We’ve had some difficult challenges recently, so this week’s assignment is easy and pleasant. All you have to do is get yourself a

FLOWER.

That’s all. Get a (new) flower, be it cut, potted, growing out of a cactus, etc. Just as long as it’s fresh and alive, we are good. Spend some time with the flower every day. Touching it,  caressing it, observing it closely. I promise that you will discover very interesting things if you look closely at a flower.

I’m getting myself a tulip because it’s the most spring-like flower I can think of.

At the gym (where I now spend more time than at home) I discovered that the popularity of TV shows where a severe and condescending person with a British or Australian accent chastises hapless Americans and teaches them how to run their restaurant, bakery, hairdressing salon, spa, or pizza joint has not diminished. Just the opposite, these shows are mushrooming.

A staple of such shows is the moment when an American says something very American (like, “I just wanted closure”) and the strict Brit/Aussie clamps down on this outpouring with “I don’t believe in closure. You need to get over this.”

Every American business owner in these shows is losing business and facing bankruptcy because of an emotional issue he or she is experiencing. The severe Brit / Aussie humiliates and scolds the business owner and gets him/her to renounce the inconvenient emotion. This is done in a signally cruel and insensitive way.

These shows are an exercise in collective self-chastisement using a symbolic (as opposed to a real) outsider who is helping to keep a tight rein on people’s emotions. I’m not surprised they proliferate at the time of economic crisis. The lesson each such show strives to teach is that there is no place for sentimentality or emotion in business. The collective psyche has decided that sentimentality is to blame for the crisis and is castigating itself for it.

Do you remember an NYTimes article by the Russian dissident Navalny that I discussed on the blog the other day?

Navalny is now being accused in Russia of being a CIA agent. His statements were edited to make it seem like he is some sort of a spy. It’s very easy nowadays to edit a recording where one says something like, “Last night I had a nightmare that I’m a CIA spy” into “I’m a CIA spy.”

Any statements criticizing the regime are now declared extremist and people making them are accused of being American spies.

Putin is now in the perfect situation of somebody who can’t be criticized for anything he does because any dissident automatically turns into a spy.

Doesn’t this all sound familiar?

McCain said that Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. And he’s absolutely right.

People keep repeating that such statements will antagonize the Russians. This betrays a complete ignorance if what’s happening in Russia.

The Russians are already antagonized to the extreme. Not by anything that Americans did or said but simply because they are in need of an enemy to hate. Nobody has invented a better way of reinforcing a weak national identity than by a collective hatred of a real or imaginary enemy.

People who refuse to see that the origins of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine lie in Russia and Ukraine and not in the US are buying into Putin’s propaganda.

A Facebook friend posted the following:

 

The funny thing is that this friend is a teacher.

. . . but then I met Judith Leiber’s handbags.

Just look at the asparagus one. Or the potted plant. Or the fan.

Nothing is more potentially disturbing than a Soviet person who’d spent a significant chunk of his or her life studying “Scientific Atheism” but then suddenly found religion.

“I’ve been listening to this series of lectures,” my aunt tells me, “where a scholar proves scientifically that Orthodox Christianity is vastly superior to all other religions.”

“Aunt, the only thing that might somewhat redeem this statement is if you tell me that the scholar in question is an atheist,” I respond.

“No, he’s an Orthodox Christian,” she says earnestly.

“Isn’t that a little suspect?”

“Oh no, he uses a scientific method,” my aunt explains. “For instance, everybody thinks that Buddhists are so nice, but did you know that they engage in human sacrifices?”

After this statement, all I can do is withdraw myself from the conversation.

An actual review of House of Cards on Netflix:

Good cast but honestly to see all the infidelity even between couples (Kevin and Robin’s characters) who should be having too much fun together than to cheat, It is over the top! Sorry, what could have been a really good movie for my husband and I was just not! I am sick of all the immorality smut!

Who cares about murder, corruption, high treason when there is a completely consensual open marriage depicted!

By the way, we watched the finale, and I had a creeping feeling that this guy might make a good president because he, at least, knows how to get things done.

Of course, aptitude should not come at the price of morality, but one does get tired of ineffectiveness and endless excuses. If one supports the Democrats, one has got to  prepare to hear constant explanations of why nothing is working out and things aren’t getting done. House of Cards is a fantasy about a Democrat who is deadly in his effectiveness, and that’s seductive in a very unhealthy way.

Tragedies have a tendency to bring out extreme jerkdom in people. Here is a blogger suggesting the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a great thing:

 In a moment dominated by the radical adoption of new technology, with reports of the NSA’s massive snooping, talk of Amazon drones making deliveries like toilet paper door to your doorstep, or checking the status of a flight through a pair of Google glasses, we need to feel that there is at least something out there that the grand orchestra of satellites and supercomputers can’t find or figure out.

It’s more than a tad ironic, but apropos, that it took a missing airplane—one of man’s greatest technological innovations—to remind us that there’s still some mystery left to humanity.

Who cares about the suffering of people when we can chirp happily about Google, Amazon, NSA, and toilet paper?

From Forbes:

Joke circulating in Russia: If you want to live in France – you go to France. If you want to live in UK, you go to England. If you want to live in Russia – Russia will come to you!

As my colleague said on Facebook, it’s very confusing to see that Forbes gets it right when almost nobody else is. Hmmm. . .

Read the article, it’s good.