The Volcker Way

Review of new biography of Paul Volcker - Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence by William L. Silber

When I talk to Volcker today, he speaks of a time when honor was the most important thing a person had. He notes that in the early years when he worked in government, many large trade associations didn't even have offices in Washington, D.C., and no banker worried more about his bonus than his reputation.

At every stage of his career, Volcker had the option to leave government and take a lucrative job in the private sector. But he chose public service. It's astounding that Washington manages to recruit professionals of Volcker's caliber while paying them modestly and putting them through all the tribulations of government work, from partisan Senate confirmation hearings to extensive rules and disclosures that they must abide by in their personal lives. Volcker still believes that public service is the most important thing someone can do, but he fears that this attitude may be a relic of a bygone era.

If we are lucky, his fears will be proved wrong. The lessons from Volcker's career and his worldview must continue to inform U.S. economic policy in the years to come if the United States is to maintain its global economic leadership. The country may never produce another figure of such towering stature, wisdom, and determination. But those who come after Volcker would be wise to heed his advice and try to follow in his admittedly giant footsteps.

Quote of the Day

"So far we have an Indian boy named after a French swimming pool on a Japanese ship full of animals heading off to Canada," the writer played by Rafe Spall says, just before the ordeal on the high seas begins. Or in the words of Paul Hanneman, co-president of international distribution at Fox: "This is truly a global picture. You've got multiple religions; it starts in India and ends in Mexico; but most of the movie takes place on the ocean, so it's really any man and anywhere."

- Life of Pi is a global vision for mainstream cinema

Audi Self Parking Demo

- More Here (I see Sebastian Thrun & his troops on this one too)

Quote of the Day

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

- Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

The Higher Education Bubble

Review of the new book The Higher Education Bubble by Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

Reynolds’ core argument seems correct: social and technological changes are pushing higher education toward dramatic changes, including universities -- and individual professors -- offering classes over the Internet. Smart academics will begin to prepare now for this transformation.

We Have No idea What A Self Is. So How Can We Fix It?

I don’t know, but misery loves company, and such acts of auto-insubordination happen all the time. They go some way toward explaining the popularity of the self-help movement, since clearly we need help, but they also reveal a fundamental paradox at its heart. How can I want to achieve a goal so badly that I will expend considerable time, energy, and money trying to reach it while simultaneously needing to be coaxed, bribed, tricked, and punished into a compliance that is inconsistent at best?

This is where the cheerfully practical and accessible domain of self-help bumps up against one of the thorniest problems in all of science and philosophy. In the 1,600 years since Augustine left behind selfhood for sainthood, we’ve made very little empirical progress toward understanding our own inner workings. We have, however, developed an $11 billion industry dedicated to telling us how to improve our lives. Put those two facts together and you get a vexing question: Can self-help work if we have no idea how a self works?

Kathryn Schulz author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, in this enlightening column continues...

The self helps itself. I know it firsthand, as well as second- and thirdhand, and so do you. But none of us—no matter what anyone says to the contrary—can tell you precisely how it happens. Maybe it was the therapy, in my case. Maybe it was the running. Maybe it was David D. Burns, M.D. Maybe it was two or three or all of the above in combination. Maybe it was some slight incident I didn’t even register at the time. Maybe it was time.

Or maybe we humans change the way species do: through random variation. If that’s the case, then the strategy we’ve arrived at out of necessity might be the best one anyone could design. Try something. Better still, try everything—throw all the options at the occluding wall of the self and see what sticks. Meditation, marathon training, fasting, freewriting, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, speed dating, volunteering, moving to Auckland, redecorating the living room: As long as you steer clear of self-harm and felony, you might as well do anything you can to your inner and outer ecosystems that might induce a beneficial mutation.

Quote of the Day

The mind gives an order to the body and is at once obeyed, but when it gives an order to itself, it is resisted.

- Saint Augustine, Confessions

How Common Threats Can Make Common (Political) ground

Our tragedy is that in these hyper-partisan times, the mere fact that one side says, ‘Look, there's [a problem],’ means that the other side's going to say, ‘Huh? What? No, I'm not even going to look up.

- Jonathan Haidt is the author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion - A must read!!

Is this the start of India's 'Arab Spring'?

After 600 rape cases reported in Delhi last year, only one has led to a conviction.

That's why the current set of sustained protests are something of a silver lining. People are genuinely upset. The rise of India's middle class has activated a powerful civil society. One that is now demanding better government. It did so a year ago regarding corruption.

Now it's asking for basic rights for women. In a way, this is India's Arab Spring. But it needs to sustain itself and to lead to real reform and change. This Indian spring will only work out better than the Arab Spring if its national leaders recognize the need for radical and thorough change in their country.

- More Here

Psychology Of Compromise

Hyenas do it. Elephants do it. But apparently congressional representatives do not.

A major contributor is partisan polarization, which political scientists say is at historic levels among the political elite. But simple human psychology may also explain why it's so tough to compromise, with feelings often trumping logic in heated debates.

In 2008, Northwestern University's Adam Galinsky and his colleagues had participants negotiate a complex deal. Half the participants were urged to focus on how their opponent felt during the negotiations. The other half were told to focus on what their opponent was thinking. The second group, known as the "perspective takers," were much more effective compromisers than the first, with 76 percent of those focusing on their opponents' thoughts reaching a deal compared with 54 percent of those focused on feelings.

In other words, if the goal is to reach a compromise, emotions are better set aside.

"The current research suggests that in mixed-motive interactions, it is better to 'think for' than to 'feel for' one’s adversaries — more beneficial to get inside their heads than to have them inside one’s own heart," the study authors wrote.

- More Here