Reading and the Weekend

What are your weekend plans? These days I hardly get any comments at all on this blog, and when I do they are spam 99% of the time. So if there is anyone out there that still reads this, please take a few seconds and make a comment or two about your plans. For myself, the minute I publish this post I am off to bake pizzas for four hours and then I will come home around midnight exhausted. On Saturday I am working from 15:00 till 19:30 and afterwards I am not sure what I will be doing.

On Sunday, Clara and I have a brunch planned with some friends. That will be fun and it will give us a chance to get together and see some people that we unfortunately don´t see often enough. As for the rest of Sunday? I have no honest idea, probably double check my German homework and do some reading. Maybe another blog post?

I just finised Der Kleine Bruder by Sven Regener. My first opinion was that it was quite funny but not quite as good as the first one had been. Of course that is always the complaint against sequels and I admit that for me this is a cliche that rings true. Next I am going to read either the Witches of Eastwick by John Updike or Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Both are sure to be quite entertaining. I wish you all a great weekend.

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Who Built It?

Reading about the end of the New Jersey-New York Tunnel project thanks to Chris Christie. When I first heard about the end of this project I didn´t like it one bit. Rail is necessary for future growth, especially in areas like NY and NJ where there is not necessarily any extra capacity for new highways. So why cancel this project that provided jobs? Christie was on about it exceeding costs, but while that is certainly the case (most infrastructure projects carry hidden costs and underestimates), it doesn´t really tell the whole story. More fundamentally its about a world view and a lot of political posturing. Republican voters want this kind of savings and it is one of the reasons that a man like Christie was elected in the first place. However its possible that the money can´t simply be moved to other projects anyway: they were for this project solely.

I am reading an article about America´s economical woes on Spiegel at the moment. Its in German and deals with the issues of today. It notes the anti-tax, anti-big government feeling that the Tea Party is screaming (echoed by the Tea Party/Republican leadership). In the end it uses the cancelling of the bridge as a metaphor for the death of the American Dream in a way. The country is unable to realize its dreams of being a top nation among nations any longer. Considering that the Republican plans got us to what we have today, how then are the further realization of their dreams going to help us any? They don´t have the answer except by using the familiar Ayn Rand idea that we need to tell Government to get out of the way. So I start to wonder than just who it was who built the infrastructure in America? Who built the highways, the ports, the hoover dam, and all that good stuff? Well it wasn´t private companies that is for sure. At this point I am really curious as to whether or not the Tea Party is really going to be happy with what they are about to get? We´ll leave the social issues for another posting.

Link to the Spiegel article

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European Cup Qualifying and Immigration

There are two things on my mind today. One is the disastrous game that Sweden played against the Netherlands yesterday and the other is immigration. Lets start with the game. Almost everyone had agreed in advance that there was only a very small chance that Sweden could really beat Holland. Stranger things had happened of course, but when one weighed up the levels of the players on both squads, it quickly became obvious that Holland had a significant advantage. Sweden also walked into their trap: they played the game and Holland just waited for any mistakes, and when the mistakes came, well wow. That is called being efficient. Nevertheless, I applaud the Swedes for trying and I think it can be a good lesson for the team if they are willing to take heed. I also think that it shows what the football academies in Sweden need to be promoting: a fast, pass-intensive game with a focus on two-way play, as well as a strong sense of team.

Now to immigration: Horst Seehofer has been making a splash and following in the footsteps of Thilo Sarrazin by making negative comments about Muslim immigrants. As an immigrant myself, I find these comments so oversimplifying that its almost unbelievable that the antagonists get so much air time. On the other hand I wonder if this isn´t just a bit of clever posturing and trying to redefine themselves within their respective parties (note that Sarrazin lost his parties support and Seehofer is still in command). To elaborate on that further: I wonder if this is not simply a way for Seehofer to attempt to get Christian Democrat voters and other conservatives to believe there is some sort of threat coming from the "others" who are coming to Germany. This way he can energize his base. Its more an American political move than a typical European one, which is why I am not super certain about it. Still I keep a wary eye on the whole thing. A political party using the name of Christ is rather presumptuous in any case.

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Wanderings and wonderings

Sometimes I wonder if I really should keep writing this blog. I want to write more about thouroughly researched topics, but most of the time I just churn out a series of rants in paragraph and sentence form. This trend is not likely to be discontinued. On Saturday I received an email that meant a lot to me. It wasn´t from any potential employers to tell me that I was being considered for a post somewhere, no in fact it came from the government of Florida. It was an email to let me know that my request for an absentee ballott had been received and that I was therefore going to be voting in the coming elections. Joy immediately descended upon me and I knew that I would not be among those who sit back and say well things went bad and I didn´t do anything about it. I don´t need to state who I am going to be voting for, anyone who reads this blog could figure that out in a heart beat.

In any case my family was here over the weekend, except for my sister who is at Bible School in a small town somewhere in the woods of Småland. Here is a picture my brother took of me trying on some pretentious glasses.


Of course the glasses turned out to be too pretentious but I may as well admit that I am looking for something like those in the near future.

I have decided to publish my reading goal for the rest of the year. Here are some of the books I want to read before 2011:

1. Der Kleine Brüder by Sven Regener
2. The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
3. The Handmaid´s Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
5. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (non-fiction)
6. Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
7. A Widow for One Year by John Irving
8. Going After Cacciato by Tim O´Brien
9. The Green House by Mario Vargas Lhosa
10. Grimms Wörter by Günter Grass

This is of course a list of books I would like to read, it doesn´t mean I will be able to finish them all. I am also taking recommendations. Leave an idea as a comment.

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More Questions and Questions again...

Time is running out in the sand. The democrats are starting to reveal themselves as they run around in circles, sweaty palmed, and shouting about how they stood up to the elites in Washington. Part of what makes American politics so interesting is the importance of the candidates identities. In other countries, most people vote for parties with a specific policy in mind. Not so in the United States where its about who you vote for first and then secondly what you vote for.

This is the reason that a character like Sarah Palin makes so much headway in the US. Or am I really off on this one? This is also the reason that a party like the Democrats had to make so many compromises on something like Health Care Reform i.e. there simply weren´t enough votes for something too radical. Of course the word "radical" is all about how you define it. What Obama has done from a standard Western European scale is simply centrist policies that leaned a bit to the right. In the US he was labeled a communist, a fascist, a socialist, and every other label that the right could throw at him. Sometimes the beauty of history is that we can read about what idiots have said in the past. Unfortunately we aren´t always able to evaluate them so rationally in the present. Thus the loud banging of drums and calling for heads to roll in Washington.

Lets consider the Tea Party. Again. Its really becoming a boring topic wondering who they really are and what they stand for and so on. From where I am sitting they are among the most stupid people in America. This goes back to their understanding of American history as well, which has led to an almost national religion based on the founding fathers. Isn´t that what other stupid countries do.

I left a country in 2006 and thought now there is no hope for that place. Fast Forward four years and if the Republicans get back in then I´ll be there for Kaddish at the all American funeral of the nation. Au Revoir just and fair America, we never knew ya!