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I don't talk about it much because most people don't like thinking about it but, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070930/ap_on_re_us/meat_recall;_ylt=Akl8O1xLmd8Snqf_nbq0rLis0NUE.
I seldom eat hamburger and always (even the food I bring to work) cook with ground round or sirloin.
Where, exactly, in the cow do you find E. Coli?
This is sad, reprehensible, and just plain awful.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_re_as/myanmar;_ylt=AqD7U8HB2DZdcercbD.MpPKs0NUE
Taken out of context though, the picture is actually funny.
What exactly is that? I would define socialism as collecting money from a group at large and redistributing it as means for achieving a larger goal, presumably a greater good. I think a lot of people would agree on that singular point. It's a common accusation flung at liberals for health care, social security, welfare, education, public transportation, etc. Kind of a nasty insult in our capitalist system because all afore mentioned are inherently evil.
For many years, I've been considering that the U.S. is not a true capitalist state at all. I think I started this train of thought during the Reagan years when I realized the defense industry was, indeed always has been, a heavily government subsidized institution from which beneficial technologies spun off. The morality of profiting from war research notwithstanding, we have gained immeasurably from government-funded military research in the private sector. Oh, and a lot of well-connected people got rich. The interesting thing about the defense industry is that it was funded more or less by both political parties through both times of war and peace. We had periods of fraud and scandal through the industry that ran in cycles from as far back as when Howard Hughs was designing airplanes, to mega-dollar toilet seats, and lately blantantly false charges from our own little corner of the south east.
Now we seem to have some other problems. The government has moved away from the socialistic redistribution of tax payer funded student loans to subsidizing private loan companies. Why are we paying companies to lend students money, compensating them for their "loss" when the government could have, and has, managed the program in the past. Somehow we moved from the government collecting the interest equivalent of a stable bond market to the government paying private companies because they were only making the interest equivalent of a stable bond market and a few well-connected people got rich plus a few more got arrested for defrauding the system.
Now Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are asking for increased caps on their customer based. They currently hold 40% of the U.S. mortgage market and are only making slightly more money than they would in a stable bond market. As compensation for this, they are heavily subsidized by the government. They recently paid (or returned subsidies) a $50M fine for fraudulent accounting practices, no one went to jail. Well-connected people are still rich.
Something in my dimming memory also seems to recall a Chrysler bail out right around the time they were "saved" by those dreadful k-cars. Don't even get me starting on what the U.S. is doing with pharmaceutical companies. And prisons, don't forget corporate prisons, an abomination if there ever was one.
So we've got government subsidized businesses related to defense research, housing, transportation, home lending, education finance, and medicine but none of it is distributed to individuals who need it. It is rather channelled to business-minded individuals who will stimulate growth (like we're seeing right now) who end up getting so rich and entitlement-sensed that they steal from the same coffers they were freely given. I can't legitemately see a free market operating here. I see money being collected from society at large being redistributed to business.
It's raining and 50 something degrees.
I feel like I've been absent from this a while and I would probably be correct. I think I've entered a bout of homesick which doesn't really detract from Europe but it does detract somewhat from my enjoyment of it. Vacation has ended again and I think Jodie had a good time despite a relatively minor fiasco. London even obliged us with a sunny day and Londoners in general turned out to be the most friendly, helpful people I've run into so far. No less than 3 people asked us if we needed help on our first experience with the subway. I don't know if Jodie carrying my amputated arm was a factor or not but at least they seemed to care about our welfare. Like the other stuff, I'll get around to pictures soon.
Now I'm here trying to get back into my routine. Being off my routine gives me too much time to read the news. That's not good for anyone. At least I was able to resolve m Etrade problems. They locked me out of my account because someone was logging in from a non U.S.-based server. Once you get flagged by security, they won't discuss your account with you until you can prove who you are. In their case they wanted, after three or four requests, a notarized letter from me begging to again have access to my own money. Apparently their security policy is based on the assumption that American notaries are located on every street corner of every foreign country in the world. My assumption is that Etrade policies are formulated by stupid fucks.
Another friend over here just had to close his paypal account because of a similar issue. Of course I learn this after logging into my own paypal account. had to log in (again) for customer service because they won't show you the phone number otherwise and was told by customer service "yep, that'll probably happen if you keep logging in from outside the U.S." The solution is to open a European paypal account which does not function with your U.S. bank account or credit card. nor does it function with your original email adress. So after seven years of depending on a service provider, I am now afraid to log into it. Maybe the economy is global, but the needs of normal people seem to be largely unadressed.
It's recently come up that I might be spending six to eight weeks in China during this two year stint. My co-workers seem to think it's a great opportunity... On the flip side, reading about Chinese culture is rather engaging. They function and react almost nothing like what westerners are used to so the challenge will basically be just fitting into the group. How I might actually accomplish what we all hope for seems daunting but there's really nothing to do but try and make it happen.
At most of a year here, I'm starting to feel like my relationship with America is becoming somewhat disconnected. I don't know what's playing at the movies, there are songs I've never heard, and some of my friends talk about tv shows I've never even seen advertising for. Probably all part of the cultural assimilation process I keep going back to and re-reading but you still have to let it run it's course. It's sort of like smearing your face against the subway hand rail in New York. You know you're going to get sick, nothing you can do will change that. You just have to try and minimize the symptoms.
Some days, I think this shoud be called dark optimism.
Germany has had a crappy, cold summer. I know it, the Germans know it, nothing to do but hope for better next year. As of September 10, however, Montana really sucks:
Pets are being killed right now, in 2007, in Zimbabwe for food because people there are starving. The focus of the reporting I've read seems to be on the concerns of animal rights activists. WTF? Last time I looked, it was still floating around the African continent where people seem to be dying by the millions yet first-world animal rights activists are worried about their media image for criticizing the actions of starving people. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070914/ap_on_re_af/pets_in_crisis;_ylt=AuyBoggB4rWNvayPh1ppIhJvaA8F
I"m noticing you can learn a lot about a region by reading the reporting related to it.
We will soon be paying 10% more for toys because people no longer want their children sucking lead. O.J. seems to have stolen some of his own sports memorabilia.
All of the above is a juxtaposition. http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/juxtaposition Come to think of it, almost everything is.
I'm in one of those moods where work has been busy, I've been speaking too much German, and I think I just got another speeding ticket - I'll open it tomorrow. Instead of wallowing in my own self pity, I worry about how miserable the rest of the world seems to be. One coping mechanism is drinking french red wine.
Sorry folks, that's all I've got in me tonight.
If you've some faint notion that I'm leaving personal messages wrapped in generalized rhetoric, you paranoia will sometimes be rewarded. I do.
If there's any doubt though, you should probably ask.
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Hey, the world rugby championships started in Paris last Friday. I really wanted to get someone I know a t-shirt but we just couldn't find a vendor.
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Two emails is the conventional etiquette limit for assuming the receiver will not reply.
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I honestly still have a difficult time not asking waitresses if the sea bass is ill-tempered after hearing of it's presence.
While vociferously condoning the use of leather and humane slaughter of animals to stuff my gullet, I can't help but worry these days about how some animals are being treated.
0.38 slug in a buck? By all means if it hits the stew pot. Articles like this one, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070911/ap_on_sc/obit_alex_the_parrot;_ylt=Ak3xha.s65isy2PrD0iZnuMPLBIF however, leave me scratching my head at all those budding young serial killer types out shooting birds in the back yard.
The thrill of the kill shouldn't be one.
Senator Craig pontificates:
Ibiza, Spain is the port I keep forgetting to include in my email accounts of this trip. Rightly so, it was atrociously expensive and had little to offer. $47 for two mixed drinks is over the top in any club. Fortunately, sensibly priced liquor was always onboard the ship.
For those of you out of the know, Bill and I took a cruise through the Mediterranean that left from Barcelona and stopped at Valencia, Ibiza, Florence/Pisa, Rome, Mykonos, and deposited us in Athens. We allegedly ate less food(by virture of not sneaking it into our over-sized hand bags) and drank 30% more than the "usual" cruise people. Good times. Florence is not a coastal city. People keep asking this as though I am either lying about stopping there or they believe Italy is composed of dirt roads and donkey carts. We took a bus from the port, with air conditioning, on the highway. Stopped in Pisa, too.
I think this was Ibiza but it's hard to say...
It was sunny that day and this was probably the most fun to be had in the ancient walled city (the cannons were a later addition, 1980 or so). The sheer amount of sunlight covering everything was amazing. There were no giant oak trees or dense forests, just rock buildings and sunlight so bright and hot it wasn't really a reasonable proposition to not use sunglasses. No real landmarks to speak of, just the remains of a walled city to walk around and look at.
This here was Valencia:
The round, numbered stickers we're wearing are for the guided tour group. If I were olive-skinned, two feet shorter, and spoke fluent Spanish, that sticker would still be screaming "Over here, tourist." The long shorts help but nothing trumps the guided tour sticker. For those of you wondering about the difference between long shorts and capri pants, it is very simple. I do not wear capri pants.
Sorry, no more pictures tonight. Due to various battery failures, electronic constraints, and poor planning, I will not have the rest of the pictures for another week or so. Then I can further pontificate on the exploits we had in other places.
I think I'm just about over travelling this year. 11 countries counting a week from now this year is my personal record. I don't want to beat my personal record.