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Friday Notes: Almost Out of Here Edition

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On May 23, 2008

In EU, Personal, Society, UK

This one’s been sitting in an unclosed browser tab all week, waiting to get posted:

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement.

You know, I’m not entirely clear on how vegan correlates with terrorists, but I’m clear on who’s been terrorizing potlucks in Minnesota – those people that bring jello fruit salads (sorry, Grandma).

~

Tony Blair has probably been the greatest political disappointment of my life, but I’d still like to ask Israel to please not blow him out of the sky. He’s trying to help, you know.

~

I’m off into the mountains this weekend, the sort of place that Sprint just won’t go. So after this and a couple other posts, I’m done until Monday. In case you find yourself with any extra time to poke around, I want to recommend two blogs that I read regularly, and should link more often:

  • Chicago Dyke (at Corrente) is very smart and very funny. And I’m not even lying when I say that. Proof of that is right here.
  • SuperFrenchie – while the posts themselves are always interesting (well, except for that recent one where he gave oxygen that that monster that should be killed – Eurovision), it’s the commenters’ conversations that follow that I find so compelling. I almost always learn something new and interesting in every thread I spend time in. I don’t think there are too many places you can say that about.

Oh, and just because, I leave you with what could be (but was not) a Eurovision entry.  Give her a minute to get going:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYzbzL80UD0[/youtube]

A real (i.e., Imperial) Pint

By

On May 2, 2008

In EU, Society, UK

The comments section to this Boing Boing post about pint glasses provides a short & useful cultural primer.  Personally, I’d like to see more Imperial pints in the U.S.  One (U.S.) beer is rarely enough, and a(n Imperial) pint often is.

European Embassy Open Houses – Saturday, May 3rd

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On April 30, 2008

In DC, EU, UK

This Saturday, European Union member states invites the public “to take a shortcut to Europe.” From 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the embassies of all EU member states will be open to the general public. Each embassy is planning a program “featuring the country’s cuisine, its music and special events.”

From the UK’s press release:

Take a Tour of the United Kingdom:
For the first time ever, the British Embassy invites everyone to take a tour past the grand history, old castles, Big Ben, Parliament, fish and chips, haggis, the Giant’s Causeway, and Stonehenge to a UK that is now a more modern, innovative and multicultural society.

Starting at 10:00 a.m. on May 3, you can tour the United Kingdom with stops in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. Guests will have the opportunity to learn more about Being a Brit Different, take a taste of Scotland, businesses of the United Kingdom, and hear about life in DC from high-profile of British expatriates living in the United States.

Event Details and time of speakers:
10:00-11:00: British Ambassador to the United States Sir Nigel Sheinwald
11:30: Journalist and Author Christopher Hitchens
12:30: BBC Washington Correspondent Matt Frei
1:30: Senior Director, Business Policy Council and former Journalist Martin Walker
2:30: Newsweek Senior White House Corespondent Richard Wolffe

Location: 3100 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008
Transportation: Free shuttle departing from Dupont Metro Station
Parking: Parking is limited so please take the free shuttle if you can
Accessibility: All guests are welcome, but not all areas of the Embassy grounds are accessible

Those of you who live around DC may find this an interesting opportunity to see the inside of the embassies of those countries who are less than generous with public access to their embassies (and I’m looking at you, Britain – go take a lesson from Spain or Sweden).

The New $3 Bill

By

On March 11, 2008

In EU

Behold the new $3 bill.

(Via Superfrenchie, whom you should be reading) 

Overnight Music: North Sea

By

On February 24, 2008

In EU, Music, Personal, UK

The 80s saw a lot of trips between our home in Fulda (Germany) and our family in Nottingham (England). This trip always involved an overnight ferry, often from Zeebrugge to Hull (occasionally returning Dover to Calais). We usually had a family cabin, and my parents fell asleep long before I was willing to call it a day. As a result, I often ended up in P&O’s casinos or at the edge of dancefloors I shouldn’t have been. This is (part of) the soundtrack of those nights.

US Federal Judge Takes Wikileaks.org Down

By

On February 18, 2008

In Distribution, EU, Law, Tech

It’ll be interesting to see how this resolves:

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after “several hundred” documents were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

Wikileaks, in case you’ve never heard of it, has been gaining profile as the place to put information that someone is trying to keep under cover:

The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents.

Here’s a mirror of the Wikileaks site. A bit popular, at the moment.

Update: here’s a list of all the various “cover names” for the Wikileaks site.  Clearly, the court didn’t have the first idea of how these things work.

Kosovo: Hours Old, Centuries Old

By

On February 17, 2008

In EU, Society

Today, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Maybe it’ll run as a back page story in American newspapers tomorrow. Or maybe it will find its way to the front soon, with talk of NATO security guarantees, Serbian demands, and Russian/American pressures. Doesn’t it all sound familiar? From Jasmina TeÅ¡anović, over at Boing Boing:

The Sirens :: 02.17.2008

It’s starting again: the language of war is the daily bread in Serbia. The sirens of nationalism are turned on again, as if nothing had changed in the eight years after Milosevic was toppled.

[ . . . ]

In Belgrade yesterday a thousand nationalists with Serbian flags marched downtown to the Slovenian embassy. Today, in front of the American embassy, potential riots were controlled by the police. In Kosovo province, two thousand policemen from EU mission will be deployed for 120 days until the situation “becomes stable.”

[ . . . ]

The president of the government with much harsher tones accused the US and EU of robbing Serbia of its territory, after destroying Serbia in 1999 with bombs. High ranked Orthodox priests also condemn the loss of their historical heritage. The members of the Serbian government tour Kosovo, encouraging Serbs to stay there. They could have done that eight years ago by coming to terms with the criminal ethnic cleansing.

Over and over again.

€ > $ + £ 2x > $ = !?!?!?!?!

By

On July 10, 2007

In EU, Society, UK

I had a practical interest in the international currency exchanges at an early age.  When I was 10, my allowance came in US dollars, but the all the places I wanted to spend it at only accepted Deutsche Marks.   I had discovered that my one US dollar would get me much more in my hometown village of Eichenzell than it would get me at the US dollar store at the base exchange at Downs Barracks in Fulda.  That was the start of an understanding that would lead me to the thrills of the black market rates of the East German Marks when we went to Berlin, the generous exchange rate with Venezuelan Bolivars in the late 90s, and the joys of cheap Euro-denominated vacations in 2001.

But everything comes at a price, no?  I had an inkling this was coming, as my last trip back to England was pretty expensive.  But I wasn’t entirely prepared for this:

The euro rose to an all-time high against the yen and traded near a record versus the dollar on prospects the European Central Bank will signal plans to raise its benchmark interest rate at least once more this year.

[ . . . ]

The pound was near a 26-year high against the dollar on speculation the Bank of England will raise rates today.

[The Euro] was at $1.3614 against the dollar from $1.3613 yesterday and an all-time high $1.3681 reached on April 27.

[ . . . ]

The pound traded at $2.0152 after touching $2.0207 yesterday, the most since June 1981.

If you’re an American reading this, and don’t know why this matters to you, let me help – it means that it looks like you’re living on a soon to be third world currency.

Turkey & the EU

By

On May 3, 2007

In EU, Politics, Society

Despite my infrequent posting on the matter, the subject of Turkey‘s possible place in the European Union has been a subject of much fascination for me.   Putting aside my qualms about EU overexpansion, I think the dance between Turkey and the EU powers can yield lessons for the much bigger global dance that we’re all involved in (like it or not).  This Slate column does a decent job of touching on some of those issues.  Check it out.

Explaining Big Brother

By

On March 9, 2007

In EU, Policy, Society, UK

I’m always on the lookout for works that do a good job of explaining why Big Brother is a problem. A surveillance society doesn’t spring up overnight, but we’ve been moving by leaps and bounds, lately.

In the US and UK, the vast majority of the public seems to be utterly complacent about the ubiquitous gathering and storing of information about our private lives by people who have absolutely no accountability to them. I don’t think it’s necessarily because they don’t care, it’s because they don’t understand what it means. And it’s not always the easiest thing to distill in a few minutes. So I was happy to come across this video.


Updated to link the video. The wordpress visual editor strikes again . . .

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