Thursday, August 6, 2009

The last year of my life in bullet points

A lot has happened in my life over the past 12 months. One year ago I was in Ann Arbor. I am here now as well. Between these A2 stints a bunch of stuff happened to me. I had the best and worst months of my life. Some relationships became much stronger, while others completely disintegrated. There are very few things I did that I regret, though those few things stick out like gaping wounds because of just how deeply I regret them. I only did like three stupid things, but they were VERY stupid, and they all involved women. Three is also the number of women involved in this time line, though the distribution of said mistakes was not even among them. I learned a lot I guess. Here's a brief recap in deliberately ambiguous bullet point form. I don't overtly name anyone, though it should be rather obvious to anyone who knows me who these people are. No one reads this anyways so it doesn't really matter.


August/September,

Moved to The Upper East Side of Manhattan!

Met Carter Page. You don’t know who he is because he doesn’t want you to.

Jogged in Central Park.

Had the most awkward, even painful interview of my life at www.priny.com They felt I handled it quite well and decided to hire me.

A poorly defined 3 year relationship ended over the course of five minutes or was it one month, or was five months? idk. I do know that over those five minutes it was clearly redefined as nonexistent going forward. This was my fault. I didn’t mind at the time. Maybe this was the problem? Maybe...

Watched my chosen industry unravel over a similarly bleak time scale. This was not my fault.

Talked to a lot of people in Nigeria over the phone.

Played a small role in closing an international deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars. On that note, I was completely unpaid (though I’m sure PRI, would argue not uncompensated) even though I feel I added real value to the project. This in contrast to my previous work at a law firm in Detroit where I was paid much more than the marginal product of my labor would dictate.

Found the Brooklyn warehouse party scene, and met a very smart and beautiful girl from Park Slope as a result.



October (Without a doubt the best month of my life,)

Had my first kiss with Park Slope girl here: ( Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, Central Park) at sunset.

Spoke Chinese over the phone at work! Everyone thought I was so cool. I was thinking about how cool it would have been if they had given me money.

Met a bunch of members from the cast of Gossip Girl at a bar.

Was mistaken for a Hassidic Jew in Williamsberg.

Saw TV on The Radio play in Brooklyn

Saw Dan Deacon play in Brooklyn

Went to maybe 20 loft/warehouse parties

Met Bill Clinton on the street, and shook his hand

Was punched in the face on my birthday

Found Isaiah Berlin, rather, Joel Rosenthal found him for me.



November,


Robert Mugabe called my friend a witch, coming from a total asshole like him this is a badge of honor.

Saw Obama win the election at a bar in the East Village with my Canadian friend and a gay couple from Sweden who just had to apologize for anything bad that may have happened to my mother when she grew up there.

Remembered to eat lunch and dinner in the same day with Park Slope girl’s help.

Ran out of money.

Had Thanksgiving dinner with Park Slope girl at 11:55PM on the Upper East Side. We had steak, fuck turkey.


December,

Slept for more than 4 hours a day

Had my last Upper East Side brunch, for now...

Made the “mistake” of writing someone a letter of apology, the mistake of course was that everything in it was true...

Decided that said letter a was mistake

Decided that said letter was not a mistake, but that giving it to its recipient was.

Decided writing said letter was a mistake.

Didn’t mind writing that letter and finally decided that writing/delivering it was not a mistake...



January (without a a doubt the worst month of my life),

Went on a road trip, and was almost killed by a drunk driver. Douchebag. I almost died in Ohio on the highway, how boring.

Went crazy in Pennsylvania , like certifiably crazy. (no joke, I was a mess)

Wrote a very a stupid email. Like the dumbest, least coherent thing I’ve ever written in my life. Writing/sending this was a mistake. (I was CRAZY)

All the girls at Bucknell were quite attracted to me in my crazed state.

Drove home and was no longer crazy.

Woke up to hear Obama become president of the United States.

Saw Park Slope girl for the last time. Remembered how to properly break up with someone you care bout, and did so. It wasn’t as sad or hard as I had expected it to be.


February,


Fell in love with the smartest girl in the world. A very hot European law student. (She is so hot that the Croatian word for ‘sunshine’ is in her name) I’m in an astronomy class right now and we learned that the sun is very HOT. We ironically lived closer to each other in Manhattan than we did at Bard. But we never chilled in NYC.

Started coaching ice hockey. 33-7-2, something like that.



March/April/May,

Nothing unique happened at all really, I went to Puerto Rico, it was a waste of money.

I did start working for the Dutchess county legislature, Fighting corruption!!!!



June/July/August,


Moved to Ann Arbor, and like(d) it.

Found Ambrosia

Was asked for $600 from a drifter. At Ambrosia.

Saw someone get taken to the hospital after being hit in the head with a large stick, outside of Ambrosia.

Learned I don’t like astronomy, it’s all lies!!!

Found a useful sleep pattern (one that does not revolve around days)

Was asked to join a business venture in Eastern Europe, will I?

Finished reading Bonfire of the Vanities which I started last August.

Started reading Man in Full Maybe I’ll finish by next August.




It was an interesting year. To me anyways.



Alex

Saturday, August 1, 2009

What's not to love

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/07/in_praise_of_immigration.cfm

It's very often that a policy or social view is so transperantly good for economic growth and moral conscience but liberal immigration polices managing to do both. All of this manages to ignore the balance of power gains from allowing a speaker of Egyptian arabic or say Albert Einstein into our country. Quality of life arguments against immigration seem to be catalyzed by purely xenophobic hatred for outsiders rather than sound economic argument. It may be true that These people would uncomfortable living with so called foreigners in Queens or Dearborn. I don't know why one should care much about their opinion, especially when its hurts our country in the long run. these people also seem to forget that their ancestors likely came here on boat a few thousand years after the original inhabitants of North America did anyways. They always seem to draw the line of when immigration became unacceptable to shortly after their own family arrived. How convenient.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Immigration is much more than an economic issue

From a think tank where one my favorite professors is the president:

http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/22_1/essays/001.html

"My goal here is twofold: First, I wish to make a plea for the relevance of moral considerations in debates about immigration. Too often, immigration debates are conducted solely from the standpoint of "what is good for us," without regard for the justifiability of immigration policies to those excluded. Second, I wish to offer a standpoint that demonstrates why one should think of immigration as a moral problem that must be considered in the context of global justice. More specifically, I will argue that the earth belongs to humanity in common and that this matters for assessing immigration policy. "

While I cannot hide that I am partially pro-immigration because I would not exist without it-My mother and three of my grandparents are immigrants- every economics professor I have had with one exception is also an immigrant.
From the standpoint of competitiveness one should note that a majority of this countries most successful technology companies such as Google were stated by immigrants. Ignoring all of that, immigration is in my opinion the single greatest contributor to world prosperity, development, and human rights in the history of mankind. The majority of arguments against immigration are misguided at best, and represent selfish xenophobia at their worst.

Read the whole article.

Monday, April 20, 2009

An odd silver lining

Pulitzers are being announced as I write:

Local Reporting -Detroit Free Press Staff "Awarded to Detroit Free Press Staff, and notably Jim Schaefer and M.L. Elrick, for their uncovering of a pattern of lies by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that included denial of a sexual relationship with his female chief of staff, prompting an investigation of perjury that eventually led to jail terms for the two officials."


no commentary necessary

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Hmmmm aka 87.5%

Last year I heard some kids at Bard were meeting to try to use our endowment's investment to draft a shareholder resolution to pressure a fast food company to use more environmentally safe practices. I thought this was a very stupid thing to do, so I went to the meeting. In no uncertain terms I told my contemporaries at Bard College that using our endowment to pressure McDonald's was a stupid idea that would not work.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/1504448,mcdonalds-program-reduce-potato-pesticides-033109.article

I was wrong,

Good Job guys.




-Alex

Friday, April 10, 2009

What to think

compare:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/students-occupy-new-school-building-again/?hp
http://gawker.com/5159003/the-painfully-ridiculous-end-to-the-nyu-revolution

To this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7989919.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Sit-Down_Strike

Protesting for the sake thereof is not only pointless and stupid, but also insulting and embarrassing. I look at these kids in their Manhattan lofts who are not quite pleased with the $70k a year that their parents are paying for them to play around in the big city for 4-5 years. What are they complaining about you ask? Well the cafateria fro NYU's optional meal plan wont give them all the vegan food they want. And the "student free space" isn't open for them to do quite everything they wanted. Who cares? Go save some money and make your own vegan food, maybe go to some Brooklyn warehouse where you can do whatever you want, or drop out of the capitalist machine and move to some upstate village like Tivoli where scores of ex New yorkers pretend to live the real American dream, where everyone reads Marx and lives off the 'power structure' that treated them like adults for the first time in their miserable lives.

Especially sad is that these are the same kids I lived with on 1395 Lexington, who spend the first $20 dollars of their day smoking weed, and the next $50 eating at restaurants on Delancy, and the next $40 snorting cocaine, followed by another $50 at some shitty bar in the East Village. After wasting a few thousand dollars, and the first 5 weeks of their semester on an seemingly eternal drug binge. They wake up sober for the first time in months only to see that the world wasn't deigned to give them everything they want, and that no one cares about their pointless, and childish complaints. Worst of all, for all the yelling and breaking of things, they wont actually risk anything for their bullshit demands. Worst case scenario the very polite (and much poorer) police detain them for 3 hours and the administration suspends them for a semester, so they can do some bullshit 40 thousand dollar english language study abroad program at a chateau in Italy or a townhouse in London for 2 months, only to return back to their "oppressive" schools next year.

Why is it that these days all the marxist occupiers go to private schools and have corporate parents with million dollar stock options and six figure incomes?

Contrast this with Moldavia, where the protesters are asking for fair elections, entrance in to the EU. (IE liberal western system) And not to lose their sovereignty to a communist hegemon. Why do these kids and the workers who did sit ins at the GM and Dodge plants risk their jobs and often their lives for what they want? Maybe it's because they wanted something just and real, when all these NYU kids wants is bullshit, and their derivative art sucks too.

GM and Chrysler workers have plenty of reasons to be pissed at their upper management for lying to them for 20 years, and running their company, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and my entire home state into the ground. But yet they don't destroy the factory. Everyone in Southeastern Michigan has reasons to be pissed at Kwame Kilpatrick and the Detroit city council for continuously embarrassing us and doing everything they can to seal the fate of what used to be my favorite city as a ghost of the past that will never return. And yet they don't occupy city hall and waste the police force's limited resources and time with petty demands. Maybe these people, most of whom never went to college, are just smarter than the New School/ NYU set. They are certainly more polite.


EDIT: This doesn't apply to all or even most NYU/ NEW SChool students. In fact many of the protesters were at both schools 'occupations' Also Bob Kerry probably should resign. He doesn't have a PhD, which should be a prereq for president of a PhD granting institution. He has also shown failure of leadership, if most of your students and faculty hate you, maybe you should pull a Larry Summers and get paid seven figures to advice some nice Hedge funders for three days a week.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

This is how you do it

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/us/08vermont.html?_r=1&hp

I have to go get dinner, but read above, and read my post below.


have a good day

Friday, April 3, 2009

The wrong approach to the right outcome

My mother's home state of Iowa, at least her adopted American home state, just joined the ranks of Massachusetts and Connecticut in legalizing gay marriage. While within my worldview this is ostensibly a very good outcome, I am worried that achieving equality through the courts has the possibility of reducing sexual orientation equality in the long run. As we have seen in California, many Americans (possibly rightfully) feel that this is an unfair attack on their democratic will. As a result, California's voters recently voted to constitutionally ban gay marriage in response to their courts decision, this outcome is of course much worse for supporters of gay marriage than if the courts never ruled on the matter.

As I have said in earlier posts, I feel that removing that state's role in regulating marriage, in place of more economic based civil unions would be an optimal situation for all but the most traditional and conservative citizens of the Union. However, this is sadly unrealistic in my opinion. The best path for equality in marriage given this country's culture and history should would involve action by voter referendum or through democratically elected legislatures. Sadly, this requires waiting until a majority of the American people are ready to accept the idea of legalizing gay marriage. Now comes my own predicament and one within the GLBT community. How can I tell my gay friends that they must wait until the American people are ready for them to be equal? How would I feel if someone told me I must wait for the country to be ready for my Jewish father to marry my gentile mother?

There are very few things that would make me happier than full scale legalization and acceptance of same sex relationships in this country; however, I fear that doing so through the courts may do the movement far more harm than good. I am proud of Iowa and the Midwest today, hopefully nothing will cause that feeling to dissipate.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Sunset on Authoritarianism


(West lake in Hangzhou at sunset)

China is the most interesting country I have ever lived in (I can only really claim to have lived in two countries, but it is also the most interesting country I have visited) For a relatively well off American like myself one day ZhongGuo fells like the freest country in the world; the bars close hours after after daylight arrives, and only because everyone has finally gone home, you can smoke anywhere, travel is cheap and easy, getting a job (for someone with chinese and English language skills) or starting a business takes minimum effort. The majority of people in the cities are incredibly open and polite, including the police.
Other times the facade of freedom falls apart in a matter of minutes. Your friend gets a phone call from the Bank of China, they want to speak with you and ask that you bring your passport, you wonder how they know your with her when they call. You stay with a host family in Tibet and the Army comes in at 1AM to kick you out of the SAR, it turns out that permit you ignored wasn't quite the formality you thought it was. Your friend gets deported and you don't; there is no explanation for the differing and arbitrary treatment.
You hear about the censored internet but a google search of Tienanmen Square yields a plethora of accurate information. The next day you mention Taiwan to your Chinese friend and it becomes clear that he thinks it is a provence just like ShanDong or SiChuan, to make this clear he wasn't like a Saudi who refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, he actually did not know that there was a controversy over Taiwanese sovereignty.
I or any other person who lives in a city in China can live and work anywhere in the country, but people from rural villages are not afforded the same rights of free movement. Of course only a very small segment of the population gets too make any relevant political decisions. And dissenters often disappear and only occasionally turn up ever again.
Up until now the Chinese populace, especially in urban areas has tacitly accepted this regime. And with good reason, the Chinese government has held legitimacy over the past 30 years by promising economic growth and (very slowly) opening up to the rest of the world. This has helped to lift over 300 million people out of poverty and starvation. The short term gains from democracy did not outweigh the costs economic loss and personal harm. However, economic growth is quickly turning stagnant, and the rising middle class will not accept this rule with increasing unemployment, especially among college graduates. I'm told by people in China now that pro-democracy petitions are circulating among young urban professionals at a pace faster than the government can quietly deal with them. I put the odds at a new Tienanmen moment within 2 years at 1 to 3, these odds will only increase if growth does not pickup. The call for democracy is closing in on the Communist Party, and unless they take extraordinary action to stop it now, it will soon be too late. I hope they fail.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Gay marriage: an obvious solution

I have always felt that a simple solution to the gay marriage debate lies in redefining the government's role in sanctioning personal relationships. Legally, there should only be one option available to everyone. It would be called something like a civil union. If for religious reasons a couple decides that they would like to enter into some extra special god sanctioned relationship through their priest or robot overlord that would still be allowed. However, it would have no bearing on their legal relationship with the state.

This has two benefits:
1. It helps to further separate the government from religious activity and sanction which in my opinion would be good. This helps to kill the religious argument that gay marriage somehow dilutes the far superior hetero-marriages by treating them equally. Because 'marriage' would now be a private affair, it would be left up to individual churches and other community organizations to decide if they would like to offer the gift of marriage to all or not.
2. It makes it more obvious that those who are against gay marriage are against it for sinister homophobic motives, rather than moral "pro-family" reasons that they like to hide behind.

It should be noted that a number of mainstream churches and temples already perform marriage ceremonies for same sex couples.


This issue of equality also creates a better society in my opinion. If two people of the same sex love each other what harm does do anyone else if their relationship is codified in the law like any other? In fact, if marriage is such a good thing for society how does precluding homosexuals from the practice harm society? They already live together, and if anything legal marriage would only help to bring them into mainstream society. A gay friend of mine once mentioned how hurtful it would be to her that I could marry anyone tomorrow regardless of love and she wouldn't be able to marry the love of her life, possibly ever. I don't plan to marry anytime soon but I can't argue with the point. From my perspective any marrage I enter into would be more legitimate and not less if she were allowed to marry as well. I hope the path of history is on her side. I fear otherwise.

These happy days

We (possibly just me until I build a readership) now have the first executive orders from Obama to scrutinize. The freeze on Bush's midnight regulations and trials in Guantanamo while they undergo legal review is good. But what about the freeze on White House staffers pay? I have always felt that the low pay offered to state and federal workers is the primary reason that there is a revolving door between Government and corporate lobbying. Why should someone who could make $500,000 a year working in compliance for an investment bank be forced to make only $60k for a boss (Obama) who is worth million of dollars.
This low pay seems to lead to more insidious results as well, with pay relatively low for people of the skill and ability that a White House job demands, two kinds of people will be especially drawn to these jobs: Those who crave power, and those who are already rich. That's a shame

On the inauguration:
While Rick Warren wasn't a bright spot, I can accept a large portion of American's follow and respect him. One redeeming factor is that the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson gave the invocation at the lincoln memorial. Too bad HBO censored it out of the broadcast.

Friday, January 9, 2009

First Post

One is forced to wonder why Blago, thought he had a chance to survive in office after this scandal broke.  Certainly, pissing off the Democratic leadership of the Illinois legislature, United States Senate, and the President-elect would not fit into my plan for helping Blago keep his job.  Of course this sort of behavior isn't very unique.  Just look ant how Ted Stevens and Kwame Kilpatrick have acted in the past 4 months.  
I would think that self-preservation would overtake these politicians egos once they have been caught, maybe after successfully holding power and abusing for so long they lose sight of their own vulnerability.  It should be noted that Eliot Spitzer had the class presence of mind to resign after his significantly more minor scandal broke out.