The Return of the King, French style
I just saw the third installment of Lord of the Rings in a French cinema, on the Left Bank. The crowd loved it, although they kept on laughing at all the faux endings. (I’m not giving anything away by noting that the movie is longer than it needs to be. In the last fifteen minutes it repeatedly feels as if it is just about to end.) Interestingly, “Frodo,” in the subtitles, is presented as Frodon. You know, like “Napoleon” and “Michelin.” That is just in case you might have thought that Frodon wasn’t French. Yes I know about the silent n, still I thought this was ridiculous.
Evolution
Often I love the idea of science fiction more than science fiction itself. I’ve read most of the classics, and I am left with junk at the relevant margin. But lately I’ve been wrapped up in Stephen Baxter’s Evolution, published earlier this year. The book, spanning almost six hundred pages, tells the story of evolution from the point of view of our genes. To be sure, the book would be easy to satirize. It has no central characters, covers 65 million years of history, and frequently presents how different animals think [sic] about copulation. OK, that doesn’t sound like an obvious recipe for success but Baxter pulls it off to a surprising degree. The treatment is reminiscent of H.G. Wells or Olaf Stapledon, a particular favorite of mine. If you, like me, are desperate for science fiction that is actually intellectually stimulating, give this book a try. We are told, by the way, that the capacity to believe contradictory ideas is what makes human beings special.
Baxter pushes the Stephen Jay Gould line that the results of evolution are highly dependent on small accidents. For a contrasting point of view, from a more scientific front, see Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. The author Simon Conway Morris argues that the path of evolution is much less contingent than is commonly believed. He points to numerous biological structures, such as the eye, that have evolved repeatedly under different guises. Here is one brief summary, here is a longer and more critical presentation. Life’s Solution, which occasionally verges on theology, should be read with a critical eye. Nonetheless if you feel you have read all the good popular books on evolutionary biology, here is a text with something new and provocative.
The best argument for spam I have yet heard
Historian and travel writer Jan Morris was interviewed about America in the British Times, December 13. She offered the following remark:
There is grossly too much of almost everything. There is too much money, too much food, too much choice, too much power, too much capitalism, too much spam on the e-mail. Wal-Mart, the ultimate American retailer, employs three million people: on one single day during my visit it opened 39 new stores, and its annual sales last year were bigger than the GNP of Switzerland. Eighty-three TV channels were available in my hotel room last night. Last Sunday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune contained, by my bemused count, 51 editorial and advertising sections. The president of Harvard occupies a house valued at $11.5 million. The supermarket Shaw’s, in Boston, offered last week, 432 different cheeses.
I had at least three reactions. First, you would think that such a famous historian would stay in a hotel with digital cable. Then she would have more than 83 channels, perhaps as many as five hundred. Second, I just had been thinking about writing a blog post complaining about American trade restrictions on French non-pasteurized cheese, the best kind of cheese I might add. Morris may have seen 432 different cheeses but we could do much much better in this area. Let’s have free trade in cheese and real diversity. How many Americans eat cheese wrapped in paper rather than plastic? Finally, spam must have something good to offer if it can be lumped in with all these rosy developments. Morris refers to the current United States as “sclerotic” and “bloated,” can she be serious?
Just the cash please
Florida officials have ditched proposals to offer a trip to space as a lottery prize because players say they just want the money.
Ananova.com offers the full story.
French cheese goes a long way
Contrary to some reports, I remain alive and well.
Is file-sharing dead?
The recent RIAA lawsuits have severely blunted the practice of file-sharing. The music industry has gone after the on-line users who share copyright-protected songs. The movie industry may someday follow suit. Although the number of people prosecuted has been small, the negative publicity has caused many people to shy away from Kazaa, Grokster, and other services.
I don’t know of any good estimates of how much file-sharing has gone down in recent times. All parties to the disputes have incentives to fudge the numbers. But based on conversations and anecdotal observations, combined with written sources, I find it plausible that file-sharing has declined by at least a third.
The days of file-sharing, however, are far from over. First, a judge just ruled that the RIAA cannot petition Verizon for the names of potential file-sharers. CNN.com reported as follows:
…in a strongly worded ruling, the appeals court sided with Verizon, saying a 1998 copyright law does not give copyright holders the ability to subpoena customer names from Internet providers without filing a formal lawsuit.
This ruling should come as no surprise. After all, why should the RIAA have a special right to petition Verizon for the names of potential copyright infringers? I hold some copyrights too. I and many others could petition Verizon for the information concerning various account holders. Without any legal standard of proof privacy is meaningless. More significantly, Verizon would end up swamped under the requests. Imagine various hackers and cyberpunks flooding Verizon with identity requests just to make the reporting system unworkable.
Even if this ruling is reversed, or John Doe suits prove effective in generating the names, file-sharing is likely to return in force. Anonymous networks are becoming more popular rapidly. Read the analysis of Clay Shirky. Right now users are not sure whether these networks are useful or trustworthy. But that information will spread rapidly. Within a year, we will know whether the Palestinian file-sharing network is indeed reliable. If that source of files turns out to be crooked, something else will arise to take its place.
Consider the whole problem in terms of consumer option value. File-sharers have not given up on the idea. They are waiting to see when and how they can start sharing files again. When the proper time comes, they will return in full force.
Addendum: Here is a Washington Post article on the decision. Hit and Run links to the full decision.
The soul of classical liberalism
Here is one of my favorite essays by my colleague James Buchanan, The Soul of Classical Liberalism. Buchanan starts this essay by noting that we have lost the “soul” of classical liberalism in the twentieth century. A new political vision is needed desperately if we are to build that “shining city on the hill.” I have long maintained that Buchanan is one of the last romantic economists, in the spirit of his mentor Frank Knight. By romantic I mean an economist whose work is driven by an intensely personal vision, and driven by an intense desire to root out the truth. Buchanan, perhaps more than any other economist, understands the tension between the objective and the subjective in economic science. Given our commitment to improving the real world, we cannot avoid objective standards for good outcomes. But at the same time economic values and costs are deeply subjective as expressed in neoclassical or Austrian economics. Buchanan’s critics, who do not generally understand this tension, think he is working on pseudo-problems or engaged in mere taxonomy. In contrast, I think Buchanan is far ahead of his time. We are not yet at the point where we can understand the full import of what he is up to. This essay is one good place to get started on his central problems.
If you can’t price the roads…
Ban elephants. That is what the Thai Prime Minister has decided.
Thaksin Shinawatra says elephants brought in from the countryside cause road problems in an already congested capital city. In his national weekly radio address, he said he had told the Interior Ministry and the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority to “not let elephants into Bangkok”. Scores of domesticated elephants – estimates range from 60 to 250 – roam Bangkok streets with their handlers, begging for food or promoting the sale of ivory trinkets. They sometimes get hit by vehicles or fall into drains. Many of the elephants, extensively used for logging, were made redundant by a 1989 ban on the industry. Thaksin said financial backers purchase elephants and then rent them out to the tourist-tout handlers.
Traffic jams in Bangkok are considered to be among the world’s worst. It can take four hours to cross town, which is one reason why many Thai cabs come equipped with bathroom facilities. At six p.m., in the middle of rush hour, downtown traffic goes less than a mile an hour, on average.
Here is a discussion of Thai traffic problems, and their solutions. More mass transit, rerouting one way roads, and road pricing are the most promising alternatives to the status quo. Banning elephants is not mentioned, which leads me to suspect that the Thai Prime Minister is using them as a scapegoat (or should I say scape-elephant?) for the problem.
Don’t even ask about Thai traffic in the monsoon season.
More on obsolete professors
A number of people wrote both in support and challenging my comments on obsolete professors. Fabio Rojas wrote:
My reading of university history is that academia has always been a superstar market, except for the three decades or so after WWII…Medieval universities were run by a small group of well paid elites, while much of the grunt work was done by low status lecturers. The German research universities of the 19th century were known for giving comfy chairs to a few stars, while privatdozents slaved away at abysmal wages. The only exception to this trend is post-WWII American higher ed. The simultaneous explosion of student enrollments and Cold War money meant that universities could afford lots of research scholars who could teach. Of course, that model is hard to sustain – already a lot of work is being shifted back to part time workers.
My hunch is that in 50 years, maybe less, the higher ed system will be very different. There will still be a core of elite research universities and liberal arts colleges, where people will pay to study with famous scholars, writers and artists. The rest of the educational system will move toward a University of Phoenix model – an elite core of administrators managing an army of part timers, distance learners, on-line learning, adult ed, etc. The traditional universities can probably maintain their monopoly on occupational certification, but the rest of the system will radically change.
Similarly, Roger Meiners wrote “I think you are correct about professors being nearly obsolete. My guess is that large state universities are the institutions due for the largest restructuring. The private schools, as inefficient as they are, still generally stick to their mission better.”
But my colleagues Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan as well as Stephen Brown from the Dallas Fed all asked, If teaching by DVD is so great why haven’t we seen it already? After all, VCRs not to mention movie projectors have been around for a long time. Perhaps, they argue, there are efficiency reasons for the structure that exists today. Stephen writes:
Professors working collaboratively, but in decentralized manner may have substantial advantages in providing certifications (degrees) when compared against a system in which students watch pre-recorded lectures by the great teachers and then are tested for mastery by an administrator through exams–particularly if mastery cannot be well demonstrated by machine-graded, multiple-choice exams.
Robin and Bryan pointed to professors as a disciplinary device. The option of self-learning may in fact be self-defeating. (See also Amy Lamboley’s comment at Crescat Sententia). Moreover, if students attend universities to find mates then big lecture classes may not be such a cost after all.
Universities have been around a long time so caution is justified but it has to make a difference in the provision of education that I can today download to my hard drive 10,000 books from Project Gutenberg or search over 100,000 books at Amazon (another 60,000 are available from Google). Innovations often seem impossible or impractical until someone demonstrates the concept and then they take off. Yes, the last is a trendy reference to the Wright brothers – note that just days before they flew, Samuel P. Langley, Director of the Smithsonian Institution and head of a well-funded government project to invent the airplane, proclaimed the goal years if not decades away.
Saddam’s seizure and good news about the dinar
I have heard numerous scenarios of how the capture of Saddam might prove counterproductive for Iraqi reconstruction. Perhaps the Shiites no longer need U.S. protection from a Saddam return, and they will cease to support us. Perhaps the American public will now demand a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
The market appears to disagree with these fears. Since the capture of Saddam, the Iraqi dinar is up nearly eight percent, as reported by The Financial Times. Since mid-November the currency is up sixteen percent. To be sure, this price is a managed float. Nonetheless the price is set in a daily bank auction, combined with information taken from the street markets. It is commonly conceded that the market is a good barometer of Iraqi political expectations about the future of the country.
More of the Wright Stuff
The world’s first private, manned rocket-plane has made a successful maiden flight. And it looks cool. More here.
Are Professors Obsolete?
We economics professors like to point out – or at least I do – that downsizing is a good thing. Aren’t you glad that blacksmiths were downsized because of the automobile? But we don’t like it when this argument is turned on us. Steve Pearlstein writes:
Every year… there are thousands of college professors who twice or three times a week offer what is largely the same basic lecture course in a subject like molecular biology or Shakespeare comedies. A few of these professors offer the kind of brilliant lectures that fill auditoriums and provide the kind of educational experience that students remember all their lives. Many of the rest offer something that ranges from mediocre to awful….why don’t we identify these extraordinary lecturers, put their lectures on CDs, and sell them to universities that could supplement them with faculty-led tutorials or discussions?
Pearlstein points out that Mark Taylor, a Williams College philosophy professor, and Herb Allen, a Wall Street financier, tried to do just this at Williams College but not surprisingly the faculty resisted and vehemently voted the idea down.
The response from educators when presented with ideas like this is that students need face-to-face interaction with faculty, CDs can’t answer questions, material has to be kept updated etc. But none of this is really convincing. I teach Econ 101 well, but it’s not obvious, even to me, that students would not learn as much with a DVD of Kenneth Elzinga or Timothy Taylor or the late Paul Heyne, to name three great teachers of economics, supplemented with live tutorials and problem sessions. Needless to say, the latter scheme, would be cheaper.
I think that we faculty will manage to beat back these ideas for another ten to twenty years but eventually the benefits of the technological approach will become overwhelming. When this happens teaching will become more of a winner-take-all superstar market and wages for the rest of us will fall.
French strikers hard at work
Walking around Paris, I came across the following in The International Herald Tribune:
“The government wants to correct France’s image,” said Christophe Beaux, technical adviser for the Ministry of Economy, Finances and Industry. “Our image has been stained by cliches,” Beaux said. “The bad publicity generated by the 35-hour workweek, by workers going on strike, gives people the impression that French people do not like to work.”
Those cliches and bad publicity will just kill your reputation, won’t they?
Note, however, that the French proclivity for strikes should not be attributed to laziness. (Here is some more systematic data: Excel file, html, comparing the French to other countries. Of the G-7, only the Canadians strike more.) In fact many French strikes are hard work. French strikers are more likely than most striking nationals to march, blockade, destroy, or otherwise make their displeasure public. This tendency stems from the centralized nature of the French economy and governance. A few tractors or transport strikers can shut down large parts of the country and thus suffice to grab national attention. French strikers are working hard in their quest for rents.
Addendum: French diplomats are now at strike, this should make at least Andrew Sullivan happy.
Earthlike planets may be common in the universe
Read Futurepundit on this topic. This news increases the expected well-being out there in the universe, but probably lowers the expected welfare of mankind. Visiting aliens could be a boon or a disaster but I am risk-averse in this capacity. Neither my juvenile love for science fiction nor my general optimism make me wish to live to see alien visitation. While earth institutions are far from efficient, they could be much worse. Right now the dominant technological power, the United States, is relatively benevolent by the standards of world history. Technologically superior aliens would upset this balance and could leave too much power in the wrong hands.
This whole news about planets only raises the question anew: Where are they? One possibility is that civilizations simply do not last very long on a cosmic time scale. If intelligent life has evolved elsewhere in the universe, most of the time it has expired before having a chance to contact us. If the window of opportunity is sufficienly small, it would help explain why we do not receive signals from other civilizations.
The research also shows that the nature of Jupiter’s orbit may be responsible for intelligent life on earth:
The simulations show that the amount of water on terrestrial, or Earthlike, planets could be greatly influenced by outer gas giant planets like Jupiter.
“The more eccentric giant planet orbits result in drier terrestrial planets,” Raymond said. “Conversely, more circular giant planet orbits mean wetter terrestrial planets.”
In the case of our solar system, Jupiter’s orbit is slightly elliptical, which could explain why Earth is 80 percent covered by oceans rather than being bone dry or completely covered in water miles deep.
This points to another reason why the aliens have not come. The existence of intelligent life requires a very large number of favorable coincident factors, perhaps larger than we have realized to date. But read Brad DeLong on the Fermi paradox, which suggests a large number of intelligent civilizations out there in the universe, even once we account for all the improbabilities.
Do the French favor diversity?
Read Jacob Levy on the new French measure to ban private individuals from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in the classroom. This would include Islamic headscarves, Jewish yarmulkes, and “large” Christian crosses. Don’t even ask about the Sikhs, who are obliged to wear turbans as their hair grows long. Here is a brief excerpt from Jacob’s analysis:
The proposed law is really quite repressive. One item that hasn’t been much mentioned in the English-language press is that it also prohibits wearing any visible political symbol (buttons and badges and so on). One article I read about that proposal in Le Monde last week made quite clear how arbitrarily that will be enforced, with school administrators drawing their distinctions between what is and what isn’t political. An AIDS ribbon? An anarchist’s A button? A button in support of SOS-Racisme? One administrator said that that wouldn’t be prohibited, because anti-racism, isn’t a political value but a republican value. But the ban clearly isn’t restricted to a bright-line rule against partisan affiliations, either. It is going to leave tremendous discretion in the hands of principals to ban what they dislike and allow what they like.
Here is more:
It is, always, all about France and the French state, never about the conflicting obligations in conscience felt by committed religious believers.
Chirac’s announcement– which was not a surprise– referred to ‘the Islamic veil, under whatever name one gives it.’ This is a recurring rhetorical device of the laicitists. There are, as far as I know, no reported incidents of French Muslim schoolgirls attending school actually veiled. French Islam is not, as a rule, that conservative. What is at stake is headscarves, and the incessant use of “voile” instead of “foulard” is an attempt to elide the difference between committed believers and fundamentalists.
Worst of all, it is estimated that about 2/3 of the French public support this measure. The only bright side is that France’s reputation in the Arab world is likely to take a big hit.