Doxology

It was a bit uncanny to read Nell Zink’s new novel, “Doxology,” in the wake of the suicide this month of David Berman, the beloved singer and songwriter best known for his work with Silver Jews, his indie-rock band.

A similar type of outside-the-box musician, named Joe Harris, dies too young (heroin) in “Doxology.” Berman and Harris are different in many ways. But they share a surreal sense of humor. Zink shows us Harris onstage at one point, “rocking out to his own conception of beauty, alone and weird.” Berman and Harris also share a restless sort of talent that can lead artists to become more influential dead than alive.

“Doxology” isn’t fundamentally a music novel. It has many other things on its mind, including a subversive history of American politics from Operation Desert Shield through the start of the Trump presidency, and it’s superb. In terms of its author’s ability to throw dart after dart after dart into the center of your media-warped mind and soul, it’s the novel of the summer and possibly the year. It’s a ragged chunk of ecstatic cerebral-satirical intellection. It’s bliss.

“Doxology” displays two generations of an American family. Pamela and Daniel are semi-clueless young people who move individually to New York City in the late 1980s. They might have dropped sideways, like bookmarks, out of a Jonathan Lethem novel. He is fleeing college life after graduation; she is just fleeing. They meet, marry, struggle financially and play in small anti-bands, sometimes with Harris before he becomes famous. Pamela’s musical motto is: “If you gotta suck, suck loud.”

They’re ’80s hipsters, in other words, a genus with which Zink is intimate. Here’s a sample of this writer’s sociological acumen — her ability, like Tom Wolfe by way of Lorrie Moore, to cram observation into a tight space:

“The ’80s hipster bore no resemblance to the bearded and effeminate cottage industrialist who came to prominence as the ‘hipster’ in the new century. He wasn’t a ’50s hipster either. He knew nothing of heroin or the willful appropriation of black culture,” she writes. “Having spent four years at the foot of the ivory tower, picking up crumbs of obsolete theory, he descended to face once again the world of open-wheel motor sports and Jell-O salads from whence he sprang.”

Zink adds, as a flourish: “An ’80s hipster couldn’t gentrify a neighborhood.” She writes: “His presence drove rents down.” Also: “The ’80s hipster could get served a beer in the Ozarks.”

If you care about this sort of thing, Zink writes about music as if she were a cluster of the best American rock critics (Ellen Willis, Ann Powers, Jessica Hopper and Amanda Petrusich, let’s say) crushed together under a single byline. This novel is replete with erudite signifiers that drop all over the place, like a toddler eating a pint of blueberries: Robert Christgau jokes, nods to the “Casio-core” sound, paeans to the righteous punk glory of Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi.

One band sounds “like lawn mowers ridden by nymphets playing banjos.” When Pamela plays guitar, “her fingers move like it’s freezing out and she lost her mittens.” (...)

Post-sensitive is not a bad description of Zink’s Weltanschauung. Her women tend to be the sort of people for whom, as the old joke has it, there was no Santa at 6, no stork at 9 and no God at 12. (...)

Her previous novels include “The Wallcreeper,” “Mislaid” and “Nicotine,” and I’ve admired many aspects of each of them. “Doxology” puts her on a new level as a novelist, however. This book is more ambitious and expansive and sensitive than her earlier work. She lays her heart on the line in a way she hasn’t before.

by Dwight Garner, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Sonny Figueroa

How Shareholder Democracy Failed the People

Democracy is a messy thing. Shareholder democracy may be even messier.

For nearly a half-century, corporate America has prioritized, almost maniacally, profits for its shareholders. That single-minded devotion overran nearly every other constituent, pushing aside the interests of customers, employees and communities.

That philosophy was rooted in an idea that has an air of nobility about it. Shareholder democracy was the name given to investors asserting themselves in corporate governance. The idea was that investors would wrest control of companies from entrenched managers, letting the actual owners set their corporate priorities. But what we really got was something else: an era of shareholder primacy.

That may have a chance — a chance — of changing now that 181 chief executives have lent their signatures to a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” that was published by the Business Roundtable on Monday. The statement from the leaders of companies including JPMorgan Chase, Apple, Amazon and Walmart affirms that the nation’s largest companies have a “fundamental commitment” to all their stakeholders: putting employees, suppliers and communities on a pedestal that once belonged only to shareholders.

The companies’ statement is a significant shift and a welcome one. For years, businesses have resisted calls — including from this column — to rethink their responsibility to society. In response, corporations typically dismissed hot-button topics like income inequality, climate change, gun violence and more as political issues unrelated to them.

Some will doubt the sincerity of these business leaders’ words, and it remains an open question whether their companies will be held accountable — and by whom. But what we may be at the start of is less a new era and more a return to the past.

For nearly 50 years — following the publication of a seminal academic treatise in 1932 called “The Modern Corporation and Private Property” by Adolf A. Berle Jr. and Gardiner C. Means — corporations, for the most part, were run for all stakeholders. It was a time defined by organized labor, corporate pension programs, gold-watch retirements and charitable gifts from companies that invested heavily in their communities and the kind of research that promised future growth.

It is a period often referred to — sometimes derisively — as “managerialism.”

But by the 1970s, managerialism became synonymous in investment circles with immovable executives who were running bloated businesses more for their own benefit than for their shareholders.

It also coincided with the ascent of Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist who preached a gospel of profits-as-purpose and mocked anyone who thought that businesses should do anything else.

“What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities?” Mr. Friedman wrote in this newspaper in 1970. “Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.”

That began the rise of shareholder democracy, an idea that the public and news media embraced. Shareholders and, in turn, a new class of investors known as corporate raiders convinced executives to slash any and all fat from their budgets or risk being taken over or voted out. Layoffs increased, research and development budgets were cut, and pension programs were traded for 401(k)s. There was a rush of mergers driven by “cost savings” that grabbed headlines while profits soared and dividends increased.

And here we are. Americans mistrust companies to such an extent that the very idea of capitalism is now being debated on the political stage. Populism has been embraced on both ends of the political spectrum, whether in the trade protectionism of President Trump or the social-net supremacy of Senator Bernie Sanders.

It is against that backdrop that the Business Roundtable released its statement on Monday. The group should be commended for coming around — and no one wants to criticize progress — but it is undeniably late.

Make no mistake, it wasn’t shareholder democracy that created this new enlightened moment. Public outrage pushed this forward. So did anger in Washington and regulatory scrutiny that is finally coming to bear.

Shareholders — with some exceptions — did not come around until they had no choice but to realize that these forces could have an impact on their investments.

by Andrew Ross Sorkin, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images

The Bad Plus

[ed. See also: The Bad Plus - Seven Minute Mind.]

Georges Braque, The Mantlepiece 

via:

Jan Lenica, Guess Who's the Anarchist. Monsieur Tête (1970)
via:

Kenny Vaughan

[ed. Ignore Marty Stuart's mugging, the music speaks for itself. Great guitar.]

The Economics of Bubbles

Last year, Ross Gerber, a corporate investment manager, Tweeted a warning about Tesla. Gerber wanted investors to know that Tesla’s success would put other industries ‘at risk’. Which ones? Just oil, internal combustion engine automobiles, car dealers, railroads, auto parts, automobile services, and gas stations. ‘Did I forget some?’ he asked, implying yes, he did. Gerber included hashtags referencing Uber and Netflix as comparable ‘disruptors’. This is why, Gerber implied, there was so much ‘FUD’ (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the media about Tesla. Gerber suggests a compelling storyline: the underdog hero, Tesla, is up against the evil incumbent forces that will play dirty to defeat it, but Tesla will overcome – just as Netflix and, presumptively, Uber have done.

The Tweet does not substantiate any of this. It doesn’t say why Tesla’s business case is like Netflix’s or Uber’s. It doesn’t say why all the purportedly threatened industries share the same interests here. It doesn’t have to – the human brain does that on its own without any help. As the US literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall has shown in his book The Storytelling Animal (2012), even the faintest sketch of a plotline is enough to prompt our minds to fill in the details. Gerber’s story outline is a familiar enough sketch of David taking on not just one but several Goliaths. It’s a good story outline. But it also ignores many important parts that do not fit with the plucky underdog narrative. It implies that all these alleged Goliaths have the same interest. It’s fiction, fantastically so.

The space between fiction and reality is where economic bubbles take shape. Froth fills that space. Gerber’s vaguely imagined world – one without oil companies, internal combustion engines, rail transportation, auto-service shops, parts makers, car dealers and gas stations – implies a radically different transportation infrastructure. But this future is just one of many possible ones, and storytellers have considered other potentially disruptive forces such as autonomous vehicles, new and different battery technology, or the micro-mobility revolution. How these potentialities play out, and Tesla’s role in them, is not just unknown but unknowable. As the late economic historian Nathan Rosenberg said to one of us: ‘The only thing certain about the future is that it is uncertain.’ Gerber’s Tesla story is fiction – and it is a fiction that relies on many unpredictable and uncontrollable convergent technological forces. To the extent that Tesla’s stock price reflects Gerber’s story, Tesla is a bubble.

As the Dutch Tulipmania of the 17th century and the South Sea Bubble of the 18th century attest, speculative bubbles have been with us since the early days of corporations and market capitalism. Instant mass communication, in the form of the radio, was an amazing invention of the 1920s. Almost 700 new radio stations – the United States’ entire current AM broadcast infrastructure – were established in 1922. But nobody had identified a successful business model for radio broadcast. That March, a small investor, Mrs W C B, sent a letter to the market columnist of the New-York Tribune seeking stock advice:

Question: I am a daily reader of your valued column in the Tribune, and your knowledge on investments has commended itself to me. The great impulse given to wireless telegraphy by the wireless concerts given daily at Newark and elsewhere suggest to me the advisability of making a modest investment in some wireless equipment stock that has potentialities. Could you name a few such stocks that I might invest in with reasonable assurance of large returns later on? What do you think of Radio common?

Mrs W C B had constructed her ‘radio story’ (the term ‘radio’ had yet to completely displace earlier alternatives such as ‘wireless telegraphy’). She correctly understood that the new medium was a powerful means of communication – just as Gerber understands that electric motors are a powerful alternative to internal combustion engines. Mrs W C B’s mind connected the dots from wireless concerts to ‘reasonable assurance of large returns later on’ and manufacturers of ‘wireless equipment’. But this was only one possible future.

Indeed, so uncertain was the radio business that the industry journal Radio Broadcast sponsored an essay competition in 1924 to answer the fundamental question: ‘Who is to pay for radio broadcasting and how?’ More than 800 essays were submitted seeking the $500 prize (more than $7,000 in today’s money). Each essay was its own narrative, a more or less sticky story that an entrepreneur could use to raise money. The US businessman David Sarnoff, who co-founded the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1919, didn’t enter the contest. But he believed that RCA would be able to charge a subscription, just like the telephone company AT&T, despite the fact that it was impossible to know who was tuning in on a radio. There were many possible radio stories available to Mrs W C B, but she wanted to have her story about the future of radio endorsed by the Tribune’s columnist.

Radio common stock was in for quite a ride: in January 1926, RCA shares were trading for $43 on the New York Stock Exchange. Investors were excited to get a piece of the technology that was broadcasting the Roaring 1920s, and join hundreds of entrepreneurs hoping to profit when manufacturers began producing radio sets and related broadcast equipment. They invested in RCA along with the 18 radio-related IPOs that were floated between 1923 and 1926. Three years later, in September 1929, RCA shares cost a bit more, $568. Three years after that, RCA shares had lost 97 per cent of their value and were trading for a mere $15. RCA’s dividend-adjusted price did not recover to 1929 levels for decades. RCA stock – indeed the entire radio sector in 1929 – was not a good investment. If Mrs W C B followed the outline of her own investment thesis and invested in RCA in 1922, we certainly hope she had the good sense to sell well before 1929.

Often the opportunity for a bubble arrives on the back of a new technology. And some technologies make for fantastic stories – indeed, sci-fi is a whole fictional genre based on this premise. Bubbles form whenever a new story is not only told, but can also be sold. However, not every new story leads to a bubble. Sometimes stories can be told, but not sold.

by Brent Goldfarb, Aeon | Read more:
Image: August 1926 edition of Radio Broadcast magazine, three years before the 1929 crash. Scan courtesy of Americanradiohistory.com

'A New Hawaiian Renaissance': How a Telescope Protest Became a Movement

On Hawaii’s Big Island, a protest against a $1.4bn observatory on Mauna Kea, a mountain considered sacred by many Native Hawaiians, is entering a second month. In that time, the protest site has swelled from a few hundred to several thousands, attracted celebrity visitors, and built a community of Native Hawaiians who see it as a pivotal moment.

The protest site sits at an elevation of 6,632ft, where the cold wind whips across hardened lava fields. But amid this inhospitable environment, weeks of demonstration have given rise to a sense of permanence.

The site stretches across a two-lane highway, where trucks flying a Native Hawaiian flag and the upside-down state flag line both sides of the road. A “Kūpuna tent”, where the elders of the community gather, is strategically placed to block an access road up the mountain in order to stop construction vehicles from reaching the summit.

New arrivals are encouraged to sign in at an orientation station. There is a tented cafeteria providing free meals, and a community-run medic station, daycare and school. Along the barren roadside, tropical flowers have been casually stuck in traffic cones. People pound taro, a Hawaiian crop, in the traditional way on wooden boards to make poi, a local dish.

The protest stems from controversy over the fate of Mauna Kea, the tallest peak in Hawaii and the proposed site of an enormous observatory known as the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The summit, 13,796ft above sea level, is said to be an ideal location to look into deep space. TMT is expected to capture images ‘that look back to the beginning of the universe. Protesters, who call themselves kia‘i, or “protectors”, argue the construction will further desecrate Mauna Kea, which is already home to about a dozen telescopes.

Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the protest leaders and a spokesperson for Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, a Native Hawaiian group, says the movement is “pushing back on corporate culture” through Hawaiian concepts of “Kapu Aloha”, which emphasizes compassionate responses, especially towards opponents, and “Aloha ʻĀina”, a saying that translates to “love of the land”.

“We are just joining the world’s indigenous movements,” Pisciotta says. “We need Kapu Aloha ... to bring back the balance from the insanity and destruction of our earth.”

Pisciotta said that the protesters were showing the world a way “to really live differently” while protecting the land.

“For Native Hawaiians, there is a question of our right to self-determination as defined by international law, but I think it’s so much bigger than that,” said Pisciotta. “It’s about us learning to live and be interdependent.”

Hawaiians consider Mauna Kea sacred for numerous reasons. The mountain is known as the home to Wākea, the sky god, who partnered with Papahānaumoku, the earth goddess. Protesters hope to protect and help restore the native ecosystem on Mauna Kea.

But the protests are also part of a legacy for Native Hawaiians that goes back to 1893, when the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown. Hawaiians lost their land as well as their culture, as the latter was suppressed through law and religion. It wasn’t until the 1970s, during a period of cultural flourishing known as the Hawaiian Renaissance, that the Hawaiian language was allowed to be spoken in school and that the hula was revived.

The period was defined by its own resistance movement, as activists focused on stopping the US military from using Kahoʻolawe, one of the eight main Hawaiian Islands, as a target for bombing practice. After more than a decade of peaceful protests and occupations of the island, the US government ended the live-fire training in the 1990s.

Some see the latest protest action as a new Hawaiian Renaissance. Days are punctuated by the blowing of the conch shell to announce ceremonies that include chanting, hula, and hoʻokupu (offerings). Several celebrities with Hawaii ties have travelled here to participate, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jason Momoa, and Jack Johnson.

by Michelle Broder Van Dyke, The Guardian | Read more:
Image:Caleb Jones/AP
[ed. I'm not too sympathetic. It feels like some grinding out of old resentments (and reaffirming cultural connections). Where were all these deep feelings when the other 13 existing telescopes were built? What if the project had been re-framed from a different perspective, ie., the natural evolution of Wākea, the sky god? A sacred place where the eyes of the world gaze deeply into the universe?]

Dutch Take Cycling to a New Level, with World's Biggest Multistorey Bike Park

In a nation with more bikes than people, finding a space to park can be a problem. The Dutch city of Utrecht is unveiling an answer at its railway station on Monday morning: the world’s largest multistorey parking area for bicycles.

The concrete-and-glass structure holds three floors of gleaming double-decker racks with space for 12,500 bikes, from cargo bikes that hold a family to public transport bikes for rent.

It is part of a strategy in which hundreds of millions of euros are being devoted to enhancing cycling infrastructure across the Netherlands, a nation so fervent about its two-wheelers that it is applying to add cycling to its inventory of intangible heritage.

“We are striving to make it a cyclists’ paradise and there’s still much to be done,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, a junior infrastructure minister. “I’d like us to make better use of what I call this secret weapon against congestion, poor air quality in cities and climate change that is also good for your health and your wallet.”

She added: “If you want to get people out of their cars and into public transport, you need to make sure using public transport is easy and comfortable. It needs to be very easy to park your bike as close to the train as possible – and you don’t want to be looking for half an hour for a space.”

According to the Dutch Statistics Office, 60% of all trips to work in the Netherlands are made by car and just a quarter by cycling – although in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, (known as the Randstad region) cycling is more common.

Demand for public transport is growing, the main four cities are predicted to expand, and the Netherlands has been struggling to meet its climate crisis commitments, so encouraging more bike use is a political priority.

“In the next 10 years, 500,000 more people will come to urbanised areas, and if all of those people bring their car then we are going to have massive congestion,” said Van Veldhoven. “So investment in public transport, cycling lanes and cycle parking facilities is crucial to keep this area that’s essential for our national economy moving.”

by Senay Boztas, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Petra Appelhof/BYCS
[ed. Not a fan of parking garages in general, but if you have a light rail system like Seattle does, it makes sense to have garages located near rail stations (instead of over-priced condos, which undermine what you're trying to achieve and only benefit a few.]

via: here and here

Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning Meets Its Match

Every summer, warm waters bathe the west coast of the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world in toxic algae. Particularly frightening are dinoflagellates in the genus Gonyaulax, Alexandrium, Gymnodinium, and Pyrodinium, which secrete saxitoxin, one of the world’s most lethal neurotoxins. Shellfish swallow saxitoxin and concentrate it in their bodies so readily that eating just one saxitoxin-laden mussel can cause paralysis and even death. Despite government warnings, people are poisoned every year by mussels they’ve gathered and eaten—as are birds, whales, and seals. But algae eaters—including shellfish, pufferfish, and freshwater frogs—remain blissfully unaffected.

Since the 1990s, scientists have known that these animals are naturally resistant to saxitoxin: they make proteins that sequester saxitoxin so it can’t affect their nervous systems. Recently, a team led by Daniel Minor, a biophysicist at the University of California, San Francisco, has taken on a molecular investigationof the novel phenomenon.

Minor and his colleagues used X-ray crystallography—the same technique used to first identify the structure of DNA—to create an atomic-resolution picture of saxiphilin, an antitoxin protein collected from American bullfrogs. They could see, in intricate detail, how saxiphilin binds with saxitoxin to render it harmless. This sophisticated image could bring researchers one step closer to detecting saxitoxin and dozens of other similar marine toxins, and even developing an antitoxin.

Detection may prove ever more essential in coming years. As climate change begets rising ocean temperatures and the deoxygenation of coastal waters, algal blooms worldwide are becoming bigger and lasting longer. More algal blooms mean more toxin-laden seafood and more sick humans, birds, and seals. If the trend continues, a better toxin detector will be a vital part of public health efforts. (...)

To protect the public, the department routinely tests for saxitoxin and other marine toxins at hundreds of spots along the coast every week. But the saxitoxin test used at the time—and still in use today—was developed in the 1930s and involves dosing mice with toxic seawater and seeing how long it takes them to die. Some people think the test is inhumane, considering how many mice must die to confirm the quality of the water. But the test remains the quickest and cheapest approach available. (...)

In his new study, Minor focused on identifying the physical structure of saxiphilin and found that it is shaped somewhat like a butterfly. Saxitoxin binds at an indented spot on one of the wings. The pocket fits saxitoxin snugly and is negatively charged, attracting the toxin electrostatically. To Minor’s surprise, the binding site looks almost exactly the same as when saxitoxin binds to sodium channels in human nerve cells, which means that saxiphilin might work to mitigate the effects of saxitoxin in people, too.

by Casey Rentz, Hakai Magazine |  Read more:

Image: Rolf Nussbaumer/NPL/Minden Pictures

The Government Must Actually Work

Today I came to the DMV prepared, because I know how these things can go. Once I waited 3 hours at the Boston DMV, only to be told that I’d brought the wrong kind of document—they could only accept a bank statement as proof of address, whereas I had brought a letter from my bank. I had to come back again the next day and wait all over again. This time, going to the Louisiana DMV to transfer my license from Massachusetts, I was determined to get through on the first try. I brought every document I could think of: my passport, my bank statement, my tax return, my old license, my Social Security card.

I arrived 20 minutes before the place opened, and there were already 30 people in line ahead of me. When they started letting us in, there was immediately a snag. The elderly man who is supposed to print out the little tickets you take (A-316 and such) had forgotten to load the paper into the ticket printer, so he shuffled off to find some. His pace made the DMV sloths in Zootopia seem downright zippy. When he returned some minutes later, he couldn’t figure out how to get the paper loaded. By the time the machine started spitting out tickets, 20 more people were in line.

When I got up to take my ticket, I told him I was there to transfer my out-of-state license.

“And you have your birth certificate, yes?”

My birth certificate??? From Britain circa 1989? I did not have it. I also knew you weren’t supposed to need a birth certificate. “Yes, I have it,” I said, so that he would give me the ticket. “I’ll sort this out at the next phase,” I thought. (In case you have not spent time in an American DMV, there are generally three phases: the line to give you the ticket to wait in the line, the line to ask for the thing you need, and the line to get the thing and pay for the thing.)

Ticket in hand (I was G-214), I sat in the main waiting area. A loudspeaker is constantly blaring out ticket numbers, making it impossible to read a book. There were 25 stations, each with a little display to say which number was being served. Only six stations were actually operating, so it took about 40 minutes for me to be called. I handed over my documents. I was not asked for my birth certificate. I did not mention it.

The woman serving me was very kind, but after a few minutes of keyboard-tapping she said:

“I’m sorry, it won’t let me do it. I have to email the help desk.”

So I sat back down and waited for the help desk to email her back. They took their sweet time. I went back up again. More tapping, another problem, another help desk email. However: I did, in fact, get my license. Total time: 90 minutes.

I was one of the lucky ones. The woman waiting next to me was told she had not brought form I-94, and so could not be processed. Looking at the Yelp reviews afterwards, I found that people routinely spend five-seven hours sitting in this DMV waiting to be called. If you don’t get there before it opens, there are literally hundreds of people in it, all miserable, most having to stand up the whole time. Some selections from reviews:

• I left work early and arrived here at 2:05. I waited in line to get to the ticket counter. I told the woman what I was there for and she gave me my ticket. The time stamp on my ticket was 2:17pm. At 3:50, a security guard announced that the office closes at 4:00 and that they will lock the doors at that time, but anyone that is already inside will be seen unless you go out those doors after 4:00. After already being there for 2hrs, I stayed planted in my seat. At 5:10 my number is called. I go to the counter and the woman tells me “that office closed an hour and ten minutes ago.”

• I PERSONALLY witnessed a young man and his grandfather wait for the young man to get his license. After sitting for 5 or more hours, because they were in place prior to my arrival; they exited with disappointment on both faces after only being at the desk to be served for 7 minutes

• I showed up before it opened and got C222. They let us into the building at 8:00 and started calling numbers at 8:30. There are 25 customer service windows and 100+ people there, but only 5 windows were open. 6 hours later, they had just called C217, and when they were finished with him, the one person helping the Cs went somewhere in the back (I’m assuming on lunch break). I went out to lunch and came back, and they were still on C217. Finally, I had had enough and left. It would have been 2+ hours more, if I were lucky.

• It is unfathomable that in the year 2019 our state cannot come up with a better way to provide this service. The sad thing is that a large percentage of the people sitting in this miserable room listening to the non stop, brain melting, electronic clicking of the speakers for unending hours will likely be told they do not have the proper paperwork to complete their transactions.

The problems with this DMV are not unsolvable. They are actually very, very simple. (1) It’s understaffed, so there are too many customers for too few service windows. (2) It’s unclear what documents people need, and the person at the ticket-handing-out phase does not know what people need to have. (3) The staff haven’t been trained to deal with very common problems, meaning that supervisors are frequently needed. Change those things, you change the whole experience. (...)

Worse, bad experiences at the DMV forever affect people’s perceptions of “government.” If this is what interacting with the government is like, then the arguments for privatizing public services begin to seem far more compelling. Look how inefficient the state is. Politicians can say “Do you want your health care to run like the DMV?” and people will nod and remember the five hours they spent standing in a sweltering room waiting to get their license renewal application denied.

In reality, “inefficiency” is only one part of the problem here. The main problem is there are only six stations open. This isn’t a problem of government waste, it’s a problem of austerity. Government can do things, but we have to be willing to spend enough money to hire enough people to get the things done. Hire more people, wait times drop, people are happy. (This means that a good way to push a pro-privatization agenda is to starve existing agencies so that they are unable to function, then point to their dysfunction as evidence the public sector can’t do anything. Underfund the NHS and then point to longer wait times and rationing as evidence socialized medicine doesn’t work.)

A lot of simplistic arguments are made that government can’t work, with the supposed evidence being that particular government agencies in the U.S. don’t work well. So, for example, American public schools show that government shouldn’t run education. Of course, that doesn’t tell us anything about “government” because many of the countries with the finest education systems in the world—the ones that consistently beat ours—also have public schools. And if the DMV and the post office are evidence against government, then fire departments and libraries and park rangers should be counted as evidence for it. In fact, you can have government agencies that produce good experiences, and private sector companies that produce horrible ones. (I would almost rather have a full day at the Louisiana DMV than ever have another interaction with Cox Cable.) The difference is less a matter of public and private than “well-run, well-structured institutions versus poorly-run, poorly-structured institutions.”

by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

To Wank or Not To Wank

Bob considers himself to be a compulsive masturbator. His daily routine once he gets out of bed is to immediately go to confession. He lives in terror that one of these days he will get run over by a streetcar or suffer a heart-attack in between getting up and getting to church. He sincerely fears that if this should happen, God will send him to hell.

Bob is not the name of a particular person. He’s an extreme case, but I encountered him more than once in the course of my life as a Catholic. I also encountered a great many men and women whose difficulties were not so life-consuming but who still suffered in their personal, spiritual and relational lives because they believed that masturbation was a mortal sin and that their inability to avoid it wounds the Body of Christ.

Materia Levis

Masturbation is an interesting test case because of all the sexual acts which are condemned by the Catholic church, it is the most demonstrably harmless. Substantive arguments can be made for moderating desires that could cause harm to another person, spread disease, or lead to the conception of a child. There is a genuine gravitas to sex simply because of its relational and procreative capacities.

But wanking has none of this gravitas. There is nothing inherent in the act that makes it weighty, or indeed that provides it with a significant moral dimension of any kind. There’s no clear sense in which it violates any of the most basic principles of the natural law (principles which, for the record, I basically consider to be sound and universal with minor modifications.)

1. Wanking does not threaten individual life. Unless something truly bizarre happens, you cannot die or become ill by spanking your monkey.

2. It doesn’t threaten the continuity of the species. While there is some evidence that compulsive and routine use of pornography is correlated with poor interpersonal and relationship skills, which can lead to intimacy problems, it’s extremely unclear whether this relationship is causal (i.e. does porn lead to problems with intimacy, or do people with intimacy problems gravitate towards greater use of pornography?) However, in spite of the fact that almost all males and most females masturbate fairly regularly, most people seem to manage to maintain relationships and even have children.

3. This is the sticky one, because the claim that the church has to fall back on is that masturbation somehow wounds the nature of sexuality and therefore offends against the building of a common life and against God. Because the issues here are a little more complex, we’ll give this a longer treatment.

Adultery in the Heart

There is perhaps an argument to be made that masturbation wounds our common life in-so-far as it involves the use of other people as objects of imaginary appropriation — the “you have already committed adultery with her in your heart” argument presented by Christ.

When masturbation involves imagining another person performing acts that that person would not actually perform in real life, it can cause a change in how someone behaves towards the object of their fantasies. Some women, especially, are sensitive to these changes and feel used or violated by people who do this.

It’s also just disrespectful: there’s a reason why we object strongly to having people take nude or semi-nude photographs without our permission. Even if they never publicize the picture, they’ve established that they have a sense of entitlement to our bodies, to use our image for their own purposes regardless of our consent or knowledge. Taking a mental snapshot and using the imagination to photoshop someone out of their clothes and into your arms is disrespectful in the same way, it’s just harder to detect.

However, masturbation doesn’t have to involve the appropriation of unwilling bodies. It can be consensual (as in phone sex or sexting). It can involve purely imaginary persons (fictional characters, artistic representations). It can involve picturing archetypal imagery without any overt human representation of any kind (Georgia O’Keefe’s erotic flower paintings…) And if you really want to be scrupulous and establish that you’re a badass master of your own internal thoughts and passions, you can train yourself to blank your mind and think of nothing at all (yes, there are people who have adopted this solution in order to be able to jerk off without lust.)

None of these things violate the dignity of others or wound social life. A blanket condemnation of masturbation must, therefore, rest on the claim that it somehow wounds our relationship to truth and to God.

Doth God Abhor a Wanker?

The best argument in favour of this is JPII’s Theology of the Body. TOB situates sex as a kind of trinitarian icon: two become one and out of their loving union a third proceeds. Sex, according to this account, reveals something of the inner life of God — and when it is used simply for personal pleasure or for the satisfaction of animal instincts this is a sort of desecration. Something like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

The difficulty with this account is that it attempts to turn all sex into sacrament. We don’t do this with any of the other normal, quotidian activities that represent the nature of God in liturgical settings. We acknowledge one baptism, but that doesn’t mean we condemn bubble baths. We find the full meaning of food and nourishment in the Eucharist — but we don’t therefore conclude that it’s an affront to God if you scarf a bag of Doritos while watching the game.

In these other cases we recognize that the sacralization of ordinary human activities elevates them and leads us towards God via the everyday. But we still recognize that human beings are bodily creatures and that it’s legitimate for us to meet our creaturely needs in mundane ways.

Similar problem arise with natural law arguments. Yes, it’s certainly true that sex is necessary for the perpetuation of the species and that it is, by nature, ordered to that end. But in other cases we don’t have a problem with non-harmful uses of our faculties for frivolous purposes.

Chewing gum involves stimulating the taste buds while providing no nutritive value. But nobody suggests that it’s an “unnatural” use of our superficial digestive parts for debased pleasure and that it is morally repugnant.

Nor, for that matter, does anybody have a problem with humans using our most elevated faculty, our reason, to do random irrelevant things. By nature the rational faculty is ordered towards truth and wisdom. But it’s not therefore disordered to use it to solve cheesy logic puzzles or read pulp sci-fi. The recreational use of our rational faculty is not merely permitted; it’s widely recognized that this sort of intellectual leisure is necessary to our psychological and mental well-being.

When it comes to sex, though, a completely different standard is in place.

by Melinda Selmys, Patheos |  Read more:

Image: Jan Sanders van Hemessen. St Jerome (1543), photographed by Dr. Alexey Yakovlev

China’s Ultimate Play For Global Oil Market Control

All attention is focused on the twists-and-turns of the very noisy US-Iran dispute in the Persian Gulf, but all the while the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is rapidly and quietly consolidating a dominant presence in the area with the active support of Russia.

Beijing, as a result, is fast acquiring immense influence over related key dynamics such as the price of oil in the world market and the relevance of the petrodollar. The PRC and the Russians are capitalizing on both the growing fears of Iran and the growing mistrust of the US. Hence, the US is already the main loser of the PRC’s gambit.

The dramatic PRC success can be attributed to the confluence of two major trends:

(1) The quality and relevance of what Beijing can offer to both Iran and the Saudi-Gulf States camp; and

(2) The decision of key Arab leaders — most notably Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin ‘Abd al-’Aziz al Sa’ud (aka MBS) and his close ally, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (aka MBZ) — to downgrade their traditional close ties with the US, and reach out to Beijing to provide a substitute strategic umbrella.

Hence, the PRC offer to oversee and guarantee the establishment of a regional collective security regime — itself based on the Russian proposals and ideas first raised in late July 2019 — is now getting considerable positive attention from both shores of the Persian Gulf. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Oman appear to be becoming convinced that the PRC could be the key to the long-term stability and prosperity in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.

Iran is also considering the expansion of security cooperation with Russia as an added umbrella against potential US retaliation.

Overall, according to sources in these areas, the US was increasingly perceived as an unpredictable, disruptive element.

The profound change in the attitude of the Saudi and Emirati ruling families, who for decades have considered themselves pliant protégés of the US, took long to evolve. However, once formulated and adopted, the new policies have been implemented swiftly.

The main driving issue is the realization by both MBS and MBZ that, irrespective of the reassuring rhetoric of US Pres. Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, their bitter nemesis — Qatar — is far more important to the US than the rest of the conservative Arab monarchies and sheikhdoms of the GCC. The last straw came in early July 2019 in the aftermath of the visit of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to Washington, DC. Sheikh Tamim received an extravagant reception from both Pres. Trump in person and official Washington. Trump lavished praises on Qatar and the Emir, and emphasized the US renewed commitment “to further advancing the high-level strategic cooperation between our two countries”.

There are good reasons for the US preference of Qatar.

The Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar is by far the most important US base in the entire greater Middle East. Qatar is mediating between the US and several nemeses, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. Qatar is providing “humanitarian cash” to HAMAS in the Gaza Strip, thus buying quiet time for Israel. Qatar has given generous “political shelter” to numerous leaders, seniors, and commanders of questionable entities the US would like to protect but would never acknowledge this (including anti-Russia Chechens and other Caucasians, and anti-China Uighurs).

Qatari Intelligence is funding and otherwise supporting the various jihadist entities which serve as proxies of the CIA and M?T (Milli ?stihbarat Te?kilat?: the Turkish National Intelligence Organization) in the greater Middle East (mainly Syria, Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Yemen) and Central Asia (mainly Afghanistan-Pakistan, China’s Xinjiang and Russia’s Caucasus and the Turkic peoples of eastern Siberia).

On top of this, Qatar is purchasing billions of dollars’ worth of US-made weapons; and paying cash on-time (unlike the habitually late Saudis who now cannot afford to pay what they’ve already promised).

Moreover, the Middle East is awash with rumors that Qatari businessmen saved the financial empire of the Kushner family by investing at least half-a-billion dollars in the 666 5th Avenue project in New York. The rumors are very specific in that the investment was made for political reasons on instruction of the Emir. In the conspiracies-driven Arab Middle East, such rumors are believed and serve as a viable motive for the policies of the Trump White House: an ulterior motive the Saudis and Gulfies cannot challenge.

The handling by the Trump White House of the Iranian shootdown of the US RQ-4A/BAMS-D Global Hawk drone on June 20, 2019, only exacerbated further the anguish of both MBS and MBZ. Both of them, along with other Arab leaders, urged the Trump White House to strike hard at Iran in retaliation. Both MBS and MBZ communicated in person with the most senior individuals at the White House. They were stunned to learn that Trump communicated directly with Tehran on the possibility of a largely symbolic retaliatory strike, and the prospects of bilateral negotiations.

Both MBS and MBZ consider the last-minute cancellation of the US retaliatory strike a personal affront and humiliation because Trump did not accept and follow their positions and demands for action. Both MBS and MBZ are now convinced that not only the US demonstrated weakness and lack of resolve, but that Pres. Trump was personally not committed to fighting Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms. (...)

Both MBS and MBZ concluded that they need a far stronger strategic umbrella than the US and Israel could offer in order to survive in the era of Iran’s ascent.

As a result, MBZ reached out to Beijing in early July 2019. After comprehensive preparatory negotiations, MBZ arrived in Beijing on July 20, 2019, for a milestone visit in which he met PRC Pres. Xi Jinping for lengthy discussions. According to PRC senior officials, Mohammed bin Zayed and Xi Jinping “elevated the two countries’ relationship to that of a strategic partnership”. The key outcome was the UAE’s acceptance of the dominance of the PRC and Russia in the Persian Gulf.

“The UAE and China are moving towards a promising future,” MBZ said in his concluding meeting with Xi Jinping. His visit aimed at “developing co-operation and a comprehensive strategic partnership, as well as opening new horizons for joint action in various sectors,” MBZ explained. Xi Jinping responded by stressing “the profound significance of China-Arab relations”. The PRC and the UAE would now work closely together to transform the Persian Gulf into “a security oasis” rather than a new “source of turmoil”.

Significantly, Xi Jinping referred to “a hundred years of grand plan” when describing the PRC’s relations with the UAE. MBZ also signed a large number of bilateral agreements, both economic and strategic.

by Yossef Bodansky, OilPrice.com | Read more:

Image: uncredited

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Megaproject Management

Megaproject management is a new-ish subfield of project management. Originally considered to be the special case of project management where the budgets were enormous (billions of dollars), it is developing into a separate specialization because of the high complexity and tradition of failure among such projects. The driving force behind treating it as a separate field appears to be Bent Flyvbjerg, previously known around here for Reference Class Forecasting as the first person to develop an applied procedure. That procedure was motivated by megaprojects.

I will make a summary of the paper "What you should know about megaprojects, and why: an overview" from 2014. For casual reading, there is an article about it from the New Yorker here.

History

Megaprojects got their name from the association of mega with big, so think mega-city rather than mega-joule. It did match the unit prefix in the beginning however, as such projects were mostly dams, bridges, or very large buildings in the early 20th century.

The next shift upward took place with the Manhattan Project and then the Apollo program, which are also frequently drawn on as positive examples. The term 'megaproject' picked up steam in the 1970s, at the same time project costs crossed over into the billions.

Currently project costs of 50-100 billion are common, with even larger projects less common but not rare. If you were to view certain things which need dedicated management as a project, like the stimulus packages from 2008 or US defense procurement, then we have crossed over into the trillions and are entering a 'tera era' of megaprojects.

Ignoring these special cases, but counting infrastructure and industries where billion dollar projects are common, megaprojects account for ~8% of global GDP.

Four Sublimes

These are four reasons which drive the popularity of megaprojects. They are kind of a group bias for each type of stakeholder. They are:

• Technological sublime: because engineers and technologists love making the newest/tallest/fastest things.
• Political sublime: because politicians love being able to associate with huge projects and the publicity that comes with them.
• Economic sublime: because unions, contractors, and business people love all the jobs and fees.
• Aesthetic sublime: because designers love making beautiful things, and the public loves to adopt big beautiful things as distinctive for their city/country.

Predictably with biases, there are side effects:

The following characteristics of megaprojects are typically overlooked or glossed over when the four sublimes are at play and the megaproject format is chosen for delivery of large-scale ventures:

1. Megaprojects are inherently risky due to long planning horizons and complex interfaces (Flyvbjerg, 2006).

2. Often projects are led by planners and managers without deep domain experience who keep changing throughout the long project cycles that apply to megaprojects, leaving leadership weak.

3. Decision-making, planning, and management are typically multi-actor processes involving multiple stakeholders, public and private, with conflicting interests (Aaltonen and Kujala, 2010).

4. Technology and designs are often non-standard, leading to "uniqueness bias" amongst planners and managers, who tend to see their projects as singular, which impedes learning from other projects. 

5. Frequently there is overcommitment to a certain project concept at an early stage, resulting in “lock-in” or “capture,” leaving alternatives analysis weak or absent, and leading to escalated commitment in later stages. "Fail fast" does not apply; "fail slow" does (Cantarelli et al., 2010; Ross and Staw, 1993; Drummond, 1998).

6. Due to the large sums of money involved, principal-agent problems and rent-seeking behavior are common, as is optimism bias (Eisenhardt, 1989; Stiglitz, 1989; Flyvbjerg el al., 2009).

7. The project scope or ambition level will typically change significantly over time.

8. Delivery is a high-risk, stochastic activity, with overexposure to so-called "black swans," i.e., extreme events with massively negative outcomes (Taleb, 2010). Managers tend to ignore this, treating projects as if they exist largely in a deterministic Newtonian world of cause, effect, and control.

9. Statistical evidence shows that such complexity and unplanned events are often unaccounted for, leaving budget and time contingencies inadequate.

10. As a consequence, misinformation about costs, schedules, benefits, and risks is the norm throughout project development and decision-making. The result is cost overruns, delays, and benefit shortfalls that undermine project viability during project implementation and operations.

The Iron Law of Megaprojects

• Over time.
• Over budget.
• Under utilized.

These aren't little, either: cost overruns of 1.5x are common, in bad cases they can run more than 10x, and 90% of projects have them; it is common for projects to have 0.5x or less utilization once complete. This holds for the public and private sectors, and also across countries, so things like excessive regulation or corruption aren't good explanations.

They start off badly, but they do still manage to get completed, which is due to...

Break-Fix Model

Since management of megaprojects doesn't know what they are doing or don't have the incentives to care, inevitably something breaks. Then additional time and money are spent to fix what broke, or the conditions of the project are renegotiated, and it limps along to the next break. This process continues until the project is finished.

If it is so terrible and we know it is terrible, why do we do it this way?

by Ryan_b., LessWrong |  Read more:

[ed. I used to do this for 30 years in Alaska, megaprojects: multi-billion dollar dams, oil field exploration and development, large mining projects, whatever. Many of them did not get built for the reasons stated above. For additional insight into how this process works, see: How the Process Works - An Outsider's Guide to Cherry Point (Duck Soup).]

Talking Heads

[ed. See also: How the Talking Heads wrote "Once in a Lifetime" (YouTube)]

Tiger Woods’s Caddie Is a Reluctant Star

Friday was perhaps the closest that Joe LaCava’s dream job will ever come to a nightmare. His boss, Tiger Woods, couldn’t get much going on or around the greens in his second consecutive round of one-under-par 71 at the BMW Championship, and LaCava had nowhere to hide from fans who feted him all the way around Medinah Country Club.

“Congratulations, Joe!” they cried out to LaCava, who was inducted into the Caddie Hall of Fame this week in a ceremony held by the Western Golf Association, which runs the BMW Championship, the second of three FedEx Cup playoff events.

“I’m just not comfortable with the attention,” said LaCava, who dropped his gaze and gave a thumbs-up in response to a shout of “Mr. Hall of Fame” on the second green after Woods tapped in for par.

As LaCava walked off the 18th green, he was greeted by Jim Mackay, the caddie-turned-broadcaster who gave him a consoling pat on the back.

“He knew I was frustrated,” LaCava said. His voice trailed off. (...)

Woods and LaCava have collaborated on a comeback that became one of the most thrilling stories in sports over the past year. So it was perhaps fitting that LaCava was approached Wednesday after his induction speech by a writer who said without preamble: “You’re good at this. You should write a book.”

It was like receiving encouragement from Britney Spears to record an album. The man was the best-selling author James Patterson, but after he trundled off, LaCava conceded that he had never heard of him.

“I’m not the biggest reader,” he said apologetically.

What LaCava does quite well is read people. The caddies’ creed is show up, keep up, shut up. But when he started working with Woods in the fall of 2011, he quickly ascertained that one of the ways he could be of service was by talking more, since the public’s hunger for insight into Woods is far greater than Woods’s appetite for sharing.

“I talk to everybody because I don’t think Tiger talks to everybody all the time,” LaCava said. “I want Tiger to be the show. I want him doing the interviews and everything else. So that’s just not a comfortable role for me.”

Being the guest of honor at a meal where most of the other diners are strangers is the attention shunner’s equivalent of playing the T.P.C. Sawgrass’s 17th island par-3 in a gale. Even as he walked off yardages and studied the greens during Wednesday’s pro-am round, LaCava was fretting over the speech he would have to deliver hours later.

“He doesn’t like to be part of the spotlight,” Woods said, adding: “For him to be recognized for what he does, he’s very uncomfortable with that.”

So great was LaCava’s discomfort that he failed to mention the induction to his wife, Megan, who learned of it from the couple’s daughter, Lauren, who had found out from an article online.

“I probably should have told my wife,” LaCava said. (...)

LaCava, who has helped Woods to 10 PGA Tour titles during their time together, shares more than a sense of humor with his boss. They have the same competitive drive. “He’s very fiery,” Woods said. “He wants to win.”

In a taped interview played during the induction ceremony, Woods spoke of LaCava’s loyalty. It was the highest praise he could offer. As the sun around which everyone else in golf revolves, Woods is always on guard against the superficial, transactional relationship.

“The curse of being Tiger is he doesn’t know who’s a friend and who’s a hanger-on,” said Robert Damron, a former tour player who provided commentary for the Golf Channel on Woods’s Friday round.

LaCava’s loyalty was tested during a four-year stretch, starting in 2014, when Woods’s balky back limited him so much that at one point LaCava went 466 days without working.

In 2016, Woods made just one start, at the tournament he hosts in the Bahamas. He told LaCava he was free to seek other employment. LaCava essentially said thanks but no thanks. He believed Woods had good golf left to play and he was willing to wait.

His patience was rewarded handsomely at the Masters this spring. After Woods secured his 15th major victory, his first major title in 11 years and his fifth green jacket, he hugged LaCava on the 18th green.

“We did it,” Woods told him.

Later that night, LaCava said, he received a text from Woods, which ended, “I love you like a brother.”

LaCava can’t remember the rest of it, and he can’t look it up. “I deleted it,” he said.

He explained that he gets rid of all his texts and emails.

But of course. Every caddie worth his bib will tell you that what’s past is past. All that matters is what’s in front of you.

by Karen Crouse, NY Times | Read more:
[ed. Freddie Couples' caddie for years. One of the best.]