Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Politics ... Public Policy ...
There’s a great debate going on in American politics today, but it’s all very cryptic. Neither the liberal Democrats nor the conservative Republicans (including the T-Partiers) want to say what they really mean, so the argument goes on in code. This argument is all about where and how we should live. But no one will just come out and say that.
The Dems hint that they favor the new-urbanist vision of the “green, efficient and sustainable city”. These are the kind of places that progressive and educated people seem to favor (at least in theory – where they actually live can be another matter). Not surprisingly, people who support the urban vision usually vote Democratic. For better or worse, however, the Dem liberals can’t just come out and say that city living is better (in theory, at least).
Why not? Because most Americans live in the suburbs. Most of the votes come from the ‘burbs. The Dems don’t want to » continue reading …
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Personal Reflections ... Photo ...
. . . than to curse the power company. This picture shows some of the power lines in my town. And some of the trees that became their worst enemy during last week’s freak mid-autumn snowstorm. Most of the town lost power, given its love for tall old trees which crash down on power lines during crazy weather. My block had to wait five days until the power company could get around to help us.
During those five days, I got to know a lot about candles. I had three flashlights, but one of them stopped working after being dropped. I didn’t have any extra batteries for the really bright one, so I had to conserve my lighting resources, depending as much as possible on old-fashioned candles.
Candle-keeping is definitely a lost art. But during those 5 dark evenings last week, I learned a lot, including how to make impromptu candles in cups (as seen above), how to clean wicks and even » continue reading …
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Photo ... Society ...
. . . on Saturday morning by a freak October snowstorm and an early power outage, I was posting a picture montage taken outside my bedroom window that morning, just as the temps dropped and the rain turned to snow. The local sparrows were freaking out at the feeder, clamoring and fighting each other off to get to the seeds, often in mid-air. I had to wonder whether they came out ahead, given all the energy they were burning in fighting to get to the trough.
And then the power stopped.
Mother Nature can be beautiful, but it can also be cruel and stupid. Human beings are also cruel and stupid, way too often. Just like these battling sparrows, humans have their own wars, inspired by the desire to secure and enjoy the good things about life. And like these sparrows, they just make it all worse for themselves; for most in the short run, for all in the long run.
But unlike these sparrows, we aren’t entirely blind to our blindness. Sparrows have their beaks and talons (it got really interesting when a woodpecker claimed the perch and threatened all the pushy sparrows with its long pointy schnoz), » continue reading …
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Economics/Business ...
No, my father was not an Assistant Treasury Secretary or a Federal Reserve governor or a partner at Goldman Sachs. So, he didn’t have very much impact on the global economy before dying in 1973 (at a too-young age of 50). But if he were here today, he could pinpoint exactly where all the trouble in today’s economy had come from.
Dad was a very pragmatic kind of guy. He always tried to think ahead, tried to keep trouble from happening. And he knew that there would always be trouble that you could not presently anticipate. So he always left some room for an unexpected turn of events. His early death was devastating for my mother, but he left her with a house fully paid for and no outstanding bills. We got by, thanks to his financial philosophy.
So I’m sure Dad would be rolling in his grave if he could keep up with our current global economic situation. About 12 years after his passing, when inflation rates, interest rates and unemployment rates » continue reading …
Monday, October 24, 2011
Personal Reflections ... Politics ...
My high school class just had its 40th anniversary reunion. I didn’t go; I didn’t want to shell out $80 or whatever to spend an evening with a group of strangers. Well, they’re not totally strangers, although I did not stay in touch with anyone from my high school class. I can’t say that I remember talking with anyone from my class in the past 35 years, even though I only live 7 or 8 miles from the old town, and I still go there quite frequently (since my brother still lives there).
There are people from my class that I would have enjoyed speaking with. But for the most part, high school was not the place where I had my best times with others. Senior year wasn’t so bad, but the first three years were pretty rough; bullying back then was still considered a form of performance art. And I participated in a lot of command performances. After I got the “save the date” letter from the reunion committee last year, I honestly thought about going. But the memories were more bitter than sweet. So I took a pass on it.
And hey, why do I need to spend $80 to find out what happened to whom when there’s Facebook? I’m still holding out » continue reading …
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
Politics ...
A few days ago (Oct 8, 2011) I wrote about the Republican presidential race; I said that although Rick Perry was down and Herman Cain now seems like the favorite, Perry might yet make a comeback, given that he is the only realistic alternative for the Tea Partiers (who seem to have hi-jacked the Grand Old Party). The fact that Mitt Romney, the logical next-in-line candidate under old-school Republicanism, has been stuck at 25% in the polls for many months speaks volumes on how things have changed.
FYI, there’s a good article today about this by political analyst Charlie Cook in National Journal. Cook says just about what I did. However, unlike me, Cook summed up Cain’s sudden rise at Perry’s expense rather succinctly: “Cain seems to be functioning as a parking place for conservatives who have grown disillusioned or who harbor reservations about the previous flavors of the month . . . it’s a good bet that Cain is little more than a place for conservatives to window shop while they decide what to do.” Regarding Perry’s future prospects: “With the Republican Party wanting to nominate someone of his ilk, the question is whether Perry can effectively grow and develop as a national candidate . . . enough to win outside of the Deep South. If he can, he’s the nominee. If he can’t, he might not be.”
Bravo, well stated! I guess that’s why Cook writes for the National Journal, and I don’t.
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 …
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Economics/Business ... Science ...
I grew up in the late 60’s, so I remember the hippies. Well, actually I don’t – I mostly saw them on TV. The town I grew up in wasn’t the type of wealthy suburb where parents threw money at their kids and let them do whatever they wished. We were a bit more concerned with basic survival issues. Oh, not that there weren’t some wanna-be hippies, here and there. And in fact, there was one artistic guy who went all the way into his own little counter-cultural world. In fact, he’s still out there, calling himself Francois, surviving as a painter (the artistic type) and a clerk in a costume store. Even in his old age, he’s just as artistic and individualistic as I remember him.
Francois notwithstanding, I never fully understood hippies, nor their close cousins, the campus protesters and building-occupiers (nor the post-college/non-college “radicals” who egged them on). I gather that they all had something to do with individualism, with living life as an experience, with disdain for all the conformity and regulation that the social and economic system demands from most people.
I sympathized with their assumption that life “held something more”, and that we needed to care a lot for our fellow humans. But instead of sex, intoxication, protests and artistic expression, » 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 …
