Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Just a few  small observations.

Donald Trump makes a joke about people pronouncing Puerto Rico  as Poo air toe Rico, which is actually the correct pronunciation.  He’s not  just being offensive to Puerto Ricans (he has allowed the temporary  waiver of the  Jones Act to lapse, btw, once  again making it  difficult for any other country to offer assistance), but he’s also mocking anybody who uses  the correct pronunciation.  Darned smart people.  Always have to be showing off how  they can talk correctly  and shit.

Dianne Feinstein is running for re-election.  She does not support medicare for all, and her main  accomplishment as Senator has been to steer huge government building contracts to her husband’s company.  She will have a Berniecrat opponent in the primary, a man named David Hildebrand.  It’s not going to be easy  for him, because DiFi is about as entrenched in the DNC establishment as it’s possible to be, has access to insane amounts of money, and, being a part of the Democratic party’s power structure, you know she is prepared  to cheat.  I wish David Hildebrand all  the  luck  in the world.  One bright spot, in any event:  she is 84, so the argument (which you know they are going to use if Bernie runs in 2020) that Bernie is too old will not have any credibility at all.

There’s a show I  watch sometimes called “Invent it Rich.”  I know  there’s another show in  the same genre called “Shark Tank” but we don’t get it over here so I  haven’t ever seen  full episodes.  Anyway, the other day they had a couple  of teenagers who’d invented a prosthetic arm which could be controlled  by  clenching muscles, a firefighting robot, and a jogging shirt which  changes  color according  to which  muscles you’re using  the most.  Once the investor made his decision,  I realized what is wrong with this  program and what is wrong  with our society in general.  Admittedly, robo-fireman didn’t  work really well.  Prosthetic arm, though, was a huge  step  forward in prosthetic arms.  But,  he went for  the  jogging  shirt, because that was  the one  he could make quick  money  on.  Which is, I  suppose, the premise of  the  show.
But wouldn’t it be nice to have a show  like  that  but  where the criteria was “which product can best serve  mankind.”  That’s one  I’d  like  to watch.

Cultural appropriation is a phrase invented by people who are so  obsessed with political correctness that they have become incorrect; people who can’t see the forest for  the trees, like, ever.

We appropriate other styles of cooking because they taste good and we like variety.  There is no rule that says only a Greek can make  a Greek salad, that only Italians can  make pizza, that a Vietnamese person can’t open a Chinese  restaurant.  When we sit down to a meal, at home or out, we are mostly concerned about the quality, the quantity, and the price of  the food.  Some people will be mentally rating the wait staff, and some people will wonder if  it’s all made without gluten, or peanuts, and a very few will raise questions of labor practices and wonder how much different people in the restaurant  make, but these people, as a rule, make awkward dinner companions and it’s probably better to just not invite them.

In music, cultural appropriation is all over the place.  Without it, we’d have no blues, no rock and roll (hell yes, Elvis borrowed from black artists.  Whether this is ‘taking inspiration from’ or ‘cultural appropriation’ is a silly argument.  Elvis was pretty great, however he got that way) or opera.  (see pizza, above.  We’ve appropriated a lot of culture from that source).
But, you can’t actually appropriate a culture; not wholesale anyway, complete with language, dress, folklore, traditions, holidays.  If you do that, it’s not appropriation, it’s conversion, which is rare and generally not seen as a threat, but as the homage it is.

So, stop worrying about it.  If you see something from another culture you like, feel free to try it, to embrace it, to emulate it if it enriches your life in any way.  Life is short and it’s a small world.  It’s a hell of a shame not to take advantage of the whole range of experiences available to  is within this finite time.

Well, it does look like a few pro-Trump internet pages were paid for by Russians.  They were hard right sites called ‘Secured Borders,’ ‘Beyond Patriotic,’ and ‘Heart of Texas.’  They referred to Hillary Clinton as Killary, which I don’t much object to, I’m convinced that Seth Rich (and a few others) were killed for her benefit, if not with her express command, but it’s a juvenile tactic.  These sites weren’t actually trying to appeal to the thinking voter, they were not subtle, they were driving straight down the middle of the road.  These sites were there for the purpose of riling up the base.  Why they were necessary, I don’t know.
Which still leaves us with the question:  who set up and administered these sites.  Well, to listen to the Hillary people, it was Putin.  But, there’s no real  evidence of  that and  it  seems rather a lame strategy.

Maybe it  was just some crazy, Russian, white supremacist with money.  That is, in fact, not an inconsiderable demographic.  Here’s the hard part for Americans to  accept.  The internet is an international thing, anybody  can join (O.K., not in North Korea, and China is iffy), and everybody, whether Americans like it or not, has opinions on American politics.  That’s normal.

Then, there’s option 3, which is what I think happened, but that’s not based on knowledge, it’s strictly my guess, I’m just a guy with a blog, in Prague, and I don’t have any inside information.  Option 3 is that it  was a regular Troll Bank working for Trump, sort of like Hillary’s ‘Correct the Record’ gang, only Trump had them in Russia, maybe he thought that was safer, my guess is it was  cheaper.

I was just reading an article about  how  3-5% of the DNA of most people in the world who are not African is Neanderthal.  I do wonder how they can spot that, it’s not like  we ever had any blood or tissue samples to work with.  Also, I wonder if it includes Asia and  the Pacific, I don’t know how widespread the Neanderthals were.

In a way, though, it’s good news.   It’s like they  weren’t exterminated completely, like  the Denisovans, Homo Florensis, and probably a few  others.  Some piece of them lives  on in  us.

Inth end, though, it’s like the Panspermia theory (that life was brought to Earth on an asteroid, rather than originating here.)  It would be a cool thing to know, but doesn’t change much.  We still are what we are, and always have been.

I do have a theory, though, well, it’s more just speculation, I guess, that maybe the Neanderthals, and Denisovans, and other human species who have gone extinct are the reason that aliens haven’t made contact with us.  Knowing how evolution works (they too, evolved), they would  know  there should  be more  than one human species, so when they look down and that’s exactly what they see, they say “Uh oh, these people are exterminators, crushers of any opposition, eaters of  the cubs.  We must not allow them to come out and pollute the spaceways of the galaxy.  We can probably get away with just ignoring them for another  couple of centuries.”

And off they zoom again.

Today, I went over to Shakespeare and Sons in Mala Strana, a lovely, touristic area which is equally as picturesque and all as Old Town, but slightly less overrun, to put a couple of copies of my most recent book, “Wild Pigs of Fukushima” on  their shelves.
I was quite pleased that they’d sold 3 copies of my other books since the  last time I was in there, which I  think was about March.  One of Poems of Prague, which was my first one and quite possibly the most popular.  Isaac Asimov once said in an interview that it bothered him when people said their favorite short story  of his was “Nightfall” because it was his first one, he wrote it when he was 17, and the implication was that he hadn’t improved  since then.  Well, I looked it up to read it and, sure enough, I recognized it withing a paragraph or two and  it’s definitely one of my favorite Asimov stories.  Bummer for him.  Anyhow, I  know  how it  feels.  I definitely feel that “The Meaning of Life in Easy English,” “4 Syllables on Water” or “155 Sonnets” are better work.  But, I’ll take what I can get.

One of the  other copies sold was 155 Sonnets.  I didn’t catch what the 3rd one was.  It’s a long way form the millions of copies I’d hoped to sell by now but, I must confess, I’m not promoting them very well.  My business plan is just to keep churning out books and eventually, if I write something that clicks, that captures the public’s eye, there will be plenty of stuff out there that people can buy.  It’s not a good business plan, but I enjoy the writing, and I don’t enjoy self-promotion, so it’s the plan for me.

Three is better than zero and I know that my words have made contact, however slight, with people in the real world.  And that makes me happy.  And encourages me to write more.