tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87821273900299178402023-11-16T10:50:50.442-05:00Like A WarehouseUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-23401486643470888272010-04-05T12:14:00.016-04:002010-04-06T10:52:00.995-04:00Fiscal Responsibility and Incremental Change<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"The legitimate debate is whether we borrow and steal from our kids or we get out of town and send the bill to our kids for something that we're going to consume today." </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is what Senator Coburn (R-OK) said to justify </span></span><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/05/unemployment.benefits/index.html?hpt=P1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">singlehandedly cutting off unemployment benefits to thousands of Americans</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> until the Senate made a greater commitment to Sen. Coburn's conception of fiscal responsibility. There is something profoundly ironic about this statement.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(I'm a little hesitant to use Senator Coburn as a proxy for the entire Republican Party, but the sentiment he expressed here is a talking point that was widely used during the "debate" on healthcare, and continues to be a big part of the GOP's anti-government rhetoric, so I don't think it's terribly problematic to do so in this context.)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As much as it's possible to ascribe an ideology to today's GOP, it seems to be focused on sending legislators to Washington to make sure that the government does nothing. The idea here seems to be that doing nothing and never spending money is fiscally responsible. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But doing nothing is not free, and not spending money when it needs to be spent is the opposite of fiscal responsibility. Ultimately, every choice has a cost, and somebody always has to pay for it. Sen. Coburn's statement is ironic because he accuses the Democrats of doing exactly what seems to constitute the GOP's entire modus operandi these days: making the cheap, easy choice in the short term, while punting the expensive, difficult choice down the road for future generations to deal with.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This was the Bush administration in Afghanistan. For seven years, American troops were there without a clear mission, in insufficient numbers to accomplish much of anything, waging a war that was not paid for. By contrast, President Obama has made the difficult decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops and adopt an aggressive strategy that will undoubtedly carry a high cost both in American lives and money.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why? Because allowing medieval-minded thugs to shelter our worst enemies deep in Central Asia is an unacceptable alternative. The cost of doing nothing is too high.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The same is true of climate change. In the face of scientific uncertainty, but where the potential consequences of being wrong are huge, the responsible choice would seem to be erring on the side of safety (see </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pascal's Wager</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">). Yet again, the GOP opted for the cheap and easy choice, avoiding the policies that would impose short-term costs and postponing an overhaul of our infrastructure that would lead to long-term benefit. Once again, President Obama has an ambitious and expensive vision of where the country needs to go. It will cost money - a lot of money, in fact - but it is ultimately the better choice.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why? Best case scenario: because while we wait, China is surging ahead of us, and we are losing valuable competitive ground to a rival power. Worst case scenario: because Al Gore is right and at some point in the future either we, or our children, or our descendants, will have to deal with the mass of interrelated crises that will stem from climate change. Again, the cost of doing nothing is too high.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There is always a cost, even when you do do nothing. These are just two examples of a general attitude that favors punting the costs down the road, rather than making prudent investments in the future. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Politico</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> recently reported on the fairly hostile reception that Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH) received from Carmen Guimond when he returned home to meet with constituents. The story describes how Ms. Guimond, an elderly woman at a seniors' home, refused to shake the hand of Rep. Hodes, because he voted for the healthcare bill. When Rep. Hodes tried to explain to her the specific benefits that the bill would deliver by 2020, she replied, </span></span><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35375.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"We'll all be dead by then."</span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(I mention Ms. Guimond by name mostly for ease of reference, not to unduly pick on her. Her views on the healthcare bill are no doubt shared by many, and I hope that it's clear that I am taking issue with the view she's espoused, not singling an elderly woman out for ridicule. But it's rare that a political truth is stated as succinctly and as aptly as this one.)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On one hand, it is hard to fault Ms. Guimond for being unenthusiastic about a bill that doesn't promise immediate benefits to her. Yet on the other hand, I have no trouble faulting her for being hostile towards it. "We'll all be dead by then" is not a philosophy that leads to good government. It is, in fact, a selfish and disastrously short-sighted attitude. Where would Ms. Guimond, or any of us, be today, if American statesmen had spent the last two hundred and forty years refusing to consider a timeline that extended any further than the span of their own lives?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fiscal responsibility and incremental change are two major planks in the Republican platform. I firmly believe that there is value in these principles. I agree that money ought to be spent responsibly or not at all. Personally, I am fairly open to non-incremental change, but the concept that we ought not be too hasty and should think hard about the consequences when adopting new policies is certainly valid and ought to inform the decisions of our legislators. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yet today's Republican Party has arrived at extremely narrow definitions of these terms. Fiscal responsibility seems to have come to mean "basically never, ever spending money on anything." And incremental change seems to mean "postponing tough choices until we are dead and leaving these problems to another generation." Sen. Coburn exemplifies the former, while Ms. Guimond exemplifies the latter. Incremental change is in the driver's seat, and fiscal responsibility is the argument advanced to kneecap policies that might threaten the status quo.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Construing these terms in this fashion renders them little more than arguments advanced after the fact to justify unflinching support of the status quo and hostility to change, rather than actual first principles upon which to build a philosophy of government. In its present state, then, the GOP has surprisingly little to bring to the table in terms of substantively informing the dialogue over what course our country ought to take. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All this being said, I'm going to end this post on an optimistic note. The current political situation cannot remain in its present state for long. As I mentioned in a </span><a href="http://likeawarehouse.blogspot.com/2010/03/that-hopey-changey-stuff.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">previous post</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, American history has a momentum that tends to knock things down if they try to stand still for too long. We didn't get to where we are today by refusing to change when the circumstances required us to. A confluence of forces brought the Republican Party to its present condition, and those forces will ultimately run their course. Things might get worse before they get better, but I am confident that sooner or later the GOP will reconstitute itself as a party that actively seeks to shape this country's future, rather than clinging stubbornly to its past. When that day comes, we will all be better off.</span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-22582613141402604262010-03-29T19:47:00.003-04:002010-03-30T09:03:05.608-04:00That Hopey-Changey Stuff<meta charset="utf-8"><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I move onward, the only direction.</span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Can't be scared to fail, searchin' perfection.</span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">- </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Shawn Carter</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Today, mainstream American politics no longer seems framed as a struggle between two competing visions of change. Rather, due at least in part to the battle lines that were drawn in the healthcare debate, it has become a struggle between the proponents of change and the defenders of the status quo. The dialogue, such as it is, has not been about what form change should take, but whether things ought to change at all. John McCain announced that the Democrats should not expect cooperation on anything after healthcare. Seriously - no cooperation, at all, on </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">anything</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">? That is a bold statement, and it reflects a huge amount of apparently unconditional attachment to the status quo.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But America has never been about accepting the status quo. Generation after generation, this country has been built by ambitious immigrants and visionaries, enabled by a social and political system that eschewed rigid class and heredity privilege in favor of socioeconomic mobility and meritocracy. The dead hand of the past can only hold us back as much as we allow it to. By and large, our historical narrative is one of choosing positive change over the status quo, of believing that we, collectively, have the power, the wisdom, and the resources to build a better future, rather than accept a flawed present. It is an optimistic vision of the future, and I would argue that it has driven much of American history.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Westward expansion, the commitments we've made to maintaining global security in the past century, the space race, the struggles for civil rights at home - the United States of America has accomplished some truly great things. And we've done so by moving forward, even when doing so presented immense challenges, confident that collectively we've had the power to build the better world that we envision. In the past, we haven't shirked our responsibility to each other, to ourselves, and to future generations of Americans when faced with these challenges. It's imperative that we not to do so now.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sarah Palin has been rallying her supporters to </span></span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/27/reid.tea.party/index.html?iref=allsearch"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"take back our country."</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> To her, I would say that this is not, nor has this ever been "your" country, at least not in the sense that the statement implies. America has never chosen fear over hope, intolerance over acceptance, complacency over action, nor anger over compassion. America has always harnessed its collective energies to move forward, not back.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If you want to pretend you're living in the early 19th century, that is of course your right as an American. But if you think you're going to take the entire country there with you, I suspect you're in for an unpleasant surprise. History shows that Americans are remarkably attached to "</span></span><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123462728"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">that hopey-changey stuff</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">" for which you've shown such contempt - except we call it "optimism." And, to answer your question, history shows that it tends to work out pretty well for us.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-18081327242263494952010-03-21T20:45:00.003-04:002010-03-21T21:42:04.497-04:00Whose Waterloo?<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Recently, Republicans have spent a lot of time talking about how passing healthcare reform would kill the Democrats in November. But would it?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">I feel more comfortable saying that passing healthcare reform would be potentially terrible news for the Republicans. Whatever he was saying last fall, Obama and his advisors probably knew that the Republicans were going to fight this thing tooth and nail. And so they did, constantly falling back to new arguments as they lost ground. First they went the morality route (death panels, killing grandma, etc.). When that failed, they went the fiscal responsibility route. When the CBO's estimates came out and shot that one down, they fell back to arguing about procedure instead of substance - as though political horsetrading, reconciliation, deem and pass, etc., were odious things that they'd never heard of and would certainly never dream of doing. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">We're still hearing echoes of all these arguments today, but now Boehner and the rest are basically just trying to intimidate Democrats out of voting for it by saying they'll lose in the midterms. Some Dems have stepped up - courageously, I would say - and addressed that explicitly, saying they're willing to take that risk. Good for them. Sometimes doing the right thing and doing the safe thing are miles apart.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">But I'm not sure that the Democrats are going to lose big in November, the way the Republicans are predicting. People have short memories. If healthcare reform passes, the world will not end immediately. Government stormtroopers will not break into homes to drag senior citizens off to face death panels while forcing their family members at gunpoint to change doctors. Congress will move on to address other issues, like the economy and financial reform, and the populist rage that the Republicans have been fueling will subside (for the record, it's not even clear that healthcare reform is unpopular among the majority of Americans - most of the polling numbers suggest that people aren't so much unhappy about the bill as they are unhappy that the Democrats have taken so long getting it through, and success will change that).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">So, while the Democrats and voters move on, the Congressional Republicans will have a "now what?" moment. As some of them have threatened, they can continue to act like petulant children and oppose literally everything the Democrats put forward. But I doubt that anything else on the legislative agenda will be as contentious as healthcare. Even the teabaggers, crazy as they may be, are furious at Wall Street, and I suspect that the GOP can ill-afford to alienate them by bringing government to a halt again to protect multi-million dollar bonuses for the people who wrecked the economy. And Boehner and McConnell will have a very hard time going on national television and explaining why job creation for unemployed Americans is a bad thing. If the obstructionism continues, it's going to be the Republicans who face an uncertain future in November, not the Democrats. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Boehner has warned that the Democrats will suffer in the midterm elections for this. And maybe they will, at least this year. But after the healthcare scare is over, whether that's this November or somewhat further down the road, the Republicans are going to find that whatever gains they made by scaremongering were only temporary. Ultimately, I suspect the congressmen who egged on an angry mob that waved Confederate flags and spat on and hurled racial and homophobic epithets at elected officials will end up looking worse than the ones who risked their political future to do what they felt was right. (I'm aware that these were isolated instances, and not everybody in the mob did it, but that's the thing about forming an angry mob - if you're part of it, you tend to be held accountable for its actions, whether you personally did it or not.)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Alternately, congressional Republicans could try a change of tack and only open their mouths when they have something constructive to add to the debate. But either way, they will have lost whatever initiative they ever had, and it may be a long time before they're in a comparable position to threaten the Democrats' agenda. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said that healthcare was going to be Obama's Waterloo. And maybe he was right, although not in the sense that he meant. Is healthcare reform Waterloo? Could be. But right now, the Republican Party is looking a lot like Napoleon (small, with an inferiority complex). And the Democrats are looking a lot like the Duke of Wellington.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">(And he's the guy who won.)</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-11286037951528016912010-02-20T14:06:00.003-05:002010-02-20T14:07:22.699-05:00Information Value and Free Speech<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Note: These are some ideas that I've been kicking around lately. It's certainly possible that other people have devoted more substantive thought to this than I have and articulated it better. I don't claim these as original ideas - I've directed no research towards this question, so I have no idea who may have already said what about any of this. On the other hand, it's also possible that there's not much merit in this, and that nobody has spent time thinking about it. Anyways, this post falls into the category of "random thoughts."</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Let's start with the premise that information is valuable. This proposition is likely as close to being universally accepted as anything can be. Whether you're gathering military intelligence or stock tips, having knowledge is an advantage.<br /><br />The next premise is that information dissemination used to be a very expensive venture. Imagine the costs associated with transmitting a large volume of information over a great distance one thousand years ago. Let's say a phonebook, from Baghdad to Reykjavik, in the year 1000. (Ignore the anachronism for the sake of illustration.) You're in Baghdad, and you need to get all the information contained in that phonebook, consisting of thousands of names and numbers, to someone in Reykjavik. You don't have a printing press, so you're going to have to pay somebody to copy out all of those thousands of names and numbers by hand. Then you're going to have to arrange for the copy to be conveyed halfway across the world. This will entail horses, ships, and other not-so-fast modes of transportation. This is also happening in an era where bears, bandits, and storms carry a real risk of your courier getting killed and this information being lost en route. So, if you want to really make sure that your phonebook gets to Reykjavik, you would be well-advised to at least duplicate your efforts: multiple hand-made copies, multiple couriers, multiple ships/horses. Result: it's very expensive to get that phonebook to Reykjavik. Given the expense of all this, you're going to be very reluctant to transmit information unless it's actually valuable in some sense.<br /><br />But technological progress has made the transmission of information cheaper. Let's say we're trying to get that phone book from Baghdad to Reykjavik 500 years ago instead of 1000. It's still going to be fairly expensive, but far less so than it was 500 years earlier. By 1500 you've got a printing press, so you're not going to have to spend so much time and money getting the book transcribed by hand. You've got better navigation technologies, so ships are less likely to sink on the way there, and you're less likely to feel the need to duplicate your efforts. It's going to be cheaper and easier still in 1600, in 1700, and so on.<br /><br />Today, getting that information from Baghdad to Reykjavik now happens literally instantaneously, and at no measurable cost to the transmitter. Forget horses, ships, printed or handwritten copies and the rest - this is now a matter of clicking a mouse. Today, information transmission is cheap, fast, secure, and generally easy.<br /><br />This is where I feel like I'm on shakier ground. Let's say the cost of transmitting a piece of information to one million people is X. Let's say the aggregate value of transmitting that information is Y. A rational person will only transmit that information if Y>X.<br /><br />I posit that right now, in 2010, X is (for many people) close to zero, because communications technology has reached a point where it is basically free to communicate instantaneously with a wide number of people. So if X is zero, information with any positive Y value at all will be worth transmitting. Put differently, in this day and age there is no piece of information that is too worthless, trivial, or frivolous to communicate across great distances to many people. (For the record, I am a big fan of free speech and reducing barriers for communications. The advantages are obvious and manifold. Right now, though, I'm taking a look at the other side of the coin.)</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">One problem with this analysis is that characterizing information as valuable or frivolous begs two overlapping questions: First, valuable to whom? Second, how to measure value? I'm not really sure how to answer these. On one hand, I intuitively feel like society is made better off by the publication of information relevant to healthcare reform than by photographs of Paris Hilton in a compromising position. Yet the paparazzo who snaps the picture of Paris Hilton will almost certainly be paid more for his work than a Washington correspondent who gets a scoop on healthcare reform.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Additionally, I firmly believe that we are collectively worse off when people on any side of the political spectrum deliberately muddy the waters with disinformation. But while disinformation is not valuable to society, it may have value to the disseminator: it may give a politician a lead in the polls, or a talk radio host a ratings boost, or it may forestall regulation and thus boost a corporation's profits. So there's a real problem related to even the most approximate form of value calculation here. Maybe this is such a case-by-case, context-specific inquiry that it's impossible to impose a standard.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">But leaving that aside for the moment: what if the cost involved in disseminating information has, in the past, played some sort of gatekeeper function, by keeping "worthless" information out, and ensuring that anything that was widely disseminated had some value? If that's true, and the cost of dissemination has dropped to almost zero, then there's no longer any kind of gatekeeper. Anybody can put anything out there, and we're constantly bombarded with nonsense - including, perhaps, this blog post.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">So here's my final, non-rhetorical question: do the scope of our free speech laws still make sense? If we no longer have a cost-based gatekeeper, should the law play that role, by stepping in to redraw the line in a spot that makes more sense for the world we live in today?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The most cited example of the limits of free speech is that nobody has the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I would argue that in this day and age, many of the communications that influence the course of national politics would fall into this same category. For example, when someone who knows better goes on national television or talk radio and announces that the President is an Indonesian-born Muslim who intends to use health care reform to create death panels, that is going to cause panic and confusion - much like shouting "Fire!" in a theater. Today the whole country, maybe even the whole world, is the theater. And the internet, along with a perpetually hungry 24-hour news cycle, has given more Americans than ever before the capacity to shout whatever they want. Perhaps the law ought to be more concerned with the consequences. To paraphrase the junior senator from Minnesota: we're entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts.</span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-39664095467709070872010-01-29T07:58:00.000-05:002010-01-29T12:26:02.900-05:00"The responsibility to govern is now yours as well."<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So far it seems that Republicans were unswayed by this week's State of the Union address. This is unsurprising. Minority Whip Eric Cantor went so far as to say that he didn't appreciate <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32192.html">Obama's lecturing tone</a>.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Fair enough. Likewise, while he didn't say it in so many words, President Obama doesn't appreciate Congressional Republicans failing to act like adults who were elected to govern. Hence the lecture. Act like children, and like children ye shall be treated.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Anyways, the tone of Obama's speech suggested that he was most concerned with keeping Democrats working hard for the solutions America desperately needs and trying to inoculate them against catching a case of midterm election fright and "run[ning] for the hills." Any Republican cooperation, he seemed to imply, would be welcome but unexpected.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Here's a bit that I really liked: "If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town -- a supermajority -- then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well."</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the first part of the statement, Obama stresses that the fact that the Senate currently needs 60 votes to pass a bill has nothing to do with the Constitution. The only significance to the number 60 is that which is given to it by the Republican vow to filibuster against pretty much anything Democrats propose. As we've seen, requiring 60 votes to get something done apparently results in worse, not better, legislation, as it forces Harry Reid to pander to Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. All that political horse-trading and back room dealing that the Republicans are complaining about? All a direct consequence of their filibuster threat. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The second part of the statement, "responsibility to govern," hints at that. Again, I don't see this to mean that Obama really expects Republican collaboration on anything (with the exception of climate change; moderate kudos once again to </span><a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/27/lindsey-graham-bipartisan-climate-energy-security-clean-air-and-clean-energy-jobs-bill-not-dead/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lindsey Graham</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for actually doing his job). Rather, I suspect that Obama is signaling that if the Republicans choose to do nothing except try to hold up his agenda, they will be responsible nonetheless for whatever has to happen for the legislative branch to function, whether that's the afore-mentioned horse-trading and back room deal-cutting, or using the controversial </span><a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/david_axelrod_on_politics_poli.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">reconciliation</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> maneuver to get around the threat of a filibuster.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So, summing up and translating what I hope Obama is saying with that statement: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We have a majority in the Senate, which is all that the Constitution says we need to pass laws. If you refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of that majority, refuse to contribute meaningfully to policy-making, and try to use the rules of the Senate to keep us from governing, we will govern on our own. If that means cutting deals and using the rules of the Senate to our own advantage, the ultimate responsibility for that rests with you, and we will make sure that the voters know it in November. And don't even think about trying to tell them otherwise. </span></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></i></span></span></div><meta charset="utf-8"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So, if Republicans think they can keep up with the obstructionism and win big in November, I think they'll be badly disappointed. It's been a rough year for Obama agenda-wise, but we're talking about a smart and ambitious leader who showed during the campaign that he learns from his errors quickly. Can you name a single mistake he's made twice? Shifting his focus to job creation is a smart move that forces Republicans to explain to voters why they're holding things up, whereas healthcare put the burden on the Dems to explain what they were even trying to accomplish. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">
<br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Obama is still facing a tough fight in getting his agenda through Congress, but it looks to me like he knows what he's doing. Let's not forget that as much as he's an Ivy League intellectual, an idealist, and a gifted orator, the President is also a graduate of the Chicago School of Bareknuckled Politics. He knows how to win a fight. </span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-27922148789665821322010-01-27T22:32:00.000-05:002010-01-28T07:59:14.858-05:00Barack Obama, the State of the Union, and the Winter of our Discontent<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For the sake of full disclosure, let me say that I like Obama. In fact, I like Obama a lot. I voted for him, I gave money to his campaign, and I worked for his campaign as a legal observer in New Hampshire on Election Day. That complex and nuanced worldview of his makes me suspect he's one of the smartest presidents we've ever had. This isn't to say that I support all of his policies wholeheartedly and unquestioningly - Afghanistan is one I've been questioning lately - but given the thought processes he brings to bear on the issues, I tend to pretty much agree with his agenda.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tonight's State of the Union address reminded me of all of this. Our president sees the big picture, how all the pieces fit together, and what we need to do to get those pieces on the table. There are definitely obstacles to such an ambitious agenda, even a really terrific speech doesn't change that. It's going to be tough - but it's doable.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Last week, taking a long view of things, it was hard to see the U.S. as anything but a superpower on the decline. But after tonight's speech, I can see another way to fit where we are now into the bigger picture. Here's what I hope the historians have to say in a couple of generations:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">After the fall of the Soviet Union, America found itself in a previously unheard of position: a sole superpower, a hyperpower, even, facing a world without a single nemesis that could rival the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War seemed to vindicate the supremacy of capitalism and of American military might. America's leadership went on a deregulation binge, and in the absence of a powerful rival the old Cold Warriors who still formed the bulk of the country's military policy establishment started looking for ways to project American military power even further across the globe.</span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, capitalism woke up with a hell of a hangover. The military establishment came dangerously close to irreparably botching the war they'd chosen (Iraq), and found themselves even closer to disaster in the war they hadn't planned on (Afghanistan). </span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">America adjusted. Saying farewell to an attitude that promised opportunities without consequences, they elected a president who saw problems with solutions. Obama reigned in the banks and took his military policy cues from professional soldiers, like Petraeus and McChrystal, instead of civilian ideologues like Rumsfeld and Armitage. Looking at what needed to be done, he harnessed the energies of a dynamic democracy of 300 million people behind an ambitious agenda that launched America into the twenty-first century, leaving the twentieth century behind. And as the policies worked, the fearmongering of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Michele Bachmann largely ceased to resonate with voters who were once again optimistic about their country's future.</span></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I don't expect this all to happen just because Obama made a good speech. But the speech was a reminder that it can happen, and that for all its troubles, America remains a place with most of the best advantages that any country can have. After a speech like that, it's hard not to feel at least cautiously optimistic about the future.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-11427131182292340552010-01-22T13:57:00.000-05:002010-01-23T19:31:22.605-05:00Thoughts on the Supreme Court<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I've grown weary of the Supreme Court. Maybe part of this is just the cumulative fatigue of the two and a half years I've spent reading their opinions. Or maybe I'm just jealous that the nature of legal writing requires me to eschew adjectives and use only the shortest words I can find, no matter how unappealing they may be, while Justice Kennedy gets to write like a paid-by-the-word 19th-century novelist. And </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Citizens United</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> certainly doesn't make me any fonder of the Roberts Court.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In any event, I question whether the Supreme Court is what it ought to be. Sometimes I think about the Court as a kind of Council of Elders, appointed for life to interpret the sacred writings of our forefathers and force the modern world to reconcile itself to their vision. Uniquely qualified to tell us what Madison and the rest would have thought about issues that they could not have possibly contemplated arising in their tiny agrarian republic, the Council of Elders issues unreviewable decisions based on judicial philosophies that often have little to do with the world as it is. The good news here is that there's at least a level of independence to the court under this view, since some of the underlying judicial philosophies defy easy liberal/conservative categorization. The bad news lies in the disconnect between the Court and the country that feels the effects of its decisions.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Other times I think about the Court as a superlegislature. With the power to ratify the laws it approves of and veto the rest, it is as nakedly partisan as any other branch of government. Presidents choose their nominees from the pool of people best positioned to hold the party line for future decades. The good news here is that the rules of the game, while unofficial, are known to all, so no one party is really rigging the system at the expense of the other. The bad news is that a disingenuous system like this somewhat undermines the dignity of the institution.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yet the appointment of Justice Sotomayor is a welcome reminder that the way individual judges approach their duties can still yield positive results, even in a flawed system. Her now-infamous "wise Latina" comment bothered me at first, but having spent a lot of time thinking about the type of thinking that it reflects, I now think, or at least hope, that it signals the kind of jurisprudence that I'd like to see more of. I don't think that we gain much by expecting our judges to not be human. Experience breeds understanding, and need not be mutually exclusive with objectivity. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Increasingly I wonder whether our political institutions still have the capacity to accomplish their prescribed tasks, or whether the country has changed so much since the framing of the Constitution that our tripartite system in its current form is still up to the challenge. Judicial activism is a term with pejorative connotations, but I have a hard time opposing a philosophy that actually strengthens the connections between our highest court and the world we live in.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-15879136589643849802010-01-22T08:25:00.000-05:002010-01-22T12:01:41.002-05:00Striking at the Heart of Democracy? Well, Maybe...<span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Verne hitched himself a few inches across the desk, and stuck a large finger at Bunny's face. "Kiddo," he said, "get this straight: I can buy any officials, just the same as I can buy any politicians, or anybody else that a bunch of boobs can elect to office. And I know what you're thinking - here's an old cow-puncher, without any fine ideals, and he's got a barrel o' money and thinks he can do anything he pleases with it. But that ain't the point, my boy - it's because I had the brains to make the money, and I got the brains to use it. Money ain't power till it's used, and the reason I can buy power is because men know I can use it - or else, by Jees, they wouldn't sell it to me. You got that?"</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />- </span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oil!</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, by Upton Sinclair<br /><br />By sheer coincidence, I happened to read this passage yesterday, just a few hours after the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission hit the news. </span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oil!</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is the basis for P.T. Anderson's </span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There Will Be Blood</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, but other than a few characters and the physical setting, there aren't many similarities between the book and the film. The main point of conflict in Sinclair's novel is between capitalism and labor. Standing in for capitalism is the massive Southern California oil industry, portrayed as an entity wealthy and powerful enough to essentially buy the American government and use it to advance industry interests abroad and at home, while running roughshod over anything standing in the way. The above excerpt is a diatribe delivered by an oil boss who has just engineered the election of Warren G. Harding, gloating over his ability to covertly keep the labor unions under control. It's a fairly bleak picture of the United States as capitalist dystopia.<br /><br />The fact that Sinclair engaged in a fair bit of hyperbole and oversimplification doesn't greatly undermine his point, and I think that it remains a relevant one. Right now, the Obama administration is struggling to pass what ought to be common sense reforms in the wake of the financial crisis, and currently doesn't have anything much stronger than moral suasion to get the financial world to change its ways. In the face of intense populist anger and high unemployment, the big firms still feel secure enough to give out bonuses that strike many as obscene. All of this begs the question, who exactly is setting the agenda? I'm not sure I'd go as far as Sinclair did in venturing an answer, but in the midst of economic devastation and political confusion, Wall Street is still going strong, and Wall Street looks pretty confident that they're going to get off with little more than a congressional slap on the wrist for transgressions that call for significantly more than that. </span></span><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cui bono</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">?<br /><br />Bottom line: with a capitalist system as robust as ours, the amount of money that can be amassed behind a particular agenda is staggering, and the court's ruling has only made it easier for monied interests to do what they've already been quite successful at doing. Frankly, I'm not sure that this is ultimately likely to significantly alter the status quo. Our elected officials in both parties have been getting hefty support from big business for decades, and in return they've gone to bat for those interests in Washington. Need examples? Look no further than Chuck Schumer and Wall Street, Joe Lieberman and insurance, Lisa Murkowski and oil, and Robert Byrd and coal (although to his credit, Byrd has recently </span></span><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30770.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">changed his tune</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> somewhat.) While </span><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html?hp"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The New York Times</span></a></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> characterized the ruling as "strik[ing] at the heart of democracy," I question whether this decision truly reflects a change in substance, or merely a change in form. This is not to suggest that the court's ruling is really consistent with the ideals of democracy, but it doesn't appear to be wildly inconsistent with the way things have been getting done in the United States for some time.<br /><br />As for the Supreme Court's reasoning, I'm not sure it's even worthwhile for me to have an opinion on it. If you want to know how I feel about the Supreme Court in general, check back in a couple of days.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-7282946713966012042010-01-20T19:27:00.001-05:002010-01-20T19:27:20.773-05:00We Might Not Win This OneLately I've had this vague sense that future generations of historians will look back at this era and say that the United States had the misfortune to face a number of threats to its existence at the very moment that it was least equipped to deal with any of them. One party is trying to govern, the other is opposing nearly everything that party does, and independents apparently don't have enough faith in either one to give them more than a year or two to produce results. <br /><br />In the electorate, the body that's been charged with the not insignificant task of choosing our leaders, it is almost impossible to make out anything meaningful in the cacophony of what passes for debate today. The media has transformed politics into a spectator sport, where you score points by kneecapping your opponent, not by governing. Yes, politics has always been, and always will be, a necessary feature of the process of governance. It's inescapable. But it has become an absolute monster, devouring time, energy, and money, and leaving our elected officials with time for little else. <br /><br />Most of us alive today can't remember a time when the United States wasn't going strong. Even in our rough spots, we were better off than pretty much any other country on earth. Economic slumps came periodically, but the economy always bounced back, stronger than ever. Even our biggest foreign policy setback, the Vietnam War, bloodied our nose, but it didn't knock us down. To some extent, America is a victim of its own success. Our track record has given us a collective sense of invincibility. Indeed, there is a shocking degree of complacency among Americans today, a sense that it's all right to ignore the facts and vote with a gut full of misguided rage at the changes we're all living through, because we'll all muddle through in the end, because we're America.<br /><br />But that's not how it works. We don't get to win just because we're America, and the American Century didn't happen by accident. History isn't some scripted drama, where the United States sails through various crises, always destined to emerge victorious and lead the world, no matter what else happens. In every major crisis we faced and emerged from, the outcome was in doubt, and without strong leaders, we might not have come out on top. We got to where we were at the end of the 20th century through sound policies and solid leadership, not by taking our cues from talk radio and Fox News. <br /><br />But Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are the symptoms, not the problems. Maybe it's a failure of education, or maybe the amount of information that we're saturated with on a daily basis has left us largely incapable of abstract thought. Or maybe the pace at which the world is changing scares people so much that they reject the uncertainty of meaningful inquiry and cling to political dogma and the comfort that it offers. Whatever it is, it is frightening and widespread.<br /><br />Let's not kid ourselves. We're looking at a devastated economy, a strong and resilient Taliban, and an Al Qaeda that is still very much a threat. In short, we are facing a national crisis, and the United States has become borderline ungovernable. Yes, we're America, and yes, we tend to come out on top. But we might not win this one.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-38315791166883371642009-12-18T11:58:00.000-05:002009-12-18T14:19:29.149-05:00Reflections on the Congressional Train Wreck<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I've been back in the US for a while now, and between work and law school I haven't had much of a chance to travel. So, I'm going to try my hand at making this a non-travel blog for a while. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">These days, I find that reading the news is like watching a train wreck. I don't want to do it, because it's only going to leave me feeling unsettled and intensely aware of both my own mortality and the immensity of human folly for the rest of the day, but it's impossible to ignore. There's also the whole "as a voter in a democratic republic, I ought to be informed" argument. But there aren't any elections anytime soon, so maybe I could make a New Year's resolution not to read the news for a couple of weeks. As resolutions go, this one would be pretty self-indulgent, aimed more at obtaining a bit of peace of mind and not so much at improving myself as a person. It's hard to argue that being informed is a vice. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">At any event, the train wreck that's on my mind today is Congress. Maybe if I write about it I can get it off my mind long enough to get some work done. That might be better than just not reading the news.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Right now, Congressional Republicans are pursuing a Taliban-esqe strategy. I certainly don't mean the comparison in any moral sense. While I'm not on board with the "conservative platform" I would never compare it to the morally abhorrent agenda that those lunatics in Afghanistan and Pakistan call an ideology. That type of hyperbole simply isn't constructive. Rather, I mean to say that the Taliban and Congressional Republicans are playing the same game. For each group, "winning" is a matter of denying victory to the other side. They don't have to actually bring anything constructive to the table, they don't have to offer any solutions to a problem. All they have to do is keep the people who actually are trying to accomplish something from doing so. The Taliban simply has to keep the US and NATO from accomplishing their military objectives, and the Republicans simply have to filibuster long enough to prevent the Democrats from actually governing.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Leaving aside the (admittedly debatable) merits of the healthcare bill for the moment, there is something incredibly screwed up about this. I've been trying to think it through. Let's ignore the massive deficits of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations for the moment and accept, arguendo, the assertion that the Republican party is not simply trying to score a political victory against President Obama, and is in fact about fiscal responsibility and small government. Fair enough. I accept that. In fact, I really like the idea of small government. In an ideal world, Ron Paul would be my favorite politician. I would love it if, with the exception of minimal taxes that went to pay for basic national defense and infrastructure, the federal government left me entirely to my own devices and didn't ask me to pay for a whole raft of things that I didn't think we should have. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">But we don't live in an ideal world. This sounds like a statement of the obvious, and it should be, but it also seems to be a point that's been lost on a great many American politicians. After the New Deal, there's just no getting around the fact that we have a huge, expensive federal government that is such a constant presence in all of our lives that we're not always aware that it's there. Whether you believe that it ought to be there or not is just as irrelevant as whether or not you believe in gravity. It's there, and it's not going away. Any kind of political solution that doesn't at least accept this fact as a given is just as impractical and dangerous as jumping off a roof and not accepting the fact that you're going to fall.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Thus, you would think that any political platform advocating small government and offering it as a viable solution would be limited to fringe candidates from third parties that will never win any significant election. But small government is the rallying cry of one of the two major American political parties, and the implications are troubling. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">How do you manage a system using an ideology that is inherently opposed to the very system you are trying to run? It brings to mind a quote from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Onion</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> in reference to </span></span><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38243"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Bush's nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> back in 2005: "Appointing Bolton to the UN is like appointing a fish to ride a bicycle that he hates and wishes to destroy." That puts it pretty succinctly. Reagan's famous quote that "government is the problem" is a self-fulfilling prophesy that creates a vicious cycle when adopted by people elected to govern. If you come into office believing that government is incapable of solving problems, then of course you're not going to try to appoint competent problem solvers to government positions (see Michael Brown, appointed as head of FEMA to George W. Bush). Then, when a crisis arises, and the government fails to address it adequately (see Hurricane Katrina), you can say "See? I told you so," and rest comfortably on your earlier assertion that government is incapable of solving problems. QED. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">So where does this leave us? With a legislative process in which only one party seems interested in actually governing. Meanwhile, any Republican in the Senate who actually shows an interest in governing (i.e., actually doing their job) risks being branded a traitor to the cause (see </span></span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP7nCyqMTsE"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Lindsey Graham on climate change</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">). This is not good for democracy. Right now we have a single-party state with all of the disadvantages thereof (lack of vigorous and meaningful policy debate) but none of the advantages (actually getting something done). </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">So, this is what I want to see happen to the Republican Party: First, I want to see the party tear itself to shreds in internecine fighting. I want to see midterm elections in which the tea party extremists on the far right turn out in record numbers in the primaries to nominate whackos who will prove unelectable to national office rather than incumbents. Democrats who might have been crushed by electable Republican incumbent can then eke out wins over the teabaggers, go to Congress, and actually give the Democrats enough votes that they can govern America without having to pander to [EXPLETIVE DELETED] like Joe Lieberman. Maybe pass a few pieces of legislation on crucial issues before it's too late. Then, I want the Republican party to take a good, hard look at itself, get its shit together, and actually stand for something other than obstructionism again. Until they do that, the country is not going to be in great shape. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">OK, writing that actually helped. Now I'm going to try and finish some papers so I don't have to take any work home for the holidays. </span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-26038483168296904462009-03-25T03:37:00.001-04:002009-03-25T03:43:56.043-04:00Hong Kong and Beijing<span style="font-family: verdana;font-size:78%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLaN1viaF7W4O3p4F77JjyEqyTnqRUXf0s2ItKCK1pP9jCxepNIrxIGUZTJphv4nTv8hCKwJ7yQ4rzVHjVBMELIo5-UKwj4pH3-1FcIEaKUoZq74ycWQO5hy-iXQ0IVj9LlzQzk02fvI/s1600-h/hk+flag"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLaN1viaF7W4O3p4F77JjyEqyTnqRUXf0s2ItKCK1pP9jCxepNIrxIGUZTJphv4nTv8hCKwJ7yQ4rzVHjVBMELIo5-UKwj4pH3-1FcIEaKUoZq74ycWQO5hy-iXQ0IVj9LlzQzk02fvI/s200/hk+flag" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317027798197964306" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9YVExXuNQgyI9D0nRgaFLbFFu_ZH80-KLRe8p4FB19Skb4ETzovNpTxKozJOiFsYmlbTO365A5cE6S7d5eWLHqyuzusEDa7fvd65ru1ASQpi40NysJIvzbQ64a_FbdoHLq4YKUK66t-M/s1600-h/prc+flag"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9YVExXuNQgyI9D0nRgaFLbFFu_ZH80-KLRe8p4FB19Skb4ETzovNpTxKozJOiFsYmlbTO365A5cE6S7d5eWLHqyuzusEDa7fvd65ru1ASQpi40NysJIvzbQ64a_FbdoHLq4YKUK66t-M/s200/prc+flag" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317027689724178578" border="0" /></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">This post has been a long time in the works. I've been keeping my eyes open and noting the differences between <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Hong</span> Kong and Beijing pretty much since my flight landed two and a half months ago. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Hong</span> Kong and Beijing are the two cities in China where I've actually lived, rather than just visiting, so I suppose the comparison is inevitable.<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;" ><br /></span><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">The differences are myriad, the similarities few. The single biggest difference would have to do with the relationship between each city as a physical space and its populace. Simply put, the physical space and layout of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hong</span> Kong all seems to be a response to the needs of its populace; whereas the population of Beijing, by and large, has to base its existence around the physical space of the city. </span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Hong</span> Kong is incredibly hilly, with steep, narrow, and winding roads. Looking at a map of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Hong</span> Kong, one sees a maze of streets, curving, crossing and recrossing one another at acute angles. A map of Beijing, by contrast, shows broad avenues, running north-south and east-west, intersecting at neat right angles almost without fail. Yet in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Hong</span> Kong, despite the appearance of chaos, people and goods move fluidly through the city by means of a hodgepodge but effective transportation network - buses, minibuses, trams, ferries, escalators, subway, and light rail. The Octopus, a stored-value, one-tap all-purpose commuter card, works on all of them. It takes me around 45 minutes and can cost as little as US $1 to get across the harbor to Kowloon all the way from my dorm. </span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Beijing is the opposite - the illusion of order that a map of the city presents evaporates quickly upon arrival. As broad as the streets are, they are regularly congested; it can take close to an hour to cover just over a mile at times. The city has attempted to address congestion by adding ring roads (a series of freeways arranged in concentric circles around the city), but each time a new ring road is completed, the congestion is alleviated just enough that more people decide to buy cars, and traffic quickly returns to its earlier gridlock. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Beijing's</span> wretched air quality makes walking a somewhat unattractive prospect, and most people resort to bicycles. However, that raises a new set of concerns - several of my friends had their bicycles stolen, one of them multiple times. </span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">Clearly the two cities have strikingly different histories. Under British rule between 1841 and 1997, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Hong</span> Kong was spared the turmoil that characterized much of the past two centuries of Chinese history - the Taiping rebellion, the collapse of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Qing</span> dynasty and the country's subsequent descent into <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">warlordism</span>, the Japanese invasion and the civil war, and the ravages of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. After 1949, when the Communists finally drove the Kuomintang from the Mainland, Beijing was largely closed off to the outside world. Today, a drive through the city gives the impression of Westernization: Starbucks, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">McDonalds</span>, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">KFC</span>; Adidas and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Ikea</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">megastores</span>; malls full of Rolex, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Bulgari</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Lacoste</span>; bars advertising <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Carlsberg</span> and Budweiser, and clubs playing (almost) current pop music. Scratching the surface, however, is as easy as getting out of the bus and walking down any of the side streets away from the main boulevards. Aside from the major foreign chains, few restaurants offer decent non-Chinese food. You'll see migrant workers from the provinces hawking and spitting left and right; parents holding their <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">pantless</span> children at arm's length, letting them <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">defecate</span> into the road; beggars and lepers sitting silently, hat in hand, staring silently at the ground. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">Giant piles of rotting fruit can be found just meters from expensive apartment complexes. The air quality is remarkably poor. You eventually get used to it, but initially spending less than a day in the city can leave you feeling as though you've been kicked in the face by a mule. The city is the beating heart of Communist China. Soldiers in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Tiananmen</span> square stand at strict attention, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">Mao's Mausoleum still draws crowds of Chinese paying their respects. Squat toilets abound, even in fairly Westernized shopping districts. Many Chinese visiting Beijing from the provinces have never seen foreigners before, and will stare wide-eyed with undisguised interest; some will even ask you to pose with them for pictures. You'll be lucky to find anyone who speaks English once you venture beyond the hotels and major tourist destinations.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Hong</span> Kong, by contrast, was a British colony for more than 150 years, and has remained an international finance and shipping hub even after the 1997 handover. As such, even in predominantly Chinese neighborhoods far from Central, Soho, and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Midlevels</span>, foreigners attract little attention from local Chinese. Western restaurant chains are prevalent, but so are independently owned restaurants offering fare every bit as good as what you'd find in a pub in London, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">shwarma</span> stand in Amman, or a burger joint in Chicago. Most locals at least understand basic English, and often speak it well enough that basic communication typically poses no problems. I've yet to see anyone spit or go to the bathroom in public, and the city is strikingly clean compared to Beijing. The air quality is quite poor by international standards, but most visitors experience nothing worse than a mild sore throat and runny nose for a few days before they acclimate. One barely encounters reminders of Communist rule in Hong Kong. I've never seen a soldier in Hong Kong, and have seen perhaps two Chinese flags flying since I've been here. By contrast, the flag of Hong Kong - a five-petaled white flower on a red background - is ubiquitous.<br /><br />Understandably, most visitors prefer Hong Kong to Beijing. As for myself, I'm still not sure. I went to Beijing last weekend to visit a few friends, and am still processing my impressions of the city as it was when I lived there, as it is now, and my overall experience there. That will be the subject of another post.<br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-14371655381979810982009-03-16T09:08:00.000-04:002009-03-17T00:52:21.919-04:00Three Days in Thailand<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwbALpkaQzufqks9XaHXXsLQIhaPz5WvAqmfBJGd3GUN8OxULk0bgjD5iU9t_oGa6_nbd8lSjIy_virBxvnEq-EXrdfHGl3HOg4BwdftFh2rzKkhBOUa8yzs4vxMn0yEZpXSAqe-8mMag/s1600-h/IMG_1907.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwbALpkaQzufqks9XaHXXsLQIhaPz5WvAqmfBJGd3GUN8OxULk0bgjD5iU9t_oGa6_nbd8lSjIy_virBxvnEq-EXrdfHGl3HOg4BwdftFh2rzKkhBOUa8yzs4vxMn0yEZpXSAqe-8mMag/s320/IMG_1907.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313968542708699618" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;" >Having Monday off for Foundation Day, and never having class on Fridays, I decided to go to Thailand for a few days.<br /><br />I spent most of my time in a small town called Kanchanaburi. It's about two hours west of Bangkok, on the River Kwai (made famous by David Lean in the classic <span style="font-style: italic;">Bridge On The River Kwai</span>), and is a very pleasant place to spend a few days. The town itself only has two real attractions. The excellent Thai-Burma Railway Centre is a museum documenting the experience of the Allied POWs who built the railroad linking Thailand to Burma during World War II. Captured when the Japanese conquered most of Southeast Asia in 1941 and 1942, thousands of British, Dutch, and Australian soldiers (and some Americans) were slave labor for the Japanese military effort to build a railroad that would eventually connect Singapore to Burma and facilitate the Japanese advance towards British India. Malnourished and diseased, apparently some 38 POWs and Asian laborers died for every kilometer of track constructed. (It would be impossible to document, but I wonder how this ratio measures up to the ratio for the Great Wall of China). Some 6,000 of these POWs are buried in a cemetery near the museum, the second attraction of note.<br /><br />Kanchanaburi's real draw is the natural scenery surrounding the town. Erawan National Park, about 65km away from the city, was definitely the highlight of my trip. There weren't many foreign tourists when I visited, mostly Thais out for a weekend excursion. The park contains a seven-tiered waterfall, with a number of natural pools that are perfect for swimming. It was an hour's trek to the seventh tier, at which point the path became a bit more tricky. Getting from the path to the falls themselves required some careful navigation across a series of extremely slippery rocks - I saw a European tourist take a very nasty spill on one particularly treacherous section. After making it safely to the top I cooled off with a half-hour swim in the various pools, watched by a family of monkeys that had come down from the trees for a drink of water. I spent my last few hours in Kanchanaburi seeing the current Bridge on the River Kwai (the original was destroyed by Allied bombers in the last years of the war), then took a minibus back to Bangkok.<br /><br />Khao San Road, in Bangkok... never in my life have I wanted to leave a place so quickly. Every negative tourist stereotype is on display there: the freshly dreadlocked white guy covered in new tattoos, beer in hand and god knows what in his bloodstream; the florid, obese middle-aged man, sunburned and balding, sweating through his polo shirt and leering at the Thai girl on his arm, young enough to be his daughter; and, of course, the type who clearly thinks that being on vacation gives one an excuse to dress and act like a complete a**hole.<br /><br />The street was crawling with them, and packed with every sort of business that would cater to their interests. T-shirt shops, hostels, tattoo parlors, salons advertising dreadlocks, beads, and extensions, bars blasting loud pop music, stalls selling cheap trinkets, and plenty of familiar Western restaurants (Burger King and McDonalds, among others).<br /><br />Ordinarily I would have made every effort to avoid this place, but under the circumstances it made sense to be there, unfortunately. I was only staying in Bangkok for one night, and then planning to catch a minibus to the coast and then traveling on to the island of Ko Samet by ferry. The hostels in Khao San are very cheap, and the abundance of local travel agencies/tour companies make the neighborhood an easy place in which to arrange transport out of Bangkok. So, there I was.<br /><br />While I was asking a hostel employee about Ko Samet, a sunburned Westerner (Austrian, as it turned out) approached, a beer in one hand and a Coke in the other. His teeth were yellow, broken and crooked, his hair was stringy, and his eyes seemed to have some difficulty focusing. He told me how Ko Samet was a wonderful island, and how he'd been going there for ten years. Then he gave me the name of the hostel that he stayed at, and told me to tell the owner (someone named Yud, apparently) that he had just come back from Lao and was about to return to Austria. He wrote all this down for me: "Koh Samet Puolsa Bangolouws Yud Greadings from Koert."<br /><br />After meeting Koert, I decided to skip Ko Samet and leave the country a day early. I was quite certain that I did not want to spend my time and money in a place that appealed to Koert so much that he has apparently made annual pilgrimages for the past decade. Given its relative proximity to Bangkok, I could only imagine how many other Koerts there would be on that island.<br /><br />There's a sad irony in the fact that Thailand, the only Southeast Asian nation to avoid European rule during the colonial period, has been so transformed by the throngs of hedonistic Westerners that pour into the country on a daily basis that it's barely possible to discern what lies beneath the bars, tattoo parlors, sex shows, dreadlock shops and youth hostels. I was only in the country for a few days, but a number of my friends spent more time there, and in different places; almost without exception, they came away with the same impressions. They loved Thailand's natural beauty - the beaches, the rivers, the forests - but they were shocked and disgusted by everything that had sprung up around it. One of my friends summed it up very succinctly: "It's like there's not even a country, just a bunch of dirty backpackers."<br /><br />So, if you're thinking of going to Thailand, spend as little time in Bangkok as possible, unless you are a) a complete degenerate, b) unspeakably perverted, c) an unwashed hippie in search of like-minded persons, or d) not particularly picky about where you spend your free time, as long as they sell t-shirts and beer. If you're reading this blog, I sincerely hope that you are none of these things.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-82602577851186458852009-03-06T00:36:00.001-05:002009-03-06T10:30:22.833-05:00Shark Fin Soup, Chicken Feet and Duck's Blood<span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">It's been a fairly uneventful few weeks for me since coming back from Taiwan. Going to classes, reading for classes, studying Chinese. I'll be traveling later this month, April, and May, so I've been laying low a bit to save money. In lieu of final exams, I'm writing papers for two courses - one is a comparison of the cannabis laws of Singapore and the Netherlands (pretty much polar opposites); the other one is about "cultural" exceptions to the international whaling ban.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">This post is not so much about Hong Kong specifically, but just some reflections on food and drink that I've tried in "Greater China" - Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Mainland. The more time I spend over here, the easier it is to let go of the idea that some animals, or some parts of animals, are more "normal" to eat than others. It's all more or less meat, after all. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Jellyfish</span>: I first tried this at a nice restaurant in Shanghai a few years ago, mostly because I wanted to say that I had eaten jellyfish. As it turned out, I liked it - the texture is a bit like calamari, but is a bit crunchy as well as chewy. I still order this in Boston. There used to be a good place on Brighton Avenue, but it has unfortunately closed. To make matters worse, my good friend Connie stole my to-go box of jellyfish the last time we went there. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Shark fin soup</span>: First off, I should say that I do not condone the consumption of shark fin soup. The way that the chief ingredient is obtained is fairly gruesome. Fishermen don't actually kill the shark, but simply hack off the fins and toss it back into the ocean to die. I would never order it. The only time I've eaten it was at a very posh, set-course dinner in Beijing. Thus, the shark was already dead, the dish was already made, and my refusal to eat the soup would have had no effect whatsoever on the market for shark fins - under the circumstances, it would also have been very rude. All that being said, I enjoyed the soup. The texture is a bit hard to describe - the fin is mostly cartilage, but it was fairly soft, not very rubbery. Served with a bowl of rice, and was a very hearty course. But while the soup was good, it was really nothing special. Had it been something less controversial, it would be nothing worth writing about. So, I continue to oppose this dish in principle. The demand for shark fins apparently remains high, though. I've seen many hanging in the windows of Chinese medicine shops and restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Duck's blood</span>: Absolutely delicious. I tried this at a hot pot restaurant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan last month. The duck's blood is congealed to a tofu-like consistency and cut into cubes. After simmering in a spicy Sichuan-style broth for ten minutes or so it picked up a wonderful flavor, both spicy and savory at the same time. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Baijiu</span>: Even if you're a serious, open-minded drinker, I do not recommend this stuff. It's not like soju, and it's not like sake. It's like rubbing alcohol. For those of you who claim vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol, trust me - it tastes like water compared to baijiu. It is generally distilled from sorghum (sometimes from rice) and tends to be very strong, around 120 proof or so. The worst, cheapest stuff comes in small green bottles with white and red labels. In some places you can buy little plastic, one-shot bags of it for the equivalent of around 50 cents. I went camping on an old ruined section of the Great Wall a few hours away from Beijing a couple of years ago, and one of my friends brought along a bottle of baijiu for the night. When one of our group gashed his leg open on a rock on a treacherous portion of the trail, we used the baijiu as antiseptic - it bubbled like hydrogen peroxide when we poured it in his cut. We also used it to help get the campfire going. I never drink baijiu if I can avoid it. However, I make an exception for moutai. It's a type of baijiu from Guizhou province, somewhere around 110 proof. It's got an interesting, almost spicy flavor to it, and served warm in a small glass it's pretty good. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chicken feet</span>: The first time a plate was set in front of me a few years ago I wouldn't touch it. However, I overcame my reluctance and tried them as part of a dim sum brunch in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. Not bad. The basic idea isn't all that different from eating a chicken wing - you nibble around a bone to get at a relatively small portion of meat. So, once I quit thinking about what part of the chicken it was, I had no trouble eating these. There's not as much meat, though, so for that reason I would order wings, if given the choice; but as a dim sum course it's fine. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Yak butter tea</span>: It's basically a thick, hot tea in which the principle ingredient is Yak butter. Sounds disgusting, but it is actually a great drink for a cold day. Hot and thick, it really warms you up. Given Tibet's altitude and how unbelievably cold the winters are, it's not surprising that this is such a popular drink there. I spent the coldest night of my life in an unheated hostel in Lhasa in mid-winter, and the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was down a giant mug of this stuff. I felt better immediately.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stinky tofu</span>: Pretty much like it sounds. I'm not quite sure how it is prepared, but these chunks of tofu smell distinctly like unwashed feet. If you're passing a restaurant that serves it, you can typically smell it from the street. This one took some getting used to. The first few times I ate it, I only did so to be polite; however, by the third time I realized I had acquired a taste for it. Part of the trick is to just ignore the smell, or convince yourself that the smell is not coming from the tofu - honestly, it does not taste like it smells. If you live in Boston, try it at Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown.<br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-70209377030802986022009-02-11T22:10:00.000-05:002009-02-13T06:45:49.269-05:00Taiwan<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hO1xFkIXF6DiPPoABKTUWNgHhy_wCqaLJv3EEDDFBGRWl4uRw-5DUMF6B3yu7wNBDF0YOcJ88v_K2H9I2huPt4uMLqUDhi8WssiaZQtx3LgbIxcXFWwWdnWjoHJDLEukTm7SeCDN6jc/s1600-h/IMG_1779.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hO1xFkIXF6DiPPoABKTUWNgHhy_wCqaLJv3EEDDFBGRWl4uRw-5DUMF6B3yu7wNBDF0YOcJ88v_K2H9I2huPt4uMLqUDhi8WssiaZQtx3LgbIxcXFWwWdnWjoHJDLEukTm7SeCDN6jc/s320/IMG_1779.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5302246723107486050" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm not sure how long I was on fire before I realized it, but it must have only been a few seconds. It was hard to tell at first. Firecrackers were exploding all around my feet, bottle rockets were whizzing past my head, and my motorcycle helmet was filling with smoke. So, I was a bit distracted. When I noticed that my shirt was burning, I quickly smothered it with my gloves, and immediately turned my attention back to jumping around in the hopes that no firecrackers would go off under my feet. When the smoke cleared I took a look at my shirt. The fire had left three mid-sized ragged holes in it. Fortunately it was only the outermost of my five layers, and it didn't actually belong to me; so, I didn't get burned, and I didn't lose a good shirt.</span></span><div style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;">This was the Yanshui Lantern Festival. It will turn up on several top ten lists if you google "dangerous festivals." Once a year the streets of this ordinarily peaceful Taiwanese town fill with crowds of people decked out in several layers of heavy clothes, gloves, and motorcycle helmets. They follow a procession of statues as they're carried through the streets, periodically stopping in front of a shop with a red lantern hanging outside. The doors of the shop open, and a "beehive," basically an iron and wooden frame holding thousands of bottle rockets, is wheeled out. When lit, the rockets go flying off in all directions, most of them straight into the crowd. The idea is to frighten off evil spirits. When the barrage ends and the smoke has cleared, and all the fires have been put out, the procession continues on to the next shop, another beehive comes out, and another barrage ensues. As it turns out, getting hit with a bottle rocket when properly attired doesn't really hurt. However, even though you know you're protected, watching fireworks fly at your head is still pretty scary. My camera batteries died early on in the evening, but a quick YouTube search yielded a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auiIxZgGh_s&feature=related">video</a> that gives a pretty good idea of what it was like.<br /></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;">I took advantage of my three-day weekend and went to visit my friend John in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I confess that over the past few years I had developed a somewhat China-centric view of Taiwan - living in Beijing, you hear people talk about Taiwan as though it's some wayward province of China, and that peaceful reunification is inevitable. One person expressed their thoughts as such: "We waited for Hong Kong, we'll wait for Taiwan." After a while you sort of stop questioning it. So, I was expecting Taiwan to feel more or less like any other province of China.<br /><br />This was not at all the case. The point was underscored dramatically literally as soon as I landed in Kaohsiung. A military transport, American-built, with a Taiwanese flag emblazoned on its tail was taking off on an adjacent runway as my flight was taxiing to the gate. The rest of the weekend was full of near constant, if less dramatic reminders that Taiwan really is not part of the People's Republic of China.<br /><br />Kaohsiung is a fairly laid-back city in the south of Taiwan. It's big, but not overwhelming - traffic is manageable, the buildings aren't tall, and there are plenty of trees and parks. The weather was beautiful the entire time I was there - warm, sunny, and not too humid. It's hard to articulate, but there was something very different about being in Taiwan rather than the PRC. The people seemed friendlier and less guarded, and more willing to bend rules or go briefly beyond their job description if they felt like it. The Taiwanese security guard at John's apartment complex, Pepe, had taken it upon himself to beautify the courtyard with flowers and other potted plants, and had even added a fish and turtle pond to one of the flower beds. I never met anyone in his position in China who I could have envisioned doing something similar. Incidentally, Pepe seemed to have learned English from watching </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:78%;" >Scarface</span><span style="font-size:78%;">, and went on a lengthy, profanity-laced tirade, peppered with random words in Spanish, about the cats he suspected of eating his turtles and what he would do to them if he ever caught them.<br /><br />The Yanshui Lantern Festival was the main point of the trip. Other than that, I mostly spent my few days there catching up with John, exploring the city, enjoying good cheap food at day markets and night markets, and basically relaxing. Hong Kong is many things - dynamic, stimulating, cosmopolitan, and engaging - but it is far from relaxing. The change of scenery was welcome. All the same, it's good to be back in Hong Kong.<br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-90213118663798818222009-01-29T19:06:00.000-05:002009-01-30T09:04:01.475-05:00Lunar New Year<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJEQZw2N-RqTwlPIn0TRBUESRnpIfkSYyw2F9QjA08x1jjiiEfqQdKsoQRAG9nHfFXOUo2cQVKNJ7lsWk1YMQDmIHkrU1duc9gyGFk-54RI3_kEJECVxhXmaiTXaa6xr-rTOSGTxMwrQ/s1600-h/IMG_1714.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUJEQZw2N-RqTwlPIn0TRBUESRnpIfkSYyw2F9QjA08x1jjiiEfqQdKsoQRAG9nHfFXOUo2cQVKNJ7lsWk1YMQDmIHkrU1duc9gyGFk-54RI3_kEJECVxhXmaiTXaa6xr-rTOSGTxMwrQ/s320/IMG_1714.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296935996334033570" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">It's been a while since my last post. The fact is, my dorm room is not a very pleasant place to spend time, but it's currently the only place where I can conveniently connect to the internet (most of the university being closed for the Lunar New Year). Thus, I'm spending most of my time out of my dorm, and am usually too tired when I get home to take time to post. So, until classes start again on Monday I'm likely to be behind on emails and posting infrequently. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">After a mere four days of classes, the university closed for the Lunar New Year. The dorms emptied of students, most businesses closed for the entire week, and expats left Hong Kong in droves for Southeast Asian vacations. A few of us stayed in town, though, and got to see a very different Hong Kong. Still busy by any objective standard, the city is more or less dead compared to any other time of year. A few of us left a bar at 9pm the other night, a reasonable hour, and the streets were empty - ordinarily that doesn't happen until 2:30 or 3am. It was actually a bit eerie. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">To celebrate the Year of the Ox, a few of us - along with apparently half of Hong Kong's population - paid a visit to the Tian Tan Buddha (pictured) on Lantau Island. 85 feet tall, weighing 250 tons, this giant bronze buddha was completed in 1993. The fact that it's not all that ancient in no way diminishes the statue's grandeur, though. It's truly awe-inspiring. The weather was not very pleasant, and we didn't have much time, so we chose to take a cable car ride instead of hiking. Even the cable car ride took about 25 minutes, and offered some great views along the way. The buddha itself is large enough that it came into view about 10 minutes before we actually reached the cable car terminus. Allegedly it's visible from Macau on a clear day. The place was very crowded, almost entirely with families. Small children were decked out in their holiday finest, which ranged from bear costumes to faux-Qing dynasty imperial outfits, complete with queues. We caught one of the last cable cars back to civilization, and enjoyed a fairly sizable New Year's banquet at an elegant, surprisingly affordable restaurant at the IFC. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">The next evening I watched the fireworks at Victoria Harbor with a few friends. The display was impressive, but nothing mind-blowing. All in all, the Lunar New Year in Beijing is much more of a spectacle. The biggest difference is that Beijingers apparently aren't subject to any laws regarding fireworks, or at least no laws that are actively enforced. People set off fireworks wherever and whenever they feel like it: in the courtyards of apartment complexes, on the sidewalks near crowded streets, leaning out of high-rise windows, etc. Basically, the city starts echoing with what sounds like gunfire around 3 pm. The noise picks up significantly as it gets dark, and continues until the early hours of the morning. In Hong Kong, by contrast, it's been very quiet. The official display at Victoria Harbor were the only fireworks that I've seen or heard all week. All in all, Hong Kong is a much more orderly city than Beijing, so that's not too surprising. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Yesterday the weather was finally warm and sunny again after several overcast days, so a friend and I took the bus to Stanley. It's a smallish town on the south side of Hong Kong Island, with a pleasantly uncrowded beach and a fairly laid-back seaside promenade. After exploring the town for a bit, we went hiking on the nearby Wilson Trail. Rather than winding back and forth across the hillside, the trail simply went straight up the side of it - it was a very steep hike. However, the view from the top was well worth the effort. After our hike, we picked up a couple of cans of Tsingtao and relaxed on the beach for a while before getting dinner on the promenade and catching the bus back to the city.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-43574605142384822842009-01-19T22:54:00.000-05:002009-01-19T23:54:20.091-05:00Dorm Life<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaTojlsfFutWPBJ04zi_aRBRN4GFpnnzJXCnhvKZLjWctJF-1JOFuGLGjKBOoAMDO25CCvR-XGlfCZ_y8VTpK5VpCCWKXaZlyZZXUYUk_NbyqRmkPIXEs-yeQbS72qqeHvi5XxVxZKyd4/s1600-h/IMG_1644.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaTojlsfFutWPBJ04zi_aRBRN4GFpnnzJXCnhvKZLjWctJF-1JOFuGLGjKBOoAMDO25CCvR-XGlfCZ_y8VTpK5VpCCWKXaZlyZZXUYUk_NbyqRmkPIXEs-yeQbS72qqeHvi5XxVxZKyd4/s320/IMG_1644.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293222944247582370" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">Living in a dorm for the first time in almost five years has required a bit of an adjustment. As I wrote previously, I'm living at </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hysan"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">Lee Hysan</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"> Hall, an undergraduate dorm. The building is more than a bit run-down - a grimy exterior houses a predictably institutional interior. I'm not too close to campus, and there's little of note in the immediate area: two more residence halls in the same complex, a 7 Eleven (one of the few in China that does not sell alcohol), and, across the street, a hospital with a Starbucks and a decent cafeteria. The one thing that this dorm really has going for it, though, is the view (pictured). We're on a hill fairly high above the rest of the city, facing west across the East Lamma Channel. Our common room has a beautiful view of the water, and at any given time the channel is full of bulk carriers and other cargo ships headed toward Victoria Harbor, very much a reminder that Hong Kong remains a vibrant and bustling port city. </span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">Most floors are coed, although mine seems to be largely, if not entirely, male. As I mentioned earlier, there's a strong sense of hall spirit and tradition. At the risk of sounding antisocial, I'll admit that I've taken the advice that was given to me by other foreign students and deliberately avoided this. By way of explanation, I'll recount a few stories:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">On my third day here, I met another foreign student who explained the concept of Water Games to me. The paint on the walls in his hallway is uniformly worn away to a spot a few inches above the floor. Apparently once a semester the local students clog up all the toilets, stop up the sinks and shower drains, and run all the water to flood the hallway (it occurs to me that the substance on the floor in the field hockey story, recounted in an earlier post, may have actually been water mistaken for beer, or perhaps a mix). This is Water Games. I don't think they do this on my floor, though, as the paint doesn't seem to be worn away. The entire concept sounds unbelievably unhygienic and dangerous. Buildings generally aren't made to be flooded multiple times per year.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">He also told me that another popular pastime is to open a window, stand some distance back, and take turns trying to kick a soccer ball out the window. Whoever kicks the ball out the window must then go outside to retrieve it, while the other students try to pour liquids on and throw things at him while he's doing so. This would explain why there's a chair stuck in a tree outside, about twenty feet below the window to our common room.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">Last week, I came home late, stepped off the elevator, and saw a group of students standing in a cluster near the door to the common room. A leg was sticking out of the huddle at a weird angle, a few feet above the floor. They turned to look at me, and I quickly made my way to my room - it seemed like the safest thing to do. I asked my roommate Sai what they were doing, and he laughed, and told me I'd find out, because they did it to everybody and they'd do it to me soon enough. I told him that they most certainly would not, and that I would really like to know what they were doing so I could avoid it. Initially refusing to tell me, he relented soon enough and explained the "bicycle" to me. Since then, I haven't quite looked at the local students the same way, and learning to understand Cantonese has taken on a new urgency for me. They all speak English, but I need to know what they're saying to each other when I'm around.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">Two nights ago, I was watching a movie in the common room with a couple of other exchange students, when we gradually became aware of students congregating in the hallway outside, near the elevators - the same spot where I had witnessed some poor soul being bicycled earlier. Fortunately for us, we weren't on their agenda (although one of the other exchange students is a water polo player, and I'm fairly sure I overheard the phrase "he's too tall" in the midst of the local students' conversation). Venturing out into the hallway, we witnessed another bicycling incident. We went back into the common room and turned the volume up on the TV, but it continued for some time. At various points people ran into the common room excitedly, and ran back out into the hallway with such diverse items as soy sauce, an empty water bottle, and a birthday cake.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">This isn't something I expected to deal with as a second-year law student. I'm making an effort to stay pretty much under the radar around the dorm. I generally leave the dorm somewhat early in the morning, and don't see a whole lot of the local students - they seem to only start coming out of their rooms and filling the hallways around 10:45pm, and they stay there until around 4 or 5am. With the aid of earplugs, I haven't had any trouble sleeping yet. All the same, I remain vaguely concerned about the bicycle. </span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-58056111415985217992009-01-15T09:28:00.000-05:002009-01-17T08:42:39.432-05:00Macau<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">None of my classes start until next week, so I've spent most of the past few days exploring Hong Kong, getting a sense of the city and how to navigate it. Yesterday I took a break from Hong Kong, and spent the afternoon and evening in Macau.</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Macau is something of a Portuguese equivalent to Hong Kong. In the 1530s, over 300 years before Britain acquired Hong Kong, Portuguese merchants began using Macau as a base of trading operations, ultimately purchasing the island from China in 1557. As a Portuguese colony, Macau was the only European port for the China trade until 1841, when China ceded Hong Kong to the British after the First Opium War. Hong Kong had a better harbor, and most European merchants soon made it their new base of operations, abandoning Macau. Eclipsed in economic and political significance, Macau never developed into a bustling, cosmopolitan metropolis like Hong Kong. It remained under Portuguese control until 1999, two years after Britain returned Hong Kong to China. Today Macau, like Hong Kong, is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) - part of China, but with different economic and political systems than the mainland. All part of Deng Xiaoping's "one country, two systems" idea. It's the only place in China where gambling is legal, and casinos remain the city's big draw for most tourists.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">A friend and I took the 12pm ferry from Hong Kong and arrived in Macau around 12:45. Not much for gambling, we headed across the island for lunch at Porto Interior, a Macanese-Portuguese restaurant. It was delicious - hot, crusty bread, rice and seafood stew, an assortment of lightly fried Macanese snacks, and vinho verde (lightly sparkling Portuguese wine). The highlight, however, was the galinha a Africana (African chicken) - barbecued, served in a thick, sweet and spicy red pepper sauce. Macanese food is sort of a fusion of influences from various parts of Portugal's colonial empire, including Portugal itself, local Cantonese cuisine, and East Africa.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">After lunch we went to the A-Ma temple, a 15th-century temple dedicated to the goddess of fishermen and the sea. With the lunar New Year around the corner, the temple attendants were setting off extremely long and loud strings of firecrackers on a regular basis. After inhaling plenty of incense and gunpowder smoke, we moved on to the Maritime Museum - had a few somewhat frightening mannequins, but all in all was a pretty interesting look at the maritime activity of Macau, both Portuguese and Chinese. There were models of various Portuguese and Chinese sailing vessels, and dioramas of traditional fishing activities. Most significantly, I learned about the Drunken Dragon Festival, a Macanese tradition in which one dances around and gets sprayed with water while drinking copious amounts of alcohol. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">After leaving the museum, we wandered around Macau's back alleys for most of the rest of the day. Like the food, the city is a blend of Portuguese and Chinese influences. Whitewashed walls and porticos give the city a distinctly Iberian feel, and all street signs are in Portuguese as well as Chinese, but there's hardly a European in sight. The alleyways, barely wide enough for a motorcycle in some places, were packed with shops, restaurants, food carts, and people. Bakeries selling Portuguese-style pastries stood next door to Chinese medicine shops, packed with the usual assortment of roots, fungi, and animal bits. We walked through a bustling and bloody seafood market, where we witnessed tables full of fish heads, some of which were still trying to breathe. At one booth an eel had been chopped cleanly in half; the top half was still squirming across the counter, opening and closing its mouth and butting its head against the lower half of its body - I'm not likely to forget that sight. We stopped for a beer at a hole in the wall noodle joint (still trying to wash the taste of gunpowder out of our mouths), and then continued back toward the ferry terminal. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Before leaving Macau, we stopped to wander around one of Macau's Vegas-style attractions, a sprawling Disney-esque recreation of various, wholly incongruous... well, things, I guess. There wasn't really a common theme. Aladdin's Fort stood next to the Roman Theatre; a replica of Tibet's Potala Palace and a Tang Dynasty fortress were built into the side of a mockup of a Volcano. Aladdin's Fort was apparently the site of some kind of war game attraction; a few bored-looking people dressed as soldiers stood next to a mock-up of a crashed Black Hawk helicopter. Yet this entire complex was almost entirely deserted - we saw at most four or five other people the entire time, and all the shops and restaurants were empty. The pointlessness of the place was almost overwhelming. After a while, we decided we'd had enough, and caught the 8:15 ferry back to Hong Kong. There are still plenty of things I'd like to do in Macau - see some of the old Portuguese forts and churches, go to the village of Coloane on the adjacent island of Taipa, and eat more Macanese food - so I'll definitely be going back.</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-49109623715504095802009-01-13T20:38:00.000-05:002009-01-13T22:22:54.891-05:00Initial Impressions<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Note: I arrived on a Saturday, so I wasn't able to get my dorm's internet connection set up until last night. Thus, this post was written on January 11, but not posted until today.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 10px; ">I've been in Hong Kong for just over 24 hours now. The trip over here was uneventful - no missed connections, delayed flights, or unfortunate seating arrangements.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 10px;">I spent most of today (Sunday) walking around HKU's main campus, getting my bearings. It's about a 20 to 25-minute walk from my dorm, or a much shorter bus ride. You know that M.C. Escher drawing of the stairs in an endless loop? The campus feels a bit like that, but placed in the middle of a subtropical forest. Initially confusing, but very cool. Hong Kong island is basically one giant hill, so the campus, like pretty much everything else here, is built straight up, right into the side of it. Big grassy quads with paths between buildings would be out of the question, so the buildings are linked by a series of exterior staircases and walkways, periodically connecting to patio-type areas, one of which has a very pleasant lily pond. The entire campus is shaded by lush vegetation. With the foliage and the various staircases and walkways, trekking around campus sometimes feels like walking through an aquarium's rainforest exhibit. I like it more than walking through that busted rock garden near the law tower.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 10px;">The U.S. is unusual in making certain subjects, like law and medicine, graduate programs. In most other places, including Hong Kong, if you want to be a lawyer or a doctor you simply study law or medicine at university, without studying something else for four years first. Thus, I'm living in the equivalent of an undergrad dorm. I have a double room in Lee Hysan Hall, an off-campus student residence hall. It was named after a Hong Kong opium prince turned construction magnate who was gunned down by rivals sometime in the 1920s. Our floor's common room has a great view of the harbor, a mah jong table, a TV, and a kitchenette. I'm somewhat apprehensive about living in a dorm again for the first time since my sophomore year of college. Every dorm has a theme; ours is "Hysanic," which means that our common room has a little bell with "1912" written on it, and there are little pictures of life preservers in the bathroom stalls. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that our theme is the greatest maritime disaster in modern history. I don't know what kind of dorm activities they plan on tying into that theme. Also, it seems that hall spirit is a very big thing here. I've hard that from a number of local students, as well as one BUSL who spent a semester here a year or two ago. He advised me to avoid hall activities at all costs. He said that they involved a lot of marching and chanting and clapping, and that on one occasion he came back to his dorm and found that the hallway floor was covered in beer, and that a number of his hallmates were hitting each other in the crotch with field hockey sticks.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-32667443200791128072009-01-07T11:30:00.000-05:002009-01-07T13:47:00.594-05:00The O.C.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I'm spending some time in Orange County, CA (perhaps you've heard of it? apparently there was a TV show...) before leaving for Hong Kong. Having spent just one full day here so far, I now have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who left Orange County to spend their time studying law in a city where the winter lasts for eight months. That's dedication, or maybe madness. Then again, I don't live here, so maybe having beautiful weather more or less year-round and living right by the beach gets a bit monotonous. For my part, I'm not sure I could get any serious work done out here. I suspect that, not having grown up out here, I would have trouble shaking the feeling that I was, in some sense, on vacation.<br /></span></div></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Anyways, it's been great so far. Brunch on the beach, drinks on a pier, spending the day wandering around a boardwalk with no real plans other than enjoying the weather. Good to spend some quality time with the roommates (two of them, at least) before going abroad.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">RETRACTION: I'm ashamed to admit that after just one post I'm already compelled to issue a retraction. However, accuracy is important - after all, if people could just post whatever they wanted to on the internet, what kind of world would that be? So: in my posting of January 2, I said that I had it on good authority that there were "peeps on call" in Orange County. It has been brought to my attention that this is inaccurate; in point of fact, I was told that there were "peeps on </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">alert.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">" I apologize for the error, and for any resulting confusion.</span></span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8782127390029917840.post-85297123601023754362009-01-02T16:44:00.000-05:002009-01-02T18:21:13.785-05:00The First Post<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">So, for some reason I agreed to keep a blog for the supposed benefit of the law school whilst in Hong Kong next semester. However, I've never kept a blog before, and have, in fact, derided the blog as an unfortunate innovation that makes it far too easy for - and, in fact encourages - people who labor under the delusion that their opinions matter to share those opinions with the entire world. That's not quite what I'm trying to do here. Last time I was in China I kept people up to date via periodic emails to a distribution list of people who had expressed interest. This time, though, I'm putting my reservations about blogging aside and trying it out, primarily as a means to stay in touch with people I know, not to disseminate the contents of my mind across the internet (because I don't think anybody really wants that to happen). So, in the interest of getting the hang of this before arriving in Hong Kong, and before I start blogging for the law school, I'm starting a bit early.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">So, this will hopefully provide semi-regular updates on my activities abroad, for anyone who cares to read it. If you don't care, then don't read it. Feel free to post - I think I've enabled that option, but I'm still figuring this thing out. A brief rundown of my upcoming whereabouts:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Until January 5: Nashville</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">January 5 - 9: Orange County, CA (where I have it on good authority that there are "peeps on call," whatever that means)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">January 10: arrive in Hong Kong</span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">That's all for now. Happy New Year!</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">N.B.: This blog is not the blog I'm keeping for the law school. Some posts may be identical, others will not be. I'm keeping this one as well because a third-party administrator has to approve all my posts before they're published on the school's blog - understandable, but cumbersome; also, the law school might not be very interested in, or particularly happy about, some of my activities (i.e. missing class to go backpacking in Laos, etc.). It may be that keeping two blogs at the same time, even if there's some content overlap, will be a little more than I'd like to handle. So, we'll see how this goes...</span></span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0