Introduction to My Miserable Jobs: Job #1, Carrier

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Job Number 1, Paper Boy. To be truthful, my very first legitimate (perhaps that is questionable) job was that of what is now called Newspaper Carrier. Oh, the Palm Beach Post referred to us as Carriers, but everyone else called us Paper Boys. Even the rare girl so employed was a Paper Boy, I believe. I do recall a girl who had a big route, and a particularly big rear, who made quite a success at the delivery business and even bought herself a new bike with front and rear baskets. I was not a success. When did I start this miserable endeavor? I would say I was 14, I think there was a lower limit on age. That would make the year 1963. Maybe I was 13, my memory is not good concerning the 60’s.We did not exactly work for the Post, but were “independent contractors” under the control of a District Manager. This was in my case, as in most cases, an evil Dickensian character, whose expertise in the exploitation of his band of amoral boys was exceeded only by our own skills at deception and trickery. Thankfully, the name of this vile loser has now exited my memory, but I know I remember him as Fagin.Young Fagin was a tow-headed braggart, and a man who rarely buttoned his shirt. He held court in his carport, slouched against some big fin muscle car. He would gather us for “management meetings” on an occasional Saturday, where he would exhort us to sell more subscriptions, thus adding to our income slightly and his greatly. There were prizes of all sorts including brand new Schwinn bicycles which we all coveted but which no one ever won. Fagin was skilled at lighting a fire under the butts of the boys and we went door to door, like orphaned beggars, pleading for subscriptions.You must know that customers paid in cash to the Paper Boy on a weekly basis, and then we paid the District Manager for the cost of the paper. Or rather the other way around, as we always had to pay in full and up front each week or forfeit a large cash deposit which invariably had been made by our parents. On the other hand, collecting from the Post reader was nearly impossible. Once again, this was a door-to-door pursuit, done on Friday evenings in anticipation of our debt to be paid Saturday morning, no later. I would knock and sing out: “Paper Boy! Come to Collect! Paper Boy!” Generally, this was enough to make the inhabitants hide in the bathroom. If I recall, the cost of the subscription for a week was about one dollar or perhaps one dollar twenty five. The boys’ profit for a full weekly subscription was a quarter per week, if Sunday was delivered, and only ten cents per week for a five-day delivery. God only knows what the Fagin demon made, but assuredly he did well as he was always paid while the boys were never paid in full.I recall that the several Jewish households on the Lakeside always paid with methodical regularity, while the good Christian rednecks were generally spent up on beer and were reeking drunk by Friday evening. One boozy fraud, a lowlife woman of questionable profession, was never home in the evening or on Saturday morning. She was so much in arrears to me, that I vowed to keep delivering as it was the only hope I had to force her to pay. If her paper were stopped she would never have any incentive to pay. It was Catch-22 before Heller wrote it. One morning before dawn, on my delivery rounds, I smacked her paper hard against her door. The doorbell brought no answer, but I knew from the car in the driveway the creature was within, sleeping off a night of wickedness. Creeping around in the dark to her bedroom, I noted the window was open to the coolness of the Florida morning. I banged the window and yelled: “Paper Boy! Come to collect! You owe me for five weeks!” From the darkness of the pit inside came a groan of pure suffering. She roared back: “Nobody’s home…and I am asleep!” So much for my pay. I stopped her delivery, gave up and took another loss.The idea that anyone would have so little character as to cheat a child out of $1.25 is beyond my belief even to this day. The substance of all forms of abuse, because they could I suppose. And what we went through on our appointed rounds! The procedure was this: up at 5 AM, and ride the bicycle on the old hand me down machine, if the tires were not flat, to the drop-off site. Once I awoke to the shock and sadness of having my bike’s wheels stolen, no doubt by another paper boy with flat tires. The drop site was an unproductive gas station where the heavy wire-bound bundles of papers were dumped in several piles for each of three or four boys. We cut the bundles with wire cutters purchased at a crooked price from the DM, and individually folded each paper and bound it with a rubber band, purchased in bulk. If it was rainy, we “bagged” each paper in a waxed wrap, purchased from the slimy District Manager. There would be a series of messages with the bundles. “Starts” would add a subscriber to the list of deadbeats and a new paper to pay for. “Stops” were those who quit subscribing after failing to pay for weeks, a loss borne solely by the Paper Boy. To issue a “stop” by the Paper Boy brought an argument from the Evil One. If District Manager did agree to stop the paper, invariably he would keep sending one in the bundle for several days or weeks to exact a revenge out of our profits.Then the procedure, after an hour or so of wrapping papers with the other boys and telling prurient stories, was to stuff the rolled papers into wire baskets fore and aft of the bike. The boys took great pride in their ability to ride fast, reach into the basket and whip out a paper, and sling it hard and fast. A paper on the roof or in the bushes was ignored. Always, I missed several households and wound up with useless papers added to the many extra sent in my bundle by the deceit and crooked counting of the vile Fagin. Of course, the reader would call the Post and I would be charged a penalty for the delivery by the District Manager, in addition to paying for the paper.And this so-called manager was a convincing liar. He liked to brag about how he cheated his insurance company by stealing his own hot rod transmission and hiding it in a closet! After I had the whimpiness to whine to my own dear Mother that I was losing money and now in danger of losing part of her deposit, she asked to “go over the books” with the Fagin Devil himself. He convinced her that I “should be making over $7.75 per week, if only I would collect from the subscribers. It is a matter of hard work,” he proclaimed. In the goodness of her blessed heart, she allowed me to quit in arrears, and lost some of the deposit. So ended my days as a “Carrier” for the Palm Beach Post.

Actually, it didn’t. Later I took another route and fared just as poorly, and then even as an adult I took a motor route to hold life together for a while. One never learns.

Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, Simon Callow, 2012

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His audiences would sob uncontrollably, laugh with abandon, and sometimes gawk in rapt wonder and all this after fighting for admission like rock star fans, lining up by the thousands long before daybreak.  Charles Dickens was not only the most celebrated writer and social activist of his era; he was a supreme actor, public reader, storyteller, and showman.  The iconic A Christmas Carolwas performed hundreds of times, along with memorable scenes from his novels and stories.  He wrote, co-wrote and acted in dramas and comedies and readings attended by the elite and poor and even the royalty and artists of Europe.  Queen Elizabeth told him of her adulation dating from her teenage years reading Oliver Twistand later, she was moved deeply by his acting in The Frozen Deep, a three-hankie melodrama.  In America, a late in life reading tour was mobbed, and Dickens was feted and nearly worshipped, and, at long last, forgiven for his snarky criticism from his first American tour in American Notes and in episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit.
Simon Callow, familiar to many as the actor who played Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, wrote this biography which is focused on Dickens on the stage.  The furious life and frantic personality of Dickens was portrayed as a dominating presence in the theater that seemed to be the real center of Dickens’ life.  Actors and critics loved his performances, and many of his astounding characters, with names right out of morality plays, were portrayed, amended, and brought to life by Dickens himself.  Dickens, who put his entire outsized personality into his stage presence, believed in the power of performance and even dabbled in Mesmerism and magic and mysterious events like the portrayal of a self-combustion in Bleak House.  Like Mark Twain after him, he was equally loved for performance as for writing and even now, Dickens’ work is the stuff of hundreds of movies, plays, musicals, readings, by amateurs and professionals alike, including Simon Callow, who looks for all the world like Dickens himself.

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, 2005

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In Blink, and in earlier The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell celebrates the small, the little clues that we all see but rarely notice, that should lead us to a sound conclusion.  According the Gladwell, we should trust the intuitive, the flash of insight, the first glance, the nonverbal, the insights in the thin-sliced verdict. 
When it comes to nonverbal signals sent by speakers, or liars, or lovers, the evidence is overwhelming that we may not be able to explain the messages, but we all get them.  They teach us more than words can, and, as in the case of the shooting of Amadou Diallao, ignoring the unspoken signs can lead to terrible consequences.  Extreme stress, fear, and the pressure of time blind us to the obvious.
Often enough, we do react, and often badly, to unconscious prejudices about race, and color and even height.  Gladwell shows through simple, verified experiments in judgments of people that such tests demonstrate we all make snap and subtle decisions based on deeply ingrained preconceptions.  Gladwell himself tested positive on these, showing a moderate preference for whites even though he says, “I’m half black,” from the side of his mother, a Jamaican.
The case of the kouros, a fake statue that convinced experts after extensive examination that it was genuine begins the book.  Gladwell shows how the first take, the quick insight of experts told a different story but the Getty Museum wanted desperately to have a genuine kouros and failed to trust that thin-sliced first glance.  In this case, as well as in the discussion of the marriage relationship experts, the author seems to argue, unconvincingly, that the unconscious judgments are better and more trustworthy than close and careful consideration.  This argument of Gladwell tries to convince us that, in some important cases, the magical insights of intuition are superior to the careful and systematic examination of evidence.  It is simply not to be believed.  However, this book presents a fascinating and overwhelming demonstration that the little blinks of insight and discovery are enormously important, that the language of the nonverbal can be learned, and that it is important that we do so. 

Einstein, Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster, 2007

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I wonder what it would have been like for a Princeton undergrad to ride back to school on the Dinky and find himself seated next to Albert Einstein or to see him seated at the corner ice cream store on Nassau Street where he would stop on his walk home.  Einstein would walk daily to his office chatting with his friend Kurt Goedel.  Interesting that these two monumental minds found such a bond, with Goedel who described the limits of logic and Einstein who explained the great expansive energy of the universe.
Walter Isaacson explains the basics of Einstein’s theories in a way that, mercifully, the average reader can understand.  By average reader, I mean, all of us who struggled with math and are baffled by physics.  And it is decidedly not true that Einstein was backward as a child and could not learn mathematics.  He mastered calculus in his teens was good enough at it to tutor the lesser minds of fellow students.  On the other hand, he was slow to take up language, but then again, it is clear that all his life he thought deeply and thoroughly before speaking.
It is interesting and surprising to learn that his discoveries were made mostly of thought experiments, rather than by actual physical testing.  That task was left largely to others who proved his theories.  It is also a surprise that this man of science insistently denied that he was an atheist.  In fact, he surprised several friends who assumed that he had no belief in a grand designer of the incredible design of nature.  On the other hand, he said he had no belief in a personal God, but rather believed in Spinoza’s God.  Spinoza defined God so broadly and was so opposed to what he termed the superstitious stories of the Bible, that it would be hard to say in what kind of deity Einstein did believe.
On thing is certain, he was proud of his Jewish heritage and hated the German nationalism even before Germany turned to the Nazis.  Einstein was also somewhat skeptical of the growing nationalism in Palestine that eventually brought about the state of Israel.  Nonetheless, he lobbied for the founding of Israel and was even offered it first presidency which he wisely declined.
Isaacson debunks many of the things we think we know about Einstein but it is true that there actually was some reason in the suspicions that the FBI had about him during the war.  Apparently he never knew it, but in his later years the woman he dated was indeed a Soviet agent.  His last years were spent quietly and peacefully in Princeton where he was thought to be just as he was, a thoughtful man who had every right to display superior airs, but didn’t.  His neighbors had a little daughter who would sneak over to Einstein and get help with her mathematics homework and he obliged.  She complained to him that her math problems were so difficult, but Albert Einstein, the patient genius, told her that his math problems were even more difficult.

Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely

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Predictably Irrational is nano-economics, a Freakonomics twist on the psychology of buying and selling, deciding and choosing.  Dan Ariely, an MIT professor of Behavioral Economics, presents in a readable style his many simple and ingenious experiments that demonstrate the irrational side of the everyday decisions we make.   Apparently, we may believe we follow a common sense pattern of decision-making governed by the unseen hand of economics, but we really are more ruled by unacknowledged passions, inhibitions, and cultural values.
Some of his experiments do show what seem to be directed by common sense.  For instance, in the experiments where he gives away some chocolates and sells cheaply some others, he shows how most everyone is reluctant to take something for free.  It just isn’t polite to take the last piece of bacon, but Ariely goes to some length to find this an irrational contradiction to traditional economic rules.  And of course, we all tend to decide on a purchase when the vendor can show a similar, equally valuable product for a much higher price.
However, a subtle and irrational twist on purchasing what we think is a bargain is demonstrated by Ariely’s analysis of a subscription offer from the Economist.  The offer was $59 for web access, $125 for print, and $125 for print and web.  Of course, print and web is superior to print only for the same price, but the clever construction of the ad leads the reader to make a comparison and to purchase on the basis that it is a bargain.  Irrational, but we tend to make decisions by making comparisons.  When vendors introduce a product they may well be wise to also sell a slightly upgraded and higher priced similar product so that purchases will feel the lesser priced one is a deal.
The book also demonstrates with clever experiments that we all change the basis of decision making based on social norms and market norms and never the twain shall meet, or the consequences are drastic.  Buying and selling is where greed is good, but our interactions with people are based on love or maybe compassion or at the least on respect.  Don’t read the prices on the menu aloud at the expensive restaurant if you plan on a second date.  And even though your employees or fellow employees are in a market-based agreement with you, it is wise to treat them with the respect that social norms demand.
The chapter on decision-making under the heat of arousal can easily be skipped as a too-many-details story.  On the other hand, the book discusses some intriguing experiments on trust, cheating, and cooperation.  Students, given a chance to verbally report their own scores on simple tests for cash rewards will cheat, but only a little.  Students also quickly helped themselves to soft drinks Ariely left to entice them in dorm refrigerators.  He also left small stacks of dollar bills, but no one at all took any unattended cash.  People will cheat and even steal, but money is safer because it is clearly stealing and it cannot be rationalized.  Stores lose billions every year due to employee pilfering, but far less actual cash is stolen.  You can trust people only so much, but we knew that.
We also know, or most everyone does, about the “tragedy of the commons” where selfish fishing or any kind of common harvesting operations will harvest far too much and destroy the commons for themselves and all of us.  Ariely also discuss a game theory experiment that demonstrates the flip side of the tragedy of the commons.  In the Public Goods Game, four participants are given $10 each and allowed to pool as much of that as they wish.  The common pool is double, then divided by four and re-distributed.  If they all put in their $10, they will each end with $20.  But if one player puts in nothing, then he ends up with $25 while the others get $15 ($30 doubles to $60 divided by 4 is $15).  On the second round, the cycle of mistrust begins and players contribute less until no one cooperates and they all lose.
Could it be that the fiscal conservatives, the one per centers and laissez-faire independents are the ones who know how to game the system while the rest of us poor players think that we will be served best by cooperation and contributions to the common good.  Or do we eventually learn that trust yields less than mistrust?

Coming Apart, Charles Murray

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     Few authors can match the clarity and strength of persuasive writing shown by Murray in another of his controversial books of data, numbers, stats, graphs, and analysis.  It is a joy to read difficult material presented in such a lucid fashion.  Unfortunately, he does not convince, at least not about the decline of American virtues and the fall of the “American project.”  Where he demonstrates the divergence of the new upper class from the broad class of working and non-working class, his remarkably well supported conclusions are hardly assailable.
     He believes that there are four “culprits” leading to a “new upper class that increasing lives in a world of its own.”  These are the rewards of brains, wealth, the college sorting machine, and homogamy.  Brains are valued in the market in the knowledge society and educated persons increasingly sweep up the economic chips while the diminishing middle classes slip into menial or service jobs or unemployment.  Wealth, of course, generates wealth and power too as it always has.  The college sorting machine defines our lifestyle and even sorts us into zip codes, where highly educated ivy league alumni live in super-zips while second tier neighborhoods are occupied by those who had somewhat less education or went to good private colleges but not the best, and state school folks have lesser accommodations.   The poorer classes, or those in Murray’s theoretical Fishtown have no higher education and little hope of middle class opportunities.  What is worse, is the continuation of this class sorting by homogamy, that is, like marrying like.  He shows how (and here we go to Murray’s disturbing use of IQ scores as highly heritable traits) intelligence test scores ascend with each rung of the education ladder.  Thirty years ago, those without a high school education scored 88 on IQ testing but now it is at 87.  With a high school education, the score remains steady at 99.  Associate degreed persons scored around 104 to 105, while bachelor degreed persons scored 113.  With a masters it is 117 and a PhD or MD, LLD, DDS the score is 124.  Here’s the rub:  if IQ is more or less heritable, who is a high IQ young person going to marry?  They will meet a high IQ partner in an elite school, marry and voila, high IQ kinds.  The beat goes on.
     Murray demonstrates clearly that the elite class knows nobody in the lesser classes, and know nothing of their values, entertainment, neighborhoods, or travails.  A clever test he offers can be taken here:   http://www.scribd.com/doc/77349055/Coming-Apart-by-Charles-Murray-Quiz to show the reader just how well or not so well he fits into the new class structure.  
      After this powerful demonstration of the new classes, their size, characteristics, and the forces that drive this structure, Murray goes on to Parts II and III where he makes a case for American exceptionalism as constructed by the virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion and that these traits are lacking in the fall of the middle class and rebounding in the upper, educated classes.  And also that the world is coming apart and we are doomed and so forth.  It is indeed interesting to see that in the upper and elite class that marriage, parenting, industrious work ethics and even religiosity are strong and in the lower class, these have fallen off a graph cliff.  Most people may think that religion is especially strong among the less educated and lacking in the upper class, but the opposite is true.  The rise of fundamentalism among the poor may make it look like religion is strong among many less educated persons, but this is not so.   Murray also spends some time in showing the Putnam bowling-alone syndrome and that the lack of social capital is destroying working neighborhoods. 
      Murray in the final chapters promotes his libertarian answer to wait ails America, but with the crazy tea-baggers out of the closet and a Ayn Rand resurgence out and about, it is a bad time to promote such a nutty response.  He goes into the moral hazards of welfare, noting the awful destruction of personal satisfaction from jobs and responsible parenthood, apparently believing that personal freedom and limited government (that tedious phrase) is preferable to the European social welfare model.  Being fair, he allows how socialism has its points and even gives a suggested reading list for those who disagree with him on this point.  But American fairness is a virtue that seems to me to be more important in our founding characteristics than religion or the work ethic, and fairness is a salient feature of what is most admired about us as a people. When Murray bemoans the decline of religion and promotes individual effort, it seems he forgets that to be fair in the unfair class structure that we have, it is up to government to step in to the place of the failure of traditional marriage to support and educate children and it is up to government which defines and controls the unfair economic system to alleviate the economic suffering that unfettered capitalism produces.  Finally, it is fine to describe the decline of marriage, of the economy and education, but to propose a return to virtue or even, as Murray does, a revived Great Awakening of religion, is just too little too late to preachy and its just too bad for those who suffer from economic destruction.  It is economic forces to which Murray gives little credit, but it is the economy stupid, that defines and constructs our class system, not virtue and not the lack thereof.

The Longest War, Peter Bergen

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    Peter Bergen wraps up his reporting on terrorism and the wars in the Middle East from the 9/11  attacks in 2001 through through the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. While most of the bloody story is familiar to anyone who can read a newspaper, or anyone who still does, Bergen adds some unfamiliar details only a superb and brave reporter could know. Everbody knows about the memo warning Condoleeza Rice and the President the Bin Laden was going to attack, but Bergen shows that there was a long list of warning and signs pointing to an imminent strike on U.S. territory. While most people understand that Bush II was hell-bent on attacking Iraq, we learn from Bergen about the delusional operatives and think tank mountebanks who for years lobbied for a second round of killing in long-suffering Iraq.  Nonetheless, he does give credit to Bush for revising his war strategy and firing the officials and generals who so made a botch of things.

    Bergen also does a fine job of showing the political and military goals of the Pakistanis and explains their troubling dalliance with local and Talibani militants.  In the Afghan sphere, it is surprising to learn the Hamid Karzai was greeted with open arms by Afghans, who, despite their reputation for tribalism, have a strong sense of national identity that is older than the United States itself.  Even today, in 2012, polls show powerful support for Americans and hatred of the Taliban.  

Follow the Money

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There is all this blather about personal attacks in the presidential campaign.  One complaint of Romney is that the D’s question his work with Bain Capital and want to know more about his taxes and where his money is hidden.  But the integrity anyone who poses an argument is a principle concern of rhetoric.  First, if you are to be believed and your arguments considered worthy, you must establish your personal worth.  Anu Garg’s word of the day yesterday was cui bono (to whose benefit?) Wordsmith.  We need to examine what the candidate gets out of his endeavors and his policies and who benefits from his proposals.

Job #2

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Introduction to My Miserable Jobs:  Job #2, Usher

I am always saying I had 50 or more jobs, but I am not sure. I want to see if I can remember all the worthless, God-awful pursuits of mine in the name of keeping body and soul together. Here is my real resume. I hesitate to call it a “Vita” lest it comes to define my life. I still have some hope that my life is more than the sum of my crummy jobs.

Job Number 2, Usher. I believe the first employment I had was at as an usher (remember them?) at a rat’s ass motion picture theater in Lake Worth, Fla. It was the Lake Theater or the Worth, I can’t remember which. The pay? I believe it was $1.10 an hour, maybe less, and all the popcorn you could eat. Of course, the ushers could also see the movies for free, once their shift was over. Unfortunately, this rotting old failure of a cinema house showed only films which nobody wanted to see. It hadn’t yet fallen to the state of having to become a porn palace, but that happened next, a few years later. We ushers wore funny little uniforms, black I think, and really cheap. Why is it that the worst of jobs come with uniforms?
I was just at the legal age to work, I suppose 14. This would have been 1963 or 1964. At that time, each little town had at least one theater that would have Saturday morning features. These were a cultural phenomenon few remember, for good reason. Basically, the Saturday morning session catered to a clientele of twelve to fifteen year olds, wild, uncivilized, and set loose in the dark. Younger ones were attracted to a cartoons, but the real free-for-all was the horror shows, two for a dollar. Of course, like today, the money was in the candy, pop, and popcorn sales. After selling vast quantities of these vile concoctions and sticky substances to the wild herd, the lights were dimmed and the show began. A tumultuous riot always ensued. Nickel pickles were hurled at the screen, gooey candy dropped or flung, most of the popcorn and soda spilled on the floor. In fact, the floor was the expected repository of all refuse as well as all manner disgusting substances. There were no trash cans as no one would use them anyway. The screaming, fighting, crowd of horrid adolescents were free, free at last to throw anything anywhere.
The usher’s duty was to maintain order. Imagine! There in the dark, six tiny ushers teamed against a mob of hundreds with all the hormones of their age coursing through them, fueled with sugar and driven with the smell of utter license and a total absence of law, parents, or any thought of decent behavior. The only rules enforced were the fire regulations limiting the size of the crowd, a law always violated to great extent. The ushers had to hold the mob at bay by guarding the entrances until the appointed hour, then only to sell a limited amount of tickets. On one Saturday, a particularly outrageous crowd pushed on the double doors to get in. The ushers pushed back. At one point, a snot-nosed villain, smelling of cola and sweat, inserted an arm and a foot and tried to unloose the locking mechanism. I shoved my body against the doors and smashed his hand quite well. In another day and age, the theater and I would have been sued from here to hell, but in 1964 the little creep just settled the score by stalking me after the show. I ran, of course, and luckily never saw him again.
My flight from him, and his accomplice, who was a freckled girl with few teeth, took place after the clean up, a task of several hours that only a Hercules shoveling out the stable could have accomplished any earlier. Gigantic mounds of refuse where pushed and shoved into the aisles from the rows. Feed lot scoops were used to shovel the junk into containers which were trucked away. It was awful. All the while, the little weasel manager, Mr. T. I think, stayed closeted in his smelly office making phone calls.
A short while after I quit this little prison, I heard what may well have been a scandalized lie, that T. was arrested in Ft. Lauderdale for exposing himself to little boys.

Ryan/Rand

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So now we have to listen to endless jabber about that second-rate mind Paul Ryan who will subject us to his sophomoric adoration of Ayn Rand. This is Harold Bloom’s assessment of Rand:

Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English at Yale University. Professor Bloom did not mince words: “Ayn Rand was a writer of no value whatsoever, whether aesthetic or intellectual. The Tea Party deserves her, but the rest of us do not. It is not less than obscene that any educational institution that relies even in part on public funds should ask students to consider her work. We are threatened these days by vicious mindlessness and this is one of its manifestations.” from Cockburn http://www.counterpunch.org