Race Report: Chicago to (maybe) Boston

Well this has been a long time coming. Here's a race report from the Chicago Marathon which was over a month ago, on October 12. It was my first marathon that I actually trained for with a specific time goal in mind – sub-3:35 – so about five months of training and pain was about to pay off or be completely wasted, depending on the result.

Part II: In Which We Read "The Tyranny of Experts": North America FTW!

So I finished the second third of The Tyranny of Experts. This part was about the “Blank Slate” – this notion that non-Western countries are masses of chaos just waiting for a technocrat to come along and impose the order which automatically yields improvements in education, health, and economics. Easterly illustrated this with Bill Gates' myopic reliance on the temporary decrease in child mortality rates over five years in Ethiopia as conclusive proof of effective autocratic governance.

What the book says

Basically, prioritization of individual or autocratic rights hundreds of years ago carries implications for current matters such as trade, democracy, and rates of organ donation. For example, medieval free cities with histories of individual rights, commerce, and government by a council of rotating members were better prepared to fight against military intervention than autocratically-governed societies with a “collectivist” (read: conformist and non-challenging) citizen experience. So one result of a collective versus individual focus is incentives – people with an individual investment will be more driven to defend their rights and society and resources than people who are spending half their time working for others' benefit.

The Rule of Law. A Lake.

I'm visiting my parents this week in Michigan. Here's what I'm looking at whilst typing this:  

There is really no way to express the contrast between the water in Brighton Beach (cloudy, salty, thick, full of jellyfish and other biological chunks, but still nice in its awkward way) and the water here (clear, blue, fresh, crisp, clear, 20 feet of visibility, chunk-free, and clear). Hell, you probably wouldn't even need to tow water on your swim since you could just sip the lake when you got thirsty and be fine.

A thing I can never get over is the ability to be in a physical place that has nothing to do with what's going on in one's head. When I was 10 years old and romping around with my little friends on the deck where I'm sitting in back of my parents' house, it would be inconceivable that I'd be back on a visit from New York and sitting here thinking about the rule of law and governance as applied to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals – yet that's exactly what I'm doing.

Race Report: The Aquathling

Saturday was NYCSwim's last edition of the Stars & Stripes Aquathlon – a 1.5K swim followed by a 5K run on Randall's Island. Like a triathlon, but without the only sport I can't do. I've wanted to try this race for years and finally got to overcome the high entry fee with a volunteer credit from last year. Boat observers FTW!

As there was no bike involved I figured there was a decent chance to place in my age group, especially after comparing my recent swim and run times to last year's results. This was the first time I paid any attention to my predicted finish relative to previous results of an event – it helped that the field was on the small side – and I liked having a competitive goal instead of just trying to do well relative to my efforts.

So now for the race report.

Some much-needed inspiration

I went to an event at The New School a few weeks ago which may or may not have involved corruption, international legal intrigue, judicial bribery, and harassment via courts of law – in other words, the resource curse and research that students at my alma mater did to combat the problem on behalf of an anti-corruption NGO.

Race Report Redux

Today was the 2014 Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Race.  The basic route runs from the point where this photo was taken to just before the second bridge, at the bottom right-ish.

Is that water not the most ridiculously inviting blue you've ever seen?! 

Anyway, I did this race when I was in Istanbul for research last year, so in the interest of nostalgia for amazing swims I present my race report from the 2013 edition.

Part I: In Which We Read "The Tyranny of Experts"

William Easterly published a new book, called “The Tyranny of Experts:  Economists, Dictators, andthe Forgotten Rights of the Poor,” which examines how would-be do-gooders such as humanitarians, bureaucrats, and developmental economists have historically prized economic growth over the rights of the individuals they’re presumably trying to help.  Easterly says not only has this jeopardized the life and property of people in developing nations, but even as an economic policy it’s bad and counterproductive.

A while ago I went to the book’s launch and Easterly’s lecture on it.  I picked up a copy (and got it signed, whoopee!) and I’m finally getting the chance to read a book the way it’s meant to be read - slowly, deliberately, and without grad school deadlines!  Ah, the glory.  Anyway, the first third retraces the origins of current development theories, and here are some thoughts about it.

If I die on a run I'll die happy.

Of course I left work late on the day I put off my 13 miles until the evening.  Part of me was (as usual) tempted not to go but after walking in the front door I just threw on my running shoes and left again right away.  Good thing too, since it ended up being one of the best-feeling and most unexpectedly enjoyable runs in recent memory.

Going off the deep end

Every time I swim in a new pool with a proper deep end, like 9 feet or more, I have an "oh shit" moment as I come over the edge of the shallow end and see the full depth. Then I usually start laughing while trying not to choke.  It's kind of fun, I hope I don't get used to it.
This is especially entertaining given that I have no idea how deep the water is off Coney Island where I swim in the summers. Doubtless not very impressive in the grand scheme of things but probably more than 15 feet. I wonder if I could see the depth would I still do it... 
"Sure" I would.

Everything's coming up facilitation.

In college I had a class on intergroup dialogue facilitation – my groups were women of color and white women – which had all kinds of long-lasting detrimental effects like a persistent habit of identifying as feminist and an occasional tendency toward annoying social-justice-speak. But in large part, practice in active listening, group observation, fostering trust and maintaining impartiality, and intergroup power dynamics fell by the wayside after college; law school doesn't really lend itself to “fostering communication,” unless you're trying to tell to the court how opposing counsel is a troglodyte whose arguments are a Threat to the Rule of Law Itself. Recently, though, these concepts have been emerging again in ways that would allow a nice “I-told-you-so” in the direction of everyone who was skeptical about such a use of my tuition dollars.

In which a young Dana discovers that impressions of Nancy Drew do not predict reality.

When I was growing up and reading a lot of Nancy Drew books, I came across one that sent her to Istanbul. It described something like how the people there were wearing a mix of veils and “Western dress.” So in my head I made up an image of half of Turkish women in burqas and half in, like, gingham dresses with aprons and cowboy boots.

That image kept popping back up when I was in Turkey last summer. I don't think it's quite what the author meant.

Various and sundry reasons for running

I came within 90 seconds of a Boston-qualifying time of 3:34:59 at the inaugural Central Park Marathon last year. Didn't really mean to; it was a February race a few weeks into my last semester of grad school, so I didn't have much of a plan and ran mostly by feel. (Which apparently is a reliable way to PR – who knew.) Afterward I stumbled around looking for my half-marathoning friends who'd stashed themselves on a hill with a flask -- it was the bleak midwinter, after all -- to cheer. Sure enough, they pounced on me soon thereafter and off we all limped to a glorious and egg-filled celebration.

So the 2^nd Central Park Marathon is coming up this weekend and I've been thinking about the last one as well as other happy running memories. The kind that don't really consist of any real story but only an image, a feeling, and a warm fuzzy. Thus, in no particular order and for no particular reason, I give you...

Camels and Corruption: Two Things Bill Gates Doesn't Get

When you use an analogy to show the contrast between two things, it helps if the analogized items are as different as the items they're supposed to describe. “That's like comparing apples and oranges,” you say – not “comparing oranges and navel oranges.”

But in the 2014 edition of his foundation's annual letter, Bill Gates compares the difference between worldwide income distribution in 1960 with that in 2012 using the example of a “camel world” (with two humps representing the income in the then-developing world and wealthier countries) contrasted to a “dromedary world” (representing the gradual convergence in income levels between the “West and the rest”). Given that a dromedary is a kind of camel, Gates' classification doesn't make a lot of sense if he's trying to set up a contrast between these two curves.

...OK, fine, so it's hair-splitting. (Maybe with an element of glee derived from the fact that your humble blogger can call out a billionaire techie philanthropist extraordinaire on his camel taxonomy [even one responsible for Windows 8].) That's one view; another is that it actually provides a neat illustration of how Gates misunderstands one of the largest obstacles to development in a considerable number of countries, i.e. corruption.