What if Dante Alighieri had chosen to write Cantos of Heaven instead of Hell?
"You will not need any money for the next two days." -- Tia Dora's first words to me after we disembarked from the ferry to dine an the 'getaway isle' of Itaparica, Day 2 of trip.
"La vida dura." -- summary of life with the Lillios Brasilian clan which consists the above, along with a run on the beach, a dip in the bathwater ocean located about 1/4 a mile away from the house, naps in the hammock, churrascado grilled meat off the skewer, mouth-watering fresh mangoes gathered from the yard, and other freshly-made cuisine at our disposal on an ongoing basis.
"We have 5 computers for 4 people." -- Paulo, walking us through his swank urban Rio 4-bedroom pad left at the disposal of Tony and myself after he treated us to inordinate amounts of Brasilian beef and laughter before whisking out of town to be with his family.
These increasingly intense Cantos of Heaven scratch the surface of Brazil, December 2008.
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Elsewhere I've alluded to the allegedly therapeuticvalue of this potentially self-absorbed exercise currently known to us as blogging. A cursory glance at the number of my posts per month will prove instructive for anyone with actual interest in the degree of my internal angst in a given period (omit the travelogues from this analysis).
But hark: while both I and my external world seem to be leveling off (omit the Motor City and the economy :-0), I've undergone a change....insanity: I still need to blog! I MUST, in fact, blog!
This post is a perfect case in point...it exists, despite me not really having anything to say....
Am I now officially and unhealthily dependent upon a medium that will never move me to a better place but just feels so good I can't stop?
This year's third trip to New York was going swimmingly:
Redeye care of EliteRewards: easier than ever.
JFK meetup with my transportation concierge and travel buddy Christina: seamless.
"Check-in" to Caspian's Castle aka the Dorman Brownstone Residence: smooth as silk.
Spin at New York City Sports Club 3 blocks up Columbus: endorphin-rich.
Times Square Church and Redeemer Pres and meeting up with friends: all good.
Coffee in Greenwich Village: realllyyy good.
Observing uninhibited breakdancing in subway: really FUN.
Ellis Island: wow. Required viewing for any anti-immigration American.
Moby's "Teany" tea shop in Lower East Side: though failing to satiate, swank.
Real Turkish kebabs next to Teany's: satisfying.
Central Park on a calm just-before-Thanksgiving day: dreamy.
The Met: Big. The Met's Renaissance art exhibit on love: replete with timeless themes.
Culture and thinking: everywhere.
Patty's new digs: phat.
And then....
I'd like to think that the theft of my iPhone was so destabilizing and disruptive for more erudite reasons than feeling the instinctive sting of injustice as a victim of theft...both by the NYSC member as well as AT&T, which does not provide insurance and locks you into a new contract when your uninsurable device is stolen but ah I digress...sort of....
No, I'm jonesing to claim more sophisticated reasons for my indignation, far better articulated by the indescribably sage media visionary Marshall McLuhan, who wrote that, in fact, our media "shapes and controls the scale and form of human interaction." Yes, of course! I was in fact so poignantly paralyzed by this loss precisely because media technology (of which the iPhone proves incredibly illustrative) "alter(s) our sense ratios (and) patterns of perception"....and "configure(s) the awareness and experience of each one of us."
AppleStore: cathedral of current-day thing-worship
Fortunately my umbilical cord to the modern world was restored within hours, after a trip to the divinely salvific AppleStore on 5th & Park and the calm, steady hand of Jonathan Clem, Genius helper, and ever-solid travel and life companion Christina who did the final iTunes hookups later on and thoroughly ignored my impudent whining (who is how old again?).
AppleStore professional Jonathan Clem Brechtan-ly takes on the horror of my loathesome prolifigate spending so I can stay in my happy place and focus on the mileage credit....
So by 3pm I was back. Back to perceiving, attuning, intuiting, processing, communicating and connecting the way I've so quickly become accustomed to doing and feeling fully justified for my reaction to the whole debacle given McLuhan's advanced observations.
And then....
I read about the Wal-Mart employee trampled to death on aptly-named Black Friday - a tragic picture of the sickness of our consumer culture which has led us to our current economic condition. Perhaps the grimmest thing I read:
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been in line since yesterday morning.'....They kept shopping."
At what point do we become so embroiled in our own existence that we lose all sense of right and wrong? Of the well-being of others?
I hope I will always be awake enough to avoid the gentle slopes and instead keenly identify where the signposts of my behavior are pointing to ensure ongoing, eternal course-correction.
NYSC: home to spin classes and iPhone thieves.
Re-connected and pacified at Rockefeller Center that evening.
Tony Campolo, for one, has been around forever. Yet I'm thrilled to report that his prophetic-while-pragmatic voice has remained consistent.* Campolo is mentioned in The Root's piece on faith implications of the New Administration...sample quote:
Rather than "new", however, I'd prefer to think of this transition as a "correction": and not just back to the pre-Bush era, but a bit further...as in, to about two THOUSAND years ago, when Christ ushered in an era where true change can and does only take place at the heart (and not at the political) level.
Also not new is how much this approach disappoints zealots ...now, and back then, too.
Wincing at the offended glare when I gently brushed someone's foot on MUNI.
Asking the gym member for clarification when her "sorry" was supposed to be heard as "can you please move over?" (this direct request was never verbalized).
While he is most known for the "medium is the message" tagline, I'm learning that this man indeed left us with a vast treasure-trove of advanced and prescient observations with respect to media.* Space and A.D.D. constraints prevent us from doing justice to this man's thinking, so for now, let's apply his sagacity to some media du jour -- namely:
Facebook...and yes, a Palinesque shout-out to the beloved Blogger you find yourself currently reading. These partially constitute "Web 2.0"..."social networking"...which is likely now just a part of our daily lives (even for us luddites), and are creating whole new ways of engaging and interacting.
Of course, this is not news. That is, until you realize just how significantly the protocols and nuances of our communication are changing because of these new media:
The development of what some social scientists have termed “ambient awareness" which is "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye"...only digitally so via "pokes", news feeds and posts.
So when I post something on Facebook, it gets "fed" - or pushed - to many many people who may or may not be up for seeing what I have to share (see video clip at the bottom of this post for a comedic but accurate portrayal of just how special "Facebook friendships" are :-). But, on the other hand, if you choose to "come" to this blog, that is more of a "pull" than a "push" kind of thing. Subtle? Makes all the difference. This became all too clear this election season, when people posted news articles, clips, videos, etc. that took ambient awareness to all sorts of levels because they were prolifically fed on "friends'" feeds with just one click.
But enough of my bumbling: I'd rather defer to my new flava Marshall, who used 4 questions ("the tetrad") to evaluate in a more lucid and structured way what the implications are of such media innovations. They follow here; my suggestion would be to fill in the blanks as you see them with respect to our current "Web 2.0" platforms....with a particular emphasis on #4:
"What does it (the medium or technology) extend?" In the case of a car it would be the foot, in the case a phone it would be the voice.
"What does it make obsolete?" Again, one might answer that the car makes walking obsolete, and the phone makes smoke signals and carrier pigeons unnecessary.
"What is retrieved?" The sense of adventure or quest is retrieved with the car, and the sense of community returns with the spread of telephone service. One might consider the rise of the cross-country vacation that accompanied the spread of automobile ownership.
"What does the technology reverse into if it is over-extended?" An over-extended automobile culture longs for the pedestrian lifestyle, and the over-extension of phone culture engenders a need for solitude.
U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling (who hails from the one other state besides Michigan that causes an inordinate amount of grief to our nation*), latched onto the "bailout" bandwagon when he told (more grief) Fox News: “You wonder where bailout-mania will end.”
Ok sorry: this is where I must now intervene...and for reasons beyond a feral need to defend my beleaguered hometown. Because, not only is the above statement simply untrue (consumers DO want to buy gas guzzlers when gas is cheap), but there are several things that differentiate the Big 3 (an admittedly nostalgic descriptor these days) automakers from the financial services firms. Namely, the automakers have**:
high fixed costs for manufacturing
a heavily unionized workforce that adds a prohibitive cost element and restricts competitiveness globally
an extensive supply chain that impacts various elements of the economy (steel, textiles, electronics, manufacturing)
environmental implications which have only recently been uncovered and require regulation...nearly one century after the industry structured itself without these considerations
an aging labor demographic that, if abandoned by the existing pension commitments, stands to significantly...significantly drain the federal government's social services
None of the above conditions apply to the Wall Street firms. And, none of the above conditions are remotely likely to be re-created in another industry any time soon. And as such, the moral hazard moniker being used to avoid aiding the Big 3 simply doesn't stick here.
Oh, and isn't the proposal on the table for the automakers just for about $25B of the (as of today) $700B+ in assistance funds? So if moral hazard is irrelevant and just 1/28 of the $ set aside thus far is all we're talking about, what is the real story behind the lack of political will?
As much as I really wanted to get the hell out of Dodge (viva la double entendre) when I left the Great Lakes State, I sure don't want it to be a total black star.
*and provides yet even more grief in his role as chair of the paradoxically-named Republican Study Committee.
** credit for this list goes in part to Salon poster Elephantman who provided much insight into the unique history & economics of the auto industry
Thank you Nicholas Kristof for articulating so beautifully why the most intelligent people can still come up lacking for me:
An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals ... appreciate ...that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.
Dingdingdingding: it's not raw intelligence, but rather it's that need to discover and pursue ideas that does me in. Partially because this belies a sense of humility in admitting to not commanding all the facts, and knowing that there is more that always lies beyond the grasp of the knower....
*this phrase actually became emblazened in my memory as The Red Herring magazine's unofficial legal counsel circa 1995.... attorneys out there, please take no offense despite intent
Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter comical ads from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker's stores.
It's been over 9 months since I emailed some friends a snarky-yet-frighteningly-incisive piece laying out the intricacies of the current sub-prime-and-the-kitchen-sink crisis. Fast-forward to today, where the NYT tells the exact same story, detailing the tragic implications that this human propensity for denial has had on school districts, municipal authorities and local governments (and of course, all of their attendant constituencies = us) around the globe.
People have always wanted to be the exception. To not, as someone recently said, "be average" but to be "above average." This means timing the markets. Escaping risks that, while explained to you, don't really apply to you. This is not new. But, what has changed is the scope and the degree of interdependence that results from this behavior.
The endorsement touches on a number of factors which led to my own transformation, but of course, elaborates on them more eloquently because, well, it's The Economist.
That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday.
The stars keep aligning. What options are left for us to sabotage ourselves now?
I know I've referenced this brilliant filmtwice in the past 2 months, but as the election thunders its way ever closer, I can't help but think of this movie on an increasingly constant basis.
Tonight's trigger? Obama's 30-minute infomercial. Can you count how many times words traditionally ending in "-ing" were pronounced ending in "-in'"? And identify what U.S. Senator omitted the "s" from the already-conjuncted "wasn't"?
I love Obama but I'm sad he and his communications crew aren't standing in the way of the demise of multisyllabic* diction:
I'm sure that McHugh once had aspirations of using his liberal arts degree for some noble purpose. Now, perhaps acting out of an ego bruised by the eccentricity of his name, he's instead lowered himself to the level of Accomplice to the state Party Machine, which is hurtling itself towards a fate that even Sarah Palin refuses to condone.
I mean...ew....Taking "TMI" to new levels: at Pennsylvania State University, a professor of engineering has captured a cough on film. The image was created by schlieren photography which “takes an invisible phenomenon and turns it into a visible picture.”
One movie, one webcast and one cocktail party later, I feel compelled to refine my previous allegations. Specifically, I'd chided our former Fed Reserve Chairman for using 40 years' prior experience as an excuse for his scandalous neglect of the U.S. economic system. But, you say, 40 years' experience sounds like a compelling reason to stay on the same trajectory? To that, I offer up three clarifications:
The "past performance is not an indicator of future results" truism can be gleaned straight from Statistics 101 (or is that 01?): when you flip a coin, it always has a 50% chance of being tails. Regardless of how many times it turned up tails prior. (brain refresher credit to "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" - fabuuuu kudos to Gary Oldman...sigh....).
AND: good economists must live by Mark Twain's wisdom that "history does not repeat itself...but it does rhyme". That is, while no two economic environments are exactly alike, overarching principles can be gleaned and applied to future conditions. In the current crisis, historical disasters amidst lack of regulation (but 2 examples: in the '30s up to Black Tuesday; in the '80s up to the S&L collapse) should have served as instructive examples (Twain quote credit to Schwab SVP Mark Riepe, who is emerging as one of my newer geek heroes).
I thus underscore my original charge: that Greenspan is a purist to the detriment of the globe. Specifically, his 40-year tryst with Ayn Rand led to a sorely misguided ascent to the unfettered rationalistic, meritocratic nature of humans, thwarting the rest of the world into the cataclysmic consequences of such distorted thinking. (credit to Haas mixer where I blurted this out in verbal form with only afterthought consideration as to whether other Rand-ists were present).
Yes, we have her to thank, too. "Objectivism" is an attractive philosophy not because it is true, but because it plays to our sense of pride. Why else would people eat up McCainistic lauds of "the American people" as being so virtuous when it was these people - not just corporate execs - who contributed to our current economic mess in living beyond their means (one example: embracing "Pick-A-Pay" negative amortization schemes...I mean, "negative amortization"??).
How much more roadkill do we need to accept that, when left to our own devices, we do NOT do the right thing?
****** Update on 12/11/08: my friend Jim just sent me an article which leads me to believe that Cardinal Ratzinger (aka The Pope) and I are somewhat aligned...
...and while I am not in 100% agreement with the entire article, I did find its assertion that "the market mechanism has a negative but not a positive function. The market cannot decide what innovations or practices are beneficial to society. It can only punish incompetence and inefficiency" to be incredibly thought provoking....I'll be gnawing on that one for a while....
So, while Blogger really has saved on the therapy bills, we know that therapy only elucidates but does not transform. Hence the un-be-frickin'-lievability pounds on. In this case, the culprit: Credit Default Swaps were unregulated....???????? I mean, I could see how these new securities constituted uncharted territory (=they were "new") and, as such, the exposure they created for their holders wasn't fully realized* until it all unwound.
But....COMPLETELY unregulated????????
Free-market purists are so pure they fail to grasp human nature, which is not, of course, purely rational.
Our former flavor-of-the-Administration went on to subtly defend himself....:
“I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that [this economic worldview] was working exceptionally well.”
But doesn't every Series 7 person know that 'past performance is not an indication of future results'? Reference my grasping to define character as being willing to course- correct....sometimes of course than can appear as waffling ;-)
I know hindsight is always 20/20 and it's easier to criticize retroactively than to formulate policy proactively. However, I'm being hard because, in this case being "wrong" has led to trillions....as in, "tr"....of damage worldwide.
Somehow that adage of "asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission" just doesn't seem to cut it here.
Ergo Gitmo = parking lot for justice. The hallmark of the Administration's outsourcing of just one of its moral and legal failings (is "failing" adequate to describe the gravity?).
"Integration" heretofore referenced indicated "internalisation and incorporation of new attitudes and behaviours into everyday life." (sic).
As my newly-attained integration has now been published for the masses, I feel the weight of accountability for these new behaviors...er, behaviours*....which as you will see, are fortunately not onerous to undertake. Some documentation:
Requisite raw materials needed to redeem the nature of "banking": New Mexico registered voter phone list, iPhone, and my Amelie-esque ever-present Obama puppet.
Just one more thing for us parochial elitists is needed: a listing of Obama's stances on key "rural issues" such as agricultural policy, gun law, and meth...for reals.
Now that we're All Systems Go, we grab our urban, dark blend fair trade organic coffee from hipster Four Barrels cafe in SF's Mission District and hide out in the back alley to get to work.
...but despite being fully equipped, I still have some reticence about calling up Jose (qua Joe) in Albuquerque on a Sunday night. I guess integration takes practice. Good thing there's still two more weeks!
*Sigh. I just love those Brits. This movie provides just some of the reasons why.
God love the U-Wisc. Advertising Project, but it does demonstrate the degree to which I've always believed "social science" to be an oxymoron. Despite its best intentions, it usually does a great disservice by trying to quantify the qualitative.
(forgive the alignment on the illustration below - full graphic at this link also included above >multimedia popup on the left - which has proven elusive in posting directly here):
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