SWCAMBORNE

Tonight is the beginning of Passover when our people celebrate the escape from slavery under the Egyptians and eventually making it to freedom in the Land of Israel.  It is a great holiday for reflecting on freedom and the right to move around.  I have posted a reflection on the implications of Passover and Immigration on my Rational Immigration site.

Simon at the Western Wall

Rabbi Grater who is my Rabbi at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center published in the Huffington Post a Top Ten List of Enslavements.  I thought his list was a Progressives distorted view of the world. Full of bad assumptions and even worse solutions and so I prepared my own list of the Top Ten List of Progressive Enslavements.

To give you a flavor of it so you don’t have to go to the jump: The Rabbi’s first item is:

We are enslaved to the notion that capitalism and money are an excuse to do anything we want in the name of freedom.

Mine is:

We are enslaved to the notion that governments can create prosperity even though we have 200 years of evidence showing that less government and more economic freedom make everybody’s lives better.

To read both lists click here.  Your comments are welcome.

A new and useful word: Copathetic; when two thing together are even worse than the sum of their parts.

Usage example: “Republicans and Democrats are copathetic.”

Another:  “Teenagers and alcohol are copathetic.”

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) –

a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing,and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

This is a sad week for those of us who grew up loving books.  The Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer going to be printed.  News story here  It will continue as an online source and try to compete with Google and Wikipedia, and it might, but this is the end of the printed collection of information.

So moving on what will be next to go?  All of it.  The age of print is over.  The presses, libraries, bookstores and publishers as we know them are all doomed within a generation.  Just like Kodak film was doomed when digital photography was invented.  They can’t be saved.  Digital books will keep the format alive for a few generations but even that is doomed.  I know you don’t like to hear this but the printed book is as over as the livery stable in 1912.  There is nothing you can do about it.

If young people want entertainment they will watch a show on their iPads.  If they want information they will Google.  And if they want to understand a subject they will use new interactive formats that combine documentary film with feedback loops, illustrations, charts and source material.

The technology of movable type created the printed book which shaped the way we learn about the world.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  The Medieval world was shaped by the scribe.  Access to information was limited and a society developed that favored those who could read and write.  Now because of printing almost everyone can read and write.  So what.  The future will create amazing new ways of doing what books have done for the last 500 or so years.

My advise if you are in the printing business:  Sell your presses! Now!  Let someone else go down with the ship.  However all is not lost. And here again the analogy to the beginning of the automobile era is instructive.  The end of the livery stable was also the beginning of the age of the mechanic,the auto dealer, the macadam road builder and lot more.  And so it will be in this era.  The book, like the horse, will be gone but as costs goes down the need for the new forms of entertainment and information will increase.  What a wonderful time to be in the new media.

Encyclopedia Britannica RIP you served us well.

“I haven’t been to Argentina”

is only one word different than:

“I haven’t been to Argentina yet.”

But there is a huge difference in the attitude that the two sentences project.

The insertion of “yet” in the second version keeps the future alive.  “Yet” makes a current statement conditional.  It is subject to change, not absolute.

Try it yourself.  Change “I don’t have a good car.” to “I don’t have a good car yet”  Change “I can’t beat Bill E. at Word for Friends” to “I can’t beat Bill E at WFF yet.”

In Spanish yet is aun and not yet is aun no.  “I don’t speak Spanish aun.” is better than “I don’t speak Spanish.”

This really is a case of “first you do it, then you feel it.”  If you will consciously try inserting “Yet” into statements you are likely to become more optimistic and happier.

I took this photo as the sun was setting yesterday.

This picture tells me that the visual pollution of power lines will become a big political issue in the near future.

The Geraniums in the back yard with the late afternoon sun on the San Gabriel Mountains.

Life is Good.

In the UK soccer hooligans are a cultural phenomenon that have over the past few decades caused dozens of deaths and lots of social angst.  Most of the news chatter that I heard seemed to hold society as a whole and the perpetrators individually responsible for the damage and mayhem.

Now consider the aftermath of the tragic soccer riot in Port Said, Egypt.  The Egyptian press reports that the public is blaming not the individuals or the society but the army and the police.  The quote I read was “there were no police there to stop us.” It is as if they are saying we are not responsible enough to attend sporting events without an authoritarian boot nearby.  It doesn’t seem to bode well for their post Mubarak society.

But it get more complicated.  In Los Angeles a Dodger fan beat a Giants fan nearly to death after a baseball game and the press and the public are holding Frank McCourt the team’s owner responsible for not having enough security.

Of these three approaches I think that the English one is probably the best but it has a danger.  Saying something like “boys will be boys” or allowing the “social disease” excuse from West Side Story tend to over time exacerbate the problem because the “boys” start to think that they can get away with it.

A mix of competitiveness, alcohol, avid loyalty and the unhappiness of losing is sure to be volatile. So the potential of people rioting at sporting events is a condition that every society has to manage.  How they manage this emotional mix is to some extent a measure of a societies maturity.  Allowing the perpetrators a free pass by blaming the police is not an indicator of a mature society.

As Gordon C. said:

“The nicest Summer I ever spent was this Winter in Pasadena.”

I took some pictures that prove his point.

An Album on Flickr

Sorry Ohio, NY, Pennsylvania and the UK

From XKCD.com

a very clever comic site