A Tech Blog

I've started a tech blog (I was graciously allowed to take my engineering blog writings from my time with SpareFoot). You may find it at makeitsimpler.org.

Teaching, Learning and all That Stuff

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted the following:

"There is no teaching, only learning."

Today, at an idle moment, I did a quick search on it. My very own tweet came up fifth on the list. Exciting.

The real reason I had searched it out today was that gnawing feeling that I'd stolen the line. Well, I discovered that it, rather unsurprisingly, had certainly been said before, though I could not find any direct attribution. What surprised me a little bit, though, was that it in its other contexts it was apparently understood in a very, very different way than I had meant it.

In one citation it was attributed to someone's "old law professor", referring specifically to the idea that it is the student who must do the work to actually learn the material, particularly in an environment where there was a whole method of thought to adopt, combined with so much material to absorb. In another, it was a religious thing. Coupled with a New Testament quote it referred to the need for learning to be experiential, that the blind could not be made to see, etc. etc.

All of this was quite different from my own take.

Years ago, there was a quote floating about, almost surely apocryphal, from Serge Lang, a well-known mathematician: "When I don't feel I adequately understand a subject, I teach a course in it. When I feel I still don't understand it well enough, I write a book about it." The punchline was that he wrote lot of books. (Some are better than others, as is necessarily the case. Some were clearly rushed, others verifiably classics.)

For me, the point is that the act of teaching is, by its very nature, an act of learning. It is indistinguishable from learning. It is one and the same. As such, the teacher is benefited as much as the student. Mentoring is not an act of altruism, it is a further honing of whatever skill or discipline is involved.

And learning...what's better than that?

And Now, the Counting...

Well, here we are.

November 2, 2012.

Election Day, the culmination of an effort that seemed to begin about 30 seconds after the polls closed in November of 2008 is nearly upon us.

And now comes the counting.

But first, there are more than a few little issues to be dealt with, a few unknowns to be resolved.

Foremost there's Sandy. Good ol' Sandy. A classic late October Nor'easter. Just one that happened to have been fueled by a hurricane. The level of devastation is really quite remarkable -- hybrid devastation, as it were. Big trees flailing about. Water coming in from the sea and finding its way down to the subway platforms. The swamps of Jersey and the low-lying coastlines of the Islands Staten and Long displaying their inconstancy. Millions without power in a drenching stew of who-knows-what.

What kind of effect will it have on the election? Will people be persuaded by events that, indeed, there are those large things what only government, a dedicated and activist government, can hope to deal with? Will the party of climate change deniers take a hit because, while a single event does not by itself confirm the scientific hypotheses involved, such event does serve as another piece of evidence in their favor?

In more prosaic terms, are there just enough people in just enough segments of the voting populace sufficiently affected to have a direct effect on who wins a Senate seat or two? And what of this electorate? Have the various polling agencies gotten it right? The last decade -- and the last four years in particular -- have seen a great change from land lines to the mobile space; hypotheses concerning what the electorate looks like are well considered, to be sure. They are also untested, for now.

Then comes the really scary stuff. What will the effect of voter ID laws be? Turnout has always been the watchword of electoral politics (with "who does the counting" a close second). Will people be turned away for lack of sacred ID? Will there be a raft of provisional ballots in key states to be fought over?

Well, I certainly don't know. But we'll find out.

I've been neglecting this thing for quite some time. Perhaps having a two-year-old in the house has some effect; perhaps it's just the case that after a certain number of times around the wheel, all the possible riffs that fit seem familiar. And, dare I say, hackneyed. "X" days out. "We know nothing." "We think we know something, but...." "The problem with the rat race is that the rats have a distinct evolutionary advantage." Of course, as I like to say, I'm busy writing my memoirs (which I kind of am, depending, of course, on the definition of "memoirs" -- what I have been writing on and off deals with a particular moment of my life when huge numbers of things changed and, even more amazingly, an even larger number of things really didn't, which was the most wonderful things of all). All right. I'll just publish. And write something that might have some actual significance later...

It Was the Best of Times, IT was the Worst...

It's pretty scary out there, folks.

The best thing we can take away from the economic numbers is that it's not getting worse fast. A pretty small consolation.

At least it seems that some people are waking up a little bit. The unsustainability of the approach of the last several decades -- itself a result of a combination of comfort and fear -- is revealing itself. The idea that the great American Dream has been perverted has become a little less alien. The idea that someday you or your children could 'have it all' was never supposed to be taken quite that literally.

We'll see. Perhaps I spend too much of my time in an environment where market fundamentalism seems to be too silly a concept, somewhere between flat earthism and young earthism... Oh. Wait. I forgot the last survey numbers.

It's pretty scary out there folks.

A note in response to Krugman's 7/3/09 column: "That ’30s Show" (written 7/3/09)

A note in response to Krugman's 7/3/09 column: "That ’30s Show"

by Artie Gold on Friday, July 3, 2009 at 10:10pm

The real question at this point is "will we get to 1937?"
A lot of the problem is that 9.5% unemployment is something we've seen before; a quarter of a century is but one generation. Yes, things are bad -- but to many, it's a restoration of "the way things are supposed to be" (hideous wealth distribution, the commoditization of labor and everything else). The big difference is that our expectations have changed to such a great extent. After all, the last time we saw unemployment at these levels it preceded a pair of decades of considerable growth (the second better shared than the first, to be sure -- and even then medians barely touched the pre-oil-shock levels).
Perhaps the first thing we need to do is to un-massage the unemployment numbers; if the "real" number were promulgated (is it 13%? 14%? more, using the pre-Reagan standard?) Of course, the "other side" would immediately demagogue that issue too -- happily comparing apples to oranges...
Yes, what must happen is to drive a stake through the heart of the trickle-down worldview that got us into this mess. There's a somewhat creepy predestination-type argument that keeps being made, that the whole problem was that people got loans who didn't deserve them -- indeed who were not WORTHY of them -- and THAT'S what brought things down.
No, dammit, the fact is that a consumer-based society coupled with a consistently upward-redistributable (read: "low tax") economy is, by its very nature, unsustainable.
Here's my prescription:
Raise the minimum wage by 30% over two years.
Institute a sharply progressive income tax for incomes over, say $400000, up to, say, 60% for incomes over 1500000 and 75% over 5000000.
Establish a living wage, at likely 150% of minimum wage; wages paid below that create a corporate tax liability of 25% of the difference (against profits).
Fund the shortfalls of the states.
Create a significant fund for very low cost loans for education.
Pass a reasonable form of Universal Health Care.
Might all this be inflationary? Yes. Most likely. Truth is, inflation has been artificially low for decades now. Capital has had its party. If we are dependent upon consumption, money has to be placed in the hands of those who will use it to consume.

When the party (finally) gets started -- and goin' pretty good -- *then* you take the punchbowl away. But not until we cut unemployment by half.

Look, I'm not an economist, nor am I an MBA (many of whom are wonderful people, but as a group -- in terms of their overall effect -- not so much). I am, however an observer of the scene and have been around the block likely a few more times than I have left. Still, it seems pretty obvious.

If we make the stated policy goal to eclipse the former high in real median income by 10% we'll be all right. Otherwise it's gonna be a long slog.

Nothing to Say?

Nothing to say? Well, hardly.

I just find myself using other forums these days. Whether it be quickie tweets or slightly longer form status line musings -- or comments on those of others -- my comments have either been quick one-offs or parts of a longer conversation.

It could be the time thing. After all, I just realized that I hadn't made a blog entry since we became a family of five. A family of FIVE!! After all that's transpired, it's a particularly remarkable thing. And now, little Eliza has a new trick! Mobility!!!! Four wheel, well, erm, limb, drive and a pretty powerful little motor, and it's off to the races. No item is safe from her potential grasp.

And the big guys are doing what you'd expect. Getting bigger. Not so big that they're ready to get out of my pocket and into the world -- Paul's only maybe, perhaps, halfway there -- but bigger, nevertheless. And Alex is now a first grader. It's official.

Yup. Summer has begun, summer vacation, to be exact.
So, until late August, we'll have to be more entertaining.

I think we may be able to handle it! I hope so, anyway...

Dad.

A little less than 68 years ago my father, just nineteen years old and having completed basic training in the US Army, found himself on a ship to an unknown somewhere, looking forward to an unknown fate. Being a sharp, streetwise city kid, he found his way to a craps game on board. Within two days, the $23 he originally had in his pocket had ballooned to about $1500, enabling him to buy the best berth for sleeping, buy food from the sailors (being a British ship, the rations for the enlisted men were particularly bad) and, in general made the journey as pleasant as possible. As he told me, he would pay $5 for a roast beef sandwich, a not inconsiderable sum in 1942; it was not exactly an environment, though, that fostered long range financial planning.

Why mention this particular story? Well, it just always seemed fitting that he had gained that particular windfall shooting dice, After all, he was born on the seventh day of the seventh month (for the record, his brother was born on the eleventh day of the eleventh month). So today he would have been 87 years old (though sixty was as far as he got).

Happy Birthday, Dad..,

An Open Letter to Tiger Woods

Mr. Woods:

Your recent difficulties and admissions have pained me -- not because of the particular actions, but because of the nature of the reaction that has been triggered.

Yes, you did a series of bad things. Violating the bounds of marriage -- particularly such a public one (despite your best efforts) -- is not to be taken lightly. However, in a very significant way, either it or something that would would be similarly perceived was just bound to happen.

You began to become a star when the mere act of walking was still a novelty. Your progress through the ranks of junior and amateur golf is the stuff of legend. The record is well known. Soon after, not long into merely your third decade you leapt upon the scene as not only an accomplished professional in your chosen field, but as a singular figure, a brand -- a brand at the dawn of the age of serious personal branding.

And through all this you were hothoused. You were described by both your late father and others as "the chosen one" from whom much is expected. A level of maturity befitting one much older was not just expected but assumed. And you played the game, quite brilliantly in fact. The indiscretions of youth? Those things most of us do at one time or another, those small indiscretions from which we learn how to conduct ourselves over the course of our lives? Nope. No time.

Single mindedly, you pursued your goals rapidly, so rapidly, ascending the ranks of the best who ever played the game and almost single handedly raising the profile of the game (and with it its possible rewards) on an international basis.

But living in that bubble has its consequences. You were on a fairy tale path. You gave much of yourself and received rewards that would not have been possible in any previous era. And with those rewards came a certain complacency about the way of the world, about the rockier path that most must take to get where they're going, if they get there at all. It's understandable.

Now as you're in your fourth decade, the path to the historical top of your profession secure if not assured it seems you have fallen off the rather narrow path that got you there. Indeed, when the path has been so long narrow, the diversions from it are likely to be great.

As both a star and a brand the opportunities are ample. Being appreciated by millions is one thing, being "appreciated" -- and having the consistent opportunity to be "appreciated" in a deeply personal way -- is a more deeply human emotional need. And, there came a point, I imagine, where saying "no" got old. I can't imagine doing that myself, but at the same time, I can't imagine being a consistent position of having to make that decision.

You say you're taking an indefinite leave from the game. I think that's a bad idea. The game is your office. The pursuit of the next major, the next championship, the next hole, the next swing is what you do.

Leaving the promotional stuff behind for a while? Absolutely. The corporate outings? Yes. The various appearances for this or that. No doubt.

But not the game. If you're serious about this, it seems the two places you need to be spending time are at home, repairing the relationships with your family, and on the course -- the place that has given you all the opportunities you have.

Devoting yourself to those two things will give you the chance to make up for the fact that you never really grew up in a human sense. Understand that I don't say this in condemnation. Not at all.

You just never had the time.

At not yet 34 years of age, now you do.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck in all endeavors.

Horns? Really?

Quite amazingly, there are some people in this world, after sinking about as low as a person can go, suddenly acquire the ability to go lower. Here's this tidbit:

Then there's Barry Lynn, alleged "Christian minister," whose stock in trade is to denounce any mention of religion anyplace, anytime. Look, I'm a Christian minister, but even I have to admit that the sight of a kindergartner praying is terrifying to most folks. (The first person to post Barry Lynn's bar mitzvah photos or birth announcement (mazel tov!) wins a free copy of my latest book...

So let's see, since Mr. Lynn is not the type who would be part of, say, an Inquisition, he must be damn Jew or something -- is that what you're trying to say, Ms Coulter? (If it weren't for the fact that I'm reasonably sure that there's at least one person out there who's reading her screed and saying, "Yup, that's right. Uh-huh." I might not be so offended. But I am.)

Ms Coulter, I implore you to attempt an action that's generally believed to be physically impossible. But please do try.

Time to Kowtow!!!!

I am so damn tired about the perceived need to kowtow to the people who explicitly make their money off other people's labor.

Yes, such folks serve a necessary function in our economy -- indispensable, even. But still...

Stock markets are bad indicators of the overall health of an economy. Essentially they are at their highest when two things occur in tandem: Growing corporate revenues and growing corporate margins. The first of these does indicate health; the later, not so much. The two times when the percentage of corporate revenue that went to the bottom line (profits) were the highest? 1929...and 2007.

...and another thing: When the usual suspects complain about how much of the tax bill the top 1% shoulders, why is it that they don't complain about the amount of the overall stuff they have?

The Paranoid Style in American Politics -- always worth a read.

This article, first published in the November, 1964 edition of Harper's Magazine remains as timely today as on the day it was written.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Looking Backwards -- and Forwards....

Though it is clear that we need -- and will likely continue to need -- some significant government spending in order to avoid the direst of potential consequences, that is at best a medium term fix. What really needs to be repaired (at least once we get past neglcted bridges and tunnels and roads and schools and all the rest) is the way the fruits of labor are distributed within our society.

Consider the loud, triumphant headlines much of the past decade, for example: "Productivity rises again!" "Corporate profits up!" Now step back for a moment and consider what this really means. We'll start with productivity. Let's see. When productivity rises, it means that more "stuff" is produced for a lower cost. Naturally, some of this can be attributed to the efficiencies created by investments in technology, but almost certainly not all.

No, there's something else at work here. 

Real wages have effectively remained static at best over the course of the last several decades -- all during a time when the economy, in aggregate terms, has grown rather significantly. Even worse, the "real wages" mentioned above are aggregates themselves; for many within our society, to have kept up -- or even close to it -- would have been a great improvement.

Now what has increased greatly over that time? Two things, mostly: Asset values in general (even when you take the last several months into account, for example, the overall price of housing in real terms has increased greatly). The kinds of things that enable the kind of class mobility that is so loudly and often said to be at the root of the "American Dream", things like healthcare, college tuition and the like.

No wonder we're leveraged to the hilt as a society -- and no wonder the blip in home values has brought us down so low, so fast.

It's really simple. When an ever larger proportion of the overall income of a country is placed in ever fewer hands it can't all go back into the economy. So it goes into assets, raising the demand for same, and hence raising their relative valuation. Since homes are the one kind of such asset that a significant percentage of people own -- and the only thing that kept up with the expansion of the overall economy (as opposed to wages) -- people will tap that asset to maintain a lifestyle. And then....

"Creative destruction" is the oft-heard term, something that is important for a capitalist system to keep on developing. And it's true. But, just as it is healthy for the growth of aggregates within an economy, the insecurity it produces among people is destructive. And, at a moment like this one, where unemployment rates are rising, the natural (and correct) inclination is to rein everything in, which, of course feeds upon itself. Given the dominant business philosophy of the recent decades, one where labor is a necessary evil at best, all this is unsurprising.

There's plenty of work to be done. Increasingly, there are plenty of people to do it. Unless and until those people find themselves in a situation where there's some reasonable confidence that they can make ends meet, put a little away and be able to do so on a consistent basis, every little bump in the road has the potential of turning into a large-scale calamity.

It's time to renew that American Dream -- again for the many, not just the few.

The Two Commandments

It's pretty simple.

1. Be a mensch.

2. Don't be a chazer.

The rest? The rest we'll get to. 

Curse of the Bourbons

They still don't get it. And it amazes me.

I'm watching Gov. Sanford of South Carolina continuing to spew the same old line about how government should tighten its belt when things get a little bit tough economically. It's as if the kind of social spending that states (typically not exactly the most progressive of institutions; in general they can't be, it's too easy to move across state borders) engage in is some kind of luxury. You know all that over-the-top stuff: Libraries. Firefighters. Health clinics. 

No, as I've stated before, the way for government to behave is exactly the opposite; when things get tough it is government and only government who must step up to the plate. When things improve, that is the time to start cutting.

Explicit government for "the gots" -- coming to a state near you.

Being a Fan

[A friend of mine on Facebook, posed a question about why one might be a fan of one team but not another; the following was my reply. I kind of liked it, so I reproduced it here (oh, and just for context, I'm a Yankee fan)]

Ah. What makes someone a fan of team A and not team B...one of life's eternal questions.

For me, I think it was two things: First of all, I became aware of baseball in 1961, when there WERE no Mets. The other thing, as time went on, was the fact that the Mets were sort of the suburban team, the urban redneck team; they played way out in Queens, almost Long Island, out where city folks had run to to escape the changing demographics. It was the whole, "Well you can't go to Yankee Stadium, it's in the SOUTH BRONX!!!" thing.

Later, of course, as they became successful again (remember, they won no pennants between '64 (when I was 7) and '76 (when I was nineteen and in my senior year at Columbia) the Yankees had become a strange amalgam of NY high class and distinct urban funk while the Mets had remained, well, the Mets. The former, for many reasons was more attractive.

The Dodgers played their last game in Brooklyn right about the time I turned nine months old, so my only connection to them was that the greed of O'Malley had stolen what should have been a significant part of my youth -- and the soul of the place of my birth. Strangely, as I cried my way through the '63 World Series sweep, the old relatives would say, "What's wrong....the home team's winning!"

Also a quick note - both of my uncles on my mother's side, Brooklyn boys both, were Giants fans.

In early days I was a Jets fan; I liked the "upstart" nature of the AFL. Once they lost that and became more part of the Mets kind of universe, I went to the Giants.

The main thing about it, though, is that the beauty of being a sports fan is rather like the beauty of playing the game -- it's the most important thing in the world and utterly meaningless at the same time.

...but despite the fact that intellectually I know well what George Steinbrenner and now, his sons represent, the NY and the pinstripes just brings me back to first seeing them on the old black and white and then on the hallowed departed grounds (7/28/62) in full flesh and color against what seemed like more green than I'd ever seen...

In these times of performance enhancing drugs, billion dollar franchises and centimillionaire ballplayers can I justify it? Of course not. Fortunately, I don't have to.

I can sit back and share the same thing with my boys that my father shared with me...times at the ballpark watching some improbable occurrence or another, great performance or unimaginable blunder, times in front of televisions or by the radio either cheering for or yelling at men who can't hear you trying to do their jobs, playing a game at a level I never could -- at least if you exclude my dreams, day- or otherwise.

Does that sum it up?

Opposite behavior

I realized something. The right way for government to act in terms of spending is simple: Just do the opposite of what would be prudent for individuals! When things are good, rein it in, cut it back. When things are not so good, go to town!!!!

And it's that simple.

And some people will never get it. You know, the "a government should be run like a business" types. There's another name for them. But I won't use it here.

Shhhhh. It starts with an "R".....

Phrase of the Day

Today's Phrase of the Day refers to those folks who see the bogeyman of "class warfare" whenever anyone dares to bring up the maldistribution of wealth in our society, the ones that willfully ignore the fact that much of the economic progress we made as a society in the decades after WWII has been lost, the ones who believe that human toil is nothing but a commodity to be used and abused as those who take (typically false) risks see fit.

In the spirit of Safire and Agnew, I offer today's entry:

Beware the Enemies of Economic Equity!!!!!!

The Whole World is Watching....

A little over forty years ago, the whole world was watching the events taking place in a park in Chicago. I know I was. And it profoundly changed me.

Last night, the the whole world was also watching the events taking place in park in Chicago. The difference is that this time they were smiling.

I was, too. And with any luck it will change all of us.

Bombings, History, McCain, Ayres and all that...

from the New York Times, October 3, 2008:

"In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, asked, 'How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?'

Of course, at the time he was referring to William Ayres, a founder of the Weather Underground nearly forty years ago, now a long time Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Hmmm. Let's see. "Someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people." Does Bill Ayres fit that profile? Yes. Undoubtedly. Though exactly which bombings he actually participated in is something known only by Professor Ayres himself and likely a handful of others, the likelihood that he was involved in bombings that had the possibility of killing innocents is at least reasonable.

Strangely, though, the exact same phrase describes one of the candidates for president as well. After all, what exactly was John McCain doing in the summer of 1967? Say what you will about the intentions of the war in Vietnam, the Cold War and everything else; looking at it through the lens of history is not my intention here. Still, given his commentary, there's an obvious question: What, after all, is the likelihood that, in his twenty three bombing missions over North Vietnam, no innocent was killed?