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Metadata
| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
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All the Pink Slips Fit to Print
Bloomberg reports the New York Times Company will cut 100 newsroom jobs at the paper in response to continued declines in add revenue. Perhaps the axed staffers should try their hand at writing childrens' books or trading food in the south of France...
[Ben H.: 2/14/08 14:51] |
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"lives in Park Slope, Aix-les-Bain, and Marrakesh, where he owns and runs the Maghreb's largest wanking business." It's enough to drive me to sipping on syrup, I tell you! (If that scandalizes you, well, hey, the primary virtue of my writing on this site is that it is delightfully unexpurgated).
[Ben H.: 2/14/08 09:26] |
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GONG!
That one ranks up there with the infamous "Tyler is at Dalton" ad!
Love the food-trading. The vaguely fake-sounding job indicates a high likelihood of a fury-inducing story. It's like time splitting in an author's biography (Trevor Jenkins lives in Park Slope, Aix-les-Bain, and Marrakesh).
[Ben A.: 2/14/08 09:09] |
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You catch on fast! But you have to make sure you hedge out the currency exposure on that swap...
Seriously, I love the job title "food trader." How wonderfully vague: it could as easily apply to an Italian emigre engaged in large-scale physical commodity arbitrage out of an office in Monaco as to a shoeless and landless Malawian peasant buying and selling corn for mealie by the bucket.
[Ben H.: 2/14/08 08:33] |
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Hey Ben, I'll trade you a petit ecolier for a Pepperidge Farm Sausalito.
Is that how it works?
[Doug: 2/14/08 07:55] |
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Help, help, I'm drowning in smugness! In my more whimsical moods, I sometimes wonder whether the whole NUY back-of-the-book is really an elaborate put-on. Angry Marxist writers amuse each other by trying to come up with the most over-the-top parody of the bourgeois NYT readership's consumerist fantasies that they can get away with passing off as legitimate.
Then again, ought we even try to mock these people if they are real? I'll quote (perhaps slightly inaccurately) an illustrious writer: "as a walking self-parody, [dingbat] enjoys a certain immunity to sarcasm."
[Ben H.: 2/14/08 07:41] |
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What We Were All Up Against, Part II
What's more offensive, black people dedicating their lives to getting high on cough syrup, or entitled white dingbats praising their own taste in provençal country houses? Yes, another one that could bear the headline "Buckets of money pouring out of our female readerships' purses."
Ms. Banks, who is originally from Maine; her husband, Pierluigi Mezzomo, who is from Italy; and their two sons, then 5 and 10, cleansed and blessed the place. They walked in the front door carrying salt, Indian basil and a small metal bowl that, when struck, made a large, gonglike sound. They toured the house, sprinkling salt in every bedroom and bathroom corner. Then they paused outside as Ms. Banks read a poem she had written for the occasion.
She then buried the words, written on bamboo, at the base of the 100-year-old orange tree that stands guard outside the kitchen window.
Let's see if a large, gonglike sound emerges from your head when it meets my fist.
On the other hand this line is intriguing: Mr. Mezzomo, 51, formerly a civil engineer and now a food trader based in Monaco ... . I guess if I want to live a Cote d'Azur lifestyle I'm going to need a less decipherable profession.
[Doug: 2/14/08 06:20] |
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What We Were All Up Against
Paulos preaches the gospel:
[Am I] the only person hesitant about joining in the celebration of a dude who organized his life — and music — around getting wasted off cough syrup? Is this really what it’s come to? Illustrious? Triumphant? Can any song about drinking a bottle of Tussin be triumphant? Is the best way to describe such a song thrillingly unexpurgated? Having to have this conversation is itself a hallucinatory experience. An upside is that the People of the Future will be able to leaf through the Paper of Record, come across this gem, and realize just what we were all up against.
What this analysis overlooks is that he was a rebel. Like Gandhi.
[Ben A.: 2/13/08 18:43] |
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Betting Markets: Relval Jockey Style!!
Forget about prognosticating. Buried in Intrade lie gold nuggets of arbitrage. I just bought Democrat victory in 2008 general election @ 66; and simultaneously sold Hillary victory in the general @ 19.5 and sold Obama victory in the general election @ 47.5! A dollar arb, and if by some chance (involving assassins, plane crashes, or plagues) some other Democrat gets nominated and wins, a shower of dollars! Now, if only I could have gotten it done in more than 5 contracts size...
[Ben H.: 2/11/08 19:08] |
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Betting Markets
Intrade has an $100 Obama contract for sale at $70, Hillary at $30. Clinton seems like a buy at those odds...
[Ben A.: 2/11/08 00:17] |
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Alice Thomas Ellis on Academic Philosophy
Sebastian had devoted his life to and career to the proposition that words should be used with tremendous care, that no statement should be made that wasn't capable of precise utterance, and that anyone who couldn't say exactly what he meant should keep his trap shut. In the heady days earlier in the century when this novel idea first began to acquire adherents, it was held by them that a massive, invincible engine was being constructed that would overturn all false, all mistaken structures of human thought -- such as religious belief -- and clear the ground for true human progress. But as time passed it began to seem that this tool resembled not so much a mighty bulldozer as that useful, but scarcely earth-shaking, and indeed slightly anachronistic implement -- the thing for taking stones out of horses' hooves.
--The Birds of The Air
[Ben A.: 2/9/08 19:57] |
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Hilary = Safeway, Obama = Whole Foods
Ladies and gentlemen, David Brooks.
Ok, just one quote:
There’s a “Yes We Can” video floating around YouTube in which a bunch of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and the guy from the Black Eyed Peas are singing the words to an Obama speech in escalating states of righteousness and ecstasy. If that video doesn’t creep out normal working-class voters, then nothing will.
Bonus points to Brooks for mocking "the fierce urgency of the Now." That said, organic asparagus for me, please.
[Ben A.: 2/8/08 10:23] |
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I don't know, but if you replace "rental-car manager" with "Serbian set-theorist" you pretty much have my Master's thesis defense.
[Doug: 2/6/08 09:45] |
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Interpret This One, Dr. Freud
I dreamt the other night that I was returning a rental car in some Slavic/Russian country. Something had gone wrong with the rental, and I had some complicated claim to make. Perhaps there was a mechanical problem, but dream-like, it was vague. The core of the dream was the reactions of the rental car staff, who took enormous pleasure in gloating amongst themselves over the likely reaction of Dragor, the rental manager. Clearly they were building up Dragor as a monstrous figure. The implication: Dragor would reject my claim and ruin me.
Dream Slavic Rental Car Employee #1: "Oh no, Dragor will not be pleased."
Dream Slavic Rental Car Employee #2: "When Dragor comes, it will be very bad for you."
Dream Slavic Rental Car Employee #1: "Wait until Dragor sees this..."
Etc., etc.
Enter Dragor. He is dark, bearded, surly. His movements are quick and jerky. In all, an intimidating figure. He proceeds to review my rental contract, and some other documentation, notes that everything is in order, and says that my claim should be recognized.
Dream Slavic Rental Car Employee #1: (sycophantically) "Oh Dragor is merciful!"
* * *
At this I woke. What the hell do I make of that?
[Ben A.: 2/6/08 02:47] |
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Super-Mardi
I registered -- or tried to register, it's not clear -- to vote via internet for the "Overseas" delegates to the Democratic convention. My various submissions of online forms have yielded nebulous results and occasional server errors. It's a perfect illustration of the fairness-versus-efficiency tradeoff of our two great parties. On the one hand, the Republicans consider (non-military) citizens abroad to be chardonnay-swilling traitors to the homeland and would never let us vote in their primary. On the other hand, if they did let us vote, they would deploy a phalanx of chrome-plated Mormons to set up the logistics and it would go off like clockwork.
[Doug: 2/5/08 04:51] |
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Who I Hate, What I Believe
Living in the Northeast has certainly burned a characteristic image of the pusillanimous leftist in my mind: distrustful of American power, always willing to give the benefit of the doubt to our enemies, systematically funking every national security issue (Cold War, Gulf War I, terrorism, rogue states, and given a time machine, WWII and the Civil War). Life has also given me exposure to the distasteful I-banker type Ben H describes. I certainly live well enough, and consider myself among the most fortunate 1/10th of 1 percent of all humans who have ever lived. For this reason, it is all the more nauseating when my peers within this charmed circle devote themselves to ever more ostentatious and empty displays of consumption.
So perhaps my hatreds govern me after all, certainly they would lead me to McCain as the candidate least beloved by I-bankers, and by wets and doves.
Yet on the ideas, he is also my man. He has not, actually, been a pro-business Republican of the Trent Lott variety. If any candidate in the race exemplifies my preferred economic position of being “pro-competition” rather than “pro-business” it is McCain, albeit imperfectly. He errs on the other side, exhibiting to a fault the tendency to moralistic anti-business and anti-wealth crusades (campaign finance, against cigarette companies, soon enough against Big Pharma and for drug importation). He remains the only candidate to mention spending cuts and entitlement reform. On foreign policy, Doug, we must just agree to disagree. Perhaps the belief that a longer occupation of Iraq will reduce human suffering and advance US interests just translates into a hope for “more war.” Perhaps a strong desire to prevent a nuclear Iran can be described likewise. These characterizations seem inadequate to me.
If McCain sews the whole thing up Tuesday, as I profoundly hope, readers can look forward to a dispassionate evaluation of “national greatness” conservatism. At the moment, critical distance escapes me.
[Ben A.: 1/31/08 21:25] |
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Doctor Feelgood's Short-Acting Narcotic
Bernanke cuts 50bps, on top of the 75bps headfaked out of him by Jerome "Evil" Kerievel. The market rallies hard. For about 30 minutes. At which point, FGIC gets downgraded to AA and all the gains evaporate. It's like being given a dose of Viagra and then shown a picture of Hillary Clinton...
[Ben H.: 1/30/08 17:13] |
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Family Money
...then again, one does see stuff like like this. "There are many ways to get rich, but only two ways to ensure perpetual wealth." I'm thinking his answers aren't: cryogenics and feudalism.
[Ben H.: 1/30/08 13:18] |
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Sticking the Next Generation
This is a common trope in political campaigans. The Treasury's longest regularly issued bond is the 10-year. If we intend to stick the next generation, should we -- stricly speaking -- ask the Treasury to borrow for at least 20-years?
[Ben H.: 1/30/08 11:13] |
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I'll show you my filing, Doug. 46% between federal income, Medicare, Social Security, NY State, and NY Local. One thing people tend to forget is that as you forge deeper into Enemy-of-Income-Equality territory, you start to lose your deductions. Therefore, your marginal rate becomes the sum of federal, medicare and state/local taxes. My marginal rate is solidly above 50%.
The income inequality numbers require some tweaks to be apples-to-apples. For example, lower marriage/higher divorce rates creates more households for the same number of incomes. And your numbers are pre-tax, pre-entitlement benefits. A nice dodge by the, uh, impartial folks at Demos. Note that the top 1% pays about double the share of income tax of its share in income. But, look, we surely do live in times of greater income inequality. Periods of greater technological and financial innovation witness the sudden generation of huge new wealth, and this accrues (rightly, I think) to the innovators. It's a different story were you to see increased income inequality through periods of stagnation (say, Latin America in the mid-70s through mid-80s), a result of a highly regressive "inflation tax" being used to fund a fiscal gap.
To your other point, I don't think allowing your views to be colored mental images of the annoying -- so long as they are also true images -- is a problem. The Gavins and Caitlins do live in the EVil, they have driven up rents, and they exude a sense of entitlement. They crowd out people who make NY an interesting place to live and transform neighborhoods into alchol-flavored outdoor theme parks. I add to the list of annoying mental images the fukktard junior banker flashing his Patek Philippe watch as he throws down his Amex black card to pay for $400 bottle-service vodka. It seems to me, though, that the right answer to restraining this kind of behavior -- and I believe that conspicuous consumption is responsible for more psychic damage than mere income inequality, in that the consumption is visible and forms these happiness-destroyin mental images -- comes in tilting the tax system more towards consumption taxes. There are ways to tilt consumption taxes toward progressivity. But when you talk about the Democrats' tax plans, what they pretty much all come down to is increasing the tax burden at the top of the scale on wage income and capital gains. At a certain point, it just stops being worth working really hard (incomes) or taking big risks (capital). We probably have a decent amount of room before that becomes an issue with capital gains (though raising capital gains taxes seems to do very little for revenues -- velocity of capital just slows down and investment drops -- so that higher cap gains taxes would really only accomplish making investors earn less from investing; that's one way to reduce inequality, I guess), but I can't see how we are that far away on income taxes.
Now, let me ask you something about these richissimes families you abhor. Where do you get the impression that wealth is now generationally stickier at the very top end of the America wealth distribution? Because from everything I've read, it's less sticky. The estate tax has never succeeded at busting up family fortunes. Rather, it's the choices of the rich themselves -- philanthropy, fertility and risk-taking. The Fed (Kennickell, 2003) did a study of the Forbes 400 between 1989 and 2001. Of the 1989 list, 230 members were no longer on the list by 2001. Conversely, much of the 2001 list represented new entrants. Now, granted, falling off the Forbes 400 list doesn't necessarily make one or one's heirs poor; and, granted, the average wealth of a Forbes 400 member grew substantially (multiplied by a factor of 2.5, in nominal terms). However, the data doesn't jibe with a story of an immobile hereditary economic elite. A couple of anecdotal data points. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the two top Americans by wealth, both have declared they will donate the bulk of their fortune to charity, leaving comparitively small amounts to their heirs. Likewise, that cynosure in the firmament of unearned, inherited weatlh, Paris Hilton, won't inherit much. Barron Hilton recently announced he would donate the bulk of his fortune to a foundation created by his father Conrad, leaving a relatively modest amount to his very numerous heirs. In sum, the US tax system itself does very little to break up American family fortunes. Yet, American rich families themselves do, with the result that there isn't strong evidence of the formation of the sort economic oligarchy you fear, Doug.
[Ben H.: 1/30/08 11:05] |
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Taxes Etc.
Wow, I'm astonished that anyone in America can pay 46% of their income in income tax. Maybe I'd believe that a 46% marginal rate is attainable at the very upper limit of the scale; but if that's your overall rate, Ben, then you would have had to earn infinite dollars in 2007, and I thought you were still a few years away from that level of compensation. But let me say that if and when you do reach infinite income, I hope you'll consider retaining me as an accountant, since I am up-to-date on the latest theorems of transfinite cardinal arithmetic.
Seriously, the tax policies that bother me are not so much taxes on labor, as taxes on capital; what offends my sense of fairness is not so much you making lots of money through skill and hard work, as the concentration of wealth in a handful of families. Here are some remarkable facts and figures on the growth of income and wealth inequality since the 1960s. They show that the trend predates Bush Jr., but they also prod one to ask whether the policies behind the trend (such as Bush's cuts of capital gains taxes and the declining estate tax rates) should be reinforced (Romney) or even maintained permanently (McCain). If the trend isn't reversed we may soon wish we had listened to the "mysterious stranger" about his Two Americas.
In reflecting about this issue I'm once again struck by how much my opinions are influenced by mental images of people I just frigging can't stand. In the present case that would be the pampered brood of Gavins and Caitlins who are reaching college age and pricing me out of the East Village -- even the frigging East Village! -- care of their parents. No, it's not much of a Kantian, pure-first-principles argument, but that's how I feel. And I've said before that I suspect Ben A of having similar motives, only towards the professional-protester class that makes its home in his city. I can't remember whether Ben A has admitted to this; in any case I find it hard to otherwise explain his level of support for McCain. He's a great man with the character one wants in a president. No doubt. But in what direction does he want to take the country -- towards a greater emphasis on war and business? What person acquainted with nations near and far, recent and antique, could look at the U.S. today and be struck first by the thought that it's not warlike enough, not business-focused enough? (In my view things have gotten even more extreme since Thoreau wrote, in the mid-1800s, "If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for -- business!")
Finally, let me tell you the mental image I have in mind when I decry the more-war-less-tax philsophy: the suburban chicken-bloggers who puff themselves up with airs of martial virtue while at the same time declining to put themselves -- or their sons -- or even their mutual funds -- in the slightest shadow of danger. Their manliness stirred up by History Channel shows, their ears ringing with the declamations of Tom Hanks and Tom Brokaw, they think they can lay claim themselves to some of the Greatest Generation's virtues by reelecting the guy who flattened Iraq. That World War II actually required some sacrifice, beyond the limited circle of military families, seems never to occur to them. These guys should take a look at the soldiers who come back from Iraq. "Ennobled" is not the first word they inspire; in fact it probably ranks behind "maimed" and "traumatized". And I do think it adds insult to injury when they stick the next generation with the bill for the horrors they vote. Presumably McCain and his supporters would defend themselves by saying they plan to pay for the horror with cuts in domestic spending. Frankly, if even Reagan (Peace be upon Him) couldn't make any headway in that direction, I can't see McCain having any better luck.
[Doug: 1/30/08 10:36] |
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Winner Take All
I think it's over. Unless Romney wants to write a $40M check over the next week.
[Ben A.: 1/29/08 22:40] |
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Signs of the Credit Apocalypse
In Emerging Markets investing, one often hears talk about a country's "credit culture." Do people feel comfortable borrowing money? Do they feel an obligation to pay it back? Well, speaking of cultural decline, check out this indicator of the state of America's credit culture
[Ben H.: 1/29/08 19:49] |
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American Cultural Decline
I sometimes wonder if elite cultural decline has in fact taken place. One such time: showing up at IFCCenter to see a Romanian movie only to find the next two shows sold out, lining up in the freezing cold 40 minutes in advance to assure myself of a decent seat and finding myself nowhere near the front of the line. Then again, New York is New York...
[Ben H.: 1/29/08 12:57] |
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The Real Untaxed Plutocrats...
... are America's elite universities. Their endowments swelling, they've recently succumbed to the embarrassment of riches and let their tight fists slacken a little. A few Ivies have reduced the required family contribution to tuition for families slightly higher up the economic ladder. However, rather than defusing criticism, the moves only called attention to the institutions' miserly endowment payout ratios, lavish infrastructure spending, and galloping compensation*. Senator Grassley, always on the lookout for tax loopholes to close (a worthier effort for tax fairness in my opinion than simply hiking the top marginal rate), has requested data from several universities on their endowment payout ratios and the causes behind the pace of tuition increases, which have for years run far above inflation.
*Take for instance Whitman College, at Princeton. Meg Whitman of Ebay payed for this new residential college, taking a charitable tax deduction in the process. Princeton erected a lavish dormatory at a cost of nearly $400,000 per room. Should housing the sons and daughters of the elite in opulent comfort come in for a tax deduction? Or how about NYU Law's recruitment of Catherine Sharkey from Columbia. Prof. Sharkey didn't want to leave the uptown lair Columbia had provided her with use of. No problem. With its massive endowment, NYU bought the 4000 square foot apartment for $5.2mio. OK, in fairness, it only bought 80% of the apartment. Sharkey had to buy the other 20% interest herself. Where did she come up with the $1mio payment? She took a mortgage. Is Countrywide still making crazy jumbo loans? Not exactly: NYU obligingly provided a $650,000 mortgage to the professor. It will forgive the mortgage over its 30-year life.
[Ben H.: 1/27/08 13:35] |
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Taxes
Trillion-dollar wars*, $100 billion dollar tax hikes or cuts**, it's really all a rounding error in comparison to the unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities the fisc has incurred. Social security: infinite horizon net liability for current active and retired participants: $13.4 trillion. Medicare: $17 trillion. I've seen estimates for state and municipal pension unfunded liabilities as high as another $1 trillion.
I'm curious, though, about this idea of untaxed plutocrats. I work in an industry full of pretty darn wealthy people and I feel caught up in an Obamania tsunami. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates represent the vanguard of the pro-estate-tax movement. In the economic rogues' gallery, next to Plutocrats stand corporations. The US has the 3rd or 4th highest corporate income tax rate in the world (depending on how you measure it). And I'll just speak for myself, in that I have gotten back from the accountants the first estimate of my total 2007 tax liability (federal, state, and NY City): 46% of my income. How much higher would you have it? I mean, seriously. It's fun to joke about Cletus the slack-jawed voter's hunger for Arab-killing rhetoric and maybe it feels good to play the Kid Card, but tell me what you want. Should I pay 50%? 55%? 75%? Sadly, the unfunded liabilities are so big, it's not clear that 100% would work, even if it were not that case that at 100% we're past the Laffer curve inflection point! Before the Bush tax cuts, the highest federal bracket ran about 4.5 percentage points higher than today. But back then, the maximum rate of New York State and New York City income tax was almost 3 percentage points lower than today. Let me venture a prediction: should the Bush tax cuts lapse, the Bloomberg tax hikes won't lapse along with them! Now maybe some secret tax dodge will be vouchsafed to me when and if I accumulate sufficient assets to enter this American Plutocracy (or perhaps I'll wangle an invite to Steven "Crab-Hands" Schwarzman's next birthday party and overhear the secret there?), but absent that, I do start to ask myself whether it's really worth dragging my ass to Midtown at 5:30am for less than half the fruits of my labor. It's particularly so when it's obvious that even this onerous taxation will barely dent the huge unfunded middle-class entitlement liabilities the country faces.
*even if you want to round to the nearest trillion, Iraq is not a trillion-dollar war. Fiscal costs have run to just above $450bio. This does not include the NPV of death, survivor and disability benefits for soldiers above and beyond what was actuarially expected in peacetime; however, neither does it include the tax benefits of economic activity related to the war (even KBR pays some taxes!), or NPV of fiscal benefits of oil-related activity which will be undertaken by US companies in post-Saddam Iraq.
**how exactly does McCain classify $100bio (less than 1% of GDP) as "massive"? Letting the Bush cuts expire would be pretty substantial. I don't have the numbers at hand, but I am pretty sure it would mean far greater than $100bio in revenues (caveat: scoring statically; scored dynamically, it might well lead to as little as $100bio).
[Ben H.: 1/27/08 12:55] |
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Taxes
From McCain's campaign site:
John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats' plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011. Left to their devices, Democrats will impose a massive $100 billion tax hike, almost $700 per taxpayer every year.
$100 billion per year -- good god, that would be crippling! It's almost the annual cost of a Republican military adventure!
On the other hand it's hard to criticize anyone for voting/agitating in their own economic interest, and it does make sense for people like you guys, without kids, to put all your wars etc. on the tab of the next generation. It's a free lunch son-et-lumiere show.
[Doug: 1/27/08 12:14] |
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My understanding is that McCain is pro-death from above, anti-rebates to plutocrats. Or at least, his passion centers on restricting spending rather than on tax cuts for fortune's favorites. In the event of a McCain win, the dome on my villa will go tragically ungilded for another year.
I should note, in defense of my guy, that McCain's lack of full-spectrum racism on immigration is killing him here in Florida.
[Ben A.: 1/27/08 12:10] |
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The plutocracy has little to gain from McCain; Ben A, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't McCain one of the few Republican candidates that refused to sign a no-new-taxes pledge?
[Ben H.: 1/27/08 11:58] |
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The Winner
Don't worry, Ben -- recent history shows that promises to kill more Arabs and to lower the plutocracy's taxes trump those based on America's core values. You're backing the right horse.
[Doug: 1/27/08 04:34] |
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Decline Was the Wrong Word
You're right Doug, I am thinking of something broader. I do not believe things are getting worse, by and large, in the US. Indeed, I am a colossal optimist about the prospects of increasing material and moral progress in America and the world. It's wrong though (and something in my nature I fight against) to overstate that optimism, and ignore the people whom American experience has treated badly, or the ways in which the course of culture has taken (or remains in) bad turnings.
The Answer, of Course, is John McCain
As Ben H knows, I am now in Tampa volunteering for John McCain and turning "Under the Banner of Heaven" face up in bookstores throughout the state. I tend to have low hopes for politics, but this is that rare election with some candidates who aren't transparently full of it. And as a card-carrying belligerent hawk, I've been an admirer of McCain's for years. I'd feel lousy if I didn't do what little is in my power to support him. Watching Romney spend money like water, however, doesn't increase good feelings.
[Ben A.: 1/25/08 20:17] |
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American Cultural Decline?
You jumped pretty fast there, Ben A, from the topic of America's car culture to the decline of its culture in general. The car culture is a great topic in its own right -- in some ways, it's a great thing in its own right. When LizardBreath blames it for "so much that's environmentally and socially fucked up about the US," I think he (or she) (or it) is exactly half right (the supercilious italics are mine). I never bought the charges about the radical isolation, the boxing ourselves off from nature, yada yada yada. There was even a period in my life, which I am as far as possible from regretting, when I would drive around on L.A. freeways without a destination blasting cassette tapes of the Doors and such. On the other hand, I cannot share is Ben A's glibness about the environmental impact. Also, it bugs me that sprawl-style exurban development has really marred the California countryside. (Don't care too much about the ugliness of exurbia in Northeastern states, which in my opinion were pretty shabby to begin with.)
As for the decline, I think I need more information on what it is that is supposed to have been declining. Are we talking about the coarsening of the culture here? About the specter of Al Bundy and P@ris H!lton that's been stalking the land for ten or twenty or thirty years? There's probably an interesting book to be written on that but I'm certainly not the one to do it. One thought keeps coming back to me from high school though, possibly the only one I retain from European History class: the English nobility in the 17th/18th century gave up their privileges in order to maintain real political power, while their French counterparts did the opposite. I wonder how much mileage you could get from an analogy to that: in the last twenty years or so the American elite has yielded cultural stewardship to the masses, in order to leave them farther and farther behind economically. Certainly the signal economic change over this period has been the evolution of the rich into the nutty cuckoo super-rich; the question is whether this is linked to the simultaneous coarsening of the culture or whether it's coincidence. If there were a link it would work something like this: our nation's slack-jawed troglodytes agree to abide the reduced taxation of their plutocrats' hoards as well as the tax-free transmission of their hoards to their offspring, on the grounds that Mr. Bush shares their love of Nascar and cowboy boots and their disdain for grammar and learning, and comforts them in their belief that their cultural crudeness is preferable to the bookish faggotry of John Kerry, and thus deserves their support in all matters. Now, I don't really think that any such quid pro quo will end up near the top of the final reckoning of our era's socio-political development. It's probably just another half-baked idea that sticks in my head because it resonates with my pre-existing contempt for our president and the bulk of his party. Still, there is something to it, and if nothing else it brings up this question: even if some "elite" really did decide for its own ends to let the troglodytes' id run wild over truly valuable culture, how is it that this elite seems itself to have lost interest in high culture? As troglodyte culture has become more and more purely focused on P@ris H!lton's ass, elite culture has crumbled -- or maybe it's more accurate to say that it's become more and more purely focused on money. Am I wrong about that? Am I just confusing what I see in Manhattan, which is now not much more than a playground for the wealthy, with nationwide trends?
What if Ben A wasn't really asking about cultural decline, though? The post mentions "poverty, misery and desperation" which makes me think the topic is broader. My chief reaction, if this were the case, would be that I'm not sure that poverty, misery and desperation have increased that much recently. On an economic level, the past few decades have been the bee's knees. Maybe this national debt and household debt stuff I keep hearing about will hurt us at some point, but if Ben H says it's not a big deal I'm sure he's right.
[Doug: 1/25/08 19:08] |
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Bloomberg now reports Fed officials say they did not know about the SocGen situation when they made the decision to go ahead with an emergency, inter-meeting cut. Jim Cramer, with all his fame and fortune, can scream his head off and berate the Fed for its supposed inactivity, but he doesn't have the clout of the humble, modestly paid M. Kerviel.
People here also bandy about conspiracy theories related to the loss. Is Kerviel a fall guy for organized and approved speculation gone awry? Is the alleged loss on equity futures just a cover for subprime losses? To me, the latter explanation is implausible. We witnessed the unwind of the futures position on Monday -- which means a fortiori the positions existed. In addition, while losing money on subprime may prove embarrassing, it has ample precedent. To lose $7bio to rogue trading calls into question in a much more serious way the baseline competence of the bank's management. The former theory seems more plausible, not least because I'm told Kerviel's immediate supervisors have all been fired.
[Ben H.: 1/24/08 16:36] |
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Wow
That would be remarkable if true. The media here still aren't convinced that one low-level trader could lose five billion euros, and report hearing the same incredulity in financial circles. It's certainly happened before, if with somewhat lower losses. All I know is that I bought that dip in (for me) a big way. Could it be the single correct call of my pathetic financial life? Or will I, as usual in these situations, come out myself as the dip?
The only thing that could make this story more comical is if SocGen tried to fire the guy, and the guy sued them for lack of sufficient grounds for dismissal, and won. (I am acquainted with a French web guy who sued his ex-employer after they fired him for keeping his p0rno pictures on a publicly accessible directory of their site -- and won.)
I will get to Ben A's post presently ...
[Doug: 1/24/08 16:17] |
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SocGen scuttlebutt
On Monday, the European markets suffered an incredible drop. The financial press chalked it up to "disappointment over Bush's inadequate stimulus package proposal." How did the journalists know the cause? They didn't. It now appears that the crazy moves were occasioned by SocGen's frantic unwinding of M. Kerviel's enormous hidden positions. While I am tempted to chalk up the journo's initial explanation as another example of media bias, it strikes me as more likely that they cast about for an explanation and the only possibly relevant and proximate piece of news was the proposal. It ought to underscore, however, that very little of what journalists purport as explanations of market behavior rises above the level of ignorant speculation.
Even more fascinating, the Fed announced its emergency 75bps cut against the backdrop of these same tanking markets. Did the Fed make its desperate move on the basis of stock prices distorted by SocGen's huge unwind? Was the Fed buffaloed into a 75bp intermeeting cut by a EUR100k/yr hedge-book trader? Did the French authorities, to whom SocGen came clean over the weekend, bother to share this information with the Fed and/or US Treasury? Who's the unilateralist now?!!
[Ben H.: 1/24/08 13:40] |
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Tromperie of the Century!
Socgen raises the bar on trader fraud! What I fail to understand is why a trader would go rogue at a French bank. He won't get outsize pay for great performance and he can't get fired for mediocre performance. What's his motive?
[Ben H.: 1/24/08 10:40] |
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We Hit The Big Time*, and With Great Power Comes Great Pomposity
Blogfriend Fontana Labs picked up our hedonic treadmill discussion, and as a result, we got a cite in the Atlantic. Now that we are Big Time Internet Pundits it is our obligation to speculate about the causes of American Decline. This topic gets a good start in the content thread of Fontana�s post, where commenter LizardBreath writes:
not being able to live without a car is what drives so much that's environmentally and socially fucked up about the US. If living a car-based lifestyle is essential to a lot of people's identities, rather than being an unimportant luxury, (and I think it is -- Ben A is perfectly ordinary here) we're just so screwed.
What interests me here is the idea of identifying the prime drivers of cultural** damage. The specific idea that the centrality of the automobile is one of these prime causes seems really, really wrong. We have poverty, misery and desperation aplenty, but it is hard to imagine in what story of America car culture stands out a crucial villain.***
The question is, what would these villains be? My candidates for main causes of America faults:
1. The US used to have slavery and Jim Crow
2. In the places most afflicted by poverty and desperation, whatever norms once compelled parents to form relatively stable parings to raise children have largely evaporated
3. Technology and globalization have caused the market returns to unskilled labor to fall off a cliff
4. The Context of No Context � or at least, a mass culture that in both medium and content leads to alienation, materialism, and ignobility
5. Whatever combination of factors (and it may be some sub-set of the above) that leads to a prison population exceeding 2 million
Any other thoughts?
*Although it's not nearly as impressive as Ben H being quoted in DealBook.
**On environmental damage, maybe I can buy it, although my sense is that overall, the environmental damage of just running a 1st World economy dwarfs that caused by personal automobiles.
*** Also, as a friend reminds me, the ability to take a spontaneous road trip is the born right of all Americans and a signal embodiment of The Freedom
[Ben A.: 1/24/08 01:51] |
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Food Scientists: American Heroes
Doug, I entirely endorse your approval of Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies, and by extension, all the finest flowers of the food scientist’s art. Cheez-Its, Oreo cookies, Nutter-Butters, M&Ms, Doritos, Coca-Cola – the mere recitation of these brands serves as refutation to slow food dogmatists. Even more, it is, by analogy, strong evidence against all High Culture dogmatism. Some say we should never listen to the Bee-Gees, because Bach is better*; that we should never watch “Die Hard” because “The Third Man” is better, that we should never read disposable detective novels, because Shakespeare is better. Well of course, these things are all better, and if we were angels perhaps it would make sense for us to always seek the absolute pinnacle of aesthetic brilliance at all times. Then every day with our spouses would be like a wedding, every prayer the Yom Kippur Amidah, every trip to church the fulfillment of the Haj. But we aren’t, so it isn’t. It is a malign transhumanism that denigrates cherry Coke by invidious comparison to vintage Bourdeux.
*William F. Buckley: “The Beatles are not merely awful... They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic.” How could a clever man be so great a fool? And let the record show, the song that preceded the Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as #1: “There I’ve Said it Again” by Bobby Vinton.
[Ben A.: 1/24/08 01:37] |
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American Culinary Experience Addendum
My list of things I most enjoyed eating while in America was missing one. I should preface this by saying that, soon after moving to New York, I got into the habit of the city's cultural elite of nourishing myself mainly with food, rather than with the industrially prepared food-like substances favored in the rest of the country. Living in France has only reinforced this habit. I like to think that only a modest snobbery has accompanied it, at least compared to the extreme forms of it one sees sometimes in the lifestyle media. And I've always remained open to the masterpieces of the other sort of nourishment, such as (and this is the missing item) Pepperidge Farm's Sausalito Cookies (chocolate chunk with macadamia nuts). I ate roughly two bags of these over a few days. To the food scientists at Pepperidge Farm, I can only say -- bravo!
[Doug: 1/23/08 05:05] |
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It's worth noting that in the worst of the Monday sell-off, the dollar rallied hard against most other currencies, including the euro. Even after an intermeeting 75bps cut from the Fed today, USD/EUR is barely back to its Friday level. The message of this selloff reads to me that investors are losing faith in the "decoupling" story. Consider that after today, the Dow and the S&P have had a better 2008 than the Hang Seng, Shanghai, JSE, FTSE, DAX, CAC40, and Norway indices.
Now, with respect to the question of stimulus, supplier-sider that I am, I think temporary fiscal measures will have little effect. US aggregate demand was running at excessive levels (see our gigantic current account deficit) and could use a drop. The real problem is what that adjustment does to the financial system. Fed cuts won't really help, because based on what I see "close-up" every day, banks aren't suffering from liquidity problems, at least not since the turn [of the year]. Rather, the issue is capital adequacy. It's up to the major banks to seek capital injections -- much as Citi and Merrill have already done -- to restore capital adequacy and rebuild the capacity to lend and otherwise take risk.
[Ben H.: 1/22/08 17:04] |
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I got stimulus for ya, right here
The markets have spoken: Bush's stimulus plan is some weak shit. Never fear, the Bandarlog is here with a real stimulus package. Just print this page on a color printer, cut on the dotted lines, drive to the mall, and buy yourself a mess of American-made products, like, well, you know, such as -- give me a second, I know I can think of one ...
[Doug: 1/21/08 13:48] |
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Why I Love Le Monde, Continued
They'll wake you up with a text message at 7 a.m. to tell you that Karlheinz Stockhausen died, but the biggest stock market crash in years, that happened a few hours ago? You'd never know from looking at their site. Our readers do not worry about filthy lucre.
[Doug: 1/21/08 12:26] |
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Holiday Food Diary
Here, mostly for personal record-keeping, are the best food items encountered on our holiday trip to New York and its suburbs. Carl and Que came through, as usual: the Christmas Eve crown roast of pork was remarkable because their preparation overcame the blandness of American pork, and the steak was remarkable because American beef is so good. Lesson: in general, you should not eat pork in America or beef in France. (Organically raised pork in America is, in my experience, no better; the problem is that we have bred all the fat out of our animals and no amount of healthy living will put it back in them.) Clare's pina colada cupcakes were great even unfrosted; I need the recipe. Thor's brandade de morue was a perfect rendition of a simple dish (basically mashed potatoes with salt cod). We had it for a second dinner on New Year's Day. The best NYC restaurants we experienced were the Cafe D'Alsace -- yes, French food in NYC is much better than in Paris at the price point of a $16.75 prix fixe lunch -- and Baluchi's, which real NY epicures would never admit to liking since it's a chain and serves staples like chicken korma and sag paneer rather than micro-regional specialities; screw them because Baluchi's chicken korma and sag paneer are consistently great.
[Doug: 1/21/08 09:28] |
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Menschlichkeit Triumphant?
Could it be John McCain for the nomination? In my judgment, Mitt Romney's personal fortune looms as the major barrier. Florida isn't for ten days, and that gives time for a lot of TV ad buys.
[Ben A.: 1/20/08 00:03] |
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RobotWar
... was a classic Apple II game, whose wikipedia page does not do justice to its awesomnity. The main activity of the game was to write a computer program that would operate a (simulated) robot. The player could then select multiple robots who would do battle in an arena until only one was left standing. The robots did not have direct knowledge of the location or velocity of any of the other robots; they could only use radar pulses to deduce distance, and perhaps use clever programming techniques to deduce velocity. No physical dexterity was required or even relevant in RobotWar; there was no way for the player to actually take part in the battle.
What brings this to mind, of course, is the prospect of a Hillary-vs-Romney showdown that the Nevada primary has presented us.
[Doug: 1/19/08 18:40] |
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Happiness
Dude, I am the king of satisficers. Just ask Dao: "It's fine" are the two words I speak most frequently. How she refrains from rapping me on the knuckles every time I do so is beyond me.
"Dishwasher" is the only thing your list is missing. I too was going to suggest "cleaning service", but only speculatively, since we have yet to retain one. Instead, being satisficers, we just let dust and grime build up until we have guests and feel obligated to clean.
I believe I've gone farther down the Thoreauvian path than either of you guys. In late '94 and early '95 I lived in a boxlike room overlooking a taqueria near Culver City, California. I furnished it with an air mattress (the six-inch-thick camping variety, not an Aerobed) and a folding chair. My Indian landlord saw fit to include a hot-plate, which I used to cook rice and beans. It was one of the happiest years of my life. But it was happiness of a very odd kind -- ultimately, an unsustainable kind, derived largely from the sunshine and palm trees and their contrast with the recently-escaped gloom of Cambridge. As the Mensch says, Alles in der Welt lässt sich ertragen, nur nicht eine Reihe von schönen Tagen. (The conclusion of Candide makes basically the same point, only in French.)
Later, when I worked around the clock for an internet start-up in New York, I had a happiness strategy closer in spirit to the following paragraph of Mill's autobiography:
The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of mankind.
I remember discussing this paragraph with Ben and Debbie when we were in the Pyrenees a few years ago. I mentioned then how frustrating the last sentence is: it seems to promise a better theory for those with a high degree of sensibility (like the author himself, he seems to say), but I've never been able to find it in Mill's book. I'd like to hear this theory, because after a few years of considering work "the purpose of life" (in a revealed-preference sense if not a stated one), during which I simply lacked the time to ask myself whether I was happy, it was not merely my self-consciousness, my scrutiny, and my self-interrogation that were exhausted. Moreover, it just became implausible that work of this sort should have been the purpose.
Since then, I've come to the conclusion that a Buddhist approach to life is the one most likely to yield sustainable happiness for me. This is reinforced by the fact that I meditated hardly at all during 2007, and it wound up being a relatively glum year. More discipline this year would be a good thing. But here's one bright spot from 2007: our new daughter. At any time during the day I now have the ability to imagine her smiling, and it's like pushing a button: an automatic moment of happiness.
[Doug: 1/18/08 19:30] |
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No Going Back
Like you, Ben, I find hedonic psychology fascinating. Reducing one's felt needs, while no easy process, repays effort much more handsomely than trying to accumulate enough wealth to meet ever-increasing wants. Incidentally, I enjoyed Rasselas so because it seemed to me that Johnson discovered through unscientific observation and self-examination many of the propositions of modern hedonic psychology.
That said, my "points of no return" have some overlap with yours. Funny that you mention the washing machine. Have we discussed this before? I like to joke that in Manhattan, the line between middle-class and rich runs through the washer/dryer. IF you have one in your apartment, you're rich. It's particularly galling, though, because it doesn't seem at all right that one should have to be rich to avoid spending one's Sunday morning lugging sacks of smelly clothing several blocks and standing guard over it in a place of business that makes an OTB betting parlour look cheerful by comparison.
I've had a car since college graduation; but to me, it only felt like a necessity in Irvine. Having one in Brooklyn is nice (for example, I went spontaneously on a hike last weekend, impossible to do without a car), but I don't think I'd feel terrible without one.
Living alone -- again, I've done this since college graduation. I really enjoyed having roommates in college, probably due to the quality of my roommates. However, I do feel like I would have difficulty going back to living with roommates, or even living with a spouse for that matter; not because living alone is inherently more pleasurable, but rather because living alone for a long stretch allows one to develop pretty serious eccentricities that a cohabitant would almost certainly have objected to before they could become entrenched. Take as illustrative my strange hours; or my "no-food rule"; or "no-TV rule"; or that I consider having to shut the bathroom door at home as an outrageous imposition.
I'll add two of my own
1) Not cooking. If I could no longer have all my meals prepared for me, one way or the other, I would go into a serious funk.
2) Weekly visit by a house cleaner. The best hedonic value of any money I spend I get from having my house cleaned. I can't bear to come home to a dirty or messy house, yet likewise I can't seem to manage to do cleaning well myself.
[Ben H.: 1/17/08 07:18] |
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There is No Going Back
A very brief email exchange with Ben H about Rasselas (I am reading it now) got me thinking about the psychology of happiness. I am an amateur student of happiness studies (Gilbert, Schwartz, etc.), and have taken some of its lessons to heart. Simple changes have had significant effects. I generally try to "satisfice" rather than optimize. Length of commute factored larger in our choice of housing than floor space. I have ceased trying to enjoy things I manifestly hate (loud parties/bars, sake, getting up early).
Above all, the psychology of happiness has taught me to avoid hedonic treadmills. Small luxuries, or even large ones can quickly become part of your mental background. Once this occurs, their presence provides no pleasure, but their absence causes pain. The key to happiness lies in keeping that baseline down. If you expect to live as a graduate student, almost any professional job feels like heaven. As the man says: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
Still, some of these luxuries are worthwhile, and some become essential. A few days back, my friend O* (not the same as O who lives in Chicago) and I discussed on the changes -- or really, the luxuries -- from which you can never go back. We came up with three:
a) Living without roommates. I loved my college roommates, and spent three glorious post-college years sharing an apartment with friends. Now, having lived alone with Deb, I could never go back. Solitude -- or living with the One Right Person, the solitude that is never lonely -- is too precious. A good friend of mine used to live in a communal house in Seattle (named “Bob the House,” naturally). The whole Manson family seemed happy enough, but I could not help but think: you poor, deluded fools. Now he lives with his wife in an apartment.
b) Owning a car. My friend O lives in Chicago, and has never owned a car. He reasons that cars and car insurance are expensive, and that if one takes cabs with abandon, a car is unnecessary and expensive. I could do the same – I live in Cambridge and work a thirty minutes from my home. Indeed, I used to do the same. Now, I could never go back. A car enables spontaneity. No need to plan to go shopping. No activation energy for trips to T-impenetrable locales (Arlington, Watertown) or a late-night visits. Also, there is a small but certain increase in comfort and privacy. From this stems an instinctive suspicion of environmentalists: Enemies of the automobile are enemies of humanity.
c) Washing machine in the unit. It is not so much the hassle (which is considerable), as the angry feeling that this is not the way a human life should be spent: schlepping sacks of clothes. Just thinking about it makes me grind my teeth in frustration.
So, what for you are the points of no return?
[Ben A.: 1/17/08 00:45] |
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Why I Think No Private Equity Exec Should Be President
Reason 1: The adoption by LPs of a 2 and 20 compensation scheme is blessing enough for any one lifetime
Reason 2: It's not exactly a leadership position. The organizational ethos of private equity and VC centers on small groups of highly skilled and driven. PE guys rarely learn to motivate well; or rather, the motivational skills they learn well are those that work on a freakish 5% of the population. I wouldn't want the head of Bell Labs to be President, and that's closer to a leadership position than being a PE partner.
Reason 3: Self-loathing.
[Ben A.: 1/16/08 20:35] |
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Why Not Private Equity
Hey, why not a private equity guy? With financing conditions what they are, it's not like he'll have any viable deals to work on. That leaves Mitt plenty of time to serve as President!
Meanwhile, in other political news: the stimulus package. I don't know about the wisdom of the policy, but I love the term. Stimulus package. "I'd like some stimulus for my package."
[Ben H.: 1/16/08 10:41] |
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Rise of the Machines
The Romney-bot 5000 has claimed Michigan. How could anyone vote for a private equity guy? Mind-boggling.
[Ben A.: 1/15/08 23:30] |
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Taking on The Overrated
Bob Dylan is the most overrated musician/songwriter of our time. I'll expatiate on that theme sometime soon. It's apposite then that Todd Haynes (one of the most overrated directors of his time) made a movie about Dylan, which in turn has become the most overrated of 2007. Rather than trouble you with my poorly expressed denunciation of the movie's shortcomings and the gallingly obtuse critical response, I refer you Nikil Saval's trenchant takedown of I'm Not There.
[Ben H.: 1/15/08 09:09] |
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"I Love Pizza"
Nobody should be allowed to voice this sentiment glibly who has not pondered the work of Jeff Varasano: complete instructions for making a true Neapolitan pizza at home. The dough instructions go on for pages and pages, but the real trick is getting your oven hot enough -- say, around 900 Fahrenheit. "But mine only goes up to 500", you say. Well, that's true if you're too chicken to cut off its lock with garden shears, which would allow you to open it during the self-cleaning cycle. My only criticism is that Mr. Varasano might have chosen to put this sentence in bold: "I make sure that I cover any oven glass loosely with 2 layers of foil because it will shatter if a drop of sauce gets on it."
[Doug: 1/15/08 08:18] |
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Job Requirement #1 For Microsoft Developers: Insanity
I'm doing more freelance work now and getting up to speed on the latest Microsoft tools for developers. Microsoft always solves problems due to needless complexity by adding another layer of needless complexity; a short memory span is one thing that might help a developer stomach the yearly repetition of this phenomenon, but outright insanity, of the sort that this blogger displays, is much more effective: Honestly, I did not plan to write a post about an hour after Enterprise Library 3.0 was released, but this Visual Studio-Integrated Configuration Editor is so cool I must have sobbed for 10 minutes at my desk in utter joy!
[Doug: 1/14/08 06:10] |
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Fathers
Thinking about another Ben A post from a day or two ago (the one about his parents) I was struck by the answer I arrived at for the question, "how much do my male friends take after their fathers?" Namely, a hell of a lot. Ben H and I have a shared sample group of ex-roommates, so he can tell me if the following analysis is off base. Joel and I got the intelligence and the languid, diffident Midwesternness that our fathers share; moreover, I look just like my father. Peter's resemblance to his father is well established, even if the son got an extra helping of creativity. Ben H has the directness and confidence of his father, though the awe-inspiring geniality may have been scaled back to make way for the awe-inspiring intellect. Ben H is the one who resembles his father least. He may be the only one whose politics differ from his father's, although Joel seems to have had a latter-day conversion to Anne Coulter-style Republicanism. As for Ben A, he too, as he hinted, takes after his father to a high degree. Now this is obviously far from a scientific sample, but it's still remarkable to me. The more so in light of two pieces of recent folk wisdom -- one, that kids always rebel against their environment, and two, that dads' importance receded into ridiculousness sometime during the 1980s (as reflected in sitcoms of the era).
The reason my thoughts went off in this direction might be that I read the book Genome over the holidays. It's a fascinating, entertaining overview of human genetics, and a convincing case that, despite the preposterous neuro-philosophical overreaching that we routinely lambaste here (see also Steven Pinker's long and pointless Times piece today about how neuroscience is advancing the cause of morality), your genes really are running a hefty portion of the show.
[Doug: 1/13/08 18:41] |
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My Favorite Recent Bandarlog Quote
Ben A on the Phillip Pullman books: "in the beginning, you have the romance of the unknown, and it is hard for any author to make the concrete as exciting as mysterious possibility." I had been searching for the right words for this idea ever since I realized its importance, at the end of the last Bourne movie. One key to the first two movies' power is precisely the romance | |
