That the health insurance mandate – something that works from Switzerland to Massachusetts – should rely on Constiturional provisions about interstate commerce seems to me as contorted as the fact that abortion – something that happens whether you allow it or not – hinges on a woman’s right to privacy.
Yet, stranger things have happened under the U.S. Constitution. I do hope the health care law is upheld.
I have a friend who is seriously into the fantasy book genre, and I usually take her book recommendations with a pinch of salt. But I am seriously into what I call the end-of-civilization genre, and critics refer to as the “post-apocalyptic” or “dystopian” novel. So, when my friend recommended the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins – supposedly, a “young adult” work, no matter how bleak -, I read it and enjoyed it as shamelessly as Harry Potter fans have enjoyed the J. K. Rowling series.
I learned today that the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy is now a movie. And the actress in the lead role, Jennifer Lawrence, comes with serious credentials as teenage heroine from the gritty, dark Winter’s Bone, which led her to an Academy Award nomination for Best leading actress (who won that year? Oh yeah. Natalie Portman won), and which you should watch by all means if you haven’t yet. District 12 is, after all, a fictional version of the Ozarks. Enjoy.
I have been asked to make a list of five books I recommend for a full immersion into the best of American writing from the ’80s to today.
It is not, of course, an easy task.
To cram more books into the list, I have picked five, but also provided notes on what else you might like if you liked that book (and no, there is no collaborative filtering algorithm here – I just went through the titles I had tagged with “American fiction” on LibraryThing, and made some hard and very personal choices). So, here’s my take. What’s yours?
What are your five books? Remember, it’s just a list. You can pick anything by Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Jeffery Deaver and I won’t think less of you. In fact, genre fiction has its own rewards – but that’s a topic for another post.
One reads David Foster Wallace‘s long-form journalism collected in Consider the Lobster slowly and with care, knowing there won’t be any more of his pieces for Harper’s, The New York Observer, Premiere and so on. (Incidentally, Gourmet, the magazine that commissioned the title story, has recently ceased to exist, too.) One of these pieces, appearing in this collection in its full uncut glory, got a brief revival in the 2008 elections: it is “Up, Simba”, where DFW got to cover on behalf of Rolling Stone none other than John McCain on the campaign trail in the 2000 Republican primary, which McCain lost to George W. Bush after a non-inconsiderable amount of “negative advertising”.
“Host”, the piece that closes the collection, profiles for the Atlantic Monthly a conservative radio talk show host named John Ziegler working at KFI in Los Angeles, and it is insightful and probing and sad. I just wanted to notice one little thing, and point it out to you. When the host is off the air, the writer’s ear does not tune out to the mindless chatter of the advertising segments. The writer keeps listening. And (this is 2004) he observes that there is quite a bit more of a certain type of radio advertising than there used to be.
As of spring ’04, though, the most frequent and concussive spots on KFI are for mortgage and home-refi companies. In just a few slumped, glazed hours of listening, a member of this station’s audience can hear both canned and live-read ads for Green Light Financial, HMS Capital, Home Field Financial, Benchmark Lending. Over and over. Pacific Home Financial, Lenox National Lending, U.S. Mortgage Capital, Crestline Funding, Home Savings Mortgage, Advantix Lending, Reverse mortgages, negative amortization, adjustable rates, APR, FICO… where did all these firms come from? What were these guys doing five years ago? Why is KFI’s audience seen as so especially ripe and ready for refi? Betterloans.com, lendingtree.com, Union Bank of California, bethebroker.net, on and on and on.
I don’t want to attribute any prescience to DFW’s words. While he might be read as implying that nothing good would come of it, this may very well be just our interpretation as readers in 2010, with the privilege of what we know today. As a writer, he merely observed and reported. May we observe the world around us with the same open-mindedness and insight.
Kudos to Obamacare: I’m all for trying to make the U.S. health care system more like the ones in Switzerland or Massachusetts, which the bill that is currently going through Congress aims to do.
Yet, it won’t touch many of today’s systemic issues in the way that health care is provided to most Americans: at an exorbitant cost. Joe R. Lansdale satirized the system in Bad Chili, his 1997 “Texas Gothic” novel where Hap Collins, fresh from a stint on an offshore oil rig, comes home and gets bitten by a rabid squirrel.
“That insurance you got,” Doc Sylvan said. “We’re familiar with it. I made some calls to be sure. Sucks.”
“Which policy sucks?”
“Both of them. The oil rig policy will pay more in the long run, but it’s the short run that’s a bitch. The other policy seriously sucks the dog turd. You see, this is what they call outpatient business. You know, give you a shot, then you go home. Come back for an examination, another shot. You go home. But, if you go home, the policy has a five-hundred-dollar deductible.”
“It’s going to cost that much?”
“Time I get through, it may cost more. It’s not that it actually cost that much, but doing the shots here at the hospital makes it more expensive. And being a small city hospital, well, that gilds the lily.”
“Then why didn’t we do it at your office?”
“I told you why. Listen, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna check you in for a few days here at the Medical Hilton.”
“Won’t that be more expensive?”
“Certainly. A lot more, but you do that, the offshore policy will pay eighty percent. The other policy will pay a bit.”
“The one that sucks the dog turd?”
“Right.”
“You mean to tell me the policy won’t pay I go to the house, but it will pay I stay in the hospital and it’ll cost more?”
“Now you got it figured. Between the two policies you come out only owing a few hundred bucks’ deductible. Policies might even overlap so you come out ahead, but I doubt it. You’ll owe something. It’s the way of the insurance and medical professions.”
“I think I’m being snookered a bit so you can make some extra insurance money, that’s what I think.”
“Considering you owe me a few past-due bills for a number of things, maybe you can live with that.”
“How long have I got to be in the hospital?”
“Way the policy works—”
“The offshore or the dog turd?”
“Both . . . I’d say seven or eight days.”
“Ah, hell. You’re kiddin’?”
“No, I’m not. You see, you take a shot now. Then you take one in seven days. That should be enough time to make sure the policy covers things. Those policies, way they’re written, you almost have to be standing on your head and get hit by lightning while trying to pick your nose with a pop bottle up your ass for them to pay. You got to get a better kind of policy, Hap. You know, a real one.”
“I get some real money, I’ll do that.”
“Anyway. One shot now. One in seven days, and one in twenty-one to twenty-eight days. You got a little option on the last shot. But not much. Thing about rabies, you miss those shots, you can kiss your ass good-bye.”
“I go to the hospital, I got to wear this damn gown all the time?”
“You play the game, you suit out.”
The art world is loudly complaining about the decision of the trustees of Brandeis University to face the financial crisis by, among other measures, selling the modern and contemporary art collection housed in the university’s Rose Art Museum. Reactions so far call the decision “astonishing”, “a shame”, “unprincipled”, “a complete wrong message to donors“, and “bad economics” (because art, like other asset classes, is likely to fetch less now than it would have in the good times). The Association of Art Museum Directors said it is “shocked and dismayed” by plans to close the Rose.
It doesn’t end here. The Massachussetts Attorney General is to conduct a detailed review of the decision. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office said: “They are saying that civilization doesn’t matter in the name of some kind of bottom line.”
Readers, you know how much I love modern and contemporary art. You know how passionate I am about it. Yet, I have to wonder: have all these people been living with their heads under the sand for the last year or so? I told you months ago that there was going to be less money for art. The writing was on the wall. It is not that civilization doesn’t matter – it matters enourmously, indeed. But in a crisis, you do what you gotta do.
So, let me come out and say it. I think the Brandeis trustees made the right decision. It is indeed a pity that the Rose has become a luxury that the university can no longer afford to keep, but if the alternatives are worse (freezing faculty hiring, cutting back on financial aid for students), then it is the right decision. If Stanford President John Hennessy wrote me another letter, saying this time that the trustees have decided to sell off the university’s art holdings, I would be saddened, but I would not complain. Let alone call the decision “unprincipled”.
The Attorney General’s spokeswoman also said: “It’s essential that students have access to real works of art [...] By subtracting the works of art from a college environment, you are betraying an enormous trust.” With all due respect, this is ridiculous. College fees are high, but do not include the permanent guarantee that you will have an art museum in your backyard, for your convenience. (Annual visitor numbers at the Rose were 13,000-15,000: a tiny number. The archeological digs at Venosa, near Potenza in Southern Italy, pull in more than that, according to 2007 data from the Italian Culture Ministry). For centuries, art students have been used to traveling, to go and study art where the art is. That’s how one becomes an artist (or a curator, or a critic, or whatever). Do we really want a generation of couch potato art students?
Collections are built and dispersed; at the end of February, the collection built up by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé will be auctioned off by Christie’s, in what is likely to be the largest sale of a private collection ever. Sure, those pieces were bought and not donated. But how many donor’s grants to the Rose stipulated that the works could never be sold under any circumstances, including a global financial crisis that shrinks the university endowment at unprecedented speeds? and what does “never” mean? until the donor’s last descendant has died? until the artist’s work has gone out of fashion – and lost value? until the end of the universe? And if you were a donor, would you make such a draconian stipulation? If you were a museum, would you accept it?
Sure, the university could have sought students’ opinions before the trustees had to decide. Yet the students’ protest sounds disingenuous, as they know perfectly well that they would have protested a lot more if the university had decided to save the Rose but cut back on, say, student dorms and have students sleep in tents out there in the snow. The decision-making process could, and probably should, have been more participative. But at the end of the day, students are there to study, and administrators are there to administer: somebody has to make decisions. And Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz and the trustees, in this case, made the right one.
Serial entrepreneur Steve Newcomb didn’t quite sit back and enjoy Martinis after selling Powerset to Microsoft. Barely six months after compelting that deal, he is back in the limelight as a co-founder at Virgance, a company that means to find and develop small, positive activism campaigns and scale them into global movements.
“I started looking at activism as a potential start-up industry,” he says [...] Mr Newcomb says being a for-profit company enables it to grow faster and achieve more social impact than a non-profit, because it can afford to pay its employees competitive salaries and can raise capital from investors, rather than relying on donations.
Full Economist article here.
Today I received an extraordinary message in my email inbox: “A Message from Stanford’s President”.
John Hennessy, President of Stanford University, has taken the initiative to write to the broader Stanford community, including students’ families and Stanford alumni, to acknowledge that Stanford too is impacted by the state of the financial markets, and explain the implications of the dramatic shift in the economic environment for the University.
Please read the letter (I believe President Hennessy won’t mind my sharing it with you). I was deeply moved as I read it. This is a man who felt that it was his responsibility to reach out and explain these things to us; and it is clear that he put a lot of thought into how to say them. The letter is clear, to the point, empathic, forward-thinking, and deeply human. It makes me trust his leadership. It makes me proud to be a Stanford alumna.
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Dear Alumni, Parents and Friends:
Many of you have contacted me over the past few months with questions about the recent shifts in the economy and how the University is affected. I would like to update you on our response to these challenges. Financial Aid Commitments Still Secure The questions continued through Reunion Homecoming Weekend as the Dow Jones average dropped approximately 25 percent further. How was the University’s endowment affected? What would this mean for financial aid, for operations and for the capital facilities projects already under way? The Tightest Financial Outlook in Decades Fortunately, Stanford entered this period in a relatively healthy financial position, bolstered by several years of revenue increases, generous gifts from alumni, parents and friends, and remarkable growth in the endowment, which for the first time ever became the University’s largest source of revenue. To manage our finances going forward, we anticipate reducing the $800 million general funds budget – which pays for most of our faculty and staff salaries, central administrative operations and non-research expenses – by 10 to 12 percent over the next few years. Declining federal research dollars could double the total revenue loss across the University. We cannot achieve these reductions without some significant and permanent cutbacks. Cutting Costs Wisely Second, we will review our capital projects. We are in the midst of a major capital program that includes some vital construction projects. Halting projects in mid-construction, even temporarily, would cost us more money in the long run. But not all our projects will be built according to the original schedule. We will reexamine projects that incur significant amounts of debt. Third, through support from The Stanford Challenge we have launched a variety of efforts to address the most challenging problems facing humankind: sustaining our planet for future generations, enhancing peace and stability around the world, exploring the potential of stem cells for autoimmune diseases, improving K-12 education in the United States, and finding new ways to generate energy that will not increase greenhouse gases. These are critical initiatives, and while we must adapt our efforts to present circumstances, we will not shy away from our long-term responsibility to lead in finding solutions for these problems. Trust in Our Stanford Community As always, I am happy to hear from you. Send your comment, suggestion or question to me at president@stanford.edu or to Howard E. Wolf, ’80, vice president for alumni affairs and president of Stanford Alumni Association, at alumnipresident@stanford.edu. Sincerely, |
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No, this is not a post about reactions to the financial meltdown. It’s about National Day of Prayer (thanks to Orientalia4all for an interesting post).
We Europeans, especially in countries with a better tradition of separation between church and state (French readers, anyone?), are always taken aback when we hear that American civil institutions explicitly endorse religious rituals, such as a “Judeo-Christian expression of the national observance”. It reminds us of other American amenities such as the Creation Museum. Yet, according to the official website of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a National Day of Prayer was first established by President Truman in 1952, after a joint Congressional resolution, and then signed into law with the official date of the first Thursday in May by President Reagan in 1988.
Last week, the Freedom of Religion Foundation sued President Bush and others over the law. It’ll be an interesting lawsuit.
I keep thinking that the post-apocalyptic world imagined by Neal Stephenson in Anathem, where learned people live in seclusion, do not use money and are resolutely atheist (while the rest of the world’s population is decidedly unlearned, shopaholic, and worships all sorts of gods and prophets), is not an improbable outcome.
For proof that religion and commerce these days are relentlessly intertwined, look no further than the home page of the National Day of Prayer Task Force site.
From Fred Wilson’s blog, A VC:
We have tax revenues that do not cover our spending. And we don’t have the will to cut our spending. And in many cases, we cannot afford to cut our spending. We should not cut our spending on infrastructure, we should increase it. We should not cut our spending on finding cleaner and smarter forms of energy, we should increase it. We should not cut our spending on education, we should increase it. We should not live with the terrible health care system we currently have, we should fix it. And we continue to spend money on things like tax breaks for oil companies and subsidies for farmers that mystify me and most Americans. And we spend a lot of money fighting vices like drugs, prostitution, and gambling when we should simply legalize them, tax them, and regulate them and turn them into a profit center.
[...] We need to get our house in order, play in this global economy with a stable and sustainable business model. And we don’t have that now. And we must get it in place soon.
