Two Theories on Crystal Meth

The Times today has an article discussing the possible spread of crystal meth to the East Coast big cities, Trashy or Not, a Drug Peril Creeps Closer. So far it hasn't happened

1. One is ecological--"The theory is that addicts well supplied with cocaine in big cities haven't craved a substitute, which suits traffickers just fine since their suppliers in Colombia and elsewhere don't want the competition from largely domestic brewers."
2. The other is classist--"The general impression among African-Americans is that this [methamphetamine] is a white-trash drug," said Sally L. Satel, a psychiatrist at the American Enterprise Institute who has interviewed drug addicts about methamphetamine. "African-Americans recoil from this drug. They told me they think it is a very low-class kind of drug, and there was a kind of revulsion to it."

Risk-Taking--Smart or Self-Assured?

Virginia Postrel in today's Times, Would You Take the Bird in the Hand, or a 75% Chance at the Two in the Bush? reports on research into risk-taking, and includes a 3-question quiz for self-assessment. The results seem to say that people, especially male people, who are smart are willing to take greater risks.

"'Even when it actually hurts you on average to take the gamble, the smart people, the high-scoring people, actually like it more,' Professor Frederick said in an interview. Almost a third of high scorers preferred a 1 percent chance of $5,000 to a sure $60.

They are also more patient, particularly when the difference, and the implied interest rate, is large. Choosing $3,400 this month over $3,800 next month implies an annual discount rate of 280 percent. Yet only 35 percent of low scorers — those who missed every question — said they would wait, while 60 percent of high scorers preferred the later, bigger payoff.

Men and women also show different results. 'Expressed loosely,' he writes, 'being smart makes women patient and makes men take more risks.'

High-scoring women show slightly more willingness to wait than high-scoring men, while the differences in risk-taking are much larger. High-scoring women are about as willing to gamble as low-scoring men, while low-scoring women are even more risk-averse"

I have my doubts. [Totally unconnected to the fact I only got 2 of the 3 questions right.] I'd like to see research on self-confidence: do people who think they aced the quiz accept greater risks versus those who weren't sure. That seems to me more likely to be the key variable. Divide the universe into four sets: smart and know it; dullards who think they're smart; dullards who know it; and smart who are modest. The second group qualify for the Darwin Awards.

Better Bureaucrats Win in Palestine

As best I can tell, Hamas won in the Palestinian Authority elections because they are and/or promised to be better bureaucrats than Fatah. Even David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy
appears to agree with the analysis. Apparently Hamas has competed against the PLO in two ways: greater militancy in opposing Israel and greater efficiency in caring for Palestinians. As such they parallel the Republicans, who also have promised greater militancy in opposing our enemies and greater efficiency in government.

Dealing with Bureaucracies--Lines

In dealing with its public, a bureaucracy has to connect to its customers, which usually means setting up a sequence to deal with them and, sometimes, fitting them into service categories. Today I experienced some variations on this:

• Visited the VA DMV to renew my driver's license. In their system, you first line up to reach an information window, where the clerk assesses your situation and fits you into the bureaucratic cubbyhole (license renewal, vehicle registration, id card, more documents needed, interpreter needed), tells you what to fill out and gives you a code number. An automated PA announcement system calls out the code numbers to go to the various windows. This morning there was maybe a 15-minute wait. So I sat waiting for the call and fussing to myself over whether someone who arrived after me was being served before you. I couldn't tell, because there were different number sequences according to the type of transaction. It would seem the different clerks specialized in different transactions. [I know I should have faith in the system and I really do, but it is a weakness. The strength, at least this morning, is that people were informed quickly of where they fit--they didn't spend 20 minutes waiting for a clerk only to find they needed more information.]
• Later I visited the post office. You took a number from the machine and waited for your number to be called. There was only the one sequence, meaning every clerk had to be able There they had a number system, just like my barbershop, where every clerk could handle most any transaction. As with the barbershop, you could tell your place in line was safe.
• Finally I hit the Safeway. You get your groceries, pick the checkout line--express or regular--and wait in line.
  

From the Mouths of Waiters

Frank Bruni, the NYTimes restaurant critic, tries waiting tables for a week and describes the result in My Week as a Waiter. In doing so he collects wisdom from the waiters (who may qualify as bureaucrats, I'll have to think about it):

"'It's amazing,' Bryan tells me, 'how unadventurous people are....'"[in rejecting specials]

"Some people are interested in having the experience of being disappointed," Tina says.... [setting expectations too high]

"Jess tells me that enthusiasm is more important than definitive knowledge, that many diners simply want a server to help them get excited about something.

"You've got to fake it until you make it," she says...."

"Once again I try to tackle an entire section, seven tables in all. Dave is my minder. He tells me to make clear to diners that they need to be patient.

"If you don't control the dynamic, they will," he says...."

Investing Time

Blake Gopnik, the Washington Post art critic, went to various galleries/museums and looked at art, not special exhibits, just the regular stuff. It's interesting. One article suggests the difference between an amateur and a professional. Tuesday::

"The time the average museum-goer spends looking at a work of art, as clocked one morning at the Hirshhorn: Well under 10 seconds. [actually, when I go to the museum I usually spend between 30 seconds and a minute, covering the usual 60-100 piece exhibition in about an hour. ]

On the second day of my week, I decided to see what it would feel like to push the experience of a single picture as far as it could go."

He goes to see a picture that consists only of color stripes, and spends 2 hours looking at it. 2 hours!! But then, he'd spend a minute on something concerning bureaucracy that could keep me going an hour. Different strokes.

What Makes a Citizen?

Edward Rothstein has a neat article on the tests different countries give to immigrants apiring to become citizens--Refining the Tests That Confer Citizenship.

Questions include: "Where does Father Christmas come from? How old do you have to be to buy a lottery ticket? If your adult son declares he's a homosexual, what do you do? If a film or a book insults your religious feelings, what is your reaction? Why are aboriginal peoples seeking self-government? Who has the power to declare war?"

Raises questions of what we hope to achieve by the tests. Would life experiences be a substitute? (Like, if the immigrant provided x ticket stubs from baseball games, or had watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", or ??)

Richard Hatch and IRS Tax Systems

I've blogged previously on Richard Hatch's ("Survivor") tax evasion problem. The Times has an update here: A New Reality for First 'Survivor' Winner: Tax Evasion Trial .

Hatch first agreed to a bargain, then backed out and went to trial. From the article he seems not to be doing well, at least not in the reporter's opinion.

"Standing in the witness box for nearly five hours, frequently gesturing and looking at the jury, Mr. Hatch sought to portray his tax situation as complicated and confusing, especially for someone grappling with instant fame and stresses involving his adopted son."

At least the defense attorney doesn't seem to be attacking the IRS.

Tripping Up on Trips: Judges Love Junkets as Much as Tom DeLay Does - New York Times

Dorothy Samuels on the NYTimes editorial page criticizes judges for going on junkets (called "seminars" sponsored by organizations with an ideological or financial interest in judicial decisons) --Tripping Up on Trips: Judges Love Junkets as Much as Tom DeLay Does . But she includes this question:

"I've been writing about the foibles of powerful public officials for more years than I care to reveal without a subpoena, and I still don't get it: why would someone risk his or her reputation and career for a lobbyist-bestowed freebie like a vacation at a deluxe resort?

Is it just plain old greed - the irresistible lure of bathrooms with heated towels, outstanding golf and tennis, and ski valets who will warm your boots on a cold day and deliver them right to your door? Is the tendency to sponge inappropriately off rich special interests an inherited trait, the product of some yet to be mapped junket gene? Or is it environmental, a sad reflection of the social and political culture?"

My guess is it's none of the above, at least not for most people. It's just very seductive to have people do for you, whether it's your mother when you're sick in bed and out of school, your secretary, your employee, or a supposed friend. Your ego gets charged up when you're the center of attention, no longer the nerd wallflower at the dance ignored by the girls clustered around the jocks, but the center of all eyes. It's easy to come to feel you deserve the attention. It's your brains and your beauty that explains the attention, not any possibility that others would benefit from pleasing you. And it's addictive, as all pleasure is addictive. Ms. Samuels no doubt felt similarly when she first had her name attached to her writing.

Faceless Bureaucrat Is Wrong!!

Although I beat to death the idea that we don't do things right the first time, Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly provides an opposing view:

"Jon Cohn returns to the Medicare prescription drug debacle with a simple question: are the kinds of problems we're seeing just the inevitable startup bugs you get with any big new government program? He takes a look back at the start of Medicare itself to get the answer:

So what happened on the day that this complex program was implemented? Thousands of senior citizens simply went to the hospital and got the health care they needed. 'There were no crises that I remember,' says Yale University political scientist Theodore Marmor, who worked in the office overseeing Medicare implementation and went on to write The Politics of Medicare, the program's definitive history. Newspaper accounts from the '60s back him up. Under the headline 'medicare takes over easily,' a Post writer described the program's first day as 'a smooth transition, undramatic as a bed change.' Three weeks later, the Times affirmed that 'medicare's start has been smooth.'"

What can I say--LBJ's bureaucrats were better than modern day ones.