artdiamondblog.com

September 3, 2010

Our Cro-Magnon Forbears Adapted Readily to Extreme Climatic Change

In the passage that follows, Brian Fagan describes our best guess at the landscape of part of France about 18,000 years ago, and then describes how the landscape dramatically changed in a short period. (We usually do not know exactly how short---maybe as long as a few hundred years, maybe as short as a month.)

(p. xiv) There would have been black aurochs with lyre-shaped horns, perhaps arctic foxes in their brown summer fur feeding off a kill, perhaps a pride of lions resting under the trees. If you'd been patient enough, you'd have seen the occasional humans, too. But you would have known they weren't far away--informed by the smell of burning wood, trails of white smoke from rock-shelter hearths, the cries of children at play. Then I imagined this world changing rapidly, soon becoming one of forest and water meadow, devoid of reindeer and wild horses, much of the game lurking in the trees. I marveled at the ability of our forebears to adapt so readily to such dramatic environmental changes.

Few humans have ever lived in a world of such extreme climatic and environmental change.

. . .

(p. xvi) The story of the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons tells us much about how our forebears adapted to climatic crisis and sudden environmental change. Like us, they faced an uncertain future, and like us, they relied on uniquely human qualities of adaptiveness, ingenuity, and opportunism to carry them through an uncertain and challenging world.

Source:

Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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September 2, 2010

"Disrespectful to Take Money from One Man's Pocket and Put It in Another's"

"A March fair to raise private funding for community centers, held at Westside Community Center, was sparsely attended." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--Like many American cities, this one is strapped for cash. Tax collections here have fallen so far that the city has turned off one-third of its 24,512 street lights.

But unlike many cities, this one is full of people who are eager for more government cutbacks.

The town council has been bombarded with emails telling it to close community centers. Letters to the local newspaper call for shrinking the police department and putting the city-owned utility up for sale. A commission is studying whether to sell the municipal hospital. Another, made up of local businessmen, will opine on whether to slash the salaries and benefits of city employees.

"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."

For the full story, see:

LESLIE EATON. "Strapped City Cuts and Cuts and Cuts." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., APRIL 13, 2010): A1 & A16.

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September 1, 2010

Energy Department Wastes Energy

(p. A17) WASHINGTON -- Like flossing or losing weight, saving energy is easier to promise than to actually do -- even if you are the Department of Energy.

Its Web site advises that choosing new lighting technologies can slash energy use by 50 to 75 percent. But the department is having trouble taking its own advice, according to an internal audit released on Wednesday; many of its offices are still installing obsolete fluorescent bulbs.

And very few have switched to the most promising technology, light-emitting diodes, which the department spent millions of dollars to help commercialize.

Many of the changes would generate savings that would pay back the investment in two years or so, according to the report, by the department's inspector general.

In one case, the Department of Energy made most of the investment by installing timers to shut off lights at night when it moved into a new building in 1997. But it got no benefit: as of March of this year, it had not bought the central control unit needed to run the system.

For the full story, see:

MATTHEW L. WALD. "Energy Department: Make Thyself Fuel Efficient." The New York Times (Thurs., July 8, 2010): A17.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 7, 2010, and has the title "Energy Department Lags in Saving Energy.")

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August 31, 2010

Legalizing Drugs in U.S. Would Reduce Mexican Crime Wave

Vicente Fox. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 14) Is there anything to be done about the drug wars that are terrorizing Mexicans today and that have reportedly caused 25,000 deaths in the past three years?
That has to be dealt with together by the United States and Mexico. It's a joint problem and a joint challenge. The U.S. provides the markets and guns that come back to Mexico and allow the cartels to be active.

You think the United States is causing Mexico's crime wave?
Absolutely, yes. The cartel gangs are nourished through the drug consumption in the United States. That's why my position is that we should move as fast as possible into legalizing drug consumption.

For the full interview, see:

DEBORAH SOLOMON. "QUESTIONS FOR VICENTE FOX; Border Rap." The New York Times, Magazine Section (Sun., July 25, 2010): 14.

(Note: bold in original, to indicate questions by Deborah Solomon.)

(Note: the online version of the interview is dated July 23, 2010.)

.

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August 30, 2010

Districts with More Government Pork Have Less Private Hiring

(p. A19) You can't read models, but you do talk to entrepreneurs in Racine and Yakima. Higher deficits will make them more insecure and more risk-averse, not less. They're afraid of a fiscal crisis. They're afraid of future tax increases. They don't believe government-stimulated growth is real and lasting. Maybe they are wrong to feel this way, but they do. And they are the ones who invest and hire, not the theorists.

The Demand Siders are brilliant, but they write as if changing fiscal policy were as easy as adjusting the knob on your stove. In fact, it's very hard to get money out the door and impossible to do it quickly. It's hard to find worthwhile programs to pour money into. Once programs exist, it's nearly impossible to kill them. Spending now creates debt forever and ever.

Moreover, public spending seems to have odd knock-off effects. Professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval and Christopher Malloy of Harvard surveyed 42 years of government spending increases in certain Congressional districts. They found that federal spending increases dampened corporate hiring and investment in those districts.

For the full commentary, see:

DAVID BROOKS. "A Little Economic Realism." The New York Times (Tues., July 6, 2010): A19.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 5, 2010.)

The research referenced is:

Cohen, Lauren, Joshua D. Coval, and Christopher J. Malloy. "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?" NBER Working Paper No.15839, March 2010.

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August 29, 2010

Cro-Magnon Provides Baseline to Measure Our Progress

Source of book image:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BS%2BtGJZ8L.jpg

Biologically modern humans have inhabited the world for at least 50,000 years, and maybe for 100,000 years or more.

Only in the last 200 years, and especially the last 100 years, has humanity made substantial progress in the quality and quantity of life.

Usually the most recent 200 years are compared with the previous few thousand, because conditions in the previous few thousand years are much better known than those in the tens of thousands of years further in the past.

But comparisons further back are of interest, and Brian Fagan's book Cro-Magnon is a source of some information that allows us to do so to some extent.

In the next few weeks, I will occasionally be quoting a few passages from Fagan that I believe are suggestive.

The reference for the Fagan book is:

Fagan, Brian. Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

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August 28, 2010

Cuban Health Care Checkup

(p. A17) . . . it's a good time to check in on the state of the Cuban health-care system. That's just what Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, does in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

. . .

Slightly more than half of all Cuban physicians work overseas; taxed by the Cuban state at a 66% rate, many of them wind up defecting. Doctors who remain in the country earn about $25 a month. As a result, Ms. Garrett writes, they often take "jobs as taxi drivers or in hotels," where they can make better money. As for the quality of the doctors, she notes that very few of those who manage to reach the U.S. can gain accreditation here, partly because of the language barrier, partly because of the "stark differences" in medical training. Typically, they wind up working as nurses.

As for the quality of medical treatment in Cuba, Ms. Garrett reports that hospital patients must arrive with their own syringes, towels and bed sheets. Women avoid gynecological exams "because they fear infection from unhygienic equipment and practices." Rates of cervical cancer have doubled in the past 25 years as the use of Pap tests has fallen by 30%.

And while Cuba's admirers love to advertise the country's low infant mortality rate (at least according to the Castro regime's dubious self-reporting) the flip-side has been a high rate of maternal mortality. "Most deaths," Ms. Garrett writes, "occur during delivery or within the next 48 hours and are caused by uterine hemorrhage or postpartum sepsis."

For the full commentary, see:

BRET STEPHENS. "Dr. Berwick and That Fabulous Cuban Health Care; The death march of progressive medicine." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JULY 13, 2010): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference to the Garrett article:

Garrett, Laurie A. "Castrocare in Crisis; Will Lifting the Embargo Make Things Worse?" Foreign Affairs 89, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 61-73.

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August 27, 2010

Government Protects Us from Julie Murphy's Lemonade Stand

Julie Murphy and her lemonade stand. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A8) When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When health inspectors cite you for it, get famous.

Julie Murphy, a 7-year-old Oregonian, set up a lemonade stand on July 29 at an art fair in northeast Portland. County health inspectors shut her down, however, telling Julie and her mother, Maria Fife, that they needed a temporary restaurant license, which costs $120. The penalty for selling food without a permit, they warned, was $500. At 50 cents a cup, that's a lot of lemonade.

Others at the fair urged the family to give away the lemonade, and they wrote "free" and "suggested donation" on Julie's sign with a marker. But the inspectors were unmoved.

Julie left the fair in tears.

For the full story, see:

JOHN SCHWARTZ. "Sorry, Kid: No License, No Lemonade." The New York Times (Sat., August 7, 2010): A8.

(Note: the online version of the article is dated August 6, 2010.)

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August 26, 2010

Air Conditioning as "the Antithesis of Passive Resignation"

In the passage quoted below, Severgnini captures something of the truth. Americans, at their best, have sought to control nature in order to make life longer and happier.

But Severgnini does not see that there is a difference between seeking to control nature and seeking to control other people. At its best, America excels at the former, and refrains from the latter.

(p. W9) A few years ago, Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini recounted his adventures in the U.S. in the book "Ciao, America!" in which he offered up humorous musings on many of the standard European complaints about the American way of living. Mr. Severgnini allows that he rather admires the Yankee "urge to control the outside world," whether that means sending planes off an aircraft carrier or sending out technicians from Carrier.

He notes that the refusal to suffer the sweaty indignity of equatorial heat is "the antithesis of passive resignation," and thus a perfect expression of the can-do American character. "In America, air-conditioning is not simply a way of cooling down a room," Mr. Severgnini writes. "It is an affirmation of supremacy."

For the full commentary, see:

ERIC FELTEN. "DE GUSTIBUS; The Big Chill: Giving AC the Cold Shoulder." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 23, 2010): W9.

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August 25, 2010

Lux et Veritas

Source of photo: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EarthPerspectives/

What is the extended island-country on the right side of the photo above?

OK, if you got that one, here's a harder question: What is the smaller island-country to the left of the extended island-country?

Stumped? Well it's a trick question. The island-country to the left is South Korea.

But, you say, South Korea is no island.

You are right. (But then ponder why it looks like an island.)

Credits:

I first saw a version of the above photo, and heard a version of the above interpretation, in a wonderful presentation by Tony Woodlief at the MBM University at Wichita in July 2010.

The photo is a satellite composite from NASA.

"Lux et Veritas" is the motto of Yale University and is Latin for "Light and Truth." (Three years of high school Latin pay off again---thank you Miss Noble and Miss Rohrer!)

Posted by Art Diamond at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eight Most Recent Comments:

Lloyd said:

Thanks, Tom for defending my honor. Art, you've taken a huge leap from my six word quote. Let's take the corporate property rights tack for a moment. How about the rights of the local farmers whose produce will we showered in mercury, particulate and other pollutants, making their fitness for consumption questionable? How about the countless tourism businesses at Topsail, Surf City and Wrightsville Beach whose cache takes an immediate hit when visitors catch sight from the beach of the 40 story smokestack looming nearby? How about the countless businesses catering to recreational fishermen whose business will be hurt when the methyl mercury levels rise and even more species are added to the non-consumable list? How about the commercial fishermen and the seafood distributors, whose disappearing product used to spawn in the North Cape Fear River, which is now mercury impaired and could be worse if Titan is allowed to emit at the levels it has requested? Do you really believe that manufacturers have special property rights that exceed those of other businesses? Let's clarify what you seem to be saying. Property rights ENTITLE a foreign corporation to $4.2M of our tax dollars, and they TRUMP the individual rights of all the local citizens whose health will be damaged by the proposed emission levels from the plant (over 200 doctors have signed a petition against the plant). I could go on all day. Could it be that you point out stories like this to illustrate your preference for property rights over individual rights? I assume you also believe the recent action granting corporations the same rights as individuals regarding political contributions did not go far enough. Maybe we should let corporations vote, too. Clarification - corporations are NOT people, and whatever rights they have should NOT trump individual rights. Oh, and back to what I actually said about Titan. I said we can be more discriminating, and I meant that our elected officials should not have offered them $4.2M to bring their stinking plant here. I note that you readily accept upstanding corporate citizen Bob Odom's assertion that we have impeded Titan's rights. Check the record - we have simply held them to the current LEGAL process for getting the permits they need to build the plant. If they had submitted willingly to a full review from the beginning, they could have been done by now. Instead, they tried so hard to avoid a full review that they are now facing significantly stricter regulations than at the time they applied, due to new EPA regulations on mercury. New regulations on other pollutants are moving through the process, too, so the longer Titan tries to avoid a comprehensive review, the tougher the regulatory environment gets. They misjudged the political environment here, and they underestimated the will of the people to fight for their rights. Power to the people!

Claude said:

Please help us in honouring him in having a main square in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, seat of the Swatch Group, named Nicolas G. Hayek Square! Please go to facebook Group and sign in: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128854790486643&ref=ts Appreciating

Aaron said:

Maybe it wasn't torn down, but moved... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/16/stalin-bust-sparks-outrage-small-town-residents/ Ridiculous.

Andrew Zaplatynsky said:

Are there any serious economists or historians who understand economics who still credit the New Deal with pulling America out of the Great Depression. The statistics of unemployement rates throughout the 1930's should be sufficient to put that myth to rest.

Habika Smith said:

The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth," recalled that when he worked at Morgan Stanley in the early 1970s, the firm's annual reports were filled with photographs of factories and other tangible businesses ================================== The Finance Firm

ptg said:

I'm not at all surprised.

Matthew H. Davidson said:

Dachshund photo links[both] *busted*: Oops! This link appears to be broken. http://media.artdiamondblog.com/images2/Willy.jpg

Dentistry Thornhill said:

I understand the American Dental Association's stance, however, in under-serviced areas such as Alaska where there are so few dentists, dental therapists help fill the void. -Richmond Hill dentist

artdiamondblog.com

Art Diamond's web log

September 3, 2010

Our Cro-Magnon Forbears Adapted Readily to Extreme Climatic Change

September 2, 2010

"Disrespectful to Take Money from One Man's Pocket and Put It in Another's"

September 1, 2010

Energy Department Wastes Energy

August 31, 2010

Legalizing Drugs in U.S. Would Reduce Mexican Crime Wave

August 30, 2010

Districts with More Government Pork Have Less Private Hiring

August 29, 2010

Cro-Magnon Provides Baseline to Measure Our Progress

August 28, 2010

Cuban Health Care Checkup

August 27, 2010

Government Protects Us from Julie Murphy's Lemonade Stand

August 26, 2010

Air Conditioning as "the Antithesis of Passive Resignation"

August 25, 2010

Lux et Veritas

Eight Most Recent Comments:

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artdiamondblog.com

Art Diamond's web log

September 3, 2010

Our Cro-Magnon Forbears Adapted Readily to Extreme Climatic Change

September 2, 2010

"Disrespectful to Take Money from One Man's Pocket and Put It in Another's"

September 1, 2010

Energy Department Wastes Energy

August 31, 2010

Legalizing Drugs in U.S. Would Reduce Mexican Crime Wave

August 30, 2010

Districts with More Government Pork Have Less Private Hiring

August 29, 2010

Cro-Magnon Provides Baseline to Measure Our Progress

August 28, 2010

Cuban Health Care Checkup

August 27, 2010

Government Protects Us from Julie Murphy's Lemonade Stand

August 26, 2010

Air Conditioning as "the Antithesis of Passive Resignation"

August 25, 2010

Lux et Veritas

Eight Most Recent Comments:

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