Dark Dark Dark - Wild Goose Chase (Elephant Micah Cover)
Relevant because of reasons (and yes, I do realize that I've posted this pretty much exactly a year ago - it made things even weirder BECAUSE IT'S NOT EVEN THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THAT SONG).
Politics:
It is the legacy of a country, known for its civil liberties, which allowed government power to exceed reason or justice or morality. So long as the place remains open, so long as men are detained there, the wound we opened but refuse to close cannot meaningfully heal.
Jon Huntsman withdrew from the Republican race this Monday, leaving Perry, Gingrich, Santorum and Paul to pretend like it isn't decided yet.
Today I dreamt about having an argument over why Austria lost its S&P AAA rating and Germany didn't (the banks' exposure to volatile Eastern European, especially Hungarian and Rumanian, market? The inability of the governing coalition to find a majority to enshrine the debt ceiling in the constitution?). It was weird. Also someone made me listen to Elisabeth - The Musical, and there's this line in a song that describes (or over-dramatises, we'll see) the lack of action following: "Wir sitzen im Kaffeehaus rum und erwarten gähnend die Apokalypse." But hey, look, at least Germany has low borrowing costs now that it's a safe haven!
In the same vein:
“Mathematics is mathematics, and one plus one has to equal two and not five,” he said, describing how, even with a significant restructuring of its debt, the Greek government’s deficit would still be too large and its economy not competitive enough to put the country back on a sound footing.
That sense can be self-reinforcing as well, making it even harder for Mr. Papademos to push through the changes Greece needs to survive the current crisis.
Greece’s dire economic condition can hardly be overstated. After two years of tax increases and wage cuts, Greek civil servants have seen their income shrink by 40 percent since 2010, and private-sector workers have suffered as well. More than $75 billion has left the country as people move their savings abroad. Some 68,000 businesses closed in 2010, and another 53,000 — out of 300,000 still active — are said to be close to bankruptcy, according to a report issued in the fall by the Greek Co-Federation of Chambers of Commerce.
NY Times: As Reforms Flag in Greece, Europe Aims to Limit Damage, January 15, 2012
Foreign Policy has an photo essay comparing the most iconic pictures of the Haiti earthquake with how these sites look now, two years later.
A couple of days before Wikipedia and other sites went black to remind users of the looming threat that is SOPA (and its Senate counterpart, PIPA), the Obama administration announced that any attempt to battle the threat of online piracy "must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small." This is not actually a promise to veto the act should it eventually pass.
Pop Culture:
io9 has an interview with Caroline Skinner, who joined the production team of Doctor Who and oversaw the making of The Fades (which is still waiting to be renewed for a second season and has just started its run on BBC America - you know what to do!).
If you want to potentially spoil yourself for the first episode of Skins and possibly subsequent ones, Digital Spy has interviews with Dakota Blue Richards and Jessica Sula.
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