Later On

No contest. Mail seems to have quite an alert Bayesian filter (I assume) that uses the little “mark it junk” button to develop rules. It (rarely) gets something wrong—it was putting my email notifications from DragonGoServer.net in junk, but when I clicked the “not junk” button on one, that ended that mistake: apparently the “not junk” datum modifies the rule immediately.

Outlook’s spam filter, in contrast, doesn’t seem to work at all. Despite repeatedly clicking the “mark it junk” button for various messages—e.g., the endless series of spam in a Cyrillic alphabet I was getting—the messages continued to show up in the inbox.

Our minds plays many tricks. Here’s a cute one:

I came across it in this article. I find his articles interesting—you might enjoy browsing. The first one in the list below will be familiar to those who have read my shaving book—and to many others as well: it’s a well-known phenomenon.

I want to draw your attention to the second in the list, which relates quite directly to the “group drive” I’ve been mulling over. I probably read this back in August sometime, so my ideas may well have some of their origins in that article. (In fact, I think I’ve read of this experiment before—it’s a well-known study.) It should be noted, however, that these boys did not create their hierarchical structures from whole cloth: they had been raised in our own culture, which definitely tilts in a hierarchical direction: their fathers undoubted had jobs, with all the hierarchy that entails, for example. Still: fascinating study and results.

• The Benjamin Franklin Effect
• The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight
• Misattribution of Arousal
• The Backfire Effect
• The Sunk Cost Fallacy
• Deindividuation
• Procrastination
• The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
• Catharsis
• Anchoring Effect
• The Illusion of Transparency
• Extinction Burst
• Confirmation Bias
• Hindsight Bias
• The Just World Fallacy
• Introspection
• Fanboyism and Brand Loyalty
• Selling Out
• Coffee
• Placebo Buttons
• Learned Helplessness
• Change Blindness
• Inattentional Blindness

I have a Kindle DX, which I have not been using. I don’t know why exactly: the screen had lost some rows and columns of pixels, and had gradually gotten darker, and ultimately I couldn’t even read the thing.

I called Amazon, but it’s a couple of years old (out of warranty). However, they sold me a replacement at $90, which I went for, and I must admit that the new one’s display is wonderfully crisp.

When I got it, I had to reload books from the archive—and I think at some point Amazon is going to have to give us better tools to organize our ebooks so that we can efficiently find and retrieve them (and I hope that they get some good librarians involved: those people know plenty about organizing and retrieving information collected in books). At any rate, I started rediscovering things about getting documents sent to my Kindle (via Instapaper.com, for example), and I got organized enough to enter my Kindle’s email address in my address book (under the name “Kinny”, which I rather like) and try sending a document to that address so I could read a long article on my Kindle instead of my laptop. (There’s a small fee for this.)

It worked like a charm: I copied the long Wikipedia article on “Loyalty”, pasted it into a MS Word document, cleaned it up just a little, saved it, and emailed it to Kinny (Amazon’s Manage Your Kindle pages gives all the specifics), and lo! there it is.

This is going to be quite useful now that I’m into it again. Instapaper.com can handle most of the articles I encounter on the Web (magazine and newspaper articles, for example), and the other stuff I can just email to Kinny.

I’m sort of excited to get into it again.

This sort of drifting away and then rediscovering an old interest and becoming enthusiastic again has happened over and over again in my life. It’s why I keep most of my Esperanto library around, for example—I’ve gotten reinvolved in that three or four times. Go is the same way. Indeed all my interests seem to go through (and, who knows?, perhaps require) a fallow period before I am up for re-engaging.

Consider the Kindle re-engaged.

My dinners continue to be grub-oriented and delicious. Tonight’s meal came together so nicely and tasted so good I thought I’d share.

I also made roasted garlic, prompted by The Eldest describing her technique. She usually pops it into the oven when she’s roasting something else (potatoes, for example), but mine went solo.

Peel the cloves of two heads of garlic, toss with a little olive oil (very little is needed: 1/2 tsp perhaps, 1 tsp at the most), salt, and pepper, and wrap in foil. I put it into a 390ºF oven for 40 minutes, then put the dinner on:

Cast-iron skillet with 2 tsp of oil.

1/2 large onion, chopped
1 handful chopped celery
5 cloves garlic, minced
4 brussels sprouts, halved and then sliced thinly crossways—shredded is the effect
1/3 large sweet potato, cut into slabs, then sticks, then dice—this is the last of that potato, which I used up over three meals
1/2 turkey breast tenderloin, cut into small chunks (about 3 oz)

I let the onion sauté for a while in the skillet, then added a good handful of the chopped celery I now keep on hand. After the onion is transparent and starting to brown, I added the chopped garlic for just a minute, then dumped in the brussels sprouts, sweet potato, and turkey.

I stirred that, added a very little salt and some pepper, then as it cooked down a little, added:

1 bunch baby broccoli, chopped (stems and all, natch: the whole bunch)

I stirred that, add a little sprinkle of crushed red pepper, and probably 1/3 c sake—the rest of a bottle.

Cover, turn down heat to lowish. At that point the roasting garlic cloves had 23 minutes to go, which sounded about right for the grub, so I rested.

When the timer went off, the roasted garlic was soft—ready to be spread like butter, as The Eldest says—and the grub in the skillet was done and still moist but with most liquid cooked away.

The roasted garlic is for later, the grub I’m having now, and it’s extremely tasty.

A word on sweet potatoes: although the Jewel and Garnet varieties are sometimes called “yams” in the supermarket, they are in fact sweet potatoes. A yam is a white, more or less tasteless tropical root vegetable whose nutritional value doesn’t match that of the sweet potato, though yams do have some advantages of their own.

My understanding is that the US grocery industry wanted a way to make customers understand that sweet potatoes were not like the traditional (white-fleshed) potatoes (the kind my grandmorther called “Irish potatoes” to distinguish them from “sweet potatoes”), and so they appropriated the term “yam”. But the “yams” you find in the supermarket are in fact sweet potatoes, which come in several varieties, from pale orange flesh to dark orange.

For more info, look at the Wikipedia articles at the links above.

I’ve been thinking a lot about loyalty, a characteristic closely tied to the “group drive” that we (as social animals) operate under—not so strong as the sex drive, which is even more primitive, but dating back some 16 million years.

Loyalty seems to me to be an internal commitment to support, defend, and ally yourself with a person, group, or creed. We speak of a person as being (for example) loyal to his boss, his company, his family, his country, and so on. Over the period of human culture the group to which loyalty is extended has gradually expanded: initially only the family and extended family, I would imagine. Then the clan or tribe, then the king, and with the Greeks, the city-state, later the nation.

But that “loyalty to a creed” thing seems a little suspect. The root of loyalty, I think, is an implied bargain: if I support and protect you (the person or group to which loyalty is felt), then you (person or group) will support and protect me: a two-way street, a bargain, a mutual alliance.

Naturally enough, some want loyalty from others (being supported and defended) without having to reciprocate (cf. the modern corporation, who demand your loyalty through thick and thin, but offers in return only loyalty until “thin” happens—and the same with various tyrannical bosses who insist on total personal loyalty), but in general the bargain is to some extent honored—Jerry Sandusky was loyal to Penn State, so Penn State protected him: loyalty returned and repaid.

That makes loyalty to a creed—a set of ethics, for example—sort of suspect: you can support and defend the ethics, but the ethics cannot take any action: loyalty to abstract principles is a different sort of loyalty, and the best one can hope for is support and protection by others who also embrace those principles. Although this kind of loyalty can have a geographic footprint (as national loyalties do, for example), it can also be diffuse: a scattered group, all supporting the same system of ethics.

So I’m not so sure “loyalty” really works when the object is a belief or system of ethics. OTOH, we readily speak of people who “betray” their principles, and that is the language of loyalty.

At this point I was rapidly confusing myself, so I did what people now do: I turned to Wikipedia and found there an informative article. Now I’m mulling that over, and I invite you to mull with me.

I received a recent request to compare the pre-2011 Mühle R41 (front razor shown) to the Eclipse Red Ring (razor in back). I also wanted an empty sampler container, so I decided to use the Edwin Jagger Sea Buckthorn shaving cream sample I got with the Osma shaving soap (which does include alum). And I wanted to try the Body Shop synthetic brush, an inexpensive brush for a beginning shaver.

The Body Shop brush isn’t bad at all. I like the feel of the wood handle, which is finished with a natural finish rather than a glossy varnish. The knot is not quite so nice as, say, the TOBS artificial badger, but it gets the job done and feels pretty good on the face.

It’s hard to go wrong with a superlather: abundant lather, working well. The main part of this shave is the razor comparison:

The Mühle R41 has an Astra Kermik blade, the Eclipse a Swedish Gillette blade. Both did a fine job and there’s not much difference. I did find the Eclipse to be slightly more comfortable, and of course both are a world of comfort away from the harsh feel (to me) of the new, 2011 R41 (which I sold quickly). I used both razors on each pass, one on the left side of my face, one on the right. They’re good razors—what can I say? (If you have specific questions, feel free to ask in comments.)

The requester asked for close-ups. Voilà:

Above: R41 on left, Eclipse on right. The Eclipse’s reinforcement bar (attached to the back of the tips of the comb’s teeth) is evident.

They look a little gross, don’t they? Remind me not to look… actually, I think I’ll break out the ultrasonic cleaner today. The Eclipse is on the right and you can sort of make out the “rays” of the logo.

In this photo the Eclipse is on the left, the Mühle on the right. Reason: the Eclipse was upside down when I took the photo, so I flipped it around to make it easier to read. Against the Eclipse’s reinforcement bar is obvious. The thing in the base of the Eclipse handle is a magnet to pick up razor blades as needed.

My own move from BofA to the Monterey Credit Union is proceeding apace. I’ll probably straddle the two institutions for a while: BofA allows free billpay, while MCU charges $60/year for the privilege, so I continue to use BofA for the billpay.

Take a look at these terrific stories. Here’s just the first:

When Daily Kos community member marvinborg was distributing flyers outside of local Chase and Bank of America branches encouraging customers to move their money to credit unions, one of the managers called the police on him. When they arrived, the police promptly told the manager off:

“He has the right to speak and the right to hand out flyers. Unless he blocks you or causes a disturbance, he has the right to be here – please don’t call the police again if he is not bothering you. If you don’t like free speech you should move to another country.”

The second tells of a bank that locked two people inside a branch office (BofA in Santa Cruz, just up the road—in fact, I opened my first BofA account in Santa Cruz) and called the cops because the people were trying to close their accounts. Rather revealing, I think.

The Wife points out this stunning collection of Armistice Day photos. (Remembrance Day is the name used in Canada for what the US now calls Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day here and still referred to as Armistice Day in Great Britain.)

The Washinton Post has come a long way—unfortunately, downhill. Katherine Graham must be spinning in her grave. Glenn Greenwald looks at what the paper has become:

Several weeks ago, I wrote about a truly twisted, deranged rant by neocon royal family member Rachel Abrams. Abrams — wife of Iran-contra convict and Bush 43 official Eliot Abrams, step-daughter of Norm Podhoretz, half-sister of John Podhoretz, and a Board Member of Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) — unleashed a torrent of anti-Palestinian hatred upon the release of Gilad Shalit that could be produced only by the most rotted of souls:

Then round up [Gilad Shalit's] captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

While Abrams’ post sparked widespread revulsion, it found one noted admirer: The Washington Post‘s Israel-obsessed blogger Jennifer Rubin, whore-tweeted Abrams’ promotion of her post with obvious (and admitted) agreement.

In the ensuing controversy, ECI claimed that Abrams’ murderous desires were directed only toward Palestinian “terrorists,” not Palestinians generally — a self-evidently false excuse that quickly fell apart after Abrams wrote that, in essence, all Palestinians are Terrorists (“there are no fine points of distinction in what they’re after”). To make her genocidal wishes even clearer, Abrams then directed her bile to ThinkProgress’ Ali Gharib — an Iranian-American who was one of the many commentators objecting to her original post — explaining that she’d also “feed HIM and his friends to sharks.” To put it mildly, Abrams’ post was bigoted, violence-inciting, and driven by hatred of the purest and most repellent strain.

It’s the opposite of newsworthy that a rabid neocon like Abrams spews this sort of anti-Arab hate-mongering; that is basically the defining attribute of neoconservatism. But what is significant is that Jennifer Rubin promoted and endorsed it without any hesitation. Over the past 18 months, we’ve witnessed a series of journalists fired for far less virulent sentiments directed at Israelis and Jews (Rich Sanchez’ complaints about disproportionate Jewish media influence and Helen Thomas’ call for Jews to leave the region), and even for completely innocuous remarks whose only sin was offending neocons (Octavia Nasr’s mild eulogizing of a moderate Hezbollah cleric). Yet here we have a Post blogger who has endorsed this extreme hate-mongering, and does so with total impunity.

Is there any doubt whatsoever that had Rubin promoted a rant spewing these sorts of ugly caricatures about Jewish children and Israelis with accompanying calls for savage violence — rather than directed at Palestinians — that she would have instantly been fired, then castigated and attacked by all Serious precincts? As Gharib reports today, that was the question posed by a Post reader via email to the Post‘s Ombudsman, Patrick Pexton. To his credit, Pexton had previously condemned Rubin on his Ombudsman blog, writing: “in agreeing with the sentiment, and in spreading it to her 7,000 Twitter followers who know her as a Washington Post blogger, Rubin did damage to The Post and the credibility that keeps it afloat.” After denouncing Abrams’ rant as “reprehensible,” Pexton added: “That a Post employee would retweet it is a huge disappointment to me.”

That’s all fine as far as it goes, but what about the question posed by the reader: wouldn’t Rubin have been fired for promoting this hate-mongering had it been directed at Jews and Israelis rather than Palestinians? Pexton’s email response, published by the reader who emailed him, was this:

Off the record, I think it’s quite possible. But the ombudsman does not hire or fire people here. I only comment.

Leave aside the bizarre belief of establishment journalists that they can unilaterally decree their statements to be “off the record” and then expect that to be honored in the absence of any agreement by the person to whom they’re making the statement. What is most striking here is Pexton’s highly revealing cowardice — probably well-grounded — in wanting his observation about this double standard to be kept private; shouldn’t an Ombudsman who believes this be eager to raise it in public? As the reader noted in reply to Pexton:

If, in your opinion, such a grave double standard exits, why do you comment off the record? Why not publicly state your opinion? Why self censor? Doesn’t that reinforce insidious limitations on free speech?

Think of the absurdity. You must stay cautiously silent about a perfectly reasonable opinion while Rubin and Abrams can let fly with genocidal remarks. With respect, your silence contributes significantly to the poisoning of public debate.

Please speak up.

What’s particularly remarkable is that Pexton is admitting (albeit wanting it kept secret) what any honest observer knows to be true: that there is a very high likelihood — I’d say absolute certainty — that Rubin would have been fired had she promoted a post like this about Jews and Israelis rather than Arabs and Palestinians.

But this is the insidious, pervasive bias that has long been obvious in a profession that relentlessly touts its own “objectivity.” Even the mildest criticism of Israelis and anything even hinting at criticisms of Jews is strictly prohibited — a prohibition enforced by summary, immediate dismissal and enduring stigma. As Nicholas Kristof wrote during a visit to Jerusalem last year: Israel “tolerates a far greater range of opinions [about Israel] than America.”

But the most extreme forms of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred flourish often with no condemnation and virtually always with no sanction (Juan Williams’ firing by NPR was one of the very few exceptions, though that was ultimately motivated by long-standing NPR animosity toward Williams’ role on Fox). Had Rubin promoted (and admitted agreeing with) such disgusting bile toward Jews and Israelis, her journalism career would have been over, but because it was directed at Palestinians, it continues to thrive. Indeed, the neocon fanatic who runs the Post‘s Editorial Page, Fred Hiatt, predictably defended and praised Rubin, calling her “an excellent journalist and a relentless reporter” who “is often the target of unjustified criticism.” (Pexton argued that what Rubin did violated Post rules “that apply to editors, reporters and bloggers,” but since Rubin is an opinion writer, those rules do not apply to her: except Hiatt and Rubin herself repeatedly describe her as a “reporter” and a “journalist”).

Herein lies one of the great myths of American political culture: . . .

Continue reading.

Excellent article by Jo Becker in the NY Times on the prosecutor’s view of the events:

For months, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania had reason to suspect a sexual abuse scandal was going to explode at Penn State University. He also had no way to talk about it, or to prepare for it.

Mr. Corbett, as state attorney general, had begun an investigation in 2009 into allegations that a former Penn State assistant football coach had abused young boys, and that university officials might have covered up the scandal. He had convened a grand jury, and his prosecutors had taken testimony. But when he ran for governor, and even after he took office, he was obligated to keep the investigation secret, even as he saw the university officials at the center of the investigation doing little to address the substance of the inquiry.

“He was upset about the inaction,” said Kevin Harley, who worked with Mr. Corbett in the attorney general’s office and is now his press secretary. “He knew what witnesses were going to the grand jury even though he was running for governor. So then he became governor, and he knew at some point that this day would be coming. He just didn’t know when it would be.”

That day came last Friday, when the charges became public against the former coach, Jerry Sandusky, and two senior university officials. Suddenly, though, Mr. Corbett faced a new challenge: . . .

Continue reading.

Very revealing of the underlying military attitude toward troops as disposable equipment. Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe report in the Washington Post:

The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea.

The mortuary in Delaware, the main point of entry for the nation’s war dead and the target of federal investigations of alleged mishandling of remains, engaged in the practice from 2003 to 2008, according to Air Force officials. The manner of disposal was not disclosed to relatives of fallen service members. . .

Continue reading.

This sounds terrific. Seems like a lot of capability for $150 ($80 without Wi-Fi). In fact I use a wired connection for my various entertainment devices: TV, Blu-ray player, Roku unit—they’re all plugged into the modem with cable. So no need for Wi-fi here.

I particularly like the sound of the brown-rice cakes in this NY Times column by Mark Bittman—and I bet The Wife will like those for her lunches up in Palo Alto (not the first one, which has cheese, but the others). Take a look. Here are the cakes (but note the column includes other recipes, equally intriguing):

Parmesan and Scallions

Combine 1 1/2 cups brown rice with 3 cups water over high heat. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Cook, stirring occasionally and adding more water if needed, until the rice is starchy and soft, about 1 hour. Chill for at least 1 hour. Stir in 1 cup grated Parmesan, 1/2 cup chopped scallions and 1/4 cup chopped parsley. Form into patties and cook in olive oil over medium-high heat until browned on both sides. Garnish: Grated Parmesan.

Carrots and Parsnips

Skip the cheese, scallions and parsley. Instead, stir 1 cup shredded carrots, 1 shredded small onion, 1/2 cup shredded parsnips and 1 tablespoon minced sage into the rice; proceed as above. Garnish: Chopped parsley.

Caramelized Leeks and Spinach

Skip the cheese, scallions and parsley. Cook 2 chopped leeks in 2 tablespoons olive oil until very soft and brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Add 3 cups chopped spinach and cook just until wilted. Stir the leeks and spinach into the rice; proceed as above. Serve with lemon wedges.

Interesting post at Cool Tools: gloves that allow you to use touchpads and touchscreens without having to remove the gloves.

Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar has an interesting post this morning:

When I first started The Simple Dollar, a little over five years ago, I had just started the process of turning around my finances and I wanted to share that story with my friends.

Before that, I hadn’t really been mindful about my financial choices. I would spend with reckless abandon, fulfilling the things I wanted in the very short term without really reflecting on what it meant not only for the long term, but in terms of other short term desires.

Simply put, I didn’t really think about what I was doing with my money. Sure, I would plan ahead enough to make sure that the next month’s bills were paid, but I wasn’t even all that good at doing that. I spent money without thinking. I was mindless.

That mindlessness ran over into a lot of other aspects of my life. It affected how I spent my time. It affected how I acted toward others. It affected how I handled my career. It affected my physical fitness. It affected my relationship with my wife. It affected my hobbies and interests.

In each case, I would make most of my choices without really thinking about them. I’d say things based on my immediate emotional or intellectual response. I’d spend time on what seemed fun at that exact moment. I avoided doing things that weren’t fun, no matter how much they would pay off for me down the road. I never considered the things I was doing in a scope that was beyond me (and sometimes Sarah, too) and I rarely considered them beyond the next few weeks.

Most of the time, I simply acted on impulse in everything that I did.

Thankfully, I was raised well enough that my impulsive responses weren’t terrible. My parents ground a basic level of politeness into my head, for starters, and I had a decent general sense of what it took to survive from day to day and week to week.

The problem is that acting constantly based on such impulses built very little for the future.

It left my finances in a shambles. It left me losing touch with the career I’d dreamed of since I was a boy (writing). It left me completely unprepared for parenthood. It left me with a life that didn’t really seem to have any long-term values.

The biggest change that I’ve made in my life over the last several years is to simply startthinking about all of the little actions I take.

By that, I don’t mean that I stand there and puzzle over what kind of gum to buy in the checkout line. Instead, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about what caused me to make decisions in the heat of the moment and I try to make sure that those decisions are the best possible ones. Not just for the short term, but for the long term. Not just for my immediate convenience, but for a better overall life. Not for my immediate emotional gratification, but for building relationships over the long haul.

Today, I actually spend a lot of time reflecting on why I make the choices that I do and how I can correct the unconscious rules that guide my impulses. I’ve learned a few things.

If I think about something for a while, I’ll find that I remember those thoughts the next time the situation comes up. For example, if I’ve realized that I’ve been spending too much time lately playing a particular game, the next time I pull up that game, that conscious thought actually pops into my head. It makes me stop for a second, reconsider playing that game, and usually causes me to simply not play it.

If I repeat a new behavior a few times, . . .

Continue reading.

Businesses, I’m beginning to think, should stay at arm’s length from the government because the missions and mindsets are so different. Businesses focus on making profits—pretty much to the exclusion of any other consideration—whereas governments have a multitude of missions that have nothing to do with “profit” but focus instead on “the common welfare”: actions that benefit the community, state, or nation as a whole.

For example, a commenter on this blog was talking about how the government was “burning through” the tax revenues, spending those revenues all over the place. Spoken like a businessman, who avoids spending as much as possible: any cost savings goes directly to the bottom line as profit, so businesses constantly search for ways to stop spending money.

Government, in contrast, collects tax revenues specifically to spend them (on projects that enhance the common welfare). Do you want governments to collect tax money and then sit on it, hoarding it, trying to “turn a profit”? No, that’s totally the wrong idea. The money we pay as taxes we expect to be spent, and spent in ways that benefit the community/state/nation as a whole.

Indeed, as we discovered with the Clinton surplus, which was to be a bulwark for social services as the baby boom ages, a large government reserve attracts the attention of businesses, who devote enormous amounts of thought and effort on how to get that money for themselves—and, as it turns out, it’s fairly easy: buy key Representatives and Senators, put a CEO in charge of the executive branch (Dick Cheney), and Bob’s your uncle. I think that KBR probably had to use those Brobdingnagian dump trucks that normally work strip mines to carry away our tax money, thanks in great part to the no-bid, cost-plus contracts (aka “blank cheques”) that Cheney saw that they got.

Kevin Drum has a good post on how business interests muck up the process of government:

The “Volcker rule” is a simple thing. Basically, it says that if you’re a bank that takes deposits and benefits from federal deposit insurance, you can’t also make risky trades that might blow up your bank and cost the taxpayers a bundle. Wall Street never liked the rule, because banks make a lot of their money these days trading for their own accounts and didn’t want their trading profits cut off. They fought the idea in Congress, but in the end, the Dodd-Frank bill that passed in 2010 included a version of the Volcker rule in its final draft.

Was this a victory for common sense? Hardly. Last month regulators unveiled their first take on the actual implementation of the Volcker rule, and it had become a monster. ”Only in today’s regulatory climate could such a simple idea become so complex, generating a rule whose preamble alone is 215 pages, with 381 footnotes to boot,” complained American Bankers Association Chief Executive Frank Keating.

Poor banks! But step back for a moment. How did Paul Volcker’s baby get so bloated? Keating’s crocodile tears aside, the answer is: banks. When it comes to financial regulation, fighting against new laws is merely their first line of defense. When they lose, as they did in the Dodd-Frank battle, the action simply moves to the regulatory agency charged with implementing the law. James Stewart explains what happened next:

When the proposed regulations for the Volcker Rule finally emerged for public comment, the text had swelled to 298 pages and was accompanied by more than 1,300 questions about 400 topics.

…”Here’s the key word in the rules: ‘exemption,’” former Senator Ted Kaufman, Democrat of Delaware, told me. “Let me tell you, as soon as you see that, it’s pronounced ‘loophole.’ That’s what it means in English.” Mr. Kaufman, now teaching at Duke University School of Law, earlier proposed a tougher version of the Volcker Rule, which was voted down in the Senate. “We’ve been through this before,” he said. “I know these folks, these Wall Street guys. I went to school with them. They’re smart as hell. You give them the smallest little hole, and they’ll run through it.”

This is probably the biggest reason that no one should take too seriously Republican complaints about burdensome regulations strangling the economy. The truth is that most reformers prefer fairly simple rules. In the tax world, they’d prefer to simply tax all income. In the environmental world, they’d prefer to set firm limits for pollutants. In the financial world, they’d prefer blunt rules that cut off risky activity at its knees.

But businesses don’t like simple rules, because simple rules are hard to evade. So they lobby endlessly for exemptions both big and small. This is why we end up with tax subsidies for bow-and-arrow makers. It’s why we end up with environmental rules that treat a hundred different industries a hundred different ways. It’s why financial regulators don’t enact simple leverage rules or place firm asset caps on firm size. Those would be hard to get around and might genuinely eat into bank profits. Complex rules, conversely, are the meat and drink of $500-per-hour lawyers and whiz kid engineers. If the rules are complicated enough, smart lawyers can always find ways around them. And American corporations employ lots of smart lawyers.

Keep this firmly in mind the next time you . . .

Continue reading.

Today’s shave had two brushes (only one shown in photo), two soaps, two razors, two brands of blades, but only one aftershave—well, come to think of it, I did use the alum block following this shave, so two aftershaves as well.

At reader request, I wanted to compare Floris and Creed shaving soaps and the iKon S3S and the Pils (with a Personna 74 in the S3S and a Swedish Gillette blade in the Pils).

After a wash with MR GLO, I quickly worked up a wonderful creamy lather from the Floris Elite, using the Frank Shaving brush shown in the photo: excellent lather, and I split the first pass between the S3S and the Pils.

For the second pass, I realized I didn’t want to rinse out the brush to start anew, but I do have a new Frank Shaving brush exactly comparable to the black one (with a white handle, no metal base), so I used that for the Creed: once again a superb creamy lather.

Again on the second pass I used both razors, as I did for the third (half my face with Floris lather, half with Creed).

A pass of the alum block, a rinse, dry, and splash of Acqua di Parma.

Findings: a) Creed is better than Floris, IMO, though both are excellent; b) the two Frank Shaving brushes performed the same; c) the S3S shaves better than the Pils, though both are excellent—the difference is that the mass of the S3S is better concentrated somehow. Anyway, given a choice, go for the S3S (IMO).

Interesting shave. Thanks for suggesting it.

I responded to this comment (to an article about Mike McQueary) by one “LadyD”:

I don’t know any of these men, but what I do know is that history has shown that White men stick together right, wrong or indifferent…..White men have been abusing other men, women and children in abundance and always find a way to justify their actions or their friends action. This is only news to those who turn a blind eye to the truth.

My response:

It’s not just white men that stick together: any tightly knit group is at risk of viewing those not in the group as “outsiders” and defining “loyalty” as protecting the group at all costs, rather than (say) as adhering to a code of ethics, morality, law, or whatever principles ostensibly govern our behavior. A person who is seen as acting against a member of the group because of ethics/morals/laws is generally ostracized as an “outsider” and may well suffer physically, financially, or in other ways. The group can consist of men or women of any race or any mix of races. Look, for example, at how police officers cover up for other police officers and generally refuse to cooperate in investigations (e.g., by Internal Affairs). Or how physicians cover up for other physicians in the case of malpractice.

Seeing this as a problem restricted to white males may be reassuring to those who don’t belong to that group, but those should look at the groups to which they do belong. Group loyalty is a deep force. Primates first began to forage in groups 52 million years ago and 16 million years ago began living in stable social groups. By now the group thing is deeply embedded—ethics is quite recent in comparison.

As I wrote I kept racking my brain for an article that I had recently read on how for some the only “group” to which they give loyalty consists of their immediate family and perhaps some close relations. I finally remembered: it was the article to which Paul Krugman links in this blog post:

OK, let me start by talking about Mel Gibson for a minute. Bear with me, this is actually relevant.

Back in 2000 Gibson made a movie, The Patriot, about the Revolutionary War. (I think I saw it on an airplane). And when the movie came out, Michael Lind wrote an essay that has stuck with me, pointing out that nobody involved in the picture seemed to know what patriotism means. The Gibson character was presented as a man who refused to get involved until his own family was hurt — then, he went to war for personal revenge. And this was supposed to show his patriotism.

As Lind said, the truth is that that’s more or less the opposite of patriotism, which is about making sacrifices for the national good, not serving your personal motives or interests.

Which brings me to the subject of this post, the apparently equally misunderstood concept of hypocrisy. I’ve been getting some personal attacks on this front, but it’s a bigger issue than that. Here’s the personal version: suppose that you’re a professor/columnist who advocates higher taxes on high incomes and a stronger social safety net — but you yourself earn enough from various sources that you will pay some of those higher taxes and are unlikely to rely on that stronger safety net. A remarkable number of people look at that combination of personal and political positions and cry “Hypocrisy!”

Wait — it’s not just about me and the wingnuts. If you remember the 2004 election, which unfortunately I do, there were quite a few journalists who basically accused John Kerry of being “inauthentic” because he was a rich man advocating policies that would help the poor and the middle class. Apparently you can only be authentic if your politics reflect pure personal self-interest — Mitt Romney is Mr. Natural.

So to say what should be obvious but apparently isn’t: supporting policies that are to your personal financial disadvantage isn’t hypocrisy — it’s civic virtue!

But, say the wingnuts, you say that rich people are evil. Actually, no — that’s a right-wing fantasy about what liberals believe. I don’t want to punish the rich, I just want them to pay more taxes. You can favor redistribution without indulging in class hatred; it’s only the defenders of privilege who try to claim otherwise.

Lind’s essay about Mel Gibson ended with concerns that we may have lost the sense of what citizenship and its duties mean. Indeed. If people can’t comprehend what it means to work for larger goals than their own interest, if they actually consider any deviation from self-service somehow a sign of phoniness, we, as a nation, are lost.

The Lind review of The Patriot is quite interesting.

James Fallows has collected the most agonizing and well-known political stumbles in presidential (and vice-presidential) campaigns. Here’s one well-known example:

Interesting report by Felicity Barringer in the NY Times:

Weary of plastic litter, Grand Canyon National Park officials were in the final stages of imposing a ban on the sale of disposable water bottles in the Grand Canyon late last year when the nation’s parks chief abruptly blocked the plan after conversations with Coca-Cola, a major donor to the National Park Foundation.

Stephen P. Martin, the architect of the plan and the top parks official at the Grand Canyon, said his superiors told him two weeks before its Jan. 1 start date that Coca-Cola, which distributes water under the Dasani brand and has donated more than $13 million to the parks, had registered its concerns about the bottle ban through the foundation, and that the project was being tabled. His account was confirmed by park, foundation and company officials.

A spokesman for the National Park Service, David Barna, said it was Jon Jarvis, the top federal parks official, who made the “decision to put it on hold until we can get more information.” He added that “reducing and eliminating disposable plastic bottles is one element of our green plan. This is a process, and we are at the beginning of it.”

Mr. Martin, a 35-year veteran of the park service who had risen to the No. 2 post in 2003, was disheartened by the outcome. “That was upsetting news because of what I felt were ethical issues surrounding the idea of being influenced unduly by business,” Mr. Martin said in an interview. “It was even more of a concern because we had worked with all the people who would be truly affected in their sales and bottom line, and they accepted it.” . . .

Continue reading. Once again we have clear evidence that the US government has to a great extent come under corporate control, and that the controlling factor is money.