The hazards of travel

The Precious.

El Cabrero is going to hit the road, or rather the sky, this Friday for a trip to Okinawa, the Holy Land of karate. I've been trying to prepare for it in more ways than one, but there are always the hazards and sorrows of travel.

Example #1: Separation from the Beloved. For nearly two weeks, I am not going to be able to see, touch or interact with the object of my affections. I am referring, of course to my iPhone. Data roaming charges overseas can be very expensive. I don't think I've ever gone without the Precious for that long before. This is gonna be tough.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to miss the Spousal Unit and all the other humans and critters as well.

Example #2. Time changes. I don't know about y'all, but I was thrown for a loop last week with the switch to daylight savings time. I can't imagine what an 11 hour difference is going to do. I'll probably just get functional when it's time to leave.

Example #3. My speech disorder. On the plus side, I know a lot of Japanese words. Unfortunately, these tend to be technical things like side thrust kick (yoko geri kekomi), shoulder throw (seionage), or triangle choke (sankaku jime) or else philosophical terms like no-mindedness (mushin). This could be a problem.

To make things worse, I have a weird speech disorder. Perhaps because I was late in learning a foreign language (I had to marry somebody to do it), my brain does weird stuff. Every time, for example, that I go to an ethnic restaurant, I find myself speaking Spanish regardless of what kind of restaurant it is. That works fine at Mi Pueblita or Tenampa but not so much at Sitar of India or Taste of Asia.

I have a feeling this trip is gonna do wonders for my Spanish...

POLITICAL CLIMATE CHANGE. The NY Times reports that cap and trade may be out as a way of dealing with climate change.

MICRO-LENDING has long been in the economic development mix in the developing world. It might be gaining a toehold in the US.

WHAT'S BEHIND THE RAGE? It might not be health care reform.

PSYCHOPATHS might have different brains.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Paranoid is back in style

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Goya.

In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter published an influential essay in Harper’s Magazine titled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” I’ve been thinking about it lately in lieu of the more extreme versions of the hysteria and hyperbole that has arisen during the current health care debate. It fits the moment pretty well.

Hofstadter opened by observing that “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” Off and on throughout the nation’s history he found a style of mind that was paranoid not necessarily in the clinical sense but was nevertheless characterized by a “sense of heated exaggeration, auspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy…”

Holy granny-whacking, Batman! This same style of mind has shown itself to be alive and well in the current debate over heatlh care reform, with bizarre rumors of death panels, mandatory abortions, euthanasia, government takeovers, Sovietized health care, etc.—sometimes seasoned with a dash or two of speculations about the Kenyan birth of a certain elected official.

I'll be taking a look at Hofstadter's insights into political paranoia this week. Stay tuned--same bat time, same bat channel.

THEN AND NOW. Here's the latest from Paul Krugman, including a bit of Nixonian nostalgia.

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION. Here are some suggestions for keeping the nation from spinning out of control.

URGENT EYELESS FANGED CRUSTACEAN UPDATE here.

MICRO-LENDING is one kind of banking that survived the credit meltdown.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HOW TO GET MORE READING DONE

Image courtesy of fromoldbooks.org.

During the fairly slack week between Christmas and New Year's, El Cabrero has decided to reveal some trade secrets. I've run across several people recently who say they'd like to read more books. And, since this is New Year's resolution time for many people, that might be a goal for some in the coming year.

I have stumbled upon a method that allows me to go through quite a few books. (Note: I can't reveal how many lest my employers realize what a slacker I am.) My method involves two strategies, one hard and one easy.

First the hard one: try to get up early enough to spend 45 minutes to an hour reading. I usually have a pile of about five going at any one time on different enough subjects to keep them separate. I try to turn the page of each one twice, then move on to the next one. Then, when you get close to the end of one, concentrate on finishing it.

Then there's the easy way: listen up! Many public libraries have good collections of recorded books on CDs, audio tapes, or even these new little recorded book thingies, the exact name of which eludes me at the moment. Even though I live kind of out there, there are three public libraries with decent collections of unabridged books within an hour's travel and I am usually abusing borrowing privileges of at least two of them at any given time.

With those gizmos, any time spent driving, jogging, chopping wood, mowing the lawn, chasing goats, or doing mindless tasks is reading time.

Here are some advantages of listening. First, some books, particularly the classics, were originally meant to be heard. That's especially true for things like The Iliad and the Odyssey. And how long has it been since someone read aloud to you anything you wanted to hear?

Historical note: the idea of an individual reading silently to him- or herself is an innovation of recent centuries. Traditionally, books were read aloud to more than one person.

Then there's the boredom factor. There are some books I'd probably never get through in print version. But if I'm out jogging for an hour, it ain't like I can switch channels. I have found that one can run, drive, or mow one's way through almost any book.

Try it--you might like it.

THE DARK SIDE OF MICRO LENDING. Micro-lending is often held up as a panacea for solving world poverty. However, a recent article from Business Week shows the dark side as many for-profit institutions charge outrageous interest to poor people in developing countries where there is little regulation.

One corporation cashing in is--you guessed it--Wal-Mart:

In Mexico, it charges interest rates that might set off popular and political revolts back home, although Wal-Mart describes its terms as appropriate to the Mexican market. At one store west of Mexico City, a 32-inch LG plasma TV with a price tag of $957 can ultimately cost as much as $1,474, thanks to a 52-week payment plan that carries an annual percentage rate (APR) of 86%.

DARK AS A DUNGEON. Here's an item from the Boston Globe about how conflicts over mountaintop removal mining are raging in West Virginia.

THE BEETLES. The British scientist J.B.S. Haldane supposedly said that the Creator, if he exists, has "an inordinate fondness for beetles." Here's an item on why they have done so well.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FEAR AND TREMBLING

Caption: This man has been overcome with it.

This is Haint Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

(For the un-hillbilly, haint is Appalachian for that which haunts.)

Whatever haints may or may not be, one reason many people have believed in them over the ages is no doubt the feeling of fear or awe that sometimes strikes us in the apparent absence of an ordinary cause.

The 20th century German theologian Rudolph Otto referred to this feeling as the "mysterium tremendum." In his classic book The Idea of the Holy, he suggests that this feeling of awe lies at the basis of both religion and many superstitions:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at least it dies away and the soul resumes its 'profane', non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy.

This feeling can take many forms:

It has wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of--whom or what? In the presence of that which is a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures.

The biblical Book of Job has a great description of this unbidden feeling of awe or dread:

“Now a word was brought to me stealthily, And my ear received a whisper of it. Amid disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night, When deep sleep falls on men, Dread came upon me, and trembling, And made all my bones shake." (4:12-14)

Otto believed that earlier, more "primitive" manifestations of this feeling had a dark side and generated belief in ghosts and demons:

Its antecedent stage is 'daemonic dread' (cf. the horror of Pan) with its queer perversion, a sort of abortive offshoot, the 'dread of ghosts'. It first begins to stir in the feeling of 'something uncanny', 'eerie', or 'weird'. It is the feeling which, emerging in the mind of primeval man, forms the start-point for the entire religious development of history. 'Daemons' and 'gods' alike spring from this root, and all the products of 'mythological apperception' or 'fantasy' are nothing but different modes in which it has been objectified.

From a purely psychological point of view, these unbidden feelings of awe and dread are the stuff of which haints are made.

POVERTY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT is the theme of the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. One item of interest deals with the possibilities of micro-loan programs to alleviate poverty and improve health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

CHANGE TO WHAT? It's been two years or so since some unions split from the AFLCIO to form Change to Win. Here's an item from In These Times about what's changed, what hasn't and what might.

DEATH PENALTY. Yesterday's Supreme Court decision could mean a temporary moratorium on executions.

LATEST PRESS ON MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH includes this item from the Daily Mail about Malik Shabazz,one of the march's organizers, and this item from the Charleston Gazette about the decision of the Charleston NAACP not to support the march, a decision shared by several other predominantly African American groups in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED