We Really Did Hike Glen Onoko Falls

Although we had a lovely hike up the Glen Onoko Falls Trail in Lehigh Gorge State Park (next to Jim Thorpe, PA) there isn't much evidence-- my wife took a number of pictures of myself, the dog and the boys as we climbed the treacherously steep, rocky trail-- and there are numerous photo ops as there is literally another waterfall at every turn in the path, each more scintillating than the next . . . and we even had a nice lady take a family picture by the sign (which contains dire warnings about the trail: hike at your own risk, sections of the trail are steep and treacherous, hikers have been seriously injured and killed, wear proper hiking shoes, use extreme caution, etcetera) but then my wife trusted our oldest son to select the best photos from the many on the phone, as he insisted he had a shortcut method of pruning all the pictures . . . but he didn't know his ass from his elbow and instead of keeping the photos he wanted, he permanently deleted them . . . but I got my revenge on Sunday when we went to Hickory Run State Park to see the Boulder Field; my wife had never seen the field, a terminal moraine created by a glacier during the last ice age-- 18 acres of various sized boulders, a lake of boulders in the midst of a pine and hickory evergreen forest-- but the kids and I had been there years ago; my older son insisted that we drove there the last time we went-- but I couldn't find any driving directions, so instead we hiked three and a half miles over rocky terrain on the eponymously named Boulder Field Trail to get to the field, and when we (finally!) arrived, my son noticed a parking lot on the opposite side, and his loud complaints jogged my brain and I vaguely remembered driving down a gravel road to get to the site-- but I insisted it was far more fun to hike it (and the dog certainly thought so) but on the return to the car, by mile seven my left knee hurt and my feet were sore and everyone was very hungry . . . luckily, Woody's Country House was open, if you go there, get the chili.

Instant Fish

There are certain things you shouldn't buy used-- condoms, fuzzy toilet seat covers, handkerchiefs, and enema kits-- but as for everything else, it might be worth it to take the risk and check Craigslist . . . my son Alex asked for a fish tank for his birthday and when you add up the price of the tank and all the gadgets you need, the set-up is pretty expensive, so I took a ride to Avenel and bought a tank from a very nice dude named Sooraj-- and for eighty dollars he gave me everything: 29 gallon tank, hood, filter, heater, pump, gravel, live plants, net, siphon, plastic plants, thermometer, a castle, food, chemicals, and even his fish . . . he dismantled it all in front of me, very methodically, and placed everything into bags and buckets, and then I brought it home, set it up in an hour, and so far the fish survived the trip and water change . . . so my advice is this: at some point in their life, just about everyone has a fish tank, and at some point, just about everyone decides that the last thing they want in their life is a fish tank, so if you want a fish-tank, get a used one.

Nerding It Up (German Style)

My family has outstripped Monopoly . . . the house we rent in Vermont has the German board game Settlers of Catan, and while last spring when we didn't have the fortitude to figure out the rules (despite the fact that I had only heard rave reviews about the game) this time the boys and I were determined, and we attacked the game with blitzkrieg furor, and learned as we went, and we all decided that it may be the best game ever (and we even taught mom!) and Catan certainly rivals RISK (while being more cooperative, fun, strategic, random and tactical than the "game" of world domination) and now my kids want it for Christmas, and I want it too . . . but I am wondering if this will send them down a scary path of cardboard chits, lead figurines, multi-sided dice, and larping conventions.

Listen at Your Own Risk

Here are some podcasts that will twist your sense of morality back unto itself:

1) This American Life updates the noted George Saunders short story "Pastoralia" in Act Two of episode 623: We Are in the Future, the rest of the episode is trash, so head straight to "Past Imperfect" . . . it's the story of an African American woman (comedian and actor Azie Dungey) who played the role of a slave at Mt. Vernon, George Washington's estate in Virginia, and the difficulties and disparagement she suffered as a consequence of this oddly symbolic position-- a sole black woman representing all 316 slaves that Washington owned; tourists struggled with this reminder of reality (thought it was sorely lacking in numerical accuracy) and the moral of the story is that none of us are over the past, and none of us are able to get over it, white and black alike, so we're going to have to have some frank discussions about what went on back there in the mists of time and how we're going to portray these folks that we all have in common;

2) Episode 792 of Planet Money, "The Ransom Problem" presents a wicked dilemma that combines Catch 22 and Hamlet's most famous soliloquy . . . when you've been abducted by terrorists demanding ransom, and you have to decided whether "to pay or not to pay"; the U.S. and Canadian governments refuse to pay kidnappers, while many European nations will foot the bill . . . and while in a utilitarian sense, it makes sense not to pay ransom, because you don't want to incentivize abduction, this tactic doesn't seem to be working . . . anyway, this episode will run you through the wringer, you'll change your position several times, and by the end you won't know what to think or do . . . not only does the podcast deal with the economic implications of ransom, it also tells the entire wild abduction story of Amanda Lindhout . . . and it all happens in less than 20 minutes;

3) the wake of a flood is probably the worst time to discuss the cockamamie flood insurance policies in our country, because you're bound to come off a bit callous and unfeeling, but the folks at The Weeds and Slate Money do a great job of being informative, empathetic, and knowledgeable about what we need to do in the future to amend the absurdity (not that it will ever happen).

Kids Ask the Darndest Damned Things About the Letter "D"

The dinner topic was WWII (not my choice), and my boys decided that things would have turned out better if the Germans had played some RISK before trying to conquer the world again (because they would have realized how difficult it is to achieve world domination, and they would have given up before they started) and then Alex asked me one of those questions that I thought I knew the answer to, but immediately realized I didn't: "What does the 'D' in D-Day stand for?" and while I gave them a few guesses that make sense, if you read this article, you'll learn that the "D" was essentially a variable.

Gas Tank = Toilet Paper Roll

So apparently there are two types of people:

1) people who fill their gas tank as soon as it gets a bit low;

2) people who drive around on fumes as a matter of course;

and I am one of those people who fills their tank as soon as it gets low-- it's bad for the car to drive with very little gas in the tank: you could burn out the fuel pump and you could kick up sediment (and, of course, you could actually run out of gas and have to freeze your ass off walking to the nearest station) but my wife is one of those people who is always driving around on empty (or even below empty) and while that's normally her business (sort of, because her car is the second most expensive item we own, after our house) sometimes it impinges on my life; Friday, we planned on swapping cars so that she could drop the van at the shop, which is right by her school, so they could put on the snow tires-- and my wife would get a ride to school (the shop is less than a mile from her school) and I would drive her car to my place of work; we made this plan last week, and so on Wednesday, I prepared the van for the swap-- I took out all the soccer equipment and stowed it in the shed-- and then I took the snow tires out from the crawl space (always a difficulty for me because you have to crouch down-- I often hit my head-- but I must point out that I did this chore without my wife's assistance) and I rolled the tires from the backyard to the driveway and put them in the back of the van so we were all prepared for the car swap and Friday morning I got up early, got ready for school, spent some time with my wife in the kitchen discussing the consequences of the FCC's rash and partisan decision on the future of net neutrality, and then hopped in the car-- the correct car, my wife's car-- to execute the final portion of the car swap, the actual swapping, but as I was driving out of town, I noticed that the gas meter was below empty . . . and I was running a little late because of our discussion about net neutrality so I didn't have time to stop for gas-- so I got pretty irate, mainly because my wife has a short commute, so she must have been running low on gas all week, but didn't prepare as considerately for the car swap as I had done and also because it's bad for the engine to run on empty, which I know she does-- she's an incorrigble low gas driver-- and also because I almost got stuck in a massive traffic jam, there was a helicopter hovering over Route 1 and the entire road was shut down and some of the overflow traffic was spilling on to Route 18 (and if I had taken Ryders Lane, I certainly would have run out of gas) and so I called home-- this is the danger of cell-phones, everything happens in real time before you have a chance to cool off, and got Ian to put Catherine on the phone and then I expressed my views on leaving someone a car with no gas in it for a car swap and then when I got to school, I did some research and sent a text describing just what could happen to the engine when you drive on empty and then I conducted an impromptu seven hour poll: I asked all my classes and every teacher I encountered if they ever drove on empty, and I'm happy to say that the results were slightly different than I thought: I began with a rather sexist hypothesis that this was a woman thing, and that women didn't understand the mechanics of an engine, but found that the split was fairly even-- wive's complained about their husbands, women admitted that they were risk-takers, men confided that they were on empty right this very moment, a woman whose father was a mechanic brought up the possibility of burning out the fuel pump, some people said they just hate getting gas and want to do it as little as possible, some people wanted to see just how much it cost to fill the entire tank . . . people were vehemently one side or the other-- people who didn't drive on empty thought that it was insane to do so-- that's my camp and my metaphor is toilet paper, there's very few things in life that you can directly gauge-- your gas tank is one of them and the amount of toilet paper left on the roll is another . . . when the roll gets low, you get more rolls of toilet paper and put them in the bathroom, you don't wait until there's one square left-- that's a disaster waiting to happen and it's a situation that's easy enough to assess and remedy . . .anyway, I don't think there's any way to change people on this issue and I'm not going to try (but I will check my wife's car the night before we do a car swap and if it's on empty, I will just go and get gas, and try not to lecture her about fuel pumps and sediment and frost bite).

No More Mr. Nice Guy (to Squirrels)

Two things that shouldn't happen on a lazy hungover Saturday: 1) Alex hit Ian on the head with a metal shovel, ripping a gash in his scalp, and 2) a squirrel leaped over my head while I was wedged in a hole in the ceiling, standing on a ladder-- my lower body in our bedroom, my upper body in our attic-- with both hands occupied with a reciprocating saw, so that if the squirrel landed on my face and started biting my cheeks, I wouldn't be able to tear it off . . . and I was certainly running the risk that if I instinctively swatted the squirrel, I'd cut off my nose with the saw (my second trip up the ladder, with a lamp, the squirrel chuckled menacingly, and I think I'm going to purchase some poison today).

I Loath to Sell Low, and I Loathe Buying High

While the themes of this blog are often tangential and desultory, there is one thing that I always get right: the difference between "loath" and "loathe," and Justin Fox does as well, making excellent use of the verb "loath" in his book The Myth of the Rational Market: a history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street; he is describing Charles Dow's famous and absurdly obvious stock strategy -- buy during upward movement (bull markets) and sell during downward ones (bear markets)-- but Fox explains that "Dow himself was loath to declare when that direction had changed" . . . "aye, there's the rub."

Can Anyone Recommend Some Light Reading?

I finished Ioan Grillo's book El Narco, which is a portrait of the Mexican drug cartels and the damage they have wrought in both their home country and our own; it works like this: the United States provides many of the guns for the drug warfare . . . and of course we provide the insatiable need for illegal drugs (especially New York City) and the Mexicans-- who used to be middlemen smugglers for Columbian cocaine, until the Miami Vice squad made it too tough to come through Florida-- have taken over as the main producers, shippers, smugglers, and distributors . . . and moved into many other organized crime rackets such as shakedowns, protection money, and kidnapping . . . and because the stakes are so high and there is so much money involved and there are so many poor folk willing to risk it all, things have gotten incredibly brutal, both as the drug gangs fight each other, and as they fight the often corrupt police for a slice of the pie . . . the violence is heinous and terroristic and the trade is global and difficult to trace-- as the drug lords rely on lots of freelance help for assassinations and transport and smuggling and raw materials-- and while good intelligence can help to bring down big players, there is always someone else ready to step in and make the big money, if only for a limited time (the days of Pablo Escobar are over) and Grillo makes the typical case for legalization of drugs-- at least marijuana, but also perhaps cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, and whatever else is coming across the border-- because that is the only way to limit the power of these very organized paramilitary economic insurrectionists who are essentially psychotic . . . there was a time in the '70's when it looked like legalization would happen, but then we "just said no," but perhaps it's time to review drug possession policy again-- considering the mounting death toll and the fact that some of the cartel drug violence violence is creeping across the border (but not much because the Mexicans know what is good for business) may lead to a viable debate about drug legalization . . . anyway, the book is a good read if you want to know the ins and outs of this atrocious situation just South of us: nine Zetas out of ten.

Dave Does the Work of THREE Journalists

The New York Times just put out a fancy version of my post about the math behind opening schools during the pandemic.

Your welcome.

Even after stealing my idea, it still took the work of three professional journalists to write this article (they do have some fancy maps and graphs).

If you're an avid follower of SoD, then you got the scoop here first.

The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus

I'm assuming I'll get a thank you from James Glanz, Benedict Carey and Matthew Conlen any time now.

I'm also torn on what public policy should be in New Jersey right now.

Should we open up bars, restaurants, and gyms and see what happens? We can't open schools until we at least try these smaller venues.

Or should we lockdown again for two weeks-- really really lockdown-- then test as many people as we can, and THEN try to open schools? 

We either need to make opening schools a priority or give up on live schooling in the near future, but this middle ground isn't going to work.

New Jersey had 690 new cases today. 

And we now know that the virus spreads fairly efficiently through children.

So we kind of know exactly what is going to happen if we open up under these circumstances.

Shakespeare vs. Rudy Giulani

The New York Times podcast The Daily recently aired an episode about Rudy Giulani's involvement with the Trump administration. 

At the start of the episode, there was a clip from a speech Giulani made just after 9/11:

RUDY GIULIANI (R), THEN-MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We do not want these cowardly terrorists to have us in any way alter our American way of life. This may go on for some time. We have to end terrorism. I believe the United States government is committed to that. And it's going to require us here in America to go about our way of life and not have them imperil it.

Giulani calls the terrorists "cowardly." He's not the only person to do so. I don't think this is an apt description of a group of of people that hijacked four commercial jet airliners with utility knives and then steered the planes-- kamikaze style-- toward symbolic American targets. While I understand the need to denigrate and insult the terrorists, the last thing they were was "cowardly." It shows a lack of understanding of the enemy.

These people were sanguinary and vengeful and zealous and fanatical and lacking perspective and empathy for other cultures. But mainly, they were true believers, blinded by a certain political position. They were haters, haters of American policy, American military deployment in their Holy Land, haters of American capitalist morality, and American unilateral success on the world stage.

But to call them cowards is to sell them short. It doesn't reflect just how fervently they believed in what they believed. They believed enough to kill and die. In doesn't reflect how dangerous it is to believe in something so strongly that you can't look at other points of view.

Whether it's Islamic terrorists, or our own homegrown right-wing variety of fanatic, you need to accurately assess the motivations of these people. And these people aren't cowards. They are willing to commit violent acts, and often willing to die for their beliefs.

Shakespeare understood this, and Giulani would be well served by re-reading the Bard's most famous soliloquy, the one in Hamlet that begins "to be or not to be."

The context of the speech is that Hamlet is royally fucked up, and he's been royally screwed over. He's been through enough betrayal and heartache that he contemplates suicide. He acknowledges-- correctly-- that his life is a shitshow and that he should probably "take arms against a sea of troubles" and end it. It's "a consummation devoutly to be wish'd."

He doesn't kill himself. In fact, the play goes on another two hours. Hamlet might be a coward-- that's another post-- but more significantly, he recognizes why most people don't commit suicide-- and why he's not going to commit suicide. People don't behave that rashly because of "the dread of something after death."

The unknown.

He doesn't want to rush headlong into the undiscovered country" that "puzzles the will." He's not sure what will happen in the afterlife, "what dreams may come" once his life is over. And he's not going to risk it.

Obviously, he has not heard about the 72 virgins.

Hamlet is religious, but still rationally skeptical. The 9/11 terrorists-- and guys like Patrick Crusius-- do not have this fear. It's scary, how strongly they believe in their convictions. There's no shadow of a doubt in their minds.

Most normal folks-- and even folks like Hamlet, folks that are struggling but still rational-- let their "conscience" turn them cowardly. We lack fervor and unshaking faith, and so our "resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." This cowardice is a blessing in disguise because "enterprises of great pitch and moment . . . lose the name of action."

A lot of these enterprises are downright crazy, and could use reflection and reconsideration. Hamlet takes this to the extreme, and we love him for it.

There are plenty of applicable insults to aim at terrorists. They are rabid and crazed and virulent. But they certainly stand by the courage of their convictions, and that is the problem. They are the anti-Hamlet. They actually complete these suicidal actions, and this -- according to Shakespeare-- is the reverse of cowardly. All us cowards go on living our day to day lives, suffering "slings and arrows," not sure what is to come. That's civilized behavior

Though being devoted is often considered a positive trait, I believe we all need to be a little less loyal, a little less faithful, and a little less principled. It leads down a dangerous road. Instead, let's try to be a little more capricious, a little more detached. Let's be skeptical and occasionally disinterested. Maybe even a little more cowardly. If the terrorists adopted a few of these negative characteristics, the world would be a better place.

Hey Michael Lewis! In A Book Titled Boomerang, Shouldn't You Visit Australia?

In his new book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, Michael Lewis is more cavalier with is opinions than he was in his last book, the longer and denser The Big Short . . . Boomerang is more of a travelogue with some finance thrown in, and at times you get the feel that he's winging it, relying on his good name in each country, but he's an engaging writer and the book is a lot of fun-- considering it's about a depressing topic-- because for each country he visits, he tries to link their national character to the type of financial disaster they are experiencing: corrupt and tribal Greeks refuse to band together for the sake of their country; feral Icelanders treat high-risk banking the same way they treat fishing in the cold and dangerous waters of the North Atlantic; stoic Irishmen shoulder their country's debt with tight-lipped penitence, though they should have acted shamefully and defaulted; rule abiding Germans don't notice the filth under the sheen of the bonds they have bought (and here he takes a scatological side-trip into "the German's longstanding special interest" in "Scheisse (shit)" and tries to extend the analogy to the financial crisis, claiming that the Germans "longed to be near the shit but not in it," and although this is entertaining, I think his logic is stretched thin and that you could find loads of "Scheisse" jokes in every culture--  Mr. Lahey from Trailer Park Boys comes to mind-- so even Canadians stoop to this sort of humor); finally Lewis ends up in America, searching for the state that is the biggest financial disaster . . . and banking analyst Meredith Whitney determines this by invoking the logic of "the tragedy of the commons," she explains: "companies are more likely to flourish in stronger states; the individuals will go where the jobs are . . . ultimately, the people will follow the companies . . . Indiana is going to be like, NFW I'm bailing out New Jersey . . . those who have money and can move do so, and those without money and cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance," and Lewis asks her, "What's the scariest state?" and I hoped her answer wouldn't be New Jersey, but she "only had to think for about two seconds" and then she said, "California."

How to Merge in Jersey

According to game theorists, the most efficient way to play "chicken" is to ostentatiously throw your steering wheel out the window, so that your opponent sees that you have no method of avoiding the imminent collision -- you have to prove that you are crazier than the person you are battling . . . and the most efficient way to merge into traffic in New Jersey, is to not look at the other car . . . you have to pretend the car isn't there, and so when the other driver looks at you, he sees that you are not even acknowledging his vehicle and he is forced to slow down . . . and this works at a four-way Stop as well: no eye-contact, just go . . . the only problem with this tactic is the possibility that the other driver might be using the same strategy, but the twenty seconds you save on your errand is well worth the risk of collision.

This is Your Brain on North Korea

It's ethically gross and difficult to stomach, but the most strategic way to prevent disaster with North Korea is direct contact and diplomacy-- we've got to treat Kim Jong-un like a real world leader, or at least pretend to do so-- because the possession of nuclear weapons commands this treatment, whether we like it or not . . . the possession of a nuclear weapon breaks down whatever ethical system you're using to solve the problem (aside from utilitarianistic realpolitik) because problems at the end of the spectrum nearly always break down categorical principles . . . very few people get hung up on whether a human or an amoeba possess more civil rights, but when you get to the fringe and compare the consciousness of a healthy chimpanzee and the consciousness of 97 year old man on life-support, things get more difficult . . . no one wants to abort and kill an eight month old baby, but the consequence of using a morning after pill is something more difficult to define . . . torture is most definitely wrong, but if you need a piece of information to avert nuclear war, then things that might be normally considered morally repugnant might be heroic . . . it's these places, moral quandaries at the edges, where ethical systems break down; there's nothing that feels morally right, and you just need to figure out things on a case by case basis; North Korea is one of these problems-- threats are useless because the ball is literally in their court-- we're the good guys and we don't use nuclear weapons cavalierly, sanctions don't work when the leadership of country doesn't care what suffering their citizens endure, and brinksmanship is too risky because it could cause a nuclear disaster, or a breakdown of the regime, in which nuclear weapons could get into random hands or disappear or worse . . . so it's time to suck it up and do what's right, even though it feels very wrong, because it's existential crisis and we've only got one earth, there's no control group, no A/B testing, and we can't risk it (unless, of course, you're some kind of religious nut, who truly believes in the afterlife . . . then you can pursue your principles without fear, punish the wicked as a matter of recourse, and know that all things will be sorted out during the rapture).

There May Be Something Wrong With Me

Warning: if your opinion of Dave is already low, this sentence may make it subterranean, so proceed at your own risk . . . yesterday was the second day of my new Creative Writing Class (we switch at the semester) and one of the students wasn't quite in his seat when the bell rang, so I yelled in what i thought was a playful but slightly admonitory tone, "If you're not in your seat when the bell rings you're late!" and the student limped to his seat-- and I thought hmmm, looks like he has a limp and then got on with the class; later in the period we went on a "field trip" to the cafeteria, and the same late, limping student was the last one out of the classroom-- so I had to wait for him before I locked the door-- and I noticed that he had a brace on his hand, so I asked him, "Hey, how did you get injured?" and he quietly said to me "It happened when I was born" and then, in a humiliating rush of cognition, it all came together in my very stupid little brain-- he wasn't limping from a skate-park injury, he was crippled, and that wasn't a brace because he jammed his thumb playing hoops, his elbow joints were inverted-- and so I apologized to him about how I managed to put my (left) foot in my mouth not once but twice in a manner of minutes-- and though I said I was sorry, this kid must still wonder how he drew such an insensitive and cruel teacher for an elective  (unless perhaps-- and I'm rationalizing like a madman here-- perhaps the disabled student liked the fact that I didn't notice his disability and was just as callous with him as I am with everyone else) and the class, which is composed almost completely of sweet girls, must think I'm a complete lout, and so, to remedy these faults in my personality: I swear here in this Official Sentence of Dave (TM) to START PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO MY SURROUNDINGS AND TO THINK MORE CAREFULLY BEFORE I SPEAK.

Save $$$$ with Statistics

Diligent readers may remember the risk assessment I did about the tree limb hanging precipitously over my back yard . . . when I first saw the limb, I thought: I'd better call a tree guy, because that thing is going to kill someone when it comes down . . . but then I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation and realized that I should have thought: I don't need to call a tree guy because it's highly unlikely that that thing will kill someone when it comes down and it turns out that in this instance, the math was right . . . the limb fell during our vacation and killed nothing, it didn't even harm the lawn, so a little bit of logical thinking saved me some cash (though I must admit, that I did try some crazy shit before we left for the beach . . . I attached a rope to an arrow and tried to shoot it over the limb with my son Alex's bow and I punted a variety of balls at the limb, but the arrow couldn't pull the rope all the way up and though I got some punts in the vicinity, the only result was a stuck ball, and then I duct-taped a rope to a rock and started whirling it around but thought better of it, because the branch was very very high up in the tree and I realized all I was going to do was break some windows).

Famous Last Words (Dave Does Risk Assessment)

You're going to want to read the entirety of this rather long-winded sentence, if only because if I die, then you can say "I told you so"; this week in Composition class, we prioritized and classified our worries and anxieties, and then we took a look at the evidence and determined if there was any logic behind our assumptions; this is a good assignment for high school seniors, with graduation and the real world looming in the immediate future-- and how the students order the things they are concerned about makes for entertaining debates (such as the girl who was more worried about shark attacks than the possibility of never finding true love); to get this going, first I review some basic probability, and then we use specious sources from the internet to do back-of-the-envelope calculations, and, finally, we place our topics in one of three categories (Harmless, Don't Panic, and Red Alert); we learned that the chance of being killed by an meteorite is phenomenally low; same with bee stings and lightning; if you apply to more than five colleges, it's fairly certain that you will get into one; and if you're a guy, there's one thing to be concerned about: passing a kidney stone . . . the project also helped me out with one of my anxieties, a thick tree branch has partially cracked off a tree in my yard-- my neighbor had to point it out to me, as the dangling log is very high up (so I can't use my usual method to take it down: tossing a football with a rope duct-taped to it over the limb and then yanking . . . I did get to explain this feat in class and show my students this awesome picture) but after I did the math, I learned to stop worrying and love the log: there are 1440 minutes in a day, and the children and I probably spend three of them (if that) under the exact spot where the log would hit the ground-- my kids play at the park more than in the yard, and if I'm watering the plants in the yard, then I make a point not to stand under the "death spot," so the chance of one of us being hit by the log on any given day is miniscule . . . 2/10ths of a percent-- to put it in perspective, it's less dangerous than something else I worry about: me or one of the kids getting injured while we are skiing/snowboarding-- the chance of that happening is 6.97 injuries per 1000 visits, or 7/10ths of a percent every time you go to the mountain.

Wilmington's Lie: If You're White, Read at Your Own Risk

Holy shit. The culmination of my Black History Month Book Club (with one member) is a wild one. Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy is a great read, but it's brutal. Downright humiliating American history. The worst behavior.

And the book explains a lot about present-day America. The reason progressives just can't fathom why poor white folks would vote for policies that harm them.

David Zucchino tells the story of Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. At the start of the book, the city is a prosperous port. Blacks and whites live in the same neighborhoods. Blacks occupied positions in business, the middle class, and politics. In many regards, black freedmen were just as affluent and successful as whites. It was truly a functioning mixed-race city.

                                                      

Then the Democratic politicians and the white newspapers joined forces to oppress and terrorize blacks, disenfranchise them from voting, and essentially run them out of town. The story takes a violent turn when the paramilitary Redshirts, emboldened by a "white Declaration of Independence" run amok. They are heavily armed-- unlike the black folks in town (because munitions dealers would only sell to whites). They burn down the office of the black newspaper, The Record. They terrorize women and children. They kill at least sixty black men. The government coup is successful, Democrats illegally remove the Republicans and Fusionists. Crazy racist coup. The Wilmington government is now all white.

And then comes the whitewashing.

The first person to take the blame was a black newspaper owner, Alexander L. many. He had the gall to print an editorial debunking a fundamental white myth: the inviolate purity of the white woman. Manly suggested that many of the black men charged with "raping" white women did not do so. Instead, he speculated that they were often consensual lovers. He urged white men to protect their women, and not blame and lynch black men for taking part in willing trysts. Sacrilege! So they burned down his building, threatened him and his family, and sent him into hiding.

White papers and politicians knew how to manipulate this editorial and enrage white folks. It's the same political tactics of race and xenophobia as today, but you've got to replace the Republican party with the Democrats. They were the abominable racists involved with voter suppression and white supremacy in 1898. This is weird at first, but you get used to the flip-flop on racial politics. The Democrats hate the other, the Democrats blame the other, the Democrats gerrymander and suppress the other. It's a tactic, and an effective one. During the Reconstruction, the Republicans used the black vote, the Democrats destroyed it. The opposite of today's politics.

After the violence, Coup leader Col Alfred Waddell proclaimed a “White Declaration of Independence” and installed himself as mayor. He proudly instituted law and order and called the massacre a "race riot" started by blacks. Meanwhile, black families were mourning the dead, hiding out in swamps, taking trains North, and still being terrorized by white supremacists. They could not walk through the city without being stopped at Redshirt checkpoints, where they were searched, harassed, and often killed.

In the 1940s, Southern textbooks still portrayed the local (white) version of events. The Carpetbaggers and Scalawags were at fault for the violence, for inciting racial tension. The city was saved from chaos and disorder by a "sort of club which they named the Ku Klux Klan." The KKK performed the charitable task of "scaring lawless men into acting decently." They dressed as "ghosts" and "frightened Negroes into leading better lives." Yikes. That's what they were teaching the kids.

by the 1950s, the truth about the event was slowly uncovered. It still causes unrest and ill-will today. 2100 blacks fled the city, and many blacks and whites were banished for political reasons. It's the stuff of banana republics. The "success" in Wilmington emboldened white supremacists throughout the South to enact Jim Crow Laws and various means of black voter suppression.

The white supremacist newspaper editor, Josephus Daniels, moved on to Louisiana and campaigned for white supremacy there. He created a voter-suppression law that, in New Orleans, “helped reduce the number of black voters from 14,117 to 1,493.” Attempts to undo these wrongs were met by indifference by Republican President William McKinley (who was involved with other ordeals, including the Spanish-American War).

This book details a downright embarrassing period of American History. It's an important reminder that the end of the Civil War did not in any way mean civil rights for freedmen. The Reconstruction was a war unto itself; the history of the Reconstruction is historiography worth investigating-- though if you're a white dude (like me) you might find yourself reflecting on just how many obstacles were thrown in the way of blacks in America and wonder about the consequences. How long will they last? Will race be an issue in America for the rest of our days as a nation?

Dave's Economic Knowledge Goes Out the Window . . .

I had to read every paragraph twice, but I finished David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden dangers to the Global Economy (The Mortgage Crisis was Only the Beginning) and for two hours after I completed the book, I understood securitized mortgage assets and the value of hedge funds and the trillion American dollars China has hoarded and the importance of transparency and an investment system that encourages entrepreneurial risk and a whole lot of other economic information, but no one had the common sense or curiosity to ask me about it during my "window" of knowledge, and I wasn't able to bring it up in conversation-- my wife doesn't fall for that ploy (hey honey, while I was taking out the trash I started thinking about what would happen if Japanese housewives tied up their savings in illiquid investments . . . did you ever wonder how that would affect the global economy?) so now the knowledge is gone, it has floated into the ether, along with other useless things I have read like the history of the Vikings and the mathematics of island geography.

If You Are Invested in the Stock Market, Do Not Read This Sentence

Yikes . . . Justin Fox's book The Myth of the Rational Market, which bills itself as a "history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street" is enlightening, but not fun to read -- it has plenty of history . . . chronicling a century's worth of market economic theories, and a huge cast of characters (from Roger Babson to Milton Friedman to Daniel Kahneman to Benoit Mandelbrot) and plenty of delusion . . . with market theories that attributed to swings in value to "spots on the sun" or "animal spirits" or "irrational exuberance" or -- the most popular -- an omniscient and very efficient market . . . but in the end, though the theories of dead economists resurface, and one school of thought quickly succumbs to the next (very much like the field of education) there is still no way to tell the difference between "speculative excess" and an "entirely sustainable boom" . . . in other words, no one knows how to value a stock accurately . . . but though you may lose your shirt in the market, there's still a positive moral in the last paragraph of the book: "the countries that have better-developed financial markets really do better."