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A friend of mine has recently alerted me to the latest brilliant idea for creating a more sustainable campus: organizing competition between various fraternities on who can recycle more. This seems to be just one form of recycling competitions that are sweeping US college campuses, the largest and most comprehensive one being the so called Recyclemania which purports to include over 550 colleges and universities. So what, aside from the dubious value of recycling in its own right, is wrong with organizing a competition like this one where young people can be given some incentives to do something valuable and "enlightened" while having fun? Well, lots of things. As my friend pointed out, these sorts of competitions create all sorts of disincentives that although perfectly legitimate within their own sets of rules, go squarely against the spirit of competition. For one thing, you are actually encouraged to consume more products so that there is more recyclable material available. If you have access to some free resource (like printing paper) you may abuse those privileges in order to help your team win. And if your team happens to be a college fraternity, and the competition is perceived to give you any form of increased standing within the Greek community, there is pretty much no restriction on what those good ol' frat boys will not be ready to do to help their brothers come on top. I know, because I've seen it happen before.

When I was freshman in college various halls of my dorm decide to compete in who can collect more spare change in the form of coins for some worthwhile social cause (I can't remember any more what it was). It was all interesting and fun until one very rich guy decided to drive to the bank and get several hundreds (or maybe it was even thousands) dollars worth of coins. This was no problem for him – the amount of money was rather insignificant, he needed a way to amuse himself, and the conspicuous consumption that he engaged in had all sorts of positive consequences for his social standing, most importantly all the fringe benefits that accompany it at a college campus. After that the competition was all but over, and none of us had any incentives to help out any longer.

Another story that comes to mind is an alleged attempt in New York City (I think) a few decades ago to try to get rid of all the rats by paying people for every caught rat. It was all going fine until it was discovered that some rather enterprising individuals started breeding mice and selling them, thus actually not helping with the problem and gaming the system for their own benefit. The whole program was brought to a close after that. I have not been able to confirm this story, but it seems pretty plausible.

All of this shows that it's pretty hard to mess with a free market. If there is a natural demand for a product or a service, someone will sooner or later come up with a way of exploiting it, provide us with that product or a service, and hopefully make himself richer in the process. On the other hand if there is no obvious economic benefit from a product or a service, tinkering with the system will only create perverse disincentives that may still benefit a few, but will make everyone on the average worse off in the end.

When I was growing up in Bosnia we didn't have recycling, or even a notion of recycling. However there was a demand for used old paper, and every year our elementary school would organize an effort to get us students to collect as much old paper as possible. We would go door to door, the boy-scout way, and ask our neighbors to give us their old newspapers. We would collect them in one huge container that was located in the schoolyard, and once the container would be filled with paper a truck would come from the paper plant, take it away, and then pay the school for it. The money that the school would earn would be sufficient to finance a school trip or some other activity. One summer a few friends of mine and I decided to collect some old newspapers for our own sake, so that we can earn some pocket money. I remember how giddy and excited one poor friend of mine was when he got paid after we sold the paper to the paper plant. This was perhaps the first time in his life that he had some discretionary income. Working hard and getting paid for your effort can be an extremely potent and stimulating learning experience. I just find it really ironic that that lesson was taught much better a few decades ago under communism to the kids in elementary school than it is being communicated today to the college students in the US.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Karl Rove give a talk and participate in a question-and-answer session at Rhodes College. The event had a very wide list of sponsors, from Young America's Foundation, Student Lecture Board, College Republicans, College Democrats (?) and the Political Science department. (This last probably means that the token conservative in the department went to the event.)

It was fun seeing Karl Rove again. Earlier this year he debated Howard Dean at DePauw, when he pretty much wiped the floor with poor Howard. This time Karl was on his own, so he was completely in control of the subject matter and the topics that he wanted to discuss. And it showed. He opened his talk with a tribute to both presidential candidates in 2008 elections. It was an introduction to what he wanted to talk about the most, and that is President Obama's record thus far. The timing of Karl's talk was very auspicious, as it came on a one year anniversary of Obama's taking office. And Karl wanted you to know, in no uncertain terms, that he was really unimpressed with Obama's record thus far. Especially in light of the grand promises and lofty ideals that were set in the campaign. Karl came with guns blazing, in a vintage Rove style, expounding on one point after another, providing facts, more facts, and even more facts. One thing that I really appreciate about Karl Rove is that every time listen to him I don't just get the opinion, but interesting and nontrivial information that makes you grasp things from an entirely new point of view. His talks are in fact great educational experiences. I would hope that even his most ardent opponents appreciate this aspect of his talks. Another great thing about Karl is that he is an extremely gracious, funny and personable speaker. He

The questions in the Q&A session were a mixed bag. There were few that were interesting, but there were also way too many that were just downright silly, from asking his opinion on Lady Gaga to asking him on the opinion on Bush Administration being persecuted for war crimes. The question that I submitted was not unfortunately asked. I asked for his opinion on what would have been different in the past year had Hillary Clinton become president. I think that's the question that more and more people, Democrats, Republicans and Independents, are asking themselves these days.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Exactly a year ago Barack Obama was sworn in as America's 44^th president. The inauguration day was filled with pageantry and festivities, all of which I had completely missed. This has nothing to do with my ideology or my respect for the man – I just find all such self-congratulatory political events extremely tedious and have not watched an event like that in a long, long while. What I did find interesting, though, was a reaction in a college newspaper the following day by one of the more "moderate" college professors. He wrote mostly favorably about the whole shenanigan, but did have a major issue with two incidents that transpired that day: an unintentional gaffe by the Chief Justice Roberts and a mentioning, in passing, of Jesus by reverend Warren. So in the whole day there were exactly two conservatives who played any role and this supposedly moderate professor decided to criticize them and only them. Very moderate indeed. Since then I've learned that you are considered moderate at liberal strongholds like San Francisco and college campuses if you a) wear clothes on a regular basis, and b) use soap.

This mode of thinking was squarely in line with what I had experienced a few months earlier at a monthly lunch for new faculty. That particular lunch just happened to fall one day after the November 2008 election, and I was hesitant to attend it because I knew what an insufferable love-fest it was going to be. In the end, the curiosity overcame discomfort as I just needed to know how ridiculous their comments were going to be. From experience I know that there is nothing more amusing than watching otherwise intelligent people act like little kids without realizing that they were doing this. And sure enough, ridiculous statements and reactions abounded. The most outrageous one came from a very liberal faculty member who was gushing about how the election results clearly spelled the end of the "southern" bent of the Republican Party. He claimed that his grandfather or something like that used to be the head of the Republican Party of Massachusetts, and how the party there lost touch with its own "Rockefeller" roots and hence had become doomed forever.

Well, guess what. Just a year after The One had been anointed the unthinkable had happened. The good people of Massachusetts have elected Scott Brown to the US Senate, a Republican who is as far from the New England country club values as they come. This in a state that has not elected a Republican to the US Senate since 1972. This for the seat that had been held by the late Teddy Kennedy, "lion" of liberalism. This truly was a remarkable and historic election, and it had me glued to the news sources until late last night.

So what are the lessons, if any, of all of this? The first and the most important one is: don't gloat. We need to be constantly reminded that there is the Providence that shapes our lives and we shouldn't take any event, no matter how significant, as the final and ultimate vindication of our values. This is particularly true in the field of human endeavor that is as fickle as politics. Elections come and go, and there are bound to be swings in voter sentiment. Which brings me to the second point: don't idealize the politicians. They are people like you and I, subject to all the same foibles that we are, and it's just downright silly to invest too much hope in any one of them. No matter what, they will do some good things and are bound to make many mistakes. My personal hope is for such a political system where it won't really matter who is in power for most of my daily concerns. The final point is actually rather mundane compared to the other two: Democrats have clearly misunderstood their mandates, and as the last two sets of special elections have shown they are paying the price for it at the ballot box. No matter what happens until then, the elections in November of this year are going to be extremely interesting.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I was growing up I had a hard-bound collection of collected works of L. N. Tolstoy on my bookshelf. They were bought by my mom, I think. At the time I did not care enough to read those books, something that later I regretted. The books, much like the rest of my home library, have been lost in the war. Many years later, once I was done with my MS and finally had more time for leisure reading, I started working on a reading list of books that I absolutely have to read. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and Dostoyevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" had occupied the top two spots on the list. They are voluminous works that require many hours of dedicated reading attention, so although they were high on my list I had never been too quick to start reading them. The main reason, however, was not the length of those books. The main reason was that because those books were written in Russian I felt that a Croatian translation would do them much more justice than an English one. The language that these authors used was not too complicated, and almost any good translation into most of World languages would probably have done them justice. So over the years I had been tempted to abandon my desire for a Croatian translation. The temptation was particularly strong when I got my Kindle. The prospect of reading thick Russian books on a very slim and cool device was almost too strong, but in the end I had resisted the urge. Finally this winter during my trip to Croatia I made a concerted effort to track down "War and Peace" and "Brothers Karamazov." This turned out to be a much more challenging task than I had thought. The book selection in Croatian bookstore is rather paltry. Most of the bookstores are the size of café area at Borders of Barnes & Noble, so their offerings are severely restricted. Additionally, books in Croatia are extremely expensive, with even the simplest paperbacks selling for more than $25. Consequently, in a country where the purchasing power is well below that of the US, very few people buy books and bookstores are forced to sell mostly books that appeal to the widest possible audience. So, many classics of literature are out. For those one has to go to a specialty used-book store, which have become somewhat of a cultural icon in Zagreb. I didn't want get a used edition of the books I was looking for. I am a bit of a new-book snob, and besides if I had waited so long to read one of those books I wanted it to be a completely enjoyable experience.

Eventually, my search for "War and Peace" bore fruit. I found a deluxe hard-bound edition that was marked down from $100 to $14. I couldn't believe my luck – this was practically a steal! Unfortunately, I was not as lucky with "Brothers Karamazov." I'll probably have to use a more refined tactics to get it, maybe even tracking down publishers and seeing if they can help me with it. For now, though, I am happily reading travails of Pierre Bezukhov and other Russian nobility in the early decades of the 19^th century. That ought to keep me busy for a while.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favorite things to do when I go to Croatia is attend Mass there. The beauty of Mass is that it is (at least in roman rite) more or less the same wherever you go in the World, so I never feel completely like a stranger no matter where my travels may lead me. And yet, there are many differences, most of which could be easily lost on the outsiders. It has often been said that Catholic Church is much larger from the inside than from the outside, and this can be noticed by the way people approach Mass. In many ways Masses in Croatia seem more disorganized than the equivalent ones in the US – there are no ushers and greeters, no church bulletins, communion is handed out on the first-come-first-served basis, people line up for confessions while Mass is going on, and most Masses (unlike the rest of Europe) are standing-room only. However, all of this to me suggests a very vibrant and alive faith, faith that is treated seriously and with urgency that is in many ways lacking in other aspects of our lives. People there experience faith much more viscerally, and that cannot leave anyone indifferent. Throngs of believers that were lining up at the doors of the Franciscan Church in Mostar to get a glimpse of the Midnight Mass were not there out of some social obligation. They came because they truly believed, attending a church whose bare concrete walls still speak of the renovation that followed the total destruction in the war.

During one of our day trips, my brother and I visited Dubrovnik. It was supposed to be just a short visit, a few hours at the most. However, my brother got in touch with a friend who wanted to find an accommodation for us so we can spend the night. In the end she found us a room in a convent that was just down the street from the Old Town. This was practically a miracle, since Dubrovnik is one of the most expensive cities in the World (yes, the World) when it comes to the price of real estate, and stay in a hotel in that area would have cost us an arm and a leg. The nuns in convent were extremely hospitable, and immediately took to my niece. In the morning when we were supposed to leave they served us in the guest room with all sorts of most delicious Croatian pastries, and travarica, a form of Croatian grape brandy. God bless Croatian nuns!

I also went with my brother and Vida to visit Međugorje. Usually, this is a very bustling city, filled with tourists and visitors from all around the World. This time, however, the whole town was practically empty. It was the Christmas day, and all shops were closed and everyone presumably wanted to spend this holiday surrounded with their family. Even so, we came across visitors from all over the place – Austria, Romania, Italy, Canada, etc. It brings to mind a truly universal reach of the Church, and in a very poignant way. Međugorje is located not too far from some of the places where just fifteen years ago ethnic hatred was the theme of the war that was tearing the whole region apart. It is good to have such a direct and visible reminder of the unity of human race, and how trite and silly those local conflicts can be in the big picture.

Today I attended Mass at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Memphis. As I looked around me I saw church members from every race imaginable: and African family to the right in front of me, an Asian family straight ahead, a young man of south Asian descent to the left, several white families, and several families of mixed racial background. All of them had assembled quietly on this Sunday afternoon to worship one God and share the fellowship with each other. They came because they all in their own way felt the sense of belonging to this universal Church. They were not there because some committee somewhere decided to increase the "diversity" of the congregation. They were there because in this Church you are truly not judged by the color of your skin, but by the content of their faith. And on the eve of celebrating Martin Luther King in the US, it is encouraging to see that his dream is reality in the Universal Church.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last month I went for three weeks back home to Croatia. I also managed to visit my relatives in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as numerous other places along the road and some a bit off the road. It was my first trip there in four and a half years, the longest that I had been away from home ever since I arrived to the US many, many years ago. Since I had been there last time, my brother has had two wonderful baby daughters, Vida (now two and a half) and Jana (who just turned one). Until now I had only seen them in pictures, although I've had an occasional chat with Vida on the phone. I've been waiting too long to see them, and all of my hopes and expectations about them have been more than fulfilled. Vida is a total character, and extremely precocious and adventurous little girl. There is never a dull moment with her around, and she gives a whole new meaning to the term "Concelebrated Mass." She also turned out to be an extremely easy person to travel with, as she hardly ever complained or cried during many car trips that we had gone on during my visit. Jana, on the other hand, was too young for me to interact very meaningfully with. She is an extremely sweet and open little girl, with a knack for music and dancing. I took many pictures of the two of them (and of the trip overall), which I've so far only managed to put on Facebook. Maybe one of these days I'll post links to those albums here as well.

Croatia is actually probably not the best place to visit in winter. In terms of the weather it's probably not all that bad, and certainly a bit warmer than the US Midwest at this time of year. However, hanging out indoors can feel rather claustrophobic there. Everything is much smaller, but the worst part is the incessant and ubiquitous smoking. It's one thing about Croatia that I don't miss at all when I am away, and even thought I try to mentally prepare myself for all the cigarette smoke before my trip, it still comes as a huge shock and a big annoyance. Unfortunately people there are so used to it that they don't even think of it as something that warrants any kind of consideration. The way you probably think about drinking water. Or watching TV. In fact, it is considered extremely rude to make any waves about it and mention your disapproval. If you do that you are thought of as an arrogant American who is encroaching on others most sacred and cherished rights. I gave up long time ago on trying to argue with this mindset.

As I mentioned above, I had also visited Mostar, and this had been one of the more disappointing experiences of my trip. The economic crisis has hit all of Europe pretty hard as well, but it seems to have hit Bosnia-Herzegovina particularly severely. In some sense this was to be expected. Bosnia-Herzegovina in its present form is an artificial entity created during the Dayton peace process. The peace that was created has despite all odds lasted for almost fifteen years, but Bosnia-Herzegovina never quite managed to become a unified country. Its three constituent ethnic groups are held together more by the outside pressures and supported largely by many years of foreign aid. As the economic woes have made the aid scarce, and the political will to keep the status quo finally dwindled to almost nonexistent level, all of the country has been hit hard by the lack of capital and any desire for foreign direct investment. From what I had seen, things are in many ways worse there than they had been right after the War. I think that it has become painfully obvious to everyone that a new political arrangement needs to be urgently worked out. Otherwise Bosnia-Herzegovina will become another failed state.

I was harboring strong trepidations about my returning trip to the US. Nine days after my journey home the "underwear bomber" attempted to blow up an airplane above Detroit. Fortunately, his plot failed, but it spurred a new set of security measures on all US-bound flights. In the end, things worked out more or less fine, although my luggage was left behind in Paris for about a day and a half. Despite that, it was a very good trip. Hopefully it won't take another four and a half years to go back there again.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have spent the better part of the past month in Croatia and Herzegovina, visiting my family. I haven't been there in a while, and I'll write more about my personal experiences when I get some free time in the upcoming days. One thing that I would like to remark upon right now, because it is still fairly fresh and relevant, are the presidential elections that just took place. Croatian politics is never boring, and these elections are no exception. In the second round Social Democrat Ivo Josipović beat his earstwhile party (adn Party) colleague Milan Bandić. The second round was particularly unappealing, since it pitted two former communists against each other, one of whom had become a byword for all sorts of corruption and graft. I actually left Croatia prior to the second round, and had I been there I probably wouldn't have voted. Bandić had tried to remake himself as a populist and a religiously-oriented candidate, but this was so ridiculous that only the completely desperate parts of the electorate believed any of it. Most of his supporters probably thought him to be the lesser of two evils (as have in my estimation most of Josipović supporters about him), but that sort of support will not get you too far. In the end, the outcome of the election is probably for the best. Josipović has a reputation for being clean and uncorrupted, which is the kind of image that Croatia desperately needs for its politicians right now. In Croatia presidential powers are rather limited, so it's not likely that the country as a whole will be pushed leftward, especially considering that the government is still in hands of center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).

The outcome of the first round of elections, where not a single right-leaning candidate managed to garner enough votes to get into the second round, is probably the consequence of the internal turmoil within HDZ that started last summer when the party leader and Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader unexpectedly quit all of his functions. In the ensuing months Croatia was plunged into the string of corruption scandals, most of which had been linked to some members of HDZ. This state of affairs created rifts in the party, with several high-ranking party members deciding to run on their own for the president of the country. The fractured right was no match for the couple of the well-positioned candidates from the left, and it resulted in the second round of the election which did not offer the electorate the real choice between competing political philosophies, superficial as they may be when it comes to Croatian politics.

Which brings me to my next point. I was rather disappointed at the level of political debate during these elections. Most of the issues are rather ad-hoc, with very little attempt to formulate a consistent and overarching political vision. Personality plays a big role in politics in general, but when it comes to electing the president of Croatia it seems like it plays the only role. There is also a very low threshold for entering the presidential race. A candidate needs to collect only 10,000 signatures of support, which even in a country of only 4.5 million inhabitants is not all that much. Consequently, we had a dozen or so motley candidates enter the race, which made all of the political debates rather cacophonous. I think that the threshold for running should be raised, and there are already some indications that this is in the works. I would also like to see some form of primary races within political parties. This will ensure that the legitimacy of the party's choices for the presidential candidate cannot be easily challenged. However, this last change is not likely to happen. The elites of all parties have too much power and they are not likely to cede it to the rank and file any time soon.

From a purely selfish point of view I am actually very disappointed with the outcome of the elections. The previous Croatian president, Stipe Mesić, had a knack for telling corny and downright inane jokes. A couple of years ago I made a parody of him telling a joke, and had it uploaded on YouTube. Since then the short video has been watched over 160,000 times, to universal loathing of the viewing public. Nonetheless, the video started making some money for me through Google's AdSense program, enough to buy me a cup of coffee each month. My brother and I made a short video, with a much more thought-out plotline, for the second round of presidential elections. (You can watch it here.) So far it has not fared too badly for a homemade YouTube video, but it has not come even close to the popularity of my Mesić video. Only time will tell if it ever becomes another hit. And that's why I was sort of hoping for Bandić victory. He would have provided and endless amount of material for online comedy. The catatonic Josipović is a much more bland character, and it will be very hard to make too many jokes at his expense.

Having a boring president might be a good thing for Croatia. It has lived through too many interesting years. It's high time for it to become another quiet little Central European country.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)