What Podcasts Should I Listen To?

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

In a shameless effort to appear a wee bit younger and hipper, I’ve finally started listening to podcasts. Sometimes during the commute, but primarily when I run and cycle with me, myself, and I.

Here are ones I’m enjoying:

Against The Rules by Michael Lewis. About the decline of “referees in American life”. Maybe things really are at least semi-rigged.

The Happiness Lab by Laurie Santos. Yale prof who created a Positive Psychology class that went viral both on campus and later on-line. Since reading this, I’m a positive psychology skeptic, but so far my bullshit alarm has not sounded. Episode 2, “The Unhappy Millionaire” is particularly interesting.

Bundyville by Leah Sottile. Everything you wanted to know about Cliven Bundy and his anti-Government hangers on, but were afraid to ask. Thorough and thought provoking.

The Retirement Answer Man by Roger Whitney. Granted, this one won’t help me appear any younger/hipper, but great case studies of ordinary people trying to save and invest enough to stop working.

Bogleheads on Investing Podcast by Rick Ferri. Interviews with smart financial analysts who adhere to Jack Bogle’s philosophy of investing. Bogle is the recently deceased founder of The Vanguard Group, an investment management group.

Conversation with Tyler by Tyler Cowen. One intellectual talking to others about everything under the sun. Recent guests included Samantha Power and Masha Gessen. Next up, Salmon Rushdie.

The Nation, Start Making Sense. Insightful lefty analysis of current events. My conservative friends will say “insightful lefty” is an oxymoron, but I will not take their bait. :)

What else dear reader should I be listening to on my now pitch black, drizzly morning runs? Think politics, social sciences, personal finance, sports, comedy.

Netflix’s “Unbelievable”

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

Rumors of Netflix’s possible demise are premature. This eight episode mini-series about a serial rapist is truly outstanding. I wasn’t sure I was up for it and almost bailed after the very dark first thirty minutes, but indoor cycling season has started, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Merritt Weaver and Toni Collette are a dynamic duo. Weaver’s steely minded, workaholic detective is especially impressive.

More important than any particular person’s contribution is the powerful illustration of how victims of sexual abuse can easily be traumatized a second time by uncaring, calloused, hyper-skeptical police.

The miniseries excels at what I try to get my first year writers to do, tell a subtle, nuanced, and complex story particularly in how it portrays men. Given the topic, it would’ve been easy to paint the majority of men in the story with a broad, decidedly negative brush.

But to their credit, the writers resisted that impulse. Instead, the rapist’s evil is detailed in the larger context of several caring and likable men including the female detectives’ male partners, along with good guy FBI agents, police, an intern, and others.

Also, the pacing is perfect and the whole tragic story, which sadly is based on a true story, seems imminently believable. Almost like you’re watching a documentary.

Unbelievable is more proof that this is the Golden Age of television. Tonight, the eighth and final episode. Hoping against hope for some semblance of justice for the victims.

National Greatness Reconsidered

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

Team USA is doing poorly in the World Cup of Basketball which is also serving as a 2020 Olympic qualifier. Even though several top NBA players chose not to play on Team USA, many US fans still assumed the team would prevail. Now they are disappointed.

The new international basketball reality, the world has closed the considerable gap the US historically had in basketball dominance, makes me wonder why the men’s US National Soccer Team is still a third or fourth tier program?

Much more importantly, why do we let our country’s athletic performances influence what we think about ourselves? At all.

It’s odd isn’t it, the way we count Olympic medals and feel a little better about ourselves, at least temporarily, when our countrymen/women excel in international competition.

Like most places, in the US we watch our teams closely and cheer them passionately, while we simultaneously incarcerate more people, childhood poverty and homelessness increases, gun violence persists, environmental regulations are undone, and loneliness and mental health challenges mount.

If we have to compete, why don’t we change the parameters? How about a World Cup of Prison Reform. The country that reduces their prison population and recidivism the most wins. The World Cup of Childhood Poverty and Homelessness. The country that moves the largest percentage of children out of poverty and reduces their homelessness population the most wins. The World Cup of Public Safety. The World Cup of Environmental Protection. The World Cup of Social Infrastructure.

Granted, those competitions won’t translate to television and will take a lot longer, but unlike the athletic ones, the outcomes will improve the long-term quality of our lives.

Weekend Assorted Links

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

1. The Quick Therapy That Actually Works. Referred to as “microtherapy”.

“Effective solutions are crucial because Americans—stressed out, lonely, and ghosted by Tinder dates—are in desperate need of someone to talk to. The data suggest that most of the Americans who have a mental illness aren’t receiving treatment. About 30 percent of psychotherapists don’t take insurance. Quick interventions offer ‘something, when the alternative is nothing.'”

Research findings are hopeful, but skepticism is understandable.

“Lynn Bufka, a psychologist with the American Psychological Association, says that these types of brief interventions could be just a first step toward the treatment of various mental-health woes. They might be enough for some people, while others go on to get more intensive therapy. But. . . for more severe issues, such as bipolar disorder and major depression, a quick dose of therapy is unlikely to be enough. ‘These kinds of interventions are probably more likely to be beneficial before full-blown symptoms or disorders have developed.'”

2. An Echo Dot in Every Dorm Room.

“If students can’t or don’t want to spend money on their own smart speaker, Saint Louis University’s Echo Dots offer a way to bring voice assistants into the dorm without any added cost to the student, since the project went through the capital funding process and wasn’t funded by tuition increases.”

I’m calling bullshit on this. There is an opportunity cost. Money that is being directed to Echo Dots is money not being spent on something else like physical plant maintenance and that money for physical plant maintenance will come from students. I’m also very wary of the wholesale adoption of any technology. Maybe my thinking will change, but right now, if I were an SLU student, I would not want an Echo Dot.

3. The worrying future of Greece’s most Instagrammable island.

A Greek-American who has lived in Santorini for 12 years laments:

“‘People treat churches like selfie studios. There’s one in front of my house and people used to ring the bell every three minutes or climb up on the roof for their fake wedding shoots. I’d get woken up at 6am by people traipsing across my terrace.” His frustration at the crowds has led him to start hanging ‘respect’ signs around Oia that state ‘it’s your holiday… but it’s our home’.”

As if that’s not enough.

“The constant building and flood of tourists create tons of rubbish, which is all dumped illegally. Santorini still has no proper waste-management facilities, so all the empty water bottles, coffee cups and restaurant leftovers go into a huge dump which doesn’t meet EUregulations. Leakage is free to infect the surrounding earth, water and air.”

Alexa, find me someplace free of deranged photographers.

4. The Mistrust of Opposite-Sex Friendships.

The headline is misleading since the focus is on opposite-sex best friends.

This makes sense to me:

“Alexandra Solomon, an assistant psychology professor at Northwestern University and the instructor of the university’s Marriage 101 course. . . wonders whether the correlation between negative attitudes toward opposite-sex friendships and negative or violent expressions of jealousy could be due to participants’ personal beliefs about gender roles.

It speaks to a bit of a rigid, dichotomous way of thinking—I suspect there’s a layer in there about how much [the subjects] endorse traditional gender roles. . . . A woman with more traditional ideas about gender might feel threatened by her boyfriend’s female best friend because. . . ‘she may have this idea that I ought to be your one and only, and I ought to be able to meet all your needs. If you love me, then you’ll only turn to me.‘ A man with similarly rigid or traditional ideas about gender roles, she added, might feel territorial or possessive, as though his female partner belongs to him and only him.”

The more important, relevant question is about the potential for opposite-sex friendship more generally. I’ve long been intrigued by the tendency of friends to congregate in same sex circles at social gatherings. Even opposite-sex friendships of multiple decades seem relatively superficial. Opposite-sex friends seem to bump up against an invisible wall as if friendship is a zero-sum game. It’s that wall that intrigues me the most. More specifically, why the wall?

5. Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience. Can Anyone Put the Genie Back in the Bottle?

This was a hard read. Seemingly, my favorite app has no regard for the common good.

6. Elizabeth Warren Is Attracting More Supporters and More Media Attention.

An easy read. :)

The Trump Administration’s Push For Dirtier, Less Efficient Vehicles

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Honda, and Mercedes Benz want to make cleaner cars. Which is pissing off the President. One can’t help but wonder, given his gutting of the EPA, the proposed undoing of the Endangered Species Act, and this attempted rollback of higher standards for fuel efficiency, whether little Donald had a really bad experience in nature. A series of horrendous experiences? For shits sake, is the endgame indoor golf?

From the Verge:

Trump is. . . saying that he is giving “politically correct Automobile Companies” the option of lowering the average price of a car by “more than $3000, while at the same time making the cars substantially safer” (though the EPA and the NHTSA’s proposal has nothing to do with making new cars safer) in exchange for “[v]ery little impact on the environment.” He called automotive executives “foolish”. . . .

Many experts disagree with the Trump administration’s calculations. Some argue any potential savings on the sticker price of new cars would likely be offset by the increased fuel cost over the life of those vehicles, even if gas prices stay low. With less fuel-efficient cars, the rollback could also introduce hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO2 into the air, and increase oil consumption by more than 1 billion barrels, according to the EPA’s own estimates.

‘The clean car standards are the most effective policy we have on the books to fight climate change, and the transportation sector is the country’s largest source of the carbon pollution that causes climate change,’ nonprofit advocacy group Sierra Club said in a statement Wednesday. ‘The Trump administration’s push for dirtier, less efficient vehicles would pump more carbon pollution into our air.’

What do “experts” and the Sierra Club know? And shame on the Obama administration for thinking so positively about entrepreneurial innovation and cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles. The genius in Trump’s thinking is that the more we lower the bar the more likely we are to exceed it.

The Power Of Language

Posted on August 19, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

If the San Fransisco Board of Supervisors have their way, the words “felon,” “offender,” “convict,” “addict” and “juvenile delinquent” will be part of the past in official San Francisco parlance under their new “person first” language guidelines.

“Going forward, what was once called a convicted felon or an offender released from jail will be a ‘formerly incarcerated person,’ or a ‘justice-involved’ person or simply a ‘returning resident.’

Parolees and people on criminal probation will be referred to as a ‘person on parole,’ or ‘person under supervision.’

A juvenile ‘delinquent’ will become a ‘young person with justice system involvement,’ or a ‘young person impacted by the juvenile justice system.’

And drug addicts or substance abusers will become ‘a person with a history of substance use.'”

Cue the protestations of political correctness. The intent, however, is quite noble. Matt Haney, one of the Supervisors says, “We don’t want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done.” Imminently sensible.

Tyler Cowen has a concern worthy of serious consideration:

“. . . here is my worry. It is we who decide how powerful language is going to be. The more we regulate language, the more we communicate a social consensus that it has great power. And in return the more actual power we grant to those linguistic ‘slips’ and infelicities which remain. It is better to use norms to regulate the very worst speech terms, but not all of them. By regulating too many parts of speech, and injecting speech with too much power, we actually grant more influence to the people and ideas we are trying to stop.”

My worry is different. I fear the proposals open the floodgate to an unprecedented wordiness. Case in point, from the San Fransisco Chronicle article:

“The language resolution makes no mention of terms for victims of crime, but using the new terminology someone whose car has been broken into could well be: ‘A person who has come in contact with a returning resident who was involved with the justice system and who is currently under supervision with a history of substance use.'”

If that level of wordiness becomes the new normal, I will not survive this world for long.

Weekend Assorted Links

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

1. The future of bicycle racing is a group road/gravel ride with music at the start?

2. Minneapolis just banned drive throughs. Last sentence is perplexing.

3. A tiny house in every backyard.

4A. Trump’s America. The shining city on a hill is an ugly pile of ruble.

4B. U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act.

“. . . the revised rules appear very likely to clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.”

5. Are You Rich? Where Does Your Net Worth Rank in America?

“Why are the wealthy so much wealthier than everyone else? One reason is that the rich tend to store their wealth in businesses and stocks, and those in the middle class store theirs in housing. The top 10 percent of the wealthiest households own nearly 90 percent of the stocks in America, while those in the bottom 90 percent own a little more than half of all the real estate in America.

So you can think of wealth inequality as a race between the stock market and the housing market. . . . In periods when home prices are rising, wealth inequality tends to shrink as the wealth in the middle class grows. But during periods when the stock market outperforms real estate, wealth inequality tends to increase.

Another reason is that income inequality feeds wealth inequality. . . . Even if the rich and the poor had the same proportion of stocks and bonds, and saved at the same rate, the rich would simply put away more money.”

6. Are you sure lap swimming is safer than open water swimming?

7. The long wait for season three of Netflix’s The Crown is almost over. The Crown’s production quality boggles the mind. Like watching one movie after another. So good, it’s turned this anti-monarchist into a huge fan. And we’re getting Olivia Colman to boot. Forget football this Thanksgiving.

Men!

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

After amazing veggie eggs benny at The Bread Peddler with J Hustle on her 24th birthday, I dipped into the Farmers’ Market on the way home because flowers for the wife makes for a nice life.

As I approached the stand, I saw a dude getting some beautiful sweet peas mixed with purple dahlias. A stylish hippy bouquet, perfect for my stylish, natural woman. After he paid, I said, “I’ll have the exact same.” A few minutes later, after scratching my signature on her iPad, she turned to a woman to the left of me and said, “You were waiting weren’t you?” Why she didn’t turn to her before helping me I am not sure.

Shit. I’m not sure I even saw her. So I said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you.” To which she replied, “Yes you did.” Ouch. The fact of the matter is the man in front of me blew her off and I mindlessly followed his lead. That’s not an excuse, I hate getting cut off, so I was supe apologetic. “No, I really didn’t, I’m really sorry.” By now a second, also sixtyish woman, had materialized. “Men! What are you going to do?” she said to her aggrieved soul sister.

Upon further thought, I think I did see her, but I wrongly assumed she was just thinking through whether to make a purchase or not. Obviously, I should have checked with her. And of course, if I didn’t see her, that’s even worse.

I had just hit the ATM so I was flush with cash money. I thought to myself hell if I’m going to drag my gender even further down some cosmic sinkhole at the Olympia Farmers’ Market! Without Aggrieved Soul Sister hearing me, I told the flower salesperson I was going to buy her flowers*. Immediately afterwards, kid you not, my upset fellow human being grabbed a large bucket of dahlias and asked the salesperson how much all of them would be. Immediately, the salesperson shot me a big smile which communicated, “Women ONE, Men ZERO!” She counted the flowers and did the math while I braced myself for the economic redistribution to come. $28. As I handed her two twenties Aggrieved Soul Sister said, “No way, please give it to someone that needs it.” I insisted telling the salesperson to “Just give me $12 back.” Soul Sister protested again, at which point, not wanting to be too aggressive a male, I caved.

I think she and the other two women appreciated the effort. At least I hope.

Antipathy for males in society is deep-seated. Most of it is deserved, but in rightly deconstructing and criticizing toxic masculinity we have to be very careful of writing off the gender. Sometimes we run that risk when it comes to rightly criticizing men who treat others inhumanely.

Occasionally, we have to point out that some men are conscious of male privilege, don’t sexually abuse women, aren’t all ego all the time, don’t talk over women, and can even talk about emotions and admit when they’re wrong.

However, as a male, I’m not the best person or blogger to do this. Were I to start cheerleading for sensitive and caring men in the interest of some semblance of balance, it would come across as disingenuous. Kind of like a President saying “I’m the least racist person in the world.” Better that some women sporadically weave occasional, alternative, positive stories of men behaving humanely to create a more subtle, nuanced, and complex feminist narrative.

*sigh, of course sharing this story with you diminishes it, a price I’m willing to pay for just a wee bit more blogging glory