December 2004 Archives
Tax deductions: Your questions answered
George W Bush would never raise taxes, oh no. But according to a trial balloon being floated today in the New York Times and a few weeks ago in the LA Times, he might eliminate tax deductions, especially those which overwhelmingly benefit those notoriously blue states New York and California. The federal deduction for state and local taxes, we're told, is alone worth $46 billion a year.
Despite having an extra three weeks to write the story, the New York Times piece, by Ian Urbina, still doesn't really add anything to the LA Times story: in fact, it raises one enormous question which it doesn't even attempt to answer.
The way this deduction works is that you don't need to pay federal income tax on money which you've already given to the state in the form of state and local income tax. If you earn $100,000 a year and you pay $5,000 of that in state and local taxes, you pay federal income tax not on your full $100,000 income, but only on the $95,000 which is left over.
According to a New York City official quoted in the New York Times piece, the change would mean that New Yorkers "could expect an 11 percent increase in the amount they pay the IRS," because they take deductions not only for New York State taxes but also for New York City taxes.
Then, however, things get confusing. According to the New York Times, "the change would affect about 3.2 million households in New York"; the LA Times is more useful, saying that those 3.2 million households comprise 37% of all tax filers in the state.
Both papers quote Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official. In the LA Times, he says that "it's one of the biggest deductions most people have on their tax returns". But in fact, even in New York and California, "most people" turns out to be just 37% of tax filers.
This makes little sense to me. If you pay federal income tax, then you pay state income tax. If state income tax is deductible, how come 63% of filers fail to deduct it? I've been poring over my 2003 tax returns, and not only can't I find the deduction anywhere, I can't even find a place where I might be able to claim it.
Thanks to ehow.com, however, I've worked out what's going on here. Americans have a choice on their tax returns: they can either itemize deductions, or they can claim the standard deduction, which last year was $4,750 for single people like me, $9,500 for married couples filing jointly, or $7,000 for people who qualify as "head of household". After I worked out my adjusted gross income, I then subtracted $4,750 from it along with $3,050 for each person dependent on me, which in my case was just me alone. So my taxable income, on line 40 of my 1040 tax return, was actually $7,800 lower than my adjusted gross income, on line 35. And that's actually the minimum amount by which adjusted gross income is decreased.
It's possible to reduce your adjusted gross income by more than that, by itemizing your deductions. The main ones are mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and charitable contributions. If you add all those things up and they come to more than your standard deduction ($4,750 in my case), then you should itemize. Most people, however, don't. Since I don't have a mortgage and I paid much less than $4,750 in state and local taxes, I was better off taking the standard deduction, even after accounting for my stunning generosity to sundry charities.
All of which raises another question, however. If people stop being able to deduct state and local taxes on their federal tax returns, more of them will take the standard deduction instead. So while the LA Times says that "the deduction is valued at $46 billion" this year, it's not clear whether that number represents the total amount of state and local taxes deducted from federal tax returns, or whether it represents the amount of money that the federal government would receive if the deduction was abolished.
What's more, it certainly seems that New York City officials are being alarmist, not for the first time. What with all the other deductions people can take, and the continued existence of the standard deduction, I simply can't imagine that New Yorkers would pay the IRS 11% more if the state and local tax deduction is abolished. I, for instance, along with 63% of other New Yorkers, wouldn't see my federal income tax rise at all. But as ever, when it comes to questions about taxes, reporters tend to find it much easier to quote duelling officials than to uncover the actual truth of the matter.
Posted by Felix at 14:53 EST | Comments (4)
Christmas Eve
It's 6am on christmas eve and I'm struggling to stay awake for the last two hours of this 12 hour shift. These are always the hardest. When it's quiet and warm inside and sleepiness creeps back in again. Outside, I forget to be quiet. Razzing around on my skiddoo, carrying newly arrived passengers, offloading cargo from the ship, picking up boxes and bringing them to buildings, unpacking box upon box upon box of tinned potatoes.
Last year I was driving across the sea ice, this year I'm at the Halley end, a winterer who has seen this before. With all these fresh faces around overflowing with enthusiasm in glaringly bright new orange overalls, I am reminded of myself last year, the year before, and it's ok to see the change too. I'm more competent, I know my way around, I know how things work and get done, this is my home. I can start a skiddoo on my own and take people where they need to go, I can lift heavy boxes and dig snow so it makes a difference. I am still a girl on base and ask for help when I need it, but I've learnt when I need it and when I don't. No-one is offering to carry those boxes for me any more or start my skiddoo. I live here. But it's their new home too.
The ship made it in with little difficulty and the Relief exercise this year has so far been very smooth. The major anxiety for me was in receiving our scientific cargo, one component of which is a very expensive 7 tonne ISO container on the weight-limit threshold for the kind of conditions we had last year. It, and the rest of our boxes, arrived before my first night shift had even begun. And all before christmas. Already, we're off to a good start.
The ship also brought with it post. POST! Letters and cards, packages and parcels. My dear friends out there know me very well. Presents for my thirtieth, five months late but not a minute too soon, and one big box from my family that I opened today full of chocolate and moisturiser, more chocolate, pates, biscuits, chocolate and shower gel. And some more chocolate. At this stage in the year, all I want is consumables and it seems I'll be doing a lot of consuming during the next few weeks!
A few friends, unasked, sent me underwear.. made me laugh as you have no idea how welcome that is! That's something else I've noticed: everyone who has been here for the winter suddenly looks more shabby. Or rather, new folk look more preened. New colours have appearred in the building – bright purple hats and brightly coloured t-shirts. T-shirts that are really white. Without noticing, everything we own has faded and been worn to extreme. Everyone has holes and patches in their outer clothing, but it's more a mark of recognition here than carelessness.
We have fruit as well. I thought I would miss fresh fruit and veg so much but I haven't. It's nice to see an orange again and bite into an apple but really, the earth didn't move. I wanted for nothing, which somehow makes the presents even more indulgent.
It's christnmas eve. I shall try and phone my family later today. I imagine I'll either work or sleep through most of the celebrations but it's the best time of summer to be here. When the action really happens. Boys and their toys in the biggest playground in the world. Bulldozers and cranes, skiddoos and sno-cats, masses of space to build and lift and dig and drop and move and do all those things kids dream of. It's a living dream, for me anyway.
Merry Christmas.
PS. The penguins have grown right up now. Like fat adolescents instead of cute kids. I wrote a little blog when I went to visit them last but it's in my room where my room-mate, on dayshift, is currently sleeping. Photos attached anyway!
Posted by Rhian at 10:25 EST | Comments (4)
Modern art notes
Thank you, Greg, for the MoMA passes you sent me. I initially intended to give them to recent immigrants who know nothing of modern art, and in fact I will do that eventually. But an opportunity came up, so last weekend I took Mr and Mrs N to MoMA. They're not immigrants; they're just visitors from abroad. And although they're not rich, they could afford the $20 admission, especially considering how weak the dollar is these days. But I wanted to see how relatively unsophisticated visitors would respond to the new MoMA.
When I wrote about the MoMA entrance fee last month, I basically attacked the priorities of MoMA's board: they clearly seemed much more interested in spending money on architecture than they were in bringing great art to the masses. So using my overseas visitors as representative of said masses, I tailed along behind them, looking to see what they liked, what they didn't, how they reacted to the new museum.
The Ns loved the Picassos. Picasso is pretty much the only modern artist they knew well, they'd seen the Picasso Matisse show, and they loved coming back to many of the same paintings again. The lesson here is that repeat visits are hugely important, even when there are gaps of a year or more between them. And the $20 entry fee certainly mitigates against repeat visits: once you've "been there and done that" you're less likely to shell out a second time, absent some special exhibition you haven't seen before. In fact, however, if and when you do return, it's more than likely that you'll have a much better time on your repeat visit.
MoMA's actually a prime example of this: by the time our visit was over, I was utterly exhausted. Many people have remarked upon the woeful paucity of seating at MoMA; when that is combined with visits which can take hours, lots of walking, and lots of intense focusing on art, you end up leaving the museum utterly drained. Familiar art is, well, a bit like Matisse's comfy armchair: it's just as rewarding, but less work, than unfamiliar art.
Yet the Ns were undaunted by the huge array of utterly unfamiliar art that they faced at MoMA. I was especially impressed with the time and effort that they put into the contemporary galleries, which are now undoubtedly the centerpiece of the new MoMA.
It's important to remember that there are two types of people in this world: the kind of people who would never dream of taking a freight elevator up to the 11th floor of a gallery building in West Chelsea in order to see a small Morandi show, and the kind of people who would never dream of not doing so. Pretty much all the visitors to the new MoMA fall into the former category, while pretty much all the people who've written about it so far fall into the latter.
Mr and Mrs N went straight for the contemporary galleries upon entering the building: it's only natural, the way it's laid out. For all the talk of the Signac starting off the exhibition, in fact it was pretty much the last painting we saw, more than three hours after we entered. The real start of the exhibition is the lobby, with the Newman sculpture and the late paintings from Monet, de Kooning and Johns; after that, it's right on into Matta-Clark and Twombly.
Neither of the Ns recognised a single work of art in the contemporary galleries. Art-world types look straight at the Twombly or the Koons and immediately it plops into its designated space in their mental filing cabinet. It's always good to see such works afresh, but it's very easy to forget how difficult they are the first time they're encountered. The Ns spent a lot of time in the contemporary galleries, not because they loved the art, but because they took care to really look at every work individually, read the (generally excellent) wall texts if there were any, and make a serious attempt to engage with the art and try to understand it.
The primary example of this, in my mind, came not in the contemporary galleries but upstairs, on the fourth floor. MoMA's collection of minimalists is nothing compared to Dia's, of course, but they still attempt a show, albeit with the idiotic decision to exhibit a Carl Andre floor piece while at the same time not allowing people to stand on it. Given that at least, oh, 60% of the power of an Andre comes when you stop onto it, the decision does seem to defeat the purpose of showing it in the first place. But not far from the Andre is a Sandback string piece. Mrs N looked at it briefly, and immediately asked an incredibly good question. The piece is illuminated by four or five spotlights, which mean that the string creates multiple shadows on the wall behind it. Mrs N wanted to know whether the illumination and the series of shadows was part of the artwork or not – a very astute comment, especially considering that the whole concept of a piece of string as art would probably have struck her as utterly ludicrous only an hour or two earlier.
In the contemporary galleries, wordy installations, especially the the Rem Koolhaas piece, received a lot of time just because there's a lot of text to read. But all the other pieces did too, from Felix Gonzales-Torres's paired clocks to Andy Warhol's Rorschach painting. And it struck me that thousands of people every week will view the content of the contemporary galleries at MoMA as being a snapshot of the very best contemporary art there is – just as MoMA has the very best post-impressionists or cubists or abstract expressionists.
MoMA, then does not have the same kind of freedom that other museums have, to put on interesting takes on marginal artists or a contrarian view of contemporary practice. The rest of the museum is so canonical – and the art in the contemporary galleries, with their super-high ceilings, is presented as so important – that MoMA is essentially forced to both play it safe and to seriously get to work improving its collection of art from the past 30 years. Let the Pompidou Center in Paris be the place to go for eye-opening exhibitions which change the way we look at contemporary art – or put those on in the gorgeous 6th-floor special exhibition galleries. The big contemporary galleries off the main atrium make an unambiguous architectural statement that they house great and important art.
Of course, there are two enormous problems with this. Firstly, no one can agree on which contemporary artists are the greatest and most important; and secondly, MoMA probably doesn't own the best work by those artists anyway. Maybe the solution is to mix things up a bit: rather than adhering to the strictly chronological segregation which MoMA has at the moment, bring some of the great paintings from upstairs down to the contemporary galleries, and start setting up shows where Picasso and Duchamp are seen alongside their heirs.
For the time being, though, the main result of my visit with the Ns was that I left with a newfound sense of awe for the responsibilities that MoMA's curators toil under. Visitors to MoMA, if the Ns are any indication, are not looking for easy art, and nor are they looking to be entertained. They're willing to put in a lot of work, if that's what modern art requires. In return, MoMA should do its utmost to repay the effort, by treating art – especially contemporary art – with the seriousness it deserves, and by making the development of a world-class contemporary art collection the museum's number one priority. They've got a great space, and they've got a great audience. Now all they need is great art.
Posted by Felix at 18:58 EST | Comments (0)
142 Henry
With some fanfare, The Garfield Building – otherwise known as 142 Henry Street, on the lower Lower East Side – had its first open house this afternoon. I'd been keeping an eye on it for some time, since it's a beautiful building – at least on the outside – with fantastic views in a neighborhood which, against the Manhattan odds, has still managed to keep it real. A tasteful renovation which really respected the building and the location could easily have been something of an architectural triumph.
It was not to be. The Garfield Building, in its latest incarnation, is a paragon
of obnoxiousness, the epitome of everything that is soulless and evil about
yuppification gentrification. Rather than take any cues from the rich
architectural heritage of the Lower East Side, the apartments in the building
are bland modernist spaces with no original features at all. Actually, scratch
that: there is one original feature left – the stairwell, with a lovely
wrought iron balustrade. Other than that, everything's clean straight white
lines and a light maple flooring. ("We're putting on the final coat,"
apologised one of the sales agents when we got to the model apartment, explaining
why we had to take our shoes off.)
The photograph above comes straight from the official website: it's the model view of the model apartment. And it's dominated by those brand-new square white beams, both horizontal and vertical, which might look fine in a house by Frank Lloyd Wright, but which seem utterly out of place in a manufacturing building built 92 years ago.
It's worth calling bullshit on the official floorplans, too. For one thing, there ain't no way the floor-throughs are 1900 square feet. We're actually given the exterior dimensions of the building: 25' wide by 84'7" long. We're also told that the perimeter walls are 18" thick. So knock three feet off each axis, and you have a gross interior per floor of 1,794 square feet. Then subtract the elevator and stairwell, call it 200 square feet there, and you have a total area inside the apartment of maybe 1,600 square feet if you include everything from closets to the area underneath interior walls.
And, of course, the developers have been very careful not to include any interior walls in their show apartment. If you actually want a bedroom with a door, or heaven forfend you need any closet space, suddenly the beautiful long vistas disappear. Even if you're happy with a one-space loft-style layout, your guests still have to navigate a very narrow kitchen before getting to the bathroom.
Realistically, however, most people will build at least one bedroom, if not two. And just look at the proposed two-bedroom layout: both of the bedrooms are, not to put too fine a point on it, tiny. If I'm spending $1.675 million on a Lower East Side apartment, (and that's before all manner of closing fees and transfer and mansion taxes), I think I'm going to want a lot more space than this. Hell, for $2.5 million I can get a 4-story townhouse on Broome Street, complete with private garden and at almost 3,000 square feet of usable space.
If you're any kind of art collector, of course, you couldn't even dream of moving to the Garfield Building: there aren't any walls to put your art on. Maybe if you're a would-be Tribeca loft-dweller who's been priced out of Tribeca and will make do with the other side of the island, this might work for you. (But there aren't any fancy restaurants south of East Broadway, I'm afraid.) Most likely, the developers are hoping to snare a handful of twentysomething Wall Street traders, their seven-figure bonus burning a hole in their pocket, looking for a snazzy bachelor pad not too far from the financial district.
I wish them luck: this building has taken many years to get to this point, and it's clearly something of a labor of love on the part of Ron Castellano and Christopher Hayes, who are the owners, the architects, and the general contractors, all rolled up into one. I'm just a little wistful for what might have been: apartments which retained some kind of Lower East Side feel, which might have been larger than those down the street but which weren't trying to import a whole new aesthetic. As it is, we can place 142 Henry next to 7 Essex as condo developments where rich yuppies can slum it on the LES while living in a beautiful white bubble far removed from the reality of the street. Really, it's obscene.
Posted by Felix at 20:05 EST | Comments (5)
Tourists!
I've had in mind to write this piece all week but every day something new arises that makes the week even more extraordinary. So much so that the initial inspiration now almost smacks of the ordinary. So I'll just list them as they arose.
On Tuesday, we had record warm temperatures. I am almost ashamed to admit that temperatures soared above freezing to +0.3C. There was water on the platform, beads of condensation drops dribbling down windows, snow so soft it was soggy and you sunk into it wherever you walked. It felt like a rainy day, we were all too warm, and it was not in any way pleasant. At the lab, we had to open all our doors and windows to stop overheating and all my lovingly collected snow samples melted before we could get them to safe refuge in the tunnels. I had to analyse the samples all evening for those molecules that undergo chemical change during melting. Nothing I wore was suitable and I was dripping with sweat after walking home from the lab.
Water! We were not impressed. We will ofcourse be even less impressed when the truly cold temperatures return as everything that got wet will freeze solid. Only then did I realise how much we take this dry environment for granted. Everything that's solid is happily left outside. The only real dangers are freezing or being buried by snow. But it's dry snow. Toolboxes, skis, items of clothing, bags of rope, cardboard boxes, waste food, sleeping bags even.. stuff you would never leave outside at home is regularly left out on the platform or the base of steps before being moved on elsewhere. This week, for the first time in at least a year, things got wet outside.
On Thursday the melt-tank was completely drained for its annual cleaning. Gallons and gallons of water just being thrown out. The melt-tank at the summer accomodation was filled, washing machines were in continual use and, my favourite, we were allowed long, hot showers. I was looking forward to it all day. A shower more than 2 minutes long, not having to turn the taps off while sudsing up, being able to stand and soak. But you know what, I couldn't do it! And I wasn't the only one. Try as I might, rational reason that there was, I couldn't keep the water running while washing my hair. I just couldn't watch all that fresh snowmelt go down the drain even though I knew it was headed that way anyway. I made up for it though by running it about 5 times between soapings and staying in there until my fingers went wrinkly. The start of the winter was marked by our melt-tank party, the end by long showers. This for me is still the ultimate luxury.
On Friday night our clocks went back by three hours. Three extra hours in bed! Halley is fairly close to the meridian so GMT actually suits us fine and there really is no need for us to change clocks since we have continual light. We change for logistical reasons, to be in synch with Rothera and the ships, and I guess the 24 hours of sunlight means we shouldn't really be bothered either way. It doesn't affect me too much but I know the met-folk who have to launch a weather ballon every morning such that it reaches a certain height by midday GMT are less than pleased! Anyway, the special thing was the extra three hours. Summer is coming.
And now that you have a taste for the things that make my life special down here, I'll tell you about the really extraordinary thing that happened. A tourist ship popped by! No, really. The first one ever. And not just any old ship, this ship has zodiacs and helicopters (yes, plural) and as far as I can tell is stuffed full of rich fat americans. It's a terrible stereotype but I'll be able to tell you the truth of it in about an hour. The organisers of the tour have been great, I can't fault them, they've invited us to the ship, offered to fly us there even and put on a barbeque for us, anything we ask. BAS said no but only after lots of excitement and anticipation had built up as you can imagine. Something to do with fraternising with the tourist industry or some such nonsense shrouded in arguments around health and safety. I don't fault or begrudge anyone along the line but really, this is an unprecedented opportunity. I went to the airstrip last night as the first group left and climbed inside the chopper just for a look around. Climbing out is one of the hardest things I've had to do all year ("no-one will miss you for a couple of hours will they", Danielle, the South african expedition leader, asked with a wink). No, they wouldn't, and I could. It's just a sign of what a great winter we've had, and how much resepct I have for Russ, our winter base commander, that I didn't. And no-one did.
The next day we had a hundred yellow jacketed toursit on base. One asked me if I felt like an emperor penguin,- all that solitude and then all these cameras and tourists? As vivid as an imagination as I have, I must admit I had no answer. Another asked me when women were introduced to the base since he couldn't see any females in any of the winter photos on the wall that date since 1958. I said it was around 1995 but that after a winter here the women look like men so you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. He replied "oh, really?". But there were rays of light as well. The first dear I met was 83 (41 years in Germany followed by 42 in England she told me as she ran up the steps while her companion nearly had a cardiac arrest behind her) and reminded me of all my most loved relatives. She was petite and spritely and inquisitive, interested and so alive. She held my hand and kissed my face and asked really good questions and told me about having to pee into a bottle when she went ot the South Pole. Around this time I realised that these folk weren't on a trip of a lifetime (not a unrealistic assumption at $25,000/month) but rather had almost all been on several similar crusies previously, if not every year since retirement.
The Halley visitors book started in 1999 and on Saturday morning had three pages filled in. The first was dated December '99 from the "first ever Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition". The second was November 2000 by three tourists who arrived by plane between Rothera and 'Blue One'. The third was February 2004, the Argentines who arrived by helicopter last summer. We now have five more pages filled with autographs – thirty-eight in all, representing the hundred odd folk who came through. They all seem happy to have come here, they all know it's something special. My favourite says: Having worked in isolation myself, may I observe that you do not need to be crazy to work in a place like this, but it certainly helps.
We didn't get an amazing jolly, it's a shame, but we did get fruit. Oh yeah, and in the madness and mayhem a plane arrived from Neumayer carrying three BAS personnel who have since stayed. I guess they were expecting a fanfare welcome but instead they just got shimmied along with the masses. Winterers are supposed to be "woken up" gently at this time of year by a select group of folk who speak to us in monosyllabic words and absorb rants like sanitary pads. I prefer our method – a hundred tourists, a box of wine, a fresh apple in the morning and many happy, if bizarre memories. If that doesn't wake you up, nothing will!
Posted by Rhian at 16:20 EST | Comments (1)
Rhetoric corner: Tavis Smiley on Nas
From preachers in Birmingham to rap stars in the Bronx, it has long been the case that many of America's greatest rhetoricians have been black. In the Democratic primaries, the manner in which Al Sharpton effortlessly showed up his opponents was, frankly, embarrassing. On the pop charts, Public Enemy and their successors changed forever the way in which popular musicians can speak to a mass audience. And over at National Public Radio, the fastest-growing program for the past few years – indeed, the fastest-growing radio show in NPR history – has been that of Tavis Smiley, a black radio host whose racially-charged programming found an audience of 900,000 listeners a week, most of them white.
Smiley has now decided to leave NPR, claiming that the network has "has simply failed to meaningfully reach out to a broad spectrum of Americans". In a short interview about his decision in Time magazine, Smiley essentially says that he didn't want to be the token black at NPR, and he saw precious little evidence that the rest of the network was taking its stated commitment to a more diverse audience seriously.
What interests me, however, is Smiley's choice of words when he's asked what he thinks of being namechecked on the new Nas album: he says he felt "stupid" and "humbled". Far be it from me to lecture any African American on the subject of humility, but are these really the mots juste? "when a rapper drops my name in a song and says something positive, I'm humbled," says Smiley: why should that be? The reaction of most of us, I'm sure, would be quite the opposite.
My suspicion is that "humbled" has a second meaning, which is almost the opposite of its primary meaning. Look at George Galloway (another great public speaker, as it happens), after winning his libel case in the UK high court, saying that "I am glad and somewhat humbled to discover that there is at least one corner of the English field which remains uncorrupted and independent and that corner is in this courtroom." Galloway isn't using "humbled" literally here. He hasn't been humiliated by the court: in fact, the court agreed with him entirely. What he means is that he feels that he's managed to find an entity greater than himself, one to whom he can happily cede authority.
Smiley's use of "humbled", I think, is similar. It's become something of a cliché for politicians to claim humility upon their election or appointment to senior posts: it's just another iteration of the "you're not working for me, I'm working for you" speech. Just as Galloway was placing himself below the high court, so do these people place themselves below those who elected them. In Smiley's case, maybe he's simply saying that being namechecked by Nas only serves to remind him that there are greater black communicators out there, Nas being one of them.
Even so, I think maybe Smiley goes a little bit far when he says that Nas's song made him feel "stupid". This is not irony, nor is it even antiphrasis, really. It's probably closer to false modesty, but even that's not quite right: no matter how undistinguished or mediocre a person you are, being namechecked by Nas does not make you feel stupid. If Smiley considered himself a nonentity in relation to Nas, then his natural reaction to hearing the song would probably be closer to pride.
Still, it's interesting to examine the literal implication of Smiley's words. What sort of a person would genuinely feel stupid upon hearing the song, and would literally feel humbled by it? The answer is someone who considered himself superior to Nas in every way: such a person would think it stupid that a mere rapper would presume to compliment him in a song, and would feel, perhaps, dragged down to the rapper's level in the process.
Now I'm not for a minute suggesting that Smiley feels that way. But I do wonder if we're not seeing a new rhetorical device here: call it false hubris. The idea, I suppose, might be that if you implausibly claims emotions only a raving egomaniac would actually feel, then you're not a raving egomaniac, and in fact you're probably just a cool, regular guy.
Of course, I'm almost certainly taking a throwaway five-minute conversation with a newsmagazine journalist far too seriously. Most likely, Smiley was simply trying to say something along the lines of "I don't consider myself worthy of this honour", without sounding pompous and, well, stupid. It's just interesting to see how someone hailed as one of the great communicators of our day actually went about doing so.
Posted by Felix at 15:18 EST | Comments (0)
Bootleg billions update
I wanted to ask the New York comptroller about the questions I raised in my bootleg billions blog, so I cast around for a respectable print publication I could do some reporting for. The New York Sun bit, and said they'd like to run the piece as an op-ed, so I got to work. I added some stuff I'd forgotten to put in the original blog, fixed some dodgy trade-account figures, and generally tightened things up. I also phoned the New York comptroller's office, but all I got out of them was a statement ducking any of my substantive questions and saying that they stand by their numbers.
The piece ran in the New York Sun this morning; it's behind a subscriber firewall, however, so I've mirrored it here. I first gave them 1100 words for one bit of the page; they then decided that they were going to run it down the left-hand column instead, so I trimmed it to 950 words. All went well: I even got an email titled "1st Edit for Read-back" to make sure that I was happy with the final version. Here's the final paragraph, as they showed it to me before going to press:
That, of course, is pretty stupid. Estimates of the global trade in counterfeit goods are only as good as their underlying data, which necessarily must come from component states and municipalities. If the best that New York can do is to work down from the global estimates, rather than producing its own bottom-up analyses, then the main lesson that we can learn from the whole exercise is that none of these numbers really means anything at all.
When I picked up the paper this morning, however, the paragraph had been changed, and now reads as follows:
That is hard to credit. Estimates of the global trade in counterfeit goods are only as good as their underlying data, which necessarily must come from component states and municipalities. We're all for trying to block counterfeiting. It's a serious problem. But if the best that New York can do is to work down from the global estimates, rather than producing its own bottom-up analyses, then the main lesson that we can learn from the whole exercise is that none of these numbers really means anything at all.
The New York Sun is trying to make a name for itself as a hard-hitting, feisty newspaper, but it seems that even signed op-ed contributors aren't allowed to say that something is "stupid": now I know what "hard to credit" really means when you see it in print.
I have a much bigger issue, however, with the two sentences that the Sun added without running them by me at all – the ones which say "We're all for trying to block counterfeiting. It's a serious problem." Firstly, there's no reason why the royal "we" should be used in a signed op-ed. I'm not speaking for anybody else: I'm speaking for myself. I have no idea to whom this "we" is supposed to refer: presumably it's some inchoate group of right-thinking individuals.
It speaks volumes, I think, that the Sun felt no compunction at all in adding those sentences: it probably didn't even occur to them that I might not be against counterfeiting, or might not agree that it's a serious problem. Actually, I have very little opinion on the usefulness of trying to block counterfeiting: in a world of competing priorities, I'm far from convinced that there aren't better things for law-enforcement agencies to be doing with their time. And as for calling it a "serious problem", well, the entire thrust of the article was that no one has a clue whether it's a serious problem or not.
The big intellectual-property (IP) debate – call it EFF vs Disney – is something that we bloggers are well aware of. In the real world, however – and for these purposes we can assume that the New York Sun op-ed page is part of that – I think there's more of a kneejerk feeling that strong IP laws are the bedrock of any advanced civilisation, and that fakes, knockoffs and the like are a grave threat. My argument in the op-ed was not that fakes are good, of course, it was simply that the anti-fake crew's numbers are bad. So I can see why the editors might have wanted to make that clear. But, just for the record, I do not believe that counterfeiting is a serious problem. A problem, maybe: a serious problem, no. Maybe if there were any reliable statistics on it, I might change my mind.
Posted by Felix at 17:48 EST | Comments (1)
Getting chilly
It is all too easy for gnarly Antarticans emerging from a dark and cold winter to become dissmissive and patronising about the soft summer with all its light and relative warmth. "You think this is cold?", I was regularly asked by t-shirt beclad locals upon first arriving while I was bundled up in multiple thermal layers. "This is nothing!".
Well, I have a new theory. I think we have a limit of coldness beyond which we're not happy to pass whether it's minus forty-five or four outside. And last night was a clear example. A windy, blowy night but only -5C, Vanessa and I decided to sleep in the igloo. "Why, you won't even need sleeping bags in this weather!" people laughed, and it was true, I was looking forward to being toasty warm in my sleeping bag that night. The entrance to the igloo has become quite narrow during the year and involves a bit of climbing to get in so we thinned down our usually massive "p-bag" to its core components and each took one foam mat, one sheepskin and one four-season down sleeping bag. The same as usual therefore, minus the thermarest and fleece sleeping bag liner but after all, it was at least twenty degrees warmer than we usually slept outside in.
The igloo was as magical as I remembered. There is now a fairly steep chute down into the entrance tunnel and a bit of a crawl before you climb into the large circular cave that used to be above ground level and is now almost buried. The blue light shning through most bricks has been replaced by opaque white and soot from past visitors (I'm afraid Kev and I are responsble for the majority of the soot after our adventures lighting the tilly lamp at midwinter in -43C!)
Outside the igloo, snow has covered the bricks so it now just looks like a little hill, useful for jumping off on a snowboard. Inside, ice crystals have grown all over the surface covering the walls, the soot, the shelf at the entrance – from little strings of crystals to great big pentagon spirals. I guess there is growth and evolution even in barren Antartctica!
Once we bundled in, we set up for the night. There wasn't any obvious need for a stove or lamp since it was warm and light already and we'd eaten dinner before leaving but we lit a couple of candles for ambience and chatted away through the evening. I did notice it was colder than comfortable though but then, unlike usual we hadn't brought great big coats with us or rabbit skin hats,- it just hadn't seemed necessary. Fairly quickly we were snug inside our sleeping bags and I was confident warmth would be upon me soon. And so it went on. You're cold because you're wearing too many clothes and the sleeping bag can't work its wonders, I thought around midnight. You're cold because the air is leaking in, I thought around two am. Why are you cold you big girly wuss, I asked at four am and put a single thermal layer on as a compromise. It must be because I'm not wearing a hat.. so I pulled my neckie over my head. And so on and so forth. I was never ridiculously uncontrollably stupidly unbearably shiveringly cold, just uncomfortable and certainly not snuggly warm and that was not right. Not at minus 4 or 10 or whatever it was.
Ness and I had talked about this in the evening,- there's this limit within which you work and allow yourself to work and beyond which you avoid. For instance, I handled the metal thermoses we brought with bare hands. In winter, I would have been wearing glove liners and massive mitts to do the same job. I let my face lie open to the air as I went to sleep where in winter I would have devised a complete coccoon for myself. I let myself, and this was my downfall I believe, roll off the sheepskin and onto the snow. At this point there could have only been a few feathers of squashed down between my naked skin and 50m of ice shelf. Even a tent has a groundsheet and, I now remmber, a wooden board under the p-bag!
Today for the first time in over a year I have a chill. I am cold, I am warm, I am not quite right. There aren't any viruses down here, we don't catch any illnesses, we are incredibly healthy considering the weather we face every day. It's an unusual feeling, not feeling 100%, but it's just a chill and I'll be right as rain (what a funny phrase that is!) by tomorrow I'm sure. A valuable lesson though and quite refreshing: it's still Antarctica outside and it's still cold. I'm quite glad actually,- life was getting a bit too easy these last couple of weeks!
Posted by Rhian at 9:42 EST | Comments (1)
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