At Last! A Nobel Prize Winner I Can Recommend

When I was 18, I read a novel about an 18 year old who fell in love with his aunt while working at a radio station with a wonderfully eccentric creative force, a writer of radio soap operas. For years after, it was on my list of favorite novels. (Until, I think, my daughter dismissed it as overly hormonal, or some such.) I thought it was brilliantly creative and this week, the Nobel Prize committee awarded its author, Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize for Literature. I feel somewhat vindicated.
To me, the novel had any number of good reasons to hold my attention. The 18 year was in love with a 32 year old (as it turns out, this was based on Vargas' own life experience). As it turns out, hormonally speaking, an 18 year old male and 32 year old female are probably pretty well matched. That relationship alone - amplifying all that is awkward in any love story with its added prohibition of defying social norms - was enough to justify a story. The love story seems hopeless which, of course, is the definition of a love story: the triumph of love over probability and good sense. Love is for risk takers.
But the real juice in the story came from the alternating chapters that were excerpts from the daily radio soap operas written by the tiny little genius who'd come to Peru from a foreign country. Not only are these chapters wonderfully absurd, imaginative, and engaging, they record how the breakdown of self coincides with the breakdown of narrative.
We tell stories to make sense of our own lives. We explain ourselves to people. We explain government or work or pop culture through stories. Scientists are calling into question the hypothesis that we have any real choice about how we live our lives, as the evidence mounts that choices are made before we are conscious of our inclinations. We may not control what we do but we can generate wonderfully good reasons for it. To lose control of the narrative of our own lives is to lose control over our own lives. Even a victim has, at least, his own story about injustice. Vargas delivers a lecture on the power of narrative in such an entertaining way that we don't even realize that it is a lecture (and I pause to use such a term because "lecture" seems such a crass description of what he does).
And then the story ends sadly when the narrative of love fails to cohere. But sadly, too, is perhaps the wrong word. (It might just be this repeated choice of the wrong word that signals one difference between novelist and blogger.) The end of love is poignant because this we hate to see the story end between our narrator and "Aunt Julia," but is nonetheless hopeful simply because we trust that once this love story is over, our narrator will be able to write another. Narrative is key and this young man has learned how to be a narrator. For such a  character, there is hope. He could one day be president or love again or even win a Nobel Prize.

Whatever Happened to Jobs?

Two months in a row, jobs have disappeared. There is no more important economic issue we face right now and the parties need to define why this is and what they will do to address the problem.

From 1980 to 2000, the American economy created almost 2 million jobs per year. For the first decade of this century, the economy has LOST about 200,000 jobs per year.

George W. Bush stimulated the economy enormously - jacking up spending and lowering taxes. In spite of that, during his administration, jobs were created at about 1/10th the rate as during Clinton's administration. And of course, the slow creation of jobs under Obama's policies has reversed, and on net, job losses each of the first two years has been about 2 million.

I have some theories about this but they are just that - theories. I do have some facts, though. The Republicans have shown themselves irrelevant to this problem by clamoring for deficit reduction - calling for budget cuts in a time of near-double digit unemployment. Whatever questions we have about how to create jobs, we can be pretty sure that this is a good way to destroy them. The Democrats, too, have shown themselves irrelevant to this problem. They ask for more time for their stimulus package to work (or, rather, put Americans to work) but are unable to explain why massive stimulus has had so little effect on the economy. And they holler about candidates who dabbled in witchcraft.

This problem of job formation would be problematic in the best of times. It is compounded by the fact that the media is all about defending or attacking the major parties rather than exploring a problem for which there appears to be no obvious solutions.

The Rate of Inflation of (perceived) Tax Rates

I had an epiphany the other day. People KNOW that taxes are too high but they don't know how high they are.

I think it would be fascinating to sponsor a study asking Americans two questions:

1. What do you think is the average tax rate for the US federal government? (What portion of the GDP is collected by the federal government as taxes?)
2. What do you think the average should be?

Simply judging from conversations with a few friends, they all are convinced that taxes are too high at their current rate of (estimates vary from 33% to 50%). They think that taxes should be closer to 18% to 30%.

Last year, federal tax receipts (for everything, including personal and corporate taxes) were about 14% of GDP. In recent decades, we've been at about 18%, give or take a couple of percentage points.

The right has infected public opinion in a variety of ways, but this matter of inflation in the perceived tax rate might be their greatest success. They've seemingly convinced the average person that taxes are about double what they are.

Oh, and one last thing. If we add in state and local taxes - everything from property taxes to sales and inheritance taxes, etc. - the average tax rate in the US is 27%.

Are taxes too high? Maybe. Looking around the Western world it seems me me that we're doing pretty well (Sweden is just under 50%; the OECD average is about 36%.) But if we're going to discuss tax rates it seems to me that the discussion should start with the facts, not some intentionally distorted perception of those facts.

Unsolicited Advice in a Miserable Job Market

There's a whole group of delightful recent graduates who are trying to start careers in this, the most miserable job market since they invented the personal computer. Here is some unsolicited advice that might help.

Most importantly, don't make your prolonged unemployment or underemployment mean anything about your own potential. If you get caught in a tsunami, your swimming skills have little or no influence over where you end up. This job market? It is a tsunami. Wonderfully able and capable people who would have been making six-figure salaries in the late 90s are serving lattes in today's economy. The people doing so well in the late 90s were not more able; the people struggling so much in today's economy are not less able. The difference lies in the economy. The good news? This economy will change.

Don't confuse cash flow, a job, and a career. In an ideal market, you'd solve all three of these problems at once, starting your career with the right job and getting the cash flow you need. In this market you might have to split those into two or three pieces.

You might have to get a job before you can start your career. Don't give up on your career if this happens. And if that happens don't let your job define how big you are. Define the job by who you are - not the other way around.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BIT OF ADVICE MAY SOUND LIKE IT'S COMING FROM AN OLD CODGER.
Follow your bliss, sure. But the only way this pursuit will pay is if it happens to coincide with the bliss of a customer or employer.

Markets are actually a beautiful thing. They force us to connect our lives to the lives of other people. It is not enough to figure out how to please yourself; you have to please other people. Masturbation can't compete with love making. Whatever bliss you can create in a vacuum does not compare with the bliss you can create with and through other people. Inquire about other people, what they like, what they need, what they wish for. Markets get created out of the intersection of what one person wants and what another can provide. If you can find a way to meet those needs, you'll find a form of bliss twice: once because you get the joy of making other people happy; a second time because in a market economy, you'll be paid for this act.

Even if you are looking for a job, think like an entrepreneur. How would you create value? How could you present this possibility to a customer or employer? Go do it. You literally have nothing to lose. The fact that businesses are creating so few jobs doesn't mean that there are so few opportunities for creating value. Look beyond the want ads.

Remember the Stockdale Paradox: always face the most brutal facts of your present situation while never losing faith in your future. If you are all brutal facts it is easy to feel brutalized and lose hope. If you are all optimism and light, it is easy to gloss over the present reality and what needs to be done.

Mind your diet: feed your hopes and starve your fears.

Be patient with yourself. Believe in your own potential and know that if it really is your potential, it will take a lifetime to realize. I know some of the young adults who are struggling in this market. They're delightful people who I think will make fabulous employees and entrepreneurs. If anything good comes out of this prolonged recession, it might simply be that for a generation so gifted and privileged there might have been no simpler way to remind them of the necessity of compassion and the inevitability of chance.

Just Wondering

I wonder

if any clergy anywhere observed "talk like a pirate" day yesterday during services.

if tea party candidates given full power would suddenly require people wait until their 70s before they could collect social security payments (and of course make that retroactive so that retired people UNDER 70 would have to find jobs in this robust economy) and would cut defense spending by 50%. Or if they would suddenly become Republicans at the point of receiving power and simply cut taxes again but do little to actually cut budgets.

if a compromise on "don't ask / don't tell" would involve just telling or just asking.

what college football players would make if they got a share of the revenue generated by their games.

how much of what he says that Newt Gingrich actually believes.

how it is that this country could show such a poor exercise of patience, giving dubya 6 unobstructed years to wreck the country but Obama only 2 years to repair it. (Yes. I know that Bush was in office for 8 years. But it was only the first 6 years in which he had absolutely no opposition in congress and was able to effect exactly the policies that the Republicans wanted.)

when a president will actually be humble enough to say, "I don't know but the thing that seems most reasonable is ..." rather than talk like they can not just predict but even control the future.

Just wondering.

Just the Way Things Are

Once a myth is seen to be a myth, it no longer is. That is, if you call a myth a myth it no longer functions as a myth, as a way to make sense of the world that people believe in. The people who believe something is a myth no longer believe in it.

I wonder if a philosophy is similar. Today, pragmatism is characterized by the fact that people don't think of this philosophy as a philosophy. To call yourself pragmatic is, of course, to say that you are not ideological or philosophical.

Once we see pragmatism as every bit as philosophical as the Enlightenment before it, we might begin to find it lessen its hold on our collective consciousness.

Waking Up From the American Dream

David Brooks has an interesting column in which he essentially gives a platform for David Platt.

Platt is a preacher who thinks that it is time for us to give up the American dream of living better. This reconsideration of the American dream is not unique to the religious world. People like Michael Polan, who argue for eating locally grown foods, are also suggesting that health and happiness might lie down a path of moderated consumption.

I am sympathetic to these notions. I've argued more than once that one of the characteristics of the new economy will be a shift from an emphasis on quantity of goods to quality of life. But I think that Platt probably gets something wrong.

Progress rarely means going back. The way out is forward.

In the early 1900s, consumer credit and the birth of mass consumption that made mass production profitable was challenged by the religous groups. They pointed to Paul's injunction to "owe no man" as evidence of God's disapproval of credit. For them, credit was a social evil and the thought that people might be free to buy goods simply because these made them happy was itself a little sinful.

But credit is an essential part of the modern economy and so is consumption. I do think that we'll consume fewer "things" in the future. Already we've shifted to spending an increasing amount of money on virtual products rather than real ones.

Discovering a Life

Tonight my teacher wife said something profound. A person can't learn their strengths without doing their best. It's a curious thought, that: we realize our potential to discover who we are. I like this thought.

A Few Clowns

A few clowns short of a circus”
~Anonymous

A "mistake" made repeatedly is probably better labeled a character flaw. One of my flaws? This notion, when I get to the hotel, that my interest in politics will translate into an interest in the political shows.

These shows (and to be fair, the candidates they are forced to cover) seem so inane. I think it's time they just give up the pretence of intelligent dialogue and go to death cage matches between candidates.

The root problem seems to be that no one can continue to stay in inquiry about what might work and openly experiment with policy. Instead, everyone has to declare what will work as if their theories were facts and then stay on the defensive. Pathetic. And so absolutely what we don't need in a time of great change.

Continuing the Denial of Climate Change

It is getting harder to deny climate change, so here is a quick guide for the growing number of converts to the "there's no such thing as climate change" camp."

1. Dismiss the data as insignificant. "Oh, it's a raise of less than 1 degree! That's noise. The planet's temperature is changing all the time."
2. Dismiss the rise in temperature as part of natural cycles. Don't admit that there is any merit to the notion of green house gases. Instead, talk about larger changes in climate that scientists have tracked through centuries.
3. Dismiss the notion that this rise will be bad. "Crop yields will raise in Canada and Norway. What is wrong with that?"
4. Dismiss claims that a changing climate triggers more floods, droughts, and storms. Rather than accept that the models all seem to predict this, just wave your hand and say, "How could anyone know that?"
5. Dismiss the notion that it is a bad thing to lose coastal cities. "Mankind has migrated before. This is part of the normal pattern of history."
6. Die. Eventually, if you deny long enough, your life will be over and any complications from climate change will be a problem for a new generation to deal with.

Take heart as reports like this come in.

Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.
The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says — although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming.

It was not until 1822 that the Catholic Church stopped banning literature that claimed we were orbiting the sun and even scientific peers took about a century to accept Copernicus's central premise. We've got at least another generation of denial before we have to let go of the old paradigm. Don't worry. You don't have to go through the painful steps of adjusting your worldview if you follow these simple steps.

August Tweets (or, the mind that never shuts up)

Too busy writing and working to write a blog post ... so, here's something to prove blog activity - a smattering of the tweets from August.

Good @ programming but bad @ marketing. His database for children's doctors was a flop. And he'd had such high hopes for pedo-file

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Band name idea: cognitive dissonance. And to make the point, it should be a string quartet.

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At some point, being advanced works against you. Good: he's 8 but reads at a 12 year old level. Bad: he's 60 but walks like he's 90.

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From what I can tell, the difference between hipsters and country folk is not what they wear but whether they wear it w/ a sense of irony.

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Idea for children's book from visit to Zoo: "the bear isn't there & there is no otter in that water: learning to cope w/ disappointment"

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Got the multivitamins. Now all I need is roughage and calories, right? I'm thinking sugar cane.

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Glen Beck's "Rally to Restore Honor." will be followed by the "NASCAR Rally to Restore Old Chevy's." Toby Keith will perform.

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So excited about prospect of being on next season's dancing w/ stars. I wonder, tho, if I'm the only candidate they've yet to contact at all

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Gulf spill reveals previously unknown oil-eating bacteria is now flourishing. Now to find the oil-pooping bacteria.

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People always tell me to "travel safe." I already stay out of the cockpit. I'm not sure what more they want me to do.

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Media distortion bumps ratings twice: once to hype the proapects of the tea party candidate and then again to hype McCain's "surprising" victory.

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Guys @ table in Japanese restaurant inexplicably rotated their table 90 degrees. Then I felt the instant change in the the feng shui.

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Man, shot in head, notices five years later: http://yhoo.it/doZ2ZI Well, to be fair, it was the BACK of his head.

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The ban of the mosque near ground zero doesn't go far enough: we should ban construction of all buildings by religions we know are wrong.

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Little known clause in Tiger's divorce settlement: he has to now go by his given name, Eldrick .

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Lou Piniella retired. I think he should stay on somewhere, pioneering the new role of designated call protestor.

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News from the future: WW3 started weeks after North Korea joined facebook and misinterpreted France's poke.

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Band name idea: "head butting the hornet's nest."

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It's always the middle of the story. Even history has a history.

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In Google, type "Find Chuck Norris" and then hit, "I am feeling lucky" button.

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Just after Byrne sold 19 million copies of her positive thinking book The Secret, the economy collapsed. I wonder what her new book will do.

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I'm nearly positive that the BBC was reporting on alms trafficking. That concept so intrigues me.

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Plato's cave allegory becomes the online allegory. "And they turned from their monitors and said, 'that can't be the real world!'"

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I think that soon the televangelist will become the twittavangelist. Just send money if you support this idea.

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RT @leawoodward: Will any of these be yours? ~ The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying http://bit.ly/bFqdpZ

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A growing % of Americans think that Obama is Muslim. Less reported is the sudden surge in % who suspect that Mitt Romney is Unitarian.

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I wonder if it is a sign of progress or decadence that 7-11 now serves sushi.

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Shopping at Costco is like a Vegas wedding. You wake up the next morning wondering about long-term commitments you’ve made.

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Children should be heard but not obscene.

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RT @nprscottsimon: "Toilet owned by JD Salinger being auctioned for $1 mil. " Wonder if this shows little or great respect for literature?

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Saw a guy with a "Chargers for Life" t-shirt. I wonder what he did to deserve that kind of sentence.

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In retrospect, they had made their plan to ensnare the population's attention no secret. They had, after all, called it the world wide web.

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Karate shares etymology with Karaoke. It means "to gesture loudly." Sadly, people misunderstood early practitioners and responded violently.

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Good idea: comic strip. Bad idea: comedians strip.

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Biz idea: phone plan that includes occasional texts from people like Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Pryor.

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After BP spills oil in2 the ocean, ice island 4X size of Manhattan breaks loose & is on path 2 destroy oil platforms. Probably coincidence.

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I wonder if Billy Idol referred to his dad as "Pop."

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Biz idea: Barnes & Noodles. Yaki soba and non-fiction. "You'll find our Italian noodle section just behind the self-help aisle."

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I think it is so cool that California has HOV lanes. Sadly, tho, I did not see any actual Hovercraft on the trip home.

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Wonder if some guy in Asia has a cryptic tattoo in English no one can read. Read, "Don't forget the milk." Everyone assumes it is profound.

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Venice Boardwalk - where the audience is the show.

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A week ago in Indy. Today in Venice Beach. They're different.

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Simple rule: if it costs 6 cents to make something worth one, stop making them. My deficit reduction plan? Stop making pennies.

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Girls that grew up w/ Barbie financed cosmetic surgery industry. Boys that grew up w/ Buck Rogers put billions into Star Wars defense.

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.... didn't know the difference between caring about other people and caring about what other people thought.

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Society is a consensus trance, like a person hypnotizing himself in the mirror and then walking away & forgetting that he’s under hypnosis

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biz idea: open a restaurant named "lunch." When people say, "let's go to lunch," it'd be the default. "When all you know is you want lunch."

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Like the 5th annual going out of business sale ... Favre announces that he's retiring.

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Denver International Airport is DIA. I wonder how they refer to their Expressway?

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A-Rod's quest for 600 home runs approaches 2 weeks. Just to put that in perspective, the rest of the planet's quest is approaching infinity.

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Ambush pedagogy: early release 4 inmates willing 2 do community service jumping from behind trees 2 frighten children w/ memorable facts.

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Oh, now that we see the potential, we'll take that from you

I am a little ticked off. I had a stock taken forcefully from me and I a offended that such a thing is legal.

I am convinced that great stock opportunities come along at best a few times a year. On occasion, you encounter a company that Wall Street doesn't really know about and that has not yet generated any numbers to prove its potential.

Oh, and I really like fish tacos. It's a San Diego thing but you know, there was a time when pizza was just an Italian thing. If something tastes good, it'll take off.

Rubio's is a local restaurant chain that helped to popularize the fish taco this side of the border and on top of that, they offer relatively healthy Mexican food.

For all these reasons, I bought stock in the company. McDonald's market cap is about $78 billion. When I bought Rubio's stock, their market cap was about $50 million. If Rubio's had 1% of the value of McDonald's, the stock would rise 10X. It seemed to me a reasonable bet.

About two days ago, my Yahoo portfolio says, "No such symbol RUBO." I didn't have time to look into it until today. As it turns out, a company has taken Rubio's private. The good news is that they paid me about 75% more than I had paid. The bad news is that this is nowhere close to the 10X I thought possible. And, I was not even given the option to say no to their offer of $8.70 a share. This was, from my perspective, a forced sale.

So, on top of all the other problems with stock market investing, whenever a really good opportunity does come along, someone can force it from you? Really? That just seems wrong. And I'm a little ticked off. I might just go somewhere different for Mexican food this weekend.

Time to Run & Scream! (or not)

The Hindenburg Omen IS Scary (read here)

I'm sorry. I should take this seriously. My portfolio is again lying on the tracks while a train may - or may not - be coming. But I have to confess that I find this kind of thing so many degrees of amusing.

"Charlie!! Look!! The Hindenburg Omen is flashing!!"
"Oh! No!" Pause. "What is that?"
"It's a predictor."
"Of what?"
"Well, as it turns out, 25% of the time that it flashes, we run and scream like little girls."
"We do?" Pause. "Why?"
"Because the Hindenburg Omen is flashing!"
"So it flashes to warn us what we are about to do?"
"Yes!"
"Why would we run and scream like little girls?"
"Because the Hindenburg Indicator is flashing!"

And so it goes. Market indicators tell players in the market that they are about to buy or sell and ... ta da! ... accurately predict this behavior every time everyone takes them seriously.

I feel inclined to run and scream just knowing that such convoluted "predictors" exist.

The Move Towards Infinite Inventory

Today we tried a new place for lunch - CBW. I ordered the fajita bowl and thought that my ordering was done. The following ensued:

Cashier: Do you want beef, chicken, or tofu?
Me: Chicken.
C: Breast meat, dark meat or crispy chicken?
M: Crispy.
C: For grain do you want white rice, brown rice, noodles or quinoa?
M: Quinoa.
C: Would you like chips or a tortilla with that?
M: Tortilla.
C: Flour, Wheat, Spinach, or Tomato tortilla?
M: [by this point dizzy with the options] Just the flour.

If I calculated correctly, I was heading down a decision tree with 288 options. (Assuming, I guess, that there were as many options down the tofu or beef and the chips trail.) Not only that, but this fajita bowl was one of probably 30 items on the menu. If they all offered as many possible combinations, it means that I could eat 8,640 different, unique meals at this one fast food place. That is, I could dine there for lunch more than 20 years and never have the exact same meal twice. And after I ordered, I could walk over to the "flavor" bar to choose between the six (or was it eight?) different sauces ... which meant that I actually would have more than a century's worth of unique lunches at this one place.

Economists are now talking about biflation. By this they mean that commodity prices appear to be rising (inflation) and prices of goods appear to be dropping (deflation). This little experience might explain why: with so many varieties, the competition for meals would bid prices down. With the need to stock so many options, this would bid the prices of commodities up. Maybe.

I just know that next time I'll simply ask the cashier if I can just have the #1.

Litany - as Recited by a 3 Year Old

Happy Friday



Or ...

Litany

BY BILLY COLLINS

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

Little Feat Obit

This week, Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward died. There is still, for my dime, no band that better realized the potential of a blues / rock / country / disco / jazz fusion band. "Fat Man in the Bathtub" gives you a window into how much was going on in just their rhythm section.

And the Cow Flew Over the Moon - Newton Counters Centrifugal Force

The leading Renaissance thinkers were willing to adapt their minds to the facts but weren’t sure how to fully explain them. Although it took decades for most scientists to accept Copernicus’s revolutionary claims, those scientists were not stupid. In addition to scripture and their own senses – it was obvious even to the casual observer that the sun rose and the earth was stationary – they had a fairly reasonable, scientific objection. Copernicus could accept facts as he observed them, but didn’t really have a cogent explanation of why the solar system worked as it did.

Imagine this conversation.

Copernicus’s debate opponent says, “So, Nicoli, let me grant you your silly premise for a moment. Let’s assume that we do, indeed, circle the sun. You claim that we’re spinning through space and traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Okay. What about centrifugal force? Spin a rock at the end of a string and see how many seconds it takes the ant on that rock to fly into space. Why doesn’t this happen to us? Why don’t cows slip out of the grip of milk maids and fly over the moon?”

“I don’t know,” says our hero Copernicus. “I just know what the data suggests. We are orbiting around the sun. I can’t explain it. I just know it is so.”

“So,” continues his opponent, “you have no explanation? You make no attempt to account for the simple fact of centrifugal force? You just want us to believe something that even you don’t understand?”

“Yes.”

Not much of a debate. On the one hand we have ants without opposable thumbs obviously unable to keep their grip on a rock in orbit, a phenomenon that would suggest that we should be observing panicked cows floating off into space if Copernicus was right. And on the other hand we have someone arguing that the data on the movement of planets fits better if we assume that it is the sun and the not the earth that is stationary, if we assume that we’re hurtling through space at about a thousand miles an hour. Preposterous.

It took an Enlightenment thinker – the Enlightenment thinker – to explain why. Isaac Newton solved two problems with one universal law. It is tempting to think – reasonable to suspect – that the explanation for our circling the sun would be different from the explanation of why it is not impossible to find our car in the morning, uncertain as to where it has spun off through centrifugal force. Newton sees a falling apple and realizes that it is pulled by the same force as the earth. Gravity is the universal force that explains why cows don’t fly and the earth does. Newton added laws – a theory – to observations and facts.

Newton gave the lovers of facts a set of laws that made sense of their facts.

Love is Ridiculous

This is an excerpt of a toast I gave yesterday. (Or, more accurately, what I thought I might have said.)

No one likes to admit this - particularly at weddings - but love is ridiculous. It is inconvenient. It is demanding. It makes you lose sleep and makes you think it is a privilege to do freely what no stranger could ever convince you to do for cash.

Love will end badly. That’s a given. And it does end. Even if you make it to the death do us part, one person has to … well, there is no graceful exit from love. You’d have to be a fool to say yes to love when it shows up at your door.

Actually, it doesn’t really show up at your door, like a package from UPS. It’s more like a baby crying in the middle of the night that you suddenly have to get up to tend. And one way it is like a crying baby is that you don’t respond because you think it’s convenient; you respond because not responding to love and all its consequent complications is to choose to be less human. You have to be foolish to answer love's cry but you have to be inhuman not to.

People have this belief that love makes you happier. They are not mistaken. It’s true, but it is only part of the story. Love doesn’t just make you more happy – it makes you more sad. It does make you more content but it also makes you more frustrated. Love is just like life only more so. Sure we choose love partly because it makes us happier. Mostly, though, we choose love because it makes us feel more alive.

Simply to be alive is to be inconvenienced. Think how much time we spend getting places, eating, sleeping, cleaning up … So, it sort of follows that if you are going to be more alive, you are going to be more inconvenienced. Love is ridiculous, demanding, inconvenient, unreasonable, and absurd. Which is to say, love is like life only more so.

It's also true that love is something that both happens to you and that you create. It is universal and also incredibly unique.

What is Stendhal’s line? "Heloise speaks to you of love and some ass speaks to you of his love, don’t you sense that these two things have nothing but the word in common?"

Two people can pretty quickly agree that they’re in love. It takes the rest of the relationship to define just what they both meant by that.

I think that when people fall in love, what they fall into is universal – the obsession, the delight, the stalking. But from there, what each couple creates is unique. And I think it mostly comes out of a dialogue. “Sure, you said that we were in love. But what did you mean by that,” is something we continually find ourselves asking when our mate does or says something unexpected. And it’s not a bad thing that we’re surprised. It just means that forgetting to engage in dialogue does to love what forgetting to water does to plants. Keep talking.

Curious

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
-Walt Whitman

Resolution stops the creative process so it is probably a good thing that we are forced to play referee over the contradictions that we are.

We're a curious amalgam of bowels and brains, soul and scrotum, a spiritual being continually reminded that we're really just animals and vice versa. (Hm. It just occurs to me that the vice might actually be vice and the versa might be scripture. More creative tension.)

Humor seems the only resolution to living our life managing the war between such odd and contradictory roommates as we house within us.

The Use of Bad Language & Nation-Building

"Wisdom begins with a definition of terms."
- Socrates

Joe Biden got a lot of flack awhile ago for using some coarse language that was picked up by the mic. In one way, however, he avoids the bad language that seems to pervade our media and politics.

Our single biggest policy mistake in the last decade has seemed to stem from a confusion of nation-building (which we always say we're doing) and state-building (which is what we're attempting in Iraq and Afghanistan).

We had some success helping to re-build states within nations after WWII (in Germany and Japan) and let that give us confidence that we could build nations within states after 9-11. Biden seems to me the person most clear that those two are distinctly different missions with timelines that differ by orders of magnitude.

Article here.

Well This is Just Random

I might have the start of a new rap song: Al Gore got rhythm like an algorithm. The chorus would just have to have a line like, "The man's so hot that the planet's heating up," and "Put your hands in the air / there's carbon up there!" Obviously, the robot dance will be featured prominently. If you know a good Al Gore look alike (or Al Gore) and a person with a drum machine and a person who can play bass and a person who can rap and a person who can write lyrics and music ... well, I would appreciate you pointing them in my direction.

Channel surfing here in hotel, it becomes obvious that there is, at best, only a loose correlation between the a show's ability to get your attention and then do anything with it.

Curiously, entertaining TV can be educational and vice versa. CNN show with Anderson Cooper featured a debate with some guy who was arguing that a constitutional amendment was "unconstitutional." I'm sorry but that just seems to prove the point that you can be so dumb that you you've gone full cycle and are actually brilliant.

So today the market jumps. Last week it skipped. Before that it fell. My retirement is being entrusted to an entity that seems about serious as a 1st grader on the playground. I can imagine the conversation when I'm in my 60s.
Me: Where's my retirement money?
The market, fidgeting and playing with its gum: I don't know.
Me, incredulous: You don't know?
The market, looking over its shoulder, obviously distracted: No.
Me: Weren't you supposed to be watching it?
The market, now running off to play, hollering over its shoulder: I don't know.

Women Priest Wandering Around Right Here in San Diego

Few people know that the Bible is full of transcription errors. Christians don't believe it and non-Christians don't care, but through the centuries in which completing a copy of the Bible meant a monk's career was finally over, errors did get perpetuated.

Scholars can compare the earliest known copies of various books in the Bible to determine what changed. One curious thing that they've found is that Paul's very clear instruction for a woman to remain quiet in church (presumably the real basis for opposition to female priests) was inserted sometime in the 4th or 5th century. Earlier versions do not have this. The Church decided to silence women but they can't blame it - directly - on Paul.

Last month, the Catholic Church listed the ordination of females along with pedophilia as "grave crimes," revealing one possible reason that they've had such trouble cooperating with local police in past matters of priestly "misconduct." One would have to think that this would make pedophiles feel pretty good about themselves.

Yesterday, here in San Diego county, local Catholics ordained a female priest. Read about it here. And, excerpt:

Congregation ordains Catholic female pastor

Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community ordained a female pastor Saturday, risking excommunication despite assertions that it represents the true roots of Roman Catholicism.

Nancy Corran was ordained by roughly 150 parishioners rather than a bishop. The ceremony at a rented church in Serra Mesa hearkened back to ancient communities that called forth and ordained women, some religious scholars said.

Associate Pastor the Rev. Rod Stephens opened the evening with a warning: Any woman attempting to be ordained, or anyone who ordains a woman is automatically excommunicated. “Right on!” one woman cried out.

The ordination of Corran, 37, dramatically revealed the state of moral disorder in the Vatican, Pastor Rev. Jane Via said.

“Tonight, we claim the priesthood of believers for all the baptized,” said Via, the county’s first female priest. “We claim the ability and authority to govern ourselves on behalf of the whole church.”

No matter how badly your week has gone, you can take consolation in this: you were born onto a fascinating planet.

Why the US Hasn't Caught Soccer Fever

The recent World Cup revealed a number of reasons that soccer is unlikely to ever catch on in the US.

Perhaps the most obvious reason soccer will have trouble winning the hearts of American sports fans is that it is a constant challenge to how Americans make sense of the world. We know that we are the reason that we are the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Just as the Germans, British, Dutch, Spanish, and Italians before us, we misconstrue our fortune of having been born into such privilege with the fact of our actually being special. American exceptionalism means, of course, that we Americans are exceptional. Regularly unable to beat teams from countries 1% our size, we are reminded that this simply is not so. Fans simply want to cheer. They don't want cognitive dissonance with their color commentary.

Another thing about the game that offends any reasonable American is its inefficiency. You can't use your hands? What are you supposed to do with that half of your body? Given their hands are free, you might expect that the players would at least be texting.

Any self-respecting American is clear that a person needs a goal. Without goals, one's life just meanders from place to place ... like the ball on a soccer field. Everyone should have a goal but apparently no one has told soccer fans. They seem perfectly content to watch 90 minutes of a game that is played, uninterrupted by a single goal.

Finally, one has only to watch a single game to realize why so many of the countries that love soccer are poor. This game never pauses. There is no opportunity for ads that remind fans that after the game they could go shopping. Compare that with any American sport. Even if there is not a single change in pitchers, baseball is good for at least 18 commercial interruptions. The last "five" minutes of football can take 50. Consumers drive the American economy and if we were to become soccer fans, our economy would likely collapse to the level of Argentina's or Cameroon's. It seems to me that the single simplest stimulus to economic growth that these soccer-crazed countries could undertake would be to change the rules so that commercial breaks are taken every 4 to 5 minutes rather than every 45 minutes. Until that happens, we Americans don't just have a right but actually have an obligation to show tepid interest in soccer.

Europe's Great Un-Learning

There are only two states of mind that precede learning, and neither is particularly pleasant. Before you learn something, you are either ignorant or confused; or, put differently, before you get answers you have to question what you know. There were two huge events in the first two centuries of the first economy that created mass confusion and revealed great ignorance, two events that made Europeans question what they knew and opened them up to the Renaissance.

The Black Death, which began in 1348, and the discovery of America created tragedy, hope and cognitive dissonance. Try for a moment to imagine the incessant, near apocalyptic coverage today’s media would give to the discovery of a “new world” populated with people with many of the same social structures as us and yet very different rituals and behaviors, much less a pandemic that killed nearly a third of the population. Imagine what absurd speculation we’d hear on talk shows, the banter between “experts” whose expertise in no way prepared them for this, and the callers who began to question everything. These two events were like gales of destructive creation, destroying so much of what Europeans believed and opening them up to the new.

Saul Alinsky writes that someone pushing for social change will rarely have a majority on his side. Change is too uncertain and people are busy with their own lives. The best one can do is to get the majority feeling like the status quo is so bad that they won’t work to defend it. When that happens, you can make changes. In a sense, the Black Death did at least that, probably not just making Europeans feel ambivalent about the status quo but actually making them ready to actively change it.

The Importance of Pepper

To find a good reason why the waiter might think it would impress your date to offer her freshly ground pepper from what appears to be a small table leg, you’d have to go back centuries to Medieval Europe. (Of course, Freud might have as much to say about what this conveys as any historian. Lasting rituals rarely make sense at only one level.) In medieval times, pepper and other spices were status symbols, highly coveted, exotic, and expensive. So much so that its special place in our diet has carried over into today’s fine restaurants.

Spices were ideal for trade. They didn’t spoil and were light in weight. Essentially, foreign trade meant spice trade and the foreign lands from which the spices came were so remote as to be shrouded in mystery. By at least one estimate the average European never traveled more than 5 miles from home during his entire life (although given the lack of pedometers this would have to be considered a very rough estimate) and places as remote as Asia were idealized. To medieval Europeans, America was unknown but Atlantis was real, as was Paradise. And yes, by Paradise they meant the Garden of Eden. Spices were so aromatic, so rare, and so special that they were thought to come from there. (It seems reasonable to assume that trader who were happy to enhance demand for their product would make little effort to clarify that pepper actually came from India and the Maluku Islands in Indonesia.) Medieval Europeans believed that “pepper … grew on a plain near Paradise [and that] ginger and cinnamon” had been carried by the Nile straight from Paradise.

European food had yet to be infused with so many of the exotics to come from later stages of world trade, and spices were coveted for the simple fact that they enhanced the taste of food. Given the trade route was so long, spice prices were high and the products were essentially reserved for the elites. “In fact, pepper frequently took the place of gold as a means of payment.” And as with any highly priced item, spices conveyed status, a literal display of good taste.

But in the 1400s, the long trade routes were getting hit with tariffs by new rulers, and growing wealth among Europeans meant increased demand. As a result, spice prices went up 30x. If a person could find better trade routes to India, a way to avoid the tariffs levied in the Middle East, he would be rich. A taste for spices drove explorers to find a new continent. Columbus, who ventured out into unknown seas in search of it, would have known that America was truly a land of great wealth if he knew that it was a place where waiters came to your table and offered you as much fresh ground pepper as you wanted.

-------
Mostly drawn from Wolfgang Schivelbusch, translated from German by David Jacobson, Tastes of Paradise: A social history of stimulants, and intoxicants [Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1993]

When the American Discovered Europe

Europeans discovered America but Americans also discovered Europe, a rarely mentioned story.

Pocahontas’s father sent one of his tribe back to England with the Pilgrims and gave him a stick, telling him to put a notch in the stick each time he saw a new Englishmen. The chief wanted to know what he was dealing with.

When the poor Indian pulled into the harbor he was flabbergasted by the crowds of people around the docks. He took one look at the crowds, looked down at his stick, looked back at the crowds and then simply threw his stick into the water.

2010: The Year of the Slacker?

Tomorrow's world cup final pits Spain against the Netherlands. Institutionalized siestas vs. legalized marijuana, which should make 2010 the year of the slacker. Maybe the lesson for the rest of us is that if we want to succeed it wouldn't hurt to relax a little.

Now that I've written this long post, I think I'll go take a nap.

NBA News! (Just like ESPN)

I get so many requests for more sports coverage here at R World. I try to be responsive to my reader, so here goes.

Business idea: little green hat labeled, "NBA Salary Cap." The optional t-shirt could read, "Doing my bit to support the home team: I kept my salary under $20 million this year."

I'm shopping a book on this topic now, but few people realize how close Obama came to making a package deal of the Russian - American spy for spy swap and simply trading LeBron James and Chris Bosh to Brazil for soccer players Kaka and Fabiano to raise our world standing.

LeBron James will get about $240,000 per game (or more than $8,000 per point at the rate he scores.) If he played just one game per year, his income would put him in the top 2% of Americans.

It's a pity that James did not sign with the Houston Rockets. He missed a major marketing opportunity there. It's hard to believe that anyone could have a cooler nickname than VonBron James.

Shaq is still active? I find this sort of amazing and mostly heartening. He must be in his 50s by now and the thought of him still playing at that age inspires me. It's amazing that a guy over 300 pounds who runs and jumps could have a career last longer than 98% of the rappers from his era.

I just love the fact that a guy whose nickname is King James took one hour to announce that he was playing for the Heat. He must use really old English to take that long to express something so simple. I could understand it taking an hour to tell his grandmother, for instance, but not to tell basketball fans.
"Grandma, I'm going to play for the Heat."
"What?"
"I've decided to play for the Heat."
"You've decided to play in the heat?"
"The team. The team is the heat."
"Why is it that every generation thinks they gotta make up new slang? Your grandpa would say, 'The team is so cool.' You say 'heat.' Well at least you are not as crude as your daddy and his friends. They'd have said, 'the team is the s**t.' There is no excuse for that."
"No. Grandma. I'm going to play for the Miami Heat."
"When you get to be my age, son, the Miami heat is reason enough NOT to play. A boy from Cleveland, like you, is likely to melt down there."
And on goes the conversation ...

Demetri Martin: “I used to like to watch sports a lot, but not as much anymore, ‘cause I’m always disappointed. I’d always rather see the actual animals fighting than the teams with those names. Colts vs Bears — yeah! Wizards vs Heat — freaking awesome! Magic vs Jazz — that’s a little too gay for me, I’m gonna pass on that one.”

Stay tuned for when LeBron takes on Harry Potter. Maybe Demetri Martin will do the color commentary.

The Slow Spread of Democracy (say, aren’t those peasants armed with voter pamphlets?)

The American Revolution didn't just happen once. In fact, it is still happening.

In 1689, England's Glorious Revolution shifted authority from crown to constitution. British Parliament essentially hired monarchs (William & Mary) and told them that they could have subjects but would - like everyone else - be themselves subject to the constitution.

About a hundred years later the Americans decided that if they had a constitution they wouldn't even need a monarch. It's worth remembering that George Washington was the first president in the history of the world. But of course it never occurred to the founding fathers, who thought that all men were created equal, that anyone other than white, property-owning, Protestant males should be able to vote.

The Revolution of 1776 was a beautiful thing but it didn't really change the the rights of most Americans. It took 34 more years before people (well, property-owning white males) of any religion could vote. It took 74 years before even white males who didn't own property could vote. 144 years before women could vote and 148 years before Native Americans were considered real Americans and also able to vote. 189 years later, minorities' voting rights were ensured. And it took nearly 200 years before the 18 year olds considered old enough to die for their country were considered old enough to vote for their leaders. (And it is probably no coincidence that since then we've not had a draft.)

The real limit to change is always the collective imagination. For all of their vision, it is not the least obvious that our founding fathers could conceive of an 18 year old black female casting the vote that might elect the next president.

Social progress is often a bet on the person who has yet to prove himself. By definition it almost has to be. Before 1920, women could not prove that their vote mattered for the simple reason that it did not.

A couple of centuries later, democracy is still spreading. Right here within our borders. Now that's a revolution.

A little Bukowski for Your Morning

about the PEN conference

take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning.

- Charles Bukowski

Afghanistan Confusion

Petraeus has been confirmed as the war commander for the mission in Afghanistan. Poor guy.

From the outset we've confused war, occupation, and development. The real question is whether we want to stay there for decades until the country develops to a point of government stability beyond that of, say, Mexico. The war is over. The development has barely begun, and won't be by next August.

Everyone thinks that Obama was mad at McChrystal. If I were Petraeus, I would think that he was mad at me. What an appointment.

Contemplating a New Worldview? Excerpt from Mindwalk

Sadly, the movie Mindwalk, based on Fritjof Capra's writing, is not yet available on DVD. Here are some excerpts that you could watch if you're interested in a world view that might be more effective for our times than the Cartesian model from centuries ago.

How Smart Phones Got So Smart

I think that I'm just going to wait another decade for the Dick Tracy watch.

Committing to Possibility

“What is possible is not independent of what we believe to be possible. “
- Neil MacCormick

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
-- Soren Kierkegaard

“The nature of a breakthrough is for you to stand on what you’ve gotten, what you’ve loved, what’s been important to you, what’s touched you, what’s inspired you, what’s turned your life on; to stand on that value you’ve already created for yourself and look out at the possibility for being alive that opens up, like a freedom, in front of you.”
- Werner Erhard

"It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for everyone of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or success – I think both of them are terrifying – people find diversions.”
- Tim Allen

McChrystal leaves White House after meeting

I guess that's news. You know, that McChrystal left the White House after his meeting.

But still, I can't help but think it'd be more newsworthy if it read,

McChrystal moves into White House after meeting

That seems like a story offering more legitimate cause for speculation.

Investment Strategies of Party Loyalists

Here is a curious little chart I created to compare stock market performance by party between the time that Teddy Roosevelt took office and yesterday's close.

Imagine that you have two rabidly political families whose allegiance to their party is so strong that each time one of their own take the presidency, they put all their money into the market (as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average). And each time a president from the opposing party takes office, they sell their stocks and put their money under a mattress.

The simple question this answers is, Who would fare better? As you can see in the chart below, the Democratic faithful would have done much better in the last 110 years. Much better. While the Republican family would have grown their $100,000 to $509,720, the Democratic family would have grown their $100,000 to $2,796,037, about 5.5X more. (click on the chart below to make it bigger)



Of course you could say that the market does what the market does and the parties - much less the president - have little to do with it. Or you could point out that the best policy would be to invest during administrations of presidents whose last name start with a "C" (Coolidge and Clinton) or "R" (Reagan and Roosevelt), regardless of party.

You decide what to make of it. Today I'll just offer the numbers. Discuss it among yourselves.

Reality is Diverse

to be nobody but yourself -
in a world which is doing its best,
night and day,
to make you everybody else -
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight .
never stop fighting.


e.e. cummings


It is really just in the last generation that we've become aware of how diverse was the world of Christianity in the 3 to 4 centuries after Christ's death. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Library, among other finds, have revealed various gospels and epistles that never made it into what we know as the Bible. Most of these were obviously not written by any of Christ's original disciples or by Paul and for this reason alone were omitted from inclusion in the approved canon. (But it is worth noting that most serious scholars today think that other forgeries did make it in. For instance, 2 Timothy seems to have been written in the second century after Christ and most certainly not by Paul.)

In the fourth century, the canon was defined and various and competing ideas about Christ were consolidated into a (mostly and sort of) uniform view in the form of the Bible. Soon, the church that owned this "true" view even used torture and death to enforce this pure view. Most people look at the Inquisition as evil but I think that the evil originated when the church decided that God could not tolerate diversity of thought and sought to make uniform the theology and teachings that professed to represent his views. Surely God loves uniformity. This might seem reasonable. It does not seem to be backed up by evidence.

This notion that God's will obviously tends towards the uniform does, I think, miss an important suggestion from nature. (I say suggestion because it may or may not be a "lesson.") Nature suggests that the creator loves diversity. There are about 1.75 million species on the planet. Some have bones and some do not. Some breath under water and some drown in water. Some walk around and some are rooted. Some are really cute and some are hideous. Some are peaceful and some are dangerous. Some are huge and some are too small to see. It's not obvious that you can draw many conclusions from nature other than the fact that nature loves diversity. The life form that works depends on so many things that one would be at a loss to predict them all in advance. Diversity, it seems to me, is the lesson of nature.

As communities become more developed and free, a similar thing seems to happen with the human population. That is, diversity seems to spring up. We have goths and hippies, the driven and the laid back, the flirtatious and the prudes, the athletic and the slothful, the intellectuals and the disinterested. The list goes on. It may well be that we have something akin to 1.75 million species of humans.

Ultimately, the Church was forced to use force to try to squelch this great diversity of people. To this day, Protestant churches reject Catholicism but tend to accept the central claim that diversity is wrong (although the diversity of ways that they reject the notion of allowing diversity does, itself, create a fair bit of diversity, from Mormons to Baptists to Presbyterians to Anglicans to Jehovah's Witnesses, to ...). It could be that they are right. It could be. But then how to explain the motives of the creative force behind the massive diversity of nature? And how to explain how attempts to make human life all one way led to one of the Darkest and most violent periods of history when the Church largely ruled the West between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of the modern, secular nation-state?

The more I look across time and communities, the more convinced I am that one of the simplest measures of advancement is how many kinds of people can make their place in the world. It seems to me that diversity is not just a wonderful thing in nature - it works in communities too. And that suggests to me that the Church's attempt to go against this trend meant it was destined to become evil. Next time someone says that they know what is best, ask for who. Some things that make people feel alive really are universal: oxygen, for instance. Other things that make people feel alive really are true for just a minority of folks: live jazz, for instance. Reality is diverse. Any explanation of it ought to accommodate rather than deny this, it seems to me.

Caption Contest (Because it's Friday)

Alternative captions:
What Santa's elves do on their summer vacation.
Godzilla was seen making the exact same moves just before he attacked Tokyo.
The buzz in the playroom was that his were the world's most dangerous diapers. The buzz, of course, coming from those whose mouths weren't full of chewy toys.

Progress

Regular readers know that I'm stupidly optimistic about the future but still have bouts of frustration when it appears that so few voters and policy makers get how much is at stake (for good or bad). I had to smile to see this report about the two Bills (Gates and Clinton) who do seem to realize how much difference a person can make.

This from Gates' post:

It’s pretty amazing to realize that 50 years ago, more than 20 million children died before their fifth birthday. Last year, it was fewer than 9 million. I think this is one of the greatest accomplishments of the last hundred years.

But 9 million children dying unnecessarily each year is still 9 million too many. That’s why we need to continue our efforts.

To read the whole post ...

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Thinking/article.aspx?ID=121

The Unfortunate Eye-Glazing Tendency of Economic Development

Economic development sounds like such a dry and abstract topic. That’s unfortunate. Economic development can mean the difference between a mother crying as her child goes off to college or crying as her child dies in her arms. Poverty brings with it so much grief and prosperity so much possibility. The potential for a human life is vastly different at higher and lower stages of economic development.

As I would define it, no topic has such a pervasive influence on the lives of people. Economic development is not just a matter of getting more goods but of giving people more options. At its most dramatic, economic development gives people the option to eat rather than starve. At its more nuanced, in developed countries, it gives people options about how to define their own lives. In the poorest countries, it can mean life. In the richer countries, it can give meaning to life.

Sell Your Gold Now

Gold is a lousy investment. Oh, I know it has gone up lots of late - outperforming real estate and stocks by a wide margin. But it is a lousy investment just in the sense that it does nothing for productivity or the economy. It is the natural resources equivalent of putting your money under your mattress. And my belief is that, in the long-run, for something to be a good investment in terms of returns, it has to be a good investment in terms of generating wealth. Gold at best stores wealth; it doesn't create it.

If you invest in real estate development or stocks, you actually put money into a general fund that can be used to create new jobs, new homes, and new products. By contrast, when you put your money into gold you divert money into a nothing more than speculation. (Unless you're betting on gold fillings make a big comeback.)

My guess? Gold will go the way that real estate did over the last few years: the "sure" investment that proves itself as susceptible to bubbles and busts as any.

Gold prices have recently dropped, but they're still high. I say sell now and put your money into something that actually creates something of value. Long-term, that is the only sensible play. For you or the economy that you ultimately depend on for prosperity.

The End of Men?

Excerpts from the Atlantic, The End of Men by Hanna Rosin ..

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same.

Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two (janitors and computer engineers) are occupied primarily by women.

Women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast.

Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s. Most important, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—the minimum requirement, in most cases, for an affluent life. In a stark reversal since the 1970s, men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma.

In 1970, women contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers—many of them single mothers—are the primary breadwinners in their families.


In 1970, 84 percent of women ages 30 to 44 were married; now 60 percent are.

A 2008 study attempted to quantify the effect of this more-feminine management style. Researchers at Columbia Business School and the University of Maryland analyzed data on the top 1,500 U.S. companies from 1992 to 2006 to determine the relationship between firm performance and female participation in senior management. Firms that had women in top positions performed better, and this was especially true if the firm pursued what the researchers called an “innovation intensive strategy,” in which, they argued, “creativity and collaboration may be especially important”—an apt description of the future economy.

Jeremy Rifkin - the Empathic Civilization

Vampire PR

If I ever hire a PR firm, I want to hire whoever has been in charge of improving vampires' public image in recent decades.

Beyond Freedom and Control: Autonomy Supportive Politics

The child who grows up without the laws, education, or health care is not free: he's been abandoned. There is a difference.

I demonstrated my stupidity again this weekend trying to look smart. (Which might, upon reflection, be the most effective route to looking stupid.) I tried to argue for universal health care with a man who, I’m pretty sure, has been a Republican since he was 12. We agreed that catastrophic health care would be a better option. I think it would be best to simply tell every American that they will not go bankrupt because of bad health and ensure that their personal expenses don’t exceed, say, $5,000. (And yes, this would have to be adjusted for people who are even more poor, but not as much as one might think. But I digress.) We disagreed about whether there ought to be universal health care regardless of the plan.

For me it is simple. If a 19 year old living on his own, working a job without benefits, should get cancer he should not have to die for lack of money. The market is a marvelous mechanism for distributing cars, designer jeans, and glazed donuts. It should have no say in whether someone lives or dies. (And if you agree with this, you do believe in universal health care. You may simply disagree on the extent of it and details.)

And reflecting on this, I realized that one of the most influential books I’ve read turns out to define my politics as well as my ideals for managing, teaching, or parenting.

Edward Deci wrote Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. In it, he offers three models of parenting or managing. The first is controlling, where the locus of control is with the parent or manager and where the child or employee is expected just to follow the lead. This is actually pretty effective at certain stages of development. The other model is abandonment, where the parent or manager essentially doesn’t care, leaving the child or employee to work things through on her own. Some call it freedom. Again, this could be effective at times. But Deci argues that the real purpose of any kind of leadership is to work towards autonomy for the individual. He advocates autonomy-supportive behavior that is intent on creating the ability for self-directed behavior. This is enabling and like the abandonment model shifts the locus of control to the individual and like the controlling model offers help.

For me, this seems like a wonderful model for government. Things like public education, health care, and police protection enable individuals to live their own lives. A good government does not control or abandon its citizens: it enables.

Conceptually this is such a simple thing that I would imagine everyone would agree with it and perhaps all political disagreement traces back to differences in opinion in trade offs. (For instance, conservatives who oppose Obama’s health care hate being told that they have to buy some health insurance plan. They find it controlling. I guess the same could be said of seat belts or motorcycle helmets. For some, the law is controlling because it makes so many people do what they wouldn’t. For others, it is enabling because it leaves so many more brains in skulls, giving individuals the possibility of autonomy.)

But for me, realizing the applicability of Deci's model to politics was an epiphany of sorts (what Hyrum Smith of Franklin-Covey would call a “blinding flash of the obvious”), helping to define so many of the policies that are important to me, from generously funding basic research to education to making it easier for people to start businesses.

Let's Make the Ten Commandments Law

I think it is time to take the advice of Sarah Palin and so many others and make the 10 commandments the law of our land. For those of you who may not recall just what those commandments are, let’s go through them (The New International Version is, by most accounts, the most accurate translation), using Exodus 20: 3-17.

1. "You shall have no other gods before me.”
Some argue that this is evidence that the Jews were not so much monotheists as a people who believed in many gods (sort of polytheists) but only worshipped one. Such arguments begin to muddle things, it seems to me, and I’ll just go with the more literal interpretation: the first commandment suggests that we must accept the God of Moses. Simply put, we need to become Jewish. This will be a change for the nearly 98% of Americans who are not, but if we’re serious about inviting God’s blessing I don’t think that this is too much to ask.

2. “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
So, no images of lions, cougars, and marlins that we might idolize. Hmm. So, no sports team mascots as near as I can tell. To me, this can only mean that we stop idolizing sports teams and their stars, so starting with high school teams we’ll do away with competitive sports. Again, this should not be too much to ask when we think of what is at stake. (And really, I'm open to other suggestions but I will simply say that if we start dismissing commandments starting at the second one, we run the risk of ending up where we are now.)

3. "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”
This might mean no cussing that involves taking the Lord’s name in vain (which always seemed distasteful to me anyways). It might also mean that one not mis-use the name of God in political matters, using the approval you imagine he has given you to win votes.

4. "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
So, simple enough. Sort of. No businesses will be open on a Saturday. I’m not sure how we’ll handle businesses like rest homes, hospitals, and emergency services but I’m sure we can make exceptions. It’ll just be the shopping malls, grocery stores, TV stations, radio stations, Internet sites, gas stations, hotels, and, of course, sports complexes that will close down from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown.

5. "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
This seems simple enough (although it may be more involved than merely sending a card on Mother’s Day).

6. "You shall not murder.”
Well, this will save on military expenses, end the debate on abortion AND capital punishment, and add to longevity as we all become vegetarians.

7. "You shall not commit adultery.”
Given that half of marriages end in divorce and about half of married people have committed adultery, this one is going to require an adjustment. For starters, we simply outlaw divorce. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to require all divorced or separated people to get back with their first spouse. Or become celibate. Again, I’ll leave the details of this re-partnering program to the politicians.

8. "You shall not steal.”
Presumably this would not apply retroactively. It would be a shame to have to give this beautiful country back to the Indians.

9. "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
This has always seemed like a great idea to me. Seriously. But if we’re going to treat it as law of the land rather than a simple injunction for believers, perhaps we should make use of the affordable technology that would allow us to monitor anyone at all times. (This could also come in handy for determining things like adherence to the 5th or 7th commandments.) This way, anyone falsely accused could produce video proof that the neighbor is lying. Trials would involve footage showing what the neighbor did or said. No more, “he said,” “she said.”

10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
I’ll leave this to theologians to explain in more detail but I’m pretty sure that among other things, this means no advertising. Properly done, only seduction is more effective for making people covet. I realize that this would hurt a major industry and leave TV, radio, and the Internet without a source of revenue and likely depress GDP as well, but again … this should not be too much to ask of a country sincere about winning God’s approval.

Shalom. And call your mother.

Those Crazy Catholics

Am I the only who suspects that the Roman Catholic Church would - in a heart beat - seize control of governments again if they thought they could get away with it?

I heard on BBC radio today that the Philippine government is finally allowing a gay party to run after a court overturned the decision to keep them out because they might offend religious groups. The Catholic Church protests the decision to allow this political option.

Catholics throughout the US are protesting Arizona's new anti-illegal immigrant law that might result in fewer Latinos (and fewer Catholics).

Catholics in the US for years have objected to the legal freedom of choice for pregnant women because this choice contradicts their religious beliefs.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is in trouble for ignoring laws regarding child molesters.

So, the officials of the Catholic Church want to impose their religious beliefs onto others in the form of laws but does not want the laws of the land to apply to them? Weren't they forced to give up this arrangement shortly after the Dark Ages? And could they be more obvious about how eager they are to again have such an arrangement?

But I guess no political leader is going to have the courage to rebuke a group that claims to represent more than a billion people. I liked it better when they were a definite minority in this country and were eager to prove that they had no political ambitions but merely wanted the freedom to worship in peace. And maybe that's the secret to success: lots and lots of denominations so no one denomination feels safe to impose their beliefs on anyone else but enough religious people that everyone is eager to maintain religious freedom.

It is becoming more and more credible that the current pope last served as head of the office that once ruled over the Inquisition. One can only speculate that he spent too much time in the archives.

Nick Clegg - Britain's New (favored) Beta Male

Intriguingly, some research into primate behavior suggests that the beta male actually does better than the alpha male. Eager to keep his position atop the heap, and needing a key ally to do this, the alpha male is more likely to favor the beta male with choice food and females so as to not lose the beta male to a competing alpha.

In yesterday's election in Britain, the Conservative Party won but did not win enough. That is, in order to rule, the conservatives will have to form a coalition government with another party. The problem with this is that, in this sense, the Labour Party is tied with the Conservative Party. That is, whichever party is able to partner with the third-place Liberal Democrats will rule. And this would appear to make Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg Britain's favored beta male. Without Clegg's cooperation, neither Labour nor Conservative can rule.

This is a fascinating election for so many reasons but one, of course, is that Britain faces very similar issues as the US. The most obvious similarity is the need to deal with the aftermath of the financial crisis and Great Recession.

To me, it's unfortunate that the Conservative Party did not win outright. The Brits will run a record deficit (11% of GDP) this year and the definite impression I got was that Cameron (the Conservatives leader) was more interested in reducing spending than slashing taxes, which should make Conservatives far more effective at reducing the deficit. Further, as mentioned in the last post, I got the distinct impression that Cameron has a better plan for implementing real reform in the city (London's Wall Street, or financial community).

But instead, Nick Clegg will likely dictate terms to the next administration. What left me unimpressed with Clegg was his seeming reliance upon general voter discontentment with the two main parties. Imagine a candidate standing up between Bush and Kerry and saying, "C'mon. You're not happy with these two. You know it. Vote for me." Crafting an effective policy requires doing more than expressing disgust with the main parties. I never really heard how Clegg's Liberal Democrats offered a coherent difference from either main party. And yet he will get to be the favored beta male. Watching the coalition government rule may well be as fascinating as watching the election. The jockeying for position is not over yet.

--------- post script
Oh, and by the way, my politics have not changed. I envy the Brits their conservative party. Sometimes a country needs to move in the direction of self reliance and smaller government and sometimes it needs to move in the direction of more regulation and public programs. Neither direction is a foregone conclusion any more than you can say whether you'll more often turn right or left on your drive to the store. But here in the states, our conservative party has been hijacked by people who deny climate change is a risk, deny health care is a right, and whose only economic development trick seems to be cutting taxes. If the Republicans looked more like Britain's Conservative Party, they'd be hard to beat. Instead, they're ruled by obstructionists reactionaries who deify Ronald Reagan but would reject him as a candidate for having actually raised taxes twice. But people do learn.

Could David Cameron Save the American Republican Party?

I watched the final debate between Britain’s current and two contending Prime Ministers this evening. They represented the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, and Labour Party. The contrast between the three was not half as stark as the contrast between British and American conservatives.

Let’s hope that American conservatives are paying attention to David Cameron of Britain’s Conservative Party. The Republican Party has been hijacked by policy makers who have decided that the clearest way to distinguish themselves from reasonable and practical policies is to offer unreasonable and ideological polices. Cameron’s campaign will hopefully remind Republicans that it is possible to distinguish yourself from reasonable policies by offering other reasons rather than just blindly opposing the other side.

For instance, Republicans in this country – the party that supposedly represents conservatives here – are mindlessly opposed to financial reform. Without reform, we will again find ourselves in the position of either bailing out bankers or letting them take down our economy. (And of course, no one wants to admit that even with great reforms we’re likely to find ourselves in this situation, the only difference being the probability and severity of the hostage situation.) Republicans simply don’t want to be seen cooperating with Obama – no matter how obvious or sensible his policies seem to be.

David Cameron, by contrast, rather sensibly wants to change things within London’s banking community in the wake of the Great Recession. He wants more regulation and more consequences for banks that pursue reckless policy. This position has the advantage of making sense whether one’s analysis is sophisticated or simply based in a common sense reaction to the last financial crisis. Cameron even mentioned that his plan for financial reform was very much like Obama’s.

In Britain, policies of liberals and conservatives sometimes align and sometimes clash. There does not appear to be a requirement to oppose everything the opposition party proposes. This used to be true in the US as well. Modern Republicans, as near as I can tell, seem to define themselves less by what they think will work than by opposing what Obama seems to think will work.

The curious thing about this is that Republicans are becoming more insistent on blind ideology in a time when the countries whose economies are performing best defy easy categorization: China is nominally communist but often more aggressively capitalist than the G-7 countries; Peru and Brazil’s economies have performed splendidly with some odd hybrid of socialist and free market policies that generally favor the poor. Anymore, the fastest growing economy is as likely to espouse adherence to free markets as socialism (and all the while adopting pragmatic policies). It seems as though the real solution to economic growth is ideological flexibility, not ideological rigidity. And yet Republicans, bucking the trend of conservatives and socialists alike around the world, are becoming more ideological. But if successful policy is pragmatic rather than ideological, having such an ideologically intent party means that we’re robbed of a practically conservative option in this country. No matter what your ideological orientation, you should find this troubling. We can’t steer right in this country because the party trying to pull the wheel in that direction does not want to pull into the other lane so much as go off-roading through the oleander.

I do believe that the Republican Party will look back at this period as the time of their great hijacking, a time when their only answer to any question was lower taxes and when they let themselves get defined on everything else by their automatic opposition to Democrats. As long as ideologues own the party, the country will either suffer from their rule (as under Bush) or conservatives will suffer from Republicans’ inability to win control in DC (as under McCain). As I said, one can only hope that American conservatives are paying attention to Cameron – and humble enough to learn from Cameron and even – on occasion – agree with Obama.

Fun Facts About John Paul Stevens

For some reason I find this little tidbit fascinating: if Supreme Court John Paul Stevens is replaced by someone who is not a Protestant, for the first time in our history our Supreme Court will be completely made up of non-Protestants.

Currently, we have 6 Catholics, 2 Jews, and 1 Protestant serving on the Supreme Court.

I also find it interesting that although John Paul Jones was born more than a quarter century AFTER John Paul Stevens, Jones retired from Led Zeppelin in 1980, more than a quarter century BEFORE John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court. I'm sure that this says something profound about the lifestyles of rock stars and Supreme Court justices.

The Slow Mitigation of Madness

Curiously, very little seems to have been made of Obama's recent attempts to secure and reduce the number of nuclear weapons. As with so much in life, this baffles me. This seems to me his most important accomplishment. Nuclear weapons are predicated on the curious notion that a state's existence should somehow outlast the existence of its people. It's hard to imagine any sane future two or three centuries hence that doesn't look back at nuclear weaponry as the most curious evidence of institutionalized madness.

Perhaps the oddest news story I've read in the last couple of years has to do with LBJ, Castro, Nukes and the Kennedy assassination. Apparently, LBJ had evidence suggesting that Castro, weary of the Kennedy brothers' multiple attempts to assassinate him, arranged JFK's assassination. The evidence for this was not conclusive but was suggestive. When LBJ learned about this, he sat on the investigation. His reasoning? The American people would be so outraged at this that they'd demand retaliation and given Cuba was a satellite state for the USSR, Johnson could see things escalating into nuclear war. LBJ decided that retaliation wasn't worth such a risk.

It might be true that nuclear weapons made war so costly that simply having them made states more hesitant to engage in even conventional warfare, much less retaliation for assassination of its leaders. But the fact that we had no nuclear wars does not mean that they were impossible. The simple question is whether it is better to lower the probability of, say, 100,000 casualties from conventional war by 50% if it meant raising the probability of 100 million casualties by 5%.

The eruption of volcano [insert unintelligible Icelandic name here] recently is a reminder of how rapidly surrounding areas could be impacted by something like nuclear war. As my friend Norman pointed out the other day, even a couple of nuclear bombs lobbed back and forth between India and Pakistan would - in addition to devastating populations in those countries - likely radiate out to impact the regions around them. Imagine radioactive volcanic dust and try to project a situation like this month's volcano lasting for years. Madness indeed.

Nuclear materials are unaccounted for. Worse, the states now threatened by them were the ones to produce those materials as part of a national security program.

Most people realize that it would be awful if Iran got nuclear weapons. Because we've had generations to acclimate to the idea, we've lost the realization that it is awful that any state has nuclear weapons. Give credit to Clinton, the younger Bush, and Obama for having the sense to realize that national security and nuclear weapons don't really belong in the same sentence and working to reduce decades of build up.

Recessions come and go, as do tax cuts, health care insurance programs, and attempts to reform education. No other policy has the potential to so negatively, and perhaps irreversibly, impact humanity as nuclear weapon policy. If we're lucky, Obama's successor will continue the escalation of nuclear arms reduction and future generations won't have the strange possibility of nuclear winter to live with.

The Difficulty of Predicting History

Apparently it is as hard to predict history as it is to predict the future. History is a story we tell about the past to make sense of it to our own lives.

Westminster Abbey is a burial place for some of the greats of England, and some who are by now, completely inconsequential. I was struck by how arbitrary is the inclusion and exclusion of certain figures of history. As near as I can tell, Jethro Tull is not there - the man whose agricultural inventions helped fight hunger and increase wealth. Yet mere servants to royalty are included there - people whose only contribution to history was to please or befriend the most powerful person in England at the time. But most curiously, Westminster Abbey captures history in real time, revealing how little we understand how lives today will be made important or rendered trivial by subsequent events.

Part of this is a matter of popularity. It seems probable that Vint Cerf will be considered more important to history than, say, Mussolini, and Robert Beyster will be more important to business history than Larry Ellison or Jack Welch, but of course Cerf and Beyster are far less known than the others. Current popularity matters.

But the bigger problem may be the problem of knowing what immediate history will make things different tomorrow. We know that GM was laying off lots of people in the late 1990s but were unaware that Brin and Page were starting Google. Sometimes years later – sometimes decades later – we finally realize the importance of certain events. History is as hard to predict as the future in part because history depends on a prediction of the future.