German Countryside Versus US

From a Vox/Grist piece on high speed rail:

"On Amtrak’s Northeast corridor route, you can spend seven hours traveling from Boston to Washington, DC, without ever passing a farm. Each city’s suburbs bleed into the next. When leaving Berlin, on the other hand, in less than half an hour you’re whisked from the capital’s center to cornfields..."

Greeks Work Harder Than Germans

The Wonkblog has 15 charts showing differences between Greece and Germany.  The fact in the title is the most surprising, closely followed by the fact they work much longer hours than Germans and the fact that Germans only work 26 hours a week

Notable Bureaucrats: Jager and Lauter

Harald Jager and Gerald Lauter deserve places in the bureaucrats hall of fame.  Their roles are described in The Collapse by Mary Elise Sarotte, the book I blogged about yesterday , on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Jager has a bit of fame, sufficient to rate a wikipedia page.  He was the lieutenant colonel in charge at a major Berlin crossing, who ultimately made the decision to open the gates and let East Berliners cross to the other side without facing rifle fire.

Lauter doesn't get that much fame, but arguably was the more important player. He was the second level bureaucrat who led a group of 4 bureaucrats from different agencies which produced the directive on a changed policy on travel to the West.  As Sarotte tells it, he didn't think much of the policy memo he was given to implement, so the group wrote a new one, including two important provisions: the new policy to take effect immediately and to include Berlin.  He wasn't a good bureaucrat, because there was a big omission--travelers needed to obtain a visa before traveling. (The policy types really wanted only to allow permanent emigration of selected individuals but Lauter believed that wouldn't work.)

So Lauter writes the directive, a PR type holds a news conference and answers questions by reading the directive, the media reasonably interprets the directive and answers as announcing free travel to the West, East Berliners gather at the crossing points, Jager is faced with a decision of using force or opening the crossing and his superiors are no help. He finally makes the right decision.

Why do I consider them candidates for a hall of fame: both deviated from mindless obedience to orders from above, resulting in gains for freedom and human rights.  And both found themselves in situations which other bureaucrats can sympathize with: stupid policy decisions from management (Lauter) and failure by superiorss to provide helpful and reasonable decisions, leaving the bureaucrat on a limb.

I do recommend the book.  The epilogue draws some conclusions  with which I agree--both on the fall of the wall and the general sense in which history happens, accident and luck, individuals and not plans often rule.

Bureaucrats and MLKing: the Collapse

Reading "The Collapse", a very good narrative description of the events leading up to the demise of the Berlin Wall.  Having lived through that time and followed it in the media, even though it predated Internet news, I came to the book with good background.

I was surprised to be reminded by the role M.L.King played in the demonstrations leading up to the fall; East Germans knew and were impressed by his example and followed it in their own actions.

The political decision making and the bureaucracy to implement the decisions was notably defective. A change in leadership, the need to clear decisions with the Soviet Union, the aftermath of a long holiday, the miscoordination of two parallel bureaucracies (the regular bureaucracy and the Communist Party), all made for a dysfunctional system, even worse than our system today.

The End of the "Healthy Immigrant" Paradox?

The Times Saturday had a report on the results of a new German census which cuts the German population.  Germany had thought they had a handle on their population because of their mandatory registration system, but the first census in many years showed different.

According to the article what happened is that immigrants registered themselves in a place, which was added to the cut.  But when immigrants decided to leave Germany, they often didn't report their leaving to the authorities, meaning the total population was inflated.  What's more, because those shadow people were never reported as having died, it came to seem that immigrants were healthier than native Germans--the "healthy immigrant" paradox.

What's interesting is that scholars have worked on the "healthy immigrant effect" in this and other countries, offering varying reasons for the phenomenon.  Google the term and see.  So I wonder whether there's similar problems with the data being used to assess the effect in the U.S.?

Crunch[ie] Dairy the Demeter Way

This article at Treehugger describes a German dairy farm (mostly) which adheres to Demeter standards.  Amusing throughout, particularly this bit:

Our guide explains that the hollow horns remaining after a cow's passing are filled with manure, and buried underground through the winter. The composting manure gathers cosmic rays in the cold season, and in spring the mixture is dug up and the manure crumbled into the mixing tanks.A special process of mixing creates a vortex that distributes the cosmic energy in the correct manner (the view from the platform is reported to put the mixer in the right mindset during the hour-long mixing process, but more importantly the elevation obviates the need for pumps, which might disturb the cosmic energy)

 And here I always thought my German relatives/ancestors were practical, hard-headed types.

An oddity: it sounds as if the cows are never slaughtered, but yet they raise chickens for eggs and meat.

Herr Roesler and the German Melting Pot

Here's his wikipedia bio, of Vietnamese ancestry, he's a German politician, currently a cabinet minister, which blew my mind when I saw his picture.

We don't think of Germany as being a melting pot; a Google search for the term doesn't yield much.  This after all is the land of ethnic purity, but no more it seems.

The Germans, Bless Them

Watched The Last Station over the weekend--starring Mirren and Plummer.  It's apparently reasonably accurate depiction of Tolstoy's last days and the conflict with his wife, Sophia.  It's good, not great, if you like such pictures, as we do.

The director's commentary was interesting.  Most of the movie was filmed in various German places, because they had both the financial incentives and the infrastructure, in contrast with Russia which was disorganized and a crap shoot.  He commented he wanted the villa where the Tolstoys lived to be a bit dirty, because it was the center of a lot of farming activity (a commune) and lots of people going in and out.  But despite his best efforts, the German crew would keep cleaning up the dirt. 

Given my mother's folks came from Germany, I've experienced that mania, although I've fortunately escaped it myself.