Month: June 2011

Coupons: Spending to Save

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

One typically American pastime I could never understand is couponing. People honestly seem to think that all these Groupons, CouponSurfers, etc. somehow end up saving them money instead of being one more way to spend on something they don’t really need. (Just to clarify, I have nothing against people spending money on junk they don’t need. It’s the self-delusion that is implicit in couponing that bothers me.) Now there is even a show on weird people who invest the time and the effort required for a full-time job on finding and clipping coupons only to fill their houses with mountains of junk they will never need. Money-wise, it would make a lot more sense to channel the energies they expend on figuring out how to “save” 20 cents on the twentieth box of detergent into looking for actual employment but coupon-lovers seem to be unaware of that.

Every week, my mailbox fills with coupon circulars from the neighborhood grocery stores. The waste of paper makes me livid, especially since I haven’t used a single coupon in my entire life. Food-wise, coupons make no sense for me because they are offered mostly on stuff that comes in cans and boxes and I prefer to eat fresh. In terms of shampoo, detergent and other similar products that coupons often cover, buying two bottles of shampoo to save 15 cents will save you absolutely no money. Human nature is such that the more we have, the more we waste. Having all that conditioner will make you use it a lot more often than if you had one little bottle and knew that you wouldn’t be able to buy a new one for a month.

Electronic couponing sites are even weirder than the paper version of coupons. What are the chances that I suddenly experience a strong desire to get a French manicure at a specific spa 40 miles from where I live, go to Groupon, and discover that if 15 more French manicure-lovers can be found in my area, we will all get $10 off the manicure at that spa? One can count on a coincidence of this kind maybe once in a lifetime. All the rest of purchases people make from such websites do not reflect any actual needs. What happens often is that people just come to such websites out of curiosity, find something that sounds kind of interesting, and get seduced into buying the product and the service just because it has the words “huge savings” attached to it.

Buying stuff you never planned to buy for a lower price that it normally has isn’t saving. It’s spending more to engage in a fantasy of being a virtuous, savings-oriented shopper. The only real way to save is not to buy. Throw out the coupon circular and try to see how long you can make the stuff you already have last.

P.S. Couponing enthusiasts always remind me of the following joke:

“I just saved a dollar.”

“How did you do that?”

“I didn’t manage to get on the bus, so I ran after it all the way to work.”

“Good for you! Next time, you can save $15.”

“How?”

“Just run after a cab.”

Blog Promotion Cards

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

So I just ordered business cards for this blog. People keep asking me about the blog (of course, they do since I can’t shut up about it), and I always have to write down the url on some crappy little pieces of paper. I have always been obsessed with the concept of business cards so I use any excuse to design a set.

Here is what I came up with.

The front:

And the back:

The point was to make it very dramatic, and I think that goal has been achieved. Cool, huh?

More From Innerarity on Time

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

The reason why I like the Spanish philosopher Daniel Innerarity is that he discusses all of the philosophical issues that are of interest to me (identity, tolerance, multi-cultiralism, progress) but without the doom-and-gloom attitude that other philosophers practice with such dedication. In Innerarity’s world, everything is good and can get even better if we try to make it so. Look, for example, how he responds to the tedious complaint about the scarcity of time in the world we live in:

The watch and the calendar are nothing other than instruments that provide is with mastery over time. They don’t rob us of our time, but help ensure we have it.

Innerarity reminds us of something that should be obvious but that we keep forgetting because of our love of blaming progress even as we put to use its benefits in order to formulate our complaints: people who live in a post-industrial society have a lot more free time than their ancestors who had no access to time-saving technology.

I find Innerarity’s position a lot more honest than that of the philosophers who paint apocalyptic scenarios and sigh over the sad fate of the downtrodden and the exploited as they sip expensive wine in their antique-filled studies furnished with the money they make from these apocalyptic treatises.

P.S. For those who are bored with my posts on Innerarity, I’m sorry, but I’m writing a conference talk about him and it’s easier for me to figure out what I’m going to say if I do it in the form of blog posts. Also, I think it’s unfair that so few people know of this philosopher’s work simply because he writes in Spanish. Spanish writers and thinkers deserve to be promoted and this is what I’m trying to do.

Brent Ghelfi’s Volk’s Shadow: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

One of the saddest legacies of the Cold War era is a wealth of cliche-ridden books about Russia whose authors exploit every sad stereotype about FSU countries in order to sell their books. I am horrified by Brent Ghelfi’s Volk’s Shadow whereas N.  loves it. Oddly enough, both of us agree entirely on the quality of Ghelfi’s writing, but our final interpretations differ drastically. Below I am going to elaborate on how this author’s writing method works. Attention: ALL quoted lines (“ ”) are taken from Ghelfi.

First, the author relies on a list of words to bring lots of Russian flavor to his creation:

MATRYOSHKA – a wooden nesting doll. A compulsory attribute of all Russian homes which is as sacred to a Russian as the American flag to a U.S. citizen. When Russians are unhappy about the state policy, they burn MATRYOSHKAS, not flags.

KONTRACTNIK – any non-conscript soldier in the Russian army, typically a corporal or a sergeant.  They can be identified by “bandanas, wraparound sunglasses, camouflage jackets with the sleeves ripped off, and tattooed prison muscles”. KONTRACTNIKS are primary targets for CHECHENS.

KINZHAL – a straight dagger

CHECHEN – a rough, ferocious highlander (but not nearly as hot as Duncan McLeod) armed with KINZHAL

ZINDAN – a Chechen mud pit, an instrument of torture for KONTRACTNIKS. However, it also serves as an educational institution to teach “philosophy, religion, global politics” to the most gifted     POWs.

CALL OF DUTY, the only non-Russian term in the list. It’s a shooter video game, probably played by Ghelfi’s kids, if not himself. The author apparently uses it to look up different weapons (MP5, Uzi, etc) to arm his characters. Then he makes them “fight to the last breath”, which is a signature cry of Russian Spetznaz (special force) in the game.

MIGALKA – a blue flashing light that can be placed on a car roof.

CHINOVNIK / APPARATCHIK – a ranked Russian official, typically corrupt. However, his corruption is not nearly as annoying to the Russian populace as his abuse of MIGALKA.

And then we come to the most important terms that organize the entire novel:

VODKA – a prime cause of everything that happens in Russia.

PALENKA – a low-quality, often poisonous VODKA produced in illegal distilleries which is favored by the protagonist. Apparently, it helps him to blend in with the atmosphere of “Moscow’s toxic violence”.

CRUDE OIL – a raw material that, on the one hand, is an indispensible source of energy for the West Europe, and on the other, a crucial ingredient for PALENKA. Correspondingly, whoever has oil controls all what happens in Russia and well beyond its borders (see PUTIN).

PUTIN – the main APPARATCHIK in Russia who “has earned a reputation for being everywhere at once, straddling the ocean, filling the sky, just like Stalin”. PUTIN and his downsized, temporary incarnation (called MEDVEDEV) seized control over Russian oil companies. In doing so, PUTIN jailed KHODORKOVSKY, an oil tycoon, who, according to his words, was only guilty of one thing that all Russians used to do in mid-1990s: getting rich or die trying.

Step two of creating a novel based in Russia that American readers will like: make up a ludicrously stupid plot and spice it up with the words from the list above. See all those MATRYOSHKAS, BABUSHKAS selling PALENKA, and APPARATCHIKS with MIGALKAS? Now only an idiot could doubt we are in Russia, right?

Then comes the final, crucial ingredient: make sure the whole book is bound with at least one gruesome, exquisitely nauseating cliché on every page. The characters dwell in buildings “made of steel, brick, and mortar laced with blood”. When they want to conceal something, they hide (figuratively, of course) behind “wall of lies sealed with the mortar of half-truths”.  A character’s “granite features” and “icy gaze” signify that he means very (very) serious business. When a female is consumed by “the flame of passion”, her eyes catch “smoldering fire”. A male gangster, on the other hand, has eyes that are “violent under bushy brows, roiling like the stormy Caspian Sea at the hard edge of land in his hometown of Baku”.

Depending on whom they are dealing with, the characters exchange either “sticky embraces” or “crushing grips.” When they go outside, the weather is either “steaming hot” or “bone-chilling cold”. Mind you, not all people in the book are evil: for instance, the main female character “has fulfilled the promise suggested by the noblest moments of her youth”.

My husband is a man of refined literary taste who truly believes that Ghelfi does all of that on purpose: laughable plot, cardboard characters, and the language that can’t possibly pass for English. I agree: if you recognize and love the works of kitsch art, you will enjoy Ghelfi tremendously. Unfortunately, my sense of humor does not stretch that far because I am to endure this kind of writing style when grading the numerous essays of my students. For me, reading Ghelfi is like trying to “hold back an ocean of raw sewage with my bare hands”.

Daniel Innerarity on Time and the Other

~ Clarissa ~ 18 Comments

With the loss of the significance of the territory, space has been replaced by time as the central concept in human conflicts. Nowadays, strangers are not those who live far away but those who live in a different epoch. Margins are not a territorial category but a temporal one. . . The real inhabitant of the “provinces” . . . or of the “periphery” is a narcissist of his own calendar.

– Ethics of Hospitality. (Translation is mine.)

This is just brilliant, people. This Spanish philosopher – who deserves to be a lot more widely known than he is – has come up with the perfect definition of what the Other is today. Ethnic conflicts that are based on disputes of territory are moving into the past. We are seeing more and more ethnic tensions that are based on the differences of calendar. People of the post-industrial, feminist, secular societies and the inhabitants of the feudal, patriarchal, fundamentalist cultures begin to clash more and more often in the countries of Western Europe and North America.

This is one of the reasons why the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians cannot be resolved by Israel withdrawing to pre-1967 borders. You can settle the territorial aspect of the conflict but that will do nothing for reconciling the temporal contradictions between a culture that has moved (albeit not without its problems) into the modern era and one that has not.

Save Christina Stead’s House!

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

The house you see in the picture belonged to the family of Australia’s great writer Christina Stead. It is sad that this talented writer isn’t more widely known outside of Australia. It is even sadder that Australia doesn’t seem to value Stead’s legacy as much as it should:

Christina Stead’s Historic Watsons Bay house is a draft heritage item but is under threat by a plan to add modern extensions and excavate the historic garden which inspired The Man Who Loved Children. In a matter of months if will be listed by the NSW Government but this plan could go through before then.

Now Australian booklovers are asking us to help them protect this historic house:

Anyone who’s tramped the streets of London enjoying those little blue plaques celebrating British literary and cultural history knows what a tourism bonus these beloved literary shrines are – but here in Australia you’re more likely to find a statue of a footballer than you are to find any trace of our literary heritage.  It is a matter of national shame that we did not save the house of our only Nobel prize winner Patrick White, so let’s not have it happen again with another of our great writers, eh?

This is where you go to find more information and sign the petition.

See my review of Stead’s great novel The Man Who Loved Children here. This has been one of my most popular posts of all times.

Sperm and Womb Differ. Get Over It.

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Many people seem to forget that feminism is not aimed at denying the physiological differences between men and women. Nobody in their right mind can argue that male and female bodies are the same. It’s the social, economic, legal and political inequalities that feminism addresses and combats. Recognizing that, to give an example, women menstruate and men don’t is not sexist. It just recognizes a fact of objective reality.

The reason why I just gave this little explanation on what feminism actually does is the following post which bandies about the word “sexism” without any understanding what sexism entails:

I wrote about Flores-Villar v. United States last year. The Times summarizes the state of the law in 1974, when Ruben Flores-Villar was born: “Children born outside the country to an unmarried American parent are considered American citizens at birth if the parent lived in the United States before the child was born. For a mother, the required period of residence is one year. For a father, it is 10 years, five of them after he turns 14. Fathers must also prove parenthood and pledge to support the child.”

The case involves Ruben Flores-Villar, whose father — but not mother — is an American. Ruben was born in Mexico and moved to the US when he was two months old. Ruben has been declared an “illegal immigrant” and deported to Mexico. Ruben’s father was sixteen years old when Ruben was born, and so the “five of them after he turns 14″ provision of the law was impossible to meet.

(It’s important to note that immigration law was altered in the 1980s; the current law is still sexist and should be fixed, but the discrepancy is not as large as it was when Ruben was born.)

The reason why there is such a difference in how mothers and father are treated under this law is obvious. It’s the same reason why women who donate eggs get paid huge sums of money while men who donate sperm get nothing. Contributing sperm versus contributing an egg + carrying the fetus to term + giving birth to the baby while putting your own health and sometimes life at risk are not equal. They are unequal not because society is sexist but because nature made it so.

Sexist societies always deny the value of fatherhood. They present everything that has to do with child-rearing as an exclusively female area of interest and expertise. Mass media present men as inept fathers who are always in need of being guided by women to whom parenting skills come “naturally.” This sexist system ends up hurting everybody.

The above-mentioned law is not about fatherhood, however. It’s obviously aimed at avoiding the creation of a black market which will be inundated with sperm for sale the second these restrictions are lowered.

Weiner Lied!

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Are this journalist and I surrounded by the same Americans?

The public outrage has stemmed in my opinion not from Weiner’s tweets, but his deception. Rep. Weiner lied to reporters, instructed others to lie and went so far as to invent a completely fallacious story that his Blackberry and Twitter account were hacked.

Seriously? This whole brouhaha came about just because Weiner lied about who sent his tweets? That’s truly an egregious lie. In a country that is passionately dedicated to hold its politicians to a high standard of truthfulness, it is no doubt that Weiner has been punished. Look what we did to the guy who told us that whopper about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the same guy, if you remember, who said,

By far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum.

And his campaign promised that,

Governor Bush’s income tax cuts will benefit all Americans, but they are especially focused on low and moderate income families.

When it turned out that, in reality, the top 20% of earners received 69% of Bush’s tax cuts, we surely held him accountable for lying about something this important.

For those with a short-term memory loss of Orwellian nature, I want to offer a little reminder of how the entire presidential campaign of 2004was conducted by the progressives under the slogan “Bush Lied!” Remember the bumper stickers, the articles, the websites? If you do, then you’ve got to remember that the voters did not care. In 2000, it was very difficult for Bush to hustle up a win. In 2004 – after the lies – he won fair and square.

So one politician lies and says,

We found the weapons of mass destruction.

And another politician lies about sending naked pictures of himself. The latter is forced to resign, while the former is elected to a second term as president. And there are still people who think that it’s the deception that the voters care about? For the information about what really bugs the voters, please see my preceding post.

P.S. For those who want to start the debate along the lines of “Bush didn’t lie, he was just misinformed”, this argument is as convincing as the argument that Weiner had no idea how Twitter worked, so technically he didn’t lie. Before such arguments are made on my blog, familiarize yourselves with the issue. For example, here and here.

Daniel Innerarity on Human Dignity

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Please remember the name of Daniel Innerarity, one of Spain’s leading philosophers of our time. I am preparing a conference talk based on his work and will be sharing some of Innerarity’s ideas (as well as my ideas on his ideas) with you on my blog. Spanish philosophers (artists, scientists, writers, etc.) find it quite difficult to make themselves known outside of their country even when their work is definitely worthy of being widely known. Innerarity is a philosopher who definitely deserves being read but it is hard to find his books in North America even in the original, let alone in an English translation.

The translations of all the quotes will be mine. I warn you that I don’t translate word for word. My translations always sacrifice the similarity of the form to the original text in favor of remaining faithful to the content.

So here is what Innerarity has to say about chance and human dignity in his book Ethics of Hospitality:

The fact that all of us get born as a result of actions whose outcome is more or less uncertain serves as a guarantee of our human dignity. It is as if not being intentionally created by anybody gave us the right to escape anybody’s absolute domination in the course of our lives.

It is very impressive that Innerarity is not afraid of talking about chance and eventuality in his work. Fatalism is one of the qualities that, in the mythology of national character, has been associated with the Spaniards. Consequently, anybody from Spain who wanted to pass for a serious thinker had to be very careful not to play into this myth. However, after a while, trying studiously not to be what your national mythology expects you to be becomes quite limiting. Innerarity overcomes the fear of appearing old-fashioned and nationalistic in order to take his ideas in the direction he needs.

Handbags

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

This is a Birkin bag that costs $280,000. Notice that you either have to hold the straps in your hand (which makes it impossible to use that hand to hold a cell phone, blog, take pictures, etc. Or, you have to push the straps up and hold the bag in the crook of your elbow, which is also quite uncomfortable. $280,000, people. And maybe something is wrong with my aesthetic perceptions, but I find it quite ugly.

And this is a bag I just bought from an artisan in Florida. It’s hand-made and one of a kind. It also has a chain that allows you to wear it over the shoulder.

This bag costs 7,000 times less than the Birkin you can see on the picture above. In my opinion, it is about 7000 times more beautiful than the crocodile monstrosity.

Will I have to end every one of my posts with the “Why are people stupid” query?