THE NO BRAINS FACTOR
Yesterday I heard Bill O'Reilly on Fresh Air on National Public Radio. The host certainly asked him questions and read him passages that she would not have if she were sympathetic to his viewpoints. However, about 36 minutes into the interview, O'Reilly has a hissy fit and just leaves. It was a fantastic piece of radio not because the interview was very good (it wasn't), but because O'Reilly spazzed so badly about things that are well within the range of his own behavior. If you have a high speed connection, check out from about minute 36. I also love when he gets POd that she says that Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is satire. Jeez Bill, what did you think it was? Al Franken is a humorist. He writes satire. What a dork.
PURITANS IN THE HOUSE!
The Boston Globe reported that the Massachusetts House of Representatives rejected a bill to allow liquor stores (known as package stores in New England) to open on Sundays. The state already allows packies to be open on Sunday if they are within ten miles of the Vermont or New Hampshire borders (states that allow sales on Sundays), as well as the Sunday before Thanksgiving and each Sunday from Thanksgiving to the Sunday before New Years. What this really comes down to is a punishment for bad planners and regular drinkers. It seems to me that Massachusetts sells liquor on Sundays during amateur season (the holidays), when all of the amateurs least need it, and withholds Sunday booze from good, solid, consistent alcoholics who keep a steady consumption up all year. That doesn't seem right.
SPEAKING OF AMATEURS
An AP story from yesterday suggests that the old adage that you get better by playing the best may be true. It seems that the FBI in Philadelphia bugged the mayor's office, but the bug was found in a routine police sweep. Now, here in the Chi, where corruption is an art form, the FBI has to be much more clever. This keeps them on their toes and keeps embarrassing incidents like this from occurring. They should have sent the Operation Silver Shovel team out to Philly.
CAPITALISM
The Washington Post has a great story about the fish market in Tokyo. In Japan, the aesthetics of seafood are much more important than here and leads tobargaining on bases other than freshness. However, the most outstanding thing in this article is when a number of buyers have all bid the same price for some eel (which is very good), and need to decide who will walk away with the eel. They play rock, paper, scissors. As some of you may know, L absolutely OWNS me in rock, paper, scissors. I guess I am lucky I don't make my living beating her at that game.
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG
As I have expressed before, I am always interested in places where people live in a nation-state of a nation other than their own. In other words, they are a minority in a relatively homogenous country. This was true of the Balts I wrote about, as well as the Uighurs, and Tibetans. Today there are FIVE articles that touch on these issues.
First, the Financial Times (free until next week) has a story about Sikkim. India annexed this former kingdom in the Himalayas in 1975, and China refused to recognize the annexation. This entire area between China and India in the Himalayas exists between two forces almost as powerful as those that created the mountains they live in. Tibet went to China, Sikkim to India. Nepal and Bhutan remain independent, but heavily influenced by India. It seems likely that in the long term neither China nor India will tolerate long term independence between their common borders.
From the Himalayas, the Financial Times takes us to the Mediterranean, where the island of Cyprus sits. Cyprus is ethnically divided between Greeks and Turks, and has been politically divided since the 1970s between these two groups. The European Union wants to admit Cyprus, and wants to do it as a single entity. The article is a profile on a Turkish opposition politician who supports a federative solution to the island's split so that the two entities would have a loose common government for EU affairs and foreign affairs. Otherwise they would control themselves. It will be interesting to see if Greeks and Turks in Cyprus can solve their millennial dispute for the benefits of EU membership.
Meanwhile the Christian Science Monitor has a opinion piece on a different solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Assuming that the two-state solution to the conflict is not in the cards (i.e. there will not be a viable, independent Palestine any time soon), the writer proposes a South African solution—one person, one vote. Create a real, single democracy from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This is different from the Cypriot solution in that it is a simple majority-rule formula. Thus, the entire Zionist project in Israel of a Jewish state in historic Israel would be out the window. This is interesting because (a) the writer ignores the tremendous problems in South Africa with crime and AIDS that make South Africa something less than a model for first world Israelis contemplating majority Palestinian rule, and (b) it ignores the post-World War II unwillingness of at least some Jews to be vulnerable to others in a state they didn't control. Turning power over to the people who vote for Arafat and support Hamas would be particularly hard to contemplate. In fact, a Cypriot-type solution seems like a better option for Israel/Palestine than one person, one vote ever will be.
Finally, the International Herald Tribune ran parallel opinion pieces on the controversies in France and Germany regarding the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women in the respective countries. In France, the controversy is wearing headscarves in public schools. France strongly enforces the separation of church and state, so that in theory you are not allowed to wear religious symbols in public schools. However, as one politician is quoted as saying, "if you wear a small cross or hand of Fatima around your neck, no one will bother you. It has to be made clear to Muslim fundamentalists that they should stop trying to test the republic." Suddenly the controversy seems much more racist than embodying a high minded secularism. France has five million Muslims in it, and will need to figure out how to treat these people as French, and not other.
In Germany, the highest court in the country said that a Muslim school teacher could NOT be banned from wearing a headscarf in class without specific legislation barring headscarves in the classroom. Six of the 16 German Länder have already said they will pass such a law. Ironically, the author of this piece advocates a law banning ALL religious symbols from the schools as a way to keep Muslims from being singled out. In other words, a law like the one getting France into so much trouble. He inexplicably fails to call the Germans to the carpet fro passing discriminatory laws based on one's faith. They do have a certain history there and ought to know better by now.
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
The Christian Science Monitor carried two stories today about a very American phenomenon. The movement of people. First is an article about the ever-dwindling number of people remaining on farms in the United States. As of 1997, the United States had twice as many farmers 65 and over as farmers 35 and younger. This reflects a lot of forces, but the interesting thing the small farm advocates are trying to deal with is land prices that have risen too high. This is great if your retirement is tied up in the value of the land you own. It is terrible if you are trying to buy land. They say that as long as this is true, people will keep leaving the farms for other opportunities. This also appears to reflect an unintended consequence of farm subsidies. As it becomes more profitable to grow more corn and soybeans, farmers rent and buy more land, which increases the prices, which locks new farmers out, which leads to further consolidation of land ownership, and so on, and so on, and so on.
The second article addresses the trend of new immigrants to big, expensive cities migrating to smaller, less expensive cities after they have been in the United States a little while. For instance, the Little Guyana in Queens has been emptying as approximately 5,000 Guyanese have moved to Schenectady, New York, where homes are 20% the price of homes in Queens. As one person in the article said, this just shows that these migrants are becoming more American as they embrace the most American more—the search for opportunity.
DESCENDING AS I ROLL
The Japan Times carried a story about a study on the differences in gestures used to describe an event among various language groups. First, the study indicates that competent bilingual speakers change their gestures when they change language. The study seems to indicate that we use gestures that in some ways mirror or linguistic structures, so that in languages that easily reflect changes in manner and space (he rolls down the street), the gesture reflects this, while languages that do not easily do this (He descend as he rolls) do not have gestures that reflect both simultaneously. The researcher states that "my research suggests that speakers of different languages generate different spatial images of the same event in a way that matches the expressive possibilities of their particular language." That is intuitive at one level, but would be a fascinating finding at another, since it goes to how we even conceive of the world we see.
I KNOW THEIR PAIN
The Boston Globe has an article about mixed marriages on the East Coast. These are Red Sox-Yankees marriages. I know much of such a relationship, since L is a born and bred Cardinal fan, and I have been a Cub fan as long as I can remember. Love sometimes overcomes good sense. The people they talk to in this article do things like sit in separate rooms, make agreements about never asking the score, and banished each other to corners of rooms when the Red Sox and Yankees play. One couple had Nomar and Jeter bobblehead dolls on the table at their wedding reception. This article speaks to my experience in a way very few ever have. Oh, and one of the Yankee fans is quoted as saying, "Bolshevik Revolution, 26, Bill Buckner" whenever his Sox-loving wife gets feisty. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 was the last time the Sox won the World Series. 26 is the number of Yankee World Series wins since 1918. Bill Buckner let the 1986 Red Sox World Series dribble between his legs for a loss.
BY THE WAY
The Cubs tied their series with the Marlins at 1 game apiece. Sammy Sosa, of whom I am a tepid fan, hit a HUGE shot to center field. It went 495 feet and was probably 100 feet from the scoreboard. I guess nobody will ever hit the scoreboard.
Yesterday I heard Bill O'Reilly on Fresh Air on National Public Radio. The host certainly asked him questions and read him passages that she would not have if she were sympathetic to his viewpoints. However, about 36 minutes into the interview, O'Reilly has a hissy fit and just leaves. It was a fantastic piece of radio not because the interview was very good (it wasn't), but because O'Reilly spazzed so badly about things that are well within the range of his own behavior. If you have a high speed connection, check out from about minute 36. I also love when he gets POd that she says that Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is satire. Jeez Bill, what did you think it was? Al Franken is a humorist. He writes satire. What a dork.
PURITANS IN THE HOUSE!
The Boston Globe reported that the Massachusetts House of Representatives rejected a bill to allow liquor stores (known as package stores in New England) to open on Sundays. The state already allows packies to be open on Sunday if they are within ten miles of the Vermont or New Hampshire borders (states that allow sales on Sundays), as well as the Sunday before Thanksgiving and each Sunday from Thanksgiving to the Sunday before New Years. What this really comes down to is a punishment for bad planners and regular drinkers. It seems to me that Massachusetts sells liquor on Sundays during amateur season (the holidays), when all of the amateurs least need it, and withholds Sunday booze from good, solid, consistent alcoholics who keep a steady consumption up all year. That doesn't seem right.
SPEAKING OF AMATEURS
An AP story from yesterday suggests that the old adage that you get better by playing the best may be true. It seems that the FBI in Philadelphia bugged the mayor's office, but the bug was found in a routine police sweep. Now, here in the Chi, where corruption is an art form, the FBI has to be much more clever. This keeps them on their toes and keeps embarrassing incidents like this from occurring. They should have sent the Operation Silver Shovel team out to Philly.
CAPITALISM
The Washington Post has a great story about the fish market in Tokyo. In Japan, the aesthetics of seafood are much more important than here and leads tobargaining on bases other than freshness. However, the most outstanding thing in this article is when a number of buyers have all bid the same price for some eel (which is very good), and need to decide who will walk away with the eel. They play rock, paper, scissors. As some of you may know, L absolutely OWNS me in rock, paper, scissors. I guess I am lucky I don't make my living beating her at that game.
CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG
As I have expressed before, I am always interested in places where people live in a nation-state of a nation other than their own. In other words, they are a minority in a relatively homogenous country. This was true of the Balts I wrote about, as well as the Uighurs, and Tibetans. Today there are FIVE articles that touch on these issues.
First, the Financial Times (free until next week) has a story about Sikkim. India annexed this former kingdom in the Himalayas in 1975, and China refused to recognize the annexation. This entire area between China and India in the Himalayas exists between two forces almost as powerful as those that created the mountains they live in. Tibet went to China, Sikkim to India. Nepal and Bhutan remain independent, but heavily influenced by India. It seems likely that in the long term neither China nor India will tolerate long term independence between their common borders.
From the Himalayas, the Financial Times takes us to the Mediterranean, where the island of Cyprus sits. Cyprus is ethnically divided between Greeks and Turks, and has been politically divided since the 1970s between these two groups. The European Union wants to admit Cyprus, and wants to do it as a single entity. The article is a profile on a Turkish opposition politician who supports a federative solution to the island's split so that the two entities would have a loose common government for EU affairs and foreign affairs. Otherwise they would control themselves. It will be interesting to see if Greeks and Turks in Cyprus can solve their millennial dispute for the benefits of EU membership.
Meanwhile the Christian Science Monitor has a opinion piece on a different solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Assuming that the two-state solution to the conflict is not in the cards (i.e. there will not be a viable, independent Palestine any time soon), the writer proposes a South African solution—one person, one vote. Create a real, single democracy from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This is different from the Cypriot solution in that it is a simple majority-rule formula. Thus, the entire Zionist project in Israel of a Jewish state in historic Israel would be out the window. This is interesting because (a) the writer ignores the tremendous problems in South Africa with crime and AIDS that make South Africa something less than a model for first world Israelis contemplating majority Palestinian rule, and (b) it ignores the post-World War II unwillingness of at least some Jews to be vulnerable to others in a state they didn't control. Turning power over to the people who vote for Arafat and support Hamas would be particularly hard to contemplate. In fact, a Cypriot-type solution seems like a better option for Israel/Palestine than one person, one vote ever will be.
Finally, the International Herald Tribune ran parallel opinion pieces on the controversies in France and Germany regarding the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women in the respective countries. In France, the controversy is wearing headscarves in public schools. France strongly enforces the separation of church and state, so that in theory you are not allowed to wear religious symbols in public schools. However, as one politician is quoted as saying, "if you wear a small cross or hand of Fatima around your neck, no one will bother you. It has to be made clear to Muslim fundamentalists that they should stop trying to test the republic." Suddenly the controversy seems much more racist than embodying a high minded secularism. France has five million Muslims in it, and will need to figure out how to treat these people as French, and not other.
In Germany, the highest court in the country said that a Muslim school teacher could NOT be banned from wearing a headscarf in class without specific legislation barring headscarves in the classroom. Six of the 16 German Länder have already said they will pass such a law. Ironically, the author of this piece advocates a law banning ALL religious symbols from the schools as a way to keep Muslims from being singled out. In other words, a law like the one getting France into so much trouble. He inexplicably fails to call the Germans to the carpet fro passing discriminatory laws based on one's faith. They do have a certain history there and ought to know better by now.
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
The Christian Science Monitor carried two stories today about a very American phenomenon. The movement of people. First is an article about the ever-dwindling number of people remaining on farms in the United States. As of 1997, the United States had twice as many farmers 65 and over as farmers 35 and younger. This reflects a lot of forces, but the interesting thing the small farm advocates are trying to deal with is land prices that have risen too high. This is great if your retirement is tied up in the value of the land you own. It is terrible if you are trying to buy land. They say that as long as this is true, people will keep leaving the farms for other opportunities. This also appears to reflect an unintended consequence of farm subsidies. As it becomes more profitable to grow more corn and soybeans, farmers rent and buy more land, which increases the prices, which locks new farmers out, which leads to further consolidation of land ownership, and so on, and so on, and so on.
The second article addresses the trend of new immigrants to big, expensive cities migrating to smaller, less expensive cities after they have been in the United States a little while. For instance, the Little Guyana in Queens has been emptying as approximately 5,000 Guyanese have moved to Schenectady, New York, where homes are 20% the price of homes in Queens. As one person in the article said, this just shows that these migrants are becoming more American as they embrace the most American more—the search for opportunity.
DESCENDING AS I ROLL
The Japan Times carried a story about a study on the differences in gestures used to describe an event among various language groups. First, the study indicates that competent bilingual speakers change their gestures when they change language. The study seems to indicate that we use gestures that in some ways mirror or linguistic structures, so that in languages that easily reflect changes in manner and space (he rolls down the street), the gesture reflects this, while languages that do not easily do this (He descend as he rolls) do not have gestures that reflect both simultaneously. The researcher states that "my research suggests that speakers of different languages generate different spatial images of the same event in a way that matches the expressive possibilities of their particular language." That is intuitive at one level, but would be a fascinating finding at another, since it goes to how we even conceive of the world we see.
I KNOW THEIR PAIN
The Boston Globe has an article about mixed marriages on the East Coast. These are Red Sox-Yankees marriages. I know much of such a relationship, since L is a born and bred Cardinal fan, and I have been a Cub fan as long as I can remember. Love sometimes overcomes good sense. The people they talk to in this article do things like sit in separate rooms, make agreements about never asking the score, and banished each other to corners of rooms when the Red Sox and Yankees play. One couple had Nomar and Jeter bobblehead dolls on the table at their wedding reception. This article speaks to my experience in a way very few ever have. Oh, and one of the Yankee fans is quoted as saying, "Bolshevik Revolution, 26, Bill Buckner" whenever his Sox-loving wife gets feisty. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 was the last time the Sox won the World Series. 26 is the number of Yankee World Series wins since 1918. Bill Buckner let the 1986 Red Sox World Series dribble between his legs for a loss.
BY THE WAY
The Cubs tied their series with the Marlins at 1 game apiece. Sammy Sosa, of whom I am a tepid fan, hit a HUGE shot to center field. It went 495 feet and was probably 100 feet from the scoreboard. I guess nobody will ever hit the scoreboard.
posted by David at 11:49 AM
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