7:38 a.m. on a Sunday

It was drizzling when I woke. I slept with the window open, seeking reprieve from the heat. It worked. I stay beneath the covers for a while, soaking in the coolness. I love waking up early on a Sunday. In the afternoon, I breathe in the day. There’s much to do: unfolded laundry on the bed, a friend’s essay to proofread, a book to review (for the blog, of course, where else?). It’ll get done. I’m not worried. I’m not dead yet – or dying – so there’s time for fiction. Contrast: SENSE OF URGENCY! NEED CAREER NOW! Revert: I crack open Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam and lean back, a conscious attempt to be taken by it all. Sometimes it works. The covered porch shields me from the drizzle and yet preserves the breeze. But ya know, I want to get wet. I leave this porch - my perch - and stretch out on the lawn that my housemate graciously mowed last week.

Up above is Syracuse’s characteristically grey canopy. I am fond of it.

I thought it was time for an update. Snippets:

I played an incredible game of ultimate frisbee last week. Maybe it’s the nature of the game or maybe just the people I play with, but we never succeeded in keeping score, even when we tried.

I spent a weekend with my grandparents in Pittsburgh last month. They talk about the future, the future without them, but both are doing wonderfully. Grandpa’s still kicking even with two fake hips. At 84, he says: “I don’t care what the doctors call it. I’m gonna die of old age, damnit.”

On the way home, I arrived at the airport to find that my 6:30 AM flight to Syracuse via NYC was delayed “at least an hour.” So much for getting home by 11 AM. But all was not lost. I was re-routed through Cincinnati and arrived back in Syracuse at 10:30 AM, half-an-hour earlier than I would have on the original flight. Only with the airline industry can you be early when your plane is late.

At the Syracuse airport, it took half-an-hour of shamelessly making announcements before I found someone willing to split a cab. With Syracuse’s public transportation system, I had little choice but to take a cab. The driver, a scruffy-looking guy in his thirties, of course had a story. For seven years now, he’s worked the 3 AM-to-noon shift for a total of fifty hours a week – on minimum wage. No benefits – no paid vacation, no health insurance. He says he’s looked into private plans but can’t afford them. I ask why he keeps this job. Answer: Flexible vacations. Well, I assure him, we’ll have figured out universal health care by the time you really need it. I sure hope so.

What else? I tutor a 39-year-old recovering alcoholic who is learning to read. We usually meet on Saturdays at the public library, but it was closed last week for the Labor Day weekend (nevermind that Labor Day is Monday! lame!). We met at the front door and meandered over to a park bench before deciding to walk around downtown to find signs and posters to read.

On the walk, we discuss why cigarette smoking remains legal despite its proven dangers. I blabber about the influence of industry lobbyists. Plus, I add, “we didn’t know how terrible cigarettes were for ya back then – so to some extent, we have inertia to thank for our lax tobacco laws.”

“Inertia,” he says excitedly, “I hearda that, in a movie once, I think. Whatzit mean? Oh right. When you’re in a relationship and you get bored but you can’t get the freak out.”

He says “freak” because he’s gentle like that.

Back at home, I indulgently smother an apple in peanut butter and devour it standing up.

It’s a good life.

New Orleans two years later

I'm a bit late on this, but what the heck. On August 29, to mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush visited the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in New Orleans. He spoke of working toward “a more blessed day” and added: “And there’s no better place to do so than in a place of hope, and that’s a school."

My brother Hannan, who's traveled to the Gulf several times to aid in relief, wrote me [posted with permission]:

Today Bush spoke in the lower 9th ward, promising to rebuild and all that jazz. The speech was held at the MLK school in the lower 9th. On my first visit to NOLA, we illegally gutted that school to protest the city's intentional negligence of the area (the city officials were still unsure whether it was worth rebuilding, or whether plans for a casino should be made). it was illegal because we were trespassing, since the land technically became 'govt owned' after the storm; volunteers were kicked out by police on the second day of gutting. it just seems too ironic.

Excerpted from a dream

The festival turns out to be a religious ceremony. Stepping lightly, I try to inconspicuously distance myself, but inadvertently draw attention when I get tangled in the cords. On the ground near my feet, beside an ultra-Orthodox man in traditional attire, lies a watch. He picks it up, holds it above his head, and begins to navigate the scene, bellowing, “Anyone lose a watch?”

I interrupt him: “You know exactly to whom that watch belongs.”

It’s enough to turn him around. I know. He knows I know.

“But you see,” he replies, “there are light years between us.” And he continues his work.

Pious enough to return lost property. Pious enough to make a show of it first.

Tax-exempting the rich

Lots of organizations present their tax-exempt status as if that were proof of a good cause. But what does it really mean? It means donors get a tax break. When I give money to charity and report doing so to the IRS, I thereby don't give my money to the government. Sometimes this rule makes sense, such as when I want to give money to an organization that doesn't receive government funding. But most of the time it doesn't make sense. My alma mater, for example constantly solicits for donations. But in taking a tax-exemption on gifts to Brown, donors are in effect taking money that would have gone to the government. And the government needs the money far more than Brown does, especially because social programs are the first to get cut in a crunch. Let me say it outright: Donations to universities, cultural institutions for the rich (say, Carnegie Hall), and religious institutions (say, the Catholic Church) should not be tax-exempt.

How much money does the government lose? I don't have those numbers right now. The NYT (which doesn't cite the numbers either, though it should) presents data from the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University: "For every three dollars they [rich philanthropists] give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes." So we're talking billions of dollars.

First caveat: Some people worry that the government would squander the money (Iraq War, cough cough) instead of say, using it to expand health insurance coverage (which is what John Edwards would do with heavier taxes on the rich). So in that case, it may be better to let rich people themselves decide where to direct their money. But we have to question whether the decisions of the rich are any better than the government's. Rich people tend to give their money to art museums and concert halls, not to the local soup kitchen. NYT: "[L]ess than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick." Not only that, but the "wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else."

Second caveat: Is citizen action as good as I make it sound? Take the example of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Last year, its philanthropic donations were directed primarily to public health projects in developing countries. "Valuable as that may be," opined the NYT reporter, "it also meant that the American public effectively underwrote several billion dollars worth of foreign aid by private individuals, even though poll after poll shows Americans are at best ambivalent about using tax dollars in such assistance." Yikes! Better leave the money in Bill Gates' hands!

Or at least that was my first reaction. Then I realized that it's just a reporter's (shameful) attempt to stir controversy. "Valuable as that may be," she writes. How cynical! "Poll after poll," she continues. I doubt that, and she doesn't back it up. Americans give just .16% of our GDP to international aid, and as far as I've seen, most people think that's too little. (Norway gives .87%.) And since when are the government's spending priorities decided by opinion polls? But let's suppose that they are. Pretend that the majority of Americans really don't want that money going to global health causes or to places where the life expectancy is less than 35 years old. Where would they send that money instead? If recent polls are correct, then at least 64% of Americans would use it to insure the 47 million uninsured people in this country (2.2 million more than there were in 2005). Covering America's uninsured is still better than covering the university's golf team.

In short, tax exemptions come at a cost. And the poor are paying it.

Coetzee's grace

I couldn’t figure out what to title this entry. It’s a review of J.M. Coetzee’s book, Disgrace. The book itself won the Booker Prize in 1999 and the author won the Nobel Prize in 2003. It’s also a commentary on animal welfare, sex, and race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa. I'd give it 5 stars (out of 5).

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Middle-aged David Lurie is a professor of romantic languages at the University of Cape Town until his university cancels his department. Though he stays on as an adjunct professor of communications, he never regains his stature. Then, the middle-age professor feels himself seduced by a student named Melanie Isaacs, who reluctantly accepts his advances. But Melanie’s unhappy boyfriend alerts the press, and Lurie, though unrepentant, is forced to resign. Disgraced, he goes to live with his daughter Lucy in the rural Eastern Cape.

As one might expect, a professor of English poetry doesn’t take well to farm work, but he volunteers anyhow to help Lucy’s friend Bev at an understaffed animal clinic. Bev’s chief duty is to kill unwanted dogs. David Lurie has no great aversion to animals, but no fondness for them either. Still, he can sense their suffering, though not at first. He tells Lucy at one point: “It’s admirable, what you do, what she [Bev] does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat” (73). Later, though, David Lurie himself gently places the dogs’ corpses into the incinerator because he can’t bear the thought that the workmen would beat the hardened bodies with the back of shovels to make them more pliable (146).

The story unfolds in post-apartheid South Africa, where a white man like David Lurie has not only fallen from grace but also from power. He is powerless to stop an attack on his daughter’s farm by three black men who rape her and light him on fire. This event and its meaning lie at the heart of the novel. Coetzee doesn’t need to embellish the event, as amateur writers often do well beyond necessity. Everything unfolds in simple language. I should add, though, that I was frustrated with how late Coetzee introduces the scene – halfway through the book – seeing how this book-turning “afternoon of violence that shakes all his beliefs” was ominously promised on the book-flap.

I’ve never read a writer quite like Coetzee. His writing is distinctive not only in its style and simplicity, but in the way he manages to include meaningful digresses. After the attack, for example, Bev’s husband Bill Shaw sees David Lurie to the hospital. Lurie thanks him.

“‘Nonsense!’ says Bill Shaw. ‘What else are friends for? You would have done the same.’

Spoken without irony, the words stay with him and will not go away. Bill Shaw believes that if he, Bill Shaw, had been hit over the head and set on fire, then he, David Lurie, would have driven to the hospital and sat waiting, without so much as a newspaper to read, to fetch him home. Bill Shaw believes that, because he and David Lurie once had a cup of tea together, David Lurie is his friend, and the two of them have obligations towards each other. Is Bill Shaw wrong or right? Has Bill Shaw, who was born in Hankey, not two hundred kilometers away, and works in a hardware shop, seen so little of the world that he does not know there are men who do not readily make friends, whose attitude towards friendships between men is corroded with scepticism?” (102).

Coetzee also speaks of the process of healing:

“He has recovered the sight of his eye completely. His scalp is healing over; he needs no longer use the oily dressing. Only the ear still needs daily attention. So time does indeed heal all. Presumably Lucy is healing too, or if not healing then forgetting, growing scar tissue around the memory of that day, sheathing it, sealing it off. So that one day she may be able to say, ‘The day we were robbed,’ and think of it merely as the when they were robbed” (141).

And of course, from the first paragraph of the book to the end, Coetzee speaks of sex, such as when David Lurie meets with his ex-wife Rosalind: “His best memories are still of their first months together: steamy summer nights in Durban, sheets damp with perspiration, Rosalind’s long, pale body thrashing this way and that in the throes of a pleasure that was hard to tell from pain. Two sensualists: that was what held them together, while it lasted” (187).

Sex is ubiquitous in this book, though not in a distasteful way. It is remarkable how Coetzee can write so much on sex, in a way that makes it routine, and yet reserve a special place for rape. Rape is not sex. And though Lucy and her father rarely speak of it, her rape changes everything. To some extent, it is a commentary on David Lurie’s own behavior with his less-than-consenting student. But this rape of a white woman by three black men is also, and more terrifyingly, a commentary on race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa. This exchange floored me:

“‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was … expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’

‘It was history speaking through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down through the ancestors.’

‘That doesn’t make it easier. The shock simply doesn’t go away. The shock of being hated, I mean. In the act’” (156).

And later:

“What if… what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that it how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves” (158).

I offered a similar interpretation in the case of a robber who was placated by a glass of wine. Those who have been historically disempowered feel it is their prerogative to take vengeance, or at least to take what they consider theirs, what ought to belong to them.

Animals' capacity for suffering

My friend Nathan recently wrote about the scientific evidence on animal intelligence. Many animals, he says, “have demonstrated clear, laboratory evidence of representational thinking, computation, visual memory, and rudimentary language. Not to mention, for instance, other formerly solo homo abilities like empathy, ritual, culture, murder, and peacemaking.”

His comments connect well to a debate among animal welfare activists on whether an animal’s moral standing derives from its rational ability – say, to understand itself in the world – or from its capacity to experience suffering. Nathan cleverly operates outside this dichotomy, perhaps scoffing a bit at this largely academic debate, with the sense that good reasons never convinced anybody – or at least not the way that technological progress does. When meat substitutes become tasty and fashionable, he says, “then the ethical explications of our decision will follow.” More so than ethical argument, advances in the mode of production will change the way we eat.

In any case, I’m still thinking about why animals might have moral standing, besides of course, as Nathan says, “the intuitive sense that needless, wasteful mass slaughter is pretty ridiculous.” In the wake of my inconclusive post, “Vegetarianism without animal rights,” I’ve been exploring reasons to go vegetarian that are totally unconnected to animal welfare, such as how animal agriculture drives climate change. So in some way, this debate over rational ability versus capacity for suffering is really a distraction. But I think J.M. Coetzee has a wonderful commentary on the subject in his excellent book Disgrace, where David Lurie, a former English professor, helps Bev Shaw in the sour work of putting down unloved dogs at her animal clinic:

“His whole being is gripped by what happens in the theatre. He is convinced the dogs know their time has come. Despite the silence and the painlessness of the procedure, despite the good thoughts that Bev Shaw thinks and that he tries to think, despite the airtight bags in which they tie the new-made corpses, dogs in the yard smell what is going on inside. They flatten their ears, they droop their tails, as if they too feel the disgrace of dying; locking their legs, they have to be pulled or pushed or carried over the threshold. On the table some snap wildly left and right, some whine plaintively; none will look straight at the needle in Bev's hand, which they somehow know is going to harm them terribly” (143).

Coetzee's point, I think, is that ‘rational capacity’ and ‘suffering capacity’ are needlessly polarized.

Love in the time of cholera

If you’re looking to re-experience the enchantment of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (GGM), then read that book again. You won’t find it in Love in the Time of Cholera, a novel about two lovers in a love triangle in an unnamed Columbian port city. In brief soap opera form, Florentino Ariza falls for Fermina Daza, who marries another man.

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Still, the book has other redeeming qualities, including GGM’s ability to relate wrenching tragedy and cruelty with dispassionate steadiness (79):

“He [Florentino Ariza] had awakened at dawn that morning, as a condemned man awakens at dawn on the day of execution, and that entire day he had done nothing but imagine, minute by minute, each of the events at Fermina Daza’s wedding. Later when he returned home he realized that he had made a mistake in the time and that everything had been different than from what he had imagined, and he even had the good sense to laugh at his fantasy” (146).

Tragedy and cruelty aside, this book is an extended meditation on love. Actually, don’t put tragedy and cruelty aside; in this book they might as well be synonymous with love. The highlights:

1. Can lovers detect fellow lovers? “Her cousin Hildebranda Sanchez, two years older than she and with the same imperial haughtiness, was the only who understood her condition as soon as she saw her, because she, too, was being consumed in the fiery coals of reckless love” (85).

2. GGM writes that Fermina Daza “had not realized that every step she took from her house to school, every spot in the city, every moment of her recent past, did not seem to exist except by the grace of Florentino Ariza” (133). In a way, Florentino Ariza feels it also. Years later, at the sight of Fermina Daza and her husband, he “did not feel either jealousy or rage – only great contempt for himself. He felt poor, ugly, inferior, and unworthy not only of her but of any other women on the face of the planet” (153).

I’ve rarely felt so consumed by love. But lovers do report seeing each other everywhere or evaluating every decision in terms of how the other might feel. Indeed, once when my two roommates started dating, I saw it more up-close than I wanted. But that is not, I imagine (yes, I can only imagine), how many others experience love. I see it expressed in tribulations and heartache. (Also be aware that an all-consuming love can at times make for a boring book.)

3. People change. I know, not so profound, but GGM’s writing can still make me gasp:

“She turned her head and saw, a hand’s breadth from her eyes, those other glacial eyes, that livid face, those lips petrified with fear, just as she had seen them in the crowd at Midnight Mass the first time he was so close to her, but now, instead of the commotion of love, she felt the abyss of disenchantment. In an instant the magnitude of her mistake was revealed to her, and she asked herself, appalled, how she could have nurtured such a chimera in her heart for so long and with so much ferocity. … ‘No please,’ she said to him. ‘Forget it’” (102).

4. Casual sex between passing “lovers” isn’t love, but it’s not insignificant either. In fact, it might be better than love. Florentino Ariza’s many affairs were “always without pretensions of loving or being loved, although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love, but without the problems of love” (151). Best of all, GGM suggests that it's supposed to be fun:

“He persuaded her to let themselves be observed while they made love, to replace the conventional missionary position with the bicycle on the sea, or the chicken on the grill, or the drawn-and-quartered angel, and they almost broke their necks when the cords snapped as they were trying to devise something new in a hammock. … He had taught her that nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love” (151).

5. The pain of being denied. Even the smooth debauchee Florentino Ariza would court women “with caution, for he felt that nothing was more embarrassing or more demeaning than a refusal” (152). Why do I feel similarly? Is it a scar of having been rejected oneself? Is it really an embarrassment to admit liking someone who doesn’t reciprocate? In another episode on a similar theme, Florentino Ariza seems to feel as I do: “Ever since his rejection by Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza had learned always to keep the final decision for himself” (201).

6. I like that GGM speaks not only of love but also of compatibility, especially between Fermina Daza and her husband Dr. Juvenal Urbino: “He was aware that he did not love her. He had married her because he liked her haughtiness, her seriousness, her strength, and also because of some vanity on his part… They did not speak of it that first night, when they spoke of everything until dawn, nor would they ever speak of it. But in the long run, neither of them had made a mistake” (159). Yet Fermina Daza doesn’t forget the “poor man” Florentino she left behind, and so “she was always pleased by the good news she heard about him, because that helped to alleviate her guilt” (223). For the (few) women I have left behind, I feel similarly.

A final comment: Despite these insights, I did not especially enjoy this book. Why? Florentino Ariza waits “fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights” (348) for love. GGM glorifies such struggle, such suffering, as if this masochistic pursuit were a noble enterprise. But I see the suffering of love just for what it is: Miserable. And that’s all I have to say about this book. In fact, if I use the word ‘love’ one more time today, I think I’m going to throw up.

A fine balance, unplugged

I’m 90 pages into Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, a critically acclaimed book that made it to Oprah’s Book Club. But I’m not feelin' it. Have any of you read this book? Should I continue?

The young Dina Dalal, who comes from an affluent background, falls in love with a poor pharmacist named Rustom. They get married, and a few pages later, Mistry kills off Rustom in a bicycle accident that was foreshadowed from the moment the two met. Rustom is not a complete character. In fact, though his presence haunts the novel (or so I suspect), we know nothing about him. I can’t understand what Dina sees in him. Rustom isn’t the only character without a character, so to speak. His aunt and uncle, who care for Rustom after his only parents have passed away, die shortly after Rustom does. At their death, Mistry writes, Dina “felt very alone, as though she had lost a second set of parents” (57). But that’s ridiculous. Dina interacts with the aunt only in learning how to sew. In fact, it seems more appropriately to call their relationship an apprenticeship. It doesn’t help that the uncle and aunt aren’t particularly believable people: They're such good people that it makes me – a student of ethics, no less – nauseous. When it’s raining, Rustom insists that Dina take his rain-coat. When Dina’s brother throws a tantrum, Rustom's aunt and uncle seem to understand. Such perfection leaves these characters vacuous. Perhaps most absurd is that Mistry writes of love. The wiser writers – Richard Russo, J.M. Coetzee – also write about relationships, but they don’t go so far as to call them love. Instead, they talk about compatibility, which at least for me is far more believable.

Also frustrating: the lack of historical context. The inside cover says: “The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed Indian city by the sea. The government has just declared a state of emergency.” My interest in India inspired me to pick up this book. But so far, nothing.

I can do with poor storytelling if the writing itself is elegant. But it’s not. First, his descriptions can be poor at times, as in this sex scene: “‘Mmm,’ she said, enjoying with all her senses, and he was pleased” (60). Mistry actually has several sex scenes – but unlike in Coetzee’s Disgrace – they don’t do much for the plot. In fact, one suspects they’re only there to sell more books.

Second, I find the point-of-view shifts, when the author moves in quick succession from one character’s perspective to another’s, rather disorienting. Most contemporary writers who narrate from the third person allow themselves to access the inner thoughts of just a single character. Of course they include info that their chosen character doesn’t know, but that’s different than narrating the story first from multiple simultaneous perspectives. For example:

“Dina had expected all of this. His words rushed over her and gurgled into oblivion, leaving her untouched. The way the rain had rolled off Rustom’s lovely raincoat, she remembered, on that beautiful night. ... In a few days Nusswan grew calmer. If Dina was getting married and leaving for good, better that it should happen amicably, without too much fuss. Secretly he was also pleased that Rustom Dalal was no great catch” (36).

Or another time:

“Dina worried ... [her two workers might desert her] for better paying jobs. And since she could not afford to let them suspect her fears, she always masked her relief upon their arrival with a show of displeasure.” Then just two inches down the page, Mistry enters the head of one of those workers: “As far as he was concerned, jeopardizing the steady income would be foolish – Omprakash and he were very fortunate to be working for Dina Dalal” (78).

I can’t quite describe what I find disorienting about these quick shifts. Perhaps I find them unrealistic, in the sense that no one knows the unstated thoughts of multiple people. Perhaps I see ways to divulge such information without saying it outright. Rather than saying “jeopardizing the steady income would be foolish,” Mistry could have described the financial situation of these two men in a way that would reveal their predicament without having to uncover their thoughts.

Yes, 90 pages isn’t all that much. I could read more. But in our modern era of remote controls and cable TV, authors should know better than to begin their books with dilly-dally.

The dog in the night-time

You could read about autism on Wikipedia, but for a deeper human understanding, you absolutely must read Mark Haddon's book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Of course, understanding autism is not the only reason to read this book. Haddon's fictional first-person narrative in the voice of 15-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is captivating and quite simply fun.

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Christopher’s eccentricities sometimes drove me nuts, like when he jumps before an oncoming train to catch his pet rat. But he can be endearing as well, such as in his penchant for lists or favorite colors. He prizes routine and feels disoriented even when the furniture’s been moved. Haddon demonstrates this antipathy to change in Christopher’s conversation with the school psychologist, Mr. Jeavons. Christopher writes that Mr. Jeavons "asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying” (25).

Christopher is a complete character. I have a real sense of how he operates in the world:

“It takes me a long time to get used to people I do not know. For example, where there is a new member of staff at school I do not talk to them for weeks and weeks. I just watch them until I know that they are safe. Then I ask them questions about themselves, like whether they have pets or what is their favorite color and what do they know about the Apollo space missions and I get them to draw a plan of their house and I ask them what kind of car they drive, so I get to know them. Then I don’t mind if I am in the same room as them and don’t have to watch them all the time” (35).

When I began this book, I saw it as a rare opening into an autistic mind. But the farther along I read, the more I saw familiar traits. I too ask a lot questions upon meeting people (albeit not the questions Christopher asks). Of course, there are questions I would like to ask but do not ask, seeing how they might produce an awkward reply, like asking someone if s/he is romantically attached. The standard practice is to let them subtly divulge that info themselves. And there are things I would rather not know about, like stomach ailments. And there are things which I would like to know, but at least not yet. I have an anti-abortion friend I met on the ultimate frisbee field. It was much better to have formed a solid foundation through athletic camaraderie before wandering into deeper subjects like whether embryos and zygotes are human beings.

I found it curious that Christopher is more comfortable around animals (e.g., Mrs. Shears’s dog or his pet rat) than around people. For me, it is very much the opposite. Animals are unpredictable and sporadic, people less so. Maybe that’s a feature of autism in general.

The book has some excellent passages. Such as:

“And Occam’s razor is not a razor that men shave with but a Law, and it says
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Which is Latin and it means
No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.
Which means that a murder victim is usually killed by someone known to them and fairies are made out of paper and you can’t talk to someone who is dead” (90).

“And Siobhan says people go on holiday to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new” (178).

One thing that stood out: Christopher is obsessed with his A-level math exam. Everything else is background noise. In his pursuit for self-advancement, he has no grief about breaking up his mother’s relationship or costing her a job (205). He has no appreciation for his father's devoted attention or cooking. You get the sense that the world would be a better place if people with autism didn’t exist – but that can't be correct. The world would be a better place if autism itself didn’t exist. But it’s difficult to make that distinction. That, I think, is the lesson of this book: There is no Christopher without his autism. I can imagine a deaf child hearing or a paraplegic person walking, but I can’t imagine a non-autistic Christopher. It influenced everything he does and who he is.

I am left with questions: Why do autistic people seem to lack the capacity to empathize? How true is it that their interest in the world is entirely self-referential? How do girls experience this predominantly male disorder? And perhaps most disturbingly: If ignoring the plight of others (as Christopher does) is a moral fault, then are autistic people ipso facto morally deficient?

Going veg for the planet

Global warming is one more reason to go vegetarian (among the ones I listed before) in a sea (read: melting ice-caps) of others.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's report, "Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options" (November 2006), found that animal agriculture generates an extraordinary output of greenhouse gas emissions - indeed, more so than all forms of transportation combined. The report addresses livestock's role in climate change, air pollution, and water depletion. I would especially refer you Table 15 in Annex 2, which tracks the CO2 emissions of major meat trade flows. So, for example, the US shipped 2 million tons of poultry meat to China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, and Canada, from 2001-03, generating 137,000 tons of CO2 emissions. And that's just the USA. But the bulk of CO2 emissions comes from the burning of fossil fuels to produce nitrogen fertilizer for feedcrops (Table 3.4). This practice emits 41 million tons of CO2 worldwide, with the USA contributing almost 12 million. A skeptic might say that plant agriculture also generates CO2 emissions. But it is still far more efficient for a person to consume vegetarian products than to cycle food calories through an animal before finally consuming it oneself.

Now comes the scandal, and hence the NYT article, "Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change." The article disgusts me. We don't have to try. The evidence is there, though the NYT mostly ignores it. Instead, the NYT covers the following debate: Some have argued that one can't be an environmentalist without also being a vegetarian. See, for example, "How Environmentalists are Overlooking Vegetarianism as the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes." It suggests that our anti-climate change work should include vegetarian outreach, say in school lunch programs. To that end, animal welfare organizations have been running ads like the one above (by the Humane Society) or the one below (by PETA). Yes, their ads may seem opportunistic since these organizations clearly care more about reducing cruelty to animals than reducing CO2. But so what? Why deride this rather neat alliance?

Design for the other 90%

In NYC last weekend, two friends and I saw Design for the Other 90%, an exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt Museum. The exhibit showcases equipment and machinery specifically developed for the global poor who lack access to electricity, building materials, clean water, etc. It's a small exhibit with roughly 30 items, on display through September 23. Because of the exhibit's size (it took just an hour to walk through), I'd say it's not worth the $12 ($9 for students) ticket price. I'm not even sure any of that money goes toward projects in the developing world. So save your money and read about these incredible items in the International Herald Tribune or the New York Times.

We're beginning to close the "10-90 gap" in medical research, which I've written about before, where 90 percent of funds go toward just 10 percent of the world's burden of disease. In design, the disparity is similar, seeing how 90% of world's population can't use the products sold at IKEA. So, kudos to this exhibit for bringing together the teams that are fighting this imbalance.

Picture-taking was allowed, so here's what we saw:


The LifeStraw (above) was by far my favorite. It's a water purification device used in Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Uganda that removes particles to reduce the risk of infection by waterborne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery and typhoid. So brilliant and yet so simple.

I also really liked the Q-Drum (below), an easily roll-able container that can hold 75 liters of water.


If you're in India, Nepal, Zambia, or Zimbabwe, look out for this drip irrigation system (below). It reduces water use by 30-70 percent while increasing yields by more than 50 percent. It can used for many kinds of products that come out of the earth, including fruits, vegetables, maize, wheat, and cotton. Also in the irrigation category, the exhibit included a "Super MoneyMaker Pump" (catchy name, eh?). Used in dozens of African countries, it can direct water without fuel or electricity and can irrigate a two-acre area in eight hours (which I assume is pretty good).

Zinn on 'inadvertent' killing

This letter to the editor is one of the best I've seen. Howard Zinn tackles what ethicists, following Catholic tradition, have come to call 'the principle of double effect.' The principle states that one may cause (minor) harm in the pursuit of doing (a larger) good, if the harm itself is not intended. In such a case, the harm is considered merely the unfortunate but necessary side effect (or "double effect") of the overall good act. Wikipedia aptly sums up the principle's other caveats. Zinn, responding to an essay by noted genocide scholar Samatha Power, argues that this often-cited idea doesn't excuse the killing of civilians during war simply because their deaths are inadvertent.

To the Editor:

Samantha Power has done extraordinary work in chronicling the genocides of our time, and in exposing how the Western powers were complicit by their inaction.

However, in her review of four books on terrorism, especially Talal Asad’s “On Suicide Bombing” (July 29), she claims a moral distinction between “inadvertent” killing of civilians in bombings and “deliberate” targeting of civilians in suicide attacks. Her position is not only illogical, but (against her intention, I believe) makes it easier to justify such bombings.

She believes that “there is a moral difference between setting out to destroy as many civilians as possible and killing civilians unintentionally and reluctantly in pursuit of a military objective.” Of course, there’s a difference, but is there a “moral” difference? That is, can you say one action is more reprehensible than the other?

In countless news briefings, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, responding to reporters’ questions about civilian deaths in bombing, would say those deaths were “unintentional” or “inadvertent” or “accidental,” as if that disposed of the problem. In the Vietnam War, the massive deaths of civilians by bombing were justified in the same way by Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and various generals.

These words are misleading because they assume an action is either “deliberate” or “unintentional.” There is something in between, for which the word is “inevitable.” If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not “intentional.” Does that difference exonerate you morally?

The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.

Howard Zinn
Auburndale, Mass.

The future with a capital F

I don’t usually post about my feelings, but here’s a go.

I feel exasperated. Socially, I’m steady (though some romance wouldn't hurt). Financially, I’m stable. And I have a wonderful job that provides me with challenging work and close mentorship.

But don’t ask about the big picture. In the last day alone, I’ve read or skimmed articles on HPV vaccination, US incarceration reform, health policy impacts of climate change, WTO agreements on pharmaceutical patents, and the very idea of distributive justice. I’ve been reading about conscientious objection in health care and about PhRMA's absurd influence. It's all worthy of study. So I'm left overwhelmed and bewildered, not knowing what to do with my life. Should I work abroad? How? Should I apply for a MPH? For a PhD? In what? I know that too much emphasis on the future can make for a less happy present, but I can't help but wonder where I'll be in a year.

As an undergrad, I was perhaps too specialized, taking small seminars on obscure topics. I loved them for their long papers, good discussion, and faculty contact. Now I have the opposite problem - I'm not specialized enough. As I peruse websites of various social justice organizations, obsessed by The Future, it seems I'm interested in everything but qualified for nothing. Perhaps I overstate the case – people are more aware of what they lack than what they have, and I guess that includes me. But still, I speak no relevant languages, have no engineering skills, have no clinical skills, etc.

An analogy: In organizing the small seminars, professors faced the age-old question of fair resource distribution. In this case the limited resource was class enrollment. Some professors tried to spook the crowd by requiring long papers; others scheduled the class for undesirable times; some resorted to a lottery; some judged by a writing sample; some asked, simply, “Why should I let you in? State your case.” This last method was my favorite, as I could usually make the cut. And my neat handwriting probably helped. But it did inspire a joke among students, with its kernel of truth: The best way to get into a course is to have taken it already. And so it is with careers.

Mrs. and Mr. Laura Bush

Big news for people who treat politicians like celebrities: Jenna Bush is engaged.

Here's the White House Press Release:

President and Mrs. George W. Bush are happy to announce the engagement of their daughter, Jenna Bush, to Mr. Henry Hager, son of the Honorable and Mrs. John H. Hager of Richmond, Virginia.

Wait a sec... Do the women have names?

From the river to the sea

There's not a lot that the religious Jewish Zionists and I agree on, but there is one thing: We both like imagine a world where there's only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Granted, the religious Zionists want a Jewish theocracy while I dream of a liberal democracy. But in any case, a single state is simply not going to happen. Israelis and Palestinians hate each other with such vehemence that they'll never be compatriots. Proponents of a "one-state solution" are steeped in fantasy, full of folly, and even a bit fanatical. Their ideas are best suited to late-night "what ifs" and not to the realpolitik of public policy.

I gave up on the one-state idea almost as soon as I considered it. But I have not relented on a different point: If Israelis and Palestinians will never be kinsfolk, then they at least ought to promise full rights to the inhabitants of their respective countries. Unfortunately, neither state is willing to do that. Israel deludes itself by claiming to be "Jewish democracy," as if such a thing could exist. It discriminates against non-Jews not only in its controversial Law of Return, but also in its allocation of government funds between Jewish and Arab locales. Palestine, on the other hand, treats its citizens no better. Both Fatah and Hamas jail their political opponents, as if citizenship and party membership were the same thing. I don't want a "Jewish democracy" or an "Arab democracy" - or some other euphemism to mask an ethnically supremacist state.

My view has critics, of course, such as Gadi Taub, a Hebrew U professor, whose essay, "Liberalism, Democracy, and the Jewish State," appeared in last week's Chronicle Review:

Ever since the late 18th century, blindness to their own strong nationalism has led many Americans to believe that imposing the American Way on others is tantamount to liberating them. ... It may be noble of such writers to shoulder what was once called the White Man's Burden, and take it upon themselves to teach the natives the right form of self-determination. But from the point of view of the natives, that does not seem like a way to promote democracy. It seems more like an assault on self-determination with a liberal accent.

Taub espouses some terrible delusions. After the work of Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, I thought no serious Israeli professor of public policy would be so naive as to call Israel a "liberal democracy," but apparently I was wrong. Or perhaps Taub is carrying on the great Zionist tradition of hiding its blunders from the rest of the world simply by ignoring them and hoping everyone does too. But he does manage to offer some criticism of my support for an American-style democracy in the Middle East, where rights are conferred through citizenship and not through culture. His message (and the message of defenders of the status quo) is: You can't impose your democracy on us. Self-determination comes in many forms, damnit, so quit the imperialist edge.

But Taub's argument is a weak one. If the Israelis or Palestinians really believed his argument, then they would stop taking American foreign aid. Okay, money is alluring and it's hard to really fault them for that. But his argument fails for another reason: Taub and his comrades can't seem to attack what we say, just that we say it - the critical thinking skills of an immature brat.

Two kinds of racism

This story is appalling but hardly surprising.

My young daughter needed to go to the toilet during a shopping trip in London during the last school holidays. While I stood next to the hand basins waiting for her, a woman came out of one of the cubicles and as she washed her hands, looked up and admonished me in no uncertain terms for the poor job I had done in keeping the toilets clean. Speechless, I watched her storm out. I am not an indolent cleaner; but I am Black, of African descent, and an Australian national. My daughter, having overheard, asked why I had not explained that I was a professor. But why do I have to? And more importantly, how do I explain to my 11-year-old that being part African, in countries like the UK, she needs to prepare for the fact that as a result of lazy cognitive stereotyping, not only will her colour be the primary “marker” by which she will be identified, but also that with that identity comes a whole range of prejudices about her status and ability? (emphasis added)

So writes Pascale Allotey in discussing the impact of ethnicity on access to medical care (The Lancet. Vol. 370, no. 9586, 11 August 2007). In her piece, Allotey tries to bridge two forms of racism: (1) racial prejudice (what most people take as constituting "racism") and (2) the more subtle, more entrenched, more noxious structural form - a potent mix of poverty, poor health, and lack of political power. Sometimes it's hard to discern a connection between the two kinds. People of any race can harbor prejudice, while "structural racism" tends to afflict only certain groups. I wonder if the connection is overstated, seeing how people emphasize the first kind in order to spice up the second. As a professor, Allotey suffers most directly from the first kind, not from the second. Racial prejudice garners more media attention simply because it's easier to understand. Type #2, by contrast, is a complicated concoction of race and class.

For a statistical account of structural racism, see this widely-cited article that makes John Edwards courageous exposition on "two Americas" seem weak: Murray CJL, et al. (2006) Eight Americas: Investigating Mortality Disparities across Races, Counties, and Race-Counties in the United States. PLoS Med 3(9): e260. The authors "estimated life expectancy, the risk of mortality from specific diseases, health insurance, and health-care utilization for the eight Americas," and found that "[t]he gap between the highest and lowest life expectancies for race-county combinations in the United States is over 35 y." Wow, indeed.

Update: An example of racial prejudice might be: black men are more likely than white men to receive a harsher sentence for the same crime. An example of structural racism might be: black men are more likely than white men to engage in crime in the first place.

Burqa, bikini, and habit

Will the real feminist please stand up?

That was my first thought upon seeing the cover of last week's New Yorker (July 30):


The painting, by Anita Kunz, is called “Girls Will Be Girls.” A discussion at The BAG blog offered a few insights, though just a few. Some thought the woman in the middle was Jewish (though none had the chutzpa to call her a JAP). Others thought the painting had a Harry Potter message (those maniacs will find Harry Potter in anything!). I took the image as a commentary on feminism, with the artist suggesting that none of the women had any more (or any less) of a claim to being a feminist than any other. Sitting side-by-side at exactly the same height, they're equals.

One person had this take, suggesting that none of the women are feminists:

If we assuem the two 'girls' on the flanks are covering up to please 'Men' you can just as safely assume that the one in the middle is revealing her flanks to please 'Men' as well. ... There's no question in my mind that Patriarchal culture has shaped both of these fashion extremes.

Another suggested that the image may not make a feminist point at all:

This cover would also work with men as the subject: One man dressed as a terrorist, on the other side a man dressed in a suit and televangelist hair-do as a fundamentalist christian preacher and a man in the middle in sunglasses, flip flops and swim trunks.

I spent a long time staring at this picture, trying to figure out what bothered me about it. Suddenly it was obvious: the burqa, the bikini, and the habit seem to emphasize that these three New Yorkers are terribly different, but they actually suggest the opposite. All three women are hiding behind something, including the middle one who seems to bare all, yet who sits with crossed legs and crossed arms and big sun-glasses. She hiding, too - a point that's emphasized, I think, by the color of her bikini top. There's both similarity and symmetry in what these women are wearing.

Shortly before I saw the New Yorker, I read about a study “Hidden in Plain Sight: Sexual Harassment and Assault in the New York City Subway System” (25-page PDF), that found that nearly 2/3 of the 1800 respondents reported have been harassed on the Subway. The value of this survey is diminished somewhat because the sampling was not randomized. Instead, the respondents had to elect to take the online survey, which probably explains why 2/3 of them were women. Still, it'd be naive to deny that sexual harassment exists below the streets of New York City. The phenomenon's been reported before. So I saw Kunz's painting through this lens, too: Three women, with their obvious differences, seeking solidarity on a Subway bench.

100th post!

Hurray!

Thanks to all the readers who make my blogging worthwhile. Please feel free to drop a note!

To mark the occasion, I went to Rate My Blog, a service that evaluates websites with a rating in the style of the Motion Picture Association of America. I am pleased to announce that my blog is rated:

That's right. Don't read my blog without being accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

Why? I offend by using the following words: sex (6x), dead (4x), shoot (2x), kill (1x), and quite a few others. It seems silly to rate a blog simply for the presence of "dirty words." Shouldn't it matter how they're used? Then again, Rate My Blog is just a silly website that's best used for giggles - and to mark celebratory occasions. I don't know if blogging in the long-run is a worthwhile endeavor, but for now, I enjoy it. It keeps me curious about the world. Thanks for checking in.

Battle for Bolivia

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is lending a hand (i.e., giving money) to the new Bolivian President Evo Morales. Of course, there's a back story: the money used to come from Washington.

The Washington Post reports:

After two decades of reliance on the economic prescriptions of the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Bolivia has turned left, embracing Venezuelan and Cuban aid, nationalizing industries and championing what its leaders call a pragmatic version of socialism. Bolivia's break from Washington is part of a regional trend underwritten by Chávez, who has lavished aid on allies to roll back the influence of the United States and Washington-based institutions that have long shaped Latin America's development. In the past two years, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Ecuador have used Venezuelan aid to pay off their debts to the IMF or allow credit agreements to lapse.

The article notes that IMF lending to Latin America and the Caribbean has declined from $49 billion in 2003 to $759 million last year. That's an astronomical decrease! In its stead, aid from Chávez has helped Bolivia avoid debt to the IMF - a good thing. Granted much of that debt may simply have been forgiven in a long-run, a seemingly generous act from the powers that be (World Bank, IMF, etc.) which probably recognize that it never would have been repaid anyway.

Though the IMF would deny it, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Nicaragua have done quite poorly (the people are still poor, after all) with U.S.-brand economics. One could argue that these countries weren't doing it right, but maybe it's simply time to try something new. What's interesting to me is how these economic decisions are interpreted as ideological shifts. People who work in Washington are prone to assess any development in Latin America in light of the burgeoning U.S.-Venezuela rivalry. But is that the right framework? Are the war-mongers co-opting the news?

The prison industry goes truckin'

What industry buys and sells the captivity of human beings?

Incarceration, of course.

The NYT reports that many states are looking beyond their borders to relieve their overcrowded prisons. The U.S. prison and jail population reached 2.2 million in July 2006, a 2.8 percent growth in just twelve months. Since states can't build new prisons fast enough (and since they're not creative enough to come up with alternatives to incarceration), some have taken to exporting inmates to private and public prisons in other states. Today, 1,300 Alabamans are serving in Louisiana, 360 Californians are serving in Arizona and Tennessee, and 2,000 Hawaiians, are serving in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Kentucky. See this map from the NYT, at left, for a sense of the zig-zag wanderings

That doesn't make family visits easy. Even states that keep their prisoners within their borders fall short. More than 60 percent of state inmates reside in prisons more than 100 miles from where they last lived. Some men I tutor used to live in New York City. The 10-hour round-trip journey for family members to visit costs $122 on Greyhound and even more on Amtrak. If states want to rehabilitate prisoners, they must do more to ensure that inmates get committed locally. Recidivism studies show that "convicts who keep in touch with family members through visits and phone privileges are less likely to violate their parole or commit new offenses" (NYT).

The relocations are not only far, but frequent. Consider the experience of Eli Coates, a 26-year-old inmate from Arizona, interviewed by the NYT. Coates is serving 10 years for armed robbery, and traveled through six prisons in Arizona and one in Oklahoma before arriving at a prison in Indiana, where he is today. "I was on my way to being able to finish a college program and vocational programs to get a trade," Mr. Coates said. "But they snatched me up from those opportunities, and here I have to start all over again." Besides educational and vocations programs, relocations disrupt health care, drug rehabilitation, and telephone privileges, which can take six months to reclaim. Relocations also spell discontent: A riot at an Indiana prison in Indiana last April was instigated by disgruntled inmates from Arizona. And why shouldn't they be disgruntled?

For other incarceration-related news, see this news round-up.