Results for “best fiction” 318 found
Don’t Fear the CRISPR
I’m honored to be here guest-blogging for the week. Thanks, Alex, for the warm welcome.
I want to start with a topic recently in the news, and that I’ve written about in both fiction and non-fiction.
In April, Chinese scientists announced that they’d used the CRISPR gene editing technique to modify non-viable human embryos. The experiment focused on modifying the gene that causes the quite serious hereditary blood disease Beta-thalassemia.
You can read the paper here. Carl Zimmer has an excellent write-up here. Tyler has blogged about it here. And Alex here.
Marginal Revolution aside, the response to this experiment has been largely negative. Science and Nature, the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, reportedly rejected the paper on ethical grounds. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, announced that NIH will not fund any CRISPR experiments that involve human embryos.
NIH will not fund any use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos. The concept of altering the human germline in embryos for clinical purposes has been debated over many years from many different perspectives, and has been viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.
This is a mistake, for several reasons.
- The technology isn’t as mature as reported. Most responses to it are over-reactions.
- Parents are likely to use genetic technologies in the best interests of their children.
- Using gene editing to create ‘superhumans’ will be tremendously harder, riskier, and less likely to be embraced by parents than using it to prevent disease.
- A ban on research funding or clinical application will only worsen safety, inequality, and other concerns expressed about the research.
Today I’ll talk about the maturity of the technology. Tomorrow I’ll be back to discuss the other points. (You can read that now in Part 2: Don’t Fear Genetically Engineered Babies.)
CRISPR Babies Aren’t Near
Despite the public reaction (and the very real progress with CRISPR in other domains) we are not near a world of CRISPR gene-edited children.
First, the technique was focused on very early stage embryos made up of just a few cells. Genetically engineering an embryo at that very early stage is the only realistic way to ensure that the genetic changes reach all or most cells in the body. That limits the possible parents to those willing to go through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). It takes an average of roughly 3 IVF cycles, with numerous hormone injections and a painful egg extraction at each cycle, to produce a live birth. In some cases, it takes as many as 6 cycles. Even after 6 cycles, perhaps a third of women going through IVF will not have become pregnant (see table 3, here). IVF itself is a non-trivial deterrent to genetically engineering children.
Second, the Chinese experiment resulted in more dead embryos than successfully gene edited embryos. Of 86 original embryos, only 71 survived the process. 54 of those were tested to see if the gene had successfully inserted. Press reports have mentioned that 28 of those 54 tested embryos showed signs of CRISPR/Cas9 activity.
Yet only 4 embryos showed the intended genetic change. And even those 4 showed the new gene in only some of their cells, becoming ‘mosaics’ of multiple different genomes.
From the paper:
~80% of the embryos remained viable 48 h after injection (Fig. 2A), in agreement with low toxicity of Cas9 injection in mouse embryos […]
ssDNA-mediated editing occurred only in 4 embryos… and the edited embryos were mosaic, similar to findings in other model systems.
So the risk of destroying an embryo (~20%) was substantially higher than the likelihood of successfully inserting a gene into the embryo (~5%) and much higher than the chance of inserting the gene into all of the embryo’s cells (0%).
There were also off-target mutations. Doug Mortlock believes the off-target mutation rate was actually much lower than the scientists believed, but in general CRISPR has a significantly non-zero chance of inducing an unintended genetic change.
CRISPR is a remarkable breakthrough in gene editing, with applications to agriculture, gene therapy, pharmaceutical production, basic science, and more. But in many of those scenarios, error can be tolerated. Cells with off-target mutations can be weeded out to find the few perfectly edited ones. Getting one complete success out of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of modified cells can suffice, when that one cell can then be replicated to create a new cell line or seed line.
In human fertility, where embryos are created in single digit quantities rather than hundreds or thousands – and where we hope at least one of those embryos comes to term as a child – our tolerance for error is dramatically lower. The efficiency, survivability, and precision of CRISPR all need to rise substantially before many parents are likely to consider using it for an unborn embryo, even to prevent disease.
That is, indeed, the conclusion of the Chinese researchers, who wrote, “Our study underscores the challenges facing clinical applications of CRISPR/Cas9.”
More in part two of this post on the ethics of allowing genetic editing of the unborn, and why a ban in this area is counterproductive.
Arrived in my pile
Gary B. Gorton, The Maze of Banking: History, Theory, Crisis. This volume collects his best articles.
Arnold Thackray, David C. Brock, and Rachel Jones, Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary. Appears to be the most thorough and comprehensive treatment to date.
Vishaal Kishore, Ricardo’s Gauntlet: Economic Fiction and the Flawed Case for Free Trade.
*The Age of the Crisis of Man*
That is the new book by Mark Greif, and the subtitle is Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973. I very much enjoyed grappling with this one. One of my more recent views is that the thinkers of the mid-twentieth century are in fact, as a whole, extremely underrated. They are not old enough to be classic and not new enough to be trendy or on the frontier. Their world faced problems which seemed totally strange to us in the 1990s, but which are starting to sound scarily relevant and contemporary. Yet our world is largely ignorant of their wisdom and creativity, in part because they often sounded dumb or schlocky or maybe they even were in some ways.
This book is sprawling, and while clearly written at the sentence-to-sentence level, it assumes some fair degree of background knowledge. Nonetheless for an intellectually-minded reader it is an excellent way to jump into the world inhabited by Karl Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset, Flannery O’Connor, and Thomas Pynchon.
Leon Wieseltier has some interesting remarks on the book. Here is another interesting (if overlong) review, by Richard Marshall. Here is an excellent Adam Kirsch review, the best review as review.
Assorted links
1. An impressive display of, um…Big Data (pdf), addressing how suppliers discriminate against customers in Singapore. There is also an NBER version, but I don’t see it on their site at this moment.
2. The religion that is Iceland.
3. “…the greatest work of journalism from the nineteenth century.”
4. The Hospital is no Place for a Heart Attack. And few from the EU side like the Greek debt swap idea.
5. Best films of the decade? Winter Sleep should be added to the list immediately, it is Ceylan’s masterpiece. That, along with Uncle Boonmee, should be very close to the top.
7. Timothy Taylor on the new corporate income tax proposals.
Assorted links
1. The detailed program for the Coase conference, late March in DC.
2. The concept of tipping is spreading.
3. I am very happy to see my former Ph.D student, Shawn DuBravac, who recently finished his degree, at #10 on the NYT non-fiction bestseller list. His book Digital Destiny is here.
4. “The most unforgivable sin in the world,” Mr. McKuen told The Washington Post in 1969, “is to be a best-selling poet.” An excellent obituary.
5. Paul Krugman on how blogging is changing, or not.
7. Can you have a Chinese Communist Party without an ideology?
Top Ten MR Posts of 2014
Here is my annual rundown of the top MR posts of 2014 as measured by page views, tweets and shares.
1. Ferguson and the Debtor’s Prison–I’d been tracking the issue of predatory fining since my post on debtor’s prisons in 2012 so when the larger background of Ferguson came to light I was able to provide a new take on a timely topic, the blogging sweet spot.
2. Tyler’s post on Tirole’s win of the Nobel prize offered an authoritative overview of Tirole’s work just when people wanted it. Tyler’s summary, “many of his papers show “it’s complicated,” became the consensus.
3. Why I am not Persuaded by Thomas Piketty’s Argument, Tyler’s post which links to his longer review of the most talked about economics book of the year. Other Piketty posts were also highly linked including Tyler’s discussion of Rognlie and Piketty and my two posts, Piketty v. Solow and The Piketty Bubble?. Less linked but one of my personal favorites was Two Surefire Solutions to Inequality.
4. Tesla versus the Rent Seekers–a review of franchise theory applied to the timely issue of regulatory restrictions on Tesla, plus good guys and bad guys!
5. How much have whites benefited from slavery and its legacy–an excellent post from Tyler full of meaty economics and its consequences. Much to think about in this post. Read it (again).
6. Tyler’s post Keynes is slowly losing (winning?) drew attention as did my post The Austerity Flip Flop, Krugman critiques often do.
7. The SAT, Test Prep, Income and Race–some facts about SAT Test Prep that run contrary to conventional wisdom.
8. Average Stock Returns Aren’t Average–“Lady luck is a bitch, she takes from the many and gives to the few. Here is the histogram of payoffs.”
9. Tyler’s picks for Best non fiction books of 2014.
10. A simple rule for making every restaurant meal better. Tyler’s post. Disputed but clearly correct.
Some other 2014 posts worth revisiting; Tyler on Modeling Vladimir Putin, What should a Bayesian infer from the Antikythera Mechanism?, and network neutrality and me on Inequality and Masters of Money.
Many posts from previous years continue to attract attention including my post from 2012, Firefighters don’t fight fires, which some newspapers covered again this year and Tyler’s 2013 post How and why Bitcoin will plummet in price which certainly hasn’t been falsified!
What I’ve been reading
1. Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov, The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, A Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia. Blends fiction, non-fiction, and occasional social science (was a non-corrupt transformation of the Soviet Union really possible?, Gaidar ultimately decided it wasn’t), but in terms of the subjective experience of the reader it is most like a novel. Excellent and also entertaining. I consider this a deep book about why liberalism will never quite win over human nature. Here is an interesting Julian Barnes review, although in my opinion it is insufficiently appreciative.
2. Kenneth D. Durr, The Best Made Plans: Robert R. Nathan and 20th Century Liberalism. I may be biased because I just gave a talk at the Nathan Foundation and received it as a gift copy. I call this the “real history of economic thought.” It’s a look at the career of a man who worked with Simon Kuznets to improve gdp statistics, helped lead the war effort in the 1940s, supported the civil rights movement, founded a major economic consulting firm, and supported the idea and practice of economic development, most of all for South Korea and Myanmar. It’s a splendid look at twentieth century economics as it actually influenced the world, without centering the story on academia. By the way, here is Diane Coyle on Walter Lippmann.
3. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings. This account of 1970s Jamaica, centered on a plot to shoot Bob Marley, shows a remarkable amount of talent, as well as a mastery of plot construction and different novelistic voices, some of which are in Jamaican patois. If you pick up this book you will be impressed and indeed many of the reviews are glowing. Yet somehow never did I care, feel entertained, or wish to read further. I stopped. I remain interested in that era, but will instead recommend a viewing — or reviewing — of The Harder They Come or Marley.
4. John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element. That element would be Providence, and this work looks at how Scholastic insights can serve as a foundation for economic thought. Loyal MR readers will know that is not exactly my brew, but some of you will find this of interest.
Assorted links
1. The favorite books of fifty famous people, though not Ben Affleck.
2. Hong Kong people.
3. Peter Thiel on creativity. And Virginia Postrel on Peter Thiel.
4. Do kids need simplified non-fiction?
5. Captive orcas speak dolphin.
6. It works best if all jurisdictions depenalize marijuana use (pdf), JPE gated version here.
Assorted links
1. Why is the college wage premium robust?
2. John Gray on the “rackety life” of Michael Oakeshott.
3. Seven reasons not to write novels and only one reason to write them, by Javier Marias. Does this apply to non-fiction books as well?
4. Interview with William Vollmann.
5. Finding the most beautiful route across a city.
6. Guardian list of best books of 2014 (not my list).
*Massacre in Malaya*
The author is Christopher Hale and the subtitle is the rather misleading Exposing Britain’s My Lai.
The first fifth of this book is in fact the best short early economic history of Malaysia and Singapore I know, even though the focus of the book as a whole is on one colonial event, namely the 1948 Batang Kali massacre during the post-war Malayan Emergency. The next section is a superb treatment of the Japanese occupation and the political issues leading up to that occupation. This book reflects a common principle, namely that often, to learn a topic, you should read a book on an adjacent but related topic, rather than pursue your preferred topic directly. The book on the adjacent topic often will take less background knowledge for granted and explain the context more clearly for what you actually wish to learn, while getting you interested in other topics along the way.
Just about every page of this book has useful and interesting information, here is one new word I learned:
The history of the ‘Malay World’ in the centuries before the momentous fall of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 is predominantly a convoluted narrative of maritime statelets, technically thalassocracies.
This one will make my best non-fiction of the year list.
Assorted links
What I’ve been reading
1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720, edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller. A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text. Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly, “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.” Recommended to anyone with an interest in the economic history of bubbles.
2. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain. An engaging and well written book about Thomas Macaulay’s father Zachary and then Thomas himself, focusing on themes of slavery, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and empire, not to mention the education of children. A good read on why some strands of liberalism hit such a dead end when confronted with the realities of the British empire.
3. Iain MacDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future. A clear and conceptually argued account of Ferguson’s thought, which will convince you he is not the lightweight of the Scottish Enlightenment. Starting with a comparison with Montesquieu, MacDaniel emphasizes Ferguson as a critic of the idea of progress and a historical pessimist, focusing on issues of war and martial virtue. This book is also useful for understanding the subtleties of Smith on the ancients vs. the moderns and why he was more sanguine about Britain than about the Romans (no slavery, for one thing).
4. John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. One of the world’s greatest Bach conductors is also one of the greatest Bach writers, with an emphasis on the vocal music and also what we know about Bach’s life. Especially noteworthy is the lengthy case for the John Passion and the discussion of the B Minor Mass. Definitely worthy of the “best books of the year” list and perhaps in the top tier too. I’m not going to liberate this volume, I am going to keep it.
Assorted links
1. How kids rate and review Pixar movies, and Steven Pinker’s desert island discs.
2. A short essay on measurement and its consequences.
3. Kenneth Minogue has passed away.
4. The political culture that is Sweden (Sörmland).
6. Greg Mankiw on Jason Furman.
7. Kurt Schuler’s monetary economics reading list.
8. What are the best pens of all time? (speculative)
Whose entire body of work is worth reading?
I’d be curious to see Tyler’s “completist” list. In other words, authors whose entire body of work merits reading. If this does get a response, I’m most interested in seeing the list begin with literature.
I’ll repeat my earlier mention of Geza Vermes. And to make the exercise meaningful, let’s rule out people who wrote one or two excellent books and then stopped. Adam Smith is too easy a pick. I won’t start with literature, however, but here are some choices:
1. Fernand Braudel.
2. George Orwell. Plato. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Hume. William James.
3. Franz Kafka, he died young.
4. T.J. Clark, historian of art and European thought.
5. J.C. D. Clark, the British historian.
Let’s stop here and take stock. Many historians will make the list, because if they are good they will find it difficult to produce crap. Without research, they cannot put pen to paper, and with research a careful, thoughtful historian is likely to be interesting. With thought you could come up with a few hundred historians who were consistently interesting and never wrote a bad book. Then you have a few extreme geniuses, and J.S. Mill might make the list if not for System of Logic, which by the way Mill himself thought stood among his best works. Timon of Athens hurts Shakespeare but he also comes very close.
Do any producers of “ideas books” make this list? Other than those listed under #2 of course. And are there truly consistent (and excellent) authors of fiction, other than those with a small number of works? I’m not thinking of many. How about Virginia Woolf or John Milton or Jane Austen?
One also could make an “opposite” of this list, namely important authors whose works are mostly not worth reading, and you could start with Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley. The existence of Kindle makes it easier to discover who these people really are.
Thailand book bleg
From Chris Acree:
I’m planning a trip which will take me through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I recently began selecting a few books about each country to read to cover the history, culture, or other interesting aspects of the area. In particular, my favorite books in this vein are Country Driving and China Airborne, both about China.
However, in searching, I’ve found Cambodia has plenty of literature (Cambodia’s Curse by Pulitzer winner Joel Brinkley seems a good starting point), and Vietnam has at least a couple good books (I picked up Vietnam: Rising Dragon at your recommendation), whereas Thailand seems bereft of strong English-language histories or non-guide travel books. Amazon searches return almost exclusively books targeted towards sex tourists, and the Economist article here http://www.economist.com/node/16155881 is mostly over 10 years old. Kindle availability is also unavailable for most of their selections, which, while not a necessity for me, hints at books that aren’t aging well or being actively updated.
Has no reputable author written a great Thai travel book in the last 10 years? If not, why not? What books would you recommend on Thailand?
How about this biography of Bhumibol Adulyadej? Falcon of Siam is historical fiction of note. Thailand — Culture Smart! is good for browsing. You can read a variety of books on Jim Thompson, and speaking of Thompson this cookbook by David Thompson is a must. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is one of the best movies ever made; watch these too, noting that Syndromes and a Century offers insight into the Thai health care system. I am not recommending use of such services, but perhaps the best of the books for sex tourists are interesting too? Siamese Soul is a good retro collection of Thai popular music from the 1960s through 1980s, hard on some ears but I like it.
Here is where Amazon sends you. Here is where Lonely Planet sends you. While you’re at it, why not read about Skyping with elephants in Thailand, in the service of science of course.
People, what else do you recommend?