The Christmas Train ( a re-read)

David Baldacci. The Christmas Train (2002)  I re-read this book (previously reviewed) because we had watched the Hallmark Movies adaptation. The book is both better and worse than the movie. Better in its depiction of railroading (albeit with a healthy dose of AMTRAK public relations stuff tossed in), and its handling of the storm-caused entrapment of the train.
     Worse in its characterisation. Actors can fill in the gaps in a thin script, and hint at depths that in writing must be done with throwaway lines and trifling details. There is none of that here. Tom Langdon is 2D. Everyone else is 1.5D, even Eleanor Carter, his long lost and ever after pined for love. Like Dickens, Baldacci uses defining quirks to set up his characters, but unlike Dickens, he doesn’t give us the incidental details that make these characters real enough to serve the illusion.
     The writing is often indifferently general and abstract. Baldacci is one of those writers who believes that Latinate words (like “inclemency” for “storm”) elevate the style. And he is incapable of riffing on cliches to make them not only fresh but apt.
     I kept on reading mostly because I wanted to see how the movie and book compared. The movie omits a few incidents, and cranks up the sentimentality (easily done with visuals, after all). The book could have been much better with more ruthless editing. Baldacci’s story is a typical love-romance, and the tropes of the genre must be respected. But a lot of the time it reads more like a travelogue than a novel. His attempts at ironic witticism fall flat.
     The plot hinges on Tom’s understanding that his past life was a refusal to accept reality, and Eleanor’s willingness to take him back. That requires more complex and subtle dialogue than Baldacci gave himself room for. The acknowledgements suggest that the book was “project” proposed to him, perhaps by AMTRAK. It doesn’t feel like a story he felt compelled to tell.
     Schlock, barely OK as a beach or airplane read. *

Neanderthals are humans

More evidence  that Neanderthals were people like us. Doesn't look like  much, eh? It's a piece of string.

It takes a lot of insight to make string. You have to understand that twisting fibres together makes a stronger product. You have to see that string is useful for tying stuff. You have to have stuff that needs tying. And so on. Quite an achievement!

Now I know why I save string.

What most people think but don't want to say

The Guardian is saying it out loud: Trump has destroyed the USA's international reputation. One of several blunt quotes:

"Erratic behaviour, tolerated in the past, is now seen as downright dangerous. It’s long been plain, at least to many in Europe, that Trump could not be trusted. Now he is seen as a threat. It is not just about failed leadership. It’s about openly hostile, reckless actions."

Before Trump was elected, I pointed to uncomfortable parallels between him and several well-known (mostly dead) dictators. Comments claimed I was being disrespectful. Fact is, I was saying less than I thought at the time.

Mother Nature: A thought.

Mother Nature doesn't care about shareholder value.

Photo of an iris

An iris from a few years ago. We are looking forward to this year's blooms.

Small defeats: Govier's short stories

     Katherine Govier. The Immaculate Conception Photography Gallery (1994) The title story tells how professional photographer Sandro slides into doctoring photos, and eventually repents after a period of adding or removing people from group photos. A small defeat, but characteristic of the fates of Govier’s characters. It seems to me to be a Canadian characteristic, for Munro, Atwood, Garner, Mitchell etc all tell similar stories. Yet these defeats as often as not strengthen the characters. They have found their proper place in the scheme of things, and accepting that is a kind of victory.
     I enjoyed reading the book, but not enough to read it without interruptions. Worth a look if you find a copy. The title refers to Sandro’s shop, which he has named after the nearby church. **½

Econ 101: Why wage subsidies won’t bankrupt the country

A comment in response to the Financial Post’s worry about how much the wage subsidy program will cost. It was announced by Prime Minister Trudeau on 2020 03 30.

Since this is a wage subsidy program, most of the money will be used to pay for shelter, utilities, food, and transportation. Most of these dollars will generate sales tax revenue for  the Province (8% in Ontario) and/or the Federal government (5%) when spent.

But a dollar spent will be spent again. The consensus is that a dollar will be spent between five and seven times before all or part of it returns to the original spender. That means about 65 to 70% of the money will return to the governments.

In short, the wage subsidy will largely pay for itself. The question, “How much will the program cost?” misses the point.

Footnote: The Canadian government will provide wage subsidies of 75% on the first $59,400 of a person's wages. This will be available to all employers whose business has been impacted by covid-19. The Prime Minister also urged businesses to pay the additional 25%, and warned that any business trying to game the system will be dealt with. Many workers will eventually pay income tax on all or part of the wage subsidy.

Update 2020 03 31: My arithmetic is off, since food isn't taxed. So I estimate the payback in taxes at about 40 to 70%. However I haven't factored in the payback, financial and otherwise, of keeping the suppliers of food and transportation etc in business.

Nostalgia and history: Cartoons by Lancaster

Osbert Lancaster. The Penguin Osbert Lancaster. (1964) Lancaster was for many years an editorial cartoonist for the Daily Express. He had other sources of income, too. His charmingly accurate stereotypes of the upper middle and upper classes shows that he belonged to that social stratum.
     The cartoons are of course dated in their references to then current political and social issues, but his commentary is not. Rather more damage is done by foolishness, incompetence, and an uninformed desire to do good than by active malice. Thus, in a 1949 cartoon, one newspaper reader to another, “I may be underestimating slightly, but by my reckoning this makes the seventeenth ‘most important mission in history’ since 1945.”
     There’s also a section on the development of interior decorating, acutely observed. All in all, a nicely done dose of nostalgia and history. ****

"20th century functional" architecture, as seen by Lancaster. He was an expert historian of architectural fashion.

 

Econ 101: Supply chain fragility (another example of neo-liberal economic failure)

A letter I sent to the Atlantic Magazine a few minutes ago

Re: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/supply-chains-and-coronavirus/608329/

Lizzy O'Leary's piece is a welcome reminder of reality. But it doesn't go far enough. The cure is not to "diversify the supply chain", as implied towards the of her article. It's to change the mindset that maximizing profits is the aim of a business, or worse, that it's the aim of the economy.

It is that mindset that has pared down resilience. A resilient system has redundancies. Redundancies cost money. Removing them reduces the costs, and hence maximizes profits.

Business profitability is one, and only one, of the many numbers that describe the state of an economy. Believing that it is the purpose of the system to maximize that one number is obviously crazy. One might as well say that it is the purpose of eating to maximize the throughput of the digestive system.

Businesses exist to provide what we need and what we want. That is their social, and therefore their economic role. "Profit" is a signal that the business is fulfilling that role. That's all it is.

It's time to rescue the economy from the advice of economists who have a superstitious reverence for profitability.

Maigret takes the waters

     Georges Simenon. Maigret in Vichy (1968) Told by his friend and doctor to take the waters at Vichy, Maigret is enjoying a relaxed daily routine with his wife. On their regular walks, they see “the lady in lilac”, whose self-possession attracts Maigret’s attention. A few days on, she is murdered.
     The local inspector is a former colleague and protege of Maigret’s, so of course the great man is drawn into the investigation. It proceeds to its inevitable end through a series of interviews. That’s Simenon’s schtick: dialogue feels more immediate than narration, so we keep reading to find out where the new information will lead. As novels, these books are light weight, the characters are realised just enough to carry the story forward. As entertainments, they are first class. Simenon knows how to set the hook.
    

I enjoyed reading this confection, but it didn’t persuade me. We’ve watched a few episodes of Maigret played by Rowan Atkinson, which I find much more persuasive. Why is it that second rate books so often make first rate television? **½

Michael Richards didn't rant about being white

From an email exchange.

I was sent an email that included a rant supposedly by Michael Richards.
This was my response:

Oh dear, what a whinge!

And Michael Richards did not make these points, in court or anywhere else. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/proud-to-be-white/ (1)

The reason there are "just Americans" is because white is the default standard. That's not in itself racist, but it does prompt racist logic, such as "My country is being taken away from me...".

Just as "male" is the default standard for "human", which among other things has caused subtle and not so subtle errors in diagnosis, medication trials, biological science, etc. E.g, it has  endangered/killed many women who were having heart attacks, because women typically don't have the same heart attack symptoms as men.

Just as college students have been the default "subjects" for psych and sociology studies simply because they were handy. But they are different from most people. For one thing, their brains are still immature.

Just as Western thinking/culture is the default standard for logic and common sense. Which is why Westerners are astonished when people elsewhere in the world think differently.

Actually, there are (still) Polish-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc. Just not English-Americans. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (aka WASP) is the default standard for "just Americans".

Etc.

(1) Misrepresenting sources is a common extremist tactic. It's just one example of the extremist belief that any wrong-doing is justified if it's done "for the cause", whatever the cause may be. For example, it's how the Inquisition justified the torture and burning of "heretics". That included some of my Protestant ancestors. Of course, other ancestors happily justified murdering Catholics using the same logic.

Have a good day,

Update 2020-11-14: There's more than one Michael Richards the stand-up comic did make a racist rant. The Guardian carried a story about how it wrecked his career.

 

 

Economics: dismal, and less than a science

David Orrell. Economyths: 11 Ways Economics Gets It Wrong (2017) In this revised edition of his book, Orrell adds updates on each myth. Basically, the neo-classical economics establishment snarled back at him. It seems his book touched a nerve. Not surprising, since Orrell’s thesis is that neo-classical economics is so far out of touch with reality that it’s dangerously wrong.
     Some years ago, I read an online proof that a legislated minimum wage could not possibly work, since the law of supply and demand guaranteed that the lowest wages offered represented the actual value of the work performed by those workers. I wrote a note to the author suggesting that the analysis left out of account employers’ power to set wages at almost any level they wished, and that their greed would depress wages below what the work was worth. I got no answer. Presumably, I did not understand economics.
     Fact is, I read Milton Friedman many years ago, and I thought then what I think now: the man had no understanding of how real people behave. For it’s always been clear to me that economics is a branch of social psychology. The law of supply and demand is about psychology, it’s about the perception of scarcity and desirability. “Value” is about psychology: if the seller values a ware more than a buyer, he will ask a price the buyer is unwilling to pay. Hence haggling. And so on.
     And so on. Orrell has analysed the myths much better than I have, which makes his book very much worth reading. I found it at our local dollar store on the remaindered-books rack, a sad fate for such an important work.
     His most interesting notion is that money behaves like quantum particles, because it has a dual nature: it is both material (coins etc) and abstract (numbers). I don’t buy this, because I see no obvious way for that notion to account for inflation. It may well be that quantum math will provide better models of how money behaves as an element of the economy, but inflation is an effect of psychology. Ordinary inflation is a natural effect of people charging more than a good is worth in order to make a profit and/or to pay the interest on their debts. Runaway inflation occurs when people no longer believe that money represents values well enough to be used as a generic IOU. But those observations are merely the beginnings of an attempt to account for inflation, which is fundamentally crazy: It’s as if we needed more and more meter sticks to measure the distance from here to London.
     Still, I think this book is a necessary and useful primer in economics. By showing that the notion of “utility” is empty, or that economic decisions are irrational, or that the system is inherently unstable, etc, Orrell shows that neo-classic economic theory is empty. I’ll go further than he does: he shows that it’s a mess of superstitions, a pseudoscience like astrology. ****
    Update 2020-03-28: The single biggest failure of Friedmanite economic theory is its pricing of externals. It's zero. That means that prices will understate the relative costs of goods and services. This is most obvious in the costs of raw materials. Ignoring the cost of externals underprices mineral resources, and overprices organic resources. Thus we overuse concrete, and underuse wood.
     BTW, back in the 1970s I read an article by an accountant, who "proved" that the costs of replanting forests could never be recovered. That's when I began to suspect that "generally accepted accounting principles" are somewhat removed from reality. These accounting practices are of course based on Friedmanite assumptions about costs and how to account for them.
    Update 2020-04-14. "Generally accepted accounting principles" are also designed to minimise tax obligations. The accountant also has some choice in which principles to apply: They can make a bad year look good, and vice versa, depending on whether their client wants to attract investors or distract the taxman. As long as the principles used are spelled out, that's ethical.