David Trinh

I’m currently slogging my way through summer internship applications and I can’t help thinking that it would be awfully nice if some organization were to develop a “common app” for summer internships à la the college common app.  The amount of time I waste sorting through various applications, converting forms into PDFs and so forth is really astounding.  Seems to me that if there was some sort of universal application, which you could just attach a custom cover letter to,  it would save everyone–employers and applicants–quite a bit of time.  All the while this would increase the number of positions an average college student could apply to and would also give employers more qualified applicants from which to choose from.  Win win all around.

1. Too Big To Fail (Andrew Ross Sorkin): Sorkin does a superb job of providing an entertaining narrative of the financial crisis.  Honestly, while the subject matter itself might be a little dry to some and the acronyms and last names a little overwhelming, this is an extremely well constructed account, filled with reconstructed dialogue, of the crash.  Don’t miss the scene where Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson dry heaves into a trash can in Nancy Pelosi’s office.  Priceless.

My only criticism of the work is that there is little in the way of analysis or explanation of exactly what contributed to the crisis.  Save for a brief overview of CDS and sub-prime mortgages, Sorkin largely leaves it up to the reader to figure out the intricacies of the investment banking and mortgage trading realms on their lonesome.  This is fine if you have a decent understanding of the crisis to begin with (and honestly, if you’re willing to page through a 550 page tome on the subject you probably already have a passing interest in the US financial system) but if not I highly recommend that you take a listen to this excellent This American Life episode as a primer.

2. Transforming America’s Israel Lobby (Dan Fleshler): Overall an excellent read. Fleshler does a good job providing a relatively even-handed account of the power of the Israel Lobby inside the United States and provides a solid plan for strengthening the left in the debate over the future of Palestine and Israel. Further, Fleshler manages to do this while avoiding many of the cliches (he even does a good job of lampooning many of them) that one frequently hears bandied about during discussions of the Middle East.

The only problem I had with Fleshler’s work is that he repeatedly cites random bloggers, or, even worse, random commentators on random blogs to score points against the far-left. I know that Fleshler needs to keep up appearances and criticize some lefties to avoid appearing entirely one-sided but the strawmanning becomes extremely obvious at the point where he’s citing a comment by “Cogit8″ on the “Mondoweiss” blog. I read a ton of blogs and I can assure you that I have never heard of Mondoweiss, nevermind Cogit8. If Fleshler wanted to criticize the left for supposedly over-the-top rhetoric it would have does his credibility to mention some names that actually command some respect in the academic community.

3. Lost in the Meritocracy (Walter Kirn): I was really excited to read this autobiographical work by Walter Kirn that details his journey from small town Minnesota to the Ivy League–albeit a school that doesn’t really matter.  Unfortunately, my excitement was sorely misplaced.  Kirn spends most of the book either bitching about Minnesota or castigating Princeton for teaching him how to test well and act smart instead of instructing him on how to understand the ideas of others.  I can sympathize with this to a point.  After all, as a former denizen of rural Minnesota, I can appreciate how some of the people there can be painfully stupid (Marx didn’t complain about the idiocy of rural life for nothing); however, I really would stop short of characterizing everyone as a rube, a distinction that Kirn doesn’t seem to quite grasp.  I can also see where Kirn is coming from when he lambasts the Ivy Tower for its approach to education.  (It doesn’t help that Kirn was a comp lit major– a particularly useless and vapid field of study.)  Sadly, it gets a bit tedious to listen to Kirn complain page after page about his classes considering (1) there are other, more meaningful, majors he could have pursued and (2) he was getting access to some of the best educational resources in the country.  Other people had it worse than you Kirn, get over it.

Moreover, Kirn genuinely comes off as a bit unstable and bratty.  There is one instance in particular where he appears to be legitimately deranged.  Three of his suitemates buy a new set of furtiture and expect him to contribute towards the cost.  Not being from means and not having been consulted about the purchase in the first place, Kirn declines only to be told by his suitemates that he will not be allowed to touch any of the furniture in the common room for the rest of the year.  Obviously, this is a dick move on their part but Kirn unfortunately chooses to reply to this provocation by cutting the wires of his suitemate’s Steinway, pouring champagne on the rugs, and generally destroying the entire suite before he leaves for winter break.  Not only is this totally unproportional to the offense but it betrays a lack of maturity in Kirn’s character that makes it nearly impossible for a reader to sympathize with the author for the duration of the book.

I wanted to like Kirn, as we hail from similar places and ended up at similar schools.  I dunno what went wrong for Kirn (maybe Princeton is just that bad) but I can attest that I am capable of mustering up much more joy and appreciation for the Ivy League (and Minnesota) than Kirn.

4. Taking Rights Seriously (Ronald Dworkin): Wonderful.  Impossible to describe.  If you’re interested in human rights, constitutional law, or social contract theory (particularly as applied to Rawls) I highly recommend it.  In other words, this is a book for debaters.

5. Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History (Brauer and Tuyll): One of the worst books I have ever read.  I thought Castles, Battles and Bombs would provide me with a good opportunity to use some of my newly acquired econ knowledge to better understand military history.  Instead I got to read a series of essays explaining how ‘there’s opportunity costs associated with building castles’ and why ‘an asymmetry of information can influence warfare!’  All of this, of course, is painfully obvious and could probably be summarized in a few short phrases (err, sort of like I just did).  I’m generally a big fan of Marginal Revolution and Tyler Cowen but I can’t for the life of me figure out why he recommended this book.

I just got back from a quick two day vacation to Montreal.  A few thoughts:

1. The food was good.  The service was excellent.  Surprisingly enough I was more impressed by the service in Montreal than the food.  Don’t get me wrong, the restaurants were all quite good (Au Pied de Cochon, in particular was a real treat) but there are certainly places in Minneapolis that more than surpass what Montreal has to offer.  While the food wasn’t mind-blowing though, the level of service was incredible.  No snootiness, no French attitude (something I was prepared for after hosting two French cousins this past summer), and no sass.  I was impressed.
2. Businesses in Montreal have a strange aversion to accepting credit cards—only about one in three shops that I visited accepted plastic.
3. The subway in Montreal is one of the better mass transit systems that I’ve seen.  By American standards it was incredibly clean and I never waited more than five minutes for a train.  Evidentially nationalized transportation works in Canada.
4. Hotwire saved the day again by furnishing an incredibly nice room for a stunningly low price.  I highly recommend it.  Use betterbidding.com if you want a better idea of which hotel you’ll be landing before you commit.
5. Tim Horton’s is nothing special.

A few days ago Ezra Klein composed a little ode to the postal service in which he used a cute personal anecdote to champion a public postal system:

I had to mail a package today. I was late to do it, and busy, and there’s a Fed-Ex/Kinkos storefront steps from my office. Compared to the post office, mailing my package was at least twice as expensive. But the real fun came while figuring out which speed to mail it at. I asked the guy at the front for their “standard shipping.” I explained that it wasn’t time sensitive. He steered me directly towards “Express Saver” shipping. “Saver,” huh? That sounded good. He’d even give me the envelope for free, he promised. A deal! He rang me up. A shade over $15.

Huh?

Turns out there’s also a “ground” shipping that he didn’t mention. That was “only” $8, plus a bit for the envelope. The salesman had been steering me towards a costlier item that I didn’t really understand, which is sort of what you’d expect, given that he’s in business to make a profit. But I’m not shipping things to help him make a profit, and don’t want to pay $15, or even $8. Good thing I have a public option to choose in the future.

Nevermind the fact that I could regale you with tales of my own postal service woe—the station here at Yale sometimes slips weeks behind sorting mail—but Ezra’s little story doesn’t even make sense.  The salesman maliciously ‘steered’ Ezra towards a more expensive option?  Give me a break.  I sincerely doubt that the guy at the front really stands that much to gain from FedEx corporate or his boss for squeezing a few more dollars out of a customer.  It’s far more likely that either Klein or the clerk (or both!) got confused and Klein accidentally ended up with the pricier option.

Moreover, this whole assailment of the profit motive is pretty dumb.  One of the strongest debate cases I’ve run this year is a little gem about postal service privatization—it’s yet to be defeated—and undoubtedly one of the stupidest opps to this case is some nonsense about how abolishing the postal service is going to lead to greedy companies harming the general welfare.  If this is true why don’t we abolish all for-profit business and turn everything over to the benevolent hand of the state?  Seriously. I hate to run up the red flag of communism but, by Klein’s logic, if we can only expect to be mislead and cheated by people who are “in business to make a profit,” we might as well make sure there’s a private option for everything (and while we’re at it we should probably just make profit illegal altogether).

Sure am looking forward to buying my public option car, making calls on my public option phone and drinking my public option wine.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading back to dear ol’ Yale, so I suspect posting will be a bit light over the weekend as I unpack my boxes and (perhaps) find time to celebrate my birthday.

Phelps Gate-- photo by Adam Soloman

I’m going to make every effort to keep up a somewhat regular posting schedule during the upcoming term but, as you can probably guess, classes tend to take a pretty substantial toll on side projects like this.  That said, I’ll try to keep paying attention to the gubernatorial race in Minnesota and hopefully I’ll have time to write a bit about some of the goings on in New Haven.  Yale tends to attract a few notable speakers every year from which I might manage to write something worth your time.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

DT

I just saw District 9 and I’m afraid I’m unfortunately going to have to squirrel on this one and give it a thumb down.   My greatest gripe with the movie was that while it played itself up on a faux-documentary it suffered from a staggering lack of realism.  I know, I know, it’s a film about aliens.  It’s not supposed to be particularly realistic.  That said, I think movies shot as mockumentaries necessarily have to be held to a stricter standard of believability than regular movies.  After all, the fake interviews, news reports and documentary camera work all work to prevent a viewer from suspending disbelief, something that’s critical to enjoying a movie that pushes the bounds of believability beyond everyday life.

District 9 (spoiler alert) had many moments that made me raise my eyebrows, to wit:

1. How can the aliens (prawns) communicate with humans and vice versa?  I understand that some sort of advanced futuristic technology could be used to construct a translator that could convert alien gibberish to British English but at no point in the movie did the characters ever appear to be using such a device.  Instead the humans and the impoverished prawns seemed to be able to understand one another as naturally as if they were all speaking a common tongue.  Me thinks not.
2. A massive Nigerian crime ring somehow manages to operate in a restricted alien concentration camp, really?  Keep in mind that the ever-nefarious defense contractors (more on this in a bit) seem to reign with impunity in District 9 and could conceivable break up this consortium of criminals with little effort.  So why do these folks let Nigerian mobsters cut into their line of work by trafficking in illicit weapons?

1. After the humans remove over a million aliens from their mothership, they seal the doors of this vessel and don’t bother exploring the ship at all.  Seriously?  I dunno, something makes me think that if we had access to a huge alien flying fortress, we would ransack it looking for loot.  Just a thought.

1. Everyone evil in this movie seems really concerned about presenting a good ‘human rights’ image to the rest of the world when it comes to the treatment of the aliens.  Hence the extraordinary effort in the beginning of the film to individually serve every single prawn with an eviction notice before removing them to a new, more isolated, concentration camp.  Yet somehow these same evildoers can get away with randomly killing prawns inside the camp and otherwise wreaking terror on these extraterrestrials.  Logical dilemma much?

1. It is gradually revealed throughout the movie that the prawns have access to pretty fantastic weapons technology.  This aside, the prawns seem remarkably willing to allow themselves to be subjugated by their human-overlords without putting up much of a fight.  I fail to see why the prawns never used their (much) superior weaponry to fight back against the humans.  I mean, they stole from people and rioted in the streets, why not a little armed revolt too?

1. Exposure to alien fuel causes you to turn into an alien.  I suppose this means if we dumped gasoline on all the prawns they would turn into upstanding members of the human race.  Or not.  A regular movie would be allowed to get away without explaining this but a mockumentaries can’t.  Explanation please.

Finally, I had massive problems with District 9’s use of the highly overused and cliché “evil defense contractors as villains” plot device.  I am a liberal but every time I see a movie that portrays a huge multinational conglomerate* (be it pharmaceutical, financial or defense) as the bad guy I cringe.  Yeah, I get it—capitalism is teh evil—but this same tired storyline is starting to get a little old.

All told, District 9 is not awful.  I grant that it’s a decent summer alien flick with some alright action sequences, but social commentary, nor ground breaking screenplay this is not.

* And yes, it’s always a multinational (in this case multi-national united) company.  Somehow this nefarious word makes an evildoing corporation even more sinister—as if an American owned company (cough Blackwater) couldn’t be evil enough.

I’ve been doing some light Lexis-Nexusing over the past few days trying to learn more about Sen. John Marty (DFL-Roseville), one of the many Democrats vying for the DFL’s nomination in next year’s gubernatorial race.  I’m particularly interested in Marty because I know that he was the DFL nominee for governor in ’94 and went down in a disastrous defeat—a two to one loss—against incumbent Republican Governor Arnie Carlson.     Given that such massive margins of victory are uncommon in Minnesota politics, I’m curious as to what exactly went wrong for Marty in ’94 and what (if any) implications this might have for the coming election.

I haven’t found a good long-form summation of the ‘94 race yet but what I have learned about Sen. Marty so far is that he’s an unabashed liberal in the Paul Wellstone mold (e.g. voted against a resolution condemning flag burning immediately before the ’94 election, capped his own campaign donations at $100, authored sweeping ethics reforms, etc.).  Interestingly enough though, unlike Senator Wellstone, Marty never managed to attain a level of ‘seriousness’ in the eyes of the electorate—it’s my sense that at the end of the day, Marty went down to defeat because he was seen as too goofy (even for a state that elected Jesse Ventura and Al Franken). Whereas, Paul Wellstone somehow managed to transform his quirky side into an image of honesty and genuineness, Marty seems to have always been viewed by voters as an eccentric, sort-of awkward, goofball.

Anyone have any insight into whether or not this is a fair characterization of the unfortunate fate that fell upon John Marty?  Also, is there any indication that his temperament has changed over the past fourteen years?  I suspect the answer to this question will determine whether or not Marty is able to break out of the DFL pack over the next year.

Michael Kimmelman has a nice crotchety piece in the Sunday Times bemoaning the modern-day museumgoer:

So tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have “done” the Louvre. It’s self-improvement on the fly.

I suppose it’s plausible that modern technology may in fact be diminishing our ability to appreciate art.  Why carefully scrutinize a painting if you can look it up from the comfort of your own desktop?  However, I have to wonder what we’re using to benchmark museum performance of present day art patrons—the behavior of museumgoers in 1950s, 1850s or 1750s? After all, it’s my understanding that museum attendance didn’t become widespread until well into the 20^th century.  Sure, some museums were accessible in the 18^th and 19^th centuries—the British Art Museum opened to the public in 1759—but I have to imagine the number of visitors to museums was small and largely made up by the upper class.   So, my question is, how do we know that modernity is responsible for the decline in the quality of the average art lover?  Isn’t it equally possible that by expanding the art franchise we simply diminished the interest and knowledge of the average museum attendee?

I’m currently en route to Vancouver BC on one of my famously long road trips.  Last December I did a long haul and drove from Minnesota to Seattle in a rather harrowing drive (which included 26.5 hours of continuous driving, three snowstorms and one avalanche); this time I’m taking things a little slower so I have time to take in the West—it’s awfully hard to appreciate the scenery in the absence of sunlight and sleep.

I love long road trips.  If done with others, they’re an amazing opportunity to make new friends or deepen existing relationships; if done by yourself, they offer an unparalleled chance for contemplation and self-reflection.   I am by myself on this trip and, in addition to all the thinking I’ve been doing, I’m also listening to backdated This American Life episodes.  Really backdated.  As in these episodes are from 1995, they’re live and the show is called “Radio Playhouse” instead of “This American Life.”  Good stuff.

Vancouver will give me a chance to cross the Canadian border for the first time (a shame that it has taken me this long I know) and an opportunity to let my inner-foodie run wild.  After that I’ll be heading to Portland for a night where I’ll hopefully have a chance to visit the Carlyle which is where one of my favorite bloggers, Jacob Grier, bartends.  Following that I will (likely) be spending a few days in Seattle before making a one day dash back to Minnesota.

All this is to say that posting here will be light over the next week.  I do have some prewritten content ready to go though, and I’m planning on having some downtime when I may manage to write a few pieces—so keep stopping by!  Enjoy the beginning of your lazy August days.

–DT

Senator George Voinovich (OH-R):

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

“They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr,’” he said. “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?’”

Coincidentally, “errr, errrrr” is the sound I make when I pretend to be a parakeet.