Writing

I was never good at writing, and I am still barely passable after many decades of trying to get words on papers. My performance in language classes, be it Chinese, English, French, Dutch or German, left teachers cringing and me annoyed. My grades were laughable, and often landed me in remedial classes. While my other grades improved in the later years of high school, English always remained somewhat of an Achilles’ heel for me.

By that point, having lived in Canada for almost 4 years, scoring high on the TOFEL test wasn’t much of a problem, as it was more or less a pattern matching exercise. I was pretty good at memorization, I was younger… Though, writing in particular, has always been terrifying. When we were asked to compose essays in China, we basically copied and pasted from random textbooks we could find and that the teachers didn’t know about. As soon as we hit the required word limit, we called it a day. This tradition more or less got carried over into my English classes in Canada. I never wrote voluntarily. I never had much that I wanted to say on paper, nor did I have the ability to express those thoughts. It felt like drawing for me, what I imagine in my head is never what I manage to draw on paper.

Many students (me included) went into engineering as a subject of study precisely because we were terrified of English or anything that required essay writing as a means of evaluation. We could do some maths and science, and we masked our insecurity with boastful claims that we were gonna get rich, especially when compared to the liberal arts folks. A few friends I made while at the University of Toronto did enjoy writing, and would spend what little time we had after school writing. Some would even go on publish what they wrote (on some inchoate version of WordPress). I read those, and I admired those people. By extension I secretly admired the English majors who actually seemed to enjoy what they were being taught. Their general hygiene and high social functionality also proved attractive… (Engineering as a discipline for the most part did not make me go starry eyed at that point.)

Years past, and I was pretty much still a half literate person. It was not until studying for my GRE that I finally started appreciating reading and writing. Two of the instructions on how to study for the GRE were literally 1) memorizing the dictionary, and 2) reading the New York Times. I tried both, but it was the reading of the paper that stuck. The Times was, at the time, not behind a paywall. Like Wikipedia, I would go on reading one article after another in a never ending rabbit hole. These articles were long, and I quickly came to realize I did not know many of the words they were using. That was a shock, to think after speaking English for more than a decade, I should have a decent vocabulary! GRE came and gone without making too much of a fuss, though I was pretty proud of getting a 162 on the verbal! (Given this bias, I do look at the verbal score more than the quantitative when evaluating potential PhD students, hint hint.)

I read, and kept reading, having maintained an active NYTimes subscription ever since overcoming the paywall became too tedious, and I thought these guys more than deserve my money… Over time, I began appreciating the writing styles of the different columnists on the Times’ staff. The underlying passion of Blow’s pieces is unmistakable. Douthat is so fancy in his writing, I still don’t understand him some times. Krugman I don’t really understand as well, especially his more wonky articles, but for an entirely different reason. Swisher I recently started listening to and enjoying. And I lament the departure of Kristof (and upset at their ridiculous treatment of his political aspirations in Oregon).

I don’t know if an appreciation of writing makes me a better writer. By my profession, I write academic papers. There is a certain style of writing that goes into such articles that I haven’t entirely deciphered. Yet I do subconsciously observe that some papers are well written and others not. I also notice that for some papers, some parts may be very coherent, and later parts felt tacked on (possibly because they had to address some reviewers’ comments). I enjoy writing, and re-writing. I derive pleasure from making sure that the words and the sentences do means what I want them to mean, and that there is a structure to it all. I read what I write out loud so I know it flows in a laminar sort of way. I smooth out kinks. I polish.

First semester

I can be seen around campus walking in my ripped jeans, with a dopy grin on my face, and a notebook and pen in my hand. I try tricking students into thinking I am a student. They make memes of me, it’s great fun. Here are some memes that a student in solid mechanics, Mr. Acosta, made.

This is a post that may help aspiring assistant professors to evaluate whether they actually want this job or not. Keep in mind that I joined a large state school in a big city so my experience may differ vastly from other types of institutions. My department of mechanical engineering has about 25 faculty members (8 assistant, 6 associate, 13 full professors, as well as 4 instructional faculty members). We have around 1000 undergraduate students, and an increasing number of master and PhD students. We on average teach one course per semester (Fall and Spring), alternating between undergrad and graduate levels. Almost all potential PhD applications come from aboard.

One of the first things the department chair told me was that we are all colleagues, and that we don’t report to anyone. Further, we all sit in one physical together, in one wing of the building, so we (me and a National Academy of Engineering person) are all neighbors. This is very different from the Swiss system where each group is run like a start-up with completely separate spaces. I don’t know what is better or worse yet. The experience does feel like running a start up (my lab) with some initial capital (start up funding) in more ways than one. Extending that analogy, my (future) tenure committee members and by extension, the department, the college, and the university are my shareholders who want to see if my return on investment is adequate.

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

I was given many advices, and I picked up a few things along the way in my career. I was told to say no to as many things as I possibly can. To ask for advice before saying yes to anything. To remind myself that my time is finite (there are only 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week), and to delegate as much as I can. The second thing, I kind of figured this out on my own, is summarized in the above quote (she is a four star general!). I follow it religiously and I have pissed people off doing it. Though, I think overall it is something I will keep doing. This is further reinforced by something I learnt. If it is an easy problem, everyone would be in agreement. If the thing for which I am asking permission is ambiguous to me, it is likely ambiguous to everyone because no one really knows the answers to many (non-scientific) questions (they just pretend, as I do). Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? Consequences be damned, if I get told off, I apologize. The last piece of advice, is to do a piece of work that I actually enjoy, at least for part of the week. This may be doing some experiments instead of writing proposals.

There are several things that I needed to do immediately and concurrently, 1) order things (I’ve got two years to spend the start-up funding.), 2) hire students, 3) start writing the first proposal, 4) figure out teaching, 5) make friends.

For any starting faculty members (experimentalist especially), staff members are my life line. They can make my life miserable, frustrating, and depressing, or they can smooth most kinks out. As there are usually only one or two people with purchasing power in a department, and I literally need to order hundreds of items, it is no easy task. The best way, if possible, is to get the department’s credit card info. Short of that (since they apparently don’t trust me), as I had some Swiss money, I bought everything large and small myself, and got reimbursed. It is critical to apply for tax exemption immediately for all the major consumer retailers (e.g. Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot and others). They all have a standard procedure but not the procedure is not immediate. Professional suppliers already expect the tax exemption notice. It is difficult to get the tax reimbursed… This strategy lasted for about 3 months before I bottomed out and began 1) to fill out purchase requests, 2) to get purchase order forms, 3) to actually place the orders. So… there is an optimal level of annoyance one should be to staff members, be nice and courteous; bug, but not too much. There also seems to be a line in the sand that suggests distance.

In terms of teaching, I started by giving a lecture on solid mechanics to a room full of junior level students (~110 in all), in the first semi-post-covid semester. I was working out of a conference room because I didn’t yet have my own office. Lecture notes from previous iterations of the course were graciously shared with me. For the first half of the semester, I can fairly say that I was barely staying afloat. I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about a teaching philosophy for this particular course. There was no guidance, with the assumption being if I don’t ask for help, all is fine. When I do ask for advice, the faculty members were extremely helpful without any exception. The first couple of classes were particularly nerve wrecking. My expectations of what they should know coming into the course vastly mismatched with what they actually knew. The lack of physical demonstrations hindered my delivery, or their understanding. As the weeks went on, I got a bit less stilted. I bought a meter stick from Amazon, and used it every class to explain the different ways one can torture a 1D beam. I started actually looking forward to teaching. I learnt several things that were quite effective, 1) Use the online discussion board, there were actually over 1500 posts over one semester, 2) giving bonus points to students who complete the course evaluation.

95% of the applicants I received are from aboard. The vast majority of them came from Iran, India and Bangladesh. I got one Chinese application and one from the UK (that I solicited), they both turned me down despite my begging. It is almost impossible to evaluate a candidate over zoom, I also don’t have a base line to evaluate candidates with. The ones I eventually decide to extend an offer, have all found greener pasture elsewhere. I will extend this section in a year’s time.

From what I see, grant proposals are a mix bag. I have put together proposals in a weekend to have some accepted. Then I realized I didn’t really want to do that work… I will write more on this when I know more.

Making friends with my colleagues. As a post-doc in EPFL, we were all around the same age, the interactions felt unforced. Now, the faculty body ranges from people my age to those who are close to retirement. The vast majority though are adults with young children. They have large houses in idyllic suburbia with great public schools. They drive 30 minutes or an hour to work every day. The ones I interact with are unfailingly courteous, encouraging, friendly and honest. They are also overworked. From what I hear, this is a lucky situation. I go out with the younger folks on a semi-regular basis. The department chair organizes happy hours once or twice a semester. I take VIPs (invited speakers and faculty candidates) to lunch and dinner.

To conclude, I am tired. It takes energy to constantly switch my brain between drastically different topics on an hour basis. It is equally hard to focus on one thing at a time without being distracted by those other topics that are swimming in the back of my brain.

A nightmare

audio transcript – I will begin transcribing what I write

This post will be partly a transcription of a nightmare I had the other day. I awoke from this nightmare feeling disoriented and terrified. In it, I was placed in an alternate reality where I was unable to find a job for a long while it seemed. I am not a part of any dream interpretation societies, and so I must resort to a literal understanding of what I experienced in the dream.

Throughout my life, I had several periods where I felt lost, when I looked around me and didn’t see a clear path forward. I really don’t credit myself much for overcoming those moments, but somehow I did. In the later years of my undergrad, there was a push within the department for engineers to assume leadership roles. Management related courses displaced ones on finite element and continuum mechanics. Concurrently, I saw many within my own cohort to go into other fields that promised more wealth and influence, many of them now sporting titles as esoteric as they are vapid. I am a judgmental and biased individual. Gullible as I was, I was easily convinced that one can practice being a leader with nothing. I lost sight of what I actually enjoyed, which was engineering.

I was sleeping on a mattress on the bare floor at the time. I tried volunteering without much success, mostly because I was unwilling to do the necessary leg work. I went to work at Starbucks as a barista. The coffee shop was inside of a book store on the corner of Bay st. and Bloor st. in Toronto. It was a period of personal satisfaction, to know that I was at least able to caffeinate hundreds of people from all walks of life in preparation for their days ahead. I was good at this job, not that it required a terribly narrow set of skills. One day, I simply stopped showing up, unable to continue. I ignored their calls of concern for months. That was more than 10 years ago. I don’t know if that bookshop still exists, I don’t know if that Starbucks still serves coffee. But maybe I will visit one day.

Experiencing hardships in life does fortify a person against future hardships, yet at the same time, the scars that were made, are real and ever present. I was reminded of Obama’s comment on David Cameron in his biography as someone who possessed “the easy confidence of someone who’d never been pressed too hard by life”. How differently would I feel if I were sailing smoothly the whole way through. I will never know, but one thing I do know, is that while I am grateful for having experienced what I experienced, but I do not wish to repeat it.

Imposter syndrome

Thoughts that emerged as I sat alone in a bar

I suffer from this ailment chronically. It is not exactly a disease in the physical sense, I also doubt that it would make an appearance in a future DSM anytime soon. But I do suffer from it, as in, this syndrome negatively impacts my life, and has been for years.

I was always told to “fake it until I make it”. Now I realize that this thing is a trap, because I wouldn’t feel like an imposter if I haven’t made it (this “it” could be anything, like getting into university, a job, or a pay cheque). Conversely, every rejection can be seen as a validation my fraudulent status (however much it hurts); if every application I submitted gets turned down, it would simply re-affirm that I am exactly as worthy as I think I am (which is not much really). It is exactly the “making it”-part that makes me feel like a fraud. I am faking it because I am making it.

Is there a pathological origin? Why do some people feel this way, and other don’t?

I am sure there are volumes of social science and psychological studies on this. Since I am a fraud anyway, I might as well start providing anecdotal “evidence” as statistical facts. I did my primary and middle school in China and I was not a good student. Others went to after school sessions to cram for state-wide exams, I went to after school sessions because I failed my classes. If we hadn’t moved to Canada, I might not have gotten into high school (apparently high school entrance is a competitive thing in China). I felt like I cheated my way into a high school, however illogical that thought may be. Anyways, I got into university based on my high school grades, but then I was a mediocre student in my undergrad. I couldn’t get into graduate programs in Canada, so I again, cheated, and went to Europe. I did work hard then for a decade or so. Now I am a faculty member in the US.

All this time though, I feel like I don’t have a firm grasp on the knowledge that I need to do my job. It’s all piecemeal, fragmented and hacked together. Like cramming for exams, I learnt things because I needed them for one project or another. I feel like I am slower than everyone around me, constantly. The feeling of inadequacy is reinforced by the overwhelming, toxic, and sickening positivity of LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter (read more on this at waitbutwhy). While I am pretty comfortable with who I am as a person (mostly because I don’t really think about it), I have no comfort with how I do as an employee.

What do I do to manage it? I constantly seek validation

These are happy pills in a metaphorical sense. Just like pills, extrinsic validations are by definitional ephemeral, they wear off. Every award I got gave me a high, it’s that cherry atop the cake, it’s that blue ribbon, a job offer, an award, a paper published. After an ever decreasing interval of satisfaction, I am out seeking another, stronger dose. Maintaining a status quo, no matter how lofty that status quo is, is never good enough. Looking at the “ego wall” (now virtual), I am just reminded the hollowness of the endeavor.

This dichotomy is something that I haven’t really made peace with in my head. On the one hand, I am (obviously) disappointed when my applications are declined. When I do get an offer, I wonder if they were duped by my clever ruse.

Intrinsic validation – am I proud of what I have done?

This is something I question constantly in academia. By definition, fundamental research are not meant to be immediately put to use (in an engineering application). We always tell each other that “this” may, some day in the future, be the “next thing”. In all likelihood, that is a trap as well. I cannot work with that goal in mind, to be honest, most of what I do is not going to be the “next thing”. Most of what I do is an academic exercise aimed at creating knowledge for its own sake. I have a lot of fun doing these academic exercises and that is a part of my guilt. I am having fun at my job, and being paid doing it.

Teaching is different. By trying to do it well, I do see an impact in the few students who understood the subject well enough to appreciate it.

In summary, I think I have gotten to a point where I’ve accept that I’ve duped everyone, and in all likelihood, I will keep duping everyone forever. I am not too afraid that someone will unmask me in some dramatic fashion anymore.

Thoughts on applying for a faculty position

There is already more than enough information and advice on how to go about applying for a faculty position on the internet, so I won’t reiterate what others have said. Of my personal experience, on the whole it was quite similar to what you have read already. Applying for such a job is reminiscent of applying to bachelor programs in North America; a bunch of schools have similar deadlines (Nov. to Dec.) and and you need to send a bunch of things as a part of the application package (CV, cover letter, statements, and so on). By February, you will have heard back from some schools asking for a screening interview. Past that, you get invited to the final interview which typically happens around March to April. After grueling days of talking to upward of 20 different people and trying to appear intelligent, you wait for an answer. With any luck, you get that email with the words “We are pleased to offer you the position of …”, and after jumping up and down for about 10 minutes, you start going through the contract with a fine comb. Then comes negotiation, and signing of the contract. The last bit is the preparation for the move, and the anxiety of doing a job that you are wholly not prepared for. I will write more on that topic very soon.

That is it, in an impersonal nut shell, and now comes the details. I had the luck and privilege of applying for jobs in the midst of a pandemic. Just from a survey of the positions being advertised, I already noticed that it was scarcer than usual. (This was pointed out already by a number of websites.) I ended up applying to approximately 25 openings to five different countries (USA, Canada, UK, Singapore and the Netherlands).

There I was already being selective I suppose, I would have applied to a Swiss school but there were no openings. The rest of Europe was difficult given a significant language barrier; most French and German schools wanted those languages to be spoken at least to some degree. Most of my applications went to the States just because of the shear number of openings. I already crossed Australia off the list just because it was too far, but Singapore was somehow okay…

The majority of these applications went to mechanical engineering, but also to material science, civil engineering, mathematics, and physics. I received approximately 10 desk rejections (hard to count them all), 6 screening interviews (2xUSA, 2xCanada, 2xUK), 4 final interviews (2xUSA, 1xCanada, 1xUK), and 2 offers (1xUSA, 1xUK). This meant about 10 applications went into the ether and were never heard from again. My eventual destination was a material science position, in the US. From what I could see, the process went as normally as covid would allow. Both the screening and the final interviews were done remotely but otherwise, not much changed. Unlike the year before, when no one knew what to do, this year there were at least some strategies in coping with the covid related limitations.

Overall, the process was demoralizing and anxiety inducing. It forced me to question my own worth as well as my drive to become an academic. (Just as an aside, these negative thoughts and emotions don’t go away.)

For the screening calls, the typical procedure was: I sat in a zoom call with some of the committee members for about 15 minutes. I was asked to give a 5 min presentation (with 5 slides) about my research, and I was questioned for another 10 minutes. The questions were boilerplate (the questions were read off a piece of paper), yet my answers had to be interesting. It was quite obvious 2 minutes in which committee members were interesting and friendly people, and which were boring ol’ duds. There were schools that I immediately liked and disliked by extension (fortunately, the opposite was true too!)

The final interviews were very tricky given the large time difference between me and most of the universities I applied to. I did all of them at my EPFL office, and I brought an air mattress in I could sleep after the interviews invariably end at 2am. I do not have many on-site interviews to compare with, but sitting on my butt for 6 to 8 hours for two days straight talking to many different people was exhausting, especially because I had to appear excited and interested the whole time.

As is the custom, I was asked to give a seminar at each of the final interviews. The seminars were of paramount importance as these were the moments the members actually pay attention to what I did, and thought hard about whether I would fit in the department. The chats with the deans were perfunctory and stilted for the most part, they invariably went on about the mission of the college and the university (watch The Chair on Netflix, it’s so accurate). The chats with the department chairs were where I gauged whether they will provide the support I needed to succeed. The chats with other faculty members could be just chats, or grueling questions. With some faculty members, we talked about where to stay in the city, day care, social scene, and other random things. With some others, I had to defend my research as if I were back in PhD defense again. Mind you, these people may be your colleagues for decades, you gotta like them too. I tried reading up on their research, but given the short time frame, it was difficult to come up with concrete collaborative projects. I imagine this to be useful.

I am a glutton for free food and a free hotel stay. So it was a bit disappointing to be skipped on those niceties. Instead, I was eating instant ramen in the office at 2am before crawling under the desk onto my half-deflated air mattress.

Being a faculty member for about half a year now, I hear gossip from the other side, or I infer things (perhaps wrongly). First, the candidates invited for the final interview were already vetted by the Dean’s office to be acceptable or at least tolerable. Second, perhaps obvious, committee members are human beings with prejudices and favorites. With less strong candidates, the objections were universally shared, but with strong candidates, opinions differ. Lastly, at the stage of the final interview, unless you majorly screw up the seminar or you were misjudged at the initially screening or you were invited for less than honorable reasons, the chance of you landing an offer is almost exactly 1/(# of people being interviewed). As in, all the interviewees would have been hired if there were space, but there never are, so the committee members try to 1) pick the least objectionable choice, and 2) maximize their own collaborative opportunities.

This was blackbox to me. So after days of painstakingly presenting the best version of myself in these final interviews, it was disheartening to not receive a single explicit rejection from the schools that didn’t want me. I had to call and email each one of them, only to get a one sentence reply saying “no.” in a sleepy tone of voice. For the schools that did want me, the pressure to accept the offers are relentless. Given that a department hires about one faculty member a year, the risk of not being able to get anyone may be enormous and severe from the department side (say, if the first choice rejects, and the second choice had already gone somewhere else, and the third choice is too objectionable).

The negotiation part of offer acceptance was ambiguous. What I read online made it out to be a bloodsport. Yet it felt like playing a game where I didn’t know the rules, against an opponent that was going to winning regardless. The mentality that this is the moment where you hold all the power is a bit misguided. Keep in mind that the “opponent” you are negotiating with is in fact your very-near future colleague who wants you to succeed (be tenured). Whether it’s during this phase, or after you start the position, this objective doesn’t change. There may be less leverage they can apply too the upper management, but I still exercise the romantic notion that people are nice and will extend a helping hand.

During the interviews, get a rough estimate on how much start-up funding and how many PhD students, and how many Post-Docs you may ask for. There are the personal items (salary, summer salary, and moving expenses), and there are research items (everything else). Some institutions, like mine, had a fixed starting salary as determined by some bureaucratic people somewhere. That was not so negotiable (as far as I know, but what do I know?!), but my moving expenses were. You can also get some summer month salary. In terms of the start-up package, I got (or not) a combination of the following:

There is discretionary funding, meaning you can buy whatever.
You can ask for a named professorship, which will supplement the discretionary funding for a number of years.
Start-up funding – you will need to write a detailed list of things you want to buy, and the cost of each. I did not provide actual quotes, but just the estimates.
PhD students – To get you started, you may be offered a number of phd-year salary. Ask for more if you can.
Post-docs – From what I hear, having a great post-doc can be very helpful.

I did not negotiate as effectively as I should have, nor did I know what I actually needed. Keep in mind that the start-up package is only there to get the system going, it is not meant to sustain a group. In fact, I already applied for equipment grants exceeding 1 million in my first year.

It will be okay.

Returning to this

So there is a gap of four or five years between this and the last entry to this blog. I was reminded that the blog still exists recently, on a server that has long deleted my account but somehow kept the blog itself alive. As the blog could be deleted without a moment’s notice, I did the only thing I could without actually having access to the WordPress interface, I manually copied and pasted all the entries into a word document in the hopes that I would repost them somewhere else. This is the somewhere else. And as much as I was just mechanically copying and pasting, I inadvertently read some of what I had written years ago…

In the intervening years, I got my PhD from ETH Zurich, I went and did a Post-doc at EPFL, and now I am a professor at the University of Houston. I am still me though, at least I don’t feel like I have actually changed or grown up. I still attend everything that offers free food. I continue to have zero shame. I still walk around with a lopsided grin on my face. Strangers still look at me thinking “this guy is a bit dim”. Though at each of these stages, people’s perception of me have changed dramatically. I am now referred to as Dr. Chen now by staff members (no matter how many times I tell them to call me Tim), and as professor Chen by the students. I got rated on ratemyprofessor.com (awful), and on my first ever course evaluation (average). I have my own small office, and run a number of lab rooms.

I haven’t changed, yet somehow, I must have. My mind and my body chronicle what transpired. It’s no lie to say that my hair is thinning and greying. (I wonder which one is going to win out at the end.) My hangovers are getting more severe, and pulling all-nighters have become impossible.

Davide Sedaris has since published two more books, both of which I listened to religiously. Obama is no longer the president, Trump is no longer the president, and Biden is failing miserably. I always felt ambivalent about the United States as it is, though never as it aspires to be. Now I am not sure.

Charlottesville

On what transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Alt-right members preparing to enter Emancipation Park holding Nazi, Confederate, and Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.

A group comprised of Neo-nazis, white supremacists, and Klan’s men held a march in Charlottesville to protest what they see as the degradation of the American value. Near the conclusion of the parade, one member mowed down counter-protesters and in doing so, he killed a woman. What happened after this was as surreal as Trump’s presidency, but you can read the news on that, many days over. Basically, every single person condemned this as a terror attack, except Trump, who placed even blames on the protesters and the counter-protesters. But no one seems to want to look deeper into the reason behind this demonstration of pure hatred.

The disenfranchisement of the white Americans

Just today, I read in the Hillary Clinton’s interview promoting her book, she attributed her loss to this exact observation, white men and women feel disenfranchised. Because I am not white, I cannot pretend to understand the sense of loss of privilege as experienced by whites. I never had that privilege to begin with. I think the disenfranchisement comes from two simple observations, 1) workers in traditional industries are being laid off, 2) minorities participate more and more in the workforce. A simple, yet completely erroneous conclusion to draw from this is to say 2) caused 1). The first observation is caused by automation of manufacturing processes, outsourcing of low tech jobs, and regulation of coal mining (and other industries that have dramatic negative externalities). The first two reasons is purely capitalism talking, and the third is a governmental decision. These have nothing to do with the second observation, which is simply mathematics. For example, the unemployment rate of Hispanics is at 6.6% of the Hispanic workforce (which is higher than whites by the way), this means the rest are either working or not looking for jobs. As the Hispanic population grows, more jobs are created, and more jobs are taken by the growing population.

Even if we accept the wrong conclusion that 2) causes 1), unless the whites are exceedingly lazy, the replacement is one to one, i.e. one minority can replace one white at any given job. On the other hand, a study concludes one robot can replace on average 5.6 human workers. Each robot can reduce the wage of 1000 human workers by 0.25 to 0.5%. The installation of robots is happening at an exponential rate.

The contortion of and complete disregard for history

Apparently, as I recently learnt, native Americans are getting paid to take pictures with tourists at the Grand Canyon. They’ve got to make some money, and we are just so bloody dumb that we can’t see the stupidity in this. That is like promoting a tourist attraction in Poland called “photos with a holocaust Jew descendant.” (For full disclosure, I went to the Grand Canyon and paid the money. I declined the photographic opportunity.)

The colonizers invaded the Americas, killed the natives, and took over their land. We do not own this place. There is no divine proclamation that we have the deeds of the land. I do not place blame on the European colonizers for the invasion, it was their job. They plundered, murdered, raped, just like all of our ancestors did at some point. The moral code dictated that they see the native Americans as indigence species to be wiped out. This history is made shameful by the further development of humanity, and it is a heavy burden we must carry going forward. I.e., we accept that we took this land from the Native Americans, we install museums to remind us never to repeat this atrocity, we do our best to treat the remaining tribes with dignity while enhancing the livelihood of all citizens.

A similar case can be made for slavery. The slave trade was the norm of the time. The blacks and other slaves were commodities to be traded on a legal market. At the time, the moral code was not developed to a point where our ancestors recognized that as wrong (there are debates on this point). It took many factors such as the abolitionists, the civil war, and Lincoln to gradually end slavery in United States. As we should do with the natives, we must treat the descendants of slaves with dignity, and because that is a much larger portion of the society, install programs in an attempt to fix our wrongs. This should be an ongoing progress, and maybe Obama was a result of that, historians will tell.

The encouragement from the president

We all know by this point that if Donald weren’t born into money, he would have never amounted to anything. Even with this money to begin with, in all of his life, he did less well than the market. That is like saying a guy starting a game of Monopoly with a hundred times as much money as the rest, yet played just as well as the rest.

What money did afford him was an insulation from criticism and negative reinforcement. As the guy with all the money, everyone he dealt with was at a position of the payee. As a payee, we think twice before crossing the guy who is paying us. This is generally how capitalism works, everything has a price, including one’s dignity. To see Republicans bending over backward is like saying that money lubricates everything, as in, the guy with the money can lubricate your orifices before putting something there.

Final thoughts

Judging by the overwhelming denunciation of this atrocity, I would say that this minnow of a movement will be in time eliminated completely. But I think there is also another factor contributing to its demise. The disenfranchisement of whites won’t stop, if all whites do is bitch about it. It is not that the other races are taking over jobs, we are all getting disenfranchised by vast automation.

What I see is a potential danger is the courting of young whites into this movement, and expansion of this into a domestic terrorist organization much like the KKK. The danger is that, if you are in a terror organization, you can get fed just by causing terror, which eliminates the need to be trained at a job or making money. This is a positive feedback loop that may snowball.

American problems

I just finished reading Amy Schumer’s autobiographical account of snippets of her life. This is right after reading a similar work by Trevor Noah. It’s interesting to see how two people from background that couldn’t be more different both end up in similar circles.

Trevor ended his book right before he got famous, or rather, right before he moved to the States. There was barely any lighthearted tales of him rubbing elbows with Jay Leno or any other glamourous encounters. From reading his book, it isn’t immediately obvious that this guy was going to be a mega star. Because in some sense, his tale is very unlikely. In come Amy Schumer, a distance niece of Chuck Schumer, the senate minority leader. Her plight to fame-dom isn’t more trivial, but it is distinctly more american.

The book was by design not chronological, but rather disjoint snippets of her life, alternating between somber and giggle worthy. It is sensational in delivering her second-hand experience with gun violence, but only after her name appeared next to a shooting. It would be hard for someone not to view it as a marketing ploy rather than a genuine concern. It was almost as if she wrote that chapter only to boast a conversation with President Obama.

Similar in tone to the group of New Atheists (I am reading Hitchen’s God isn’t so great right now), I would categorize her as one of the late comers to New Feminist, whose membership include Tiny Fey, Lena Dunham, Amy Polter, and so on. Coming from the same professional background of comedians, and SNL, and celebrates unabashed womanhood to the point of grotesque.

In direct contrast to the image of well-manicured wife with a gut-showing beer-stained husband, she lays bare her “dragon-breath” in the morning, “cavernous vagina” in the evening. With the clear message, any guy whom I find worthy must accept all my flaws, but must be perfect himself. Is it meant to be endearing, or is it to mask subconsciously a deeper insecurity that she only alludes to in passing. She does spend a considerable amount of works discussing how undesirable she is.

What is distinctly American? Her well-to-do family fell from financial security to bankruptcy when she was young, and I assume her parents made a great effort to make sure she wasn’t directly impacted by it. She describes it as “still getting Christmas presents”. So basically, middle class. I contend she’s never been poor a day in her life. Her father suffers from a string of infidelities (or he rather encouraged them), then as apocryphal as it sounds, went from being a sexy man to a wheel-chair bound MS sufferer. A MS sufferer who defecated in front of his daughter(s) twice. The mother, who obviously isn’t allowed to cheat, confessed love of another man to her. The man is the father of her best friend, whom decided never to talk to her again. That relationship ended after a few short months. Domestic abuse. She was struck by her previous partners, and was fearful of her life. This is difficult to get wrong. Before pulling a knife on her, this boyfriend repeatedly struck himself on the head against the wall. I have had these tendencies to self-harm, at moments of extreme agitation, and knowing hurting the other person isn’t an option. I just wanted to knock myself out.

It’s hard for me to write these things, which can be read negatively, when I actually enjoyed the book as a light reading. It really is only upon reflection that these thoughts inadvertently pop up. I think it is a lack of introspection in the book that allows the reader to form their own opinions of the author.

There is no free lunch

Impression of the book “Free” by Chris Anderson (the founder of TED talks) after first read.

The opinions and analyses of the author are more or less self evident. He managed to put down with a pen what people understand instinctively. however, this is not meant to be disparaging his work, the fact that he can clearly elucidate these new technological and social developments, and relate them to age-old principles of economy is worth noting.

He states that there are four kinds of free. The first two have been employed as market tactics forever. The first is buy one get one free, buy one get the next at 50% or a variation thereof. The second is the giving away of trial products, e.g. samples, movie trailers, game demos, etc.

Then there are the two new forms of free. The first largely derives from the fact that the per-item cost of products approach zero.

He then explores the social and psychological implications of free. He borrows from a very interesting book called “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely, who also devotes a section of his book on the principle of free. They both pose the question “Why is free so different from almost free?” The obvious answer is the removal of this psychological barrier erected eons ago to prevent people from frivolously wasting their precious resources and go hungry.

The two main takeaways for me are, 1) when resources are no longer scarce, don’t pretend that they still are, and make the most use of this abundance. His example of the price decline (from 5 dollars to 0.0000015 cents) and miniaturization of transistors, and Intel’s leverage of that to make integrated circuits and CPUs.

2) The increasingly precious commodity of human attention. He said we all have only 24 hours a day, and we gotta eat, sleep and (I add) go to the bathroom.

Sidebar, the phrase “there is no free lunch” actually comes from regulations that clamp down on US bars in the olden days that would offer free lunch to anyone in the hope that they get a drink. This free lunch program fed more people than all the charities, governmental and religious, combined in that period.

Siderbar, I don’t remember why he talked about the paradox of “As you walk towards a wall, you halve your distance, then you halve that distance, and so on and so forth. How will you ever reach that wall since there’s always an ever halving gap between you and the wall?”. I knew mathematically, using sum of geometric sequence, one can get an answer (which is, you can). I didn’t think about the obvious physical phenomenon of electron repulsion force which stops you from ever “touching” the wall.

Religions

I feel like I write about religion too much, but then Christopher Hitchens published at least a book on it. He published a book defacing religion, or rather exposing it for what it is.

He was capable of outlining a phalanx of attacks to religion, and the concept of a god. Here I would just like to reflect on one or two of those that strike me the most. Before that however, I would like to state that there shouldn’t be any attacks, just like we see no need to attack the superstitious belief that a turtle is holding up the world.

The need of religion in the dawn of civilization is, I would say, inevitable. There were many observations that our predecessors just cannot explain. I don’t blame them at all for not being able to explain phenomena such as why the sun comes up, why sometimes it floods. These “super”natural forces often left us powerless and fearful of when they happen again. So as soon as we can correlate something (such as the accidental death of a cow) that we can control to disasters not happening, we tend to want to repeat these something. Soon enough they turn into rituals, which are then elaborated and reinforced.

As modern day horoscopes show, it is really not that hard to “predict” the future if the prediction is sufficiently general (e.g. you will have a nice day tomorrow, and a friend will appear). So leaders of these ancient civilization correlate the control “killing of a cow” to the abatement of a disaster “flood”. He can’t lose either way, if the flood is abated, he would keep killing cows. If the flood happens, he would claim the number of cows killed wasn’t enough, and more should be offered to appease the flood god. There would always be a sufficient number of “miracle” that one can tie together with the actions causing them (i.e. the horoscope principle).

At some point, the leaders realize how easy it is to whip up his followers in a frenzy towards a certain cause that they all believe would result in, essentially, their salvation. This is when, when the time is good (e.g. new kingdom of ancient Egypt when most large pyramids were built), the leader ascend to the status of god. It is almost as if he accumulated enough credit to upgrade himself to a new level. After all, if the leader is seen as godlike, then not following his order would be not just foolish but blasphemous. At some point, a monotheist god emerges and scriptures were written. I don’t really question that the leaders actually believe that 1) they are god, 2) there is a god, however 1) arrogant 2) ignorant, that seem.

Scientific inquires have shown that many observations can be explained, but more importantly, science has shown that it is capable of explaining the previously unexplained.

The second thing he mentioned was memorable. Religion’s last defense was always, “look at all of these good deeds! Why would you take all that away, just so you can be honest.” In essence, the defense is that religion amounts to a white lie that has benefits. We ignore for the moment the hypocrisy of such an argument, and think about the necessary negative consequence of such belief.

If a religious man is good only because he has faith, what would happen if he loses it, or momentarily take a pause? (This can and does happen, and usually the penalty is just a wholehearted confession and penance.) Then it is as if the flood gate of pent up rage and desire opens. Any resemblance of reason and morality is gone.