Yep, I'm posting about something political

Fellow bloggers!

Hey guys. So I've been meaning to post about public transportation for awhile, but with my service program ending next week and trying to find employment for after that (so far to no avail), I have not yet had the time. That post will come later, but I just had to post something this morning because sometimes what happens in Washington is very relevant to all of our lives.

I woke up early turned on NPR and low and behold, instead of applying to jobs, it spurred me to call/e-mail me congress people about the debt ceiling! Having worked in a Senate office, I know that every single day staffers tally the messages from constituents about every issue and tell the Senator, and the staff keeps statistics in the long term on constituent opinion. So with August 2nd being next week, its SO important that we call our representatives and tell them that adjusting Medicare, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans (because making over $250,000/year or at least over $500,00/year means you can pay a little more! See: Sam's explanation of progressive taxes in season 3, I think, West Wing) and cutting some spending (obviously the poor, and especially mentally ill, will be first on the chopping block......but its the only way to get something passed) is key. Raising the debt ceiling is VITAL to all of our lives, and especially to the unemployed among us.

President Obama asked everyone to call their congresspeople, and I am sick of Republicans making proclamations about what the American People "want" when I absolutely disagree with their assertions. The American people want competent leaders and right now, we are not getting that.

There is my political rant of the day. I miss you all and will post more soon.

-Elise

PS

This is how things should be, thank you Will Bailey (Isaac, you wouldn't understand this reference....season 5 of the West Wing is just.....well.....beyond you): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtM4LEjHBn0

A Gentleman's Agreement

There was a time where my baseball allegiance could have been changed at a young age. Even though we lived in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, my dad raised me to be a Giants fan (it always helped that whenever I came home from my day care after school that Dad would immediately flip on the TV to the Giants game). But when I was in elementary school (as well as middle school, for that matter), a majority of my friends where fans of the Oakland Athletics. I can think of a number of reasons for this, despite the fact that neither the Athletics nor the Giants fielded strong teams in the mid-90’s: A’s games were cheaper to attend, easier to get to (thank you BART!), greater chances of getting a foul ball, and there were some likeable stars with Mark McGwire and Rickey Henderson. (My dad would probably mention that the Oakland Coliseum was also a lot nicer to go see, before Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders installed an upper deck in centerfield and a bunch of luxury suites.) The Giants, on the other hand, played games at Candlestick Park, a run-down football-oriented stadium, where they would give you special buttons for enduring cold extra inning games (and as those of you familiar with San Francisco in the summer time… it can be exceedingly cold and windy). I really only remember going to a couple of games when I was younger at Candlestick (including Barry Bonds’ game where he hit his 300^th and 301^st home runs), specifically because it was much harder to go to those games. And though it was easier to go to games and my friends could have peer pressured me into liking the A’s (I can’t say that I never owned A’s gear), the A’s never really captured my imagination and adoration in the same way the Giants did. I loved Barry Bonds, Rod Beck (a closer who rocked a Fu Manchu), Matt Williams as well as later players like Jeff Kent and JT Snow.  And my personal hero was Bill Mueller, mostly because I enjoyed playing 3^rd base in little league and a coach compared my defense to his. And while I rooted for the A’s when they were successful in the early 2000’s—it would be appropriate to call me a bandwagoner—the Giants have been my team… despite the occasional teasing from my friends.

So it was quite a surprise to me, at a younger age, when I learned that there was a time where the Giants could have been moved to Florida in the early ‘90’s. Despite the fact that the Giants had played in San Francisco since the mid-50’s and was home to such stars as Mays and McCovey, they almost moved. They were mostly terrible as a team in the 1980’s and they played in the craphole that was Candlestick Park—not a money-making scheme. It was only through some last minute dealings that a local ownership group took over, vowing to keep the Giants in San Francisco and build a new stadium*. But there was a critical component in the deal to keep the Giants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Walter Haas, the owner of the Oakland A’s at the time, is believed to have given the Giants the “territorial rights” to develop a new stadium in Santa Clara county in a gentleman’s agreement, where San Jose (the tenth largest city in the United States) is located. Though the Giants never built a stadium in San Jose, they still have access and control over the market.

As Howard Bryant elegantly depicts it (http://tinyurl.com/3j3cvrv), the A’s are struggling both in terms of popularity next to the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants (never gets old for me to say…) and financially. The stadium that used to be a jewel in the Bay Area covers the decks with tarps during baseball season and is now suited more towards football. The A’s have tried to build new stadiums in both Oakland and other locations in the East Bay, but it has been met with no success or enthusiasm. The A’s would rather move locations to San Jose, where they can build a new stadium, gain new revenue streams for corporate sponsorships, and start afresh in a new town. The Giants, claiming that they would suffer financially if the A’s were to move to San Jose, are not having any of it. Both teams have turned to the bumbling and incompetent commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, to help sort out the situation.

It has been really interesting for me to be hear and read both sides of the debate, as there are kids—just like I was—trying to figure out their allegiances to their baseball teams (for better or worse) that will ultimately be influenced by the outcomes of the debate. For Giants fans, either they don’t want the A’s in San Jose or don’t have a strong opinion of where the A’s are. Personally, I am not sure most are aware of the gentleman’s agreement that led to the Giants’ territorial rights in Santa Clara. A’s fans are livid with the owners of the Giants—they see the Giants as blocking the development of their franchise, despite the “generosity” of Walter Haas.

Personally, I would like to see both teams remain in the Bay Area, whatever ends up happening. The early 2000’s, when both teams were especially strong, were lots of fun for me and my friends alike, especially since we wanted a rematch of the ill-fated Bay Bridge Series of 1989 that was disrupted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The sound of the San Jose A’s seems strange to me, and I’m a bit skeptical of baseball succeeding in San Jose (though the Sharks seem to sell out every home game). But I think the Giants ownership can cut the crap about the negative financial effects of having another team in San Jose. Giants fans (with bandwagoners too) have been selling out every home game at AT&T park, and there is a new generation of young’uns loving Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Brian Wilson, Buster Posey, and Pablo Sandoval. The Giants have an increased payroll and would likely take on additional salary if they were to trade for the studly Carlos Beltran. If there was ever a time to give the A’s a break, it would be now. And I wouldn’t have any second thoughts about it.

*The new stadium thing kinda worked out for Giants, as well as baseball fans of all stripes. I’ve heard many people say that “Mays Field” is one of the best places to catch a game in all of the major leagues. As a Giants fan, I tend to agree. 

What is "God?"

Suppose, for a second, that you were asked to describe a powerful thing/force/being that created the every living thing around us. One that created a diverse array of living creatures: everything from Golden Retrievers to E. Coli bacteria to Redwood trees. This thing made us look, act, and feel the way we do. What’s more, it gave us the concept of self-consciousness, the ability to think, and the power of love. It even helped form our moral principles and was a major influence in shaping how we set up our society. How then, would you describe this?

I ask because I would describe this thing as a type of “God.” The above list seems to describe everything that I think a “God” would do and, in essence, describes what “God” is. Others seem to feel the same way; a definition I found described god as “the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority.”

And yet the force I described above was not my description of the Christian God (or G-d or Allah for that matter). Instead, I was describing the force of evolution, as presented in a book called “The Moral Animal.” The book talked about how many evolutionary psychologists believe evolution created not only the way we look, but also the way we feel and act. The arguments are long and complex (and I think fascinating), but the basic idea is that everything from our hands to our moral system of beliefs evolved through a process of natural selection. A parent’s love for their children, for example, evolved as a way to make the parents willing sacrifice everything to help their children survive and thus pass on their genes.

At first this thought scared me. It almost made me feel “fake,” like my love for my parents (and all of you) wasn’t real and instead just a way of my genes “tricking” me. I was fine with the idea that proto-humans evolved millennia ago and weren’t just abracadabra-ed to existence by a God 6,000 years ago. But I always took comfort in the fact that there seemed to be space for some other power (God) to enter somewhere: how else would you explain morals or altruism or love? Yet here was an explanation laid out in front of me… it was all the same force and a brutal, cold-hearted, unthinking force at that… it was all evolution.

But then I stepped back and looked at it in a different way, which, I should add, I was only able to do after Gwen nudged me that way. I spent the entire book looking for a place to insert “God” into the story, but what if “God” was already there, staring me in the face the whole time? What if the evolutionary force is “God?”

When it comes to religion, I’m not certain of much. But one thing I am certain of is that God is not some guy who looks like Dumbledore and sits on a cloud. I think “God” is not a “he,” nor is it a “she,” nor, do I think, is it something that we would generally think of as being an “it.” In my mind, “God” is something that we won’t, or even can’t, fully understand; just an unknowable force that shapes our world. And the more I learn, the more that evolution seems to fit that definition perfectly.

An all-powerful force that created love, morals, and friendship? Sounds like a "God" to me. Unfortunately, it also sounds like evolution. But maybe, just maybe, that isn't the contradiction that it at first seemed. Plus, just think how deliciously ironic the religious right's campaign to keep evolution(God?) out of the the schools would then be.

More thoughts, which are all even less well developed than my undeveloped thought above.

• I’ve also thought that you could also tell a story where there is a higher power than evolution somewhere. After all, who’s to say a “random” gene mutation that would create a feeling of love between a father and son is actually random. Maybe it’s a careful manipulation by a higher power, but because we could never understand the higher power, we just chalk up to “randomness.” In that case, maybe “God” did create love and morals and creatures everywhere and used the might of evolution as the path with which to implement “its” creations.
• Evolution does some fucked up things. I still have a tough time thinking of the evolutionary force as “god” because I have a tough time thinking about a “god” that would do evil things. But maybe there’s no getting around that.
• The related thing that bothers me a bit is that humans seemingly have controlled, or at least influenced, evolution in the past by breeding only the best animals, sowing the best seeds, etc. and genetically modified products are basically a souped-up version of that. Clearly, I can't believe that we've managed to control "God." But maybe that's just me being anthropocentric. I guess you could argue that domesticated plants and animals made us evolve (by moving to cities, which changes what the "best" genetic traits are) just as much as we made them evolve (by selectively breeding/sowing them). Or, in this line of thinking, neither one caused the other to evolve, but the power of "God" caused them both, with the interaction between the two only enforcing its power.
  

Just so you know...

I handled some peppers while making dinner tonight. Neither the peppers or q-tips covered with milk made it up my nostrils.

I am not completely incompetent, I promise.

11th Commandment?

I stumbled upon this thought-provoking post on an econ blog and I'm curious what you all think. Here's the post in full:

"At the conference I attended in Israel, Shimon Peres said that if he could, he would add an 11th commandment, “Respect your sons and daughters.” I would go for “Thou shalt not spread my word with the sword,” which sounds appropriately biblical and might have done some good. If you could write an 11th commandment what would it be?"

Some good/interesting ones have been proposed in the comments, which include:

• Thou shalt laugh in times of duress
  
• Question everything for only in this way does one become closer to God.
• Endeavor to leave the world a better place than when you found it.
• Thou shalt not outsource your judgment to experts.
• Honor the earth
• Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself

Some other comment highlights include, "Don't be THAT guy," "Mind your own business," a quotation from a early Jewish scholar saying "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn," and finally , as a nominee for new worst commandment "If you think you are the physical incarnation of God Himself, it’s because YOU DEFINITELY ARE!"

Pumped for the Real World

I’ve been pretty excited to share a story that happened the first month I was out of college, which was, in retrospect, a great icebreaker and a pretty excellent introduction to the real world.

To set the scene, I was on my first project as a professional environmental field tech, helping my co-worker test the capacity of a bedrock well in southern Vermont. Simply put, in order to get a state permit for a new water source, this resort was required to have us, the contractors, run a “pump test” in which we turn on the well and see how much water it can produce sustainably. The premise was simple: keep the pump running at exactly 150 gpm for five days while continuously checking the water level to make sure you didn’t run the well (or neighboring wells) dry.

I was living for the week with my co-worker, Dagan, a middle-aged hydrogeologist, in a cabin the resort has lent us. I hadn’t been seeing much of him, because we were on alternating 6-hour shifts for the next 5 days so that someone was monitoring the well at all times. My only other source of social interaction had been the maintenance guys, a gang of scruffy, heavily-accented backwoods Vermonters who chuckled at stories of friends chased out of their girlfriends’ houses with shotguns, grumbled about management, and took turns trying to set me up with the youngest of their gang, a blonde chain-smoker named Mitch.

We were on Day Two out of 5 of our pump test, and I had already learned that there are a lot of things that can go wrong. First and foremost, bedrock wells are unpredictable. You can pump one, like this beast, at 150 gpm for 18 hours no problem, only to come back an hour later and find the water level has dropped 100 ft and is plummeting like someone removed an enormous plug. You just can’t really say what will deplete a bedrock well without – well, depleting it. The problem is that A) these tests are expensive, B) the flow rate has to remain constant throughout the test to get your permit, and C) you can’t stop the test more than once in the entire five days, or for more than 1 minute. So it’s super-tricky science, and you can’t really get it wrong without really pissing off your client.

You also really need to have a good sub-contractor. Ours, Lester, had already caused us a lot of headache. Our electrical wires had already burned through on Day One, which required a stop of the test to replace them, and our enormous, deafening generator had already caused enough complaints that management had insisted on replacing it with a smaller, less deafening one, which required another stop. Lester installed a pump that was too small for the volume of our test, the wrong kind of valve for adjusting the flow rate, and the pipes he used were so rusted they looked like they had been sunk in Lake Champlain for 10 years before being resurrected for our use. At this point on Day Two poor, frazzled Dagan and I couldn’t think of a single piece of equipment that hadn’t malfunctioned.

Oh, but there was one, and it took a flat-out comical week and made it nothing short of epic.

Before we get to that, though, you should also appreciate the mini adventures I had been having on my lonely midnight-to-6AM shifts. I am a competent wilderness camper. I swear I’m not afraid of the dark. But taking readings at the pump in the middle of the dark woods with a generator that sounded like a ~150-lb bullfrog drowning out all other sounds just made me squirm. The probability of getting attacked by anything, even human, was minimal, but if it did happen, I would never know it was coming.

Worse were the rounds I had to do in between readings, checking water levels on twenty other nearby wells to make sure we weren’t drying out someone else’s well while pumping ours. All the neighboring wells were located discreetly back in the dark creepy corners of Vermont woods, with the exception of two, which were the creepiest. One was located in a tiny little run-down werewolf-hiding shack in the dark woods, and one (which was 6 ft wide and big enough to push me in, btw) was behind a huge, crumbling, guaranteed-to-be-haunted-or-filled-with-psychopaths barn. I didn’t get cell reception at any of them, so even if I could have called people in the middle of the night to have someone at least hear me get eaten by werewolves or psychopaths, I couldn’t keep them on the line. Knowing where I was, the dropped calls were frightening my mom so much that I just stopped trying. Sadly, I’m not exaggerating when I say I got some good sprinting practice that week, the truck being my finish line and my safe haven.

Alright. So already, this week had been downright ridiculous. But my absolute favorite of all the misadventures that week happened on Day Three at about 5:45 in the morning.

I showed up at the well to take the last reading for my shift, exhausted from running from werewolves and psychopaths all night and aching for my flat, hard bed back at the cabin. Dim, early light was streaming through the woods as I walked over the gutted, gravelly road to the rusty pump, its high-pitched drone transposed weirdly over the deep hum of the generator as I got close. I wiped condensation off the glass face of the meter-reader, the pipe radiating icy cold air from the icy cold water it was pumping from more than 500 ft below my feet. I picked up the datasheet and pencil to write the meter reading, and stopped. The meter-reader wasn’t moving. It stared up at me blankly, a nonsensical number frozen on its face.

I stood there in the early dawn morning, frowning at the meter reader, stupid with weariness and trying to understand why the numbers weren’t moving – why the reader was no longer counting the number of gallons that had roared up out of the ground. The pump sure hadn’t stopped – it was gushing away into the woods with its regular fury (currently blasting at 100 gpm). So why wasn’t the meter reader counting anymore? (I would later learn that a loose piece of rust inside that ancient pipe had been blasted off by force of the water, and had lodged itself in the meter-reader, preventing it from counting, but at the time I knew none of this.) How was I going to calculate the rate of flow if I didn’t know how many gallons had been pumped since 3 AM?

It was a rather large problem; we had to maintain the same rate of flow or the permit wouldn’t be granted. Not that it really looked like the permit would be granted at this point anyways, but hey, I’m the new kid and I’m keeping my mouth shut. So I had a problem.

There’s only one way to get the rate of flow without the meter-reader, and that’s with a bucket check. You wait until your exact reading time, stick your bucket in front of the flow, start your stopwatch, and time how long it takes for the bucket to fill with water. Then, using the volume of the bucket, you calculate your rate of flow.

So, I had a 5-gallon bucket…and a pump gushing at 100 gpm…and a stopwatch. I stood there and just looked at the gushing pump for a moment in exasperation. This is ‘work?’ This is what adults do? This is the big, scary, professional world I prepared for by agonizing over milligrams of sediment samples, millimeters of grain length, and gallons/meter/second for stream flow? You’ve gotta be kidding me.

But I didn’t have long to contemplate the irony of it all. 6:00 AM was approaching fast, and timeliness, my professors taught me, is very important in the professional world.

So I grabbed my 5-gallon bucket and my stopwatch and picked my way down into the gully, washed out by the pump over the last couple of days. I tried to find a place to prop the little bucket, using rocks and sticks to hold it in place, but the force of the water kept blasting it backwards. With only six seconds to go until 6:00 AM, I gave up, hoisted my bucket under my arm, and, in the name of science, stepped in front of a firehose.

Seven minutes and at least as many attempted readings later, I trudged out of the gully no less than soaking wet, giggling, sputtering, and dragging my battered bucket and stopwatch behind me. I wiped my face on my sleeve as I lowered the tape for the now-6:07 water level reading and final stood up, all necessary numbers recorded, and took a moment to just stand and laugh at the world’s absurdity and my absolute bedraggledness. As I straightened, I found myself face-to-face with Gary, the head of the maintenance crew, who stood by his truck with the fuel tank for the generator in hand, staring at me as if I had completely lost my mind.

“What are ya doin’?” he asked in bewilderment.

Geeze, Gary, I think it was pretty clear that I had no effing idea what I was doing. All I knew at that point was that the real world was a whole lot weirder, and funnier, than I could have imagined.

I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be just fine out here :)

Bill Murray Resonates

It’s been three weeks since I stood amongst a throng of overachievers, threw my hand over my heart to pledge a scripted oath, and otherwise joined the well-intentioned cult that is “Edify for America” (pseudonyms for my own protection). Here at teacher boot camp, I’m living my own “Groundhog Day.” Like meteorologist Phil Connors, I find myself reliving the same sequence over again and again.

Every morning, I wake at 5 am, trudge to the cafeteria for my fruit and yogurt breakfast, double fist and chug out a coffee and a diet coke, board a school bus crammed with 30 grown-ups juggling lunchboxes and poster paper, and close my eyes until the bus sighs to a halt in front of a middle school in Watts, LA. Every morning I watch Malon, our bus driver, grin through the rearview mirror, anticipating drama and spilt milk as we hit the speed bumps flying.

These days are similarly closed by thirty grown men and women boarding Malon’s bus to head back to Loyola Marymount's campus. We eat the same dinner every night (wraps made with yesterday’s leftovers, whether teriyaki chicken, scrambled eggs, or meatloaf), file back to our dormitory cells, and begin lesson planning. The lounges are crammed with student teachers hacking at their keyboards, colorfully block printing upon chart paper, and waiting in the forty minute line at the photocopy room. Most are asleep by one am, content with the gratifying four hours of sleep they’ll get until Groundhog Day begins again.

But much like in the film, what is most of note is what happens between wake and sleep. Each eerily similar day, I have the opportunity for perpetual self betterment. Each day, I have the opportunity to incorporate feedback from experienced teachers, excite the most unexcitable student, and further build relationships and math skills with my middle school Mathletes. I’m responsible for reshaping attitudes towards a school system that has blatantly failed my kids, for bringing a seventh grader up to par from her second grade reading level, or teaching her the long-needed skill of long division. The kids want and deserve to be challenged, and they’re worth the late nights and bumpy bus rides.

My scholars embody resilience. Some scholars love math so much that, even though they can’t multiply 5 by 2, they keep their arms raised high the whole time I’m teaching, just hoping to attempt the problem sets up at the whiteboard. Some scholars come to summer school because they’re bored at home, because taking care of their little brothers is hard work and because they want to exercise their brains. These are the kids who mastered the seventh grade material four years ago, the kids who have craved challenges but lacked them since the third grade, the kids who have been let to slip through the system without being advanced by their negligent teachers. They sit quietly, engaged with their eyes up and hands raised despite the fact that they have learned all this now-stale material before. Finally, there are the scholars who bother to show up, despite the fact that they have been knocked down time and time again by the same teachers who should have inspired, impassioned, and picked up and dusted off these resilient children. These are the students who turn their backs to my whiteboard, roll their eyes when I stress the importance of math, try to tell me that they “aren’t about to jump up fast and quick and all to the whiteboard just because you told me to.” My hope is that all of these students will love math by the end of the summer, will find fractions frightfully exciting, will finally show the teachers who have, no joke, called them stupid, just how capable they are. Each day, I’m learning from my advisors, my peers, and moreover, from my students. They have spirits that can’t be hampered, and they encourage me to strive to lift those spirits higher every day. I’m slowly becoming less of a wide-eyed college student out of my element, and more like a teacher who (very) remotely feels like an effective leader in the classroom.

Yet I can’t help feel, dressed in drab grey slacks, a buttoned up cardigan that hides anything feminine from hormonal middle schoolers, and the kind of stiff flats that make me walk the streets of LA barefoot on my weekends off, that I’m playing dress-up. I find it hard, shaking hands with donors and future colleagues, not to tell them, “I want to be a teacher when I grow up.” When they ask me how old I am, how long I’ve been out of school, I’m mildly tempted to hold up my fingers and tell them, “I’m this big.” Just last year I was waking up at 3 am to paint my cheeks green, drink myself silly, and watch the sunrise over Miller Steps; rather than a 9 to 5, I had a 5-day weekend; my mom still booked my dentist appointments. When did we graduate from adolescence, teendom, and young adulthood? I still feel like the shoes are too big, Mom’s lipstick missed the mark, and I'm just playing pretend.

In Defense of Soccer

I recognize that the audience here at TDT is more likely to agree with the general premise of this entry—that watching soccer can be extremely entertaining, despite the numerous individuals that I’m sure that are out there who couldn’t care less. But I felt that something has to be written in response to the last-minute last-gasp effort that saved the US Women’s National Team in the Women’s World Cup.

One of my buddies from my program, who I will be living with next year, is about as pro American football as an individual that I’ve ever met. He lives for both Saturday and Sunday in the Fall. His first words after the Packers were the Super Bowl were “I’m going to miss football season.” And both of us found ourselves in a conversation with the third guy in the program, who might be more avid about soccer than I am (i.e. watched almost all of the World Cup matches in the previous cycle… and would regularly wake up at three or four in the morning for the World Cup before that). Future roommate made an argument that he really wouldn’t ever be able to substitute the world “football,” of the American sense, with “football,” of the European sense, which is what third guy was doing when we were talking about the Portland Timbers and our excitement to go see a game (because the Timbers’ Army seems like it is ridiculous). Future roommate started rehashing all of the well-worn arguments that I’ve read numerous times on pieces on the internet: Americans don’t/won’t understand the game (or the history of the game), not enough scoring, too boring, too much flopping, etc. I think he brought up these points more to see how third guy was going to react—understandably, it got a bit of a rise out of him. But future roommate also acknowledged that soccer could be entertaining, especially at the national level (though he argued that he probably would never watch MLS).

I think today’s game, at least, should dismantle some of those arguments. Gwendolith (hooray, new author!) and I were furiously texting during today’s match, as the referee constantly made errors with her decision-making that continued to put the US into a hole: the red card, waving off the first PK, the subsequent yellow card for Hope Solo (which apparently was for her mouthing off to the ref—which was definitely not clear during the broadcast of the game), the failure to call an offside’s before Marta’s goal… I resigned myself to the fact that the ref was going to lose the game to us before Abby Wambach’s amazing header:

(Yeah, that happened. Photos courtesy of the USWNT Blog)

It was one of those moments that I’ll never forget, mainly because of the sheer drama and unlikelihood of the moment (playing for almost an hour with 10 players?! Scoring in the 122^nd minute?!). Much like when the Giants won the World Series (forever known on this blog as TGWTWS—also, if Isaac gets to talk about the Red Sox, I’m going to talk about the Giants), when I woke up to hear that the US had upset Portugal in the 2002 woke up (on the radio in the bedroom in my old house in El Sobrante), and when the USWNT won the World Cup in 1999 (at Lakeridge, an athletic club, watching on the big screen TV).

And then, Hope did her thing (as Gwendolith said, she’s “got sass”).

(Yeah, that also happened)

And the Americans—in quite an unlikely circumstance—put the Brazilians away.

There were those after the match that said this team demonstrated true “American Spirit” in that they never gave up, kept plugging away, and came through, despite the circumstances. While I’m not sure true “American Spirit” exists—maybe it’s more of a myth in today’s day (though politicians would likely claim otherwise)—the ladies showed tremendous grit, poise, and cajones. It was absolutely wonderful to watch, and the match was highly entertaining.

But it got me thinking—I think part of the appeal of watching or soccer national teams is that they play for the pride of our country. How many other American athletic teams can say that they do that? In all honestly, the World Baseball Classic will never mean all that much because of the contrived circumstances that it is played under (one game matches, played in Spring Training, and a general lack of teams from countries not in Asia or South/Central America). There might have been a time where basketball athletes would have given their heart and souls to play for their team (aka the ’92 Dream Team—but even then, they were steamrolling opponents as the game hadn’t developed as much in other countries), but I would argue that it is no longer the case. Football would clearly be a joke at an international level. Maybe it is only hockey players that match the intensity of soccer players donning their countries uniforms (I loved watching the gold medal match in the Winter Olympics last year)… Regardless, the USWNT is fighting to maintain their stature within the game, while the USMNT plays to prove their worth at an international stage. Is that not patriotic? Is that not inspiring?

What a great game. 

P.S. ESPN wins today. There aren't too many days where I can say that I really enjoy ESPN--I really only watch out of bad habits and having something to watch. Today, they showed the game today, ESPN Classic of the '99 World Cup, Timbers v. Sounders, and SF Giants v. NY Mets. Needless to say, I didn't accomplish much. 

Oh, you're an economist...

One of the unintended consequences that came along with getting a Ph.D. in economics is that every time I mention that to someone, they immediately look serious and asked in a hushed tone, "so what do you think about taxes/the deficit?" I've thought for a while that I should come up with a good answer to that, but never really gotten around to it. But I think after rambling to Jess and Gwen last night about the subject, I'm going to write a rough draft. And I thought that instead of writing it in a journal, I'd write it here. So here goes...

One of the sayings that economists are most fond of is, "there's no such thing as a free lunch." In short, it says that there are trade-offs in everything and that pretty much any policy or decision of interest has both good and bad consequences. There are many examples of this: environmental regulations are obviously good in a number of ways, but they also hurt businesses, often cause job losses, and make products more expensive; me going to D.C. over spring break meant I got to see some of my favorite people, but it also meant that I have less money now to visit again; my decision to spend the summer in Montana means that I get to spend the summer in a beautiful place, but it also means that I'm not spending it with any of you or getting know the Bay area better. Which is the best policy or decision thus depends on a careful weighing of the pros and cons that will result from that decision. (On a side note, I just described microeconomics in a paragraph; I don't know what it says about my discipline that it can be basically described in a paragraph.)

I'm quite confident that the above paragraph would not be considered controversial by any economists, and I think most non-economists would agree with the basic premise as well. What boggles my mind is that when it comes to taxes and the deficit people seem to forget that the trade-off exists. I will 100% agree with the republicans that taxes have negative consequences. They are in general unfair (I've earned this money, why do I have to give it to someone else), don't fully reward hard work (why should someone who competent at her job and made $$ be punished for that), and create a disincentive for people to work (if I'm only working to make money, I'll work less if I'm getting $13 an hour after taxes than if I was was taking home my full $17). I think the statement "taxes have negative consequences" should be one of the most uncontroversial statements around and I personally think less of those Democrats who try to deny that.

But there are also good reasons for taxes. Number one is that they help fund important government programs. Investments in education, public safety (like the department of defense and cops), and transportation all allow the country to prosper and there are legitimate economic arguments for why they should be done by the government. So the adverse effect of taxes on the economy is often more than offset by the benefit to the economy of the investments that these taxes help fund. In this case, the argument for or against taxes is not a theoretical one, or even really a moral/philosophical one... it is mostly an empirical one.

The other reason why taxes can be good is that they can fund a society safety net, which helps those of us most in need. John Rawls and John Harsanyi (an economist!) popularized the idea of the "veil of ignorance" as a way to resolve moral issues. Their basic idea is that moral decisions that effect society should be made from the perspective of someone who is about to enter the society, but does not have any knowledge of who he will come in as; he's equally likely to come in as rich landowner as he is to come in as slave. This line of thinking justifies extreme social redistribution. Just about any redistribution from rich to poor is morally justified, because behind the veil I don't like inequality since I'm equally likely to come in as poor as I am to come in rich. (There's a big caveat here, which boils down your beliefs about why people are poor. If it's because they're lazy and not because they got unlucky with the cards they were dealt, then this argument breaks down. I personally think luck matters a lot more.) This can morally justify unemployment benefits, medicaid, medicare, social security, and a progressive income tax, and even suggests that these should be increased. Yet there's another moral side to the issue. If you work hard, why can't you keep the money you earn. One can legitimately ask, who's the government to force me to give to charity (which is what social security et. al basically are)? So in this sense, the "right" amount of taxes in your mind boils down to an empirical question again (how much to taxes hurt growth), a empirical question/personal belief (who is to blame for the poor, themselves or luck), and a moral/philosophical question (what's a bigger moral issue, helping out the weakest members of society or keeping our freedoms, letting individuals choose their actions, and rewarding hard work).

As for where the deficit falls in to all of this. Unless it gets so big that it effects the economy as a whole (or Republics are dumbasses and let us default before it gets too big out of stupidity, greed, and blinded hate of Obama), all the deficit does is cause an inter-generational transfer from the future generation to the current generation. Although, being from a future generation, I'm not a huge fan of that, I was lucky enough to be born in an age with internet, good medication for my epilepsy, and the Red Sox winning World Serieses (plural!), so I can't complain too much. And if you really want to help us out, do us a favor: increase the deficit right now and use it fund the research and other needed investments that will let us best mitigate climate change.