Cobb

The False Majority

It's better to be the king of a small hill, than a prince at a higher elevation.
-- Cobb's Rule #9. 

The last book I just finished reading is Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. It is a very interesting and good book which goes into some detail about security, trust, society and all things related to rule following and rule breaking. It's very thorough, not very technical and so truthful that it almost sounds obvious. What's extraordinary about it in retropsect is that Schneier told almost no stories from his personal experience. Good on that security.

Schneier is in my T50 - the list of thinkers that I am limiting myself to hearing out for the rest of my life. It's interesting how he sounds a little bit like a boring Gladwell. Gladwell is such a good writer that he makes everything sound exciting and profound. Schneier quotes almost as much as Gladwell, but not quite - still he mentions other folks in my T50, including Nassim Taleb and Clay Shirky, and even though he didn't mention John Boyd by name, I hear a lot of OODA thinking in his talk about the 'Red Queen Effect'.  

At any rate, there are bigger takeaways from this common sense sounding book that I now recongize in my own evolution. And so I remark about it here. 

F1 racing has been my metaphor for the kind of work I want to do and am now doing, 15 years later than when I first really wanted to. What it took me a long time to learn is the cost of largeness. What Schneier described very well in his closing chapters is how the cost of communication in large organizations rises with a factor of each incremental person added and there comes a point at which the technologies and processes are unable to sustain any single-minded agenda. This is precisely a characteristic of what I call information thermodynamics, but what I never quite envisioned was the negative aspect. I understood that within a large organization that it costs money to keep the brass informed about how the business is actually operating, and Schneier did make use of the Dunbar Number. But what I thought was the know-have-nots would simply be dragged along with the know-haves. I didn't think that there might be a point at which it drags down the ability of the organization to accomplish *anything*.

In other words, organizations don't get 'too big to fail', there is literally a point at which they get so big that they *must* fail. The nature of that failure is primarily in what I would call an 'open agenda', but not necessarily the failure of the entity. Xerox, for example, once owned American Express. Hard to believe, but true. While I was working there, ostensibly for the workstation business, Xerox' most profitable division was VanKampen Merritt Investments. They were playing money games on Wall Street but failing to be Xerox, the innovative product company. Soon, small companies like the PC printer division of HP and a company called Adobe kicked Xerox' in what used to be some of their core competencies. 

So, as certain people predicted several years ago, my disinterest in politics has left me to be a Libertarian. But I suppose as I have been called a RINO, then I may be a LINO as well. Except that there's no such thing as a LINO because libertarians seem to have the good sense to know they won't rule, and since they won't - the don't have pretenses to ideological fidelity - or at least they don't bother enforcing a party line. 

It occurred to me this week that you probably could run America with half a million people. That if we were really connected on Facebook Next, and you paid us 600 times our annual salaries, we could take care of 600 people each and we would all do just fine. 

Combine all this and what do you get? Well I get an idea that The System is permanently broken and that when it really comes down to it, there is no such thing as a nation of 300 million. Somewhere around whatever we were in the 1950s in breaks and there is the active nation and there is the passive nation. America keeps struggling to have all of us in the active nation with a real nationalism, but in the next 20 years that's going to break dramatically and we will split into the active nation and the passive nation. We will be more of a civilization than a society and the fakery of all patriotism will be exposed. Not that patriotism is false but patriotism that scales will break. Of course the great news is that we won't amend the Constitution, because that's too difficult. Put another way, democracy > 200 million is a Wicked Problem.

I expect that significant liberal and libertarian subgroups of the American population will have money enough to support the Elon Musks of the world and that they will come to build their cars for our markets. So long as personality and dynamism wants to be rich as in American rich, the active patriots will win the day. And we need fewer of them than we think, I think. I'm fairly confident of this rather in the same way that Vannavar Bush was confident that we wouldn't blow ourselves up with nukes. 

Conservatives aren't who they think they are, by the way. If they think the country is going to hell, it's simply because they think we're all in the same handbasket. As they discover that virtue will out, they will relax. This young generation has had its fair share of douchebags and they won't put up with it despite of all their other wimpy sensitivities. The free love to remain free and they will put down their celery sticks and fight when it comes down to it.

All of this is to say that the Fifty States are in for some real big fun and the Feds are going to have their asses handed to them. I am confident of this - because the states will fail and get right first. Experts will have their way again in the future and bullshit will walk. This is my optimism for the future of everything. We have too many cultural memories to forget how free we have been. That which is too big will fail, the small, smart and agile will perservere, there will be no Idiocracy, because the majority simply will not be clued in, and they will not be able to chain the minds of those who know. 

 

Looking Back On When I...

I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha in 1984. I think that was the year. Maybe it was 85, I honestly don't recall. But somebody raised the question of a kid having a hand in his own destruction. He wanted to pledge, and he found the hazing too rough. If he dropped from the pledge program, he would have the stigma from the fraternity that he wasn't man enough to do it. If he continued and got hurt, he would blame himself for being stupid.

My crazy theory is that it has a lot to do with the way people think about black manhood, and that is why this problem persists in black fraternities. Basically the (bad) idea is that only a black man can teach a black man how to be a black man, and the separate and distinct kernel of that blackness is the 'hard' experience. IE only a 'true brother' will pledge you hard so that you will be tough enough to handle what a 'real black man' will have to face in life. 

To me that is a ghetto mentality no matter how you slice it. Now my line was pledge quite roughly, to the point at which one of our sessions was interrupted by cops asking us pledges out of earshot of the brothers if we were ok. But for me - well, that's what I wanted to do, but I did it without any of the deeper black manhood issues hanging in the balance.

I pledged for several specific reasons but with one overall purpose in mind. That purpose was the make the most out of every big man on campus credibility cookie I could garner. The reasons were as follows.

1. Black unity

2. Alpha affinity

3. My best friend

4. My roommates

On Point One
What I could believe in 1984 was that a black man would be president in my lifetime. What I could not believe is that one would do so without being part of the black Establishment. So my part and parcel of belonging to the frat had a great deal to do with what I said in my interview. "I am going to be part of the black leaders of tomorrow, we're all going in the same direction and we're all going to end up in the same place, I might as well join up today". That illusion was well disabused before I left college, but it seemed like the right idea at the time. I figured out black diversity the hard way, but I did figure it out. If I would have known at that moment what I knew a couple years later, I probably would have not pledged.

On Point Two
This was basically the question 'Why Alpha', and it's basically as much answer as Myers-Briggs would give. Alpha was a personality match. Tradition!, First among equals, arrogant... blah blah. 

On Point Three
One day I was hanging out with my best friend, whom I thought to be one of the smartest guys I knew. He was wearing a cardigan sweater over a white t-shirt. As we got out of his car to go to lunch, he pulled out a pair of black Ray-Bans from his glove compartment. When he put them on, I joked that he looked like an Alpha from a step show. He told me that he was an Alpha. What!? He said it was the hardest thing he ever had to do. Damn. I had to do that.

On Point Four
It turned out that my roommates were going to pledge Alpha. We could study together, we could help each other through the program. We turned out to be the only three out of the pledge class of seven that finished the program.  

On the whole, in retrospect, I'm glad that I pledged undergrad and if I had to do it all over again, it would be a toss-up. I'm sure that if I had to go to college, I would have tried not to care so much about the BMOC cookies, or at least expected a whole lot fewer from the frat. However, the fact that I got to be a national officer in my engineering organization turned out to be the introduction to business travel and the world that made me. It's hard for me to imagine the other me I might have been without that particular introduction to non-geek intelligence. But that's something of another story...

Dreams, Schemes, Prayers, Players & Man's Plans

I don't know what life was like before MLK. I don't know what life was like before Malcolm. I was too young to have experienced either. I know what life was like in my own household - with parents whose minds didn't need much prodding to know what they wanted for me. You see, I cannot imagine that either of those men's minds were full of ideas that never existed before - that their's was an era of great ideas and ours is not. That before them there was nothing and after them only wakes. There is right and wrong. There is stasis and chage. There is grey and hesitation. But there is not progress and there is not regression. 

Some minds are easy to change when they are wrong, such are the minds that bear up our civilization. Some minds refuse to change when they are wrong. Do the combinatorics and calculate the percentages on every subject and you might know the state of the world, but I think the Buddhists and Stoics are right to eschew such global scheming and live in the moment.

A field of red white and blue shivers on the Mall listening to poetry. I heard the iams from the television stumbling my way to the refrigerator this King Day morning. As foolish as I find the very idea of consecrational poems coming from minds younger than those to be consecrated, I heard two words from that fresh face in the January air: 'many prayers'. Many prayers. Many prayers.

Prayer is contemplation of the ultimate in deep meditation. A prayer must take effort because if it can be anything, it is a reckoning with what we know to be true. A prayer must be at long last an acknowledgement and submission to profoundest truth - the truth that serves no man but upon which man's survival depends. In the manner of Christian ethics we submit to God's Grace which flows eternally and we neither earn nor deserve. It is what it is and in prayer it is up to us to recognize. That requires effort and discipline. 

A prayer is not a request. That is a wish. Time spent in preparation for the fulfillment of or arguments in defense of a wish is not prayer, but wishful thinking. Imagining the circumstances under which case the wish comes true is dreaming. It is a fancy, a phancy, a fantasy and the conjures up the fantastic. 

It is often difficult to bridge the space, or quite literally to explain the materiality of change between what has been dreamt and what has been prayed for. We say that dreams come true. We say that prayers are answered. These are passive voice sentences which the human mind attributes any actor in range. God gets most of the blame and praise because a studied God makes more sense than aggregated superstitions and chances. But the instruments of fate are still illusive to us; many claim to be God's hands in action, but we are wise to cast suspicion on such bold pronouncements. Who among us is God's prophet? I dare you. 

Men can scheme. Men can plan and discipline themselves to the tasks of a plan, and make manipulations suitable to the aims of any scheme. We can do so in sunlight or in shadow, but our consequences are real no matter how. We succeed and fail by measurable degrees. We can gauge men's plans and schemes and know who did what according to which plan and under what scheme which tasks were done and which left undone. This is in great contrast to Acts of God, which is nothing more or less than the unfolding of the truth of the Universe, the forces on every boson that ever was, whose materiality is an uncalculable mystery shrowded in infinite distance and unparsably minute fragments of time. But the dramas that guide men's lives and fortunes - we process them swiftly. We inutit it in the arch of an eyebrow. We interpret it in the slouch of a walk. We smell it in desparate breath. We see it written in blood. We know when a family is broken and we know who to blame. We know when a business is collapsed and we know who blew the cash. We know when a building is crumbled or erected, a baby born or a body buried. We know the fathers and mothers of mankinds deeds. We know them because we are them and we know the truth of ourselves whether or not we are apt to admit it. 

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One of Cobb's Rules is to never underestimate the intelligence of people in power, and over the past few years, since I have abandoned the ebb and flow of politics itself, I have come to understand more about the mind and of psychology. I have come to a clearer undstanding of those deceptions that are planned and those that are products of indiscipline or our mere ability to be fooled. And I pay attention to how we backtrack to explain what appears to be. 

One of the great deceptions is that dreams and prayers are as powerful as scheme and plans. They are not, nor will they ever be, because power is always in the hands of men, and never in the hands of chance. Not even in orbit above the planet are tons of equipment held aloft by chance. Don't imagine that your earthly fate is either, my friend. 

Whomever is speaking, however close or distant from the truth, they will offer dreams or schemes. They will present players or prayers. Plans are the affairs of man from which we can annex action to actor - the rest is the working of wishful thinking, fantasy and the dreams of romantic poets, the seductions of youthful lips whispering wanted whims. And this is now as it has ever been. 

Why do minds change, how do we see the world anew? Is it from a review of our plans, assessment of our tasks, calculation of forcasts versus actuals? Or is it a estimation of dreams come true, fantasies realized, prayers answered? 

I have presented this on a day set aside from work to celebrate a dream, but now that it's done, I am going back to work. 

Social Ceilings and Floors

The other day I thought about somebody I haven't seen in over 35 years. His name is Steve H. and he was, by my reckoning one of the most socially superior people I have ever known. Steve was captain of the swim team and so when I was a frosh, we celebrated at his home in Toluca Lake. (And through these facts, a sleuthier person than I could identify him, sorry Steve).

Or maybe not. You see I couldn't find him for free, and I have been able to find a lot of people online for free. In fact Steve is the first person I was really interested in finding for whom there was no trace whatsoever. And it reminded me of the way I embarassed myself, slightly, in Steve's parlor. 

You see in 'hood terms, I could play piano and I could play tennis. In real terms, no. And so I played a touch of piano, that classic boogie woogie blues that every kid learns, and experience a bit of the clutch the pearls shunning, which I remember as stunning in the moment. I think that if the event had occurred a year earlier, before I had gotten to know any whitefolks at all, it might have struck deeper. 

I will inquire about Steve at the reunion, some classmates or teachers might recall the H's considering what must have been some significant wealth they appeared to have and the tendency of private educational institutions to favor such families over more market-oriented funding sources. I think, quite frankly, that he has disappeared way over my head through a ceiling that is far from transparent. I would guess that he has, or has become a good lawyer and that that whole internet thing is beneath them.

I liked Steve. He was the kind of kid that we seem genuinely glad to know exists though we doubt them. Like pro-baller 'Admiral' David Robinson he seemed too goodie to be true and as such attracted the kinds of taunts juvenile kids and adults tend to dish. He was a freckle-faced redhead, good-natured, straight A kind of kid. His father was literally restoring a P-51 Mustang fighter plane in his garage, and he lived in a mansion on a lake. I don't know what happens to kids like that - they tend to disappear from my life. And I presume that they disappear up.

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A year ago I visited the old neighborhood having attended the year previously the 50th birthday party of my first grade girlfriend. Her big 50 was such a success, and we all enjoyed hearing stories of the old 'hood so much, that she decided to do it again right at the old neighborhood gym. So on my way there I stopped in the old street and knocked on the door of Sims, one of the three boys exactly my age I grew up with as a teen. Sims had a picture of Mike T. on the mantle. 

I didn't like Mike T. Nobody respected him. His bigger brother, who was maybe a half brother, beat him up and his father was a drunk and beat him up too. T had a bad attitude and he couldn't play football, or basketball. He was just on the large size of scrawny, cursed and mumbled all the time, got the words to songs all wrong and was constantly scratching his balls. We figured he had the itch. 

I didn't recognize T in the picture on Sims' mantle but commented on his loud ugly yellow jumpsuit. It took Sims about five minutes of rolling on the floor laughing and recovering himself to tell my dumb ass that that was a prison uniform and T was in for murder. It was a visitation photograph of him with his teenaged daughter. Oh.

There have been people I used to know that my brother the cop has arrested, and when I left the old neighborhood, I could have probably guessed which of us would end up 'dead or in jail'. Mike T was for certain. 

I think about Mike as one of the knuckleheads who became famous when NWA became famous. Their every bit of style, and everything 'gangsta' that came out of Los Angeles came from them being little brothers to guys like Sims and I. We never made a dime from our cultural influence - that all landed on Ice Cube's crafty hands, but the whole gangsta reality came from the likes of T, who sunk through the floor.  I wouldn't expect to find him on the internet either, not that I would be looking.

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I had a good couple hours hanging out with my 16 year old daughter today, and as we commonly do, we talked about her generation. We have great conversations and in this one agreed that maybe America isn't going to hell, but we sure do get tired of people who have lost their faith. Their whining is not only tolerated but broadcast, and it grates on our nerves. She told me that we have raised 'fence children' who listen to a lot of good, bad and ugly without getting overly affected by it. She's right. We're all very socially observant, but we articulate neutrally on only pontificate on our own dime. For that reason, I think we'll all see our way through.

On the shelf to my right is the 1955 Funk & Wagnell's edition of Emily Post. I think that perhaps 10% of its prescriptions are known and fewer still understood. Something's up with social mobility. Something negative. I think more Americans are beginning to take all of this zombie stuff a bit more seriously, and dish around the Constitution a little more casually and hate each other a bit more easily. Ceilings and floors are getting thicker, and it's not about 'income equality', it's about trust. 

These days I'm reading Schneier's latest two books. They are not so much news as reminders and frameworks. Good stuff. 

The (Old) Guide to Cobb - Concepts & Terms

Cobbian Terms

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Who is Cobb? What is Cobb?
 Cobb is my second middle name. I am Michael David Cobb Bowen. Most people don't have two middle names. But it is a conservative thing and a tradition in my family to have middle names. To have two, I suppose is double, and Cobb is definitely the most conservative part of my name. So when I decided to blog from an Old School Conservative point of view and yet keep it more personal than ideological I went with Cobb.

Lots of people call me Cobb, and that's OK. It is my name.

Cobb is the name of the blog. I don't speak of myself in the third person as Cobb, I only speak of Cobb, the blog. 

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The Black Political Context  Not only has the black monolith been broken, so has the political solidarity of 'the' black community. I see it this way. Those who have sought to inherit the mantle of the black political vanguard, ostensibly the 'Talented Tenth' have split into three camps.

The majority camp is the Liberal Left. They are aligned with Democrats and Greens. They are about 60%. The majority of blacks vote with them. The second camp is the Progressive Independent camp. They tend to be unaligned. They are about 25% The third camp is the Conservative camp who are aligned with Republicans and Libertarians. They are about 15%.

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What was the original purpose of Cobb? The purpose of Cobb is threefold. First and foremost it is to satisfy my craving to write and engage with everybody far beyond the contexts that everyday life provides. I am a writer and I love to write.

Secondly, it is to address a political agenda.

Thirdly Cobb addresses a cultural agenda.

I try to exemplify in a personal and analytical fashion, the orientation of black Conservative thinking in my generation. While I am a bit unusual as a writer, I think of my situation within America as fairly representative of a typical upper middle class black American suburban family. I think that the distance between mainstream conservatism and black conservatism is short.

In this personal mode of expression, I seek to break down stereotypes about who Conservatives are and how they come to support their ideological positions and I discuss in a Socratic dialog the issues of the day.

Additionally, I do so with particular care and respect for black Progressive politics. I seek to make the differences clear and to talk about the mistakes of Progressivism. As for the black Left, I attempt to keep my disdain from making me tell lies about them, but much of the respect is gone.

With regard to black politics, Cobb is something of a Talented Tenth / Old School project. I think of my audience as all folks who are particularly interested in the intersection of culture and politics and particularly the evolution of black politics in the post-Jim Crow era of American history. I am doing my share to advocate towards an organic black conservative politics in American life.

What is Cobb about now? (2010 & beyond)
Cobb stands as a factotum tracking where I’ve been and my intellectual interests over time. At the current time it serves as a testbed for thought experiments and expository essays about:
Global Economy
Political Philosophy

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Cobb is Not 

Cobb is not about changing or improving race relations. If you can't get along with other ethnics that's your problem. Cobb is not 'for blacks only' it is open source black thought straight from this horse's mouth. If you can't read English, you will find yourself severely handicapped. Cobb is not sponsored by any ideological group. It's syndicated by blog aggregators. Cobb does not coddle. Cobb is not everything about Michael Bowen, it's a project. It had a beginning and it will end. Cobb is not afraid to use profanity. Cobb is not for kids. And Cobb is not Boohab.

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The Old School  

The Old School is a somewhat mythical orientation of conservative black culture and politics. You know it when you see it. The Old School is Christian, it is family oriented, it is unapologetic and bold, it is organic and self-sufficient. It takes little for granted and is ready to go down swinging. It is deeply American and deeply black. It is strong and proud, stubborn and graceful. I think of it engrained in the values and person of my grandparents who beat polio and got optimistically married during the Great Depression. The Old School includes but is not limited
to the Talented Tenth. Whereas the Tenth is on a noble mission, the Old School tends to mind it's own business.

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African Americans  

Black is to African American as Catholic is to Christian. Black is a flavor. African American is a demographic description. Black has meaning, subtlety and context. African American is just a huge bunch of undifferentiated people of African descent.

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Blackfolks & Whitefolks  

Blackfolks are folks who call themselves black. Whitefolks are folks who call themselves white. I am not trying to be demographically accurate or politically correct. I'm just speaking about average Americans with an average amount of racial consciousness who know they fit into one or the other bucket.

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Aggregation
 Aggregation is the black dream of the beloved community in the upper and upper middle classes. It is the purposeful establishment of a pro-black old money Establshishment in the tradition of American money, philanthropy and social exclusivity. It is definitely a Talented Tenth dream.

The 'Aggregate Community' is the next evolution of the Talented Tenth. They will be those who, for better or worse, take control of the legacy of African American history and life. I think the maintenance of this aspect of black history is at risk because of the failure of many African Americans to accurately represent the Old School.

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Statistical Morality
Americans tend to speak about the status of groups of people in statistical terms in order to introduce themselves to subjects concerning them. This is troublesome for two reasons. On the one hand it traffics in stereotypes and reverse-stereotypes about in-groups and out-groups, but does not deal with causality or individuals. It therefore cheapens the quality of discussion and sets up litmus tests and glass ceilings and false dichotomies. Secondly it does not begin to approach with respect to which the dynamic in question is transient. It goes against the principle of discovery.

For these reasons I find sociology to be a discipline that warrants suspicion, the same kind of suspicion economics warrants. However I find that economists tend to be a bit less dogmatic and more self-deprecating in their predictions than sociologists. That is because I believe economists have a great deal more accurate and detailed data than sociologists and thus realize how contingent their models are on complexities beyond reckoning.

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Sherwood Forest
 Sherwood Forest is a metaphor for the less than civilized parts of the black diaspora and of the world in general. It is a place where untoward behavior is the norm and where. as Slick Rick would say "This type of shit happens every day."

The proper attitude to have towards Sherwood Forest and its denizens is benign contempt, for just beyond the edge of the woods is civilization and everyone from the woods are welcome to join. That means, however, that they must live by rules they didn't create in order to benefit from the civilization they didn't create. This also means that those who live outside of Sherwood Forest, be they master or serf, has little business worrying themselves about the dastardly and pathetic deeds which go down there.

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Scientific Animism
 Scientific Animism is the hightened and superstitious belief in information that is presented by scientists or any expert by people unwilling and/or unable to determine the truth value of that information. 'A recent university study shows that...' is an example of a type of story that is taken as an indisputable fact by people who never show an interest in critical thinking. Scientific Animism is a class of logical fallacy of the appeal to authority but is unique that it makes a fetish of scientific discovery without using the scientific method. It takes theory as fact, and finding as universal.

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Eclexia  Eclexia is a sin.

"A little bit of everything adds up to a whole lot of nothing."

-- Cobb's Rule #1

There is probably no such word as 'eclexia', I just made it up, but the sin is real. It is the fatal attraction to novelty and change. It is the mindless sacrifice of tradition at the alter of the new. It is the inability to find satisfaction in the settled.

Eclexia is characterized by a restless antipathy to the established and an overweening desire to get away from it. The eclexic is eclectic to a fault. Their fatal flaw is that once the novelty of the thing has worn off, once it becomes established, their interest and respect fades rapidly.

Eclexia is a sin because it is fundamentally disrespectful of the efforts made by people who bother to study something specific. It acts against collaboration in solving standing problems. It refuses to focus. Thus the eclexic requires some outre personality which allows him to eschew the 'mundane' tasks that are faced by all of us. In that regard, eclexics are dependent on an established alternative subculture - something that allows them to easily be understood as 'cutting edge' or 'radical' even if they are not talented or committed in any way.

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Cobb's Operating Theories

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The Civil Rights Movement Won 

And there is no going back. The Jim Crow era of America is over. But yeah we have stragglers. They are a distraction, and all such reporting on that distraction is overkill.

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Black Culture is Transparent  

There is essentially nothing about black culture that isn't in the public sphere. There is no 'dirty laundry', it's all public domain. Blackfolks have no secrets worth hiding. There are no 'black things' that other people can't understand, there are only contexts that other people (and black people) are too lazy to understand.

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The Black Monolith is Broken  

There is no single class of blackfolks. There is no single religion for blackfolks. There is no single 'Black Community'. There is no single political orientation, no single mode of cultural expression, no single dialect and no single region of the country for blackfolks. If you see one, then you are thinking in stereotypes.

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Economics Beats Politics
 There is no political agenda for black empowerment that will ever have any more force than that of the economy.

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Racists Are a Minority  

The overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to be racist or be considered racist. There's no money in it, no social benefit in it, and considerable risk.

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Integration Wins  

There is no separated destiny for African America. As America goes, so goes those with the round nose.

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Cobb's Enduring Themes

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Support Your Local Police  

There is no such thing as 'black on black crime'. There are good guys and there are bad guys. There is no reason to try to invent new social experiments.

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Marches are for Illiterates  

If you don't have a pitchfork, torch or billy club, stay off the streets. There is no such thing as a 'political' street. America is a republic, not a township. Write a blog, write your congressmen, get on public access.

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American Metaphors

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Try Strawberry  

America is like McDonald's. Everybody knows the menu is big, but their selections generally don't change. In a lifetime of drinking chocolate shakes, how many times do you select strawberry? People like to complain about America, just as they claim McDonald's is bad for you. What is more accurate is that among a wide variety of choices, they are responsible for poor ones, and after all haven't cooked for themselves.

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The Mercedes Birthright  

Every American inherits a Mercedes Benz at birth. It is the infrastructure of the American system. However, it is up on blocks, the wheels are off, and there is no gas in the tank. You can sit behind the wheel in comfort and pretend that you are driving. You can fall asleep in the back seat, roll up the windows and ignore the world. But you have no idea about the real experience of America until you figure out how to get some wheels and mount them, get that car off the blocks and figure out how to get some gas into that engine. If you figure that out, you'll be able to drive 100 miles per hour. But if you don't bother, you walk like everyone else.

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The Elephant's Right of Way

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Cobbian Personnae

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Them Bowens
The Spousal Unit is my wife.
Boy is my son.
Scholar is my elder daughter.
Sprite is my younger daughter.

Doc is my brother, the LAPD officer
Deet is my brother, the Obama fanatic
Pops, my father, the retired urban studies professor and God fearing Lefty
Moms, my mother, the in-home caregiver and evangelical actress.
Dutz, my dear dreadlocked sister, married to
Mr. T, my piecred college professor brother in law

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Cobbian Associates, Partners & Antagonists
The Existential Partners: These are men I might very well be had my life taken a different turn or God given me real talent.
    Nulan = Craig Nulan, mad genius, hermetic mystic & ethical scold
    Spence = Lester Spence,  superdad, dance floor dervish & brilliant academic
    EC = E.C. Hopkins, perfect gentleman, philosopher king & citizen soldier
    Iz = Jimi Izrael, urban griot, fearless mensch & starchild personified
    Lee =  ubergeek, industrious ai researcher & black felix unger
    Playa = man's man, lady's man & world class unix hacker
    George = George Kelly, aesthetic adept, perfect host & genuine philanthropist

Fish = Michael Fisher, first order black capitalist & machiavel
FN = Wayne, the Field Negro, the last angry black man
P6 = Himself
DS = Darkstar, destroyer of wishful thinking
BB = Brotherbrown, old friend from the neighborhood

Stretch = drinking buddy, frat brother & firefighter
Mr Jones = family friend, civic patriarch & private banker

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Cobb's Rules

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cobb

1. A little bit of everything adds up to a whole lot of nothing.
2. There is Marriage, and there is everything else.
3. Talk what you know.
4. Civilization is where you put it.
5. Don't second guess people.
6. Always have stretch goals.
7. Never trust anyone whose shoes cost more than your whole day's pay.
8. An enemy is someone who doesn't mind if you fail.
9. It's better to be the King of a small hill, than a Prince at a higher elevation.
10. An early start beats fast running.
11. Perfect is the enemy of good.
12. The Planet is fine.
13. None of your ideas are any good until somebody else can take advantage of them without your permission.
14. People don't have weakenesses so much as they overuse their strengths.
15. If the poor and oppressed knew how to work the system, they wouldn't be poor and oppressed.
16. It is never a good idea to underestimate the intelligence of people in power.

Corollary Wisdom

What do you give a man who has everything? An irresistable opportunity to throw it all away.

The Devil's Advocate only argues because he is disgusted and contemptuous.

No matter where you park your car, the birds will always find it.

How to Handle Black People: A Beginner's Manual

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Cobb's Bitter Enemies

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 Mr. Stupid
 I am the enemy of empowered ignorance.

The Coalition of the Damned  

People who spend all of their time jumping on anti-establishment bandwagons are a drag on politics and reason.

The Dainty Dillitantes  

I'm sick and tired of so-called adults who are shocked at the barbarity of human beings. Beware of the phrase "I would like to think that.." It is by definition, wishful thinking. Also watch for "I can't believe that in (insert year hear) we still have..."

The Eclexic Relativists  

The first thing you will notice about these folks is that they will go anywhere in the planet (but mostly to Sherwood Forest) to come up with a counterexample which satisfies their arguments. You can't drive your SUV because the Bambuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest don't need them. Their multicultured murals may be nice to look at, but their ideas are about as thin as the paint.

The Eternal Barbarians  

Also known as 'The Element'. Thugs, gangsters, pimps, whores, perverts, derelicts, haters, liars, crooks, con men and their hangers-on and wannabees.

The Tribalists 

People who believe that race, ethnicity, country of origin, or sexual preference are a permanent feature of the human soul and should be recognized as such in law and standing are the bitter enemies of humanity itself.

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Coalition of the Damned

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Cobb: The Coalition of the Damned
The Coalition of the Damned. People in Lebanon are attending the funeral of their former prime minister. He was assassinated by a suicide bomber with a car ...

 

Cobb: Humiliation & Fortitude

So things hang in the balance for the parties directly invovled and activism on either side ratchets up the attention given. Depending on which way this thing goes, I may have to worry about my niece making a bad name for herself among the cop fraternities of Providence. Sounds like 1966.

If I had my way, I'd just call the whole thing off. Cop families wouldn't have to worry about whether dad has a job, student families wouldn't have to worry about whether son has an education. Everybody gets chewed out and humiliated and all parties recognize how much they need mutual respect. Humiliation this time, fortitude next time.

Cobb: Devin's Advocates

There is a difference between criticizing the system and dogging the system, and those who might bother to read the DA's report might notice that there are better ways to address the problem than to fire a scapegoated symbolic officer. In fact, Bratton has done so in retraining the force with regards to the standard felony stop. In one scenario, officers will park their cruiser within 10 feet of the back bumper of the suspect's vehicle in such a way that the car will not have enough space to pick up enough speed to be deadly. I know this because my brother's a cop and has been retrained. But I wonder if those who dog the system know that reform has already taken place. I imagine that if they were constructively engaged with the LAPD, they would know such things, but that is not the aim of Tony Muhammad, nor any other unelected mouthpiece of the Coalition.

It must be sad not to know how wrong you are, how politically ineffective are the desires you have been exhorted to champion. It must be frustrating to be in such a state of mind that you only feel you can gain if the police lose. But no matter how sad and frustrating things get for the Coalition of the Damned, they're simply wrong. They have picked a poor set of spokesmen and a poor set {Stanley Miller, Devin Brown, Tookie} of symbolic victims. I hope, for their sake, sooner or later they'll determine that they're on the wrong te

Cobb: Make Me!

Doc's patience is being tried by knucklehead members of the Coalition of the Damned. Mine too.

Their new prophet of rage, Tony Muhammad, blasted cops for not raising the dead. Well actually, that's not the whole truth, he blasted firemen for not raising the dead. Well, that's not the whole truth either, because Tony Muhammad wanted to raise a ruckus at the funeral of the dead homie in question as an opportunity to get in cops' faces. That's more like it. And so when he and his bodyguards (why do you bring bodyguards to a funeral? ) didn't disperse at the order of the police the conversation went south.

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Cobb's Terminology

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Classes of Racism

The reasoning behind it has to do with the notion that all racist acts are not equal either in intent or effect. The state does have a compelling interest in insuring that society does not exclude groups but I don't see that it is useful in policing all instances of racist discriminations. For this reason I have come up with three classes of racist offense. These of course are informal and don't stand up to legalistic definitions but you should get the picture:

Class Three - Background Noise

This will include all such insults, slights and disrespect as is generally expected to be found everywhere in this nation. Examples include but are not limited to being ignored by cabbies, flying confederate flags, nazi propaganda, being mistaken for the help, being shown costume jewelry, being asked one's opinion of, or to account for the opinions of the Fungibles, and most nigger calls.

Class Two - Political Intransigence

Class Two racism involves denials of public accomodation or private standing which are not criminal, yet grossly unfair and unjust. Such acts would include imposition of glass cielings, racial profiling, white flight, medical misdiagnosis, educational tracking, false arrest, false imprisonment, racist vois dire, racist jury nullification, denials of service with plausible deniability, any institutional individual or institutional racism which must be tried in civil courts and all such active bigotry one associates with hate groups which fall short of incitement.

Class One - Crime

Theft, criminal defamation, cross burnings (now), hate crimes, murder, rape & all that stuff for which America has never made any extraordinary effort to repair.

 

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Cobb: Effective Resonance

Colorblindness cripples. How much it does so becomes apparent when its principles are applied without nuance. The plaintiffs who argued their case before the Supreme Court this week sounded to me to be of the persuasion that there should absolutely be no regard to color. This is a problem.

I'm not close enough to the law to understand what the Constitution directs historically with regard to its ability to percieve race but I do have a principle I think which ought to be applied. I call the idea 'effective resonance'.

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Cobb: The Old School Core Values

The Old School Core Values

Pride

We are African Americans of all backgrounds and ethnicities. We are proud of our heritage, and respect the lives, triumphs and tribulations of our forebears in this country and beyond. We aim to represent their greatest hopes for us and honor their memory.

Patriotism

The United States of America is our home, not simply by default but by choice. We take our duty to our home seriously and we defend it. We seek to improve it by our work and values and leave it better than we found it.

Family

We are extended families and we put family first. It is the primary organization to which our lives are dedicated. We fight for the proper upbringing of our children. We demand respect and consideration of our elders. We love and support our brothers and sisters.

Industry

We work twice as hard and sometimes get half as far, but we work with dignity and we expect and enjoy our rewards. We are not materialistic but we know the value of a dollar. We seek self-improvement through creativity, dedication and effort in our jobs, businesses and partnerships.

Piety

We have abiding faith in God and the principles of righteousness. We strive to be true to transcendent values and take the long view of our purpose on Earth. We conduct ourselves as vessels of spirit and we guard our own souls and the souls of others from corruption.

Liberty

We believe in the rule of law and rights of people to be free and to determine their own fate. We fight tyranny and oppression of all kinds keeping in mind the battles of those who struggled and died that we might be free.

Pluralism

We believe in a tolerant and open society, and we welcome all people to enjoy its benefits and responsibilities.

I've been thinking about a simpler way to express that perplexing thing that is my Conservatism. Yesterday somebody asked me about why I'm a Republican, suggesting that I'm a minority within a minority. I quickly replied that, no in fact I'm in the majority party whose president was re-elected, and then we (actually) went down that path of whether the President is legitimately the President. But then I got to the point of her question and headed back towards my epiphanies of 2003 which include references to Stalinism and respect for the middle class. Nothing I could explain without appearing to be an egghead, which I am, but every brilliant idea needs an elevator pitch.

For now, I'll stick to the core values, but I'm working on the pitch.

Quote of the Day - Nassim Taleb

After more than twenty years as a transactional trader and businessman in what I called the “strange profession,” I tried what one calls an academic career. And I have something to report— actually that was the driver behind this idea of antifragility in life and the dichotomy between the natural and the alienation of the unnatural. Commerce is fun, thrilling, lively, and natural; academia as currently professionalized is none of these. And for those who think that academia is “quieter” and an emotionally relaxing transition after the volatile and risk-taking business life, a surprise: when in action, new problems and scares emerge every day to displace and eliminate the previous day’s headaches, resentments, and conflicts. A nail displaces another nail, with astonishing variety. But academics (particularly in social science) seem to distrust each other; they live in petty obsessions, envy, and icy-cold hatreds, with small snubs developing into grudges, fossilized over time in the loneliness of the transaction with a computer screen and the immutability of their environment. Not to mention a level of envy I have almost never seen in business.… My experience is that money and transactions purify relations; ideas and abstract matters like “recognition” and “credit” warp them, creating an atmosphere of perpetual rivalry. I grew to find people greedy for credentials nauseating, repulsive, and untrustworthy.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2012-11-27). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Kindle Locations 579-589). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This is what I have learned over my lifetime in dealing with academics. It's so true. Here's another example of an antifragile tangent related to the simplicity of the Merlin Rocket engine. Rocket science is still rocket science, but the best is not needlessly complex. 

Murder by Numbers

That tiny little sliver is what has been obsessing America and some dude named Piers Morgan. This is about 30 minutes of work, which is more than it deserves. I've got all the stats in the archives. 

'mojo mm 30 years assault' is the figure of mass murders perpetrateds with assault rifles as defined by Mother Jones magazine for the past 30 years. I figured that since they went through all that trouble to point things out, they should have a line in this for the 35 deaths they claim. 

The first pie has one year of murders in Los Angeles overshadow all the mass murders shown. The second pie adds one year of food poisoning deaths give perspective. The third pie thows in automobile deaths which just really stamps the rest into insignificance. 

We all know that the sorts of people who want to step on the Second Amendment like to claim that they are 'reality-based', but here are the numbers they can't stomach.

A Rude Question About Gun Control, Mental Health & Race

When the Beltway Snipers, two black men, perpetrated their mass murder, America said, yes obviously they are crazy and it was just their insanity that made them evil killers. It has nothing to do with the dysfunction of American society. But when some white kid perpetrates mass murder, America thinks there must be something wrong with all of us - we need to control our guns because none of us can be trusted.

Well the reason is obvious. If mass-murderous rage can happen in a nice white community, there's obviously something wrong with all of American society. But if black people do some mass murder, well that's not really our civilization, our fault or our problem. Blame it on those crazy Negroes. They're special. 

John Allen Muhammed? Psychopath - completely unhinged, nothing he does reflects upon what America is about. Let's put this maniac under the jail as soon as possible. Insane. Evil. Guilty. Case Closed. 

Adam Lanza? - Well, he had some mental health challenges. We need to control guns and help people with mental illness. His story illustrates how America needs to get better. We ought to even reconsider the whole Second Amendment to the Constitution. 

Now say something. 

 

 

Spit in the Food

If a kiss tastes like nothing unless there's bad breath, candy or tobacco involved, how would I know if my waiter spit in my food? If your waiter spits in your food and you don't taste it, have you been insulted? What kind of satisfaction can a waiter get if the patron he wishes to insult cannot taste the spit in his food?  Why not just give him the finger when he's not looking? 

 

Tipping Deconstructed

I am starting to think from a new perspective that Mr Pink, from Reservoir Dogs, is correct. Play the world's smallest violin for all the waitresses. We have inherited all this tipping business without any good reason. If it's not mandatory, does it not mean that the market cannot sustain the higher price? Tipping is social coersion by extra-market forces, paying tips is like buying indulgences. It only matters, quite frankly, when you are talking to other people about your tipping habits. In economic speak, tipping is *signaling*. How many of us actually talk to the person we might tip about the reasons for tipping, no we talk to each other about that. Every time I tip, I realize that I am either, being morally self-congratulatory or on an expense account. A tip sends a message to the tipee only if it is very large or very small as regards the quality of service. But a normal tip sends no message at all to the tipee, but it always signifies something to the tipper.

Here's an experiment. (I've been reading Ariely). I bet that the amount of a tablemate's tip is a bigger influencer on tip size than the quality of service. Or back to the Tarantino movie, if there were more people in agreement with Mr. Pink it wouldn't matter how good the waitress was, she'd get a smaller or no tip.

I'm meticulous about my tipping and always tip everybody. It's a habit I picked up as a traveling consultant road warrior on expense accounts. I tip 20% rounded down to the nearest buck. I never write that amount, I just put in the bottom line and let them figure it out. If you want the money, do the math, I say.

I do distinguish.. now that I'm signaling I may as well got the whole nine..between waitstaff, cabbies, bellmen and janitors. My wife always tips the lady who cleans the hotel room. I don't know where that came from and I never do it. I never tip for takeout food. I tip cabbies but don't mind if I don't. The person I would never stiff is a bellhop or a shoeshine boy, no matter what.  

Hmm. Now whom do I cheat on a regular basis?

The Error of Coming To Jesus

What if it were the end of the world, or merely the end of your world? Where would you go? 

In Portsmouth, NH there is a church in the middle of town. No matter what you believe or don't believe about God, that church has been standing there over 400 years. What do you know that's 400 years old? Surely not Google. 

For a couple years now, I have been thinking about how democracy fails and how representative government fails, rather in the same way that I had previously been thinking how racial reasoning fails. Like many people at the turn of the century, I have been wondering why the future has arrived full of surprising successes and unexpected failures, and so I have come to give my attention to (among others) The Long Now, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim N. Taleb, David P. Goldman, Richard Fernandez and several others acting under pseudonyms. I don't expect everything to fail, and I don't expect to live in a world of zombies, but I am preparing my mind to work under those conditions. It's like gaming Fallout 3. Hopefully, I'm a quick study.

Without going into the details of which institutions I think will fail and what behaviors will emerge in various levels of educated and monied people, I am thinking of the act of desparate flailing when the floor collapses under you and you wake up some time later with the taste of blood in your mouth. You get up, stumble around for a moment, find out where you are and then vow never to walk that same stupid way again. Then of course you go look for an explanation and a hiding place. 

The church is a hiding place and so you might come to Jesus, testifying loudly and showing off your knocked out bloody teeth. And a priest will be smiling to himself and rubbing his hands together. You have traded one lost comfort for a newly found one which you hope to be eternal. And so you are a fool, the exact dimensions of which are known to the priest. His explanation will be hard to accept but sufficient for your desparation. Alas, you must commit coin. And you might find or at least be suspicious that it was that very priest who weakend the floor you fell through in the first place. 

Until you make that suspicion, and as you commit your coin, you have come to Jesus. You make the confession you expect the priest will accept (he will eventually give you the proper words) and you begin with a fresh start. But have you made an error?

As a Stoic, I say that you have unless you are significantly cynical (or stoical) and realize that you are merely building yourself another shelter from the dangers of the world - a shelter that itself will fail in the perfect storm. You must realize the strength of the bricks of the church building itself without regard to the confessions and promises held therein.

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My newest insight is that 'the people' are a force of nature. Like storms and wild beasts, they are not to be trifled with, but they can always be outwitted. Your only hope is that you don't have to outwit them spontaneously without prior preparation or they will mow you down, oblivious to your credentials. 

As I keep arguing with atheists (ok with the atheists inside my head), the point is not whether or not God exists in any verifyable and objective way, but what is verifyable and objective about the people who believe in God. For one thing, they are trying to be moral. For another, they build churches. And these churches end up lasting for centuries as generations of human beings fall through their respective floors. Not saying that the floors of all churches are bedrock, but 400 years is 400 years. That is a force of nature a wise man would not try to spontaneously outwit. 

The error is not in coming to Jesus, in this ironic regard, one cannot come too soon. The error is coming without preparation. No irony there at all. 

New Years Resolutions - 2013

Quick - Say it all before you stop caring.

• New refrigerator
• New Couch
• New XBox
• Calesthenics - 1 each per day to 100 each situps, pushups, 4 count jumping jacks
• Tai Chi
• New Bike
• Integrate Cubegeek & Cobb
• Move static websites to Amazon
• Move Limbo to Evernote
• Mac Mini
• Start Men's Meetup in SouthBay
• Find a Bar
• 35 Year Reunion
• Finish First Draft of Borky's Beach
• Read Classics {Middlemarch, Don Quixote, Finnegan's Wake}

That should cover the first half. 

Joy Is Everywhere

Christian Folk Mass code deep in my kernel. (c.f. Holy Name of Jesus School, 1973)

Erasing Transparency One Holiday At a Time

I used to debate Kwanzaa here at Cobb. It has been many years since I have. But I happened upon an old link and read some history. After reading that, I was reminded that GWBush wished us all a happy Kwanzaa for several years during his administration. It was something I would like to have in my archive. All I could find was this:

 

Bush Extends Greetings To All Celebrating KwanzaaUS Dept of State ^ | December 19, 2005 | George W. Bush 

Posted on Wed Dec 28 2005 11:40:33 GMT-0800 (PST) by presidio9

President Bush December 19 sent warm greetings to all who are celebrating Kwanzaa -- a seven-day observance emphasizing seven principles of African culture.

Kwanzaa, which will begin December 26, represents an African-American and pan-African holiday celebrating family, community and culture.

For additional information see Holidays and African Americans.

Following is the text of the statement:

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary December 19, 2005

December 2005

I send greetings to those observing Kwanzaa.

African Americans and people around the world reflect on African heritage during Kwanzaa. The seven days of this celebration emphasize the seven principles of Nguzo Saba -- unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. These values contribute to a culture of citizenship and compassion, and Kwanzaa activities help pass on African values and traditions to future generations.

As families and friends gather for Kwanzaa, Americans remember the many contributions African Americans have made to our country's character and celebrate the diversity that makes our Nation strong. May your commitment to family, faith, and community thrive during this holiday season and throughout the coming year.

Laura and I send our best wishes for a happy Kwanzaa.

Which is pretty good, except that I couldn't get it from the original link to the State Department where the official press release was hosted on the US Government website. It turns out that the current Administration has deleted the reference. Damn.

I have no doubt that I can access very few items from the previous administrations. There's no excuse.