A Meaningless Game

A few days ago I went to what was probably my last ballgame for the season. It was a meaningless game. My beloved Oakland As are, for the first time in a while, well out of contention with forty games yet to play. For years now, they’ve managed with a low payroll and smoke and mirrors to be one of the better teams in major league baseball.

But this year is different. The smoke and mirrors just aren’t there. There have been too many injuries and too many bets on head case players with talent that haven’t paid off. The As have hovered around .500 all year. And recently they’ve started to unload their higher salary players – two head cases and one guy who somehow has never been the same ever since major league baseball started to test for steroids - to save some money for next year. In the lineup at the game, there were only three players starting who were playing on opening day. The other seven, including the pitcher, started the season either playing for other teams or more commonly, in the minor leagues.

On the other side were the Toronto Blue Jays, another mediocre team that is well out of contention. But the starting pitcher for Toronto was Roy Halladay, one of the best pitchers in the major leagues. If Roy Halladay pitched in New York or LA, he’d be a nationally known star. But he plays on a team that is virtually anonymous. He’s 30 years old – prime for a pitcher – and has pitched for Toronto for about nine years having been drafted by them when he was 18.

Hardly anyone was in the stadium. And it was hot, about 90 degrees. When I was young, I’d have never gone to a game like this. What was the point? But nowadays, I seem to be finding an ability to see the joy in the little things. I was happy to be able to watch a good pitcher do his work even if that pitcher was pitching for the other side and the game was meaningless.

Roy Halladay did not start out well. He looked miserable out there and I was wondering if he was just going through the motions. He gave up four cheap runs in the first three innings. But then in the fourth inning something changed. Suddenly he had command of his fastball. His curve ball was devastating. He was locked in.

When a great veteran pitcher gets locked in like that, it’s all over. The As hitters, mostly rookies, were looking helpless out there. I looked up from my scorecard during that inning and said to the guy sitting next to me, “The As are going to get nothing until he’s done.” And they didn’t. He was unhittable for the rest of the game. Even though he had thrown a lot of pitches because he had started out so miserably, he kept coming out inning after inning. I couldn’t believe it. The game was meaningless, but he still had that desire to win. I smiled in admiration watching him. He threw 120 pitches over nine full innings, keeping his team in the game.

The As eventually won in extra innings. One of the many As rookies in the lineup slapped a single to win the game. By then Roy Halladay was long gone. But he had been fun to watch. Performances like that are why I love to go to baseball games, even when the teams are out of contention and it’s so hot that even my kneecaps are sweating.

Don't Look Back

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, a disaster that for New Orleans was avoidable. I've written about Katrina and New Orleans before. The levees in New Orleans were known to be substandard. This country did nothing. Eventually, the inevitable happened; the levees failed.

In Washington D.C. and Minnesota, politicians are still pointing fingers about the collapse of a bridge across the Mississippi River this year. Like New Orleans and Katrina, the Minnesota disaster was completely avoidable. The bridge, like many bridges on US highways, had known problems. Nothing was done.

It's tempting in these cases to blame government. How can it be that a country so rich and powerful has a thirld-world approach to maintaining its infrastructure? It's tempting to simply charge our nation's governmental bodies, both state and federal, with incompetence.

But I don't think that's quite accurate. I think that something else is responsible. It isn't government per se. It's public attitudes about what's important. This country doesn't do maintenance well because ultimately the public doesn't think that maintenance is that important.

Every nation has its own quirks and ethos. And one thing that defines this country is that it's always looking forward. Our country's motto could well be the saying coined by the major league pitcher Satchel Paige: don't look back because someone may be gaining on you.

We don't look back. We love the new. We wait in line to buy the latest, greatest cell phone even though our old one worked perfectly fine. We buy the newest thin TVs because they look cool (even though their picture quality is actually inferior to the old style tube TVs). And what do we do with the old perfectly decent stuff? We throw it in the dump.

Even the way we treat our elderly is governed by an ethos that is always looking forward. We throw our old and infirmed in the dump as well. We don't call them dumps. We call them rest homes. I invite anyone to visit a few rest homes and not walk away depressed by the shabby care our elderly receive.

We are doing the same with New Orleans right now. It's an old city with a poor economic base. In response to the levee failures, this nation has essentially abandoned the city. We are doing little to bring it back to life.

Our inability to look back does come with economic advantages. A forward looking nation will tend to want to not only buy the latest and greatest stuff, but also to create it. When it comes to goods and services, we are as a nation incredibly innovative. That innovation allows us to be a worldwide economic powerhouse.

But it does have its drawbacks and they include more than our shameful treatment of the elderly and our abandonment of New Orleans. It means that when it comes to maintaining our old things we don't do a particularly good job. We let our levees, bridges and roads decay. We're too busy looking forward to spend time, money and energy on infrastructure that's decades old. It's there already. We focus on building the new.

Our attitude toward our infrastructure can be summed up in an old phrase: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We wait until failure happens. Then we stop looking forward for a little bit to make repairs. It isn't pretty to watch us behave so irresponsibly. But I would argue that it's built into our ethos. It's not government that's to blame for failing bridges and levees. It's us.

That Cloud Over Idaho and Other Transgressions of Mere Mortals

Yesterday, Senator Larry Craig apologized for creating a "cloud over Idaho" because of the bad publicity associated with his possible lewd activity in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. But he denied the lewd activity took place (despite pleading guilty to disorderly conduct) and denied he was gay.

Did Larry Craig solicit a police officer for sex in a bathroom? By the way, I don't get this sex in a public restroom thing. Restrooms are cold, smelly and ugly. Even if Scarlett Johansson were to strip in a public restroom and command me to jump on her bones, I'd probably pass. Anyway, the police officer's report says Larry Craig seems to think bathrooms are pleasure palaces.

Is Larry Craig gay? I consider my gaydar, honed through many years of living around San Francisco, to be excellent. And my verdict is...Larry Craig and Liberace have something in common and it isn't a skill at playing piano.

Regardless, I understand fully why Larry Craig has no interest in owning up to lewd conduct or being gay. If I were him, I would do exactly the same thing: deny, deny, and deny. I'd do it with conviction. I'd face the cameras and lie straight out. Even if there were films of me doing something nasty somewhere, I'd still deny it. I'd say it was someone who looked like me. I'd say it was a plot to discredit me.

While most would say that lying like this is all about survival, I think it's more than that. It's about the role of leadership. And I know this sounds twisted as all get out, but people in positions of leadership need to appear to be infallible. We get our trust from institutions because we like to believe that those we entrust with power are better than us. They have more integrity. They are more honest. And they don't solicit for sex in bathrooms. They don't get blow jobs from interns in the White House. They don't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We put them up on a pedestal. Sure there is ego and personal reputation at stake when they engage in the scummy activities that mere mortals do and get caught doing it. But more importantly, at stake is also the value of the institution they represent.

My view is that no politician or person in a position of authority should own up to their mortal misdeeds if they can help it. There may be a time when it's actually in their best interest to tell the truth; if that's the case, they should spill the beans. But if it isn't, they shouldn't.

So go ahead Bill Clinton, shake your finger on camera and deny having sex with an intern. Go ahead Larry Craig and deny soliciting for sex in a bathroom. Go ahead George Bush and deny you know who is responsible for leaking Valerie Plame's name to the press. Our faith in institutions demands that you do.

People in leadership aren't better than the rest of us. They have the same mortal and moral flaws as you and I. When we place ridiculous expectations on their character and integrity they have no recourse but to lie.

There is of course the legend of our founding father, George Washington, chopping down a cherry tree as a child and owning up to it. It's a funny story. Why the hell would he chop the tree down in the first place? Anyhow, as an individual George Washington should of course do the right thing and admit to his misdeed. But once he becomes a public figure, I don't think that rule applies.

Let's go back a couple hundred years. President Washington has a thing about axes and trees. Who knows why? He's had that thing since he was a kid. He goes out one night in the middle of cherry blossom season and chops down a couple of trees in the Tidal Basin. The next morning some reporter notices the trees missing. Who did it? If I were Washington, I'd say, "I have no idea, but we'll get to the bottom of this tragedy." There is no other recourse folks. By demanding so much from our leaders we require that they be liars.

Stu's Cockamamie Theory of Investment

I have never taken a course in economics. Studying money seems like the most boring thing anyone can do. I've read books by economists, some of whom have won big prizes. They have been unimpressive. I've read a little economic theory. It seems long on speculation and short on testable hypotheses. Economics is frequently called the dismal science. It doesn't look like science to me. So let's just call it dismal.

OK, I've dumped enough on economics as a field. I do note that a former neighbor who reportedly will win a Nobel Prize in economics one day is one of the smartest people I've ever met. It seems like a waste of his intellect to me, but people have said the same thing about me and geophysics, so there.

That said, I am concerned about keeping a roof over my head so I do invest my money in a variety of places in the hope that it makes more money. I don't look at my investments often because money bores the hell out of me, but I do look at them about twice a year. Sometimes I do more than look. I'll shuffle them around a bit.

In making my decisions, I'm governed by my own cockamamie theory of investment. And that theory says that greed drives everything. People buy investments out of greed. Because there are only a finite number of acceptable investments and a lot of cash chasing after them, the value of those investments goes up. It could be land. It could be a house. It could be a stock. Buy something other people consider to be desirable and it will go up. It's money chasing after money.

Now this cockamamie theory of investment would imply that "acceptable investments" will always rise, which of course isn't true. And that's because according to me, people get scared when they start to make too much money. They panic. They start to worry that this pyramid scheme of money chasing after money will falter. They start to sell when fear overcomes greed.

That's what is happening right now. For the last five years, you could have been dumb as a brick and made a lot of money investing in stocks and real estate. But those days are over for a few years. Fear has taken hold. My cockamamie theory of investing says that investments in real estate and stocks will sour for a few years. And it says that in a year, if you are one of the fortunate few with some cash in your piggy bank, there will be some real bargains available for those who can wait out the bad years. Remember where you heard it first.

Confessions of a Praying Atheist

About a month ago, I went to hear Richard Dawkins talk about his book, The God Delusion, at a local bookstore. The place was packed and the audience consisted almost entirely of fellow non-believers. Even fellow Brit/godhater/author Christopher Hitchens, who lives part-time in the area, was in the crowd. Dawkins read from the preface to the paperback edition of his book and then opened the floor to Q&A.

Dawkins is a proud atheist with disdain for those who believe. His hatred of Islam is particularly transparent. In his view, not only does God not exist, but the world’s use of spirituality creates intolerance and hatred that would likely not exist if we were all rational humans who could simply accept our godlessness.

There’s some good in what Richard Dawkins is doing on the book tour circuit. People stand up as if they are in an atheist tent revival and express their joy and relief at being able to come out of the closet about their lack of belief. But Dawkins fights intolerance of atheism with intolerance of spirituality. He’s the Pat Robertson of atheism.

In the preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion, Dawkins focuses on atheists critical of his efforts and his book, the “I’m an atheist but…” crowd. That would be me. I’m an atheist, but I’m not at all a fan of bashing spirituality. Faith can be and is rewarding. It provides comfort and joy. And contrary to Dawkins' and Hitchens' views, it’s clear that despots and tyrants who believe in God are no more a source of destruction and war than those who lead and who believe in a godless world. Pol Pot’s, Hitler’s, and Stalin’s belief in God or lack thereof did not lead them to murder millions. Hatred and evil do not solely occupy houses of God.

Dawkins just doesn’t get spirituality. He doesn’t understand why people desire it. I think I do. I’m an atheist, but…

Whether God exists or not is almost beside the point. Billions believe, facts be damned. There are many reasons for this that I won’t discuss here. But one reason they do believe is that when it comes to the religions of the world, they have much better stories, much more compelling narratives, than atheists. Those stories are so good – a son of God born of a virgin mother, a patriarch talking to God on Mt. Sinai – that it doesn’t matter if they are true. What do the atheists have for a narrative? A big bang. Yawn. A big deal.

I don’t believe any of those God-based stories. But I still find them incredibly captivating. I grew up reading some of those stories in Hebrew trying to decipher meaning from every word in the “davar Torah.” I wasn’t a believer then either. I can remember one time when one of my teachers asked why a redundant Hebrew word was used in a sentence in the Old Testament. “Surely there must be a reason,” the rabbi said. I thought this was ridiculous. I raised my hand. “Maybe the writer got paid by the word,” I said. He threw one of his shoes at me.

OK, I was a wise guy at twelve years old (and still am), but even though I didn’t believe, I was mesmerized by the idea of scholarship, in finding meaning in the most obscure of details.

And while I do not believe in God, I have never given up praying. I’ve been doing it ever since I was a little boy. Why should I stop now? It gives me comfort to pray, not to God but to the wonders that are nature and the human spirit. I don’t think God is great. I don’t even think he exists. But I do think that life is a gift regardless of its boring origins. And I try to celebrate that in my prayers every day.

Richard Dawkins is proud and angry. That’s his thing. He's sold a million plus copies of his book because of it. Pat Robertson is proud and angry, too. He's made tens of millions of dollars because of it. Neither are what I would call admirable people.

They should put Pat Robertson and Dawkins in a mud tank and have them wrestle each other. It would be quite a sight, two obnoxious people going at each other caked in mud. It wouldn’t prove anything, but it sure would be amusing. I’m an atheist, but…I’m always up for a good laugh.

Personality Parade

Yesterday, I was talking to a musician who has been touring with one of those musical acts that can sell out a football stadium in three hours. He said that the fans are so loyal and emotional over this act that it was just plain fun to be up there on the stage and feel that energy.

I didn't ask him what he thought about the act's music. I was trying to be polite. But the standard take by professionals on this act's musical ability and songs is thumbs down. The act can't sing. The songs are just plain boring. The act (which by now you should realize will go nameless for business reasons) does have a sex appeal that I don't quite understand. My sister-in-law tells me that if I were a woman I would understand.

But there are a lot of good looking people out there who can sing, play an instrument wonderfully, and have or write good songs that don't go anywhere. Their albums are launched with great fanfare and lots of bucks behind them from a label, yet flop.

Why is this "no-talent act" so successful?

And I think that the answer is that unlike most any other field of art, music is personality driven. And that act has a personality or persona that people can relate to or admire in a big way. For example, Madonna can't sing worth a damn. Her songs are incredibly boring. But for some, her personality is magnetic. Teens identified with Britney Spears in her day even though her voice is marginal even for a high school choir audition. Women swoon over Justin Timberlake even though he can barely sing and his music is completely forgettable.

It's personality that drives pop music. The musicianship is almost incidental.

Actors' and actresses' success can be personality driven as well. For every Meryl Streep there is a Keanu Reeves, someone who can barely recite his lines in a coherent manner much less act. But a large segment of the public seems to not mind. They apparently can relate to Keanu Reeves. Or they think he's sexy. I don't quite get why, but I suppose if I were a woman I'd understand.

However, there is a key difference between movies and music. Put an actor or actress in a turkey of a movie and people won't buy tickets. The movie better have some appeal on some level independent of the hunk or hottie on the screen.

In music, it's not that way at all. An act with a magnetic personality can sing or play the most awful song imaginable. And people will still download the thing and pay good money to dance along at a concert.

For me, when other musicians talk about "no-talent acts" that sell out arenas I tend to disagree. The act may not be able to sing. They may not have a decent song at all. But having a winning personality is a talent too. If you can sell out arenas year after year, you have to have some kind of talent. It may not be talent a professional musician appreciates, but it's talent that the public clearly does.

I Almost Feel Sorry

I note that on Sunday Republican hatchet man Karl Rove yet again went on TV to bash Hillary Clinton. It's a very sad state of affairs for Republicans right now. Through a mixture of incompetence and lousy policy, they've run this country into the ground in a mere six years. If you're an independent voter, the last thing you're going to do is vote for a Republican next time around.

And what about rallying the Republican troops? Well that's a non-starter. The top three Republican candidates for the next presidential election are: 1) a New York Catholic with a rap sheet of moral transgressions a mile long; 2) a robotic Mormon with no real stance on anything; 3) a late out of the gate, dim-witted actor with lymphoma who spent his brief years in Washington chasing skirts instead of doing what he was paid to do. It's going to be very hard for the Republican base - white Protestant holy rollers - to get enthused about any of these people.

What's a Republican hatchet man supposed to do? Well there's always Clinton bashing. Republicans hate the Clintons. And if you don't have squat in terms of policy, competence or candidates, you bring up the Clintons yet again. Maybe that will get Republican troops energized.

But the problem with this is that it's all old news. Republicans already have found whatever dirt on Hillary they can possibly find. They've been saying the same stupid stuff for years. You can't rally the troops around tired old gossip. And even some of the Republican faithful admits that this country was a lot better under those bad, bad Clintons than it is under the Republican poster boy without a brain, Bush.

If bashing Clinton is all Rove and other Republicans have for the next election, it's all over. They don't have a candidate. Strike one. They don't have a track record. Strike two. They ran out of new sleaze to dump on Hillary years ago. Strike three.

Karl Rove, like the Republican Party, is looking pathetic. I almost feel sorry for them.

College Ranking Service Annual Announcement 2007

US News announced its annual college rankings today. I note that the magazine fired its investigative reporting staff last May. Without investigative reporting, you can’t really provide news can you? They should change their name to US Rankings because that’s where they make their money. Without rankings, they would be bankrupt.

Since US News makes an annual announcement, I’ve decided as the public spokesman of the College Ranking Service (whose president and staff remain anonymous to ensure the integrity of the rankings) to make my own announcement.

For the seventh straight year, the College Ranking Service (CRS, rankyourcollege.com), has found that prestige in colleges and universities correlates with the size of endowment. The richest schools are the most prestigious.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS has found no difference between the prestige of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, and Stanford. They are all incredibly prestigious and wealthy. In fact, they are so wealthy that the CRS wonders why anyone continues to donate money to them. They don’t need your money folks. They have billions upon billions of dollars. By continuing to solicit money from you, they are just being greedy.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS has found no difference between the prestige of Northwestern, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke, Penn and about a dozen or so universities that aren’t quite as wealthy as Harvard et al. While they don’t have endowments in the 10 plus billion range, they do have endowments in the 5 billion dollar range. They too are wealthy enough. They don’t need your money either.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS has found no correlation between the prestige of a university and the quality of its education.

For the seventh straight year, the CRS found that state universities continue to be squeezed by state governments. They will never be as prestigious as the universities above because they don’t have their wealth. But they are the engines that provide this country with its educated workforce. Without Harvard et al., this country would still do well. Without UCLA et al., this country would be in real trouble. The CRS suggests that you take the money that you would normally give to your prestigious and already wealthy alma mater (if you perhaps went to one of those schools) and give it to your state university instead.

Patriarch in Training

A few years ago I was at a family wedding. I happen to love weddings. I’ve never been to one where I didn’t have a fabulous time. Anyway, at these affairs it has fallen on me for decades now to instigate the chair dancing for the bride and groom. It’s a traditional Jewish thing, this hoisting up the bride and groom in their chairs and dancing them around the room. I don’t know why I’m the designated chair dance engineer. I just am.

At this wedding, someone came up to me and said that the mother of the bride – who isn’t Jewish – always wanted to do this chair dance thing. And I said sure, why not, let’s have the mom and dad go first.

For decades, not only have I been the chair dance engineer, but also one of the lifters. But at that wedding, I looked at the crowd of potential chair lifters, young men of varying strength and thought, hey, you know I’m a couple of decades older than all of them. And with age should come a certain amount of dignity and authority. Plus, one of these days I’ll be lifting one of these chairs and wrench my back or worse. It was time to delegate.

So I organized the chair lifting, but didn’t participate myself. I just watched. It was fun to see those “buchers” dance the mom and dad, and then the bride and groom around.

I look young for my age – always have – and people still sometimes refer to me as a “young man.” But I’m not. I don’t feel old. However, what I feel is the presence of some gravitas. Ever since that wedding, I don’t feel like a kid in the least. I’m inching along to become patriarchal.

When I think about the patriarchs in my family past and present, I think the one characteristic that made them who they were was distance. They could separate themselves from the day to day and be observers.

While being a patriarch implies a certain degree of separation, you aren’t fully detached. Because what you are observing is the next generation – which is tied to you by much more than DNA – continue on.

I doubt that I will ever lift chairs at weddings anymore. It’s not that I can’t do it. I’ve been lucky. My body has always managed to let me do whatever I wanted to do. It’s that it’s no longer my role. I’ll still be the instigator for a while I’m sure. But I’ll be delegating my chair lifting duties. I’m starting to develop a sense of distance. It seems that I’m a patriarch in training.

The Aftermath of Scandal

Louis Brandeis once said about the benefits of openness and transparency in institutional policy that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” And one might think that when an institution undergoes a nationally visible scandal, the sunlight caused by such exposure might cleanse that institution and in the end make it better. But my experience suggests otherwise. At least when it comes to higher education, scandal is followed by denial and ultimately a worsening of the ethics and integrity of an institution.

I’ve been at two universities that underwent national scandals shortly after I left. The year after I left Stanford, news broke about its overbilling on federal grants. The year after I left Duke, news broke on the arrest of Lacrosse players for possible rape. As an aside, the day after I once left Israel, a major war broke out. My leavings must possess some seriously bad juju.

Joking aside, the scandals at Stanford and Duke both resulted in major international news coverage. The narrative in the Stanford case was “greedy university cheats the federal government.” The narrative in the Duke case was “spoiled rich white athletes rape poor black woman.” In both cases, the narrative promoted by the press wasn’t particularly true (in the Stanford case, the actual amount of cheating was a minor fraction of the dollars stated in the press; in the Duke case, no rape occurred), but it didn’t matter. The stories were so juicy that they stuck, facts be damned.

At Stanford, the response of the administration to the initial wave of the scandal was to simply, deny, deny, and deny. According to Stanford officials, they hadn’t overbilled. They countered that they had actually underbilled the federal government. While they quickly abandoned statements that they had underbilled, all through the scandal (and to this day) they maintained that there had been absolutely no wrongdoing. When testifying before Congress about the scandal, Stanford leadership stonewalled.

If this were the only negative aspect of the Stanford scandal, the impact on the institution would in the end have been minor and ephemeral. But in response to the scandal, Stanford underwent profound changes. In leadership’s eyes, the bad publicity wasn’t the result of any wrongdoing, however minor. It was the result of Stanford’s openness. The institution turned Louis Brandeis turn of phrase on its head. It decided to close down the information flow to the outside world.

An institution that once prided itself on its openness and transparency fired its nationally visible information officer. An institution that once had a vocal and politically powerful faculty clamped down on faculty governance and created a top down managerial style. The end result of Stanford’s scandal is an institution that has a sense of paranoia about the outside world. It’s a far less open place. Faculty now have little say in its operation. Scandal has had permanent and negative repercussions for the institution.

The Lacrosse scandal at Duke seems to have unfolded with a similar response and repercussions. As at Stanford, Duke leadership maintains it has done absolutely nothing wrong. Duke once prided itself on its openness to the press. Now its leadership, like that of Stanford’s, has developed a nasty sense of paranoia.* In response to scandal, Duke has circled its wagons.

When you are in denial over having done anything wrong, you just dig yourself into a deeper hole. For example, recently Duke decided to renew the contract of its athletics director, someone whose ineptitude resulted in both the bad publicity associated with the Lacrosse scandal and a steroids scandal the year previous. Since it can’t admit to any mistakes, Duke leadership ends up perpetuating incompetence.

It would seem that when it comes to institutions of higher learning, the repercussions of scandal aren’t just short term. Scandal causes institutions to be even less open and even more intent on maintaining an aura of infallibility. Unfortunately, institutional response to scandal creates the behaviors and conditions that make future scandals more likely.

* It’s worth noting that unlike Stanford, Duke has never had significant faculty governance. In fact, Duke’s undergraduate college’s faculty governing body was so insignificant that it was disbanded for a couple of years while I was there.

A Michayeh in Tanaya*

When I was a Ph.D. student, I got lucky in many ways. And one of those ways was that my field site was in the eastern Sierra Nevada. I love the arid West, and the eastern slope of the Sierra is the western boundary of the region of the country I love the most, the Basin and Range. The harshness of the landscape, the blueness of the sky, the ability to see for miles on end, the volcanic cones, the earthquake bounded ridges, it all adds up to heaven for me.

I keep returning to my field site, usually once a summer. It has a lot of great memories. And it’s beautiful as all get out. I camp and hike the trails for a few days and get dirty as can be. Walking around the cinder cones is more than a bit dusty and even with jeans, the dust manages to float up and cover my shins and thighs. I used to go to a hot spring in the evening to clean off, but that spring has gotten too hot to even dip your toe in for the last couple of years.

There are of course lakes in the area. Usually, my hikes involve a visit to a lake or two, sometimes with a fishing pole in hand. I’ll jump into any of them with the caveat that above 10,000 feet the water is usually in the 38 degree range, and that is too cold for even me – a lover of cold water – to do more than go in waist deep for a few seconds to clean and cool off.

But no matter where I go for my hikes, I can always count on coming home through Yosemite and stopping at Tanaya Lake for a final dust off and swim. The water is in the 55 degree range in August, too cold for most people, but perfect for me. Growing up on the western shore of Lake Michigan, the water rarely was warmer than that. I’m used to it. Actually, I’m more than used to it. I love it.

At 8100 feet, surrounded by the granite domes of the western part of Yosemite, it’s my favorite place in that national park. I can sit on the beach and watch climbers scale the domes. I’ll have a sandwich and catch the sun’s rays laying on the sand, something I normally don’t like to do. But here, acting like a beached whale seems fitting. Don’t ask me why. It just does.

And then I’ll jump in the water. That’s what I did yesterday. I took a good swim, dunked my head in and swam underwater for a while cleaning myself and feeling the cold water against my skin. I took my trusty Atra razor into the water and shaved my three-day beard. When I got out, I felt completely refreshed and wonderful.

A woman is a woman, but a good lake is a swim.

*Michayeh, Yiddish for heavenly pleasure

Sitzfleisch

One of my biggest objectives when I started teaching was to try to get students to find the skill and mindset to be able to sit down and ponder over one thing - a page in a scientific paper when I was teaching graduate students or a fundamental scientific idea when I was teaching undergraduates – in great detail. My view is that if you could get a student to do that, you’d give them a skill that would serve them in many aspects of their life.

But teaching this skill was something that I could never do successfully. Either people had it already (very few) or they would never get it. Those that would never get it looked at me like I was nuts for trying to teach them how to analyze something in great detail.

In Yiddish and German, the ability to sit down and grind something out until you understand it fully in all its beautiful detail is called sitzfleisch. In Orthodox Jewish education, you either learn sitzfleisch or you die. Well you don’t die exactly. What happens is that your teacher lifts you up by your collar, pins you against the wall, and slaps your head back and forth in rapid succession with his free hand. This back and forth motion of your head actually had a name, from Krakow to Warsaw. Your head went one way. That was to Krakow. Then it forcefully lurched the other. That was to Warsaw.

Needless to say, I couldn’t use this technique of my rabbis to “teach” sitzfleisch. My view nowadays is that by the time a student reaches college, there is absolutely no way it can be taught. Physical coercion, mental cruelty (something some of my students would have accused me of), nothing will work.

I still believe sitzfleisch is a valuable skill. It’s not coincidence that quite a few Jewish immigrant kids born and raised in New York in the first half of the 20th century went on to win Nobel Prizes. They were smart no doubt. But brains only go so far. To work original ideas through requires you to have the ability to sit down day after day pounding your head against the wall until miraculously the problem is solved. Those immigrant kids had sitzfleisch. And I know exactly where they learned it.

I don’t know where non-Orthodox kids learn sitzfleisch. But somehow they do. Or maybe it’s just in their make up. Richard Nixon certainly didn’t go to Yeshiva. But he had sitzfleisch big time. He used to call this ability “iron butt.” He thought about problems in politics carefully and thoroughly. If he had possessed a little bit more in the way of ethics (and maybe a little bit less anti-Semitism), he would probably have been the best president of the 20th century.

We currently have a president with zero sitzfleisch. The results have been predictable. Sigh.

Getting the Narrative Right

It’s when you really know about something and then you read it in the newspaper that you realize just how subjective and narrative driven journalism is. Yesterday in the NY Times*, there was an article about Silicon Valley “single digit millionaires” on the front page. The article was accompanied with a big photo of a geeky looking fifty year old, complete with 1950s haircut and slumped shoulders standing in front of a redwood fence.

The narrative being sold in the NY Times was that the Silicon Valley is chock full of people with million dollar homes and a few million in the bank who don’t feel rich. They see their neighbors with Ferraris and Lamborghinis and they seem to want those too. They continue to work 12 hour days in the hopes that they one day become double or triple digit millionaires.

I live in the Silicon Valley. I know quite a few “single digit millionaires.” It wasn’t that hard to become one living here in the 1980s to 1990s. First, you could buy a home here in the early 1980s for about 150 to 250K. That home is now worth one to three million. Second, you worked for a start-up company or knew someone who worked for a start-up company that was going well, invested in it, watched it balloon ridiculously during the internet mania, and if you were prudent, cashed out (if you could) some of that mania money before it all disappeared.

It's worth nothing that being a single-digit millionaire in the Valley isn’t all that common. Many people couldn’t afford to buy a house back then and certainly can’t afford one now. Most people don’t work for start ups and if they do, those start ups almost always fail. Or they couldn’t cash out during the internet mania. They’re just geeky folks making a good living who will likely never see millions much less tens of millions.

That said, on my block there is also at least one double-digit millionaire (he sold his publishing company of kids books for a ridiculous sum of money) and one triple-digit millionaire (employee number eight or thereabouts at Google). Now according to this article in the NY Times, the presence of people like that is supposed to make everyone in the Valley anxious about their financial state. Um, no.

Unlike the NY Times article’s narrative, the mere “single-digit” millionaires that I know seem to feel (rightly) that they have won the lottery. They can’t believe their luck. They could care less that Steve Jobs lives within walking distance and has 1000 times more moolah than them.

Certainly, there are people in the valley that exist who are insecure concerning their financial state despite their great wealth. These people make a better narrative for a newspaper article about wealth in America. It sells more newspapers to tell the story of rich people who are insecure than rich people who are happy. So you round up a few of those insecure types and write an article.

The article leaves the impression that the Silicon Valley is the domain of greedy multimillionaires who want more. It’s a great story for selling newspapers, the reality be damned. As the saying goes, the story is so good that it doesn’t matter if it’s true.

Newspapers common use this “round up a few people” method to tell a story. The only problem with this is that the people aren’t randomly selected. And even if they were, randomly selecting a half dozen people hardly constitutes a scientifically valid sample. While the narratives contained in articles like this can be emotionally riveting and titillating, they aren’t really informative. In essence, they are fictions created by a newspaper reporter, a story so slanted by preconceived notions that it bears little relation to reality.

Newspapers are often about telling an “interesting story.” The idea is to write something so compelling that the person reads from beginning to end. But news isn’t usually all that interesting in terms of narrative. So the tendency is to gin that narrative up.

In contrast to the “round up a bunch of people” kind of stories, are the stories of “conflicting narratives.” Controversy also creates an interesting narrative that sells newspapers. So you gin up a controversy even when one doesn’t really exist.

I saw this happen in the news with two particular scientific issues where I have some interest and expertise. One was nuclear waste storage. Newspapers would always find a dissenter scientist who would make ridiculous claims about the hazards of storing nuclear waste in Nevada. It was always the same guy. The NY Times, in particular, tried to make legitimate the ridiculous views of that one dissenter scientist. The end result of this “reporting to get a good story” rather than reporting what’s actually occurring is that we still have no place to store our nation’s nuclear waste.

The press also ginned up controversy about global warming for many years. Even though the overwhelming view of scientists was that global warming was real, they’d always give ample ink to a handful of dissenters to create the illusion that the scientific community was at odds. It made a great read. But it wasn’t true. The end result of years of misinformation from the press is that our nation still has no coherent policy about what to do about global warming.

In newspapers, and probably in our own minds, the value of a good narrative trumps the value of the truth almost every time.

*I note that the NY Times got skinnier today. The columns are narrower and the Times is harder to read as a result. I'll get used to it. But it reminds me that I need to get skinnier too.

Born Liars

A man walks into his house and finds his best friend screwing his wife on the couch. The best friend jumps off the couch buck naked and says, “Now buddy, before you jump to any conclusions, who you gonna believe? Your eyes or your best friend?” That best friend would make a great politician.

Slime and lies come with the territory. Yesterday before Congress, Donald Rumsfeld undoubtedly perjured himself concerning the cover up of the cause of death of former NFL star turned soldier Pat Tillman. It wasn’t the first time. A couple of years ago, he went before Congress and said concerning torture at the Abu Ghraib prison, “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.” Perjury is of course a criminal offense. But when it comes to Congressional testimony politicians treat the truth like Hollywood starlets treat parking tickets. It’s disposable and easily ignored.

Lies come in all kinds of shapes, colors, and flavors, but the most favored lie among politicians and their cohorts is the “I didn’t know” or “I can’t recollect” lie. I don’t mean to pick on Donald Rumsfeld. Scooter Libby couldn’t remember anything about Valerie Plame. Alberto Gonzales seems to have Alzheimer’s concerning the firing of US Attorney Generals and NSA wiretapping authorizations. Bush, when confronted with the Valerie Plame leak, said he didn’t know but “we’ll get to the bottom of this” (at least he didn’t do this before Congress; it’s not a criminal offense to lie before television reporters as Bill “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” Clinton will attest.)

Why are politicians incapable of telling the truth? I think that the answer goes hand in hand with why they will never admit they make mistakes and why are they so thin skinned and egomaniacal. A certain personality is attracted to politics. You have to be someone who likes power. You have to be exceedingly pragmatic. And then there is this expectation by the public – noted long ago by Machiavelli – that politicians should be honest and ethical. That expectation is in direct conflict with the nature of politics, which is bruising, dirty, and requires slight of hand.

What’s a politician to do? He or she has to lie to maintain public trust. And he or she better be skillful at it.

Last night, I watched Rudy Giuliani dodge and weave about abortion, health care and Iraq during an interview on PBS. The b.s. he laid down in the half hour that I saw was incredible. But I don’t mean to pick on Giuliani. A half hour interview with any of our presidential candidates would reveal their pathological inability to be truthful and show even a speck of candor.

It’s the nature of the beast. Politicians are skillful at smiling and being friendly (the exception to that rule being Dick Cheney). But when you catch them screwing our country, don’t believe what they say. You should believe your eyes.

Where Did They Go?

I just came back from a couple of weeks in NYC. I was living in an apartment in Brooklyn in an area that not so long ago was a high crime slum. But nowadays, the brownstone buildings on the block are selling for more than two million dollars and that just buys you the land and the bricks and mortar. About seventy percent of the brownstones on the block had been gutted and renovated to the hilt complete with Viking stoves, granite kitchen countertops, and exotically tiled baths.

Gentrification is happening all over New York City’s more centrally located areas. I hadn’t been to Manhattan in half a dozen years. The no man’s land west of Eighth Avenue has been transformed into buildings with 2500 dollar a month 900 square foot apartments. An entire block of strip joints near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance is now a place for experimental theater.

It isn’t just NYC. In my town, the South of Market area – a former home to crack addicts – is now full of trendy eateries and million dollar condos. In LA, Hollywood Boulevard – where you once could find used syringe needles in the cracks of the Walk of Fame sidewalks – is home to big name hotels, posh movie theaters and a billion dollar shopping mall.

Cities have become cool again. Oh sure, there are exceptions. New Orleans has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina. Detroit has no jobs and as a result, no chance for urban renewal. But if a city has a decent economy, you can bet that its central areas are undergoing renewal.

It’s wonderful to see ordinary and rich people walking the streets in places where they haven’t stepped foot in decades. On the block where I was living in Brooklyn, a common sight was of young cell phone toting mothers in fashionable clothing pushing fancy strollers inhabited by dressed to the nines two year olds. A half a block away, the street was lined with high-end restaurants. Ten years ago, if you had said that young parents with high incomes would be plunking down large sums of cash to own a little piece of Brooklyn heaven, people would have called you crazy.

But one question kept bugging me. Where did the poor people who once lived here go? It’s not as if they left the planet. Urban renewal does not mean the end of poverty. There have been marked and welcome reductions in teenage pregnancies and crime across the country. But the number of poor continues to increase. Where have they gone?

My guess is that many have moved to the fringes of America’s cities. They’re less visible as a result. Poverty has not been an issue that the public has wanted to address in over forty years. Ever since the race riots of the 1960s the response of the public to the nation’s poor has been a mixture of contempt and neglect. Whether a less visible impoverished class translates into even more neglect is debatable.