http://timharford.com/2009/08/dear-economist-the-readers-respond/

But a second question arises: why are we judged on appearances? It might be intrinsically satisfying to have a well-dressed boyfriend, but there is nothing fundamentally less productive about a scruffy accountant. Evidently, the tie is important because employers believe it is correlated with diligence and talent.

If this is true, we would expect to see the largest premium on snappy dressing in professions where there are few other effective ways to evaluate performance. Estate agents and management consultants are sharply dressed in the absence of more convincing guides to their competence.

In professions where talent is more obvious, this façade is not needed. That is why when I scan the Financial Times office, neatly pressed shirts and blouses are hard to find.

James Ryerson in The New York Times, 12 December 2008:
A report on DFW’s very analytic deconstruction of a paper by Richard Taylor which draws metaphysical conclusions from a simple thought experiment.
In summary,

…his own analysis of the problem “seems to warrant the following conclusion of our own: if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate.”

Sometime in his later college years, Wallace became troubled by a paper called “Fatalism,” first published in 1962 by a philosopher named Richard Taylor. The fatalist contends, quite radically, that human actions and decisions have no influence on the future. Your behavior today no more shapes events tomorrow than it shapes events yesterday. Instead, in a seemingly backward way, the fatalist says it is how things are in the future that uniquely constrains what happens right now. What might seem like an open possibility subject to human choice — say, whether you fire your handgun — is already either impossible or absolutely necessary. You are merely going with some cosmic flow.

Perhaps most counterintuitively, the fatalist argues that this topsy-turvy doctrine can be established by mere reflection on the simple logic of propositions about the future. If I fire my handgun, one second from now its barrel will be hot; if I do not fire, one second from now the barrel will not be hot; but the proposition one second from now the barrel will be hot is right now either true or false. If the proposition is true, then it is the case that I will fire the gun; if it’s false, then it is the case that I won’t. Either way, it’s the state of affairs in the future that dictates what I will or won’t do now.

Obviously, there is something fishy going on here. But Taylor’s highly sophisticated version of this argument makes it extremely hard to pinpoint what exactly is amiss, not least because he makes his case for this controversial doctrine using only a handful of uncontroversial assumptions about logic and language (for instance, that any statement is either true or false). What most bothered Wallace about Taylor’s paper was not the despair-inducing worldview of fatalism itself (though that was indeed worrisome); it was, as Jay Garfield recalled, that “this metaphysically troubling conclusion followed from these ordinary-seeming premises.” Taylor seemed to have scrambled the normal relations among logic, language and the physical world, detaching them from their proper spheres. There was a kind of anguish for Wallace in the prospect of a world so out of whack. “He was very level-headed in so many ways,” Willem deVries, a philosopher now at the University of New Hampshire and the principal adviser on Wallace’s thesis, told me. “He wasn’t attracted to philosophy because you could construct these weird, mind-bending arguments. He was quite wary of the mind-bending. Maybe because his own mind could bend so easily.”

But how to straighten out Taylor’s fatalism? Wallace proposed that there was a flaw in Taylor’s argument, a hidden defect. In essence, Taylor was treating two types of propositions as if they were the same, when in fact they needed to be distinguished and treated differently. Consider the sentences “It was the case that I couldn’t fire my handgun” and “It cannot be the case that I did fire my handgun.” At first they may sound similar, but Wallace argued that they involve quite different notions of impossibility. “It was the case that I couldn’t fire my handgun” refers to a past situation in which discharge is deemed impossible because (let’s say) my gun was broken. “It cannot be the case that I did fire my handgun” refers to a present situation in which discharge is deemed impossible because (let’s say) my gun is still cool to the touch. The first notion involves an earlier, physical constraint on firing (namely, the broken gun); the other involves the current absence of a necessary consequence of firing (namely, a hot barrel). An extremely sensitive observer of language, Wallace noted that there is a subtle indicator of this important distinction already at work in our language: the fine differentiation in meaning between “I couldn’t have done such and so” and “I can’t have done such and so.”

Armed with this small but powerful insight, Wallace was able to pick apart the machinery of Taylor’s argument. All the things about the “Fatalism” paper that appeared maddeningly simple started to look complex and thorny. By the time Wallace worked out all the details — the precise interactions among elements of meaning, time and possibility — it was clear that he had defused Taylor’s argument. (The formal apparatus that Wallace developed in the thesis, a so-called intensional-physical-modality system, would have been a novel contribution to the philosophical literature; deVries and Garfield each expressed to me their regret that Wallace never published the paper.) Perhaps our actions are indeed fated, Wallace acknowledged — he had nothing to say either way about the metaphysical substance of the doctrine. But if fatalism is true, he demonstrated, we are going to learn that fact only through an argument that draws on something richer and more substantive than the arid, purely logical moves Taylor made. If Taylor were to overthrow our worldview, he would have to roll up his intellectual sleeves and delve into reflection on meatier issues like cosmology or entropy or the like.

The real accomplishment of Wallace’s thesis, however, was not technical or argumentative but more like a moral victory. His demonic attention to detail in language and logic, and his seemingly limitless cognitive abilities, had set aright a world momentarily upended by a conceptual sleight of hand. “In light of what we’ve seen about the semantics of physical modality,” Wallace wrote in the closing passage, “I hold that Taylor’s semantic argument does not in fact yield his metaphysical conclusion.” He then ventured modestly that his own analysis of the problem “seems to warrant the following conclusion of our own: if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate.” Things, for the moment, were as they should be.

From an interview in The Sun prior to his Round 3 TKO loss to Katsidis:

Mitchell, unbeaten in 31 fights, is realistic enough to admit his unbeaten record will not last for ever. He added: “Almost everyone gets done and you have to accept it.

“Amir Khan got beat, Carl Froch got beat, so what. He is fighting at world level and that is what happens. Fighters don't usually stay unbeaten. The test of a real fighter is when he gets beat, he comes back.”

via Kevin Mitchell blew £250k on a giant spending spree | The Sun |Sport|Boxing.

From the same writing team who hit the big time with Sexy Beast, we have a more theatrical, darker piece. At first glance, it strikes on as something like a RESEVOIR DOGS set in London, but actually the themes, infidelity, vulnerability and forgiveness are remarkably congruent with Sexy Beast. Once again, there’s an all star cast led by Ray Winstone. John Hurt does some scene stealing Frankie Fraser schtick - a very long way from Winston Smith in 1984 or THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT. Bravo.

Witty dialogue, good pace and an interesting enough journey for the protagonist Colin Newman (Ray Winstone) make this well worth watching. It’s a far cry from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and all the better for it.

Interesting conversation between Krauss and Oz in Jerusalem. They discuss Israel, each other’s work and, interestingly, the process of writing.

Having just finished THE HISTORY OF LOVE, it’s interesting to their discussion of the book. Amos Oz is very warm in his praise and in particular commends Nicole Krauss on her ear for dialogue. He says that he hears the Yiddish beneath the English of the novels joint protagonist, Leo Gursky. Nicole Krauss talks about her idiosyncratic use of the phrase ‘And yet.’ - something that can grate as it’s used so much.

Some notes:
Also, interesting (towards the end) Amoz Oz states that he dislikes the term fiction. In Hebrew, bookshops group novels under the heading sippoet, translated as narrative prose.

Oz: Writers are driven by a curiousity to understand what it feels like to be someone else.
NK suggests this might be why writers are so often liberal - they have the capacity to put themselves in another’s place and as a result are more likely to have empathy. NK found in writing A HISTORY OF LOVE that it was easier to put personal feelings into a character who is outwardly less like her ie she could explore personal themes through the Leo Gursky character more easily than through 14 year old, Alma - a character she gives many of her own biographical contingencies.

NK mentions that Oz’s novel, MY MICHAEL was written when he was just 25 - around the age she was when writing The History Of Love.

Amos Oz talked about how long it took him to look at his own difficult background directly. For most of his adult life he was full of anger and hatred towards his parents. His mother killed herself when he was a child and he blamed both his father and himself for this. On reaching the age of 60, curiousity crept in; after that came compassion, understanding, humour and finally even more curiousity. He reached the age when he could write about his parents as if they were his children - as if they were not quite adult when the family drama occurred. In his view this meant that the memoir that that explored this was not melancholy, but rather humourous.

At the very end, NK delivers her credo for future literary efforts. The desire to do different things, learning from David Grossman to put everything into a book - saving nothing for future efforts. ‘I want to take everything that I love and put it into my books’. I can’t remember where, but I remember reading somewhere JM Coetzee saying much the same thing. Seems like a good thing to do.

From a ‘let’s have Walken take us back to his old neighbourhood” feature article in The New Yorker:

“In Connecticut I don’t see anybody for weeks except the guy who comes and gets the trash,” he said. “At night I have possums, skunks, lots of raccoons. They come right in the house, through the cat door, and they bring their babies in. I get up at night and they’re in the kitchen, eating all the cat food.”

Also,

• W’s ‘What I’ve learned’ from Esquire magazine
• Walken interviews Mickey Rourke in Interview Magazine
• And talking about a Chinese tap dancer on Youtube

From five-books.com, distinguished LSE criminologist, Professor David Downes on why Durkheim is relevant today.

Durkheim’s Suicide

This is a great taproot for modern theories of crime in the anomie tradition, anomie being a state lacking social and moral cohesion. It was Durkheim who, in this book, did most to establish sociology as a subject in its own right, by showing how suicide, that supremely individual act, varied in relation to social pressures. He stressed the pursuit of ‘infinite aspirations’ as generating higher rates of anomic suicide, due to the weakening of moral regulation in the wake of economic boom as well as slump. Suicide also rose as social bonds weakened due to ‘egoism’ – there is a higher suicide rate in Protestant countries than there is in Catholic ones. And, counter-intuitively, the rate falls when social integration strengthens, as in time of war. His theories of crime, deviance and control are intensely relevant today in the midst of financial crisis following the crash of 2008. In The Division of Labour in Society, he focused on the ‘non-contractual elements in contract’ – trust, integrity and moral obligations – as the prime source of social cohesion in economic relations. Elementary sociology but ignored by, or unknown to, economists, for whom Durkheim should be compulsory reading. Feral bankers are a far greater threat to civil peace than feral children. Even the neo-conservative Francis Fukayama prefaced his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995) with a quotation from Durkheim.

Crime in Durkheim’s view is intimately bound up with the overall nature of society.

Robert Stone is taken to task by the famously pitiless Ms Kakutani in The New York Times:

Similar cynics populate Mr. Stone’s novels, of course, but in the most persuasive of those books, he not only maps the sources of his heroes’ malaise and the fallout it has on their lives but also dramatizes their flailing efforts to grab after one last chance at a big score or even a whiff of love and salvation. In the stories in this volume we are not given the full arc of his people’s lives; we get only snapshots of their drunken nihilism and puerile self-pity. It’s certainly not enough to make us care, not even enough to engage our voyeuristic curiosity; it’s simply dismal and depressing.

Heaviest snow fall for several years and it’s still snowing. There are going to be some fine snowmen patted together. I wonder what percentage of commuters made it into work? The car insurance companies must be nervous indeed.

Sad story of Mike Quarry, brother of 1970s Great White Hope at Heavyweight, Jerry. Sadly both took too many blows to the head and suffered dementia pugilistica.

From the LA Daily News, 23 Aug 2006:

Ellen encouraged Mike to go to school so he could seek steady work, but his memory became so poor he couldn’t hold down a job. She can’t remember exactly when Mike was diagnosed with dementia pugilistica, but she said that it was more than 10 years ago.

In 1998, Ellen began taking Mike to UC Irvine, where he was examined yearly by doctors specializing in neurology.

His neuropsychologist, Dr. Malcolm Dick, was responsible for administering tests that would determine the pace the disease was progressing.

“During that time, Michael showed a significant decline in his abilities,” Dick said. “He went essentially from, I would say, a mild dementia to a severe dementia.

“It is sort of not surprising that he had these behavioral problems and was more confused.”

Over the first seven years of testing, Quarry’s condition worsened gradually. Last year, it escalated.

Ellen became faced with the burden of not only caring for a husband with advanced dementia pugilistica, but one whose aggressive behavior began to rise at an alarming rate.

She has threatening handwritten notes she said were signed by her husband. One to Ellen read, “I’m going to get you.” Others were made out to neighbors Mike believed were stealing from the condominium garage.

“He got aggressive on me,” Ellen said.

Ellen, not a big woman, feared for her safety, and for Mike’s. She had him committed to Brighton Gardens in Yorba Linda in a locked dementia unit, but she said he escaped after a month. Then he was put in Sunrise, a home in Seal Beach. He was there 10 months, from March 2005 through last December.

Ellen said she moved Mike to Seasons, where he died, because it was better equipped to deal with patients with severe dementia. Seasons cost her $5,000 monthly.

By January, Mike had been on Haldol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer used to control behavior, for three months. Neurologists at UC Irvine prescribed the drug, Dick said.

But neither Mike Quarry’s sister, Wilma Pearson, nor her husband, Robert, is convinced that Mike had become violent enough to warrant being put on Haldol. Robert Pearson drafted a letter signed by his wife and her two remaining sisters, Janet and Diana, questioning Ellen Quarry as to why Mike had to go on Haldol.

“I don’t know

her motivation; all I know is what was happening,” Robert Pearson said. “She kept telling everybody how violent Mike was, and that was why she had to keep him on this medicine. But he was never violent. His caregiver told us Mike was never violent. And he was fired.”

David Finns, the caregiver, was one of two who helped care for Mike prior to his being placed in a home. Finns, who described Mike as having the mind of an 8-year-old, admitted that Mike did head-butt him once, but playfully.

“I said, `Michael, don’t ever do that again,”’ Finns said. “He said, `I’m sorry, Dave.’ He would get in my face, but he would never, ever hit me. I really loved that man.”

However, Ana Kunz, supervisor of the dementia unit at Seasons, said that nurses sometimes had difficulty with Mike.

“When we would try to clean him up, he would try to punch you like he was boxing,” Kunz said. “He was pretty much aggressive at that point. We would just try to talk to him, tell him to put his hands down because he was a very strong guy.”

Familiar situation

For Wilma and Robert Pearson, seeing Mike on Haldol was all too familiar. In the 1990s, as he too battled dementia pugilistica, Jerry Quarry was living with his brother Jimmy, who later died of cancer. Jimmy had been designated as Jerry’s caregiver, and Jerry was on the drugs Haldol and Thorazine, also a tranquilizer.

“Even when he was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame
, he couldn’t sign (autographs),” Wilma said.

Jerry, according to several reports, was on the dais drooling, and couldn’t make an acceptance speech.

“We … got him off the drugs and he really came out of that,” Wilma said of Jerry, who was honored Aug. 12 by the Golden State Boxing Association.

“Jerry got his speech back.”

Wilma said she couldn’t bear visiting Mike once the effects of the Haldol began to take hold.

“He immediately started to have an arm that was shaking,” she said, noting one of Haldol’s side effects

. “He had to drag his leg. (Ellen) would tell us we could only visit for 30 minutes. But it took us at least 30 minutes to get him conscious, to get him out of drowning in the drugs.”

Ellen disputed the assertion and said she never put any visitation restrictions on Mike’s family. Ellen also said that Mike’s sisters rarely visited, coming down from Bakersfield to do so only every “three months or so.”

“I had a birthday party for him in March,” Ellen said. “I brought in musicians, I had streamers

put up, balloons. They didn’t call. Not even a card.”

One observer said Ellen was always by her husband’s side.

“From what I have seen there with Michael was the relationship he had with Ellen,” said Ken Garnett, community director at Seasons. “She was a very dedicated family member. She was there almost every day.

“I have never even met the (Quarry) family. I can’t remember a time that they were here. I know they never checked in with me to see how he was doing.”

According to Ellen, Mike’s sisters visited him only once or twice during the six months he was at Seasons. So she said it is unlikely that they could understand just how much their brother had regressed and how erratic his behavior had become.

Prizefighting family

Perhaps, more than anything else, Mike and Jerry Quarry died young because they were members of the fighting Quarry family.

Three of the four brothers had lengthy pro careers. Mike contended in the light heavyweight division, Jerry in the heavyweight division.

Jerry was 53-9-4 with 32 knockouts and he was knocked out by the best — twice each by Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, and by George Chuvalo and Ken Norton. Making matters worse, Jerry retired in 1977 but came back for two fights in 1983.

For him, it wasn’t enough. He came back again for one fight in 1992 at the age of 47.

Bobby Quarry, the sole surviving brother, was 9-12-2 with six knockouts fighting as a heavyweight from 1982-92. Bobby, 43, is scheduled to be released in November from Folsom State Prison, where he is serving a sentence for grand theft.

Jimmy Quarry had one pro fight. He was knocked out and never fought again.

“The boys had to eat, sleep and drink boxing,” Wilma Pearson said, referring to the law of the land laid down by her father, the late Jack Quarry. “They weren’t allowed to do anything else.”

But Wilma refused to blame her father for the deaths of Mike and Jerry.

“When my father was 14, his father told him to hit the road because he couldn’t afford to feed him anymore,” she said. “So he had to hop on a train and fight here and there, wherever he could. My father has been named as an animal. But my dad was a very loving man.

“My brothers tried to do everything to get his attention, especially Michael. No, I don’t think Michael would have fought if it wasn’t for my dad, but it’s all my dad knew.”

Retired sports writer Bill O’Neil eulogized Mike at the funeral held by Ellen Quarry (the Quarry sisters held their own funeral a week later).

O’Neil said of Mike Quarry’s condition after a knockout at the hands of Foster: “He didn’t have the same spark, the same cockiness. I think if he would have retired from boxing, that would have been the right thing. But that would have been like quitting.”

Perhaps for Mike Quarry, dying young was better than being a quitter.

robert.morales@presstelegram.com

Another Mike Quarry profile in The New York Times Magazine.