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."

Sodom and Gomorrah and Explosions

Everyone knows that "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions"-- including my favorite "cool guys," the silent and scary Mexican cartel assassins from Breaking Bad-- but I have a hypothesis as to why this trope is so common: it is actually a subtle Biblical allusion to the the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; Lot and his wife are commanded by the angels NOT to look back at Yahweh's explosive destruction of the depraved cities but Lot's wife disobeys the angel's instructions and looks back and she is turned into a pillar of salt . . . and so not looking back isn't just about being cool, it's also about obeying God's will and showing humility when something is justly and purposefully destroyed-- and I had this epiphany while showing my children the story of Sodom and Gomorrah on a site called The Brick Testament, which is an illustrated Bible depicted with Legos . . . it is comprehensive and incredible; on the other hand, if something is being randomly destroyed in a movie, then people watch it in fascination (such as the colossal train derailment in Super 8).

North Brunswick Alumnus Scores 102 Yard Goal

Tim Howard, Premier League and U.S. National Team goalie, is arguably the most famous North Brunswick High School Alumnus (he's competing with Glen Burtnik of Styx and two comedians: Jim Norton and Aries Spears) and this goal certainly helps his case.

Movie Trivia (Answer in the Comments)

What film contains cameos by Dom Deluise, Charles Durning, James Coburn, Milton Berle, Elliott Gould, Madeline Kahn, Bob Hope, Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Telly Savalas, and Orson Welles?

Basketball vs. Soccer: Microcosmically

In the winter I play pick-up basketball and indoor soccer in the same spot-- an elementary school gym-- which is conveniently located two blocks from my house; there are only two people who play in both games, myself and a guy named Bruce . . . so we'd be in the middle sliver of the Venn diagram, but the rest of the folks don't occupy the same world; here are the differences between the two games  . . . draw what inferences you like:

1) for soccer, you need to bring a white and a dark shirt-- so that you can wear the same color as your team-- but for basketball, you have to memorize who is on your team-- this is fairly typical and I suppose it is because in soccer you are looking down more and have to make longer passes and might not be able to recognize someone's face from that far away, but my eyes aren't great and I wouldn't mind if the basketball game adopted the soccer policy;

2) in the soccer game, if you have to sit out a game because there are too many players, you are guaranteed to play in the next game-- even if someone from the winning team needs to be relieved-- but in the basketball game, if there are more than five players, and you miss your foul shot, you will NOT play in the next game . . . as the winning five always get to stay on;

3) because of this rule, more fouls are called in the basketball game and the score is more important;

4) the soccer crew has an email group but the basketball group does not;

5) if the weather is decent, the soccer group will play outside, while this has never happened with the basketball group . . . even when it was 95 degrees in the gym in the summer;

6) more advice and strategy is dispensed by the experienced basketball players, and it is more often accepted, or at least entertained and discussed . . . while during soccer if anyone mistakenly attempts to give someone else advice, it usually results in a vehement argument (which may happen in a language other than English)

7) sometimes at soccer, while we are warming up, we talk world politics . . . this never happens at basketball;

8) there are a couple of women that occasionally play in the soccer game-- and they can hold their own-- but I have never seen any women at the basketball game;

9) you can bring your kid to the soccer game, and if you get there early then he might get to play some-- my seven-year-old son once played for a while before everyone got there . . . but I've never seen any kids at the basketball game;

10) the soccer game has people with names such as Mario, Gio, Jose, Guillermo, Felipe, Mohammed,  Javier, Yorim, Ahmed, Yusuf, Ari, Josi, Bruce and Mike . . . the basketball game has people with names such as Al, Keith, Ben, Tom, Chris, Anthony, Richard (Cob), Eugene, Bruce, Isaac and-- of course-- Mike.

The Greek Economy is Ik (Michael Lewis Thomas)

One of the economically devastated countries Michael Lewis describes in his new book Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World is Greece, and his tale is a sordid one of corruption, tax evasion, and systematic cheating and abuse that is so endemic to the culture that it is difficult to fully quantify-- he finally concludes that Greece "does not behave like a collective . . . it behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good," and this reminds me of a Lewis Thomas essay about anthropologist Colin Turnbull's infamous portrayal of The Ik, a displaced Ugandan tribe; Turnbull's observations-- in his book The Mountain People-- give a firsthand account of the Ik's selfish and highly individualist practices-- which include defecating on each others doorsteps, leaving the old and sick to fend for themselves, and having no collective spirit whatsoever-- and this makes Turnbull question the goodness of human nature . . . but Lewis Thomas dismisses this pessismism and the Ik behavior-- insisting that The Ik society has essentially gone crazy-- and as a solution to the insanity, each individual Ik has formed a "group, a  one man tribe on its own, a constituency," and Thomas says this is not all that unusual, as it is how nations behave, and "for total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is no match for a nation."

Is Something Wrong With Me? Besides the Obvious . . .

Last weekend I did a lot of walking up and down the sledding hill in my duck boots, and I eventually grew so annoyed that I had to switch to my regular hiking boots because when I wore the duck boots my socks kept getting pulled down . . . somehow the duck boots were literally sucking my socks right off my feet, and I am wondering: is something wrong with my feet? is something wrong with my boots? does this happen to anyone else?

A Fact I Will Never Reveal To My Children

In this months issue of Wired magazine there is a tiny article called "Three Smart Things About Boogers" and one of the smart things is that "boogers are good for you" and apparently mucophagy-- or the act of picking one's nose and eating the results-- has a long and fruitful history and may bolster the immune system . . . but I'm not reporting this to my children, nor am I telling them that my descriptions of the horrible consequences of eating your boogers are completely wrong.

Things Start Making Sense

My work today is over at Gheorghe: The Blog-- and, unfortunately for those of you with limited patience for my rambling, it is more than one sentence long-- as I have written a rather existential essay about how my life is starting to resemble one of my favorite songs: "Once in a Lifetime" by The Talking Heads.

The Tragedy of Dave Learning About The Tragedy of the Commons

Biologist Garrett Hardin famously used the idea of "the tragedy of the commons" as an environmental principle that explained how individuals will inevitably deplete a shared resource-- such as a common pasture-- because no one owns the particular resource, so no one is invested in protecting it; the simple solution is to allow people to own the land, because then they won't let their animals overgraze-- unless they are stupid-- and the tragedy of the commons explains why public bathrooms are filthy and why it's difficult to get kids to clean up their trash in the school cafeteria and why it's impossible to get nations to subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol, and it is also a wonderful rationalization if you feel like littering in your local park or don't feel like scooping up your dog's excrement or if you stain a library book with chocolate fingerprints or if you feel like tossing some trash out your car window . . . if someone looks at you askance, simply shrug your shoulders and say, "tragedy of the commons, what can you do?"

Corrupted Blood Incident: A Good Name For A Screamo Band

Much of the new Neal Stephenson novel REAMDE takes place in a fictional Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) named T'Rain-- which is similar but more developed than the infamous World of Warcraft (and T'Rain has supplanted World of Warcraft as the most popular MMORPG in the world of the novel)-- and the plot of REAMDE revolves around flesh and blood teenage Chinese hackers that have co-opted the gaming platform to disseminate a computer virus that encrypts the victim's real data on his computer, and the hackers are receiving "ransom" payments for a data encryption key from infected users in T'Rain currency inside the world of T'Rain, allowing them to launder the money, remain anonymous, and profoundly intertwine the reality of the game and the reality of reality; much of this MMORPG stuff is new to me, and so Stephenson made curious as to how accurate the T'Rain stuff actually is-- as I have never played World of Warcraft-- and I ended up reading about the "corrupted blood incident" of 2005, an incident which must have had some influence on the novel-- because (and this is a real incident . . . or it really happened in virtual reality) someone wrote a computer virus that spread through World of Warcraft just like a real virus, through proximity and transmission-- it actually spread through the game like a disease-- and made the people in the game behave as if there was a pandemic: people holed up in the country, avoided other people, died en masse in the cities, etc. and the reaction was so accurate that doctors and scientists studied the game-play in order to further our understanding of how people behave during an outbreak (and I wonder if I had a character in World of Warcraft, if I could have him write a one sentence blog inside that virtual world, detailing his life in there . . . Sentence of Thok?)

It's Good To Give Your Children Concrete Goals To Strive For . . .

The other day I promised my son Ian-- the budding artist-- that if he draws something cool enough, I'll get it tattooed on my back.

I'm Going to Read Me Some REAMDE

I am half-way through Neal Stephenson's gigantic new novel REAMDE, and it reads like a 1000 page Wired Magazine article, a Wired article with a thrilling plot and a multitude of well-drawn international characters, but a Wired article nonetheless, and this makes my review pretty simple . . . if you like Wired Magazine, I recommend the novel . . . and if you don't, then I don't; you also might like the novel if you appreciate the word "albedo," which is a fun word to challenge people to define, but also a word I have never seen in a novel, but Stephenson had no problem working it in: "modern paper, with its eye searing 95 percent albedo,  simply ruined the look that was coming together inside the walls."

My Sentiments EXACTLY!

Carrie Brownstein-- of the sketch comedy show Portlandia-- was being interviewed on "Fresh Air" a few weeks ago, and when Terry Gross asked her to describe her tattoos, Brownstein said something that I agree with wholeheartedly . . . as I possess some really stupid tattoos that I do not wish to talk about (why couldn't I have gotten a cool science tattoo, like these people?) and not only do I completely and unequivocally agree with what she said about tattoos, but I also think she used the perfect analogy to develop her opinion . . . she said: "Telling people about your tattoos is worse than telling people about your dreams."

12th Man = Chili

So I have made Giants play-off chili three times in my life, and all three times have resulted in good luck for the Giants-- but Sunday was the first time I actually had good luck making the chili . . . to explain: the first time I made Giants play-off chili was in 1991-- the Giants played the Bears that afternoon in the NFC divisional play-off game, which they won 31-3, and then they eventually went on to beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl-- and I had recently received a crock-pot as a gift from my parents, once they discovered that I went off the William and Mary meal plan and pocketed the money, and so I was cooking for myself (which consisted of eating fast food, catfish we caught in the Chickahominy River and microwave burritos) and I decided to inaugurate the crock-pot by making some chili so I bought some beef and peppers and onions and chili powder and tossed it into the pot and left it to simmer for a few hours, but when I returned there was a slick of viscous golden liquid atop the chili and there was so much of it that I couldn't scoop it off, it had permeated the entire batch and the chili was disgusting and quite inedible and by this time my roommate Jason had returned and he took a look at the concoction and asked, "Did you brown the meat before you put it in?" and I said, "Brown the meat?" and he said, "You didn't brown the meat and drain the fat?" and that's when I learned that you need to brown the meat before you put it in a crock-pot and by this time the game was nearly on, so I put the top on the crock-pot full of fat saturated meat and peppers and unplugged it and . . . I forgot about it, I suppose it got lost among the detritus on the floor of our room and I "discovered" it a few weeks later; the chili was dry, irremovable, and covered with blue, green, and yellow fungus and so I did the only thing we could-- I tossed the crock-pot off the third floor balcony to the bricks below and a cheering crowd watched it explode into shards of pottery, chunks of chili, and clots of fungus; the second time I made Giants play-offs chili was in 2001, we were living in Damascus and the Giants played Minnesota in the NFC Championship game, which they would win 41-0 and then go on to lose to the Ravens in the Super Bowl (which my friend Drew and I watched at the U.S. Marine house in the middle of the night) and while I was cooking this batch of chili-- and I should mention that I browned the meat-- the power went out, which was a common occurrence in Damascus, so I had to cook by candle-light and I thought I might have to carry the chili to Drew's apartment for the game, because his power was still on, but miraculously, my power came back on an hour before game-time; unfortunately, while I was cooking in the dark, I over-salted the chili, and I soon learned that you can't erase the taste of salt with more spices, and so by the time my wife got home, it was nearly game time and I was close to tears and I hysterically beseeched my wife to help me-- I worked so hard! my chili tasted awful! more chili powder didn't work! more cumin didn't work! more cilantro didn't work! help!-- and my wife looked at me in disbelief and said, "Why don't you brown some more meat, and add a couple more cans of tomatoes and beans and dilute the salt?" and I realized: this was why I married her! this was brilliant! utilize ratio and proportion! more chili and the same amount of salt=less overall salt! and so I was able to save this batch of chili, and everyone enjoyed it as well as the resounding Giants victory; and the third time I made Giants play-off chili was, of course, on Sunday, and the Giants throttled the Packers 37-20, and not only that, but I finally got my culinary act together and made an excellent batch of chili (in a crock-pot) and so I think this bodes well for both the Giants and future batches of my play-off chili.

Is This How Lenny Bruce Got Started?

My seven old son Alex invented this riddle last week: "What does a lady cat carry around? A purrrrrrse," and I thought it was quite clever-- though his delivery was atrocious-- but I assumed that although he "invented" it, that someone else had already thought of this previously, but I checked the all-knowing internet and did not discover its existence . . . so when I explain what a pun is to my students, I will use his example, and give him credit (I normally use the classic "what happens when you step on a grape? it lets out a little whine" as my example).

The E-Reader: Pros and Cons

I am certainly what the tech-world calls a "late adopter," for example: I only recently got a cell-phone, and that's because my wife purchased it for me, brought it home, and said: "You have two kids . . you need a phone," and then handed me a slim, white, lime green gadget that my students described as the phone a "12 year old Asian girl would have"-- and so, well behind the rest of the reading world,  I have finally started knocking around the idea of getting an e-reader . . . but, as I am a disciple of Neil Postman, I always think about the pros and cons of any technology before I allow it access to my life . . . and the pros for an e-reader are pretty obvious:

1) I like to read multiple books at the same time and some of them are hefty, so it would save a lot of space and clutter,

2) I hate small font, and so I could adjust this on an e-reader,

3) my book-light would be attached to the e-reader, so I wouldn't always lose it,

4) when we travel, I like to bring a lot of books . . .

but I have decided, for now, that the cons outweigh the pros, and here they are:

1) I like to take books out of the library because (duh) it's free,

2) I like to buy cheap used books off Amazon and Half.com,

3) I don't want to spill coffee or soup onto an e-reader, while I don't care if I spill coffee or soup onto a library book,

4) this one is the most important: if I read on an e-reader, no one can see what I'm reading, and-- if these things become ubiquitous-- I won't be able to see what other people are reading, and maybe I'm obnoxious, but I like it when people see me reading the new translation of War and Peace, and I liked sharing a knowing glance with the dude I saw last week on the exercise bike at the gym reading Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From . . . and if that dude was a cute female, I might have even said a word or two about how much I liked the book . . . so really what it comes down to is that I have enough trouble making conversation, and I don't need the one topic that I am knowledgeable about taken away from me, made obscure by a convenient technology-- I'm still recovering from the switch from boom boxes to personal stereos . . . who knows what the kids are listening to on those head-phones?

Can Someone Explain This?

I'll go to the gym and exercise until I am sweaty, lightheaded, and about to puke . . . but moments before I leave, I can't work up the effort to carry a laundry basket full of folded clothes up the stairs.

Thomas Ripley: Believe It or Not . . .

So this may be the most cliche thing you can say about a classic novel adapted for film, but-- sorry-- it's true; The Talented Mr. Ripley is a decent movie, but the book is better . . . because in an attempt to make Tom Ripley's actions less calculating and his motives for murdering Dickie Greenleaf less premeditated-- in order for the audience to be able to empathize with him a bit more-- he loses his charm . . . in the film he stumbles on his nefarious plan, while in the novel, part of his charm lies in his calculation, like Shakespeare's Richard III, the fun is that he lets us in on his evil but completely understandable machinations . . . so if you've only seen the movie, and sort of liked it, then I highly recommend the book (by Patricia Highsmith) which is different to a degree in plot, character, and tone and for once in my life I agree with Matt Damon, who said, "I'd like to make the whole film all over again with the same cast and same title but make it completely like the book."

I Draw a Line in the Sand . . . and Then Erase It: Arguments Against The Digital First Down Line

You may think that the digital first-down line is an unassailable target-- that your football watching life is much improved by this benevolent technical wonder-- but I have dismantled venerated targets like this before, so head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog to read my logically sound, rhetorically reasonable, and profoundly persuasive argument on why there should be no digital lines intruding upon our football viewing experience . . . I promise your mind will be changed.