History is repeating itself in Burma—20 years after the end of Ne Win’s socialist government the present regime is making the same mistake as the one that led to the former dictator’s downfall. From its power base in Naypyidaw, the current military regime is handing down administrative edicts without any regard for the consequences they hold for the Burmese people.

In September 1987, the socialist government unwisely announced the demonetization of the bank notes 25, 35 and 75 kyat, leaving the people with no money in their pockets and leading to the civil unrest that climaxed with the 1988 nationwide uprising.

The similarities between then and now are clear.

link to the whole article 

I’ve managed to fill my days with lots of varied part time work. This has had a chilling effect on my ability to find writing time, hence today’s catch-up musings:

My bike was stolen from my front yard. Not 8 feet from my open door. I kept expecting that some parent would notice that little Johnny had acquired a new bike, and upon realizing the child had not the wherewithal to have purchased  said bike, would force him to take it back. No such luck. Anyway, the bike I’ve cobbled together (also originally acquired through recycling and free) is one I like better than the stolen one, so it’s not all bad.

Then leaving work one evening at midnight, in a shopping center with 24/7 security, a fellow bike rider asked if I knew who might have stolen the seat from his bike. Sure enough, post and seat were gone. We park our bikes 10 feet from the door of the security office, in plain view of the officers inside through large pane windows. Consequently, I a) have added a seat saver to my current ride, and b) begin to wonder why theft is all of a sudden a recurring theme in my life. I don’t steal, I wonder what this karma is all about.

I’ve written before about my brain’s problem with other languages, but as a recap, when I was first in Thailand and learning Thai, I found that every time I was asked a question in Thai I would find myself answering in Spanish. I’ve always felt that my mind recognizes a foreign language, and answers in the only foreign language it knows. But now, after years of working on my Thai, I find myself again around a Spanish-speaking kitchen staff in restaurants. When they talk with me in Spanish, what do I speak? Thai. Go figure.

And speaking of being back in restaurants after a decade of other work, the one thing I’m most surprised about is the amount of food that is thrown away. I’m stunned. It’s not a gender issue, men leave as much on their plates as women. It also appears that no one reads what the side dishes are on the entrée, or else they’ve been such pigs with the chips and salsa awaiting the entrée there’s no room for them. I constantly throw out the entire side dish portion. Memo to diners: if you know you’re not going to eat the side dish, order a different side, or tell us not to put it on the plate in the first place. Saving the restaurant money will help keep prices down as wages rise, and saving food from being thrown away helps the planet.

And now, back to work!

Dear friends of mine took scuba lessons this past winter, and have just returned from their second dive vacation, the latest one off Cozumel. This was the first time outside the US for one of them, and at lunch yesterday she told me how she felt ‘guilty’ seeing the extreme poverty just outside the Gold Coast (hotel row) where they were staying. By the end of the trip, she wouldn’t venture outside the hotel, it was so bad.

I, on the hand, have seen my travels to poor countries (and there are many on this globe that are poorer than Mexico) as a way to spread the wealth. I may travel in manners that seem inexpensive to me, but on the relative scale, my few dollars can go a long way in a poor country, feeding many in a family. So many of the travel industry workers in these countries, Bali for example, sustain not only themselves but the relatives back in the rural village where they were born on what they make from services provided to tourists. In Mexico, if oil prices are below $45 a barrel, tourism is the #1 source of outside money flowing into the country.

These travel experiences also open my eyes to many of the consumables and other pleasures I enjoy because of America’s intrinsic wealth, and lead me to feel blessed. But you can’t choose the economy you are born to, just as you didn’t choose to be born Muslim, Jewish, Christian or whatever. We can only live our lives to the best of our ability, to minimize our impact on the rest of the planet. Thankfully more people are trying to live a lifestyle of less consumption in America, as am I, and that may make life easier for others in poorer countries.

I’ve not felt ‘guilty’ for having the wherewithal to travel and spend. In fact, I’ve wanted to spend a part of each of my many vacations seeing how the locals survive in areas outside the tourists zones. On occasion, I’ve been able to leave some money with a person who has provided a meal in their front room, or at a table placed in the road outside their home, rather than at the usual touristy restaurant. I’d much prefer to eat where locals eat than tourists.

And yet, I’m not 100% comfortable either. When Aung San Suu Kyi called for tourists to boycott Burma (Myanmar, for those of you unable to defy the current dictatorship there) as a travel destination, I paid attention. To my knowledge she’s not changed her stance. Her request stemmed from a desire to deny the regime any additional funds they would take from the citizens who participate in the travel industry. By going other places, not so blatantly corrupt, am I continuing to foster a social structure of oppression? Am I perpetuating poverty? Or do my (few) dollars help someone who otherwise might go to sleep hungry?

I certainly hope it is the latter. Aside from the environmental impact of jetting around the world, I’d hate to give up satisfying my wanderlust.

I'm dating again. First time in decades, as I don't count what happened in Thailand in 2002 'dating'. So it's interesting to track the stories one tells to help explain how one arrived at this particular life-juncture. Like my 'Why I don't go skiing' story:

My brother enjoyed cross-country skiing and, as much as I dislike cold and snow, was finally able to convince me to go along with him one Sunday. We climbed up the back of Dodge Ridge (ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains, California) and topped out at about 2 pm.

Now, this being the first time I've ever been on skis, the only way I knew how to stop was to fall down in the snow. By 2 pm, standing at the top of Dodge Ridge looking down at all the skiers and a mass of bruises from head to toe, the last thing I wanted was to have to fall one more time to stop.  I sat down, took off my skis, and proceeded to walk down the mountain.

I was approached three separate times by the Ski Patrol, each time I was told to put my skis on, that I wasn't allowed to walk off the hill. But not once did I see a gun on any of the ski patrol members, and so I saw my way clear to disobey authority.

By the time we all assembled at the foot of the ski run and got into our cars to head home, it was dusk. My vehicle at the time was a VW bug. It was in good shape, but the firewall had fallen from the front side of the dashboard, and that created 'flow-through ventilation'...meaning the wind came right through the dash as I drove. With a 5 hour drive back to santa Clara, bruised body, wt clothing and this 65 mph draft, it is one of life's miracles I did not die from hypothermia. As it was, it took me literally, no exaggeration here, 5 minutes just to get out of the car when I pulled into my driveway. I plodded into the house and into the bathroom, began to run hot water in the tub, and sat in it with my clothes on for 30 minutes just to thaw out enough to get to a towel.

Think I want to go skiing again? Not this lifetime, or the next. 

There was a time in my younger days when the argument had been put forth that the Earth itself was an organism. A new term, Gaia, was coined to convey this concept. One of the most cogent arguments I remember from those days was this one:

If you were to question a butterfly that was sitting on the branch of a redwood tree, and ask it if the tree was alive, the butterfly would say:

“Of course not! I’ve been sitting here my entire life, and it hasn’t changed one bit!”

I was reminded of this story on Thursday when the bridge collapsed in Minnesota, and the concern immediately surfaced in the media about the safety of other structures around the country. There has been talk lately, especially during election campaigns at all levels of government, about our crumbling infrastructure and what to do about it. I fear that not enough will be done about this problem, for the reason hinted at in the story: The bridge close to my house has been there my entire life and will always be there.

The Minnesota incident may be the harbinger of things to come, unfortunately. For too long, concrete and steel has been considered to be ‘permanent’ when, in fact, it is subject to corrosion and degradation just like everything else. As Buddhism teaches, nothing is permanent.

Media pundits are quick to quote hundreds of billions of dollars as the required funding to ‘fix our infrastructure’, but I question both the ability of anyone to assign a price tag to that endeavor. It would likewise be impossible and ludicrous to create one agency to manage such an effort, it will instead rely on much more locally managed projects. But how to fund it? I would suggest a gasoline tax, and a steep one at that. Remember the argument I made late last year about raising gas taxes? We know gasoline will be more expensive every year, as environmental costs increasingly get added to the price, and supply issues cause increases. Some argue that increasing costs will drive a few consumers to find alternatives, and for this reason, tax increases are justified to reduce consumption. My argument was, if we know that increased prices will change the habits of some and fund recovery efforts when the situation is dire, then let’s raise the funds now and create the transportation infrastructure of the future today.

Do you, like me, worry about an earthquake, but only when you are stopped at a red light while sitting under an overpass?

no link to an article, this one's my own fault 

There was a lot of moaning and complaining on the local radio talk show this afternoon concerning Rupert Murdock taking over the Wall Street Journal. The hand-wringing seemed to center around the expectation that the Journal’s reputation for detailed, in-depth and balanced reporting will be the first aspect of the old regime to be sent flying out the door once Murdock has actual control.

I will tell you, I still subscribe to the local daily paper. I rarely read past the front page of each section, but I find it keeps me in touch with state and local issues better than anything else I’ve found. I don’t mind paying to help offset the costs of local newsgathering, either.

I also subscribe to numerous RSS feeds to get national and international news. I’ve spent much of the last 5 years outside the US in Thailand, 80 km from the Burma border. I subscribe to a daily news summary from the online Burma source news@irrawaddy.org, and have been willing to pay for that also. It is vital to my safety when I’m there, in Thailand, to keep tabs on what’s happening in the train-wreck we call Burma. But I’ve also learned I find value in getting news about the US from outside the US. This drives me to find a good portion of my news from these sources I’ve listed below. I welcome suggestions you may have, of feeds you find particularly useful.

I mention these changes in my newsgathering only because I feel strongly that if you want information you should bear some responsibility for the cost of gathering it. If that means subscribing, so be it. If you continue to rely on the free CNN feed, or Fox News feed, or Google News, you will continue to get a narrow, slanted viewpoint and your horizons will not expand. Don’t lock yourself into only reading sources you know you agree with. That only increases your alienation in the future, and limits your capacity to make good decisions, especially electoral decisions. The world is a much smaller place than it was 20 years ago, at the start of the internet revolution. Staying with only local news sources severely limits your capacity to deal with this reality. Be a responsible reader!

http://www.iht.com/rss/frontpage.xml

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/index.rdf

http://thailandnews.net/rss.php

http://www.iht.com/rss/opinion.xml

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/world/rss.xml#

http://www.tricycle.com/rss/dailydharma.xml

http://feeds.feedburner.com/foxsports/RSS/soccer

http://cr.unchy.com/atom/joe

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheNationEdPicks

http://blog.wired.com/defense/rss.xml

http://www.socialistworld.net/rss.xml

http://www.ft.com/rss/world/asiapacific/china/society