What would Mary do -- leave room for Jesus?

Kate Soper recalls (LRB 30 April 09) "the Oedipal injunction at my Catholic school, where we were expected to model ourselves on the Virgin Mary and advised to sleep on one side of the bed in order 'to leave room for Jesus.'"

Transparency is not transparent -- what does it mean?

W.P. Cresson credits (James Monroe 1946) early government transparency efforts to the defensiveness of elected officials. After Jackson's incursion into Spanish Florida, some questioned whether President Monroe had authorized this seeming act of war, which he had not. "Seeking public sanction of his conduct as Chief Executive, Monroe determined to place before Congress a full explanation of all that had occurred, together with all papers relevant to the affair." He also instructed his attorney general, William Wirt, to write an article for the National Intelligencer "explaining to the American people just what had happened and defending the administration."
In contrast, the transparency required under the current president's stimulus act is proactive -- tell people about your decisions as your making them, not after; explain your goals when you set out, not when you arrive; provide information in a useable, not overwhelming, way.

A budget is a quantification of plan

Ryan Lizza describes (New Yorker 4 May 09) President Barack Obama's budget process, which Peter Orszag (Princeton '91) is running: "The initial discussions were highly abstract. The first Obama budget . . . 'was being designed with an eye toward what do we need to do to put the economy back on a more sustainable path? What do we need for economic growth? And what do we need to do in order to transform the country? Those were our overarching principles.' The budgeteers took a hyper-rational approach, attempting to determine policy and leave the politics and spin for later. He went on, 'One of the things that would probably surprise people is that this wasn't an effort where anybody created a top-line budget number and said, "This is the number that we have to hit, and that's just that, and we'll fit everything else in." Or, "We can't go higher than x on revenue," or, "We can’t go higher than y on spending." It was more of a functional budget than anything else: "This is what we need to do. These are our principles. These are our core beliefs. And as a result this is what our budget looks like."'"
This is the approach I learned from Jim Croft at The Field Museum: a budget is a quantification of a plan. I've tried to apply it in each position since. At the Hypocrites, we're currently part way through this -- we've identified artisitic and business goals, we're quantifying those, and the next few weeks, we'll see how the numbers match up. It seems the best way to meet your goals -- your goals, not your invoices, determine your spending.

Would it be more interesting to live on a street named after someone more interesting?

W.P. Cresson offers (James Monroe 1946) a backhanded compliment to his subject: "In this struggle, Monroe was suddenly to find himself the key figure, playing a role that put to the most severe test those qualities of his character -- more ruggedly honest than impressively brilliant -- that won him his place in the history of his country." I wonder whether it would be more interesting to live on a street named after someone more interesting?

the unexamined life is not worth living

Margaret Talbot interviews (New Yorker 27 Apr 09) several users and researchers of "steroids for your brain" like Ritalin and speed and others with fancier names.

A recent Ivy League grad (millennial?) said, "One of the most impressive features of being a student is how aware you are of a twenty-four-hour work cycle. When you conceive of what you have to do for school, it's not in terms of nine to five but in terms of what you can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals in a variety of realms -- social, romantic, sexual, extracurricular, resume-building, academic commitments." While he's spot on about the blurring boundaries of the work day and the play day, sadly, he's taking speed just to work more, not better: he boasts of getting a B on papers he wrote on speed. Aren't 80% of Ivy League grades B or better?

A competitive poker player (Gen Y?) said, "In a competitive field -- if suddenly a quarter of the people are more equipped, but you don' want to take the risks with your body -- it could begin to seem terribly unfair. I don't think we need to be turning up the crank another notch on how hard we work,. But the fact is, the baseline competitive level is going to reorient around what those drugs make possible, and you can choose to compete or not." If shear amount of work were what counts, maybe he would have a point. But quality matters more. Brain gain with drugs might seem easier, but more effective is reflecting on what you do -- choosing where to put your effort, thinking about the best way to do it, and above all considering the impact you want to have on the world. As the oracle told Socrates, "Know thyself." As he explained, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

If the world were healthy, would there be daily news?

James Wood comes (New Yorker 13 Apr 09) across in the social criticism of George Orwell, born Eric Blair, a wonderful example of the how the world has changed -- since 1914 and the Great War, "the sound of the radio is more normal than the sound of birds." In Orwell's words, "in a healthy world there would be no demand for tinned foods, aspirins, gramophones, gaspipe chairs, machine guns, daily newspapers, telephones, motor-cars, etc. etc." The daily newspapers are failing -- maybe our world is getting better?

Everyone wants to live downtown -- just like me

Alan Ehrenhalt cites (Governing March 2009) a poll by Lesser & Co.: 80 million Americans were born since 1980; 77% of these millennials want to live in the urban core. There are 65 million baby boomers, of whom 71% say walking to work is their most important criterion in choosing a home. Ehrenhalt's response to this demand is to "urbanize suburbia," because building all the houses downtown would take just too many skyscrapers. Blurring the lines of city and suburbs recalls Breugmann's book, Sprawl: There is no longer a clear distinction at the city line, or at least between city and near-in suburbs. One of Breugmann's counterintuitive conclusions is that Los Angeles is the densest city in the country. While NYC is denser downtown, NYC is sparse in the suburbs; LA is consistently across the metro area.