What it means to forget

by | Feb 23, 2010 | Off topic

Yesterday, a British police dog handler was found guilty of animal cruelty after leaving his two Alsatians in the back of a boiling car. His defence? He forgot they were there.

British tabloid, the Sun is up in arms. Its headline: “Let off…Cop who left dogs to bake.” For some bizarre reason, its website has pictures from the RSPCA of each of the dead dogs.

How can someone leave two large dogs in a car by mistake? Quite easily. Because parents – doting and otherwise competent parents – do the same thing with their children more often than you’d like to think. And if the weather is hot (or cold) enough, the children die:

An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.

Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

(more…)

The Tea Party movement is stupid: it’s official

by | Feb 23, 2010 | Influence and networks, North America

Ali Rizvi has a delicious piece in the Huffington Post, containing such delights as this:

What was until recently a difference in ideology has devolved, in a little over a decade, into a difference in intellect … By painting educated, well-earning, science-embracing, articulate, introspective, intellectual citizens as un-American, the Republican party has built an entire base made up of those who not only don’t possess these attributes, but enthusiastically abhor those who do. Not only are these factions now split along lines of educational achievement, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious values, but most significantly, along an “intellectual divide”.

And this:

It’s one thing to be ignorant. It’s another to take pride in it. And it’s quite another to venture beyond that into full-blown stupidity. It’s not often that you get to use the word “stupidity” in a non-ad hominem context, but now — with the majority of Republicans believing Obama is a socialist without having any idea what socialism is, over a third believing he is foreign-born, and featured Tea Party speakers calling for the hanging of a US senator — it’s becoming harder and harder to euphemize some of things we’re witnessing as anything but.

Finally, the answer to Kissinger’s question

by | Feb 22, 2010 | Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia

Proving again why he should be on everyone’s must-read list of foreign policy blogs, the Economist’s Charlemagne has news of even more clamouring from national governments on the need for Cathy Ashton to assert greater independence from the European Commission (and in particular from Jose Manuel Barroso).

Last week, the trouble started again after “news broke that Mr Barroso had pre-empted the creation of the new European External Action Service, and chosen the next EU ambassador in Washington”:

The incumbent is a former Irish prime minister, John Bruton, and plenty of EU politicians would like to see a similar heavyweight, political figure get the job. Instead, Mr Barroso has chosen a career Brussels official from his native Portugal, João Vale de Almeida (who was until a few months ago the head of Mr Barroso’s private office). In theory the appointment was made under the old rules, which operated before the Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1st 2009, when overseas missions of the EU were delegations of the European Commission. In practice, most if not all foreign ministers found out about the appointment only very recently, and they are hopping, because they were not consulted.

Late on Sunday, as EU foreign ministers started to arrive for the monthly meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, news started to emerge that Carl Bildt (“arguably the most serious and heavyweight foreign minister in the EU, thanks to years of international experience and a stint as prime minister of his country”) had written formally to Cathy Ashton – demanding “a discussion of how Mr Vale de Almeida came to be nominated for the EU’s most senior overseas post”:

Mr Bildt’s letter, dated February 19th, asks Lady Ashton how the nomination of Mr Vale de Almeida came about, without applying the very principles governing such appointments which are currently the subject of discussion among the 27’s EU ambassadors. The letter also seeks clarification about the impression that the nomination was made without Lady Ashton playing the leading role set out for her in the Lisbon Treaty.

So what happens now?

Is there any prospect of Mr Vale de Almeida’s appointment being reversed? I must admit, I do not see how that can happen without causing a scandal that leaves the EU worse off. The EU’s biggest diplomatic partners, from America to China or Russia, are already slack jawed with amazement at the squabbling that has broken out since the Lisbon Treaty came into force. Yet Mr Bildt is not alone in his desire for answers, I am told. Other foreign ministers are incredulous about the way this appointment has been handled.

Well, at least we finally know the answer to Kissinger’s question about who to pick up the phone to when he wants something done. Beijing, Brasilia or Delhi.