One Year On: An Accounting of a Novice's Dive into Stocks

On May 27, 2011, I purchased shares of an individual stock for the first time. Previously all my investing had been through mutual funds.

I chose Apple. Several months prior to my decision to buy Apple's stock, I'd bought a fourth -- and, still today, latest -- edition of the iPod Touch. After years of incomprehension or ignorant nay-saying, I finally understood what the fuss concerning Apple was about. When I reached the point where I was ready to jump into the stock market via the shares of a single company, Apple was the one I felt most comfortable with.

It wasn't only because Apple makes good stuff. Their stock was, and remains, undervalued. I bought at the price of $334.80. As of yesterday, the price was $562.29, making for an annualized return of over 68% for that first block of shares. I've continued to purchase Apple shares, and good thing, that -- because other decisions I made in the name of diversifying my holdings didn't turn out so well (Northrop Grumman, CSX, Sanofi, and Chevron, I'm talking about you!). Yet one good decision, to begin buying Apple and to keep reinvesting in it if the price continued to seem good after looking at its earnings, made up for many poor ones. While the S&P 500 is up a scant 0.24% on an annualized basis, the stocks I bought over the past twelve months are up 23.64% on that same annualized basis. It's been a good year.

Oh, I'd be remiss not to also thank Google for doing so well. And Accenture -- well, at least you didn't go down.

I'll be back next May 27 to report on how it looks after two years.

Ah, Democracy

For Super Tuesday, a collection of thoughts on democracy and voting:

To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil. Edmund Burke 

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods. Ambrose Bierce 

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Winston Churchill 

Democracy is rule by the collective wisdom of those who believe, all statistical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that their individual votes make a difference. Or that their votes matter in some spiritual or ethical context, as if God or Immanuel Kant were watching on Election Day. And yet they complain when they get bad government. Me 

Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. Churchill, again

Ten Memorable Books Read in 2011

The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb
Willpower, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
How to Live, by Sarah Bakewell
Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner
On Desire, by William B. Irvine
Strangers to Ourselves, by Timothy D. Wilson
Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink
The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham
The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt
Spingendo la notte più in là, by Mario Calabresi

Mess

The world is a mess. Always has been. Always will be.

I can't claim this as an original insight. I read it long ago and have enjoyed recalling it whenever politics, economics, the weather, scandals, and outrages combine in a particularly nasty way. I've been thinking about the idea a lot lately.

The Euro is hovering at the edge of a precipice. If it goes, it will take the world's economy with it. The Republicans have assembled quite a circus of potential presidents and are trying them out. A couple of them look like fine people; the rest can only scare anyone with a brain, or, as one of them said in a debate, a heart. The Democratic nominee-apparent, the incumbent, did not prove up to much of the hope placed in him (and evoked deliberately by his most famous campaign poster). He was said to have been reading about fellow-Illinoisan Lincoln in the days leading up to his inauguration in 2009. He's tried Lincoln's ceaseless patience with his political foes, and ended up with some accomplishments to show for it. But he's as reviled as Lincoln at the low moments of the Civil War. He may end up remembered more like another Illinoisan, Ulysses Grant, who squandered his promise and came to be regarded as a horrible president, one of the worst in polls of historians.

Alabama, my home state and birth state, has embarrassed itself badly with an immigration statute designed to reverse the rise in its Hispanic population. Yesterday, a visiting German manager from Mercedes was arrested for not having his papers with him while driving (oh, historical irony, thank you for that good chuckle). The governor's office called nearly instantly to try to fix the problem. I'm betting no Guatemalans will be extended that courtesy.

I could go on and on about the banking system, the world's climate and population explosion, the stagnant American economy, the collection of thieves and ignoramuses elected to the U.S. House and Senate, and the even worse crew in Alabama's government (I speak in a truly bipartisan spirit: Democrats pillaged for decades in Alabama while they were a monopoly and became a machine whose sole purpose was keeping itself in power and skimming money off the top of tax receipts; it's simply the Republicans' turn now).

On an everyday level, it looks much different. This is our salvation, and maybe a lesson about what's truly important. While the world is a mess, many people in it are wonderful. True, they have their quirks, lies, skeletons, and selfish moments. Yet most of them, most of the time, are a pleasure to deal with or can, if we choose, be pitied for what they're suffering rather than hated for how their pain manifests itself as fear and anger toward others.

The "news" is always going to be mostly bad. It's created, commoditized, and distributed in order to make a profit. Bad stories about particular incidents grab far more eyes, and thus money, than good stories about general trends at the micro level. We won't read or view reports about how usually people are going about their lives showing at least a modicum of respect for each other and not deliberately trying to inflict harm in order to please the false gods of money, fame, or power. Maybe that's why the stories about politicians are so fascinating. Their behavior is so aberrant compared to anything we witness, would practice, or could get away with.

That such people rule and do harm from selfishness is not truly "news" -- how could it be when it's not at all new? We just can't predict who exactly will act in such ways while we less assertive sorts are going about our daily business. The "news" is therefore but a freak show skewing rather than uncovering reality. I'll likely continue to read and watch, fascinated as I am by the fixation on destruction exhibited by the allegedly powerful. You might say I have my own fixation, on the blind and predictable choices made by those who can't or won't develop a meaningful and helpful philosophy of life and a long-term view on events. I'll also know they will, as they always have, botch their jobs and push us repeatedly to the brink. I'd like to hope for better, but I haven't seen that humans are capable of it.

That's the way of the world and of people. I don't see the point in being upset about it. Do you?

Is Europe Burning?

Much of Europe is on fire and can do nothing about it -- long ago they used all their water for swimming pools. Germany has lots because it saved its water for just such a contingency. It's proud of the sacrifices, but resents the implication that it should sacrifice even more by retroactively saving those who could have saved themselves. But will the fire make this moral distinction upon reaching the German border?

Who will buy German goods if all of southern Europe defaults on its loans because the European Central Bank is tied to an anti-inflationary policy at German insistence?

I say, print extra money just this once, kick the offenders out of the Euro, and then give up on the notion of a close political union between peoples with thousands of years of distinct cultural development. Free trade is good; the Schengen agreement on unrestricted travel is important; and a shared labor market helps everyone. Some cross-border issues like the environment require uniform regulation. But we've learned that fiscal policies cannot be harmonized, and thus a single currency cannot work.

Sinite parvulos et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire

The revelations about Penn State's football program have stunned me as much as anyone. I can't understand how the chief witness, a 28-year-old member of the coaching staff, could have observed the rape of a child, done nothing to help, and then gone home to tell his father first and only then, the next day, speak with his boss/head coach rather than the police. How do you live with yourself for the next decade knowing that you didn't help that boy and that other boys may have subsequently been raped?

That being said...I seriously doubt pedophilia has increased as drastically in the last decades as the media would make it appear. It must have been far more prevalent when it could be hidden in a fog of shame and humiliation that authorities were reluctant to try to penetrate. Yet, as this clip by my favorite comedian, Bill Burr, makes plain, the cost is borne also by children to whom the rest of us may feel we can no longer be nice:




Women don't face this problem. A few years back, I saw what looked like a lost child in the hallway outside our classrooms. He (or she, I can't remember now) was just standing there by the window, a place where young children shouldn't have been loitering unsupervised. I wondered if the child was in trouble. Rather than approach myself, I asked one of my female co-workers to see if help was needed. It wasn't -- the child's parent had irresponsibly left him or her in the hallway while attending a class and had simply told the child to wait there. By then maybe I'd seen this riff by Burr, or perhaps I already knew the score: an unknown man approaching a child was likely to encounter from the child not the truth, but the stunned silence and averted gaze of one ingrained with the fear of stranger danger.

I like to think that I would have rushed into that shower to help that boy. Or called the police. Or both. It's too easy for me to ponder the issue when I didn't face it. Yet I do know for certain that I only rarely speak to children I don't know, and when I do, I usually encounter reflexive defensiveness rather than the curious wonder I think I always projected in my youth. I can't recall being warned often, or at all, about not talking to strangers. Maybe my parents gave me the standard talk about not going away with people I didn't know. If so, it had no impact on my view of adults. I think I was so flattered by their attention and so eager to learn from them that I wouldn't have recoiled if one spoke to me, rubbed my head, or gave me a smile.

I wouldn't want to grow up today.

Laudat venales qui vult extrudere merces

A good number of years ago I was part of a group making a hiring decision. The choice came down to a few applicants we interviewed in person. One we could scratch because his written application had fooled us; he was clueless in person. But we had a very difficult time choosing from the others. As I believe is bound to happen in these group decisions, each of our intuitions made our decisions for us. Only then the reasonable parts of our mind began to concoct a story to justify our intuitive reaction.

One of the people I liked most was distrusted by another of our group. She said this applicant had too often been vouching for his own integrity and honesty. At the time, this was a new one on me. I couldn't see a problem. All these years later, though, I know I would react just as my colleague did.

Unlike my colleague -- who carried her point in the discussion -- I hadn't been fooled enough yet by people who talked themselves up. The honest person knows how difficult it is to be honest. He or she realizes that dishonor and disgrace, at least in our own minds, are but a single moment's lapse away should we misbehave. Telling someone you're honest is to spout words you may quickly have to eat.

The dishonest person, the one who doesn't actively think about the fine line to be tread between right and wrong, has no problem constructing and narrating a story about his or her honesty. They'll fool people like the me of many years ago who never see through the deception, and they'll fool a lot of dishonest people in the bargain, because they're blind to their own problem. That leaves those of us who try hard, but sometimes fail, to be upright to watch out for themselves and those close to them. If you vouch for your character in front of me, don't be surprised if I put my hand on my wallet and start walking backwards, never taking my eye off you.

Nimium ne crede colori

I'm no more skilled at avoiding the deception of good looks than anyone else. Yet even as I've beheld thousands of people who appear physically attractive to me, I've come to feel sorry for them if they also seem equally attractive to everyone else. We've all heard how people who are perceived as good-looking get better jobs, faster promotions, more unsolicited offers of assistance, etc. No good-looking woman in search of a drink ever has to pay for it. No good-looking guy has to do more than say "hi" to pique the interest of someone he's interested in.

It's all unearned -- and that's the problem. They learn nothing from alleged successes that have required no work, no sacrifices, and no mistakes along the way. Think of the supermodel who claims that modeling is "hard work." How would she know? How would she fare if her looks vanished for some reason?

Bette Davis explored this dilemma in one of her lesser known films, "Mr. Skeffington." She obtained all she thought she wanted, and got away with mistreating everyone around her, because she was seen as ravishing. She hadn't understood her husband, a man she'd married only for his money, when he'd told her "A woman is beautiful when she's loved, and only then."

An illness destroys her good looks overnight, just as she's entering middle age, and she's abandoned by everyone who had sought her out solely to enjoy the aesthetic pleasure she radiated. I won't spoil the movie any further. I think it should be required viewing in high school: it gives a warning to the good-looking, and hope to the rest.

It's only natural to want to stare at something you perceive as beautiful. There must be a chemical signal in the brain rewarding us intensely, telling us that we want to mate with that (or at least benefit from being close to it). So I've begun to deliberately look away on some occasions, just for practice. I also want to do them a favor in any interaction by being a little more demanding than usual, so that they experience what it's like to have to use reason and empathy to guide their relations with the less aesthetically advantaged.

I know they must be terrified inside to consider what life will be like once the good looks fade and ultimately vanish. By not looking or by being a little brusque and businesslike, I'm giving them a foretaste so that they can realize it won't be all that bad to have to earn, minute by minute and success by success, everything they achieve.

I've seen the future, and it's ugly

An article in today's New York Times makes plain that Greece should have defaulted on its government debt long ago. Three things kept this from happening. (1) Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, refused to believe that a Euro state could be allowed to default. He was influenced toward his view by the increasing amount of Greek debt the ECB had purchased to stem the growing crisis. (2) Many European and American banks were holders of the debt, and in their still anemic state, might collapse if forced to write off most or all of the loans, leading to worldwide recession/depression. (3) Many of the loans were hedged (insured) using the infamous credit default swaps familiar to us from the mortgage debacle still underway. If Greece goes into a state of default without the permission of its creditors, the swaps are triggered. No one seems to know who all has sold the swaps, and who has bought them, with the result being fear of a panic if they're triggered and the solvency of major financial players is put into doubt. As in 2008, credit would stop, and our system, which depends on credit to continually roll over short-term debt, would collapse.

The only reasonable, if still painful solutions left are these: (1) The Euro states that can afford it buy a lot of the debt. This would be a political and moral disaster. Wealthier and more productive states that took difficult steps to rein in their debt years ago would have to bail out the Greeks, who lied repeatedly in order to keep the loans coming and not face the political consequences of reducing their borrowing. Or (2) the European Central Bank buys the debt by increasing the money supply ("printing money") in order to fund the purchases. It is currently forbidden to do this, so a rule would have to be changed or ignored. The price would be a drop in the Euro, inflation in Europe, and a transfer of wealth from those with assets denominated in Euros to those holding other forms of real wealth (land, real estate, stocks, etc.). 

This means either German taxpayers would pay quite openly and would likely rebel, or Europeans in general would pay with a bout of inflation. Such an inflation would also make it more difficult for non-Europeans to sell their goods in Europe, since the Euro would fall relative to other currencies, making European goods cheap elsewhere, and imports more costly.

Welcome to Our New World.

Lenior et melior fis, accedente senecta

Not too long ago, I reconceived my life so that it no longer had only two ages (young and old), but four. There was to be a prelude, which was my childhood and adolescence. Then Act 1, the first half of adulthood (18-48), the era of striving. Act 2 would be the era of wisdom (48-78). The postlude will be whatever time is left, assuming I make it that far in the first place.

It's hardly a coincidence that this decision came in my 48th year. For some time I'd been feeling better and better about being older and older. Yet I couldn't get my mind around the concept of all the wisdom and serenity being packed into such a tiny portion of my life. At some point I must have realized that I should no longer say that my entire life is well over half gone, but that my adult life has just entered into its second half. This presupposes that I'll live to be as old as my father, who recently died at 80. It's as good a number as any to plan with. That gives Act 1 thirty years, and Act 2 the same. It's as if I'm starting a new life in these very days, and the metaphor pleases me.

For a few years, I'd been realizing I was caring less or not at all about any number of things that used to motivate or interest me (for example: sports, movies, politics, pay raises, what other people thought about me). Books, Italian, writing, and my dog have supplanted them. It took a while, but my divorce transformed me into a profoundly happy man, and these four things make me happiest. I hope to pursue them in an atmosphere of serenity and joy. I'm making a good start, and beginning to feel certain of something I've long haltingly believed: it's not despite my living alone, it's because I live alone.

I had terrible "luck" dating after my divorce. I finally realized it wasn't luck, but my sabotaging the process by looking for the wrong person. This wrong person was very likely any person. It's not that I'm opposed to being around the same woman a lot. It's simply that the odds of her being someone I could stand and who could stand me are so long, and the trouble in finding her immense. It's much more peaceful and joyful to enjoy my freedom as it is rather than look for a way to change it dramatically. If it comes yet, fine. If not, finer.

Then there's also the matter of my bad hearing, which is combining with my introversion in a particularly powerful way to lead me to avoid any gatherings where more than one person speaks at a time. If you're going to do that, then you're going to be by yourself a lot. I went to two weddings last weekend, strained to hear at the receptions, and felt so bad about it that I left as early as I politely could. My specific kind of introversion isn't about shyness. On social occasions it has much more to do with being largely silent while trying with intense concentration to figure out second-by-second the person or people I'm with, a process which absorbs almost all my energy and attention. If I can't hear, it messes everything up. I leave feeling exhausted and defeated, at least until I reach the sanctuary of my car and drive off. Then everything's better, instantly. It's as if the quiet and solitude are themselves a source of energy.

Horace wrote, "You become milder and better as old age advances." While this is true for me, I'd add this: "And milder and better still if you can align your inner and outer lives harmoniously."

I've been very, very fortunate.

Error qui non resistitur approbatur

Any aspiring professor who could be shown the total mass of written work to be graded in succeeding decades would tremble. Some might turn away and never return. The piles of a single semester's midterms, term papers, and finals are such to make every other routine task (dishes, vacuuming, cleaning out the septic tank, brushing the dog's teeth) an urgent matter requiring immediate attention.

Some disciplines have it easier with grading, but perhaps harder in other ways. Subjects that use almost exclusively multiple-choice exams might, for example, face far more pressure to bring in external funding for research. So I'm not complaining about either how much, or what kind of tests I have to grade. I do get paid to do it, and I knew it was coming because they were the same kinds of tests I'd always had as an undergrad and grad student.

What was most difficult shortly after beginning my career, and then for a long time after, was knowing exactly what kind of issues on written work I wanted to grapple with and bring to the students' attention. Some instances were always clear-cut. I'd be shirking my duties, for instance, if I didn't point out errors of historical fact or the failure to provide enough specific evidence to support an essay's thesis. But every single spelling mistake? Unclear antecedents of pronouns? Run-on or comma-spliced sentences? Repeating the same noun or adjective three times in two sentences?

At first, if I erred, it was on the side of marking anything that I wouldn't have knowingly submitted in my own work. I've never forgotten the reaction of a student in the back of one of my earliest upper-level classes on the day I returned term papers. As he leafed through his paper, he asked a friend, loudly enough for me to hear, "is this an English class?" My not forgetting is a sign that somehow the sarcastic query wounded me. I have to admit I'd never had a class or any kind of instruction on what to mark and what not to bother with on history essays. I must have felt insecure, revealed as a fraud who didn't realize that in all other history classes students looking over their marked essays would never have seen such corrections as "the man that started the First World War" (I always insist on "who" in these cases). If the student got reasonably close to the spelling of Gavrilo Princip, then maybe I was supposed to keep my stylistic advice to myself.

My biggest insecurity, the one that led me to mark every error I perceived, of whatever nature, was being seen as someone who'd allowed a mistake to slip past him. My father, once a self-employed accountant and tax preparer, had hired me to check his work for precisely this reason: I loved catching others' mistakes and being seen as smarter for having found them out. Normally, my father hated it when I did that to him (although I'm certain it's a trait I copied from him). Yet he knew the consequences of making a mistake on a client's taxes were so high that his ego could no longer afford to overrule his good sense. Meanwhile, I'd work for the minimum wage of slightly over $3 an hour and the pleasure of an occasional triumph.

Potentially being viewed as slipshod, ignorant, or the dupe of a student who'd run a mistake right under my nose motivated me to keep my pen ready for action at every instant while I graded an essay. Even if my insecurities were groundless, there was the potential professional malfeasance of condoning a mistake or harmful stylistic quirk by failing to mark it. As the years wear on, it's this reason rather than any other that keeps me marking misspellings, who/whom confusions, sentence fragments, and other distractions from the flow of the paper. I'm now happy to allow students to believe they've put one over on me in many settings (well, usually). But I can't bring myself to approve their writing mistakes by passing them in hurried silence. They deserve to be taken seriously as long as they've put some effort into their writing. Pointing out that their words were read with care and found wanting in places, rather than being seen as officious meddling by a history professor, should actually be taken as a sign that the students were viewed as as a colleague while I was reading the essay, someone to whom I owed my fullest attention.

No, it's not an English class. But we like to understand you all the same.

My Immigration Quandary

I may be one of the few Alabamians tugged both ways in the debate over my state's new immigration law. The driving influence behind the law is not economic, but cultural. It's a xenophobia born of too little contact with the outside world, and too little empathy. I despise the police-state tactics associated with the law's enforcement.

Yet...what's really happening? The state has volunteered to accept and pay for what's usually a federal responsibility: enforcing immigration laws. There are millions of people residing in the United States in violation of the law. If I were to try to live in another country past my visa deadline, or with no visa at all, I wouldn't feel abused if I were caught and deported. Just unfortunate. It's the way the world works. I'm puzzled why enforcing the nearly universal principle of sovereign control of borders is somehow, on its face, wrong.

I'm still more bothered by having laws that are widely flouted and underenforced, as are our federal immigration laws. If a law's not effective, it should be repealed or its enforcement redoubled, but it can't simply be ignored without risking popular contempt for the rule of law.

One of the unintended consequences of such new state-level immigration laws, should they take hold and spread, will be rising food prices. Weirdly, I regard this as partly a good effect. The assembly line slaughter and butchering of cows and chickens is made possible by cheap immigrant labor fueling the demand for the meat through lower prices in the grocery store. I'm not so happy that fresh fruit and vegetables will be made more expensive, I'll admit. But I've been disconcerted to realize that I've been saving a buck on the back of someone stooped over in a field all day earning far less than a legal worker would.

So, ideally, we'd either legalize the immigrant labor we need in order to produce food at prices we find acceptable, or we'd enforce the existing laws more rigorously, ask more legal residents and citizens to consider working in the fields, and cope with the reduction in our ability to consume non-food items. The status quo ante was unacceptable in its inconsistency, and we shouldn't be surprised that someone would step forward to adjust it, either toward regularizing and legalizing more immigration, or trying to throttle illegal immigration.

A Breakdown: Three Questionable Criminal Acts

My interest in most things Italian and in true crime has led me to contemplate the acquittals of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in comparison to two famous murder defendants in the U.S. about whose guilt many questions have been raised.

	Amanda Knox	Lee H. Oswald	O.J. Simpson
Motive	No	No	Yes
Means	Yes	Yes	Yes
Opportunity	Uncertain	Yes	Yes
Reliable evidence linked to defendant	No	Yes	Yes
Suspicious post-crime behavior	Yes	Yes	Yes
Good police work	No	Yes	No

In Knox's case, the suspicious post-crime behavior (turning cartwheels, a browbeaten and concocted "confession," buying lingerie) is easily explained away. Not so for Oswald (he murdered a policeman) and Simpson (contemplated suicide and fled). If the police work had been better for Simpson, or the motive clearer for Oswald, there would be very little doubt about their guilt by anyone. What lingered for Simpson should have been removed when photos of him wearing Bruno Magli shoes emerged after his criminal trial (rare and expensive shoes identified from the crime scene, but not linked to Simpson until his civil trial). If you're one of the 80 percent of Americans who believe Oswald didn't act alone, then of course I don't expect facts and evidence to matter anyway.

How to Save Euroland (Choose One)

Solution 1: German and other northern European taxpayers bail out Greece, then Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, perhaps through the mechanism of Eurobonds that will internationalize the bad debt and lower the interest payments (bad for Germans et al and therefore for the future of the European unification process)

Solution 2: European banks and the ECB take the proposed "haircut" on their loans to Greece and eventually loans to other profligate countries (worse, due to the prospects of a systemic banking crisis that leads to another credit freeze worldwide, as banks collapse when their loans to Greece et al have to be written down or off)

Solution 3: Greece defaults in a disorderly process (a worse variant of Solution 2), and then leaves or is tossed out of Euroland. It can then start fresh with the drachma and inflate its way out of any future debt crises (worse still, because Greek banks will collapse when every Euro now on deposit is withdrawn in a panic because Greeks fear their money will be forcibly converted to drachmas).

So, unless I'm missing something, the northwestern Europeans are going to have to foot the bill, and then figure out how to establish a European-wide fiscal policy that is ironclad and will prevent future excessive borrowing by member states. Good luck with that. But remember that it's still a lot cheaper than the wars that recurred every decade or so before 1945.

Two Things I'll Never Say

You'll never hear me say, or see me write, either of these: "I'm sorry for your loss" to someone whose friend or relative has just died, or "Thank you for your service" to someone in the military. These utterances are anodyne, clichéd, and timid. Every TV homicide detective says "I'm sorry for your loss" to the victim's loved ones before asking them where they were when it happened. Every member of our military hears "Thank you for your service" when they're in uniform in public.

Instead, how about "I was so sorry to hear about your father's death?" or "It must have taken a lot of sacrifices to go to Iraq and Afghanistan?" You know, something specific. Vagueness is recognized immediately for what it is: the fear of giving offense that, paradoxically, does offend because it treats the recipient as a commodity. They are treated as one of the "bereaved" or a "soldier, sailor, or airman" rather than an individual. I'd go so far, at least concerning "sorry for your loss," as to maintain it's better to say nothing at all.

I can't say how a member of the military might feel about "thank you for your service," but I've read that that they hear it so frequently as to be bewildered about how to respond meaningfully. It must feel very good to hear the phrase the first time, just as every beer bought for you in an airport terminal on your way to an assignment must taste good no matter how many times a civilian picks up the tab. In the latter case, though, at least the civilian made a sacrifice. In the former instance, they made themselves feel better at the cost of putting the service member on the spot. I can't know for sure, but I think a smile and a nod might be more welcome.

The Avatar Next Door

Imagine if Christianity had emerged from the Arian-Athansian dispute of the 4th century with a different winner. Imagine, that is, Jesus was a man and a prophet to Christians and the world -- but no more a God incarnate than any of the rest of us.

One of the big advantages would be the ability to see the avatars among us more clearly. As it is, Western civilization has accustomed itself either to regarding Jesus as part of a Trinity that includes another mysterious sub-division, the Holy Ghost, or it has moved into apathy and atheism. In both cases, we fail to notice those around us, and perhaps even ourselves, when we exhibit the same kind of flashes of insight as Jesus about matters that are today too easily brushed aside. They intrude into the realm of settled theology, or they seem spiritual in a world that would only scoff. Everyone's offended, and no one hears a word.

This article in The Onion nails it: every day, there must be thousands of Jesuses dying all over the world who never knew what they had to offer, or felt constrained to hide and downplay it. One day we'll push past both religion and atheism and find a way to listen to what they have to offer.

Betting on Traffic Lights

The recent death of my father has brought me into full contact with the world of investing. He had a lot of investments in the stock and bond markets, and I've been the one in my family so far to look into and after them. I've found it so exhilarating that I began to understand why my dad was taken with investing. I began to buy individual stocks myself for the first time, rather than indirectly via mutual funds.

I'm in that dangerous place where I know a little more than nothing. If I were totally ignorant, I'd probably be all right because of the beneficent effects of random chance. Now that I'm aware of enough financial concepts I'll make decisions partly influenced by the crowd psychology of the investment world. Until I can get a better handle on my own financial emotions, I need to be very careful.

I bought several good companies I think I understand and about which I feel optimistic over the long run. For the record, they're Apple, Google, CSX Transportation, and Accenture. I purchased the shares about 7% or more off their recent highs. Yet they mostly have continued to fall. Listening to and reading the daily chatter of the financial press, I've come to realize that the commentators and analysts only rarely say anything of any relevance to a long-term investor like me. It's as if I've embarked on a backroad trip from Key West to Seattle (3,500 miles) with a bus load of people who are betting on the color of every traffic light and location of every stop sign along the way. I just want to make it to Seattle, and I'll enjoy the trip a lot more if I tune them out and get on with appreciating the scenery.

No One Has 217 Friends

It's done. After steadily increasing unease at the time I was wasting on Facebook, I "deactivated" my account. From what I understand, it's more difficult still to permanently delete one's account. I saved that for later, until a moment when I'm certain I'm finished with them forever: for instance, like everyone who ever had a MySpace page.

At the moment of my departure, I allegedly had 217 friends. And this after culling a few dozen over the past month. Long before, I'd created three tiers and made separate lists for each. One was called "Real Friends," the next was "Second Tier," and the third, just like the 90+ percent of French subjects in the Third Estate prior to the Revolution, was "Everybody Else." If you ever ask me where you were, I will certainly tell you that I'd included you among my "Real Friends," so don't worry. I always read the goings-on of my "Real Friends" first, sometimes moved to "Second Tier," and far less often waded through the confusion of "Everybody Else."

In the United States we suffer from an imprecision when using the word "friend." The best I can tell, we utter it when we are referring to people with whom we're more than casually acquainted, but with whom we are not overtly "enemies." I mean, in what other society could the word "frenemy" emerge? You call each other friends, and you put on a good show, but in reality you seek to undermine the other subtly?

Most of my 217 Facebook friends were current or former students. I like them all. But to say I'm friends in the American sense of the word is to merely assert, banally, that we're not outright enemies. I'd decided long ago to friend anyone on Facebook who requested it and with whom I'd had at least some level of interaction. The volume of idiocy that came from some of their accounts led me to block a few from my news feeds (if you're reading this, then no, I don't mean you). Only in the last few weeks did I begin deleting those who'd friended me years ago whom I'd subsequently blocked. The logic of this move compelled me to reconsider the whole enterprise -- why was I on Facebook at all?

Facebook became mandatory for me when I was a beginning student of Italian in the fall of 2008. Our teacher created a Facebook group for us, and I was quickly seduced by the novelty and especially the reconnections with long-lost acquaintances from college, high school, and graduate school. I began squandering inordinate amounts of time and creative energy. This blog was the first casualty. My posting volume here declined drastically as I discovered whatever I wrote on Facebook was far more likely to provoke at least a "Like" or a brief comment from an identifiable source.

Within the last few weeks, I've both read a story maintaining that Facebook has lost participants in the U.S. and I've purchased shares in Google, one of Facebook's main competitors. Both these moves led me to think seriously about what Facebook offered me versus what it asked of me. It gave me easy connections, along with quick but random feedback from supposed friends to whatever happened to be exciting me at any given moment. It demanded in return my self-control, my attention, my time, my energy, and whatever ideas about friendship I'd developed prior to 2008. The trade only worked when its terms were invisible to me. As I slowly realized how much I'd conceded to Facebook in exchange for the chimera of online friendship, I grew more and more dismayed at what I'd forsaken, and for so little.

Count me out now. If I could sell Facebook's stock short, I would. They have yet to offer shares to the public, however. Rumors are that their initial public offering of stock may come this autumn. I will grant that they are competitor-free and keep hundreds of millions of eyes glued to their screens every day. No one will be able to disrupt their business from outside. My concern as a potential investor would be about internal rot, however: how long before more and more users realize that real friends count for far more than online ones, that every moment spent interacting with cyber-friends is a moment lost with real ones, and that the measure of our worth is not our friend count, but whether we can count on our friends?

Thoughts on the Strauss-Kahn Case

Although I've tried to restrain myself from watching the news in the past few months, the many weeks spent at my parents' house as my father was dying, and then after his death, led to the shattering of my dome of silence. My parents' house gets a daily newspaper, and the TV is on a lot more. I'll also have to admit that the Osama Bin Laden raid and execution led me to seek stories online regardless of where I was.

So the "DSK" story became known to me as I was reading an Italian newspaper to keep up my fluency. I read stories in other places, since Franco-American relations and cross-cultural stereotypes have interested me for decades. As I await the "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" treatment of the case, I'm also predisposed to believe he's guilty. The only possible scenario for innocence, based on what I've heard, is if the accuser was hired to frame Strauss-Kahn. If he's going to try to argue "consensual relations" to explain away the physical evidence, then we can toss out any chance he's being set up.

His alleged behavior in the hotel was only natural to him. It's connected to a sense of sexual entitlement and need for conquest to which dozens of women have already testified. I realize it may sound like I'm arguing rape is natural. In this limited sense, it is. But as a friend once told me so wisely, we often have to establish our most severe punishments precisely for those behaviors that come so naturally, or else they'd happen a lot more. Just as I would never argue that we should excuse a murder because it happened in a fit of anger, I don't think Strauss-Kahn should get any sympathy either. We can understand without forgiving, despite the epigram so famous in his own language (tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner).

Strauss-Kahn had a long run. He was aided by his power, his influence, and the blurring of lines between interest, flirtation, seduction, and rape in the culture of his country and the micro-cultures of French politics and high finance. His poor impulse control likely led him not only to attempt rape, but to do so in a place where his crimes could not be covered up by powerful friends. I'm very proud to be a citizen of a country where the word of a 32-year-old African immigrant has counted for as much as the denials of one of the (formerly) most powerful men in the world.

Weingarten High Music, 1982-1983

I spent my junior year at a college in Germany. Because the word "Hochschule" translates literally, but incorrectly, into English as "high school," a friend teased me often about going to "Weingarten High." The college was located in Upper Swabia, very close to where Germany, Austria, and Switzerland all meet.

While I was there, I saw almost no television. My constant companion for many evenings was a clock radio I'd bought upon arrival. My favorite station was SWF 3, the coolest station of its era (and one that no longer exists). It played the pop hits -- a rock purist would have despised it. In between songs, I listened intently. My ability to understand German came from hearing hundreds of hours of DJ banter and the news broadcasters.

I can never hear certain songs without thinking back to SWF 3 and Weingarten. If you have any fondness for the music of 1982-83, or a personal memory of the era, these may be of some entertainment or nostalgia value.

The Hymn, by Ultravox

Don't sell your soul to a good looking guy with a demi-mullet. The minute you turn away, his eyes will glow green.

*****



Overkill, by Men at Work

Re-introduced to succeeding generations by Colin Hay on "Scrubs" several years ago, in an acoustical version.

*****



The Umpire Strikes Back, by The Brat

I bought this as a 45 rpm in a London record shop after hearing it many times in Germany. It eviscerates John McEnroe for a series of famous arguments he started with tennis umpires in the early 1980s. His eruptions included such phrases as "Chalk dust flew!", "You are the pits of the world!" and "I was talking to myself!" (when sanctioned for his attacks). Notice also the way "rap" was portrayed in 1983.

*****



Africa, by Toto

Not much to say about this one. Bland, yet replayed endlessly because it was a catchy tune.

*****



Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), by the Eurythmics

I spent much of 1982-83 on trains, and certain lines about travelling made a lot of sense.

*****



Major Tom, by Peter Schilling

A big act in the alleged "German New Wave." There was a video only for the English version of the song, so someone kindly created a new one with the German words and scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The English cover by Shiny Toy Guns may be even better.

*****



Our House, by Madness

A German student came into the common area of our dorm and couldn't help but gush her enthusiasm for this song, "Our House in the Middle of the Road."

*****



Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, by Culture Club

Only after I returned to the States did I learn that the lead singer was named "Lloyd George," who in fact turned out to be Boy George.

*****



Come on Eileen, by Dexy's Midnight Runners

The lyrics make no sense. Catchy as hell. Wish I'd known an Eileen. I had to settle for a Colleen.

*****



Flashdance, by Irene Cara

Ah, Jennifer Beals, we hardly knew ye. Yet you're back now with your own series on Fox, looking every bit as lovely.

Premature Forgiveness

I don't comment on politics very often, because most people seem excessively attached to their opinion and resent you for yours if it differs. And I'd rather not contribute to the number of silly things that divide people. But I'll make an exception for Michael Vick (or "Mike," as the announcers call him). I can see the moral appeal of both extremes regarding Vick, yet I know one of these extremes is my own.

On the field, when he's playing his good game, he's a lot of fun to watch (last night, not so much). Despite my belief in and repeated personal need for second chances, I find it hard to believe that someone who would torture and kill animals for fun and profit can change after only a couple of years. If he'd spent a decade volunteering in animal shelters first, I might consider him reformed. Mr. President, he's not the one you want on the poster for the Second Chance Foundation. He's a great football player who's also a sadist and an idiot about what really matters. I believe it's possible he will change, like anyone changes after they've been caught. I don't think either he or we were helped by his return this soon. I'll continue to watch him play and marvel at his skill on his good days. I'll continue also to wish he were still in prison.

A Decade in Popular Films: The Best, According Only to Me

Surfing past a site that lists the top 100 U.S. box office draws for each of the last 10 years, I not only realized how many movies I have yet to see, but also decided to choose one film each year as my favorite. I haven't seen any of the top 100 for 2010 yet, and for several years I had a difficult time choosing, hence the "Honorable Mentions" at the bottom. There were also some indie and foreign films that might have appeared here if they'd been in the top 100 (I'm thinking especially of "Waitress" from 2007, "Secretary" from 2002, and "The Lives of Others" from 2006). Obviously I don't care for The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Harry Potter....

2000: Wonder Boys
2001: Amelie
2002: Barbershop
2003: Lost in Translation
2004: Napoleon Dynamite
2005: Brokeback Mountain
2006: Stranger Than Fiction
2007: Juno
2008: Gran Torino
2009: (500) Days of Summer

Honorable Mention:

2001: The Royal Tennenbaums
2002: The Bourne Identity
2006: Little Miss Sunshine

Hell, Updated

Sorry, Sarte. Hell is actually having Silvio Berlusconi's campaign song stuck on an endless loop in your head. Still, I'm fascinated by this video -- the aesthetics of fascist propaganda, updated for our age, are well on display: happy, healthy, vibrant young Italians lose their individuality while signing in unison an anthem to a savior-leader. He's referred to both formally ("Presidente," or prime minister) and informally ("Silvio" and the familiar pronoun "tu"). Missing from the video are the old like Berlusconi himself, the weak, the infirm, and all other outsiders and non-conformists. Watch only if you're willing to have the catchy tune linger in your brain for days. It sounds good the way that fast food tastes good. It's just as appealing to the senses, and just as unhealthy in the long run: it's the visual and aural equivalent of a mouthful of salt, sugar, and fat.

Coming to Terms with Life: I, Too, Am an Introvert

Passing midpoint in this earthly existence, I’ve noticed I have a well-established preference for being alone much of the time. It’s not conscious. I don’t ever have to tell myself, “you need to get away from people, and now.” I simply find myself by myself. It’s like shifting in my seat to make myself more comfortable without having to devote any awareness to the act.

For years, a favorite essay explained much of this to me without immediately convincing me that I was a full-blown introvert. Jonathan Rauch’s piece in The Atlantic in 2003 struck the right chord with millions of us. We could see for the first time that nature had to be involved, not only nurture or some odd, aberrational proclivity we’d developed and needed to be freed from. Rauch’s essay introduces the concept of fatigue as the chief driving force behind introversion. While extroverts may go crazy without someone to talk to (or at), introverts like me feel our bodies and eyelids sagging when we’re trapped in many conversations.

This does not stop introverts from trying and often succeeding in careers and professions in which constant interaction is the norm. But they’ll have to conserve their energy. Think of Dick Cheney sitting quietly at a meeting – it’s not only a Machiavellian ploy, it’s also very likely his nature. He’s conserving his energy for more agreeable circumstances. Cheney strikes me as someone who realized early that he could only succeed if he worked with his penchant for not talking, rather than against it. I’ve seen others at all levels who’ve done well, but all it takes is seeing them at a party to realize that they are out of their element in large groups of jabbering people. They might hang close to a spouse or date (often also an introvert, for how else could they be tolerated?). They hesitate before talking, although they know full well that this time, talk they must. They look for an excuse to move along quickly, because they can feel their intellectual and emotional batteries oozing out all their energy.

As Rauch notes, we introverts can often talk in front of large audiences without compromising our true nature. Thus I can meet with classes over and over again, and on occasion stand before huge groups in auditoriums. In such settings, the control and flow of the interaction is never in doubt. It’s not a real conversation of the kind that we find so draining. Either I’m lecturing, or responding to a direct question, or at most directing the Socratic pursuit of some momentarily obscured truth.

There are other introverts who are also shy. I’m not one of them. I don’t mind being on stage, and I like playing the ham. I can get what extroverts seek from their interactions (validation and human contact) without engaging the part of my brain required when one banters and converses at length, whether it be while making small talk at a party, explaining oneself on a first date, or engaging in any of the required group exercises in a large organization like a university. I don’t even mind extroverts in small doses. As a matter of fact, my ideal (brief) conversation partner is an extrovert from a dysfunctional family. I can mostly listen to their tales of woe and their gossip. I need only ask a few questions when I’m particularly interested in one or another aspect. Since I come from a highly functional family of introverts, this other world never ceases to beguile me. Likewise, I can’t get enough of movies about extroverted family members at each other’s throats.

Luckily, I’ve ended up with a nearly perfect life for someone like me. That shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve had enough time to nudge the outward circumstances of my life into conformity with my inner nature. I regard myself as uniquely blessed sometimes when I realize how absolutely quiet it is, how alone I am. I enjoy others without actually feeling I need them. An energetic dog engages what is left of my need for interaction, and on our long walks together through quiet suburban lanes I have more than enough time, and silence, to realize what a charmed existence I’ve been granted.

15 Authors

While drinking my coffee this morning, I decided to accept the challenge of a Facebook friend who tagged me with a note in which she rapidly listed 15 authors who had influenced her. The resulting list is more of an intellectual history than a statement of current or abiding influence; for instance, I was once wild about Lewis, Hardy, and Buckley, but haven't read anything by any of them in decades. My only criterion was that I have read more than one book by each. Thus one author (Dostoevsky) is omitted who wrote a book very influential for me (The Brothers Karamazov). The absence of academic historians is as obvious to me is at might be to you. Haffner and Tuchman read better, but they weren't always the best informed. Still, being read matters. Maugham is the supreme stylist of the group. Mencken is the funniest, while Twain and Lodge aren't far behind and aren't as emotionally exhausting as dealing with Mencken's rapid-fire satire. Easwaran was my primary spiritual influence for a good decade, recently supplanted by Tolle; Campbell is always a comfort to return to at any moment in this regard. Hardy (and my dictionary) are responsible for the explosion of my vocabulary in my late teens and early 20s. If you wish to play the game, I'd enjoy seeing your list too. Don't spend more than 15 minutes. It's mostly a way of thinking about thinking, and of lightly encouraging others to do the same...

Somerset Maugham
Thomas Hardy
Mark Twain
David Lodge
Sebastian Haffner
Eckhart Tolle
Eknath Easwaran
H.L. Mencken
Nick Hornby
Joseph Campbell
George Orwell
Barbara Tuchman
Bertrand Russell
Ernest Hemingway
William F. Buckley
C.S. Lewis