The passive voice is wildly overused in government writing. Typically its purpose is to conceal information — one is less likely to be jailed if one says, ‘He was hit by a stone,’ than if he says, ‘I hit him with a stone.’ The active voice is far more forthright, direct, humane.
Economist Alfred E. Kahn in a memo to his Civil Aeronautics Board staff in 1977, cited by his friend Robert Frank in today's New York Times.
Stacey Harwood also wrote about the memo in The Best American Poetry shortly after Kahn's death, and posted image copies online if you'd like to give it a read.
I have heard it said that style is not substance, but without style what is substance? — Kahn
You can't just say, 'I have a model for tremors that works great, I just can't explain earthquakes.'
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, speaking of the crisis of faith that's rumbling through the academic economics community as a result of their general failure to see the financial crisis coming, in Paradigm Lost in the 21 December issue of the Boston Globe.
In the same piece Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, "describes these intellectually challenging but less policy-relevant questions" that have occupied the academic community since the 1980s, "as a sort of scholarly 'luxury good.' 'During good times we all consume more luxuries,' he says, 'but during a bad economy, it feels to macroeconomists that what we should be doing is stuff to help today.'"
The Globe continues: "Some economists have suggested that this focus may account for why so many failed to see the warning signs of the financial crisis, and to predict the size and scope of its fallout."
Either way, according to the economists, it would be difficult to do much worse than George Bush. The respondents give Mr Bush a dismal average of 1.7 on our five-point scale for his economic management. Eighty-two per cent thought Mr Bush’s record was bad or very bad; only 1% thought it was very good.
The Democrats were overwhelmingly negative, but nearly every respondent viewed Mr Bush’s record unfavourably. Half of Republican respondents thought Mr Bush deserves only a 2. “The minimum rating of one severely overestimates the quality of Bush’s economic policies,” says one non-aligned economist.
The Economist surveyed "683 research associates of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America’s premier association of applied academic economists," and found that "eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject."
Just received this email from a friend. It was mailed to a list of friends, and he's given me permission to post it here.
Many people asked why I left government service when I had just been selected for promotion. Quite frankly, I no longer had any confidence in my government; I trusted the guy to my left and right, but I wouldn't give a nickel for my political masters or the governmental process that ruled me. For example: The House version of the Economic Stabilization act was around 150 pages and didn't get any traction. There was not much fluff there; and it failed.
I just read the Senate version (which is gaining significant traction).Let me tell you how it gained traction. It's now 451 pages long and contains such gems as Section 503 Exemption from Excise Tax for Certain Wooden Arrows Designed for Use by Children.
Section 503 states it "shall not apply to any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft" and applies only to shafts that "measures 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter".
In my prior life this is what we would call a "zip code provision". If you knew enough about the toy arrow industry, you could pin point the zip code of the beneficiary of this lobbying effort (obviously a company producing laminated arrows that can't compete with the Chinese without getting his brother-in-law congressman to add section 503 to some legislation). What's worse is that there are scores of pages of gems like that in the "Economic Stabilization Act of 2008". That's what's going to make this version get approved and that's what's wrong with our political system.
Volkswagen, 1961. Simple, elegant layout; simple, devastating sales pitch. The Volkswagen is never obsoleted, unlike those new American models that appear in the spotlights at the auto show. The light, humorous copy puts the ad's explosive message across easily: Detroit is a fraud.
Polari, or "The Lost Language of Gay Men" as Paul Baker has it in his wonderfully readable lexicon of that name, is the secret parlance through which gay men secretly communicated with each other during most of the 20th century.
According to a recent article in the Guardian ("What brings you trolling back, then?" by Colin Richardson), it flourished between Oscar Wilde's trial in 1895 and the decriminalisation of homosexuality (in England) in 1967.
Polari-speak is not so much "lost" now, as part of our common culture—witness "cruising", "cottaging", and even the most basic gay word, "camp". By the way, the next time you "cold-call" someone, looking for a positive outcome, you are speaking Polari.
Discovered deep within Evan Zimroth's fascinating read about the coded sex-diaries kept by the Economist, John Maynard Keynes at MoreIntelligentLife.com.
Although I have to confess that the very first note that I took was off -- the one that said it started at 6.30, so be there by a little after 6. No, actually, in fact it started at 6. So we missed a few minutes -- about five, according to the kind lady who seated us late, but we were there in time to catch Krugman’s depressing assessment of the race card in America -- that invisible force which he described as “a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement”, that has influenced so many elections and moved so much policy, and remains too often unnamed.
Krugman noted that Southern white men are the only group that votes strongly Republican in the U.S., reminded us of Bush Sr.’s Willy Horton and Reagan’s welfare mother driving the Cadillac, and made a side comment about Guilliani’s strange appeal to Republican voters -- which Krugman believes has more to do with Rudy’s reputation for cracking down on “you know who” than it does on his 9/11 moment. (Re Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Guilliani: it’s “still leaving me kind of freaked out.”)
Having heard that I was getting ready for the full waterboard: we’re screwed. It’s over. We might as well cede to China and call it a day.
But then the tide turned.
Most Americans are liberal, Krugman stated -- they just don’t say they are. It’s an epithet that folks won’t subscribe to -- but the policies they support -- health care, sorting out this mess in Iraq -- they support in surprisingly liberal ways. About the race card he said “we’re not that country anymore”. Immigration has changed us. Diversity has shaped us.
The Conscience of a Liberal, he said, the book he just wrote, that he was here to shill, “is a happy book -- because I think it’s about over.”
But not because our government is straightening out the worst of it -- it’s because the people won’t take it anymore.
Krugman stated that it’s “amazing to me that the worst didn’t happen; the public turned out to be better than we feared.”
As I review my notes I realize that I didn’t record any of his proofs -- I can’t recall that he offered more than this compelling optimism, or maybe I was so grateful and glad to hear it that the pen stopped for a while and I just steeped in it. I do know that the statement he made as he wrapped up his remarks settled well in my sternum. He said he was “astonishingly hopeful” because America did turn out to be the country he hoped it was.
And then came the Q&A.
Of Bush on National Security Krugman stated he’s “destroyed the brand”. Krugman doesn’t see the fear factor influencing future elections that it did in years past -- Bush and his administration have made such a mess of the war in Iraq that they’ve destroyed all credibility on this front. The American public won’t allow themselves to be manipulated again. (We can only hope.)
He cited a “constitutional lawyer who asked to remain unnamed” who stated that “if Bush hadn’t been such a screw up [2] the republic would be over” -- we came that close to losing it all.
Of Milton Friedman and the piece in the NYRB (assuming this was the piece you were referring to, Martin...) he defended his original position, of course, saying that Friedman’s ideas were fresh in the ‘50s, but that as he aged he became “increasingly doctrinaire” to where he was defending things that were indefensible -- like the belief that the FDA was unnecessary because the free markets can police these things. To this he alluded to our recent troubles with imports from China, and told the joke that he said has been circulating in academic circles: “Sure our trade with China is fair and balanced -- they send us poisoned toys and we send them fraudulent securities.”
Of the economy -- “it’s pretty bad, but don’t panic yet”. He said the dollar is having a Wiley E. Coyote moment, observing that law of “cartoon physics where objects stay suspended in space until they become aware of their environment”. We’ve plunged off the cliff and are just now realizing what we’ve done. Here again my notes offer no solid proofs outside his reassurance that all will be well -- I suppose we’ll have to read the book to find out why.
Of media coverage of the politics and the presidential elections, he disparaged what he called the “cult of even-handedness”, skewering the press for failing to call folks on their bullshit -- he cited Guilliani’s recent wrong-headed statements about prostrate cancer when the headlines read “Guilliani claims disputed” (No, said Krugman, Guilliani’s claims were WRONG.) Said Krugman: “The moments when my optimism leans over to dispair is when I look at the coverage.”
The remedy: Harassment. Journalists have thin skins, said Krugman -- the Right figured this out a long time ago and it resulted in the “asymmetrical intimidation of journalists”. The Left needs to fire off and hold the Media accountable.
And now I have to go to work. Happy Friday, Y'all.
[1] Yeah, right. I’m qualified to deliver cogent economic analysis on Krugman like... well. You know. I’m not.
[2] Krugman noted that this was a paraphrase -- the lawyer used a stronger phrase than "screw"
dzgnboy's Flickr thread on the New Tivoli Diner in Toronto -- a neighborhood joint that was forced to shut down after 34 years due to difficulties with a lease renewal -- is pure heartbreaking poetry.
For brilliant portraiture his slideshow of the people who inhabit that place is a must see -- but do take the time to click through for the captions that tell more about the people in the thread -- they'll make you regret that the Tivoli wasn't your breakfast stop every damn morning.
And they'll make you weep to know that it never will be.
