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Showing posts from August, 2011

Wildlife

These are a bunch of mule deer out in my front yard. They're tame enough that I could probably kill one with a spear.

Ways in which South Africa is unquestionably superior to America

1. Television commercials . I had forgotten how thoroughly American commercials have been sanitized to reflect the dominant cultural mores.  South Africa has the occasional quite interesting commercial (see above), but more often they're just bizarre, which is still a fairly effective way of catching your attention.  American commercials are, on the other hand, simultaneously bland and irritating. 2. Public transport .  Out here in Colorado I have to drive everywhere.  As I've said before, the South African public transport system might be a bit uncomfortable at times, but it is still remarkable in its reach, cost, and speed.  Even a town the size of Cortez would have taxis leaving in several different directions at least once per day back in Mzansi. 3. Dynamic governance .  Clearly America has a bit less overt corruption (though South Africa has far superior financial regulatory bodies).  But coming home I can't escape the feeling of creeping political decay.  When

What's it like being home?

After more than a week home, my thoughts are crystallizing somewhat, and I've got a few semi-coherent observations, in no particular order. People are friendly .  This could be a result of hanging out in rural Colorado, but personally I don't believe it.  Even the immigration officer in Los Angeles was nice: "Welcome home!"  General human interactions are, on the whole, a lot more pleasant than in South Africa. Colorado is beautiful .  After the bland, washed-out colors of my village, the vibrant greens, spectacular clouds, and rugged topography is like being clubbed in the retinas.  Quite the place to live. Culture shock is powerful .  I'm feeling it mostly in little strong bursts.  I'm very glad to be spending at least a little while here in the old family abode where things haven't changed very much and I know lots of people; I reckon it will get worse again when I move to the city.  The worst episode so far was on the plane coming back, where I h

I must be in Colorado

This, as you might guess, is a bunch of bear tracks on a dumpster.

Sunset

This is from my family home in Colorado.

Rick Perry and science

Jon Chait and Yglesias pile on to this staggeringly boneheaded article by Kevin Williamson in NRO.  It's actually kind of postmodernist: The broader question, however, is: Why would anybody ask a politician about his views on a scientific question? Nobody ever asks what Sarah Palin thinks about dark matter, or what John Boehner thinks about quantum entanglement. (For that matter, I’ve never heard Keith Ellison pressed for his views on evolution.) There are lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting, and they are not politicians; they are scientists. In reality, of course, the progressive types who want to know politicians’ views on evolution are not asking a scientific question; they are asking a religious and political question, demanding a profession of faith in a parti

Droid heaven

I took this picture on my new phone, which has been a lot of fun to play with. Tomorrow I'm going to Durango to buy some new clothes and sandals. It's been a lot of necessary purchases but it still feels weird to be spending so much money.

Ways in which America is unquestionably superior to South Africa

1. Beer .  When I arrived in Denver after a marathon 24 hours in the air, I sat down at a pub in the airport and ordered a porter, and it was by far the best beer I've had in two years.  The taste of freedom.  Speaking of which... 2. Customer service .  The bartender at this place also had the best customer service I've had in two years.  Friendly, polite, cheerful, and very well-timed.  Quite a shift from the usual South African sullenness where you have to practically lay out bear traps for the waiter to get the bill. 3. Food .  My mother made some corned beef with vegetables, and a shortbread with Palisade peaches for dessert, and it was a workout my tongue hasn't experienced in some time.  There's good food to be had in South Africa, but more often it's a kind of red-headed stepchild of old British cuisine consisting of small variations on "boil it into an unrecognizable paste." 4. Construction .  Walking around my family home, designed and built

I'm home!

This is looking south from my family home where I grew up from about nine years old.  I took this picture with my mom's sweet new Android phone.  I don't have a phone myself yet, but I'll probably have one by early next week.  Over my left shoulder you can see Sleeping Ute Mountain, and over my right you can see Mesa Verde. The flight was a 40-hour marathon and I still feel pretty frazzled, but a shower and some sleep did me a world of good.  I'm still processing the whole America experience, so I don't have much more to say yet, but more updates will follow as I manage to put words to things.

Goodbye, South Africa!

I feel an unexpectedly poignant note as I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight. Despite all my complaining, one can't stay in a place for two years without developing some kind of attachment. I learned a lot and had, on balance, a great time. Farewell Mzanzi, I hope we'll meet again.

I'm officially done!

I've turned in all my paperwork, gotten all my medical things squared away, and collected all my, er, samples. I am now a returned Peace Corps volunteer!

Being a banker must be nice

Trying to close my FNB (First National Bank) account here in South Africa I got a visceral reminder of what kind of service banks are providing the average customer.  First, just to close the account requires a fee of about R50.  I had left about R20 in there, but as it turns out FNB had charged me a bunch of fees that put me in the hole, and then a R88 "service fee" which I assumed was from being forcibly overdrafted.  I suspect there's some kind of automatic procedure that trips a bunch of fines if you ever let your account balance get to low so they can then charge you for overdrafting.  Anyway, I had to pay to get my balance up to the correct amount, and pay an additional deposit fee to allow me to put money into my own account. The best part, though, was after waiting about twenty minutes for the deposit to go through, they had one more fine of R9.50 waiting for me on another screen, so I had to pay the deposit fee again to finish the process.  I considered throwi

Quick update

I'm currently doing my end-of-service paperwork and various checkups, so posting might be a bit light for the next few days. In some strange weather, it's raining hard, something that doesn't usually start until November or so.

Intercape and creationist propaganda

Jesus-soaked movies are all well and good, but one thing that made me very happy to have books and music on this trip is the half-assed creationist "documentary" they're showing right now. It had a bunch of moldy-oldie anti-science nonsense about Piltdown Man and the supposed forgery of all archaeopteryx fossils. Good thing I'm taking off soon; I don't think I could stomach giving these cretins another single rand.

Goodbye, Kuruman!

I just said goodbye to a family in town here that are some of the finest people I've ever known. Now I'm on the bus to Pretoria for the last time. With luck, I'll be back someday.

This is the end

I have just left my village forever. It's been a great time, and an extremely valuable experience, but quite frankly I am sick to my back teeth of South Africa and cannot wait to get quit of the place.  Don't get me wrong, the country has a lot going for it, especially if you take a few steps back and look at the larger picture.  The government is stable, and the political situation, which looked only a few years ago to be heading down a Mexico-style single party state road, is improving.  Macroeconomic management has been head and shoulders above most countries in the developed world, especially the United States.  There is a strong national identity, and very little of the tribal conflict that characterizes many other African countries. But the average, day to day existence quite often grinds at the soul. South Africa has a concept called "Ubuntu," roughly translated as "a person is a person because of people," similar to other brotherhood-of-mankind phi

Man

It's my last day in the village, but I don't have much to offer but an atrocious case of hiccups and this Michael Lewis article . This graf in particular jumped out: Jörg Asmussen offers the first hint of an answer—in his personal behavior. He is a type familiar in Germany but absolutely freakish in Greece—or for that matter the United States: a keenly intelligent, highly ambitious civil servant who has no other desire but to serve his country. His sparkling curriculum vitae is missing a line that would be found on the résumés of men in his position most anywhere else in the world—the line where he leaves government service for Goldman Sachs to cash out. When I asked another prominent German civil servant why he hadn’t taken time out of public service to make his fortune working for some bank, the way every American civil servant who is anywhere near finance seems to want to do, his expression changed to alarm. “But I could never do this,” he said. “It would be illo

US manufacturing is alive and well

Matt Yglesias flagged this study which should be required reading for the "we-don't-make-anything-anymore" crowd: But even durable goods, which only account for about 10 percent of total spending, are mostly made in America — 66.6 percent to 12 percent for China with the rest coming from the rest of the world. In fact the only category of spending in which Made in the USA doesn’t account for the majority is clothing and shoes. What’s more, even a lot of the spending on imported goods actually reflects the cost of shipping them around the United States. An easy mistake to make given the ubiquity of "Made in China," but a mistake nonetheless.

Collected links

1. Fox is bringing back Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson .  Huzzah! 2. Can you name a living scientist ? 3. How bad is the Texas drought ?  Real bad. 4. Ryan Lizza's profile of Michelle Bachmann is a must-read . 5. In defense of flogging .

The financial reform bill has devastated the DRC?

I had no idea : The “Loi Obama” or Obama Law — as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act of 2010 has become known in the region — includes an obscure provision that requires public companies to indicate what measures they are taking to ensure that minerals in their supply chain don’t benefit warlords in conflict-ravaged Congo. The provision came about in no small part because of the work of high-profile advocacy groups like the Enough Project and Global Witness, which have been working for an end to what they call “conflict minerals.” Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank law has had unintended and devastating consequences, as I saw firsthand on a trip to eastern Congo this summer. The law has brought about a de facto embargo on the minerals mined in the region, including tin, tungsten and the tantalum that is essential for making cellphones. For locals, however, the law has been a catastrophe. In South Kivu Province, I heard from scores of artisanal miners and small-scale pu

Jesse Osmun, Peace Corps South Africa volunteer, charged with sexually abusing children

Dear god : BRIDGEPORT -- Federal agents arrested a 31-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer on charges he sexually abused at least five young girls while working in a South African preschool. Agents from the Peace Corps' Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Jesse Osmun, 32, of Glen Street, Milford, on charges that he traveled from the U.S. to engage in sexual conduct with a minor. The charge carries a maximum 30-year prison term and $250,000 fine. U.S. Magistrate Judge Holly B. Fitzsimmons Thursday ordered him detained without bond. A criminal complaint signed by Special Agent Joyce Shores, of the Peace Corps' Office of Inspector General, alleged that Osmun "provided a written confession" that "he engaged in sexual contact with three underage girls for approximately one year." Reading The Looming Tower , I thought by the end that I could place Osama bin Laden in the human f

The self-appointed experts

Aaron has a true, and hilarious , post: This is where our self-appointed experts come in. As Mason talks more and more about this project (which has really taken off, by the way), the most common reaction when talking to either Azeris or PCVs or anyone, for that matter, is that Mason gets an earful of how to change things in CBT Azerbaijan. It’s a fascinating moment: “ Hey, that’s a great idea! This is how you should change it! ” I cannot claim to be innocent of this reaction. Inevitably, the proffered ideas are well-meaning but either have already been thought of or don’t really fit in with the goals and model of CBT Azerbaijan. You can see how this might become a little irksome. That is mildly interesting. More interesting, however, is that this is almost exactly what we as Peace Corps Volunteers know is the wrong approach to making any sort of constructive changes with our local colleagues and organizations. I remember during Pre-Service Training talking about how to ask apprecia

Collected links

1. Republicans are trying to kill internet privacy for ever .  What a staggering surprise. 2. Books behind the fake "vaccines-cause-autism" scare .  These people indirectly killed children. 3. Are you horribly allergic to poison ivy?  You should get some of this stuff!   Apparently it's a near total cure if you catch it within an hour or two. 4. Ostensibly over some "spending" controversy, Republicans refuse to fund the FAA something like $25 million , which is costing the government $16 million every day in lost fees.  Of course, the real issue is union-busting. 5. Ethics blogging .

Things I will miss about South Africa, part II

  Continued from part I . 1. Public transport .  I know, I said I was looking forward to leaving taxis and buses behind.  Yet zooming out a little bit, the public transport system here is remarkably extensive and convenient.  One can get fairly reliable and cheap rides to even the smallest villages out in the hinterlands, and it's really a remarkable feat of logistics.  The bus companies, in particular, make for my money the best-organized, best-run, most efficient and most reliable system in South Africa.  I'm sure the options are better in Sweden, but they sure as hell aren't in America. 2. Long runs and walks alone .  My plan when I get back to America is to live for at least the next few years in Washington, DC, and while I'm sure there will be a lot of things to like about that, one of my favorite things to do here is wander around the bush alone.  I grew up in remote rural towns, and when I moved to New York, the crush of people definitely took some getting

The influence of financial elites

John Quiggin says the critical issue facing America is clawing back some of the money going to the top one percent; in effect, the super-rich have about the only good-sized pot of money out there, and if we're going to have reasonable public services, by gum the rich are going to have to pay for most of it. Yglesias, on the other hand, says this focus is too narrow: But a lot of the political dialogue I see online seems to consist of a slightly strange form of class resentment in which intellectuals, nonprofit workers, or public servants express bitterness about the high incomes of businesspeople whose lives they don’t actually envy. No doubt that are millions of working stiffs in America who really do envy Clarence Otis, Jr.’s life and career starting with many of the 180,000 or so other people working for Darden Restaurants. But by the same token, there are millions of Americans who envy the lives and careers of lots of other people who have “good jobs” that are good

Things I won't miss about South Africa, part II

Continued from part I . 1. Begging.   I hate that shit , and it never lets up.  Today I stepped out of my room, and in the 50-yard walk to school, no less than five people asked me for money.  Four children and one adult.  It's completely routine.  "Hello, Thabo," says the person.  "Hello," I say.  " Mpha madi ," he says, holding out a hand, meaning "give me money."  When I say no, often the person is angry. 2. Taxis and buses .  The public transport I usually take is cramped, uncomfortable, usually miserably hot or cold, takes forever, and is often terribly dangerous.  Drivers are sometimes equipped with well-maintained vehicles and drive conservatively, but more often they're aggressive maniacs zooming around in seat belt-less rusting contraptions held together with band-aids and bailing twine.  On vacation, having my own rental car was a terrific feeling of freedom. 3. Teaching .  This isn't to say that I have forever forswor

War gaming a constitutional crisis

Yglesias, talking abou t the French Fifth Republic (the current government): In practice, the resulting situation seems pretty similar to our divided government. But there’s a very important difference. The president can fire the prime minister, dissolve parliament, and call a new election . This, in practice, has made a world of difference during cohabitation periods. The upshot is that instead of the prime minister and the president constantly deadlocking, the prime minister basically just governs (on domestic matters). But he needs to be constantly worried about overreach. He could try to enact sweeping, super-controversial measures that the president opposes, but he’d be running the risk of being dismissed and losing the election. So he legislates with a much freer hand than John Boehner has, but he’s also in practice much more restrained. I've been aimlessly speculating what might happen were this debt crisis to turn into a full-blown political collapse. In Franc