My computer crashed last month. I was advised that the hard drive had failed and would need to be replaced. That meant that all my memory would be lost. Every e-mail I had sent or received, all the music I had stored on I Tunes, all my pictures of family and friends, and all my written work including all my past columns, my novel, which in the process of being reprinted, and my book on metaphysics, which was backed up on another system, thank G-d. I took the great loss well and I started thinking about memory and its loss. My novel concerned one person who was destined to be forever forgotten and another who lost his memory of himself. The loss of memory was a punishment for the first character and a blessing for the other. What is our memory to us?
When I first studied psychology in the early 60s, I was taught about a concept called "the halo effect." The concept or theory was that first impressions color the way a person is forever regarded and remembered. If a person had been considered bright and honorable at first meeting, everything he did from then on would seem somewhat bright and honorable. A few years later, while in college I had a chance to test the theory. I was the French teacher's favorite and best student. I was bright and hard working and got A's on my first tests. But by the end of the semester, I had missed some tests and done badly in others. My teacher viewed me as a poor student who just didn't have what it took. She remembered the last few weeks of school rather than the first impression, which had seemed justified for most of the semester. I realized it was the most recent experience that colored our memory of people and events and not the first.
Take the weather. If it is warm and sunny in San Francisco for a week, people say that it has been that way forever. When the weather changes and it is cold, foggy and or wet for a few days, people say that this weather seems like it will never end.
Or take relationships. People have a great relationship for a period of time. Then something happens to make them split a part. If it was a bad ending, there is a good chance that it will make the memories of the good times less so. It was the last experiences that revealed the true nature of the person and the relationship.
Or take retail. Do you remember what Abercrombie and Fitch used to be? It was a totally different store that specialized in high end sports equipment. In the 1950s I was big into ping pong and would buy my special paddles at Abercrombies. It was not a store for young people wanting to be sexy. But who remembers that? Do you remember what Banana Republic sold and why they chose their name? They sold surplus uniform items from banana republics.
And then there is our lack of memory about taxes. The highest marginal tax rate is threatening to go from 35% to 39.6%. People are screaming "unfair exorbitant tax increase on the rich." The 35% top rate was part of the former administration's temporary tax cut for those in the highest tax bracket. “It means that when adding state, local and payroll taxes, the wealthiest among us will be paying almost half their earnings in tax. What will it do to productivity when people see so much of their earnings taken from them?” the well-to-do ask. We forget that it is a marginal tax rate which means it is applied to only the highest part of the person's net income. (So for a person making $500,000, with $100,000 in deductions and a net of $400,000 would pay an extra 4.6% on the $42,000 over $358,000, (the beginning of the top bracket, or $1932 more in taxes. This is less than four tenths of one percent (.38%) of their income We also forget that this is what the top earners paid from the 1980's to just a few years ago. But we also forget something else. While America was its most productive, from 1946 to about 1980, the highest marginal tax rate in America was 90%.
I remember growing up in an upper middle class family where my father earned about $40,000 a year in the 1950's. He paid at a 50% marginal tax rate so whenever he lamented the cost of something, like my boarding school, he would double the amount because he figured, incorrectly, that all of his earnings were taxed at the 50% rate and therefore everything actually cost twice as much net income dollars.
But a bad memory is also a plus. We forget some of our past prejudices as our culture evolves taking us along with it. The latest presidential primaries and election were cases in point. One major party picked an African-American over the wife of its most successful past president and then over an good old boy, really white guy who was the son and grandson of full admirals. It showed that many of us have forgotten our past racism enough to give an excellent candidate a chance to make a difference.
Our bad memory helps when we must forgive someone's past transgressions and find it harder and harder to remember exactly what they had been or why they mattered so much. It helps us forget some of the pain that life provides us so generously. We have forgotten how painful the pregnancy was so that we can look forward to having more children or the pain of open heart surgery so that we can face it again when it needed five, ten, or 15 years later. It surprised me when my reaction to being told I needed open heart surgery again made warm salt water cover my cheeks. My body still remembered the trauma even though my mind had forgotten.
But, perhaps, what we should never forget is how lucky we are to be alive and that no matter how hard life seems to us, it could always be a lot worse. And we should not forget those who love us and those who have helped us. And we should try to remember that no matter what we did, it was the best we could do at the time and that there is plenty of room for improvement in the future. And that if this applies to us, then it should also apply to everyone else as per Kant's categorical imperative.
And, if you don't agree with any of this, then you can just forget about it.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Where is Our Fourth Estate?
Over the last few years, the country has lost some of its best journalists, most notably Tim Russet, Peter Jennings and Walter Cronkite, one of the greatest of all. Their successors lamented their passing promising to try to carry on their proud tradition.
But have they?
With a few exceptions, the members of the mainstream mass media have failed to live up to that legacy. In large part, the newspaper and television coverage of events is either shamelessly excessive or terribly shallow and incomplete.
When it comes to covering the big stories like severe hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, or earthquakes, the media reports from the scene, ad nauseam. The death figures change by the hour from being ridiculously small to being record-breaking. Every detail of the disaster is reviewed and repeated, incessantly. We are forced to see the worst of the tragedy until it saturates our consciousness. We are invited to look at as many ruined buildings and shattered lives as possible.
When 9/11 came into our lives we were shown footage of the crash not just dozens of times but hundreds or even thousands of times, as though picking at a wound.
Then here was the tsunami in Indonesia, the flooding in New Orleans, the terrible storms in the Midwest, the landing on the Hudson, and then the earthquake in Haiti. The media could not seem to spend enough time on these events. The anchors were obliged to leave the warmth of their studios to venture into these crises. Reporters informing us of killer weather must actually be in that weather to report on it even if they are falling down or can hardly see.
During these disasters, no other news occurs or, at least, is reported. There is no war overseas, no crime in the streets, no child lost or abandoned. There is just the one main story that is designed to reveal just how loving and compassionate we all are.
But then, for all other news on regular news days, the journalists can’t seem to get or share all the information necessary to tell the story.
Here are some cases in point.
The governor of New York at the time was accused of having an expensive night with a prostitute. Every day we heard about him and the prostitute and how much she charged to fly to give him service. What they did not report immediately or even weeks later was that this john was a regular customer for many years dating back to the days that he was the state’s attorney general. At that time he vigorously prosecuted the major houses of prostitution except for the one he frequented.
When reporting on economic news, the media neglects to connect all the dots. For the past few years, the country’s recession has caused a high unemployment rate. The current administration is trying to help by pumping money into the economy causing a large budget deficit. It has been two years now and the unemployment stands at just under 10%, twice as much as it should be. When this is discussed, it is rarely, if ever mentioned that when the last great recession occurred during the Reagan administration, Reagan tried for five years to reduce the unemployment rate he inherited from his predecessor. He lowered taxes for the rich and thereby incurred record deficits.
It took FDR nine years to end the depression after creating record deficits and finally needed World War II to get us back to “normal.”
Our President has been forced into a record budget deficit because of the disaster left him by the former administration. The deficit is now $13 trillion with Obama’s first year shortfall of more than $1 trillion. The right wing media is howling that we are at $13 trillion because of Obama. No one has mentioned that the $12 trillion deficit that Obama did not cause, came to us from Reagan and Bush, the Right’s heroes. The deficit actually decreased under Clinton, the Right’s villain.
The country suffers from serious immigration problems. Poor, unskilled, uneducated masses are coming into our country illegally. It is estimated that there are now 12-20 million document-free immigrants in this country, breaking laws and taking jobs away from Americans who really need the work. No one mentions that this problem got bad when Reagan gave those in the country illegally at that time amnesty and did not secure our borders. This gave tens of millions of poor Latin Americans hope that if they could get here illegally, get good paying work without having to pay income or payroll taxes, they too would eventually be handed keys to the Promised Land as did their countrymen before them.
During the Presidential campaign, the minority-party candidate made two strange, but unchallenged, statements. To this date I have not heard one media person point out the absurdity of the comments.
The first was a reaction to the opponent’s promise to eliminate tax cuts for the rich that were put in place by his predecessor on a temporary basis. The reclaimed taxes would be used the help fund needed services. The candidate from Arizona accused his Democratic rival of being in favor of using taxes for the redistribution of wealth. Not one person so far has reminded the senator that government exists to provide needed services by redistributing wealth. All taxation dating back to the Dark Ages has been collected for the redistribution of wealth, be it from the farmers to the rich nobles or from the taxpayer for the services needed by the population whether they be national defense or urban planning and development or welfare for the poor. I have not heard one media person ever point this out.
The second was regarding not deporting the many document-free immigrants currently in our country. The compassionate conservative minority-party candidate responded by saying that these are G-d’s children and therefore cannot be deported. No one reminded the senior senator from Arizona that by that logic all living creatures are G-d’s children. How can we ever go to war? Aren’t the enemy soldiers G-d’s children? How can we slaughter animals? Are they not also G-d’s children? And by the way, John, didn't G-d deport his first two children from the Garden of Eden? Did he not later deport his chosen people from the Promised Land? Can the media ask questions?
We have been in Iraq for more than eight years now. We have almost complete control of the country and all of its records. And yet the media has been unwilling and/or unable to ascertain and report how many people have died as a result of our invasion. The media has never to my knowledge even reported that they weren’t reporting it. So while we hear, as we should, exactly how many of our troops have died, we don’t hear that at least 50 to 150 times that many Iraqis have been killed during this period. The media just can’t figure out how to find this information out or even that it is important. Would you want to know that, let’s say, from 200,000 to 600,000, mainly civilian Iraqis, have been killed?
There are notable exceptions to the rule of poor reporting. The PBS News Hour (the Lehrer Report) goes into the major news in depth, trying to cover every angle. The BBC World News is also excellent and much more thorough than its American network counterparts.
What these good news shows prove is that good journalism is still possible. We don’t want fluff. We don’t want to see and hear the same big news story until we are numb but we insist on hearing the whole story with the necessary facts and figures on the rest of the news. We want to be treated like intelligent, well-educated adults. How can we learn and grow to make intelligent decisions if we cannot get news that actually teaches us about our world and its inhabitants?
If we want a strong fourth estate, we have to demand it.
But have they?
With a few exceptions, the members of the mainstream mass media have failed to live up to that legacy. In large part, the newspaper and television coverage of events is either shamelessly excessive or terribly shallow and incomplete.
When it comes to covering the big stories like severe hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, or earthquakes, the media reports from the scene, ad nauseam. The death figures change by the hour from being ridiculously small to being record-breaking. Every detail of the disaster is reviewed and repeated, incessantly. We are forced to see the worst of the tragedy until it saturates our consciousness. We are invited to look at as many ruined buildings and shattered lives as possible.
When 9/11 came into our lives we were shown footage of the crash not just dozens of times but hundreds or even thousands of times, as though picking at a wound.
Then here was the tsunami in Indonesia, the flooding in New Orleans, the terrible storms in the Midwest, the landing on the Hudson, and then the earthquake in Haiti. The media could not seem to spend enough time on these events. The anchors were obliged to leave the warmth of their studios to venture into these crises. Reporters informing us of killer weather must actually be in that weather to report on it even if they are falling down or can hardly see.
During these disasters, no other news occurs or, at least, is reported. There is no war overseas, no crime in the streets, no child lost or abandoned. There is just the one main story that is designed to reveal just how loving and compassionate we all are.
But then, for all other news on regular news days, the journalists can’t seem to get or share all the information necessary to tell the story.
Here are some cases in point.
The governor of New York at the time was accused of having an expensive night with a prostitute. Every day we heard about him and the prostitute and how much she charged to fly to give him service. What they did not report immediately or even weeks later was that this john was a regular customer for many years dating back to the days that he was the state’s attorney general. At that time he vigorously prosecuted the major houses of prostitution except for the one he frequented.
When reporting on economic news, the media neglects to connect all the dots. For the past few years, the country’s recession has caused a high unemployment rate. The current administration is trying to help by pumping money into the economy causing a large budget deficit. It has been two years now and the unemployment stands at just under 10%, twice as much as it should be. When this is discussed, it is rarely, if ever mentioned that when the last great recession occurred during the Reagan administration, Reagan tried for five years to reduce the unemployment rate he inherited from his predecessor. He lowered taxes for the rich and thereby incurred record deficits.
It took FDR nine years to end the depression after creating record deficits and finally needed World War II to get us back to “normal.”
Our President has been forced into a record budget deficit because of the disaster left him by the former administration. The deficit is now $13 trillion with Obama’s first year shortfall of more than $1 trillion. The right wing media is howling that we are at $13 trillion because of Obama. No one has mentioned that the $12 trillion deficit that Obama did not cause, came to us from Reagan and Bush, the Right’s heroes. The deficit actually decreased under Clinton, the Right’s villain.
The country suffers from serious immigration problems. Poor, unskilled, uneducated masses are coming into our country illegally. It is estimated that there are now 12-20 million document-free immigrants in this country, breaking laws and taking jobs away from Americans who really need the work. No one mentions that this problem got bad when Reagan gave those in the country illegally at that time amnesty and did not secure our borders. This gave tens of millions of poor Latin Americans hope that if they could get here illegally, get good paying work without having to pay income or payroll taxes, they too would eventually be handed keys to the Promised Land as did their countrymen before them.
During the Presidential campaign, the minority-party candidate made two strange, but unchallenged, statements. To this date I have not heard one media person point out the absurdity of the comments.
The first was a reaction to the opponent’s promise to eliminate tax cuts for the rich that were put in place by his predecessor on a temporary basis. The reclaimed taxes would be used the help fund needed services. The candidate from Arizona accused his Democratic rival of being in favor of using taxes for the redistribution of wealth. Not one person so far has reminded the senator that government exists to provide needed services by redistributing wealth. All taxation dating back to the Dark Ages has been collected for the redistribution of wealth, be it from the farmers to the rich nobles or from the taxpayer for the services needed by the population whether they be national defense or urban planning and development or welfare for the poor. I have not heard one media person ever point this out.
The second was regarding not deporting the many document-free immigrants currently in our country. The compassionate conservative minority-party candidate responded by saying that these are G-d’s children and therefore cannot be deported. No one reminded the senior senator from Arizona that by that logic all living creatures are G-d’s children. How can we ever go to war? Aren’t the enemy soldiers G-d’s children? How can we slaughter animals? Are they not also G-d’s children? And by the way, John, didn't G-d deport his first two children from the Garden of Eden? Did he not later deport his chosen people from the Promised Land? Can the media ask questions?
We have been in Iraq for more than eight years now. We have almost complete control of the country and all of its records. And yet the media has been unwilling and/or unable to ascertain and report how many people have died as a result of our invasion. The media has never to my knowledge even reported that they weren’t reporting it. So while we hear, as we should, exactly how many of our troops have died, we don’t hear that at least 50 to 150 times that many Iraqis have been killed during this period. The media just can’t figure out how to find this information out or even that it is important. Would you want to know that, let’s say, from 200,000 to 600,000, mainly civilian Iraqis, have been killed?
There are notable exceptions to the rule of poor reporting. The PBS News Hour (the Lehrer Report) goes into the major news in depth, trying to cover every angle. The BBC World News is also excellent and much more thorough than its American network counterparts.
What these good news shows prove is that good journalism is still possible. We don’t want fluff. We don’t want to see and hear the same big news story until we are numb but we insist on hearing the whole story with the necessary facts and figures on the rest of the news. We want to be treated like intelligent, well-educated adults. How can we learn and grow to make intelligent decisions if we cannot get news that actually teaches us about our world and its inhabitants?
If we want a strong fourth estate, we have to demand it.
The Oil Spill Symbolism
The Oil Spill Symbolism
What has been described as the greatest man-made disaster to ever hit this country showed no signs of abating after more than two months. The ruptured oil well located one mile below sea level had been leaking as many as 50,000 barrels (or 2.1 million gallons) a day of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico threatening sea life and all those depending on it for a livelihood. While all of its causes are still being investigated, the primary cause is clear - greed mixed with a good measure of arrogance. The greed made oil company decision-makers rush the job to minimize costs and maximize future profits. The arrogance made them believe that they did not need to take the time to do it right. They were blind to any possible environmental damage their corner cutting could cause.
Where have we heard this before?
The banking, real estate and automobile industries in this country have had their own systemic ruptures recently. In each case the decision makers were greedy as well as arrogant. The combination made them all blind to the problems they were creating. As with the oil spill, the problems in each industry continued unabated for a long time. First there was denial, then there was minimizing the problems, and then there was a problem too big to disguise or disregard. In each case there was the externality, the spill over effect, of these business catastrophes and there are always the innocent victims.
The banking disaster, caused in part by the real estate disaster, led to the loss of confidence in the financial system which led to reduced spending which led to reduced production which led to fewer jobs which exacerbated the loss of confidence and the vicious cycle continued like a snowball rolling down a steep incline. The bankers got greedy, they wanted ever bigger bonuses and took ever greater risks. They were arrogant because they thought that they could get away with anything, that if they failed the government would have to bail them out.
The politicians who received generous donations from Wall Street were greedy. They wanted more money to stay in power. They were greedy for power. So they acquiesced to Wall Street’s demands and eliminated restrictions set in place to prevent another Great Depression. They were arrogant enough to believe that by earning money to betray their constituents they were still worthy of their votes.
The realtors also got greedy. They must have known that some of their clients could not possibly afford the homes they were bidding on with nothing to put down for the purchase. Their arrogance was in their thinking that their bubble could never burst.
The home buyers who bought the homes that even they knew they could not afford were greedy for the American dream with all its trimmings but had not put the down payment in effort. Their arrogance was in believing that somehow they could get and keep something for nothing or at least for well under actual cost.
The corporate leaders of our car companies were also greedy. They wanted easy profits and so abandoned the small economical family car that the country needed and instead produced large truck-like SUVs which were inexpensive to build but could be sold for high prices because of their size. Never mind that they were gas guzzlers and took up too much space. The leaders of “the big three” were arrogant enough to think that the American consumer would buy whatever Detroit gave them. Their blindness led to the bankruptcy of two of our three major automakers and a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout.
I believe that the Reagan tax cuts for the rich reducing the top tax bracket from 90% to 39%, unleashing a gush of suddenly rich and the suddenly terribly rich was a similar disaster. The rich built even bigger houses, bought even bigger cars, and developed bigger egos. They were ever greedy for more money and fewer taxes. They became increasingly arrogant and made risky investments that ended up almost destroying our economy.
The result of all this free-flowing greed mixed with arrogance polluted the nation’s economic waters from which our people are nourished.
The same thing happened in competitive sports - amateur and professional. Some athletes and their trainers got greedy for more success, better stats, higher salaries and bigger bonuses. They were arrogant enough to think that they could get away with using steroids to improve their strength and perseverance. As the violations seemed to piggy back on previous ones and more athletes took performance-enhancing drugs in more sports, more of the results became hard to believe. Whether it was Olympic sprinters, weightlifters or swimmers, long distance cyclists, or professional baseball pitchers and hitters, the sports officials couldn’t stop the abuses. And meanwhile whatever integrity these sports had enjoyed became polluted by the cheating bred from greed and arrogance.
Today our favorite religions seem to be unable to control their own destructive eruptions. The Catholic Church has been unable to stop the eruptions of charges of priestly abuses that are being reported all over the globe. When the truth is finally told, the sexual abuse of children by the clergy will probably be found to have occurred on every continent. After a while we will also learn that this rupture of hypocritical immorality dates back hundreds of years with many of these priests themselves having been innocent victims in their youth. It’s hard to imagine what kind of greed and arrogance motivated these outbursts except perhaps a greed or desperate hunger for physical affection mixed with the arrogance that they could get away with it because they were above Man’s laws. And how could their “superiors” think that they could just cover it up? Who knows how many of these “tolerant” bishops had themselves been molested as children?
Then there is the religion that is so much in the news for its violence in the Middle East. The religious leaders either cannot or will not stop the violence that in the last 10 years has prematurely ended the lives of more than a million of its own people. Thousands of its adherents are blowing themselves up and killing innocent people in the mistaken impression that they will not only escape their lives of suffering but also that they will be somehow rewarded for their greatest of sins. Perhaps the leaders of this religion are also greedy for more power and are arrogant enough to believe that inciting their flock to violence will somehow not get them eternal damnation.
And then there are columnists like this one who is greedy enough to want his country, his world free of all that pollutes it and he is arrogant enough to think that somehow by writing about these problems, he can make them disappear.
Let us hope that the damages of this tragic oil spill in the Gulf are easier to repair than the other effects greed and arrogance are having on our nation and its people.
What has been described as the greatest man-made disaster to ever hit this country showed no signs of abating after more than two months. The ruptured oil well located one mile below sea level had been leaking as many as 50,000 barrels (or 2.1 million gallons) a day of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico threatening sea life and all those depending on it for a livelihood. While all of its causes are still being investigated, the primary cause is clear - greed mixed with a good measure of arrogance. The greed made oil company decision-makers rush the job to minimize costs and maximize future profits. The arrogance made them believe that they did not need to take the time to do it right. They were blind to any possible environmental damage their corner cutting could cause.
Where have we heard this before?
The banking, real estate and automobile industries in this country have had their own systemic ruptures recently. In each case the decision makers were greedy as well as arrogant. The combination made them all blind to the problems they were creating. As with the oil spill, the problems in each industry continued unabated for a long time. First there was denial, then there was minimizing the problems, and then there was a problem too big to disguise or disregard. In each case there was the externality, the spill over effect, of these business catastrophes and there are always the innocent victims.
The banking disaster, caused in part by the real estate disaster, led to the loss of confidence in the financial system which led to reduced spending which led to reduced production which led to fewer jobs which exacerbated the loss of confidence and the vicious cycle continued like a snowball rolling down a steep incline. The bankers got greedy, they wanted ever bigger bonuses and took ever greater risks. They were arrogant because they thought that they could get away with anything, that if they failed the government would have to bail them out.
The politicians who received generous donations from Wall Street were greedy. They wanted more money to stay in power. They were greedy for power. So they acquiesced to Wall Street’s demands and eliminated restrictions set in place to prevent another Great Depression. They were arrogant enough to believe that by earning money to betray their constituents they were still worthy of their votes.
The realtors also got greedy. They must have known that some of their clients could not possibly afford the homes they were bidding on with nothing to put down for the purchase. Their arrogance was in their thinking that their bubble could never burst.
The home buyers who bought the homes that even they knew they could not afford were greedy for the American dream with all its trimmings but had not put the down payment in effort. Their arrogance was in believing that somehow they could get and keep something for nothing or at least for well under actual cost.
The corporate leaders of our car companies were also greedy. They wanted easy profits and so abandoned the small economical family car that the country needed and instead produced large truck-like SUVs which were inexpensive to build but could be sold for high prices because of their size. Never mind that they were gas guzzlers and took up too much space. The leaders of “the big three” were arrogant enough to think that the American consumer would buy whatever Detroit gave them. Their blindness led to the bankruptcy of two of our three major automakers and a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout.
I believe that the Reagan tax cuts for the rich reducing the top tax bracket from 90% to 39%, unleashing a gush of suddenly rich and the suddenly terribly rich was a similar disaster. The rich built even bigger houses, bought even bigger cars, and developed bigger egos. They were ever greedy for more money and fewer taxes. They became increasingly arrogant and made risky investments that ended up almost destroying our economy.
The result of all this free-flowing greed mixed with arrogance polluted the nation’s economic waters from which our people are nourished.
The same thing happened in competitive sports - amateur and professional. Some athletes and their trainers got greedy for more success, better stats, higher salaries and bigger bonuses. They were arrogant enough to think that they could get away with using steroids to improve their strength and perseverance. As the violations seemed to piggy back on previous ones and more athletes took performance-enhancing drugs in more sports, more of the results became hard to believe. Whether it was Olympic sprinters, weightlifters or swimmers, long distance cyclists, or professional baseball pitchers and hitters, the sports officials couldn’t stop the abuses. And meanwhile whatever integrity these sports had enjoyed became polluted by the cheating bred from greed and arrogance.
Today our favorite religions seem to be unable to control their own destructive eruptions. The Catholic Church has been unable to stop the eruptions of charges of priestly abuses that are being reported all over the globe. When the truth is finally told, the sexual abuse of children by the clergy will probably be found to have occurred on every continent. After a while we will also learn that this rupture of hypocritical immorality dates back hundreds of years with many of these priests themselves having been innocent victims in their youth. It’s hard to imagine what kind of greed and arrogance motivated these outbursts except perhaps a greed or desperate hunger for physical affection mixed with the arrogance that they could get away with it because they were above Man’s laws. And how could their “superiors” think that they could just cover it up? Who knows how many of these “tolerant” bishops had themselves been molested as children?
Then there is the religion that is so much in the news for its violence in the Middle East. The religious leaders either cannot or will not stop the violence that in the last 10 years has prematurely ended the lives of more than a million of its own people. Thousands of its adherents are blowing themselves up and killing innocent people in the mistaken impression that they will not only escape their lives of suffering but also that they will be somehow rewarded for their greatest of sins. Perhaps the leaders of this religion are also greedy for more power and are arrogant enough to believe that inciting their flock to violence will somehow not get them eternal damnation.
And then there are columnists like this one who is greedy enough to want his country, his world free of all that pollutes it and he is arrogant enough to think that somehow by writing about these problems, he can make them disappear.
Let us hope that the damages of this tragic oil spill in the Gulf are easier to repair than the other effects greed and arrogance are having on our nation and its people.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
In Praise of the English Language
Having studied many languages, I find that English is the most up-to-date of the bunch and has eliminated many of the shortcomings with which other languages still struggle.
English evolved from its Germanic roots when the Normans invaded and conquered England in 1066. The Normans brought the French that was then in use to the British Isle. (The Normans, though from France, were originally from Norway, hence the name.)
English adopted many of the words that have since changed in French. Many modern French words that begin with an “é” and are followed by a consonant used to be different and more like our English. I don’t think even the French realize this. Here are some examples. Substitute the beginning “é” with an “s” and see what happens: étage, étranger, étudie, école, écailler, écarlate. échalote, écope, épouse, équerre, état, étole, étrangler and étuve. They become stage, stranger, studie (study), scole (school), scaler, scarlet, schalote (shallot), scope (scoop), spouse, squerre (square), stai (stay), state, stole, strangle and stuve (stove) - Voila, English!
The French also did the same to its letter “s” in the middle of words if the “s” is followed by a consonant. They replaced the “s” with an upside “v” over the preceding letter. So the Latin fenestra become fenêtre, bastard became bâtard, nostre became nôtre, etc. But unlike English, French never got rid of the ancient practice of giving genders to objects and then to their modifiers. So French and the other Romance languages require the user to know which inanimate object has which gender. Is a table feminine because a chair which is masculine slides in between its legs? An object with two different names to describe it can have one that is masculine and one that is feminine. Different Romance languages may assign a different gender to the same object. A car can be feminine in one and masculine in the other.
I have tried to trace the origin of this strange practice and believe I have found it. It is the same source as the alphabet. Did you say Greek? Yes, Greek had genders for objects and had an Alpha Beta, but that’s not it. And since it predated Latin, it is not Latin which caught the habit from Greek. It was Hebrew. And Hebrew had the first Alef Beit, which became the Greek Alpa Beta.
English has all the verb tenses that Latin has like present, past, pluperfect, future, conditional subjunctive, and imperative, but it does not require us to conjugate each verb depending upon whether it is in the first, second or third person singular or plural. We also do not use two different “you”s depending on with whom we’re speaking. Some Asian languages cannot differentiate between the present, past and future using their verbs. So one would have to say “I go to work, yesterday” or “I go to work tomorrow” instead of “I went” and “I will go.” And they didn’t have alphabets meaning that each word has a symbol that must be memorized. Can you imagine a Chinese keyboard for typing?
And since English is a Germanic language mixed with a Romance or Latin based language, we have two words for the same thing. Examples are donate (L) and give (G); labor (L) and work (G); and demonstrate (L) and show (G).
I believe that this is why English, but not French or Chinese, is and will be the international language. French used to be known as the international language but has lost out, I believe, because of its insistence on giving each noun and its adjectival modifier a gender, which unlike Italian or Spanish, is not discernible by hearing it. At least the Italians and the Spanish ended each masculine noun with an “o” and each feminine noun with an “a” to let speakers know which arbitrary gender the word is supposed to be.
So aren’t you happy that you know English? Don’t you wish everyone did?
December 2008
Just Between You and Me
I am not an English professor or a famous grammarian, but I was an excellent student of sixth grade English which included diagramming sentences. I learned about prepositions, nouns, adjectives and adverbs as well as subjects, objects and appropriate verb forms. I also studied Latin grammar in high school giving me a greater appreciation of the grammatical elements of our own language.
And while I know how busy we all are and that sometimes we lack the time to think about our use of English grammar, I cannot overlook some of the grossest forms of language abuse without writing something.
The most common error and one some think shows erudition, but doesn’t, is the phrase “just between you and I.” It is supposed to be “between you and me,” because the word “me” is the object of the preposition. The word “I” is used only as a subject of a sentence or as a predicate pronoun as in “It is I.”
Many people say “if I was you” or “I wish I was you.” Since both phrases are conditional, they must be phrased in the conditional subjunctive “if I were you” or “I wish I were you.”
Since the verb must agree with the subject, it is important to know which words are singular and which are plural. The word “criteria” is plural and so takes a plural verb like “are” or “were.” The singular version is “criterion.” (The same is true about the word “phenomenon.”) The word “alumni” is masculine plural. The singular is “alumnus.” The feminine versions are “alumna,” singular and “alumnae,” plural.
I also learned in the sixth grade that adjectives define or describe nouns. The words “male” and “female” are adjectives that describe nouns as in “a male suspect” or “a female impersonator.” Police officers are male or female as are models or firefighters. Therefore it is incorrect to say “man police officer” or “man executive.” It is also incorrect to say “woman firefighter” or “woman senator.” Saying that he is a “man doctor” would mean that the doctor specializes in treating men and could actually be a woman.
This confusion began years ago because some group decided that “female” was too male oriented. But actually, the word comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning woman, while “woman” has a male reference in it. The word “male” comes from old French male and masle and the Latin masculus.
Then there is the little-known rule that even journalists get wrong. The words “who” or “which” always relate to the noun that directly precedes them (even if the noun is in a prepositional phrase). A great New York Times journalist just wrote a column about a woman who took a lover. But she wrote “The woman married to the Duke who was seeing a commoner” meaning that the Duke was seeing the commoner.
I apologize for bringing all these common errors to your attention, but do so only to end the repetition of these abuses of our language. I never claimed to be an expert on the use of commas, they were covered in 7th grade English, so see if you can find some errors in this column. It would serve me right, wouldn’t it?
June 2008
And while I know how busy we all are and that sometimes we lack the time to think about our use of English grammar, I cannot overlook some of the grossest forms of language abuse without writing something.
The most common error and one some think shows erudition, but doesn’t, is the phrase “just between you and I.” It is supposed to be “between you and me,” because the word “me” is the object of the preposition. The word “I” is used only as a subject of a sentence or as a predicate pronoun as in “It is I.”
Many people say “if I was you” or “I wish I was you.” Since both phrases are conditional, they must be phrased in the conditional subjunctive “if I were you” or “I wish I were you.”
Since the verb must agree with the subject, it is important to know which words are singular and which are plural. The word “criteria” is plural and so takes a plural verb like “are” or “were.” The singular version is “criterion.” (The same is true about the word “phenomenon.”) The word “alumni” is masculine plural. The singular is “alumnus.” The feminine versions are “alumna,” singular and “alumnae,” plural.
I also learned in the sixth grade that adjectives define or describe nouns. The words “male” and “female” are adjectives that describe nouns as in “a male suspect” or “a female impersonator.” Police officers are male or female as are models or firefighters. Therefore it is incorrect to say “man police officer” or “man executive.” It is also incorrect to say “woman firefighter” or “woman senator.” Saying that he is a “man doctor” would mean that the doctor specializes in treating men and could actually be a woman.
This confusion began years ago because some group decided that “female” was too male oriented. But actually, the word comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning woman, while “woman” has a male reference in it. The word “male” comes from old French male and masle and the Latin masculus.
Then there is the little-known rule that even journalists get wrong. The words “who” or “which” always relate to the noun that directly precedes them (even if the noun is in a prepositional phrase). A great New York Times journalist just wrote a column about a woman who took a lover. But she wrote “The woman married to the Duke who was seeing a commoner” meaning that the Duke was seeing the commoner.
I apologize for bringing all these common errors to your attention, but do so only to end the repetition of these abuses of our language. I never claimed to be an expert on the use of commas, they were covered in 7th grade English, so see if you can find some errors in this column. It would serve me right, wouldn’t it?
June 2008
When is More of a Good Thing Not Better?
I admit that I am not a great believer in the predictive ability of economics, but I do appreciate some of its descriptive concepts and models. My favorite three are externalities, indifference curves and the law of diminishing marginal returns.
Externalities are the hidden costs and benefits of activities. For example, pesticides kill harmful insects and protect the crops but also pollute the earth, air and water in the process. There is a cost for this activity that is not paid by the user or the producer. Public education, if it is good, has positive externalities like making the population more skilled and productive and less likely to commit crime. The role of good government is to factor in the externalities of each activity and ensure that costs are paid by the responsible parties and benefits are acknowledged when allocating more resources.
Indifference curves are often tied to pricing or cost. If a seller increases the price of a product, the immediate result will be higher profit per item and therefore more money. But as the price increases, there comes a point when fewer items are sold for the higher price and so while the profit per item increases, the volume decreases until no one wants one at a very high price, so they are indifferent as to whether they have it or not.
Finally, I like the law of diminishing marginal returns which is designed to predict or at least describe the point at which something precious loses its luster because too much is available. I tested this theory with filet mignon. Surely, there can never be too much filet mignon. But after my eighth meal of it in a three-week period, I could no longer bear the thought of it. We now see this happening with gasoline usage. When the price gets to a certain point, say $4.50 a gallon, people will seek alternatives such as public transportation or carpooling or getting rid of the pickup or SUV.
I think all this can be applied to the notion that more is better, the more the merrier. Like the idea that you can never be too thin or too rich or never have enough friends or should never turn off your cell phone.
When you see even a few anorexic models and actresses, it is hard to come away thinking one can never be too thin. When you read about the excesses of athletes, actors, and businessmen, it makes you wonder if this wealth could not be put to better uses like reducing poverty, improving education or cleaning our environment and whether the excessively rich are really better for the experience. When you talk to a friend who must squeeze you in between two other friends who are also vying for attention, you realize with so many friends there is never enough time for any of them.
And when I see people constantly on their cell phones literally hooked the way smokers used to be, I wonder if there is not something like too much cell phoning. Do people really have to talk on their cells while driving their cars, eating their lunches at a restaurant, purchasing something at a store, walking across a busy intersection or nursing their baby? Have cell phones become our new Sirens drawing us in against our free will? Or are they like communications from the Almighty that should never be ignored?
It seems like the answer our former president gave for his many infidelities in the White House - “Because I could” - could apply to our many daily excesses. We do them because we can afford to. But I wonder when do we realize that enough is enough and that more than that is not necessarily better but could be worse?
When do we recognize the externalities in our excessive behavior and develop an indifference to these gluttonous activities be they eating or drinking too much, to listening to talk radio too much, to buying too much, owning too much, controlling too much and therefore worrying too much?
How long will it take us to see the diminishing marginal returns of increased activities?
When do we say “enough really is enough?”
July-August 2008
Externalities are the hidden costs and benefits of activities. For example, pesticides kill harmful insects and protect the crops but also pollute the earth, air and water in the process. There is a cost for this activity that is not paid by the user or the producer. Public education, if it is good, has positive externalities like making the population more skilled and productive and less likely to commit crime. The role of good government is to factor in the externalities of each activity and ensure that costs are paid by the responsible parties and benefits are acknowledged when allocating more resources.
Indifference curves are often tied to pricing or cost. If a seller increases the price of a product, the immediate result will be higher profit per item and therefore more money. But as the price increases, there comes a point when fewer items are sold for the higher price and so while the profit per item increases, the volume decreases until no one wants one at a very high price, so they are indifferent as to whether they have it or not.
Finally, I like the law of diminishing marginal returns which is designed to predict or at least describe the point at which something precious loses its luster because too much is available. I tested this theory with filet mignon. Surely, there can never be too much filet mignon. But after my eighth meal of it in a three-week period, I could no longer bear the thought of it. We now see this happening with gasoline usage. When the price gets to a certain point, say $4.50 a gallon, people will seek alternatives such as public transportation or carpooling or getting rid of the pickup or SUV.
I think all this can be applied to the notion that more is better, the more the merrier. Like the idea that you can never be too thin or too rich or never have enough friends or should never turn off your cell phone.
When you see even a few anorexic models and actresses, it is hard to come away thinking one can never be too thin. When you read about the excesses of athletes, actors, and businessmen, it makes you wonder if this wealth could not be put to better uses like reducing poverty, improving education or cleaning our environment and whether the excessively rich are really better for the experience. When you talk to a friend who must squeeze you in between two other friends who are also vying for attention, you realize with so many friends there is never enough time for any of them.
And when I see people constantly on their cell phones literally hooked the way smokers used to be, I wonder if there is not something like too much cell phoning. Do people really have to talk on their cells while driving their cars, eating their lunches at a restaurant, purchasing something at a store, walking across a busy intersection or nursing their baby? Have cell phones become our new Sirens drawing us in against our free will? Or are they like communications from the Almighty that should never be ignored?
It seems like the answer our former president gave for his many infidelities in the White House - “Because I could” - could apply to our many daily excesses. We do them because we can afford to. But I wonder when do we realize that enough is enough and that more than that is not necessarily better but could be worse?
When do we recognize the externalities in our excessive behavior and develop an indifference to these gluttonous activities be they eating or drinking too much, to listening to talk radio too much, to buying too much, owning too much, controlling too much and therefore worrying too much?
How long will it take us to see the diminishing marginal returns of increased activities?
When do we say “enough really is enough?”
July-August 2008
Can a Victim Be Responsible?
A woman lets her two-year-old go off in a water park with the child’s four-year-old sibling to watch him. The two year old child drowns. The water park is sued because this mother has lost her child on their grounds. What’s a mother to do when a park lets two year-olds die?
A large energy company is cheating the residents of the nation’s most populous state. The employees and stockholders know what the company is up to but stay on to reap the financial rewards. When the dishonesty of the company becomes overwhelmingly obvious, the company goes bust. The employees lose their jobs, pension benefits and 401 Ks. The stockholders lose all their stock’s value. What are employees and stockholders to do when their company is caught cheating? Why must they suffer the consequences?
People sign up for mortgages they know they cannot afford. Lenders give loans to people they know do not qualify for them. They all think that they will somehow get away with it if the market can rapidly increase toward infinity. The bubble bursts. The borrowers cannot pay and cannot sell their property to pay off their debt. The lenders see their loans go unpaid and the collaterals’ value shrink by the day. And then the market collapses. The new homeowners lose their property and are thrown out into the streets forced to return to wherever they had recently moved up from. The lenders see their jobs and companies threatened. Why must they suffer just because their plan failed?
Two states want to buck their party’s schedule for primaries so that theirs will be first or at least sooner and more influential. The states’ representatives are told that if they hold their primaries early, the votes won’t count. All the candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. In one state, all but one of the candidates took their names off the ballot. The people in the two states knowing the promise that their votes won’t count and knowing that they would be meaningless anyway because no one campaigned in their states, voted anyway.
They were then reminded that their votes would not be counted. They were angry. Why won’t their votes count? It wasn’t their fault their states broke the rules, they didn’t break them. The only candidate who profited from this improper vote had agreed that their vote should not count until the results were in and they were so good. Why shouldn’t this candidate count the votes even though they were improper?
Many of us bought large pickup trucks and SUVs. Some of us did so to keep our family safe in case of a collision not so concerned about the safety of those outside our vehicles. Some of us bought them because we liked having extra space inside not thinking that there will be that much less space outside. Some of us bought them to sit high while driving so we could see over the other cars not realizing that we might be blocking the view of others. We knew that our trucks were gas guzzlers but figured that we could always afford it. We knew that small car owners looked at us with derision but we just figured that they were jealous. Now our trucks are unaffordable to run and are almost impossible to sell. We are now stuck with our gluttonous behemoths. Why must we suffer just because we like things big and now gas prices are too high?
We didn’t set the price OPEC charges for oil.
When do knowing victims of improper actions realize that they themselves may have been the villains in their own tragedy? When do those who at first benefited from the violations of moral conduct accept responsibility for the eventual outcome?
When do we learn the meaning of cause and effect, action and responsibility otherwise known as karma?
A large energy company is cheating the residents of the nation’s most populous state. The employees and stockholders know what the company is up to but stay on to reap the financial rewards. When the dishonesty of the company becomes overwhelmingly obvious, the company goes bust. The employees lose their jobs, pension benefits and 401 Ks. The stockholders lose all their stock’s value. What are employees and stockholders to do when their company is caught cheating? Why must they suffer the consequences?
People sign up for mortgages they know they cannot afford. Lenders give loans to people they know do not qualify for them. They all think that they will somehow get away with it if the market can rapidly increase toward infinity. The bubble bursts. The borrowers cannot pay and cannot sell their property to pay off their debt. The lenders see their loans go unpaid and the collaterals’ value shrink by the day. And then the market collapses. The new homeowners lose their property and are thrown out into the streets forced to return to wherever they had recently moved up from. The lenders see their jobs and companies threatened. Why must they suffer just because their plan failed?
Two states want to buck their party’s schedule for primaries so that theirs will be first or at least sooner and more influential. The states’ representatives are told that if they hold their primaries early, the votes won’t count. All the candidates agreed not to campaign in those states. In one state, all but one of the candidates took their names off the ballot. The people in the two states knowing the promise that their votes won’t count and knowing that they would be meaningless anyway because no one campaigned in their states, voted anyway.
They were then reminded that their votes would not be counted. They were angry. Why won’t their votes count? It wasn’t their fault their states broke the rules, they didn’t break them. The only candidate who profited from this improper vote had agreed that their vote should not count until the results were in and they were so good. Why shouldn’t this candidate count the votes even though they were improper?
Many of us bought large pickup trucks and SUVs. Some of us did so to keep our family safe in case of a collision not so concerned about the safety of those outside our vehicles. Some of us bought them because we liked having extra space inside not thinking that there will be that much less space outside. Some of us bought them to sit high while driving so we could see over the other cars not realizing that we might be blocking the view of others. We knew that our trucks were gas guzzlers but figured that we could always afford it. We knew that small car owners looked at us with derision but we just figured that they were jealous. Now our trucks are unaffordable to run and are almost impossible to sell. We are now stuck with our gluttonous behemoths. Why must we suffer just because we like things big and now gas prices are too high?
We didn’t set the price OPEC charges for oil.
When do knowing victims of improper actions realize that they themselves may have been the villains in their own tragedy? When do those who at first benefited from the violations of moral conduct accept responsibility for the eventual outcome?
When do we learn the meaning of cause and effect, action and responsibility otherwise known as karma?
Sept. 2008
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