Samstag, 29. November 2008

Notes of a day




In Switzerland, you usually collect your leaves (if you have a garden) with fallen branches of trees, cut gras and other "green waste" and put them into a green container/trash bin. Then, a truck stoos by every other week or so and the bin's contents get poured into the truck.


In America, the team of 534 N Monroe Street performed an extra effort at 11pm on a Wednesday night to get the huge pile of leaves - brushed/collected together the Saturday before - to the street, hoping that a truck would collect it as scheduled the next morning. There is not green waste bin, so the leaves get "sucked in" [remember Electolux' famous ad from the 1970s or so: "Nothing sucks like Electrolux" - poor Swedes]. Indeed, 14 days later, a truck came by and did the job: A lawn sign two blocks away reminded the neighborhood "Vacuum leave collection, Nov 25". Strangely, just one block further, huge piles of leaves still embellish the streets - maybe the truck lost its breath?








and something else sucks money...:


I was honored to join the selected many (who had an invitation/reservation/links to Congress(wo)men or else) today and visited the all new Congress Visitor Center CVC (costs: just 630-odd m$) before it's actual opening on Dec 2. Apparently, construction took about 7 years and the result is gorgeous: Virginia sandstone, the large "Emancipation Hall" reception hall, embellished with some statues that have been moved from the Capitol here (among others Astronaut Swigart of Apollo XIII and the plaster version of Lady Liberty (the lead one is on top of the Capitol dome) and of course an impressive exhibition hall with an abridged version of the Senate's and House's history. An exciting movie introduces the audience to this Temple of Liberty.


In any case: it's worth a prolonged visit and also worthwile to spend some thoughts on liberty and the purpose of good policymaking.

Sadly, there are a lot of security precautions that hugely restrict visitors' moves. A visit in 1998 was rather simple: you just walked into the Rotunda and there friendly guides welcomed you (guess what: there was no such thing as a bag control or x-ray). Now, it seems there are more policemen than guides...
























Freitag, 28. November 2008

Reflections on so-called "elite education"

Deresiewicz, W. (2008). "The Disadvantage of an Elite Education". The American Scholar, Summer 2008, 77/3, pp. 20-31.
The author was English teacher at Yale (and thus may have some provocatively exaggerated points, but the core isn't that bad, I'd say:-)

"The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from" (i.e. you cannot relate to ordinary ppl anymore, the claim goes).

"The second disadvantage, implicit in what I've been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth ... all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE." (and, one ought to say, sometimes a false sense of self-esteem...).

on elite uni's and their exlcusivity-drive, reinforcing the self-perception of the "best and the brightest": " There's no point in excluding people unless they know that they've been excluded" (otherwise there is no "exclusive society:-)

"The elite like to think of themselvesas belonging to a meritocracy, but that's true only up to a point. Getting through the gate [of the school, i.e. getting admitted] is very difficult, but once you're in, there is almost nothing you can do to get kicked out" [yeah, maybe, but the fear persist...; on the other hand, there are parallels to management establishment where "eine Hand waescht die andere", i.e. mutual protection of who's "in the club".]

The perception of being 'entitled" to money, fame, power...

"... students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They've been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure ... "
[Good point, although the author is here much too narrow and simple-minded. I think the phenomenon goes much deeper...]

and what the guy thinks of the true nature and purpose of an (elite) school:
"their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul ... feel like freaks ... searchers."
[a bit less metaphoric, please - ok, he is English teacher...-, but this is quite true, at least in my eyes. It's the perennial quest, the thirst to know and experience more...]

"Being an intellectual means thinking your way toward a vision of the good society and then trying to realize tht vision by speaking truth to power. It means going into spiritual exile...."
[ok, cool. Sadly, instead of pondering the financial meltdown and the political consequences, all we do is solving problem sets and embracing the Neyman-Pearson Theorem... (I just come from trying to read the stats book...)]

issue needs continuous treatment...

Freitag, 21. November 2008

Financial Crisis and its ramifications...

In "Blue & Gray", the biweekly official Georgetown gazette for faculty and staff (there is btw also "the Hoya", published by the students), of Nov 17th, 2008, there was a brief article about Georgetown's endowment.
Apparently, the fund's volume dropped below 1bn $. It lost 9.5% of its value in Q3 2008 and overall 12.5% in 2008YTD.
Tough times ... however, the author of the article points out that Morgan Stanley's MSCI (global equity index) lost 26 (same time frame may mean 2008YTD, I guess). Anyhow, compared to Yale's or Harvard's endowment, Georgetown's is pretty small....

Another hot issue this week was (and still is) the possible 25bn $ loan for Detroit's Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler). However, it is highly unclear whether there will be money, how much, for which purposes and with which strings/conditions attached. There is no clarity whatsoever about the automakers' current financial health: will the go bankrupt withouth the federal money injection? If so, when (end of the year, in some months, never)?
Even if the money would help (how to spend it most efficiently, given the complexities and sizes of those firms?), is there enough oversight to avoid just preserving outdated plants/management styles/ill-fated worker benefit programs etc.?
It seems that noone wants a breakdown of the US auto industry, but can a gov't bailout help? on the other hand, if there is no help, what if all three go bust and some 4-5m jobs are lost in the aftermath?

We might assume that Congress, after playing hardball tactics to get more facts and clearer conditions on the package, finally grants money for the carmakers. Let's hope that it really helps to change the industry. The US auto industry urgently need a DRASTIC change (with or without public money), so let's just hope pouring money over it won't help them avoid changes and make them look forward (energy challenge, fuel efficiency, environmental standards, design revolution, sizes & tastes) and not backward (outrageous health care and pension packages).

Mitt Romney is apparently an outspoken critic (cf. "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt", NY Times, Wednesday, November 19, 2008, page A31): "with it [governmetn money], the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market share, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

On the other hand: how can you explain in simple terms why to bail out a financial system with 700bn, while being stingy about 25bn for cars and 4m jobs? Most people possibly don't easily understand stability and systemic issues and rather care more about their job. In any case, policymakers face a huge challenge to restore confidence: in the system, in the individual's power to keep on fighting for him/herself, in America, and, in politics.

Sonntag, 16. November 2008

Tue, November 4th, 2008: Being Election Officer



A student as election officer…
Tuesday 4.11.08: I went to bed at 3.30am (doing readings for courses and reading the guide for election officers). I got up at 4.10am, cooked eggs and ham to eat breakfast with bread and cooked spaghetti (to take with me as lunch). After taking a shower I walked two blocks to be on time at 5am at the Arlington Arts Center (my polling place). Overall, about 18 election officer were assigned to work in this precinct. At 5am, we built up the voting room, i.e. set up the desks, chairs, voting machines, leaflets, marked queuing lines on the floor etc. The actual voting room was approx. 5 x 10 meters in its size. When the first voter came in, he went to the desk for with the three poll books (3 electronic ones) to check-in as voter (i.e. the ID, name/address is checked and compared to the registration rolls on the poll books). If a voter was correctly registered, he got a yellow voter permit for the day to vote on all issues. Other colors restricted special voters to the federal elections or the presidential elections only.
Then a voter would proceed to the second desk was for deciding whether to vote by paper ballot or by machine. Each voter could opt for either one. If the choice was voting by machine, voters kept their yellow (or other colored ) permit and went on to stand in line for the machines (we had four, i.e. WINvote machines).
If opted for paper ballot, the two election officers at the desk took the yellow card and handed out the paper ballot (Arlington County ballot, contained: election of president/VP, one Senator, one House Rep (8th district), one member for the county board and two persons for the local school board as well as five ballot issues (four about whether to issue bonds for some purposes (for the metro, utilities, community infrastructure and public schools) and one about whether to activate a Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Arlington (was rejected clearly).
The voters then filled out the paper ballots at a desk (four seats only, with cardboard shields on the side, so no one could look on their ballots), and put it through the scanner, next to an election officer, called Accuvote which optically counted the vote.
The Winvote machines were touch screen-based systems (strangely, the Virginia state legislature apparently decided in 2007 against the purchase of more touch-screen or similar voting machines, so the electoral Board decided to opt for optical scanners (rental!!) in order to make sure to have enough capacity on election day).
Voting on the Winvote machines was straightforward: in order to re-activate (after a voter has posted his votes and finished the process), each time an election officer had to take the next person in line and put in his card to activate the system for the voter to start casting his votes (i.e. to prevent multiple/abusive use). Besides one brief incident (apparently related to power supply) the machines worked fine.

The precinct (Monroe, # 49) has about 1600 registered voters, of which about 900 or so voted. Both Winvote and Accuvote machines (overall five devices have been at our place) have an individual tally which we printed out three times after the closure of the polls at 7pm. Then the tallies have been checked, added together etc. If I recall correctly, Obama won by a sizeable margin (about 600 votes against McCain’s some 260).

From 6am onwards, I worked first at the Winvote, welcoming voters and advising them how to operate, and handed out stickers (“I voted in Arlington”) until about 10am, when the major wave of voters was over. Then I voted by myself on the Winvote and subsequently took a seat at the table with the paper ballots (worked (and more talked there between 10-1 and 5-6pm) and in between sitting around and waiting, eating, trying to learn (while falling asleep several times) Micro (last midterm was Micro, on Nov 7th). I had some good conversations with fellow election officers. One had Iranian roots and worked as a director in a law firm, another was originally from Dakota and worked for the FDIC. I could share some thoughts about the Swiss system (how they vote over there, the referenda of Nov 30 in Switzerland etc.) A Japanese-American woman invited me to a Japanese-US panel on education and IT later on. Particularly glad I was when one of my fellow roommates came at about 4pm to cast his vote and take this picture.

Stunning was that most of the voters came early in the morning, so that after 10am not many people came (between 1 and 4pm was almost nobody voting). The first people started to build a line in front of the polling place at 5.30am, so between 6 and 9am we all have been pretty busy and the place was crowded.

Sonntag, 2. November 2008

Freedom

The land of the free has elections next Tuesday. What about the state and quality of freedom in this country? Given its huge challenges and the many tasks that the next president face may make us think about how freedom will be affected. Some helpful inspiration:

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." [Moshe Dayan]


"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." [Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888]

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." [Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952]

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." [Abraham Lincoln]

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" [Benjamin Franklin]

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." [Goethe]

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." [Rosa Luxemburg]



http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_freedom.html

Samstag, 1. November 2008

Indulgence....

Indulgence is when ...

... you can read again a newspaper after having had to deal only with econ/math/equations for weeks to study for midterm exams
... dedicate your time again to do some politics (e.g. vote early in the US for the presidential, House and Senate elections as well as some local elections and local ballot issues; e.g. Swiss politics, as Swiss voters face 5 federal referendum issues on Nov. 30th, as well as Cantonal government elections in Aargau)
... finding time to dive again into some political philosophy (and being reminded how sad it is that no party in the USA reflect this brand of thinking, i.e. cf. e.g.
F.A. von Hayek, "Why I am not a Conservative"
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=53

and, of course: indulgence is when a friend spontaneously invites you to original Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup lunch at a Pho75 restaurant (cheap, simple, but great food) in Falls Church.
The beef briskets gets cooked in the hot soup (a bouillon) whith bean sprouts, rice noodles, Thai basil and some other herbs. Dunk the beef slices into the pepper/chilli sauce and enjoy!
Afterwards feel even more comfortable by sipping iced Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk .. hmmmm.