Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Robin Hood > a very short review
A notable cast starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt & Max von Sydow in a mediocre film by Ridley Scott. Wait for free cable, I say. For more goto IMDb
Loyalty > a forum dialog "sadly all true"
Person 1. Loyalty went out the window in the '80s when companies stopped seeing employees as people and started seeing them as "human resources". At that point, staff became another expense to manage and minimize. Manufacturing was the first major victim as companies would move production to cheaper labor markets (ultimately giving rise to China's current power).
Person 2. Nowadays, staff and even those in the executive suite don't see stability & loyalty from their management so there's no reason to offer any on their end.
Person 3. In short, loyalty no longer puts food on the table.
Person 4. Outstanding explanation. I just had a similar discussion at work last night, more specifically on the death of the manufacturing process in America.
Person 5. The only loyalty [anyone] needs to show is to himself and those he cares about.
Person 6. Sadly, all true.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
1 billion condoms > Courtesy of the Huffington Post
"It may have sounded like a lot when the Vancouver Olympics were stocked with 100,000 condoms, and it may have been shocking when that huge total did not suffice. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa, however, promises to blow Olympic condom records out of the water.
South Africa has said that it needs one billion condoms in 2010, due in large part to the upcoming soccer tournament. A batch of 42 million is already headed to the host nation by way of Britain.
According to the Guardian, one billion condoms would represent a substantial increase from the country's typical supply:
Some 450m male condoms are distributed in South Africa every year but, with 16 million sexually active men and one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, there are never enough.
In addition to the surge of condoms, 40,000 prostitues are expected to enter South Africa during the World Cup."Ancillary stories here
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Yin & Yang of a weekend trip to Washington, DC
Carol and I traveled to Washington, DC ostensibly to attend a wedding. We had some free time & there were a few sites we both wanted to visit between our social obligations.
On Friday afternoon, in the blazing sun, we walked to the Vietnam Memorial wall. On the way there we ran into a friendly squirrel.
As we walked along it in respect of those who were sacrificed, I told Carol that what saddened me most was knowing that 35,000 of those 'names' became eligible for their etching only after the start of peace talks between the United States & the Republic of North Vietnam.
The two sides first had to first decide on the location for the negotiation, then the shape of the table the negotiators were to sit at & other such important items before getting into the protracted peace talks which where punctuated by extra U.S. bombing runs to make a negotiation point, the suspension of the talks & the return to talks, a dance that went on for years so everyone could save 'face'.
Saturday morning started with a cholesterol filled breakfast (eggs benedict) & a cooler walk to the National Holocaust Museum. It was crowded, many of the vistors where young. I guess that's a good thing but I couldn't imagine how these kids were going to absorb what they were to read & what they would see.
On Friday afternoon, in the blazing sun, we walked to the Vietnam Memorial wall. On the way there we ran into a friendly squirrel.
Calling it a wall is sort of a misconception, at least to us. While it is a wall, it is set into the side of a berm, i.e. it was not a free standing wall which we had always imagined it to be. This did not take away from its simple beauty or tragic symbolism.
As we walked along it in respect of those who were sacrificed, I told Carol that what saddened me most was knowing that 35,000 of those 'names' became eligible for their etching only after the start of peace talks between the United States & the Republic of North Vietnam.
The two sides first had to first decide on the location for the negotiation, then the shape of the table the negotiators were to sit at & other such important items before getting into the protracted peace talks which where punctuated by extra U.S. bombing runs to make a negotiation point, the suspension of the talks & the return to talks, a dance that went on for years so everyone could save 'face'.
Saturday morning started with a cholesterol filled breakfast (eggs benedict) & a cooler walk to the National Holocaust Museum. It was crowded, many of the vistors where young. I guess that's a good thing but I couldn't imagine how these kids were going to absorb what they were to read & what they would see.
In the museum lobby, you take an ID card which contains the photo and the story of a person who died in the holocaust. My person was a Polish Jew named Chaim Engel. When the Germans invaded Poland, they sent him to Germany as a slave laborer. In 1940 he was shipped back to Poland but immediately deported to the Sobibor death camp. There a small prisoner revolt took place; Chaim stabbed his overseer (to death) while screaming the name of his father & his mother & others murdered with each thrust of the knife. Chaim escaped into the dense forest where he hid out until the war ended. After living in Europe & Israel, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1957.
At the start, the museum is dark and foreboding. No natural light filters through the steel covered windows.
The tour beings on the forth floor and wends its way down an irregular ramp which takes you through different spaces of exhibits, photos, videos, news reels, clothes, hair, films, objects (large & small) in a time line from the rise of the Nazi Party to the present.
But to give you an inkling of the intensity is to describe traveling to the fourth floor in a crowded industrial-like stainless steel elevator; to me a reflection of the gas chambers that were used to poison groups of un-suspecting prisoners. At some level I felt some relief when the doors opened on the fourth floor.
The story of the Jew's descent into hell begins with Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) and continues as the race laws were enacted, destroying Jewish life & dignity bit by bit before destroying bodies and minds. Then came the camp experience told by survivors via film & audio recordings. Next the liberation as seen by the troops and here I have to pause for a moment to describe one video that impacted me deeply but I didn't know it until later when it hit me like what I imagine PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) episode must be like.
When the allies reached Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen & other camps, the Nazis had not had enough time to destroy all the 'evidence' of their atrocities so the allied soldiers found piles of dead bodes which had not yet been burned along with mountains of shoes & hair, and brushes & spoons. Oh yes, there were the odd skeletal survivors & one can only marvel at the strength of the body to survive such horrors.
To avoid disease, the allied army was tasked with buring the piled dead bodies in mass graves. This was accomplished using bulldozers so there I stood watching a video of these bulldozers pushing piles of emaciated corpses into a mass grave & covering them with dirt.
Then came the story of how no one would accept the refugees from these camps who had nothing, some left without their dignity nor a shred of clothing to hide their bodies. Not the United States, no country really, so Jewish organizations set up camps for these people to heal & to get organized before moving on.
We walked through narrow hallways with photos from ceiling to floor on both sides of people who had lived in the shtetls (villages) before the war, the names of these shtetls engraved in glass to be glanced at as we moved along. Then the names of the inhabitants of the shtetls also etched in glass. Some light could now be seen as we approached the end of this tragic journey.
But just before we reached the first floor, there was a vast bright and almost empty room save some simple stone benches & an eternal flame. There were only a very few people in there.
It was the remembrance room where people could sit and meditate, to think about what they had just seen & heard, to think about relatives or friends, or friends of friends, or relatives of friends, or period stories read & to consider some of the more recent ethnic cleansing in Europe and Africa.
It reminded me of the a room in the Jersalem Halacoust Museum -- a room of eternal flames -- a number of them placed on the floor below a low, wooden, viewing balcony, each flame representing a remembrance of the thousands of Jews lost in each country conquered by the Nazi war machine.
I started to enter the Washington Holocaust remembrance room & felt a sudden need to stop as though a strong hand was in front of me, preventing me from entering. Mind you, this was all in nano seconds. But I turned away overwhelmed by an enormous emotion, a sorrow, so huge that it left me with the greatest urge to burst into tears but I managed to keep myself together. Carol must have seen something on my face & asked if I was all right. I couldn't talk. I could only shake my head.
Outside we sat on a stone bench, watched children lined up waiting for their tour to begin, and talked about other things: the weather, what we would do next, the back timing necessary to get to the chuch on time. After a few minutes we walked back to the hotel.
Four thirty in the afternoon found us at the little yellow church near the White House for a lovely wedding ceremony followed by cocktails, dinner, speeches & dancing.
The date was May 22rd & it wasn't until many hours later that I flashed on my 97 year old father being buried about six weeks before, his coffin in the hole in the ground; everyone throwing shovels full of earth into the hole to cover the coffin which contained his body, emaciated by old age. He would have been 98 on May 23rd.
Huffington Post > FINALLY. Someone, somewhere is being held accountable for something. Maybe this will start a trend.
WASHINGTON — Democratic sources say the Obama administration has fired the head of the U.S. Minerals Management Service in response to blistering criticism over lax oversight of offshore drilling.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity before the official announcement, tell The Associated Press that President Barack Obama will announce the decision Thursday.
Elizabeth "Liz" Birnbaum had run the service in the Interior Department since July 2009.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
From The Smoking Gun > Dumb Toilet Paper Bandit Captured
MAY 10 > Nebraska's Toilet Paper Bandit is under wraps. Joshua Nelson, 29, was arrested Saturday night and charged with the armed robbery ... a heist during which Nelson obscured his face in a ribbon of toilet paper. [snip] Cops began zeroing in on Nelson a week after the April 24 robbery, when a man who lives near the convenience store reported finding a discarded knife, "several rolls of coins similar to those taken in the robbery," and a prescription bottle bearing Nelson's name[/snip] For the video of the robbery and the rest of this crappy story click here.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Frank Serpico arrested for carrying a concealed carrot. > What?
Honest cop Frank Serpico was scratching his head yesterday after police at the Capitol in DC stopped him for carrying a concealed carrot -- just hours after nobody noticed that he'd accidentally left an "ominous"-looking lunch bag unattended at New York's Penn Station. "These are indeed troubling times," said Serpico, who in the 1970s battled New York City police corruption and ended up shot in the face. The Post'sS.A. Miller reports that in a speech at a whistleblower symposium, Serpico said he expected police dogs would be surrounding his "big black plastic" lunch bag when he retrieved it -- but nobody cared. That didn't jibe with vigilant enforcement of the ban on bringing food into the Capitol, including the carrot left over from his lunch. "I said, 'Look, I'm licensed to carry firearms. I'm a retired New York City detective,' " he said. "Thank God, some people still use discretion. [They] didn't take my carrot away." Read more
Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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