PLEIN-AIR. This article by Daniel Grant in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal says that painting outdoors came into its own in the nineteenth century. Technology helped—the century saw portable easels and convenient tubes of paint. I took a particular interest in the article because the Rowayton Art Center sponsored a plein-air event about a month ago and Annalisa and I took part. Two days were set aside for the painting to be done, with an exhibit on the evening of the second day. It rained for most of the two days and we wound up working fast for the last two hours, with trees providing some protection against a drizzle. The Journal article describes how outdoor artists cope with animals, wind, rain and blown sand (wait til the sand dries and it will fall off). It turns out that for many artists, the biggest problem of painting outdoors is the kibitzer. The article mentions an artist who carries a pistol and leaves it out on the easel where passersby can see it. And Jamie Wyatt, of the illustrious Wyatt family of painters, kneels inside a four-foot high, seven-foot long, three-sided wooden bait box when he paints to discourage onlookers.
Archive for August, 2009
PLEIN-AIR.
Monday, August 31st, 2009WHY THE “BIG MEN” IN NEW GUINEA OPPOSE FREE MARKETS.
Sunday, August 30th, 2009WHY THE “BIG MEN” IN NEW GUINEA OPPOSE FREE MARKETS. The anthropologist Keir Martin explains why the Papua New Guinea society discourages the less well off from taking actions to help themselves. He calls attention to the importance of giant ceremonial gift exchanges. The “big men” engaged in these exchanges do not try to maximize their own wealth in terms of money or pigs or trucks. Martin explains this by saying that: “Their aim was to increase the number of those dependent upon them, and so, like a Mafia godfather, their aim was to create debts that would never be repaid.” The big men behave rationally if their goal is to build up an army of followers.
PURIPURI AND WITCHCRAFT—SOMETIMES IT’S NOT RATIONAL TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS.
Saturday, August 29th, 2009PURIPURI AND WITCHCRAFT—SOMETIMES IT’S NOT RATIONAL TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS. Keir Martin, an anthropologist, explains in this article in the Financial Times why some farmers in Papua, New Guinea, do not plant all their land even though they would make more money by doing so. Martin says that government workers and development officials often say that they are “lazy or stupid.” Martin’s explanation is expressed by a farmer who plants only half his land: “If they see me planting too much cocoa, they’ll do things to my land and my family, and they won’t bear fruit; really bad things; puripuri and other witchcraft.” Martin thinks that the Papua example proves that it is wrong to assume economic rationality. I think that it is economically rational not to do something that will put your land and your family in jeopardy.
FAIRY ENCHANTMENT—PISHOGUE.
Friday, August 28th, 2009FAIRY ENCHANTMENT—PISHOGUE. The article about bog butter points out that it was apparently not stored for ritual purposes. It quotes a museum official: “There are accounts dating back to the 1850’s with people used to wash their cattle once a year in the bog and then put some butter back into the bog. It was piseogary,” This blog post has some background. (The post is for August 21, 2009). It speculates that “in the 18th-19th century locals began finding lost butter stores when they harvested peat, and they developed the superstition that butter should be placed in the bog.” As for the word, apparently “pisherogues, or pishogues, a term used both in the Irish manuscripts and in the vernacular, means properly witchcraft or enchantment.” The post has a lot of lore: “If you said it was bad luck to come in and out of a house using the same door, someone would accuse you of believing in ‘ol pishogues.’… A lot of pishogues surrounded cows and milk. If the cow wasn’t inclined to give milk they believed someone had done pishogues. If the cream didn’t turn into butter after you dashed it in the churn, that was pishogues, too; and if a woman was seen skimming the top of water from a pond on your land she was said to be doing pishogues, and it would have a bad effect on your cows…” I can now think of some of my conscientious ancestors worrying whether they done all they could to protect their cow.
BOG BUTTER.
Thursday, August 27th, 2009BOG BUTTER. Annalisa knows of my interest in bogs, which comes from my belief that my Danish ancestors and my Irish ancestors were bog people. She sent me this article about the discovery in a Kildare bog of an oak barrel containing what had been butter in the Iron Age 3000 years ago. The barrel is now full of some seventy pounds of animal fat. It is thought that the butter had been placed in the bog for storage and the amount was probably for a community. I can imagine that a bog might be a cool place to put butter, but I can’t help wondering why nobody wound up using it.
KEEPING TRACK OF THE SEEDS.
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009KEEPING TRACK OF THE SEEDS. I liked this article by Jack Sanders in our local Darien Times for two reasons. First, I am delighted to know what a chickadee is capable of doing. Sanders writes about how: “A study several years ago by Purdue University biologist Jeffrey Lucas found that a Carolina Chickadee could keep close track of its thousands of seeds, stashed in bark, rock fissures or even under roof shingles, over many acres of territory.” The second reason relates to my posts (such as here) in which I expressed my astonishment that months after the bankruptcy of the Lehman bank, the administrators had not yet located all of Lehman’s assets. Accordingly, I cherished Sander’s comment on the ability of the Carolina Chickadee to keep track of thousands of seeds which it has stashed: “Could Deloitte’s best bean counter keep track of accounts like that?”
A FACTOR OF TWO—OR OF THREE?
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009A FACTOR OF TWO—OR OF THREE? Select any stock and look at its price movements for a day–or a month–or a year. What is the correct price for that stock? Richard Thaler cites Fischer Black, who “once defined a market as efficient if its prices were ‘within a factor of 2 of value’ and… opined that by this (rather loose) definition ‘almost all markets are efficient almost all the time.’” Thaler suggests that if Black were alive today, he might amend his standard to a factor of three.
DRUNKEN WALKS.
Monday, August 24th, 2009DRUNKEN WALKS. I posted here a couple years ago on a comment by Annalisa that “there appears to be a good deal of randomness as to which stocks do well and which decline.” I have posted several times since on the important theory that stock prices take “random walks.” One variant says that at any moment the prices that are taking the random walk are the best estimates that the participants in the stock market can collectively do, that the prices “fully reflect” available information. In this recent article in the Financial Times, Richard Thaler substitutes the phrase “drunken walk” for “random walk” and poses the important question of how accurate the resulting prices are. Thaler says: “[P]rices can be unpredictable and still wrong; the difference between the random walk fluctuations of correct asset prices and the unpredictable wanderings of a drunk are not discernable.” Annalisa’s comment was made at the beginning of July, 2007, just before a dramatic drop in stock prices. How accurate should we expect stock prices to be if the market is working well? Thaler takes a crack at answering the question, and I will summarize his answer tomorrow (or you can read the article at the link).
FLAUBERT’S CONTEMPT.
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009FLAUBERT’S CONTEMPT. Flaubert has the same kind of contempt for the characters in MADAME BOVARY that Salinger has in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, without the protective screen that the first person narration by Holden Caulfield provides. That is, it is possible to take Salinger’s rejection of most people as really that of the troubled young narrator. But Flaubert hated the bourgeoisie and that hatred is reflected in his hatred of his characters. Of course, Flaubert, the author, had an unfair advantage over his characters. First you throw the fish in the barrel, and then you shoot them. Flaubert claimed that Madame Bovary was himself, but I don’t believe it.
HOLDEN CAULFIELD’S CONTEMPT.
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009HOLDEN CAULFIELD’S CONTEMPT. I have a lot of the same feelings about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE now that my kids do, and a lot of it is due to my experiences since I read it. Mary McCarthy’s point that the book “… is based on a scheme of exclusiveness….” explains a lot of my feelings. Perhaps my dominant memory from the book is Holden Caulfield’s disdain for almost everyone he encounters. I glanced at the book again, and his disdain shows up on almost every page. This kind of contempt was new to me when I read the book back in the day and it was arresting. But we can encounter it on the internet now any time we choose to. Holden’s contempt for almost everybody is even more disquieting now because we have some reason to believe that it reflects a contempt for people that Salinger shares.
