Jeffrey Sachs: The Sweet...
Jeffrey Sachs has done many, many good things in his life.
First off, he got into Harvard. Then, in 1976, he graduated summa cum laude. Then, in 1980, he received a doctorate in economics from the same institution. The same year he earned his doctorate, he became a professor, again at the only school in the world whose name rhymes with “Shmarvard.” By 1983 he had become a full professor, making him the youngest person to receive tenure in Harvard’s history. He’s a very smart guy.
But, all this served to prepare him for the much more important work he would soon do. Beginning in 1985, Sachs played a crucial role in forming economic policy for a variety of countries around the world. With the thawing of the Cold War, many formerly communist countries faced the challenge of how to move their economies toward capitalism without destroying them in the process. Sometimes – as occurred with Poland – Sach’s advice helped work near miracles. Other times – as occurred with Russia – it didn’t. Regardless of the consequences, Sachs’s celebrity continued to rise.
Now closely tied with the UN and Kofi Annan, he played a key role in the development of the “Millennium Declaration,” which outlines several goals and targets for global economic development. Lately, he has emerged as a spokesperson for African aid and debt relief, arguing that, despite the less-than-not-evil character of many of the continents regimes, foreign assistance can play a crucial role in saving millions of lives. To promote awareness of the reality of global poverty and ways to address it, he recently released a book with the felicitous title “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.” It was excerpted in Time magazine, (which, by the way, named him one of the 100 most influential leaders in the world) where it ran as the cover story. Bono, of U2 fame, wrote the book’s quasi-comprehensible introduction.
By the way, he also teaches at Columbia. And it’s not because he confused it with Colombia. In 2002, after intensive lobbying and the offer of what is rumored to be a very lucrative contract, Sachs agreed to leave Harvard to head Columbia’s Earth Institute. There, Sachs has helped lead the institute in developing interdisciplinary approaches to the type of global problems that attracted him in his economic work. Columbia’s then president, George Rupp, averred that Sachs was “one of the world’s most important international economists.” Lee Bollinger called him “a major public intellectual, in the best sense.” Then provost Jonathan Cole may have won the coveted award for most extravagant sucking up to someone you’ve just hired in the history of the world when he declared: “[Sachs] may be the ideal type of 21st century professor.”
...and The Sour
If this is the case, then undergraduates in the 21st century are in a lot of trouble. Because, despite his undeniably massive accomplishments, Sachs does not teach undergraduates in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, he doesn’t teach undergraduates in any sense of the word, unless one takes teach to mean “give occasional lectures open to the Columbia community which undergraduates may attend if they find out about them in time.” Since coming to Columbia, Sachs hasn’t taught one course available to a broad array of undergraduates. The lectures, like most of Sachs’s work, are compelling, informative, and insightful. At one of these speeches last year, the student who introduced him claimed that after listening to Sachs, he had a Road-to-Damascus experience, except about global interconnectivity, not Jesus. But it’s an experience he could have had by picking up Sachs’s latest book, available at major bookstores across the United States.
Many Columbia professors say that one of the great joys of their job comes from knowing that they are shaping the future leaders of the world. Jeffrey Sachs can shape the leaders of today. In light of that, his actions are understandable, maybe even praiseworthy. Every second he spends explaining supply and demand to a blockheaded student in his lecture is a second he could have spent lobbying for aid to help the 1 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day and don’t know where their next meal will come from. If that’s the case, however, then maybe he shouldn’t be “teaching” at Columbia at all.
Sachs certainly isn’t the only mega-star professor to claim residency at Columbia without ever coming into contact with undergraduates – Brain Green and Simon Schama, I’m looking in your directions. But, in a particularly vivid way, his work raises fundamental questions about what Columbia – even, the academy in general – is and should be. Sachs is probably the most famous person associated with Columbia today. He raises awareness of the University through his actions on behalf of one of the most praiseworthy causes in the modern world. Yet for all that, with the money Columbia has lavished on him, several professors could have been hired who could have made a major difference in undergraduates lives. The cost-benefit analysis is far from precise – but it is clearly not wholly on the side of Columbia students.
Jeffrey Sachs really has done many, many good things in his life. It’s too bad that teaching undergraduates at Columbia hasn’t been one of them.
Quote of the Day
In honor of everyone who has moved, is moving, or will move to college in the near past/present/future.
The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn: the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.
I’ve witnessed this spectacle every September for twenty-one years. It is a brilliant event, invariably. The students greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures, as always. The parents stand sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in every direction. The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people’s names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage. This assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of the year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation. - Don Dellilo, White Noise
Best. Interview. Ever.
Obscure 18th Century American Political Journalist, Cato, the Honest Farmer, interviews Cindy Sheehan.
Q: Madame Fheehan, what if your confidered judgment of that iffue judged to be of paramount import to dogmatic philofophef af much af our learned clerify – the ever increasing encroachment of the LEVIATHAN?
A: Um… I’m sorry, I don’t understand. And you confused your “f’s” with “s’s.”
Q: Forry. Prithee, sorry. The question concerns the subversion of the antitent state of our country, making a revolution of sovereignty which, prima fonte, by declaration of the tyranny of reason, threatens our oeconomy, constitution, and commonweal, perhaps leading to an agrarian revolt and return to a state of nature, viz Shay’s Rebellion.
A: Yeah, I still don’t get it. Also, none of that was a question.
Q: Moving on. I understand thou hast recently entangled thyself with issues concerning WAR in the land of Mohammedan. But, as the learned Thomas Hutchinson hath noted, what of the possible connexion between this race and the mystic Hindoo?
A: My main point is that this war –
Q: As the eminent Thomas Jefferson has observed “It should be our endeavour to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most, when we shall have carried our point against her.”
A: I think his point even makes sense for today. But I also –
Q: And yet, how can we avoid such crossing of the lances, when we continue to maintain entangling alliances, along with the Scylla of a standing army, and the Charybdis of a foolish and wicked naval fleet? Has the dread torment of the Barbary pirates failed to educate us on this point?
A: I think I should go.
Q: But not until our most important point has been difcuffed. How has your individual education sharpened the senses, formed the temper, and regulated the passion so as to overcome the intoxicating regal homage that make of the majority of women no more than a common aristocrat? Is it, as the learned doctors of medicine declaim, a distemper of the humors? Do you have an excess of the spleen?
A: Bush is a terrorist.
Morbidity Watch
Today, NPR had a report on an 83-year-old resident of a retirement community who has recently taken up the adorably disturbing hobby of obituary writing. He started out with himself, apparently not trusting his children to realize the overwhelming life of an advertising executive. Finding that he had a taste for the subject, he decided to offer his services to other retirees in his neighborhood. Since he know turns a tidy profit from his literary skills, I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to do the same. Sen(i)or OldGuy may have his demographic market covered, but that just leaves younger ages ripe for the plucking. We're the most valued group for every other kind of product, so we should have the obits covered as well.
The dirty little secret of obituary writing, one I learned earlier this year while helping to write my grandmother's, is that they all follow the same formula. Sure, the really famous get more extensive treatment, but for 99% of the population, all the obit writer has to do is copy-paste the right names in the right places.
The problem, for college kids at least, comes from this format. It emphasizes marriage, careers, and kids, otherwise known as all the stuff that constitutes life, which is also known as the thing we haven't lived yet. But, this can be overcome. In fact, it has been overcome. By me. Below, I present an example of the ObitModel3000: College Edition. I haven't trademarked it yet, and I wouldn't know how to make the signal for it if I did. So just know that if you steal my idea, it will hurt my feelings.
"Billy McBill, whose AIM screenname was 'HornyToad' died of being too awesome at his home in Pleasantville yesterday.
HornyToad was born on January 7th 1984 to a bunch of losers who never appreciated him. Sure bet they feel sorry about not letting him throw that house party now. Because he's dead. Can't throw many house parties from within the cold embrace of the crypt, can you Dad? What's that? I can't hear you. I'm dead! One time, his mom walked in on him... you know. Man, that was unawesome.
He was a 2002 graduate of EveryHighSchoolUSA, where he enjoyed feeling cripplingly awkward. It's not as if he had much choice though, because he couldn't have any parties at home, now could he?
He attended IvyLeague State, where he changed his major several times in a quest to find which one had the most girls and grade inflation. His many interests included 'smokin my chronic, golf, [and] smokin my chronic.' His enjoyed music from 'skinner, seger, the stones, led zepp, bon jovi, [and] MMMMMEEEEETTTTTAAAAALLLLLIIIIICCCCAAAAA!!!!!!!' He listed "Zoolander" as his favorite book. His favorite quote was 'Life isn't made up of the number of moments you breathe. It's made up of the number of moments that take your breath away.' Many of his friends speculated on both his gender and sexuality on account of this quote.
In addition to the aforementioned douchebag parents, he is survived by a younger brother, a dog, and 185 facebook friends.
Prior to his death, HornyToad requested that all memorial donations be made to I.C. Weiner. Although Mr. Weiner's name is not in the phonebook, HornyToad suggested calling Moe's. Then he laughed and laughed and laughed. Then he died."
Jealous?
Fine, But Delaware's Still the Worst State
Recent statistical evidence confirms an assumption that anyone who has ever met Santa Clause already knew: fat people are generous, or, at least, skinny people aren't. According to the Trust for America's Health, an organization so honest that they have the word trust in their title, the top ten skinniest states, in enfattened order, are:
1 Colorado 16.8
2 Massachusetts 18.4
3 Vermont 18.7
4 Rhode Island 19.0
5 Utah 19.6
6 Connecticut 19.7
7 Montana 19.7
8 (tie) Wyoming 20.8
8 (tie) Idaho 20.8
10 Nevada 21.1
Whereas the top ten fattest comprise:
1 Mississippi (29.5) 28.1
2 Alabama (28.9) 27.7
3 West Virginia (27.6) 27.6
4 Louisiana (27.00) 25.8
5 Tennessee (27.2) 25.6
6 (tie) Texas (25.8) 25.3
6 (tie) Michigan (25.4) 25.3
6 (tie) Kentucky (25.8) 25.3
9 Indiana (25.5) 25.2
10 South Carolina (25.1) 25.1
This brings to mind an observation from two writers at the Economist that, instead of dividing America between red and blue states, one should divide it between horizontal and vertical. Horizontal America, filled with wide planes and concomitantly wide people like Denny Hastert, votes Republican. Vertical America, composed of the skyscrapers that dot the urban landscape in a way that Seuratt would appreciate, has whip-thin liberal leaders like Nancy Pelosi. This is the part where anyone who voted for Kerry can chortle about how people that voted for Bush are as stupid as they are fat. But, before they climb up to high on their laughing-at-Bush-voters horse, they should consider their own fat problem, a fatness of the soul. Because, a list of the top ten least charitable states, in declining order of stinginess, goes like this:
1. Alaska
2. New Hampshire
3. New Jersey
4. Connecticut
5. Rhode Island
6. Massachusetts
7. Louisiana
8. Illinois
9. Washington
10. Hawaii
Whereas the ten most charitable states are:
1. Utah
2. Wyoming
3. Arkansas
4. Nebraska
5. Mississippi
6. Oklahoma
7. South Dakota
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Tennessee
Utah can kind of be tossed out as an outlier, because their God tells them to tithe heavily to their church, otherwise they'll go to hell, which would presumably entail being followed around for all eternity by jackasses asking if you want to convert to their religion. Man, not even Dante thought up that one. Alaska can also be ignored, because they have to save up their money in case the dreaded penguins ever get their act together and join forces with the Eskimos.
Anyway, the fact remains that although they may be fat, those cross-burning, cousin-loving, trailer-park-living-in rednecks give a hell of a lot of money to charity, and the Waspy McWasps of the Northeast don't. Remarkably, this holds true despite seemingly extenuating conditions like, say, taxation. New Hampshire, a state with no income tax, stands skinny shoulder to skinny shoulder with heavily taxed Massachusetts.
Someone much smarter than me might be able to draw out clever observations on the nature of the welfare state, it's interaction with individual character, irrationally longstanding regional differences, and the development of social prejudices from this data. Perhaps, say, in the comments section. But for now, the English concentrator in me is winning out, so I'll just point out that Shakespeare had this all figured out before the data-crunchers at the Census Bureau could count their legoes. In Julius Caesar, he has his eponymous character declare: "Let me have men about me that are fat/ sleek-headed men and, such as sleep o’nights./ Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look./ He thinks too much, such men are dangerous."
Quote of the Fifty Years Ago: I'm a Saul Bellow Whore Edition
"The Adventures of Augie March is concerned with Augie's quest to learn his own character and destiny. Novelist Saul Bellow (Dangling Man, The Victim) has handed over his typewriter to his hero, to let him tell his own story in his own way. As a result, the book, which has a kind of self-generating power and authenticity, reads more like fictionalized memoirs than a novel. Self-educated, slum-bred Augie writes with a combination of raw, breezy slang and literary allusion that is often bouncy and effective, although too frequently his over-enthusiastic prose is merely bloated. Despite it's faults of narrative, style and taste, the story is good enough to push 38-year-old Saul Bellow to the forefront of the younger, postwar U.S. novelists." - Time, 1953
Quote of the Day
"But there's a dark side to the iPod era. Snobbery subsists on exclusivity. And the ownership of a huge and eclectic music collection has become ordinary. Thanks to the iPod, and digital music generally, anyone can milk various friends, acquaintances, and the Internet to quickly build a glorious 10,000-song collection. Adding insult to injury, this process often comes directly at the Rock Snob's expense. We are suddenly plagued by musical parasites. For instance, a friend of middling taste recently leeched 700 songs from my computer. He offered his own library in return, but it wasn't much. Never mind my vague sense that he should pay me some money. In Rock Snob terms, I was a Boston Brahmin and he was a Beverly Hillbilly--one who certainly hadn't earned that highly obscure album of AC/DC songs performed as tender acoustic ballads but was sure to go bragging to all his friends about it. Even worse was the girlfriend to whom I gave an iPod. She promptly plugged it into my computer and was soon holding in her hand a duplicate version of my 5,000-song library--a library that had taken some 20 years, thousands of dollars, and about as many hours to accumulate. She'd downloaded it all within five minutes. And, a few months later, she was gone, taking my intimate musical DNA with her." - Michael Crowley, The New Republic, where ACDC fans count as rock snobs.
Starry Night
If you ever want to feel high without paying for it, and if you don't have cool friends who let you mooch, then the next best alternative is to live in a city for the majority of the year, then take a trip somewhere where the stars come out at night. They probably won't look as cool as those in the picture, but there will be free candy. I promise. Even if there isn't candy, there will still be stars.
In an essay that's so rewarding it's not even funny - and normally I find rewarding essays hilarious, so that's really saying something - Emerson says that "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." Holla, E-Dog. Holla.
He Brought the Illinoise, Not So Much Illifunk
Despite that notable failure, and an excessive reliance on sloppily executed gimmicks, the innate awesomenss of Sufjan Stevens's songs made the concert more than wortwhile. Damn, "All the Trees of the Field" gets me every time.
Intelligent Design = Actually, Really Stupid Design for Idiots
I like science a lot. I don't understand it, but I do like it, and I generally know who to go to when I want to know what people who do understand science think. So, I think I'm on pretty solid ground when I say that an op-ed in yesterday's
New York Times from Verlyn Kinkenborg - who is
not a villain from Hogan's Heroes - has it pretty much right when it says that "Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence... [A]ccepting intelligent design means discarding science."
If this is true, then why oh why did the
New York Times have to humor the
45 percent of Americans who believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." That's nice. And by "nice" I mean nice in the sense in which Shakespeare used it. Shakespeare used it to mean stupid. That's stupid.
It's true that since last November's election, God is the new black, and that following some intense naval gazing, the
Times's Executive Editor, Bill Keller, has declared that the paper needs to do more to speak to the concerns of those who dwell within the vast area - which may or may not be
Mordor - between the coasts that isn't a major city. But that doesn't justify running a multi-part series on the "debate" between intelligent designers and the scientific community, as the paper of record finished doing yesterday. Although the articles provided space for scientists to explain why intelligent design fails so spectacularly, the mere fact of the article's existence helps promote the cause of these neo-creationists. When the most influential paper in the world runs treats your theory as worthy of discussion, then, regardless of its legitimacy, it becomes worthy of discussion. The constraints of objective journalism further promote this impression by providing equal time for intelligent designers. Again, even if the quality of the argument is poor, the fact of its existence constitutes a victory for intelligent designers, hence the widespread support among religious conservatives for "teach the controversy" evolution curricula.
There wasn't a controversy about evolution among people who actually understand it before the
Times's series, and there isn't one now. But, with the help of a few quixotic scientists, savvy politicians, and a cowardly and complaisant media, there is enough material to create a controversy about evolution among those who don't. Nice.
Quote of the Day
"I'm going to have lunch with Secretary of State Rice, talk a little business; Mrs. Bush, talk a little business; we've got a friend from South Texas here, named Katharine Armstrong; take a little nap. I'm reading an Elmore Leonard book right now, knock off a little Elmore Leonard this afternoon; go fishing with my man, Barney; a light dinner and head to the ballgame. I get to bed about 9:30 p.m., wake up about 5 a.m. So it's a perfect day." - George W. Bush
God and Man at Six Feet Under
Now I have something. Despite
Six Feet Under's aggressively secular viewpoint (sample dialogue: "There’s no God, no rules, no judgements except the ones you accept or create for yourself and once it’s over, it’s over"), the series finale of this bluest of blue state shows embraced family values in a way rarely seen this side of PAX, or an op-ed supporting gay marriage. A show with plotlines that included sex with prostitutes, adultery, and incest, among other activities sure to outrage the collective campus of Bob Jones, ended with babies, marriage, and a celebration of family. Even though it's characters didn't believe in God nearly as much as they believed in having lots of sex, somehow they came to the same conclusions about what makes life worthwhile as most of those Bob Jones alums probably will. When this constitutes radicalism, maybe the divide between...wait...this isn't radicalism at all.
Well, Not Now
But when I have something worthwhile to talk about. Which will be soon. Just not now.
Fear and Trembling
This is probably a bad idea. As explained
here , anyone who has any interest in the academy, which includes me, would be well advised to stay far away from the wretched netherworld of blogs. These grafs discuss the heart of the matter, to coin a phrase:
A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.
Worst of all, for professional academics, it's a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation....
It would never occur to the committee to ask what a candidate thinks about certain people's choice of fashion or body adornment, which countries we should invade, what should be done to drivers who refuse to get out of the passing lane, what constitutes a real man, or how the recovery process from one's childhood traumas is going. But since the applicant elaborated on many topics like those, we were all ears. And we were a little concerned. It's not our place to make the recommendation, but we agreed a little therapy (of the offline variety) might be in order....
Job seekers who are also bloggers may have a tough road ahead, if our committee's experience is any indication.
You may think your blog is a harmless outlet. You may use the faulty logic of the blogger, "Oh, no one will see it anyway." Don't count on it. Even if you take your blog offline while job applications are active, Google and other search engines store cached data of their prior contents. So that cranky rant might still turn up.
The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum....
[I]n truth, we did not disqualify any applicants based purely on their blogs. If the blog was a negative factor, it was one of many that killed a candidate's chances.
More often that not, however, the blog was a negative, and job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible.
So this is a risk, but I think it's a manageable one. Specifically, it's one I can manage by posting stuff that won't embarass me. Starting...NOW!
First Post
Yeah and the like
