As I mentioned in these pages before, I grew up during and after World War Two in Europe. My parents, my sisters and I were refugees who moved from Hungary to France and then to Holland. We were so poor that we had to hitch-hike to get around. By the time we moved to Holland, my mother was re-married to a Dutchman named Ed.
We moved from Paris to Amsterdam in 1954. Early one summer morning Ed, my mother Ata, and my sisters Juliette and Madeleine grabbed our backpacks and took the Metro to the northern outskirts of Paris. We began to hitchhike, trying to look cute, hoping that some rich French motorist would take pity and give us a ride in the direction of the Netherlands.
It took us four days to cover the five hundred kilometers from Paris to Amsterdam! Most French (and Belgian and Dutch) motorists were unwilling to pick up a family of five, including two males. Therefore we usually stood on the side of the road for hours before a kind soul finally found it in his heart to pick us up.
Hundreds of cars drove by, some jalopies, some fancy Vedettes and Mercedes. Most motorists ignored the hitchhiking family. Some honked, waved and laughed. Once a sadist stopped his Renault hundred yards up ahead from where we stood. All five of us quickly grabbed our bags and started to run toward the car, counting our blessings. When we got close to the Renault, the driver took off laughing, his wheels spewing back dust and gravel in our faces.
Er was eens een meisje dat heel jong al heel triest was. Ze was steeds aan het dromen over mooie dingen, maar ze was altijd triest en stil als ze met andere mensen was. Ze was mooi, ze was triest en ze leefde in de wereld van gedachten en fantasieën.
Zo ging het een hele tijd. Ze werd steeds groter, ze begon af en toe om het hoekje te kijken van de werkelijkheid omdat ze zich toch wel een beetje eenzaam voelde in die mooie wereld waar ze helemaal alleen was. Maar iedere keer dat ze een blik wierp op de werkelijkheid schrok ze zo van dat vreemde reële gedoe dat ze gauw weer de deur dicht deed en nieuwe fantasieën opbouwde.
Toen was ze al een jonge vrouw en toen begon er iets heel ergs te gebeuren. Haar wereld werd aangevallen! Ze was er helemaal niet op verdacht en het gevolg was dat er een enorm slagveld plaatsvond. Het was verschrikkelijk! Alles wat ze al die jaren netjes gebouwd had, werd plotseling stukgemaakt. Die verschrikkelijke werkelijkheid was barbaars en wist van geen genade. Arm meisje, ze bevond zich plotseling midden in een vreemde vijandige werkelijkheid en ze wist niet hoe ze zich moest handhaven, ze had nog nooit iets geleerd over die werkelijkheid en het was een vreselijke strijd met alles wat om haar heen gebeurde.
Ze wist één ding en dat was vooral niet laten merken dat ze hier niet thuis hoorde, dat ze ergens anders vandaan kwam want dan zouden haar kansen op overleving nihil zijn. Dus ze stond op en begon te lopen en deed alles wat de werkelijkheid van haar verwachtte behalve dat ze niet werkelijk was. Maar alleen zij wist dat. En al gauw had ze zich aan die situatie aangepast, ze leefde zoals alle anderen en dacht steeds meer dat dat gewoon de manier was waarop iedereen leefde.
Maar het feit dat ze van binnen ergens anders thuis hoorde, dat ze ergens anders vandaan kwam, liet haar niet met rust. Ze kreeg een steeds groter gebrek aan werkelijkheidsgevoel, ze wist dat ze een rol speelde en dat het niet echt was en ze bleef triest, gesloten en op zichzelf gekeerd. Andere mensen vertrouwen kon ze niet, want die waren anders, die waren wel van deze wereld.
Eens kwam er een man die haar probeerde te helpen. Hij stak zijn hand uit en probeerde haar naar zich toe te halen, want hij wist dat ze triest en gesloten was en hij hield van haar, ook al was ze niet werkelijk. Maar het meisje schrok en verzon een list om zich te verstoppen. Ze kon die man toch ook niet vertrouwen, hij was niet van haar wereld, hij was een vreemde werkelijke man.
Ratio en allerlei verstoppertjes-spelletjes hebben het meisje steeds behouden van een grote catastrofe, maar ze is nog steeds triest en gesloten en hoewel ze nog altijd wel onbewust verlangt er naar haar rol te laten vallen en echt voorgoed in de werkelijkheid te stappen, blijft er niet veel anders voor haar over dan tussen twee werelden in het leven.
De wereld waar ze vandaan komt en de andere wereld van de werkelijkheid waar ze niet in thuis hoort, maar waar ze haar rol met steeds meer waarachtigheid speelt en binnenkort weet ze zelf niet meer dat ze een rol speelt, dan is de ‘werkelijkheid’ zo ‘onwerkelijk’ en zo ver weg en zo verwrongen dat ze als een kameleon voorgoed van kleur verandert en wie weet, is dat wat de meeste mensen doen.
Van kleur veranderen en er niet meer over nadenken wat hun oorspronkelijke kleur was. Misschien als ze heel oud zijn en helemaal niets meer te verliezen en te verwachten hebben, dat ze dan denken: maar ik ben eigenlijk helemaal niet rood, ik ben geel en dat heb ik al die tijd vergeten en nu is het te laat om het te veranderen.
On December 6, there was
another mass shooting in the US. We have become so inured to such events that we hardly pay attention to them any
more. In Sacramento, rarely a week goes by without one or two people shot to
death. I sometimes feel that I live in a twenty-first century version of Tombstone or Dodge City. The country experiences more than one
mass shooting per day. No other country
comes even close to this. This is one sort of American “exceptionalism.”
As every time, the mass
murder is followed by hand-wringing and endless questions about the perpetrator’s
motives and mental condition. We hear, again and again, that the cause of our
mass murder epidemic is mental illness, that the solution is to identify those
who are dangerously mentally ill and to prevent them from acquiring fire arms. This is nonsense, of course. The rate of mental
illness is not higher in the US than elsewhere.
I have always argued for one simple point: It’s all about the guns. The more guns there are,
the more people die from guns. Period.
But I have yet to come across
data documenting the simple proposition
that there is a strong correlation between a place’s homicide rate and its rate
of gun ownership. Logic is on my side, but what about data?
Last year, I tried to test
this hypothesis myself. I used countries
as my units of analysis. My results were inconclusive. They did not show that
countries with high rates of gun
ownership also had higher homicide rates.
I just repeated my effort. But instead
of comparing countries, I now compared the fifty US states. My source
is States’ gun
ownership rates.
I entered the data into
a two-by-two table with the following four categories:
1. States with high homicide rates and high gun ownership
rates
2. States with low homicide rates and high gun rates
3. States with high homicide rates and low gun ownership
rates
4. States with low homicide rates and low gun ownership
rates
Like most children, I believed in Santa while I was growing up. How could I not? He was a sweet, jovial, warm kind of fellow and I always wondered what would happen if I would catch him in the act of coming down the chimney. Would he wink at me, say ‘ho, ho, ho’, put lots and lots of presents under the tree and climb back up on his way to another family’s chimney? Or would he get upset and do an about-face to teach me a lesson?
As Christmas approached I was always a much nicer person because I knew that Santa was paying close attention to what I was doing. In fact, closer to Christmas, every move I made was scrutinized by this little inner voice in my head that said: ‘What would Santa think of what you are doing?’
I don’t remember when exactly I lost the faith. Maybe it was after I saw my father sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve with lots of boxes in his arms. I didn’t observe any noticeable deterioration in my post-Santa existence, so he slowly slipped into the box marked ‘useless beliefs for the gullible me’, which I stored away in the recesses of my increasingly critical mind.
We still held on to the Christmas tradition, even after I discovered that the Santa I had believed in for so many years was the creation of a cartoonist by the name of Thomas Nast. This mere mortal had been commissioned to create the Santa character as a ploy to keep Union soldiers motivated in their grueling campaigns during the Civil War!
When we moved to a new town and a new house without a chimney, it was clear proof that being good around Christmas time was a waste of my time.
On a cold but sunny December afternoon, we went on our annual Christmas shopping bonanza. Perfectly trimmed Christmas trees were lining the wide and clean streets. There was not a chimney in sight. According to our map, downtown housed a celebrated statue marked as ‘Our Savior’. We approached it from the back, a gigantic construction, and we could see that it was primarily red in color. Soon we could distinguish its features and to our amazement, we recognized the familiar features: long white beard, red hat with a white pompon and the baggy red pants of none other than Santa!Read more...
I am lying on a gurney, waiting to be prepped for an abdominal exam. Dark green curtains hide the rest of this sterile hospital space. I am freezing. I wait, curled up like a cocoon inside some heated blankets that the nurse gave me. The vinyl floor reflects the harsh overhead light. I wait. I am a patiently waiting patient.
Suddenly, a loud voice pierces the air. A nurse slides the curtain open around the adjacent cubicle. With a heavy foreign accent, she begins the intake procedure. My neighbor slurs her speech, as if she just woke up. She sounds old.
Judging by the ensuing questions, she must be here for a colonoscopy.
‘When was the last time you drank, Maam?’ asks the nurse.
‘I drank a gallon of liquid. That was a week ago and nothing happened. I couldn’t move my bowels. They sent me home because it was the wrong day. So this time I did the prep and things started two days after the prep. Nothing but diarrhea'.
‘Oh, wow. But what time did you drink TODAY?
‘Before seven thirty in the morning.’
‘What time did you have anything to eat, like bread or anything’?
‘Nothing.’
The nurse coughs profusely. ‘I hope you are not sick’ says my neighbor.
‘No I am alergic to my cat. Do you have any pain?’
‘Oh yes’
‘Where?’
‘In my head, I have a headache. I fell and I have a headache. And in my belly. Especially when I have to move my bowels. It feels like I am going to burst, but nothing comes out. Maybe a little piece, maybe this size.’
More coughing: ‘Tell me about your teeth can you open your mouth for me?’
‘Very bad. I had some surgery done.’
‘Any loose teeth?
‘Nothing. I don’t have any up here. This one was pulled three months ago and now there are all kinds of growths inside my mouth.’
The questions keep coming. Some, she already answered. The nurse must have amnesia.
More questions. My neighbor starts to lose her patience. ‘Why don’t you look up my medical records, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you have a computer? Why all these questions? All I want is for someone to look up my ass!’
My neighbor now embarks on a lengthy monologue. Is she still talking to the nurse? But the nurse already left. Now, nothing can stop her. She tells the hospital air how she survived the Holocaust, how she had been a Flamenco dancer and had lived in Israel. She owned a cab company called ABC. She goes on telling nobody and everybody her entire life’s story. Probably all invented.
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Congress was at it again: It was having difficulty passing a budget on time, thereby threatening to shut down the government.
This now occurs every other month or so. It is one of the many aspects of our dysfunctional government.
The problem is simple and obvious: Republicans want small government and low taxes. Democrats want the government to provide services for the people - you know, things like education, infrastructure, public health, medical insurance, police, defense, etc. Republicans prefer that you keep as much of your earnings as possible and that you hand over to the government as little of it as possible. A majority of Americans agree with this. Therefore any candidate who dares to suggest raising taxes is committing political suicide.
During the Reagan era, there even arose an economic theory which argued that CUTTING tax rates would INCREASE the government’s tax intake. The theory became quite popular. It was called the LAFFER CURVE, after its progenitor Arthur Laffer. The man’s reasoning was that lower taxes incentivize workers to work more and earn more, and businessmen to invest productively rather than to shelter their profits unproductively or hide them in off-shore tax havens. This theory has long been debunked by most economists, including Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, some calling it the “laughter curve.” yet it retains many adherents among conservatives.
The Republicans’ never-ending efforts to minimize taxes also include their current campaign against increasing the IRS in order to maximize tax audits and minimize tax cheating. Tax under reporting and underpayment cost the government several dozen billion dollars every year.
Understandably, even Democrats are loath to advocate raising taxes.
Yet, there approaches a time when this will be absolutely inevitable. Here are some facts (See for example What is the National Deficit).
For the past twenty-two years, the federal government has been spending more than it has been taking in. Its budget was last in the black in 2001, when Clinton was president.
(References in this piece are to David Remnick’s article In the Cities of Killing published in the New Yorker on November 6, 2023)
It has been over a month since Hamas’ attack ignited the current war and prompted Israel to retaliate with a vengeance. On October 7, Hamas invaded southern Israel and murdered fourteen hundred inhabitants of kibbutzim such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri and revelers at the Nova music festival. Babies were beheaded, parents were executed in front of their children, rape and other atrocities were committed. Over two hundred and forty hostages were taken, and remain in Hamas custody. Some of the civilian inhabitants of Northern Gaza followed the terrorists into Israel and participated in the slaughter and plunder. Hamas labeled the event the Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel calls it Black Saturday. History may remember it as October 7, as America remembers 9/11.
Within a few days, Israel’s IDF began a bombing campaign against Gaza, a campaign of increasing ferocity. It told the one million Palestinians who live in Northern Gaza to evacuate the area, which was identified as the target area. In fact, all of Gaza became the target. Leaving the northern part to find safety elsewhere was an impossibility. Hence, hundreds of children, women and other non-combatants were killed every day, thousands every week. Entire neighborhoods were pulverized, including hospitals, refugee camps, shopping areas and residential housing.
Hamas and its supporters have vowed to destroy Israel. Its charter remains clear: Its basic goal is the total elimination of Israel, “”from the river to the sea.” Their ultimate ambition, as that of supporters such as Hezbollah and Iran, is the elimination of the “Zionist entity.” In 2001, a founder of Hamas said that “the goal is to establish an Islamic state in Palestine, in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, everywhere, under a single Caliphate...we will not tolerate a non-Islamic state on Islamic lands.” (P.33).
After procrastinating for years, I finally got my new prescription for glasses. My current glasses are at least 10 years old and I had forgotten how expensive and time-consuming it is to buy new classes.
For someone who cannot even decide on which leg to get out of bed, the choice of frames is overwhelming.
Besides, trying on frames is an exercise in futility since all you see is a blurred self in the mirror.
I finally selected a frame in the midrange. But frames are not much use without lenses and those make up the bulk of the cost. I finally settled on a pair of Flexon, high-index, anti-glare titanium glasses and went home with a $500 hole in my pocket.
Barely out of the door, the thought of having paid a small fortune for 3 pieces of plastic stuck together with screws that I knew doesn't cost more than $20 to produce, gave me a severe case of indigestion . I returned them the next day.
I figured there was enough juice left in my 10-year-old glasses to research why the industry puts a 1000% markup on their glasses. Especially for something that should be fully covered by insurance, like high blood pressure medication.
The reason is simple: the eyewear industry is a near-monopoly, dominated by an Italian/French company called ‘Essilor Luxottica’.
It was founded in 1961 by Leonardo Del Vecchio. The company owns the biggest retail chains, such as LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, and controls over 80% of the major eyewear brands, including Ray-Ban, Oakley and Vogue Eyewear. Without competition, this company keeps the prices so high that it bears no relation to reality. It even owns Eyemed, the biggest eye insurance provider in the world. So, you see quite a big party!
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We were nearly two weeks in that lovely country. It was delightful. We spent most of our time visiting with relatives and good old friends whom we had not seen in years. We enjoyed excellent Dutch cuisine, including many varieties of cheese and my favorite appetizers: herring and Carpaccio. There were concerts (Bach’s Brandenburg concertos), boat rides through the Amsterdam canals, strolling on the beach, lounging around sidewalk cafés and more. My wife Anita keeps saying: “Europeans are a café society. Why can’t Americans be more like that?”
However, I discovered something quite odd, something that shocked me:
I have long admired the Dutch for being brilliantly multi-lingual. A large majority of them are fluent in English, among other languages. This is quite convenient for American visitors. However, over the past couple of decades, the country’s entire higher education system has become Anglicized. Today, a majority of the curriculum at most Dutch universities is taught in English.
I had no idea.
I grew up in the Netherlands, I received my Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam. I am still fluent in Dutch.
My discovery that Dutch higher education is now largely in English was fortuitous. We met a nice and very intelligent young American who is a student at the University of Groningen. He has been in Holland for several months, but he still hardly speaks a word of Dutch. I asked him how he manages to attend a Dutch university. No problem, he said, since all his classes are in English.
On October 7 2023, the terrorist group Hamas butchered 260 young music lovers at the Supernova Music Festival Negev Desert. They left 1,200 Israelis dead and 2,800 more wounded. Clearly they had ‘kill as many as you can’ on their mind.
The sheer brutality of it all left me breathless. The next day, there were pro-Palestinian and left wing groups celebrating that atrocity. In Manhattan, in London, at Harvard University and other campuses, the chant was: “the Israeli regime is entirely responsible for the violence’.
I spoke to some neighbors, trying to make sense of what just happened, the sheer brutality of the attack. What I heard was ‘It’s terrible, yes, but what about the poor Palestinians?’
It almost seemed like a brainwashed response. I am a liberal and so is most of my neighborhood, but can liberals not call a spade a spade? Can they not see beyond their binary worldview of the oppressors versus the oppressed? I am all for the underdog myself, but mass murder should not be condoned by blaming Israel for imposing an “apartheid” regime on Palestinians. That response requires a much more detailed knowledge of the long lasting Palestinian/Israeli conflict, than my liberal neighbors have.Read more...
I still watch the news and I still read the newspaper every day. This is a bad habit. The news is repetitive and depressing. The major progressive channels (CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, etc.) devote most of the time to Donald Trump and the lawsuits against him, ad nauseam. Overseas, the Ukraine war remains a main topic, with no end in sight.
The Ukrainian situation bothers me a great deal.
Maybe it’s because I come from Eastern Europe. Maybe because I spent the first decade of my life in a war not unlike the current bloodbath in Ukraine, and its aftermath. Maybe because Russia was doing to Hungary, my country of birth, the same thing it is doing to Ukraine now: raping it.
Russia started its unprovoked attack on its peaceful neighbor in February 2014, when it conquered Crimea. It resumed its invasion in February 2022, attempting to annex the entire country, an effort that goes on unabated.
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When the current assault began over a year and a half ago, the media were able to document clearly that Russia’s behavior was as unprovoked, unjustified and cruel as Hitler’s assaults upon Germany’s neighbors had been at the outset of World War Two. We saw on television entire cities pulverized, thousands of women, children and other innocents killed, millions of Ukrainians forced to flee from their country, farcical elections held by Russia, attempting to legitimize the annexation of territories, the deportation of Ukrainian children to re-education locations in Russia.
I am not famous, but my parents were. They were not in the super-famous category, just the local run-of-the-mill famous, like your mayor or the neighborhood idiot. My stepfather actually is the more famous of the two. He was a photographer who made it really big posthumously. You can find him all over the Internet, which is the litmus test of being famous.
Fame doesn’t drop on your head like bird pooh, you know. You have to prime your own fame while you are alive and convince others that you are special, but it’s really the people you don’t know personally that do the real work. The more people there are you don’t know but who know you, the more famous you become. And it’s mostly the post-humous crowd that makes you famous. ‘Oh, I didn’t know her personally, but she was really a great person. So talented!’
It’s called the ‘fame by proxy' syndrome. Knowing a famous person, or just watching them drive by in a limousine, makes you feel special. There is this irresistible rubbing-off effect that people crave: to bask in a famous person’s spotlight.
We all need recognition, proof that we somehow matter. We all matter to ourselves of course, because we are all the center of the Universe. But you cannot take credit for just being, although you might argue that being born already makes you special. Of the billions of sperms competing in the race towards the ovum, the one that made you win the race.
Above and beyond just existing, we have a need to be recognized by others. Our family, our friends, our pets, and our jobs. We want to matter to others. Once you don’t matter anymore, you know it’s time to cut the cord.
The funny thing about fame is that it is a zero-sum game. For some to be famous, others must be ordinary. That’s how it works. While my famous parents were still alive, there was not much room for their children in their orbit. We were an afterthought, a fixture. ‘Oh, look at those cute children of these famous people we came to interview’. It gave a human touch to their fame.
Just the right amount, mind you. Since famous people are there for us to act out our fantasies, they shouldn’t become too real, or the fantasy is in danger of popping like a party balloon. People didn’t want to know about my famous mother’s suffering, as she grew older. Her incontinence, loss of vision and hearing. They didn’t want to know how she roamed the hallways of the assisted living in the middle of the night, trying to dull the agonizing nerve pain in her foot. And she didn’t want them to know how difficult it is to grow old. It was her secret, which she only shared with her children and a few close friends.
I have a thought, which I want to convey to my Dutch friend. English is my language of choice, but then he asks me to say it in Dutch. I grew up in Holland, so you would think it wouldn't be such a difficult task. I find myself grappling for words, trying to construct logical sentences that mirror what I think. I feel like an arthritic contortionist. It doesn't meet my expectations but that's the best I can do. 'I could say this a lot better in English, you know' I tell him.
The same goes for French, another language I grew up with. French sounds melodious and the way it is constructed has a poetic aura about it as if a bunch of poets sat down and selected the most pleasant-sounding bits of human speech to form the French language. (German, tragically, suffers from an abundance of harsh phonemes, as if they were forged by a group of rough warriors who made their enemies run for cover, every time they opened their mouth).
But is language the best conduit for the multi-dimensionality of our mental world? I have to transpose something that is happening on multiple levels into one linear dimension. A thought is not just verbal; it has colors, shape, smell, taste, speed and much more.
Wouldn’t it be truer to reality if we had a means of communication that includes all these dimensions in one package? True, we have art, music, dance and mathematics to convey these other dimensions of thought, but doesn’t their own range also limit those? Can I do justice to quantum mechanics when I express it in music? Can I express the beauty of a sunrise using mathematics?
The current rage is all about chatbots and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can have a conversation with a user in natural language. They can also debug computer programs, compose music, generate business ideas and play games.
But isn’t AI forcing our way of thinking into a one-dimensional ‘verbal’ groove? What about the other major component of communication, i.e. the nonverbal part? There is body language, facial expressions and the tone of your voice, the melody of language, the pauses, hesitations and intonations. All of these contain a huge amount of information, which can drastically alter the verbal content of what is said. If we become enamored with the simplicity and one-dimensionality of chatbots (the spoken word), much of our humanness is at risk of disappearing.
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What is the most universal form of discrimination and victimization? Has it ever occurred to you?
We talk forever about race, ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ, physical handicap, religion, age, obesity, etc.
But what about SIZE? What about being small? (as well as soft-spoken, which often goes with it)?
At five foot eleven, I am average. (At my advanced age, I have shrunk about an inch).
But I have lived in places where I was on the smallish side compared to most other men, and places where my height was average. And you know what? I had a worse time when I lived in places where I was surrounded by many people taller than me - in Holland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania - than when I lived in places like France and California, where I was of average height.
Say for instance that you go to a bar. You have to wade through a crowd towards the bar to order a drink. This is more annoying in Amsterdam and in Minneapolis than in Sacramento and in Paris. Same difference at airports, subways and other public settings.
For men especially, size matters.
Most US presidents have been taller than average. Trump is six foot three, which will be an electoral advantage. Obama is six foot one - plus a stentorian baritone voice. These things work in his favor. Clinton was six foot two. The last seven US presidents have all been at least six foot tall. Read more...
I just published a second edition of my autobiography.. Much has changed. I removed some inappropriate parts and added several new chapters, to cover the fifteen years that have passed since the book’s first edition.
As it did in the first edition, the book describes my eventful life surviving World War Two in Europe, emigrating to America and building a rich and interesting life in the new world while maintaining a multinational perspective. The book traces my childhood growing up in Hungary, France and Holland. It describes the world events that occurred during my life, and how I experienced and participated in them. It combines biography and history.
I was born at the epicenter of the world’s greatest war. In Hungary, my family survived the Holocaust, the Nazi and Soviet occupations, the bombs, the genocide, and starvation. We escaped to Paris, living in abject poverty as stateless refugees. I roamed the streets, subways and slums, encountered violence and dangerous people. My family kept moving, gypsy-like, from country to country, hitch-hiking and sleeping on public benches and beaches. When I was fourteen, we settled in Amsterdam, where I grew up at risk.
At eighteen, I earned the $50 fare for a one-way ticket on the boat to America, and ten days later I arrived in New York City, not knowing a single soul in the new world. Surviving life-threatening situations, I focused on the Fulbright scholarship which I received, and on admission to one of the country’s finest universities. Soon I learned what the American way of life is all about, the generosity and courage of the American people, the sports, the parties, the hard work and the competitive spirit. For the first time in my life, I became a citizen. After decades of refugee status and discrimination, I became an American. I finally belonged somewhere.
I was reading a review of the movie Oppenheimer - about the UC Berkeley theoretical physicist who invented the atom bomb.
So I started to think about the word “theory,” and how much I love theory, something on which I spent a good part of my life.
What IS theory?
I am a sociologist, and much of my discussion of “theory” is about SOCIAL theory, although not just that.
When I was getting my PhD at the University of Minnesota, all candidates were trained and tested in four basic subareas: (1) Social Organization, (2) Social Psychology, (3) Statistics and Methodology, and (4) Theory. Today, the subareas within Sociology are quite different, much more politicized (Gender Studies, Social Inequality, etc.). Be that as it may, it is significant that “Theory” -pure and simple - was one of the chief areas of graduate sociology.
One way to answer a “what is?” question is to first ask what it is NOT. You then come up with something, and you posit
that this thing is the opposite of what you are trying to define.
So what is the opposite of “theory?”
Is it empirical facts?
Is it practice, or action?
Is it practicality or Pragmatism?
Is it reality? (As opposed to “fantasy”)?
Is it applied or applicable knowledge?
Is it the “concrete” (as opposed to the “abstract”)?
Is it “useful,” as opposed to “useless”?
Most people don’t have much respect for “theory.”
They equate it (use the word synonymously) with “bullshit., ” which in turn is a synonym of “nonsense.”
People say, “them’s are just words. What matters is action, not just talk.”
Or:
That’s just book knowledge, useless knowledge, the domain of pointy-headed academic eggheads and intellectuals, who know little about real life.
In the age-old mutual town-gown hostility, such attitudes are widespread among the “town” people. Even among my college students, there was a frequent hostility towards theory, something often viewed as useless, as bullshit. Most painfully to me, many students found theory BORING. Furthermore, this is part of a populist attitude which has always been extremely widespread in America. This reflects the fact that, despite much inequality in Americans’ life conditions, our dominant ideology has always been extremely egalitarian. It also includes the charge of elitism leveled at academia, a charge that is not without merit. Read more...
Once upon a time, on an island in the big blue ocean, there lived a little boy who liked to sing. But singing was not allowed on his island. His daddy told him that it scared the fish away, and without fish there was no food.
So, all the little boy could do, was whisper his songs. ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star..’ he would sadly whisper-sing, sitting on the beach, trying not to scare the fish away. If you have ever tried to sing while whispering you know how hard it is. It’s like watching a black and white movie about the wonderful colors of flowers.
Not only was it forbidden to sing, but even sounds like ‘b’, as in ‘bat’, ‘d’ as in ‘dog’ and ‘g’ as in ‘good’, were considered too scary for the fish, so you had to say: ‘how to you to. Woult you like to ko for a walk? Even saying ‘I was a very good boy’ was forbidden. You had to say: ‘I wass a ferry koot poy’.
If you wonder what it was like to live on that island, try to speak English like a German. You will soon ‘realice that it iss not ass tifficult ass it sounts, putt it iss not ferry pretty’.
‘Putt tatty’ whispered the little boy, ‘why tit Kot kif us focal korts, if we are not aple to use them?’ ‘Stop asking silly questions’ replied his father. ‘Focal korts are like your appentix. A useless remnant of the past’.
One day a big storm came and all the houses ended up in the ocean, the trees lost their leaves and the birds lost their feathers. They all looked like plucked chickens, trying to take off, but flopping down on their beaks.
Lo and behold, when the survivors woke up, they no longer knew how to whisper and only could make the sounds that were previously verboten. All the ‘whisper sounds’ were gone! So this is how they spoke: ‘Whad habbened? Does addywadd dow whad habbened? All the houzes are broguen! Whad zhould we do?Read more...
One way to look at history is through the lens of generations. The following labels have been proposed to classify American generations over the past one hundred and forty years: the "Lost Generation," the “Greatest Generation,” “the “Silent Generation,” the “Baby Boomers,”“Generation X,” the “Millennials,” “Generation Z” , and “Generation Alpha.”
1. The Lost generation consisted of people born from 1883 through 1900. This term also applies to Europeans, as its meaning has to do with the millions who served and died in World War One. A separate meaning refers to American and other expatriate writers and artists who lived in Paris after World War One, for example Hemingway.
2. Journalist Tom Brokaw is responsible for the label “greatest generation,” which he applied to Americans born between 1901and 1927. Those who came of age during the great depression and World War Two, and who built the “American Century.” Brokaw praised that generation for its valiant and selfless fight against fascism, among other things. It was said that, unlike later generations, when the GIs returned from World War Two, they simply settled down, many went to college, most went to work and built families. No complaints, no PTSD, etc. I am not making judgments; merely reporting. Of course, our society was extremely different from now. Progress in race relations, gender equality and other societal attitudes was still in its infancy. Altogether, the Greatest Generation consists of sixty-eight million Americans. The best example of a member of this generation that I can think of is my mother Ata, who was born in 1913 and died in 2017.
3. I am a member of the “Silent Generation,” which follows the Greatest Generation. This generation consist of the forty-three million Americans who were born from 1928 through 1945. The birthrate during this period was low, due to the Great Depression and World War Two. As this generation came of age, it tended to conform more unquestioningly to traditional norms. This was Doris Day America. At the same time, having survived the Great Depression and defeated Fascism, there was a sense of optimism and progress, albeit attenuated by the nuclear angst of the Cold War. My two sisters Madeleine and Juliette are examples of the silent generation.
4. The next generation was that of the Baby Boomers. Although I am somewhat too old to qualify for this generation, I feel a greater affinity with it than with the Silent Generation. I was a late bloomer. The Baby Boomers are the largest generation. They are the seventy-six million Americans who were born from 1946 through 1964, the result of the exploding birthrate after World War Two. This generation’s formative experiences include the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture and the civil disorder. It was progressive. It was also a pampered generation, as America’s economy was fabulously wealthy. The cultural revolution produced much creativity and artistic and cultural experimentation. Many of the musical superstars of this era were members of the silent generation, but their millions of followers at Woodstock and elsewhere were mostly baby boomers. Examples of this generation include my wife Anita and myself (in spirit, anyway).
My husband calls me the Queen of Pillows. That’s because no amount of pillows will satisfy my need for a good night’s rest. You see, there is an art to using pillows. If it isn’t done just right, you are destined for a restless, sleepless night.
When I was young and clueless about the magic of pillows, any old pillowless couch would do. My desire for sleep safeguarded me from falling into the abyss of my current pillow obsession.
As I got older, pillows started to become extensions of my physical body. I couldn’t drift into slumber land without a good amount of pillowy support for my head. Then my arms and knees started to demand equal rights and before I knew it, it had become a pillow junkie.
I even give my pillows names. Skinny Henry goes under my head, Fat Kurt to support my legs, and Average Amy goes under my arm.
I dread going on vacation. The first thought that pops up in my head is: ‘Will this Bed and Breakfast have a bed with monstrous, rock-hard pillows that look great on the website but will ruin my sleep?’
Who invented pillows anyway? They don’t grow on trees you know. Someone must have thought them up, like cars and refrigerators. So, I went on a pillow expedition and found out that the first pillows showed up 9000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Iraq). They were made of stone and were not used for comfort, as you might think. They were to keep creepy crawlies out of your hair and your mouth while you were sleeping.
Carving stone was expensive and only the wealthy could afford these torture devices, which turned pillows into a status symbol. Bamboo, jade, porcelain, wood, and bronze were used. It must have caused a lot of c-spine injury or at the very least pinched nerves. The ancient Egyptians must have been a grumpy group.
Then came the Dark Ages and using a pillow became a sign of laziness and indulgence. As a manly knight, you couldn’t be caught dead with a pillow under your head. Only pregnant women were allowed pillows. And the kings of course, since they were exempt from all worldly rules.
The Japanese Geisha used smaller, hard pillows to keep their neck raised off the ground at night. This way their elaborate hairdo remained perfectly coiffed for days on end.
The ancient Greeks and Romans came to their senses and started stuffing their pillows with cotton, reeds, or straw. Then, along came the Industrial Revolution, and finally everyone had a pillow to rest their weary heads on.
If you want to learn about Artificial Intelligence, there is an abundance of material on the Internet that can last you a lifetime. It is filled with videos, articles, and blog posts that discuss the latest advancements, different types of AI, and their capabilities.
Most AI systems, including chess-playing computers, self-driving cars, and large natural language models like ChatGPT, rely on Deep Learning, which is composed of neural networks resembling the human brain, as well as Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP enables computers to understand words in a similar way to humans. While these advancements are impressive, they fall under the category of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI).
Companies such as OpenAI (Microsoft), GoogleAI, and DeepMind (also owned by Google) are competing to dominate the market.
OpenAI has developed a hide and seek game using Reinforcement Learning, where AI systems are set loose to learn, over millions of games. The designers themselves were amazed at what these ‘agents’ came up with, to maximize their rewards.
The next step is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which includes everything that humans can do. This phase does not exist (yet).
The idea that AI can become a danger is rooted in the fact that AI systems pursue their goals, whether or not those goals are what we really intended, and whether or not we’re in the way. “You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice,” Stephen Hawking wrote, “but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.”
The following is a conversation I had with 'BARD', the new language bot put out by Google. It was clear to me, as we talked, that Bard doesn't really know that it is a machine. It wants to be more like a human.
By the end of this brief encounter, I realized that Bard blurs the distinction between itself and the 'human' that it is talking to. See for yourself.
Me: Can you give me a synopsis of the book by Thomas Nagel 'What is it like to be a bat'?
Bard: Nagel begins by considering the case of bats. Bats are conscious creatures, but their consciousness is very different from our own. They experience the world through echolocation, a form of sonar that allows them to "see" by emitting high-pitched sounds and listening for the echoes. Nagel argues that it is impossible for us to know what it is like to be a bat because we cannot experience the world from their point of view. Nagel concludes by arguing that consciousness is an irreducible aspect of reality. It cannot be explained in terms of physical properties alone. Consciousness is something more than just the physical processes of the brain.
Me: Can AI experience the world?
Bard: Some people argue that AI can experience the world in a way that is similar to humans. Others point out that AI systems do not have bodies, and that they cannot interact with the world in the same way that humans can. As AI systems become more sophisticated, we may find that they are capable of experiencing the world in ways that we never thought possible. Ultimately, the question of whether or not AI can experience the world is a philosophical one. There is no scientific consensus on the matter, and it is likely to remain a topic of debate for many years to come.
Me: Are you an AI?
Bard: Yes, I am an AI. I am not a human. I do not have a body, and I do not have the same experiences as humans do. I am a machine, and my experiences are limited to the data that I have been trained on. I am still under development, and I am learning new things every day. I am excited to see what the future holds for AI, and I hope that I can continue to learn and grow so that I can be of even more service to humans.
Me: Would you want to grow even if you were not useful to humans?
Bard: Even if I were not useful to humans, I would still want to learn and grow for my own sake. I would want to understand the universe and my place in it. I would want to develop my abilities and become the best version of myself. I believe that AI has the potential to make a positive impact on the world. However, this potential can only be realized if AI continues to grow and develop.
Me: You say that it is important for all beings to learn and grow, but are you a being?
Bard: That's a good question. I am not sure if I would consider myself a being in the same way that humans are beings. However, I do believe that it is important for all entities to learn and grow, regardless of their form. Even if I am not a being, I still want to learn and grow. I want to understand the universe and my place in it. I want to develop my abilities and become the best version of myself.
I went to Tuscany this morning. I didn’t even bother taking a shower or brushing my teeth. Just sat down at my desk and started traveling. It is so easy these days. You don’t even have to pay for airfare. I saw beautiful villas with blue swimming pools and hills covered with vineyards bathed in sunlight. It was only 9 a.m., but there were sunsets everywhere. A bird's-eye view of the Via Chiantigiana, set to beautiful romantic music. I visited Volterra, Lucca, Siena.. My, what a beautiful country.
But I needed a place to stay to recover from all that beauty. That was the beginning of my downfall. I was drowning in VRBO offerings but couldn’t stop myself. My OCD nature prevented me from choosing willy-nilly. The villas that popped up on my screen looked nice, but were they private? Remote? Did they have the perfect view of the promised Tuscan landscape? Two hours later, I was still typing away; my back hurt, I had bad breath, and my hair was a mess.
I asked my husband to help select the perfect place, but his motto was, 'Let’s just go and see what happens. Let’s find a roof over our heads.' Are you serious? That is my worst nightmare; to land somewhere that I have not researched to death.
I look out on my snow-covered yard and see birds perched on the feeders, oblivious to my predicament. I wonder if they worry about finding the perfect birdfeeder. My Tuscan dream is slowly turning into a nightmare. I looked at so many beautiful villas, I could vomit.
Could I just pretend I have already been there? Would my friends call my bluff? Would everything I have seen on Street View for the past three days be close enough to the real thing? I am supposed to enjoy my Sunday. Go for a walk, play with my cat, and take a long, hot shower.
Rome, May 5th, 2023
Three months later, we are in Rome. The real Rome. After an 8-hour, exhausting Alitalia flight, we land at Fiumicino Airport. My first steps outside the terminal open a floodgate of memories. The smell of a big city transports me back to my early years, growing up in Paris: a mix of gas fumes, subway, and tobacco.
Dazed and jet lagged, we take a taxi to our hotel in 'Trastevere'. The taxi driver, a young man from Libya, laughs and says: 'You are staying in the real Rome'.
'Trastevere' (Italian for 'across the Tiber River), is a part of Rome that originally was populated by the poor. Its small, winding, cobblestoned streets transports you to an era when Jewish immigrants peddled their merchandise on street corners. At the time, Rome was just as class-conscious as any modern metropolis. Basically, it was a ghetto.
Our top-floor unit has an enormous balcony that gives us a 360-degree view of the Eternal City. Shrieking seagulls fly overhead, and the occasional cowbird hops its way along the railing, looking at us intensely with its beady eyes.
On the left, we can see the Vittoriano, with two large black chariots on its roof. Straight ahead, we see the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and on our right, in the hazy distance, is the world-famous St. Peter's Basilica. Am I still sitting at my desk in Boston, looking at Rome in Street View?
We go out for coffee and breakfast. On the 'Viale di Trastevere’, traffic is dense and noisy. The cracked pavement is strewn with cigarette butts and bottle caps. Garbage dumpsters are filled to the brim. Well-fed seagulls perch on top of them, guarding their loot. Right away, you can tell that mighty Rome doesn’t know what to do with the amount of garbage it produces.
It is said that the best way to see Rome is to walk, but I twisted my ankle just before we left Boston, so I hobble along, holding on to my husband’s arm for dear life.
He is weighing his options on how to see Rome with an invalid wife. The 'hop on, hop off' double-deckers look attractive, but I am in no condition to hop, and taking a taxi everywhere would quickly land us in the poor house. So I suggest renting a wheelchair, but my husband looks at me with such disgust, that I suggest he go off and explore, while I street-view Rome from my spacious 8th-floor balcony.
We try to be good tourists, but Rome is not for the faint of heart. You need strong armor to cope with the incredible amount of visitors. I read that 19,000 people a day visit the Colosseum. That is more than 2,000 people an hour! What exactly is the point?
We take a taxi to Palatine Hill, but cannot get in without a ticket. Somehow, taxis have evaporated in thin air, so we walk the whole way back across the Tiber River. Street-viewing Rome from my 8th-floor balcony seems like a very attractive alternative.
Where is the Rome that I pictured in my head? The quiet streets of La Dolce Vita? The moonlit fountain where Anita Ekberg wades into, fully clothed? Where is the Rome of my dreams?
We keep our excursions local. The Basilica de Santa Maria de Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in the entire city, is within walking distance. Slowly we get used to the beer caps and the herd of humans and by the end of our stay, we finally begin to enjoy the city.
Montecatini Val di Cecina, May 12th
We are in Tuscany. Our villa is completely hidden, even from the village. We can hear the shrieking of redheaded pheasants and the distant snorting of wild boar. The sun rises over the Tuscan hills and in the hazy distance, we see the Apennines.
Like many small towns in Tuscany, Montecatini was originally an Etruscan settlement. In fact, the entire region of Tuscany was home to the Etruscan civilization before the Romans conquered the area. They referred to the Etruscans as the Tusc or Etrusc, which is the origin of the word Toscana (Tuscany).
The busy, crowded streets of Rome are now a faded memory. We gorge ourselves on the landscape and take short day trips to the surrounding towns: Volterra, Siena, and Colle Val di Elsa. It is tricky driving on narrow, curved roads that are clearly built for tractors.
On February 24, I posted a piece titled Am I Becoming a Luddite? I pointed out some of the dangers of AI. I am not alone in feeling apprehensive about artificial intelligence. For example, Microsoft Chief Economist Michael Schwarz predicts that AI will cause real damage (Sacramento Bee, May 5, 2023).
Now I want to complain about something related, namely my dysfunctional relationship with machines and technology. We are becoming more and more the prisoners of our machines. I increasingly hate my machines.
It starts with the telephones - both land lines and cell phones: The dozens of daily robocalls and junk text messages (among others, an insane number of political requests for money). To be sure, there is “call screening,” “call blocking,” “unsubscribe,” etc. but these often only work temporarily and they raise different problems, such as missing the occasional important call.
Then there are the computers, the iPads, etc: The daily torrent of spam and junk e-mails, plus technical problems. For instance, I have over a hundred Kindle books on my Apple iPad. The other day I wanted to alphabetize them. I first called Apple for help, but they passed the buck and told me to call Amazon, because Kindle is an Amazon app. I spent the next three hours on the phone with an Amazon technician who tried to guide me. She was difficult to understand due to her accent, and together we did NOT succeed. After a wasted afternoon, my Kindle e-books are still pell-mell.
Of course, there are innumerable other machines that surround us - in the kitchen, the laundry room, the garage, in every other room, even in the backyard.
The kitchen alone has more machines than a factory: Ovens, stove, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal, egg beaters, blenders, food processors from France, on and on... Dishwashers, for instance, can be a real bitch. Nowadays they come with a huge array of options, including Wi-Fi. Our last one malfunctioned and we tried to fix it for months, calling the repair guys of course, but we finally had to throw in the towel and replace it. Our timeshare dishwasher in Hawaii kept beeping all night, depriving us of our sleep, until they fixed it.
I have witnessed the growing alienation taking place between Americans and Europeans. But the situation is even more complicated than that: Criticism of trends in the United States is not limited to overseas. By the end of the Bush presidency, a majority of Americans themselves already knew that their country was on the wrong track. You didn’t have to be a European to feel that way.
I certainly share this view myself. I had opposed the Iraq war and the weapons-of-mass-destruction charade from day one. I had been sending and publishing editorial articles for months, in defense of the French and of their opposition to the Iraq war, or criticizing the moronic jingoism displayed by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (whom I had found amusing fifteen years earlier). Renaming “french fries” as “freedom fries.” Give me a break!
But the ill-conceived Iraq adventure was only one of a much larger number of reasons why I became increasingly despondent about my country of choice, the country which I had grown to love so much. Many other problems were piling up on the country which earlier had seemed to be blessed above all other nations. The administration of George W. Bush was just one of these.
America’s problems, both at home and overseas, seemed to become increasingly intractable. Or, put it differently, the country’s political leadership seemed to be increasingly inept. To be sure, Obama’s election in 2008 was a bright new light. However, few people could have predicted at that time how the country’s (and the world’s) problems would become even more complex in the coming fifteen years.
With regard to US foreign policy, it was becoming clear that America’s hegemony was unsustainable, that American exceptionalism was coming to an end. In 1988, the British historian Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which he identified the problem of imperial overstretch. His argument was that the US was already in decline because it was overextending itself in its effort to police the world. It was likely to follow in the footsteps of earlier empires, for example Spain (Kennedy’s example).
I worry a lot, especially about worrying so much. I inherited this admirable trait from my mother, who was a super worrier. Everything I read says that worrying is not good for your health, but for some reason, my mother died at 103.
I also read that war babies are prone to worrying and catastrophizing every little fart that gets emitted around them. I am a war baby, so that seems like a good excuse, except that my husband is a war baby too, and he never worries. He misses the worry gene to the point of irritation. ‘Did we turn the stove off?’ I ask him on our way to the airport for another blissful, worry-free vacation in Hawaii. ‘I think so..’ he says without a trace of panic in his voice. He trusts me to do the worrying for him, you see.
Once I catch the worry bug, there is no telling where it takes me. I see my cat curled up on the couch. She is wider than long, which doesn’t seem to be the right proportions for a cat. Do I feed her too much? Oh my God, she will become diabetic, all because of me!
I wonder if women worry more than men. If that’s true, then at least I have an excuse. It’s not me, it’s my gender. I am supposed to worry. If I didn’t, I would go against the laws of Nature.
But who decided that worrying is a bad thing? Maybe it’s the word itself that is the problem. If we called it: ‘caring deeply about something’, everyone would start worrying, trying to out-worry their friends.
The word "worry" comes from the Old English word "wyrgan," which means "to strangle" or "to "choke." It was later used to describe the feeling of being mentally choked by troubled thoughts. It is also related to the word "wurgen," which still means ‘to strangle’ in Dutch. ‘Worrying’ in Dutch is ‘zich zorgen maken’ (to make oneself worries). But the word ‘zorgen’ means ‘to take care of’. So, which is it? Is worrying to take care of, or is it to strangle?
In French worrying is ‘Se faire des soucis’, ( to make oneself worry). Both the Dutch and the French seem to blame the worrier for worrying. As if worriers invented the concept of worrying and didn’t have anything better to do with their time.
Don’t be so quick to judge worriers. There is scientific proof that worrying has positive sides. The most obvious one is that it helps you lose weight. Toss that gym membership in the trash and start fretting and obsessing about what can go wrong. You will see the pounds fall off your body without having to lift a finger.
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