Peggy Noonan on 3 things we've learned from the coronavirus pandemic

Peggy Noonan writes in a Wall Street Journal piece called "New York Is the Epicenter of the World":

New York

I asked for the dateline in pride for my beloved city. For the third time in 20 years it’s been the epicenter of a world-class crisis—9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and now the 2020 pandemic. No one asks… Why us? We think: Why not us? Of course us. The city of the skyscrapers draws the lightning. There are 8.6 million of us, we are compact, draw all the people of the world, and travel packed close in underground tubes.… The crises are the price we pay for the privilege of living in the most exciting little landmass on the face of the Earth.

What do we know? That we’ll get through it. We’ll learn a lot and it will be hard but we’ll get through, just like all the last times.

While that's an inspiring sentiment and I assume she's right that "we" as an overall collective will get through it, we should always remember that many of the individuals who make up that "we" did not get through it.

Noonan offers two more "thoughts about the meaning and implications of the pandemic." One is about immigration:

Public sentiment will back harder borders and a new path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living here.

Global pandemics do nothing to encourage lax borders. As to illegal immigrants, you have seen who’s delivering the food, stocking the shelves, running the hospital ward, holding your hand when you’re on the ventilator. It is the newest Americans, immigrants, and some are here illegally.

They worked through an epidemic and kept America going. Some in the immigration debate have argued, “They have to demonstrate they deserve citizenship”—they need to pay punitive fines, jump through hoops. “They need to earn it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, look around. They did.

Here is where the debate is going. When it’s over, if you can show in any way you worked through the great pandemic of ’20, you will be given American citizenship. With a note printed on top: “With thanks from a grateful nation.”

Relatedly, here's the latest cover of the New Yorker (here's an interview with the artist, Pascal Campion — clicking on that might limit your New Yorker articles if you don't subscribe):




Noonan's last point:

The hidden gift in this pandemic is that this isn’t the most terrible one, the next one or some other one down the road is. This is the one where we learn how to handle that coming pandemic. We are well into the age of global contagions but this is the first time we fully noticed, stopped short, actually reordered our country to fight it.

This is when we learn what worked, what decision made it better or worse, what stockpiles are needed, what can be warehoused, where research dollars must be targeted....

Knowledge of how to handle a coming, more difficult pandemic is being gained now, by all of us.

Photos of campaign 2016 in NYC

My goal with these photos was simply to document the various ways I saw people in New York City expressing themselves with respect to the 2016 presidential race. I don't intend these photos to express any of my own views about the candidates depicted or referenced in these images.

Click the link for all 17 photos — here's a sampling:

How two comedy greats went back to work after September 11, 2001

David Letterman on September 17, 2001:

Welcome to the Late Show. This is our first show on the air since New York and Washington were attacked. And I need to ask your patience and indulgence here. . . . If we are going to continue to do shows, I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes, and so, that's what I'm going to do here. It's terribly sad here in New York City. We've lost 5,000 fellow New Yorkers. And you can feel it. You can see it. . . . And watching all of this, I wasn't sure that I should be doing a television show. . . .

In the 20 years that we've been here in New York City, we've worked closely with the police officers and firefighters. And fortunately, most of us don't really have to think too much about what these men and women do on a daily basis. And the phrase "New York's finest" and "New York's bravest" — you know, did it mean anything to us personally, first-hand? Well, maybe, hopefully, but probably not. But boy, it means something now, doesn't it? They put themselves in harm's way to protect people like us. . . . And my hope for myself and everybody else . . . is that we never, ever take these people for granted. . . .

The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are . . . missing and dead, and they weren’t doing anything wrong, they were living their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what they normally do . . . as I understand it, and my understanding of this is vague at best — another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them into buildings. And we’re told that they were zealots, fueled by religious fervor. Religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamned sense?

I’ll tell you about a thing that happened last night. There’s a town in Montana by the name of Choteau. It’s about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border. And I know a little something about this town. It’s 1,600 people. And it’s an ag-business community, which means farming and ranching. And Montana’s been in the middle of a drought for, I don’t know, three years? And if you’ve got no rain, you can’t grow anything. And if you can’t grow anything, you can’t farm. And if you can’t grow anything, you can’t ranch, because the cattle don’t have anything to eat. And that’s the way life is in a small town, 1,600 people. Last night at the high school auditorium in Choteau, Montana, . . . they had . . . a rally . . . to raise money for New York City. And if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the . . . the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you. I’m sorry.

Rolling Stone notes that Letterman got married 8 years later in Choteau, Montana.

Notice how Letterman started out: "If we are going to continue to do shows . . ." That seems like a silly thing to say now. But back then, he was invoking a serious concern: it didn't seem to make sense for anyone to do a comedy show anymore. Everything seemed to have turned completely serious all of a sudden, and it was hard to imagine ever getting out of it. That's probably how people often feel in response to the death of a loved one — but that happens privately, not to the whole country at once.

It's interesting to compare how Letterman and Stewart dealt with the situation. In many ways, they were similar: they both highlighted inspiring Americans and lambasted the terrorists' way of life. But their emotional quality was different. Letterman was clearly rattled, but he also had a steadily controlled determination. Jon Stewart seemed absolutely raw and barely able to get through a sentence. He was speaking three days later than Letterman, but he seemed like he was speaking the day after the attacks. They were both great in their own ways.

This was Jon Stewart on September 20, 2001:

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

I'm sorry to do this to you. It's another entertainment show beginning with an overwrought speech of a shaken host, and television is nothing if not redundant. . . . They said to get back to work. And there were no jobs available for "a man in the fetal position under his desk crying" — which I gladly would have taken. So I come back here. . . .

We sit in the back and we throw spitballs, but never forgetting the fact that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that — that is, a country that allows for open satire. And I know that sounds like it goes without saying, but that's really what this whole situation is about. It's the difference between closed and open. It's the difference between free and burdened. And we don't take that for granted here. . . .

I wanted to tell you why I grieve, but why I don't despair. . . . One of my first memories is of Martin Luther King being shot. I was five. . . . That was a tremendous test of this country’s fabric. And this country’s had many tests before that and after that. And the reason I don’t despair is because — this attack happened. It’s not a dream. But the aftermath of it, the recovery, is a dream realized. And that is Martin Luther King’s dream. Whatever barriers we’ve put up are gone, even if it’s just momentary. And we’re judging people by not the color of their skin, but the content of their character.

And you know, all this talk about: “These guys are criminal masterminds. They got together, and their extraordinary guile, and their wit and their skill.” . . . It’s a lie! Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see . . . these firefighters, these policemen, and people from all over the country, literally, with buckets, rebuilding. That’s extraordinary. And that's why we’ve already won. It’s light, it's democracy. . . . They can’t shut that down. They live in chaos, and chaos, it can’t sustain itself. It never could. It’s too easy, and it’s too unsatisfying.

The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it’s gone. They attacked it! This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce, and it is gone! But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that.

So we’re going to take a break . . . and we’re going to get back to this. And it's going to be fun and funny, and it’s going to be the same as it was.

Now the World Trade Center is back. And we've recently said goodbye to David Letterman and Jon Stewart. They quietly played a role in helping America work through its feelings after the unthinkable happened.


(Photo by my mom, Ann Althouse.)

How the Uber vs. de Blasio fight can be explained by public choice theory

Liya Palagashvili writes:

The recent showdown between ride-sharing service Uber and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio provides a vibrant illustration of what we economists call “public choice”—basically, the study of politics through the lens of economic theory. Mayor de Blasio attempted to limit ride-sharing drivers, but Uber exposed this proposal, unleashing thousands of New Yorkers onto city council. After a weeklong public debate, de Blasio dropped the proposal. . . .

In the public choice framework, politicians are in the profession of maximizing votes, staying in office, and increasing campaign contributions. As a result, elected officials often face a tradeoff between satisfying public wants and catering to special interest groups, which donate to campaigns and lobby to politicians in order to advance their own goals. . . .

Ideally, de Blasio, who has received more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from the taxi industry, wanted to sweep his Uber cap proposal under the rug. Uber is quite popular in New York City and de Blasio may have wanted to cater to the special interest of the taxi companies without stirring backlash from his constituents. If de Blasio truly cared about road congestion (which became the public justification for the cap) and thought it was popular to demonize Uber, he could have been vocal about this position upfront. It looks good for a politician to trumpet favored positions—such as vilifying Wal-Mart and Wall Street, both of which de Blasio has criticized.

By going public with the proposal, Uber forced de Blasio to factor in the cost of catering to special interest groups. Uber’s strategy was a classic example of placing public pressure on politicians. This was why de Blasio had to provide a public justification for his proposal. He even wrote an op-ed that read much like a debate strategy of throwing mediocre arguments against the wall and hoping some of it will stick.

So, New Yorkers, who love their Uber and detest their nonexistent taxicabs on a rainy day, blasted this issue with a typical Big Apple uproar. Now what? De Blasio knows that ultimately the public elects him. And it’s too risky for his goal of staying in office to satisfy his special interest constituents. So he raised the white flag and downloaded the Uber app.

But why did Governor Cuomo and Comptroller Stringer side with Uber? First, it’s a popular position to hold, and few politicians want to miss an opportunity to rally around a fashionable flag. But more importantly, taxicab companies have no interest in providing campaign contributions to Governor Cuomo because the taxi medallion system is a local issue, not a state issue. This means that the mayor and New York City Council have discretion over important aspects of the taxi industry such as the number of taxi medallions and the barriers to entry for new competitors.

As a result, Governor Cuomo isn’t tied to the special interest of taxicab companies. But Stringer’s opposition to de Blasio is interesting as it stirs some speculation that Stringer may intend to run against de Blasio in the near future. In the game of politics, it makes sense for Stringer to side with Uber to boost his popularity.

What can we learn from this Uber fight and public choice economics? We need to have a more practical understanding of politics rather than indulging in a romantic notion that all policies intend to help residents or consumers. We often get bad policies because of self-interested exchanges between politicians and special interest groups. We shouldn’t fall head over heels every time politicians tell us they support a particular policy in order to “help the people.” Sometimes that’s just a façade for what is going on behind closed doors.

Happy belated 85th birthday to Thomas Sowell

The economist Thomas Sowell reflects on his 85 years. An excerpt:

After my 85th birthday last week, I looked back over my life and was surprised to discover in how many different ways I had been lucky, in addition to some other ways in which I was unlucky.

Among the things I did not know at the time was that I was adopted as an infant into a family with four adults, in which I was the only child.

All sorts of research since then has shown how the amount of attention and interactions with adults a child gets has a lot to do with the way the child develops. But of course I knew nothing about such things back then.

It was decades later, when I had a son of my own, that I asked one of the surviving members of the family how old I was when I first started to walk. She said, “Oh, Tommy, nobody knows when you could walk. Somebody was always carrying you.” . . .

Although I was raised by people with very little education, they were people who wanted me to get an education. They praised my every little accomplishment when I was very young, and I was taught to read by the time I was four years old, taught by someone with only a few years of schooling herself.

Years later, when I was promoted to the seventh grade, I was surprised by what a commotion it caused. Then I was told: “You have now gone further than any of us.” You don’t need a Ph.D. to help your child get an education. . . .

Not everything was wonderful in my family or in the world where I grew up in Harlem. But, as I learned from later research, the homicide rate in New York when I was growing up was lower than it had been in the years before, and much lower than it would be in the years afterward.

I cannot recall ever hearing a gunshot, or even having to think about gunshots when I slept out on the fire escape on hot summer nights.

The New York City schools were among the best in the country in those days, better than they had been for the European immigrants before me and much better than they would be for the mass influx of blacks from the South after me.

As for bad luck, there were years of that, too. But I learned a lot from that bad luck, so I am not sure that it was all bad luck in the long run. And 85 years is a very long run.

The only NYC subway station without rats

"The Second Avenue subway is the only line in the city that doesn’t have rats — yet. They move in when the people come and leave trash."

(Warning: That's a New York Times link which could affect how many NYT articles you can read this month.)

Overheard on the NYC subway

Two British girls in a whole class of high-school students taking the 1 train uptown to 59th St.:

Did you know we're going to Central Park?

What's Central Park?

It's just a park!

Observations in the aftermath of Sandy

1. The traffic in the blackout areas of Manhattan is lawless in the most literal sense: the traffic lights aren't working, so the law cannot be applied as usual. But "lawless" doesn't seem to be a fitting description; the driving seems better-behaved than usual. We're so used to seeing people act under a system of government rules that it's easy to assume that without the rules, everything would descend into chaos. But perhaps free people are generally capable of acting decently on their own. Of course, that's never going to be universal; but then, people break the law too. In fact, a dense set of rules tempts people to see how close to (or how far across) the borderline of legality they can go without being penalized. In the absence of governmental laws, people might focus more on other kinds of laws: social norms and ethics.

[Added: There actually is a law that applies when the traffic lights aren't working, but people probably don't know about that law, and they definitely aren't following it. We never get the chance to do a pure experiment on how people would act in the absence of any government, but this is closer to such an experiment than we usually get.]

2. Whenever there's a high-profile disaster, whether it's a storm or a mass murder or terrorism, so many people's instinct is to declare that their political ideology has been vindicated.

3. I like Adele, but the people who work at Starbucks must get tired of listening to nothing but Adele.

An opossum is on a Brooklyn subway, and the New York Times is surprised.

An article in the New York Times from earlier this week says:

Last Friday — yes, it happened to be the 13th — the straphangers on a late-night D train were startled to discover that a nonhuman creature was in their midst. An opossum, to be precise.

The intrepid marsupial, which had apparently boarded after the train departed from its Coney Island terminus, had curled up beneath a seat, comfortably close to a radiator, as the train rattled through the wilds of Brooklyn.

There were several reasons this was rather strange.

For one thing, opossums tend to like trees. They are not big burrowers, although they have been known to venture below ground in search of food or warmth. And unlike rats or pigeons (often seen on A trains in the Rockaways), they do not commonly carouse within the city’s mass transit system. . . .

Neither the Police Department nor New York City Transit keeps statistics on subway animal incursions. But officials from both agencies said that such an occurrence was rare.

“A wild animal? This is the first anybody could remember,” said Charles F. Seaton, a transit authority spokesman, who sounded quite amused by the tale.

Back in 2010, I blogged an article in the New York Post that would seem to explain why we're seeing opossums in unusual places:

The city played possum -- and Brooklyn residents lost.

In a bizarre attempt to outwit Mother Nature, city officials introduced beady-eyed opossums in Brooklyn years ago to scarf down rats running amok in the borough, according to local officials.

Surprise: Operation opossum didn't work.

Not only do wily rats continue to thrive, but the opossums have become their own epidemic, with bands of the conniving creatures sauntering through yards, plundering garbage cans and noshing on fruit trees.

They've even taken up golf, with two sightings of the whiskered marsupials at the Dyker Heights municipal course in the past week, local officials said.

"They are everywhere," said Theresa Scavo, chairwoman for Community Board 15, which represents Sheepshead Bay and surrounding south Brooklyn neighborhoods.

"Didn't any of those brain surgeons realize that the opossums were going to multiply?" . . .

The opossums were set free in local parks and underneath the Coney Island boardwalk, with the theory being they would die off once the rats were gobbled up, said Councilman Domenic Recchia (D-Brooklyn).

Instead, the critters have been populating, spreading to Park Slope and Manhattan. . . .

The critters have a mouth full of 50 sharp teeth, tend to exude a foul odor, and can occasionally contract rabies, said Stuart Mitchell, an entomologist.

Which American city overpays the most in federal taxes, relative to the federal benefits it receives?

San Francisco. Another one of the most overpaying cities is New York City.

Two first-hand accounts of the attacks of September 11, 2001, by the same person

Penelope Trunk wrote this on September 12, 2001 (on her blog and for Time magazine):

At the Wall St. train stop people were covered with papers. A plane crash. That's what everyone said. Then a boom. Everyone ran. I ran to my office and called my brother in the Midwest.

I wanted to be closer. At the corner of Church and Broadway, I angled my way through a large, packed crowd to get the best view. We talked about people jumping. The police stood behind the yellow tape. Minutes later, there was a boom. I thought it was a bomb, so I crouched, but people ran, so I ran. I couldn't see anything. I don't know how far I ran. Couldn't see where I was running. Didn't know if I was in a street or next to a building. Didn't know what street I was on. No one could talk because the dust filled our throats. After about ten steps I tripped over a pile of people and then people tripped on me.

I laid there. The only sound was the falling of dust and debris. No one moved under me. The weight of people on top of me got heavier. I couldn't breathe. I knew we were all going to die in that pile. I pulled myself out of the pile. My slip-ons slipped off. I stood up and saw nothing. Not even an inch in front of me. I put my hands out and felt for something. I bumped into the brick side of a building. I bumped into milk crates. I stopped. I had no idea what to do, and I knew everyone around me was suffocating. I thought about my mom and dad, they would be so sad to hear that I died. I thought about my husband. Just married and I will not get to live my life with him. I thought about my brothers. They would cry. I told myself to just keep trying to find a way to air, but I didn't believe I would live.

I bumped into something that I could feel the top of, so I lifted myself up. I worried I was going into the back of a dump truck, and I was scared I'd be trapped. I didn't know if there was fire, or a bomb. I didn't know how to protect myself — find air. Go up? — so I didn't know for sure that a dump truck would be bad. I think it was scaffolding. I think I jumped over piles of bodies by climbing scaffolding.

I pulled myself into a building. What building? I don't know. And I took a breath. I took two breaths. I was sure the building would be bombed. I looked for stairs. I kept thinking I needed clean air. I found a bathroom. I didn't realize I wanted water until it was there. Four men inside. Two fighting over the faucet. I shared the toilet with another man. We drank almost the whole bowl.

Once the four of us were calmed by water and air, we ventured outside the bathroom. We walked up stairs. Slowly. We checked doors behind us, left them all open. We got up only one floor. We waited. I cried. They shared one can of apple juice.

The intercom in the building announced stay where you are. I was so relieved to know people knew we were there. The intercom announced again and I thought another bomb would go off and I'd die. I cried. The guy with the apple juice put his arm around me. I wondered why no one else cried. The intercom announced to go down the stairs. I picked up a wastebasket: I planned to fill it with water. Planned to use it to shelter myself from the next bomb. (I still had no idea the building collapsed.)

In the lobby of the building someone gave me a Nantucket Nectar and told me to vomit. I walked outside the building with the drink in my wastebasket. There was no one around. White everywhere. The four of us had nowhere to go. I couldn't remember where I was. I walked toward the water. Police directed everyone north. I asked a woman next to me, "Where are we going?" She said, "I don't know." She had no dust. She looked so steady. I followed her. This was the beginning of her long protection.

She said, "You can walk home with me. You need a shower." I coughed. She asked why I was carrying a wastebasket. I said, "In case there's another bomb." She held onto my arm as we made our way next to the river. In Chinatown, she bought me shoes. At the Bowery we finally found a payphone that didn't have a line of people. So she called her husband and I sat down next to my wastebasket. It was the first time I sat down, and I started crying.

We resumed walking. Sometimes we ran. I made sure to keep up and I didn't tell Teresa that I was worried that I would faint. I drank Nantucket Nectar every time I got dizzy.

At 59th St. a plane went overhead and I screamed. In front of Bloomingdales. There was no one there from Wall St. I knew I looked crazy. I screamed anyway. I reminded everyone there were no planes allowed to fly. Someone said, "It's the army." I came out from under my wastebasket and kept walking. Theresa's apartment was 71st on the Upper West Side. Where everyone looked fine.

In the shower, dripping debris down my body, I remembered one more moment under the rubble. When I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't see. In the middle of the dead quiet was a voice. He said, "Is there anyone here? Can someone hold my hand?" I reached out to the voice, and held his hand. It was shaking and the skin was old. I squeezed and then I let go.

10 years later, here's her very different description of the same events:

I was there when the first tower fell. I was so close to it that I could not even see what had happened. I didn’t run. I ducked for cover. I got trampled. By the time I could stand up, everything was completely dark.

I remember the moment I realized I should close my mouth and stop breathing. Time got so slow. I remember thinking that if I had stopped breathing sooner, I would have had a few extra breaths right now. I remember thinking don't swallow, because there was too much stuff in my mouth.

I thought to myself that I had no idea what to do to save my life. I was in the dark and couldn’t breathe. I thought I’ll only be alive for maybe a minute longer, so I only have to keep trying to figure out how to save my life for one more minute. I told myself I can’t give up until I pass out. I remember that I hoped for a fast death.

Then something switched in me. I was okay dying. I felt okay with whatever level of pain I had before I died. I thought of my two brothers. I wanted them to be okay. To be fine. And I hoped someone would help them deal with my death. I thought of my husband, and I was so disappointed to not see our life unfold together.

That evening, after I had been to the hospital, after I had both eyes patched up, my husband finally told me both towers fell. That evening, I still thought the time that I was in the dark was maybe ten minutes. Now I realize that the time when I could not breathe was probably less than a minute. I had accepted the pain and my death after only 30 seconds.

Today, she posts to Twitter:

My mom called me this morning. She was crying. She said she remembers thinking I was dead. She never cries.

Keep an eye on Hurricane Irene with these web cams.

Times Square

Empire State Building

Charging Bull (near Wall Street)

Chelsea Piers (begins with ad)

Somewhere in Lower Manhattan

Grand Central Terminal before Hurricane Irene hits

(Photos by MTAPhotos.)

Overheard at brunch

Roger Ebert has written that only in movies does someone go to a bar and just order a "beer" without being more specific. He calls it the movies' "Generic Drinker Syndrome." Well, I overheard this today at brunch in Yaffa Cafe:

Customer: "I need something to drink. Alcohol."

Waiter: "Mimosa? Beer?"

Customer: "Anything."

Going to Whole Foods in NYC last night while everyone is stocking up for Hurricane Irene

[UPDATE: Some of the photos were missing before. They're all here now.]

On the way there, you see the subway has been closed:



I went to Whole Foods at around 9 p.m. last night, and people had taken almost all the bottled water:



And bread:



And chips:



You can tell that blue corn is the least popular kind of chips. "We'll only eat them if we have to." If this is what it looks like when there's a mad rush for chips, how do blue corn chips ever sell under normal conditions?

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help — Hurricane Irene Edition

This is the New York City government's idea of how to protect me from Hurricane Irene, which is expected to move up here on Sunday or Monday:

I'm in a "hurricane evacuation zone" because I live on a certain street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

If I lived just 3 short blocks away (one-tenth of a mile, according to Google Maps), I wouldn't be in a "zone."

(If you live in NYC, you can look up whether you're in a zone here, though I ended up getting this information by calling 311 since that website is extremely slow.)

What does it mean for me to live in a "zone"? If the city issues a "hurricane evacuation order," the government will order me to leave my home "immediately" and either (a) stay in an area that's not in a "zone" (which, again, could be as close as 3 blocks away) or (b) go to a "hurricane center." Where's the closest "hurricane center"? Oh, between 192nd and 193rd St. In order to get there, I'd need to travel almost the whole length of Manhattan.

There are 8 million people in this city. Can you imagine what the stampede coming from Manhattan and the Bronx to converge on that hurricane center would be like if people took these rules seriously?

Now, possibly the biggest risk from the hurricane is flooding. Fortunately, I don't live on the basement or ground floor of my apartment building; I live on the 3rd floor. So I'm not very worried about my apartment getting flooded. But if there is a "hurricane evacuation order," and if I happen to have a friend who lives in a non-zone — even on the basement or ground floor — the government will tell me to stay at that apartment instead of my own.

[ADDED: Some people have suggested that the zones might make sense if there's a significant difference in elevation between the area in the zone and the area outside the zone. Well, I walk to and from those areas almost every day, and it's pretty much a flat expanse of land.]

What's really going on here is that the government is trying to signal that it is taking the hurricane very, very seriously — so seriously that it has a plan for evacuating a large portion of the city. The truth is, that's impossible. So the government makes up some arbitrary rules, as if the hurricane is going to carefully observe these neat distinctions between the various streets of Greenwich Village.

Why can't the government show that it cares by releasing general advisory guidelines, and then let individuals use their own judgment based on their specific circumstances?

Why we'll never go back to Zucco Le French Diner, a restaurant/bar in NYC's Lower East Side

I posted this to my Facebook wall:

Waiter/bartender at Zucco Le French Diner asked us to move from our table (where we had been sitting for a while) to the bar to have dinner, because there were only 2 of us and "there's a party of 5 here; I could lose them if I don't seat them at your table." Well, you just lost 2 customers for good.

Response #1:

He should have asked nicely and offered you free drinks/desserts. It can be fun to sit at the bar. _____ and I often choose to when tables are available, but it's bad to be treated brusquely.

I say:

He was definitely brusque. When we said no, we wanted to stay at the table, he didn't seem to accept this.

Response #2:

Unfortunately a restaurant like that probably has enough demand they can afford to be jerks to the occasional small party. Or they are really pushing that rude-French shtick.

My response:

Yeah, he probably figures his restaurant is so small, and there are so many potential customers, that he can afford to be rude whenever it will directly serve the bottom line. I don't agree with that calculus, but I understand it.

To be more specific about why I said I disagree with the calculus: if they truly just wanted to maximize profits, the way to do it wouldn't be to rudely shift their already-seated customers around to try to seat as many people as possible at each table. They should try to create as much customer satisfaction and good will as possible, so more people want to go there — even if this means more people want to go there than can physically fit into their cramped Manhattan restaurant. Insofar as the demand exceeds the space, they should raise their prices just enough to tamp down demand while keeping the restaurant full.

When I choose to give my money to a restaurant or bar, it's not just to have them give me food and drinks, but to have an overall experience. Most places seem to understand this, because if they didn't, it would hurt them in the long run.

Metablog

I hate those blog posts that say sorry the blogging has been sparse lately . . . but sorry the blogging has been sparse lately.

Two weeks ago, I accepted a job offer in New York City. Since then, I've gotten an apartment in the East Village and packed up my stuff in Albany. I'm very excited about the new job and the new neighborhood. I spent over a year looking for this, but in the end, I really couldn't have hoped for things to have turned out better for me.

I start the job today, and I'll be going back to Albany tonight in order to move my stuff downstate. On New Year's Day, I'll finally be living again in the city where I was born, and where I belong.

There was also a nice Christmas vacation in the middle of all that. So, things have been pretty hectic, and I haven't been focusing on the blog.

I might not be blogging much in the next week or two either, since I'll still be getting settled in. But I'll be back.

Fareed Zakaria has done a great thing.

He just gave back a prize, including a chunk of money, that he received in 2005 from the Anti-Defamation League, to protest their opposition to building a mosque near Ground Zero. He explains:

The ADL’s mission statement says it seeks “to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.” But Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL, explained that we must all respect the feelings of the 9/11 families, even if they are prejudiced feelings. “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted,” he said. First, the 9/11 families have mixed views on this mosque. There were, after all, dozens of Muslims killed at the World Trade Center. Do their feelings count? But more important, does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they’re victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?

Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation.

What should we learn from Hugo Tale-Yax, the homeless man in Queens who lay dying on the street while no one stopped to help?

This seems to be the feel-bad-about-humanity story of the moment:

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax’s last act may have been helping a woman who was having an argument with another man last Sunday morning in Queens. But his last hour or so was spent as a curiosity for people passing him on the street as he lay face down in blood after being stabbed several times.

Mr. Tale-Yax, 31, was pronounced dead by medical workers who responded to a 911 call around 7:20 a.m. on April 18. The police confirmed the authenticity of surveillance video on The New York Post’s Web site that shows dozens of people walking by Mr. Tale-Yax, who was homeless, lying on the sidewalk at 144th Street and 88th Road in Jamaica. After more than an hour, the video shows one man shake Mr. Tale-Yax before turning him over to reveal the wounds.

This Metafilter thread about the story shows a wide range of different reactions. The standard response is that this is like the famous incident with Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed (also in Queens), and slowly died in public as many people failed to help. (I'd be remiss if I didn't note that this account has been seriously called into question.)

This supposedly shows the "bystander effect": people don't help someone in distress if there are many other people around. (Incidentally, this is at odds with the conventional wisdom that seemingly altruistic behavior is actually done out of a self-interested desire to appear benevolent: people are apparently more likely to be good Samaritans if there's no one watching.)

A related reaction is that the Tale-Yax incident is even worse than the Genovese incident:

For the first time in history, most of these people could have called 911 using an object in their pocket. Most people fundamentally suck. You've just got to try to be different.

Another reaction is: we shouldn't castigate the passers-by, because they probably had no idea what was going on. Tale-Yax probably just looked like an ordinary homeless person. Yes, he was lying in a pool of his own blood, but his body may have been covering up the blood. A Metafilter commenter elaborates on this:

I'm sorry, but when you are walking early in the morning and see a homeless man face-down on the sidewalk (a not-infrequent occurrence), you assume they are passed out drunk, because 90% of the time they are. You don't stop to see if they're okay, because that can turn into a dangerous situation if they awaken still intoxicated. I say this as a social worker who genuinely cares for the plight of the homeless and understands that the majority of the time their circumstances are caused by mental illness that they didn't have the resources to treat. But, I'm also a person who cares for her personal safety and lives in NYC and would likely have walked on by too, not assuming the worst.

It's also worth considering this commenter's experience:

I'm a woman, and I've been threatened by homeless dudes in various states of inebriation/mental confusion a few times in NYC. Just for walking too close/sharing a subway car. It's as terrifying as you expect, and pretty much removed my willingness to go up to homeless strangers and help them unasked.

But my favorite reaction is this one from another Metafilter commenter:

I guess the way to reconcile this is to say: the problem isn't that people walked on by without calling for help, and from this we can conclude that people suck; the problem is that it is so common and unremarkable to see human beings so totally destitute and outcast that they are, for all appearances, lying dead in the street, that when one of them actually is dead, because he has recently been murdered, nobody can tell the difference.