Is Asperger’s a Disease to Be Cured or “a Way of Being” to Be Celebrated?

(p. C1) . . . until eight years ago, Mr. Robison, who wrote the 2007 memoir “Look Me in the Eye,” a touchstone in the literature of Asperger’s syndrome, had never experienced the most obvious aspect of music that neurotypical people do: its simple emotional power.
That all changed, Mr. Robison explains in “Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening,” when he participated in a pioneering Asperger’s study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in 2008. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, doctors hoped to activate neurological pathways in his brain that would deepen his emotional intelligence.
Driving home after his first session, Mr. Robison cranked up a song he’d heard countless times before. Before he knew it, tears were streaming down his face.
. . .
(p. C6) “Switched On” is subversive in more ways than one. In this age of heightened sensitivity to neurodiversity, one of the most uncomfortable notions you can raise about Asperger’s is that it can cruelly obscure the most basic elements of personality. The very idea is offensive and wounding to many people, because it frames a difference as a deficit; to wistfully suggest that a person with Asperger’s might be someone else without Asperger’s is to denature them completely, to wish their core identities into oblivion.
“Asperger’s is not a disease,” Mr. Robison wrote in “Look Me in the Eye.” “It’s a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.”
In “Switched On,” Mr. Robison, 58, retains his Asperger’s pride. Part of him even fears he’ll lose his special gifts, on the (beguiling, I thought) theory that “perhaps the area that recognizes emotions in people was recognizing traits of machinery for me.”
But he is also torn. He did not come of age when “neurodiversity” was part of our vocabulary of difference. He did not come of age when “Asperger’s” was part of our vocabulary at all. He received his autism diagnosis at 40, and he has many memories of being bullied, losing jobs and mishandling social situations because of his inability to read others.
. . .
Mr. Robison still believes autism is not a disease. “But I also believed in being the best I could be,” he writes, “particularly by addressing the social blindness that had caused me the most pain throughout my life.”
But if the effects of Asperger’s can be mitigated, what consequences will that have? And what does it mean for the future of the neurodiversity movement?

For the full review, see:
JENNIFER SENIOR. “Books of The Times; Tradeoffs to Easing Asperger’s Strong Grip.” The New York Times (Mon., MARCH 21, 2016): C1 & C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MARCH 20, 2016, and has the title “Books of The Times; Review: In ‘Switched On,’ John Elder Robison’s Asperger’s Brain Is Changed.”)

The book under review, is:
Robison, John Elder. Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2016.

Poor Are Exiting High-Housing-Cost Cities

GroupsExitingHighHousingCostCitiesGraph2106-11-18.jpgSource of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A3) Americans are leaving the costliest metro areas for more affordable parts of the country at a faster rate than they are being replaced, according to an analysis of census data, reflecting the impact of housing costs on domestic migration patterns.

Those mostly likely to move from expensive to inexpensive metro areas were at the lower end of the income scale, under the age of 40 and without a bachelor’s degree, the analysis by home-tracker Trulia found.
. . .
Another study this year from California policy group Next 10 and Beacon Economics found that New York state and California had the largest net losses of domestic migrants between 2007 and 2014, and that lower- and middle-income people were more likely to leave.

For the full story, see:
CHRIS KIRKHAM. “Costly Cities See Exodus.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Nov. 3, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 1, 2016, and has the title “More Americans Leave Expensive Metro Areas for Affordable Ones.”)

Uncredentialed Loner Saved Lives with Respirator Invention

(p. B9) When the fraternity of inventors celebrate the geniuses who came up with super glue, kitty litter and the cellphone, they sometimes talk about Dr. Bird, an American original who began tinkering with gizmos concocted out of strawberry-shortcake tins and doorknobs and eventually developed four generations of cardiopulmonary devices that came to be widely used in homes and hospitals.
. . .
Dr. Bird was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1995 for developing the first low-cost, mass-produced pediatric respirator, known as the Baby Bird, which has been credited by medical experts with significantly reducing the mortality rates of infants with respiratory problems.
The device, he said, saved two Idaho neighbor boys born with breathing distress. Among those aided by his inventions was his first wife, Mary, who learned she had pulmonary emphysema in 1964; his respirators, including one that used percussion to loosen secretions in her lungs, helped prolong her life until 1986.
Dr. Bird, who received the Presidential Citizens Medal from George W. Bush in 2008 and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2009, lived a self-contained but busy life on a remote, 300-acre compound on Lake Pend Oreille, surrounded by majestic mountains and forests 50 miles from the Canadian border.
On the estate was his home; the headquarters of his Percussionaire Corporation, with dozens of employees who develop and market his inventions; a working farm that sustained all the residents; an airfield and hangars for his scores of restored vintage airplanes, seaplanes, helicopters, cars and motorcycles; and the Bird Aviation Museum and Invention Center, which he opened in 2007.
. . .
His first prototype, cobbled together from shortcake tins and a doorknob in 1953, was revised often and tested on volunteer patients with limited success. But in 1958, he introduced the Bird Universal Medical Respirator, a green box that reliably assisted breathing and sold widely to patients and hospitals. He later developed improved versions, as well as his Baby Bird ventilator.
Much of Dr. Bird’s formal higher education came after his successful inventions. His curriculum vitae includes a doctorate in aeronautics in 1977 from Northrop University in Inglewood, and a medical degree in 1979 from the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas in Brazil.

For the full obituary, see:
ROBERT D. McFADDEN. “Forrest M. Bird, Inventor of Respirators, Dies at 94.” The New York Times (Tues., AUG. 4, 2015): B9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date AUG. 3, 2015, and has the title “Dr. Forrest Bird, Inventor of Medical Respirators and Ventilators, Dies at 94.”)

About 90% of Current Jobs Include Tasks that Are Hard to Automate

(p. B1) They replaced horses, didn’t they? That’s how the late, great economist Wassily Leontief responded 35 years ago to those who argued technology would never really replace people’s work.
. . .
(p. B6) A research paper published last month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argued that even the occupations most at risk of being replaced by machines contained lots of tasks that were hard to automate, like face-to-face interaction with customers.
It concluded that only 9 percent of American workers faced a high risk of being replaced by an automaton. Austrians, Germans and Spaniards were the most vulnerable, but only 12 percent of them risked losing their jobs to information technology.

For the full commentary, see:
Porter, Eduardo. “ECONOMIC SCENE; Contemplating the End of Human Workhorse.” The New York Times (Weds., JUNE 8, 2016): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JUNE 7, 2016, and has the title “ECONOMIC SCENE; Jobs Threatened by Machines: A Once ‘Stupid’ Concern Gains Respect.”)

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development paper mentioned above, is:
Arntz, Melanie, Terry Gregory, and Ulrich Zierahn. “The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis.” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 189. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2016.

Many Great Inventors Grew Up Poor and Had Little Education

(p. A13) Mr. Baker is good at pointing out the unanticipated consequences that arose from some inventions: Richard Jordon Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun, a fearsome instrument of battlefield butchery still in use in some forms today, believed that his contribution would save lives–depending on which side of the gun you were on–because one man operating the weapon would reduce the need for other soldiers. The inventor who created television, Philo Farnsworth, believed that his device could bring about world peace. “If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings?” he wrote. “War would be a thing of the past.” And you wouldn’t need the Gatling gun.
Like Farnsworth, many of the inventors in “America the Ingenious” came from impoverished upbringings and had little formal education. Walter Hunt, creator of the safety pin, was educated in a one-room schoolhouse but went on to invent scores of other items, including a device that allowed circus performers to walk upside-down on ceilings. Elisha Graves Otis, of Otis elevator fame, was a high-school dropout who, according to his son, Charles, “needed no assistance, asked no advice, consulted with no one, and never made much use of pen or pencil.” Of the innovators who undertook world-changing engineering feats, it is remarkable how often they brought them in under budget and ahead of schedule, among them the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam and New York’s Hudson and East River railroad tunnels.

For the full review, see:
PATRICK COOKE. “BOOKSHELF; The Character of Our Country; Copper-riveted jeans, the first oil rig, running shoes, dry cleaning and the 23-story-high clipper ship–as American as apple pie.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 5, 2016): A13.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Oct. 4, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Baker, Kevin. America the Ingenious: How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World. New York: Artisan, 2016.

Berners-Lee Suggests Web Micropayments Replace Ad Revenue

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty-seven years ago, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way for scientists to easily find information. It has since become the world’s most powerful medium for knowledge, communications and commerce — but that doesn’t mean Mr. Berners-Lee is happy with all of the consequences.
. . .
So on Tuesday [June 7, 2016], Mr. Berners-Lee gathered in San Francisco with other top computer scientists — including Brewster Kahle, head of the nonprofit Internet Archive and an internet activist — to discuss a new phase for the web.
. . .
(p. B6) Consider payments. In many cases, people pay for things online by entering credit card information, not much different from handing a card to a merchant for an imprint.”
At the session on Tuesday [June 7, 2016], computer scientists talked about how new payment technologies could increase individual control over money. For example, if people adapted the so-called ledger system by which digital currencies are used, a musician might potentially be able to sell records without intermediaries like Apple’s iTunes. News sites might be able to have a system of micropayments for reading a single article, instead of counting on web ads for money.
“Ad revenue is the only model for too many people on the web now,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “People assume today’s consumer has to make a deal with a marketing machine to get stuff for ‘free,’ even if they’re horrified by what happens with their data. Imagine a world where paying for things was easy on both sides.”

For the full story, see:
QUENTIN HARDY. “World Wide Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It.” The New York Times (Weds., JUNE 8, 2016): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed dates, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JUNE 7, 2016, and has the title “The Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It.” )

Hillary Clinton Did Not Give a Rat’s Ass About a Rat’s Ass Lawsuit

(p. A4) LITTLE ROCK, Ark.–One of Hillary Clinton’s first assignments as a corporate lawyer landed her far from her roots. She helped overturn a ballot measure that increased electric rates for businesses and lowered them for the poor.
“Instead of defending poor people and righting wrongs, we found ourselves squarely on the side of corporate greed against the little people,” her colleague, Webb Hubbell, later wrote.
The future presidential contender worked for 15 years as a corporate litigator at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas’s capital, longer than any other position in or out of government. Her portrait still hangs in the firm’s downtown offices.
. . .
In her 2003 book, Mrs. Clinton writes only briefly about her work at Rose. She highlights a couple of cases, including her first jury trial, where she defended a canning company sued by a man who found the rear end of a rat in his pork and beans. He claimed he couldn’t kiss his fiancée because every time he thought about the situation he would spit.
Mrs. Clinton argued the man hadn’t suffered any real damages and because the rodent part had been sterilized it would be considered edible in parts of the world. She said the plaintiff won “only nominal damages.” Mrs. Clinton didn’t identify the name of the man or the company involved.

For the full story, see:
LAURA MECKLER and PETER NICHOLAS. “Clinton’s Forgotten Law-Firm Career.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 29, 2016): A4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 28, 2016, and has the title “Hillary Clinton’s Forgotten Career: Corporate Lawyer.”)

Longer Permit Delays Slow Construction of Houses

(p. A3) Home prices and rents are surging in Denver, but local builder Jared Phifer said his construction work virtually ground to a halt last fall.
The reason: He can’t get permits for new projects.
The process can take as long as eight months, at which point the prices he quoted buyers often are out of date, he said.
The delays are “almost making us go bankrupt,” he said. “We’ve had to put a halt on so many projects that I’m in the process of getting a loan for $150,000 to cover all of our expenses.”
. . .
Developers of single-family homes reported that the median delay was seven months in 2015, compared with four months in 2011, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
. . .
Last July [2015], Denver saw the biggest permit backlog in its history, according to Brad Buchanan, the executive director of community planning and development. Residential projects were taking as long as three months to review, three times the target duration. Apartment and office projects were taking two months to review, although some developers and homeowners reported waiting much longer.
“Last summer our phones were ringing off the wall with people who couldn’t even get permits to change out water heaters,” said Jeff Whiton, chief executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver.

For the full story, see:
LAURA KUSISTO. “Home Builders Slowed by Permit Delays.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 4, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 3, 2016.)

When People’s Lives Stagnate They “Often Become Angry, Resentful”

(p. 3) Benjamin M. Friedman of Harvard University, in his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” (Knopf, 2005), said that at a deep level people make judgments about the economic progress that they see in their own lifetimes, and in comparison with the progress made by the previous generation, especially their own parents. Few people study economic growth statistics. But nearly everyone knows what they are being paid. If they realize that they are doing less well than their forebears, they become anxious. And if they can’t see themselves and others in their cohort as progressing over a lifetime, their social interactions often become angry, resentful and even conspiratorial.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT J. SHILLER. “Economic View; Weak Economies Foment Ethnic Nationalism.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., OCT. 16, 2016): 3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCT. 14, 2016, and has the title “Economic View; What’s Behind a Rise in Ethnic Nationalism? Maybe the Economy.”)

The Benjamin Friedman book mentioned in the commentary above, is:
Friedman, Benjamin M. The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Tech Start-Up Grows with No Outside Money

(p. B6) . . . , it’s possible to create a huge tech company without taking venture capital, and without spending far beyond your means. It’s possible, in other words, to start a tech company that runs more like a normal business than a debt-fueled rocket ship careening out of control. Believe it or not, start-ups don’t even have to be headquartered in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.
There is perhaps no better example of this other way than MailChimp, a 16-year-old Atlanta-based company that makes marketing software for small businesses. If you’ve heard of MailChimp, it’s either because you are one of its 12 million customers or because you were hooked on “Serial,” the blockbuster true-crime podcast that MailChimp sponsored.
Under the radar, slowly and steadily, and without ever taking a dime in outside funding or spending more than it earned, MailChimp has been building a behemoth. According to Ben Chestnut, MailChimp’s co-founder and chief executive, the company recorded $280 million in revenue in 2015 and is on track to top $400 million in 2016. MailChimp has always been profitable, Mr. Chestnut said, though he declined to divulge exact margins. The company — which has repeatedly turned down overtures from venture capitalists and is wholly owned by Mr. Chestnut and his co-founder, Dan Kurzius — now employs about 550 people, and by next year it will be close to 700.
As a private company, MailChimp has long kept its business metrics secret, but Mr. Chestnut wants to publicize its numbers now to show the road less traveled: If you want to run a successful tech company, you don’t have to follow the path of “Silicon Valley.” You can simply start a business, run it to serve your customers, and forget about outside investors and growth at any cost.
. . .
“Every time we sat down with potential investors, they never seemed to understand small business,” Mr. Chestnut said. Venture capitalists always wanted MailChimp to serve “enterprise companies,” large businesses with thousands of employees and, potentially, thousands to spend.
“Everybody we talked to said, ‘You’re sitting on a gold mine, and if you pivot to enterprise, you could be huge,'” Mr. Chestnut said. “But something in our gut always said that didn’t feel right.”

For the full story, see:
Farhad Manjoo. “STATE OF THE ART; A Road Less Traveled to Success as a Start-Up.” The New York Times (Thurs., Oct. 6, 2016): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 5, 2016, and has the title “STATE OF THE ART; MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up.”)

Regulatory Restrictions on Business Have Doubled Since 1975

GrowingRegulatoryRestrictionsGraph2016-10-31.jpgSource of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A2) Measuring the regulatory state is no easy task. The Code of Federal Regulations contains more than a million restrictions, as signified by the use of the words “shall,” “must,” “may not,” “required,” and “prohibited,” according to two scholars from the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank. The total has doubled since 1975, pausing only during Ronald Reagan’s first term and Bill Clinton’s second.

Rule enforcement is also getting more serious. Responding to accusations of lax oversight in the past, federal authorities have imposed criminal penalties, in particular on financial companies, averaging $7 billion a year in the past four years, up fourfold from the prior 11, according to Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
. . .
Brent Skorup, a scholar at the Mercatus Center, says regulators like the FCC increasingly extract behavioral conditions from companies via transaction approvals rather than rule-making. For example, Comcast Corp. acquired NBC Universal in 2011 after agreeing to a long list of conditions, from not charging for faster network access (aka abiding by “net neutrality”) to expanding local, public-interest and children’s programming.

For the full commentary, see:
GREG IP. “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; AT&T Feels Growing Reach of Presidency.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Oct. 27, 2016): A2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 26, 2016 title “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; Reaction to AT&T-Time Warner Deal Shows Presidency’s Growing Reach.”)

The data presented in the left panel of the graph above is described in the following article:
Al-Ubaydli, Omar, and Patrick A. McLaughlin. “Regdata: A Numerical Database on Industry-Specific Regulations for All United States Industries and Federal Regulations, 1997-2012.” Regulation and Governance (2015), doi: 10.1111/rego.12107.

The data can be downloaded at:
http://regdata.org/data/

The Garrett results mentioned above, are reported in his article:
Garrett, Brandon L. “The Rise of Bank Prosecutions.” The Yale Law Journal Forum (May 23, 2016): 33-56.