2010

There were 91 posts published in 2010 (this is page 6 of 10).

Journal 2010-05-12

Yeah so today I became more certain about going to India again over summer. That happened after taking Elizabeth to the airport. Somehow my brain is wired to associate travel to India with happy thoughts – there isn’t much logic to it.

It was great seeing Emily again. We had already some interesting conversation. It’s amazing how people interact with us in our lives in ways we hardly suspect. Like when we were talking about children she said that her first really strong desire to have kids was one day when babysitting in our house. She had slept over. Yonatan had woken up crying and made his way to her bed. She said that just being there for him and being able to ease a baby’s needs had made her realize how good that felt.

In another conversation I had today, with a village person, I realized how important it is, once again, to keep a record of experience and discussion, otherwise everything is so easily forgotten. That happens because experience needs to be processed and considered. Otherwise much of what we do becomes a jumble. It doesn’t help that our brains are growing old. I wish I could write everything down.

This has been a year of meeting up again with old friends, and it’s nice to see a trail of people coming through, and staying a few days.

The other day at Coral’s memorial I thought again about that extraordinary woman who even at the age of 60 took her life in a completely new direction. Sometimes we take everyhing for granted. It is better to view life as something completely dynamic, since that is closer to the truth.

2010, rather than earlier years, may be the definitive year for social networks.

Just as before Google there were Alta Vista, Excite and all the others, but web search really came into its own with Google, I think we are seeing something similar in the field of social networks, and I don’t think the current players are showing us what these networks will eventually look like. Now that high profile figures are quitting facebook, and there is an appeal for an open distributed social network, I think we are witnessing the birth of a real revolution in this field. Or it may fizzle.

New website for Haaretz newspaper giving me trouble

Letter to Haaretz.com: “Your new web site causes Google Chrome to lock up when accessing articles. I’m running Chrome on Linux with plugin Flashblock (since I don’t like flash commercial content). I have managed to overcome the lock up by disabling cookies and javascript on your site.”

I’m wondering, though, if this is a conscious attempt by the news site to make it uncomfortable for viewers who block their ad content.

Journal, May 10 2010

Interesting weather today. Started hot, went up to the mid-30s, then dropped down to being almost chilly in late afternoon.

The volcanic ash cloud is wafting through the middle-east, but not grounding flights.

Israel, with a quarter of its citizens below the poverty line, was admitted to the OECD. . Le Monde points out that the admission was despite the complaints of many Palestinian organizations that “estimant que la politique de ce pays à l’égard des Palestiniens était en contradiction avec les principes de l’OCDE. ”

The Makhoul case broke in the Israeli news – gag order lifted. But the Channel 1 news reportage – particularly that of their military correspondent who was called in for the story, revealed the way that the average Israeli understands these things.

Dropping out of Facebook

I’m cutting down on my interaction via my personal profile on Facebook. Earlier today I unsubscribed from all the groups, blanked my profile except for contact information and stopped Twitterfeed from posting there. I’ll continue to read status updates of my friends via Threadsy.  Correction: have to be logged into Facebook for that. And I don’t want to be logged in, since this allows Facebook to track every move we make via the 50,000+ websites that have installed its social plugins.  So I can use Gwibber – Linux’s desktop aggregator.

I didn’t yet find a good alternative to Facebook, but that isn’t sufficient reason to go on using a service that is growing steadily nastier.

Journal for Saturday 10 April

Thanks to Twitter I discovered Vi Ransel, whose writing is of a similar style to Arundhati Roy’s non-fiction. I read a couple of articles – one “The American Workplace: Sweatshop USA”.

My own growing up in America gave me a view of it that was fairly unreal. First of all, because Northern Virginia is wealthier than most places and secondly because I left in “the good years”, when jobs were secure and money was easy. But still I left, because I couldn’t tolerate America. How I ended up in Israel is a mystery, but again 1978 isn’t 2010, and I was fairly naive.

Just this afternoon I found myself thinking in patterns framed by that upbringing. When I considered my objections to the existing order, my mind raised the objection: but it really gives me, and a lot of other people all that we need for our happiness. I can afford more food than I could ever eat, live in a comfortable home that can be cooled in summer and heated in winter, can afford nice clothes and consumer electronics. Just a couple of generations ago, all of these things would have been a problem.

And, I reasoned, so what if my style of living, and purchase of consumer goods, permits others at the top of the pyramid to accrue countless millions? It isn’t bringing them any more happiness. I had a small corner of doubt that my lifestyle, besides that of the billionaires, is what is keeping so much of the world poor.

But Ransel helped me to realize again that the security and relative affluence that I currently enjoy is hopelessly fragile. Beneath all the glitter of our 21st century civilization, the basics of food and shelter are still a problem – not only in Africa but also in America. They needn’t be a problem but remain so because of greed and social disparity. There has always been enough food to go around, if only it is shared, and shelter could always be available if neighbors helped with the building – as they traditionally did in Palestinian society.

We live in a period of great complexity. It’s comparatively few people who can see through the illusions thrown up by our civilization, without getting embroiled in other illusions that are still more tenacious – such as ideology or religion.

The important lessons are all about learning how to stay balanced on a ship caught in a hurricane, acting sanely when surrounded by mad people and insisting on freedom while being aware of the invisible bars.

Samnyaasa and 9/11

The Buddhist monk who had immediately before been discussing the Dharma suddenly asked, “Do you know about 9/11?” It was obvious from the way he said this that his understanding of the event was different from the accepted version.

He had a lot to say on the subject, and I, who have never troubled to delve into alternative speculation about this tragedy, was at first shocked to hear this from a monk. And then I understood.

In order to take what would seem to most people as the radical step of abandoning the world, there must be a strong instigation, either personal or more general.

When I myself took the vows, all those years ago, it was on account of a strong attraction and hopefulness towards what I defined as spiritual life, and a simultaneous dislike for what I saw in the world. The latter was not well-defined; only a feeling for which I had not bothered to provide a theoretical background. I had no sources of information and only my intuition to go on.

But now there is the Internet, and much greater access to information than in the past – even for monks. It is a lot easier to access covert knowledge and stimulate alternative thinking. This monk had taken a path that allowed him to deeply question basic assumptions about the way our civilization works. 9/11 had been a convenient opening.

His wish to share his knowledge of 9/11 came from a notion that it could serve as a key to understanding. For me, it isn’t and could not be such a key, because it’s an area in which I feel out of my depth. As I said to him, “I could go to websites about 9/11 and begin to believe alternative theories, but this would still be only a belief. I simply don’t have the tools or the knowledge to assess them properly.

But although 9/11 isn’t a key for me, I’m in sympathy with the rest of his deep dissatisfaction with the world. I told him he was preaching to the converted.

The truth, however, is that it is quite difficult to detach from the world. Monkhood is an easier path for that. The rest of us have to deal with the world much more rigorously. The establishment, and the established patterns, worm their way through everything.

Google finally acknowledge a weakness I’d noticed in Buzz’s privacy system

“People you follow will see that you are following them and may display their followers on their public profile.”

That means that regardless of how you arrange your privacy settings, you will be visible to the Buzzosphere.

Since your profile name is also your email address, that means that your email address ends up being visible to the world. Gmail does a good job of protecting us from spam, but there are many people who might not want their email address to be publicly known. Google’s solution for that is to give the possibility of using a long unfriendly number. Mine is 117130852944864714190. Recently, the long unfriendly number became also the default for Picasaweb.

It would be nicer if Google could give the possibility of profile nicknames, just like many other services. That would give us 3 options: a) to use the email identifier b) the long unfriendly number and c) a nickname.

Targeted assassination is suicide

The gag order on the Anat Kam story was finally lifted yesterday, but the interest in the Israeli press was in its own freedom in being able to report the case, the question of the severity of Kam’s alleged crime in stealing secret army documents, and the possible damage to national security.

Regarding the Haaretz publication of evidence gathered from Kam (“License to kill“) that Israel had continued targeted assassinations under conditions that contravened Israel’s own supreme court ruling, the Channel 10 news anchor, Yaacov Elon said that the matter hadn’t created a huge amount of interest at the time. That’s true, but who is supposed to generate such interest? The media, of course.

The fact is, Israel’s media isn’t interested in crimes committed by the Army in the Occupied Territories. Even when the person responsible for them, according to a poll published in the same news program, would currently be the most favored candidate for prime minister.

Israelis care a lot about their freedom, and want to give their army, their air force and security services as much of the stuff as possible when dealing with Palestinians. Regardless of its continuing and drastic repercussions, the Mabhouh assassination has won only praise here.

Most Israelis are unable to perceive the devious influence of this attitude on their own society. Targeted assassinations? America does them too, and lately ordered one against an American-born citizen. Israel is not known to conduct targeted assassinations against its own citizens, but that might be less of a problem if the Chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee gets his way . Rotem wants to strip those who hurt state security of their citizenship.

Democracy, such as it is in Israel, is being stripped away by its security services, its lawmakers, and also by a compliant media that screams bloody murder when press freedoms are threatened but fails to alert its audience when actual murder goes unpunished. “License to kill” was the title of the original Haaretz story. In granting such a license, Israelis are really targeting the moral and judicial underpinnings of their own society – not to mention its already tarnished image as a fair and democratic society. They are targeting themselves.