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Bryant Park Reading Room 2019

Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series.

Established in 1935, the Bryant Park Reading room was created by the New York Public Library as a refuge for thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression. Today the Reading Room is thriving once again. As part of the Bryant Park program, Oxford University Press has created a special book club where we pair acclaimed contemporary authors with a classic title from the Oxford World’s Classics series.

Check out the line-up below. Prior to each event, stop by Bryant Park to pick up a free copy of the book club choice while supplies lasts. The Reading Room is located in Bryant Park, right behind the NYPL Main Branch, on 42nd street between 5th and 6th Ave.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019 – Kayleen Schaefer, author of Text Me When You Get Home, discussing Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Kayleen Schaefer is a journalist and author of the bestselling Kindle Single memoir Fade Out. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue, and many other publications. She currently lives in New York City, and Text Me When You Get Home is her first book.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019 – Barry Strauss, author of Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine, discussing The Gallic War by Julius Caesar, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University, is a leading expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, The Spartacus War, Masters of Command, and The Death of Caesar.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019 – Abbigail N. Rosewood, author of If I Had Two Lives, discussing Thomas De Quincey’s On Murder, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Abbigail N. Rosewood was born in Vietnam, where she lived until the age of twelve. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. An excerpt from her first novel won first place in the Writers Workshop of Asheville Literary Fiction Contest. She lives in New York.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019 – H.S. Cross, author of GRIEVOUS: A Novel, discussing Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. H. S. Cross was born in Grosse Point, Michigan. She was educated at Harvard and has taught at Friends Seminary, among other schools. Her debut novel, Wilberforce, was published by FSG in 2015.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019 – James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List, discussing The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. James Mustich began his career in bookselling at an independent book store in Briarcliff Manor, New York, in the early 1980s. In 1986, he co-founded the acclaimed book catalog, A Common Reader, and was for two decades its guiding force. He subsequently has worked as an editorial and product development executive in the publishing industry. He lives with his wife, Margot, in Connecticut.Tuesday, August 13, 2019 – Jeremy Dauber, author of Mayhem and Madness, discussing L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Jeremy Dauber grew up devouring classic science fiction and comic books. A professor at Columbia University, he is the author of several adult nonfiction works including Jewish Comedy: A Serious History. Mayhem and Madness his debut novel for young readers. He lives in New York City with his wife and his three young children, who insist on making him the supervillain in their games every single time.

Featured image credit: “People sitting on the grass of city park” by Krisztina Papp. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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Water scarcity, warfare, and the paradox of value

Back in 1995, then World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin made an important prediction about the future: “The wars of the next century will be fought over water,” Serageldin warned, “unless we change our approach to managing this precious and vital resource.” Fortunately for the world, Serageldin’s predication has so far not occurred. No wars have been fought strictly over water in modern history. In fact globally the number of international agreements over water far exceeds the number of international conflicts. That paradox shows that water can be just as powerful a driver of cooperation as of conflict between nations, regions, and communities.

But that doesn’t mean Serageldin is wrong.  The world does have a big problem with its most critical resource, and it’s very far from managing water effectively. Broadly speaking, the world faces three major challenges when it comes to freshwater. First, water is unevenly distributed across both space and time, meaning it’s almost never available where and when we want it, and in the right quantity. This problem is just as bad when there’s too much water, causing flooding, as when there’s too little. Moreover, this mismatch is getting worse because of climate change, which in many parts of the world is increasing the frequency of floods and droughts while also making precipitation more variable, and therefore harder to predict.

A second major challenge arises from water quality. What water does exist around the world often isn’t in a state where we it can be used as is; most often, it has to be purified or treated. Around the world, about 800 million people lack access to clean drinking water, and many more lack sanitation facilities. The problem of water pollution, too, is getting worse, for two main reasons. First of all, growing cities around the globe are generating increasing volumes of wastewater, most of which isn’t treated before being released into surrounding waterways. The accumulation of industrial pollutants like heavy metals in groundwater is cause for particular concern, since it’s very difficult to purify. Second, the increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides to boost crop yields causes vast quantities of pollutant runoff, choking streams and rivers. And unlike many side effects of economic growth, water pollution turns out to be pretty egalitarian: heavy metal and nutrient pollution is a major threat to human health in both developed and developing countries.

As complex as the world’s water challenges are, many of them stem from the fact that across the world, water is essentially free.

But it’s the world’s third major water-related challenge that is in many ways the most concerning. What water we do have we use poorly – and that’s true across the globe. A decade after Serageldin made his prediction, a 2004 World Bank report noted that while most experts agreed on what steps needed to be taken to manage the world’s water more effectively, virtually no country had done so. Another fifteen years later, the situation isn’t much different. But we do have some examples of where countries have succeeded in making water use more sustainable. As is so often the case, the solutions are economic – but the issues are political.

As complex as the world’s water challenges are, many of them stem from the fact that across the world, water is essentially free. There are very few places in the world where users pay anything close to the total cost of withdrawing, transporting, and purifying water, to say nothing of environmental and other externalities – meaning there’s little reason for individual water users to think about not using that last cubic meter. Adam Smith once observed that while water is about the most valuable commodity there is, hardly anyone values it, while things that are essentially useless, like diamonds, fetch enormous prices on the market. This paradox of value still obtains, and it means that the world’s water won’t be used effectively unless people learn to value it more highly. More people are going to have to pay more, in some cases much more, for the water that they use.

Of course, water being water, it’s not quite as simple to just raise the price of water. Everyone needs a certain quantity of water just to live, and there are obvious benefits to clean water that are hard to capture in a single price. These ethical issues are why it’s proven so difficult to put a price on water, and to use it effectively.

But going forward, we may not have much choice. Cooperation is more likely than conflict over water – and yet it’s not inevitable. There’s only so much water on Planet Earth, and we have to find some way short of warfare to use it equitably, efficiently, and sustainably.

Featured image credit: ‘Subnational Hydropolitics‘. Owned by Oxford University Press.

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Investing in women’s reproductive health makes economic sense

There is no gender equality without access to reproductive health services, including access to contraceptives and safe abortions. In fact, economists are paying increasing attention to the economic benefits of investing in women’s reproductive health and finding gains not only for women but also for their families and for the economy at large. Yet several governments around the world, including the United States, are restricting women’s access to contraception and safe abortion services. The International Day of Action for Women’s Health on May 28 marks a particularly good time to recognize that investing in women’s reproductive health is smart economics at home and abroad.

Since January 2017, the Trump administration has enacted a set of policies that have restricted women’s access to reproductive health care.  On his third day in office, President Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the Global Gag Rule. First implemented by Ronald Reagan in 1984, the Global Gag Rule cuts U.S. foreign aid for family planning and reproductive health to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions or discuss the option of abortion with patients. Over the last 35 years, every Democratic president has rescinded the policy and every Republican president has reinstated it. Not only did President Trump reinstate this restrictive policy, he expanded it to cover all global health funding. The policy puts $8.8 billion in global health funding at risk.

The Global Gag Rule and other policies that restrict funding for women’s reproductive health are ineffective and costly. It turns out that the Global Gag Rule causes more rather than fewer abortions. Data from 51 developing countries, covering about 6.3 million women per year, indicates that women in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa were at least twice as likely to have an abortion when the policy is effect. This policy – renamed by the Trump administration as “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” – does not achieve its objectives in the majority of countries that receive U.S. assistance. This is cutting U.S. foreign aid for family planning and reproductive health reduces women’s access to contraception and leads to more unwanted pregnancies. And women will find a way to have an abortion if they need to, even if it is illegal and in unsafe conditions.

Investing in women’s reproductive health is good for women. It also makes good economic sense for a number of reasons. Access to comprehensive reproductive services improves women’s health. Women’s ability to control the timing and number of births is linked to higher maternal age at first birth, fewer children, and longer birth intervals. These factors are all linked to improved maternal health, which not only helps women but also has repercussions for healthcare costs and the overall macroeconomy.

Women’s ability to control fertility is linked to increased educational attainment, higher labor force participation rates, and greater lifetime earnings for women. Providing birth control to young women leads to a substantial increase in age at first marriage and higher enrollment in in professional and graduate schools.  A recent study suggests that abortion law liberalization in the United States had an even stronger effect than the introduction of the birth control pill on women’s decisions to delay marriage and childbirth.

Investing in women’s reproductive health improves children’s wellbeing. In developing countries with high fertility rates, greater spacing between births and smaller family size both benefit children’s nutritional status, body mass index, development, and survival chances. Smaller family size increases the resources available for each child, which contributes to improved child health and greater educational attainment. Some of these effects can result simply from contraceptive access, not necessarily contraceptive use. For example, evidence for Malaysia indicates that parents may invest more in their daughters’ education if they know that their daughters will have access to contraception later in life.

Integrating family planning and safe abortion into a full range of reproductive health services will go a long way to promoting health equity and improving women’s economic opportunities. When women control their reproductive health, they have more control over their economic health and well-being. Research shows that it makes sense for US policy to support this agenda rather than marginalize women and their reproductive health with ideologically-based funding restrictions such as the Global Gag Rule. It is time for policy makers to embrace the fact that women’s reproductive health rights are intricately linked with their economic empowerment.

Featured image credit: #Fight4HER Rally to End Trump’s Global Gag Rule Lafayette Square, Washington, DC by Bill Petros. Public Domain via Flickr.

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The eclipse that proved Einstein’s theories

“Lights all askew in the heavens,” read the New York Times front page, “Men [sic] of science more or less agog.” The Times of London was more decorous: “Revolution in science. Newtonian ideas overthrown.”

The confirmation of Albert Einstein’s new general theory of relativity on the 29th of May 1919 made headlines around the world. Arthur Stanley Eddington‘s measurement of the gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun was a triumph of experimental and theoretical physics. Scientists are good at celebrating triumphs. Sometimes we’re a little too good – students can be left thinking that one crucial experiment is all it takes to make or break a theory. So it’s worth using this anniversary as an occasion to reflect on how science advances.

If you want to measure the deflection of starlight by the Sun, you can’t do it at night: the Sun is in the wrong place. You can’t do it in the daytime, either: you can’t see the stars. To perform their measurements, Eddington and his successors had to wait for an eclipse to block out the sunlight, letting them see images of stars close to the edge of the Sun.

But solar eclipses are, however, inconvenient. They don’t come when or where you’d like. An early mission, meant to measure the effect during an eclipse in the Crimea, ended abruptly when German astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich was interned as an enemy alien at the outbreak of World War I (He was released in a prisoner exchange; his telescope was not). Eddington had to mount expeditions to Principe, off the coast of West Africa, and northern Brazil, where temperature changes deformed a telescope’s mirror. More than fifty years later, the Texas-Mauritania eclipse expedition had its views obstructed by a dust storm. Even decades after Eddington’s first observations, the accuracy had not hugely improved. The measurements clearly favored general relativity over Newtonian gravity, but with errors of around 10%, they left a lot of wiggle room for alternative theories.

This artist’s impression shows how ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, may have looked.
Image credit: 

Then came radio astronomy. You can detect the radio waves from a quasar in broad daylight, with no need to wait for an eclipse. Radio measurements come with their own problems: a radio wave passing too close to the Sun will be refracted by the solar atmosphere. But this effect is well understood, and it varies with frequency, so it can be subtracted off by measuring at several different frequencies. The first radio measurements were already better than Eddington’s. With the advent of Very Long Baseline Interferometry, which combines signals of many widely separated radio telescopes, the accuracy has improved a thousandfold.

Nowadays, many of the best measurements of the bending of light are actually incidental results of other experiments. Geophysicists routinely use the interferometry technique to monitor the Earth’s orientation, crustal dynamics, and the like; more than seven million of those observations have been combined into a test of Einstein’s predictions of light-bending. The Hipparcos satellite was designed to use parallax to determine the distances to stars, but it also measures the defection of light; an analysis of 87,000 stars has given an answer almost as precise as the results found using Very Long Baseline Interferometry. Hipparcos’s successor, the GAIA mission, will do even better.

It’s sometimes said that a phenomenon is truly established when it passes from being a test to being a tool. The gravitational defection of light has made this passage. Eddington used the known mass of the Sun, plus Einstein’s equations, to predict the defection. Astronomers today use the observed deflection – gravitational lensing – to infer the distribution of mass, allowing a direct measurement of the otherwise invisible dark matter that pervades the universe. In a few years, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and similar observatories will use these techniques to give us unprecedented three-dimensional maps of the mass of the Universe.

But there is still room for surprises.  The Event Horizon Telescope has just shown us the first direct image of a black hole, silhouetted against light that was bent into a ring by the enormous gravitational field.  Better images are coming, and while it may not be very likely, the deflection of light could yet show that black holes are very different from how we currently perceive them.

Eddington’s triumph lives on, in ways he could not have imagined.

Featured image credit: “Solar Eclipse” by Taylor Smith. CC0 via Unsplash.

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The surprising similarities between Game of Thrones and the Hebrew Bible

Note: This post contains spoilers for the series finale of Game of Thrones.

From prophecies and their cryptic interpretations to stories of warring kings and their exploits, the narrative world that George R. R. Martin has created in his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, shares much in common with the narrative world of the Hebrew Bible. Both worlds are haunted by the impacts of colonialism, the machinations of kings and their advisors, and the competition for influence and resources. At the forefront of the plot, though often working behind the scenes, are several Westerosi wisdom figures. On a literary level, these sages propel the narrative forward, acting as advisors to the monarchs or those who aspire to that position.

In HBO’s television adaptation of Martin’s work, A Game of Thrones, the wisdom tradition expresses itself in three primary ways. Maesters, the official sages of the seven kingdoms, function as the scholars and doctors of Westeros. Like the scribes of the Hebrew Bible, they collect and interpret the history in order to learn from it. The first notable maester we encounter is Maester Luwin, advisor to the Starks. Luwin emphasizes diplomacy by teaching Bran Stark how to navigate the great houses of power in Westeros. While Luwin is a caring figure to Bran and the other Stark children, Qyburn studies more sinister aspects of knowledge and was demoted for dissecting living human beings in pursuit of medical knowledge. Later, Qyburn regains his lost influence by creating the wildfire that the Lannisters use to win the battle of Blackwater Bay and that Cersei uses to massacre her rivals. He also designs the scorpions—long range, portable ballistas that the Lannister armies use against Daenarys Targaryen’s dragons. Much like the pursuit of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, the maesters seek to record and learn from all sources of wisdom and apply their knowledge to help their rulers.

A second wisdom figure in the realm of Westeros is the intelligence agent. Two characters represent this figure: Lord Baelish (Littlefinger) and Lord Varys (the Spider). Both use knowledge gained from espionage to advance their interests. Lord Baelish gathers much of his information from the women who operate brothels throughout the Kingdom, using secrets to plant seeds in the minds of different characters, while seeking to advance his own status. Lord Varys also has a network of information gatherers, and displays great skill at navigating the shadows of Westerosi society. For Varys, knowledge and its use are the keys to manipulating the direction of the kingdom. Unlike Lord Baelish, however, Varys constantly uses his information in service to the commoners, even when it may mean changing his course of action under threat of death by dragon’s fire. Varys’s intentions reflect those of the benevolent ruler of the book of Proverbs: “Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Prov 31:8-9).

The most prominent wisdom figure in Game of Thrones is Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion was born as a dwarf in a society that devalues, in his words, “cripples, bastards, and broken things” (S1, E4). As such, he relies on his cleverness and knowledge to survive the many perils of life as a dwarf among those vying for the Iron Throne. Tyrion devours knowledge in any form. When Jon Snow asks Tyrion why he reads so much, the dwarf replies, “My brother has a sword, and I have my mind. A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone” (S1,E2). Tyrion does not only rely on book knowledge; he values observation and life experiences, so much so, that his journey reflects that of Qoheleth. Like Qoheleth, Tyrion revels in strong drink and knowledge, two components at the heart of his self-perception. When Missandei asks him how he came across a particular piece of information, Tyrion responds, “That’s what I do. I drink, and I know things (S6,E2).

On a deeper level, his love of wine and pursuit of women are much more illustrative of his celebration of life in the midst of a dismal world. When discussing the fate of Bran Stark, whom Tyrion’s brother, Jaimie, pushed out of a window, Tyrion challenges Jaimie’s ableist assertions. Jaimie laments, “But even if the boy lives, he’ll be a cripple, grotesque.” In response, Tyrion retorts, “Speaking for the grotesques, I have to disagree. Death is so final, whereas life, ah, life is full of possibilities” (S1,E2). One can hear echoes of Qoheleth in Tyrion’s celebration of life in spite of its limitations:

But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. (Eccl 9:4-5).

Of course, all the wisdom that Luwin, Qyburn, Littlefinger, Varys, and Tyrion have collected has brought each of them much sorrow (Eccl 1:18). In fact, only one of these sages, Tyrion, still clings to life. Each of the others died either in their petty pursuits or principled stands. And Tyrion, for all his cleverness, must now do penance by toiling under the sun as Hand of the King with the knowledge that he will not even be remembered in the Song of Ice and Fire (Eccl. 1:11).

Featured image: “Chess set” by Randy Fath. Public Domain via Unsplash 

 

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High pressure processing may be the future of food

For millennia, mankind has understood that we can apply heat to raw food materials to make them safe to consume and keep their quality for longer. Cooking is even credited as being key to human evolution, as its discovery (a trick unique to humans) greatly reduced the amount of energy bodies needed to digest and extract nutrients from food, allowing saved energy to be diverted into useful pathways such as those which developed more sophisticated brains.

Later, the use of cooking and other rudimentary food preservation techniques, like fermentation, pickling, and drying, were crucial to the development of civilisation as they allowed cities to emerge whose inhabitants were free to focus on things other than hunting, gathering, and farming.

Heating has remained a key tool for treatment of food, and gradually the reasons for its usefulness have grown. Developments in France in the nineteenth century illustrate this. At the start of that century, Napoleon fostered the development of canning as a means to allow his armies to march across Europe. Later Louis Pasteur unpicked the science of what was causing food spoilage, and how heat helped to eliminate these agents.

We now know that most unprocessed food materials play host to a wide range of micro-organisms, some of which cause spoilage, while others lurk stealthily and cause illness or death. In other cases, food, being mostly of biological origins, is spoiled by the action of enzymes which break down and give foul-smelling or discoloured results.

But heating food to kill bacteria or inactivate enzymes is like hitting it with a blunt hammer – it does the job, but the process is crude and not particularly discriminating.   This is because many of the characteristics we appreciate and value in our food, such as its flavour, aroma, colour, and nutritional value, are also susceptible to heat, and we end up trading off safety and stability against perceived quality and appeal.  For example, consumers in many countries prefer pasteurised milk which has a two-week shelf-life and needs to be kept in the fridge to ultra high-temperature pasteurized milk which, despite having the apparently massive advantages of sterility plus a six-month shelf-life outside the fridge, simply doesn’t taste as nice.

Food scientists have long sought innovative ways to overcome the good news/bad news nature of heating food. Over a century ago an American scientist called Bert Hite at the West Virginia Agricultural Station found a possible solution, when he showed that subjecting food materials to extremely high pressures could inactivate the undesirable agents therein without use of heat.  Figuring out how to apply this discovery on a large scale took most of a century, but today we can find high-pressure-processed meat, shellfish and juice products, and even raw milk (in Australia), which offer consumers the sensation of fresh, raw, or unprocessed foods, but with safety and stability built in not through the blunt force of a hammer, but the precision of a laser or scalpel, dealing with the undesirable while leaving the food’s taste relatively unaffected.

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Albert Camus and the problem of absurdity

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French philosopher and novelist whose works examine the alienation inherent in modern life and who is best known for his philosophical concept of the absurd. He explored these ideas in his famous novels, The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Fall (1956), as well as his philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

Camus was born to a poor family in war torn French Algeria. His father, a farmer, was killed in the First World War, leaving his deaf and illiterate wife to raise Camus and his elder brother. Despite the deprivation of his childhood, he won a scholarship to a prestigious lycée in Algiers and went on to study philosophy at the University of Algiers. He began his writing career as a journalist for Alger Républicain newspaper. After moving to Paris, he became involved in the Resistance movement, editing its clandestine paper, Combat, and was sought by the Gestapo. His memories of wars and experiences under the Nazi occupation permeated his philosophy and novels. His debut novel, The Outsider, and the essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, catapulted him to fame and brought him to the attention of Jean-Paul Sartre. After the liberation of France, he was a major figure in post-war French intellectual life.

His philosophy of absurdism can be exemplified in his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus: 1942). Camus defined the absurd as the futility of a search for meaning in an incomprehensible universe, devoid of God, or meaning. Absurdism arises out of the tension between our desire for order, meaning and happiness and, on the other hand, the indifferent natural universe’s refusal to provide that. In the essay, Camus posed the fundamental philosophical question: is life worth living? Is suicide a legitimate response if life has no meaning? He compared humankind’s longing for order and meaning to the Greek mythological hero Sisyphus, who was condemned for eternity by the gods to roll a boulder up a mountain, only to have it fall to the bottom. Like Sisyphus, we continue to ask about the meaning of life, only to find our answers tumbling back down. The philosopher asserts that we should embrace the absurdity of human existence and take on the purpose of creating value and meaning.  Efforts and resilience – not suicide and despair – are the appropriate responses. Camus argued that Sisyphus is happy and that we must emulate his resilience. The Greek hero is admirable for he accepts the pointlessness of his task, and instead of giving up or committing suicide, he has risen above his fate by deliberate choice and toils on.

Image credit: Albert Camus by unknown. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In The Stranger, with its famous line “Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don’t know,” the anti-hero protagonist had to accept the absurdity of life, “opening up his heart to the benign indifference of the universe.” The novel conveys this conception of the absurdity of human existence and explores the alienation of a young man, known as Mersault, who has killed an Arab and is condemned to death for his refusal to conform to the bourgeois society’s expectation of him, and not for the murder itself. When he does not weep at his mother’s funeral or show any emotions, this compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and the juror who convicts him. This notion of the absurd can also be found in his other masterpiece, The Plague, in which human aspirations and happiness are undermined by the plague. Set in the town of Oran which is overcome by the deadly epidemic, the novel is an allegory of German occupation of France; the plague is a metaphor for fascism and a totalitarian regime, Nazism. Camus examines human responses to random evil and human solidarity in the face of an indifferent universe.

His political philosophy finds its expression in The Rebel, which examines the notion of rebellion in opposition to the concept of revolution. Responding to the political climate of the time in Europe, Camus made a critique of communism and denounced the idea of revolution because of its tendency to transform into totalitarianism and collapse into terror, such as Nazism and Stalinism. As a pacifist, he advocated a humanistic, ethical, and social upheaval to achieve justice. He was sympathetic toward the Arabs in Algeria and wrote numerous articles to castigate the inherent injustice in Algeria under French colonialism throughout his career (collected in a volume of journalism, Actuelles III: Chroniques Algériennes 1939-1958), although he kept a neutral stance during the Algerian Revolution for fear of inflaming partisan passions. He was also against the death penalty and was one of the few who spoke out against the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

Camus died prematurely in a car accident on his way to Paris with an unfinished autobiographical novel The First Man. It was an untimely end to a highly accomplished and remarkable career. He remains one of France’s greatest cultural icons.

Featured image: “Eiffel Tower” by Louis Pellissier.  Public Domain via Unsplash. 

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Using economics to find the greatest superhero

In case you missed it, the world was recently saved by the Avengers, a Marvel Comics superhero, super-team who defeated Thanos, a genocidal maniac of galactic proportions. However, the real victory belongs to Disney, which owns the Marvel movie properties. Avengers: Endgame annihilated the record for the largest opening weekend box office haul, raking in over $1.2 billion globally. In terms of the battle for superhero big-screen supremacy, Marvel is the winner, hands-down. That being said, some on the Internet suggest that the main men and women of the other comic heavyweight, DC Comics, would’ve wiped the floor with Thanos stoking the watercooler chatter over who might be the greatest superhero of all. In the grand scheme of superhero hegemony, the answer to who is the greatest has been an elusive one, even more so with the introduction of lesser known heroes like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Deadpool, and Shazam. (Ok, Deadpool isn’t the greatest; not even Deadpool would make that claim.) In addition to more familiar names like Batman, Hulk, Superman, Thor, and Wonder Woman, we now have a host of heroes who are candidates for king or queen of hero mountain. Donning an economist’s cape, we can utilize a superpower of a different kind to at least approach an answer to a question that has befuddled comic fans for decades: who is the greatest of them all?

Considering greatness requires us to look beyond being powerful. The Hulk can smash things, and, it turns out (spoiler warning) wield infinity stones with some degree of success. But rampaging Hulk is a menace to everyone, even other heroes. Thor is particularly strong, but (another spoiler) he is prone to drunkenness and an apparent addiction to Fortnite. The mighty Captain Marvel is so convinced of her own righteousness that in the comics she considers taking over the world. A smashy, boozy, or dictatorial hero may be no hero at all, so perhaps we should look at additional attributes.

Saving people should make the hero happy. In economic terms, we call this utility.

There are strong heroes, smart heroes, noble heroes, and brave heroes. There are heroes with the power to destroy the universe, and ones who are just out there protecting the neighborhood. Who could possibly be the best? To adjudicate this, let’s consider an economic perspective. The greatest should be the most productive in terms of accomplishing his objectives. Moreover, saving people should make the hero happy. In economic terms, we call this utility. Great heroes are happier, or increase their utility, when they save people. In that regard, we can clearly say that Wonder Woman is better than Wolverine (who seems annoyed by the whole hero thing). But comparisons require an additional element. Productivity could just mean Captain Marvel takes over the world. She is happy, and everyone would be safe, but at what cost? The second part to the economic analysis is that the hero needs to consider how their actions would impact the world they are trying to keep safe.

The economic investigation comes down to this: Who achieves the most and does so at the lowest cost? Costs to saving the day include what the heroes give up, say in terms of a personal life, and the costs imposed on society as they do their jobs. In other words, a tradeoff exists for the hero between good deed doing and time away from the family. Similarly, there is a tradeoff for the citizenry between being safe and living in a dictatorship.

Unfortunately, economic reasoning can only take us so far. You see, there is one significant shortcoming with utility analysis. Like comics, utility is a fabrication. There isn’t a universally accepted scale for how many utility points you get from eating chocolate cake, or reading a comic book, or saving someone from Thanos. How you measure happiness won’t ever compare to how I measure it or how Superman measures it. The only real thing we can say when comparing utility is that something makes you happier or less happy, not by how much or how that change in happiness improves your life relative to mine. That means that while utility is certainly a helpful tool to establish motivations we must apply this one person (or hero) at a time.

So who is the greatest? Powerful, yet considerate heroes, who like doing what they do are few and far between; thus, the list of contenders for best in the land is curtailed significantly.

I know who I would choose. Partly based on economics, the greatest superhero is … well, you don’t really want to know that. It might make you mad, and that would reduce your utility. The debate over who is the greatest will probably never end. That’s part of the fun, and even economists can’t take all the fun out of superhero stories.

Featured image: “Comic Books” by Lena Rose. Public Domain via Unsplash. 

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How to protect your family from sun exposure this summer

Global climate change has significant negative impacts on our environment and many living beings in the world around us. Higher levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun reach our planet’s surface as the Earth’s ozone layer continues to deplete. Sun exposure is the primary risk factor for skin cancer: increased exposure due to ozone depletion is expected to lead to increases in the incidence of skin cancers, including melanoma. Sun exposure in childhood is predictive of skin cancer later in life.

What can parents, educators, coaches, policy makers, and others do today to help protect children from the harmful effects associated with climate change?

Be a role model for making good choices about using sun safety strategies. Children look to those around them to learn about healthy behaviors and how to practice them. Be a positive model for children by practicing sun safety strategies yourself, and make sun safety a regular part of your family’s daily routines.

Give children tools for protecting themselves. Help your children protect themselves from by giving them the right tools. These include:

Help children seek shade during the hours of 10 am – 4 pm (March through October) and 9 am – 3 pm (November through February) when sun exposure is most dangerous.Remind children to wear protective clothing (broad-brimmed hats and sunglasses, long-sleeved shirts, and long pants or skirt).Encourage children to apply a broad spectrum sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher to any exposed skin. Re-apply every two hours or after coming into contact with water or sweat—even on a cloudy day.Make sunscreen application on the go easier by keeping extra bottles of it by your front door and in your sports bags for easy access.

Reinforce children’s use of sun safety strategies. Applaud children when they use good sun safety strategies with verbal praise or a small reward. This is especially important for children who are more reluctant to use sun safety strategies, and can help maintain good sun safety practices.

Talk with children about avoiding tanning. Both indoor tanning (such as through the use of artificial sunlamp products or tanning beds) and outdoor tanning in sunlight lead to skin damage that increase the risk of skin cancer.

Offer children choices about how to protect themselves. Encourage children to use several sun safety behaviors at the same time. When this is not practical, give children choices about which sun safety behaviors they use. For instance, some children may prefer to wear sunscreen on their upper body when they swim while others might want to wear a rash guard or sun shirt.

Advocate for skin cancer prevention education for children and families. Encourage schools, parent-teacher-student organizations, community groups, sports teams, and other clubs your child comes in contact with to support sun safe behaviors. For instance, schools can provide education on skin cancer prevention and promote behaviors that encourage students to protect themselves from the sun.

Show children that they are active partners in addressing climate change and its effects on the environment and health. In addition to teaching children how to make healthy choices around sun safety, encourage them to learn how to take care of the environment in other ways and be advocates for social change.

Climate change will continue to affect all life on our planet. Children can learn from an early age how to keep themselves healthy in a changing climate and how they can make a positive difference in the world around them.

Feature image credit: Photo courtesy Franklin Timpson of the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center.

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Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday

Few lives have been as heavily documented as Queen Victoria’s, who kept a careful record of her own life in journals from a young age. In her day, she was also one of the most heavily depicted people in existence across a variety of mediums including paintings, sculptures, sketches, and the newly emerging photographs. It is no wonder, then, that Victoria frequently adorns our screens even 200 years after her birth, such as through the recent popular TV series Victoria (2016–present), or the film Victoria & Abdul (2017).

In celebration of Victoria’s 200th birthday today, discover six facts you may not have known about one of the longest-reigning British monarchs.

There were concerns over Victoria’s sanity during her reign
Following her husband Albert’s death, there were concerns that Victoria would suffer from madness as King George III – who was considered insane – was her grandfather. These concerns were likely based not just on medical history but also sexism. Suggestions of insanity were used to contain the perceived dangers of a young woman on the throne who was without a husband, and these claims tailed off once the queen passed menopause.Victoria helped to extend the right to vote – but not to women
While we may not think that the Royal Family nowadays has much say in domestic policy, there continues to be much debate about Queen Victoria’s influence, particularly during the Third Reform Act of 1884. Scholars now suggest that the royal services in securing the passage of the bill were more important than previously thought – so important, in fact, that the royal mediation may well have been decisive in the passing of the Bill. Though it did not allow all residents to vote (most notably women), it helped to increase the size of the electorate considerably.Victoria was not amused by the rising tide of feminism
Image credit: Queen Victoria and the members of the royal family (1877). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.Despite her gender and the sexism Victoria herself faced, she condemned the women’s suffrage movement, believing it to be a “wicked folly” and a violation of God’s laws. She never gave up this belief, even as the fledging feminist movement of mid-century matured and grew to the size of a mass movement by the end of the century, referring to her gender as the “poor feeble sex” with little thought given to the irony of her statement.The queen was a mother of 9 and grandmother of 34, but she wasn’t impressed by babies
Victoria was a grandmother at the age of 39, and a great-grandmother at 60, but she really didn’t like babies: the queen stated “when they come at the rate of three a year it becomes a cause of mere anxiety for my own children and of no great interest” following the birth of one granddaughter. Sons were even worse; in Victoria’s eyes, a son was a “misfortune” that got in everyone’s way. Victoria was dismayed to find herself pregnant within just weeks of her marriage; she was treated as an invalid throughout each of her pregnancies and suffered from postnatal depression. Despite this disdain for babies, Victoria did love her descendants, but became more interested in them as they grew into adulthood.
This painting by Victoria of the new Balmoral, designed by Albert to resemble his native German castles, was made in 1852 while it was being built. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.The “Greatest Showman” visited Victoria on three occasions
The queen appreciated shows for entertainment. She often attended the theatre and the opera, which she had loved from a young age, and she enjoyed visiting Astley’s circus. In 1844, Victoria invited the American showman P. T. Barnum to Buckingham Palace on three occasions along with General Tom Thumb, a boy with dwarfism who was just six years old at the time. Apparently, the queen was quite charmed by the young performer, taking him by the hand on a tour of her picture gallery.Both Victoria and Albert loved Scotland
Despite having access to three royal residences – Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and  Brighton Pavilion – this wasn’t enough for the infatuated couple, who wanted somewhere they could escape the public. Even after building Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight, they decided this didn’t provide them sufficient privacy as it was too close to London, and so turned to escape in Scotland through Balmoral. Victoria enjoyed the company of the local highlanders, who she saw as “noble peasants.” The queen also enjoyed sketching and painting while exploring Balmoral with her husband, a skill she learned from her favourite artist, Edward Landseer.

Queen Victoria influenced the monarchy and also wider society, and her legacy extends far beyond her lifetime. Throughout Britain – and to a lesser extent across the former British Empire – few towns are without a statue of Victoria, or a park, building, or street named after her. Between this and the tradition of wearing a white wedding dress that she established, Victoria’s legacy looks set to last another 200 years at least.

Featured image: “Queen Victoria monument” by rolf_aderhold. Public domain via Pixabay.

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