Here are Sally and I on Saturday morning before the kidney transplant. My operation went extremely smoothly. Hers took longer than expected, because a little bit of the kidney was spasming, making it hard for the surgeons to attach the blood vessels. Worse, a couple hours after surgery she started hemorrhaging and had to go back into surgery--an unusual and dangerous complication. Fortunately, she came through OK and is gradually recovering.
I am now out of the hospital and doing fine, recuperating at a friend's nice DC crash pad. I'm a bit weak and not as mobile as usual, but I'm off pain medication and more normal than not. Here I am:
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2006 • Comments
Wright Amendment supporters have turned from push polling to push-direct mailing. Alan K. Henderson has the details.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 03, 2006 • Comments
Unless people like Leon Kass get their way, someday patients with failing kidneys will be able to get made-to-order replacements that are exact genetic matches, either through therapeutic cloning or some now-unknown future technology. Now, however, if your kidneys stop working, you have three options: die, go on dialysis (regularly described as "living hell" by dialysis patients and their loved ones), or find a donor kidney. And donor kidneys are in short supply, made shorter by legal restrictions and social taboos.
Last fall, my friend Sally Satel wrote about the issue in general and her own search for a kidney donor. Between the time she wrote the article and the time it appeared in the NYT, I heard about her situation and volunteered as a donor. Our tissues turned out to be unusually compatible for nonrelatives and, when her Internet donor dropped out, I moved from backup to actual donor. We have our surgeries tomorrow morning.
As surgeries go, the procedure is safe and straightforward--far more so than people think. A donor can live a completely normal life with one kidney. The recipientis not so lucky, since a foreign organ requires a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs. But that's a lot better than the alternative.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 03, 2006 • Comments
I'm delighted to announce that on March 15, I'll be joining The Atlantic as a contributing editor, writing a monthly column on "Commerce & Culture" and the occasional feature. My first piece will appear this summer.
In other writing news, if you're traveling Southwest Airlines this month, check out my article on pens in Spirit, the Southwest magazine. I hope to post the piece on this site eventually, but it's currently unavailable online.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 03, 2006 • Comments
| You Are Los Angeles |
 Young and fun, you always know where the best parties are. And while you tend to keep things carefree and casual... You certainly can glam it up when you need to. |
What American City Are You?
(Via Dan Drezner.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 28, 2006 • Comments
With its insights into the ways people act inconsistently or against what they say they want, behavioral economics can provide useful ideas for incrementally improving management, and self-management. Richard Thaler, for instance, has turned his research into the successful and practical Save More Tomorrow program to encourage employees to put their future raises (or portions of them) toward retirement savings.
Some economists, however, have rushed to apply behavioral economics not to private dilemmas but to public policy, arguing that inconsistent preferences need to be corrected with paternalist government policy. In a smart, careful new Cato Institute study economist Glen Whitman argues that the paternalist notion of "internalities" has serious flaws--flaws analogous to those identified in traditional "externality" theory by Ronald Coase in his breakthrough 1960 paper, "The Problem of Social Cost" (PDF file here). Unlike many people who throw around Coase's name, Whitman gets that paper right and applies it well.
UPDATE: More on behavioral economics at Marginal Revolution. It's a mistake to view the field as primarily about public policy. It isn't. But people who are primarily interested in government policy (pro or con) naturally apply any new social science discoveries to that interest.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 28, 2006 • Comments
Elaborating on an earlier blog posting, my latest Forbes column is on the tough-minded messages of Project Runway. And a couple of pages earlier, Amanda Ernst profiles PR finalist Chloe Dao.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 27, 2006 • Comments
Both my email and some of Dan Drezner's comments suggest that it's better to go with your gut on the ports issue, never mind the facts. Dan and I are supposedly "overly rational." One reader email recommends Malcolm Gladwell's Blink
as a cure for my excessive rationality.
All I can say is my gut reaction was, "This is stupid." And, now that the research is in, I'd say that gut reaction was right--as Glenn Reynolds, among others, has come to agree (the blogosphere at its best). When you've seen enough ill-founded hysteria over foreign ownership, you develop an instinct.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 22, 2006 • Comments
That's how much Americans' leisure time has increased since 1965, according to research I discuss in my latest NYT column. No matter how you measure it, we have way more leisure today than 40 years ago. We also have more ways to use it. If you haven't noticed the improvement, you probably weren't a working woman in 1965. Or you're just like most people and spend most of the extra time--about five of six additional hours a week--watching TV.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 22, 2006 • Comments
Jim Glassman has a great piece on what's at stake in the ports flap. I usually quote articles for the benefit of those who won't click through, but in this case I want everyone to read the whole thing.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on February 22, 2006 • Comments