Wild Wild West Not For Me, Pardner

I try and avoid writing posts about the U.S., but sometimes something happens which reminds me why I don't live there anymore, such as the recent death of Trayvon Martin. Who? He was an unarmed black teenager who was shot in a gated community in Florida by a member of the neighborhood watch who will probably not face any charges because he was legally in the right.

Basically, in Florida and other states, the laws governing self-defense have been rewritten. Whereas in the past, the only time you could be the aggressor and escape culpability for killing someone was in the case of home invasions, you can now "stand your ground" and shoot whomever you want based on a perceived threat. Add in laws that allow for carrying concealed weapons, and you get incidents like Trayvon Martin or the off-duty police office who shot a homeless man because his actions were supposedly overly aggressive toward said officer and his family.

I swear the U.S. is becoming a parody of a dystopian country written by a Hollywood committee that tries to combine every genre for cross-market appeal. Let's start with time travel and go back to a gilded elite and ruling class which is almost Dickensonian in their views on the poor, but add technology that is very much futuristic Star Wars mixed with Orwell with drones and all-knowing surveillance state. Throw in a little western where everyone packs heat and survival is based on who has the quickest trigger and key-stone cops. The script would almost be a surrealist comedy if it weren't so tragic.

The Land of Really, Really Tall Elves

One of my favorite Grimm Fairytales is the story of the poor shoemaker whose financial woes are turned around thanks to elves who sneak into his shop at night and make wonderful leather shoes without leaving a trace of their presence.

I bring this story up because doing things without drawing attention to their actions seems to be the Dutch way. Once a every quarter, you might see a deposit in you bank account from the Sociale Verzekeringsbank, or Social Insurance Bank, with a one word explanation: kinderbijslag. What is this? As the SVB website says, “Babies are expensive. Nappies, clothes, the pram . . . all these things cost money. The Dutch government provides for child benefit to help you with the costs of bringing up your child.”

But it's more than just receiving benefits. The other morning while taking the alien to daycare, I saw one of the houses along the way had a bench for sale and decided to ask how much it was. The husband wasn't home and the sleepy wife told me the price as she tightened her bathrobe.

"Great!" I said, "I'll come back and get it when I can get someone to lend me a hand."

"Ok," the woman replied. "You can pay me the money then."

That afternoon I opened our door and Voilá, the bench was there, under the kitchen window. No note, no explanation as to how the person knew which house was ours. In Spain, this never happens, probably because people live in apartment buildings and put old furniture outside to be collected by whomever. Something like this might happen in the states, but you'll definitely find a note from the person bringing attention to their good deed.

Now, if this had been a one-off incident, I could say that it was just the kindness of one particular gentleman, but there have been other times. A colleague of my wife mentioned a neighbor cleaning her roof after he cleaned his out of the kindness of his heart. A remark to my better half, such as, "We need string to tie back the stock rose that blocks the path," will come to fruition without either of us doing it as if an elf had overheard our conversation and took action.

Your Language and Your Financial Health

There was an interesting article last week about recent research into the influence of language on savings. Apparently, people whose mother tongue makes a strong distinction between the present and future using different tenses (like English, Spanish, and French) tend to save less than those who speak a language where there is weak distinction, such as German, Mandarin and Finnish.

Here's the graph.

And a rather academic explanation.

It is as if grammatical marking of the difference between the present and the future insulates you from seeing that the two are coterminous so you should plan ahead. Using present-tense forms for future time reference, on the other hand, encourages you to see that the future is just more of the present, and thus encourages you to put money in a 401(k).

From what I can decipher, people who speak languages that make sharp distinctions between the present and the future tend to forget the latter and live it up in the moment. Meanwhile, those who think of the present and future within the same scope, try to stretch their money to make it through a never ending day.

Personally, I don't know how much credence I put in Whorfian linguistic relativity which believes language structures influences the way we conceptualize the world. My grandparents and parents are both English speakers. One saved a lot and was more frugal after surviving the great depression, while the other grew up in the era of easy credit and mass consumerism. Culture, and those who shape it, have a much greater impact on our lifestyles than how we speak, me thinks.

Feel like taking a trip into space?

This came in my inbox

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I wonder if you get the miles, too. I get winded walking up and down the stairs so I doubt I'd make it through astronaut training. But feel free to enter. Think you need a flying blue account.