american suburbia and oil shortage: bad combination

Krugman is on an oil kick.
 
For decades, American urban planners have been extolling the virtues of transit oriented, compact development that is commonplace in Europe. Perhaps the rest of America will listen now.
 
 
Stranded in Suburbia
By PAUL KRUGMAN
May 19, 2008
 
BERLIN

I have seen the future, and it works.

O.K., I know that these days you’re supposed to see the future in China or India, not in the heart of “old Europe.”

But we’re living in a world in which oil prices keep setting records, in which the idea that global oil production will soon peak is rapidly moving from fringe belief to mainstream assumption. And Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world.

If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.

Notice that I said that cars should be fuel-efficient — not that people should do without cars altogether. In Germany, as in the United States, the vast majority of families own cars (although German households are less likely than their U.S. counterparts to be multiple-car owners).

But the average German car uses about a quarter less gas per mile than the average American car. By and large, the Germans don’t drive itsy-bitsy toy cars, but they do drive modest-sized passenger vehicles rather than S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks.

In the near future I expect we’ll see Americans moving down the same path. We’ve already done it once: over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the average mileage of U.S. passenger vehicles rose about 50 percent, as Americans switched to smaller, lighter cars.

This improvement stalled with the rise of S.U.V.’s during the cheap-gas 1990s. But now that gas costs more than ever before, even after adjusting for inflation, we can expect to see mileage rise again.

Admittedly, the next few years will be rough for families who bought big vehicles when gas was cheap, and now find themselves the owners of white elephants with little trade-in value. But raising fuel efficiency is something we can and will do.

Can we also drive less? Yes — but getting there will be a lot harder.

There have been many news stories in recent weeks about Americans who are changing their behavior in response to expensive gasoline — they’re trying to shop locally, they’re canceling vacations that involve a lot of driving, and they’re switching to public transit.

But none of it amounts to much. For example, some major public transit systems are excited about ridership gains of 5 or 10 percent. But fewer than 5 percent of Americans take public transit to work, so this surge of riders takes only a relative handful of drivers off the road.

Any serious reduction in American driving will require more than this — it will mean changing how and where many of us live.

To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.

Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon.

Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.

Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

Link.

speculators or supply and demand?

I meant to post this with “the end of the oil era” since the two go hand-in-hand. I’ve wondered, as many have I’m sure, about the so called oil speculators and the impact they have on oil prices. As this editorial points out, isn’t it more realistic that the high prices are a result of the low supply of the easily extracted oil and the high demand of oil now that China and India, the most populous countries in the world, have adopted America’s auto-oriented lifestyle?
 
 
The Oil Nonbubble
By PAUL KRUGMAN
May 12, 2008
 
“The Oil Bubble: Set to Burst?” That was the headline of an October 2004 article in National Review, which argued that oil prices, then $50 a barrel, would soon collapse.

Ten months later, oil was selling for $70 a barrel. “It’s a huge bubble,” declared Steve Forbes, the publisher, who warned that the coming crash in oil prices would make the popping of the technology bubble “look like a picnic.”

All through oil’s five-year price surge, which has taken it from $25 a barrel to last week’s close above $125, there have been many voices declaring that it’s all a bubble, unsupported by the fundamentals of supply and demand.

So here are two questions: Are speculators mainly, or even largely, responsible for high oil prices? And if they aren’t, why have so many commentators insisted, year after year, that there’s an oil bubble?

Now, speculators do sometimes push commodity prices far above the level justified by fundamentals. But when that happens, there are telltale signs that just aren’t there in today’s oil market.

Imagine what would happen if the oil market were humming along, with supply and demand balanced at a price of $25 a barrel, and a bunch of speculators came in and drove the price up to $100.

Even if this were purely a financial play on the part of the speculators, it would have major consequences in the material world. Faced with higher prices, drivers would cut back on their driving; homeowners would turn down their thermostats; owners of marginal oil wells would put them back into production.

As a result, the initial balance between supply and demand would be broken, replaced with a situation in which supply exceeded demand. This excess supply would, in turn, drive prices back down again — unless someone were willing to buy up the excess and take it off the market.

The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding — an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling.

But it hasn’t happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth.

Saying that high-priced oil isn’t a bubble doesn’t mean that oil prices will never decline. I wouldn’t be shocked if a pullback in demand, driven by delayed effects of high prices, sends the price of crude back below $100 for a while. But it does mean that speculators aren’t at the heart of the story.

Why, then, do we keep hearing assertions that they are?

Part of the answer may be the undoubted fact that many people are now investing in oil futures — which feeds suspicion that speculators are running the show, even though there’s no good evidence that prices have gotten out of line.

But there’s also a political component.

Traditionally, denunciations of speculators come from the left of the political spectrum. In the case of oil prices, however, the most vociferous proponents of the view that it’s all the speculators’ fault have been conservatives — people whom you wouldn’t normally expect to see warning about the nefarious activities of investment banks and hedge funds.

The explanation of this seeming paradox is that wishful thinking has trumped pro-market ideology.

After all, a realistic view of what’s happened over the past few years suggests that we’re heading into an era of increasingly scarce, costly oil.

The consequences of that scarcity probably won’t be apocalyptic: France consumes only half as much oil per capita as America, yet the last time I looked, Paris wasn’t a howling wasteland. But the odds are that we’re looking at a future in which energy conservation becomes increasingly important, in which many people may even — gasp — take public transit to work.

I don’t find that vision particularly abhorrent, but a lot of people, especially on the right, do. And so they want to believe that if only Goldman Sachs would stop having such a negative attitude, we’d quickly return to the good old days of abundant oil.

Again, I wouldn’t be shocked if oil prices dip in the near future — although I also take seriously Goldman’s recent warning that the price could go to $200. But let’s drop all the talk about an oil bubble.

Link.

the end of the oil era

Well, we might not be there yet, but it appears we are getting close. It will be interesting (scary?) to see how the United States and its citizens cope with the price surges of not only gasoline, but also food and everyday products. Sure the oil shortage affects the entire world, but most countries can fall back on cities designed around walking and mass transit and shipping goods via trains. Unfortunately for Americans, nearly all of the U.S. was developed around the automobile. Our forefathers were so shortsighted (and greedy) that they neglected or destroyed what few alternative modes of transportation we had. Even after the first oil scare of the 70s, cities continued to sprawl and the federal and state governments continued to pump money into roads and drain money from rails. Brilliant planning.
On the bright side, Americans are trading in their gas guzzling SUVs for efficient compact cars and are no longer shopping like it’s going out of style. Too bad the money they’re saving is going into their gas tanks and not their bank accounts. So it goes.
 
 
Oil shock threatens lasting changes to U.S. economy
Fri May 23, 2008 6:02pm BST
By Emily Kaiser and Matt Daily – Analysis

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil’s relentless price rise has pushed U.S. drivers off the road, curbed consumers’ appetite for expensive goods, forced airlines into their deepest cuts in years and threatened car makers with a flood of red ink.

It all points to a dramatic shift in the U.S. economy as oil’s surge above $130 per barrel forces already cash-strapped households and companies to rethink business as usual, and the changes are likely to be lasting, even if energy prices retreat.

“The weakness in the United States economy in housing, that we have read about for over a year, with the mortgage crisis and credit crunch, was one blow. But oil is another blow, and it’s probably one blow too many,” Dow Chemical (DOW.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Andrew Liveris told Reuters.

The consumer response has been modest so far, but the pattern is clear. The number of miles travelled on U.S. roads fell 4.3 percent in March from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Transportation said on Friday, the sharpest yearly drop on record and the first decline in the month of March since 1979, when the last major oil shock hit drivers.

Sales of gasoline-guzzling sport-utility vehicles have plummeted. The prices for used SUVs dropped by 17.5 percent year-over-year in April, according to Manheim Consulting, which tracks used vehicle sales. Compact cars were up 2 percent.

Businesses are reacting even more dramatically. “Going green” with energy efficiency programs, once a popular image-burnishing exercise, have now become a matter of survival for oil-intensive companies.

Gerard Arpey, CEO of American Airlines parent AMR Corp (AMR.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said earlier this week the industry “will not and cannot continue in its current state” as he unveiled plans to cut thousands of jobs, retire old aircraft and charge passengers to check bags.

Automaker Ford Motor (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research) announced production cuts on Thursday and said it no longer expected to return to profitability next year.

“We saw a real change in the industry demand for pickup trucks and SUVs in the first two weeks of May,” Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally said on Thursday. “It seemed to us that we reached a tipping point where customers began shifting away from these vehicles at an accelerated rate.”

Gasoline prices hit a record national average of $3.79 a gallon in the run-up to the Memorial Day holiday weekend, traditionally the start of the summer driving season.

This year, 12 percent of drivers say they have cancelled travel plans and another 11 percent have cut the distance of their trips because of expensive fuel, according to a survey by Deloitte & Touche.

BACK TO THE 1970s
James Hamilton, an economics professor at University of California, San Diego, who studies oil price shocks, said consumers had shrugged off steep rises in gasoline prices for most of this decade because even at higher prices, it still represented a modest portion of household budgets.

Now, with wages stagnating and fuel prices rising more rapidly, consumers can no longer absorb the pressures. That is reflected in slumping consumer confidence and a steep drop in spending on non-essentials.

“We’re back at a level of (fuel) expenditures that’s similar to what we had in the late 1970s,” Hamilton said. “It’s a big enough part of people’s budgets that it’s definitely getting their attention.”

Hamilton sees the beginnings of permanent changes in consumer behaviour. Even if gasoline prices moderate from current levels, consumers are shunning SUVs, he said. Trips to suburban strip malls are becoming less popular as Americans balk at driving an extra 10 or 15 miles just to save a dollar or two at a national chain store.

The economic implications are huge. Consumer spending accounts for some two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, and there is no denying the slowdown. The Commerce Department’s retail sales data shows demand down sharply for autos and furniture, as well as at department stores.

The retail category showing the sharpest gain is gasoline stations, evidence of the higher prices.

When consumers curb spending, companies retrench, manufacturing falters, and employment dips. That is precisely what is happening now, and it points to a dangerous slowdown in the U.S. economy already grappling with the worst housing slide since the Great Depression.

“When gas prices hit $4 a gallon, you’re going to see America come to a screeching halt because for two weeks, consumers aren’t going to shop for anything except groceries,” said Britt Beemer, head of America’s Research Group, which surveys consumers on spending behaviour.

“Consumers are trying to figure out how they’re going to manage the family budget when it costs $70, $80, $90 to fill up the tank of gas,” he said.

Beemer’s polls have found that a growing number of consumers are writing shopping lists before heading to the stores so that they won’t be tempted to pick up impulse buys. The number of consumers putting off a purchase of $500 or more has been growing since October.

When he asks why they are not spending, the most common answers are high gas prices, or lack of money. Back in October, consumers were more likely to say that they couldn’t find what they were looking for in the stores.

“Now, they’re not even going to the stores. They’re making the decision not to shop before they even leave their homes,” Beemer said.

(Additional reporting by Euan Rocha in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Link.

friday funny: building under construction for 20 years and still not finished

The Worst Building in the History of Mankind

It’s the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, where the world’s 22nd largest skyscraper has been vacant for two decades and is likely to stay that way … forever.

A picture doesn’t lie — the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella’s castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital — the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it’s open — or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely.

Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn’t the just the worst designed building in the world — it’s the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.

A bootleg video of the tower from YouTube. How the brazen videographer escaped without being arrested remains a mystery.

Construction on the Hotel of Doom stopped in 1992 (rumors maintain that North Korea ran out of money, or that the building was engineered improperly and can never be occupied) and has never started back up, which shouldn’t come as a shock. After all, who the hell travels to beautiful downtown Pyongyang? It would make sense if the hotel were in South Korea, where Americans are allowed to travel and where projects like the Busan Lotte Tower and the Lotte Super Tower now rise thousands of feet above the formerly modest skyline.

With Pyongyang’s official population said to range between 2.5 million and 3.8 million (official numbers are not made available by the North Korean government), the Ryugyong Hotel — the 22nd largest skyscraper in the world — is a failure on an enormous scale. To put it in context, imagine if the John Hancock Center (1,127 feet tall) in Chicago (population 2.9 million) was not only completely vacant, but unfinished with zero hope of ever being completed.

You may not be able to actually live there, but the building now has its own virtual real estate managers, Richard Dank and Andreas Gruber, a pair of German architects and self-described “custodians of the pyramid’s diverse manifestations.” The duo run Ryugyong.org, which they describe as an “experimental collaborative online architecture site.” Sad you can’t visit the building in real life? Log on, view the detailed 3-D models, and “claim” a subsection for yourself.

The Demolition S How video.

The Demolition S How video by the Italian architects Extraneo might not be as conceptual as Ryugyong.org, but this piece of architectural porn sure is fun to watch. The video (which you can watch above) was mounted as part of the exhibition Fiction Pyongyang, curated in part by Stefano Boeri, who also collected 120 speculative designs for the hotel in the June 2006 domus magazine. The designs, he says, “have forced it to reveal its icy nature, its irresistible fascination as a fragile alien meteorite.” The worst building in the world is also, we now know, “the only built piece of science fiction in the contemporary world.” And it’s true. Demolition S How is all Blade Runner-style flying ads and soaring concrete, and the video reminds us that the worst building in the world is the closest humans have come to building a Death Star.

Link.

grover norquist on the colbert report

I was going to post this last Friday but I couldn’t figure out how to get flash player to work on wordpress until now. I mention this because since my first draft I’ve come to discover that Grover Norquist is not some fringe, libertarian loon. Rather, he is a major player in DC, possibly the biggest! Supposedly, if Republican politicians don’t bow down to Grover, they’re out. Papa Bush didn’t listen when Grover said don’t raise taxes and poof! Bush lost to Clinton. Of course, Norquist and his followers ignore the impact Ross Perot had on that election. Regardless, Norquist carries significant weight in the political world and we have him to thank for many of Dubya’s policies. Keep that in mind when you watch this clip.
 
Grover Norquist on last Wednesday’s Colbert Report was funny yet disturbing. I just don’t understand the anti-tax, anti-government movement. Have they actually thought through their philosophy? Norquist could only come up with police and military as services the government should provide. Really? That’s it? Colbert nailed Grover on an obvious one, roads, and it didn’t even phase him. Do they think we would have the Interstate System if the government didn’t build it? What about fire? Should we go back to the good old 1800’s and have private fire departments that won’t put out a fire if the owner doesn’t pay them a monthly fee? What about health care since it’s a hot topic in the upcoming election. McCain and other conservatives want to scale back or completely do away with MediCaid and Medicare. They think giving an annual tax break of $1,000 or so is sufficient to assist Americans with health care costs. Do they know what it costs for private health insurance? Even the cheapest of the cheap with outrageous copays runs about $250/month for a family of four. If you want anything remotely decent you’re talking $600-700/month. And if you have a pre-existing condition forget about it. What about local government services? Courts, Public Works, Planning, Human Services? And on and on it goes. Either these people are incredibly dimwitted or they’re greedy bastards lying through their teeth. I don’t know which is worse.

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

olbermann to bush: “shut the hell up!”

This clip is 12 minutes long but worth it. I didn’t realize Keith Olbermann was so awesome. Why aren’t his tirades all over the news? Or are they already and I’m just living under a rock? Do a quick search for Olbermann on YouTube and you’ll find a lot of his commentaries on the bush administration and other whackos like Ann Coulter.
 

friday funny: bushisms

The Top 50 Most Stupid Bush Quotes
By Shahram Vahdany
April 9, 2008

A man lost in his geography:
1-”We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.”
2-”It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.”
3-”The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.”
 
A man lost in his logic:
4-” It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. “
5-”Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”
6-”These people are trying to shake the will of the Iraqi citizens, and they want us to leave…I think the world would be better off if we did leave…”
7-”I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”
8-”If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”
9-”Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
10-Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.
 
A man lost in space:
11-”For NASA, space is still a high priority.”
 
A man with heaven on his side:
12-”I believe God wants me to be president.”
13- [I was] “chosen by the grace of God to lead at that moment.”
14-”God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
15-”I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.”
 
The man lost in his vocabulary:
16-” Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.”
17-”The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for ‘entrepreneur’.”
18-”One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is, ‘to be prepared’.”
19-’There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.’
 
Thoughts coming straight from George Orwell’s ‘1984′:
20-”Iraq and Afghanistan …are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.”
21-”Ariel Sharon … is a man of courage and a man of peace.”
22-”See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
 
The deceiving pacifist:
23-”I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”
24-”This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table.”
25-”Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.”
26- “Governments accountable to the voters focus on building roads and schools—not weapons of mass destruction.” (N.B.: The U.S. has 10,000 nuclear weapons)
 
The Theologian:
27-”Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion.”
28-”The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur’an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace.”
 
The Flip-Flopper:
29-”I favor leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question.”
30-”I am pro-life.”
31- “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
32- “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
33-”We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories…for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”
 
The forecaster of things to come:
34-”Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties [in Iraq].”
35-”We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur. “
36-”I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”
37-”Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you.”
38-”To the C students, I say you too can be president of the United States.”
 
The astute observer:
39-”A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”
40-”Brownie (Michael Brown of FEMA), you’re doing a heck of a job.”
 
A man and his environment:
41-”I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
 
The double-talker:
42-”There’s a lot of suffering in the Palestinian territory, because militant Hamas is trying to stop the advance of democracy.” (N.B.: The Hamas government was elected)
43-”We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make—it would hope—put a free press’s mind at ease that you’re not being denied information you shouldn’t see.”
 
The would-be dictator:
44-”In a time of war, the president must have the power he needs to make the tough decisions, including, if need be, the decision to grant himself even more power.”
45-”I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.”
46-”If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
47-”I’m the commander — see, I don’t need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president.”
48- “I will not withdraw [from Iraq], even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me.”
49- “I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best.”
 
And, last but not least,
 
Considering the mess in Iraq:
50-“I don’t have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy.”

Link.

han do jin

Can anyone tell me the movie or television show that has the excerpt quoted below? Coldcut samples it on their 70 Minutes of Madness album and I’ve found a few references on the web about other artists who have sampled it but nobody knows where it came from in the first place. Please help! It’s driving me mad.

You are Chun Te?
Yes.. I’m Chun Te.
Do you remember a small waterboy?
Well then, the old man has been teaching you some tricks, has he?
You’re damn right! And now, you bastard, I’m going to do to you what you did to my father in the woods ten years ago!
What’s your name, boy?
I am Han Do Jin, Hang Wong’s son.
Ahh.. Then you’ve asked for death by my hand, Hang Wong’s son.
I will die after you. I’ll see to that.
You’re crazy.

my name is dennis and i’m an introvert

Excellent article for introverts to send to their extroverted friends and family. I know my friends have a hard time understanding why I don’t want to hang out all the time. Hopefully this will help.
 
 
Caring for Your Introvert
The habits and needs of a little-understood group
By Jonathan Rauch
The Atlantic Online, 2003

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren’t caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.

I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.

Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts. It pays to learn the warning signs.

What is introversion? In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially “on,” we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: “I’m okay, you’re okay—in small doses.”

How many people are introverts? I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—”a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population.”

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. “It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert,” write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Are introverts oppressed?I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I’ve read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered “naturals” in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As Coolidge is supposed to have said, “Don’t you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?” (He is also supposed to have said, “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called on to repeat it.” The only thing a true introvert dislikes more than talking about himself is repeating himself.)

With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. “People person” is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like “guarded,” “loner,” “reserved,” “taciturn,” “self-contained,” “private”—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.

Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. “Introverts,” writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I’m not making that up, either), “are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don’t outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness.” Just so.

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts’ Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say “I’m an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush.”

How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an orientation.

Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the matter?” or “Are you all right?”

Third, don’t say anything else, either.

Link.

friday funny: step in poo, what to do? mother says sue

City: Mom’s claim stinks
By Alexandra Fenwick
05/08/08

NORWALK – A New York woman who took her family to visit the Maritime Aquarium has filed a $100 claim against the city, saying her child’s shoes, along with the entire outing, were ruined when her 1-year-old stepped in dog feces early last month outside the Maritime Garage.

Norwalk officials will deny the claim, city attorney M. Jeffry Spahr said.

“The official response is her claim is denied and poop happens,” he said.

The claim by Mahopac, N.Y., resident, Kelly DeBrocky was filed with the city clerk on April 7. It came across Spahr’s desk yesterday.

“I had to read it twice,” Spahr said. “Immediately, what I did was say, ‘You’re not going to believe this one.’ It was hilarious. What are these people thinking about? Just when you think you’ve heard it all.”

But DeBrocky said it’s no laughing matter.

“I was just really skeeved, I thought the whole thing was disgusting,” she said.

DeBrocky wants the city to reimburse her for $54 she spent at Stride Rite replacing her toddler’s ruined shoes, and the wasted $50-plus in expenses she spent for parking and aquarium admission on April 5.

She detailed the incident in her claim.

“After parking, we exited the garage and my 1-year-old son was walking around the structure outside the door of the garage and stepped in a large pile of fecal matter,” DeBrocky wrote. “I quickly picked him up and brought him to the aquarium and did my best to clean him up.”

“After a long car ride, it was not practical for me to immediately turn around and go back home with a small child. We had to pay for admission to the aquarium and my son had no shoes and it made the entire experience awful.”

DeBrocky said she had to buy new shoes for her son, throw away his soiled clothes and cut their trip short.

She and her family left a little more than an hour after arriving at the aquarium, and the pile of feces was still there when they returned to the parking garage, she reported.

“I didn’t ask for anything crazy, I asked for reimbursement for a pair of shoes,” she said, in defending her claim. “The person who was working (at the parking garage) can verify it did actually happen.”

Spahr said the city doesn’t doubt the veracity of the claim, only its merit.

He questioned the city’s responsibility in the incident and the need to discard the child’s clothes and shoes.

“I don’t know why the shoes are ruined. I’ve mowed the lawn a lot of times, we have a dog, and the same things happens to me, I just squirt them off. I don’t understand why she couldn’t run the shoes under water,” Spahr said. “I’m also having a tough time picturing why (the child) had to be bathed after stepping in this unless he thought it was some kind of poop sandbox.”

Spahr said he has seen some frivolous claims, but the feces claim reeks.

“Some wacky stuff comes across. I don’t know if people are more litigious. My opinion is two things are at play. No. 1, people are resistant to taking responsibility for their own actions and No. 2, they feel there always has to be somebody to blame,” he said.

Other claims without merit, Spahr said, include a boater who blamed the city after his boat, docked at the city marina, filled up with water in a heavy rainstorm and sank, and parents who hold the city responsible when their children fall and injure themselves on playground monkey bars.

Spahr also cited a suit by boxer Travis Simms two days before he won the super-welterweight title in January 2007.

Simms said that a 2005 injury he suffered during a basketball game at Benjamin Franklin School due to city negligence sidelined his boxing career for two years.

The city is waiting to see whether Simms will drop the case amicably.

Spahr said that long after that is resolved, lawyers in his office will still be talking about the feces claim.

“That’s kind of way up there in a take-the-cake kind of thing,” he said.

Link.