CJC.org

Just spoke to Washington Mutual, the current holder of my mortgage. They had someone who actually could give me information about the situation.

The type of load I need is called a blanket loan, which will cover refinancing the current apartment and taking out a mortgage on the new one. Since WaMu holds the current mortgage, the loan officer said it should be relatively easy to set up the new blanket loan.

I need the following before I can proceed with a loan application:

So, I’ll need the lawyers to draft the contract and an architect to draw up the plan relatively quickly.

The current rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage is 5-7/8%. Slightly higher than other banks that only had someone taking notes instead of properly explaining my options, but still almost 200 basis points less than my current mortgage.

There’s a fire on Staten Island. It appears to be an oil refinery fire near the Outerbridge Crossing in the southwestern part of the island. Here are some photos from my office building:

The window’s a bit dirty, so there might be specks in the first two photos. The sky is also hazy.

As a cautionary point after the post about Thomas Friedman’s op-ed, I found this article from The New Republic: The Liberal Power, on “hawkish liberalisms” prospects in the event of a second Gulf War.

Hawkish liberalism — the willingness to use military power in pursuit of altruistic aims, such as democracy and liberation — was betrayed after the first Gulf War, when the previous Bush administration struck a back room deal with the Saudis to keep Iraq more or less intact and let the Shiites and Kurds get slaughtered. This betrayal was eased by the realization that America has the preeminent military power in the world, and that, under Clinton, it could still be used for liberal purposes, as it was in Bosnia and Kosovo.

The danger now is that this Bush Administration may similarly betray the hopes of liberal hawks after this new Gulf War by installing someone more to the liking of the oil companies and the Saudis, instead of a leader more interested in democracy. The Administration hasn’t budgeted funds for the reconstruction of Iraq — necessary for a liberated Iraq to be a democratic beacon in the region — which leads one to hope that not spelling out the dollars and cents was out of fear of diminishing support for the war by forecasting the immense cost of reconstruction, and not out of criminal neglect in taking care that Iraq won’t simply slide into chaos and further misery.

If liberal hopes are betrayed, the author speculates that the hawks may give up on the idea of the judicious use of military power, even though there are evils in the world that can only be confronted by the threat or use of force. The realist left may join the McGovernite left in isolationism, and the Kosovos of the world may be left to bleed.

The author should perhaps note a two things: Rwanda and Somalia. The hesitation to use military force allowed genocide to happen in Rwanda. This strengthens the argument that disasters can happen if some liberals aren’t willing to use force. Somalia is the other one-word signifier, and is related to Rwanda because it explains why there was a hesitancy to use force in the face of genocide. Is the story of Somalia the tale of the limits of military power in a democratic society, or is it about the failure to apply it properly?

I came to a handshake agreement with the owners of the neighboring apartment, 4B, late yesterday. The agreed upon price was actually a hair less than I was hoping, which is very good. I would have been willing to pay probably another 5% if he had wanted to negotiate some more. He did simple math, and split the difference between our initial positions, rather than split the difference between the latest positions; the latter would have been more advantageous for him.

Anyway, I’ve started talking to a real estate attorney who happens to be my aunt, so hopefully we’ll have a formal contract signed by end of month. She works at a bank, so that may simplify matters if that bank does mortgages for co-ops: the pursuit of synergies that lead to behemoths like Citibank may finally work for me.

I’ll need to contact the co-op board and management company soon. I’m not sure how long closing and renovation will take. The upstairs apartments, 5B and 5C, and in a similar process. 5C bought 5B with the intent of combining the apartments; they’ve been in contract since October, but haven’t closed yet. Their paperwork is, however, more complicated, since 5C’s fiance bought 5B, and he has to go through a seperate vetting and filing with the co-op board, as well as have architectural plans filed. I’ll contact them for the name of an architect, who should be at least familiar with the apartment layouts. I’ll also need a contractor, though Grace’s friend’s brother does that kind of work.

Thomas Friedman has a good op-ed in today’s NYT: Tell the Truth. He criticizes the Bush Administration for badly bungling the diplomacy needed to build support for war, for failing to spell out the legitimate arguments for war, and for lying with at-best-tenuous connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq to falsely legitimize war.

Because of its high handed attitude and stupid unilateralism — European anger over Bush stems in part from Kyoto, etc. — the Administration has made it next to impossible to legitimize the possibly necessary unilateralism that apparently has to happen to enforce a decade’s worth of UN resolutions. Even in the practical art of diplomacy, this Bush Administration compares unfavorably to the previous one on the eve of the first Gulf War, when SoS Baker spent time and effort to meet face to face with allies to build support; this Bush Administration apparently believes phone calls are sufficient.

Far more serious is the deceitful linkage of Iraq with Al Qaeda to justify war. Friedman rightly recalls the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, also based on falsehoods. And we all know how Vietnam turned out. The Administration’s desperate reaching for connections shows that they are either inept or distrustful of the American people. Inept because a history of the folly of starting democratic wars based on lies is clear; the Administration should know this. Distrustful because they don’t believe the American people can handle legitimate argument and debate on whether to prosecute this war; the Administration should trust Americans, and realize that only democratic processes can legitimize wars fought by a democracy.

Anyway, the kernel of Friedman’s op-ed — which is the kernel of the liberal argument for war — is in these two paragraphs:

Tell people the truth. Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice ? but it’s a legitimate choice. It’s because he is undermining the U.N., it’s because if left alone he will seek weapons that will threaten all his neighbors, it’s because you believe the people of Iraq deserve to be liberated from his tyranny, and it’s because you intend to help Iraqis create a progressive state that could stimulate reform in the Arab/Muslim world, so that this region won’t keep churning out angry young people who are attracted to radical Islam and are the real weapons of mass destruction.

That’s the case for war ? and it will require years of occupying Iraq and a simultaneous effort to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to create a regional context for success. If done right, such a war could shrink Al Qaeda’s influence ? but Al Qaeda is a separate enemy that will have to be fought separately, and will remain a threat even if Saddam is ousted.

As a side note, this last point leads back to John Lewis Gaddis’s article in Foreign Policy about an American grand strategy for transforming the Middle East. Friedman perhaps could also have noted that Saddam will not live forever, and the collapse of his regime with his death — be it by coup, revolt or natural causes — will require US troops to prevent massive sectarian bloodshed and starvation whether there is or is not an invasion. The US will have to intervene in the future, no matter what the circumstances of “regime change”; doing so forcefully gives us the best chance to prevent “regime change” from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe.

Some pictures around Park Slope (well, Lincoln Place only) from the evening of the President’s Day Blizzard, 2003.

Grace had the excellent foresight of driving in from Manhattan and putting the car in the hospital parking garage when the snow started. This should save us from digging it out and marking the spot, as my brother advised us after the previous snow fall. We don’t keep a cheap lawn chair in the trunk, but we do have a cheap snow shovel.

Here’s one about the software developer as a movie icon: invariably, developers are portrayed as social misfits who can write ultracomplex systems on the fly and like to break into computers. This movie image attracts to the industry people who are social misfits, who believe they can write ultracomplex systems on the fly, and who are interested in breaking into computer systems. Unfortunately, companies want to hire people who work well in teams and are good at communicating, since the bulk of development is done in teams, with business rules and constraints defining projects. The media images leads both to unhappy employees and to people who would enjoy working in software development not to go into the field.

This other article by Paul Graham argues that nerds are unpopular because they value intelligence more than popularity, so purse intellectual achievements rather than social ones. Nerds don’t realize that to be popular, one has to work at it — spend considerable effort at clothing, go to parties. There may be a self-selection process, also, as smart kids will tend to do intellectual things, since it’s easier for them.

Unpopularity is made more unbearable by the persecution that goes with it in high school. Persecution of nerds is also part of the mechanism of popularity, sort of an exclusion of the other brings the popular kids closer together.

Unpopularity and social persecution are mitigated in the real world — post-college — because the real world is more diverse, and the real world has real consequences and real work (high school doesn’t have anything “real”), so it’s important to arrive at the right answers.

The article veers into examing schools as social phenomena, where a population hierarchy is created, and the further consequences for this hierarchy. It notes that other countries don’t have the same problems (though he leaves out Japanese schools, which has a bullying problem, though probably not one based on nerdiness).

Most of this makes me feel lucky to have gone to Stuyvesant, where the vast majority of students are nerds and would have been corralled at their own table in the lunch room at other schools. But Stuyvesant isn’t immune to tribalism; tribalism is merely defined in other ways, such as belonging to Sing or math team, etc. We were also somewhat convinced that what we were studying in school was “real” in some way (though disillusion would come later), and that our work had consequences (though most of these consequences were related to college admissions, they were still consequences that lay beyond high school), so the lack of “reality” imposing tribalism on high school life doesn’t quite hold in the converse.

I’m tempted to invoked the Hofstadter observation about anti-intellectualism pervading American life in general. Intelligence isn’t prized much outside of high school, either, though in a more technologically orientated society, it may be more so, compared to Hofstadter’s mid-century industrial world. This general anti-intellectualism is probably a factor in nerd persecution, though it isn’t mentioned.

Anyway, with regards to bullying, I feel that all kids should learn judo. Not only do you get to bounce around, and not only is ukemi useful in life, but sometimes physical deterrence is the only thing that works.

Based on this Recipe Source recipe:

Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup non-fat yogurt
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350° Prepare 8×4 inch loaf pan

As usual, mix wet ingredients together, then mix with dry ingredients. Chocolate chips go in last. Batter/dough will be thicker than expected for quickbread.

Bake for 55-60 minutes.

Fairway was packed before the big winter storm, but not as bad as other times we’ve been there. The pictures I took of the crowd and the small army of cashiers and baggers working the checkout didn’t come out interestingly — I think I had to be about five feet higher up to get a good shot — but I did get this one surreptitiously.

Here’s an article from The Atlantic on the standardization of time by American railroad companies in 1883. Prior to November 18, 1883, local noon had been set as it had been for millennia — when the sun was at its zenith. Oakland’s noon differed from San Francisco’s by thirty seconds, and in the 1850s there were hundreds of local time zones across the country.

This lead to serious problems for anything that needed to coordinate actions across many times zones, such as the railroads. The various railroad companies kept their own times, and coordinating arrivals, much less keeping tracks free of colliding trains, required the use of time zone tables and algebra.

So, the railroad barons met and decided to coordinate using Greenwich Standard Time, with time zones well defined by longitude. Naturally, there was resistance, with some localities not switching to standard time for up to a year later. People feared to power of the railroads to standardize and industrialize what had previously been defined by nature.

The article doesn’t delve into the matter — it’s a short commentary on a larger book on the American transition from natural time to mechanical time — but it should raise questions and parallels on this post-industrial age. How should standards set? At what point does it become necessary to set standards? Globally, we have not standardized the electrical plug, but does it matter?

The electrical plug may not be a good example, actually: it’s software embodied as hardware, not pure information itself, like standard time is. In terms of pure information, we have such things as the Internet Protocol. It was easier to change time in 1883 — fewer dependencies — than it is today. Again, consider IP, but this time IPv6: our information rich society has dependencies now, where pure information gets embodied in other information, which may need to change also.