Molly Moore of the Washington Post has got to go back to school and learn some French. She obviously translated the comments of some poor frail French students incorrectly in yesterday's paper.
Just to give you some background on the article, and estimated 250,000 French students were protesting across France in response to a proposed change in the labor laws that would allow employers to fire, at will, any employee under 26 years old within the first 24 months of employment.
Here is what she quotes the students as having said about why they were protesting:
"They are offering us nothing but slavery."
"You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked."
"I'd rather spend more time looking for a job and get a real one."
Certainly Moore got this all wrong. This has to be a mis-translation.
Even knowing the French, it's hard to believe that hundreds of thousands of French students are rioting because they might have to actually work at a job!
Sacre Bleu! Not work! This is "noting but slavery."
The real translation must be something like this:
"They're offering us nothing but unemployment. Liberalize the rules further so that companies can actually create some jobs here"
"I wouldn't mind doing everything my employer asks since they are actually paying me."
"I'd rather spend my time working at a job rather than protesting so that there's a chance that some of the jobs might stay here instead of going to Hungary and Romania."
I'm sure that's what happened.
It must have been a translation error.
Really.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Friday, March 17, 2006
You Movin Too Fast
A child psychologist once told me that children are often psychologically impacted by frequent moves and changes of lifestyle.
Military families have long known the trauma of uprooting their children every two to three years as their postings change and many families have evolved elaborate rituals around the move to lessen the strain.
I lived in the same house from birth until I moved away for college. Even then, I attended undergraduate and graduate school less than a mile from my parent's home.
By contrast, my children moved from Springfield, VA to Union, WV to Huntington, WV back to Springfield, and then to Ft. Lauderdale and back between 1992 and 2001. Six moves in eight years.
Our children have complained often that this period of chaos in their lives was severe and irreperable. They suffered from insecurity, from a lack of permanence that comes from never having experienced the comforting monotony of stasis.
Until recently I was not as sympathetic to their plight as I now know I should have been. Spending 22 years living in the same town had given me a strong desire for change. New faces and new places were a welcome change, not something to be feared. I looked (and look) forward to forging new relationships with persons places and things (or "nouns" as my 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Sands used to say).
Lately, however, I've begin to notice a discomfort in society. An insecurity borne of an eerily similar lack of permanence to what my children felt growing up. Nothing stays the same for very long.
You can see this in the macro and in the micro.
Watch any TV show in Fast Forward mode. No scene will stay in sharp focus for more than a few seconds. Do the same for the commercials -- they are a rapid fire montage of images and sound that bombards the soul
At the societal level, we move from fashion to fad to mania to passe in a matter of months. Today's hero is tomorrow villain. We raise up our idols only to smash them down in the public square of humiliation and scorn.
Long term means a year, and permanence means less frequent transitions. We are living the Orwellian double speak in our own lives.
The picture that came to mind the other day was of a phonograph needle on an old vinyl LP. In the opening tracks, the stylus rides gracefully along the perimeter without a mood or care. The longer it plays and the closer it approaches the middle, the shorter the time allowed to complete each revolution.
Round and round we go. The changes becoming ever more frequent and severe.
And even the change changes. Once orderly and predictable, societal change has become a helter skelter experience of staccatto disruptions brought to us in real time by cell phones, internet and wirelessly connected PDA's.
I think living in the big city is getting to me. Maybe I'll move.
Military families have long known the trauma of uprooting their children every two to three years as their postings change and many families have evolved elaborate rituals around the move to lessen the strain.
I lived in the same house from birth until I moved away for college. Even then, I attended undergraduate and graduate school less than a mile from my parent's home.
By contrast, my children moved from Springfield, VA to Union, WV to Huntington, WV back to Springfield, and then to Ft. Lauderdale and back between 1992 and 2001. Six moves in eight years.
Our children have complained often that this period of chaos in their lives was severe and irreperable. They suffered from insecurity, from a lack of permanence that comes from never having experienced the comforting monotony of stasis.
Until recently I was not as sympathetic to their plight as I now know I should have been. Spending 22 years living in the same town had given me a strong desire for change. New faces and new places were a welcome change, not something to be feared. I looked (and look) forward to forging new relationships with persons places and things (or "nouns" as my 2nd grade teacher Mrs. Sands used to say).
Lately, however, I've begin to notice a discomfort in society. An insecurity borne of an eerily similar lack of permanence to what my children felt growing up. Nothing stays the same for very long.
You can see this in the macro and in the micro.
Watch any TV show in Fast Forward mode. No scene will stay in sharp focus for more than a few seconds. Do the same for the commercials -- they are a rapid fire montage of images and sound that bombards the soul
At the societal level, we move from fashion to fad to mania to passe in a matter of months. Today's hero is tomorrow villain. We raise up our idols only to smash them down in the public square of humiliation and scorn.
Long term means a year, and permanence means less frequent transitions. We are living the Orwellian double speak in our own lives.
The picture that came to mind the other day was of a phonograph needle on an old vinyl LP. In the opening tracks, the stylus rides gracefully along the perimeter without a mood or care. The longer it plays and the closer it approaches the middle, the shorter the time allowed to complete each revolution.
Round and round we go. The changes becoming ever more frequent and severe.
And even the change changes. Once orderly and predictable, societal change has become a helter skelter experience of staccatto disruptions brought to us in real time by cell phones, internet and wirelessly connected PDA's.
I think living in the big city is getting to me. Maybe I'll move.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Alchemy
The history of modern science is rooted in the work of the alchemists. Scientist-Philosophers throughout the pre-modern era in all regions of the world sought to change the base into the precious. The plentiful into the rare. The common into the sublime.
In pursuit of this goal, science proceeded from microscopic to molecular, to atomic, and finally subatomic matter. The benefits to humanity in pharmacology, genetics, science, communications, agriculture, and physics dwarf any metallurgical gains that would have accrued from the accomplishment of the alchemist's original aims.
Yet we have now (and have always possessed) the means to achieve true alchemy. We can, using our particularly human ability to reason and think, change one type of matter into another.
This is not a physical transformation per se, but rather the ability to substitute the manufacture of one type of matter for another.
Take, for example, the manufacture of oil in New Hampshire by the John Deere Company of Iowa.
Everyone knows that neither New Hampshire nor Iowa has any indigineous petroleum production or refinery capacity. How then does the John Deere factory in Iowa produce petroleum in New Hampshire.
As new roads are built in northern New Hampshire, the Earth Movers made by Deere in Iowa flatten hilltops and burrow through mountains to level the new roadbeds. Over its 50 years life,tens of millions of automobile miles will be spent traversing these highways. The flatter the road, the fewer gallons of gasoline will be consumed by the automobiles (and too, fewer brake pads consumed and transmission parts worn).
Our modern alchemist can create an oil savings of millions of barrels of oils by substituting John Deere earth moving equipment.
While this process is not limited to the alchemic process of producing petroleum products, that particular item is reputed to be in such short supply and hails from such a contentious part of the globe, that it is worthy of some focus.
The subsidization of fixed rail mass transit is almost universally unpopular from a fiscal point of view, but from an energy policy standpoint, it seems quite wise. Automobiles burn refined petroleum products; most light rail systems utilize coal generated electricity. In essence this is the cheap way to convert coal to gas.
How about bio-diesel? Even at the current cost of diesel hovering around $2.35 per gallon, bio-diesel is plagued by distribution and refining difficulties that keep it from being a widespread alternative for the trucking industry in America (the largest consumer of diesel fuel).
The modern alchemist, however, would note that the next largest consumer of transportation diesel is the agricultural community. Perhaps the farmers of midwest could cooperatively refine a fixed portion of their Oilseed crop in exchange for bio-diesel for their combines, reapers, tractors, trucks and heating and drying equipment.
This type of alchemy is currently being done in the coal fields of West Virginia. Coal operators are committing coal from their mines in 20-year fixed price contracts to a refiner who is committing to provide back refined truck diesel at equivalently fixed prices. The coal miners are alchemists creating Middle East Oil from their own coal.
The examples are endless, we need only use the one unlimited resource that we possess on earth -- the power of our minds.
In pursuit of this goal, science proceeded from microscopic to molecular, to atomic, and finally subatomic matter. The benefits to humanity in pharmacology, genetics, science, communications, agriculture, and physics dwarf any metallurgical gains that would have accrued from the accomplishment of the alchemist's original aims.
Yet we have now (and have always possessed) the means to achieve true alchemy. We can, using our particularly human ability to reason and think, change one type of matter into another.
This is not a physical transformation per se, but rather the ability to substitute the manufacture of one type of matter for another.
Take, for example, the manufacture of oil in New Hampshire by the John Deere Company of Iowa.
Everyone knows that neither New Hampshire nor Iowa has any indigineous petroleum production or refinery capacity. How then does the John Deere factory in Iowa produce petroleum in New Hampshire.
As new roads are built in northern New Hampshire, the Earth Movers made by Deere in Iowa flatten hilltops and burrow through mountains to level the new roadbeds. Over its 50 years life,tens of millions of automobile miles will be spent traversing these highways. The flatter the road, the fewer gallons of gasoline will be consumed by the automobiles (and too, fewer brake pads consumed and transmission parts worn).
Our modern alchemist can create an oil savings of millions of barrels of oils by substituting John Deere earth moving equipment.
While this process is not limited to the alchemic process of producing petroleum products, that particular item is reputed to be in such short supply and hails from such a contentious part of the globe, that it is worthy of some focus.
The subsidization of fixed rail mass transit is almost universally unpopular from a fiscal point of view, but from an energy policy standpoint, it seems quite wise. Automobiles burn refined petroleum products; most light rail systems utilize coal generated electricity. In essence this is the cheap way to convert coal to gas.
How about bio-diesel? Even at the current cost of diesel hovering around $2.35 per gallon, bio-diesel is plagued by distribution and refining difficulties that keep it from being a widespread alternative for the trucking industry in America (the largest consumer of diesel fuel).
The modern alchemist, however, would note that the next largest consumer of transportation diesel is the agricultural community. Perhaps the farmers of midwest could cooperatively refine a fixed portion of their Oilseed crop in exchange for bio-diesel for their combines, reapers, tractors, trucks and heating and drying equipment.
This type of alchemy is currently being done in the coal fields of West Virginia. Coal operators are committing coal from their mines in 20-year fixed price contracts to a refiner who is committing to provide back refined truck diesel at equivalently fixed prices. The coal miners are alchemists creating Middle East Oil from their own coal.
The examples are endless, we need only use the one unlimited resource that we possess on earth -- the power of our minds.
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