LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
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Archive for June, 2008
Childless and Cheerful in the US…
“The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term “bundle of joy” may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,” says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. “In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.”
More at Newsweek on some evidence undermining one of the great mythologies of modern life.
Comment:
Mind you, despite what family-value adherents will tell you, you can’t call this a Christian mythology. The Gospels are pretty clear on that. Jesus even comes right out and says his values are…or can be…. pretty much opposed to the family. On the other hand, sociological surveys of the emotional states of random individuals aren’t exactly deep thinking either and they’re not likely to offer up much solid evidence one way or other.
Still, once in a while, it’s nice to see the childless off the hook and the fecund squirming to defend their choice.”
Ind-lish As She is Spoked….
Thanks to writer-engineer Kash Agarwal, on whose blog I recently discovered this gem of Babu English:
“A School Master from a remote rural area in Bihar was
transferred to a new School in Mumbai.He reported for duty two days after the actual
date of joining.Consequently he was asked for an explanation in
writing…____________ _________ _________
Deer sur,
If small small mistakes getting inside my letter, I
big you pardon, ass I am not a good englis speaker.This is my fist vijit to Bombai. Stickly speaking, I
wanted to joint your school more fastly,but for the following region, too much time
lost in getting slipper reservation in three-tyre
compartment.I tolded
I has head ache problem due to migration. Still the
clerk rejected to give ticket to I and my sun.I putted a complain on station masterji.
He said I to go to the lady clerk.
At first she also rejected. I then pressed for long
time and finally with great difficultyshe gave a birth to my sun.
Anyway I thanked the station master also
because he was phully responsible for getting birth
of my son…”And more in that vein.
MindBody: J.K. Rowling On The Inner World And The Outer….
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling at her Harvard commencement speech on June 5 2008.
Shooting for Justice: Supremes Uphold Right to Self-Defense
“The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact…..”
More at AP News.
Rights to self defense are for individuals not just for state militias, as liberals like to argue. Notice it’s the only time you’ll hear liberals defend any rights for states…
Supremely Confused: Rat Out the State - Die…..Rape Kids - Live.
“[Justice] Kennedy concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals — as opposed to treason, for example — “the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.”
The decision does not affect the imposition of the death penalty for other crimes that do not involve murder, including treason and espionage, he said…..”
More at the Washington Post on the Supreme Court’s latest piece of muddled thinking.
Comment:
If treason warrants the death penalty, it must be because of its heinousness as a crime, not because of any inherent tendency to lead to murder, since not all treason leads to anyone’s death (besides which, of course, the state is a far larger killer than any traitor).
But, if heinousness is a criterion, then isn’t raping children (at least in certain instances - let’s overlook mentally defective rapists here) heinous?
Right here, I find the rationale for my blogging and the source of much left-wing and right-wing confusion: the pervasive belief that most harmful things in society are physical and material; that most good things are physical and material; and that we can leave out the mind when we discuss the body politic….
Raping people is a form of torture - rape attacks your feelings about your own sexual identity and others’ that form the core of human personality and integration into society.
Children who are raped repeatedly grow up, like torture victims, with suffering that almost never leaves them. The lives of the most savage criminals often have childhood rape as a common theme. Growing up to be a serial killer or a future rapist seems to me to be a fate worse than being killed. You might not end up that way, but only because of a heroic effort on your part.
Parents, which would you rather have - a child who dies in war, is decorated as a hero and honored forever, or a child who is kidnapped and repeatedly raped and tortured, survives…. but only as an emotional and physical wreck, who for the rest of his life stumbles from one crisis to the next, eventually turning to crime himself.
If you find that difficult to answer, I rest my case…
Mob Mind: Warriors of the Amazon…
“As the Amazon sites expand their visitors are seen as an increasingly important. Mark Moskowitz, an independent filmmaker, sent an e-mail message to about 3,000 people this week asking them to review the DVD of his film “Stone Reader,” which goes on sale soon.
“If you didn’t see it but heard it was good, go ahead and post anyway, (what the heck),” Mr. Moskowitz told them. “It doesn’t obligate you for anything, even the truth.”
Despite the widespread presumption that the reviews are stacked, both readers and writers say they affect sales, especially for new writers whose books are not widely reviewed elsewhere.
To increase the credibility of the reader reviews, Amazon has introduced a means for users to vote on the quality of each review, and a corresponding ranking of the top 1,000 reviewers. But the site’s discussion boards are full of carping about how people are trying to play that system, too. Many prolific reviewers speculate that Harriet Klausner, 55, who has long reigned as No. 1, cannot possible read all the books she reviews.
In a telephone interview, Ms. Klausner, in turn, accused the No. 2 reviewer of getting people to vote for him and against her in a “desperate attempt to be No. 1.”
But such concerns among reviewers pale beside those shared by a range of naturally obsessive authors.
Late last month on her radio talk show, Dr. Laura Schlessinger used a call about an anonymous letter to vent her distress over some of her Amazon reviewers, who she described as “scummy, creepy people.”
The feminist author Katha Pollitt mentioned in a recent New Yorker article that she had considered anonymously posting a nasty review on her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s Amazon page, but refrained from doing so. In an interview, however, she said she had chastised a friend whose book had no reviews on Amazon when it came out, telling her to have friends to post some. The friend followed her advice, but Ms. Pollitt was disappointed. “I’m thinking what kind of friends are these? They’ve only written one sentence.”
The novelist A. M. Homes said the one Amazon review that had stuck in her mind was a negative one from someone who signed off “A reader from Chevy Chase,” which is her hometown.
“The world of books is a very small world these days, and any time someone takes the time to share their opinion it’s incredible,” Ms. Homes said. “But I do want to know who that person from Chevy Chase was and what their problem with me really is.”
Read the rest of this 2004 New York Times piece on the weird world of Amazon reviews.
Housing Bubblicious: Post-Bubble Bargain-Hunting
Tampa
Florida’s Gulf Coast metropolis has less glamour - and lower prices.
$499,000
Agents say this newly built traditional four-bedroom home in the up-and-coming Robles area would have gone for $600,000 in 2005. One negative: It’s right next to the Interstate.It’s not the Atlantic coast of Florida, with symbols of opulence like lavish Palm Beach estates or multimillion-dollar spec homes. But Tampa, with its more blue-collar feel, offers the same brand of South Florida living at a far more affordable price. How much more affordable? Prices are consistently lower by 50%, estimates Deborah Farmer, president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors.
To be sure, Tampa lived large during the boom years; prices rose 100% from 2001 to 2006. That was fueled in large part by speculators just looking to flip, and when they started vanishing in 2006, thanks to the slowing market and a tightening of credit, so did those massive annual increases. Real estate values have fallen 17.5% in a year, according to the Case-Shiller index.
But more than other markets, Tampa could be nicely positioned for a rebound. Its relatively strong local economy, coupled with the fact that the bust hit here earlier than in some other markets, means that the downside may have largely played itself out. The median price is now $222,000, down from $275,000 last year, and top NAR economist Lawrence Yun has singled Tampa out as well prepped for price recovery, estimating 20% or more appreciation in the next five years.
A prime spot for high-end bargain hunters: Gulf-front luxury condos in nearby Clearwater or St. Petersburg, which might have gone for a minimum of $1 million a few years ago, can now be snapped up in the $600,000 range…..”
Comment:
Read more at MSN Money on where you can find bargains in the US now. Bargains, that is, if you are solvent and have money in the bank. Cash is king….
And just keep in mind that Lawrence Yun, the optimistic one in the post, is an economist for NAR, the National Association of Realtors, a group notorious for urging people to buy at the top of the bubble.
Amazon Blog: The Funny-Money-Hunny [sic]
The German translation of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets,” Der Massensyndrom, is out. And my co-author gave an interview to accompany the release.
We have a slight difference of opinion on this. I think the over-supply of paper money in the system over the past decades isn’t entirely Greenspan’s doing. It isn’t possible for one man to exert that kind of influence on the economy. What about the oceans of paper that poured in from millions of ordinary people in Asia who chose to stash their savings in the dollar rather than in a gunny sack… or in their own woozy currencies?
Too bad the dollar turned out to be as bad a bet as any of the others…
How the times they have a-changed.
Back then, we turned down thrifty, frumpy Hard-Work-And-Savings at the door (no callouses, dirty nails and sweat stains, please) and waltzed in on the arm of the Funny-Money-Hunny [sic] — a lady of questionable virtue and unquestioned charm….
But now?
We turn to the papers for insights and we find this:
Former Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Managers Indicted.I guess they call that hedge-hunting.
Tut…And these guys were gods only yesterday.
How soon they forget….
All it took was for gas prices to double…..and the mob got out the noose and the gallows…
Back then, the working stiffs….got, well, stiffed.
Back then, all over the world, the good times rolled and the high-rollers made good;But now it’s goodbye to the good times.
The nobs are being nabbed.
And the only thing rolling on Wall Street are the heads…..(No trade mark infringement intended against Maria Bartiromo, TV’s original “Money Honey” - hence my alternative spelling..
Bear Stearns Hedge Managers: Doing The Perp Walk….
“Two former managers of hedge funds at Bear Stearns were arrested and charged with securities fraud on Thursday, a year after the collapse of the funds signaled the onset of a credit crunch that shows little sign of abating….
The indictments, which will be detailed this afternoon by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, are the first to be brought against senior Wall Street executives linked to a tight credit market that has rattled global markets, led to more than $350 billion in write-offs, cost numerous executives their jobs and culminated in the demise of Bear Stearns.The two funds had names as obtuse as the complex subprime securities in their portfolios — High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and its riskier sister offering, the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies…….”
More at the New York Times.
Comment:
Tut…And these guys were gods only yesterday. How soon they forget….
All it took was for gas prices to double…..and the mob got out the noose and the gallows…
Brazil Booming…
Lost Your Job on Wall Street? Head for Brazil! 
27 May 2008 by John Fitzpatrick
The financial crisis which has hit American and European banks has cost tens of thousands of workers their jobs. One side effect of this has been a rise in interest by Western bankers in other markets, particularly in India, the Middle East and the Far East. The Times of London coined the expression summing up the dilemma facing those with no prospects in Western markets: ‘Mumbai, Dubai, Shanghai - or Goodbye”. It quoted a headhunter as saying there had been an annual increase of 20% to 25% in the number of Western bankers heading East over the past two years. So far there has been no sign of many (if any) of these jobseekers heading to Brazil but there are a number of reasons why they should consider the idea.
Any Wall Street whiz kid would feel at home immediately in São Paulo. The city is obsessed with money, success, status and flaunting your wealth. Visit the old downtown area around the Bovespa and BM&F futures exchange, Avenida Paulista, Faria Lima, Funchal, Itaim and Berrini or head further out along the Marginal highway almost as far as Interlagos and you´ll see banks, brokerages, finance houses, insurance companies, accountancy firms, consultancies, actuaries and lawyers´ offices by the score. Countless sky-high buildings, gleaming as the sun reflects their glass exteriors, swarm with hundreds of thousands of busy bees, plugged into their computers, phones glued to ears as they gaze into their computer screens while holding conversations with a dozen people at the same timeIndividualism Is A Lamb With A Lawyer
“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting what’s for dinner. Freedom is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote….”
Benjamin Franklin (?)My Comment:
Maybe so. But corporatism is a pack of wolves and a sheep drawing up an employment contract. Individualism is a lamb with a contract lawyer and paid-up union membership.
Financial Flings: Consumer Prices Here to Stay
“Don’t expect to see any drop in the prices you pay at the pump — or at the grocery store or anywhere else — from any decline in the price of commodities. The price of gas at the pump actually climbed to a new high at $3.983 a gallon last week, according to automobile club AAA, even as the price of oil was falling. (And it kept on climbing, to $4 a gallon, on June 8 after a two-day rally in crude oil prices.)
You can expect the same from other commodities that have tumbled in price. Consumer prices will stay high even as commodity costs come down. Wheat prices are down. From a record $13.95 a bushel on Feb. 27, the most actively traded contract on the Chicago Board of Trade had dropped 42% to $7.78 a bushel on June 5. The prices of most other commodities — well, except for corn, which has soared as heavy rains have held up planting — have tumbled in recent weeks. See any drop in the price of bread or in a meal at your favorite restaurant?
No, and don’t expect to. There’s no quick relief coming to consumers even if commodities continue — or resume, in the case of corn and oil — their retreats in prices.”
More from Jim Jubak’s Journal at MSN Money.
Ronald Reagan on Peace Through Strength
“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”
-Ronald ReaganComment:
Weakness invites attack. Statistics show that mugging victims are more likely to be shorter, frailer and more defenseless than the average person - which is why mugging victims are typically older people, women, slightly-built men, children, the physically handicapped, foreigners, or outsiders of some sort. And why victims of harassment in the work place are usually employees with fewer options to negotiate or leave (such as older men and women, divorced women or single mothers, or junior employees/contract workers (men and women).
Fundamentally this is a type of mob behavior. The establishment beats up on the outsider; the corporation hunts down the lone whistle blower; the church burns the the isolated dissenter - (though a group of dissenters might quickly become another church); carnivores prey on the deer that is wounded or separated from the pack.
Slaves On The Intellectual Property Plantation, Unite!
“There is no question that copyright was originally vested by the federal Constitution with the original author, that this is a constitutional protection properly having jurisdiction in federal courts and always has in cases involving interstate commerce like sales over the Internet, and that the 1976 Copyright Act itself acknowledges that “registration is not a condition of copyright protection.”
Yet this decision denies unregistered writers their constitutional right to any copyright protection by federal courts. The ruling contradicts the specific guarantees to copyright protection that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It contradicts over 200 years of constitutional protection against copyright infringement for all writers, not just those who choose to register with the Copyright Office.
This decision is a dangerous precedent that must not be allowed to stand. It must be appealed to the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and, if necessary, to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
More at The National Writer’s Union on last year’s decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that writers who had not registered their works with the U.S. Copyright Office are denied any access to federal court for copyright protection.
Comment: If you are a writer, you owe it to yourself to make your voice heard on behalf of the write side of this debate.
Ron Paul Revolution: The Stealth Candidate You Never Heard Of…
“At the very least, the untold parallel story of the Republican primaries, which, for the 99% of you who had no way of knowing, have continued alongside the Democratic primaries, and received almost no coverage. Oddly enough, the Republican primaries would have made a more interesting story because although John McCain has been the “presumptive Republican nominee” since January, as late as last month, McCain barely eeked out 70% in the Pennsylvania primary, with 11% going to Mike Huckabee, who had officially dropped out in February, and 16% for Ron Paul. In Idaho, just last week, Ron Paul received 24% in the Republican primary – an astounding figure considering the public has been fed virtually no information indicating that McCain has any opponents at all! Huckabee has consistently managed to pick up 7-10% in each state, mopping up the core religious right wing remains of the dying Republican generation. But the Ron Paul phenomenon is fascinating to me, because the Republican primaries don’t net proportional delegate representation, as the democrats do. If they did, there would still be a race going on there. As it is, what does the Ron Paul phenomenon portend?
The Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in September may have a big surprise in the form of dissent from within. Only it won’t be liberal Democrats and anarchists in the streets; it will be millions of Republicans who have been trying to register their opposition to the War, to deficit spending, and to the “Imperial Presidency” (or, as Dick Cheney calls it, the “Unitary Executive” – a concept heretofore unknown in the United States). While there are many aspects to Dr. Paul’s libertarian platform that are anathema to my liberal sensibilities, I find it encouraging that so many Republicans are expressing – albeit with no voice afforded them by the media – a desire to return to a form of conservatism that is more rock-ribbed Eisenhower than reactionary Rove….”
More at the Smirking Chimp.
DNA, IQ, and the New Racialism….
“On Oct. 14, 2007, one of Watson’s former assistants, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, wrote an article about him in London’s Sunday Times that quoted him making racist comments about black people by suggesting there are inherent, unalterable biological differences in intelligence between black people and everyone else. The response was swift and impressively devastating. The father of DNA had spoken the unspeakable. Echoing racist remarks that have been used to justify the enslavement and colonization of black people since the Enlightenment (think Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Hegel), Watson’s comments implied that he believed that nature had created a primal distinction in intelligence and innate mental capacity between blacks and whites, which no amount of social intervention could ever change.
He had uttered the unutterable, the most ardent fantasy of white racists (David Duke would wax poetic on his Web site that the truth had at last been revealed, and by no less than the discoverer of the structure of DNA). His words caused a ripple effect of shock, dismay and disgust among those of us who embrace the range of biological diversity and potential within the human community. It was as if one of the smartest white men in the world had confirmed what so many racists believe already: that the gap between blacks and whites in, say, IQ test scores and SAT results has a biological basis and that environmental factors such as centuries of slavery, colonization, Jim Crow segregation and race-based discrimination—all contributing to uneven economic development—don’t amount to a hill of beans. Nature has given us an extra basketball gene, as it were, in lieu of native intelligence….”
More at The Root by a scholar of race theory, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The New Exit-Empire Tax….
“The primary purpose of the Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008 is to provide a range of tax breaks for veterans. But the law also imposes the first-ever “exit tax” on even moderately wealthy expatriates. I predicted Congress could pass an exit tax bill like this over a year ago, and now it has.
Once President Bush signs this bill, the law will require future expatriates to pay a tax on all unrealized gains of their worldwide estate, including most offshore trusts. And the tax applies not only to former U.S. citizens, but also to long-term green card holders who have resided in the United States for at least eight of the 15 years before they expatriate. (Fortunately, long-term residents can “opt out” of the exit tax, as I’ll explain in a moment.)
How are you supposed to pay the tax without selling your assets? That’s your problem - not the IRS’s - although the bill permits deferral in certain circumstances….”
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