mouseworks

He looked at the books and asked if they were all mine. I said yes, and he picked up various more scholarly looking books and asked me what was in them. I answered, but there was definitely the tone that he didn't believe I'd read these books. He came across as geekish, computer guy, and I suggested the various O'Reilly books, but he had most of them. I finally, rather nervously, let him see the books in the living room that I hadn't brought outside to sell yet. He didn't pick up anything more and wasn't interested in a cheap grab bag of books, saying that he never bought books he wasn't going to read.

Weird feel to the whole thing -- not that I felt like I was being cased for a burglary, but the questions and attitude were definitely intrusive, looking for ways to be dismissive.

I hear American men talking about the machismo in Nicaragua, and then about the greater numbers of Nicaraguan women taking computer programming classes than they'd seen in the US (I understand that this varies over the US and will have to see how Nicaraguan women programmer fare after graduation).

I've never felt that the sample Nicaraguan men I've met were threatened because I might be bright. Brightness in women doesn't phase them the way it appears very much to phase some American men.

The people in Immigration might not be amused if I say I'm going down there for the history and the feminism, but if Nicaragua has women programmers, women working with solar panel electrification projects, and women leading battalions and national police forces, it's got some things that are missing in the US at this point. And it's already had a woman head of state.

After I learn Spanish and if Cuba hasn't been subjugated to US plans, I want to see Cuba. It sounds like a giant American-style commune, with people all working together for food, housing, clothes, and a monthly allowance, with some private enterprise allowed on the side. I think, now that we should have lost our terror of Monolithic Communism, such places should be allowed to exist (Cuba lets anyone who really doesn't want to stay on the commune the opportunity to leave, which is far cooler than the Soviet Union's refusal to let anyone leave unless they were a famous writer who didn't want to leave but who was forced out).

What the communes say is that there are different ways of doing things. I don't know if they're workable for the entire planet, but it's rather cool that a whole rather large island is basically running Twin Oak's script with additional charges to the people who just want to visit and get laid. I suspect that communes would be a rather pleasanter way of running the tourist industry than capitalism. Everyone needs to do dishes at least once a week; everyone needs an opportunity to try running the place; and nobody has to specialize in being a maid.

Twin Oaks and Acorn both work as organizations if not as cradle to grave communities. They're useful in showing us that there are different ways to organize a company, happiness to be had in what people do rather than what people consume.

I know that life in them isn't perfect, too. I lived at Acorn for three weeks.