Honesty

Take a moment and try a little thought experiment: look around you, right in our own immediate environment. Take a good look. Now expand your view to include more like the town in which you live or country. Then think about the world.

OK, and now make a list (either mentally or write it down) of all the things that really function well. A rather short list, isn't it?

If your list is long, I'm going to suspect that you didn't take a very honest look. All the news we hear is bad news, so nothing's working there. We have social, financial, political, and technological problems. To be perfectly honest, paying very much attention to it all is rather depressing. It's really enough to get you down, and I'm not surprised at all to hear about the rates of heart disease and depression we've got.

So, now, the second task as part of our experiment: be honest, but how much do you think you personally can do about any of it? Give it some serious thought and make a list (either mentally or write it down) of all the things you can do to make things better. A even shorter list than the first one, eh?

For all of you that ended up with long lists, I'd appreciate if you'd get in touch and let me know how you manage, and, of course, to give me some suggestions about what I can pass on to others to help them get started turning things around.

Don't think it can be done? Oh, I think it can, but it'll demand of you the absolutely most courage you've ever been able to muster. I'm serious. You are going to have to find the courage to change not just what you do, but you have to change how you think. You've got to re-evaluate your priorities and put then in an order that doesn't favor just you, but favors the most of everybody you know.

Oh, I know what you're thinking: why should I be the only one? You know very well that none of your friends are going to go through with it, don't you? And now for the last demand of honesty: what does that tell you about your friends? And that's why things are as they are: not because of those big, bad others. No, things as they are because we are as we are.

Turning the tanker

At a recent project meeting, we had a presentation on what things looked like employment-wise in the high-tech sector. Yes, there were the usual sad statistics about how few young people were looking for jobs in technology and engineering, and how difficult it was to get kids interestend in math and science. That's nothing new. What was sort of new -- at least in a way -- was the presenter's plea for a broader-based education. It seems one of the most common complaints of employers is that their new-hires are seriously lacking in interpersonal skills. In other words, they know very little about anything other than what they know technically, and they have as good as no idea about how to get along, let alone work, with others. Isn't that surprising? I thought so.

OK, I'm not surprised like "yikes! where did that come from?" No, in light of the persistent pleas for employability somebody apparently overlooked the fact that understanding other people and communicating clearly and effectively are just as essential in the workplace as knowing what you are doing on the job. The question that popped into my mind, of course, was why were these skills no longer part of the curriculum.

When I went to school (granted quite some time ago), those were precisely the things our English (or fill-in-you-own-native-language) instruction. We read stories that were about how people did or didn't get along, about what made life worth living and we learned (or at least our teachers tried to teach us) how to form a coherent thought in a sentence and to take just a little bit of pride in being able to spell correctly.

The last thing I want to do is turn back the clock, but I do think it's time we re-thought some of the things we have decided aren't so important in the meantime. To many, art, literature, and music may have seemed like a waste of time, but they were anything but. We saw that there were multiple ways of expression, that words, pictures and tones could stir feelings ... right, feelings. Not just sensibilities that are too easily offended, but feelings that we had ourselves and that others had as well. We at least had the chance to learn that others weren't really all that different from us.

Even in that hard, cold world of work and business, it would seem that there is recognition that we really can't just make everything about money.

Terminal blindness

OK, what can any one of us really do? It's a legitimate question, and it deserves an honest answer: not a lot ... if it's only about us individually. Most of the problems with which we are confronted these days are bigger than any one of us, but they are not bigger than all of us. And therein lies the rub.

In order to do certain things ... big things, for sure ... we need to get together and work together with others. We have to give up just a little part of ourselves in order to get along with and cooperate with others. This is the real secret to success. Nobody -- regardless of what the propagandists may tell you -- makes it on his or her own. Everybody had help, everybody got support, everybody who ever became anybody became that somebody because others helped them get there. The fact of the matter is that without others, we are nothing. But that's the lie we've chosen to live.

It never ceases to amaze me how selectively blind we are. We love to just blot out things that we don't want to fit. It was Steve Jobs who made Apple, even though thousands of folks like you and me did all the right things to make him successful. It was Edison who invented the light bulb, even though he had tens of assistants working with him day and night. It was ... well, the list goes on and on. What applies in small, applies in the world at large as well.

The easiest examples to find are in the area of business and economics because this is where we have decided to place our focus any way. There it is the individual who climbs to the top and most of them will be damned if they're taking anyone with them. When things go awry in the neighborhood, like after a natural disaster, it is the community who binds together to make sure things work again. That's what a society is about.

It is not too late to decide, once again, that the society is more important than the economy. These are not mutually exclusive choices, rather it is simply a matter of priorities. If we choose to remain selectively blind to the fact that together we are capable of much more -- and much more economically -- than if only a few get all the credit, we can turn from the road to perdition and head off somewhere else. If not, we'll just continue down the road we're on, and our blindness will become terminal.

The road to perdition

For those of you who have been paying attention, you will have noticed that the theme of the last few posts was about selfishness. Many of the problems with which we are confronted, either as an economy or a society (should we still have one), are because of what some think they should have and who we believe should be able to have what. It's all about having, nothing more.

It's so simple when you get right down to it, but it's having that is going to be our undoing. When we are born, we have nothing. We hope we have at least a mother, because if we don't, we're not capable of living on our own, but we have absolutely nothing. When we die, we take nothing with us; nothing physical that is. We may have amassed a huge fortune, but we can't take it with us. We just go. We have nothing at the start and nothing at the end, and that makes me wonder why having plays such an important role between those two points. Does what we have say anything at all about who we are? I don't think so.

As long as we buy into the illusion that having is more important than anything else, we're going to continue having the problems that are plaguing us right now. By making having the be-all and end-all of existence, we have created this illusion, however. We feed it every time we think we have to buy something and that buying things will make us happy. But they don't. I saw a statistic yesterday about how many things the average person (and we're talking about people here in the industrialized West) has/owns: 60,000. Yes, I was amazed, too, but we have all these things and we're as unhappy as we've ever been, so we're going to go out and buy some more ... but for what?

What you have says absolutely nothing about who you are. This applies whether you are just a single person or whether you are a company, a community, a society, an economy, or a country. What is important is who you are, and who you are is determined by what you do.

So, what are you doing to stop us all from going to Hell in a handbasket? Consuming? Talking? Complaining? Or are you really doing something?

Public trust

As is so often the case in modern life, we seem to be faced with something of a predicament, if not a dilemma. How much government do we need? What kind of government should we have? How free may we allow markets to be? Which has priority: the common or private good? I'm not saying the answers to these questions are easy, far from it. What I am saying is that I don't think we think enough, nor seriously enough about the answers. Many appear to have ready answers on their lips, but does what they have to say reduce or increase the difficulties with the predicament.

We're back to where we have been many times before: Do we live in an economy based on sound social principles? Do we live in a society based on sound economic principles? Or, perhaps just a little more bluntly: do we live in a society or an economy? I realize that the industrialized West, in the USA, first and foremost, society has been traded in for just an economy, and a relatively poor one at that. Privatization, de-regulation, reduction of social spending, and unrestrained markets is what the people clamor for ... or have I only been able to hear part of the yelling. I suppose so. Being as far away as I am, I can really only hear who is shouting the loudest and that's what I'm hearing. Here in Europe, the most recent elections -- in France, Greece, and two of the Länder in Germany have made clear statements that the people want more of their society back. Granted, it's not all as simple as that, but it's really not all that complicated either.

We -- and by that I mean all of us, every single one of us -- must decide what is important to us. We have to decide whether we want to have a society or not? If we decide we want one, we then need to decide what kind: tyrannical, authoritarian, democratic, free, social ... should it be a community or just a collection of individuals, every person for him or herself. These are very, very fundamental questions, but they are questions that each of us is called upon to have an answer to. And, oh, by the way, it isn't that you just have an answer, you need to know why your answer is your answer, you have to be able to justify to others the advantages of your own view. In case you are wondering how far this need go, that, too, is simple: you should be able to make clear to anyone that how you think is how absolutely every human being on the planet should think. If it's good enough for you, it has to be good enough for anybody. If it isn't, it's just another lousy -- and I do mean lousy -- opinion.

And, yes, I believe everyone is entitled to their opinions, regardless of how lousy they are. But no one should expect that I honor or have much respect for the lousy ones. If you aren't willing to put any effort into having it, why should I put any effort into dealing with it, let alone respect it?

Much Ado About Nothing

I have to take a break from the public/private thread ... just for today, and in reality, it's not all that far off target. Three days ago Facebook went "public". I'm not exactly sure what that means, really. It's a private company that is now held by different private persons (but not very different from who was holding it before). According to reports, there are now a good number of tens-millionaires that there weren't before. And yes, there are a number of newly minted paper-billionaires in the crowd as well, but I'm not sure what is "public" about that. Talking about the stock market and public makes about as much sense as talking about the public in relation to the Freemasons. But that doesn't stop us from getting excited, does it?

So what actually happened on Thursday? Well, take away the hype and the private fortunes and what's left? Right. Nothing. I didn't feel the earth miss a beat in its rotation. The Messiah didn't arrive. Cancer wasn't cured and neither was AIDS. And for those of you who think the stock market has something to do with the economy as a whole or its "health", well, I suppose you just have to go on living your illusion. Facebook -- at the moment -- is the most highly "valued" company in the world. And the only question that comes to my mind is "so?" Oh, don't get me wrong. There are no sour grapes here. Whether Mr. Zuckerberg is a pauper or billionaire makes no difference to me. Money is money and you're either beholden to it or your not. It doesn't make people people. Too often, it turns them into un-people, so let's hope this fate doesn't befall Mr. Z.

No, I'm just surprised by all the airtime such a non-event gets. Facebook is an advertising platform (when seen as a business, which it really is). Whether people can get in touch with old friends or post silly pictures of themselves or out themselves in ways they never would in person doesn't really matter. People are that way, and just being able to accumulate a good number of them in one place is attractive go advertisers. OK, some, like GM, got tired of no return on investment and pulled out. That Facebook generates only about one-seventh of the revenues of Goldman-Sachs (another peach of a company, considering how much public money went into them), it's now twice as "valuable". I think it's time we started reconsidering what we really mean when we use certain words. So, what is it that they really do as a business. It would seem very little.

And that's where this is all going to end, I'm sure. If the banks hadn't jumped in to the tune of about $300 million on that first day, the stock price would have closed lower than it started ... oh, by the way, that's considered a bust on Wall Street. What some people won't do to keep the illusion going. And, in the end, who's going to end up paying for all of this? You guessed it, the public. That's what going public is apparently all about.

Precarious privatization

The conflict of interests spoken of last time dealt specifically with education, but that is not the only area in which we should be a bit more cautious. I realize there are many out there who are strong advocates of free markets, but they've really got no support to fall back on. Not every area of human endeavor is a market, nor should it be. And, there are some things that may look like markets but aren't.

Now, for all of you who now want to start beating me over the head with Adam Smith, I would ask that you at least read him before you use him as a weapon. The good scholar (a moral philosopher, no less, whose Wealth of Nations is hardly comprehensible without first understanding his Theory of Moral Sentiments and I'm guessing only a handful of people alive today have ever read that). Mr. Smith may have been skeptical about too much government, but he was a strong advocate of government in that it should oversee and take care of those areas which would not naturally profit a private individual. Government, in Smith's eyes was there to provide a justice system, enforce contracts, grant intellectual property rights, but also to provide public goods such as infrastructure (roads, bridges, transportation means, national defense, and one would suspect utilities). He supported public education and religious institutions because he believed they provided a general benefit to society, and most strikingly, he advocated protecting infant industries and regulating banking.

In other words, the "patron saint" of the free market was only in favor of those areas of endeavor that lent themselves to being regulated by the laws of supply and demand. He suspected that if left to their own devices, business would collude to the disadvantage of customers, therefore oversight was necessary. He was also in favor of several forms of taxation, such as taxes on rents, and was a very strong advocate of progressive tax rates: those who earn the most should contribute the most to the common good. For Smith this is common sense; for his so-called followers ... well, most of them ignore in him what they don't want to see.

What we learn from Mr. Smith, then, is that anything that has to do with the common good, with providing benefits to everyone, not just a privileged few, should include government involvement. The government also has a right and a duty to tax so that the common good may be assured. The solution to too much government spending is more discipline, to be sure, but it is not to turn over public trust to the private sector. Even Adam Smith knew that too much money in too few hands did too little good to too many people.

Collusion or conspiracy

Employability is actually just the tip of an unintended iceberg. When we start worrying too much about whether our graduates can get jobs, we miss the point of education. Instead, by looking almost exclusively at the needs of industry (however you may define that) we naturally start asking what it is that this industry really wants as far as qualified workers. It's a reasonable, but dangerous question.

Quality has long been defined as the fulfilling of requirements; high quality the fulfilling of expectations as well. By stressing the need to know industry's needs, companies start getting involved -- deeply involved -- in schools. They start exercising influence on the schooling process and consequently -- and perhaps inadvertently (I wouldn't want to accuse anyone unjustly) -- they drive education out of the schools. There is simply no room left for it. Two questions immediately arise: do they know what they want? And, what are they willing to do to get it?

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure they know what they want. I've been in enough meetings and at enough conferences on the subject to know that their requirements are anything but clearly defined and articulated: students should be "skilled", be capable of "teamwork", they should have sound math knowledge (in engineering related disciplines), they should be able to communicate. That all sounds very nice, but what does it mean? It sounds a lot like the three R's (reading writing, 'rithmetic) to me. Isn't that what we have been doing all along? Apparently not, so what's the consequence?

As sports is the first and easiest ways into education institutions of all varieties, we've seen it already. They come bearing gifts: stadiums, sponsorships, specific equipment or facilities. And what they bring along with these are commercial interests, consumerism, advertising, and, of course, guilt: what often looks like a donation is really a down payment.

I'm not saying that legitimate business doesn't have its own interests, nor that these interests are bad. What I am saying, however, is that these interests are private interests, not public interests. We have long passed the time when we erroneously believed that what is good for GM is good for the country. We should have learned that private interests in public education is really a conflict of interests.

The tyranny of employability

Having made a distinction between education and schooling, at least in general terms, it seems reasonable to take a closer look at what that means across a broader front. Although I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, I'm not too inclined to take many of them too seriously, but I am sensitive, I believe, to subtle changes in attitude that, once they spread, appear to the casual observer that they were somehow planned or are part of a larger scheme.

In many of the projects in which I am involved, one word keeps reappearing which is giving me some pause for concern. The word? "Employability". At first glance, it seems relatively harmless. The idea behind it is simply to provide those seeking employment those, more or less, specific skills and capabilities that will enhance their chances of landing a job. Noble, right? I mean, who doesn't want to help people get into gainful employment? I do. (And, just to be clear on the issue: there is really no reason why everyone doesn't have a job -- and a meaningful one at that -- but at the moment, that's not how the deck is stacked, but more on that another time.) I'm sure you do, too. So what's the problem?

As with so many well meaning, well intended initiatives, this one has all the potential to become our latest Frankenstein. Why? The reason is just as simple: it's too limited a concept. If person A needs skills X, Y, and Z, and I train him (or her) to obtain those skills, what happens when technology or processes or the situation changes and those skills are no longer required? They would have to be retrained. But, in the meantime, chances are very good that they will be out of work again, because why should a business keep someone around who doesn't have the right skills? Exactly. In other words, by pursuing a strict policy of employability, we are actually condemning a large segment of our population to irregular cycles of employment and unemployment, of being in demand and of being in the way. Is that what we really want?

We moderns pride ourselves in living in such a dynamic and fast-changing world. The pace of life hasn't slowed down and it doesn't seem it's going to soon. But not everyone takes part in that world. Some are simply victims of it. Since we've got schooling down and have turned our backs on education, we are creating that very class of people who will never be a part of the world we claim to love so much. It's not their fault that they are improperly prepared, for it is our own policies that condemn us.

We need to seriously rethink our attitudes toward something as common and necessary as education. I don't think we can afford not to. And, the sooner we do it, the better for all of us.

Schooling

A most fundamental idea underlies much of what I've been saying over the past few posts, namely that of all nature's creatures, it is humans who are in most need of education. The state of affairs today, our state of economy, the pressing issues that we face are all a result of a lack of education.

Don't get me wrong, we do a fairly good job of schooling ... well, provided you live in a wealthy enough school district or can afford to go to a well-endowed, hence expensive college or university. You can be pretty sure your schooling will be complete. You'll know your multiplication tables, you'll be able to recite important facts of history, you'll know the basics of the natural sciences, and you will have learned that objectivity, that facts, are much more important than values, that values belong in the personal, not the public sphere. You'll be able to spout off definitions of "important" concepts, that is concepts that have been deemed important by acknowledged authorities. You will have learned to accept what others tell you if their credentials are impeccable enough. In other words, you will have learned to talk, but not to listen. You will have learned to make statements, but not necessarily ask questions.

And that, my friends, is the tip-off ... that's how you know you're dealing with a schooled, but not necessarily educated, person. We've nearly lost the ability to question. In fact, questioning has become a mere signal for trouble-making. It is the uncomfortable, difficult student who questions. The good student recites his lessons without error. The good student accepts that authority of the teacher. The good student is ambitious and anxious to please the teacher. And we've got plenty of well-schooled individuals running around, I can assure you. I have to deal with them every single day.

For the most part, they are very nice people. They tend to think they know more than they do, but by and large they are well intended and sincere. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, they never learned that the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and that sincerity, in and of itself, is an excuse for action.

Education

For those of you who aren't (or aren't yet) out dancing around the May Pole, let me tell you why education is not the same as schooling. It's all very simple actually.

Schooling prepares you for certainty. Schooled people are skilled people. You know what is, therefore you know what to do, for every problem, you know the answer. We always have all the answers. Just listen around. There is no shortage of allegedly smart people who have the answers. And these answers are very often implemented, and nine times out of ten, they fail. Why? Because the issues involved are uncertain, and certainty is no match for uncertainty. Uncertainty wins every time.

Education is all about preparing you for uncertainty. You don't learn answers, you learn how to question. You don't learn facts, you learn to think and analyze, to formulate problems is such a way that possible solutions can be found. You don't know for sure, you know how to try. You know things may not work out as expected, and you're willing to change direction as soon as that becomes clear that it's needed.

Education is about openness, but most importantly it is about wisdom. It is enabling individuals to not only know but learn. To learn from others, to learn from books, to learn from experimentation, to learn from experience. Education is about knowledge, not information. It is about competences, not just skills.

But, education demands courage. Courage to be different. Courage to tolerate difference. Courage to think differently. Courage to accept challenges to one's own thinking. And that's what we have so little of these days. Always take the safe path, make sure you don't rock the boat, conform, don't draw attention to yourself. In short, be afraid ... of the "bad" grade you might get, of your teacher, your boss, anyone in authority, of the police, of the government, or that you might lose your job.

And that's why we don't educate anyone anymore ... we're simply too afraid.

Crimes against the future

Even though it's happening, we're not ready for this. There are lots of crimes against now: speeding, breaking & entering, theft, grand larceny, fraud, murder. They're bad, all of them. OK, if they weren't they wouldn't be crimes, right? Yeah, and there are some places that these are more widespread than others, but they are all things that we don't agree with and that we do agree are not good for any of is. Hence, they're forbidden. They've been declared crimes and we sleep better at night knowing that, though too many people in too many places have to take their guns to bed to ensure that we're all straight on that.

And that's the problem. Not that people are taking their guns to bed ... what goes on behind closed doors should be of interest to no one, regardless of how sick or kinky it might be. No ... that's all about now.

No, I'm more concerned about what's to come. We give way too low priority to that. What about illegal clearing of the rain forests. Sure, somebody's getting robbed, but more importantly, a whole ecosystem is getting ruined and future generations are going to pay for it ways we haven't even begun to imagine. Or, what about the short-term accounting practices that we've instituted. We're screwing our kids and grandkids. I'm not very happy about that. One of the things I thought I could do when I had children, was that I'd leave them a better world than I found. But that's not going to happen. Other folks have decided that their own current benefit is more important than the fate of my kids and grandkids. I'm wondering who gave them the right.

Well, it turns out, they really don't have the right. They are legally within their "rights", whatever that means, but truth be told, they are screwing with my family ... immediate and potential, and I'm not convinced that that's a good thing. I think that crimes against the future: deforestation, long-term debt, speculation, promotion of the use of unrenewable energies ... the list goes on ... are actually every bit as despicable as the so-called "crimes against humanity". After all, humanity has a future ... or at least we did until it was decided that money was more important than sustainability, for example.

No, I'm not disturbed by the reports of catastrophes per se, as I said a couple of posts ago. But, I am disturbed by the ignorance that allows decisions to be made today that have to be addressed later. I just hope my kids get more pissed off than I am.

Expert terror

You know what scares me more than anything else? Experts. Lord knows we got enough of them. Some of them have respectable credentials. Most of them are only self-proclaimed. Yeah, that's one of the risks you take when living in an age when any opinion is as good as any other. That's where we are, aren't we? Yeah, unfortunately. Well, that's how we wanted it.

Our real problem is that we can pick and choose what we want to believe. It's not a matter of accepting any more. It's not a matter of the better argument, the more valid research, the more reliable information ... no, it's all about belief. We've long outdone the early Middle Ages, the Pre-Renaissance ... we're way past that. We're so much smarter than any of those poor misguided souls could have hoped to be. Yep, universal education, and not a bright person in the house. Should one actually show up, s/he'll get shouted down by the masses faster than you can say "liberal educated elite".

Me? I think we get what we deserve. We don't want it any different than we have it. If things don't work, it's really because we don't want things to work. C'mon ... gridlock is much more interesting than actually solving a problem. Holding to your hokey principles is much more important than actually making the world a better place. No, me? I have no sympathy for anybody anymore. Oh sure, I'm depressed by the fact that there are more have-nots than there ever will be haves. I'm bothered by the fact that too few take too much for themselves and are willing to leave the rest behind. I'm disturbed by how widespread true ignorance is. But, I can't say that I'm all upset about it. I figure is the systems doesn't work any more, feed it. It'll implode. It has to.

As a matter of fact, I actually think we're moving to a new level of crime ... not ignorance: that' been around long enough, and it has tradition, in fact. (If you don't believe me, try reading Hofstader's Anti-intellectualism in American Life (if you can get past your own anti-intellectual prejudices that is) for a cogent portrayal of a phenomenon that has been going on much longer than any of us can afford.) No, we are, I believe, moving from crimes of now to crimes against the future. They're not new, of course, but they are becoming ever more evident.

Pride before the fall?

OK, I hated (at least a little bit) to leave that last post hanging, but how much more is there really to say? We've got some unexplained (but not necessarily threatening) natural phenomena going on, and we've got some sensationalist news folks (almost exclusively American) "investigating" it all. And, we've got the fact that some of what has been going on has always been going on (but we haven't written it down), and some of it is truly a bit odd and in need of serious investigation. But, that still leaves us with what I consider to be the most important, and least asked, question of all: so what?

Let's assume the worst-case scenario: 2012 the world comes to an end. The Mayans turn out to be "right" (though we have no idea why their calendar ends or what they were up to, but no matter: we're dealing worst-case here). The Earth is rebelling, the Sun is overreacting, humankind have overstayed their welcome and are destroying Gaia ... it doesn't matter how we describe it, the world is coming to and end. Again, I have to ask, so what?

Why is this such a big deal? If you're a good Gd-fearing, born-again Christian, you can't help but get into rejoicing mode, because you're about to be taken into the bosom of Abraham. If you're a good Allah-fearing Moslem, you can't help but get into rejoicing mode, because He is about to assert his authority. If you're a good, Gd-fearing Jew, you can't help but get into rejoicing mode, because what has begun must also end. If you're a good, observant Buddhist, you can't help but get into rejoicing mode, because the Wheel is turning once more, and there's a good chance we all get off. If you're just a plain, old, everyday atheist, you can't help but not get excited at all: we're just here by chance anyway, so there's a chance at some point we won't be here.

In other words, just about every group I can think of has all their bets covered. And, if that's the case, why is it that the American news media thinks it can increase its sales (at least until the bottom falls out) and make even more money than it already shamefully does? It's quite simple actually: chances are good that nothing is going to end, except for the way that some people currently think. And that, my friends, is what so many folks are afraid of: they might be believing the wrong things? The big, threatening question is always: what if the other guys are right?

My question is, of course, the same as always: so what? All your believing can't change what is. Perhaps it is simply time to step a bit more slowly, to get a bit less insistant, and to become a bit more open to ... well, faith. The degree to which you are afraid, is the degree to which you do not know. The degree to which you are sure, is the degree to which you have no idea. The degree to which you accept, is the degree to which you are actually free. That's what a wise man once said: you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

The sky is falling?

A dear friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video that collected all the "unusual" happenings that have been going on since the beginning of the year. Mayan Calendar so or so ... there's lots of creepy things happening, and I have to say, I think I may agree.

First of all, except for a couple of mysterious sound reportings ... that is, people were hearing strange sounds coming from the sky (?) ... almost all of the "strange events" happened in the US. Second, the most cited news channel reporting on the events was Fox. Finally, the reports were about things that people (as they repeatedly intoned) had never seen before. Well, I'm convinced. Aren't you?

OK, granted, a few of the reports were actually interesting: the absolute increase in the number of severe tornados, even in areas where they don't "normally" appear. That's interesting, but it is more interesting for people who don't believe in global warming than for those of us who know it is. There has been some pretty severe sun activity lately, too, but my scientist friends tell me that we don't know what it might have been like at other times because reports are scarce and couldn't have been observed like we can observe them today, so we're starting with a pretty fresh sheet of paper on that one. And then, there is all this volcano and earthquake activity. Excuse me: I lived in California for 14 years and if I found earthquakes, even larger ones "unusual", well that pretty well described me as unusual to my peers. What do you expect when you live on the Ring of Fire?

There are plenty of folks out there who love (or would love) to cash in on people's fears, but if we look at the threats: tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes/typhoons, etc., couldn't it just be that the Earth is simply being what it is: the Earth? OK, we may be having (and I do believe we are having) an effect on the weather overall. You can't pump as much crap into the air and water as we do, you can't raze as much rainforest as we do without some kind of consequences. But if you're in denial, well, you'll just deny it anyway. My question is, what does it matter? Why all the concern? What is there to get all upset about? Nature is nature and we're all a part of it. And ... ?

May day

I love today. It's one of the nicest holidays we have here in Europe, and at the same time it is a call for help, for rescue. As with so many things, we can't have it both ways.

The 30th of April, of course, is Walpurgis Night ... I know you all knew that ... and it's still (fortunately) celebrated in many areas of the Continent. Oh sure, there is a lot of demon driving-away going on, but it is the "official" end of winter in these climes. Reason enough to celebrate. In good European tradition, if you are going to party long into the night, why not just party through the next day as well. And so it goes, that many communities with have their Dance into May, so that today, can be properly observed as a holiday; that is, by doing nothing.

I have no problem living amongst the non-Calvinists and non-Puritans. I've thought about it long and hard, and to be perfectly honest, I can't think of a single good thing that's come of those ideas. Psychologically, Mr. Calivn was a bit of basket case, but that never stopped anybody from declaring the crazy person the bearer of The Big Guy's word. True, He does have a habit of picking outsiders, but not a one of them was looney. That should have been a tip-off, but who am I to say.

No, what pleases me even more about today, is that International Labor has chosen it to be their day to celebrate. Once again, it's the world, and it's the US who just can't fit in. I know, I know, there are lots of folks across the Pond who would drop dead of shame if it were even intimated that they may have something to do with the Red Terror. If Irony weren't dead, we'd be astounded that the only Communists left are the biggest closest Capitalists going: the Chinese, but what we won't do to not offend our preferred trading partners.

Thanks to a good friend, I was pointed to a statement by a Republican congressman who maintains that over 80 of his Democratic colleagues are in fact Communists. I don't know how he knows. But what I do know is that he has no idea about communists, or politics, or economics, or ... he's simply proof positive that even nut-cases can find a job, even if the job isn't a real one.

Yes, Walpurgis Night is a night for pagan revelry, and the day after the night before is a chance to put work in its place. The truth of the matter is that the Grand Master of the Misunderstood, our friend Karl, got it right: we should work to live, but we should never live to work ... but, oh, I'm sorry, only my European friends can think about that now. My American friends have to wait until September.