Author: Art Diamond

Boeotia Was “an Early Model of Democratic Federalism”

(p. C12) Mr. Cartledge, a professor emeritus at Cambridge and author of popular history books such as “The Spartans,” “Thermopylae,” “Alexander the Great” and “Democracy: A Life,” has picked an opportune time to look afresh at Thebes and Boeotia. The modern city of Thebes, an uninspiring market town, would not normally attract tourists, but is home to a glittering new museum, among the most up-to-date in Greece, featuring exhibits of archaeological finds (many unique in type) and historical objects from prehistory to the present. (One exhibit is titled, provocatively, “The Intellectual Radiance of Boeotia.”) There is a book forthcoming, from scholar James Romm, about Thebes’s “Sacred Band,” its elite unit of soldiers, made up of pairs of devoted homosexual lovers. Thebes is in the spotlight.

. . .

The biography of the Theban leader Epaminondas (418 B.C.-362 B.C.) written by Plutarch is, unfortunately, lost. Even so, his reputation shines. Admired by figures from Cicero and Montaigne to Sir Walter Raleigh (who called him “the worthiest man that ever was bred by the nation of Greece”), Epaminondas seems to have had a philosophical bent as well as a brilliant military mind.

. . .

Perhaps his greatest act, . . ., even if it might have been intended more to inconvenience the Spartans than as a benevolent deed, was freeing the helots of Messenia, a people that had been enslaved by the Spartans for 300 years. He helped found a new capital city for the Arcadian federation (Megalopolis), and also for the ex-helots (Messene). Maybe Epaminondas was not only the Nelson of his age, but the Lincoln as well. He died in battle and was buried alongside his male beloved, Caphisodorus, with an epitaph that listed his children (daughters, being female) as the cities Messene and Megalopolis; it ended “Greece is free.”

Mr. Cartledge’s command of the historical material is effortless and exhaustive, and his appreciation of Thebes is persuasive. Between the radical but self-destructive democracy of Athens and Sparta’s totalitarian oligarchy (both imperialist), Thebes and Boeotia stand in the middle as an early model of democratic federalism—the “united states” of Boeotia, for instance, shared a currency. It was Thebes that dealt a critical blow to Spartan domination, and a Theban leader who freed a long-enslaved people. Alexander the Great himself adopted military tactics from Epaminondas. If Thebes’s period of hegemony was brief—barely a decade—it also changed the course of the ancient world.

For the full review, see:

A.E. Stallings. “Greece’s Mythic Heartland.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, September 12, 2020): C12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date Sep. 11, 2020, and has the title “‘Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece’ Review: Mythic Roots.”)

The book under review is:

Cartledge, Paul. Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece. New York: Abrams Press, 2020.

Advanced Colon Cancer Patients Lived Longer When They Drank Coffee

(p. D6) Researchers studied 1,171 patients diagnosed with advanced or metastatic colon or rectal cancer who could not be treated with surgery.

. . .

Compared with people who drank none, those who drank a cup a day had an 11 percent increased rate of overall survival, and a 5 percent increased rate of living progression-free. The more coffee they drank, the better. Those who drank four or more cups a day had a 36 percent increased rate of overall survival and a 22 percent increased rate of surviving without their disease getting worse. Whether the coffee was decaf or regular made little difference.

The study, in JAMA Oncology, controlled for race, smoking, alcohol intake, aspirin use, diabetes, and the addition of milk, nondairy creamers or sweeteners to the coffee.

For the full story, see:

Nicholas Bakalar. “Coffee for Better Outcomes.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 29, 2020): D6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated September 23, 2020, and has the title “Drinking Coffee Tied to Better Outcomes in Colon Cancer Patients.”)

The article in JAMA Oncology mentioned above is:

Mackintosh, Christopher, Chen Yuan, Fang-Shu Ou, Sui Zhang, Donna Niedzwiecki, I-Wen Chang, Bert H. O’Neil, Brian C. Mullen, Heinz-Josef Lenz, Charles D. Blanke, Alan P. Venook, Robert J. Mayer, Charles S. Fuchs, Federico Innocenti, Andrew B. Nixon, Richard M. Goldberg, Eileen M. O’Reilly, Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt, and Kimmie Ng. “Association of Coffee Intake with Survival in Patients with Advanced or Metastatic Colorectal Cancer.” JAMA Oncology (published online in advance of print on Sept. 17, 2020).

New York Times’s “Inexcusable” Reporting Ignored Sophia Farrar, Whose Actions Belied the Kitty Genovese Narrative

(p. A24) The story of Kitty Genovese, coupled with the number 38, became a parable for urban indifference after Ms. Genovese was stalked, raped and stabbed to death in her tranquil Queens neighborhood.

Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times reported in a front-page article that 37 apathetic neighbors who witnessed the murder failed to call the police, and another called only after she was dead.

It would take decades for a more complicated truth to unravel, including the fact that one neighbor actually raced from her apartment to rescue Ms. Genovese, knowing she was in distress but unaware whether her assailant was still on the scene.

That woman, Sophia Farrar, the unsung heroine who cradled the body of Ms. Genovese and whispered “Help is on the way” as she lay bleeding, died on Friday [Aug. 28, 2020] at her home in Manchester, N.J.

. . .

The murder was reported in a modest four-paragraph article in The Times. Two weeks later, its interest piqued by a tip from the city’s police commissioner, The Times produced a front-page account of the killing that transformed the murder into a global allegory for callous egocentrism in the urban jungle and undermined the innocent-bystander alibi.

. . .

That account — epitomized by one neighbor’s stated excuse that “I didn’t want to get involved” — galvanized outrage, became the accepted narrative for decades and even spawned a subject of study in psychology: how bystanders react to tragedy. Except that with the benefit of hindsight, the number of eyewitnesses turned out to have been exaggerated; none actually saw the attack completely; some who heard it thought it was a drunken brawl or a lovers’ quarrel; and several people said they did call the police.

. . .

In several retrospectives decades after the murder, The Times reassessed the original account, concluding that more neighbors might have heard Ms. Genovese’s screams than actually witnessed the attack. But only one Times article, during Mr. Moseley’s trial, even mentioned Mrs. Farrar’s name, reporting that she and Ms. Zielonko found the victim in the vestibule.

Since Mrs. Farrar was interviewed on camera in “The Witness,” though, among those who criticized The Times’s failure to report her presence in earlier accounts of the crime was Joseph Lelyveld, who was the executive editor of The Times in the 1990s. He has called the omission “inexcusable.”

For the full obituary, see:

Sam Roberts. “Sophia Farrar Dies at 92; Belied Indifference to Kitty Genovese Attack.” The New York Times (Friday, September 4, 2020): A24.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Sept. 2, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

Litan and Mankiw Endorse Paying People to Take Vaccine

(p. 5) What’s the best way to get the economy back on track after the Covid-19 recession? Simple: Achieve herd immunity. And what’s the best way to achieve herd immunity? Again, simple: Once a vaccine is approved, pay people to take it.

That bold proposal comes from Robert Litan, an economist at the Brookings Institution. Congress should enact it as quickly as possible.

. . .

Recent research by the University of Chicago economists Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson has found that the government-mandated shutdowns account for just a small part of the decline in economic activity. The main reason people aren’t spending is that they are afraid to leave their homes and contract the virus. That hypothesis explains my own behavior. I have not stepped foot on an airplane or inside a restaurant for six months.

. . .

Immunology, meet economics. One of the first principles of economics — perhaps the most important — is that people respond to incentives. Applying this principle to the case at hand, Mr. Litan recommends that the government pay $1,000 to whoever gets the vaccine. With a large enough incentive, most Americans are likely to get vaccinated.

This proposal is textbook economics. (I’ve written some of the textbooks.) As all economics students learn, when an activity has a side effect on bystanders, that effect is called an externality. In the presence of externalities, the famous theorems of economics that justify laissez-faire do not apply. Adam Smith’s vaunted invisible hand can no longer work its magic.

A classic example of a negative externality is pollution, and the simplest and least invasive policy solution is a tax on emissions. In economics-speak, such a tax internalizes the externality: It induces polluters to take the cost of pollution into account by giving them a financial incentive to cut emissions. That’s why I have written here many times that a tax on carbon emissions is the best way to deal with global climate change.

Vaccination confers a positive externality. When you get vaccinated, you benefit not only yourself but also your fellow citizens by helping society take a step toward herd immunity. In this case, internalizing the externality requires not a tax but a subsidy, as Mr. Litan suggests.

For the full commentary, see:

N. Gregory Mankiw. “A Vaccine Subsidy Licks 2 Crises With One Shot.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, September 13, 2020): 5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 9, 2020, and has the title “Pay People to Get Vaccinated.”)

The Robert Litan op-ed mentioned above is:

Litan, Robert E. “Want Herd Immunity? Pay People to Take the Vaccine.” Brookings Institute Op-Ed. (Tues., Aug. 18, 2020) URL: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/want-herd-immunity-pay-people-to-take-the-vaccine/.>

The Goolsbee and Syverson NBER working paper mentioned above is:

Goolsbee, Austan, and Chad Syverson. “Fear, Lockdown, and Diversion: Comparing Drivers of Pandemic Economic Decline 2020.” NBER Working Paper #27432, June 2020.

“Operation Warp Speed, . . . , Is More Imaginative Than the Bureaucratic Norm”

(p. 11) . . . the blundering of the Trump administration, while real and deadly, may not be responsible for the bulk of America’s coronavirus fatalities.

. . .

. . . : the absence of challenge trials for vaccines (in which young, healthy participants agree to be vaccinated and then infected with the virus), the predictable expert resistance to at-home testing. But the most important one was the straightforward bureaucratic calamity at the C.D.C. that delayed effective testing for a fateful month.

An effective president might have addressed some of these problems. (Although Operation Warp Speed, the White House’s vaccine initiative, is more imaginative than the bureaucratic norm.) But overall they are problems with structures and habits rather than personalities — an institutional decadence that predated Trump and will persist when he is gone.

. . .

. . . the third thing you see when you look beyond Trump [is] the fact that so many countries in Western Europe, to say nothing of our neighbors in the Americas, have had death rates similar to ours.

This reality speaks not of exceptionalism but of convergence — and the possibility that the trends of the early 21st century have left us sharing more in common not only with France and Spain but also with Mexico and Brazil than most Americans might expect.

This, too, may matter long after Trump is gone. Where there are crises, in this dispensation, they are likely to be general rather than just American. Where there is decadence, it is the shared experience of late modernity. And if renewal comes to an exhausted West, it will not necessarily come through America alone.

For the full commentary, see:

Ross Douthat. “What Isn’t Trump’s Fault.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, September 13, 2020): 11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 12, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

“Before the White People Left”

(p. A1) CHICAGO — The old guard of this city’s Roseland neighborhood, a community on the South Side famous for molding a young Barack Obama and infamous for its current blight, has never forgotten the fruit trees.

Back in the 1970s, before the full exodus of white residents, the erosion of local businesses, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the disinvestment that followed, it was the trees that signaled the societal elevation of Black families — separating those who moved here from the urban high rises they fled. An apple tree greeted Antoine Dobine’s family in 1973, he said. The tree meant a yard. A yard meant a home. And a home meant a slice of the American dream, long deferred for Black Americans.

“Pear trees, peaches, apples, it was beautiful,” Mr. Dobine recalled. “Before the white people left.”

. . .

The fruit trees have been replaced with overgrown lots. Residents say gangs use the abandoned areas to stockpile weapons, which children sometimes find.

For the full story, see:

Astead W. Herndon. “Black Area Embraces Protests But Still Has No Grocery Store.” The New York Times (Wednesday, August 12, 2020): A1 & A21.

(Note: ellipsis added. The online version say that the New York print version had the title “In a Black Chicago Community, Doubt Defies Hope for Change.” My National print version had the title “Black Area Embraces Protests But Still Has No Grocery Store.”)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Aug. 28 [sic], 2020, and has the title “‘A Smoking Gun’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air.”)

“An Active Regulatory State Is a Playground for the Privileged Class”

(p. A17) . . . the poor would suffer most under Mr. Biden’s platform. Dividing U.S. households into five income groups, I have estimated the regulatory costs of each quintile and expressed them as a percentage of each quintile’s average income. The costs to the bottom group amount to 15.3% of its total income—representing a burden equal to all the taxes they currently pay. This group would experience part of the cost as lower wages, but the biggest bite would come in diminished purchasing power due to higher prices for energy, cars and other consumer goods.

The top quintile, by contrast, would suffer the least from regulatory restoration, with labor, energy and other consumer rules amounting to only a 2.2% implicit tax on the highest earners.

This estimate includes not only regulations Mr. Biden has explicitly said he would revive, but also many of those that would be necessary to meet the goals outlined in his platform.

. . .

An active regulatory state is a playground for the privileged class to indulge its own preferences at the expense of ordinary Americans.

For the full commentary, see:

Casey B. Mulligan. “The Real Cost of Biden’s Plans.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, September 17, 2020): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sep. 16, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

Manship’s Heroic Prometheus Sculpture Celebrates “the Promise of the Future”

I wanted to use a photo of Manship’s Prometheus sculpture on the cover of my book Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. My editor vetoed my choice on the grounds that Prometheus was a male and the cover design needed to be gender-neutral.

(p. C14) Think a minute, then name an outdoor sculpture in Manhattan. Chances are, you chose the gilded image of Prometheus at the heart of Rockefeller Center, . . .

. . .

In conceiving his urban commercial complex, John D. Rockefeller Jr. wanted to celebrate civilization, human achievement and the promise of the future.

. . .

It’s a very serious, and very handsome, Prometheus that Manship fashioned. He chose to depict the moment after the titan has stolen the fire and is descending to Earth, signified in the sculpture by the summit behind him, and by the sea as portrayed by the pool beneath him. Prometheus, eyes wide open, looks down toward his destination. His youthful, strong-featured face betrays not worry exactly, but acknowledgment that he will face consequences from an angry Zeus, who did not want mankind to rival the gods in any way. But Prometheus is determined to give humanity the flame in his right hand, held above his head, almost triumphantly. With his outstretched left arm, he balances himself—and Manship balances his heroic sculpture.

. . .

Manship also added an element to the whole: He suggested the quote from Aeschylus that is carved in bold capital letters on the wall behind his work, strengthening its seamless link to its setting: “Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends.”

Manship thus delivered a powerful piece of statement art.

. . .

. . . —Prometheus stands out. He is a marvel within a larger urban marvel.

For the full story, see:

Judith H. Dobrzynski. “MASTERPIECE; A Monument of Titanic Beauty.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, August 22, 2020): C14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 21, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

Open Offices Reduce Productivity and Spread Diseases

(p. B4) When historians of the early 21st century look back on the pre-Covid era, one of the absurdities they might highlight is the vogue for gigantic, open-plan offices. The apotheosis of this trend of breaking down barriers between co-workers must surely be Facebook Inc.’s 433,555-square-foot Frank Gehry-designed open-plan office at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Opened in 2015, it’s now a ghost town, a monument to offices vacated by the pandemic.

Cramming cavernous spaces with as many desks as they could hold might have increased serendipitous interactions, but it almost certainly reduced productivity and helped spread communicable diseases, including coronavirus.

. . .

Cue the “dynamic workplace,” a pivot away from the open plan, built on the idea that with fewer employees coming to work on any given day, offices can offer them more flexibility of layout and management.

While open offices and dynamic workplaces share similar components—privacy booths and huddle rooms to escape the hubbub, cafe-like networking spaces, etc.—they’re philosophically distinct. One is intended to be a place where people come (at least) five days a week, and get most of their work done on site. The other is planned for people rotating in and out of the office, on flexible schedules they have more control over than ever.

. . .

Research on hot-desking in office spaces, for example—where employees give up a dedicated space in favor of first-come-first-serve seating—finds that it decreases socialization and trust. This happens because employees figure they might never again see the person they sit next to on a given day, says Dr. Sander. In other studies, employees complain they can’t find their colleagues, that it’s a hassle to find a new spot to work every day, and that such arrangements ignore humans’ innate territoriality and desire to make a space their own.

For the full commentary, see:

Christopher Mims. “Goodbye, Open Office. Hello, ‘Dynamic Workplace.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, September 12, 2020): B4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the same date and title as the print version.)

Whole Live Covid-19 Virus, Not Just Fragments, Found in Hospital Aerosols

(p. A4) Skeptics of the notion that the coronavirus spreads through the air — including many expert advisers to the World Health Organization — have held out for one missing piece of evidence: proof that floating respiratory droplets called aerosols contain live virus, and not just fragments of genetic material.

Now a team of virologists and aerosol scientists has produced exactly that: confirmation of infectious virus in the air.

“This is what people have been clamoring for,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not involved in the work. “It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”

For the full story, see:

Apoorva Mandavilli. “Scientists Find Respiratory Droplets in Hospital Air.” The New York Times (Wednesday, August 12, 2020): A4.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added. The online version say that the New York print version had the title “Scientists Retrieve Live Virus From Hospital Air.” My National print version had the title “Scientists Find Respiratory Droplets in Hospital Air.”)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 11, 2020, and has the title “‘A Smoking Gun’: Infectious Coronavirus Retrieved From Hospital Air.”)

Former FDA Commissioners Urge Early “Emergency Use Authorization” for Covid-19 Vaccine

(p. A17) As former FDA commissioners, we are confident in the FDA’s career scientists to oversee vaccine development rigorously.

If a Covid vaccine clears this process, it could be made available initially to specific groups of people through an Emergency Use Authorization. This emergency authority enables the FDA to make products available before a full application is approved by the agency. Congress created the emergency-use pathway as part of the Project BioShield Act of 2004, which provided for the development of medical countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. Following 9/11 and anthrax, lawmakers expected an urgent need for such defenses.

After the 2009 swine flu, Congress expanded this pathway in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013, a bipartisan measure aimed at preparing the country to weather a pandemic. The law streamlined the application process for emergency use, expanded the classes of drugs eligible, and broadened the testing the FDA could require.

. . .

This authority enables the staged entry of a vaccine. It’s unlikely that a Covid-19 vaccine will receive full approval and broad distribution right away. Instead, the FDA will probably authorize vaccines for use in targeted groups of people at high risk from Covid and most likely to benefit from the vaccine. For them, it may make sense to provide access to the vaccine before long-term follow-up studies that address very remote risks.

This might include health-care providers or first responders, who face greater exposure, or older people, who are more prone to severe complications if infected.

. . .

This process exists precisely to deal with public-health emergencies like Covid-19. It isn’t a lower standard for FDA approval. It’s a more tailored, flexible standard that helps protect those who need it most while developing the evidence needed to make the public confident about getting a Covid-19 vaccine.

For the full commentary, see:

Mark McClellan, and Scott Gottlieb. “How ‘Emergency Use’ Can Help Roll Out a Covid Vaccine.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, September 15, 2020): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sep. 13, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)