Author: admin

Posted on

Arthur Treacher’s, A&W and Other Endangered Gastronomical Delights

The only free standing Arthur Treacher’s I know about is near my house.   All the others have gone the way of the dodo, except a few remnant populations in food courts along the New Jersey Turnpike.   I like the original fish and chips and the offerings of Long John Silver or Red Lobster just do not measure up.  Someday, maybe soon, this one will also be gone.  On that day I shall mourn.  BTW – Notice the pay phone, another endangered species.

A similar fate has befallen A&W stands.  You can still get the root beer at the grocery store, but they are mostly gone as free standing stores with the honest  draft style root beer.  The only one I know about is on HWY 29 on the way out of Charlottesville.   When I was a kid, my cousin Lani used to take me to swim at Racine beech.  We would stop off on the way back at the A&W on Lake Drive.   I think that is some kind of drive in bank these days.   Near Holmen there used to be one across from the Skogan’s IGA.  I could walk to that one from Chrissy’s parents’ house.   It still features root beer and still even has the drive in, but it is no longer A&W.

Of course, all sorts of new chains have come to take their places.   At the Taco Bell near my house, you really cannot order in English and expect your order to be correct.   I guess that is why the numbered menus are so useful.   You can just hold up as many fingers as the item you want to order.  American high school kids used to work at these places, but now you find nothing but recent immigrants.   The other day I went to Taco Bell and was amused to find some Asian immigrants in the back speaking in heavily accented Spanish.   It must be challenging to be the immigrant within the immigrant community.

Duncan Donuts is doing all right, having weathered the low carbs craze of a few years back.   I always preferred Duncan Donuts to the Krispy-Kreme sugar-dough balls.   Krispy-Kreme sailed ahead from its southern bastions until it was wrecked on the low-carbs rocks, taking its customers and sharholders on a roller coaster ride.  Duncan Donuts abides.  Up in Boston, there is a Duncan Donuts on every corner.  There are not quite so many around here.  They do make the best coffee. I don’t like Starbucks as much.   I can never figure out what all the various coffee types are called and which ones I like. 

Speaking of coffee, there is an interesting relationship.   Back when I was a kid, gas cost around quarter.  Everybody looks back with great fondness to those prices, but everybody made a lot less money too, so it was about the same number of hours/minutes worked to fill up.   But coffee used to be a nickel.   Today gas costs $3.39, but if you go to Starbucks or someplace like that, coffee costs about the same as gas, so gas is a much better deal than coffee.Away from Iraq, as you see, my thoughts become more prosaic.  

The great privilege of freedom, BTW, is the freedom to have prosaic thoughts.   When everybody thinks serious thoughts most of the time, you know the country is in trouble.

Posted on

Two Cans of Coke Zero & a Salami Sandwich

We went out to Old Rag in the Shenandoah today.  The weather was beautiful.  Old Rag is the best hike in Virginia.  In the roughly eight miles, you get lots of variety, including very interesting rock scrambles and excellent views.   I don’t go on the weekends, since it gets too crowded.  On weekdays it is just right.

Below – This rock has been hanging there since the last ice age, or longer, but I am always afraid it will let loose just as I am squeezing below.

Alex & Espen are in good condition these days.   I used to have to drag them behind me; now I am the one being pulled along.  They were making fun of me.  With each jump they asked me if I was worried about breaking a hip.   I have to admit that I am not as nimble as I used to be and I am more likely to shimmy down and less likely to leap.   You re better off, BTW, wearing softer bottom shoes.  Stiff bottomed hiking boots protect you from the rocks, but it is good to have shoes that allow a little toe dexterity. 

Below – ditto this rock

Old Rag is one of my “home places”.   This is my 24th year of coming here.  I first took the boys when Espen was only seven years old.  They still remember that time, or at least remember the story of that time.  It was a very foggy day and the low visibility gave the whole place a surreal, end of the world type look.   Somebody brought a dog names Spike.   We couldn’t see them, but we heard the group behind us.  Now it is against the rules to bring dogs, with good reason.  Dogs do not do well on the rocks and they might knock somebody off.  In this case, it was Spike himself who had the problem.   We heard barking and people calling to Spike.   Then we heard somebody say, “Spike no.”   After that, we heard Spike no more.   What happened I don’t know, but I don’t think it was good.

Below – You can imagine the problems a dog might have climbing those rocks ahead of Espen.  They are steeper than they appear in the picture.

My friend Doron Bard and I once hiked up here with his dog called Tuckahoe.   I had to literally throw Tuckahoe up some of the rocks; Doron caught him and he did not suffer Spike’s fate, but we learned that dogs and sheer rocks don’t mix.  Their little paws slip and canines just cannot climb as well as hominids.

Below – This used to be labeled “Fat man passage” but the PC crowd scrubbed it off.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures and do the hike.  From Sperryville, go south on 522 to SR 601 and follow the signs.   Nearby is another great hike in White Oak Canyon. 

Below – How great thou art.  Every time I am up in the hills, I feel newly inspired.  The words of the old hymn come to mind: O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Fits well, doesn’t it.

I am enjoying my trip home and I have to admit the thought of returning to Iraq is not a pleasant one.  But, what can you do?   I often make this mental experiment.  Imagine you have lost everything and then you got it back.  How lucky are you?  I am lucky now and will be again. 

Below – For the good (non-Iraq) times.

Below – Not all is well.  Over the last 20 years almost all the hemlocks have died out, victims of the hemlock whooly agelgid, introduced from Asia in 1924.    Invasive species are as much of a threat to our forests and ecosystems as global warming.

Hemlocks used to line this stream.  It was dark and beautiful and the shade cooled the water.  There is no easy replacement for the niche formerly occupied by the hemlock in Eastern N. America.

BTW – Espen & Alex wanted to drink the water.  I think the water is clean, but drinking it is not a good idea.  We each had two cans of Coke Zero & a salami sandwich.   What other rations can you need for a hike like this? 

Posted on

Shenandoah and Appomattox

Below is Tom Newbill, this year’s tree farmer of the year, next to his biggest oak tree.  It stands in one of the five family graveyards on his land.  In the old days, people buried their relatives on the old farmstead. Tom says that some people still visit the graves, but less frequently as time goes on.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

The most poignant is a grave of a nine year old girl called Goldie, who died just before Christmas in 1914.  Her grave is alone, near where the farmhouse stood, but away from other family members.   I am sure there is a story, but nobody will ever know.

This year’s tree farmer of the year lives in Hardy, near Roanoke, a little more than a four hour drive from Vienna.   Since I had to get there at 9am, I set out early in the morning.   I took 66 to 81 and made good time and was almost to Lexington by the time the sun came up.   It is tough driving on 81.   81 is the truck route that serves the East Coast and it is uncomfortable to be the little guy among the giant trucks.

The Shenandoah Valley is beautiful at dawn or at any other time.   Looking at it from 81 is not the best way to see it, however.   My thoughts often return to Iraq, where I must soon return, and the effects of war.  This beautiful valley was the scene of terrible destruction, much more intense than in Iraq.   Phil Sheridan went through the Valley in 1864 and destroyed everything so that the South could not use it as a supply area.  He famously said, “If a crow wants to fly down the Shenandoah, he must carry his provisions with him”.    And he did this after the war had ranged through the place for four years.   The Shenandoah was a battleground because of its proximity to Washington, its natural bounty and the mixed loyalties of the valley residents.   Anyway, by the end of the war there was not much left.

It grew back.

I will write up and post the article re the tree farmer of the year tomorrow or the next day.   Suffice to say, this guy has done well.  He has more than 1000 acres and he got it the old fashioned way.  Well, he inherited the family farm, but then he saved his money and bought some other acreage.   It is his retirement account and his land is very well managed.

Since it was more or less on the way, I stopped at Appomattox.   I missed the big event by a couple of days (and of course 143 years.) Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in Wilmer McLean’s parlor on April 9, 1865.  Our Civil War was unique in world history.   All that fighting and killing just ended.  Robert E. Lee was a real man of honor.  He sent his men home to become good citizens of the United States.   Civil wars don’t usually end like that.   In France, they would cut off heads.   The Russians machine gunned the opposition and the Chinese just starved millions to death.   In the U.S. Lee just went home and so did his men.  Of course, Grant’s terms were generous.   A few weeks later Joe Johnston surrendered his army to William T.  Sherman and the unpleasantness was largely over.  Johnston and Sherman became friends.   In fact, Johnston died of pneumonia contracted at Sherman’s funeral when he refused out of respect to wear a hat or take shelter from the rain.   April 1865 was also the month Lincoln was shot.   With the possible exception of July 1776, it was the most momentous month in American history. 

Of course most people remember the story of Wilmer McLean.  In 1861 he lived near Manassas, on the banks of a little stream called Bull Run.  During the first battle there, with the lead flying through his back yard and a Union shell landing literally in the soup pot in his kitchen, he decided to move to a quieter place, one where the war would not intrude.   He figured Appomattox was the spot.  Talk about luck.

Posted on

Vienna Virginia … Again with the Running

Along my habitual running trail is a neighborhood along Glyndon Street.  The little brick houses there (as above)  are disappearing. People who want to live here but dislike the current housing options have been tearing them down to build bigger and more luxurious homes. These nice homes are very different from those they displace. The people who live in them are different too. In driveways next to old houses, you find Chevy pickups holding the tools of McCain supporters. In the multicar garages of the new homes are Prius with Obama bumper stickers.

It goes deeper than that.   Whole Foods comes to displace Safeway.  Restaurant menus change from down home to ethnic fusion.  There are fewer kids playing on the streets and Virginia accent becomes less and less common in this part of Virginia.   Native Virginians have long said that you probably have to go south of the Rappahannock to get to Virginia.  That is becoming more uniformly true.  The area is gentrifying.  Lawyers and government workers are replacing the small business employees and owners.

I have mixed feelings about those things.   I am a carpetbagger myself.   I think shopping at Whole Foods is a waste of money, but my tastes run toward the gentrification.  Those houses are too big for me, but I like to look at them in the neighborhood.   (It is always better to have the cheapest house in a rich neighborhood.  You get to look at your neighbors’ houses and they get to look at yours.)  On the other hand, I have come to like many of the aspects of the neighborhood I had.   I learned to like Old Virginia.  I also don’t like the “style” of some of my new neighbors, who insist on wearing designer running suits and those tight bike pants.    

I guess on balance the change is good, but my ledger does not balance the same debits and credits as most of my neighbors.  For example, I like the density near the Metro. I think they should build high rises for residential and office space and lots of retail.  That is the only way to get “transit oriented development.”  I want my Metro area to look like Clarendon.  

Local citizens’ groups try to fight density.  Ironically, it is often the newest people leading the charge.  They moved here to escape such things and now it is following them and they want to lock the door.  I think that position is hypocritical.  We can’t expect to have a Metro stop with a low rise neighborhood around it.  All that means is more people drive more cars more often.   A Metro stop is too important an asset to be left sitting lonely.  We either build density here where commuters can use the Metro or push sprawl out onto the farms and fields in Loudon or even Harpers Ferry, from which people will commute hundreds of miles a week in their cars.  For me the choice is obvious. 

Above is part of an older Virginia suburb too.  The development is named for Stonewall Jackson and all the streets are named for his subordinate commanders or his famous campaigns.  I doubt anybody would choose those names and themes today. 

Strange the things you think about when you are running.  As I mentioned in the previous posts, running gives you a thinking opportunity.  I didn’t say it was always profound thought.

Posted on

Green, Green Grass of Home

Washington is nice in springtime.  This is general Sherman near 13th St. 

I am home on R&R and Virginia and Washington are green and beautiful.   The sky is blue.  Flowers are blooming.  April is my second favorite month around here, after October.

Washington is a nice city.  It is walkable and full of parks.  I have gotten to know a lot of the city at ground level, especially the Capitol Mall.  I have seen a few changes.  Most are good.  The WWII& Korean War Memorials were good additions.  The American Indian Museum has really nice grounds.   I especially like the pond.  I made a note re the the American Indian Museum a couple years ago, if you want to see pictures.

The city around the Mall and to the East has gotten a lot better, especially the Capitol Hill area.  The bad part of town used to start at 14th Street.  Now you can go almost to the Anacostia and still be in a place that isn’t too scary.

I would not mind living around here after I retire.  The nice things re Washington is all the free “intellectual services”.  Of course, you have all the museums around the Smithsonian and the area is rich in Colonial & Civil War history not far away.   But you also have the think tanks with daily lectures and other events.  Many of them give free lunches, so they feed both body and mind.  I have fairly eclectic tastes, yet I notice some of the same people attending lectures wherever I go.   I am sure some of these guys come for the free lunch.   You could live off the fat of the land if you owned a good suit and didn’t mind sitting through lectures on various subjects.  The best breakfasts, BTW, are at AEI.  Heritage provides Subway sandwiches and very good chocolate chip cookies.

Many of the lectures are also available online, but I find I pay a lot more attention if I can see the person right there.   It is a great luxury of Washington.   Boston was like that too, of course, but not every place has that kind of intellectual infrastructure.

At had some meetings at HST and SA 44 today.  I went in early with Chrissy and walked from Federal Triangle Metro to SA 44.  On the way is the American Indian Museum.  As I walked around there, I recalled my decision to go to Iraq.

I had almost forgotten.   I talked to Chrissy about it and then talked to Jeremy.  Then I decided to go and told others.   Telling others is a good way to confirm a decision.  It makes chickening out harder.  A couple days later, I felt like chickening out.   Who doesn’t have doubts?  Now my decision to go to Iraq seems natural or even inevitable, but was not. I walked around that pond at the Indian Museum, heard the water running and the red wing blackbird singing.  Of course I knew I should go and did, but I remember thinking, “What the hell have I gone and done?” 

At the halfway point, I can say that I am really happy that I made that decision.  I am grateful for the opportunity.  It is easy to overlook what a great opportunity it is being a PRT leader.  Not many people get to do something like this and even fewer get this kind of adventure when they are past 50 years old.   I cannot say that I look forward to going back to Iraq.  The hot weather is coming and the dust never goes away, but it is a good experience.   I love working with my teammates and the Marines there.  I think my team is making a difference.  I am making a difference.  That is important to me. 

Posted on

Running After the Meaning of Life

I know my title is extravagant and vainglorious, but it makes some sense to me.  I have been running regularly literally my entire adult life.   I began to run in along the lake trails at U of Wisconsin in 1977.   It was in style back then and technology had just made regular running possible.   Shoes are the key to success in running and the Nike “wafflestompers” were just coming out.   W/o good shoes, you wreck your knees and few guys my age would still be able to run with the old shoe technologies.

I don’t run for exercise alone; I would never do it on a track or treadmill and I would never – every – bowdlerize the experience with an I-Pod.  I run with nature, to be in the environment feeling the wind & sun, hearing the sounds, feeling the undulations of the topography and getting to know the place – and my place.  You cannot really get to know anyplace until you have put your feet on it and it is important to experience different seasons and moods.  Running gives you a chance to think and the movement helps you think clearly.  Running (hiking too) balances me.  I suppose there are other ways to do that, but it is hard to think of easier or more effective ones.  Running has the side benefits of good fitness and the virtue of being cheap and universally available.  You need the good shoes, so running costs around $100 a year.  Other accessories are even cheaper.  I still wear a sweatshirt that hails the 1987 Minnesota Twins championship.  I don’t doubt that I have some clothes that are older, but they don’t have dates printed on the front.  The per-use cost of these thing is vanishingly small.  Everything else is free.

I have run all over the world.  I really cannot say which is my favorite trail.  I still look back with fondness to my “original” trails through Grant and Warnimont Parks in Milwaukee and the lake trails in Madison, but Norway on Bygdoy and Brazil, through the lush woods at St. Hilaire Park also hold strong positions.  My favorite trail in Minneapolis was in Wirth Park. I loved running in Las Wolski in Krakow, with the caveat that there was significant air pollution sometimes.  I ran on the old road between Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.   That was wonderful because of the surface of the road and all the historical buildings around it, but I only did it once.  You see, I collect running memories the way some people collect coins or beanie babies.

Washington region has lots of possibilities.   At lunchtime at work I run around the Capitol Mall.  That is the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” run.  You get to go past the Capitol, Whitehouse, Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington Monument Vietnam, Korea, WWII and the Smithsonian all in around a half hour.  Talk about inspiration.  The W&OD trail in Virginia follows old railroad lines, so it provides a long trail w/o too many hills.  It goes all the way from Washington to Purcerville in the Blue Ridge.  Of course, I have never run the whole way, but I have been on many segments.  The pictures are from the part of the trail nearest my house on the W&OD and the nieghborhoods around and from the Washington Mall trail.  I have been running on this trail since 1997.  

Below is a neighborhood of Vienna, Va near the trail.  I cut down along these suburban roads.  Nice houses in pretty surroundings. They completed that one just last year. They do a good job of making them fit in and seem like part of the established neighborhood.  The homes are not cheap.  Maybe less expensive now with the mortgage crisis, although I doubt this is a subprime place.

I have gotten a lot slower over the years.  I used to repeat my miles in less than six minutes. Now I feel doing them less than nine minutes is an achievement.  It still feels the same and I have a hard time believing I am moving 1/3 slower than I did before, but it has been more than thirty years.  Sometimes young punks come flying past me, but I assume they are just sprinting at the end of their runs. I have replaced my running watches several times, since I figured they all must be defective, but I have been unable to find one that records my miles at anything less.

It is funny – almost paradoxical given my other attitudes re running – that I don’t like to run w/o the watch, but I really don’t care about the times.  I know the distances along the W&OD because there are mile markers, but most of the places I run I don’t know how far I am going and I don’t try to find out.  But over 30 years of running I have gotten the idea that it is not really running w/o the clock running.  My saving trait is that I don’t write the times down and do not keep good records.  I can kind of fool myself that I am still not that slow and the self deception doesn’t cause me much distress.

Only a shallow person lives a life w/o contradictions and only a fool tries to resolve them all.

Posted on

Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground

Our HQ building is being rewired and repainted, so our PRT and our RCT colleagues are out in tents.  It is not good.  When the wind blows, the sides of the tents blow in and out.  There is a generator outside that make lots of noise. It gets hot in the tents when it gets hot outside. Fortunately, it is not as hot yet as it will get.

This affects me not as much as it could.   I am out on R&R.  With any luck, I will miss most of the camping.   I have to give a lot of credit to my PRT colleagues and the Marines.   Conditions are not good, but they are doing very well.

I am delighted with the growing cooperation between my team and the associated Marines.  We have really become one team for the one fight. 

Posted on

No War for Oil

We did not invade Iraq to take the oil.  We are not trading blood for oil, but conspiracy buffs have been saying we did for years now.  I think we now have definitive proof that these guys were wrong.  As I reread my note from yesterday, I realized the proof was before us.  I even mentioned it, but I cannot resist expanding a bit.

War opponents have changed arguments.  They now acknowledge that we are achieving success in Iraq.  All that talk about defeat, so common last year, is gone.  Now they are complaining that it costs too much.  They also point out that Iraq is rich enough to pay for its own reconstruction.  They have a point on both issues.  But consider the implications.

If you call upon Iraqis to pay more, you have to assume they CAN.  What does this say about your confidence in the capacity of the Iraqi government and economy?  You cannot simultaneously believe that Iraqi is collapsing into ruin and that they can afford to pay billions of dollars. The other thing that it says is that this was not a war for oil.  If CF went in to take the oil, we would not have to worry about asking the Iraqis to pay more of their own way.  It would be like somebody robbing a liquor store, not taking any money and in fact using his own money to help fix the place up.  I don’t think we would call that a robbery.

I am just getting sick of this war for oil crap.  It is juvenile.  Let me explain.  There is no doubt that w/o oil we would have been unlikely to have a strong interest in this country or region.  But that does not make it a war FOR oil.  Oil in a resource that allows those who control it to wield power.  If you have a tyrant in a poor country, he is a local menace.  Somebody like Robert Mugabe is a good example.  W/o the big money provided by a resource like oil, guys like Osama bin Laden and his followers would just be a nutty bunch of desert bandits.  Add oil to the equation – lots of oil – and you get lots of trouble.  A local psychopath can become a global threat when you inject the steroids of oil wealth. In some ways, therefore, the war is about oil but not for oil.  That distinction is very important. 

The oil curse is also the curse of easy and generally unearned wealth.  It tends to corrupt the recipients and it can make them dangerous. This is a variation on the point and don’t want to belabor it.  Those who know me understand that I sometimes can rant a bit, but now that rhetoric has changed from defeat in Iraq to success in Iraq is costing too much – and that Iraq can and should pay more – it should at least let us dispense with one of the more annoying pieces of disinformation.  There was no war for oil.

Posted on

Bureaucrats Who Can’t Spend Money

I watched closely the Petraeus/Crocker Senate testimony.  Some of the questions made me wonder how some people get to be Senators, but others made a good point about Iraqis paying for Iraq’s development.  I am not an expert on the whole country, but I do have some local observations.  

My instructions on coming to Western Anbar and the instructions to my team stipulate that our job is to get the Iraqis to spend their own money for projects.  We don’t do anything unless the Iraqi side contributes.  Beyond that, many of our training programs from the inception of the ePRT have been on “budget execution” for Iraqi officials.

It is a lot harder for governments to spend money than we think.  In the U.S. we have no shortage of bureaucrats who have a tradition of knowing how to allocate & spend money.  We have various numbered forms, document numbers, obligations, fiscal data etc.   Our problem is often to slow down the spending.  We forget how lucky we are. Iraq lacks almost all those things we take for granted.  The British left a reasonably efficient bureaucratic tradition, but that was a long time ago and those skills have passed almost from living memory.  Saddam Hussein actively destroyed the power of intermediaries (and often the intermediaries themselves) between his desires and execution.   In Saddam’s Iraq bureaucratic execution had meanings beyond the fiscal and the rules based systems broke down and largely disappeared.  Bureaucrats remained, lots of them, but they stopped doing the things that bureaucrats, even bad ones, usually do.

This is a big difference between Iraq and Germany post WWII for example. In Germany, out of the rubble of Nuremburg, Dresden or Berlin emerged a living bureaucracy.  In those places, as often in the U.S., the challenge is/was to cut thought the red tape.  Around here we often don’t have enough red tape to hold the package together.

I have observed the rule of rules (good bureaucracy) developing in Western Anbar, but it is a painful process and the tradition of the strong man remains.  I have written in previous posts about my discomfort at seeing a big leader dispensing projects and favors to local supplicants, but at least the money gets spent this way.  The better situation is that local, provincial and national government develop budgets, set priorities and allocate funds based on the instructions of elected officials in the context of the rule of law.   We also need to see more initiative from the lower levels and less emphasis on central authorities.  I wrote a blog entry about that when I first got here.

My team and I are pushing hard to get the Iraqis in Western Anbar to allocate and spend their own money.  We are doing “good” here and many of projects help the people of Anbar.  But our purpose is not to do good.  Our purpose is to make Al Anbar a place where the insurgency and AQI cannot find a foothold.  We are spending the taxpayers’ money and risking our safety to accomplish THIS mission. Development and improving the lives of Anbaris is a happy collateral benefit.  I take great personal pleasure in seeing that our efforts will help people help themselves and I am especially gratified when we can help restore the degraded environment of this arid region.  But I recognize that these are fringe benefits.

Iraq is enjoying an oil boom.  The country is earning something like $56 billion a year in oil revenues.  They should be and will be able to pay their own way – soon. I hope that we in the ePRT can work ourselves out of a job – soon.  But it is in OUR interests that Iraq succeeds and not fall into the hands of a hostile or terrorist regime.   That is why we are still involved.

BTW – the very fact that the IRAQIS – not us – have that pile of cash indicates that all those guys who said we were in this war for oil profits were full of crap.   If we were after the oil we would … get the oil.

So I agree that Iraqis can & should pay more for their own development.   I believe they will do it.  But we have to prime the pump a little and since a secure Iraq is important to us too, it is worth it.  I regret that we get stuck with the cost and the risk but the alternative is not acceptable.

Posted on

Measuring Success in Iraq (Banana index)

Two separate groups of people came to see me about measuring progress in our area of operation and gave me an opportunity to pontificate in my very best style.  I am doing my best to deploy all my skill and experience on how to assess and measure.  I am delving way back to my MBA days when I studied marketing research, but Iraq presents a researcher with almost the perfect storm of confusion.  I am not sure how to measure progress in Iraq and I am not sure that information is knowable even in theory.

One of the guys who came to visit was a practicing anthropologist.  I didn’t know they had that kind of career path, but it makes sense.  Anthropologists study relationships between people, institutions, traditions and society.  The skills of an anthropologist are more appropriate in Iraq than those of a public pollster.   I don’t believe the usual polling methods can produce valid results in a place like Iraq. Figuring out the situation here is more an art than a science, more anecdotal than analytical. My study of marketing research methods gave me a good feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of statistical studies. 

Graphically Misleading

The most misleading sort of study is the pseudo-scientific one, with lots of numbers and graphs w/o valid grounding in reality.  Such things are usually based on a kind of snowballing of the power of a few guesses.  A few people make estimates that are locally valid for decision making but not scientific.  For example, “How much traffic is there on the road?”  “Lots.” You could make a decision based on that, but it is a soft estimate.  Somebody aggregates these guesses and gives them numerical weight.  As the aggregations get farther from the original sources, they get less and less related to reality BUT more and more impressive in terms of certainty of numbers and presentation.  

In my traffic example, if you aggregate traffic information from downtown Manhattan and rural Wyoming, you might conclude that traffic is a moderate concern in both places and you could produce graphs and charts to support your position. I learned a long time ago that if you want to enhance the power of your own gut estimate, you should put it into writing and if possible draw a chart or a graph. I know this works, but I also know that it is primarily a presentation ploy.  Even in the best cases, it is used to simplify information and make it easier to understand.  In the process, we trade some degree of accurate detail for presentation. Anyway, I think we are demanding more of the information we have than it has to teach us and much of our precision is unjustified. 

Spock Trap

I remember in the old Star Trek when Spock would say something like “impact in 10.5 seconds.”  How stupid is that?  That is why I prefer Picard. By the time he says 10.5, the number has changed.  It is unjustified precision, but it is easy to fall into the Spock trap.  It is attractive and makes you seem intelligent.  BTW – my own experience in using deceptive numbers is that you are much better off using precise odd numbers.  For instance, 97 is a more credible number than 100 or 90.  (Remember that Ivory Soap was 99 and 44/100ths percent pure, not 100 %.)My feeling about the part of Iraq that I know best, the places I have actually set foot and looked at with my own eyes, is that things are much better now than they were when I arrived six months ago.   I use the word “feeling” because that is what I have.  I have observed that people seem friendlier.  Markets are fuller.  There seems to be less fear.  Local people were once afraid to talk to us or work with us.  Not any more.  It just feels better.

Dreadful Conditions

I am convinced that conditions here are better than our measurements will be ever able to detect.  Iraqis have a long history with oppression.  Smart people learned to hide their prosperity from predatory authorities.  If Saddam’s henchmen found out you had something good, you might not be able to keep it.  We also saw the age-old desire to hide assets from the tax collectors.  As a result of all this, people have become accustomed to lying to anybody asking questions and trying to make conditions seem as dreadful as possible. 

Sing the Body Electric

A good example of a statistic we cannot use – but we do – is electricity.  Iraqis get some hours of electricity from the grid.  This power is essentially free, since the authorities have generally lost the capacity to meter and charge for it.  Naturally, everybody wants as much of this free power as they can get and when the power comes on they plug in everything they own.  It makes demand appear much higher and shortfalls more acute. If asked, people complain bitterly about the lack of power.  BUT if you fly over Anbar or drive thorough a city at night, you see plenty of lights even when there is ostensibly no power.   The fact is that many communities and even individuals have generators.  They prefer not to use these generators because it means that electricity is no longer free.  However, when they say that they do not have electricity, they really mean that they do not have FREE electricity.

Demand for electricity in Iraq is growing at around 12% a year, as people buy more things like refrigerators, microwaves and DVD players.  Supply can never catch up with demand as long as electricity is de-facto free.   I am convinced that if/when the authorities figure out how to meter and charge for it, the “problem” of electricity will be mostly solved, or more correctly it will stop being a problem and become an expense.

Fear v Greed

There are some sorts of statistics that I think we might be able to use IF we could assess them.  One is the risk premium that contractors and others demand.  Six months ago we had to pay relatively more for services because people thought it was risky to deal with us (i.e. they were afraid the insurgents would target them in retaliation). They charged us more to compensate.  Now the prices we are paying for our projects are dropping.  Of course that could be because we are getting better at knowing local conditions and negotiating better deals.   I think that if I could figure out a reliable way to estimate the risk premium, I would have a very good measure of improvement.  It is a kind of greed v fear measurement.

Banana Index

One of my own assessment methods is a “banana index”.  I observe fruits in the market especially bananas.  No bananas are grown locally.  They all have to be imported from somewhere else.  It is very hard to get a banana to market exactly at the right time.  They will usually be either green or brown.  A banana stays yellow for only a short time and if it is mishandled it gets easily bruised.   If you see lots of good quality bananas in the market, you know that the distribution system is working reasonably well and that good are moving expeditiously through the marketplace. Anyway, I shared my methods with the researchers. They are just rules of thumb, but if you call them heuristics they sound almost scientific.