This afternoon I am working at home - I need to finish the hand-outs for next weeks summeryoga class.

So for me right now Thursday is okay.

What a day. I now have a freaking Turkish tax ID. I mean, really. Inshallah I won't have to bribe any customs officials tomorrow, but I'm ready for anything.

you are the media you consume.

Thursday is a bit of a dead day in Finland. Wednesday is the 'Little Weekend', Friday starts the party weekend. TGIF. All the Thursday action is in the art galleries, because new shows are launched then - if a cheap red wine and some cheese nibbly things is your thing. The openings are usually 17 - 19.30, after which artists, gallerists and assorted liggers retire en masse to some trendy watering hole. I've given up on them.

Meanwhile I managed to record, edit and despatch 2 voiceovers that I will probably never ever hear again: one for a pulp mill safety video, the other for a regional bank near the Russian border.  

I am planning to watch Redbelt 2008 by David Mamet later, when it is cooler. Last night I watched The International 2009 with Clive Owen, that could have been quite good if  it had been directed by Paul Greengrass. Owen is wooden - but he worked better than expected in this story of an Interpol operation.

I also watched Finding Amanda 2008. A much better movie with good dialogue and good acting. Worth watching.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Nice cartoon in today's Guardian:

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Coronation Street | Google Street View - ITV Soaps

Corrie fans will soon be able to see 360-degree images of the famous Street as it becomes the first ever TV soap set to feature on Google Street View.

The Google Street View car has been driven down the cobbles to capture pictures for its virtual maps, so you will soon be able to see the Street as you've never seen it before.

I'm tired of this backslapping, aint humanity great BS, we're a virus with shoes Bill Hicks

It's one of the two holidays in this town:  their lady of Carmen.  The socialists are sponsoring a street party with grilled sardines and sangría, where I'm supposed to show, but I don't know for what.  

It's not an appealing combination, but it should be fun.  

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

Shhhh... Secret Sanctions on Bank of America
by Karen Weise, ProPublica

Federal regulators placed Bank of America under a "secret regulatory sanction" ($) in early May, the Wall Street Journal reported this morning. The sanction, which is still in effect, requires the bank to revamp its risk and liquidity management as well as overhaul its board to have a majority of new directors.

"Rarely disclosed publicly, the so-called memorandum of understanding gives banks a chance to work out their problems without the glare of outside attention," the Journal said...

The nuclear debate has truly exploded in Germany. Now two more issues added to the one I wrote a story about, the persistent security lapses at a plant that was shut down just after re-start (two yeard after the previous shutdown for the same reasons).

• The nuclear waste storage facility in Asse (officially, a research facility, but it is full of low- and medium-grade waste) has been scandal-ridden for long, due to leaks, water breaks, instability, and general mismanagement (see f.e. Salon discussion last year). It was assumed that it will have to be emptied somehow in the next decade -- it wasn't yet closed.
  
  However, fresh leaks have just been reported - groundwater continues to enter the mine. (See Salon.) The boss of the radiation protection agency advised an immediate closure. While there seems to be no danger for anyone outside as yet, this complicates the cleanup greatly. The federal environment minister used the occasion to revise requirements for final storage.

• The nuclear oversight authority found a new kind of problem in a number of plants: bits of isolation material get loose inside the piping of the primary water loop, and block the emergency sump pumps (this could prevent cooling in case of cooling water loss). Can be solved by retrofitting. But RWE, the operator of Biblis B, one of the affected plants which was just at the end of a revision, wanted to delay a retrofitting until the next revision. After the minister went public telling them to not repeat Vattenfall's mistake, RWE backed off.

At present, 4 of the 17 nuclear blocks in Germany are shut down for various reasons.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Mig: I have not been able to reproduce your Safari bug. Which version are you using?

   

Control station in the subterranean coastal artillery fortress "Batteri Arholma"(pdf! picture) north of Stockholm. The text says "war" and "peace".

Batteri Arholma is now a museum.

   

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

I was born on a Thursday.  I'm pretty pro-Thursday.

A quick thanks to you guys who had my back at Booman yesterday.  Now I feel like I have a posse!

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

I see the Sears Tower in Chicago is being renamed the Willis Tower.

Either way, you wouldn't find me standing on this viewing platform on the 103rd floor....

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

so why am I just back from work and it's already Friday?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes