Saturday, October 22, 2011
Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...
Just a small thought here about something small. I.e., supermarket discount cards. I usually shop at the Bloomfield Shop Rite. I have my regular night and time to be there, stocking up for the week. It’s usually a low-drama experience, as it should be. The only ripple is when the checkout clerk asks for my Shop Rite card, as most of them do. Well, I don’t have one, and I have to tell them that. Some just shut right up and go on scanning my groceries, but some push the issue and say “oh, you forgot it then, what’s your phone number?”. So then I have to repeat that no, I don’t have a card at all. Once in a while, a sympathetic one asks if I want to sign up for a card. Would you like to come in from the cold and be like the rest of us, you outcast?
Well, the answer is still no (although I try to be gentle). I like being a Shop Rite outcast. I can’t understand why most every other customer has one, given the invasion of privacy that such a card entails. I mean, someone is tracking your weekly food and sundry purchases and sharing it across a variety of different corporate databases. Eating is a sacred thing for me, and I don’t want corporate America looking over my shoulder whenever I go to market, assembling a huge databank so as to “make my food shopping experience better”.
I wonder if other people even think of this; I wonder if they would be so quick to whip out the card if they knew just what Big Business Brother was doing » continue reading …
Monday, October 17, 2011
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...
Let’s zoom from the far-right GOP of today (see above post) to the far-left; yes, there may actually be a far-left forming around the Occupy Wall Street event. Interestingly, there was a little tift in the press recently about the spreading Occupy movement and whether it is being bankrolled by billionaire George Soros (a man who made his billions on Wall Street and the like — a man in the top 1% of the powerful 1% whom the Occupiers are protesting against).
A few days ago, Reuters ran a story saying that there appears to be certain organizational links by which Soros money is finding its way to whoever is spending funds or earning a salary to keep the Occupy thing alive. The on-going “Occupy” event obviously needs food, blankets, sleeping mats, press outreach, toilets and “handlers expenses” for those who plan and guide the activities that gain press attention, such as marches on corporate HQ buildings. These things don’t just happen, despite the idealistic claims by the young Millennials that their “General Assembly” is the prototype for the horizontal, autonomous, emergent, consensus-based leaderless system of the future. Nonetheless, various sympathetic commentators such as financial journalist Felix Salmon protested that Reuters was acting too much like Rush Limbaugh and his friends in implicating Soros.
So, the latest version of the Reuters article starts out with the title “Soros: not a funder of Wall Street protests”. But the article itself still outlines how Soros money » continue reading …
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Current Affairs ... Politics ...
A few weeks can be a long time, especially in Presidential politics. Back in late August, just as Hurricane Irene was about to hit the East Coast, Texas Gov. Rick Perry had just announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination, and had soared to the top of the polls. But now, after a few rough weeks of inter-mural jousting with Mitt Romney and an admission that he sometimes governed Texas like a reasonable politician and not a rabid Tea Party animal, Perry has lot his luster.
And then the liberal press opened fire with an accusation that Perry’s family used a patch of hunting ground that had a prominent rock monument with an offensive racial epithet painted on it. Perry said that his dad immediately painted over the bad word as soon as they started using the place, but the Washington Post claims to have spoken with people remembering that he didn’t. It’s mostly a “did so, did not” confrontation, but that still doesn’t do Perry much good with the northern moderate swing voters that he would have to attract in order to beat President Obama in Nov. 2012.
So, to extend the meteorological metaphor, the high energy levels in the conservative currents of the GOP have found their way to another brewing storm, and they seem to be building up to hurricane levels. Yes, I mean Herman Cain, » continue reading …
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Current Affairs ...
There’s a cute little advice-column parody at the end of The Atlantic mag, called “What’s Your Problem” by Jeffrey Goldberg. In the October issue, Goldberg presents himself with a mock question about how to come up with a “things I want to do before I die” list, given all the choices that a young, rich person might have. Goldberg’s mock advice was to come up with a reverse list, i.e. things you definitely do NOT want to do during your lifetime. He then posted 25 items that would appear on his own list. I thought I would comment on some of them.
1.) Climb Mount Everest
2.) See any movie or read any book about self-actualizing rich people who climb Mount Everest
3.) See that movie about the guy who cuts off his arm in a ravine that isn’t even on Mount Everest
COMMENT: So far I’m totally in synch with Goldberg. I have no intention of seeing 127 Hours either. I like hiking, but not that extreme stuff.
10.) Collateralize a debt obligation
COMMENT: Best to avoid debt obligations in the first place
12.) Colon cleanse
COMMENT: It just gets dirty again anyway, and fast. Pretty much like house cleaning.
15.) Create a coat of arms for my family
COMMENT: I agree, coats of arms are over-rated.
18.) Play golf
COMMENT: On a nice day, I’d rather be » continue reading …
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Current Affairs ... Society ...
I heard a report on NPR the other day about the band of elderly Japanese people who are volunteering to do work at the Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down, in place of younger people whose lives might be shortened by the high levels of radiation there. The government and the utility company have not taken them up on this yet, but they might.
Wow, the Kamikaze spirit lives on in Japan! At least amidst the older generation, those who grew up during WW2 or not long after. This is quite an honorable thing, the notion of older people willing to cut short whatever years they have left, so as to keep younger people from losing a decade or two due to radiation-induced cancer.
Practically speaking, these old codgers are going to suffer if Tokyo Electric sends them out to nuclear hot spots » continue reading …
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...
I didn’t go to any of the 9-11 memorial services today marking the 10th anniversary of the attack, although I was listening to the live radio coverage from the Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. Instead, I went to a “tombstone uncovering” ceremony at a Jewish cemetery, to remember a fellow from my Zen group who passed away back in January. He lived to age 87 and had a long, full life including marriage, combat service in the Army during WW2, running a successful accounting firm, on-going involvement with his synagogue, and regular attendance at our zendo.
While at the cemetery, I was looking around at the writings on the other “memorial stones”. I’m used to tombstones from Christian cemeteries, which don’t usually say much other than a short quote from the New Testament. The Jewish stones I saw today had a lot of interesting sayings on them, by contrast.
The saying that I would like to share here today is actually my own mis-reading of what the stone actually says. Let’s start with reality; the stone says: “Do Not Remember Me With Tears But With Smiles”. My own misreading of it goes like this: » continue reading …
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Current Affairs ... Politics ... Psychology ...
A friend at work recently loaned me a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” and I’ve been cruising through it over the past few days (it’s a fairly easy read, with lots of anecdotes; interestingly, a movie is being made about it, to be released later this year). Gladwell’s main point is that we humans are built to make snap judgments about things and people that we see or encounter for the first time, based upon initial impressions; and that such judgments are generally more accurate than you might expect. He calls this the “thin slicing” technique of decision making.
But Gladwell also points out that “blink” judgments are sometimes wrong, and offers some conjectures about what can throw us off when we start judging books by their covers. To be honest, Gladwell doesn’t really leave you with much to help decide whether and when to trust your gut instincts, and when to re-think them. He gives a few examples of the many overt and subconscious prejudices that people harbor, but doesn’t say how to detect when these are blinkering your blink. This book is kind of “blinky” in itself, actually; various critics have said that the evidence for Gladwell’s contentions is usually quite thin. But the stories in it are interesting enough.
One of Gladwell’s stories regards Warren Harding, 29th President of the US and arguably the worst one ever. This was an instance when the “thin slicing” of a first impression let us down. According to Gladwell, » continue reading …
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Current Affairs ... Politics ...
At the moment, there’s a big nasty hurricane bearing down on my humble abode. The eye of it is still down around North Carolina, but it’s already raining here (no wind yet). So I am finally going to get a taste of all the rough treatment that Mother Nature has dished out to humankind since the start of the year. First off was all the snow that fell on the east coast (actually I did slog my way thru that), then the killer earthquake and tsunami in Japan, then various floods and tornadoes in the USA along with Australia, Pakistan and China. Even some volcanoes and mudslides! And more earthquakes, including one in New Zealand. And even a little one in the northeast US! (Which I experienced, by the way – I felt some strange vibes in my desk chair at work last Tuesday, and first thought that I was having a heart attack!).
By July, the year 2011 was already the costliest one on record for property damage from natural disasters. Not exactly what a world economy struggling to recover from a variety of financial shocks over the past 3 years needs. And now we have a huge hurricane pointed at the New York metro region and New England. So, I’m going to get a real taste of what millions of others around the world have experienced over the past few months. Hopefully that taste will be relatively mild; perhaps by Wednesday the power will be back on and the streets will be cleared of all the trees and debris that will be blown onto them. I don’t see this as becoming a Katrina-like situation, especially in my neighborhood which is on high ground far from any major body of water. But one never knows . . .
Some of this world-wide mayhem can be associated with anthropic climate change, but some cannot (however, hurricane Irene is much bigger than the ones I remember hitting New Jersey in the past – it does make you wonder). » continue reading …
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Current Affairs ... Society ...
Things aren’t going so well these days in the venerable land of Europe. Greece is bankrupt, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are on the verge, Italy is rolling toward the cliff, France and Britain are in continued recession, and the old cites of England, including London itself, are rioting and burning. Nope, not a good time for Europe.
It’s ironic that the western world fought two major wars and sacrificed millions of people during the 20th century to keep Germany from taking over Europe. But today, Germany is the only European nation that knows how to thrive in the modern world economy. The Germans, with some help from the Chinese (who else?), seem willing to take responsibility for much of the damage that has done by the less business-oriented, less productive members of the Euro community. Up to 2008, Europe could get by as a cultural museum floated by American tourist dollars. But now America is also losing ground economically, and the nations that are gaining it might not be as sentimental about Italian food, French wine, Greek ruins, Spanish fishing villages, London’s theater and all those old cathedrals and wonderful museums. I can’t see throngs of Chinese, Brazilians and Indians lining up outside the Vatican or the Louve.
About the only people who could re-start the engines of Europe are be the Germans. If the Euro Union is going to stick together, the Germans are going to call the shots. » continue reading …
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Current Affairs ... Foreign Relations/World Affairs ...
Being an old guy who grew up in the 60’s, I still like The Ventures and the surf guitar instrumentals that they were famous for. It’s well known amidst Ventures fans that this group had a special relationship with the people of Japan. They started touring there in the early 60’s, well before the other pop music stars of the west started noticing Japan. Actually, almost no one in the west noticed Japan back then. It was only 17 or 18 years since the big Pacific war (that they started) had ended with a nuclear ‘bang’, and no one much took ‘the Japs’ seriously anymore. Japan was starting to export stuff for sale in the US by then, but it was mostly considered ‘cheap garbage’. A few Zen-masters from the Japanese temples were starting to arrive on our western shores, as to take advantage of the nascent ‘beat generation’ and the search for meaning amidst affluent American bohemians. But for the most part, Japan was not on anyone’s radar anymore (an ironic choice of words, given what had happened at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941).
In just a few years, the sun would begin to rise once again over Japan. But in the misty pre-dawn of the Japanese cultural and economic resurgence, the Ventures found a niche, a place that became special to them. After the Beatles hit the music scene and the British pop invasion swept the surf craze aside, the Ventures became an “also ran” band, still useful on occasion for things such as the theme for the TV show “Hawaii 5-0”. However, they could still pack ’em in at the concert halls of Japan, and made annual tours to the Land of the Rising Sun. Believe it or not, despite all the changes in the music world, the group continued doing that thru the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s.
By now, the surviving Ventures are in their 70s (Don Wilson and Nokie Edwards; Bob Bogle and Mel Taylor both passed, but Mel’s son Leon still tours with the band on drums). You would think that in the wake of that terrible tsunami disaster back in March, » continue reading …