Layers of Editors
Dynamist Blog
Kidney Blogging, Cont'd
"People want to keep [kidney donation] as a heroic, uncompensated act because it makes them feel good. Never mind that tens of thousands of people are dying for your right to feel good about other people's heroic acts."
That's me, quoted by Tim Harfod, author of The Undercover Economist
Science Is Not Enough
In a column about a California controversy, the SacBee's Dan Weintraub makes an important point:
Regulating pollution is not only about science. It is also about economics. And scientists, no matter how smart or educated they may be, are not necessarily the best people to tell us how their findings should be weighed against the other needs of society.
If the state really wanted to fight smog, for instance, it could ban the private automobile. But no one (or almost no one) is recommending such a thing. The reason: The car is an integral part of our lives, and without it, the economy would grind to a halt. Millions of people would be far worse off, even if a few might live longer if they were not exposed to the tailpipe exhausts that cars emit.
Banning the car is an extreme example. But the point is that nearly every regulatory decision involves trade-offs that science alone cannot resolve.
Scientists have gotten way too fond of invoking their authority to claim that "science" dictates their preferred policy solutions and claiming that any disagreement constitutes an attack on science. But, even assuming that scientists agree on the facts, science can only tell us something about the state of the world. It cannot tell us what policy is the best to adopt. Scientists' preferences are not "science." You cannot go from an "is" (science) to an "ought" (policy). Social science, particularly economics, can tell you something about the likely tradeoffs (hence some of my frustrations at Aspen). But it can't tell you which tradeoffs to make.
Live from Aspen
The Postrels left Aspen on Thursday, but my Atlantic colleagues are still blogging up a storm. Sample lines:
From Ross Douthat: Maybe had Powell won more bureaucratic battles, everything would have gone swimmingly in Iraq, and the fact that it didn't is all Donald Rumsfeld/Dick Cheney/George W. Bush's fault. But given that he was present at the creation, not just part of the government that took us to war but one of its leaders, there was something a little off-putting about his self-justifying explanation that he tried to stop it, and besides it was the right thing to do, and anyway the fact that it fell apart is somebody else's fault.
From Clive Crook: If the world did everything C.K. [Prahalad] recommends to act on poverty, within-country inequality in China and India would likely continue to increase. In other words, alleviating poverty and reducing inequality are two quite separate issues. Using success on the second as a yardstick to measure progress on the first is an error.
From James Bennet: It turned out that on separate occasions in recent months both of our lunch-table companions had been invited very late at night to play the card game "Oh, Hell" with Clinton. One of our companions declined, preferring to go to bed. The other played until 2 a.m. before begging off and turning in -- even though it was the former president, not he, who planned to be up at 6 for round of golf.
Plus commentary on the speeches by Bill Clinton and Karl Rove.
Squeaky Voices
LAT columnist Meghan Daum wonders why women's voices seem to be getting higher pitched and more girlish, something I've puzzled about myself. Is it a real phenomenon? Or just a false impression?
Assuming it's a real trend, it likely reflects the attitude the WaPost's Robin Givhan evoked in her article on Liz Claiborne's recent death: "Where once Liz Claiborne was celebrated for helping young women go into the workforce looking like adults, now adults are interested in looking like adolescents."
Talking Design
The always delightful, insightful, and extraordinarily quotable Michael Bierut talks about design and designers in an interview on WNYC. I highly recommend his new book, Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
A Chinese Renaissance?
Dan Drezner interprets my complaint about the opening lineup at the Ideas Festival as "too many humanities types and not enough social scientists." I see how he got that impression, but it wasn't exactly what I was trying to say. I would like to see more social scientists, and I would like to see social science and policy questions addressed by people who know what they're talking about. But I have absolutely nothing against including lots of "humanities types" talking about their areas of expertise. I love to learn from them.
Take Melissa Chiu, the museum director of the Asia Society in New York, talking this morning about "Chinese Culture: The Tensions and Trends of Contemporary Chinese Society." In remarks that desperately needed photos but were otherwise fascinating, she recounted the evolution of the contemporary Chinese art world. Delayed by a phone call, I came in as she was addressing the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, in which art students were heavily involved. The subsequent crackdown led to a large diaspora, particularly to the U.S., which accepted 30,000 Chinese students, and Australia, which took 20,000. (Chiu is from Australia.) During the 1990s, travel and communication between Chinese artists abroad and those at home was limited, and artists within China found it difficult or impossible to exhibit their works. Beginning around 1994, the Web became an important place for "virtual exhibits" that allowed artists within China to show the rest of the world their work. And as China opened more and more to the world for business reasons, the art world opened as well. The year 2000 was something of a turning point, as the Chinese government decided that avant garde art was OK. Chinese artists gradually began moving back to China and even those who remained abroad travel there more frequently.
The result has been a "New Renaissance" that Chinese artists compare to the great T'ang Dynasty period. Those who stayed in China have become "art entrepreneurs," operating large-scale studios with many employees and in some cases producing very large-scale works. "It's a great time to be a Chinese artist," said Chiu, noting that artists have far better facilities than their New York counterparts. "As China has become a manufacturing center in the world, so has it become an art manufacturing center," she said. The combination of commerce, craftsmanship, and culture really does sound like the Italian Renaissance.
Art has become an expression and source of national cultural pride, and Chinese artists increasingly incorporate and adapt national iconography: pandas, Chinese flags, Tiananmen Square, and, especially among younger artists who didn't experience the Cultural Revolution, images of Mao. (Where are PowerPoint slides when you need them?) When moderator Jim Fallows asked for examples of "xenophobic" art, however, Chiu said she couldn't think of any. In the art world at least, it sounds like Chinese pride is manifesting itself as positive, self-affirmation rather than negative, foreigner-bashing.
Satisfying my yen for photos, The Atlantic's website features slide show on Chinese contemporary art, with narration by curator Britta Erickson. (No subscription required for slide show.)
Buy My Condo!
It's a great place, a great neighborhood, and a great deal.
My Parents Will Be So Proud
The great Manolo gets the same family-friendly rating. Reason's Hit and Run, on the other hand, rates an NC-17--not for its propensity for bad language but for the wonky drug policy posts.
[Via PG-rated Dan Drezner.]
Who Benefits from Airport Delays?
These guys. But they do better when passengers are surer about the length of the delay--another reason airlines should be candid about conditions.