artdiamondblog.com – Page 407 – Art Diamond's web log

“Before British Settlement” American Indians Lived Lives of “Violence, Terror and Stoic Suffering”

Source of book image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mfln_Fc2NF4/ULE7koH_h7I/AAAAAAAAD1Y/4AOrpodtoac/s1600/9780394515700.jpg

(p. C8) Mr. Bailyn opens with an account of the Indians of eastern North America in the years before English settlement. He reviews their economy, technology, religion and much else, drawing examples from the Powhatan, the Pequot and other tribes. He emphasizes the violence, terror and stoic suffering in their lives rather more than the contemporary specialists in the subject would, but brutality–on just about everyone’s part–is a major theme throughout this book.

For the full review, see:
J.R. MCNEILL. “BOOKSHELF; Before Plymouth Rock, and After.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., November 17, 2012): C8.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 16, 2012.)

Book under review:
Bailyn, Bernard. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.

Scientists May Be Double-Dipping in Multiple Grants for Same Project

(p. D) The government may be wasting millions of dollars by paying for the same research projects twice, according to a new analysis of grant and contract records.
Researchers from Virginia Tech and Duke University compared more than 600,000 grant summaries issued to federal agencies since 1985. What they found was almost $70 million that might have been spent on projects that were already at least partly financed. The results were published in the journal Nature.

For the full story, see:
DOUGLAS QUENQUA. “Study Flags Duplicate Financing.” The New York Times (Sat., February 5, 2013): D6.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 4, 2013.)

The research summarized above, can be found in:
Garner, Harold R., Lauren J. McIver, and Michael B. Waitzkin. “Research Funding: Same Work, Twice the Money?” Nature 493, no. 7434 (Jan. 31, 2013): 599-601.

Liver Transplant Pioneer Roy Calne Has a “Rebellious Nature”

“Roy Y. Calne” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT interview quoted and cited below.

(p. D2) Sir Roy Calne is a pioneer of organ transplants — the surgeon who in the 1950s found ways to stop the human immune system from rejecting implanted hearts, livers and kidneys. In 1968 he performed Europe’s first liver transplant, and in 1987 the world’s first transplant of a liver, heart and lung.
. . .
When you were studying medicine in early-1950s Britain, what was the prevailing attitude toward organ transplantation?
It didn’t exist! While a medical student, I recall being presented with a young patient with kidney failure. I was told to make him as comfortable as possible because he would die in two weeks.
This troubled me. Some of our patients were very young, very deserving. Aside from their kidney disease, there was nothing else wrong with them. I wondered then if it might be possible to do organ transplants, because kidneys are fairly simple in terms of their plumbing. I thought in gardening terms. Might it not be possible to do an organ graft, replacing a malfunctioning organ with a healthy one? I was told, “No, that’s impossible.”
Well, I’ve always tended to dislike being told that something can’t be done. I’ve always had a somewhat rebellious nature. Just ask my wife.

For the full interview, see:
CLAUDIA DREIFUS, interviewer. “A CONVERSATION WITH ROY Y. CALNE; “I’ve always tended to dislike being told that something can’t be done. I’ve always had a somewhat rebellious nature.”” The New York Times (Weds., November 27, 2012): D2.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original to indicate interviewer (Dreifus) question.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date November 26, 2012 and has the title “A CONVERSATION WITH ROY Y. CALNE; Organ Transplant Pioneer Talks About Risks and Rewards.”)

Great Cities Innovate to Adapt to Possible Global Warming Floods

(p. C3) Spurred by long histories of disastrous storms, the urban engineers of Venice, Tokyo and the Netherlands have been among the pioneers of modern flood control, building storm surge barriers and sea walls on the scale of the pyramids. Such structures could well be models for New York City in the wake of superstorm Sandy.
The cities most experienced in building bulwarks against flood tides and storm surges are at a turning point, however, in their struggle for control of nature. The land upon which they are built continues to sink, population grows and the seas around them rise. As city planners reach the limits of conventional flood control measures, they are experimenting with ways to re-engineer low-lying urban waterfronts.
In Rotterdam, architects are building houses that float on floods. Beneath Tokyo, engineers have tunneled to create miles of emergency floodwater reservoirs. And in St. Petersburg, where storm tides have flooded the city about once a year since its founding in 1703, engineers last year completed a storm-surge barrier more than 15 miles long.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Keeping Our Heads Above Water; What can New York learn from other great cities battling rising tides and sinking land?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., December 1, 2012): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 30, 2012.)

Kevin Kelly Explains and Criticizes Amish Attitude toward Technology

Source of book image: http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/files/2012/02/kevin-kelly-book_rdax_620x349-300×285.jpg

Kevin Kelly’s book has received a lot of attention, sometimes in conjunction with Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, with which it shares some themes. I found the Kelly book valuable, but frustrating.
The valuable part includes the discussion of the benefits of technology, and the chapter detailing Amish attitudes and practices related to technology. On the latter, for instance, I learned that the Amish do not categorically reject new technology, but believe that it should be adopted more slowly, after long community deliberation.
What frustrated me most about the book is that it argues that technology has a life of its own and that technological progress is predetermined and inevitable. (I believe that technological progress depends on enlightened government policies and active entrepreneurial initiative, neither of which is inevitable.)
In the next several weeks, I will be quoting some of the more important or thought-provoking passages in the book.

The reference for Kelly’s book, is:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

The Johnson book mentioned above, is:
Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2010.

Energy-Efficient Buildings Increase Indoor CO2 Pollution and Impair Decision-Making

(p. C4) Carbon dioxide at levels normally found indoors is usually considered benign, especially compared with carbon monoxide. But a study finds that even modestly elevated CO2 can impair decision-making.
. . .
Given the emphasis on energy-efficient buildings, which are often more airtight, the study suggests that carbon dioxide might be an indoor pollutant to worry about–especially in conference rooms, where important decisions are hashed out.

For the full story, see:
Daniel Akst. “WEEK IN IDEAS; Week in Ideas: Daniel Akst; POLLUTANTS; Blame It on the Air.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 27, 2012): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 26, 2012.)

The study summarized is:
Satish, Usha, Mark J. Mendell, Krishnamurthy Shekhar, Toshifumi Hotchi, Douglas Sullivan, Siegfried Streufert, and William J. Fisk. “Is Co2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate Co2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance.” Environmental Health Perspectives (Sept. 20, 2012): 1-35.
(Note: it is not clear to me if Environmental Health Perspectives is an online journal or an online working paper series. Whatever it is, it is affiliated with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.)

Chinese Communists Starved 45 Million in Mao’s Famine

Source of book image: http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/xun.jpg

(p. C5) It is difficult to look dispassionately at some 45 million dead. It was not war that produced this shocking number, nor natural disaster. It was a man. It was politics and one man’s vanity. The cause was famine and violence across rural China, a result of Mao Zedong’s unchecked drive to turn his country rapidly into a communist utopia and a leading industrial nation.
. . .
(p. C6) . . . important pieces of evidence are being covered up . . . : Some originals transcribed in Zhou Xun’s chastening documentary history, “The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962” ( . . . ) have since been reclassified by the Beijing authorities and vanished once more into closed files.
In 2010, Frank Dikötter produced “Mao’s Great Famine,” an authoritative account of the catastrophe, written with a bravura seldom seen in Western writing on modern China. Impassioned and outraged, Mr. Dikötter detailed the destruction, the suffering and the cruelty or hubris of China’s leaders. Sorting through forgotten and hidden documents with great intellectual honesty, Mr. Dikötter ended his journey pointing his finger directly at Mao, who notoriously said, as he called for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine: “It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
. . .
As a teenager in 1959, Mr. Yang watched his father die of starvation. Years later, while working in a senior editorial post at Xinhua, China’s state-controlled news agency, he began his own search for the truth behind the famine. The author spent 20 years tracking down survivors across China and using his authority as a respected Communist cadre to access provincial archives. It was, in part, expiation for his shame in not questioning his father’s death.
. . .
There is no memorial anywhere in China to the victims of the famine, no public monument, no remembrance day. Graves are not marked and mass burial grounds have disappeared into the landscape. The famine’s very existence has been denied. The Communist Party will only admit to “food shortages” and “some difficulties” during the Great Leap Forward. They claim that these setbacks were a result of natural disasters.
Mr. Yang set about writing his book as a tombstone for his father and for every victim who had died from starvation. He was also erecting a tombstone for the system that brought about the Great Famine. First published in Hong Kong in 2008, Mr. Yang’s work is banned in China. The reason is clear: The book challenges the very foundation of the Communist Party’s authority.

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL FATHERS. “BOOKSHELF; A Most Secret Tragedy; The Great Leap Forward aimed to make China an industrial giant–instead it killed 45 million.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., October 27, 2012): C5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 26, 2012.)

Books under review:
Yang, Jisheng. Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Zhou, Xun, ed. The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962: A Documentary History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.

The Dikötter book mentioned, is:
Dikötter, Frank. Mao’s Great Famine. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

Greater Efforts to Save Premature Babies Inflates U.S. Infant-Mortality

(p. A13) The federally chartered Institute of Medicine issued a comprehensive report last month on the state of American health. Saying that “Other high-income countries outrank the United States on most measures of health,” the report concluded that the U.S. “is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest.”
. . .
As the report’s authors point out, the U.S. has the highest infant-mortality rate among high-income countries.
. . .
Doctors in the U.S. are much more aggressive than foreign counterparts about trying to save premature babies. Thousands of babies that would have been declared stillborn in other countries and never given a chance at life are saved in the U.S. As a result, the percentage of preterm births in America is exceptionally high–65% higher than in Britain, and about double the rates in Finland and Greece.
Unfortunately, some of the premature babies that American hospitals try to save don’t make it. Their deaths inflate the overall infant mortality rate.

For the full commentary, see:
SALLY C. PIPES. “OPINION; Those Misleading World Health Rankings; The numbers are distorted because, for instance, U.S. doctors try so hard to save premature babies.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., February 5, 2013): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 4, 2013.)

Driving to MobileIron Job Interview in $100,000 Car, Tells CEO Tinker You Are Not Hungry Enough

“Above, Robert Tinker, the chief executive of MobileIron, at its offices in Mountain View, Calif.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B2) “There are disruptions everywhere,” said Robert Tinker, the chief executive of MobileIron, which makes software for companies to manage smartphones and tablets. “Mobile disrupts personal computers, a market worth billions. Cloud disrupts computer servers and data storage, billions of dollars more. Social may be one of those rare things that is totally new.”

Relative to the size of the markets that mobile devices, cloud computing and social media are toppling, he says, the valuations are reasonable.
But most of these chief executives are also veterans of the Internet bubble of the late ’90s, and confess to worries that maybe things are not so different this time. Mr. Tinker, 43, drives a 1995 Ford Explorer that has logged 265,000 miles.
“If somebody comes to a job interview here in a $100,000 car, I know he’s not hungry,” he said. “The reality is, I’ve taken $94 million in investors’ money, and we haven’t gone public yet. I feel that responsibility every day.”

For the full story, see:
QUENTIN HARDY. “A Billion-Dollar Club, and Not So Exclusive.” The New York Times (Weds., February 5, 2013): B1 & B2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 4, 2013.)

Jobs’ Protest Against Mortality: Omit the On-Off Switches on Apple Devices

(p. 571) . . . [Jobs] admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. “I like to think that something survives after you die,” he said. “It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures.”
He fell silent for a very long time. “But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch,” he said. “Click! And you’re gone.”
Then he paused again and smiled slightly. “Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.”

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis and bracketed “Jobs” added; italics in original.)

New York Resisted Roosevelt’s Enforcing “Stupid” Vice Laws

Source of book image: http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/i/island-of-vice/9780385519724_custom-e38a25fc66f104a049d4d24aa39dbe92d42fbd57-s6-c10.jpg

(p. C9) . . . as Richard Zacks’s excellent “Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York” ably shows, while we might like to believe that the stretch from 1970 to 1995 represents the city’s nadir, it was just about business as usual in New York over the centuries.

From its time as a Dutch colonial outpost, the city has always been pretty bad. You’d almost think New Yorkers prefer it that way. Of course, we don’t like fraud, robbery, assault, arson, rape or murder any more than anyone else does. But the deliberate injury of one’s fellow citizen isn’t the only way to break the law. There are also those crimes that fall under the broad category of “vice”: things such as gambling, prostitution, indecent exposure and selling alcohol at a convenient time. Historically, the average New Yorker has not greeted these acts with the same immediate urge to suppress that many of his or her fellow Americans have had. You don’t get a nickname like “The City That Never Sleeps” without having a certain amount of things worth staying up for.
. . .
In the end, Mr. Zacks’s exhaustively researched yet lively story is a classic battle between an irresistible force, Roosevelt’s ego, and an immovable object, the people of New York’s unwillingness to follow laws they thought were stupid. In this case, the object won, and handily. Mr. Zacks’s account of the way the city’s saloonkeepers instantly turned their establishments into hotels to take advantage of a loophole in the law is particularly amusing. Eventually, the police department, not unsympathetic to the Sunday tippler, began finding ways to wriggle out from under the commissioner’s thumb, and beer-friendly Tammany Hall, with the people solidly behind it, began peeling away his allies.

For the full review, see:
DAVID WONDRICH. “BOOKSHELF; Teddy’s Rough Ride.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 17, 2012): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 30, 2012.)

Book under review:
Zacks, Richard. Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean up Sin-Loving New York. New York: Doubleday, 2012.