I am now posting an email I just sent to a friend:
Just imagine. The Czech Post Office in downtown Prague---not far from the train station---is
open Saturday and Sunday from 2pm until midnight!
That's amazing and convenient.
I went there yesterday to mail a letter, and did not have to wait in line. In Pardubice, I ALWAYS
wait in line!
In the USA they would not believe me if I told them the post office is open on Sunday---and
after dark!
Little things like this matter.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
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.....
"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......
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".
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".
Thursday, September 19, 2013
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.
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....)
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....)
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