Now Who’s Rational?

I was reading through some post-mortems on the Philly elections that discussed the relatively low turnout – somewhere around 35% of registered voters showed up, and you could probably adjust those numbers to get lower figures (for all voting-age residents) or higher (just for Democrats, who were the only party with a competitive primary). The idea that many people express is that this low turnout is a bad sign – that candidates can not motivate citizens to go to the ballot box and exercise some control over their government. And there’s a part of me that agrees, that figures that voting is the minimum level of participation required in a democracy.

But then I get to thinking about the economics-driven analysis I encountered in my poli sci coursework. The framework is about figuring out what a “rational actor” would do, the assumption being that a rational actor is one who can compute costs and benefits and will not do things where the former significantly outweigh the latter. I have problems with this framework, but it does help put a question into perspective: why should anyone bother to vote? In my lifetime, I think I might have seen one story about a very local race that was decided by a single vote. And none of those were elections I voted in. So every time I have voted – and every time during my college years that I did not get an absentee ballot – my participation or lack thereof had absolutely no bearing on the outcome. If the person I voted for won, I could have stayed home and still gotten the benefit of that result. (This is the free-rider problem: if I can enjoy a public benefit without doing any of the work to procure it, why should I do the work? Especially when my contribution will make such a negligible contribution to the achievement of the benefit that it might as well be nonexistent?) If the person I voted for lost, I obviously was unable to prevent the undesirable outcome, so why not just stay home and save myself the trouble?

Thought about this way, voting is a completely irrational act, and in order to be successful political candidates have to somehow convince people to be irrational on their behalf to a greater degree than their opponent is able to do. Suddenly the nature of political campaigns makes much more sense.

Now, I’m still trying to work out in my head some way to make the act of voting a rational one, but so far the only luck I’m having is to take it out of the realm of the individual. It seems to me that if you’re going to make individual political action meaningful in any way, it has to either be a way that allows one-to-many interactions, so that what I do has a definite ripple effect, or be something that improves my own life in such a way that the social effects are incidental and not the whole point of the enterprise. That brings us back to the quest for more robust versions of democracy, but more on that another time.

A Sticky Situation

I decided to take a crack at making homemade chocolate syrup last night, and printed out Alton Brown’s Cocoa Syrup recipe from the Food Network site. I really should have gone to the Alton Brown fan page to check out the episode transcript just to see what details I missed, because when the printed recipe says to only reduce the syrup “until slightly thickened,” they sure as heck mean the slightly. I underestimated exactly how much the sauce would thicken as it cooled, and wound up with something almost like chocolate tar. I reheated the syrup and mixed in some more water, and the end result is still awfully tasty stuff, but I have a hunch the second go-round will be even better. Still, I guess screwing up the recipe the first time is half the fun of cooking. OK, maybe a quarter of the fun. Do I hear an eighth?

Yankee Schadenfreude

The Boston Red Sox are 11.5 games ahead of the New York Yankees in the American League East, and I must confess this makes me quite happy. (Although it could be a setup for a major gut-punch collapse, in which case, won’t that be a story and a half.) Part of me feels bad when I celebrate the Yankees losing. I went to college in the Bronx just as the Yankees were getting this current dynasty together, and there was a lot of happiness on campus when they won the World Series in 1996. Plus I have family members who are huge Yankee fans. So why the antipathy?

I gotta say it probably comes down to George Steinbrenner. Back in 2001, the Yankees were in Game 7 of the World Series with a lead in the ninth inning, but the Arizona Diamondbacks came back to win the game. Afterward, Steinbrenner said something to the effect that this was an unacceptable failure and he would make sure it didn’t happen again, and over the next few years the Yankees went from being in the group of league-leading payrolls to way ahead of everyone else. There’s something about that sense of entitlement that bothers me, the idea that if you do not reach the absolute pinnacle you are a failure because by rights you should be at that pinnacle. There must be some midpoint between accepting mediocrity and being hypercompetitive, but Steinbrenner hasn’t found it. So while I know it is horribly unfair to the many Yankees fans and personnel who realize that hey, some of those other teams are pretty good too, I enjoy it when George has to watch another team celebrate.

Besides, I’m a Phillies fan. It’s not like I’ve had a whole lot to celebrate for the last 13 seasons.

No Disturbance Today, Come Back Tomorrow

So today is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, also known as the day George Lucas attached a vacuum to my wallet. My major commemoration of the anniversary has been to dive into the excellent new Making of Star Wars hardcover, which I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks over at theLogBook. I enjoy the book (and Ken Burns’s great documentary Empire of Dreams) for showing me more of how the movie was made – my interest in how-the-heck-did-they-do-that probably stems back to the Star Wars movies. But I also appreciate the occasional glimpse of a world where lightsabers and Wookiees were not ubiquitous pop culture references, but ideas that existed in the head of one stubborn director. I can’t remember a period when I didn’t know about Star Wars – I was one-and-a-half when the movie came out, three or four when I started playing with the toys, and six by the time I finally got to see the thing. So unlike Earl, I don’t necessarily remember how my life changed because of Star Wars – it’s just been a constant source of entertainment, inspiration, and occasional exasperation.

As for the title of this post – like a lot of people, I figured that the big Star Wars Celebration in California would be a source of big news about the future of the franchise. Some newspapers and fansites had even gotten worked up about the idea that new movies might be in the works, although Lucasfilm reps have said no. Still, plenty of time left in the weekend, so who knows what might be coming down the pike.

Not Her Father’s First Grade

I went to an open house at the neighborhood public school today – Alex will start kindergarten this fall, so we registered her there. I got to look at the kindergarten classrooms, and the kids there seemed enthusiastic. Lots of projects and signs were hung around the room, and while it wasn’t the brightest of environments – the kindergarten classrooms are in the basement – it seemed like a place where kids were learning. I was a little late to the opening discussion, so I stayed later to talk to the principal, who asked me if Alex would be continuing at the school after kindergarten. A large number of kids in the area apparently go to the public school for K and then switch to parochial schools for first grade and up. (The Archdiocese of Philadelphia runs a huge network of schools – there are two parish grade schools within a ten minute walk of my house and a third about 20-25 minutes away.) I said that while Alex won’t go to the parochial schools, I don’t know whether she’d stay at the public school. The principal offered to show me a first grade classroom, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I have heard so many horror stories about the public schools from my classmates at Temple, and I had my own memories of grade school in the front of my mind. But in this classroom, there were no rows of desks with kids expected to sit in them all day. It looked a lot like the kindergarten classrooms, and I mean that as a compliment. Round tables for students to sit and work in small groups, a large floor space for kids to gather together with the teacher, colorful student projects all around – it looked like the students were getting the attention they needed and participating in their learning process. It was a considerable relief, to tell you the truth. The principal seemed pretty proud of the work they were doing given the resources they have, and I can’t really blame her. Now if we could only figure out how to replicate that success.

War Funding Disconnect

There’s a lot of anger in antiwar circles about the supplemental spending bill that came out of the House-Senate conference committee, which appears to strip all timelines and mandated consequences from the bill. It’s being portrayed as a blank check for the president’s war policy

The major thing I’ve been grappling with in this discussion is that it seems like even many of the anti-war voices in Congress seem opposed to any action that would cut off funds. Whether that’s because of political fears, reliving Vietnam, beliefs about the separation of powers, or something else entirely, I’m not completely sure. But it seems pretty real and not something that’s going away any time soon. And given that fact, it seems like President Bush knows that he doesn’t have to compromise – even if by not compromising he’s doing himself and his party political harm. That seems like something that’s so hard for anyone else in Washington to comprehend that they really can’t come up with a strategy for it. I suppose it’s why I never really expected anything different to come from all of this – but I still wouldn’t mind if people proved me wrong.

A Ton of Rocks

After years of discussing it, today I filled in two areas in front the house with small white stones – snowchips, as the rock store called them. Rather than make roughly three hundred extra trips to Lowe’s, we ordered the rocks from a wholesaler. Thus it came to be that at around 3 in the afternoon, I heard a truck pulling into the driveway. By the time I got outside, the truck was spilling a ton of small rocks onto the pavement – a ton apparently being the smallest unit that this wholesaler sells. I suppose fractional tons would require it being called a halfsaler. But I digress. I then spent the next few hours shoveling these rocks into their designated positions so that the driveway would be usable again.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my rocks. But this is one of those things you have to remember when someone gives you the “buy-a-home-don’t-waste-your-money-renting” spiel. Were I renting a place, I doubt I would have said to myself, “There’s a hundred bucks burning a hole in my pocket. Let me purchase many, many small rocks so that I can spend hours shoveling them around.” So I think that should be in the spiel.

No, It’s a Chocolate Mint!

I’m not exactly sure what this says about Internet discourse, reading comprehension, pervasive marketing, and overall cynicism. But this story and discussion thread over at Newsarama is well worth reading. Apparently the Franklin Mint – the folks who’ve brought us so many pewter chess sets over the years, one piece every other month – is taking a bunch of quarters and “enhancing” them with images of the Silver Surfer from the upcoming Fantastic 4 movie. People who find these quarters can then enter a contest or something. As you can probably tell from reading the story, the initial details were sketchy and had to be updated later. But it did not take long for folks to start complaining about the government participating in a movie promotion. Now, I can’t quite blame anyone for getting the Franklin Mint and the U.S. Mint confused – but doesn’t it say something that people would have such an easy time believing it?

Branded From Birth

Pattie’s recent mention of the latest marketing tendril (tentacle?) to snake outward from Disney’s “Princesses” franchise struck a nerve with me. You see, I’m going to become a dad myself this fall, and even though I’m going to be spending the next few years learning baby talk and then trying to transition that into what I hope will become a solid and fluent grasp of English for my child, I’ve already been mentally filing away “lesson plans,” for lack of a better way to put it, for later, once we’ve (hopefully) established the roots of a command of English. One of the topics burning a hole in the back of my brain is trying to create some sense of awareness of marketing, and a sense of discipline and skepticism about it.

I doubt I’ll have much luck anytime before age 10 or so, of course. I remember what I was like as a kid (and what I’m like now, too, being essentially a big kid, depending on who you ask). I was four when I saw Star Wars for the first time, and five when the figures hit the stores. Oh yeah, baby. I was all over that. My young life (and, therefore, my parents’ budget) hinged on the availability of plastic wookiees and droids. (If I’m to be quite honest, my plastic-wookiee-and-droid lust didn’t abate until after I’d gotten a couple of handfuls of Episode III figures.) I have no doubt my kid’s going to be the same.

But something to keep in mind about my formative years is that the Star Wars marketing story was a bolt-from-the-blue success that nobody expected; certainly not 20th Century Fox, which allowed Lucas to hang on to the merchandising rights for himself, as they figured there was no value in it for them. These days, stuff isn’t just marketed heavily toward children – it’s marketed downright insidiously. While shopping for baby bedding a few weeks back, I snuck a glance at toys aimed more at toddlers – well over a year before I’m even going to need to be thinking about such things – and I was stunned. There have been toy cash registers since I was a wee tot myself, but not with slots to swipe a big plastic credit card. And not just any big plastic credit card, but a plastic credit card with the official Visa logo on it.

Oh, I don’t. Even. Think so.

I had already been looking at the world in a new light, having just recently found out that we’re expecting a boy, and I was already re-examining things like cartoons and children’s programming (and their various and sundry tie-ins) with a new, more skeptical eye. I’ve seen my niece’s collection of Disney princess-related gear grow steadily too, and I’m becoming aware that I’m going to be fighting the opposite number of that trend – one fueled more by testosterone than frills and fantasy. I don’t want to raise my child to be naive, but I don’t want him to be a bully either. There’s got to be a balance. But let me stray a little bit closer to the original point.

It seems that the folks marketing toward kids are sometimes ignoring the ramifications of their message in favor of getting their “brand” out there. When that brand-awareness-from-birth practice grows to include credit cards, I lose track of how many mental alarm bells go off. If you were standing next to me right now, you could catch a glint of red emergency “bubble lights” shining through my ears. Don’t get me wrong, credit cards are tools like any other, capable of helping one in a tight spot, and just as capable of being misused. But the idea that the major credit card vendors are stamping their official logos on toys, and sponsoring educational initiatives on money, aimed at the grade school crowd, the phrase “fox guarding the henhouse” springs instantly to mind, even with all of the acclaim that these efforts have won. It strikes me as being almost as laughable as the Philip Morris company’s bluster about sponsoring anti-smoking education – because all you have to do is watch an hour or so of television to see that Visa and others of their ilk are flying in the face of their own “lessons,” with one recent TV ad campaign – set to the tune of Petula Clark’s “Downtown” – all but coming right out and saying that if you’re feeling just a little blue, get out there and run up that credit card balance. Buy stuff. Feel better.

At least the tobacco companies are barred from getting their counter-education onto the public airwaves.

Even though I know I’m probably a good three years early on this, I guess my question is, to any other parents out there, how do you fight this? Everyone from major credit card vendors to fast food restaurants have already figured out how to get their names and their logos and their products under kids’ noses at school, when we can’t be there to point out the alternatives or the downsides. College age kids are having credit cards pushed to them as soon as they’re on campus, if not before.

I realize that schools seem to be under-funded just about everywhere, making these sponsorships a necessary evil to some districts. And I’m not asking public schools to shoulder the entire burden of teaching fiscal responsibility (here’s an article that makes several good cases against that, in the context of the modern American public school classroom). The American way of life shouldn’t be mom, baseball, apple pie, and consumer debt in one big package – and we shouldn’t be relying on the schools to get that message across when they’ve fallen into the same trap of debt that the rest of us have at one time or another.

Sure, we can ask for policy reforms on this issue, but it doesn’t absolve us of the need to start doing the work at home. This is a case where it looks like we’ll have to reform ourselves to set a better example for our own children.