Yesterday, MeiLi held a small gathering at her house in memory of Eric, who passed away two weeks ago today from a heart attack.
It was entirely unexpected. We'd seen them two months ago, and Eric looked healthier than he'd ever been. He was his usual self, chatting knowledgeably about his current hobby, making stringed instruments. He showed us the guitar he'd been making for Anan, his younger daughter. It was almost finished then, and in fact he finished it and gave it to her a few weeks before he died. We'd run into him quite serendipitously, at a performance at Gryphon where Allie's guitar teacher was one of the performers. He had so changed from his earlier yangzi that I didn't recognize him at first, and Lillian didn't recognize him for several minutes. He'd invited us over to his house, a few blocks from Gryphon, and after the performance we went over and hung out with him and MeiLi. They were quite content— Anan had recently gone off to college, Ping was about to graduate, and Eric was about to start working again after an enjoyable three-year hiatus. I was reminded then, as I had been when we'd seen him in the past, just how intelligent, friendly, interesting, and knowledgeable Eric was. When he developed a passion for something, he became an expert in it, and his joy in learning every small detail about things was always evident. He'd recommended an author he'd been reading, and had loaned me a book about a famous folk-singing family (part of learning about making stringed instruments, for Eric, was learning about the history of folk music in the U.S). I'd been meaning to return it, and off and on over the intervening weeks had been musing about seeing them again over the holidays, and how nice it would be to reconnect with them, especially since our own children were about to leave home. And suddenly, he was gone.
It's clear that MeiLi is still in shock. She hadn't been able to reach us for several days, since our land-line connection has been having problems and she didn't have any of our cell phone numbers. We went over as soon as we heard to keep her company; their daughters had returned early from school. MeiLi is so used to being firm and in control, and it's difficult for her to handle the sudden, extreme pain and helplessness. She apologizes for asking for help, is concerned about being a burden to her friends. She'd taking medicine for sleep, but is still having trouble, and there's much to take care of, financial issues, funeral arrangements, daily routines like paying bills that Eric used to handle. The stress suffocates her, it covers her face, weakens her posture, tightens in her hands, and I feel very sorry for her.
I'd known Eric since I met him in Taiwan almost 30 years ago. I'd met MeiLi there too. Afterwards, when we continued our college careers, I met my future wife Lillian when the three of us were in a small seminar class in Chinese Literature class together. I went with Eric to the airport to greet MeiLi when she arrived in the states to study. After graduation we held a Chinese book reading club for a few years, the "Xin BiHu SheHui" a fondly grandiose Chinese title for ourselves that Eric enjoyed. We looked for houses with them, and later on they suggested houses for us to look at. We baby sat their eldest daughter a few times, kept some of their belongings for them during the five (?) years they were overseas when Eric was working in China, put up MeiLi once or twice when she was here alone. But in more recent years our contacts had grown fewer and further between. Eric was always a rather private person, and we rarely saw him in the company of his other friends. Yet he was always friendly, and seemed easy-going and content.
Yesterday, at Mei Li's house, eight of us buried Eric's ashes under the various fruit trees he'd planted around his yard when they first bought the house 25 years ago. We brought shovels (those of us who had them handy). I took a handful of his ashes and threw them in the small hole I had dug— not everyone handled the ashes, they were gritty and real, and the touch was probably too much for some— and then pushed the dirt over the top with my hands, trying to make sure the hole was deep enough and tamped down enough that it wouldn't be dug up again by animals. It felt right to get my hands dirty— Mr. Toad said he felt same thing— and seemed like the kind of low-key ceremony Eric would want and approve of. Like everything he did, Eric had selected and tended the fruit trees with great care and after significant research, choosing them for their novelty, appropriateness for the climate, and the size of his yard. He'd appreciate the value to the plants of adding bone meal to the soil.
It's tough, growing old. People your age, even those younger than you, start dying because their bodies just wear out. We'd lost an earlier acquaintance, Al Garber, earlier in the year, and Lillian just lost someone she'd worked with to complications from a stroke. Our parents are dying too. One of Eric's friends had just lost his father in the past few months, another's mother was back in the hospital attempting to recover from an unsuccessful hip surgery, and it wasn't clear how good that was going. Lillian has lost both her parents, and in the next decade, if not sooner, I'll lose mine. Your memories and experiences get riddled with holes— you see a place, or a thing, and remember a person dear to you— then realize they're gone. There's an emptiness there— the memories patch it over, but they're thin, translucent, not quite substantial, and they don't hide it. And over time, more and more of your world fills with such holes, so that what was once a whole cloth of experience becomes a skein of weakened threads.
I find it difficult to comprehend, emotionally. Eric was there, and I'd imagined a future with him there, and was looking forward to that future. Now I'm sad for the loss of a future with Eric that is not to be. I can reconcile myself to that loss, because it was more abstract than real, and I wonder about that. Mine is a small loss compared to MeiLi's, and it is so much easier to bear, I feel guilty about it at the same time that I feel it. But there it is. Last week while walking back from lunch at work, the grass was covered with crumpled, fresh-fallen leaves, and all I saw was the ground covered with dozens of Eric's, struck down by a sudden blast at 49, waiting for the wind and rain to grind them back into the soil. As with us all.
Goodbye, Eric. I miss you.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Ground Truth
Just read "The Ground Truth" by John Farmer, about what the 9/11 commission was able to find out about the events around the 9/11 attacks. I picked it up from the library on a whim, just because there was a blurb from William Langewiesche on the back.
In brief, the book summarizes discrepancies between the actual series of events and the version presented in the days and weeks following 9/11, which has become the dominant narrative of those days. He provides transcripts of logs/tapes and compares them with official statements. As I read it, his overarching conclusion is that government fails to prepare for and react to catastrophe because it refuses to publicly acknowledge and thoroughly address mistakes. This causes a failure to prepare adequately, which increases the likelihood of future mistakes.
I suppose there are those within government who expect it to function better than this. Mr. Farmer was attorney general of New Jersey, and served as counsel to the 9/11 commission, and certainly seems to feel it should. His book ends with some recommendations for 'reinventing government', basically by trying to bring policies in line with what actually happens during a crisis. But from what I've experienced in my (mercifully) limited experience with bureaucracy and government, these failures come as no surprise. The primary objective of most organizations is CYA&mdash' "cover your ass" — and the primary goal of high-level figures in government is to construct a narrative of events that reaffirms their importance and effectiveness. The Bush administration was not different from previous administrations in kind, and only perhaps to degree. That they lied to the press and to the commission in order to make themselves look good, well, that was standard operating procedure for them. It's always easy for the powerful to conflate their own interests with the interests of the organization they manage or those it serves. I'm sure they felt that providing a reassuring, if false, narrative of how the government was in control of events was best for the country, and if it was 'incidentally' also in their own self-interests, well, what's the big deal?
Fundamentally I see this as a divide between those who get things done, and those who take credit. Those who get things done have to pay attention to reality, because if they don't, ultimately their efforts will fail. Their goal is to effect a change in reality. Those who take credit pay attention only to how things are perceived, and their goal is to effect a change in perception. There's a symbiosis and a tension between these groups. The symbiosis is due to the fact that in order to marshal the resources to get big things done, the perception has to be created that the change is necessary, and that the people in charge know what they're doing. And in order to manufacture the perception, there has to be a germ of reality that the manufacturers of perception can leverage (well, some of the time, anyway). To the extent that people can perceive the reality, it can't diverge too much from the perception. So, there's the symbiosis, which is, I suppose, obvious. The tension is yet more obvious— the doers need to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, while their counterparts need to hide them. Thus the 9/11 commission wants to learn all the facts so that it can address the problems, while the white house and the military want to keep the inconvenient facts hidden.
They also operate at different time scales— the doers operate long-term, while their counterparts operate short-term. From the perspective of those who take credit, delaying apprehension of inconvenient facts is sufficient. They appreciate that information has time value, and that the information available while the narrative is being formed is the most important, because the narrative, once formed and widely adopted, will persist. Thus immediate suppression of inconvenient facts is the goal. The trickle of books that come out years later (as this one did) is not really of interest to those who shape the narrative, because they know that after sufficient time most people have lost interest— their perceptions will have been set, the narrative established. So, for example, the narrative of 9/11 is that we were attacked by evil, wily foes who had the advantage of surprise, but that the government, at all levels and especially at the highest levels, reacted swiftly and effectively to protect us. Once this narrative was established, they just had to delay until the actual information no longer mattered. Thus the delay in, and timing of the release of, the results of the investigations in response to the 9/11 commission findings.
Farmer notes, for example, that the narrative has our F-16's tracking flight 168, ready to shoot it down if need be, when the passengers assaulted the cabin and the plane went down during a struggle with the hijackers. The central issue there is the difficult decisions the leaders must face in determining whether to sacrifice the lives of those on board the plane. This narrative affirms that the military and government was in control, and that the leaders were making quick, informed decisions and wrestling with large moral issues under time pressure. In reality, he points out, we didn't even know where flight 168 was, had no F-16's anywhere near the aircraft, the plane had gone down before the leaders even knew it existed, and the eventual directive to take down the plane if necessary was never passed to the pilots because the military official in charge knew that there were no suspect planes currently in the air when the order arrived.
Being allied, as I am, with the 'reality-based community', I agree with Farmer that the facts need to be acknowledged and addressed. But I cannot share his surprise (though I share his dismay) that they were not. And while I appreciate his suggestions for improvement, I think he doesn't fully appreciate the reality that must be addressed. The "ground truth" is that those who wield power do so because they know that perception matters, and know how to manage it. The only way to make reality drive policy is to make reality drive perception, and it can only do so when the facts are timely and relevant. I'm glad he wrote the book, and it's a small push in the right direction, but it's too little, too late. It won't be read except by those who still care, and they are few and wield relatively little power. Priorities won't change, and policies that align better with demands won't be effected. Guess I'm pessimistic, or perhaps a cynic, but that's how it's always been.
p.s. Also read "The Atomic Bazaar" by William Langewiesche. I'll write about these soon, I need to return these books to the library before it closes.
In brief, the book summarizes discrepancies between the actual series of events and the version presented in the days and weeks following 9/11, which has become the dominant narrative of those days. He provides transcripts of logs/tapes and compares them with official statements. As I read it, his overarching conclusion is that government fails to prepare for and react to catastrophe because it refuses to publicly acknowledge and thoroughly address mistakes. This causes a failure to prepare adequately, which increases the likelihood of future mistakes.
I suppose there are those within government who expect it to function better than this. Mr. Farmer was attorney general of New Jersey, and served as counsel to the 9/11 commission, and certainly seems to feel it should. His book ends with some recommendations for 'reinventing government', basically by trying to bring policies in line with what actually happens during a crisis. But from what I've experienced in my (mercifully) limited experience with bureaucracy and government, these failures come as no surprise. The primary objective of most organizations is CYA&mdash' "cover your ass" — and the primary goal of high-level figures in government is to construct a narrative of events that reaffirms their importance and effectiveness. The Bush administration was not different from previous administrations in kind, and only perhaps to degree. That they lied to the press and to the commission in order to make themselves look good, well, that was standard operating procedure for them. It's always easy for the powerful to conflate their own interests with the interests of the organization they manage or those it serves. I'm sure they felt that providing a reassuring, if false, narrative of how the government was in control of events was best for the country, and if it was 'incidentally' also in their own self-interests, well, what's the big deal?
Fundamentally I see this as a divide between those who get things done, and those who take credit. Those who get things done have to pay attention to reality, because if they don't, ultimately their efforts will fail. Their goal is to effect a change in reality. Those who take credit pay attention only to how things are perceived, and their goal is to effect a change in perception. There's a symbiosis and a tension between these groups. The symbiosis is due to the fact that in order to marshal the resources to get big things done, the perception has to be created that the change is necessary, and that the people in charge know what they're doing. And in order to manufacture the perception, there has to be a germ of reality that the manufacturers of perception can leverage (well, some of the time, anyway). To the extent that people can perceive the reality, it can't diverge too much from the perception. So, there's the symbiosis, which is, I suppose, obvious. The tension is yet more obvious— the doers need to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, while their counterparts need to hide them. Thus the 9/11 commission wants to learn all the facts so that it can address the problems, while the white house and the military want to keep the inconvenient facts hidden.
They also operate at different time scales— the doers operate long-term, while their counterparts operate short-term. From the perspective of those who take credit, delaying apprehension of inconvenient facts is sufficient. They appreciate that information has time value, and that the information available while the narrative is being formed is the most important, because the narrative, once formed and widely adopted, will persist. Thus immediate suppression of inconvenient facts is the goal. The trickle of books that come out years later (as this one did) is not really of interest to those who shape the narrative, because they know that after sufficient time most people have lost interest— their perceptions will have been set, the narrative established. So, for example, the narrative of 9/11 is that we were attacked by evil, wily foes who had the advantage of surprise, but that the government, at all levels and especially at the highest levels, reacted swiftly and effectively to protect us. Once this narrative was established, they just had to delay until the actual information no longer mattered. Thus the delay in, and timing of the release of, the results of the investigations in response to the 9/11 commission findings.
Farmer notes, for example, that the narrative has our F-16's tracking flight 168, ready to shoot it down if need be, when the passengers assaulted the cabin and the plane went down during a struggle with the hijackers. The central issue there is the difficult decisions the leaders must face in determining whether to sacrifice the lives of those on board the plane. This narrative affirms that the military and government was in control, and that the leaders were making quick, informed decisions and wrestling with large moral issues under time pressure. In reality, he points out, we didn't even know where flight 168 was, had no F-16's anywhere near the aircraft, the plane had gone down before the leaders even knew it existed, and the eventual directive to take down the plane if necessary was never passed to the pilots because the military official in charge knew that there were no suspect planes currently in the air when the order arrived.
Being allied, as I am, with the 'reality-based community', I agree with Farmer that the facts need to be acknowledged and addressed. But I cannot share his surprise (though I share his dismay) that they were not. And while I appreciate his suggestions for improvement, I think he doesn't fully appreciate the reality that must be addressed. The "ground truth" is that those who wield power do so because they know that perception matters, and know how to manage it. The only way to make reality drive policy is to make reality drive perception, and it can only do so when the facts are timely and relevant. I'm glad he wrote the book, and it's a small push in the right direction, but it's too little, too late. It won't be read except by those who still care, and they are few and wield relatively little power. Priorities won't change, and policies that align better with demands won't be effected. Guess I'm pessimistic, or perhaps a cynic, but that's how it's always been.
p.s. Also read "The Atomic Bazaar" by William Langewiesche. I'll write about these soon, I need to return these books to the library before it closes.
Monday, November 9, 2009
World Distribution of Wealth, 2008
I was feeling frustrated with a book on socially conscious investing that I was reading, and so turned (of course) to wikipedia for more solid information. This took me (via reference links) to some UN publications, in one of which I found the above chart.
The chart shows the distribution of adults whose personal wealth is in the top 10% of world wealth. As can be seen, the US has 25% of the richest 10%. (As several publications pointed out, it's important to be mindful of the distinction between wealth from income.)
The paper (note: it's a discussion paper only) is from UNU_WIDER (United Nations University — World Institute for Development Economic Research):
Discussion Paper No. 2008/03
The World Distribution of Household Wealth
James B. Davies, Susanna Sandström,
Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff
February 2008
ISBN 978-92-9230-064-7 (printed publication)
The World Distribution of Household Wealth
James B. Davies, Susanna Sandström,
Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff
February 2008
ISBN 978-92-9230-064-7 (printed publication)
I found the following paragraphs especially notable:
"Table 2 summarizes our results on the distribution of household wealth across the world population of 3.7 billion adults, based on official exchange rates and figures for the year 2000. According to our estimates, adults required just $2,138 in order to be among the wealthiest half of the world. But more than $61,000 was needed to belong to the top 10 per cent and more than $510,000 per adult was required for membership of the top 1 per cent. The entrance fee for the top 1 per cent seems surprisingly high, given than the group has 37 million adult members. Furthermore, the figure refers to the year 2000 and is now likely to be considerably higher, especially when measured in US dollars.
"The wealth share estimates reveal that the richest 2 per cent of adult individuals own more than half of all global wealth, with the richest 1 per cent alone accounting for 40 per cent of global assets. The corresponding figures for the top 5 per cent and the top 10 per cent are 71 per cent and 85 per cent, respectively. In contrast, the bottom half of wealth holders together hold barely 1 per cent of global wealth. Members of the top decile are almost 400 times richer, on average, than the bottom 50 per cent, and members of the top percentile are almost 2,000 times richer."
"... The final column of Table 3 records wealth Gini estimates ranging from 0.547 for Japan to 0.801 for the USA and 0.803 for Switzerland. The global wealth Gini is estimated to be even greater at 0.892. This is equivalent to the Gini value that would be registered for a 100-person population in which one person receives $900 and the remaining 99 people each receive $1."
Amazing. The world is a rough place.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Sahara Unveiled
Well, I was going to write about this book, but it's been summarized much more capably than I could here. Not that I read this blog, just found it when searching on the title to confirm the spelling of William Langewiesche's name. I should investigate this blog a bit... Anyway, I'll forgo my own description of it. Suffice to say, I enjoyed it, and it left a big impression on me: Africa is a hard, troublesome, difficult place.
But I can talk about my experiences around reading the book. I'd seen it in the living room, and picked it up and put it in my bag when we were packing to take Nick to Philadelphia. Even at the time I knew I probably wouldn't have time or inclination to read it while we were there, but I did read it after we returned. And...
It wasn't until page 150 that I realized that I'd read it before.
At that point my memories came back. I'd enjoyed the book— his writing, his observances, his attitude— a lot. My impressions on rereading it were substantially the same as when I'd read it the first time, ten years earlier. But I hadn't noticed.
I was rather taken aback, and sat in wonderment as this all sank in. Years ago, in my twenties, I'd recognize within half a page that I'd read something before. Granted, I hadn't read quite so much at that point in my life. But the contrast between then and now bothered me. How could I read so far into the book and not realize that it wasn't the first time I'd read it? Is this what aging does?
Now, this post isn't really about aging and what it does, but about my distressing tendency to notice events and relate them to aging. It may be that the book just hadn't made much of an impression on me up to that point (this is where he describes the family with the 5-year-old boy taking a car trip into the desert, getting lost, and dying, slowly, of thirst). So, maybe I was just not engaged enough with the book until that point for it to make enough impression on me to remember it ten years later. And then, part of me responds "yes, but that wouldn't have made a difference when I was 25." So I argue with myself about whether something is or is not a sign of aging, and whether it really matters all that much. It's a bit troubling, and part of it is wondering to what extent I will inherit my father's proclivity to worry about himself, his anxiety about losing his mental abilities— and, well, his actual loss of mental acuity.
Sheesh. I'm 51. There is something about turning 50 that makes it no longer possible to ignore the fact that you're aging, which I had managed to do during my 40's. But I'm not old. Am I?
But I can talk about my experiences around reading the book. I'd seen it in the living room, and picked it up and put it in my bag when we were packing to take Nick to Philadelphia. Even at the time I knew I probably wouldn't have time or inclination to read it while we were there, but I did read it after we returned. And...
It wasn't until page 150 that I realized that I'd read it before.
At that point my memories came back. I'd enjoyed the book— his writing, his observances, his attitude— a lot. My impressions on rereading it were substantially the same as when I'd read it the first time, ten years earlier. But I hadn't noticed.
I was rather taken aback, and sat in wonderment as this all sank in. Years ago, in my twenties, I'd recognize within half a page that I'd read something before. Granted, I hadn't read quite so much at that point in my life. But the contrast between then and now bothered me. How could I read so far into the book and not realize that it wasn't the first time I'd read it? Is this what aging does?
Now, this post isn't really about aging and what it does, but about my distressing tendency to notice events and relate them to aging. It may be that the book just hadn't made much of an impression on me up to that point (this is where he describes the family with the 5-year-old boy taking a car trip into the desert, getting lost, and dying, slowly, of thirst). So, maybe I was just not engaged enough with the book until that point for it to make enough impression on me to remember it ten years later. And then, part of me responds "yes, but that wouldn't have made a difference when I was 25." So I argue with myself about whether something is or is not a sign of aging, and whether it really matters all that much. It's a bit troubling, and part of it is wondering to what extent I will inherit my father's proclivity to worry about himself, his anxiety about losing his mental abilities— and, well, his actual loss of mental acuity.
Sheesh. I'm 51. There is something about turning 50 that makes it no longer possible to ignore the fact that you're aging, which I had managed to do during my 40's. But I'm not old. Am I?
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Also read recently
I'll write notes on these eventually, some I read almost a month ago.
Read:
"Kill All Your Darlings"— Luc Sante
"His Master's Voice"— Stanislaw Lem
"Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone"— Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshenberg
"The Gatekeepers"—Jacques Steinberg
"Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert"— William Langewiesche
Reading:
"The Philosophical Baby"— Alison Gopnik
"Outliers"— Malcolm Gladwell
"Irrational Exuberance (2nd Ed.)"— Robert J. Shiller
Jonathan Lethem
Recently read one of his books, checked it out from the local library— "The wall of the sky, the wall of the eye," a collection of short stories. Usual Lethem; I don't know anyone who does quite what he does. The things he writes tend to be near-parodies of genre fiction, with some often counter-factual twist. Yet they actually work in their genre&mdash "Gun, with occasional music" is a very readable detective novel that just happens to feature a kangaroo. Thinking about it more, 'genre fiction' isn't quite the right term, it's a little too pejorative. Perhaps 'styled fiction', something that has a recognizable flow and mood, better suits what I'm trying to say. The things he writes are recognizably similar to other novels and stories you've read, and allude to their conventions, yet they're sui generis. These short stories are a good introduction to his work.
I'll describe some I especially liked. "The Happy Man" is a story of a man who literally dies and goes to hell, returning for brief, unpredictable, and not particularly welcome visits with his family. Together with with his son he discovers the source of his childhood daemons, and eases his hell just a little bit. "The Hardened Criminals" is about a prison literally built of men turned to concrete, whose brains live on as robotic automatons inside their heads. "Light and the Sufferer" is about a man's failed attempt to save his brother from himself, accompanied by one of the speechless dog-like aliens that are drawn to the self-destructive. There's nothing breezy about these tales, no elbow in the ribs or knowing wink, they're serious, hard-hitting fare.
It's not always this intense. "Five Fucks" is about two people who can't keep apart to save themselves— or the world, which changes around them each time they sleep together. He takes the whole notion of a "doomed relationship" and sends it careening into space. This story succeeds on several levels; humorous, profound, quirky, and sad all in a jumble. He doesn't force the humor, it just flows from the situation, and he's happy to let it just slide by, only nodding at it from time to time in his choice of words or phrase or image. (I was especially tickled by the statue in the town that the Mayor ends up standing under before the world turns again).
As it turns out Mr. Lethem has a piece in this week's New Yorker, and is also interviewed in an article in last week's Time. He seems to have crossed over the line and made it into the public eye, which should be good for his book sales, and maybe for him. His popular books have a little less of the dark edge and more humor, but that's ok. I just hope he keeps writing cool stuff, looking for and finding that edge.
I'll describe some I especially liked. "The Happy Man" is a story of a man who literally dies and goes to hell, returning for brief, unpredictable, and not particularly welcome visits with his family. Together with with his son he discovers the source of his childhood daemons, and eases his hell just a little bit. "The Hardened Criminals" is about a prison literally built of men turned to concrete, whose brains live on as robotic automatons inside their heads. "Light and the Sufferer" is about a man's failed attempt to save his brother from himself, accompanied by one of the speechless dog-like aliens that are drawn to the self-destructive. There's nothing breezy about these tales, no elbow in the ribs or knowing wink, they're serious, hard-hitting fare.
It's not always this intense. "Five Fucks" is about two people who can't keep apart to save themselves— or the world, which changes around them each time they sleep together. He takes the whole notion of a "doomed relationship" and sends it careening into space. This story succeeds on several levels; humorous, profound, quirky, and sad all in a jumble. He doesn't force the humor, it just flows from the situation, and he's happy to let it just slide by, only nodding at it from time to time in his choice of words or phrase or image. (I was especially tickled by the statue in the town that the Mayor ends up standing under before the world turns again).
As it turns out Mr. Lethem has a piece in this week's New Yorker, and is also interviewed in an article in last week's Time. He seems to have crossed over the line and made it into the public eye, which should be good for his book sales, and maybe for him. His popular books have a little less of the dark edge and more humor, but that's ok. I just hope he keeps writing cool stuff, looking for and finding that edge.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Obama's address to congress on health care
Just watched Obama's address, thanks to the wonders of YouTube. It's available at WhiteHouse.gov, along with a transcript.
Most of it ran as these things usually do. Lots of interruptions for applause, with various members or factions making a show of standing and applauding or sitting and looking stoic, depending on the side they're taking. I find this posturing to be a bit wearying... As his speech progressed he moved from descriptions of what he wanted reform to achieve, to what particular proposals he favored, to a description of the partisan bickering and fear-mongering, to a rousing call to action and American ideals. It had a good overall flow and structure. I was rather interested that he chose to call out and address some of the lies (his word) promulgated by opponents of his proposals. His directness, I think, reveals his frustration with the level of debate and the kind of politics being waged. And his final call to action and appeal to ideals and morality during the last ten minutes of his speech was quite strong. It's an appeal that I'm pretty amenable to, of course, but I think you can't deny that he performed very well. So in the end I felt it was pretty watchable.
A few days ago I watched his address to schoolchildren, also on YouTube. With both speeches I felt he needed to be a bit more camera-savvy. Reagan always knew to address the camera (he was a professional pitchman after all). Obama looks left and right at the audience, and clearly connects with them, but rarely, if ever, looks directly at the camera. As a result the feeling is that you're observing him talk to others, rather than listening to him talk to you. It's clear he has the charisma— his resolve and passion was quite in evidence with this speech— but he needs to figure out how to deploy it a bit better through the media.
Since I don't watch TV new or talking head shows, and get only a very biased view via reddit and web news aggregator headlines, I don't really know how this played out. Fox "News" probably didn't play it live at all, and I doubt there was much analysis on any program of what he said, as opposed to descriptions of how various factions received him, and talking heads trying to spin it this way or that. My sense is that it didn't move the national conversation quite as much as he needs to. It did seem to energize his base a bit, which I think he needs. Energized me to write this, anyway, though of course that's not saying much!
I don't know enough to assess the financial impact of what he proposes. What is clear is that he's trying to do this the right way, with the expenses budgeted and paid for, rather than through keeping it off books or pushing costs off into the nebulous future as we've done with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I'm not sure he's going to be able to save as much by reforming the system as he hopes— the folks extracting profits out of the current system are going to hold onto them as tightly as they can. Also, I suspect that much of the "waste" comes from the complexity of the billing and paperwork, which isn't going to go away if we continue to have multiple insurance policies with varying level of coverage and forms of payment as we do now. I suspect a lot of push towards higher costs comes from defensive tests and incentives (or lack of disincentives) for doctors to perform, and clients to request, procedures that aren't strongly indicated. Overly-aggressive end-of-life treatment clearly contributes its share of unnecessary cost, too, but that's a societal issue that's not easily addressed. High pharmaceutical prices due to non-competitive restrictions on bargaining are also a problem; he might be able to do something about this, though again big pharma is going to fight this with everything they've got. So these seem like large contributions to the problem of escalating health care costs that I don't see being addressed. But I really don't know how much of the overall cost is due to these features of our system, and how much is due to "waste and abuse" (or less prejudicially, how the system is gamed) by the people participating in the system— for example, when healthy people opt out of the system and rely on emergency room service, throwing costs onto others, or when insurers cherry-pick who they insure. I wonder if anyone really knows. I should explore the web a bit more, I'm sure there's data somewhere that would inform these kinds of speculations.
Anyway, I liked the speech. It was passionate and direct. He's a very bright guy, Obama is, and curiously optimistic still despite the difficult slog over the summer. Let's hope he succeeds.
Most of it ran as these things usually do. Lots of interruptions for applause, with various members or factions making a show of standing and applauding or sitting and looking stoic, depending on the side they're taking. I find this posturing to be a bit wearying... As his speech progressed he moved from descriptions of what he wanted reform to achieve, to what particular proposals he favored, to a description of the partisan bickering and fear-mongering, to a rousing call to action and American ideals. It had a good overall flow and structure. I was rather interested that he chose to call out and address some of the lies (his word) promulgated by opponents of his proposals. His directness, I think, reveals his frustration with the level of debate and the kind of politics being waged. And his final call to action and appeal to ideals and morality during the last ten minutes of his speech was quite strong. It's an appeal that I'm pretty amenable to, of course, but I think you can't deny that he performed very well. So in the end I felt it was pretty watchable.
A few days ago I watched his address to schoolchildren, also on YouTube. With both speeches I felt he needed to be a bit more camera-savvy. Reagan always knew to address the camera (he was a professional pitchman after all). Obama looks left and right at the audience, and clearly connects with them, but rarely, if ever, looks directly at the camera. As a result the feeling is that you're observing him talk to others, rather than listening to him talk to you. It's clear he has the charisma— his resolve and passion was quite in evidence with this speech— but he needs to figure out how to deploy it a bit better through the media.
Since I don't watch TV new or talking head shows, and get only a very biased view via reddit and web news aggregator headlines, I don't really know how this played out. Fox "News" probably didn't play it live at all, and I doubt there was much analysis on any program of what he said, as opposed to descriptions of how various factions received him, and talking heads trying to spin it this way or that. My sense is that it didn't move the national conversation quite as much as he needs to. It did seem to energize his base a bit, which I think he needs. Energized me to write this, anyway, though of course that's not saying much!
I don't know enough to assess the financial impact of what he proposes. What is clear is that he's trying to do this the right way, with the expenses budgeted and paid for, rather than through keeping it off books or pushing costs off into the nebulous future as we've done with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I'm not sure he's going to be able to save as much by reforming the system as he hopes— the folks extracting profits out of the current system are going to hold onto them as tightly as they can. Also, I suspect that much of the "waste" comes from the complexity of the billing and paperwork, which isn't going to go away if we continue to have multiple insurance policies with varying level of coverage and forms of payment as we do now. I suspect a lot of push towards higher costs comes from defensive tests and incentives (or lack of disincentives) for doctors to perform, and clients to request, procedures that aren't strongly indicated. Overly-aggressive end-of-life treatment clearly contributes its share of unnecessary cost, too, but that's a societal issue that's not easily addressed. High pharmaceutical prices due to non-competitive restrictions on bargaining are also a problem; he might be able to do something about this, though again big pharma is going to fight this with everything they've got. So these seem like large contributions to the problem of escalating health care costs that I don't see being addressed. But I really don't know how much of the overall cost is due to these features of our system, and how much is due to "waste and abuse" (or less prejudicially, how the system is gamed) by the people participating in the system— for example, when healthy people opt out of the system and rely on emergency room service, throwing costs onto others, or when insurers cherry-pick who they insure. I wonder if anyone really knows. I should explore the web a bit more, I'm sure there's data somewhere that would inform these kinds of speculations.
Anyway, I liked the speech. It was passionate and direct. He's a very bright guy, Obama is, and curiously optimistic still despite the difficult slog over the summer. Let's hope he succeeds.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Setting things up
I tried to enhance this blog today. Took a lot of time. I feel a bit constrained by blogger's templates and widgets, I just need to learn more about them I guess. The flickr photo badge came from a generator tool on the flickr site. I learned that there was support for tags— um, they're called labels, and there's this handy box you can type them into, so I switched to use them. D'oh.
I spent some time writing my own flickr photo viewer, which lets you page through the images instead of seeing them all at once, but I need to get a bit further with it. Maybe I'll switch to that, I can provide a bit more info on the photos.
Sigh, wasn't the idea for me to get off the net a bit more?
I spent some time writing my own flickr photo viewer, which lets you page through the images instead of seeing them all at once, but I need to get a bit further with it. Maybe I'll switch to that, I can provide a bit more info on the photos.
Sigh, wasn't the idea for me to get off the net a bit more?
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Klein Bottle
This popped up again on reddit today, it's been around— the bottles, by Alan Bennett, date from 1995. They're on display online here. The actual bottles are at the Science Museum in London.
It would be fun to visit London again. I've only been once.
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Years of Talking Dangerously by Geoffrey Nunberg
I finally decided to find something more productive to do on the web than play sudoku and read reddit— namely, to get off the web and read books for a change. As it happens for my birthday my wife gave me a copy of Geoffrey Nunberg's book (he's the linguist who comments on Fresh Air) so the choice of where to start was easy. It turns out to be a selection of his on-air commentaries over the past eight or so years, slightly edited (or unedited, as some were a little too explicit for NPR). I was dubious at first, but I decided to try it. Being a typical educated older liberal San Francisco Bay Area resident, I listen to NPR all the time, so I was familiar with his commentaries. I'd always found them just OK; somehow I'd never really taken to them.
As it turns out, though, I find myself enjoying the book quite a bit. Partly, I'm embarrassed to say, I suspect a significant factor in my former lukewarm reception was that I'm just not that fond of his voice and reading style. It comes across as a bit mannered to me, and overemphasized the wordplay— instead of being witty it seemed, well, a bit too cute and attention-grabbing. But this all goes down much better when I read the commentaries instead of listen to them. I find I can appreciate the ideas and observations better at reading speed, where I can pause to think and reflect on what he's saying. As a result I've found that much of my frustration with the way many members of the Bush administration (well, all members the Bush administration) manipulated language for political purposes, which I had had difficulty articulating, he was able to articulate quite clearly and forcefully. I'd understood this, vaguely, nodding along listening to NPR years ago, but it became startlingly obvious to me when reading the essays in print. He put his finger on exactly the things that had troubled me! Imagine that!
Now, as a book, or even a collection of essays, it's pretty light reading. Owing to their origin as short radio pieces, none of the commentaries is particularly deep or involved. (Perhaps that's what I need to wean myself off the 'net and back into print.) But they do provide amusement and plenty of brief insights into how the English language is used in America today. I've been enjoying it.
At Powell's Books
As it turns out, though, I find myself enjoying the book quite a bit. Partly, I'm embarrassed to say, I suspect a significant factor in my former lukewarm reception was that I'm just not that fond of his voice and reading style. It comes across as a bit mannered to me, and overemphasized the wordplay— instead of being witty it seemed, well, a bit too cute and attention-grabbing. But this all goes down much better when I read the commentaries instead of listen to them. I find I can appreciate the ideas and observations better at reading speed, where I can pause to think and reflect on what he's saying. As a result I've found that much of my frustration with the way many members of the Bush administration (well, all members the Bush administration) manipulated language for political purposes, which I had had difficulty articulating, he was able to articulate quite clearly and forcefully. I'd understood this, vaguely, nodding along listening to NPR years ago, but it became startlingly obvious to me when reading the essays in print. He put his finger on exactly the things that had troubled me! Imagine that!
Now, as a book, or even a collection of essays, it's pretty light reading. Owing to their origin as short radio pieces, none of the commentaries is particularly deep or involved. (Perhaps that's what I need to wean myself off the 'net and back into print.) But they do provide amusement and plenty of brief insights into how the English language is used in America today. I've been enjoying it.
At Powell's Books
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