Microlending Abuse

Microfinance has apparently been good for many people, but for others it has been a disaster.

More than 70 people committed suicide in the state from March 1 to Nov. 19 to escape payments or end the agonies their debt had triggered, according to the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, a government agency that compiled the data on the microfinance-related deaths from police and press reports.

This quote was a bit of a jaw-dropper.

“If you can’t profit off the poor, it means that no companies will service the poor -- and then they will be worse off than earlier.”

I get the sentiment, but it's still seems a cruel thing.

Here is a recent paper arguing that the best way to help many poor people is international migration.

In addition to estimating per-capita income gains of 30-40%, we find that participating in [New Zealand's seasonal migration program] leads to greater subjective well-being, more durable asset purchases, housing improvements, and in Tonga, a large increase in secondary schooling. Moreover, as a recent evaluation by New Zealand’s labor department found, these gains came with minimal displacement of native workers, and overstay rates of less than 1%.

This is very interesting and I hope more groups exploring the poverty problem take a look at it.

The Problem With Talking Heads

Not the band, the sort you find on your TV. Ta-Nahesi Coates hits the nail on the head.

So for instance, making this specific to me, let's say I go on television and say "We can salute the bravery of the Confederate Army, while deploring their aims." This is a fairly conventional point which relies on relatively established mores. They are, in this case, 1.) Slavery was bad 2.) The men who died at Gettysburg, Antietam, and Vicksburg on both sides, were brave. Or some such. Moreover it makes me sound fair-minded in my willingness to allow for a kind of moral out for all sides, regardless of their sympathies.

But let's say I go on television and say, "Confederate bravery is neither unique, nor in and of itself, praise-worthy. Mohammad Atta was brave. The kamikazes were brave. But bravery in service of evil should never be commemorated." This is a problem. Even in writing it, I've had to take up more space then the previous assertion. Likely, I could edit it down to a sentence or two. But I leave it this way to show how much space and time it takes me to make the more contentious point, one that challenges our accepted thinking, (the 9/11 bombers were brave) and leaves no room for an honorable retreat. Pushing the point further, I could, as was done the other night, simply call the firing on Fort Sumter a terrorist attack. This is almost certainly untrue, but it incites our visceral disgust for terrorism and thus leaves the point of commemorating implicit.

He's not the first to make this point and for all the complaining about the problem, I'm almost (but not quite) surprised that the format has lasted this long. I can't stand 99% of the programs that have a couple of heads shouting banal talking points back and forth. It educates no one and only worsens our discourse. Unfortunately, most people are looking for reinforcement of already formed opinion and not honest, challenging debate.

One thing I've tried to instill in my daughters is a willingness to question one's own beliefs, to always be accepting of new ideas, to test them, to mull them over. If some new fact or circumstance causes a person to rethink some notion they have held and to change their mind, that should be respected and not ridiculed. This can be disconcerting at times, but in my mind the rewards outweigh the drawbacks.

Catcalling Isn't Cool. Really.

A woman goes off on men who catcall.

Am I saying men should never talk to women in public? No, not at all.

There’s a huge difference between harassing a woman and trying to start a conversation. Here are some tips: talk to her, not at her. Treat her with respect: be aware of her personal space, ask her how she’s doing or what she’s reading instead of commenting on her body parts, look at her face instead of her chest. If she ignores you, drops eye contact, or walks away, back off. It wasn’t rude of you to approach her, but she’s not being rude if she doesn’t want to keep talking to you, especially if you initiated conversation while she was running an errand, waiting for the bus, or on her computer at a coffee shop.

Let’s say you’re not interested in having an actual conversation, but just want to let a woman know she’s beautiful. Go ahead, it’s a free country; just do it respectfully. Don’t be threatening, don’t make animal sounds, don’t follow her. Most women I know wouldn’t be offended if someone told her she was looking great or had gorgeous hair or a beautiful smile. But don’t expect the woman in question to feel the same way, and don’t act aggressive if she rejects your advances.

It seems somewhat amazing to me that men would still do stuff like this, but clearly it happens. The author talks about a lack of respect for women and that is clearly a big part of it, but I wonder how much of it is motivated by fear, as well. Men are intimidated by beautiful women. Whistling at a women walking by or making lewd comments is easier than approaching her and talking to her which could lead to rejection. No man likes that. By keeping the woman at a distance the man allows himself to fantasize that she finds him just as attractive and that he has a chance if he "really wanted to talk to her."

Not that this makes this kind of activity okay. I don't have any sons to teach to respect women, but I do have two daughters which means I need to teach them how to handle this sort of crap because unfortunately it seems inevitable that they will have to deal with it.

Elie Wiesel is a "Holocaust Winner"

According to Fox News if you can believe it.



Stuff like this is typically seen by a few people beforehand. How is it that this could get by all of them?

Memoirs of a Geisha

I finally got around to watching Memoirs of a Geisha tonight. It wasn't a bad film, but it left me with an odd feeling by the end. Am I the only one that found it strange that this movie 1) mostly romanticized this act of making women second class citizens and 2) mostly made women the bad guys when it was the patriarchal society that created geisha?

On the plus side, the cinematography was incredible and the score was beautiful.

Fantasy Book Covers

This is interesting. Orbit Books analyzed book covers from 2008 to 2009 and produced the chart above breaking them down. It is funny to line up fantasy books (or any genre really) and see how similar they are in many respects.

Physical Books Are Not Going to Be Gone in 5 Years

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop One Child, thinks that hard copy books will be gone in five years.

"[Books] will be [gone] in five years," said Negroponte. "The physical medium cannot be distributed to enough people. When you go to Africa, half a million people want books ... you can't send the physical thing."

Negroponte emphasized the efficiency of being able to put hundreds of books on the laptops his organization sends to villages. "We put 100 books on a laptop, but we also send 100 laptops. That village now has 10,000 books," he said.

Negroponte is right about the ease and importance of e-books in third world countries, but I think it's crazy to think that physical books won't be around in five years. For many people, myself included, the joy of books goes beyond their content. I like to touch them, smell them, see them on my bookshelves. I'm a huge tech geek and I like e-books, but I love my dead-tree versions and don't plan on ever parting with them.

This is not unique to me or to books. People listen to vinyl records still despite the prevalence of mp3 players. People enjoy driving old cars despite new ones that have power steering and anti-lock brakes. E-books may overtake their tangible counterparts in sales and importance, but they will never completely replace them.

Lost Footage From 2001 Discovered

Not the year 2001, the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. As one of the greatest sci-fi flicks ever made, this is very exciting.

Speaking at a presentation of 2001 in Toronto, Trumbull and Larson talked about the footage they’d seen which they said is in “perfectly preserved” condition. And while they didn’t screen it, it’s assumed the footage contains at least some of the 19 minutes Kubrick himself cut for pacing purposes after the premiere...

B-b-but Terrorists!

From the always-worth-reading blog of Glenn Greenwald.

If American citizens don't object to the permanent seizure and copying of their laptops and cellphones without any warrants or judicial oversight, what would they ever object to?

This is the sort of thing irrational fear leads to especially when exploited by the ruling class.

History and How It's Taught

I recently watched Band of Brothers with my daughters and it got me thinking about how we teach history in schools. My youngest daughter is one of the typical kids who says, "I hate history. It's boring." My oldest daughter appreciates it a bit more, but only certain periods. World War II is not one of them. Both of them, however, really enjoyed this series and it's not hard to understand why.

Band of Brothers is about people.

It seems a bit silly to say that, but think of how history is typically taught. Lots of dates. Lots of big picture events. When students learn about people they are larger than life characters that are hard to relate to (think George Washington crossing the Delaware River or Alexander conquering much of the known world. We read about giants of history who seem to have little in the way of human flaws and we don't hear much about what life was like for the average person.

Now, dorks like me are still fascinated by all of this stuff, but the typical person is not. They need it to be more personal, to seem more relevant. And that's okay; we can do that. The problem is that the people teaching history are typically closer to my temperament and can't understand why anyone wouldn't be excited by studying troop movements in World War I. If students got to read more about "real" people, the people taking part in these events and learning about ways their lives may have been similar to their own and how they are different, I guarantee many more of them would be engaged. We also need to make the towering figures of the past more real. Instead of pretending the Founding Fathers were pinnacles of humankind, point out things like Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, George Washington grew marijuana, John Adams wouldn't wear dentures and spoke with a lisp.

Granted, the big picture stuff is important, but most kids aren't going to care about it if teachers can't make it real, can't connect the kids with it on a more personal level. It doesn't take a movie to do this, but it does take better textbooks than we typically have and teachers willing to understand that history needs to come down to a smaller level to get kids interested.

Questions for Opponents of DADT Repeal

1. Before President Truman issued his order to integrate black people into our military, 63% of the troops opposed it. Should Truman still have gone ahead and issued this order?

2. Do you believe civilians should have control over the military? Or should it be the reverse?

Quote of the Day

From a story about teen prostitution.

"It's not the best deal to have sex with 15 different guys in one day and only get a cheeseburger at the end of it," says Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Sharmin Bock.

Now, if they were given fries and a shake, too, it would have been so worth it.

"Technology trumps religion."

I find the sci-fi author always interesting.

I’ve taken to Twitter like a duck to water. Its simplicity allows the user to customize the experience with relatively little input from the Twitter entity itself. I hope they keep it simple. It works because it’s simple. I was never interested in Facebook or MySpace because the environment seemed too top-down mediated. They feel like malls to me. But Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anybody on Twitter.

What Attracted Me to My Ex-Wife

Insecurity is a bad ingredient for a relationship.

A friend recently mentioned on Facebook that she wondered what attracted me to my ex-wife. I replied that I often asked myself the same question. Which is true. I have a habit of ruthlessly thinking about and examining my life and the choices I've made. If you're honest with yourself which I have worked hard to be, it can be very liberating; however, it can also be somewhat depressing. Coming face-to-face with one's flaws is not the most comfortable thing in the world. Be that as it may, hopefully I can stop myself from making the same mistakes again or offer frank advice to someone who needs it.

So, on to the topic at hand - my ex-wife and what the hell was the attraction there. It's simple, really.

She was attracted to me.

I met her when I was 16 and I was certainly not at my best then. Not that anyone really is at that age, but I was definitely at a low point. I harbored a lot of anger and that drove many of my poor decisions. One of the biggest drivers of my anger was my insecurity. It's hard to underestimate how poisonous this can be to a person.

My insecurity stemmed from a number of things. I had few friends. I was picked on a lot. I was pushed around. I never felt I fit in anywhere. I certainly didn't have enough confidence to really talk to girls and I didn't expect any of them to actually be interested in me, anyway. My relationship with my mother was quite strained at this time and my relationship with my father was virtually non-existent. I had no adult figure in my life to mentor me or help me navigate this tricky time for any kid growing up.

So, when a young woman I worked with showed an interest in me, how could I help but "fall in love"? She was the first girl I dated, the first girl I kissed, the first girl I had sex with, and ultimately we got married. Her declaration of love for me shored up my deep insecurity and allowed me to feel better about myself, no matter how hollow this ultimately was.

Looking back now, of course, I cringe at what I did, what I thought. The warning signs that this was not a good relationship were all over the place, but they were willfully ignored. No one I knew, friends or family, thought she was right for me, but I was too stubborn to listen even if I had my own doubts (which I made sure to bury very deep). How could I walk away from someone who seemed to love me in a way in which no one else did, especially when I was sure no one else would?

Of course this set my life on a bad path that I am still trying to recover from. She got pregnant a few months after we started dating and my first daughter, Erica, was born just six months after I graduated from high school. Instead of going off to college I was working full time to support my new family which grew by another daughter the following year. The marriage dissolved a few years later when I finally woke up and realized how wrong she was for me, how unhappy I was. She got custody of our daughters then because she had a lawyer her grandparents paid for and frankly I wasn't ready to be the dad I needed to be then whether or not I had money for a custody battle.

Back in 2008 I realized the time had come for me to fully assume my parental responsibilities and get full custody of my daughters. Their mother did not provide a safe, secure environment for them and there was no convincing her to change what she was doing. It took over two years, but it was finalized earlier this year and now I have full custody of my lovely daughters.

This is wandering away from the core of this post, though. Insecurity is what led me to my now ex-wife. It took me a long time to get over that and I'm not sure that even now some of it doesn't linger on, rearing its head in my subconscious from time to time. It's a poisonous thing, insecurity. I wish there was a magic bullet cure for it especially now as I see it in my youngest daughter and I feel near helpless trying to combat it. My own experiences with it give me a tiny bit of insight into what she is feeling, but the sheer power of it is overwhelming. I feel like Frodo walking into Mordor.

But I'm not going to give up. I owe her that.


Pictured above is me (looking like I'm fresh out of junior high and demonstrating why I need some facial hair even now otherwise I don't look much older than that) with my then girlfriend (we weren't married, yet) and our oldest daughter on Christmas Day 1996, about six weeks after Erica was born.

Galileo Was So Wrong!

The great thing about teh GoogleTubes is that it allows crazies to easily find each other.

Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right is one of the most unique and penetrating books you will ever read. Now complete in Volumes I and II, authors Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett take you on a tour of science and history the likes of which you would have never believed possible unless it were told to you in detailed and graphic form. Has modern science led us down the primrose path and convinced us of something that they cannot prove and that is in actuality false? Were the Fathers, the Medievals, our popes and cardinals of the 17th century correct in believing that the Earth, based on a face value reading of Scripture, was standing still in the center of the universe? Come with an open mind and allow these two authors to show you facts and figures that have been hidden from the public for a very long time. This is a page turner that you will find hard to put down, once you get riveted by the astounding material these authors have assembled for you. Prepare yourself, however. Your world will be rocked, literally and figuratively. Not only will you see from Volume I how modern science has documented for us in bold fashion that the Earth is motionless in space and occupies the center of the universe (yet have done an equally remarkable job in keeping these important facts out of our educational system), you will now see in Volume II how deeply the popes of the 17th century were involved in condemning heliocentrism, guiding the process step-by-step and finally castigating it as "formally heretical." You will also see how effusive is the data in Scripture that teaches a geocentric universe in the most detailed exegesis of Holy Writ ever presented to the public on this topic. Lastly, Volume II offers detailed and comprehensive documentation of the consensus of the Church Fathers and Medieval theologians on geocentrism. It also covers all the statements and teachings of modern popes and councils, such as Gregory XVI, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XIII, Benedict XV, The Council of Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II, and a special section on John Paul II in his re-examination of the Galileo case. These are facts and analyses that every Catholic should avail himself. The most important thing you will receive from this astounding study is a very close relationship with God. For once you see that God, his Church, and Holy Scripture have given us the unadulterated truth, proven by modern science itself, you will have no choice but to put yourself completely in His trust and care for everything else in your life.

And here I thought I was the center of the universe. Maybe I need to write a book to prove it.

Prostitution

The Post has an interesting article up on "Five myths about prostitution."

2. Men visit sex workers for sex.

Often, they pay them to talk. I've been studying high-end sex workers (by which I mean those who earn more than $250 per "session") in New York, Chicago and Paris for more than a decade, and one of my most startling findings is that many men pay women to not have sex. Well, they pay for sex, but end up chatting or having dinner and never get around to physical contact. Approximately 40 percent of high-end sex worker transactions end up being sex-free. Even at the lower end of the market, about 20 percent of transactions don't ultimately involve sex.

Figuring out why men pay for sex they don't have could sustain New York's therapists for a long time. But the observations of one Big Apple-based sex worker are typical: "Men like it when you listen. . . . I learned this a long time ago. They pay you to listen -- and to tell them how great they are." Indeed, the high-end sex workers I have studied routinely see themselves as acting the part of a counselor or a marriage therapist. They say their job is to feed a man's need for judgment-free friendship and, at times, to help him repair his broken partnership. Little wonder, then, that so many describe themselves to me as members of the "wellness" industry.

I think the assault on Craigslist is misguided. Prostitution is not going to go away. We would be far better off legalizing it and regulating it (and, yes, taxing it). This would allow us to more easily keep women from being abused by pimps and such. I don't think this is the same as condoning the practice. It's recognizing that prostitution is not going away no matter what we do and we're better off conducting it within safe boundaries rather than in the dark.

How Language Shapes How We Think

Interesting, especially the stuff about geographic languages (all directions are given in terms of north/south/east/west, never left/right, for example).

Roald Dahl Was Cursed

Read this fascinating piece on Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach amongst many others. I had no clue how rough his life had been.

Dahl had an idyllic childhood until the age of 3, when his older sister suddenly died and was followed, weeks later, by her heartbroken father. This was the beginning of a toxic tsunami of bad luck that would toss Dahl around for the rest of his life. When he was a boy, his nose was cut off in a car accident. (A doctor sewed it back on.) Then he was shipped off to boarding school in England, where he suffered all the traditional miseries. In World War II, he became one of the RAF’s most promising pilots—only to crash his plane, on his first official day of flying, in the Libyan Desert. As he lay there fighting for consciousness—his skull fractured, his spine wrenched out of place, his eyes swollen shut by burns, his poor reattached nose driven back into his face—his airplane’s machine guns, stoked by the heat, started shooting at him. (Dahl later mythologized this, telling people he’d been shot down.)

And there's more. No wonder his stories weren't idyllic.

Weekly Secret

PostSecret

How sad. And how many other gay people feel the same way? I would tell this person that they should come out. First, they don't know how it will affect their family. It might not be that bad. Second, if they do not take it well, it is their problem. No one should have to pretend to be something they are not to spare the feelings of someone else.

Growing Inequality

Today, the wealthiest 1% of Americans account for 24% of the nation's income, up from approximately 18% toward the beginning of the 20th-century. Slate's Timothy Noah is writing a series of articles exploring this growing inequality that is worth a read.