The Mind-Body Politic

“The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term “bundle of joy” may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,” says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. “In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.”

More at Newsweek on some evidence undermining one of the great mythologies of modern life.

Comment:

Mind you, despite what family-value adherents will tell you, you can’t call this a Christian mythology. The Gospels are pretty clear on that. Jesus even comes right out and says his values are…or can be…. pretty much opposed to the family. On the other hand, sociological surveys of the emotional states of random individuals aren’t exactly deep thinking either and they’re not likely to offer up much solid evidence one way or other.

Still, once in a while, it’s nice to see the childless off the hook and the fecund squirming to defend their choice.”

Thanks to writer-engineer Kash Agarwal, on whose blog I recently discovered this gem of Babu English:

“A School Master from a remote rural area in Bihar was
transferred to a new School in Mumbai.

He reported for duty two days after the actual
date of joining.

Consequently he was asked for an explanation in
writing…

____________ _________ _________

Deer sur,

If small small mistakes getting inside my letter, I
big you pardon, ass I am not a good englis speaker.

This is my fist vijit to Bombai. Stickly speaking, I
wanted to joint your school more fastly,

but for the following region, too much time
lost in getting slipper reservation in three-tyre
compartment.

I tolded

I has head ache problem due to migration. Still the
clerk rejected to give ticket to I and my sun.

I putted a complain on station masterji.

He said I to go to the lady clerk.

At first she also rejected. I then pressed for long
time and finally with great difficulty

she gave a birth to my sun.

Anyway I thanked the station master also

because he was phully responsible for getting birth
of my sun.

Ass a hole it was a bhery diphicult experiment in my
hole life.

I hope u will look into explain my hole story after,
and late me joint first.

I am now ending this fastly. I am a waiter for
your responsement.

May God blast you!”

Yours awfully,

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling at her Harvard commencement speech on June 5 2008.

“The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact…..”

More at AP News.

Rights to self defense are for individuals not just for state militias, as liberals like to argue.  Notice it’s the only time you’ll hear liberals defend any rights for states…

“[Justice] Kennedy concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals — as opposed to treason, for example — “the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.”

The decision does not affect the imposition of the death penalty for other crimes that do not involve murder, including treason and espionage, he said…..”

More at the Washington Post on the Supreme Court’s latest piece of muddled thinking.

Comment:

If treason warrants the death penalty, it must be because of its heinousness as a crime, not because of any inherent tendency to lead to murder, since not all treason leads to anyone’s death (besides which, of course, the state is a far larger killer than any traitor).

But, if heinousness is a criterion, then isn’t raping children (at least in certain instances - let’s overlook mentally defective rapists here) heinous?

Right here, I find the rationale for my blogging and the source of much left-wing and right-wing confusion: the pervasive belief that most harmful things in society are physical and material; that most good things are physical and material; and that we can leave out the mind when we discuss the body politic….

Raping people is a form of torture - rape attacks your feelings about your own sexual identity and others’ that form the core of human personality and integration into society.

Children who are raped repeatedly grow up, like torture victims, with suffering that almost never leaves them. The lives of the most savage criminals often have childhood rape as a common theme. Growing up to be a serial killer or a future rapist seems to me to be a fate worse than being killed. You might not end up that way, but only because of a heroic effort on your part.

Parents, which would you rather have - a child who dies in war, is decorated as a hero and honored forever, or a child who is kidnapped and repeatedly raped and tortured, survives…. but only as an emotional and physical wreck, who for the rest of his life stumbles from one crisis to the next, eventually turning to crime himself.

If you find that difficult to answer, I rest my case…

“As the Amazon sites expand their visitors are seen as an increasingly important. Mark Moskowitz, an independent filmmaker, sent an e-mail message to about 3,000 people this week asking them to review the DVD of his film “Stone Reader,” which goes on sale soon.

“If you didn’t see it but heard it was good, go ahead and post anyway, (what the heck),” Mr. Moskowitz told them. “It doesn’t obligate you for anything, even the truth.”

Despite the widespread presumption that the reviews are stacked, both readers and writers say they affect sales, especially for new writers whose books are not widely reviewed elsewhere.

To increase the credibility of the reader reviews, Amazon has introduced a means for users to vote on the quality of each review, and a corresponding ranking of the top 1,000 reviewers. But the site’s discussion boards are full of carping about how people are trying to play that system, too. Many prolific reviewers speculate that Harriet Klausner, 55, who has long reigned as No. 1, cannot possible read all the books she reviews.

In a telephone interview, Ms. Klausner, in turn, accused the No. 2 reviewer of getting people to vote for him and against her in a “desperate attempt to be No. 1.”

But such concerns among reviewers pale beside those shared by a range of naturally obsessive authors.

Late last month on her radio talk show, Dr. Laura Schlessinger used a call about an anonymous letter to vent her distress over some of her Amazon reviewers, who she described as “scummy, creepy people.”

The feminist author Katha Pollitt mentioned in a recent New Yorker article that she had considered anonymously posting a nasty review on her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s Amazon page, but refrained from doing so. In an interview, however, she said she had chastised a friend whose book had no reviews on Amazon when it came out, telling her to have friends to post some. The friend followed her advice, but Ms. Pollitt was disappointed. “I’m thinking what kind of friends are these? They’ve only written one sentence.”

The novelist A. M. Homes said the one Amazon review that had stuck in her mind was a negative one from someone who signed off “A reader from Chevy Chase,” which is her hometown.

“The world of books is a very small world these days, and any time someone takes the time to share their opinion it’s incredible,” Ms. Homes said. “But I do want to know who that person from Chevy Chase was and what their problem with me really is.”

Read the rest of this 2004 New York Times piece on the weird world of Amazon reviews.

Tampa

Florida’s Gulf Coast metropolis has less glamour - and lower prices.

$499,000 Agents say this newly built traditional four-bedroom home in the up-and-coming Robles area would have gone for $600,000 in 2005. One negative: It’s right next to the Interstate.

It’s not the Atlantic coast of Florida, with symbols of opulence like lavish Palm Beach estates or multimillion-dollar spec homes. But Tampa, with its more blue-collar feel, offers the same brand of South Florida living at a far more affordable price. How much more affordable? Prices are consistently lower by 50%, estimates Deborah Farmer, president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors.

To be sure, Tampa lived large during the boom years; prices rose 100% from 2001 to 2006. That was fueled in large part by speculators just looking to flip, and when they started vanishing in 2006, thanks to the slowing market and a tightening of credit, so did those massive annual increases. Real estate values have fallen 17.5% in a year, according to the Case-Shiller index.

But more than other markets, Tampa could be nicely positioned for a rebound. Its relatively strong local economy, coupled with the fact that the bust hit here earlier than in some other markets, means that the downside may have largely played itself out. The median price is now $222,000, down from $275,000 last year, and top NAR economist Lawrence Yun has singled Tampa out as well prepped for price recovery, estimating 20% or more appreciation in the next five years.

A prime spot for high-end bargain hunters: Gulf-front luxury condos in nearby Clearwater or St. Petersburg, which might have gone for a minimum of $1 million a few years ago, can now be snapped up in the $600,000 range…..”

Comment: 

Read more at MSN Money on where you can find bargains in the US now. Bargains, that is, if you are solvent and have money in the bank. Cash is king….

And just keep in mind that Lawrence Yun, the optimistic one in the post, is an economist for NAR, the National Association of Realtors, a group notorious for urging people to buy at the top of the bubble.

The German translation of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets,” Der Massensyndrom, is out. And my co-author gave an interview to accompany the release.

We have a slight difference of opinion on this. I think the over-supply of paper money in the system over the past decades isn’t entirely Greenspan’s doing. It isn’t possible for one man to exert that kind of influence on the economy. What about the oceans of paper that poured in from millions of ordinary people in Asia who chose to stash their savings in the dollar rather than in a gunny sack… or in their own woozy currencies?

Too bad the dollar turned out to be as bad a bet as any of the others…

How the times they have a-changed.

Back then, we turned down thrifty, frumpy Hard-Work-And-Savings at the door (no callouses, dirty nails and sweat stains, please) and waltzed in on the arm of the Funny-Money-Hunny [sic] — a lady of questionable virtue and unquestioned charm….

But now?

We turn to the papers for insights and we find this:
Former Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Managers Indicted.

I guess they call that hedge-hunting.

Tut…And these guys were gods only yesterday.

How soon they forget….

All it took was for gas prices to double…..and the mob got out the noose and the gallows…
Back then, the working stiffs….got, well, stiffed.
Back then, all over the world, the good times rolled and the high-rollers made good;

But now it’s goodbye to the good times.
The nobs are being nabbed.
And the only thing rolling on Wall Street are the heads…..

(No trade mark infringement intended against Maria Bartiromo, TV’s original “Money Honey” - hence my alternative spelling..

“Two former managers of hedge funds at Bear Stearns were arrested and charged with securities fraud on Thursday, a year after the collapse of the funds signaled the onset of a credit crunch that shows little sign of abating….
The indictments, which will be detailed this afternoon by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, are the first to be brought against senior Wall Street executives linked to a tight credit market that has rattled global markets, led to more than $350 billion in write-offs, cost numerous executives their jobs and culminated in the demise of Bear Stearns.

The two funds had names as obtuse as the complex subprime securities in their portfolios — High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and its riskier sister offering, the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies…….”

More at the New York Times.

Comment:

Tut…And these guys were gods only yesterday. How soon they forget….

All it took was for gas prices to double…..and the mob got out the noose and the gallows…