Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Question of the day

So how come, like, every single patient on House goes into liver failure?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Note to self

Do not wear slightly ridiculous, yet nonetheless beloved, Abercrombie and Fitch miniskirt near Alex, nor permit him to see pictures of same.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Your tax dollars at work

I've been in California this weekend, and during that time, I bought a few little sample bottles of shampoo and conditioner that I did not use. So why not take them back with me?

Alas, I had not reckoned with the awesome investigative powers of our Transportation Safety Authority, which pulled my bag off the security conveyor belt faster than you can say "ridiculous application of silly rules". The offense? The shampoo and conditioner were under the 3.5 ounce limit, but they were not in a plastic ziploc bag.

I offered to put them in a non ziploc bag. No dice. Apparently, only clear plastic bags with a zipper are good enough for Our Girls in Blue. You can always reason with the people at security. You can always reason with your wall, too, and you'll get about as far as I did. In vain did I explain that the direction to put your belongings in a clear plastic ziploc bag was to make them easy to pull out of your bag and inspect, not because the items represent some independent security threat unless they are enclosed in a baggy.

"They have to be in a ziploc bag," said the nice security lady.

"What do you think the bag adds?" I asked. "Do you think that the air pressure differential will keep me from opening a ziploc baggy in flight?"

"They have to be in a ziploc bag," she repeated.

It's not that I particularly mind the loss of a travel size sleek 'n shine shampoo set. But I resent being treated to rule applications so blind that they zip past moronic and straight into The Kafka Zone. And I suspect that they are so moronically applied because we treat the TSA people like morons. How low does one's IQ have to be to indicate that one cannot comprehend the security purpose, and limits, of a ziploc baggy? Whatever the cutoff, I am sure that this woman was above it. But hey, terrorism! So we create a bunch of silly rules, and then demand that our silly TSA people follow them blindly . . . and we all go merrily down the road to airport hell together.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

New York libertarian Todd Seavey has a new blog, featuring quite a rant about feminism. Thoughts tomorrow, if I have time.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Moving day

The movers have been here for an hour, and boy, are they efficient. I won't exactly call moving a joy (and I still have to trudge around looking for apartments), but I have to say, paying guys several thousand dollars to pack everything up and put it in storage sure beats the old box-and-uhaul regime. This middle class lifestyle is everything the television commercials promised. Specialisation rocks!

I, meanwhile, am crammed into a corner, feeling useless and trying hard not to sob hysterically while they disassemble years of loving homemaking. So why not blog? I've already done two crosswords, and the third one is stumping me. (Does anyone know the capital of Upolu Island? Without googling . . . that's cheating.) Unfortunately, all I have to offer right now is a primal scream. The stuff's not even moving somewhere; it's going into storage while I straighten out the rest of my life.

On the plus side, I'm finding all sorts of stuff I'd forgotten I had. Who knew you could lose so much in 435 square feet?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

You must suffer for your own good

When I was seven or eight, and my teacher first explained slavery to me, I laughed. I mean, really, the thing is ludicrous. How could a person own another human being? It's so obviously ridiculous that you simply can't help laughing at the notion. Honestly, occasionally it still strikes me as funny. In the abstract, I mean, not the execution.

I have a similar reaction to the War on Drugs. I don't even understand how it is possible that, in order to keep some people from ruining their lives with prescription painkillers, we are willing to condemn other people to horrendous suffering. Why have so few other people noticed that this is not merely wrong, but also thoroughly silly?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Why ask why?

Jim and Julian agree that even if we had found WMD in Iraq, it wouldn't have justified the war, so why bother arguing that there were some?

It seems to me that this is confusing what war opponents said--and I agree, they did say just that--with victory in the national debate. Jim and Julian may not have cared whether Iraq had WMD¹, but Jim and Julian are (in so many ways!) not typical voters. Those voters did care whether Iraq had WMD.

I find it hard to imagine that if we had found that Iraq was, say, eighteen months from having a nuclear bomb, we would be seeing the same national debate we have now. If troops had found a decent sized stockpile of uranium, or designs for a bomb, or what have you, the majority of Americans would now think that the war was a good idea, even if all other events had unfolded the same way. Jim and Julian, presumably, still would not. But they would have lost the national debate.

Even if we'd found a substantial biological weapons programme, the same logic would hold; possibly, even if they'd had decent-sized stockpiles of chemical weapons. That's why people who supported the war, and want not to admit that they were wrong, are eager to find that there were WMD after all.

I mean, why do libertarians bother proving that the free market does stuff better? After all, if you're against coercion, then raising taxes for non-common goods is wrong even if the government can provide health care better than the free market.

But the question answers itself. First of all, they think it's true (which doesn't seem to apply in the case of the rather silly Spectator article Jim and Julian are talking about), and two, because the majority of Americans who don't believe that taxation is theft are more likely to be moved by efficiency arguments than by earnest young people declaming that liberty dies a little bit every time the government mails out a social security check.

That does not, of course, make this grasping at straws any less batshit crazy. But it has a certain logic to it, like opponents of welfare reform who keep trying to discover a special, hidden kind of poverty that isn't showing up in any of the, y'know, poverty figures. You just start knowing what evidence you need, and then progressively lower your threshhold until you find something that resembles it . . . I mean, if you squint really hard and don't put on your glasses or turn the lights up or anything. The human ability for self-delusion in the face of error has a force something akin a natural law.

¹ I mean, not enough to think it merited invading the place. Neither Jim nor Julian is observably in favour of evil dictators with nukes

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Bleg

For reasons that will be revealed later, I am looking for an old television commercial; specifically, the "Rocket Chef". Does anyone know where I could score such a thing?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Random aside

I now have exactly 1666 songs in iTunes. Does this mean Dr. Dog is the antichrist preparing for a thousand-year rule? Just askin' . . .

From the desk of Jane Galt:

The rumours are all true

Dr. Dog's new album really is that good¹.

I will never doubt again.

¹ Another victory for small Philadelphia bands. Sigh. To think what might have been if money, interpersonal conflict, and a lack of talent had not intervened . . .

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Sunday time waster

Here. I'm "Megaldo". Nobody summons Megaldo!

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Where have I gone?

I'm guest-blogging at Andrew Sullivan this week. Plus blogging like mad on Free Exchange. Posting here will be light.

But here's an item that does belong here. On Saturday evening, I went to a play in Baltimore. My friend and I were chatting about the game friends and I used to play, in high school and college, of making up just barely believable stories to tell strangers, usually in bars. "So you were a pathological liar?" said my friend.

Not thirty minutes later, in the Japanese restaurant, I confirmed this opinion by unblushingly informing the waiter that I am allergic to seaweed, and asking them to make the rolls without it. Now, in fact, I am not allergic to seaweed; I just hate the taste of it. But "allergic" produces more willingness to help me out by making the rolls without seaweed than "I hate one of the major components of your national cuisine, please cater to my philistine tastes". I have used this line with great success in many other restaurants.

In this case, it backfired spectacularly; the restaurant first refused to serve me rolls, then nearly refused to serve me at all, while my friend tried desperately not to topple out of the chair and roll around on the floor in helpless laughter. Eventually, I succeeded in persuading them to sell me some food after "explaining" that seaweed won't put me into anaphylactic shock, but merely disagrees with my stomach. A sorrow shared may be halved, and a joy shared doubled, but a humiliation shared is at least cubed.

But here's the thing: I am under the impression that occasionally making up stories in bars (though I haven't done so in years), and claiming to be allergic to food that you merely despise, are very common things. Am I mistaken? Do I need therapy?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I do not think that means what you think it means

Before I start, let me say I'm no fan of abstinence based education. But the much-hyped study from HHS, showing that abstinence based education makes no difference in adolescent sexual behaviour, is not exactly a triumph for the prior consensus on sex ed. Everyone seems to have missed the explosive finding, which is that abstinence-based education makes no difference in adolescent sexual behaviour. The kids didn't have sex any later, but they also weren't any less likely to use birth control. If this study is correct, it implies that all sex-ed is useless, a result I don't find particularly surprising, actually.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Ethics question of the day

You are a worker in a hospital. An unidentified patient dies on your ward. In his pocket are two tickets for a sold-out concert for two hours hence. You are pretty sure he isn't going to be identified in time to use the tickets. Would you take them? And if not, why not?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Randall Parker blogs about brain genes being found on the x-chromosome, which may explain the purported higher standard deviation in male IQ (more geniuses, but also more mental retardation). This brings up an interesting question:

An interesting consequence of the higher male standard deviation for IQ is that women above average in IQ generally can find men who are as smart or smarter to pair up with. But in the below average territory the women are going to tend to be smarter than the males of their social class and neighborhoods.

What I've always wondered: When successful men divorce their middle aged wives and marry younger women are the second wives less bright on average than the first wives? In other words, do the men decide to be less choosy on IQ in order to get younger second wives? I'm not looking for anecdotes to the contrary. I want to know about averages. Also, are the children born to second marriages as smart on average as children born to first marriages?

I'm not sure whether this is true on average, or whether it's just folk wisdom that appeals to our envious streak (sure, she may be younger and prettier, but boy is she stupid!) Nor can I imagine there's much data on it, but maybe I'm wrong. What do y'all think?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Wondering how to get those lost White House emails back? PC World has some tips. Interestingly, waterboarding did not make the list.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Good night, sweet prince

My brilliant friend Alex has started a brilliant blog, upon which I learn that Prince William has broken with his girlfriend. My first thought was that this is a colossal mistake, since the good prince is rapidly coming to resemble his father, which will make it harder to attract another bride so good looking. The second thought is that of course, this is ridiculous, because of course it probably isn't hard to attract attractive women if you're the future king of England. I don't quite understand that, of course, since being a member of the royal family looks like possibly the worst job in the world that doesn't involve handling human waste. But the British always were a bit strange.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Comment of the day

From commenter Zach:

I also enjoyed the longer version of _Stranger in a Strange Land._ At the same time, Heinlein is the last author who should be put forward as a case against editors. It's startling how much better the heavily constrained and edited childrens' books and short stories hold up on rereading than the stuff he wrote later in his career.

A good editor was needed to take Heinlein firmly by the hand -- wearing sterile gloves if necessary -- and insist that no more than 1/4 of the possible male-female sexual pairings be explored in any given novel.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Success has one father . . .

We are all far too ready to attribute success to our sterling personal qualities, rather than environment. (Failure, of course, just couldn't be helped.) Alexandra Starr writes that political figures are not immune:

Chávez embarked on this ambitious, risky agenda even as oil prices began to dip, a sign, perhaps, of how much he believes his authority derives from his charisma and vision rather than from high global demand for petroleum. But he may want to heed the experience of Carlos Andrés Pérez, the other modern Venezuelan leader who had the good fortune to serve during an extended oil boom. Pérez, who first served as president from 1974 to 1979 and won a subsequent term in 1988, also enjoyed periods of wild popularity. When oil money coursed into the country in the 1970s, Pérez nationalized Venezuela’s iron ore and petroleum industries. Pérez relished international power politics as much as Chávez does: he meddled in Nicaraguan affairs, championed Bolivia’s bid to win access to the sea, and served as vice president of Socialist International, an organization that promotes labor rights and democracy. There are, of course, salient differences between the two men. Pérez had an uneasy relationship with the United States, but it was nothing like the virulent hatred Chávez harbors for the country he calls “the evil empire.” (The animosity stems in part from the Bush administration’s jubilant reaction when Chávez was briefly forced from office in 2002.) And Pérez respected the basic norms of Venezuela’s democracy. He didn’t rewrite the constitution, clamp down on the media, or intimidate nongovernmental organizations opposed to his rule. Those are all legacies of Chávez’s tenure. Still, there are striking similarities between the two presidents’ agendas, and Pérez’s eventual fate should give Chávez pause. When voters returned Pérez to the presidency in the late 1980s, he led them to believe they were in for a reprise of the go-go years. But years of low oil prices had left government coffers bare. Instead of dispensing goodies to businesses and jacking up spending on social programs as he did during his first term, Pérez was obligated to inflict harsh economic measures, including raising the price of gasoline. Stunned Venezuelans took to the streets; bloody riots left as many as 1,000 people dead. It was an inauspicious debut for the administration, and an ambitious Hugo Chávez spotted an opportunity. Three years later he led a coup d’état, and while the effort failed, it politically wounded Pérez, and he was ousted from power in 1993. Pérez’s successor commuted Chávez’s prison sentence, and the ex-military officer immediately began campaigning for the presidency. With the support of Venezuela’s poor, he won the 1998 election in a landslide.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Note to self

No matter how famous I get, I will never make the classic mistake of all famous writers, which is to hand my manuscript over to an editor and declare that it is deathless prose which must be published exactly as it is. Down this path lies ignominy.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Cause or effect?

Robert Epstein challenges the whole concept of adolesence:

As a longtime professor and researcher, I got curious. Were our young people always required to attend school, and were their work opportunities always limited to babysitting, yard work, and cleaning the floors at fast-food joints? Were they always subject to so many restrictions? Are teenagers necessarily incompetent and irresponsible, as the media tell us? Is there really an immature “teenage brain” that holds them back? After all, past puberty, technically speaking we’re not really children anymore, and presumably through most of human history we bore our young when we were quite young ourselves. It occurred to me that young people must be capable of functioning as competent adults, or the human race quite probably would not exist.

Speaking for myself, I was immature and thoroughly incapable of managing my own life at the age of 17. Of course, I often feel that's true at the age of 34, so this may not be evidence for the existence of adolescence. More to the point, it's worth asking whether we treat adolescents thus because they are immature, or whether they are immature because we coddle them in such a ridiculous fashion.

Certainly, it is not evolutionarily normal for children to spend the majority of their time immersed in a peer group composed of people within a year of their own age. Nor is it probably healthy. Children act rather like animals when they're in groups together. Not only the immaturity of adolescence, but the barbaric cruelty of much of it, may be due to the fact that herding children into a series of age-segregated activities profoundly retards the process of socialisation. If Judith Harris is right, and peer group effects dominate parental influence, we are in effect letting large groups of children raise each other.

On the other hand, while I understand that "adolescence" was not, as such, a concept in 19th century America or before, "youth" was. The literature of the era seems to be firmly of the opinion that there is something sad about fourteen year old boys having to work to support their families. And it is a commonplace thing that young men and women are very likely to do foolish things from which they should be protected. People may have stepped into adulthood earlier, but they did so with training wheels, surrounded by a huge extended family that guided them through the rocks and shoals of early adulthood. Now that a first job may be across the country from your parents, it's hardly surprising that they want you to wait until you're really well prepared. Not to mention the fact that modern jobs require a bit more training than the basic 19th century employment of writing things down in books, or moving heavy objects from one place to another.

But then, even after all this extensive training, young people on their own for the first time still manage to have disastrous relationships, unsustainable credit card debt, summary firings from first jobs, and so forth. So perhaps Epstein is right, and we're only extending the foolish phase well into the twenties.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

In response to the post below, one of my commenters avers that racism is logical application of the law of averages, and the system is in fact rigged in favour of underachieving blacks.

It is arguably true that the system is so rigged in two areas--elite education and government contracting. But these two areas affect the lives of a very small percentage of American citizens. Most schools admit more than 2/3 of their students; affirmative action is irrelevant. And I hope we can all agree that working for the government shouldn't be anyone's lifelong ambition. There's pretty considerable evidence that at lower levels, being black is a substantial handicap to getting and keeping a job.

Perhaps this is a rational employer response; on average, black men are more likely to be criminals, high school dropouts, and have other traits that make them less desireable employees, than white men. But that's sort of a cop out, because most of those traits are easily discernible by, say, asking about high school graduation and criminal records. Compared to the social damage done by blanket decisions not to interview applicants with "black sounding" names, the cost of a few extra interviews where you unfortunately discover the applicant has a criminal record seems pretty trivial.

Moreover, even if such discrimination were useful, this is not a simple equilibrium. If you permit people to discriminate so that black men have to work twice as hard to get half as far as white men, then the rational response of black men is not necessarily to try four times as hard; it might be to give up. Perhaps you are the sort of extraordinary achiever who would cheerfully put out four times as much effort as your coworkers just to get the same rewards, but that is expecting too much of most ordinary human material.

In American society, racial problems are a toxic dynamic in which both sides accrue blame as they react to the reactions of the others. This is why both sides have to be prepared to work on them, rather than (as almost everyone currently seems to prefer), sitting back and demanding that the other guy make all the effort. Yes, black teenagers have to work harder in school. But white employers also have to focus on the individual, not the group. The evidence I've seen shows that this is pretty clearly not happening now.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Other quote of the day

The rappers made me do it is a crappy excuse when your teenager uses it. It’s contemptible coming from grown men.

From Jim Henley.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Quote of the day

Yes, the theory of evolution now gives us at least a partial answer to one of the great, pressing puzzles of our existence. But many remain for the atheist. I don't know, or pretend to know, how life first arose on Earth, or why there is Something rather than Nothing, or whether I have any special purpose in life, or how subjective mind arises from objective matter, or why the physical constants of the universe are what they are, or even why there are any physical laws at all. To be an atheist in the face of those gaps in understanding is to refuse the temptation to tame our ignorance by affixing a name to it. We reject one Mystery, and receive many mysteries in exchange.

From Julian Sanchez.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Speaking of Kevin, is he right that we should be outraged by what rap artists put in their songs, the same way we are by Don Imus?

There's a double standard for whites and blacks in our culture regarding racial epithets. As there should be. A black man calling a white man "cracker" is not nearly so bad as a white man calling a black man "nigger". That doesn't mean endorsing the use of the former epithet, or liking the people who use it. There should be cultural opprobrium for both. But there should be much more cultural opprobrium for the latter, because it is a symptom of a cultural sickness that needs to be stamped out not just for social comity, but because justice demands it.

The way you stamp out those kinds of cultural traits is by making such expressions unthinkable. When we sack Don Imus, it's a modern-day version of an ancient practice: signalling that you cannot say something like that, and still be part of the tribe. Xenophobia, like rape and murder, is a deep rooted instinct, and requires very powerful social conditioning to overcome it.

Such taboos are dangerous: it is not a good thing for America that the empirical question of IQ differences within ethnic groups is off limits (leaving it mostly to internet fever swamps full of people who are entirely too ready to attribute all differences to genetic inferiority). But no culture can survive without setting some limits, and Imus's remarks weren't vaguely empirical; they were just random, nasty invective.

I think it's obvious that there should also be a taboo against "cracker", or rappers using racial and sexual slurs, simply because a healthy society rubs along best when people don't call each other names. Black leaders should probably not bask in the company of nasty rappers, and all of us should leave their albums on the shelf. But that said, the two things simply aren't the same. One perpetuates a system which considerable evidence shows is still rigged against people simply for the colour of their skin. The other is just rude. Both are wrong, but they're different degrees of wrong--like the difference between shoving your girlfriend in the middle of a fight, and beating the crap out of her with your closed fists until she begs you to stop.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Izzat so?

In response to my post on CEO pay, Kevin Drum said:

I wouldn't take "CEO" so literally. CEOs are easy to measure and their pay makes for nice charts, but it's really executive pay in general that's the issue. And if you take a look at the total compensation of, say, the top 20 or 30 executives at all F500 companies, the amount of money they make is a pretty substantial percentage of corporate profits.

But of course, even that's not really the issue, I think. The real issue is why corporate profits have skyrocked for the past few decades but average worker pay has stagnated. Some people don't care about that, but a lot of us do. If workers were getting a cut of the productivity boom, I think most liberals wouldn't really care how much the CEO was taking home.

Over at Free Exchange, a rebuttal.

From the desk of Winterspeak:

Meritocracy. Really.

Jane clarifies her earlier point on meritocracy

The current system is meritocratic in the sense that it mostly takes hard work and talent to get into a top school, and then succeed there... It is also not meritocratic in the sense that affluent parents provide things to their children--connections, social knowlege of how to move around in the elite milieu, the money to take unpaid internships and low-paid jobs while moving up the professional ladder, and a peer group that values education above almost all things--that lower-income parents do not

It may be unfair but I'm not sure it's unmeritocratic. And I'm not splitting semantic hairs here: a meritocracy is "a system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement" and all of the things Jane lists -- connections, social knowledge, useful work for low pay, a good peer group -- are real assets that lead to real abilities which translate into real achievements. Therefore, a system that rewards such investments is, by definition, meritocratic.

If some people are denied the opportunity to develop these real assets then that may not be fair, but it may still be meritocratic. I would also add that meritocracy is the only system that offers these low-opportunity folks a chance. It is possible for an individual born into poor circumstances, in the US, through luck and dint of effort to have real ability, and a meritocracy would raise that person to the appropriately lofty position in society. In a system based on some political sorting, a person born on the outside would have no mechanism to get on the inside.

This conversation began with CEO pay, which is quite different from what school you went to. While going to a good school certainly helps make big bucks, Jane and I both know people who went to very good schools are not making big bucks, and people who went to perfectly adequate schools (maybe state schools) who are doing just fine.

High-end colleges care about legacy -- a truly non-meritocratic criteria -- much more than business. Check out this list of which colleges CEOs went to in Time Magazine. All worthy institutions, but not a solid block of Ivy by any means. Perfectly accessible to smart, hardworking individuals who never had the benefit of learning how to "move around in the elite milieu"

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Meritocracy? Really?

My co-blogger takes me to task for criticising the meritocratic school system:

A meritocratic educational system is the only way for a poor, smart, hardworking, child to get a good education and take advantage of those natural talents. An educational system based on wealth, geographic location, or skin color will not be helpful. Furthermore, a meritocratic educational system will also help a poor, average intelligence, average industrious child get a more appropriate education for them, with classes that help them succeed, and not go over their heads. Unfortunately, the current American local tax based education system is not meritocratic, where a voucher system would be. I know Jane supports vouchers, so maybe when she said the problem was a meritocratic school system, she actually meant something else.

Yes, I should have put meritocratic in quotes. The current system is meritocratic in the sense that it mostly takes hard work and talent to get into a top school, and then succeed there (I am a noticeable exception to this rule.) It is not meritocratic in the sense that there are hardworking and talented people who do not move as easily into this system as they should, because the primary and secondary school systems are highly unmeritocratic. It is also not meritocratic in the sense that affluent parents provide things to their children--connections, social knowlege of how to move around in the elite milieu, the money to take unpaid internships and low-paid jobs while moving up the professional ladder, and a peer group that values education above almost all things--that lower-income parents do not. This may be the fault of the parents, but it is not the fault of the children; and a truly meritocratic system would not sort for things like neighbourhood, or parental ability to finance unpaid internships at prestigious institutions.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Culture matters

Last month, when I read Alex Heard's piece on David Sedaris in The New Republic, I thought that Sedaris's fabrications probably aren't the crime that he made out . . . raise your hand if you haven't cleaned up a funny story in the retelling to make it really hilarious (Sorry Marcie, Annabel) . . . but that they were bad enough to warrant a chastened admission from Sedaris. As Jack Shafer attests, this hasn't happened. And as a big Twain-o-phile, I find the "Twain Defense"--Uncle Mark did it!--ridiculous.

Let's be honest: Mark Twain made stuff up. And not just minor stuff. My understanding is that when he was a journalist in Nevada, he used to fabricate things like house fires in remote areas when he didn't have a good story. Certainly, anyone who's familiar with his later work knows that he liberally borrowed anecdotes that happened to someone else, lied about his past, and thoroughly exaggerated every incident that he ever wrote down. Anyone who thinks of "The Innocents Abroad" as straight reporting needs to sit down with a cool compress on their head until the seizure passes.

But his readers didn't think of it as straight reporting. Mark Twain was working in a very different journalistic environment from the current one. Even much later writers got away with, for example, building "composite" characters to dramatise their non-fiction. People expected less from their newspapers, which were in Twain's time often house organs of one political party or another, and later the only source of print most households could afford.

All that changed in the 1950's, and the standards of fidelity to facts have become more stringent with each passing decade. That gives people the expectation that when they read something labeled as non-fiction, or journalism, it is not merely "truthy", but actually true: the words said are things people said, the actions portrayed were actually performed by some person. Obviously, there is a little leeway. I clean up the quotes I print, which otherwise would often go "I, uh, think that there's, um, a few kind of . . . a few things that you have to, you know, think about if you want to, um, implement a school voucher programme." And if your mother gets out of a chair suddenly when she sees a mouse and demands that you kill it, we'll give you humorists a little leeway to describe her as shooting out of the chair like a rocket, screaming "Kill that little bastard dead!" But you can't then go on to say she broke her leg trying to get away with it if she didn't even stub her toe.

When Sedaris makes up whole scenes and large swathes of the dialogue in them, he is trading on the fact that people believe the stuff he writes about actually happened. If it didn't happen, it isn't nearly so funny . . . and as others have pointed out, Sedaris's stuff isn't really amusing enough to make funny fiction. It's like the time I rode up in an elevator with a perfectly normal-looking, straight-laced businessman who positively reeked of pot. This is funny only because it actually happened; the very thing that makes it amusing is that you have to believe something pretty unbelievable. If I wrote that scene in a novel, it wouldn't be funny. It would just be unconvincing.

If Sedaris was as funny as Mark Twain, he would need no defense.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Note to self

Whenever I am tempted to complain about my HR department, I will reread this.

From the desk of Winterspeak:

re: The real question about CEO pay

Jane Galt asks

The real question about CEO pay is... who cares?

She points out that 1) there aren't very many fat cat CEOs, 2) neither customers, shareholders, or employees would benefit much if their pay was reduced, since their lavish pay is still tiny compared to the revenue of the company, 3) they don't have much politcal pull compared to, say, unions, and 4) they aren't buying up anything the common man needs. I agree with all of these positions. Jane goes on to say

The problem with income inequality--and I do see one--is the current worry about lack of mobility. But it isn't CEO's choking the opportunity pipeline with their plenitudinous offspring. It's nice upper middle class people like my parents . . . and every single academic with children who complains about inequality while simultaneously reinforcing and extending the meritocratic educational system that has become the largest single obstacle to intergenerational movement.... The real problem with income inequality is not a few hundred CEO's hogging everything; it's a few million affluent people ensuring that their offspring always come out on top.

Here I disagree. First, I don't think that intergenerational movement is the key measure of social mobility, I think it's how the system responds to shocks. Second, I don't think that a meritocratic educational system is an obstacle to intergenerational movement, in fact I think it's the key enabler (see point 1).

If smart hardworking parents work smart (and hard) to produce smart, hardworking children, and society is meritocratic, you should expect to see success remain within families. This may look like an immobile society, but it is not. The question is, how does this arrangement respond to shocks, and the answer is quite well. If smart hardworking parents produce a dull, lazy child (it happens) then that child is not going to remain successful. Alternatively, if poor parents produce a brilliant child, then in the US at least, it's quite likely that the child will do well (maybe even go from a trailer park to be president). How mobile a society is should not be measure by how much it shuffles up ever generation, it should be how it responds to shocks and reallocates people (and talent) accordingly.

A meritocratic educational system is the only way for a poor, smart, hardworking, child to get a good education and take advantage of those natural talents. An educational system based on wealth, geographic location, or skin color will not be helpful. Furthermore, a meritocratic educational system will also help a poor, average intelligence, average industrious child get a more appropriate education for them, with classes that help them succeed, and not go over their heads. Unfortunately, the current American local tax based education system is not meritocratic, where a voucher system would be. I know Jane supports vouchers, so maybe when she said the problem was a meritocratic school system, she actually meant something else.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

The real question about CEO pay is . . .

Who cares?

CEO pay just isn't a huge problem. There are fewer than 500 of them making more than $1 million a year, which for most companies is probably the average centre-left liberals' golden average of 40X the lowest-paid employee, and considerably less than 40X the salary of the median full-time employee. The really huge pay packages are usually five-year or more deals, so that the top of the list varies from year to year; i.e. the head of Yahoo made $230 million in 2005, but that was almost equal to his total 5-year compensation; 2005 just happened to be the year his options hit.

$50 million a year is still a huge sum, especially considering that Yahoo lost money that year. But that's on revenues of $717 million. The worst, most abusive pay package out there cost shareholders less than $50 apiece--except it didn't, because the stock price didn't tank when it was announced. (Almost all of that deal was in stock, not cash; it didn't strip any real assets out of the firm.) And most CEOs made nowhere near that much. They didn't cost their shareholders very much: spread Rick Wagoner's $8 million a year over the 550 million outstanding shares, and his services cost each share a very affordable $0.01 apiece. Spread it out over his 327,000 employees, and you could give them each a whopping $24 a year.

On a social level, this is even less of a problem. There are fewer than 500 of these guys in a country of 300 million. And it's not like we're in Latin America, and these guys are hogging all the arable land. What exactly are the institutional problems these CEO's are creating? Even if Rick Wagoner made absolutely nothing, he'd still be the head of GM, with all the institutional pull that position creates. The problem is not that he has money. It's that only 500 people can head up the world's 500 largest companies. When he retires, no matter how much cash he has on hand, he'll just be one more guy on the rubber-chicken-talk circuit.

Maybe they're using their money to buy influence? Oh yeah? When Rick Wagoner goes up against the UAW, even in a Republican dominated congress, who do you think wins? (I will give you a broad hint: it is not the head of GM).

But just think of how much you could buy with $250 million for people who really need it! my critics will say. This confuses cash with resources. Status aside, the only sense in which these CEOs can be said to be depriving the poor of anything is to the extent that they use their money to consume scarce resources that the poor need . . . like arable land in Latin America. Money represents a claim on those scarce resources. But CEO's don't cash that claim in: they don't consume very much more of things the poor need than the poor do. Redistributing Terry Semel's "excess" health care, clothing, food and housing to the poor wouldn't produce any noticeable difference in national poverty outcomes; it would make, at best, one other person happier and healthier.

Most of their "extra" consumption lies in things that are rare, and hence not redistributable (fancy gems, harrier planes), or which don't actually cost much more in resources to produce (Hermes handbags). You can move the money around, but that won't give us more doctors, hospital beds, day care workers, policemen, parks, high-quality teachers, museums, etc. Those things can be produced only by shifting people and raw materials currently being used for something else into education, law enforcement, medical construction, and so forth. The laws of arithmetic being what they are, that means a large number of ordinary people giving something up, if only leisure time, in order to free up the resources for other uses.

The problem with income inequality--and I do see one--is the current worry about lack of mobility. But it isn't CEO's choking the opportunity pipeline with their plenitudinous offspring. It's nice upper middle class people like my parents . . . and every single academic with children who complains about inequality while simultaneously reinforcing and extending the meritocratic educational system that has become the largest single obstacle to intergenerational movement. I don't say, mind you, that this system is wrong or should be abolished; that's a question for another day. Nor is it a "tu quoque"; I am worried by the lack of intergenerational income mobility at the same time as I am prepared to do everything I can to give any kids I may have a leg up in the meritocracy. But the focus on CEO pay is a comforting distraction. The real problem with income inequality is not a few hundred CEO's hogging everything; it's a few million affluent people ensuring that their offspring always come out on top.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Department of huh?

One of the things that has long fascinated me about people who make really stupid and awful remarks in public is how long they manage to cling to the hope that they can save their jobs. The rest of us may have known for weeks that they are through, but somehow they manage to convince themselves that maybe, just maybe, everything will be all right. The ghoulish parody of their former lives can go on for weeks before they finally give up the ghost of a chance and resign. Meanwhile, they have pressed it firmly into everyone's head that they genuinely do not grasp either reality, or what they did wrong, making it that much harder to later stage a penitent comeback.

Today's case in point is, obviously, Don Imus, who yesterday said "I don't deserve to be fired" even as advertisers fled the show like cranked-up rats on the Andrea Doria. Well, Don, you just--suddenly and for no apparent reason--directed appalling racial slurs at a perfectly innocent girl's basketball team. And your show seems to be about to not make any money. These seem like two very good reasons for firing you. In fact, it's hard to think of anyone more deserving of termination currently in the public eye.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I downloaded this version of La Fille du Regiment from eMusic preparatory to going to see the thing this week. The opera is already comic, but the sound quality (it was originally recorded for radio in the pre-television days) is so bad that it is actually hilarious. Someone keeps knocking over the microphone, which gives the whole thing a sort of Abbott and Costello quality. Highly recommended.

And thanks to Ezra Klein, incidentally, for encouraging me to join eMusic, although now I'm like a crack addict; I keep upping my subscription level as I trip out my max downloads. Pretty soon I'm going to be in the eMusic equivalent of First Class, mortgaging all my future children so that I can keep downloading obscure radio recordings of Glenn Miller, and Ray Charles duets, along of course with lashings of ancient opera. All I can say, Ezra, is when I end up on the street, shaking a cup for contributions to my eMusic fund, I'd better get a sizeable donation from you.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Hello, I'm from the American Non-Sequitur Society. Blue is a beautiful colour!

On Volokh today, Dale Carpenter blogs this article about domestic partnerships in Washington State. I have nothing to add on the substance, except . . . what the hell is this all about?

"It's not marriage," said Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle. "There are more than 400 state law rights or obligations that don't come with domestic partnership, and we are going to have our hands full trying to get those rights and protections, too....

The bill passed easily on a 63-35 House vote despite condemnations from conservatives who said the bill was an affront to community values and religious freedom.

Gov. Chris Gregoire plans to sign the bill, which earlier passed the Senate, into law. Senate Bill 5336 creates a domestic partnership registry with the state and provides enhanced rights for same-sex couples, including hospital visitation, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Couples would have to share a home, not be married or in a domestic relationship with someone else and be at least 18.

Similar to California law, unmarried heterosexual couples would also be eligible for domestic partnerships if one partner were at least 62.

Why can't all heterosexual couples avail themselves of the benefits of domestic partnership if they so choose? Or, on the other hand, why let any of the bastards get them, since they can get married any time they want? And if we are going to carve out exemptions allowing heterosexuals to partner, what on earth is so special about turning 62? This seems completely and totally random to me. Can someone explain?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

New York City's decision to encourage adult male circumcision triggered a minor conversational firestorm last time I was there. Would circumcision provide similar protective functions in America, where most transmission is not through heterosexual sex? Even if it does work, should the state be in the business of deciding such things? In all this, the obvious point was missed: is anyone really going to take the city up on this?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Belle Waring goes off on the silly "In your face!" gotcha style of the right. Take heart, Belle--the biting rejoinders to straw men existing only in the arguers head are every bit as common, and as stupid, on the left; you're not uniquely beleaguered. Indeed, I've been bemused in exchanges with Belle's very co-bloggers as they delivered what they apparently thought was some astounding stumper--like "Do you think the surge will work?"--which would have stumped only the imaginary radio talk show host with whom they were apparently conducting their side of the argument. Arguments over, for example, the Stern Report and the Lancet study keep getting sidetracked by an apparent inability to conceive of anyone who might criticise these things for any reason other than the instrumental goal of justifying previously held positions. But I'm in favour of large carbon taxes and other global warming abatement, and I've already admitted I was wrong about the Iraq war; neither report does anything to my prior beliefs. Let's say the Lancet study is right, and the number is closer to 600,000 dead than 100,000. Since approximately 200 million Americans supported the war, this would move my incremental dead Iraqi responsibility from .0005 Iraqis to .003, not exactly reason for ideologically driven debunking.

On one question, nuclear power, I'm afraid I think Belle is dead wrong.

It’s a standard move in global warming denial rhetoric to say, “if they were really serious about CO2 production, those crazy hippies would support the construction of nuclear power plants. Bwa ha ha ha, in your face, Al Gore!” Now, I never see anyone actually go on to advocate new nuclear power plants. But guess what? If, after the implementation of a reasonable, revenue-neutral carbon tax, nuclear power would be competitive without subsidies, then I would be happy to support nuclear power. If government subsidies would still be required, I think we would be better off subsidising something like wind or solar power, because nuclear power plants do have a wee negative externality problem, what with all the extra security needed, and that whole “radioactive” issue. Oh, now that I’m here, I might as well just offer up a few other responses to various right-wing Morrisette-ironic talking points.

The environmental movement has so far utterly failed to develop a coherent approach to replacing carbon producing power sources. Wind and solar are not such a coherent response without a massive breakthrough in battery technology, because variable sources are inadequate to provide base-load power. Also, they too have negative externalities: wind kills birds and destroys views, and many solar panels are loaded with gallium arsenide, a highly toxic substance that is apparently rather tricky to dispose of.

All this wouldn't be so bothersome if the environmental movement merely failed to provide realistic alternatives, but in fact, many environmentalists actively move to block new wind installations (I'm looking at you, Robert jr.) and nuclear power plants, spread hysteria over nuclear waste, and otherwise actively work against the cause they are trying to advance. As such, it is perfectly legitimate to demand why they are blocking the only things that have any realistic chance of replacing carbon-emitting power plants.

The answer, in my opinion, is that too many environmentalists flunk basic and economic knowlege, which is why so many people believe it is practical to replace a coal-fired turbine that pumps out 1,000 megawatts with a solar installation that will, in peak sun conditions, produce about 1 kilowatt per 150 feet of space, twelve hours a day; or wind farms, which average less than 1 megawatt per turbine in prime spots. In addition, the core of the environmental movement are people with a whole host of linked views about things like capitalism, consumer culture, and so forth; they find solutions that support, rather than changing, the existing system much less emotionally interesting than radical conservation strategies. Unfortunately, the latter are a thoroughgoing political failure, but the environmental movement has strenuously resisted adjusting to this reality. (Some leaders have, God bless them). As long as this attitude persists, the environmental movement is blocking change that could and should happen; it is perfectly legitimate, nay necessary, to tax them on this.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Look, I know . . .

. . . that I shouldn't want Fred Thompson to win just because I like him on Law and Order, and also, because it would be really funny if we plucked our next president from a television set. But looking at the rest of the field, how bad a reason is that, really?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Essay question of the day

Here's a question I thought of the other night. (Neither marijuana nor hallucinogens were involved, though you could be forgiven for thinking so . . . and come to think of it, the mushrooms in the empanadas did look a little funny). I throw it out in the hope that my favourite bloggers will answer, though I have little faith that they actually will. The question: say they were holding an election for God. Further, say the fringe benefits were so terrific that you wanted the position. Finally, assume that once elected, you can't be deposed. What's your campaign platform? Why should we elect you to this desireable position?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Premature politics

Dr Helen makes fun of women who ask "How do you feel about abortion?" on a first date. In general, I agree that political litmus tests are a good way to ruin a date--and I've had more than a few killed by guys who tried to make sure that I, too, longed for the day when George Bush's severed head rests on a pike in front of Nancy Pelosi's office. On the other hand, abortion is the kind of thing you want to get out of the way earlyish. Because otherwise you might get a horrid surprise when you turn up pregnant and he assumes you'll have the abortion you always knew you could never get--or vice versa, though that seems like less of a problem.

At that, it's probably not the kind of question you should ask unless you're actually planning on sleeping with him that night--kind of like asking "How do you feel about salmon and eggshell for our wedding colours?" three months in.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

By the way

I have promised JIm Henley that if he will blog more of his poetry, I will blog some old song lyrics and fiction. If you want access to some of my more turgid compositions, you should email Jim with encouragement.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Question of the day

What is the deal with those commercials like the ones for Hot Pockets featuring creepily cheerful families booming out bizarrely unconvincing dialogue as they stare into the camera with identical rictus grins.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Poetry out loud

At a recent poetry reading, I was musing on the fact that some poems really work in person better than I think they would work on the page. Then I began thinking that this might be true of all poems; a really good reading covers any hollow moments or infelicitous phrasings.

There's an epigram I can't quite recall: something along the lines of ""Words too banal for poetry are set to music." This has always seemed self evidently true--think of the words to your favourite song, and then imagine them as a poem written down. Try to say them without the music running through your head. Pretty bad, huh? In part, this is because song lyrics have to conform to the needs of the music, so things get jammed in because they match the rhythm. But that's also true of a sonnet, and yet these still hold up pretty well.

I suspect the real reason most song lyrics are banal is the same reason that most things are just pretty okay: they don't have to be any better. We will forgive them if the tune is catchy.

As an aside, I imagine the fairly recent fashion for singer-songwriters doesn't help. The odds that you are a) a good composer b) a good singer and c) an outstanding lyricist are pretty slim. Speaking as someone who's done it, there are some advantages to writing your own stuff: you don't have to be as good a singer, because everything you write matches your voice perfectly. So you can swap a little composing talent and a little lyrical talent for a little vocal talent. (Unfortunately for me, I had very little of all three; hence the crib death of my erstwhile band.) But the net result is that the songs probably aren't as good as they were when you had specialisation--a really good lyricist, a good composer, and a good singer, all doing their thing.

Of course, this does not explain the Olympic-level banality of hyperproduced pop songs, but that's a rant for another day.

Where was I? Ah, yes, poetry. So I don't think that poetry recitation can elevate awkward rhymes quite as far as, say, Freedy Johnston spinning the barely sensible words of "Bad Reputation" into middling genius. But I suspect that spoken poetry was a lot more forgiving than the written form. There probably wasn't the sheer volume of bad poetry running around the pre-literate world, just because we've got a lot more bad aspiring poets. But I bet the percentage was higher, if only because like the singer-songwriter, the pre-literate poet had to be good at two things: authoring poems, and reciting it. The odds of being superlative at both are low-ish, plus their poems wouldn't necessarily transfer particularly well to the next poet, so many undoubtedly got lost in translation. The stuff we have is great mostly because it survived a few hundred or thousand years of constant refinement--and survived the discerning eyes of monks deciding what wasn't written down.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

For your benefit, dear readers, I will try to resist the urge to Vlog, no matter how urgently the webcam on my new laptop beckons me. But I will speculate on where this trend might lead. When do we get our first E! style biography on Vlog, with the earnest Vlogger's friends talking about how awesome they are, interspersed with clips of their Vlogging and interviews on other blogs, all tied together with a soggy voiceover describing their dead relatives and any recreational pharmaceuticals they may have taken? Because I would totally watch that. And how long until "Best of . . . " recap shows start appearing? Will Matthew Yglesias start doing musical numbers as soon as the ratings begin to sag? Inquiring minds want to know.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

The thread on whether or not I supported torture has taken an interesting side turn: how can I know that gang rape, or having ones fingernails pulled out, is worse than waterboarding? Perhaps we're just falling prey to the availability heuristic: we can easily imagine gang rape or extreme pain, because we've experienced something akin to both. The experience of drowning, on the other hand, is rarer.

Well, I haven't been either gang raped or waterboarded, thank God. But I have experienced what it is like to almost die of suffocation--and really almost die, not just feel like I was going to. In 2001 I had a freak asthma attack while I was out drinking without my inhaler. But for the intervention of a passing bystander, it might well have been fatal: I'd lost the ability to talk, my lips and nails were blue, and I barely managed to force a little albuterol into my bronchia. My last thought, if it had been my last thought, would have been "How effing stupid is this?" But mostly I wasn't thinking. I was filled with panic, and a primal, wordless, rage to live.

It was pretty awful. But then it ended. I don't have the same kind of permapanic I've seen in rape victims who were attacked once, by a single attacker. I can only assume it is worse for those who are repeatedly violated by multiple thugs. If I had to choose between the asthma attack again (even over and over again), or a gang rape, I'm 100% sure which I'd pick.

Not that this is a defense of waterboarding, as I said in the comments. After all, I'd rather be gang-raped than, say, flayed alive, but that doesn't mean gang rape is anything except completely horrific.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Department of huh?

Law student PG, in the course of a rather interesting post on beliefs about rape and torture, bizarrely links me with the following description:

Some who support harsh treatment of terrorist suspects have claimed that the criminally convicted often are worse off than detainees, because given the choice between being raped and waterboarded, some likely would choose waterboarding.

The link is actually to one of my commenters, but I said the same thing here, and meant it: I'd rather be waterboarded than put in the general population of a high security prison. It is entirely possible that life at Guantanamo is more bearable than life at San Quentin, and no, that is not a defense of Guantanamo.

But that hardly constitutes support for torture, which I haven't and don't. I thought I'd been rather explicit about thinking torture is wrong. But just in case not: torture=bad. Wrong. Horrifying. Immoral. Un-American. Etc. Yes, if there were a ticking nuclear bomb I might slap a suspect around to get information out of him. But I also might hole up in a casino with my life savings and an extensive supply of recreational drugs; neither is a good guide to what should be done in the 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of times when there is not, in fact, an atomic time bomb around.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I don't know why, but this totally stole my heart. Happy passover.