A Princess's Plea

Last Wednesday, I saw a real, live princess. Her Royal Highness Princess Haya Al Hussein of Dubai came to the Baker Institute here at Rice University to speak on "The Politics of Hunger," as part of her larger efforts, through her non-profit Tkiyet Um Ali, to end world hunger.

The talk began at 6pm. As I approached the Institute I saw a number of black sedans parked in front, and men in impeccable suits. In the lobby sat a pretty, smiling receptionist, checking the roster for names (the day before I had to fill out a detailed online RSVP form and register as a Rice student to get in). A police officer was watching from the corner as she checked me in.

I walked inside, with my jeans and T-shirt (covered in chalk from class), and immediately felt out of place. Most of the attendees were clearly important people; donors, public officials, distinguished members of the community. They were dressed up, had white hair, and clearly knew each other. It was a group as close to aristocracy as we get in America.

We were kept waiting a little bit. In the meantime I flipped through the program, and people-watched the aristocrats, who were greeting each other with the familiarity and affection of fellow parishioners. Every now and then I would hear the loud tak-tak of high heels as someone from the Institute went in the back to check on something. After a while, people started trickling from the back; at first a couple men in suits, then some women, who would later walk back to check on something; they would return; some more important-looking people; and then finally, the princess herself, surrounded by a whole delegation of people, including the former Secretary of State James Baker, with whom she was finishing up a conversation. As I watched this scene, it struck me how the extended wait and the scurrying back and forth of the Baker Institute staff represented an integral part of the very spectacle of power and status that we were there to see. By the time the princess did come out, I already felt distant from her, blocked by layers upon layers of guards, staffers, and officials who guarded her access; a common man, glimpsing a world to which I wasn't privy. An aura befitting a princess, I guess.

Her Royal Highness shook hands with some people sitting in the front row, and then took her seat.

Mr. Baker introduced the princess. He spoke fondly of the work he did with her father, the King of Jordan, and the honor of having her to visit. He gave the air of a man proud to see his friend's daughter all grown up.

Then Princess Haya took the podium. She was just as I imagined a princess should be. She had a British accent (being educated at Oxford), and spoke only as loud as she needed to be heard, lending her voice an ethereal and other-wordly quality. If it weren't for the Bose speakers, I would have to strain my ears to hear her:



The main theme of her talk was that America needed to take moral leadership in the fight against world hunger. Global hunger "has to become a priority," she said. Without food security, "there can be no political security, and no peace."

What most struck me about her talk was the latent frustration that bubbled behind her serene front. She admitted to feeling powerless at times, despite her high station; and she explained her annoyance for endless rounds of policy debates, which she saw as an excuse for not meeting our responsibilities. Most of all, she couldn't understand why policymakers weren't sincere about fighting global hunger. Why do countries spend so much on weapons and so little on aid? Why do we permit hunger to continue? Where is the outrage?

This plea was so earnest and sincere that I felt guilty for also thinking it was futile. There is, I think, a natural progression of thought when one works for moral causes like this: first comes outrage, and zeal, and disbelief; but eventually, sometimes soon but often much later, there settles in a kind of serenity that comes with wisdom and understanding. Yes, fight on for the causes that are important, but there are reasons for why things happen. (In this particular case, I would say, Princess, that it is possible for all the people in the world to have good intentions and still find ourselves in miserable situations.)

But I know well enough not to become cynical. Exhorting important people to spend more money on food aid may not be the most effective way of ending world hunger, but God knows the world could always use more of the princess's sincerity.

Rumbo a Argentina

Next semester I’ll be in Buenos Aires, studying at the Universidad Católica de Argentina (UCA).

I'm going mostly for two reasons. The first is Spanish. I've been working on learning the language for a long time (almost 7 years to be exact), and I feel that in order to make it worth all that while, I should try to become as fluent as I can. Here in the United States and at the University I've tried everything I could (reading books, listening to the radio, conversation partner programs, and the like), and it's all worked well so far. But now I'm at that point where I need to finally immerse myself. My hope is that I can solidfy my Spanish as much as possibly while I'm there. At the same time, though, I not only want to learn Spanish, but also use it as well: I've been in "practice mode" for the past seven years, and I'm ready to finally put it to work in real life. In Argentina I'll have to rely on my Spanish to get around and get things done, and that, in my mind, is a wonderful way of culminating all these years of study.

The second reason for studying abroad dovetails somewhat with the first. You see, the reason I'm so eager to learn Spanish in the first place is that I think it opens up worlds. In not knowing Spanish, I felt blocked off from millions of people; their culture, ideas, hopes, and fears seemed off-limits. But now those barriers have fallen, and I can interact meaningfully with a whole new group of people.

As a student of economics, I find this “opening of worlds” terribly exciting. Each country has its own way of organizing itself, is own goals and priorities, and its own way of tackling social problems. Here in the U.S. we naturally focus on our own approach—but of course ours is not the only one. In my economics classes at UCA, I am curious to see whether Argentinean economists understand their field in a different way than Americans (and a cursory perusal of their journal articles suggests they do), or whether they have a different perspective on world affairs. More broadly, I think living in Argentina will help broaden my understanding of my field, especially by providing me with real-life examples of how different social norms, customs, and institutions influence economic activity.

In the long run I hope to become a professor, if not of economics then in some field related to the social sciences. Part of being a professor, it seems, is thinking critically about one’s field, and international exposure is one way I can force myself to consider and reconsider my assumptions. Indeed, that's the only way we grow.

NB: I don't mean for my blog to be autobiographical, but I'm making an exception here because I find explaining myself like this helpful in clarifying my own thoughts. This trip is a big move on my part, and it's important that I think through what I'm getting myself into.

Tuesday Night Rides

Picture a stock scene from The Fast and the Furious: a crowd milling in an open lot; rows and rows of tricked out cars rev their engines and flash neon lights; new entries gracefully skid up, and their drivers gracefully step out; buzz in the air; anticipation. Now take that scene and swap bikes for cars and that's pretty much how Tuesday Night Rides begins.

At TNR the entire biking world converges for a joyous celebration of biking. There are the Lance Armstrong bikes, regular Target mountain bikes, BMX bikes, beach cruisers, and unicycles. There's a bike with two wheels in the back, which makes it look like a chariot; and there are low-rider gangster bikes, with super long handlebars and an extra curvy South-Side frame.

With a couple whoops and shouts, the ride gets going. Even from the inside I knew the sight was something to behold, like watching a flock of Canadian geese embark. You know there's a leader out front, as does everyone else, but as you turn through streets and lanes, striking amazement in drivers and pedestrians, you feel as if you yourself know where you're going, and that the path is intuitive, natural, and right, guided by natural forces like magnetic poles.

Even though we ride as a pack, everyone does their own thing. Some face the road ahead, not saying anything. Others catch up on conversation. Others share cigarettes as they ride.

It's on Tuesday nights that bikers gather to claim back the streets. No longer confined to falling off the edge of the road, we stream through empty parking lots and take up both sides of empty lanes of quiet, dark neighborhoods. Sometimes dogs bark--and when we run through red lights cars honk—but we don't care. For once we don't yield.

A Helping Hand in the Bowels of Bureacracy

It can be quite depressing to work in the Division for Substance Abuse Policy at the Governor's Office because you have to constantly consider social problems most people don't have to worry about. Our work is all about things like kids binge-drinking at age 13 and meth ravaging entire communities, which make you realize how desperate some problems have become. I've asked several people at the office how they cope with this. Their reply: "It helps knowing that I'm doing something to help."

Through the thickets of reports, paperwork, and legalese, though, it's hard to see how my work contributes to anything. It's all so far removed from the people and their problems.

Today, however, that gap was bridged—if only temporarily—when I inexplicably got a call from a distraught woman in San Diego who told me that she was desperately seeking help for her brother-in-law, a meth addict in Tucson. I have no idea how her call ended up reaching my cubicle, but once it did I seized the opportunity to do right. I told her I'd figure out what to do, and, flushed, I ran to the director of the division, who nonchalantly said she had some contacts in Tucson and called her back in 15 minutes...

That's it. I didn't even really help her directly. But it was enough for me: knowing that I was part of a process that brought some peace and consolation to a fellow human being is more than enough.

Genius

When I was in the 7th grade, I learned that exponents do not distribute inside parentheses. That is:

(a + b)² ≠ a² + b²

My teacher hadn't mentioned the FOIL method for performing distributive multiplication (that was for 8th grade, I came to find out), so I just assumed that it hadn't been discovered yet. How nice and clean would it be, though, if there were a way to distribute that exponent! So I worked on coming up with a rule.

Ambitious as I was, however, I didn't have any mathematical chops. I couldn't simplify it, or manipulate it, or modify it to come up with an elegant solution, so I tried the only other strategy I knew: guess-and check. a² + b² + a + b (no); a² + b² + 4a - b (no); a² + b² + 3a / b (no)...

For the next week this became my obsession. I thought about it during class (ignoring whatever else was going on), while eating, before sleeping. Guess-and-check is, after all, not a very quick or reliable method, so it took a lot of computing. But finally, I came up with something that seemed like it would work:

(a + b)² = a² + b² + 2ab.

I double checked it and tripled checked; I tested it with fractions, decimals, irrational numbers, whatever math I knew at the time; and when I was absolutely sure it worked, I showed it to my parents.

It was meant to be one of those conversations that starts off casually enough at first, but then quickly escalates to life-changing proportions. I imagined my parents would jump out of their seats when they realized they had been raising a genius all along. There would be a press conference the next day of course, so I had already started planning how I'd strike that delicate balance between humility and healthy pride. And I had good reason to be proud. I had just solved one of the most perplexing mathematical problems of our time. Mathematicians would rejoice. Scientists would cheer. It would be a new world...

How many government employees does it take to change a light bulb?

Cassandra, who heads the Arizona Governor's Office for Children, Youth, and Families, where I work, had requested that a light bulb be installed in her office. She wanted something that would sit over her head or something so that she could read better.

So she puts in her request with the powers that be, and a week later a guy comes down to her office to appraise the situation. He nods, and then comes back with two more people: a guy holding some kind of meter, and a "lighting hygienist." The lighting hygienist takes a look around, turns on all the lights (including the lights under the desk, which Cassandra never uses), and has Cassandra sit in her chair. Well, the lighting is fine, she says, but I think your computer monitor may be angled too high...