7.13.2022 – pick and choose numbers

pick and choose numbers
that tell you what you want and
glue them together

Adapted from the last paragraph of the article, The Humbug Economy, by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.

Writing about the current economic climate, Mr. Krugamn stated:

Overall, the picture appears consistent with a “soft landing” — a slowdown that falls short of a full-on recession, or involves a mild recession at worst, together with stabilizing inflation.

But, of course, we don’t know that. In fact, given the wide discrepancies in economic data, economic pundits (including me) have unusual freedom to believe whatever they want to believe. Just pick and choose the numbers that tell you what you want to hear and glue them together.

He also stated:

Are you confused? You should be. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I can’t remember any period when economic numbers were telling such different stories. On the other hand, we’ve never before faced the kind of shocks we’ve gone through in the past few years: Both the pandemic-induced recession and the recovery from that recession were, to use the technical term, weird, and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised the measures we normally use to track the economy aren’t working too well.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Both the pandemic-induced recession and the recovery from that recession were, to use the technical term, weird, and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised the measures we normally use to track the economy aren’t working too well.

Got to love the use of the technical term, weird!

And the warning that we shouldn’t be surprised the measures we normally use to track the economy aren’t working too well?

NO KIDDING!

7.12.2022 – but can see in me

but can see in me
things which I don’t see myself
a kind of paradox

Adapted from the line, It’s a kind of paradox. He’s very self-involved, but also very able to see the subtle character of others. He can see in me things which I don’t see myself” in an article in a recent New Yorker Magazine, titled, The First Rule Is Not to Lie: Emmanuel Carrere’s bracingly personal reportage confounds France’s literary establishment by Ian Parker.

I am not sure what it means.

Who has a truly accurate image of how they appear to other people.

Who doesn’t listen to a recording of their voice and not say, that’s not me.

When I worked in TV, occasionally I found myself on TV.

I thought, that is not how I look.

Not how I look in a mirror.

And I was right.

What I saw, what anyone sees in a mirror is reveresered.

What I saw on TV was the way people saw me.

And they probably saw things in me that I don’t see myself.

Where is the paradox?

Or is the paradox that the person doing the see was self absorbed and so self absorbed so that their ability to see anything in anybody other than themselves, let alone things they other person didn’t see, is paradoxical.

To paraphrase Robert Kennedy, some folks look at things and ask why while some folks dream great dreams and ask, why not?

7.11.2023 – place the accent on

place the accent on
wrong letter, you’re going to
mispronounce the word

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was quoted in the article, Eric Adams, the Mayor Who Never Sleeps, by columnist Maureen O’Dowd in this passage:

“If you place the accent on the wrong letter, you’re going to mispronounce the word,” Adams said. “If you place the accent on the wrong moment in your life, you’re going to mispronounce your life. Place it on how many times you got on the train and nothing happened to you. Nothing eventful. That’s where the accent should go, not ‘Hey, this is my 900th ride and you know what, I saw a homeless person today. Oh my God, things are out of control.’ They’re not.”

I spent 20 years working in television news.

Working with a dedicated bunch of people who worked daily, hourly, to identify the accent marks that would mark the moments in peoples lives that would set the pronunciation of those lives.

It struck me, reading this quote, that a word gets one point, one part of a word, that is accented.

As the Mayor said, where that accent goes, can determine the meaning of the word.

Where the accent goes can determine the meaning of your life?

Simplistic?

Yes.

Too simplistic?

I am not so sure.

Right now it is hard to not point a finger at covid and say this is where the accent is in my life.

At least, in my life right now.

Over the years, where is that accent?

Do I choose the place or was the place chosen for me and all other changes and consequences in my life descend from that point?

I think I have told the story of how I wanted to be history teacher.

In college, working with an advisor, I had my course of study from a BA through to an MA all laid out.

I needed a foreign language and after three years of high school Latin, my advisor agreed that Latin was the path for me.

On the first day of college Latin 101, I had to fill out an index card with my name and overview of my Latin background.

The second day, someone from the Latin department stood if front of the class and read out six names, mine included and asked us to step out in the hall.

We were told that after a review of our cards, we were being offered an accelerated version of Latin 101 and 102 which would enable us to meet our 2 years of foreign language requirement in just one and a half years.

It was just an offer and we did not have to take but it would allow us to take another elective should we take the accelerated class.

Without thinking too much about, I took the offer.

The impact was far reaching as this knocked over the house of cards that was my carefully scripted course of study to an MA and it brought about this and that and another thing and in the end I spent 20 years working in the news business instead of a career in teaching history.

Is it that moment when my name was read out loud in a classroom in Angell Hall in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I was asked to step out in the hall the place in my life where the accent mark goes?

My life certainly changed.

I took another path.

A path less traveled on a snowy night with miles to go before I could sleep.

But I didn’t know it at the time.

Much more would happen in my life.

Still, the question remains, was that moment in the hall the place in my life where the accent mark goes?

I guess, only if I want it to.

Maybe really, in the long run, the long view, I stepped out into that hall and nothing happened to me.

Nothing eventful.

Things did not go out of control.

Things were not out of control.

Because they were not.

Nothing happened at all.

7.10.2020 – C is not an A

C is not an A
but a C is not an F
he told reporters

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was quoted in the New York Times article, Eric Adams, the Mayor Who Never Sleeps, by columnist Maureen O’Dowd in this passage:

Six months into the job, Eric Adams, 61, is at a crucial juncture. The honeymoon, filled with hope for a dynamic new mayor, is over. Adams’s poll numbers have dived, which the optimistic politician took with aplomb. “A C is not an A, but a C is not an F,” he told reporters, adding that he interpreted the numbers from tough New York graders to mean “We’re going to give Eric a shot.”

You have to admit when the Mayor is right, he is right.

A C is NOT an A.

But it sure is a wonderful sentence.

Also, as a social comment, a friend of mine recently posted a National Parks brochure about being out on the water in a local river.

The brochure had the warning that the river was not round and you did not end up where you started.

I guess I am not surprised that today’s park visitors need that warning.

As much as I am that maybe today’s political reporters do need to be reminded that a C is not an A.

7.9.2022 – geostrategic

geostrategic
trajectory of contests
inevitable

Adapted from this quote:

“Nor should we naturally assume it is a demonstration of the inevitable trajectory in other areas of geostrategic contest.”

From a speech to foreign policy think tank the Lowy Institute in Sydney, by the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.

“In the wake of the tensions we see rising, including in our Indo-Pacific region, diplomacy must become the strongest tool and de-escalation the loudest call. That won’t succeed, however, if those parties we endeavour to seek to engage with are increasingly isolated and the region we inhabit becomes increasingly divided and polarised,” Ardern said.

On the one hand I agree with everything I think Ms. Ardern just said.

On the other, I am reminded of the speech of Mr. Wilson in the The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain.

Mr. Wilson addressed the crowd with many multi syllabled words as well and delivered a speech and sat down victorious because, as Mr. Twain said, “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.“