Psychology and electricity bill

In the NYTimes article Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy one can read:

The district had been trying for years to prod customers into using less energy with tactics like rebates for energy-saving appliances. But the traditional approaches were not meeting the energy reduction goals set by the nonprofit utility’s board.

So, in a move that has proved surprisingly effective, the district decided to tap into a time-honored American passion: keeping up with the neighbors.

They go on to explain that people really don't appreciate being badly rated and send angry letters when they are but:

The approach has now been picked up by utilities in 10 major metropolitan
areas eager to reap rewards through increased efficiencies, including Chicago
and Seattle, according to Positive Energy, the software company that conceived
of the reports and contracts to produce them. Following Sacramento’s lead, they
award smiley faces only.

Energy saving is the largest and most ignored ressource of energy, and they've just found a new way to extract it from where it lies!

Saying more than hi to my readers

Dear blog readers,

Books, movies, treks, work... There's a lot of exciting things going on these days so let's give a try at updating you.

Books

I'm a Martin Winckler fan these days. I started with La maladie de Sachs (The Case of Dr Sachs) which I mentioned on this blog in my post entitled Secrets, went on to read his first novel La vacation, and most strikingly Les trois médecins, which is both a sequel and a prequel to Dr Sachs's story, and an tribute to Alexandre Dumas. (Should I mention that I read as a kid three times the 800 pages of The Three Musketeers and some of my favorite passages many more times?)

Next: Plumes d'Ange, the biography of his father, Ange Abraham Zafran. Not as exciting so far.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman: fascinating; I plan to review it here as soon as I'm finished reading it.

Movies

Nina's Tragedies (האסונות של נינה) by Savi Gavison, who also directed Shuroo. What a movie! Incredibly moving and touching, it is about a twelve year-old boy, Nadav, who is in love with his aunt, Nina. Nadav's parents split recently and Nina's husband was killed in a terrorist attack. She is going through a lot and Nadav is encouraged to move in with her. He is watching all along and learning while she meets another man with whom nothing is simple: he has a girlfriend but falls deeply in love with Nina; she spends a night with him but her bad conscience dictates that she break up... I cried my eyes out.

Mon Oncle, by and with Jacques Tati, for the thirtieth time - at least.

Trek

In the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. What an experience! The silence, the beauty of the landscapes...

Warning: Dead Sea disappearing fast, almost no rain this year and whatever rain there is is tapped by agriculture, flush toilets and showers instead of flowing through the Jordan river and into the Dead Sea... Pssst, do something!

Friday: Ein Feshkha (known in Hebrew as Einot Tsukim), an amazing nature reserve...



and Qedem, sources of warm sulphur water:





Night: in Mitspeh Efes, which is as it name suggests, at see level i.e. 400 m above the Dead Sea, probably the most beautiful place I've seen in my life.



Saturday: Wadi Arugot



Sunday: starting from Masada early in the morning (lunar landscape)...



and into Nakhal Tse'elim to Ein Namer for a dip in 13 Celsius water which didn't last more than a couple of seconds






Obama

I have supported Obama from the moment he won the primaries and am very excited about him. I have great hopes for both renewable energies, environment protection and foreign policy, including this region.

I hosted a party in honor of his inauguration which I took great delight watching on Fox News, my favorite channel.

A war

The political situation here is never brilliant, it is sometimes even catastrophic. We had another war. Three colleagues from work were mobilized. A good friend of mine took part in the ground offensive. Several of my friends who live or work in Ashdod, Ashkelon and Beer Sheva experienced the alerts and the anguish of expecting the impact near them. On the other side, the situation was dire and the toll incredibly high. At first I was tuned to the Israeli radio channels and to the wide consensus in favor of the war. The casualties among the Israeli soldiers were high in the first two days. With the toll mounting on the other side, I couldn't understand anymore. עדיף שלום ממלחמה goodwill people say here but no one could offer an alternative to war.

I hope Obama will force us to make peace. In the meantime, all I can do is vote.

Personal Life

Indeed you ask, "All that's nice, but what about you? The man in the picture?" Well I'm doing well. Running almost every day to help keep mood and fitness up. Making progress in various fields like knowing myself, communicating with others, getting my projects going, etc. And the feeling of improvement by itself fills my life. But many challenges remain and it won't be easy.

Saying hi to my blog readers

Quote of the day:

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.
-- Salvador Dalí

Idea of the day:

Run for twenty minutes, four times a week.

Book recommendation of the day:

Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman

Israeli Solar Powers African Villages

Well, that's the title of a post on isRealli "The new blog of Israel" which I stumbled upon.

When you look into it, beautifully designed webiste and projects brochure, the association mentioned, Jewish Hearts for Africa, has two completed projects and four ongoing projects, including one of each in Uganda for a community of 130 Africans who are orthodox Jews. They seek funds for another dozen projects.

I wish them luck because I like what they're doing.

(Un)Fair Trade

Jean-Pierre Boris's excellent book "Unfair Trade: The Black Book of commodities" has been published in paperback... in French and is available in German.

I thought for a minute that it had been translated in English when I saw the title "(Un)Fair Trade" but it was actually the cover of the German edition.

For those reading French or German it's a fascinating book.

FoxNews on Obama

I have a lot to say about this election but for the moment just a funny line.

FoxNews' Marrecca Fiore writes:

It's been a stressful two years for Barack Obama. He’s campaigned nonstop, day-to-day, hour-to-hour, flying to different states and sleeping in different time zones. He's also had to fight off the typical character attacks and mudslinging that hit any candidate for office.

Knowing who relayed so much of the "character attacks and mudslinging", it is highly ironic to read this on FoxNews...

Read the whole article, it's good fun.

Secrets

Philippe Grimber, Un secret

I stumbled recently upon the short book by Philippe Grimbert, Un secret, which has inspired the movie by the same name. Telling his own story, with a few adaptations, the author brings us to discover the tragic family secret which was hovering over him as a child, until the age of fifteen.

The narrator is a young child, born after the war in Paris, the only son to parents who cultivate their athletic bodies with daily exercise. The young boy is sickly but obsessed by a fantasy about an elder brother who resembles his parents more than he does: tall, strong, the elder one is a source of pride for his parents. On the day he turns 15, the child is in school watching a documentary on Auschwitz. When a schoolmate makes an anti-semitic remark, the boy at first laughs along but a moment later finds himself fighting recklessly the author of the remark. On that day, a friend of the family will reveal to him his origins but also the tragic tale of love and sacrifice from which his parent's union emerged.

I don't write more because of the excitation and emotion I felt unfolding the story in all its details under the pen of Philippe Grimbert and I highly recommend reading the book. Un secret has been published in English under both titles Memory: A Novel and Secret.

I you really want to read more details, I refer you to the Fiche de lecture réalisée par Rachel M, élève de 3ème, these notes on a Rencontre avec Philippe Grimbert or even the pedagogic material aimed at teachers detailing both the book and the movie.

Martin Winckler, La maladie de Sachs

As a proof that any family secret evokes any other one, I want to write about an other book I recommend warmly, Martin Winckler's La maladie de Sachs (which appeared in English as The Case of Doctor Sachs: A Novel.)

I'll borrow first from this excellent review the outline of Martin Winckler's novel:

Dr. Bruno Sachs, a slight, stooped, and somewhat unkempt general practitioner in a French village is dedicated to his work and loved by his patients. Sachs is a solitary, self-effacing man who takes his Hippocratic duties seriously and is especially sensitive to the needs of his patients.

The reader views Sachs through the eyes of multiple narrators--his patients, colleagues, friends and acquaintances, all of whom write in the first person and present Bruno Sachs as "you" or "he." Thus, the reader gradually builds up a "connection" (...) with Sachs by synthesizing multiple glimpses of his behavior and facets of his character. At the same time, Sachs is trying to find his own voice, his own connection, by becoming a writer. At first he jots down random thoughts, then he keeps a notebook, and eventually he produces a complete manuscript.

Sachs is a hero to me: His attempt to listen to his patients and understand what they are saying with their symptoms or their hypocondria, their sometimes vocal and sometimes silent calls for help. His attempt not only to treat the symptoms but also to advise the people who came to him on their real, often non-medical, problems. To alleviate the pain of the patients. To set the patient as his sole concern, including respecting a patient who wants to be allowed to die. (Insofar as Winckler, through Sachs, is very critical of the medical establishment - and moralizing - I do hope he is a good doctor himself...)

Back to family secrets. One story in The Case of Doctor Sachs, intertwined among other patients' stories, is entitled "The secret". Like in Grimbert's novel, we are first aware of the surface effects, the symptoms and only later do we understand the terrible family secret that lies below the surface. The backdrop is the same period in France: the occupation. A young woman and a young Jewish man named Abel are lovers. She is pregnant. Abel is arrested and deported. Abel's best friend, a French aristocrat, marries the young pregnant woman out of loyalty for his late friend. A generation later, after they have raised Abel's child and a second child together, she reveals the truth in a moment of anger: she had plotted the whole scenario and denounced Abel whom she didn't care for, in order to pave the way for a marriage with him, the aristocrat, her ultimate target.

It is hard for me to believe that Winckler made up entirely this horrible secret of ambition and treason, it is just to horrible to come to the imagination. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Some chapters, including the first two chapters of "The Secret" are available online through Google Books (pages 283 and 341), but the third one, the comprehensive "original version" isn't (page 355).]