July 2013 – Page 3 – artdiamondblog.com

Millions Die Due to Precautionary Principle Ban of DDT

(p. 248) . . . , malaria infects 300 million to 500 million people worldwide, causing 2 million deaths per year. It is debilitating to those who don’t die and leads to cyclic poverty. But in the 1950s the level of malaria was reduced by 70 percent by spraying the insecticide DDT around the insides of homes. DDT was so successful as an insecticide that farmers eagerly sprayed it by the tons on cotton fields–and the molecule’s by-products made their way into the water cycle and eventually into fat cells in animals. Biologists blamed it for a drop in reproduction rates for some predatory birds, as well as local die-offs in some fish and aquatic life species. Its use and manufacture were banned in the United States in 1972. Other countries followed suit. Without DDT spraying, however, malaria cases in Asia and Africa began to rise again to deadly pre-1950s levels. Plans to reintroduce programs for household spraying in malarial Africa were blocked by the World Bank and other aid agencies, who refused to fund them. A treaty signed in 1991 by 91 countries and the EU agreed to phase out DDT altogether. They were relying on the precautionary principle: DDT was probably bad; better safe than sorry. In fact DDT had never been shown to hurt humans, and the environmental harm from the miniscule amounts of DDT applied in homes had not been measured. But nobody could prove it did not cause harm, despite its proven ability to do good.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Samuel Adams Is Underrated Founder Because He Burned His Paper Trail

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A17) “Samuel Adams: A Life” makes it abundantly clear why the British so detested Adams. He started talking independence more than a decade before the Declaration and did more than anyone to organize opposition to colonial taxes and to make “no taxation without representation” a rallying cry. . . .
. . .
If Mr. Stoll’s biography lacks the narrative power of books on other Founders, such as David McCullough’s “John Adams,” the reason may be that the paper trail left by Samuel Adams is frustratingly short. He destroyed much of his correspondence during the revolutionary years, fearful that it could fall into the wrong hands. Some of the letters that remain end with the words “burn this.” This Adams wasn’t playing for the history books. He was trying to plot a revolution. Mr. Stoll makes a convincing case that Samuel Adams is not just the most underrated of the Founders but also one of the most admirable, down-to-earth and principled (he worked to abolish slavery).

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN KARL. “Revolution Is No Tea Party; Rabble-rouser, wordsmith, strategist and defender of liberty.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., November 3, 2008): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review is:
Stoll, Ira. Samuel Adams: A Life. New York: Free Press, 2008.

Why Wind Power Has Not, and Will Not, Replace a Single Conventional Power Plant

(p. A17) After decades of federal subsidies–almost $24 billion according to a recent estimate by former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm–nowhere in the United States, or anywhere else, has an array of wind turbines replaced a single conventional power plant. Nowhere.
But wind farms do take up space. The available data from wind-power companies, with which the Environmental Protection Agency agrees, show that the most effective of them can generate about five kilowatts per acre. This means 300 square miles of land–192,000 acres–are necessary to generate the 1,000 megawatts (a billion watts) of electricity that a conventional power plant using coal, nuclear energy or natural gas can generate on a few hundred acres. A billion watts fulfills the average annual power demand of a city of 700,000.
. . .
The promise that wind and solar power could replace conventional electricity production never really made sense. It’s known to everybody in the industry that a wind turbine will generate electricity 30% of the time–but it’s impossible to predict when that time will be. A true believer might be willing to do without electricity when the wind is not blowing, but most people will not. And so, during the 30% of the time the blades are spinning, conventional power plants are also spinning on low, waiting to operate during the other 70% of the time.

For the full commentary, see:
JAY LEHR. “OPINION; The Rationale for Wind Power Won’t Fly; Physical limitations will keep this energy source a niche provider of U.S. electricity needs.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., June 18, 2013): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 17, 2013.)

Project Entrepreneur Would Rather Change the World than Buy a Luxury Car

“Reid Hoffman at Greylock Partners foresees a tectonic shift coming in the Web, with data and its many uses as the new linchpin, replacing identity and relationships.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 5) As an executive vice president, it was up to Mr. Hoffman to manage external relations. “He was the firefighter in chief at PayPal,” Mr. Thiel says. “Though that diminishes his role because there were many, many fires.”

Mr. Hoffman emerged as a connector and high-level strategist. He packed his schedule with meetings, charmed credit card companies and soothed the regulators.
PayPal survived, and when the company went public, in 2002, Mr. Hoffman and many of his colleagues became multimillionaires.
Mr. Thiel splurged on a Ferrari. Mr. Hoffman wanted to buy an Audi but instead invested his newfound riches in one of the first solar panel companies to come out of Silicon Valley, Nanosolar, and bought an Acura instead.
“I started to think about the value of money,” he says. “I thought if I only had $75,000, would I rather invest in a luxury car or make a play in changing the world?”
Nanosolar became a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

For the full story, see:
EVELYN M. RUSLI. “A King of Connections; How Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn Became Tech’s Go-To Guy.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., November 6, 2011): 1 & 5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date November 5, 2011, and has the title “A King of Connections Is Tech’s Go-To Guy.”)

The Precautionary Principle Stops Technological Progress

(p. 247) All versions of the Precautionary Principle hold this axiom in common: A technology must be shown to do no harm before it is embraced. It must be proven to be safe before it is disseminated. If it cannot be proven safe, it should be prohibited, curtailed, modified, junked, or ignored. In other words, the first response to a new idea should be inaction until its safety is established. When an innovation appears, we should pause. Only after a new technology has been deemed okay by the certainty of science should we try to live with it.
On the surface, this approach seems reasonable and prudent. Harm must be anticipated and preempted. Better safe than sorry. Unfortunately, the Precautionary Principle works better in theory than in practice. “The precautionary principle is very, very good for one thing–stopping technological progress,” says philosopher and consultant Max More. Cass R. Sunstein, who devoted a book to debunking the principle, says, “We must challenge the Precautionary Principle not because it leads in bad directions, but because read for all it is worth, it leads in no direction at all.”

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.

In the England of the Late 1600s, Coffeehouses Were “Crucibles of Creativity”

Source of book image: http://www.drinkoftheweek.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-post-thumbnails/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/thumbnails/23682.jpg&w=250&h=400&zc=1&ft=jpg

(p. 8) Like coffee itself, coffeehouses were an import from the Arab world.
. . .
Patrons were not merely permitted but encouraged to strike up conversations with strangers from entirely different walks of life. As the poet Samuel Butler put it, “gentleman, mechanic, lord, and scoundrel mix, and are all of a piece.”
. . .
. . . , coffeehouses were in fact crucibles of creativity, because of the way in which they facilitated the mixing of both people and ideas. Members of the Royal Society, England’s pioneering scientific society, frequently retired to coffeehouses to extend their discussions. Scientists often conducted experiments and gave lectures in coffeehouses, and because admission cost just a penny (the price of a single cup), coffeehouses were sometimes referred to as “penny universities.” It was a coffeehouse argument among several fellow scientists that spurred Isaac Newton to write his “Principia Mathematica,” one of the foundational works of modern science.
Coffeehouses were platforms for innovation in the world of business, too. Merchants used coffeehouses as meeting rooms, which gave rise to new companies and new business models. A London coffeehouse called Jonathan’s, where merchants kept particular tables at which they would transact their business, turned into the London Stock Exchange. Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse, a popular meeting place for ship captains, shipowners and traders, became the famous insurance market Lloyd’s.
And the economist Adam Smith wrote much of his masterpiece “The Wealth of Nations” in the British Coffee House, a popular meeting place for Scottish intellectuals, among whom he circulated early drafts of his book for discussion.

For the full commentary, see:
TOM STANDAGE. “OPINION; Social Networking in the 1600s.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., June 23, 2013): 8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 22, 2013.)

The author of the commentary is also the author of a related book:
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in Six Glasses. New York: Walker & Company, 2005.

Office Workers Switch Tasks Every 11 Minutes and Take 25 Minutes to Return to Original Task

(p. 12) As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy to count the added expense of the hassle of change. When your brain is switching tasks, the cost is harder to quantify.
There have been a few efforts to do so: Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, found that a typical office worker gets only 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an interruption. But there has been scant research on the quality of work done during these periods of rapid toggling.

For the full commentary, see:
BOB SULLIVAN and HUGH THOMPSON. “GRAY MATTER; Brain, Interrupted.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., May 5, 2013): 12.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 3, 2013.)

The Gloria Mark paper referred to in the commentary is:
Mark, Gloria, Victor M. Gonzalez, and Justin Harris. “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.” Proceedings of ACM CHI’05, Portland, OR, (April 2-7, 2005): 321-30.

Another relevant Gloria Mark paper is:
Mark, Gloria, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Kloecke. “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress.” Proceeding of the Twenty-sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’08), Florence, Italy, ACM Press (2008): 107-10.

Walker Says Those Who Call Him “Patent Troll” Want His Property Without Paying

Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Jay Walker turned his idea for “name your own price” Internet auctions into a fortune by starting Priceline.com Inc. Now the entrepreneur is trying to cash in on his ideas by suing other companies.

Since it was founded in 1994 as a research lab, Walker Digital LLC has made much of its money by spinning out its inventions, like online travel agent Priceline and vending-machine firm Vendmore Systems LLC, as independent businesses.
. . .
Mr. Walker defends his newly aggressive tactics, which some critics compare to those of “patent trolls,” a derogatory term for firms that opportunistically enforce patents. Without the lawsuits, he said, his patents could expire while other companies exploit them. Patents have a 20-year lifespan.
“Not only are we not a troll, but the people who want to label me are often the same ones that want to use our property and not pay,” Mr. Walker said in an interview.

For the full story, see:
JOHN LETZING. “Founder of Priceline Spoiling for a Fight Over Tech Patents.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., August 22, 2011): B1 & B10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Amish Break the Golden Rule

(p. 237) If we apply the ubiquity test–what happens if everyone does it?–to the Amish way, the optimization of choice collapses. By constraining the suite of acceptable occupations and narrowing education, the Amish are holding back possibilities not just for their children but indirectly for all.
If you are a web designer today, it is only because many tens of thousands of other people around you and before you have been expanding the realm of possibilities. They have gone beyond farms and home shops to invent a complex ecology of electronic devices that require new expertise and new ways of thinking. If you are an accountant, untold numbers of creative people in the past devised the logic and tools of accounting for you. If you do science, your instruments and field of study have been created by others. If you are a photographer, or an extreme sports athlete, or a baker, or an auto mechanic, or a nurse–then your potential has been given an opportunity by the work of others. You are being expanded as others expand themselves.
. . .
. . . as you embrace new technologies, you are indirectly working for future generations of Amish, and for the minimite homesteaders, even though they are not doing as much for you. Most of what you adopt they will ignore. But every once in a while your adoption of “something that doesn’t quite work yet” (Danny Hillis’s definition of technology) will evolve into an appropriate tool they can use. It might be a solar grain dyer; it might be a cure for cancer.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Property Rights, Flexible Work Rules, Open Markets Are Keys to Economic Growth

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) Messrs. Hubbard and Kane argue, as do others, that certain policies and core principles are the key: property rights, flexible work rules, open markets. For the authors, such matters explain economic growth entirely.

To those who would cite the primacy of technological breakthroughs, Messrs. Hubbard and Kane assert that inventions only spark growth if there are systems in place (such as intellectual-property rights) that enable inventions to flourish and their value to spread. “The wheel and the windmill were invented many times,” they write, “then forgotten, until finally one society had the institutional framework to implement them widely and pass them on permanently.” In short, “institutions explain innovation.”

For the full review, see:
Matthew Rees. “BOOKSHELF; How the Mighty Fall; The Roman empire eventually lost its economic vitality thanks to price controls, heavy taxes and state-sponsored debt relief.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., June 21, 2013): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 20, 2013.)

The book under review, is:
Hubbard, Glenn, and Tim Kane. Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.