USA

Mad Cow Disease Or…?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The demonstrators are still at it in South Korea, I see on CNN tonight.

When I was in Hanoi this month I was sitting on the front steps of my guesthouse waiting for a van to take me on a day trip when all of a sudden a tall, young good looking guy appeared at my side. He was obviously Asian, but never knowing if you are talking to an American, or an Asian from some other country, I asked where he was from. South Korea he said. Then we traded travel stories.  He is traveling long-term.   He has excellent English and is obviously well-educated. Hmmm, well-to-do, I thought. He wissoft-spoken…not anything like his older countrymen that I have come across.  I said that I had noticed that a lot of South Koreans weren’t happy these days. He laughed. Oh, yeah, he said, we don’t like your country selling your beef to us. But, I said, we aren’t getting sick from Mad Cow Disease. Then we get down to it.

South Korea has a strong long-held tradition of dissent. My son’s best friend, Mike, who lived in Seoul for 10 years teaching English told me once that many young demonstrators are paid by in-country interest groups, like the many unions, to demonstrate. Every week almost, there is a demonstration against something…they’ve got it down to an art, he said once.

However, in this case South Koreans are not so much unhappy with the U.S. as they are with their own new President. He has disappointed them. He is not conforming to the will of the people on many issues, my friend in Hanoi said. Like why do we have to buy beef from the U.S. which competes with our own farmers. And your beef is more expensive than ours. Why does our president have to do everything the U.S. wants? Seems his new president is a little too chummy with us. You wouldn’t know this from listening to the media reports in the U.S. But, he said, we have a soft spot in our hearts for you Americans because you defended us in the Korean War. Then we talked about how the U.S. wants a lot of things from many countries. Then his van arrived. I have to go, he said, as we shook hands and said goodbye. As he darted for his ride, he looked back and said, “I don’t want to leave you!” Of course I loved that conversation! This is one of the great moments when traveling.

Return To Oregon

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After 19 hours traveling from Bangkok to Tokyo to Portland, I am finally home…of course still waking up at night and napping during the day…a vicious cycle.

This is what I have come home to:

Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

Now, CNN’s Barbara Starr reports: “One thing perhaps worth noting in this report, is the forward, the preface to the report was written by retired major general Anthony Teguba. He’s the army general that led the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. in this report the general says, ‘there is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes.’ The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held into account. pretty tough words from a man very well regarded inside the army when he conducted the investigation into Abu Ghraib. For its part, the pentagon continues to say that it deals with detainees in a humane fashion, that there is no policy towards torture, and if there was any misconduct, any abuse, it was in violation of government policy. But this report clearly is a pretty damning indictment if it stands on its own.”

Note: Just before I left Bangkok I was told that to get a visa to Burma an American now has to apply for it in Washington D.C.

Chinese Students Fight View Of Their Home

Posted on by Laughingnomad

New York Times Article

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: April 29, 2008

LOS ANGELES — When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the front of the University of Southern California lecture hall to answer questions, the Chinese students who packed the audience for the talk last Tuesday had plenty to lob at their guest:

…….

As the monk tried to rebut the students, they grew more hostile. They brandished photographs and statistics to support their claims. “Stop lying! Stop lying!” one young man said. A plastic bottle of water hit the wall behind the monk, and campus police officers hustled the person who threw it out of the room.

Scenes like this, ranging from civil to aggressive, have played out at colleges across the country over the past month, as Chinese students in the United States have been forced to confront an image of their homeland that they neither recognize nor appreciate. Since the riots last month in Tibet, the disrupted Olympic torch relays and calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in Beijing, Chinese students, traditionally silent on political issues, have begun to lash out at what they perceive as a pervasive anti-Chinese bias.

Last year, there were more than 42,000 students from mainland China studying in the United States, an increase from fewer than 20,000 in 2003, according to the State Department.

……..

As the U.S.C. session wound to a close, the organizer, Lisa Leeman, a documentary film instructor, pleaded for a change in tone. “My hope for this event, which I don’t totally see happening here, is for people on both, quote, sides to really hear each other and maybe learn from each other,” Ms. Leeman said. “Are there any genuine questions that don’t stem from a political point of view, that are really not here to be on a soap box?”

At that moment, the bottle hit the wall

Read the full article here.

A Coincidence

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last night I opted for a foot massage at a place where the strong Isan masseuses from NE Thailand are trained at Wat Pho (Temple of the Reclining Buddha). Dating from the 16th century, this monastery in Bangkok began as an open university and is still the national headquarters for the teaching and preservation of traditional Thai medicine including Thai massage.

While zoning out in my reclining lounger, an older American couple walked in. Happens that although they are living in Singapore…he still working for Caterpiller Tractors…they are waiting to retire near Klamath Falls Oregon…the city of my birth and where I went to high school!

Xmas in Las Vegas 2007

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Spent last weekend with son #1 in Las Vegas. (He shines so bright I call him son. Sorry, my mother used to say that to the kids all the time.) Great time with sushi and a Lynard Skynard concert. It was my xmas since the kids are scattered from hell to breakfast….”kids” being 34 (Beijing), 38 (Thailand) and 40 years old (Las Vegas)!

Disneyland For Adults I call it. Many go there to let their freak flag fly. The brand message is “Whatever happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.” This includes your money. No other city like it unless it’s Macau China. Unless you live there. Most locals ignore the strip. The morning after is referred to as the double hangover…one for money and the other for alcohol.

It so happened that my visit there overlapped with an Aussie friend that I met and traveled with in Laos and Thailand. Such excitement because we thought we would never see each other again! Greg took me to the hotel she was staying in. As I walked down a hall to the elevators I’ll never forget seeing her running toward me with her arms outstretched!

My Day

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Well, I had quite a day yesterday. My son Doug, visiting me for the last three weeks from Thailand where he lives, woke me at 1 am. We finished getting his banking set up on the internet. Wrote up the family info and took it to Kinkos to get it plastisized. Told him to give a copy to his wife in Thailand and that if anything happened to him that she was to show it to someone who reads English so we could be contacted. Got him set up with frequent flyers..and printed out his boarding pass.

I dropped him off at the curb for his flight back to Thailand, kissed him goodbye, and drove off elatedly. Free as a bird! Went to downtown Portland for a coffee. Then to shop for some clothes at Nordstroms. Everything made in China with crappy fabric and horrible prices. It was either that or high-end designer clothes with even more atrocious prices.

So I went to a movie…”The Darjeeling Limited.” Sneaky good…touching story about three brothers…set on a train in India…and their mother, played by Angelica Huston, who had become a nun in a Himalayan monastery. (This I totally understood!!!) The twenty something boys were whining about her taking off and leaving them and not even going to their father’s funeral. Ha! She finally told them to forget about it and get on with their lives. In other words, grow up. Very instructive for me, I tell you!!!

Then I bought some shoes and went to another store where I had a great conversation with an older woman who waited on me….me laughing at the prices…me telling her the cost of one piece was the price of a plane ticket to BKK…she telling me about living in Singapore when she was young and how she was so shocked by the ostentatiousness of America when she returned…we agreeing that Americans should travel to a third world country at least once in their lives. We ended up laughing about most of the women’s pants out now were low-cut… just the thing for women with poom pooey tummies!

Then I went to another movie ($8.00 tickets) called “I’m Not There,” the creatively constructed story about shape-shifter Bob Dylan amid the insanity of celebrity. Unconventional filmmaker, Todd Haynes, (who wrote the story while living in Portland BTW) cast 6 or 7 different actors (the best one a woman played by Cate Blanchette) who all played the changing personas of Dylan. The very young Dylan was played by a very young black kid (Dylan was supposed to be 11 years old) who claimed to be Woodie Guthrie. Dylan’s name was never mentioned and names were all changed but you knew who the characters were…Joan Baez played by Julianne Moore. If you are familiar with Dylan you will be intrigued by it…much of it ironic…tongue in cheek. Rolling Stone says that Dylan surprisingly gave his permission, through a third party, to use his songs both his own recordings and those performed by others. We are left with no better understanding of Dylan than we had before seeing the movie. That’s as Dylan would want it, I think…he hated being corralled…defined by others…especially by the niggard media. You’d have to see it 50 times to catch all the references of the times and then, unless you were a Dylan freak and were alive in the 60’s, you’d miss. If you are interested, musician/songwriter Peter Stone Brown chronicles the historical packaging of Dylan in a Counterpunch article.

Then I had sushi for dinner…including wonderful ice-cold Uni (sea urchin) from the California coast . Finally paid $16 to get my car out of the parking garage! I’m still in sticker shock after not living in the States for most of the last 6 years!

So that was my splurge. I am new again.

Visit From Son Doug

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son Doug arrived in Salem from Thailand on Friday November 9th and hit the ground running…cleaning up the farm for the sale and tying up his loose ends in the area before he goes back to his wife on Koh Samui…all with the help of his personal assistant, of course…me! So I’ve been off the radar for awhile. I can tell. I am getting email from friends again asking me where I am now! Nice to have supporters trying to keep track of me!

For his part, Doug says he is mourning the sale of the farm. After all, his childhood was spent there…helping grampa feed the cows and eating grandmas fried chicken, fry bread and apple pies.

I’m getting a break this weekend. Doug flew down to Las Vegas yesterday to have brother time with Greg. We left Salem at 4:30pm and after nearly three hours in bumper to bumper traffic finally arrived at the airport at 7:25 for a 7:30 flight. Upside of flight delays. He surprisingly made it on the plane in time. But the packed freeways in the valley were a big surprise for me after being out of the country for the better part of the last six years!

On The Other Hand: Altruism?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Salon.com again by Gordy Slack: “New proof of “mirror neurons” explains why we experience the grief and joy of others, and maybe why humans are altruistic.

Nov. 5, 2007 | A young woman sat on the subway and sobbed. Her mascara-stained cheeks were wet and blotchy. Her eyes were red. Her shoulders shook. She was hopeless, completely forlorn. When I got off the train, I stood on the platform, paralyzed by emotions. Hers. I’d taken them with me. I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks. But I had no death in the family. No breakup. No terminal diagnosis. And I didn’t even know her or why she cried. But the emotional pain, her pain, now my pain, was as real as day.

Recent research in neurobiology would explain my response as the automatic reaction of a kind of brain cells known as mirror neurons. On Nov. 4, neuroscientists announced that mirror neurons had for the first time been directly identified in humans. Previously their existence had only been inferred from primate research and the observation of human brains through fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging).

Enthusiasm among scientists has been spreading as growing evidence suggests that “mirrors” may explain the roots of human empathy and altruism as well as provide insight into such disorders as autism and even schizophrenia. But that’s not all. In the past few years, dozens of studies have linked mirror neurons to the emergence of language, abstract reasoning and even self-awareness or consciousness. “The self and the other are just two sides of the same coin. To understand myself, I must recognize myself in other people,” says Marco Iacoboni. [Maybe this is why gossip is so fascinating for us!]
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The Devil Wore J.Crew

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There is an excellent reprint of a review in Salon.com of a book published in 2005 by Martha Stout Ph.D. called “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us.”

I have had at least one co-worker, and a few others, not many, but a few others in my life who have absolutely left me befuddled. Sometimes they made me question myself. Some made me very angry and defensive. Some have charmed my socks off leaving me to realize I’d been had. And maybe you have too. Maybe this is why.

The Devil Wore J. Crew
Salon.com
By Sara Eckel

“A new book says that sociopaths aren’t just Scott Peterson and BTK. They are your neighbors, bosses — even therapists.

Mar 22, 2005 | It sounds like a treatment for a creepy psychological thriller: a world in which one in every 25 people walks through life without a drop of human compassion. On the outside, these creatures appear perfectly normal. They get married, buy homes, hold down jobs. But on the inside, they’re morally bankrupt and completely unrestricted by conscience. They can do absolutely anything — lie, steal, sabotage — without feeling a shred of guilt or remorse.

Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, Ph.D., says this is not science fiction. In her controversial new book, “The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us,” Stout claims that 4 percent of the population are sociopaths who have no capacity to love or empathize. Using composites pooled from her research to illustrate her points, Stout details the havoc sociopaths wreak on unsuspecting individuals — marrying for money, backstabbing co-workers, or simply messing with people for the fun of it. The fact that most of us never suspect our friends and neighbors of sociopathy only makes the transgressions easier to pull off.

Stout, who is also the author of “The Myth of Sanity,” an analysis of forgotten childhood trauma and dissociated mental states, spoke to Salon from her home in Rockport, Mass., about serial killers, bad boyfriends and how to know if your boss is a sociopath or just a jerk.

This idea of ordinary people with no conscience is pretty radical and kind of terrifying. Why are so few of us aware of it?
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