Alienation

By Madeleine Kando

There once was a boy who was very young and very sad. He always dreamt of beautiful things but every time he was with other people, he was sad and quiet. He was beautiful and he was sad and lived in a world of thoughts and fantasy.

It went on like this for a long time. He got bigger and once in a while, he peeked around the corner of the real world, because he felt lonely in this beautiful world where he was all by himself. Every time he peeked into the real world, he was so frightened by all that strange real stuff, that he quickly closed the door and built new beautiful fantasies.

He grew into a young man when something terrible happened. His world was being attacked! He wasn't prepared at all and he felt an enormous carnage-taking place. It was awful. Everything that he so meticulously had built got destroyed. The awful reality knew no mercy. He suddenly found himself in a strange hostile world of reality and didn't know how to cope. He never learned anything about that reality and it was a terrible struggle. He knew one thing: nobody should ever find out that he did not belong here, that he came from somewhere else, because then his chances of survival were nil.

So, he got up and started walking and did everything that reality expected of him, except that he wasn't real. But only he knew that. And soon he got used to the situation, he lived as others did and soon thought that that was the normal way. But knowing that he belonged somewhere else didn't leave his mind. He knew that he was playing a role, and knew that it wasn't real and he kept feeling sad, closed off, and turned inward. He could not trust others because they were different, they were really from this real world, not his.

Once, there was a woman who came and tried to help him. She reached out and tried to pull him closer, because she knew that he was sad and closed off and she loved him, even though she knew he wasn't real. But the boy got frightened and made up a ruse to hide. He couldn't trust the woman, he wasn't from his world and she was a strange real woman.

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Hitchhiking in America

Tom Kando

In my previous post, I described a hitchhiking adventure I had in Italy as a child. Just a few years later, I was hitchhiking again, this time in the US. I first came to America in 1960, as an Fulbright exchange student. I was nineteen. I fell in love with this gigantic and magnificent country. I was eager to explore a wide world beyond the narrow confines of Europe. Having almost zero money, So I hitchhiked. 

I was enacting a book I had just read breathlessly, a revolutionary book - Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. To me, the book’s appeal was not in its glorification of drugs, but in that it was a celebration of America, of the American spirit of freedom, of the grandeur of America. I saw the book not as anti-American, but as quintessentially American, an ode to the beauty and diversity of this country and its people, in the tradition of Thoreau, John Muir and Jack London.

My Fulbright scholarship was for a year at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. At Easter break, all the college men (Union was still all male), went home for the recess. A great guy named “Buzz” Jackson was from Wichita Falls, Texas. He was going home for the break. He generously agreed to take me and two other exchange students all the way to Texas for a minor contribution to the gas expenses. The other two exchange students were Mike, like me also from Holland, and Saleem, an Algerian student. 

So the three of us rode with Buzz all the way to his parents’ home in Wichita Falls. We went non-stop in two days. We drove through Washington D.C. just in time to see the cherry blossoms. We crossed the whole Deep South, driving across the Carolinas’ bright red-earth landscape and Georgia’s and Alabama’s cotton fields. We only stopped to eat, fill up and go to the bathrooms for whites only. To the three of us from overseas, those segregated bathrooms were a stunning visual indication of an apartheid we had never pondered. 

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Reflections on the New Year

By Madeleine Kando

Another year has ended and we are all excited about it. We made new year’s resolutions which we probably won’t keep and we convince ourselves that the new year will be better than the last. But the real reason for all this frenzy is to celebrate the fact that the Grim Reaper hasn’t come knocking at our door.

But what’s so special about a year? Why not a day? A month? A century? Doesn’t that reek of anthropocentrism? There is no line drawn across the universe that says: “Today is January 1 2023.”

Some insect species never live long enough to celebrate New Year. They don’t even make it to the next day. The female mayfly ‘Dolonia Americana’ only lives for a few minutes as an adult. Can you imagine having to do your entire life’s business in under 5 minutes? Learn to fly, find a mate, make babies and then lay eggs in a safe spot? You wouldn’t have time to eat or go to the bathroom (which is just as well, since mayflies don’t have a mouth). You wouldn’t have time to retire and write your memoirs. You couldn’t wish anyone Happy New Year! You could wish your buddies Happy New Minute, but even that would not fit in your busy schedule.

Ordinary house flies are given some wriggle room, but they too have to cramp their entire lives into a few weeks. No wonder they are so determined to land on that sugar cube, no matter how many times you try to squash them. *

Mammals are somewhat better off, but some still have to sprint through their lives before their time is up. The lowly mouse lives only 18 months and a shrew lives for only about a year. Their metabolic rate is too high to allow them to live much longer. On the other hand, bowhead whales, the longest living mammal on earth, can live over 200 years.

Amazingly, some animals grow extremely old, because they have what is called ‘negligible senescence’. Senescence is the condition or process of deterioration with age, which means that once an animal grows old enough, it stop growing old. An example of negligible senescence is the Greenland shark. Covered with battle scars, it can live up to 500 years. Similarly, the 500 year old Ming clam could have gone on living its incredibly long life, were it not for a bunch of marine biologists who fished him out of the ocean and froze him on board to take him to the lab. Of course he instantly died.

In the plant kingdom life spans begin to increase dramatically. The Pando tree, one of the oldest organisms on Earth, is 14,000 years old. It is really a colony of clones of an original tree, but all of the trees are connected through an underground network of roots. In this way, aspens continue to live long after a single tree may fall or die. Read more...

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)

leave comment here

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. Read more...