The Proposal and Chris Blattman

We recently watched The Proposal from Netflix.  For those who don't recall, it is a romantic comedy where the Sandy Bullock character needs to marry to stay in country and the INS heavy is going to question them both (forget the male lead's name) to see if the marriage is real.  The movie was good.

Now comes real life.  Chris Blattman is a Harvard prof from Canada who's going for his green card interview with his wife.  He's getting nervous:

"Now, normally you’d think a Canadian professor with a job and a work visa wouldn’t be a big worry to the INS. Plus I’m interviewing in Connecticut and not Arizona. But Jeannie quizzed me the other day, and it turns out (1) I have no idea what color her toothbrush is, (2) I overestimated how long we have been married, and (3) we live in different cities and  have different last names
Also, if you squint, you could mistake us for Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. This bodes ill. I could be blogging from Canada on Wednesday.

Blattman's international development blog is good.

The Fascinating World of Politics

Today is a red-letter day for those who enjoy the twists and turns of politics.

Ruth Marcus in the Post describes the background to the passage of the Arizona immigration law.  Seems they went to a "clean election" concept, which enabled people with no deep-pockets backers to win elections to the state legislature.  Without the vetting of the establishment, the legislators became more populist.

The Times describes a surge of African-American candidates encouraged by Obama's success, except these are Republican candidates. The idea black candidates can be elected in majority-white constituencies is empowering.


And the Times describes Britain's own shut-the-door politics, people who fear the impact of allowing all those Polish immigrants into the country, destroying Britain's way of life.  The O Henry twist here is the writer finds some of these fearful people at a mosque in Luton.

Don't you love human beings?

Followup to Lazy Students

From an interesting article on a Duke professor who tried having her students do a crowd-source assessment of their work:

She said that the students each ended up writing about 1,000 words a week, much more than is required for a course to be considered "writing intensive" at Duke (even though her course didn't have that designation). She also said that the writing (she read every word, even while not assigning grades) was better than the norm.

 This is incidental information, but 1,000 words is about 4 pages, which doesn't sound like all that much for a writing intensive course.  Of course, my memory is raising the bar, but seems to me that was roughly the standard for my freshman English class many years ago.

As for the main subject, the professor and students claim is the process worked very well.

Robot Bureaucrats

Thanks a bunch, Ann Althouse:

Also, for some reason, I don't find robotic voices intimidating. If I'm interacting with a bureaucrat, I prefer a robot.

Spreading Innovations II

Posted earlier on the problem of spreading innovations in the US Army.  Another example, which may be familiar: anyone who has a reputation for knowing technology, for being able to program VCR's or whatever the current standard is, perhaps has had this experience.  You show someone who is less knowledgeable, perhaps an older relative, a neat way to accomplish something they'd like to do: find out the weather in Dublin by doing a Google search for "dublin weather".  They're duly impressed and seem to comprehend what you've demonstrated.  But, next week or next month, a similar situation occurs and the person doesn't use the knowledge you've passed on.

Obama Defends Government, Not Bureaucrats

Obama spoke at the University of Michigan, asking for civility and defending the necessary role of government.  That's all fine, just as motherhood and apple pie are fine (though rhubarb pie is better), and honoring "Older Americans" as you all are supposed to do this month is fine.

But when is someone going to speak out in praise of the poor "faceless bureaucrat"? You can't have government without faceless bureaucrats.

[Updated--this is Public Service Recognition week.  Though how one recognizes the faceless I'm not sure.]

My Suspicions Confirmed, College Students Are Slackers

Tyler Cowen passes on a report which claims to show students in my day worked 40 hours a week on their studies (plus another 20 working their way through school, at least for some like me), whereas now they work 27 hours a week.  Of course, it could be that the use of Powerpoint has improved the transmission of knowledge so much that less studying is needed because more is accomplished in class.  Or it could be youth are going to pot.

$500 an Hour for Law School Graduates?

Piece in the NYTimes on the people handling the bankruptcies in the financial sector, particularly Lehman Brothers.  Apparently the time of associates in law firms (the worker bees familiar from John Grisham's novels who are 1, or 2, or 3 years removed from law school) can be billed at $500 an hour.  If they worked 2,000 hours in a year, that's a cool mill. And associates, if Grisham is right, are expected to bill 60 or 70 hours a week.

Remember that when right wingers talk about government bureaucrats being paid more than private--I double damn guarantee no Federal lawyer is in the same ballpark as these people.

The piece offers some justifications for the charges, and there is some oversight.  But my bottom line is: pigs at the trough, making hay while the sun shines (to mix farm metaphors). The creditors of the bankrupt institution don't have the ability effectively to monitor the firms and serve as a countervailing interest to abuses.

What Does a Crofter Do? [Updated}

A nice post at Musings from a Stonehead describing what a crofter (small farmer) does: walk and carry. He's not walking behind horses, but the farm is small enough not to need a riding tractor.  That's one reason old time farmers had no problems with their weight.

Meanwhile, just to prove small farms are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, StonyBrookFarm has a post about the concept of "cool boredom", which he sees as part of doing chores on a farm:

Lugging around water buckets, wheeling out bales of hay, standing still and running the hose for ten minutes to fill a fifty gallon water trough, walking from pasture to pasture, paddock to paddock, barnyard to barnyard, following a rote routine multiple times a day, day after day, are the stuff for me of cool boredom on the farm.

Both posts are worth reading in their entirety.

How Much Has Politics Changed?

Mr. Brookheiser, in his memoir of Bill Buckley, recalls that 2 weeks after LBJ became President, the National Review declared his honeymoon was over.  (How'd I like the book--it was a quick read with a number of good lines in it.  I don't think much of his politics, but the guy writes well.)