7.31.2012

never complained

My mother died last week, at 97. She lived through tough times and I don't know if she ever had a happy period.  Her family did not let her study medicine, so she studied philosophy. Started as a teacher and later became a psychologist. She had an extraordinary capacity to listen, but was probably too compassionate for a psychologist. She wrote several books. About twenty of her research papers on youth development were published in specialty journals.  In her seventies, she worked as a cashier. In her late eighties she started to collect cooking recipes  for cookies and  tortes. Each one had a date and the name of the provider. The last entry was her own marvelous nut cake.

7.20.2012

Who's entitled now?

Obama's infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What's variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes. This is from Krauthammer
True. How true!
 But what we have is the unwillingness of one entitled class to contribute to roads and schools, to  the constant, to contribute in a fair way. The genius of the individuals that feel entitled to infinite riches. Seems to me the one-percenters  are claiming and feel more entitled than the poor.  The risk taking individual that doesn't care to pay the communal utilities bill.

7.18.2012

Socio 101

Seems to me that nowadays the sociological imagination is being displaced by the environmental imagination where people try to situate themselves in the history of  Earth.   Sustainability  is not likely to shed light  on their biography, condition, problems or malaise,but  it gives them the opportunity to feel contributing to society. (without solving the problem of child poverty.)

7.16.2012

Mortua est

The coffin is lowered with lots of attention and care. We dump soil on it. When they die we call them cherished and beloved. Is it because we are afraid they will haunt us?

7.08.2012

There is no freedom in being oneself.

Is this a misquote? I thought I saw this yesterday on the internet somewhere, thought interesting and tried to find it again. Nowhere. My fading memory ... could it be in being yourself? or for being yourself? Did I read too fast or is it my own imagination? Can I say this is mine? No ancient Greek or Hindu ascetic has gotten this? Being yourself is just being shackled by your fate. Your genes, your looks, your cultural determination. Or is it purely idiocy? Half baked sentence, good only for some pop song.

7.04.2012

artifice

Everyone likes fire works. It seems that the heart designs are more popular than the flags or the earth. We look and we wonder is this the best? Can they outdo themselves? Is this the finale? Glorious finale? But the expression in French is more appropriate -feu d'artfice. ars facere, ingenious and cunning. Pleasurable false explosion.

Mermaids. NO MERMAIDS

 Sad news. I am going to give up sailing. Or can one believe NOAA? They are rarely precise in their predictions. Science is going haywire. There is a boson. But no Atlantis. No mermaids. Just winds....
And they announce this on the 4th of July.