Big Brother and Petite Brothers

I am amazed that so many people think that mainly the NSA is spying on them. How many foreign governments are also spying on us, I wonder. The technology exists and the temptation exists and the money is always there for that kind of things.
Of course, it is not Big Brother that is the most annoyuing, it is all the businesses that buy information about you and put you in a category to target. We don't want the government to spy on us, but every bank or business or geek is welcome to spy on us. Does it make sense?
Based on my age, I get every week a proposition to get buried lavishly, to buy a handy wheelchair and take care of my deafness and my life insurance. I am not targetted for the things I like: new dresses, antiques, books, elegant shoes, pralines, good wines, cheese and expensive perfume. Petite Brother is persistent, but stupid.
If I google "Russian stove" because I don't understand the description of a huge stove  in a book, I receive propositions to buy a Russian stove for a whole week. Nobody in their right mind would buy a big stove in Savannah, Georgia: it is too hot out here. How the ads moguls have the guts to say that "targetting works" is beyond me. I look once at a site like Overstock, and they "target" my Google page for several weeks. It makes me smile. I am an avid reader, I look at hundreds of things I am curious about, every week. I don't want them.

We have a tradition of being afraid of Big Brother, and it is enhanced by the fact that the Press will naturally report more on Federal excesses than on local excesses: it gives them more audience.
But frankly, who is most annoying? Who writes 100 pages instructions for a building permit? Who imposes the color of your house? Who decides that your grass should be no more than 7 inchers high? Who prevents you to grow vegetables in your frontyard? Who decides what you should recycle or not? Who sells lottery tickets to pay for education? We do know, isn't it,  that the lottery is a secret tax on the poor? It is all done by all the Petite Brothers around you,

Culture has us fighting Big Brother, but it is the Petite Brothers all over America who pull the carpet under your feet.

Viva Walmart! Down with Duke!

I love Walmart. Sure enough, for its prices, but also because of the jobs it produces. You should have seen the opening week of the last Walmart here in Savannah: every employee was smiling. Many of the new employees had been looking for a job for a long time. I liked these smiles: I knew what they meant. I also liked the fact that Walmart carried the products of a nearby Alabama delicatessen. Their products were not sold here in summer because that small producer could not afford to buy refrigerated trucks. Now they got the strength of Walmart behind them. Good for them.
What I am less fond of is Walmart CEO Mike Duke. He kept the mentality of his mentors.
During the Cold War, bribery was a way of life, the cost of doing business abroad. I still remember how Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was led to abdicate after her husband accepted a million-dollar-bribe from the Lockheed Corporation. The minds were starting to change, not only in the US, but in many countries, realizing that paying bribes abroad was counter-productive. For Pete's sake, even the Russians signed the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention! Lobbying to water down our anti-bribery legislation is a sign of old age, and I'm polite about this (see details in the Washington Post).
The same Mike Duke, I heard, refused to follow the politics of McDonald who fights the terrible conditions met by pregnant pigs. There is no need to torture pigs, and the fight serves McDonald image. Burger King has similar pledges. See, the end of the Cold War: no bribery, cage free: signs of progress. Wake up, Walmart! Don't linger in past ideologies!

Nowadays, you need not only to sell cheap, you need an image. The image of Duke-Walmart is terrible.
Time for fresh air.

The Narcissist Generation

I should have seen it coming. The first time I saw a mobile phone, about twenty five years ago, I was very impressed: mobile phones were not cellular back then, they came with a heavy suitcase and looked like the army field phones. A person with a phone like this must have an important job and be able to answer in an emergency. That is what I thought.
A middle aged man sitting next to me at the airport took a heavy phone out of his case, deployed a five feet antenna and said:
“I am at the airport. The plane is on time.”
I guess I had expected 007, I felt deflated.
Similarly, when my friend Mr. Dulac, who had a small TV and electronic shop in the French town of Angouleme, installed a car phone for the first time, it was for a man who wanted to call his wife to tell her to open the garage door when he came home.
Nowadays when I go to the grocery store, one person out of three is on their cell phone. I roll my cart next to them, and what do they say?
“I am at Wal-Mart”, or “I am at Kroger’s” or they say: “I think that I’ll buy an Iceberg salad.”
Then they go home and they twitter the same message.
What kills me is that I do not understand whom they are talking to. Does one third of the country talk to the ten percent unemployed people we have? It does not make statistical sense. Who has the time to listen to this incessant chatter and to read all these Twitter and Facebook messages? What do these people DO?
What kind of friends does this new generation have? All my friends work. They remodel houses, they teach, they are ex-military going back to school, they pave roads, they invest, they write books. Even if they do not have a job, they all work. Of course all of them, including my ex-students, are over forty years old.
I think that if I called any of them to say that I am at the grocery store and considering, God forbid, buying an Iceberg salad, they would have me committed.

Make your own blessing

There is a fable that all French kids have to know, about an old gardener that everybody mocks because he is planting trees (at his age!)and will not benefit of their shadow; the old man replies that he tastes today the pleasure of planting.
My friend Anne-Marie Costrini is tasting today the pleasure of graduating as a Paralegal. You see her surrounded by her family in the middle of this picture taken by our local television WTOC. She is 91 years old. Anne-Marie still has a job; she is an A student and enjoys studying: she plans to go on and become a lawyer (you can see more about her here
So, if you think that it is too late for anything, shame on you!