Month: May 2009

Small Sports and Cities

by Richard Florida

Too many cities have mortgaged their futures on big-time sports, letting their parks and high-school ball-fields go while pouring public dollars into big-league stadiums. But some communities are reaping myriad benefits by focusing on smaller, local sports, according to Next American City (pointer via Planetizen).

Moore Award Dissent

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The examples you cite bear no relationship the issue that John Amato raises. When Joe Biden’s hair plugs are used to dismiss his policies and John Boehner’s orange tan becomes the key talking point in response to his latest political maneuvers, you’ll have equivalency. Amato is noting the very well established tendency to mock some incidental about a powerful woman – her looks, clothing, voice – to cut her down to size. So Barbara Walters’ lisp is endlessly reduced to baba wawa jokes, but even Barney Frank’s haters don’t go there with his. I don’t know that I would call this “misogyny” so much as unreflective sexism, the kind of thing one has to work at catching himself doing.

But he did call it misogyny – the hatred of women. And not just in regards to the disgustingly sexist comment by Limbaugh, but the "corporate elites who run network news" as well. So, in the same way that Amato said pundits were diminishing Pelosi with sexist remarks, Amato was trying to diminish the substantive charges against Pelosi on torture by crying sexism. Pelosi's tough enough not to need that sort of help. She wouldn't be Speaker otherwise.

Amato is noble to highlight individual acts of sexism. But saying they represent the prevailing media culture is counterproductive I think. (Also: check out every SNL sketch ever made on Barney Frank, or David Paterson; petty ridicule comes with the office, male or female.)

Surviving Uncertainty: A Few Tips

By Lane Wallace

In yesterday's NY Times Op Ed section, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert wrote:

 "Our national gloom … isn't a matter of insufficient funds. It's a matter of insufficient certainty … An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait."

If that's true, humans have been walking around gloomy and unhappy since the dawn of time. We forget, sometimes, that problems–often far greater problems–predated whatever crisis we're facing at the moment. "Why is it," a friend asked me once, "that we never recognize the good old days when we're in the middle of them?" Indeed. Today, it's the economy that's gone shaky. But epidemics, war, natural disasters, accidents and the fickle fates have been throwing humans curveballs for  … well, as long as there have been humans. 

And without question, there have been some humans, also undoubtedly since the dawn of time, who've spent their lives worrying about all that uncertainty to the point of great unhappiness. But I wouldn't recommend them as role models. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famous declaration that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself wasn't a blithe dismissal of the monetary, violent, or uncertain challenges in life. It was a caution that it's fear, not concrete challenges, that paralyzes us, and brings out the worst in us, as opposed to, as Lincoln said, "the better angels of our nature."  

I agree with Gilbert that uncertainty is scary. I just disagree with his conclusion that it leaves us with nothing to do but wait. (There's an interesting essay that reinforces this point here — by an entrepreneur named Phil Terry who founded an informal organization called "Fun Not Fear" this spring as a counterpoint to all the worry.) 

But also … there are any number of activities and professions–flying, mountain climbing, exploring, and being an entrepreneur, to name just a few–that are non-stop exercises in uncertainty. There's no clear path to follow; no predictable gauge on how events are going to unfold. All plans are subject to change, at all times, with very little notice. And yet, talk to the people involved in those activities, and most of them are passionately enthusiastic about the life they're leading. 

Why is that? Clearly, some of us have a higher tolerance for uncertainty, and put a higher value on the new discoveries and possibilities a less-proscribed path offers, than others. But it's also because people involved in endeavors fraught with inherent uncertainty have to learn to cope with it if they're going to survive. 

In the course of the past 20 years, I've flown small aircraft on five continents. I've been stranded alone on a glacier in shorts and tennis shoes. I've found myself in the middle of rapidly destabilizing situations in African countries. And I've started two businesses and navigated a career that, more often than not, has lacked a stable paycheck. Do I love all the uncertainty that comes with that? No. But I've learned how to survive it, and even embrace the possibilities it offers. (I've even written a book on the subject.) Not every lesson translates to surviving uncertainty in everyday life, but a surprising number do. A few big ones:

1. Don't panic. Self-explanatory. Panic and fear never helped anyone think their way clearly out of a tight spot. 

But how do you control panic and fear?

2. Focus on the present. Fear is almost always related to something we're afraid will or might happen in the future, not what's actually happening in the present. In the present, we get busy with the business of coping. It's our fears of amorphous monster threats down the road … realistic or not … that tend to paralyze us. Ask yourself, "Am I okay right now?" If the answer is yes, take a deep breath and relax a little bit. You can figure the rest out as you go. 

3. Keep perspective. Ask yourself, "what's the worst thing that happens here? Does anybody die?" Sometimes, in an adventure setting, the answer to that is yes. But that's rarely true in everyday life. And keeping that fact in perspective helps ratchet the fear and worry down a notch or two. As long as you're alive, you can regroup to fight another day. 

4. Separate what you can't control from what you can, and then focus on taking action on those items you can control. In an airplane, I can't control whether the weather is going to deteriorate or something mechanical is going to break. But I can make sure I at least have enough fuel to look for a second airport, a flashlight in the cockpit in case the electrical system goes out, and a plan of what I'm going to do next if Plan A doesn't work out. 

5. Learn to prioritize what's essential, and loadshed everything else. 

6. Stay flexible. Be open to innovative options that pop up unexpectedly, or aren't along the path you initially planned to follow. Sometimes those out-of-the-way places you end up diverting to end up way better than your original destination.  

7. Remember to look at and enjoy the scenery, even when things get challenging. Few experiences are without any moments of beauty or grace. And these days … "good old" or otherwise … will pass all too quickly. You may have more money or safety down the road, but you'll never be this young again. 

Stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait? Only if we choose to be. 

Dissent Of The Day, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Some people should not be allowed to play with numbers. First, driving and flying do not remotely have "about the same death rate per mile" – you're 3.6 times as likely to die in a mile on the road as in a mile in the air or, put differently, you have a 72% lower chance of dying per mile if you fly.  That's a huge difference.  Ask the average person if she'd, say, change toothpaste if she could reduce her chances of getting tooth decay by 72 percent and see what reaction you'd get. Second, the "per trip" measure is useless because it compares apples and oranges.

The average plane flight is somewhere in the 700-800 mile range, that is, 70-80 times the average trip length for auto travel.  Of course you have a lower chance of dying on any individual car trip.  Heck, you have a much smaller chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke during a 10 mile car trip than you do during a 700 mile plane trip, just because the flight is likely to take 6 to 10 times longer than the drive.

If you want a more valid comparison of the risks of driving to the risks of flying using the per trip measure, consider that the average driver probably is on the road for about 10,000 miles a year.  (Statistics on this are hard to come by, but this appears to be in the right range.)   That's about 1,000 trips, but it would be only 12 to 14 trips if you were flying.  So your likelihood of a fatal driving accident would be 0.00009 (0.09/100) and your likelihood of a fatal flying accident would be from 0.000021 (0.18/8,333) to .000025 (0.18/7,142).  Not coincidentally, these numbers look a lot like the per-mile numbers, and flying is considerably safer.

Oh, and 2005 was an above-average year for air fatalities.  The five-year average from 2004 to 2008 was 0.0021 fatalities per million miles and 0.15 fatalities per 100,000 departures, both around 17 percent lower than the 2005 figures.

There are also, of course, far more non-fatal accidents in cars.

Countering Manzi, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Ryan Avent responds to Manzi:

…because of our temperate location, we will be spared many of the most severe consequences of warming to come this century, which will instead be focused overwhelmingly on poor countries. This is illiberal and immoral. We don't have the right to invade whomever we please for the sake of a few percentage points of GDP growth, and we don't have the right to conclude that since this generation needn't worry about warming there's no need to change our behavior.

Another tricky but important consideration is that whatever version of W-M passes is extremely unlikely to be the final word in climate policy. Obviously, there is no responsible way to build the potential for future emendations into a current cost-benefit analysis. Still, this should be taken into consideration. The record of environmental regulation in this country is one of steady revisitation and improvement of rules. It is also inconceivable that Congress would not address any serious and unexpected economic issues that may arise; if low-income households are getting hammered, legislators will face significant pressure to make some changes.

The question that many greens have been grappling with is whether it is better to pass an imperfect bill now under the expectation that it will be improved later, or to continue building the constituency for a better bill, to be passed at some future point. This isn't an easy matter to resolve. But given the history of environmental rules, and the difficulty the Congress has had passing any carbon pricing bill at all, it seems clear to me that we should seize the opportunity to pass what's passable, and clean the bill up over time. Manzi would say that he'd prefer no bill to a perfect one, I think, but as I mentioned above, that's not a very sound approach to the issue.

The Truth Slips Out

by Chris Bodenner

Loyal Bushie Karen Hughes:

She acknowledged the current uproar over interrogation tactics and allegations of prisoner torture during the Bush years. “I was very vocal in the internal debate,” she said. “I worried about how that would make us look in the eyes of the world. But I had left the White House when a lot of that was taking place.”

Then she paused, worried for the first time in 90 minutes that she’d made a gaffe. Whatever Sen. John McCain says about interrogation techniques, she added quickly, she has similar views.

Oops. Did she forget that McCain called waterboarding a "horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot"?

Not Gonna Happen

by Patrick Appel

Reihan Salam, a few days ago, saw method in Cheney's madness:

Could it be that Cheney, who has sound-enough political instincts to realize that the GOP is in dangerously weak shape, is finally gunning for the top job? If not, would he consider "guiding" another young pup from the office of the vice president? Right now this sounds like a surreal nightmare, one that would lead the five boroughs of New York and large swaths of Southern California to saw themselves off from the American mainland and try their luck as minor outlying islands. But stranger things have happened.

Name one.

Tracing Propaganda

by Chris Bodenner

NYT reporter Elizabeth Bumiller is backpedaling on her A1 story yesterday that blared "1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad," which was subsequently changed in the Web version to reflect a vaguer possibility: "Later Terror Link Cited for 1 in 7 Freed Detainees." TPM's Elliott asks:

Did Bumiller and her editors consider the possibility that a six-year stay Gitmo could actually create terrorists? That an innocent Afghan man embittered after being scooped up by the United States and unjustly imprisoned for years might actually become a terrorist?

Ackermann tracked the story yesterday, highlighting a Human Rights Watch report saying at least one of the detainees had been tortured into admitting recividism. CAP's Ken Gude rips into Bumiller's shoddy journalism:

Reaching back into an old bag of tricks, Bush administration holdovers in the Pentagon have used the paper of record to spread false propaganda at a critical juncture in a key national security debate, this time about released Guantanamo detainees supposedly returning to terrorism. This article has just one purpose: to mislead readers about the true nature of the threat posed by released Guantanamo detainees. … What kind of journalism allows a reporter to write a story so clearly slanted in one direction without even a minimal effort to verify the information that forms its basis?

Shayana Kadidal piles on.

The Re-Balancing Wrap

by Chris Bodenner

In case you missed him, Andrew popped on the Dish today and offered his take on Obama’s national security speech – as well as Cheney’s. Also, here’s an Obama reax and here’s a Cheney reax. The WaPo’s Friday editorial, posted early, is well worth reading too, along with Fred Kaplan’s dissection of Cheney’s lies. Finally, a reader conveys something Andrew saw a while back:

Obama’s strongest card is his basic seriousness about what he is trying to do as president.  He is really hard to caricature.  For all the ways in which he is different from what we are accustomed to, perhaps the biggest difference is his absolute refusal to play for the news cycle, to allow ephemeral political gamesmanship to alter his strategic focus.  He will be no one but himself, and the intelligence and thoughtfulness that he brings to the big questions of his time are what really expose his opponents.  I have been reading the Republicans’ highly predictable (and in the past, typically effective) attacks in response to his national security speech.  They just don’t work.  The predictable sound bites about “a 9/11 mentality”, “making the country less safe”, “a flowery campaign speech”…all of these ring hollow when the guy is so obviously more serious, more reflective, more interested in actually solving problems, and profoundly more respectful of both his audience and the country’s institutions than his opponents.

When the books are written about how this 47-year old black man with little Washington experience got elected president to lead this balkanized, still-race-conscious country, much will be said about demography, the litany of Bush failures, his speaking ability, and the skill of his campaign organization.  What I hope will also be included is the raw power of his intellectual heft, and his insistence on avoiding shallowness, on forcing depth and rigor into public debate, and the deeply rooted patriotism and principle with which he brings it.  That is the strength of his character, and it will endure far longer than the dazzling quality of his oratory or his deft political sense.  It’s how he disarms his opponents and pushes us all to rethink our entire approach to politics.  He may not change many minds on policy, but his approach to politics in itself is strengthening America, and it is a great act of leadership for which we should all be grateful.