Books – Page 51 – artdiamondblog.com

How Edison Brought Tears to the Eyes of Maria Montessori

(p. 221) Edison’s partial loss of hearing prevented him from listening to music in the same way as those with unimpaired hearing. A little item that appeared in a Schenectady, New York, newspaper in 1913 related the story that Edison supposedly told a friend about how he usually listened to recordings by placing one ear directly against the phonograph’s cabinet. But if he detected a sound too faint to hear in this fashion, Edison said, “I bite my teeth in the wood good and hard and then I get it good and strong.” The story would be confirmed decades later in (p. 222) Madeleine’s recollections of growing up. One day she came into the sitting room in which someone was playing the piano and a guest, Maria Montessori, was in tears, watching Edison listen the only way that he could, teeth biting the piano. “She thought it was pathetic,” Madeleine said, “I guess it was.”

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Federal Tax Reduction Fueled Craft Beer Revolution

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

(p. 6) The story of craft beer’s rise begins in 1965, when Fritz Maytag, an heir to the Maytag appliance fortune, bought and revived the Anchor Steam brewery in San Francisco, thus inspiring a generation of so-called home brewers to begin considering commercial ventures.
. . .
A 1976 federal tax reduction for small brewers fueled the industry’s growth.
. . .
For years, the greatest challenge for craft brewers was distribution — simply getting restaurants and grocery stores to sell their product. Most wholesale beer distributors, Mr. Hindy writes, were heavily reliant on the three megabreweries — Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors — and couldn’t be bothered to spend time pushing obscure brands whose makers rarely had enough money to advertise. In 1996, Augustus Busch III demanded that its distributors devote a “100 percent share of mind” to Busch products. That left most microbrewers to beg and wheedle the Miller and Coors distributors, a situation so frustrating that, in time, Mr. Hindy’s Brooklyn Brewery began distributing its own products.

For the full review, see:
BRYAN BURROUGH. “OFF THE SHELF; Craft Brewers, Finding a Better Seat at the Bar.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., MAY 11, 2014): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MAY 10, 2014.)

The book under review is:
Hindy, Steve. The Craft Beer Revolution: How a Band of Microbrewers Is Transforming the World’s Favorite Drink. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Phonograph Allowed Middle Class to Bring the Show to Their “Castle,” Like Kings Already Could

(p. 218) Once Edison’s marketers squarely addressed the urban middle class, they devised advertising that made prospective customers feel as entitled to enjoy the pleasures of recorded music as anyone. “When the (p. 219) King of England wants to see a show, they bring the show to the castle and he hears it alone in his private theater.” So said an advertisement in 1906 for the Edison phonograph. It continued: “If you are a king, why don’t you exercise your kingly privilege and have a show of your own in your own house.”

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Government Regulations Favor Health Care Incumbents

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

(p. A11) The rise in U.S. health-care costs, to nearly 18% of GDP today from around 6% of GDP in 1965, has alarmed journalists, inspired policy wonks and left patients struggling to find empathy in a system that tends to view them as “a vessel for billing codes,” as the technologist Dave Chase has put it.

Enter Jonathan Bush, dyslexic entrepreneur, . . .
. . .
. . . , Mr. Bush touts technology as a driver of change. It has revolutionized the way we shop for books and select hotels, but health-care delivery has been stubbornly resistant. Mr. Bush notes that the number of people supporting each doctor has climbed to 16 today from 10 in 1990–half of whom, currently, are administrators handling the mounting paperwork. Astonishingly, as Mr. Bush observes, the government had to pay doctors billions of dollars, via the 2009 HITECH Act, to incentivize them to upgrade from paper to computers. Meanwhile, fast-food chains discovered computers on their own, because the market demanded it.
. . .
Let entrepreneurs loose on these challenges, Mr. Bush believes, and they will come up with solutions.
Mr. Bush identifies three major obstacles to the kinds of change he has in mind. First, large hospital systems leverage their market position to charge hefty premiums for basic services, then use the proceeds to buy more regional hospitals and local practices. “As big ones take over the small,” Mr. Bush laments, “prices shoot up. Choices vanish.” Second, government regulations, especially state laws, favor powerful incumbents, shielding “imaging centers and hospitals from competition.” Third, heath care suffers from a risk-avoidant culture. The maxim “do no harm,” Mr. Bush says, should not be an excuse for clinging to a flawed status quo.

For the full review, see:
David A. Shaywitz. “BOOKSHELF; A System Still in Need of Repair; Routine medical services can be done for less cost–one of many obvious realities that current health-care practices studiously ignore.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., May 19, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 18, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Where Does It Hurt?’ by Jonathan Bush; Routine medical services can be done for less cost–one of many obvious realities that current health-care practices studiously ignore.”)

The book under review is:
Bush, Jonathan, and Stephen Baker. Where Does It Hurt?: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Fixing Health Care. New York: Portfolio, 2014.

Edison Sold General Electric Shares to Keep His Lab and Mine Open

(p. 193) In 1902, at a time when General Electric shares were trading at a historic high and well after Edison had sold his, Mallory happened to be traveling with him and saw in the newspaper the eye-popping closing price. Edison asked what his stake would have been worth had he held on to it. Mallory quickly worked out the number: over $4 million. Hearing this, Edison remained silent, keeping a serious expression for about fifteen seconds. Then his face lit up and he said, “Well, it’s all gone, but we had a good time spending it.”
(p. 194) The story would be retold by Edison’s hagiographers many times. The evidence suggests that Edison did have a jolly time, which, to him, was well worth the $4 million.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

“Man Is Born Free, But He Is Everywhere in Cubicles”

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

(p. C21) I’ve spent about half my working life sitting in, and loathing, cubicles. You’ve probably spent years in one, too. About 60 percent of us work in cubicles, and 93 percent of us dislike them.
. . .
(p. C31) Mr. Saval describes the image we have of the cubicle today: “the flimsy, fabric-wrapped, half-exposed stall where the white-collar worker waited out his days until, at long last, he was laid off.”
. . .
When he discovers that half of Americans report that their bathrooms are larger than their cubicles, for example, he writes: “One wonders to what extent the extravagant growth of the American bathroom, and of the suburban home in general, is partly a reaction against the shrinking of cubicles, where the owners of those bathrooms spend so much of their time.”
. . .
Putting a spin on Rousseau, he says,
. . .
By the end of “Cubed,” the author is dropping in on Silicon Valley offices, where companies like Google cater to their employees’ every need, almost eliminating the distinction between work and leisure. Mr. Saval savors the fact that so many well-known Silicon Valley figures dropped out of college yet want their offices to resemble college campuses.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Books of The Times; The Office Space We Love to Hate.” The New York Times (Fri., APRIL 25, 2014): C21 & C31.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date APRIL 24, 2014.)

The book under review is:
Saval, Nikil. Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. New York: Doubleday, 2014.

Edison Failed to Stop Film Projectors from Disrupting His Kinetoscope

Edison tried to kill film projection because he thought the whole country would only need 10 projectors, while they could sell a great many of the single-view kinetoscopes. But the wonderful twist to the story is that it DID NOT WORK because Edison could not stop the Lathams and others from coming forward and disrupting the kinetoscope.

(p. 205) The Lathams were not the only exhibitors frustrated with Edison’s kinetoscope, and the others urged Edison to introduce a projection machine. Edison was adamant: no. He reasoned that the peephole machines (p. 206) were selling well and at a good profit. The problem with projection was that it would work all too well–if he replaced the inefficient kinetoscope with projection systems that could serve up the show to everyone, “there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States.” He concluded, “Let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

At Edison’s lab in Orange, without his boss’s approval, W. K. L. Dickson carried out research on film projection on his own and shared his findings with a friend who was a keen listener: Otway Latham. And when Dickson accepted an invitation to try a projection experiment in a physics laboratory at Columbia, who should show up but Otway’s father, Professor Latham. The Lathams made an offer to Dickson–come join us and we’ll give you a quarter-share interest in the business–but Dickson was unwilling to make the leap. When Edison got word of his fraternizing with the Lathams, however, and failed to reassure Dickson that he believed Dickson’s dealings had been perfectly honorable, Dickson felt he had no choice but to resign. The exact chronology of what he did and what he knew at various points preceding his resignation would be the subject of much litigation that followed. But regardless of intellectual-property issues, Edison lost the one person on his staff who would have been most valuable to him in developing a projection system.
The Lathams and Dickson had discovered that sending a bright light through a moving strip of film did not project satisfactorily because any given image did not absorb enough light before it sped on. The Lathams came up with a partial solution, which was to make the film wider, providing more area for the light to catch as each image went by. The projected images were about the size of a window and good enough to unveil publicly. Professor Latham gave a demonstration of his newly christened Pantoptikon to reporters in April 1895.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Galeano Repudiates His Chávez-Endorsed Latin Leftist Classic

“Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, handing President Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” in 2009.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) For more than 40 years, Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” has been the canonical anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and anti-American text in that region. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s populist president, even put a copy of the book, which he had called “a monument in our Latin American history,” in President Obama’s hands the first time they met. But now Mr. Galeano, a 73-year-old Uruguayan writer, has disavowed the book, saying that he was not qualified to tackle the subject and that it was badly written. . . .

” ‘Open Veins’ tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn’t yet have the necessary training or preparation,” Mr. Galeano said last month while answering questions at a book fair in Brazil, where he was being honored on the 43rd anniversary of the book’s publication. He added: “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it.”
. . .
(p. C6) In the United States, “Open Veins” has been widely taught on university campuses since the 1970s, in courses ranging from history and anthropology to economics and geography. But Mr. Galeano’s unexpected takedown of his own work has left scholars wondering how to deal with the book in class.
. . .
In the mid-1990s, three advocates of free-market policies — the Colombian writer and diplomat Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the exiled Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Peruvian journalist and author Álvaro Vargas Llosa — reacted to Mr. Galeano with a polemic of their own, “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.” They dismissed “Open Veins” as “the idiot’s bible,” and reduced its thesis to a single sentence: “We’re poor; it’s their fault.”
Mr. Montaner responded to Mr. Galeano’s recent remarks with a blog post titled “Galeano Corrects Himself and the Idiots Lose Their Bible.” In Brazil, Rodrigo Constantino, the author of “The Caviar Left,” took an even harsher tone, blaming Mr. Galeano’s analysis and prescription for many of Latin America’s ills. “He should feel really guilty for the damage he caused,” he wrote on his blog.

For the full story, see:
LARRY ROHTER. “Author Changes His Mind on ’70s Manifesto.” The New York Times (Sat., MAY 24, 2014): C1 & C6..
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 23, 2014.)

The Vargas Llosa book mentioned above is:
Mendoza, Plinio Apuleyo, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa. Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot. Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books, 2000.

Source of book image:
http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/9781568332369_p0_v1_s260x420.JPG

When Labor Markets Are Flexible, Workers Need Not Fear New Technology

(p. 6) Driverless vehicles and drone aircraft are no longer science fiction, and over time, they may eliminate millions of transportation jobs. Many other examples of automatable jobs are discussed in “The Second Machine Age,” a book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and in my own book, “Average Is Over.” The upshot is that machines are often filling in for our smarts, not just for our brawn — and this trend is likely to grow.
How afraid should workers be of these new technologies? There is reason to be skeptical of the assumption that machines will leave humanity without jobs. After all, history has seen many waves of innovation and automation, and yet as recently as 2000, the rate of unemployment was a mere 4 percent. There are unlimited human wants, so there is always more work to be done. The economic theory of comparative advantage suggests that even unskilled workers can gain from selling their services, thereby liberating the more skilled workers for more productive tasks.
. . .
Labor markets just aren’t as flexible these days for workers, especially for men at the bottom end of the skills distribution.
. . .
Across the economy, a college degree is often demanded where a high school degree used to suffice.
. . .
The law is yet another source of labor market inflexibility: The number of jobs covered by occupational licensing continues to rise and is almost one-third of the work force. We don’t need such laws for, say, barbers or interior designers, although they are commonly on the books.
. . .
Many . . . labor market problems were brought on by the financial crisis and the collapse of market demand. But it would be a mistake to place all the blame on the business cycle. Before the crisis, for example, business executives and owners didn’t always know who their worst workers were, or didn’t want to engage in the disruptive act of rooting out and firing them. So long as sales were brisk, it was easier to let matters lie. But when money ran out, many businesses had to make the tough decisions — and the axes fell. The financial crisis thus accelerated what would have been a much slower process.
Subsequently, some would-be employers seem to have discriminated against workers who were laid off in the crash. These judgments weren’t always fair, but that stigma isn’t easily overcome, because a lot of employers in fact had reason to identify and fire their less productive workers.

For the full commentary, see:
TYLER COWEN. “Economic View; Automation Alone Isn’t Killing Jobs.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., APRIL 6, 2014): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date APRIL 5, 2014.)

The Brynjolfsson and McAfee book mentioned is:
Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.

The Cowen book that Cowen mentions is:
Cowen, Tyler. Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. New York: Dutton Adult, 2013.

Young Inca Woman Was Probably Murdered

“The Incan mummy.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Hobbes famously wrote that for most of human existence, life has been “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Further evidence:

(p. D4) Scientists who have examined the mummy of a young Inca say that her death was most likely a homicide and that it was not because of Chagas disease, the tropical parasitic infection that she had.

For the full story, see:
“Observatory; A Verdict of Murder.” The New York Times (Tues., MARCH 4, 2014): D4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 3, 2014.)

The famous Hobbes quote can be found on p. 70 of:
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, Dover Philosophical Classics. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2006 [first published 1651].