Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

I read this article today about the resignation of MIT’s Dean of Admissions, Marilee Jones, for lying about her educational background on her resume:

Jones, who had led the admissions office since 1998, falsely claimed degrees at three schools in upstate New York, an MIT spokeswoman said. In reality, Jones briefly attended just one of the schools, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and never enrolled at the other two.

I am not sure how I feel about this.  Obviously, people should not lie on their resumes – and what a lie!  She didn’t just list one imaginary degree, but three!  It is especially a disgrace since she is the Dean of Admissions and had counseled students against “making up information to present yourself as something you are not.” 

However, she was also very good at her job:

The revelation was a shocking turn for Jones, who had been highly regarded in her field and widely praised for MIT’s efforts to reduce student anxiety in college admissions. Her profile surged last year with the publication of “Less Stress, More Success,” which she wrote with a pediatrician, Kenneth R. Ginsburg.

If she was successful at her job, does it matter that she does not have these degrees?  I understand that she was fired for lying and not necessarily for not having the degrees, but she would most likely never have risen to the position of dean without these credentials.  And, frankly, although a college degree is beneficial for some, we all know plenty of people who have degrees and are as dumb as nails.

When I lived in Boston years ago, I knew a guy who lied on his resume about his college degree (he claimed that he had a degree from Harvard).  He would work a year or so and then quit to sail his boat around the world, and then return and repeat the process.  He took great pleasure in fooling all his co-workers and, as far as I know, was never caught in the lie.

Mount Vernon

This past weekend, Tim’s immediate family came to town to visit.  On Saturday, we headed to Mount Vernon, the estate of George Washington.  Let me preface my description of our day by stating that it was absolutely gorgeous outside on Saturday – there was not a cloud in the sky, the air was clear and fresh, and the sun was shining without making us miserably hot.  It was too early or still too cool for insects to be out in swarms, so we were saved from being bothered by them as well.  All of this was good, because we were outside for the majority of the day.

We arrived at Mount Vernon around 11:00, bought tickets to both the estate and the boat tour, and meandered down the path toward the wharf (to catch the 12:30 boat ride).  Along the way, we stopped at Washington’s first tomb (he left instructions in his will that a new tomb should be constructed after his death and his corpse moved to the new location), his second tomb, a memorial to the slaves on the plantation that was located on the old slave burial grounds, and several barns.  It is a beautiful estate.

Once at the wharf, we boarded a boat and steamed down the Potomac.  We saw old Fort Washington (now a park) and could see the Woodrow Wilson bridge and Washington, DC in the far distance.  We didn’t see much else, and the boat seemed to move at a galacial pace.  We were out on the water for about 45 minutes.

We headed back up to the visitor’s center to have lunch (exhorbitantly priced), then waited in a very, very long line to get a 20 minute tour of the actual estate house.  It wasn’t actually a tour; we just shuffled through each room where a docent would reel off a continuous, short, looping speil that really provided no information.  We had to keep moving, so we could not spend any time actually studying the rooms.  I was disapointed in the tour; I learned nothing about Washington or the house.  Actually, the day was very pleasant but very uneducational.

                              

After the tour of the house, we took a quick walk through the gardens, where there were many tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths in bloom.  We then stopped at the gift shop and headed home around 4:00.  It was a nice day to be outside in such a beautiful setting; however, I would not recommend Mount Vernon if you are looking for an historical experience.  

Motherless Brooklyn

I finished the book Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem recently.  Isn’t the title wonderful?  I find it intriguing yet poetic.  It refers to the main character and his 3 cohorts, who are all orphans.  In very short vignettes, we learn about their history, being abandoned at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, and raised by nuns and priests.  The protagonist is named Lionel, and, more interestingly and more devestating than being an orphan, is that Lionel has Tourette’s Syndrome.   We meet Lionel as an adult, working as a detective for Frank Minna, a small-time mobster/hustler.  When Lionel was a teenager, he and 3 other boys from St. Vincent’s are selected to assist Frank Minna on some “projects.”  The relationships between the group and Frank are the emotional centerpieces of the story – Frank evolves into a distinct father figure for all of the boys (each one making Frank into the type of father they want or need).  As the boys grow older, they come to work for Frank full-time in his driving service business, which is really a front for a detective agency.

The book is powerful in its portrayal of Tourette’s and how Lionel handles his symptoms.  The strange neurological outbursts also lend some humor to the story, and Lionel’s intelligent analysis of people’s reactions to his manifestations are insightful.  For example, Lionel describes his encounter on a bus with another Tourette’s victim (who was having a systematic belching attack):

I knew that those other passengers would barely recall it a few minutes after stepping off to their destinations.  Despite how that maniacal froglike groaning filled the auditorium of the bus, the concertgoers were plainly engaged in the task of forgetting the music.  Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.  The belching man ruptured it so quickly and completely that I could watch the wound instantly seal.  A Touretter can also be The Invisible Man.

The action in the book begins when Frank Minna is murdered.  This event triggers in Lionel an obsession to locate the killer and avenge Frank’s death; this obsession is less a result of Lionel’s Tourette’s than an emotional need to recompense Frank for his role as surrogate father.  Lionel’s investigation takes him on a variety of escapades throughout Brooklyn and the Northeast, including encounters with aging and powerful mobsters, Frank Minna’s ex-wife, a giant, members of a Zen buddhist temple, and an emotional link to a young Zen practicioner named Kimmery (we also witness how Lionel’s Tourette’s manifestations ruin his embryonic relationship with Kimmery).

Lionel winds up solving the mystery and geting his revenge for Frank’s death.  Of course, he has no way of exacting revenge on Fate for making him an orphan and giving him Tourette’s Syndrome.  However, the likability of Lionel’s character rests on the fact that he does not seem to hold any grudge against Fate for doing this to him.

The book is beautifully written; Lethem uses language to make the Brooklyn setting a character of its own and gives the reader the sense that Lionel belongs in Brooklyn and that it is part of his being (of course, other characters, such as Lionel’s wife, Julia, blatantly do not belong in Brooklyn and are miserable in their existences there).

The book is a light read; it flows easily and is not terribly long.  As I said above, Lionel’s tics and outburts, caused by his Tourette’s, provide a sense of comedy to the narrative.  Overall, I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Tax Cheaters

In honor of Tax Day occurring this week, I thought I would write a brief piece on the hated things.  I read this interesting piece in the Washington Post about income inequality being an accurate measure of the number of taxpayers who cheat on their returns:

Economists have long known there are two reasons that people cheat on their taxes. One is that they are poor and need the extra cash so badly they are willing to risk getting caught. The other is that they are rich and have lots of “non-matchable” income — mostly investment income not directly reported to the government — which makes it less likely they will be caught.

Taxpayers in the middle class are the least likely to cheat: They are not struggling to make ends meet, and their income is mostly wages, which are directly reported to the Internal Revenue Service. . .

What economists missed seeing until recently, however, is that both these explanations are really part of a single, larger theory. Essentially, said Kim Bloomquist, a senior economist at the IRS in Washington, the more people you have at the upper and lower ends of the income spectrum . . . the more tax evasion you are likely to see. A central cause of cheating, in other words, might be inequality.

So, besides the fact that income inequality is just bad in general (having more impoverished people and more extremely wealthy people (and therefore, fewer in the middle class) makes for an unbalanced and potentially volatile societal social structure), it is also specifically bad for the government coffers (and to a further extent, all American citizens - with less tax money coming into the government, we will have fewer dollars for programs we need and/or want (whether you are a Democrat or a Republican (or something else) less money will effect you – that’s less money for education or defense spending or everything)).

What was most striking to me in this article was the data presented on how much the income inequality gap has grown:

University of California economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez found that in 1970, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans had 31.5 percent of all reported income. By 2000, they had 43.9 percent.

That’s correct: 10% of Americans control almost half of reported income.  What happened to the middle class?

To Mow or not to Mow?

After looking in dismay at our backyard, I was wondering why I cared that it was weed-ridden and overgrown, and asked Tim why and when Americans became obsessed with having a perfectly manicured and lush lawn (I probably asked this in an attempt to scorn the perfect lawn and justify our own clover-infested swath of yard).  Tim did not have an answer and told me to research it and blog about it.  Maybe he was joking, but I did it anyway.

This article describes some of the theory behind the growth in popularity of well-manicured lawns.  According to one researcher, the need for grassy space is genetic:

One theory was put forward a few years ago by Dr. John Falk, an ecologist and former special assistant at the Smithsonian Institution, as the result of research and surveys conducted since 1978. He calls it the Savanna Syndrome. In his view, our love of grass dates back to the time when humans roamed the savannas of Africa in search of food. We preferred to forage on grassy plains dotted with copses of trees because they offered protection from predators, which we could easily spot as they crept up on us in the short grass. Over the millennia, this was encoded in our DNA.

So it is not just a need for control, of man conquering nature, but in fact, some deep-seated survival instinct.  [I have to add that a nice lawn also makes it easier to play lawn games such as bocce ball and badminton (but I guess that is circular reasoning - we wouldn't have lawn games if we didn't already have lawns).]  I do think that Americans are too obsessed with their lawns.  Now that spring has arrived, I have seen countless commercials for fertilizers and mowers, and lawn care itself has to be a huge industry – besides just individual homeowners’ lawns, there are also copious numbers of businesses, parks, etc. that are surrounded by or comprised of lawns.

If you are lawn obsessed, please don’t over-fertilize.  Better yet, if you feel you must fertilize, do so in the fall.  By fertilizing in the spring, when it rains more, you are allowing the nutrients on your lawn to be washed away by rain and into stormwater drains, which eventually make their way to our rivers and waterways, and pollute them.  

Stop and Listen to the Music

When we were traveling back from Delaware last weekend, we picked up the Sunday edition of the Washington Post.  I read the interesting cover story about Joshua Bell, a world-reknowned violinist, who camped out at a Metro stop and played for an hour, in order to see how many commuters would take time out of their busy schedules to halt and listen to the music.  As the article described, only a handful of people actually did stop.

The Post offered several reasons as to why only a few people tarried to listen to a musician who customarily sells out concert halls that charge $100 a seat.  The Post spends some time discussing whether or not Americans are culturally bankrupt or whether or not we are so driven by our capitalistic needs that we cannot take a few moments to appreciate great art.

There was also the discussion about context – whether the fact that Bell was playing in a Metro station while dressed in jeans and a baseball cap changes expectations.  I think there should have been further discussion about the definition of “art.”  The Post and classical music afficiandos might consider Bell and his music ”art,” but others may not.  Since there is no unanimous definition for “art,” it is presumptuous to deem the commuters as rubes who do not appreciate it.

I was most interested in the following reason offered for the lack of listening, describing how many commuters were listening to their own music on iPods: 

For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.

I think there is some merit in this reasoning.  We usually do go to the web-sites, papers, blogs, etc. that express the views that we agree with.  We listen to songs we already like by programming our iPods. We talk on our cell phones at the expense of listening, or even noticing, our surroundings.  Maybe it would be beneficial to sometimes just take a day off from all these distractions.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

I finished reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami last Friday evening, but had not reviewed it in the hope that some digestion time would enable me to glean some deeper meaning from the novel, some meaning that surely must be there but which I cannot seem to grasp.  I empathize with the main character, Toru Okada, who spends time sitting at the bottom of a dried-up well, waiting to enter a state of consciousness that takes him to an alternative reality.  Once in that reality, he is constantly on the edge of discovering why this alternative exists, but he is unable to move through the wavering fuziness to grasp the meaning, or why exactly he is there, until the very end of the novel.

As you can tell by the above brief description of some of the action, the novel has a surreal feel to it.  The bounds of reality are sometimes stretched, but not completely severed.  Toru Okada begins the novel as a recently unemployed individual (he is unemployed by choice; he decided to quit his job because he found no meaning in it) who has lost his cat.  His wife, Kumiko, urges him to talk to a strange woman with some sort of psychic powers (we do not actually discover what these powers are) in order to find the cat.  Toru interacts with this woman psychic, Malta Kano, and her sister, Creta Kano, and also spends some time with his teenaged neighbor, May, trying to find the cat.  At some point, Kumiko leaves Toru, under what Toru feels are mysterious circumstances that involve Kumiko’s brother, Noboru Wataya.   Even though they have little physical interaction, Toru considers Noboru Wataya the personification of evil, and, as a result, his enemy.  Along the way, Toru is introduced to an aging Japanese war veteran and the mother/son pair of Nutmeg and Cinnamon, who take him under their wings.

The book is interestingly written.  There are far too many characters, and I cannot fathom why all of them need to be in the novel.  And these aren’t just characters mentioned in passing, but fully developed characters who interact with Toru, but who do not progess the story in any foreseeable way (for example, the psychic and her sister, Malta and Creta Kano).  I went on-line in an attempt to find some commentary about the novel that could aid my understanding.  I found the following by Kevin Salfen on Amazon.com that helped provide a context for the characters in the novel:

Is evil sin? Maybe in monotheistic cultures, but I think in Murakami’s novelistic universe–and this is a recurring feature of many discussions of Japanese religion, culture, and art–a more insightful way of comprehending evil is as “defilement,” and this is the term Jay Rubin uses in his translation time and again. Defilement is what ties every character together: some inner filth that each character is trying to purge in some way. May Kasahara’s idea of the physical manifestation of death as an oozy gray thing is the clearest picture we have of that unrelenting ghost that haunts everyone intersecting with Toru Okada’s life. It is not regret or guilt. It is not emotional scarring. It is a sickening tangible object poisoning a person’s life and threatening to overwhelm it. It must be washed off, or it will destroy whatever it comes in contact with.

Because defilement is such a defining feature of the work, it functions to create two broad sets of characters: the defilers and the defiled, where Kumiko’s brother (Noboru Wataya) is the archetype of the defiler and Kumiko herself the archetype of the defiled. Confusion arises and the border between the two sets becomes blurred because the nature of defilement is to spread, and once Kumiko herself becomes defiled, she spreads that to those around her, principally to the central character, her husband Toru.

The third character type is found in Toru, whose beautiful quality is to absorb all the defilement, find a way to stop the spread of it, and then to wash it away, to expunge it in the final defeat of Noboru Wataya. Toru’s beautiful quality is not easily won, though. The whole of “Wind-up Bird” tells of the immensely difficult quest for it, an encountering of many different faces of defiler and defiled, a repeated tasting of others’ defilements, in order to learn the method of purification.

I think this is a good analysis and does provide a comprehensive theme to the book and the characters, although I still do not think it justifies the inclusion of so many characters.  Could not the same point have been made with a smaller cast?  Would not the point have been clearer without all these superfluous characters?  But perhaps we are meant to feel like Toru, jumbled and a bit confused by all these strange people suddenly intersecting with what was a simple existence.  Clear out the chaff to get to the wheat.

From a “reading as pleasure” perspective, the book began strongly – I was very interested in the characters and the surreal nature of the action.  I felt that I was on the urge of accompaning Toru on discovering something profound.  Somewhere in the middle, I lost some interest (this was mostly during the time when Toru felt lost, too – Kumiko had left him, he didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what to do with himself – so perhaps I was supposed to feel lost).  I did enjoy the stories of the Japanese war veteran (mostly because I know so little about Japanese history), although I’m still not sure they were needed in the novel.  The ending section, when Nutmeg and Cinnamon play roles, and when Toru “saves” Kumiko, became interesting again.  It is a long book, so be prepared to invest a bit of time in the reading of it.  Overall, I give this one 4 out of 5 stars. 

Let Mosquitoes be Mosquitoes

I read this article several weeks ago and have meant to post about it for quite some time.  It deals with the genetic modification of mosquitoes in order to prevent malaria:

US scientists have genetically engineered mosquitoes with eyes that glow in the dark and do not carry malaria that have a better survival rate than their wild counterparts. . .

The scientists, led by Dr Mauro Marrelli from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggest that the transgenic malaria-resistant mosquito could one day be introduced into the wild where it would outbreed natural mosquitoes and reduce the spread of malaria.

I know that genetic modification is old news: there has been debate for some time about introducing genetically modified crops into the American food supply.  It seems harmless; actually, in fact, it seems like a positive change – modifying crops so that they are disease-resistant and therefore, more bountiful and able to feed more people.  The same can be said for the malaria-resistant mosquitoes.  It seems like a great way to prevent malaria from spreading.  According to this source, mosquito-bourne illnesses kills one in five African children, and, obviously, that is a bad thing.

But the flip side is, do we really want to mess with Mother Nature?  It seems that every time we try something like this, it ends up biting us in the ass.  For example, kudzu was introduced to America as a forage crop and ornamental plant, and the federal government promoted the planting of it to control soil erosion. Now, it has taken over a lot of land, including crop land, and is considered an invasive species, and the government spends a ton of money trying to control it.  There is also the slippery slope argument: if we begin genetically modifying mosquitoes, what will stop us from eventually modifying humans to be blonde-haired and blue-eyed (or whatever else we deem as perfect)?

I tend to err on the side of leaving well enough alone and letting mosquitoes be mosquitoes.  We do have cures for malaria – perhaps we could invest more money in spreading treatment.  However, if my 5-year old daughter (not that I have one) was dying from malaria, I’d probably have wished that those genetically-modified mosquities had been introduced.

Muzzles

Today, the Thomas Jefferson Center announced the annual winners of its Muzzle awards.  The Muzzles “honor” those in both the public and private sectors who effectively “muzzled” free speech in America via censorship.  There was a list of 15 for the year 2006.  My favorite (although definitely the least offensive in terms of actual harm to the public) was the censorship by the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement.  Here is a summary:

Shelton Brothers is a company located in Belchertown, Massachusetts that specializes in distributing small-batch, specialty beers from Europe. Distinctive and original labels adorn many of the beers to complement their special nature. In 2006, Shelton Brothers planned to distribute “Santa’s Butt Winter Porter,” an English-made, holiday-themed beer. On the label was a rearview image of Santa Claus (clothed) sitting on a beer barrel. The term “butt” refers to a large barrel once used by English brewers to store beer.

Apparently the label was too distinctive for the Main Bureau of Liquor Enforcement which denied Shelton Brothers’ application to sell the beer in Maine. In a letter to Shelton Brothers, the Bureau stated the application was denied because it contained an “undignified or improper illustration.”

Yes, because Santa Claus is such a sacred image, it would be unseemly to show him sitting on a barrel of beer.  On a side note, I have to respect a beer company that has its headquarters in a town named Belchertown.

The term “Muzzles” of course, just makes me think of “Muggles,” the name given to humans by the wizard folk in the Harry Potter series.  Of course, most of the Muggles are oblivious to the goodness of the wizards and definitely want to muzzle them (so much so that they deny the wizards’ existences).  Thus, perhaps the name is appropriate. 

You Can’t Get Paid for Talking about Sex

Finally, the states are rebelling against the Bush indoctrination inherent in accepting federal money (especially for education):

In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity.

I cannot believe that it took almost 7 years for state governments to say “enough is enough.”  I am assuming it has to do with a surge of confidence brought about with the Democratic seizure of Congress.

It is shocking that

the program has too many restrictions and rules to be practical. Among other things, the money cannot be used to promote condom or contraceptive use, and requires teachers to emphasize ideas such as bearing children outside of wedlock is harmful to society and “likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

How could this even be considered sex education?