Turning into a cult? When hasn't it been a cult?

Absolutely excellent article by John Hart, a columnist for the Independent.

I've been meaning to write a piece on the health care "debate" going on in the US but each time I make the attempt my utter disgust with every single Republican in Congress blinds me with rage and I have to close my computer, take a sip of water and say a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods are listening for the UK's free at point of delivery, National Health Service (NHS).

They've had the NHS for 61 years and no, it's not perfect but it's a damn sight better than the US alternative: no coverage for the poor, the unemployed, the underemployed, for-profit insurance companies who deny treatment to protect their bottom line, families who are forced into bankruptcy because of a mountain of medical bills, the list goes on.

Once again I'm sitting here across the water shaking my head at the ignorant insanity that is the bedrock foundation of the American Right. The fact that these uninformed fanatics are able to hijack the debate surrounding a vital domestic issue is perhaps more a reflection on the President and the Democrats than it is on the Conservatives themselves.

Obama entered office with a mandate to insure the uninsured and both his moral foundation and political momentum are eroding because the right-wing have grabbed the spotlight and made the public forget that PEOPLE ARE DYING every day in the US because of a lack of adequate health care.

There really can be no consensus. The Democrats must simply push through health care legislation over the frothing mouths and shaking fists of the entire Republican Party. Civil rights was not won through compromising with the Southern political establishment. There are some things that simply must be done, not because they are popular but because they are right.

Travel math

I have 227 stamps in my passport.

My passport is three years old.

Three years is 795 days.

That is one trip across an international boarder every 3.5 days.

According to Carbon Footprint Checker my travels have put 60,000 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere.

To neutralize my carbon footprint and appease my conscience it would cost me $357.00

$.33 per day, every day for three years.

Of course this doesn't include energy use at home, in hotels, taxis and the few times I hired a car.

Let's call it an even $1 per day.

$1 per day to erase my stain from the earth. $1 per day allows me to maintain a lifestyle of comfort, travel and westernized prosperity with no further thought for the repercussions of my energy intensive actions.

Such a deal.

Praha

I'm in the second half of a long stretch in Prague. One migration and one internal procedures audit which is even less exciting than it sounds. Truth be told I wouldn't mind doing these audits full-time. I would get the requisite travel I require to maintain a healthy appreciation for London and the demands are very low: show up, ask to see some paperwork, tell them everything they are doing is wrong, leave. I have the evenings to myself and I never have to work until 2AM re-permissioning every folder on a file server by hand (as I was doing last night).

It's the height of the summer travel season and Prague is filled with tourists. My hotel, the Intercontinental, seems to be the favourate of visiting Americans. They are hard to miss: trying to squeeze their immense girth into the lifts, tucking in their t-shirts and wearing white socks. They are also the only ones eating at restaurants before 8:30 at night.

To tell the truth, I'm with them on that one. The European habit of eating dinner very late doesn't suit my metabolism. Tucking into a pork-pie (or in my case a tofu-pie) at 10, an hour or so before bedtime, guarantees I will spend the best part of the wee hours clutching my stomach in torturous agony.

In Spain there is a federal statute which prevents restaurants from searving anything but hard rolls before midnight and dance clubs don't even start shoveling out last-nights cigarettes until 3AM. Yet these people manage to show up to work at 9:00- still drunk and wearing the clothes they left in the day before but at their desks they will be.

To be fair, that last sentience applies to the English. I've never met a drunk Spaniard during the morning commute but I encounter them with staggering regularity on those few days I manage to Tube to my office in London.

Right. Prague. They have a mini version of the Eiffel Tower here. It's up on the top of what, from a distance, looks like a small hill but which is in fact a daunting, wooded, Matterhorn. I didn't set out this morning with the intent of scaling that particular mountain but I kept wandering further and further afield and ended up at its base. They have a funicular which runs to the top but the queue to get on snaked back to Italy so I decided to hoof it.

I come from San Francisco so I'm used to a good bit of urban mountain climbing however I grossly underestimated the scale of the task facing me. My timing, as always, was well off and I started my accent at high noon. By the time I reached the summit, a good 45 minutes later, I was feeling distinctly old and out of shape. Never mind that the route to the top is a well maintained car-free road with gradated switchbacks. Bah! I found a disused goat path that looked much more direct and considerably more interesting. There certainly wasn't a shortage of shirtless, tattooed homeless guys using my path as a public urinal; this provided all the motivation I needed to scamper up those last 200 meters.

I have to say that the view from the top was stunning in its absence: you simply can't see Prague for the trees. I considered for a moment trudging up the spiral staircase to the viewing platform of the mock Eiffel Tower but I was again thwarted by the queue. All of this worked to my advantage.

Through a break in a wall I discovered a large park and rose garden. Massive trees provided the perfect mix of sun and shade and I settled in for a nice bit of daydreaming, napping and note-taking. For almost two hours I stayed under my tree; thinking about the nature of things and watching people being happy. Eventually I explored the rose garden and took a keen interest in the bees as they toiled away collecting for the betterment of their hives. Nearly our entire agricultural system, not to mention ecosystem, is dependent on an insect whose lot in life is to be born, work for six months and die. Unless they're the queen they don't even get to have sex and their working conditions make a Laotian sweat shop seem like a wide-open prairie. They must have some pretty impressive motivational posters tacked to the walls of the hive.

Taking a different goat-path I made my way back down; passing through orchards which had long ago returned to a feral state. Much to the delight of a Japanese couple the trees were loaded with fruit. I watched for a while as the man, somewhat inexpertly, climbed a tree and dropped a dozen pears into his lady friend's outstretched hands. I picked some cherries and sat in a grove of apple trees feeling lucky and happy.

If you ever get to Prague, and I highly recommend a visit, after you have done the cathedral, the castle, the astronomical clock and a river cruise, do yourself a favour and spend a day walking to the Eiffel Tower on the hill. Every city needs a green lung to expel the traffic and crowds; for London it's Regent's Park and for Prague it's Petrin Hill.