Incompetence and sisterhood

I was reading an editorial about Sarah Palin today (because, despite my better instincts, I can't stop making fun of her). But this editorial happened to contain some quotes that speak to, oddly enough, our friendship:

You don’t have to be perennially pretty in pink — and ditsy and cutesy and kinda maybe stupid — to have an inner Elle Woods. Many women do. I think of Elle every time I dress up my insecurities in a nice suit. So many of us today — balancing work and family, treading water financially — feel as if we’re in over our heads, getting by on appearances while quaking inside in anticipation of utter failure. Chick lit — think of Bridget Jones, always fumbling, never quite who she should be — and in particular the newer subgenre of mom lit are filled with this kind of sentiment.

You don’t have to be female to suffer from Impostor Syndrome either — I learned the phrase only recently from a male friend, who puts a darned good face forward. But I think that women today — and perhaps in particular those who once thought they could not only do it all but do it perfectly, with virtuosity — are unique in the extent to which they bond over their sense of imposture.

[...]

Real life is different, of course, from Hollywood fantasy. Incompetence has consequences, political and personal. Glorifying or glamorizing the sense of just not being up to the tasks of life has consequences, too. It means that any woman who exudes competence will necessarily be excluded from the circle of sisterhood. We can’t afford any more of that.

--Judith Warner

Are we bonding over being impostors, Nancy? Are we excluding competent women from our sisterhood?

HA, need I even ask these questions! Of course we are!

My thesis, part 1

Since this blog is supposed to keep a record of our lives, it's only fair that I introduce the terrible preoccupation that rules my life: my senior thesis.

Nancy and I both major in East Asian Studies, which doesn't require seniors to write theses; nonetheless, out of a combination (you can decide in what proportions) of profound intellectual passion, hunger for glory, and foolhardiness, we are both writing theses this year.

It's only September, the year is young, and crushing reality hasn't set in yet, so I'm still wildly in love with my thesis. Let me introduce it to you! Here is a brief description I filed in a form yesterday:

I will investigate the use of classical Japanese literature in Enchi Fumiko's work and how it relates to what Nina Cornyetz calls her "literary configuration of femaleness." The center of the thesis will be a translation of selected essays about The Tale of Genji from Enchi's Genji monogatari shiken. Through her nonfiction writings about the Genji, I aim to clarify the role of classical Japanese literature within her oeuvre and specifically her work about gender. Finally, I will attempt to put Enchi's use of classical Japanese sources in the context of gender theory, 20th century Japanese feminism, and the similar literary efforts of her peers.

What makes this project so exciting to me, at least in part, is the way it pulls together so many of the disparate threads of my academic career here. Translation is, of course, my current passion and one of the things I want to work toward in my post-college life. I've written term papers on Enchi in both my sophomore and junior years. And Genji itself is my shameless obsession--I've taken two seminars on it, I learned classical Japanese to read it, I've hunted down art, plays, movies, and literature based on it, and I am basically an enormous dork about it.

This thesis lets me play in all of my sandboxes at once. Through one project, I can deal with gender theory, feminism, modern Japanese women's literature, classical Japanese women's literature, Genji studies--everything! It's all still in an embryonic stage, but I love it so much already!

(P.S.: In Rachel Opera Project News, Berg's Wozzeck is still totally eluding me, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was pretty dull, and I've given in and am now listening to Britten's Billy Budd. Because I love Benjamin Britten. A lot. I have to say, the Opera Project is actually increasing my quality of life quite a bit.)

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

This is the most famous photograph of World War II and possibly the most famous photograph in history.



In the photo, five Marines and one Navy corpsman are raising a flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. Published stateside, this photograph became unimaginably famous.

Although Mount Suribachi (which means mortar, as in mortar and pestle, in Japanese) was the most tactically important location on Iwo Jima (which means "sulfur island"), the battle continued for a month after this photograph was taken. In spite of the continuing carnage, the image of an American flag going up on Iwo Jima inspired hope in Americans. The three surviving flag-raisers, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John Bradley went on a bond tour and raised $26.3 billion for the war.

To me, what is amazing about this photograph is not the impact it had on the US during the war, but the man on the very end at the left, Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian from Arizona. He was apparently a model Marine, until he was recalled from Iwo Jima for the bond tour in the United States. He said, "It was supposed to be soft duty, but I couldn't take it. Everywhere we went people shoved drinks in our hands and said 'You're a Hero!' We knew we hadn't done that much but you couldn't tell them that." He became a serious alcoholic and died ten years after he left Iwo Jima.

Ira himself has inspired the popular imagination in books, movies, and even song. There's something admirable in a morbid way about his refusal to accept the myths people tried to build.

The Kiss in Times Square

What an iconic photograph, no?

Apparently, the sailor, after returning from World War II, went around kissing every girl he encountered in Time Square. As it happens, this nurse slapped him.

To see other photographs that "changed the world", click here.

-.-

In my inbox yesterday morning:


Dear student returning from travel abroad:

I hope that your summer experience was fulfilling!

We are asking all Harvard College students who traveled this summer to countries with a high prevalence of tuberculosis to come to UHS ( Fifth floor ) on October 20, 21, or 22 between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm for a TB screening and skin test. You are receiving this e-mail because you were listed in the Office of International Programs’ travel database as having traveled to a country with a high prevalence of TB.

[redacted]

Chief of Medicine

Harvard University Health Services

Harvard University Health Services sucks. Globalization sucks. Most of all, TB testing sucks (because I always test positive ._.). Curses.

Nancy's room

This looks marginally more welcoming than when I first moved in. I still don't have spare furniture, but the walls are looking decidedly less institutional!

This is my "Turkish harem" corner. That is, as soon as I get more pillows and gauzy fabric and Turks.

Just kidding. Maybe.

This is currently my favorite thing on my wall right now. In case it's not clear from the photograph, the poster reads: "E-COW-NOMICS: Economic Models Explained with Cows."

In a rare display of spontaneity, I bought a pot of orchids.
This picture doesn't really do the blooms justice (the color looks bizarrely artificial), but the plant is poetically beautiful. The great thing about orchids, or at least this particular subspecies, is that they are hardy and thrive in mediocre conditions. Not at all the fragile beauty that I had assumed them to be, and I find that very charming.

WienerCat

My previous knitted stuffed toy may have been an enormous, floppy disaster, but I am not discouraged!  Meet--WienerCat.

WienerCat is thus named because he is an adorable cat who kind of resembles a wiener dog.  I am quite pleased with him and his cuteness!

Library adventures

I spent several hours this morning on an extended library pilgrimage--an epic adventure that brought me to the very depths of hell (by which I mean Pusey Library) and back!

The day began in Yenching Library, my spiritual homeland.  Although it appears modest, Yenching is the largest academic East Asian collection outside of Asia.  No question, this is one of my favorite places in the world, and I feel quite comfortable here.  I spent a while looking Enchi Fumiko up in encyclopedias of Japanese literature in both English and Japanese, and felt innocent delight that I didn't have to deal with call numbers at all--I'm so familiar with the reading room that I can just walk over to the bookshelf by the window on the right and pluck the 近代文学事典 (or whatever) off the shelf.

At Yenching I picked up six volumes in Japanese about/by Enchi Fumiko (including a memoir by her daughter and the Enchi Genji!), Doris Bargen's book on spirit possession, and a book about Ono no Komachi in literature (Komachi, you say?  intriguing!  it's almost as if you think you might write about Enchi's 小町変相!  but that would be foolhardiness).

My backpack is beginning to become a little heavy.

I then proceeded to spend a fruitless half-hour in Widener Library, Harvard's largest library, with 65 miles of stacks.  I was attempting to hunt down some mysterious monograph by someone I've never heard of that may or may not have been in German, in the interest of thoroughness.  Despite help from librarians, I was unsuccessful; however, I got to visit my favorite part of Widener, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Widener actually has two separate classification systems: the Library of Congress system and the Old Widener system.  This is because the Harvard library collection is actually older than the United States, and they never bothered re-classifying the original collection.  So there are about four bookshelves hidden way in the back of the stacks classified under "Jpn" that contain some unimaginable treasures.  There are just heaps and heaps of ancient, fragile books, bound in knobbly leather and gilded and in all sorts of European languages all mixed together.  It is here that you find the archaic books about Japan by Europeans and Americans that are terribly unsuited for objective academic research but brilliant period pieces.

There are somewhat political books by Baron Suyematsu, the first translator of the Tale of Genji into English!  (I bet you thought it was Arthur Waley, didn't you?)  Here is a particularly delightful quote from a 1903 book entitled Queer Things About Japan:

In matters of taste the Japanese never can grasp the Western standpoint.  The worse the color, the more worthless the material, the better they like it...

FUN FACT:  Harvard's library system contains three books bound in human skin.  Please think about that for a while.

I was attempting to find a copy of a dissertation filed here, at Harvard, only eight years ago.  This was unexpectedly difficult.  A Widener librarian directed me to the Harvard Archives, which I'd never visited before.  They're in a featureless, rather musty-smelling basement guarded by a white-haired elderly lady who warned me that I shouldn't carry around so many heavy books or else I'd feel it in my back when I was old like her.

The archives have even more aggressive library security than other Harvard libraries; you have to be buzzed in and out by the person at the desk, file a form to be allowed to even look at materials, leave your belongings in lockers, and keep all materials inside the library.  This was a bit overkill for me, but fortunately the archives lady was very nice to me and told me that I should go to...

Lamont Library, the undergraduate library here.  Lamont is often open for 24 hours, and it contains both many comfy couches and a newly constructed cafe; it is not an exaggeration to say that many Harvard students routinely spend days on end at the library without leaving.  At all.  Really.  (The bathrooms are also notorious gay cruising spots, but this is unverified rumor.)

At Lamont, I picked up a book for JASC (whoo-hoo!) and four more operas (opera project going well!):

Beethoven's Fidelio

Adam's El Niño

Berg's Lulu

Berg's Wozzeck

Alban Berg's Lulu, an opera about a woman who destroys various men's lives in increasingly improbable ways.

My backpack can no longer contain all of my books at this point.

One of the things that really makes me feel like an old, cranky senior is that they renumbered the floors in Lamont.  One of Lamont's many (dungeon-like) charms is that it is half underground, as is Widener.  You enter Lamont on its third floor.  When I came here, the floors and elevators all properly identified the ground floor as the third floor, the third floor as the sixth floor, and the lowest basement as the first floor.  It was weird and charming.  Now, they've made the ground floor the first floor, the third floor the third floor, and the basements are A, B, and C.  Straightforward and intuitive--for shame!

Anyway, I went to the microfilm research center for the first time, where the two enthusiastic librarians both showed me where to find the tiny pieces of plastic that contained the dissertation, how to use the microfilm machine, and how to scan the microfilm to pdf.  I felt very grown-up using the microfilm, and very satisfied to finally see this dissertation after using several online databases and visiting three libraries to do so.

So that was my library adventure--I emerged unscathed, except for some very sore shoulders (oh no!  the little old lady security guard was right!).  I will be so educated!

Dream lives

I would be a private detective, with a partner.
We'd have awesome chemistry but never actually get together.
We'd have this tiny business in a seedy alley.
I wouldn't have money, just enough to get by.
I'd drink, I'd have a high alcohol tolerance.
I'd be so tough.
I'd have a kitty.
--Nancy

Glitter and be Gay

The opera project is going remarkably well.  I am still combatting an unhealthy obsession with Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw, aided by a 1982 film version of the opera in which little Miles is quite clearly attempting to seduce the governess!  (Remember how I said that Britten wasn't on the opera project?  This was clearly unrealistic.  Not only have I been listening to Britten all week, but I've also been bothering everyone involved in my opera company to agree to perform an unstaged version of this opera.  I mean it!  It's amazing!)

I've finally gotten around to listening to an opera that's actually on the list: Leonard Bernstein's Candide.  (I like the 20th century.  I can't help it!)  Of course I've heard (possibly even played??) the overture; everyone has.  But I'm enjoying the heck out of the opera itself.

I made the mistake of pausing in my first listening session to attend a meeting.  The unfortunate consequence was that I spend an hour with the catchy part of "Glitter and Be Gay" stuck in my head.  Fast forward to 2:50 and observe:

(Note that my selection of the performance by Kristin Chenoweth is not at all an endorsement of her as a great coloratura soprano, which I'm not sure she is--I was just so deeply charmed by her jumping up and down mid-aria!)

What I find particularly fascinating is that Turn of the Screw was written in 1954 and Candide was written in 1956.  In spite of that--the instant I turn on a recording of Candide for the first time, I understand what's going on, I like the sound of the music, I enjoy listening to it.  Now, after a week of listening to Turn of the Screw for basically my every waking moment, reading the libretto, watching video--there are still some scenes where my musical brain totally rebels and doesn't understand in the slightest what's going on.

Everyone raised in an environment where he is exposed to western music, particularly western classical music, has this innate understanding of what music is supposed to sound like.  Particularly those of us trained as musicians since childhood can instinctively feel what's going on in a piece of music and where it's going to go.

Candide, despite having some dissonance and some rhythmic funkiness (that's a technical term!) that was presumably avant-garde in the 1950s, for me fits very easily within the same musical framework that centuries worth of classical music does.

Turn of the Screw, although it's far from the most unusual or out-there work, requires something different of me.  My conventional understanding of melody or harmony or the way a piece should fit together just doesn't apply, and I am left adrift--like I have to consciously work to do what my brain usually does unconsciously, which is to order noise into a musical framework.  I have a decent ear and I always hear the musical logic in, say, Mozart.  Britten sometimes still sounds like noise to me.

I rebel very strongly against the idea that simply because Bernstein is easy to listen to and Britten is difficult to listen to, Bernstein is somehow better music.  This way of thinking is prevalent among philistinesa surprising number of well-educated musicians--that the job of music is to be beautiful, pleasant, and emotionally stimulating.  I am a rather aggressive proponent of the idea that sometimes the job of music is to be ugly, challenging, and intellectually profound.

At the same time, I fight against my own (pretentious) assumption that because Bernstein is easy to listen to and Britten is difficult to listen to, Britten is better music.  Bernstein is brilliant, sophisticated, and awesome in his own way.  The question for me, I suppose, is--if it's possible for music to be sophisticated whether it's beautiful or ugly, how do I evaluate if music is sophisticated or not?  Even setting aside the question of historical context, how do I listen to an opera and determine for myself if it's 'good' and 'sophisticated' in a way that isn't pretentious--in a way that doesn't needlessly elevate difficulty and dissonance over ease and harmony?

Failure (aka Tacoma Narrows Bridge)

One of the great comforts of being a child is the lack of consequence. Mistakes were made all the time: I routinely fell victim to my cousin's lies, and after each revelation of his duplicity, I would experience an inexplicable renewal of faith, thus allowing for his next great coup. My repeated victimization (of myself, one could argue) led to minor scrapes and bruises, bafflement, and fleeting embarrassment, none of which outlasted the day.

Were that still the case today! Adulthood (I always imagine myself as approaching adulthood, though I am already legally independent in a vast majority of societies) is frightening in part because consequences seem to multiply and outgrow our competence. Professionally, we are held accountable by virtue of the fact that we take salaried jobs. Emotionally, we and everyone we interact with have lost the golden amnesia of childhood: sadness is no longer a moment but an interminable state. Family is less a haven and more a responsibility. Social propriety? No longer optional.

I worry about these demands and expectations sometimes. And I doubt I am alone in doing so. But I am taking this opportunity today to reassure myself that no matter how great my failures, they can hardly rival that of the engineers responsible for designing the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which collapsed in 1940, only four months after it was erected. I should add, before I mock, that no life was actually lost in the collapse of the bridge

To the architects and civil engineers behind this remarkable phenomenon:
SUCKS TO BE YOU! (:<

Immigration: Just What Do National Borders Mean?

Immigration is contentious because identity politics taps into so many of our primal fears -- the breakdown of political boundaries seems to imply the breakdown of cultural identity. I remember writing a book review on The Inheritance of Loss, which is part of an entire genre of diaspora narratives, and it seems to approach the immigrant experience as one would approach exile: lost, incomplete, and restored only when reunited with the homeland.

The context in which I wrote the following, however, is far less abstract though no less contentious. In the summer after my freshman year, I spent some time putting together a literature review for an economics professor then working on the relationship between immigration and trade. Many of the articles I read are referenced in the subsequent article, published in Harvard Economics Review in the spring of 2007. Due to the length of the article, this post will appear in five parts -- apologies!

Stealing jobs, dodging taxes, on the brink of religious extremism or political terrorism: even as negative images associated with immigrants fracture and multiply, developed nations must confront the challenges and opportunities presented by immigration.

Though immigration has made quite a place for itself in the political forum, the responses it elicits tend to be overwhelmingly one-sided. It might be acceptable – even commonplace – for American political leaders to argue for the free movement of goods under the banner of free trade, but far fewer dare apply the same liberalization to the movement of people.

Those few reckless enough to adopt such a stance do so at the risk of voter backlash. Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle unexpectedly lost the November 2004 election, in part due to his perceived “pro-immigration” tendencies. In the same election, Republican Representative David Drier suffered at the polls after radio shows attacked his apparent laxity on immigration – in response, he wisely reformed and sponsored legislation that punishes the hiring of illegal aliens[1]. The European debate on immigration, on the other hand, occurs at the margins of politics, though it is no less heated than its American counterpart and is often accompanied by back-and-forth accusations of racism.

For all the uproar it causes, immigration essentially stems from the same root causes as trade: inequalities in the wages of labor. This is quite clear in the case of non-skilled labor or cheaply produced goods, both of which arrive in first world nations in droves. At the same time, it also holds true for skilled-labor -- thus the phenomenon of "brain drain" -- and the products and services generated by it. In the end, both goods and labor will, quite naturally, gravitate toward places where they command higher relative prices. So, if trade and immigration are fundamentally similar, it leads us to the sensitive question why the former is overwhelmingly preferred over the latter.

---

[1] “Dreaming of the Other Side of the Wire”. The Economist (March) 2005.

“Who would want to kill the town idiot?”

That people in developed countries find immigration distasteful is hardly a matter of question. Most Europeans answer that immigration is an “important” or “extremely important threat”[1]. This attitude can be attributed to many factors: xenophobia, certainly, but also worries about unemployment, terrorism and the apparent failure of multiculturalism.

The last reason is particularly relevant to the Netherlands, where the debate on immigration has become much more public since the murder of Theo van Gogh, a controversial filmmaker and a critic of multiculturalism. In 2004, he directed the short film Submission, which heavily condemned Islam’s treatment of women. He reportedly dismissed friends’ concern for his safety after the film’s release with the words, “Who would want to kill the town idiot?”

Theo van Gogh

Well, Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old, well-educated and, to all appearances, well-integrated Dutch citizen, did and succeeded. He was quickly apprehended by the Dutch police, but this incident reverberated with surprising intensity. Van Gogh had always generated controversy – while he saw political Islam as a threat to Western liberalization, he was an equal opportunity critic and provoked politicians, actors, writers and Jews alike with his vitriol and obscenities. His death, though, turned him into a martyr and fueled the heretofore hidden worry whether the assimilation of immigrants is truly possible.

This concern is echoed in the more academic voice of Samuel Huntington, whose position on immigration is essentially that the larger the immigrant community, the less likely the immigrants are to truly become integrated into their destination society. Indeed, popular psychology literature argues that second generation immigrants, even as they assert autonomy in adolescence, are quite content to remain embedded within their immigrant community[2]. And, as the case of Mohammed Bouyeri proves, Western education does not entirely sever this sense of connection to the parent culture.

---

[1] “Talking of Immigrants”. The Economist (June) 2006.

[2] Kagitçibasi, C. (2003). “Autonomy, Embeddedness and Adaptability in Immigration Contest”. Human Development 46, 145–150.

And the real loser of immigration is…

Extant fears that immigration will lead to a breakdown of civil society into racial enclaves are also accompanied by the more economically tangible worries that immigrants are taking away jobs from native workers. Europe has traditionally struggled with much higher unemployment rates than the U.S., and this, according to Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC, is the biggest difference in how Europe and America look at immigration: “America protects its welfare system from immigrants but leaves it labor market open, while the EU protects its labor markets and leaves its welfare system open.” This distinction seems more contrived than real. There are just as many protests over immigrants’ share of domestic jobs in the U.S. as there are complaints that immigrants are exploiting the generous welfare system in Europe. In either case, the developed countries ought to be aware that immigrants take highly unappealing jobs, and Europe, with its aging population, cannot do without immigrants, who often arrive when they are young and healthy. As for financial burdens, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors estimated in 2002 that immigrants in fact generate benefits of up to $14 billion a year.

The Trojan Horse: the EU and Turkey

This is just the surface, however. Dig even a little deeper and the issue becomes even more clouded. The argument that immigrants take jobs away from natives or depress natives’ wages, though often overblown, holds some truth for unskilled labor. Over time, American incomes have become less equally distributed, and the wages of the least skilled may even have fallen in real terms. Immigrants are an easy target for blame as recent arrivals tend to be disproportionately less skilled: the 2000 census shows that immigrants make up a little over 10% of America’s labor force but close to 30% of workers without high-school education.

On the other hand, a more theoretical framework has yielded the suggestion that immigrant labor actually protects native workers from the business cycle by allowing employers to hire immigrants when the economy is in the upswing and lay them off when the economy sours[1]. In any case, an influx of unskilled labor should at least increase the marginal return of capital, so employers might be more tempted to open new factories or purchase new machinery, which would require more workers to run and so restore wages to the original level.

If this analysis has only managed to further obscure the debate over the ultimate lowers of immigration, there is no need to panic -- the author is similarly flummoxed. Perhaps ambiguity should be the ultimate take-away of this discussion, but even though economists have not reached a consensus, the population at large has. Regardless of the sentiments that underlie wealthy nations' reluctance to accept more immigrants, the reality -- that global immigration is on the rise -- compels a response.

---

[1] Ethier, W. J. (1985). “International Trade and Labor Migration”. The American Economic Review, 75, 4, 691-707.

How globalization – and its discontents – changed immigration

Immigration as a phenomenon is changing, and though it has become a touch cliché to speak of globalization, its central role in reshaping immigration renders its mention inevitable. One effect of globalization is the increase of the wealth gap between countries, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. As wage differentials between the developed and the developing nations escalate, third world workers face ever greater incentives to leave their homes in search of better wages. If a metaphorical balance of some sort were able to weigh the pain and separation inherent in the process of diaspora against a pile of riches – a simplistic reduction of the American Dream – then globalization has been steadily dropping gold coins on the side of the latter.

The other facet of globalization is the shrinking of distances between countries. Advances in communication and transportation are enabling potential immigrants to make the leap between aspiration and reality. In sum, more people are now willing and able to join the stream of global migration, but this is not to say that globalization’s effect on immigration can be simplified into a single nostalgic image of a young fellow dreaming of riches while boarding a bus, suitcase in tow.

In the last decade or so, globalization was also responsible for the cohesion of some polities – most notably the European Union – and the breakdown of others – the Soviet Union comes to mind, though that seems to belong to another age altogether. The result is an almost constant making and erasing of political boundaries. A World Bank discussion paper, drafted in the early 1990s in the wake of the new EU and the fractured USSR, offered two predictions: immigration will become more volatile, and regional immigration patterns will develop[1]. The idea uniting both observations is their belief in the rise of multiple immigrant destinations, whose attraction is based on both geographical and cultural proximity. Once the U.S. ceases to be the main destination of interest, then characterizing the nature of global immigration becomes much more complicated.

Since the publication of that paper, immigrants’ reception in their countries of choice has been further complicated by September 11^th. It has led America to toughen its approach to potential immigrants, particularly Muslim students, while Europe has witnessed a resurgence of the far-right, often based on ludicrously xenophobic premises. And all the while, the same question remains: what to do?

---

[1] Russell, S. S., & Teitelbaum, M. S. (1992). “International Migration and International Trade”. Washington D.C.: World Bank Discussion Papers, 160.

Full-circle: peddling free trade as a cure-all, or not

If optimism could rule the day, there is in fact a very straightforward solution. Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin, two economists from Stockholm, developed a model of free trade in the 1930s and subsequently lent their names to it. One of the conclusions resulting from the Heckscher-Ohlin model is the factor-price equalization theorem, which suggests that free trade by itself is enough to allow for the convergence of wages between two countries[1]. The rationale assumes that the unimpeded movement of goods is equivalent to a similarly free movement in the factors of production, including labor. Once wages are equalized across countries, there would no longer be an incentive for immigrants to cross borders in search of higher earning potentials. As aesthetically simple as this theorem is, it is also the part of the model over which there is the least agreement.

The lack of consensus is certainly nothing new in economics, but a more realistic approach to the model predicts that immigration would spike for a period immediately following the opening up of trade before slowly tapering down. A study specific to NAFTA and its impact on Mexican immigration to the United States reaches the same conclusion and add that the “migration hump” is likely to last between 10 and 15 years[2]. If this is indeed the case, the developed nations are left to struggle through the pressures of immigration without the relief of an immediate cure.

The European Union provides a fair sample of possible responses. Of the countries that opted for leniency, Spain and Italy are among the foremost. They favor amnesties and grant them liberally[3]. In 2005, Spain announced that illegal immigrants may stay if they had worked at least six months, hardly a grueling standard. On the other end of the gamut, France has become decidedly cold toward immigrants. Last year, 500 illegal immigrants from Africa were evicted out of an abandoned dormitory in a Parisian university.

While closing one’s border – or erecting a behemoth of a fence, as some Republican stalwarts have suggested – may seem tempting for nations besieged by immigrants, it is hardly realistic or politically viable. Ideally, such countries would refrain from acting unilaterally and condescend to negotiate with the immigrants’ source countries. A financial fee has been suggested in exchange for entrance into the country of choice. This may sound superficial and even heartless, but given how much illegal immigrants are willing to pay for a passage into the golden land, a nominal fee for a temporary visa effectively legalizes a practice previously in the purview of the black market. The proceeds from these visas can then be used to subsidize healthcare costs for immigrants. Finally, the immigrant does not have to stay permanently in order to reap the gains from immigration, so destination countries could focus on developing better short-term work programs.

Before policy decisions can even be considered, the first thing that developed nations must realize is that immigration is not a zero-sum game. Demonizing it simply to wrangle an advantage at the polls is shortsighted in the extreme and liable to exacerbate the strains immigration places on all those involved. A recommended program: meditate, clear the mind, recognize that it is possible for immigration to be mutually beneficial and start over.

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[1] Horiba, Y. (2000). “U.S. Interregional Migration and Trade”. Preliminary Draft, Tulane University.

[2] Robertson, R. (2005). “Has NAFTA Increased Labor Market Integration between the United States and Mexico?”. World Bank Economic Review 2005, 19, 425-448.

[3] “Migration Migraine”. The Economist (September) 2006.

Who I Am (Johari/Nohari)

The Johari window is a psychological tool/game.  You and others choose the most appropriate words to describe you from a list of adjectives, and you compare your list with others' lists.  Things that both the subject and others know are in the "arena" box: traits that you're aware of and openly display.  I object to the word "facade" for traits that you but not others know about (I've seen other diagrams call it "hidden," which I prefer).  And "blind spot" is what I think is most crucial--uh-oh, how do you see me?

Please feel free to participate (anonymity is possible, obvs) in an online Johari window for me!  The Nohari window is the same thing, but with negative adjectives rather than positive ones.

Johari window

Nohari window

To be frank--filling these out and choosing six traits to represent me was in itself revealing.  It was pretty easy selecting the six for the Johari, since most of the words didn't apply.  When I first clicked every word that applied to me, the Nohari window lit up like a Christmas tree; I see about half of the negative traits in myself.

I think perhaps I am too attached to my many failings.

Flux

In electromagnetism, we talk about flux as the rate at which electromagnetic energy flows through a finite surface. In this usage, flux is the integral of a surface vector, which produces a scalar quantity (the distinction is important because flux in the study of transport refers to the amount that flows through a surface area per unit time, a vector quantity). In the equation above, electric flux (Φ_f) is the integral of the electric vector field E over the vector area (dA), directed as the surface normal...

O__o

No, I kid. I use the word here to refer to change. And what I have in mind is the most unpredictable and the most constant of changes: what happens when people change?

In every kind of relationships, that other (friend, parent, colleague,lover) plays a specific role, and we understand both the individual and the relationship with respect to that role. And I don't even mean seismic changes -- affairs, abuse -- I mean mundane ones. When the friend that we go to for comfort runs into emotional turmoil of his own, and needs to be the cared-for, rather than the caretaker; the first violinist -- a good friend and mentor -- falters and makes a series of thoughtless mistakes, and suddenly we are elevated, over him, to the position of concert master; or perhaps even more trivial, when our casual movie theater buddy takes a class in French auteur cinema, "discovers himself", and watches nothing but art house drivel. I mean, productions.

How does the relationship recover? Does it also change in order to adapt, and if so, how? If it becomes qualitatively different, then are we looking at an entirely new relationship? There seems to be a normative bias against severing the relationship entirely, but to what end do we preserve relationships?

People change all the time; we become ever more similar, more different, more incomprehensible. What obligations do we have to each other and to ourselves?

Cultural understanding?

A listening question from my practice JLPT:

Why did the boy run away from home?

1.  Because his father beat him with his shoes.

2.  Because he had a fight with his father.

3.  Because his father is a violent man.

4.  Because he lost his father's handkerchief.

Appreciating Art

I began this as a comment to Rachel's last post, but what began as a comment grew long and unwieldy, and I decided to post it as an independent entry instead.

I wish I were more sensitive to music. Despite spending about half of my life playing one instrument or another (four years on the accordion; seven on the violin), I have only the faintest notion of pitch and rhythm, and my version of reading music mostly involves breaking concertos down to mathematical patterns.

For that matter, are we capable of appreciating more than one artistic endeavor with equal passion? Or is the very phrase "equal passion" a paradox that undermines the commitment implied by the word "passion"? I, myself, prize the visual far above the aural. I like the petulant whine and the joyful staccato of the violin, and I like the sounds of well-written prose rolling off my tongue, but neither can compete with the orgasmic pleasure of clean lines and bold colors.

I have never come across a more powerful commentary than Pablo Picasso's Guernica. As for functional art, Louis I. Khan's Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban (Dhaka, 1982), which houses the Bangladesh Parliament, is astounding in its geometry. Commercial art? The silhouettes of Chanel and Lamborghini inspire lust.

Guernica
Picasso, 1937

Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban
Khan, 1982

For several years when I was younger, my hopes and ambitions were all wrapped up into one: I wanted, desperately, to go to the Rhode Island School of Design after high school. I even began preparing a portfolio. In the years since, I gradually became convinced that being an artist was a marginal occupation that would allow me to make only limited contributions to society, that I would spend the rest of my life in a French atelier, impoverished and neurotic, and most devastating of all, that I lacked sufficient talent. I sold my paintings and gave most of my drawings away. (Friends asked for them thoughtlessly; I don't think they realized how hard it is to part with a work. Time spent aside, it was like giving away pieces of myself, intimate and irretrievable.)

I don't paint anymore. It is too expansive an undertaking to do for a hobby. And while I still have my Prismacolor sets with me, I don't draw much either. Being a spectator, however, revives the joy of performing -- art reminds me of possibilities.

Sharpie markers, mania, success

I'm not sure which way the cause and effect relationship runs, but I know that the more organized I am, the happier I am. Or the happier I am, the more organized I am?

Either way, I am beginning to be pleased with the idea of the new school year. I can tell because I am building a command center. The Rachel Command Center is an ever-evolving organizational system mostly involving Sharpie markers and inappropriate enthusiasm--I plaster my walls with pieces of paper in cheerfully color-coded profusion, each one purporting to organize some aspect of my life. Hearts, smiley-faces, and exclamation points are all integral elements of the Rachel Command Center.

So far I have a shopping list (urgent, because I live in Boston and I don't own an umbrella), a knitting plan (complete with due dates and sub-lists for specific projects), and the Rachel Opera Edification Project!

A scene from this year's Met production of Peter Grimes, my current Favorite Opera Ever.

I have decided that, since I love opera more than almost anything else in the world and quite whole-heartedly believe that it is the greatest of all human artistic endeavors, I should make a concerted effort at familiarizing myself with the greatest operas throughout history. (This feels like a particularly immediate concern because I only have access to Harvard's libraries for another year--alas!)

My list is pretty fantastic. It covers nearly four centuries of opera history, from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607 to Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus in 1986. (Isn't that great?) I alternate between older and newer works, because I figure that I'm going to get bored with classic opera, and contemporary opera is presumably going to be a little challenging (I've got operas by Alban Berg and Gyorgy Ligeti on the list ♥ ). No composer gets more than one opera on the list, even Mozart, Wagner, or Puccini. No operas I already know are on the list, and Benjamin Britten is barred from the list completely because I love him with such insane passion right now that I know I'd listen to nothing but Britten if I had my druthers. Did you know that "druthers" is a contraction of "would rathers"? Fantastic!

I am so, so, so excited about this. It's high time I took my musical education in my own hands; I should have done this years ago. Also, Nancy, you should quake in your (ostrich-skin) boots. This, in addition to my newly acquired speakers, heralds the beginning of the year of obscenely loud opera in our room. All the time. ♥

Blog Wars

Nancy has been obsessing over the formatting of our blog.  I find it extremely endearing.  Isn't our blog lovely?

My other blog is a Porsche

For a slightly more professional and less pathetic glimpse at planning JASC, please visit the totally awesome 61st JASC AEC Blog, which I set up.  Oh yeah!  I'm about as techno-literate as an eight-year-old!  Woo!

To no Chujo

As some of you may know, one of my hobbies is knitting.  I pursue this hobby with vigorous enthusiasm and ineptitude.  Inspired by overpriced knitted stuffed animals at Black Ink and a gift of orange yarn from Nancy, I decided to make a stuffed animal myself.

I really wish I had an excuse for this.

I really didn't expect it to turn out quite this... horrifying.

I promise I am a better knitter than this.

No, really.

AAAAAAAUGH

Nancy has named him To no Chujo, after Genji's youthful best friend (and lover, seriously guys, it's obvious) and adult rival.  He's never quite as successful politically or romantically as Genji.  Poor To no Chujo.

I think perhaps I'll stick to scarves after this.

Letter Never Mailed

I was flipping through my notebook, looking for my notes on Professor Gordon and Professor Mitani's joint conference, when I came across this instead. It was written, as far as I could tell, on June 18th. It is addressed to you, which is extraordinary because this intimate letter was written before our friendship became cemented by JASC. As it was intended for you, I share it here.

Dear Rachel,

I am writing this on an American Airlines flight to Tokyo Narita Airport. Four and a half hours into the flight. I'm watching a bad romantic comedy about, well, romance. But it's so bad that I neither want to fall in love nor have children.

Oh Rachel. I feel so young and so confused, only pretending to know what I'm doing. Like laughing at jokes I don't understand. I'm waiting for the moment when my deep intellectual paralysis and dysfunction could give way to something a little more presentable to the world.

And it's frightening because there is but one chance to do everything we ever want to do. Ever. And I'm terrified of failing -- how could I not be after growing up with only the knowledge of one lucky success after another. But, to spend a lifetime waiting for the extraordinary that never comes... well, I couldn't shed enough tears.

I am so afraid of being hurt. The human heart and the human ego are the two most fragile things I know. I wouldn't be able to get over a failure on this scale and still be the same person...




It's unfinished. Which is just as well. I fear I need more time to be able to write an optimistic conclusion to this sad, sad pile of fear and insecurities.