Moved my Blogger
Not sure how this is going to work, but for those that actually read my blogger, it is now located at http://www.sarbonn.com/weblog. This is my own website, which seems a bit more stable than blogger for the most part. I think it still archives through the old address though, although I'm not sure it stays that way forever.

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The Little Democracies Around the World
an article published at http://www.useless-knowledge.com (use the link in the title of the article)

I've tried publishing articles at this spot, so take a read and let me know what you think. They have a policy of taking exclusive rights, so basically I can't republish the article here, but at least I can give you a link to where it's located. If I find the experience there to be one of no readership, I'll just discontinue publishing there.

I should have another article coming out in the Western Herald in the next week or two (they print a weekly issue during the summer) before starting to contribute regular opinion articles during the regular year again.

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Home Again
I can't tell you what a great feeling it is to be home again. It was an extremely long trip I had to take, but in the end, I ended up back home.

The trip home was extremely long. I had to fly from Prague to Paris, from Paris to Chicago, take a train from the Chicago Airport to the Amtrak station, an Amtrak train to Kalamazoo and then a cab home. The really intense part of the trip was going from the Chicago Airport to the Amtrak station as I had about an hour and a half to get there, and I just barely made my train before it pulled out of the station. Talk about a lot of stress as there wasn't going to be another train until the next day. I was so out of money, I knew I'd have to stay in the train station, and who knows if I'd even be able to get another ticket. But in the end, it worked out okay.

Spent most of the day today just taking care of personal things that needed to be done. I'm going to get them to switch out my futon for an actual couch, cause I really can't stand this one I have right now. They said it should be taken care of tomorrow.

The rest of the day was just spent walking around the campus and just accomplishing those little things that need to be done. Found out I'll probably be TA'ing for one of the supreme court classes rather than teaching. It was a bit of a disappointment, but in the end it might be a lot easier TA'ing than actually having to teach a class load.

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Will Be Offline For A Few Days
Well, as most people know by now, I'm in Prague. My trip is about to end, and I'm heading home on Sunday (which is in two days). So, this is probably my last chance to be on the net until I fly, and then I'll probably have a day or so before getting back up to speed once back in Kalamazoo. So, I won't have a chance to update anything until after that. I tried to drop a few articles here and there in the last few days just to compensate, but who knows if anyone even reads this thing.

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Why Humor Writers Should Never Be Security Officers
I was running across some old files the other day (I'm still in Prague but this ended up on my laptop somehow), and I used to have this really corny job as a security officer for a major hotel. It was a dorky job, and it didn't involve a lot of thinking (which was perfect for me) but part of the job was writing situation reports. Most of the staff was functionally illiterate, so those were always fun to read, but I used to go overboard and have WAY too much fun with my reports. Here's one of the ones that was rejected:

"On September 7, at approximately 1400 hours, while fighting off a squad of evil ninjas on the 7th floor of the hotel garage for control of a nuclear activation device they were going to set off to assassinate a visiting dignitary from South Africa, I noticed that a red BMW was left with its window rolled down and its door was unlocked. Realizing the melting temperature of mercury-cadmium telluride samples is just under 972 kelvin, I accessed the vehicle and rolled up the window. While remembering the honor I felt when Reagan pinned on my Congressional Medal of Honor during that wonderful White House ceremony, I was confronted by a tall, beautiful blonde wearing a mink coat and little else. She informed me that she was in fact the owner of the BMW and opened her coat for me to alone to see and told me she felt it was necessary to reward me, using strange, alien terms such as 'you hunk of stud muscle' and 'you so dreamy man of every woman's fantasy.' I thanked her but informed her that the only reward I could ever desire was to know that she was a very satisfied guest at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel. I allowed her to blow my whistle as a consolation (the one on my key chain) and then went off in search of those evil ninjas who were most certainly up to the 9th floor by now. Damn ninjas!"

For some reason, they felt my report required a rewrite. Critics!

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The Killing of the Two Saddam Boys
I don't really know how I feel about this. I hate to see the death of anyone, for pretty much any reason. Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run because two very bad people are finally no longer around to do the things they did, but I hesitate here because like in most cases, I believe bad people like this tend to be a product of their society. Which means that what they did is not excusable, but at the same time, it just means that someone else pops in to fill in the gap set aside by their demise.

I think in order to "win" in Iraq, we really need to be paying more attention to making the Iraqis feel good about themselves and actually bringing out democracy to their regime rather than tell them how good democracy will be as we run around installing martial law. They had martial law before we got there. The only difference now is the uniforms are a bit more expensive, the toys are a lot more powerful, and they are lacking basic services such as power and food.

What bothers me the most is that Bush took an entire news conference to talk about how great this is without bothering to address what is bothering the Iraqi people most. We need to stop playing cowboy and start talking to the Iraqis. The thing is: I don't doubt our professionals in place are doing that at the highest levels, but those people at the highest levels are not the ones walking around in shadows with rocket launchers, hoping to take out an evil American. We need to devote SERIOUS resources to dealing with the individuals in Iraq who were saying "America, Freedom, Whiskey, Sexy" (or something like that) and deal with making these people not only be happy that we're there, but be happy that they're going to be in a better living condition. As long as we keep making these vague references to what's better, people are going to continue killing our soldiers over there.

We are supposed to be rebuilding, not having to be on defense 24 hours a day. As long as we treat the Iraqi government as children, which is our direction of conversation with their power base so far, we're never going to win over the Iraqi people. We may never win them over anyway if we're going to keep trying to equate Iraq with terrorism constantly. Much like we did with Germany after World War II, we need to stop treating the people as child-like entities and actually start working with them.

I mean, we're not even finished scooping up the messes in Afghanistan, and we're seeing the long haul of Iraq, while our political elite is now discussing whether we should focus on Iran or North Korea next.

It is just so frustrating.

Meanwhile, there are struggling democracies all around the world right now that need help to stay afloat (I give you a ton of eastern european examples, South Africa, and island nations all through the Asian Pacific), but we've turned our back on them because they've already become democracies and obviously we've done our part, so we like to convince ourselves. What is going to happen is we're going to see the very end of Huntington's Third Wave, and the inevitable Third Reversal with more and more democracies falling back into authoritarian governments, because we felt it was important to liberate rather than consolidate.

That's just my thought, but what do I know? I'm just a stupid American who gets all my news from TV, obviously.

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Downloading Music Off the Net
I'll be upfront on this. I've never downloaded music off the net illegally. When I bought an HP computer, I did participate in a music program that let you download music through that pay-for-service, but the choices of what you could download were crappy, so I opted out, and I've never bothered to interest myself in online music again.

So, does this mean I buy lots of CDs from stores? No, it doesn't. I rarely buy music from any of the retail stores, mainly because most of what comes out these days is prepackaged garbage. You might get one really good tune on an album, but then you've bought a CD worth of junk. So I rarely buy music anymore unless it comes out from one of my five favorite artists. And that's it. You can't goad me into wanting to buy more music.

So, why is this important? I think it's important because I don't believe I'm the only person with this type of attitude. We have opted out of the music CD market. Where I used to buy approximately 40 to 50 CDs a year, I buy perhaps 3 or 4 now. If that. I believe there are a lot of people just like me, the people who are of the age where we have that type of income to buy such items, who have decided we're not supporting this industry that has done so little for us.

It's not about wanting to support the artists, who get ripped off by the music companies. Personally, I could care less about the artists. They are all richer than me, and they won't return an email from me if I ever wrote them, so why should I care squat about them and their lack of more wealth? So, what is it that causes me to care?

I care that the music industry is looking at people like me, people who USED to be customers, and they are pointing fingers at me, indicating that I must be pirating music because I am not buying it anymore. They are making these accusations on a daily basis, and they don't care who they alienate when they say it. I wouldn't be suprised to see one of those lawsuits against me, even though I don't even subscribe to any of the download services that seem to let you do this sort of thing anyway. I really have that little respect for them and their desire to profit off of everyone who has opted out of their demographic.

This whole attack of theirs on the downloading populace is really sickening, and that's what bothers me. They can't figure out how to target their own industry (which IS the problem) but want to get as much profit as possible with as little quality as possible. That's what bothers me the most.

A long time ago, they promised us that the move to CDs would end up costing us about $9.99 per CD when they were released. That never happened. Then, when they realized how much money they were losing with $12.99 as an on sale CD with no customers buying, they started to announce they were going to start moving those CDs to $9.99. This is after over a decade of fleecing us at the higher prices. And then what happened? The prices didn't go down. Sure, an ocassional artist will be featured at $9.99, but it wasn't the move they promised in the business news of every newspaper in the United States. That was two years ago and last year they promised this. They, however, didn't do a lot of work to hype this to the general populace (most likely because they really never had any intentions of keeping this promise).

Now, the record industries are talking about doing the online thing again, and they're targeting $9.99 as the price of a full album to be downloaded online. When have we heard this before? It's sad that they think we have no memory of the past.

I refuse to participate. I also refuse to participate in any criminal activity as well. I just have decided that I buy a few artists every year, and if they can't handle that, then perhaps they should get a paper route and earn a real living.

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Tourism in Prague
Since being in Prague, I've mainly been pretty sick. It's only been a few days now that I've actually been feeling a lot better. Yesterday, I was walking around Prague, walking back from an internet cafe, when I came across a lot of people milling around an area, and I discovered I was right in front of the Charles Bridge, a huge tourist site here.

So, I wandered across the bridge, and I was looking at all the different stuff people were selling, and what I thought was most interesting was almost everything being sold was crafted in some way or other. Oh sure, they were selling postcards and that kind of stuff, too, but everything else appeared to be skill-related. Some of the artists that create portraits of people in front of you were unbelievable. It probably didn't hurt that every woman in Prague appears to be a supermodel as well, but the work they were doing was phenomenal.

I wandered to the people's square, which is just huge, filled with churches. I went into one of the churches, and the amount of money that had to go into this place was nothing less than astronomical. The gold, the paintings on the walls, the paintings that stretched across the ceiling in a Michaelangelo style, were just breath-taking. They were about to have a concert in the church then, so I wandered off, but it was still unbelievable.

In the square, there are tons and tons of booths where people sell things they make (plus the usual touristee type of postcard and ceramic sales). There was one guy who was obviously a smith, as he was working on an anvil making impromptu artwork. Next to him was a stall that was selling old military helmets and axe-like weapons. There were several of those stalls next to each other, and I walked by one after another, kind of ignoring one of the stalls that was tucked in between two of the weapon and armor dealers. I then wandered back because I realized I hadn't even looked at what was selling there. That was when I noticed every product in this stall was of a similar nature. The woman was selling leather handcuffs, whips, restraints and all sorts of that kind of paraphenelia that was made by someone, not mass produced in some factory somewhere. I started thinking about this because with the fall of communism, it was just shocking to see something like this sold openly on the Prague market. I couldn't imagine it being sold on the open US market, unless in little stores where they hide it away and then probably give it to you in brown paper bags.

I wandered over to a small gazebo setting and ordered a beer, and then I sat down and drank it and watched the people walk by. Beer is really cheap here. I then wandered home and continued to work on my autobiography (something I started here when I first arrived and realized I was too sick to really go out and do anything). It's almost done, which to be honest was something I really had very little intention of ever writing. It's amazing how much of your life you remember when you sit down and start to write about it.

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My Thoughts on the Current Nature of Racism
I know everyone has his or her personal opinion on political correctness, and some have opinions without even having to look at any evidence, but this is somethign that I feel has some merit.

First of all, I intend to keep the argument based mainly through popular media; I'm sure it can be developed through other mediums as well, but I'll keep it simple for now. It also helps to observe the time frame of what I'm talking about, because we're talking the earlier 1970s or so of television programming.

At this time, two huge television events of racial significance had taken place (I'm sure you can name a few others, but these were, in my opinion, the most significant): the first interracial kiss on television (a Star Trek episode, which I believe may have aired in the late 1960s) and several serious episodes, including one with Sammi Davis, Jr. on All in the Family involving both racism and fear of other races due to misunderstandings. A new politically correct atmosphere was slowly coming onto the scene during this time in which you started hearing of protests against the old Lone Ranger, and stuff like that due to its depiction of Native Americans as stereotypes.

However, fast forward a bit, and you come to the very first episode of a new show called Taxi. Now I'm sure a lot of people have seen this show since then and have no idea of the controversy this show caused. In this first episode, Danny Devito makes a comment to a new driver that he should never pick up people with wheelchairs because it takes twice as long to pick them up and he could do two fares in that time. Louie Depalma, his character, was supposed to be a bad guy, but this started a HUGE letter writing campaign and an fizzled boycott campaign. The politically correct people were extremely upset at handicapped people being referred to this way.

It is my argument that right about this time is when political correctness became problematic rather than socially innovative. Recently, there's a huge protest against the new Charlie’s Angels movie because Lucy Liu's father is John Cleese, a white guy. It is so obvious this was done tongue in cheek, but like so long ago, they can't see a joke that has no racial problematic situations. For some reason, there’s been little protest that Bernie Mac, an African American has been chosen to play Bill Murray’s brother.

I guess my point is that I think we are starting to really go the direction of creating conflict where diversity exists just because diversity exists. Somewhere down the line, we forgot that original idea of desegregation was to bring people together; yet, for some reason there is much more payoff in keeping people apart.

And this comes from all angles, from both those of marginalized minority status and powerful white guys, like Bill O’Reilly, that seem to think that being rich and opinionated also makes them correct. My fear is that we’re moving further and further away from racial disappearance and instead we’re clinging to old racisms just for the sake of trying to find some common bond, quite often with people who believe in hatred rather than forward moving thought.

At least that’s my thought.

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The Communist Museum
Today, I took a trip to the Communist Museum in Prague, a very interesting exploration of the Czech past concerning communism. It's a very sobering experience, to say the least. Anyway, as we have a tendency to announce and denounce such current events with a wave of a mouse, I thought I'd add a perspective that I picked up just from spending a little time in this establishment.

First of all, the place is run by an old guy that apparently has the goal of making sure people don't forget the evils of what was communism (he has all the symbolism and tons of the materials of that time, but his displays don't seem to have a very positive outlook on it). The museum is obviously well funded as it is in the middle of the busiest zone of Prague, sandwiched between two casinos (or one very big casino...still haven't figured that one out). The museum requires a lot of reading of displays, but other than that, it is hard to walk out of there without a different understanding of what communism was during the 1950s through the 1980s.

However, what I really wish to bring to your attention today is the last exhibit in the museum which was nothing more than a television and a vcr. Once turned on, you watched the televised instances where the Czech police turned on the Czech people who were protesting. It is bloody, mean and without any real comparison to anything I've seen in quite some time.

The last entry was 1989, the final week of communism in Prague. We all know this time as when they overthrew the communist government and everything was happy after that. But the scenes on the street during that time were horrible. Police officers were integrated with the protesters, and they would come out in masses (in civilian clothing) and just start beating the crap out of protesters for whatever reasons they apparently felt were significant at that time. One guy was severely beaten for begging to a police officer: "Please don't hit the women!"

What really caught my attention about this was the realization of when this happened. It was 1989. That means that many, and I mean MOST, of these people who had no qualms about beating their fellow citizens (some of these beatings made the Rodney King beating look like an acquittal), yet they are now melted right back into civilian populations as if nothing ever happened.

All I kept thinking was, how can people be so cold towards their fellow citizens? I mean, this wasn't about having to do it because you had no other choice. These people actually appeared to take great pleasure out of seriously hurting and arresting their fellow citizens. I saw one strike a protester in the face with a huge stick for handing him a flower.

I guess this is what worries me about my fellow people. How close are we to being able to be just like this? I really doubt that the only fear was due to communism. How many times have we in our own history observed something similar but turned the other cheek because it did not concern us, or it was those pesky Berkeley protesters, or I'm sure they had it coming for whatever reason they must have done what the did; or even my other favorite: they must have done something to deserve that or it wouldn't have happened?

Does anyone else ever find himself or herself worrying about humanity because of humanity itself?

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