Shutdown

Why does the GOP hate health care reform? Simple: look where the savings actually come from: reducing the amount of money people pay insurance companies. Health care reform would reduce the insurers' profits.

Rich people stand to lose money.

That is abhorrent to a Republican. They don't give a shit about your health or your finances or which doctor you see; the GOP is protecting the wealth of its owners.

That they are able to sell "I will take money from relatively poor people and give it to enormously rich people" as being for the benefit of those relatively poor people speaks volumes about the quality of information in the American media and the integrity of its journalists.

Interlude

I forgot to mention a few utterly trivial points about the journey here. I got upgraded to business class again for the second leg of the trip, from Munich to Tel Aviv; as I said before, it's very nice but I would not pay for it. Why me? who knows. Perhaps because I'm a fairly frequent flyer and travelling alone?

The security inspection in Stuttgart confiscated my shaving cream, first time that I've ever had anything taken away. In fairness they did offer me the alternative of checking my bag (i.e. not carrying it on), which would have let me keep the stuff; they would have tagged it with a huge great big label and I would have given it to the gate personnel and received it again on the "finger" in TLV. I didn't know that system and thought they meant that I had to go back to the checkin, wait in line, give them the bag, then fight my way through security once more — which had already taken nearly an hour the first time I did it. Ah well, live and learn. (The reason I didn't give it up to the baggage handlers in the first place is that it contained my laptop, and I felt no need to expose them to the temptation to steal or break it.)

Security did allow me to keep my toothpaste and aftershave, but I had to take them from the plastic bag that they were in and put them in a specific and special 1-Litre Transparent Resealable Plastic Bag, which by an astounding coincidence was available from a vending machine right there. In a package of two, though you are only allowed to take one such bag on board. The bureaucratic mind at work is a thing of wonder.

Oh, by the way and on the subject of security, here's an important Public Service Announcement. If you have a connecting flight, e.g. Stuttgart to Munich to Tel Aviv, do NOT purchase anything even vaguely liquid-ish at your first airport! There is a chance that it will be confiscated at the second airport's security check, even though the goods are obviously bonded and sealed and clearly purchased in the airport, behind the first security check. The duty-free shops all know that this will happen but most of them don't warn you, which in my considered opinion borders on fraud.

Ah, it's sunset, the [forgotten which denomination] are out in their speaker vans calling us to prayer. Israel is very far south, and so sunset is early and rapid: pitch-darkness comes barely an hour after you notice that the clouds are getting red.

I bit the bullet and bought shampoo (400 ml), shower-gel type soap (200ml) and a package of razors to throw away. The latter are utter shit: "Life" brand twin-bladed disposable razors* in a packet of 5 for €2.50. The blades are rough and scratchy, it's like shaving with a handful of broken glass. Avoid. The former are good enough products, but obviously far too large. I will not be able to take them back with me, unless I check my bag and risk losing my laptop. Why do the hygienic article makers not produce small sizes for travellers? Perhaps they prefer for us to buy a huge bottle which gets confiscated? I guess our loss is their shareholders' win. Bah.

And another thing. I'm sure I speak for 99.3% of men when I say that we do NOT want to have to examine an entire stock-island-gondola-thing of shampoo, five shelves high and 150cm long, to find something to wash our damned hair with. Perhaps women appreciate being able to choose between low-fat daily-wash creme-rinse-without-brighteners for curly straw-blonde hair and low-fat daily-wash creme-rinse-without-brighteners for curly wheat-blonde hair, but we just get utterly pissed off by the needless complication. I have been known to leave stores empty-handed and enraged, refusing to play this insulting game of too many fake choices. And it's not just shampoo either: when I was a kid, you bought Crest toothpaste or you bought Colgate toothpaste. Now there are over 40 varieties of Crest alone**. Ridiculous!

Attention makers of shampoo for men: Want to drive your competition out of business within a single month? Produce a yellow package with clear black writing that says

This is shampoo.
It will make your hair clean.

No alternatives, no variations, no phony pseudo-distinctions that are (we suspect) either unfounded or based on differences so minute as to lie within the bounds of experimental error; just one single simple product. We would queue up — nay, we would fight each other — to buy that.

* Google bomb, hoping maybe to save someone else from buying them.

** Really. I counted them in the Duane Reade near Columbus Circle.

How the future doesn't look

It's a fine summery Monday midday in Toronto, 12:52 pm at present whatever Blogger might try to tell you. The weather has changed: after two days of cold and rain, today is sunny and warmish (16°C) with a gentle breeze and only few decorative clouds.

I'm alone at home (in my parents' house): Sis and BIL are downtown seeing friends, Niece and Nephew are at the Science Centre, parents are shopping. I have taken advantage of their absence to open up windows front and back, to get some fresh air into the house. I find the recycled air of these tightly-sealed North American houses unpleasant: it feels used, stale, flaccid somehow compared to the fresh crisp vitality of the air outside. I can hear birdsong — such a profusion and variety of birds here! — and airplanes, a lawnmower and the vague dull background roar of traffic on the Don Valley Parkway, which together were the soundtrack of my childhood. One thing is sorely missing though: the sound and smell of the row of poplars that stood at the back of our property. Ah well.

The neighbourhood has not changed much visibly, many houses are still inhabited by families I knew forty years ago. In some cases, the parents moved out and left the house to the next generation (my generation) who are now raising children here; some others simply never left home. One can't even buy a cardboard box in the gutter for under C$199,000 these days, let alone a proper house where one might raise a family. There are apartments and condominia going up all over downtown, which is generally a good thing, Jane Jacobs was entirely right about that, but they start at C$ half a million for a one-bedroom flat. Who the hell buys or rents them, and how do they pay for it?

The better question is: Where on earth does everyone else live? The answer is, sadly, "In a bedroom suburb 90 minutes by car away from their jobs downtown." This is not a model for the future. Oil is running out (in case you hadn't heard), and the automotive suburban lifestyle will die with it. How do you think people will survive in so-called "communities" where there are no shops? How will you get to the big-box store by the highway intersection when there is no gas to put in your car? For that matter, the big boxes won't be there: how will WalM*rt and the rest survive when the price of diesel makes their warehouses on wheels as expensive as the brick-and-mortar warehouses of their competitors? They will die before peak oil really hits, because their sole justification for existing is their low price: people are willing to buy shit from them because it is cheaper than non-shit, but who would still shop at WalM*rt if their shit were the same price as other stores' higher-quality goods? The big-box stores are dead, take that as a given. The Internet shopfronts like Amazon, who are really just negotiators between you and somebody else's warehouse on wheels, will die immediately after from the same cause: their business model also depends on cheap and plentiful fuel.

I am extremely pessimistic about the future of North America late-phase free-market globalized capitalist democracy, I'm sorry to say, not because the problem is insoluble but because I see no willingness to admit that it exists at all. Hard rains are coming, folks, and I'll tell you right now, for free, that neither prayer nor technology will provide a solution. Nor will the kind of eyes-tightly-shut denial that is currently being practiced by almost all politicians and media.

The coming crisis is not about the kind of fuel we pour into our cars, that is a technical matter (albeit one with wide-reaching social, environmental and global-political side effects, obviously).

The root problem is the car itself: the kind of lifestyle it forces (apparently...) us to live and the kind of national economy it requires (apparently...) us to support. How and with what will we replace a society based on the immediate gratification of childish whims and on private, individual mobility? Because these are not sustainable in the long term, probably not even in the middle term, and the sooner we begin to face this problem the more likely we are to solve it without falling into chaos and bloodshed.

Our desires and our lifestyle must change, if we wish to save the rest of what we now call "civilization."

Thus endeth the lesson.

On saving money, and matters arising

I phoned Lufthansa tonight to book my flights for my father's 80th birthday celebrations, and had to wait and wait and wait and wait (as one does). While waiting I idly surfed over to Lufthansa's website and started researching flights and prices there. The sales rep came on the phone as I was about halfway through the online process, so I carried on with that while talking to her. She and the computer both ended up with the same flights on the same days — but a 300 Euro price difference! Booking online was only 2/3 of the price she quoted me. So I explained the situation, thanked her politely for her efforts, and booked online. I can think of much better ways of spending the money than by giving it to Lufthansa. For instance, it's almost exactly the price of a 16Gb iPhone.

But anyway. That's the state of play. I am now booked for Toronto for early May. According to my mother, it'll be the first time that Sis and I have been in the house together with them since 1988.

I phoned my parents to let them know, and we talked of family and friends (as one does). Mom asked whether I had heard from Physically Distant Cousin's daughter lately? No, should I have done? Apparently yes: there are plans* in the brewing. As Mom tells the tale, PDC'sD's grandparents asked her at Christmas what she was planning to do after graduating from high school this coming summer, whether she had thought about university? "No way," she replied, "I'm going to go and live with Udge in Europe for a year, learn German and maybe French."

Ah. Okaaay.

Mom expected me to be contrite and apologetic at having lead her astray**, and also to be concerned about looking after this poor delicate flower (snorts) for a year, but I'm afraid I laughed delightedly. I think it's a marvellous idea and I support her fully. No idea how it'll work out, or even where I'll be living come September, but it will work out somehow. Good on yez, PDC'sD, more power to your elbow.

* Or at least: ideas and big talk.
** Educationally speaking, I hasten to clarify.

On the road again

To London in about an hour (well: to the airport, thence to Zurich for 90 minutes, thence to London; such is the state of capitalism in the early 21st century). I don't know whether I'll be able to get online during the weekend, so if not: Enjoy the day, be kind to yourselves and to each other.

Shabbat shalom and a very happy Pi day to you all.