Results for “da vinci” 262 found
Is Leonardo da Vinci overrated?
The Mona Lisa is not the best artwork ever, and as a painter I am not sure Leonardo is much better than either Mantegna or Piero della Francesca, neither of whom is much known to the general public, much less Titian. He has no work as stunning as Michelangelo’s David, and too many of his commissions he left unfinished or he never started them. The Notebooks display a fertile imagination, but do not contain much real knowledge of use, except on the aortic valve, nor did they boost gdp, nor are they worth reading. Much of his science is weak on theory, even relative to his time. In Milan he was too content to serve as court impresario, and he seemed to have no idea of how to apply his own talents in accord with comparative advantage.
His ability to take an idea and turn it into a memorable sketch was his most remarkable ability, and in this he is without peer.
Plus he painted “woman as gorgon” very very well, but with a sweetness too.
I can recommend Walter Isaacson’s new book on Leonardo as a wonderful introduction, but it does not change my mind on these points.
The New Da Vinci Code?
Over at Digitopoly Joshua Gans says that the breezy style of Launching the Innovation Renaissance (Nook, iTunes) makes it a page-turner “reminiscent of Dan Brown.”!!! I take this to mean that the book will sell millions of copies and be turned into a movie starring Tom Hanks; this does seem unlikely but after the Moneyball and Freakonomics movies who can say? FYI, Joshua is more confident than I am that the Coase theorem applies to rent division.
Over at Slate, Matt Yglesias also offers a short review saying the worst thing about the book is that it is too short!
Nick Schulz interviewed me at The American on some of the book’s themes, the WSJ also published part of this interview in their Notable and Quotable section.
How The Da Vinci Code became such a hit
Yes readers love it but Barnes and Noble pushed it. The author, Dan Brown, was largely unknown in the world of publishing. But Doubleday distributed a remarkable 5000 advance reader and review copies. Internal readers in Barnes and Noble loved the story and the bookseller was on board. Advance orders from the store upped the print run from an initial 60,000 to 230,000 copies. Some Barnes and Noble stores hired greeters to tell customers about the novel. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list and has held strong ever since.
And why should Barnes and Noble care? Competitive pressures are forcing them to promote their products to greater degree. The company faces low price competition from discounters such as Costco. If your bookstore can’t compete on price, it has to emphasize quality dimensions, such as being a source for new and hot book ideas.
The usual story suggests that price competition prevents the more expensive retailer from offering ancillary services. You could speak to the stereo salesman at the good shop but buy at the cheap shop. But the cheaper the per unit value, the more likely a store can profit from offering bundled services. It is not worth your while to hear about The da Vinci Code in Barnes and Noble and then drive to Wal-Mart to buy it. In other words, expect more concerts at your local book superstore. And expect book superstores to take a growing role in shaping consumer taste.
I read the book and was repulsed, though I will admit to finishing it, for reasons of research obviously.
There are now 6.1 million copies of The da Vinci Code in print, the title is slated to become the fastest-selling non-Harry Potter book ever, surpassing Bridges of Madison County.
Some of the above information is drawn from the March 8 issue of Fortune.
Least Convincing Argument of the Day
Here is James Caruso, the chief commercial officer for drug maker Allos, defending the price of cancer drug Foltyn:
Mr. Caruso also said the price of Folotyn was not out of line with that of other drugs for rare cancers. Patients, moreover, are likely to use the drug for only a couple of months because the tumor worsens so quickly, he said.
In other words, our drug isn't so expensive given how poorly it works.
Canada is Poaching US Talent!
Here is Noahpinion on Canada’s recent immigration policies and how Canada is poaching US talent!
[I]n recent years, the Canadian government has begun to set hard targets for immigration, such as last year’s target of 1.5 million more by 2025. And the country is deliberately encouraging more people to come, with one of the world’s most aggressive recruitment strategies.
First, let’s just take a look at the results Canada is achieving. The country’s population has just passed 40 million — a 14% increase from when Doug Saunders published Maximum Canada. The national statistics agency loudly celebrated the achievement. And the country’s population growth rate has just shot up to over 3.5%, which is among the world’s fastest:
This isn’t quite Maximum Canada yet, but it’s clearly headed in that direction.
…And Canada’s zeal for greater population inflows is matched by its determination to recruit the best and the brightest en masse. The country’s points-based immigration system, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, is well-known, as is the Provincial Nominee Program that allows individual Canadian provinces to recruit immigrant workers to specific locations. But the country keeps adding more programs for grabbing talent. Its latest idea includes an offer of permanent residency to people working in the United States on H-1B visas — basically, poaching America’s own skilled immigrants!
Happy Canada Day!
Hat tip: Carl Close.
Friday assorted links
1. Nervous Nellie vs. Builder? Which are you?
3. Top holiday toys from the year you were born.
4. text-davinci-003. There is much more than what you might be playing around with so far. And here.
5. Derek Thompson on scientific breakthroughs of 2022.
China depredation of the day
People who have arrived in Zhengzhou to withdraw money from embattled regional banks said they have found their health codes turn red — a label mostly reserved for potential COVID-19 carriers or those infected with the virus — after arriving in Henan province’s provincial capital, prohibiting them from accessing transportation networks, public services, and even going to the banks to lodge their grievances.
Who needs deposit insurance? Here is the full story, via B.
Wednesday assorted links
1. New non-profit for geothermal energy.
2. New Allison Schrager podcast, first episode with Joel Mokyr.
3. Who owns the publicity rights to Einstein?
4. Yann LeCun on AI risks. And why (some) octopus mothers self-mutilate and kill themselves.
5. “The subscribers presumably think they’re talking directly to the woman in the videos, and it is the job of the chatter to convincingly manifest that illusion.” (NYT, those new service sector jobs)
6. Virginia Postrel has a new Substack.
7. Mihm on the Henry Ford parallel (Bloomberg).
Canada Moves to First Doses First
The Canadian province of British Columbia has moved to First Doses First (as I suggested they would) with a four month (not three as in Great Britain) delay on the second dose. Quebec is already using FDF. I believe that the rest of Canada will follow shortly:
Also on Monday, the province announced it is extending the time between first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccine to four months. The change, as well as Health Canada’s approval of a third vaccine, means every eligible person in B.C. will receive the first dose of their vaccine by mid- to late July.
Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said data from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control — and countries around the world such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand — shows “miraculous” protection of at least 90 per cent from the first dose of a Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
She said the National Advisory Committee on Immunization is expected to issue a statement to align with B.C.’s decision, which frees up 70,000 doses for younger age groups.
“This is amazing news,” said Henry. “These vaccines work, they give a very high level of protection and that protection lasts for many months.”
As I wrote earlier:
… first doses first will save lives in the US but delaying the second dose and other dose-stretching policies are even more vital in countries [such as Canada] where vaccines supplies are more limited than in the United States.
Meanwhile in the United States we are vaccinating relatively quickly but in the last week we have given out more second doses than first doses. Overall, we have given out 25 million second doses–under first doses first we would have vaccinated 25 million more people benefiting them and the unvaccinated by lowering transmission rates.
The US FDA is not following the science.
Thursday assorted links
1. The dark side of Coase: a crypto tale.
2. The Covid-19 rave culture that is German.
3. Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects stay-at-home order (NYT).
4. How much of health care spending is discretionary?
5. What it is like to land in Hong Kong and try to enter (recommended, short photo essay).
6. New data from France. And a Twitter thread on same.
7. What is the cost of reining in wild horses?
8. World 2.0: chess does indeed move to the internet, and Magnus Carlsen is calling the shots.
9. Is Virginia mixing up its test results and reporting the wrong numbers?
10. I find this kind of defense convincing for many research efforts, but not for actual real world problems with immediate decisions to be made: “I don’t know the 2 Swedish models in question but in general it is disingenuous to say the models that do not try to take into account changes in human behavior failed because people behaved in ways the models didn’t model. The models were upfront about the scenarios addressed.”
Germany R estimate of the day
Germany is being closely watched worldwide as the most successful large European country in curbing the spread of the virus, partly thanks to massive testing, which has prompted a partial reopening of the economy. Merkel has frequently said the reproduction rate of the new coronavirus must be held below 1 to prevent the health system from being overwhelmed.
But the Robert Koch Institute for public health said the rate hovered above this critical threshold for the third consecutive day with an estimated value of 1.07 on Monday, after 1.13 on Sunday.
That Germany does not have its R below one is, in a nutshell, why short-run measurements of coronavirus responses are not very reliable. And why “we need to lock down until full testing is up and running” is not necessarily convincing. Here is the full story.
*Essays One*, by Lydia Davis
Is there anything more enthralling than a writer of supreme intelligence covering topics she understands deeply? Here is just one bit from this fantastic collection:
We know we are not being asked to believe in a woman named Oedipa Maas or a man named Stanley Koteks, and our attention is distracted from the story to the artifice and artificer. What is shared by the two books is a sense of tight control by the author over the characters, the language, the book, and probably the reader. Sometimes the control is achieved through his mastery of a graceful prose style or an appealing notion (“Creaking, or echoing, or left as dark-ribbed sneaker=prints in a fine layer of damp, the footstep of the Junta carried them into King Krjö’s house, past pier glasses that gave them back their images dark and faded, as if some part were being kept as the price of admission”): here is control by persuasion. Sometimes, on the other hand, the young author goes beyond eloquence to a kind of hyper-eloquence that becomes a display of power over language itself that perhaps borders on control by coercion.
Or how about this?:
Franz Kafka’s “The Burrow,” because of the confident and convincing narrative voice of its obsessed narrator, who begins: “I have completed the construction of my burrow and it seems to be successful.” Kafka fully inhabits his characters and presents them with a realism that makes them, though they are impossible, believable.
And:
I have given students in writing classes the assignment to read, analyze, and then imitate stylistically one of [Thomas] Bernhard’s small stories. Younger writers these days often have trouble constructing long, complex sentences. They often restrict themselves to short, simple sentences, and when they try a longer, more complex one, they run into trouble. I see this in otherwise good writers — including good published writers.
Make sure you read her short essay “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits” (you won’t agree with them all, though I think I do)
This is one of the very best books to read if you wish to think about writing more deeply. You can pre-order it here.
Tuesday assorted links
1. The technologies that are Canada: “Audible hockey puck could revolutionize the sport for blind players.” Note: “[It] sounds pretty much like a smoke detector,” Francois Beauregard, who helped come up with the idea for the puck prototype…”It is not made to be harmonious or pleasant.”
2. Was Leonardo da Vinci ADHD? (speculative)
3. Professional football is also much riskier for subsequent heart attacks.
4. Paul Keating, former Australian Prime Minister, on classical music.
5. Homeopathy in the French health care system, but much more than that too.
Saturday assorted links
1. The next generation of Indian intellectuals? Is the list maybe a bit too high-falutin’?
2. How some of China’s spies operate. And update on Chinese CRISPR patients, lots is going on here and we are seeing just the tip of it.
3. “Libraries are incredibly risk averse…” And this bit: “We will err very much on this side of caution. We would rather not gather the information in the first place, then run the risk of holding it and losing it. And we do have to have information. With one exception, we get rid of it the moment we can. The only one exception is fines information.”
5. More skepticism about carbon taxes, from Justin Gillis (NYT).
6. Scott Sumner on how to teach economics (recommended, there is much truth and wisdom in this post).
7. Top economists pick the best research papers of the year.
Acquisition Talk: A daily blog on the theory and practice of weapons system acquisition
That is a new blog by Eric Lofgren, an Emergent Ventures recipient. Here is an excerpt from one post:
The story was from 1938. It sounds astounding to modern ears. Congress did not earmark money for special projects. Pitcairn was a bit of a political entrepreneur by convincing his representative to get a project funded that funneled money back to his own district.
Back then, the Army and Navy were funded according to organization and object. Project earmarking only started becoming routine with the implementation of the program budget in 1949 (and really not until the rise of the PPBS in 1961).
I often say that the budget should be the most important aspect of defense reform, not the acquisition or requirements processes.
By the way, the French parliament doesn’t earmark defense funding. There’s actually quite a bit to learn from the French experience.
Here is his post on cost disease in weapons acquisition, and more on that here: “It’s clear that defense acquisition costs are growing at least as fast, and probably much faster, than education and healthcare costs. Defense platform unit costs grow nominally from 7-11% per year. Doing some adjustments, DOD production costs probably grow twice the rate of inflation.”
Here is his general post on acquisition reform and the limits of decentralization, maybe the best introduction to his overall point of view.