Privacy and What's the Wildest Thing You've Ever Done?

The other day two very beautiful girls asked me what was the wildest thing I have ever done. Good opening, eh?

My counter was, "What do you mean by wild?"

Yeah, I'm a spoilsport.

The answer I received was cogent and I liked it a lot: "Something that pushes your boundaries to where normally you would be uncomfortable." So...

A wild experience: an experience that pushes your boundaries beyond your ordinary comfort level.

It deserves a closer look.

In pushing past your boundaries you could push two different kinds of boundaries. Your personal boundaries, and social boundaries. Sometimes they are congruent. In some people, one contains the other, but I'm guessing that's not true for most people. In Japan they have a sense that you have different "circles" for family, work and social responsibilities. These circles aren't nested, they are independent, maybe overlapping, and rarely are they called upon simultaneously. For example, your family may call upon your social duties, but would ignore your possibly conflicting work duties. Rather than trying to restrict any one circle by making them all the same, this society accepts that they are different, and creates ways by which they can remain independent.

Western society has a different approach, one that is tantamount to believing in an Ethos. Because of our need to drive to a single circumscribed and consistent moral worldview, we have issues like forcing our work leaders to have good family and personal values.

Unfortunately, it can't be done. It rubs a billion years of biological evolution the wrong way. To compensate, we sublimate sex instincts, and divert dominance drives into the business world (or pro wrestling, or violent vengeance movies). No wonder why we're so stressed out, trying to put a cork on a billion years of genetic progress!

So what do we do? We invent privacy.

But privacy is a two-edged sword. It may be a right, but it's a dangerous one. David Brin wrote a thoughtful book on this called The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, generally underrated by most but prized by some.

But it's worse. Not only does privacy give the government untold controls over our freedom, it also gives the worst of society a place to congregate. I'm not saying that we should kill the pedophiles, but I am proposing that we wouldn't have as big an issue with them (in the church, raping children, and so on) if there wasn't as much privacy.

This is a hen-egg issue. As I work behind an Internet pseudo-anonymous identity to post this blog, obviously I care about privacy. But only because society continues to hold people accountable to an unrealistic standard. A standard that is perpetuated in peoples' minds only because of privacy.

So what does this have to do with the question about wild experiences?

I believe that all this is the reason why, nine times out of ten, if you ask a Westerner what is the wildest thing they have done, you will hear a story about sex.

Not that I mind. If I'm hearing two gorgeous girls talking about their wildest experience as a their first lesbian encounter, well, I'm all ears!

But my belief is that sex pops out because the personal and social boundaries are least coupled there due to privacy.

What's the wildest thing I have ever done?

Nothing.

Because I have no boundaries to push. I have very few boundaries at all, and those few that exist don't move.

Don't even try.

I told you I was a spoilsport!

Picking up a Girl, Part 3: What Happens Next?

This story begins here: Picking up a Girl, Part 1: Good Beginnings.

The next day is another beautiful day. I drive over to the park and call Cameron en-route. Goes to voicemail. I dutifully leave a message, but receive a call back within 10 seconds. We confirm The Plan.

We meet for a walk around the park, and then to have lunch. Ominously, this is exactly the first date I had with Dina. But I am not superstitious, being completely protected by several charms and having thrown the I-Ching earlier.

So I pull my car into the park. She pulls in, driving a sensible import car. We hug awkwardly.

Cut to the chase. The date is fine. As sweet as a Hallmark card. It comes up again in conversation that she's never been to the east coast. So I invite her to New York City.

So I go from never having invited a strange woman on a date, to inviting her across the country to spend an overnight with me.

Now I observe how it works. I'm either a total mark for this gal, or some girls just make it easy. See, Cameron drops hints that are easy for me to spot. For whatever reason I usually don't pick up such hints. In fact, in my earlier years, girlfriends used to criticize me, claiming that I was quite a sensitive and attentive man except when it came to their dropping hints about asking them out. There is where they wanted to give me a good swat in the head with a baseball bat.

The previous evening I was thinking about what my prior experiences have taught me. Clearly strippers have it worse than providers. In my limited experience, they are far more screwed up. Or it's possible that providers are able to wall of their personal life much better. It's true that I have met providers with substance abuse problems. But because they actually provide, whereas dancers only promise, there is an additional emotional honesty in a provider. This may require either or both a higher wall and a stronger emotional center.

But I am a starry-eyed romantic through and through. I liked Cameron, and she seemed without guile and very straightforward, two atributes I prize. She hasn't danced very long. So we had our date, and an invitation to New York in July.

Due to travel, that scourge on relationships, I will not be able to see Cameron before the trip to NYC. She has no email. It's only cell phones and voicemail. We'll see if she actually goes through with the trip. After all, I'm still a stranger. And it's a strange big town where she will have to trust me.

This chapter isn't over yet.

Picking up a Girl, Part 2: Bad History

This story begins here: Picking up a Girl, Part 1: Good Beginnings.

I picked up a stranger for the first time, in a sub shop, and it turns out to be stripper.

Why is that particularly ironic?

Because that following day was not my first date with a stripper.

I have a bad history with strippers, who prefer the euphemism, dancers. But don't get the wrong idea, I do not frequent strip clubs. No, really!

Ok, I went to strip clubs for almost every bachelor party I've attended or thrown, that's true. But I rarely went on my own. Despite this, I've had bad history with dating strippers!

I was twenty-something and fogged in the airport. A very attractive blonde girl was there also and struck up a conversation with me. She asks me out to dinner, so, what the hell, we do that. When the last flights were cancelled, she suggests we room together. I have a relationship with her. Turns out she is a dancer. Turns out she is married. Turns out the person she introduced as her brother, with whom I had drinks, was her husband. And don't even ask me how I found out. I'm still scarred! ;-)

I didn't go to a strip club on my own for a while after that.

Some years later, I went to a club in Las Vegas after CES. I met a girl there on a fairly dead day shift named Jenn, another willowy blonde. She asked me out, too. We had a lot of fun in Vegas, and then in Los Angeles. Then she got into a terrible car accident. I helped her out with her hospital situation, but she got very messed up about it and moved without leaving any forwarding information. Even her friend in Vegas I knew was in the dark.

Some years after that I went to a different club in Seattle. For almost two months I went as much as twice weekly during the day shift. Toward the end of that time I met Dina. I saw her three times before I was pulled out of town. When I returned a few months later, she asked me out. I brought a camera and we went to a park. We had a torrid and very serious relationship. She was beautiful. She was fun. She was a drug user. So I put her through rehab. Several times. It ended very badly, the only relationship I've been in where I was physically abused by pots, pans, and even a vase. (I've been abused by ex-boyfriends, but not the gal.)

Another year passes and I go to the same club. Literally the first day I am back I meet another gal, Daniela. We trade email addresses. We correspond. She asks me out. I cut it off early, but a strange thing happens. Word about me gets back to Dina. She contacts me and she asks to get together again. We do, but it's still bad. She's still a user. That story doesn't have a good ending either.

So I've had maybe a dozen or so solo visits to a strip club, and I've been asked out by four dancers. Friends might ask, "What is your secret?" Well, if I had a secret, I'd only bless my enemies with it. If there is a god of karmic justice, she's killing me with her two-edged sword of lust.

Ok, now you can imagine the scene: I've just finally figured out that Cameron doesn't work at a gas station. That she's a dancer. All this is rushing through my head... so let's rejoin the scene:

"You think I work at the gas station." she states. I nod. "I don't. I work at the strip club next to it."

"Strip club?" I echo, dumbstruck.

So... I picked up a stranger for the first time, in a sub shop, and it turns out to be a stripper.

"Yes, silly. You didn't really think I pump gas, did you?" she smiles at me.

"Oh." I am reduced mostly to monosyllables. She leaves to work, reminding me to call her the next day. I am left contemplating good beginnings and bad history, and speculating about what happens next (in part 3).

Button fly jeans

I don't buy my clothes.

It's a dirty secret, but I have a horde of personal shoppers who purchase things for me. Alright, you might find a horde difficult to believe, so would you believe six in three cities? Listen: when one of them stampedes into my local office, clothes in hand and assistant in tow, it sounds like a horde.

All this because I hate shopping, and Internet shopping doesn't really work for clothes. Not yet. Unless it's underwear and socks. I like underwear and socks, because if I find a kind I like, I can buy a years' worth.

Personal shoppers aren't dummies. They understand how it works, at least with me. Two of my personal shoppers are men. They bring young, attractive female assistants who compliment me a lot. They've correlated the compliments with my likelihood to purchase. The other personal shoppers are women. They bring assistants that are older women who are more gifted as alterations, but they, too, know how to lay it on thick. Men who claim that women are vain and easily swayed by fashion marketing are completely off the mark. Men are worse: we are vain and totally clueless. At least a woman has an idea of what's really going on with her flaws. Men will just believe a woman. Or at least I will.

Anyhow, recently I was sold on button fly jeans. I've heard of button fly jeans from Levis. But these aren't Levis, they're French. Or at least they're from a company that has a person in marketing who thinks that Gallic brand names command a premimum markup.

So I wore these jeans for the first time today.

Button fly jeans, without a doubt, are the worst fashion invention I have seen.

Maybe high heels are worse for women, I don't know. It's been so long since I've worn high heels.

Just kidding.

But who the hell decided that it was better to put buttons on your fly than a zipper? What used to take a second at the urinal now takes an excrutiating amount of fumbling and cursing, during which time any neighboring men will slowly edge away from you thinking you're pulling a Pee Wee Herman.

I consider myself to have reasonable dexterity. Perhaps I'm not used to dealilng with buttons that are so low. Or maybe it's that the pants are fastened above and below, and I'm trying to button an area in between, making it treacherously narrow and difficult to maneuver in there. Or, and I'd like to believe this one, perhaps my package is so huge that it naturally creates little room to manipulate the buttons.

I can think of no good reason for buttons and plenty of bad ones: You are more likely to set off a metal detector. A woman can't undress you with her teeth. You are more likely to get caught on a rear bumper and dragged to your death.

When I complained to my buyer, she shrugs, and in an excellent channeling of Gallic c'est la vie, says, "Yep, that's the way they make 'em." I suppose they look good for the large fraction of the day that my hands don't get stuck in my pants as I'm fastening them.

The other response is, "But they look good on you." So I ask for the same cut of jeans, but with a zipper. Makes sense, right? If they are going to make inventory of jeans of a certain cut, why make an entirely different pattern just because the crotch fastener changes?

Ah, but of course I forget about fashion logic, which is to say, complete irrationality. Yep, they don't make it with a zipper, they make a different cut with the zipper. And if I dare to make a comparison with the rationality of Levis, well, that doesn't go over well at all. Levis, after all, are common jeans, worse, in fact, because Levis are an American icon diluting the sanctity and purity of the French culture (yes, the selfsame culture that produced mimes).

Perhaps the abject terror I can strike in an American's mind while I'm groping out for help in the men's room, eyes beseeching, one hand wriggling in the crotch of my French jeans, is their sweet revenge for McDonalds and high-quality California wines.

Picking up a Girl, Part 1: Good Beginnings

I never pick up women.

I don't know why. I am told that I have the necessary attributes to pick up a woman: mobility and the ability to talk. Furthermore, I am told that I even have some attractive attributes: such as a sense of humor, politeness, social grace, intelligence, health, wealth, and physical looks that do not scare animals and small children.

So what's the problem?

Long ago when most of my friends were learning to pick up women, the problem was insecurity and respect, a potent double combination. Insecurity stemmed from my being unusually young in my peer group and the only Asian, a total geek, and probably a host of secondary issues I'll save for a future psychiatrist. Respect probably came from the way I was raised. I always liked to be a gentleman, surprise and spoil women, and treat them respectfully. They were to be cared for, not used. Frankly I don't know where that came from, but my namesake Freud would say it was my mother. Whatever the etiology, this combination meant that I didn't want to inconvenience women, nor did I want to put my ego on the line.

Net result: I didn't pick up women during the important formative years when I would ordinarily be learning the technique.

I had a friend who used what he called the "saturation bombing" technique. He would ask and ask and ask until somebody said yes. He had no problem with rejections, he just moved on. But I couldn't do it. Yes, the same person who could ask people for money for a startup from a teenager, and take the multiple rejections and ego hits in that process, couldn't ask a girl to go out.

Later on, the problem changed. I was well liked, respected, athletic, and successful. I was told (later) that many women at work wanted to date me, but I was too intimidating to ask out! When the first woman told me this, I was completely floored, since I always felt more intimidated than intimidating, and I was very open and friendly with women (in the only company where I worked, I was the highest rated manager... by women). Men have never intimidated me, even the most famous and powerful. But women, that's a different matter. So how could I seem intimidating? But I never made the first move, something that several girlfriends in college mentioned. And perhaps as a consequence, I have tended to date aggressive women who, more often than not, had other issues or took advantage of me.

Yet I will hire an escort. Is this because the exchange of money makes it ok?

My sister gives me a hard time about this, which she terms an "affectation" or a "wimpy lack of courage" (depending on her mood). I have to just go out and try, she says. I certainly don't lack chutzpah. I am no wallflower. I will walk up to world rulers that I don't know, say at Davos, introduce myself, and make a connection. I do not lack aggression. I have gone toe to toe with some of the most aggressive players in the world, with a pretty good win percentage. But historically when it comes to civilian girlfriends, I am asked out, I don't do the asking.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I picked up a girl!

It was early afternoon on a fantastic sunny day. I was pumping gas into my car, looking forward to some nice driving, and a dinner and R&B music show with some friends later on. I am hungry, so I spot a sandwich shop next door. I fill up, park my car at the station, and walk over to the shop, mostly because it's in a tiny strip mall with very tight parking. The shop looks good with a creative selection of subs, so I order one and take it to their eating area. The counter and kitchen ladies are young, I guess it's summer job time for high school and college kids. I take my jalapeno-laden sub sandwich to a lone two person plastic table.

A group of three girls and a guy are sitting across from me at a larger table. They are having fun, joking around. One of them in particular catches my eye. She is very pretty, casually dressed, long legs, and not made up. She has a natural fresh look, but looks like she just graduated from college. But, hey, I can look, right?

So I'm eating my sub, when her friends all take off, leaving her alone at her table.

She spends a minute or two fiddling with her cell phone, and makes a couple of calls. Then she sits idly, starting to look bored. She goes up and refills her water, pokes through the cast-off newspapers, and then returns to her seat, draping herself like a cat over two chairs. Every now and then she's checking her phone. Her legs are put up and driving me a little crazy. I think she's noticed me staring, but is pretty much ignoring me, having probably classified me as "yet another annoying male ogling my legs."

But then I find myself walking up to her and smiling, probably like a loon. I'm psyching myself up. I'm imaging that she's a VC and I have this great idea: I'm a marketable concept. She isn't looking at me, organizing her purse, or maybe looking for the pepper spray, but I catch her eye and startle her a little. I clear my throat, always a great way to start a conversation (I think Dale Carnegie ranks that just above belching), and then say, "Are you waiting for a call?"

Now in the library of pick up lines, that one is probably at the back of the stacks, in the archive section, covered with cobwebs and dusted off only to show to students of lame historical artifacts, good for a sophomoric giggle like the dildo collection of the powerful Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt.

But she unleashes a dazzling smile and a wash of pheromones, and I can feel the oxytocin course through my body. She looks at me, and says, languidly, "Nope. But have a seat, I'm waiting, I'm bored and I'd like you to talk with me."

So I sit and we talk. Her name is Cameron, and she is a great conversationalist. We talk about the weather, a good place to start, but then move to ideal living locations and the effect of cultural exposure and local indicators such as currency strength, real estate law, and interest rates to international living choices. We talk about vocation. We talk about investment. We talk about education. We talk about love handles. She's fun. I like her. She has never traveled far out of the area, but reads a lot and dreams of travel. She has never been to the east coast, has worked white collar and service jobs while at school and, remarkably, rather than traveling, saved all her money to put a down payment on a small house in an unfashionable section of town about 30 miles away. Now she's saving to trade up to place in a more fashionable section.

She also takes in stray animals, spays or neuters them, and find homes for them. I try out my best puppy dog eyes, but she seems oblivious and checks her watch again.

I say, "Who are you waiting for?" hoping it's her twin sister, or even a sick aunt... anything, anything, anything but her boyfriend.

"Work. I'm waiting to go with a friend to work. I work next door." she replies, oblivious to my rapid and sequential conversion to seven religions and subsequent prayers to their respective deities. (It would have been eight religions, but after the first seven I ran out of spiritual inventory to pawn in return for my wish. After heart, mind, soul, devotion, worldly possessions, first born, and all other children what's left besides chastity, and offering that seemed counterproductive to the whole point of the wish.)

I'm thinking, She drives thirty miles to work at a gas station? Maybe the car wash? and the car wash idea has my mind racing ahead of my prudence, but I say nothing. I notice she is appraising me. Then she asks me what is your sign?

A personal note on astrology: I don't believe in it. But I know a surprising number of educated women who do, or at least have fun pretending to. I could go on and on about how our brains are great pattern matching machines, even overriding common sense and logic in its desire to find patterns and meaning and agenda (conspiracy) in chaos, but who am I trying to convince? Four out of my seven favorite providers ever are also Scorpios. Go figure. Maybe I'm the idiot for refusing to believe.

So I told her I was a Scorpio, and it turns out our birth dates are one day apart. Cameron reminds me that we are the most sexual sign, and laughs. The conversation takes a decidedly interesting turn to the left. At one point she admits to being very sensuous and liking touch, but only had a professional massage once. She complains that her boyfriends would claim that massages would hurt their hands after a couple of minutes, and would buy her flowers instead of a massage even if she asked for one.

Hey, even somebody as dense as me can drive into an opening that large: "I can't believe it. If I were your boyfriend, I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off you," I say, as gallantly as it is possible to say something like that. Then in a desperation fishing maneuver: "Your boyfriend must be crazy not to at least buy a gift certificate for a massage."

"Oh, I don't have a boyfriend. I've been single." A pause. "I guess for about a year now. I live alone and like it. My last boyfriend was bad for me."

She checks her watch again. "When do you have to go?" I ask.

"Fifteen minutes ago," she laughs. I protest that she should be moving along, but she says, "I can show up pretty much whenever. My friend can take care of herself... for once."

Flexible time at a gas station. I guess if I were running the gas station, I'd let a gal like her show up whenever she wanted to. But then again, if I owned a gas station it probably would be a non-profit. Or I'd be too tempted to blow it up and see if it would explode as impressively as in the movies. But I've never picked up a girl, right, so her flextime at work isn't my chief concern.

But thinking my time is running short, I decide to go for broke. I can't invite her to dinner because my previous dinner engagement was planned for a month. I fly out of the country the next evening. My brain races: "Say, Cameron, I'm flying out tomorrow evening, but could you meet me for lunch?"

This is the defining moment. I have asked a girl out. She hasn't even hinted that she wants to go out, I have just flat out asked her. I'm holding my breath...

She pauses again and looks at me, searches my eyes. While I'm turning blue, I'm thinking, god, she's pretty, and then she smiles and says, "Ok! sounds great. I can skip a few hours at work and we can have lunch and walk around if it's a nice day."

Sheesh, that was easy! I think, but I say merely, "Hey, that's great. Very cool. I'll look forward to it. Really. Wow. You're neat." and trail off before the bullshit turns into a case of the runs. And she writes down her cell phone number, and ensures I record it correctly on my phone. This is basically another first, receiving a phone number from a woman who I don't know that I've just picked up. (Last Thanksgiving I got a number from a woman, but I knew her.)

I tell her, "I parked over where you work. I'll walk you there."

She gives me an odd look. "You parked where I work?" she says.

Is there an echo? I think, but I say, "Yes, the lot is more convenient, and so I walked here."

"Do you go there often?" she asks, "I've never seen you there."

Well, this gal take a real personal interest in her work at the gas station, I guess. Then it strikes me, her family must own the gas station. That explains it all.

"No, just dropping by. It's a pretty nice place." I say.

"Really? Have you been to many?" she asks.

"Well, my tank needs filling up pretty often. I don't get very good mileage." Certainly not the way I drive.

She has stopped talking and is looking at me strangely again. "What are you talking about?" she says.

I pause, mentally reviewing the conversation to see what I said that was so strange. My review is interrupted by a peal of laughter. Which becomes even more raucous. She nearly doubled over. "You don't get good mileage!" she gasps, and laughs even harder. When she has composed herself and dabbed her streaming eyes, she turns to me. I'm wearing my Class A Puzzled Look.

"You think I work at the gas station." she states. I nod. "I don't. I work at the strip club next to it."

"Strip club?" I echo, dumbstruck.

I picked up a stranger for the first time, in a sub shop, and it turns out to be stripper.

[To be continued in Picking up a Girl, Part 2: Bad History]

The Cheating Gene

Probably everybody has heard of this by now, but here's the link on nature.

Enhanced partner preference in a promiscuous species by manipulating the expression of a single gene.

Of course animal studies of genetic influence on psychiatry rarely have strong correlation to humans. I am no vole.

But imagine if this were applicable to humans. It brings up some fascinating questions. If you were a philanderer but met a woman you loved, would you voluntarily undergo gene therapy to remove this gene? Would you consider a relationship with somebody who had this gene? Would you ask your partner to test for it before making a commitment?

The question is not dissimilar to "Would you sign or ask your partner to sign a prenuptial agreement?"

Hollywood and the Premiere

On Sunday I attended the Hollywood premiere of Around the World in 80 Days. This was a Disney movie, so the premiere is full of Disney-esque marketing, gift baskets, product placements, and precise brand management. The stars were not A list, maybe B+ or A- with kids.

Strictly speaking, this is the second premiere I have attended, but the first one in Hollywood. I attended the dreadful Harry Potter 2 movie in New York, crammed into a far corner seat, with other people in the category of "Time Warner may owe you, but they don't owe you much." Because of the way I look, I am often mistaken, no, not for a movie star dammit, but for somebody who might be associated with a movie star. The prevailing opinion is that I am probably an assistant or some kind of flunky, which in Hollywood is a step above waiter. And the frenzied desperation of fans means they'll grab anybody who looks remotely close to their target star, squeeze, and wish hard. And that's the most interesting aspect of the premiere. It's the crowd. It's like watching a Nova program on animal behavior. The effect the crowd has on itself creates an amazing feedback cycle that amplifies the emotions of every individual until you see people screaming, crying, and looking like they literally died and went to heaven. I won't even essay to fathom what's going on here.

Evolutionary biology made us social creatures, but this has got to be some aberration of the gene that coded for it. And most of the crowd are teenagers, the very same kids that disdain authority and adult social convention during the week, show up on the weekend in crowds of undifferentiated peers and scream in unison, or earnestly consume the latest mass-media pap about some otherwise unremarkable actor. Is this desire to affiliate with a person of fame so great that they would make themselves sexually available to somebody who might be affiliated with that target? What's the evolutionary value of that? Ok, dumb question, we can all answer that. My genes aren't selfish enough, since I have never felt that kind of hero worship or fan stirrings in my life. Thank god for modern society, in the old days I would be dead: stoned by my tribe, shunned by the women, and eaten by wild animals I could not see because of my myopia. My only chance would be going for the exalted position of Medicine Man.

Hence I never feel part of the crowd at a premiere (nor part of the pantheon of the idols they worship). Instead I am a social anthropologist, hidden in the camouflage of the glitter and behind the duck blind of tuxedoed support staff, observing the curious behavior of humans in the wild. Then after their social gatherings to follow them to their burrows and, using special fiber optic starlight cameras, observe their mating behaviors. Just kidding.

Seriously, though, this movie wasn't as good an opportunity for observation, since the star was Jackie Chan, and even lust-blinded teenagers realize that he's too old for them. It's only a matter of time until he starts taking the Pat Morita roles as the wizened mentor.

The guy from Jackass had a good reception, though I can't imagine why anybody's genes would want to reproduce with his. That's when a selfish gene is a stupid gene. For a seriously scary link about this, see James Watson's comments.

In this premiere, I had slightly better seats, having graduated to the tier just below "press that we have to invite but really don't want to," like the rather obnoxious and unwashed reviewer from High Times, or the guy from Hustler Magazine who couldn't stop talking about how the Ashley twins were now 18 years old, and how it would be the nadir of his career if he could just get them to pose... Ok, I'm kidding about the seats, and I actually met those guys at another party. But that really was all that guy from Hustler could talk about. The movie was pretty much what you would expect from the previews. The premiere itself was the wonderful anthropology study, but the reason to attend is to attend the afterparties. The afterparty scene is like the Cantina scene from Star Wars. You need a guide, a Jedi Obi-Wan to keep you out of trouble, and it's impossible to get a quiet drink. It is different from private parties, such as the kinds producers will have in Santa Monica. The latter have a ten to one female to male ratio, where as the after parties are more like real parties with less set up. These parties appear to be the closest thing that stars can get to really hanging out without being on guard constantly. Not that they still don't get harassed. They had to use two bouncers to pry my ass off of that gal who played Helen in Troy. But overall everybody is more relaxed and you can find people to talk to. Stars are usually very clear if they are approachable, and arrange their seating accordingly. If the seating circle is closed and everybody looks at you and frowns, then don't approach. If people look and smile, then you can come in.

Don't think I will repeat. Unless it's starring Winona Ryder, whose fanclub I started, to whom I have dedicated a shrine in my basement, and who I routinely follow around. Or was that Natalie Portman? ;-)

Inflation, sex services in 1915

I found this copy of a price list from a French bordello in 1915 (click on it to expand).

Price list for love, 1915 (tarif bordel)

A franc in 1915 was worth a bit under 19 cents, so 5.45 is 5 francs and 45 centimes, or about $1.36. There are 20 sou per franc.

I find very amusing how detailed the menu is on options, and the different pricings for who is on top.

Marriage and the political economics of prostitution

http://the-idea-shop.com/papers/prostitution.pdf

Although this clearly does not cover all reasons why individuals may choose prostitution, particularly in a first world western society, it's an interesting model of why the pricing for prostitution remains such a large multiple of ordinary wages in any given country.

I find it interesting in the contexts of my earlier posts, such as Selling yourself, money vs. services and Girlfriends, better to rent or own?.

This paper was published in the Journal of Political Economics. One of the authors, Lena Edlund, has several other publications on the political economics of marriage.

(click on the title of this post to see the PDF)

Changes and Good Deeds

Changes in the blog: I turned on comments, although I couldn't repost everything, so you can't comment on early entries. I feel a little stupid not realizing that the feature was there but not activated. I also changed the style sheet, although because my entries are long, the narrow column may be a problem.

Deeds: I received an email about how my life was terribly empty, and I was turning into a souless rich man who could only purchase his love.

I also received a message taking me to task for wasting money and asking why I spend it on relationships instead of charities.

I find these emails, when well-written, quite thought-provoking. In fact I am quite worried that my fate is in the direction of souless emptiness. That somehow money fills and displaces meaning from your life.

I am responsible for my life, so my decisions are a big part of it. Part of it may also be money and the work I am in. Part of it may be my personality. Part of it may be fate. But it is my decisions that I can use to influence my future.

In that sense I am far from self-actualized. Otherwise I'd ignore all of that feedback and just enjoy... me! ;-)

Now as it turns out, I have made several fortunes, and am working on my fourth. For each previous fortune, I gave away 80% to 90% of the money (80% for my first, 90% for the most recent). It's a lot of money, especially if you consider that I live my lifestyle on the remainder.

Partly this is because I am not "in it" for the money. It's a measure of success, but not my measure of self. So I make it, accumulate it, and then give it away.

It turns out that giving it away is harder than making it. Or maybe just as hard, but more frustrating.

I will admit that most of the money I have away was wasted. Many nonprofit and charitable activities are run very inefficiently. Maybe that's not suprising considering that many of the entrepreneurs in the nonprofit field are not well trained, and are more passionate than capable; and there is less infrastructure supporting them and allowing them to scale.

And ultimately people build charities around perceived need, and do not really analyze what is the real need. The lack of this kind of analysis is sometimes due to compassion, sometimes ineptitude, but most often due to thinking in the box, or according to a set of conventional wisdoms that are considered immoral to think around, at least in the charitable world of social justice. Let's call it "politically incorrect."

Let me give an example. I'll start with a harsh one, and then a more reasonable one.

If you save the children of Africa from infectious disease, you will cause more suffering.

Why? Their economies cannot bear their current population, so if you increase the population by making more kids survive disease, it will get worse.

Now that's not a reason NOT to support helping the children of Africa. But it suggests that disease control has to be part of a more comprehensive program that include infrastructure, jobs creation, better government, better economies, and so on.

When you analyze this, many people then jump to jobs creation or education (or they call you a heartless bastard). But that disregards two other important blocking issues: 1) the governments and their corruption that blocks social changes in their nations, and 2) the lack of eye, dental, and hand and foot care that stops the population from being productive workers.

On the first issue, India could have been as bad off as Africa. India was many many tiny nation-tribes without a common language, and with a lot of strife. India is plagued with disease like Africa. But India has hope. Although politically incorrect, I assert that occupation of India by the British was the best thing to happen to them. The British unified India (against them), gave India an education system, roads and communications infrastructure, governance, and an economy. Now India has engines of growth, wealth, and job production.

These are the weapons they use to fight poverty, the tools India will use to defeat their social welfare problems. Their success is not a sure thing, but in the last few decades as they grew from 500 million to a billion people, they have reduced the number of their poor by more than the entire population of the US. They have a long way to go, but you should not discount their success.

But how will Africa do this? Nobody is unifying them, and nobody, imperialist or otherwise, is providing infrastructure, education, communications or an economic engine to fight the poverty, disease, and social travails of the continent.

On the second issue, you try being productive when you can't see well, your teeth hurt like hell and are rotting out of your mouth, and you can't walk or your manual dexterity is compromised. The diseases that ruin a nation are the ones that turn their productive working adults into unproductive liabilities that can't work. You can only have so many liabilities before you collapse. And then the wealthiest are only rewarded for keeping the poor too weak to throw a physical revolt.

The long and short of it is that it is difficult to give money rationally, and I have learned this the hard way.

I also hope to demonstrate, in this post, some evidence that I am not a sybartic hedonist, a Screwing Scrooge. I very much enjoy the non profit work where I have contributed, and remain quite active in that area, even if I don't post that much about it. Maybe I should balance this blog with more thinking on that side!

In a future post, I'll cover some of the areas I've invested in for non-profits. In preview, one of them was helping sex workers facing slavery conditions in Central Europe.

Keeping busy

Although nobody seems to comment on my blog (perhaps unsurprising since it used to be hidden from the directory and I've given it to very few people), I do receive emails on it. Some of them ask if I work.

I DO work, quite a bit, thank you. But I have the flexibility to travel (or not) when I do.

Meanwhile I can ponder the true imponderables: like why only Gulfstream can make a decent jet with large windows? Other manufacturers have great jets, but these small windows. Do you buy a jet just for the windows? Maybe. Apparently I've bought computers just for the windows...

Since my last entry I visited Belize, which was hot. I was thinking of looking up a provider friend who is over there, but I decided not to. Might have been too weird. And judging from her blog, she might not welcome the company. I flew there by way of Canada, where I had visited Montreal and Vancouver, two of their best cities. Montreal is always a lot of fun. They have history and their attitude. Think of it as a friendly Paris. :-)

Meanwhile I did meet lots of interesting people, which keeps my intellectual side happy. Visited several universities, and now will be preparing for a couple of talks I'll be giving over the summer. Travel will include climbing in the Rockies, Asia again, and London.

I'll also be at the premiere of Around the World in 80 Days this weekend in LA, and am throwing a 40th birthday for a long-time co-worker and friend in Las Vegas next month. That will be quite an event; I look forward to writing about it.