el paso texas
what a miserable place
a little bit of snow and everyone goes crazy
Dear EPTX:
okay, get used to it
global warming is coming
climate change is here
Today my eighty-something father was owed two professional visits:
first the nurse's aid who should have bathed him, and secondly
the nurse who is supposed to monitor his health (which she does once a week).
Those two women play an important role in my father's weekly routine.
Neither was here Monday when they were scheduled to appear.
The nurse's aid phoned up on Monday to re-schedule.
The nurse did not.
Neither is well paid.
Yet both contribute more by way of real contribution to society and economy
than many wall street traders, politicians, and Hollywood stars ....
What an absurdity.
To get the very minimal care my father receives, a person must
travel by car from the other side of town.
I hear that they pay for their own gas too.
That is a bullshit system, the USA system which I call a We-Don't-Care-About-Your-Health-System....
No, I don't really have anything good to say at this particular moment.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
death is coming too slowly
the loneliness
isolation
and emptiness
the anti-social nature of daily existence
in this miserable place
all of it
is killing me
alas
too slowly
Sunday, January 30, 2011
shocking!
Shocking! An economist speaks the truth!
"The wealthy hate the idea of government money going to anyone but them, and since the vast majority of Social Security benefits are going to low and middle-income families, the program is an outrage to their sensibilities."
--Dean Baker--full article at :
And one can even hear the truth in Egypt:
“The country is full of wealth and resources, but where are they?”—Egyptian heard on Al-Jazeera
(We might well ask the same thing about the USA.)
(What's that I hear? Billions of dollars to support a dictator in Egypt?)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Egypt and beyond
There is a predictable, inevitable, and not wholly inaccurate mention of the fall of the Berlin
wall in today's Guardian...in discussing Egypt...
Unfortunately, the end of what was called "communism" is not widely understood. Perhaps I can express my own point of view most quickly if I recall the words of one former dissident in Czechoslovakia who said that what they'd gotten in the end was not at all what they had wanted when the 'Velvet" revolution started... They had wanted something more like a Swedish social democracy and had gotten something too much like the United States...
There is, as well, a genuine question, rarely asked, about the real costs of the transition to the current form of organization in "Eastern" Europe...whether it might have been carried out differently, what was the extent of bad influence from the U.S.A. and its allies.....
So that, e.g., among western capitalists, unemployment is just the price to pay for business
as usual--a penalty meted out to workers not capitalists....and I did once read in a Czech newspaper about estimates by a sociologist, estimates of the number of people who had died younger under capitalism than they would have under the old regime, dying younger because they had become unemployed and started drinking.....As I re-read these words, they seem altogether too premature-- the course of events in Egypt and other countries is very much unfinished. But I think I've made my point about the easy comparison to the events of 1989.
wall in today's Guardian...in discussing Egypt...
Unfortunately, the end of what was called "communism" is not widely understood. Perhaps I can express my own point of view most quickly if I recall the words of one former dissident in Czechoslovakia who said that what they'd gotten in the end was not at all what they had wanted when the 'Velvet" revolution started... They had wanted something more like a Swedish social democracy and had gotten something too much like the United States...
There is, as well, a genuine question, rarely asked, about the real costs of the transition to the current form of organization in "Eastern" Europe...whether it might have been carried out differently, what was the extent of bad influence from the U.S.A. and its allies.....
So that, e.g., among western capitalists, unemployment is just the price to pay for business
as usual--a penalty meted out to workers not capitalists....and I did once read in a Czech newspaper about estimates by a sociologist, estimates of the number of people who had died younger under capitalism than they would have under the old regime, dying younger because they had become unemployed and started drinking.....As I re-read these words, they seem altogether too premature-- the course of events in Egypt and other countries is very much unfinished. But I think I've made my point about the easy comparison to the events of 1989.
Friday, January 28, 2011
sociological?
I can imagine what it's useful to say when you want to communcate with undergraduates in North America if one attempts to teach philosophy...I can imagine the sort of thing...
So, when George Rudebusch adverts to a hollywood style image of bombs exploding in his explication of Socrates, I'm not surprised.
Of course Rudebusch is a responsible scholar, and knows what he is doing, controls his exposition with appropriate qualifications.
Nonetheless, I don't find the image of bombs exploding (or was it bullets firing?) and people dying to be a useful metaphor when it comes to explaining the idea that what we do makes a difference. And I actually recoil away from the sort of high style language we need in English to talk about this--phrases like "the importance of morality"....too abstract, hopelessly abstract, it seems to me.
(hastily added explanation: I've not got the text before me, but as I recall the basic point was that our actions do impact upon the lives of other people, and that this gives an urgency to a kind of moral seriousness and inquiry as typified by the life of Socrates. I shall have to come back to this entry and fill it in, I fear....---it's that important for us to get our thinking straight about how to live! how important? as important as it would be if our thoughts could bring about the immediate death and injury to innocent people, people we didn't even know...)
I prefer the literary style of Elizabeth Bowen in "The House in Paris" where two young people fall in love, bringing with it a host of consequences, and a child.
There's not the flash of explosions, but there is, first of all a dreadful excitement due in part to plunging into the unknown, and later a growing awareness of how little one understood what one was really doing, and, later, an attempt to deal with what's become of one's actions....all truer to reality than anything like the Hollywood style....
(Kundera says something like this: we try to portray ourselves when we act, but when we look at the results of our actions, it's hard to find ourselves in what we've made.)
But, then, again, how many North American undergraduates would bother to read a book like "The House in Paris"? (I suppose that last remark was said in Rudebusch's defense.....) Then again, how many philosophers would consider a novel to be irrelevant? (I don't know the answer to that last question....)
Note: (A somewhat political remark.) It's a point made by Ted Honderich (though, I suppose, not only him) that our fascination with violence makes us less aware of the slow dying of starvation....That's another way to begin to express discomfort about Hollywood style drama. It reminds me of the complaint that mere books or articles or blogs change nothing.....a disguised appeal to the Hollywood rapid change picture of history...... as if words were ever mere words.... (I end this remark with an unpleasant feeling that I've not yet begun to get to the bottom here...)
Further note/after-thought; Then, again, there is something bad in a life that lacks conversation--or, as we are wont to say, lacks honest conversation. I'm not sure (though I say this without great confidence) that we find this portrayed in Plato's dialogues: the halting, self-censored conversations we find in Bowen's "Death of the Heart"... but there too what's portrayed is badness in a human life, an absence of a certain good--and, once again, it lacks the simplicity of a Hollywood portrayal....(and by "simplicity" I do not mean clarity, but, instead a kind of inappropriate childishness... a kind of over-simplification...)
So, when George Rudebusch adverts to a hollywood style image of bombs exploding in his explication of Socrates, I'm not surprised.
Of course Rudebusch is a responsible scholar, and knows what he is doing, controls his exposition with appropriate qualifications.
Nonetheless, I don't find the image of bombs exploding (or was it bullets firing?) and people dying to be a useful metaphor when it comes to explaining the idea that what we do makes a difference. And I actually recoil away from the sort of high style language we need in English to talk about this--phrases like "the importance of morality"....too abstract, hopelessly abstract, it seems to me.
(hastily added explanation: I've not got the text before me, but as I recall the basic point was that our actions do impact upon the lives of other people, and that this gives an urgency to a kind of moral seriousness and inquiry as typified by the life of Socrates. I shall have to come back to this entry and fill it in, I fear....---it's that important for us to get our thinking straight about how to live! how important? as important as it would be if our thoughts could bring about the immediate death and injury to innocent people, people we didn't even know...)
I prefer the literary style of Elizabeth Bowen in "The House in Paris" where two young people fall in love, bringing with it a host of consequences, and a child.
There's not the flash of explosions, but there is, first of all a dreadful excitement due in part to plunging into the unknown, and later a growing awareness of how little one understood what one was really doing, and, later, an attempt to deal with what's become of one's actions....all truer to reality than anything like the Hollywood style....
(Kundera says something like this: we try to portray ourselves when we act, but when we look at the results of our actions, it's hard to find ourselves in what we've made.)
But, then, again, how many North American undergraduates would bother to read a book like "The House in Paris"? (I suppose that last remark was said in Rudebusch's defense.....) Then again, how many philosophers would consider a novel to be irrelevant? (I don't know the answer to that last question....)
Note: (A somewhat political remark.) It's a point made by Ted Honderich (though, I suppose, not only him) that our fascination with violence makes us less aware of the slow dying of starvation....That's another way to begin to express discomfort about Hollywood style drama. It reminds me of the complaint that mere books or articles or blogs change nothing.....a disguised appeal to the Hollywood rapid change picture of history...... as if words were ever mere words.... (I end this remark with an unpleasant feeling that I've not yet begun to get to the bottom here...)
Further note/after-thought; Then, again, there is something bad in a life that lacks conversation--or, as we are wont to say, lacks honest conversation. I'm not sure (though I say this without great confidence) that we find this portrayed in Plato's dialogues: the halting, self-censored conversations we find in Bowen's "Death of the Heart"... but there too what's portrayed is badness in a human life, an absence of a certain good--and, once again, it lacks the simplicity of a Hollywood portrayal....(and by "simplicity" I do not mean clarity, but, instead a kind of inappropriate childishness... a kind of over-simplification...)
free egypt
courtesy of my sister who watches fox
we get the usa propaganda version
the danger in Egypt is that there will be a "right wing Muslim" takeover...
no, I don't believe that....
the "danger" is that the usa might lose influence
that's what the usa ruling class fears....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
