Mean Genes

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book cvr_mean genesThe subtitle of this remarkable book written by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan is “From sex to money to food, Taming our primal instincts.” The first sentence grabbed my attention. “Consider this book an owner’s manual for your brain.” That is followed a bit later by warning us that our brains have minds of their own and sometimes (or often) they encourage us to do things that aren’t in our best interest. For example, our genes encourage us to eat in excess when food is plentiful to survive when food is scarce. The trouble is that food is seldom scarce for some of us.

We also enjoy having nice things and spend money to have them in times of plenty. That might have worked well when we had to use actual cash and noticed when it was gone. Credit cards allow us to buy pretty and fun things without the need for cash. Making yourself pay off the credit card balance when the bill arrives is one way to learn when you aren’t in a time of plenty. Learning to save doesn’t come naturally. Surveys indicate people want to save ten percent of their income, but the reality is that the average savings is less than one percent. The authors say they found they had to hide money from themselves in the form of automatic withdrawals into some kind of investment or savings account. Another interesting discussion is about how we are genetically programmed to be lazy. This comes from when energy in the form of food was often hard to obtain and frivolous activity wasted energy. “The only people who exercise in poor countries are the privileged…” Animals that expend energy needlessly die and their genes die with them.” Continue reading →

All that Glitters is not Gold

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The Phrase Finder states the obvious that “Not everything that is shiny and superficially attractive is valuable.”  Shakespeare used the original expression “all that glisters is not gold” in The Merchant of Venice dated 1596. Forms of the expression have been around since at least as early as the twelfth century. Some purists insist that the expression is not accurate unless “glisters” is used. However, in the opinion of the Phrase Finder, there is no argument since “glisters” and “glitters” have the same meaning.

Social Security Private Accounts

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There was a commentary posted February 1, 2012 about George W. Bush’s proposal to allow young people to voluntarily invest a third of their Social Security “contributions” into private accounts. That was successfully vilified as a proposal to “privatize Social Security.” The attacks were based on the lie that the proposal would reduce monthly payments to people already receiving benefits. Older people are dependable voters, and politicians scrapped an idea that would have been wonderful for younger workers.

I wrote in the earlier commentary what would have happened if the proposal had been passed by Congress. Workers could have put the proposed one third or their Social Security “contributions” into a private account invested in an S&P 500 index fund beginning in 2005. There is no doubt 2008 was a scary year for investors. Workers earning $50,000/year would have invested about $8300 into their private account from when the change was proposed. That investment would have dropped in value to about $5700 at the low point of the financial crisis. That would scare anyone! However, what would have happened if the hypothetical investor had the guts to continue to invest two percent of their $50,000 earnings as the market dropped and beyond? The monthly “dollar averaging” investments would have bought more shares in the S&P 500 index fund, and that would have had a powerful effect on the current value of the account.   Continue reading →

Russians, The People Behind the Power

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Russians I found Gregory Feifer’s book depressing. “The vast majority of Russians will continue to endure the grinding bureaucracy… [G]overnment repression, waste, shoddiness and corruption remain prominent.” Between the oligarchs and the vast majority there is a “jarring contrast between extravagance and the heart-wrenching shabbiness of the great unwashed.” Westerners who try to do business through the visible government structure are disappointed because the real power is hidden in traditional cronyism, corruption, and bribery.
Feifer says he is pessimistic that Russia will “Westernize”. He asks: “Have they learned nothing from their painful past?” They don’t seem to; Russia has a “political culture that has shaped the country’s history for centuries.”
Feifer covers tsarist, Soviet, and recent history, including the history of St. Petersburg and Moscow. (Being a Russian peasant has always been a misery.) World War II is still prominent in Russian thinking: while seventy years of Soviet rule killed as many as 20 million people directly through execution and imprisonment, or through state-orchestrated famines; WWII killed 30 million in a few years, including 40% of men aged twenty to forty-nine. Continue reading →

Getting Off the Snide

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I recently heard a sports announcer for the Colorado Rockies mention that the team had “gotten off the snide” after scoring a run to end a 23 inning scoreless streak. Alpha Dictionary says no clear origin can be found for the expression. However, a response to a question on the site mentions that “snide” is a variant of “schneid and schneider.” Both terms are used in gin rummy to describe “…where one side has failed to score for an extended period.” Wordpress.com further explains that “schneid” entered the vocabulary of gin players from the German word for “tailor.” If “…you were schneidered” in gin you were “cut” (as if by a tailor).”

Supreme Court Criminal Trial after a Lynching

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I’m often given a stack of legal magazines while visiting our son and his family, and one article that I’ve saved is titled, “A Supreme Case of Contempt” by Mark Curriden published in the June 2009 ABA Journal. You can tell by the date that it took a considerable time before I could post something about this incredibly sad and disturbing story. The article tells the remarkable story of United States v. Shipp. It was the first and only criminal trial in the history of the Supreme Court. There were nine defendants, and all were charged with contempt of the Supreme Court. The U.S. Attorney had filed the charges directly with the court, which gave it “…original jurisdiction in the matter.” The charges alleged that the defendants engaged in action “…with the intent to show their contempt and disregard for the orders of this honorable court…and for the purpose of preventing Ed Johnson from exercising and enjoying a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Ed Johnson was a young black man convicted of raping a white woman despite ample evidence he was innocent. He was lynched after police officials stood aside to allow him to be taken by a mob.

The story begins with a 21 year old white woman named Nevada Taylor who was on her way to work in Chattanooga, TN on January 23, 1906. An assailant approached her from behind, put a leather strap around her neck, threatened to kill her if she screamed, and raped her. She ran home and her father called Hamilton County Sherriff Joseph F. Shipp to report the crime. The newspaper report of the “fiendish crime” said that Taylor had not seen the assailant. The report described the assailant as a “Negro brute.” There was a $375 reward announced for anyone who could identify the attacker. A white man named Will Hixxon read about the reward and said he had seen Ed Johnson, a young black man, carrying a leather strap near the scene of the crime about the time it had occurred. Shipp arrested Johnson, who maintained his innocence during a three hour interrogation. Johnson said he had been in a saloon and gave names of a dozen men who could vouch for his story. Continue reading →