Living like the 1%

Americana, Around home

Table cloth-1664We have a very expensive, heirloom, tablecloth that I wanted to get cleaned. There is a nearby cleaner in Menlo Park that I have gone to in the past, Peninou French Laundry and Cleaners, where I took it this time, figuring I would get a good job. What I hadn’t counted on was how much Menlo Park has changed since the last time I used them. This is at the northern end of Silicon Valley – if you don’t count San Francisco, which is becoming the hip bedroom community for the Valley – and Silicon Valley is becoming the richest place on earth. I heard the other day that Facebook going public created three billionaires and over a thousand millionaires.

Not everybody is in the 1% but alot are and the ones who aren’t, want to be, and consider themselves falling by the wayside if they barely get into the top 10%. Peninou, which is a local chain with a history going back to 1903, has changed with the times. They have really changed with the times, charging us $54.21.

The table-cloth came back folded – wrapped in a suitable, lightweight, cardboard wrapper – and then wrapped in the purple? tissue in the picture. It is lovely and, I suppose, it looks like it should cost more than the $54.21 they charged, but – still – $54.21 to clean a tablecloth?  Almost $55 big ones as Woody Allen used to say.

As an aside, there is no sales tax because a sales tax is only added to things rather than services. When the sales tax was introduced in California during the 30s, most people bought alot more things than services (except for the rich). Having to raise money, the Legislature passed a tax that looks fair at first glance – after all, the more you spend, the more tax you pay – and is really regressive because the rich pay a smaller percentage, so everybody was happy. End aside.

Since we were taking the table-cloth in any way, I added three sweaters. That cost $75! The really troublesome part is that they were sale sweaters and originally cost less than $25 each (without the required sales tax of course).

More odds and ends

Uncategorized

Karzai is only out for himself….uh, yeah.

Korea-0011

A couple of days ago, I heard some Congressman – I don’t remember who – complain that Karzai is a crook and only out for himself.  Aside from the obvious projection on the Congressman’s part, of course Karsai is a crook and out for himself, that’s why he sucked up to the Americans. If someone is an ambitious guy who is a crook and only out for himself and they live in a country occupied by the Americans, the road to success is to suck up to them to get into power.

That’s what Syngman Rhee in Korea did, that’s what Diem and Thieu in Vietnam did, and Maliki in Iraq. Rhee assumed dictatorial powers, under our protection, even before the Korean War broke out in 1950 and the war just gave him more power. Diem was a Catholic elitist running an Asian country through nepotism and corruption. Thieu gained power by a military junta we supported and then, after winning a fraudulent election, consolidated his authoritarian and corrupt rule over South Vietnam.

Maliki is still there, still trying to hold on to power, as his country spins down into sectarian violence.

So far, none of our handpicked guys have gone well.

American exceptionalism

Exceptionalism-0847

To misquote the Tappet Brothers, Whenever I hear Sara Palin say it, I want to scream,  but I do think there is an  American exceptionalism. That belief is reinforced when I see the guest list for Obama’s White House State Dinner for the Chinese premier.

There were two Chinese-American White House aides, Christopher P. Lu and Christina M. Tchen. There were two Cabinet level Secretaries, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. In no particular order, there was The Honorable Elaine Chao with her husband Dr. James Chao, John A. Chen from New York and The Great Jackie Chan from California, Mrs. Sherrie Chen, The Honorable Judy Chu, Representative from California, with Ms. Chiling Tong, and Mrs. Jean Chu. The ice skater Michelle Kwan and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the architect Maya Lin and the fashion designer Vera Wang, were all there.

There were powerful African-Americans like The Honorable Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement and The Honorable Susan Rice, United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and his wife Samara were there with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Lisa Nutter. The Rev. Al Sharpton and Aisha McShaw, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Kent Blake were there.

In the California mayor division, there was Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and his wife, Michelle Rhee – a twofer – along with Ms. Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, and The Honorable Edwin M. Lee, Mayor of San Francisco.

Of course there were the usual suspects like Ms. Christiane Amanpour of ABC News, The Honorable Dr. Zbigniew Brezezinski and Mrs. Emilie A. Brzezinski, and The Honorable Jon Huntsman, U.S. Ambassador to China, with his wife.

No other country on earth, can put this many powerful people of different races in the same room.On second thought, maybe this is not the kind of exceptionalism that Sarah Palin talks about.

 

 

The plight of the Siskins

Birds-7659

I have no idea where the following quote came from although I am fairly sure that I didn’t write it. As an aside, the siskins reference in the title is about the siskinds at our bird feeder. Over a period of five years, the siskins increased almost exponentially until we had to fill the birdfeeder every day. The following year, there were no siskins. The population had increased until it was unsustainable and then it crashed. It just crashed, they just disappeared. End aside.

In the name of nature, we are asking human beings to do something deeply unnatural, something no other species has ever done or could ever do: constrain its own growth (at least in some ways). Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, brown tree snakes in Guam, water hyacinth in African rivers, gypsy moths in the northeastern U.S., rabbits in Australia, Burmese pythons in Florida—all these successful species have overrun their environments, heedlessly wiping out other creatures. Like Gause’s protozoans, they are racing to find the edges of their petri dish. Not one has voluntarily turned back. Now we are asking Homo sapiens to fence itself in.

What a peculiar thing to ask! Economists like to talk about the “discount rate,” which is their term for preferring a bird in hand today over two in the bush tomorrow. The term sums up part of our human nature as well. Evolving in small, constantly moving bands, we are as hard-wired to focus on the immediate and local over the long-term and faraway as we are to prefer parklike savannas to deep dark forests. Thus, we care more about the broken stoplight up the street today than conditions next year in Croatia, Cambodia, or the Congo. Rightly so, evolutionists point out: Americans are far more likely to be killed at that stoplight today than in the Congo next year. Yet here we are asking governments to focus on potential planetary boundaries that may not be reached for decades. Given the discount rate, nothing could be more understandable than the U.S. Congress’s failure to grapple with, say, climate change. From this perspective, is there any reason to imagine that Homo sapiens, unlike…

Somehow, this New York Times headline is just wrong

The headline – giving the location at Phnom Penh, Cambodia – is One of the worst stampedes in recent years killed at least 378 people at a holiday celebration Monday night. 

Ball-6102

I like this

Samuel Beckett: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Le-Terrible-S619

Countries are like high school students….immature high school students

Maybe once a month – and I am not kidding about this – I wonder why India doesn’t just say Fuck it, lets have a election to settle Kashmir. They have been in a low grade civil war and occupation government for years. It is costly, it hurts India on the international stage, and is hypocritical. Sure, India might lose Kashmir, they probably will lose Kashmir, but so what? They don’t really have it, all they have is a problem.

But countries don’t do that.

Now I read that the French are trying to make sure that the British continue to buy US nuclear weapons systems. Apparently, they are concerned that, if the Brits give up their nukes, there will pressure for the French to follow suit. Obviously this would be better for the world, but the French don’t want to give up their nukes. Sure, they have no real reason for them, but they want them it makes them feel good.

A bunch of stuff I keep wanting to finish

Uncategorized

Road-3255

For the last week, or so, I have been stalled out. It is not that I haven’t started all sorts of Blog Posts, it is just that they have faded out. I would have such a great thought or insight and then it would just sit there, like a duck hit on the head with a mallet, or scamper away, hiding under the closest cliche (would you prefer cliché). Going back to China, I have about 200 false starts, so I thought I would just post a couple of starts to get them out of my hair.

Hong Kong-9414

….a bill that would require a kill switch on all smartphones sold in California has stalled in the State Legislature amid opposition from the telecommunications industry. New York Times May 3, 2014

I wonder why the telecommunications industry is against something that would make their product safer. Reading that, it sounds sarcastic, but I’m not. It can’t cost very much money, it would obviously cut down on smartphone theft which is now a big part of all theft, and it would make customers happier. It certainly doesn’t make them happier to know that the telecoms are fighting this.

Is it a knee jack reaction to more government control? That doesn’t seem likely, this is an industry that has government control everywhere and, as this bill illustrates, the industry knows how to control the controllers. Or, at least, influence the controller’s. This industry knows how to work with and around the government.

It is not just the telecom industry. I see it in the fight over the minimum wage. Last Christmas Season, WalMart – among others – report declining sales and attributed it to – among other things – people’s declining income. However, that did not stop WalMart – among others – from fighting an increase in the minimum wage.

On a much bigger scale, I wonder why – even – oil companies are fighting the very idea of Global Climate Change, after all alot of oil company CEOs have grandchildren. What are they going to tell them?

Names

A Jonathan Chait quote I was going to do something with but I have no idea what. It is an interesting idea, though, I wonder if Barack Obama hurt or helped the president get elected.

Democrats will run Jack Conway against Rand Paul. This puts the Kentucky Senate seat in play — Rand is the favorite but Conway has a shot. I have a pet theory that a politician’s name is a major factor — I’d guess being named “Jack Conway” is worth several points more than being named “Daniel Mongiardo.”

Hathaway and Lawrence

I thought that this was an interesting article about archetypes. I really had no idea that anybody didn’t like Anne Hathaway until I read it but I certainly can see Jennifer Lawrence as the Cool Girl. It would not surprise me to read that she had a pickup truck.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/the-happy-girl-vs-the-cool-girl-why-people-dont-like-anne-hathaway

Kodak and Microsoft

SJA--2

I read an opinion piece the other day that opined that Microsoft would be gone in ten or fifteen years. My first thought was That is impossible. and then  I started thinking about Kodak. When the picture above was taken, Kodak was a colossus and now they are almost gone.

As an aside, the woman, above, is named Maria. I had met Maria in Najab, Guatemala  – I know her name is Maria and it was in Guatemala, I am less sure about Najab – and I then saw her hawking hupils to tourists in Antigua several days later. I gave her my backup camera and a roll of film as asked her to take some pictures. At first she didn’t want to because her husband would think I was hitting on her. I still think that is charming. Look at how she is holding the camera, she looks like a pro; it made me realize how smart she was and how much more she knew about us than we knew about her. End aside.

 

 

 

Pattern Recognition and the Seduction of Simplicity

Politics

Ukrane Cartoon 2

In one of the early episodes of Cosmos – which is as far as I’ve gotten – Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how we humans have evolved to be good at recognizing  patterns. He may have even said that pattern recognition is something that all animals are good at. Either way he is, of course, right. The better an animal is able to recognize patterns, the more likely their survival. After all, any animal that is able to intuit the pattern of her world – The best grass is by the wide spot in the river, or The lions like to sleep during the day. – will flourish at the expense of another animal just wandering around at random.

We – Home sapien – are so good at pattern recognition that we often see patterns when there really isn’t one. From around the time Homo erectus stood up, in the neighborhood of one and half million years ago, our ancestors have probably been seeing patterns in the stars. By the time we actually became Homo sapiens and started migrating out of Africa – going North toward the bright star that is always the same direction – we had already, probably, started naming those patterns.

Today, I – and most of us – see bigots and racists every time we see somebody waving a Confederate Battle Flag. Every time Western Europe moves east, the Russians see Nazis. But not all patterns are really there and most patterns are only there some of the time. A pattern, by definition, is not one hundred percent. I think that is easy to forget, to think the pattern is a simple answer. That simplicity is the handmaiden of certainty and Certainty makes us so comfortable.

As an aside, somebody – I think it was Gail Cousins – posted a quote from Lupita Nyong’o on the seduction of inadequacy. I love that term, I love the depth and subtlety. Seduction, so gentle a word used here and still, so insistent, like an undertow. Most of us feel that undertow and some of us get swept away by it.

I – all of us, I think – want to be right, we want to be certain and to be certain, requires answers. Years ago, maybe in the late 70s, I was at a plant show and saw a striking plant labeled Beaucarnea Species, I asked the guy selling the plant if he knew the species name and his eyes said, If I knew the name, I would have put in on the label. But his mouth said, Uh….Beaucarnea stricta? I bought the Beaucarnea and happily labeled it Beaucarnea stricta. End aside.    

 

The Supreme Court isn’t always wrong

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Wallace_at_University_of_Alabama_edit2

I only have one data point, named Joe as it turns out, but, as Michele Stern says: One data point may not be proof but it is still a data point.

The Supreme Court ruled against Affirmative Action a couple of days ago (even though they did not couch it in those terms, everybody else seems to). Adam Liptak of the New York Times wrote: In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.

Contrary to most of the columnists and bloggers I admire, I think that the Supreme Court is right. The operative part of the NYT quote above is  what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities and the implication is that giving racial and ethnic minorities special rights protects those minorities. I don’t think it does and I have my reasons.

My only data point is from when I had a development company and we hired a Stanford MBA for the the job of Construction Manager. It was probably in the mid-80s and his name was Joe. Joe was a full blooded American Indian and the job didn’t work out. Not because he he was an Indian – obviously – but because he did not like making decisions that didn’t have clear-cut answers. He didn’t like the stress. When we talked about going our separate ways, he asked me why I had hired him. I told him it was because he was a Stanford MBA and he answered something like Yeh, but I only got in because I am an Indian. I have no idea if that is true or not but he, clearly, thought so and, I suspect, many of his fellow students did also.

I think that Affirmative Action misidentifies the problem. The problem is that a huge proportion of racial and ethnic minorities – we are using racial and ethnic minorities as a euphemism for African Americans and Hispanics here in California – are poor. They come from poor families, poor neighborhoods, and they have almost no exposure to what they need to prosper in our society including useful connections. Most importantly and most powerfully, they come from substandard schools and they get a poor educations compared to their peers from affluent areas.

As an aside, those schools are substandard not as a result of chance, but because of Government Policy. In California, and – I think – every state, schools are primarily supported by the State, but, when State funds are cut, affluent local areas make up the difference or send their kids to private schools. In Portola Valley, where I live, the locals voted to raise taxes to compensate for State education cuts (not me, other locals). Portola Valley is a Liberal – even if somewhat Libertarian – town that prides itself on having voted for Obama and Anna Eshoo, but being able to compensate for for State cuts in Education makes it much easier to ignore those cuts. End aside.

Giving African Americans and Hispanics Special Rights just pisses off those whites – and probably Asians – that feel that the Special Right of Affirmative Action is unfair. That those Special Rights are an attempt – no matter how ineffective – at compensation for the screwing the affirmed minorities got in the first place, is forgotten or was never considered. It is easy to say that those pissed off whites are wrong – or racist – but that doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make them less pissed and, in most cases, it doesn’t make them want  to improve minority education.

For whatever reason, the people of Michigan voted against Affirmative Action and I think the court was right in upholding that vote. Jamming Affirmative Action down their throats would not solve the problem, it would just build resentment and resentment is part of the problem. After what I just wrote, it may not be obvious that I think everybody deserves a good education, but I do. I think that giving everybody the best education that they can absorb should be one of the main jobs of our government; it is way more important than killing illiterate Taliban in Afghanistan. I think that education should be free, good, and equal for all Citizens. It is not only a moral imperative but a better educated Citizenry makes for a healthier country. But, the Affirmative Action that Michigan voted against, didn’t do that, it only made some people feel better about themselves without solving the problem and it made even more people angry and resistant.

My only complaint with the new Section 26 of Article I of  the Michigan Constitution is that it does not go far enough, it should also eliminate legacy Affirmative Action. The idea that an Alumni’s kid should get preference at State schools, paid for by taxpayers, is wrong and unfair and should also be eliminated. Hopefully this Supreme Court ruling will get people thinking about how to solve the real problem.

One suggestion that I have read and that appeals to me is that the top students from every high-school get to go to the top Universities in the State. There are somewhere in the order of 2100 high-schools in California so there would be plenty of room for the top five students from each school. That would mean that the top five students from Woodside High or Redwood High would be automatically eligible for Cal or UCLA or Davis, et al. The top five students from Compton High or Fresno High would also be automatically eligible.

I am sure that there are other good ideas out there, but traditional Affirmative Action isn’t one of them.