Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Everybody’s bitching and moaning and hating each other, in Saudi Arabia they are executing women basically for  being women (uppity  women), in Libya people  are actually being sold as slaves, another school shooting today, and an oil spill a couple of days ago. (There were people who  objected to that  pipeline, you know.  I think they are owed  an apology.)
But then, my day was actually pretty good.  My  lessons all  went fine, although my older group  of  little kids was rebellious, Emma has become rather good at reading, so that was heartening.  It was a warm day,  with perfect skies.
What the hell is wrong  with this world that some of us can  have it so good while others have it so  hard?  This is not sustainable.

The argument, which I’ve seen many times on Facebook, today  was hardly  unique, was between  idealism and pragmatism, as if the two were polar opposites, which they are not.

It would be very pragmatic of us to have an ideal society.  A utopian society.  There’s another word that gets mocked and maligned.  A utopian society, an ideal society.  This is a worthy goal.
Here’s how I see it.  Good is better than bad, in the same way that healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, beautiful is better than ugly, strong is better than weak.  Nobody would ever willingly choose the opposite.  So, why would people say we should settle for a less than ideal, a flawed society over a perfect one.  Why would anybody choose the bad over the good?

If you are not an idealist, if you are not a utopian, then what you’re saying is that a less good society is better than a perfect one.  That is just an absolutely ass backwards viewpoint.

I hate to side with big surveillance, but if I was in law enforcement and wanting to prevent the next school shooting (I’m assuming somebody in law enforcement would like to prevent the next school shooting, right?), here’s what I’d do: make a list of all white males who are currently in High School or have graduated in the last couple of years. That should be easy to do, schools keep lists.

Look them up on social media.

Flag any of those who are obsessed with guns, have few close friends, are members of hate groups, or post statements on line about how they’d like to kill everybody.

It might require a bit of manpower, but most of  the work is done on the computer so you don’t exactly need a Sherlock Holmes.  You can take some traffic cops who are mostly just harassing motorists, and pull some people off the marijuana detail, since it’s almost legal anyway.

Then, you send Social Services round to their house for an interview. Maybe, if the kid doesn’t do well in the interview, try and convince their parents to get rid of their guns.  Something like “Mrs. Jones, your boy is a weirdo.  We think there’s a good chance he’s going to take one of your  guns and go kill a bunch of people.  Maybe it would be for the best if you just turned them over.  We’ll let you have them back in a couple  of  years, after he’s moved out or is no longer a threat.”  “No, I’ve got  my 2nd amendment rights.”  “Mrs. Jones, if your kid does kill somebody with one of your guns, we’ll charge you with accessory to murder.”  “O.K., they’re in the closet.”
If that doesn’t work, watch the little fucker like a hawk.

I’m still slogging through “Economics of Good and Evil” by Tomas Sedlaček.  Despite being over my head and kind of dull in parts, I am learning some things.  For instance, the author seems to think that Adam Smith is both over-rated and misunderstood, and the invisible hand idea actually came from Bernard Mandeville, who preceded Smith by a generation and of whom Smith was not actually a big fan.

They’ve both been  dead a very long time so I  don’t care about that, but I do have some opinions on this ‘invisible hand’ idea.  I get it, if everybody acts in their own self interest, it will all help the economy in the end.  If you are a thief, you are spurring the economy because your actions encourage people to buy alarm systems, insurance, guns, and a new TV set to replace the one you stole.  It’s sort of like trickle-down, only sideways.  And, as a description of economics, it works.
The bubonic plague killed off about 50% of Europe’s population, but it paved the way  for the Renaissance.  WWII killed 18 million people or thereabouts, but gave us jet aircraft,  computers, and space travel.  Still, nobody is advocating for disease, or war.
So, I’m not saying the invisible hand theory is incorrect.  I’m just saying I don’t  understand how anybody could think this is a good thing.  It’s an INVISIBLE HAND.  Sure, the rich person might say “it works for me” with a smug smirk, as if they’ve got a right to be richer than other people.  But, for the average working person,  the  invisible hand is always  just around the corner, waiting to whack you up the side of the head.
The world needs an economy which works, even in the short term, for all of the world’s people.  It could be done.  We’ve got the resources.  We’ve got the manpower.  And we’ve got the technology.

We need to make that invisible hand visible and put it to work.

Aaron Schlossberg fucked up real bad.  After his nasty anti-hispanic rant in public, it’s been  revealed that he’s actually  not a member of the New York Bar Association, and he’s been kicked out of his building (where his office is, he  hasn’t been made homeless)  I expect he’ll recover.  There are plenty of racists out there just like him, some of them are wealthy and powerful, so he’ll be O.K.  I’d like to think  this will  ruin his  miserable life, but it probably won’t.

Whether it does or doesn’t, he is going to continue to hate.  Of course, the thing about hating people for speaking a foreign language comes down to fear.   If you can’t understand what they’re saying, why, they could be saying anything.  Well, I have trave3led and lived in many countries, and picked up a little bit of a few languages on  the way, but it’s not  easy.  I still  don’t understand Czech people when they are talking too fast.  But, here are some clues for  how to understand what people are saying even when you can’t understand the language:

1.  If they are in a coffee shop  and talking to the person behind the counter, they are probably ordering a cup of coffee.
2.  If they are laughing, somebody probably just told a joke.  You may feel  left out, but maybe it was a personal joke, like between  the two of them, and you  wouldn’t have got it, anyway.
3.  If they are screaming, jumping out of their chair, and making frantic gestures with their hands, they have probably just spilled coffee on  themselves.  It happens.
4. If you are on a train, and they are wearing a uniform, they are probably asking to see your ticket.  Just show it to them.  No words are necessary.
5. If they are a waiter in a restaurant, they are probably asking you what you want to  eat.  Why would they be asking anything else?

It’s not really  that hard.  Even though we have thousands of languages around the world, people are mostly saying the same things.  People are people.