New York City 2009

Monica and I find the Paley Center for the Arts in midtown Manhattan. A well dressed man asks whether we are here for the film, then gives us our will call tickets. First, we claim third row seats, then we visit the Stephen Spielberg gallery which features complimentary wine. This gallery displays posters highlighting the threat of global warming. There is a computer terminal for the purpose of collecting names for an online petition to the United Nations.

The film being screened at the Paley Center will be presented on HBO in the Spring. Eric Metzgar, the film maker, had followed Nicholas Kristof to Congo, where Kristof found starving war victims and interviewed a warlord. Most of the questions went to “Nick”, though someone questioned Eric’s claim of trying to be objective. “There is no way to separate the person from the process. I point the camera where I look.” Two time Pulitzer winner, Kristof, is the hero of the film. He reports on those suffering the most so that people can visualize just how bad these wars are. The Paley audience is the media elite. Pat Mitchell, in charge of the program and the organization, is a dynamo. How did we locate this event? Kristof tweeted.
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We arrive a little early and have a great Buffalo Wing sandwich. On a small stage in what appears to be an old passenger train at Pete’s Candy store in trendy Williamsburg Brooklyn, we will watch Amy Sohn and Julie Klam read from their books, mostly to other women. Hodgman has Twittered us the event notification. Both live up to impressive resumes. Amy enjoyed Julie relating her Letterman intern memories. Julie was an intern while going to NYU film school and her fictional memories of her real job were great fun. Julie likes Letterman. “He had a five year old. As far as we knew, Letterman was a one woman man.”

I went online to get SNL tickets and Daily Show tickets. We walked on Broadway past a Letterman taping. We stopped at TKTS and might have gone to Broadway shows. But, we somehow avoided the major visual broadcast events for more literary and independent events that popped in front of us or into our cell phones’ text mail.
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One set of tickets was purchased in advance. That was to see the Les Paul trio at the Iridium. Monica asked, “Would you have gone to see Les Paul if he were still alive?” “Absolutely. I loved to play Les Paul on KALX and would definitely pay to see him.” “Great. Then, we are going for the right reason.”

T.W. Doyle, Les Paul’s engineer, opened with some of his compositions, which I enjoyed, especially as he seemed more like a studio guy than a stage guy.

The Trio told stories about Les. Rusty Paul, his son, sat in the back representing the family. (In early November, nephew Steve Miller performs.) I enjoy the bass player particularly. This is how she happened to join the band:

“Les was a master of dirty jokes. I was playing with two guitarists. Les asked me to stay on the stage and they left. Les said something about girl bass players. I said something about old men. Les said ‘Looks like we have an act.”

Larry Coryell headlined the event, playing a speed guitar version of Bolero. (He talked about how he tried to imitate material that he later discovered that Les Paul recorded at 2x speed. I'm guessing that he came up with this in the 1970's.)
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We spent two evenings at the Symphony Space at 96th Street, which we learned about from an LED sign that scrolled on Broadway near our hotel. Appearing on the 20th: Frank Rich with Rocco Landesman. Appearing the 21st: Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. We pick up the pamphlets at midnight or so, then go online at the hotel to reserve tickets.

The Leonard Nimoy Thalia, of the Symphony Space, seats one hundred or so and provides plentiful table space for writing. White haired people filter in and join us upon finishing their wine at the adjacent cafe, which has provided WiFi allowing me to play Mafia Wars.

Frank Rich, while engaged, could not be more relaxed. He asks paragraph long questions in perfect rhythm and grammar. NEA head and country music fan, Rocco Landesman, could not be more quotable. Rocco’s father founded the Crystal Palace theater in Saint Louis “because there were no good drinking establishments in the area.” It was a place “where people like Woody Allen would have residencies when they were going through divorces.”

We learn that the NEA has a small budget, $165 million, which is less than New York City’s arts budget and that, nonetheless, Glenn Beck finds ways to criticize them. Someone asks about special NEA programs for women. Rocco says this will not happen as the local organizations funded by the NEA choose how to spend the money, not the federal government.

Landesman pitches that the Arts attract the employees that attract the good companies that make cities thrive. “Arts money is development money.” A second thrust is education. “It turns out that the schools that incorporate art into everything, into math, into science, into everything, have the best test scores.”

Landesman faces little controversy from this polite, older crowd of arts supporters though he notes that his answer about arts spending for women “drew faint applause.”
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“I’m Levitt. He’s Dubner.”

We have figured this out already. The lanky, stiff guy must be the academic. The formally dressed Al Franken-esque guy must be the writer who first interviewed Levitt in 2003 for the New York Times Magazine.

This is a younger crowd. White haired people are present, but scarce. One would think that given the genial and good-humored Dubner lives a few blocks away, this crowd might be equally friendly to the previous night’s crowd. Judging from the questions, four of the five which could be considered pointed or self serving, this is not the case.

First, Dubner and Levitt describe how they met. This is entertaining and may be found in the forward to SuperFreakonomics. Two of the questions relate to environmental scientists accusing Dubner/Levitt of misquoting them, which they refute here.

“Let’s say we stop putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It will still take 50 to 100 years before warming stops. The temperature will go up six degrees. We are not saying we need to put sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere (about the flow of one garden hose at each pole) to cancel out the warming effect. We are not saying that ocean acidification and carbon dioxide are not issues. But, we do need to talk about geoengineering. That is all.”

A woman plugs her book. Levitt plugs the woman’s book. Dubner gently corrects Levitt: “You learned about the book on prostitution in Chicago 100 years ago from our blog.”

Levitt coins the phrase "carbon crazies" and apologizes as "this is not language that I use elsewhere." As I texted to Facebook friends about our social skills: Monica is Dubner. I'm Levitt.
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Frank Rich. Nicholas Kristof. Dubner/Levitt. Their data will be solid. Their opinions will be well thought out. Their books will be best sellers.

Dubner/Levitt perhaps seek out the controversy, but are not angry themselves. People currently in their forties and early fifties seem to like to disagree to be disagreeable. “Mensa doofuses” ask impolitic questions, making themselves look unreasonable, where the same questions could be asked politely and reasonably. Heavily represented on television, I will be pleased to see them go out of fashion.

At less than Mensa level, we found Yankees fans in a lower Manhattan bar to be uniformly obnoxious during a playoff game versus the Angels. How obnoxious? They made fun of the Angels’ Nick Adenhart for being dead. People in Jeter uniforms (number 2) may be telling us more than they imagine. It was not just the one comment or the one bar. Because of the Yankee fans in New York, I can no longer imagine myself rooting for the Yankees team, even against the National League.
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A jean clad woman drinks from a water bottle. “No drinks,” the librarian giving our tour directs. “This is posted on the front door.” Our tour advances to the end of the hall. “No cell phones,” she directs to a man in a suit. “Please move on.”

The New York Public Library has WiFi. The restrooms in the park have attendants who prevent the grounds from turning into camps for the homeless. The library will soon lend. (It has been a research library.) The mission is clear. “No one had heard of this man. He left his estate to the library pointing out that no one had asked his name, but that nonetheless, help had generously been offered. Our mission is to serve everyone.”

More symbolic of our time is the Metropolitan Opera tour guide who looks at Monica’s backpack (actually more of a camera case.) “Of course, since 9-11, we can not allow backpacks backstage of the Met. Do you have a place to store it? No, there is no place to store it here.”

In my imagination, the librarians of NYPL vigorously debate whether water bottles should be allowed. Meanwhile the director of the Lincoln Center prefers not to think about their policies or to discuss them with employees. “Didn’t the Bush Administration warn us about backpacks?”

So much has changed. No one reads books in the Subways. It seems like they did two and four years ago. Dress is much more casual, even on Wall Street. The pace on the sidewalks has slowed as people stare into I-Phones. People in Manhattan do not seem to be as there as they used to be.

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We did other things. We toured Central Park and its Shakespeare garden on a cold, damp day. We walked the Brooklyn Botanical Center in warmth and sunniness. We found the New York Transit Museum. (Transit in NYC is several light years ahead of local transit.) We often visited the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank, for late night suppers. We ate the Barack Obama and the Willie Dixon (both excellent) at Amy Ruth’s on 116th in Harlem. We wandered and walked with direction, primarily around the Village. We stopped for “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” at the IFC Theater.

We found comedy clubs. The first was the Village Lantern, no cover (they asked for donations), where we went because we were hungry. We had been assured some of the comedians had been validated by TV appearances, though the crowd was outnumbered by the comedians. Their schticks related to identity-- black guy, gay guy, guy from India, Bronx guy. The other comic troop, the Upright Citizens Brigade, was a higher league, still only five dollars. Their improv was quite professional.

Giuliani acknowledged Monica near Central park. (I was staring off into some other reality at the time.) Bill Thompson, Obama endorsed candidate for mayor, was surrounded by press in Brooklyn. I would have missed that too without Monica. The Hodgman and Kristof tweets? I would have missed them, also. This was our third anniversary trip. I can not imagine traveling without her.

It's More Important How? than What?

Nicholas Kristof says the biggest global opportunity, comparable to ending slavery or totalitarianism, is advancing women's roles in the emerging world. Others worry about climate change, financial collapses, religious extremists or the bomb.

But, perhaps the proper question to consider first is not the what. Maybe, it is the how.

How are the needs of individuals dealt with in an age when corporations (and governments and the ultra-rich) have the money, the power and the votes?

Ayn Rand and the Cato Institute would abolish government, effectively giving all of the power to the wealthy who can move to private utopias and ignore the biggest issues.

The Republican party is more worried about the welfare of corporations than the welfare of voters.

The Democratic party in its quest to "solve" problems can forget that appetites are insatiable and that a "free market" can be reasonably efficient.

Here are some proper roles of government (the how):

Regulate away the ability of economic giants to create "externalities" such as depressions caused by high risk investing.

Limit the bigness of corporations and thus limit their power to extort governments. (Any corporation with more than one billion dollars in sales should be taxed heavily enough that it considers splitting itself into smaller, less politically powerful companies.)

Tax "externalities" such as the pollution and carbon dioxide created by a large business. (Cap and trade is a reasonable way to limit carbon dioxide. If corporate use of sweeteners causes obesity, which shortens lifespans, then tax Coca Cola's use of high fructose corn syrup.)

Tax "externalities" that an individual creates. (Gas taxes should be much higher. Energy taxes should be higher and progressive.)

Create roads and public transportation with the vision of continued economic growth. (If the top 10% of income earners are not riding public transportation, then the public transportation is not designed correctly.)

Engage globally. Being the one remaining military "superpower" creates the obligation to be engaged and multilateral. (The United Nations must be regarded seriously as it is the body best representing the globe.)

If we get the how correctly, then we can move on to some more important "what" issues:

Ensure some basic standard of living. (If people live in places less nice than a Motel 6, then offer them a Motel 6.)

Make excellent education available to all.

Health care is hard. Reducing infant mortality in the United States should be a top goal. Did you notice that I did not solve it? When Barack Obama pointed out that 80% of health insurance in the state of Alabama is controlled by one company, he nailed the essence of the problems with the current system.

And, how to improve the plight of women in third world countries? You may have to do that one on your own, though Nicholas Kristof can provide ideas.

That Barack Obama is essentially getting the how right is more impressive to me than the Nobel Prize. Or, to be more accurate, not getting it terribly, terribly wrong is impressive to me in this era.

Overtime

The Twins need to win three of four games to tie the Tigers last week. Instead, they won two. Ozzie's White Sox beat the Tigers two out of three while the Twins swept the Royals. So, the Twins tied the Tigers the hard way, forcing a one game playoff.

Likewise, Clay Buchholz, Tim Cahill, and K-Rod pitched poorly. If the Asakusabashi Bazookas are to take fifth, they will have to do it the hard way. Currently, it is a tie for fifth. If points change during the Twins tiebreaker, that will serve as the tie breaker for the CBS League. The Twins and the Bazookas are in overtime. Update: The Twins advance to the post-season by winning in twelve innings (over-time). The Asakusabashi Bazookas hang on to a tie for fifth, worth $45 toward transaction costs. (Miguel Cabrera would have had to go 5 for 5 or steal a base to change the standings. Winning fifth out-right was worth $90.)

A six homerun game on Thursday, lead by Jay Bruce with two, brought the Bazooka Kazoos to a perfect 60/60 hitting points in the Yahoo League. Wins by spot starters Randy Wells, Ryan Rowland-Smith and Wade LeBranc, plus a .57 WHIP day by Nick Blackburn improved the pitching stats dramatically on Saturday for an impressive concluding uptick. Team leaders: Miguel Cabrera (195 hits), Pablo Sandoval (.330 average), Mark Teixeira (34 homeruns, 106 rbi), Matt Kemp (34 stolen bases), Chris Carpenter (17 wins, 144 strikeouts, 1.01 WHIP, 2.24 ERA), Fernando Rodney (30 saves), Jose Valverde (1.81 ERA in 44 IP) and Neftali Feliz (.82 WHIP in 24 IP). Final overall Yahoo Rank: 2129 (147.05 adj points). So, the Yahoo team finishes in the top half of the the 5000, slightly better than the 2007 results and significantly better than in 2008 (which was a tougher league).

One final Week

There is just one final week between now and the beginning of the baseball off-season. Will the Twins win three of four against the Tigers and follow it up by advancing to the post-season? Will the Bazooka Kazoos finish at 100+ points and rank among the top 5000 Yahoo teams overall? How will my CBS League do? Can it hold ground for a respectable 5th place finish (for an expansion team)? Will the ERA and WHIP come down and get the Asakusabashi Bazookas into 4th? (You picked a fine time to injury your arm, Johan!) Is third still possible? Saves from relatively new closers Gutierrez and Madson today fill me with optimism. The standings look stable, but there are at least ten points still in play.

Some highlights from the upcoming post-season: On October 17, I may get to meet Bill James at a book signing. And, two weeks later, his 2010 Handbook will be mailed!

Missing My'at

This morning, I brushed Gizmo. She has collected quite a bit of fur. I would not think of Fall as the time a cat would shed. Maybe, she is a weird cat.

My'at collects three brushes of fur for every one on Gizmo. She's not on her usual perch. Where is My'at? It would be a good time to brush her. She will come down if she wants to be brushed.

I vacuum the living room. Gizmo jumps away. I vacuum the stairs. Gizmo, who had relocated to the quieter area, jumps away again. I think to myself, Gizmo has been visiting me quite a bit lately. She shows up on my bed in the morning. I see her on both perches. When was the last time I saw My'at? A week ago? Has she gone missing?

Last time I heard of My'at was when Monica was annoyed with her for stalking Beau and Gizmo on the stairs. Just how annoyed was she? We seem to be going through plenty of cat food. Monica wouldn't give away My'at and some cat food, would she? The house does seem cleaner. Surely, Monica would tell me?

I vacuum the TV room. A previously hidden cat jumps away. The mystery is solved.

False Political Balance Part II

I watched Keith Olbermann on MSNBC last night. Among his targets: Lawrence Lessig, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Among his criticisms: Fox News had a producer hype up the footage of one of the contrived made-for-TV "tea parties" and Lawrence Lessig stole parts of his monologue for a political ad.

Olbermann claimed Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Creative Commons (which Olbermann never mentions), used MSNBC footage without his permission. More about this: here. If Olbermann does indeed represent the anti-corporate wing of the anti-conservative party, then I am not sure why Olbermann would be upset at being used in ad where the producers agree with his point of view. In fact, some would view this as promotion. More importantly, if people like Lessig are not allowed to reframe what is broadcast on "news channels" then are we granting a monopoly on "news" to the big networks?

Likewise, in criticizing Fox for having a producer generate applause at the contrived "tea party", Olbermann neglects that his own network did the same at Saint Paul during the Republican convention. Why else did they give me the tee shirt and wave their arms as they went to commercial? Olbermann knows the tactics of the "other side", because they are the same as the tactics of "his side". Olbermann, the former ESPN sports announcer, views politics as purely sport. Ron Santo, the radio announcer who bleeds Cub blue, has the same job as Olbermann feels he has. (Santo brings a good deal more sincerity.)

As far as I could tell, Olbermann had nothing substantive to say. Perhaps, his writer is taking the week off. His job, at least last night, was to provide a naysaying voice. The Harlem Globetrotters can't play without the Washington Generals. It appeared that Keith Olbermann was a Washington General, helping to bring relevance to "Faux News" and the wackiest of made-for-TV conservatives. Perhaps, this explains why corporate America is finally paying a "liberal" voice. The last thing the left needs is an intellectually dishonest face to balance out Fox News right-wing lies.

(Likewise, Sam Donaldson did not represent the left for ABC. Rather, he was a foil for the much more intelligent and much more wrong George Will. If networks truly want to represent "both sides" then why do they seem to have so much trouble putting intelligent liberals on the air? My answer: the purpose of TV is not to be honest, it is to sell tomato soup.)

P.S., if you see one of those "Vote 2012" promotions at the bottom of your TV screen and TV is where you get most of your news, please don't vote.

False Political Balance

Debra Saunders, David Brooks and Peggy Noonan are three conservatives that make well argued cases. Often, I agree with them. This does not make "conservatism" as valid as "liberalism". These two points of view rarely have equal validity, and sometimes neither is right. So, today, I take issue with Debra Saunders.

In the Chronicle this morning, Saunders writes, "I love the Van Jones brouhaha." Her argument seems to be that Jones is a nutty lefty, really not much different from those nutty right-wingers. To her credit, "nutty town hallers" and birthers annoy her, so stupid people making Weekly World News type claims, get no support from Debra Saunders, as is fitting.

In 2004, Van Jones (who resigned from the Obama administration before most people ever heard of him) signed a petition that suggested that people in the Bush administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war." Is this a wacky Weekly World News proclamation? No, not really. Cheney, Rumsfeld and all of the prominent neo-cons pushed for an Iraq War during the Clinton Administration, and most used 9/11 to justify the Iraq War. A book by Peter Dale Scott examines the theory in detail. While not concluding one way or another, certainly similar things have happened in American history. For example, the Johnson administration used a Gulf of Tonkin non-event to justify the Viet Nam escalation. It is often claimed that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen. What did the Bush administration do once it was learned that "bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States?" [Previous blog entry re: Peter Dale Scott].

Does history suggest a tie between Second Amendment fundamentalism and America's health care? Have past presidents not met the constitutional requirements? Debra Saunders rightly concludes birthers and "town hallers" are flakes. (Evidence indicates they are corporately sponsored flakes.) In contrast, the case made by Peter Dale Scott has historical precedent.

The Bush era was a really bad time in American history. For example, torture is a war crime. If I am a public relations person for the Republican party, I play on the cognitive dissonance of "the greatest country in the world" being involved in war crimes. I stand up and sing the national anthem and "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful" and that Lee Greenwood song, and after that, how can we imagine our country involved in evil activities?

The second public relations strategy would be to build false equivalencies. People who bring guns to presidential public meetings are the same as controversial historians, and just as patriotic as those who opposed and saw through contrived rationalizations for a stupid war. Nice try, Debra Saunders. And, to those who say the Republican National Committee is incompetent, I say no. In the zero sum game that they feel they are playing, their best strategy is to invent equivalencies to convince us that one side has to be just as bad as the other.

But, let's move past old fights. The Afghanistan War needs to end. The unemployment rate needs to come down. Infant mortality in the US needs to get reduced. These are things that we can agree on whether we are numbers people or letters people-- the "Phantom Tollboth" seems like a timely reference. And, on the trivial matters, we can agree to disagree.

People interested in working toward the common purpose have to be really annoyed at the focus of the discussion.

Adding and Dropping

Lots of adding and dropping. Johan Santana is out for the year. He is dropped. Aaron Harang had an appendectomy. Dropped. Jake Fox has big homeruns every time he plays, it seems, but hardly ever plays. Dropped. Hiroki Kuroda hit in the head with a baseball. He may return soon. For now, he is dropped. Hank Blalock is no longer playing with Chris Davis called back up. Dropped. Justin Masterson had his two start week where he pitched terribly. Dropped.

Juan Gutierrez seems to be the Arizona closer with Jon Rauch traded to the Twins and Qualls with an injured knee. Added and starting. Derek Holland is starting twice. Added. Trevor Cahill is pitching well. I thought he might have a two start week, but not if Oakland has a six man rotation. Added and starting. Pat Burrell seems to start every day. Added. Carlos Gonzalez. Added and starting.

Pitching has been atrocious, and Carlos Zambrano, back from his injury, has been a culprit. Him, I keep. With a lead in wins, I can afford to use Feliz and Wagner, both of whom have been brilliant relief pitchers, in addition to four closers. Maybe, WHIP and ERA can be coaxed down.

The bench is actually solid. Corey Hart should be back from his emergency appendectomy later in the week. Asdrubel Cabrera should be starting, but my MI is too good, and it is a toss up to put him or Adam LaRoche at utility. Eric Young is mostly a play for 2010, but he will add SBs if Colorado gives him a chance in September. Jason Heyward is done for 2009, but belongs on my 2010 roster. He is another one to be kept. (I have about ten I want to keep, but must choose seven.)

With luck, the lines on the graph keep moving higher.