My future as an non-accountant

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed—in this piece that purports to tell us what jobs are probably not going to go out of style in the near (or even distant) future—that “accountant” led the list.

Well, that’s awfully nice—for accountants. But having been up last night till the wee hours of the morning (and even the not-so-wee hours) doing my taxes, I know that, despite the advantages and the job security, an accountant I’ll never be.

What a headache-inducing, cold-sweat-creating, frustration-inspiring chore! Of course, I was more emotionally involved in last night’s endeavor than an accountant would be for a client because, after all, it was my taxes, and my ever-dwindling store of money, that were being taken away. But I also know that doing taxes is an activity I utterly loathe, and I’m not sure you could pay me enough money to take it up as a profession. And I suspect (actually, I know) that I am hardly alone.

My father was a CPA, and I well remember the drill. My parents would go away in mid-February in an attempt to store up some relaxation for the coming assault. But from the time of their return in late February until that long-awaited date in the middle of April, my father would sit at a small table in our living room every night when he came home from work, filling out large sheets of checkered paper and stacks of tax returns. He did this till bedtime, and then got up in the morning and set out to do it again.

Nowadays this is all computerized. But in my father’s era it was a matter of his own brainpower doing the computations and then entering everything by hand. I don’t think he trusted calculators anyway; he trusted himself.

We children tiptoed around him even more than usual because we knew it was tax time. After the magic Ides of April things improved, but till then you stayed away and stayed quiet.

I think my father enjoyed the neatness of math, and took pride in his reputation as one of the best accountants around. He also was a lawyer, and so he didn’t do this all year, although for a few months it seemed to take over everything.

I think some people have an affinity for seizing the messiness of life and trying to impose order on it through numbers, and some of those people are called accountants. The rest of us can either pay them to do our taxes, or gnash our teeth every April as we do our own—and reflect in awe on those for whom this is an everyday event.

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The garages of New England

The New Neo Posted on by

A garage is a wonderful thing to have, especially in New England. The reason seems obvious: it snows a lot here, and without a garage you have to dig your car out regularly.

An attached garage is even better; whether it’s snowing or raining or sleeting or icy outside (or some combination of all four), you can keep warm and dry as you carry in your groceries.

Oh, how I’ve loved my attached garages! I appreciated them all the more because of the considerable time I’ve spent living in New England without a garage at all.

But I appear to be in the minority. It’s not that a lot of people don’t have garages here—they do. It’s just that they rarely use them for cars.

Oh, they use them, all right. They’re stuffed to the rafters with goods: lawnmowers and saws and lumber and bicycles and hockey skates and garbage cans and paint cans and old furniture and whatever it is that most people put in an attic or a basement or a toolshed. And this despite the fact that most people in New England actually have attics and basements and toolsheds.

But even the relatively empty garages seem to remain empty of their owners’ cars.

I think perhaps it’s a macho thing, a show of Yankee toughness: only wimps or people “from away” (is that redundant?) consider the garage to be the proper resting place for a car. The best analogy I can think of is to umbrellas in Seattle—have you ever seen a native using one, despite the constant damp dank dripping drizzle alternating with the drenching drowning deluges of the downpours?

Advice from Daniel Webster

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are a couple of quotes to ponder, from New Englander and patriot Daniel Webster:

“There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.”

“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”

The Girl From Ipanema returns

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: While we’re talking about Brazil (and why not? I’m tired of talking about Obama) let’s revisit an old post of mine with a Brazilian theme: “Lost in translation: the girl from Ipamema.”]

A while back we had a discussion about poetry, and whether its recent incarnation speaks to most people these days. As the back-and-forth in the comments section got going, quite a few people ventured the idea that song lyrics have taken over where poetry left off about fifty years ago.

Well, I happen to know a little bit about the lyrics of “The Girl from Ipanema.” Even though I don’t speak Portuguese myself, I am close to someone who does, and he once gave me a recitation and translation of the original Portuguese lyrics to the song. And I have to say I was blown away, not only by their loveliness (you could recite the phone book in Portuguese to me and I’d think it was lovely), but by the depth of the Portuguese version compared to the relative shallowness of the English translation-which-is-not-a-
translation (can’t resist those water metaphors).

It turns out that the author of the Portuguese words to the song, Vinicius de Moraes, was a man who quite handily bridged the poetry/lyrics gap. He was a well-known poet and popular lyricist, as well as a diplomat (!) who was at one time vice-consul to Los Angeles (no, I kid you not, so if things had worked out differently we might have had “The Girl from Santa Monica”).

Here are all the words: first, the familiar English version most of us know; then, the original Portuguese lyrics; and lastly, a literal translation into English of those Portuguese lyrics. I wish the popular English version had followed them more closely–but then, if it had, would it have been as popular?

Tall and tan
and young and lovely
the girl from Ipanema
goes walking
and when she passes
each one she passes
goes ahhh

When she walks
she’s like a samba
that swings so cool
and sways so gently
that when she passes
each one she passes
goes ahhh

Oh, but he watches so sadly
How can he tell her he loves her
Yes, he would give his heart gladly
but each day when she walks to the sea
she looks straight ahead not at he

Tall and tan
and young and lovely
the girl from Ipanema
goes walking
and when she passes
he smiles but she doesn’t see
she just doesn’t see

Olha que coisa mais linda,
mais cheia de graé§a
é‰ ela menina
que vem que passa
Num doce balané§o
caminho do mar

Moé§a do corpo dourado
do sol de Ipanema
O seu balané§ado
é mais que um poema
é‰ a coisa mais linda
que eu jé¡ vi passar

Ah, porque estou té£o sozinho
Ah, porque tudo e té£o triste
Ah, a beleza que existe
A beleza que né£o é sé³ minha
que também passa sozinha

Ah, se ela soubesse
que quando ela passa
O mundo sorrindo
se enche de graé§a
E fica mais lindo
por causa do amor

Look at this thing, most lovely
most graceful
It’s her, the girl
that comes, that passes
with a sweet swinging
walking to the sea

Girl of the golden body
from the sun of Ipanema
Your swaying
is more than a poem
It’s a thing more beautiful
than I have ever seen pass by

Ah, why am I so alone
Ah, why is everything so sad
The beauty that exists
The beauty that is not mine alone
that also passes by on its own

Ah, if she only knew
that when she passes
the world smiles
fills itself with grace
and remains more beautiful
because of love

There’s more: here’s a discussion comparing the legend of the writing of this song to the supposedly true story of its origins (I have no way to evaluate the veracity of any of this).

And here’s an interesting comparison of the two versions, along with a link to the Getz/Gilberto rendition.

[ADDENDUM: I didn’t have access to You Tube when I first wrote the post. But I do now. So here you are (there’s a fairly lengthy intro before the more familiar tune begins):

You mean, Lula, it’s not the fault of the Jews?

The New Neo Posted on by

Brazil’s President Lula de Silva has some insightful remarks on the world economic crisis:

This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who thought they knew everything and now show they know nothing,

Unlike Lula, who shows how very much he knows.

Racist? Nah, can’t be; Lula’s Brazilian, folks. Third-world country, you know. And besides:

When challenged about his claims, Lula said: “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker.

That’s probably a stranger statement, when you think about it, than Lula’s first one. Not only is it bizarre that Lula thinks not a single lender of subprime mortgages or derivatives trader or quant or anyone else mixed up in this mess might have been black, but after all, Lula is Brazilian, and Brazil has an enormous black population:

Brazil has the largest population of black origin outside of Africa with, in 2007, 7.4% classyfing themselves as preto (black skin color) and 42.3% as pardo (brown color). The latter classification is broad and encompasses Brazilians of mixed ancestry, including mulattos and caboclos, making the total 49.5%. The largest concentration of Afro-Brazilians is in the state of Bahia where over 80% of the people are descendants of Africans.

Are none of these people employed as a banker? In Bahia, for example? Or has Lula just not met any? Or, because they are black, would such people by definition be absolved of any wrongdoing (remember; only whites can be racist)?

As for Lula himself, I suppose he appears to be white (I’m not up on the finer points of these distinctions), although hardly blue-eved, and not a banker:

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Hannan: bloody well-spoken, sir

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday Daniel Hannan was just a backbench member of the European Parliament from South East England, probably known only to his constituents, some Conservative fans, and some Labor enemies. Today—although this may just be his obligatory Warholesque fifteen minutes of fame—he’s known to a lot more people than that, including me.

As Hannan describes in his blog, the cause of all the commotion was a little three-minute speech to the EU that “went viral” through You Tube and bloggers. As of now, the You Tube video has about nine hundred thousand views and 6,800 comments, and it’s only been posted there for two days.

In case you’ve missed it, here it is:

What’s the appeal? First of all, the relief of seeing true eloquence rather than false. Compare this to Obama’s much-praised oratory (we needn’t bother with Bush’s) and you’ll see the difference: wit, bite, pungency, and an emotional connection with the words being uttered. Hannan appears to be genuinely enraged rather than mouthing words of anger. And it’s all delivered in that exquisite British manner that is no less powerful for being tightly controlled.

But the words, and Hannan’s delivery, would mean nothing if they were merely clever or well-delivered. What struck a deep chord in his country and in this one—and, for all I know, around the world as well—is that he is saying what so many of us have yearned to hear said or to say ourselves, what we see as the unvarnished and plain truth (truth to power, by the way). Although he is speaking to the British Prime Minister, the parallels to our own possible fate under Obama are only too clear.

[NOTE: I heard that Hannan was going to be appearing on Sean Hannity’s show this evening and so I watched it. He was no less articulate in his extemporaneous answers to Hannity’s questions than he was in his speech, and no less commonsensical as well. Hear, hear!]

[NOTE II: The title of this post is not mine. It was one of the 6,800 comments on the video at You Tube.]

[NOTE III: It turns out that, astonishingly enough, Mr. Hannan was a somewhat tepid Obama supporter during the US election, and still hasn’t entirely given up on him. This is difficult to understand, since most of the US kudos for Hannan’s speech came from people who think he should have also delivered it to Obama.]

[NOTE IV: Hannan, an Oxford graduate, is only 37 years old. He was the youngest Britisher elected to the EP, back in 1999.]

Words matter: but not as much as liberals think they do

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been some relabeling going on in the Obama administration. The “Global War on Terror,” a term criticized by the Left as too simplistic and truculent, and on the Right as too general and nonspecific, has been rebranded.

The “solution” would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Read about one of the new terms and its rationale, according to Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano (and note that, while the Spiegel interviewer uses the term “Islamist terrorism,” Napolitano leaves the word “Islamist” out in her response):

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

The second and related relabeling effort is to use the term “overseas contingency operations” instead of “global war on terror.” It’s got a real ring, doesn’t it?

It’s not clear who’s at the bottom of this one (the article mentions allegations that it was the Office of Management and Budget, but the OMB denies this). But the term has been used for a while by “senior administration officials,” so there does seem to have been some sort of directive from the administration.

This is an example of language designed not only to be dull bureaucrateese, but to obfuscate, neuter, and hide. Does anyone, even native speakers of English (or perhaps especially native speakers of English), know what this phrase actually means? That, of course, is the point.

This has been the province of government for quite some time. But it seems to be accelerating in the Obama administration.

Strangely enough, I see some of its roots in the efforts of therapists to use less blaming language when working with clients and their families. However, families are not terrorists, and when they’re in therapy, they tend to be there because they actually want to change, at least at some level.

Here’s an example of how it works in therapy: if there’s a child who’s gotten into trouble and has been regarded as a bad seed and incorrigible, the therapist can give the family a message such as “he’s not bad, he’s sad.” This can stop a vicious and spiraling cycle of rage towards the child in question, and help the family to be more responsive to suggestions for setting limits and transforming the child’s behavior in an atmosphere less harshly punitive and more conducive to cooperation.

It’s not appropriate in all cases, of course, even with families. But it can work quite well in a situation in which a child has been acting up because he/she really is crying out for help to the adults in his/her life, and is getting nothing but angry condemnation back.

The key point is that therapeutic clients and terrorists are different (duh!). The latter have not come to us for help. And although it’s true that Islamicist terrorists are indeed mired in an honor-shame culture, and are sensitive to language and face-saving, the situation is not amenable to linguistic gymnastics (and although author Richard Landes is speaking of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in the following passage, he might just as well be speaking of the entire War on Islamicist Fundamentalism):

In this kind of war, negotiations will not work. The Palestinians cannot make any significant concessions to Israel without losing honor. Additionally, they view concessions by Israel as marks of weakness, as invitations to further violence, rather than as invitations to put an end to the war.

The idea that the administration’s linguistic changes will matter to anyone at all—except to draw laughter from the terrorists themselves, approval from the deluded pacifists of Europe and at home, and (I sincerely hope, just for the irony of the thing), anger from feminists who consider “man-caused” to be a sexist term—is a delusion.

The Obama administration doesn’t seem to get the concept of enemies who wish us dead. There really really are such people. And if you call them something nicer, and don’t label the war against them as what it actually is, you only earn their contempt, and their perception that it is you who are the weak horse.

And that’s a recipe for “man-made disaster.”

[ADDENDUM: Great minds think alike.]

College as re-education camp

The New Neo Posted on by

Please go here to learn about a chilling experiment in indoctrination recently embarked upon by faculty at the University of Delaware. Be sure to watch the You Tube videos, and if you want to see the details of the reading matter that was part of this program, take a look at this.

It’s just another example of the Orwellian transformation of our college campuses. A group that calls itself FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has been fighting the good fight against this sort of thing, and got involved in the Delaware episode. But it should come as no surprise that although the PC mind-control program is no longer in operation there, those who designed and implemented it are still employed by the university.

The private sector has become the Democratic politicians’ punching bag

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t make that line up. It’s an idea voiced by Daniel Henninger in this WSJ article. Henninger believes the disconnect between the majority of Democrats in Congress and the private sector has become profound, leading not only to the demonizing of major industries, corporations, and their executives (not to mention shortsighted bills of attainder such as the AIG bonus tax), but that it will ultimately hurt the economy.

Henninger also points out that “progressive” Democratic groups have—not surprisingly—begun to target those moderate Democrats who are standing up to oppose Obama’s budget. The existence of this thin blue line has predictably aroused their ire.

The Democratic party has now moved so far to the Left that its power is strongly in the hands of its most radical members. In their jubilation at finally being in control after all these years, they would like to crowd out any tempering influences.

However, they are ignoring the law of thirds (which I described several years ago, here). I hope it will be their undoing—that is, before their policies are the undoing of us all.