Beyond Rivalry

PD James' latest Dalgliesh crime novel, The Private Patient (2008), is set largely in Devon at a manor house-cum-plastic surgery center. Central themes seem to include worthiness and what we deserve, revenge, redemption, forgiveness, the inability to forgive.

When the book opens, the reader is in the mind of the soon-to-be murder victim, Rhoda, and after her death, at various times we're privy to the thoughts and feelings of a number of other characters, including suspects and police. Rhoda turns out to be a rather single-minded and self-focused woman whose actions have been at least partially responsible for others' pain and harm, and by allowing us the victim's pov at the start, I think James aids our ability to sympathise with her.

Speaking of her family of origin, Rhoda recalls:

"Those outbursts of violence, the impotent rage, the shame, had done for them all. The important things had been unsayable. And looking into her mother's face, she asked herself how could she begin now? She thought her mother was right. It couldn't have been easy for her father to find that five-pound note week after week. It had come with a few words, sometimes in shaky handwriting: With love from Father. She had taken the money because she needed it and had thrown away the paper. With the casual cruelty of an adolescent, she had judged him unworthy to offer her his love, which she had always known was a more difficult gift than money. Perhaps the truth was that she hadn't been worthy to receive it."

Later, Dalgliesh, Kate and Benton are discussing the case over wine:

Benton says:

"People die because of who they are and what they are. Isn't that part of the evidence? I'd feel differently about the death of a child, a young person, the innocent."

Dalgliesh:

"Innocent? So you feel confident to make the distinction between the victims who deserve death and those who don't? ... Moral outrage is natural. Without it we're hardly human. But for a detective faced with the dead body of a child. the young, the innocent, making an arrest can become a personal campaign, and that's dangerous. It can corrupt judgment. Every victim deserves the same commitment."

This reminded me of a comment I read recently, attributed to Gil Bailie:

"Anything one does to champion the cause of the victim creates new victims, so then you have a shift in the marker, and the moral boomerang comes back upon those who were trying to champion the cause of victims and therefore made victims and therefore became victimizers and therefore the whole thing begins to shift again."

I think Dalgliesh is saying the same thing, though the line seems to so fine and the task so daunting -- to hear the victim, to do what one can to stop the making of victims (including recognising oneself as complicit in the ways we are), without making the avenging of victims a campaign, a cause to champion, a justification for victimising others.

Finally, James nicely summarises the way that finding an appropriate scapegoat brings order and peace to a community. Dalgliesh is musing about how suspects feel about the police:

"At first he and his team are awaited and greeted with relief. Action would be taken, the case cleared up, the horror which was also an embarrassment would be salved, the innocent vindicated, the guilty -- probably a stranger whose fate could cause no distress -- would be arrested and dealt with. Law, reason and order would replace the contaminating disorder of murder. But there had been no arrest and no sign of one. It was still early days, but for the small company at the Manor there was no foreseeable end to his presence or to his questioning. He understood their growing resentment .... "

Later she alludes briefly to the psychology of suspicion:

"Murder was a contaminating crime, subtly changing relationships which, even if not close, had been easy and without strain .... It wasn't a question of active suspicion, more the spread of an atmosphere of unease, a growing awareness that other people, other minds, were unknowable."

My blog and I have parted ways on the Myers-Briggs personality analysis. I've tested as an INTP for many years now. This blog, on the other hand, is apparently an ISTP. You can test any blog here (their first language seems to be Swedish).

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment and are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like to seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

There's a lot going on here ...

At the conservative estimate of $4.6165 trillion, so far (including the Citi bailout) (Bloomberg estimates the bailout even higher, at over $7 trillion already, which is $24,000 for every person in the country), the bailout would cost more in inflation-adjusted costs than:

the Marshall Plan,

the Louisiana Purchase,

the Race to the Moon,

the 1980s S&L Crisis,

the Korean War,

The New Deal,

the Invasion of Iraq,

the Vietnam War,

and NASA [hope that doesn't include The Race to the Moon ...],

which together total $3.92 trillion.

"The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost [to U.S.]: $288 billion, Inflation-Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion."

More scary details here, courtesy Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

Yes, taxpayers could get some of the money back (the Chrysler 1.5 billion bailout loan in the early 1980s was repaid in full with interest) (maybe), but even if taxpayers are on the hook for only $1-2 trillion, that's still between $3,200 and $6,500 per every man, woman, and child in the country.

Others suggest we should look at the cost of the bailout in terms of GDP, or in terms of national net worth. (And Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his recent 'What To Do' essay, talks about the viability of solutions in terms of GDP.)

Doing the latter, one commenters says that the $4.6 trillion "is still quite modest. As a percent of total national net worth (government and non-governmental assets minus liabilities) it's less than 4 percent." (No idea where those figures come from.)

Another commenter crunches more numbers (with caveats, and sources, listed) to determine government expenditures inflation-adjusted as a percentage of time-relative annual GDPs:

the Marshall Plan (1947): $115.3 billion/$1,574.5 billion GDP in 1947 = 7.3% of 1947's GDP

the Race to the Moon (1961-69): $237 billion/$3,191.1 billion GDP in 1965 = 7.4% of 1965's GDP

S&L Crisis (1986-91): $256 billion/$6,742.7 billion GDP in 1988 = 3.8% of 1988's GDP

Korean War (1950-53): $454 billion/$1,915.0 billion GDP in 1951 = 23.7% of 1951's GDP

The New Deal (1933-36): $500 billion (Est)/$704.2 billion GDP in 1934 = 71% of 1934's GDP

Invasion of Iraq (2003-08): $597 billion/$10,989.5 billion GDP in 2005 = 5.4% of 2005's GDP

Vietnam War (1965-75): $698 billion/$3,771.9 billion GDP in 1970 = 18.5% of 1970's GDP

NASA (1958-2008): $851.2 billion/$5,423.8 billion GDP in 1983 = 15.7% of 1983's GDP

which total 153% of annual GDP relative to year of expenditure

In terms of GDP, the current bailouts (2008) -- estimated, conservatively, to cost $4,616.5 billion (or $11,523.9 billion GDP in 2007) -- would be 40.1% of 2007's GDP, a little less than the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined, but quite a bit less than the New Deal.

I wish my calculator went up to a billion, much less a trillion ....

Had Thanksgiving leftovers tonight for dinner. Served the crab au gratin on English muffin, the last of the Pommes Anna alongside them, and a fresh batch of baby spinach sauteed with garlic in olive oil. With the rest of the Beringer's chenin blanc. And more pumpkin pie. Mmm.

Our Thanksgiving was leisurely. Watched the Macy's parade and football and Miracle on 34th Street (the new version, which I much prefer to the old one, though I know most people don't), took a walk with the dog, and then commenced prepping and cooking the dinner, which took about an hour total (the Pommes Anna bakes for about 45 mins.).

The Crab au Gratin seems to have been improperly named. Technically, it's true, it was crab with browned breadcrumbs and cheese on it. But a more accurate name would be Crab in Sherried Cream Sauce. It was a Mornay sauce, with crab, sherry, Worcestershire sauce and Old Bay added to it, and so even after its 20 minutes of baking at 400F (with Ritz cracker crumbs and Parmesan cheese atop), it remained more a bisque or a dip than a solid mass. Still, it held its own on the plate along with the spinach sauteed with pine nuts and garlic and the Pommes Anna. And it tasted luscious.

Of course, I forgot to take photos of any of the prep or the finished products, until we were halfway through with them. In fact, we had eaten all the spinach already when I remembered. So below are photos of the remnants of our meal, including the Waldorf Salad and the Beringer chenin blanc, which we drank instead of the Riesling that we bought for the event and then forgot to chill.

I'm a pesce-vegetarian, so for Turkey Day we mostly we have either visited friends (our old neighbours) who are vegetarians and partake of the Tofurkey with all the trimmings, or we have bought take-out Indian or Chinese food (ditto for Christmas), or we've gone out to eat someplace where I can get fish. This year, though, despite a couple of wonderful Thanksgiving invitations, we're staying home and I'm making a mini-feast. I don't know why.

Yesterday, I made the pumpkin pie, the Libby's standard with my own pie crust. [I also made the dough yesterday for Windmill cookies, a supposedly easy thing I'll never do again. It nearly ended in tears.]

Today, I'll buy the crabmeat from the local seafood place to make either Diane's Crab Casserole, Crabmeat au Gratin, or a crab meat souffle that I found in a book first published in 1958, Recipes, Party Plans, and Garnishes, by Sadie Le Sueur ("Le Sueur" like those little canned peas). Or very possibly some melange of the three recipes. I want Old Bay and sherry!

Thursday, I'll make and bake the crabmeat thingy after the Macy's Day parade (as we always called it), assemble and bake some Pommes Anna, and saute fresh baby spinach in olive oil with garlic and pine nuts, and we'll say thanks for all that bounty, plus a slice of pie, and maybe later a piece of the Gethsemani fruitcake that arrived on the doorstep today, just in time, with some lovely tawny port from last Christmas.  Mmm.

At least, that's what Joan Didion seemed to say, per a NYT article, at a talk she gave a week after the U.S. election, when she "lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an 'irony-free zone,' a vast Kool-Aid tank where 'naïveté, translated into "hope," was now in' and where 'innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.'"

Columnist Roger Rosenblatt, after 9/11, "said that while irony had its place and time, this was not it." Some events, he says, "are so big that they almost imply an obligation not to diminish [them] by clever comparisons."

John H. McWhorter, "semiconservative black commentator," sees a reduction in irony as a natural and praiseworthy reaction among white people to having voted Obama into office and in doing so expiating "white America's sins" and "showing that you are past the nastiness."

I gotta go with Joan. Irony (particularly phase III irony) is all about puncturing propaganda, "stating the lie in order to expose the lie," pointing out the discrepancy between what is expected and what actually results, and in doing so examining the nature of human folly and vanity. So particularly when we're feeling good about ourselves and what we've accomplished, and when much is expected and hoped, when so much faith and trust is put in one event, in one person (as New York magazine put it, a couple of weeks ago, "Obamaism: It’s a kind of religion. But one rooted in a deep faith in rationality."), and when results are so sorely needed, we benefit from that "distanced perspective" of irony more than ever.

Like P.J. O'Rourke's; he's writing a column for The Weekly Standard with the working title, 'Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn't President Yet?'

I clipped a recipe for Chocolate Sambuca cookies from a Jan. 1995 issue of Gourmet magazine; apparently it's a cookie that was served at a restaurant called Mirabelle in Boston, which doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd never made it but this year when I was flipping through my recipes looking for potential holiday cookies, it caught my eye, in part because it claimed to make 64 cookies, without doubling. (It actually made about 80.)

The dough -- really more of a batter consistency -- has to chill overnight, so I made the dough last night and baked the cookies today. It's not a quick or easy recipe; the dough is pretty easy to make, though the grinding of the almonds and the melting of the chocolate and butter in a double-boiler took a bit of time and created some mess, but the baking prep requires forming the chilled but still sticky dough into balls, which is hard to do unless you wet your fingers under the faucet about every fourth cookie, and then the balls are rolled first in granulated sugar and then in confectioner's sugar. Not sure why both are needed; the confectioner's would probably be sufficient for the appearance of the cookie, which resembles a snow-capped chocolate krinkle.

The recipe I used is similar to this one, found several places online, but instead of 2/3 cup flour, the Gourmet recipe called for 1/2 cup plus 2 T flour; and instead of 1/3 cup Sambuca, the Gourmet recipe called for 1/4 cup plus 2 T.  Nit-picky Gourmet. (I think 1/3 cup Sambuca would be better. Maybe a little almond flavouring, too.)

Anyway, they taste great: light, moist, chocolatey with a hint of anise and almond.

Reading lots, between my inter-library loaned crime novels -- finished Tana French's The Likeness last week, am reading PD James' new Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, now, and have Reginald Hill's The Price of Butcher's Meat to read afterwards -- and the arrival of the Wall Street Journal through the door slot almost every day, a little 6-month perk for having completed about 200 online surveys in the last few years ... I love the WSJ, its editorial board notwithstanding.

Here are a couple of recent gems from its pages:

***

Destructive Delusions: How therapists and 'victims' seized on the idea of repressed memory, leveling false charges and ruining lives, by Theodore Dalrymple, a book review of Dr. Paul McHugh's Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind. Best lines:

"One of the most extraordinary outbreaks of popular delusion in recent years was that which attached to the possibility of 'recovered memory' of sexual and satanic childhood abuse, and to an illness it supposedly caused, Multiple Personality Disorder. No medieval peasant praying to a household god for the recovery of his pig could have been more credulous than scores of psychiatrists, hosts of therapists and thousands of willing victims."

"In Try to Remember, Dr. McHugh hints at the cultural context in which preposterous and vicious accusations against parents and others could be so easily believed by seemingly intelligent people, including courtroom judges. ... Freudianism alone could not have produced the necessary atmosphere; there must have been other forces at work as well. The sanctification of victims and victimhood comes to mind."

***

Japan's Latest Fashion Has Women Playing Princess for a Day

Japanese women in their 20s and 30s are dressing up as doe-eyed princesses, aiming "to look like sugarcoated, 21st-century versions of old-style European royalty. They idolize Marie Antoinette and Paris Hilton, for her baby-doll looks and princess lifestyle." They buy $1000-outfits (frilly dress, parasol, handbag, shoes) and work their straight hair so that it's curly with 'super-volume" to assuage a "longing for a happy-ending fairy tale," if you accept that bit of sociological analysis.

The women (aka 'girls') particularly idolise 24-yr-old Keiko Mizoe, sales clerk at one of the stores that sells the gowns, who calls those who sport the look "perfect, gorgeous and feminine."

A 16-yr-old who's buying the clothes online because the store seems too intimidating says:

"Their cuteness is beyond human. I'd like to be like them."

A 36-yr-old housewife felt "shy about her plump figure" so she lost 33 pounds and can now wear the tight-waisted dresses, on which she spends $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Her parents "send the couple food so they have more money for Ms. Yamamoto's shopping sprees.

'I figure it's OK as long as what I'm buying is pretty,' she says."

***

How a Drug Maker Tries to Outwit Generics describes how pharmaceutical company Cephalon, Inc. maximises profits on its drugs, in particular, its narcolepsy drugs Provigil and Nuvigil, and entices customers away from cheaper generics. The company, using an apparently common tactic of pharmaceutical companies, has been recently increasing the price of Provigil -- now $8.71 per tablet, 24% more than 8 months ago and 74% more than 4 years ago -- so that patients will have an economic incentive to switch over to Cephalon's new and longer-lasting narcolepsy drug, Nuvigil, which will be available next year at a lower cost -- and, critically, which won't be off patent until 11 years after Provigil will be:

"It works like this: Knowing that Provigil will face generic competition in 2012 as its patent nears expiration, Cephalon is planning to launch a longer-acting version of the drug called Nuvigil next year. To convert patients from Provigil or Nuvigil, Cephalon has suggested in investor presentations that it will price Nuvigil lower than the sharply increased price of Provigil. By the time the copycat versions of Provigil hit the market the company is banking that most Provigil users will have switched to the less-expensive Nuvigil, which is patent-protected until 2023."

One woman who takes Provigil off-label for Parkinson's stopped taking the drug when her cost went to $565 per month. Her insurer, like most, won't cover payment of an off-label use (a use not approved by the FDA).

The article later notes that "fully preventing tactics like Cephalon's would be difficult short of outright regulation of drug prices. Most other countries in the world control drug prices, but most U.S. regulators and legislators have opposed such moves."

***

In further drug-related news: Power of Suggestion: When Drug Labels Make You Sick by Melinda Beck looks at the effect of nocebos, which are the opposite of placebos: the power of suggestion that brings on illness:

"Research deliberately causing nocebos has been limited (after all, it's kind of cruel). But in one 1960s test, when hospital patients were given sugar water and told it would make them vomit, 80% of them did.  Studies have also shown that patients forewarned about possible side effects are more likely to encounter them."

Interestingly,

"the rare, serious side effects listed on drug package inserts -- say, toxic epidermal necrolysis, in which one's skin falls off in large sheets -- are less subject to nocebo effects."

It's harder to "suggest" one's skin to slough off than to evoke headache and fatigue by suggestion, and anyway, as is noted in the article, large percentages of the general population experience these vague symptoms regularly; in a 1968 study of healthy subjects not on medications, only 19% said they had no symptoms (such as headache, fatigue, dizziness) in the past 3 days. Also noted, that anxiety about illness can bring about common side-effect symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth and rapid heart beat.

** Hours after I read this, I learned that the dear friend of a friend of mine is suffering from exactly this "rare, serious side effect" of toxic epidermal necrolysis, likely from anti-inflammatories she had been taking for a while.