Ramen Review

Less than skin deep.
(c) BILD
“The army would need to run border surveillance so that nobody tries to smuggle € out of [Greece]. [...] [The Greek government] would need to rule by emergency powers [...] Wire transfers would need to be outlawed [...] international air and rail traffic would need to be prevented.”
– Some German professor releasing 1000 years’ worth of stench from his undies[de:], probably Nov 6th, 2011 or a bit earlier.
People will starve. They always do.
The “fun” thing is … read more

Guajardo et al. “Why (and How) Austerity Kills” (IMF, 2011)
Howse “Why Regime Debts Are Not State Debts (and Neither Are Corruption Debts)” (UN, 2007)
Sproul “Why Zimbabwe Collapsed and the US Didn’t Despite Neither Having ‘Solid’ (i.e. fossil) Money” (UCLA, 2003)
Hutchinson “Most Overlooked Use of the Word “economics” in the History of Knowledge” (Yale/AMNH, 1948)
The present global economic woes, at least, should be largely solvable based on this.

After all is said and done, burn everything. Dump the ashes into the … read more

So, revisiting the river valley overlooked by Hill 431, where two nights before the CinC[*] and his “publisher of a major newspaper” friend went to their little outing.
While the Minister was back in Berlin getting 80% of the major media pissed off mightily (and one Mr. Wonka of the Leipziger Volkszeitung[de:] presumably shitlisted — watch 1:20 to 1:32 and 1:50 here:)

some Afghan guy who presumably will forever remain nameless had decided to take matters in his own hands — alas, … read more

So, on May 20th, 2010, I said in a private conversation (that was duly noted down) regarding the economy:

the significant index values of the coming ?weeks:
dax 6500 and rising
djia 10000 and falling

Meaning that until one of these marks is breached, and robustly so, the global economy will remain in limbo, and other matters of concern may be leisurely regarded as utterly more important.
Almost 3.5 months later, I have no reason whatsoever to change my opinion on this issue.
The last week … read more

Stupid WordPress bug.
Back to Part I
So, at one end money is melting away — creditor-debitor relationships are blowing up –, and this questions (by questioning the future windfalls based on which private banks did draw that money = credit from the central anks in the first place) the existence of further money. Such money may be involved in backing a creditor-debitor relationship that is due now, and its disappearance may cause this relationship to bust, too. It may be indirectly … read more

(Too pissed off of the universe to add links right now, also need to run some PCR 2mo’. Maybe l8r.)
A month as uneventful as it was full of summer heat and monochrome karma.
Kim the Lesser’s guys have assembled some more rockets in NKorea and are showing off. Everybody is pissed, except the NKoreans, who are partly elated and partly… … I don’t expect it to matter to their daily lives too much.
Peace in Sri Lanka? I fear not — though … read more

GodmodeTrader.de[de:] predicts that the DJIA will now try and rise beyond 9,061 ticks and if it makes 9,400 it’s BULL TIME YEEHAWW. Otherwise, he says, it is also likely (but less so) that it stays below 8k. IONO. Neither looks very reasonable to me. The trend lines that circumscribe the meso amplitude of fluctuation (months) look good to me. The rest is… well, it might work in times of peace.
I note that the micro amplitude of fluctuation (days and weeks) … read more

We didn’t go to the demonstration 2day, but I went to where they had their final speeches and cultural programme. Met w/a few ppl I know, though I’d hoped I’d meet some other folks who weren’t there. One guy is a local activist, in whose case his non-presence represents quite epic FAIL. Or I have not understood his methods and he’s in a weird tree-hugging magickal cult that hopes to bring civilization as we know it crashing to its knees … read more

This year has had some funny weather that far. Not bad though. First decent winter since I moved here or so, >10 years ago. When the cold started to get obnoxious, spring broke out. Lasted for 3 weeks or so, unexpectedly turned into summer. April has been what you’d expect May to be. By now, it is colder again and wet, has been raining on and off again for the last few days. But again, the sun is coming thru.
The … read more

The Con supreme-mayoral candidate of Cologne announced today that he’ll quit the race for re-election (elections due August).
He had been a staunch supporter of the subway project that came to almost topple a church belltower[de:], killed two, destroyed much of the documental archive of Cologne, sunk millions of euros; he had been investigated by the police more than once, had been entangled in networks of bribery, kickbackry, ill-spent funds, construction scandals and the likes. His time of office benefitted … read more

Now, here we have a document titled
NATO IN AFGHANISTAN
MASTER NARRATIVE AS AT 6 October 2008
A bit obsolete, but nonetheless… It is part of a batch of documents liberated by the good people at Wikileaks. As they dryly remark,

The encryption password is progress, which perhaps reflects the Pentagon’s desire to stay on-message, even to itself.

Said “password” also “encrypted” the three other documents. Note that Wikileaks is intelligent enough not to submit the password of one Chris Riley, to whom the … read more

The DAX made a brave attempt at recovery yesterday, but the DJIA was, for the time being, malade. So the N225’s attempt to pass on the hot potato and hope for a transatlantic recovery had not quite worked. Especially as it pulled itself above 7.5K, only for the DAX to come down in flames over the whole Opel and AIG and the Citi and whatnot mess.
(Note that to make up for a loss, you need to gain more percentiles than … read more

Ah, the eternal challenge to actually discuss cooking on a weblog originally intended to be about the culinary only. So… what did I make for Hanukkah? Searching for something similar but not alike to latkes (which I had been advised to prepare), I came across some pakora-style concoction incorporating peas; I figured that given the fact that this would not be unknown to the Bene Israel, it would be adequate. Being probably as goy as goy can be, what would … read more

As staple rice, I prefer the nondescript parboiled rice you get in kilo packs in the supermarkets over here. I have no idea where it comes from, what cultivar it is, and so on. It has a good combination of keeping fresh and being healthy (for a carb staple). I sometimes don’t like rice, so I eat something else as carb staple, taters or pasta or whatnot. Brown rice would start to spoil under such conditions ever so often, so … read more

Whatever.
As it seems, Arnie is having a bit of a hard time. The Handelsblatt at least says so[de:], and they are usually pretty nonpartisan for the exuberant mouthpiece of Capitalism that they are. But I think we had this coming, with the State practically bankrupt for the last 4-6 months or so.

“The Terminator is an end-of-line model, little more fit for reality than Detroit’s Big Three.”
(Rüdiger Scheidges, loc. cit., 17th February 2009)

If you understand German, the article gives you … read more

Some mixed odds’n’ends…
“No police officers will be prosecuted over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, Crown prosecutors Service say.”(BBC, February 13th 2009)
Those were strange days, back in 2005. For a conspi take that is at the same time kooky and rather interesting in an unJonesian way, try 7/7: The Ripple Effect. It seems certain from the weight of evidence that some MetPol honchos were investigating rumours of an upcoming attack on some Israeli interest, although the question of whether … read more

At present, I am reading Mayr’s Konzepte (What makes biology unique?, etc). He probably was the last naturalist; he certainly was one of the dozen or so people who defined what we (scientists) think of as evolution today.
The general understanding of evolution is somewhat backwards and weaker than it need be — for the stuff is literally everywhere in your daily surroundings if you are a member of a human civilization — ; the cre-guys in particular have little … read more

Back for picking up some pieces.
Icelandic krónur, somewhat worse for the wear, definitely qualify as "filthy lucre" these days.
The IS króna is being re-floated; trade in that currency was essentially suspended since mid-October to prevent hyperinflation. As is to be expected, “float” is fairly misleading here. The official term is “managed refloat” anyway, which basically is the fiscal equivalent to dropping a fat chunk of volcanic rock overboard somewhere in the GIUK Gap, with a safety line tied to it … read more

I have not discussed markets a lot lately, because they have not changed much. It may be taken as saying that the pattern has stabilized, but I think the Fed interest adjustment may still shake things up quite a bit in the second half of the week. Though I cannot imagine how it ought to make a major and long-term impact, the occasional interesting behavior might still be witnessed. In any case, the apparent pattern is a decline of about … read more

People are much speaking of the upcoming interest slashing of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America, or just “Fed”.
Regarding the Fed, it is perhaps more interesting to note the following figures from their official October 22, 2008, H.3 Release (”Aggregate Reserves of Depository Institutions and the Monetary Base”), wherein MRD is “milliard” (U.S. “billion”):

October 31, 2008 — Nonborrowed: US$42MRD. Required: US$41MRD.
October 22nd, 2008 — Nonborrowed: US$-363MRD. Required: US$47MRD (both estimated).

No, the “minus” sign before “363″ is … read more