Hops for Hope

After 42 hours of training to volunteer at the Boulder Safehouse, I think I can safely say that conversations on race, gender and sexuality are sorely lacking in our society. In particular, I will add that being a member of a marginalized or minority group makes it incredibly difficult to make your voice heard.

Despite the long hours of sensitivity training and responsibility-taking and realizations that floated through the air over those three weeks, I was rather surprised that there was very little talk of sensitivity training around serving people with disabilities. In my limited time working the crisis line (an hour, yes, I know, it's minimal), I've already come into contact with victims of domestic violence who suffer from learning disabilities, physical disabilities that resulted from abuse and victims with perhaps undiagnosed neuroses.

However, I am also aware that I might be hyper-astute when it comes to such issues. Though I often tell Ryan that I forget she is in a wheelchair, there are times when it is painfully obvious. Last week, we went for a swim at the CU rec center. The lifeguard appropriately offered her the pvc pipe chair to go down the ramp, but after her insistence that she didn't want it, he hovered. He came right up to us and stood over her as she moved from her chair to the ground and into the water. During our entire swim, he paced along the lane with her and he was no less vigilant when we got out of the pool an hour later. I have been a lifeguard, and I understand that you want to avoid accidents, to minimize response time should something happen, but following someone who is clearly a competent swimmer because she presented herself in a wheelchair is no less discriminatory than following a black man around a store because he's black. The lifeguard's excuse was "I've never seen you around here before", but it was simply code for "I thought you were going to f* up". Unless he does it for every swimmer that comes in, it's simply a discriminatory practice.

I don't know how I got going on this. The purpose of this post was to note that I was very fortunate to attend a fundraiser for Ryan's physical therapy program this weekend at the Auto Museum in Lakewood. Ry has been working with SCI Recovery Project for almost two years now (?) and has always immensely enjoyed her time there. Dave Hart (above) and his gang do a great job of fostering independence and physical strength in patients with debilitating spinal cord injuries.

I'm very grateful for each day that I get to spend with Ry, and I'm grateful for each day that she gets to spend at SCI, getting back in shape, working on her core strength and generally improving her quality of life.

Oh, the wonders of photography

A very cool article from the NYTimes to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can hardly believe it's been twenty years. I remember it so vividly and I was so little.

1359

I've never really known that many people that blog, besides Quico, that is. Or to put it more correctly, I've never known that many people who had managed to keep up on blogging for long. Most people did it on a whim, on an extended trip abroad or something, a way to keep in touch without flooding inboxes with daily updates about dahl. Given that, I find it funny that I now know quite a few women who blog and almost all of them took part in National Blog Writing Month, posting every single day. If you don't think that's funny, at least humor me when I say I barely opened this blog during NaBloWriMo, as it's so lovingly called.

Today was kind of tough, and though I certainly don't like to come her to just bitch, I won't say that it hasn't happened once or twice (or several times). However, this evening I was compelled by a very unique dinner and drinks experience.

Right about the time I was trying to convince Jen to love the Women's Bean Project as much as I do, the women who I was introduced to WBP with suddenly came back into my life. In middle school and high school I went through friend phases, just like every girl going through that stage, but these women were there through the whole thing. Despite our unwillingness to own up to the nerdiness of what we were actually doing, 1359 was an incredibly safe space for me growing up. It didn't matter that we weren't taking classes together, that we had switched schools or didn't hang out every Friday night. It was a space for volunteering, for escape and though I don't think I realized it at the time, I very much cherished the variety of experiences that made up our little group.

It shrunk, of course, over the years, and ultimately we ended up with six of us finishing our senior year. Some, we reminisced, we had sort "mean-girl"-ed out of the group. Others, who knows. Over margaritas and really hot (temperature hot) Mexican-ish food, we laughed about choreographed dances and sock-hops and puppy chow and the ridiculousness that was 1359.

We are just as diverse as ever. Three married, three not (one of the latter in NYC and couldn't come). Two who eschewed the Mrs thus far are working on the Dr instead. We are a firefighter, an interior designer/sewing machine salesperson, an internal auditor for gold mines, a vet-to-be, an economist.

And two hours just flew by. Even after ten years, there are still things to laugh about.

Happy Diwali

That's all I have for today. It's been a long week. Maybe some Indian food is in order...

It happened

Ry and I have been joking about it for years now. But they got old; we got old. Some of my students are her old students!

Reason # 437 that I will never be a financial economist

All I really get from this article is that the government is getting in on the act of profiting from the TARP funds that were distributed to banks over the past year or so. While it's probably not bad that the taxpayers are getting a return on the massive amounts of debt and liability they shouldered, bringing the financial system back to life, it's also indicative of just how freaking confusing our system is . Am I wrong that it also seems to point to endless opportunities for arbitrage?

So confused.

Regulating Banker Pay

One of the hardest things to teach in a principles of microeconomics course is the concept of short term and long term. Neither term has any defined length of time associated with it, yet the ramifications of mixing them up are huge. Depending on the industry, the city, the good, the labor involved, short term can be anywhere from a few minutes to a few years. And thus long term can be anywhere from a day or so to decades to centuries.

A lot of the debate on new banking regulations has to do with bonuses and the pay scheme for bankers. It's understandable, as those large bonuses are some of the most conspicuous thorns in the taxpayer's side.

Did I really just allow that much of my tax dollar be used so that those guys can go back to making millions while I teach economics for a ridiculously paltry sum every year? Yes, I did.

But even beyond the populist argument for limiting pay is a an argument put very well by Paul Krugman in the NYTimes this week. The cycle of booms and busts is likely very heavily dependent on banker compensation. Rewarding profit-making sounds well and good. And we might think it unfair to punish those whose decisions cause losses amid recessions and large market swings. In general, those two waves of thought dominate, but are incredibly contradictory. Ultimately, if we think their decisions caused large gains, then their decisions should also be responsible for large losses when they happen. But as bankers face no pay cut if large losses build up, there is only the incentive to take on very large risks. Very large risks can lead to very large reward or nothing for that individual. Even with a slight probability of success, the best option for an individual is take the risk, even if it means causing losses, beause that individual doesn't bear the cost of his decision, only the reward.

In a sense, it's a bit like driving and greenhouse gasses. If I drive my car to the store to pick up something I forgot yesterday, I'm putting a good bit of pollution into the air. That pollution however, gets spread out and only a tiny fraction of it actually affects my air quality. In addition, if I didn't drive, if I rode my bike instead, someone else reaps all of the benefit--a closer parking space, less traffic, making a light he might not have--while I just have the hassle of fitting a head of lettuce in my backpack. The pollution I didn't emit doesn't necessarily make my air quality better, though. So, in essence, I don't pay the full costs of my driving.

It's not exactly analogous, but the distribution of costs and benefits is what is important. If we can somehow make bankers more accountable for their risky behavoir, then we would likely see that behavior diminish. If you made gasoline really expensive, I'd likely walk or ride my bike to the store even though it's a bit of a hassle.

But this is where the long-term/short-term problem comes into play. In banking, what is the long term? Bonuses are typically yearly, rewarding good years and indifferent in bad years. Is the long term 5 years? 10? The tenure of an employee? It seems like most schemes would ultimately find a group that isn't happy about it.

But maybe that's ok.