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...

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.......

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

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........

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. 

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