Month: February 2017

Government Wastes Millions on Corrupt Nanotech Boondoggle

(p. A19) In Utica, a former industrial hub in upstate New York where the near collapse of manufacturing has made for a scarcity of jobs and a rarity of good news, the announcement in August 2015 that an Austrian chip maker had decided to put down roots in a fabrication plant built by the state was cause for jubilation.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo celebrated with an appearance in Utica, promising $585 million in state funds to cement the public-private partnership, which was to create 1,000 jobs. Some in the crowd wept with emotion.
But last week, after months of delays and mismanagement that culminated in September with federal prosecutors revealing a far-reaching bribery and bid-rigging scheme, state and local officials said that the Austrian chip maker, AMS, had abandoned the project.
The Utica project was merely one chunk of the multibillion-dollar investment with which the Cuomo administration has pledged to seed nanotechnology and high-tech industries in upstate cities starved for economic growth.
. . .
For the state, it seems, the strategy developed by Mr. Kaloyeros and trumpeted by Mr. Cuomo — to lavish hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies on corporate partners to create high-tech jobs — is unblemished. Yet the model has come in for repeated criticism from government watchdogs, who say an economic policy that tries to create risky new industries virtually from scratch, and that spends millions in taxpayer dollars to create every new job, is folly.
“We’re incredibly skeptical of the economic logic behind these projects because they’re too expensive,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good-government group. “There is no economic logic to (p. A21) this, really. But there’s a huge political logic to it. The governor desperately needs for this to be a success for his political legacy in New York.”

For the full story, see:
VIVIAN YEE. “How Missteps Doomed Plan for Growth, Foiling Cuomo.” The New York Times (Weds., DEC. 28, 2016): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 27, 2016, and has the title “How Cuomo’s Signature Economic Growth Project Fell Apart in Utica.”)

Complex Regulations Stifle Innovation

(p. A15) In “The Innovation Illusion” . . . [Fredrik Erixon and Björn Weigel] argue that “there is too little breakthrough innovation . . . and the capitalist system that used to promote eccentricity and embrace ingenuity all too often produces mediocrity.”
The authors identify four factors that have made Western capitalism “dull and hidebound.” The first is “gray capital,” the money held by entities such as investment institutions, which are often just intermediaries for other investors. Their shareholders, say the authors, tend to focus on short-term outcomes, a perspective that makes company managers reluctant to invest in the research and development that is the lifeblood of the new. The authors’ second villain is “corporate managerialism,” which breeds a “custodian corporate culture” that searches for certainty and control instead of “fast and radical innovation.”
A third villain is globalization, though the authors have a novel complaint: The global economy, they say, has given rise to large firms that are more interested in protecting their turf than pursuing path-breaking ideas. Finally, they decry “complex regulation” for injecting uncertainty into corporate investment and thus stifling the emergence of new ideas and new products.
Echoing the views of Northwestern economist Robert Gordon, Messrs. Erixon and Weigel lament the paucity of big-bang innovation, writing that “the advertised technologies for the future underwhelm.” They wonder why there hasn’t been more progress in all sorts of realms, from the engineering of flying cars to the curing of cancer. Responding to those who worry that robots will drive up unemployment, they say that the real concern should be “an innovation famine rather than an innovation feast.”

For the full review, see:

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

The book under review, is:
Erixon, Fredrik, and Björn Weigel. The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2016.

Tech Firms Rally Their Customers to Fight Restrictive Regulations

(p. A23) The nasty battle between Uber and the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio over New York City’s proposed cap on livery vehicles has ended, at least for now, with the city and the ride-hailing giant agreeing to postpone a decision pending a “traffic study.” There’s no doubt who won, though. The mayor underestimated his opponent and was forced to retreat.
It wasn’t just conventional pressure — ads, money, lobbying — that caught the mayor off guard. Uber mobilized its customers, leveraging the power of its app to prompt a populist social-media assault, all in support of a $50 billion corporation. The company added a “de Blasio’s Uber” feature so that every time New Yorkers logged on to order a car, they were reminded of the mayor’s threat (“NO CARS — SEE WHY”) and were sent directly to a petition opposing the new rules. Users were also offered free Uber rides to a June 30 rally at City Hall. Eventually, the mayor and the City Council received 17,000 emails in opposition. Just as Uber has offloaded most costs of operating a taxi onto its drivers, the company uses its customers to do much of its political heavy lifting.
Uber’s earlier strategy to win entry into the Portland, Ore., market followed a similar pattern. When the city wasn’t allowing the company to operate taxis, Uber exploited rules that allowed it to act as a delivery company, and distributed free ice cream around town. Using data on these deliveries, the firm shrewdly recruited recipients as pro-Uber citizen lobbyists, pressuring local officials to allow their cars to pick up passengers. It worked.
Many tech firms now recognize the organizing power of their user networks, and are weaponizing their apps to achieve political ends. Lyft embedded tools on its site to mobilize users in support of less restrictive regulations. Airbnb provided funding for the “Fair to Share” campaign in the Bay Area, which lobbies to allow short-term housing rentals, and is currently hiring “community organizers” to amplify the voices of home-sharing supporters. Amazon’s “Readers United” was an effort to gain customer backing during its acrimonious dispute with the publisher Hachette. Emails from eBay prodded users to fight online sales-tax legislation.

For the full commentary, see:
EDWARD T. WALKER. “The Uber-ization of Activism.” The New York Times (Fri., AUG. 7, 2015): A23.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date AUG. 6, 2015.)

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.