This is a picture of a member of the US navy and an Iranian fisherman hugging each other. The hug is on the occasion of the US navy having rescued said fishermen from Somali pirates. It took them a day to make up their minds, but even the leaders of Iran decided eventually that this was “a welcome and humanitarian act”.
The word “meme” is a relatively new one, originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene as the cultural analog of a gene. A meme is a concept or an idea that spreads to person to person within a culture. By their very nature, good memes survive even in harsh environments, despite official sanctions, bans, or attempts at censorship.
Two days ago, a massive demonstration took place in Budapest, Hungary, triggered by the country’s new constitution and the increasingly authoritarian behavior of the ruling Fidesz party. The country’s public television channel tried to downplay the significance of these demonstrations in its evening newscast, strategically placing its reporter on a quiet street, away from the crowds.
In protest, Hungary’s pre-eminent frivolous political party, the Two-tailed Dog Party published a satire of the evening newscast. This was too much for the humor-deficient political elite of (no longer The Republic Of) Hungary: the Web site was banned. (For now, the youtube version of the video is still available.)
But it’s a tad harder to ban a meme. Since the ban, a new form of art is spreading on Hungarian Web sites: the image of the same television reporter pasted in front of varying historical backgrounds, with humorous captions. Here is my favorite:
There was little public interest as members of his immediate family joined Jesus C. (33), a felon with multiple convictions known for his anti-regime speeches, on his final voyage.
In English, the on-screen captions read: “Golgota; Live; In three days, no one will remember the storyteller”.
Try banning this, clowns.
It appears that the once respected French newspaper Le Monde, too, has fallen victim to the agitations of this international liberal bolshevik cryptocommunist gypsy conspiracy, aimed to defame my country of birth, (no longer The Republic Of) Hungary, its perfectly democratic, flawless government and its Dear Leader, I mean, humble prime minister, lone champion of democracy in this European sea of neoliberal slime financed by corrupt Jewish money.
In an alternate universe, the one in which I unfortunately live, the journalists of Le Monde just might have a point.
For me, 2011 was not a particularly good year. In fact, business-wise it has been the worst in, literally, decades. We also lost our oldest cat, and indeed, cats all around us did not fare well: two strays, taken to the shelter on two separate occasions (once by us, once by neighbors of us) were killed by the Humane Society, another cat that belonged to a neighbor, one that we knew since 1997, succumbed to old age, as did the oldest cat of an American friend of mine just a few days ago. Yes, we’ve had happier years than 2011. But then again, we remain healthy, safe and secure, so we do count our blessings still.
What will 2012 bring? The collapse of the Euro? A major war in the Middle East, perhaps over the issue of the Strait of Hormuz? A Chinese economic meltdown, precipitating a worldwide crisis? More wars and suffering?
Or a strengthening of the Eurozone, with new institutions that will prevent similar crises in the future? Peaceful resolution of the issue with Iran, perhaps an end to the ayatollahs’ regime? Finally, full recovery from the economic woes of the past few years?
I remain cautiously hopeful.
Here is a fascinating view of the India-Pakistan border, from the International Space Station:
Notice that strange orange line intersecting the landscape. Yes, that’s the border alright. It’s lit by floodlights along its entire length.
Years ago, when Bush’s stupid war in Iraq began, I started putting some statistics up on my then blog site. Statistics like this one:
and so on. Now that the Iraqi war officially came to an end, CNN provided some interesting statistics of their own:
So my question is… was it worth it? Even if we ignore the fact that Iraq may yet become a satellite state of an increasingly powerful Iran and as such, a worse security threat than Saddam Hussein has ever been, his evil sons and chemical attacks on civilians notwithstanding?
An e-mail from someone reminded me that whereas I posted a comment here in my blog on the death on Kim Jong Il, I neglected to comment on the death of Vaclav Havel. Goes to show that notoriety is often a more direct route to greater fame than doing the right thing.
I know it’s bad form to rejoice upon the death of a human being, but I cannot say that I have any inclination to shed a tear over the death of North Korea’s totalitarian dictator, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il.
Former Bush speechwriter David “axis of evil” Frum’s name is well known and widely despised among liberals. What is perhaps a little less well known is that he is not exactly well liked these days in conservative circles either. For what it’s worth, I have come to admire his intellectual honesty that led him to write, among other things, the following about present-day conservative media and conservative thinking:
“Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) ‘the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.'”
There is only one observation I’d add to Frum’s comments. The people he speaks of… they’re not “conservatives”. They abandoned conservative ideals when they jumped on the radical right-wing agenda of the tea party movement or started parroting the radical right-wing trash coming from talk show hosts like Limbaugh.
A while back, I wrote an e-mail to James Moore, Minister of Heritage, expressing my concern that the proposed new copyright legislation (Bill C-32) is going to turn me into a de facto criminal for the mere act of copying legally purchased DVDs to my computer’s hard drive for easy viewing.
Yesterday, much to my surprise, I received a reply. In his reply the Minister explains, among other things, that “copyright owners may decide whether to use technological protection measures for their content and consumers whether to pay for such content”.
In other words, screw me, it’s laissez faire capitalism. (In fact, he’s preaching to the choir: I stopped purchasing software like computer games eons ago because I despise Activation-type technologies.) Except that… our Minister and his government already decided that it is NOT laissez faire capitalism since government intervention (in the form of criminal sanctions, no less!) is required to protect the interests of copyright owners. The Minister’s reply is also representative of this government’s very callous attitude towards culture in general: by stating that “Copyright is a marketplace framework law”, the Minister makes it clear that they see intellectual property only as marketable products, and the consumption of culture as merely a voluntary consumer activity. I wonder if they maintain the same attitude towards, say, food or health care: in the marketplace, after all, consumers have a choice whether or not to purchase foodstuffs, right?
Their plans concerning copyright law was one reason why I did not vote Conservative this time around, and it seems that my concerns were well justified. Now my hope is that as this legislation passes, its ridiculousness will eventually become evident, and either the Supreme Court will step in or a successive government will make the necessary changes.
2012 is supposed to be the year when the world comes to an end, courtesy of a stray planet or something. No, this is not something that I worry about, not the least bit.
Yet the world as we know it may still come to an end of sorts. Here are some of the things I do worry about:
Thankfully, there is one item that I can strike out from my list: it seems increasingly unlikely that one of the tea party fundamentalists would win the Republican nomination in the United States and go on to defeat Barack Obama. Obama may end up a one-term president, but if he is defeated by a Gingrich or a Romney, I’d know that at the very least, an adult remains in charge of the White House.
Well, if I thought Halloween was bad enough already, I quickly learned the error of my ways this morning, when I found out about the Greek referendum thing. How does a world order unravel? In 1914, all it took was a bullet to pull the first thread. Perhaps in 2011, it’s a boneheaded move by an embattled prime minister of a minor economy within the Eurozone. I have a very, very bad feeling about this.
And Facebook still hates me, not picking up my blog posts unless I reset the link manually every time.
Years ago, I expressed my (informed, I hope) skepticism concerning climate change in the form of several questions. One of these questions has been answered in a very resounding way by a most thorough independent analysis: yes, the warming trend is real and statistically significant.
So then, my questions are:
√ Is global warming real?
• Is it a future trend?
• Is it man-made (caused by CO2 emissions)?
• Is it bad for us?
The fundamental dilemma is that on the one hand, it seems irresponsible to advocate the spending of trillions of dollars (and potentially wrecking an already fragile global economy) before all these questions are answered. On the other hand, by the time we have all the answers, it may be too late to act.
But then, perhaps none of it matters. I do not believe that harebrained schemes like carbon trading are ever going to work. Humanity will continue to burn fossil fuels in ever increasing quantities in the foreseeable future, and atmospheric CO2 will inevitably increase. Ultimately, we may be faced with choices such as geoengineering or simple adaptation: moving from coastal lands to higher ground, evacuating areas that become unsurvivable in the summer, but also taking advantage of longer growing seasons or more fertile areas in the north.
I don’t usually join politically motivated movements on a whim, but this time I made an exception: the mission statement of the newly established Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter is one with which I find myself in complete agreement. I just worry that this and other acts are really too little, too late…
Now is the time to panic! At least this was the message I got from CNN yesterday, when it announced the breaking news: an explosion occurred at a French nuclear facility.
I decided to wait for the more sobering details. I didn’t have to wait long, thanks to Nature (the science journal, not mother Nature). They kindly informed me that “[…] the facility has been in operation since 1999. It melts down lightly-irradiated scrap metal […] It also incinerates low-level waste” and, most importantly, that “The review indicates that the specific activity of the waste over a ten-year period is 200×109 Becquerels. For comparison, that’s less than a millionth the radioactivity estimated to have been released by Fukushima […]”
Just to be clear, this is not the amount of radioactivity released by the French site in this accident. This is the total amount of radioactivity processed by this site in 12 years. No radioactivity was released by the accident yesterday.
These facts did not prevent the inevitable: according to Nature, “[t]he local paper Midi Libre is already reporting that several green groups are criticizing the response to the accident.” These must be the same green groups that just won’t be content until we all climbed back up the trees and stopped farting.
Since I mentioned facts, here are two more numbers:
All fear nuclear power! Panic now!
Using the Internet in China just got a little harder. Not content with operating one of the most heavy-handed Internet censorship regimes in the world, Chinese authorities decided that free Wi-Fi makes it just too easy for all sorts of unsavory electronic communication to take place without appropriate supervision by Big Brother… so they ordered public Wi-Fi access providers to install costly software to record the identities and monitor the Web activities of users.
This is why I am not really afraid that the 21st century will belong to China. Sure, they became an economic giant, but this kind of institutional paranoia is ultimately self-limiting. Now if one day, they suddenly kicked out the Chinese Communist Party and replaced its one-party rule with a pluralist society… but then again, if that were to happen and China became the world’s most populous liberal democracy, why would I need to feel worried about their economic prosperity?
Hungary’s ruling party Fidesz, which enjoys a two-thirds parliamentary majority allowing it to tweak the Constitution on a whim, prides itself, among other things, as the true guardian of the nation’s cultural traditions.
The other day, Thomas Melia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the State Department of the United States, told the US House Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia that Hungary’s new constitution, media law, and law on churches are causes for concern.
Tamás Deutsch, a founding member of Fidesz, former government minister (responsible for Youth Affairs and Sports, 1999-2002) and current member of European Parliament responded on Twitter with the following words: “Who the fuck is Thomas Melia? Why do we have to deal with this kind of shit every day?”
How cultured. It must be a proud day for every Hungarian.
Here is a picture, shown a few nights ago on Jay Leno’s show, of United States Senate majority leader Harry Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell. If you can’t easily tell which is which, you are not the only one:
Just how ridiculous is it that a few days before the debt ceiling deadline, they are simply incapable of coming to an agreement? That even though they seem to agree on the basics (the debt-ceiling must be raised, a long-term solution to tackle the deficit problem must be found) gaining a political advantage over their opponent is more important than resolving a crisis that will likely have long-term repercussions not only for the economy of the United States but that of the entire world?
Looking at the recklessness and ineptitude of today’s politicians (and not just in the United States, I don’t want to be an America-basher here) it does make me wonder how long we have before World War Three…
I hate to make a political point in the wake of a terrible tragedy but… I wonder if those who advocate profiling based on race, religion, and ethnicity are now in favor of subjecting young, blue-eyed, blond Christian males speaking with a Scandinavian accent to extra scrutiny.
Yelena Bonner is dead. May she rest in peace.