T P O

T   P   O
The Patient Ox (aka Hénock Gugsa)

G r e e t i n g s !

** TPO **
A personal blog with diverse topicality and multiple interests!


On the menu ... politics, music, poetry, and other good stuff.
There is humor, but there is blunt seriousness here as well!


Parfois, on parle français ici aussi. Je suis un francophile .... Bienvenue à tous!

* Your comments and evaluations are appreciated ! *

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Inequality Map - by David Brooks




The Inequality Map
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By DAVID BROOKS
Op-Ed Columnist / NY Times
November 10, 2011

Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

The intellectual, cultural and scientific findings that land on the columnist’s desk nearly every day.

This is an excellent question. I will provide you with a guide to the American inequality map to help you avoid embarrassment.

Academic inequality is socially acceptable. It is perfectly fine to demonstrate that you are in the academic top 1 percent by wearing a Princeton, Harvard or Stanford sweatshirt.

Ancestor inequality is not socially acceptable. It is not permissible to go around bragging that your family came over on the Mayflower and that you are descended from generations of Throgmorton-Winthrops who bequeathed a legacy of good breeding and fine manners.

Fitness inequality is acceptable. It is perfectly fine to wear tight workout sweats to show the world that pilates have given you buns of steel. These sorts of displays are welcomed as evidence of your commendable self-discipline and reproductive merit.

Moral fitness inequality is unacceptable. It is out of bounds to boast of your superior chastity, integrity, honor or honesty. Instead, one must respect the fact that we are all morally equal, though our behavior and ethical tastes may differ.

Sports inequality is acceptable. It is normal to wear a Yankees jersey, an L.S.U. T-shirt or the emblem of any big budget team. The fact that your favorite sports franchise regularly grounds opponents into dust is a signal of your overall prowess.

Church inequality is unacceptable. It would be uncouth to wear a Baptist or Catholic or Jewish jersey to signal that people of your faith are closer to God. It is wrong to look down on other faiths on the grounds that their creeds are erroneous.

Income inequality is acceptable. If you are a star baseball player, it is socially acceptable to sell your services for $25 million per year (after all, you have to do what’s best for your family). If you are a star C.E.O., it’s no longer quite polite to receive an $18 million compensation package, but everybody who can still does it

Spending inequality is less acceptable. If you make $1 billion, it helps to go to work in jeans and black T-shirts. It helps to live in Omaha and eat in diners. If you make $200,000 a year, it is acceptable to spend money on any room previously used by servants, like the kitchen, but it is vulgar to spend on any adult toy that might give superficial pleasure, like a Maserati.

Technological inequality is acceptable. If you are the sort of person who understands the latest hardware and software advances, who knows the latest apps, it is acceptable to lord your superior connoisseurship over the aged relics who do not understand these things.

Cultural inequality is unacceptable. If you are the sort of person who attends opera or enjoys Ibsen plays, it is not acceptable to believe that you have a more refined sensibility than people who like Lady Gaga, Ke$ha or graffiti.

Status inequality is acceptable for college teachers. Universities exist within a finely gradated status structure, with certain schools like Brown clearly more elite than other schools. University departments are carefully ranked and compete for superiority.

Status inequality is unacceptable for high school teachers. Teachers at this level strongly resist being ranked. It would be loathsome to have one’s department competing with other departments in nearby schools.

Beer inequality is on the way down. There used to be a high status difference between microbrews and regular old Budweiser. In academic jargon, beer had a high Gini Coefficient. But as microbrews went mainstream, these status differences diminished.

Cupcake inequality is on the way up. People will stand for hours outside of gourmet cupcake stores even though there are other adequate cupcakes on offer with no waiting at nearby Safeways.

Travel inequality is acceptable. It is perfectly normal to have separate check-in lines and boarding procedures for airline patrons who have achieved Gold, Platinum, Double Ruby or Sun God status.

Supermarket inequality is unacceptable. It would not be permissible to have separate checkout lines at the grocery store for obese frequent buyers who consume a lot of Twinkies.

Jock inequality is unacceptable if your kid is an average performer on his or her youth soccer team. If your kid is a star, then his or her accomplishments validate your entire existence.

Vocation inequality is acceptable so long as you don’t talk about it. Surgeons have more prestige than valet parkers, but we do not acknowledge this. On the other hand, ethnic inequality — believing one group is better than another — is unacceptable (this is one of our culture’s highest achievements).

Dear visitor, we are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other. Have a nice stay. 


Friday, November 11, 2011

The Yogurt Fly - by Hénock Gugsa



THE YOGURT FLY
(የ  እርጐ  ዝንብ )
--------------
by Hénock Gugsa ©
 
A while back, I was sitting at a café with an old school friend ... drinking coffee and just shooting the breeze ... having a wonderful and jovial conversation.  We had begun doing this as a weekly ritual.  My friend is fully retired, and I am effectively semi-retired, and anyway we both agree that Facebook somehow just is not enough for old folks like us.  Interfacing on the computer cannot match actual face-to-face interaction between friends.  But sometimes, this rare luxury is spoiled by the appearance on the scene of some unwanted persons.  There are indeed such people out there who just drop in uninvited and insert themselves in private conversations. There is no rhyme or reason (or should I say excuse) for spoiling the good ambiance of a favorite café.  In Ethiopia, such people are, not unkindly, and collectively labelled: Yogurt fly.

The common garden-variety picnic ant has nothing on the pesky and ugly green fly of great infamy.  Even its Latin name gives one pause: Calliphora  Vomitoria! ....  But, some people simply refer to it as a green-bottle-fly ... an innocuous and nonsensical appellation!

Literally-descriptive Ethiopians, on the other hand, named this terrorist insect: “yogurt fly” (የ እርጐ ዝንብ ) ... because of what it does.  A person may just be getting ready to enjoy a glass of yogurt or some specially-prepared milkshake.  Then out of nowhere and with great and malicious speed, the fly appears and just literally dives into the delicacy in much the same manner as a kamikaze pilot. There is no escaping this fly!  And after it has landed on the yogurt and is feasting with spiteful greed, there is not much else to do but to dispose of the yogurt in disgust and frustration.

Understandably, such flies are despised, and people who behave like them are treated likewise as well.  They are avoided with passion and soon become friend-less.  It is true that butt-in-skis and busy-bodies are everywhere, but we patiently tolerate and cope with their behavior.  I suppose there is nothing else one can do with such people.

In old and ever-wise Ethiopia, when a child behaves in a manner akin to a yogurt fly, he is right away given that nickname.  And it will stick unless the child takes the reprimand to heart and shirks his bad ways (manners) once and for all!  Such shaming  is actually very effective psychologically, and I wish it were practiced more here!