Thursday, April 30, 2015

What Pardubice does not have/know

There seemed an urgent need to create streets and spaces that made people feel they were planned for them, not cars....
The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jul/07/in-a-successful-modern-city-the-car-must-no-longer-be-king

Yeah, for people--not cars, not bicycles, not glorified roller skates...

At every step, I must compete with bicycles, roller skaters and cars@!\
Damn it!
A bicycle almost hit me today because the cyclist was too impatient to wait.
And behind me, another bicycle came up quickly, silently, adding to the mess.

Really, this is not a nice place.  And the pedestrian paths are always crowded with unwanted traffic.--That on top of dodging cars......

Monday, April 27, 2015

Three Things

Three things have become perfectly clear to me:

1.  The Internet is increasingly a torture device.

2.  Bourgeois morality is despicable, petty, narrow, smug, and a thousand other things it was proclaimed to be one-hundred and fifty years ago.

3.  A person can have what they call "computer literacy", but be illiterate.  I.e., they are unable to read a text with understanding gotten by analysis and supplying historical/sociological/critical context.  Without real literacy, a mind becomes a repository for other people's thoughts. For that reason, what they call computer literacy is much less important than real literacy.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The Desultoriness of Czech Television

After watching the discussion on Czech TV of the American election campaign,
I was reminded of William James's remark that most people believed themselves to
be thinking when they were merely reshuffling prejudices.

However, we would have to modify that.

It was is as if the conversation were built out of building blocks which consisted
of crude categories created by someone else, someone not then present in the conversation,
and there was no analysis of those categories, which were employed with an amazing lack
of grace and subtlety.

So little is understood about the USA; incomprehension in inverse proportion to the frequency with which it is discussed.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

No Democracy Now

The police come onto the train. Maybe six.  I didn't count.  They actually don't speak.  I get out my passport.  I've seen it before.  No words are spoken.
I also make the mistake of getting out my Residence Permit.  What a mistake.
If I had only showed the passport, it would have been quicker.
The guy takes out a scrap of paper--again without speaking a word.
Then he goes to the space between the cars, where there's a toilet.  He and his chums consult. He phones someone up.
After a time, he comes back.
Did he say anything?  I don't recall.
I complained vociferously to my neighbor.  He probably heard me, and didn't like it.
He didn't seem angry, so much as uncomfortable.
Good.
He should think about what he's doing.
Interfering with people for no reason.  Just in case he might find something.
Is it legal?  Then the laws are bad.
Freedom?  No, it's not.  It's interference.