Thankful

In my acceptance speech at Writers of the Future, I said "Thank you," a lot of times. And just now I got another rush of "thank you."

Due to Writers of the Future, excellent professional writers will give me the time of day. They know who I am. Many have offered to help and some have already helped. I am a member of an online group of newly minted professional writers and some young giants in the field.

All of my "Thank yous" from my acceptance speech are still the core of what took me to where I am. But it just occurred to me that I owe even more thanks than before.

Burning Money

It was hot, the night we burned chrome. -- William Gibson

I like the way that Gibson turned the phrase. "Burning" can be a present progressive tense verb or a modifying gerund. In a two word title "burning" sounds like a gerund, that is, I first assumed that "burning chrome" was a noun phrase--"chrome," the noun, and "burning," telling me what kind of chrome. But Gibson immediately turned my expectation inside out. He used "burning" as a verb and "chrome" as a direct object, as in, "We are getting out the blowtorch and burning chrome."

"Killing Words," one of my short stories, uses Gibson's ambiguity.

But I want to talk about burning money.

The Writers of the Future staff suggested a dress code for the workshop and events during the week. One staff member's clarification made it clear that I was well set, with clothes that fit the code. Later, another staff member interpreted the code differently--I was a bit below the bar.

For me, spending money on clothing is akin to burning it. I have enough clothes to rotate through most of a week, then wash them, then rinse, and repeat. So I do not have the amount of clothes that normal people have. This is one facet of my nerdhood.

My view of buying clothing has led me to make friends with my decades-old shirts. When they're finally too worn to wear, it is like saying "goodbye" to an old friend. I identify with Brian Eno, who once sung, "The passage of my life is measured out in shirts." I think Eno's line is a reference to J. Alfred Prufrock's life, which he has "measured out in coffee spoons."

So today I went to Walmart and bought $150 worth of clothes. Man, that hurt. Yes, I know it will make me a bit more normal to have an office casual wardrobe that can span 10 days or more before a wash. And I know that even though I spend, perhaps, $50/year on clothing, that normal people spend much more than that. And normal professionals do not buy $150 wardrobes at freakin' Walmart. But I am not normal.

However, it just may be the case that people who buy books would rather think of the author as being like them--as being normal. My bet is that WOTF's suggestion is like a flu shot. I did not want it. But it will be good for me.

Brave New World

I recently saw this on Facebook.

"Progress usually is a result of people who take an unpopular position. 'Well, we've always done it this way is the worst excuse we can use."'

This is 99% garbage and 1% correct.

The reason we do things in the ways we currently do them is that those ways work. 99% of the time when we strike out to do things in a new way, Old Lady Reality slaps us across the cheek and says, "Idiot! We do things that way for a reason!"

Rat

Some medicine had been called in to the only all-night drugstore in town. The store was busy so the prescription not ready until around 3:00 AM.

Since it was so late, I went as I was--shorts, tie-dyed purple shirt, flipflops, and hair past my shoulders instead of bound in a ponytail.

I was on my way back to the truck with the medicine when I saw a huge rat run across the parking lot, climb up on the tire of my truck and disappear up into the underside of the truck. Where could it have gone? I waited for him to leave. He did not. I approached cautiously.

I jumped in the truck and slammed the door quickly. I did not know if the rat could get inside the truck from the outside. There should not be any holes big enough, but I know rats can get into places they should not be able to.

I cut a couple of donuts in the empty parking lot to see if I could sling the rat out from under. I did not see him leave. On the way home I hit every pothole that I could and changed my route in order to go over some bumpy railroad tracks. But there do not seem to be any bad potholes when you need them and apparently the road crossing the tracks had been smoothed.

I slung the truck into the parking lot of Catfish Cabin and cut a couple of donuts, then slung it back onto the road. Then I saw the blue lights behind me.

I pulled into the parking lot of an auto dealership. The officer told me to get out of the truck. I realized that I was wearing my cut-offs, tie-dyed shirt, flipflops, and had mountain-man-hippie-hair. There was no way I was going to avoid being hauled in.

Then he looked at my license and asked me why I was driving so erratically.

And I realized that I was about to tell him about a huge rat under my truck at three in the morning. No way.

But I did. I told him about the rat. He looked the truck over and said, "Is he still under there?"

I said that I did not know--I never saw him leave.

He thought it over and said, "Drive safely on the way home."

I did.

Titanic

It sank almost 100 years ago with 1,500 people aboard. Get over it, people.  It is not that interesting.

Census

In 1980 I drove around my town and asked people to fill out their U. S. Census forms.  The folks that I visited had already ignored multiple requests, so they were not interested.

One old woman thought that the U. S. government was cooperating with the Russians so that when they took over that they would know how many rooms she had so they could quarter troops.

I warned one woman, as I had been trained to do, that the next visitor with a census form would be a federal marshal.

I was such a jerk.

Entropy

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold -- William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

Systems tend toward disorder.  This is a casual paraphrase of the Second Law of Thermodynamics--the Law of Entropy.

Orson Scott Card's "Alvin Maker" books frame evil as the destructive force, which the world tends toward, like water flowing downhill.  Whereas good, the constructive force, must work against the tide.

Things wear out, rocks erode away, the sun cools slowly.

Over a decade ago, I read something that Marilyn Vos Savant wrote.  I paraphrase it, thus.  Information is not subject to entropy.  That which stores the information is subject to entropy--paper decays, your hard drive crashes.

Other than Card's "Alvin Maker," I have not read anything which makes entropy a character in a story.  But now I am thinking about it.  Right now my ideas are soup.  I have to overcome my own entropy to make it into something solid.

The Divide

I think about what is right and wrong.

If people do not agree with me, then I am ready to discuss how they think about the subject.

A good friend of mine did an excellent job of teaching me about the other side of the argument. She said that she does not think about what is right and wrong. She just knows what is right and wrong.

My friend and I are divided. Since we are extremely tolerant, we are able to remain friends.

I first read about such the divide in a book by Thomas Sowell over a decade ago. I have heard/read similar libertarian discussions over the years. These discussions did not come home to me until my friend gave me the viewpoint above--she knows what is right and wrong, just like Sowell, et. al. said she does.

How do the people on either side of the divide view each other? Since my friend is so tolerant, I will leave her, in particular, aside in this analysis.

To me, the folks on the other side should think--should do analysis. They do not have impure motives. They are honest folks that have faulty methods.

But the folks on the other side see right and wrong as obvious observation that needs no method of analysis. So they view me--who differs from them--as purposefully choosing evil.

These are the two worlds.

A few years ago I was in the DMV, listening to a conversation between two young women.  One was telling the other how to achieve the good life.  "Have your baby.  Apply to this place for your housing.  Apply to that place for your support check.  Apply to this place for your medicaid.  Apply to that place for . . . " 

The one was teaching the other a life plan.

Young women like these end up being supported by government--never learning personal responsibility.  For me, that is no life at all.  Such a path gives no hope of achieving any meaningful purpose.  Typically, those mothers remain single and poor.  Their children will be poor.  They will more likely fall into a life of crime.

My heart breaks for these young women.  My heart breaks for their children.  I hate the system that robs them of the opportunity for achievement--though they are willing participants, I understand that a corrupt system will corrupt them, too.

But this is on my side of the divide.

On the other side of the divide, my friend's heart goes out to the single mother with no means of support.  How will her child live?  Where will they live?  We must give her housing and food and medical care and other necessities.  It is only right.

On my side of the divide the answer is to tear down the system that encourages the terrible existence.  A child must be a burden to the girl's parents if she is to be seriously taught not to bear children that she cannot care for. 

That is tough.  For me it is tough love--and the only kind of real love. For those on the other side of the divide it is hate.

Part of the divide is analysis vs. emotion.

Part of the divide is short run vs. long run.

But there is little hope convincing someone on the other side because both see the other's approach as alien.  Now and then someone has an epiphany. 

The people to whom I have spoken that have come over to my side of the divide have felt the ephiphany as powerful as being hit by lightning.  And the epiphany is as rare as being hit by lightning.

Bread and a Lie

I was an only child at age three.  My mom walked into the room and saw a loaf of bread on the seat of my high chair.  It was squashed flat.

She asked, "John, did you squash this loaf of bread."

I said, "No."

Kids have no idea how transparent their lies are.

Just Love

We finished talking about unemployment today.  One topic was how the official unemployment rate could systematically err. (Yes, this post is really about love.)

A student asked about how illegal aliens would affect the unemployment rate.  As usual, I asked questions and had them answer. 

If you're an illegal and you get the call from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, do you tell them that (1) you have a job (2) you don't have a job (3) you are looking for a job?

I got the answer that I consider to be most likely.  If you are that illegal worker, you hang up the phone.

So the first conclusion is that the unemployment rate likely does not reflect the presence of illegals at all.

My next statement and question was this.  If illegals are not included in the official statistics, because they do not participate in the survey, will that increase or decrease the unemployment rate?  The answer depends on whether illegals are more or less likely to be employed.

I got the right answer again.  Illegals do not have unemployment insurance. And they would often find it more difficult to get any other welfare benefits.  That means they probably are more likely to be employed than non-illegals.  So illegals really lower the unemployment rate, though we never pick that up in the data.  The official rate is likely overstated.

The students' unprejudiced analytical view was too much for me.  At that moment, I just loved my students.

Letter to a Friend

Victor,

On the way home I pondered your question about whether it was moral to set up the sneaker factory in Vietnam and employ 6 year olds--or maybe it's 12 year olds, since I'm not sure how much 6 year olds can contribute.

I think that those who choose to work in a new factory only do so because they think their lives would be improved by it. Perhaps they are choosing to live in the factory or die in the jungle. Unless I could be convinced that Nike is using force or the threat of force to acquire workers, I think that Nike would be immoral to forego setting up up the factory for the sake of political correctness.

Similarly, were those kids we discussed who lived in the coal mines choosing between living in the mines or dying on the city streets? As I said, the choice between living in 1600's Jamestown or living in 1800's Philadelphia is an easy one to make.

Maybe it is immoral for dad to tell the kid to work in the factory, rather than play in the jungle (and maybe die in the jungle). A middle-eastern friend of mine once said, on this topic, "That is why you have the damned kid. He is supposed to help the family. He helps support the family, he supports you in your old age, and his kids support him in his old age."

Maybe we would rather have a lot of government aid to bring those kids into Y2K America. It never seems to work, though. Self improvement through freedom is the path up. (Then once a country is up, they seem to decide that this path is distasteful and try to short-cut advancement through a welfare state that ends upward progress).

If government concentrates on eliminating coercion, individuals improve themselves. And as they improve themselves, they cannot help but improve others. Donald Trump does not want to make a lot of people better off, but his gaudy empire employs a lot of people. If we squash him because we disapprove of whatever it is that he produces, then what happens to those people who had jobs in Trump empire?

I probably did not say much that was new. My point in writing was just that I consider it immoral to bow to the utopian protesters at WTO meetings who demand that we refuse a hand up to the third world, since we can't offer them the Garden of Eden.

John

The Heart and the Head on 9-11

My heart takes a back seat to my head in almost all decisions. That does not mean that I never make mistakes because I think everything through correctly. By extension, my analysis of situations that I have no direct control over is primarily mental. This shapes my opinions.

I know plenty of people for whom this is not the case. Their initial reaction is emotional. I probably cannot appreciate the benefits of the emotionally centered person. But in reflecting on 9-11, I may have uncovered a difference between the two types.

My analysis of 9-11 was the following. Islamic terrorists wish to target our unarmed, untrained civilians; we must send armed, trained troops to kill them. We must discover their plots in every way possible and prevent further slaughter. Even though we supplied weapons to Afgani fighters, so that they could kick the Russians out, the Afganis still considered us the enemy. I view that as evidence that Islamic terrorists cannot be appeased. Bin Laden clearly said that he was inspired by our weakness in withdrawing from Lebanon--he was not enraged by our strength.

This reason does not fade with time. I do not see that any of these assumptions have been challenged over time.

Emotions fade with time. We burn with love for a high school crush. Later our emotions are wholly different.

We cry on 9-11 for the slaughter of thousands. But we cannot cry every day like that, for every person who was slaughtered. Our heart does not have the capacity.

I view the current political retreat in the face of terrorism to result from a fading of the emotions of those who are prone to act primarily on emotion. When the emotion fades, it is hard to find the reason to continue onward. Those who react emotionally construct an elaborate rationalization which is consistent with their changing emotions.

Some may have said on 9-12, "We must kill this enemy. If we must invade countries, then we will. If we must torture these men who slaughtered thousands, then we will.* But we cannot allow this to happen again next week or next month or next year."

But, with a year of no further attacks . . . and two years . . . and eight years, this person's emotions have subsided.

Now this person says, "We must change our behavior so that the enemy will soften their approach. We must respect the sovereignty of countries who would plot our destruction, up until the day they take hostile action. We must treat the inhuman beast in a humane fashion, even if this means losing lives. Nothing has happened in the past years and that is a sign that nothing will happen."

After eight years, what I view as my reasoned response remains.

It happened. It can happen again. They hate us. Our attempts at concession show the weakness that inspires them. Our security was lax before 9-11. We needed new rules. We still need new rules.

My emotions have faded since 9-11. The images and the testimony of those who lost sons and daughters and mothers and fathers bring some of that emotion back. Fading emotions cannot sustain the resolve of a people--even to protect themselves--only enduring reason can.


----------------------
*Note that even high-level decision makers in Congress did not object when they were privately briefed on torture. They understood that protecting our sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers was worth harming the killers.

I Miss David Letterman

I was in college when David Letterman got his first late night talk show. He was the new thing. He was funny. His sense of humor was fresh back then.

He was a skeptic about the glam of show business while he was working in that same medium. He was a skeptic about government and of other centers of power. In short, he was a comedian, and comedians are best when they're working as an "out" and not as an "in."

Tonight David interviewed a guest who once modestly proposed that a world wide government (goodbye, U. S. A.) might be necessary to impose forced sterilization and abortion to control population. In such a regime, you would be a criminal if you had too many children. If a woman was found to be pregnant without permission she would be hunted down and her baby would be aborted--that's what forced abortion is.

Monsterous.

Since I am an old guy, I associate such advocacy with Chairman Mao. A person who calls for such measures is crying for Big Brother to take control of the most intimate aspects of our lives. If you have read my writing before, you know I am an advocate of freedom--of people freely working out solutions to their problems.

David got along well with his guest. No, he was not discussing just how great forced sterilization and abortion would be with the guest. He was discussing one of the latest advocacy fads, which, if enacted, would result in shorter, less fulfilling lives.

But I can never take a person who, as a sober, well-trained scientist, seriously advocated Big Brother. David Letterman can now take such a person seriously.

Of course this guest is now in a position of power. David's interview was, essentially, speaking power to truth.

I'll miss David Letterman. I'm just glad the old David did not live to see the new one.

Real Life

As an expert witness, I once had to estimate the dollar loss to a couple suing for a possible malpractice that resulted in the death of their three day old child.

So I had to find an estimate of the cost of raising a kid in terms of money spent and in terms of the market value of the service provided by parents (maid, cook, chauffer, babysiter, etc.). The estimate was around $400,000 per kid.

Kids are the costliest little decisions in the world. The time and effort that one must take to raise a kid is huge.

So my three kids cost something less than $1.2 million dollars. I say less because some services do not multiply exactly--for example, hiring a cook for three is not three times as expensive as hiring a cook for one.

When I teach economics I tell my students that we undertake decisions for which the benefits outweight the costs. And I say that the benefits of each of my kids outweigh the costs. Overall, having a family is the best thing that one can do with one's life.

This idea is at the heart of economics. Perhaps we would rather dwell on benefits of things that we favor. But there are always costs. Since I can be happy, even with this perspective, perhaps I am fortunate I found my profession.

I wrote a haiku in which I attempted to express the essence of choice: we take one option, and we give up another. Whether we consider any of our options "good" or whether we consider all options "good," the getting, as well as the giving up, is the nature of choice.

Choice is all about living in the moment. All action takes place, as Pirsig said in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, on the present's knife edge, cutting through a boundless, undefined future, and leaving a decided past. Here is my haiku.

Tender shoots encased

in an age of ice. The hare

Picks the best bait's trap.

Vick

Michael Vick went to prison for two years for operating a dogfighting ring.

He was recently released and will soon be able to play professional football again.

He had to confess how wrong he was. He had to say that he now loves Big Brother. Or maybe he was saying that he now loves Little Rover.

It reminds me of an old song I heard on my family's Edison record player. The record was a quarter inch thick and the phonograph had to be wound with a crank.

Eastward, westward, home's the best word,
When you're blue and all alone.
Little Rover, think it over.
Don't forget to come back home.

Indian Cornbread

The simplest dish that I know of is what southerners call indian cornbread. It is also called fried cornbread or hot water cornbread in some quarters.

Pour corn meal in a bowl.
Add some salt.
Pour in boiling water--paste should not be runny, but can stop just short of runny.
Shape into palm-sized disks with hands dipped in cool water.
Put in a cast iron skillet which has a thin layer of hot oil and fry until it starts to brown.
Flip, repeat.

My mom and grandma cooked it. My wife's mom and grandma cooked it. Men cooked it in wartime, since all you need is corn meal, water, and oil--when they could get even those simple ingredients.

So few people cook anymore that I do not know if indian cornbread will survive.

My Alma Mater

In its own way, this is the most beautiful campus in the world. Julia and I sat on that footbridge, day or night, watched and listened to the bayou.

When I did job search as I finished graduate school, I had an interview at my alma mater and at another university--one which was a cut above, with regard to research capabilities, which is what graduate students mostly consider.

I was torn. But when I got the offer to return to the bayou, I realized that I did not want anything else.

Oh, by the way, the University has classrooms, dorms, a huge library, and all the other stuff you need to educate a dozen thousand students.

Somehow, despite the fact that a medium sized university immediately surrounds this bayou, the natural beauty of this place is preserved. And somehow the administration manages to all-but-hide this jewel on their web site. I found it after a close inspection.

Lemma

This is a lemma related to Murphy's law.

Even though you can't tie a knot that will hold in the face of any adversity, if you drop two sets of headphones in your bag, upon removal you will find them tied in undefeatable knots.

What's In "A Name"

Julia and I were in a nearby city with a Mexican population so large that there is a Mexican side of town (with excellent authentic food).

We passed a sign that said,

"Sanchez" Auto Repair

Yes, the "Sanchez" was in quotation marks on the sign. What the heck was that?

Was the guy's name Santanna, but everybody called him Sanchez? Was the guy's name Sanders, but, since he served Mexican customers, they called him Sanchez?

Or did the guy have some deconstructionist outlook that views language, and also names, as artificial constructions that shape an arbitrary personal reality, such that any attempt at communication does not transmit information regarding a shared reality, but only reveals the biased worldview of the "communicator."

The latter is not likely because he is still in business. You can be a deconstructionist history professor, but not a deconstructionist auto repair person. "You say that your car is not running. But your car is 'running' our environment toward a cataclysmic ruin. $525.82, please. I don't take 'checks.'"

In Betweens

My eleven year old son and I drove to a nearby town for my doctor visit and so he could have a bigger selection of games on which to spend some Christmas money. On the way we talked about the language of meals.

I am from an in-between generation in the south. My parents ate breakfast, dinner, and supper. Non-southerners ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So from my family I got one language and from television I got another language. My kids have much less confusion since their parents are muddled, while the television is clear.

The only thing I cannot figure out in all this is the meal at school when I was young. We ate lunch--I don't know why. Everyone's parents knew that the noon meal was dinner, but their kids ate lunch at school. In fact, Huey Long, noteworthy socialist governor of Louisiana, provided free lunches, not dinners, at school.

I would love to blame the national government for the confusion at school, but in Huey Long's day the federal government stayed out of schools.

The word "dinner" is first recorded in the year 1297 and meant "the main meal of the day." Dinner was originally the first meal of the day, but eventually became the noon meal. "Lunch" is first recorded in 1829, however "luncheon" dates from 1580. In either case, "dinner" predates "lunch" by centuries.

Why did we have to change it!?