geofencing and defenestration

The always splendid and visionary BLDGBLOG presents an excellent survey of the coming electromagnetic moats that are being created to thwart off the remote controlled cat burglars known as drones.
It ought not come as any surprise that constellation of technologies that enable the good guys to keep us safe also comes off the shelf for the potential deployment and home- invasions, casing the joint from a safe distance. The number of black sites for GPS navigation devices is growing as are signal-jamming equipment create permanent and impromptu force fields. I suspect, however, that whatever counter-measures are implemented, new methods for getting around those drawbridges and portcullises won’t be far behind, including navigation by more traditional methods, orientation without being tethered to a human operator and completely autonomous missions (replete with exhaustive demographics) with no need to report back. I wonder how the the physical façade of suburbia and gated communities, exposed and set apart from the concrete jungles that might provide some natural defenses and more barriers to overcome, might change to support this firewall fortress.

ra-ra-rasputin, russia’s greatest love-machine

I am not sure what impression that I had formed of Grigori Rasputin beforehand other than him being some creature of the court of the Romanov’s—maybe a charlatan, and spiritual-healer and advisor to (and perhaps lover of) the Russian queen. Aside from the biography presented in the lyrics of the Boney-M song, I only based my knowledge of the so-called Mad Monk from the passages in The Tin Drum where the little hero’s mother is similarly enchanted by Rasputin’s story and led down the road to ruin.

The truth will assuredly remain elusive and buried in legend and speculation. The first precept that Rasputin’s religious conversion and consequently his supernatural powers for curing the sick and prophesy is tied to his homeland in Western Siberia—an ungoverned province and the cosmopolitan gossips of Petrograd must have surely been susceptible to stereotype and suggestion. Supposedly, there was an orgiastic cult of Christian fanatics, devoted to getting it all our of their system so that they could eventually come to abstinence and salvation honestly. People were convinced that Rasputin had come from this tradition and I am sure greatly magnified any sign of hedonism to a scandal and augmented supposed diabolical powers—including that he was invulnerable to attack, having survived quite a few assassination attempts. Rasputin  may have been wielding soft-power from Petrograd and had the ear of the emperor for his own benefit to an extent.
It really struck me, however—given that the belligerents of the Great War were almost all a part of one big family feud—oh bother, there’s Cousin Willy sounding off again, no member of the royal houses were heard to say a word to stop the fighting, save for Rasputin, who foretold the end of the Empire—though perhaps already obvious to the neutral observer. I had also assumed that Rasputin was executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries along with the rest of the Romanov family, but—and again, the true reckoning is obscured—His Majesty’s Secret Service, it seems, either pulled the trigger or at least provided the weapon in the assassination of Rasputin in the thick of the war in 1916. Rasputin’s warnings to the Romanov’s maybe were dissuading the Russians from entering the war, and with the tide shifting in favour of Imperial Germany in that year, the British knew that they could not hope to contain them if they were only challenged on their western front.

augury

The Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman presents a rather interesting expository piece, with a segue about an African tribe that submits its most perplexing and unprecedented problems to an oracle—a sort of poor Schrödinger’s Cat of a decision-maker in a chicken fed poison and whether the animal survives or expires is the sought after solution. This method seems to work perfectly well for the chieftain. In parallel, neuroscientists have discovered that when faced with a similar predicament, a new environment where rodent-logic or bias may actually prove detrimental, laboratory rats can switch their brains into a random-mode. I wonder if our brains aren’t similarly wired. Burkeman finds the profundity in these little philosophic barbs and has a whole series of articles in this vein.

link roundup: five-by-five

tiny bubbles: that fizzy sensation is actually the flavour of carbon-dioxide

does not stay in vegas: charter flights for employees of area 51

convoi-exceptionel: polish trucking companies blanch at new german minimum wage laws

hils and tanketorsk plus eight other nifty danish words

new york, new york: gotham perennially threatens to secede from the rest of the state

agit-prop

The Local, the German daily in English, is reporting that the Duma is ruminating on whether to draw a parallel between the annexation of East Germany by West Germany, and declare the reunification an illegal act, as unlike in the Crimea, there was no plebiscite put to the people of the East before the 1990 appropriation and thus had no say in the matter, and Russia’s own behaviour. Mikhail Gorbachev, who has been meanwhile issuing some dire warnings to the West about not escalating matters and courting more polarization, dismissed the proposition—yet to gain any official backing and just under consideration—as preposterous. What do think of this sort of propaganda? Is it merely detached or is it purposely divisive?

paso del norte oder flüchlingslager

In a 2008 publication, historian David Dorado Romo explored a very dark and tragically formative and inspiring episode of in the history of cross-border relations between the US and Mexico and attitudes towards immigration.
These uncomfortable measures taken—ostensibly to ensure public health during the Spanish Influenza pandemic (brought back by returning soldiers from the Great War) that was decimating the population, included screenings to keep out homosexuals, the handicapped and other undesirables, fumigation and disinfection, and were lauded as systematic and scientific—though only in practise only carried out in a targeted, selective manner at checkpoints in El Paso and Juárez and only for Hispanic peoples. While the cruelty and outcome—death and maiming from the disinfectants that included DDT, petrol and Zyklon-B, has gone mostly undocumented and even forgotten—even after the debut of Romo’s book, the influence that America’s model had on the Nazis is recorded explicitly, whom instituted those already horrible and dehumanising methods by dread exponents.

R-IL (D-SC)

According to Four-and-Six, a web-site documenting forensics and doctoring photographs that spans the history of the technology, that iconic image of the Statesman Abraham Lincoln is actually a pastiche of Lincoln’s head and the posing figure of Senator and former Vice-President John Caldwell Calhoun. This choice of composition is a great irony as the Democrat’s views, fearful of a tyranny of majority-rule and defense of the institution of slavery, and general rabble-rousing was one of the contributing factors that encouraged the Southern Secessionists and started the US Civil War. There are quite a few more interesting examples to be found on the website of creative cropping and air-brushing before the advent of photo-shop.