Sam’s Place

I just finished Brad Warner’s Sit Down & Shut Up. I enjoyed it, as I did Warner’s first book, Harcore Zen. Warner is a Zen Buddhist monk who played bass in a hardcore punk band in the early ’80s, then released 5 neo-psych solo albums, moved to Japan, and worked in the Japanese monster movie industry. Now he’s living & working in LA, & teaching zazen, Zen meditation.

Warner is a Zen Buddhist monk who played bass in a hardcore punk band in the early ’80s, then released 5 neo-psych solo albums, moved to Japan, and worked in the Japanese monster movie industry. Now he’s living & working in LA, & teaching zazen, Zen meditation.

I do have some criticism. Warner likes to make blanket statements (that are wrong or only partially right): Buddhists believe such-and-such, people always suffer when they harm others, every time someone gets angry it’s because he enjoys getting angry, individual people don’t really exist, etc. He also claims repeatedly that Zen meditation leads to increased insight (though not Enlightenment). There’s probably something to this, but in a limited way. When I read Shoes Outside the Door, about the abuse of power by the leaders of the San Francisco Zen Center, it seemed to me that the champion meditators had less than average ability to detect and resist predatory behavior. Roshi Richard Baker’s sex and money controversies were followed by the weird behavior of his successor, Reb Anderson. Police caught him waving an unregistered handgun in a housing project. The gun had killed a man in Golden Gate Park a few years earlier. Anderson claimed to have found the gun near the corpse, taken the gun from the crime-scene, never reported the corpse, & carried the gun around with him for years. The police eventually “lost” their records regarding the politically-connected sect’s leader.

Baker was chosen to be the SFZC’s leader by the Center’s founder, Shunryu Suzuki (author of the influential Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind). I read Crooked Cucumber, a biography of Suzuki, written by David Chadwick. Though Chadwick defends the SFZC and Baker, and admired and, it seems, loved Suzuki, he’s admirably honest. We learn, for example, that Suzuki allowed Baker to inaccurately describe him, in print, as an opponent of Japan’s aggression during WWII. Suzuki’s teacher is described as a hard-drinking philanderer who engaged in what would currently be considered illegal child abuse.

And speaking of WWII, there’s Zen at War. Turns out that a whole organization full of meditators didn’t include even a visible minority of war opponents, and, on the contrary, actively supported military aggression.

As someone (Suzuki’s wife, I think) said in Cucumber, Suzuki supported the war but so did all of Japanese society. But that’s just the point, the Zennists did no better than anyone else. Bringing it up-to-date (and not to pick on Warner, who seems like a sincere guy, and who’s probably an excellent meditation instructor), look at Warner’s most recent Suicide Girls column, “Buddhism Through Violence.” Warner argues that Buddhists should reconsider their pacifism, which is fine, but also their opposition to Bush wars. He seems to be oblivious to the difference between aggression and defense, writing, for example, that Buddhists “need a big bully on our side.” It may (or may not, considering retaliation) be useful to have a bully’s support but it’s unethical to support a bully.

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Also, I recently read 4-Hour Workweek (previously mentioned here). Some of Timothy Ferris’s advice seems ethically questionable but the book strikes me as a good step-by-step primer if you’re interested in setting up an online sales company, test-marketing online cheaply before investing much in the project, & then offshoring and outsourcing the business, & then offshoring your life.

Ever wonder why people are not entirely rational about economics & politics?

Bryan Caplan has written about how the average person’s beliefs about economics differ from the beliefs of people who’ve studied the subject. The differences are not random. To paraphrase:

The Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy finds that, compared to the experts, laymen are much more skeptical of markets, especially international and labor markets, and much more pessimistic about the past, present, and future of the economy. When laymen see business conspiracies, economists see supply-and-demand. When laymen see ruinous competition from foreigners, economists see the wonder of comparative advantage. When laymen see dangerous downsizing, economists see wealth-enhancing reallocation of labor. When laymen see decline, economists see progress.

Paul H. Rubin explains (I’m paraphrasing from “‘Folk’ International Economics“):

Part of the reason for the relative success of protectionist arguments has to do with evolution. We have certain tendencies and beliefs that may have been useful in evolutionary times, but they are now counterproductive. This evolved belief easily translates into a fear of loss of jobs.

The human evolutionary environment was approximately “zero sum” — resources and incomes were fixed, and more for one person meant less for another.

If Mexicans are finding jobs in the United States, then it “must” be that American citizens are finding fewer jobs because, in a zero sum world, the number of jobs is fixed. Similarly, if we are importing goods from China, or outsourcing tasks to India, then the Americans who would otherwise make those goods or perform those tasks must be losing jobs.

Our ancestors were quite warlike. Our close relatives, chimpanzees, engage in genocidal behavior when possible. Humans have evolved to be adapted to this level of warfare. This high level of conflict has led to strong, evolved, in-group and out-group preferences.

Those individuals who lose from international competition can harness innate beliefs to create obstacles to competition, such as by keeping out products made by foreigners (in the case of tariffs) or keeping out the foreigners themselves (in the case of immigration). Anti-foreigner arguments resonate because they fit into evolved mental compartments.

Understanding economics is like reading, which must be taught, not like speech, which we acquire naturally with no instruction.

I recently read Rubin’s Darwinian Politics. I think he over-reached a little in trying to make policy recommendations but otherwise made a strong argument, with page after page of references to scientific studies.

Bryan Caplan has a similarly-themed book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, so can’t comment. Yet.

Beautiful People

Sam: ****

• Comments: I have some slight problems w/ the politics of this movie but it’s a good, amusing antiwar movie set in London; released in 1999, set in 1992.

Emma: ****

Goldfish Memory

Sam: ****

• Comments: This is a good movie (4 stars) for anyone who wants to see a light romantic comedy set in Dublin. Otherwise, 3 stars (just OK). It reminds me of the J. Geils Band’s classic song “Love Stinks”:

  you love her
  she loves him
  he loves somebody else
  you just can’t win

Emma: ***

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Also, on the Antiwar.com blog, excerpts from The Looming Tower.

Something else weird from the NORAD tapes:

Nasypany: “Goddammit! I can’t even protect my N.C.A. [National Capital Area].”

[A] dramatic chase towards the White House continues. Two more problems emerge: the controllers can’t find the White House on their dated equipment, and they have trouble communicating with the Langley fighters. 

CITINO: 15 miles. One-five … noise level please … It’s got to be low. Quit 2-6, when able say altitude of the aircraft.… Did we get a Z-track [coordinates] up for the White House?
HUCKABONE: They’re workin’ on it.
CITINO: Okay. Hey, what’s this Bravo 0-0-5 [unidentified target]?
FOX: We’re trying to get the Z-point. We’re trying to find it.
HUCKABONE: I don’t even know where the White House is.

Tens of millions of Americans believe that the gov’t was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks. One of the conspiracy theories is that NORAD was ordered to stand down on 9/11 — why didn’t they intercept the hijacked planes & start shooting them down after the 1st one crashed in the WTC? The NORAD 9/11 tapes have recently been released; here’s a Vanity Fair article about it. The transcripts show incredible incompetence rather than conspiracy, though there are a few weird things, including an apparent cover-up of the extent of the incompetence. And there was a hijacking exercise going on 9/11/01, & it seems this caused some confusion.

BOSTON CENTER: Hi. Boston Center T.M.U. [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.
POWELL: Is this real-world or exercise?
BOSTON CENTER: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

WATSON: What?
DOOLEY: Whoa!
WATSON: What was that?
ROUNTREE: Is that real-world?
DOOLEY: Real-world hijack.
WATSON: Cool!

FOX: I’ve never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.
NASYPANY: This is what I got. Possible news that a 737 just hit the World Trade Center. This is a real-world.

—Is this explosion part of that that we’re lookin’ at now on TV?
—Yes.
—Jesus …
—And there’s a possible second hijack also—a United Airlines …
—Two planes?…
—Get the f*ck out …
—I think this is a damn input, to be honest.

The last line — “I think this is a damn input” — is a reference to the exercise, meaning a simulations input.

Also (from the same Vanity Fair article):

In order to find a hijacked airliner—or any airplane—military controllers need either the plane’s beacon code (broadcast from an electronic transponder on board) or the plane’s exact coordinates. When the hijackers on American 11 turned the beacon off, intentionally losing themselves in the dense sea of airplanes already flying over the U.S. that morning (a tactic that would be repeated, with some variations, on all the hijacked flights), the NEADS controllers were at a loss.

The military’s radar scopes were “strikingly anachronistic compared with the equipment at civilian air-traffic sites,” and “airlines have their own means of monitoring the location of their planes and communicating with their pilots, [though] they routinely go into information lockdown in a crisis.”

And:

Just at that moment, in one of the dark, U-shaped air-traffic-control areas at New York Center, on Long Island, a half-dozen civilian controllers are watching a second plane that’s turned off course: United 175, also scheduled from Boston to Los Angeles. … One controller is looking at his scope, calling out the rate of descent every 12 seconds as he watches the radar refresh. It is not until the last second, literally, that anyone from New York Center thinks to update NEADS.

So it wasn’t obvious that the terrorists’ technique of turning of the transponders would work. And how did they learn the technique? Did a flight school teacher say something like: “Whatever you do, don’t turn off the transponder because then the plane will disappear from the US military’s radar screens, and NORAD may not be in communication with the airlines”?

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Also, GDP Per Worker http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/11/gdp-per-workers/

Carlson’s Curve http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/12/carlsons-curve/

And new Backtalk http://antiwar.com/letters/?articleid=9680

I just finished reading Charlton Heston’s autobiography — one of two he’s written, I think — In the Arena. Unlike some of my friends, I don’t mind his guns rights work nor his anti-Ice T Cop Killer agitation. I wanted to know more about two of my favorite dystopian movies, Planet of the Apes & Soylent Green. Why did a right-wing hawk make an antiwar film (based on a French sci-fi novel) during the Vietnam War? I also liked Touch of Evil. Turns out Heston was in a bunch of other movies that I haven’t seen, & some plays. He marched for civil rights but hates affirmative action racial preferences.

In my unscientific sample, Heston’s book is better than sleeping pills when recited to very pregnant person.

Heston was stationed in Alaska during WWII & just when he was about to go help invade Japan, the nukes fell, & Heston got to go home. So it’s sorta understandable that he would be in favor the mass destruction. It saved a million Japanese lives, blah blah blah. Fine. But then he comes back to it chapters later & it’s rah-rah-rah for Enola Gay. Here’s the real deal on Hiroshima, a p.o.v. that Heston doesn’t even mention: http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9443. Regardless, Heston’s ends-justify-the-means enthusiastic support for the destruction of cities full of civilians is terroristic.

So that was enough reading of every word for me. I skipped forward to the parts I was interested in. And he never did explain the whole Apes thing.

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Frame Dependence http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/08/30/overconfidence-frame-dependence/

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Mirrored at Antiwar.blog http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/08/30/you-maniacs-you-blew-it-up/