J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 75

Wikipedia: Philippa Ruth Bosanquet Foot https://en.wikipe...

Wikipedia: Philippa Ruth Bosanquet Foot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Foot: 'Practical considerations involving "thick" ethical concepts���but it would be cruel, it would be cowardly, it's hers, or I promised her I wouldn't���move people to act one way rather than another, but they are as descriptive as any other judgment pertaining to human life. They differ from thought such as it would be done on a Tuesday or it would take about three gallons of paint, not by the admixture of what she considers to be any non-factual, attitude-expressing "moral" element, but by the fact that human beings have reasons not to do things that are cowardly or cruel. Her lifelong devotion to this question appears in all periods of her work...

#noted #2020-01-06

Ezra Klein: Why We're Polarized https://www.google.com/bo...

Ezra Klein: Why We're Polarized https://www.google.com/books/edition/Why_We_re_Polarized/1G6gDwAAQBAJ: 'Discover how American politics became a toxic system, why we participate in it, and what it means for our future���from journalist, political commentator, and cofounder of Vox, Ezra Klein.... The 2016 election wasn���t surprising at all. In fact, Trump���s electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates. Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together. In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis. Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump���s rise to the Democratic Party���s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself...

#noted #2020-01-05

Very Briefly Noted 2020-01-05:Brenda's Oakland���A New...

Very Briefly Noted 2020-01-05:

Brenda's Oakland���A New New Orleans Kitchen https://brendasoakland.com/_...

Uncut Gems https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/uncut_gems...

Little Women https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/little_women_2019...

Stefan Link and Noam Maggor (2019): The United States as a Developing Nation: Revisiting the Peculiarities of American History https://delong.typepad.com/files/us-development.pdf

Marica Restaurant Oakland https://www.maricaoakland.com/...

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Richard Kogan https://www.cbpp.org/richard-kogan...

Main Street Grill http://halfmoonbay-restaurants.com/main-street-grill/#.Xg1cNS2ZPOQ...

Nolita Hall https://www.nolitahall.com/...

Ross LaJeunesse: I Was Google���s Head of International Relations. Here���s Why I Left. https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065: 'The company���s motto used to be ���Don���t be evil.��� Things have changed...

Michelle Pacansky-Brock: Benefits of a Liquid Syllabus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDpO5hIpBBE...

Michelle Pacansky-Brock: Publications https://brocansky.com/publications...

BBC Radio 4: Great Lives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cmrz: 'Novelist Enid Blyton: Janice Turner nominates Enid Blyton for giving her a sense of adventure when she was a child...

Jameson Minto: Musings of Clio https://musingsofclio.wordpress.com/...

#noted #verybrieflynoted #2020-01-05

Jameson Minto: Achaea and Rome: 192 B.C.���146 B.C https:...

Jameson Minto: Achaea and Rome: 192 B.C.���146 B.C https://musingsofclio.wordpress.com/2019/12/03/achaea-and-rome-192-b-c-146-b-c/: 'Achaea hadn���t really changed: divided into two factions, vying for more autonomy and seeing itself as able to compete with the larger states due to the strength of the collective identity of its people. Rome had changed and changed into a state that didn���t allow any deviation from what it wanted.... The relationship between it and its allies was now one of patron and client.... Achaea���s actions went against this.... Roman dignatas would not stand for that.... Rome... issue[d] an ultimatum: break up the League or war. The strength of Achaean Identity meant that war was the only option, since it became a war against the Achaean people and everything that it had built up to become it.... Survival, one of the key pillars of the Achaean identity had lost all meaning, since the proposed destruction of the League would render it all for nothing. Which was why the divisive assembly unanimously voted for war, even though it meant the destruction of the League.... The Achaean collective identity fostered a sense of unity between the various poleis of the Peloponnese... helped in dealing with other states.... Achaean identity was originally established as a way for a people, an ethnos, to survive and thrive in a world that was fast becoming dominating by poleis. It served a similar purpose in this period, creating a unified people to create a greater bargaining power against the larger states, it simply underestimated the power of Rome until it was too late...

#noted #2020-01-05

Weekend Reading: Harry Brighouse: Teaching a 10 Year-Old to Read

Weekend Reading: Harry Brighouse: Teaching a 10 Year-Old to Read http://crookedtimber.org/2020/01/05/teaching-a-10-year-old-to-read/: 'My then-18 year old daughter was home with her friends when I opened my author-copies of Family Values. After they left she said ���My friends are really impressed that you���ve written a book. But I���m not really. I mean, it���s just part of your job, isn���t it? It���s just what you���re supposed to do. I mean���.it���s not like you taught a third grader to read, or something like that���. If you���ve read the book, or simply know its main theses, you���ll see many layers of irony in that exchange, and probably further layers of irony in the sense of pleasure and pride I got from it. But actually I did teach a kid to read, a 5th grader actually, though just one, when I was 18...

...I took what would now be called a ���gap year��� between school and college, but I didn���t plan it very well, and, after a few months living in a squat in Kentish Town while working for CND, and a couple more working as a live-in nanny in Brighton, I returned home and spent my days volunteering in a rural primary school classroom with 9-11 year olds. This involved a daily (and hair-raising) commute of 12 miles each way on my bike. I enjoyed it, and at that point was planning to be a primary school teacher, so I suppose it wasn���t such a bad idea. Mostly I worked with kids in ones or twos, and normally the kids who were behind.

One 10 year old boy called Darren who lived on the nearby council estate (US = public housing project) was far behind the others in reading. Darren had joined the school the previous year and had integrated well socially ��� he was a lovely, cheery, lad, overweight (which I identified with) but never mocked for it possibly because he seemed genuinely to like everybody. He was perfectly on track with his maths and I realize now that he may have been dyslexic, but diagnosis was sparse in those days (many teachers ��� indeed many experts ��� believed it was not a real condition, just a mask for laziness), and treatment sparser.

I had no idea what I was doing, but every living member of my mother���s extended family either was or had been a teacher and my dad, the nutter, knew a bit about it, so there were at least books about teaching around.

My strategy (if that isn���t too grand a word) was to get him to sound out words, and gradually progress to reading out simple sentences. The problem was that the books with which children were taught to read were all for 4 year olds, and he was 10 and therefore, not unreasonably, found those books dull as ditchwater (and, probably, a little infantilizing). Things improved when I gave up on the books, and started writing words and sentences for him, based on his interests. Words were short, and simple, but the sentences I made from them were (supposed to be) either funny, or interesting. Some of them were, unquestionably, rude. After that he progressed to the point that he wanted to read real books (which I was incapable of writing). But, again, the books which fit his reading age did not fit his chronological age.

I was reminded of all this by this brilliant episode of Great Lives about Enid Blyton. Enid Blyton will be unfamiliar to American readers because for whatever reason she never really made it in the States despite selling all over the world, and being the most popular author in many countries. But teachers and librarians thoroughly disapproved of her because, well, they were snobs and she was popular. And whereas even now you���d be hard pressed to find a bookshop which doesn���t sell her, I never saw an Enid Blyton book in any of the several schools I attended. Fortunately my parents, despite being teacherly, did not ban Enid Blyton so I had read (and had at home) all her books for older kids ��� Famous Five, Secret Seven, Mystery series, Adventurous Four, the Adventure Series, Mallory Towers, you name it. Enid Blyton isn���t how I learned to read but she is how I learned to love reading.

So when he was ready I brought him some of my own Enid Blytons to read, with their secret trapdoors, and hidden treasure, and deserted islands, their dull-witted policemen, their dead, missing, or merely unpleasant parents (Uncle Quentin has a serious personality disorder), and their dogs called things like Scamper, Timmy and (rather brilliantly) Loony. He was off: he could read and he loved it. I wondered at the time how many kids had never learned to love reading because their snotty teachers had prohibited Enid Blyton from the classroom shelves.

Contrary to what the guests say the books aren���t entirely sexist, classist, and xenophobic [4]. I haven���t gone back and reread the whole oeuvre, and at this point I probably won���t, but there are many exceptions. Most obvious example is the initially mysterious and ultimately glamorous Pierre Lenoir, who becomes friends with the Famous Five early on. The Secret Seven are not upper middle class, as far as I can tell. George is, as Matthew Parris points out, one of the strongest characters in all her books (of the FF, Anne simpers, and Dick and Julian are little prigs, but George is courageous, ingenious, and highly unconventional ��� mark you, maybe damaged by her clearly psychotic father). And then there���s Mallory Towers: which I think were the first books I ever read with no male characters at all (I���m very curious about who read the Mallory Towers books ��� did the readership actually skew much more female than for her other books?) I was selective about what I gave him, but many of the books are just fine, so it was easy.

The reason my daughter���s comment seemed so brilliant to me was that she didn���t say that teaching just anyone to read was really hard. The thing about teaching a 3rd, or 5th, grader to read is that they have already not learned to read: there may well be some sort of actually internal challenge (like dyslexia), but even if there isn���t, they think of themselves as not being able to read. Darren was lucky, in that he had a pretty easy-going disposition, and was good at other things, so his non-reading wasn���t really part of his self-definition. But I did wonder, even at the time, how many kids of his age didn���t learn to read at all just because the snobbish teachers and librarians refused to stock Enid Blyton���s books...

#books #weekendreading #2020-01-05

John Maynard Keynes: _[Economic ConLenin is said to have ...

John Maynard Keynes: _[Economic ConLenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose...

#noted #2020-01-03

Thomas Philippon: Europe, Not America, Is the Home of the...

Thomas Philippon: Europe, Not America, Is the Home of the Free Market https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/europe-not-america-home-free-market/600859/: 'From plane tickets to cellphone bills, monopoly power costs American consumers billions of dollars a year: When I arrived in the United States from France in 1999, I felt like I was entering the land of free markets. Nearly everything���from laptops to internet service to plane tickets���was cheaper here than in Europe. Twenty years later, this is no longer the case. Internet service, cellphone plans, and plane tickets are now much cheaper in Europe and Asia than in the United States, and the price differences are staggering. In 2018, according to data gathered by the comparison site Cable, the average monthly cost of a broadband internet connection was $29 in Italy, $31 in France, $32 in South Korea, and $37 in Germany and Japan. The same connection cost $68 in the United States, putting the country on par with Madagascar, Honduras, and Swaziland. American households spend about $100 a month on cellphone services, the Consumer Expenditure Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates. Households in France and Germany pay less than half of that.... None of this has happened by chance. In 1999, the United States had free and competitive markets in many industries that, in Europe, were dominated by oligopolies. Today the opposite is true...

#noted #2020-01-03

Steve M.: Con Successfully Worked https://nomoremister.bl...

Steve M.: Con Successfully Worked https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2019/10/republicans-are-so-good-at-two-person.html: 'New York Times: "One pundit on Fox News went as far as to suggest that Colonel Vindman had engaged in 'espionage' against the United States, prompting an unusual rebuke from a Republican member of Congress.... 'Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine while working inside the White House, apparently against the president���s interest', Ms. Ingraham said. ���Isn���t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?' Her guest, John Yoo, a former top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, agreed. 'I find that astounding,��� Mr. Yoo said. ���Some people might call that espionage'. The accusation by Mr. Yoo was decried... by Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a Republican lawmaker. 'It is shameful...' Ms. Cheney said..." That's how the con works: One person (or in this case two, Ingraham and Yoo) smear Vindman, then Cheney���a Republican attack dog of the old school, which means her brand requires her to be unfailingly pro-military���calls Ingraham and Yoo out, thus reassuring everyone in the so-called sensible center that Republicans are actually fine people and���with rare exceptions!���won't smear a war hero to get what they want.... So now the mainstream media cries of "Republicans have gone too far!" are quieted���but the smear is out there. Con successfully worked...

#noted #2020-01-03

John Scalzi: In Annalee Newitz: A Better Internet Is Wait...

John Scalzi: In Annalee Newitz: A Better Internet Is Waiting for Us https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/30/opinion/social-media-future.html: 'Scalzi is fascinated by the unintended consequences that flow from new discoveries. When he thinks about tomorrow���s technology, he takes the perspectives of real, flawed people who will use it, not the idealized consumers in promotional videos. He imagines a new wave of digital media companies that will serve the generations of people who have grown up online (soon, that will be most people) and already know that digital information can���t be trusted. They will care about who is giving them the news, where it comes from, and why it���s believable. ���They will not be internet optimists in the way that the current generation of tech billionaires wants,��� he said with a laugh. They will not, he explained, believe the hype about how every new app makes the world a better place: ���They���ll be internet pessimists and realists.��� What would ���internet realists��� want from their media streams? The opposite of what we have now. Today, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are designed to make users easy to contact. That was the novelty of social media���we could get in touch with people in new and previously unimaginable ways...

...It also meant, by default, that any government or advertiser could do the same. Mr. Scalzi thinks we should turn the whole system on its head with ���an intense emphasis on the value of curation.��� It would be up to you to curate what you want to see. Your online profiles would begin with everything and everyone blocked by default. Think of it as a more robust, comprehensive version of privacy settings, where news and entertainment would reach you only after you opted into them. This would be the first line of defense against viral falsehoods, as well as mobs of strangers or bots attacking someone they disagree with.

The problem is that you can���t make advertising money from a system where everyone is blocked by default ��� companies wouldn���t be able to gather and sell your data, and you could avoid seeing ads. New business models would have to replace current ones after the demise of social media. Mr. Scalzi believes that companies will have to figure out ways to make money from helping consumers protect and curate their personal data. This could take many forms. Media companies might offer a few cheap services with ads, and more expensive ones without. Crowdfunding could create a public broadcasting version of video sharing, kind of an anti-YouTube, where every video is educational and safe for kids. There would also be a rich market for companies that design apps or devices to help people curate the content and people in their social networks. It���s all too easy to imagine an app that uses an algorithm to help ���choose��� appropriate friends for us, or select our news....

#noted #2020-01-03

A piece of evidence that affirmative-action programs two ...

A piece of evidence that affirmative-action programs two not in fact harm beneficiaries via mismatch: Joshua D. Angrist, Parag A. Pathak, and Rom��n Andr��s Z��rate: Choice and Consequence: Assessing Mismatch at Chicago Exam Schools: "The educational mismatch hypothesis asserts that students are hurt by affirmative action policies that place them in selective schools for which they wouldn't otherwise qualify. We evaluate mismatch in Chicago's selective public exam schools... show that... mismatch arises because exam school admission diverts many applicants from high-performing Noble Network charter schools, where they would have done well.... Exam school applicants' previous achievement, race, and other characteristics that are sometimes said to mediate student-school matching play no role in this story...

#noted #2020-01-03