In recent years it has been the fashion — especially among younger people — to wear jeans with holes in them. When I was a kid, my parents got me a new pair of jeans at the beginning of the school year in September, and that pair of pants had to last for the rest of the year until the following autumn. If I wore through them before then, my Mom would patch them. Fast forward to my adulthood. I continue to wear jeans, and I continue to make them last as long as I can. They usually wear out at the knees and in the butt (I have a bony butt, LOL). Lots of stores sell iron-on patches, and that's what I use to patch my jeans. Some of my jeans have multiple patches. At first, I try to match the colors of the patches (navy blue denim) to the color of the pants (same, though faded). As the pants and patches wear down and if further patches are needed, I skip the color matching and use whatever color patches I happen to have (beige, deep forest green, brown, etc.). The jeans start to look like patchwork quilts — very cool. Does anybody else do this kind of thing?
Yesterday afternoon (2009.07.28) as I was leaving the public library and heading out to the parking lot, I encountered a man in a large BMW sedan dressed in white shirt and tie backing his car out of its stall, all the while talking on his cellphone. When as I was in my car pulling out of the lot, I stopped for a younger man about age 35 or so dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals who was in the crosswalk and he, too, was talking on his cellphone. As I was driving down the road, I encountered another guy riding his bicycle dressed in jeans and a t-shirt — yakking away on his cellphone as he rode. Has the world become obsessed with cellphones? I don't have one whatsoever. And life goes on.
L'ancien président péruvien Fujimori condamné à sept ans et demi de prison
LEMONDE.FR avec AFP et Reuters | 20.07.09 | 21h45 • Mis à jour le 20.07.09 | 21h59
L'ancien président du Pérou Alberto Fujimori a été condamné à sept ans et demi de prison, lundi 20 juillet à Lima, pour une affaire de corruption pendant son mandat entre 1990 et 2000. Reconnu coupable de détournement de fonds publics, M. Fujimori était poursuivi pour le versement illégal de 15 millions de dollars à son bras droit et chef des services secrets, Vladimiro Montesinos, au cours des derniers mois de sa présidence.
L'ancien chef de l'Etat, âgé aujourd'hui de 70 ans, a annoncé qu'il ferait appel pour "nullité". M. Fujimori a déjà été condamné en avril à 25 ans de prison pour violation des droits de l'homme dans le cadre de sa politique de répression contre la guérilla maoïste du Sentier lumineux. Le président du tribunal, le juge César San Martin, était d'ailleurs le même magistrat qui avait déclaré l'ex-président responsable des tueries de civils commises en 1991 et 1992 par un escadron de la mort, instrument de la "sale guerre" menée par le pouvoir contre la guérilla d'extrême gauche.
Cette nouvelle condamnation de M. Fujimori pour corruption n'aura aucun effet sur sa détention, car les peines ne s'additionnent pas au Pérou. M. Fujimori avait déjà été condamné une première fois fin 2007 à six ans de prison dans une affaire de perquisition illégale. Lors du procès, il a affirmé avoir été forcé d'effectuer un versement occulte à son ancien bras droit afin d'éviter un coup d'Etat. Selon lui, Montesinos, un homme-clé du régime qui contrôlait l'appareil militaire, menaçait de prendre le pouvoir.
A l'époque, les autorités avaient justifié ces dépenses puisées dans le Trésor public sous le prétexte d'une opération de sécurité destinée à empêcher la progression de la guérilla dans la zone frontalière avec la Colombie. M. Fujimori a également axé sa défense sur la dénonciation d'un "procès politique", estimant que la justice tentait de nuire aux chances de sa fille, Keiko, une prétendante sérieuse à l'élection présidentielle de 2011. Keiko Fujimori, députée la mieux élue du pays en 2006, est en tête des intentions de vote pour la présidentielle, selon plusieurs sondages récents.
Le courant "fujimoriste" reste populaire auprès des classes pauvres du Pérou, qui continuent de plébisciter l'ancien chef de l'Etat pour avoir pris des mesures sociales et restauré la sécurité après les attentats sanglants du Sentier lumineux. En novembre 2000, quelques jours seulement après un sommet à Bruneï, M. Fujimori s'était enfui vers le Japon, son pays d'origine, au milieu d'un scandale de corruption, annonçant sa démission par un simple Fax. Il avait été arrêté en novembre 2005 lors d'un voyage au Chili puis extradé au Pérou, où il comptait se présenter à la présidentielle l'année suivante.
Just finished reading AMERICAN THEOCRACY, by Kevin Phillips (2006). The author explores the influences of religion, oil, and indebtedness on American politics, government, and society. Phillips began his career analyzing the emergence on the Republican party as a national political force after the presidential candidacy of Barry M. Goldwater (1964) and Ronald Reagan (1980). In this book, his primary emphasis is on the Bush dynasty, and its presidents George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and George W. Bush (2001-2009). Phillips explores how the Bush presidencies catered to the "Religious Right," and implemented its agenda both domestically and internationally. He defines which groups constitute the "Religious Right," and lists the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assembly of God, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Church of the Nazarene, the evangelical megachurches, etc. Phillips indicts both Bushes for implementing an agenda of petroleum imperialism and bungling both American incursions into Iraq in the early 1990s, and after 9/11/2001. As to the phenomenon of national economic and personal indebtedness leading to the puncturing of the stock, real estate, and credit bubbles of the early 2000s, Phillips points to President George W. Bush, Phil Gramm, Newt Gingrich, Alan Greenspan, and the by now familiar rogue's gallery of political miscreants. This book contains much useful information and many incisive insights, but suffers from a lack writing discipline and focus, numerous and unnecessary digressions, redundant presentations of factual examples, and less than stellar editing. I would give this book a grade of "B" on a scale from "A" (excellent) to "F" (poor). The original dust-jacket price of this hardbound book was $26.00. I bought my copy at Dollar Tree for $1.00. I think I got my money's worth.
Just got finished reading THE MAN BEHIND THE MICROCHIP: ROBERT NOYCE AND THE INVENTION OF SILICON VALLEY, by Leslie Berlin. The book was an excellent "read." Noyce was a brilliant physicist, inventor, manager, executive, and P.R. guy. He achieved the very heights in almost everything that he did, and won accolades from many sources. Yet his family life was not entirely happy, and in the end he may have felt that he had not fully been a positive parental role model to his four children. This book was well-written, and interested me because I worked in the computer electronics industry in Silicon Valley during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. As a production test technician and as a field service technician, I had to work with many of the products that Noyce's company, Intel, produced. It is always interesting to me read the biographies of people to know more about them beyond the public images which the project to the press and other media. The human and personal sides of the lives of famous people are more interesting to me than their accomplishments, for these sides of their lives point to what they share with the rest of of us in humanity.
