One Market Under God

Perhaps you remember the economic crisis of 2008? The near-vapourization of all that electronic stuff we call "money" was narrowly averted one Sunday afternoon in New York when Hank Paulson bullied the major U.S. banks into a semi-nationalisation. Those tumultuous weeks in the fall of 2008 completely discredited the notion that the free market could regulate itself. France's president Nicolas Sarkozy famously said in a speech that Anglo-American economic leadership was dead. There is no "free hand" of the market. This was a golden opportunity for a reinvigourated Left to take the lead in shaping a more fair, stable economic system. But having themselves embraced free-market ideology over the past 20 years, (neo-)liberals have nothing to bring to the table. Indeed, the silence from the Left has been deafening.

So we are in a bizarre situation: a Left-leaning U.S. President hires neo-conservatives right off of Wall Street to fix the economic crisis. These former bankers and stockbrokers launch a massive Keynesian spending program (the most Lefty sort of Big-Gubmint socio-economic manipulation) to keep the economy ticking. Yet there has been no fundamental re-think of how this all works. Regulation of the financial markets has not been strengthened. The recent article in Rolling Stone asks rightly "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?". Yes, an example was made of the most outlandish Ponzi-schemer who has been locked up for 150 years*. But the rest of the Albanian-inspired** banking system remains unchanged.

The solution to the crisis in the financial sector is very confusing: Moneybags McScrooge doling out zillions of dollars (borrowed from the Chinese, BTW) so that Joe Six-Pack will keep buying stuff? Castro himself couldn't make this up. But if you look closely you will see that the money was borrowed against Joe Six-Pack's future earnings.

This all reminds me of a very insightful book I read over a decade ago. Thomas Frank's "One Market Under God" exposed the Faustian bargain of the investment-oriented economic system and drew parallels between Silicon Valley and the 19th-century coal and rail robber barons. He mocked those of us who were only too happy to give up (for some stock options in some dot-com) the social benefits that our grandparents, marching in the streets, had gained in the first decades of the 20th century.

The quiet dismantling of financial regulations has led to some of the most expensive financial debacles, starting with the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 80's. But this was all settled years ago. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, I guess.

* = for 10 points, can you name him? Last name begins with "M".

** =  In the mid 1990s, Albanian society was caught up in a Ponzi frenzy the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Tulip Craze of 1637. One cannot blame the Albanian people, as decades of communist rule had left them innocent as to how money is made honestly. The entire society was almost fully invested in one pyramid racket or another: Generals, secretaries, and secretary-generals put all their savings in these 'sure-fire' paper companies. When the house of cards fell the country descended into chaos. The army deserted, the armories were looted and a nation of suddenly very poor people began shooting at stuff. It was in the news.

Redonkulously cute

I know how boring it is when others push pictures of their darling offspring at you. But allow me this one indulgence. Arianne is 5 months old now (Sie haben funf monate) and is getting cuter by the day.

She's covered under my German medical insurance (from work), and got her second set of innoculations last week. There's a German/Canadian paediatrician about a 10 minute walk from here who lived/worked in Toronto. Like most professionals here she speaks perfect English. So at least that aspect of Arianne's care is exactly as it would be back home. She's in perfect health and hasn't been sick even for a day.

Sitting in the Bumbo

I am home alone with Arianne today and tomorrow while Christine is off to visit her friend in Brussels.  We're having a great time just hanging out. She's even started to eat a bit of "solid" food (rice-powder-mush).

She gets her cheeks from me

It's Karnaval time at the office

Strange sight in the lobby of my building yesterday: Bonn's Prince and Princess of Karnaval arrived for a visit. People who work in the medical offices on the other floors were all there for the party. There were balloons and streamers, apple juice in champagne glasses (it's an office party) and finger-food. Some folks were in costume and posed for pictures with me:

Of course, there is no actual royalty involved. The Prince & Princess are volunteers I guess, and they have an "army" of fieldmarshalls who are dressed like Banon Von Munchausen and who go from office party to office party spreading good cheer. The minivan behind the fieldmarshall says something about the "Washing Princes" (hence the line of hanging laundry)

 

This Karneval thing is not found in all parts of Germany. I gather that it's mostly the Western and Southern part of the country that celebrates it. Some of my colleagues who hail from other cities (Berlin) have themselves never seen a Karneval either and find the whole thing very silly.

The whole thing really takes place next Thursday (and for a few day thereafter). Apparently Köln (Cologne) is the scene of epic drunken debauchery. Our little neighbourhood is having a parade and children's costume contest which will be more our speed. We've got THE CUTEST outfit for Arianne.  

Eine kleine maus in der Strasse

A little mouse in the street.

I found this plump little fellow nibbling on a crust of bread on my return home one evening last week. It didn't seem to be the least bit concerned with my presence.

Windmill fashions

One thing I find strange is the NIMBY-ism surrounding wind farms. People will swear up and down that they care about the environment, are recycling their garbage, etc., but as soon as some utility company wants to put one of those new-fangled twirlygigs on yonder hill to generate electricity, watch out. There's a hue and cry from the local populace and all the old bromides about bird-migration patterns and unspecified illnesses are used in protest against the new windmills. The local municipal or regional government gets dragged into an interminable series of public meetings, and compromises are made all around. Although people like the concept of green energy, I think they have simply decided that windmills do not fit with their vision of what the countryside should look like, and are therefore ugly. A local example of this is Wolfe island, near Kingston.

Claude Monet - Tulip fields with Windmill

And yet these same folks think that windmills of the old Dutch variety are pretty. Art collectors pay millions for Van Gogh's paintings of windmills. Even contemporary artists make a living painting bucolic scenes of ye olde windmille:

Peter Oldale - Windmill

Why the dichotomy? Why is it that old windmills are seen as more pastoral/rural/traditional/quaint, while new windmills are seen as techno-wizardry that is at odds with a "green" lifestyle? This is strange because high-tech and eco-conciousness are not at odds. The Toyota Prius is coveted by many who seek a "greener" lifestyle, and that is a highly complex product of 21st-century technology. Nobody shuns hybrid cars because they don't look like carriages, so why not view the modern windmill as equally picturesque as the impressionists did theirs?

Is this really so hideous?

Learning to speak German

German is a neat language, and given the context, I can get the gist of things. More and more, I am finding that I can understand simple (written) sentences. My guess is that 15% of the words are similar to the English form (wasser = water), and another 10% are imported from French (Champignon = champignon) or another romance language. However, the remaining 75% of German words bear no similarity with any other form of human communication (Geschirrspulmittel = diswashing liquid). I found the first weeks here to be particularly frustrating because, contrary to a Mexican vacation, I can't bluff my way through simple interactions (Spanish is just like French, but with more flair). I can't even begin to put words together into a sentence yet.

So this past week I started taking German lessons. These courses are offered by the municipal Volkshochschule ("Folks High School").

The classes are after work two times per week (Zwei mal pro Wochen). The teacher is a multilingual retired geographer who is very patient with us. More importantly, he speaks slowly and is pleasant to listen to. Looking around the classroom, there are a couple of ladies from Chile, a young guy from Perth, Australia, and other bewildered immigrants (like me) from around the world. Although I can barely read a menu (oh, who cares? It's all sausage and cabbage anyways), I realize that I am fortunate to be young-ish and bilingual. Trying to learn another language gets harder as one gets older or when one has only ever known English is a bit of a handicap. As there's no homework or exam, I am enjoying the class.

Plus ça change...

No doubt you remember that a couple of years ago there was a rash of car accidents involving Toyotas (oh, come on: you must remember! It was on the news every night for months. The 'news' is that show on TV before all the sit-coms start at 7). It seems that Priuses and Camrys were launching themselves of their own accord. The drivers claimed that they drove into a brick wall even though they tried to brake because the gas pedal got stuck.

Well the U.S. Dept of Transportation just released a report that got to the bottom of the issue. They actually borrowed rocket-scientists from NASA to work on the study (You see the space shuttle program is being wound down and now that the replacement rocket has been cancelled by Obama, I guess they have some time on their hands). The conclusion: dumb people were pressing the wrong (i.e. "gas") pedal.

The funny thing is that this is an exact repeat of what happened a quarter-century ago with Audis*. Now, as then, the government took pains to tip-toe around the real issue. You can't blame voters for doing something stupid. So they call it "pedal misapplication", a term brilliantly mocked by P.J. O'Rourke's review of the (original) sudden-acceleration hoax.

That's what this post is about. Others who remember both incidents have pointed out the irony of the same problem being papered over in the same way 20-some years apart. And thanks to P.J., it's as funny now as it was then.

* = You see, back in the 1980's the whole yuppie thing was in its infancy. There was no such thing as Lexus or Infinity, and there were no SUVs. So an up-and-coming stockbroker could only choose between a large American luxury car (which looks rediculous if one is wearing a pink Lacoste polo shirt) an a German import. So it was trendy to drive foreign. At the time Audi was not as upmarket as it is now, and specialized in 4-wheel drive rally cars. But they were less expensive than BMWs and Mercedes, and that lower price was correlated with the driving skills of some buyers.

Management of science

Today I had a meeting at Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The DFG is the federal government's science-funding and science-policy department (Forschung means "research" and gemeinschaft means "company" or "organization"). They are just a few blocks East of here (and have the big cafeteria where we usually eat).

In any case, they fund iFQ so we meet with them from time to time. Unlike the NRC, they don't do any research themselves, so it is more like Canada's NSERC. In fact, they apparently signed an agreement with NSERC recently to encourage post-doc collaborations between Canada and Germany.

It is really nice to work in a place that values bibliometrics and which is interested in using the results of our work to shape German science. In contrast, while the NRC had heard of bibliometrics and was happy to give Montreal's Science-Metrix buckets of money for the simplest kind of citation-counting, there was never any awareness that it could be actively used to manage science more effectively. It seemed to serve the function of supplying numbers in order to bring some gravitas to reports.

Over on this side of the pond, while bibliometricians are not exactly thick on the ground, it is not uncommon for universities to have a staff bibliometrican. I doubt if there is a university in Canada that does the same thing, and as of three months ago, the NRC no longer has that sort of expertise.

My new Pegasus

The cycling infrastructure here is fantastic. Many roads have bike lanes and there are bicycle-specific traffic lights at larger intersections. Moreover, the presence of cyclists on the road is respected and expected. It's not like in North America where a bicycle is an anomaly, and seen as intruding on the right-of-way of cars. The debates going on in Ottawa right now over the proposed bicycle lane on Laurier avenue simpy echo the stereotypical positions that haven't changed in thirty years. Cyclists want a bike lane that goes somewhere practical, not around some park. Business owners complain that there will be less parking. Motorists want the cyclists to get the hell off the road so that they can drive faster to the next red light.

It is so nice to ride in the city and not feel guilty for slowing traffic down or that I have to assert my presence to get a few feet of pavement. And I never feel that some pickup truck is going to run me over because they were posting a really important Tweet.

So while the tram is fine, for the past couple of weeks I have been riding the orange work-bicycle that belongs to the apartment. It is a single-speed with fat tires. Although slow, it has a certain presence and the 47mm tires really soak up the cobblestones. But this was only a temporary fix. This past Thursday I picked up my new bicycle! It's a Pegasus Premio SL, with 28 inch wheels and the full kit for city cycling. The price was right and it rides very nicely.

Jeff's new Pegasus - from Fun Bikes

It's actually hard to find a men's-frame bicycle that is set up for city cycling. There are city bikes, which have 7 or 8 speed internal gear hub (just like 3-speeds of yore). While this has some advantages in terms of reduced maintenance, I found the shifting to be very hesitant and clunky. The bikes with derailleurs are called touring bikes, and the ones with a men's frame always come equipped with straight, mountain-bike style handlebars. This forces the rider to lean forward, putting much weight on the hands. Completely impractical for riding in the city, but the style matches the Jack Wolfskin jacket that the rider is invariably wearing, so the effect is that they look like they could be going mountain-biking, and not actually to the grocery store. I got the shop to put on some regular bent handlebars and to raise them all the way up. It's such a beautiful city that it would be a shame to ride around staring at the pavement.

Art cars & pointy castles

Okay, enough about the politics of work and how the NRC is mis-managing science. Here are some photos of neat stuff from the past week.

Last Saturday (January 29th), Christine, Arianne and I went for a stroll along the Rhine. Nice sunny day and I was able to get a good shot of the pointy castles on the other side of the river. Here you see the Drackenfels ruins (literally "Dragoncliffs") at the very top of the mountain, and a little further down is the Drachenburg palace, which is where Count Chocula lives (well, why not? The whole thing looks like something out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel). I see these from the window of my apartment every day.

And on my way to work the other day I took a different route and came across these two old and tiny cars sitting there as objets d'art. I have no idea what either one is.

By the way, it is 10 degrees today. Overcast as usual but very warm. I have even seen potted flowers for sale at the hardware store near work: not in the garden centre/greenhouse, but out in the parking lot. I guess it must be spring.

Swinging from vine to vine

On Tuesday, November 2 2010 I met with my boss at NRC's Central Business Support department. There was the usual awkwardness as the progress I reported on was undermined by shifting goals or missing data. Requests to find information somewhere 'on the computer' to support her latest tactic for departmental aggrandissement. And an offer of a permanent government job (only 17 more years until retirement!), with a signing deadline of Thursday.

On Wednesday, November 3rd 2010 I had an interview with iFQ via Skype. It went well and they asked how soon I could start.

On Thursday, November 4th, 2010 I received a job offer from iFQ. I met with the H-R ladies at NRC to discuss the technicalities of what severance benefits remained from the downsizing of CISTI (the burning ship from which I jumped a year previously).

On Friday, November 5th, 2010 I met with my boss and quit. And I accepted the offer from iFQ to work in Germany for at least a year. I had found a way out of the meaninglessness of bureaucracy.

This whole episode was stongly influenced by Christine. I remember that a couple of years ago she pointed out how retirement should not the goal of one's career. That she would rather work longer at an interesting job than to whittle away the years at an uninteresting one. That stuck with me. In regards to the whole burning-ship period, Christine encouraged me to quit the NRC and find a more fulfilling job. And most importantly, on the evening of Thursday, November 4th, she agreed to pack everything up and move to Germany for a year. This time abroad is all made possible by her adventurousness and support. That's only one of the reasons I love her.

The Stupidest Job

Of all the jobs I have had, it was strangely the one that paid the most that was the stupidest. I have had some pretty menial jobs in the past (cleaning airplanes for Canadian Airlines), and more stressful ones (Copyright Librarian at CISTI). But for sheer pointlessness-per-dollar, being a Planning and Business Officer for NRC's Central Business Support (CBS) takes the cake.

On Mondays I would put on a tie and go to my beige cubicle with the goal of wrapping up the such-and-such report and making progress on the actual tracking of innovation. By Thursday of every week I would trudge home with the same thoughts looping through my mind: "How do I get out of this place"? Of course, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth: the salary and benefits were great. I had zero commute. The NRC campus was a lovely place to go for a lunch-time run. All I had to do was push a mouse around and go to meetings (so many meetings).

Add all those things up and it becomes hard to leave. The years trickle by and before you know it, the cozy cubicle has become a trap: You are too old to find another job, but a decade or more from retirement. Quite a few of my colleagues were in that position. Counting the months, and years, with only one thought to justify all the pointless meetings: gotta hang on to that pension. Luckily my experience gave me options. Indeed, all three CBS employees who had MLIS degrees left within the first year (including me). We knew that this was a bizarre work environment and that we could find other jobs. The poor folks with MBAs were stuck: they had drunk the kool-aid and took these meetings seriously.

Projects were changed on a whim. Reports could never be finished because (A) we had no way of getting reliable data and (B) my micro-managing boss kept changing what she wanted. Although I am a published researcher and a bang-up programmer, it seems that I was being given ever-simpler tasks because I couldn't deliver on time (because the organization has no reliable data with which to work: every quarterly report took more than 3 months to complete because of the tooth-pulling required to get accurate numbers from such-and-such department). The twighlight zone of CBS was undermining my attempts to make any career headway. Was I really not capable of doing a simple report?