Matins

¶ At Prospect, Richard Wilkinson defends The Spirit Level,  his eloquent demonstration of the advantages to everyone of social equality (co-written with Kate Pickett) against a refutation by the Taxpayers Alliance.

Again in contrast to our critics, we offer a coherent theory of why so many health and social problems are linked to greater inequality. Rather than being caused directly by material conditions or being simply a reflection of selective social mobility sorting the resilient from the vulnerable, the link with income inequality suggests that the problems associated with social status are responses to the stresses of social status differentiation itself.

We remain puzzled by the stance the Taxpayers Alliance has taken to our work. As we point out, greater equality need not depend on high taxation. Within the US the state of New Hampshire has amongst the lowest taxes. It has no income tax or state sales tax but, like other more equal states, it does well in terms of a host of social measures including rates of infant mortality, homicides, teenage pregnancies, imprisonment, levels of trust and children’s school performance. It stands as an example of the benefits of a fairer and more equal society.

This chimes well with what we’ve observed about the perception of status: differentials in status disappear to those at the higher end. People of high status become accustomed to deferential or respectful treatment by taking it to be “normal.” Conversely, people remain aware that they possess more in the way of material goods, and fret about theft and expropriation.

Lauds

¶ Alex Balk’s recipe for Bolognese sauce, “passed down through an unbroken chain of Italian grandmothers,” is so delightful to read that we’re going to give it a try any day now, what with the comfortable temperatures. The ingredients are the same as in the recipe that we use (Giuliano Hazan’s), but the order in which ingredients are added is almost entirely different, and nobody ever told us to put the tomatoes in a blender.

Liquid time. Get a cup of dry white wine (if you don’t have any, a cup of dry vermouth will do. Hell, I’ve used a cup of red wine before and the difference has not been particularly notable.) and pour it in. Stir occasionally, but let the meat “drink” the wine so that it kind of evaporates into the mix. Figure a couple of minutes on this one. Next you’re gonna take a cup of milk and do the same thing. Here’s the part where the old Italian ladies will tell you that the milk should be hot, but I think this is something they make up just to keep you busy and show that they’re in control. It doesn’t matter what temperature the milk is, it’s all gonna wind up in the meat all the same. You hear that, nonna? It doesn’t matter. When the milk is gone (it’ll take longer than the wine did) add another cup of wine, same deal as before.

[A NOTE FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT LIKE TO COOK WITH ALCOHOL: You’ve got your reasons, I guess. I’m not gonna judge. You can replace the wine with beef stock. BUT, the beef stock should absolutely be made fresh. Nothing from the store, got it? I would have given you my personal recipe for beef stock had I thought about this in advance, but the idea of a life without alcohol is so alien to me that I only just now remembered that there are some people who swing that way. I’m sure there plenty of good recipes on the Internet. Good luck.]

Because we’re probably closer in age to Alex Balk’s grandmother than we are to Balk himself, we’re going to heat the milk.

Prime

¶ Felix Salmon talks PIGS with Carlos Steneri, a veteran of Uruguays economic turnaround back in the 1980s, and suggests that European policy-makers might learn a thing or two from the South American’s experience.

But Carlos reckons that some kind of European Brady plan makes sense — he calls it the Trichet plan. Germany would take the lead in providing the collateral, in the form of zero-coupon 30-year notes — and get money back for issuing them, as well, so it wouldn’t lose out. The PIGS would at the very least be able to term out a bunch of their short-term maturities, dealing with their liquidity problems. And the new instruments, with embedded partial German guarantees, would be more palatable to investors than plain-vanilla Greek debt, making it easier for banks to offload the paper into the secondary market. That’s important, because a large part of the sovereign-debt problem in Europe isn’t the sheer size of the debt so much as it is the leveraged nature of the banks which hold it. If the debt can be moved off bank balance sheets and into the hands of bond investors, the amount of systemic risk would fall dramatically.

This is neither a necessary nor a sufficient solution to the debt problem, of course, but it might be a helpful step in the right direction, and at the very least demonstrate a willingness to face up to the magnitude of the crisis facing Europe. Carlos was adamant that muddling through is simply not going to work — and the longer it seems that Europe is trying just that strategy, the more painful the eventual crunch is likely to be.

Tierce

¶ As concern about the health risks of professional sports in general and pro football in particular mounts, it’s not surprising to learn that Lou Gehrig, the “Iron Man” slugger who routinely “played through” his injuries, may not have had amyotrophic lateral schlerosis — “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” Alan Schwarz’s report on a study that does not in fact name Gehrig reminds us that there is such a thing as fashion in morals.

“Obviously he played in the days before helmets, and he led with his head and with his shoulders, certainly on the football field,” said Mr. Eig, adding that he found no record of brain injuries in news reports of Gehrig’s football career. “On the baseball field he got knocked around a bit because he could be klutzy. Given the barnstorming he did in the off-season and his football career and style, there’s no telling how many additional shots to the head he took.”

Gehrig’s handling of injuries inspired reverence among fans and the news media. Concussions then almost resembled cigarette smoking, in that what is now known to be harmful was in Gehrig’s time considered benign, even charming. An advertisement for Camel cigarettes that filled the back page of Life magazine included various testimonials to “Larruping Lou’s” playing through injuries, including the 1934 incident.

“Another time, he was knocked out by a ‘bean ball,’ yet next day walloped 3 triples in 5 innings,” the ad reads. “Gehrig’s ‘Iron-Man’ record is proof of his splendid physical condition. As Lou says: ‘All the years I’ve been playing, I’ve been careful about my physical condition. Smoke? I smoke and enjoy it. My cigarette is Camel.’”

Sext

¶ Welcome the Class of 2014: the annual Beloit College Mindset List. (Remember, today’s freshmen were born in 1992 — only yesterday! The Editor’s daughter was in college at the time. (via  Speakeasy)

The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. 

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them.  A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.

Nones

¶ At Foreign Policy, Peter Feaver implores us to stop arguing about the Ground Zero Mosque and start prioritizing aid to Pakistan. (via  3 Quarks Daily)

Yet, all of the focus on the Ground Zero mosque controversy may now be having the ironic effect of distracting us from a much more important and much more urgent issue in that ideological struggle: the vast humanitarian crisis caused by the floods in Pakistan. The human toll is staggering, and that alone ought to be enough to prompt an outpouring of generosity from the American people.

But if you are not moved by the human suffering, perhaps the national-security concerns will prompt you into action. Pakistan is at the epicenter of the war on terror, and it is hard to see how that larger struggle will turn out well if the Pakistani state collapses and the society plunges into anarchy. The country was already teetering on the edge with a bankrupt economy, severe food and water problems, and an ongoing insurgency in Balochistan. And, by the way, al Qaeda and other terrorist networks are primarily in Pakistan, not Afghanistan — indeed, several of the recent attempted terrorist attacks in the United States have originated from or had links to groups in Pakistan. Oh, and Pakistan has a sizable nuclear arsenal.

Vespers

¶ At The Millions, Jessica Francis Kane worries a bit about developing “writer’s desk,” and learns to make do in libraries. We can hardly write a word when another person is in the room, but otherwise we’re in complete accord: trying to create a lovely working space can become a deadly distraction.

One day, complaining to my father about this lack in my life, he told me a story. He’d known a man—the father of a childhood friend—who spent his retirement building the studio of his dreams. His whole life he’d wanted to write and paint, and now he would have the time to do it. As soon as the studio was finished.

This sounded fine to me. Where was it? Were they still friends of ours? Could I rent it?

He designed it beautifully, my father continued; the man was a good carpenter, worked on it for years. Apparently he showed it to my father at one point. He walked him through this perfect backyard work space, but what struck my father was how the man talked on and on about all the things that weren’t quite right yet.

The story appeared to be over.

What happened? I asked.

He died before it was finished, my father said. Never wrote a thing.

I kept looking for a desk, but I can’t say I wasn’t rattled. I eventually found something I liked and could afford at a very depressing estate sale on the Upper West Side: an antique, Mission-style writing desk that probably should have been found by someone able to afford to have it restored. I brought it home as it was, rough and rickety, for $150 and used it for a year. When I left that apartment, I sold the desk to the next tenant because it wouldn’t have survived another move. She worked in publishing, too, and wanted to write, so it felt like the right thing to do.

But I also think my father’s story had taken root. I began to suspect I was too susceptible to the idea of the “writer’s desk” and decided it might be better to do without one.

Compline

¶ At The Morning News, Robert Birbaum talks with Jennifer Egan, and we’re not telling you this at Vespers because talking about her own work is only a part of what interests Ms Egan. The conversation is fresh from first to last, a makes-you-want-to-be-there exchange of thoughts and feelings, and we heartily recommend reading the whole thing. But what we don’t want you to miss is the sparkling exchange, toward the close, about celebrity. We’re delighted to hear one of today’s most important writers praising an important 50 year-old book.

RB: There is also a shift in the notion of celebrity—people famous for being famous.

JE: That phrase, “famous for being famous,” you know who coined it?

RB: I don’t.

JE: Daniel Boorstin in 1961, in The Image, a book that everyone in America should read every few years. That’s where he pinpointed that tendency, that possibility. This was really before even television had become a mass form. He predicted all of it.

RB: I haven’t read it—

JE: It should be required reading. It explains so many things about how our media has developed.

RB: How did you come across this book?

JE: I loved Boorstin, he’s written a lot of great books. I heard it referred to—Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle is better known, but it comes after The Image and The Image predicts what’s in there, also. It’s a really slim book—I highly recommend. It’s so smart. Anyway, he talked about the possibility of being famous for being famous—that was 1961.

RB: Now we are overwhelmed by those kinds of people.

JE: True, but how new is it, is the point I am trying to make. I wasn’t even born when he wrote that book.

RB: Perhaps it is the glut of everything.

JE: We see a lot more of this stupid stuff. That feels so true. It feels like we are inundated. It’s everywhere. At the same time, I am disgusted by my sense of myself as this middle-aged person complaining. For example, my older son has gotten really into pop music. He wants to listen to the hot radio stations all the time. My first reaction when he was doing this was, “Wow, pop music was a lot better when I was a kid.” But then I started listening and I realized it was no different, it was no better. It was just as silly. In fact, I have totally gotten into the groups he loves. I want to be connected to him. It doesn’t make any sense to stand there judging.

RB: I see pop music as always having a range from mediocre to brilliant. There was bubble-gum tripe like “Sugar Sugar” on the air with Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

JE: Exactly.

RB: Who are these women named the Kondrashians?

JE: I don’t know. I have no idea.

Have a Look

¶ The 25 Most Disturbing Films Ever. (Where’s Dead Calm?) (via  MetaFilter)

† Frank Kermode, 90. The London Review of Books, announcing Kermode’s death, published an online chronology of his contributions to the LRB, which range widely over thirty-one years, from a recent review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity to a consideration of the Nabokov-Wilson estrangement in 1979.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 10:30 am.