Crude simulations

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on several learning and teaching techniques at various institutions. In Stage Simulations, for example, Jeff Young goes to the Wharton School and finds students facing a simulation that focuses on resource management

Lee Moss and Dominic Meoli sit in a small meeting room here nervously staring at a computer screen. They are master’s students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, but for the moment they are playing the role of representatives from a small Middle Eastern country deciding how many barrels of oil their nation should produce.

. . .

When the simulation began at the start of the three-hour class session, and each group of students retired to a different computer-equipped meeting room, Mr. Moss and Mr. Meoli quickly determined that if all the countries produced 38.3 barrels of oil, they would maximize total profits, and each country would make the same amount. And the students knew that if the countries collectively produced too much oil, the market would flood and they would all lose money. So during each turn the teams must decide whether or not to produce a few extra barrels and risk sparking a production arms race — a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.”

For the first few rounds, things go smoothly. The Web-based computer system controlling the simulation shows exactly what each country produces, so if one nation strays from the optimal price, others can see, and can scold them via electronic messages.

But starting with Round 5, the computer system no longer lets the teams communicate. And the system no longer shows details of what each country produces, but instead displays only the total combined production of the teams.

That’s when things get interesting.

One of the countries decides to increase its output to snag some extra profits. In the next round, Mr. Moss and Mr. Meoli decide to retaliate by drastically raising their own output — to 55 barrels — to try to stage a comeback. “We went thermonuclear,” jokes Mr. Moss of their production spike. Unbeknownst to them, the other teams also raise output.

World oil prices promptly collapse.

The simulation and ideas behind it were the result of collaboration between the professor and programmers at the college, which, for me, is the important part of all this. What did the simulation reinforce in the students? To deal still means that you have to get out, meet people face to face, and negociate. Very Good.

Thanks to Christina Gowtowka for the send.

New London woes

Today the Supreme Court ruled on the pressing New London eminent domain case in support of the Connecticut Supreme Court, a decision that I find misguided and dangerous. I can’t say that I like agreeing with either Justice Thomas or O’Connor, who dissented, but in this case their arguments are to my mind reasonable and sane. From my point of view, the court continues its hands-off decisions, assenting to too much authority in the hands of the state over the individual. What follow are some snippets that I find interesting from the case. Links are in original and italics are mine for emphasis. Justice Stevens in his opinion writes this

Those who govern the City were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference. The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including–but by no means limited to–new jobs and increased tax revenue. As with other exercises in urban planning and development,12 the City is endeavoring to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational uses of land, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. To effectuate this plan, the City has invoked a state statute that specifically authorizes the use of eminent domain to promote economic development. Given the comprehensive character of the plan, the thorough deliberation that preceded its adoption, and the limited scope of our review, it is appropriate for us, as it was in Berman, to resolve the challenges of the individual owners, not on a piecemeal basis, but rather in light of the entire plan. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.

The problem that surfaces here is the confounding of eminent domain, “benefits to the community,” the idea of “public purpose,” all in the context of taxes, jobs, and the justice’s “deference.” Further, he writes

Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government. There is, moreover, no principled way of distinguishing economic development from the other public purposes that we have recognized. In our cases upholding takings that facilitated agriculture and mining, for example, we emphasized the importance of those industries to the welfare of the States in question, see, e.g., Strickley, 200 U. S. 527; in Berman, we endorsed the purpose of transforming a blighted area into a “well-balanced” community through redevelopment, 348 U. S., at 33;13 in Midkiff, we upheld the interest in breaking up a land oligopoly that “created artificial deterrents to the normal functioning of the State’s residential land market,” 467 U. S., at 242; and in Monsanto, we accepted Congress’ purpose of eliminating a “significant barrier to entry in the pesticide market,” 467 U. S., at 1014-1015. It would be incongruous to hold that the City’s interest in the economic benefits to be derived from the development of the Fort Trumbull area has less of a public character than any of those other interests. Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose.

I agree that one of government’s jobs is to promote economic development (by staying out of peoples’ way as much as possible, yet restraining behavior that puts the public good in danger), but in the context of the above paragraph, there’s no strong connection being made analogically between the New London case and those cited , which is what I find as the greatest weakness of the 5 to 4. How do Berman, Midkiff, and Monsanto fit; hence, how would a nay opinion be incongruous? The question isn’t whether economic development has something to do with public purpose but whether the State has proven that its needs are greater than those of the individuals in “this” case. Oligopoly and blight aren’t at issue. “No principled way,” the justice writes. Bull. The latitude being given to a principle here is astounding. If Microsoft wanted to buy West Simsbury, proving to the state house that it would generate money and jobs, which I’m sure it would, how does Steven’s standard of judgement provide a legitimate framework for consistency (which to me is a public good)? And it’s not just Microsoft, it’s anyone who has more money than I do who could claim my property.

On the other hand, here’s what O’Connor has to say. She writes

Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded–i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public–in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings “for public use” is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” When interpreting the Constitution, we begin with the unremarkable presumption that every word in the document has independent meaning, “that no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added.” Wright v. United States, 302 U. S. 583, 588 (1938). In keeping with that presumption, we have read the Fifth Amendment’s language to impose two distinct conditions on the exercise of eminent domain: “the taking must be for a ‘public use’ and ‘just compensation’ must be paid to the owner.” Brown v. Legal Foundation of Wash., 538 U. S. 216, 231-232 (2003).

The emphasis here is going to be on the concept of public use and providing a strict standard for its definition. O’Connor comments on the relevance of Steven’s earlier examples

The Court’s holdings in Berman and Midkiff were true to the principle underlying the Public Use Clause. In both those cases, the extraordinary, precondemnation use of the targeted property inflicted affirmative harm on society–in Berman through blight resulting from extreme poverty and in Midkiff through oligopoly resulting from extreme wealth. And in both cases, the relevant legislative body had found that eliminating the existing property use was necessary to remedy the harm. Berman, supra, at 28-29; Midkiff, supra, at 232. Thus a public purpose was realized when the harmful use was eliminated. Because each taking directly achieved a public benefit, it did not matter that the property was turned over to private use. Here, in contrast, New London does not claim that Susette Kelo’s and Wilhelmina Dery’s well-maintained homes are the source of any social harm. Indeed, it could not so claim without adopting the absurd argument that any single-family home that might be razed to make way for an apartment building, or any church that might be replaced with a retail store, or any small business that might be more lucrative if it were instead part of a national franchise, is inherently harmful to society and thus within the government’s power to condemn.

Furthermore

Even if there were a practical way to isolate the motives behind a given taking, the gesture toward a purpose test is theoretically flawed. If it is true that incidental public benefits from new private use are enough to ensure the “public purpose” in a taking, why should it matter, as far as the Fifth Amendment is concerned, what inspired the taking in the first place? How much the government does or does not desire to benefit a favored private party has no bearing on whether an economic development taking will or will not generate secondary benefit for the public. And whatever the reason for a given condemnation, the effect is the same from the constitutional perspective–private property is forcibly relinquished to new private ownership.

. . .

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

It seems to me, despite the problems with the relevance of Midkiff et al, that the majority failed to live up to the simple test O’Connor brings up here: how far should we go in loosening the standard for defining public use as well as problematicizing the roles of individuals, private owners, and the extend to which the state should act on the behalf of either. I agree with O’Connor about the question of power here. Can we simply allow a tranfer of property from one holder to the next, even if a new holder could show “benefit”? I water, keep the lawn up, do some gardening, and pay my taxes. Certainly, though, some other owner could turn my property into a chicken farm and sell loads of fresh eggs. We could argue that neighborhoods and quality of life go hand in hand, but ultimately thats too arbitrary for the court. Here’s Thomas’ concluding statement

The Court relies almost exclusively on this Court’s prior cases to derive today’s far-reaching, and dangerous, result. See ante, at 8-12. But the principles this Court should employ to dispose of this case are found in the Public Use Clause itself, not in Justice Peckham’s high opinion of reclamation laws, see supra, at 11. When faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution’s original meaning. For the reasons I have given, and for the reasons given in Justice O’Connor’s dissent, the conflict of principle raised by this boundless use of the eminent domain power should be resolved in petitioners’ favor. I would reverse the judgment of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

I agree.

Stoning Field update almost final

Neha gives me too much credit for the “totally new” comment in her post over at Narratives. The overall work is really no big deal; the interesting thing for me has been the “making.” Nevertheless, the meat of Stoning Field is basically completed, all the media content in the right place, and now comes the online test on the server for media quality et cetera. The biggest headache I’ve had is with organizing lots of things into multiple files and worrying about size and how to load things up on the reader’s end. The files range in size from small to bigger, the biggest about 7 megs because of video but overall I’m averaging about 5 to 600 kb, which is no sweat for broadband. Most of the video is set for streaming but the files need to go up for test.

Then it’s off to figure what to do with the project once tested.

Overall, the only thing that really interest me about Flash is ActionScript. For example, the following code generates an interesting animation that came about through trail and error and luck. Note the formatting isn’t true in this example:

function gameani() {
this._y += this.speedy;
if(this._y > 100) {
games.g._rotation += 5;
games.g._xscale += 3;
games.g._height += 5;
}
if(this._y > 200) {
for(var i = 0; i < 5; i++) { games.duplicateMovieClip("games" + i, i); games._x = Math.random() * 500; games._y = Math.random() * 500; games._xscale = Math.random() * 100; games._yscale = Math.random() * 100; games._alpha = Math.random() * 100; } } updateAfterEvent(); } function warani() { this._y += this.speedy - 1; if(this._y > 100) {
war.w._rotation += 5;
war.a01._rotation -= 5;
war.a01._xscale += 2;
war.a01._height += 5;
war.r._rotation += 75;
war.r._height += 5;
}
if(this._y > 150) {
for(var k = 0; k < 6; k++) { war.duplicateMovieClip("war" + k, k); war._x = Math.random() * 500; war._y = Math.random() * 500; war._alpha = Math.random() * 100; war._xscale = Math.random() * 100; war._yscale = Math.random() * 100; } } updateAfterEvent(); } games.onEnterFrame = gameani; war.onEnterFrame = warani; games.speedy = 2; war.speedy = 2;

The effect moves then toys with two movie clips, games and war, “tweening” then breaking apart text for a random effect that would be impossible to duplicate on the Flash timeline using the design tools. After duplicating the clips, though, I didn’t necessarily know what exactly would happen. The important part here is working with clips within clips and teasing each nested letter by tracing its “path.” I “know” what the code is doing but I didn’t know what the code would look like on the stage when the animation kicked in. The functions are basic, but even with basic code interesting and unforseen things can happen. Like writing a story, therefore, the code behind the behavior can often lead to things unknown and unseen.

Experience and preparation

Drawing from the last post and its active comments, it would seem that the fundamental conflict in Antigone is important. We know what happens: Creon acts, Antigone acts, and bad things happen as a result, with no godly interference, no god to swoop down and pause the action and aide the poor mortals in their bad decisions and woe, no Theseus to provide answers. Hence we’re left with the idea of judgement in the hands of Creon and Antigone and they become our ears and eyes into the Sophoclean world.

But this “contained” world provides very little control, just as it does in Cortazar. Fate is strong. What’s going to happen to Oedipus is going to happen regardless of what he does or what we do. Same goes with Sir Gawain and in the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.” In SciFi, the question of time always matters. If we’re put in a position of changing the future by interrupting something in the past, a past which has always led to our present position, we may suffer oblivion. This calls attention to the “rightness” of what happens in time. Don’t go back and change the past because that interrupt the “natural” flow of time; therefore, we conclude, what happens “should” happen as it occured without human interference. Changing even the most minor bit or byte of things, could result in disaster. But didn’t we create disasters anyway? Are disasters natural within the natural arrow? And if human agented disaster is “natural,” then is going back into time and changing something to avert disaster, is that not immoral then? If an individual could prevent 9/11 by going back and changing an element in the chain of events, would it be immoral or moral (hypothetically) to do so? This, yet again, assumes that the time traveller will make the right choice and is outside Sophoclean boundaries (and subject to what law?). If we could manipulate time, isn’t the ability to do so also “within” the boundaries of time itself?

The logic, of course, becomes strained here. In the text, the narrative boundaries for even the most complex of hypertexts are limited. The hypertext must have physical boundaries however they may be defined, by “resolution” or computer memory. There’s always a boundary, a last word. For some the boundary is where “they” stop. For others it’s the last count. A hypertext isn’t “the” universe which at this point continues to inch outward, extruding space. A game should close at some point, but not the universe. One day should lead to the next not continue to loop. Hense the narrative is “spatial.” It has physical boundaries.

But we know all this I think. Do we leave Sophocles with a sense of doom, paranoia, or satisfaction knowing that we “can’t” control everything? Do we leave Sophocles with a greater sense that we need to do better with the givens? We know we can’t leave Antigone thinking, wow, that was really fun watching those nice kids get killed off. Do we leave with a greater appreciation of “responsibility”?

The future’s shape

One of the interesting qualities of story is the idea of change. Some action is taken or something happens and the result is inexorable. The audience can do nothing to “save” the principle character. All we can do is “read” about Connie’s removal from the home in “Where are you going.” We can’t interrupt the action of Antigone and inform Creon that he will lose his son and his wife because he failed to “know” the consequences of his actions. Shouldn’t King Lear have known better than to divide his kingdom up? Should we not have known that space travel kills people? Should Oedipus have simply ignored the answer?

The idea that we would want a character to display sophrosyne as a value in story is at odds with what we know about Creon, Oedipus, the gods, Antigone, and most characters in story. We know that Creon isn’t going to display coolheadedness or any sort of golden mean. We need Creon’s arrogrance, just as we need a confused Hamlet and a pridefilled Coriolanus. But this is just one element.

The other element is our reaction to the story that comes from the principles. Hopefully we won’t repond by laughing and leaving, but that something about the tragedy proves either true or captivating, yes, like watching a trainwreck. Do we “need” to see the children not just eat their way out of a cage but also step forth into the dark wood where “we know” the hungry antagonist waits.

This returns me to the story once again. Creon makes his edict and stands by it, thinking himself in the right as the “state” made manifest, the state on whose side Ares has smiled, the state that must take a “moral” stand against the actions of Polynices. But do his reactions to the sentry and to Antigone “reveal” him as a corrupted leader or a coward? Is his original intent corrupted?

Another example. In Suttree, now being covered by Susan Gibb, the principle has money sent to him by a relative. The reader knows what he’s going to do with it. I can’t remember how much but Suttree hides some of the money for safe-keeping prior to the night of waste, in a place where he will forget while drunk or keep hidden from theives. The rest of the money will be lost. We know that something horrible is going to happen. Still, as we read, we hope it won’t.

Back to the notion of order

For the past couple of weeks in lit we’ve been talking a lot about the notion of order and chaos, taking I guess the Hegelian dialectical approach to clashing notions, an approach that goes pretty well with Antigone, Sophocles’ play. It’s not the end all of course. Nevertheless, the idea that something must be resolved in Antigone is palpable, and always relevant to contemporary politics and culture (the play always reads fresh because something about Antigone–her resolve, energy, and anger always touch a cord with the audience. Something must be resolved may appear dull || obvious, but in the play the fundamental notion that things are falling apart and must be stopped is central to the tragedy. What’s the problem, though, in the play? Why doesn’t Antigone simply accept Creon’s decision for Polyneices’ body? Why doesn’t he retract sooner than he does? Why does he react as he does in the first place? Why doesn’t Haemon kill Creon when he has the chance? And what about Ismene, who declines her sister’s request. Then again, why doesn’t anyone ask the question about Polyneices’ actions vs Eteocles’ choice to suspect transition of the right to rule?

If we take the sequence of events in the Oedipus cycle and consider (for limited time) the notion of fate as a force fluid in the plays, then the above questions become even more interesting to the underlying drama and to the general course of anagnorisis (revealing). The play is filled with powerful questions and incredible sense of “dramatic” telling.

But the original issue keeps coming back to me: something must be resolved. But what? More to come on this.

Too many books, too little time

Both Susan Gibb and Daniel Green are remarking on the state of the book publishing industry. Daniel Green writes

I don’t say that too many people want to be writers or that readers should have to make do with whatever books a selected number of book publishers wants to give them. I only say that if you’re relying on the “book business” to make your career as a writer you’ll be sorely disappointed. (For additional evidence of how the oversupply of books makes it difficult for lesser-known books to even get stocked on bookstore shelves, see this post by Maud Newton.) The “book business” described in M.J. Rose’s post is not your friend. As long as you continue seeking entrance to the “book business,” as opposed to simply doing good work and perhaps looking for alternate modes of publication, you’ll be contributing to the mess the publishers have made of literary production and ensuring that not so many years from now there won’t even be a book business to kick around anymore.(links in original)

Susan writes,

So to just about everyone except some celebrity with a sizzling sex life, the old advice stands firmly: Don’t give up your day job.

It’s an important conversation to have–as book publishing is one thread in the narrative of readers, writers, and the culture of reading. The sense of this “overloaded” or stuffed market has been germinating for a while. I’ve had the experience, and this was years ago, of walking into the book store and staring at the stacks of novels for sale and the whole daunting hump looked like a mound of hay. The fact of the matter is I haven’t read a lot of new books in a while, yet I keep coming back to the stories and poems in the lit mags, and really only read what I’m interested in reading, hypertext fiction, comics, and the old standbys. I have to say that I no longer have the patience to “look” for interesting novels unless someone points one out to me and I’ll read it, well, at least some of it, as Neha will remind me. (Then I’ll keep the book in my office and keep forgetting to give it back.) I must say though that it’s a great era for blurb writers, who all claim that the novels they’re commenting on are “tours de force.” Nevertheless, a good novel is always something to be shared.

I agree that the saturation of the market diminishes all of the work and opens the novel and the act of writing the novel to a strange obscurity. But reading persists and the work persists and, importantly, the alternatives to Knopf and Norton persist. The novel in whatever form, I would argue, needs to be written even more so these days despite the market. I recall a saying from Carlos Fuentes in his novel The Campaign that went something like: people need god more than they need the church. The same may be said of the mainstream industry of books. Anyway, the above links are worth further reading.