Month: November 2014
Street harassment and social cohesion in Mexico City
For all the chatter about that recent video where the woman walks through New York City and is repeatedly harassed, I thought it worth mentioning there is a systematic study of this question going on at MIT economics (and elsewhere), conducted in part by job market candidate Sara Hernández, with numerous co-authors. The paper isn’t ready yet, but here is the abstract:
This study seeks to document the frequency of street harassment and preventive measures women take to avoid it. It explores the association between experiences of street harassment and perceptions of social cohesion among women currently presenting for health care at public health clinics. The study was conducted in Mexico City, the most populous city in North America, which has a high documented prevalence of gender-based violence against women, ranging from 20-30% in a woman’s lifetime. Despite the pervasiveness of gender-based violence in the city, little is known about experiences related to street harassment. Data were drawn from a baseline survey among women currently participating in a randomized controlled trial in Mexico City (N=952). Current findings underscore the needs for programs and policies to promote the safety and well being of women and addressing community and structural-level forms of gender discrimination and violence.
I believe this issue will continue to receive more attention in the future. The “flexibility” of the behavior of men — depending on social expectations for one thing — remains an underexplored topic in economics.
Fanfare meta-list for classical CDs
Loyal MR readers will know that late fall I survey the yearly “Want Lists” of Fanfare music reviewers. If you don’t already know, Fanfare is the world’s premiere journal for classical music reviews. My meta-list is simply those recordings which are mentioned as best of the year by more than one polled Fanfare critic. This year the winning discs with multiple nominations are:
1. Busoni, late piano works, Marc-Andre Hamelin
2. Prokoviev piano concerti, by Jean-Effiam Bavouzet and Gianandrea Noseda.
4. Sylvia Berry, Haydn piano sonatas.
5. Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Richard Strauss tone poems.
Another meta-list would be discs which I recommend and which a Fanfare critic also recommends, that would include:
Gillian Weir playing Messiaen organ works.
Bach, Brandenburg Concerti, Freiburger Barockorchester.
Gerald Finley and Julius Drake, Winterreise, Schubert.
Igor Levit, Beethoven late piano sonatas.
I would give all a very high recommendation, with this second meta-list being better than the first meta-list.
Other “best of the year” lists will be coming later this month. Here are earlier posts on what I’ve been listening to. Here are earlier Fanfare meta-lists.
Kyoto markets in everything the culture that is Japan
Kyoto-based company Cerca Travel has set up a service providing all the glamor of a wedding without any of the commitment in what they call a “Solo Wedding.” That’s right: women can now have the full wedding day experience without actually having to get hitched.
A Solo Wedding is a two-day excursion where clients spend the night in a hotel as they go in for dress fittings, bouquet design, hair and make-up, and even a full photo shoot. Each of these services is handled by a professional in the industry and done with the same level of quality and attention to detail as a real wedding ceremony.
When she’s all done up, the tour coordinator will take the solo bride to some beautiful Kyoto backdrops which complement her appearance for a commemorative photo shoot. If wedding dresses aren’t your cup of champagne, Cerca Travel can also set you up with one of the many other historical dress-up tours around Kyoto such as putting on Geisha make-up and clothes. There is also an option to have a decorative man between the ages of 20 and 70 to pose alongside you, but reportedly none of the 10 women who have enjoyed the Solo Wedding experience since Cerca began offering it in June this year have opted to do so, instead focusing on making the day all about them.
The article also offers some customer testimonials. That is via the excellent Adam Minter, here is Adam’s excellent recent piece on having children in China.
In defense of sporadic voters
Sendhil Mullainathan writes:
…we compared the polarization of 19- and 20-year-olds in an election year. Both age groups were eligible to vote, but only the 20-year-olds were able to vote in the previous election — and thus had a chance to formally commit themselves to candidates and ideologies.
We found that the 20-year-olds held stronger and more uniform views than the 19-year-olds. That wasn’t just a result of aging: When we looked at more age groups, we found that 18- and 19-year-olds, both of whom were ineligible to vote in the previous election, were similarly polarized; there were also no polarization differences between 20- and 21-year-olds, both of whom were able to vote previously. This and other evidence led us to conclude that exposure to the voting process more effectively committed people to a candidate or party…
A combination of neutrality and persistent voting would be ideal. But our psychologies are complicated. If they override our narrow self-interest and lead us to vote instead of free-riding, the very act of voting may make us more partisan. Sporadic voters can provide an antidote: Their previous lack of engagement may serve as a counter to partisanship.
There is a line between apathy and neutrality. People who sit out all elections provide little value to a democracy. People who sit out some elections, jumping in at crucial times, serve an important role as a reserve army of the uncommitted.
I once argued to Ashok Rao that public intellectuals and other influential persons should not vote at all for this reason. By not voting, they will keep the quality of their influence higher.
Assorted links
1. Robin Hanson on Arthur Melzer and esoteric writing.
2. There is no great stagnation electric spoon zaps taste into every bite edition.
3. Richard McKenzie on Ebola, not my views but happy to pass along an economist writing on this topic.
4. Is it legal to build a diversion barrier against Hawaiian lava flow?
5. The Abbey Road studio. And profile of Clive James.
6. BrookingsFightClub (pointless video, I am not trolling you, it really is just that, there is no reason to watch it, not even with a tall man in a white bunny suit acting as referee).
Taylor Swift (John Cage) markets in everything
It is time for Taylor Swift to drop the mic and take a bow because she has just accomplished the unthinkable. Swift hit number one on the Canadian iTunes chart this week with eight seconds of pure static.
A glitch in the Canadian version of iTunes released a track called “Track 3,” that looked like it could be a new track from her upcoming album 1989 but was actually just white noise. Nevertheless, the song soared to the top, beating out her new songs that are actually new music, including “Shake It Off,” “Welcome to New York” and “Out of the Woods.”
Haters might hate, but once a singer scores a chart-topping hit comprised solely of white noise, it’s hard to deny she’s an unstoppable musical force.
There is more here, via the excellent Mark Thorson.
Space Tourism Still Not Ready for Flight
Ten years ago when Burt Rutan was predicting 100,000 space tourists in ten years I wrote a widely debated article, Is Space Tourism Ready for Takeoff? My answer then, and my answer now, is no:
The vision is enticing but the facts suggest that space tourism is not ready for market. The problem is not the monetary expense, there are enough millionaires with a yearning for adventure to support an industry. The problem is safety. Simply put, rockets remain among the least safe means of transportation ever invented. Since 1980 the United States has launched some 440 orbital launch rockets (not including the Space Shuttle). Nearly five percent of those rockets have experienced total failure, either blowing up or wandering so far from course as to be useless. The space shuttle has a slightly better record of safety — it was destroyed in two of 113 flights. There are lots of millionaires willing to spend one or two million dollars for a flight into space but how many will risk a two to five percent chance of death?
It is true that we have been “learning by doing” or in this case by learning by exploding. In the 1960s the risk of failure was a stunning 12%. As in other industries, learning by doing reduced the failure rate dramatically over the first units but more slowly thereafter. In the 1970s the failure rate dropped to 5.2% but nearly thirty years later the failure rate for rockets still hovers between four and five percent. We can expect similar slow and steady improvements in the future but there is little reason to expect dramatic improvements in rocket technology
Unfortunately with two disasters this week, one of them sadly involving the loss of life, the safety of rockets continues to be far too low to support significant tourism. Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise, which crashed yesterday, was just on its 23rd powered flight suggesting a failure rate of perhaps 5%, in line with expected values. An earlier tragedy involving tests of the rocket motor killed 3 people.
As I said ten years ago, even a failure rate of 1 in 10,000 is far too high to support space tourism of the “fat guys with camera” variety and we are not yet close to a failure rate of 1 in 10,000.
Pharmaceutical regulation is getting tougher
From Diana Carew at the Progressive Policy Institute:
…the number of ‘restrictions’ on drug companies increased by 767, or 40% since 2000. This represents a substantial rise in the overall regulatory burden of pharmaceutical companies, which must allocate resources to ensure regulatory compliance. The word “restriction” refers to command clauses such as “shall” and “must,” as contained in sections of the Code of Federal Regulations related to the FDA.
The full study is here (pdf).