Happy New Year!

Dear readers:

We wish you all a happy holiday season and a Happy New year, in many interesting languages:

Happy New Year

Bonne Année

ka Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar

शुभ क्रिसमस (Hindi)

Felice Anno Nuovo

наступающим Новым Годом

Danistayohihv & Aliheli'sdi Itse Udetiyvasadisv (Cherokee)

聖誕快樂 新年快樂 

Prospero año nuevo

Ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος

ein gutes neues Jahr!

Barabu Baraba

సంతోషకరమైన క్రిస్ఠ్మస్ ! (Telugu)

boldog űj évet

QISmaS DatIvjaj 'ej DIS chu' DatIvjaj (Klingon)

חג מולד שמח ושנה טובה أجمل التهاني بمناسبة الميلاد و حلول السنة الجديدة

gōngxi fācái

Maupay nga Pasko (Waray-Waray)

கிறிஸ்துமஸ் மற்றும் இனிய புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள் (Tamil)

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Childhood Memory: Hitchhiking in Italy

Tom Kando 

My sisters Juliette and Madeleine and I grew up poor, in Europe. We fled from Hungary after World War Two and moved from country to country, ending up in Holland when I was fourteen. 

 

By then, my mother was divorced and struggling to feed us and raise us by herself. Despite our poverty, she was determined to provide us with vacations and to show us Europe’s beauty. She felt that we were just as entitled to travel as rich people were. 

The solution? We hitchhiked wherever we went. And did we go! Every summer, we would hitchhike to places like Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy and elsewhere. 

These trips placed a heavy burden of responsibility on me. I was the oldest child and the only ‘man’ of the family. I was barely fourteen and my sisters were twelve. How could I protect them? For instance, sometimes we would get picked up by truck drivers in Germany, Italy or some other place, and they would get fresh with my mother and my sisters. Then what? 

In 1956, we hitchhiked from our home in Amsterdam to the South of Italy - two thousand kilometers away! A forty-two year old mother with her three children. We carried our tent, our sleeping bags and our backpacks. 

One day, we were standing on the coastal roadside outside of Viareggio in Italy, only a few feet away from the beach. We had been stuck there for several hours. The sun was setting on the Mediterranean coast, appropriately named the azure coast for its deep blue, almost purplish color. It was a warm summer afternoon with a gentle breeze blowing from the South. My mother and the three of us were taking turns at standing on the roadside and sticking out our thumbs. While two of us would be doing that, the other two could sit, read, play or have a bite. 

Christmas Past and Present

By Madeleine Kando

Like most children, I grew up with Santa. Before he and I left Hungary, to move to Paris, his name was Mikulas. He wasn’t even Hungarian by birth, but Turkish and didn’t believe in flying over rooftops in a sled. His main mode of transportation was called ‘ambulatio’, also known as walking.

Mikulas’ original name was Saint Nicholas. He was from a town called Patara in modern Turkey. He became famous by saving a poor man’s three daughters from a life of prostitution. Since the father couldn’t afford a dowry, he secretly stuffed gold coins in the daughters’ socks. That was the choice daughters had in those days: either bribe a future husband or become a whore. Isn’t that amazing? What would be considered common decency these days, turned into a world-wide tradition of ‘doing good’. But just one day a year, mind you.

Mikulas was a clever fellow. He recruited a helper who went by the name of ‘Krampus’, an ugly goat like creature with huge horns, fangs and a very long tongue. This was the anti-Saint Nicholas, often seen stuffing unfortunate juveniles in a bag, hauling them to his lair and when he was really hungry, eating them alive. That way Saint Nicholas could remain saintly and untainted.

 

After my family moved to France, Mikulas not only changed his name, but also his status. He now had to compete with 'Père Noël' who came onto the world scene because of a religious fanatic called Martin Luther. Martin was not fond of saints, as gift givers or otherwise. He decided to give the gift giving role to Baby Jesus instead.

But the carrying capacity of a baby is very limited, especially with the increasing appetite for receiving gifts in the West. There were several contenders that applied for the job: the Three Kings, Baby Jesus himself and Père Noel. The latter won by a narrow margin, but not without some help, as you will find out later.

About Guns, Again

Tom Kando 

A recent editorial by Leonard Pitts prompts me to chime in, once again, about America’s gun problem. I am a criminologist and I have lectured and written about the gun issue for years. See for example my May 17 post on this blog, “It’s the Guns, Stupid,” 

Pitt’s editorial is titled “”Mass Shootings: It’s Time to Stop Asking ‘Why?’” I agree with this. However, while much of what Pitts writes has merit, at some point he goes somewhat astray. Let me explain: 

First, Pitt reminds us correctly that the bulk of American gun violence does not consist of mass shootings. A vast majority of it consists of what he brilliantly calls “knucklehead shootings.” These are “small-scale shootings where the motive is patently absurd.” For example, “in Atlanta, in June, a woman who worked at Subway was killed for putting too much mayonnaise on a sandwich... In Brooklyn in August, a man who worked at McDonald was shot in the neck because the French fries were cold. In Detroit in November, a man was shot to death after he apparently failed to hold the elevator door...In Tulsa, in November, a man shot at his stepfather after they got into an argument over a game of Monopoly...” Let me add to this the many cases of domestic violence, for example irate husbands killing their wives and children. What all these crimes have in common is that someone got uncontrollably angry. 

Pitts goes on to argue that we should stop asking “Why?” (the killers’ motives) and start asking “Who?” He notes that “Many say that the problem is that guns are too readily available in America.” But he feels that this is not the best explanation of America’s problem. He mentions Australia and New Zealand, countries where gun ownership is also widespread, and yet they do not have the same atrocious level of gun violence as we do. 

The Power of Stupidity

By Madeleine Kando

You cannot call someone stupid these days, or you could be arrested for political incorrectness. There are other alternatives, like calling someone an airhead, a bird brain, or a dumbass, but that might land you on the floor with a bloody nose.

Thanks to the incredible richness of the American language, however, there are safer ways to describe a stupid person (preferably without them being present): ‘He’s one fry short of a happy meal. ‘The light is on, but nobody’s home. ‘As bright as Alaska in December. ‘Goes surfing in Nebraska. ‘His belt doesn't go through all the loops. ‘His cheese has slipped off his cracker.’

Humor goes a long way, but it doesn’t change the fact that of all our human qualities, stupidity is the most abundant.

What is stupidity? Wikipedia’s definition is: ‘Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit. It may be innate, assumed or reactive’. Does that really explain why the world is full of stupid people and why non-stupid people do so many stupid things?

I was lucky enough (not smart enough) to come across an essay called: "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity", written by Carlo Maria Cipolla, an Italian economic historian. This is what he has to say about stupidity:

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

by Carlo M. Cipolla 

THE FIRST BASIC LAW: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

THE SECOND BASIC LAW: The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.*

THE THIRD BASIC LAW (The Golden Rule): A stupid person is a person who causes losses to others while deriving no gain to self and even possibly incurring losses.

Human beings fall into four basic categories: the Helpless, the Intelligent, the Bandit and the Stupid (See figure 1). If you suffer a loss while producing a gain to someone else, you are in field H: You act helplessly. If you make a gain while also creating a gain to others, you in area I: You act intelligently. If you gain something, but cause someone else a loss, you are in area B: you act as a bandit. If you do something that harms others and yourself, you fit in area S. You act stupidly.

Rational people have difficulty understanding irrational behavior. We can deal with a devious person’s motivation, or avoid being played for a patsy, but because you have to be smart enough to recognize how stupid you are, a stupid person will never realize that they are stupid. They will overestimate their own competence, knowledge etc.

Nuclear War and other Bad Things. Probabilities and a Bit of Game Theory.

Tom Kando

I continue to fret about the war in Ukraine. I worry about Putin's nuclear saber rattling.

All the pundits keep reassuring us that this is mere bluff and  that there is very little chance of this war escalating into nuclear Armageddon. Most of us don't have sleepless nights worrying about the possibility of nuclear war. Many of us did, during the Cuban missile crisis, but not now.

 Let me try to approach this topic with a statistical or a game-theoretical mind. Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. The probability of a  bad event  happening should be inverse to how terrible the event is likely to be.  Put differently, the greater a  risk is,  the smaller the probability of failure, when taking that risk, should be.

For example, it is possible that I will catch a cold this winter. If a doctor  told me  that there is a probability of .33 (one out of three) of this happening, I will not worry very much. On the other hand, if someone told me that there is a .003 probability of nuclear war  in the coming six months (one out of 300), I would worry quite a bit.

In other words, the greater a possible upcoming catastrophe is, the closer to zero its probable occurrence should be.

I have no idea whether there exists a   negative correlation between how terrible  an event is and how likely it is to happen.

One important aspect is  the time frame: Is the bad thing likely to happen  soon or in the distant future?  The catastrophes which Hollywood likes so much - giant earthbound  asteroids, devastating earthquakes, etc. - have the advantage of following geological and astronomical timetables. We don't worry about them, in the belief that they only occur once in a million years. What about global warming - the destruction of the planet? This may be the worst thing that can happen to  us, and its likelihood  is quite high. But it is happening gradually. We are the slowly boiling frog.

Do Voting Systems Matter?

By Madeleine Kando

It’s election time and many of us are biting our nails, to see what will emerge after November 8. It’s like watching a football game: Two teams against each other. Or fighting with your sibling on which flavor ice cream your mom should buy, except the store only sells chocolate and vanilla.

But why is it like that? I come from a tiny country where there are no less than 17 political parties represented in the Legislature. Why is the US so stingy with its political parties?

To be fair, we really have four political parties rolled into two. We have the Sanders Democrats and the Biden Democrats on one side and the Trump Republicans and ‘Rino’s’ on the other side. Both parties have always been ‘big tents’, but now the ‘centrists’ are being so radicalized by their own extreme wings that they might not survive. Then all hope of compromise and working together goes out the window.

The two-party system is an outlier in the modern world. Wouldn’t it make sense to allow for these four parties rolled into two to legitimately exist on their own? This could only happen if we changed the way we vote.

In the US we have what is called a First Past the Post electoral system, or winner takes all. The candidate who receives the most votes wins. Sounds fair? Not really. If there are more than two candidates, that candidate could win with a minority of the votes. That is why we have red states and blue states. About a third of Massachusetts voters are Republicans, but since we have a ‘single member district’ voting system, all our Representatives are Democrats.

The First Past the Post electoral system does not allow for third parties to emerge. If you vote for a budding third party that has no chance of winning, you take away a vote from your preferred major party and the party you don’t like, wins. It’s called the spoiler effect. Ralph Nader caused Al Gore to lose the presidency in 2000.

What if you could have a system in which your vote did not ‘spoil’ the outcome? That system is now used in Alaska and Maine. It’s called Ranked Choice voting. You rank your candidates in order of preference. If you like a third party the best, that’s your first choice, but you can rank your preferred major party second. That way, even if your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your second choice. The spoiler effect is gone.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Tom Kando 

I often think historically. From that perspective, I can see a couple of deja vu’s: 

1. Seen historically, Putin’s behavior is the norm, not the exception: From ancient Egypt and Rome to Hitler, including the Asian hordes (Attila, Genghis Khan, Timur), European nationalism (Louis XIV, Napoleon, Prussia), Western imperialism (Belgium, Britain, France, Iberians, Netherlands, the US) 20th century fascism and communism (Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Mao), etc.: All powerful regimes have engaged in the same thing as Putin’s Russia is doing today: The enlargement of the nation’s territory through conquest and genocide of alien territories and populations. This has been the norm more than the exception. 

The shocking thing about Putin’s campaign is not that it is unprecedented, but that it represents pre-1945 politics by other means. It is the type of war and aggression that was practiced by innumerable powerful states until the middle of the 20th century. 

2. On Oct. 12, the United Nations voted to condemn Russia’s behavior in Ukraine. This, too, is reminiscent of the past: 
In 1920, the planet took its first step ever toward world federalism, or world government. It created the League of Nations, with forty-two countries joining originally, growing to fifty-eight, headquartered in Geneva. To his everlasting credit, President Wilson used all his influence to promote the creation of this world body, in conjunction with the Treaty of Versailles and the conclusion of World War One. Sadly, due to customary senatorial malpractice, the US ended up not joining. The novel idea was that national borders, as drawn on maps, are sacrosanct. Nations enjoy sovereignty. No nation is to invade, occupy, attempt to possess territory belonging to another nation. Borders may be negotiable, but they are not to be altered through war.

What to do About Putin and Russia?

Tom Kando 

Putin is saber rattling again, threatening,   blackmailing, maybe bluffing, maybe not...I mean,   of  course, his renewed nuclear threat. 

 The current   deja vu is the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962,   the stand-off between President Kennedy and Nikita   Khrushchev, two weeks during which the world was   at the edge of nuclear Armageddon. We are not there - yet. 

Regarding the war in Ukraine, there is nothing refreshing to say about it. There are no words to express how evil Putin’s unprovoked assault and his devastation of the neighboring country are. 

We hear that Ukraine is turning the tide, that it may well win the war. This would be great, if it were realistic. 

The problem is that Ukraine is fighting the devil. Putin holds the trump card - the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. 

And just like the devil, Putin is not going anywhere. Russia’s and Putin’s defeats are hard to imagine, judging from what we know about the man’s mentality. It can be described generously as “stubborn,” or bluntly as “psychopathic.” 

At the risk of falling into the mea culpa mode so often typical of Western liberals, let me bring up what may have been a mistake on the part of the West. I am referring to the vast expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We added a dozen new members and encircled Russia, making practically every state bordering that country into its enemy. Russia became entirely isolated, the international black sheep. 

By no means am I blaming the West for what Russia is doing now. There are those who bring up the tired old refrain of our “military industrial complex..” They argue that “this war is what the capitalist weapons manufacturers want, for profit, etc.” I am not among this group. 

Of course, we did not create Putin’s imperial ambitions. He might have behaved even more aggressively if we had not enlarged and strengthened NATO. There is always the Munich analogy, Neville Chamberlain, “Peace in our Time,” the appeasement of Hitler in 1938. Maybe the only proper response to such aggressive dictators is force. 

However, isn’t it possible that the West made some mistakes, that it didn’t think the situation through, didn’t think sufficiently about the future, about some side-effects of such a drastic expansion of NATO, especially the inclusion of all the countries that used to be Russia’s vassals? 

Are Hungarians from Mars?

Dr. Theodore von Karman

By Madeleine Kando

There are moments in an immigrant’s life, when one wonders where one belongs. Where one’s identity lies. Are you the person that left or are you the person that arrived? An emigrant or an immigrant? You cannot be one without the other, obviously. It’s like asking an airplane not to depart before arriving at its destination.

Most immigrants are much too busy trying to survive to ask themselves these existential questions. It’s a luxury that only a retired self-absorbed immigrant like myself, can afford. Besides, you would think that being a veteran immigrant of almost 50 years, I would have solved that riddle a long time ago.

I left my native Hungary at a very early age, not having any say in the matter. Then I left France to move to Holland where I basically grew up. I performed some test flights in my early twenties to England and Spain, but my final destination was America, where I spent the rest of my life.

The question I ask myself: am I Hungarian? French? Dutch? American?

I don’t kid myself by thinking that I am unique as an immigrant. The whole world is either emigrating or immigrating. We are a curious species and contrary to the proverbial cat, it hasn’t killed us yet. It just makes us want to travel and discover even more.

But Hungarians are a special case. There are more Hungarians that live outside of Hungary than in the country itself. The first ‘diaspora’ was not because Hungarians left their country; their country left them. The post-World War I Treaty of Trianon reduced the fatherland to a fraction of what if was before. As a consequence, two million Hungarians found themselves living outside their own country.

Other ‘diasporas’ (including the persecution of Jews in the Second World War and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956) caused another 3 million Hungarians to leave their country, including little old me.

So what happened to all these millions of Hungarians? Did they become part of the ‘melting pot’? Just another patch in the crazy quilts that make up nations?

That assumption is not borne out by facts. Rather than politely blending into their new surroundings, like normal immigrants do, Hungarians always make their presence loudly known by being smarter or weirder, or more creative than others.

The Martians

This was especially the case with a group of prominent Hungarian physicists an mathematicians who emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. They were Jewish and were fleeing the Nazi occupation. After some time ‘observing’ them, as scientist like to do, their colleagues at the Los Alamos Lab, started to suspect that these men with their superhuman intellect, who had arrived from an obscure country and spoke an incomprehensible foreign language, were not ordinary humans, but were really from Mars.*

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi once casually asked fellow scientists the following question: “The universe is so vast that intelligent life must be out there in large numbers. Eventually they should spread out all over the Galaxy. These highly exceptional and talented people could hardly overlook such a beautiful place as our Earth. They should have arrived here by now, so where are they? "

In Memory of Ata Kando

Ata Kando made these photos around 1958. They were never published. It is a love story that could not be told better than through Ata's incredible photographic talent. I publish it here posthumously, in honor of her upcoming birthday, on September 17th.

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British Character

 Tom Kando 

 For a week so far, we have been treated to the pageantry, the ceremony, the dignity, the spectacle of Queen Elizabeth’s departure. 

I remember Queen Elizabeth’s coronation over seventy years ago (February 6, 1952). I lived in France at the time. I was nearly eleven. People didn’t own television sets yet, certainly not in impoverished neighborhoods such as mine. Even my junior high school had no TV. However, there was a fancy private school a few blocks away, and it had ONE TV set. So our teacher had my whole class walk to that rich school, and there, we watched Elizabeth’s coronation. 

Today, the world’s fascination with this event and the accompanying spectacle are interesting. At first, I had no interest in adding my two bits’ worth of comments to the media’s already oversaturated coverage. 

However, I can now see a connection with the topic of my previous post, which dealt with the subject of good cultures and bad cultures, good societies and “less good” societies. 

Since the Queen’s death, Britain has presented its best face to the world, of course. As we look at the streets of London, the Westminster Abbey, people placing flowers in front of Buckingham Palace, the impressive parades, and as we listen to eloquent speeches, most of us probably agree that England looks like a fine and attractive society, all things considered. Hmm...could WE perhaps learn a few things from the British? 

Before I proceed, a caveat: I understand that generalizations about entire countries are problematic at best and stereotyped prejudices at worst. 

And as far as Britain is concerned specifically: Let’s not forget that the country’s history is replete with bloodbaths, both domestic and worldwide (something that can be said about nearly all countries, especially powerful ones). 

But for now, what the news has shown us about Britain most recently is appealing, and it makes us think more highly of that country. The ceremony, the ritual, the formality, the speeches, the pomp and circumstance, the landscape, the behavior of all parties, including the royal family, the public and the authorities, all this makes us think: The British know how to do things well; they know how to do things and say things with dignity. They have class. 

To be sure, the country is facing challenges (which country does not, currently?). The British committed a major and irreversible error when they voted for Brexit. Centrifugal forces continue to threaten the island nation, including the continued possibility of a Scottish exit. The country faces looming economic problems, etc. 

What are Memories?

By Madeleine Kando

The word for ‘memory’ in old English is ‘murnan’, which means ‘to mourn or remember sorrowfully’. You recognize that meaning in the Dutch words ‘mijmeren’ or ‘peinzen’, which means ‘to ponder, muse or dream’.

To have memories always has a tinge of deep, regretfulness, whether we are talking about positive or negative memories. They are sorrowful because they represent moments that no longer exist. On the other hand, we wouldn’t be who we are without our memories. Memories define us. Like strands of spaghetti, memories make us reach into the past and into our future. It is only because we have memories that we can ‘imagine’ our future self.

As I write this, I have memories of the three weeks I just spent in Kauai. They are wonderful, but also sorrowful. I dream of still being there. The older these memories are, the more they approach the pining stage. Six months from now, when Boston is buried under five feet of snow and it is too cold to even take my dog out to pee, I will pine and sorrowfully muse about Kauai. I won’t pine for the centipede that one morning decided to share my shower cell and whose bite feels like you have just been shot. I won’t dream of the monster wave that knocked me down to the sandy bottom and almost crashed open my skull. Those details will be conveniently forgotten.

When I was on Kauai, there was no room for memories because the present was so overwhelming: Hiking in the jungle, snorkeling and watching the stunningly beautiful Napali Coast. You cannot have memories of something that is happening in the present.

Kauai itself has a five million year old memory, stored in its red soil and lush vegetation. If a Kauaian could live that long she would have witnessed two billion sunsets, give or take. Do islands have memories? Or is it the privileged domain of sentient beings?

Most of us who go there to partake in this sensory orgy, want desperately to hold on to a fleeting experience by taking hundreds of photos of those sunsets. The original inhabitants more than likely watched the sunset after a hard day’s work tilling their taro fields. They didn’t watch it through their iPhone. Does the frenzied desire to hold on to the present by taking pictures of a sunset prevent us from experiencing it?

My parents were both professional photographers. They taught me a thing or two about viewing the world through a lens. Our ‘family albums’ do not sit on a bookshelf gathering dust, they ARE our family. My twin sister is not this grey haired woman that I Skype with on a regular basis. She is the chubby baby that I shared a crib with. She is the gorgeous 16 year old blond who stole all my boyfriends. She is the 21 year old ballet dancer posing for a perfect arabesque. Our entire lives were recorded, minute by minute, not because of our memories but because of the lens that both my parents focused on us, their children.

But you don’t need to be a professional these days to immortalize your life’s memories. We all feel this tug of war between our need to share our memories and memories’ inherent desire to remain private. They are supposed to die when you die. Don’t they reside in our brain? True memories are personal, intimate. Why? Because they are yours, no one else’s. A photo you post on Facebook becomes everyone’s memory. It loses it’s memoriness. It’s just a fake copy of a memory. The ‘friends’ that see that memory make it their own. It is not longer yours.

There are memories that one would rather not have. Those are so painful that they only appear in nightmares. It is the strength of our species that we cope with memories that otherwise would destroy us. If memories would force us to relive those nightmarish moments, we would not survive them. The present can break us, but we are masters of our memories.

Sometimes I fantasize about having no memory of the day before. I wake up, look at the sunlight through the bedroom curtains and I am full of wonder. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? I am new, not a copy of what I was yesterday. I don’t want to sound factitious. I know loss of memory is a devastating condition. But isn’t that what we do when we read fiction, watch movies and even imagine what it would be like to be a famous person? We try to become a person we were not before.

But the moment I return to my ‘real life’, I see my wrinkled hands type these words, I feel the stiffness in my back, I hear the rain pelt against my window. I cannot wait till the moment my brain has had time to wash the present clean of its sting and morph it into a laundered memory.

The only problem with that, is that since I am not a famous photographer whose memories are immortalized, no matter how clean washed my present will be, it will disappear the moment I disappear. Oh well, it’s probably for the best. Can you imagine if everybody’s memories would survive them? It would clog the airways, cause incredible memory traffic jams - one person’s memories would collide with another person’s memory at a traffic circle and they would not know where to go! It would cause a global memory epidemic!

That’s what’s happening on Facebook. We are confusing the real world with what happened in the past. Now, I pine for those sunsets that I didn’t ruin by watching them through my iPhone. I prevented the memory of that one memorable sunset to plant itself into my long-term memory, by trying to focus, get the right angle, etc.

Then, we share those memories with our friends on Facebook, pretending they are real memories. The next time you share a photo of a sunset on Facebook, add a caption: ‘warning this is a pretend sunset. To see the real thing, close your eyes and imagine one.’ leave comment here

Good Cultures and Bad Cultures

Tom Kando

Some societies are more successful than others. Today, there are successful societies such as Australia, Canada and Scandinavia, and unsuccessful ones such as Ethiopia, Pakistan and Venezuela. In the past, ancient Rome succeeded for over a thousand years, and the Third Reich failed after twelve years. 

By “successful,” I mean two things: (1) in such societies, a majority of the people live relatively free, prosperous and peaceful lives, unhampered by internal or external strife, and (2) such societies survive as coherent nations and remain viable for a long time. They do not fall apart. In other words: Quality and longevity. 

Whether a society succeeds or fails depends on many factors. One of these is Culture. Every society has its culture, its national character. By this I mean behavioral tendencies and core values and beliefs. For example, when I am overseas, I can recognize Americans fairly easily, from their appearance and their behavior. Of great importance to Americans are individual freedom and shopping. They are spontaneous and friendly. They sometimes believe untested ideas and are therefore viewed as naive. They are open-minded to new ideas, at least until recently... 

Some cultures are good and other ones not so good. An example of a bad culture was that of the Aztecs, who ruled parts of Central America for about a century (1428 to 1521) This was a theocratic and highly militaristic empire which practiced human sacrifice on a large scale. Its agriculture was based on the slash and burn system - the milpa - which has been held responsible for the destruction of the land’s fertility (See Hoebel, pp. 244 a.f.). 

Another bad culture was that of the Easter Islands: Faced with declining food and resources, the religious leadership urged the population to redouble the building of massive statues so as to propitiate the gods. To this end, all remaining trees were cut down and the island’s environment was destroyed. The society lapsed into cannibalism and devastation (See: Jared Diamond). 

 Current countries where counterproductive beliefs and habits seem to be widespread include Russia and some Middle Eastern and Latin American states. Dysfunctional cultural elements include extreme religiosity, machismo, violence, authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, even unhealthy physical habits and unhealthy eating and drinking. “Bad cultures,” are non-adaptive. 

Kauai!

By Madeleine Kando

It’s early here in Kauai. A group of nenes waddle across the lawn in front of our lanai. Behind them, the blue ocean shimmers in the morning sun. In the hazy distance, Mount Makana, also known as Bali Hai, stands guard over her dominion, making sure everything is as it should be.

God must have had Kauai in mind when he created the concept of ‘beauty’. It is a sensory paradise. The oldest island in the Hawaiian chain, Kauai has had time to turn into a lush, green garden island. The trade winds make sure temperatures are never too hot or too cold and constantly envelops your skin with a silken touch.

A bright green gecko with red warpaint on his back is on a warpath across the wall. He watches me and is as curious about me as I am of him. He catches a bug and licks his chops, waits, catches another one. An identical copy appears. They now confront each other. Two minuscule warriors competing for a morning breakfast.

Suddenly, one of the nenes screeches as he spreads his large wings and runs at high speed across the lawn. I see the shadow of a black cat disappear in the brush. But in an instant everything is back to its peaceful state. The feral cat population on this island is obviously not on good terms with the nenes.

We prepare for our first snorkel adventure and choose to go to Anini Beach, where the surf is mild and entry fairly easy. My 10 year old grandson Marshall, his mother and I wade into the waves. The water is warm and as we flutter kick our way closer to the reef, hundreds of tiny yellow finned goatfish encircle us, turning the water into a silver cloud. I hold Marshall’s little hand in mine and we forge our way closer to the reef.

In the crevices, we see the famous trigger fish (Humuhumu), with its blue mustache and triangular shape. He doesn’t seem to appreciate our presence and emits a plume of milky dust in his wake as he swims away. There are bright yellow tang fish and the impressive parrot fish (Uhu in Hawaiian). These are in their bright blue male phase and are known to keep a harem of females. When the male dies, the alpha female of the harem switches sex, becoming a male herself.

Further towards the sandy bottom, we see a group of totally black triggerfish. As one of them turns, a gorgeous blue and green line radiates from its eyes. As he swims away, tossing its fins back and forth like a flamenco dancer’s skirt, my breath is taken away: a neon blue halo appears along his entire body.

We turn a bend in the reef. Suddenly, Marshall points at something, frantically waving to me to come closer. Then, I see it: two larger white and black striped damsel fish are being attacked by a group of smaller, brightly colored tamarind fish. One even pushes its nose under a damsel fish’s gill. As we look closer, we realize that we are looking at a cleaning station. These larger fish are actually being cleaned by the smaller fish, removing parasites and getting a meal in return.

Snorkeling is like a drug. It opens a door on a different world. Even in my diving days, what we saw did not match the variety of colors and shapes that one sees closer to the shore. The corral must have been a lot healthier before tourism caused it to deteriorate, but the island is now limiting access to the northern beaches, giving the corral and reef fish a chance to regenerate. 

Like hundreds of others, we are here as a family, enjoying one of the most unique locations on earth. The nenes and the mynah birds know this. Their loud screeching tells us: ‘We allow you to be here, as long as you behave yourself. As long as you respect what is around you.’

Hawaii not your run of the mill volcanic islands. Usually volcanic eruptions happen where two tectonic plates meet, but the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount chain sits right in the middle of the Pacific Plate and reaches all the way to Siberia. The source of its enormous volcanoes is a hotspot that originates deep in the center of the earth. The Pacific plate slowly moves towards the North American Plate and slides under it (subducting) at a rate of 7 inches a year.

Imagine a sheet of thick cardboard that slides over a blow torch. Every time the blow torch ignites, it melts the underside of the sheet and eventually burns a hole, pushing the molten lava through it, thus creating a volcano. Hawaiian volcanoes were formed very slowly, creating huge dome shaped mountains, resembling warrior’s shields, hence they are known as shield volcanos.

Kauai is the old lady of the bunch and is slowly being eroded. Traveling south, to the other Hawaiian islands, you can see how Kauai looked like millions of years ago. The Big Island is still in its infancy. It is black, steaming and glowing with fresh lava. As you travel north, there is Maui still young, only about a million years old, but already covered with lush vegetation. Further up, towards the Asian continent, you peer into Kauai’s future. This beautiful old lady will shrink, until it turns into an Atoll and will finally completely disappear under the waves.

Waimea

Today is our ‘Waimea’ day. We drive to the other side of the island to Waimea canyon. Also known as ‘the Grand Canyon of the Pacific’, Waimea is a spectacular gorge, roughly 3,600 feet deep and 10 miles long. Here you can witness the island’s turbulent past.

As we drive up the winding road from the town below, we see the island of Nihau in the hazy distance. They call it the forbidden island because only native Hawaiians are allowed to live there. At mile marker 14, we drive our jeep onto a hunters’ trail called the ‘Miloli’I Ridge Road’. It is supposed to be drivable all the way to the end point, 5 miles down, with a stunning view of the Napali Coast, but half way in, the tossing and jostling becomes too much and we decide to hike the rest of the way. The scent of eucalyptus and guava fruit accompanies us. We stop half way down at a picknick area and eat our Subway sandwiches, washing it down with Hawaiian beer. 

As we huff and puff our way back, uphill this time, a red dust covered pickup passes us. In the cargo bed, we see a dead bloody wild boar, with his legs dangling over the side. Well, this is a hunter’s trail after all. It wasn’t put there for the benefit of soft-hearted tourists from Boston.

The Napali

We decide to pay a small fortune to go on a Napali Coast Boat Tour. We meet at Anini beach, where we leave our flip flops in a basket and wade through the shallow water to board the small catamaran. The engines rev to take us out to deeper waters and we begin the trek around the Napali Coast. The water glistens in the morning sun and the coastline become more and more beautiful. We enter caves carved out by the surf, starboard we see a turtle lazily bob up and down on the waves.

The captain points up to a narrow red line on the cliff. That is the notorious ‘crawlers’ ledge’ on the Napali trail. At this point, the trail is so narrow that hikers literally have to crawl on hands and knees. I hope I will come back as a mountain goat in my next life, so I can enjoy the Napali without having to crawl on hands and knees. We see boobie birds nesting, a goat here and there, but mostly the majestic cliffs. There is no better way to see this coastline than from the ocean side.

On the way back, the boat is being slammed down hard, we get tossed left and right , sprayed clean and I silently offer a small prayer to Mr. Dramamine. The boat gets pulled onto the boat ramp, passengers and all and we put our flip flops back on, unforgettable images floating in our heads for days to come.

We are facing North West, the perfect direction for the famous Kauai sunset. A rain storm is approaching the island, inching its way closer over the water, but on the land side, the sky is blue with small fluffy clouds. Bali Hai is half hidden, bursting with moisture. The sun emerges from behind the overhanging clouds, the entire firmament ablaze with an indescribable array of colors: purple, orange, gold, bluish grey. No amount of words can do this sunset justice, even the nenes take time out from munching the grass to watch it. 

One Hundred and One Times Across the Atlantic

Tom Kando 

For various personal and circumstantial reasons (aging; Covid, etc.), my travel habits are changing. Before 2020, I used to go to Europe a lot - usually twice a year. I have crossed the Atlantic one hundred and one times altogether. It could be a few more, I’m not sure. While I traveled between Europe and America several times before 2000, the frequency of such trips rose a great deal after the turn of the century. Let me explain why: 

My family of orientation comes from Hungary. We moved from Budapest to Paris when I was seven. Then we moved from Paris to Amsterdam when I was fourteen. I went to America for one year when I was nineteen in 1960 and I moved there permanently in 1965, when I was twenty-five. My (single) mother (Ata) stayed in Holland until 1977. By then, I was a US citizen, a professor in California and I had my own family of procreation. That year, my wife Anita and I moved Ata to come and live near us in Sacramento, and she stayed here for over twenty years. 

Then, she moved back to the Netherlands. This made sense: She was eighty-six. She could not drive. She was still a (naturalized) Dutch citizen. Like most Western European welfare states, the Netherlands provide excellent, affordable and generous medical services, much better than the US. Other public services such as elder care, transportation and retirement benefits are also far superior to America’s. 

Therefore, moving back to Holland was the right decision. Ata’s extended family pooled together our resources and bought her a wonderful apartment in a high-end retirement home in the fairy-tale like seashore community of Bergen, just thirty miles North of Amsterdam.

Kauai!

 

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Grandfathers and their Daughters

By Madeleine Kando

My family is originally from Hungary. That is where I was born, but soon my parents moved to France. Then, when my brother, twin sister and I were in our early teens, we moved again, this time to Holland. We quickly forgot how to speak Hungarian, but never lost our French.

We adapted well to our Dutch life. My mother had divorced her second husband and tried to make a living on her own. We entered puberty with a vengeance and partied day and night. One week-end blurred into another, all ending up in the bathroom, vomiting our guts out.

Decades later, when I was already a grandmother myself, I found an old letter, written by my grandfather. It was written after one of his infrequent visits to the West, infrequent enough for us kids to see him as a quaint old man, speaking perfect French, with a Hungarian accent. The letter has no date, but it was addressed to us and must have been written during that period, when we were partying as if there was no tomorrow. My mother, a photographer, was trying to work on the third floor of our flat, an impossible feat considering the loud music and drinking that was going on downstairs.

The letter is written in French, but not just your daily variety. It is clear that the writer is a highly educated man. He not only spoke and wrote French, but translated hundreds of works from Greek, Latin, Russian, German and English. Behind his highly stylized prose, the sadness and desperation of an old man is as clear as a bell.

It is a lamentation of a concerned father, trying to talk some sense into three semi-delinquent teenagers, who were literally abusing their mother. It is a plea that obviously fell on deaf ears. ‘Grand-père’ as we used to call him, knew this even as he was writing it. He knew he was fighting a lost battle. I don’t think any of us read the letter at the time. Many years later, as I read this letter, the helplessness of a father trying to protect his daughter is palpable.

Pi

Tom Kando 

My previous post began a discussion of some interesting mathematical problems which I want to share with you. I am fully aware that I am a novice in this field. Last time, I wrote about prime numbers. Today, I want to talk about another fascinating topic, namely Pi (π). 

You have heard of the expression “squaring the circle,” right? It means doing (or trying to do) the impossible. 

In order to construct a square with the same area as a given circle, you must first determine the area of the circle, using the following steps: 

1. measure the circle’s circumference. 

2. measure the diameter, that is the distance across the circle between the two halfway points of the circumference. 

3. determine the radius, which is half the diameter. 

4. Square the radius and multiply this number by 3.14 (π). 

In other words A (Area) = π x r 2 (r is radius) 

Then, you simply compute the square root of the circle’s area. This gives you the length of the square’s side. 

Example. You want to square a circle which has a circumference of 1,000 meters. 

Using the π approximation of 3.14, The circle’s diameter is therefore about 318.5 meters, and the radius is half of that - 159.25 meters. The circle’s area is therefore 3.14 x 159.25 2 = 79,582 square meters. The square’s side is the square root of this (√79,582) i.e. approximately 282.1 meters. 

For practical purposes, this procedure will do. However, the problem is that π is a transcendental number. 

Transcendental numbers are non-algebraic and irrational: They are NOT the solution of an algebraic equation. They cannot be expressed as the ratio of two numbers. They have a non-terminating decimal.

22/7 is often used as an approximation of π. It is about 3.14. Since it is a fraction, it is a rational number. Like π,, it has an infinite, non-terminating number of decimals. 

However,UNLIKE π,, the decimals consist of a six-digit repetend. . For example, if you divide 22 by 7 to 24 decimals, you get 3,142857 142857 142857 142857. “142857" is called a “repetend,” and it repeats ad infinitum.

SOME INTERESTING MATHEMATICAL TOPICS

Tom Kando

Most of my recent posts have been negative. There are so many wrong things these days. The third year of Covid, 5th month of war in Ukraine, the Supreme Court abolishing our constitutional rights, the proliferation of weapons and therefore of mass murder, no progress on the environmental front, the rightward political drift toward fascism in many countries, etc. 

So how about something not depressing, for once? 

A field which has long piqued my curiosity is mathematics, if only because I am not well versed in that area. Incidentally, some of my ancestors were eminent mathematicians and scientists. They include my great-grandfather Beke Mano, who was a pioneer in differential equations and my grand-uncle 

Kalman Kando who invented the phase converter. 

My secondary school education was stellar on the humanities side, but mediocre on the quantitative side: At the gymnasium, we had six years of six languages - Dutch, English, French, German, Latin and Greek! However, our quantitative training did not go beyond algebra, trigonometry, analytic geometry and stereometry. Later, obtaining my PhD at the University of Minnesota required a strong quantitative component in the form of advanced statistics. However, most of my quantitative skills, limited to begin with, have atrophied. I remain fascinated by fields about which I know little, wondering sometimes if I might chose the direction of the exact sciences if I were to do things all over again. 

Take prime numbers, for instance. You can check out a previous post of mine about this: 

Prime Numbers, Large Numbers 

A prime number is a whole number that can only be divided by 1 and by itself. Or put differently, prime numbers cannot be divided by any other whole number without leaving a fraction. The smallest twenty-five prime numbers (those under 100) are: 

Ranked Choice Voting

by Madeleine Kando

 

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Thank God for the Vaccine (From my Coronavirus Diary)

By Madeleine Kando

Day 1

What a wonderful time we had in San Francisco. Aside from the joy of being with my 10 year old grandson, there was the city with its parks, its architecture and its museums. Even without any of that, it would have felt like a get out of jail free card after so much time being cooped up in our own universe, back in Boston. For almost two years, we steered clear of the claws of this ruthless monster called Covid. We didn’t go to restaurants, we had friends over one at a time, no parties, no movies, no nothing. 

Now, it is time to fly back home. Squeezed in the window seat, my glasses fogging up above a n95 mask, I am ready to zone out and pretend I am somewhere else for the next 6 hours. Long gone are the days when I fully enjoyed flying cross-country. The window shade is partially open, symbolic of my ambivalence about an experience that I used to find absolutely thrilling. Most of us think nothing of propelling ourselves at 500 miles an hour, at an altitude that only two bird species on earth are known to reach, but I was born two years before the first transatlantic commercial flights began, and there is still this sense of wonder in me. I open the window shade and endure the dirty looks from my co-passengers who are trying to sleep. I cannot get myself to be completely indifferent to this wonder of aviation.

That evening I collapse on my king-size bed and realize how exhausted I am. My throat doesn’t feel good, but I don’t give it a second thought. Home sweet home…

Day 2

The next day, my throat is painful. I can barely swallow. I have intense body aches and a great desire to stay in bed. I test myself for Covid, but I am negative. I go outside to inspect the vegetable garden and notice that little bites have been taken out of all the seedlings. Cukes, beans, peas, all rendered inedible. ‘Oh I forgot to tell you about the groundhogs, mom’, my daughter says. 

We install chicken wire around everything that we assume would go on a groundhog menu: Marigolds, nasturtiums, pansies.. I sprinkle ‘deer repellant’ around the raised beds, which is a terrible mistake. Its odor is so repulsive, that even I cannot go in the garden.

I crawl back in bed. An hour later, I look through our French doors and see a fat groundhog, probably the mother, blissfully eating away at a clover patch. She stares straight at me, her jaws working a mile a minute. A smaller version has materialized and follows in her footsteps. Like two efficient lawnmowers, they quickly decimate half of the clover patch.

Day 3

My symptoms are worse. The lozenges are pretty much all I can tolerate. Having the flu is no picnic. 

Guns and Murders

Tom Kando

My previous post's title was: It's the Guns, Stupid. 

I subsequently thought: There is a simple way to prove this: Just draw up a list of places, list two variables for each place, namely (1) per capita gun ownership and (2) per capita murders, and see if there is a correlation between the two. For example, one could use a list of our 50 states for this or a list of the world's roughly 200 countries.

There is anecdotal and journalistic  evidence that states and countries with high rates of gun ownership also have high murder rates (e.g. Texas vs. Massachusetts, or the US vs, Holland). But I can't think of any  systematic attempt to correlate the two variables, using a list of states or countries. So I did it myself. It was quite simple. I chose to list countries rather than US states. To make it easier on myself I reduced the population to 45 Aimportant@ countries. I then listed each country's  rate of gun ownership and its murder rate.  This produced a bi-variate 2x2 table, on which I did a Chi Square significance test. My data are from  countries ranked by gun ownership rates  and countries ranked by murder rates

Of the 45 countries in my sample, 25 were Ahigh gun ownership@ and 20 were Alow gun ownership@ Of the same 45 countries, 17 were Ahigh murder rate@ and 28 were Alow murder rate. The table below gives the distribution of the 45 countries into 4 cells, as indicated:

                                                               Table I: The relationship between guns and murders

		MURDERS
		MANY	FEW	TOTAL
GUNS	MANY	#1) 12	#2) 13	25
	FEW	#3) 5	#4) 15	20
	TOTAL	17	28	45

 

Cell 1: High rates of gun ownership and therefore high murder rates: US, Pakistan, Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico, Russia, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Columbia, South Africa, Jamaica, Brazil.

Cell 2: High rates of gun ownership and yet low murder rates: Canada, Finland, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Germany, Thailand, Australia, Italy, Belgium, Hungary.

Are Things Getting Worse?

Tom Kando 

 Many bad things are happening in the world today. 

I sometimes feel that the world is worse off now than it has been during most of my life. I say most, because I do remember times when the world was in worse shape than it is now - notably during the first five years of my life, 1941-1945. I spent those years in Hungary. At that time, things there were similar to what they are today in the South-Eastern part of Ukraine. Budapest and its surroundings were being pulverized, annihilated, obliterated, wiped off the face of the earth. 

There have been other turbulent periods and catastrophic events affecting humanity during my life. But an awful lot of crises are currently piling up on top of each other. 

For one thing, we are in the third year of a pandemic. There have been 540 million cases and 6.5 million deaths. The US alone has had 87 million cases and 1.1 million deaths. That’s 16 % of the world, even though we only make up 4% of the world’s population. As a result, America’s life expectancy is declining. 

You might argue that we are better off with Covid than the world was with the previous pandemic - the 1918-1920 “Spanish Flu,” and you would be right. Here are the facts: The Spanish Flu infected 500 million people, a number which Covid already exceeds. However, that was 26% of the world’s population at that time, whereas Covid has only infected 7% of the world so far. On the other hand, Covid is outlasting the Spanish Flu. As far as deaths are concerned, the Spanish Flu killed about 35 million people, or 1.8% of the population of the world at the time, or one out of 56 people. So far, Covid has killed 0.08% of the world’s population, i.e. one out of every 1,200 people. Thank God for vaccines!

A Twin’s Perspective on Friendship

By Madeleine Kando

It is difficult to define friendship, but like many other indefinable things in life, ‘you know it when it’s there’. It is more like beauty or art, something that you value for its own sake. As soon as you try to exploit it for personal gain, it vanishes. It’s like trying to catch your own shadow.

I am not talking about the Facebook kind of ‘friend’. I am talking about the bond that is created between two people who decide to devote their time and energy to a mutually agreed upon relationship that is completely voluntary. Unlike other types of relationships like family ties, romantic ties or business ties, where you have some kind of ‘obligation’ to each other, friendship survives on the complete absence of rules. It is literally the stuff of dreams. A friendship is like a dream that you have with another person. And just like a dream, friendship is fragile.

The root word for friend is fréon (to love), which is connected to freo (not in bondage, acting of one's own will). It describes friendship to a T. It is one of the most democratic arrangements in social interactions. And just like a Democratic arrangement, if you don’t work at maintaining a friendship, it just disappears, without complaining or throwing a tantrum.

One factor that has influenced my view of friendship, is the fact that I am a twin. My sister is actually not at all like me. She is uninhibited and blunt and she acts out her frustrations by lashing out. I am self-conscious, reserved and eat up all my anger. But we were never really ‘alone’. There was always this other you that wasn’t you.

We were close growing up, since people couldn’t tell us apart, but for years, we were compelled to create conflict to prove that we were really two people. Especially after my father left and we had to vie for our only parent’s attention.

We have come full circle, however. With the help of distance and time (my twin in Spain, me in the States), we are finally able to meet each other as equals, like two branches on an old tree with a common base. We can talk to each other, accept each other and let bygones be bygones.

I had several friends, on my way to old age, most of them women. There was Marijke in high school, back in Holland. She lived in a beautiful, old style Dutch house with a thatched roof and a large garden with cherry trees. Why we were friends, I don’t remember. She actually decided that we should be, not me. Then, there was Barbara. Beautiful, tall, intoxicating Barbara. We were friends too, to the point of embarking on a secret correspondence based on a semi-pornographic series of teenage books called ‘the thousand and one nights’. Barbara sometimes gave me a ride home on her bike. I sat on the rack behind her, holding her narrow waist, her long skirts brushing against my legs. Her long pony tail reminded me of a beautiful, shiny race horse.

It's the Guns, Stupid

Tom Kando

It happened again - May 14: Ten  innocent civilians (mostly black) mowed down by a racist lunatic. This time it happened  in Buffalo. Eleven  days earlier  it was  my hometown, Sacramento: Six dead - half of them women, half people of color.

American mass murder will never stop. We are moving in the wrong direction. After every  mass shooting, thousands more  add to their arsenal. There are  four hundred million fire arms in private hands in this country, and the number is growing. An increasing proportion of these weapons are rapid-fire automatic, capable of firing dozens to hundreds of rounds per minute. They are created for mass murder and nothing else.

Public opinion is also moving in the wrong direction - with ever lower levels of support for gun control legislation.

Judicial decisions increasingly favor out-of-control gun ownership of any kind by anybody.

First, there was the 2^nd Amendment It stated that Aa well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.@ Over time,  the first half of this amendment became ignored. Judges came to misinterpret the amendment, ignoring the vast differences between the eighteenth century and current conditions. 

In  District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008),  the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self‑defense within the home.

The powerful NRA lobby  had done its job. Many additional judicial decisions at all levels confirmed the new interpretation  of the 2^nd amendment.  A recent example occurred on May 11, 2022, when a US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California=s  law banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under twenty-one  is unconstitutional. And so the 2^nd amendment, which was questionable to begin with, morphed into a sacrosanct protection of one of the few constitutionally enumerated  rights placed above all else. Presciently, Chief Supreme Court  Justice Warren Burger had declared  in 1991 that the Second Amendment is a fraud.  True: the amendment=s current interpretation is most certainly fraudulent.