Online literary magazines

We are innundated with news all the time, so it's nice to read magazines that take a broader view of things. I have found a few online magazines that publish interesting articles. I think I stumbled across these because they publish some of Theodore Dalrymple's work. Theodore Dalrymple (a pseudonym) is a retired doctor whose years of work in the U.K. prison system led him to question some of the sacred cows of modern liberal thought. One is The City Journal, which tends to cover politics.

 

Last week I discovered The Social Affairs Unit, and have been reading a series of articles by Emily Kingham (another pseudomym) about teaching English in a U.K. prison. I think what I like about these magazines is that they have an unconventional take on things without being radical. In general they seek to expose the curious trends and contradictions in society.

How to do less with less

The main web page of the National Research Council of Canada is not working today.

Ha-ha!

We are not talking about the website for Joe's Hot Dog stand being down, but that of the leading science institution in the country. Just a symptom of forced restructuring and departmental rationalization that I got the hell away from a couple of months ago (and the Nature reported on last week). Amazing to see the old place start to come apart at the seams.

No, no....dig up, stupid!

Burg, Schloss, und Fähre

Here is a series of photos from the last couple of weeks showing what I did on the weekends. On April 17 I went to the Bad Godesberg castle with Marcel.

Marcel at base camp "Bad G" about to climb to the summit of the tower ("Berg")

The view from the top is amazing. To the north is the business district of Bonn. The shiny building is the Deutsche Post offices.

At top of Bad Godesberg tower. View is to the north.

Later that afternoon I met up with a co-worker and her partner for a bike ride south along the Rhine. Then we took a Fähre (ferry) over to the other side and returned along the east bank. I don't know if it is all part of a Commie plot to squeeze the secret of maple-syrup-making out of me, but my colleagues at iFQ are really nice and go out of their way to make my time here enjoyable.

Rolandseck ferry

Manuella on the ferry

Christine bought a Burly bicycle kinder-wagon a couple of weeks ago. Now we are much more mobile with Arianne. On Sunday, April 24 I loaded her into the Burly and biked downtown to meet up with a co-worker at the Poppelsdorfer Schloss (palace), which is now part of the University of Bonn. Kalle has two daughters, so our manly, extreme activities consist of feedings and nappy changes. But it was still fun. The botanical gardens aren't much to write home about, but they do have a giant flower (7ft tall) from Indonesia that blooms only once every seven years. The most entertaining thing to see were the Blumenschnappers that Kalle pointed out: Thse are wierdos with professional-grade DSLR cameras who are loaded down with utility belts that holster a range of mega-zoom lenses. They wander around the garden in Tilley hats and safari gear taking extreme close-ups of flowers. Fucking flowers.

Kalle and daughter Helena at the Botanische Gärten

Little Arianne was a real trooper. We were out and about for 5-1/2 hours on a hot day. We must have covered 15 kilometers in all. She didn't cry or make a fuss, and fell asleep on the ride home.

Wheeeee!!

Gleefully Gloating

Remember a couple of months ago I detailed why I left the NRC? Well the shake-up is now the subject of a news item in Nature (one of the most important scientific publications).

Canadian research shift makes waves

Agency's focus on industry-driven projects raises concerns that basic science will suffer.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110419/full/472269a.html

There will still be jobs there and they will still do some science. But their focus will definitely shift to making quick money by seeking contracts with industry. In the software industry this is called being a "solutions provider"; we'll make whatever you pay us for.

Today I bicycled along the Rhine as pink petals fluttered from the cherry blossom trees. The birds sang and the air was fragrant with flowers. I figured out how to use a probabilistic interpretation of the Jaccard Coefficient to disambiguate synonymous authors. And I did not have to make a pie-chart for some frantic suit who was desperately trying to justify the existence of their institute in light of the coming rationalization of programs that the NRC's new focus demands.

I gloat over my good fortune to have left that sinking ship when I did.

The economic establishment begins to question itself.

You know things are getting strange when the Secretary-General of the U.N. calls for a revolution in our economic system. You see son (leaning back in my rocking chair and hooking my thumbs under my suspenders), time was that it was the poor folk who started economic revolutions and all. Not them high-falutin' folk in their fancy motor-carriages.

Perhaps you remember the economic crisis of 2008? The near-vapourization of all that electronic stuff we call "money" was narrowly averted one Sunday afternoon in New York when Hank Paulson bullied the major U.S. banks into a wierd semi-nationalisation-cum-bailout. The recent documentary "Inside Job" is an amazing peek into the willful ignorance and outright duplicity of Wall Street leading up to the crash.
A quick refresher course in political economy is perhaps in order: Those tumultuous weeks in the fall of 2008 completely discredited the notion that the free market could regulate itself. France's president Nicolas Sarkozy famously said in a speech that the Anglo-American economic model was dead. There is no "free hand" of the market. And if there is, it is sometimes psychotic and therefore cannot be left unattended. This was a golden opportunity for a reinvigourated Left to take the lead in shaping a more fair and stable economic system. But having themselves embraced free-market ideology over the past 20 years, (neo-)liberals now have nothing to bring to the table. Indeed, the silence from the Left has been deafening.

So we are in a bizarre situation in which a Left-leaning U.S. President hires a horde of arch-suits right off of Wall Street and puts them in charge of fixing the economic crisis. That they caused. These former bankers and stockbrokers launch a massive Keynseian spending program (the most Lefty sort of Big-Gubmint socio-economic manipulation) to keep the economy ticking. Yet there has been no fundamental re-think of how this all works. Regulation of the financial markets has not been strengthened. Heck, forget about writing regulation to prevent the next crash: how about using existing laws to deal with what just happened?

The recent article in Rolling Stone asks rightly "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?". Yes, an example was made of the most outlandish Ponzi-schemer, who has been locked up for 150 years (for 10 points, can you name him? Last name begins with "M"). Now it seems that people are starting to ask pointed questions as to why the "vampire squids" at Goldman Sachs, who made a killing swindling private investors and then connived their way into kajillions of dollars that was meant to help the swindlees, are not in Leavenworth.

All this is to put into context the recent statements by the Secretary-General of the U.N. who called for a revolution in our economic system. He feels that the banking system is out of control and that the environmental challenges of climate change require a new economic model. Remember, we're talking a mild-mannered career bureaucrat here, not some jungle-dwelling quat-chewing colonel. Of course, he means "revolution" in the intellectual sense and is not actually calling on people to start throwing Molotov cocktails. Still, the frankness of his message - delivered at a major economic forum to old men in suits - is shocking. Yes it sounds like crazy talk, but in light of the aforementioned scams that seem to form the basis for a large part of the financial sector, perhaps Ban-Ki Moon is on to something.

Some more photos

Here are a few more photos on no particular theme.

A couple of weekends ago we went to downtown Bonn. It was a really warm sunny day (remember, we're talking about the end of March). There was some sort of gastronomy festival in the main square (where the statue of Beethoven is). This old Citroen van looked cool:

Old Citroen van in Bonn Markt

And here's another photo from last weekend's excursion up the Romantic Rhine valley. An old abbey or something. Note the steep vineyards in the background. They are arranged on the south-facing side of the mountains for maximum exposure to the sun.

Abbey ruins above Bacharach

And here's little apple-cheeks herself making a silly face:

No car, no problem

It has been three and a half months since we left Canada. Put the car in the garage with some Sta-bil in the tank and stored the battery in a warm place. Since I have been in Germany I have not driven a car, nor have I even been a passenger in a car. There has been no need.

This is wonderfully liberating as I do not need to drive to the supermarket to fetch the daily necessities. Back in Canada, the endless rigamarole of schlepping to the mini-mall, parking the car, walking across the 4-acre parking lot to get to the airplane-hangar-sized store just so I can buy a bag of milk at non-usurious prices is a real pain in the ass. Of course, having gone to the trouble of getting there I might as well pick up a few other things so that I won't have to trudge all the way back here tomorrow. Then I get to stand in line behind a dozen fuglies in order to pay. Christ, I just wanted some frickin' milk! Then it's off to find some Molson because apparently society will come apart at the seams if we are permitted to buy beer at the same place we buy beer nuts. Naturally, the beer store is located in a different mini-mall a short drive (but a long walk) away. So I get to repeat the whole dance all over again: park the car next to a minivan with truck nutz, walk across another vast parking lot to the charmless commercial plaza, stand in line again behind folks who have tattoos on their necks yet who are also wearing clown-sized shorts and designer-brand flip-flops.

Besides being a colossal waste of time, it results in a really ugly built environment. The "generica"* we have chosen to build for ourselves is not an enjoyable way to live. This is the credo of the writer and social critic James Howard Kunstler who describes the suburbs as "the greatest waste of resources in history". Not simply because it takes a lot of gas to drive around in an SUV collecting packages of processed food, but also because our most important resource - our lives - is spent in such unnecessary ugliness.

So being able to walk to the local grocery store from home here in Bonn, even if the prices are a bit higher, certainly is nice. The only disadvantage is the difficulty in purchasing liquids in family-sized quantities. I can carry a few litres of milk, juice, and pop on my bike without any problem and that lasts us a few days. But it is hard to ride all the way from the getrank with a 10-litre crate of beer bottles. The solution is to drink more wine as there is a Jacques' Wine Depot a stone's throw from my place.

* = The homogenized land of mini-malls and 4-lane streets that are the same anywhere you go in North America

Mittle Rhine by train & boat

Christine's parents are visiting us for a couple of weeks. After a few days to get their bearings, we hopped on a train and went South to explore the Romantic Rhine valley. We took a train to Koblenz, then switched to the Mittelrhein train for the next leg of the journey to Bacharach. (pronouned in German "Bahahhrah"). The trip took less than 2 hours and cost a mere 39 Euros (2 adults, 2 seniors).

Mittelrheinbahn train in Bacharach

This whole area is the wine-growing region of Germany. Because the climate here is not as warm as the more obvious wine-growing regions like Spain or Italy, the Rhein wineries have had to adapt. Here only the South-facing hillsides have been turned into vineyards in order to capture as much sunlight as possible.

Bacharach and the Rhein

View from hotel room

The olde towne is full of cutesy cobblestone streets and restaurants catering to tourists who like crooked architecture:

The oldest house in the region. Built in 1386 (without a ruler).

This morning we walked across the street and took a ferry downsteam to Koblenz. This was the real highlight of the trip, as around every bend in the river was another castle.

Look upon yonder hill-top; it's a castle!

The old towns, colourful trains, and passing ships (going upstream towards Switzerland) made for a great sightseeing. And they serve beer on board.

Ship go up, train go down

As a taste of things to come, note the graphics and signage on the modern ferry pictured above. The "BUGA" is the national German flower and garden show. It starts next week in Koblenz and I will drag my mom to it in May.