NYC Junta

The latest psychology strikes a blow against reality TV, but it shows some evidence in favor of what we’re doing at the Junta. From the journal Psychological Science:

Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations

Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions—the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker—exist, but little is known about which interaction style is actually associated with greater happiness (King & Napa, 1998). In this article, we report findings from a naturalistic observation study that investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they have.

Next time you see somebody in the office kitchen, getting a coffee, don’t ask about their weekend. Ask what they think about Iran getting the bomb, or the nature of God, or … hell, at least talk about a movie. Just no more about the weather. It’s making you depressed.

This is the malevolence we are resisting. Ours is a worthy battle.

Via the Times

In the News conversation, junta, society

I’m not usually for moral relativism, I’m more of a universal values man myself, but I think you gotta cut Morgan Tsvangirai a break when it comes to his remarks on gay rights, which seem to be more in line with Mugabe than the rest of the world. Tsvangirai has suffered greatly and is a guy I admire, apparently some people are talking about him for the Nobel Prize. Interesting that the Times has made gay rights in Africa a theme of their coverage in the last few months. Part of the insidious gay agenda? Just kidding.

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In a rare glimmer of good news out of the wasteland of Somalia, it looks like Al Shabab, the brutal Islamist group trying to take over Somalia, is losing ground. Props to Jeffrey Gettleman on actually being brave enough to report from Mogadishu.

I noted at the end of the story that Shabab is having problems funding their jihad. Junta members/readers will recall our talk and posts on piracy. The conventional wisdom is that the pirates are not in cahoots with Shabab, though some money probably changes hands. The pirates would not want to align themselves too closely with a terrorist organization because that would possibly put them out of business, either in the form of military intervention or governments really applying pressure to forbid paying a ransom (which, if it is was to Shabab, would violate the Patriot Act). But when ruthless groups get desperate they turn to whatever means necessary to raise money. So I would watch whether Shabab gets more in piracy. Similarly, there was a very interesting piece in Forbes entitled Is al Qaeda Bankrupt? It looks at some of the ways that al Qaeda has tried to keep up funding (kidnapping, drug trafficking, extortion) in light of effective financial measures put in place to curb terrorist financing.

Articles al Qaeda, global jihad, Shabab, somalia

Do any of the following describe you and your job?

• have a long commute to an office where communication is mainly by email and phone
• most in-person communication consists of long meetings that accomplish little
• it’s hard to find time for tasks that demand dedicated attention; too many interruptions in the office
• manage/report to people in other countries and time zones

Nine-to-five just seems archaic today. So many of our jobs revolve around people sitting in front of computers, yet we still cling to the factory model for structuring working hours. I’ve been working a straight job for only five years, but the one thing that has bugged me from the start—more than the cubicle, more than the corporate fun runs—is the underlying presumption that we all work the same way, from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. And girding that falsehood is a series of others: that our bosses have to see us to manage us; that those not in sight are escaping their responsibilities; that we worker drones are inherently lazy and need to be controlled.

Lucky then, that I am starting to find like-minded folk out there. Jason Fried of 37signals, a software company, discusses in this interview “Why You Can’t Work At Work,” where in 6 minutes he cogently explains the problems with the modern office. Interruptions lead to working longer hours, and personal life slips away as time is wasted. People start to hate their jobs, even if they like their work. 37signals has just released a new book about their ideas called Rework. [Sidenote: it is the first book I can remember in a long time that does not follow the Catchy Title: Long Explanatory Subtitle naming convention.]

An organization called ROWE is solely dedicated to spreading the idea of a Results-Only Work Environment. The tagline is “Where people are paid for productivity, not time spent ‘at work.’” Sounds exactly right. There are obvious benefits to the employees in such arrangements. Their time and freedom are restored to them. Not only do they not have to ask their boss for permission to see the dentist on a weekday, but they don’t have to request time off, either. The organization doesn’t care if you’re in New York, Maui, or Tajikistan as long as the work gets done. Individual freedom and responsibility leads to happier employees and better retention rates.

And what benefits go to the employer? Some ask how results would be measured. This is the first sign that the organization doesn’t currently measure results at all, except by confirming that employees are at their desks during business hours. If this is your only check on an employee’s productivity, then you actually have no idea if this person is worth paying at all. To those who say people would slack off given such freedom, guess what: we already do. When there is no requirement for anyone to be in the office at any particular time, and people are judged by the quality of their work alone, it is easy to tell who is doing a good job and who is not.

But what if people end up working different amounts of time? Isn’t that unfair? Not really, say I.The current system assumes that every working person has exactly 40 hours of work to do each week. Does that even remotely make sense? In reality, people’s productivity is limited by their environment, their attention span, stress levels, etc. Allowing them to choose their time and place of work is more likely to increases their productivity.

Of course not every job is suited to this. But for so-called “knowledge workers,” it’s the future. In addition to increased productivity, better retention rates, and lower stress levels among employees, businesses can see reduced costs through less office space, less travel, and a more robust business continuity plan—because every worker is already empowered to work wherever, whenever. A dispersed system is better prepared for the unexpected.

Really, the only thing holding us back is a lack of imagination and the crushing weight of the status quo. Start to talk about these things, however, and you’ll be surprised how much change is possible.

Articles commuting, freedom, technology, work

Almost daily I read things about China that make me shake my head. Sometimes I find myself doing so in admiration for the Chinese. They have really moved forward quickly on creating a green-tech sector in the country, for instance. But most often I am shaking my head in dismay. Whether it’s the ethnic genocide that the Chinese are pursuing in western China against Buddhists and Muslims, the rampant destruction of the environment and their infuriating obstructionism on taking steps to slow that process, or their attitudes towards animals (anyone see this horrible story about Siberian Tigers in China?), so often I find myself totally opposed to China’s aims and values and skeptical about their motives. 

Today one of the news items out of China is on the fate of the Rio Tinto executives that have been held in China since the summer on charges of espionage. They are reducing the charges in a slow diplomatic climb-down, but the facts seem largely the same. It looks like China, unhappy with the status of negotiations with Rio Tinto and others on global pricing for steel decided to send a message and essentially hold one of the big companies hostage.  

The other thing I’m thinking about today’s is the value of China’s Renminbi and how disagreement over that is potentially building to a climax. It was one thing before the financial crisis for China to artificially keep its currency low to fuel export-driven growth. At that time consumers in the US and Europe were buying up cheap Chinese goods and everyone was winning, even if economists were warning about dangerous and unsustainable balances that resulted. And right after the economic crisis started policy-makers in the west were just trying to save their financial systems, Chinese currency manipulation fell off the agenda. And no one knew how China would be affected by the crisis. A huge Chinese stimulus package has played a big role in keeping China moving at roughly the same 8% annual growth it had predicted prior to the crisis. But China has retreated from slowly letting its current appreciate against the dollar and now economists are saying that this is hurting the global economy, further warping trade balances when the rest of the world can no longer afford it. Forget the US for a moment, many third world countries are hurt by this beggar-thy-neighbor fiscal policy as they can’t compete with warped business margins manipulated by Chinese technocrats.

China’s years of economic growth and America’s woes have led to more and more destructively hostile behavior from China as it tries to throw its weight around. It reacts with petulant anger and robot-like defiance to reasonable requests from the rest of the world to discuss a range of issues. For years people have talked about US exceptionalism, and you can knock the US if you want, but the idea of that exceptionalism was that the US would intervene to try to right wrongs, help the oppressed, and generally steer the world in a postive direction. Chinese exceptionalism is about telling the rest of the world to go to hell and come kowtow to ”The Middle Kingdom” when we’re ready. The Chinese belief that they are somehow above the rest of the world and shouldn’t have to held to its rules is nothing new. I hope that like Lord Macartney in the late 18th century, the world will refuse to kowtow to China’s unreasonable ways.

Articles china, currency manipulation, Renminbi

Reading this story in the business section of the NY Times about Saudi oil production and Chinese consumption, I was struck by a few things. I think it’s interesting to follow the diplomacy that Saudi Arabia is engaged in to put pressure on China to support increased sanctions on Iran. Saudi Arabia is promising China increased production to make up for any short-falls that might arise as a result of such sanctions. The message is that the Chinese would suffer from the instability of a nuclear Iran, and that is a message that the Chinese might listen to. It’s obviously true that appeals about nuclear proliferation are at best an ancillary concern for China, which doesn’t want to see proliferation increase but also doesn’t see it as a direct threat to its interests (and it is a direct threat to its main geo-political rival, the US, which China balances as a positive). But this quote is the one that caught my eye the most: “The Saudis are particularly concerned about the shape of the global market where all the growth comes from the east and all the security comes from the west,” by Jon B. Alterman, a Middle East expert. The Chinese are content to coast on a US-dominated security platform where the US is the guarantor of global stability. China doesn’t see the world at all in terms of globalization, but rather only in terms of its narrowly defined parochial interests. The challenge of balancing a decline in US power with a rise in Chinese power will be fraught as this equation frays in the future.

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Pretty unhappy about the news out of Israel lately. Briefly, VP  Biden was in the region to try to get talks between the Israelis and Palestinians moving again and was greeted by an annoucement that new building would start on Israeli settlements in contested east Jerusalem. I don’t want to summarize all the history, but Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital, while the rest of the world rejects this. Most reasonable people think that any peace between the two sides will have to include a shared Jerusalem.

I consider myself one of those reasonable people, even if I am definitely biased towards the Israeli side. But acknowledging that bias, I am interested in a lasting peace, mainly because I’m interested in a prosperous and safe Israel. I resent what I think is the over-critical stance of the rest of the world towards Israel, no country would be asked to live with a neighbor lobbing rockets into civilian areas, and no country is subject to the microscope of international scorn when it attempts to stop such terrorism. But whenever I heard of Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinians are check-points or news like last week, which embarrasses the US (Israel’s greatest ally), it upsets me because I feel like Israel has to maintain the moral high ground in the conflict or all is lost. The situation is toxic enough without having right-wing religious parties bent on controlling all of Jerusalem (and, indeed the West Bank) undermining the peace process (which is what happened when the Shas-dominated interior ministry made the announcement of new construction in east Jerusalem as Biden arrived). What I fear is going to happen, and what a left-wing Jewish colleague of mine just back from Israel agreed is likely, is Intifada III. I felt a bit sick this morning reading about new clashes in Jerusalem over this latest development. There is never a good time for violence, but with the challenges already out there–an Iran hell-bent on a nuclear program, a still volatile Iraq, the war in Afghanistan at a major turning point–we don’t need the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to erupt into horrible violence again.

It’s time for the US to use some of its considerable leverage over Israel to stifle the extremist voices that are threatening a possible peace. That peace, which arrives and recedes over time, is tragically well known: a Palestinian state roughly along the 67 borders, with land transfers to reflect “facts on the ground”, and a shared Jerusalem (with probably some UN administration for the holy sites). I firmly believe that Palestinian state should be demilitarized, with a NATO presence on its borders to mitigate the risk of weapons being smuggled into the new Palestinian state. In short, I don’t trust that the Palestinians, or the surrounding states, will ever fully accept Israel. But the creation of a Palestinian state will take the wind out of the sails of Israel’s enemies who use the Palestinians as pawns against Israel. Thomas Friedman, who I generally find tiresome and repetitive these days but who is still good on the Middle East, thinks that only a right wing government, like Netanyahu’s current administration, can deliver a lasting peace. I’m not so sure. I think Ehud Barak, with his military credentials, could have pulled it off, and it was Arafat that tragically walked away from peace at the end of Clinton’s administration. It’s time to make the leap and see if the Palestinians are serious about peace. Israel has to show that it is the smart democracy with a long-term vision for it’s people that I truly believe it is. I hope that its own extremist haven’t capitalized on the years of Palestinian violence and intransigence and taken over fully.

Articles Biden, Intifada, israel, Jerusalem, Netanyahu

Wow.

Via Boing Boing, H.P. Albarelli Jr claims the CIA sprayed liquid LSD over the air and spiked the bread supply of Pont-Saint-Esprit, a village in southern France, in 1951.

From the Telegraph:

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Words escape me. Weren’t we just talking about how actions can have unintended consequences? One would think that—even in 1951—people would have considered how much could go wrong by feeding a large, unknowing population with heavy psychotropic drugs. But maybe not.

In the News cia, france, lsd

I started the discussion on Tuesday night with a sort of mini-argument: four points that I had arrived at over a couple of weeks reading on the subject of Iran, which I figured would get the ball rolling on the evening. Because of the sharp minds in attendance, it was all that was necessary to spark a great conversation. I said:

• Iran is the dominant power in the Middle East. This was a historical fact for a long time before Saddam Hussein’s Iraq became a check on Iran’s power—and now the US has removed that check. While Israel and Saudi Arabia are America’s allies in the region, Iran could take both of them, as it had indeed already defeated Israel in Lebanon. Even the US could not really take over Iran. We could bomb them into submission and take Tehran, but we would not be able to hold the country against the guerrilla threat they represent.
• Iran has the power to make the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan untenable, and indeed they have already done this to some degree. They have become experts at proxy warfare, and at this point they are able to determine the level of violence that US forces have to deal with in certain parts of both countries.
• All of this, it is important to note, does not require that Iran possess nuclear weapons. Indeed we (America) are quite powerless to stop them acquiring nukes if they are determined to have them. Sanctions won’t work; military attacks won’t work. Iran has the power to drive oil prices through the roof, by mining the Strait of Hormuz or launching missiles at tankers, which would make life in America very painful.
• Given all this, the best option is for America to reach some kind of settlement with Iran. This would involve giving Iran a formal role in maintaining the security of Iraq, which would likely end up partitioned. We would share responsibility for security of the Strait of Hormuz, because both countries have an interest in keeping the oil flowing. Trade and talk would increase as sanctions were lifted and diplomatic ties restored, and Iran would agree to stop arming Hezbollah and Hamas. America would stop talk of regime change and guarantee Iran’s security, in order to foster closer ties and stop the Iranians inching closer to Russia and China. In short, the US would balance its strategic alliances in the region.

There was some controversy in my words, because Jarrod came in right off the bat to challenge my first point, saying that Iran, in the wake of last year’s elections and subsequent protests, had never been weaker. And while it seems the mullahs aren’t going anywhere yet, I would concede that they might feel a bit restricted right now. Jarrod came back later in the evening, twice, on the point on nuclear weapons: the concern is not that Iran will use them, but that they will give them to others who will. “If a white light flashes over Israel, then that’s it, and Iran can say they had nothing to do with it.” Alex contended this forcefully, saying the uranium traces (or something) after an explosion would definitively prove where the bomb was made. So it seems Iran wouldn’t be able to get away with it, although that provides little comfort to Israel, since they are too small to absorb a nuclear explosion and still viably exist.

A lot was made of Ahmedinejad’s words towards Israel; although I argued that he didn’t have the final say in Iran, Noah said convincingly that he obviously spoke for the leadership. But Alex reminded us all that the fact is that there is no evidence Iran is pursuing nukes—citing the most recent intelligence reports. Noah claimed otherwise, mentioning the articles we have been seeing on our front pages for so long. But we also read a lot about Iraq’s weapons programs in the newspapers, I said, which turned out to be bluster.

We debated whether we could know the character of the Iranian people. Is there a “red/blue” divide, similar to America’s, with rural people more supportive of Ahmedinejad’s populism and jingoism, and urban “elites” more inclined towards cosmopolitanism and internationalism? Some argued in general support of this idea, although my conclusion was that we generally know very little of the Iranian people, despite the seeming ease of false labels.

The conversation broke into pieces several times during the evening, which was great. There were 10 people there, so it was inevitable that mini-convos would break out here and there. Of course I couldn’t follow everything that happened at once.

My most contentious point may have been the partitioning of Iraq. Some participants, Noah most vocally, said this would be crazy, that after spending so much blood and treasure we should “lose” Iraq. My point was that it was inevitable without American troops on the ground: should we stay forever? “Well, we’re still in Germany, we’re still in Korea,” Noah said. This is true of course, but it worries me. I don’t foresee a day when American soldiers are not being attacked in Iraq, or Afghanistan. I don’t think Korea and Germany are good models (in fact, I don’t think we should have troops in those countries, anyway). I argued that Iran already had some de facto control over southern Iraq, and that they would take it over when we left, anyway. But Noah seemed to think that we could leave a strong Iraqi government behind. This I doubt, and so it seemed we would not reach any agreement here.

Mark said something which put everything in perspective. Over the last 15-20 years (and I would argue, even longer), when the US has seen a geopolitical problem in the world, it has resolved to do something about it. We have gone into countries, or engaged with countries, in a way which we determined would solve the problem. We’ve taken decisive action. But most of the time, there have been unforeseen consequences that have either made the original problem worse, or created wholly new problems to deal with. Perhaps, in the future, we should endeavor to do less, to be more passive, and to let things play out before we act.

***

What are your thoughts? If you were there, fill in my account with points I missed. If you weren’t, what would you have added?

Wrap-Ups iran, israel, nukes, oil, politics, usa

I’m avid reader and admirer of Peter Singer, his columns with Project Syndicate (my ex-employer) are well worth reading. This month he used the recent tragic death of a trainer at Sea World by a killer whale to talk about the cruelty of animal parks and circuses.  I find myself in total agreement; if I had kids I would not take them to the zoo or a circus for the exact reasons he lays out.

I had the good fortune spend a bit of time with Professor Singer when I was in Melbourne and starting to work on a story on animal welfare in China. I read his seminal book Animal Liberation at that time and, more recently, The Ethics of What We Eat, and his views have really influenced me. One thing I was struck by in the introduction to Animal Liberation was the fact that Professor Singer isn’t a particular animal lover per se—he just feels strongly that our views on animals are a form of speciesism that we need to rethink. His views made me question the way I eat, something that has been an ongoing process. Lately I’ve been reading reviews of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” and I was struck by something I read by him in an essay on the Huffington Post. He talked about how eating ethically doesn’t have to be a zero sum game—you can strive to eat ethically without going vegan, or even fully vegetarian. He compares it to an environmentalist who accepts that he/she will sometimes drive in a car. That was really an epiphany for me. People sneer at the term, but I like the idea of the conscientious omnivore and that is what I strive for these days, trying to avoid eating meat that has been intensively raised.

I’d love to do a Junta on this issue. People so frequently just snicker or denigrate these ideas, but I think they are being defensive and there is a lot to explore philisophically about it and it has such a direct impact on our health and how we live.

Articles animal welfare, Dawn Brancheau, killer whale, Peter Singer, Project Syndicate