Month: March 2015

Still so much going on at TED — I’m about to go for my solo test-drive of this thing! (do they know how badly I drive?) and one of the speakers makes a somewhat plausible case that 80,000 colonists a year will be flying to Mars and another is blind as a bat but has developed the ability to see the way a bat does . . . and I met the guy who invented Siri and the Estonian who engineered Skype and a Romanian who has a great way to make phsyical therapy more palatable and a Spaniard who “came out” to a book I wrote 40 years ago and even got to fawn over Jeff Bezos a little and meet one of the Bezos scholars, a freshman at Harvard, who lives in Pennypacker Hall, which I just find so cool because she climbs the same stairs up to her room I did, a few decades ago, when I was in Pennypacker — just no time to write about.

So in the meantime:

PAY IT FORWARD

Schmalz alert!  But what’s wrong with a little schmalz every so often?

So much going on at TED — just no time to write about.

So in the meantime:

THE MINNESOTA EXPERIMENT

“This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Increased the Minimum Wage — Now, His State’s Economy Is One of the Best in the Country.”  Spread the word: middle-class economics works.  And winds up enriching everybody!  (Did the rich do better under Clinton, who raised taxes on the rich and the minimum wage, or Bush, who slashed taxes onthe rich and froze the minimum wage?   Hint: the stock market soared tripled under Clinton, cratered under Bush.  Obama, too, raised tax rates on the rich — yet the the stock market has again tripled.)

Check it out.

Sorry to be late with this, which I’d usually post on a Friday when you had the whole weekend ahead to find 20 minutes to watch . . . but I got thrown by the time difference.  Did you know Vancouver is three hours behind the East Coast?  And observes daylight savings time — but that two Canadian provinces don’t and a third, Newfoundland, is half an hour askew year round?  (And what’s up with Arizona?)

But while I edit my Hillary email/Senate Iran letter thoughts, watch John Oliver, Edward Norton, and an all-star cast make Infrastructure super fun and scary.  Rated R, for language.

(Spoiler alert: how self-destructive are we?  We should just add 25 cents a gallon to the federal gas tax and be done with it.  Oliver doesn’t go that far — he doesn’t venture into the realm of science fiction, an alternative universe in which we, as a nation, make rational decisions — but that, in fact, is what we should do.  And by the way?  If you were getting 18mpg in 1993, the last time the tax was hiked, but will be getting 36mpg going forward, then, adjusted for inflation, the federal gas tax you’d be paying to drive a mile would still be lower than it was in 1993.)

C’mon, Congress: man up!

TED OR NORTH KOREA

I’ll be out at TED next week, listening to interesting people.  (After a few weeks or months, most of those talks wind up on the Internet, along with the 1900+ you can already watch for free here (with tools to sort by topic, type and popularity, among other things).  In case I fail to post one or more days next week, just watch a few dozen TED talks.

But as you do, consider this clever quiz from Mother Jones, wherein you are presented a series of short quotes and asked whether they came from a TED talk or from North Korean propoaganda.

It’s a lot hard than you might think.

IN CASE YOU FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM

Meanwhile, say you’re struck by lightning or something and — thankfully — there’s no damage at all.  No blood, no pain; maybe you have to send your clothes out to the cleaner.  The only thing is: you can’t for the life of you remember who you are.  (Haven’t we seen this movie?)

By asking you a few questions about how various words sound to you, this quiz will at least tell you where you’re from.  That’s a start.  (Try it!)

Now, if you could only remember your name.  And your PIN.

(Thanks, Mel!)

#

Monday (I Hope): A Few Thoughts on Hillary’s Emails and the 46 Senators’ Letter to the Ayatollah

“Mad Men” starts again April 5 here on AMC — the final season.

And now yet another reason to live: “Better Call Saul,” the lawyer from “Breaking Bad,” here on AMC.  If you’ve missed the first four, treat yourself.  So good.

And a completely zany “Mary Tyler Moore for the Twenty-First Century” is available for binging here on Netflix — “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”  You think Mary had spunk?  Wait til you meet Kimmy.*  Being a creature of Tina Fey, with no small assist from Jane Krakowski, it is just ridiculously funny most of the time.

And there are lots more, but no time.  I still have episodes of “The Roosevelts” in queue!

The problem with kids these days, I keep telling people: they don’t watch enough television.

But if, like them, you don’t either . . . if you insist on books (thank you) . . . then read (or listen to) Ghettoside.  Gripping.  Wrenching.  Real people most of us would otherwise never meet.

*Lou Grant, famously: “Mary: You’ve got spunk.”  Long pause, as Mary blushes and beams.  “I hate spunk.”

In case you missed this, a couple of years ago — as 99.99% of us did — here they are, in three minutes.  Could we please, please, please find some Republicans like these again?

π

Hey!  What are you doing this coming Saturday, March 14 at 9:26am?  Wait 54 seconds to experience a once-a-century moment.  It’s pi!  Namely, 3/14/15 at 9:26:54 . . . 3.141592654.  Bake something!

YESTERDAY’S PUZZLE

I would say “spoiler alert,” but if your spatial intelligence is as bad as mine, you won’t understand the explanations, either.

Mark:  “Yesterday’s puzzle was easy to decipher.  Between 1:02 and 1:03 if you listen closely you hear hm drop a tile on the table from his hand.”

☞ Perhaps — but not according to George:

George Vivino-Hinze:  “You can see that he’s cooking the books, skimming off 1.7% for himself each time he moves the skewed blocks.  After the camera break, he lets you see his second set of books – I mean blocks – and the middle blocks no longer are perfect squares, having been replaced with inflated blocks from ‘under the table.’  If you had a straight-on view, you would see the middle blocks getting shorter, but like a professional con, he doesn’t let you see that.  And after he’s pocketed his 5%, another camera break, and he shows you the first set of – uh – blocks and confidently counts the deflated squares neatly fitting back into their folder, keeping the stockholders from having any suspicion.”

☞ Perhaps — but not according to Bruce:

Bruce:  “Here’s a video that shows how it’s done.”

☞ I didn’t get that one either.  But I can tell you how they saw people in half.

EVEN MORMONS SOMETIMES LIE

My two Mormon friends of longest standing are spectacularly decent guys.  A little nuts in some of their views, if you ask me, and needlessly shy of caffeine; but first-class folks.  Which is why this account of Church duplicity — found guilty on 13 counts of election fraud (written by the only openly gay candidate for President that I can recall, a Republican, no less) — struck me.

ENERGY PARTNERSHIPS

Doug Gary:  “I’m writing to see if you are still holding this energy partnerships you mentioned sometime back. I have them in my IRA and they haven’t done great — but time will always be the ultimate, judge, right? I hold CMLP, MWE, OKS, PAA, RGP and TOO. Thoughts?”

☞  They’ve gotten hammered, but I hope that makes them an even better buy.  In the meantime, I suffer along with you, even as we’re collecting very nice distruibutions.  (Since you have them in your IRA, your custodian may be siphoning off some of the distributions to the IRS, as explained here.  It’s an IRS interpretaion that’s never made the slightest sense to me; but the law’s the law.)

How, oh how does he do this?  Seriously?

BEANIES

I don’t hold babies.  I’m afraid they might poop, afraid I might drop them, see no way to reason with them, think they all look like Winston Churchill.  I’d make a horrible dad.  (Once they’re two, let alone four or five, I make a really good uncle.)

I have also never held a Beanie Baby.  Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever been in the same room with one.

So I might not have been the most likely candidate to read The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, published this week, had it not been written by my pal Zac Bissonnette.

But what a story it turns out to be!

Don’t settle for my blurb (best business bio of the millennium) — here are a couple of others:

“Equally heartwarming and heartbreaking, this accessible work will captivate.”
—Library Journal, Starred review

“The spectacular story of the strangest speculative bubble there ever was and the man behind it.  A must-read for anyone looking to understand how manias start and markets go insane.”
—LIAQUAT AHAMED, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance

Move over, Charles MacKay.

BARNEY

Also just out is Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage.  I love that the two principal blurbs come from George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary — the former head of Goldman Sachs — and Elizabeth Warren, who, shall we say, comes at Wall Street from a different point of view.

“Barney Frank will be remembered as one of the hardest-working, quickest-thinking, most effective — and most quotable — congressmen in our nation’s history. Frank tells his story with characteristic candor, from coming out of the closet and working for LGBT rights to fighting for sensible financial reforms. Frank’s belief that government can improve people’s lives has given passion and energy to every part of his remarkable career in public service.” — Senator Elizabeth Warren

“This is authentic Barney — a compelling narrative because it mixes the personal with the professional and with his one-of-a-kind sense of humor. It’s also an important piece of history by a skilled legislator who has been able to get things done in Washington, D.C., that have made a real difference in all of our lives. I was privileged to work with him.” — Hank Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury

Full disclosure: The photo of Barney and the doe on Fire Island?  (Captioned: “Contrary to some people’s expectations, I did not yell at it, and it did not run away from me.”)  It was taken in Charles’ and my back yard.

CASEY & BRUTUS

Floating around the internet, in case you haven’t already seen it.  (Thanks, Mel!)

A Man Found Two Bear Cubs Beside Their Dead Mother. Words Can’t Describe What Followed.

A naturalist named Casey Anderson stumbled across two grizzly bear cubs nestled beside their dead mother in the wild mountains of Alaska. Casey couldn’t just leave these little guys to die in the wilderness, so he made the brave decision to take them with him. He trains animals for a living, so he knew he would be able to give these cubs a real shot. That simple decision, borne out of grief, turned into one of the most unique and adorable rehabilitation stories we have ever laid eyes on.

Warning: you’ll want to adopt a bear after this. You probably shouldn’t.

Behold the photos.  (And if you’re having fun, skip to the last minute or so of the video, when they really start having fun.)  I like that Brutus (the 800-pound grizzly) was best man at Casey’s wedding.

HOW TO REACH JARED

My pal Jesse Kornbluth reviewed Merchants of Doubt, upon which the documentary I linked to yesterday is based:

This book, written with science journalist Erik Conway, is about the absence of reasoned action — and not just when the issue is global warming. The real shocker of this book is that it takes us, in just 274 brisk pages, through seven scientific issues that called for decisive government regulation and didn’t get it, sometimes for decades, because a few scientists sprinkled doubt-dust in the offices of regulators, politicians and journalists. Suddenly the issue had two sides. Better not to do anything until we know more.

“How do you talk to these people?” he wrote in response to yesterday’s post about Jared.  “Good luck.”

Jim Batterson: “I have known people with whom I share very few views.  A good starting point is the challenge: Let’s see if we can find some issue that we can agree on.  My libertarian friends and I can agree on pro-choice issues, or LGBT rights, or keeping the church out of the government.   Some of my fundamentalist friends share my views on gun control or supporting prison reform.  It’s a start.  Where do your political views overlap with [Jared’s]? There  must be something.”

☞ Yes.  I think that’s an excellent approach.

Manny Sodbinow:  “You asked how we can reach Jared and people like him.  I’m not sure we need to, because it is our experience that we cannot change their minds, even when the evidence solidly suggests they are wrong.  (In fact, the proof that Andrew Wakefield was a fraud made a large segment of the anti-vaccination crowd even more convinced that he was right.) Instead, we should be strengthening the resolve of those who believe as we do, and those who are truly on the fence about various matters.  We need to ensure that their voices are heard more loudly and more consistently, so that we drown out the shouts and echoes of the wrong-headed.  And, of course, we should do this politely.”

☞ Amen.  But I can’t help myself.  I still want to try.  Occasionally, people come around.  Look at George Wallace, who recanted on segregation.  Look at Davd Brock (Blinded By The Right).  Look at this guy (How a Right Wing, Fundamentalist, Conservative Pastor Became a Leftist, Liberal Heathen).  Or this guy (How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative).  Or at the guy who organized a national bus tour against same-sex marriage – who actually drove the bus.  On his tour, he wound up actually meeting gays who were following in protest. Once he came to see them as nice people, with the same kinds of hopes and fears as anyone else, he decided they should have the same rights and respect.

Have a great weekend!  I just may take Monday off.  (National Crabmeat Day.)

Jim B: “When Hannity refers to the president as Barrack Hussein Obama his emphasis on the Hussein is clearly a dig at his Muslim middle name, although he can defend his choice by saying that it is just a fact that it is his middle name.  We cherry-pick our facts and this choice is clearly gratuitous.  Likewise when you highlight a poster’s pitiful education, as you did yesterday — Facebook identifies him as having “studied at Central New Mexico Community College” — you are cherry-picking your facts and committing an ad-hominem error.  Admittedly his point is very, very poorly argued, but you can do better than to attack his education as your refutation.  Because you are better than Hannity.”

☞ I did hesitate before including that.  Maybe I made the wrong call.  But after reading his comment on Facebook, I was curious to see who Jared was and so clicked his name.  The only thing listed was what I quoted.  So technically, I wasn’t cherry-picking; I was taking the whole bowl.  And I didn’t intend “to attack his education as [my] refutation.”  Basically — and this was my point — I had no refutation.  How do you argue with people who simply dismiss anything that their thought leaders — Rush Limbaugh, say, or James Inhofe — have not approved?

(James Inhofe — selected by the Republicans to chair the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee — who recently brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to mock the scientific consensus on climate change.)

It’s no small question.  If America — or humanity generally — can’t act rationally in its own long-term interest, what do we have to look forward to?

I often think back to 1974, after the second OPEC oil shock, and the oppoortunity I had to interview then Treasury Secretary Bill Simon.   Should we not begin adding a dime a gallon to the gasoline tax each year — using all those billions to lower the income tax — thus discouraging the thing we wanted to discourage (oil imports) and encouraging the things we wanted to encourage: work, saving, and fuel efficiency?

Gas would have risen to the same $5 it hit recently, but the cost of driving a mile would have stayed modest as fuel efficiency soared; and all those trillions of dollars over the years would have stayed in American coffers rather than flowing to our friends abroad.

The Secretary — who was considered a bit of a terror (and who certainly scared me) — gave a long glower, as if trying to figure out how to deal with such a moronic question — and said, “Yes, of course we should!  Everybody knows that.  But we could never do it politically.”

Just one enormous example of a simple, obvious policy change that would have made us far more prosperous today, and very likely safer, with a much stronger balance sheet.

Forty years from now, will we be saying the same of our failure to address climate change?  Or our failure to shift modestly from private consumption (bigger homes, bigger yachts) to public consumption (infrastructure revitalization)?

MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

One reason we often fail to make rational policy decisions is that talented people are well paid to mislead the public.

To wit, from eSkeptic:

. . .  A new documentary film opens this weekend titled Merchants of Doubt, about the nature of pseudo-skepticism and climate denial and the link to the tobacco industry, featuring Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer and magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss, among others. In addition to the many climate deniers and their industrial lobbyists featured and interviewed in the film, Jamy Ian Swiss plays a key role in demonstrating, through card magic, how easy it is to be deceived and how, through his principle “once revealed, never concealed,” the exposure of the tricks employed by industrial lobbyists to deny science means that they cannot use them again (just like knowing the secret behind a magic trick makes it hard to be fooled again). Forewarned is forearmed. Michael Shermer is featured as a one-time climate skeptic, who flipped his position (famously in the pages of Scientific American) after reading the primary scientific literature on the subject. . . .

We need to find ways to reach our friends like Jared.  I’d be the first to admit that insulting his educational credentials is no way to do it.  What is?

All suggestions welcome.