Jail time

I don’t think I want anyone to go to jail, ever.

I spent a few hours today staring at pictures of the man with the longest prison sentence in history for insider trading.

He was guilty, he was totally guilty without a doubt. He was so obviously guilty, that when his team appealed the verdict, the ruling said “actually, you were even MORE guilty than we thought the first time around!”

I don’t actually have a rational defense that I can make, “this guy doesn’t deserve to go to jail because a and b so therefore c and thus I am right.” I don’t have that. He broke laws, he thought he could get away with things that had been deemed illegal, he didn’t help his own case one bit by being non-cooperative, etc.

But I’m not really talking about a rational want. I’ve been looking at this guy’s pictures. There are pictures of his arrest, doing the perp walk, handcuffs and everything. In one particular picture, his lip is curled a bit and he is biting it and looks kind of pained. I have cried enough in public to know that look very well. He is trying not to loose it. He never, ever thought that he would be where he is right now, in this picture.

And he doesn’t look like a power broker, he doesn’t look like your typical big shot wall street man.  Most of the other guys from this insider trading round up are pretty good looking, in that privilege and money and power kind of way. Trim and fit, nice hair, good faces of the well bred and well raised. They probably have beautiful trophy wives. This guy probably has a beautiful trophy wife too, though, because you can buy those I’m pretty sure. But he wouldn’t look as picture banker perfect. He is kind of pudgy, and he smiles more than the other guys do, who are doing the stone cold guilty look. It makes him look boyish, or like he would have been your favorite teacher in school, who giggled a little too much but was really good at what he did. It makes it easier to sympathize with him and harder to send him to jail. For 11 years.

I just hate the idea of jail, so much, for anyone, especially someone that I can sympathize with, which how could you not after spending several hours looking at pictures of this person smiling or crying or emoting in some subtle way?

Jail sounds like a terrible place. And insider trading sounds like such a made up thing sometimes. There must be rules for society, but must it be like this?

Anyway, I want to interview the FBI agents who are responsible for all this busting, about their feelings. Maybe after the fact, like in 5 years or 10 years, when they can speak more candidly.  

I read about insider trading for one day and now I have an opinion about it and so I deserve to be heard.

Trade regulations and securities laws are so weird.

It is weird to me that information that one person may know is illegal information for another person to know. Or rather, for them to know it and act on it. The idea being that if you know something that other people don’t—have insider knowledge—and then use it to make money in investments and the stock market, that isn’t fair to people.

What a weird thing to care about in terms of fairness. This idea of fairness presupposes that if you know something that other people don’t and you act on it in a way that benefits you at the expense of others, that is unfair. Okay, fine, if that’s what you think. Make it a law, even. But what about the thousands of times that happens in life, all the time, every day?

When interviewing for TFA, I interviewed a ton of former TFA corps members (well, 3 or 4 I think) and they gave me a ton of tips: don’t say this, do say that, I said this and it worked out well, someone at the group interview said this and it was really dumb. This is the stuff that TFA cares about, this is the insider knowledge. And I am sure that put me ahead of the competition in many ways. Was that insider trading? I think this happens all the times with jobs. Hey, I know somebody who works there, let me tell you what they will want to hear, and you will get the job.

I think I have a personal bone to pick with this, so maybe I am way off base here and this doesn’t even compare, but other people have tons of advantages, things that they know that others don’t, things that they understand that others don’t, things people have told them that others haven’t. Some of that has been gotten through hard work, but a lot of it is dumb luck and some form of an unfair advantage.

There aren’t laws about that kind of thing. You don’t have to sign non-disclosure agreements about daily life stuff, but if there is a powerpoint for your pharmaceutical company that says “Do not share”, and you share it, you have obviously crossed some line. Good point. I think if you promise to keep a line and other people expect you to keep to a line, than you should. I walk the line.

But those lines so often feel so arbitrary.

For example, going back to finance: everything revolves around having more information than the next guy, and making better financial bets and hedges than the next guy because of what you know that they don’t. That is the basis of the industry. Everyday, you are working hard to find some edge. So of course it feels somewhat arbitrary when someone says “this information here? This is okay and you can make decisions based on this information. Oh, but that information over there? That information is off limits, and you cannot use it to inform your decisions.” Or course that just seems nonsensical, and absurdist.

Which makes me say that I don’t really think these SEC rules are real moral imperatives—it really is what you can get away with. Just because something is illegal, well that doesn’t have anything to do with right and wrong, or fairness. We should stop kidding ourselves that it is about fairness, you can’t make an industry built around getting advantages over other people play fair. Not that I think we should deregulate or anything, heeeelllllll to the no. No. But I think we should stop kidding ourselves that we are writing rules based on some kind of grand morality, and that’s different.

I think, as a very religious person who is also highly skeptical at the same time, I am in a place to say that most rules are not based on some higher grand purpose or virtue. In Mormonism, we always talk about following the Spirit of the Law rather than the Letter of the Law, and that phrase meant something once and now it is just a terrible cliché. But I think that the Spirit of most laws is largely overhyped, and most of the time, there isn’t really a deeper meaning to what we are doing. And if you can come up with one, it is largely an ex post facto rationalization for why that law might be required of us, and the so-called Spirit or real purpose of the law is a fable. And so what? What really matters more than just following the will of God, even if you must to do petty and purposeless things (along with hard and trying sacrifices), if that is what is required of you? The Pharisees weren’t rebuked because they had tried to figure out how to follow the law of Moses and were doing all these unnecessary laws that they had decided were necessary, they were rebuked for judging unrighteous judgment of others and basically for being major pricks about everything and throwing rocks at people, etc. Please follow the dumb laws, but please don’t stone each other if you aren’t. Because they are probably all dumb anyway. In fact, not even that much later, Peter gets a revelation where he is like, “psych about all that law stuff, eat all the crab you want.” But, as always, I’m very aware that I could be reading way too much of myself into this. Right now, I am following a lot of rules because I promised I would, and those promises are important to me, even if the laws aren’t really.

That all being said, I don’t know what I would do about SEC laws regarding trading if I was in charge of the world. I would not be like “psych about all that law stuff, get secrets and get rich off them.” And I think that there needs to be rules. But I have no idea how to create the right incentives to get people to follow rules and do it for the right reasons with the right consequences for everyone. That is why I couldn’t hack it as a middle school teacher. So in the meantime, I guess everyone please play nice and fair with the money, y’all.

Mind Games

When I was younger, I would stop mid-stream in a thought and wonder, how did I get here? How did I get to be in my bed, staring at the dark ceiling after lights out and thinking about what it would be like to race with sled dogs in Alaska? And then I would think backwards—right before this, I was thinking about that movie, Iron Will, that I saw on TV last month, and how it was a funny name for the movie because Will was the name of the character but it was also, like, willpower and intention and strength and stuff—and I started thinking about that because I was thinking about my cousin Will, who was a history major at Virginia Tech, and how he once took an entire semester class that only talked about the Reconstruction (after the civil war) and imagine spending a whole semester, months, just talking about what was only a small frame in time and space—which I started thinking about that because I was thinking about how there were probably tons of things missing from the Bible and the scriptures, that is why it is so weird sometimes, I mean they talk about whole generations in a matter of verses—and I was thinking about that because I was thinking about what I would say if someone asks me about evolution—and I was thinking about that because I was thinking about this one girl from school, who thought that cave men were something that was made up by scientists to confuse creationist Christians—and before that I was thinking about the Flintstones. And that is why I am thinking about racing sled dogs in Alaska right now.

And it was a pretty fun game. It helped me, if not to understand my own mind, then to at least appreciate the weirdness and the twists and turns that free form thinking before bedtime can take you on. And I think it was a healthy memory and thinking awareness activity, realizing where your thoughts can go.

The How Did I Get Here? Game is not as fun anymore. I mean, sometimes I do it with my thoughts, and that is still very fun, but most of the time, it isn’t about my thought histories anymore. It is when I look up from my computer and I’ve been piddling around online for three hours and I think, how did I get here?

Today, I looked up in the middle of browsing through Cat Marnell’s twitter, which I got to after reading a New Inquiry article on her, which I got to from a link on a beauty blog, which I got to from a friend posting it on Facebook on another friend’s page. I don’t even know who Cat Marnell is and I never read Vice so I’m not really going to find out. Before that I was reading an article on raising kids with same sex parents that someone posted on Facebook, and that led me to reading an extremely conservative blog called the Thinking Housewife. Later, I’m browsing articles on Psychology Today, also because of something posted on Facebook, and reading about the 9 Habits of Successful people, most of which it turns out I’m kind of middling on, according to the linked quiz.

So, my backtracking takes me to Facebook, Facebook, and Facebook.

And unlike the fun and effort it takes to connect my own thoughts backwards in time, reviewing the path of my internet travels is so blah. It doesn’t reflect my imagination, or my ability to think, or anything but passively reading/consuming/clicking on links. That isn’t what I value about life, and so it makes me sad.

In case you don’t know anything about me at all, I have a compulsive and addictive personality. This means that the internet is like a deadly mix of all the things that prey on my weaknesses, and it really kills me to be so tied to all that.

Filmmaker Foils

I really love to waste time online, and especially i love to read the unofficial bios of people on Wikipedia. So today, I happened to read both Christopher Nolan's and M. Night Shymalan's and here is what i found out:

DID YOU KNOW?...
1. ....that both Nolan and Shyamalan were born in 1970?
2. ....that both wanted to be filmmakers from a young age, having played around with 8mm as kids?
4......that both were heavily involved with film in college and first shot films while in school?

They have similar backgrounds and similar dreams, and almost--almost!--a similar career arc. As is well known, they had early career breakout hits. With Nolan, it was Momento in 2000, and with Shyamalan it was Sixth Sense in 1999. After this, they were both anointed and given a certain amount of carte blanch and respect by studios for being so young (barely 30!) and so talented. And rightly so! These were both extremely creative, groundbreaking movies.

Now look at this:

Here is Christopher Nolan's filmography......

.........and here is M. Night Shyamalan's.

Notice that their film releases basically coincided--2000, 2002, 2004/5, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012/3. But as Nolan just got better and more respected every year, Shyamalan's career was in a spiral (at least the 'respected artist' part of his career--all of his films since Sixth Sense, even the bad ones, have been commercial successes and very profitable). Batman Begins vs The Village? The Prestige vs. Lady and the Water?!??!??? DARK KNIGHT VS. THE HAPPENING????????!!!! and we won't even talk about pitting Inception and The Last Airbender against each other, that's just cruel.

So why? How? Why and how did this happen?
It's easy to take a look at their filmography of Nolan vs. Shyamalan and just say that oh, it's because Shyamalan was doing too much, and had no creative oversight to help him out--in all of his films from 2000-2008, he was the director and producer and writer and he acted in them. I think this is totally a contributing factor for why Shyamalan fell from grace, he was trying to do too much, and didn't have enough input from other people--like another producer or director or co-writer--to help him out and say, every once in awhile, "hey, you know, this is actually kind of mediocre and crazy, maybe we should work on this some more." That totally should have happened, and it didn't.

But I think there's more to it than that.
First off, Shyamalan's career took off with Sixth Sense, but he'd experienced success before then. His 1992 film was screened at Toronto International Film Fest, which is kind of a big deal. He was 22. He was an NYU student. A 22yo NYU film student with his first feature at TIFF? He already thought he was a big deal, and other people were telling him that too, according to wikipedia. Next, he made a 6 million dollar movie that only grossed $300,000 and was in post-production for 3 years. I'm not knocking movies that don't make money, lord knows that will happen to nearly all filmmakers. But what i'm saying is, he made a film in college that made him feel like hot shit and then had his parents produce his next film.

What did Christopher Nolan do? He made corporate videos for 4 years. He shot his first film on weekends with his friends and it cost him approx $5000. I'm biased by my own experience, but even based on those first 5 years they were out of college, Shyamalan's career foreshadows "will go down in a flaming blaze of glory and hubris and disappointment" and Nolan's predicts that he will be a patient, masterful storyteller with an extremely solid career ahead of him.

So there's that. But also, Nolan works with a tight knit group of people. His wife produces his films, his brother co-writes many of his scripts, he's worked with the same cinematographer since Memento, and he often works with the same actors in film after film. So, though he has been writer/director/producer for most of his movies, he was not as susceptible to the hubris/lack of oversight kiss of death that Shyamalan was in this same situation. It's my conjecture that because of this group of people he routinely works with, Nolan has built up a trusting network of advisors who probably give advice and criticisms and keep him out of too much trouble.

So lessons for you: work hard, don't act entitled, and surround yourself with trusted advisors and friends who will tell you the hard truth.

I just hope that Nolan's next project after Dark Knight Rises shows that he is able to bounce back from mediocre.....fingers crossed, i want to see more good movies from this guy.

Liberals Arts United: shedding some guilt

Ugh, it drives me crazy that there are so many articles that are like “social sciences aren’t important” and “literature isn’t important” and always emphasizing STEM STEM STEM!

I totally think STEM is important too. In fact, I wish that I had taken way more STEM classes. I wish I retook calculus in college, and that I’d taken a statistics class. I regret my dismissal of science and my assumption that a greater understanding of science is irrelevant to my life. I wish that I’d taken more basic computer classes in high school, and maybe some handy electives like automotive tech. As a liberal arts major who has struggled off and on with unemployment and underemployment since graduating two years ago, I know very well the value of these “hard skills” and technical knowledge.

But reading between the lines of this recent article continuing the drum beat of STEM STEM STEM, the simple STEM solution is not as simple as it seems. One of the most telling lines is this:

“Hans-Herbert Jagla, executive vice president for human resources at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, said finding workers with both technical skills and people skills was proving more difficult than predicted… [Jagla says,] “In manufacturing, you have to be able to calculate things — and express yourself."”

I have found that despite my “unemployability” as a nearly skill-less, non-technical worker, I actually have invaluable skill set—my people skills and communication skills, particularly interpersonal communication. And where did I get that? From reading books! From taking sociology and psychology classes. From going on “useless and frivolous” study abroad programs. These are some of the things that the social sciences and liberal arts have to offer, and their contributions to the workforce should not be ignored. They have been soundly blasted for nearly a century now as being useless, baseless skills, but that is simply not true. The above article quotes an economist say “It’s better to get a C in chemistry than an A in literature.” This is an awful pithy statement, but it is a frivolous and irresponsible thing to say, especially because it sounds like just the kind of latchkey phrase that a politician would cling to when trying to get rid of liberal art and social sciences and replace them with engineering.

I mean, I love engineers. Some of my best friends of engineers! But the thing is, every engineer thinks that if they and their engineer friends ran the world, everything would be perfect. This is clearly not true, because Herbert Hoover is the only engineer president and everyone agrees that that guy was no good. I don’t deny that engineers are smart and that they have really good, logical answers and solutions to many of todays problems. An engineer would probably make a great VP, actually. But there are many, many other skills that make up the world of useful skills, and as a proponent of the liberal arts, I am tired of their contribution being marginalized.

That being said, I do agree with many of these alarmist STEM articles that it is a growing and worrisome problem that so many jobs are going overseas, not just for the cheaper labor but also because there are just not enough qualified workers  in the US (I think that biggest illustration of this was in This American Life’s Retraction episode, where Ira is talking to the reporter about Apple’s supply chain in China? In the US, it would take 9 months to find all the industrial engineers they need. In China, it only took 15 days—and they were working slow. That’s crazy!!!!). But, I don’t think it is a simple matter of valuing STEM over all the other subjects. I think that this problem reflects definite cultural shifts in America. And culture is an unwieldy, multi-faceted thing that is hard to figure out, solve, define, or change. So we have our work cut out for us. 

And, just as a further disclaimer and caveat, I would never say that all you need are soft skills and a liberal arts background and you are prepared for the job market. That is untrue as well, and anyone who says otherwise does not have your best interest in mind. But to say that liberal arts or social sciences is a death knell for your future professional life is just as wrong as saying that STEM careers are the way to professional fulfillment and jobs for everybody. Both of these assertions only tell part of the story. 

Girls, Girls, Girls

I’ll say it now, first, so you aren’t left wondering: I simultaneously feel jealous, condescending, disdainful, and crushing on Lena Dunham.

Jealous because she grew up in NYC, has had success early on in her twenties, and is on a path that I wish I could follow/parallel but I don’t really know how to do that. Basically, I want (parts of) her life.

Condescending because she is easily dismissed as a stereotype of the millennial generation-brooklyn hipster-liberal arts educated-privileged child set, and oh how I want to dismiss her as such for the sake of making myself feel better about my lack of most of these things.

Crushing because actually, I really admire her talents and feel like in some other dimension where our paths crossed, it is possible that we could have been friends.

I’ve been reading a lot about Girls lately on the interwebs, and I thought I should take a looksee myself before I jumped on one band wagon or another (I was sorely tempted by this bandwagon but ultimately I think I’m joining this one, and I agree totally with this one). Luckily, HBO put the whole first episode on youtube, which is great because who owns a TV?

(reminder: this is HBO. Viewer discretion needed. Meaning, there is a lot of cussing (like middle school) and weird tv sex (like most TV shows and movies! Do people really have sex with that many clothes on? These guys don’t even seem like they are in that much of a hurry, so I don’t get it, why don’t they just take their clothes off. Do they like to do it with their pants around their knees and 70% of the rest of their clothing still on? Is that a thing I don’t know about?))

watch here! http://youtu.be/OrQfvq9RfM0

When i told joel who the main characters were—specifically, that they were all the daughters of famous people from NYC—he was horrified. "this isn't secretly a reality TV show based on their real lives, is it?" Actually it totally is just that, probably.

Considering that Lena and the blond girl and the funny guy basically played these exact same characters in Tiny Furniture, i would say that yes, it is quite possible that this is a reality show, or just as real as the reality shows.

Also, that both this series and Tiny Furniture feature Lena being in relationships with really jerky guys makes me revoke part of that jealousy thing I was talking about. I am not jealous of that at all. I am SO glad that this is not part of my personal twenty-something/privileged millennial life journey.

But, as much as I thought it was pretty enjoyable, reflected pretty realistically what young adult life is like today, and was witty and entertaining, I can’t really like this show all the way. I mean, what is this show even saying? That it is okay to act entitled and not consider the practical dimensions of your life? What is so annoying about Lena’s character and other characters in this show (or at least this one episode) is that they totally disregard the fact that their actions have consequences. That the things we do have consequences, and the choices that we make have consequences, and the lives we want to live have consequences, and we need to figure out what to do with those. I hate that they represent twenty-somethings this way, because it is what everyone says about us, and here they are, proving it on TV.

Also, let’s talk about the portrayal of men. First, Lena’s character’s boyfriend/whatever is such a jerk. SUCH a jerk. I can/could never understand why girls think it is okay for guys to act that way, ever. But…she just goes with it? Ugh. Second, the other main boy character is Brian Williams’ daughter’s boyfriend, who is supposedly this quintessential “nice guy.” Except he is not, he is not a real guy. I have never met anyone like that, and I went to the college with the hands down highest percentage of nice guys in the US. No one is like that. It makes me wonder if Lena and her co-writers have ever actually met someone they could consider a nice guy. Perhaps not. Also, their portrayal of him as the quintessential nice guy just makes the idea of being the “nice guy” even more distasteful to men, which is unfair both to men and to women. I can’t support this gender portrayal on this show.

BUT, I can forgive both of these. Because Lena is a millennial actually writing about her own generation (remember how people from other generations love to write about us and get it wrong and it’s annoying?), and she is a female in the entertainment industry, where only 16% of writers/directors/etc are women and there are horrible portrayals of women on nearly every show.

So hooray for Lena Dunham and her vast potential stretching out before her! Maybe we will meet in THIS dimension and be friends.