25 December 2006, Christmas Day

The Chinese are coming!  And we have translated the three most terrifying words in Chinese English!  Be warned!  They are:

"adult assembly required"

There should be a sign on the side of the box, like the radiation symbol, warning fathers away.

Some Chinese character meaning "this is the way you are going to spend Christmas morning, stupid American gringo infidel" or words to that effect.

Peace on earth, good will to fellow men, yeah, sure.  My kid hates me and I hate him after this morning's assembly period.  What is there about "wait!" that he doesn't understand in either Spanish or English?  I can't say that word in Chinese, unfortunately, because my Chinese restaurant language is limited to "thank you" in both dialects.  I always use both, since I'm never sure which one is appropriate.

Now that I think of it, though, "wait" was probably what the waiter was saying back to me and I didn't pay sufficient attention.

We have a Chinese restaurant in La Fortuna, with real Chinese from China, but they speak Spanish.  I don't understand enough Spanish, either.  And their Chinese food only slightly resembles "real" Chinese food.  Oh, you cannot imagine how much I'd like to go back to David Wong's in Stockton once again!

(That and Kaffee Barbara in Lafayette...I'd kill for one of Elisabeth's cheese omelettes and commit genocide for her eggs Benedict.  I have never, ever, tasted better Hollandaise than hers!)

We bought Tony a large plastic playhouse, must be around 3'x4' or so, high enough for him to stand up inside, and he's moved in already.  During one tense point this morning, when I was reading incomprehensible instructions and he was interrupting interminably with equally incomprehensible instructions, I shouted at him ("Merry Christmas", of course, what else?) and he went inside his casa, closed the door, and threw himself on his floor to sulk.  All 30 seconds' worth.

You know what they say...be careful what you complain about, things can always get worse?  I used to complain about having a bossy wife.  Now I have a bossy 3-year-old, as well. 

You should have seen him this morning, opening presents while Carol took pictures.  Pretty soon he was directing her which pictures to take, and when. 

It was quite amusing, especially while he is doing it to her, but he also really didn't understand the whole Christmas present idea this morning.  It took him a little while to catch on that these were presents for him and he could open them, really interesting to see how much he has missed in his first few years, makes us even more certain (we sometimes have our doubts) that we did and are doing the right thing.

What's that?  No, assembling the playhouse was a snap, a matter of a dozen or so screws.  Two left over, naturally, but that's the construction business for you.

  No, it was his toy crane and dump truck set-up that got to me, a huge mess of plastic parts all jumbled together in the box along with a helpful instruction sheet.  You know, connect part JJ to piece YY, making sure that XX is in the proper location. 

Huh?  Why aren't they labeled simply J, Y and X?  Because after they passed 26 pieces they ran out of letters.

(Does anyone realize the English alphabet is base 26?  Does anyone care?  Besides, that is, the Chinese, for whom 26 is barely a good beginning?  No wonder they're going to win...by the time their little children learn their ABCs they are already a thousand characters ahead of us.)

Well, enough of the holidays.  To my great surprise and pleasure, Lis came to work this morning!  Carol, struggling with a headache and fatigue, happily retreated back to bed leaving Lis to help me cope, help I desperately needed.  Geez, what a bossy little boy.

If he's at all uncertain about his role in this new family of his, it doesn't show.

The following is from another US expat here in Costa Rica, taken from our local on-line newspaper:

"As my retirement approached, I did consider what I was going to do.  I knew that continuing to live in the United States was not financially feasible unless I moved to a small town totally off the beaten path where rents were reasonable.  I like a city.  Like most people in the U.S., I knew little about Costa Rica, but when one of my poker pals told me her uncle had moved here and was very happy, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to visit."

Interested me because the last place in the world I'd ever want to live is in a city.  I'm a country boy, I grew up where people were few and far between, both in the California Mojave Desert and then in southern Utah, close to Bryce Canyon. 

Life likes to play games with your head.  We moved from rural California to the jungles of Costa Rica.  Or so we thought.  We live in a residential subdivision, complete with street lights.

And our local grocery store is now open from 8-to-8 on Christmas and New Year's Day.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 24 — Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site.

I wasn't planning on switching to Vista, but it certainly irritates me that Microsoft does as poor a job as it does in testing its operating systems. 

And I can't believe there aren't product liability lawyers lining up to go after them.

Determina is part of a small industry of companies that routinely pore over the technical details of software applications and operating systems looking for flaws. When flaws in Microsoft products are found they are reported to the software maker, which then produces fixes called patches. Microsoft has built technology into its recent operating systems that makes it possible for the company to fix its software automatically via the Internet.

Doesn't anyone else look at this and go...oh oh OH?  If Microsoft can "fix" my system automatically via the Internet, then so can anyone else.

Ah, another Christmas present, this from the Washington Post:

Lobbyists and corporate officials serve as directors on the nonprofit group's board, where they help raise money and find jobs for Johnstown's disabled workers. Some of those lobbyists have served as intermediaries between the defense contractors and businessmen on the board, and Murtha and his aides.

That arrangement over the years has yielded millions of dollars in federal support for the contractors, businesses and universities, and hundreds of thousands in consulting and lobbying fees to Murtha's favored lobbying shops, according to Federal Election Commission records and lobbying disclosure forms. In turn, many of PAID's directors have kept Murtha's campaigns flush with cash.

When the Democrats take control of Congress on Jan. 4, ethics and budget restructuring will be the first orders of business. Among the provisions in the Democrats' ethics package are demands for more transparency in the doling out of federal funds to home-district projects and a required pledge that no earmarks benefit a member of Congress personally. That could put an uncomfortable spotlight on lawmakers such as Murtha.

The man from Abscam strikes again.  I think there might be more than a few Democrats who wish they weren't suddenly so prominent in ways they didn't expect.

I didn't think they were allowed to do things like this:

Tehran vows to defy the U.N.

 Iran vowed yesterday to press ahead with uranium enrichment despite U.N. economic sanctions aimed at forcing a rollback in its nuclear program, and hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that the penalties would hurt the West more than Iran.

It took the U.N. six months to get up the guts to do as little as they did, too.

What chance do we have, reading this next item?

Two senators -- both of whom recently returned from Iraq -- debated yesterday whether a surge of U.S. troops should be sent to the country to quell the outbreaks of violence.
    Sens. Lindsay Graham and Christopher J. Dodd took away differing views from their respective trips about whether U.S. commanders supported such a surge.

I mean, we send two senators who know everything there is to know about everything, and will tell you so, both of them infinitely smarter than the president and the joints chiefs of staff, and they can't come back with the same answer?  How can this be?

Although he continues to support the war, Mr. Graham has been a vocal critic of U.S. strategy. While expressing his support for a troop surge, Mr. Graham also said he believes the U.S. should have gone into the conflict with a larger troop presence.

There you go!  Now that we have that cleared up, we can finally move ahead!

 Both senators also debated the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which calls for conducting diplomatic negotiations over Iraq with neighboring Middle East countries, including Iran and Syria.
    "This is not the question of liking the government in Syria or wanting to have dinner with them necessarily -- but to ignore them, to not spend any time trying to figure out if you have any common purposes here, common agendas I think is a huge mistake," Mr. Dodd said.
    Mr. Graham said he does not think such negotiations are in America's best interests.

I think they are tied for the fat-head role.  Can Dodd actually believe there are no behind-the-scenes talks going on with Syria?  Does he not have any ideas of his own what Syria wants?  What would Dodd do in return for their help, give them back Lebanon?  What would Syria do in return...stop sending terrorists into Iraq?

Speaking of terrorists, the locals are firing off more fireworks, looks like it may be happening down at the soccer stadium on the far side of town.   My dogs are unhappy at the explosions, although I suppose terrorized is a bit too strong a word to use.  Poco gets very unhappy and wants to sleep in his cave right under my feet, asking me to reassure him that everything is okay.

Then the neighborhood dogs start barking and he has to dash out to see what's going on.  Then more bangs and he's back in again.  Ah, yes, the happy holidays...grump grump grump, can't they get this all over with in one night?

I was going to say that tomorrow is a "work" day, but Lis showed up this morning, bless her.  Carol made it for Christmas morning but was exhausted when it came time to setting up Tony's toys, I really needed Lis to be there and help me and allow Carol to get some rest.  The girl is a priceless gem!

We sometimes seem to be living a life of barely-contained chaos around here, what with three dogs and a 3-year-old.  I scratch my head sometimes and wonder how this all came about, and what happened to my discipline?  Over myself as well as others.  Was I ever really any good at it?

Eleven o'clock, finally, and the fireworks seem to be finished for the night.  Let the dogs out for a final run, check the internet one last time...

Amusingly, the first pop-up ad that popped up was of a buxom Santa Clausette with a low-cut fur-rimmed bra.  As chance would have it, my mouse pointer was right smack dab on her cleavage when the ad appeared.

On top of that, the ad was for a subscription to REASON...about the last thing my limbic system was doing at that point.

Still, I appreciated the article written on the Durham Debacle by Jeff A. Taylor, especially this line:

That leaves the efforts of quirky Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) to get the feds involved. Jones, who does not even represent Durham, has asked the Justice Department to start its own investigation into Nifong's handling of the case. Jones, you'll recall, was among the very first Republicans to question the wisdom of the war in Iraq, so he is not at the top of the Bush administration Christmas card list.

Yet Justice has not flatly turned Jones down, and is instead making noises like it is taking the request seriously. However, with two federal grand juries already investigating political corruption in the state, there might be practical limits to how much more federal manpower can be brought down on North Carolina, America's very own banana republic.

Shelby Steele, an intelligent man who certainly should know about his subject, on racism:

In attempting to answer these questions, we must acknowledge one of the most profound achievements in recent human history: the death of white supremacy. Here was an event far more world-altering than the collapse of communism, and yet, out of a truly extraordinary historical blindness, it has gone utterly unnoticed. Possibly it was an event too conspicuous to see.

Many believe that it is racist for whites to say white supremacy is dead, and that it is Uncle Tomism for blacks to say it. But it is dead nevertheless. Once a legitimate authority with dominion over all the resources and peoples of the world, it is today universally seen as one of history's greatest evils. It is dead today because it has no authority anywhere in the world and no legitimacy out of which to impose itself. It was defeated by revolutions in the last half of the 20th century that spanned the globe from India to Algeria to the United States. It was defeated by the people who had suffered it. And even if it survives in some quarters as an idea, as a speculation, it now stigmatizes anyone associated with it to the point of ruin.

When Richards blasted forth with the "N-word" at a comedy club, his language met with universal condemnation. Today's acts of racism play out within an American society obsessed with purging itself of racism, a society that measures its very legitimacy by its intolerance for racism. When I was growing up in the last decade of segregation, even violent acts of racism were no threat to American legitimacy. When Richards said to his hecklers, "Fifty years ago we would have hung you up by your feet," he was longing for the days of my childhood, when blacks would fear to heckle a white comic — a time when violence enforced a much larger pattern of black subjugation. But Richards' hecklers only laughed at him. The difference between the two eras is the death of white supremacy.

 I know only what I read in the papers about it, these days.  In Costa Rica we practice a mild form of black-white racism compared with what I understand it used to be.  At one point I understand that black people, originally the descendants of slaves brought in to build the railroad, could live only on the Caribbean coast, but that's no longer the case.  Families here might refer to having black blood in their heritage but do not consider themselves to be black as a result.

From what I hear and read about, the racism practiced in the United States now seems to be of blacks practiced against whites, a reversal.  As in Obama not being black enough to be 'one of us".

The seamy underside of "equality" has often seemed to me to be the fact that people want to gain equality only as long as they perceive themselves to be on the short end of the stick.  Once they finally achieve superiority, they are no longer interested in equality.

This does not mean that racist behavior today is somehow benign. It means that today racism swims upstream in an atmosphere of ferocious intolerance. Moreover, today's racism is no longer in concert with an overt and systematic subjugation of blacks. While racism continues to exist, it no longer stunts the lives of blacks.

This is a difficult subject to write honestly about without fear of being unfairly judged, I think.  For instance, I'm 'racist' to the extent that I grew up in a white society that in my youth (1934-53) did not include many black people...but my family would NEVER have admitted the N-word in polite conversation, just the same, except when it was used as Negroes, because that was considered to be the polite term.  My parents would not have been discourteous to black people any more than they would have to whites or Mexicans.

I don't consider myself to be prejudiced, but honestly forces me to admit that I do, just the same, notice their skin color...how can I not?  I figure racism is not that notice, any more than sexism is practiced by noticing whether a person is male or female, but by how one acts upon that awareness afterwards.

And with what intent.  When I moved from the Bay Area to the California foothills, the Gold Rush country, I was told that the people were real rednecks.  In fact, we had very few black people living in the county, very few.  One of my all-time best friends once took me to visit a black family he knew because the guy split wooden shake shingles for a living, good ones, and my friend truly considered himself to be unprejudiced except that he felt like he was doing a good thing by buying from this humble man, which means that he recognized the difference existed.. 

As we were talking to the man, preparing to leave, my friend almost self-consciously reached out to rub the wooly scalp of the black man...I don't know why, I got the distinct feeling that he felt like he was supposed to do that.  I was appalled, but nobody else seemed to regard it as nothing less than a gesture intended to be friendly.

Now some would call that racism, but my friend was a truly good-hearted man, and as an Italian he had suffered enough from prejudice on his own side, and I was aware that simply by traveling as far as he did to buy shakes from this man that he wanted to help him as much as he did to buy some good wooden shakes.

I've often wondered if the black man understood my friend's goodness of heart and thus did not react to what a Bay Area black man would probably have deemed insulting behavior, or whether the man was intimidated by the fact of where he lived and the people he had to deal with in order to live there in peace.

On the other hand, my partner and I almost sold the site for the first Ford dealership in Amador County.  Our client had dreamed of it all of his life, had the contacts and the background and his life's savings, and since he was an older man this was to be his crowning lifetime achievement. 

We had the deal all ready to go, then he returned from a meeting with Ford and sadly told us that Ford had informed him the next new dealership they issued had to go to a black man.  Our client was crushed.  He died a few weeks later...his wife told us he died of a broken heart.  All I know is what he told us about the story, but a black dealer did, in fact, open the Ford franchise shortly afterwards.  He was not our client, despite the fact that we had done all of the groundwork putting the Ford deal together with the land owner and the county. 

That failure hurt my partner quite a lot, emotionally, because he felt a keen affinity with the old guy who was about to realize his life's dream before he was denied by reverse racism.

I later became friends with the new dealer, he was bright and educated and we had the first computers in our area at that time, so long ago now you readers can scarcely imagine what those times were like.  My IBM PC had 10kb of memory...

...racism in the United States has parallel lives. In one life, it is the actual instances of racism on the ground. But, in its parallel life, it is a time-honored currency of power that still trades well in the United States. Here, racism lives as faith rather than fact. It is something you believe in out of unacknowledged self-interest.

So when race gets in the news, it is hard to know whether we are dealing with fact or faith. Was the political ad that some say defeated Harold Ford in Tennessee really racist, as the NAACP suspects, or was this old civil rights group ambulance-chasing for power? Did racism motivate the police shooting in Queens? Was the recent defeat of affirmative action at the polls in Michigan an example of racism or of an insistence on fairness? As we look at such events, are we judging facts or practicing a faith?

The great mistake Americans made after the civil rights victories of the '60s was to allow race to become a government-approved means to power. Here was the incentive to make racism into a faith. And its subsequent life as a faith has destroyed our ability to know the reality of racism in America. Today we live in a terrible ignorance that will no doubt last until we take race out of every aspect of public life — until we learn, as we did with religion, to separate it from the state.

Good point.  I'd start by disbanding the Congressional Black Caucus.  Either that or endorsing the idea of a Congressional White Caucus, which doesn't seem likely to happen.

It's back to my earlier point: equality is desirable only when you are behind.