Being foreclosed on?  No worries if you follow the example of Jerome Daly, a lawyer and political activist of sorts, who successfully had his mortgage declared null and void. 

In order for a mortgage agreement to be legal, the bank must put up legal ‘consideration’.  That’s a fancy lawyer word for ‘money’ or some such other tangible asset.  The Federal Reserve System creates money for lending as bookkeeping entries and as such, the bank fails to provide any real consideration in the contract.  As a result, the whole thing is null and void and you can’t be foreclosed upon. 

Don’t believe me?  Read it for yourself here:

http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/CreditRiver/1968-12-09judgmentanddecree.pdf

This decision has never been overturned and Daly was able to keep his house.

bank · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · http · ILS · Jerome Daly · lawyer · lawyer and political activist · legal consideration · mortgage · Mortgage Crisis · pdf · Red · Rome · the fed · US Federal Reserve

I’ve been watching with horror as the US economy is reduced to socialism.  Few are asking how much this will cost.  Those who do ask are getting nonsense answers like 25 billion dollars.  The Savings and Loan crisis of the 90’s took 250 billion dollars to bail out.  This current crisis dwarfs that crisis by orders of magnitudes.  So let’s cut through the bull and look at some math.

The Government is now on the hook for 5 trillion dollars in loans.  The only way they can lose money is if people default on those loans AND the value of the underlying asset (the home) has depreciated since the time the loan was issued.

So let’s say that 3% of people default on their loans.  The government is now on the hook for 150 billion dollars.  The government will now try to sell those foreclosed houses at market value.  Suppose those houses were inflated by a factor of 2 (that is they’ve now lost 1/2 their value).  Now the government sells the foreclosed houses at half the price and they’re on the hook for the left over half.  Thus the cost to the government would be 75 billion dollars.  The formula is thus:

bailoutCost = totalValueMortgages * defaultRate * (1 – (1/inflationFactor))

Now the question is where do we come up with values for things like the defaultRate and inflationFactor? (The totalValueMortgages is given as 5 trillion dollars by the government.)

Google mortgage deliquency rates or mortgage default rates and you’ll find numbers ranging from 2-5,  (I took 3 as an average).  Next to figure out the inflation factor, look at this chart:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/08/21/business/21real.graphic.html
and you’ll see that homes are around 2X inflated in value. 

So given these current numbers, the best case cost would be 75 billion dollars.  If the default rate increases or housing devalues beyond 2X the numbers could of course be much higher.  I welcome any polite criticism and/or suggestions for alterations.

bailout · Case · cialis · Economy · fannie · Fannie Cost · freddie · Google · html · http · inflation · king · mortgage · Red · savings and loan · United States · USD

There has been a lot of controversy regarding the proposed integration of ‘Intelligent Design’ into current biology curriculum. Intelligent Design is the hypothesis that all life on Earth was created and designed by an intelligent designer. Subsumed by this hypothesis, although not clearly stated, is that most proponents of Intelligent Design believe the intelligent designer to be the most intelligent designer, namely God. It is proposed that in the name of impartiality, Intelligent Design be taught along side Darwinian Evolution in biology classes.

We have two choices in trying to argue against this hypothesis. First we can show that the hypothesis is false by counter claims of design flaws. Next we can show that the hypothesis is an inherently un-testable hypothesis which thus belongs in the realms of philosophy or theology, but not in science. I will argue that while the first approach of finding design flaws is enlightening, it misses the issue. The issue is that for something to be taught in a science classroom it must somehow relate to a testable hypothesis: testable by experiment.

The temptation for someone who is versed in biology when approached with Intelligent Design is to quickly point out all of the design flaws that they know of. There are many examples to pick from but the most commonly offered are design flaws in (human) joints, most notably the elbow and the knee. One of my personal favourites is the prevalence of people with eye glasses which suggests there is a possible design flaw in the maintenance of a spherical shape of the eye. Biologists quickly offer up their favourite design flaw hoping to see a recantation of Intelligent Design. To their dismay, they get answers like: “We do not know the design of the intelligent designer. Perhaps non-spherical eyes are beneficial in some other unknown way, or the knee was some sort of design trade off against some other more beneficial feature. However, the sum of all the trade offs is the ultimate perfect design, designed by the most intelligent designer, God.” The frustrated scientist then returns to his beaker and the Intelligent Design guru returns to his pulpit or to the White House which are increasingly indistinguishable.

The reason that the hypothetical scientist and the theologian talk at cross purposes is that they both have failed to realize the bar of entry to science: a testable hypothesis. In life there are testable hypotheses and un-testable hypotheses. Some un-testable hypotheses are:
1) In absence of an observer, human or otherwise (i.e. a tape recorder): If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a noise? Yes or no?
2) Suppose all of history started 5 minutes ago with all of our collective memories implanted at that moment.
3) All good in the world is a work of a benevolent God, and all problems people experience are the result of God working in mysterious (good) ways.
More topically:
4) The wonder and beauty of the living world is the result of an intelligent design and all counter examples such as fossils, design flaws, evolutionary proofs, are just the result of our inability to grasp the grand design.

The common thread that runs across all four statements is the fallacy of an unprovable statement. It is this same thread that many stitch together to form a rip stop nylon fabric of belief. Statements 1 through 3 would likely be widely accepted as topics for a class on philosophy or theology. Statement 4 is no different. It is an inherently unprovable statement which has no place in science.

Many have said that science is a religion unto itself. I have often said that the only reason our language has two words for science and religion is that we sorely misunderstand both. They are both searches for the truth. Science is an ideology based on the Scientific Method and the instrument of that method is the experiment. Science allows for discussions of all things provable, even if they are not yet proved. Take for example the Superstring revolution in physics. It is currently unproven; however, scientists are building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland which should have sufficient power to create ’supersymmetric’ particles which would confirm the theory. What experiment does Intelligent Design proposes to validate its hypothesis? How does one experimentally prove something was designed? Even if such an experiment could be constructed, how then does that disprove that the designed item was not self designed and thus (perhaps), not intelligently designed?

Confused? The notion of a self designing design is especially hard to understand on a planet where we (most) see a clear distinction between human made and natural objects. [However, it is a distinction I do not see because humans as part of nature.] Just the same, the notion of a self designing design is crucial to evolution, and while complex, its power is compelling. If you are confused and interested pick up a good book on the subject or take a course. However, if you are presented with Intelligent Design, ask for a proposed or executed experiment published in a reputable scientific journal. Darwin had to go through the same efforts of the before his works were accepted. There is an established process in place and it has been put in place by an intelligent design (irony intended). The designer is certainly not God and its intelligence is often arguable, just the same it has served us well so far.

In summation, scientists are, by definition, very inquisitive people who would love to have conversations about many different theories and possibilities. The price of admission to such a conversation is to bring with an experimentally testable hypothesis. All other discussions belong in a different classroom.

AID · ale · creationism · darwin · darwinism · designer · evolution · frustrated scientist · God · http · hypothetical scientist · ILS · intelligent design · intelligent designer · king · life · namely God · nature · observer · philosophy · Red · Religion · Switzerland · White House

Canadian Link:  http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip185688

US Link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=231561&title=reza-aslan

Reza Aslan was interviewed on the Daily Show on June 24, 2009 lauding the response of Barack Obama during the recent and ongoing revolution in Iran.  Aslan notes strong parallels to ‘79 noting that this revolution is likewise a battle for the future of Iran.  Starting at time index 4:48, Aslan applauds Obama’s response:  “Thank you God for President Barack Obama” says Aslan.

“Obama played this perfectly.  During his campaign Iran never left his mouth.  This worked to the disadvantage of Ahmadinejad’s because he couldn’t use his ‘America is going to attack any minute now’ rhetoric.”

Aslan notes that Ahmadinejad’s campaign slogan was “Ma Mitavanim” which is Persian for “Yes we can”.

Responding to opposition calls to make stronger statements or take stronger actions in regards to Iran Aslan warns:

“The US has a long sordid history of meddling in Iranian affairs. … If you want to pu and end to this movement, this revolution tomorrow, let’s listen to Bill Bennett, let’s listen to John McCain.”

Aslan recommends that the US continue its current approach.  “The best thing that we can do is shut up.”  He goes on to say that “Obama has changed the equation in that region.  He is taking the long view on issues, looking ahead 10 years from now.”

Aslan is certain that Iran will emerge a different country from what it is now, but he is concerned as to what form of change will come.  “Iran is on a precipice between North Korea and China; with isolation and militarization on one hand and a preservation of the oligarchies while opening to commerce and contact on the other.”

When asked what US citizens can do to help the revolution, he suggests encouraging and pressuring the EU and UN to act who do have influence in the region.  As for the US, he contends “you have to have a relationship with someone in order to punish them more.  … We have no influence there.  … We can’t punish them any more.  What are we going to do sanction them more?”

—

Reza Aslan’s most recent book is “How to Win a Cosmic War”:
http://www.rezaaslan.com/cosmicwar.html

Ahmadinejad · aig · America · Barack Obama · Bill Bennett · blog · cent · China · Commission of European Communities · equation · European Union · evolution · flu · God · head · html · http · Iran · Iranian Revolution · Islamic Republic of Iran · John McCain · king · MIT · North Korea · obama · President · Reza Aslan · The Daily Show · United Nations · United States · video

I’ve long held a theory about homosexuality that a recent article lends credence to. I’ve examined homosexuality through a political-societal lens in this posting:

http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/the-war-of-the-words-are-heterosexual-monogamists-the-patent-holders-on-marriage/

In this posting, I’d like to examine homosexuality through the lens of evolutionary biology. You see, those who condemn homosexuality do so by thumping on two texts, the bible and National Geographic. Bible thumpers thump and then leaf to Leviticus 18:22 which reads: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.” I invite such individuals to glance at Numbers 15:32-36 which states that those who profane the sabbath ought to be publicly stoned. However, at least in the case of bible thumpers I can concede that the text does condemn homosexuality.

In the case of those who open up their National Geographic and point to pictures of rutting and mating animals and say, “it’s not nature’s way”, they’ve just got it wrong. It is Nature’s way; they just lack an understanding of nature and specifically evolution. Homosexuality has existed in nature for eons, but the question, from an evolutionary standpoint is: “How?” Standard evolution deals with selective pressures which make certain individuals more successful than others in reproduction. As a result the genes that contributed to this success are passed on preferentially over less ‘fit’ genes.

Homosexuality poses a conundrum then to anyone who lacks another piece in the evolution puzzle: Kin Selection. It is possible to pass your genes on to the next generation without directly reproducing. You can accomplish this by helping your kin as much as possible. By helping your kin, who carry part of your genetic code, you can preferentially increase the survivability and reproductive success of your kin. This mechanism was proposed by W. D. Hamilton in the 1960’s when explaining the evolution of altruism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton#Hamilton.27s_rule

Since I am Canadian, I learned about the evolution of altruism using the example of our good old Canadian Beaver. When a beaver detects danger, such as a wolf, it slaps its tail loudly against the water to warn its peers of the impending danger. This behaviour attracts attention to itself, making it a target for predation. Thus, how did this behaviour evolve, considering that it lowers the reproductive success of the warning beaver? The answer is that the beaver’s peers are relatives. Thus even if the beaver becomes the wolf’s lunch, the beaver’s genes can live on via the reproductive success of its relatives.

Arriving back at our original topic of consideration, how then can homosexuality have been allowed to survive the process of natural selection? I’ve long suspected that the notion of kin selection might be at work here too. I’ve long thought that if perhaps homosexual individuals helped in child rearing and caring, then their genes may have been passed indirectly through the offspring of the kin they assisted. Recently I chanced upon a study which proposes exactly this explanation:

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080208_gaygene

This study of a Samoan homosexuals suggests that homosexuals do indeed assist in child rearing. It’s important to note that similar studies have been conducted in the West but have failed to find such a correlation. It is proposed that the Samoan culture more closely replicates our ancient lifestyle and that the modern (western) biases and condemnation of homosexuality may be to blame for the failures of the western studies.

In conclusion, what is most striking, yet perhaps not blaringly obvious from this study is that opposition to homosexuality comes from those appealing to old sources such as the bible or appeals to nature’s longstanding order. However, this study shows that, at least in evolutionary time scales, the bias against homosexuality is a modern invention.

ale · bible · Case · cent · evolution · genetic code · Hamilton · homosexuality · http · kin selection · king · life · marriage · National Geographic · natural selection · nature · Red · Samoa · sex

 

The media coverage of the AIG crisis is completely off the mark.  The Fed DID NOT bail out AIG.  It did something better and worse.  The fed had two choices, 1) bail out AIG or 2) let it go bankrupt.  The Fed made both choices.  It bailed them out per se with an $85 billion dollar loan, taking 80% of the company in the process.  However, the loan came with an 11% interest rate.  This effectively prevents AIG from ever getting back on its feet.  Instead the company has been given time to arrange for the orderly sale of its assets to repay the loan, but AIG will not survive the process.    So the correct coverage of this story would  be to say that AIG has gone bankrupt and the Fed has stepped in to allow for a slow controlled sale of its assets.

aig · ale · bailout · bank · blog · fed · Federal Reserve System · http · interest rate · king · media coverage · the fed · US Federal Reserve · USD

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/08/21/business/21real.graphic.html

This is a graph of historical housing prices relative to inflation since 1890.  The graph is indexed to inflation so you are seeing the bubble in house prices above and beyond inflation. 

The take home message to this graph is the following.  Take a look at the average home value over the past 100 odd years.  It seems to average somewhere around $112,000.  Now look at the peak which is somewhere around $180,000.  Dividing through we get a ‘bubble-factor’ = 180/112 = 1.6 .  What that means to you is that if you own a house currently valued at $500,000, if the bubble corrects you’ll actually own a $312,500 house (500/1.6 = 312.5).

Will the bubble correct?  Historically bubbles do one of two things:  1) they correct or 2) they flatten and wait for inflation to catch up with them.  What will this bubble do?  I can’t tell you and neither can any of the supposed experts. 

What caused this bubble?  The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to as low as 1%.  This flooded the market with money which people invested in housing, since the internet bubble had burst. 

Who benefits from this bubble?  This bubble benefits 3 groups of people, bankers, the recently dead, and people with in laws.  Bankers make huge profits on the the inflated mortgages people must now take out to put a roof over their head.  Those who have recently died (since we’re at the peak of the bubble) benefit as their estate sells their property at the inflated price with record profit.  Hopefully they have children to benefit from the heavily taxed inheritance.  Regrettably, if they don’t have children to pass the benefit on to, then it’ll be hard to enjoy their windfall, being dead and all. 

If you’re alive you never benefit from this type of bubble.  People typically want to move up, that is move to a better home.  Thus you have to sell your current home and move to a better home.  Thus, you make a profit on the sale, but take a hit on the inflated purchase.  Basically it’s like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and it all ends up even in the wash. 

If you have in laws and can sell at the inflated price and move in with your in laws (avoiding having to buy an inflated property) you may benefit from the bubble by waiting for it to bottom out, if indeed it does.  Living with your in laws may allow you to sell high and buy low, but that assumes the bubble corrects and moreover, living with your parents you may wish you were recently dead.

Who suffers from this bubble?  The most notable group of people to suffer are the first time home buyers.  Entering the market at the peak you’ll be paying 1.6 times what you should hadn’t the bubble occured.  Ultimately all property owners suffer because the bubble leads them to think that they have more money than they actually do.

ale · bank · banker · bubble · cent · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · head · html · http · inflation · interest rate · Internet · internet bubble · mortgage · real estate · Red · Robert J Shiller · the fed · US Federal Reserve · USD

Growing up I often heard people remark that the “poor get poorer as the rich get richer.”  I was led to believe that this was an unfortunate side effect of a free market economy.  This flaw aside, the free market economy was said to be a much better approach than anything else that had come along.  I spent my time focused on ways of making laissez faire capitalism more compassionate.  We exist in a welfare state and I, living in Canada, live in a society which offers socialized medicine.  Both of these measures are great first steps in assuring the compassion of capitalism however, I was always frustrated knowing that the only true compassion of capitalism would come in allowing everyone to earn wealth.

As I continued to study the problem, imagine my shock and dismay when I learned that we do not live in a free market system.  We live in a central bank monetary system (ie, the Federal Reserve) which has an invisible, moreover, malevolent hand in conducting the nation’s monetary policy.  This may sound like a conspiracy theory however if it was, it’s an awfully dull one given that the chairman of the Federal Reserve openly admits this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56MpWZh88s
http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/comedy/?vid=19058

Through the Federal Reserve’s mucking with the money supply and the resulting inflation, those with savings saw their savings erode silently falling into the hands of the nations richest few.  In order to escape inflation, you must own debt free assets which index to inflation.  Only the richest few of us can accomplish this and thus evade the silent erosion of our savings into the hands of bankers and the financial elite.  Here are a few graphs showing the effects:

source : http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/

source : http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Central banking (The Fed) is an age old scheme of mob rule over the money supply. 

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
– Mayer Amschel Rothschild

It has origins dating back to the temple days when Jesus drove out the money changers.  (The word ‘bank’ comes from the Latin ‘bench’ from which the temple money changers made their predatory exchanges.)  The only way to restore justice and equity is to restore the issuing power over money back to the people.  For more info, please see:

http://inflationtax.blogspot.com/

AID · alan greenspan · ale · America · bank · bank monetary system · banker · banking · blog · Canada · capitalism · cent · central bank · central banking · chair · chairman · Economy · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · free market · html · http · income disparity · inflation · king · MIT · monetary policy · money changers · piracy · quote · Red · socialized medicine · the fed · US Federal Reserve · wealth · welfare state

In honour of Ben Stein’s Canadian release of “Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed”

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php

I have produced a nice javascript demo of one of the basic concepts of evolution: natural (cumulative) selection. 

Don’t get me wrong, I think Ben Stein is a very intelligent person.  Having said that I think when it came to taking attendance in biology class his teacher was saying: “Stein? Stein? Stein?”.  Natural selection is simple concept but is easy to confuse.  Does anyone know what natural selection is “anyone? anyone?”

(If you don’t catch my allusion, please watch : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbqDGQvobVA)

I got so annoyed with the repeated claim that evolution is a random process that I developed a javascript demonstration to show how evolution actually worked.  I’ll say it one more time for all those who aren’t quite sure:  “EVOLUTION IS NOT A RANDOM PROCESS.”  The only thing ‘random’ (even chaotic will suffice) in the process is the generation of variability (diversity).  Natural selection is the exact opposite of random. It is a deliberate selection of traits which confer a higher fitness of individuals within a population.

So without further ado, here is the javascript demonstration of evolution in action:
http://www.rankyouragent.com/evolution/weasel.htm

AID · ben stein · creationism · darwin · evolution · expelled · http · king · natural selection · php · random · teacher

Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (Canadian Link): http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/#clip174780

Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (USA Link):  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/228190/may-19-2009/walter-kirn

Review of:
“Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever”
By: Walter Kirn (Doubleday)
Reviewed By: Martin C. Winer
June 28, 2009

When I picked up “Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever” by Walter Kirn (Doubleday), I expected a semi-dry expose on the problems facing the American Education system with an emphasis on the Ivy League schools.  The only semi-dry thing in the book was the champagne Kirn poured over two fawning exchange students during a graduation night orgy on his way to Princeton.  Told with prose and wit more common to novels, Kirn details his experiences as he rises out of the rural Minnesota winning one of 20 transfer student spots at Ivy League Princeton.

By Kirn’s account it is a wonder that there is any ivy left due to the propensity of the students to smoke any mildly herbaceous looking thing.

“There is no drug scene like an Ivy League drug scene.  Kids can’t just get high; they have to seek epiphanies.  They have to ground their mischief in manifestos.  The most popular one around … held that drugs, … especially plant based psychedelic drugs helped to break down the rigid inner partitions that restricted one’s full humanity.” (p. 124)

Recreational drug use was pervasive at Princeton as were many other illicit activities, with education taking a back seat.  I was so engaged with the stories that I was half way through when I reexamined the title and asked “what is a meritocracy anyways?”

Meritocracy was introduced as a more equitable replacement for aristocracy. Insofar as education, Harvard’s James Conant championed the cause of educational reform towards meritocracy as a realization of Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a “natural aristocracy among men, founded on virtue and talents.” (Jefferson used the term ‘natural aristocracy’ instead of ‘meritocracy’ because it wasn’t coined a term until the 1958 book “Rise of the Meritocracy” by Michael Young.  Incidentally it was intended pejoratively.) As with many high minded theories, the implementation often renders an imperfect reflection of the ideal.

Conant set the controversial School Aptitude Test (SAT) as gatekeeper for the bastions of higher learning guarding all the rewards of power that lay beyond.  When Walter Kirn took the SAT, he discovered he “had a natural talent for multiple-choice tests [which] landed [him] without the vaguest survival instructions [at Princeton]”. (p. 6)  Throughout the course of the book which details his experiences at Princeton Kirn suggests that his education consisted of learning how to succeed in the education system;  this is a far cry from becoming educated.

The distinction is eloquently revealed when Kirn is asked to discuss the ‘critical assumptions’ he’s made in reading the Norton anthologies;  unfortunately, Kirn had done little reading at all:

“With virtually no stored literary material about which to harbor critical assumptions, I relied on my gift for mimicking authority figures and playing back to them their own ideas as though they were conclusions I’d reached myself. I’d honed these skills on the speech team back in high school, and l didn’t regard them as sins against the [Princeton Student] Honor Code. Indeed, they embodied an honor code: my own “Be honored” it stated. “Or be damned.” To me, imitation and education were different words for the same thing, anyway.  What was learning but a form of borrowing? And what was intelligence but borrowing slyly?” (p.119)

Throughout the course of the book Kirn refers to himself as a fraud – sometimes proudly but more often with remorse.  But is Kirn a fraud or instead a sufferer of “Fraud Syndrome”?  Fraud Syndrome (also Impostor Syndrome) is not an official psychiatric diagnosis, but it is a topic well known and documented by psychiatrists and psychologists.  It is an intellectual condition where the intellect feels disconnected from any accomplishments or abilities.  If the intellect were a tree, then the tree would lack any knowledge of its roots and thus mistakenly think that its ability to grow upright was the result of undeserved serendipity.

Kirn’s notion that he somehow managed to beguile and finesse the system into accepting him to its highest ranks is significantly, and ironically, weakened by the quality of the writing he uses in making said point.  What follows is an example of Kirn’s average writing:

“Certain questions which grown-ups deem unanswerable begin as answers which children find unquestionable.  For example: what is Death?  To me at eight years old, death was the signal for a person’s loved ones to cry and look stricken for a while and then begin dividing up his stuff.” (p. 30)

Witty and clever turns of phrases such as these are found on every other page.  While this made for a delightful read, it served to undermine one of his main tenets.  It seems far more likely that Kirn didn’t finesse the system, but that the system managed recognized his talent despite his own inability to do so – marshalling him exactly where he ought to be: in the commensurate Princeton English Program.

If Fraud Syndrome ever does make it one day to be an official diagnosis, then Kirn should appear on the Public Service Announcement poster.  The text is rife with examples of Kirn’s detachment from his talent and feelings of being a fraud:

“My genuine tears [over the news of John Lennon’s death] flowed along with my false tears, as they did the distinction between them blurred.  I wasn’t ashamed of this.  My fraudulence, I was coming to understand, was in a way the truest thing about me.” (p. 77)

“The need to finesse my ignorance through such trickery [(using catchphrases)] — honorable trickery to my mind, but not to other minds, perhaps — left me feeling hollow and vaguely haunted.  Seeking security in numbers, I sought out the company of other frauds.” (p. 121)

“I grew to suspect that certain professors were on to us, and I wondered if they too, were fakes.” (p. 122)

“[My poems] were concerned with grander matters such as the creeping loss of “personhood” in an era of technological change. How I’d hit on this theme I wasn’t sure, but the more time I spent on it the more convinced l grew that I’d borrowed it.” (p.140)

“I confessed that my poems were all a sham and that [my] Bittman [character] was a hybrid version of Eliot’s Prufrock and Berryman’s Henry two famously beleaguered characters from the North anthologies.” (p.144)

“I felt in [my friend’s] company, as in no one else’s, that my bullshitting was a defensible activity, a circular approach to enlightenment.” (p. 168)

One of Kirn’s Princeton encounters offers a possible cause for Fraud Syndrome.  Kirn has a conversation with Julian — undoubtedly Dr. Julian Jaynes best known for his book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” – in a bar following the production of one of Kirn’s plays.  Julian explained that the human mind was actually two distinct entities, that in ancient times were:

“… virtual strangers to each other.  When a thought arose in one of them, the other one, acting as a receiver, processed the thought as a voice, an actual voice.  …  But who was this being?  …  Man had answered these questions in many ways.  He’d conceived of gods and spirits, angels and demons, trolls and fairies.  Muses.” (pps. 93-94)

When Julian asked Kirn: “did you ever feel, during the composition of your script, that someone else, not you, was in control?” Kirn replied: “Honestly, I feel that way a lot.  Down deep, in a quiet way, I feel it constantly.  And sometimes it shakes me up a little.” (p. 94)  Perhaps this is why Kirn was unable to identify with his obvious talent; it felt external to him.  While Kirn makes this point incidentally in his book, it is nonetheless a very important one.  While Kirn fails to connect with his talent due to this separation of the mind, many more do something far worse:  Many fail to express their talents at all – failing to listen to that other ‘voice’.

While Kirn fails to impress upon me that his placement at Princeton was either coincidental or accidental, he does make some well taken points about the education he received once there.  It seems that when reading in the English program, pretension superseded comprehension.

“We … concluded, before we’d read even a hundredth of it, that Western canon was “illegitimate,” a veiled expression of powerful group interests that it was our duty to subvert.  In our rush to adopt the latest attitudes and please the younger and hipper of our instructors, … we skipped straight from ignorance to revisionism, deconstructing a body of literary knowledge that we’d never constructed in the first place.” (p.121)

“To thinkers of this school, great literature was an incoherent con, and I — a born con man who knew little about great literature had every reason to agree with them. In the land of nonreadability the nonreader was king it seemed.   Long live the king.”  (p.122)

Kirn found that many of the supposed ‘greats’ they were asked to read were completely incomprehensible by students and professors alike:

“Here is a sentence (or what I took to be one because it ended with a period) from the contribution by the Frenchman Jacques Derrida, the volume’s most prestigious name. “He speaks his mother tongue as the language of the other and deprives himself of all reappropriation, all specularization in it.” On the same page I encountered windpipe-blocking “heteronomous’ and “invagination.” When I turned the page I came across – tucked in a footnote –“unreadability.”

That word I understood of course.” (p.120)

For Kirn, university was a process in learning to jockey jargon words and phrases effectively.  Phrases like ‘semiotically unstable’ (referring to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”) and words such as ‘hermeneutical’, ‘gestural’, ‘recursive’, ‘incommensurable’ were all synonyms for ‘hard’.  Kirn was extremely confused by the works he read but he realized that confusion was not something to be escaped by understanding, but instead something which could be exploited by mirroring it back at its source.

“I was a confused young opportunist trying to turn his confusion to his advantage by sucking up to scholars of confusion.  The literary works they prized — the ones best suited to their project of refining and hallowing confusion — were, quite naturally, knotty and oblique.  The poems of Wallace Stevens, for example.  My classmates and I found them maddeningly elusive, like collections of backward answers to hidden riddles, but luckily we could say “recursive” by then.  We could say “incommensurable”.”  (p.122)

Kirn was adrift in a sea of confusion but it seemed that he was managing to navigate it by drinking the sea water and rolling with the currents.  It wasn’t long before Kirn’s thirst for meaning caught up with him, just as he had become completely intellectually dehydrated, basking in the scorching sun of the top percentile.  Kirn suffered a collapse, unable to continue the charade:

“For a few weeks I was still able to write, but it was a punishing, grind, self-conscious labor. I began most of my sentences with “the.”  Then I went looking for a noun. “The book” was often the result. Next, I seemed to remember, should come a verb. “Is” is a verb. It because my favorite verb. I liked it for its open-endedness — the way it allowed for a wide range of next moves. “The book is always . . .”  “The book is thought to . . .”  “The book is green and . . .” Impermissible. Yes, a book might be a certain color, but starting an essay with the fact wasn’t what college was all about. What was it all about? It was about making statements that weren’t obvious for people who made such statements professionally. “The book is a gestural construct possessed of telos.”

There I could rest.  I’d done it.  An hour’s work.” (p.178)

Eventually Kirn recovered after undertaking a course of self guided education which he found more fulfilling.  He continued his academic career at Oxford as a recipient of the “Keasbey Prize”.  Kirn draws two broader conclusions from his experience.

The first is a ‘roll with the punches and everything will turn out alright’ sort of message.  “… I discovered the truth — if words like “truth” mean anything.  And even if they don’t perhaps.  Pause in your knowing to be known.  Quit pushing — let yourself be pulled.  Stop searching, frantic child, and be found.”  (p. 205)  This advice may bear meaning for someone like Kirn with an innate and wonderful talent.  Its relevance to the rest of us who must work at it is somewhat questionable.

The second conclusion comes out more strongly in the interviews surrounding the book, but it is mentioned briefly.    In an interview (The Colbert Report: May 19, 2009.) Kirn claims that the current meritocracy does not reward depth, but instead rewards the “ability to define ‘incipient’. “Basically people who are very good at cross word puzzles end up running the country.”  “They are able to shine in every cocktail party they attend, but when it comes to running the economy, fighting the war on terror, … not very good.”  Kirn is referring to Donald Rumsfeld and to certain Lehman Brothers board members, who are Princeton Alumni.  Given Kirn’s experiences, it is easy to imagine jargon slinging economists brandishing terms like “Collaterized Debt Obligations” and “Credit Default Swaps” using them as talking points, rather than understanding their deeper implications.  Terms like these undoubtedly are mentioned in numerous A+ Ivy League Economics theses, confounding both the authors and the readers while leading to economic ruin.

This second summation is made in the book when Kirn discusses a run in, after graduating Princeton yet before going to Oxford, with an old friend who was self taught and well read.

“We had a great deal in common, Karl said.

But we didn’t, in fact, or much less than he assumed, and I didn’t know how to tell him this. To begin with, I couldn’t quote the transcendentalists as accurately and effortlessly as he could. I couldn’t quote anyone, reliably. I’d honed other skills: for flattering those in power without appearing to, for rating artistic reputations according to academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the backgrounds of my listeners, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some “classic” or masterpiece,”       for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if it looked like it was changing.

Flexibility, irony, self-consciousness, contrarianism. They’d gotten me through Princeton, they hadn’t quite kept me out of Oxford, and these, I was about to tell my friend, were the ways to get ahead now–not by memorizing old Ralph Waldo. I’d found out a lot since I’d aced the SATs, about the system, about myself and about the new class that the system had created, which I was now part of, for better or for worse. The class that runs things.” (p. 210)

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