Dr. X's Free Associations

Surging: Gangbangers, 1959 Edition

This has been drawing heavy traffic lately. I never got around to restoring this one. I'll put that on my to-do list.

Teenage gang members (the Mau Maus) arrested in fatal shooting of Brooklyn youth. Photo by Orlando Fernandez, World Telegram & Sun, 1959

Left to right, Carl Cintron, Transit Patrolman Ernest Fatoruso, Carlos Reyes, Patrolman Frank Collins, Melvin Torres and Israel Narvaes at the Popular St. police station, New York City.

The Mau Maus:

The Mau Maus were a Brooklyn Puerto Rican gang operating from at least late 1954 to around 1962. Some members of a street gang called the Apaches broke away and created the Mau Maus, according to Israel Narvaez, one of the gang's founders. The Apaches had succumbed to heroin while Narvaez and others were more interested in fighting and maintaining territory. They also asked permission from a rival gang called the Chaplains to start a Puerto Rican gang in the area. Eventually the gang was called Mau Mau Chaplains.

Around January 1958, a Bishop member and a candy store owner were stabbed to death by some of the Mau Mau gang, supposedly in retaliation for the Bishop's knifing and killing of Mannie Durango, a member of the Mau Maus. One of its best known members was Nicky Cruz, who was President, Vice President, and Warlord at different points during his tenure. Cruz said he stabbed 16 people while a member. Cruz and his best friend Israel Narvaez became born-again Christians in July 1958 after hearing David Wilkerson preach. However, Narvaez became disillusioned with Christianity and eventually rejoined the Mau Maus. He became their leader again and on February 23, 1959 Narvaez, along with Carl Cintron, Carlos Reyes, and Melvin Torres, shot and killed Anthony Lavonchino, a member of the Sand Street Angels (an Italian street gang), one of the Mau Maus' enemies. Lavonchino had apparently beaten Tico, a Mau Mau, for walking with his sister.

Cruz would later write a book about his experiences called Run Baby Run. Eventually Israel recommitted his life to God and wrote his own book called Second Chance: The Israel Narvaez Story. David Wilkerson's biography, The Cross and the Switchblade and the film that was based upon it were partially about Cruz's Mau Mau years.

Thinking, Fast & Slow

Daniel Kahneman has a new book out. Here's the Amazon description of Thinking, Fast and Slow:

Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book. In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.

System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.

Our Strengths and Weaknesses Flow From The Same Wells

Psychologist Drew Westen:

AS a psychotherapist for more than 25 years, I’ve never been fond of boilerplate formulations. But if there’s one aphorism I’ve repeated to patients many times, it’s one that applies as much in politics as it does in daily life: Our strengths and our weaknesses tend to flow from the same wells.

Even more fundamentally than Dr. Westen proposes in this article about political attitudes, his claim goes to the core problems of the human condition.

Prominent Global Warming Skeptic Reverses Himself

In a stunning reversal of his earlier position, physicist Richard Muller, a prominent critic of the hockey stick graph of global temperatures, says that the graph correctly represents the recent record of global temperature change. Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2011:

"When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections. Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that."

It's important to note that Muller is making no attribution of cause or implications; that's not what he investigated. But a prominent piece of the deniers' argument has been the rejection of the figures used in the Mann hockey stick graph, so this is a major reversal on a key position for many deniers.

But I don't expect deniers to change their minds as a result of Muller's new analysis. Expect, instead, that sinister ulterior motives will now be attributed to Muller.

Muller's research was funded by the Koch Brothers. Though I wouldn't assume they'll be thrilled to see some of the confusion about this matter cleared up, I'll give them a chance to show some integrity. They chose to fund Muller because he was one of a few reputable skeptics. Well the verdict is in. Let's see if they continue to endorse a view they like or the facts their researcher found

Vintage Washington DC: 1935

Above & below: "Healthy white children," Washington, D.C. Photos by Carl Mydans, Farm Security Administration.

 

Investing in so-called collectibles

Jason Notte:

If you stare at the Thomas Kinkade painting on your wall each day thinking "There's my retirement fund," prepare to pour skim lattes until you're 90.

Collecting as a hobby can be a fun, worthwhile and potentially lucrative way to pass time. Amassing collectibles as investments, however, can be a disappointing endeavor yielding nothing but piles
of devalued tchotchkes for the next of kin to sort
through [...]

"I tell people that keeping collectibles is like storing money under your mattress," says Lou Kahn, head of the Bakerstowne Collectibles appraisal and consignment service in West Hempstead, N.Y. "You're going to have the same amount of money next year, but it's going to be worth a lot less."

Notte identifies nine popular but financially questionable collectibles:

NO JEWS ALLOWED

Not stated explicitly, but if we take Crockett Keller of Mason, TX at his word, Jews are on his list of banned persons (Ed Brayton):

MASON, Texas — It was a message intended to bring in some extra business. A radio ad for a concealed handgun class at Keller’s Riverside Store in Mason, located in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, is causing controversy.

“We will attempt to teach you all the necessary information you need to obtain your C.H.L.,” the ad stated. Forty-five seconds in, the advertisement added a disclaimer.

“If you are a socialist liberal and or voted for the current campaigner in chief, please do not take this class. You have already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as under the law.”

The ad continues, going on to say,”If you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class with no shame; I am Crockett Keller, thank you and God bless America.” …

“The fact is if you are a devout Muslim then you cannot be a true American,” said Keller. “Why should I arm these people to kill me, that’s suicide.”

It’s a stance Keller isn’t alone on. During this interview the instructor fielded nearly 40 calls congratulating him for the ad.

“I just will not teach these people,” said Keller. “If I see them on the road, I’ll wave at them if they wave at me. If I meet them on the street, I’ll be polite as they are to me, that’s my nature; I believe in being polite and honest and matter of fact.

Ms. Rand, Meet Singapore, Mr. Hayek, Meet Norway

Business Week: 

While this doesn't explain the reasons for the differences, what it does show is that hysteria over government spending and intervention in the economy is overblown.

Moreover, the rationale for extreme income inequality as a prerequisite for the kind of investment that raises the tide for all the boats, isn't unequivocally supported by the facts.

As the BW writer points out, things are never very simple:

Certainly there’s a lot more data that could be brought to bear here. The Singapore income share data ends in 2005, and doesn’t include several years of strong growth. Oil is a major component of the Norway’s ascent. Both are small countries, and neither is really a model for the United States. Still, they are instructive. In parts of the world—China, Russia since the fall of communism—economic growth has been accompanied by stunning disparities of wealth. That doesn’t mean the two have to go together.

The world is not a simple place and ideological formulations have serious limitations. Big government is supposed to lay waste to human productivity; Norway should not be prospering, or so says the prevailing American conservative ideology, but the Norwegian economy is thriving.  See Jeffrey Sachs for more on that.

In Greg Mankiw's Book, Rick Perry is a Crank and a Charlatan

Mark Thoma:

Suzy Khimm poses a question to the Perry campaign:

1) How will the new tax breaks for the wealthy be paid for?

Perry campaign: The purpose of this bold tax proposal is to give the economy the jumpstart it needs to get people back to work. ... Gov. Perry is confident that the economic growth that results from this plan will generate the necessary revenue to balance the budget by 2020.

So the tax cuts will pay for themselves? Greg Mankiw:

I used the phrase "charlatans and cranks" in the first edition of my principles textbook to describe some of the economic advisers to Ronald Reagan, who told him that broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue. I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don't.

Using Cheaters in Lieu of Prescription Glasses

My Dad has always worn glasses, but my Mom had excellent vision until age began to take its toll in her 40s. Like my mother, my sibs and I grew up with better than 20/20 vision.

So when reading the small print in the crossword puzzles started to become a challenge in my late 30s, I discovered that glasses can be a real pain in the butt.

It wasn't much longer before my distance vision also began to falter. My vision has deteriorated slowly, but has progressed to the point that reading street/avenue signs and license plates from a distance has gotten difficult, and the rest of the world looks a little fuzzy.

I've freely used cheaters for reading and find them pretty much as effective as the prescription glasses I own. But until recently, it hadn't occurred to me that I might be able to use very low-powered cheaters to correct for distance. So I bought a pair of low-magnification readers after testing out several strengths at Walgreen's. I can barely tell the difference between those and the prescription driving glasses I just bought. My vision feels ever so slightly sharper with the new prescription glasses, perhaps because of the better lens quality, or because the prescriptions for each eye are slightly different. Overall, though, the cheaters for distance are very serviceable. I can see very well using them..

I know this wouldn't work for everyone because many people have issue that aren't addressed by magnification alone, but it's nice to know that, for now, I can do just fine with a cheap pair of over-the-counter glasses in a pinch.