nonsatiation

skype me! (actually, please don't.)

2007-09-28T14:04:00.000-05:00

do you ever have random people add you on skype? i don't know if skype is popular in china, or what, but i usually get about 1-2 add requests a week from chinese people i don't know.

every night before bed, i try to remember to mute my computer. any number of sounds can be triggered by various programs (or if the computer spontaneously restarts), and more often than not, if i don't mute, i'll awake to some loud sound. (i typically have the speakers up pretty high from listening to music.)

well, over the past couple months, i've been woken up 3 or 4 times in the middle of the night when i've forgotten to mute my speakers by this very very bizarre, repeating sound, that i could not for the life of me identify. it was quite creepy. well, yesterday i finally realized what it was: the skype incoming call ring. all along, it was random chinese people trying to call me at 4:00 am (which, i guess, is during the day there). so, i've disabled the ringtone.

i know i haven't updated this in forever. i will soon.

hunger strike: revoltingly inappropriate

2007-05-09T17:39:00.000-05:00

harvard's security guards, supplied through a contract with alliedbarton, earn $12.68 per hour, plus benefits that include health insurance, retirement planning, and paid time off. these guards are separate from the deputized harvard university police department, and generally assist with lockouts, small packages, and other unskilled tasks. most are stationed at desks with internet access, and are permitted to talk on the phone, listen to music, read, and surf the internet while on duty.

$12.68, which is above the cambridge, ma living wage of $12.19 and several dollars above the legal minimum wage, is not enough, argues the student labor action movement (slam). to protest, eleven of its members have undertaken a hunger strike "of indefinite length and proportions", according to their statement. yes, you read that correctly, a hunger strike. these eleven students say that they have not eaten for what has now been 6 days, and one of them has been hospitalized for complications. this is also the middle of finals period.

reasonable people can debate whether or not $12.68 is a fair wage for our security guards. i haven't considered the question carefully enough to reach a definitive conclusion, but my feeling is that it probably is. the job is unskilled and there is very little labor involved, either physical or mental. i'm not sure how much a person could reasonably expect to be compensated for those tasks. in fact, i can think of many much more difficult jobs that pay a comparable or lower amount: research assistance, beach lifeguarding, and technical support call center work all come immediately to mind. these guards must also be paid the same or more money than employees at many harvard square businesses, such as felipe's or qdoba.

there is no question that living anywhere near cambridge on approximately $13 per hour must not be easy. if i were one of the guards and found this to be too difficult a task, i would probably try to move to a less expensive area of the country, or else pursue education that would allow me to gain a better paying job. in fact, the security guard who is usually on duty in my house is extremely personable, intellectually curious, and highly intelligent -- i can tell the latter two by the books i see him reading. i find it impossible to believe that he could not find a skilled job that would pay him more money if he set out to do so. my guess is that the utility of the increased wages would not make up for the lost utility of such an easy job and a pleasant work environment.

therefore, while i am suspicious of the idea that our (unionized!) security guards are underpaid, i will accept it as a conclusion that reasonable people might come to. slam has been lobbying harvard for better conditions for the security workers for almost a year now, with negative results. now, they have upped the ante several orders of magnitude in an effort to force the university's hand. they want harvard to insert itself in what is actually a private negotiation between alliedbarton and the guards' union. the hunger strike has been accompanied by other actions designed to arouse feelings of pity and gross injustice, such as letters to president bok in poem form. an excerpt from one:

President Bok,
I know it may seem like
this is self inflicted hunger,
but back when i used to ask my mom
for hamburgers
she couldn't afford to buy
for all of my brothers
she would say:
None of us eat unless we all eat.

We are a community
and if one of us is hungry
we are all hungry.
I hope you take care of me
as well as I promised my mom
you would.

Love,
[redacted]

i guess i'll refrain from comment on that.

returning to the subject of the hunger strike, to resort to such a drastic tactic that is so shamefully disproportionate to the issue in question puts harvard in an awful position, and i consider it revoltingly inappropriate. protest tactics such as a hunger strike should be reserved for egregious violations of fundamental human rights. not being paid an above-market wage is neither egregious nor a violation of a right. are these hunger strikers willing to die because our security guards are only paid $12.68 per hour, plus benefits? this seems quite literally insane to me, and six days later i am still shocked that it is actually happening.

a simple thought experiment will allow anyone to see how this policy is unsustainable. imagine if any time a person's wish were not granted, he made a credible threat to kill himself. for example, what if every time a man was passed over for a promotion, he told his superiors that he would commit suicide if they did not change their mind? this puts all parties in an impossible situation and, if sufficiently widespread, would quickly bring all of organized society to a deadlock.

in this case, just like in the general scenario above, everyone is forced into an untenable position. the university has no jurisdiction over the guards' contract, and no interest in becoming involved, but it must carefully weigh the fact that as time goes on, several of its students are in (self-imposed) significant bodily danger. the hunger strikers at this point are so invested in the cause that they are unlikely to stop until they are satisfied with some concession. students who do not support the strike may feel uncomfortable saying so when classmates are at such risk -- but again, i emphasize that they have brought this risk upon themselves as part of a strategy which i consider unfair to everyone.

i can only predict that the university and slam will eventually agree to some mutually face-saving compromise. the hunger strikers are certainly well-intentioned, but just as certainly misguided. this approach is poor judgment and unlikely to result in any advances to workers' rights at all comparable to the magnitude of the protest.

speech codes

2007-04-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

in my psychology class, "morality and taboo", which is co-taught by steven pinker and alan dershowitz (amazing), one of our recent topics was speech codes at universities. speech in a university, if one thinks about it for a moment, is far from free. as professor dershowitz remarked, "there are plenty of things i could say right now in this room that would get me fired...that would end my forty-[something] year career as a professor of law". restrictions on speech exist de facto whether or not a university has a written speech code; professor dershowitz actually supports speech codes, because one of his mantras is to always prefer articulable rules, agreed upon ex ante, to inarticulable discretion, exercised ex post. of course, his ideal speech code says something to the effect of, there are no restrictions on speech.

speech codes are rarely called such -- rather, they may take several guises, most commonly that of a "harassment policy". in his book the shadow university, harvey silverglate (who believes there should be no speech codes) exhaustively reviews the various policies in place across the nation, many of which are astoundingly broad, prohibiting language that may knowingly or unknowingly embarrass (or intend to embarrass), offend, make uncomfortable, etc. (all of these phrases are quoted from various speech codes) a member of a protected group; the remarks need not be directed at a specific person or group of persons. prohibited actions can include not only oral remarks, but also writing, gestures, sign languages, certain ways of looking at a person, laughing (yes, laughing), sounds, and even the absence of an action (e.g. a resident advisor's refusal to wear a pink triangle distributed at a gay and lesbian sensitivity training event, for which he was fired at carnegie mellon; the ra sued and settled with the university). the effect is essentially to license the university to punish any student for nearly any remark -- and this authority is, of course, exercised extremely selectively, as draconian speech codes probably produce hundreds or thousands of actionable incidents each day. therefore, looking at who and what a university chooses to prosecute is quite interesting.

some of the codes truly go beyond the pale and into absurdity, notably west virginia university's. wvu's policies instruct students to "value alternative lifestyles...use language that is not gender specific...[and] educate yourself about homosexuality". it seems that it is not enough to simply not be homophobic at wvu; one must also actively research alternative lifestyles. they are told "do not determine whether you will interact with someone by virtue of his or her sexual orientation". is this not blatant thought reform? does this open the door to someone being punished for having no gay friends? all of this craziness is particularly ironic because i imagine (although this is a complete guess) that wvu is probably a fairly homophobic place to go to school.. certainly less gay-friendly than other more liberal universities, which don't instruct their students to be nice to gay people and use gender-neutral language under threat of discipline.

now, when you think about it, you can see how a lot of these cases really could be construed as harassment. that is, a resident advisor's conspicuous refusal to wear a gay rights symbol at sensitivity training could make one of his homosexual advisees uncomfortable because it could be reasonably inferred that the advisor at least does not support gay rights, if he is not actively homophobic. therefore, the student has a reasonable complaint: the person who lives on his hall in a supervisory role, who is supposed to be an advisor and mentor, is apparently in some sense opposed to his sexual orientation.

i agree that this complaint is valid, and i agree that the student has a right to an ra who is not homophobic. but consider the alternate scenario: what if the ra had simply gone along with things and worn the pink triangle? he would still have been just as homophobic (if he was homophobic) as before; wearing the symbol would change nothing about the situation, other than removing the overt threat. the gay student would thus not be "harassed", but he would have no indication that his ra had some problem with homosexuals. this could potentially lead to much larger problems in the future. more broadly, moving to the example of wvu, what would gay people prefer: for everyone to pretend to accept them, and completely falsely be nice to them (out of fear of punishment), or for students to voice their opinions about homosexuals as they so choose? the latter would help gay students identify who their true friends were, and it would allow open discussion of and debate about homosexuality and homophobia in the free marketplace of ideas, and allow whatever homophobic opinions were voiced to be judged in the court of public opinion rather than by a quasi-judicial university administrative board. (forgive the hackneyed metaphors.) and finally, still more broadly, from a free speech perspective, it is untenable to suppress some subjectively undesirable forms of expression while permitting others which could be equally objectionable to some people, but that the group in power (the university administration) agrees with.

neither of the options in the previous paragraph seems good: the ra's refusing to put on the pink triangle could be threatening or uncomfortable (i am accepting the premise that it is a goal of the university that gay students should not be made uncomfortable because of their sexuality, and that this goal is possibly as important as the right of freedom of expression), but on the other hand his disingenuous compliance would only veil his homophobia, which could well become clear later on. the solution is to simply not hire homophobic people to be resident advisors in the first place, instead of hiring homophobic people and then suppressing their right to express this belief. prospective ras should be told that they will be overseeing a diverse group of students -- and that this diversity includes diversity of sexual orientation -- and be asked their thoughts on this subject. addressing issues like this during the hiring process would have preempted a conflict between the values of tolerance and free speech.

i'm still not totally sure where i stand on the subject of speech codes. there are compelling reasons for and against them. i think it's most important to simply be aware that there are very real limits on speech in most settings, whether or not they're enumerated in a (quasi-)legal document.

new venue

2007-04-10T21:03:00.000-05:00

i moved my blog to blogger. this is better, i think, than hosting my own wordpress. if you used to subscribe to my rss feed, i think you'll need to subscribe to the new feed (which can be done at the bottom of the page).

i moved all of my old entries here, but i lost the comments :(.

i kind of agonized over the background image, so i hope you enjoy it. i wanted something symbolic, but sufficiently abstract to go in the background (and remain there for a reasonable period of time). it's (obviously) the view from a car driving at night in the desert (death valley, to be precise). driving at night -- especially in the summer/when it is warm out (i know this is weird) -- is strangely evocative for me.

anyway, new entry coming soon.

fast-track adoption

2007-03-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

have you heard all of this absurd talk about angelina jolie getting “special treatment” in her adoptions of orphans in ethiopia, namibia, and most recently vietnam? for some reason that is unfathomable to me, a significant number of people seem to have a problem with this, and have even gone so far as to question whether she is “fit” to adopt these children.

first of all, of course she gets special treatment. she’s one of the most famous celebrities in the united states. how could she not get special treatment? there are a lot of negative things that come with superstardom (i.e. paparazzi), but there are also some perks. not having to wait 18 months for your adoption paperwork to be processed is one of them. this should be neither surprising nor a big deal.

obviously receives special treatment

the idea of her being an unfit parent for these children seems to go beyond the realm of insanity. one of her children, zahara, had to be hospitalized for dehydration upon her arrival in the united states. surely life with angelina jolie is several steps up from the conditions in an ethiopian orphanage, where it seems that even water is scarce?

our society chooses not to restrict who can become a parent — i.e., we don’t sterilize people who we deem unfit to care for children. therefore, it seems especially ridiculous to impose very high standards on those who volunteer to rescue foreign children from depraved, lonely conditions in orphanages. maybe angelina jolie is not or won’t be a model parent (who knows), but she’s surely better than no parent at all, and she’s surely better than a lot of people in this country who have as many children as they please and endure none of the moral judgments angelina jolie is being subjected to.

time use

2007-03-17T20:46:00.000-05:00

how many hours, in total, have people logged in the game world of warcraft? this statistic might be available somewhere — i haven’t looked — but my guess is that the answer is hundreds of millions.

what if we consider all video and computer games together? the answer could easily be 10 or 20 million hours per week in the united states, and much more than that globally.

big numbers are impressive, but this is also striking on the micro level. many young americans (ages 12-25) routinely spend 15-30 hours weekly playing video and computer games. this activity is entirely non-productive, it’s fairly antisocial (although not totally, in some cases), and is not personally enriching either intellectually or physically. it is, of course, fun, and so it’s important to remember that video games do provide a great deal of utility in that sense.

imagine thirty hours gone from your week, every week! this is as much time as a lot of people spend at work. for some of us, it’s barely fathomable — we simply don’t have that much time to spare to do nothing. going to bed and waking up thirty hours later once a week would be a setback difficult to recover from. (in fact, amount of leisure time is negatively associated with several measures of success.)

the interesting thing about this is that video game addiction is a relatively recent phenomenon. thirty years ago, there were no video games, and even fifteen years ago i don’t think very many people spent large amount of time playing computer or video games. for one thing, the technology was more expensive and less common; for another, today’s games are far more compelling than yesterday’s. there are whole virtual worlds to explore, populated by millions of other human gamers, and so these games can captivate one’s attention for a long period.

the obvious question is, what consequences do all of this “lost time” have for society?

i’m going to start with the premise that millions of hours per week being spent playing video games is first-order a bad thing for society. there are innumerable potential alternative uses of this time that would be preferable.

i will begin with a couple general observations.

(1) if there were no video games, people would likely substitute most of this time away toward similarly unproductive activities.

(that is, if there were no video games, that doesn’t mean game players would instead spend those millions of hours working on cures for cancer.)

more concretely, before there were video games, people spent a lot of time just watching tv. (people still do, of course, but many of those people probably would have played video games instead if they’d had the choice.) without video games, today’s avid gamers might spend their gaming time surfing the internet, watching movies, listening to music, et cetera. therefore, it’s not necessarily that there is something intrinsic to video games that has especially detrimental effects on people; rather, they are just one entertainment product — and they are of particularly good quality, which is why they command a lot of time share in many people’s entertainment habits. nevertheless, not all forms of entertainment are created equal. reading a good book, i think most would agree, is a better use of time because it is at least intellectually stimulating, and at best educational or even life-altering.

however, i do suspect that there may be something “special” about video games, insofar as they are more addictive than other forms of entertainment. if this were true, it would imply that people would not shift their time one-to-one to other forms of entertainment; they would also shift a share of this time to other activities, thus reducing the total amount of time spent on entertainment.

(2) the more advanced society gets, the more time people have the option of devoting to leisure.

back when times were tough, men did manual labor outside from dawn to dusk. preparing family meals, washing clothes, and other domestic chores similarly occupied women’s time. children weren’t much better off. there were small amounts of leisure time, but most of this was devoted to sleep.

today, for anyone in the middle class or above, food, water, and shelter are all plentiful. it’s very possible for a family to live comfortably with only one working member (or none, if there is inherited money). it’s also possible to hire housekeepers, have food delivered, and so on. the result is that many people in this country have enormous amounts of free time: anywhere from 12 to virtually 24 hours per day (including sleep time), in a large number of cases.

this is a good thing: it’s nice not to have to devote hours a day to the most basic elements of life, such as finding food to consume. it also enables civilization to flourish: people have time to create and enjoy culture. but if people — who are much more productive today than in the past — devoted as much time to productive activities as they did in the past, there would be a lot of positive results.

(3) highly entertaining activities like video games might be an “efficient” source of fun.

there are lots of leisure activities in the world, and people have different tastes for which ones they like best. however, some forms of leisure are more entertaining than others. watching tv might be more entertaining than listening to the radio. if so, it’s conceivable that a 30-minute television program would yield the same amount of satisfaction as, say, an hour of radio. this seems like a good thing. but why, then, aren’t people playing video games less as their quality improves? well, that would assume that people have some “quota” of fun to fill, after which they go back to work, and this isn’t how the brain operates. we should assume nonsatiation in fun, like any other good. in fact, time devoted to video games will increase, not decrease, as they get better. therefore, the efficiency is good for game players (because they have more fun), but doesn’t imply any decrease in consumption of video games.

okay. having made these remarks, i’ll speculate about possible answers to my original question of the consequences of this lost time.

first, it’s almost hackneyed to bring up, but we could apply putnam’s “bowling alone” hypothesis and say that video games probably contribute to a decline in social capital, because some of the time spent playing video games might otherwise be spent establishing norms of reciprocity with others by participating in voluntary organizations, like a volunteer group or soccer club.
each hour spent playing video games is an hour spent sedentary, and is often accompanied by the consumption of junk food. therefore, video game playing (i am assuming, but i would bet almost anything) is associated with poorer health.
reduced social interaction could have innumerable negative effects.
if the game player is truly addicted, the habit may interfere with his or her ability to fulfill other responsibilities at school, work, or home.

most of all, it just seems like a shame to me that so much time is wasted in this way. people have the right to spend their time however they wish, but it’s still disturbing.

what if we (society) wanted to reduce video game playing?

theoretically, there could be a technological solution: for example, making a game system operate for a maximum of three hours a day, or games work for a given number of hours before expiring. these solutions are usually overcome almost instantaneously by workarounds, though. (this is assuming that congress somehow passed legislation requiring this, which of course would never happen and might in any event be unconstitutional. i don’t know anything about the constitution though, so maybe not.)

one straightforward approach would be to tax video games and video game systems, just like any other vice. this wouldn’t limit the amount of time gamers would spend playing, but it would decrease demand for video games such that only especially avid gamers would play. $200 video games would present a much larger opportunity cost. (secondary markets would avoid this tax. however, those prices would still rise.)

the simplest approach, probably, would be to encourage parents to restrict their children’s game playing. this is unlikely to work: parents who would care enough to do so probably already monitor their kids’ habits. besides, many game addicts no longer live at home, or are too old to be micromanaged in this way.

i’m not saying that i necessarily advocate any of these measures, besides perhaps some sort of campaign that would encourage game players to reduce their playing time. if the problem became more serious, i might be in favor of some sort of tax.

matching

2007-03-12T20:45:00.000-05:00

why are so many of my friends single?

i may be a little biased, but i would say that my friends (as a group) are great people. they’re young, interesting, intelligent, attractive, and caring — perfect relationship material. but the vast majority of them have no significant other. in fact, i just used facebook to (roughly) quantify this: only 18.6% percent of my friends list themselves as currently being in a relationship. (the true figure might be closer to one quarter, because not everyone publicizes their relationship status.)

surely almost all of them would, at least in principle, like to be in a relationship. relationships can be incredible, being single can be no fun, and life in general is more enjoyable when experienced with a partner than alone.

furthermore, most of my friends are in college. isn’t this prime dating time? after college, doesn’t it only get harder to meet people?

obviously, many of my single friends do have a romantic life, or at least a sex life. they may go on occasional dates, hook up with people at parties, et cetera; still, this is hardly equivalent. i’m sure that some of my friends genuinely want to be single: they aren’t ready to “settle down” or be “tied down”, they enjoy being accountable to no one, they’ve recently gotten out of a relationship and want some time to themselves, or something else like that. however, i still claim that if the right person were to come along, nearly all of my single friends would rather date that person than stay single. it’s just human nature.

i tried to brainstorm the possible reasons for this seemingly low number of friends in relationships. for one thing, most of my friends are harvard students. i have a feeling that, on the whole, people date less at harvard than at other schools. most of us are very busy, which makes it difficult to commit much time to a relationship, and might make it especially difficult to date someone who’s not at harvard (and who might require a larger time commitment). perhaps being in a relationship, while it would be “nice”, simply isn’t a top priority for many of my friends: grades are important, extracurriculars are time-consuming, and they have plenty of friends to hang out with, and all of this is satisfying enough. it takes time and effort to find a mate; perhaps my friends simply direct their energies elsewhere.

maybe it’s simply difficult to find a match. we humans are complex individuals, and we won’t date just anyone. there needs to be mutual attraction, common interests, physical chemistry, and plenty of other dimensions of compatibility for a relationship to work out. surely it’s not easy to find someone who fulfills all of these requirements, but, then again, it happens countless times each day, and harvard is full of interesting people who are single. i think it’s very possible that my friends are pickier, or have higher standards, than the average person. that is, they may be less willing to settle for an imperfect match than other people. for my friends, most of whom lead interesting, busy, and privileged lives, the “outside option” of being single is probably more attractive than it is for someone who doesn’t have much else going on, which would lead them to have a higher reservation quality for entering into a relationship.

i really don’t know. these are just guesses. so i will appeal to my readers. how come more of the people i know aren’t in relationships? leave your comments.

judicial fact discretion

2007-03-07T20:45:00.000-05:00

subtitle: frivolity, mootness, and the law in the case of brandt v. city of chicago board of education

anyone who doesn’t believe that almost anything about a case — the finding of facts, the verdict, the sentence — is highly dependent on who the judge is is kidding themselves.

there have been lots of studies about this. even the most well-intentioned judges unconsciously mold the facts and cherry-pick precedents to fit their personal opinion about the case.

in economics, we can treat what facts the judge finds as his or her choice variable. (example: the plaintiff suffered no damages / $5,000 in damages / $20,000 in damages from the defendant’s actions; or, the defendant did know / did not know / could not have reasonably known the effect his or her actions would have on the plaintiff.) now that we have a choice variable, this begs the question of what the judge is maximizing over: what is the objective function? of course, economists have different competing theories about this.

in one study, judges were given a set of pre-sentencing reports for several individuals and asked to sentence them. these were for routine crimes. then, the most extreme values were thrown out: i.e., the only the middle 50% of sentences (in years) were retained. (in statistics, this is called a 25% trimmed mean.) disregarding the top 25% most severe sentences and the bottom 25% most lenient sentences, the researchers observed variation of up to fifteen years in several of the cases.

judicial fact discretion was the subject of a recent week in my political economics seminar with andrei shleifer.

we considered the brandt first amendment case. it’s pretty amusing. short summary: a group of gifted eighth graders were bussed into a chicago public school. They called themselves “gifties” and the (hispanic) locals “tards”. the principal announced there would be an election to determine the class t-shirt and the gifties conspired to vote en bloc to ensure the election would be one by their favored design, which was basically a smiling stick figure with their names printed on the back.

their design received a plurality of the votes but not a majority, and so the school announced there would be a runoff — in this runoff the t-shirt lost. (the school did not discolse the rules of the election in advance.) as a protest, the kids had the t-shirt printed independently and started wearing it to school; they were told they could not and effectively received in-house suspensions for about 2 days. they complained to the school board and chicago’s school “crisis intervention team” was called in, sided with the kids, and they were allowed to wear the shirt from then on. Also, the dress code rule against “inappropriate” articles that the principal had used was done away with.

the 23 children, via one of their mothers who was a lawyer, then filed a federal lawsuit claiming that their first amendment right to protest had been impinged upon.

they did not want any monetary damages, and there were no disciplinary records of the incident, so they wanted the principal et al involved to be forbidden to speak about the incident in any form. they received a summary judgment in district court — but for the reason that the stick figure had a deformed right hand and thus violated the americans with disabilities act. (this is obviously ludicrous but the judge wanted to be safe and not deal with the other issue.) they then appealed to appelate court; the decision was affirmed but for different reasons. we read the affirming opinion for class, as well as an audio recording of the oral arguments at the appeal.

the oral arguments are extremely entertaining; i suggest you listen to them. the plaintiffs’ lawyer was questioned by richard posner, a famous judge who has written several books. i loved listening to him because he was really funny, and sarcastic, and did a wonderful job of showing this woman that she was way out of her league in trying to argue a first amendment case.

well, it turned out that shleifer is friends with posner, and he was in town, and he came to our class to talk about the case. that was awesome.

posner is pretty cynical. he’s a pretty strong anti-formalist, and he observed (correctly) that, of course, strict formalists who often claim to be apolitical are themselves advancing a (usually conservative) political agenda. he also openly admitted that he had policy motives in his decision. to be fair, the case could have gone the other way: there was conceivably a legitimate first amendment case that could have been made by a more competent lawyer. but posner said that in the brandt case, he realized that if they were not ridiculed, it could invite a lot of similar lawsuits, and where do you draw the line? (i.e. do 2 year olds have the right to protest their recess?) and it would require schools to hire more lawyers, have more sensitivity training, etc. etc. all of which would make it even more difficult for them to compete with private schools in the education marketplace, which he wanted to avoid.

of course, theoretically, these should never be reasons for a judge’s decision.

posner is not elected by the people: why should he rule in ways that advance his own views about the education system, or try to influence the education market through a first amendment case? that is, what right does he have to do that?

update...

2007-02-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

sorry for the protracted absence. i hope you didn’t give up on me. there’s another new entry below, too, that i’d started writing a while ago but never finished.

january was ridiculous. i came back to school several days into reading period (that is, i took a slightly extended winter break, since the time alotted is pathetic, and you technically should be back on campus january 2nd, weeks before every other college student in the world goes back). then i did very little for a few days, because i figured i still had a fair amount of time before paper due dates and exams. then i started doing things, but kathryn came for a five-day visit. it was great to see her, of course, but that somewhat hampered my productivity. i also was writing the most difficult paper of my life (for the romance studies final), which was time-consuming, frustrating, and very intellectually demanding. by the time that was finished, i had a second major paper and 3 exams in a span of 8 days. that really sucked, i was seriously miserable. i slept about 4 hours a night, although night is a misnomer because i actually became nocturnal. that is, for more than 5 days straight, i went to sleep while it was light out and woke up after dark.

the past two reading periods have really been misery, with frequent fantasies of dropping out of school/changing concentrations/being at home/sleeping and wondering what the hell i am doing with my life. this spring’s should be much better (by several orders of magnitude), because i’m only taking four courses this semester, and i believe i should have only one final exam. amazing.

during all of that, i was also preparing for the model congress conference in san francisco, in which i had a major role as director of operations. i was also pretty miserable the morning i had to get up and fly there, as i had just finished all of my academic work only hours ago and was desperate for a break, rather than a very busy five days. however, my mood improved as soon as i got to san francisco, and the conference was a blast. i had an amazing time, and it seemed that so did everyone else — the staff, the kids, and the faculty advisors. it was a lot of fun and i’m so glad that i’ve had the experience of being on the executive board for the past several months. our boston conference is coming up in a few days, and i’m very excited for that.

then i became stressed again, as i left san francisco on a red-eye, and had on-campus recruiting for summer positions the day my plane landed. that was a very stressful, though thankfully fairly expedient process, and i am now seriously an expert interviewer. i started out doing a pretty good job, i think, but by the end of the week i was acing them, if i may say so. i did accept an offer and will be trying my hand at investment banking this summer. i’m very excited for that, and i feel that a big weight has been lifted off of me.

spring classes are going well, i guess, although i’ve barely been to them. i missed a lot during interviews and it’s been hard to get back into the routine. i’ll be missing a couple more next week, too, due to model congress. oh well.

i also just bought a really nice ralph lauren wool zip jacket at an indecently large discount. i’ve always wanted a wool jacket.

future idyll

2007-02-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

thinking about the future is something i indulge in too often. some thinking about the future is good, of course. i’m not a “go with the flow”, ultra-spontaneous kind of person. i like to have a plan. a plan can still be flexible; indeed, flexibility and uncertainty can and should even be explicitly incorporated in a plan. but one needs some plan, especially for important things such as education, career, and the like. even leisure activities like vacations require plans; otherwise you waste time trying to figure out what to do once you’re there, and you miss out on activities you would have learned about had you done some research and made the necessary arrangements. some people are comfortable without plans. i’ve been planning since i can remember: very, very early childhood.

planning and thinking about the future a lot puts one at risk for “living in the future”. it’s almost hackneyed to point out that living in the future is generally thought of as “unhealthy” (in, i guess, a psychological sense); actually, i think it’s more of a coping strategy. example: my room is messy. i like to think about how once i have my own “real” apartment, i’m going to keep it clean, neat, nicely-decorated, et cetera. this is just a dorm room; this is temporary. of course, this sort of thinking is much easier than actually cleaning my room, or doing something actively to change the present state of things.

i let myself get away with this to some extent; but at least this allowance is a conscious decision. after all, it really is just a dorm room, and it doesn’t matter that much to me whether or not it’s a bit messy (as long as the disorder is not extreme). but when i move into an apartment, and i see it starting to get messy, i hope that i will have the will to say: this is it. the future you spent all that time thinking about is now. so clean up!

along these lines, there are some lifestyle-related plans i have for the future — the future being when i get my first apartment and begin my first full-time job. there’s nothing to prevent me from implementing many of them now, of course, but it’s difficult to do anything like that here: i have very little time, and i also feel like i should just enjoy being a college student and not having to care about much. (what makes me think i’ll have any more time once i get a job? i’m not sure; that probably won’t be the case.)

in any case, list-making can be a fun if self-indulgent activity.

oh, right: i have a blog.

2006-12-25T20:42:00.000-05:00

things have been busy. but i’m home! thank god — i needed a break. update coming soon.

unboxing

2006-12-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

an article in thursday’s wall street journal (which i can’t link to; a subscription is required) described a new phenomenon called “unboxing”, or videos that depict people unwrapping products and removing them from their boxes. a clip on youtube showing a man unboxing a playstation 3 has been viewed over 76,800 times, for example, and there are several popular web sites devoted to the act.

that’s it: when the product has been unboxed, the clip ends.

the article refers to these videos at one point as “geek porn” and hypothesizes that, for many viewers, watching an unboxing approximates the excitement of actually owning/receiving the product.

does anyone else find the fetishization of this ritual extremely bizarre and moderately unsettling?

postscript: i wish i could have written this entry in french instead; the topic lends itself so well to that “expressive ambiguity” that can’t really be achieved in english. i’ve done my best for an anglophone audience.

transamerica

2006-12-03T20:41:00.000-05:00

things are changing.

an article about so-called “gender variant” children in yesterday’s new york times describes the case of a five year old boy (that’s right: five) who requests to be called “she” and has told his parents that “it feels like a nightmare i’m a boy”. he has long hair and wears dresses and jumpsuits, and began emulating girls shortly after turning three. he has “normal”, professional parents and had had no prior knowledge of or exposure to transgendered people in his short life. this and the other stunning (at least to me) stories in the article present yet another challenge, quite difficult to explain away, to anyone who still holds an essentialist view of gender.

surely this is not a totally new phenomenon — there have been tomboys and tomgirls for a long time (maybe forever), and many children enjoy crossdressing. this can truly be a phase and doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will feel this way forever; in fact, according to the article, most “gender variant” boys grow up to be homosexual, not transgendered.

the difference is that now some parents are beginning to accept and accomodate their childrens’ feelings about their identity. when their young child resists wearing boys’ clothing, they let him wear girls’. and in some kindergartens, children are no longer asked to line up by gender, to avoid forcing a child to identify with a particular group.

this sort of thing can sometimes go overboard, but still, it’s exciting to me. people should be able to define themselves however they want, gender being one particularly central component of identity (in most societies). it’s impressive to me that such young children can resolutely assert their desire and intention to totally vitiate social norms, no doubt to shocked parents, though probably their youth actually helps them in this case: they have no idea of the social effects of their decision.

it’s brave, and i wonder if i could do that — like, if i decided i was a girl. i’ve always admired people like that, like the kids at high school (though there weren’t many of these at mine — pretty homogeneous) who were just themselves and didn’t care what people thought. of course, to some extent you have to have that attitude if you decide to be yourself, because kids will ridicule you for it. but it’s certainly easier to just try to fit in with the norm.

i haven’t really met many transgendered people, at least not that i know of, but i did meet one this spring, who was biologically a girl but identified as a boy. (he is friends with another person i know.) i also met his girlfriend — who is a girl (in both gender and sex). she was very attractive (in the traditional, abercrombie & fitch sense): the type who’d have no trouble whatsoever fitting in with anyone else. they were perfectly comfortable as a couple in public, and only in the 11th grade! they were a positive example to me that relationships aren’t just about looks, and that there really is someone for everyone in the world. i shudder to think what i might have thought about them had i met them at that age; at that point i would have probably been too immature and self-conscious to associate with people who had such a different lifestyle — meanwhile, at the same age, they’re living it. again, i don’t know that a relationship like that between such young people would have been openly possible twenty or even ten years ago.

the vast majority of people are very accepting of others, from my observations — even (in some cases especially) kids. people may be surprised when they learn something, but they get over it; it’s human nature. and if not, in most cases they’re a waste of your time.

you can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html.

i want to write a book.

2006-12-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

seriously: i really want to write a bwook. i have some ideas, kind of amorphous right now, but still. it would be a coming of age novel. how original, right? except it would be original. i have a lot to say. and my style would be different. i don’t envision the book having mass market appeal, but i think it could really resonate with some people.

part of the desire, i guess, is narcissistic: i want people to read what i have to say, and i like the idea of something of mine being immortalized. i’m not sure a book really immortalizes you, though, unless it’s a masterpiece or something, since most books go out of print and fade into obscurity (nothingness?) in a fairly short time. there are just so many people in the world, and they will all keep writing new books, and those displace the old stuff.

it’s not just narcissism, though. i think it would be a very personally rewarding experience. and i have things to say that i haven’t really seen expressed in a book. (the idea of me having something original to say is perhaps itself narcissitic. and i’m not particularly well-read, so maybe there are books like what i’m thinking. however, these aren’t reasons not to write it, to me.)

the question is when. no way i could do it during the school year.* next summer i’ll have a full-time job, and then be working on graduate school applications. maybe i could do a few chapters, though. i would love to just have a chunk of time — say, 8 months — to just sit down and write a book, with no other concerns. that’s not reality, though. (i suppose i could drop out of school and do it, but the urge isn’t that strong.)

* well, i could work on it now. i mean, if it was really important to me, i could set aside time and just do it. i do have some time. but this isn’t the kind of book that you write in like hour-long random spaces of free time. i would need to be in the right mindset. and it’s just too tiring, busy, etc. here to do something like that.

welcome, seychellois visitors

2006-11-26T20:39:00.000-05:00

according to my site statistics, someone from seychelles visited my blog. (for those of you who don’t know, seychelles is a 150 square mile island nation in the indian ocean. two of its largest industries are cinnamon bark and coconut fiber rope.)

if you’re from seychelles, please e-mail me (contact information on profile page). i’d be interested to know who you are, and how the hell you stumbled across this blog.

alternatively, maybe there was some sort of error in the logging software that falsely attributed some hostname to seychelles. that would be disappointing.

what to do

2006-11-14T20:39:00.000-05:00

(incidentally: isn’t it interesting how much effort we [humans] expend trying to answer the question: what should i do? in the past, most people didn’t have much time to spare: working to fulfill basic needs (food, shelter) took a large part of the day. now many people face an abundance of free time, and they wonder how they should spend it. the word should is interesting to me, because it implies the existence of some ideal choice. of course, companies and institutions have all sorts of answers to this question: you should go shopping, you should eat at x restaurant, you should visit x city, et cetera. as if someone else could know what i should do!)

my literary theory class continues to get even more interesting. i’ve often thought that there are a large number of perspectives from which to look at the world, which have more or less the same goal (to explain the world) and overlap quite a bit in a lot of their concepts. to me economics and statistics are two of the most compelling lenses, so i choose to study them, but i realize that others (i.e. sociology, history) may do as good or better a job in some situations. these perspectives are substitutes: i can come up with an economic rationale for nearly anything we observe in the world, but someone else may be able to come up with a psychoanalytic rationale for the same thing that’s just as convincing (and just as useful). thus the choice of rationale (or description, more neutrally) is really mainly a question of what “tools” or vocabulary you feel the most comfortable with, more than anything else. the choice is also often an ideological one, a political one, and an aesthetic one, of course. this is part of why i think education should be as interdisciplinary as possible: the idea of rigid distinctions between the disciplines is false.

until recently i thought of literary theory as another discipline, competing alongside (or horizontally with) the others (i.e. economics). but now i think of it as above those: far more comprehensive, and able to explain not only the world but also all other theories (which are, of course, artifacts of the state of the world). and i finally understand how a theory can really be subversive. i always had thought that this was kind of a word that people threw around, and that a lot of discourse about “power” and so on was unlikely to have much power in itself, and did not seem particuarly powerful to me. however, reading some theory (particularly stuff that is anti-essentialist and derivative of derridean thought) has truly changed my conception not only of things we observe in the world (as, say, economics has) but of the world itself and how it is structured (or not structured) by language. and that is truly subversive, insomuch as what it entails about the current power structure and ordering of things, and its future.

it’s all so interesting to me that i’ve almost been considering applying into a phd program in philosophy or comparative literature. however, i’m not going to. the life of the academic holds some appeal to me, but i don’t see it being completely satisfying long-term. and i feel lucky that business, and finance, and economics, all of which have great career potential, are also things that are extremely interesting to me. i can read literature in my spare time, but not really the opposite. instead, i’d rather go into business, but make it my goal to be successful enough to be able to devote significant time to pursuing my other interests, like literature (and a lot of other things).

i know i haven’t updated this blog in quite a long time. i feel very constrained by its format: there’s not really very much i feel comfortable publishing for such a wide audience. so, you’re stuck with vague reminiscences about my life, it appears. there are a lot of much more specific things going on in my life that i want to write about, but i can’t here, really. (well, i could; i don’t want to. and i think i could regret it.) i guess i’ll try writing some private entries next, and see how that works.

there's beauty in the breakdown

2006-10-27T20:38:00.000-05:00

sorry that i haven’t updated in a while. thanks to kathryn and cheema and matt for your comments :D. things are pretty busy, what with hmc and midterms. procrastination has driven me to write another post.

halloween is next week, which means thanksgiving is approaching! thanksgiving is my favorite holiday (it overtook christmas when i was around 16). it’s a feast and i get to see lots of relatives.

the weather still hasn’t been too bad. i really like fall, i think i mentioned that before. the leaves are still pretty, and it’s been crisp but not cold, for the most part. unfortunately, a storm is coming tomorrow.

so, someone jumped from the 9th floor of leverett towers yesterday (well, self-defenestrated, to be precise). (he survived.) when things like that happen it sometimes catches me off guard to realize and remember that there are people in the same community who are truly miserable, right around me, perhaps in the same building. and of the different ways of attempting suicide, i think jumping is one of the most desperate. there are different classifications for the psychological state someone is in depending on how they choose to end their life, and i kind of buy into that.

i’ve been watching the third season of nip/tuck (ordered it on dvd). i’ve watched all but the finale (in which the carver will be unmasked), and i’m planning on watching it later tonight. that show is really incredible. it’s by far the best show on television, in my opinion, and the quality is much higher than most movies. it is literally so captivating, i can’t look away from it. the amount of plot twists, surprises, and overall drama in a single episode is unbelievable. it’s twisted, surreal, sexy, pretty much just awesome. and it gets better each season. man. as stupid (pathetic?) as it sounds, watching season 3 has probably been the highlight of my week. similar to shows like law & order (”ripped from the headlines”), a lot of the plastic surgery cases in the show are based on disorders, abnormalities, and desires (both physical and psychological) that i’ve heard about in real life. the acting is fantastic, the characters are awesome, and the show is visually stunning.

okay, i’ll stop talking about nip/tuck now.

but now what is there to say? when you think about it, nip/tuck is really an allegory for life. well, maybe not. i should probably get back to my problem set now. things like problem sets just seem so insignificant and meaningless after seeing nip/tuck…

i'm retarded

2006-10-14T20:37:00.000-05:00

so i decided to watch flightplan tonight (the jodie foster movie… love her). i had been listening to tracy chapman (who i also, by the way, love) beforehand for a couple hours while reading barthes (who i love… seriously) for our upcoming seminar on structuralism. he literally makes me shiver, his writing is so good. i have to include just one short excerpt, from the beginning of “roland barthes par roland barthes”.

to begin with, some images: they are the author’s treat to himself, for finishing his book. his pleasure is a matter of fascination (and thereby quite selfish). i have kept only the images which enthrall me, without knowing why (such ignorance is the very nature of fascination, and what i shall say about each image will never be anything but . . . imaginary).

when consideration…treats the image as a detached being, makes it the object of an immediate pleasure, it no longer has anything to do with the reflection, however oneiric, of an identity; it torments and enthralls itself with a vision which is not morphological (i never look like myself) but organic. … it provokes in me a kind of obtuse dream, whose units are teeth, hair, a nose, skinniness … here i am henceforth in a state of disturbing familiarity: i see the fissure in the object (the very thing about which he can say nothing). it follows that the childhood photograph is both highly indiscreet (it is my body from underneath which is presented) and quite discreet (the photograph is not “me”).

anyway, that’s not a passage i’d choose to capture or epitomize barthes, but i think it’s more capable of standing alone than a lot of others.

on to why i’m retarded: so, i begin watching the movie on my computer, and a couple minutes in i realize that a tracy chapman song (short supply) is playing during the opening scene and credits. i think, that’s a funny coincidence. and then the actual movie starts, and people are talking, and i can’t hear what they’re saying. at that point i realized that i had forgotten to pause the music in itunes, and tracy chapman was still playing, and was completely overriding the movie soundtrack. so then i had to start over. the funny thing is that the tracy chapman song sounded totally natural with the beginning of the movie at the time. however the mood was a lot different the second time around, because there was creepy thriller/suspense music.

the time is going quickly; the first holiday weekend is already come and gone. it’s also starting to get chilly, which sucks. follow-up on one of my first posts: the photodermatitis is almost completely gone (or is healed the appropriate word?).

foley & the page program

2006-10-11T20:36:00.000-05:00

sorry for the long delay between updates.

in the wake of this latest scandal, some people are wondering if the congressional page program should be dissolved. this is an extremely interesting question for me, in part because i was a page myself, but mainly because of its broader societal implications.

let me begin by proposing two premises, which hopefully you will find intuitively plausible. i will also attempt to justify them.

(1) members of the united states congress are less likely, or — at worst — as likely, to be sexual predators than members of the general population.

(note: for the purposes of this blog entry, when i say “sexual predators” i am referring specifically to those who target minors.)

you will probably agree that members of congress are not more likely to be sexual predators than the average person; that is, there is no obvious feature inherent to politics as a profession that would particularly attract sexual predators. why do i claim moreover that they are indeed less likely than the average person to be sexual predators?

(a) congress has passed many bills that impose tough punishments on sex crimes, and that encourage and provide resources for states to enforce sex crime laws. you might argue that it is politically difficult for a member of congress (abbreviated moc from now on) to vote against such bills regardless of his or her personal views. this is probably true; however, if a significant number of mocs were indeed sexual predators, we might expect congress to spend less time on these issues.

(b) members of congress are public persons subject to intense scrutiny and have no prior record of sex offenses. to be elected to congress, a person generally needs to have an extremely “normal” personal life, and cannot have committed misdeeds in the past. since the average age of a moc is quite high, we might expect that a person who is (for example) 45 would have acted on their urges by that age if he or she intended to do so, been caught, and thus forfeited the opportunity to become a moc. (what if the members of congress in question indeed had acted on their urges before, but simply had not been caught? this is possible, but there is no evidence to suggest that it’s the case.)

(c) other professions, such as teaching, are more attractive than politics to sexual predators.
i could go on, but hopefully you are convinced that there’s unlikely to be a higher prevalence of sexual predators who target minors in the united states congress than there is in the general u.s. population.

(2) congressional pages, on average, receive as good or better supervision than their average age peer.

in my use of the normative “better”, i really mean stricter. from my experience, i can tell you that pages are watched very closely at all times. pages live together in a controlled-access dormitory guarded 24 hours per day by the capitol police. the resident caretakers were (when i lived there) all former or current members of the military who kept a very tight watch. a page typically cannot leave to go anywhere besides to work without signing out, and must usually be accompanied by at least one other page. what is more, the schedule is incredibly busy, which leaves little time for going off to do anything unseemly. so, for example, i contend that a page is less likely to be vulnerable to an internet predator (excluding members of congress, for the moment! i will return to this.) than a teenager who is not a page. there is not a lot of time to spend on the internet; internet access is available only in a computer room which affords little privacy (or, at least, this is how it was in 2003 when i was a page); and it would be somewhat difficult to leave on one’s own to meet a predator.

thus i hope you will agree that there is nothing about being a page that puts a person a priori at more risk of falling prey to a sexual predator than the typical teenager. indeed, a page is probably at less risk.

given these premises, i will proceed with my analysis. in premise (2) i spoke about pages being at less risk of being victimized by predators who were not members of congress. the problem is that — while this may be true — they have been victimized repeatedly by members of congress.

thus, calling for termination of the page program is equivalent to saying that the 535 members of the united states congress, some of the most powerful, respected, and influential people in the world, are incapable of restraining themselves from making sexual advances on a small group of teenagers who works in the congress. they are so incapable of doing this, that the only way of preventing it is to remove the teenagers.

this is truly an incredible thought! do those who call for ending the page program realize that this statement follows directly from what they are advocating? (perhaps not: perhaps there are other reasons, such as that scandals involving pages are bad publicity. however, i think it’s reasonable to assume that the primary concern — and thus the primary reason for these proposals — is the well-being of the pages.)

i will now examine the above paragraph, which i’ve put in bold for emphasis, further: what can we conclude from the fact that members of congress have proven themselves literally unable to keep their hands off of the congressional pages? let’s return to my two premises: what does this mean in light of the fact that members of congress are less likely to be sexual predators than the general population, and that pages are better supervised than most teenagers?

in my mind, a couple of important conclusions are implied.

(1) as taboo as it may be in our society, it is indisputable that a significant proportion of human adults are powerfully physically attracted to young people — that is, minors.

i say “powerfully attracted” because members of congress have, in many ways, far more to lose than the average person by making an advance on a minor. they risk destroying a career which has taken a long time to build, and in which they have amassed a great deal of influence. they also face certain public scorn at the international level if they are discovered. and yet several members of congress on several occasions have been willing to take this risk.
does this mean that the age of consent should be younger than 18? (it already is in some places.) possibly, but not necessarily. a case could easily be made for why sex between a teenager and an older adult would be harmful to the teen. and the law is likely to prevent some (although, as we have seen, certainly not all) adults who are interested in this from engaging in this activity. that said, it is difficult to enforce laws that are contrary to public sentiment (examples: prohibition, online sharing of music) due to the number of transgressions.

you could counter my last point by saying that public sentiment is in fact overwhelming against sex between a minor and an older adult, and any poll would almost surely support your claim. i would respond by noting the important difference between attitudes and outcomes. if you had asked mark foley, daniel crane, or gerry studds (other congressmen involved in page scandals) that question, i suspect they too would have said that they were staunchly against it. thus it is impossible to get a true, honest measurement of public opinion on this matter. doing so has not been particularly important, however, because most of us have an intuitive sense that it is undesirable and should be against the law.

(2) the prevalence of sexual contact between adults and minors is likely to be much, much higher than most people would estimate it to be.

it’s reasonable to believe that a sexual predator who is a moc is more likely to be caught than a sexual predator who is a private person, for several reasons. one is that members of congress have relatively little privacy and are under constant surveillance by a variety of people (staff members, security, the press, the public). another interesting one is that there is a fairly strong incentive for the page to reveal the secret to others. this is because he or she is involved in illicit behavior with an extremely well-known person; monica lewinsky was similarly unable to keep her affair with clinton a secret. the page may want attention, or simply want (in a juvenile way) to exercise the disproportionate amount of power he or she suddenly has over another person who is traditionally a power figure.

with all of this said, if there have been several incidents in congress in the past 25 years — where incidents are less likely to occur than other places and the probability of incidents being reported is more likely — there must be thousands and thousands (possibly millions) of such incidents occuring in the united states each year. their prevalence is underestimated because they are highly underreported.

one possible counterpoint: perhaps members of congress wield such strong power positions that they are more able to coerce pages into engaging in sex than the average adult would be to the average teenager. this is possible, but doubtful to me; to a 16 year old, a teacher or adult relative might seem to be in an equally elevated power position relative to the young person. i think this counterpoint, if it is valid at all, would have a minimal effect.

so, should the page program end? absolutely not, in my opinion. if anything, pages are less likely to fall prey to a sexual predator than they would be by staying at home for a year! (and the likelihood of future scandals decreases with each successive one.) being a page was one of the most fun and memorable experiences of my life. i’d hate to see the program end just because some members of congress exhibit the same behavior that’s seen in the rest of society.

private entries

2006-09-30T20:35:00.000-05:00

cheema and i were discussing why she doesn’t have a blog a couple of days ago, and why i had hesitated to create one. in a journal, you generally want to talk about personal things, things you don’t want the whole world seeing, things that you might not want to come up in a google search of your name by potential friends (dear potential friends, if you are reading this: you should be friends with me), employers (you should hire me), or lovers (you should love me).

and so then you need to kind of censor everything you write, or just stick to neutral/boring/mundane/impersonal things, which is no fun. so, one option would be for me to begin a separate, totally anonymous blog and just write whatever i wanted there. but it’s not like these other things are so scandalous or shocking or abnormal. i don’t mind (in fact, i want) people i know reading them. i just don’t want anyone/everyone reading them.

so i’m going to start writing some private (password-protected) entries. if you want the password, just ask me for it. (if you don’t have my contact information, it’s on the profile page linked to from the top of this page.)

the other thing i don’t want is for this blog to turn into a collection of random (or even non-random) links, as so many blogs do. that said, i’ll share one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/us/30daddy.html

it’s about the national guard giving soldiers’ families life-size cardboard cutouts of their affiliated service member. you know, to keep them company.

deal or no deal?

2006-09-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

deal or no deal is an interesting show for economists. glaeser talked about it last year, i think. it allows us to observe people make decisions about bets in a very pure form, and we can estimate their coefficient of risk aversion from how they play. the interesting thing is that most players on the show seem far less risk-averse than we typically imagine most agents as being — and even, in some cases, appear to be risk-loving. it’s odd to see middle class and lower-middle class people (who presumably have a high marginal utility of wealth) reject good offers from the “bank” to gamble for a big win.

there have been some papers written about this. i’m going to take a look at some of them eventually.

i was thinking about it, though, and i think i would behave a little differently on the tv show than in my normal life. it is supposed to be for fun, after all. and the stupid audience always wants you to reject the deal. that’s a lot of pressure.

i switched stat classes. time series was just too ridiculous. there were only three undergrads in it, the rest were master’s and phd students from statistics, applied math, etc. the very first problem set was too hard for me. so i switched into a linear methods class which is going to be very nice. the professor seems cool too. went to the class for the first time today.

we had a meeting about the model congress web site, it should be launching within the next week. this is a good thing, because a lot of faculty advisors are e-mailing me wondering why we still have last year’s site up. we’re also working on a new publicaton: a guide for faculty advisors about everything hmc-related. i’m going to be laying it out, which should be kind of fun, because it’s an excuse for me to learn pagemaker. so i’m looking forward to working on that a bit this weekend.

update

2006-09-24T20:34:00.000-05:00

i’m behind in school work already, somehow. i did read the whole poetics this weekend, for literary theory. tomorrow’s lecture is entitiled “poetics and philology”. it’s probably good i read it because it’s kind of a classic. i found it interesting but not particularly profound or groundbreaking.

the first problem set for time series analysis & forecasting is due on thursday. i want to get started on that soon. it’s mainly a review of things we should already know from stat 110 and 111. i’m sure i won’t know how to do any of it, but hopefully i can figure that out without too much difficulty, or else it does not bode well for the rest of the course.

had model congress meeting tonight. we’re recruiting freshmen this week.

regarding unique pizza: it actually is more expensive than tommy’s. each slice is $2.50 (!). they’re pretty substantial, though. one thing i’ve noticed, oddly, is that they’re very hands-on at unique pizza… as in, their hands, on your pizza. literally three different employees there have done this. they don’t use serving tools, or plastic gloves. they just pull the pizza apart with their hands (messily) and put it in the container. and then they use their hands more to arrange it. luckily, the people that work there aren’t gross/disgusting. and i know that this is probably the sort of thing that goes on in restaurant kitchens all the time, but usually in places where they serve your food publicly they make more of an effort at not touching it. oh well.

first week

2006-09-20T20:33:00.000-05:00

so, my first week of classes is 75% complete, considering that i don’t have classes on fridays this semester :D . i like all of them so far. not much work yet, just reading. my first problem set will be due next thursday (for “time series analysis and forecasting”, which may be difficult because it’s composed primarily of graduate students).

everybody has already begun attending lots of recrutiing events, which is lame. it’s incredibly time-consuming and has little value, in my opinion. i’ll go see them when they return in november or december to give presentations specifically geared toward summer opportunities. in the end, i feel quite certain that they would rather select for an interview someone with an excellent resume who isn’t in their system, than a weaker candidate who records show has attended four of their events.

i tried unique pizza. i actually like it. it’s heartier than tommy’s… greasier, larger, more filling. i’m not exactly sure how the price compares but it’s almost the same. 2 slices + a 20 oz. drink is around $6.80, which is almost exactly what the same thing used to cost at tommy’s, if i recall correctly. the only downside is that they carry pepsi products, whereas tommy’s stocked the (superior) coca-cola brand.

my room is still clean, although my desk is starting to amass some objects.

trading results have been good so far. i’m up 4.4% in 5 days of trading, or about what my savings account earns in a year. maximum daily drawdown has been 0%, as the profit from each of my trades so far has been weakly positive. the euro is currently in the midst of a modest after-hours rally following today’s fomc meeting.

back to school

2006-09-14T20:32:00.000-05:00

so, i’m back in the dorms; classes start next monday. it seems like whenever i think about the passage of time, in some ways the amount of time in question makes perfect sense, but in others it seems so much shorter.

case in point: the thought of being an upperclassman. it does feel right, in many ways. i feel like i’ve been around for a while… i feel confident… freshmen seem young to me… and certain memories from freshman year feel quite distant. i do feel like i’ve been in college for a while. and, as much as i love harvard in a lot of ways, the thought of moving on to the next thing in not too long is a pleasant one.

i’m unphased about being back. our new setup is great, though. at least three times larger than last year, and the same ideal location. tommy’s pizza is no more! it’s been replaced by “unique pizza & subs”, which ironically has over 200 locations (although i’d never heard of it since yesterday). i look forward to trying it, although i’ve heard it’s not as good as tommy’s was. that location seems to be ill-fated; its ownership turns over quite frequently.

my room looks really nice now, and i’m making a vow to keep it tidy this year. that means no clothes on the ground (or, at least, not more than one or two articles), no empty cans/bottles lying around, and making my bed as often as possible. my television receives exactly two channels with reasonable quality; luckily, they’re cbs and nbc. i knew this would be the case, though; i only bought it for dvd watching.

i bought books for three of my courses today. waiting on the other two until i’m sure i’m taking them. the books for my literary theory class look great, i’m looking forward to that a lot. extracurriculars are already starting up again, too; i think i’ll be working at the activities fair tomorrow. and i have a *lot* i need to be doing for model congress.

trading the 4x

2006-09-11T20:31:00.000-05:00

so, i’m going to try my hand at currency trading. i know, i know, it’s almost like gambling. the markets are volatile and unpredictable… etc.

but i traded a demo account for a few weeks during finals this spring and had good results (gain of about 8% in that time period). i know, i know: past performance does not guarantee future results (especially with such a small trial period). but there are some market conditions where it really is quite clear what direction things are going in. and i think if you’re fairly conservative and stay rational, you can do alright.

i don’t need this small bit of money i’ve put into it, so i’m just going to play around with it and see what happens. real money should be more fun than a demo account. i’m trading minis (1 contract = $10,000, 1 pip = 1 dollar), which make playing the market manageable with a small investment.

if it doesn’t work out, oh well. if it does, i’ll make a little extra cash. i’ll keep you posted.

summer music

2006-09-08T20:29:00.000-05:00

of course, i spent a lot of time listening to my enduring favorites this summer: cranberries, alanis, r.e.m., counting crows, and so on. however, i’ve also been listening to some new music, and some new discoveries of mine (even if the albums themselves are not new):

* snow patrol: puts me in a good mood. some of the sound is pretty unique.

* goldfrapp: ryan told me about them (along with ladytron and blonde redhead). i wasn’t a big fan at first, but it’s growing on me, despite being kind of electronic and sex-musicy.

* panic! at the disco: okay, a lot of people hate this. but it’s catchy. i heart it.

* paris hilton: obvi.

out of my pre-existing music library, i’ve also been listening to a lot of staind, abba, and bright eyes recently, according to iTunes.

photodermatitis

2006-09-06T20:28:00.000-05:00

so about three and a half weeks ago this really weird thing appeared on my hand. it looked like i splattered scalding oil on myself. it was splotchy discoloration in a strange pattern. i thought it was a bug bite because there was a bite-looking thing, and i couldn’t think of anything else it could be.

i did a little online research and it wasn’t consistent with lyme disease (not that i had a tick on me anyway…) or west nile virus, so that was a relief. i figured it was some sort of spider bite.

well, a week later it was still there, and hadn’t faded at all. it looked like i had some sort of rare skin condition, and i was getting a little worried. (my mom was, too.) i went to a walk-in health clinic. the doctor didn’t know what it was, but prescribed a topical cream to reduce the inflammation.

three weeks from the rash’s sudden appearance, it was still unchanged. i e-mailed my doctor at school along with a photo of my hand, asking him if he thought i should come in. (cambridge is about an hour and 15 minutes from here.) this was his reply:

“Jordan: Had you squeezed any limes recently, particularly on a sunny day?”

well, hmm. actually, yes. the very day it appeared, i squeezed 7 or 8 limes to make a large batch of guacamole for a mexican party we had. i also mashed up a few more to make mojitos, and sliced still more to make margaritas. then i was outside for several hours during the party, which took place on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

“It has the appearance of a photosensitivity rash.”

my doctor is scarily good. like, how the f*&k did he know that it was from lime juice? this isn’t the first time he’s made what i’d think would be a non-obvious diagnosis without even seeing me. (the first time was two weeks into freshman year when i went to bed right after taking a pill, and so it remained in my throat, dissolved, and created a tiny ulcer, which made it excruciatingly painful for me to swallow, eat, or drink.)

so, i’m a bit relieved, and it’s beginning to fade. all i need to do is keep my hand out of the sun.

careful with limes on sunny days.

inaugural post

2006-09-06T20:26:00.000-05:00

welcome to my blog. should be wild.