Dynamist Blog

Michael Chabon in Dallas

Reader Jim Rain writes, partly in response to my DMN piece, to let me know that the great Michael Chabon will be giving a reading at Highland Park High School on March 30. The talk is at 7 p.m., and, against all Dallas custom, is free and open to the public. It's part of a literary festival at the well-funded high school. Details are at here. I will, alas, be in L.A. and Columbus, Ohio, on March 30 and unable to attend.

Is There Intellectual Life in Dallas?

After nearly a year of dilly-dallying in meetings, the Dallas Morning News is finally launching its new Sunday opinion section, Points, edited by Rod Dreher. The inaugural issue features a debate on intellectual life in Dallas, with me taking the centrist position, Fred Turner arguing Dallas is great for intellectuals, and DMN book review editor Jerome Weeks saying it's lousy. Here's the opening of my piece (the first word should actually be "five," since I wrote it nine months ago):

Four years ago, I told my New York literary agent that I was moving from Los Angeles to Dallas. He replied, "You have my condolences."

Keep in mind that New Yorkers look down on L.A. Dallas is certainly not an obvious place to be an independent writer of serious nonfiction–a so-called public intellectual. You're an oddball here. Without a university job, you won't have colleagues to talk to. The closest real research library is in Austin. The bookstores' "new nonfiction" tables offer mostly talk show tie-ins and theology lite. The local paper runs short, boring book reviews.

"Provocative" is not a compliment in Dallas, except maybe to strippers. Few interesting, as opposed to merely famous, speakers come to town. People actually pay money to hear David Gergen on the platform with Bob Dole and Al Gore.

Condolences indeed.

The professional intellectual could do a lot worse than Dallas, however. You could, for instance, be stuck in the provincial ghettos of New York or San Francisco. There you'd have lots of other writers to talk to. The newspaper would report publishing gossip as major business news. You'd go to book parties and free lectures. You'd know who was arguing with whom about what.

But unless you traveled a lot, you'd have no idea what the rest of American culture is like. Reporters in New York have called me up to ask about the business significance of Whole Foods Market and the cultural meaning of the Left Behind series–both ancient news everywhere but The New York Times. New York is an intellectual cave, and San Francisco is even worse.

Read all three entries here. And, for the record, I think Dallas, while no Silicon Valley, is a fine place for "smart people," a group that is much, much bigger than professional intellectuals. The folks at American Leather are incredibly smart.

Survey Request: Who Are You Readers, Anyway?

Blogads is conducting an admittedly unscientific survey to determine who reads blogs. Please go to this link and answer Dynamist to question 16.

For interesting news on the evolution of blog ads--which are increasingly not just print ads online--see the Blogads blog. How meta is that?

New Voice

I'm delighted that John Tierney has been named to succeed William Safire as a Times op-ed columnist. John is a great guy and my kind of empiricist libertarian. He's also funny and a writer's writer. (Thanks to Sean Dougherty for the tip.)

More on Women in Science

In our parochial way, we discuss the number of women in science as if science professors came out of American culture. But, of course, many--if not most--don't. David Donoho, a Stanford statistician, makes an interesting point:

One reason there are so few women in science is very simple -- at least for math sciences and engineering fields -- it has to do with the status of women internationally, not here in the USA.

[*] men from every society on earth are applying in large numbers for graduate schools in the USA.

[*] women not from the US are very much less likely than men from the same country to be applying for graduate schools here in the USA.

[*] in many research universities there is a very small fraction of americans among the applicants.

Here's a concrete example: There are many Iranians in better Electrical Engineering departments nationwide. And Iranians are known to be among the best students of EE. However, very few of these prospective students are women.

I recognize that PRC Chinese women make an exception. In some departments there are as many PRC Chinese women students as Chinese men. That may be partly to do with the fact that it's an only-child society that has gone post-traditional at gunpoint. But I have the impression that there are not nearly as many Singaporean or Taiwanese women as men in US graduate programs. So I don't think that descent from Confucian civilization can be credited with the gender equity of PRC applicants; the only-child hypothesis is a better explanation.

I reach the conclusion that as long as there are traditional societies supplying ambitious young men to science careers, there will be imbalances. Globalization and gender equity are just in conflict.

Actually, globalization and gender equity are not in conflict, over the long run, because globalization works both ways. The most powerful, and frightening to many, idea exported from the United States and other Western country is the equality of women. Aside from its social implications, that ideal has practical economic advantages for societies that adopt it.

An Interview I Would Have Dodged

In a truly bizarre interview, Nick Gillespie demonstrates that he's unflappable and the charming (in person) but morally disturbed and disturbing (in print) Luke Ford demonstrates that for all his Jewish posturing, he needs to brush up on the concept of l'shon hara.

Harvard Is for Wimps

On Slate, Stephen Metcalf examines the source of the controversy surrounding Larry Summers: His "crusade to stamp out the culture of self-flattery." That crusade has focused primarily on the faculty, but I suspect that the students are more routinely flattered than the professors. After all, they got into Harvard. What more could anyone possibly expect of them?

A lot of elite universities, and some not-so-elite ones, could use a good dose of Project Runway-style tough talk. If design and architecture students can routinely put up with nasty criticisms, some justified, some less so, surely Ivy Leaguers could stand the occasional B. But all the incentives for professors cut against setting high standards.

Rolling Sculpture

To social critics like Robert Frank, the only spillovers from aesthetically appealing luxuries are negative--envy and status competition, producing a never-ending race to consume.

We hear the same about beautiful people, especially if they got that way not through sheer luck but through discipline and technology. The better other people look, the more pressure you feel to get better looking yourself. Seth Stevenson explored those competitive pressures in his delightful Slate article on tooth whiteners: "Tooth whiteners are primed to be the next deodorant: a once-optional form of personal hygiene that's now simply an obligation. It's only a matter of time because the more of us who get whitened, the grungier your unwhitened teeth will appear in contrast."

But LAT car critic Dan Neil reminds us that not all the spillovers from costly, beauty are negative. He drove a Bentley Continental GT (that's the "affordable" non-stodgy model) and discovered that beautiful luxuries can provide public goods as well as private pleasures.

16303454.jpgWhy, when I drive a car like the $170,000 Bentley Continental GT, don't the valet parkers, the carwash rag men, the predawn pop can harvesters in their rusty swayback pickups — why don't they lynch me with their looks?...

Who could be more disenchanted with cars than the men who work at the carwash at the corner of Sunset and Alvarado? But when I pull the Bentley in, the workers eagerly scrimmage for positions around it. These are guys who are standing in rubber boots half filled with cold, soapy water, whose hands must hurt from the biting detergent. Why are they so happy to see me?

The crew foreman scoffs at the Lexus waiting in line. "This is a true car," he says in Spanish....

While it may seem foolish to lump pro basketball players and Malibu real estate developers in with the likes of the Medicis, it's nonetheless true that without rich patrons the Bentley would not exist. And that would leave us all a little poorer.

Couple o' Clippings

All About the O: Slate's Seth Stevenson explains that bizarre Overstock.com ad.

Spiffy Badges: Donald Sensing blogs on the changing prestige and meaning of the Combat Infantry Badge and (notes reader George Jong in an email to me) makes a style point toward the end: "I have always had the suspicion that the CIB is so highly coveted because it is a very attractive, handsome badge and stands out on the class A uniform. I bet that if the Army took the wreath away from the CIB and gave it to the EIB, the prestige pecking order would change, too."

Grocery Shopping

Reader Frank Conte calls my attention to this CSMonitor article, occasioned by the bankruptcy of Winn-Dixie, which explores the dramatic changes going on in the supermarket industry. As in so many other businesses, there are essentially two successful strategies: very low prices, which requires size, tough bargaining, and unmatchable logistics (Wal-Mart) or a great experience with aesthetic attention in both the shopping environment and the foods themselves.

Paradoxically, the strength of Wal-Mart is one of the major factors driving today's aesthetic imperative. If you can't be Wal-Mart, and only one retailer can, you've got to give customers something valuable for the extra money. Great goods and a pleasant shopping experience are one possiblity. Another is quick convenience--the 7-Eleven strategy. Yet another is an appeal to personal identity, such as Whole Foods' earthy-crunchy approach (brilliantly analyzed in this old column by Jonah Goldberg).

Speaking of Wal-Mart, Hugh Hewitt recently suggested that I might have some thoughts on the stores' aesthetics. Here they are: Most traditional Wal-Mart stores are ugly inside and out, with bad lighting and crowded aisles. I have it on good authority that Wal-Mart customer surveys show that when asked what they most enjoy about the "Wal-Mart experience," people say, "Leaving the store." Not good--though not dissatisfied either. (They like the stuff they buy.)

That's not the end of the story, however. Wal-Mart exists in the same competitive world as other businesses. So the company can't entirely ignore aesthetics and, over time, we can expect Wal-Marts to get moer attractive. And, judging from the new one near me, their new Neighborhood Markets--which are grocery stores--are not only better looking than ordinary Wal-Marts but slightly more attractive than the typical Albertson's. The merchandise doesn't go as far up the food chain as I'd like, but at least they keep up their stocks and don't regularly run out of Diet Coke.

Finally, having just returned from New York, I can say there are major swaths of America--or at least Manhattan--that would be aesthetically improved if their existing "super"markets were replaced with even the world's ugliest Wal-Mart.

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