Lord Voldemort Un-Masked

Tonight I completed the last Harry Potter book. Rowling has created a world and set of characters that folks will still be reading about a century from now (folks who read only about 40 pages a year and will thus need 100 years to get through the entire 4,000+ page series).

The one thing that I should have seen coming? The rather Mission Impossible-like scene in which Ron Weasley pulls off Lord Voldemort's mask to reveal a sneering Dick Cheney. It explains so much.

Disequilibrium Economics

One of the problems with economics is that it assumes economies gravitate towards equilibrium. In this model, economies are all about moving towards a resting point, a balance between supply and demand, a quiescent state that suggests that the status quo is normal.

Yesterday would have been Thorstein Veblen's 150th birthday. (Curiously, had he actually been alive, that would have made him the world's oldest living economist.) Veblen is probably best known for coining the phrase "conspicuous consumption." Referencing the potlatch ceremonies in which Indians gave away or even destroyed surplus goods to gain status, Veblen explained the robber barons who might light a cigar with a $100 bill.

But to me, a more interesting dimension of his economics was his adoption of Darwin's (at the time) novel idea of evolution as a model upon which to base economic analysis. He emphasized two things that most economists of his time ignored, two things that have proven to be of vital importance to progress (as opposed to equilibrium): technology and institutions.

We all realize how disruptive and defining technology has been to economic growth in century since Veblen began publishing. We still tend to overlook the importance of institutional change. Veblen saw institutional change as essential to economic progress, and reminded us that institutions can be thought of as habits of thought. Changing habits of thought is often harder than changing technology.

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Thanks to the Bob Edwards show and Edwards' interview of economist Ken McCormick for alerting me to Veblen's birthday yesterday and for the refresher on his influence. If you'd like to learn more, one great place to start is with Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers, which includes a chapter on Veblen (whose penchant for fellow professors' wives did little to help him overcome resistance to his novel ideas).

Pay Back the Election in 4 Days!

An odd thing has happened on the way to the White House. For the first time since they've tracked these things, the Democratic presidential candidates lead the Republican candidates by $100 million in fund raising.

It's fashionable in the blogosphere to show that we're not naive and to point to the stupidity of supposedly smart people, decrying the futility of politics and the emasculation of the average voter by special interest groups. But in this little tidbit I see something delightfully positive.

Each year, the American voter is out about $100 billion for a war they no longer want. Even if it costs $1 billion in campaign support to put up a candidate that ends this, the financial returns to the average voter will be higher than anything Wall Street could offer. Basically, the campaign money spent will be returned in the first week after a withdrawal!

With this in mind, the American people are showing themselves delightfully rational - finally learning from the lobbyists who have for years spent pennies to make dollars. If this doesn't make you smile, you're committed to scowling.

Experts Call Chief Justic Roberts Idiopathic

Chief Justice Roberts suffered what doctors are calling "a benign idiopathic seizure."

Expert Bernard Benoit said that such a condition follows from a series of idiopathic decisions. "An idiopath, like a sociopath, makes decision that follow from an oddly idealistic notion of the world rather than the facts," Benoit claimed. "The seizure is benign even though the decisions themselves can be rather malignant."

During his tenure as Chief Justice, Roberts has led the Supreme Court to rulings that have argued against student's having freedom of speech even when off school property and have decided that even substantiated instances of sexual discrimination in the work place don't hold unless the claimant sues before being aware of the discrimination.

"The seizure is called 'idiopathic,'" clarified Benoit, "because it is the brain's attempt to purge itself of a series of really idiotic decisions. Think of a wet dog shaking dry and you'll get some sense of the brain mechanism."

Bathtub Sloshing

There is a degree to which the most advanced have to advance in order to bring along the whole. If you've tried to push water in a bathtub, you'll see this. The water sloshes forward and, with no where to go, sloshes back to collide with the rest of the water moving forward behind it. If the advanced aren't able to move forward, their energies are diverted towards getting even more from those behind. Thwarted from movement forward, they return to compete. Progress needs a path.

This is just one of the reasons that we need to move beyond the information economy to an entrepreneurial economy.

Brazilian Soldiers

Bush was listening to his regular morning briefing from General Petraeus.
"Insurgents killed two Brazilian soldiers in the Anbar province yesterday," Patraeus calmly reported.
"Oh no!" exclaimed Bush.
"Sir?"
"Oh no," Bush groaned again, dropping his head into his hands.
His staff were confused and shaken by this display of grief from their normally stoic leader.
"Sir?" inquired Condoleezza. "Are you alright?"
"No I'm not alright," Bush said dejectedly. "This is just awful."
A long and awkward silence followed, finally broken by Bush's quiet voice.
"How many is a Brazilian?"

Pass Me Six Slices of Bacon, Kevin

My buddy Bernard is a nervous wreck. He's afraid he could be implicated in the obesity epidemic of the last two decades. His concern has been triggered by a new study arguing that obesity is contagious. It seems as though the notion of acceptable weight is heavily influenced by our friends and relatives who, in turn, influence their friends and relatives' notion of normal, an odd variation on the game of six slices of bacon, Kevin.

This from the San Jose Mercury News

The study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled. Researchers think it's more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together. Instead, it may be that having relatives and friends who become obese changes one's idea of what is an acceptable weight.

In 1988, for no particularly good reason, Bernard's weight spiked. He gained 43 pounds. Shortly after that, his brother gained weight. And his friend. Then his brother's friends. His friend's friends. Now, as he walks through the mall, Bernard can see that the ripple effect outwards has seemed to have hit everyone, like a slow-motion, silent video of a fat kid executing the perfect cannon ball at the public pool. Fearful that sociologists will soon trace this epidemic back to him, Bernard is seeking solace in comfort food. Pass the bacon, Kevin.

Nursing Home Cat Can Sense Death? Oh Sure

Nursing home cat can sense death?

CHICAGO (Reuters) - When Oscar the Cat visits residents of the Steere House
Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jumps
into action -- Oscar can sense within hours when someone is about to die.

In his two years living in Steere's end-stage dementia unit, Oscar has been
at the bedside of more than 25 residents shortly before they died, according to
Dr. David Dosa of Brown University in Providence.


The article goes on to speculate about how Oscar the Cat can sense imminent death and mentions that the cat visits lots of patients but when it curls up besides one, the nursing care staff spring into action because they know that they're about to lose someone.

Well, where I come from we have a label for people like Oscar the Cat. It's not clairvoyant. It's not hyper-sensitive. What we call people who just happen to continually show up beside people who promptly die? Murder suspects.

Brooks, Bush, and Blind Faith in God

A professor of astronomy mentioned to a hall full of students that the sun would likely die out in about 3 billion years.
“How long before the sun dies out,” asked a worried student.
“3 billion years,” repeated the professor.
“Oh,” said the relieved undergrad. “I thought you said 3 million years.”

David Brooks rather timidly defends Bush from his critics this week, talking about Bush’s confidence in his plan for Iraq and his continued excitement about his job as president.

Rather, his [Bush’s] self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources.
The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is
convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said
Friday: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an
Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will
tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t
exist.”
Second, Bush remains energized by the power of the presidency. Some
presidents complain about the limits of the office. But Bush, despite all the
setbacks, retains a capacious view of the job and its possibilities.

Even granting that Bush is right about the direction of progress – that all nations will become democratic – he has confused the inevitable with the immediate. If God wants citizens to have the freedom to vote, he hasn’t demonstrated much urgency about this goal. Assuming that man has been on the earth only 6,000 years, the first 5,800 were spent democracy-free (save for a few anomalous experiments along the way). Assuming that man has been here closer to 100,000 years, the lead time to achieving democracy has been even more alarmingly slow. Even now, a minority of countries are democratic: roughly 60-some of the more than 200 countries registered with the UN.

The question is not whether Iraqis are capable of achieving democracy. They are. The question is whether they’re capable of achieving democracy as they are currently organized (within one state and with their current constitution) and in something less than half a century. One of the few predictions one can safely make about Iraq is that the American people will not support the loss of 1,000 lives and $100 billion a year for 30 to 100 years. Even if the Iraqis are able to cut that time in half, drawing lessons from our own experience, this ignores a flaw in Bush's logic.

Bush and his supporters fail to admit that the Iraqis are hesitant to find in our experience relevant examples of adopting democracy. It is one thing for different kinds of protestants to see how to separate church and state; it is quite another for Muslims to accept a relationship between church and state first pioneered by Protestant Christians.

Bush’s remains a blind optimism rooted in faith and not fact. The philosopher Karl Popper argued that a proposition is not scientific if it does not have the capability of being proven false. To say that democracy is God’s will or is inevitable is not a scientific assertion, as there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. By remaining in the domain of flat assertion rather than testable proposition, Bush, strangely, evades accountability and this country, sadly, evades resolution.

What is even sadder is that bloggers (e.g., All Spin Zone) are left to make these obvious points instead of a columnist like Brooks. It is as though NBA professionals have become caught up in exhibitions of dribbling expertise at half court and have left the fans to do the work of taking lay ups to the hoops. It is not that Brooks cannot see this very argument - it is that he looks away. If he and other columnists were doctors, they would be liable for malpractice.

Post-Capitalist Capitalism, Crowdsourcing, & the Democratization of Media

From Wired

Gannett to Crowdsource News
Jeff Howe 11.03.06
12:00 PM

The publisher of "America's newspaper" is turning to America to get its news.

According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers," and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."

The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.

"This is a huge restructuring for us," said Michael Maness, the VP for strategic planning of news and one of the chief architects of the project. According to an e-mail sent Thursday to Gannett news staff by CEO Craig Dubow, the restructuring has been tested in 11 locations throughout the United States, but will be in place throughout all of Gannett's newspapers by May. "Implementing the (Information) Center quickly is essential. Our industry is changing in ways that create great opportunity for
Gannett."

The article makes crowdsourcing sound promising - a way to reverse the drop of 30% in readers since 1985. And it is not the only model folks are tinkering with. (An example of how the Napster model could be adapted to newspapers, for instance, is mentioned here at co-render.) To me, it sounds like one of two things: either exploitative or incomplete. It could, in fact, be both.

Resorting to crowdsourcing - turning to readers for content - is actually a great example of the need for a corporate revolution. If the readers are going to become the writers, it suggests that ownership of the newspaper ought to be democratized as well. It is one thing for publishers to make exorbitant profits when they invest millions in complex and expensive publishing machinery and professional staff. It is quite another when the expense is Internet cheap and the staff is comprised of an odd hybrid of professionals and amateurs.

We've yet to fully embrace the implications of post-capitalist ownership. Distributing the ownership of the newspaper along with the work of creating it is just one of those implications.

After the Locust

Spying squirrels and terrorist badgers have descended on the Middle East.

Iranian police have arrested 14 squirrels on charges of espionage.

And

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

I can only speculate that the beleaguered badgers, feeling unsafe in Iraq, had hired the squirrels to scout out a safer location.

[And I'm not sure what more surprises me. That I finally got to use the term "beleaguered badgers" or that both of these accounts come from actual news reports in the same week. The absurdities continue to pile up like so much snow in winter. ]

Love & Money

It seems to me that a person can make one of two mistakes regarding money and a career: choose a career simply because it pays well or choose a career in spite of the fact that it pays poorly. Perhaps a similar thing could be said about choosing romantic partners.

Standing on the Corner: Gangs, Tribes, Nation-States and Other Suspicious Groups

We complain about congestion, but it's a fact that we're drawn to other people.

This draw has sophistication to it. We don't just saunter up to our fellow man, plant ourselves and stare, like an attentive Irish Setter. We socialize.

If our world is small, we socialize in families. If it is a little larger, we socialize in tribes. (In urban areas, that shows up as gangs.) Even larger and more sophisticated groups are referred to as city-states or nation-states. We cluster. We organize. We mobilize. We find a purpose within an agreed upon context, using a particular set of rules and people. We belong.

All that to point to this tidbit from Report: Gang suppression doesn't work

Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more dangerous, according to a report being released Wednesday.
Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young men, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

The advocate for a new approach (Condi Rice's relative Connie Rice) claims the current policy makers are "stuck on stupid." The defenders of the current approach counter by claiming that the study authors are "thug-huggers" who don't appreciate the need to deal with these criminals as criminals.

Given our instinct for assembly, it might be better to focus on using gangs rather than breaking them up. At some point a community has to look at the data and conclude that gangs are a fact of life rather than something that can be eradicated.

I wonder what might happen if we harnessed the instinct for gangs into a better kind of organization. As a student of history, it strikes me that the gangs are not much different in composition and rules of engagement from small groups that eventually channeled their violence into social order in the form of settlements. What if gangs were looked at as a natural progression in social evolution rather than aberrations? What if they were looked at as groups that should be hastened through a violent stage of development to a more formal stage of order and productivity? What if gangs are not a cancer but a new organ that needs to fully develop in order for communities to gain coherence and for individuals to feel a sense of power?

As I’ve said before, it still amazes me that there is so little interest in social evolution and development, the ontogeny and phylogeny of social groups. How we can pretend to engage in nation-building, transforming gangs, or enter into transnational trading alliances without drawing from something akin to social development and evolution baffles me.

Positive Thinking

I once tried positive thinking but I knew it wouldn't work.

Confusion About Incentives & Management

You wouldn't think much of a doctor who dangled a $20 bill in front of a child with a fever and told him, "You can have this money if you'll just lower your temperature by 2 degrees." In fact, you'd know that you were dealing with a doctor who knew little about the body or medicine.

So what to make of the managers who dangle incentives in front of their people and then say, "You can have this money if you'll just increase profits by 10%." Or the school administrator who tells a principal or teacher, "You can have this money if you just increase average test scores by 10 points."

A management practitioner needs to understand system dynamics that ultimately define outcomes, just as a doctor needs to understand the physical processes that ultimately define states of health or disease.

Particularly in schools, this sensibility seems to be missing. The thought that vouchers, incentives, and ranking of schools will actually transform schools seems to me naïve, and resorting to incentives strikes me as an admission of defeat. If school administrators know what helps children to learn, they should institute this across all classrooms. If they don't know what to do, they should learn rather than admonish teachers.

If you need a clear example of how bankrupt is this approach, look at Iraq. Bush has basically been told by the American people to get things in order there. Unable to create order in Iraq, he's offered inducements to the generals. They, in turn, have ordered the Maliki government to create order. Maliki has, in turn, ordered those below him. And all the way down - from the American press and public to Bush to the Pentagon to Maliki - there is ignorance and inability. No one knows how to create order in Iraq and inducements are not going to make a difference. Not dips or rises in opinion polls, not additional troops or money (or fewer troops or money).

[The example of dangling money before a fevered child comes, if I remember correctly, from Alfie Kohn, whose delightful writing on competition and rewards will likely transform your opinion about such topics.]

Progress is Boring

Progress is boring. Emotional upheaval may be dramatic, but it interferes with the stability needed for people to focus on inventions, novel writing, or creating a business. In 1700, per capita GDP in the U.S. and Mexico were roughly the same ($490 and $450). By 1800, the U.S. per capita GDP was not quite double ($807 vs. $450), but by last year, the U.S. per capita GDP was about four times Mexico's ($43,500 vs. $10,600). Why did Mexico fall behind? It may have to do with political turmoil. Between 1824 and 1867, the U.S. had 13 presidential administrations; Mexico had 52, or 4 times as many. Could it be that 4 times as much political turmoil led to one-fourth the per capita income? It certainly sounds plausible to me.

This is something that families and companies can forget. Progress depends on fairly boring and stable conditions. A child learning how to play piano can't do it in a noisy, turbulent, emotionally draining environment. Or, better put, is less likely to learn it in such conditions. Companies that get caught up in reorganizations, a string of initiatives, and lots of reassignments have a difficult time simply going about the business of producing and creating new products and services.

And speaking of creating, boredom can be conducive to creativity as well. One might argue that most acts of creativity were attempts to create one's way out of a desperate situation - a situation that often included boredom. Unconstrained, a child won't stay bored long; she'll invent a game or begin to play or find something to do.

Progress is not exciting. It is engaging.

Vitter Cheers Wife’s Broken Political Promise

Apparently, the job of a politician is to make the future sound sure. Of course, the promises made to assure the constituency are bound to disappoint: the future has little regard for our expectations. We seem to have problems even predicting our own actions.

It turns out that for Senator Vitter (R. Louisiana), this is a good thing. He was not the only one to break campaign promises when a DC Madame revealed that Vitter bought "services" from her prostitutes.

Vitter ran as a social conservative, a family values man. His career in DC began when the representative for his district was revealed to have had numerous affairs. It wasn't just Vitter who was going to be different. When Vitter's wife was asked about how she'd handle a cheating husband, she made this comment:

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary [Clinton]. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

This week, Vitter's wife showed up at a press conference beside her husband. Neither he nor his wife mentioned whether he'd be serving as this nation's first eunuch.

Bjork and Social Deconstruction

Bjork is the most intriguing artist in pop music since John Lennon.

Art is important to the construction and deconstruction of social reality. The iconic art of medieval times gave way to the art of the human in the form of Michelangelo's David and DaVinci's Mona Lisa. This art helped to loosen the hold of form on the West, bringing the individual into focus. The classical music of the Enlightenment was pre-echo, if you will, of the symphony of factories and workers in the new world of capitalism - the importance of precision and coordination in art as prelude to commerce.

Bjork is one of those rare artists for whom the manipulation of notes is secondary to the manipulation of common clichés, symbols, and culture. She plays with the elements of pop culture. Anyone who thinks that pop culture can’t change society didn’t pay attention to the impact of the 60’s.

In this video, she deconstructs the odd symbiosis between media and culture, the muse and celebrity. It's a rare bit of genius in the midst of mindless videos. Enjoy.

In Praise of Dick Cheney

Oh. Wait. I've got nothing here. Sorry.

My sense of relief is, like, totally ginormous

Merriam-Webster is going to include ginormous (akin to gigantic and enormous or even bigger) in its new dictionary. Finally. I can express my true feelings without fear of violating the conventions of language.