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Someone asked me if I wanted to play soccer with them in a couple of days. I actually flinched, just a little. I was thinking, “What? Play soccer? I don’t understand, why would you do that?” I have nothing against soccer as a sport, but I had no idea that deep down, I really can’t stand it. I played for four years as a kid and I’ve never missed it, nor have I ever had the desire to watch it. I saw the best soccer I have ever seen on the flight from Cyprus to Dubai, English premier league, and I was nonplussed. Keep in mind that I am a sports fan, I love watching most sports, but it says something to me that I’d rather watch curling (which I put in the same nebulous “sports” category as golf) than soccer. And I don’t think that it’s just because it’s unfamiliar, I’m really intrigued by cricket, and I would enjoy trying that. I don’t think I’m alone, I’m willing to bet that this is the reason that the only significant audience for soccer in the US is the immigrant one. We’ll see if Beckam does anything for soccer in the US. I doubt it, I really do…

Isaac

My last vocabulary list included words like brutal, occupation, military, detain, and of course Israeli… Israeli is actually a tough word for me, it’s just about the same, but they switch a syllable. It is IS RA EE LI instead of IS rael i. Things are slowing down for me, I’m still trying to build up a critical mass of words. my vocabulary is too limited to be able to compose whatever pops into my head. And no, I’m not talking about anything complicated, I’m talking about remembering the equivalent of “about”… I made the observation that all Arabic is like poetry to me right now. I don’t have a great grip on the grammar, so I pick out the words I know and try to relate them. It works pretty well, I keep telling myself that this is how kids learn, so it should work really well, after about 10 or 11 years of it..

Isaac

Talking to my teacher today, I got another view on the trash situation that I mentioned earlier. Most Muslim scholars apparently say that cleanliness is next to Godliness. I have noticed that most people here are fairly well groomed and don’t usually smell. My teacher added that people should also (according to how he understands Islam) not litter and throw trash all over the place. To him, it is a disgrace. This reinforces my idea that the Islam here isn’t overly nuanced. Not throwing trash around isn’t exactly a deep concept, but still, not a whole lot of thought seems to go into it. They keep themselves neat and clean, but most of them do not seem to think to apply that standard to the environment around them. There is also apparently a TV spot encouraging kids not to litter. Not sure how effective that will be considering the number of children that get to watch TV and the example that is being set by the adults…

Isaac

There is currently a tortilla crisis in Mexico. Protests in the streets, shortages, etc. The president has tried to impose a price ceiling and demand that no one “hoard” tortillas, but we know how that’s going to work out… Tortillas will sell for what they’re worth (on the black market if no where else) and/or people that make them will distribute them to whoever they like. What cased this problem? Well, there are two obvious ones. American subsidies for biofuel have artificially raised the price of corn on world markets. Reasonable people can argue that that’s OK (They’re wrong of course:-) but there’s another, larger problem. Mexico restricts imports of corn with strict quotas. Nothing quite like restricting supply AND rising world prices as a one two punch for the prices of corn tortillas. Of course, many will blame this on “Market failure” . As usual, whenever you hear that term, you should replace it with “government interference”. Subsidies distort market prices (to the consumer’s detriment usually) and trade restrictions do nothing but enrich special interests, once again at the expense of consumer’s pocketbooks. If Mexico would just allow imports to come, it would ease some of the price pressure. God forbid we allow domestic producers to compete, they might have to lower prices!

Isaac

The Yemenis have no compunction whatsoever of throwing trash on the ground. It doesn’t occur to them that maybe they shouldn’t do it. I have felt like an idiot a couple of times holding onto trash for miles looking for a trash can while wading through everything that has been left on the ground. In the old city, they do have street cleaners, but someone must have taken the week off where I walk daily. It’s disgusting, and rather shocking to American eyes. I distinctly remember the ad campaign in the mid to late 70’s of the “Native American” (who wasn’t, he was of Italian heritage if I remember properly) crying over what had become of his land. He was of course crying about the litter, not about the abject poverty and substance abuse that his people had fallen into because of the White Man… Hmmm, no wonder they used an Italian:-) It seems fairly obvious that some sort of campaign would help here to, but the delivery would be an issue. Most people do not own TVs or radios. And that’s in the big city, the ownership of those items approaches zero in the rural areas… In the end, nothing will work except the Yemenis taking pride in how their place looks, and I don’t see that happening any time soon.

I’ve been listening to the podcasts from the Cato institute recently, and I’ve been very impressed. Cato is a libertarian think tank, and I was a little apprehensive of what their editorial tone would be. So many libertarian outlets are, shall we say, a little strident. And that’s coming from someone with many of those sorts of leanings… Well, I’ve really enjoyed the podcasts I’ve listened to so far, they have been very balanced, and all of them are obviously done with people that have done a lot of research into what they are talking about. I’m willing to bet that most of the readers of this blog would enjoy them as they rarely stray into economic issues, but have instead focussed on foreign policy, politics, and the general ineptitude of the current administration. They have been emphasizing the less controversial aspects of libertarianism like civil liberties, and avoiding massive, world wide conflicts. To be sure, there are the occasional topics that will ruffle some feathers like public school reform and social security reform, but most of it is, dare I say it, mainstream… In particular I have enjoyed their discussion of the Iran situation, how Dems are actually more “libertarian” than the republicans (in some ways of course), dissecting various subsidy programs (corporate welfare anyone?), and just general level headed assessments of the political scene in general. The speakers have also shown the freedom to speak in ways that are, if not actually against the Cato party line, at least not in agreement with it. I encourage anyone that is interested in foreign affairs and politics in general to check them out. You can find them at cato’s website, or my preferred method, in the iTunes store…

Isaac

Alec ran into me yesterday, he’s the one who asked if I was a foreigner a whole back. He’s going to Damascus to continue his Arabic studies. He says it is much cheaper there, although it is a different format. He’ll be in both a group class and with fewer private lessons. But he says he’ll be living with a family. I’ve wanted to see Damascus for a while, so I’ll be paying close attention to his reports… Olga has gone to Lebanon, just for the hell of it as far as I can tell. She may come back to study more but it sounds like she needs a break. I think I’ll stay here as per my original plan, unless Damascus sounds too good to turn down…

Isaac

I decided to go down to the main souk last night and see what I could see. My teacher had a really nice looking falafel (sandwich?) for lunch and I wanted to find some for dinner. Well, it seems that this is yet another thing that is available for lunch, but not dinner… A little kid, probably around 7 or 8 years old, started to follow me around and encouraging me to go eat at a particular Kabob stand. I figure it was his father’s… I finally gave in, I hadn’t had any Kabobs since I had been here, so I figured I should try them. It was pretty good, they make really tiny ones, maybe 3 inches long and about a third of an inch in diameter, and give you 5 or 6 of them. It was made of some sort of spiced ground meat and was pretty tasty, cheap too.

I wandered into another place later that night since I was still hungry. It was a tiny place, only 3 tables in there. Between the whooshing of the gas “stove” and the conversations, I couldn’t hear the mubasher when I asked him what they sold. I shrugged and said OK, it was a true pot luck cause I had no idea what I had just agreed to… Turns out it was something called “voul’, which may just be a really badly pronounced version of “fool”, a soupy bean dish. It was pretty good, and different from what I’ve had before. All that place made was beans, really strange. Finished off the night with a big glass of Lime juice, and another of Mango juice. Good stuff…

Isaac

Yesterday was “Milton Freidman day”, and I didn’t get any cards out…. again:-) He was a giant in economics, his ideas have had far reaching consequences. One of his more provocative claims was that it was the federal reserve bank (the fed) that had caused the great depression. At the time, this was really controversial, it isn’t any more. His idea that “Inflation everywhere is a monetary phenomena” is now widely followed. In fact, whenever rampant inflation rears its head, a quick look at the money supply is all it takes to check this. Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the board of governors of the fed (he replaced Alan Greenspan) had this to say on Milton’s 90th birthday:

“On Milton Friedman’s Ninetieth Birthday, Nov. 8, 2002 he stated: “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Rose: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”…”

Any man that can prevent future great depressions by using his insight alone is worthy of praise. We’ll miss you Milton…

Isaac

The guy over at Coyote Blog ran some numbers on his social security statement (see it here), and the results are not good. It seems that he is getting a -.8% return on his payments into the ss program. Not only are we not getting any interest on the money being taken out of our paychecks for our “retirement”, we’re being charged for it. People yell and scream that we can’t privatize social security because people will make bad decisions and they will lose their money… If you put the money into just about ANY mutual fund, you will get SOMETHING back on the investment. Or to put it another way, we’re already losing money, you might as well let us decide what to do. Gah….

Isaac