Kieran Healy

Leaving aside the question of whether a sequel is a good idea in the first place, if anyone can give me a plausible argument why “Ocean’s Twelve”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/oceans_12/ is a better title than _Ocean’s Dozen_ then I’d like to hear it.

I recently got a new cell phone after being out of the U.S. for a year, and now I routinely have a problem with telemarketers. The odd part, though, is that the people who call me, whoever they are,[1] seem to have fused the two most irritating aspects of dealing with companies on the phone. Telemarketers are annoying because they phone you up unannounced and try to sell you stuff. Customer service departments are annoying because when _you_ phone _them_ up you get put on hold right away. The guys bugging me at the moment call me up and, when I answer, immediately say “All of our agents are currently busy serving other customers” or “For quality purposes this call may be monitored.” I don’t know what they say next, because I hang up. Which marketing genius dreamed up this approach, I wonder? Is it a common phenomenon? Is it a ruse to get me to stay on the phone for some reason? And how can I make them stop?

fn1. Nine times out of ten they have strong Indian accents.

By now you’ve probably read “this story”:http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0904/171981.html about what Dick Cheney said yesterday:

bq. Indicators measure the nation’s unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay. “That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Ohio. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”

John Edwards “said this morning”:http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1034852&t=Business&c=31,1034852 that “If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking.” I see three possible responses from Cheney.

* Say you’ve changed your mind and that women’s domestic labor _should_ be counted as part of the formal economy. Job-creation problem solved.

* Issue a “corrected transcript”:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003975 of the speech, with one of the following corrections: “Four hundred thousand“; “trading on eBay NASDAQ”; or “That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago I just pulled out of my ass right now, because I think you’re “all idiots”:http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000761.html.”

* Glance out the window, turn to Scooter Libby and say, “Let them sell tchochkes.”

“Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001619.html reports on a “small tiff”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/business/worldbusiness/09outsource.html?pagewanted=all&position= between Paul Samuelson and Jagdish Bhagwati over outsourcing. It contains a good line that tells you a lot about neoclassical economics:

bq. But Mr. Bhagwati … says he doubts whether the Samuelson model applies broadly to the economy. “Paul and I disagree only on the realistic aspects of this,” he said.

In contrast, Marxists tend to agree fully on the realistic aspects of things but disagree about the unrealistic ones, such as when exactly the revolution is coming, who will be in charge, and whether people or robots will clean the toilets afterwards.

As “Kitty Kelly’s hatchet-job on the Bush family”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385503245/ref=lpr_g_1/002-7398203-0818411?v=glance&s=books nears publication, lots of people are linking to these “additional revelations about George W. Bush”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003137.html by the Poorman. And you know what? “So am I”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003137.html, because they’re great. Go read, especially if you are a staff writer for the Kerry campaign.

As a spin-off from Daniel’s discussion of “whether the DEM04 contract is overvalued”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002460.html on the “Iowa Electronic Markets”:http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm, here’s a version of the trend surface he calculated that shows “differences between the Black-Scholes valuation and the observed market price”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.pdf over time (you can look at it in smaller “PNG”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.png format or better-quality “PDF”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.pdf). I created it using “R”:http://www.r-project.org/, the free[1] statistics package because I “didn’t like Excel’s default effort”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/kerrychart2/surface.JPG and I hadn’t had a reason to use R’s wireframe() function before. It’s still not up to the standards of the “Bill Clevelands”:http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/ or “Ed Tuftes”:http://www.edwardtufte.com/ of this world, but it was the best I could manage on short notice. Thanks to Daniel for sending me the data, and remember that whereas I am happy to field questions about graph colors and chart widgets, technical queries about option valuation, Black-Scholes volatility fluctuations and arbitrage should still be directed to him.

fn1. As in “free to make your own mistakes.”

Alan Keyes “said today”:http://www.nbc5.com/politics/3712293/detail.html that “Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” apparently because Obama is pro-choice. But clearly the reason that Jesus would not vote for Obama is that there is just no way He would move from California to Illinois in the first place.

A number of journalists have gotten upset this week over the fact that my uncle Seán “was invited”:http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/3873334?view=Eircomnet to address the “parliamentary meeting”:http://212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=95850800&p=9585y38x&n=95851409 of “Fianna Fáil”:http://www.fiannafail.ie/, the main coalition partner in the Irish government. Together with a small group of like-minded people, Seán’s been responsible for building “an organization”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/index.htm devoted to social policy analysis in Ireland. He started twenty-odd years ago, when the country’s financial management was on the verge of being handed over to the IMF, unemployment was running at about fifteen percent and pretty much no-one outside the civil service was doing much in the way of policy analysis. By the mid-1990s, many of CORI’s ideas about “social partnership”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/soc_partner/index.htm and “basic income”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/basic_income/index.htm had moved to the center of arguments about social policy and, particularly in the former case, become incorporated into collective bargaining institutions. So it gladdens my heart to see the likes of Ireland’s “Sunday Business Post”:http://www.sbpost.ie/web/DocumentView/did-394778113-pageUrl–2FThe-Newspaper-2FSundays-Paper.asp pulling out the stops to discredit him this week:

By any standards, it’s a harsh penance … to invite Fr Sean Healy … to address the parliamentary party in Inchydoney in west Cork tomorrow … Healy has been a constant, vocal and extremely irritating thorn in the side of the government … “I know backbenchers who would burn him,” said one … Healy is revered … by the left generally, and particularly by left-wing commentators … he’s good value in media terms – the controlled bluster … the quick soundbites … He has been described as “the only real opposition in the state” … he operated a back channel of influence through secretary to the government Dermot McCarthy, and through the Taoiseach himself …. “We thought that he was completely off the wall,” said a former official in Merrion Street. “He was the author of various mad harebrained schemes – that basic income scheme was totally mad” … not popular with the conservative wing of the Catholic Church, many of whom see in Healy the socially radical impulses of liberation theology … Healy’s reluctance to wear clerical garb … and the infrequency of his references to God, prayer and the spiritual dimension of man’s life are further irritations … His late father was a member of Fianna Fail (his brother[1] is a former national chairman of the “Progressive Democrats”:http://www.progressivedemocrats.ie/) … Some who have dealt with him consider him prickly … “He has no influence on policy. Sure, he has a great media profile and all that …” … He is perhaps aware that his views are open to caricature.

Open to caricature is right. So now you know Seán is a raving loon who is nevertheless a controlled debater and good with the soundbites on TV; he’s the author of various harebrained Marxist schemes who somehow has a secret backchannel of influence to the highest-ranking civil servants and the Prime Minister himself; and he’s a radical priest evangelizing liberation theology except he doesn’t wear a clerical collar or talk enough about the spiritual dimension of life in public. A classic incoherent hatchet job. And to top it off he has the cheek to be related to members of more right-leaning parties. Clearly he must be doing something right.

You can learn more about CORI’s “role”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/about/role_policy.htm in Irish Social Policy, and their positions on “poverty”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/publications/briefing/poverty/index.htm, “taxation”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/publications/briefing/poverty/index.htm, the Irish “housing boom”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/publications/briefing/housing_accomm_policy04/index.htm (or crisis) and “other issues”:http://www.cori.ie/justice/publications/ansoecrev/ase_review03.pdf at their website.

fn1. That’d be my father.

Some contributors in the discussion thread “on crutches”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002445.html (if you see what I mean) bring up other ambulatory aids by-the-by, and Bad Jim says:

bq. Can anyone who remembers the 19th century think of canes as anything but a weapon?

The 19th century? What about the 1970s? I remember being caned at school. On the palm of the hand, though, rather than the backside. I think I was about six or seven. (This was in Ireland, by the way.) I also remember the news percolating down to us kids at some point[1] that such things would no longer be allowed in schools, and some of us telling the teachers “You can’t smack us anymore because capital punishment is abolished!”

fn1. Google informs me that corporal punishment was abolished Irish schools “in 1982”:http://www.corpun.com/ies00211.htm/, when I was nine.

Seeing as “Kevin”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_09/004634.php is wondering whether M&Ms have gotten smaller since the last time he looked[1], my imponderable for the day is this: Why is it that in Europe (at least in my experience) patients with a sprained ankle or whatever are typically issued with “forearm crutches”:http://www.bentonmedical.com/forearm.html whereas in the U.S. you get “underarm crutches”:http://www.bentonmedical.com/underarm.html. It seems clear to me that the underarm kind is inferior in every important respect. So why does it survive in the U.S.?

Possible explanations:

* *Efficiency*. Already ruled out. Underarm crutches are inferior.
* *Revealed Preferences*. Underarm crutches _must_ be more efficient because otherwise people wouldn’t be buying them.
* *Path Dependence*. Some QWERTY-like event in the early 1900s locked American hospitals into the underarm regime.
* *Cultural*. De Tocqueville notes somewhere that American individualism thrives in the presence of underarm supports for gammy legs, while the _ancien regime_’s tendency to lean at the elbow meant that its collapse was both inevitable and unforseen.
* *Marxist*. The ruling crutches of any epoch are the crutches of the ruling class, etc.
* *Evolutionary Psychology*. On the Pleistocene Savannah, Underarm crutches provided a selective advantage to their users due to their greater length, enabling Underarm-using groups to hold off predators at a slightly greater distance and obtain marginally higher-hanging fruit than their Forearm-using competitors.
* *Political Economy*. A cartel of crutch producers in league with hospital crutch-wranglers and has cornered the market through aggressive undercutting of the competition and a complex system of kickbacks. _Standard Crutch (New Jersey)_ pioneered this technique in the 19th century, bringing it to such a pitch of perfection that it was impossible to buy a forearm model without also getting three underarm models delivered to you.
* *Libertarian*. Though technically inferior, underarm models are ultimately beneficial because they encourage a quicker return to standing on your own two feet.

Alternative explanations (perhaps even informative ones) are invited.

fn1. Perhaps they are simply further away than before?

Berkeley’s “Mike Hout”:http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/hout/ and my colleague “Fr Andrew Greeley”:http://www.agreeley.com/author.html have an “Op-Ed in the Times today”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/opinion/04greeley.html?ex=1252036800&en=76ca9f02982c96ca&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland making some good points about the Republican Party’s support amongst Evangelical Christians. Religious and political conservatism don’t line up as closely as you might think, and certainly not as much as the talking heads assume. The intervening factor is how much money you make:

bq. [N]either region nor religion can override the class divide: if recent patterns hold, a majority (about 52 percent) of poor Southern white evangelicals will vote for Mr. Kerry in November, while only 12 percent of affluent Southern white evangelicals will.

bq. Most poorer Americans of every faith – including evangelical Christians – vote for Democrats. It’s a shame that few pundits, pollsters or politicians seem to notice.

A related point is that the swing to the Republican in the South has not not been a uniform migration. More of the better off have drifted, but not necessarily the poorer Whites. Of course, the claim isn’t that all poorer White Evangelicals vote Democrat — Brayden can testify to that — but rather that a surprisingly large number do, even after the universally acknowledged success of the “Southern Strategy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy and the long-running tactic (going back to Reagan) of appealing to the Patriotism of poorer Americans in an effort to make them forget about their pocketbooks.

Well, OK not really — Durkheim died in 1917. But there’s more to crowds than “being able to estimate prices accurately”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002357.html and “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029079373/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ is without doubt the place to begin when reflecting on the Republican Convention once the speeches are all done:

The force of the collectivity is not wholly external; it does not move us entirely from outside. Indeed … it must enter into us and become organized within us … This stimulating and invigorating effect of society is particularly apparent in certain circumstances. In the midst of an assembly that becomes worked up, we become capable of feelings and conduct which we are incapable when left to our individual resources … For this reason all parties — be they political, economic, or denominational — see to it that periodic conventions are held, at which their followers can renew their common faith by making a public demonstration of it together …

In the same way, we can also explain the curious posture that is so characteristic of a man who is speaking to a crowd — if he has achieved communion with it. His language becomes high-flown in a way that would be “ridiculous in ordinary circumstances”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-zornlog.story#zell; his gestures take on an overbearing quality; his very thought becomes impatient of limits and slips easily into “every kind of extreme”:http://andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dish_archive.html#109409893313020605. … Sometimes he even feels possessed by a moral force greater than he, of which he is only the interpreter … This extraordinary surplus of forces is quite real and comes to him from the very group he is addressing. The feelings he arouses as he speaks return to him enlarged and amplified, reinforcing his own to some degree. … It is then no longer a mere individual who speaks “but a group incarnated”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/zell.html and personified.

Continuing in a “Durkheimian mood”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Durkheim, it strikes me that, by holding the convention in New York, the Republican Party has managed to have it both ways with the _conscience collective_: Party solidarity is enhanced positively as the delegates make a reverent pilgrimage to the site of the September 11th attacks, but also negatively through the buzz they get from feeling angry at and superior to the actual New Yorkers loudly protesting their presence. Thus the real New York of September 2004 provides the raw emotional energy used inside the convention hall to sanctify an image of the New York of September 2001.

Zell “‘I am a Democrat because we are the party of hope'”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3600710.stm Miller says John Kerry has been “more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure”:http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9557575.htm. Except maybe that guy who delivered Clinton’s keynote a decade or so ago and is delivering Bush’s now. What’s his name again?

Miller could have used some bits of the “Bush Twins Speech”:http://www.slate.com/id/2106067/ to better effect than they did. “And as to my fifty year career in the Democratic Party … Well, when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible!” Would’ve played much better.

Anyway, all in all a ringing endorsement of the the cardinal conservative virtues of steadfastness, loyalty, constancy and, in the words of “another well-known Democrat”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dish_archive.html#109409968493733425 a “partisan,” “crude” and “gob-smackingly vile” effort “jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.” Vote for Bush because _Zell Miller_ told you Kerry flip-flops and we shouldn’t “change horses in midstream”:http://www.buzzflash.com/filmfan/04/08/fil04002.html.

Ireland “won a gold medal”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics_2004/equestrian/3606042.stm at the Olympics this year, but after the “appalling intervention”:http://sport.guardian.co.uk/olympics2004/athletics/story/0,14782,1293496,00.html of ex-priest and arch-gobshite Neil Horan in the “marathon”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics_2004/athletics/3610598.stm, Cian O’Connor’s performance in the showjumping competition wont’ be remembered as Ireland’s main contribution to the games. Dressed in a kilt and green hat with a handwritten sign on his chest reading “The Second Coming is Near,” Horan attacked the leader of the race, Brazil’s Vanderlei de Lima, at around the 21-mile mark. He knocked the guy over into the crash barriers. Amazingly, de Lima got up and — though he looked like he was in agony — continued running, only to be beaten into third place. Horan’s last public appearance was at the “British Grand Prix at Silverstone”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/3081921.stm last year, where he ran onto the track. You’ll notice from the “news photos”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/3081921.stm that he was wearing the same outfit then as now.

I am of course horribly embarrassed on behalf of Ireland generally, and I hope some of Horan’s “sneaking regarders”:http://www.the-kingdom.ie/news/story.asp?j=10631 back home will be feeling bad now that they’ve pissed off the whole of Brazil and forever burned their already-slim chances of hitting it off with any of their volleyball players. At the same time, I despaired at the behavior of the Greek officials at the race. Although de Lima had a policeman riding alongside him, and the route was lined with people in official T-Shirts, and this was supposed to be games with the highest degree of “camera surveillance”:http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/10/olympics.security.ap/ in history, Horan had no trouble running out onto the course and attacking the leader. The crowd reacted faster than the police. Even if you didn’t know that Horan had a history of interrupting major sporting events, you’d think that _someone_ at the race might have suspected that the guy in the leprechaun costume with a Star of David on his leg and a message about the end of the world plastered to him _just might_ have been planning to do something when the leading runners and the TV cameras hove into sight.