The Misinformation Society: The Liars Leading the Ignorant.

By Tom Kando

Only one thing aggravates me more than the mistakes of the electorate - as exemplified by the Democratic loss in Massachusetts on January 19: The conformity and stupidity of the media chatter afterwards.

The pundits have been Monday-morning-quarter backing ever since. They got it all figured out: Take Michael Gerson, Washington Post, Jan. 22: People are angry at Obama; he must scale back health reform. Or a professor recently interviewed on NPR: People are concerned about the deficit. Or other “experts,” who see the voters’ desire for the country to move more to the center (Republicans are at the center?), or the independent voter’s opposition to more taxes, or anti-government populism; etc.,etc...

The truth is: these pundits know as much as the ancient Roman augurs knew - nothing! The goat’s entrails are dark, this means that Caesar will win the battle tomorrow.

I’ll tell you why the people of Massachusetts voted that way on January 19, and why Obama’s ratings have gone down by 20%. For only one reason: They have been bombarded with misinformation for the past 10-12 months.

In politics, only one thing talks - money. Whoever has the resources to repeat its message - including its lies - the most often to the largest number of people, wins the election. The candidate with the most money and the most sympathetic media coverage wins.

Polls don’t reflect the opinions or the will of the people. They reflect the indoctrination of the people. The people’s votes are based on misinformation.

Here are some illustrations:
1. Many people blame Obama for bailing out Wall Street. They confuse two rescue packages: TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), which was the Bush-Paulson $700 billion bailout program for investment banks. And Obama’s stimulus package, the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), aimed at creating jobs and helping people with their mortgages.

2. We can still remember the widely publicized case, last year, of the old geezer who attended one of those town hall meetings with a picket sign saying, “The government should keep its hands off my medicare.”

3. On January 21, NPR had a call-in panel discussion on health care. A fellow called in and said: “I oppose Obama’s health care reform package because I don’t want the government to take on another massive program.”
The NPR panelists could have reminded him and millions of listeners that he was misinformed, and that there was nothing governmental left in the final package being considered by Congress - no single-payer plan, not even a public option. But they didn’t. And so, the lies live on. The Democrats’ near-capitulation to the Insurance Industry got them nothing in return, not even a better informed public, a public which understands that “socialized medicine” has long been off the table.

4. Recently, a college student was quoted in the Sacramento Bee saying that it is “unconstitutional to force someone to buy something he doesn’t want, namely health insurance.” So then, mandatory car insurance, home insurance, fire and flood insurance, clothing in public, motor cycle helmets, etc. these things are all unconstitutional?

5. Pregnancy is a pre-existing condition which can prevent a woman from obtaining health insurance. A few years ago, a young female friend of mine was pregnant. She had no insurance. Delivery and pre- and post-natal care of her baby would cost more than thousand dollars, which she didn’t have. She really wanted the child, but given the situation, she had no choice but to abort. This should please the right-wingers who sank health care reform.

Here is an idea for the insurance companies and for the congressmen in their pockets: Be consistent. Since all fertile women are potentially pregnant, why not declare that they all suffer from a pre-existing condition, and deny all women health insurance?
Well, you get my point: Absurdity. leave comment here Read more...

Quotes of the Day

By Madeleine Kando

After the recent victory by Republican Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, I came across an old quote by Bertolt Brecht, which I thought was very applicable. I took some liberty in reproducing it here:

1) Only the stupidest hogs choose their own butcher.

Here are a few more quotes that I like:
2) Republicans vote to have the same sky as the corporate giants. They just don’t get the same horizon.

3) If only God had limited the Republicans’ stupidity, not just their intelligence.

And here are some quotes that apply to the Democrats:
1. The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
2. Bush poisoned the soup that Obama has to eat.
3. Don't be afraid of Republicans so much as an inadequate Democrat.
4. There are many elements to a Presidency. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.

And some for the Independents:
5. It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up one.
6. Hungry men are reaching for the bible, it is a weapon.
7. Society cannot communicate so long as it is split into warring factions.
8. The law was made for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Any more you can think of? leave comment here Read more...

It's About Time

by Madeleine Kando

I don’t like to think about time too much. It makes me confused and not sure about anything any more.

Here I am, Madeleine sitting at my mac typing. I like to think that I am going to be sitting here tomorrow and the day after, still the same Madeleine. But what about in 10 years from now? Will I still be the same Madeleine typing at my Mac? Mmmm. And what about when I was 6 years old? Was I a different Madeleine then? I know my body was made up of different cells altogether, up to the smallest piece in my fingernail.

I know that my ability to think was the size of a pea. But what about the ME? And if I WAS a different Madeleine – when did I stop being the Madeleine I was then and start to become the Madeleine I am now?

Changing our names every decade or so would simplify things. We don’t keep other things throughout our lives, do we? We change houses when they become too small. We change schools, shoe sizes; our voice changes, our eyesight... So why keep our names throughout our lives?

If had been called ‘Sue-Ellen’ when I was 6 I could talk about the day I stole my best friend’s black lacquered shoes this way: ‘You know what Sue-Ellen did? She took Monique’s shoes home with her. She pretended she had found them. Her mom made her bring them back and apologize. But Sue-Ellen left them on the front steps and ran back home before anyone could open the door. Isn’t that cute?’ Right now it is one of the many many monkeys on Madeleine’s back but if I could have been Sue-Ellen instead..

If I had been called Shirley when I was in my early teens I could talk about the day I almost burnt the yard down because I was smoking in secret this way: ‘Shirley did something really stupid…’ and I would shrug it off like one of those silly things Shirley had done instead of hearing about it ad nauseam at every family reunion.

It would also solve the problem that many parents have with their children. Mothers look at their 30 year old daughters and see a cuddly baby instead. Next time your mom tells you that you need a hair cut or that your skirt is too short, tell her to go talk to Sue-Ellen or Shirley and leave you in peace.

Yes, time is a funny thing. Take Zaza, our cat for instance. She was such a devoted mother to Rosy. Licked her clean all day, played with her, taught her how to catch mice.. One day all of that love and affection, gone … disappeared right out the window. Rosy had become a rival. Had to be chased away, hissed at, scratched and bitten. Clearly animals don’t recognize their own offspring once they have reached adulthood.

Babies don’t even have a concept of time. To them everything is forever. No wonder they scream their heads off. Can you imagine having wet diapers forever?!

What about old age? Time has a tendency to slow down when you are waiting for something. Whether you are a prisoner waiting to be released, or very old waiting to die.. time can slow down until it almost stands still. Then again time can speed up. When you fall in love and don’t ever want it to end, or when you are watching a sunset and don’t want the sun to sink into the ocean.

Wouldn’t it be great if my twin sister and I could do the ‘twin paradox’ experiment. I would be sent out into space at close to the speed of light while Juliette would stay on earth. Supposedly, when I come back I would be younger than my twin. Juliette, all wrinkled and shriveled up. Me, all glowing with youthful energy. Of course we would fight tooth and nail over who gets to be the space twin.

So what is time really? Is it just a trick of our mind? Or is it real, like the trees and the snow? Maybe all of time is already out there, like the space around us. We just cannot see it. We are like blind men in a room full of furniture. We are bumping into whatever is in front of us, as we move through life, our blind brains unable to encompass all of time at once. Besides, time unlike space, is a one-way affair. You can never purchase a return ticket, even if you have frequent flyer miles. leave comment here Read more...

Two Americas

By Tom Kando

I have often wondered how to reconcile my love for America with the mistakes which this country makes. This schizoid situation was awakened in me again when I juxtaposed (1) Jan’s comment on Madeleine’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? post of January 9 and (2) Ken Burns’ The War - the magnificent 7-part documentary film about America in World War Two, which I recently saw again.
I agree with just about everything Jan writes, in her scathing critique of American politics, and at the same time I see the nobility and the greatness of the American people, as depicted by Ken Burns. How can this be?

The most obvious reconciliation of these two perspectives is to see this as a class conflict, a conflict between the people and their corrupt elite, who cleverly brainwash the population. Jan is right, there is much of that. I see the deterioration of which she speaks in even allegedly “liberal” media such as NPR and the Sacramento Bee, which devote inordinate space to reactionary voices, under the guise of “equal time.”

But there is another perspective. I can see two Americas in another sense, too. Not just in the sense of poor vs. rich, of progressive vs. reactionary. I can see two Americas within the spirit of the American people.

1. The enduring greatness of the American people is documented in Ken Burns’ The War: It shows not only the heroic sacrifices of our men overseas from 1941 through 1945, but also the courage, strength, goodness and selflessness of all Americans, both overseas and at home. The footage alternates between the bloodbaths of Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima and a thousand other places on the one hand, and the wise, sensitive and intelligent comments of veterans, relatives, widows and others on the home front.

I know, the war caused far more death and suffering among other people. For every American killed by the war, 60 Russians died, 40 Chinese, 15 Jews, 20 other Europeans, 30 Germans, 30 Japanese. “Only” half a million Americans died, almost all soldiers. A majority of Russians, Jews and others were civilians - women and children.

But this is not what I want to write about. What strikes me, in Ken Burns’ rich historical document, is the nobility and the morality of the American people....and the contrast with the mentality of their enemies, and even that of some of their allies.

It’s quite simple: America saved the world. And it did this with calm strength, not rancor. Leaders like FDR and Eisenhower, and the masses of the American people, were determined, not bitter or enraged. Their hearts were filled with courage and an unfailing belief in goodness, not frenzy.

Courage takes many forms. There is the pathology of the Japanese kamikaze and of today’s deranged suicide bomber. Loyalty to country and to cause is also universal. But the courage and determination of the American people have been of a special kind: Americans never became nihilists, killing for the sake of killing. They never lost sight of the ultimate good, the value of human life and happiness. Even during the depth of the mayhem, comradeship, a loving family back home, a glass of beer, the war’s eventual end - such things continued to sustain Americans, who continued to appreciate and to look forward to life, and to occasionally smile through it all.

To the typical Japanese fighter, the noble thing was to die in combat and to take a maximum number of enemies with you. In occupied countries, people suffered and waited to be liberated.

Americans were free from the viruses which had infected much of the world - fascism, imperialism, genocide and cynicism. Americans were psychologically healthy. They did not doubt that they would win, because they knew that lunatics like Hitler and Tojo could not. Americans did not hedge their bets. They knew that they were the only ones capable of beating back the beast. Equivocations such as Clint Eastwood’s movies about Iwo Jima, which show moral equivalency between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific war, are reprehensible.

To this day, this remains a good culture, a great culture.

2) But we have morons like Glenn Beck and his followers, like this college student interviewed in the January 11 Sacramento Bee. According to a Time Magazine survey, Glenn Beck is the most popular man in America today. The Sacramento Bee student said that it is unconstitutional to force Americans to buy something against their will, namely health insurance. Morons.

So the question is: where does the stupidity come from? Why does this noble people willingly accept so much bs? Accept the lie that unfettered free enterprise works for the greater good of all (after nearly 3 years of that system’s catastrophic performance).

Maybe the naivete is rooted in the very nature of the American people. Americans believe in inherent goodness, and they are very slow to anger. They find political fights tedious. They’d rather be happy. And help someone who is downtrodden. They are the quintessential bon vivant. Life is too short to be angry. Even when they get into a fight, Americans are rarely angry. That’s what I saw in Ken Burns: Even in Iwo Jima, they weren’t really angry. They just tried to survive. They killed so as not to be killed.

What this means, for America’s current confrontation with international terrorism, is this: What to do, and how to it, are complex questions. But there is no doubt that radical Jihad and terrorism are just as wrong as the Nazis and the Japanese militarists were 60 years ago.

 leave comment here Read more...

Avatar

By Tom Kando

We just saw James Cameron’s movie Avatar. At a cost of $400 million, and earnings of 1.1 billion during its first 3 weeks, it may break all the records, including Titanic, the previous record-holder and also a Cameron film. Story: Earthlings try to colonize the distant planet Pandora in order to exploit its mineral riches (a metal called Unobtanium). This leads them to wage a war of extermination against the native Na’vi. The Na’vi are noble savages who, unlike modern humans, live in harmony with nature. They are like American Indians in movies such as Dances with Wolves.
Scientist Sigourney Weaver has a clever Avatar program: She can put a human into deep sleep in a pod, and temporarily transfer his consciousness into an Avatar, i.e. a pre-fab Na’vi body. Such an Avatar can then go and mix with the Na’vi, to either befriend them, or to spy on them and harm them. The movie’s hero, Jake Sully, is one such individual. At first, he is sent as a spy for the terran (translate: US) military, but he turns native, like Kevin Costner did. Thanks to Sully, the Na’vi win the battle, and the earthlings are forced to return to - quote - “their dying planet.”

To begin with: I agree with everybody that the special effects are stunning and that the movie is a visual feast.

The problem with the movie is that (1) it is aimed at a 12-year old audience and that (2) it is full of political messages. Hemingway once said that writers should write stories, not messages. I don’t go to the movies to get sociology lessons, especially when I am already familiar with the material.

The film is drenched in political correctness. Now don’t misunderstand me, I am pretty politically correct myself. But why do I have to be told by Hollywood, in a really dumbed-down way, that:

1. Modernity is bad
2. Pre-industrial peoples are better and have better values.
3. Green is good. The destruction of forests is bad.
4. American military intervention overseas is cruel and heavy-handed

The Na’vi noble savage is so obviously modeled after groups such as the Sioux in Dances with Wolves, it’s almost embarrassing. The language, the rhetoric, the lifestyle, the mysticism, everything reminds you of some earlier film. When the hero hunts down and kills a deer-like creature, he thanks his prey and assures it that by eating it, they will join and become one. When hauling things cross-country, the Na’vi use drag sleds because, like American Indians, they haven’t invented the wheel. You recognize aspects of Kicking Bird and Wind-in his-hair from the Kevin Costner movie. One, a wise man, the other a hothead warrior who first wants to kill the hero, but then learns to love him... The movie is a melange of borrowed elements. Every five minutes I had a deja vu, whispering to my wife, “ there goes Kevin Costner,” or “that’s right out of Apocalypse Now.”
The message, “Green is good” is also very thick. The destruction of Pandora’s rain forest is an obvious reference to what’s going on Brazil and elsewhere, including the loss of plants with medicinal value.

And then there is the military operation, which takes up almost the whole second half of the movie, to the point of tedium. Here, we see enormous airplanes, helicopters, stinger-like missiles, jungle warfare. It’s all so familiar, right out of footage from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s all about the heavy-handed and destructive way in which America has waged war around the world for decades. It’s obvious that the sky people are white and that they are Americans.

God knows I have criticized modernity myself (for example, I find Ken Wilber’s writings fascinating). But here, it’s all so simplistic. Don’t forget that the most virulent critics of modernity are Osama Bin Laden and his associates. That should make you pause. And as to the noble savage: Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto shows us a different face of pre-industrial civilization. He exaggerates Mayan cruelty, you say? A caricature? Maybe, but no more than Avatar, and probably less naive.

Another faddish idea is borrowed from the Matrix: when riding horselike and giant birdlike creatures, the Na’vi plug their own tails into part of their mount’s body, which connects the rider’s and the mount’s energies and consciousness. The idea that in order to achieve total connectedness, one-ness - “mind-meld,” one just needs to find a plug and an outlet, seems to have great appeal among the electronic generation.

The funny thing is that while reviewers recognize much of what I have just said, many of them still don’t get it: Take David Brooks who wrote on January 9 in the NY Times that the movie Avatar is an “offensive antique” (and he is not alone). He writes about what I call the Tarzan syndrome. He deplores the fact that in this movie, as so often in the past, it takes a white man to save the natives. According to him, then, Avatar is still patronizing, Eurocentric and racist. People like Brooks remain unable to shake their white guilt, and they will go to the end of the earth to be PC. The problem with this movie is not that it is racist. It’s that it is a cliche.

Overall grade: B leave comment here Read more...

The Elephant and the Donkey

by Madeleine Kando

On an island in the sea there lived an elephant family and a donkey family. They were not exactly friends but since it was a great big island they usually kept out of each other’s way and lived their lives peacefully by pretty much ignoring each other. At times they had to interact because, as the donkey was trying to build something, he needed the elephant’s strength to haul stuff. And when the elephant was trying to figure out a repair job he needed the donkey’s brains to figure out how to fix it. But all in all, they spent their days avoiding each other as much as possible.

The elephant stomping about, making sure that nothing was disturbed in his domain. He liked things to be nice and tidy. His waterhole undisturbed by foreign creatures, the sandpit where he liked to roll around in nice and dry, and his little elephant babies all in a row, marching to his beat behind him. And noone dared to oppose his wishes, seeing that he was a great big elephant.

The donkey also liked things his way. He made up for what he lacked in bulk, by his wit and stubbornness. He was an adventurous little fellow. His brood showed him respect even as they wondered off to explore some foreign-looking object on the beach. He didn’t mind that much. He himself was endowed with a curious nature and instinctively realized that stunting his children’s sense of adventure wouldn’t serve them well in the long run. He was clever and because he was so small compared to the elephant, he often coveredd himself with a lionskin when he went foraging. Even the elephants ran off as they saw him approach, which made him chuckle. Read more...

What's the Matter with Kansas?

By Madeleine Kando

I am ill-equipped to write about politics. All I have in my arsenal is an instinct for the ‘right’ thing. But even that is failing me as I am struggling to make sense of the events of the past year: the economic crisis, the ruins left behind by the Bush administration, the unemployment rate.. above all this nation’s resistance to health care reform.

I don’t think that even the most knowledgeable academician could explain to me what is going on in America today. How did we get to a place where it is tacitly accepted that the poor have to bail out the super rich, or the whole country might sink into a depression (as we are told).

One source I found to cope with my confusion is in a book by Thomas Frank: ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas’. Frank tries to make sense of the transformation of his home state of Kansas, which has turned from a populist left-wing state to a state controlled by conservative, pro-business, right-wing evangelical Christians.

He asks the sensible question: how so many people can vote against their own economic interests? His explanation rings true in my opinion. Conservative politicians have managed to deny the ‘economic’ basis for the difference in social classes. They have replaced it with a ‘cultural’ basis. They have branded left-wing liberals as those latte drinking vegetarians who don’t like guns. It is clever. By removing the ‘economic factor’ as a source of discontent conservative leaders find no opposition to their free-market, laissez-faire, lower taxes for the rich policies. By keeping people angry about cultural issues such as family values, intelligent design or abortion and gay rights, they are masking their true motivation: keeping the system friendly to unregulated, run-away capitalism.

This might explain why so many poor people are against health care reform. Health care reform equals government intervention. It infringes on a person’s privacy and right to self-determination (the right to not get affordable health care when they are sick?)

But this phenomenon of polluting true politics with ‘cultural’ issues is also a disease of the liberal left. Rather than pushing for more equality and economic security they concentrate instead on gay rights, pro-choice and anti-school prayer. As important as those issues might be, I consider them far less important than the fact that 14% of families in america suffer from food insecurity. That on any given night there are a million homeless people on the streets.

How did we come to accept the inevitability of so much inequality? The liberals have long ago stopped talking to the ‘working class’ and in a sense they have what is coming to them: an opposition that is much better at manipulating politics.

Sometimes it seems that the word 'liberal' is becoming a dirty word and that its true meaning is becoming so tarnished that before long there may only be different shades of conservatism. We have a Democratically dominated House and Senate and a Democratic Presidency, and yet the government is unable to pass a health care bill, which is clearly the wish of a majority of Americans. leave comment here Read more...

Milly The Wug

by Madeleine Kando

Milly the wug was very ordinary looking. She wasn’t one of those fancy wugs, with curly cues int their hair and stiff collars to hold up their necks. No, Milly was unpretentious. True, she had a tendency towards being snappy sometimes. Especially when her father came into her room without knocking. Her parents often couldn’t tell where her wugging started and theirs ended. But on the whole, she was a well-adjusted, soft-spoken, cuddly little wug that most other wugs her age liked.

On Tuesday she received a letter from her aunt Mildred (she was named after her as you might have guessed). This is what the letter said: ‘Dear Milly. This is your aunt Mildred. I wanted to come over to visit you on Friday to give you a present. Please respond a.s.a.p, as I am waitressing all week at the ‘Wugger’s delight’ and need to ask my boss if I can take the evening off. Yours sincerely, Aunt Mildred’.

Milly liked presents so she replied in an email. ‘Dear aunt Mildred. Yes, please come over. I will be waiting in my room. The secret knock on the door is the following: ‘two short taps followed by one long one’.

Milly could hardly wait for Friday to come. She had received presents before. They all had had cards on them: ‘to Milly-the-wug’. Just so they wouldn’t be given to whom exactly? ‘Milly-the-bee’? ‘Milly-the-bear?’ No-one else was named Milly in her neighborhood, so it was somewhat superfluous in her opinion. But as I said before, Milly was ordinary and unpretentious, so she kept her criticism to herself.

On Wednesday, on her way to school, she met up with Barnaby. Barnaby secretly liked Milly. That’s why he sometimes pushed her and punched her on the shoulder. So Milly crossed the street so she wouldn’t have to talk to him. In school they learnt about the famous twelfth century ‘Batlle of the Wugs’ when Wug the Magnificent had defeated his enemies.

On Thursday, after she had done her chores and her homework, she took Poodles for a walk. She saw a crawn stuck in the tree where Poodles was doing his business. She carefully untangled his right leg and placed him on the ground. Crawns are unpredictable you see, so Milly quickly stepped back before the crawn would have a chance to take a bite out of her helping hand.

Finally it was Friday. Milly had put out chips and lemonade, crackers and napkins. And now she was waiting for the secret knock. And sure enough: she heard the two short taps followed by one long one. ‘Please come in’ said Milly.

The door opened slowly and Milly, who hadn’t seen her aunt Mildred for quite some time, was surprised to see a beautiful, tall and slender wug stand in the doorway. ‘Hello Milly’ said Mildred with a beautiful, melodious voice, unlike any other wug voice Milly had every heard. ‘I have come to give you a present. Would you like to open it?’

Millly was very curious but also very polite, so she first offered Mildred some lemonade and crackers. As the tension built inside her, she inched her way closer to the box and finally couldn’t resist. ‘May I?’ she said. The box was easily opened. A flat, square looking object was wrapped in tissue paper. She had never seen anything like it before. Inside a dark brown looking frame was a shiny silver colored glass surface with the letters ‘U’ and ‘G’ on it. As Milly slowly turned it towards her she saw buttons with letters, like a telephone pad on the side of the frame. She pressed the letter ‘W’. Whoosh! An odd looking creature was looking back at her. It had eyes, ears, a nose.. ‘what is that?’ asked Milly. It looks like a picture of someone familiar. I sort of like it. Who is it?’

Mildred leaned towards her and as she caressed her cheeks with an ever so tender touch, she said: ‘that is YOU, my darling. A wug. Why don’t you press the letter ‘B’?’ Instantly she was transformed into a B-U-G inside the frame. As she started to press the different letters, her reflection metamorphosed into a M-U-G, then a R-U-G and also a SL-U-G. ‘What a wonderful present’, said Milly. I can be anything I want!’

So from that day on, when she didn’t feel like doing her homework she changed herself into a bug. And when her father got upset she could become a ‘hug’ and make him feel better. And when her feet were cold she could become a ‘rug’.

I bet you can think of many other things Milly could change herself into. Wouldn’t it be great to be a wug? leave comment here Read more...

Aphorisms and Provocations

By Tom Kando

An aphorism is a "a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written." (Wikipedia). A provocation is a statement meant to rile up the reader, to make him/her think. For example the well-know statement (attributed to George Bernard Shaw ?): "Those who can, do, and those can’t, teach." Or French Utopian Socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's famous dictum: "Property is Theft."Perhaps the key characteristic of a provocative aphorism is that it is both true and false. How true it is, depends on its degree of generalization. But the beauty of such zingers is precisely that they are terse and categorical. The sophomoric reply, "well, it depends" is silly. No duh! Of course, everything depends. Are some teachers incompetent? Yes, some are and some aren’t. Is some property stolen? Yes, and some isn’t.

But "it depends" isn’t the point of provocative aphorisms. They have a different value. A provocateur can be largely wrong, but his insight can be an eye opener. He is expressing a perspective. You may not share that perspective, but to him, based on his experience, that is how things look.

Here are some examples - some are mine (at least the formulations), some are not: Take bureaucracy for instance. The last person to praise bureaucracy was probably Max Weber. Today, the word has a bad connotation, right? Here are two aphorisms which capture the badness of bureaucracy succinctly and wittily. The well-known Parkinson’s Law, and Peter Principle:

1) The function of bureaucracies is to create useless work so as to fill employees’ time.

2) Bureaucracies maximize inefficiency and incompetence: Employees who excel are promoted, while those who do not are maintained in their positions. Thus, everyone is promoted until they reach their level of mediocrity/incompetence.

I have some of my own aphorisms about bureaucracies. Obviously, these are not original thoughts. I just wrote them down:

3) The goal of bureaucracies is to fail, for only then will their budgets be augmented.

4) Failure leads to reward and success leads to punishment, for failure is interpreted as the result of under-funding.

6) An important budgetary goal is to waste money: Unless you spend the maximum budgeted for a given year, the next year’s base-line budget gets reduced.

Or how about the helping professions and the social sciences? Here are some of the things I have said to my criminology students at one time or another, so as to provoke them (again, these are obviously not my ideas):

1) Society needs its deviants

2) Psychiatrists need their patients more than the patients need their psychiatrists.

3) the more laws there are, the higher the crime rate is.

4) The result of prisons is to increase criminality.

5) The function of the criminal justice system is to create jobs in corrections, in the courts and in law enforcement.

6) The result of social services (Child Protective Services, Social Work, Probation, Parole, Counseling, Juvenile Reformatories, Rehabilitative Services, etc.) is an increase in family dysfunction, delinquency and maladjustment, which increases the need for those services.

Well, you get my drift. What most of these aphorisms have in common is that they reverse the conventional wisdom. And each is both true and false. For example, do prisons protect society against criminals? Of course they do. Do they also criminalize people? Absolutely.

I invite you to send me some of your favorite aphorisms. If we get a bunch, maybe we can compare them, and even recognize and acknowledge the best one(s)... leave comment here Read more...

A Bird’s Eye View

by Madeleine Kando

I woke up this morning all refreshed and glad to be alive. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I got ready for my customary morning flight. Where should I go today I pondered. Should I go my usual route: over the little houses that form a circle, or should I go more west, towards the town forest? I liked the little houses so I decided to fly that way today. As I was breathing the fresh air and feeling the breeze on my wings, I looked down and watched a human walk down the street.

He was dragging himself slowly down the road. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to always be in contact with the earth. Would it feel safer? Smaller?

As I watched him struggle trying to fight gravity with each step he took, there appeared another person in front of him. They both stopped. Oh, they are going to sing to each other I thought for a brief moment.

Suddenly the smaller person’s nose came in contact with the other man’s knee and they touched briefly. I could see that his nose started to drip a dark red fluid. Now the man’s chin came in contact with the larger man’s curled up hand and I heard a faint cracking noise, as if a branch was breaking. He tipped backwards, and lay down. The larger man approached him and his foot quickly came in contact with the man’s stomach after which the tall man walked away. What a strange way these creatures communicate with each other, I thought.

I veered towards the town forest. I usually encounter other early risers in this area. Yellow throated warblers, little chickedees and an occasional woodpecker. I flew over a large open area covered with what looked like long golden colored stalks. As I watched the wind dance over the stalks, moving them to and fro, a human appeared with a long instrument in his hand. He started to pull out large tufts of these stalks and fed them into a container, its gaping mouth wide open waiting for nourishment.

He must be preparing a nest, I thought. Where is his female? He hasn’t called out to her. Ah, there she is, all dolled up with a colorful wrapping around her waist. The human tilted the loaded container and pushed it in front of him, towards his mate.

They faced each other and it looked like they were going to do a mating dance. And sure enough, she put her hands on her hips, pushed out her chest and opened her beak. Is she going to sing? The sound was not pleasant, high pitched and very loud. The man lifted his open hand quickly and touched her cheek. Little dew droplets fell from her eyes.

A little befuddled I continued my morning flight over the busier section of town. I was maneuvering my way through the tall buildings when I saw a group of humans gathered together seemingly preparing for some event. ‘Ah! I bet they are ready to migrate’, I thought. Many of them carried stones in their hands, others long branches, probably to build a shelter on their way south. I watched their slow progress along the street as they gathered speed. For a moment I thought they might take flight, but then remembered that these unfortunate creatures don’t possess wings.

They abruptly stopped. Suddenly stones and branches were flying through the air. One of the building’s see-through front broke into a million pieces. The group dispersed in an instant.

I returned to the comfort of my nest and watched my brood still sleeping peacefully. I opened my beak and started my morning song. All I could feel was immense gratitude that I had been born as a bird. I felt great pity for those wingless creatures that act so mysteriously and sing so badly. leave comment here Read more...