1. Obama is a messianic figure. The left has put this man on a pedestal higher than anything I've seen in my life, save the personality cults of my youth under communism. For them Obama was never just a politician. He was a redemptive figure that would "stop the rise of oceans and bring all the people of the world together." He could do no wrong. Opposition to anything that he did was solely based on the dark evil tendencies. The only thing that was required for him to achieve the final apotheosis was the whole-hearted embrace of homosexuality. Once he's done that, there is absolutely nothing wrong that he could ever do. He's no longer a mere mortal man.
2. Being gay is primarily a cultural thing. Aside from a few niche corners, most people don't think that Obama is actually "really" gay. By calling him the first gay president, they imply (aside from the reference to Bill Clinton being called the first black president) that there is something fundamentally cultural about being gay. It's an agglomerate of attitudes, values, ideas, and yes, behaviors. So it would be natural to call people, objects, and behaviors "gay" if they exhibit traits that belong to this cultural niche. And those of us who use that epithet disapprovingly ought not to be labeled "homophobes", "bigots" and worse. It should be a perfectly neutral term in principle, the only difference being what one decides to make out of it. In a perfectly rational world this would of course be the inevitable conclusion, but we all know that will never happen. You can only call things gay if you are approving of them. This brings us to the last, and most important, point.
3. Gay is holy. Gay is sacred. It is untouchable and beyond any worldly criticism. Embracing gayness bestows, quite literary, a halo on someone. From the love that "dared not speak its name" it has morphed into the love whose "name thou shalt not take in vain." It is a value that has been exalted far beyond the usual liberal triumvirate of race, class, and gender. Those who espouse it have seen the light. Those who oppose it are infidels worthy of the highest contempt. And this is why homosexuality will increasingly become ever more divisive and contentious. It is because its champions, and not its opponents as it's always claimed, are the true religious zealots who can never accept any form of compromise, and who are willing to wage jihad until the whole world has embraced their monolithic faith. This week's Newsweek cover is just the most visible manifestation of that fact.

The war in Sarajevo had started a little over a week earlier, on April 6^th 1992. A few days prior to that, we had all been dismissed from school, as certain people "in the know" already knew what was coming our way and wanted to prepare themselves and their families for the inevitable. Ever since the start of the war in neighboring Croatia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been immersed in an uneasy and surreal game of denial. In general there was not much sympathy for the Croatian people and their suffering. There was even a sense, particularly among Bosnian Serbs, that Croatia had brought the war on itself by embracing the hard-line nationalism of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Those of us who knew that the war in Croatia could not be that easily contained, and that the Serbian war machine was only warming up to unleash the full force of its brutality on everyone it perceived as its enemy, could only anxiously wait and see what would come our way. On that pivotal day in April of 1992, our wait ended.

Ever since the passing of that car with the loudspeakers by our house, my mom had been anxiously working on trying to figure out what to do. We knew that we had to leave, but the questions were how and to where. By the spring of 1992 the war in Croatia had reached a stage of an uneasy truce of sorts, with all of the major fighting more or less over. Croatia seemed the most logical place to escape to, but with our car not functioning, we had to rely on public transportation to get us there. The most direct route to Zagreb, where we had some relatives, would have taken us north, but that route was becoming increasingly unsafe. The only other option was to try to get to Mostar in Herzegovina first, where my grandparents lived, and then get to Croatia somehow from there. The problem with that option was that we would need to take a train, and the main train station was cut off from us at that point. All the public transportation in Sarajevo had by then ceased to operate, so we had no easy way of making it to the train station. My mom started making some phone calls, to see if someone would be able to give us a ride. Most people were understandably reluctant: by then we were hearing of the Serbian paramilitary units setting up bogus "checkpoints" where they would stop any car that they deemed "suspicious," and oftentimes seize the car and rough-handle the driver and the passengers. The risks were real and vivid.

On April 16^th 1992, sometime in the early afternoon, we got a phone call from one of my mom's work colleagues. Her husband was a cab driver, and he was willing to come pick us up and drive us to the train station. In one hour. In that time, we had to make a life-changing decision, gather whatever we could, and leave our home, probably forever. My mom was understandably apprehensive. She looked at me and asked: "What do you think?"

For me the decision to leave Sarajevo was one of the easiest ones in my life. That place had been directly or indirectly hostile to my family and me ever since I could remember, and the hostility had on quite a few occasions turned violent. As I was growing older I had increasingly started to perceive the vast differences between the culture and values of my surroundings and those that I espoused and gravitated towards. It was not a place where either individual opinion or individual responsibility were promoted or even accepted. For most of my adolescence I had felt like an alien there. In a few instances when I would get particularly despondent and discouraged my mother would try to encourage me with words: "I am not raising you for this place." She knew, and increasingly so did I, that the only way to overcome that place was to leave it. So when she looked at me that Holy Thursday in 1992 while engaged in the most important phone conversation of our lives, I just said "Mom, let's go."

We started packing immediately, if trying to assemble the most fundamental necessities of our lives can be called packing, and tried to get all that we could possibly need to help us as refugees. Thanks to her legal background, my mother was particularly attentive to ensuring we take as many of our official documents and paperwork that we could. For me the most important decision concerned which of my precious books to take with me. I have always been a bibliophile, and had treasured my small home library. Under the mounting pressure, I had to decide which few books I absolutely had to take with me. This decision, too, was surprisingly simple: I took my Bible, the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe (in English), and the two volumes of the Croatian translation of the Berkeley course in theoretical Physics. Anyone who knows me well will probably not be surprised by these choices. We also decided to take our cat with us. The poor thing had to be carried in a sack, and on the subsequent train ride she almost got dehydrated out of fear and anxiety.

My mom's friend came on time, loaded our luggage, and left with the three of us on board: my mom, my brother, and myself. As we were leaving, I threw one last glance at my old house, and made a promise to myself: I was never coming back. Sarajevo had brought a lot of pain and misery to my family and me, we had no family ties to that place, and we were forced to leave in the most painful and humiliating way. For me, there was absolutely no reason to ever want to go back. Over the past two decades I've kept that promise.

In the ensuing years I have reconnected with some school and family friends from Sarajevo, and every once in a while we get in touch. Many of them ask me if I have been to Sarajevo lately, or if I have any plans of visiting. I tell them that I haven't been there since I left in '92 nor do I ever intend to go back. Most of them think that this as an unduly harsh attitude. I understand where they are coming from: many of them love the city in which they had grown up or where they had gone to school, and perceive the war and its aftermath as a tragic aberration from an otherwise almost idyllic life they remember. My memories, for the better or worse, are different from theirs. In fact, for the most part I have left those memories behind in Sarajevo, together with most of my other possessions. Leaving Sarajevo gave me an opportunity to start from scratch and build up my life with the values and attitudes that I can freely choose for myself. It has forced me to create an identity that is based more on the things that I believe in and treasure, and less on the circumstances that are beyond my control. I feel blessed that over the last twenty years I have been able to pursue that path, and look forward to all the new places that it may take me to.

For the most part old Ph.D. theses languish in some dusty old university library, or more likely in an off-site storage facility. That, pretty much, is the case with my own UIUC Ph.D. thesis, and it's the fate that for the longest time I had thought to be inevitable. However, we do live in the 21^st century; desktop, internet, and electronic publishing have been making great strides over the past few decades, and there is no reason to let your magnum opus just roll over and die the death of permanent obscurity. So at the end of the last year I took the plunge and published my Ph.D. thesis. The whole process was surprisingly simple and straightforward, and requires just the minimum amount of publishing formatting experience. I've used the online service provided by the CreateSpace, and have by and large been very satisfied with them. For the basic service there is virtually no cost (aside from having a proof shipped to you for the approval), and your published work will be sold through Amazon and a few other online outlets. You can set your own price, but you don't have any control over how much you take back in royalties – that stuff is fixed.

To my surprise, I've already been able to sell a few copies. I don't think my thesis will ever become a bestseller, nor do I expect it to be the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster, but it does give me some satisfaction to see my own work find a small niche in the publishing world.

So if you are looking for a perfect Christmas or Valentine's gift, or are wondering what to give a discerning intellectual friend for his birthday or Bar Mitzvah, head over to Amazon and purchase Non-local Gauge Field Theory. It's only $9.99. While supplies last.

I just finished reading Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart. Like all other Murray's books, it is brilliantly written and insightful, and already causing a lot of controversy. Murray has an uncanny knack for teasing apart even the most subtle and non-obvious social relations and trends, and presenting his results in a way that makes you scream "of course, how could it have been otherwise." In this latest book he focuses with a laser like precision on one topic which has played a role in much of his work and writing: the increasing social stratification in America and its deleterious consequences. Much ink has been spilled on this topic over the years, but most of the discussions have always focused on income inequality. In this line of thought income inequality is both the root cause and the most salient manifestation of the increasingly prominent social dissolution and polarization. However, in Murray's analysis the increasing disparities in wealth of the top classes and those at the bottom don't tell the whole story. In fact, they don't even tell most of the story, and are in fact the red herring. What truly distinguishes the most well-off Americans and those at the bottom is the disparity in their social capital. A half a century ago this disparity was relatively negligible, but in the ensuing decades it has grown beyond the recognition. While those at the top have largely stuck to the traditional values and standards – stable marriages, low rates of illegitimacy and single parenthood, nearly universal participation in the workforce, high rate of civic involvement, high rate of church attendance, etc. – all of those standards have experienced a body blow in the poorest strata of the society. This is particularly troublesome because a lot of solid research has consistently shown that it is precisely those standards and values that contribute both to the increase of personal and social wealth, as well as to the subjective sense of well being and happiness. Majority of those at the top have made it there because they stuck to those standards and invested heavily in acquiring the concomitant social capital. Unfortunately, while doing so they almost completely abandoned any desire to preach those virtues to the rest of the society. In Murray's words, they stopped "preaching what they practice." The only virtues that they publicly promote are those of "acceptance" and "nonjudgmentalism."

Over the years of observing college faculty I've seen this kind of behavior a lot. As a group they are the most vocal, and sometimes vicious, proponents of all sorts of "transgressive" behaviors. They indulge their sense of moral superiority over their white, middle-class, all-American students, and reserve special disdain for the "red state" America. And yet many of them, especially the more successful ones, lead lives of probity and staid conventionality that would make Norman Rockwell hang his head in shame. There are very few of them who lead the kinds of dysfunctional, to-heck-with-all-morality, lives that they often tout as yet another "lifestyle choice" and hold in the highest esteem. (Although from the top of my head I can think of at least one such person.)

Criticizing others, especially in very personal matters of morality and values, is never easy and it's often bound to backfire. This is especially true today in the age of pervasive online social networks. It's all too easy to surround yourself with a coterie of yes-sayers and enablers that will lend support to your every move, no matter how self-defeating it may be. And when you do say something, you expose yourself to criticism, and, of course, charges of "hypocrisy." Nonetheless, if you truly care about someone's well being you will not refrain from being honest with them and telling them what you really think. Not wanting to upset your own cushy life with "unnecessary" antagonism is ultimately very selfish. In words of Thomas Sowell, "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." It is time for all of us to stop worrying about being deemed judgmental, and start helping those around us. With words, and not just deeds.

Now that February is half over, I can start feeling like we've been incredibly lucky this year. The days when the high temperature was below freezing were relatively few, with more sunny days than I ever remembered at this time of year. Consequently, my SAD was largely under control, and I was one (relatively) happy camper for a change.

If i were more credulous, I would ascribe this unseasonably warm weather to "global" warming, but a) last year the especially brutal winter was given the same cause, and b) while in Midwest we are enjoying the balmy days, back in Croatia they are having one of the worst Winters on the record. The simple law of averages implies that globally, things are about the same as they have always been. Locally, however, I am not complaining.

As anyone who has any knowledge of NFL knows, Colts' logo is an inverted horseshoe - a very simple and iconic image that effectively captures the team's identity. In Indiana you can see this logo everywhere: on bumper stickers, on hats and jackets, and even as an oversize lawn ornament. It has become an inescapable part of the cultural landscape of the Hoosier state. It's so ubiquitous that most people probably don't even notice it any more. And unless you are a die-hard fan of a different NFL team, it's unlikely that you'll ever take an umbrage to seeing this symbol.

In Croatia the situation is quite different to say the least. Europeans in general don't know almost anything about the American Football, and I can't really blame them - unlike basketball, football is the sport that has not been successfully exported overseas. Croatia also happens to have very strict laws about the display of fascist signs and insignia. Among these is the stylized letter "U" that is associated with the infamous WWII Ustashe regime. (Why there are no such laws that deal with the even more infamous communist regime is another story.) This letter "U" happens to have a passing resemblance to the Colts logo, which is why it's probably illegal to show up somewhere in Croatia wearing that sign, as has been confirmed by various people that I had asked about this. Which is crazy.

I am no sympathizer with any murderous regime or ideology, but when one letter of the alphabet become permanently tainted and a priori legally suspect, then you know that something has gone terribly wrong. This is the problem with all "hate speech" laws. All of them invariably elevate the right to not be offended (usually of certain predetermined interest groups) over the right to free speech. Such laws become the tool for various ideological groups to claim the higher moral ground and push their own agendas. They are an affront to anyone who values freedom of expression. In a truly free society you should not have to worry if you decide to put a horseshoe on your hat.

This coming Sunday Croatians are voting on the EU accession referendum. Like most such votes thus far in other countries, the vote is largely inconsequential. All major political parties are in favor of us joining the EU, and if by some chance the vote fails then it will be repeated six months later, and six months later, and so on until the people finally accept the inevitable. I am mildly in favor of accession, although many people I know strongly oppose it. The opposition is largely concentrated around the economic issues and issues pertaining to national sovereignty. For me, though, one of the main concerns is the issue of the various freedoms, including the freedom of speech. I am afraid that the "hate speech" legislation in Europe has already gone too far, and I only worry that it may become even more intrusive. If there are attempts to create a uniform code of law about this dubious legal category across the entire continent of Europe, then all true-blue Colts fans should really be worried. They may want to go on a European vacation (but not to Croatia!) while they still can. ]]> tag:www.tunguz.com,2011:/blog//1.177 2011-12-09T20:30:14Z 2011-12-09T20:30:15Z

Today Croatia officially signed the EU accession treaty, thus finalizing the process of becoming EU's 28^th member. Despite my very strong reservations about the EU (and the future of Europe in general), this is a welcome and good development. Years of waiting in the wings to join this elite club, stymied by hurdles and obstacles, have finally come to the end. Joining the rest of Europe in "ever closer union" is the only way forward for my small homeland.

However, the timing of the accession probably couldn't have been worse. EU is reeling under the strain of its financial and economic troubles, and just today another overarching attempt to get the act together seems to have failed thanks to the British veto. All of this has a feeling of finally being let into a cool private club party at 4 am. All the good booze is gone, most of the guests are drunk, they are arguing with the bartenders about the bill, and no one is really happy to see you come in. The whole situation is a wee bit awkward, to say the least. Let's just hope that the morning coffee and some donuts manage to sober people up somewhat.

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To be honest, I haven't been following Croatian politics all that closely in years. The years of living abroad are certainly a major factor, but even more significant is my complete disillusion with the corruption and the venal nature of my homeland's politics. Political parties have become little more than patronage networks, operating both within and outside the legitimate channels. Sure, each party has a nice-sounding and elaborate party program, but they are little more than ideological talking points. The parties try to differentiate themselves along a variety of social issues, but even this is done tepidly and without any clear plan of acting on those aspirations. When it comes to the economy, I personally don't see any major differences between various political options. They all promote to various degrees some form of European-style social state. I've never heard any Croatian politician talk passionately and with conviction about free markets, fiscal restraint, deregulation (*particularly* deregulation!), or any such topic whish can have a major and direct impact on the economy as a whole.

All things considered, it is still hard for me not to feel a considerable doze of regret that HDZ has been reduced to such a sorry state. When it was formed in the early 1990s, as communism was collapsing and countries in that neck of the woods started opening up to democracy and political pluralism, HDZ managed to mobilize hopes and aspirations of the vast majority of Croatians. In those days HDZ was more of a movement than a political party, and had a distinctly modern and future-oriented flavor. When it came in power it led Croatia to its freedom and international recognition, and under the leadership of Dr. Franjo Tuđman guided the country though a bloody war and some of the most difficult days in our nation's history. It paved the way for the path of joining the EU which is finally bearing the fruit as Croatia is scheduled to sign the accession treaty this Friday. Unfortunately, Tuđman was also an old-school authoritarian, and after his passing away in 1999 HDZ lost power for several years. When Croatian voters eventually gave it a second chance there was a lot of hope that HDZ had evolved into a more refined and forwad-looking party. For a time it looked like those hopes were well justified – the country seemed to be prospering, there wa a lot of construction and infrastructure development everywhere, and people started feeling better off. However, much of that was just a facade. Underneath it all was cronyism of the worst kind (calling it crony-capitalism just wouldn't do it justice), and right now many of teh highest ranking government officials (including the former prime minister dr. Ivo Sanader) are standing a trial for corruption. I might be a cynic, but it's not very likely that many of the corruption charges will in the end stand. Most of the big actors were too good and too smart to leave any paper trail behind them.

For the sake Croatia, I hope that when it enters the parliamentary opposition HDZ will find ways to reform itself and get rebuilt with copetent and capable talent. I might be overly optimistic, but I still believe that there are people out there who wish to enter politics for the sake of selfless public service. Croatia deserves and needs such people. Now more than ever.

This is why I've been trying to diversify my online reviewing efforts. I've started posting on all of Amazon's various international sites (UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain), started posting my reviews on Barnes and Noble's website, weRead, Goodreads, Lunch, Google books, etc. In addition, I've created a Twitter account and a Facebook page for my reviewing activities.

One of the product categories that I particularly enjoy reviewing is the consumer electronics. Like every other normal guy, I love them gadgets and can't get enough of them. I've been fortunate enough that I've been able to obtain many electronic devices for review though Amazon's Vine program, so I don't have to bust my bank balance in order to feed my gadget cravings. I've also decided to start a separate website where I'd be able to post just my electronics and technology reviews (as well as tech books) – Tunguz Review. I expect to use that website to also blog about anything and everything that catches my attention in the wide world of technology. Hopefully I'll be able to post blog updates there on a more or less regular basis. For my personal blog you can still check this site, rarely as I post here.

The new translation aims to be closer to the original Latin. There are many good reasons why this is a good idea. The most important, in my opinion, are the theological considerations. The old translation all too often shuns the high-minded theological concepts and in their stead substituted more commonplace terms and phrases. Unfortunately this desire to make the Mass immensely accessible strips it of many of the most eloquent expressions of the profundity of our faith. In many instance it effectively substitutes orthodox Christianity with something that verges on moralistic therapeutic deism. The new translation will hopefully make us all mindful of the deepest truths of our faith and reclaim the traditions that have sustained untold generations of Catholics that came before us. It will hopefully also be a good incentive to start paying closer attention to the words that we say during the Mass. I caught myself slipping into the old wording on a several occasions today, which brought to my attention the fact that I've been cruising through those parts of the Mass on autopilot for a while now.

The old translation of the Mass is the one that I have been the most familiar with in all of my years as a Catholic. I have entered the Church in 1992, shortly after my family and I had become refugees in Croatia. In a matter of few short months I had gone on to the United States, and it is here that I have really become a Catholic. I've learned the words of the Mass just by attending it on a regular basis, and because of this personal experience this old translation will always have a very special place in my heart.

The news of his death has spread like a wildfire, and as of this writing is one of the top news stories on Google News in terms of the sheer number of sources covering it. There is nothing I could add to this information deluge that has not already been mentioned countless times, except perhaps a few reflections on how Steve Jobs and Apple have influenced my life.

The first time I came across an Apple computer was in mid eighties. My mom took me and my brother to en exhibit called "Design in America". There I came face to face with the best that American design has to offer. The products that were showcased were very functional and solidly built, yet classy and elegant. In one corner of the exhibit there was a presentation of a Mac computer. The man who was showcasing it was playing with MacPaint, and I still remember what he was drawing: an electric trolley car. The impression that this experience had left on me was profound: for the first time I glimpsed into the world where computers could be used for creative and artistic purposes.

Over the ensuing years I had very little experience with Macs. The computers that induced lust in those days were Commodore, Atari, Amiga, and a few others. I had learned to use PCs and managed to navigate the arcana of DOS. Nonetheless, somewhere in the back of my mind I had the notion that the center of the computer universe was in Silicon Valley, and the culture that made that place great was in large part shaped by the spirit of Apple.

When I arrived at Stanford in the early nineties, I discovered to my surprise that it was a Mac-dominated campus. Almost all computer clusters that catered to students were Mac-only, and a few that weren't had some scary-looking UNIX machines. This was particularly interesting since in those days Mac market share was in low single digits.

When I started my MS program I bought my first computer: a really old Mac that nonetheless had all the basic functionality intact. I got it from the university surplus store and paid a whopping $70 for it. The idea was to use it in my room for checking e-mail and other light activities. What I didn't realize was that it was a Mac that predates the widespread use of Ethernet and hence had no usable network card. A new card alone would have cost me almost twice as much as the computer itself, so that put a lot of cold water on my initial plan.

In grad school I was riding the Linux wave, largely because it had a lot of free software and as a graduate I didn't have much money to throw around. I however relearned the old truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch: what I couldn't invest in terms of money I had to compensate in the time it took to get various software packages running and talking to each other. Again, that wasn't much of the problem since as a grad student you have very little money and a lot of free time.

My years in the grad school coincided with what has been called "the second coming of Steve Jobs" – his glorious return to Apple, the company that he cofounded and from which he was unceremoniously exiled just a year after the launch of the first Macintosh. The "second coming" witnessed an unprecedented string of new and revolutionary devices, starting with iMac, though iPod, in late nineties and early years of the new century, to iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air in recent years. Each one of these devices, although not entirely new, dramatically changed the way that we interact with technology. After going through a string of mp3 players, I eventually decided that the higher price of iPod was justified in terms of the time it saves me managing and accessing my digital media.

Once I got out of grad school and started having more disposable income I gradually started acquiring more and more of the Apple products. iPhone has changed the way I think of accessing information, and iPad has completely changed the way I approach computing. All of a sudden computers are not any more these big boxes that sit in one place, and which you have to turn on and wait a while to get anything done. Now you can do all of that instantly. These days it takes my computer less time to start than my TV. I've come to realize that once you go Mac, you never go back.

Unfortunately I had never met Steve Jobs nor have I seen him in person. The closest I ever came to being near him was once when I walked by his house in Palo Alto. He lived in a relatively ordinary house on a relatively ordinary street, but in quite an extraordinary town. The only unusual thing about his house was that he and his family had converted almost all the space around into vegetable gardens. That was probably the most expensive produce in the world, but also a testament to his unorthodox interests and the lifelong commitment to vegetarianism.

The irony about this blog post is that it was written on a Windows laptop. This is due to the fact that the Microsoft Office for Macs still doesn't have a nice blogging support, so I have to put up with frequent program crashes and inabilities to save the document properly. The fact is that even though I am a huge fan of Apple and its products, I am not a fanboy that approaches it with single-minded zeal. Ultimately I like technology because it helps me get things done more efficiently and creatively, and will always look for the solution that best suits my needs. It just so happens that Apple is increasingly able to meet more and more of those needs, and for that I primarily have to thank Steve Jobs and the relentless vision that he pursued all these years. For so many reasons the world is a better and more fun place thanks to him, and his inspiration will endure long after his untimely death.

I had only seen the Twin Towers once, during my first year in the US when a bunch of us foreign exchange students had been taken on a field trip. I still have a few pictures of me and a couple of friends standing on Ellis Island, with the World trade Center in the background. Today those pictures feel surreal.

The tragedy of 9/11 revealed a few things to me that I was up to then not fully aware of. I realized how Americanized I had become and how personally I had felt about the attacks. This realization was additionally reinforced by callous and insensitive e-mails that I had received from a couple of friends that I had known from back home. For the most part my friends and family were completely sympathetic and shocked with what had happened, and were in complete solidarity with America on that day. But there were some who were less understanding, to say the least.

At the tenth anniversary of 9/11 it is important and appropriate to reflect on those shocking and tragic events. They were transformative on many levels, and have been seared deep in the memories of those who had witnessed them. For the better or worse, they have brought a major change in the US foreign policy. In subsequent years political debates over the exact nature and effects of those policies have managed to take away much of the spotlight away from 9/11 proper. It would be desirable to for at least some time put aside politics and solemnly reflect on tragedy that happened a decade ago.

This was my first, and so far only, car. When I bought it I anticipated spending a lot of time on the road and I wanted to buy a sturdy, safe vehicle. Seeing it gone after all these years is a bit sad, not unlike the time I sold my bike at the end of my college years. Aside from being my first car, it also had a lot of sentimental value for several reasons. I bought this car with the money that I inherited after my mother's death. In a way, this was her last gift to me. That money she obtained after selling out old house in Sarajevo. For all of the war we had no access to that house or any of the few positions that were left over there. Most of those possessions were pillaged by the Serbian forces shortly after we had been forced to leave, but the house they could not take with them. Thanks to the US military intervention we were able to reclaim the house and sell it. In a way, my car was thus an indirect yet very tangible reminder of the virtues of US military engagements around the world. Thanks to one such engagement millions of people in my neck of the woods alone were able to go to their homes and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. My car is gone now, but its symbolism remains with me. It is after all our memories that make us into who we are.

For a political junky like me election night is somewhat of a cross between Super Bowl and the Christmas Eve. Even though the country has been polled to exhaustion over the past few weeks, there is still enough of uncertainty to keep me glued to the television for hours at the time. Thanks to the high-level expertise of the political commentators on Fox News, I was able to glean many new insights throughout the night. It was really interesting seeing a whopping and resounding victory for the Republicans in the US House of the Representatives, a highest gain in the number of seats in almost eighty years. Unfortunately, the US Senate gains have not been that dramatic, but considering that only about thirty six seats had been in play, the total gain of six is still pretty remarkable. The message, to all who are willing to listen, is very clear: voters are very angry with the direction in which the US is going, especially with President Obama's reckless and misguided liberal agenda. The level of anger clearly goes well beyond the dissatisfaction with the economy.

Unfortunately, based on his speech today, Obama still seems refuse to hear the message. He acknowledged that he was disappointed with the electoral results, but resolutely refused to take any personal responsibility for them. Unlike Clinton who felt everyone's pain and was able to move to the center in 1994, Obama wants everyone to feel his pain and keep following him wherever he intends to go. Obama has made a few offers of cosmetic changes in his agenda, and repeated the mantra of "bipartisanship," but so far there have been no indications that he is either willing or capable of changing his own approach to governing. This man's hubris is starting to acquire legendary proportions.

On a personal note, I feel excited that my own state of Indian has turned very red last night. Indian now has a Republican governor, both senators, majority of representatives, and the state legislature. This is the kind of state I can believe in.