Sunday, September 29, 2013

disbelief

The Gringo is very naive.  He cannot believe the things people say, even when (especially when) he is a participant in the conversation....

"Students are not allowed to lock their doors.."

Unspoken implication:  students have no right to privacy.....

Spoken response:  "I am not a student...."

"I know that..."

Then why are you telling me about your mistreatment of students?

Jeez Louise, even students deserve a little privacy.  What a monster you really are.....

Note carefully what's going on here.  When the monster mindlessly recites the rules, she is not merely informing ignorant me of a fact; she is also asserting her superiority. She knows the rules and I don't.  The fact that she mindlessly repeats them is irrelevant.  Her knowledge is a sort of stick with which she will beat people.  She really is a sort of monster.....

Saturday, September 28, 2013

David Petraeus

Corey Robinson has a nice post at "Crooked Timber" about the recent public confrontation of David Petraeus by a group of young people.

Especially nice is a quote from Adam Smith.

http://crookedtimber.org/2013/09/22/voldemort-comes-to-cuny/#more-30865

I have not carefully read all of the comments, but I'm not much taken by the way some of them were about right-left issues:  If we lefties allow that to be done to people on the right, then we can expect it by people on the right against us......

That seems to me a mistaken way of thinking.  It suggests a sort of symmetry that doesn't exist.
After all, isn't one point which emerges from this example that the "right" precisely do have the police on their side?

Petraeus is a bloody murderer and has no business teaching in a university.  Defenses of his "academic freedom" are a joke. He's not an academic.

The students are right to be outraged. The little bit of verbal abuse he may have endured is nothing compared to the suffering Petraeus has caused. 

When administrators criticize the students, they are also refusing to re-examine their decision to put Petraeus in a place where he doesn't belong.

Yes, he should be allowed to speak for himself--at the Hague......

Sunday, September 22, 2013

weather report

It always amazes me when I read something (in Czech or Slovak as it happens) and, without footnotes or references or quotation marks, the writer repeats the words of someone else.

As in the editorial writer yesterday in a Czech newspaper who said (words to the effect that)

What the Greek problem shows us is that we have all been living beyond our means.

Which is consistent with the omnipresent endorsement of austerity which I seem to find again and again in Czech newspapers.....

And I think of my mother struggling to care for my father, and not having enough help.
I think of me working in Central Europe because had I stayed in the USA, I would not have had either a full-time job or health insurance.

Indeed, my education was possible because my parents helped me.  Were they living beyond their means when they provided their children a college education? "Provided" because university education is not free in the USA.

The other night I mentioned the idea of full employment to a friend.  And by "full employment" I mean decent work, and not drudgery.  To which my friend replied that East Germany had full employment 

But that was precisely not the sort of work I have in mind.  Not work that makes people stupider.
Not work that leaves people feeling they have been cheated or abused.

I tried to explain to her:  I don't want to go backwards.  I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past.  But I see no reason why full employment with decent work, interesting work, should be impossible.

I don't want to go backwards; but what I see today is that we are going backwards.  And our decline is being hastened by the wise men who dare to say that we've all been "living beyond our means".




Sunday, September 15, 2013

no one wants to know

The help available to my elderly parents is inadequate.
I won't spell that out except to say that they do receive some help,
and it falls far short of their needs.

If one person in a couple is weaker than the other, naturally, the stronger will
help the weak.

But we are talking about two elderly people--both of whom are now weak,
both of whom should be getting assistance.

It is cruel and it is uncivilized.  But that is the USA.

People I know in Europe find this unbelievable, and imagine that I am exagerrating.
How little they know.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Did I get this right?

Are my ears deceiving me?  Is my memory bad?

The head of Yahoo before a government committee is asked why she didn't tell her customers (citizens, nay, fellow citizens of a democratic country)

that they were being spied on?

And she used the word "treason"?  If she, as an individual, were to reveal bad behavior by a government, that would be "treason"?  What the hell is treason?  You mean it's not treasonous if the government betrays the most basic principles of democracy?  Errr, no matter what the government does, the government is right----what do you call that?  Well, it's not democracy. It sounds like the esteemed boss of Yahoo is motivated by blind obedience and self-interest....... and, of course, fear..... Is that how you get to be head of a huge corporation?  Is that creativity and enterpreurship in action?  Is that innovation?

And she said (in effect) she didn't want to go to prison?

But, err, those people who are being illegally spied upon....  I suppose they don't matter.  We can sacrifice them, right?

In Snowden's first interview, he described the possibility that a person who had committed no crime, and had zero evil intent, could, given the lack of safeguards and non-transparencey, be framed.  He did not actually say this has happened---but, I wonder, has it?  And might S. know of a case where it had?  This is speculation, but, it's not unfounded.

So, return to an individual who has been deemed "suspicious"----though surely the bureaurcats will find some fancier expression----and who doesn't know it.  Errr, that's robbing them of the right to face their accusers.....Something, I recall that was supposed to be somewhere at the foundation of American democracy...

And, so at the most basic level, what the Yahoo boss was protecting was, one might say, un-American.......and what the government itself was doing was, uhhhh, un-American----and that's not "treason"?? 

What about the people (us!) who have been secretly spied upon?  Do they want to be spied upon?  What about the fact that once a government feels the need to spy upon its citizens---especially in an indiscriminate and universal fashion---- it shows itself not to be a democracy?

But then the expert who was commenting upon all this clarified things for me when he remarked that public knowledge (especially abroad) of all this spying was bad for Yahoo's business overseas.  Oh dear, we can't have that.  An American corporation whose prospects overseas are damaged......Gee, that might hurt me, right?  (No, I think not.......The behavior by Yahoo's boss shows how much companies really care about me.....  or you....)

recommendation

I just want to recommend Michael Dawson's blog:  "The Consumer Trap".

http://www.consumertrap.com/

The book of the same name is worth reading.  It also provides an antidote to philosophers who blandly (and cheerfully, and misleadingly)  compare Plato's Theory of Forms to advertising's creation of artificial desires----something I hope to write about at greater length in the future...

Thursday, September 12, 2013

the democracy deficit

Could there be a sort of device which helped the elderly avoid falling?
A device combining state of the art robotics and AI?

I say this thinking of my 88 year old father.

If a team of researchers at, say, MIT, worked on this....

If they had worked on this starting in the 1960's, say, what, by now, might they have come up with?

Instead, they gave us the Internet and Drones.

And there was never a public discussion of these uses of public money.......

Sunday, September 8, 2013

An Open Letter to The President of the USA

Dear President Obama,

I've heard you say that you do not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Thank you for speaking the truth.

Now, you should remember that actions speak louder than words.  You should give the prize back, along with the money.

Sincerely yours,
The Yankee Gringo

Friday, September 6, 2013

a bit of humility, but not too much..............

The profession of being a foreigner is a humbling one. Imperfect language mastery, and real cultural differences create a real stew.....

But it is still irksome to hear, "You behave as if you thought you were still in America...."
As, for all practical purpose, I left there in 1996....... , I am more likely to make a comparison between Vienna and Pardubice, a comparison disfavorable to Pardubice----more likely than a comparion to El Paso, Texas which is also less civilized than Vienna.....

On the other hand, I suppose that means I violate certain local expectations of behavior, in addition to sometimes simply not understanding........

Thursday, September 5, 2013

capitalism is inhuman and disgusting

I've just returned from the post office, where I was sending a letter to my parents.
I used a larger than usual envelope because I was sending a photo, and didn't want to bend it.

So, I had to fill in a customs declaration.

What utter stupidity.

What utter redundancy when we know that today the US Postal Service carefully controls every piece of mail, and, in fact, copies the envelopes, in order to compile a file on every citizen----who she communicates with, and who communicates with her.....And, a citizen like myself who lives and works abroad--- I am an economic migrant because I couldn't find a full time job with benefits in the USA----is even more suspicious.

What price can I put on my own letter, a poem, and a foto?

For my parents, those things are priceless.  My mother's own words:  Your father treasures your letters.

What price to put on a father or mother's love?

What a stupid question.  Their love is priceless, and for that reason my letter is also priceless.

Yet, the stupidity of capitalism and markets insists on squeezing everything into a coffin.

The lady at the post office was surprised by what I told her.  Alas.  People in Eastern Europe tend to be very naive about what the USA really is.  It is unfortunate.  Good people in many respects, yet, in this one area, very naive. 

Monday, September 2, 2013

the Habsburgs and "mentality"

A  Polish girl on the train yesterday, a student of nursing, mentioned that there is a certain 'mentality' common to Slovaks and Poles....among others..

Usually I hear that word from Central European friends when they talk about the older generation.  I would describe them as the older generation who suffered through a failed social experiment.
Suffered because the system was not democratic.  Nor, I think was it really socialist, because socialism is democratic.

The system retained a rigid social hierarchy.  Workers did not manage themselves or make decisions as they would at Mondragon or a proper democratic workplace.  And corruption and shortages resulted from the maneuvers of managers who wanted their bonuses.

Yet the idea of a "mentality" has resonance for me.

E.g.,

I've been living in temporary accomodation, a sort of hotel.  I've just returned from Vienna, and the shocking difference between the standards here and there is fresh in my mind.

We were told that we would be out of our regular accomodation for about three weeks.
When the three weeks were up, I wrote an email to the person in charge asking about when
we could move back.  The answer was very polite, but the essence of the message was:  Please be patient.

Now, I spent four or five hours last night moving.  I returned from Vienna at 7pm to find a message on my door saying:  Your room is now ready.

Well, that message was posted on Friday morning, sometime after I had already left.
And, I am happy to leave the so-called hotel. It's of a standard comparable (I would imagine) to the YMCA in the USA.  Shared bathrooms. Shared kitchen.  A room too small for my belongings, so that frequently a glass or shampoo bottle might tumble to the floor because there's just not enough room.

So, I wasn't exactly wanting to stay in that hotel as long as possible.

But today around 8am as I was starting to move, I was confronted by someone who evidently imagines herself important.  She informed me that I was already supposed to be gone.
Yeah, right!  When I'd asked about moving, I was told: Please be patient.  When it is time for me
to move, I've got to do it quickly.  They can miss a deadline, but I cannot.

Err, that's not symmetrical. 

I told her that I had never been informed of the deadline.  My note (telling me that I could now move) specified no deadline.

She did not know that.   but her bossiness was not going to stop merely because she was ignorant....

Later I spoke to the lady who actually will clean my room.  She told me that it didn't matter if I took all day to move out...............

Now, isn't that interesting........

She wrote back, politely asking me to be patient.

Friday morning I left early because I had to catch a train.  I returned Sunday around 7pm,
and found a message on my door.  It was a friendly message telling me that my "room" (it is really an apartment, but the bureaucracy thinks we are all students living temporarily in rooms....)
is ready.:

This is all adding insult to injury, as I have been thoroughly overwhelmed for the past month by the inadequate living conditions. 
UNFINISHED

a poem




If I knew a way to bring my parents joy,

I would not hesitate.

 

When my mother tells me

she wants me to be happy,

after all these years,

I finally believe it.

--And it hurts.


I was blind,


--not selfish,

but stupid.



My father did so many little things,

out of sincere kindness,

like sending me postcards of American Indians.


--A thousand little things that I did not understand.--



You might call it egoism,

but that would be unfair to my younger self:

The mind is burdened and cluttered,

by a thousand smaller or larger obstacles:

You can't see past them,

and you can't see around them.


Until one day they disappear,

and the sweet sadness starts.





Pardubice

2 September 2013