If the Church still maintained standing armies of crusaders, and decided tomorrow to send the cavalry into the slums of Johannesburg and Lagos and Nairobi, slaughtering the helpless residents and some of their children, it probably wouldn't go over very well. Instead, they tell their legions of new converts to kill themselves, by refusing to use birth control/protection despite living in the most overpopulated and AIDS-infested regions on Earth.
Pray tell, what is the Church doing to combat AIDS? Fidelity? Yes, that's nice, and I support fidelity. Unfortunately, as Dr. House would say, "People lie." Infidelity is a fact and will not disappear because we want to believe it away. Christianity itself posits that man is inherently flawed, deeply so, but is faith the only tool God has granted us? Surely not. Ingrained cultural mores that seem savage or downright insane to outside observers, such as having sex with a virgin to "cure" sexual diseases or refusing to use protection because it's not manly, are similarly difficult to extinguish. We have an arsenal at the ready, including education, technology, and that elusive bottled lightning, hope, but the hope that the Pope is peddling is tainted by the Church's slow-motion in an age of rapid change.
The real savage, insane belief is that faith should trump reason - the prohibition of condoms is just faith healing in fancier robes. And a funny hat. And you wonder why you're losing believers at terrifying rates in the developed world, Benny...?
More than 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, according to a 2008 UNAIDS/WHO report. Nine out of 10 children with HIV in the world live in the region, which has 11.4 million orphans because of AIDS, the report said, and 1.5 million people there died of the disease in 2007.
School is taking up most of my time, and what remains I'm pissing away reading the news and messing around on the computer watching Obama's speech to congress. He again shows that given a chance to prepare, he is unbeatable behind the podium, but his plate is awfully full.
Meanwhile, Russia is facing crisis by getting together with its neighbors and creating a $10 billion 'anti-crisis' slush fund through the 'Eurasian Economic Community.' Once upon a time, I did a lot of research on alliances in Eurasia, and even I'm losing count of how many regional alliances and blocs the Russians (and the Chinese) are forming or taking part in. They must be planning to apply to some tough schools to need all these extra-curricular activities.
Well, Russia, in addition to bequeathing the world some of the greatest writers, philosophers and scientists it has ever known, I see you were President of the...what is this, Eurasian Economic Community?
Yes, yes I was. Our responsibilities included uniting former Soviet states in a customs union and forming an anti-crisis fund.
Mmmkay. Well, how do you think this makes you a good fit for our school?
Well, I have significant international experience, especially in dealing with challenges and bringing people together.
Mmm-hmm. Anything else you'd like to add?
Also, I absolutely beat the piss out of a small caucausian country when they attempted to meddle in my internal affairs.
That's nice.
...I was in marching band, too. Best of luck to them.
TIME is running a feature called '25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis' - you can puruse short profiles, including a caraciture headshot in front of a prison background and then vote on a scale of 1-10 on whether they are guilty or innocent. Featured are Phil Gramm, The American Consumer, Bush, and, interestingly, the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. Wen is implicated as the dealer of cheap credit to the Americans, who are similarly blamed for being such junkies. Does this mean we're going to undertake an expensive and wasteful War on Chinese Holders of US Treasury Bonds (Just Say NO to T-Bills!) to protect ourselves from this dangerous menace?
Seriously? I can't even add anything to how insanely stupid this piece is. Now even revered organs of the press are joining overzealous congresspeople in the great financial crisis snipe hunt. I'm waiting for the cover of TIME with a dollar sign and a big red 'x' over it in blood, as they've famously done for Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and more recently, al-Zarqawi (that seems like reaching). Actually, TIME has been horrible ever since they named'You' the person of the year. You didn't deserve it.
The massive, unfinished hotel that was due to open next to the CCTV building here in Beijing has burned in an amazing pyre that lit up the Beijing night. Early reports were that it was the famous CCTV building (nearly finished) itself, and I'm not sure how one really makes the distinction since they're being built in the same project, but, wow. My old office stared at these two buildings, I cannot imagine the view in the morning. The fire has been extinguished but given how absolutely huge it was, I can't imagine the building is in good shape. I also can't believe I slept through this, and all the fireworks last night, given that I can practically see the building from my bedroom window.
I wonder if they were still running overtime construction shifts over there - hope not.
Bear fails and Lehman fails and then all faith is lost and I'm crying in front of my computer, then the government is pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the only way to save the economy is for you to own the banks, and everyone is always saying, this is all your fault, this is all their fault, we need more regulation we need Obama we need to lock the bastards up we need more and more and more.
A lot of people say speed kills. It does, but kindness is the crueler killer. We are a litigious society, cursed with an overabundance of legalistic talent and excellent orators. We even have a President who can string together metaphors, imagery, and alliteration to make a point. Unfortunately none of this particularly guarantees us a bright, shiny future. In fact, forget the President, if you can, and think about yourself. What do you use? What do you need? What do you want? Odds are, unless you have extremely impractical or particular tastes, you need what a lot of other people need, you want what other people want, etc. From here, it's not a long logical leap to making half-decent investment decisions. And yet, nobody does. Because protecting our investments is no longer our responsibility, it's everybody's responsibility, and everybody's fault when things go wrong. Anything that is everybody's responsibility is nobody's responsibility and will never get done. If you can't manage your own money, you'd better find someone you trust to the ends of the Earth to do it for you, and you'd better stay close enough to them that you can hit them with a brick if things go wrong. Having the Man do it for you is bad, even if I concede some degree of involvement by the Man in our lives is necessary.
We look to icons in times of trouble; it's a natural human reaction. We have specialists in society, experts and gurus, all expected to use their luminary talents to lead us out of the dark times and back into the land of honey and milk. So you call up Alan Greenspan. You led the Fed for years, and during the good times were regarded as a sort of lucky totem, despite your dot-com era warnings about irrational exuberance. Did Richard Fuld rub your head for luck? Ah well. Tell us what went wrong, Alan.
"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders."
Actually, you're making a bigger mistake by going in front of Congress and surrendering a lifetime of belief in the ability of markets to regulate themselves. Are you still the same guy who palled around with Ayn Rand? Come on.
So you call up John McCain. Senator, how bad are things, really?
John McCain unwittingly walked into a political minefield when he said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. He was playing it up to his audience, and when attacked claimed that Barack Obama wasn't respecting the American worker and that Wall Street was corrupt and so on. Bullshit on all sides, but McCain should have known better. We're all stupid and in bad times will be taken in by anger and frustration, and the sort of dogged optimism required to power through bad times isn't popular or easy. Investing is the same way. Lining up executives to be shot for redecorating their bathrooms isn't justified in any way. At the same time, they, too, should have known better. Popular anger isn't easily ignored or brushed off. It doesn't matter if, in the long term, it's not justified. You still have to deal with it now, and Americans won't abide a whiner, even one who may be right.
But if EVERYBODY starts whining, well! It's time to roll up our sleeves and take action, doggone it! So the President, ignoring concerns about too much government intervention, decides to put a hard cap on executive pay. Well, that'll certainly make our leaders better stakeholders. It sure is a good thing that we have all this regulation, post-Enron, post-2000, post-Lehman. Why live with risk when we can live with crushingly obtuse regulations? I'm not an expert; I don't know which are good and which are bad, but I do know that the US is no longer the preferred destination for foreign companies looking to list on a stock exchange. It's just too annoying for them to register here. If these companies end up failing elsewhere because they were badly managed, well, aren't we smart over here. If they end up doing phenomenally well and leading the next global boom, from Mumbai or Dubai or London or Berlin, well, it's time for another lynch mob in the Senate Finance Committee! Who let this happen? WHO?! Answer: We all did. Shut up and get a job.
I remember reading Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom. He discusses democracy and its merits and failings, and concludes that without great benefactors and civic morality, democratic capitalism is mostly the cruel system that Marx and others claimed it was. It needs Andrew Carnegie, it needs Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It needs them to be rich and it needs them to be good. But not just them, I think. We're all participants in the capitalist experiment, and if we aren't good citizens then we will creep ever closer to a socialist democracy where emotion rules more than it ever has. How do you regulate morality, though? I've never been convinced that outside of a circle of family and friends, we're really able to change the moral compass of anyone else. It's good and right to try, but I don't foresee a lot of success. It's like expecting this schizoprhenic blog entry to revolutionize the financial and social viewpoints of its readers. "Yes, Michael, after I read your blog I cut up my extra credit cards, paid off my loans and started donating to public television and charities that I support. I also lost thirty pounds and you saved my marriage." There's no such thing as a moral bailout. It's up to each of us to be good at our own lives. Capitalism is a great system, it's so good that it magnifies our decisions and causes the impact to actually trickle up the chain, and when we're all in our overpriced, depreciating houses that we could never afford to begin with, the whole house starts to fall down around us. And we're left, trapped in the suburbs, wearing our McMansions around our necks like golden albatrosses, wondering how did this happen? Could it be my neighbors made the same bad decisions I did? Could it be we're not so different after all? Shocking.
Did anyone else notice that in the auto bailout, Ford made a big deal of refusing aid? They just had their worst quarter ever and said, nah, we're okay over here for now. You guys go ahead, we don't want you to fail. They're no doubt hoping to turn that in their favor, and curry favor with the bailout-weary American public. It worked with me - I love a survivor. But more and more, I think that this wasn't their main motivation. They aren't running a hyper-risky marketing campaign over at Ford. They're afraid. Afraid of the retribution they might face in what is becoming a public kangaroo court for business and industry leaders, and afraid of being dragged in front of our representatives, so angry on our behalf, and mocked and interrogated on CSPAN. They are afraid of us.
The Super Bowl is notable as one of the most-viewed television events in American culture, and accordingly features the best that ad executives can dream up to throw at us. This year featured a one-second ad for Miller High Life, Hulu.com's declaration of evil, a shitload of talking E-Trade babies, and, in what I can only take as a sign of the times, an ad for Cash4Gold, a scam-laden company that rifles through desperate peoples' jewelry and sends them pittances. Not very Super.
In more alarming news, a company called Cyberdyne, named after (apparently?) the firm in Terminator 2 that creates the Skynet AI that ends up destroying civilization and exterminating most of humanity, has released a robotic exoskeleton, Robot Suit HAL. So you've got not one, but two alarming pop culture evil robot references there. Judgment Day cometh.
And apparently someone threw a shoe at Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier. How uncreative.
"Don't throw anything away," says my Mom, standing over me in the disorderly work in progress that is my bedroom.
"I haven't tossed anything yet," I reply. "I'll set it aside and look at it later."
"No," she says, "Don't throw anything away. You'll regret it later."
Such is the absolutism of my mother's packrat tendencies, which have created in me a offsetting need to throw away, clean out, renovate and renew on a regular basis. I cannot stand having things just sit where they are and collect dust for long periods of time, unless for some reason they are collecting interest at the same time. I'm not above keeping things for sentimental value, and when I clean out my old files and papers, I enjoy rereading them, to the point I frequently fail to finish cleaning, lost in premature nostalgia for...whatever. She wishes to preserve forever; I wish to recollect once and sweep the floor.
There is a sort of invincibility in memory that memorabilia cannot rival. Besides, with the transferability and mutability of things that are just data now, what can't be preserved in a non-physical space? Words, photos, music, the collected knowledge and worthless arguments of the entire human race? Google is the ultimate packrat, if only mom would heed my desperate calls to really learn to use the Internet she would discover that anything and everything, regardless of the value assigned it, can be kept around forever. Have you ever opened up an old computer and just browsed the files? Insane what you'll find. I used to manually save instant message conversations; now Google does that for me (as I discovered, somewhat to my horror, recently). Google is coming out with the GDrive service soon, after which I don't know that I'll ever have a need for an external hard drive. A few gigs of flash storage should suffice for quickly moving data between non-linked computers. Everything else in the hands of our googly-eyed data overlords, reposing eternally in their timeless memory-city of Mountain View, California. I hear they have great cafeterias.
Which brings me to my music collection. In terms of senses, only smell is a stronger conjurer of random memory than music. I can actually listen to all my myriad cds and recall particular moments (many driving in my car) with particular people, years and years ago. Some connect, like frayed wires, to images I no longer understand, devoid of context. Some others can summon entire complex scenes that I can almost step back into. I can vividly see my hands on the steering wheel and the dark-dark of driving aimlessly through the Cleveland Metroparks 2 or 3 AM the night before my high school friends and I all left for college, somehow linked to a Depeche Mode song, a girl I used to adore attached to a U2 song, and my old guitar teacher, Cheryl, who will forever be remembered by the various songs she taught me, her laziest student. And there are plenty that have no particular personal connection, but they had good music videos or I just remember really liking them.
I would call music a replaceable memory - it's not unique unless it's a recording I personally made. There are, thankfully, few recordings of me singing or playing guitar, so I don't see much reason in hanging on to all my physical CDs and their cases. Then again, I can't justify throwing them out or giving them away quite yet. I gave away all my nintendo games and now people are paying stupid amounts for the cartridges on Ebay despite the media being available for download (legal if you purchased the game at some point) online, or through a number of 'arcade' services offered through Xbox Arcade or Mii or whatever else current-gen consoles are serving up. So, much as with records, one must suspect that 'vintage' CDs will one day be in vogue, making them a collectible, and leaving me with no choice but to descend into the basement and hunt for a larger box even as my computer busily finishes burning the last few tracks from Beck's Odelay onto my hard drive.
This, from the guy whose bedroom is now almost entirely dominated by books - a medium I could probably stand with not compulsively collecting, given their size and weight. I can't help it - the sensation of being physically surrounded by knowledge and creativity, the feeling one gets in a really excellent bookstore (becoming an endangered species these days) or library - I'm willing to sacrifice some space for that. And there are a number of written things, notes from friends, cards, that cannot be replaced. Besides, like any true, dyed in the wool packrat, I'm not throwing anything away, I'm really just moving it around and calling it spring cleaning. Instead of my CD cases collecting dust in the open, they'll collect dust in private, and I'm probably even adding dust to a server in a room somewhere where I'll host all my data.
It's hard to let go, even when things are just things.
