The secondary consequences of car alarms
According to the Census Bureau, New Yorkers are now more bothered by false car anti-theft alarms than by any other feature of city life, including crime or bad public schools. If you ask me, it is the whooping ones that are worst of all, it is hard to stay overnight in Manhattan without hearing one. It also appears that the alarms do not hinder theft. First, most are false alarms and everyone now ignores them. Second, thieves have learned how to disable the alarms quickly.
False alarms also can make a community more dangerous, by signaling to everyone either that a) theft is common, or b) no one cares, or both. It becomes common knowledge that the community has poorly defined property rights. Here is the full story on this aspect of the problem.
Alternative technologies do a much better job of stopping car theft. You can buy a silent pager that communicates the theft only to the car owner. This one works only for tough guys, though, if I knew that my (insured) car was being stolen, I would run the other way. Better is the “silent engine immobilizer,” which simply shuts down the engine when a thief is tampering with the ignition. General Motors and Ford are now using this technology.
How to conserve flu vaccine
The flu vaccine is now running very scarce, you can wait for weeks and there is no guarantee of getting it at all. Most of the supplies are already in the hands of doctors. Note also the following:
Random immunization is almost useless because, for many viruses, more than 95% of the population must be vaccinated to prevent the disease’s spread.
But things are not as grim as they might sound. First:
An alternative to the flu shot is FluMist, a more expensive inhaled version of the vaccine, which is recommended for healthy people between the ages of 5 and 49. There are about 4 million doses available of FluMist, health officials said.
Although those below 5 and over 49 are the at-risk groups, they are less likely to catch the flu if the rest of us are healthy.
Second, we could administer flu shots more wisely by targeting superspreaders, here is one proposal:
Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his colleagues propose a simple modification of random vaccination that is more effective, according to their computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose, say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances. Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at least once, the researchers found. On the other hand, the super-spreaders are so few in number that the random 20% of individuals is unlikely to include many of them.
Using the team’s vaccination strategy, a disease can be stopped by vaccinating less than 20% of the individuals, in some cases, according to their computer model of a human population. The method can also be tweaked: if a larger sample is asked for names, and those named twice are vaccinated, the total number of vaccinations required can be even lower.
The trick may be getting these people to take the shots, but surely economists can come up with a useful incentives scheme for that, I would prefer a subsidy over a tax.
What does a top British artist earn?
Last year the highest-earning British artist was Damien Hirst, the creator who cuts up dead sharks and puts them in formaldehyde. He pulled in twelve million British pounds last year (over twenty million dollars), although dealer’s commissions may have eaten into this figure. As an aside, many buyers of Hirst’s early dot paintings, see the link for an image, are unhappy because most of those works were made with ordinary household paints and are now falling apart.
A close second on the earnings list was Andrew Vicari, now resident in Monte Carlo, since 1974 he has been the official painter to the Saudi Royal Family.
What a pair. Hirst I admire for his visceral impact but I could not live with most of his works, not the least because some of them involve live, buzzing insects. Would you wish to own “the beauty of a disused shop full of butterfly pupae, hatching from white canvases, feeding on sugar syrup, mating, laying eggs and dying”? Or rather would you call the exterminator to get rid of something like that?
I wouldn’t hang a Vicari on my walls, check out his painting of the first Gulf War. I now have a better understanding why the Saudi Royal Family is in such trouble.
But let us look at the bright side. No one (well, hardly anyone) ever said capitalism was about rewarding people in accord with their merits. An unequal distribution of rewards is part of the system that generates more diverse art of many kinds, click here to see a compelling portrait by Lucien Freud, or here for a broader choice of images. Click here for a sparkling Howard Hodgkin, here for a broader choice of Hodgkin images, which always bring a splash of color. They are the British painters I will buy when they start paying bloggers.
The earnings information is from The Art Newspaper, one of the highest quality periodicals of any kind.
Beware X-Rays
I am always pleased when one of my crank folk medicine theories is proven to be true, or at least possible. It turns out that low-level X-Rays might be much more dangerous than we had thought. In fact they might even be more dangerous than high-level X-Rays, because the cells do not repair themselves in the same way. Keep this in mind when you visit the dentist, I haven’t let them do this to me for six years now, despite continual entreaties and guarantees that it is safe. I picked this fact up from the January 2004 issues of Discover magazine, which covers the 100 biggest science stories of the year, go buy a copy and catch up on a year’s worth of science reading, not yet on-line.
Beautiful women and rational thought
It seems that the two do not go together:
Male students, when shown pictures of pretty women, were more likely to opt for short-term economic gain than wait for a better reward in the future.
Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website ‘Hot or Not’. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward. They could either accept a cheque for between $15 and $35 tomorrow or one for $50-$75 at a variable point in the future.
Wilson and Daly found that male students shown the pictures of averagely attractive women showed exponential discounting of the future value of the reward. This indicated that they had made a rational decision. When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an “irrational” way – they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward.
Women, by contrast, made equally rational decisions whether they had been shown pictures of handsome men or those of average attractiveness.
One biologist hypothesizes that the entire effect should be stronger for unattractive men, who must take greater risks to win partners. Furthermore it is known that working with attractive young women makes men more likely to take foolish chances, engage in stupid affairs, and end up divorced, here is one study.
My take: I suspect this is all true, I fear it will be used to construct an efficiency argument for restricting pornography and tightening social mores. And the next time I do something crazy, I will blame it on having a beautiful wife.
Addendum: Here is some entertaining commentary.
The race to space
Everyone has his or her obsession, one of mine is collecting Mexican amate painting, for some people it is investing in space travel.
The tangible pieces of John Carmack’s dream are scattered around an 8,000-square-foot warehouse: industrial water-purification tank, aluminum cones, compressed air cylinders, used Russian spacesuit.
All are components of the software developer’s project to launch a manned rocket 62 miles up by January 2005.
What binds the pieces together are Carmack’s quiet intellect and considerable bankroll.
“We mostly look at it as a two-horse race,” the 33-year-old millionaire said of the international competition for the $10 million X Prize, offered by a St. Louis-based foundation.
The entrepreneur has a background in computer games and works with a team out of a warehouse, sometimes using the parking lot for small-scale launch attempts. Rather than pursuing secrecy, progress is publicized on the project website, there you can even see videos of failed launch attempts.
NASA had the following response:
NASA has no official comment on the civilian attempts.
“It’s certainly a complicated business. Sometimes [sic] we make it look easy,” said Melissa Mathews, a space agency spokeswoman.
Is Carmack crazy? Beats me, read this interview if you want more data. The whole point is that there is only one way to find out, which is to let him try. Maybe he is right that “Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up.”
Thanks to Marko Siladin for the pointer.
Should we renorm IQ tests?
The year in which IQ is tested can make the difference between life and death for a death row inmate. It also can determine the eligibility of children for special services, adults’ Social Security benefits and recruits’ suitability for certain military careers, according to a new study by Cornell University researchers.
That’s because IQ scores tend to rise 5 to 25 points in a single generation. This so-called “Flynn effect” is corrected by toughening up the test every 15 to 20 years to reset the mean score to 100. A score from a test taken at the end of one cycle can vary widely from a score derived from a test taken at the beginning of the next cycle, when the test is more difficult, says Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell.
In other words, our definitions of intelligence and mental retardation are more relativistic than we would like to think. Yet the law, and various institutional categories, look to IQ scores as if they were fully objective. Here is the full story.
The Flynn effect implies, if you take it literally, that most people were morons as recently as a few generations ago. Just think, “someone who scored among the best 10% a hundred years ago, would nowadays be categorized among the 5% weakest. That means that someone who would be considered bright a century ago, should now be considered a moron!” So much as I believe in the idea of progress, I don’t think we can take the numbers at face value. If you are not convinced, try reading David Hume. Here is another survey of hypotheses, and why they fail to explain the data.
We’re past the point where nutrition can explain the rise in IQ scores, and more generally the Flynn effect numbers are inconsistent with more general data about the limits on environment for improving IQ scores. The less culturally specific the test, the stronger the Flynn effect appears. Bill Dickens and Flynn offer some interesting evidence on how genes and environment interact.
My favorite hypothesis, which has no hard data to support it, cites “the impact of the visual and spatial demands that accompany a television-laden, video-game-rich world. ” In other words, TV helps us do well on IQ tests. This does not explain why the Flynn effect predates 1950, but perhaps the more general increase in world complexity forces our brains to adapt. In earlier times people were “smart enough” for their environments, and still could create brilliant achievements on the frontiers they faced, still they might have been ill-suited to live in modern times.
Putting things in perspective
How much investors lost, over the last ten years, by attempting market timing, rather than “buy and hold”: $1 trillion
How much investors lost, over the last ten years, from high mutual fund fees: $20 billion
How much investors lost, over the last ten years, from crooked trades: $10 million
All of the estimates are from the December 22 Forbes, p.84. The last number seems far too low to me, but the point remains: investors are their own worst enemy, they inflict far more damage on themselves than they ever lose through outright fraud.
Best books of the year?
Slate.com surveys some of the “best of” lists that come at the end of the year. This time around there is little agreement on top picks, here are my earlier recommendations.
Ths secret of Stradivarius?
I have long wondered why the modern world has never been able to equal Stradivarius and Amati violins. After all, it wasn’t too many years ago that we were using computer punch cards and bulky machines, instead of laptops. Most other goods have improved in quality since the 17th century, and more than just a bit. Why should violins be so resistant to technological advance?
We may now know the answer as to why Stradivarius violins are so special. In addition to first-rate craftsmanship, the wood from that time had a special quality. Why? Longer winters, due to a mini-Ice Age. The cold weather yielded denser Alpine spruces: “narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood’s density.” In other words, the greenhouse effect will raise the prices of good Stradivarius violins, by making it harder for us to match that achievement.
Should we privatize the National Zoo?
In recent times the National Zoo, of the Smithsonian, has been beset by one scandal after another. First large numbers of animals have died due to incompetent management. Then we discovered that Zoo management forged records for how those animals were being treated. The performance and credibility of the Zoo are arguably at an all-time low.
Marc Fisher of The Washington Post now suggests privatizing the zoo.
…there is a healthy middle course that a number of cities have already explored with encouraging results. By contracting with a private nonprofit, often one built up from the local zoological society, cities have ensured better management, more modern exhibits and caring support from local animal lovers.
“The best success story is in New York City,” says Hyson. In 1980, three municipally run zoos — in Central Park, Brooklyn and Queens — were turned over to the New York Zoological Society, curator of the world-renowned Bronx Zoo, and the result has been nothing short of spectacular. The zoos were completely remade, with more effective designs, better animal care and more pleasing exhibits. The zoos still get a city subsidy, and they did have to add an admission fee, but the result is vastly better for all concerned.
About 40 percent of the 165 zoos accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association are run by private nonprofits now, the result of a wave of privatization over the past generation. Seattle just finished transferring control of its zoo from the city to the local zoological society. San Diego’s world-famous zoo is privately run, depending on government for only 2 percent of its funds.
Yes, this probably would mean admission fees, rather than the current null tariff. But why should admission to the zoo be free? If poor urban children need a price break, or free admission, this can be granted. In the meantime, the best way to give customers a say in how the zoo is run is to make them significant financiers.
Our new Medicare bill
Today Bush signed the Medicare bill into law.
The Washington Post writes: “The oft-told story of the elderly gentleman who urged his congressman to “keep the government out of my Medicare” is telling.”
Hardly anyone can understand the new legislation. Again here is the Post, hardly a bastion of anti-regulatory and antibureaucratic sentiment:
Walk with me through a scenario that will have senior citizens scratching their heads when it comes time to figure out how this system functions. After the program begins in 2006, Medicare beneficiaries who decide to purchase a drug plan will pay a $250 deductible and then 25 percent of their drug costs up to $2,250. Once the $2,250 spending cap is reached, they will get no help until they have spent an additional $1,350 of their own money on prescription drugs…
Older and disabled Americans will have to decide whether to opt into the system in the first place, and if so, which drug plan to buy. In 2006, premiums are expected to be $35 a month ($420 a year) but they could be a lot more. Many older people have incomes of less than $20,000 a year; buying insurance that will cost them more than they get back in coverage could be a major sacrifice. Indeed, only people with incomes below $13,470, whose costs will be largely or entirely covered by the government, or people with catastrophic drugs costs, can be sure the coverage is worth the cost. For others, trying to determine that fact will be a painfully complicated calculation…
Plans will also differ in the drugs they offer, and the coverage and charges for drugs not on the “preferred” list. Even if beneficiaries can easily find out which drugs are covered by the different plans (not a sure thing), they are unlikely to know what the drugs will cost. People will be hard-pressed to know whether the plan they choose will cover medications that their doctors prescribe them after they sign up, or whether a plan will drop one of their prescriptions during the year.
If a Medicare beneficiary decides to choose an HMO or PPO to obtain drug coverage, the decision gets even more convoluted. By making this choice, those on Medicare agree to receive all their health care through these groups, with varying expenditures for all medical care.
The whole point of health care reform is to introduce more transparency into choice and costs, that is hardly what we will get. Moreover, the new system relies heavily on penalizing people who make mistakes in once-and-for-all decisions, this is rarely politically stable. The aggrieved elderly will feel they are being treated unfairly, I will predict that the legislation will be rewritten to extend benefits in a simpler but costlier and less responsible form, with few beneficial incentives at all.
And maybe you were thinking that you, or your parents, might buy private insurance to cover some of those gaps in the new Medicare coverage? Think again.
Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available.
Score yet another blow against freedom of choice.
Media concentration
It is commonly alleged that media concentration is on the rise. Ben Compaine, in the January issue of Reason magazine (not yet on-line), debunks this myth. In the mid 1980s, the top ten media companies accounted for 38 percent of total revenue. In the late 1990s the figure was higher, but only barely, up to 41 percent. More importantly, different companies shape our media experiences. Where was Comcast, now the largest cable company, twenty years ago? Bertelsmann, now a giant, was barely visible in American markets. Amazon.com and other Internet-related enterprises are new on the scene as well. If media companies are monopolies, their market power is extremely fragile.
Nor are smaller media outlets necessarily better than the larger conglomerates. The larger outlets are much more likely to win awards for their quality, nor are they obviously more biased. Clear Channel radio is now a poster boy for media critics, but its 1200 stations comprise only slightly more than ten percent of a total of 10,500 American stations. Note also that there were only 8000 radio stations in 1980. We now have satellite radio and Internet radio as well.
Compaine makes a nice point in closing:
It may indeed be that at any given moment 80 percent of the audience is viewing or reading or listening to something from the 10 largest media players. But that does not mean it is the same 80 percent all the time, or that it is cause for concern.
The bottom line: When it comes to media, we have more choice and more competition than ever before.
What would it cost to send a man to the moon?
Recently the Bush administration has been making noises about sending a man to the moon again. Gregg Easterbrook offers some cogent critical points:
A rudimentary, stripped-down Moon base and supplies might weigh 200 tons. (The winged “orbiter” part of the space shuttle weighs 90 tons unfueled, and it’s cramped with food, oxygen, water, and power sufficient only for about two weeks.) Placing 200 tons on the Moon might require 400 tons of fuel and vehicle in low-Earth orbit, so that’s 600 tons that need to be launched just for the cargo part of the Moon base. Currently, using the space shuttle it costs about $25 million to place a ton into low-Earth orbit. Thus means the bulk weight alone for a Moon base might cost $15 billion to launch: building the base, staffing it, and getting the staff there and back would be extra. Fifteen billion dollars is roughly equivalent to NASA’s entire annual budget. Using existing expendable rockets might bring down the cargo-launch price, but add the base itself, the astronauts, their transit vehicles, and thousands of support staff on Earth and a ten-year Moon base program would easily exceed $100 billion. Wait, that’s the cost of the space station, which is considerably closer. Okay, maybe $200 billion.
What can a man do on the moon that automated vehicles cannot? Virtually nothing, and of course he requires far more maintenance and protection.
Given all that, where should we go from here?
NASA doesn’t need a grand ambition, it needs a cheap, reliable means of getting back and forth to low-Earth orbit. Here’s a twenty-first century vision for NASA: Cancel the shuttle, mothball the does-nothing space station, and use all the budget money the two would have consumed to develop an affordable means of space flight. Then we can talk about the Moon and Mars.
Mostly I agree, though I expect private enterprise can beat NASA in this latter project, at least provided we allow the privatization of space.
What does a signed Beethoven score cost?
Right now over two million dollars, an auction was held recently. On one hand, it was the String Quartet Op.127, on the other hand it was only the Scherzo movement. Earlier this year a working manuscript for the 9th Symphony fetched over two million British pounds, or over 3.46 million dollars.