Same content, new form

Welcome to the redesigned zs blog. I think it looks a bit more professional than before. I tried Typepad for a change, but in the end I prefer Blogger. At least Blogger lets you tinker with the blog template as much as you want -- for free. Of course, my knowledge of cascading style sheets and such is limited, but I was still able to give it a slight personal touch, so that it does not look exactly like every third blog on blogspot.com. The only thing I would like to have (and Typepad has it) is the possibility to organize posts into categories, but I guess I will have to live without that.

The largest traffic jam in the known Universe

Hurricane Rita is gone. And, as Stan Marsh of South Park would say, we learned something today: don't trust the local and state and federal government, people who are supposed to give you advice and help during an emergency situation. Don't trust them because they often seem incompetent, arrogant, dishonest, and self-congratulating.

To be more precise, on Wednesday, September 21, we decided that the best thing to do is to leave Houston, and left on the next morning. After six hours in the car, we were about 20 miles away from our home, and we already used up more then a quarter of the gas in the tank. That was the point when we turned around, and that was the right thing to do. Clearly, we were in the largest traffic jam in the known Universe. Important people like mayors and judges kept saying on the radio that (1) they were going to make all lanes of the highway one-way, and (2) gasoline was going to be provided by tanker trucks. After six hours, we could see no evidence of this whatsoever. We realized that we would sooner or later run out of gas and be stranded on the highway, at the merci of other people, or even worse, at the merci of the authorities who were arrogant enough to say at one point that they were not responsible for the traffic backups outside of their jurisdiction. And it is clearly better to be in a building as opposed to a car on a highway when hurricane-force winds start providing the entertainment.

I don't get this. Do you have to be a rocket scientist to realize that, if you put 3 million people or possibly more at the same time on three highways, you will end up with humongous traffic backups and all those people will have to spend tens of hours or even several days on the roads? I understand that you want to evacuate as many people as possible when a category 5 hurricane is approaching, but that does not mean that you should create panic and call for evacuation in a totally disorganized way. During the days before the landfall of Rita, I haven't seen on television a map of the three mandatory evacuation zones; I haven't heard a definition of so-called low-lying areas of Harris county (are they below the 20 ft elevation? 30? 50?); and I haven't seen a map of the road conditions on the major evacuation routes. How can you call this botched job a "successful evacuation" when there was no gas, no water, no food along the evacuation routes, opening up the counterflow lanes took forever, and most people went through a whole lot of unnecessary suffering and stress?

Erdélyi blog

A kolozsvári Transindex fórumán "erdélyi" blogokról folyik többek között a szöveg. Nem szoktam a Disputát olvasni, csupán arra figyeltem fel, hogy hirtelen megnőtt e honlapon a forgalom, s így bukkantam rá az idevezető linkre. Mindez nem lenne különösebben érdekes, ha az első reakció nem így hangzana:

"Bar Zoltan Sylvester (sic!) Erdelyben nott fel, sot idonkent a Szabadsagot is olvassa (van ugye neten is), talan kicsit sarkitas Erdelyi-nek nevezni blogjat :)."

Hmmm... Érdekes kérdés: mitől lesz erdélyi vagy nem-erdélyi egy blog? Egyesek szerint elsősorban attól, hogy valaki hogyan írja a nevét, és - gondolom - Erdélyben csapkodja-e a billentyüket vagy sem. A tartalom, a téma: az nem fontos. Na nem mintha az én blogom csupán kincses Kolozsvárról, Mátyás királyról meg a csíksomlyói búcsúról szólna. De van benne egy néhány jegyzet, melyeknek talán van némi erdélyi relevanciája (hopp... egy idegen szó... vajon ez is csökkenti erdélyiségemet?).

Ami a nevet illeti: az "igazi" erdélyiek egy része nem hajlandó felfogni, hogy aki huzamosabb ideig idegen nyelvü környezetben él, az nem egy légüres térben tengeti életét, hanem néha muszáj kommunikálnia magyarul nem tudó és a magyar személynévrendszert nem ismerő személyekkel, és ezt sokkal könnyebb megtenni, ha nem kell naponta ötszázszor elmagyaráznod, hogy a magyarok milyen sorrendben használják a család- és személyneveket. S mivelhogy internetes elmélkedéseimet (remélem) nemcsak tősgyökeres magyarok olvassák, szerintem nem olyan egetrengető bün az angolos sorrendet használni.

Másrészt, sajnos meg kell mondanom, hogy a mai "erdélyiség" egyre kevésbé vonz. Nem hiányzik az az Erdély, ahol a természettudomány és a technika nem igazán téma, ahol a búcsúra járó harisnyás székelyre látszólag az egyedüli alternativa a nihilista posztmodern értelmiségi, aki a sebességről, mint olyanról elmélkedik; ahol az "ateista" szónak legalább annyi negatív konnotációja van, mint Amerikában (s ez nem kis teljesítmény...).

Végezetül, próbáljuk csak elképzelni, mi lenne, ha Kőrösi Csoma Sándor ma élne és úti jegyzeteit egy blog formájában rögzítené (tévedés ne essék, az analógia megáll a névhasználat szintjén!). Mintha látnám, hogy kerülne valaki, aki így reagálná le blogját a Dispután:

"Bar Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (sic!) Erdelyben nott fel, sot idonkent a Szabadsagot is olvassa (van ugye neten is), talan kicsit sarkitas Erdelyi-nek nevezni blogjat :)."

First post on this blog, on a rainy Saturday. (It tends to rain on weekends over here).

Bought a few days ago the new issue of Skeptic. It has a chapter in it from the new book by Simon Conway Morris (Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe). Quite disappointing: "...at some point and somehow, given that evolution has produced a sentient species with a sense of purpose, it is reasonable to take the claims of theology seriously". Or: "In essence, we can ask ourselves what salient facts of evolution are congruent with a Creation."

Luckily, a good review follows by Donald Prothero that summarizes the issue very well: "Well written trade science books are a vanishing breed, marketed to smaller and smaller audiences who are easily suckered into reading and believing pseudoscientific babble and religious tracts masquerading as science. What a pity that such a distinguished scientist as Conway Morris (who has produced much excellent science in the past) falls into the latter trap with this book."