Should You Know Your Banker?

Monday, December 8th, 2003

Virginia Postels’s Should You Know Your Banker? reviews Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists:

In the good old days, your local bankers knew you. You saw them in person, and maybe played golf with them or attended the same church. They didn’t need a credit report to decide whether to give you a loan. Your character wasn’t reduced to a numerical score. Trust didn’t require computers or background checks.

If those good old days sound humane, consider what those lending practices mean to the outsider — to the upstart who doesn’t belong to the right country club, isn’t from the right family, isn’t of the right race — or to the insider whose entrepreneurial idea threatens established businesses.

Financing based on reputation quickly turns into financing based on connections, a closed system where what matters isn’t what you know but whom. That system pleases incumbent businesses, which can get the funds they need without worrying about pesky new competitors. Controlling finance is a way to control the whole economy.

“Relationship capitalism is basically where a lot more is done through contacts — who you know, how you know them — rather than through arm’s-length contracts, more transparency, more open dealing and so on,” says Professor Rajan, who is now serving as the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist. In relationship capitalism, “we do less through contracts and more through handshakes.”

The system sometimes arises as the best way out of a bad situation. Personal relationships can replace an unreliable legal system in which formal institutions don’t enforce contracts and the law doesn’t require the information disclosure on which competitive finance depends. Extended families, close ethnic groups, or local social sets substitute reputation and social sanctions for courts and contracts. These arrangements are particularly common in developing countries.

But relying on reputation means keeping the group small. And keeping the group small conveniently limits competition. So relationship capitalism tends to survive when it’s no longer needed, hampering economic growth.

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Wormtalk and Slugspeak

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003

On his blog, Wormtalk and Slugspeak, an “English professor, medievalist, Anglo-Saxonist and J.R.R. Tolkien scholar natters on about” the upcoming Return of the King movie that he managed to see before its wide release:

[L]et me say that as a movie this one manage[s] easily to top the other two. I could come up with all kind of picky criticisms (and I have some larger ones, as well), but on the whole this just blew me away — and I actually quite disliked Two Towers. The sheer spectacle, the visuals, the landscape, the special effects (seamlessly integrated)…

The audience was made up of jaded film critics and theater owners, and had only about 50 people in attendance. But spontaneous applause and cheering broke out three times and I myself got misty in more than one place.

On the down side…

Ok, you probably want me to wear my Tolkien-critic hat: the treatment of Denethor is even worse than that of Faramir and shows that the critique of Tolkien for having ‘black and white’ characters is incredibly off the mark. Tolkien treats Denethor with great subtlety; Jackson does not — it’s over the top, in fact. The editing of the movie is odd: some things are very rushed, while we get image after image of catapults firing, many slow motion scenes, etc.

I expect to agree with him.

On the good side…

I said that I didn’t think the scale of the battle of the Pelennor Fields being ten times larger than Helm’s Deep would really make that much of a difference. I was really wrong.

Gimli’s comic relief wasn’t heavy-handed and worked in this film.

You’ve never seen such an amazing volcanic eruption.

And, finally, and most importantly to my students, I think: EOWYN RULES!

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Discovery Kids Ultimate Labs DNA Explorer

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003

They sure didn’t have toys like this when I was a kid! Behold the Discovery Kids Ultimate Labs DNA Explorer:

James Watson was only 24 when he discovered the helical structure of DNA, but this kit from Discovery Kids — the first to feature a bona fide centrifuge and electrophoresis chamber — will turn your kid on to the intricacies of genetics at an even younger age. Realistic lab equipment transforms the kitchen into a forensics lab, where your breakfast-bar biologist can extract clumps of real DNA from fruits and vegetables or solve ‘crimes’ by revealing DNA ‘fingerprints’ — telltale blue protein stripes in a gel mixture. $80

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Cannibal Confesses in Shocking Trial

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003

You can find anything on the Net. From Cannibal Confesses in Shocking Trial:

A German confessed on Wednesday to killing and eating a willing victim in a case that could make legal history, telling a shocked courtroom the experience was ‘like taking communion’ in a religious service.
[...]
Meiwes said there were “hundreds, thousands” of people seeking to fulfil their desires to eat humans or be eaten via Internet advertisements in forums called “Cannibal Cafe,” “Guy Cannibals” and “Torturenet.”

In testimony so frank it drew gasps from the public gallery, Meiwes said he had kept his victim’s skull and plastic bags of flesh in his freezer. He ate about 44 pounds of the flesh, defrosting it bit by bit.
[...]
He invited him to his elegant half-timbered home near Kassel and killed him with a kitchen knife in a “slaughtering room” he had built containing meat hooks, a cage and a butcher’s table.

“He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten,” Meiwes said. “He was very intelligent and I didn’t see any sign that he was disturbed.” Meiwes filmed the killing and the video tape may be shown to the court.

Defense lawyers have said the film shows Meiwes cutting off the victim’s penis at the latter’s request.

“It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it,” Meiwes said.

“He screamed terribly and jumped around the table but after a while he said he was surprised it didn’t hurt and was very pleased that the wound bled so strongly,” he added.

“It gave him pleasure.”

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For a Good Time, Well, Don’t Call Dad

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003

Even as an ardent Darwinist, I find Darwinian literary studies…odd. From For a Good Time, Well, Don’t Call Dad:

Sir Walter Scott was an author, not an evolutionary theorist. He wrote his poems and historical novels 40 years before Charles Darwin described the process of evolution — and well over a century before scientists began in earnest to apply principles of natural selection to the study of human nature.

Yet Scott, a 19th-century writer, apparently shared with modern evolutionary scientists the general notion that men tend to follow two basic mating strategies.

The new research is part of the fledgling field of Darwinian literary studies, in which scholars try to draw connections between literature and evolutionary science.

According to a new study, Scott’s dark heroes, rebellious and promiscuous, and his proper heroes, law-abiding and monogamous, reflect the two types of men scientists recognize by the kinds of relationships they have with women: cads and dads.

What was the actual study?

In the study, 257 women in college were asked to read passages from Scott’s novels. Each read a paragraph describing a dark hero and one describing a proper hero. Then the women were asked which type of man they would prefer for a relationship.

As predicted by the cad-dad theory of human mating strategies, the women preferred the proper heroes for long-term unions. When asked which character they would like to see their future daughters choose, they also selected proper heroes. But when asked who appealed to them most for short-term affairs, the women turned to the dark heroes — the handsome, passionate and daring cads.

“These 21st-century female college students could understand mating strategies intuitively,” even when they were described in dated language, said Dr. Daniel J. Kruger, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, who led the study. It is published in the fall 2003 issue of the journal Human Nature.

Some amusing quotes:

“Bodice rippers, for centuries, have made a profit off this sort of distinction,” said Dr. Marlene Zuk, a biology professor at the University of California at Riverside. “Nice guys have been complaining that women don’t want to have sex with them for a long time. We’ve heard this.”
[...]
“Are you surprised that women are attracted to cads?” she [Dr. E. Mavis Hetherington] asked. “You wouldn’t go out of your way to marry a cad, but if you had a little fling with him, it might be fun and exciting. He’s probably a sensation-seeker, so you’d be going off to Mexico or going on ski trips or going to watch the bulls run at Pamplona.”

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What Conservatism Means

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

From What Conservatism Means:

There are two problems of which Burke, and conservatives after him, have been acutely aware. The first is that of unintended consequences — that because of the complexity and interconnectedness of things, in initiating change on an ambitious scale, more is almost invariably set in motion than the initiator had in mind, and the result may be quite different from the intended one. Thus, in Burke’s words, “[V]ery plausible schemes with very pleasing commencements have often shameful and lamentable consequences.” To stop elephants from being killed, the ivory trade was banned. This made ivory scarce. Prices went up, and the rewards for poaching became greater. More people engaged in it, and more elephants were killed than before the ban was introduced.

The second problem is that of latent function. As well as their apparent functions, institutions often perform other, hidden functions of a very important nature — something that may not become apparent until those institutions have been dismantled.

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Clued In

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

Clued In describes The Game:

Put simply, The Game is a puzzle-solving race. Teams of four to 10 players drive around the Bay Area in pursuit of clues, which involve data collection, decryption, even a bit of performance art. Each solution leads a team to the next destination — and clue. Most teams cross the finish line in about 24 hours, while some limp along for 36 straight. The winners get a place in Game history and the chance to head home to bed.
[...]
The idea for this mental marathon germinated amongst a group of Clearwater, Fla., high schoolers in the mid-1980s. Joe Belfiore and his buddies created all-night scavenger hunts called Midnight Madness, inspired by the virtually unwatchable 1980 movie of the same name. When Belfiore enrolled at Stanford, he brought his Game along.

Stanford, with its vast, scenic campus and multitude of smarty-pants always looking for a challenge, proved to be a consummate Game setting. Six Games were held on the Farm under Belfiore’s auspices. Now the general manager of Microsoft Windows eHome division in Seattle, Belfiore, 90, still participates in annual Games with his high-tech colleagues. And his brainchild plays out all over the country. Once a rather secretive pursuit, The Game now flourishes in communities from New York to Michigan to MIT. Mini-Games — which last a mere seven or so hours — are deployed to build corporate unity or mingle alumni of different Ivy League schools. But the Stanford/Bay Area community still hosts the country’s largest group of bona fide Gamers, with some 40 teams competing semiannually.

I vaguely recollect not doing a Midnight Madness event in high school. Odd…

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Flit — Paris Match Interview

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

Flit — Paris Match Interview provides a translation of the article “Voici le commando qui a touché l’Airbus” (“The commandoes who hit the Airbus”), in Paris Match, Nov. 27, 2003, by Claudine Vernier-Palliez:

It is dawn and the time for first prayer. The ten men lay down their weapons on the ground and prostrate themselves towards Mecca. Three cars await them. They start off like a whirlwind; we don’t know where they are taking us. They stop in a cloud of dust, a few kilometers further, to recover a Sam-7 surface-to-air missile wrapped in a white fabric and hidden in a thicket, at the edge of a dirt track. Then they take out RPG-7s, Kalashnikovs and machine-guns concealed in the rear of the van. ‘Today,’ shouts the leader, ‘we will shoot down a plane! We had planned to carry out this operation tomorrow evening, but it will be this morning.’ He raises his arms towards the sky and begs Allah to support them.

The original article was written by French journalists allowed to travel with Iraqi guerillas. Hmm…

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NY Author Hopes Acclaim Will Bring Success

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

NY Author Hopes Acclaim Will Bring Success explains why becoming a successful novelist doesn’t mean making much money:

Lennon, 33, has been making his living as a novelist since his first book ‘The Light of Falling Stars’ was published in 1997 and also wrote ‘The Funnies’ and ‘On the Night Plain.’ But despite being a rising star in literary circles, Lennon toils at his profession for modest rewards.

His first book brought an advance of $35,000, his second $50,000 and his third effort $80,000. But then his publisher dropped him and he sold ‘Mailman’ for $50,000 to W.W. Norton.

‘In terms of feeding a family of four that has to be spread over 2 years,’ Lennon notes of the seemingly impressive sum of $50,000. And that amount dwindles, he said, when you take out the 15 percent his agent takes and taxes.

‘As soon as you get the money, half of it is gone and you usually have a pile of bills you were waiting to pay until your advance check came so … a lot of money quickly becomes a little money,’ he said.
[...]
On top of that, Baker said young male authors face a bigger obstacle — the majority of fiction readers are middle-aged women. “More than 60 percent of fiction is bought by women and most of that by women aged between 35 and 55. Men are not big fiction readers.”
[...]
Changes in book selling has also made it harder for unknown writers to reach the top. Publishers now have to pay thousands of dollars to chain book stores to get titles prominently displayed in stores and featured in newspaper ads — a dynamic that forces publishers to focus marketing budgets only on authors they are almost certain will turn a profit.

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Bestseller Lists 1900-1995

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

I stumbled across Bestseller Lists 1900-1995, and I’m astonished by a few things I quickly noticed while looking at the lists for the 1900′s, 1910′s, and 1920′s:

  • I recognized only the tiniest fraction of the titles and authors on the list.
  • Winston Churchill had numerous bestsellers early in the century — although that’s probably not the Winston Churchill you were thinking of.
  • H.G. Wells had numerous bestsellers too — that I’d never heard of.
  • The year 1917 had fiction, general nonfiction, and war categories.
  • Zane Grey — a name that sounded vaguely familiar — had a lot of bestsellers.
  • A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young was a nonfiction bestseller in 1925.
  • Diet and health fad bestsellers go way, way back: Diet and Health by Lulu Hunt Peters was the number 1 nonfiction bestseller of 1925.
  • I’m not sure what to make of this 1931 bestseller: Boners: Being a Collection of Schoolboy Wisdom, or Knowledge as It Is Sometimes Written, compiled by Alexander Abingdon; illustrated by Dr. Seuss.

What does it mean when almost none of the bestsellers of yesteryear are in print, let alone well known and well read?

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Sacred-Texts: Sources of Lord of the Ring

Monday, December 1st, 2003

I wouldn’t normally find myself drawn to a “sacred texts” site, but Sacred-Texts: Sources of Lord of the Ring lists a number of Tolkien’s influences from myth and early fantasy literature:

J.R.R. Tolkiens’ Middle Earth did not come out of thin air. Tolkien, an academic linguist, drew on the following source materials to inspire his world-building exercise. The texts presented at this site are complete and in some cases in the original languages.

The Kalevala. [English]
The Kalevala. [Finnish]
This Finnish saga, replete with battling wizards and heroes, quests and magical objects has been cited as one of the early inspirations for Tolkien. The languages of Middle Earth also have more than a passing resemblance to Finnish.

The Elder (Poetic) Edda.
The Younger (Prose) Edda.
These Icelandic collections of epic poetry are key sources for the study of Norse mythology. Our plane of existence is called ‘Middle Earth’ in this mythology. Tolkien also took many of the names of key characters from this text; particularly one sequence early on in the Voluspo, including Gandalf, and all of the Dwarves from the Hobbit. Also found in the Eddas is the forest of Myrkwood; Bilbo’s party traversed the vast Mirkwood forest in the Hobbit.

Wagner’s Ring of the Niblung
The Volsung Saga
The Nibelungenlied
The Volsung saga is the Icelandic version of the story which was later re-told in the Germanic Nibelungenlied. This was the basis for Wagner’s Ring cycle. The cursed ring of doom is likewise a central theme of Tolkiens’ mythology.

Heimskringla or The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway
by Snorri Sturlson. tr. Samuel Laing [1844]
Gandalf is not only mentioned in the Voluspo, but in the Heimskringla Sagas: Gandalf was the name of the last king to rule over Alfheim, He was killed by Harald Harfagra in the year 866. Gandalf gets mentioned in The Ynglinga Saga, Halfdan, the Black Saga, and Harald Harfager’s Saga.

Beowulf [Modern English]
Beowulf [Anglo Saxon]
Tolkien was a distinguished scholar of Middle and Old English. The Beowulf saga is one of the treasures of this branch of literature, and Grendel, the monster of this tale, is a prototype for many of the darker creatures that populate Middle Earth.

Modern Fantasy
The Wood Beyond the World
by William Morris [1895]
One of the recognized forerunners of Tolkien was William Morris, skilled artist, pioneering Socialist, translator of Icelandic sagas, and fantasy writer. The Wood Beyond the World is one of Morris’ masterpieces which he originally published using hand-set type.

The Worm Ouroboros
by E. R. Eddison [1922]
“The greatest and most convincing writer of ‘invented worlds’ that I have read” — [letters of Tolkien, p. 258]

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The Cavalier Daily

Monday, December 1st, 2003

According to The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia is reacting — negatively — to the following statement by a medical center employee:

Howell reported that the offender ‘said something like this: ‘I can’t believe in this day and age that there’s a sports team in our nation’s capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks.”

Their reaction:

In response to the alleged remark, the Staff Union at U.Va. is sponsoring a “Protest Against Racism at U.Va. and the U.Va. Medical Center After a Recent Racial Incident” today at noon.

“It doesn’t really matter in what context this word was used,” Staff Union President Jan Cornell said in a statement, adding that employees have reported other similar incidents.

It doesn’t really matter in what context this word was used. Riiiggghhhht. The Volokh Conspiracy likened it to the Monty Python sketch about saying “Jehovah”:

MATTHIAS: Look. I don’t think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying ‘Jehovah’.
CROWD: Oooh! He said it again! Oooh!…
OFFICIAL: You’re only making it worse for yourself!
MATTHIAS: Making it worse?! How could it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!
CROWD: Oooooh!…
OFFICIAL: I’m warning you. If you say ‘Jehovah’ once more– [MRS. A. stones OFFICIAL]
Right. Who threw that?
MATTHIAS: [laughing]
[silence]
OFFICIAL: Come on. Who threw that?
CROWD: She did! It was her! He! He. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him. Him.
OFFICIAL: Was it you?
MRS. A.: Yes.
OFFICIAL: Right!
MRS. A.: Well, you did say ‘Jehovah’.
CROWD: Ah! Ooooh!…
[CROWD stones MRS. A.]
OFFICIAL: Stop! Stop, will you?! Stop that! Stop it! Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say ‘Jehovah’.
CROWD: Ooooooh!…
[CROWD stones OFFICIAL]
WOMAN #1: Good shot!
[clap clap clap]

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The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection

Monday, December 1st, 2003

I could have sworn that I’d blogged on The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection, but I guess I hadn’t. Here’s a taste:

Glen Larson (creator and producer of Galactica) is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and many parallels between his church’s and the show’s mythologies can be found.

The main characters in Galactica are the last remnants of the Twelve Colonies, which were founded by twelve tribes of humans who left their home planet of Kobol, which had become inhabitable because of either natural or man-made contamination. There was a “lost thirteenth tribe” who went a different direction than the rest and, as the story goes, ended up colonizing Earth. Commander Adama once delivered the following speech about their origins: “Our recorded history tells us we descended from a mother colony, a race that went out into space to establish colonies. Those of us assembled here now represent the only known surviving Colonists, save one. A sister world, far out in the universe, remembered to us only through ancient writings…” He goes on to assert that the “lost thirteenth tribe” colonized Earth. Something called “The Book of The Word” described the journey of the tribes of man away from Kobol.

In the Mormon church, The Book of Mormon describes the journey of a “thirteenth tribe” There were twelve tribes of Israel and the prophet Lehi took a remnant of the tribe of Joseph (creating a “lost thirteenth tribe”) and somehow travelled from the middle east to North America around 600 BC. They ended up splitting into two tribes, one of whom flourished and according to the book are the descendants of the American Indians. Additionally, the name Kobol is made up of the rearranged letters making up the word Kolob, which is the star “nearest unto the throne of God,” or the name of the planet where the Mormons’ god, Elohim, is from.

There’s another article on Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism by Michael Lorenzen. Read both.

Edit: The Mormon/Battlestar Galactica Connection no longer has its own link; it’s on Dr. Squid’s articles page.

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Florida Woman Knocked Out in Shopping Rush

Monday, December 1st, 2003

The true spirit of the season, from Florida Woman Knocked Out in Shopping Rush:

A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
[...]
Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O’Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.
[...]
Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

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