Moving Money

Our fellowship money from the summer study sessions and Ayn Rand
reading arrived today. We were first told that it would be a series
of standard direct deposits, but for some reason it arrived in the
form of a single $2500 check. There are two things I can so with such
a check: I can walk downtown to the issuing bank and get it cashed,
or I can wait until I go home and have my credit union put it in my
account. Obviously the wise thing to do is wait, because my martial
arts skills are not yet advanced enough for me to be completely
comfortable walking around with that much cash.

But, as I held the check, my first thoughts were as follows:

"Aww man, why did I have to pay my tuition yesterday? It would have
been awesome to cash this check, make the cashier give me half of it
in the form of one dollar bills, and fill my backpack with bricks of
cash. Then I could have walked into the Bursar's office, said, 'I'm
here to pay next semester's tuition', and started shoveling massive
wads of cash out of my backpack. The look on the teller's face would
have been priceless."

But I wouldn't really have done it. While I may have the cleverness
to come up with such stunts, I also have the wisdom to avoid them.

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Bartlett's Quotations

I grabbed a 1955 edition of Bartlett's Quotations from the shelved of
the department library and began flipping through it. The book is
organized chronologically, by the birth date of the author of the
quote. Sometimes I will know every author on the page, sometimes I
will recognize none.

The highest rate of recognition seems to come from people born from
1804 to 1806: Disraeli, Hawthorne, de Toqueville, Wilberforce,
Garrison, Mill. Earlier and later time periods tend to be filled with
people I don't know. I don't know of this says more about that period
in history, or my education.

There is a huge difference in my appreciation of the quote when I know
something about the author. Context is golden. The purpose of a
general education should be to give you the context to understand,
absorb, and appreciate all the random facts you encounter in your
life. This does not happen with most education today. It saddens me
to know that so many people do not have enough general knowledge about
the world to put things like these quotes into context.

I was disappointed to see only three Steinbeck quotes. I think he
should have rated more, especially since they gave Emerson eight whole
pages. Maybe this has been corrected in later editions.

I found one quote/poem so good that I wanted to share it. The author
is Stoddard King, a songwriter in the early 1900's. He is so obscure
that he does not even have a Wikipedia entry:

A writer owned an asterisk
And kept it in his den
Where he wrote tales ( which had large sales )
Of frail and erring men,
And always, when he reached the point
Where carping censors lurk,
He called upon the Asterisk
To do his dirty work.

The poem, in its memorable and amusing way, tells a lot about social
standards. It seems to be a universal rule that people are fascinated
by anything that is just over the line of socially acceptable, no
matter where the line is drawn. If something is within the limits,
people are bored by it. If something is too far past the limit,
people recoil in terror. But the money is made by pushing the limit a
little. This, of course, has the effect of moving the limit a bit
further out, as the risqué eventually becomes the passé.

Victorian Novel

I just finished reading a fun novel written in 1903: The Magnetic Girl

I know that the 'Victorian' period technically ended in 1901, but this is close enough. In terms of cultures and attitudes, the 'Victorian' age really lasted until World War 1. This book is certainly not Modernist.

The book was recommended by another blog. Unlike the stereotypical Victorian novel, it does not feature long, boring, endless descriptions of minutiae. It is easy and fast to read. This is probably because the book was clearly intended to be a mass-market work, not a literary work. The last 20 or so pages of the book is actually a catalog of other books available from the publisher.

The book was advertised as a 'long novel' but it is quite short by the standards of today's popular novels. There is not really a lot of meat to the novel; it would have been better as a short story. The middle of the book, where all the 'action' takes place, is somewhat boring and can be skipped or skimmed. The fun part is the thoughts of the narrator.

The book is basically a first-person account of a young lady who makes a wish to be extremely attractive, and has that wish granted for a day. Her attitude is surprisingly modern and progressive; she hates the way that the women around her devote their entire lives to following fashions and attracting men. She also has some very feminist things to say about men, how they act, and what they are good for.

Yet despite this, the main value of the book is that it is a period piece. It is an excellent look into history. It gives the reader a glimpse into life in 1903 London, and the kind of thing that people read for fun over a hundred years ago. I also learned a couple new words. I'd recommend it for anyone who has a few hours to spare and is interested in literature and/or that time period.

The link above is the only place you will be able to find the book; the copyright has expired so Google shows the whole book. If you do read it and you are not already well-versed in Victorian, have an unabridged dictionary handy as you read it. Also, I should mention that a 'grenadier' is a very large, strong, well-built soldier; that word is used a lot and it is assumed that the audience knows what it means. A modern author would use 'bodybuilder' or 'football player' in that context.

Financial Literacy

This article was surprising and disturbing, but in hindsight it really
should not have been:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/are-we-a-nation-of-financial-illiterates/

The main point of the article is that a lot of people cannot answer
really basic questions about personal finance. They also say that
nobody really knows the details about the ignorance, because nobody
has studied it. This is probably because people who have the
qualifications to study financial literacy will assume that everybody
knows the basic stuff.

But when I stop to think about it, most of my financial literacy comes
from the Larry Burkett radio show. If you've never heard of him, he
was a financial expert who ran a talk and advice show. He would
explain the basics of financial planning, budgeting, interest rates,
etc. and give advice to people who called in. It was aired on the
Christian radio station, and my parents would listen to him in the car
when I was a kid.

They taught nothing about this in school. Our eighth grade health
teacher did a class on filling out tax forms, and she may have given
some vague recommendation to save money, but that was it. When I went
to college, I took accounting and finance classes. But they were
mainly designed to teach you the skills to be a corporate office
drone; there was very little on personal finance. And outside the
College of Business, there was nothing at all.

So the complete ignorance on financial matters is not surprising.
Nobody teaches it. Our school system makes algebra, which is useless
for 95% of the population, a graduation requirement, while teaching
absolutely nothing about interest rates and balancing budgets. All
information about money comes from friends and family, charities, or
people who are trying to sell you something.

As far as I can tell, churches and religious groups seem to be the
only people trying to teach financial literacy in a systematic way.
It is a sad comment on our society that an organization devoted to the
health of the soul finds it necessary to teach the ways of Mammon.

Piles of Money

The pastor's sermon today was about money. During the sermon, he
pulled a large manila envelope from under the pulpit. He reached into
it and started pulling out bricks of cash and stacking them on top of
the pulpit. It was ten bricks of 100 $1 bills.

I have never seen such a pile of money in my life, and the sight was
disturbingly powerful. I routinely deal with sums of money larger
than $1000 on checks and computer screens, and it does not affect me
at all. But the sight of piles of money is much more visceral; I felt
a brief flash of violent, animalistic greed when looking at the bricks
of cash.

I think this happens because, when we are little children, we deal
mostly with cash, and a dozen $1 bills would be a lot of money. When
you are an adult, you start dealing with money in the abstract, so you
use a different part of your mind. Seeing that pile of cash took me
back to a childhood view of money, and activated a different and more
primitive part of my mind.

Decline of the State

I just finished reading this article:

From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State
and U.S. Strategy:
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=867

I will summarize the author's points, and then give my comments:

---

The nation-state is in decline, and that many other organizations are
asserting their power. States have failed to provide for their
citizens, and security for the average citizen has little to do with
the armies and diplomacy of their state. People are turning to
non-state groups for their security. The rise of terrorists, criminal
gangs, and tribal loyalties is not a temporary problem, but the start
of a new system of world affairs. The U.S. must recognize this, and
learn how to deal with situations where the central government of a
state has no real power.

---

I noticed that the work was internally inconsistent with regard to
actions in Iraq. The author wants to escape 'statocentric' thinking,
but then he seems to criticize the Anbar awakening on the grounds that
it will make it harder to form a stable central government. If states
are doomed to failure, as he claims, then the only responsible course
of action is to work outside that government and help the tribes
create a stable environment.

I also found it telling that the author repeatedly claims that states
are failing to meet the needs of their citizens. Governments of all
kinds are spending more on social and domestic programs than at any
time in the past, and yet states are in more danger of falling apart.
This tells me that states are failing to fulfill their primary
purpose.

I believe that the purpose of a state is to maintain law and order, to
protect the lives, rights, and property of its citizens with competent
and non-corrupt police, courts, and military forces. Any state that
fails to do this has failed in its primary mission and lost its reason
for existence. As the author points out, a great many states are
failing either because they never did this, or because the are losing
these capabilities.

I do not believe that states are doomed to failure. A state that
fulfills its primary function well, without becoming disracted by
other matters, will show its value and be supported by its citizens.
But I do agree any state that fails to do its job will soon be
revealed as an empty shell. We must either show states how to to
their job right, and quickly, or deal with the world foretold in this
article.

Zen and the art of Blueberry Picking

We have six extremely productive blueberry bushes, and during the
summer we gather an average of a gallon a day. I can easily fill up a half-gallon bucket
in 30 minutes. While blackberry picking is like a combat challenge,
blueberry picking is very peaceful and relaxing. There are no
distractions, no interruptions, and no need to move around. Life
compresses to me and the bush and the bucket. I enter a zone of
timeless but purposeful action, gathering berries with an unhurried
but efficient economy of motion.

Thanks to years of practice, I can fill the bucket with berries about three
times as fast as an inexperienced picker. The key to efficient berry
picking is not to let your hand make too many trips to the bucket. I
pick the berries with my thumb and forefinger, while the rest of my
fingers form a kind of cup with my palm. My hands wander around the
bush, seemingly guided by my eyes alone with no conscious thought. I
pluck one or two berries a second, dropping them into my palm, and
dumping a handful in the bucket when my hand is full.

The resulting abundance of blueberries means that, during the summer,
we usually have a very large bowl full of fresh berries in the
kitchen. I find them irresistible. Whenever I pass the bowl, I will
grab a big handful, shove them all in my mouth, and start chewing. It
seems that I can always eat a handful of blueberries, no matter what
time of day it is or what I have eaten recently. There have been days
when about half my calorie intake was in the form of blueberries.

I have a theory about food cravings. I am aware of no empirical
evidence that supports it, but it seems to make sense. My theory is
that appetite depends on nutrients in addition to calories; your body
becomes hungry when it knows that it lacks important vitamins or
minerals. Your body feels deprived, so it sends a signal to your
brain telling you that you need to eat more. However, in our modern
world, most of our food has lots of calories but few nutrients. Thus
a person can can end up both obese and malnourished.

The implication of this is that you can end food cravings and keep
yourself at a healthy weight by eating really healthy food like
blueberries. This strategy works for me. One of my mottoes is "Think
like an angel, eat like an ape."

If you want to read what real scientists are saying about nutrition,
here is a good article published recently:

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11745528&fsrc=RSS

There is an interesting quote from that article:

"Some foods, [Dr Gómez-Pinilla] concludes, are like pharmaceutical
compounds; their effects are so profound that the mental health of
entire countries may be linked to them."