Little Talk:

Andre Gregory's preface to My Dinner With Andre:

"A few weeks ago I had dinner with Twyla Tharp in her kitchen. . .we began to speculate that your early years, say your twenties, should be all about learning - learning how to do it, how to say it. learning to master the tools of your craft; having learned the techniques, then your next several years, say your thirties, should be all about telling the world with passion and conviction everything that you think you know. . .Meanwhile, though, if you have any sense, you'll begin to realize that you just don't know very much. . .And so the next many, many years, we agreed, should be all about questions, only questions. . ."

I don't think, and doubt Andre Gregory thinks, that your forties should be devoted to "questions, only questions". But it is perhaps the time to, in the spirit of Ron Moody, ask a question or two, review the situation, and hopefully come up with better answers than Fagin.

***

Macro-Readonomics

I had planned to read Raymond Chandler's "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", and time how long it took me to read it. As it happened, I stopped after Part 1, because I didn't feel like going on, and Part 1 was sufficient for my purpose. For whatever reason, I wasn't feeling Mallory, Rhonda Farr, Landrey, Erno, the fight scene, the two bored men, or the highball-drinking woman. I did like the descriptions of place, and scenery, and highball. And perhaps the plot device of blackmailing about scandalous letters seems quaint and obsolete in a world where everyone knows everything about everyone, and where, if no true scandals exist, it is possible to manufacture fake scandals, and if true scandals exist, it is possible to distract from them by flooding the zone with fake scandals.

Here are the numbers: Length of Part 1: About 2000 words. Time it took me for a first skim of Part 1, where I missed a bunch of stuff: 10 minutes. Time it took me for a second skim of Part 1, where I missed slightly less stuff: Another 10 minutes. Time it took me to ruminate / reflect / chew the mental cud on Part 1: Another 20 minutes.

So what is my maximum reading speed: Somewhere on the order of 50-100 words a minute

What is my comfortable reading speed: Somewhere on the order of 25-50 words a minute.

Maximum amount of time I can read in a day: Somewhere on the order of a 500-1000 minutes a day.

Maximum amount I can read in a day: Perhaps somewhere on the order of 25,000 words a day. Perhaps somewhere in between 25,000 and 50,000.

Minimum amount I should read in a day: Not sure.

Micro-Readonomics: What To Read And Why.

Yeah no, someone else.

Macro-Writeonomics

I wrote these 2 paragraph in a a pretty un-self-conscious state, without too much effort or struggle:

"The days of everyone assuming Black people will vote with Democrats are coming to an end, and they should be coming to an end. America will be a better country if the Republican party changes its strategy of trying to deliberately make it harder for people in Democratic-leaning counties to vote, and instead makes the strategic decision to compete for the votes of the people in those counties.

Depending on life circumstances, some people may have a calling to enter the arena, and once in the arena, those people may have a duty to compete, and compete to win. But when competing, they have a duty to compete in a way that does not bring the game into disrepute. They have a duty to compete in a way that does not damage the game. Voter suppression, even attempted voter suppression, is competing in a way that damages the game."

It took me about 10-15 minutes to write a zeroeth, 0.5 draft, and then another 15-20 minutes to read, re-read, add a word or two here, a line or two there, until eventually I had a first, 1.0 draft.

So the bottom line is I seem to write in short bursts of 15-30 minutes, and in those short bursts I seem to write about 100 words.

How money of those short bursts am I capable of writing in a day? Certainly 5, probably 10, possibly 10-20, conceivably 20-30. 

Maximum amount I can write in a day: Perhaps somewhere on the order of 500-3000 words a day.

Minimum amount I should write in a day: How many words does a non-writer really need? That is, how many words should you write, not for fame or fortune, but out of a general sense that writing is a good thing to do, like walking, or talking? 

Perhaps a few short bursts of writing a week seems like the right amount to keep as a gentle minimum to encourage yourself to do, even when you don't feel like it, out of the vague sense that a hundred words a day keeps something away.

Micro-Writeonomics: What To Write And Why

Yeah no, someone else.

Macro-'Rithmeticonomics: How Much Calculation Does a Non-Mathematician Really Need?

Micro-'Rithmeticonomics: What To Calculate And Why.

Macro-Walkonomics: How much to walk.

Micro-Walkonomics: Where to walk and why.

Macro-Stuffonomics: How much stuff to have.

Micro-Stuffonomics: A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Rain check.

Macro-Talkonomics:

Micro-Talkonomics:

Someone else.

***

Busywork

One big difference between the me of three years ago, and the me of today, is that the me of three years ago had an unbounded contempt for busywork. Now my contempt for busywork, or anything, for that matter, is very, very bounded. Busywork is obviously not ideal, but it seems to me better than many of the alternatives. And what I did not appreciate, at all, is that sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether something is busywork or not, until you've actually done it.

3 depictions of busywork that speak to me:

1. A friend claims that when his dad was in the army, he used to always carry a hammer with him, even when he had nothing to nail.

2. Daniel Pinkwater, "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death":

"All of Genghis Khan High School works on the notebook system. . . 

One of the tricks kids use in preparing nice, heavy notebooks is this: You take your actual, say, biology notes, maybe twenty-five pages's worth. Then you take twenty-five pages of just anything with writing, and shave a a quarter of an inch off the outside edge of the page. You put a genuine page, then a shaved-down fake page, then a genuine page, and so on. This way you have a fifty page notebook, a certain A. When the teacher flips the pages, the book will always open to a real biology assignment. When you've gotten your A, you can take apart the biology notebook and use some of the contents for your social-studies notebook. 

Another thing you can do is obtain someone's last-year's notebook cover that got an A. You erase the grade and use it again. The theory is that if Miss Sweet liked the picture last year, she'll like it again this year. . . 

I could probably make my own cover and get an A with it, but it's more challenging to cheat. At least this way, we're actually learning some skills. And the teachers are cheating. The whole reason for the notebook system is so that if anyone accused them of never teaching anything, they could grab one of the notebooks and say, "Look, this kid knows all about spores and grasshoppers and all this stuff - how can you accuse me of never doing my job?"

3. Crowley in "Good Omens": "Our lot have better things to do than verifying compliance reports from Earth. No, as long as they get the paperwork, they seem happy enough. Just as long as you're seen to be doing something. . .Our respective head offices don't care how the work gets done, they just want to be able to cross it off their list. . ."

The current "solution" to busywork is constant monitoring and surveillance, but that seems deeply unsatisfactory to me.  The solution I would prefer is honor among workers, and bosses who care, not just whether the work gets done, but how it gets done. It's fashionable to pretend that busywork is most common in libraries and post offices and schools, but the more highly paid and prestigious the field, the greater the incentive to game the system. The Facebook pivot to video scandal, where the whole journalism field re-oriented itself on the basis of metrics that turned out to be completely faked, seems to me to point to the need, not just for surveillance, monitoring, metrics, but behind all of that, honor.

***

I enjoy the arrogance of the villain in Bobby Lee's K-Drama parody:

Not only am I the president, but look at me. I am a beautiful man. 

My features, they are near perfection. 

My hair is like spun ebony silk.

Every muscle on my sinewy body appears to have been carved by a loving God who loves only me.

It seems to me that shamelessness can be a problem if it gets in the way of self-correction, but it can also be a very good thing if it gets in the way of self-harm. "My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual!"

***

How much subscription media does a clerk really need?

So with the income from your job copying out the Encyclopedia Brittanica, how much of that income should you devote to subscription media? The minimum, of course, is the Strand, the Times, and Punch. What is the maximum?

Big Talk

William Burton-ism Lost:

http://williamburton.blogspot.com/2002_09_01_archive.html

Saturday, September 07, 2002

An American's Statement to the World:

Hi, World, how's it going? Been a while. I know our current leader doesn't call you much, but we really do like you. In fact, we're a lot like you. Really. We've got Hindus, and Muslims, and Christians, and Jews, and people who believe in Body Thetans and the healing power of crystals. We've got Irish Buddhists, Japanese Baptists, and Jewish atheists who are trying to find a nice Jewish boy to settle down with. We've even got women who make a living traveling all over the place telling other women to stay home. All sorts of crazy shit. You'd love it over here. I know we told a lot of you to stay home, but you know we didn't mean it. . .

We'd prefer that everyone just keep sending us their smartest students and hardest workers while buying our soft drinks and watching our action movies. . .

You should also really chill out about people of different religions, different tribes, and different races. I know we Americans have got to work on this stuff ourselves, but we're trying (most of us, anyway). We've got one country with all the world's religions, all the world's tribes, and all the world's races in it at once. It may be confusing at times, but we've always got someplace different to eat or a new name to mispronounce. I know our history on this stuff sucks, but we're getting a lot better at it. . If we try real hard, I think we can all get along. Hey, if a Vandy fan can date a UT fan, anything's possible. . .

We'd also like to apologize for not learning your languages. We bought the tapes and have been meaning to get around to it, but the game was on and a friend came over with some beer. Next thing we knew it was 3am and we were on our way to Padre. You know how it is.

William Burton-ism Regained

Maybe. Maybe. Not yet.

***

I liked this November 2 1A podcast which featured ordinary Americans speaking on their behalf. More than one person said they felt that neither party represented them, and it seems to me important to understand why they feel that way.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/31/929952736/poverty-politics-and-the-presidential-election

***

There's an old Gene Lyons column on Newt Gingrich I remember, but can't find online, where he says something like "Most of us, by the age of twenty-five, have accepted the fact that we'll never play third base for the Yankees. Newt Gingrich seems not to be one of those people." And just as we first have to surrender our sporting fantasies, most of us will have to surrender our fantasies in other areas as well. (Surrender to Who or What? Good question.)

The amount of megalomania in American, and world, politics, does seem to have been on an upward trend in recent years, across the political spectrum. I do think American elites have some responsibility for this, because they have insisted, in the teeth of a fair amount of logic and evidence, that health care for everyone, and homelessness for no one, is wild-eyed, megalomanic moral grand-standing. I do think health care for everyone, and homelessness for no one, will make American politics, and life, less angry, possibly less megalomanic. 

I am absolutely fine with incremental progress. But I never hear the advocates of incremental progress talk about the size of the increment, or the condition to be evaluated after every step.

I once heard a researcher on the radio say something along the lines of, the Great Recession spooked everyone, rich and poor. But the rich responded to the spook by grabbing more and more (Surf or ski? Why not both!), and the poor responded to the spook by making do with less and less. (Water *and* electricity? I can make electricity from water!)

I have a David Copperfield-based analysis of the stimulus checks. Will official Washington exclude Mr. Dick, Rosa Dartle, Miss Murdstone or Mrs Gummidge from the checks? So far they have. We'll see if things change with Democrats in charge.

***

Doge Debate

You, A Doge: Wow, capitalism! Much productivity. Such wealth creation.

Me, A Debate: Yes, yes, very impressive. Congratulations. Well done. Jolly good show. So no problem about health care, education, clean toofs and a roof for all?

Doge: What? No! Why? We're broke, broke I tell you! Entitlement spending will kill us all!

Debate: . . .Is that your final answer?

Doge: Absolutely. I'm sorry, we can't give money to losers, we'll just get more loseriness.

Debate: [deep sigh] Socialism it is then.

Doge: Well, if you go Sock, I will go Fash! Only, to annoy you even more, I will call it Anti-Anti-Fascism!

Debate: Fine!

Doge: Fine!

Debate: Fine! 

Doge: Fine!

What happens next? Tune in next decade!

***

I don't have super strong opinions on student loan debt forgiveness, so will follow the lead of the politicians I trust most (Warren, et al.) What I do have a strong opinion on is that student loan law is a good indicator of the state of American economic democracy. This seems to me an excellent history of student loan law:

https://www.savingforcollege.com/article/history-of-student-loans-bankruptcy-discharge

and this seems to me the story it tells:

Pre-1970: Noble and generous policy-makers being perhaps a tad too noble, and a mite too generous.

1970-80: Mostly well-intentioned policy-makers trying to balance competing interests.

1980-1998: Lobbyists trying to earn their fee, with a modicum of shame.

1998: Lobbyists taking advantage of a strong economy to pull a fast one, increasing the non-dischargeability of student loans from seven years to infinity years.

Post-1998: Lobbyists wilding (The 1998 and 2005 modifications seem to me downright evil).

2006-2019: Pushback to the wilding, some of it effectual.

2020-present: More pushback to the wilding, some of it even more pushy, more effectual.

How pushy? How effectual? We'll find out!

If student loan law had stayed at around the 1976 or 1978 level, student loans could never have become the problem they became.

***

The John Adams Hierarchy

There is a John Adams quote that I first read on William Kaminsky's blog. The full quote is this:

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

I think some of current politics is about which level of the John Adams hierarchy do you most identify with: Do you identify most with politics and war, most with mathematics and philosophy, most with geography and natural history, most with commerce and agriculture, or most with painting, poetry and music? I think part of the reason policies to fight climate change and covid-19 have been fought is a sense that they are sneaky attempts to gain status from people who identify with different fields.

And I think one of the ways to make American politics, and society, better is to have more interaction between people in different fields.

***

No problems with Kamala Harris, but I really liked Karen Bass's calmness, and her super-power like ability to not be annoyed or aggravated during annoying and aggravating times. I am certain that the Scientology "scandal", on examination, will turn out to be something like, "She paid to see Battlefield Earth in a movie theatre, twice, which is something that only the most dedicated, devoted Scientologist would do. Not even John Travolta has seen Battlefield Earth in a movie theatre, twice. She claims she only went to see Forest Whitaker, but . . .can we take that chance?"

***

Noble liberal sentiment from Hercule Poirot (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, 1992):

Blunt: Well, I've killed 3 people. . .but haven't I done something for England? I have held it firm, I have kept it solvent, I have kept it free from dictators. I am necessary to the continuing peace and well-being of this nation!

Japp: Is he saying what I think he's saying? . . . 

Poirot: Eh bien, M. Blunt, that is where you and I, we do not see alike. For to me the lives of those three people are just as important as your own life. M. Blunt, you talk of the continued peace of this nation, hein? Oh yes, that is very good. But Poirot is not concerned with nations. Poirot is concerned with private individuals, who have the right not to have taken from them their lives!

I am a fan of Suchet's Poirot, and it seems very fitting that Suchet should be a devotee of Saint Paul, because there seem to me to be connections between Poirot and Saint Paul: both of them marvelous, fastidious little men, three cubits high, with very strong opinions about order, method, and the right way of doing things. One feels that when Paul lets his amanuensis have his say, he does it in the same spirit as Poirot letting Hastings have a go at solving a case.

One wish I have for the Poirot TV series is for Suchet and Brian Eastman to team up one last time, and film some of the stories of the Labours of Hercules that the series didn't get around to filming the first time. In particular, I would like the Carnaby sisters to be portrayed on the screen.

Next post: 10-21-21