Art and Diplomacy
Hillary Clinton makes a terribly undiplomatic, but refreshingly truthful, gaffe in Mexico. (As Michael Kinsley pointed out...) [Via Andrew Sullivan, whose position on the image's origin is nicely ambiguous.]
Dynamist Blog
Wanted: Better Measurement
The Fraser Institute is sponsoring an essay contest on "Excellence in the Pursuit of Measurement," with a top prize of $1,000 (Canadian) and five second-place prizes of $500 (Canadian), "for identifying a vital issue that is either not being measured, or is being measured inappropriately." Entries can either be short essays (500-600 words) or one-minute videos. The deadline is May 15, 2009. Send submissions to measure.it-AT-fraserinstitute.org. Full contest details here.
I find the video alternative interesting, as one more example of how dominant video story telling has become as technological costs have dropped. When will high schools start teaching "video composition" as a required course?
The Control of Time
China is roughly the width of the U.S. but has only one time zone. In today's LAT piece Barbara Demick reports on how ethnic minority Uighurs in China's far west use their own time zone, two hours earlier than the official one, to subtly protest Beijing's dominance.
Local people have strangely adjusted.
"Confusing? Not confusing at all! You can ask anybody how easy it is to convert between Beijing time and the local time," insisted a Chinese woman working at the Kashgar inter-city bus station, which is running on local time until April 1 and then switching over. "We use Beijing time in every aspect of our lives. It is only our comrades, the ethnic minorities, who use their local time."
Ali Tash, a 28-year-old tour guide, said it's really quite simple. Pointing at empty sofas in a hotel lobby, he explained how he would set up a hypothetical meeting with a Chinese friend and a Uighur friend. "So I say to the Chinese guy, come at 4 o'clock, and to the Uighur guy, come at 2 o'clock, and then everybody will be there the same time. No problem."
Such adjustments shouldn't seem "strange" to a reporter for a West Coast paper, since Pacific Coasters are forever making similar adjustments to accommodate the dominant East. Whoever gets up first, generally sets the day's agenda. I've been known to suggest the the U.S. would be better off if everyone were on Central time. And I'm currently enjoying being six hours ahead of the East, seven hours before Italy switched from "solar time" ("ora solare") to the aptly named "legal time" ("ora legale") this past weekend.
Where Have I Been?
Readers of DeepGlamour know.
Cancer Drugs vs. The One Best Way
In my March Atlantic column I used my personal experience with breast cancer to illustrate broader concerns about the development and availability of cancer drugs. Here's the beginning:
If I lived in New Zealand, I'd be dead.
That's the lead my editor wanted me to write, and I have to admit it's great. Alas (for this column, at least), it's not exactly true. But neither is it false. And the ways in which it's partly true matter greatly, not just to me or to New Zealanders but to anyone who might get cancer or care about someone who does.
The American health-care system may be a crazy mess, but it is the prime mover in the global ecology of medical treatment, creating the world's biggest market for new drugs and devices. Even as we argue about whether or how our health-care system should change, most Americans take for granted our access to the best available cancer treatments — including the one that arguably saved my life.
As readers of The Future and Its Enemies know, I have long-standing concerns about the threats to innovation posed by centralized technocracy. I'm the fortunate beneficiary of an unusually dramatic advance against cancer--one developed because of the determination of a relatively obscure academic, with basic research largely funded by Revlon philanthropy and development done by a young and somewhat shaky biotech company. (The story is told in detail in Robert Bazell's book Her-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer
The column came out during the debate over "comparative effectiveness" research funding in the stimulus bill. Such research can provide valuable information within a competitive system. Within the context of a nationalized health system, however, such information is often used to justify rigid rationing schemes that stifle technological progress and hamper individualized treatment. Few of the readers who objected to the column made sophisticated arguments about comparative effectiveness, however. Most were just angry that The Atlantic had printed a piece implicitly questioning single-payer "universal" systems--and they wrote a lot of letters. In a new piece on The Atlantic's website, I respond to some of the most common arguments.
Recession Blues
The Real Life economic crisis takes its toll in Second Life.
Daredevil Secrets to Successful Innovation
Diego Rodriguez draws lessons for entrepreneurship and the global economy from this daredevil bigwheel jump. And it's good advice, not just a blogging stunt.
Margins of Adjustment
Following a conversation with Arnold Kling and Seth Ditchik, Tyler Cowen suggests that this may be a "Great Depression for Rich People, because it's driven largely by huge cutbacks in luxuries. The bigger story, which Tyler hints at, isn't about rich people but about pretty much everyone in our very rich economy. We have lots of margins of adjustment--places we can cut back on spending without suffering serious hardship. For most people, cutting back doesn't mean deciding between food and rent but between manicures and lattes.
Consider this USA Today report on "small luxuries."
Think small, like Casey Elliott.
She's here picking up a tin of gourmet hot chocolate mix for her kids, a small but welcome treat at a time when her husband is out of work. "We're trying to do simple things, like going for family walks and playing games," she says.
She's buying gourmet hot chocolate mix. Did that margin of adjustment even exist 20 years ago (much less during the Depression)?
Toy Wars: Regulatory Defense
As the effects of the CPSIA finally begin to attract public attention, the NYT plays sock puppet to the law's increasingly panicky supporters.
UPDATE: Alison Moore at Publisher's Weekly reports on her industry's mood, with little love for the NYT's position:
We booksellers are feeling both besieged and stymied by the complicated mess of unclear rules and uncertain expectations the CPSIA places on all of us. As are librarians. As are book publishers. As are toy makers and crafters and artisans. As is everyone who sells used books or used toys or used clothing for kids. Everyone who manufactures or sells products for children, it would seem, rightly regards the CPSIA as the source of innumerable headaches and huge potential profit losses....
Since I first began learning about it, the over-reaching and harmfully inclusive regulations of the CPSIA have reminded me of one particular book: Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow. Among the many points Doctorow makes in this entertaining novel is the fact that sometimes in its efforts to enact laws aimed at increasing the public's safety, a government makes its citizens less safe, or at least a lot more inconvenienced that should ever have been necessary. I was thinking maybe I ought to be sending copies of this book to members of Congress, but I'm now thinking I should start by sending a copy to the New York Times
Meanwhile, at Ordinary Gentlemen, Mark Thompson gives the Times editorial a thorough fisking and Freddie makes the seemingly obvious argument that saying the CPSIA is a terrible law doesn't indict all regulation:
Every piece of stupid, ham-handed, counterproductive regulation makes it harder to pass effective and smart regulation, if for no other reason than that it erodes public trust in regulation as an institution. Regulate where prudent and necessary, but regulate intelligently, for goodness sakes.
Crazed right wingers all.
Cheaper Headache Relief
Earlier this week, the FDA approved the first generic version of the wonderful but pricey migraine drug Imitrex. Now if we could just get it over-the-counter.