Art Diamond – Page 163 – artdiamondblog.com

FDR Ruthlessly Manipulated Political Process

(p. D8) Michael C. Janeway, a former editor of The Boston Globe and executive editor of The Atlantic Monthly who wrote two books chronicling what he saw as the intertwined decline of democracy and journalism in the United States, died on Thursday [April 17, 2014] at his home in Lakeville, Conn.
. . .
The second book, “The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power From FDR to LBJ,” published in 2004, measured some of the ideas in his first book against the history of the New Deal. It focused on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inner circle of advisers, a group of political operatives and thinkers often called Roosevelt’s “brain trust,” who helped conceive ideas like the minimum wage, Social Security and federal bank deposit insurance.
Mr. Janeway’s father, Eliot Janeway, an economist, Democratic hand and columnist for Time magazine (a portfolio not unheard-of in those days), was a prominent member of that group.
Michael Janeway suggested that in undertaking the radical changes necessary to yank the “shattered American capitalist system into regulation and reform,” Roosevelt and his team manipulated the political process with a level of ruthlessness that may have been justified by the perils of the times. But in the years that followed, he wrote, the habit of guile and highhandedness devolved into the kind of arrogance that defined — and doomed — the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, Roosevelt’s last political heir.

For the full obituary, see:
PAUL VITELLO. “Michael Janeway, 73, Former Editor of The Boston Globe.” The New York Times (Sat., APRIL 19, 2014): D8.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has title “Michael Janeway, Former Editor of The Boston Globe, Dies at 73.”)

The book mentioned in the passage quoted above is:
Janeway, Michael. The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power from FDR to LBJ, Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Model Flaws Result in No Useful Climate Consensus

At the end of the first page of the commentary quoted below, the following biographical credentials were provided for the author of the commentary:

(p. C1) Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

(p. C1) The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
. . .
(p. C2) We often hear that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.
. . .
• Although the Earth’s average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.
Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.
. . .
• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity–that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today’s best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.
These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not “minor” issues to be “cleaned up” by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.
Yet a public official reading only the IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that “climate science is settled.”

For the full commentary, see:
STEVEN E. KOONIN. “Climate Science Is Not Settled.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 20, 2014): C1-C2.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 19, 2014.)

Pay Gap Widest in Jobs that Value Long Hours, Face Time and Being on Call

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B3) “The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours,” [Harvard economist Claudia Goldin] . . . wrote in a paper published [in April 2014] . . . in The American Economic Review.

Occupations that most value long hours, face time at the office and being on call — like business, law and surgery — tend to have the widest pay gaps. That is because those employers pay people who spend longer hours at the office disproportionately more than they pay people who don’t, Dr. Goldin found. A lawyer who works 80 hours a week at a big corporate law firm is paid more than double one who works 40 hours a week as an in-house counsel at a small business.
Jobs in which employees can easily substitute for one another have the slimmest pay gaps, and those workers are paid in proportion to the hours they work.
Pharmacy is Dr. Goldin’s favorite example. A pharmacist who works 40 hours a week generally earns double the salary of a pharmacist who works 20 hours a week, and as a result, the pay gap for pharmacists is one of the smallest.
Pharmacy became such an equitable profession not because of activism but because of changes in the labor market (fewer self-owned pharmacies and more large corporations) and changes in technology (storing patient records on computers where they are easily accessible by any pharmacist).

For the full story, see:
Claire Cain Miller. “Pay Gap Is Because of Gender, Not Jobs.” The New York Times (Thurs., APRIL 24, 2014): B3.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed information, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 23, 2014.)

The Goldin academic paper mentioned above, is:
Goldin, Claudia. “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter.” American Economic Review 104, no. 4 (April 2014): 1091-119.

“Discovery Cannot Be Achieved by Directive”

(p. 170) As early as 1945 the medical advisory committee reporting to the committee reporting to the federal government on a postwar program for scientific research emphasized the frequently unexpected nature of discoveries:

Discoveries in medicine have often come from the most remote and unexpected fields of science in the past; and it is probable that this will be equally true in the future. It is not unlikely that significant progress in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, cancer, and other refractory conditions will be made, perhaps unexpectedly, as the result of fundamental discoveries in fields unrelated to these diseases…. Discovery cannot be achieved by directive. Further progress requires that the entire field of medicine and the underlying sciences of biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, bacteriology, pathology, parasitology, etc., be developed impartially.

Their statement “discovery cannot be achieved by directive” would prove to be sadly prophetic.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Shetl Golden Age Ended When “Russia Repurposed Shtetl Jews as Scapegoats”

(p. 15) Smuggling looms large not only in the economy of Petrovsky-Shtern’s shtetl but for its symbolism, too. The author is interested in the way aspects of one world slide inside another. His golden-age shtetl was born when Russia swallowed a giant slice of Poland at the end of the 18th century and went from having few Jews to overseeing vast numbers of them, many of whom lived in privately owned Polish towns.
These towns are the essential ingredients of the hybrid world Petrovsky-Shtern is celebrating. Polish nobles had permitted Jews to live there on the condition that they ran the outdoor markets, sold liquor and in general acted as engines of trade. When the towns fell under Russian rule, Jews retained many of their economic privileges while expanding their civil rights, especially after they displayed a willingness to inform on their erstwhile Polish overlords.
Shtetl dwellers became adept at playing the declining Polish nobility off against bribable Russian officials. The czar had not yet laid his heavy hand on the trade by which shtetl Jews powered the economic growth of western Russia. Neither had he made nationalism the supreme ideology and Eastern Orthodoxy synonymous with Russian nationalism.
That would come, and as the Russian treasury bought up more and more of the private towns and trade died, Russia repurposed shtetl Jews as scapegoats for a restive peasant population.

For the full review, see:
JONATHAN ROSEN. “World of Our Great-Grandfathers.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., July 27, 2014): 15.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 25, 2014.)

The book under review is:
Petrovsky-Shtern, Yohanan. The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Wal-Mart Nimbly Evades Bank Industry Efforts to Restrict Competition

(p. B3) Here comes Wal-Bank.
After years of thwarted efforts to break into banking, Walmart is making its biggest foray yet into everyday financial services.
Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is teaming up with Green Dot, known for its prepaid payment cards, to supply checking accounts to almost anyone over 18 who passes an ID check.
. . .
. . . the new Walmart initiative will be the first full-blown, off-the-shelf checking account. To help attract customers, Walmart and Green Dot will forgo a screening system many banks use to vet potential customers and rely instead on a proprietary system. The model is expected to allow almost any consumer who passes an identification check to open an account in minutes, according to Green Dot.
In the past, Walmart has tried to secure a federal bank charter to become a deposit-taking bank, but abandoned that effort in 2007 in the face of opposition from the banking industry. Since then, the retailer has assembled an array of services that could be offered without a charter, as well as partnerships with financial service companies like Green Dot.

For the full story, see:
HIROKO TABUCHI and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG. “Finding a Door Into Banking, Walmart Prepares to Offer Checking Accounts.” The New York Times (Weds., SEPT. 24, 2014): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 23, 2014, and has the title “Walmart Prepares to Offer Low-Cost Checking Accounts.”)

Moss Revived After 1,500 Years

(p. D3) Typically, plants break down into organic matter as they become permafrost. Looking at the ancient moss from Signy Island, however, Dr. Convey and his colleagues wondered if, after centuries of frozen darkness, it could grow again.
It was an unlikely idea. Scientists had not managed to revive moss that had been frozen for more than 20 years. Still, Dr. Convey thought it would be interesting to try. “It was just kite-flying,” he said.
The scientists put a core of Signy permafrost under a lamp in a lab in Britain and misted it from time to time with water. After a few weeks, the moss was sending up new green growth.
The deepest layer in which the resuscitated moss grew was three and a half feet below the surface. Based on radiocarbon tests, as they report in the journal Current Biology, the revived moss turned out to be more than 1,500 years old. It’s been in a state of suspended animation, in other words, since the age of King Arthur.
. . .
In some cases, organisms may naturally revive after thousands of years without scientists’ help. And it’s possible that they play an important role in their ecosystems.
At the end of each ice age, for example, retreating glaciers leave behind bare ground that develops into new ecosystems. Dr. Convey wonders if moss, and perhaps other species, may survive under the ice for thousands of years and revive when the glaciers melt. “That gives you a very different way of understanding the biodiversity of a region,” he said.
While cloning mammoths remains speculative, reviving dormant organisms is now passing out of its proof-of-concept stage. The research could lead to using revival to help bolster endangered species.
“You could use whatever is stored in ice or sediment as a sort of backup for biodiversity,” said Luisa Orsini of the University of Birmingham in England. But, she said, “one has to be really, really careful introducing something from the past.”

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; A Growth Spurt at 1,500 Years Old.” The New York Times (Tues., MARCH 18, 2014): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 17, 2014.)

The academic paper reporting the research summarized above, is:
Roads, Esme, Royce E. Longton, and Peter Convey. “Millennial Timescale Regeneration in a Moss from Antarctica.” Current Biology 24, no. 6 (March 17, 2014): R222-R223.

“Folkman Persisted in His Genuinely Original Thinking”

(p. 141) As detailed by Robert Cooke in his 2001 book Dr. Folkman’s War, the successful answers to these basic questions took Folkman through diligent investigations punctuated by an astonishing series of chance observations and circumstances. Over decades, Folkman persisted in his genuinely original thinking. His concept was far in advance of technological and other scientific advances that would provide the methodology and basic knowledge essential to its proof, forcing him to await verification and to withstand ridicule, scorn, and vicious competition for grants. Looking back three decades later, Folkman would ruefully reflect: “I was too young to realize how much trouble was in store for a theory that could not be tested immediately.”

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Less than One Percent of Government Spending Is Cost Effective

(p. A3) . . . , most Americans don’t think of their government as particularly successful. Only 19 percent say they trust the government to do the right thing most of the time, according to Gallup.
. . .
Of the 11 large programs for low- and moderate-income people that have been subject to rigorous, randomized evaluation, only one or two show strong evidence of improving most beneficiaries’ lives.
“Less than 1 percent of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence of cost-effectiveness,” writes Peter Schuck, a Yale law professor, in his new book, “Why Government Fails So Often,” a sweeping history of policy disappointments.

For the full commentary, see:
David Leonhardt. “A Quiet Movement to Help Government Fail Less Often.” The New York Times (Tues., July 15, 2014): A3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the last two paragraphs quoted above, were combined into one paragraph in the online version.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has title “The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often.”)

The book mentioned in the passage quoted above is:
Schuck, Peter. Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Evidence Some Flies Can Adapt to Climate Change

(p. D7) In the early 2000s, Ary A. Hoffmann, a biologist then at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, wondered how the many species in tropical rain forests would cope when their humid environment dried out.
. . .
. . . at the end of the experiment, the flies were no more resistant to dry air than their forebears. The flies seemed to lack the genetic potential to evolve. Those results suggested that if the rain forest home of Drosophilia birchii loses its high humidity, the flies will die off.
. . .
Recently, two of Dr. Hoffmann’s collaborators — Belinda van Heerwaarden and Carla M. Sgrò of Monash University — decided to rerun the experiment, but with a crucial twist.
Rather than expose the flies to 10 percent relative humidity, Dr. van Heerwaarden and Dr. Sgrò tried 35 percent. That’s still far drier than the moist air of rain forests, but it’s not the aridity one might encounter on a summer day in Death Valley.
“It’s a humidity that’s more relevant to the predictions for how dry the environment would become in the next 30 to 50 years,” Dr. Sgrò said.
. . .
Unlike the flies in the earlier studies, it didn’t take long for these to start evolving. After just five generations, one species was able to survive 23 percent longer in 35 humidity.

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; Study Gives Hope of Adaptation to Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 29, 2014): D7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 24, 2014.)

The recent paper discussed above, is:
van Heerwaarden, Belinda, and Carla M. Sgrò. “Is Adaptation to Climate Change Really Constrained in Niche Specialists?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1790 (2014): 1-1.