Papal announcements through the televised years

Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Francis), 2013

Joseph Alois Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), 2005

Karol Józef Wojtyła (John Paul II), 1978

Albino Luciani (John Paul I), 1978

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini (Paul VI), 1963

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (John XXIII), 1958

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Pius XII), 1939

Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti (Pius XI)

Just a few notes on the immigration of technical workers

Citing a collection of data obtained from the US's National Science Foundation (NSF), Jordan Weissmann over at The Atlantic reputes the notion that there is a dearth of scientists in the country that sponsored The Manhattan Project. In a separate article he points out a comparison between American (which he categorizes as native-born citizens, green card holders and those whose citizenships were not identified) and immigrant Ph.D.'s, showing that while young American engineers have a much better share of job offers, more than a fourth of them were still not able to secure jobs, postdoc appointments or any other post-grad plans. Charts for physical and life sciences grads don't differ much, and at least Weissmann postulates that:

"While American-born Ph.D.'s seem to have it better than immigrants when it comes to their job prospects, they don't necessarily have it good. If companies were desperate to snap up competent scientists, these graphs would all look vastly different." 

Here in Saudi Arabia, where contractors are having their heyday employing a great deal of expatriate workers especially in the technical fields, the government recently imposed some regulatory mechanisms in order to provide ample, if not equal opportunity for native Saudis. Aside from the 'Saudization' scheme implemented during the previous year, it was said that the Saudi government is also considering increasing the cost of work permits to be issued to migrant workers. This would mean substantial loss for contractors not only on the aspect of profit versus expenditures but also on the aspect of meeting clients' manpower demands, on which the survival of their contracts is hinged. While they may shift to the recruitment of natives, there are still job positions best filled by expatriate training and expertise, particularly in engineering. If their clients in turn would stick to their guns in letting in the same rate of expatriate influx, this would not save the latter from trouble as one of the purposes in hiring contractors is to maintain a company's statistics well above the minimum requirement of Saudization laws (as any additional migrant employee would be under the contractor's visa).

Nonetheless, the rate of young Saudis graduating from technical institutions and universities have nowadays exponentially increased, and in due course they will be able to perform work once left to the care of migrant employees. Though it might seem early, the Saudi government thinks it better to prepare the floor for an upcoming demand for jobs by graduating Saudi youths.

Benedict XVI and the church of reform

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Foundation)

The Pontifex Maximus calls it quits. Just two years shy of the 600th anniversary of the last pope who stepped down from St. Peter's shoes, Benedict XVI, known for the unique monicker "God's Rottweiler," reached the limit of his strength trying to defend the walls overburdened by remorseless members of the clergy. Throughout his reign from the Holy See, Benedict has impressed us with admirable patience and calm, and though at some point of his priesthood he held a progressive's view, his attempts at modernizing the Church missed the essence with which it could survive as a large part of the lives of the faithful - that of turning its back on the old dogmas and welcoming the horizon of the modern enlightenment. If the Church is to survive, it would be through reformation, not the defense of its errors. It must not mistake ritual with legacy and tradition with truth.

Amy Davidson at The New Yorker writes that Benedict's  decision (which is justifiably human) should not be construed side by side with his predecessor Pope John Paul II's, who spent the last days of his life struggling to announce the Urbi et Orbi from the papal balcony with the last inaudible gasps of a charismatic hero of the downtrodden.

Benedict, who had been John Paul II's spiritual protege, did not apparently intend to emulate the late pontiff's gestures - he preferred the honesty of reacting reasonably when faced with overwhelming responsibilities. He knew full well that while John Paul II's era demanded involvement in the political climate external to the Church in order to save the faithful, his own time required a domestic cleaning of the Church in order to save the relevance of the faith. Yet dictators seemed to be easier to discipline than the clergy, and such has taken a toll on his health. Benedict has recognized the necessity of the strength of his mind and body which according to him has deteriorated in the last few months to the point that he feared he would not be able to carry out the ministry entrusted to him.

By the beginning of March an enclave will be convened to choose Benedict's successor. Geeks will call this the selection of Peter the Roman, the last pope according to a prophetic list attributed to St. Malachy.Yet there is no implication that the faith must end. If the next to wear the Ring of the Fisherman will be an able crusader for the reformation of the Catholic organization, then the old Kingdom of Rome will end and the new Kingdom of God will begin.

Updates on the 2012 Nobel Prize announcements

British history and culture at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony

For those who, like me, missed out on the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, catch a replay of the elegant exposition of British history and culture on the blog Allan is the Man.

Alfred Eisenstaedt and the twilight of the idol that was Ernest Hemingway

I am indeed one of those people who are more fascinated with Ernest Hemingway's erratic persona rather than with his straight to your face literary economics. When I read his works in college it was already evident to me that the man himself, who prowled the tropics in search of adventure, was as difficult as his writings were as easy, judging from the terse paragraphs and impatient dialogue running across his pages, symptomatic of the man who if possible prefers to get into the action quicker than his words ever could. Take for example the following sentences from one his best works For Whom the Bell Tolls:

Anselmo lay face down behind the white marking stone. His left arm was doubled under his head and his right arm was stretched straight out. The loop of wire was still around his right fist. Robert Jordan got to his feet, crossed the road, knelt by him and made sure that he was dead. He did not turn him over to see what the piece of steel had done. He was dead and that was all.

Hemingway wanted to get things over so quickly that he even took his own life rather than sit and wait for his evening.

It was indeed an unlikely spectator, the famous photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt who saw the innovative author of The Sun Also Rises at his worst. Eisenstaedt went to Cuba in 1952 to photograph the writer for LIFE's September issue of that year, but instead of seeing a mighty, dazzling and larger-than-life celebrity, what he found was a crazy, berserk, wild and insulting giant who often went blue in the face with sudden, uncontrollable anger and drank alcohol for days on end.

Though Eisenstaedt was only able to take a few photographs due to difficulties getting along with the man, his snapshots were still able to capture a side of the author different from what he experienced - that of Hemingway's younger disposition to cheerfulness in the face of pressure, a bear who wrestled with the beasts of the jungle and enjoyed his dangerous sports as the best rituals of life.

Click here to view Eisenstaedt's rare photos of the author as recently published by LIFE.

Weekend Poetry: Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's marriage to the poet Ted Hughes developed from fairy-tale to stormy and ended up as one of the most tragic in literary history when Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Her poems, the greatest ones of which were written months before she took her life, reflect intonations of darkness and death, as remembrances of her earlier attempts at suicide coupled with repetitive visits of depression and her marriage's subsequent failure contributed to the themes which permeated her writings during her short but nonetheless productive life. Poets and critics hailed her works as the best examples of confessional poetry, as is summed up by the below poem written shortly before her death and published in her posthuomuous collection Ariel.

In Daddy, Plath describes her complicated feelings towards her father Otto who died after her eighth birthday due to undiagnosed diabetes. In the poem Plath regards her father's memory as something which she has to bury in oblivion. She describes him in God-like terms, and she seems to have difficulties coming to grips with his death, that at one point she recalls a suicide attempt at age 20 to join him (At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you.) She then goes on to say that she married Hughes for his resemblance to her dead father, a manifestation of the Electra complex which Plath was aware herself. At the end Plath says she has killed both of them (that is, forgotten both of them) and that she is therefore through with her father's lingering memory.


Daddy
by Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.