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Metadata
| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
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Leakage is Fun
Before the internet, when the Brazilian Treasury behaved badly, I pretty much could only fume to my sales coverage. With the internet, I can fume at least slightly more broadly.
[Ben H.: 6/9/06 17:07] |
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Return to Normalcy?
Our furniture and stuff did arrive yesterday, 6 months after being packed up in New York. Essentially everything was unscathed but the process was made unpleasant by the English dolts who trucked it in from Kent. The driver was hopeless (roughly 4 hours late) and the other guy communicated in unintelligible mutters that all sounded like "Blurgla lumpkin, innit?" Not having tools to put our bed together, this guy banged the metal parts together with his fist and seemed to injure himself in doing so.
[Doug: 6/8/06 05:24] |
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Coups
The point of Kinzer's latest book is precisely that American-sponsored government overthrow's have accomplished little or even had baleful effect
[Ben H.: 6/7/06 08:10] |
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Control Groups
We may not be precisely recapitulating the rollback vs. containment debate, but a classic Cold War debate seems at issue. Briefly, what tactics are advisable to prevent hostile regimes from arising. Is supporting coup d'etat against a hostile, or hostile-leaning regime ever advisable? Is military and diplomatic support of an unsavory, and perhaps unpopular, American-leaning local regime ever advisable? Kirkpatrick, as I recall her, was largely arguing for a positive answer to the second point. The first course of action seems far harder to support. And here one wants to know, as Doug says, the results from negative controls. But results from positive controls would be helpful too. Has a western-supported coup d'etat ever worked out well? This seems like a question so poorly defined (what counts as "western supported" what does it mean to "work out well") as to defy an easy answer; and of course the very feasibility of coup d'etat in a country suggests a attenuation of civil society that likely correlates with bad results. Nonetheless, it would be an interesting question to try to address. Surely some academic has done so.
[Ben A.: 6/7/06 06:22] |
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Control Group
In some respects, many of Iran's neighbors can play the role of the control group. Nasser's Arab-nationalist Egyptian regime eventually swung (sort of) into the Soviet orbit. Nasser started wars with Israel and intervened in Yemen.
You might say the same about much of post-colonial Africa. Several of the "founding" leaders of the post-colonial states professed a brew of leftism and nationalism, and many stumbled into the orbit of the Soviets and consequent economic failure. Hard to say, though, whether African clients ever really helped the USSR.
Finally, would you consider Cuba in this category? Right after the flight of Batista, it was hardly a done deal that Castro would throw in his lot with the Soviets. Now, it's not as though we didn't try to remove him, but his regime did help the USSR, at least insofar as it provided an annoyance to successive US regimes.
[Ben H.: 6/6/06 19:11] |
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Control Group?
What would help me judge the wisdom -- more likely, the unwisdom -- of the US backing of the 1953 Iran coup, is a "control group": countries that had popular socialist leaders suspected of communist leanings, but were nonetheless left alone by the US. I can't think of any offhand. Surely you know of some, Ben H. What was their fate? Did they eventually go communist and strengthen the USSR?
On an unrelated note, they tell us all our furniture and crap from NY is going to be delivered tomorrow; if true, this signifies the conclusion of our half-year moving ordeal.
[Doug: 6/6/06 03:45] |
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Shah Sumbitch
Constructing historical counterfactuals is not an easy business. The Shah faced fairly intense opposition in the streets by the end of his reign, a condition which has generally lead to regime downfall in the absence of outside intervention. Leaving aside the question, for a moment, of whether the Shah could have held on under any circumstances, consider whether the Shah's regime had any chance given the Carter Admin's bungled policy. Zbignew Brzinksi, Carter's NSC Chief, adamantly assured the Shah that the U.S. would back him to the bitter end. He even suggested that the U.S. might commit troops to safeguard the regime. Perhaps, if that had been true, we could have kept the Shah in power (at great cost in blood, treasure and reputation). And given what else was going on the region by the very end of the Shah's regime. The Marxist PDPA overthrew the Daoud regime in neighboring Afghanistan in 1978 and promptly aligned with Moscow; that had to enter in Brzinksi's calculus. At the same time, other parts of the Carter Administration urged putting pressure on the Shah to reform and end the repression of the opposition. Carter -- not for the only time in his Presidentcy -- had difficulty deciding, or even mediating, between the State Department and NSC positions. As a consequence, the Shah may have ended up getting the message that he had a free hand and unconditional U.S. support, which lead him to try to hang on by sharpening repression, when in fact he did not enjoy such support. Had the U.S. communicated unambiguously that it would not support the Shah under all circumstnaces, perhaps he would have tried to reach an accomodation with moderate opposition.
After the Shah's flight, the U.S. did not give forthright support to the secularists because it was felt the communists had too much influence. The U.S. sensitivity on this point almost certainly was sharpened by the fact that in the mean time, the USSR had invaded Afghanistan. The U.S. actually wound up helping the Islamists as part of an attempt to quash the communists (Khomeini was staunchly anticommunist and in fact massacred them in the end). In this case, there is a good argument to be made that a Sumbitch was required to purge the communists in Iran (given what was going on next door in Afghanistan). The Islamists were indeed sonsabitches, but the irremediable problem was that they would never be -- and this should have been obvious -- our sonsabitches.
As for 1953, in hindsight it looks like a trade of dubious value. Certainly that is the view of the only book I've read on it. Then again, Kinzer is quite clearly a lefty infected with a mild case of the American Self-Loathing Virus (his most recent book tells the story of all the U.S.'s overthrows of foreign regimes, and not, from what the review say, from the perspective of a cheerleader). It seems to me, though, that the error of Operation Ajax goes back another few years. When, in 1951, Mossadeq proposed and Parliament approved the nationalization of AIOC's assets, the British came up with a plan to invade and seize the oil fields. President Truman vetoed it. Had the British been allowed to seize the oil fields, they never would have needed to later resort to the more indirect and unpredictable method of a coup. Iran might have remained quasi-democratic, with a chastened Mossadeq or some similar successor at its head, and a strong message would have been sent to the "crap countries"* worldwide that they would not be permitted to simply snatch, like common thieves, the local property of foreigners.
I wonder also whether Eisenhower came to regret backing the British idea of a coup in Iran, one that whatever its merits as realpolitik, had the collateral effect of reallocating huge economic value to AIOC/BP. His response to the Anglo-French iniative to take back the Suez after Nasser's nationalization of it would argue that he did have regrets and did not intend to get "suckered" again.
*I am trying to get this going as a term of art. We have used a succession of mincing euphemisms (The Third World, Underdeveloped Countries, LDCs, Emerging Markets) to refer the countries other than those of the developed world, countries marked generally by poverty, corruption, and stagnation. I take "crap countries" from an episode of the Da Ali G. show, where he visits the UN campus in NY. As a functionary gives him a tour of the GA Hall, Ali reads off the names of a bunch of obscure countries with seats in the front of the hall and then asks the stunned functionary, "With full respect, why do you give crap countries a vote?"
[Ben H.: 6/4/06 09:13] |
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In Praise of Leaders Who Are Neither Our Sonsabitches Nor Theirs
I share Ben H's disinclination to listen to Carter's advice on Iran, but I don't think nostalgia for the Shah is appropriate either. Could Carter have saved the Shah? I honestly don't know; my sense is that he was hated by a large enough majority of his people that his fall could only be delayed, and not for long. The situation was like Vietnam in the sense that the U.S. was supporting an irremediably corrupt (not merely distasteful) regime that was viewed by its people as servile to foreigners. The scale of the slaughter the U.S. must underwrite to maintain these regimes rises quickly once a certain point (of revolutionary consciousness) is passed. Maybe Carter should have exploited the disanalogies with Vietnam, especially the fact that the revolutionaries were divided. (Ho Chi Minh killed off or co-opted most other pro-independence factions fairly early on, but the communists and Islamists in Iran were fighting each other until very late.) Regardless of whether Carter missed opportunities to stave off the revolution in Iran, I think the real mistake goes back to 1953 and the British/American Operation Ajax which overthrew the democratically elected prime minister and reinstalled the Shah. The minister in question (Mossadegh) seems to have been the Chavez (or the new Bolivian guy, whatsisname) of his era -- i.e. a populist intent on more or less nationalizing energy resources. Rather than try to negotiate with the guy -- to give a bigger cut of revenues to the Iranians and a smaller one to the British/American petroleum companies -- the British convinced the Americans to help take him out and bring the Shah back. I understand that in the context of the Cold War -- Iran bordered the USSR -- there was a lot be said for having a US puppet in Tehran. But we're paying a high price now for the 25 halcyon years the coup bought us. I think a similar analysis holds for the Vietnam war. Ho Chi Minh sought U.S. aid for an independent Vietnam very early on (in the 1940's). It was only later that he aligned himself exclusively with the USSR. Obviously it was preferable in the short term to have a fully complaint government in Vietname, rather than this headstrong (and murderous, but then so were his opponents) nationalist. Again, the Cold War context reinforced the preference. But you have to be able to project ahead: will we ultimately be able to keep our sonofabitch in power? Will these people be sullen but mainly docile, like the French under the Nazis, or will their fury grow and become unstoppable? (Incidentally I make no claim that the French would have remained docile indefinitely if the Nazis had remained; it's a hard question.) We answered this question wrongly in Vietnam for decades, and, it seems to me, in Iran in 1953. Or do you guys think that letting Mossadegh nationalize (or partly nationalize) Iran's oil would have had terrible consequences for us in the Cold War? (Presumably Jeane Kirkpatrick thinks it would have but I haven't read her book.)
[Doug: 6/4/06 05:23] |
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In Praise of "Our Sonavabitch"
Never has the doctrine set forth in "Dictatorships and Double Standards" looked so good as it does when in hindsight applied to Iran. The Shah, we know, was unsavory; and we should all feel gratitude that a similar character does not enjoy absolute rule over us. Nonetheless, can there be much doubt that a Shah-ruled Iran would have been better for Iranians, better for America, and better for the world?
Hipster Cred
Ladyton covers Tweet. Smokin'
(hat tip to Reihan Salam)
[Ben A.: 6/3/06 20:00] |
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Area of Expertise
Even if you don't believe, as I do, that Jimmy Carter put in the most disastrous Presidential performance of the last hundred years, you might still hesitate to take advice from him on certain matters. Relations with Iran, for example, given the turn they took during his time in office. Is Jimmuh so earnest as to have no inkling of the irony of presuming he has anything worthwhile to say on the subject of Iran?
Since Jimmuh likes to quote his Bible, let me put it in terms he might appreciate:
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Proverbs 26:11
[Ben H.: 6/3/06 19:06] |
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Rent-A-Womb
Ben H, again you prove yourself ahead of the curve. The economic logic for this is impeccable. Any service that removes six months of inconvenience and medical risk has a very high value. I expect we will see this happen on a small scale within 5-10 years.
[Ben A.: 6/3/06 08:52] |
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Moral Dilemma: On a More Serious Note
Ben, I also don't have very strong feelings about "harvesting" embryonic stem cells or, for that matter, the organs of Chinese criminals. Certainly, when I contemplate the physical reality of this "harvesting" it makes me feel queasy. On the other hand, when I try to consider it only purely rational grounds, I find it easier to justify. Now, what this makes me ask is: what weight ought we give to the "ick" factor in considering moral dilemmas? Is the "ick" factor the foundation of a naturalized ethics that will in point of fact do just as well if not better than any of the many attempts at a rationally grounded ethics?
[Ben H.: 6/2/06 09:22] |
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Moral Dilemmas
I'm not sure, guys, if I've ever shared with you what, for the last 6 months or so, I've half-jokingly proposed as the new venture I would throw myself into if the Emerging Markets finally emerged and left my current job pointless. It was inspired by my study of our Argentine cattle-breeding operations, where genetics and calf-bearing can be considered more or less separate (many calfs are a result of embryo implantation).
I call it Rent-a-Womb. Now, surrogacy is hardly a new idea. However, in the U.S. you can't simply pay someone to be your surrogate. You may only "cover expenses." You can also get caught in thicket of legal problems -- see, for example, the Mary Whitehead case from some years ago. And who exactly in the U.S. will sign on to being a surrogate? Probably not exactly the person to whom you would like to entrust your fetus.
None of these will be a problem at Rent-a-Womb, where we recruit underemployed Chinese women to carry foreigers' fetuses. We pay them what for a rural Chinese is a life-changing amount of money. During their term of service, we have them live at our dormitory facility, where their diet and healthcare are stricly supervised. You believe in Mozart-in-the-Womb -- we'll make sure it plays.
The major innovation of Rent-a-Womb, though, will come in the marketing. No doubt we'll start out with gay couples or couples where they woman can't carry a fetus to term for some medical reason. However, over time we aim to make Rent-a-Womb a service of which perfectly healthy and fertile couples will avail themselves. Egg harvesting is no picnic, I'm sure, but it sure as heck beats nine months of pregnancy! Physically vain celebrities and socialites -- don't worry about losing the weight; with Rent-a-Womb, you'll never gain it!
Our slogan: "Parenthood Without the Pushing".
We'll also have excellent synnergies with my other idea, Eton Ghana. I noticed, in my African business dealings, that "U" Queen's English accent is most faithfully preserved among highly educated West Africans. Wouldn't I love my children to spreak with such refinement? Highly competent teachers, buildings and facilities can all be had in Ghana much more cheaply than in the USA. Eton Ghana takes advantage of these resource arbitrage to provide a first-class education at parochial school prices!
Package deals available: Rent a Womb and send the fruit of it to Ghana!
[Ben H.: 6/2/06 07:34] |
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Incredible Shrinking Japan
Japanese birth-rate hits new low.
1940: Land of the Rising Sun
2006: Land No Longer Raising Sons
[Ben H.: 6/2/06 07:16] |
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Moral Dilemmas Close to Home
Overheard at a meeting today: “There are huge sources of abortions we haven’t even tapped yet!”
The topic was stem cells, and the concern being rebutted was the availability of sufficient ‘material’ for therapeutic trials. For a semi-credentialed moral philosopher, I have a weakly thought-out position on the stem cell controversy. The whole topic just creeps me out and depresses me. Nonetheless, I incline increasingly to the Krauthammer view that biomedical research and commercialization exerts a powerful pull towards commodification of human tissue, human remains, and ultimately human life. It will happen with organs, it is happening with clinical trials, and it will happen with the corpses of aborted Chinese fetuses. And I don’t see any way to stop it.
Well, that was cheery. Have I mentioned that X-Men 3 totally exceeds expectations? That’s a plus.
[Ben A.: 6/1/06 22:52] |
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Clearstream
I know little about the Clearstream affair and intend to keep it that way. Here is a totally unsuccessful attempt by Le Monde to present the main lines of the affair graphically. Le Monde has been trying to whip up interest in /indignation about it for about a month. What I don't understand is that the origin of the scandal seems to have been forgotten or deemed unimportant (Le Monde never mentions it). This is the Taiwan Frigate Affair, which by itself is complicated enough. France wanted to sell some warships to Taiwan; to do so it needed to bribe Taiwanese officials (to keep them from choosing another warship supplier) and also mainland Chinese officials (to keep them from raising diplomatic protests about the arming of their enemy). There were also kickbacks to various highly placed French people (like the US, France has its military-industrial-political complex). Most of these kickbacks did indeed go through Swiss bank accounts; attempts to track them have run into the brick wall of "state secret" claims, according to that Wikipedia link. The Clearstream scandal's source is the remainder of these kickbacks. What is the most striking to me about this whole thing is that nobody seems to care about the arms dealing corruption. I get the sense that the French attitude is that unfair trade practices and corrupt arms dealing are basically an American thing, and if rumors surface that we do it too, well, we just keep quiet about them. What Le Monde is focusing on now is certain vagaries in the investigation and cover-up. These involve infighting in the ruling center-right party: apparently Chirac and his protege Villepin tried to nail Sarkozy by having his participation in the affair investigated. No doubt there is some reason internal to Le Monde's power structure that explains why it wants to take down Chirac and Villepin, but I don't know it; all of these epicycles of the affair are strictly "franco-francais" as they say here, and are worthy of outsiders' interest only insofar as they further confirm the pettiness of French politics.
[Doug: 5/30/06 08:42] |
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Clearstream Affair
Doug, I realize that your lucubrations on France aim at a higher level of generality, but what do you make of the Clearstream Affair? I don't feel qualified to speculate on the intricacies of French politics, but I happen to have a certain familiarity with Clearstream the institution. As such, I have a hard time understanding how the allegation of "secret accounts at Clearstream Bank" could register even a baseline level of credibility. My firm has tried for nearly a decade just to get Clearstream/Euroclear to let us open an account. They won't do it; we rely on prime brokers to custody instruments that reside at in the Clearstream/Euroclear system. An absurd conservatism reigns chez Clearstream when it comes to taking on new customers. Hedge funds, for example, are considered presumptively too suspect as counterparties. Clearstream is not a bank in the way people commonly understand the term. It is more a settlement system. So the idea that French intelligence was peddling (or swallowing, I find the whole thing a little hard to follow) is that French politicians had secret "bank accounts" at a clearing-system bank that never deals with individuals and pretty much will only deal with other large regulated institutions. Oh, and it is owned by Deutsche Borse. I mean, if you're going to make up a story about French politicos stashing illicit lucre, try setting it at some obscure cantonal Swiss Bank. That's a lot more plausible.
[Ben H.: 5/30/06 07:16] |
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Official Sign Summer Is Here
My street has multiple parking spaces available. I bet that the same cannot be said for downtown Southampton.
[Ben H.: 5/28/06 13:10] |
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American Without Mass Immigration
I laid out my serious thoughts in an earlier post, wherein a noted that one of the main questions of immigration policy is distributional. For my own case, high levels of immigration provide a benefit. It recently occured to me what existing institution illustrates what metroopolitan American life would be like without high levels of immigration. Think: what establishment implements a rigorous legals-only hiring policy, for mostly low-skill work? The Post Office!
I spent 30 minutes waiting in line to pick up a package on Friday. I got to witness a staggering display of sloth and apathy. At one point, the only attendant allowed his work to grind to a halt due to the fact that he did not have, and could not easily find, a functional pen. Trust me: the striving poblano at the local bodega would write in his own blood to get a sale done!
[Ben H.: 5/27/06 17:08] |
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Kitchen Plans
If you recall, I have long lusted after SMEG brand refrigerators. Of course, when I say lust, I have to put it into the context of my overall kitchen libido, hardly satyriacal. Two years after moving into my house, I still have a half-functional stove and a broken microwave.
[Ben H.: 5/25/06 17:06] |
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Second Least-Favorite Activity, Not a Factor In France...
And that's jury duty. I had to sit in the Brooklyn courthouse waiting for the sooner of my term of service elapsing or my empanelment on an actual jury. Given the ruinous consequences for me of getting stuck on a long-running case, I have given a lot of thought to the best way to approach the situation. My trick (which worked last time around) is to postpone my service to just before a holiday weekend. Lawyers and judges are already decamping for the Hamptons and the Jersey shore, and few trials get started. I figure that the odds of avoiding service and even getting an early discharge run higher at such times.
At first, today it seemed like my scheme would come to a bad end. I showed up and got called to voire dire in pretty much the first batch of jurors. After a short wait, the judge came in and informed us that we would be hearing about a civil trial. I stifled a groan -- civil trials are reputed to last longer than criminal one. The lawyers then came in and introduced themselves and noted their clients. To my astonishment -- and then joy -- the defense lawyer revealed that she came in representation of [Redacted] Taxi Cab Corp. Score! Absolutely no way the plaintiff would let me on this jury. My family has been in the NYC yellow cab business since 1940 and our dinner table never went long without stories of meretricious PI attorneys unfairly bringing suit. I held a get-out-of-this-voire-dire-free card!
I was about to jump up and declare my unsuitability, when I realized that I could achieve more by holding on to my card than by playing it. The voire dire moved at a glacial pace. I could hang around and burn minutes of my jury service, all the while knowing I stood in no danger whatsoever of getting empaneled. The lawyers went around asking all the standard questions of each of the candidate jurors, going outside to confer with each other, sometimes going out to talk to a candidate juror who didn't want to answer a question in public. Two hours passed and we came down to the matter of filling the final slot. I raised my hand. "Excuse me; there's something I'd like to address with you outside," I told the counselors. Out we went. To the defense lawyer: "Did you mention that you worked for [firm redacted]?" Indeed she did, as I well knew. I recognized the name as one of a firm that many cab fleets keep on retainer. "I think my father's business has a long-standing relationship with your firm." That, they both agreed, would not by itself present a problem. But what, they asked, was the nature of the relationship. "Oh," I mentioned casually, "my father runs and my grandfather used to run a medallion taxi fleet." The defense lawyer asked tentatively and with really touching hopefulness, "do you think you could still try to be impartial?" The plaintiff's attorney shot her down immediately and I returned to the jury pool just in time for the lunch break.
When I came back from lunch*, the clerk announced that they didn't have a great need for jurors today and as such, anybody who had spent the morning in voire dire could go. My dastardly scheme comes to fruition!
*"lunch" in my case being only rhetorical, as i spent the lunch hour at my house (only a few blocks from court) trying to get some work done.
[Ben H.: 5/25/06 15:32] |
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New Least Favorite Activity
Painting. My bedroom walls had better gleam with the light of a hundred suns by the time I'm done with this bullshit.
[Doug: 5/25/06 06:26] |
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Decorating
I didn't implement any decorating ideas in Dao's absence, but I did realize that the only logical way to fill out our living room walls is by attaching a sequence of red and blue quasi-abstract jellyfish to them.
Speaking of decorating, Ben H, if you haven't redone your kitchen yet, I rediscovered (in a Paris storefront) the brand that's one step ahead of your Vikings and Sub-Zeros:
I'm starting to regret getting an apartment with a pre-equipped kitchen! Finally, an unrelated picture, of a traffic sign down the road from our apartment, which may appear in my book on France under the chapter "la vénération de la subtilité analytique". Although I am assured that this intersection has more accidents than any other in Paris, and although I can testify myself that cars and buses are always beeping at pedestrians unaware of the criss-crossing lanes, one senses in this sign, and in the fact that it's been posted in the intersection, the enormous pride that the ponts et chaussées engineers take in having built such a work of genius:
[Doug: 5/23/06 03:41] |
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Mark Helprin on Immigration
Here
Bonus points for the classic Helprinism: "little blast furnaces of ostentatious compassion."
[Ben A.: 5/21/06 10:15] |
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Every financial markets trend carries the seeds of its own destruction. Perhaps that sounds too dialectical for a free-market-loving trader to truly believe, but believe it I do. So counterintuitive as it sounds, i think shorting commodities may be the way to go. They've rallied because they are conceptually excluded from people's concept of underlying inflation and hence fall outside the influence of faith-based economics. But now that people are losing their faith, inflation will provoke a more typical response -- tighter money, higher risk aversion, lower consumer confidence, falling demand, falling inflation, and a reversal of the commodity bubble.
[Ben H.: 5/18/06 09:01] |
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Advise Us
So what do I do with the money under the mattress? Do I stockpile guns, gasoline, or rare numismatic coins?
[Ben A.: 5/18/06 08:23] |
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The Limits of Faith-Based Economics
I hate to crow over bad news -- ok, I can't fool you guys, you know I love it -- but the markets finally seems to be coming around to my view, once seemingly paranoid, that the U.S. has an inflation problem. Wednesday's bad CPI print exhausted the last intellectual reserves of the excuse-makers. The joke on the desk here, repeated after every bit of data that bolstered our belief that inflation has returned, is that the Fed and rest of the market might hold it at bay by clicking their heels and repeating three times "there is no inflation." We call this "faith-based economics." Joking aside, though, faith-based economics does have a certain effectiveness in preventing inflationary shocks from becoming entrenched. Inflation is at least partly a product of inflation expectations. If you believe a price shock will propagate into an inflationary process, you will make more aggressive demands for wage (if you are a worker) or price (if you are a business)increases. On the other hand, if you have faith that Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke will somehow prevent $70 oil, $4/lb copper, and $1,000,000 studio apartments from contaminating the broader price level, then you will forebear. What I jokingly call faith, the economic literature calls "credibility", and it is a cornerstone on monetary policy in a fiat-money world...
[Ben H.: 5/18/06 06:35] |
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Home Alone
Let's see: you own your place and Dao's away. It seems to me you have been handed a golden opportunity to realize all the eccentric decorative schemes you have proposed over the years. Forget paint: how about a wall of chalkboard?
[Ben H.: 5/18/06 06:08] |
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Limited Connectivity
We've moved into our new place, with a mattress and some suitcases anyway. This will probably reduce my bandarlog activity. Luckily the corner cafe has free wifi access. Dao is in Korea on business for a few days and I am supposed to be working on the apartment. Suffice it to say that painting really isn't my thing.
[Doug: 5/18/06 03:29] |
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Chavez's Latest Gambit
The U.S. recently announced it would no longer sell advanced weaponry to Venezuela, due to concerns about Chavez and his relations with rogue states. In response (and confirming the reasoning behind the U.S. move) Chavez threatened to sell the country's fleet of F-16s to Cuba or Iran.
I hope that he tries it, so we can blow the planes out of the sky (or sink the ship they are on).
[Ben H.: 5/16/06 18:26] |
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Timing Is Everything
Without regard to whether the immigration measures the President unveils tonight make sense as policy, the timing of their announcement could stir up trouble for us in Latin America. Mexico holds its presidential elections on July 2. For most of the campaign, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico has held a substantial lead over the candidates of the PAN and the PRI. An AMLO victory would further frustrate America's interests in Latin America. While AMLO isn't a true member of the Chavez - Morales - Castro - Humala (if he were elected in Peru) axis of malo, he certainly would certainly extend greater sympathy to creeping Latin leftism than the other candidates, for instance obstructing the deepening of hemispheric free trade. However, within the last few weeks, the PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon, has pulled ahead of AMLO. The latest polls show him with a steady 3-4pp advantage over AMLO. Now, as the campaign rolls into the home stretch, Mexicans will watch the US President calling for the deployment of the National Guard on the border to keep people like them out of America. Bush will hand AMLO a golden opportunity to retake the initiative. The PAN is perceived as being the closest to the US administration of all the Mexican parties. Now, one might well ask whether matters of foreign relations have much weight in Mexican politics. The crux of the matter is that Calderon's has managed to overtake AMLO by running very aggressive commercials linking AMLO to Chavez, more in terms of temperament and rhetoric than actual cooperation. AMLO has attempted without success to regain the initiative. He may now riposte by portraying Calderon as a stooge of an American administration hostile to Mexicans.
[Ben H.: 5/15/06 20:39] |
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Birth of a Genre
I concur that the Dynamite Hack video linked to below is solid. Add that to the Ben Folds "Bitches Ain't Shit" cover I linked to a while back (link now broken, alas; I recommend googling it if you haven't heard it) and you've got a genre. Since dating the inception of new music genres is arbitrary anyway I will nominate as its creators myself and my friend John G; unless I'm misremembering, we were both in the habit around age 13 of improvising cheesy Perry Como type settings of Run DMC lyrics.
[Doug: 5/11/06 11:32] |
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When Meta Beyond Meta Becomes Sincerity
Heard some bad news today, so I went looking for something cheering. Thought I would share: The boys in the 'hood are always hard.
[Ben A.: 5/10/06 22:56] |
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France's Overeducated Graffiti Artists
You'll find Dasein's tag on public structures around the 19th arrondissement; here, along the Quai de la Loire.
[Doug: 5/9/06 03:40] |
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In Measurement Began Our Might
Good! I was being lazy - thank you for making the intuition concrete!
[Ben A.: 5/7/06 00:33] |
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Run Differential Concentration and Winning Percentage
Winning percentage is related to average run differential per game according to function of the form:
W% = 1 / (1 + e^-RD/K)
At the margin:
dW%/dRD = W% * (1 – W%)
As winning percentage increases beyond .500, additional run differential has decreasing effect on winning percentage.
Let’s say you start with a run differential per game that is the same for games started by the “ace” as for the rest of the staff. Now, start shifting that run differential such that it is more concentrated in games started by the ace and less in games started by the rest of the staff. You are adding run differential where dW%/dRD is low and subtracting it where dW%/dRD is higher. Therefore for a given positive aggregate run differential, you would expect a higher winning percentage if the run differential is uniform across the pitching staff.
[Ben H.: 5/6/06 23:37] |
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Yankees
You're astute Ben H, to look at the run differential. The New York offense, even with charity case Bernie Williams at DH, is potent, and the maligned pitching staff has allowed the second fewest runs in the league. A team that outscores the opposition by 57 runs over a 30 game span should win a great may games. And as starts by the rejuvinated Mike Mussina account for only 17 runs of that differential, the Yankees are even more likely to pay up to expectation. (Although I have never done the formal analysis, logic suggests that a substantial "concentration" of runs differential in a single starting pitcher should predict a team likely to underperform the run differential projection).
As for the Sox -- don't ask! -1 (!) run on the season, and +18 in starts by Curt Schilling...
[Ben A.: 5/6/06 18:21] |
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Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
What are attendees of lower body weight feeling, Doug? That depends. If named "Kennedy", they are feeling sudden deceleration as they crash into guardrail or similar obstacle.
[Ben H.: 5/6/06 00:12] |
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Bomber Underachievers
The Yankees record is running way below what the team's performance statistics predict. Watch out, Boston! Odd, Ben, isn't it, that the Yanks have weak spots in starting pitching and at DH?
[Ben H.: 5/6/06 00:09] |
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Juggernaut
I note with horror that the Yankees team on base percentage is 39%. And while Giambi will at some point return to normal human performance, the Bombers will also not go through the season with a bottom-quartile bat in the DH spot. Unsettling.
[Ben A.: 5/6/06 00:07] |
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It's 1:45 AM here but I feel I have to drink a couple more glasses of water before I go to bed. We went to a cinco de mayo party thrown by some International Herald Tribune people; I had a beer and 2.5 margaritas. I don't know what the hell was in those things but it's been years since I've felt this drunk. No wait, I do know, I saw them being made: it was 2/3 tequila and 1/3 cointreau. God damn. I can't imagine what the attendees of lower body weight are going through.
[Doug: 5/5/06 19:47] |
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Regression to the Mean
Dad's a Senator. Son's a Congressman.
Dad crashes drunk off a bridge, kills passenger. Son crashes drunk into a traffic barrier, wounds political career.
In three generations, Kennedys will serve on school boards and rack up tickets for failing to signal before lane changes.
[Ben H.: 5/4/06 21:28] |
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Pointless Debates
I for one admire -- and have directly benefitted from -- your tendency to stick with contentious debates. Our discussion of fact-based metaphysics way back when helped me understand an alternative way of looking at things that I just didn't "get" beforehand. I don't know of any sure way to gauge an interlocutor's openness to differing views beforehand. Maybe check the comment thread for phrases such as "you freaking moron" before getting involved. Also, I think both of us, when we get involved in these blog debates, tend to oscillate between pretty and piercing rhetorical attacks (in the private language of our Winthrop rooming group, "wurls") and then magnanimous back-stepping and qualifying when the other side gets ruffled. If someone has a way to keep debates interesting without resorting to wurls (whose value as purely aesthetic objects I am far from denying, esp. when they come from Ben H) I would love to hear it. I think it might be worth studying William James' works for examples of this.
[Doug: 5/4/06 11:33] |
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Why Do I Never Learn?
Doug, do you remember that long pointless and ultimately acrimonious debate on Holbo's site about whether the humanities would benefit from fewer graduate students. And how I ended up spilling oceans of ink trying to present what was basiclyl a three step argument but somehow managed only to piss of my main interlocuter? Well, damn it, I just did the same thing on another topic, on another blog. It's madness. If a topic is contentious and you are making a point which *you think* very simple -- in fact obvious -- that's just the sign that you are stupidly wasting your life, and everyone else's. Why would I possibly think any good could result from debating the Iraq war at this point? Why would I ever think it useful to convince the skeptical that an informed war supporter may in fact care about human suffering. Am I insane? Arrogant about my ability to persuade? Naive about the ultimate efficacy of truth seeking discussion? You guys know me. What is the element of my psychology that makes me indulge in these bootless efforts?
[Ben A.: 5/3/06 22:44] |
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Begum Bucks
Without referring back to the article, I can tell you that the Aga Khan benefits from the Romish model of religious finance. The Ismaili community worldwide makes contributions to him.
I also recall from this article that the Aga Khan is in the process of divorcing Begum Inaara.
I was once shown a debt deal for a mobile phone company in Afghanistan, of which the Aga Khan foundation was the largest equity-holder. I forget the details...
[Ben H.: 5/3/06 13:28] |
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Begum Bucks
I'd appreciate it if you would track that down -- I was wondering where Muslim plutocrats got their dough from before the petroleum age. (Maybe the riches of the Ottoman empire somehow found their way to the Khan clan?)
[Doug: 5/3/06 12:11] |
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Ismaili Slur
It was: "Zahra Aga Cow".
Doug, you are not the only one intrigued by the Aga Khan family's weird, unreflective blending of high living and ostentatious charity. The WSJ, I think, had a long, critical article about the family's sources of wealth. I am trying to track it down...
[Ben H.: 5/3/06 06:02] |
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Two Possibly Final Comments on The Begum's Site
-- Here's a third-world peace initiative you might try out: Build a giant network of loudspeakers in Chad or Sri Lanka or wherever to pipe the website's soothing background music 24 hours a day.
-- Try opening two browser windows of the site; on Firefox, anyway, you get a psychodelic phase-shifted effect.
[Doug: 5/3/06 04:51] |
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ZAK nickname
Don't remember it. But it seems to me Peter S. held his own in cruel nicknaming.
The Begum site really speaks to me for some reason. Take the too, too perfect portrait of the Begum on the main bio page. Look how the practiced smile sort of slides, toward the right side of her mouth (from the viewer's perspective), into this annoyed and contemptuous curl, as if to say -- "I'm glad to hear of your support for my work with the UNESCO equality initiative ... but if I might ask, how was a person of your station let into the compound?"
[Doug: 5/3/06 04:46] |
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Solid Advice
John Scalzi offers counsel to young writers:
People who write books where the main character is a young, questioning writer should be shot out of a cannon into a pit filled with leeches. Don't make us do that to you.
[Ben A.: 5/2/06 23:04] |
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David Ortiz
If he had been born in 8000 BC, they would have had to invent paper, ink, and currency just so people could talk about how money he is. Ben H, the rain won't save you!
[Ben A.: 5/2/06 21:59] |
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Aga Khan
That music is taking me to a better place. No response to my request for a microloan yet, and they call themselves a philanthropy!
Say, did I ever tell you guys that the Aga Khan lived in Claverly when my Dad was there? It seems the Khan's staff always provided him with tickets to every night of every show and concert in town, and he was known for passing them on to the other guys on the floor.
[Ben A.: 5/2/06 20:36] |
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Groovy
I guess Ismaili Muslims don't have a theological problem with New Age music -- or perhaps this is a peculiar taste of aristo German converts? As the current wife of the reigning Aga Khan, the Princess is the step-mother of our Harvard classmate, Zahra Aga Khan*. She lived in Winthrop, so I imagine the musical stylings of her website will consist mostly of late 80s vintage Madonna.
*Doug -- To give credit where credit is due: it was not usually Peter S.'s style to bestow cruel nicknames on our classmates, but he came up with the one we used for ZAK. Do you remember it?
[Ben H.: 5/2/06 20:31] |
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Begum Stumper
I guess the overall question that the Begum's website leaves me with is this: why do UNESCO conferences on "equality" feature the highest concentration of people who insist on being called "Her Highness"?
[Doug: 5/2/06 05:10] |
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Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
Earlier |