or "farewell" or "Auf Wiedersehen" or "Tschüss" or "au revoir" or "ciao" or "tot ziens" or "sawasdee krap" or "hejdå" or "farvel " ....
Addressed principally to my small group of regular readers, although everyone is, as ever, welcome.
There are 365 items to date (before this article) on this blog. It would be possible for a reader to select one item per day to study each day of the year. As in a leap year you will need an extra item for February 29th, you create one more article (hence this) and let the reader decide what to read that day. Every four years, like a German election cycle or an American Presidential cycle.
I started writing this blog in 2010. My concern then as now was to get beyond the clutter of individual instances (the "tabloid" approach), and get to the grist of the issues (like the "quality" press). Facts. Analysis, long-term picture. Escape the situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees.
I have not always succeeded - I too get stuck in the here and now rather than looking to the future. Some of the best stuff IMHO I wrote when I first started out - only I seem to read that now, so .....
At times you are deadly serious, at times you are funny, at times you are cynical, at times you are downright pessimistic, at times despite all the events pointing to the contrary, you can see a light shining at the end of the tunnel. You need the latter - once that goes out .....
The impersonal mixes with the personal. The individual voice is suddenly part of the crowd. And suddenly everything fades to shadow and you are alone again, the voice of wisdom in a world dominated by stupidity, the selfless voice among the selfish cat-calls.
You mix history, politics, economics, various languages, various branches of science, geography, maths, music, the arts in general. All the learning required to understand the reality of what is happening out there. You blend, you mix, but you stay rational. Silencing your emotions is not always easy, but emotional shouting matches are never really won, remember that! Bitterness always remains for the loser.
So where are we?
See most polls out there where people can decide for themselves (exclude chronic dictatorships where voicing your opinion is not allowed), and you will hear that the world is headed in the wrong direction. So then we have an election and vote into power a load of people who do not understand this.
And the repeat errors are there and obvious for the trained observer. The Asian crash (principally Thailand) of 1997, the crash in the Western world in 2008 (principally the US, but Europe is still paying heavily for it), Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand in 2001, Mitt Romney (George W. Bush Mark II!) in the US (almost certainly) in 2012.
Do we ever learn? Do we want to? But if you do not learn the lesson, you do not pass the exam.
After our Pyrrhic victory over the bureaucracy and the corporatocracy (74 Euro extra that we could not afford), the passport is sorted out, and as of Wednesday at 1410 I shall be with my wife on a plane to Bangkok. Three weeks holiday and family visit for her, three weeks reading and counting the days for me. Once in a while, when visiting the university where her sister teaches for example, I might get to open my mouth. Maybe I will finally get round to learning Thai. Someone who can manage French, German and Dutch should be able to manage that. But Thai is a tonal language, and my singing voice is not amazing!
No laptop - I have been told to leave that at home. No translation work - as not only my wife has said "no" to that, perhaps more disturbingly my doctor has also told me to take a break (German word "Pause").
In 2013 I need to find something else to do, a surer form of income. Some chance of that! Or rather no chance of that!!!!
And as of today I am putting this blog to sleep. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe forever. Its words will be still out there, its comments are worthy of study in many instances. Hopefully some people will have learned something, maybe I will have informed and entertained the world and will in my absence continue to do so.
Like Cincinnatus though the time has come to withdraw myself and my opinions to the shadows and anonymity of the real world.
So farewell, thanks for visiting and viel Glück!
Monday, 29 October 2012
Sunday, 28 October 2012
How far have we come? Looking at the Black Death
I was musing on a sentence last night, as writers are prone to do.
And yes, it was political.
It ran summat upon the lines that "Thatcherism was the worst thing to strike the world since the Black Death". I like to be reasonable and reasoned, and that statement is obviously unreasonable and illogical - for one thing, as gruesome and as awful as it was, Thatcherism was not as bad as Nazism or Stalinism, or wharrever Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet practised - in the 20th century alone.
Behave, don't exaggerate. Think!!!! And move on.
Anyway this morning, the clocks went back. It is the time for moving backwards apparently - taking American foreign policy back to the 1980s, social policy back to the 1950s and economic policy back to the 1920s (as was accurately quoted in a propaganda piece last week - advice that will be ignored by the majority of the American voting public when picking Romney as President next week, but as a foreigner I am not allowed to criticise (cough, splutter)). The UK is meanwhile trying to recall the good old days of the massive deflation of the Thatcher years. I wonder why the German government isn't trying to recreate the boom years of the 1950s and 60s, but that would sound too much like good news. Merkel, unfortunately, tends to look to Kohl rather than to Adenauer.
Time to check out the Black Death.
In its years of devastation in the 14th Century, it wiped out substantial chunks of the population of China, Western Asia, North Africa and Europe (in Europe Poland was spared, the rest of the continent lost 30% of its population, and for the Euro(xeno)phobes, particularly supporters of the EXP (UKIP if you insist), in the UK, the same happened to the UK as in the rest of Europe, as ever!).
That it started in China and spread is almost certain. The cause though is even now subject to controversy. The widely established reasoning created in the 19th century, that it was spread by fleas on the back of black rats in trading ships (hence its widespread impact) is now disputed. Quite what caused it is still then not 100% clear. Its impact though was devastating. What we now accept as sanitation of course did not exist, filth was everywhere, and under such conditions its spread could be very quick and very nasty.
The question as to why its spread suddenly halted, why the disease burned itself out, is also unanswered. It was to reappear in several local instances over the next 500 years though it never repeated its trans-continental spread thankfully.
The political and religious impact of the plague though is both interesting and sadly typical.
Wikipedia has an interesting paragraph called "Persecutions" which I quote chapter and verse without permission with intervening notes by myself in italics:
"Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death.
Yes, when you cannot see a rational solution to problems, turn to the irrational. It won't solve anything but you might feel better!
Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers and Roma, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis.
In fact blame anyone or anything that suits your prejudice. It reminds me of the 2008 crash (if you are a US Republican party supporter ignore this bit, as apparently the events of 2008 IYHO did not actually happen!) when the bankers, international gamblers on Stock Exchanges round the world usw who caused the crash got their money back, while people doing their normal jobs and working as hard as ever (and were in no way responsible for the crash) lost their jobs, maybe their homes and were often placed into huge amounts of debt that they could not afford. Those at the bottom of the heap, who had least to do with it, took most of the flak. Blame the victims not the perpetrators, a common line of economic thinking. The answer of course is to put the lunatics back in charge of the asylum!
Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.
Drastic, but obvious and easy targets. We wanted rid of them anyway, it solved nothing, but did we feel better for doing so!!!
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.
See my first note (Saturn must have been in the 12th House and other nonsense) and my comment on Jews below.
The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread.
Typical government incompetence (right, left, centre, you name it) - times do not change!
The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays.
Well in Europe at least we have learned some lessons in this respect. Some of the comments from some US politicians who are about to be elected to the US Senate though, persuade me that not everyone there has got the message.
There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed.
Not just Hitler, was it? This is a ridiculously prejudiced line of thinking going back generations. The lesson - don't be a foreigner or a member of another religious belief, it isn't good for your well-being. And do not believe that this type of thinking still does not exist (to the same or a lesser extent) in different parts of the world with different beliefs or lack of them! Try becoming an atheist in Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood of the Flagellants a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity".
Intriguing how silly human beings can be at times in trying to resolve issues that they do not understand.
Ask yourself what would happen if something like the Black Death re-emerged tomorrow and started spreading round the world. Do you believe we would react rationally, sensibly and with speed, or would the prejudices above take over? And I ask myself why I tend to believe the latter rather than the former, despite the fact that eventually it would not be in our best interests and would resolve nowt .....
And yes, it was political.
It ran summat upon the lines that "Thatcherism was the worst thing to strike the world since the Black Death". I like to be reasonable and reasoned, and that statement is obviously unreasonable and illogical - for one thing, as gruesome and as awful as it was, Thatcherism was not as bad as Nazism or Stalinism, or wharrever Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet practised - in the 20th century alone.
Behave, don't exaggerate. Think!!!! And move on.
Anyway this morning, the clocks went back. It is the time for moving backwards apparently - taking American foreign policy back to the 1980s, social policy back to the 1950s and economic policy back to the 1920s (as was accurately quoted in a propaganda piece last week - advice that will be ignored by the majority of the American voting public when picking Romney as President next week, but as a foreigner I am not allowed to criticise (cough, splutter)). The UK is meanwhile trying to recall the good old days of the massive deflation of the Thatcher years. I wonder why the German government isn't trying to recreate the boom years of the 1950s and 60s, but that would sound too much like good news. Merkel, unfortunately, tends to look to Kohl rather than to Adenauer.
Time to check out the Black Death.
In its years of devastation in the 14th Century, it wiped out substantial chunks of the population of China, Western Asia, North Africa and Europe (in Europe Poland was spared, the rest of the continent lost 30% of its population, and for the Euro(xeno)phobes, particularly supporters of the EXP (UKIP if you insist), in the UK, the same happened to the UK as in the rest of Europe, as ever!).
That it started in China and spread is almost certain. The cause though is even now subject to controversy. The widely established reasoning created in the 19th century, that it was spread by fleas on the back of black rats in trading ships (hence its widespread impact) is now disputed. Quite what caused it is still then not 100% clear. Its impact though was devastating. What we now accept as sanitation of course did not exist, filth was everywhere, and under such conditions its spread could be very quick and very nasty.
The question as to why its spread suddenly halted, why the disease burned itself out, is also unanswered. It was to reappear in several local instances over the next 500 years though it never repeated its trans-continental spread thankfully.
The political and religious impact of the plague though is both interesting and sadly typical.
Wikipedia has an interesting paragraph called "Persecutions" which I quote chapter and verse without permission with intervening notes by myself in italics:
"Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death.
Yes, when you cannot see a rational solution to problems, turn to the irrational. It won't solve anything but you might feel better!
Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers and Roma, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis.
In fact blame anyone or anything that suits your prejudice. It reminds me of the 2008 crash (if you are a US Republican party supporter ignore this bit, as apparently the events of 2008 IYHO did not actually happen!) when the bankers, international gamblers on Stock Exchanges round the world usw who caused the crash got their money back, while people doing their normal jobs and working as hard as ever (and were in no way responsible for the crash) lost their jobs, maybe their homes and were often placed into huge amounts of debt that they could not afford. Those at the bottom of the heap, who had least to do with it, took most of the flak. Blame the victims not the perpetrators, a common line of economic thinking. The answer of course is to put the lunatics back in charge of the asylum!
Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.
Drastic, but obvious and easy targets. We wanted rid of them anyway, it solved nothing, but did we feel better for doing so!!!
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.
See my first note (Saturn must have been in the 12th House and other nonsense) and my comment on Jews below.
The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread.
Typical government incompetence (right, left, centre, you name it) - times do not change!
The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays.
Well in Europe at least we have learned some lessons in this respect. Some of the comments from some US politicians who are about to be elected to the US Senate though, persuade me that not everyone there has got the message.
There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed.
Not just Hitler, was it? This is a ridiculously prejudiced line of thinking going back generations. The lesson - don't be a foreigner or a member of another religious belief, it isn't good for your well-being. And do not believe that this type of thinking still does not exist (to the same or a lesser extent) in different parts of the world with different beliefs or lack of them! Try becoming an atheist in Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood of the Flagellants a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity".
Intriguing how silly human beings can be at times in trying to resolve issues that they do not understand.
Ask yourself what would happen if something like the Black Death re-emerged tomorrow and started spreading round the world. Do you believe we would react rationally, sensibly and with speed, or would the prejudices above take over? And I ask myself why I tend to believe the latter rather than the former, despite the fact that eventually it would not be in our best interests and would resolve nowt .....
Postscript (December 28th, 2021).
1. OK, OK, my pessimism about Romney being re-elected proved unfounded.
2. Now we are in the era of rampaging Covid-19, which also originated in China (!!!!) check out some of the claims out there from the lunatic fringe about its origins. Fortunately rationality is winning the argument on how to fight it. No auto-da-fes yet thankfully.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
If you were earning millions you would think differently
Actually in Germany that is not so easy a sum to achieve. I quote from an online magazine called Industry Week:
"Last year's biggest single earner was Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn, who earned a record 16.6 million Euro".
Let us settle for a paltry 6 million, which is equal to half-a-million a month. If what I have read is correct, the top tax rate is 45%. There may of course be other stoppages (retirement funds, health insurance usw).
Anyway for argument's sake let's say that I had to pay out stoppages of 80%. That would mean that I would have a miserable 100,000 Euro per month to live off.
Would I start screaming and shouting about all the deductions that I was obliged to pay out?
A clear and resounding NO!!!!
If you cannot live on 100,000 Euro a month, there is something seriously wrong with your approach to life and how you live and think - IMHO! Remember too that your health costs have already been covered.
The biggest outlay after that would be accommodation. We have at the moment a 74 square metre apartment. 2 bedrooms (one of which has become my wife's all-purpose utility room), a bathroom (which could do to be a bit larger), a kitchen (ditto), a spacious lounge. And really that is all we need. So an alternative on those lines in a more pleasant area maybe - but it wouldn't cost that much more (maybe 1,000 Euro a month rental altogether). More rooms that we would never use? Why?
The heating system where we now live is typical of an old house - we could do with a more modern, more environmentally friendly heating system, but over a period of time you would get your money back.
A few other things might be useful, the odd bit of furniture, both the PC and the laptop need replacing. And then there is the fact that my wife would like a car (although given the environmentally friendly and very convenient nature of public transport here, I do not see why). Some travel to interesting places (principally by train, I have grown to hate going anywhere near international airports with all the hassle involved).
Presto.
Not even one month's spending (see above) as far as I can see.
Then you can help charities and support other worthwhile causes quite happily.
But once you have everything that you need, why would you need more - just for the sake of having it?
The whole concept strikes me as being amazingly silly. Excess for its own sake, for me, equals waste!
And the money that they have taken off you? Well, you never had it in the first place, and there are a lot of things out there that need doing, which we often take for granted. Ever wondered about the maintenance of the sewage system for example? Necessary work and it needs someone to look after it. And I feel no need to concern myself directly with anything like that. Let them get on with it.
About the only thing that does concern me about government spending (national or local) would be if it were spent upon nuclear weapons, the need for which seems to me extremely dubious. But in Germany that does not apply (no nukes here), so no need to worry.
As long as there are excellent police and prison services (so that the ne'er-do-wells are rounded up and kept out of the way of the law-abiding public), the health service provision meets all our requirements, excellent public transportation is available, the future generations have all the educational possibilities that they require (including a well-rewarded team of excellent teachers), possibilities are made available to get people back to work and have the self-respect that proper employment brings, and the elderly can live out their lives comfortably and without too much discomfort - then fine, the money will find itself being put to good use! No complaints from me.
"Last year's biggest single earner was Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn, who earned a record 16.6 million Euro".
Let us settle for a paltry 6 million, which is equal to half-a-million a month. If what I have read is correct, the top tax rate is 45%. There may of course be other stoppages (retirement funds, health insurance usw).
Anyway for argument's sake let's say that I had to pay out stoppages of 80%. That would mean that I would have a miserable 100,000 Euro per month to live off.
Would I start screaming and shouting about all the deductions that I was obliged to pay out?
A clear and resounding NO!!!!
If you cannot live on 100,000 Euro a month, there is something seriously wrong with your approach to life and how you live and think - IMHO! Remember too that your health costs have already been covered.
The biggest outlay after that would be accommodation. We have at the moment a 74 square metre apartment. 2 bedrooms (one of which has become my wife's all-purpose utility room), a bathroom (which could do to be a bit larger), a kitchen (ditto), a spacious lounge. And really that is all we need. So an alternative on those lines in a more pleasant area maybe - but it wouldn't cost that much more (maybe 1,000 Euro a month rental altogether). More rooms that we would never use? Why?
The heating system where we now live is typical of an old house - we could do with a more modern, more environmentally friendly heating system, but over a period of time you would get your money back.
A few other things might be useful, the odd bit of furniture, both the PC and the laptop need replacing. And then there is the fact that my wife would like a car (although given the environmentally friendly and very convenient nature of public transport here, I do not see why). Some travel to interesting places (principally by train, I have grown to hate going anywhere near international airports with all the hassle involved).
Presto.
Not even one month's spending (see above) as far as I can see.
Then you can help charities and support other worthwhile causes quite happily.
But once you have everything that you need, why would you need more - just for the sake of having it?
The whole concept strikes me as being amazingly silly. Excess for its own sake, for me, equals waste!
And the money that they have taken off you? Well, you never had it in the first place, and there are a lot of things out there that need doing, which we often take for granted. Ever wondered about the maintenance of the sewage system for example? Necessary work and it needs someone to look after it. And I feel no need to concern myself directly with anything like that. Let them get on with it.
About the only thing that does concern me about government spending (national or local) would be if it were spent upon nuclear weapons, the need for which seems to me extremely dubious. But in Germany that does not apply (no nukes here), so no need to worry.
As long as there are excellent police and prison services (so that the ne'er-do-wells are rounded up and kept out of the way of the law-abiding public), the health service provision meets all our requirements, excellent public transportation is available, the future generations have all the educational possibilities that they require (including a well-rewarded team of excellent teachers), possibilities are made available to get people back to work and have the self-respect that proper employment brings, and the elderly can live out their lives comfortably and without too much discomfort - then fine, the money will find itself being put to good use! No complaints from me.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Controlling deities, or the forces of fate, at work
If you check out some ancient Greek dramas some time, you will quickly gain the sense that fate is at work, and everything in life is inevitable.
So when Oedipus's father learned his offspring would kill his father and marry his mother, he took the actions necessary to make sure the son would not stay anywhere in the vicinity and was sent away.
Fate being fate, the son eventually returned, killed his father and married his mother - not knowing in either case that they were his real parents.
Fate? Believers in astrology may still believe in it, at least to a point. Where religious believers are concerned, some 2500 years on from the Oedipus myth, you would surely not expect a commitment to fate though, would you? Christians in the main push this "free will" stuff as an excuse for the evil in the world. God doesn't want it usw.
OK, try the comment from Republican candidate for the US Senate, Richard Mourdock. To quote from the Guardian online today, Mourdock apparently claims that "pregnancies from rape are "something that God intended to happen"".
Which sounds like God is responsible for every single act of conception on the planet. There is in fact no human responsibility at all, it is all God's will - except of course when we stray from the path, then it is free will - or am I getting confused?
Carry this logic one stage further it almost sounds like that God sent the rapist to impregnate the woman.
OK I am an atheist, but a socially responsible one (as most atheists are incidentally). But I have known Christians (including both my parents) who would have considered this whole line of thinking absurd. In their view humans are getting on acting according to their own free will, and God is sitting up in Heaven with his ledger, ticking and crossing every action taken in line with the moral rules that he established.
No decisions upon who should be conceived and how. If he is involved in the decision, the consideration of right and wrong where the rapist's actions are concerned fly out of the window. God decided that he should impregnate the woman, that way the child would be conceived, and thus THE RAPIST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. He was driven to carry out the action by a force beyond his control.
Even by Christian guidelines, as most of us know them, this surely must be mistaken. And the person pushing the agenda is either extraordinarily confused where his own logic is concerned, or believes that fate is an actual force that controls our actions.
This may have been fine where the ancient Greeks were concerned, but surely in the societies in which we live across the Western world, it doesn't really make any sense any more. Or does it?
And if it does please let me know - intelligent answers, well explained and elucidated, please. Not dogma or the usual "believe it or else" nonsense!
So when Oedipus's father learned his offspring would kill his father and marry his mother, he took the actions necessary to make sure the son would not stay anywhere in the vicinity and was sent away.
Fate being fate, the son eventually returned, killed his father and married his mother - not knowing in either case that they were his real parents.
Fate? Believers in astrology may still believe in it, at least to a point. Where religious believers are concerned, some 2500 years on from the Oedipus myth, you would surely not expect a commitment to fate though, would you? Christians in the main push this "free will" stuff as an excuse for the evil in the world. God doesn't want it usw.
OK, try the comment from Republican candidate for the US Senate, Richard Mourdock. To quote from the Guardian online today, Mourdock apparently claims that "pregnancies from rape are "something that God intended to happen"".
Which sounds like God is responsible for every single act of conception on the planet. There is in fact no human responsibility at all, it is all God's will - except of course when we stray from the path, then it is free will - or am I getting confused?
Carry this logic one stage further it almost sounds like that God sent the rapist to impregnate the woman.
OK I am an atheist, but a socially responsible one (as most atheists are incidentally). But I have known Christians (including both my parents) who would have considered this whole line of thinking absurd. In their view humans are getting on acting according to their own free will, and God is sitting up in Heaven with his ledger, ticking and crossing every action taken in line with the moral rules that he established.
No decisions upon who should be conceived and how. If he is involved in the decision, the consideration of right and wrong where the rapist's actions are concerned fly out of the window. God decided that he should impregnate the woman, that way the child would be conceived, and thus THE RAPIST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. He was driven to carry out the action by a force beyond his control.
Even by Christian guidelines, as most of us know them, this surely must be mistaken. And the person pushing the agenda is either extraordinarily confused where his own logic is concerned, or believes that fate is an actual force that controls our actions.
This may have been fine where the ancient Greeks were concerned, but surely in the societies in which we live across the Western world, it doesn't really make any sense any more. Or does it?
And if it does please let me know - intelligent answers, well explained and elucidated, please. Not dogma or the usual "believe it or else" nonsense!
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Taking responsibility - professionally and personally
I would first of all point you in the direction of an item that I wrote way back when I was starting out on this blog. The item was called "Personal Responsibility" and is dated November 2nd, 2010.
Two years down the road my views have not changed much. We should take responsibility for our lives and our decisions. At the same time though that requires an economic circumstance where that is possible, not one where there are far more applicants than jobs, more cheap labour than adequately paying employment, and not one where people are written off as "too young" or more significantly "too old"!
Realise also that not everyone is a born salesman, not everyone likes running their own business (many do not), and gambling is something many of us would choose to avoid - except for buying the occasional not-too-expensive lottery ticket.
Which means that the alternatives to being employed are limited.
Which means we have to create more decent paying jobs for people who are keen to work hard, and jobs appropriate to their skills.
I am somewhat strange in my outlook on life in that I happen to think that professional responsibility is as important as personal responsibility. Which means if you are doing an important job, and not doing it well, then you should admit to the fact.
In this world though would you do that? Given the rarity of jobs out there, would you throw something in because of your inability to deliver?
In 1979 I did just that. If I ever had been a good teacher, I did not think that I was any more. The stress had eaten away at me, my ability to deliver the goods had seemingly disappeared, and given my responsibility to both the kids and their parents I recognised that it was time to leave.
One of the down sides to this is that the personal responsibility side (the need to maintain yourself without help as far as is possible) suffers while facing up to the demands of professional responsibility.
Yet how many people are there out there in important, or not so important jobs, who would recognise that they could not deliver the goods professionally any more (if ever) and should find summat else?
And for people in that situation who are married with children? What should they do?
We might want to believe that the private or public concern employing the individual in question would deal with the situation as kindly or as harshly as they saw fit.
But this does not always happen. When I left teaching I could quote a number of colleagues who were obviously less effective than I was. In over 20 years in IT I saw a good number of people who did not have the necessary talent to work in the industry. And some of the managers that I have seen, especially in the UK! How they ever got appointed in the first place??!!
But if the choice is staying, as bad as you are, or condemning yourself to a situation where there is no way that you can make ends meet! There is not much of a choice, is there?
Two years down the road my views have not changed much. We should take responsibility for our lives and our decisions. At the same time though that requires an economic circumstance where that is possible, not one where there are far more applicants than jobs, more cheap labour than adequately paying employment, and not one where people are written off as "too young" or more significantly "too old"!
Realise also that not everyone is a born salesman, not everyone likes running their own business (many do not), and gambling is something many of us would choose to avoid - except for buying the occasional not-too-expensive lottery ticket.
Which means that the alternatives to being employed are limited.
Which means we have to create more decent paying jobs for people who are keen to work hard, and jobs appropriate to their skills.
I am somewhat strange in my outlook on life in that I happen to think that professional responsibility is as important as personal responsibility. Which means if you are doing an important job, and not doing it well, then you should admit to the fact.
In this world though would you do that? Given the rarity of jobs out there, would you throw something in because of your inability to deliver?
In 1979 I did just that. If I ever had been a good teacher, I did not think that I was any more. The stress had eaten away at me, my ability to deliver the goods had seemingly disappeared, and given my responsibility to both the kids and their parents I recognised that it was time to leave.
One of the down sides to this is that the personal responsibility side (the need to maintain yourself without help as far as is possible) suffers while facing up to the demands of professional responsibility.
Yet how many people are there out there in important, or not so important jobs, who would recognise that they could not deliver the goods professionally any more (if ever) and should find summat else?
And for people in that situation who are married with children? What should they do?
We might want to believe that the private or public concern employing the individual in question would deal with the situation as kindly or as harshly as they saw fit.
But this does not always happen. When I left teaching I could quote a number of colleagues who were obviously less effective than I was. In over 20 years in IT I saw a good number of people who did not have the necessary talent to work in the industry. And some of the managers that I have seen, especially in the UK! How they ever got appointed in the first place??!!
But if the choice is staying, as bad as you are, or condemning yourself to a situation where there is no way that you can make ends meet! There is not much of a choice, is there?
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
So is style all that matters?
To my American liberal friends, please skip the next paragraph. For other American readers, please take note.
OK, I am a foreigner, I am not American, it is not my business - at least until your next financial crash (see 2008 when a "made in America" financial crash brought most of the European banking system down with it (although that didn't reach Spain finally till this year)). Or until your next unnecessary war when we are supposed (in order to keep you happy) to send some of bravest young people to die or get maimed in a conflict which is otherwise of little strategic interest to us. If Israel and Iran want to have a go at each other, why is that our business? And frankly I think that the threat from Iran is overrated anyway. Unlike Israel they have no history of starting wars - at least not for the past 200 years.
Everyone back? Right.
I was reading odd things this morning about the 3rd of the Presidential debates, last night in Florida. Most neutral sources were informing me that in the post-debate polls, Obama had won and won clearly. And unlike in the second debate there was no question of the moderator being allegedly biased.
I went on to YouTube and picked out a snippet from the American network ABC (part of the "liberal biased" media, if I remember rightly, or at least I have been so informed) upon who came out ahead after the "match". According to their political commentator, the answer was Romney, because despite everything he "looked Presidential".
Really. No arguments in his favour, no issues where he impressed, no world-shattering pieces of knowledge emanated from him (in fact the fact that Russia is an enemy to be feared is a shock to most of us here in Europe, and we are far closer to the action where they are concerned).
No substance, only style. Even the debate that he allegedly won it was pretty much that. Apparently within 24 hours after the end of the first debate, he had retracted the best part of half of what he had said. Most of the message seems to be "look at me, trust me, and wait till after you have elected me before I tell you what I am going to do".
And 49% of potential American voters are happy to go along with that?
Well you don't like Obama, so Romney is bound to be better?
WRONG!
Obama may not be that good, Romney might be even worse, in fact very likely will be. You don't like unemployment at 8%, how does unemployment at 11% or 12% sound? You do not like a debt of 16 trillion Dollars, what does a debt of 19 trillion Dollars sound like (toss in Romney's tax cuts and massive increase in (unnecessary) defence spending, that is where the US national debt is heading with Romney in charge).
You haven't got a very good choice (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson would be a more interesting contest), but given the crisis that you survived in 2008 what should you expect? There is optimism, and at the same time there is living in denial, and unfortunately the latter is more the case here than the former!
I was sitting in the doctor's surgery this afternoon reading the relatively conservative German weekly magazine "Focus". In it two German economists (one "liberal", one "conservative") looked at the US economy and reached the same conclusion. For the US debt to be cut, spending has to be cut (including the bloated defence budget), and taxes (no specification where incidentally) have to be raised!
Arithmetic!
With Obama and Romney, you will get neither. The balance though is, from any neutral perspective, in Obama's favour. Most of Romney's "savings" are minimal and based upon a lot of wishful thinking. And despite the noises last night the chances are that Obama is less likely to get involved in a war with Iran, which will be enormously expensive.
It is not totally an American problem, this matter of style. I was also reading in "Focus", a comment on the SDP choice for Chancellor to run against Merkel next year. For me the best candidate (of the three available - Steinbrück and Steinmeier were the others) would have been Sigmar Gabriel - he seems to realise more what "ordinary people" are going through better than the other choices available. Somehow though he is considered "unelectable"! Being concerned about the issues obviously makes less impact than the suit that you are wearing and the platitudes that you are uttering.
Wherever you are!
OK, I am a foreigner, I am not American, it is not my business - at least until your next financial crash (see 2008 when a "made in America" financial crash brought most of the European banking system down with it (although that didn't reach Spain finally till this year)). Or until your next unnecessary war when we are supposed (in order to keep you happy) to send some of bravest young people to die or get maimed in a conflict which is otherwise of little strategic interest to us. If Israel and Iran want to have a go at each other, why is that our business? And frankly I think that the threat from Iran is overrated anyway. Unlike Israel they have no history of starting wars - at least not for the past 200 years.
Everyone back? Right.
I was reading odd things this morning about the 3rd of the Presidential debates, last night in Florida. Most neutral sources were informing me that in the post-debate polls, Obama had won and won clearly. And unlike in the second debate there was no question of the moderator being allegedly biased.
I went on to YouTube and picked out a snippet from the American network ABC (part of the "liberal biased" media, if I remember rightly, or at least I have been so informed) upon who came out ahead after the "match". According to their political commentator, the answer was Romney, because despite everything he "looked Presidential".
Really. No arguments in his favour, no issues where he impressed, no world-shattering pieces of knowledge emanated from him (in fact the fact that Russia is an enemy to be feared is a shock to most of us here in Europe, and we are far closer to the action where they are concerned).
No substance, only style. Even the debate that he allegedly won it was pretty much that. Apparently within 24 hours after the end of the first debate, he had retracted the best part of half of what he had said. Most of the message seems to be "look at me, trust me, and wait till after you have elected me before I tell you what I am going to do".
And 49% of potential American voters are happy to go along with that?
Well you don't like Obama, so Romney is bound to be better?
WRONG!
Obama may not be that good, Romney might be even worse, in fact very likely will be. You don't like unemployment at 8%, how does unemployment at 11% or 12% sound? You do not like a debt of 16 trillion Dollars, what does a debt of 19 trillion Dollars sound like (toss in Romney's tax cuts and massive increase in (unnecessary) defence spending, that is where the US national debt is heading with Romney in charge).
You haven't got a very good choice (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson would be a more interesting contest), but given the crisis that you survived in 2008 what should you expect? There is optimism, and at the same time there is living in denial, and unfortunately the latter is more the case here than the former!
I was sitting in the doctor's surgery this afternoon reading the relatively conservative German weekly magazine "Focus". In it two German economists (one "liberal", one "conservative") looked at the US economy and reached the same conclusion. For the US debt to be cut, spending has to be cut (including the bloated defence budget), and taxes (no specification where incidentally) have to be raised!
Arithmetic!
With Obama and Romney, you will get neither. The balance though is, from any neutral perspective, in Obama's favour. Most of Romney's "savings" are minimal and based upon a lot of wishful thinking. And despite the noises last night the chances are that Obama is less likely to get involved in a war with Iran, which will be enormously expensive.
It is not totally an American problem, this matter of style. I was also reading in "Focus", a comment on the SDP choice for Chancellor to run against Merkel next year. For me the best candidate (of the three available - Steinbrück and Steinmeier were the others) would have been Sigmar Gabriel - he seems to realise more what "ordinary people" are going through better than the other choices available. Somehow though he is considered "unelectable"! Being concerned about the issues obviously makes less impact than the suit that you are wearing and the platitudes that you are uttering.
Wherever you are!
Sunday, 21 October 2012
So should it matter?
There is no life after this.
There is no way that you will know what has happened anywhere, at any time, to anybody after you have died - all awareness goes when your brain stops working, and as interesting as it might be to know how people will cope when you have "gone", and how the world will turn out usw usw. You will not know. You will not be aware - everything will continue without you knowing.
Logically, rationally, that is the way it will be.
So why does it matter what happens if it does not affect you?
"Because I have a pronounced altruistic side" is my answer. What happens to my wife after I die is important. She is intelligent, she has a university degree, she has survived nearly eleven years of marriage to my intellect. There are not many positive ways forward for her, and I protect her a lot from the vicissitudes of this world, and I love her and it is important. And she is not a silly little bit of brainless fluff (thankfully) - though the same can be said of most women, actually!
"Yes, but all the politics?".
Because of the altruistic side. We need to have a better world, not for just me personally when alive. If things do not improve soon for the mass of humanity and all the other species on the planet, where are we headed? "We" here will not include me, I will not be aware of it, but there have to be better solutions, practical, working, significant. For all the species on the planet - I repeat.
"But it was never like that!". True. But you do not stop believing that it can be. Cynicism may be the order of the day. Saying one thing one day and taking a totally different position the following day might get you elected, but actions are what history judges. Lifting people up is more difficult than letting those that already have plenty help themselves to more. The modern day Ghengis Khans do not invade and pillage, they just open Swiss bank accounts. So it is not easy.
But it matters. Things have to get better, we have to address the issues, we have to resolve the problems, we have to learn to accept and be tolerant and not be too greedy. NIML (not in my lifetime)? No, it is too late (and as I nearly died in 2008, and death could happen any time). But believe me. It matters!
There is no way that you will know what has happened anywhere, at any time, to anybody after you have died - all awareness goes when your brain stops working, and as interesting as it might be to know how people will cope when you have "gone", and how the world will turn out usw usw. You will not know. You will not be aware - everything will continue without you knowing.
Logically, rationally, that is the way it will be.
So why does it matter what happens if it does not affect you?
"Because I have a pronounced altruistic side" is my answer. What happens to my wife after I die is important. She is intelligent, she has a university degree, she has survived nearly eleven years of marriage to my intellect. There are not many positive ways forward for her, and I protect her a lot from the vicissitudes of this world, and I love her and it is important. And she is not a silly little bit of brainless fluff (thankfully) - though the same can be said of most women, actually!
"Yes, but all the politics?".
Because of the altruistic side. We need to have a better world, not for just me personally when alive. If things do not improve soon for the mass of humanity and all the other species on the planet, where are we headed? "We" here will not include me, I will not be aware of it, but there have to be better solutions, practical, working, significant. For all the species on the planet - I repeat.
"But it was never like that!". True. But you do not stop believing that it can be. Cynicism may be the order of the day. Saying one thing one day and taking a totally different position the following day might get you elected, but actions are what history judges. Lifting people up is more difficult than letting those that already have plenty help themselves to more. The modern day Ghengis Khans do not invade and pillage, they just open Swiss bank accounts. So it is not easy.
But it matters. Things have to get better, we have to address the issues, we have to resolve the problems, we have to learn to accept and be tolerant and not be too greedy. NIML (not in my lifetime)? No, it is too late (and as I nearly died in 2008, and death could happen any time). But believe me. It matters!
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Businessmen running countries, or running a country like a business.
For those who think that this is a great idea, look at one very recent example -
try Italy and Silvio Berlusconi!
Now do you think that it is still a great idea?
try Italy and Silvio Berlusconi!
Now do you think that it is still a great idea?
Friday, 19 October 2012
Bring out the brioches
In my piece yesterday I brought up the French Revolution. Interesting subject that tried to change the way people thought - moving from a society dominated by the rich and powerful, attempting to raise up the people in the middle while placating the people at the bottom (sound familiar, anyone?).
I often think that Marie-Antoinette, the allegedly haughty arrogant Queen of France, who was much despised by the French public at large, got a bad press.
On hearing the plight of the starving peasants who had no bread to eat, tradition has it that she uttered the phrase "Let them eat cake".
The phrase actually pre-dates her marriage by four years (and was made by someone else entirely - she was 10 at the time), so whether she actually repeated the phrase is uncertain.
And the actual phrase was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"!.
Brioche is not actually cake. It is a type of bread. I quote from a recipe (!) on the site of the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) - "A slightly sweet, French yeast bread, rich with butter and eggs. The traditional shape has a fluted bottom and a topknot and is made in a special mould".
So bread of a better quality (which they could never have afforded), not actually cake!
Among other things to remember with Marie-Antoinette are firstly that she was actually Austrian (Princess Maria Antonia of the House of Habsburg), so whether she was quite as fluent in French (even if she obviously had learned the language) and could master its phraseology with the same wit and wisdom that she could manage with German is an open question. I personally can speak both French and German for example, but my sense of humour does not work so well in either as in English.
And she was married at the age of 14 (royalty used to pull this trick quite frequently in 17th and 18th century Europe - if they tried that now, think of the media response!), so she had to mature in a foreign country with all that involved.
You know the problems with immigrants!
Anyway looking down your noses (maybe that should read "their noses") at the lower classes is not an attitude restricted to the nobility in the past. It has passed down to all sorts of politicians round the world in the past fifty years whether it is Mitt Romney and his 47% (a quarter of whom will actually still vote for him!) or Margaret(-Antoinette) Thatcher in the UK who used to talk in grandiose terms of the "British people", while seemingly uninterested in the poor and the unwashed and the mass unemployed that she left behind in creating a country where the robber bankers could make fortunes, and the speculators could cheat to their heart's content.
Oh, and we don't like rules (some of these people might get found out for the crooks that they are, even though we have legalised a lot of dubious practices), and as the EU likes rules, we don't like the EU.
Wahnsinn!
I am surprised still that during the 1980s she didn't have agents wandering round the ridiculously de-industrialised high unemployment areas dishing out trays full of brioches!
In Germany they have not managed to produce many politicians who produce this sort of nonsense. They tend to be more careful what they say (whether they think along those lines, I would leave you to guess). They have raised the sum of money available to the poorest members of society (some 15-16% of the people living here apparently) in a programme called Hartz IV again next year, though the amount will hardly be adequate. The electricity companies have also announced their price rises for next year. The rise is way above the rate of inflation, and is frankly becoming a joke. Shop around for a cheaper supplier (privatised competition works?) - you won't find one.
Try living without electricity?
We have slashed our gas heating costs by turning the heating down to a minimum except upon the coldest days, but saving electricity? It is, from a practical point of view, far more difficult. And remember that this impacts commercial premises as well, so production costs are obliged to rise driving up everyone's cost of living further!
I will repeat what I have said before. Firstly we need to raise people's standard of living, at all levels maybe but particularly at the bottom (create aspirations, do not inflict criticism! And we need jobs that pay a living wage, not unemployment or cheap labour!). Secondly we need to make costs affordable - create a way that people can live within their means. Rapidly rising costs in areas over which people have no control are IMHO indicative of the failure of the so-called "market economy".
Continue down the road down which we are going and the results are going to be drastic. There probably will not be enough brioches to go round for starters!
I often think that Marie-Antoinette, the allegedly haughty arrogant Queen of France, who was much despised by the French public at large, got a bad press.
On hearing the plight of the starving peasants who had no bread to eat, tradition has it that she uttered the phrase "Let them eat cake".
The phrase actually pre-dates her marriage by four years (and was made by someone else entirely - she was 10 at the time), so whether she actually repeated the phrase is uncertain.
And the actual phrase was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"!.
Brioche is not actually cake. It is a type of bread. I quote from a recipe (!) on the site of the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) - "A slightly sweet, French yeast bread, rich with butter and eggs. The traditional shape has a fluted bottom and a topknot and is made in a special mould".
So bread of a better quality (which they could never have afforded), not actually cake!
Among other things to remember with Marie-Antoinette are firstly that she was actually Austrian (Princess Maria Antonia of the House of Habsburg), so whether she was quite as fluent in French (even if she obviously had learned the language) and could master its phraseology with the same wit and wisdom that she could manage with German is an open question. I personally can speak both French and German for example, but my sense of humour does not work so well in either as in English.
And she was married at the age of 14 (royalty used to pull this trick quite frequently in 17th and 18th century Europe - if they tried that now, think of the media response!), so she had to mature in a foreign country with all that involved.
You know the problems with immigrants!
Anyway looking down your noses (maybe that should read "their noses") at the lower classes is not an attitude restricted to the nobility in the past. It has passed down to all sorts of politicians round the world in the past fifty years whether it is Mitt Romney and his 47% (a quarter of whom will actually still vote for him!) or Margaret(-Antoinette) Thatcher in the UK who used to talk in grandiose terms of the "British people", while seemingly uninterested in the poor and the unwashed and the mass unemployed that she left behind in creating a country where the robber bankers could make fortunes, and the speculators could cheat to their heart's content.
Oh, and we don't like rules (some of these people might get found out for the crooks that they are, even though we have legalised a lot of dubious practices), and as the EU likes rules, we don't like the EU.
Wahnsinn!
I am surprised still that during the 1980s she didn't have agents wandering round the ridiculously de-industrialised high unemployment areas dishing out trays full of brioches!
In Germany they have not managed to produce many politicians who produce this sort of nonsense. They tend to be more careful what they say (whether they think along those lines, I would leave you to guess). They have raised the sum of money available to the poorest members of society (some 15-16% of the people living here apparently) in a programme called Hartz IV again next year, though the amount will hardly be adequate. The electricity companies have also announced their price rises for next year. The rise is way above the rate of inflation, and is frankly becoming a joke. Shop around for a cheaper supplier (privatised competition works?) - you won't find one.
Try living without electricity?
We have slashed our gas heating costs by turning the heating down to a minimum except upon the coldest days, but saving electricity? It is, from a practical point of view, far more difficult. And remember that this impacts commercial premises as well, so production costs are obliged to rise driving up everyone's cost of living further!
I will repeat what I have said before. Firstly we need to raise people's standard of living, at all levels maybe but particularly at the bottom (create aspirations, do not inflict criticism! And we need jobs that pay a living wage, not unemployment or cheap labour!). Secondly we need to make costs affordable - create a way that people can live within their means. Rapidly rising costs in areas over which people have no control are IMHO indicative of the failure of the so-called "market economy".
Continue down the road down which we are going and the results are going to be drastic. There probably will not be enough brioches to go round for starters!
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Changing the date
To start with let me take you back into ancient history when I had just embarked upon my university studies, and dinosaurs walked the earth and there were pterodactyls flying overhead .... And I was reading French poetry as part of my studies.
From the French poet, Charles Baudelaire (to this day still my favourite poet), the first stanza of a poem called "Spleen":
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Which is essentially a fascinating way of saying in French that it is January or maybe February and it is dark and cold and pouring with rain! Fortunate that it wasn't snow, but anyway!
"Pluviôse" ("Rainy") was one of the 12 months of the calendar established following the French Revolution. As the revolutionaries wanted rid of all symbols of the nobility and the church, they reinvented the calendar, starting with 1792 as the year I (Roman numeral), and having 12 months each of 30 days starting from approximately September 22nd, (with additional celebration days to bring the number up to 365 or 366). There were also 10 days in a week (3 weeks a month). Employers would love that - one weekend less off per month for their employees to waste! Pay people still for a 40-hour week, think of the costs that you will save.
Not enough time to explain the entire system, Wikipedia is, for once, good on this though, so try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
or in German
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%C3%B6sischer_Revolutionskalender
All the month names have natural (as in "belonging to nature") leanings, so the month of my birth is the month of fruitfulness (how appropriate!) - Fructidor. According to this my wife and I no longer share the same month of birth, so she will not be too happy if we readopt this format.
As an atheist and linguist though it has often crossed my mind that we should look at revising date formats to take out the religious influences. Across the Western world it is 2012 AD (yes I realise that AD is not used in all Western countries). As a computer specialist (another of my hats), I realise the difficulty of changing millions of computer systems (from 2012 to CCXXI if we adopt the French revolutionary calendar for example), but for an atheist keeping the "D" in the "AD" makes no sense. We could resolve the problem quickly by simply changing AD to AAD (the second "A" standing for "allegati" - Latin Genitive form for "alleged"!). As for what you would place in front of the "C" in BC, or equivalent in other languages, please offer a suitably imaginative, yet accurate (and non-insulting) alternative!
As for the days of the week, I expect that some of you never realised that Norse mythology (in Northern European languages) or Roman mythology (in the Romance Languages of Southern Europe - French chosen in following text for convenience) were still around. Tuesday / mardi - named after Tiw or Mars, Wednesday / mercredi named after Wotan or Mercure, Thursday named after Thor or Jupiter, Friday named after Freya or Vénus, Saturday named after Saturn (interestingly Roman not Norse in English) or Saturne.
My German readers are laughingly pointing to Mittwoch ("Wotan's day or le jour de Mercure") as simply the middle of the week, no mythological influences - well for NOW at least. It has been around since the 10th century apparently. Time to stop laughing though, Jungs und Mädels - according to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom today!) - "Der Mittwoch galt im Volksglauben als Unglückstag"! Probably as there was no Norse God to pray to ....
Why would we stick with days celebrating Gods who have long since been discarded is an interesting question. It is probably an indication how much we are creatures of habit. Maybe it is time to think about changing them. The names of the French revolutionary days are nothing like as interesting as the months, so maybe we should organise a competition to come up with something appropriate.
Or maybe we need to starting asking Thor for help. Today (the day that I am writing this) would be as good as any!
Postscript - to my occasional readers in Thailand, I am fully aware that this year is actually 2555 and not 2012. To my very rare readers in Israel (probably supporters of Yosse Beilin and not the current government) I realise that it is 5773. And (tempting fate putting Muslim countries next to Israel, but I at least am open-minded! And I do not think that many people in that part of the world are that receptive to my opinions!), in the Muslim world it is apparently 1433.
From the French poet, Charles Baudelaire (to this day still my favourite poet), the first stanza of a poem called "Spleen":
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Which is essentially a fascinating way of saying in French that it is January or maybe February and it is dark and cold and pouring with rain! Fortunate that it wasn't snow, but anyway!
"Pluviôse" ("Rainy") was one of the 12 months of the calendar established following the French Revolution. As the revolutionaries wanted rid of all symbols of the nobility and the church, they reinvented the calendar, starting with 1792 as the year I (Roman numeral), and having 12 months each of 30 days starting from approximately September 22nd, (with additional celebration days to bring the number up to 365 or 366). There were also 10 days in a week (3 weeks a month). Employers would love that - one weekend less off per month for their employees to waste! Pay people still for a 40-hour week, think of the costs that you will save.
Not enough time to explain the entire system, Wikipedia is, for once, good on this though, so try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
or in German
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%C3%B6sischer_Revolutionskalender
All the month names have natural (as in "belonging to nature") leanings, so the month of my birth is the month of fruitfulness (how appropriate!) - Fructidor. According to this my wife and I no longer share the same month of birth, so she will not be too happy if we readopt this format.
As an atheist and linguist though it has often crossed my mind that we should look at revising date formats to take out the religious influences. Across the Western world it is 2012 AD (yes I realise that AD is not used in all Western countries). As a computer specialist (another of my hats), I realise the difficulty of changing millions of computer systems (from 2012 to CCXXI if we adopt the French revolutionary calendar for example), but for an atheist keeping the "D" in the "AD" makes no sense. We could resolve the problem quickly by simply changing AD to AAD (the second "A" standing for "allegati" - Latin Genitive form for "alleged"!). As for what you would place in front of the "C" in BC, or equivalent in other languages, please offer a suitably imaginative, yet accurate (and non-insulting) alternative!
As for the days of the week, I expect that some of you never realised that Norse mythology (in Northern European languages) or Roman mythology (in the Romance Languages of Southern Europe - French chosen in following text for convenience) were still around. Tuesday / mardi - named after Tiw or Mars, Wednesday / mercredi named after Wotan or Mercure, Thursday named after Thor or Jupiter, Friday named after Freya or Vénus, Saturday named after Saturn (interestingly Roman not Norse in English) or Saturne.
My German readers are laughingly pointing to Mittwoch ("Wotan's day or le jour de Mercure") as simply the middle of the week, no mythological influences - well for NOW at least. It has been around since the 10th century apparently. Time to stop laughing though, Jungs und Mädels - according to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom today!) - "Der Mittwoch galt im Volksglauben als Unglückstag"! Probably as there was no Norse God to pray to ....
Why would we stick with days celebrating Gods who have long since been discarded is an interesting question. It is probably an indication how much we are creatures of habit. Maybe it is time to think about changing them. The names of the French revolutionary days are nothing like as interesting as the months, so maybe we should organise a competition to come up with something appropriate.
Or maybe we need to starting asking Thor for help. Today (the day that I am writing this) would be as good as any!
Postscript - to my occasional readers in Thailand, I am fully aware that this year is actually 2555 and not 2012. To my very rare readers in Israel (probably supporters of Yosse Beilin and not the current government) I realise that it is 5773. And (tempting fate putting Muslim countries next to Israel, but I at least am open-minded! And I do not think that many people in that part of the world are that receptive to my opinions!), in the Muslim world it is apparently 1433.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
No need to get excited - it's only a game
I don't talk about football (North American = soccer) much, but today it is appropriate. Yes I am interested (originally from a working class family in the North of England, what would you expect? Rugby League if you want an alternative - not that the sport seems to exist in Germany). But there are more important matters on the face of this earth than sport. Eventually the world does not go into an economic slump if your team loses.
One of the more intriguing things about living in Germany is that the excitement ratio is low. Even when important matters like elections are on, the viciousness and name calling that you get in other countries tends to be more restrained ("restrained viciousness"? Intellectually possible actually. Saying something nasty in a moderate tone of voice using a clever phrase).
Whereas the quality press in the UK is dwarfed by the overwhelming daily nastiness of the tabloids, here there is one national tabloid (Bild) and a load of interestingly intelligent quality papers. There is plenty of lively gutter stuff on television if you want it, though (as my wife has discovered to her delight and to my consternation - usually I am left wondering whether it is real or fabricated).
The tone though, in most of the Western part of the country at least, is pretty restrained (that word again!). So when the major opposition party, the SDP, pick their candidate (Peer Steinbrück) to run against the Chancellor next year, they pick someone who is fiscally conservative, hardly emotionally challenged, and could easily sound like a member of the conservative CDU.
My own choice if I could vote would be Claudia Roth. If she won it would at some point lead to an interesting meeting - Green German Chancellor meets US President Mitt Romney, who used, for convenient political reasons, to believe that global warming exists, and now, for convenient political reasons, believes that it doesn't. Frau Roth would make him look stupid, but then that is not difficult! Why having clean air to breathe and a healthy environment to live in is such a bad idea, I do not understand. It would cost jobs? Since when has Bain Capital been concerned about jobs being cut, or if jobs are going to be created (according to their philosophy) let them be created in cheap-labour, highly polluted China!
Move on.
My wife is not that happy with her boss. Usually I offer her the platitudes that it cannot be that easy for him, all the stress and the schedules and the deadlines to meet usw. Yesterday though I could have throttled him.
She works a split system at the airport. This normally means 3 to 4 morning shifts, followed by 3 to 4 afternoon/evening shifts (always 7 or 8 days in total), then 3 to 4 days off. Yesterday, after 4 days on mornings, she was supposed to switch to afternoon/evenings. The day before, he informed her that his teams were out of balance (due to illness) and he needed her in the morning instead.
This should affect me? Alarm clocks going off for four consecutive days at your peak sleeping time (about 0320) do affect you, and when you are prone to insomnia, getting back to sleep is a problem. Yesterday afternoon I was walking round the park in Bockenheim feeling as ill as I have at any time since I came out of hospital in 2008, but this was probably the 5 days worth of interrupted sleep taking their toll.
As significant as this was though, more importantly I had planned to spend the evening watching the football (North American = soccer) international between Germany and Sweden. She hates football (given her background that is hardly surprising), and while I can normally hide myself in the bedroom while it is on, she has the habit of going to bed quite early (given the fact that she got up yesterday at 0320, going to be bed at 2130 was late enough for her).
Consequently I managed to watch the first half, during which the German side resembled the team that they were in the World Cup in 2010 when they drubbed England and Argentina. 3-0 at half-time, switch off, let her sleep. Went to bed early, but as chronic insomnia does not allow your mind to switch off, I lay there awake thinking of business contract translations and what was happening in the match in Berlin.
Finally at 2320. I rose to check www.kicker.de to find out the final result. 5-0, 6-0?
No. 4-4. A draw (North American = tie). How the Swedes who had looked so bad in the first half .... And at one point it had been 4-0. No particularly dramatic excited comments on the German news on ZDF this morning (though no doubt the sports page of Bild will be foaming at the proverbial mouth!), more a sense of shock. The defence unit suddenly fell apart.
Well as the goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, (often described here as the "best goalkeeper in the world" - personally I do not think that he is even the best goalkeeper in Germany, that honour, and his place in the national team, should go to Hamburg's Rene Adler), made one ghastly error and as for the rest .... If they were not used to playing together at international level, it could be understood, but as the goalkeeper, three of the back four, and the two defensive midfielders all play for the same club team (Bayern München), that explanation does not work (unless you blame Arsenal's Per Mertesacker, and I would hardly expect that he alone played badly).
Anyway congratulations to the Swedes for a gutsy performance.
And let us repeat till we are blue in the face that it is, eventually, only a game. Even if over-excitement often takes over at such events (one of the rare occasions in Germany - see the beginning of this piece!), even if the ugly spectre of football hooliganism is beginning to rear its head more frequently again here, even if huge amounts of money are involved (don't mention how much these guys get paid to my wife, she is liable to throw a tantrum!). It isn't war, it isn't the end of the world when your team does not win.
At the end of the day the wrong side winning a political election (e.g. Romney winning the US Presidential election, maybe Merkel winning here again in 2013, although Steinbrück will not be much of an improvement) is far more significant. Sports events do not impact people's lives directly. Sadly politics and economics do often affect them radically, and very often make them worse!
One of the more intriguing things about living in Germany is that the excitement ratio is low. Even when important matters like elections are on, the viciousness and name calling that you get in other countries tends to be more restrained ("restrained viciousness"? Intellectually possible actually. Saying something nasty in a moderate tone of voice using a clever phrase).
Whereas the quality press in the UK is dwarfed by the overwhelming daily nastiness of the tabloids, here there is one national tabloid (Bild) and a load of interestingly intelligent quality papers. There is plenty of lively gutter stuff on television if you want it, though (as my wife has discovered to her delight and to my consternation - usually I am left wondering whether it is real or fabricated).
The tone though, in most of the Western part of the country at least, is pretty restrained (that word again!). So when the major opposition party, the SDP, pick their candidate (Peer Steinbrück) to run against the Chancellor next year, they pick someone who is fiscally conservative, hardly emotionally challenged, and could easily sound like a member of the conservative CDU.
My own choice if I could vote would be Claudia Roth. If she won it would at some point lead to an interesting meeting - Green German Chancellor meets US President Mitt Romney, who used, for convenient political reasons, to believe that global warming exists, and now, for convenient political reasons, believes that it doesn't. Frau Roth would make him look stupid, but then that is not difficult! Why having clean air to breathe and a healthy environment to live in is such a bad idea, I do not understand. It would cost jobs? Since when has Bain Capital been concerned about jobs being cut, or if jobs are going to be created (according to their philosophy) let them be created in cheap-labour, highly polluted China!
Move on.
My wife is not that happy with her boss. Usually I offer her the platitudes that it cannot be that easy for him, all the stress and the schedules and the deadlines to meet usw. Yesterday though I could have throttled him.
She works a split system at the airport. This normally means 3 to 4 morning shifts, followed by 3 to 4 afternoon/evening shifts (always 7 or 8 days in total), then 3 to 4 days off. Yesterday, after 4 days on mornings, she was supposed to switch to afternoon/evenings. The day before, he informed her that his teams were out of balance (due to illness) and he needed her in the morning instead.
This should affect me? Alarm clocks going off for four consecutive days at your peak sleeping time (about 0320) do affect you, and when you are prone to insomnia, getting back to sleep is a problem. Yesterday afternoon I was walking round the park in Bockenheim feeling as ill as I have at any time since I came out of hospital in 2008, but this was probably the 5 days worth of interrupted sleep taking their toll.
As significant as this was though, more importantly I had planned to spend the evening watching the football (North American = soccer) international between Germany and Sweden. She hates football (given her background that is hardly surprising), and while I can normally hide myself in the bedroom while it is on, she has the habit of going to bed quite early (given the fact that she got up yesterday at 0320, going to be bed at 2130 was late enough for her).
Consequently I managed to watch the first half, during which the German side resembled the team that they were in the World Cup in 2010 when they drubbed England and Argentina. 3-0 at half-time, switch off, let her sleep. Went to bed early, but as chronic insomnia does not allow your mind to switch off, I lay there awake thinking of business contract translations and what was happening in the match in Berlin.
Finally at 2320. I rose to check www.kicker.de to find out the final result. 5-0, 6-0?
No. 4-4. A draw (North American = tie). How the Swedes who had looked so bad in the first half .... And at one point it had been 4-0. No particularly dramatic excited comments on the German news on ZDF this morning (though no doubt the sports page of Bild will be foaming at the proverbial mouth!), more a sense of shock. The defence unit suddenly fell apart.
Well as the goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, (often described here as the "best goalkeeper in the world" - personally I do not think that he is even the best goalkeeper in Germany, that honour, and his place in the national team, should go to Hamburg's Rene Adler), made one ghastly error and as for the rest .... If they were not used to playing together at international level, it could be understood, but as the goalkeeper, three of the back four, and the two defensive midfielders all play for the same club team (Bayern München), that explanation does not work (unless you blame Arsenal's Per Mertesacker, and I would hardly expect that he alone played badly).
Anyway congratulations to the Swedes for a gutsy performance.
And let us repeat till we are blue in the face that it is, eventually, only a game. Even if over-excitement often takes over at such events (one of the rare occasions in Germany - see the beginning of this piece!), even if the ugly spectre of football hooliganism is beginning to rear its head more frequently again here, even if huge amounts of money are involved (don't mention how much these guys get paid to my wife, she is liable to throw a tantrum!). It isn't war, it isn't the end of the world when your team does not win.
At the end of the day the wrong side winning a political election (e.g. Romney winning the US Presidential election, maybe Merkel winning here again in 2013, although Steinbrück will not be much of an improvement) is far more significant. Sports events do not impact people's lives directly. Sadly politics and economics do often affect them radically, and very often make them worse!
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Why the Taliban should kill me and several million other people
The Taliban is rightly described an Islamofascist group.
Fascist on the include/exclude principle. If you are part of us, you are superior (see Hitler and the master race), if not you are to be enslaved, tortured and/or killed.
Change Hitler's master race for the Taliban's version of Islam - Islamofascist.
Easy enough to define, and historically accurate.
They have now claimed (as Fascists are wont to do) that they were perfectly at liberty to attempt to murder somebody. In my book attempted murder is attempted murder, and all parties involved in pursuing it (including encouraging someone to commit murder) should be prosecuted with all the force that the civil law should throw at them, so the Pakistani government in this instance should be rounding up all possible suspects.
Anyway their claimed justification of the attempted murder of Malala Yousufzai falls into three categories:
Anyway on with the motley.
Take my case and compare where I stand.
And I suspect that on this issue millions will agree with everything that I have just said.
Fascist on the include/exclude principle. If you are part of us, you are superior (see Hitler and the master race), if not you are to be enslaved, tortured and/or killed.
Change Hitler's master race for the Taliban's version of Islam - Islamofascist.
Easy enough to define, and historically accurate.
They have now claimed (as Fascists are wont to do) that they were perfectly at liberty to attempt to murder somebody. In my book attempted murder is attempted murder, and all parties involved in pursuing it (including encouraging someone to commit murder) should be prosecuted with all the force that the civil law should throw at them, so the Pakistani government in this instance should be rounding up all possible suspects.
Anyway their claimed justification of the attempted murder of Malala Yousufzai falls into three categories:
- Because she had spoken out against the group.
- She had praised U.S. President Barack Obama.
- She was propagating against Islam.
Anyway on with the motley.
Take my case and compare where I stand.
- I think that the Taliban are a load of murderous, ignorant, barbaric, pre-medieval, good-for-nothing, mediocrities. You cannot compare them with slime, slime is far better than that. Wiping them off the face of the earth would be one of the best things that could happen to everything on the planet! Does that sound enough like speaking out against them?
- Obama is not amazing, but he is better than Bush ever was, better than Romney can ever be, he had his priories right in Iraq, has not made the mistake of invading Iran, ordered the end of the Islamofascist leader Bin Laden, has the US economy in a stronger shape than it would ever have been if left to the US Republican Party (12-15% would be the rate of unemployment now, and the debt would not have been any lower with a GOP President, and the auto industry would have been considerably reduced in size with all the associated lost jobs), which in turn helps the world economy from sinking any further. He is a nice guy, a good father, and he has his head screwed on. Another term (which sadly he won't get) and he might get close to matching Clinton - the best US President of my adult life. Is that enough praise for you?
- She was propagating against Islam. I do not think that she was, so let me start instead. Like all religious beliefs, Islam is a load of superstitious garbage with no scientific basis, and nothing to hold it together except fear. Allah, let us state quite clearly, does not exist and hence is incapable of revenge! Only the brainless and the brainwashed could ever accept such a load of ridiculous codswallop as Islam, though the prospect of being killed if you dare to oppose or renounce it (as any sensible person with any brains normally would) tends to keep even the most talented of the proverbial of sheep in the proverbial pen. There is no need to believe in the proverbial (and non-existent) Hell. Two days living under a strictly Islamic state should be enough to ensure that you believe that Hell really exists on Earth. Something you could not say about a country like Germany or the Netherlands. And as for Shariah Law - if ever there was a load of antiquated junk upon which every textbook should be destroyed as an insult to humanity .... Enough propagation for you?
And I suspect that on this issue millions will agree with everything that I have just said.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Or how a 14-year-old girl has more guts than a whole army of stupid men stuck in an antiquated belief system!
Dedicated to Malala Yousufzai.
I hope that she recovers. I hope that she has the chance of a normal life again. And I hope that she becomes the most significant female to emerge from Pakistan since the death of Benazir Bhutto.
How many causes can justify themselves by shooting an unarmed 14-year-old girl in the head with a gun. Deliberately, under the orders from a crazed fanatic leader who embraces an antiquated form of an antiquated belief system.
The girl fought them with words. Her words hurt them. They told her to stop or they would kill her! She kept on fighting, bravely, courageously! With her words!
Poor sad people, aren't they? They cannot fight back with words and beliefs - only with guns and bullets.
Brave? COWARDS! COWARDS! COWARDS!
They are fighting to take their world back 600 to 1600 years. They wish to enslave their women and make them slaves to their imbecility, for imbeciles they are! Men like this are not true men. They are frightened and scared and fighting for a cause not worth fighting for anyway.
True men appreciate their womenfolk as equals, as bright, intelligent individuals whose talents will enhance the lives of all in any community. UN statistics show it time and time again. The healthier women are, the better educated they are, the more likely their communities are to prosper!
The world needs intelligent women, women who can study, women who can teach, women who can write, women who can use their brains, women who can make things that can happen.
And women (and girls) with the guts to speak out - like Malala Yousufzai!
It doesn't need thousands of cowardly men stuck to their antiquated belief structure and their antiquated ways of doing business. Such scum need calling out for what they are - SCUM! and COWARDS!
I hope that she recovers. I hope that she has the chance of a normal life again. And I hope that she becomes the most significant female to emerge from Pakistan since the death of Benazir Bhutto.
How many causes can justify themselves by shooting an unarmed 14-year-old girl in the head with a gun. Deliberately, under the orders from a crazed fanatic leader who embraces an antiquated form of an antiquated belief system.
The girl fought them with words. Her words hurt them. They told her to stop or they would kill her! She kept on fighting, bravely, courageously! With her words!
Poor sad people, aren't they? They cannot fight back with words and beliefs - only with guns and bullets.
Brave? COWARDS! COWARDS! COWARDS!
They are fighting to take their world back 600 to 1600 years. They wish to enslave their women and make them slaves to their imbecility, for imbeciles they are! Men like this are not true men. They are frightened and scared and fighting for a cause not worth fighting for anyway.
True men appreciate their womenfolk as equals, as bright, intelligent individuals whose talents will enhance the lives of all in any community. UN statistics show it time and time again. The healthier women are, the better educated they are, the more likely their communities are to prosper!
The world needs intelligent women, women who can study, women who can teach, women who can write, women who can use their brains, women who can make things that can happen.
And women (and girls) with the guts to speak out - like Malala Yousufzai!
It doesn't need thousands of cowardly men stuck to their antiquated belief structure and their antiquated ways of doing business. Such scum need calling out for what they are - SCUM! and COWARDS!
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Do we never get the message? ALL DEBT IS BAD NEWS!
Anyone who sponsors a football (North America = soccer) club in the English Premier League is of necessity a rich, powerful company or individual.
The story surrounding Newcastle United's latest sponsorship deal though is indicative of just where things are going wrong with "wealth creation" - in the UK in this instance, but it could apply in many other countries.
The company sponsor is called Wonga, and has been described as a "legal loan shark company". They lend out money almost instantly on demand. The APR that they charge has been estimated as somewhere between a ghastly 360% to a beyond credibility 4,214%.
The company's (feeble) response to this is that APRs are irrelevant as they only offer short-term loans. So paying 41 Pounds on a loan of 254 Pounds is OK. Short-term.
Really?
So somebody who desperately needed 254 Pounds is going to have to pay back 295 Pounds. And if they were desperate for 254 Pounds in the first place, where are they going to find 295 Pounds? Another loan shark company? And then it becomes 349 and then 397 usw?
If you do not pay Wonga back, they just keep adding on the interest. Short of going bankrupt, where do you end up with them? And if you do go bankrupt, they end up partly owning you! Until you pay back by which point you may well be subject to the 4,124% "that never applies"!
That this is legal I find astonishing. That Wonga is this successful and they get so much custom I not only find astonishing, I find it extremely depressing.
If this had been a company that encouraged savings and growing your income, then they would win my plaudits. As it is they profit massively from the worst aspect there is in any capitalist society - debt culture! On a big scale.
We should be aiming to get low unemployment with all people earning a living wage. We should be aiming for a savings culture where people can live within their means and put summat aside for the future. We should be aiming for sound money culture and an eradication of all debt in all its forms - be it public, private or business.
Instead we end up with greedy nasty loan sharks (actually calling them that is an insult to real sharks!) growing fat upon the misery of others.
This blog is sub-titled "personal thoughts on a world heading down the sink". If you ever wanted an example of the world heading down the sink, this is definitely it!
The story surrounding Newcastle United's latest sponsorship deal though is indicative of just where things are going wrong with "wealth creation" - in the UK in this instance, but it could apply in many other countries.
The company sponsor is called Wonga, and has been described as a "legal loan shark company". They lend out money almost instantly on demand. The APR that they charge has been estimated as somewhere between a ghastly 360% to a beyond credibility 4,214%.
The company's (feeble) response to this is that APRs are irrelevant as they only offer short-term loans. So paying 41 Pounds on a loan of 254 Pounds is OK. Short-term.
Really?
So somebody who desperately needed 254 Pounds is going to have to pay back 295 Pounds. And if they were desperate for 254 Pounds in the first place, where are they going to find 295 Pounds? Another loan shark company? And then it becomes 349 and then 397 usw?
If you do not pay Wonga back, they just keep adding on the interest. Short of going bankrupt, where do you end up with them? And if you do go bankrupt, they end up partly owning you! Until you pay back by which point you may well be subject to the 4,124% "that never applies"!
That this is legal I find astonishing. That Wonga is this successful and they get so much custom I not only find astonishing, I find it extremely depressing.
If this had been a company that encouraged savings and growing your income, then they would win my plaudits. As it is they profit massively from the worst aspect there is in any capitalist society - debt culture! On a big scale.
We should be aiming to get low unemployment with all people earning a living wage. We should be aiming for a savings culture where people can live within their means and put summat aside for the future. We should be aiming for sound money culture and an eradication of all debt in all its forms - be it public, private or business.
Instead we end up with greedy nasty loan sharks (actually calling them that is an insult to real sharks!) growing fat upon the misery of others.
This blog is sub-titled "personal thoughts on a world heading down the sink". If you ever wanted an example of the world heading down the sink, this is definitely it!
Update (24/6/2025). Well some good news. Wonga had to take their dubious loan practices into administration in 2020. It would be interesting to know if they tried to pay off their creditors by taking out short-term loans at a rate of over 4,000%!
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Atheists are more likely to commit crimes than "believers" - Really?
Of all the stupid, in fact preposterously stupid, arguments put out by "believers" this is probably the most stupid of the lot. You think that you have nothing to fear in any life after this, so there is no payback in the life to come. Usw, usw, usw!
A one-word reply - to be polite - "Nonsense"!
I would be inclined to argue the reverse.
Examine the psychology of the atheist, the rationale of the atheist, and the probable ensuing conduct of the atheist.
Q: How many lives do you have?
A: One.
Not two (or more in case of those creeds that are into reincarnation). So you get one shot at this existence. It is up to you to make the best of the one chance that you have. There is no replay coming up where you can try again.
I often wonder what sort of society these "believers" live in. If I decide to take a gun and shoot somebody or walk into a bank and receive a couple of million Euro from a frightened bank clerk, I can get away with it?
To repeat for seemingly the zillionth time, we have something called the CIVIL LAW. The CIVIL LAW applies rules, passed in democratic societies by elected representatives, which apply to all and sundry regardless of their belief system.
In a country like where I live now which has regulations passed under the CIVIL LAW which will not entail me being put to death for committing a serious offence, that means being locked up in a prison for a very long time if I commit such a crime, and get caught and prosecuted.
And what sort of company do you get in such an establishment? Usually not the sort of company that you would be happy to meet at a neighbourhood barbecue. The grimmest, angriest, most vicious, meanest, most brutal and possibly the most stupid people you would ever want to meet. And if you are a man of course, they will all be male - no female company to lighten your psychological burden. And you want to spend 20 to 30 out of your 70 year span with people like that? A greater portion of your one 70 year span wasted like that?
Huh????
So if you want anything positive from this one existence, does it make sense to spend much of it locked up in unpleasant often desperate company. And if you are a food and drink freak please realise that there is no pâté de foie gras and Bordeaux AOC to be had in jail!
Risk it, you might get away with it. You might manage a really good life on the proceeds of one large robbery? Follow the story of the Brinks-Mat gold bullion robbery some time - see link:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/the-curse-of-the-brinks-mat-gold-bullion-robbery-829220
Really worth trying? Serious criminals usually get caught. The police may botch up the pursuit of small-scale burglars once in a while, but the serious stuff is usually resolved - although diminishing the numbers of policemen and women does usually lead to a rise in unsolved crime (now I wonder which of the US Presidential candidates is proposing cutting the police service, and a clue - it isn't Obama!).
The fact that you will probably get caught and locked up with some desperate individuals is the best reason for a rational person not to break the civil law, and most atheists are rational people!
If on the other hand you have a belief system that says you can always ask for forgiveness for your wrongdoings, that cop-out clause means that you might try the odd thing or two, realising you can get off the hook later. At least IMHO. And then, even though it flies in the face of the CIVIL LAW, you might claim that you are doing it in the name of Jihad, so it is actually the will of Allah! After all by that thinking the civil law is less important and relevant than Sharia usw.
No stats are available to me on this, but the logic rings down bright and clear. I am reaching the end of my life, I have had 47 years as an atheist or as an an atheistically inclined agnostic. To date the desire to break the civil law has never possessed me. While I know that arguing from a particular case to the general breaks the fundamentals of Aristotelean logic, I will for once use that to justify my position, knowing that I am by no means the only law-abiding atheist out there!
A one-word reply - to be polite - "Nonsense"!
I would be inclined to argue the reverse.
Examine the psychology of the atheist, the rationale of the atheist, and the probable ensuing conduct of the atheist.
Q: How many lives do you have?
A: One.
Not two (or more in case of those creeds that are into reincarnation). So you get one shot at this existence. It is up to you to make the best of the one chance that you have. There is no replay coming up where you can try again.
I often wonder what sort of society these "believers" live in. If I decide to take a gun and shoot somebody or walk into a bank and receive a couple of million Euro from a frightened bank clerk, I can get away with it?
To repeat for seemingly the zillionth time, we have something called the CIVIL LAW. The CIVIL LAW applies rules, passed in democratic societies by elected representatives, which apply to all and sundry regardless of their belief system.
In a country like where I live now which has regulations passed under the CIVIL LAW which will not entail me being put to death for committing a serious offence, that means being locked up in a prison for a very long time if I commit such a crime, and get caught and prosecuted.
And what sort of company do you get in such an establishment? Usually not the sort of company that you would be happy to meet at a neighbourhood barbecue. The grimmest, angriest, most vicious, meanest, most brutal and possibly the most stupid people you would ever want to meet. And if you are a man of course, they will all be male - no female company to lighten your psychological burden. And you want to spend 20 to 30 out of your 70 year span with people like that? A greater portion of your one 70 year span wasted like that?
Huh????
So if you want anything positive from this one existence, does it make sense to spend much of it locked up in unpleasant often desperate company. And if you are a food and drink freak please realise that there is no pâté de foie gras and Bordeaux AOC to be had in jail!
Risk it, you might get away with it. You might manage a really good life on the proceeds of one large robbery? Follow the story of the Brinks-Mat gold bullion robbery some time - see link:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/the-curse-of-the-brinks-mat-gold-bullion-robbery-829220
Really worth trying? Serious criminals usually get caught. The police may botch up the pursuit of small-scale burglars once in a while, but the serious stuff is usually resolved - although diminishing the numbers of policemen and women does usually lead to a rise in unsolved crime (now I wonder which of the US Presidential candidates is proposing cutting the police service, and a clue - it isn't Obama!).
The fact that you will probably get caught and locked up with some desperate individuals is the best reason for a rational person not to break the civil law, and most atheists are rational people!
If on the other hand you have a belief system that says you can always ask for forgiveness for your wrongdoings, that cop-out clause means that you might try the odd thing or two, realising you can get off the hook later. At least IMHO. And then, even though it flies in the face of the CIVIL LAW, you might claim that you are doing it in the name of Jihad, so it is actually the will of Allah! After all by that thinking the civil law is less important and relevant than Sharia usw.
No stats are available to me on this, but the logic rings down bright and clear. I am reaching the end of my life, I have had 47 years as an atheist or as an an atheistically inclined agnostic. To date the desire to break the civil law has never possessed me. While I know that arguing from a particular case to the general breaks the fundamentals of Aristotelean logic, I will for once use that to justify my position, knowing that I am by no means the only law-abiding atheist out there!
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
World War III is coming?
A popular little title on several web forums, sites usw.
A whole host of apocalyptical visions, with explanations ranging from the plausible to the more than highly improbable, often dosed with the latest interpretations of Nostradamus (an amazing cottage industry that is centuries-old and never seemingly proved wrong! Despite the multiple variations in the interpretations).
Most of the expectations of the conflagration to end all conflagrations start and end in the Middle East and involve Israel. OK, let us say that Iran is not to be trusted (even if Ahmedinajad is term limited, so with him it is 2013 or never, and the Mullahs - who hold the real power in Iran - have actually declared a fatwa on nuclear weapons!). Then Egypt looks potentially unstable, and I would expect that relationships between Egypt (where Islamic voices are becoming stronger) and Israel will sour, but to what extent ....
In which case I will play the secular equivalent of Devil's advocate (atheistic author's note - no "Devil" exists, and I cannot provide an alternative expression!), and offer you the following concept:
International war there may be, world war there will not.
The First World War was actually a traditionally evil European continental war that became internationalised due to the presence of the various European empires being dragged in (notably those of the UK and France). North America was represented throughout by Canada (a British dominion), even if the USA chose to stay out until 1917.
The Second World War had this combination of events plus the ongoing invasion of China by the Japanese (there is an argument that World War II had actually started already before 1939, in that the Japan-China conflict was an important component of it, and Japan had already signed the axis with Nazi Germany and Italy in 1936). This time round of course, the USA stayed out till 1941.
A Third World War will not start on the European continent, and will not be between the traditional rivals on the continent, the EU will see to that (British Conservatives who can never keep their noses out of a good war must hate the EU for that reason alone!). And much to Israel's chagrin (and that of many people in the US Republican Party), Europe's perspective upon the Middle East is neutral (which does not incidentally equal being anti-Israel, nor pro-Iran), so rule out much by way of European presence in any international war in the Middle East, however much a Romney Presidency might try to drag NATO in.
Then there is China, who have no strategic interest in getting involved (not good for trade and that is all that matters these days). The same can be said for India. Japan and South Korea (at most limited support of any US involvement) I would not like to predict. The only Asian country (but hardly a power) which might have some influence on the matter is North Korea, who might happily supply wharrever they have by way of nuclear technology (but do not overrate that) to whichever side is opposing the USA.
And Russia? Often misunderstood by American Conservatives, they would actually be the best power broker to bring the whole situation to the peace table. Given the situation in their Southern provinces, they would certainly not be pleased to see any form of aggressive Islamic (Sunni or Shia) power on their doorstep, and they are somewhat less unfriendly towards Israel than is often claimed (see Medvedev's visit to Israel last year or the year before - I cannot remember the exact date). Taking sides again is not in their strategic interest.
So rule out a World War, and accept the fact at worst that there may be a very nasty local conflict which needs a lot of international diplomacy if we are to head it off.
Less apocalyptic maybe, less colourful for the producers of online graphics, and certainly not as predicted by Nostradamus or in certain weird interpretations of the Bible! In the latter case, I am prone to utter of course not (the usual nonsense!). However, probably better for all of us. We can instead start concentrating upon the important economic issues that are making the lives of so many people and other species on the planet so miserable. Eventually we might start getting round to reaching some positive solutions - if politics stops getting in the way and we stop thinking that bankers are the only significant people on the planet!
A whole host of apocalyptical visions, with explanations ranging from the plausible to the more than highly improbable, often dosed with the latest interpretations of Nostradamus (an amazing cottage industry that is centuries-old and never seemingly proved wrong! Despite the multiple variations in the interpretations).
Most of the expectations of the conflagration to end all conflagrations start and end in the Middle East and involve Israel. OK, let us say that Iran is not to be trusted (even if Ahmedinajad is term limited, so with him it is 2013 or never, and the Mullahs - who hold the real power in Iran - have actually declared a fatwa on nuclear weapons!). Then Egypt looks potentially unstable, and I would expect that relationships between Egypt (where Islamic voices are becoming stronger) and Israel will sour, but to what extent ....
In which case I will play the secular equivalent of Devil's advocate (atheistic author's note - no "Devil" exists, and I cannot provide an alternative expression!), and offer you the following concept:
International war there may be, world war there will not.
The First World War was actually a traditionally evil European continental war that became internationalised due to the presence of the various European empires being dragged in (notably those of the UK and France). North America was represented throughout by Canada (a British dominion), even if the USA chose to stay out until 1917.
The Second World War had this combination of events plus the ongoing invasion of China by the Japanese (there is an argument that World War II had actually started already before 1939, in that the Japan-China conflict was an important component of it, and Japan had already signed the axis with Nazi Germany and Italy in 1936). This time round of course, the USA stayed out till 1941.
A Third World War will not start on the European continent, and will not be between the traditional rivals on the continent, the EU will see to that (British Conservatives who can never keep their noses out of a good war must hate the EU for that reason alone!). And much to Israel's chagrin (and that of many people in the US Republican Party), Europe's perspective upon the Middle East is neutral (which does not incidentally equal being anti-Israel, nor pro-Iran), so rule out much by way of European presence in any international war in the Middle East, however much a Romney Presidency might try to drag NATO in.
Then there is China, who have no strategic interest in getting involved (not good for trade and that is all that matters these days). The same can be said for India. Japan and South Korea (at most limited support of any US involvement) I would not like to predict. The only Asian country (but hardly a power) which might have some influence on the matter is North Korea, who might happily supply wharrever they have by way of nuclear technology (but do not overrate that) to whichever side is opposing the USA.
And Russia? Often misunderstood by American Conservatives, they would actually be the best power broker to bring the whole situation to the peace table. Given the situation in their Southern provinces, they would certainly not be pleased to see any form of aggressive Islamic (Sunni or Shia) power on their doorstep, and they are somewhat less unfriendly towards Israel than is often claimed (see Medvedev's visit to Israel last year or the year before - I cannot remember the exact date). Taking sides again is not in their strategic interest.
So rule out a World War, and accept the fact at worst that there may be a very nasty local conflict which needs a lot of international diplomacy if we are to head it off.
Less apocalyptic maybe, less colourful for the producers of online graphics, and certainly not as predicted by Nostradamus or in certain weird interpretations of the Bible! In the latter case, I am prone to utter of course not (the usual nonsense!). However, probably better for all of us. We can instead start concentrating upon the important economic issues that are making the lives of so many people and other species on the planet so miserable. Eventually we might start getting round to reaching some positive solutions - if politics stops getting in the way and we stop thinking that bankers are the only significant people on the planet!
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Quote(s) of the day
I missed the S-Bahn tonight by 2 minutes and I was hanging round the bookshop on Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to kill 18 minutes or so. I saw this on a postcard they were selling.
From Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 to 1926), one of the best known German language poets of his era - you would have to be a poet to come up with this, so it calls for a graphic!
Deutsch
"Es gibt Augenblicke in deren eine Rose wichtiger ist als ein Stück Brot"
That will appeal to all the romantics in you, it will certainly appeal to my wife!
Oh you want the English (I always forget that not everyone speaks German! The next US President can't, but at least he can manage French, at least he can today, he will probably rewind the tape and deny it tomorrow, or have someone on his team do so for him. Anyway):
"There are moments in which a rose is more important than a piece of bread".
So when you next lose your job and cannot afford to eat and you are walking past someone's garden and there are dozens of roses blooming there, you could sneak off with one or two of them and eat them down the road .....
And to my critics who keep asking why I am always so cynical, may I quote the words of the 2nd significant girlfriend of my life, a wonderful lady called Margaret (who wisely hated the British PM who shared her name) I knew in Lancashire back in the 1980s:
"You know behind that cynical facade is a really nice person".
I shall remember her for many things, but for that piece of insight most of all.
From Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 to 1926), one of the best known German language poets of his era - you would have to be a poet to come up with this, so it calls for a graphic!
"Es gibt Augenblicke in deren eine Rose wichtiger ist als ein Stück Brot"
That will appeal to all the romantics in you, it will certainly appeal to my wife!
Oh you want the English (I always forget that not everyone speaks German! The next US President can't, but at least he can manage French, at least he can today, he will probably rewind the tape and deny it tomorrow, or have someone on his team do so for him. Anyway):
"There are moments in which a rose is more important than a piece of bread".
So when you next lose your job and cannot afford to eat and you are walking past someone's garden and there are dozens of roses blooming there, you could sneak off with one or two of them and eat them down the road .....
And to my critics who keep asking why I am always so cynical, may I quote the words of the 2nd significant girlfriend of my life, a wonderful lady called Margaret (who wisely hated the British PM who shared her name) I knew in Lancashire back in the 1980s:
"You know behind that cynical facade is a really nice person".
I shall remember her for many things, but for that piece of insight most of all.
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Living the problem first-hand - and watching the impact of Alzheimer's Disease
There are lot of excellent well-meaning people on this planet who take the problems of others seriously, devote their time and energy to help make the world a better place and donate their own resources to help make things happen.
I sometimes think that it would be better if their help weren't needed, that we could create a situation where self-sufficiency, or at least the capacity to be self-sufficient, were the norm. Hopeless idealism, wishing for the moon? Pick your own expression.
I am, as regularly readers know, fascinated by birds, and many bird species have a "pecking order" where the the more dominant get all the goodies and the lesser among them have it difficult to say the least.
Not sure how many brown pelicans survived the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico last year, but for those that did, the usual pattern will probably continue as before. Three eggs will be laid, three chicks will hatch. The third will be killed by its two elder siblings, the oldest one will then kill the second - short of an accident, in which case the oldest survivor (but only one) will live while the others die. Human babies face problems - but not like this!
We may have brains, whether we can create a society that benefits the species as a whole is another matter. Even if we move away from instinctive behaviour (I was going to say like birds, but I can produce examples which show that the "intelligent" behaviour of various members of the crow family has evolved with time) towards more "logical" concepts, the likelihood of us eliminating "selfish" behaviour patterns (political conservatives may regard this actually as individualism, but anyway) entirely is remote.
The problems are universal rather than local.
If I want examples of many of the world's problems, large or small, I do not need to check books, periodicals or the Internet, I can observe them first-hand.
Take my wife (that is not a literal invitation!), for example.
I know quite a bit about "spousal abuse" because her former live-in boyfriend used to practise it (ever wonder why a kind if occasionally cantankerous much older foreigner should appeal to her, that may be the underlying reason). I also understand why women often clam up on the subject.
I know about the problems involved with adoption and fostering because both her parents had died by the time she reached the age of 7.
And I know quite a bit about the problems of ageing and Alzheimer's Disease as her (foster) grandmother went through both in my (occasional) view.
My wife's foster mother is a (now retired) schoolteacher in East/North-East Thailand. Her mother in turn was a Thai Lao lady. Thai Lao is a term given to people of Lao background living in Thailand. They are related to, but separate from the Lao people in the country of Laos, and their languages are similar, but not the same.
Apparently this lady was a sensible, intelligent lady who in her later years was overtaken by Alzheimer's Disease. I never knew her when she wasn't suffering from it, unfortunately. It is wretched though watching someone go through the impact of such an illness.
She had a permanent nurse to help her, but help here is often a rugged process. Gentle handling does not always get the desired results with an old person who cannot seem to wash herself or dress herself properly any more. All the affection from the people close to her would have little impact. At times. There was a distance and impenetrability with regard to motive and action that could not be explained. How you get through to such a person with the best of intentions is impossible to explain.
And then put yourself in the place of the person suffering from Alzheimer's. Could you, can you even imagine it? As rational as you are now! I find the whole concept impossible, and to use the vernacular, it is not somewhere where I even want to go. Life has to have a quality that makes it at least tolerable. Go there it is no longer the case, and there is no way back - remember that!
And yet there were some strange unforgettable moments. Occasionally my wife's grandmother would start emitting some old Thai Lao chants. Aloud, coherent and continuous, things maybe that she had acquired in her childhood that had never been forgotten. For someone raised in the West, they had a strange impact, but their cultural value should not be underestimated.
I often thought that we could have done to have a microphone and tape recorder available so that we could surreptitiously record these chants for posterity. A researcher at a local university might have been able to help. Who knows what they might have been and as what examples they might have served.
A verbal historical relic, a leftover of another, now lost, era?
It never happened and we will never know. She died three or four years ago at the age of 94, taking her chants and her savagely brutal mind-destroying illness with her. A release, a relief, but still a sad loss. My wife understandably cried bitterly the day she died - for the memory of the person that her "grandmother" had been, rather than, I suppose, the old lady that I had known.
When you have seen Alzheimer's Disease in action though, and it has no geographical boundaries anywhere on this planet NB, you can only hope that someone finds a cure before long. There are very few pleasures in growing old. At least the elderly should be able to see out their last years with a degree of dignity.
I sometimes think that it would be better if their help weren't needed, that we could create a situation where self-sufficiency, or at least the capacity to be self-sufficient, were the norm. Hopeless idealism, wishing for the moon? Pick your own expression.
I am, as regularly readers know, fascinated by birds, and many bird species have a "pecking order" where the the more dominant get all the goodies and the lesser among them have it difficult to say the least.
Not sure how many brown pelicans survived the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico last year, but for those that did, the usual pattern will probably continue as before. Three eggs will be laid, three chicks will hatch. The third will be killed by its two elder siblings, the oldest one will then kill the second - short of an accident, in which case the oldest survivor (but only one) will live while the others die. Human babies face problems - but not like this!
We may have brains, whether we can create a society that benefits the species as a whole is another matter. Even if we move away from instinctive behaviour (I was going to say like birds, but I can produce examples which show that the "intelligent" behaviour of various members of the crow family has evolved with time) towards more "logical" concepts, the likelihood of us eliminating "selfish" behaviour patterns (political conservatives may regard this actually as individualism, but anyway) entirely is remote.
The problems are universal rather than local.
If I want examples of many of the world's problems, large or small, I do not need to check books, periodicals or the Internet, I can observe them first-hand.
Take my wife (that is not a literal invitation!), for example.
I know quite a bit about "spousal abuse" because her former live-in boyfriend used to practise it (ever wonder why a kind if occasionally cantankerous much older foreigner should appeal to her, that may be the underlying reason). I also understand why women often clam up on the subject.
I know about the problems involved with adoption and fostering because both her parents had died by the time she reached the age of 7.
And I know quite a bit about the problems of ageing and Alzheimer's Disease as her (foster) grandmother went through both in my (occasional) view.
My wife's foster mother is a (now retired) schoolteacher in East/North-East Thailand. Her mother in turn was a Thai Lao lady. Thai Lao is a term given to people of Lao background living in Thailand. They are related to, but separate from the Lao people in the country of Laos, and their languages are similar, but not the same.
Apparently this lady was a sensible, intelligent lady who in her later years was overtaken by Alzheimer's Disease. I never knew her when she wasn't suffering from it, unfortunately. It is wretched though watching someone go through the impact of such an illness.
She had a permanent nurse to help her, but help here is often a rugged process. Gentle handling does not always get the desired results with an old person who cannot seem to wash herself or dress herself properly any more. All the affection from the people close to her would have little impact. At times. There was a distance and impenetrability with regard to motive and action that could not be explained. How you get through to such a person with the best of intentions is impossible to explain.
And then put yourself in the place of the person suffering from Alzheimer's. Could you, can you even imagine it? As rational as you are now! I find the whole concept impossible, and to use the vernacular, it is not somewhere where I even want to go. Life has to have a quality that makes it at least tolerable. Go there it is no longer the case, and there is no way back - remember that!
And yet there were some strange unforgettable moments. Occasionally my wife's grandmother would start emitting some old Thai Lao chants. Aloud, coherent and continuous, things maybe that she had acquired in her childhood that had never been forgotten. For someone raised in the West, they had a strange impact, but their cultural value should not be underestimated.
I often thought that we could have done to have a microphone and tape recorder available so that we could surreptitiously record these chants for posterity. A researcher at a local university might have been able to help. Who knows what they might have been and as what examples they might have served.
A verbal historical relic, a leftover of another, now lost, era?
It never happened and we will never know. She died three or four years ago at the age of 94, taking her chants and her savagely brutal mind-destroying illness with her. A release, a relief, but still a sad loss. My wife understandably cried bitterly the day she died - for the memory of the person that her "grandmother" had been, rather than, I suppose, the old lady that I had known.
When you have seen Alzheimer's Disease in action though, and it has no geographical boundaries anywhere on this planet NB, you can only hope that someone finds a cure before long. There are very few pleasures in growing old. At least the elderly should be able to see out their last years with a degree of dignity.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Living with the corporatocracy
Dedicated possibly to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I never actually got round to reading "Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire", though the title always appealed to me. Written towards the end of his life when everything was falling apart. I both sympathise and empathise.
A trip round Frankfurt (accompanied by some flights of fancy).
Let's start with the Occupy movement. Occupy Frankfurt's campsite was cleared by the police in August, though their leaders were talking of moving elsewhere. Not sure if elsewhere happened. One Conservative politician described it as a nuisance, an eyesore and a disincentive to people to come to Frankfurt (the business types I assume he meant).
Surprised he even noticed. Occasionally you would stay on the number 11 tram and go to Willi-Brandt-Platz rather than getting off at Hauptbahnhof, otherwise you would hardly have known it was there. Ask one of the protesters what was going on -
Me: What are you doing here?
Protester: Protesting. Capitalism stinks!
Me: I agree - capitalism stinks, but how is this going to change anything and what do we put in its place?
No real answer apart from some mumbo-jumbo about symbolic gestures. As a pragmatist I do not quite get that.
Maybe we should try Communism, but again they did in the Eastern part of the country and it was not exactly a raving success story. Maybe though .... Think of the work creation possibilities (well the Ossies are always complaining about the high unemployment, even with one of their own running the whole country!). Building barbed wire fencing, maybe a wall for graffiti artists in Berlin, gun turrets and windows for people employed to try real live target shooting.
No I don't think so, on second thoughts.
Read 'tother week incidentally in some fairly serious magazine like Spiegel or Stern that there are problems developing in the East as large numbers of qualified young women are heading West to find careers, and their not so intelligent male counterparts are staying put, causing a large male-female imbalance with all the problems therewith associated (maybe they need to consult the Chinese who have a similar problem).
Anyway back to Frankfurt. On to the U-Bahn, off to Bockenheimer Warte. Walk past the university library outside where the old bearded guy in the old raincoat is still living in his cardboard box (wonder which faculty he is in?). 2 hours at my favourite Internet place later (one day I will be able to afford the €188 for Microsoft Word plus licence and then I can work at home, my wife would love that ....), then back to the U-Bahn on 'tother side of the road.
Stand on the escalator and stare at the sticker that has been staring back at me for the past 7 months. "Let's Crack Capitalism". Written not in German, but in English, the language of the corporatocracy (that's a good start?).
This was about the Blockupy protests at the end of March this year. Bring the banks to a halt, show them what's what usw. Brilliant idea. 3 days of protests, sitting down blocking access to the financial sector. The first day, a Thursday, was a public holiday, so nobody was working. The Friday was a virtual holiday as people took a long weekend. And finally it was the weekend and whoever heard of banks being open at the weekend?
As the financial district is next to the shopping area though they did get in the way of the shopping crowd. Well as Rossmann, Kaufhof usw are also a contributory part of capitalism, I suppose .... And as future US President Romney believes in running countries as a business, maybe the example of Schlecker (major rivals of Rossmann and DM in the cosmetics retail business and biggest business crash of the past two years in Germany) should be borne in mind. "Let Schlecker go bankrupt!". They did, hundreds of people lost their jobs. Next!
Anyway 7 months later the sticker is still there, and so is Capitalism, and it still stinks, and it is not going away any time soon ....
Change on to the S-Bahn at Hauptbahnhof and go home.
Finally got all papers ready for my passport renewal. Not that I really want the same passport as the people in the UK who support the likes of the BNP and the UKIP/EXP.
In fact not that I really want a passport at all thinking about it - my German permanent residence card will get me round the Schengen zone if needed. But as my wife has insisted that I must visit her family in Thailand next month, and I do not like annoying her .... Maybe I should instead find some 15-year-old girl and cart her off to Bordeaux ("love" not "lust" of course, she would return to her parents as pure as the virgin snow. We could buy some of that stuff that narrows or reseals that part of the female anatomy after they have "misbehaved", nudge, nudge, wink, wink - apparently it is doing great business in parts of the Muslim world!).
Anyway just got around to the important bit of sending it off when I suddenly remembered the fairly insignificant point about them wanting money for this. €65 in 2002, now €195 (including forced, no-choice courier charges for returning it). Security is the reason for the sharp rise in price and the fact that you cannot get these locally in the country in which you are based any more.
Their security, not mine! Rip-off! My wife renewed her passport last time at the Thai Consulate-General in Frankfurt and for nothing like that cost. Wonder where the Thai concept of "security" has gone?!
Get to the Internet automatic form to fill out and arrange the bank credit transfer to pay this exorbitant sum. Bank credit transfer? Well the British Embassy / Consulates must have banking access somewhere in Germany, right? I mean they are based here and it is not 1940 any more?
Clearly visible on the form is one fact - payment must be by Visa or Mastercard! Visa and Mastercard are massive examples of the corporatocracy at work. But you cannot get a passport without using them? Are governments giving into the corporatocracy so much that something as significant as a passport is subject to their demands? Huh????
And if you live in a country like Germany where you can actually live without Visa and Mastercard? I have happily lived without them for 12 years. They are a rip-off extraordinaire. APRs at 7 times the rate of inflation, annual fees for what, and never complain to their service desk - they get really uppity!
Spent some time on a 0900 call (at €1.75 a minute - yet another rip-off) trying to sort it out. The matter has been escalated to the CG in Düsseldorf, but I am not expecting much joy. It sounds like the corporatocracy has already won this argument and the UK government is happy to comply with this.
Well I did not really want to go anyway. And my wife is not the same nationality, so she cannot exactly argue with them.
The question remains though what else is left to sell to them. The air we breathe maybe? Yes, Capitalism stinks. Now will someone please come up with a practical alternative?
A trip round Frankfurt (accompanied by some flights of fancy).
Let's start with the Occupy movement. Occupy Frankfurt's campsite was cleared by the police in August, though their leaders were talking of moving elsewhere. Not sure if elsewhere happened. One Conservative politician described it as a nuisance, an eyesore and a disincentive to people to come to Frankfurt (the business types I assume he meant).
Surprised he even noticed. Occasionally you would stay on the number 11 tram and go to Willi-Brandt-Platz rather than getting off at Hauptbahnhof, otherwise you would hardly have known it was there. Ask one of the protesters what was going on -
Me: What are you doing here?
Protester: Protesting. Capitalism stinks!
Me: I agree - capitalism stinks, but how is this going to change anything and what do we put in its place?
No real answer apart from some mumbo-jumbo about symbolic gestures. As a pragmatist I do not quite get that.
Maybe we should try Communism, but again they did in the Eastern part of the country and it was not exactly a raving success story. Maybe though .... Think of the work creation possibilities (well the Ossies are always complaining about the high unemployment, even with one of their own running the whole country!). Building barbed wire fencing, maybe a wall for graffiti artists in Berlin, gun turrets and windows for people employed to try real live target shooting.
No I don't think so, on second thoughts.
Read 'tother week incidentally in some fairly serious magazine like Spiegel or Stern that there are problems developing in the East as large numbers of qualified young women are heading West to find careers, and their not so intelligent male counterparts are staying put, causing a large male-female imbalance with all the problems therewith associated (maybe they need to consult the Chinese who have a similar problem).
Anyway back to Frankfurt. On to the U-Bahn, off to Bockenheimer Warte. Walk past the university library outside where the old bearded guy in the old raincoat is still living in his cardboard box (wonder which faculty he is in?). 2 hours at my favourite Internet place later (one day I will be able to afford the €188 for Microsoft Word plus licence and then I can work at home, my wife would love that ....), then back to the U-Bahn on 'tother side of the road.
Stand on the escalator and stare at the sticker that has been staring back at me for the past 7 months. "Let's Crack Capitalism". Written not in German, but in English, the language of the corporatocracy (that's a good start?).
This was about the Blockupy protests at the end of March this year. Bring the banks to a halt, show them what's what usw. Brilliant idea. 3 days of protests, sitting down blocking access to the financial sector. The first day, a Thursday, was a public holiday, so nobody was working. The Friday was a virtual holiday as people took a long weekend. And finally it was the weekend and whoever heard of banks being open at the weekend?
As the financial district is next to the shopping area though they did get in the way of the shopping crowd. Well as Rossmann, Kaufhof usw are also a contributory part of capitalism, I suppose .... And as future US President Romney believes in running countries as a business, maybe the example of Schlecker (major rivals of Rossmann and DM in the cosmetics retail business and biggest business crash of the past two years in Germany) should be borne in mind. "Let Schlecker go bankrupt!". They did, hundreds of people lost their jobs. Next!
Anyway 7 months later the sticker is still there, and so is Capitalism, and it still stinks, and it is not going away any time soon ....
Change on to the S-Bahn at Hauptbahnhof and go home.
Finally got all papers ready for my passport renewal. Not that I really want the same passport as the people in the UK who support the likes of the BNP and the UKIP/EXP.
In fact not that I really want a passport at all thinking about it - my German permanent residence card will get me round the Schengen zone if needed. But as my wife has insisted that I must visit her family in Thailand next month, and I do not like annoying her .... Maybe I should instead find some 15-year-old girl and cart her off to Bordeaux ("love" not "lust" of course, she would return to her parents as pure as the virgin snow. We could buy some of that stuff that narrows or reseals that part of the female anatomy after they have "misbehaved", nudge, nudge, wink, wink - apparently it is doing great business in parts of the Muslim world!).
Anyway just got around to the important bit of sending it off when I suddenly remembered the fairly insignificant point about them wanting money for this. €65 in 2002, now €195 (including forced, no-choice courier charges for returning it). Security is the reason for the sharp rise in price and the fact that you cannot get these locally in the country in which you are based any more.
Their security, not mine! Rip-off! My wife renewed her passport last time at the Thai Consulate-General in Frankfurt and for nothing like that cost. Wonder where the Thai concept of "security" has gone?!
Get to the Internet automatic form to fill out and arrange the bank credit transfer to pay this exorbitant sum. Bank credit transfer? Well the British Embassy / Consulates must have banking access somewhere in Germany, right? I mean they are based here and it is not 1940 any more?
Clearly visible on the form is one fact - payment must be by Visa or Mastercard! Visa and Mastercard are massive examples of the corporatocracy at work. But you cannot get a passport without using them? Are governments giving into the corporatocracy so much that something as significant as a passport is subject to their demands? Huh????
And if you live in a country like Germany where you can actually live without Visa and Mastercard? I have happily lived without them for 12 years. They are a rip-off extraordinaire. APRs at 7 times the rate of inflation, annual fees for what, and never complain to their service desk - they get really uppity!
Spent some time on a 0900 call (at €1.75 a minute - yet another rip-off) trying to sort it out. The matter has been escalated to the CG in Düsseldorf, but I am not expecting much joy. It sounds like the corporatocracy has already won this argument and the UK government is happy to comply with this.
Well I did not really want to go anyway. And my wife is not the same nationality, so she cannot exactly argue with them.
The question remains though what else is left to sell to them. The air we breathe maybe? Yes, Capitalism stinks. Now will someone please come up with a practical alternative?
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
In loco parentis
Dedicated to the person who sent me an obscenity ridden comment yesterday (which I refused to publish, resend it without the obscenities, I will probably publish it before shooting it down).
This may be an old-fashioned view, but as far as I am concerned the role of any teacher in public service is to act "in loco parentis" - translated from the Latin it means "in the place of the parent".
Whether you are a young teacher starting out or a very senior teacher who has been around since Noah allegedly left the Ark, the same applies.
The parent wants this information giving to the child, he/she cannot provide it, it is your job to provide it instead. They pay taxes, which pay your salary. You take the salary for doing the job as best you can do it.
In the days when I was teaching myself, my view was that I was permitted to do anything that a parent might accept. This is not always easy given that in a class of 28 pupils/students parental expectations are not universal.
I recall at one parent's evening back in the 1970s being told by one parent that I needed to be stricter with his 14-year-old son.
"He's still young enough to be put over my my knee and get spanked hard", I was informed. It was not practical to follow that advice and anyway the school would have suspended me immediately if I had tried. In the (now long-since defunct) debate upon corporal punishment in schools at the time though, it was a factor. Corporal punishment applied at home, therefore it could apply in schools - parents who did not like the idea could seek to opt their children out. Again "in loco parentis".
As parents should not even think of taking their own children to bed and having sex with them (yes, I know, sadly, that there are some horrendous cases where it does happen, but that does not justify it!), the same applies with teachers and pupils/students.
WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
My friend who sent the obscenity-ridden rant may believe that "they all do it!" (they don't!), and "there's nothing wrong with it anyway" (there is!).
Maybe if you have a 15-year-old girl in a class that you really fancy, you should contact the parents first and ask them if it is OK for you to have sex with their daughter? Not quite "in loco parentis", but the next thing to it? I think I know what the reply would be! And I do not think that they would be too polite saying it either!
"In loco parentis" requires responsible conduct, not self-indulgence. If you cannot cope with the demands of the responsibility involved, there is a simple option. Get out of teaching and find another job!
This may be an old-fashioned view, but as far as I am concerned the role of any teacher in public service is to act "in loco parentis" - translated from the Latin it means "in the place of the parent".
Whether you are a young teacher starting out or a very senior teacher who has been around since Noah allegedly left the Ark, the same applies.
The parent wants this information giving to the child, he/she cannot provide it, it is your job to provide it instead. They pay taxes, which pay your salary. You take the salary for doing the job as best you can do it.
In the days when I was teaching myself, my view was that I was permitted to do anything that a parent might accept. This is not always easy given that in a class of 28 pupils/students parental expectations are not universal.
I recall at one parent's evening back in the 1970s being told by one parent that I needed to be stricter with his 14-year-old son.
"He's still young enough to be put over my my knee and get spanked hard", I was informed. It was not practical to follow that advice and anyway the school would have suspended me immediately if I had tried. In the (now long-since defunct) debate upon corporal punishment in schools at the time though, it was a factor. Corporal punishment applied at home, therefore it could apply in schools - parents who did not like the idea could seek to opt their children out. Again "in loco parentis".
As parents should not even think of taking their own children to bed and having sex with them (yes, I know, sadly, that there are some horrendous cases where it does happen, but that does not justify it!), the same applies with teachers and pupils/students.
WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
My friend who sent the obscenity-ridden rant may believe that "they all do it!" (they don't!), and "there's nothing wrong with it anyway" (there is!).
Maybe if you have a 15-year-old girl in a class that you really fancy, you should contact the parents first and ask them if it is OK for you to have sex with their daughter? Not quite "in loco parentis", but the next thing to it? I think I know what the reply would be! And I do not think that they would be too polite saying it either!
"In loco parentis" requires responsible conduct, not self-indulgence. If you cannot cope with the demands of the responsibility involved, there is a simple option. Get out of teaching and find another job!
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