Prince Albert

(Forty kilometers due east of P.A. actually, but that's the nearest town.) Having a pleasant stay with uncle and aunt and piles of cousins. Weather is mostly grand: coolish temperatures, frequently sunny, gentle breezes. Lots of storms moving through, though: it has rained briefly but intensely every day. Watched a few films on TV, ate our way through enormous mounds of food five times a day.

Family, hot tub, coyotes barking in the dead of night, Northern Lights, hail damage, crop failures. C'est la vie.

To Toronto tomorrow, for a few days of diet, then to Halifax for a week of meditation.

Happy New Year

Just a quickie, waiting for a lunch date with friends from high school. It's been mostly grand in Toronto, the "mostly" having to do with the usual mild annoyances that surface when families get together. Weather has been nasty, +4°C and rainy.

I'm flying to Germany tonight, the New Year will strike for me a few kilometres above eastern Quebec. Flying tonight was nearly 600 Euros cheaper than in the first days of January; much as I do like Lufthansa I saw no particular need to give them that money. Realized while printing out my boarding card for FFM that I have a six hour layover there tomorrow, midday to evening. Bah. Might just throw away my final ticket and take a train home, even on January 1 there should still be an ICE every two hours.

Harpier cries, 'tis time, 'tis time. Happy New Year, my dears, may 2010 treat you kindly. Gods and terrorists willing, my next post will be from home (Stuttgart).

Merry Christmas

Ho ho ho, and welcome to the season of indulgence. And various other things too, of course, but from where I half-recline right now, full to bursting of good food and very good wine (if I say so myself, having chosen and imported it double-bubblepack-wrapped quadruple-plastic-bagged and wadded up tightly in my clothes) the indulgence seems most evident.

I wish all my readers a pleasant holiday, in the mode and style of their choice.

What, that's not enough? OK, a weather report: it's +4°C and raining like hell. Bah.

Reading lots, finished Coupland's "jPod" (a work of meretricious beauty, less than the sum of its parts) and now reading Atwood's "The handmaid's tale" (darker, deeper, altogether more interesting, though I strongly suspect that it will not even remotely end with happily ever after).

Merry Christmas

Settling in well to the routine of life in a pet-filled vegetarian household at -23°C. Finished wrapping presents, only one of which broke in transit, now blogging before dinner. Went for a walk just after sunset along the Wascana Creek, dog surprised a jackrabbit which escaped into somebody's fenced garden.

Flights were blissfully dull. 23 hours door-to-door, of which just under 12 hours were actually spent in the air.

Merry Christmas, my dears. I wish you all peace, health and happiness.

[Just noticed the dateline, which is wrong. This was actually posted at 7:30 pm on Christmas Eve.]

On the wing

God and terrrorists willing, my next post will be from the bosom (or is that "bowels"?) of my family in Canada. Merry Christmas / Chanukkah / Festivus / Yule / seasonalities to you all, my dears.

[Updated after 19.5 hours under way, of which 11 hours actually in transit. Waiting in Calgary airport for the third and thank gods last connection of the day. Nearly home, which is just as well as I am fading fast. Arsehole neighbours held an open-windows party last night until 3 a.m. Now in desperate need of a shower and a bed, only about 3 hours away.]

How the future doesn't look

It's a fine summery Monday midday in Toronto, 12:52 pm at present whatever Blogger might try to tell you. The weather has changed: after two days of cold and rain, today is sunny and warmish (16°C) with a gentle breeze and only few decorative clouds.

I'm alone at home (in my parents' house): Sis and BIL are downtown seeing friends, Niece and Nephew are at the Science Centre, parents are shopping. I have taken advantage of their absence to open up windows front and back, to get some fresh air into the house. I find the recycled air of these tightly-sealed North American houses unpleasant: it feels used, stale, flaccid somehow compared to the fresh crisp vitality of the air outside. I can hear birdsong — such a profusion and variety of birds here! — and airplanes, a lawnmower and the vague dull background roar of traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, which together were the soundtrack of my childhood. One thing is sorely missing though: the sound and smell of the row of poplars that stood at the back of our property. Ah well.

The neighbourhood has not changed much visibly, many houses are still inhabited by families I knew forty years ago. In some cases, the parents moved out and left the house to the next generation (my generation) who are now raising children here; some others simply never left home. One can't even buy a cardboard box in the gutter for under C$199,000 these days, let alone a proper house where one might raise a family. There are apartments and condominia going up all over downtown, which is generally a good thing, Jane Jacobs was entirely right about that, but they start at C$ half a million for a one-bedroom flat. Who the hell buys or rents them, and how do they pay for it?

The better question is: Where on earth does everyone else live? The answer is, sadly, "In a bedroom suburb 90 minutes by car away from their jobs downtown." This is not a model for the future. Oil is running out (in case you hadn't heard), and the automotive suburban lifestyle will die with it. How do you think people will survive in so-called "communities" where there are no shops? How will you get to the big-box store by the highway intersection when there is no gas to put in your car? For that matter, the big boxes won't be there: how will WalM*rt and the rest survive when the price of diesel makes their warehouses on wheels as expensive as the brick-and-mortar warehouses of their competitors? They will die before peak oil really hits, because their sole justification for existing is their low price: people are willing to buy shit from them because it is cheaper than non-shit, but who would still shop at WalM*rt if their shit were the same price as other stores' higher-quality goods? The big-box stores are dead, take that as a given. The Internet shopfronts like Amazon, who are really just negotiators between you and somebody else's warehouse on wheels, will die immediately after from the same cause: their business model also depends on cheap and plentiful fuel.

I am extremely pessimistic about the future of North America late-phase free-market globalized capitalist democracy, I'm sorry to say, not because the problem is insoluble but because I see no willingness to admit that it exists at all. Hard rains are coming, folks, and I'll tell you right now, for free, that neither prayer nor technology will provide a solution. Nor will the kind of eyes-tightly-shut denial that is currently being practiced by almost all politicians and media.

The coming crisis is not about the kind of fuel we pour into our cars, that is a technical matter (albeit one with wide-reaching social, environmental and global-political side effects, obviously).

The root problem is the car itself: the kind of lifestyle it forces (apparently...) us to live and the kind of national economy it requires (apparently...) us to support. How and with what will we replace a society based on the immediate gratification of childish whims and on private, individual mobility? Because these are not sustainable in the long term, probably not even in the middle term, and the sooner we begin to face this problem the more likely we are to solve it without falling into chaos and bloodshed.

Our desires and our lifestyle must change, if we wish to save the rest of what we now call "civilization."

Thus endeth the lesson.

Toronto

There is both too much and very little to say about the place where one grew up, especially when seeing it after more than three decades of separation. I am here in the company of my sister's children, who are now older than I was when I left Toronto for England, Europe, architecture and my own life (such as it is).

I feel that I am suffocating in this tightly-sealed, recycled-air, overheated house. Typing right now on an inflatable bed in the office, which was my bedroom three decades ago, with the window open and a cool breeze playing over my legs. Birds are singing outside as daylight fades — by the way, it is 8:30 p.m. on Saturday 3. May as I write, whatever date and time Blogger may see fit to impose on this post when I publish it — and planes are droning overhead on their way to the airport; other than that, it is quite close to silent here. I hadn't realized how noisy Stuttgart is, how oppressive I find the sound of traffic outside my windows (there).

Celebratory lunch for my father's 80th birthday in the new restaurant of the remodelled and reopened Royal Ontario Museum today, a happy and pleasant occasion. The bill for seven of us came to C$480 excluding tip but including the Members' 10% discount that my parents get. Was it worth every penny? Hard to say. The food was delicious, the wine was good, the service suitably fawning; but damn if it doesn't come hard to say that such a price can ever really be justified. If you happen to be in Toronto with a buttload of money, there are worse places to spend it.

That's enough for now, I am tired and unmotivated. I hope you are all well and happy, dear readers.

qa0ßßß0

Monday, work day, alone in the house but for cat and dog. Parents and friends are en route (separately) to Toronto; cousins have dispersed in every compass direction but south; Sis, BIL and Nephew are at work, Niece is back at the university lazing about studying.

Twenty-two of us met yesterday for a formal brunch in the Hotel Sask, very pleasant. Afterwards, Physically Distant Cousin and I went on a pilgrimage to Rouleau, better known as Dog River. There wasn't much to see, alas, as filming was finished for the year and the gas station/café was (literally) boarded up tight and all possible stealables locked away. A lovely day out nonetheless, photos will be posted later in the week.

PDC's daughter is about to graduate from high school, and is wondering what to do with her life (she's not yet eighteen). I suggested that she might take a year or two off to see a bit of the world and consider what if anything to study. There is a certain amount of parental pressure influence to continue straight on into university; I countered that taking a generic BA course for its own sake is a poor investment of time if she doesn't know what she wishes to study. Better to spend a little time exploring herself and narrowing down the possibilities.

Conan has just walked across the keyboard, renaming this piece. I'm inclined to let his contribution stand.

I walked to the local Chapters store at the edge of town this morning, where I spent a pleasant 90 minutes snuffling and nosing about. It's odd that I can spend hours (literally) in a bookshop, but am seldom longer than twenty minutes in the library. Managed to restrict myself to six books, but only because four others that I was specifically searching for weren't available. Megastores like this are an odd combination of delight and frustration: they have so many (presumably) wonderful books, yet they almost never have the one particular book that you wanted.

I'd forgotten during my years in Germany, how much of English so-called humour is based on cruelty, on harsh mockery and abusive, bitter put-downs. I found speaking to my father's cousin quite distasteful; on the other hand, I have to award him points for being the only representative of my father's family who could be bothered to attend. [Updated: in fairness, those that didn't have school-age children or are themselves teachers, so it would have been pretty difficult to get away—just to have lunch together.]

This may be the last post for a while, as tomorrow will be spent travelling and Wednesday will be spent sleeping. Take care, be good to yourselves and each other.

Fiftieth

Well, the celebration has gone over well. We were fifty people in the end, one of my many second cousins had to cancel because of a kid's illness. Good food, good people, good speeches (including mine, if I may be so bold). My parents were pleased, and that's the main thing.

Now home again, listening to the murmur of conversation as my parents and their four best friends from university catch up on news old and new. It's the first time all six have been in the same room since 1953.

Reading Harry Potter, listening to the rain, feeling mellow. Happy Saturday, everybody.

Tired meets Godzilla

Parents and their travelling companions, friends of twenty-seven years' standing, arrived yesterday. After tea with Sis, I settled the friends in to their hotel (only the finest will do!) and walked home. Spent today catching up on news and having a portrait photo made with Sis; soon dinner.

Sentences you wish you hadn't heard, part 37: "Mom, the cat just walked across the pie." True, alas; photos will be posted on Flickr when I get home. We covered over the footprints with whipped cream and ate it anyway.

But young Conan is adored and indulged nonetheless, to the extent that one finds oneself whispering because he's asleep on a nearby chair. There is a certain quantity of sibling rivalry between the dog, who was here first, and him; but on the whole they get on well. They play together, i.e. fight without drawing blood; despite the difference in size and weight it's nearly an even battle.

I've been considering my speech for a week, and shall now have to settle down and write the damned thing. It'll be short and bittersweet and hopefully win approval on both counts. We shall see.

Reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" and enjoying it greatly. No spoilers about the new one please, it will be arriving with Niece tomorrow evening for me to read on Sunday.

In other news I love being here. I love the flat, empty landscape and the enormous so-pale-it's-nearly-white sky. I love speaking English. I love the small houses and colourful trees and quiet streets. I am considering the possibility of moving back to Canada.

In other, other news an amusing cartoon from xkcd which will appeal to SQL-geek moms everywhere.

Son of tired

Posting quickly while dinner races towards the table. Spent the day preparing for (a) our parents' arrival tomorrow, and (b) the anniversary party on Saturday. Walked around town, noting change and constancy and clear blue skies.

Suffering from vague headache, which I think is due to forced-air heating and tightly-sealed houses. I've jammed the window in the guest room open, and will see whether that helps.

Suffering also from cat-hair allergy, which didn't happen either in Lisbon with the Lioness and her pets or with my sister's late cat. Ah well; 'tis an imperfect life of joy and sorrow commingled, as the poet said.

I was reminded of a trivial event in Frankfurt airport on my way here. I wanted to get some Canadian dollars, so headed towards the foreign exchange office, then noticed just before reaching the counter that there was a Post Office bank cash machine next door. So I went there and got a handful of cash, with which I returned to the counter. I handed the bundle of notes to the cashier and said "300 Euros' worth of Canadian dollars, please;" he set the bundle aside and counted out a slightly larger handful of Canadian notes and handed them to me. As I took the bundle, I said to the cashier "You're very trusting, giving me this money without counting what I'd given you." He replied, "I've been in this job for twelve years. I can tell that you're honest." He's right, but still it was a slightly odd encounter.

One might call this "the trust economy:" the feel-good factor of dealing quickly and pleasantly with me outweighs the possibility that I might have stiffed him for—well, what's the downside? that I gave him 250 instead of 300? When my pre-paid cellphone card ran out in Hamburg recently, the service sent me a text message offering an advance on my next prepayment: for forty cents of my remaining balance, they'd advance me five Euros so that I could continue using the phone.

By the way there's only one Internet connection here (cable-modem with a literal single cable) and five people wanting to use it, so my time online is limited. Please don't be offended or surprised if I don't get around to reading/commenting on your blog during the next week.

Tired

Arrived in Regina, spent the day playing with dog and cat and family. Now so tired that I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, nonetheless can't go to bed just yet as we haven't had dinner. It is such a hard life (sobs quietly). [Updated: as though by magic, a glass of beer has just appeared at my hand. It is such a grand life (sips quietly).]

Favourite cousin and family and I drove to Banff (150 kilometres) to meet my parents and travelling friends of theirs for lunch, then drove back home. Only in Canada.

I've taken lots of lovely photos of leaves and trees and clouds. Unfortunately, I've left the camera's USB cable at home so you'll have to wait another week to see them.

More tomorrow-ish.

[Updated yet again: I notice that Blogger is posting the time back in Europa even though I've changed my computer's time and timezone settings. It is actually 7pm on Monday 8 October.]

Early

I'm jetlagging mildly, what a surprise. I woke at 4am, dozed until 6 when the heating came on (forced-air, as is typical in North America) and made me get up. It is still quite black-dark outside, favourite cousin's husband is awake but the rest of the family sleeps on. I think it's time for cappuccino.

Another day here, then tomorrow to Regina to my sister's for the party preparations.

Life is good.

Arrived

... in the Stampede City (as it calls itself, as though Boston were to be known solely for its marathon). Flight was pleasingly uneventful, good weather and often clear skies. I saw the mountains of eastern Greenland for the first time in all these decades of regular trans-Atlantic flying: very rugged, very high, quite impressive. There was no sign of human activity between crossing over Iceland three hours into the flight, and seeing the first electricity lines in northern Alberta six hours later (an hour before landing). I thought (as I often do) what a peculiar thing it is to fly halfway around the world on a whim, just for a party; and how strange that this mid-air tin can should be some people's regular place of work.

There was, alas, a screwup with the tickets: somewhere between my booking window seats on all four flights and the agent reading me back the seat numbers, and when I turned up at the airport in Frankfurt, all these reservations were lost. Either the Lufthansa agent forgot to carry them forward when he changed my first flight to the train, or (more likely) they were lost during the transfer between Lufthansa (where I booked the tickets) and Air Canada (who actually ran the flight). In the end it was OK, because I was able to change at the gate to a window seat; I just hope that my return trip won't be spent in the middle of the plane.

Memo to Lufthansa and Air Canada: Pardon me for interrupting your tenth-anniversary backslapping, but this Star Alliance partnership thingy of yours still needs a bit of debugging.

Weather coldish and grey, seamless overcast and 3°C as I landed. The forecast is for warmth, Sunday should be sunny and mid-teens.

My favourite cousin and her family are well, everyone seems healthy and happy. The kids are growing, my gods, her son is as tall as she now.

Mail is downloading as I write, some 6923 messages on the server which are new to my laptop but not to me. There seems to be no way to delete mail without downloading it. Ah well, it's a flat-rate broadband connection so what the hell. Just saw a subject line flash past: "Now you can have sex up to 10 times a day." Dear gods, what kind of unhappy, uninformed, gulllible clod believes this crap? Somebody does, else the spammers would find another game.

Cappuccino awaits, and there are hares on the lawn that need watching.

Assorted musings

I apologise for the length and pomposity of yesterday's post, which I have substantially shortened and enhumbled. Perhaps I should start a second geek-specific blog where such things may gyre and gimble at full length without disturbing normal healthy readers?

Anyway. The weather remains grey and windy though the temperature has reached the dizzying height of 10°C, so I remain indoors working (well, blogging; soon to be working) and drinking coffee and eating delicious Italian biscuits ("Baiocchi con crema al latte" by Mulino Bianco, whose rather primitive website doesn't list them. For American readers, they look like Oreos but have less sugar and are more flavourful).

I am listening to Glenn Gould playing Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony for solo piano. Compressing a piece of orchestral music down to one single (albeit polyphonic) instrument is an almost absurd act, but it works very well. Liszt has captured the essence of the Sixth quite brilliantly. Thanks to Antonia for the kind gift.

We lived around the corner from Gould for a few months in the early Sixties, between our moving into the neighbourhood and his moving out. That would have been the summer of the year that Gould gave his last public performances; I presume that he moved to be nearer to his recording studios which were downtown, but also (given where he settled) because he felt himself to be too successful and rich for our neighbourhood. Or perhaps he simply felt out of place in suburbia, at the end of a forty-minute commute by bus and subway from the heart of the city.

This brief elbow-rub with fame may come as a surprise to my sister, but I didn't know either until last Autumn, when my father happened to mention it as we walked past a particular house one day. He and my mother had gone to a viewing when it was on sale, and were most impressed by the handmade hardwood music shelves (aka bookcases) on nearly every wall of nearly every room.

Wonderful

Well, that was quite excellent - with only a few minor blemishes. The brass remained woefully underrehearsed, fluffing notes and entries in all four operas. Yes, it's a difficult part; but I have heard the orchestra of the Met under Jimmy Levine and I have to tell you that there were no mistakes made there. Your bad playing is either incompetence or laziness, and I see no reason to excuse either. Frances Ginzer disappointed slightly in Götterdämmerung as she did in Die Walküre, perhaps it's a question of stamina as she started well but weakened. She was definitely straining for the notes and the volume in the final act.

But it was very moving, the final scene of the gods' ruin was beautifully staged, better even than Stuttgart which has been my favourite so far.

On the whole, the Toronto Ring was very good, among the best I've seen. I would have rated it equal to New York had the brass and Brünnhilde been a touch better. To think that the shy, clumsy, prissy, wallflowerish Toronto of my youth could have matured so far as to produce this world-standard opera in this magnificent building!

I am sad that the Ring is over, but happy to think that the next one is already only 296 days away. I've restarted the countdown for the Mariinsky Ring at the Met in New York. We saw it in Baden-Baden in 2004 and quite liked the production.

The trip hasn't been all opera, of course. I have met a few friends, had sushi and fancy coffee (and why is it so damned hard to get a plain, simple cup of coffee these days? what is wrong with coffee-flavoured coffee?) and done some shopping (clothes, books that were unlikely to be available in Europe) and now have four more days of touristing and fun before flying back. (I changed to a later flight because G and U are spending the week in France, poor things.)

Walking around the old neighbourhood is a strange experience, a mix of happy memory and present sadness. Some of my friends and contemporaries have already died, by accident or illness; many are divorced or separated and have returned to the parental nest. I thought that I recognized the fourth trumpet at the orchestra as a girl from high school, who lived three streets up the hill in a house that her father designed. It wasn't her, but the resemblance was striking. I had such a crush on her, but didn't dare speak to her because I was a nerd and she was a jockette; it would have been the death of her socially to be seen with me, so I spared myself the embarrassment of being refused. Fool. (For what it's worth, my sister who is always right says that she was a mean and spiteful bitch, so perhaps it was just as well.)

I have been channelling Proust all through the trip, seeing my memories of people in their (my) youth overlaid on their present ageing appearance to surreal and often saddening effect.

Typically Toronto: the smell of cut grass, there are no lawns in Germany; the sound and sight of aircraft flying overhead; the muted roar of traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, which is as loud and as constant at 3am as at 1pm; faces and languages (street signs) from every race on the planet; odd juxtapositions of land use and value: a two-storey brick row of houses and offices next to a thirty-storey tower.

In other news I have posted the remaining answers to the music quiz. Thanks for playing!

Halfway

I am most impressed.

The Toronto Ring (as we shall be calling it in future) is quite brilliant so far. Great singing, good sets, good orchestra - with a few truly awful fluffed notes in the deeper brass, I hope that they are getting their arses kicked. If it continues in this quality, it will be as good as the Mariinsky Ring. It's Siegfried tomorrow and Götterdämmerung on Sunday, and I am already disappointed in advance that the Ring will soon be over.

The first act of Die Walküre last night was just perfect, could not have been better. Adrianne Pieczonka - a fine Canadian name - was brilliant as Sieglinde, gamely hopping about on a broken ankle. Frances Ginzer as Brünnhilde is good but not great, which is unfortunate as she is the central character of the remaining two operas. She has the unfortunate habit of rising to tiptoe as she belts out the high notes; she's young and somebody will teach her not to do it. The Amsterdam Brünnhilde, Nadine Secunde, was a much better singer. The planned Wotan, Pavlo Hunka, is ill so we have had John Fanning in the role: quite good. I disagree with the portrayal of the character, Wotan is not a whiner, but that is hardly Fanning's fault.

The Toronto Opera House is also excellent visually and acoustically, a large but intimate space with marvellous (clear, crisp, warm) acoustics. We are sitting in the middle of the fourth of five balconies, not exactly the cheap seats but also nowhere near the top of the price scale. I would recommend this area and the third balcony to readers who may visit Toronto, the fifth balcony would have a worse view and the orchestra seating and lower balconies would surely have different (worse) acoustics. [This was confirmed by a friend who was sitting in the orchestra level: muddy, unpleasant sound.] The "front of house" area is fully glazed to the street, with layers of balconies and stairs and a lecture area on the second level, and manages the trick of appearing small and intimate while still accomodating three thousand people.

Let me read you the surnames of the singers: Forbis Pieczonka Ens Hunka Bullock Ginzer Németh Makerov Vilsmaier Phillips Baggott Stannard Szabó McHardy Yang. Typically Canadian, the lot of them.

In other news I still hope to find a way to get online at a reasonable speed, I don't have the patience for blogreading on this dreadfully slow connection. It's hard to imagine that people (myself among them) actually used to do business at this speed.

In other other news we are watching Six feet under on DVD. Brilliant, wonderful stuff. Highly recommended - but have a large box of tissues and a good friend handy.

Toronto

Here OK, but: there will be no more blogging until I can find a way to get online faster. My parents' analog modem (!) took nearly five minute to display the "create a new post" page.

In transit

Blogging in Regina airport, waiting for my 90-minute flight west to Calgary where I will change for an eastbound flight to Toronto. Such is life under capitalism. Explain to me how flying one plane eastwards from Regina to Toronto (as Air Canada does) can possibly be more expensive than flying two planes west and then east (as WestJet does). No, don't bother.

I had a nice visit, as the Westerners say. Lots of good (vegetarian) food, much conversation, dogwalking in the early hours followed by still more conversations until the slugs kids and my sister's husband get up.

Next stop Toronto, as I said: more good food, more conversation, plus the added attraction of a big-city downtown area with many large bookshops. I doubt that I'll beat (not even equal) the Lioness' record of bringing 115 books back from her holiday in Canada in 2004/5, but I shall do my very best.

The Ring Cycle starts tomorrow evening.

Harpier cries; 'tis time, 'tis time.

Regina

The cold and rain have caught up with me, after a single day of relatively good weather. There will be very few photos taken during this holiday, I fear.

I had forgotten what clever, interesting people my sister and her family are: the speed of conversation, the balletic weave of jibe and retort, are like a Billy Wilder movie come to life. It's fascinating to observe, and dizzying to take part in, their conversations after such a long time away. I find myself to have slowed down, to have adopted the Germanic zeal for precision at the cost of the easy fluency that we once shared.

Their computer (one of those Windows things) died last week, so the first thing we discussed on my arrival was what kind of Mac they should buy. We phoned around yesterday morning, and after some difficulty found the only Mac Mini available in the city - which we promptly bought yesterday afternoon. I have been fine-tuning it and teaching them the basics of Macism since then. The question of salvaging their data from the wreckage of the Winbox is still open, of particular interest are the 4.5 gigabytes of music files that nobody remembers (or admits to) downloading.

Three days until the opera starts! I'm very excited. There have been some last-minute changes in the cast due to illness (and politics, it is whispered) but should still be quite good indeed.

In other news during my nearly three-hour stopover in Frankfurt on the way here, I signed up for a pilot project run by the German Bundesgrenzschutz (border police), testing automatic passport control by iris recognition. It was impressively simple and efficient: sign the release forms, present my computer-readable passport, stand in front of the camera, stand in front of a test system to confirm that it could recognize me. Finding the ofice where this was done took twice as long as the actual sign-up. It worked well, too: I walked from there to the passport control, ignored the three hundred people waiting to be checked by a human and laid my passport on the checking console. The first set of doors opened, I stood in front of the camera which flashed and beeped, and the second set of doors opened. Took about twenty seconds. What's not to like?

Mind you, I would not have been so willling to stand in front of an American version of this system. I am willing to trust the German = European security apparatus and its political masters; I have serious doubts about the CIA/FBI/NSA and actively distrust their political masters.