Where Fidelistas Miss Mr. Hershey’s Company Town

(p. A9) This small town on Cuba’s northern coast is steeped in memory and wistfulness, a kind of living monument to the intertwined histories of the United States and Cuba and to the successes and failures of Fidel Castro’s social revolution.
The town dates to 1916, when Milton S. Hershey, the American chocolate baron, visited Cuba for the first time and decided to buy sugar plantations and mills on the island to supply his growing chocolate empire in Pennsylvania. On land east of Havana, he built a large sugar refinery and an adjoining village — a model town like his creation in Hershey, Pa. — to house his workers and their families.
He named the place Hershey.
The village would come to include about 160 homes — the most elegant made of stone, the more modest of wooden planks — built along a grid of streets and each with tidy yards and front porches in the style common in the growing suburbs of the United States. It also had a public school, a medical clinic, shops, a movie theater, a golf course, social clubs and a baseball stadium where a Hershey-sponsored team played its home games, residents said.
The factory became one of the most productive sugar refineries in the country, if not in all of Latin America, and the village was the envy of surrounding towns, which lacked the standard of living that Mr. Hershey bestowed on his namesake settlement.
. . .
“I’m a Fidelista, entirely in favor of the revolution,” declared Meraldo Nojas Sutil, 78, who moved to Hershey when he was 11 and worked in the plant during the 1960s and ’70s. “But slowly the town is deteriorating.”
Many residents do not hesitate to draw a contrast between the current state of the town and the way that it looked when “Mr. Hershey,” as he is invariably called here, was the boss.
Residents seem amused by, if not proud of, the ties to the United States.
Most still use the village’s original name, pronounced locally as “AIR-see.” And Hershey signs still hang at the town’s train station, a romantic nod to a bygone era, though perhaps also a symbol of hope that the past — at least, certain aspects of it — will again become the present.

For the full story, see:
KIRK SEMPLE. “CAMILO CIENFUEGOS JOURNAL; Past Is Bittersweet in Cuban Town That Hershey Built.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 7, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date DEC. 7, 2016, and has the title “CAMILO CIENFUEGOS JOURNAL; In Cuban Town That Hershey Built, Memories Both Bitter and Sweet.”)

Government Sugar Protectionism Kills More Jobs than It Saves

(p. A13) As if domestic price-fixing by the government–here, driving prices up by setting production limits–weren’t enough, the feds then set a limit on sugar imports, and punish any imports above that limit with heavy tariffs.
The result? Countries such as Canada openly advertise to U.S. companies that use sugar–for instance, in the food industry–that they will enjoy lower business costs if they move. And when companies leave, like some candy makers that have moved production overseas, they take their jobs with them. Even the Commerce Department admits that for every job that the sugar program “protects,” it kills three others.
Reforming this policy sounds like a no-brainer, but the small number of beneficiaries use their benefits to influence–by lobbying, for instance, or with campaign contributions–politicians who block any reforms. No wonder sugar was the only commodity program not to be reformed by having its subsidies reduced in the most-recent farm bill, in 2013.

For the full commentary, see:
JOE PITTS and DAVID MCINTOSH. “Your Funny Valentine Candy Pricing; Making a box of chocolates more expensive is one of many ways federal sugar policy hurts U.S. taxpayers.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 12, 2016): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 11, 2016.)

The Good Old Days Were Grim

(p. A15) In “Progress,” the Swedish author Johan Norberg deploys reams of data to show just how much life has improved–especially over the past few decades but over the past couple of centuries as well. Each chapter is devoted to documenting progress in a single category, including food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, the environment, literacy and equality.
In response to people who look fondly on the “good old days,” Mr. Norberg underscores just how grim they could be. Rampant disease, famine and violence routinely killed off millions. In the 14th century, the so-called Black Death wiped out a third of Europe’s population. Five hundred years later, cholera outbreaks throughout the world led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and even killed a U.S. president, James Polk.

For the full review, see:

MATTHEW REES. “BOOKSHELF; Bending the Arc of History.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., December 13, 2016): A15.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 12, 2016,)

The book under review, is:
Norberg, Johan. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2016.

“Worrying About Overpopulation on Mars”

(p. B4) Reflecting on my own brief experience as an invertebrate neuroscientist, I’d say that today’s AI is at the jellyfish stage in the evolution of biological intelligence. Real brains–and genuine intelligence–are so far in the future as to be beyond any reasonable horizon of prediction.
Or, as chief scientist and AI guru Andrew Ng of Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. once put it, worrying about takeover by some kind of intelligent, autonomous, evil AI is about as rational as worrying about overpopulation on Mars.

For the full commentary, see:
CHRISTOPHER MIMS. “KEYWORDS; Artificial Intelligence Has a Way to Go.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Dec. 5, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 4, 2016, and has the title “KEYWORDS; Artificial Intelligence Makes Strides, but Has a Long Way to Go.”)

More Live to 100, and Those Who Do, Are Living Even Longer

(p. A13) There were 72,197 of them in 2014, up from 50,281 in 2000, according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1980, they numbered about 15,000.
Even demographers seemed impressed. “There is certainly a wow factor here, that there are this many people in the United States over 100 years old,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution. “Not so long ago in our society, this was somewhat rare.”
Not only are there more centenarians, but they are living even longer. Death rates declined for all demographic groups of centenarians — white, black, Hispanic, female, male — in the six years ending in 2014, the report said.
Women, who typically live longer than men, accounted for the overwhelming majority of centenarians in 2014: more than 80 percent.

For the full story, see:
SABRINA TAVERNISE. “Centenarians Proliferate, and Live Longer.” The New York Times (Thurs., JAN. 21, 2016): A13.

The Case Against “Mindful Dishwashing”

(p. 9) I’m making a failed attempt at “mindful dishwashing,” the subject of a how-to article an acquaintance recently shared on Facebook. According to the practice’s thought leaders, in order to maximize our happiness, we should refuse to succumb to domestic autopilot and instead be fully “in” the present moment, engaging completely with every clump of oatmeal and decomposing particle of scrambled egg. Mindfulness is supposed to be a defense against the pressures of modern life, but it’s starting to feel suspiciously like it’s actually adding to them. It’s a special circle of self-improvement hell, striving not just for a Pinterest-worthy home, but a Pinterest-worthy mind.
Perhaps the single philosophical consensus of our time is that the key to contentment lies in living fully mentally in the present. The idea that we should be constantly policing our thoughts away from the past, the future, the imagination or the abstract and back to whatever is happening right now has gained traction with spiritual leaders and investment bankers, armchair philosophers and government bureaucrats and human resources departments.
. . .
So does the moment really deserve its many accolades? It is a philosophy likely to be more rewarding for those whose lives contain more privileged moments than grinding, humiliating or exhausting ones. Those for whom a given moment is more likely to be “sun-dappled yoga pose” than “hour 11 manning the deep-fat fryer.”
On the face of it, our lives are often much more fulfilling lived outside the present than in it.
. . .
Surely one of the most magnificent feats of the human brain is its ability to hold past, present, future and their imagined alternatives in constant parallel, . . .
. . .
What differentiates humans from animals is exactly this ability to step mentally outside of whatever is happening to us right now, and to assign it context and significance. Our happiness does not come so much from our experiences themselves, but from the stories we tell ourselves that make them matter.
. . .
So perhaps, rather than expending our energy struggling to stay in the Moment, we should simply be grateful that our brains allow us to be elsewhere.

For the full commentary, see:
RUTH WHIPPMAN. “Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., NOV. 27, 2016): 9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 26, 2016.)

The Octopus, Though Intelligent, Only Lives for Two Years

(p. C5) Around 600 million years ago there lived in the sea a small unprepossessing worm, virtually eyeless and brainless. For some reason this species split into two, thus seeding the vast zoological groupings of the vertebrates and the invertebrates. On one branch sit the mammals; on the other sit the molluscs (and many others). Among these two groups, two notable creatures eye each other warily: the human and the octopus. They have no common ancestor apart from that lowly worm, yet there is a strange affinity, a bond almost. For they are both evolutionary experiments in intelligence–pockets of genius in a vast ocean (sorry!) of biological mediocrity.
In “Other Minds,” Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher at CUNY and an avid scuba diver, has given us a smoothly written and captivating account of the octopus and its brethren, as observed by humans. He celebrates the cephalopods: the octopus, the squid and the cuttlefish. He stresses their dissimilarity to us and other mammals, but he also wants us to appreciate what we have in common. Just as eyes have evolved independently in many lineages, so have intelligent minds. From those mindless worms, via two separate evolutionary paths, to the glories of consciousness and curiosity–we are brothers in big brains.
. . .
(p. C6) Mr. Godfrey-Smith mixes the scientific with the personal, giving us lively descriptions of his dives to “Octopolis,” a site off the east coast of Australia at which octopuses gather. There they make their dens in piles of scallop shells. He also reproduces some excellent photographs of the octopuses and other cephalopods he has observed in his submerged city. It is with a jolt, then, that he announces the average life span of the cephalopod: one to two years. That’s it: That marvelous complex body, the large brain, lively mind and amazing Technicolor skin–all over so quickly. There are boring little fish that live for 200 years, and the closely related nautilus can live for 20 years, but the octopus has only a year or two to enjoy its uniqueness. Mr. Godfrey-Smith speculates that the brevity results from a lifestyle that forces the animal to reach reproductive age as soon as possible, given the problem of predators such as whales or large fish.
Whatever the biological reason for such a brief life, it is a melancholy fact.
. . .
What is it like to be an octopus? It’s not easy to say, but I speculate soft, malleable, brimming with sensation, vivid, expressive, exciting, complicated, tragic and determined. They make good, if brief, use of their portion of consciousness. They must live by the evolutionary laws that have created them, but there is an inner being that makes the best of its lot. Though it’s easy to think of octopuses as alien, a better view is that they are our cousins in biological destiny–spirits in a material world.

For the full review, see:
COLIN MCGINN. “Experiments in Intelligence.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 3, 2016): C5-C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 4 [sic], 2016, and has the title “Our Noble Cousin: The Octopus.”)

The book under review, is:
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

Trump Victory Undercut Faith in Big Data

(p. B1) It was a rough night for number crunchers. And for the faith that people in every field — business, politics, sports and academia — have increasingly placed in the power of data.
Donald J. Trump’s victory ran counter to almost every major forecast — undercutting the belief that analyzing reams of data can accurately predict events. Voters demonstrated how much predictive analytics, and election forecasting in particular, remains a young science: . . .
. . .
(p. B5) This week’s failed election predictions suggest that the rush to exploit data may have outstripped the ability to recognize its limits.
. . .
Beyond election night, there are broader lessons that raise questions about the rush to embrace data-driven decision-making across the economy and society.
The enthusiasm for big data has been fueled by the success stories of Silicon Valley giants born on the internet, like Google, Amazon and Facebook. The digital powerhouses harvest vast amounts of user data using clever software for search, social networks and online commerce. Data is the fuel, and algorithms borrowed from the tool kit of artificial intelligence, notably machine learning, are the engine.
. . .
The danger, data experts say, lies in trusting the data analysis too much without grasping its limitations and the potentially flawed assumptions of the people who build predictive models.

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR and NATASHA SINGER. “How Data Failed Us in Calling an Election.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 10, 2016): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Rigid Labor Regulations Hurt Labor in India

(p. A9) . . . rigid and complex regulations have discouraged investment in labor-intensive industries in India, . . . .
Many economists say India’s labor laws have encouraged enterprises to stay small, rely on informal labor or substitute capital for workers. A report by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said for India to return to a high-growth trajectory, it must “reduce barriers to formal employment by introducing a simpler and more flexible labor law which doesn’t discriminate by size of enterprise.”

For the full story, see:
NIHARIKA MANDHANA. “India State Tests Labor-Law Overhaul.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 6, 2014): A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Dec. 7 [sic], 2014, and has the title “Modi’s BJP-Controlled States Become Labs for Contentious Reform.”)

One Way to Defend Free Trade (in Honor of Reagan’s Birthday)

(p. A9) Baldrige also knew how to use humor to deflate tense moments, as when the U.S. toy balloon industry petitioned for protection against cheap Mexican imports. Baldrige was opposed, but after debate the entire cabinet favored sanctions. Sensing this was not where the president wanted to go, Baldrige pulled from his pocket a dozen toy balloons and tossed them on the cabinet table. As the room filled with laughter, he said, “This is what we are talking about.” Reagan denied the sanctions.

For the full review, see:
CLARK S. JUDGE. “BOOKSHELF; The Cowboy At Commerce; During tense talks over steel imports, Baldrige insisted the tired Europeans work through lunch. He’d hidden snacks for his team nearby.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Jan. 5, 2016): A9.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 4, 2016, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; The Cowboy At Commerce; During tense talks over steel imports, Baldrige insisted the tired Europeans work through lunch. He’d hidden snacks for his team nearby.”)

The book under review, is:
Black, Chris, and B. Jay Cooper. Mac Baldrige: The Cowboy in Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet. Lanham, MD: Lyons Press, 2015.

Innovation Brought Rise of Middle Class and Decline of Aristocracy

(p. C7) Mr. Evans claims that “master narratives” have fallen into disrepute, and he does not aspire to provide one. But he returns repeatedly to such themes as the growth of “public space” as Europe urbanized and communications improved. He likewise describes the “shifting contours of inequality” as the middle classes burgeoned and benefited from the hastening pace of scientific innovation while the aristocracy slowly declined in status (albeit not in creature comforts).
Similarly, Mr. Evans offers an interesting discussion of how various forms of serfdom disappeared, even as the essence of rural immiseration generally did not. He conveys the degradation of existence for the emergent working class of the cities with controlled pathos yet without acknowledging the improvements in living standards that took place in advanced countries during the last decades of the century. He adduces evidence to show that the benefits of improved sanitation and hygiene, health and nutrition, consumer products and home conveniences, as well as longer life expectancy, went at first disproportionately to the urban middle and professional classes, strata that tripled as a fraction of the population in leading countries. Thus even in comparatively prosperous England, well-off adolescents at midcentury stood almost 9 inches taller than their proletarian contemporaries and by 1900 enjoyed a life expectancy 14 years longer.

For the full review, see:
STEPHEN A. SCHUKER. “The European Century.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 3, 2016): C7.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Dec. 2, 2016, and has the title “A Long Century of Peace.”)

The book under review, is:
Evans, Richard J. The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914. New York: Viking, 2016.