Chicago Boyz

OK, now for something light, even silly. My friend Dave is a lawyer who lives in New Orleans, right in the French Quarter. I have known him since 1981. He was the pledge master at my Phi Delt chapter. He is a total maniac. After he moved to New Orleans, there was a brouhaha involving the Krew of Comus, one of the very old social clubs which put a float in the Mardi Gras parade every year. The city barred any organization from participating which did not racially integrate. So, after over a century, Comus was off the street. Dave, a traditionalist of an extreme sort, was upset. So, he spent a fortune having a spectacular Comus costume made for himself, and he returned Comus to the party all by himself. He founded the Mistick Social Drinking Club of Comus as the vehicle for an annual party, which commences at 9:00 a.m. on Fat Tuesday at his pad, which then spills out into the street. I have yet to be able to go. But I at least write an elaborate regrets letter, this year’s went thus:

Thrice hail, O Great Comus!

I am in receipt of your missive anent those delightful annual revelries, which will raise many raucous shouts and much jolly laughter, amidst copious bibulation, in daylong merriment, both within your own temple precincts and bursting forth as it were onto the ancient flagstones of the French Quarter of the Crescent City. Yet again you so kindly deign to solicit my participation in these fabled events. Yet again, O thrice great Comus, I tremblingly approach you, and humbly prostrate before your Olympian eminence, I express my renewed and tearful regret that I must once more decline your proffered invitation. Train not upon me thy baleful eye! Visit not upon me thy more-than-human wrath! Would that I could join you, and those others similarly blessed by your many kindnesses, garbed in motley (or other suitably festive raiment) in full-throated imbibement and convivial companionship — before embarking on the usual course of severe and arduous Lenten austerities commencing the next day. I pray that you will forgive my absence, knowing as you do that duty alone keeps me from your company. I trust that you will convey my greetings to the assembled throng of your votaries. I hope too that you will quaff at least one flagon of savory and ardent spirits in my name, O most splendiferous and aureate Comus! Farewell.

Maybe some year I’ll make it down there.

Kaedrin has a good post with links to all seven of Steve Mumford’s Baghdad Journal columns. Good coverage of Iraq, good art. Worth a visit.

The Onion gives us the inside scoop on the Kerry campaign.

(via Chicago boy DG)

Twenty-five to fifty year projections of relative economic strength based on demographics have one key assumption that (I hope!) isn’t really safe to make:

Older people will always lack health and vigor relative to younger people.

This assumes in turn long-term stagnation in the advancement of medical technology.

If we’re the least bit optimistic about our future, we’ll tend to regard such pronouncement as being about as reliable as 25 or 50 year projections made in 1900 about the quantity of horse droppings littering the streets of our cities.

If the projections are valid, and anti-aging treatments don’t get developed over the next fifty years, then most people reading this are pretty much screwed. Even a continuing absence of such treatments over 25 years would be a very disturbing sign that long-term stagnation is the order of the day.

But let’s assume that National Health Care never comes to pass, and a working anti-aging treatment successfully runs the FDA gauntlet (or gets developed overseas by researchers that have more latitude in playing with stem cells). What then do current demographic trends portend?

Predictions based on the age distribution in a population get turned on their heads. Having lots of older people becomes an advantage: they’ve got their youthful vigor back, plus lots of experience. Age demographics will tend to favor Europe, Japan, China, et al, rather than the United States, especially if they get the treatment first.

Of course, it won’t be a complete reversal. As it stands, older people are a positive burden on the younger people, while with anti-aging treatment, younger people will be productive, only less so than older people, so extra younger people in places like the United States won’t be a drag on the economy the way extra older people in places like Europe and Japan are projected to be in the absence of anti-aging treatments. Proportions won’t be as important as sheer numbers, where we’ll still be in good shape, or economic freedom and attraction of talent, where we’ll probably be relatively better for the foreseeable future.

But, either the aging of our trading partners and competitors will at some point end up working to their relative advantage, rather than ours, or you and I have significantly less than a century to live, and will not get a stay of execution.