Ominous Silence, Volcker Speaks

We sit in the ominous silence as the experts try to sort out how to fix the financial mess, which is beginning to feel more like an act of nature than anything human made, although it was made by these self-same experts.

Paul Volcker had a semi-optimistic assessment today in the WSJ, saying the correct things were finally beginning to be done.

Fortunately, there is also good reason to believe that the means are now available to turn the tide. Financial authorities, in the United States and elsewhere, are now in a position to take needed and convincing action to stabilize markets and to restore trust.

First of all, there is now clear recognition that the problem is international, and international coordination and cooperation is both necessary and underway…

Maybe a truncated recession is possible.

Just a few days ago the experts were saying that letting Lehman's fail was a great idea and the public celebrated that the rich guys weren't being bailed out. Now many experts say that failure of Lehman's led to panic in the other institutions to which Lehman's was connected and thence the freeze up of credit.

So we sit in silence, hoping for the best, like John Ashberry's The Painter,

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

Deep Fish in Choppy Seas

Creatures unaffected by the financial crisis have been found.

Living in the deepest trenches of the multitudinous seas, hadal snailfish have their own issues:

Here they have to contend with total darkness, near freezing temperatures and immense water pressure – at this depth the pressure is 8,000 tonnes per square metre, equivalent to that of 1600 elephants standing on the roof of a Mini car. They feed on the thousands of tiny shrimp-like creatures that scavenge the carcasses of dead fish and detritus reaching the ocean floor.

It is not so bad:

…these fish aren’t loners. The images show groups that are sociable and active – possibly even families – feeding on little shrimp, yet living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.

Debate Two: A Re-View

The debates can only be reviewed as a show. First the spoiler: in the general election, Obama will win. It is in the stars. The press and manic advocates can relax. Obama wins in the end out of no quality of his own. It is just in the stars, the convergence of events.

Now the players: Obama was professorial and somewhat boring, McCain a very experienced and effective politician, Brokaw looked embalmed. Speaking of embalmed: the audience was badly in need of an opening act — something was needed to loosen them up. (A Seinfeld standup set before air?)

McCain was very effective in the format provided. He was comfortable. He connected. Obama is professorial and can't seem to shake it. It is his predisposition. He seldom went to the back of the plane in his campaign flights to talk to the press informally. He needs a wall. He sets up huge stadiums in which to address the impersonal throng, or stands behind a protective podium to give speeches out of a discomfort with personal contact. Obama is only, or principally, comfortable with unquestioning supporters. Obama really makes no empathic connection — a strange quality in a politician.

The troubling things about McCain: he is a maverick. The very thing he touts isn't suitable for running things. We need engagement now, not contention. He is too quick to react; his judgments appear too emotional.

The troubling things about Obama. He follows. If McCain talks about bipartisanship, Obama says the same thing in his turn. This happened again and again in the primaries. Is Obama a leader, or a repeater? McCain is correct: Obama has never stood up to any constituency, about anything. Obama's supporters want him to “go harder” in the debates, but what he needs to do is go harder against their excesses.

We will just have to trust to Obama's intellectual grasp of the structural problems and the push of circumstance to force him to act. We will have to trust to the deeply neurotic Democrats to overcome their vengeance problem, their fractionalized identity politics nonsense, and see the interests of the country as paramount; the Republicans need to come together as something like a coherent party.

Obama's proposals, in their intent, seem more on point. Obama was right in his priorities. It seems he would do better by the average person. A business friendly administration is not as important as a citizen friendly one. It's come down to that. Obama seems disposed to make that connection intellectually, even if unable to do so on a personal basis.

The truth is, both candidates are decent and able individuals who will fight for the country they both love. Exactly what they can do given the current situation, well, no one can push the river, we'll just have to ride it out and try and steer when we can.

Dr. Seuss

The web being the web I came across a Dr. Seuss link. Following it and reading for awhile about this talented man, I discovered…

…he wasn't Jewish but faced anti-Semitism because of his name…he was against isolationism and racism and yes anti-Semitism long before it was fashionable…The Cat in the Hat was written to use words educators thought all children should know…given the task he used 236 of the 250 words so designated…he was a political cartoonist, pro-FDR…many of his children's books are regarded as parables…he went to Oxford…

well, that is some of what stuck with me. I had always been a fan. You don't know why you are a fan at first. Just something appeals. Later I realized it was first his wonderful and still modern graphical talent. I always loved cartoons, but he updated the Victorian children's book illustration and made it more fun, more modern. Beyond his visual skills, which seemed Art Nouveau derived to some extent, he was unusual in having an add-on — his mastery of language. The wonderful, clever rhymes in his books appeals to our love of nonsense and the absurd.

Nonsense and the absurd, like Jabberwocky for the genius Lewis Carroll, are a high order of artfulness. That absurdity, the ability to take sophisticated snippets from culture and thought and language and our visual heritage, and play with them is the serious play that defines art.

Wikipedia's article was especially informative about his rhyming schemes and suggestive of the solid cultural foundation,

Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter also employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This characteristic style of writing, which draws and pulls the reader into the text, is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well-received.

Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. An example of this meter can be found in Geisel's “Yertle the Turtle”, from Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories:

“And today the Great Yertle, that Marvelous he
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.”

Geisel generally maintained this meter quite strictly, until late in his career, when he no longer maintained strict rhythm in all lines. The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks; the many imitators and parodists of Geisel are often unable to write in strict anapestic tetrameter, or are unaware that they should, and thus sound clumsy in comparison.

Some books by Geisel that are written mainly in anapestic tetrameter also contain many lines written in amphibrachic tetrameter, …

Of course success breeds scholarly exegesis,

The cat’s improvisations with the objets trouvés in the home he has invaded are obviously an allegory for his creator’s performance with the two hundred and twenty arbitrary words he has been assigned by his publisher. The cat is a bricoleur. He has no system—or, rather, his system is to have no system. He is compelled to make meaning from whatever is there. He fails, the bricolage topples, the fish ends up in a teapot; …

My Uncle Terwilliger on
the Art of Eating Popovers
 
My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them
with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,”
said my uncle,
“you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT…
you must spit out the air!”
 
And…
as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.
—Dr. Seuss
 
An original poem composed for the 99th Commencement of Lake Forest College by Theodor Seuss Geisel
June 4, 1977

Happy Thoughts for Jolly Days

An obscure local channel showed a film noir last night — I never caught the name — but it sure fit the mood.

The press, the politicians, the leaders of industry and finance, the public intellectuals, all seem embroiled in internal battles, unable to engage the concerns of the time. There seem no useful insights, no reassurances that have substance for the public to grasp. Seeking leadership we have Bush and Pelosi and Obama and McCain. Small insubstantial fish in a roiling sea.

The most difficult: it, whatever “it” is, just seems to be beginning. There doesn't appear to be any consensus on how far and how deep the financial crisis will spread, or for how long. Uncertainty breeds dire thoughts that can lead to social disruption. Simple minded thugs can rise to power with simple minded answers that seek to target blame. That is just the unexpected consequence society tries to protect itself from, but often has failed historically. Herd instinct, which now appears to have been, in the guise of partisanship, in practice for years for just this circumstance, now leaves us without a foundationalist reservoir of comity.

The press, which loves rumor and titillation via fear mongering, then acts as though it is calming things down and patronizingly reassures. Having blown their credibility they look like manicured fools playing mom and pop. Titillate and deplore, that is the press in their day to day attire, but now, titillate and condescend. Even the more mature media like PBS and NPR have self-slimed themselves in their advocacy of Obama, so shamelessly beyond their usual left-leaning tendentiousness they have become a big part of the problem: they have no traction, about anything. Smug fools seldom do.

Neither candidate seems up to the job. Both candidates and parties petty and petulant, unable to hook into the public's concerns even if their rhetoric makes such claims; they seem irrelevant, as does the press, the politicians, the leaders of industry, the public intellectuals — but that is where we began.

Happy quote of the day:

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

— Sir Edward Grey
August, 1914

Post VP Debate Thoughts

There is a kind of horrified fascination about the campaign now. The future festooned with threats and doubts making the politicians smaller than the moment. They almost disappear in the shadows.

Palin did great in her debate. I felt glad for her. Public ridicule should be saved for malefactors. Biden, a likable competent politician, also did fine. He is a bore who doesn't put you off.

The election process has been from the outset celebrity cults at war. Obama, the newcomer, and his delighted with themselves supporters; McCain, the war hero, with his drill baby drill brigades. At no point did you feel issues were at stake, just a dislike of Bush, a choice of personalities, and a doubt either would do much of anything.

The country has gotten used to shallowness, personality, coarsened judgments — the latter a specialty of the media. The race for president feels more like a casting call than an assessment of judgment, character and understanding. All tactics, which the press is fully entranced by and probably explains its centrality. You would think the press wished to be campaign managers rather than reporters.

I've come to think the real casualty of the election will be the credibility and personal honor of the media. Some would laugh at personal honor mentioned in this context, but there are many reporters who are honorable. However, their smug and ponderous pronouncements in this election; their attempt to skew and slant and whisper their voice-over prejudice has betrayed them. In scanning some of the commentary one of the networks had a big Nielsen logo in the corner of the screen and a group of putative independent voters; the outcome was that Biden won big time. Then the reporter said that the group was “leaning towards Obama”. The pics and charts said big win Biden, the text, that the segment was a farce. The celebrity cult most easy to deplore: the press itself.

Obama has been more obnoxious in his affection for cult status. McCain, talking too much about his past, admirable as much of it has been, too little focused on the narrative of concerns, or anything else. All they both want is to win.

Well, Palin's success won't do much for McCain. Biden's workmanlike performance won't change things either.

The tangle of the issues facing the country brings to mind David Foster Wallace about the complexities of modern life:

We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it’s next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life. Where even people in two closely related sub-sub-specialties have a hard time communicating with each other because their respective s-s-s’s require so much special training and knowledge.

VP Debates Preamble

Palin's shaken confidence and ability to recover is on the line for the VP debates. She garbles strings of slogans and has been memed as therefore “not ready”. She can mangle syntax almost as badly as Eisenhower. Palin does make Obama look good, who himself is not prepared. But Obama is a slick orator, born to the manor of Washington. What Palin really is, is someone who is unskilled. She hasn't worked out the political blarney — how to dish out the slogans.

For how long did “unite and change” work for Obama before he had to really answer serious questions? When Obama has been faced with questions without his best friend Mr. Teleprompter nearby he has often stumbled. It has seldom been remarked the way Obama is always reading prepared text in any important public statement. If Charlie Gibson asks about Obama's contradictions and evasions, Obama is personally affronted.

Obama was for cross country debates before he was against them; he didn't know where he was in one campaign stop and in another didn't know how many states there are; he said he never heard Wright's anti-American and anti-Israel rants, then the next day he said he did. Obama was for the unification of Jerusalem, then the next day he was against it. His wife couldn't find a reason to be “proud of this country”. The response of the press was to aid next day “clarifications” without remark, as though that settled the issue. These gaffes aren't those of poor rhetorical skill of which Palin is guilty, but of garbled thought.

The press wants Obama to win and Palin to do badly. Of more importance, economic circumstance has all but ensured an Obama win. He is having success served up to him, yet again. The most recent politician to benefit from such convergence of events, George W., who had the presidency handed him by the Supreme Court.

Whether Palin can counter the media/economic/challenged-rhetorical-skillset tsunami seems unlikely. Depends on the public. And the public is worried about the economy, not the potential Vice President.

Captain Beefheart and Mortgage Derivatives

I don't know exactly what made me think of Captain Beefheart. Maybe his eccentric life force offers a salutary perspective on things as they are now drifting. Drifting.

In this youtube video from 1982 Captain Beefheart talks to Letterman. It is a fascinating segment in the interplay of expectation, of group reaction to the unfamiliar; in the discomfort of difference in a crowd. Beefheart isn't wearing a costume and ironically winking subtextually, he is the real deal.

As the segment evolves, the audience, which at heart is welcoming and wanting something new, starts to accept the eccentric pop genius. He already had his corner of pop fame but not in the realm Letterman inhabits. It is a circus spectacle: a shaman slowly casting his spell over conventional expectation.

Beefheart splattered the drone of the quotidian and mind numbing category. He would never be mainstream, but he will always influence other artists. Even now Beefheart's work is cutting edge. It is hard to pinpoint it — he extends a liberty that is indefinable but has shaken things up. You think immediately of Tom Waits, but there are excitements in his work that are suggestive to anyone creative. Beefheart wasn't a formbreaker out of ironic self conscious sophistication like Zappa; he was better, a natural — he couldn't help but be himself and it would never occur to him not to be. Sort of like Andy Kaufman.

When asked in a 1980 interview what the most important thing to him was he said, “My wife. Definitely. Sorry girls.” He meant it. Always surprising.

What's It All About Henry Paulson?

In trying to understand what happened to the financial system I listened to and read a number of experts. The dismal science is normally just that, dreary, but current circumstance makes it of interest. The big question is whether the Paulson plan, as yet not announced, will work. No one is in agreement about that — even the premises of the plan. It appears the Congress is trying to protect itself by seeming to give oversight and not be rushed into anything. But the details of what is happening are not available to any but the most sophisticated economists. Oversight sounds great but it's not much help to read the map carefully if you are going in the wrong direction. Congress doesn't know. Paulson might not be correct. Congress is covering its butt in a most familiar way — the Democrats don't want to appear snookered with the operative word being “appear”; the Republicans want to help the wealthy.

Warren Buffet said that you shouldn't invest in a business you don't understand. If a company sells a soft drink, you get that. But these mortgage securities are a house of cards. Only a few people understand fully what is happening, although snips of the errors made are trickling out. The “black swan” phenomenon, where expectations provided by statistics don't fully account for anomalies. In this case, computers assessing risk failed to take into account that the statistics were based on the value of housing continuing to rise. Then there is Andrew Cuomo's relaxing the requirements to get a mortgage so poor people could get a piece of the pie. This seems to have exfoliated in the markets — things got relaxed. In other words, it wasn't a single event, but a long, hard to follow series of mistakes, with many at fault.

So we are in doubt as to whether the plan will work. As to whether it even addresses the right thing. Shouldn't we give this money directly to the country itself — maybe some form of WPA (a plan Obama was reportedly sympathetic to) — rather than try to prop up the financial markets? Maybe those markets should shrink. No one knows. If that outcome doesn't improve things by cleansing the system, we would have the disaster we fear and the Despair of Shoulda. Something of the way Paulson went about this makes me wonder if he is just familiar with and trying to restore what was. That he is afraid inaction is worse than any action. Maybe this whole house of cards, these mortgage derivatives, should be disallowed from the financial system. Not just oversight — elimination. At least that is what some experts are saying.

Desperately Seeking FDR

Neither Obama nor McCain gives off leadership vibes. They are politicians. McCain has character as a man but it doesn't seem to translate into an overriding narrative to which the public can adhere. Obama seems incapable of standing against his own constituency when it is warranted — a crucial quality in a diverse country. It is not even clear if he knows when it is warranted. The New Yorker cartoon cover was a perfect time to show, in a minor way, that he got it. “Hey folks, it is just a cartoon. I know it is meant to satirize the foolish preconceptions people have about me and my wife. It is not that funny to me, but it is a joke. Let's uh….MoveOn!” Instead, Obama said nothing. If it doesn't directly enhance Barack, he is a no show. Ensued clueless whining from the grievance crowd. Obama has had numerous opportunities to show the public he understands the need for independence. He will never show those qualities — he doesn't have them. Desperate for a real leader and none to be found. Too bad Bloomberg didn't run. He was uniquely qualified and has shown leadership skills. Bush, who I think is still president, has become a shaken and defeated figure. The swagger gone, and fear in his face; just what we don't need.

The two public demonstrations of what was needed came from Bill Clinton on Letterman and for a nano second in a non-scripted speech given by McCain. In both cases they said, with sincere feeling, “Hey, we can do this. We can deal with this problem.” A simple affirmation. Ideally, it would be followed by a fireside chat about the current status of things — maybe a series of such — and then a vision of where we need to go and an acceptance of the bumps that will inevitably follow. Simple confidence and vision and communication skills and character and honesty. Honesty, what happened to that in the public debates?

The faces of members of Congress when emerging from their meeting with Paulson will stay with me. They were truly shocked at the situation. Paulson did a good thing in that meeting — he got their attention. Now Congress seems to be making progress — they are scared, they know if they don't do something and things tank as Paulson predicted, it is they who will be blamed. And they also know that the system, which operates in large rhythms, has been shaken like an earthquake; there are disruptions — psychic disruptions — that are making people very uneasy which leads to intense and sometimes dangerous herd reaction. Historically Jews, minorities, immigrants, take your pick, have been blamed for calamities. Next week will tell. If the markets settle and the world can absorb the tsunami of doubt that flows outward like a wall, things might not be so bad — systems might be improved. Next week might be one of the most important in the history of the United States.

Purging the system and shaking things up has its value. That is sometimes historically true, but there is a lot of individual pain in the process. The US wasn't touched in a day to day basis by 9/11 or the Iraq war. Bush failed miserably in communicating the reasons for the war and in providing the ongoing updates that were needed. The consequence was that only some families and individuals were affected. It had the familiar media-dissociative quality of TV — it was happening out there. And privately, many people don't think in any substantial way there is a there out there. People argued ideologically but it never seemed they had something at stake other than their egos and truncated world view. This time, no one escapes.

The Rapture of Calamity

A great discussion between two science journalists about, among other things, the exhilaration of calamity.

And here an article about the limits of statistics and how the experts play the public for fools.

So knowledge (i.e., if some statement is “true” or “false”) matters little, very little in many situations. In the real world, there are very few situations where what you do and your belief if some statement is true or false naively map into each other. Some decisions require vastly more caution than others—or highly more drastic confidence intervals. For instance you do not “need evidence” that the water is poisonous to not drink from it. You do not need “evidence” that a gun is loaded to avoid playing Russian roulette, or evidence that a thief a on the lookout to lock your door. You need evidence of safety—not evidence of lack of safety— a central asymmetry that affects us with rare events. This asymmetry in skepticism makes it easy to draw a map of danger spots.

This is the “black swan” thesis, that anomalies might exist; that statistics might not indicate their significance. A singular anomaly might render all the preceding data useless, reality exploding in our faces. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

John Horgan noted that this is a variant of the argument between Stephen Jay Gould of the messiness of reality — a kind of inherent humor embedded in the system that finds an unexpected use for structure — and Dawkins' anally precise vision of reality (Panglossian Paradigm).

The exhilaration of calamity is the explosion which makes, for a precious moment, things new and unfettered, the mind and the moment at one.

George Johnson offered this quote,

“Everything was so clear that day, so unencumbered by theories and opinions, by thought, even. It just was.” — Ken Kesey in an email sent to friends after September 11, 2001.

RIP Paul Newman

“What a sweet, decent guy Paul was,” [a friend of Paul Newman] remembers. “Yes, he was ambitious, but you got the feeling he’d never tolerate cruelty. And that he’d stand up for you if you needed protection.”

If ever an individual seemed born under a lucky star it was Paul Newman. The luck which followed him his entire life was appreciated: “It’s allowed me to take chances, to take risks. To get close to a lot of edges without falling off.” He always seemed to keep his perspective, some sense of context.

It's rare and telling of their character when people know where they stop and the Fates take a hand. It would have been so easy for him to believe his press clippings and drift like most celebrities in a sea of sycophants.

Newman appreciated his circumstance, did not flaunt it, use it to preach or squeeze more profit, but rather he managed to do so much good. A celebrity who, if we can trust his public self, seemed shy, a gentle soul, whose first instinct was modesty and generosity. A rare celebrity — one for whom you felt glad for their success.

Written just before his death , this Vanity Fair piece makes the point well,

There has never been anyone in show business like Paul Newman. He is as famous as Oprah but doesn’t flaunt his celebrity. He has changed the lives of literally thousands of people (among them more than 100,000 children) with his generosity, and he’s entertained us and moved us with his films. He is an honorable man—“a man of conscience,” his friend Gore Vidal said. If Newman doesn’t want to tell us about his cancer (if he has cancer), why should he? As he has said so often about his private life, “It’s nobody’s business.”

Debates: What Are They Good For?

The first presidential debate was flat. That lack of drama is a good thing. Who needs more drama right now? The foundations of a capitalist system, its banking and market oversight, all in a fray, shaking the country up; personal attacks and bitterness would turn people off to the system big time, as Cheney would say. But with the huge and lingering clouds of market instability overhead, turning all to shadow, the debates still had great interest.

Obama seemed competent, which is what his handlers want, as the commentators all set that as a predicate. His views were clearly enunciated, Obama's strength, and despite a couple of inaccuracies which one commentator pointed out post debate, he seemed a reasonable if uninspired figure. I don't agree with his thinking; for example, talking to Iran without precondition (then claiming he had not said that — one of the inaccuracies pointed out). Government can have a positive effect on people's lives, which is what Obama is saying; we don't need to let things play themselves out in society or our financial system, the system can help and should. Why devolve to a jungle and say we can do no better than be bystanders to the chaos system of the markets?

McCain had seemed a chicken running around without his head the last couple of days; add to that Palin's imploding in an ill conceived interview with Couric and McCain's “I'll be at the debate no I won't”. Brooks said McCain returned to Washington to affirm to the Republicans that they would all be together in the bailout battle. But it looked frenetic — too herky jerky. McCain stabilized and enhanced himself in the debate — he came across as vigorous (a putative doubt) and if you agree with him, as I do about many things, extremely effective.

The commentators themselves tried to skew the outcome — they themselves have become spin doctors as the press has joined the Obama campaign — but it was pretty much advantage McCain, no matter what they say. The behavior of the press, its deep bias, will be a longtime hit on a profession that has lost its way. They cluck so much among one another, the solidarity affirmation amongst themselves by affirming Obama so cogent, that they have no idea how poorly they are doing. The best the media can offer in response is smug disdain. Even the usually pretty fair Lehrer had Margaret Warner doing a campaign hagiography in what was supposed to be a segment examining Obama's judgment. This is a guy who was for the unification of Jerusalem before he was against it; who “explained” his long relationship with pastor Wright by lecturing the country on race — absolutely no ability to self-correct or respond to concerns. Obama is stubborn as Bush and has his own problems when not scripted or sloganeering.

Of course the debates are stuff as dreams are made on as we have no money to do much of anything; as our confidence in the system erodes the world is taking notice.

Politics and the Markets

It is not just the financial system that is broken, but the political system that floats like a cork on the sea of money provided by that self-same financial system.

Obama sees the current financial crisis as another opportunity to attack McCain. A sample of his leadership skills. McCain, ungainly in matters economic, mutters that the economy is sound, trying clearly to calm things down, but saying it so ineptly that he set himself up as a patsy.

We should be able to vote “Try Again” and thereby force the political parties to return to convention to provide other candidates.

From a 2003 interview with David Foster Wallace by Dave Eggers,

Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil. Conservative thinkers are balder about this kind of attitude: Limbaugh, Hannity, that horrific O’Reilly person. Coulter, Kristol, etc. But the Left’s been infected, too. Have you read this new Al Franken book? Parts of it are funny, but it’s totally venomous (like, what possible response can rightist pundits have to Franken’s broadsides but further rage and return-venom?). Or see also e.g. Lapham’s latest Harper’s columns, or most of the stuff in the Nation, or even Rolling Stone. It’s all become like Zinn and Chomsky but without the immense bodies of hard data these older guys use to back up their screeds. There’s no more complex, messy, community-wide argument (or “dialogue”); political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying… well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an asshole—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community.

Elevator Going Up

I once read a 100 page New Yorker article about the growing, processing and canning of Le Sueur peas. Well, it felt like a 100 page article. But I read the whole thing. Something hypnotic about the magic-realism, anal, detailed prose I guess. It is a form of escape into minutiae. Like watching TV. Or reading the text on cereal boxes. Or parsing political strategies. Or…

Anyway, here is another article, very long, very New Yorker, very good, about elevators in high rises, interlaced with one man's horrendous experience being stuck in a high rise elevator for long enough for it to ruin his life.

Traction elevators—the ones hanging from ropes, as opposed to dumbwaiters, or mining elevators, or those lifted by hydraulic pumps—are typically borne aloft by six or eight hoist cables, each of which, according to the national elevator-safety code (and the code determines all), is capable on its own of supporting the full load of the elevator plus twenty-five per cent more weight. Another line, the governor cable, is connected to a device that detects if the elevator car is descending at a rate twenty-five per cent faster than its maximum designed speed. If that happens, the device trips the safeties, bronze shoes that run along vertical rails in the shaft. These brakes are designed to stop the car quickly, but not so abruptly as to cause injury. They work. This is why free falling, at least, is so rare.

Hawking. Clock. Headache.

Out of some gothic nightmare, Stephen Hawking presented a grisly clock yesterday. He didn't take part in its conception. He was just there to add to the merriment. Whether this device is symptomatic of the times is not a question we want to ponder.

Another quirky feature is the eerie sound of a chain dropping into a wooden coffin hidden behind the clock on the hour, which is intended to be a reminder of human mortality.

Do we really need to be reminded of our mortality right now?

Bob Rubin Reincarnated As A Pail

Another death and destruction is on its way discussion about the economy @ Moyers. Kevin Phillips has been around a long time and expects the coming recession to be around a long time. He has credibility, but, who knows really? Attempting to explain a phenomenon can be helpful and revealing; it gives you a sense of control or at least context. The problem with going beyond analysis into this type of prognostication is that it becomes a media meme, thence devolving to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social processes have as their fundamental a sense of confidence.

You go through a painful adjustment process. The British were absolutely top dog in the world in 1914. Two world wars and 35 years later, they were having, after World War II, they were having food rationing, the pound sterling crashed, dukes were giving guided tours of their castles because they couldn't afford to maintain them otherwise. Doesn't take long. And I'm afraid the United States is coming right into that period which marks a couple of decades coming up that are going to be very difficult for America.

To his credit and credibility, Phillips attacks both parties,

It's been a bipartisan phenomenon. You can go back to the 1980s and say Reagan and George Bush, Sr., got a bubble started. Clinton got in and got an even bigger bubble going. And then George W. Bush with the biggest bubble of all. But it's not that the Clintonites didn't play. They did. Bob Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury — I mean, if he was a Hindu and he was being reincarnated, he'd come back as a pail because this guy bailed out everything you can imagine. They had the Mexican loan bailout. They had the long-term capital management bailout, the Russian Southeast Asian currency bailouts.

It's The Economy Stupid

Lehrer had clips of the reactions of the candidates to the current financial crisis. McCain was unscripted, passionate and blamed the lobbyists. It was a forceful representation and as general message makes sense. McCain's instincts against bailouts also makes moral sense, but not in this case. Too much is at stake.

Obama came out with his troops flanking him — the flock in formation. They were ready to do battle with the economy, or fly to Canada. Of special note in the group: the redoubtable Robert Rubin. He is a guy you want on your team. As usual, when something significant has to be said, Obama reads his statement. Obama's emphasis on the necessity for a bailout was on the money, so to speak.

Money in politics dumbs things down making government inefficient but it seems impossible to kill the disease without the patient's willingness to face the problem.

Speaking of the economy and the dumb things politicians do, here is an article about the dumb things people do online.

Being a fan of the Mac, this was amusing:

Michael Hanscom did not pose nude on Flickr, attack the locals with a stick on his trip to Mexico, or dress up like the Fairy Princess while calling in sick. His crime? In October 2003, the Microsoft temp posted photos of Macintosh G5s being unloaded on the Redmond campus to his blog with the title “Even Microsoft wants G5s.” And that was enough to get him canned from his job in Microsoft's print shop for an alleged “security violation.” Apparently, the world's largest developer of software for the Mac (besides Apple) didn't want anyone to know that some of its employees use Macs.

Jeremiad For Jolly Days

The news is too much with us.

The previous post about David Foster Wallace was generated by news of his suicide. He was 46 and his father said he had struggled for 20 years with depression. His wife found him. He had hung himself. His writing was a bit detached for me, but he clearly had enormous smarts and great gifts. You always wish something could have been done.

Three great investment banks tanking and two more that may go. A conga line of huge financial entities waiting their turn in the spotlight of doubt, with many expecting a cascade of failures and financial catastrophes or at very least a long recession.

There is a lot of ranting now on the campaign trail by both sides, but it is both sides that are to blame. They both lie and have betrayed their early promise. Move On Attack Dog Barack Obama (aka Great Post Partisan Uniter) trying to please his base, and John McCain becoming a conventional Republican while still claiming he is a maverick. By inclination maybe, but not by political behavior.

Here is a discussion about what happened with Fannie and Freddie and why it is the system itself that needs fixing. This does suggest McCain's systemic diagnosis is the way to go. Here is a piece about Fannie and Obama.

One aside about the financial bad news. There is a guy (Nouriel Roubini) who has been appearing on talk shows. He predicted the onset of the current disaster and now everyone is listening to him. It actually makes you start to laugh as he goes on, like the biology teacher on Wonder Years played by Ben Stein, discoursing on the inevitable violent brutish miserable depleted disease enshrined end to which all living things devolve. He even has the same droning speaking pattern.

It reminds me of the old PBS show Wall Street Week. No matter what happened there was always one guy who was optimistic and another pessimistic. So whatever randomness the market's chaos system served up made one or the other look prescient. These commentators were merely coincidental onlookers to a buzzing, blooming reality. Forget experts. This will just have to play itself out and no one knows where it will go. Seems like the country is pretty resilient. Although Obama mocked McCain for saying just that. Obama doesn't disagree. He mocks.

Today there was a piece suggesting Money Market Funds may lose money. They call it “breaking the buck”.

A hurricane just wiped out swaths of Texas. All we need now is an earthquake.

David Foster Wallace

The new rebels, might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the 'Oh, how banal.' To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness.

-David Foster Wallace

Here is an archive of Wallace's articles @ Harper's.

Photographing The Unicorn Tapestries

Richard Preston's article about the attempt to photographically capture the Unicorn Tapestries resolves to the real issue. The issue is that an image is not a cargo of data.

When I looked at [the tapestries], each flower and plant, each animal, each human face took on a character of its own. The tapestries were full of velvety pools and shimmering surfaces, alive with color and detail. In the fence that surrounds the captive unicorn, tarnished silver, mixed with gold, gleamed in the grain of the wood. In comparison, the digital images, good and accurate as they were, had seemed flat. They had not captured the translucent landscape of the Unicorn tapestries, as the weft threads dive around the warp, or the way they seemed to open into a world beyond the walls of the room.

Many people would not be fully aware of the difference between the original and the photographic copy. They would focus on the impressive technological achievement of duplication. We are battered nearly insensate by pop culture crudeness, rendering our world simpler, more garish, less interesting, juicy, sexy, full to the brimming. It's not that the technology and sophisticated mathematics attempting to capture the tapestry images aren't themselves superb; it's just that those digital images are crude by comparison to the work of art. In other words, the soul of the art, its resonance, is lost in the digital translation.