Sardinia, baby!

While I'm a little torn about the ecological implications of cheap air travel, I'll have to admit that it's great being able to hop on a plane and get yourself flown in no-frills style to some nice place at a reasonable cost.

Happily, easyJet flies from Berlin Schoenefeld to Olbia on the Italian island of Sardinia. We had booked ourselves into a cosy Bed & Breakfast place in the North of the island, and a snazzy little rental car to move around. While he had planned to keep our excursions to the Northern part of the island, it turned out we had underestimated the curviness of the roads. It was difficult to drive anywhere much faster than 40 mph or something (except on a few stretches of highway), so our action radius was somewhat curtailed. We did manage to see quite a bit of the rugged beauty and historic treasures, and it was a wonderful and relaxing 8 days.

Here's a few pictures that attempt to capture a little of what we saw:

How time flies when you're having fun

Oh my goodness, as Shirley Temple used to say so fetchingly... how time flies! Looks like I haven't blogged in month or so... thereby sorely trying the patience of my multitude of readers. ANd I hope they will accept as excuses any or all of the following:
- it was HOT here, and a sticky heat at that, so I hardly was able to function, let alone think up new blog entries;
- my birthday came and went, plunging me into midlife depression for a while;
- Andrea and I treated ourselves to a week of vacation on Sardinia, where I was blessedly away from the world wide web though not from the heat;
- upcoming exams kept me studying morning, noon, and night;
- did I mention it was HOT?

Anyway, I'll try to come up with some new stuff to share. First will be a few vacation pics.

Gold ships and silver ships

A line from a novel I read over 20 years ago remains stuck in my mind:

"There are gold ships and silver ships, but the best ship is friendship."

Corny, isn't it? And I don't even know if it's a well-known saying, or just something the author Joseph Heller made up. But I've been thinking about friendships and what they mean to me. Apparently, not a whole lot, because I don't really have a large circle of friends...and, as the recent high school graduation anniversary reminded me, I certainly don't have very many longtime friends, not from my school days, at any rate. Part of that is to be expected, I suppose, and not really specific to me. People tend to drift apart once they enter new spheres of life. When you enter university, when you start out in a job, and then again a new job, when you marry, when you have children, every new sphere brings new relationships, most often at the expense of older ones.
A lot depends on your personal definition (or, as I like to say as a card-carrying constructivist, your personal construction) of friendship. I suppose your relationships with other people could be plotted on a continuum that could have the poles of "enemy" vs. "friend", or of "completely indifferent person" vs. "really close and intimate friend", with loose acquaintances somewhere in between.
Another dimension is likely to be your personality. Are you an extravert who is outgoing and sociable, if perhaps a little superficial, someone who likes to have many friends around? Or rather an introvert who prefers few but deep friendships but who is just as happy not to have his friends around all the time?

When I look at my own preferences, I find that I want to be friends with many, but I also want to be left alone; I relish the lively exchange of ideas with other people, but I admit to preferring the company of a good book to a crowd of friends.

In all honesty, I also find that most friendships can turn boring all too soon. Conversations with longtime friends tend to be predictable; if you haven't seen them in a while and then meet them again, you mentally "check off" the relevant topics of discussion (family, job etc. ) but rarely cover new ground. But I realize that, much as marriage, friendship needs work, needs input. You can't expect your friends to be there for you if you never are there for them, even if just for listening. It has to be a two-way street.

So, to return to the trite phrase from the beginning, it may be that true and deep friendship is better than any gold or silver ship could be. But you have to work to keep that ship afloat; if you're not prepared to do that, you may as well leave the ship in the harbor. ((I think I now have flogged the ship metaphor to death) )

Apropos of the rainy weather

Biking through the pouring rain yesterday, it helped that a bouncy little song was playing and re-playing in my head... no, it wasn't the all-too-obvious "Singin' In The Rain", though that is of course a beautiful standard. (And I do have a Judy Garland, up-tempo version of it somewhere, which I really need to listen to again sometime)

It was a song from the Disney live-action classic, "In Search of the Castaways", from 1962, which also happens to be the year of my birth. The Jules Verne-based film had an eclectic cast including George Sanders, the bubbly Hayley Mills and... Maurice Chevalier.

Chevalier and Mills together sang the song I'm referring to, a buoyant little number by Walt Disney's all-purpose songwriters, the Sherman brothers.

I'm quoting from memory here:


Why cry about bad weather? Enjoy it!
Each moment is a treasure, enjoy it!
We're travelers on life's highway, enjoy the trip!
Each lovely twist and byway, each bump and dip!

When there's a complication, enjoy it -
you've got imagination, employ it!
A hurrican comes your way? Enjoy the breeze!
You're stranded in the jungle? Enjoy the trees!

(there's more, about seeing roses in the snow, and "joie de vivre" making them grow,
but I always sing that first part ;)

And you know what? It worked - I really enjoyed getting wet all the way to my unmentionables :)

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can also hurt

I apologize for making this a more personal post than usual... on second thoughts, what am I apologizing for? Aren't Blogs supposed to be personal?

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended a high school reunion last weekend, my first ever. It was interesting to see how my former classmates had changed and matured, in appearance as well as in outlook. But while I had been prepared for the usual questions about what my life had been like in the intervening years, what career choices I've made and so on, I was not prepared when a former classmate confronted me with a description of my older self that was anything but positive.

My own memories of school are hazy and selective, and while I remembered having had political differences and debates with that classmate, my take on them was that it had all been in good fun of the "agree to disagree" variety. However, her recollection was much different, and much as I want to believe my version, I fear hers may be the more accurate one, especially as she felt so strongly about it that this impression of me virtually stayed with her through the years. I should add that this classmate is of Indian heritage, and as she told me, my statements in class and to her had clearly been racist. And while she had encountered "faceless" racism and intolerance before and elsewhere, to her I became the face of racism.

I can't really say strongly enough how much that distressed me. There are few things I despise more or find more repugnant than racism, intolerance, or discrimination of any sort. My own self image all these years has been of a person remarkably free of prejudice, someone who truly believes that all people are basically brothers and sisters, all children of a loving God. The idea of demeaning or belittling someone on account of their color, race, ethnicity or religion is completely alien to me...now. And I am deeply ashamed that I ever may have acted or believed differently.

But the more salient point here is that our own perception of ourselves, and of how we act in certain situations, may be much different from how others perceive us. A careless remark, possibly meant in fun, can hurt deeply... never more so than during the formative years of young personhood, where one is still searching for one's own identity. And young people can be especially cruel and harsh in their views of others.

I hope and I think that my classmate realized that I've changed from the person who made all these statements in the past, whether they ever were intentionally racist or not. And I believe the lesson here is very easy...and very hard at the same time: the things we do, the things we say, leave traces in the people around us. And while it is unrealistic to expect that we will always be able to consider every possible consequence of our acts, it sometimes may be good policy to remember the old saying that "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all", or, because disagreement is a healthy and necessary thing, to at least be civil about it.

Home is where the heart is

Last weekend, I attended my *cough, cough* 25th high-school graduation anniversary back in my hometown of Duesseldorf... to protect the innocent and prematurely aged, I won't be posting pics from the reunion, but I'll post a few of the 100s of pics I took while visiting the city for the first time in 5 years. Besides a few shots of the city, here's your chance to not only see a duck from below, and a crane that looks like a horse's head (at least to me it does!), but also a rare one of my wife and me :)

Here goes:

Budapest impressions

What's YOUR mindset?

I’ve decided to focus a little more on psychology, and to feature –time permitting- some aspects, theories, and people in psychology that I find particularly interesting and enriching.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has recently published a book that distills her research into what she calls “implicit theories” or mindsets that appear to determine much of how we function. Her central proposal is that people either hold a fixed mindset or a growth mindset (earlier works by her featured the description of “entity theories” or “incremental theories”). Simply put, a fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities (e.g., your intelligence) as basically fixed, stable, and unchangeable. The person with such a mindset believes he or she is who he or she is, and that the ideal way of getting through life is to avoid challenge and the risk of failure.

If, on the other hand, you have a growth mindset, you see yourself as a fluid entity, a work in progress, and you welcome challenges as opportunities rather than risks.

To someone who holds the one or the other of those mindsets, it appears natural and he or she may be surprised that there is that other way of looking at things. But Dweck’s research showed that as early as kindergarten, people split up among those two central mindsets. The good news is that even fixed mindsets are not set in granite, they can be changed. Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome.

The book is filled with an avalanche of vivid stories from lives of the ordinary and the celebrated in the worlds of business, science, education and sports. Each chapter is filled with anecdotes from everyday people as well as names still making headlines today, demonstrating how a fixed mindset can constrict a life while a growth mindset can liberate and empower one. The author even turns the lens of her criticism to her own life, reviewing not only her successes but also the failings and her struggles to apply the insights she's exploring.

While each chapter also ends with a checklist for evaluating one's own mindset and its life consequences and there's something of a primer for shifting mindsets at the end, this is not merely a how-to manual. But merely reading the book (and it's a quick 255 pages) begins building the recognition skills the author stresses as an important first step to making changes in one's own life. And as she points out, it's never too late to change a mindset that is limiting one's potential and accomplishment in any aspect of life, including love and relationships. For those of us who are parents, or teachers, or in relationships, the book also shows that there right kinds and wrong kinds of praise and criticism, namely, those kinds that encourage growth and those that don’t.

Here’s a link that I hope will work for you (if not, just go to www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com or whatever and search for Carol Dweck)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062756/sr=8-1/qid=1145700975/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0938507-7987029?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Sex tourism within the U.S.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/us_nm/crime_sextourism_dc

Reading this truly made me heartsick... now, studying to be a psychologist makes me aware that the sexual drive is a powerful one, and as a constructivist I believe that people do construct their own realities... but I for one can't imagine a reality in which there can be any pleasure in demeaning and abusing a child.

O is for Onomatopoeia

hehe! fill all your onomatopoeic needs right here:

http://www.batmania.com.ar/paginas/serie_onomatopeyas.htm

Disney legend Ollie Johnston

Hmmm... I guess I haven't posted in a few days, and since I know teeming multitudes have been waiting with bated breath for new insight from me, I'd better get on it pronto!

Before I start, and before any of you lose interest, I just want to put in a quick plug for an excellent blog about the making of a new animated movie based on the Irish Book of Kells,
http://theblogofkells.blogspot.com

And that set me thinking about how I love animation...and how I've been fortunate to know one of the premier Disney legends, Oliver M. Johnston or Ollie Johnston, one of Walt Disney's Nine Old Men...in fact, the last surviving one.

Picture shows Old Men Marc Davis, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ward Kimball

Now in his 94th year, Ollie joined Disney in the 1930s, learning the ropes mostly under greats such as Art Babitt and, especially, Fred Moore. He soon became a supervising animator. While the animation process at Disney was a collaborative effort and it therefore is not technically correct to credit just one person with the design of a character, Ollie was largely responsible for bringing to life many classic Disney stars, such as Mr. Smee, Alice (in Wonderland), Baloo the bear, the three good fairies in Sleeping Beauty, and many others... in the last picture he actively worked on, The Rescuers, he even sneaked in a caricature of himself, in the shape of Rufus, the orphanage cat that comforts little Penny.

Ollie lookalike Rufus the Cat on the bed
next to Lil Orphan Penny - see the resemblance?

I had the good fortune of meeting Frank and his wife, Marie (who sadly passed away last year) more than 20 years ago... I was living in my hometown of Düsseldorf at the time. It was a pleasure spending time with that gracious couple. Later, I met Ollie again in Burbank, California...and we kept a loose pen-palship over the years.

Someday, when blogger photo uploads work properly again for me, I'll post some of the
wonderful X-mas cards he's sent me.

Even though I sometimes feel OLD at 43-and-a-half, I can't even begin what it must be like to be approaching 94... to have lived through such amazing times, to have spent 60+ years with a woman and then to lose her... to have left this rich and wonderful legacy of artwork...

here's to you, Ollie!

Abominations

In his current book, "What Jesus Meant", writer (and practicing Catholic) Garry Wills quotes a letter that someone sent via the internet to an Evangelical preacher, who had raged against the "abomination" of homosexuality. I reproduce the letter below, condensed.

"Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination--end of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's laws and how to follow them.

Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor to the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there degrees of abomination?

Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my eyesight. I have to admit that I wear glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?"

(end of quote)

The idea of abomination arose from the fear of the "unclean," which in turn arose from the fear of the "unnatural." One whole class of the "unnatural" entails the mixing of different kinds of things--of milk and meat, for instance, or planting two different kinds of seed in the same field, or mingling two kinds of yarn in the same garment (Lev. 19:19). Another class of the "unnatural" has to do with the idea of function: the function of eating is to sustain bodily life, the function of sex is procreation, and so on.

Yet it is quite acceptable, even among Christian fundamentalists, to extend eating beyond survival to celebration and fellowship. Why, then, cannot sex be extended beyond procreation to an ideal of intimate communion between two individuals? Two individuals of the opposite sex, of course. But why not also of the same sex? After all, with same sex, one obeys the old tribal law of "not mixing different kinds of things" (Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant, 2006, pp. 32-39).

note: this entire post lifted with all due respect from noted geographer Yi-Fu Tuan's homepage, http://www.geography.wisc.edu/~yifutuan/

Acid attacks

Is it possible for a person to literally "melt", to dissolve? To have your beauty, your future, your life melt away is what literally happens to thousands of (mostly) girls and women, who are doused with acid... in their sleep... by men.

Like Nobisa, a 15-year old, who made the mistake of telling a boy she didn't love him. Or Nasima, who was just 12 when she turned down a marriage proposal by her 27-year old uncle.
Or the heart-wrenching case of the young mother who arrived at a clinic with her 10-month old baby. Her husband had been brutal and violent even during the pregnancy, had raged and demanded the outstanding rest of the dowry, had hit and beaten his young wife. After the child had been born, he had attacked it no less than five times with acid, once even forcing the baby to swallow some. Finally, the mother was able to flee with her child.

A small amount of sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, readily available even to the poorest, can disfigure within minutes. The substance not only eats into the skin on face, neck and shoulders but also the underlying muscles and nerves, sometimes even the bone. Immediate help is essential, yet 80 percent of such attacks occur in remote rural areas, where the trip to the next doctor or hospital is at best an adventure. And even if you have found a doctor who knows how to treat the terrible, disfiguring wounds, the damage to the spirit and the soul is harder, if not impossible to repair.

Not only do the victims suffer almost unbearable pain and anguish, their lives are also thrown off course, with love and marriage now a near impossibility. Education is cut short, with all physical and financial resources now poured into trying to recover.

"It's difficult to tell what it is that goes through the mind of someone who throws skin-burning acid over another human being," said Dr Ron Hiles, a British plastic surgeon who recently travelled to Bangladesh to treat acid attack survivors. "There are all sorts of motivations, one of the prime ones being jealousy. But I don't think people realise before they carry out the attack quite what horrific injuries they will cause."

I'm not ashamed to say that tears ran down my face as I read about the plight of these women, whose lives have been ruined by cowardly, evil attacks. And I salute them for their strength and power of will, and their refusal to let the attack destroy their identities. As it happens, Monira Rahman, who works to help the victims will receive the Human Rights Prize from Amnesty International here in Berlin March 19th . Her organization is www.acidsurvivors.org and I hope some who read this will be moved to pledge some financial support for that cause.

Yes, we need to acknowledge that different cultures have different norms and traditions. But, much as the practice of genital mutilation, the reprehensible tradition of acid attacks needs to be stopped. Sadly, however, it appears to be spreading, as this news report from Iraq says http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=7197

A Teltow Friday

Self-portrait :)


Taking a short walk this morning, I experienced the pretty side of Winter once more. Overnight, some snow had softly fallen, and it kept on snowing all morning. With my trusty digital camera always at the ready, I took a few pictorial impressions (I had to re-size them a little bit; you'll have to take my word for it that they look better in large format) :

Let's be friends ?

Remember The Golden Girls? This may date me something awful, but I remember it well, in fact, it was my favorite show for a long time and I still enjoy the reruns every now and then.

My favorite character was Rose and I don't really want to know what that says about me. In one of the earlier episodes, Rose is distressed because there's a co-worker she just can't seem to get to like her. Dorothy tells her she can't expect to be loved by everyone...to which she replies, "But I do want to be loved by everyone!"

Now, I don't know if I really want to be loved by everyone. I'm not even sure I love everyone, although I'm sure my tolerance of other people has much increased over the years. As an adolescent, one is easily intolerant; I suppose it comes either from being self-centered and therefore intolerant of everyone who is a potential rival in the spotlight, or from being idealistic, and therefore intolerant of everyone who does not meet your high standards. Over the years, you become less self-centered (one hopes) and possibly also a little less idealistic (one fears), so tolerance of others increases.

What I do tend to do is go overboard when I like someone. I go all out and try to turn what sometimes is at best a casual acquaintance into a friendship. Not because I NEED that friendship, but because I feel I have much to give to people, in terms of support, wisdom, humor, understanding and experience. Many times, I get rebuffed or ignored, and that really is a hurtful experience. I try to console myself by saying it's really their loss more than mine.

I guess what I want to say is, when people offer you their friendship, why not accept it? See if it works for both sides and I'm sure you'll be surprised at the insight and advice you will gain.... and give.

Oscar night

Wow, that was quick! With the combined help of Oscar show producer Gil Cates, who kept thank-you speeches to a bare minimum, AND my trusty fast-forward button, I managed to zip through the taped show in about 2 hours. And I managed to NOT listen to the news all morning, even resorting to covering my ears with my hands and humming "zip a dee doo dah", in a successful effort to not hear any Oscar results before I had a chance to watch the tape.

Why, you may ask? For one thing, the Oscars have been a high point of my year for about a quarter century...I love movies, and I admit to loving the pomp, pageantry and glitter of the Oscar show. And for also close to a quarter century, I have been taking part in an Australian friend's Oscar prediction competition, so it was fun checking off the ones I predicted right (for the record, 15 out of 24 awards, or, under my friend's points system, 41 out of 66 possible points...not too shabby and down only a slight tick from last year's 15 awards/43 points).

The awards:
It's a cliché, but true as far as I'm concerned - it's not to win, but to be nominated that's important. There is no objective way of judging the performances or artistic efforts of the nominees...as a constructivist, I'd argue that every viewer constructs his or her movie experience differently, with his or her personal life experience and current situation playing large parts in how a movie, a song, a score or a performance are perceived.

Having said that, I can't quibble with any of the major results*, which I'm sure all were and are excellent. The "Crash" upset at the end really was an upset; I had been pretty sure it would win, especially after Ang Lee picked up his overdue Best Director award. Of course, now that I know everyone in L.A. was IN "Crash" (host Jon Stewart early in the show asked for a show of hands of who was NOT in the movie), it's no wonder the film won.

*is Best Song a major category? Maybe I'm just an out-of-touch loser, but I feel the best winning songs have always been somewhat timeless...I can't believe they picked a foul-mouthed hip-hoppy piece of c**p... but that's just me, I guess.
Scorsese: 0 Three Six Mafia: 1
Enough said.

The honorary award for Robert Altman was touching, I liked his metaphor of movies as sandcastles. Among the clips of his films, I thought one of my favorites, "A Wedding" was conspicuously absent. Anyway, now I can't wait to see "A Prairie Home Companion".

The show:
I thought Jon Stewart acquitted himself very well. As I don't watch his show, I'm not that familiar with his brand of humor, but I understand he toned down the political edge considerably, leaving the speechifying to George Clooney. As always, I enjoyed the movie montages, of which there were several, prompting Stewart to comically plead "we're all out of clips! folks, send in clips, I don't care if they're on Beta!"

The films:
This year, I hadn't really seen very many of the nominees (the biggest of them all, "Brokeback Mountain", hasn't even been released here yet). But I was really intrigued by many of the clips they showed, and am definitely going to see "Capote", "Brokeback Mountain" , "The Constant Gardener" and "Good Night, and Good Luck".

A note on "Crash":

George Clooney rightly pointed out that Hollywood has for a long time been ahead of general public awareness of social problems, and he understandably saluted the industry for that.
However, some of the films touted this year, including "Crash", seem to have it backwards.
"Crash" depicts a Hollywood writer's imagination of a deep and brutal racial divide, while the truth out there is that much of the nation is successfully trying to live with each other in a richly diverse multiculturality (if that's even a word), and to smooth out old divisions and injustices. I'm not sure what purpose is served when old scabs that have been healing quite nicely are picked at and re-opened.

I also agree what noted film critic Kenneth Turan said, "I do not for one minute question the sincerity and integrity of the people who made "Crash," and I do not question their commitment to wanting a more equal society. But I do question the film they've made. It may be true, as producer Cathy Schulman said in accepting the Oscar for best picture, that this was "one of the most breathtaking and stunning maverick years in American history," but "Crash" is not an example of that."

+++

On balance, 2005 really was an excellent year in films, in my ever humble opinion, with a great variety of subjects and treatments. So, keep going to the movies...don't engage in piracy...remember, you're stealing from all these handsome folks in Hollywood if you do...and some of those women can only afford clothes that barely cover their breasts! ;)

The coarsening of society

Just a brief note: in her two most recent Wall Street Journal columns ( http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008002 and http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008034, the excellent and eloquent Peggy Noonan relates her experiences during air travel security checks and, in the 2nd column, paints a broader picture of what she sees as a coarsening of society, a surfeit of sexuality and sexual discourse, that is offensive not only to women, but really a disgrace to us all. Using a term that may not be readily accessible to less religious people (Noonan is a devout Catholic), she says we are "embarrassing the angels". Imagine, if you will, that there are indeed heavenly beings around us... wouldn't they be embarrassed by the language and imagery we routinely use? I think this is a thought worth pondering.

A Potsdam Sunday

Sometimes it takes the visit of a friend to really get out and see some of the sights in your area, so it was nice having a friend stay with us over the weekend, giving us a chance to tour the grounds of Frederick the Great's Sanssouci Palace (it really is a VERY small palace, but with a lovely park) in Potsdam once again. I'm just posting a very few pics I thought had some artistic value :)




















An ornate gazebo.



















Detail of the gazebo.



















Frog's eye view of the wine terraces and the palace.




















Top o' the Chinese Teahouse.




















Some Prussian princess' bust. If you look closely, you see the snowflakes :)




















B&W can make anything look artsy.




















This final one isn't Sanssouci (duh!) but a picture from the historic Dutch quarter of Potsdam (I had to aim high, as I didn't want to have any cars, street signs or people in the frame).

The Women's Figure Skating event is just about the only thing I watch when it comes to the Winter Olympics.
While it's debatable whether anything that is subject to individual judging and not to objective measurement can really be called a sport, I love the blending of athletic effort and poetic grace that the best practitioners have always exhibited.

With no German competitors in the finals, it's easy for me to say that I don't usually root for the "home team", but I honestly subscribe to the motto that the best should win. But i understand that Americans were rooting for Sasha Cohen, who had done so brilliantly in the short program and who, it was hoped, would continue the tradition set by greats such as Dorothy Hamill, Kristi Yamaguchi (my personal favorite), and Michelle Kwan.

Watching the competition last night was tough. I tend to suffer with the athletes as they stumble or fall. What's worse in this particular sport is that after a fall, you have to grit your teeth, smile through it all and continue with the program. But if, like Sasha Cohen did, you take falls in the first 30 seconds of your program, that has to have a psychologically devastating effect, although she did recover.

I also felt for Russian Irina Slutskaja. At 27, this probably was her last chance for olympic gold. And while I don't have the professional eye, it was difficult for me to see why her program should have set her back behind Sasha Cohen in the end.

Shizuka Arakawa glided effortlessly and beautifully, with just the right amount of technical difficulty not to distract from the lyrical beauty of her performance. As her turn cam fairly late in the competition, it did not really take awesome predictive powers to say she would take home the gold, but that's what I did after seeing her skate.

Congratulations to her and to Japan, for the first ever olympic gold in women's figure skating!

Hunting with Dick Cheney

Oh, OK, this is not really about hunting with Dick Cheney. But the recent hunting accident involving Vice President Cheney made me think again about what kind of a "sport" hunting really is. Why do grown men (and they are almost exclusively men, I believe) find fascination in aiming a shotgun at some peacefully browsing unsuspecting animal ? Why would anybody?

Where is the sport in that - does the animal have any chance at all ? I strongly believe that animals are God's creations, with feelings not wholly unlike our own, and the desire to live their lives peacefully. What joy can there be in savagely terminating such a life? I wish we would put those remnants of our prehistoric hunter forebears behind us. Isn't it bad enough that we mistreat our domesticated animals by the way we raise, then slaughter them?

As for Cheney, I have never liked him and I like him even less now that I know he's a hunter...and an inept one at that (although as long as he shoots other hunters, the animals can breathe a little easier)

Nostalgia time

Anyone remember the 1964 New York World's Fair? Well, old-ish though I am, neither do I.

But I do happen to be a Disney fan, and the Fair was of great importance to Walt Disney... he was very much present at the Fair, with his team having designed several shows and pavilions, among them the State of Illinois, where an audio-animatronic Lincoln was first presented, the Unicef pavilion (sponsored by Pepsi-Cola), where the (in)famous It's A Small World ride originated, the Ford pavilion, and the General Electric Carousel Theater.

I recently happened to accidentally visit a website http://www.nywf64.com/ dedicated to the fair, and I'll post some of the intriguing (or so I think) aerial photos they showcase. Do visit the website to see more and to learn more about the history of the fair than I could ever tell you!

Looking at those pics with a somewhat false nostalgia, the corporate can-do optimism of the time strikes me as naive yet charming. But look for yourself: