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Friday, September 28, 2012

Fish for Friday

Last Friday a man jumped off the Bronx Zoo Wild Asia Monorail, cleared two fences, and landed in a tiger enclosure. Where, not surprisingly, he was attacked by a tiger. Zoo employees used fire extinguishers to chase the tiger away from the man, but a zoo official was quoted as saying they would have used deadly force if necessary.

    I don't suppose that he meant they would have shot the man, not the tiger. But if a person is that determined to do something senseless, why should an innocent member of an endangered species pay the price?
    That would be like shooting the driver of a car to keep them from running over someone who ran out in an interstate to commit suicide. Wouldn't it? [personal communication]


Something to think about, from "On the diminishing marginal utility of Stuff," by Charlie Stross:
Once you hit a certain threshold at which you are not hungry, cold, in debt, and short of pocket money, a weird gap opens up between that which is available, and that which we desire. Even the hyper-rich can't have what they want unless they pour vast amounts of money—and, more importantly, time—into making it.
    So why do the rich keep trying to acquire more money, long past the point at which it can make any noticeable difference to their lifestyle?
    I have three answers. One: it becomes a habit. You don't generally get to be hyper-rich without many years of continual effort; after a decade, just about anything becomes an ingrained habit.
    Two: it becomes a game, a way of keeping track of how well you're doing at whatever it is you want to do.
    And three: you're trying to build up a war chest that will buy you a very expensive toy—one that isn't currently available at any price, so that if you want one you'll have to sink billions of dollars and years of your own time into building it.
    The latter is unusual but not unheard-of. Elon Musk has repeatedly explained that he wants to retire on Mars. That's a not-available-at-any-price option right now, but he's definitely serious about it; which is why he sank most of a gigantic fortune into building his own space program....
    But what, I wonder, motivates Mitt Romney? Does he want to buy something that isn't for sale at any price because it doesn't exist yet? Is it habit? Or is it all a game? [personal communication]
Of course, "friends don't let friends read The Daily Beast," but maybe this won't harm you: "The Sinister Message Behind Romney's 'Gaffe'," by David Frum [personal communication; excerpt:]
Mitt Romney has just committed the worst presidential-candidate gaffe since Gerald Ford announced in 1976 that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe."
    Irreparable? To Romney's image, yes; to his election chances...we'll see. But you know who's determined that Romney never recover? His deluded supporters in the conservative media world.
...Romney was expressing views that are widely held among a certain group of conservatives, and they are determined to make it as awkward as possible for him to retreat from those views.
    ...Romney has been reshaped by this campaign. The dread to which he gives voice in his Boca Raton speech—that "makers" are about to be electorally overwhelmed by "takers"—is a dread expressed again and again by conservative media and conservative thought-leaders. "Democracy is two lions and a lamb voting on what's for dinner": how often have we heard that old country-club quip repeated these past four years? Only this time, the quip is repeated not as a joke, but with real fear.
    ...And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey's army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer's fields...There is no protest party of the political left.
    ...Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.
    It's all a scam, but it's a spectacularly effective scam. Mitt Romney tried to make use of the scam, and now instead has fallen victim to it himself....
And one more: "We Are All Welfare Queens Now," by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published in The Atlantic [personal communication; excerpt:]
Thinking some more on Mitt Romney's high-handed claim that one in two Americans will vote for Obama simply to better ensure their own sloth, I was reminded of Lee Atwater's famous explanation of the Southern Strategy:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff....
The process Atwater is describing really stretches back to 1790 (sorry if I am on repeat here) when Congress restricted citizenship to white people. Progress has meant a series of fights first over direct and indirect components of citizenship (voting, serving in public office, serving in the Army, serving on juries etc.) and less explicit tactics to curtail access to them.
    ...More to the point, as tactics aimed at suppressing black citizenship become more abstract, they also have the side-effect of enveloping non-blacks. Atwater's point that the policies of the Southern Strategy hurt blacks more than whites is well taken. But some whites were hurt too....What [we're seeing now] is more non-black people being swept into the pool of victims and the pool expanding.
    You can paint a similar history of the welfare state, which was first secured by assuring racist white Democrats that the pariah of black America would be cut out of it. When such machinations became untenable, the strategy became to claim the welfare state mainly benefited blacks. And as that has become untenable, the strategy has become to target the welfare state itself, with no obvious mention of color. At each interval the ostensible pariah grows, until one in two Americans are members of the pariah class....
Well, here is one for you...
    Just unscrewed the lid on a jar of sunflower butter, and found ants inside! The lid was on tight, how can that be? On closer examination I discovered the new jar has one less groove of threads than an old one, no doubt a cost-saving move to squeeze an extra 50 cents of profit per 1,000 units. Only problem is, ants can follow the threads and get inside to the food. Which I assume means other tiny creatures, and air, can do the same.
    That is what actuarial thinking—or "Bainthink" as we call it these days—gets you. More profit on the container, no protection for what is inside.
    Hey, that gives me an idea, what if we take seat belts and airbags out of cars to make them more affordable? [personal communication]


Limerick of the week:
When morning comes and day's post's not ready,
Comb the papers with eye poised, steady:
    Some news from somewhere
    Will come out of nowhere;
Hold on, th'experience can be heady!

6 comments:

  1. On the Bronx Zoo incident... The recklessness of the man is irrelevant to the course of action. If the tiger imperils his life and no nonlethal solution is possible, by all means shoot it. We know everything there is to know about the tiger, but what of the man? Is he married? Does he have parents? Children? Is he the sole breadwinner? Isn't he very likely deranged and in need of treatment?

    The hypothetical of the driver on the interstate is a false analogy. I see more similarity in the case of a fetus that threatens the life of the mother.

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    1. Sorry, but must disagree about the Bronx Zoo incident. The tiger was only defending its space, same as you have a right to do if someone kicks in your front door. Plus, there are very few tigers. and plenty of people. If someone is deranged, just having a bad day, or doing something risky to create a buzz (like the guy who got run over trying to create a Bigfoot sighting) they should pay the price, not innocent bystanders, tiger or human.

      Regarding the hyper-rich: what about a fourth possibility? How much of their drive is just an obsessive-compulsive disorder of sorts? Maybe the rest of us should be glad they chose to be the richest people they could be rather than the best serial killers they could be. Of course, if they had endeavored to be record-setting serial killers they may actually have done less damage in life, because law enforcement would have eventually dealt with them.

      Regarding Atwater and the Republican success in the South: It has been widely reported that after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson is said to have told aide Bill Moyers, "I think we have just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come."

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    2. Moto, that's an unusual perspective about the tiger. Let me run a scenario by you. Say I'm at the zoo with my wife and a granddaughter. I'm munching some popcorn and talking to them while leaning against a metal post in the chain-link fence that covers the front of the tiger pit. The post is old and carelessly anchored. It gives way and I fall, tumbling down into the pit. I'm immediately attacked by a tiger because I'm "encroaching on his space." Fortunately, some zookeepers hear the screaming. If necessary, should they kill the tiger to save my life? It's the same story as the news piece, except my intrusion is an accident.

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    3. Ken, your scenario is also about as likely to happen as being hit by a falling satellite. Zoos employ experts who put as much thought, effort and expense into keeping people away from animals as they do into keeping animals away from people.

      That said, if you did somehow manage to find the weak link and accidentally take the plunge, I would still say save the tiger. As much as I would miss your insightful and clever commentary here on Moristotle, there are many who could replace you, and there are few tigers. And accidentally or not, you are the one encroaching in a place that animal already doesn't want to be, so you get what you get. I won't quite go so far as to say zoo goers deserve an attack every now and then for supporting zoos in the first place, but the thought bubbles very close to the surface.

      For the record, those are the same rules I insist upon when photographing grizzly bears in Alaska, moose and elk in Canada, and big cats and other dangerous animals in Africa. I believe that when I choose to get out of a vehicle and encroach in a wild animal's domain, it shouldn't pay the price if I make a mistake and provoke an attack. If the animal jumps in the vehicle, sure, blast away, but if I am the one initiating the contact, I deserve to absorb the full brunt of whatever happens. So do people at a zoo, or worse, a circus, or even worse, a dog fight.

      When people reduce animals to objects of entertainment, they are playing with fire. They deserve to be burned every now and then to remind them to show a little respect.

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  2. I think the Stross bit is right on the mark. The rich pile up money to keep score of how extraordinary they are. The more money, the more extraordinary. Trophies count, too. A yacht, a private island, a title—say, President of the United States.

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    1. Phil, had to second your comment and add it seems much the same with people funding the building of grand churches so they can brag about being members.

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