General Studies

New Blog

2010-08-12T20:12:00.001-07:00

Check out my new blog here.

De Soto on Cities

2010-04-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

The primary problem is the delay in recognizing that most of the disorder occurring outside the West is the result of a revolutionary movement that is more full of promise than of problems. Once the potential value of the movement is harnessed, many of its problems will be easier to resolve. Developing and former communist nations must choose to either create systems that allow their governments to adapt to the continual changes in the revolutionary division of labor or continue to live in extralegal confusion--and that really isn't much of a choice...

Extralegal zones in developing countries are characterized by modest homes cramped together on city perimeters, a myriad of workshops in their midst, armies of vendors hawking their wares on the streets, and countless crisscrossing minibus lines. All seem to have sprung out of nowhere. Steady streams of small crafts workers, tools under their arms, have expanded the range of activities carried out in the city. Ingenious local adaptations add to the production of essential goods and services, dramatically transforming certain areas of manufacturing, retail distribution, building, and transportation. The passive landscapes that once surrounded Third World cities have become the latest extensions of the metropolis, and cities modeled on the European style have yielded to more noisy, local personality blended with drab imitations of suburban America's commercial strip. (De Soto, The Mystery of Capital)

Tragic Beauty

2010-04-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

For me, the word that best describes the novelist's view of the world is tragic. In Nietzsche's account of the "birth of tragedy," which remains pretty much unbeatable as a theory of why people enjoy sad narratives, an anarchic "Dionysian" insight into the darkness and unpredictability of life is wedded to an "Apollonian" clarity and beauty of form to produce an experience that's religious in its intensity. Even for people who don't believe in anything that they can't see with their own two eyes, the formal aesthetic rendering of the human plight can be (though I'm afraid we novelists are rightly mocked for overusing the word) redemptive...

I hope it's clear that by "tragic" I mean just about any fiction that raises more questions than it answers: anything in which conflict doesn't resolve into cant. (Indeed, the most reliable indicator of a tragic perspective in a work of fiction is comedy.) The point of calling serious fiction tragic is to highlight its distance from the rhetoric of optimism that so pervades our culture. The necessary lie of every successful regime, including the upbeat techno-corporatism under which we now live, is that the regime has made the world a better place. Tragic realism preserves the recognition that improvement always comes at a cost; that nothing lasts forever; that if the good in the world outweighs the bad, it's by the slimmest of margins. (Jonathan Franzen, "Why Bother?", How to Be Alone: Essays)

Framing Suffering

2010-04-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

How is suffering, including that caused by sickness, best explained? How is it to be addressed? These questions are, of course, as old as humankind. We've had millennia in which to address--societally, in an organized fashion--the suffering that surrounds us. In looking at approaches to such problems, one can easily discern three main trends: charity, development, and social justice. (Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 153)

Relationship-Building

2010-04-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

"So once again, an illiterate old Balti taught a Westerner how to best go about developing his 'backward' area," Mortenson says. "Ever since then, with all the schools I've built, I've remembered Haji Ali's advice and expanded slowly, from village to village and valley to valley, going where we'd already built relationships, instead of trying to hopscotch to places I had no contacts, like Waziristan." (Mortenson and Relin, Three Cups of Tea, 177)

DFW on the Redistribution of Wealth

2010-04-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Opinion: The mistake here lies in both sides' assumption that the real motives for redistributing wealth are charitable or unselfish. The conservatives' mistake (if it is a mistake) is wholly conceptual, but for the Left the assumption is also a serious tactical error. Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people. No one ever seems willing to acknowledge aloud the thoroughgoing self-interest that underlies all impulses toward economic equality--especially not US progressives, who seem so invested in an image of themselves as Uniquely Generous and Compassionate and Not Like Those Selfish Conservatives Over There that they allow the conservatives to frame the debate in terms of charity and utility, terms under which redistribution seems far less obviously a good thing. (David Foster Wallace, "Authority and American Usage", Consider the Lobster)

A Culture of Charity

2010-04-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

In society, I’d like to see more value placed on social impact and success than on good intentions or effective marketing or the severity of the need you’re claiming to serve. I’d like to see a fundamental change in ethics or culture around that. We still have the lingering effect of a culture of charity, which honors people for their sacrifice—how much they give and the purity of their motives. The word charity comes from the word “caritas,” which is Latin for love or compassion. We’re rewarding people for demonstrating their love of humankind, but we’re not often looking to see whether it has the intended impact. So I’d love to see an ethics change, so that we honor people for the impact they’ve had directly, or indirectly in choosing to support programs and organizations and individuals that have had impact, not just for how much they give or how generous they are. (Greg Dees, "The Past, Present, and Future of Social Entrepreneurship")

Patience

2010-04-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer. Perhaps indeed you carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming, as a particularly pure and blessed kind of life; train yourself for it--but take what comes in complete trust, if only it comes from your will, from some inner need of yours, take it to yourself and do not hate anything. (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)

Strongly Stated, Loosely Held

2010-04-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

In keeping with professional forecaster practice, my opinions are strongly stated and loosely held--strongly stated so that clients can get at them to conjure with, loosely held so that facts and the persuasive arguments of others can get at them to change them. My opinion is not important; it's just a tool. The client's evolving opinion is what's important. Your evolving opinion is what's important. If you're reading this book just to reinforce your present opinions, you've hired the wrong consultant. (Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline, 21)

Interrelationship

2010-03-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

I believe it was two winters ago. I was in Taiwan having dinner with a friend and his parents. As we were finishing dinner, my friend and I were getting ready for our night's festivities. My friend's dad told us before we headed out, "Have a good time, but remember, your body is not your own. It was given to you by your parents." What a funny thing to say, I thought at the time. As I talk to my nephew on the phone, though, and hear his toddler voice, as I see my sister's features in his photos, I get this feeling that nothing could be more true. Your body, a gift from your mommy and daddy to be respected and cherished.

Buzz

2010-03-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

The greatest thing to come from Google Buzz is the uptick in Google Reader sharing. That and the random connections that it brings. Somehow, I am following all of Chris Blattman's shared items and he's following mine. Ha.

She's So Pretty (Part Two)

2010-02-15T19:59:00.001-08:00

She's So Pretty

2010-02-14T00:51:00.001-08:00

Avatar's Crude Environmentalism

2010-02-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but I think it's still timely as Avatar's buzz isn't going away anytime soon.

On the one hand, the movie has received a ton of praise for its groundbreaking technical prowess. On the other hand, the movie has been criticized for its rehashing of white liberal fantasy, the predictably colonial undertones that drive the narrative forward.

Discussion of the movie in these two regards is well-traversed territory. What I haven't seen much of is criticism of the movie's environmentalism. The environmentalist message is typically noted in passing and subsequently folded into the politics of colonial subjugation.

In its Manichean scheme, Avatar pits humans versus nature, as though one could conceive these two categories essentially and in isolation. Humans relate to the environment in purely corporate, extractive terms; meanwhile, the enviable Na'vi exist in perfect harmony with their natural surroundings. Clearly, the movie espouses a vindictive reproach of capitalist kowtowing to the Almighty Quarterly Earnings Statement. The threat embedded at the heart of the movie: we who in our consumer culture continue to be champions of industry are doomed to moral and economic depravity.

Let me step back from this plot line for a moment and channel Break Through, as I am apt to do:

"If 'the environment' includes humans, then everything is environmental and the concept has little use other than being a poor synonym for 'everything.' If it excludes humans, then it is scientifically specious, not to mention politically suicidal." (emphasis in original)

The movie wants us to buddy up with those lovable scientists who are oh-so-dedicated to protecting Mother Tree and "the environment." In turn we are expected to demonize the mechanical logic of corporate interests. But as the Break Through quote states, the categories of "industry" and "environment" or "humans" and "nature" are simply untenable. Why must economic growth be inherently parasitic and unsustainably extractive? Why is it impossible to imagine technological innovation that brings us towards greater resource efficiency rather than increased resource consumption?

The answer is pretty obvious. Fear sells. We are captivated by the prospect of civilization's eventual demise. But fear doesn't inspire action. I'd like to think that James Cameron aspires in his movies to more than simple-minded entertainment (why else produce an environmental allegory?). In fact, I'd like to think that James Cameron, by virtue of the popularity of his movies, has a responsibility to be thoughtful and critical of his movies' messages. But in this regard, Avatar demonstrates a frightening failure of the imagination.

I relish saying that last sentence.

I am a Public Transit Enthusiast

2010-02-07T21:43:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, I rode the 38 Geary bus line from the Financial District to Outer Richmond. The trip took longer than I anticipated (45 minutes), but it was heartening as a reminder of the diversity and sense of community that can exist in San Francisco.

In cities of high population density, public transportation is used by everybody. San Francisco and New York City come to mind. Contrast this to Los Angeles, where public transit is used pretty exclusively by people who cannot afford cars. The 38 Geary line is used by hipsters and yuppie douchebags alike, families, students, professionals, bums, the young and the elderly, locals and tourists, people of all colors and stripes. Within this panoply of difference, there is an implicit sense of community trust. If the bus has to stop longer than usual for a wheelchair-user to board, nobody bitches about the wait. When an elderly person gets on, someone sitting will almost always volunteer his or her seat. When a tourist looks lost, a local will typically offer a guiding hand. In these simple acts of decency are important lessons for us all.

Being on a bus requires patience. No amount of rage will move the bus along its route any faster. When you board a public bus, you surrender yourself to a service largely outside your control. You implicitly accept the limits of your ability to manipulate time and space. You will arrive at your destination when the bus arrives, and you have to be okay with that. A dose of such humility would do us all well.

The exposure to diversity demands courtesy. In order to ride comfortably, you will have to address others with such phrases of respect as "Excuse me, sir," and "Thank you." Pushing and prodding might get you to where you want to go, but it is very obviously not the path of least resistance. You may well have to give up your seat for someone in greater need of sitting, but when you do, you will see your act not as personal loss but as social gain. In the setting of a bus, courtesy makes eminent sense.

For me, forty-five minutes on the bus really lifted my spirits. Decency between strangers is really great to behold.

Does it come as a surprise that a public bus served quite literally as a vehicle for social change during the civil rights movement in the United States?

More Sports, Less Gym

2010-02-02T22:22:00.001-08:00

That's all.

MLK on Time

2010-01-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

Take a look at a graphical representation of Moore's Law, and it's hard not to believe in the inevitability of technological progress. Or sneak a peak at the idea of learning-by-doing, and you cannot help but feel that productivity increases inexorably of its own accord. So we see human progress marching along with but the passage of time.

This is deceiving. A recent re-reading of MLK's letter from a Birmingham jail provides a very different perspective on the meaning of time:

"I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

On Getting Down a Mountain

2010-01-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

Went snowboarding in Lake Tahoe this weekend. The feeling:

Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it's impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly got up and began running down the mountain after him doing exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about five minutes I'd guess Japhy Ryder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn't care any more I was so anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain goats or I'd say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago, enough to raise the hair on the head of the meditating Morley by the lake, who said he looked up and saw us flying down and couldn't believe it. In fact with one of my greatest leaps and loudest screams of joy I came flying right down to the edge of the lake and dug my sneakered heels into the mud and just fell sitting there, glad. Japhy was already taking his shoes off and pouring sand and pebbles out. It was great. I took off my sneakers and poured out a couple of buckets of lava dust and said "Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain." (Kerouac, The Dharma Bums)

Why Learning to Write is Important

2010-01-19T23:27:00.000-08:00

This caustic piece about the patronizing, self-congratulatory language of people writing about Africa reminds me of the importance of learning how to write. I'm not talking about how to put a sentence together. I'm talking about all those tools of literary analysis that you learn in English Literature that seem to have no direct relation to something like economic development--tone, style, imagery, metaphors, cultural theory and all that good stuff--and how to apply those tools to produce effective writing.

Learning how to write about another culture is neigh impossible. Maybe it is impossible. Chinua Achebe is familiar with the contradictions and difficulties. To me, it seems obvious that the difficulties of development are akin to the difficulties of writing about Africa or any less developed country/poor country/third world country/country of the economic south. How does one figure out the right tone/authorial stance? the right narrative structure? How, if one desires to persuade in development writing, does one overcome the difficulties of establishing ethos/speaker credibility? Surely, part of what is so offensive about Brooks' recent column about intrusive paternalism in Haiti is the fact of his unalterably being white, male and upper class.

Similarly, how do developed countries and aid organizations figure out their role in the development of other countries?

Jet Lagged

2010-01-06T04:49:00.001-08:00

I am severely jet lagged at the moment and reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I ordered the book off Amazon after a recent trip to Bangkok and exposure to the city's in-your-face sex tourism.

My decision to read the book was questionable at best. Its journalistic prose flows easily and doesn't induce the sleep I was seeking. Also, I am not quite sure I want to fall asleep thinking about the forced prostitution in Cambodia and India.

Anyway, the book provides an interesting perspective on the efficacy of aid work, which I found a refreshing respite from the economic analyses of Easterly and other development economists. In describing a Seattle private school community service project to help construct a school in Cambodia, the authors write:

In February 2003, the school construction was complete, and Grijalva led a delegation of nineteen students from Overlake School to Cambodia for the opening. A cynic might say that the money for the visit would have been better spent building another Cambodian school, but in fact that visit was an essential field trip and learning opportunity for those American students.

From personal experience, advising high school community service projects in Ecuador, the inspiration and broadening-of-perspective dividend to be had in helping others is non-negligible for sure. But few economic analyses of aid work take this factor into account.

Call me a romantic, but I'd like to not undervalue inspiration and goodwill.

The Drama of POSSIBILITY

2009-12-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

I am just now beginning to hear through the grapevine the college admissions results of former students. It's quite an exhilarating feeling, let me tell you, even from the sidelines a continent away.

Some months ago, Stanley Fish wrote a column about how he found himself entranced by the spectacle of the NBA Draft. Ultimately, he ascribed his fascination to the idea that "what [he was] witnessing was the repeated renewing of hope." For me, it's a compelling explanation. One cannot help but feel in awe of the promise and potential on display. The idea of an unmolded life that just sits ready for the taking is...exhilarating. Cherish it! you want to scream both for yourself and for the world.

A couple months after graduating from college, I e-mailed a professor who had been particularly influential for me. He responded by writing, "Your life sounds full of PROMISE now, keep notes on your days..." His capitalization of that word, "promise," made an impression on me, and that's why I remember the e-mail.

These ritual cycles--the birth of a newborn, the election of a new president, matriculation and graduation--all enact the drama of rebirth and POSSIBILITY. It's a beautiful thing, central in my mind to our existence as human beings, and one cannot forget it. Even during the profanity that is separate from the ritual moment.

"From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," anyone?

To Oysters and Elk

2009-12-16T07:45:00.001-08:00

2010, Year of the Tiger

2009-12-10T22:24:00.001-08:00

I was getting my hair cut today by a middle-aged Chinese woman. We were chatting. She asked me my age and went on to comment that I must be a Tiger according to the Chinese zodiac calendar. She prophesied good things for me in the year ahead, which was nice to hear.

I got to thinking about the twelve-year cycle that the Chinese zodiac calendar runs through. It's comforting to think about time in cyclical rather than linear, sacred rather than profane terms. Rather than a straight-shot march through the years, a cyclical imagination of time gives me an anchored sense of continuity. 2010, Year of the Tiger. The next one after won't be until 2022. Puts things in a different light.

Themes

2009-12-08T21:05:00.001-08:00

A couple weeks ago, the CEO of my company was recognized for her leadership as one of the top 100 women in the hedge fund industry. She wrote up a speech to accept her award and distributed the transcript internally. In her address, she identified key themes that have run consistently throughout her life and career, and she concluded by urging others to do the same. It is an exercise in introspection and self-awareness that serves to guide one through life's decisions.

I have written in this blog, on and off, for a little over a year now. Reading over old posts, I can identify a couple themes that have been most prevalent in my mind for at least the past year or so.

1) Living probabilistically. For me, thinking probabilistically is a way to deal with the limits of individual agency, a mode of thinking that encourages one to confront randomness proactively by tweaking those variable that are within one's control. The focus is not on short-term variation but rather on long-term properties.

2) Intellectual humility. Having deep conviction in my own fallibility, I try to approach problems and questions from the perspective of discussion and not debate.

3) Responsibility. About a month ago, a high school friend was in town visiting, I was hanging out with her and her friends in my apartment, and conversation grew more intense and drunken. A guy threw out a comment about being answerable only to yourself and how you should pursue whatever career it is that makes you happiest. Invariably, I get a very strong and negative reaction to such comments. I believe in relational being, and I believe in a notion of responsibility that supersedes the individual.

4) The beauty and richness to be found in stories, especially those that connect in unexpected ways.

5) The power of ecology as a metaphor. For understanding cities. For understanding policy-making. For understanding people. Currently, I obsess over the idea of triple bottom line thinking and what I am now going to call Maslow's ecology of needs.

For now, I feel pretty comfortable with these themes being drivers of my personal growth for the years to come.

Yikes. There is such a thing as too much introspection. And indeed, you, my imaginary reader, are beginning to make me blush self-consciously. Too much sincerity. Too little sarcasm.

"Relationship Science"

2009-12-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I read The New York Times Magazine's feature on marriage.

In line with the thinking of my previous post about cities, the salient question for me is, What kind of a problem is a relationship?

With language reminiscent of that used in The Corrections (Franzen), Elizabeth Weil describes her marriage variously through the lens of economics, psychoanalysis and military strategy.

Economics:

[Marriage is] an environment of scarcity, it's "a barbaric competition over whose needs get met"; it's "two people trying to make a go of it on emotional and psychological supplies that are only sufficient for one."

Psychoanalysis:

Monogamy is one of the most basic concepts of modern marriage. It is also its most confounding. In psychoanalytic thought, the template for monogamy is forged in infancy, a baby with its mother. Marriage is considered to be a mainline back to this relationship, its direct heir.

Military strategy/Politics:

...I began seeing Dan as my adversary, the person against whom I was negotiating the terms of our lives.

Perhaps we'd been striving in raising children and not in marriage because child-rearing is a dictatorship and marriage is a democracy. The children do not get to vote on the direction of the relationship, on which sleep-training or discipline philosophy they like best. But with a spouse, particularly a contemporary American spouse, equality is foundational, assumed. (emphases mine)

The problem to me seems to be that Weil approaches her marriage much as she would other facets of her life, that is, with the same industry and the same resources at her disposal. She says as much: "...I started wondering why I wasn't applying myself to the project of being a spouse. My marriage was good, utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseum, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why. I wanted not to accept this."

In regarding her role in her marriage as a "project," Weil tries to dissect her marriage and analyze it as she would other problems. She tests hypothesizes. She gives herself exercises and homework assignments. She appeals to expert advice: marriage counselors, sex therapists, psychoanalysts, relationship scientists. There is even mention in the article of a "Love Lab," where one purported expert claims 94 percent accuracy in predicting whether a married couple will last longer than six years.

Absurdity in my ears. Management consultants get assigned to "projects," not life partners. Being in a relationship is fundamentally a different kind of problem than a work project, an investment decision, a weight-loss plan or an international treaty. It is an area of life in which our maximizing tendencies come up against a wall and our typical modes of thinking meet their limits. Thinking otherwise can be of real detriment.

I think Weil's efforts to grow in her marriage are admirable. But something about the way she sets out to improve her marriage strikes me as deeply wrong. Something in my gut tells me that we need to draw upon a different set of resources when thinking about matters of the heart. As a culture, we have let the language of economics and politics infiltrate our thinking about relationships. We increasingly regard love as something that can be demystified with the right application of analytical tools. Despite our best efforts, relationships resist demystification, rightfully so in my mind.

What kind of a problem is a relationship? What are the implications of how we choose to answer that question?

What kind of a problem is a city?

2009-12-05T14:28:00.000-08:00

Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity, like the life sciences. They present “situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways.” Cities, again like the life sciences, do not exhibit one problem in organized complexity, which if understood explains all. They can be analyzed into many such problems or segments which, as in the case of the life sciences, are also related with one another. The variables are many, but they are not helter-skelter; they are “interrelated into an organic whole.”

...The tactics for understanding [the life sciences and cities] are similar in the sense that both depend on the microscopic or detailed view, so to speak, rather than on the less detailed, naked-eye view suitable for viewing problems of simplicity or the remote telescopic view suitable for viewing problems of disorganized complexity.
In the life sciences, organized complexity is handled by identifying a specific factor or quantity—say an enzyme—and then painstakingly learning its intricate relationships and interconnections with other factors or quantities. All this is observed in terms of the behavior (not mere presence) of other specific (not generalized) factors or quantities. To be sure, the techniques of two-variable and disorganized-complexity analysis are used too, but only as subsidiary tactics. (433-440)

That's Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. If we take the metaphor of a city as a living organism seriously and recognize cities as emergent phenomenon, then what is the appropriate analytical approach for cities? Although my friends tell me that Jacobs is dated in her understanding of how the life sciences are studied, I think the basic point remains: Cities are not "understandable purely by statistical analysis, predictable by the application of probability mathematics, manageable by conversion into groups of averages."

For me, this is a profound point, especially given the ubiquity of the statistical approach in social science thinking today. What is more, the framing of the problem determines the nature of the solution. Moving forward, the question is, How does one combine the sensibilities of Jacobs' street-level humanity with the empirical rigor of an econometrician?

Are You Interesting?

2009-12-01T19:34:00.000-08:00

Ben Casnocha writes a lot about interesting-ness: what it means to be interesting, how to be interesting, how to determine quickly whether someone else is interesting. Sometimes, I like what he has to say about the topic, particularly when he says something along the lines of, "The way to be interesting is to be interested."

But for the most part, his thoughts leave me a little bit peeved. Who are all these people that Ben comes across in daily life that he deems so uninteresting? Does he meet so many inexcusably boring people that he feels compelled to write about how to be interesting so regularly?

At one point in my life--namely, during the intellectual awakening of my adolescence--I would sneak away from social gatherings to read James Joyce. His words--"Evidently she had been unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which civilization has been reared." (Dubliners 91)--sent fireworks off in my head as I exclaimed to myself, "How true and how sad it is that so many people muddle through life in zombie-like fashion!"

So I admit it. I've made my fair share of snap judgments about people I find uninteresting and not worth my time. But, taking a break from Joyce, I started talking to people and took a stab at understanding others. Everybody's got a story to tell, obstacles encountered and overcome, dreams foiled and realized, hearts broken and filled. Looking back, I regret every single time I have written someone off as being uninteresting.

Back to my question: Are you interesting? Yes, you are.

A Sense of Place

2009-11-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

1) My grand-uncle was born in Dong Shih, a small farming town in the central highlands of Taiwan. He grew up speaking Hakka, the dialect of his parents, and Japanese, the language of formal schooling during Japanese occupation. My grand-uncle has lived through colonialism, World War II, forty years of martial law and an economic miracle that saw Taiwan engage the global economy at unprecedented levels. While his beginnings may have been humble and provincial, his knowledge of the world is vast and his experiences diverse. My grand-uncle forged a career as a successful businessman, but as life would have it, his wife became ill at a young age and was largely confined to the house. He refused to leave his wife's side and never once left the country even as opportunities for travel became commonplace and it became clear that my grand-aunt's health would neither worsen terribly nor substantially improve.

A couple years ago, my grand-aunt passed away. So at the age of seventy, my grand-uncle left Taiwan for the first time in his life to go to Japan. Upon his return, I was eager to hear his impressions of the wider world, what it was like for him to step off Taiwanese soil for the first time. With a proud grin, he responded to my inquiries, "Taiwan is a great place to live."

2) A couple weeks ago, I participated in a tour of the Village Bottoms district of West Oakland, which for over half a century has been the object of systematic marginalization. I moved to San Francisco about a year ago, and I must admit that I know embarrassingly little about the Bay Area and its history. Fortunately for me, the leader of the tour, Marcel Diallo, a Village Bottoms native, intimated vast and deep knowledge of the neighborhood. Every block we walked he infused with rich history. For years, he has labored to revitalize the neighborhood for which he harbors obvious love. At a venue that Marcel has toiled to designate as a cultural space, there hangs a portrait of his grandmother. On the portrait reads a quote from Marcel's grandmother: "When I sat for this portrait in 1951, West Oakland was one of the few places we as Black folks were allowed to live. Today I wouldn't leave the Bottoms if they paid me."

3) I was talking to a colleague the other day trying to figure out how she landed in San Francisco after growing up her whole life in Michigan. She told me she had been ready for something new and wanted to experience for herself all the hullaballoo about San Francisco. Three fantastic years, she tells me, she has been in San Francisco. Now she's itching to move on to something new again. "You can only do Bay to Breakers so many times. You know what I mean?"

You've Gots to be Kidding Me

2009-11-29T20:20:00.000-08:00

There was not a single tree growing in San Francisco when the first Spanish arrived; it was too dry and wind-blown for trees to take hold. Today, Golden Gate Park looks as if Virginia had mated with Borneo, thanks to water brought nearly two hundred miles by tunnel. The same applies to Bel Air, to Pacific Palisades, to the manicured lawns of La Jolla, where the water comes from three directions and from a quarter of a continent away. (Mark Reisner, Cadillac Desert 333)

An Explosion of Good Will

2009-10-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

From David Bornstein's How to Change the World: "In the United States and Canada, for example, almost everyone has heard about the explosion of dot-coms--a much smaller phenomenon--but millions have still not heard the big story: the worldwide explosion of dot-orgs" (6). The book begins with an account of how the number of NGOs and nonprofits has ballooned over the last couple decades. Readers, I presume, are supposed to applaud what is taken as a proxy for an explosion of good will.

My training in economics has me asking a number of questions:

1) What is driving growth in what Bornstein calls "the citizen sector?" My economic intuition tells me it is something other than good will.

2) NGOs and nonprofits form to address social goods that are neglected by both private and public sectors. Why are these social goods being neglected? Government exists for the provision of public goods, or when possible, to enforce legislation (taxes and property rights) that helps internalize externalities. What role does that leave for the citizen sector?

3) From what are resources being diverted to fund newly formed NGOs and nonprofits? Does this represent an efficient allocation of resources?

4) If there is a loss in efficiency, can we count growth in the citizen sector as a boon to society? How might we begin to answer this question?

5) How do market forces and competition operate in the citizen sector?

The book doesn't answer many or any of these questions. Nonetheless, I found it a worthwhile read for its stories of ground-level, piecemeal change throughout the world. The Ashoka Foundation sounds fascinating and definitely seems to be onto something.

No doubt there is abundant literature to answer some of the questions that I have posed. Now if only I could find some of what is out there...

Storytelling

2009-10-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, Chris Blattman linked to this essay about how book clubs diminish the intimacy of the reading experience.

For me, the essay brought to mind my undergraduate study of postcolonial literature, which helped me appreciate the diversity of different models in reading. The author of the essay, Adam Sternbergh, no doubt relies upon a Western model that envisions an intimate, singular connection between text and reader. Implicit in the model is a highly individuated reader, a liberal self isolated from community and context. No surprise then that Sternbergh romanticizes the ideal of reading Moby Dick "while sailing the world alone."

For myself, I draw inspiration for my reading from a different model. In an essay on oral subjectivity, Cynthia Ward writes, "The value of the oral tale to the oral culture lies not entirely in the tale itself but, perhaps more significantly, in the discussion it generates after it is told." This insight accords with my experience of texts that come alive in discussion. In such cases, the give-and-take of discussion heightens the reading experience rather than cheapens it.

The Policy Imperative

2009-07-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

A couple months back, I posted an entry criticizing the various initiatives discussed by Bill Gates in a TED Talk regarding education reform. I continue to believe that my criticisms represent valid concerns. However, when a friend of mine asked me what I would suggest in lieu of Gates' initiatives, I had nothing to offer. My friend then retorted that my criticisms were, in light of my failure to present viable alternatives, irresponsible and unproductive.

I agree with my friend and have come to appreciate more what a policy perspective entails. Policy-making is inherently a forward-looking, problem-solving enterprise. It engages with real constraints and by virtue of its future orientation contains seeds of optimism. Critical thinking and analysis are great things that one picks up from a liberal arts education. But a policy perspective demands more than critical thinking. It demands that we take the next step to ask, What now? How do we move productively forward given available resources and constraints?

I intend to better incorporate the set of questions implicit in a policy orientation into my daily thinking.

The Demise of Stacey's Bookstore

2009-07-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I am only half way through, but the book already has me seeing cities through different eyes. The story of Stacey's Bookstore is a case in point.

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In March of this year, Stacey's Bookstore, not long after celebrating its 85th year of existence as an independent bookstore, closed its doors for good. I used to frequent Stacey's. On the second floor, there was a large sunlit reading area where readers could read free of pressure to consume. No Starbucks or Seattle's Best attached. The reading area was often arrayed with rows of seats for the appearance of guest authors and a weekly lecture series. Employees were most often middle-aged or older, well-read individuals who were long-time San Franciscans and could speak passionately about their favorite titles or reading spots in the city. As someone who wants eventually to be a bookstore proprietor, I appreciated Stacey's as a cultural asset, a place that strove to be a community center, a cultural hub in addition to being a place to buy books.

When I first saw signs for the clearance sale that anticipated the store's closing, I felt along with other loyal patrons that something special was being lost. It was easy to understand, though. The economy was in shambles. Online retailing had long ago changed the landscape of brick-and-mortar book sales. And how was a mom-and-pop store supposed to compete with national chains such as Borders or Barnes & Noble? It was easy to cast Stacey's Bookstore as the unhappy victim of changing economic and social circumstances, and that is precisely how the story was reported.

Now, reading Jacobs' book, I am beginning to understand the demise of Stacey's Bookstore in a new light. Stacey's Bookstore, located in San Francisco's Financial District, was doomed to failure from the get-go as a result of its specific location in San Francisco's urban fabric. What now seems remarkable to me is that the bookstore lasted as long as it did. Applying the analytical framework developed by Jacobs in her book, two factors are prominent:

1) The Financial District, as one might infer from its name, is not a district that boasts great functional diversity. People work in the Financial District. One does not go to the Financial District for entertainment or commerce or for its cultural vitality, and one certainly does not live there. The result is extremely lopsided pedestrian traffic. Venture into the Financial District Monday through Friday nine to five and it feels quite lively, but it feels quite like a ghost town outside standard work hours and weekdays. Business at Stacey's was premised on weekday noontime and after-work pedestrian traffic. That leaves for a lot of dead hours in between, and it is extremely difficult to sustain a bookstore let alone a cultural hub in this context.

2) Aged buildings in the Financial District are nonexistent. As pictures show, Stacey's Bookstore resided in a building that looks and feels very new, surrounded by office buildings that also look and feel very new. The advantage of aged buildings in cities is that they usually require lower capital and maintenance costs, demanding lower rent. As a result, aged buildings are better able to support businesses with lower profit margins, ideal for small independent establishments. Without aged buildings, you get a lot of franchise stores like Quizno's, Chipotle, Subway or Staples. As Jacobs writes, "great diversity in age and types of buildings has a direct, explicit connection with diversity of population, diversity of enterprises and diversity of scenes" (212). No wonder then that the Beat writers hung out at City Lights Bookstore in North Beach.

In short, the Financial District is not really a place that is equipped to support a viable center for cultural activity. This reality is a property of the city, its layout and urban planning. The demise of Stacey's Bookstore can in large part be understood by the overwhelming dullness of San Francisco's Financial District. Its vacated space remains vacant.

Hating on Agribusiness

2009-07-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

It's so easy to hate on agribusiness these days. Such industrial behemoths as Monsanto and Cargill, they are the bullies in our story, the Goliaths, the colonial oppressors against whom it is our moral obligation to fight the good fight. They've infiltrated Washington, D.C. with their lobbyists, co-opted the political process, insulated themselves from popular pressure in order to pursue their single-minded pursuit of profit. They pillage our planet with their environmentally destructive practices; they ignore the welfare of animals, workers and family farms; they feed the masses with diabetes-inducing Frankenfood, helping us along in our journey to exploding the national healthcare budget. Oh, they are so evil. It is so, so easy to hate on agribusiness.

Hating on agribusiness has a long history, beginning with Upton Sinclair's muckraking in The Jungle. More recently, books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dillema, documentary films such as Supersize Me and Food, Inc. have helped fan popular resentment of agribusiness. But as with all such linear, good versus evil stories, we should view this tale, which has so captivated popular imagination, with some amount of skepticism.

Rather than blindly throw our weight behind Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, the organic food movement or small-scale farms or the holistic, wholesome grass farming methods of individuals such as Joel Salatin, we should listen to the views of dissenters. For many environmentalists, the ruthless efficiency of agribusiness and the use of genetically engineered crops are in fact an environmental imperative. James Lovelock, in The Revenge of Gaia, writes:

As I have said before, we cannot farm more than about half the Earth's land surface without impairing Gaia's capacity to keep a comfortable planet. Sadly, at our present numbers the lower productivity of organic farms compared with intensive agriculture makes it a dubious enterprise. (121)

Lovelock goes on to argue that we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that all "man-made chemicals" are harmful with "natural chemicals" somehow beyond reproach and always salutary. Stewart Brand, in a recent TED Talk, echoes these concerns about the too-easy categorization of agricultural methods and the land-intensity of agriculture as he comes out strongly in favor of genetically engineered crops. What to do about these concerns that detract from the linear simplicity of the story told by agribusiness-haters?

As ever, a Manichean worldview serves us poorly. There are never easy solutions and always trade-offs to be weighed and considered...

What I've Read This Year

2009-07-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

Once you graduate from college, you no longer have a syllabus to dictate your reading material. During my first year out of college, I read books that had some way or another found their way onto my bookshelf in previous years but remained unread. The result was a fairly random selection of books with little in terms of coherence or focus.

The trouble with a random selection of books is that it becomes difficult to contextualize what you are reading. Context is precisely what a course syllabus provides, and context is what most enables you to learn and achieve a balanced perspective on a topic. In an effort to increase the efficacy of my reading, I have tried recently to choose books that at least participate in the same conversations. From the past eight months or so, this is what I have read chronologically:

The Time Paradox, Philip Zimbardo
Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman
Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart
The Green Collar Economy, Van Jones
The Subprime Solution, Robert Shiller
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
Pioneering Portfolio Management, David Swensen
The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, George Soros
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Iliad, Homer
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock
Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins
Break Through, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, David Bornstein

The dominance of nonfiction in this reading selection is interesting to me, and I suppose this reflects a change in my tastes and priorities. The fiction I've read has been pretty random, but the nonfiction can be organized according to a number of themes that I find myself caring about more and more. These themes include: 1) sustainability and today's environmental movement; 2) development economics; and 3) behavioral economics.

I want to fashion my future reading lists according to these three broad themes (with the occasional novel to satisfy my cravings for fiction). Next up, I have:

Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus
The Long-Legged House, Wendell Berry
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely

Would love to hear suggestions. Right now, I especially want to find a book that deals with the intersection of urban planning and sustainability issues.

Nuclear Energy?

2009-06-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

In The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock makes what I found to be a compelling case for nuclear energy. While I don't feel well-versed enough in the nuclear debate to comment intelligently on Lovelock's specific arguments, I was struck by his analysis of current popular resistance to nuclear energy. In particular, Lovelock quotes W.J. Nuttall's Nuclear Renaissance at length:

The real opposition to nuclear power within the public grew in the 1970s and the 1980s. It may be argued that this has been a consequence of the rise of single-issue pressure groups and youth culture. That is, as the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the late 1960s grew out of earlier Civil Rights demonstrations, so the anti-nuclear demonstrations of the late 1970s arose directly from the Vietnam War protests, once that conflict had come to an end. This, however, is a rather Americanized perspective on what has been an erosion of enthusiasm for nuclear power. In Britain the defining socio-political events of relevance are those assoicated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1960s and resurgently in the early 1980s. Not only was CND passionate and anti-American, but it was also fun and it was cool. This fusion of popular culture with the British anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s is vividly captured by the present writer's uncle Jeff Nuttall in his visceral autobiography Bomb Culture, in which he describes one CND Aldermaston March as a Carnival of Optimism: 'Protest was associated with festivity.' This important aspect of matters nuclear has only slightly attenuated with passing decades. Those advocating nuclear renaissance ignore such aspects of nuclear power at their peril. (quoted in The Revenge of Gaia, 94)

To this, Lovelock writes: "I agree with Nuttall, and it is easy to see why many greens are so anti-nuclear; they often are the children of a union between environmentalism and the CND...gradually as the Cold War intensified and the two superpowers tested larger and ever larger weapons, the all-pervasive fear of all things nuclear became widespread" (94).

While it is typically easy to view today's issues and groups in isolation of the socio-historical contexts from which they emerged, this analysis of anti-nuclear sentiment highlights the importance of taking a historical view and examining origins. This is the work that has been most thoughtfully done for the environmentalist movement (to my knowledge) by Van Jones in The Green Collar Economy, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in Break Through and by Gavin Hood in X-Men Origins.

Important stuff, I say.

Break Through

2009-06-04T14:22:00.001-07:00

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. An excellent read. I am tempted to say that it is for me the most intellectually influential book I have read since Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That statement will have to withstand the test of time, but I highly recommend the book to anybody interested in liberal politics, or politics and environmentalism in general.

Explains perfectly why I have never called myself an environmentalist. More on this later...

Goals

2009-06-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

I attended a climate policy conference some weeks ago and I was super impressed by a bunch of the speakers but one in particular. Holmes Hummel. She is young, confident, articulate, personable, a Congressional Science Fellow who teaches at Berkeley and consults on carbon-pricing policymaking. After the conference, I reported my impressions to a friend of mine and we came up with the following life goals:

1) Be articulate.
2) Be impressive.
3) Have shit together.

Ideally by age thirty.

Zeitgeist

2009-06-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

I watched Fight Club a couple nights ago. The last time I watched the movie I must have still been a freshman in college, so it was interesting to revisit the film.

In one scene, Tyler Durden pulls Raymond K. Hessel, some poor Asian dude, out of a convenient store and puts a gun to the back of his head. Durden--upon learning through interrogation by gunpoint that Raymond had studied biology in community college in hopes of becoming a veterinarian--issues an ultimatum: either Raymond puts himself on the path towards being a veterinarian in six weeks time or he will be hunted down and killed.

A heartening lesson from Tyler Durden with typical Brad Pitt, will-to-power, Randian undertones. The film, and its message, struck a chord in 1999 and ensuing years. It tapped into a deep strain of male anxiety about the meaninglessness of everyday work, of being a cog in corporate bureaucratic machinery, of being trapped in the value system of consumer culture. Forge the life that you want to live, mold your circumstances according to your wishes, be the chief architect of your own life. The film beats this mantra into your head with very little room for subtlety.

In 2009, though, I think the film strikes a false chord. In this great recession of ours, when rugged individuals aren't feeling so rugged, when fatalism is running high, there is a lot of respect to be had for the Raymond K. Hessels of this world, people who are making an honest living and who've adjusted rather admirably to changing circumstances. Tyler Durden, on the other hand, comes off as adolescent in his narcissism, irresponsible. Mischief? Mayhem? I'll pass.

Our zeitgeist is, in my mind, aptly captured in the 2008 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire. D) It's written. How nice would that be?

John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin...

2009-05-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

would approve of Barack Obama.

As I was listening to Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame and his comments on abortion, I was momentarily brought back to my philosophizing college days. So I dug in the archives and looked up some old essays that I had read by John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin. Here are some quotes that I've culled for your (my) reading pleasure:

The concept of justice is independent from and prior to the concept of goodness in the sense that its principles limit the conceptions of the good which are permissible. A just basic structure and its background institutions establish a framework within which permissible conceptions can be advanced...Other things equal, a conception [of justice] will be more or less stable depending on how far the conditions to which it leads support comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines which can constitute a stable overlapping consensus...It suffices to remark that in a society marked by deep divisions between opposing and incommensurable conceptions of the good, justice as fairness enables us to at least conceive how social unity can be both possible and stable. (Rawls, Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical)

Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. "To realize the relative validity of one's convictions," said an admirable writer of our time (Joseph Schumpeter), "and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian." To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow such a need to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity. (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty)

As a philosophical stance, liberalism is surely not unproblematic. However, the idea of an "overlapping consensus," the need to identify common ground in a pluralistic world and move productively forward from it, at least gives liberals in the United States a starting point when talking about "moral issues."

Dreams from My Father

2009-05-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

I am a bit of a late-comer to the book, but I just finished it and am very glad I took the time to read it. It is very well written in my opinion, in terms of both its prose and its construction. Barack Obama writes about the various figures in his life with great empathy and does a good job preserving narrative momentum throughout.

In hero-journey fashion, the book begins with news of the loss of a father and concludes with a reconciliation of sorts. At once familiar and novel, the book achieves its resonance primarily through the strength of its archetype. And as an archetype in its broadest terms, Obama's story is truly one in which we can all inscribe our own anxieties, fears and dreams.

I run in circles that typically gush with Obama love, so I am sure that my praise will sound trite. Nonetheless, here I go. What really impresses me is Obama's strength, his willingness to probe at difficult questions that are sure not to yield easy or particularly palatable answers. In an exchange between Obama and his half-brother, Mark, who is also of mixed race, I am struck by the possibility of an alternative path, of it all being otherwise:

"Understand, I'm not ashamed of being half Kenyan. I just don't ask myself a lot of questions about what it all means. About who I really am." [Mark] shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I should. I can acknowledge the possibility that if I looked more carefully at myself, I would..."
For the briefest moment I sensed Mark hesitate, like a rock climber losing his footing. Then, almost immediately, he regained his composure and waved for the check.
"Who knows? he said. "What's certain is that I don't need the stress. life's hard enough without all that excess baggage." (344)

What Mark regards as superfluous stress, "excess baggage," Obama considers the core of his existence. It is so easy to leave difficult questions for another day, to sweep inconvenient histories aside. Plenty of people choose to put on willful blinders and maybe it is easier that way to get by. But Obama refuses such easy answers, looks incessantly at the facts of his life that are most difficult to digest, and for this, I admire him greatly.

Dolores Labs

2009-04-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Last week, I spent all my time at work day-dreaming about how Dolores Labs, or something like it, will eventually eliminate the need for my job. If you have any experience working a mechanical, repetitive, mindless job, you'll forgive me for my indulgence.

The Irony is Priceless

2009-04-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

From Maureen Dowd's Tuesday column this week:

"My adventure did feel like time travel into the past, especially when the G.P.S. began flashing near Yosemite that we were "entering an area where turn-by-turn guidance cannot be provided.""

Isn't Dowd's irony or sarcasm or whatever you want to call it absolutely blissful? She is poking fun at our dependence on technology and how unimaginable it now is to go on an adventure without the aid of technology-aided orientation. Get it?

It's subtle I know, but there it is. After I read the column, I was overcome by a rapid-fire succession of questions. To give you some background (if you haven't read the column yet), Maureen Dowd takes her readers west through San Francisco on an expedition to pan for gold, an activity that has apparently experienced something of a renaissance as our recession has deepened. Let me break that down again. Maureen Dowd, a New York Times op-ed columnist, hops on a plane from New York City to San Francisco, then goes to Yosemite with her GPS to pan for gold for a couple of hours, all so that she can reflect in 850 words on how the literal search for gold captures the state of the economy and our national psyche at the same time. Fool's gold. Otherwise known as pyrite as we are fortunate enough to learn. It's symbolic of our times.

So back to the questions that raced through my mind. How much does Maureen Dowd get paid? Did the NYTimes really fly her out to San Francisco just so that she could write this column? Did she fly first-class? Is there really a recession? Has the price of stock in The New York Times Company really fallen 90% in the last five years? Did the company lose $58 million in 2008 or is Google Finance just lying to me?

What the hell is going on here?

And, finally, how do I get her job?

Lessons from Google Reader

2009-04-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

On March 30, 2009, The Atlantic published an article titled "The Quiet Coup," written by Simon Johnson. Almost immediately, Andrew Sullivan, a blogger at The Atlantic Online posted a reader's response on his blog. As well on the same day, Dani Rodrik, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, posted his thoughts on the article. A slew of comments and other blog posts quickly followed.

I found out about Simon Johnson's article because I subscribe to Rodrik's blog and saw a bunch of related items being shared by friends who also use Google Reader. On April 2, David Brooks published his two cents in his NYTimes column. By the time Brooks came out with his op-ed piece, I had read a half dozen opinions about "The Quiet Coup," and it was pretty tough to put a substantively different spin on what had already been written by premier economists who participate in the blogosphere.

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This one a little bit closer to home. On February 2, CleanTechnica.com published a piece about how Andres Pacheco and Alex Bell, two engineering students from Swarthmore, had built a hydrogen fuel cell-powered motorcycle for their senior project. LivingtheAmericanGreen.org followed suit with a post on February 17 and a Wired.com blog covered the engineering project once again on March 3. Yesterday, the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet put out a video clip featuring interviews with Pacheco and Bell and the motorcycle crawling along Swarthmore pathways.

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So, as I spend more and more time on Google Reader, here are a couple of things that have struck me:

1) Redundancy. As can be seen from above, there is a lot of redundancy in Internet news coverage, and it becomes especially clear when using Google Reader. A friend of mine calls this "echo."

2) The line between traditional media sources (print journalism and TV production) and the Internet blogosphere definitely blurs. Traditional media moves at geriatric speed in comparison to the hordes of freelance writers out there. Note that the Discovery Channel covered the Swarthmore engineers a good two months after CleanTechnica.com caught wind of the story. The claim is that traditional media comes out on top in terms of quality and thoughtfulness, but that notion is pretty quickly challenged when you see the likes of Dani Rodrik or Timothy Burke blogging frequently.

3) What do you do with the idea of authorship? Think of a million students crammed into a single classroom and think of the voices in that classroom. Individual voices inevitably get drowned out in a general din. Who said what first? Can you tell the difference between the original and the echo? I must say: this idea of echo makes me very gun-shy when it comes to posting.

4) My time spent on Google Reader has definitely, definitely crowded out my other reading, and I don't feel good about this shift. At Swarthmore, it's common and often fashionable to complain about the insularity of the campus and how bubble-like it is. I'm beginning to view "the bubble" and "the ivory tower" differently. To constantly be at the cusp of engagement with the world through the Internet and the blogosphere...to always be reading words that are no more than a day old...I need respite from it all. To be sure, I am a neophyte in the blogging world and I feel a bit like a newborn babe when it comes to everything that is happening right at this moment. But this sense of novelty I enjoy and want to preserve. It comes from the four years I spent hidden away between library stacks and it enables me to approach all that is now critically.

I need to crawl back in bed with The Iliad, words that have rung true for centuries. Otherwise, I fear I will be swept away in the sea of voices, lost forever.

Bay Area Culture

2009-03-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago, I had a college friend come visit me here in San Francisco. On one of the afternoons that he was here, we walked pretty aimlessly around the city but eventually went to hang out by City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. After perusing the eclectic titles shown in the window display, we made our way towards Vesuvio, which is famous for having been a hangout spot for a lot of the Beat writers, including Kerouac and Ginsberg. Fittingly, the alleyway that separates City Lights and Vesuvio is named Jack Kerouac Alley. Well, in Jack Kerouac Alley, there was a street performer sitting up against the wall plucking away on his guitar a Dylan song and singing plaintively. Next to him, there was a group of four to five guys and girls dancing. Bodies and limbs were being flung every which way, there was a lot of stomping and stumbling as it was obviously free-form interpretive dance. One of the dancers saw that we were admiring the whole scene and beckoned us to join. He took a couple of steps towards us, stopped a second and then said, with conspiracy in his voice, "Right here. This is the energy that created the universe." We walked into Vesuvio and nursed a couple rounds of Anchor Steam beer.

Fertile Ground

2009-03-25T22:52:00.001-07:00

Unemployment is not a good thing. I don't think anyone will tell you otherwise. Certainly, as we hear consecutive updates about job losses and the unemployment rate creeping higher and higher, nobody is rejoicing.

Last week, though, The Economist Magazine published a special report on entrepreneurship that I found to be uplifting. With the kind of economy we have right now, a lot of people are losing their jobs through no fault of their own, and a lot of recent graduates are struggling to get their first jobs as well. Not only that, there are tons of people who find themselves underemployed, working at jobs that don't fully utilize their potential. A colleague of mine recently told me a story about a lawyer friend working shifts at a gas station. In economics-speak, we might call all this "labor displacement." It isn't that the growing hordes of the jobless are unemployable or lazy or stupid, it is just that the ground beneath the economy as we know it is shifting.

How to put a positive spin on this dismal reality? Well, with so much displaced labor, there has got to be something that is now in surplus. But what is it? For one thing, there is a lot of excess, underutilized talent floating around. And when you get a lot of free-floating, talented individuals from just about every industry, a likely byproduct is the creative recombination of skills into something novel, something innovative. All of the brainpower that has recently been laid off, after it has exhausted the thrill of severance pay and newfound freedom, well, it has to find something new to feed upon. I find this not only highly comforting but also greatly exciting. High unemployment rate = fertile ground for entrepreneurship! It's just like science! (That's why I used the "equal" sign.)

Job

2009-03-22T22:49:00.001-07:00

I want a job with IBM, doing this. But how do I get it?

Photo Blog

2009-03-20T10:06:00.001-07:00

I recently reconnected with an old high school friend and he showed me his photo blog. I find it very impressive, and I find the wordpress formatting to be very flattering for the photos. Now I've got to get my act together and take some pictures.

But check it out here. Maybe you'll recognize some neighborhoods.

Spring Forward, the (Tragedy) of Suburbia

2009-03-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

In Quito, there wasn't much in the way of seasons. Total daylight varied by maybe forty-five minutes over the course of the year. There was a rainy season to be sure and a dry season as well. But four, well-defined seasons? Forget about it.

Now that I live at a higher latitude, things are a bit different. The days are lengthening noticeably. The golden sun dips into the ocean progressively later each day. Freezing cold mornings, blue skies, warm days, my goodness! it's spring! and what a feeling! What does springtime conjure up in my mind?

Lazy afternoons spent soaking up the sun on Parrish Beach... But more than that, with a Proustian bent, I remember whizzing down hills on a bike in the neighborhood park in Denver suburbs, breathing pungently fresh air mixed in with the occasional gnat, breezing by cattails that lined the creeks streaming by. I remember rollerblading, playing street hockey in the cul-de-sac only a couple blocks away from home, collapsing onto a friend's lawn in exhaustion and being overtaken by the itchiness of rolling around in grass. I remember throwing tennis balls against the stone facade of my house, diving to snag erratic rebounds so that I could play baseball like the Big Cat, Andres Galaragga.

What is it about these pleasant childhood memories spent outdoors in springtime air? They have such a suburban hue, or stench, depending on how you look at it. Subsidized by cheap energy and the interstate highway system. My nostalgia for life in Denver 'burbs, though, is not tinged with any sense of guilt. Hell, I think I'd still like some day to raise kids in the kind of safe neighborhood in which I grew up. I want it all. I want to tread lightly on the environment, I want all the material goods that come from industrial development, I want the safety and sense of space that comes from living in a suburban neighborhood...

Ahhh...springtime!

Engineering Bias: a Transaction Cost?

2009-03-09T20:21:00.001-07:00

It's very tempting to view today's energy problem as essentially an engineering problem. A quick scan through popular media turns up all sorts of reporting about the promise of new devices that will help us reduce our energy consumption and thus both our environmental footprint and our dependence on foreign oil. On the supply side, we hear about the need to invest in solar and wind power, or just more efficient, cleaner methods of extracting energy. On the demand side, we hear about pushing for fuel efficiency in vehicles, energy efficiency in our buildings and everyday appliances. These are all good things, positive developments to get excited about. But the one thing that such "solutions" have in common is an engineering perspective, and I worry about this engineering bias.

For one thing, viewing the energy problem in this way allows the layperson to deflect personal responsibility. Climate change? Dependence on foreign oil? Air pollution? These are problems for engineers to solve, one might say. Such a deflection of personal responsibility dictates business-as-usual for all non-engineers. That kind of mentality is worrying when there are demonstrated gains to be had in human behavioral changes.

Also, single-minded focus on engineering solutions crowds out more systematic ways of thinking. Gains in energy efficiency do not have to come at the level of devices. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a lecture delivered by a PhD student from Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency. The student's research related to CDMs (Clean Development Mechanisms), which are institutionalized methods for industrialized nations to curb their own environmental footprint by offsetting carbon emmissions more cost-effectively in developing countries. The student observed that transportation systems are being overlooked as an offsetting mechanism and proceeded to analyze the cause of this prejudice. Turns out that the panel that is responsible for approving CDMs is staffed by engineers. It also turns out that it's much harder to quantify to the satisfaction of an engineer's standards the carbon offsets that result from developing a transportation system. (Warning: I am definitely butchering the nuances of the research and the empirical analysis of the causal relations, but this is my take on the talk.) When you take into account these things, it begins to make sense why a panel of engineers might overlook systematic improvements in favor of device-level projects. The idea behind CDMs is to provide an efficient platform for industrialized nations to reduce carbon emissions, but it appears that an engineering bias presents a significant transaction cost that hinders the program's cost-efficiency.

So what big systems-level improvements might we be overlooking right now? Well, this is a thought piece, so I am just going to throw some ideas out there. In addition to transportation systems, I think that the energy-intensity of agriculture needs to be looked at more systematically. And I think policymakers need to think more seriously about reversing urban sprawl and stepping up urban revitalization.

Two Metabolisms

2009-02-25T19:58:00.000-08:00

A long time ago (2002), in Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart introduced the idea that we need to think about materials as belonging to two different metabolisms, namely a technical metabolism and a biological metabolism. The authors argued that waste predominantly results when the two metabolisms get mixed up and confused with each other in "monstrous hybrids."

It's an interesting idea that I believe is fundamentally right, but it seems that putting the idea into practice is (surprise!) infinitely more complicated. (An interesting article about McDonough and his complicated visionary status can be found here.)

But I'm not writing to talk about the practicality of zero-waste design, I'm writing to extend the idea of two metabolisms to energy consumption and energy efficiency. I've been casually grappling with the idea for a bit now, but I think I've come to something of a revelation with the aid of revisiting Cradle to Cradle.

Just like materials, our energy consumption can be thought of as belonging to two different metabolisms. One industrial/technical and the other ecological/biological. Energy efficiency makes sense only in the context of industrial energy, because industrial energy belongs to a metabolism whose primary input is carbon-emitting fossil fuels. With regards to the ecological metabolism, energy efficiency makes no difference whatsoever.

All the hoopla these days is about increasing the efficiency of industrial energy. I'm beginning to believe that we should really be focusing our efforts on first understanding and then manipulating the interaction between industrial metabolism and ecological metabolism. Okay, that's a bit confusing. But bear with me, this is an idea in progress.

Let's take buildings as an example. We could and indeed are beginning to focus our energies on how to make buildings more energy-efficient. Such efforts belong to the industrial camp. But if we stop thinking about buildings as devices to be engineered, if we get away from the industrial logic of energy efficiency, then we get a different picture and a whole set of different questions. How can we get buildings to partake in an ecological metabolism? How can we capitalize on natural energy flows (regardless of efficiency) to satisfy our energy demands?

In my opinion, we should be trying to maximize our dependence on ecological metabolism while minimizing our dependence on industrial metabolism. Rather than focus on the efficiency of devices, we ought to focus on how to be more a part of an ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think there is potential in exploring the different types of thinking that follow from the different types of metabolisms. Is it possible to reduce our dependence on industrial metabolic logic?

On Being a Cog

2009-02-23T22:36:00.000-08:00

Some quotes that I believe deserve to be read:

"Willie, aren't you wise to the Navy yet? It's all child's play. The work has been fragmentized by a few excellent brains at the top, on the assumption that near-morons will be responsible for each fragment...Whether it's the fragment of coding, the fragment of engineering, the fragment of gunnery--you'll find them all predigested and regulated to a point where you'd have to search the insane asylums to find people who could muff the jobs. Remember that one point. It explains, and reconciles you to, all the Navy Regulations, and all the required reports, and all the emphasis on memory and obedience, and all the standardized ways of doing things. The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and commonsense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, 'How would I do this if I were a fool?' Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you'll never go wrong." (The Caine Mutiny [Wouk] 105)

---

"I watch the cars go by for a while on the highway. Something lonely about them. Not lonely--worse. Nothing. Like the attendant's expression when he filled the tank. Nothing. A nothing curb, by some nothing gravel, at a nothing intersection, going nowhere.

Something about the car drivers, too. They look just like the gasoline attendant, staring straight ahead in some private trance of their own. I haven't seen that since...since Sylvia noticed it the first day. They all look like they're in a funeral procession.

Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly, as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he was looking at us. I see it now because we've been away from it for a long time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to be moving at a steady maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want to get somewhere, as though what's here right now is just something to get through. The drivers seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather than where they are...

Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We've been out of it for so long I'd forgotten all about it." (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [Pirsig] 333)

---

"It is precisely his fantastic dreams, his most banal stupidity, that he will wish to keep hold of, with the sole purpose of confirming to himself (as if it were so very necessary) that human beings are still human beings and not piano keys, which, though played upon with their own hands by the laws of nature themselves, are in danger of being played so much that outside the calendar it will be impossible to want anything. And more than that: even if it should indeed turn out that he is a piano key, if it were even proved to him mathematically and by natural science, he would still not come to reason, but would do something contrary on purpose, solely out of ingratitude alone; essentially to have his own way. And if he finds himself without means--he will invent destruction and chaos, he will invent all kinds of suffering, and still have his own way! He will launch a curse upon the world, and since man alone is able to curse (that being his privilege, which chiefly distinguishes him from other animals), he may achieve his end by the curse alone--that is, indeed satisfy himself that he is a man and not a piano key!" (Notes from Underground [Dostoevsky] 30-31)

The Iliad, Probabilistically

2009-02-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

I am reading The Iliad right now, and as I make my way through Homer's epic poem, I find myself referring constantly back to a point that Taleb makes in his book, Fooled by Randomness:

My very first impression upon a recent rereading of The Iliad, the first in my adulthood, is that the epic poet did not judge his heroes by the result. Heroes won and lost battles in a manner that was totally independent of their own valor; their fate depended upon totally external forces, generally the explicit agency of the scheming gods (not devoid of nepotism). Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Patrocles does not strike us as a hero because of his accomplishments (he was rapidly killed) but because he preferred to die than see Achilles sulking into inaction. (34)

Taleb's observation really drives home for me the appeal of probabilistic thinking. Probabilistic thinking provides a way to understand the real limitations of individual agency and gives the prominence of circumstance/ground/luck a fair reckoning. From Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, a similar idea:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference. (60)

Probabilistic thinking once again! An elegant way to deal with uncertainty, isn't it? A clarion call to live honorably, to live with probabilistic greatness, regardless of result.

Incentives in the Classroom

2009-02-17T23:13:00.000-08:00

In a recent TED Talk, Bill Gates talks about the importance of great teachers in shaping leaders. He discusses the incredible variability in quality between teachers and ultimately suggests that a new model needs to be adopted to encourage the professional development of teachers. With his business acumen and demonstrated success in the corporate world, he suggests tools that he is no doubt familiar with:

1) Employing better technology with the video monitoring of classrooms, both for the benefit of surveillance as well as for the benefit of distribution and study.
2) Smarter incentives for teachers.

I really don't like any of these two suggestions. Truth be told, I dislike them with some kind of intensity. The great teachers I've had in my life have always emphasized their respective decisions to become teachers as not being motivated by money. What happens in a classroom is a special thing that exists outside the logic of business operations. That for me is the big picture argument against both 1) and 2).

In theory, video monitoring promises great returns. How else could I have access to all the great lectures distributed for free on TED.com? But TED Talks are a peculiar case. They are lectures and not discussions. Invariably, they are not interactive with the audience. Great teachers respond to the different personalities of different classrooms spontaneously and organically. Great teachers engage the unique interests and backgrounds of their students. Videos do none of these things. Yes, videos can play a role in the dissemination of information, but great teachers do far more than engage in a one-way flow of information from teacher to student. A recorded lecture commodifies a lesson plan. I cannot be inspired by a commodity. In a video, I would never have experienced the palpable passion that Mr. Maggio demonstrated for literature. Any move towards the commodification of education goes against everything that I have learned both as a teacher and as a student.

As for its other purported purpose, surveillance, video monitoring seems to wage a silent war against accountability and trust. The trust and mutual respect in a successful classroom cannot be legislated from the outside. It has to be built from within the classroom, from the ground up. In my opinion, video monitoring would undermine teacher efforts on this moral dimension.

What about smarter incentives? For one thing, incentives require measurements. If teachers are incentivized by the measurable amount in which their students' scores improve on some standardized test, then teachers will begin to teach to the test. There are so many problems with this that I don't even know where to begin. So I won't.

Barry Schwarz says in his excellent talk that we have thus far responded to the financial crisis by trying to improve the regulatory environment and devise smarter incentives. Regulations and incentives are important, but they neglect, according to Barry Schwarz, practical wisdom. The exercise of practical wisdom takes place independently of regulations and incentives. In fact, Schwarz cites a psychological study that demonstrates how the presence of financial incentives can undermine basic goodwill and the exercise of moral wisdom. Interesting stuff. People should behave ethically because it is the right thing to do and not in order to receive some monetary reward.

Bill Gates' suggestions about how we can improve teacher quality are efforts to improve the efficiency of regulations and incentives. Something important is missing. I agree that great teachers should be rewarded and paid handsomely. The service done by great teachers is truly immeasurable. But treating education in a business manner undermines what education is all about.

Nicholas Negroponte, in his talk about One Laptop per Child, discusses his decision to make his organization nonprofit. He says one of the greatest advantages of being nonprofit is that you can attract the best people in the world. Why? Because the people that you attract by being nonprofit are attracted by the merits of the project at hand. Because people who are the absolute best at what they do are seldom motivated by money alone. In my mind, what goes for the nonprofit world goes for what happens in the classroom as well.

Energy Perceptions

2009-02-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

I have joined livingtheamericangreen.org as a contributor. So, when appropriate, I will be cross-posting on both this and that blog.

There certainly is a lot of talk about being green these days. A lot of publicity on a lot of different fronts. Given the media exposure, I think it would be prudent to see how well perceptions match up with reality.

As I am sure many a commentator has noted before, there is a truly disproportionate amount of attention being paid to three letters in particular: M-P-G. A lot of people seem to regard the mpg of your vehicle as a merit badge, a barometer for just how "green" you are. The unfortunate truth is that mpg represents but a small slice of the energy pie, even when considering the transportation sector in isolation. First, we should be concerned not about miles, but about passenger miles. Five people carpooling in a gas-guzzler surely beats five people each driving their own hybrid car. Second, we need to account for the embodied energy in the production of a new vehicle. With regards to transportation, we should ultimately be thinking about how to take cars off the road, and how to get people to share cars, bike, walk or use public transportation.

The outsized attention being paid to vehicular fuel efficiency ought to give us pause. How else do the various loci of media scrutiny skew public attention on energy issues? There are a lot of commercials these days about the wondrous possibilities of a smart electric grid and smart devices (vehicles included). Is all the hoopla deserved? Does it crowd out other energy interests? By many estimates, agriculture accounts for fully one-fifth of U.S. petroleum consumption. But is one-fifth of our attention being directed towards increasing the energy efficiency of agricultural practices? I don't have any numbers to back me up on this, but I would guess not.

Media scrutiny is important because it plays a role in shaping the public conscious and directing public as well as private funds towards the development of various initiatives. It would behoove the "green movement" to think about how the allocation of media attention matches up with underlying realities.

Information Anxiety

2009-02-10T11:01:00.001-08:00

The Internet makes available a lot of information, and its democratizing effect really is unbelievable. If you are at all curious about or hungry for what is out there, though, the sheer amount and variety of information can be overwhelming.

So this is my plug for Google Reader. It takes a modest amount of time to familiarize yourself with all of the tools, but it allows you to conveniently centralize your information consumption and to keep up with sources that you might not visit with high frequency.

The information flow is still a bit overwhelming. I currently have 256 new items. But Google Reader allows you to manage the flow with some efficiency. The function that I am most excited about is the "Share" function. Rather than have an anonymous crowd filter Internet content, you can have those people whose opinions you respect and interests you share perform a filtering function. In this way, you get to see quality articles that you would never have seen otherwise. Plus, the "Share" function doubles as an archiving tool.

Now, the thing to do is get on Google Reader and find a group of people that will actively share. As with all network ideas, the "Share" function becomes effective only after reaching some critical mass. I have not reached the critical mass yet, and that is why I am writing this entry.

Bringing my connectivity up a notch...Many thanks to one James and one Benjamin for directing me to Google Reader.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2009-02-03T20:18:00.001-08:00

I have nothing but praise for Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is informative, engaging, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I especially enjoyed the ecological perspective that Pollan employs as well as the intellectual humility with which he writes. Intellectual humility, by the way, I find myself prizing more and more highly everyday.

Ecological Perspective. We often think of literary analysis and the tools employed in such analysis as being useful for, well, literary analysis alone. But Pollan demonstrates just how far a simple literary conceit, a metaphor, can go in explaining the way behavior is organized. How a Cartesian metaphor largely explains the contemporary model of industrial agriculture. How an ecological conceit yields a totally different specimen, the Polyface Farm in Virginia that calls itself "beyond organic," or "postindustrial." The implications are dramatic for a term that I've been thinking a lot about recently, "efficiency":

Most of the efficiencies in an industrial system are achieved through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over...By contrast, the efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence--by definition, the very opposite of simplification...Polyface Farm is built on the efficiencies that come from mimicking relationships found in nature...(214-215)

I still need to do a bit more thinking about this, but I think the distinction between industrial efficiency and ecological efficiency is important and exciting. Especially with all the attention that "energy efficiency" has received recently.

Intellectual Humility. The book's NYTimes reviewer criticizes Pollan for being too nice a guy, for failing to judge when judging was clearly called for. To be sure, Pollan is neither didactic nor vituperative in his style, but I take the book's balanced argumentation as a sign of intellectual humility, something that Pollan clearly values as well:

The problem is that once science has reduced a complex phenomenon to a couple of variables, however important they may be, the natural tendency is to overlook everything else, to assume that what you can measure is all there is, or at least all that really matters. When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. (148)

I like this a lot: "a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery..." On buying Argentina-grown asparagus from Whole Foods, Pollan writes:

The ethical implications of buying such a product are almost too numerous and knotty to sort out: There's the expense, there's the prodigious amounts of energy involved, the defiance of seasonality, and the whole question of whether the best soils in South America should be devoted to growing food for affluent and overfed North Americans. And yet you can also make a good argument that my purchase of organic asparagus from Argentina generates foreign exchange for a country desperately in need of it, and supports a level of care for that country's land--farming without pesticides or chemical fertilizer--it might not otherwise receive. Clearly my bunch of asparagus had delivered me deep into the thicket of trade-offs that a global organic marketplace entails. (175)

The material in this book could easily have lended itself to a rhetorical attack on the vices of industrial agriculture. But Pollan refuses to deliver on that account, and the final product is incredibly refreshing. Though I am none the wiser as to how one ought to disentangle the moral knot presented.

The Journey Defines the Place

2009-02-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's because I was an English major in college and studying literature has deeply informed my worldview. But, for me, this world and this life that we bumble our way through is most enriched when populated with stories. I say "enriched," but maybe "enchanted" better captures what I'm going for. Because stories, as meaning-giving, hermeneutic devices, imbue our discrete experiences with what is often for me a sacred dimension. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo that is.

Here is what I mean. A couple of days ago, I drove thirty miles from my sister's house to the Snoqualmie Falls. As I am prone to do, I got lost along the way and took a detour, bringing the trip to something more like fifty miles. The detour was both worthwhile and frustrating. I got to see beautiful parts of the Pacific Northwest that I would not otherwise have gotten to see, but I was also obviously delayed from arriving at my ultimate destination, the Snoqualmie Falls. Finally, after asking for directions at a gas station, I found my way to a lookout point. I parked my car in the parking lot and walked all of ten yards to a gazebo from which I could enjoy a quite stunning view of the falls. An hour of driving, getting lost, asking for directions, and thirty short seconds of walking. And there it was, Snoqualmie Falls as though in a postcard picture.

The waterfall was impressive but very much a letdown. Gazing down from the gazebo platform, I remembered another similarly sized waterfall I went to see last year, El Paílón del Diablo in Baños, Ecuador. To get to that waterfall, I biked for an hour and then hiked twenty minutes before having the waterfall unveiled to me from behind formidable rock formations. I could hear the thunderous roar of the waterfall well before I saw it, and as I approached, anticipation built even as my body tired. Undoubtedly, the path to the waterfall had been paved in a very literal way to ease my journey, but still, I felt that my view of the waterfall had been in some way earned. Seeing El Paílón del Diablo was a qualitatively different experience than seeing the Snoqualmie Falls. Much more gratifying.

So the journey defines the place. And what else is a journey but a story? Another example. This one from Kerouac's On the Road:

The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight at Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn--a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up the Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Frisco romances--a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, "Mama when do we get home to Truckee?" And Truckee itself, homey Truckee, and then down the hill to the flats of Sacramento. I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air--air you can kiss--and palms. Along the storied Sacramento River on a superhighway; into the hills again; up, down; and suddenly the vast expanse of a bay (it was just before dawn) with the sleepy lights of Frisco festooned across. Over the Oakland Bay Bridge I slept soundly for the first time since Denver; so that I was rudely jolted in the bus station at Market and Fourth into the memory of the fact that I was three thousand two hundred miles from my aunt's house in Paterson, New Jersey. I wandered out like a haggard ghost, and there she was, Frisco--long, bleak streets with trolley wires all shrouded in fog and whiteness. (60)

Kerouac presents San Francisco in its physical context, in its geographic setting. For Kerouac, having hitchhiked, bused and driven three thousand miles from the East Coast, San Francisco is a physical destination in a way that it isn't for me. After reading this passage, it dawned on me that I arrived in San Francisco by being dropped from the sky. My experience of the city is as a result qualitatively different from Kerouac's. Lacking a substantive journey to precede arrival, emptied of history, stripped of meaning, a city is nothing more than a bunch of concrete and glass, an abstraction of industrial development.

It is in this light that I have begun to understand technology. Technology shortchanges the journey in order to deliver the place. Snoqualmie Falls delivered to me. San Francisco delivered to me. What energy did I expend personally to arrive at these places?

I think this is why I experience aversion to things like Facebook. Facebook has the power to deprive social interaction of journey. As far as maintaining a social network goes, Facebook is infinitely more convenient than having to go through the trouble of composing a thoughtful e-mail let alone scrupulously handwriting a letter. Convenience is Facebook's utility. But at the same time, its convenience shortchanges the usual journey that is required of keeping up a healthy interaction.

The same logic can be applied to food. What knowledge do we possess of the journey that the food we consume took in order to arrive on our dinner plates? Most often, nothing. This is the magic of industrial agriculture and technology. Food delivered to us. Unfortunately, the anonymous food that we consume, and our ignorance of its journey, deprives the food of any real meaning. There is little to no enchantment involved in scarfing down a BigMac. We enjoy it only in an abstract sense.

None of this is to say that I am a Luddite. Believe me you, I enjoy my BigMac or McPollo as much as the next guy.

Thoughts inspired by The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan on which I will write more...

Online Community

2009-01-30T19:14:00.001-08:00

I picked up a print edition of the New York Times today. It was a refreshing change from reading the Internet version. Its flimsy, cumbersome pages so tactile, so present in my hands. Needless to say, browsing a print edition is decidedly different from browsing a web page. With a hard copy, you are forced to see an article in visual context, which in turn directs your attention to articles you wouldn't otherwise notice, whereas you are only able to read a full article online in isolation of other stories. The experience is substantively different.

It got me thinking, though. Ever since graduating from college, I have spent a ton more time online than ever before. Why?

1) Community. At a small residential college like Swarthmore, you are much more a member of your immediate community. Now, deprived of that tight-knit and physically-bounded community, I use the Internet to leapfrog my more immediate physical surroundings. I don't know the names of any of my neighbors sadly enough.

2) Information consumption. In an academic setting, information tends to flow in the context of human-to-human interactions. In the classroom. In the dormitory lounge or hallway. Now, information streams to me overwhelmingly via digital signal. Online periodicals. Recorded lectures. Blogs.

3) Increasingly sedentary life. If you are working any kind of white-collar, entry-level job, then your circumstances almost certainly dictate that you spend more time sitting in one place than ever before. The Internet provides a convenient way to feign hard work.

I can't quite pinpoint what I want to say in this entry, but I think I am beginning to see the Internet and connectivity in a different way. Web 2.0?

---

I spend a lot of time on NYTimes.com. I used to be a big fan of their feature that allowed you to save a page under "My Saved Pages." It was like a scrapbook of my favorite news clippings, making it super easy to pull up old articles and also to see what other people had deemed worthy of saving. Recently, the website eliminated this feature. WHY? How do other people archive or flag articles that they want to store away for some reason or another? (Seriously, I want to hear answers.)

The other feature I really like on NYTimes.com is looking at the articles under their "Most E-mailed" or "Most Discussed" tabs. These tabs help differentiate the overwhelming amount of information in a self-sorting way. Essentially, they crowd-source the arbitration of quality, which is no easy task. Not really a novel thing at all, but when I think critically about the way I surf the Internet, I think that my methods are lacking. I don't think I use the Internet to its full potential. E-mail. Online Banking. NYTimes.com. Wikipedia. Amazon. Various blogs. Pretty much, that is the extent of my Internet use.

It seems like differentiating quality through a crowd-sourcing mechanism is exactly what Digg does. Cool idea that I am currently looking into. Seriously, I need to reconsider my surfing methods and bring my connectivity to a new level. Especially considering the amount of time I spend online. Yeah, I'm ready to elevate things.

Going Kerouac on Everybody's Ass

2009-01-27T23:39:00.001-08:00

I watched "Step Brothers" the other day. Funny movie. Made me laugh.

There is a job interview scene in the movie where Dale, the character played by John C. Reilly, explains twenty some years of unemployment by saying that he had "gone Kerouac on everybody's ass." Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny.

So, you know, I've been wrestling with the idea of responsibility recently. Especially after Obama talked about "a new era of responsibility" being required of us. Big important questions like, you know, what does responsibility even mean? Or: did Sal Paradise live responsibly?

Because, don't you see, maybe Sal was living more responsibly than any of us. Maybe he was just being responsible to the gift of life, and that's why he gripped life so hard and then ripped it again so hard.

This column about institutional thinking helps me understand what I think is an important piece of the puzzle. So often we frame questions about important decisions in terms of ourselves. This is the way we are trained to think. What am I passionate about? What will make me happiest? Thus, the archetypal journey of self-discovery makes intuitive sense to us. Kerouac occupies a prominent place in our collective conscious. We aspire to live passionately, to dig life right alongside Dean Moriarty.

I guess Kennedy's famous exhortation to "ask not" hinges upon the distinction between individual and institutional thinking. When thinking about responsibility, the important question is, What are we responsible to? Ourselves? Or to the various groups to which we belong? Nation? Family? Or here are a couple of old possibilities that might appear extremely novel: History? Our forebears? What responsibility do I have towards George Washington and his men on that bleak winter night?

Deficit Spending

2009-01-24T17:14:00.000-08:00

In November 2008, Thomas Friedman wrote a column urging young people to save more:

I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: "You don't know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn't be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.

Is Thomas Friedman offering sound economic advice here? Certainly, the importance of saving seems to be the new mantra these days. Lots of emphasis on "bargain meals" and such. But, really, should everybody be saving? Should we all be hoarding money in preparation for financial endtimes?

Steven Levitt puts the question nicely in his blog entry, titled, "When it Comes to Saving, Who Would You Listen to: My Wife or Milton Friedman?" (Note that Levitt is speaking of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, and not Thomas Friedman, economic layperson and obviously in cahoots with Levitt's wife.)

A lot of people blame today's economic crisis on excessive borrowing. Loans were too often extended to people not worthy of the credit. A fair assessment. But does this mean that borrowing is necessarily a bad thing? No.

Enter probabilistic thinking. The US government currently operates at a deficit and all signs point towards this deficit increasing dramatically during Obama's first years as president. This is not a bad thing. Economists are generally in consensus that large fiscal stimulus (read: deficit spending) is required to get the economy back on its feet. But there is an important distinction to be made when talking about the deficit, the difference between structural deficit and actual deficit. The structural deficit can be thought of as a probabilistic deficit: do spending programs exceed expected tax revenues (which can be calculated using the economy's long-run probabilistic unemployment rate). So Obama's challenge is this: to simultaneously increase current actual deficit spending while eliminating Bush-era structural deficits.

How does this all relate to the initial question about the prudence of saving? Well, the same principles that apply to government deficit spending apply to personal finance, especially for young people with long time horizons to consider. It is okay to borrow and to spend so long as you are probabilistically-structurally sound. In fact, your spending patterns need change from what they were a year ago only if there has been an underlying, probabilistic shift in your expected, life-time income stream. Consumption-smoothing, after all, is one of the primary functions of financial markets.

As for Thomas Friedman's advice? He with his words is single-handedly responsible for a statistically significant drop in consumer confidence, and we should blame him at least partially for our current woes.

Of course, probabilistic thinking sometimes or oftentimes runs counter to emotional thinking. Thus the conflict between the coldly rational Milton Friedman and the surely sentimental wife of Steven Levitt (why she must surely be sentimental I have no idea).

Maybe I am just trying to rationalize my current spending habits.

Is Wall Street One Big Casino?

2009-01-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

If you are a student of economics, then conversations with other students of economics about the economy generally go relatively smoothly. But if you are a student of economics and you engage someone without a background in economics, then conversations about the economy can get messy very quickly. This is because economists take things for granted. And a lot of times, economists have a hard time explaining why they take certain things for granted.

A colleague of mine once told me that the stock market is like a casino and investing in the stock market is no different from gambling. This comment annoyed me, but I had trouble articulating why this perception was so misguided.

Well, now, as "Wall Street" is demonized in the press and described as being fundamentally separate and in opposition to "Main Street," I feel the need to go back and reconsider that statement about the stock market being like a casino. The relevant question is, Why do financial markets exist? It is a daunting question, and I won't pretend to answer it thoroughly. But off the top of my head, I come up with the following reasons:

1) To provide liquidity. What is this thing, "liquidity," and why is it important? Another daunting question, but I will try to answer it as simply as possible. Liquidity allows companies to raise funds for the expansion of their activities. Fundraising can take many forms, including but not limited to initial public offerings, issuance of bonds (debt), or borrowing from banks.

2) To allow for the smoothing of consumption. Nobody wants to have to save $500,000 before buying a $500,000 house. Mortgages and the credit market allow people to smooth their consumption and savings over time so that the $500,000 can be paid incrementally over time.

3) To allow public ownership of equity. When Karl Marx looked at the economy and its organization, he separated society into two broad categories: capitalists and laborers. The existence of Wall Street, in theory at least, fundamentally blurs this distinction as laborers can increasingly become owners of capital.

These reasons that I have listed, I am sure, are crude and full of holes. And I am sure that other reasons exist as well. But my hope is that they show at the very least that "Wall Street" and "Main Street" are not in antagonistic relation to one another. Also, despite what might appear in the press, Wall Street does not exist solely to feed the greed of super wealthy individuals and corporations. In fact, Robert Shiller, a Yale economist, argues that further expansion and democratization of financial infrastructure is required to prevent crises like the one that we find ourselves in today. To people who regard Wall Street as one big casino, that kind of proposal sounds particularly counterintuitive.

In the past, when I have been confronted with statements or questions about the economy from people without a background in economics, I have often felt frustrated over my inability to respond intelligently or intelligibly. I ascribed my failures to explain economic thinking to the failings of my own intelligence or alternatively to pitfalls in my education. I don't discount the former possibility, but I am as well increasingly convinced that more attention needs to be paid in education to the issue of communication. Economists must learn to communicate economic thinking. I think the political process in the United States would benefit at the very least as economics takes a more central role in the public conscious.

Zen Thought of the Day

2009-01-15T10:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just the usual late afternoon letdown, but after all I've said about all these things today I just have a feeling that I've somehow talked around the point. Some could ask, "Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?"

The answer, of course, is no, you still haven't got anything licked. You've got to live right too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence...

...The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [Pirsig] 332)

Game-Changer

2009-01-14T15:16:00.000-08:00

When it comes to pub quizzes, the iPhone (or the Blackberry or the Google Phone) is a serious game-changer. Cheaters!

Union Square

2009-01-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

Walking from my apartment to Union Square...

past the sound of change rattling in a paper cup.

from a distance, a street performer blows lugubrious tunes from his tuba into the night.

Macy's, Neiman Marcus, The Cheesecake Factory, Victoria's Secret, Saks Fifth Avenue.

a crowd of professional-looking people gathered at the Weinstein Gallery, sipping on Sauvignon Blanc probably.

outside a hostel, two Japanese girls meet two Spaniards and are caught off guard by the besos laid on their cheeks.

Optimal Trajectory

2009-01-07T17:32:00.000-08:00

I was in Ecuador sitting at Mister Bagel with my sister, who was on vacation and visiting me at the time. We engaged in desultory conversation. The kind that picks up effortlessly on old themes but also wanders to new places, the kind that includes long unsolicited pauses but is also punctuated by random bursts of energy.

My sister mentioned a script that she had recently read, a forgettable, mediocre piece with a single phrase that had caught her attention. Optimal Trajectory. The idea is that for every person, given his/her beginning circumstances and innate ability, there exists an ideal path for that person's life. Divergence from this ideal path could be caused either exogenously or endogenously, but the idea is that the path exists.

An acquaintance of mine from the school I taught at walked into Mister Bagel, said hi to me, ordered a coffee to go and promptly left. I explained to my sister that he worked in the copy room at school, had been educated in Ecuador but spoke very good English. "Take that guy for example," my sister mused, "what do you think his optimal trajectory is?"

I did not respond kindly to the question, or for that matter, to the idea of "optimal trajectory," which so captivated my sister's imagination. The question, in my mind, presumed limitations on the poor guy's life. That the infinite possibilities of his life could be succinctly captured in as crude a concept as optimal trajectory...the whole idea really rubbed me the wrong way. In my mind, I recoiled at the terminology, denounced it as dehumanizing and reductive. I told my sister as much. Surprised at this reaction, she prodded me to further explain.

When I hear the word "optimal," I think of calculus and optimization. When I hear the word "trajectory," I think of projectile motion and mechanical physics. Put together, the phrase "optimal trajectory," borrows from mathematical and physical models to describe human life. Human life! The irreducible beauty, the most precious of all things...human life! Reduced! Abstracted! Poor guy! (Needless to say, I received a liberal arts education.)

---

Thuon, our Vietnamese guide from Hanoi on this family trip of ours, is 26 years old. By my calculation, that puts his birth in the year 1982, only six years after the conclusion of Vietnam's prolonged civil war. Only three years after the brief Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. Thuon is college-educated and therefore among the elite in his country. By his estimate, about ten to twenty percent of all high school graduates continue onto higher education. At University, he studied tourism and English, but his English, while respectable, is rudimentary at best. I have to strain to understand his tour guide explanations, nodding only to be polite.

Occasionally, though, I ask him some questions in hopes of gaining the Vietnamese perspective on things. "What stereotypes do the Vietnamese have of Americans?" "Yaas," he replies. "No, no. I mean...hmm. Do the Vietnamese have bad feelings towards American tourists?" "Yaas."

I give up. Thuon is among the elite in his country, and yet in the frustrations of our communication, it dawns on me just how different my world of opportunities is from his. Here he is, with a university degree, catering to the whims of a Taiwanese family on vacation, making about $300 a month. Even were he transplanted to the United States and given citizenship, he would see such a different country from the one that I have called my own.

---

Optimal trajectory? While I see in the phrase the unforgivable crime of dehumanization, my sister explains to me, she sees the world through the lens of policy, and the idea of optimal trajectory serves as a tool for thinking about policymaking. While the terminology might be imperfect, the unfortunate truth is that there are real limitations on the potential of individual lives.

Traveling over the last few weeks across the development gradient from the United States to Taiwan to Vietnam, I've realized just how unique and privileged my unique world of opportunities is, and I see the historical sacrifices that have been necessary to put me in this position. The feeling, more than ever, is not of guilt but of responsibility.

Outliers

2008-12-18T20:02:00.000-08:00

My friend Jonathan once said of Malcolm Gladwell, "He's a moron/genius." I confess that I bought and read Gladwell's most recent book, Outliers, while in transit. And after finishing the book, it was this moron/genius dichotomy that I found best described my feelings towards the book.

It's a page-turner. I don't know how to explain it, but it reads a bit like an adult, non-fiction Harry Potter. No, I take that back. Ew. Harry Potter is genuinely exciting, what I'm trying to say is that Gladwell certainly succeeds in keeping his readers in his thrall.

The book is about success, and its insights are interesting but certainly not world-shaking. For Gladwell, the figure-ground configuration shifts towards an emphasis on ground, and he writes about how our typical storytelling methods fail to convey the importance of ground. The argument is similar in ways to what I blogged about earlier, and, unlike David Brooks, I do read the book as a call to social action.

So the insight in the first part of the book is about the ubiquity of a favorable ground for the successful figure. The insight in the second part of the book is about cultural legacy. Gladwell draws extensively from a Dutch psychologist, Geert Hofstede, and discusses his cultural psychology in relation to plane crashes. Funny for me, because I read Hofstede while doing summer, Swarthmore-sponsored research. Basically, Gladwell tells us that cultural legacy determines much of our behavior in ways that we typically fail to detect.

This is the problem for me, I suppose. I feel like I have come to the same insights that Gladwell writes about on my own before. Not that my thoughts were particularly original, but I felt ownership over the ideas because I had arrived at them personally. But here Gladwell comes sauntering around the corner, and he packages ideas that were for me hard-earned into these hearty little packages that are just waiting to be consumed by his eager readers.

Unfortunately, I cannot help but feel that the very popularity of Gladwell's books has a cheapening effect on the ideas that he writes about. It is as if the value of knowledge exists in inverse relation to its accessibility. If an idea is made overly accessible, it diminishes in value. Who wants an idea to be whorish in its ways? Is Gladwell a pimp of ideas then, bringing previously exclusive ideas and granting access to a popular audience?

Another thing about the lessons of Outliers. They aren't very sexy. In stories, we often mythologize the successful as figures outstanding simply for who they are. We don't like to think about the circumstances that produced them. Part of what Gladwell does in his book, however, is dymystify successful people. These guys were tremendously lucky and hardworking. I imagine a successor book about love and relationships. What we imagine as a primal force noted for its independence to circumstance, Gladwell will dissect as being no more than the product of forces we'd rather not think about: geography, socioeconomic class, age, culture... Just not very sexy to think about.

Bloated Stomach

2008-12-16T21:50:00.000-08:00

I write now with a bloated stomach. I really can't help it. The food here is good, but that only begins to explain why I stuff myself so regularly when I am in Taiwan. Another thing is family. As my grandfather is fond of saying, "Food tastes better with more people." That's a crude translation from a much more elegant Chinese saying, but it does the job.

Ever since I was a kid, having a "healthy appetite" has been touted as a great virtue. On my way to getting a second bowl of rice, I'd have people complement me for being a "big eater." After my vertical growth stalled and took on horizontal dimensions, people could no longer call me a "growing boy," but the ethos of "big-eating" is hard to shake.

I chalk it up to my ancestors, who were Hakka farmers in the highlands of central Taiwan. I am only a couple of generations removed from a genuinely farming generation. As I am told, food could be hard to come by in those days. Thus "Have you eaten yet?" is the common greeting even today, taking the place of "Hello," or "How are you?"

Well, hell yeah, I've eaten today!

In the Taiwanese movie, "Eat Drink Man Woman," almost all of the important scenes are filmed around the dinner table. That is much the way that my family in Taiwan operates; social time is structured around meals. Lunch at 12:30; Dinner at 6:00. En punto. Eating is a family event, not something that you do hunched before a television set or over paperwork sitting on your desk at work. And to not eat your unreasonably large fill would be unappreciative. So, when I come back to Taiwan, I guess I eat to catch up on all of the meals I have missed with my relatives.

---

After disembarking flight BR017, I claimed my baggage, hopped a bus to the High-Speed Rail, took the two-hour train ride to Kaohsiung, then took the KMRT to the central train station, before finally walking ten minutes to arrive at my grandfather's house. Both the High-Speed Rail and the Mass Rapit Transit systems are new additions in the last couple of years. When I first started coming to Taiwan with my parents, one of my uncles would drive the four-and-a-half hours from Kaohsiung to the international airport in Taoyuan to pick us up. Obviously, some things have changed.

Upon arriving at my grandpa's place, I was greeted with an empty living room, where my grandpa spends most of his time. After looking around a bit, I found him in the backyard with a grizzled beard tending to a bonsai tree. Some things haven't changed. Not yet.

The Hub of My Travels

2008-12-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

At some point during my fourteen-hour flight earlier today, I started thinking about the number of times I have flown to Taiwan. It's hard to count, but my guess is about twenty times in all. Movie selections were poor (House Bunny being the only title I can remember), so I had my TV screen set to the interactive map option that gives you all the flight info you could ever want.

I started imagining superimposing my life's travels onto the map. I've lived in a bunch of different places--Englewood, CO; Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan; Swarthmore, PA; Quito, Ecuador; San Francisco, CA--and I've obviously visited even more places. If I drew a line to represent every single flight I've ever taken in my life, I think an interesting pattern would emerge. And the most interesting part of the pattern that I never truy realized: the Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan would certainly look like the central hub in my network of flights. I've only ever lived in Taiwan for six years, and I don't even have citizenship in the country. But I suppose it is, as the hub of my travels, more than any other place my home.

It's a strange thing for me to say. Because after flying in and out of the island for over twenty years, I cannot say that I have grown up with the place. Every time I return is a Proustian encounter: accumulated years of aging and change, as in the wrinkles of Marcel's grandmother, reveal themselves abruptly suddenly and render the familiar thing momentarily unrecognizable.

Spot On

2008-12-14T12:03:00.000-08:00

This op-ed is definitely on target with its analysis of dating and hooking up on college campuses today. It's pretty funny to think that there are serious professors studying the "hooking up" phenomenon today and thinking about it in terms of gender issues and larger social trends. I suppose it shows the possibilities of academic relevance, which is pretty cool, I guess.

Articles about today's young generation, written by those of an older generation, are so often tinged with nostalgia. This one is no different. Its author basically boils today's pseudo-dating formula down to three steps:

1) Hang out in a group with members of the opposite sex.
2) Pump alcohol into the system on occasion.
3) Hope shit happens.

Romance doesn't seem to be too much a part of the equation. In my mind, there is definitely something romantic about mustering the courage to ask a girl out on a date, like in all those old movies where some intrepid guy ventures out to the girl's dormitory and has the receptionist phone his darling. But what's the good of romance when hooking up is so easy?

Can older people really judge though? Does their nostalgia not simply represent a conservative unwillingness to change, or have we the younger people simply entered a degraded age?

Hmm... As with most if not all things, we'll save that question for another day.

Naruto Marathon

2008-12-13T23:06:00.000-08:00

I am all caught up now, I am emotionally drained, but it was worth it, and one thing is clear to me: I must train harder.

Equal Opportunity Employers

2008-12-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

I watched a snippet (snippet! isn't that a great word? it sounds dangerous, doesn't it?) of the public hearings in Washington, DC with the Big Three automakers today. Senators and CEOs: damn, that's a lot of old white guys in one room.

During the last public hearing, there was a lot of uproar about the use of corporate jets by the CEOs: Do you mean to say that you couldn't downgrade to a first-class commercial seat to get here from Detroit? As this uproar indicates, we are pretty clearly dealing with symbols here, as corporate jets, more than their cost, simply just don't jive well with the operative symbology of Main Street. Progress these days certainly seems to be measured in symbolic terms--the election of the first African-American to the Oval Office being Exhibit A. Sure, Obama's victory was a huge breakthrough in the fight for racial equality, but it is more than anything a symbolic victory. Hopefully, the symbolic resonance of Obama's victory does not mask the underlying reality of racism that persists despite the anomalous accomplishment that receives all the fanfare. Real work still needs to be done. A digression.

In any case, because symbols appear to be the currency of the day, I say that the face of corporate America needs to be changed. Enough with old white guys running the show.

Earlier today, I was listening to an NPR interview with a journalist about organized crime and its relationship with terrorism. According to the journalist, a key distinction between organized crime and terrorist groups is that crime organizations are typically driven by the profit motive whereas terrorist cells are more bent on ideology. As such, crime organizations practice equal opportunity employment almost to a fault, much more than even their law-abiding, legitimate business counterparts. Apparently, the Yakuza in Japan are one of the biggest employers of ethnic Koreans and Chinese in Japan. I don't really know how this is related to the Big Three automakers, but I think it's a nice contrast.

Maybe with all of the federal protection and union protection that the auto industry has received over the past several decades, the simple profit motive has been obscured, and auto workers have been able to hide a little bit too comfortably behind their awesome lobbying power in Washington, DC. Maybe stodgy old white guys need to be pushed aside; maybe the dog-eat-dog logic of capitalistic competition needs to be pumped into the sclerotic arteries of Detroit such that we can put a new face onto that symbol of American Industrialism, the auto industry. After all, we are dealing in symbols here. And Detroit could usher in a new face to represent Equal Opportunity Employment. Let's hire some Japanese people.

Thank You, David Brower!

2008-11-30T16:49:00.000-08:00

I went hiking with my sister this weekend at the Point Reyes National Seashore. Unbelievable scenery.

At the end of one trail, we found ourselves on a beach with huge waves crashing in and sending clouds of mist into the air. Right at the edge of the water, there was a guy staring out at the vast expanse of the Pacific. From where I saw him, he was no more than an outline of a figure facing the ocean with a hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. There was such simplicity in the image, a solitary figure in awe of natural beauty, just a couple of meters removed from the unfathomable strength of the ocean waves. As familiar and archetypal the image was, it struck me as immensely strange as well. He was so clearly outside the regular grid of routine, utility and worry in which we spend most of our time...how does one explain the type of appreciation embodied by a guy mesmerized by the ocean?

David Brower was the conservationist most responsible for protecting the Point Reyes area.

An Expanded Notion of Environmentalism

2008-11-24T11:58:00.001-08:00

Typically, when we think of environmentalism, we think of that brand of environmentalism espoused by John Muir and the Sierra Club. We think of the great outdoors, trees, green things and dirty hippies. But if you talk to a psychologist about environmentalism, then a very different conversation evolves. Environmental psychology is about the interplay between one's surroundings and one's behavior. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about environmental psychology as "The Power of Context," and attributes the precipitous decline of New York City's crime rate to simple environmental changes made particularly within the subway system. According to Gladwell, doing things like scrubbing the graffiti off subway walls and arresting fare-beaters can lead to significant changes in individual behavior.

So, at first glance, it appears that "environmentalism" refers to at least two disparate bodies of thought. In thinking about the work of Majora Carter, however, and her pitch to "Green the Ghetto," tree-hugging environmentalism and the psychological variety as well find common ground. Saving the environment (Mother Earth) can have everything to do with reducing crime, fighting the war on drugs, lifting people out of poverty, etc.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Cougars

2008-11-23T22:33:00.000-08:00

It must be cougar night tonight!

Fate and Politics

2008-11-23T18:31:00.000-08:00

From The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, a favorite quote of mine:

In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care about how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have anything to do with it, only to suffer the effects. (447)

I remember having a class discussion in ninth grade about fate. The teacher surveyed the class and asked us to raise our hands if we believed in fate. A couple of hands went up. The rest of us, true children of the Enlightenment, believers in our abilities to forge our own futures, kept still, uncomfortable with the metaphysical nature of the question. Well, go to India, the teacher told us, walk the streets of Mumbai, look into the eyes of teenage mothers sitting alongside dirt-paved roads holding their infant children, look into the eyes of a leprous beggar, and you come back and tell me that there is no such thing as fate. Jeez, harsh message for a bunch of ninth graders. But well-deserved considering the mostly bratty, oblivious, affluent demographic.

When I hear Joe the Plummer talk about "American" values, and the rugged individualism that they embody, I remember that ninth grade class, and I remember that my station in life has more than anything else been determined by the geography of my birth. The movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, draws upon classic American ideals about hard work and equal opportunity. It is a beautiful, moving story of individual triumph in the face of adversity. The story is powerful because it certainly is always nice to believe that we are the masters of our own fate, the shapers of our own destiny, the writers of our own story. That, despite everything, if we just work hard enough, we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

There is no real way to live without this fundamental belief in our hearts. And yet, economics is destiny. Unemployment is at something like a twenty-year high right now, and all those newly unemployed folk are not suddenly unemployed because of their own failings. Sheer will and determination will only take them so far. So, if Joe the Plummer wants to call Barack Obama a socialist for wanting to redistribute wealth, well, that makes me a little bit angry. Because equal opportunity does not characterize the US economy, it will never characterize any economy if simply left to its own devices, and while it might be a utopian ideal, it is an ideal worthy of our striving, even if impossible.

The question of fate, for me, is one of the definitive differences between liberals and conservatives. The discussion in my ninth grade classroom has been the root of much of my political thinking. And, damn, I can't wait to leave behind the era of cowboy individualism that Bush champions.

Unexpected Connectivity

2008-11-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

During my freshman year in college, I was sitting at a cafe, Kohlberg Coffee Bar, reading To the Lighthouse. An elderly couple approached my table and sat down. They were just passing by, the older woman was an artist and her husband was accompanying her to see her exhibit at the school’s gallery. They saw that I was reading and asked me what I was studying at school.

"English Literature."

"Do you write at all?"

"Well, I’ve tried before. But every time that I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to put together more than a couple of pages. So I’ve written some vignettes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around an entire story."

"Unexpected connectivity."

"What?"

"Yeah. Have you ever listened to Beethoven’s fifth symphony? Well, it is the perfect example of unexpected connectivity. Each movement in the symphony stands on its own, seems different from everything else. But by the end, you’re made to recognize the unexpected connectivity in it all. Keep on writing, and you’ll find unexpected connectivity."

There is something so beautiful about the idea that no matter how one wanders through life, how incongruous the different stages of man may appear, some thread weaves through it all, a running stream through which all of life’s experiences may be reflected, that brings life into one coherent whole.

I tried listening to Beethoven's fifth symphony and finished listening to it none the wiser.

When Numbers Acquire the Powers of Language

2008-11-18T00:26:00.000-08:00

In Moneyball, Michael Lewis writes about this idea, quoting Bill James, the father of sabermetrics:

When the numbers acquire the significance of language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do: to become fiction and drama and poetry...And it is not just baseball that these numbers, through a fractured mirror, describe. It is character. It is psychology, it is history, it is power, it is grace, glory, consistency, sacrifice, courage, it is success and failure, it is frustration and bad luck, it is ambition, it is overreaching, it is discipline. And it is victory and defeat, which is all that the idiot sub-conscious really understands. (67)

When I first started watching different TED Talks, I mostly was watching things that didn't seem to have anything to do with Technology, Entertainment or Design, the three things that TED stands for. I was watching talks by Al Gore and John Doerr about climate change and the possibilities of greentech innovation. Sure, these talks had something to do with technology, but entertainment? design? But today, I watched a super cool talk by Hans Rosling, who presents statistics in an engaging way to describe the progress made by developing countries in improving health. And it dawned on me.

People typically think of design as very simply the study of appearance. At least this is the way that I understood design. But Rosling's talk, and really all of the TED Talks, have opened my eyes to a different understanding of design. Design isn't simply about the way something looks, or about how to make things look cool and interesting. Rather, design is motivated by such principles and ideas as the democratization of information, the accessibility of technology, the interactivity of humans, the relationships between humans and nature and space. Rosling uses data and organizes it, designs it in such a way as to make it accessible. Previously, I understood qualitative analysis as being fundamentally different from quantitative analysis, anecdotal evidence as being fundamentally different from empirical evidence. But Rosling presents empirical data in such a compelling way that numbers acquire the powers of language. Data-based storytelling.

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is a movie that stars a slideshow presentation. A slideshow presentation! Surely, that represents a triumph of design, of the ability to make scientific data as compelling and convincing as a story.

The personal computer was surely a technological innovation, but more than anything else, it was an innovation in design. It democratized the applications of technology, enabled people to interact with technology more intuitively. Doesn't this explain the success of Apple's iPod? It isn't just that the iPod looks cool or comes in neat colors, but it changes the way in which people interact with digital soundbites.

Maybe none of this is all that revelatory. But when I think about how little people typically understand of design, how little I understood, I am reminded of the scene from "The Devil Wears Prada," when Meryl Streep's character rips into Anne Hathaway's character who clearly regards fashion as a frivolous waste of energy:

This..."stuff?" Oh...ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of "stuff."

The Milky Way

2008-11-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know that I've ever seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes. This bothers me. While I am by no means a hardcore outdoorsman, neither am I a stranger to the smells that a fresh rain unleashes from the earth. In fact, I derive much of my spiritual sustenance from moments of "Einsteinian wonder," moments when you are put face to face with the largeness and beauty of the cosmos through nature.

The night sky invites its undeserving gazers to ask age-old questions. It sends a chill down my spine to think that humans have been staring and wondering at essentially the same constellations since, well, the beginning. But I was at Safeway the other day, and I saw the front cover of a National Geographic magazine, a night-time, bird's-eye view picture of a city, a rationalized grid of orange light. The editor's letter was about a small town in Virginia that is known for its view of the night sky, and the controversial decision of the town to install stadium lighting for high school football games. Isn't it strange to think that something as ancient and revered as the night sky has become a tourist attraction? A thing that a town can become known for? Isn't it strange that I have only seen the Milky Way in pictures that I studied in elementary school?

I associate stars with the silent chill of night air, when one cannot help but shiver--from the coldness of the darkness? or maybe from the smallness of one's existence? It troubles me, then, that when I look up at the night sky--on those few clear, chilly nights when light conditions permit--I can only recognize the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion's Belt. In a way, I suppose, this is nice. The night sky allowed to be a mystery, a spectacle that evades scientific classification in my mind. The stars unnamed and unknown to me. But the fact remains...I don't know that I have seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the different ways in which today's environmental problems are framed. Some describe the environmental crisis as a problem of awareness and consciousness, others point to the limits of technology and capitalistic growth. More recently, people like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman frame the problem as a policy failure and have advocated for a Coasian solution, a price signal placed on carbon emissions. Mark Wallace, in introducing his book, Finding God in the Singing River, describes today's environmental problems as fundamentally "a problem of the heart." It is this last formulation that I can't seem to get out of my head. How do humans relate to nature? Are we to be its benevolent stewards? its domineering masters? its helpless victims?

In Al Gore's famous climate crisis slideshow, the photos that he shows of melting glaciers are truly harrowing. Presented with such pictures, I invariably react with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. We did this? Changes of this magnitude are the result of industry and human activity? Is this really possible? There is such a profound hubris in the imagining. We did this, and now we need to try to fix what we have damaged. Weather, previously the exclusive playground of the gods, now rendered a human plaything. There is something deeply offensive to me about talking about global warming, or about our relationship with nature, in this way.

There are people who yearn for some imagined era when humans existed in harmony with nature, or who romanticize the relationship that exists between humans and nature in developing countries that have not yet been falsely weaned from Mother Earth. The irony being that companies from developing countries are invariably dirtier and more hurtful to the environment than their first world counterparts. Such romanticizations make me cringe. Have you ever been to a developing country? I want to ask. Have you seen the litter and the careless disposal of waste?

I don't know. Perhaps it can only be helpful to exaggerate our abilities to manipulate nature. Much like it can only be helpful to believe in the persistence of personal agency in the face of external constraint. Maybe, despite all odds, something profoundly human will triumph. It is a nice thought at the very least.

But jeez, the Milky Way. Surely something is amiss.

Makes Sense

2008-11-16T13:27:00.000-08:00

I recently read a book that tells the story of how the world's first user-friendly personal computer came into existence. In it, the author describes a method of conflict resolution practiced within the group that developed the computer:

PARC's leader, Bob Taylor, had an especially deft way of resolving those conflicts that did surface. He employed a mediation model that eliminated the divisive win-lose element from arguments and substituted the goal of clarification. Taylor would urge people to move from what he called a Class 1 disagreement, in which neither party could describe the other's position, to a Class 2 disagreement, in which each side could articulate the other's stance. (Organizing Genius [Bennis] 122)

The method sounds incredibly simple, even a bit hokey, but it draws exactly upon the difference between a debate and a discussion that I talked about in an earlier post. I really don't understand why such a method of discussion isn't made more intuitive in our education system.

Language Barrier

2008-11-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

During my freshman year, Richard Dawkins came to Swarthmore to lecture about his work on evolutionary psychology and his views on the apparent conflicts between science and religion. After his talk, I went up to him and, eager to use vocabulary and ideas I was picking up from my philosophy class, asked him if his ideas didn't represent a positivist and reductionist worldview. "I'm not a philosopher," he replied to my naive and inappropriately confrontational inquiry. Hearing such a curt reply, my facial muscles probably twitched awkwardly, and I probably looked down at the wrinkles in my t-shirt self-consciously before squriming my way out of the crowd that was growing around him.

In retrospect, this brief interaction represented my first encounter with the insularity that characterizes the academic world. If you are an established discipline, then you necessarily boast an esoteric vocabulary and specialized journals to boot. Unfortunately, these things set up walls between disciplines and inhibit communication. They essentially allow Richard Dawkins to rebuff inquiries such as mine by pleading ignorance. In Economics, there is the presitigious Journal of Economic Perspectives, but sometimes I wonder if a Journal of Perspectives on Economics and the Economy might not be more fruitful as an intellectually curious publication. It appears to me that a discipline often receives more fanfare for its methodology than the questions that it professes to answer. This is obviously a very short and perhaps a simplistically naive assessment of academia, but I think it merits consideration.

The problem of communication doesn't just exist in the academic world. I see evidence of a genuine language barrier in issues all around me. Let us take the issue of environmentalism as an example. There are those environmentalists that profess an eco-centric as opposed to an anthropocentric worldview. Such environmentalists condemn all environmentally hurtful activities and generally resist capitalism as an environmentally exploitative, earth-destroying, growth-bent, parasitic, soul-sucking system. Naturally, such environmentalists clash with traditional economists. In the context of Swarthmore, Crum-dwelling granola crunchers don't often fraternize on the halls of Kohlberg 2nd. Meanwhile, the concerns raised by such environmentalists fall deaf on the ears of the more pragmatically-minded economists and businessmen of the world. What happens? The 1999 WTO anti-globalization protests happen.

Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, forges a path forward. He sums up the problem burdening the environmental movement, which I think has its roots in communication: "Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. Too many critics of environmentalism characterize any conservation as some flaky anticapitalist ideological dalliance" (194). But, if I could assign TF an epitaph, it would be, "Speaker of many languages." He "pals around" with venture capitalists, environmental activists, politicians, academics, and manages to speak to all these different groups of people. In his book, he gives one example of successful communication between groups that I find particularly inspiring. Friedman describes the success of a conservation project in Indonesia and quotes the project's leader, Dr. Jatna Supriatna:

When you talk with the head of the government, your language is economic; when you talk to the communities, the language is welfare; when you talk to business, you talk about their future profits; when you talk to other NGOs, the language is environment. (311)

The answer seems rather simple. Just communicate across disciplines, across interest groups. But the forces of insularity are strong. Language barriers difficult to surmount. I think that it is a point, while simple, that we tend to overlook and fail to appreciate. In my view, a language barrier serves as the greatest source of frustration for young idealists intent upon effecting substantive change in the world. Friedman pokes fun a bit at the youthful naivette:

ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and General Motors know the difference between a Facebook group and a blocking coalition in Congress. They are not in Facebook, but they are in the faces of those lawmakers who stand in their way. (400)

Most of us, i.e. young and eager twenty-somethings, don't speak even a single language that resonates with groups that are in a position to effect change. I think this is the harsh reality that youthful idealism confronts. We may possess the soft tools, the critical thinking and the drive, but we lack the credibility, experience and language skills to communicate effectively. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around the language barrier, and I guess that is why Friedman ultimately counsels diligence, discipline and sacrifice.

24-Hour Fitness

2008-11-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

"Do you like to be challenged?"

"Yeah, sure, of course."

"Well, for just $99.99, you can get five one-hour sessions with a personal trainer. What d'you say?"

About two weeks ago, I signed up for a seven-day free trial at 24-Hour Fitness. And so for a week straight, I politely declined offers for protein shakes, personal training sessions and a paid membership. Meanwhile, I enjoyed all the benefits of membership without shelling out a single dime. Really duped the system, I did.

Two days after my free trial expired, Julie, the sales agent who was put in charge of my account, called me up with news of a promotional $29.99 monthly rate. Craving "challenge" and wanting once again to "be part of the club," I decided to sign up. Dollar-a-day health? Fine. I can afford that. What? There is a $49.99 initiation fee? Well...hmm...let me think about this for a second. Oh! It's only $49.99, and it's a one-time fee. Access to locations across the country and across the world. Well, in that case, sure, sign me up!

Okay, I admit it. Julie, the little devil, she got in my head.

Inside the gym are twenty treadmills lined up against a window that overlooks a busy street. Each one of these treadmills is outfitted with a control panel that lets you regulate your pace and incline, as well as monitor your calories burned, distance run and time elapsed. On top of each control panel is a 15-inch LCD screen. They probably call it a personal entertainment center, but I skipped out on the informational tour so I'm not really sure. All you have to do is plug in a set of earphones, and you can browse through any of the three channels that they offer (CNN, ESPN and some other cable channel), and enjoy watching TV with audio while getting a full-body workout. Or, if you're not one for TV, you can bring along your iPod and listen to your very own music library during your workout.

I don't own any earphones, I am a bit ashamed to say. So, as I jog on the treadmill, I watch the number of calories I've burned climb slowly through two-digit totals and finally break into three-digit territory. I'm all business when it comes to taking care of my body, let me tell you. Meanwhile, I also browse through the TV options. Today, there is AC360 on CNN, a college football game on ESPN, and an episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin has two plungers suctioned on to his man-boobs such that he has a pair of truly killer nipples. Anderson Cooper, muted by my lack of earphones, is rendered comical as he gazes ever so intently into the camera.

Here, I think to my nerdy self, is negative liberty at its very best. Freedom to choose without having to impose or intrude on others. My privacy and my personal space so fiercely protected. Never will I, in this gym, need to compromise my television-viewing or music-listening preferences. Never will I have to suffer through the eccentric musical tastes of another.

Once, during a particularly busy hour at the gym, I had to wait in line to get on a treadmill. I tried to make small talk with the girl that was waiting in front of me, "Is it always this busy at this hour?" I didn't realize, but she was listening to her iPod, so she couldn't hear me but could tell I was trying to ask a question. Removing one side of her earphones, and making it very clear how much of a hassle this was for her, she looked at me questioningly, accusingly. "Nevermind," I said apologetically. Peeved, she looked away, put her earphones back in and resumed her waiting, arms folded.

On to the weights. In the area for free weights, the walls are lined with full-length mirrors to feed the vanity and insecurity of the area's image-conscious frequenters. I am doing bicep curls today, so I position myself in front of the mirror and start counting reps. I exaggerate my exhalations to emphasize my effort. When I discover the faint outline of a vein popping out from my upper right arm, it is all I can do to stop myself from screaming out loud in self-congratulatory elation. Weights equals dates, I remember my college buddy telling me. I quickly look around to see if anybody else noticed my personal triumph. Nope. Nevertheless, I know that through furtive glances or sometimes outright staring, everybody is checking everybody out. There might not be much in the way of conversation to be found at 24-Hour Fitness, but let's make no mistake, this is a community of health-conscious individuals. There is no escape from being looked at here.

When I was teaching in Ecuador, my students were always curious to hear about what it is like to live in America, but I was always at a bit of a loss as to what to say. Once, we were watching the movie About Schmidt together as a supplement to reading The Death of Ivan Ilych. There is a scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson's character walks into a Dairy Queen to buy an Oreo blizzard. "American culture is so weird!" one student blurted out. We laughed disgustedly at the scene together. The interaction between Jack Nicholson and the DQ employee was so commercial, dehumanizing, impersonal, scripted. The brightness of the colors, the oppressiveness of the DQ uniform, the confines within which the interaction took place...it was all so offensive and repugnant to the eyes of my Ecuadorian students.

Today, with a sweaty towel carelessly adorning my neck and shoulders, I mosey my way past customers, attendants and personal trainers, and, as I open the door onto Davis Street, I smile. "Well, kids," I think to myself, "this is what it is like to live in America."

Twisted Twenties (continued)

2008-11-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

Pretty quickly, the worrying subsides and the wandering commences. No, the worrying doesn't quite subside. Rather, it gets pushed aside by more immediate concerns, becoming more of an ambient noise. Decisions lose their grandiose sheen as your mind turns towards decisions of a smaller, but infinitely more pragmatic variety.

The first day after my graduation from Swarthmore, I was driving around New York City. First mistake. After circling the block looking for parking on the Upper West Side, I found a spot and Austin Power-ed my way into it. Fed the meter, only to show up five minutes after its expiration with a $60 fine. Second mistake. Oops. Whether or not I could afford to feed my caffeine addiction from Kohlberg Coffee Bar had previously been my biggest financial concern. That and how many hours I could reasonably log for a single tutoring session. Deadlines? Negotiable. Not so any more.

Always, though, always, the anxiety of the big questions--What the hell am I doing with my life?--nags away as you understand that all of the small decisions that you are making amount to an answer to the questions that truly matter. This awareness haunts you, and to deny its presence is to live in denial. Maybe you shove it under your bed, and you forget about it for stretches at a time, surely its absence enables day-to-day euphoria, but on some sleepless nights, it comes back in all its original, primal force.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must.

Sheer inertia carries you through the days...

Some Articles

2008-11-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

This period of life, what I have called the twisted twenties, has been written about quite extensively. Here are a couple of articles that I think are worth sharing:

"Tribal Workers" (Barlow)
Thomas Barlow writes about a culture of discontent that seems to be growing among the highly educated young. Particularly about the excess of opportunity that seems to greet such individuals.
"The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors" (Tierney)
John Tierney writes about a study from the field of Behavioral Economics about the utility derived from keeping options open.
"The Odyssey Years" (Brooks)
David Brooks writes about the transition from adolescence to adulthood, a decade of wandering that he calls the odyssey years.

If you have any other reading suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Twisted Twenties

2008-11-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

I started this blog for a variety of reasons, but above all, I started this blog because being in your twenties can be rough business. I know that I have struggled, mightily at times, and I sense that my friends have had their fair share of worries and troubles as well. It is out of a sense of community then that I write in this blog.

Senior year in college: one foot in college, one foot already out the door. With that ominous graduation date looming so closely, every decision ahead seems to take on new gravity, at times unbearable weight. More than ever, you are aware that the decisions you make will change the course of your life. You try to avoid thinking in these overly dramatic terms, but it's nearly impossible to resist the urge. You are ready to leave your college years behind, sometimes you are even eager to be charting your own course, but the ugly truth is that uncertainty looms ahead.

On the precipice of today and tomorrow, of certainty and possibility...I am reminded of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and its first passage introducing Howard Roark:

Howard Roark laughed...He stood naked at the edge of a cliff...the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff...

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh...

These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them. (omissions mine)

To feel so vitally young and empowered, as though the world is at your feet. Surely, it is an intoxicating feeling that comes over you at times as you look ahead to the unmolded years. But most other times, probably, your intoxication is of the OH (alcohol) variety and mixed with a good dose of anxiety. Howard Roark is an egocentric, incompassionate, nature-plundering, and most importantly, fictional character. Nobody is as certain or cocksure as he, or so you think. Then you look around and see your overachieving peers look so certain about their futures, so certain about their respective paths. How can you be so goddamn certain!? your innards scream.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must. But, as you begin applying to graduate schools or to jobs, as you take that GRE or MCAT or LSAT, you realize how little control you actually have, how little power you exercise in deciding your own future. The resume and cover letter that you so meticulously crafted sit in a pile of hundreds of others, just waiting to be tossed aside by some unforgiving hand. Or worse yet, you wonder if that e-mail you sent sits in the "Spam" folder of your potential employer.

And then there is the nagging idea in the back of your mind that you are in your prime and that you are not living your every day to the fullest. These precious years should not be spent in a state of suspended worry, not in a cubicle pushing paper either, but living. The fierce urgency of NOW calls you, Carpe-fucking-Diem, or more eloquently, in Joyce's words: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!"

Every fiber of your being calls on you to partake in life's feast, but you've got to watch your weight, you've got to think about the future and your career and what is best, how to optimally allocate your resources.............................

But you are not alone. The Dude abides. And I take comfort in that.

[to be continued...]

Okay to Hope

2008-11-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

On November 3, the day before the election, I was on my way to the Stanford bookstore when I came across a political rally. A professor of political science was stumping for Obama, trying to instill in the minds of the under-20s in the audience the historical import of this election, stressing the importance of voting, and unabashedly adopting Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes We Can." At first it all struck me as a little bit, well, off-key.

Here, on this improvised stage, was a middle-aged white guy with a beard, a tweed, professorial jacket, slightly short and slightly plump, dressed impeccably as a scholar, stumping for Obama. Surely, I thought, this guy belongs in his book-filled office, hunched over student papers, thinking quiet, professorial thoughts. But no, here he was, pacing like a maniac with a microphone in hand, appealing passionately to those who would listen, and enticing the audience to chant with him, "Yes We Can." Not yet mesmerized, more in a state of detached amusement, I looked around me, couldn't help but smile at the sight of so many people chanting such a simple, naively optimistic campaign phrase. The size of the crowd grew.

Next up after the professor: a young conservative student dressed in madras pants and a pink button-down. The emotion in his voice so obviously young and raw: "I would rather disagree with a President Obama than agree with a President McCain!" Fist-pumping. Waving of campaign posters. More chanting. So the procession of speakers went. Each with more license to be impassioned, to be hopeful, and each with more fervent support from the growing crowd. And I found the words forming on my own lips, unexpectedly: "Yes We Can."

---

After it was all over, after enough votes had been counted, after history had been decided, I waited to watch Obama's victory speech. What impressed me most was the equanimity he has now become famous for, the absence of self-congratulation or even of celebration, the sobriety with which he reached out his hand to the audience in a gesture of gratitude. "It is okay," Obama's body language and facial expressions seemed to emanate, "It is okay to hope."

I remember following the 2000 and 2004 elections. I remember the incredulity with which the people around me greeted news of President Bush's respective victories. The post-game analysis was that gun-toting, homophobic middle America had stolen the election again. People talked about how liberals had forfeited all language of morality and could not stand their ground against evangelicals on issues like abortion, homosexuality and second amendment rights. "Moral issues" catapulted Bush to the White House in 2000 and 2004, leaving liberals feeling somewhat helpless.

Now, harboring hope, sanctioned by Obama's meteoric rise, I cannot help but feel that something has changed. That Obama's victory ushers in a new chapter, that liberals can now speak confidently of their own moral issues: equality of opportunity, the right to health care, personal and civic responsibility, sacrifice. Obama's victory speech, and the demeanor with which he delivered it, captured perfectly the tenor of this changed debate and articulated the sober optimism with which we can now all embrace tomorrow: "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep," but you know what? and you can even go ahead and say it out loud, "Yes We Can."

Reading

2008-11-04T00:53:00.000-08:00

For want of proprietary thinking, I record a quote from Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone essays to reflect the tragicomic mood that Franzen has put me in:

In Philadelphia I began to make unhelpful calculations, multiplying the number of books I'd read in the previous year by the number of years I might reasonably be expected to live, and perceiving in the three-digit product not so much an intimation of mortality (though the news on that front wasn't cheering) as a measure of the incompatibility of the slow work of reading and the hyperkinesis of modern life. All of a sudden it seemed as if the friends of mine who used to read no longer even apologized for having stopped. A young acquaintance who had been an English major, when I asked her what she was reading, replied: "You mean linear reading? Like when you read a book from start to finish?" (63)

Shamwow!

2008-11-02T18:36:00.000-08:00

After going around and nerd-calling Stanford students, it is finally decided. I am going to buy myself a Shamwow!

Cool Resource

2008-10-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled upon a very cool resource for thinking about innovation and social entrepreneurship, Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner. A little bit like TED.com, it features video talks from prominent "thought leaders." I like it as an interface between academia and business leaders.

The Liberal Arts Lie

2008-10-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

There is a growing trend to view higher education as a value-adding commodity. You go to school and you expect to come out employable, with marketable skills. Surely, education is an investment in human capital, but an overly commodified view has its drawbacks. If you view education as a value-adding transaction, then you tend towards vocational training, which adds value in concrete, measurable ways.

Liberal arts institutions fight this trend, a worthy fight in my humble opinion. Rather than cranking out employees, liberal arts colleges try to nurture thoughtful citizens, armed not with skills but with critical thinking. And this is the liberal arts pitch: at our institution, you will learn how to think, you will learn how to learn, and that is the most transferable skill possible. You will receive a broad-based, holistic education that will enable you to pursue any profession you desire. At our institution, we take a broader view of "value."

This is all nice and dandy. I enjoy learning and thinking, and my Swarthmore education cultivated my curiosity and, cliche as it might sound, a lifelong love of learning. Things get a bit messy, though, when you transition from an institution that fights against the value-added view of education to the job market. In the vagaries of the marketplace, it is unreasonably difficult to translate thoughtfulness into social contribution. I see so many of my classmates--who are smart, thoughtful, motivated and filled with good intentions--struggle to find employment where they are happy and feel as though they are contributing real value to society, or at least on their way to doing so.

I am unemployed right now, and I am sleeping on the couch of a high school friend who studied Business for his undergraduate degree. He is an investment banker taking in a handsome salary, and he just finished reading a book, titled Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker. The author of this obnoxious book ends the preface with this sentence: "Dad, thanks for not letting me study liberal arts."

I am not complaining. There are things in my life that I value much more highly than a bank statement. And I think the liberal arts pitch is ultimately true. I am merely commenting on the difficulty of the transition from a liberal arts education to a nonacademic pursuit. And I think that it is something of a shame.

Behavioral Economics

2008-10-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Taleb gets a shout-out here from NYTimes columnist David Brooks.

I wonder about the legitimacy of behavioral economics in Economics departments across the United States though. So far as I know, undergraduate programs pay it lip service at best. I suppose injecting psychology into the study of economics would detract from the discipline's increasingly mathematical orientation and scientific pretension.

I once expressed to a professor of mine an interest to pursue graduate studies in Economic History. He informed me that economic historians carry just about zero clout and hold just about zero sway over economic policy or the way that economics is taught/studied. Sad reality. The idea of studying models or econometric methodology strikes me as so damned ahistorical, though.

And of course: we should not assume. Because if you assume, then you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me." Take that Econ!

A One-in-a-Million Plea

2008-10-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dear John Doerr,

Obviously this e-mail is a long shot. But, as you said in your TED Talk, quoting Thomas Friedman, "If you don't go, you don't know." I am an avid reader of Friedman's books and columns, and his writings have helped convince me of the need for the United States to adopt a Code Green response to today's environmental and economic crises. I want to contribute to the cause.

I am writing to you in particular because I was moved by the passion and emotion with which you spoke during your TED Talk. From everything that I have read about you, you seem to share Friedman's vision of America as a place distinguished by its innovative vigor and entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, I would argue that you have largely been the author of this vision during your career at KPCB. But more importantly, you seem to believe in America as a place where a guy like you just might respond to an e-mail from a guy like me.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2007 with majors in Economics and English Literature, and after teaching high school English for a year in Ecuador, I now live in San Francisco. I decided to move here because, in Michael Lewis' words, "[The United States] is the capital of innovation," and, "Silicon Valley is to the United States what the United States is to the rest of the world." I moved here with the intention of getting involved in greentech innovation, hoping to offer my skills and work ethic towards the cause which I passionately believe in.

Unfortunately, my decision to move to the bay area has coincided with one of the worst periods for the economy in recent memory. In the six weeks that I have been here, I have submitted application materials to over fifty companies and have repeatedly been told, "Sorry, but we are not hiring right now," or some variation of the same sentiment. I have a degree from a presitigious liberal arts college with a strong record of academic achievement, and I am convinced that I have something to offer to greentech innovation, perhaps not in the vein of technical expertise, but at least in the combination of critical thinking, passion and hard work.

Being young, I am eager to learn and to contribute. But I have not yet been able to find the structure required for me to develop what potential I do possess. When I learned of the Greentech Innovation Network and your leadership role in it, I said to myself, "I want to be involved in that." Obama and McCain both speak of the dignity that comes with earning an honest living. As a young American, I seek the dignity that comes with working towards what one believes in. I worry for our country and for the world when young people with profiles similar to mine struggle so mightily to find meaningful employment. So I am writing to ask you how I might get involved in what you are doing with respect to greentech. Perhaps I can assist in research and analysis, conduct literature reviews, or support administratively. I want to be involved in some capacity such that I can be a part of the bottom-up innovation required to reach some solution to the problems that we face. Any guidance that you could offer would be much appreciated.

I humbly ask that you take the time to read my e-mail and I hope to hear back from you sometime. In any case, I admire the work that you have done on your daughter's behalf.

Sincerely,
Brian Chen

Where am I?

2008-10-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year in July, I was sitting at the international airport in Quito waiting to board my flight to Buenos Aires. Having just cleared security, and with only a backpack and a duffel bag, my first thought after settling into my seat was, "What the hell am I doing going to Argentina?"

No itinerary. No plans. No friends to visit. Not even reservations for a hostel.

Perhaps there was some vague romantic notion of what it means to be a traveler, on the road...

---

Since coming to San Francisco, I've been shuttling between San Francisco and Stanford pretty regularly. A lot of times, I drive along I-280 late at night on my own, and my car is the only one in sight. Outside the driver's window, I can see the lower third of the night sky. On clear nights, the stars and the moon give the hills that surround the freeway a faint outline. On cloudy nights, it's the orange city glow that emanates from San Francisco. Ahead of me, I see only what my headlights illuminate, lines of reflectors extending miles and miles ahead.

At some moments on these drives, I see in my mind's eye a Google satellite map of the road where I am driving. And the map keeps on zooming out and zooming out until it truly is a satellite view, one oblong circle of light moving slowly through surrounding darkness. Myself separated from my parents by the Pacific Ocean and from my two older sisters by hundreds of miles.

In these moments, I think, "How the hell did I get here?"

---

A job interview, at least of the behavioral variety, often turns out to be a lot like storytelling. The interviewer asks you questions about your resume, various decisions that you've made, why you are interested in his/her particular company. And in response to these questions, you are expected to believe one hundred percent in the narrative fallacy. You package yourself, you tell a story about where you have been and why you are where you are at that particular moment. Causality in the stories that you tell about yourself is made out to be simple, fairly straightforward, rational and thought-out. The purpose is to convey passion for where you are going and that you know what you want.

But during the "What the hell?" moments that I am describing, all your defenses collapse. All the energy required to believe in your self-narrative dissipates, reasons evaporate into the air.

---

Rational Choice Theory? Fuck that. Causality can only be assigned retrospectively. Randomness (what we do not know and cannot explain) overwhelms.

TED

2008-10-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

TED.com is one of the coolest sites and one of the coolest ideas I've seen. Something to get excited about.

Also: I am currently reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis. It profiles Jim Clark and the Silicon Valley boom of the late 90's. And my mind is energized by all the talk of innovation.

Ms. McDowell

2008-10-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

I read The Last Lecture today, the book that is based on the last lecture given by the Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who passed away just a couple of months ago from pancreatic cancer.

It is a sentimental book, full of feel-good optimism and, many would say, full of cliches. But I don't think anyone can doubt its sincerity or that it touches a chord in....well, all of us. At some point in our lives, we feel the need to distance ourselves from cliches, from the overly sentimental and what we might call the cheesy. But here are a few words on cliches:

"After all, even on cliched phrases, you could hoist true emotion." (The Inheritance of Loss [Desai] 232)

"So I have gone all the way around Robin Hood's barn to arrive at the old platitudes, which I guess is the process of growing up." (The Caine Mutiny [Wouk] 505)

These quotes, obviously stripped of their context, might not resonate for you the way they do for me. But I like these quotes. What does it matter if something is cliche or cheesy if it is sincere and true?

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Ms. McDowell, my tenth grade English teacher, has been one of the biggest influences in my life. Like Randy Pausch, however, she got cancer at a young age and passed away some years ago. As a teacher, she imparted to her students a passion for literature, beauty and critical thinking...things that I can't seem to shake from the way that I view life.

After reading The Last Lecture, I tried to remember just a couple of the aphorisms/pieces of advice that she shared with us. For me, these McDowellisms contain infinite wisdom and are guideposts that I have come back to continually in my life. Here are a couple off the top of my head. If you are reading this post, and by any chance had Ms. McDowell, perhaps you can help me grow my collection. Or perhaps you have a collection from a teacher of your own.

1. If she ever sensed that her students were particularly stressed, she would say, "Don't worry. You will live just as long and just as happily."

2. The idealism of a few can change the world.

3. You have to be consciously aware to be a fully-functioning human being.

4. Learn a recipe from your mom, so that you can cook your favorite dish when you are away from home.

5. Write postcards to the people that you care about.

6. Boredom is the shriek of unused capacities.

Discussion, Not Debate

2008-10-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

If I had to distill my $40k-a-year college education into one lesson, it would be this: the difference between a discussion and a debate. And I will be proud if in my life I approach every problem and every question from the perspective of a discussion and not a debate.

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I just finished reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book that I highly recommend. Taleb describes himself as an academic libertarian, a term that he defines as "someone who considers that knowledge is subjected to strict rules but not institutional authority, as the interest of organized knowledge is self-perpetuation, not necessarily truth" (307). I am very much taken by this idea of academic libertarianism. It seems very apparent to me that the categories created to describe different academic departments are arbitrarily drawn. And while I am sure that there are benefits to having lines drawn between different disciplines, I am also sure that the lines are often taken too seriously and thereby inhibit cross-pollination between disciplines. Taleb criticizes the insularity of Economics departments in particular.

Let me cite at length Taleb's discussion of the confirmation bias, which is a related idea and which I find to be super interesting:

The first experiment I know of concerning [the confirmation bias] was done by the psychologist P.C. Wason. He presented subjects with the three-number sequence 2, 4, 6, and asked them to try to guess the rule generating it. Their method of guessing was to produce other three-number sequences, to which the experimenter would respond "yes" or "no" depending on whether the new sequences were consistent with the rule. Once confident with answers, the subjects would formulate the rule...The correct rule was "numbers in ascending order," nothing more. Very few subjects discovered it because in order to do so they had to offer a series in descending order (that the experimenter would say "no" to). Wason noticed that the subjects had a rule in mind, but gave him examples aimed at confirming it instead of trying to supply series that were inconsistent with their hypothesis. Subjects tenaciously kept trying to confirm the rules that they had made up. (58)

I find this idea about confirmation bias interesting because it addresses the single most important question about people and knowledge, namely, how people become certain about their knowledge.

If we try to avoid the confirmation bias, then it makes sense to try at every point to disprove our hypotheses rather than seek to prove them. This has everything to do with the company that we keep, the conversations that we choose to hold and what we choose to read. If I hold liberal opinions on politics, I should make an effort to associate with conservatives so that I can challenge my ideas and see if they might be disproved in a way. (Obviously, opinions can't be disproved, but they can be undermined.) I should try to understand the thoughts of those who hold beliefs opposite to my own.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I have been particularly successful in avoiding the confirmation bias in this respect.

---

I grew up in a household that was not particularly politically aware/active, at least not in the realm of US domestic politics. So when I arrived at Swarthmore, I had a vague idea of what it meant to be liberal or conservative, but by no means a deep understanding. But I happened upon a campus that was overwhelmingly liberal and populated by passionate liberals. So from every direction, I was the recipient of liberal ideology, a situation from which it is most difficult to think independently.

Now that I think back on it, the political environment of Swarthmore lent itself to the confirmation bias. Swarthmore students did not seek to disprove their liberal ideas; instead, they surrounded themselves with others who would only confirm their ideas. Presidential debates and State of the Union speeches were the most telling scenes of the confirmation bias. On a Swarthmore TV screen, it was impossible for President Bush to say anything of merit. Over the "boos" and the mockery, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to hear the words of Sarah Palin or John McCain during the most recent debates.

---

So this is my main point: if we too readily call ourselves "liberal" or "conservative," we take the first step towards engaging in a debate rather than a discussion. In a discussion, you are not trying to convince, you are trying to understand. A discussion in many ways is similar to a debate, but it is importantly seasoned with humility and the earnest desire to understand the other perspective. A debate usually implies an unbending allegiance to one's own beliefs, and the desire to persuade another lends itself to the confirmation bias (you will pull only from evidence that support your argument). A hallmark of intellectual integrity ought to be the willingness to be disproved, and the willingness to change one's opinions.

Ironically, the one lesson that I probably cherish the most from the classrooms of Swarthmore was very seldomly practiced outside the classroom (at least in large public gatherings; behind closed doors, things were a bit better).

The Problem with Humility

2008-10-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

I studied English Literature in college, and part of the reason I studied English Literature is because every time that I read a novel, a short story or a poem, I feel humbled. Total mastery of a text is impossible. There are always different things that a reader can bring to a text, always different things to be seen, always different insights to be made.

But reading with humility flattens the array of possible interpretations by in a way granting legitimacy to all readings.

---

A lot of my parents' friends in the United States, being Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American and being staunch supporters of Taiwanese independence, vote Republican. Why? Because Republicans and neoconservatives usually hold a harder line against the Communists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. They back up their "globalization" or "democratization" project with force, and that bodes favorably for the fledgling democracy in Taiwan.

This makes me ask, On what basis should voters make their decisions? Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that Republican foreign policy is better for the future of Taiwan, but let us say that I like the more liberal domestic policies of the Democrats. Do I base my decision as a voter on the single issue of foreign policy towards Taiwan? Do I vote with my personal interest in mind or with national interest in mind?

If I vote according to personal interest, then I can hope that the aggregation of all self-interested votes will result in the best mixture of policies for the nation, much in the same vein as Adam Smith's idea of the Invisible Hand. Plus, if a voting bloc can be organized around the single issue that I care most about, then that single issue will gain political momentum.

On the other hand, if I vote according to national interest, I run the risk that my personal interest will be sacrificed for what I deem to be the greater good, and that the single issue I care most about will lose political steam. So it isn't immediately clear to me: Do I vote for what is immediately best for me? Or what I think is best for the country?

---

If you practice humility in your life, it becomes much more difficult to hold strong opinions. After all, in how many subjects are you an authority? Along the same lines of logic, practicing humility often paralyzes, handicapping action. Let us say that you want to help in the fight against global warming, and that you think about buying a hybrid as your personal contribution. But then you read an article that the additional carbon emissions from the production of the hybrid far offsets the benefits from switching cars. What do you do? How do you determine the net benefit or cost of your ultimate decision?

I've always struggled with the idea of decision-making under the conditions of uncertainty. Surely, there is a way to reconcile humility and decision-making; otherwise, there really is no way forward.

Sir Charles Barkley

2008-10-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago, Sir Charles Barkley made an appearance on The Larry King Live Show. Barkley, who supports Obama in this election, describes himself as an independent. According to him, the United States is tragically divided--not along partisan lines, not along racial lines, but along socioeconomic lines. For Barkley, it is the rich against the poor, the haves against the have-nots. The poor are losing and have been losing for at least the last eight years, and that is why Sir Charles Barkley supports the Obama-Biden ticket.

But when asked about the economy and the respective merits of the economic policy proposals put forth by McCain and Obama, Sir Charles Barkley declined to comment and instead deferred to the opinion of his fellow guest on the show, Ben Stein, an economist.

Joe the Plummer, in an interview he gave for a news channel, recently called Obama's tax policies socialist. Why should Americans be penalized for financial success? Why would we want to "spread the wealth"? In reality, Obama is merely calling for returning to the Clinton-era tax rate of 39% for households earning more than a quarter million. Was the US a socialist country under the Clinton administration?

What Barkley and Joe show is that the Economics IQ of the general American population is somewhat lacking. Economics is a tough subject, and, in matters of the economy, most of us defer to "the experts." When political commentators tout the economy as the deciding factor in this election, general public ignorance about the mechanisms of the economy troubles me. How is one expected to vote as an informed voter?

As evidenced by last night's discussion of Joe the Plummer, both candidates claim to champion the needs of the middle class. How many voters in this country can give coherent arguments about why their candidate is right and the other candidate wrong?

In an age where people defer to "the experts" on most issues, how is one to remain independently-minded?

In a slideshow presentation that Richard Dawkins once gave at Swarthmore College, he put up a slide of two kids standing side by side. Underneath one kid was the caption, "Keynesian," and under the other kid, the caption, "Monetarist." Dawkins was poking fun at the idea that kids could subscribe to religious belief systems at such a young age.

What shocks me in this election is how readily people, especially my peers, are to proclaim themselves "liberal" or "conservative." Obviously, we can't all be experts on all issues, but it seems a more rigorous examination of one's beliefs is called for.

The Q That Counts

2008-10-13T23:09:00.000-07:00

How probabilistically employed am I?

Guess this question puts things into perspective.

Ergodicity

2008-10-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

I have only recently been introduced to the idea of probabilistic thinking, and I like what I see. Probabilistic thinking refers to a way of seeing the world through the lens of statistics and probability theory. My introduction to this has come from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and Michael Lewis' Moneyball. I suppose the ideas of probabilistic thinking are not new to me. I studied statistics and econometrics while in college, but Taleb and Lewis have made the implications and importance of probabilistic thinking much more clear to me.

What appeals to me about probabilistic thinking is that it devalues actual outcomes in favor of expected outcomes. Actual outcomes are very often deceptive and probabilistic thinking alerts us to this fact and cautions us against drawing conclusions from individual events. It seems like a simple and very obvious insight, but I wonder how many people actually practice probabilistic thinking because it is so inherently abstract.

We are trained to treat results as being important. It doesn't matter if a team has a 0.6 probability of winning a game. What matters is if the team manages to notch a tally in the win column. We are trained to judge things by results rather than by processes. A lot of people and a lot of companies will tell you that they are "results-oriented." But when was the last time that you heard someone tell you that he/she is "process-oriented?" Part of the problem is that processes are much harder to observe.

In a recent job interview, I was asked the question, "What has been one of the biggest decisions you have made in your life? How did you arrive at your decision?" My instinct (and I think the instinct of most people) is to go through an inventory of decisions I've had to make in my life and think about which has been most important, and then to think about the process through which I arrived at the decision.

But you see how that is sequenced? Precedence is given to the decision...you think about the decision first, and then you think about the process. The instinct is to think about our lives as a series of big and small, but all discrete, decisions.

And this, finally, is where my discussion comes to the idea of ergodicity. As I understand from Taleb, ergodicity is the idea that a very long sample path will show its long-term properties. I am sure that there is a more technically and mathematically rigorous definition, but I like the elegance of the idea. Despite short-term volatility, things eventually settle according to their long-term properties. A very Aristotelian idea, I suppose. Like telos.

But if we take ergodicity seriously, then how important are individual decisions at all? How big of a decision was it for me to move to San Francisco as opposed to Philadelphia or New York City? The generator of this decision as well as of past and future decisions remains the same. Eventually, my life will settle into its long-term properties. So the difficult but important thing is to examine those long-term properties.

What started me on this train of thought was a passage from Philip Zimbardo's book, The Time Paradox:

Compared to people from other cultures, Americans today seem more obsessed with personal happiness and have been criticized for having become a feel-good rather than a do-good culture. We are obsessed with looking good, with having a great tan, tight buns, and blemish-free skin. Yet what is important in life is more than skin-deep. It is a spiritual inner happiness that does not diminish over time. (256-257)

Thought about in this way, and viewed through probabilistic thinking, personal happiness over a short time horizon is not all that important. The important question to ask, strangely enough, ought to be: How probabilistically happy are you?

Expected outcome over actual outcome. A long, long time horizon over a short time horizon.