confusion

A lot has been said about the hostile rhetoric of the Bush years—something that is thankfully behind us. President Obama’s speech in Cairo [whitehouse.gov] yesterday was a good example of a new rhetoric. Continuing a recent string of improved rhetoric including verbal pressure on Israel to stop the settlement building and calling on China to acknowledge the dead from the Tienanmen Square massacre. Improving the rhetoric of the United States is a good first step, and while Noam Chompsky [chompsky.info] might not be happy [alternet.org] (then again he wouldn’t be very Chompsky if he was would he?) I welcome the change in rhetoric. No one can change the vast workings of the US government overnight —nor indeed in 100 nights. It will take a long sustained effort. Changing the rhetoric is the first and possibly the easiest step. Now the Obama administration needs to continue the backup rhetoric with reality. If Obama and his team can do that, then they will go down in history as one of the best administrations.

Where were you 20 years ago? [wikipedia.org]? We watched all the news reports in school as it unfolded in the days leading up to the final events… not that we really understood the significance of the events (the same can be said for the the other big international development that year [wikipedia.org]).

Taking a cab home from work late tonight I had a second to reflect on an interesting coincidence: my office is now located (we’ve moved recently which brings up a different but equally funny note; I’ve changed office 5 times since coming to Singapore, but I’ve only changed jobs twice… I guess since I’ve managed to put a stop to my habit of moving house once a year that was going on for 12 years now that I own a house, somehow that curse has been transferred to moving office way to often… And now that this parenthetical reference has dragged on so long that, like a freshman reading Kant, you can’t remember what the main sentence was talking about we return you to your normally scheduled programming…) in the building next door to the building that housed my office when I first moved to Singapore in 2004.