Time for a musical interlude

Health, Beauty and further proof that wearing a watch is a bad idea

Nothing quite so profoundly reminds me what it means to be American like getting sick. Last week i got the flu and all my cultural conditioning immediately kicked in: calling in sick is a sign of weakness and indicates lack of commitment to one's job, going to a doctor is only necessary as a last resort, the need to rest is a euphemism for the desire to be lazy. Logically, i know none of these attitudes can survive much scrutiny; however, cultural responses to unexpected situations - i was going to say 'stressful situations', but only an American would classify illness as a form of stress - are not based on logic, but rather on normative behavior.

In the US - especially for those without health insurance - the norm is to work until you drop and as soon as you can stand up again, get back to work. It's no small coincidence that Americans are so inclined to try self-help remedies, women moreso than men. The principle difference between us and Europeans is that much of the alternative/complimentary medicine in Europe is practiced by doctors, whereas in America, we have learned to avoid doctor visits as much as possible and do our best treating ourselves. Over a decade ago, i contracted lyme disease and believe me when i say that i did a lot more work than any of the doctors i went to in figuring out how to recover and then manage this disease. 'It takes a lot of work to get well' fits very nicely with the entire cultural ethos (physical therapy is obviously an exception).

At any rate, while i was being a lazy bum, staying out of the rain and (intense Caspian) wind, drinking a catatonia-inducing quantity of Theraflu or whatever its Russian equivalents are called, i did manage to save myself the expense of going back to a hair salon by covering up those gray roots in the comfort of my own home. This is not to say that i regret having experienced the pleasures of an Azeri salon - au contraire! To spend an afternoon in the midst of so many black-haired beauties carrying out their feminine mandates was precisely the sort of perspicuous adventure any armchair anthropologist would crave.

It's probably safe to say that in a place where the bars and tea houses are predominantly exclusive to males, upscale beauty salons become a sort of female clubhouse. There seemed to be a number of women there just to gossip, drink tea and compare accessories. Smokers came and went through the back door. The only way to distinguish workers from customers was in the footwear, with employees sporting every color of plastic slipper or epsadrillo knock-off imaginable. Instead of music, a muted tv screen was set to a Turkish music video channel: sexy girls in sexy clothes, being drooled over by sexy, lustful men. The whole atmosphere felt almost conspiratorial.

While i was in 'the chair', a would-be Avon lady stood in front of me and methodically went through her entire bag of cheap, glitzy hair pins and jewelry. It didn't seem to matter to her that i wasn't going to buy anything; in a country of high underemployment, not making a sale here was just as good a way to spend the day as not making a sale somewhere else. Anyway, each hair stylist has 3-4 assistants who do lots of mindless tasks, such as taking the place of hair clips, (used in western salons) by holding the sections of hair that aren't being cut or colored, so there was a little mob around me who were happy to ooh and ahh over the contents of her various satchels.

Being a non-Azeri client, i was an item of obvious interest and practically everyone who worked there had to come over and get the low down on what exactly was being done to my voluminous locks. Cups of tea came, cooled and were replaced by new, hot ones. There were several discussions about ideal cuts and styles, followed by repeated disbelief that i only wanted a trim, as if i was insulting their sense of feminine propriety. My hair was dried simultaneously by three different girls while their mentor looked on, giving tips on pulling and fluffing. Far too much fussing for me, but i had to assure them all over and over that yes, the color was good and yes, the cut was what i wanted and yes, i would come back again. When i was finally finished and waiting to pay, in came a woman with a crate of kiwis to sell, which seemed like the perfect finale for this little afternoon comedy. Surprisingly, tips are not de rigueur here, which was fine since i was already paying way more than i'd expected. But no complaints. They gave me the full treatment, as it were, and it was definitely worth the experience.

Clearly, health and beauty are complex cultural realms, especially across national divides. Nonetheless, it was beyond shocking to read that wearing a watch - which has always seemed to me such an internationally accepted form of accessorizing that it doesn't even count as noteworthy - was responsible for no small number of men being renditioned to Guantanamo. Evidently someone(s) at al-Qaeda decided Casios were the perfect gift for their recruits; hardly as classy as a Rolex, but Casios do come with all the practical features a materially deprived, mountain-based terrorist needs: shock resistance, altimeter, solar power and a multi-functional alarm (one imagines that working for Sheikh bin Laden, effective management of alarms would be high on the list of priority skills). The lesson here is that sometimes it might make sense to look a gift horse in the mouth and just depend on the sun and stars to set up your attack plan, as warriors did in the time of Xerxes. Undone by a watch? Well, for a religious fundamentalist it's probably more palatable than being undone by a beautiful woman. But let's not tell the ladies here that, we wouldn't want to spoil whatever romantic fantasies may lurk in the minds of those yearning for eternal beauty, however contrived.

Gratulálok Magyarország! Hála istennek!

Catching up with Spiegel Online this evening, i scrolled past all the radioactive wastelands articles to learn that the Hungarian parliament, under Viktor Orbán's inspired tutelage, has finally voted on a new constitution. On Kossuth tér these days, it is 2011 going on 1935. The Germans and various EU others are not very pleased. Spiegel quotes Süddeutsche Zeitung:

"The constitution enshrines a spirit of ideological, ethnic intolerance, both externally and domestically. Some are being reminded of the fascist rhetoric in Europe between the world wars. Neighboring countries are getting unpleasant memories of the cultural arrogance and power of the Hungary of old, whose Magyarization programs they were subjected to. The new constitution claims that the state of Hungary represents all other Magyars, meaning the three million living in neighboring countries."

Orbán's spokesmen responded to the barrage of criticism coming from Germany with true freedom fighter spirit. "Hungary had to tolerate being instructed what to do or what to include in its constitution from the capitals of other countries for long decades. That era is now over." We have to give the Hungarian political establishment high marks when it comes to never learning from their own history. The purgers later become the purged. This new constitution is so heavily laden with nationalist rhetoric that one can't help but wonder if the motivation is not so much to pat themselves on the back for being Europe's most outstanding race as it is to convince themselves they didn't need papal payouts to set themselves up as an independent kingdom in the first place. Hungarians, in my experience, are even more schizophrenic than Americans when it comes to their identity.

The Fidesz party constitution takes a deep bow towards hefty domestic breeding and enshrines marriage as a solely heterosexual union, which inevitably means the Budapest police can stop whining about traffic obstruction and just ban the annual gay pride march on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Yet the principle points of contention that have got the Hungarian left-center oppostion and all the centrist EU politicos up in arms involve the extent to which the ruling party will be allowed to cement their economic, judicial and social policies for years to come by making it virtually impossible to change them, even if Fidesz falls out of polling favor in the next elections (2014?). Thankfully, the media law enacted earlier this year should go a long way in ensuring that radical, aka 'anti-Hungarian', opinions are kept out of the public sphere, at least for as long as Fidesz remains in power.

i'm sure i'm not alone in thinking there is serious irony here, considering the circumstances at the root of King Viktor's re-ascension to power. i've been saving this video link for just the right moment... The names of liars in residence may have changed some, but the perversion of truth remains ever constant. Spoken word by Henry Rollins.

Is that all there is?

i'm fully aware how immature and catty this is going to sound, but this is my blog, not Glenn Mr. Maturity Beck's. One of the things i have enjoyed about living in Baku is that whenever i come across a swarthy Texan clad in layers of NorthFace garments, i ask if he works in the oil industry and the response i get is always as follows: he will hang his head, penitently nod and then look me shamefully n the eyes and say, "Yes, I work for BP... but I'm an engineer". The professional qualifier is evidently supposed to induce some level of sympathy, help me understand that not being here to drain the Caspian's reserves (adding billions to BP's coffers) would be a waste of his education and brilliant mind, or render him and his family destitute or victims of some other Ayn Rand nightmare. The main thing is that these guys are all clearly ashamed of BP which - especially after the Horizon disaster last year - they should be. For the first time in my life, oil men are not admonishing me for being uninformed and reactionary; i could get used to that.

Now to get catty and rancorous. This morning i received an email from the Gulf Restoration Network that may place me on the wrong side of this equation, drinking beer with the BP engineers - or karmically worse. Here's what they have to say to me on the anniversary of the Horizon explosion:

You don't have to go to great lengths to play an important role in reminding the nation that a year after the BP deepwater drilling disaster, the Gulf still needs the nation's support. I was out in the wetlands yesterday with an out-of-work oyster fishermen, and I can tell you the oil is still here. Unfortunately, Congress hasn't passed a single bill to restore or protect the Gulf after BP dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into our nation's energy sacrifice zone.

You want to do something though, don't you? Here are two simple things you can do for the Gulf right now—without even leaving your desktop.

1) Update your status on Facebook and Twitter to voice the call for Gulf recovery. Sample text: 1 year ago the worst oil disaster in U.S. history began. BP’s oil is still here! Help restore the Gulf at http://bpdrillingdisaster.org.

Make sure to link to http://bpdrillingdisaster.org.

2) Change your Facebook and Twitter image to the PeliCAN design on the right to draw attention to BP's on-going disaster in the Gulf. Just save the image to your computer and upload it to your social media profiles.

Having vowed to not use facebook this week and still sparing myself the hashtag inundations of twitter, you can immediately see the oil and water quandry GRN has placed me in. I cannot change my profile picture to a pelican. i cannot update my status to admonishing the US Congress. i cannot flood my friends' walls with horrific pictures of dead dolphins, blackened beaches, and stories of out-of-work Gulf fisherman. In short, not using facebook today puts me squarely in the ranks of the apathetic, the inactive, the oil industry doormats.

Am i wrong to feel sickened by this? If not sickened, then disheartened? i get that an augmentation of collective rage can be societally powerful, though i'm not sure if rage can exist in any real sense when manifest in the form of bytes and pixels. Call me naive, call me arrogant, call me a techno neophyte, i really don't care. It's not so much the use of these mediums that disturbs me but the fact that activism is now so focused on them. i'm definitely yearning for those old school, cut & paste flyers, surround the offices of Chevron days. But hey, whatever makes the Gulf activists feel better is ok, they're the ones living directly in the aftermath. i just hope for their sakes that facebook and twitter are not all there is.

Anyone who claims to be surprised by this must not know the history of US military intervention and the drug trade. The triad of military action, paramilitary/insurrectionist drug runners and subsistence farmers has long been characteristic of US foreign invasions, as well as more surreptitious CIA operations from Asia to Latin America. We knew from the onset that Afghanistan would be no different, and Patrick Cockburn likewise reported in 2007 that Iraq's opium fields have been brought back to life as a direct outcome of circumstances created by the US invasion there: conditions of primal anarchy are ideal for criminal gangs and drug smugglers and producers.

Afghanistan is an incredibly poor country. According to the Asian Development Bank, "Despite significant development gains since the 2001 ouster of the former Taliban regime, the people of Afghanistan continue to suffer widespread and growing insecurity; weak governance; inadequate health care, education, and other public services; and gender inequality. Lack of employment opportunities and endemic poverty continue among a large segment of the population, with two thirds of the population living below or just above the country’s official poverty line." That the US/UN lackeys currently trying to run the country publicly posit Afghan farmers would choose wheat over opium at current prices is more of the same dog and pony show we have seen for decades. The whole region is awash in heroin now, and i'm guessing that as the number of disenfranchised, disillusioned youth whose families, et al. have already been shattered by violence and despair increases, the inclination to escape reality by chasing the proverbial dragon will grow proportionately.

Escape From Facebook

It's Digital Detox Week, a great idea for people like myself whose worst nightmare has become the death, destruction or disappearance of my laptop. i'm not joking about this; just last week i dreamt that i got hit by a van (highly realistic Baku scenario) and instinctively used my computer case to buffer the impact. Laying on the ground in pain, all i could think about was that my computer was wreaked, which felt more devastating than any damage which might have befallen my own, corporeal being. i've no doubt that i'm one of millions in the world today who have developed a serious, insidious fear of losing net access, webcams, or worst of all, having their facebook accounts deleted. Not absolutely sure, but i'm guessing this is a contemporary manifestation of barophobia.

Complete detox from the digital world is definitely not in the cards during a regular work week. On top of having to use a computer to do what i'm paid to do, i've got an international job search going on, this blog, an unrelenting backlog of personal correspondence... what i can do, and have decided to do, is stay off facebook for a week, starting today. Oh, but wait! Shouldn't i post the link to this blogpost first? If i don't explain to everyone what i'm doing, does what i'm doing even matter? How can i network about not networking if i cease to use my networks? This conundrum has endless loops, but i won't falter. No facebook for a full 7 days will be good for me, a sort of digital world ramadan, testing my self-discipline for some higher spiritual Good.

Apparently unlike the vast majority of users, i do actually know 90% of the people in my facebook world, which means i'm well below the 8 new 'friends' per day par. The remaining 10% are folks i have shared political or artistic interests with, similar to the peripheral acquaintances one has in real social settings: the people you enjoy dancing with at parties but never quite manage to share a meal or go to a movie with. Some of my closest friends are not on facebook but i'm proud to say this has not resulted in them falling under my radar. i don't use facebook to chat for the sake of chatting (actually, i keep myself invisible to specifically avoid this), yet as most of my friends are involved in environmental/political/human rights work, i do use it as a source of recommended news and a place to discuss the events of the day. i like to think that the discussions i engage in are meaningful and relevant, and since my friends are all over the planet, it's great for being exposed to art, humor and various forms of weirdness that pop up around the globe.

There have, however, been downsides to the whole facebook experience. Posting something or making a brief 'status' statement that receives no comments feels akin to saying something to a room full of people and being completely ignored. When i first set up my account, i felt it was rude to not acknowledge everything my friends were posting, but keeping up with that became way too time consuming and since nobody else was doing it... Intellectually, given the medium, i have learned to adjust to this dynamic, but i can't help feeling that on some level it's not very healthy, psychologically. Why would you want to be 'friends' with someone you then repeatedly choose not to interact with? For people who derive social identity on the basic of their facebook activity, this could be damaging in subtle or even non-subtle ways.

Then there's the abbreviated opinions phenomenon, since short comment windows mandate short comments and people seem increasingly disinclined or unable to express themselves in more than 3 lines of text, anyway. Alternately, if you write more than 2 complete sentences or say something the least bit contentious, it's end of discussion (if one can even use the word 'discussion' for what is going on) or worse: you can be dealt that 'fuck you if you're too stupid to not agree with me' blow. i encounter this a lot, especially with friends of friends involved in cross-pollinated comment threads. Facebook has generated a new kind of phrasal speak, characterized by incomplete thoughts = weak thinking and rapid dismissal of alternative views. It would be easy to say that one reason i let this blog sit dormant for so long was because facebook distracted me, but the truth is that too much time on the site eroded my ability to write a full paragraph - to think through something long enough to have a full paragraph's worth of words to say about it. It might be positive - exciting, even - to regularly exchange information and ideas with so many diverse personalities, but when the end result is an intellectual meltdown, i'm not convinced that i wasn't better off just sticking to email.

While writing this, i've been listening to archives of an old friend's weekly music broadcast on Area 24 Radio, which i think is located somewhere in Westchester County, New York. This is someone i haven't seen for probably 20 years, yet thanks to facebook, i now have an outlet for random music requests and get to listen to T rifle through his eclectic music vault for two hours every week. So again, not everything about my Facebook experience has been negative, but taking a break is good, too. i listen to my students talk about how they use the site, see what gets posted on the pages of my Azeri acquaintances and realize that just as in the real world of social interaction, i am definitely on the edge of the social gaussian curve. i need to get off facebook for a week; some of them should consider getting off it for life.

You Need To Get Off Facebook from Świat Social Media on Vimeo.

Money, Brains, whatever works

After spending two classes discussing the topic, my well-adjusted student L is still unable to grasp the concept of creative thinking. What does one say to a person convinced that she has never in her life had a creative thought, a new idea, an urge to see what happens when she does X?? Suddenly, my own brain seems to function only a few notches below Pablo Picasso's, perhaps even on par with Alan Ball. i asked her questions like these: How do you decide what clothes to put on in the morning? How do you organize the books on your shelves? Why do you take photos when you go on vacation? Simple acts, all dependent on some small amount of original thought, and still she didn't get it. In her mind, there is nothing creative about making necessary everyday decisions. 'It's an obvious thing,' she says, 'we all do this.' And that was my point, we all do this. She lives a somewhat charmed, upper class life. Maybe all that materialism has caused permanent brain damage?

How Your Money Works from MUSCLEBEAVER on Vimeo.

Strewn relics, crumbling walls

Years ago, my friend Rachel - who, unlike myself, is a real photographer with excellent eyesight, ergo can take pictures that are actually in focus - produced a group of photographs which came to be fondly known as the dead animal series. These images included carcasses of roadkill, bones from dessicated desert creatures and other remnants of animal life in varying stages of decay. What i always found profound about them was the window each photo opened into my imagination of the animal's demise: how it collapsed to the ground or crawled off into the woods to die, the invasion of detritivores, the final stretching or contraction of muscles. Then the fast forward, back of the eyelids flickering that brought a body through its loss of flesh to the bare, clean-washed skeleton seen in the photo.

The other day i went to out to the Absheron peninsula, which brought Rachel's photos to mind in that so much of what one sees there seems to be the decaying relics of the Soviet era and oil industry, what still remains from the heyday of 'peace, bread and work'. As Lenin famously remarked, "fascism is capitalism in decay," and apparently he and his political descendants were intent on proving this to be true. What is perhaps most interesting is the extent to which life simply goes on with the rusty equipment, decaying walls and shaky gas lines. It's not the same as walking through an exclusion zone, yet there is a grimy, cynical sadness about this environment which i find oddly captivating.

Rusted out, often abandoned pump jacks pop up from the flatlands in every direction. It's hard to imagine how anyone could psychologically acclimate to living in a virtual forest of these grinding praying manthises: it's not the mechanical nature of them that disturbs the senses so much as the hardened pools of tar at their bases, the incredible proximity to people's homes, the utterly intense indifference conveyed by repetitive up and down motion or the immobility of lengthy disuse. This detritus from the oil industry works as an oxymoronic magnet, something so shocking at this scale that i simultaneously feel a deep revulsion and a morbid desire to see how disgusting it can actually get. Petroleum is a dirty industry, we all know this to be true. Seeing this side of it - a place where people feel proud of their country's contribution to the global petrol market and are inured to the quality of life costs because that's simply how it needs to be done - i'm left wondering if it's really fair to sneer at all the massive SUVs clogging the streets of Baku. That is to say, having already irreparably trashed the land they live on, does it make sense to suddenly care about energy conservation and auto efficiency?

Outside the town of Suvelen, i encountered a cemetery that overlooks a large seaside refinery and has clearly changed hands from red star era Russian Orthodox to a glittery, we-wish-this-were-Shiraz Shia Islam. At the top of the hill are the weathered Russian gravesites. Again, that feeling of decay and abandonment, of a place which once held meaning being left to the elements. Not sorrowful, but lost. Small monuments to those who came before, intact out of respect or indifference - who can say? They stand as relics of a time people clearly want to put behind them. Fenced and overgrown, dotted by the occasional, inert pump jack (yes, in the middle of a cemetery, when it comes to oil no ground is that sacred), the only flowers at these graves are those growing out of the earth, eventually sure to envelop them. Walls fall, fences collapse. The decay of their relics does not, per force, imply the decay of the people.

Fire on the Mountain

'Out of the frying pan, into the fire' only partly characterizes my recent relocation, since prior to getting fully settled in this land of flame and contradictions, i was proverbially stewing in a very, very, VERY slow-cooking dutch oven.  The mind works in mysterious ways, or sometimes doesn't function well at all.  A brief moment of epiphany in which the depth and effect of stress on my being came to light, then avenues appeared out of that abyss until suddenly - wham bam thank you ma'am - a flash of sentence-forming adrenalin and here i am opening the link to my blog again, after a much too long hiatus.  My new place of residence is the city of Baku, the largest port on the Caspian Sea and yet another place i never in a million guesses would have placed myself in for more than a week or two.  C'est la vie, ou peut-etre la mode... i'm sure the Tao is actively at work here; as a committed atheist, i'm always eager to point out that (unlike many religious zealots) i strongly believe in The Future, that even entropy is systematic in its inclusiveness: everything has a niche, however small and inconsequential in the face of big bangs, revolutions, or what have you.

So, welcome back to my frenzied search for meaning in an era in which most people are consumed with the search for money (or look towards money as the fountain that dispenses meaning), or for someplace safe, for people who are friends outside the friend-fantasy land of facebook, or just for a few minutes of real peace and quietude.  What is most transitory is often of utmost immediate importance; to recognize and roll with this at times feels like the only thread of continuity in my grasp, though i doubt it gives my existence much value, least of all to myself.  To be perfectly blunt and admittedly egomaniacal, i simply don't want to accept that this is all that defines me.  The niche should be broader, the channel deeper, the dance, as it were, much more multi-rhythmic. Everyone should have a mission, and it seems that after half a century of wandering around the planet, this is what mine has either come down to or evolved into, the jury is still out on that point.

Azerbaijan has an interesting history, yet another land that's been partitioned again and again over the centuries, such that the terms 'nation' and 'country' are qualified in just about every conversation and shift depending on the time period being referenced.  It also plays a pivotal role in the world's oil and gas distribution networks and is truly a land of eternal fire.  The recent holiday of Nowruz has its roots here, and having visited a couple of natural gas seeps, i am seeing the roots of Zoroastrianism in a whole new light (no pun intended).  The top photo was taken at Atesgah, the Temple of Fire on the Absheron peninsula whose foundations date back to at least the first millenium AD and i'm guessing even earlier.  Below are a couple shots from Yanar Dag (Fire Mountain), up in the hills above Baku, a place which acquired its moniker in much more recent times, after someone tossed a cigarette onto the ground at a spot where natural gas just happened to be leaking out.  Coming from a place (Hungary) where gas prices are exorbitant and supplies somewhat insecure, it requires a total change in attitude to not freak out seeing a local gas supply burned up in the interests of second rate tourism.

Blogspot has changed its design features during my absence so it's going to be a bit touch and go as i acclimate to the new formatting constraints. It feels good to be back here though - no question there are LOTS of things to write about, nukes and the Middle East are, as ever, at the top of my list!  Yet there aren't many english blogs coming out of Azerbaijan so i'm looking forward to exploring this novel facet of my experiential universe as well, getting another view of this place out there into the virtual world.  Please bear with me as i relocate my lexical limbs... caught in slow motion in a dash for the door...

Haiti

Just read this. Matt Taibbi reaches a poignant new zenith in no-holes-barred elite shit-kicking.

My inaugural gown was worth a dozen seals

Among the innumerably hideous recollections i have over many years of following Exxon's attempts to dodge financial responsibility for the Valdez oil spill was the company's proposition that each seal caught in the crude was worth exactly $1000. Presumably that would be the assessed value before fur and lungs were coated in hydrocarbons, and maybe 20 years ago, Exxon thought they were being overly generous, since nowadays Chinese wholesalers offer seal coats for as little as $85. Then again, Exxon may have been flaunting their arrogance, as it appears that black seal fur is quite a bit more expensive. Who knows? It's all pretty despicable, so much so that i shouldn't even be embarrassing myself by making such lame, inane jokes about it.

We see the same mentality in US health insurance companies, telling people their kids' survival is not worth the expense, or that a middle finger is of greater value than a ring finger (which may actually be true, considering appropriate responses to corporate mandates in just about any rapacious industry). If Michael Obama had bought her inaugural gown on eBay, she would have had enough money left over to stock the Jefferson Memorial pond with a large family of seals... according to Exxon's calculations, which in the end are as offensive and ridiculous as dumping a wild marine animal into an urban pool or spending $20.000 on a dress. Probably though, the First Lady put style first and felt cost wasn't an issue; or, that since one can't put a monetary figure onto what/how Americans would feel seeing her look absolutely regal that night, the figure presented in cooperation with the dress was essentially priceless, ergo whatever was spent is irrelevant.

The issue of valuation has always dogged me. Aside from - or perhaps in spite of - the obvious relationship between production costs and asking prices, determining the intrinsic value of something is relative, at best and impossible, at worst. With consumer goods, it's easier to look at this than when dealing with something like a mountain gorilla. For example, if i were to buy a fancy color printer, it would be a simple matter of keeping track of how much money i save at Copy Central and how much more income i'd be able to explicitly derive from the sale of whatever propoganda, cards, etc. i printed myself, until the point where money saved + income generated = purchase price of the printer. That's very straightforward. When i look at my teaching fees, setting the value is much trickier, because i've really no idea how much one lesson is intrinsically worth on its own merit. Hence, i have to rely on what the market will bear and hope my prospective students find a rationale for accepting the fees i request. Some do, some don't - when i get a high fee, i put more energy into that class, but i'm not convinced this actually produces more value, in the basic, albeit elusive, sense of the term. The mountain gorillas? You spend a day bushwacking after them in the jungle and then tell me how much money you would've accepted in exchange for that experience. As poor as i am financially, i cannot give you a figure for which i would willingly have foregone that adventure and its concomitant stash of gaia-esque insight.

Raj Patel has come out with a new book which looks at this very important and compelling question, The Value of Nothing, and i'm sure it will be worth reading if, like me, you sometimes find yourself overwhelmed by all the distortions of value in which we mall-walled urbanites, especially, are adrift. There's no telling how long it will be before Patel's book is available (in English) in Hungarian bookstores, but maybe after seeing this video, one of my 5 readers - surely none of whom live in Hungary - will feel inspired to give the book a whirl and then you can tell me about it.

Can't take credit for coming up with this, but i do like how they seem to be waiting for everyone to have a snowball ready before someone fires the first shot... proving yet again how low homo sapiens are on the primate behavioral development chart.

Went to the Budapest 350 climate event on Saturday, which essentially turned into a kind of poolside rave. My friend and photo critic M liked this shot best, so that's the one you get. Someone was complaining about the event not being well-organized, as demonstrated by a chaotic beer line; given the local pro-bike, anti-car movement, what surprised me most was that the turnout wasn't larger. No big deal, though, as it's fair to say a good time was had by all.

The one thing which did disappoint me was that the bicycle rickshaw companies were totally absent to pedal people out of the park. They would've done some good business, but instead there were a line of taxis... urggggh! Gotta learn to think ahead, people.

350 or bust

Last week there was light snowfall in the Buda hills. Yes, that's right. Snow in Hungary on 15 October. JC in Prague also posted a snow sighting that day, to which someone commented, 'I miss Prague!' Sorry honey, but i think that's the wrong response. It should NOT be snowing - should not be cold enough for snow - at this time of year in the middle of Europe (or New England!). Also last week, a study was released showing that global warming-induced glacial melts in the Swiss Alps are releasing toxic compounds into the environment which had been bound into the ice for decades: organic pollutants like DDT and and dioxin - for which there is no 'safe' minimum concentration - which floated upward from the agrarian lowlands, expecting to be enshrined in ice forever. Other studies have shown that this same phenomenon has been occurring in Antarctica, where trace amounts of these chemicals have been found in penguins. Elsewhere, i've read that Switzerland's borders with Italy have been redrawn to accommodate the appearance of solid land where there once was thick glacial cover. 'Great that Berlusconi's kingdom is shrinking!' Ok, sure, but again, wrong response.

This is a photo i took 2 years ago while flying over that border area. Surprised by the scant snowpack, i'd had no idea that the situation was as bad as it actually turns out to be: not in terms of political dimensions but rather, environmental ones. A recent report by al-Jazeera (embedded below) discusses the impact of receding glaciers in Peru, a situation which is even more stark due to the lack of pervasive surface water that characterize Italy's Lake Region (if you aren't familiar with this area, just do a search for George Clooney, who has a lovely house on Lago di Como).




Too much doom and gloom? i totally agree. That's why i'll be going to this event in Budapest on the 24th: to hear some great music, maybe cop a little film cameo, and be part of the paradigm shift in parka preparedness (the 'Stewardship Revolution' for those who prefer more swanky event marketing slogans). We may be too late to reverse climate change, but at least we can weather the change in weather with some respectable GMT+2 late-night aquatic enervation. According to 350.org, 170 countries will be holding some sort of event to register (our) (collective) desire for meaningful action at the pending COP 15 (please oh please let it not be another episode of the Obama Multimedia Love Boat).

As one of the great environmental thinkers of our time, David Suzuki, famously said, “We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.” Obviously, people who ride bikes don't have that problem, so wherever on Earth you find yourself this weekend, try to do something as if the lives of penguins depend on it... or the lives of glaciers, if species extinction doesn't make your heart bleed... or just your own little 'i prefer four seaons' life, if, like me, you don't want to be burning gas or coal to prevent hyperthermia in October.

As i've written elsewhere on this site, Budapest has a substantial cycling movement and most of the folks i know outside of work are focused on climate issues. Here's a link i received this week about a newly designed Hungarian hybrid, the Antro Solo. Republishing the photo here, to get your attention. It almost makes me want to have a car... deep down, i recognize that is still not the optimal way to go.

Ten reasons why Obama should return the Nobel, posited by none other than The Black Commentator. Several of my non-black friends in the US have expressed consternation over all the criticism there of Obama (i'm assuming mostly from the Glenn Beck squads), but as the ever-insightful RM says, "we have to support Obama unconditionally, otherwise people will think we're racists, too." Since i live on the other side of the Atlantic, i can get away with being blasphemous so long as whatever i say doesn't deride Roma.

Der Spiegel has just published the winning images in their microscopic photo competition. The pictures are amazing! Dealing with light waves at such high magnification levels is clearly an art in itself; these photographers have achieved some remarkable effects. i especially liked #12, which captures the movement of soap on a slide. Bill Bigg, my old plant physiology prof at Humboldt State, defined 'detergent' as anything able to break the surface tension of water and i think this photograph basically proves him correct. Enjoy the pics - #4 fish ovaries also fascinating.

Rhythms East-West

Some random Mickey Hart interview i heard eons ago came to mind while watching this lively montage. Mickey talks about breath as the source of all rhythm, evolving palaeontologically into The Beat as we commonly think of it, or maybe just take for granted dancing around till sunrise in an ecstasy-propagated workout. It punches out the frequency of our hearts, our brain waives :-), REM flutter and just about everything else indicative of life. Even in dormancy there is a pulse, however faint.

The soundtrack for Akachi's short film is provided by the Brasilian-based ensemble, Barbatuques, who are also dedicated to exploring this rhythm-body-sound relationship. STOMP without all the toys. Their own website has some nice visual interpretations of their musical journey, definitely worth having a look at if you're in a free-thinking, relaxed mood and need something non-specified to focus on (that is not an oxymoron, contrary to how it reads). In all likelihood, Too Far West Is East was probably made with other objectives in mind, but it's a beautiful rendition of how rhythmically we humans behave, across vastly different cultural parameters and regardless of the material objects which partly define or direct our movements.

Too far west is east from Takayuki Akachi on Vimeo.

Nobel Appease Prize

The Obama love fest marches on. How utterly bizarre that he has received this honor immediately after declining to meet with another Nobel Laureate... hard not to notice that among all the commentaries and congratulations, the Dalai Lama's reaction is conspicuously absent. Is the Nobel Committee trying to subvert Obama's stated intention to intensify military action in Afghanistan by handing him a check that reads 'Man of Peace', or do they just want their own private audience with the guy? Historically, the prize has been awarded to individuals who've taken real, substantive personal risks in the interests of justice, peace and planet, or embraced platforms crucial for moving in that direction (think of Al Gore and the IPCC); i may be missing something in his background, but it doesn't seem to me that Obama qualifies under either of these criteria.

Last weekend i met a Danish woman who asked if i was happy about Obama becoming president, flashing me that semi-glazed over, starry-eyed look that i've come to recognize as the spell of saviordom. People so desperately want to believe that Obama is "the answer", the man who will make all things bad in the world go away or transform into bite-sized bits of goodness. It feels too cynical to dispel anyone's optimism; yet, from another perspective, one could argue that encouraging the worship of a well-marketed elected official reflects an even deeper level of psychic despair. Thus far, Obama has not managed to deliver much more than drone attacks on impoverished villages, appeasement towards zionist extremists and guaranteed, unrestrained profits to big pharmaceutical companies. My conversation with the woman from Denmark demonstrated yet again the extent to which Europeans still want to believe that the US can set things right in the world, and how willing we all are to ignore what we don't want to see in order to keep whatever dream we harbor alive - be it a savior nation or a savior from Chicago.

There are those who have argued that the Nobel Peace Prize lost all credibility back in 1973, when it was awarded to Henry Kissinger - in the same year that he orchestrated the overthrow of Allende, condemning the Chilean people to over a decade of inexcusable repression. i am not going to shame myself by challenging that position, since i think the Norwegians would have better served the interests of peace by arresting Kissinger the minute he stepped off the plane. Perhaps my reaction to Obama winning is just a matter of selective or short-term memory, of not wanting to accept that something i'd like to believe has substantive meaning has actually been devoid of it for at least several decades. i suppose i should be thankful that if persona marketability was their main criteria, at least the Committee didn't select Angelina Jolie.

At this time, one hopes that the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient will take a moment to reflect on the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he accepted his award in 1964.

I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.

This morning i received an email from moveon.org which claimed that the primary reason Obama won the award is his push for nuclear disarmament. On this, i would refer you to Thomas Pickering's recent commentary in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: "...the Obama administration will at least continue to look seriously at the possibility of missile defense, focusing less on a frenetic commitment to early deployment and more on bringing it to its full technical capability." Their clock is still set at 5 minutes to midnight, so while the potential to move away from nuclear war may be greater than it was a year ago, our experts at the Bulletin have yet to lower the threat level.

Also want to tag on a quote from someone at Israel Radio, just to illustrate how convoluted perspectives on the Nobel Prize - or perhaps peace, itself - can become. "Almost nine months of pregnancy at the White House has not given birth to one peace or any [significant] progress under the inspiration of American president.... Whoever had hope that President Obama would lead a military operation against Tehran, today those hopes have evaporated. A Noble Peace Prize laureate doesn't rush into to any war." Does that need deconstruction?? According to the Secret Service, death threats to Obama are up 400% since his inauguration. The racist anti-sanity birthers [sic] are taunting him left and right, but who would be surprised if the first tangible attack came from an agent of zionism? Yet that surely won't happen in Oslo, so we can all start stocking up on popcorn and rhetoric, in preparation for another monumental speech and a blogophere frenzy to prove it so.