South/North Paw

One of the few things that I have in common with our president is that I write with my left hand. As I finished my essay test in my history class today, I looked down at the pencil lead smeared all over my hand. This happens to me every time I take written test. As I was walking through the Wilk, I was thinking about doing a blog post about being a leftie. As I researched on Wikipedia (where else), I was prepared with all kinds of facts about southpaws. Then I remembered that I'm not actually left-handed. 

I scrolled down to related topics and found the entry on cross-dominance. That is right (and left), I'm really mix-handed. I write with my left hand, but I do pretty much everything else with my right. There was not nearly as much research on that, but I did learn that I'm in a pretty elite club. Here are some of the mix-handed individuals in history:

Leonardo da Vinci

Albert Einstein

Richard Feynman

Oscar Wilde

Nikola Tesla

Michelangelo

Benjamin Franklin

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Ludwig van Beethoven

Donovan McNabb

(Note: This article does not cite sources, so it could be totally bunk, but it sounds good to me!)

From causeof.org:

An Aversion to Exercise

People with mixed laterality might have an aversion to exercises such as walking and running because these exercises tend to strengthen both sides of the body equally.

Compensating for these exercises, by spending additional time strengthening your dominant hand and the foot that is on the same side as the dominant hand, may be helpful. It also may be helpful to squeeze your dominant hand while exercising. 

Now I have an excuse for not enjoying going running all the time. Next time I'll try squeezing my hand to see if it works.

The Company I Keep

On Thursday evening, Doug and I attended a celebration in honor of Abe Lincoln, which I thought would just be a lecture by Dr. Holland, one of my favorites, at the Provo Library. It was quite the experience. The room was packed with fellow Abe Lincoln lovers, and I was interested to find out what kinds of people were there.

The program included Mayor Billings of Provo, Mayor Wasburn of Orem, the County Commissioner, and Lieutenant Governor Herbert reading excerpts of writings or speeches of Abraham Lincoln. In the background, they had a band playing 19th-century fiddle tunes. I thought that it was a nice touch, but apparently not everyone else did. When Dr. Holland got up to speak, this old lady yelled out, "Could you not have the music in the background? It's distracting." Thankfully, Dr. Holland wasn't planning on having music accompanying his entire lecture, but if he did, it could have been incredibly awkward.

Dr. Holland gave a fine lecture, one that I've heard before when I was his TA, but enjoyable nonetheless. Afterward, a Lincoln impersonator got up and recited the Gettysburg Address. This was received by a standing ovation, which I kind of thought was weird (I would have stood if it were actually Lincoln, but I was 99.9% sure it was NOT Abe Lincoln). Apparently, the program was quite inspiring because I overheard a guy on his cellphone afterwards saying, "I'm going to memorize the Declaration, like I started doing a few years ago." After a pause, he said in very serious tone, "It HAS GOT to be memorized."

Those, my friends, are the kinds of people that have the same interests as me. And yes, Doug and I DID get a picture with Abraham and Mary Todd. I will definitely post it when I get a copy. In the mean time, I will be memorizing Washington's Farewell Address.

Book List

I have recently come to the realization that I am not very well-read in the classics. I have decided to create a list of books that I must read before I die. It is a little embarrassing that I haven't read any of these books. Some I have read excerpts from, or abridged editions, but not all the way through. So here is my list. If it's not on there, I have either read it already, or not thought of it. I haven't included any Shakespeare plays because I think I should read all of them.

The Brothers Karamazov- Fydor Dostoevsky

Chronicles of Narnia- C. S. Lewis

The Federalist- James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay

The Wealth of Nations- Adam Smith

Les Miserables- Victor Hugo

Great Expecations- Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens

1984- George Orwell

The Odyssey- Homer

Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy

The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas

Don Quixote (in Spanish?)- Miguel de Cervantes

East of Eden- John Steinbeck

Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway

The Lord of the Rings Series- J.R.R. Tolkein

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Moby Dick- Herman Melville

Paradise Lost- John Milton

The Prince- Niccolo Machiavelli

The Three Muskateers- Alexandre Dumas

War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy

Das Kapital- Karl Marx

Leviathan- Thomas Hobbes

On Liberty- John Stuart Mills

Walden- Henry David Thoreau

Something by Charles Saunders Peirce (for my dad)

What others should I add to my list?

Market Morality

Now that I'm done with metablogging, you get a real entry. I'm not going to feign in-depth understanding of the financial crisis. You might be surprised by this given the fact that I have nearly completed my economics minor. Cut me a little slack, since the last macroeconomics class I took was Winter 2004. Besides that, most of the economic analysis you do in middle level economics classes has to do more with how many noodles and boxes of cereal Bob and Alex consume and produce. With that disclaimer, I would like to explore the idea of the role of morality in a market economy. I'll try to keep the jargon out.

As most of you know, I am a fan of free markets. Adam Smith is up there with Abraham Lincoln as one of my heroes. I will admit that I have been brainwashed (at least I'm aware) by a few of my University of Chicago educated econ professors. Markets do a remarkable job of delivering the most goods in the most efficient manner. They encourage creativity and invention. They create wealth like no other system (excluding Consecration, but that will require a huge change in human nature). But markets are also amoral.

Because of recent discussions in my American Heritage* labs, I have been thinking about what it means to be amoral. Markets do only what is efficient, without regard to what is moral. It's not that they're IMmoral, it's just that in determining prices, production or consumption, the market does what is efficient (meaning satisfying the most people possible given the scarcity of time and resources). So really, markets are driven upon societies' tastes and preferences. For example, despite our greatest attempts at gender equality, the NBA is much more successful than the WNBA, because people enjoy watching men play basketball more. Unfortunately, the filth we call pornography is in abundance. So you could say the market may be more of a reflection of our morality rather than a means to a certain moral outcome (in contrast with socialist or communist economies which have a greater focus on the outcome of equality). If people stopped demanding pornography, it would stopped being produced.

So although market economies are based upon people pursuing their self-interest (shout out to Adam Smith), taking this to the extreme is, in my opinion, quite devastating. Because the market itself has no moral outcome, it requires some level of morality in the public to be successful– which leads me to the current financial crisis. It seems to me that people (both producers and consumers) were so focused on short term gratification and profits, that the system could not sustain itself and collapsed. In that way, the 1920's were much like the past decade. Although I disagree with him on a number of issues, I appreciate that President Obama has focused on responsibility. Hopefully it rings true with the public, and that he pursues policy that encourages responsibility.

*For those of you not in the BYU loop, American Heritage is a dreaded general education class that I think is fabulous. It is an interdisciplinary course with economics, political science and history, seeking to explain the founding and development of the United States. I am currently in my 8th semester of being a TA for the course.