Walkers and Movers

by Madeleine Kando

Before I became a suburbanite with a family to raise, I used to live in the city. First Paris and Amsterdam, then London and Madrid. There is skill involved in being a successful city dweller, and the art of walking down the street is one of them.I first became aware of the complexity of this art form as a young girl, growing up in Amsterdam. I don’t mind telling you: I was shy and not very confident. I did not like to draw attention to myself, but I had the misfortune of being endowed with good looks and passing a group of teen-age boys on the way to school was something I dreaded. My instinct told me to cross the street in order to avoid being harassed. But my indignation took over and I started to observe some of my more self-confident friends who didn’t seem to be intimidated by these annoying males in the making.

It is then that I first realized that there are two kinds of people in a city: the walkers and the movers. I, unfortunately, was a mover. I moved to the other side of the street to avoid confrontation with these young chimps. My friend Amanda, on the other hand, was a walker. She was loud, self-confident and quick with her tongue. I tried to immitate her stride – her way of looking past other pedestrians as if they didn’t exist. She knew instinctively that most of them were ‘movers’. That they would move so she could walk. I envied her and in her presence I too became a walker. But whenever I was alone I reverted back to being a mover. Read more...

Crime and Punishment

By Tom Kando

We have been hearing about this monster Garrido for the past couple of weeks. He kidnapped, raped and impregnated Jaycee Dugard, and held her in captivity for 18 years. Horrible. But the large amount of attention devoted to this case by the media may have some unintended negative side effects. I just saw Dr. Phil hollering on TV about the authorities’ scandalous failure to prevent what happened. Garrido should not have been on parole after his previous felonies. There are dozens of registered sex offenders living in the neighborhood around South Lake Tahoe where Jaycee was nabbed, etc. etc.

The message is loud and clear: In the Garrido case, the authorities were asleep at the wheel. Our society is much too lenient on criminals. We need to lock up more and parole less.

This is how our criminal justice system works. Legislation driven by one-time, celebrated cases. That’s how the three-strikes laws, the Megan laws and all the other inane laws which broke the California budget without necessarily lowering the crime rate came into being - on the basis of individual and highly publicized cases like Polly Klaas and Jaycee Dugard.

This is no way to run a society. Our prison system is utterly broken, with 3 times as many prisoners as it should have and 10 times more prisoners than it had a generation ago.

The State is trying to negotiate a reduction in the prison population, but with the hysteria generated by sensational but rare cases like Garrido, conservatives will once again be able to bamboozle the public into believing that we need to lock up more, not less.

And another thing: Why do we need to come up with new categories of crimes all the time? When the concept of “hate crime” first came up, decades ago, I had a problem with it. I asked: Isn’t most crime based on some sort of hate? If I love you, I am not likely to kill you, am I?

And we have sex crimes. Why? Why separate out this category? Should we also have food crimes? And greed crimes? Pride crimes? Crimes against society? Political crimes? Sports crimes? Work crimes? Leisure crimes?

Crime is crime. It often consists of someone harming someone else. Often, it consists of harm to the collective. And it occurs whenever a law is broken, whether the law makes sense or not.

The main purpose of having categories of crimes is to agree on their seriousness. The greater the harm, the more severe the punishment should be. Many criminal classifications are useful: property crimes vs. violent crimes, the FBI’s distinction between Index crimes and Part Two crimes, felonies vs. misdemeanors, etc. etc. But other ones seem to reflect shifting cultural and political values more than scientific criminological concepts. They are not helpful. leave comment here

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I Could Never Be Swiss

By Anita Kando

As a frequent visitor to Switzerland, the country never ceases to delight and to impress me , and it is about as perfect a country as it gets. I’ve been very fortunate to be a guest of the Bienz family, my husband’s cousins, in Solothurn, a gorgeous little town between Basel and Zurich. Being a guest of the Bienz family will spoil you for all time. They live in a charming three story rock-solid home with beautiful nature photography throughout the home, a garden that looks out over the Jungfrau and the Eiger, a winding stairway made of the most beautiful wood, a state of the art kitchen where Esther (the best cook in our extended family – where the competition is quite fierce for that title) produces the most amazing Swiss dishes. They have enticed us with unparalleled Swiss fondue and introduced us to the fun of sharing raclette at the kitchen table with the whole family. The air is crisp, cool, it’s often sunny, and one sleeps like a baby in their upstairs, chalet-styled, wooden-ceiling bedroom with duvets and huge pillows that make it difficult to ever get out of bed.

We have made many journeys and side trips within Switzerland, and it is impossible for me to say which one has been more delightful. Just when you think it can’t get any more stunningly gorgeous, Switzerland will find a way to show you that it can. We took a train through the countryside to Appenzell . The entire ride there was like a travelogue, with side visits to Schaffhausen and St. Gallen where we visited one of the world’s most impressive libraries (we actually saw Napoleon’s correspondence there).

We took this amazing little train that wound nearly vertically up a mountainside toward Appenzell. My husband and I looked at each other, laughing that at every turn the landscape just gets more and more impossibly beautiful. Unreal, we thought. When we reached this Brigadoon of a town, we were convinced that it could not possibly be real. Swiss architecture is always beautiful, and the people of Appenzell really outdid themselves when they decorated their buildings. Our hotel was a beautiful shade of red, with a hanging medieval sign stating the name of the inn. There was a riot of brightly colored flowers in the window boxes. The inside proved to be equally amazing, with everything made of beautiful wood. As we walked down the street, we realized that all of the houses were just as beautiful, or more beautiful than our hotel. I so admire the pride that they take in creating such delightful, well-loved buildings.

The next morning, after another super-healthy Swiss breakfast, like the ones served all over the country, we took a bus ride up the mountain to see Mt. Santis. Hans and Esther made sure we had a front row seat next to the huge windows of the enormous bus while they took seats further behind.

Mt. Santis is a formidable mountain, and there’s been an unseasonably early snow-storm overnight, so it’s covered with snow. We line up for the gondola to go up the mountain, and at this point I am reminded again that there is a whole different dimension to Swiss mountains. Yes, we have mountains in California, we have trams and ski lifts – I’ve ridden them up and skied down for decades. But the sheer vertical climb of this tram is something else, and I am getting nervous.

We arrive on top (yay, we are still alive!). The view is stunning – high white topped mountains in every direction, as far as the eye can see. We ambulate through a little museum, and the rest of my party disappears for a few minutes while I’m looking at Swiss mountain goats perched precariously on the very edge of the mountain.

A few minutes later, Hans invites me to walk over to the restaurant. He turns to me as we are about to go out the door, and says, “But you might not want to do this.” Strange statement, I thought. Well, he was certainly right. The moment we are out the door, blizzard-like wind and snow hit my face. I’m dressed in a light jacket, wearing my new athletic shoes. No problem, I think. Well, as we venture on a little further, I see a semi-circular grated metal path suspended in the air, with crevices thousands of feet below. I walk timidly forward, only to realize that the soles of my shoes are filled with ice and becoming very slippery. Then I look to my right as best I can through the blowing snow, and I see that this small metal bridge has only one thin guardrail with plenty of room to slide right under it. What’s worse, a person cannot hold onto the guardrail because there are foot-long icicles formed sideways - horizontally! - due to the fierce winds. Okay, that’s it, I’m going to slide right under the guardrail and end up as an archeological find thousands of years from now. I’ll perish of a heart attack long before I hit the bottom of the crevice, to become Homo Turisticus Americanus, eons from now.

Somehow, I step and slide on, with my purse (in which my passport and medications are stored) swinging precariously over the guardrail. Finally, I make it to the door. Thank God! I’m in another one of those gorgeous wood-paneled Swiss restaurants, and I’m alive. I plop down at the table out of breath and shaking – I see a large bottle of Appenzeller Schnapps, and wish I could down the whole thing right there to stop shaking. I let out a sigh, “Okay, that’s it, I’ve failed, I can never be Swiss.” We all have a good laugh over that, but it’s true – I’m not rugged enough to navigate this terrain the way our cousins do. This formidable mountain’s name should not be Mt. Santis -- Spiritus Sanctus Mortis is more fitting! Esther takes my arm and tells me she will guide me back over the horrifying metal bridge. “Oh my God, is that the only way out? Surely you don’t mean to tell me that I have to do this again?” I’m laughing and frowning at the same time. Nope, no other way out. We walk side by side, and I’m thinking this time we might not be so lucky and we’ll both slide right under the guardrail. I’m more than a little embarrassed that I’m being guided like an infant, but I’m also very grateful for Esther’s Swiss expertise in navigating the dreaded path. Ah, we’re done! Back on earth! Then we take the shear tram downward (a whole new definition of vertical drop!) and we step out on flat ground. Esther turns to me and says, “We thought it best not to tell you that last week, just a few miles away, a tram broke down and they had to rescue everyone via helicopter, suspended over thousands of feet by ropes.” I’m more than a little relieved that they did not tell me this before we went up. I picture myself in a nightmare like Sylvester Stallone movie’s Cliffhanger.

We settle down at the ground-level restaurant, sipping our delicious Swiss barley soup, watching amazing Swiss snow dogs that look like large balls of snow with legs and heads. Even the dogs are hardier here. What a gorgeous day as the clouds part and bright blue sky re-appears.

Okay, it’s true, I can never be Swiss. I’m not qualified. But part of my heart remains there. What a country! I hope to return, and I’ll never quit trying to be Swiss.... leave comment here Read more...

Are Humans Intelligent?

by Madeleine Kando

At this moment I am spending a few gorgeous weeks in one of the most beautiful places on earth: Kauai. For the reader who has not had the privilege of visiting paradise, I will just describe it as an orgy of scents, sights and sounds. The smell of hundreds of types of plants, the blue sky and the red earth, the continuous lulling sound of the ocean mixed with the soft breeze caressing your body day and night.. Trust me, this description is not an exaggeration to make this story more interesting.

You might wonder by now what all this has to do with intelligence. Bear with me and I will tell you. As I am taking an early morning walk to watch the sun rise out of the vast blue ocean I am rudely torn away from my bliss by a powerwalker talking loudly on a cellphone. What on earth possesses someone to do this? By a seemingly innocent act this woman has ripped a hole in the fabric of my paradise.. gone are the scents, the sights, the feel of the breeze. She has not only removed herself from being in Kauai and the morning dew that creates rainbows above the glistening grass, but has managed to affect her environment by her incessant and annyoing chatter.

Howard Gardner, the famous Harvard Professor, who has developed the ‘multiple intelligence’ theory has identified different types of intelligences. He is of course giving a new name to what we call ‘talent’. If you have a gift for music, he says, you have ‘musical intelligence’. If you are good at building things you have ‘spatial intelligence’ etc. Which is nice. Being talented means you either have it or you don’t. It is so final. Whereas if you have ‘musical intelligence’ or ‘spatial intelligence’ it means you can develop those intelligences by studying music, architecture etc. He has identified 6 types of intelligences: verbal, spatial, kinesthetic, visual, mathematical, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

So I wonder about this woman on her cell phone.. She probably scores very high on the verbal scale, considering her obsession with the cell phone. But shouldn’t we add one more type of intelligence to the list? ‘The ability to live in the moment’ intelligence? Where would she score on that?

As I hurry to create some distance between her far reaching voice and myself I see a flock of myna birds strutting about pulling their breakfast out of the wet grass. Their yellow encircled eyes make them look like intellectuals with bifocals on. I cannot help but notice the vast difference in IQ between the woman and these native creatures enjoying this glorious morning.

Couldn’t we open schools to develop our ‘how to be happy’ intelligence, our ‘live in the moment’ intelligence? And you would only be allowed to visit Kauai if you score high enough on your ‘be happy’ intelligence test. Otherwise stay out of paradise!!leave comment here Read more...

Words Say It All

by Madeleine Kando

There are words and then there are WORDS. My favorite words are actually not English but French. The way the French language describes life can be so endearing that it gives me goose pimples just listening to it. Take the words of one of Edith Piaf’s more famous songs: ‘Milord’. When she sings it she pronounces it ‘meelor’ as if it were someone’s name like Frank or Joe. None of the British snobbishness of the words “My Lord”. Because it is in French, in a few sentences Piaf pulls us into the world of a harbor prostitute and her love for a gentleman who does not know she exists. In her song she tells him to come in and make himself comfortable. To ‘put his feet up on a chair and his sorrows on her heart.’ ( ‘vos peines sur mon coeur et vos pieds sur une chaise.’)

What is it that makes French so good at describing matters of the heart? Why is it so poetic? French has the ability to describe reality in such rich details that you could stay in bed for a year reading French novels and not feel like you are missing out on the world outside. You want to experience the feel of a soft breeze on your cheeks? Say it in French: ‘Le vent me caresse les joux avec ses ailes de soie’. (the wind strokes my cheeks with its wings of satin).

American English, on the other hand, has the incredible vitality of a language that uses action words in many of its expressions. Even talking about something as dry as the stockmarket, by saying it in English it becomes exciting: ‘ the stockmarket crashed today and investors ran for cover.’ A French person might say: ‘the stockmarket lost shares today and investors withdrew their money.’ What’s fun about that?

In America you don’t study, you hit the books. You don’t make small talk, you shoot the breeze. You don’t get suspicious: you smell a rat. Americans have elevated many nouns to the status of verbs: ‘to interface, to impact.’ This is to make sure that your listener gets the importance of your statements.

What is interesting about the use of words in different languages is not the language itself of course. A language can not really BE poetic, dynamic or imaginative. A language is a reflection of the people who speak it. And Americans ARE different from the French. As are the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, The Mexicans.. I only wish I would have enough time to learn all those other languages.

But who wouldn’t be totally blown away by my latest experience in the heart of Paris. As I was passing a construction site, a young construction worker looked at me and said: ‘Mademoiselle, vous avez perdu quelque-chose’. (Miss, you dropped something). I looked down and said: ‘what?’. With a beaming expression he said: ‘votre sourire’. (your smile). That is how a Frenchman makes a pass at a female passerby. Vive la difference!! leave comment here Read more...

What does “E= mc square” mean?

By Tom Kando

I recently read an entertaining little book - Davis Bodanis’ E= mc square. Popularizations of Einstein and of his famous equation abound. (Actually, the formula is Henri Poincaré’s).
I see another example on my shelves: Evert de Bruin’s Einstein in 90 Minutes.
As a layperson utterly ignorant of relativity theory, quantum physics and other such matters, I am nevertheless fascinated by them. Here are just a few comments - actually questions more than comments. I hope they don’t elicit guffaws from physics professors who might read this:

Like many other popularizations of Einstein’s work, Bodanis’ book leaves many questions unanswered, the most important one of which is this:

Exactly how much energy can a given mass of matter generate?

Okay, we know that the speed of light is a very large number (nothing can travel faster), regardless of what unit is used to measure it (meters per second, mph, or whatever). So the conversion factor used to convert mass into energy (c square) must be an astronomical number.
But is the Einstein/Poincaré formula so simple that you can just plug two specific numbers into it - one for m (mass), and one for c (celeritas; speed) - and presto, you find out how much energy this mass can produce?
And if so, what systems of units should be used?

Bodanis does not answer these questions, and some of his numerical examples confuse rather than enlighten. For example, on page 69, he mentions that in units of mph, c is 670 million, and so c square is 448,900, 000,000,000,000, i.e. 448 quadrillion.

But why on earth would you plug in 670 million into the Einstein/Poincaré formula for c? You could just as well plug in the speed of light measured in kilometers per hour (1.08 billion), or meters per second (about 300 million), or in parsecs per 3.3 years (1)*. In each instance, the number on the energy side of the equation changes. For example, if you were to measure and express the speed light in parsecs (which would be no more arbitrary that expressing it in mph), you would end up with the following absurd equation:
E = m x 1 square,
i.e. E = m

But I looked up a few things. It seems that physicists use the International System of units. The speed of light is expressed in meters per second, which is nearly 300 million. Mass is measured in kilos. And energy is measured in joules**. So one kilo of matter could generate 300 million times 300 million joules, i.e. 90 quadrillion joules of energy (90,000,000,000,000,000).

* The distance covered by light in 3.3 years is slightly over 3 x 10 to the 13th power in kilometers, or nearly 2 x 10 to the 13th power in miles.
** I came across a very scientific explanation of how much a joule is: it is about how much energy it takes to lift a small apple about one meter up. It is also the equivalent of one Watt.second. leave comment here Read more...

Why Are people Fat?

By Tom Kando

A Sacrament Bee article by Ellen Shell on obesity (November 13) illustrates a problem with contemporary pop science: The issue is America’s obesity epidemic -- what causes it, and what can be done about it? Her magic-bullet-of-the-day is the hormone leptin.
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In the old nature-nurture argument, the nurture side has been losing ground for years . We desperately want to find a bio-chemical/genetic explanation not only for physical conditions , but also for a growing list of behavioral and mental phenomena -- obesity, criminality, intelligence, mental illness, alcoholism, sexual preference, addictiveness, etc. But we should question this growing tendency towards bio-chemical reductionism.

Ms. Shell’s article is drenched in pseudo-scientific rhetoric: "people act on biologically wired drives....pathways in the brains...the brain’s weight control center, ...scientists are decoding....leptin signals..." etc.

However, such language is metaphorical, inspired by computers and the other gadgets with which we are so enamored. It makes little contribution to our understanding of human motivation, consciousness, social life, or dysfunctional behavior.

Let’s be Aristotelian: Americans have become overweight. The other 96 % of the world’s people do not have this problem (yet), and neither did America until a few decades ago. So how could this new and primarily American problem be caused by (insufficient) leptin or some other genetic trait? This would only make sense under the absurd assumption that Americans are genetically different from (1)everyone else and from (2) their ancestors a few decades ago. For A to be the cause of B, there must be concomitant variation of the two, right?

Isn’t it obvious that the obesity epidemic is caused largely by sociological trends? Two things distinguish Americans: (1) we are the least ambulatory people in the world, and (2)we eat more than anyone else. The culprits are our diet and our relentless quest for comfort -- in sum: lifestyle changes!

Shell’s article is symptomatic of today’s culture, of the decline of common sense and of the death of a meaningful science of psychology, distinct from biology. Instead, we have the mumbo-jumbo of chemical reductionism, which increasingly attributes all behaviors to genes and biology. Next we’ll be told that one is born a racist, or born divorce-prone, or born with Republican tendencies.

The underlying message: We don’t have to lift a finger to help ourselves, because biology has the solution to all our problems. So there is no need to clean up our act (exercise, quit smoking, stop pigging out, etc.), or for social policies such as less reliance on cars and more governmental monitoring of the junk food.

This is irresponsible. It reminds me of those chain-smoking patients milling around in front of Kaiser Hospital, waiting for the doctors to fix them up. leave comment here

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Are Children Miniature Adults?

By Madeleine Kando

We like to think that children are miniature adults, unfinished copies that will turn out to become like us. Children know better: they know that grown-ups are a breed apart and other than that they are a lot bigger, they could be from Mars for all they care.

The biggest challenge for them is trying to figure out the rules of society. The problem starts out right away, as soon as they are able to see a face. Their parents expect them to smile and show how cute they are and they soon learn that it’s their ticket to get what they want. Children are so into themselves, they really don’t have a lot of time to follow the rules. They possess a blissful unselfconsciousness that allows them to sing at the top of their lungs in the supermarket, makes them run into people left and right and makes them show up undressed in front of mom’s dinner guests.. all that is perfectly acceptable from the perspective of a child.

They don’t understand things verbally. It mistyfies me to hear moms discuss their shopping strategy with their 2 year old in the supermarket: ‘What kind of cheese do you think we should get, David? Do you think a pound is too much for tomorrow’s guests? Oh dear, look at the price on this!’… and on and on. I am tempted to go over and say: ‘Lady, you are talking to a wall here, not to mention the fact that you are preventing me from following my own train of thought. If you really want David’s advice let him taste the damned cheese. If he spits it out, don’t buy it.’ Read more...

'Hey Guys, Let's Smother Grandma...'

By Madeleine Kando

There is this provision in the Obama health care bill that would reimburse doctors for end-of-life consultations for seniors.

It’s a very common sense proposal by a common sense senator from Oregon. The idea is to give seniors a chance to clarify how much care they want in case they are incapacitated: do they want to be resuscitated, put on a respirator or fed through a tube? Or do they want to receive palliative care and be left to die in peace at home, surrounded by their family and loved ones? The default procedure in this country is that a doctor will take every measure in an emergency to keep a patient alive. In fact, most of the time you do not die peacefully with family around you in your home if you do not make plans. (Except for Oregon because more Oregonians plan for their end of life care.)

The amendment says nothing about doctor-assisted suicide, a legal option for terminally ill residents in Oregon for example and in some countries like Holland.

To many uninformed people whom I will call ‘the lynch mob of America’, spurred on by uninformed and dangerous TV talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, this amendment promotes government-sponsored euthanasia. ‘Congress requires seniors to have counseling that will tell them how to end their life sooner’, says one former Congress woman. Sarah Palin and others speak of government-funded death panels.

Some of these uninformed idiots have an issue with the fact that doctors get reimbursed to have such consultations. But doesn’t Medicare reimburse doctors for hip surgery? I don’t think a doctor would perform hip surgery for free, do you? These consultations are also voluntary and talking about how to die is not the same as shooting someone, is it?

The irony is that these (mostly right-wing) protestors are against this part of the bill because they say government should not interfere with their business. If I am not mistaken, this provision is actually trying to give patients more control over how they want to die. (I personally wish it did include an option for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, but that would be way too progressive, and add fuel to the fire).

Modern medicine has been good at prolonging our life span but it has turned away from the added responsibility of how to handle the side-effects of longer lives. This would be an important step in the right direction.leave comment here Read more...

Do You Also Believe in the Flat Earth Theory?

By Tom Kando

It is difficult to remember a presidency which has elicited more venom within its first few months. The Obama-haters are trying to discredit him in some amazing ways. Come to think of it, I do remember that Presidents Kennedy and Clinton were the recipients of similar hate campaigns early in their terms...

1. There are, for example, the birthers. This is a grass-roots (largely Internet) movement of people who claim that Obama was not born in the US. According to columnist Eugene Robinson, 28% of Republicans believe that Obama was not born in the United States, and another 30% are “not sure”! This despite the fact that the President’s birth on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu has been incontestably established.
2. Then there are the town hall meetings, organized by the administration to discuss the President’s Health Care plan. So far they have backfired, because many of the people who come to these meetings are hostile, disrupting and opposing everything that administration spokesmen try to discuss.

I am not sure what happened. Opponents of health care reform - various interest groups - may have orchestrated something here, I don’t know.

But I just want to give you one example of the level of discourse of some of these protesters: At a recent town hall meeting somewhere in the Midwest, an elderly gentleman in the audience stood up and shouted, emotionally, to the administration spokesman who was trying to answer questions: “I want the government to keep its paws off Medicare!”

What does democracy mean, when people are so embarrassingly ignorant? Democracy becomes mobocracy. Maybe that’s what happened in California, where the state has been run by referendum for many years. People pass propositions without the slightest understanding of their consequences.

3. Another asinine catchphrase heard a lot in the health care debate is, “do you want the same people who run the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles, to run your health plan?” - the obvious insinuation being that nothing is more inefficient than government bureaucracies such as the USPS or DMV.

4. So now Obama’s poll ratings have declined. No duh! There is nothing mysterious about a President’s popularity or lack of it. There is nothing “inherent” in public opinion polls. They just reflect how the people have been told to feel, that’s all. Subject a president to a barrage of criticism in the media for three months and, lo and behold, his ratings go down! Or let the media praise him for six weeks, and his ratings go up. Is this a miracle? No, it’s called indoctrination through spin.

5. The cornerstone of our health insurance system is that it goes via your job, your employer. A majority seems to believe that this cornerstone must stay untouched. But there are millions who do not have jobs, who don’t have an employer. There are the unemployed, the unemployable, the retired, the self-employed, the very young and the very old. And of course everyone switches jobs at one time or another. The immutable link between one’s job and one’s health insurance is another piece of nonsense.

6. So for all those of you who believe that Obama is not American-born, that the government should stay out of Medicare, and other similar theories, I have an organization which might interest you:

The Flat Earth Society International
P.O. Box 3543, Lancaster, California, 93540
Membership, Certificate and Map of Flat Earth: $20.00leave comment here Read more...