Stoolball

Um...not sure what to say about this. They describe it as "medieval baseball." I think they should change the name.

Guantanamo Bay

I have no idea why I thought Guantanamo Bay was an existing prison which the Bush administration decided to use, when in fact it was the Bush administration who created the Guantanamo Bay detention camp!  (And why doesn't that surprise me?)

The naval base has been in Guantanamo Bay since 1903, when the US had friendly relations with Cuba and established a "perpetual lease" for the land.  Of course, after the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro claimed the lease as invalid and demanded the US leave.  The US insists the lease is valid and continues to send rent checks for an inflation-adjusted $4,085 per month, which the Cuban government refuse to cash, and literally keeps stuffed in a drawer in the President's office.

The play and movie, "A Few Good Men" -- written in 1989 and loosely based on an event in 1986 -- is about Guantanamo Bay naval base, and has nothing to do with the detention camp (which didn't exist at the time).

The first twenty detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002.   As a detention camp, it is meant to hold people awaiting trial; it is not a prison--the people at Guantanamo Bay have not been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to anything.  It was not until 2006 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners were entitled to the minimal protections under the Geneva Convention, and 2008 that the detainees were entitled to the protections under the US Constitution.

On January 22, 2009, President Obama announced that the detention facility would be shut down within the year. However, Republicans in Congress passed an amendment blocking funding.  On January 7, 2011, Republicans added an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill forbiding the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to "the mainland or to other foreign countries," thus effectively stopping the closure of the detention facility.

Also in January 2009, Susan J. Crawford, who was appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to review practices used at Guantanamo Bay, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured while being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, making her the first Bush administration official to concede that torture occurred there. 

In April 2011, Wikileaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.  The documents reveal that over 150 innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs, and drivers, were held for years without charge.  The youngest detainee was 14, and the oldest was 89.  Approximately 60 detainees were minors, although the number is hard to confirm as the US military considers minors to be people under 16 years of age, not under 18 as defined by most human rights groups.

One detainee was a journalist from the respected news agency Al-Jazeera, who was detained from 2002 to 2008 "to provide information on...the al-Jazeera News Network's training program, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations."  One detainee was waterboarded at least 183 times by the CIA, who "revealed" that Al-Qaeda had a nuclear bomb and, if Osama Bin Laden was captured or killed by U.S. allies, a "weapon of mass destruction" would be detonated in a "secret location" in Europe.

The Justice Department has said the leaked documents remain classified and therefore the lawyers representing the prisoners are not even allowed to read the documents which were published in the New York Times!

The United Nations has called for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be closed, with one judge observing, "America's idea of what is torture ... does not appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations."

As we mark the tenth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, 171 detainees remain, including 12 of the first 20 detainees who arrived in 2002.  It serves as a continual reminder of the low point in American foreign relations and human rights.  To quote President Obama in 2009:

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world. Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al Qaeda that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law. [...] Meanwhile, instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. [...] Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security.

BBC News has a slideshow of photos from Guantanamo Bay.

An atheist defends religion

Bruce Sheiman is "guest editing" today's blog entry, via an extract I found from his book, "An Atheist Defends Religion."  I think he is spot-on when he talks about atheism being a "bankrupt ideology" because it provides no benefit to believers.  I've always argued that atheism wasn't the absence of religion, it was just another religion, something people believed without having any rational reason to do so.

As an atheist, I approach religion much like an economist. I believe religion persists in our market-based culture, despite the prevalence of secularism, because it provides net value over and above its required investment, and because it beats competing belief systems in the same value proposition. I evaluate religion in terms of its pragmatic usefulness to humankind and seek to answer the question posed by William James: "Grant an idea or belief to be true, what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life?"

Atheism is a bankrupt ideology on empirical grounds: Its benefits simply do not come close to covering its opportunity costs. Religion, by contrast, offers the vast majority of people a high-value transaction: Its enduring benefits far outweigh its costs. Religion persists, in short, for the reason that it provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Thus, by book "An Atheist Defends Religion" is not mainly a critical examination of the New Atheism. Rather, I am making a broad statement about the affirmative role of religion in the contemporary world and what is lost in a purely secular conception of the world.

For centuries, the theism-atheism debate has been dominated by two positions: hard-core believers fervently committed to their faith in a living God; and militant atheists vehemently driven to repudiate the Divine. The time has come to admit that after more than 2,000 years of back-and forth proofs and counterproofs, this debate has reached an insolvable impasse. The question about the existence of God can never be resolved to either side's satisfaction. But the discussion need not end there. We are still left with the important issue of the value of religion. And this is a debate that religion can win. "An Atheist Defends Religion" redefines the terms of the debate, offering a new direction and perspective.

I am not a person of faith: I do not feel the majesty or mystery of the Holy. But neither do I stridently repudiate God. Indeed, there is a part of me that wants to believe in God. That makes me an "aspiring theist." And I want to believe in the Divine because, on balance, religion provides a combination of benefits -- moral, emotional, aesthetic, psychological, existential, communal, and even physical-health -- that no other institution can replicate. These are the essential qualities that make religion so enthralling, enriching, enlightening, and enrapturing. They explain how we achieve our fullest humanity only in religion.

The question I present is not whether God exists, but whether the world is a better place because people believe God exists. This book, as a consequence, is not a defense of God; rather, it is a defense of the belief in God and of religious belief in general.

Being an atheist is not something that I or any one else rationally or deliberately chooses. I did not think through all the competing belief systems and chose unbelief. It is just something that I am. I must admit, however, that the more I understand the world as revealed by science, the more I find the materialist and reductionist explanation for our human destiny terribly devoid of depth, value and meaning. This offends not my religious sensibility (of which I have none), but my existential vanity - the strongly held personal view that my life counts in the grand scheme of things. As a consequence, I am an atheist who is sympathetic to religious aspirations and who is prepared, if not to defend God, then to defend the belief in God.

A mature view holds that religion is more about meaning and purpose than facts and events. Through religion, we experience the mundane as miraculous and the normal as numinous. Religion teaches us that our lives have inherent worth and that the world is shot-through with value. Paul Tillich said, "He who enters the sphere of faith enters the sanctuary of life." And that is because the core preoccupation of religion is the preservation and perpetuation of human existence.

More than any other institution, religion deserves our appreciation and reverence because it has persistently encouraged people to care deeply - for the self, for neighbors, for humanity, and for the natural world - and strive for the highest ideals humans are able to envision. And there is no more eminent ideal than religion's clear declaration of human specialness and the absolute sanctity of life.

Faith is one of the most powerful forces in human development and a strong impetus to personal transformation and collective progress. Religion's misdeeds may make for provocative headlines, but the everyday good works of billions of pious people is the real history of religion, one that parallels the growth and prosperity of humankind. There are countless examples of individuals lifting themselves out of personal misery through faith. In the lives of these people, God is not a delusion, God is not a spell that must be broken - God is indeed great.

The debate about the existence of God is neverending. What is not in dispute is that God exists in people's hearts, minds and spirits. What is not in dispute is that religion is adaptive, constructive and healthful - and thereby makes a positive difference in people's lives. Reflecting James' pragmatic conception of belief: When we act as if religion is true, we act with greater optimism, hope and benevolence.

The take-away from this book is that religious experience is the essential human experience. Mine is a human-centric evaluation of religion. By any empirical measure -- defined in terms of theism's practical impact on individuals, society, and culture -- religion is profoundly beneficial.

In the end, "An Atheist Defends Religion" cogently explains that the most rational and definitive argument for dismissing atheism is not found in the interminable debate over the existence of God, but in elucidating the enduring value of religion itself.

Bruce Sheiman is the author of the new book "An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off With Religion than Without It."

Red, white, and blue

Whenever an American references the "red, white and blue" I can never tell if it's out of ignorance or hubris.  Granted, few other countries in the world revere the national flag as Americans do, but the fact is there are twenty nine countries whose flag is red, white and blue!

I found this curious, but it turns out is was just from countries copying other countries:

• The Union Jack was created from the red-blue English flag and Blue-White Scottish flag, and is used by the former colonies, including USA, Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Tuvalu.
• The US flag, as a symbol of revolution, was adopted by Liberia, Chile, Malaysia, Uruguay.
• The French flag was designed in 1794 and adopted by French colonies such as Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, etc.
• The Pan-Slavic colors were red, white and blue, and adopted by Russia, Czech, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia.
• The flag of the Netherlands was originally the flag of the Prince of Orange, and was orange–white–blue. Somehow, though, it got changed to red–white–blue.  (New York adopted the original orange–white–blue as its state flag.)

Cambodia
Chile
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cuba
Czech Republic
Dominican Republic
Faroe Islands
France
Iceland
North Korea
Laos
Luxembourg
Nepal
Netherlands
Norway
Panama
Paraguay
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Russia
Samoa
Serbia and Montenegro
Slovakia
Slovenia
Taiwan
Thailand
United Kingdom

Tuition fees

I found an interesting list comparing tuition fees across the world.  (Sorry, it's in pounds.)  Almost every country has different limits, and almost every country has nationalized education -- only the US has a thriving private sector.  In the UK, there are only 2 private universities, and they aren't Oxford or Cambridge.  (One is the University of Buckingham, the other is BPP--and I don't know what that stands for.)

Most European countries have to offer the same terms to students from anywhere in the EU -- a marked contrast to the public universities in the US, which only offer discounted admission to students from that particular state.  Almost all universities have higher fees for international students.  This isn't a comprehensive list -- there are just too many variables to consider -- but I think it gives a good idea of the overall landscape.

• Finland, Sweden and Norway: No fees for home or EU students.
• France: No charges, enrolment is £145.
• Belgium: No tuition fees but an enrolment charge of £438.
• Germany: £845 a year, some universities do not charge.
• Ireland: Trinity College, Dublin, £1,454 a year. £10,500 for international students. EU students pay £800 registration fee.
• Scotland: First degrees from £1,820 a year.
• China: Up to £2,500
• US: From £3,200 to £19,000.
• Holland: Students of departments such as business schools charged up to £4,400. Graduate schools have tuition fees as high as £7,000.
• Canada: £5,600 - £9,400.
• Australia: Most degrees - both undergraduate and postgraduate - are £6,200 to £12,500 a year.
• Japan: Undergraduate course fees are on average £6,200 a year.

Personally, I think everyone can agree that higher education is a necessary requisite to support a healthy economy.  What I find so odd is that so many countries are happy to accept international students to train them, but then kick them out as soon as they've graduated.  While they may have captured a few thousand dollars in revenue, think about how much they just lost in terms of intellectual capital.

Some people argue that fees are necessary in order for people to value education--which I think is nonsense.  How many private college students are working part-time jobs so they can afford the average $38,000/year tuition?  There some people today who argue that college no longer provides a cost-benefit -- that is, you'd be better off going straight into the workforce than you would going to a 4-year college and getting a better job, but spending most of that money paying off your student debt.

I'd also argue that college should be meritorious -- that is, based on ability, not how much your family can afford to pay.  (I know I have the wrong word there, but can't think of the right one at the moment.)  Too many good students are passed over because of their parents pocketbooks.  And certainly Oxford and Cambridge prove that higher fees do not make a better college -- they charge the same as every other university in the UK.

While I'm not saying we should nationalize education, I am saying that the tuition fee rises of the last 10 years are unsustainable, and as a whole we need to look at the effect this will have on the future of the country.  Because if we don't, the world in 20 years is going to look very different than today.

And this isn't a problem that's about to occur, it has occurred:

- The US had the highest proportion of students who graduated from college, about 33 percent.  In 2000, the US slipped to fourth place, with Today, Norway, Britain, and the Netherlands are at 35-37 percent.

- In 1998, the United States trailed 22 other countries in the number of students graduating from high school.

- And this shouldn't surprise anyone: The United States pays teachers less per capita than all but three other countries surveyed, and teachers work 300 hours longer than average.

(From the Boston Globe, May 17, 2000)

Fortunately, China produces some 20 million graduates per year, and about 7 million emigrate to other countries, many to the US.  That helps, but it also isn't sustainable.  At some point, the Chinese economy will surpass the US, and there will be a brain drain of epic proportions.

Think about it.

Electric Monk

High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse. From under its rough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into another valley, with which it was having a problem.

--from Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"

Douglas Adams went on to explain: "The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed dishes for you, video recorders watched television for you, and Electric Monks believed things for you." 

However, I've decided to co-opt the term for my own purposes.  As my job no longer requires me to do anything, only to think about things -- generally technology-related -- I've decided my new job title is "Electric monk."

It's very strange.  All my life I'd hoped to avoid the dreaded "middle manager" syndrome, feeling as though my only task in life was to move papers (or information) from an inbox to an outbox.  Unfortunately, they moved all the workers to India, and I didn't go with them.  So I moved up the ladder and now produce technical designs which are then sent to India to be realized.

Except, having been in that position for many years, I know they don't give a rat's ass about the design, and they'll build the system any way they want to.

Which is fine, because I don't have responsibility for it.  I don't even get to see it.  By the time it's complete, I'll have worked on a dozen other projects.  Most of them will have just been bids or ideas, and will never see the light of day.  But senior managers think it's important -- and generally don't listen when I tell them otherwise -- so we waste time chasing stupid ideas.

Cynical?  Perhaps.  But mostly I'm just frustrated.  Frustrated that I no longer feel I'm producing anything useful. My job is to stop other people from doing stupid things.

So next time you think of me, picture me on a rocky promontory, sitting on a bored horse, gazing into a virtual valley, and thinking that everything is starting to look the same shade of pink...

Perceptions and assumptions

The point of that (rather droll) history of the Czech Republic was that because I was being forced to challenge all of my assumptions and preconceptions about Eastern Europe, I needed to understand the historical context.  What I found was that I even had assumptions about my assumptions that needed to be challenged!

I grew up learning about western culture, but hardly anything about Eastern culture.  Partly this was because I was a product of the western culture, and so that was my heritage; but I suspect mostly because at the time, Eastern Europe was communist, and of course as a child in the States, I was constantly being told that Communism was evil, and the "Godless" Soviets were the enemy who would destroy the world.  It's amazing how much crap you subconsciously adopt without ever challenging it.

My first assumption was that Prague was different because it was part of Eastern Europe.  The reality is that it's always been part of Western Europe!

Although never conquered by the Romans and settled by the Slavs (probably from the Ukraine), Charlemagne captured Bohemia around 806 CE, just a few hundred years after Slavs had settled there. From 1002 to 1918, they were vassals to the Holy Roman Empire, and it's successor the Austrian Empire!  They adopted Roman Catholicism, inj the 14th century the Czech king Charles IV became head of the Holy Roman Empire, and they even had Catholic-Protestant wars 100 years before the West did!  Czechoslovakia firmly considered itself part of western Europe...until the western leaders signed the Munich agreement in 1938 allowing Hitler to invade without opposition.  If it hadn't been for that, Czechoslovakia probably would not have joined the Soviets after World War II.

The second assumption was that life there was defined by Communism.  The reality is that not only was there a thousand years of architectural history, but the Communists were (accidentally) very good stewards!  Even Hitler preserved the synagogues in Prague -- the "old-new" synagogue dates from 1270 -- because he thought they would make nice museums about the "extinct" Jewish race.  The churches survived because the Communists couldn't figure out another use for them.  Communism may have dominated the country from 1948 to 1989s, but that accounts for about 3% of its history!

My third assumption -- and this is just a natural conclusion from the first two assumptions -- is that all Eastern Europeans are all the same--fat, heavy smokers, heavier drinkers, and wearing funny hats.  Prague is quite fashionable, and while they do drink, their beverage of choice is beer, not vodka.  In fact, reading about the history of the Slavs, they had already split into three groups by the 6th century CE -- Eastern Slavs took over Russia, Southern Slavs were in the Balkans (formerly Yugoslavia), and western Slavs in Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. Although there are many similarities, such as language, the western and southern Slavs have been interbreeding with Europeans for so long, you can't make an ethnocultural distinction.

That said, Hitler did not make any distinctions and, along with Jews, Gypsies, homeosexuals, people with disabilities, freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses, Hitler planned to exterminate eastern and  western Slavs. He actually killed twice as many Slavs as Jews, but still fell far short of his aim: Today there are about 200 million eastern Slavs, 78 million western Slavs, and 46 million southern Slavs.

And my final -- and probably most pejorative -- assumption was about the Eastern Orthodox church, but that was because I really didn't know a thing about it.  I knew Constantinople (now Istanbul) had been established in 330 CE as the "co-capital" of the Roman Empire, but after that it was a complete mystery.  Reading about, I found that the founding of Constantinople effectively split the empire in two, with western Europe dominated by Rome and the Catholics, and eastern Europe (or the Byzantine empire) by Greece and the Eastern Orthodox Church. While the western Slavs became part of the Roman empire, the eastern and southern Slavs were under the Byzantine emperor.  I read an interesting description of the differences here (albeit from an Eastern Orthodox perspective).  I also learned "orthodox" means "correct" -- as in the correct way to worship.  Eastern Orthodox felt Roman Catholics had gone astray, and they were practising the "one true way" to worship.  And I found out that an uneasy truce lasted until 1054, when at a meeting members of both churches tried to excommunicate the others, resulting in a permanent split.

.However, and more relevant, I learned that I hadn't learned a thing about Eastern Orthodox, because I was in Catholic chuirches!  So I've had to uncheck eastern Europe from my to-do list, and one day I will actually explore the area.  (Here is one way to see it.)

2011 in review

Honestly, I'd like to pretend this year never happened. My primary accomplishment, after spending three years convincing Jess to marry me, was to leave her. My therapist thinks I'm nuts.

Yhe year started with me getting a painful lesson in the UK house buying process, which finally concluded end of February. Then we spent two months gutting the house--that wasn't the plan, of course, but as we moved from room to room stripping layers of wallpaper, we found the walls were crumbling beneath. In the end, we replaced every interior wall except one!

Fortunately our contractor was an absolute dream, and in 8 weeks the house was put back together--with new bathrooms, a new kitchen, new plumbing, new heating, new electrical, new flooring, new windows, and a new patio door--and we moved in end of April. Now whether it was the stress of the renovation, or just underlying issues, Jess and I were hardly speaking, and I finally realized it was always going to be like this, every little argument spinning out of control, and I couldn't live that way.  So I moved out three weeks after we'd moved in.  (You can draw a lot of comparisons to the B&B, but don't.)

I spent a couple of weeks back at the hotel where I started, and two weeks in the States, just trying to figure out what was next. I didn't want to leave England--I only have two more years to get my "indefinite leave to remain" (equivalent of a green card) and if I leave now, the new immigration rules would prevent me from ever moving back!

But I also didn't want to be in London--too many memories, I guess, plus my work didn't require me to be in London, so paying London rents was crazy.  I looked at a map and Reading (pronounced "Redd-ing") seemed like a good alternative. I rented a flat overlooking a park and the Thames river, and moved in 21 July.

I was actually afraid to leave London, worried I was going to feel lonely and isolated. To counter that, I got a fish tank and started dating online. I met a lot of people, except none of them lived in Reading! I was driving an hour each way for every date! After a month of that nonsense, I started dating one girl exclusively. She lived in north London, not too far from Jess. And she was a South African Jew, just like Jess. And everyone who saw her told me how much she looked like Jess.  I didn't see it at all.

We dated for about three months, had a lovely trip to Cape Town, and she was present at my conversion, and though I quite liked her, I really didn't see the relationship going anywhere. We split just before Christmas, which was kind of a stupid time to break up. I plan to start dating again in the new year, and will try to be a little more discriminating, at least about location.

I was hoping to visit my family over the holidays, but airline prices were sky high (excuse the pun).  Since I already had the time off, though, I looked at a map to see how far my frequent flier miles would get me, and that turned out to be...Prague. I went with a jaded (and naive) American belief about all Communist countries--drilled into me from an early age--and I couldn't have been more wrong. I think it was the prettiest city I've ever been to. Four days wasn't nearly enough, and I will definitely be back. (Hopefully next time with someone else, or at least my good camera!)

Ironically, I'm spending New Years back at the hotel where this all started--the owner has become a very good friend--and I may brave central London to see the New Year's parade tomorrow. 

Plans for 2012 include a trip back to visit my family soon, plus my cousin is wants me to come to South Carolina for her daughter's wedding in April. I will try to visit Ireland and see my friend Kim in Amsterdam, both three years overdue. Also, for whatever reason, the sun has an 11-year-cycle which means 2012 will have an unusual amount of solar flares, so I will try to finally see the Northern Lights.  (5 weeks of holiday is fantastic!)

I'm also starting to get involved with my synagogue, and meeting people that way. (I would probably get even more involved if it weren't half an hour away.)  Financially, I should be out of debt by July and my job is going well, and the company seems stable, so probably no changes there.  I have one pair of tickets to the paralympics, and none to the Olympics, so that is going to be a washout. (At least I'm not living in London, so won't have to deal with all the tourists.)  I have a vague and ongoing resolution to lose weight and reduce my carbohydrates.

I also know two couples who recently moved to London, doubling the number of friends I have here!

So that's my 2011 in a nutshell.  Now I just need to put this to music and puppets...

http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/2011_buh_bye?cmpid=yir2011_url

Happy new year!
  -Gregg