Author: Art Diamond

Universities Limit Free Speech

(p. F10) Ask Andrea M. Quenette if she thinks that colleges and universities are doing a good job refereeing the debate over free speech, and she’ll respond with an emphatic ‘no.’
“Schools are not doing enough to protect free speech,” Ms. Quenette, a communications professor at the University of Kansas, said in an email. “Specifically, they are protecting the speech of some, those whom they fear or those voices which are loudest, but they are not protecting the speech of those whose voices are easier to silence. Generally, these quieter voices are those of faculty and staff who should rightfully fear for their jobs should they use unpopular, but legally protected, words.”
. . .
According to a poll recently released by the Gallup Organization, 78 percent of 3,072 students from 32 four-year private and public colleges believed their campuses should strive to create an open environment where they would be exposed to a range of speech and views. Twenty-two percent noted that “colleges should prohibit biased or offensive speech in the furtherance of a positive learning environment.” But 69 percent favored limitations on speech when it came to language that was deliberately upsetting to some groups.
An October 2015 survey of 800 students nationwide, sponsored by the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale, reported that 63 percent favored requiring professors to use “trigger warnings” to alert students to subject matter that might be unsettling. By a 51 percent to 36 percent margin, students also supported speech codes to regulate speech for students and faculty.

For the full story, see:
ABBY ELLIN. “Studies in Free Speech.” The New York Times (Thurs., JUNE 23, 2016): F10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JUNE 22, 2016, and has the title “Studies in the First Amendment, Playing Out on Campus.”)

Computers and Humans as Complements Rather than Substitutes

(p. B1) “A lot of companies pushed hard on the idea that technology will solve every problem, and that we shouldn’t use humans,” said Paul English, the co-founder of a new online company called Lola Travel. (p. B10) “We think humans add value, so we’re trying to design technology to facilitate the human-to-human connection.”
. . .
“I tried to create the best travel website on the market,” he said. “But as good as we thought our tech was, there were many times where I thought I did a better job for people on the phone than our site could do.”
You’ve most likely experienced the headaches Mr. English is talking about. Think back to the last time you booked anything beyond a routine trip online. There’s a good chance you spent a lot more time and energy than you would have with a human. Sure, the Internet has obligingly stepped in to help; there are review sites, travel blogs, discussion forums and the hordes on social media to answer every possible travel question. But these resources only exacerbate the problem. They often turn what should be a fun activity into an hourslong research project.
. . .
In many cases, yes, but there remain vast realms of commerce in which guidance from a human expert works much better than a machine. Other than travel, consider the process of finding a handyman or plumber. The Internet has given us a wealth of data about these services. You could spend all day on Craigslist, Yelp or Angie’s List finding the best person for your job, which is precisely the problem.
“It’s going to be a long time until a computer can replace the estimating power of an experienced handyman,” said Doug Ludlow, the founder of the Happy Home Company, a one-year-old start-up that uses human experts to find the right person for your job. The company, which operates in the San Francisco Bay Area but plans to expand nationally, has contracts with a network of trusted service professionals in your area. To get some work done, you simply text your Happy Home manager with a description of the problem and maybe a few pictures.
“A quick glance from our handyman gives us an idea of who to send to your job, and what it will cost,” Mr. Ludlow said. The company handles payment processing, scheduling and any complaints if something goes wrong.
I recently used Happy Home to get a few home theater cables concealed in a wall. The experience was liberating — I found a handyman and a drywall specialist to do my job with little more than few texts, and no time spent scouring through web reviews.
It isn’t feasible to get humans involved in all of our purchases. Humans are costly and they’re limited in capacity. The great advantage of computers is that they “scale” — software can serve evermore customers for ever-lower prices.
But one of the ironies of the digital revolution is that it has also helped human expertise scale. Thanks to texting, human customer service agents can now serve multiple customers at a time. They can also access reams of data about your preferences, allowing them to quickly find answers for your questions.
As a result, for certain purchases, the cost of adding human expertise can be a trivial part of the overall transaction. Happy Home takes a cut of each service it sets up, but because it can squeeze out certain efficiencies from operating a network of service professionals, its prices match what you’d find looking for a handyman on your own. That’s true of human travel agencies, too — the commissions on travel are so good that Lola can afford to throw in human expertise almost as a kind of bonus.
The rise of computers is often portrayed as a great threat to all of our jobs. But these services sketch out a more optimistic scenario: That humans and machines will work together, and we, as customers, will be allowed, once more, to lazily beg for help.

For the full commentary, see:
Manjoo, Farhad. “State of the Art; The Machines Rose, but Now Start-Ups Add Human Touch.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 17, 2015): B1 & B10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 16, 2015, and has the title “State of the Art; In a Self-Serve World, Start-Ups Find Value in Human Helpers.”)

Edgar Speyer Was Entrepreneur Who Created Innovative London Tube Infrastructure

(p. A13) Before World War I, Edgar Speyer headed the London branch of the German-based Speyer banking conglomerate. Among other things, he was a great lover of music. His mansion on Grosvenor Square was a cynosure for composers– Debussy, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg–all of whom availed themselves of the luxuries of the house, playing or conducting their work in private performances. “We live even more elegantly than kings and emperors,” Grieg wrote, referring to the mansion’s suite of rooms for visitors.
Not all of Edgar Speyer’s interests were so ethereal. The British Speyer branch was a key source of railroad finance, and Edgar himself was best known for creating–in partnership with Charles Yerkes, a Chicago entrepreneur–the London tube system, with its innovative “deep-tube” design. Edgar persisted in expanding the system despite its precarious finances and for many years functioned as its chief executive.
. . .
The Speyer bank, Mr. Liebmann tells us, had roots going back to the 14th century, at the threshold of a long surge in international commerce. New forms of paper–bills of exchange, letters of credit and much else–allowed traders to leverage up their businesses quite remarkably. Over time, houses like those of Baring, Rothschild and Speyer shifted out of their traditional-goods trading for the higher volumes and higher fees available from trading just the paper claims. The Speyers were known as the leading investment and trading house in Frankfurt, Germany, usually ranked just behind the Rothschilds in the Jewish financial imperium.

For the full review, see:

CHARLES R. MORRIS. “BOOKSHELF; Second Only to the Rothschilds; Speyer banks funded the London underground, placed the first Union Civil War bonds in Europe and built the Madeira-Mamore railroad.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Jan. 26, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 25, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Liebmann, George W. The Fall of the House of Speyer: The Story of a Banking Dynasty. London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2015.

Ozone Hole Shrinking

(p. A4) Nearly three decades after the world banned chemicals that were destroying the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer, scientists said Thursday that there were signs the atmosphere was on the mend.
The researchers said they had found “fingerprints” indicating that the seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica, a cause of concern since it was discovered in 1984, was getting smaller.
. . .
“This is just the beginning of what is a long process,” said Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.
. . .
Ozone depletion is a complex process that is affected by variables like temperature, wind and volcanic activity. So Dr. Solomon and the other researchers looked at data from satellites and balloon-borne instruments taken each September. That made it easier to separate the effects of the decline in chlorine atoms from the other factors. They also compared the data with the results of computer models.
The study found that the ozone hole had shrunk by about 1.5 million square miles, or about one-third the area of the United States, from 2000 to 2015.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Ozone Hole Shows Signs of Shrinking, Study Shows.” The New York Times (Fri., July 1, 2016): A4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JUNE 30, 2016, and has the title “Ozone Hole Shows Signs of Shrinking, Scientists Say.”)

The academic paper in Science, mentioned above, is:
Solomon, Susan, Diane J. Ivy, Doug Kinnison, Michael J. Mills, Ryan R. Neely, and Anja Schmidt. “Emergence of Healing in the Antarctic Ozone Layer.” Science (June 30, 2016) 10.1126/science.aae0061.

Tribe Uses Autonomy to Fight American Dental Association (A.D.A.) Credentialism

(p. A10) Mr. Kennedy, 56, a soft-spoken Tlingit Native Alaskan, is a dental therapist, the rough equivalent of a physician assistant. He is trained to perform the most common procedures that dentists do, from fillings to extractions. Since January, when he started at the Swinomish Dental Clinic, over 50 miles north of Seattle, he has been the only dental therapist on tribal land anywhere in the lower 48 states. He studied in Alaska, which has the nation’s only program — patterned after one in New Zealand — aimed at training therapists specifically to work in underserved tribal areas.
Laws here in Washington and most other states bar dental therapists, who have long been opposed by the American Dental Association, so the tribe created its own licensing system. The federal Indian Health Service, which pays for medical care on Indian lands, cannot compensate therapists unless authorized by the state, so the Swinomish (pronounced SWIN-o-mish) needed private foundation support and meticulous accounting so that no law was violated.
“We had to take matters into our own hands,” said Brian Cladoosby, the chairman of the Swinomish Senate and president of the National Congress of American Indians. The breaking point came in 2015, after Washington’s Legislature — pressured by the dental lobby, Mr. Cladoosby said — declined for the fifth year in a row to pass a bill allowing a therapist program. Asserting tribal sovereignty, the tribe forged ahead anyway.
“The American Dental Association is no friend to American Indian tribes,” Mr. Cladoosby said in an interview.
. . .
(p. A11) Dr. Rachael R. Hogan, a dentist who works at the Swinomish Clinic, supervises Mr. Kennedy’s work. At first she did not think the arrangement would work. The A.D.A.’s safety concerns made sense, she said.
“I was leery,” she said. But after watching Mr. Kennedy for the past four months and visiting the training school in Alaska, she has changed her mind. By practicing procedures over and over — more than most dental school graduates, who must also study a broad range of diagnostic and disease issues — therapists can hone procedures, she said, to an art.
“Their fillings are better,” she said. “Are we providing substandard care by providing a therapist? Actually, I would say it’s the opposite.”

For the full story, see:
KIRK JOHNSON. “Asserting Tribal Sovereignty to Improve Indian’s Dental Care.” The New York Times (Mon., MAY 23, 2016): A10-A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 22, 2016, and has the title “Where Dentists Are Scarce, American Indians Forge a Path to Better Care.”)

German Car Makers in No Rush to Catch Up to Tesla

(p. A7) When Elon Musk rolled out the new Tesla Model X at the end of September [2015], some grumbled that the Silicon Valley car maker’s all-electric luxury crossover was coming to market two years too late. It depends on who you ask. The Big Three German auto makers only wish they could catch the tail of Mr. Musk’s rocket.
I’m not talking about units sold, though Tesla’s target of 50,000 cars in 2015 is a respectable chunk of the global luxury-sedan market. But Tesla has taken more hide off German prestige and sense of technical primacy. I mean, the Model X was just rubbing their noses in it with those “falcon” doors, right? In executive interviews at the Frankfurt Auto Show any praise of Tesla was guaranteed to land on the table like a paternity suit.
. . .
I wonder if any traditional auto maker whose existence does not hang in the balance can ever have enough belly for the EV long game?
Even if the Germans had market-bound EVs in mass quantities, there is the concurrent problem of charging. As the estimable John Voelcker of Green Car Reports notes, the luxury incumbents have no plans to challenge Tesla on charging availability. Tesla has hundreds of charging stations in the U.S. and Europe and plans for hundreds more–all free to owners.
. . .
I am struck by the lag time. This isn’t about profit and loss but industry leadership. The Germans are headed where Tesla already is and, taking Frankfurt as the measure, they are in no great hurry to get there.

For the full commentary, see:
Dan Neil. “RUMBLE SEAT; How Tesla Leaves its Rivals Playing Catch Up.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 10, 2015): D11.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 8, 2015.)

Franklin Was Appalled by the Boston Tea Party, But Was More Appalled by British Arrogance

(p. A13) When George III assumed the throne in 1760, Franklin was full of praise for his “virtue” and “steadiness.” Many American associates considered him somewhat sycophantic.
Mr. Goodwin’s assessment is gentler. “Franklin was a proud Briton, but he was not starry-eyed.” By 1770 he was frustrated by Britain’s “treatment of her American colonies as one giant farm and forest of raw materials.” His relations with Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, became venomous. Lord North, the prime minister, icily ignored him. Franklin began to produce anonymous satires rebuking British attitudes toward America.
The nadir came in December 1773, when word reached London of the Boston Tea Party. Incensed, the king’s Privy Council summoned Franklin to Westminster. He was already in bad odor for having leaked impolitic correspondence from the royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. The Privy Council chamber was, on this occasion, packed with counselors and curious members of the public. Other than Edmund Burke, they were hostile. Franklin stood grimly motionless as the solicitor general pounded the table and subjected him to “an hour-long verbal assault.” The council roared approval as he accused Franklin of acting for “the most malignant purposes.” The American had “forfeited all the respect of societies and of men.”
The humiliation of Benjamin Franklin gratified the grandees of George III’s government, but the episode epitomized their arrogant maladministration. Franklin was hardly an anti-British zealot. He favored reconciliation and might have been an effective mediator had he been respected and trusted. Franklin was so appalled by the Boston Tea Party that he offered to personally repay the East India Co. That this rather Anglophilic colonial served as the Privy Council’s whipping boy demonstrates how obdurate the government had become.
Franklin’s revenge was served hot. He left England in March of 1775 under threat of arrest. Twenty months later he arrived in France, where his diplomacy would deliver a mortal blow to Britain’s American empire.

For the full review, see:
JEFFREY COLLINS. “BOOKSHELF; A Revolutionary Loyal to Britain; Franklin’s years in France resulted in military aid and recognition of American independence. His time in London? Slightly less successful.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 11, 2016): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 10, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Goodwin, George. Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.

Richest Rich Use Crony Capitalism to Game Tax System

(p. A1) Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups.
. . .
(p. A12) “There’s this notion that the wealthy use their money to buy politicians; more accurately, it’s that they can buy policy, and specifically, tax policy,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “That’s why these egregious loopholes exist, and why it’s so hard to close them.”

The Family Office
Each of the top 400 earners took home, on average, about $336 million in 2012, the latest year for which data is available. If the bulk of that money had been paid out as salary or wages, as it is for the typical American, the tax obligations of those wealthy taxpayers could have more than doubled.
Instead, much of their income came from convoluted partnerships and high-end investment funds. Other earnings accrued in opaque family trusts and foreign shell corporations, beyond the reach of the tax authorities.
The well-paid technicians who devise these arrangements toil away at white-shoe law firms and elite investment banks, as well as a variety of obscure boutiques. But at the fulcrum of the strategizing over how to minimize taxes are so-called family offices, the customized wealth management departments of Americans with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in assets.
. . .
The major industry group representing private equity funds spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year lobbying on such issues as “carried interest,” the granddaddy of Wall Street tax loopholes, which makes it possible for fund managers to pay the capital gains rate rather than the higher standard tax rate on a substantial share of their income for running the fund.

For the full story, see:
NOAM SCHEIBER and PATRICIA COHEN. “By Molding Tax System, Wealthiest Save Billions.” The New York Times (Weds., DEC. 30, 2015): A1 & A12.
(Note: bold, and larger font, in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 29, 2015, and has the title “For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions.”)

Standard Oil Money Funded Homage to Oz

(p. A1) Vandals are slowly destroying the Land of Oz, a small private theme park nestled atop Beech Mountain, N.C., built on land bought years ago with money from a Standard Oil fortune. Thieves and urban explorers have carted off polka-dot mushrooms, a pair of cement lions and, most hurtfully, pieces of the golden-hued path that runs through the park.
“It’s magical,” says Vicky Conley of Morganton, N.C., who took her son to Oz last year when he was six. “People should leave it alone.”
. . .
(p. A8) In 1966, Mr. Leidy’s grandfather Page Hufty–an insurance pioneer and real-estate developer in Palm Beach, Fla.–bought land on Beech Mountain. His wife, Frances Archbold Hufty, was the granddaughter of John D. Archbold, a titan of the Gilded Age and John D. Rockefeller’s right-hand man at Standard Oil, which was dissolved by the government in 1911.
Mr. Hufty leased some of the land to other developers, who wanted a summer theme park to complement their ski resort.
The Land of Oz opened in 1970, amid much fanfare about the 70th anniversary of L. Frank Baum’s classic book. Debbie Reynolds stopped by. So did Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow in the 1939 movie. At least 300,000 people visited the first year, says Neva Specht, a historian and a dean at the College of Arts and Sciences at Appalachian State University.
By the second year, she says, it was one of the biggest attractions in the Southeast, and it graced the cover of “Southern Living” magazine.
. . .
But the park quickly became more of a white elephant than a Merry Old Land. Attendance dropped, as families were lured away by splashier attractions like Disney World, which opened the following year in Orlando, Fla. The developers went bankrupt, and Mr. Leidy’s grandparents eventually gained ownership.
. . .
Mr. Leidy installed fences topped with barbed wire, but thieves cut through. Security cameras didn’t seem to deter anyone either. Mr. Leidy is now hiring guards.
. . .
Mr. Leidy says he doesn’t know what lies in store over the rainbow, but thinks his grandparents would be proud.
“Until we figure out a long-term plan here,” he says, “it’s important to me to protect it.”

For the full story, see:
CHRISTINA REXRODE. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Even a Wizard Can’t Save Oz.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Sept. 18, 2015): A1 & A8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 17, 2016, and has the title “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Even a Wizard Can’t Save Oz From Vandals.”)

Details of a Case of Gene Transfer Between Species

(p. A7) . . . in recent years, scientists have pinpointed many instances of horizontal gene transfer–genes being ferried from one species into an entirely unrelated species that happens to live in the same environment.
For example, a gene from a species of bacteria has been discovered in the genome of the coffee berry borer beetle, where it enables the beetle to feed exclusively on coffee beans. It is through horizontal gene transfer that bacteria typically develop antibiotic resistance.
A few months ago, a team of U.K. researchers concluded that the “jumping gene” method enabled humans to acquire more than 145 foreign genes from bacteria, viruses and fungi over the course of our evolution.
The big mystery is: How does this happen? In the latest study, researchers suggest a possible route whereby the genes of parasitic wasps jump into the genomes of butterflies and moths.

For the full story, see:
GAUTAM NAIK. “Scientists Find How Genes Jump Species.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Sept. 18, 2015): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 17, 2016, and has the title “Scientists Learn How Genes Can Jump Between Species.”)

The academic paper reporting the possible details of a process of horizontal gene transfer, is:
Gasmi, Laila, Helene Boulain, Jeremy Gauthier, Aurelie Hua-Van, Karine Musset, Agata K. Jakubowska, Jean-Marc Aury, Anne-Nathalie Volkoff, Elisabeth Huguet, Salvador Herrero, and Jean-Michel Drezen. “Recurrent Domestication by Lepidoptera of Genes from Their Parasites Mediated by Bracoviruses.” PLoS Genetics 11, no. 9 (Sept. 17, 2015): e1005470.