On Writing

So my Part 2 on Minimum Wage is the second comment that I wrote on Part 1. Kevin was very adept at noticing many of my short comings that I had intended to address. Hopefully more people will point out my shortcomings so as to strengthen my argument.

At any rate, there was an interesting article by Stanley Fish, an Emeritus Dean at University of Illinois at Chicago in the New York Times, entitled “Devoid of Content”. His main contention is that in teaching writing, structure ought to supersede content. I could not disagree more.

The most important aspect of writing is not purely the manner it is presented. I am sure you could take a class on this and know every name for every part of a sentence, then when actually asked to write an essay you would have nothing. The main building block of writing is critical thinking, the ability to synthesize numerous arguments into a significant and contestable thesis. In learning how to do this, you develop your own writing style, one that may slightly irk an Emeritus Dean somewhere, but at least your argument will have content. It will flow, building argument upon argument (god damn that is hard).

I know many people that can write beautifully constructed essays with sentences that all have beautiful "relationships," but rely on this to mask an utter lack of content. One reason I love the University of Chicago (no affiliation with Professor Fish's institution) is that to "teach writing" we take a humanities course, whereby writing is taught by doing. We analyze Homer while learning how to construct an essay. The ability to analyze and from that construct an essay is far more important than Professor Fish’s stylistic issue with writing today.

But worst of all, the proper idea of writing varies from subject to subject. Professor Fish’s class may help his English Major students, but do nothing for his Biology majors, whose terse and content laden style of writing relies enormously on content, not presentation. The universality of writing is not presentation. Biology and Classics essays may seem in entirely different languages, but both rely on the importance of a solid argument.

Writing classes do not have to be boring lessons (although Professor Fish's assignments do sound interesting) on learning to write as your professor tells you the correct way is (something that will change with every semester and every professor). By teaching through experience students develop much needed skills. All in all, I am happy that Professor Fish was never a dean here.

-Mr. Alec

Minimum Wage Response: Part One- The Clarification

Well I lost the last half of my response, but the first half is worth getting up. Here you are:

So this is a little unorthodox but I typically need challenges to fully develop my ideas and reach an appropriate consensus, so I am going to respond to a comment to my entry on minimum wage. To minimize clicking it is below:

"Now some stick to the minimum wage because a recent study showed that a raise in the minimum wage had no effect on employment. However a subsequent study showed that a drop in employment does occur, it just happens before the minimum wage law goes into effect."

And another subsequent study showed the previous subsequent study to have 1) an absurd conflict of interest and 2) a demonstratable apparent bias in its data sampling methods. Notably, they didn't actually sample any data; they were handed a data set from an anti-wage-floor think tank, which refuses to disclose their sampling methods.

Unless you're referring to another study enitrely. Then I got nothin'.

I dont buy the economic arguments against minimum wage. Assumptions that wages are efficient and elastic; that employees can just easily quit their jobs and find new ones; that monopsonies dont exist. These are the opposite of the truth. Bullshit assumptions do not scientific reasoning make.

So now my response: First of all, I should have cited the studies I was referring to. This was just lazy on my part and this may clarify some of the commentator’s concerns (who I will now refer to as Mr. C). David Card and Alan Krueger, of UC Berkley and Princeton respectively, came out with a study that found minimum wage did not cause unemployment. Their study focused on California, New Jersey, and Texas. The rationale for their argument was two-fold. First, well paid workers are more efficient workers and second, better paid workers are less likely to quit, this reduces a firms cost involved in constantly hiring and rehiring workers. This rationale is shaky at best. If a firm can be more efficient by paying its workers better then it will do that. Your local McDonalds is not looking to screw over its workers nearly as much as it is looking to get consumers to go there instead of Burger King, Wendy’s, and a host of other competitors. If it can get a leg up by paying its workers better, it will do that.

Now two studies came out with responses to the Card and Krueger study, first, Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas, Austin, concluded that firms cut employment before the minimum wage is increased. This seems shaky to me, but obviously worth thinking about. The second and much more effective response (in my opinion) was by Finis Welch of Texas A&M and Kevin Murphy of University of Chicago, they argued that Card and Krueger's data was skewed by regional differences in economic growth, specific to where they focused their study. Essentially this study takes us back to square one, something I am ok with, mostly because I think the intuition behind no minimum wage is particularly strong. Now Mr. C, I do not know what study you are referring to, hopefully this clarifies my claim.

-Mr. Alec

God damnit

So I just wrote a ridiculously long response to a commentor on the matter of minimum wage. I then lost it. I have half of it, but have become demoralized. Expect soon, blame the A key being so close to the S key. God damn you S.

-Mr. Alec

David Brooks Does It Again

Well David Brooks has yet again put my feelings on the issue of the Newsweek controversy into much better words than I ever could. Check it out. But I would like to note that I did post my very similar opinions on the issue before he did, so turns out some much smarter people have slightly similar opinions to me and superior writing ability. So close, yet so far.

-Mr. Alec

Minimum Wage

There was an article in The Economist a couple of weeks ago that had a quote from French President Chirac (and no this is not going to be a bash France article, but man does it suck on a lot of things). Here is the excerpt,

Asked on television last week why Britain's unemployment was so much lower, Mr

Chirac replied that its social rules would be “unacceptable” in France.

Now what I find interesting about this quote is that I think it sums up so many arguments on so many sides of the employment debate. Often on the issue of employment and the economy in general the debate becomes far too simple. It becomes about poor versus rich, about who ought to benefit and prosper in a nation. But frequently there are those in the middle who just see what happens and recommend stuff. In the United States academics and think-tanks perform this job, to varying levels of success. This third group is not always correct, but unfortunately when it is, which ever party that had initially rejected that claim will refuse to give in. Ultimately this spawns a destructive cycle in which the party on the wrong side fails to see that their goals would only be assisted by a change in course. This example personified is the issue of minimum wage (just imagine the minimum wage is a person and that sentence works).

Although Democrats have perfectly justifiable goals in their implementation of minimum wage, the overwhelming amount of evidence and intuition shows that it is a policy that helps no one. All it does is provide us with a sense that our social rules are somehow "acceptable" regardless of the ultimate cost. Democrats and Mr. Chirac are only interested in assisting those who suffer from an egregious market inequality (who in turn vote for them, but that’s a separate story), but the manner that they do this is destructive, lets look at the evidence.

First, intuitively minimum wage is damaging to the countries poor. Say there is no minimum wage; employers will not begin forcing workers to work for 2 dollars an hour. Well they could try, but that would fail, miserably. No one would work for such a firm and a separate firm could swoop in and hire all the employees for 2.50 an hour. Of course this process would occur over and over until the equilibrium wage is found (my guess is that it would be well over 2 dollars an hour) for various types of jobs.

Now the present federal minimum wage law is not a good example because it is so low ($5.15 an hour), but many states have minimum wages that are much higher. Connecticut has a minimum wage of $7.10 per hour; the most ridiculous is San Francisco's which is $8.50. The San Francisco example is perfect, now I guarantee you there are people in San Francisco, or that area, that are willing to work for 6, 7, even 8 dollars an hour, but can't. Of course the response to that is, "Well who cares, they get extra money, and all are happy." Well that’s incorrect. Not all are happy, in fact very few parties end up happy. I explained this in my post on French employment problems earlier. Check that out, because it is the exact same argument.

In fact, economically the only case for a minimum wage law would be in the case of a dominant employer that can actually force wages below efficiency. This type of employer has gone extinct since the advent of the car. Now some stick to the minimum wage because a recent study showed that a raise in the minimum wage had no effect on employment. However a subsequent study showed that a drop in employment does occur, it just happens before the minimum wage law goes into effect. Perhaps the strongest argument against minimum wage is that often labor unions are strong supporters of very high minimum wages. Why would this be, especially when their workers are all receiving well over minimum wage because of collective bargaining? The answer is that the mechanization that follows hikes in minimum wages causes increased demand for many skilled workers that make up unions now. Of course none of these arguments is a sure answer, but intuition gives a clear answer that all but one recent (often cited but also debunked) study have shown.

Now to finish up, I want to tie this all back in with this notion of unacceptable social rules because I think that economics offers may debunk many of our much loved "social rules" but it is doing so in attempt to benefit everyone. Sure Republicans may sell it to their constituency for a very different reason, but that does not make them wrong (and I am not happy about that either). Democrats really have to go back to what Clinton attempted to do or what Tony Blair is doing, move away from depleted labor unions and accept global trade, accept that minimum wage is not what FDR claimed it would be. Really the Democrats should be pushing for changes that benefit the poor and rich alike; one of Clinton's biggest successes was the Earned Income Tax Credit, a negative income tax if you would. More ideas like this would make the Democrats more than a party desperately holding onto FDR's legacy. We'll just have to wait and see where Hillary takes the party. It's going to be interesting.

-Mr. Alec

Financial Times (London, England) May 16, 2005 Monday


Copyright 2005 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)

May 16, 2005 Monday
USA Edition 1

A threat to impartiality in the American Senate

By BRUCE ACKERMAN

During the coming week, the US Senate will be struggling with a question that will affect the path of American constitutional law for decades. While senators are battling over Democratic efforts to filibuster George W. Bush's nominees to the courts of appeal, this conflict will set the stage for a larger struggle in June, when William Rehnquist is expected to announce his retirement as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Mr Rehnquist's retirement will be the first of a series. Eight of the court's nine justices are over 65. Depending on the new appointments, the court may continue down its present course or launch revolutionary changes in constitutional principle. Under existing rules, it takes 60 senators to terminate debate, enabling Democrats to filibuster judicial nominations that pander too obviously to the religious right. But rightwing activists are pressing the 55 Senate Republicans to allow a simple majority to confirm the president's judicial nominations.

Their prime target is Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader. As a leading candidate for the presidency, Mr Frist is especially eager to pacify his religious constituency. But the Senate rules do not make this easy. A special provision requires "two-thirds of the senators present and voting" to end debate on rule changes and Mr Frist will fall far short of the 67 senators this requires. His predicament is exacerbated by another provision stipulating that no rule may be changed except as "provided in these rules".

Faced with this unambiguous command, the Republican leadership has manufactured a constitutional objection to the rules themselves. The constitution says each house "may determine the rules of its proceedings", and for two centuries the Senate has exercised this power in a distinctive fashion. As only one-third of its members enter with every election, the Senate has viewed itself as a continuing body. Unless there is a challenge at its opening session, the Senate continues to operate under its established rules.

Mr Frist is urging his fellow Republicans to repudiate this understanding. He claims that the Senate has the constitutional right to be like the House of Representatives, which approves its rules each session by simple majority vote. Conservatives do not often insist on repudiating a practice dating from the founding fathers. In any event, Mr Frist's analogy to the House does not get him where he wants to go. Once the House organises itself at its opening session, it must follow its own rules if it wants to change them later. In contrast, Mr Frist claims that a Senate majority may simply repudiate the rules at any time. This raises the question, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Reference Service, of wheth-er the Senate will become "a chaotic environment in which a temporary majority could change precedents any time it wanted to". The constitution gives the Senate the power to "determine its rules", but nothing gives it the authority to ignore them.

Nevertheless, the Republican leadership wants change before the Rehnquist vacancy opens. Mr Frist plans this week to make a pending judicial nomination into a test case. He is counting on vice-president Dick Cheney, as president of the Senate, to declare the key Senate rules unconstitutional, and to end debate on the basis of a simple majority vote. Unsurprisingly, he is having trouble rounding up 51 votes to support this manoeuvre, leading Mr Cheney to offer further assistance. As Senate president he has the power to break tie votes and has said he would cast the deciding ballot to destroy the rules.

There is more at stake than sheer lawlessness. The filibuster permits the Senate to play a moderating role within the constitutional system of checks and balances. Except when there is a decisive landslide, it requires the majority party to moderate its initiatives to gain the support of at least a few minority Senators. Mr Cheney's role in destroying the moderating role of the Senate is particularly problematic. For two centuries, the Senate president has been the pre-eminent guardian of the rules. Thomas Jefferson first put them in writing when he served as vice-president. His aim was to prevent political manipulation by the presiding officer, and Senate presidents have consistently served as impartial arbiters. In breaking with this tradition, Mr Cheney has a clear conflict of interests. As president of the Senate, he owes the institution fidelity to its rules, but as vice-president to Mr Bush, he wants to see his boss's judicial nominations confirmed. By allowing his executive interest to trump his duty to the Senate, Mr Cheney is undercutting the separation of powers.

Constitutional tragedy turns to farce in the light of Mr Cheney's professed aim: to appoint judges who will return to the original understanding of the constitution and the rule of law. Physician, heal thyself.

The writer is Sterling professor of law and political science at Yale University

Note: The Financial Times generally requires payment for its publications, but I [Bruce Ackerman] have obtained special permission from them for free circulation of this essay on the Internet. It may also be posted on web-sites.

Opinions on the Newsweek Scandal:

Alright, so I promised minimum wage, but you will not be getting it. That is because something happened that is kind of pissing me off. Now Newsweek published a story last week where they claimed that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed copies of the Koran down the toilet. Apparently this "caused" protests which turned into riots and this in turn caused nearly 17 people to die. Then it turns out the story was not as solid as it should have been and Newsweek came out with that. The Bush administration has pushed for Newsweek to retract the story, which they did.

Alright, now that we are caught up, let’s examine this a little more closely because there is a lot going on here. The first thing is this issue of the riots. Now many are attempting to blame the riots on Newsweek and I really think that is just plain stupid. Sure Newsweek published something that it was not sure happened, but I honestly do not think that people would riot because they read something in Newsweek that said the Koran was flushed down a toilet. Honestly, I doubt more than a couple hundred people in the Arab region read Newsweek and those people are not the ones who would start a violent riot. So then the question becomes, how did this riot begin if it was not a spontaneous outburst of anger as a result a bombastic story in a publication few could read, and even fewer do? Well of course the riots had to be arranged in some manner. Sure the Newsweek article may have upset an official of sorts, who then encouraged people to riot, but it was not the article that caused the riots, rather an official of sorts who was able to play on peoples already existing hatred for many things outside of the one incident in which a Koran may have been flushed down a toilet.

So if we want to levy an specific blame for the riots that ensued, we can't blame an article, we have to blame decades of oppressive American foreign policy towards the Arab region, which we are attempting to rectify, but which requires an initial exacerbation of that ill will to hopefully, eventually pacify. But anyways, lets no go wild here and claim Newsweek ought to get the death penalty for what it has done.

That is all for today, but before I go, I feel guilty for not posting something about the filibuster issue today, considering it may all go down tomorrow. But I have talked about it a good deal. Let me summarize though, it will be bad if done for all parties. There you go.

-Mr. Alec

I have changed the name of the blog in a desperate attempt to raise ratings.

Also, if I finish my biology crap, I am going to write an entry on minimum wage. You all know it has been coming for awhile. But definitely expect it by tomorrow evening.

One last note, everyone should check out Republican Dan's comment section on his entry entitled "Equal Opportunities," you can just scroll down until Commander Mike starts talking. It degrades more and more, until a debate is sparked on how important penis size is. Looks like some others are attempting to liberate his blog, but in a very different fashion.

-Mr. Alec

Precription Drugs and its Market Inequality:

Yes, I am going to post another entry tonight, mostly because I really do not want to write my essay for my biology class. Anyways, I want to briefly tackle one a particularly grave market inequality. Often when discussing prescription drugs, proponents of the status quo will give you an argument that runs along these lines, "The drugs that people want and will cure their lives will be the ones that drug companies spend their time creating, thus leading to a perfect market equilibrium where cures for AIDS and cancer are demanded and tirelessly worked on to create a supply."

As nice as that sounds, considering how complex meddling with health care always is, it is just wrong. Think about it for a second, what have been the largest advances in prescription drugs over the past five years? Although AIDS, pain, and heart medication have had very impressive advancements, we have also seen dozens of medications that battle depression, social stress, and everyone's favorite: erectile-dysfunction. Now I do not intend to demean the importance that all of these drugs have in people's lives, because all have greatly improved the living of thousands if not millions. But their success is beside the point, because it points to where prescription drug companies invest their money. They invest it in drugs that will make money. Even though malaria kills millions every year, the market for such a cure would be limited to sub-Saharan Africa and other tropical areas, areas that all share one thing: poverty.

Luckily for much of Africa, its other terrible affliction, AIDS, has also hit the United States, because if not, would drug companies care all that much? I suspect that they would not and I would not expect them to. I am not here to derided drug companies that are doing what the market tells them to do. Rather I think this is something that the world community should be looking at much more closely than it seems to be. Some type of market mechanism ought to be created which would create incentives for curing terrible yet unprofitable diseases. Especially considering the economic cost in production suffered every year from the destruction that AIDS and malaria have on Africa.

Unfortunately I do not have a solution, but hopefully those bitches who claim market perfection in the creation of prescription drugs will cram it.

-Mr. Alec

How Transferable is the Republican Parties Doctrine?

A couple of months ago there was an article in the New York Times by retired Senator, Rhodes Scholar, and Basketball Star Bill Bradley on the main difference between the Republican and Democratic parties entitled, "A Party Inverted." He stressed that the Republican party had a well established pyramid of think-tanks, lobbyists, and grass-roots coalitions that made a pyramid by which the presidential candidate only had to be placed on the top to make the party complete. Bradley continued by saying that the Democratic party had the opposite set-up, that frequently it would attempt to capture gold with a single candidate that would define his own issues and ideologies, and create, in effect, an upside down pyramid.

Initially this seemed like an excellent observation, especially given the recent history of the Democrats and their attempts to continually re-invent themselves over the past couple of decades. But how true is this about the Republicans? Does their pyramid only require a tiny little cap to make it complete?

I am truly starting to think that George Bush is a lot more than just a tiny cap on a pyramid. He is an extraordinary political figure who has been able to seem like a common man while having a WASP upbringing and the business connections necessary to win the business section of the Republican Party. Simultaneously, as a born-again Christian he is able to win over and more importunately, mobilize the social conservatives in a way that Reagan could not even do. For all that Democrats deride him for his seeming lack of intelligence and charisma; he is a man who has been able to unite the very distinct elements of the Republican Party.

Now according to Bradley's thesis, this should be an easy job, one that anyone could do. But I highly doubt that and I think we will see why in 3 years. Mostly because of the way that Bill Frist has manufactured a lot of his socially conservative views and how easily it will be for Democrats to crucify him on his litany of terrible choices (worst of all, according to The Economist, in his 1989 book Transplant, “He even recommended changing the legal definition of “brain death” to make it easier to harvest the organs of anencephalic babies (who are born with a fatal neurological disorder but show signs of mental activity).” Can someone say hypocrite). Because there does not seem to be anyone (as I know of yet) who has the transcendent charisma that Bush has, certainly Bill Frist does not have it, someone who rivals Al Gore in his ability to connect with the people.

In fact the Al Gore analogy with Bill Frist is a particularly fruitful one, I think I will hit more on that in a later post. But regardless of that point, I think that Bradley is giving the Republicans far too much credit for their success when he paints it as this well oiled machine, when in fact, much of the Republican success has been built around personalities who have had a much broader appeal then their individual ideologies. The list includes those like Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and of course Dubya. Also, this would explain why Reagan and Dubya have had such success while Bush Sr. floundered despite almost everything going for him.

But finally, the Democrats, because even though there does not seem to be a perfect coherent ideology from the Democratic Party, I think that is actually a good thing. The population is going through a lot of changes in its beliefs. Views on unions, economics, foreign policy, and religion have all changed drastically over the past decade, and just because the Democratic Party is going through growing pains in its attempt to capture the sturdy coalition necessary to exploit these changes does not mean we ought to spin off a dozen phony think tanks.

What the Democrats ought to do, is what Hillary Clinton is doing now. She is moderating much of her supposed social liberalism and she is appealing to the vast swath of lower-class Republicans that Bush was so apt at swooping into his coalition. David Brooks had an excellent column on this today and where he dissects poll numbers that are going to scare a lot of Republicans, who until now have reassured themselves that there is just no chance another Clinton could ever make it to the White House. Well it seems they have their work cut out for them and I promise that it will take a lot more than Bill Frist (or Al Gore 2.0) to accomplish that.

-Mr. Alec

Employment and Unemployment Policy

Alright, so I could not stay away. I have to talk about employment, France, and Wal-Mart. So first employment. Everyone always bitches about the number of jobs that are created, how Bush somehow "lost" the United States hundreds of thousands of jobs. The French always brag about their enlightened approach to legislation (i.e. a law saying you can not work more than 35 hours a week) and how their workers have been shown to be some substantial percentage more productive than American workers. All of these are stupid assertions. Oh and Wal-Mart is not all bad. Consider that my intro paragraph.

So the United States first. First, why is employment important? Well obviously it is important because in our country if you do not have a job, it hurts a lot. Job retraining is not easy and transitioning from a steady job you thought you would have your whole life to a different one is difficult. But employment is important for reasons outside of just bitchy poor people. It is a indicator of the success of the economy and the fact that economic growth created more jobs is the main reason why market economies are so fucking awesome. Unfortunately job growth has become far too political of an issue. George Bush has no control over how many jobs are created during his term. The most he can do is provide a temporary boost that would most likely end up being ultimately destructive. This is true for all presidents (with the exception of FDR, who is an exception given the significance of his problems). What can be done about job growth? Well economic stability and education are about the only solutions that are effective in the long term. The smarter you are, the more industries and innovations you create which in turn creates more jobs. Bush overseeing a budget deficit has no bearing on this (in the short-term at least).

Now in France they thought they had an excellent solution to their employment problem. They figured that if they had a certain number of jobs and people worked a long time, if they forced people to work less, more people could be hired. This is such a terrible idea for so many reasons. First of all it is based on an incorrect premise, that there are a fixed or even limited number of potential jobs. In fact, quite the opposite is true; there are an infinite number of possible jobs. But France is destroying those possible jobs with this legislation. First and foremost because under an economy where I can only work 35 hours, there is no point for me to go to the best college, to challenge myself, to go to graduate school, or to even work hard for the chance at more hours and higher pay. The second reason this is a terrible idea is because it kills employers. They now have to go out and hire a significantly higher percentage of workers, which they otherwise would not. Hiring workers is very costly, so what is their solution? Mechanization. If McDonalds has a machine that can make burgers at a cost of 15 dollars an hour, and the cost of hiring and paying a worker goes above that, they will not hire more workers; they will just buy the damn machine. This explains why the French so often brag about their increased productivity. Sure they are more productive, but that is some expensive productivity.

Last, Wal-Mart. Now I am really sick and tired of people bitching about Wal-Mart. I am fine with people not liking Wal-Mart in their town, out of fear that it may hurt their town center. But those who contend that it hurts its workers must take into account a number of very convincing. arguments. First, yes, Wal-Mart does not pay its workers incredibly well, but in doing so, is able to provide very cheap goods, goods that if all of a cities poor were forced to buy at "Ma and Pa's Corner Shop" would cost significantly more. Second, no one forces people to work at Wal-Mart. This is something people frequently forget. Some contend, well Wal-Mart is so big. Others go so far as claiming that the reason people get tricked into being forced into working their is the prestige it exhibits on its commercials. That is rubbish. Wal-Mart competes with other employers to hire people. It has no control on setting the wages of the market (the term for such a company is a monopsonist, and they pretty much do no exist since the invention of the car). True Wal-Mart does an extremely lousy job in competing for these jobs, and that is why they have an incredibly high rate of turnover. Ultimately this is very costly for them, given they have to continually retrain their workers, but those who stay around for longer than a couple of months do get raises. Now I think the Wal-Mart example brings into light disturbing market inefficiencies, but that is not Wal-Mart's job to fix, it is the governments. Unfortunately the government sucks at fixing these kinds of things. Job retraining vouchers, an increased earned income tax credit system (which was a great thing Clinton did), or some kind of healthcare system (yeah I said it, and I am starting to believe in some type of market solution being more and more necessary, especially given the detriment this has on really smart foreigners immigrating as well as the cost that employers often have to bear) would all go extremely far in using market solutions to market problems.

This has probably been my most controversial post thus far. Hopefully we can get some kind of argument going here. Though obviously stated with a certain bravado, I do not intend these to be the final ones on this dispute. Consensus anyone?

-Mr. Alec

Aristotle then what I have been up to:

Alright, so I said I would talk about that quote some more. I basically want to point out an interesting aspect of it, how Aristotle seems to value a moderation in life that we no longer see in our society. Those who are celebrated rarely show the moderation that ought to be celebrated. Maybe this is an aspect of a more meritorious society or perhaps it has to do with a market economy. Regardless, of the cause, this should be something taken to heart. Though I doubt I will listen to it, it’s a good thing to remember and keep in mind.

With that said, I think I am going to just review how Chicago has been, the classes I am taking, and then go to sleep. So this weekend has, by far, been the best weekend at Chicago. The weather becomes so nice, the campus so much more social. People are happy. We just had ScavHunt, which is by far the greatest tradition ever. What happens is that a list of challenges is created by a panel of judges and then each dorm attempts to accrue the highest number of points by fulfilling all of the challenges. Sounds pretty dull and clichéd doesn't it? Well it isn't at all; the challenges are awesome and sometimes just gross. For example, the two most scandalous of the past two years have been: get circumcised and eat your umbilical cord. Both were fulfilled by a number of teams. Crazy. But the other challenges involve writing an epsilon-delta proof proving that your milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and filming the prequel to too fast too furious, entitled, not fast enough, not quite furious enough. The list goes on and on. But the best part was the entertainment provided on the quads, with each team throwing competing parties, complete with pretty damn good live music. It was a great time.

So then those pesky classes. The best class I am in is my Humanities course which I have taken as a year long sequence. This quarter we are focusing on the birth of historiography and it was has really been fascinating. The readings have been so interesting, ranging from Livy to Plutarch to Caesar to Tacitus. All have been really intriguing and everyone in the class is so intelligent and the class discussion is amazing. My second most interesting class is my Economics class, which is the first "real" economics class I am taking, meaning it is the first quantitative economics class. It is pretty intense, mostly multivariable calculus, which I did not know until I entered the class, but it is really amazing how a mathematical model of human behavior is constructed. Very interesting. The third interesting class is my third quarter of Calculus. It is not that difficult, but my professor is great and calculus is important stuff. Last, my not so great class is Core Biology. I have to take this course; it is just an introduction to biology class. It is boring, I learn nothing, and they make us write an essay. All in all it is a waste of my time. Though when I studied for the midterm, the stuff I taught myself was really interesting.

So those are my classes. Sorry if this was a lousy post. Hopefully some interesting news will come up soon. Or maybe I will write something comparing Tom DeLay to Lyndon Johnson, that would be interesting, though I do not know enough about Tom DeLay the person, I only know his politics. But at any rate. Adios.

-Mr. Alec

Note:

Yeah, I just realized what a disservice I did to that quote. I now promise a follow up. I think that quote has broad social implications that are especially important in modern day. Also it poses an interesting conflict that inherently benefits certain people. Wow, I really will unpack this quote this weekend. Sorry, I will leave the post up though.

-Mr. Alec

Aristotle on Greatness and why that matters:

This is kind of corny, and not something that I would normally do, mostly because I like answering questions a lot more than I like posing questions and pretending to sound smart. But nonetheless I was introduced to a particularly interesting and poignant quote from Aristotle's Ethics on the difference between excellence and skill. I am writing an essay on the extent of Alexander the Great's, "Greatness."

“Again, neither do the case of skills and that of excellences resemble each other: the things that come about through agency of skills contain in themselves the mark of their being done well, so that it is enough if they turn out in a certain way, whereas the things that come about in accordance with the excellences count as done justly or moderately not merely because they themselves are of a certain kind, but also because of facts about the agent doing them—first, if he does them knowingly, secondly if he decides to do them and decides to do them because they are the things a just person would do, and thirdly if he does them from a firm and unchanging disposition. When it is a matter of having skills, these conditions are not relevant, except for knowledge itself; but when it comes to having the excellences, knowledge makes no difference, or a small one, whereas the force of the other conditions is not small but counts for everything.”
-Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (1105a28-1105b4)

So this topic got me thinking, who then would fall into this category of greatness? Very few modern examples would meet any of those conditions, let alone all three. I think this issue is pertinent in that greatness is a term often thrown around. Many would describe Ronald Reagan as a great man, perhaps he meets that definition, perhaps he doesn't (I would lean towards not). Also, Robert Kennedy may serve as an example, although he has mitigating factors that I wrote an independent study on (ie is far outside the scope of this post, let alone blog). My mom suggested Burke Marshall, who I think is an excellent example (here is his obituary for those who have not heard of Burke Marshall, but go buy a biography of Robert Kennedy if you have not heard of Burke Marshall).

So that is just one opinion. Perhaps I will follow up on this post in the future. Perhaps not. You'll just have to keep coming to see...

-Mr. Alec