All Things in Moderation

Thought I’d go ahead and put up the daily post for suggestions and questions since I’m here. I think if we try to keep them consolidated into one post per day, they’ll be easier to track. /okie ocd

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A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell. Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a bit like Ronald Reagan. “What’s it like in there?” asks the visitor. “Well,” the devil replies, “in capitalist hell, they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“That’s terrible!” he gasps. “I’m going to check out communist hell!” He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge queue of people waiting to get in. He waits in line. Eventually he gets to the front and there at the door to communist hell is a little old man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. “I’m still in the free world, Karl,” he says, “and before I come in, I want to know what it’s like in there.”

“In communist hell,” says Marx impatiently, “they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives.”

“But… but that’s the same as capitalist hell!” protests the visitor, “Why such a long queue?”

“Well,” sighs Marx, “Sometimes we’re out of oil, sometimes we don’t have knives, sometimes no hot water.”

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An open thread to end the day. Please use it to catch up with others and feel free to post whatever suits your fancy. Just so you know I’ll put this up tomorrow as a scheduled post and any of you “We’re all Administrators Now” can drop a link or comment in prior to posting.

Here’s my comment for tonight.

There has been much discussion of Social Security over the past several months and in particular the last few weeks. I think it’s appropriate at some point to remember why it was enacted in the first place and a quote from FDR seems appropriate.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

I hope you’re all working on conversation starting posts for tomorrow.

I put this in early tonight since no one seemed to have a post going. Come on you guys, we need commentary to comment on, lol.

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*crickets*

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I’m often prone to say there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and predictions. So, of course, I enjoyed this episode of the Freakonomics podcast:

Joe Namath, pension fund managers, Romanian witches, psychic grandmothers, the Farmer’s Almanac, Mad Money, Barney Frank, Donald Rumsfeld . . . good stuff.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/freakonomics-the-folly-of-prediction/

“It’s impossible to predict the future, but humans can’t help themselves. From the economy to the presidency to the Super Bowl, educated and intelligent people promise insight and repeatedly fail by wide margins. These mistakes and misses go unpunished, both publicly and in our brain, which has become trained to ignore the record of those who make them.“


If you don’t already know, you’ll discover I’m a big fan of Freakonomics, TED Talks, the Ricochet podcast, and No Agenda. I will quote them often. You have been warned.

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Do you ever follow links that lead to other links and then even more links, I do. Hence, I came across this piece today, an anthropological study of bankers being conducted by a Danish anthropologist. He’s even launched a blog to discuss his findings. As a matter of fact it just went live today (link to blog at the end of the article). I took a couple of anthropology courses in college and they were two of my favorite classes, probably because I preferred anything to math or biology, but still.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the piece. We probably don’t need another blog to visit but you never know.

Another banker who would talk but declined to sit for a portrait, compared his work to that of a GP: “You spend many hours memorising terms (body parts, diseases, treatments) and learning to recognise patterns. Then you put in very long hours and collect a nice salary, while employing your jargon to intimidate outsiders.”

That’s the sort of thing I’ve been talking to bankers about, and why I am beginning to be captivated by them. Beneath the layers of lingo there are subcultures and dress codes and ways of speech, their mutual stereotypes, conventions, taboos and of course jokes: “Every economist knows that there are three kinds of economists; there are those who know how to count, and there are those who don’t.”

Now for the blog. Here’s the idea. You have the internet and today’s technology. You have the classic techniques of narrative journalism and anthropological fieldwork. And you have this enormously important yet devilishly complex thing called the world of finance.

Like most anthropologists he worries he’ll get too close to his subjects but,

Still the bankers are getting under my skin. If there’s one thing that has suddenly begun to annoy me no end it is categorical statements about “the banks” or “bankers”. I have learned by now that such generalisations obscure just how different many of the activities across the financial sector are. If you are angry about “the banks”, you need to specify which parts. Otherwise you are like somebody who blames the BBC for what happened at News of the World; they are all the media, aren’t they?

And here, a discussion with a lawyer friend, after observing a room full of lawyers, he compares their dress code to that of Merger & Acquisition bankers. Funny but interesting if you believe that bankers are people too.

He then proceeded to compare this to the outfit of an M&A banker. These may dress in a very flashy way and drive very expensive cars. The reason is, they are selling companies for their clients, making these clients very rich. If an M&A banker radiates wealth and success, potential new clients will not think: am I paying too much? Potential clients will think: this guy has made other people very rich, he must be very good, I am going to hire him so he can make me very rich too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/bankers-anthropological-study-joris-luyendijk

The obvious conclusion of course is that none of us should demonize entire swaths of either an industry, political party or any identified group of people.

*Administrative note: I’ll be publishing an open thread this evening (not too early) so we can all discuss the days events, the Plumline (just kidding), our blog or whatever suits your fancy. I thought we’d try it and see if everyone likes it. I think I’ll call it Go To Bed (not really) unless anyone has a better idea.

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Ya think?

“Federal investigators issued a report concluding that the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster was primarily due to BP’s cost-cutting measures and poor safety standards — and that BP is ultimately to blame.”

Video here:

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/09/15/091511-news-gulf-oil-spill-video/

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Hi all,

First and foremost, I’d like to thank Kevin for getting this going. I’ve scanned over a few posts and it looks promising. I have a little blog of my own that took a summer break. In case anyone is interested, the blog is fairlingtonblade.blogspot.com. My posts tend to be either about cooking or raising kids with autism. I’d thought about politics as I certainly have a bit to say about that. I didn’t go that direction, because there’s plenty of political blogs out there. Mind you, there’s plenty of blogs about autism (autismtwins is a favorite) and cooking. Originally, I was planning to emphasize my work as the secretary of a bowling league, but never got around to it. That might change.

Second. I look forward to discussions with those who hold opposing opinions. Ever since the Post redesigned the comments section, it wasn’t worth starting a thread and I tended towards snark. I rather enjoy chatting politics with conservatives–my best friend from grad school was a die hard Republican. Funny thing is that he’d been a die hard Democrat and then went to a party convention in Minnesota. Anyway, this should be fun.

Finally, who is the Fairlington Blade? For that matter, what is a Fairlington Blade? I picked up the Fairlington bit as that’s the area where I live. It’s a combination of Fairfax and Arlington, though it’s not on the border between the two. Technically, I don’t live in Fairlington, just in a neighboring development in Alexandria that appropriated the name as it’s a bit more shi shi (than Bradlee Towers.

The Blade comes from my favorite football team, Sheffield United. [Note: I grew up in Nebraska so I’m a die hard Huskers fan. Still, it makes sense to me that the game in which a foot strikes the ball has primacy.] For those who have seen The Full Monty, you’ll know that Sheffield is a steel town. The name is famous for cutlery for hundreds of years. So, Sheffield United is the Blades. I also liked the sound of the name Fairlington Blade. It sounded Zorro-esque. It’s also gotten me accused of being a not so closeted gay to my immense amusement. It doesn’t help that the local GLBT newspaper is the Washington Blade.

So, that’s the nickname. What lies behind it? I’m Paul Lane. I’m a research physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. I’ve been studying organic semiconductors for about 20 years. I went to college at Macalester in Minnesota, grad school at Iowa State and have since bounced around quite a bit. Post-doc at Utah, four years as a “professor” in Sheffield, England, and the last ten years at research labs in Boston or Washington, DC.

The non-political posts should be fun too. My biggest cooking passion is Indian food, though I make decent sushi and killer risotto. I’ll have fun chatting about the kids too. There’s a good saying. If you meet one kid with autism, you’ve met one kid with autism. Mine are five year old twins and different as night and day in their needs. Both would be considered high functioning and just started kindergarten. Parenting a special needs kid isn’t that different in kind from a typical kid. There’s just a lot more meetings.

BB

P.S. Edited for completeness. I did like the accidental “Second. Whatever.” from the draft post.

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Update: We’re using this thread to discuss site issues today (Thursday).

If you run back and forth and juggle all things in your life, you get here and want to see where the people who said something said it, especially if in response so no one feels ignored if you talked to someone else or started with a new post.

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Does everyone like the way the comments section works?  Another option is to have the comments come up in a separate pop up window.  I actually prefer that, because you can still see the front page in the main window, which can be refreshed for new posts without losing the comments that you might be looking at for a particular post. Not sure if/how it might effect mobile devices, though.  Food for thought.

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