The Tin Lizard

Christmas Massacre In McLean Virginia

It's been a few years since those blow-up plastic outdoor holiday decorations reached their zenith of popularity.  If you live in the U.S., you know the type; at this time of year, of course, giant Santas or snowmen, lit from the inside, are commonly seen.   Now, although they're falling out of favor  (Did too many of them spring leaks?  Were they too-tempting targets for kids with BB guns?), some people still have them. 

One of the interesting things about them (if there are any) is that evidently it's recommended that they be allowed to go flat overnight.  I don't know if that's to avoid having them explode, or just to save a little on the electric bill. 

In any event, it creates some interesting sights on our early morning walks.  Deflation is ... well, deflating!  It's a downer.  A few days ago, we observed a Santa flat on his face on the sidewalk in front of someone's front door.  It looked as if the poor old feller had come for an early visit, and either had had a heart attack, or maybe just was stone drunk and sleeping it off.

Worse yet, though, was the tableau below.  A Christmas massacre! Obviously someone had mowed down an entire family of Santa, elves, snowmen, or what-have-you. 

It's interesting to speculate on who might have committed this heinous crime.  Could it have been a rabidly radical Muslim, or equally zealous atheist?  No, methinks, if the motivation were religious, it must have been one of those traditional Christians who resents seeing Jesus displaced by Santa Claus and snowmen.   Or - perhaps most likely - it was just a person offended by the in-your-face tawdriness of these puffy seasonal figures. 

Historical Enigma - Armenians In Turkey

Beginning in 1915, " 'a history-shifting number of Armenians' were killed or driven out of the dying Ottoman Empire."  That's a quote from the Washington Post review of a new book, "There Was And There Was Not," by Meline Toumani.   And that simple phrase is pretty much the sum of facts on which everyone who relates to or studies that period, place, and time can agree without much controversy.

Controversy abounds, though, mostly among modern-day Turks and Armenians concerning whether the killing and expulsions were the result of a purposeful and intentional policy of the then-regnant government, or an unplanned explosion of ethnic (and religious!) prejudices [similar perhaps to that between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda] that was enabled by failing government authority as the Ottoman Empire dissolved.   The Armenian diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere has had considerable success in creating the view that a genocide occurred but the real facts remain unclear.

Here, I would note that there are any number of ethnic diasporas in the U.S., or sometimes in Europe, who have tended to make unmitigated hatred of some group in "the old country" the centerpiece of their national identity as Americo-whatevers.    Separated from the homeland, too often the tales, however true they are at inception, tend to get exaggerated, evil tends to get attributed to an entire people or ethnic grooup, and over time, the flame of hatred is kept burning brightly in diaspora far beyond the point when people in the old country have moved on.  This general proposition can be applied to Armenians, certainly, but also to Ukrainians, Cubans, Kurds, and others. 

Back to the book.  According to the review, author Meline Toumani, who is of Armenian ancestry and had been steeped in the anti-Turkish hatred purveyed by Armenians over the past century, has reached the conclusion that in this dispute, the most important thing is to move beyond historical hatreds. 

If so, that makes it a book I want to read.  It's time for a more nuanced light of greater understanding and humanitarianism to be shone, not perhaps so much on what actually happened in 1915 (though that would be important too), as on what is, or should be happening now, regardless of the facts. 

Square - Could Be More Customer-Friendly

At Christmas  time I like to buy unique handcrafted gifts when possible, so I end up dealing with a lot of craftsmen and artisans.

This year, it seems  nearly all of them are using a payment system called "square." It allows them to accept credit cards and process them through their cell phones.    It must be fairly cheap, too, given that nearly everybody is using it.

This is not a new system (there are several others) but one wrinkle is that you can receive a receipt by e-mail. The system will figure out your e-mail address from your credit card. If you don't consider that a privacy issue, you might think of it as convenient.  I did. And sure enough, within seconds a message arrived on my cell phone e-mail.  Simple, quick, and save a tree, what's not to like?

Just this:  It's not a receipt, not to me. It tells you a charge was made to your card. It provides a date and a name (of the artisan). But what is not provided is an address, a phone number, a description of what was purchased, or any itemization.  Instead, though, you do get a little button to click so you can tell (someone - but who?) how you liked the process of making this purchase.  More like a ploy for Square to obtain your e-mail, it seems to me.

So, pretty worthless. If small businesses find Square handy, I'm all for it, but I'll take the paper receipt in future, please.

Food Fight! US Squares Off Against EU

Anthony Faiola, in a Washington Post feature item about a proposed US-EU trade agreement, raises a lot of the classic points of dispute between the U.S. and Europe about food sources  ("A trade deal that many Europeans can't stomach").

It's a complex issue, with elements of gastronomy, trade, national pride, and even local politics.

On the food issue per se, I have to side with the Europeans regarding quality.  The American megacorporations that represent probably 95% of what most people think of as "farming" these days have done a great job of producing huge quantities of foodstuffs cheaply.  In their worldview, food is a commodity, and one chicken, egg, or parnsip is pretty much like the next.  And because Americans by and large were indifferent to food in the 1950s and 60s when all the consolidation was taking place, we pretty much acquiesced in that trend. 

Thus on this side of the Atlantic, those who value a more intricate eating experience are fighting a rear-guard action to claim back ground, via organic food movements, farmers' markets, and opposition to genetically modified foods.

In Europe, by contrast, more of a family-farm mentality remains; they hope to keep what they haven't lost yet.  "Yet" is important, because it's hard to imagine, in today's world, that they can stave off industrialization of the foodstream forever.  Supermarkets have made inroads in the European retail sector, and food grown or raised on an industrial scale would seem to be the norm as populations worldwide continue to grow (albeit more slowly in Europe).

Ultimately, I think the classic European culture (represented by M. Cabernet in the referenced article) will give way.  It will survive, surely, as it has survived, and even taken new root, in the U.S.  But a period of adjustment in Europe is seemingly inevitable, with or without a new US-EU trade agreement.

Meanwhile, on the trade side, it would seem that all the arguments are in favor of the new proposal.   Free (or free-er) trade has been the watchword, the stated goal, among north-Atlantic allies for years, but the concept has faced many obstacles as forces of protectionism have remained stronger - on both sides - than logic would predict.  But EU officials and European nations' food producers will need to figure out what they're really afraid of.   If Germans, Spaniards, and Romanians are all so passionately devoted to real farm-raised, free-range chickens, then surely no one will buy those American factory-bred chicken breasts.   The real fear seems to be of offering alternates that may be more attractive to many.

The process of consolidation and mass-marketing, whether in food production, homebuilding, or wireless service, isn't always pretty, and it doesn't always produce the best quality.  But continuing population growth makes it inescapable.