To some extent, I think that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a load of crap. But then, I think that of just about all tests. Still, these tests can be really helpful in understanding oneself. I test as an INTP (introversion, intuition, thinking, perception). As I’ve gotten older, that “thinking” part has become much less extreme and now I sometimes test as “feeling” instead. This is clearly part of the vagaries of the test. While it is certainly true that I’ve gotten more in touch with my feelings as I’ve gotten older, thinking is still primary.

Let me give you an example, which may creep some of you out if you aren’t of my type. I create mental models of every person I meet. It’s not like a hobby, I just do it automatically and I always have. One of the great delights of my life is when someone I know breaks my model. I immediately begin creating a new model for that person. Most people never break my initial model. The really complex ones do it once. But there is one guy who I went to college with named Mark. He broke my model three times. And I think that makes him the most interesting man in the world, regardless of what beer he drinks.

I fully admit that I’m not a very observant person. But when it comes to little things, I am often shockingly observant. Many people have observed that I won’t notice the most obvious thing in the world but I will notice some little thing they never would have. It’s a little like autism, but let’s not dwell on that. (Although I’m an excellent driver!) So when I make my models of people, they aren’t based on the big picture. I just grab hold of a bunch of little things and try to synthesize them. It is heavily weighted toward the questions that people ask and how they ask them.

Many years ago, I was at a dinner party with David Griffiths. I knew of him because he wrote a very popular intermediate level electromagnetism book that I quite liked. At the party, all he did was ask questions—about everything. He was a knowledge sponge. He really put a lot of people off because they thought he was challenging them. That wasn’t true at all. He was complimenting them. He just assumed that they knew what they were talking about. If it was knitting, he knew he wasn’t an expert, so he assumed the other person was. And from a practical standpoint they were. He quizzed me excessively about the film Citizen Kane. I was thrilled about it; very few people care enough to ask questions about the things you care about. Anyway, clearly, I have a model of him and I doubt if I spent more time with him, it would change. People don’t have to be ineffable to be interesting. It doubtless helps that we are both intellectual sponges, just of different types.

But as I think you can tell from all of this, I may have a thinking tendency—a need to take data and organize it into theoretical models. But this is not Mr. Spock kind of thinking. Regardless, my thinking function is not all that pronounced. What is most pronounced is my “introversion” and “intuition” functions. And that’s why I think I notice the little things but commonly hit my head on clearly visible obstacles. (That is not hyperbole.) So the data I get to work with are fascinating and varied, but not necessarily reliable. Thus the fun of getting to reevaluate an entire person based on the inflection of a single word, as opposed to, say, the corpse rotting in their bathtub that I overlooked.

All of this is to say that I totally have you figured out. Until I don’t. But it will not take long for me once again to have you totally figured out. And that’s all there is to it. Unless you are Mark.

Afterword

Regular readers know how much I love tests! If you want, you can take the test (72 yes/no questions) and then read all about yourself on Wikipedia! History shows that most of the people who can put up with me are INFPs. There are some Ss and Ts in there, but the I and P are extremely common. The J types are far too reasonable to waste time reading me. And the E types have friends to meet at that bar everyone goes to. Or to put it the Frankly Curious way, “The Js are boring and the Es are all drunks!”

As you’ve probably heard, the Healthcare.gov website is now working quite well. But I had the unpleasant experience of hearing Charles Krauthammer on Fox News yesterday. Do you know what he was saying about Obamacare and Healthcare.gov? Exactly what he was saying a month ago! Now instead of claiming that Obamacare is hopeless because the website wasn’t working, it is that Obamacare is hopeless because it has a 1% error rate. He even had the pea-brained idea that the government can’t do anything right because Amazon is able to manage a much larger flow of traffic with less difficulty. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Amazon has been in business for almost 20 years. Second, and much more importantly, what Amazon does is trivial compared to what Healthcare.gov does.

The point is that the conservative complaints in general, and the Fox News complaints in particular are of no value. They hate Obamacare and they will attack it no matter what. Their actual argument against healthcare reform is that it taxes the rich and gives health insurance to the poor. But clearly, that won’t fly. Even most die hard Republicans would find that argument repellent. So they use the “government can’t do anything” argument and grasp at any and every problem that comes along. And, let us not forget, they make up problems.

Yesterday, the always great Aaron Carroll wrote, Media Madness, ACA Edition. It was yet another Fox News report about the evils of Obamacare. In this case, it was a couple that couldn’t get insurance for their one and a half year old child because Obamacare mandates that children must be at least two years old before they get insurance. It’s laughable on its face. This is a couple with four children and the insurance company supposedly said, “Father, mother, three kids? Fine. But that toddler? No way!” It turned out that when daddy was filling out the forms, he only listed three of the children, apparently forgetting that he had a fourth.

Of course, that part of the story was not reported on Fox News. Why would it be? It doesn’t make Obamacare look bad. And it isn’t news. I think that everyone knows that if you buy an insurance policy for 5 people, that insurance policy will not cover anyone other than those 5 people. But there’s more to the story. The father is Cornelius Kelly, a prominent member of the Conservative Party of New York State, a group of people who think the Republican Party is too liberal. In 2012, they went after Republicans who voted for same-sex marriage. So clearly, he had an ax to grind against Obamacare.

But that’s the thing: conservatives hate Obamacare. But unlike what they say, they don’t actually think it will be a disaster. They think it will work really well. And that will just show once again that conservatives are against every good policy idea for no reason other than their commitment to enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. But the better Obamacare does, the less we will hear from these people. But it won’t go away completely. There are still conservatives who are trying to dismantle Social Security and that’s been law for almost 80 years!

Afterword

Carroll noted the following that I think can’t be stressed enough:

Since I was quite young, I’ve been a big Syd Barrett fan. For those who don’t know, he was for all intents and purposes the founder of Pink Floyd. And with all due respect to the other members of the band and all the great work they did, it was Barrett who put them on the psychedelic music road that they pursued. Most people just know his work from the first Pink Floyd album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the single “See Emily Play.” If you haven’t heard it, you owe it to yourself to. I think it has the seeds of everything good that Pink Floyd would become without the ponderous Roger Waters lyrics that would eventually destroy the band:

Last night, I listened to all four of the other members of the band discuss what Syd Barrett is mostly remembered for: his mental illness. The folklore is that Barrett was an “acid casualty.” He took so much LSD that he went insane. This certainly seems to be what the band members think. But I don’t buy it. No doubt the drugs made his condition worse. But Barrett began showing signs of schizophrenia at exactly the age that the disease manifests. What’s more, schizophrenics tend to gravitate toward drugs such as LSD and amphetamines. So I think it works the other way around. (I just found a good Wikipedia page on the subject: LSD and Schizophrenia that largely agrees with me.)

What was most interesting in the interviews is how much guilt the band members feel about not getting Barrett help. I think that’s valid in the sense that they let him fall in with a bad group who did him harm. But I seriously doubt that professional help would have been beneficial. Even today, I think treatments for schizophrenia are of marginal value. Forty-five years ago it would have been a total waste. The best thing for Barrett was what eventually happened: he returned home and lived with his mother where he lived a quiet life painting, gardening, and writing.

In between his time with Pink Floyd and his retirement, he released two albums The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. I think they are both masterpieces in different ways, although it seems even today that people jeer at the later album. Here is a taste of it, “Golden Hair” with lyrics by James Joyce

But contrast it with the last song on Barrett, the wonderfully silly “Effervescing Elephant”:

But finally, I want to present to you something really special. “Terrapin” is the first song on Barrett’s first album. For those who don’t know, a terrapin is a fresh water turtle. The song has only the vaguest of connections to these wonderful creatures. But it does make a certain intuitive sense. What makes this video special is that David Gilmour is performing it. The guitar work is just perfect; I’m sure that Syd would have appreciated it. His singing is a bit muddy (Syd was always a better singer), but it is still a delight:

I created another video. Kind of. My short love letter to Romantics Anonymous was flagged by the fucktards at Studio Canal. YouTube announced that the video would only be allowed to be shown in some countries. Well, I thought one of those countries was the United States, because I could watch it. But it turns out that you can’t watch it in the United States. It is just because I posted it that I was able to watch it.

Studio Canal’s claim to it was not for the video but just for the audio. So I decided to take out the audio. As it is, the dialog is in French, so people can still enjoy it. And instead of the dialog, I recorded over it with my own complaint about what’s going on. I will be deleting the original video soon. I hate to do it. It has almost 700 views and 4 thumbs up. But I just hate all this business. I don’t think that any individual person has done so much to promote this film. The whole thing just drives home how broken our copyright system is. I never do anything to harm copyright holders. I’m not one of these guys who posts long scenes from films. I am the kind of person who Studio Canal should be encouraging, “Please! Advertise our films for us!” But no. Like most modern businesses, they can’t see past next quarter’s profits.

Anyway, here is the new video, which is kind of fun. It is both a strong endorsement for the film and a blast at Studio Canal.

Okay, so Jeff Bezos wants to send carrots to my door via helicopter drones. Or something. I don’t know. My father gave me the news last night that 60 Minutes continued their long history of hard hitting investigative reporting by doing a puff piece about how Amazon totally rocks! They could have just photoshopped a picture of Matt Yglesias sucking Bezos’s cock, but that wouldn’t have eaten up 15 minutes of air time. Look, I’m for Amazon. Last year I was able to order Christmas gifts, have them wrapped, and sent my nieces and nephews without ever having to talk to them. Now if Amazon could just come up with a service to handling those “thank you” calls, I’d be set.

But here’s the thing. What if Amazon succeeds? The truth is that our income inequality problems are the result of exactly this kind of thing. We need to think about whether the capitalist system really works as human labor becomes less and less important. I’ve begun to think about it like a game. Imagine that the World Series was decided by a single game. It is well known that any team in the major leagues can beat any other team on any give day. So that wouldn’t be fair. But take it further. Imagine that none of the players on any of the teams got paid unless they won the World Series. That’s pretty much the system that we have.

Let’s think about my favorite example: Mitt Romney. He makes about $20 million per year. The average American family makes about $50,000. So he’s making 400 times as much as the average American and he doesn’t do anything. And he never did. He mostly just extracted wealth out of the work that other people did. But taken to extremes, what exactly is our society going to do when Jeff Bezos has all the money? What good will his carrot delivering helicopters do? No one will be able to afford carrots—just Jeff and Mitt.

Of course, it won’t get to that point. Economies evolve. But conservatives are so rigid in their thinking. They pretend as though the economy is the same as it was when Adam Smith was alive. But it isn’t. As I wrote last year at this time, Tsarist Russia Less Unequal Than America. And why is it less equal? It isn’t because people are worse now. It is that the economic system now allows for “winners” to win far more than is reasonable.

The question is what we are going to do about it. To me, we are at the point where we should provide a guaranteed income. This would do a number of things. First, it would reduce the amount that the “winners” win. Second, it would mean that businesses that wanted labor would have to pay reasonably well. Otherwise, there would be no point in working. Third, it would force businesses to automate and not use humans to do stupid, repetitive, boring work. Overall, it would be a boon to innovation. Conservatives claim that people only innovate if there are huge rewards for doing so. I haven’t found this to be the case at all. I work two different jobs that currently aren’t paying anything to speak of. One of them is this blog, which continues to grow in terms of its readership. The other is a high tech start-up. I’m doing both of these things because I have a financial cushion. If I had to worry about my next meal, no amount of potential future reward would make me work on them.

So if Jeff Bezos wants to deliver carrots by helicopter, he ought to be in favor of this new approach to our economy. Otherwise, there will not be enough people who will be able to afford drone delivered produce.

Wow, what a terrible day for birthdays! But at least I don’t have to lower my standards for today’s winner. But before we get to that, and with a great big yawn, let’s get on to the other birthdays.

On this day in 1863, the co-founder of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Charles Edward Ringling was born. Is that a big deal? Probably not. There were seven of them. But to his credit, he was the Kermit the Frog member of the family. He managed the crazies and everyone really liked him. So let’s give him a great bit, “Yea!”

I don’t normally do politicians, but how can I not note that Harry Reid is 74 today. Look, the man ended the filibuster. He made it happen and I’m very pleased. I’ve had my problems with him over the years. But the truth is that he is an effective majority leader just as Nancy Pelosi was an effective speaker. That’s one thing we Democrats can be proud of: our people are capable.

The British actor Brendan Coyle is 50. He plays John Bates in Downton Abbey, who is the only reason I watch the show. In general, I don’t care about the show. But Bates is the most noble of characters. He plays Lord Grantham’s valet. In general, Grantham is a good guy. But every time something happens that calls Bates’ past into question, Grantham just lets him go. It isn’t that Grantham is a total asshole about it. But who is the noble man? It certainly isn’t that man born into nobility; it is the man who has lived his difficult life with grace and honor. But all is not bad, because he ends up married Joanne Froggatt. Happy days!

Other birthdays: painter Otto Dix (1891); character actor Bill Erwin (1914); film director Vilgot Sjoman (1924); actor Julie Harris (1925); actor Lucy Liu (45); and singer Britney Spears (32).

The day, however, belongs to the great Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat who was born on this day in 1859. He was the guy who painted with little dots of paint, a technique he pretty much invented called pointillism. But that’s all technique. What matters is the result. And the result is really interesting. It’s hard to know which of his work to highlight. I’m rather fond of his more stylized work like The Circus, but I think Bathers at Asnieres is more indicative of his work:

Happy birthday Georges Seurat!

One scenario that might preserve the status quo for the United States would be for its nations to follow the Canadian example and compromise on their respective cultural agendas for the sake of unity. Unfortunately, neither the Dixie bloc nor the Northern alliance is likely to agree to major concessions to the other. The majority of Yankees, New Netherlanders, and Left Coasters simply aren’t going to accept living in an evangelical Christian theocracy with weak or nonexistent social, labor, or environmental protections, public schools systems, and checks on corporate power in politics. Most Deep Southerners will resist paying higher taxes to underwrite the creation of a public health insurance system; a universal network of well-resourced, unionized, and avowedly secular public schools; tuition-free public universities where science—not the King James Bible—guides inquiry; taxpayer-subsidized public transportation, high-speed railroad networks, and renewable energy projects; or vigorous regulatory bodies to ensure compliance with strict financial, food safety, environmental, and campaign finance laws. Instead, the “red” and “blue” nations will continue to wrestle with one another for control over federal policy, each doing what it can to woo the “purple” ones to their cause, just as they have since they gathered at the First Continental Congress.

—Colin Woodard
American Nations

See also: Regional Violence and American Nations