Ozymandias

Shrinking Respect for Strunk

2009-11-18T12:13:00.002-05:00

Judging by the enormous number of misuses I've seen of late, I'd estimate we are no more than a half dozen years away from completely losing the distinction between 'effect' and 'affect'.

If Stimulus II: This Time We'll Call It Jobs Because We've Already Tainted The Word 'Stimulus' With Our Ineptitude goes through, I would consider supporting it if some significant amount of money were spent on distributing copies of Strunk & White to everyone who claims to be literate.

As is often the case, XKCD is there to give me hope.

That's so weird!

2009-11-11T11:02:00.004-05:00

The government of Venezuela being boldly progressive has, over the past several years, taken greater and greater control over various economic sectors, among these the energy sector.

They have used all of their progressive skill & acumen, all of their socially-just compassion to provide low-cost power so the poor could finally enjoy a decent standard of living.

What was the result of these nobly-envisioned price controls?

Rampant shortages.(fn1)

If only there had been some way of foreseeing the possibility of this outcome. But, alas, this must be chalked up as an odd aberration, the root causes of which may never be fully known. At any rate, the solution is clearly more direct involvement by the government in energy production and, increasingly, consumption.

Because when the government sets out to provide something good for the people and, inevitably, destroys what was already there, the blame is never on the good-hearted, hard-working progressive overlords, but on the venal people greedily using too much. Thus Chavez has taken to berating his citizens for taking showers over 3 minutes and getting fat.

Don't worry, there are no lessons here for our own impending government takeover of health care. As I say, this is a weird, totally unpredictable one-off kind of event with no generalizable lessons. When our own well-intentioned, very smart & compassionate progressive overlords redesign a massive chunk of our economy for the betterment of the poor & everyone else it will be smooth sailing with no unintended consequences or highly predictable economic ill-effects. None.

fn1: I'd add that the NY Times is, predictably, completely flummoxed by this odd appearance of shortages in the wake of price controls. I'd point out this might be their ideology once again blinding them to reality but pointing out their manifold failings gets tiresome even for me at times.

Government Leading Us to Progress!

2009-11-10T10:26:00.005-05:00

So the Pfizer plant that prompted the Kelo decision that legitimized using the right of ~~public~~ eminent domain to take property from one private interest to give it to another, more-favored private interest is being abandoned. So the town of New London kicked a bunch of people out of their homes for nothing.

At base, this episode was a fairly massive change in the traditional understanding of the relationship of the people to government that was okayed in the name of allowing the government a freer hand to pursue broad social goods, in this case gaining a higher tax base and improving the town through redevelopment.

The end result was a fairly complete disaster with people kicked out of their homes by the government in the name of progress and no actual gain to be seen for the trouble.

Don't worry, this was an isolated incident that should in no way influence our faith in the power of government to engineer good outcomes through exercising state power behind good intentions. I'm sure that the fairly significant redefinition of the traditional relationship between the citizen and the government represented by the health-care reform legislation currently wending its way through Congress will not end in a similar disaster...

Great Scot! It's Doc Brown's Phone!

2009-11-06T13:24:00.003-05:00

Funny line in this Times article about the capabilities that will be coming on phones in a couple of years:

Open up the device, point it at the street and ask it to show you what the place looked like 200 years ago, and it offers a photo or video.

Wow! Photos of what places looked like 200 years ago! Truly technology is progressing faster than I thought: apparently phones will have access to time-machine capabilities only a few short years from now...(fn1)

fn1: Some fun history. The first photographic techniques date to the 1820's but took several hours of exposure. The first relatively workable techniques were developed by M. Daguerre in the late 1830's and early 1840's. They took several minutes of exposure. So we are still at least a few decades away from being able to look at photographs of what places looked like 200 years ago, barring the invention of time travel allowing us to photograph them before the invention of photography.

The earliest workable motion picture camera was famously invented by Thomas Edison in the 1890's so we're quite aways away from calling up 200 year old moving pictures, even ignoring the fact that video more specifically referes to electronic capturing of motion pictures, which wasn't invented until the late 1920's by the fantastically named Philo T. Farnsworth. Electronic television, it should be noted, was based on an idea Farnsworth had at the age of 14! And people think teens today spend too much time thinking about television...

Odd

2009-11-06T06:45:00.004-05:00

The main article in the NY Times on the Fort Hood shootings contains one of the more awkward examples of media bias I've ever personally come across.

Thirty-three paragraphs into a fifty-four paragraph article comes this:

"The Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking for many American Muslims, condemned the shootings as a “heinous incident” and said, “We share the sentiment of our president.”

So why is that odd? Because nowhere in the article is the religion of the shooter mentioned. So why the non-sequitur of a condemnation from a Muslim group when the religion of the shooter is apparently not known or not important to mention? Why not include a condemnation from a Christian group, since it was Texas and Christianity is the majority religion of Texas? Why not a quote from a Jewish group, if we feel it's important to include minority religious reaction?

Oh, I learn about 80% of the way through the Wash. Post's main article on the shootings, the shooter is Muslim. Well, that explains the otherwise inexplicable reaction quote in the Times.

One must wonder, though, what is going through the minds of the NY Times. I think this is just the reflexive obedience to their pieties leading them into absurdity: linking Muslims to violence is wrong & bigoted & evil so you must not mention the religion of the shooter. But people are likely to find out anyway, so it's best to include something to show that Muslims are just as shocked and outraged as everyone else. Obeying these two dicta leads them to the curious position of leaving facts out of their story, implying that if you actually want to know all of the facts about a breaking story, you should go elsewhere than the Times.

Or learn to read their code, b/c clearly the random quote from a Muslim group indicated that the shooter was Muslim w/o the Times having to do the awkward, bigoted act of actually reporting news they would rather not.

Fun Fact

2009-11-05T11:54:00.003-05:00

So Mayor Bloomberg won a third term by a surprisingly narrow margin. Prob. a good thing that he won over the other guy, prob. also a good thing that it was scarily close. Lets him know New Yorkers are upset about his term-limits shennanigans.

But here's something odd I noticed. Again and again in the coverage of his victory it was noted that this makes him "only the fourth three-term mayor in the last century". This makes it sound like quite an unusual thing, no? Only 4 in 100 years?

Here's the thing, though. The first was LaGuardia who took office in 1934. NYC mayor terms are 4 years a piece. So the other way of looking at this "only the fourth" statistic is that when he completes his third term, New Yorkers will have spend 48 (3 terms * 4 years per term = 12 years per mayor, 4 3-term mayors * 12 years per mayor = 48 years) of the past, well, 80 years if we take LaGuardia's entrance as the start but, oh, let's call it 100 years so as to not cherry pick LaGuardia's start date.

48/100 years under 3-term mayors doesn't sound nearly as rare as "only the fourth in a century" does it? Going by number of mayors, it would be 4 of the last 10 mayors, again not exactly a once-in-a-lifetime event.

A good example of the truth in the phrase "lies, damned lies & statistics".

Truth of the Day

2009-11-04T14:40:00.003-05:00

Fascinating article in the NY Times about an expensive piece of bomb-detecting equipment that the Iraqi government is quite enamored of which has the sole drawback of being comically useless:

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.

Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.

This heartfelt statement from the head of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives betrays the truth I referred to in the post's title:

“Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri

Though this fellow might be written off as a backwards yokel from a backwards region of the world, this is how most of humanity thinks, even today, even in the West where science seems to reign supreme. Rational thought is very alien to humanity. Scientific thought is an even more unnatural subset of rational thought. It's a rare person who is able to fully embrace it and takes real will for most people to even follow the logic of it, even in the face of literal centuries of evidence of its benefits.

This is a big part of the reason that I feel civilization rests on such infirm footing, despite seemingly irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The glorious achievements of our civilization were not natural or inevitable, nor is the maintenance of the modes of thought needed for their further existence. Indeed, most of humanity would gladly embrace the pleasantly irrational, civilization be damned, than do the hard work of maintaining rationality. For an example from the very heights of the "rational West", just look at the anti-vaccine movement.

Sounds like somebody brought a knife to a gunfight...

2009-10-02T13:18:00.007-04:00

So Chicago is out of the running for the 2016 Olympics in the first round just ~~days~~ hours after both the President and First Lady personally appeared to make speeches on behalf of its bid.

Wow.

It seems that just about everybody assumed when Obama reversed his "I'm too busy" excuse and made the trip that this meant the fix was in and Chicago was a lock. Everybody assumed this because Presidents of the United States tend to only show up after all of the many thousands of people working under them have already ironed out all the issues and all that's left is to sign the final deal and take the photos.

Not Obama. Apparently he honestly just wanted to go to use the power of his office and, perhaps, his legendary personal charisma to try to sway the judges. I guess it never occurred to him that the chance to build themselves up by snubbing major officeholders like the President of the U.S. usually proves irresistible to minor, unimportant functionaries like the IOC.

I wonder if the administration figured that having him go would ensure Chicago's victory. I could see them thinking, "Gee, when presidents show up at big treaty signings and the like, they always get their way, so if we want Chicago to get the nod, all we have to do is have the President go and he'll get his way, b/c that's how it works right?"

And of course this is exactly backwards. Yes, it is rare for a President to show up for a big decision and not have it go his way but this is because most presidents have their staff make sure the decision is going to go their way before they make an appearance.

It's really just the old correlation/causation thing. The Obama-ites figured that Presidents showing up caused things to go their way but in reality Presidents show up only after they know things are going to go their way.

Not this one, though.

I also found both of the Obamas speeches to be kind of odd. I didn't read them in their entirety but from the description and excerpts in the Wash. Post, they sounded like kind of not very good US campaign speeches, which is not what one would think would win over an international crowd like the IOC.

Mrs. Obama's seemed to be mostly about how hard her Dad's life was and how much she loved him and how much he would have loved having the Olympics in Chicago. That's great but I'm sure there are heartwarming stories about challenged parents in Rio -- and everywhere else, for that matter -- who would love to have the Olympics there.

Pres. Obama's seemed to be mostly about what a great American city Chicago is, populated by people from all over the world. Wonderful then, I guess you don't need the Olympics as a show of diversity, you've got your own little Olympics every day! And saying it's a great "American city" seems particularly odd in the context of this particular decision given that 4 Summer and 4 Winter Games have been held in American cities while none have been held in S. America at all. Isn't Obama all about spreading the wealth and we're all equals and all that? Isn't it odd for him to lobby on behalf of his adopted hometown against the first serious contender from an entire snubbed continent?

It's odd, I'm kind of torn on the whole thing. On the one hand, I hate seeing the US President get so flagrantly snubbed. On the other, it's kind of Obama's fault that he put himself in the position to get slapped in the face.

On the one hand, I'm not a fan of Obama's, so it's somewhat satisfying to watch him get a first hand lesson about how international relations works in the real world, rather than (as Sarkozy memorably put it recently) Obama's 'virtual world'. But on the other it's always nice to see America come out on top.

And, as one might expect, I think the Olympics are way overrated. They're a good way for local politicians to engage in graft and wasteful legacy building at the expense of their constituents -- very rarely are they ever a net positive for the hosting city overall. I frankly wouldn't mind if the Olympics were always held in the middle of nowhere, where they wouldn't bother anyone and could be safely ignored, but that wouldn't give the IOC members the chance to collect bribes from and showcase their importance in all of the world's major cities.

I guess overall it's something of a wash. But def. embarrassing for Pres. and Mrs. Obama in light of the "sacrifice" (the Mrs.'s word) of flying over there to lobby on Chicago's behalf.

Texting while driving part II: this time it's nuanced...

2009-10-01T16:34:00.004-04:00

Perhaps I was too rash in my post about the texting-while-driving regulation.

This article is frightening in suggesting how much of this goes on, drawing particular attention to blue-collar folk tethered to a dashboard-mounted dispatch computer while driving massive trucks. This seems like an amazingly bad idea for a whole host of reasons and one that even I would concede might benefit from some regulation. (Though the cynic in me notes that in that last article, about the executive order, there were already complications raised about extending the ban to interstate drivers because of "industry concerns" aka: I paid good money to install that computer to tell my jackass drivers where to go, don't you dare say they can't use it!)

I standby my determination that texting (or emailing or watching youtube or reading dispatches or whatever) while driving is so self-evidently stupid as leave me mind-boggled that it happens at all.

The reasons I underestimated the extent of the problem are probably twofold:

a) I cannot conceive of caring so much about my job (or, he adds quickly lest you think he doesn't care about his job, any job, for that matter) that I would endanger my life or the lives of others(fn1) for it.

b) I represent an extreme case of the one-track mindedness the article notes:

The reason, researchers say, is that the brain can effectively perform only one difficult task at a time.

I find it almost literally impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time, even if neither thing is particularly engaging or important. If I'm reading a book or watching television or doing whatever I get so focused that it is near impossible for me to even maintain conversation, a fact noted on numerous occasions by both my girlfriend and my mother.

fn1: Well, I say not the lives of others. Maybe I wouldn't mind endangering the lives of others so long as I got to choose the others. I kid! I kid! I kid b/c I have a warped and disturbing sense of humor.

Commonsense regulation

2009-10-01T15:59:00.004-04:00

Obama has issued an executive order forbidding all federal employees from texting while driving government vehicles or while using government-issued phones in their own vehicles.

Unconfirmed reports indicate that in the coming days he will issue additional orders confronting such menaces as: stabbing yourself in the eye with a government pen or with your own pen while engaged in government business; blithely driving your government car into a lake or driving your own car into a lake while engaged in government business unless that business expressly requires the driving of a car into a lake; and, finally, jumping off a government bridge or off a private bridge while engaged in government business just because "everyone else is doing it".

While I'm sure that texting-while-driving is a rising menace, I wonder if the type of people who are prone to engaging in it are really the types to stop because they've been told it's against regulations. That is, if you are so stupid that you willfully disregard obvious and immediate threats to your own safety, will being told not to by an abstract regulation really stop you?

Also, if there are so many government employees who are, in fact, so stupid that they will place themselves in danger for no good reason but will stop if told not to, does this suggest that we might have some work to do on improving hiring standards in the federal workforce?

But perhaps I'm looking at that last point the wrong way. Maybe idiots who will follow instructions to the letter but are incapable of performing even the most basic independent thoughtful analysis for themselves are exactly who we need to carry out the detailed will of our government...

Why I hate CSI:Miami

2009-10-01T13:52:00.004-04:00

This Youtube clip compiling an amazing number of instances of David Caruso's patented "one-liner while putting on sunglasses" is a good distillation.

To be fair to the Miami version, I don't actually like any of the many CSI variants. The only one I've ever actually seen at any length, though, is CSI:Miami. And it was atrocious. Beautiful, lush cinematography that looks absolutely glorious in HD combined with incredibly cliched storylines, laughable casting choices and pathetically bad acting.

No sir, I didn't like it.

Commune-ism

2009-10-01T13:10:00.002-04:00

Fascinating article in the NY Times about people organizing group living situations in the city.

The article is everything you'd expect and serves as a beautiful illustration of how difficult it can be to put together satire in today's world where actual craziness tends to vastly outstrip anyone's ability to exaggerate it.

Perhaps just a few choice quotes with some commentary...

Consider the efforts of Ms. Berger, 28, and Ms. Hazard, 24, who advertised eloquently for roommates before even settling on a house: "Some of the things we like are: permaculture, living sustainably, gardening, dancing, hula hooping, yoga, herbalism, making music, active listening, non-violent communication ..." they wrote, in part.

It's kind of sad the way they are clearly trying as hard as they can to be unique people fearlessly carving their own way in the world and yet are ending up as hopeless cliches every bit as ridiculous as the conformists whose restrictive reality they no doubt believe they are bravely fleeing.

A house in Philly apparently had this listing:

"You will probably not feel at home here unless anti-ableism, anti-ageism, anti-classism, anti-racism, consent, trans-positivity and queer-positivity, etc., are very important to you," the ad read.
Anti-ableism?
Ms. Feigelson, who works as a political organizer and volunteer, explained: "It means against the oppression of those who are physically or mentally disabled, and extends to language. Like you wouldn’t use the word ‘lame.’ "

Ah yes. Because you wouldn't want to get a roommate who is in favor of the oppression of the handicapped -- as so many in today's society are.

You know, this tendency to imagine yourself as a brave warrior courageously fighting evil opression is one I've noticed for a while, perhaps I should pull together my thoughts on it at some point and share them.

Basically, the driving force seems to be that while it's a lot of fun to be bravely fighting oppression -- it's romantic and all that -- it sucks to actually live in a place that's full of real oppression with lots of power behind it b/c then, for all the romance, you tend to get thrown in jail, beaten, killed, that kind of downer stuff. So what's really fun is to come up with definitions of "oppression" that are so mild that very open, very accepting societies can be shoe-horned into meeting them. Then you get all the pleasantness of living in an open, free society bereft of much actual oppression AND all the romantic fun of proving how moral you are by bravely standing against oppression -- nevermind that this oppression exists mostly in your own imagination.

I don't pretend that this is a recent phenomenon -- indeed, based on my cursory knowledge, it seems to have been a significant force animating the late 1960's -- but it def. seems to be on the rise of late.

Then later, the reporter (fn1) asks a personality expert about the ads:

Yet she worried that other personality types, the sort who know how to fix the toaster or program the VCR, weren’t being invited into these houses.

That's not really a concern though, is it? After all, everyone knows that toasters are a tool of the patriarchy designed to oppress womynkind; VCR's, in their conceit to 'record' something that 'happened', are reflective of a normative heuristic favoring certain dominant frames of reference over others; and as for "programming", don't even get me started on how inherently oppressive the idea that it is right or even possible for one being to impose its designs and desires on another is...

Somehow even after reading this article about these brave iconoclasts creating a new type of society, one based on profound thought and deep insight about the role of humanity in the world, my conviction that Western Civ. is on its last legs and disaster will follow remains unshaken...

fn1: Who, somewhat oddly, openly admits in the article to "fretting" over her interview subjects, though that's a topic for a separate post. One on my old favorite: the NY Times. The open sympathy of their reporters -- even in the "hard news" sections -- for their subjects, when those subjects are on the 'right' side of the political spectrum, is getting pretty out of hand. But, as I say, a topic for another time.

Real rights for a truly just world

2009-10-01T10:55:00.004-04:00

Hi all, it's me Dewey. I'll be popping in now and again to shed some progressive light on these dark corners. With luck, soon all the doubters will come to their senses and we can realize a true progressive utopia right here in the good old, benighted USA!

At any rate, here's my first...

In light of the Supreme Court's decision to review the McDonald's v. Chicago gun rights case, Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle asks "is the second amendement is a real amendment?"

The answer, of course, is that the second is clearly not a "real" amendment in the sense that it does not protect a real right -- nor, I hasten to add, do many of the others in the supremely over-hyped "bill of rights".

Real rights are more solid and lasting. They are granted by well-intentioned progressive overlords and include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:
- The right to effective, extensive, up-to-date medical care
- The right to nutritious, environmentally-sustainable, delicious food
- The right to clean, attractive, well-designed, modern housing situated in easily-walkable, vibrantly-diverse, multi-use communities
- The right to meaningful, sustainable, socially-responsible employment
- The right to societally-approved free expression of sexual preference with other consenting beings

The provision of these rights should be society's top -- indeed, perhaps only -- goal. Protecting supposed "rights" like "free speech" or "freedom of religion" or "free assembly" or "the right to bear arms" or whatever else is beyond outmoded.

In a society as rich as ours, every single person's "freedom" should be utterly trammeled if that is what is necessary to provide everyone with an equitable, meaningful, environmentally-sustainable, socially-reponsible existence.

Sure, we have this atavistic desire to cling to these archaic concepts, and that is largely understandable b/c they are familiar and comfortable. But we will not be living in a just, progressive world until we throw them on the dustbin of history as they deserve and allow our betters to redesign our society in a more perfect form.

Naturally, the evil Republicans will try to frighten us with their soceror's talk of "negative rights" and "limited government". Hopefully, the Supreme Court will make the right decision and end our country's sad devotion to this ancient religion of so-called "rights" and help us to conjure up a new progressive age and discover a base for meaningful growth. Then we can be proud of the technological progressive achievements we have constructed.

Is it clobberin' time?

2009-10-01T10:26:00.003-04:00

NASA has announced that cosmic-ray radiation has reached its highest level in more than 50 years.

As any dedicated student of pop-culture or slightly geeky teenage boy could tell you, 50 years ago is roughly the start of the silver age of comics, a period when many of the super-heroes we all know and love were created, many through the effects of cosmic rays.

Obviously a surfeit of cosmic radiation heralds a new age of superheroes. I'm sure it will work out better than it did in Kingdom Come.

Something New

2009-10-01T10:20:00.006-04:00

In a new turn for the ol' blog, I've invited a fresh face to put up occasional posts.

I was worried that my somewhat misanthropic, generally conservative, often contrarian views might be too out of sync with the progressive times we're living in -- and besides, my posting sched. has not been the best. So I've invited a nice, earnest progressive idealist to submit occasional posts. He will endeavor to provide a progressive take on the issues of the day, hopefully enlightening us as to why on earth that tired, tyrannical philosophy would hold any attraction for anyone.

I am informed that his first may well be up later today. He'll be posting under the name "Dewey" and will be keeping in the somewhat insouciant spirit of the blog. Look for it and I hope you enjoy it.

Bad Books

2009-09-24T12:26:00.002-04:00

Talking about Stephanopoulos in that last post reminded me that his book about his time in the Clinton administration, All Too Human, was possibly the worst book I've ever finished.

I was assigned it, once upon a time, and aside from being hilariously self-sycophantic (yes, I wouldn't have believed that was possible either) it was in general so poorly written that it was a slow struggle just to finish each page. During the long slog through, I literally thought I might have some kind of a brain disorder that was erasing my ability to read. I thought there was no way a book could be pseudo-high-brow fluff, airport bookstore fodder, while at the same time having syntax and sentence construction subtly impervious to speedy absorbtion.

Turns out I was wrong: it wasn't me, it was him. But then, that's usually the case, isn't it?

The Art of Not Lying**

2009-09-24T11:00:00.003-04:00

President Obama addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday and gave what I found to be a fairly appalling speech -- though, to be sure, not significantly more appalling than his usual obviously deceptive, overly obstreperous, often inane and surprisingly incoherent speeches.

Perhaps the most baldly prevaricative statements came towards the end:

"And I pledge that America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights -- for the student who seeks to learn; the voter who demands to be heard; the innocent who longs to be free; the oppressed who yearns to be equal."

"There are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident -- and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny."

Were the obviously fraudulent Iranian elections that led to weeks of protest in the street, --protest met by that evil regime with murder and intimidation and by our own lofty President Obama with delay and dissembling before weak condemnation -- so long ago that he thinks we have forgotten?

"Always stand"? "Never waver"? It was less than 4 months ago that he himself didn't stand and did waver on precisely those principles! I wonder if he honestly believes his own bullshit or thinks that everyone else is so stupid that he can say whatever he wants, however contradicted by reality his words might be, and get away with it.

He does this kind of thing all the time, on matters great and small. Last Sunday, George Stephanopoulos(fn1) asked him how fining people who don't buy health insurance -- as Obama has said he would do -- is not a tax? Obama said it's just not. Only a liar would say it was. Stephanopoulos cited the Webster's dictionary definition of "tax" in support of his question, to which Obama replied "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now." I see, so when Obama denies that a word means what it means, he is right, not the dictionary. Nor, apparently, is the bill he was defending, which calls the charge a tax, correct. Whatever Obama says at the moment is right. Reality bends to his needs.

Or, later during that same Sunday morning media blitz, when Obama suggested that he is holding off on committing more troops to Afghanistan -- troops that were requested in a strategy document sent to him a month ago by his own chosen general -- because we are "lacking a strategy", he seems to want to imply that Bush screwed up Afghanistan, left us without a goal or a strategy and that Obama must fix that problem before moving on to questions of resources. He must think we are so stupid that we have forgotten his speech of last March (6 months ago!) "announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan". A strategy that marked "the conclusion of a careful policy review that I ordered as soon as I took office." Clearly, he was either lying then about having carefully developed a strategy or he is lying now about not having one. Or, perhaps most likely, both.

I honestly cannot understand how our supposedly bright punditocracy continues to gush over his enormously similar speeches. Yes, he gives a good speech. His cadence and pronunciation, his gestures and pauses: he is a master, no doubt. But given that he gives every speech pretty much the same way, you would think at some point our professional political observers would start paying attention to the actual content of these wonderfully delivered speeches and discover that they are at best full of deception, often contradict previous statements and are usually in conflict with plain reality. Sometimes all at the same time.

** I've had something of a ground-swell of late asking for new posts -- well, as much of a 'ground-swell' as a blog whose highest readership number was barely in the double digits can generate, anyway. So here you go. I've been considering taking up the blog again but am leery. I've got some potential ideas but a lot of other stuff on my plate of late so don't go getting your hopes up. With any luck, this angry rant will turn my few beleaguered readers off to the point that I can retire in peace...

fn1: Can I just note how appalled I am to find "Stephanopoulos" in the spell-check? I hope they have it wrong.

Bad Decisions: Not Just For Poor Folk!

2009-05-15T13:42:00.007-04:00

I've pointed out in previous posts that nearly every article I read about people in horrible financial straits contains obvious hints -- if not outright confirmation -- that colossally bad decision making underlies the problems.

I get the sense, sometimes, that people think I'm picking on poor folk when I do this. That somehow, poor folk are forced into making bad decisions by the immutable facts of their lives and it is somehow bad form to point out that if they had made better decisions, they would have had a better outcome.

Well, today I saw an article in the NY Times written by one of their economics writers about how he has descended into a pit of debt. Reading the article one sees, as always, that his situation is the result of terrifically poor decision making. Perhaps because he is not a middle-class writer trying to tug heart strings about the plight of the poor but rather confessing his own problems, these bad decisions are not concealed and glossed-over the way they tend to be in sob-stories focusing on the poor.

At any rate, I thought I'd just take the moment to point out that if you repeatedly make bad decisions, they will lead you to penury just as surely whether you make $120,000 a year (as the author of this piece does) or $30,000 per year (as the unfortunates in one of my previous posts on the subject did). Sure, you'll probably get to the poorhouse faster on $30K but the fall will seem much more calamitous from $120K.

The other thing to note is the perhaps obvious point that people who make $120,000 are probably less likely to make enough bad decisions to ruin their lives. If they were the types who were relatively incapable of logically forecasting the results of their actions, after all, it's unlikely they would make it through the requirements to get jobs at $120,000. (Education, working-your-way-up, etc.)

I came to the article through Megan McArdle, one of the professional bloggers at The Atlantic. In her post she acknowledges the courage it must take for a professional economics journalist to admit to having fallen into the state he's in and then goes on to talk about how difficult it is to make ends meet as a journalist, particularly b/c you tend to be well-educated and friends with upwardly mobile professionals in industries that pay much better and probably aren't teetering on the verge of extinction.

Of course, she also points out that she finds it "obvious, unembarrassing, and uncontroversial" to admit that her household (with her and her unemployed journalist boyfriend) must cut back. Here we have an example of good decision making. This is why she is unlikely to fall into the truly dire straits in which the NY Times fellow finds himself. If, on the other hand, she found it unremarkable to live on credit card debt while maintaining a lifestyle that neither she nor her boyfriend could afford, then disaster would follow as surely as night follows day. And it would not be the choice of poorly-paying career -- or rather not primarily that choice -- that led them there. It would be the logical end result of the repeated bad decision to not live within their means.

Quote of the Day

2009-05-14T13:53:00.002-04:00

George Will on the Obama administration: "The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption."

True.

What 12-year Old Girl's Basketball, TE Lawrence and Computer War Games have in Common

2009-05-07T12:59:00.005-04:00

I'm still under the gun with work-related stuff until next Wed., so posting will be fairly nonexistent until then.

I did just want to point out that Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker is stupid and approaches self-parody.

I don't have time to go through it point- by-point illustrating its manifold stupidities, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

I'll just tease it by saying that one of his main arguments is that men's college basketball way under-utilizes the full-court press. His primary support for this is that a parent-coach had a lot of success with it in his 12-year old daughter's league.

No, seriously.

Greed apparently not always good

2009-04-30T10:27:00.005-04:00

Oliver Stone is looking to make a Wall Street sequel.

As long as we're going with bad ideas, why not follow in the footsteps of the ultimate bad-idea man, George Lucas, and have an entire awful trilogy to crap all over the magnificent creation of your youth?

Wall Street: The Phantom Prosperity
Wall Street: Attack of the CDO's
Wall Street: Revenge of the Socialists

Best part? Shia Labeouf is up for it. You know, I'm a nice guy. I don't wish harm on anyone. But it's really hard not to wish at least some harm on Shia.

And I say this as one who enjoyed the odd Even Stevens episode as a guilty pleasure.

His good movie to bad movie ratio is skewed way to the dark side. This isn't, in and of itself, a reason to wish him harm, of course. There are lots of people who don't make good movies and never have that bother me little to not at all. But his failures tend to involve the steaming wreckage of beloved childhood memories of mine. Yes, Transformers was okay. But the last Indy film was an abomination. (fn1)

Wall Street is a good movie. It encapsulated its time well. I agree that the current financial mess could serve as a good backdrop for a movie. But, Oliver, please. Let some young auteur with a fresh take and feel for the times take a crack at it. Don't try to wedge Gekko into it. Don't ruin what we had with some half-baked cash-in staring that sack of overwhelmed youngster that is Shia.

I leave you with a link to Talking Heads This must be the place, the song playing as Charlie Sheen outfits his new apartment in Wall Street. Good tune, I always smile when it comes up on my iPod.

fn1: South Park had a memorable episode in which the kids are traumatized from having seen Indy getting raped. The rape being, of course, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Which I still haven't seen. And probably won't because while it was fun to watch the Nazis' faces melt when they looked in the Ark in Raiders, I fear that something similar would happen to me upon witnessing Crystal Skull.

Warning: Slow Traffic Ahead

2009-04-23T12:29:00.004-04:00

I've got some work-related stuff that'll be keeping me pretty occupied for the next month or so, just to explain the slow posting of late and to come.

Of course, if I have any more run-ins with prostitutes, you kind people will be the first to know.

Also, to my anonymous debate partner in the AIG-bonus post, I've seen your latest and will respond but, sadly, that will be slow as well.

Prostitutes Redux OR Stories from the Recession

2009-04-23T11:08:00.006-04:00

I was awoken at 3:00 this morning by a loud fight taking place outside my building. Now, living in midtown Manhattan I do not expect pastoral silence for my slumbers. Pretty regularly, we get boisterous revellers (read: drunken bar-goers) caterwauling their way down the block but this did not sound like the type of noise typical of my neighborhood.

What I heard was what sounded like one woman loudly screaming at someone to "get out of the car!" Along with plenty of cursing and the like.

Much as Father does in the celebrated poem Twas the Night Before Christmas, I sprang from the bed, flew to the window in a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash(fn1) to see what was the matter...

Instead of a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, however, what appeared to my wondering eye was two African American prostitutes and a drunken white businessman.(fn2) They were having quite the argument in and around an SUV parked directly across the street from my apartment.

How nice.

From what I could gather of the fight, the two hookers must have picked up the john to do their business in the SUV and at some point (impossible to tell when during the proceedings it might have happened) the man refused to pay. This had understandably upset the prostitutes terribly and they were demanding that he get out of the car so they could leave. It was hard to make out what the man was saying, as unlike the ladies he wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs, so I'm not quite sure what his argument was, except perhaps "I'm a drunken idiot who wants to have an argument."

How can I be sure they were prostitutes? Because at one point, after they had apparently drawn the man's ire by asking him loudly, "If you're a millionaire, where is your money? Where are your friends? How come you're walking down the street at night alone??" To which he responded (audibly, for the first time), "I'm going to take down your license plate number!" Whereupon one prostitute replied, displaying admirable logic, "Go ahead! I'm a prostitute! What you gonna do with a license plate number??"(fn3)

There were also a number of asides to the ladies by what I can only assume was one or the other's daughter in the vein of "Let it go, Mom, let's just leave!" Sensible advice but predictably slow to be heeded by prostitutes who would take their daughter with them to turn tricks.(fn4)

At any rate, eventually the prostitutes tired of haranguing the drunken lout and managed to extricate their car enough from his inebriated grasp to peel out and away.

The disheveled, suited man then took a moment to survey the surrounding buildings and, as my head was perched in front of my still mostly-closed blinds, caught sight of me. He looked dead straight at me and then slowly extended to me a middle-finger salute -- a gesture I would have though more appropriate coming from me whom he had awoken. I shook my head slowly and then withdrew for a moment. He began to stagger off down the street and back to bed I went.

It took me an hour to fall asleep again. I wish I'd called the cops (there's a station two blocks away) when I first heard the noise. It would have given me great joy to have had that man thrown in jail, though that probably wouldn't have happened.

So prostitutes again. In my neighborhood again. I was a bit groggy and at a much further distance this time, but I have to say this pair was much less appealing in both appearance and -- most certainly -- demeanor than the one who propositioned me from an SUV some months back.

I can't help but think the increasing prevalence and apparent rising disregard for stealth is somewhat related to desperation brought on by the worsening economic conditions. But maybe I've just been reading too many sob-stories in the Times.

fn1: Well, drew the Venetian blinds, things have changed since Victorian times...

fn2: My sig. other informs me that the man was British. I do not recollect this but, if true, it would lend an additional sad air to the fall of that once great people. She also says there was a significant part of the fight during which one of the women was yelling about being pregnant. I also do not remember that. Ah, how interesting to see how people's recollection of an event can differ! This is why eye-witness testimony is not the gold-standard that you might think it would be and why circumstantial evidence, though it sounds much inferior, can actually be sig. more persuasive.

fn3: This exchange immediately followed an amusing comment by one of the prostitutes to the effect of "I"m a real New Yorker! You must be from Jersey or somewhere!" Ah yes, a status fight between a prostitute and her john. I'm reminded of the tag line from the first (which lamentably was not also the last) Alien vs. Predator movie: "Whoever wins... we lose."

fn4: Perhaps they had confused this with the child-friendly version of "trick-or-treat" or perhaps the daughter was deemed to be of age to start an apprenticeship, who knows.

Mythbusters Cranks the Awesome up to 11

2009-04-13T17:03:00.003-04:00

Video of the Mythbusters team smashing a steel plate into a car at 700 miles per hour.

Just in case the probably-faked Italian meter-maid humping video from earlier didn't do it for you.

Healthcare Link

2009-04-13T14:57:00.002-04:00

Interesting post on health care over at The Atlantic's business section.

It's pretty much where I was heading with my posts but the ambitious folk who are actually paid to blog for a living have got there before I did.

Rest assured, the rest of my promised healthcare musings will be forthcoming regardless. The Atlantic, for the most part, doesn't have my insouciant way with words, so I can add that, at the very least...

Video of the day

2009-04-13T12:27:00.006-04:00

Sorry for the slow posting of late. Know that I am noodling some long posts on various topics. Mostly I'm trying to tone down the invective in them so I don't scare the horses.(fn1)

Also, due to circumstances out of my control, I will be in Anguilla for a wedding for most of this week. I will not be thinking about the internet while I am there so you will have to suffer without my wise guidance.

As a small attempt to make amends, I give you this video of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi taking the time out of his busy day to pretend-hump a meter-maid on his way to the car.

The guy's an amateur. Bill Clinton would have avoided the cameras and would not have gone the 'pretend' route, but rather the full monty.

fn1: In this usage horses = my liberal readers.

Boxing Day

2009-04-03T16:44:00.002-04:00

I work, as some readers know, for a large corporation. (We're trying to keep this thing at least nominally anonymous so, please, those of you who know which one, don't go shouting out the answer -- or even any hints. Thx.) I work in the corporate headquarters building. As corporate headquarters are wont to have, it has corporate security. They are perfectly nice fellows, so far as I have interacted with them, but they are most definitely carrying out fairly specific rules that have been given to them. I ran into one of these rules in a rather amusing way the other day.

A few weeks back I ordered some t-shirts online. They were too small but the store has free exchanges: you print out a packing slip, rebox it and drop it at the post office. Since there is a post office that is very convenient to my office, I took the boxed t-shirts to work to drop off during a spare moment.

Now, this box. It was a brown cardboard box just the right size to hold the 4 or 5 t-shirts it contained. So, a small box. Too small to put, say, a ream of paper in. Just about the right size to put one desk phone in, maybe.

So about 3:00 I decided to pop out to the post office with my box. As I walked through the turnstiles at the main entrance, a security guy stopped me and asked about the box.

"Where are you taking that?"
"To the post office."
"The mailroom or the post office?"(fn1)
"The Post Office."
"Are you bringing it back?"
"No, I'm mailing it."
"Do you have a form for that?"

A form? What? I was befuddled. He directed me to the security desk. I got over there and the nice security man there asked me about the box. It's my box, I said, with some shirts that I'm returning. He explained that no one may remove "anything" from the office without filling out a form saying what it is, why you are removing it, who approved the removal, and your supervisor's name. He gave me the form and told me to put my name down as "removing" and also as "authorizing" and whatever.

I asked him, "If I remove 'anything'? Because I brought this box in this morning, what if I brought in a gym bag, would I need a form to take it back out?"
"Yes, anything."

So as I finished filling out the form, as luck would have it, a lady was leaving the office and had come through the turnstiles behind us. She was carrying a large purse-like bag and also a large Duane Reade bag. And was, of course, just walking out, hassle free. Each of the two bags could hold maybe 3 boxes of my box's size. So I pointed her out and asked the guy, "See her? Why doesn't she have to fill out a form to remove those bags?"

"Those are her personal bags."
"So, to be clear, if I had put this box into a Duane Reade bag I would not have to fill out a form and we would not be having this conversation?"
"We don't search personal bags, you have a box."
"It's my personal box."
"It's not a bag."
"Again, I just want to understand, if I put this in a bag, you don't care. It's only because it's in a box."

The guy was confused so his supervisor who had returned to the desk as we were talking came over to see what was what. I asked him about the box-bag distinction.

"That's right," he said,"it sounds stupid, I know, but that's the rule."
"I think it sounds stupid because it is stupid," I said, "But now I know: take things out in bags, not boxes. Good to know."

fn1: Our headquarters is large enough to have its own mail system but we are not supposed to use it for anything but official correspondence and I am nothing if not a fastidious follower of corporate rule-making.

Links...

2009-04-03T16:33:00.000-04:00

Some interesting links:

- Sports Illustrated on pro-players going broke

Eye-opening stats from the first page:

• By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.
• Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

- Former IMF'er writes on the U.S. as suffering from a classic "emerging market" financial disaster.

Best part? Due to our "advantages" we're less likely to actually take the hard steps to quickly confront the problems and more likely to pussyfoot around and let things get worse and worse.

Quick Question

2009-04-03T16:09:00.003-04:00

Does anyone ever actually use the "Overwrite" feature in Windows where typing overwrites the text ahead of your cursor instead of inserting it or is it just there to annoy me whenever I accidentally brush the "Insert" key when reaching for its next-door-neighbor the "Home" key?

When Analogies Attack

2009-03-25T15:45:00.004-04:00

I was reading the "preview" of this week's NY Times Magazine article on Freeman Dyson and why he is crazy b/c he's not joining up with the global warming scare-team when I came across this:

...The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin...

What can it possibly mean? The NY Review of Books is to gravitas as the Beagle was to Darwin?

The Beagle was the ship Darwin travelled on that provided him the time and opportunity to catalog the observations that led to his theory of evolution and book laying out said theory "On the Origin of Species".

So the NY Times Review of Books is akin to a ship that gravitas sails on? Or it's the tool that allows gravitas to create new insights?

Am I missing something or is this gibberish?

I think what happened is the writer decided to forget that words actually mean something b/c it was just so nice to be able to shoehorn in a reference to another famously controversial-for-his-time scientist while reminding the reader of the "gravitas" of the NY Review of Books. It flowed so well the actual meaning (or lack thereof) of what he'd written seemed unimportant by comparison.

Slow Ride...

2009-03-25T12:12:00.004-04:00

The city that never sleeps is going to slow down a bit, it seems. Massive service cutbacks and fare increases have been passed by the MTA's board.

It could be a bargaining tactic to force Albany to cough up some green but my bet is that my commute -- and travel to just about anywhere -- is about to get uglier.

Title of this post courtesy of Foghat.

Worst Week Ever...

2009-03-25T12:04:00.003-04:00

So this Japanese businessman was on a business trip to Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and gets a nuke dropped on him.

You can imagine how glad he was to quickly make it back home to Nagasaki...

Just in time for the Aug. 9 bombing there.

Wow.

Misc. Links!

2009-03-24T16:55:00.003-04:00

Couple of quick links to things I'm reading and enjoying.

1) This article(fn1) on the rise and fall of Culture11 is interesting thus far. It makes me wish I'd paid more attention to Culture11 when it was around(fn2). The opening few paragraphs also make me want to read more Tom Wolfe(fn3). I leave you with just this one quote from James Poulos, who was apparently the Political Editor for Culture11:

"The right has a lot to learn from people who are completely outside of it," he explained later. If they did that, they "might actually win some latecomers, people who have lived unhappy or unsatisfying lives. And if they show up at the door of the right and say, ‘Gosh, my super-transgressive life is sort of unrewarding, maybe I’ve exhausted this mine of self-indulgence and personal freedom and saying ‘fuck the man,’ and the right is completely disinterested in engaging those people, I think they’re missing out."

I feel that this expresses something significant about the approach to conservatism that I and many of my friends take. If I ever sit down and think constructively about my philosophy, understanding those elements will certainly be a part of it.(fn4)

2) That quote put me in mind of this excellent speech (the link is to the transcript) delivered by Charles Murray at the recent AEI something or other. I'll let him lay out the topic:

"I have two points to make. First, I will argue that the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish--it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness. Second, I will argue that twenty-first-century science will prove me right.

I haven't finished reading it through, just yet, but I find it intriguing. More the first bit than the second.(fn5)

fn1: Which I came across from the link in this post on the excellent Marginal Revolutions blog. Seriously, it's excellent, you should check it out.

fn2: I did find my way over there quite a bit, but not in any organized kind of way.

fn3: As does, interestingly, reading Tom Wolfe. Oh for more time...

fn4: Which is not at all to say that any of us have lived -- or even wanted to live -- "super-transgressive" lives, just that I have a respect for people who do but also a kind of distrust of the mindset that says we should throw out civilization b/c I want to grow beyond it. If you throw it out, how will you be able to justify your journey as going "beyond"? In other words, without standards, how can you boldly disregard standards? I'm going on too long, but it's something that I wrestle with from time to time. (fn6)

fn5: Came across the Murray speech on The Corner, National Review's blog that is usually fairly lively and interesting.

fn6:The phrase I always remember when thinking along these lines is "if you see through everything, you don't see everything, you see nothing." Kind of the zen way of pointing out that life without rules isn't ultimate freedom, it's ultimately meaningless.

Photo Fun!

2009-03-24T11:58:00.005-04:00

Inspired by my friend Mr. D's blog, I have spruced up my title with a snappy new picture.

The picture was cribbed from here and adjusted in MS Paint with my awesomely spectacular graphic design skills. If anyone who has actual graphic design skills wants to come up with something better, I would be much obliged.

Couple of other blog management type things, while we're on the topic:

1) I am vaguely considering switching the blog to Wordpress. There seem to be some better features over there that interest me. If anybody has thoughts on the relative merits of Wordpress vs. Blogger, or even just wants to tell me about the fantastic features of Wordpress, I'd be interested.

2) Ads. As I was implementing my title picture, I noticed a "Monetize" tab in the Blogger management screen. Since we in the U.S. are now all about monetization, I was intrigued. But, of course, I live to serve my readers, both of them. Would there be any sig. objections to my experimenting with the relatively run-of-the-mill Ad-Sense text ads? Please register objections in the comments to this post. Frankly, I'm interested to see what ads my rather specialized take on the world would draw...

Of Sickness and Work

2009-03-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a bit about health care of late. It seemed only appropriate since our president is apparently of the opinion that the near collapse of the economy is a problem secondary to our health care system's many flaws and failings. So I'm going to be putting together some posts outlining my few thoughts on the health care system's present state, the problems, the potential, the potential problems...

At any rate, here's the first one.

Thought 1: The fact that health insurance is almost entirely tied to employment in this country is beyond stupid.

Interestingly, this bizarre state of affairs is actually a result (as most bizarre states of affairs are...) of prior government intrusion in the economy. You see (he says, settling into his easy chair and grabbing his pipe...) back, oh, 60 or 70 years ago, there was no such thing as health insurance. If you were sick or otherwise needed a doctor you sought one out, got treated and paid him. All on your own.

Now, keep in mind that this is so long ago that medical science was pretty rudimentary compared with what we have today. Oh sure, they had the germ theory of disease and a few highly efficacious drugs (aspirin, penicillin) but not many. The nearly miraculous and extremely costly treatments that we take for granted today simply didn't exist. For lots of conditions the best the doctor could do was make you comfortable and hope you either got better fast or died quickly. This was not as effective, for the most part, as modern medical science but it was relatively cheap.

So. No health insurance. Then, low about 1941 or so, we got into a bit of trouble with Germans and Japanese and decided to dedicate pretty much our entire economy to destroying their war-making powers. You may have heard the period referred to as WWII. It was an interesting time not just for foreign relations, but economically as well in that the government exerted unprecedented control over the economy, as it might be expected to given that it was purchasing the majority of the output.

Among the controls put in place were wage controls.(fn1) Now, people being bright and enterprising, they wanted some way around the wage controls. They wanted to be able to compete on price for labor, that is to offer higher payments for better workers, just as they always do. But they were explicitly not allowed to offer higher wages. So what happened? That's right! The first large-scale creation of "benefits". You see, rather than paying more you could pay the government mandated wage but add in a benefit like, for example, having your medical expenses paid for by the company.

Bully. And, of course, once created the benefit became a standard expectation and never died even though it is beyond ridiculous to have health insurance tied to employment in the way we do.

And that, dear reader, is the story of why health insurance is tied to employment in the United States: it was an unintended side effect of the well-meaning effort to curb wage inflation during the tight labor markets of the war years.

So, I think we can all agree that having health insurance tied to employment is beyond stupid. But it's interesting to note that this stupid state of affairs is the result of government involvement in the economy; it makes one wonder whether further government involvement in the economy is really the solution...

One of the best ways to wean us all off of employer provided health care would be to stop giving the tax breaks for health insurance only to employers. This gives them the incentive to offer gold-plated health-insurance as a benefit as it's a tax-free way to increase compensation. But why should health insurance be tax-free if your employer picks your choices but after-tax if you buy it on your own?

I thought McCain's proposal on this was great and I was disappointed to see Obama demagogue the point throughout the campaign. Relatedly, I was somewhat heartened to see that Obama has recently changed his mind and floated the idea of removing the tax benefit of employer-provided health care. Sadly, he has missed the point of McCain's plan, which was to move the benefit from the employer to the employee (or, actually, everyone, since you would no longer have to have employer-provided health care to benefit from the tax-savings) and is simply using it as a revenue generating measure to pay for his attempt to nationalize health care.

Alas.

At any rate. Things to look forward to in future health care musings:

- Health care in the US is more expensive than in many countries with socialized systems yet has no better (and, in some measures, slightly worse) mass health outcomes. This is not suggestive of what you think it is.

- Enabling greater access to and utilization of preventative care may be a laudable goal but -- contrary to what many pro-government health care advocates say -- it is in no way a cost saving measure for the health care system as whole.

- And other wackily sensible thoughts on health care economics that I haven't even thought up yet!! What fun.

fn1: Which are always stupid in exactly the same way as price controls are because they are simply price controls on the price of labor. Anyhoo.

Classic.

2009-03-23T14:08:00.000-04:00

My favorite story of the year so far has got to be the story of the Prime Minister's gift.

In case you haven't been following all of its amusing wrinkles, please allow me to give a brief recap of the more humourous(fn1) moments.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, our oldest and most powerful ally, paid a state visit to President Obama. Ordinarily when the UK Prime Minister visits there is pomp and circumstance: a joint press conference, perhaps a state dinner, that kind of thing. Obama was apparently quite too busy not nominating anyone to Treasury to deal with the economic crisis and so decided that all he could spare was a brief conference in the Oval Office. Oh well, can't have everything for the first major state visit.

It is traditional at these first meetings to exchange gifts. Mr. Brown brought Obama a pen holder. A pen holder carved from the timbers of the old British anti-slaving warship the HMS President, the ship, it so happens, that was the sister ship to the British anti-slaving warship HMS Resolute whose timbers supplied the wood to create the desk that Pres. Obama uses in the Oval Office. He also gave him a 7-volume biography of Winston Churchill.(fn2)

Initially, it was a bit of a secret what President Obama had given in return, as the Prime Minister's office was uncharacteristically coy when asked about it. Eventually, though, it came out that Obama had given him a collection of 25 classic American DVDs -- including films relatively unknown in Britain such as The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars and Psycho.

That's quite a gift for any special occasion. I mean that could run you anywhere from $100 to $150 at Target, unless they were having a sale, but actually the thoughtlessness of the gift is even more profound than that. You see, Gordon Brown is blind in one eye and apparently slightly hard-of-seeing in the other. Giving movies to a partially blind guy might seem insensitive but it's actually not b/c the DVDs they gave were coded for the U.S. region and so won't play on British DVD players regardless.

It is literally hard to think of a gift that would be more embarrassingly inappropriate and demonstrate a higher level of disregard.

The British press took this as an unconscionable snub, and it's sort of hard not to see it that way. (fn3) Apparently, when asked what this meant for the historic "special relationship" one unidentified WH staffer said that Britain should expect to be treated no differently than any other country. Any other country like, say, pissant third-world dictatorships who hate America? Interesting to know.

More recently, when someone at 10 Downing tried to play one of the DVDs thus discovering that they were the wrong region and unplayable, a WH staffer contacted by the British press apparently "snickered" when he heard. It is funny -- I've been tremendously amused -- but this is perhaps not the correct reaction from a WH staffer. Maybe some contrition, some embarrassment, something.

I'm just so glad that we finally have some adults in the White House who will be charming our way back into those Europeans' good graces.

Sheesh.

Perhaps later we can talk about Hillary's disastrous world tour that culminated with her trying to "reset" the administration's relations with Russia after their attempt at back-channel letter writing was embarrassingly publicly rebuffed. She gave the Russian Foreign Minister a button labeled "Reset" except that they mistranslated the button so it actually said "Overcharge". Aside from the wild inappropriateness of hammy prop-gags in international relations among world powers, there's the simple incompetence on display in not being able to get a one-word translation correct. Have they never heard of babelfish?

A wag on a blog I read pointed out that this is also interesting in that our general foreign policy towards Russia since the dawn of the nuclear age has been pretty uniformly directed towards getting them to not push the button. But whatever.

fn1: Yes, the British spelling. 'Cause it's a post about British folk.

fn2: The Churchill bio. might have been a traditionally understated British slap to the face, seeing as our Pres. had only recently decided to give back the bust of Churchill that the British government had loaned us as a sign of solidarity in the days after 9/11. But then again it might not have been, this is the genius of the understated British sense of humor.

fn3: Yes, hard to see, 'cause the PM's partially blind, get it? Whatever, I'm a blogger not the President. Yet.

Bonus!

2009-03-18T10:52:00.002-04:00

On the topic of the AIG bonuses, I understand and sympathize with the outrage but am very much on the side of respecting the sanctity of contracts and our system's (rather flimsily remaining, it seems at present) rules against bills of attainder(fn1) and the like. These are the kinds of things that our very civilization depends on and should not be trifled with no matter how vehement the popular outrage.

That said, the whole episode throws into stark relief an interesting problem with the way high-finance's compensation system is currently set up.

This piece in the NY Times presents the best (and, perhaps, only possible) defense of paying out the bonuses. In addition to sharing my respect for contracts, he points out that the problems these people are unwinding are tremendously complicated and since these folk built them, they know the details better than anyone and are in the best position to fix them. So you want to keep them around and thus will pay to do so.

Also, there is the possibility of other companies poaching these folk away precisely because of their familiarity with AIG's positions. Yes, they constructed the financial bomb that almost destroyed the financial world, but now there is good money to be made if you know which companies are counterparties to the mess. Basically, you could bet against the folk exposed to the bomb you built.

Can we see the problem here? If you are one of these geniuses of finance, every incentive you have is to make big, risky potential bombs. The bigger, the better. The riskier, the better. If everything goes well and it pays off, you become unfathomably rich. If everything goes wrong, then so long as it's big enough and complicated enough, you'll be paid handsomely to try to defuse it, because you were the one who built it. And if anyone should refuse to pay you to try to save them from the disaster you created, you can go and make a killing betting on it's blowing up.

Financial innovation can be a wonderful thing but so long as the entire system of rewards is set up so that those with the most skill and knowledge of complex finance can best maximize their earnings by creating massive potential financial catastrophes, we are going to continue to have massive financial catastrophes.(fn2)

I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps going back to something more like the old-school partner model might be beneficial, as then the folk responsible are not just playing with other people's money, but with their own and with their own name.

fn1: It occurs to me that folk might not be familiar with the term "bill of attainder". A bill of attainder is when you pass a law that directly targets an individual. Traditionally, they were used to punish or sentence to death without a trial. They are expressly forbidden in the US Constitution. My recollection is that they were only very rarely used even by the time of our split from England but still our founders felt it an important enough point to include in the constitution. Though with a "living constitution", perhaps our understanding of their prohibition has grown to include allowing them when we really, really want to get somebody without all the usual legal rigmarole.

fn2: Note that we will certainly have massive financial catastrophes either way, but without the poor incentive structure we will hopefully have fewer and, at the very least, can take consolation in that we weren't basically paying people to create them on purpose.

Wither Britain

2009-03-13T17:02:00.000-04:00

Meant to mention this a month or so ago when it came out but congratulations to Britain for becoming the first industrialized nation to see the Flynn Effect reverse itself!

First into the Industrial Revolution and now first into the dark night! What an iconoclastic people those Brits are!

I must note how nice it is to have actual hard evidence for my thesis of Western Civ's decline. Guess I wasn't just whistling dixie after all...

A Tale of Two Monkeys

2009-03-13T12:29:00.000-04:00

Recently up here in the NYC area we had an awful bit of excitement when a chimpanzee went wild(fn1) and mauled a lady, taking out her face and very nearly killing her. Police shot the chimpanzee dead.

An interesting side-note to the story was that the chimp's mother had also been shot after going wild but the circumstances were different in what I think is a fairly illuminating way. You see, the chimp's mother didn't actually maul anyone. In that case, the chimp started acting in a threatening manner and someone got a gun and shot it before it hurt anyone.

So what happened to that person? Oh, they were put in jail, of course. You see, the chimp hadn't done anything wrong. Its owner said they should have just hidden inside and let the chimp cool down, they didn't have to shoot it.

I am 100% sure if someone had shot the latest chimp just prior to its ruining of the woman's life, that person would likewise have been condemned for attacking an innocent animal.

Much of life is like this: you cannot prove a negative so you will be pilloried for taking actions that you feel are preventing worse outcomes. And you are more likely to face disapprobation the more successfully preventative your actions are.

Please note that I am not saying that we need to always err on the side of "shooting the chimp"(fn2), I am merely pointing out, as someone must, that the world is a complicated and messy place and there are no easy answers.

fn1: Any time a wild animal in captivity snaps and hurts someone I am reminded of Chris Rock's memorable nsight when Siegfried and Roy's tiger mauled whichever of them it mauled:

Sigfried and Roy, man, the tiger bit the man in the head and everybody's mad at the tiger. Talking about 'The tiger went crazy.' That tiger didn't go crazy, that tiger went tiger! You know when the tiger went crazy? When the tiger was riding around on a little bike with a Hitler-helmet on!

Classic. You can see it here at about 1:20 in.

fn2: Though I do think "shooting the chimp" would make an excellent candidate for a phrase to popularize. I picture it working like this:

Two guys at a party immediately after one has cut his friend off as he was about to say something stupid in front of a girl...

Guy 1:"Why the hell did you do that, man??"

Guy 2:"Just shooting the chimp."(fn3)

fn3: I must confess, though, to never having had the stick-to-it-iveness to follow through on my phrase popularization schemes. A couple friends and I thought the phrase "compensating for bullet drop", which originally refers to snipers having to aim far above their targets to hit them after the effects of gravity, would make for an equally good pop-phrase. Actually, I still do, I'm going to try to work that into conversation over the next few weeks.

Just Deserts

2009-03-12T13:46:00.002-04:00

Ran across this piece in the Onion AV Club about the film The Devil's Advocate, a decent-ish Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino movie featuring the devil as a New York corporate attorney.

In the piece, the author makes this aside:

Aside: Why are criminal-defense attorneys always nearest to Satan in our culture? Everyone deserves a fair trial and adequate representation, and if they didn't, our justice system would collapse.

This is a fairly common way of thinking about our justice system's insistence on everyone having access to a fair trial but it is wrong. Everyone does not deserve a fair trial. Someone who has violated society's agreed upon standards of behavior deserves only whatever punishment society has deemed should follow that violation.

The reason we have this insistence on a fair trial is that we do not know with certainty who is guilty and who is innocent. And because we highly value the protection of the rights of the innocent, we have devised a system with hurtles against conviction of innocent people.

The reason everyone must have access to a fair trial in our system is not b/c guilty people deserve fairness it's because innocent people do. And you can't always easily tell the one from the other.

To illustrate the self-evident truth of this, let's imagine for a moment that we discover some marvelous new technology that allows us to tell with 100% certitude whether someone is guilty of a crime. Let's say it provides a television like view of the person that you can rewind through time to see with perfect clarity if they were actually the person who robbed the bank or killed their friend or whatever else the crime might be.

What possible purpose would a trial, fair or otherwise, serve in that scenario? Wouldn't they "deserve" a fair trial? Of course not! The purpose of the trial is to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that they are the guilty party but you would already have established that!

We might still have a use for sentencing hearings to determine the person's level of culpability (were they temp. insane, were there other mitigating factors?) and we would most def. still have disagreements as a society over what the appropriate punishment for various crimes should be but the trial system would be obsolete and useless.

I found the author's treatment of the devil's seductive monologue at the end of the film arguing that he (the devil) has been far more a friend to man than God ever was to be interestingly flawed as well but my dime-store theologizing will have to await another post.

Je réponds

2009-03-11T14:46:00.002-04:00

So, as I mentioned, my flurry of posts at the end of last year drew forth an unprecedented number of comments. And not only a sig. number(fn1) but also substantive, which was pretty much a first for the blog. I was excited. I wanted and promised to respond. Unfortunately, year-end close and the ensuing annual statement stuff is the busiest time of the year at work and I've also been busy with some stuff at home so I have not taken the time to sit down and give the attention that such a response deserves.

But now I am.(fn2)

First, because I'm pretty sure nobody besides me reads the comments(fn3), here is SaltyGirl's response to my post on the paternalism of foodstamps:

(Not knowing where to begin, she puts on her boots, and wades in the muck.)There are many, many valid reasons for the government to designate what various forms of assistance must be spent on. Your assertion that the very act of designating aid for food, rather than just "giving" handouts is paternalistic is perplexing. There are many parallel circumstances- such as with governments only spending certain funds on certain projects- where it makes good sense to have designated pots of money for certain needs. Why do this? Any number of reasons- accountability, ease of tracking and evaluating need, etc. With foodstamps and other need-based forms of assistance, the gov't has the additional compelling interest of promoting the health and welfare of its people.

Ultimately, the fact that you are against most forms of gov't regulation will probably cause you to dismiss what I am saying. BUT. You should at least learn something about foodstamps while you are dismissing me: http://www.dhr.state.md.us/stamp/spend.htm. For people that are struggling financially, foodstamps are literally a lifesaver. Foodstamps and WIC make a huge difference in the quality of life for almost 30 million people in America. They give children the opportunity to not start out life disadvantaged because they are malnourished. Hunger is a real problem, and it exists in your city, today. Until you are prepared to do without all of the benefits of government, don't heap scorn on others who benefit as well. Aiee! I am supposed to be studying right now! Damn you and your blog, damn you!! :) (fn4)

First, just as an overall comment to dispel any misconceptions, I was not saying that foodstamps were bad because they were paternalistic. Indeed, I was saying that I think the paternalism is a necessary feature of them, that the money would be wasted if the government didn't attempt to direct the handouts to food.

Second, still sticking with the general before I respond in detail, I am not against "most government regulation". I am against stupid, counter-productive government regulation -- a category into which a disturbingly large amount of government regulation falls, I'll admit. But I am fully cognizant of the need for much government regulation. Being a conservative, I also believe that there are limits to how well government will ever function. This does not mean that I feel it should stop functioning. That would be more on the libertarian side of the spectrum and while I have some sympathy for that view, it is miles from where I am.

Another aspect of being a conservative is to be aware that there are no real "solutions" to many of life's problems. We live in an imperfect world that is not perfectible. Indeed, attempts to perfect it tend to lead to the worst kinds of suffering. So when I point out a problem, do not think that I am implying that I have a solution or that there even is a solution at all. There are always different sets of trade-offs that we could change to and we need to be aware of what set we are dealing with and think about what other sets might be possible but there is no "solution".

Now, to deal more directly with SaltyGirl's comment.

I must confess perplextion at SatlyGirl's perplexity (fn5) as stated in the first part. I am fully aware that there are lots of reasons for the government to put different money in different pots. I work fairly closely with accountants and realize that it is important and fascinating work.(fn6) That said, there is no need for the government's obv. interest in tracking their expenditures to dictate that expenditures intended to alleviate the effects of poverty be explicitly guided to food or housing or whatever with separate programs. The only reason for that is that you do not trust the recipients of these payments to spend them wisely. And given that you are designing programs to keep people from starving or dying of exposure (for housing programs), etc., it is imperative that you try as best you can to prevent that from happening.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that we do not feel that we need to supervise the recipient’s spending, that we trust their decision-making and don't feel the need to paternalistically tell them "this money is for food", "this money is for rent", "this money is for clothing" and whatever other programs we might set up. In such a world, the government's interest in tracking their expenditures and testing people's needs could be far more simply met. Rather than have a panoply of poverty programs designed to meet the various needs of poor people, we could simply decide what the minimum income for a person should be. Then need-testing would be the (relatively) straightforward process of seeing how much someone made and the giving would be the (again, relatively) straightforward process of truing up their income to the agreed-upon level. Much easier to administer, much easier to track for fraud, much easier to ensure that everybody's getting their needs met.

In fact, there are people who do trust in the decision making powers of everyone and advocate precisely such a system. Milton Friedman was one such person. I have perhaps a more cynical (realistic?) sense of reality so I feel that such a system would be a disaster. Some portion of the people who received the "true-up aid" would waste the money and end up starving in the cold anyways. They need guidance or structure to prevent that, much in the way a child does. And the word for that guidance is paternalism.

Indeed, SaltyGirl seems to pretty much concede this point at the end of her first paragraph. She says the government has the "additional compelling interest of promoting the health and welfare of it's people". I would agree. But, of course, promoting someone's health and welfare through guiding their actions is paternalism. Again, this does not make it a bad thing.

Not to belabor the point, but when SaltyGirl draws a parallel to the good-directed nature of food-stamp assistance to “governments only spending certain funds on certain projects”, I think she is making an error. No doubt, the government has an interest in knowing how much they are spending on, say, a bridge (I imagine this is the type of project SaltyGirl has in mind), but I hope we can all agree that if the government, when appropriating money for that bridge, felt it necessary to go beyond saying “this is bridge money, here you go” to “this is rivet money, you must spend it on rivets; this is concrete money, you must spend it on concrete; this is girder money, you must spend it on girders” and so on, they would be entering paternalistic territory. Pretty much the only reason I can imagine that they would go to that level of micromanagement would be if they didn’t trust the people in charge of building the bridge to not do something stupid with the money, like just blow it all on a pile of rivets. (fn7)

Now, does the government have an interest in knowing how much money was spent on concrete, rivets, girders, etc. for the bridges they have directed be built? Yes they do. But they get those figures by looking at how much was spent on each category after the fact, rather than trying to direct the money in the appropriation bill.

Moving on to SaltyGirl’s points about hunger being a real problem and foodstamps saving literal millions of lives, I would just say that I was in no way calling for the abolishment of foodstamps or doubting that they help real people. In fact, in the following post, I even said: “of course, in a society as rich as ours we should have a safety net to prevent the worst of human suffering”.

So I hope that will suffice to prove that I am not trying to deny others the benefits of government.

SaltyGirl was interested enough to also leave a comment in my follow-up post about the bad decisions that always seem to be in evidence in media stories about the plight of the poor but I’ll respond to that one in another post.

fn1: Well, significant to me and my little blog...

fn2: A small part of the reason for my long absence was what one might call the procrastinator’s dilemma. I had wanted to respond to the substantive comments left on my blog at the end of last year. I even started composing a response. But I wanted to do it right, spend some time on it. But never seemed to get around to it. And it seemed wrong to throw little one-off posts while not finishing my one big one, so I stopped those as well. It was a vicious cycle. Hopefully this post has broken it and I will learn from the experience to not get into that situation again.

fn3: A quick note about comments. First off, I fully realize that the Blogger software is rudimentary at best. Comments on a separate page without the post? Why? Also, I realize that it looks like you have to register to leave a comment. An exchange with a reader who has emailed me comments in the past brought to my attention the fact that some might be put-off by having to register to leave a comment. You do not, in fact, have to register to leave a comment. You will have to answer a captcha ("what does this text say?") to post and that's annoying but it does keep the spam down. So, just to let you know, don't be afraid to comment. I'd love it and it's prob. not as difficult or intrusive as you think. Also, in the spirit of 50 million Elvis fans not being wrong, I'd point out that Elvis has done it. If the King can comment, why not you?

fn4: I added a paragraph break where I thought it was appropriate and corrected one typo. Because the comment system on Blogger is atrocious (see fn3) I thought it was the least I could do. If there are objections, I'm happy to put it back the way it was.

fn5: Yes, I'm having fun by creating my own conjugation. It's the kind of thing I do.

fn6: Wait, no. Not fascinating, the other one. Boring. That's it. But still v. important. In fact, double entry accounting is one of the key discoveries underlying much of what we think of as "the modern world". Interestingly, it was invented during the "Dark Ages" and is just one of a number of examples of crucial technological innovation that took place during that much maligned era.

fn7: The other big reason they might do that level of micromanagement was if they had the opposite problem: the bridge builder is too honest and would just spend the money to efficiently build the bridge. Why would this be a problem for the politicians in charge of appropriating the funds? B/c they might want to direct money to, say, concrete providers and the bridge guy might not buy as much concrete as the politicians in league with the concrete builders have already decided should be used. Is this type of thing one of the motivating factors for food-stamps above and beyond paternalism? Almost certainly. We do have, after all, an incredibly powerful food and agricultural lobby, but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing SaltyGirl is advocating so I’m sticking it down here.

Super Apology

2009-03-11T13:49:00.004-04:00

I picture my apology in the last post along the lines of Superman's apology for his absence during General Zod's attack.

You can watch it here, at about the 20 second mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kLUzPSvltY

Please note that I do not make Superman's promise that "I won't let you down again."(fn1)

fn1: Although, in all honesty, how seriously can we take his promise given that the latest Superman movie's premise is that Superman I and II happened and after that Superman left Earth for a decade or so? Clearly, he did leave Earth on it's own again and it was just lucky that no cataclysmic disasters befell us in that time.

February made me shiver, with every blog post, I didn’t deliver…

2009-03-11T13:45:00.000-04:00

Sorry to have gone silent for the last month or so. I wasn’t “feeling it”, define that as you may.

I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things but I’m focusing a little more on work and other stuff so you’ll have to bear with me, I’m afraid.

Or not, I suppose.

Form 1040DEM

2009-02-03T17:10:00.004-05:00

On the topic of the apparent optionality of taxes for senior Democrats, this is funny:

UPDATE: Reader(fn1) CF chides me in the comments for insufficient attribution. My thinking was that the link to the Flickr account hosting the picture would have been enough esp. given that my half-dozen strong readership is generally familiar enough with me to know that I didn't make this up myself.

But since I can't afford to alienate any potential readers and, of course, I also value the readers I already have far too much to ever leave them with the idea that I've tried to steal another's work, here is the full attribution:

The fake form was created by Jeff Dobbs of The Voice in my Head who apparently got the idea from a comment by Ranger at JustOneMinute who was himself apparently inspired by a comment by DaveG at Ann Althouse's blog but Mr. Dobbs also credits this post from Clarice Feldman(fn2) at the American Thinker for laying it all out.

Whew! This attribution stuff is a pain! Guess I should just stick to my own rants and not link to anyone else's creations...

fn1: Or, I strongly suspect, not reader but random one-time commenter though I do hope he or she proves me wrong by reading a couple more posts and maybe even leaving additional comments...

fn2: It occurs to me that "CF" might possibly stand for "Clarice Feldman"? If so, how nice that my attribution correction will come full circle back to her!

How about a refund?

2009-02-03T16:30:00.006-05:00

Tom Daschle, forced today to withdraw his name from consideration for secretary of health and human services, must be kicking himself for having paid those back taxes now.

I mean, the only reason he paid them in the first place was because he had to in order to get this new post! And now he's out the taxes and doesn't even get the post!

Life can be so unfair.

On the plus side, if the Obama administration has taught us nothing else so far, it's that only suckers pay taxes.(fn1)

fn1: Unless you want to be nominated to some big post and even then it's okay, so long it's a really, really important post and you're really, really qualified.(fn2)

fn2: Qualified aside from, you know, willfully violating the tax laws that you are going to be in charge of enforcing in your new post.

I shall return

2009-02-03T16:18:00.002-05:00

Although recent events have forced my retreat from the blog, I came through and I shall return.

Some time ago I began composing my promised response to Salty Girl and it is still forthcoming.

January found me hammered (fn1) and I am just now digging out. The end of the deluge at work is now within sight and I shall soon be free to resume my inchoate rantings about the many things that annoy me.

Stay tuned.

fn1: In what can only be considered an unusual turn of events to those who know me well, I was hammered with work and other obligations this time, rather than my more traditional sort of hammered.

Plane crash

2009-01-16T14:13:00.003-05:00

People have been wondering how a flock of birds managed to take out a plane.

My theory is that the plane was brought down by a Flock of Seagulls and that after taking down the plane, they ran... they ran so far away...

Pending...

2009-01-08T16:31:00.003-05:00

My response to Salty Girl is still forthcoming, sorry it's been a busy week and I want to wait until I have a proper amount of time free to focus on it.

For now, I direct you to Arnold Kling's post comparing the forthcoming stimulus bill to the battle of the Somme as examples of colossally stupid decision making. It is a wonderful post.

His point at the end that, all things considered, he's happier watching the government make stupid decisions that merely wreck untold economic havoc rather than watching them make stupid decisions that cost thousands of young lives is well taken.

It could always be worse...

(I'm going to leave off my innate suspicion that if you wait long enough, it usually is.)

Red Letter Day!

2009-01-05T11:33:00.003-05:00

First off, I feel I should apologize for my flurry of comments last Wed. As I mentioned, I hurriedly finished off a bunch of half-formed ones and got them out before I left town for the weekend. As we all know, haste makes waste and as I re-read them I realized that they were somewhat poorly written even by the admittedly low standards of this blog. So apologies for that.

Yet I can't feel completely bad about them as they had the salutary effect of drawing 5 brand new comments over the weekend! I feel like the blog has come alive.

Speaking of coming alive, one of the comments was from Elvis; I am glad to know that he's still kickin' and v. flattered to learn that he's a reader.

But perhaps even better were a couple of genuine, dyed-in-the-wool substantive comments in reaction to my pointing out the paternalism inherent in foodstamps and the followup post on bad decision making.(fn1)

I can't say how glad I was to see comments taking issue with my posts. I do think that Salty Girl misunderstands my positions on a few things and might have run away a bit in her comment arguing against things that she thinks I said that I don't believe I did. Regardless, it's these kinds of exchanges that are the lifeblood of our political system(fn2) and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

To that end, I shall have an in-depth response to them soon, with hopes that I do not too adversely affect Salty Girl's studies.

And while we're on the topic of posting, while it is my definite intention to keep up a steady schedule in the new year, the fact that we're amidst the busy year-end season at work and other issues might preclude that to some extent. So apologies in advance for light posting over the next few weeks.

Hope everyone's New Year's celebration was fun.

fn1: I feel like I need to make special note of Tom's comment too, so he doesn't feel left out as I mention all the other posters and not him...

fn2: Not to mention of a blog...

Site Stats

2008-12-31T12:28:00.005-05:00

Some fun statistics on my blog:

I have now made 108 posts.

I have received 7 comments, only one of which was me responding to another commenter.

One of the comments was spam from some motivational speaker no doubt trying to draw my enormous readership to his blog.

One comment was from a Brazilian(fn1) who I must assume was confused or otherwise mistaken in leaving a one-word comment of no particular relevance.

And the rest are from Salty Girl, usually haranguing me when I stop posting for too long. Most of these date to when she was my sole reader.

Nowadays my ad-hoc estimate of my readership is in the 10-12 range on a good day. All friends and family, of course.

Thanks to anyone who reads and Happy New Year!

fn1: The word "Brazilian" reminds me of the joke about Bush being told that two Brazilian soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Bush's face falls, he's silent a moment and then says "That's terrible. How many is a Brazilian again?"

Last bit of hilarity from Caroline...

2008-12-31T12:27:00.000-05:00

Finally we get a glimpse of the powerful impact that Caroline has had and that will hope to have with in the Senate:

NC: So your precise role in the Gates grant was what? You came in at the end...
CK: It coincided with the time that I came into the department, and I think it was important to Bill Gates that I was there.
DH: What do you mean? I don’t get it. Just that you were there physically? Or just that you had arrived?
CK: Well I don’t know, you gotta ask him. But I think I, um —

Who knows what her role was? No one. Not her. Maybe Bill Gates. Because there's no way that it being "important" to him that she was there when the last stage of his gift went through was in any way just a throwaway line to some know-nothing scion of an important family at a cocktail party. No, she had an impact, she made a difference. She's not clear on how, exactly, but just ask her friends: they'll tell you she did just as they've told her the same.

Stimulating my curiosity

2008-12-31T12:24:00.000-05:00

I've been ignoring as much as I can Obama's upcoming stimulus plan. I just know that the more I learn of it, the more my head will feel like it's going to explode. And I also know that it will be impossible for me to ignore all the unsavory details as the program gets implemented.

But there's a few things that have been puzzling me as I tangentially learn of his plan.

First, just as a general proposition, now that we're poor how is spending money on infrastructure projects that did not seem worthwhile when we thought we were rich a good idea? This seems a bit like losing your job and deciding to start work on the addition to your house that you felt you couldn't afford when you were employed. Sure, the plan is to put an office in there and start making real money but maybe that's just stupid?

Second, isn't construction one of those "jobs Americans won't do"? Wasn't that what we heard a couple of summers ago when we were told that the amnesty was imperative? That any effort to staunch the flow of millions of illegal immigrants would be disastrous for the construction industry? How is giving money to illegal immigrants to send home in remittances going to stimulate our economy?

Third, doesn't construction take massive amounts of steel and concrete and things of that nature? But don't we import most of that dirty stuff from China now? How is paying China to make steel for Mexicans to install in projects that aren't good investments going to help again?

Lastly, why is Obama calling for economic stimulus at all? Yes, I get that he wants the economy to be better, but wasn't he the one telling us that our consumerist ways were unsustainable and insulting to the rest of the world? Well, congratulations, we are no longer consuming nearly as much as were. But somehow that's now bad too? Kind of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't thing?

But prob. I'm just missing something fundamental.

Not with a bang but a whimper...

2008-12-31T12:19:00.000-05:00

Humorous article in the WSJ about a Russian professor -- and former KGB analyst -- who's been predicting the collapse of the U.S. in a civil war for a decade now. He thinks it'll happen in 2010.

I think he's dead wrong. Western Civ. is def. in decline and not long of this Earth. And the U.S. is pretty much the last bastion of Western Civ. But I can't see it blowing up in a civil war. Far more likely to slowly fade away, so slowly that each step into the darkness will hardly be noticeable and it'll only be in hindsight that the few left who care enough to think it through will say, "Wow, where did it go?"

Particularly humorous is his idea that Alaska will be rejoined with Russia. I can see the appeal from the Russian standpoint but I can't imagine the Alaskans going without a fight. I'd picture something like Red Dawn fueled by whatever military advantage the part of the U.S. arsenal parked in Alaska would have over the entire Russian army. Which would likely be a considerable advantage: our military technology is light years ahead of just about everybody else's.

Speaking of Bad Decisions...

2008-12-31T11:45:00.004-05:00

All this talk of food assistance programs put me in mind of a an article on the struggle of the poor to get enough food that appeared on NPR last summer. The economic problem then was the high gas prices, I'd imagine things are worse now. It stuck in the memory because the family they used to illustrate this struggle to get enough to eat -- a photograph of whom appeared with the piece -- were morbidly obese. Perhaps not the ideal family to use as a set-piece when talking about the hungry in America, though it does provide a nice illustration of the point raised in the article that Salty Girl linked to about the link between food programs and obesity.

As a side note, it seems that in very nearly every article on these types of issues -- the struggle of poverty -- the families used to illustrate the piece have made many conspicuously bad choices. I have to believe that the reporters are generally trying to find the most sympathetic stories -- that is the ones that best show how the problems of poverty are deep and about being unlucky and the rest -- but it's striking how there is always some egregiously bad decision making that appears in the article as well.

For example, the morbidly obese family is stuck in a town some distance from Toledo. There are few to no jobs in that town and without a car there is no way for them to get to work. Tragic. It also mentions that the family's current adult generation was raised middle class. So clearly, this kind of thing could happen to anyone, right? Well, maybe, but the matron of the family is also described as having "never worked" and having "no high school degree". And they talk about the bad luck of how a car accident "17 years ago" left her "depressed and and disabled" and "incapable of getting a job". But she's 40, so the car accident happened when she was 23. I'm sure it was debilitating and awful but why hadn't she finished high school or had any kind of job by the time she was 23? And given that she had no degree and no job, why was she having kids? Perhaps she missed the part of high school where they explain how babies are made...

And I don't mean to just pick on this one family in this one article. The NY Times ran a heart-string-tugging article some weeks ago describing the tough times faced by four families as they go through foreclosure and other economic-crash related problems. The story was written as sympathetically as possible so you had to kind of pick up the scattered details and reconstruct them for yourself to get a good picture of what went wrong for these people but in every case the way they had structured their lives prior to the crash was not going to work. In some of the cases it might have worked if everything had gone perfectly but that's not planning, that's gambling.

The one detail from that article that sticks most clearly in my mind was the story of the family who has one income of $30,000 now. In happier times, they had two incomes totalling about $60,000. And they bought a house which went up in value so they refinanced and took all of the new equity out of the house. The article didn't specify what they did with all of it but did mention that among their belongings in storage was an $8,000 4 piece mahogany and marble bedroom set that they had purchased just after taking the loan.

I make considerably more by myself than this family does as a whole at the best of times. And I don't have a family to support. And I live with someone who by herself makes considerably more than this whole family at the best of times. And we wouldn't dream of spending $8,000 on a bedroom set. Or, for that matter, anything else. If you're raising a family with 4 kids on $60K of dual income, it might be better to stick to Ikea than treating yourself to extravagant bedroom sets with money taken out of your home.

Now, of course, it's their life, if they want to throw away their security on home furnishings, that's their prerogative. But it does somewhat diminish the power of their story as a "tragedy". If you're hit by a bus while carefully crossing the street, that's a tragedy. If you're hit by a bus because you decided to practice your break-dancing on the median of a busy street while blind-folded that's less of a tragedy.

Now, of course, in a society as rich as ours we should have a safety net to prevent the worst of human suffering, even if self-caused. But we do need to be aware that not all human-suffering is inflicted by random chance and to the extent that you alleviate suffering caused by bad-decision making you are inviting more bad decision making.

This is what's known as "moral hazard" in insurance: the danger that if you remove the cost of recklessness you will get more recklessness. It's why there are things like deductibles and co-insurance, to make sure that just because you've got insurance on your car doesn't mean you feel no need to avoid running into things because it's all free to you.

Relatedly, it's also one of the best arguments against all the bailouts we've seen in the financial world this past year. Which is not to say that there weren't compelling arguments for them as well but it is why the government has been trying to work a little pain into the agreements along with all the cash.

Food Stamps Paternalistic? Heck yeah.

2008-12-31T11:45:00.000-05:00

A friend asks on her blog if linking nutrition to food-stamps is paternalistic. She only briefly floats the question but based on the article she links she's wondering if making food-stamps more directly limited to purchase of healthy food is paternalistic.

My answer would be that I don't think it's any more paternalistic than food stamps inherently are already. After all, this is a program that fundamentally says, "You think you need more money. And I agree. But I think if I give you money you'll just blow it on stupid stuff. So I'm going to give you money that can only be spent on what I think you should be spending it on." That's about as paternalistic as it gets. I don't think it's any more paternalistic just because you get more specific about what is "okay" for the poor people to do with their handout.

Note that this is not to say that I think food stamp recipients wouldn't just blow their money on stupid stuff if they received plain-old cash. Just to recognize that it's paternalistic regardless.

I'll finish with one quick prediction: any attempt to regulate the diet of people who you feel are so bad at making decisions that you need to restrict the money you give them to food purchases or have them blow it is bound to fail. Once it does, we'll no doubt have an army of social workers ready to explain how that failure was the fault of neither the program nor the people it was intended to help and that with some retooling and a lot better funding these kinds of problems will disappear.

Am I Nostradamus or just a cynic? Too close to call.

Unintentionally Revealing

2008-12-31T11:06:00.001-05:00

The exchange about her money is one of the more humorous parts of the Kennedy interview. First there's this:

NC: Have your personal finances been affected by the economic crash?
CK: Um, probably — yes. (Laughter)
NC: Can you give a sense of how badly?

I'm not her accountant, Nick, but I'd say that when you ask if the economic crash has affected someone's finances and they respond "probably" that's an indication that they haven't been, shall we say, overly distressed about the personal repercussions of the state of the economy.(fn1)

Here's her actual response to the "how badly" question:

CK: You know, I think everybody’s — not as badly as a lot of people’s, but obviously everybody’s been hurt by this, and it doesn’t matter where you live. And, I’m lucky that I’m not afraid of losing my home. And my husband still has a job. And that’s not true for a lot of people. So I feel very fortunate, and that’s exactly why I would like to help people who are in those circumstances.

Again not being her accountant it's hard to say for sure, but I'd bet that the "not afraid of losing my home" should actually read "not afraid of losing my homes."

fn1: I heard an anecdote about a fellow who had been a billonaire prior to the recent economic unpleasantness but was, perhaps foolishly in retrospect, invested heavily on margin. Long story short, he is now a millionaire -- low tens. Not the poorhouse, to be sure, but still: that's got to sting. I'm going to guess that if you ask him whether he's been affected by the economic crash his answer will be a good bit more specific -- and profane -- than "probably".

Flotsam and Jetsam

2008-12-31T11:02:00.004-05:00

There's a bunch of random posts that I had played with and not posted a few days ago that I'm going to be putting up now.

So that's why it might appear that I'm suddenly interested in the same things again and also suddenly v. prolific...

Life imitates Art inspired by Life?

2008-12-31T11:02:00.001-05:00

"Where it began... I can't begin to knowin'..."

-- Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?
CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)
... cutting some inane blather from Caroline in response to a question about what she has against women's magazines...
NC: But there was no one moment you can draw on —
CK: I know I wish there was, I’ll think about it.

-- Caroline Kennedy's interview with the NY Times

Sweet Caroline...

2008-12-29T13:13:00.004-05:00

Drinking games taking advantage of her annoying verbal tics aside, her interview with the Times is quite hysterical. For example there's this bit:

NC: It just seems like the only — your interest in this seat coincided with the chance to become appointed to it, which is the easy way into the seat, and so it raises questions. If you really want it —

CK: Actually, I think that actually a campaign would be an easier way, because I think it would give me a chance to explain exactly what I’m doing, why I would want to do this, and, you know, and get people to know me better and to understand exactly what my plans would be, how hard I would work, you know, kind of...

Ah yes. Elections are soooo much easier than appointments. In the course of an election, one never comes under the kind of harsh scrutiny that she has during this appointment process. On the other hand, if elections are so much preferable, one wonders why she has never shown any interest in participating in one? Even, for the most part, as a voter...

Which is not even to point out the absurdity of her claim that she wishes for an election to let people know about her plans. It's easy to see her point: in an election she might have some highly visible way -- like, say, an interview with the NY Times -- in which to lay out her agenda. Pity that in an appointment situation those opportunities never present themselves...

Embarrassment

2008-12-29T08:02:00.003-05:00

Here's a fun idea for a drinking game: take a drink every time Caroline Kennedy displays the verbal tic "you know" in her NY Times interview. I bet you won't make it through her response to the second question before you pass out.

Your daily dose of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy...

2008-12-23T18:15:00.004-05:00

As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment. Any existing structures and all the conditions of doing business are always in a process of change. Every situation is being upset before it has had time to work itself out. Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.

(italics in the original)

And then this bit from later in the same paragraph:

Possibilities of gains to be reaped by producing new things or by producing old things more cheaply are constantly materializing and calling for new investments. These new products and new methods compete with the old products and old methods not on equal terms but at a decisive advantage that may mean death to the latter. This is how "progress" comes about in capitalist society.

It might be dangerous to say it this early in the book, but from my (admittedly cursory) knowledge of the work, this is the nut graph.

Holiday Reading

2008-12-22T16:21:00.004-05:00

So over my little Christmas break, I'm reading Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, the seminal economic classic by Joseph Schumpeter.

Now, as everybody no doubt already knows, the thumbnail takeaway of this book is "creative destruction" which is Schumpeter's description of how capitalism progresses: the old and less efficient is swept aside by the new and more efficient. This can be an unpleasant process for those being swept away but ultimately benefits everyone with a better use of inputs and thus increased prosperity. (fn1)

At any rate, I figured it would behoove me as an economic dilettante to at least take the measure of those classics that I have not read and decided that Schumpeter was as good a place to start as any.

All of this is by way of saying that I'm on vacation and so posting will be light. And what little posting there is will most likely be observations of and from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

In his (unnecessarily long, in retrospect) discussion of Marx, I've found my lines of the day:

The masses have not always felt themselves to be frustrated and exploited. But the intellectuals that formulated their views for them have always told them that they were, without necessarily meaning by it anything precise.

True.

fn1 One of the earliest examples of this unpleasantness was the luddite uprisings against the new mechanized weaving industry at the very dawn of the industrial revolution.

Music notes

2008-12-19T16:34:00.003-05:00

I recently learned from the band Spoon that I have no fear of the underdog and that this is why I will not survive.

Apparently, I also have my cherry bomb.

Historic

2008-12-19T14:21:00.004-05:00

"So that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth..." - Abraham Lincoln

"So that poorly made cars assembled by overpaid labor to be sold at redundant dealerships shall not perish from the Earth..."(fn1) George W. Bush

A blogger I read had the humorous observation recently that the plan for the Big 3 seems to be that we bail them out so that we can force them to make green vehicles. This is, he points out, prob. the first time in history that the rationale has been "we have to save them so we can destroy them" rather than the other way around.

fn1: Note that I may be paraphrasing his actual remarks.

What's wrong with "Compassionate Conservatism"?

2008-12-17T13:52:00.003-05:00

Oh, just about everything, according to John O'Sullivan in the latest National Review. He's right.(fn1)

Also, Jonah Goldberg has a good discussion of this piece and Michael Gerson's response on The Corner.

fn1: Oh wordplay!

A little bit better, every day...

2008-12-17T12:27:00.001-05:00

I noticed this article in the Wash. Post last week about how the killers employed by Mexican drug cartels have been getting much more sophisticated and thought it was interesting. Not only because hired assassins are always going to be kind of inherently interesting, but also for the way it illustrates a universal economic point: people get better through experience.

Even with all kinds of book learnin', the best way to make yourself a more valuable employee is to hold down a job for a while. You'll learn the ins-and-outs of the job and get better at it. And, of course, as you get better at it, you are more valuable and thus, barring some unfortunate problem, better able to command a higher wage.

The fact that this is just as true -- if not more so -- at the bottom end of human capital as at the top end is why minimum wage laws are another one of those classic governmental programs that seem to straightforwardly advance one interest, raising the wages of poor folk, but actually work exactly to the opposite effect.

The goal seems to be unambiguously good: help poor people make more money. And the means couldn't be any more straightforward: force employers to pay them more.

But here's the problem: if you are not capable of producing value to employers that's worth more to them than the minimum wage, you will not be hired. So, right off the bat you're taking the least able members of society and locking them out of the job market entirely. (fn1)

This is bad for the obvious reason of them not having a job but you might think that this is okay in our modern welfare world. After all, if these people are that low on human capital, perhaps it's best that society take care of them through social safety nets and the like.

Ah, but here's the rub. If you can't ever get that first job, get your foot in the door even for what some rich person might find an appalling wage, you never begin the process of bettering yourself through experience. You are thus permanently less well-off not only monetarily but in terms of personal development.

You see folk who get uber-low paying jobs (yes, the minimum wage ones now, but it would be true of sub-minimum wage employment too, were that allowed to function) by and large do not keep those jobs forever. As they learn their job and develop skills, they move up the income ladder. Perhaps not very far but they do move. If you lock them out of the bottom, you lock them out of the growth.

As an aside, this is also why the selling of minimum wage increases is always so economically illiterate. The number of people who have earned minimum wage over some lengthy period is trotted out and talk about how awful it is that these folk have gone so long (since the last minimum wage hike) without a raise is tossed around. But this is wrong. They are not the same people, most people move on from minimum wage quite quickly and v. few stay at it forever.(fn2)

And that's before considering any shrinkage in the minimum wage workforce that happens as employers trim their employees to avoid paying folk who are not worth the new wage.

Coincidentally, as I was noodling this post I happened across this recent economics paper showing that minimum wage laws do, in fact, have all of these bad effects:

Based on their comprehensive reading of the evidence, Neumark and Wascher argue that minimum wages do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters. They reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers and tend to reduce their earnings; they are not an effective means of reducing poverty; and they appear to have adverse longer-term effects on wages and earnings, in part by reducing the acquisition of human capital. The authors argue that policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.

fn1: Interestingly, this lock-out was considered a feature not a bug of minimum wage laws when they were first suggested in the U.S. The people doing the suggesting back then were concerned about the huge migration of unskilled black labor from the South to the North. So they conceived of minimum wage laws as a way of locking those black folks out of the labor market. Ah progressivism. One wonders if the folk who like to use it as a label now-a-days would be as comfortable with it if they actually took the time to learn its history. But that's just crazy-talk, progressives are all about the future and the benighted past has nothing to teach us, right?

fn2: Note that this is a problem with reporting on "quintile" or other strata of earnings more generally. They tend to look at the distribution of income among quintiles in one year and compare it to another year without acknowledging that you are not talking about the same people in both years. For example, young people make less money, on average, than old people. Thus, over a lifetime, people tend to move from lower quintiles into higher quintiles. Obv. there is movement the other way as well, as people retire or scale back their workload or what-not. And, of course, there are lots of other things going on. But when you read a news story about how the income of the lowest quintile hasn't increased in 30 years or whatever, do take a moment to realize that the seemingly obvious conclusion: "OMG! 20% of people have been living on the same income for 30 years!" is flat wrong.

Will the last one left please buy some expensive jeans before you turn out the light...

2008-12-17T10:20:00.004-05:00

Sad article in the Wash. Post today about a new magazine in Japan trying to appeal to the "elder boys" to get them to spend money.

Apparently when your demographics fall off a cliff, so does your consumer spending. Who knew?

In the tradition of Japan being the home of all things weird, the magazine is called "OilyBoy".

The good news, I suppose, is that this shouldn't be a problem for too terribly long. After 100 years or so there simply won't be enough Japanese folk left to market magazines to or worry about what their economy is like.

Note to the rest of the civilized world: you might want to take notes.

Keep trying Tom...

2008-12-16T15:14:00.004-05:00

Tom Cruise back on the Today show tries his darndest to be sane:
Nope.

Jocking my style.

2008-12-16T14:14:00.003-05:00

No doubt noticing the explosive growth in my readership numbers, the NY Times Freakonomics blog has decided to crib my prostitution-economics nexus with a post discussing why prostitution is not a Giffen good.

Economics and prostitution, you saw it here first.

The discussion of Giffen goods in the post is quite good, though fairly useless as there has only ever been one found in the wild: rice among desperately poor peasants in China.

The two effects that work together to create a Giffen Good, the substitution effect and the income effect, are very useful indeed, however.

I can still remember the first time I used the income effect to explain an observed behavior. It was way back in college when Miller Lite was in the middle of a particularly fantastic run of advertising. I read an article in the Journal about how Miller was upset because despite this critically acclaimed and v. popular advertising push their product was not selling any better.

Of course, this was during the late 90's tech boom. My conjecture was that Miller Lite is an inferior product(fn1), that is people would prefer to drink some better beer if they can afford it. And in a boom everybody feels like they can afford it so Miller sales stall. And no amount of advertising was likely to change that.

fn1: I feel I should note that I do not personally view Miller Lite as all that inferior in the everyday sense. I prefer it to Bud Light or Coors Light. That said, they are all inferior in that I tend to buy nicer beers. But for certain uses, they are the best. Sports watching, for example, goes well with light beer, not so much with Guinness or Bass.

Meet the new boss...

2008-12-16T13:24:00.003-05:00

Got a couple of posts in the pipeline, so hopefully this week won't be as barren as past weeks around here.

For now, though, perhaps a quick prediction.

Call me the worst sort of cynic but I'm gonna bet that this new South African party that has split from the reigning ANC will soon be just as mired in corruption as the old party. Prob. even before they manage to amass any kind of actual power.

As an aside, the article is a good example of at least one reason why newspapers are a dying industry. After the first 10 paragraphs describe the generalities of the split from the ANC and the speeches and chants at their first public meeting, the second to last paragraph almost gets interesting:

Zuma defeated Mbeki in a bitter race for the party leadership last year and is likely to be the country's next president, with general elections expected early next year. Lekota has questioned whether Zuma is fit to be president of the country and accuses Zuma, who would be South Africa's first Zulu president, of fanning tribal tension.

Wow! A bitter leadership race? Allegations he's not fit to be president? Sounds intriguing... but wait, just "fanning tribal tension"? That seems like kind of a let down.

And then this revelation in the very last paragraph of the article:

Zuma has been tarnished by corruption allegations; corruption charges were dropped on procedural grounds but could be revived. He also was acquitted of raping an HIV-positive family friend.

So the guy leading the party they're splitting off from was acquitted of raping an HIV-positive family friend? Now that's a hook you could hang a "new party splits off" story on, don't you think?

Nah, better to stick it in a brief mention in the very last sentence of the article. Wouldn't want anybody to think we were slopping around in the gutter or, you know, trying to entice readers with interesting pieces about current events or anything...

Unspoken Transgressions

2008-12-12T16:26:00.003-05:00

So about a month or so ago when I was down home-ways for T-giving, I went over to a good friend's house for some traditional night-before-Thanksgiving, homemade pizza. The food was delicious, the company was wonderful, a great time was had by all.

While there, the guests had a fascinating discussion on sharing a bathroom with your superiors at the office: the awkwardness, the oddity, etc.

I should note here that I did not introduce this topic of conversation and am somewhat offended that you would leap to that conclusion. Shame on you.

That said, I did relay an awkward experience of my own. Please feel free to stop reading if you're not interested in proper urinal etiquette.

The mens room in my office features six urinals arranged in a row as such:

UUUUUU

Now, as any man will tell you, there is a correct order to the use of these urinals. The first fellow should take one end, the second the other, the third one of the middle ones and -- since there are an even number -- the fourth fellow might be better off using a stall or perhaps a sink rather than sidle up right next to someone who's already there. (fn1)

A few days before thanksgiving I happened to enter the bathroom immediately behind a coworker. And there was already one man at the urinals.

The first problem was that the current... occupant (I guess?) had already committed a small violation of etiquette, he had not gone to one end but rather was one urinal in from the end (fn2):

UUUUUU
o o o o 1 o

(I'm using "o" to indicate empty as the Blogger software seems to not like spaces used as spacing.)

But this can be regarded as a strip of 5 urinals and there are two fellows entering, so easy solution, right:

UUUUUU
2 o 3 o 1 o

This is what any sane person would do: go to the end, esp. realizing that the person who just walked through the door behind you is headed for the urinals as well.

But no.

This guy, in what was the most appalling disregard for the unspoken rules of life I think I have ever witnessed, instead went for the urinal one in from the other end:

UUUUUU
o 2 o o 1 o

Yeah. So now I was left in the unenviable position of having to choose one of the fellows to buddy up with or else, perhaps, wave off and hit a stall or pretend to wash my hands or something.

But you know what? This guy, number 2 in our example, had set me up for this. And so I figured: screw him. I went right next to him. I was tempted to have bad aim and leave him with a wet leg but decided not to take it that far this time:

UUUUUU
o 2 3 o 1 o

So that was then. It was a bizarre break with what I would have expected were the accepted norms in, at the very least, American mens room behaviour but there it is.

So today I happen to be headed into the bathroom to wash my hands (for real, actually, it was lunch time and I like to eat with clean hands) and a coworker walks in behind me and hits the completely unoccupied urinals. And chooses as such:

UUUUUU
o o 1 o o o

What the hell? Am I living in bizarro world? Is this guy some kind of alpha-A-hole (he doesn't seem the type and, really, most actuaries don't...) who is expressing his dominance by trying to take over the whole "watering hole" (so to speak...)?

Unfortunately my ability to remember my younger male coworker's names and faces is such that I don't know if this was the same jackass from my previous encounter but it could be. Either way, it's unacceptable.

fn1: These rules obv. do not apply in crowding situations such as at a ballgame or other heavily attended event. These are for your ordinary bathroom uses, which is to say largely empty ones.

fn2: At the dinner-party discussion of these events the point was raised that the fellow who was in there first might have had good reason for choosing his spot based on the use of the other urinals when he entered. I am willing to acknowledge that it is not impossible but find it highly unlikely. The only acceptable scenario would be every single other urinal was taken and that was almost certainly not the case.

Smackdown

2008-12-12T10:45:00.003-05:00

Bill Ayers in the NY Times: I'm not a terrorist and never hurt or wanted to hurt anyone.

Charles Lane (fn1) in the Washington Post: you def. did want to hurt people and didn't only through a combination of luck and incompetence. Stop lying.

fn1: Charles Lane was the editor of the New Republic when the Stephen Glass fabrication scandal broke. He's the guy who fired Glass. He was played by Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass, the movie about the story. I have a weird love of that movie and have watched it an unhealthy number of times.(fn2)

fn2: I think my love of that movie might come from the writing style. It was written by H.G. Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights the book and movie and creator of the tv show.(fn3) The first season of Friday Night Lights was among the best television ever. The second season was still v. solid. The third season I've not seen as it's been shown "exclusively" on some channel only available on satellite tv. And that sucks. Though if the show is getting the money it needs to survive at all through that kind of deal, I guess that's better than the alternative. The show's been one of those "critical favorites that have trouble finding an audience" throughout its run.

fn3: After having developed something of an obsession with the tv show back in season one, I read the book and watched the movie as well. They are both also v. good.

It's stuff like this that makes people like me

2008-12-05T10:41:00.004-05:00

Call me a wild-eyed libertarian but stories like this one rankle.

In a nutshell, a church's Christmas tree lot was shut down because it violated the Montgomery County law that prohibits sales of Christmas trees prior to Dec. 5.

You can count me in the group who is appalled at how early the commercial sector starts milking the holiday season each year but, honestly, a law?

Here's the best part: "officials could not determine why the law was enacted or even when, only that it was sometime in the late 1960s or early '70s".

Fantastic. Nobody knows why it's a law or even how long it's been a law.

This is why I sometimes think it would be much better if all laws had expiration dates and had to be renewed or cease being laws. You see, legislatures have to justify their existence, same as everybody else. They justify it by passing lots of laws. And those laws stack up. Until nobody knows or even can know them all. And that's when the law can become arbitrary in ways that are antithetical to the rule of law.

And that's not smiles times.

If they all had expiration dates then legislatures could busy themselves by re-authorizing the necessary ones and they wouldn't have to create busy work for themselves by crafting laws to deal with silly things like Christmas tree sales times.

The sounds of the silence...

2008-12-04T11:34:00.003-05:00

Busy week at work plus no internet access at home (coming Sat.) equals no posting on the ol' blog. Nothing to be done about that.

So, until I can get back in the swing of things, here's an article I stumbled across and enjoyed.

It's about Jill Price who has a perfect memory. Literally. She remembers every detail of every day since she was fifteen and many of the days before that. It's not all wine and roses:

In addition to good memories, every angry word, every mistake, every disappointment, every shock and every moment of pain goes unforgotten. Time heals no wounds for Price. "I don't look back at the past with any distance. It's more like experiencing everything over and over again, and those memories trigger exactly the same emotions in me. It's like an endless, chaotic film that can completely overpower me. And there's no stop button."

This put me in mind of the v. interesting book The Mind of a Mnemonist by A.R. Luria that I read a while back. It was one of that all-too-rare genre of medical case study written for a wide audience (Oliver Sacks of Awakenings fame is prob. the most well-known and prolific of the genre.) It was about a man who, like Jill Price, never forgot.

In the Mnemonist book the fellow had synaesthesia, the condition where your senses are not distinct from each other: sounds were associated with colors, tastes and smells for him. Apparently many people with phenomenal memories have varying degrees of the condition.

The Mnemonist fashioned a fairly successful career for himself as a memory showman. He would entertain audiences by having them recite random words or sounds or whatnot to any length and then he would rattle them back. Of course, as he never forgot, he could rattle them off for any of his shows no matter how many years before. The book ended, as I recall, unhappily as the fellow eventually went somewhat insane because he could no longer distinguish things that had just happened from things that had happened years before.

And, it seems from the article, much the same thing might be happening to Ms. Price, though she apparently does not possess the Mnemonist's ability to remember arbitrary strings of words.

And another goes down?

2008-11-19T16:43:00.002-05:00

To the extent that misery loves company (fn1), this speculation from a blogger at Portfolio (fn2) that Berkshire Hathaway could potentially face a ratings downgrade in sort of a cascade of self-fulfilling prophecies is excellent news for AIG. (fn3)

There's this interesting bit at the end:

On the other hand, I'm not comfortable with any company -- not even Berkshire Hathaway -- having a business model which requires a triple-A rating. Triple-A ratings should be the consequence of a company's profitability, not a cause of it. If Berkshire lost its triple-A and started playing on a level playing field with everybody else, that might be more sustainable, in the long term, than an attempt to shore up the triple-A at all costs. Certainly there's something very weird going on when CDSs are at 450bp and the credit is still triple-A: one or the other has to be wrong.

The last line is indisputably true: if two indicators are giving you radically different information, one of them is wrong. I could see arguments being made for either (briefly: irrationality in the market for CDS's mean they're wrong verses slowness of updates by the ratings agencies mean that they haven't reflected the most up-to-date information thus they're wrong).

But his overall point about not trusting business plans that rely on a AAA rating seems less obvious to me. I'm not sure it's wrong but it seems suspect. I'd have to think it through. Sadly, I don't have time to do that just now. But someday, someday...

(fn1) Not actually all that great an extent, in my experience. Though that could just be me, I'm not much of a people person at the best of times.

(fn2) Portfolio magazine, which I was only very dimly aware of just a couple of months ago, has crossed my radar many times recently. First, I saw their notice that they were cutting back and thought, "there's another magazine I don't read and never will". But then a friend called my attention to Michael Lewis's excellent piece on the Great Collapse, mere days after that I ran across this older but interesting piece on the troubles facing the traditionally technologically savvy and recession proof(ish) porn industry, and now this fun-filled guess at a potential calamity falling on Berkshire. They're on a roll!

(fn3) As you'll recall from previous posts (if, that is, you like long, rambling discourses...) it was a ratings downgrade that felled AIG.

A Winner!

2008-11-19T16:22:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the light posting, I've been up to my eyeballs with work and packing and the like.

But I did want to call attention to the fact that today's 3:00 Dive left the Dow closed below 8,000 for the first time in five years.

Whoever had "Nov. 19" in the "when will the Dow close below 8,000" pool, you can collect your winnings from the man selling pencils on the corner.

Stupid is as stupid does?

2008-11-11T16:34:00.005-05:00

I got my lunch today, as I often do, from Lenny's, an NYC chain of sandwich shops. They make your basic made-to-order sandwiches and do a good job. I like Lenny's.

The one downtown, which is to say the one I frequent when at work, is a mob-scene during the lunch rush, from about 11:30 to 1:30, as are most food places around here. The ones that are not mobbed are not long for this world.

As most of the successful places have, Lenny's has got their ordering system down to something of a science to deal with the crush. You order at one place, take your slip, grab your drink, chips, fruit salad or whatever, and head to the register to pay. The cashier gives you the number to listen for when your sandwich is ready and then you stand milling around with the others waiting for your number and, if you're like me, grumbling when numbers after yours get called before you.

Today I got wrapped up in some stuff and didn't actually head over until about 2:00. When I hit Lenny's it was empty, though the full lunch staff was still working, so you had two cashiers and a multitude of sandwich makers. Having established a routine, of course, they stick to it, so I went through the usual steps: ordered, got slip, grabbed lemonade and chips, paid, got number.

But, again, I was the only customer in the place. Just me and the staff.

So when my sandwich was ready and I was over perusing the selection of ready-made pastas thinking they might be good for a future lunch do you think the lady calling out the number took note that there was only one person in the place?

Of course not.

No, she called it and then paused for approximately 3 seconds -- and did not use those 3 seconds to realize there was not a crowd in front of her, but rather an empty store with one person over by the refrigerated section -- and then called it again and then, pausing for 3 seconds again, read the order. As if someone might have forgotten their number but would recognize their order.

As it happens I had not forgotten my number but it took me longer than 6 seconds to traverse the store. I must say, though, that the level of lack of awareness was somewhat startling.

I think of these kinds of encounters when people make the argument that we need to get dramatically higher percentages of our population through higher education. That this would somehow benefit our economy or our population.

This lady would not benefit in the slightest from college, though I am sure she would enjoy the parties. And she is not alone. In point of fact, I'd say we're already a good bit past the point of diminishing returns in terms of who goes through higher education today. Many of today's "students" would benefit far more from an apprenticeship or other on-the-job training. They have no capacity or use for abstract thought and forcing it on them is much like teaching a pig to dance: ultimately futile and annoying to the pig.

The way people fall into this thinking is, I believe, a classic sort of false logic. They see that people who graduate from college are more productive than people who don't and then make the inference that college must have made the difference. But this is selection bias: smart people are more productive and more likely to go to college, but they would be smart and thus more productive even without the input of college.

There's also a bit of selection bias in that the kind of people who think about these kinds of issues are smart themselves. Smart people tend to cluster, so odds are most of their friends and acquaintances are likewise smart. So, unless they are particularly observant (as is your humble blogger), they have limited encounters with people who would not benefit from college. Combining that with the noble impulse to believe, contrary to all evidence, that everyone is roughly equally capable, you have people who almost literally cannot conceive of stupid people. They just zone them out.

Of course, if there were no stupid people then more college would be great. But that is not reality.

Larry Sechrest, an economist who died recently, wrote a fun little essay on the subject called "A Strange Little Town in Texas". He made his home in a little college in rural Texas where he believe the entire college -- professors, students and all -- functioned roughly at the level of a decent high-school.

"Not now, Mr. Obama, I'm concentrating on walking..."

2008-11-10T15:00:00.003-05:00

I've noticed this tendency before but isn't it striking that when Bush is shown in a candid moment with other world leaders it very nearly always looks like a not-so-bright schoolboy getting a lecture?

I recall a great one of Gordon Brown just after he became Prime Minister in which he appeared to be using his fingers to show Bush how many ten was.

I'm not a psychopath, I just don't care...

2008-11-10T13:04:00.002-05:00

Interesting article in the New Yorker on psychopaths.

Psychopaths are scary but the article does raise the interesting point that at least part of the reason it's difficult to come up with a solid definition of psychopathy is that pretty much everyone is capable of displaying psychopathic traits at one time or another. Who among us has never shaded the truth to get their way? Who among us can honestly say they always take full account of others? Indeed, the author has the following exchange with the researcher he is interviewing:

As I sped along Wolf Road, a traffic light ahead turned yellow. I momentarily thought about flooring it, and probably would have, if not for my passenger; instead, I slowed down and stopped. But the car on my left went flying by, through what was now a red light.
“Wow, look at that,” Hare said. “Now, that man might be a psychopath. That was psychopathic behavior, certainly—to put others in the intersection in danger in order to realize your own goals.”

The difference is one of degree: your extreme psychopath never cares and is capable of going to lengths that the normal person never would. (fn1)

This quote on the first page put in me in mind of the difficulties in teasing out genetic vs. environmental factors in human development:

"Considerable evidence, including several large-scale studies of twins, points toward a genetic component. Yet psychopaths are more likely to come from neglectful families than from loving, nurturing ones."

Of course, this is just what we might expect to see even if psychopathy was entirely genetic: psychopaths would have psychopathic children. Because psychopaths lack normal emotional responses, the homes they create in which to raise those children would likely be neglectful. They would be very unlikely to be "loving" since psychopaths are largely incapable of love.

This difficulty is why twin studies are the gold-standard for genetic vs. environment determinations. Of course, twins being somewhat rare, assembling large groups of them to participate in whatever nature vs. nurture study you've concocted can be difficult (read: expensive), thus the debate rages on. The rapid advance in genetics may soon (fn2) start to end the nature vs. nurture debate in a variety of fields but then again it may not.

(fn1) Note that I don't think running a yellow is beyond the pale, but then I've not spent years analyzing psychopaths. That's got to do bad things to your sense of proportion and normalcy. One of the dangers sited by a researcher is being sucked in by a psychopathic research subject's charisma and heading towards the psychopathic side yourself. I'd say that this researcher is displaying the opposite tendency: he's so attuned to and disturbed by psychopathy that he overcompensates and rates ordinary behavior as far more anti-social than it actually is.

(fn2) Where "soon" is defined as within the next couple of decades.

Wasted Opportunity

2008-11-05T07:57:00.003-05:00

One real shame about Obama's win last night is that it ruins the punch of this fun fact: on election day 2032 Barack Obama will be slightly younger than John McCain is today.

2032.

Historic

2008-11-05T07:51:00.003-05:00

Congratulations to President-elect Obama. He waged a good campaign and deserves his victory.

And it is undeniably historic that Americans have elected our first black president. I do wish it were someone slightly less a man of the left, though.

I sincerely hope that he is a successful president and that his policies are not the unmitigated disaster I fear they will be.

I have the distinct feeling that I will have lots of opportunity to write about misguided, counterproductive government policies over the next few years. But then, I was going to have that opportunity no matter who won last night. It's the nature of the beast.

The primary reason I need another room...

2008-11-04T16:34:00.001-05:00

From the New Yorker.

Busy...

2008-11-04T12:04:00.002-05:00

Been a busy week. So light posting, sorry.

Here's a quick fun fact for today:
If When Barack Obama finishes serving out his first term as president it will be the longest period of time that he has ever held one job without seeking a higher office.

That is, unless he figures out some higher office to go for. Most people would hold that President of the United States is about as high as offices get but maybe we could come up with a new one for him. Supreme Leader of the Americas? President of the World? Savior of Mankind?

Zombies Beware

2008-11-03T11:03:00.004-05:00

Study shows that teens who watch shows with sex in them are more likely to be involved in teen pregnancy.

If this finding is generalizable, then, given the number of zombies I killed on my tv set this weekend, I would have to advise any undead creatures that may be contemplating hanging around me to make other plans.

You're the man now dog!

2008-10-31T16:13:00.004-04:00

America's craziest octogenarian senator is back making history.(fn1)

This time he's insisting that he "hasn't been convicted of anything" because, despite the jury voting to convict him on seven counts of corruption, he isn't technically convicted until the judge enters final sentence. That's... wow. Just... wow.

Even better he calls the guilty verdict a "temporary situation."(fn2) You know what else is a temporary situation? Your being a member of the Senate, Senator. How can I be so sure? Because the leader of your party's senate delegation has said there is a 100% chance the Senate will vote to expel you if you get re-elected. Just to be clear, that's the captain of your team telling you to screw off.

But man, what I wouldn't give to have one of the t-shirts his supporters printed up to greet him upon his return to Alaska: "F**k the Feds, Vote for Ted!" Awesome.(fn3)

(fn1) It is perhaps indicative of a general decline in our political system that there are actually enough crazy octogenarian senators that this is a contest. You might not think it's a contest but then you didn't spend a month one summer sitting on the floor of the Senate listening to Senator Byrd (D. - Crazy) give about a 20 part lecture on ancient Roman battles and politics. (fn4) Not, keep in mind, because it related to any pending business of the senate in particular but just because you are allowed to talk about whatever you want during "Morning Business" in the Senate and the man loves his antiquity. Possibly because he was there.

(fn2) How can one let the phrase "temporary situation" slide by without reference to the classic Parliament song about DC "Chocolate City" in which appears the line "they still call it the White House but that's a temporary situation C.C."? One cannot.

(fn3) Awesome as this shirt is, it must be considered only the second most awesome political shirt I've ever seen. Number one? That would be the shirt sported by the young lad sitting opposite my girl and me as we journeyed down to DC by train one St. Patrick's day. The shirt was green and had "I (shamrock) Bob" on it. Apparently it was the St. P's day wear for some congressional hopeful named Bob.

(fn4) Complete with elaborate visual aids that had been printed up. Your tax dollars at work. Not that this was even close to the most extravagant waste of tax dollars ever perpetrated by the esteemed Sen. Byrd. But still.

Anticipation!

2008-10-24T14:39:00.002-04:00

Almost 3:00! Can't wait to find out which way those crazy, crazy traders are going to jump today!

Here's Mr. Tom Petty giving a voice to current market conditions.

Music soothes...

2008-10-24T14:37:00.000-04:00

Recently I've been listening to two albums almost exclusively.

One is the debut from Vampire Weekend, a band of Columbia grads.

They've apparently been described as "the whitest band" by Stuff White People Like author Christian Lander as well as "trust-fund frat rock" by other musicians.

This is probably true. It is difficult to imagine over-estimating the snobby eliteness of a band with songs named for obscure punctuation terminology (the excellent "Oxford Comma"), bizarre architectural details (the also excellent "Mansard Roof") or that uses African pop-music influences to construct a song about WASPY summertime activities (the very excellent "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa").

They've also got a song called "M79" about taking the crosstown bus to meet up with your lady. I've been lucky to always date within my side of the city but being a man-of-the-people, I've taken various crosstown buses -- including the M79 -- many, many times. (fn1)

The songs "A-Punk" and "Campus" are also very good.

The other album I've been listening to, though perhaps somewhat less than Vampire Weekend, is "Under the Blacklight" by Rilo Kiley.

Rilo Kiley is an LA band whose lead singer, Jenny Lewis, was the female lead in the ~~childhood~~ advertising classic The Wizard.

My favorite songs on the Rilo Kiley album are "The Moneymaker" (fn2), the jaunty "Smoke Detector"(fn3), and "15". (fn4)

The songs "Close Call" and "Breakin' Up" are also pretty decent, though you kind of have to be in the mood for them. (fn5)

Both of these albums are many months old, of course, since I am now middle-aged and thus hopelessly behind the times. Such is life.

(fn1) Note that bus-taking is not Stuff White People Like, as evidenced by a friend of mine who is the George Wallace of anti-bus-bigotry and who gets upset when I reference stuff we've talked about without referencing his name. So: WFA. There.

(fn2) The video for which features real, live pornstars! Just to keep the blog's prostitution vibe going...

(fn3) A song that sounds like a slightly dirtied-up early 60's dance tune.

(fn4) The subject matter of which is fairly wrong. And by "fairly", I mean "very". Especially considering that it was penned by a female former child-star.

(fn5) But then again, I suppose that's kind of true for all music, to some degree. Does the song exist that you appreciate hearing regardless of current mental state? I would posit that it does not. There are many songs which have tremendous power to alter mental state, but I would think that even those require certain baseline mental states to be effective. That is, you're not going to go to pieces for "Danny Boy" if you're in the middle of a murderous rage. (fn6)

(fn6) Or ever, if you're me, as I use that song mostly to humorously jibe my friend Danny. (fn7)

(fn7) Wow, I've really kind of gone nuts with the footnotes this time out, huh? Perhaps I'll join a group.

New Guns for Criminals Program

2008-10-23T18:38:00.010-04:00

Caught a story on NY1 last night about the expansion to Manhattan of a gun buyback program that has apparently been running in Brooklyn for a little while.

I'd just like to point out that gun buyback programs are indisputably stupid. They are a classic example of having good intentions and designing a government program that seems to straightforwardly advance those intentions but actually works precisely to undermine them.

When you buy guns you are enlarging the demand for guns. This increases the value of guns. This will increase the amount of guns supplied. Period.

Imagine it for any other non-gun thing and you will immediately see that it's true. In this excellent post an economist makes exactly this point using sneakers as the example. If the government decided to buy back sneakers, would we expect to see fewer people wearing sneakers afterwards? Or would we expect people to take the chance to sell their old, crappy sneakers and use the money to buy new, nice sneakers?

Why would we expect the same program targeting guns to have any different result?

The best part is that the success of this lunacy is judged based on how many guns they manage to buy. Awesome. You are tallying up the number of people who like to buy guns to whom you have given money to upgrade their gun. Well done.

Tee-hee

2008-10-23T10:33:00.003-04:00

I think I was at this same wedding... (fn1)
(fn1) Fun Fact about me that you might not know: I love advice columns. Love 'em. I only have two that I read regularly now but that has gone as high as five at various points when I find ones I like.

Line of the Day

2008-10-23T10:25:00.001-04:00

George Will today:

The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life.

True.

One, two, three o'clock... three o'clock rock?

2008-10-22T16:49:00.004-04:00

So the Dow took a nosedive right at 3:00 again today. There seems to be a definite pattern of enormous volatility -- usually a price drop -- popping up right at 3:00.

I have no idea what's driving that, just that it's weird.

In other, happy news, I promise to have some more posts soon. I realize I've been light lately.

What can I say, the realization that my blog's readership is up 300% has left me with a bit of performance anxiety...

That said, I've got at least one longish, serious-ish post I'm noodling. And when I get some time to read the NY Times you just know there'll be something to kvetch about. It's the nature of the beast.

Nischt, nischt, nischt...

2008-10-17T15:00:00.002-04:00

Did you know Amy Winehouse is Jewish? Neither did I. In celebration of that fun fact, here is a middle-aged man performing "Rehab" in Yiddish.

Mazel-tov.

Taking a stance for a friend

2008-10-17T10:19:00.006-04:00

You know things are grim when Larry Craig shows up to lend moral support during your corruption trial.

Oh Sen. Stevens, you old coot. Remember when you threatened to quit Congress if the senate took away your $400 million bridge for 50 people? Or the time you called the internet a "series of tubes"?

We're gonna miss you, you lovable ol' curmudgeon, you! (fn1)

(fn1) Fun fact: The first summer that I was a Senate Page I got coffee for Sen. Stevens. I remember it well because it should have taken about 2 minutes but the coffee corner in the Minority Leader's office (This would have been Senator Dole's -- Bob Dole, that is -- office) was out of cups. So I then had to track down some cups which involved a lengthy search through the basement of the capitol.(fn2) By the time I had tracked down some cups and gotten a fresh batch of coffee made the whole thing had taken like 20 minutes or more. I was worried I was going to get chewed out when I finally showed up with the coffee but he had totally forgotten he even asked for it. Someday maybe I'll tell you about the time Strom Thurmond took me to the Senate dining room for ice cream and gave me a long talk about the many positive qualities of South Carolinian peanuts.(fn3)

(fn2) The basement of the capital is a strange and wonderful place. There are tunnels that go practically everywhere. And by everywhere I really, honestly mean everywhere. It would surprise me not at all if some of them led to different continents or time periods a la the weirder reaches of the Dharma Initiative in Lost.

(fn3) Jesse Helms, by contrast, was convinced that there was no better peanut to be found than that of North Carolina. He didn't give me ice cream, though, so I'm a South Carolina peanut man to this day.

I'll tumble for ya... I'll tumble for ya...

2008-10-15T16:16:00.004-04:00

So the Dow is down again today, nearly 8%.

We are living in utter chaos. Up 11% Monday, steady Tues, down 8% Wed. Madness.

What I'm wondering now is how long it takes until this fades into the background and is no longer panic inducing?

I'm paying, perhaps, particular attention, over and above my usual, due to the limbo my various housing situations are in. (fn1) So maybe the dread pit in my stomach that has lived there almost continuously for the last couple of months is just my own unique cross to bear. But I think not.

On the other hand, if there's anything I feel certain of about Human Nature it is humanity's nearly inexhaustible capacity to become used to anything. So now I'm wondering how long it is until chaotic markets and an impending economic collapse just becomes "the way it is" and is no more bother than any other ongoing tragedy of our world.

Honestly, if it goes like this much longer, a collapse will be a relief if only as an end to the anticipation.

(fn1) It's a long, long story. Suffice to say we're now moving on a rental as negotiations seem to have reached the end on the place we couldn't buy. "What negotiations?", you might be asking if you'd heard about our board rejection. That, dear friends, is why it's a long, long story. But for now, at least, I theoretically am moving on two fronts. And the market is tumbling. (fn2) And my stomach is not loving life.

(fn2) The word "tumble" always puts me in mind of the Boy George song "I'll tumble for you". Good song.

Shrinkage!

2008-10-15T13:21:00.003-04:00

Alcohol shrinks your brain.

No proven link to cognitive decline, though, so I'm good.

The post suggests limiting yourself to one glass of alcohol a day for women, two for men. I'm going to assume those are averages and stick to having my 14 per week during a few hours on Sat. night.

CBS reads my blog... or my mind...

2008-10-15T11:18:00.004-04:00

So I finished up watching last week's How I Met Your Mother on the web this morning and the ad selection this time around was much better. Rather than a 50-something selling me Viagra they had the hilarious set of ads of Neil Patrick Harris using his "former fake doctor" bona fides to sell me "prescription strength Old Spice -- without a prescription."

Using ads targeted to the same demographic as the show during which they air? Featuring the actor who performs the breakout character of the show? Much better.

I love those ads.

The episode, btw, was one of the best ever. And that's saying something.

"See you guys later, I've got to take a huge New Jersey."

I'm not that old, I swear...

2008-10-14T10:00:00.005-04:00

So this morning I finally got around to watching last week's How I Met Your Mother. So far, it is hysterical. It's a whole episode about the rank prejudice that young New Yorkers have against New Jersey. Many of the jokes I and my friends have in fact made ourselves. Genius.

But here's the odd thing. I'm watching it on CBS's website, since I had a scheduling conflict and couldn't DVR it. On the website you get fewer ads but you can't skip them. So what was the ad? Viagra.

A show about 20-30 somethings that is designed to most appeal to 20-30 somethings serves up an ad for erectile dysfunction.

I remember the first time I saw a beer ad with a song I had actually bought. I realized that I had hit the age (not 21, btw) at which beer companies felt it was worth paying attention to what I like. But am I really at the age when ad companies feel I might be interested in Viagra?

I'd note that the guy in the ad was in his 50's at least. I'd bet good money that the over 50 audience for How I Met Your Mother could fit comfortably in my apartment. And the over 50 web audience could fit comfortably in my refrigerator. Which is not a full-size fridge.

Ah city life... (updated)

2008-10-13T16:08:00.000-04:00

So this morning at about 4:30 my next door neighbor (the apparent prostitute) had a knock-down, drag-out fight with her boyfriend. I'm talking screamed obscenities, thrown stuff, slammed doors, the works.

For like an hour. Then all was quiet for an hour or so and then the fight resumed with all of its original intensity and ended when she stormed out. She came back half an hour or so later banging on the door demanding her phone.

From what I could gather, the fight was about him cheating on her. Why a prostitute would be upset by her boyfriend cheating on her I do not know.(See update below...) I'd also love to know what the intermission in the fight was all about.

Regardless, living next door to people who are regularly up and active during the 4 am. hour during the week is growing very tiresome. Literally.

Happily, we're gone by the end of Nov. come hell or high water. Started looking at rentals yesterday. Saw some possibilities.

Update: So after conversing with my girl and comparing notes, we've decided that the girl who was arguing with her boyfriend was not, in fact, the prostitute. Rather, the boyfriend is apparently holed up at the prostitute's place and this girl found him there and was understandably upset about it. This explains her repeated screams of "what are you even doing here!?!?!?" as well as why she would not have access to the keys to retrieve her phone.

Ah, prostitutes.

What is it with me and prostitutes lately?

2008-10-13T14:38:00.006-04:00

So my weekend was slightly weird.

It opened nicely. A friend recently competed on Jeopardy and the show aired Friday night. So a number of us gathered at some friends' house in Brooklyn to watch. He won big, we were all very happy for him.

Then we played poker in the basement (lowest-level, whatever, it's an apt., though a big one). I won. Yay me.

Heading home having had, perhaps, a beer or two too many (let's be honest: perhaps 8 or 10 too many.) I dozed off slightly and missed the transfer from the F to the 6 line to head home. No worries, though, as the F intersects with the E a stop or two later and the E actually goes even closer to my place.

At the E transfer station I missed an E by literal inches and then 10 minutes later it was a C train that trundled through. The C does not head over to the East side. But it was late, I was drunk, so I did what I sometimes do and just took it up to 50th st. on the West side and walked across.

And during my walk, I was propositioned by a prostitute. A huge white SUV ahead of me rolled its window down as I neared and the blonde girl driving leaned over and asked me where I was headed.

"Home."

"Where's home?"

"Nearby."

"Want some company on your way home?"

(Light turns on in my head as I figure out what this is... I was drunk...)
"Oh! No." (Walks purposefully away.)

50th or 51st around Madison. 12:30 at night. When relating this tale to friends, I've heard of similar experiences. Guess they want to tap the i-banker trade but don't want to risk actual streetwalking.

The next day I had a weird conversation (fn1) with my real estate attorney but that's perhaps best saved for another time.

fn1 Non-prostitute related except for the slight overlap of my next-door neighbor being a prostitute. But that fun fact has never actually come up in conversations with my real estate attorney.

U.S. as banana republic...

2008-10-09T16:49:00.002-04:00

Kind of hard to argue with, lately...