Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 276

Assorted links

1. That was then, this is now.  Advances in plastic surgery.

2. On resolving the Mpemba paradox.

3. How much of the Flynn effect is a retesting gain?

4. Germany now allows “indeterminate gender” at birth as a valid category.

5. The culture that is Norway.

6. Miles Kimball on Mormonism.

*Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, volume I*

That is the new book by Mark Lewisohn, and I was so keen to finish it that I neglected to see the Ender’s Game movie yesterday.  944 pp. and you only get up to 1962 and the beginnings of the first LP!  Despite the length, it is gripping throughout.  In addition to the obvious angles on The Beatles, it is a study of Liverpudlian history, the nature of poverty, why educating even really smart people can be problematic, why relative age matters so much for young people, how groups gel, the importance of practice, the importance of management, and the importance of origins, among a variety of other more general topics.

This work is one of my five favorite non-fiction books of the year.  And if you are wondering, it is not just me: the book has received very positive reviews elsewhere.

NBA predictions time

It’s that time of year.   Against the conventional wisdom, I’m going to opt for the Brooklyn Nets.  They have an excellent front line, a very good starting five, and a deep bench.  Garnett and Pierce still have something to prove, although my hypothesis does require an attitude upgrade from Deron Williams.  They are more like some of the old Pistons teams than a “single best player team.”  A healthy Miami Heat is a stronger contender but Wade is already being rested for back-to-back games, which does not augur well for a long playoff run.  Chicago needs a more creative offense and Indiana doesn’t seem quite ready to win a title, though they may knock off Miami in a playoff series.

The most overrated team is the Los Angeles Clippers (Griffin is more a spectacular player than a great player and Chris Paul is bad for team morale).  So who will win the West?  When in doubt, and when it seems no one deserves to win, ask these two questions: a) does the team have world-class defense?  b) which is the team with the single best player?  That leaves you with San Antonio and Oklahoma as the two units with the best chances.  Each seems too weakened to take home an entire title.

By the way, here is a new study of where NBA players come from, note this: “Growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the N.B.A. for both black and white men.”

How exactly did the ACA exchanges go askew?

Here is the real inside story of how the ACA exchanges failed, excellent piece by Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin.  Here is the David Cutler to Larry Summers letter.  Both are essential reading.

The increase in residential segregation by income

Via Kevin Drum:

Via Harrison Jacobs, here’s a recent study showing the trend in income segregation in American neighborhoods. Forty years ago, 65 percent of us lived in middle-income neighborhoods. Today, that number is only 42 percent. The rest of us live either in rich neighborhoods or in poor neighborhoods.

There is more here.

Assorted links

1. Someone doesn’t like Colin McGinn.

2. What if baseball moved to a sixteen-game schedule?

3. Where would seven million displaced Syrians fit?  And unusually placed sports arenas.

4. Israeli coverage of *Average is Over*, in Hebrew.

5. My thoughts on the health care mandate, from four years ago.

6. Lex Machina does legal analytics, using Big Data and AI.

Restructuring the Social Sciences

Very interesting paper (pdf) from Gary King with practical advice on reorganizing centers and departments for the information age:

The social sciences are undergoing a dramatic transformation from studying problems to solving them; from making due with a small number of sparse data sets to analyzing increasing quantities of diverse, highly informative data; from isolated scholars toiling away on their own to larger scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary, lab-style research teams; and from a purely academic pursuit to having a major impact on the world. To facilitate these important developments, universities, funding agencies, and governments need to shore up and adapt the infrastructure that supports social science research. We discuss some of these developments here, as well as a new type of organization we created at Harvard to help encourage them — the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.  An increasing number of universities are beginning efforts to respond with similar institutions. This paper provides some suggestions for how individual universities might respond and how we might work together to advance social science more generally.

The Fanfare classical music meta-list for best recordings of the year

Fanfare is the leading periodical for classical music reviews, and every year it asks numerous critics — this time 45 of them — for their top five classical music picks of the year.  In turn, each year I present a meta-list, which simply is a list of all the works selected by more than one critic.  This year we have:

1. Meanwhile, by Eighth Blackbird., assorted contemporary pieces.

2. Haydn,  The Creation, conducted by Martin Pearlman.

3. Arvo Pärt, Adam’s Lament.

4. Bellini’s Norma, with Cecilia Bartoli.

I just ordered 1-3 of those, for the Bellini I am still stuck on Maria Callas.  My personal picks of the year, in classical music, would be:

1.  Shostakovich string quartets, Pacifica Quartet, several volumes, including some other Soviet compositions as well.  I find these more powerful than Emerson, Manhattan, Brodsky, or the other classic sets of Shostakovich.

2. Arvo Pärt, Creator Spiritus.

3. Klára Würtz and Kristóf Baráti, Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano.

4. The Art of David Tudor, seven disc box set, caveat emptor on this one.

From the comments, John Goodman on health insurance subsidies

Commenting on yesterday’s post, John Goodman writes:

Two points:

1. The premium the individual pays is not fixed as a percent of income. The subsidy is fixed, based on the second lowest silver plan premium and that amount is based on income. But the consumer is free to buy any plan. Remember, the second lowest priced silver plan may be a really lousy plan. It might have a very narrow network, for example. So, all the plans are competing against each other, with one fixed subsidy and an array of premiums. The premium an insurer charges will matter very much. 2. After 2018, the out-of-pocket premium for the second lowest priced silver plan will no longer be fixed as a percent of income. Premium subsidies as a whole will grow no faster than GDP + 0.5%, the same rate of growth that is in the Obama budget for Medicare.

The thread has some other good comments as well.

How many time zones does America need anyway?

Allison Schrager writes:

This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again—no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

And why?:

It sounds radical, but it really isn’t. The purpose of uniform time measures is coordination. How we measure time has always evolved with the needs of commerce. According to Time and Date, a Norwegian Newsletter dedicated to time zone information, America started using four time zones in 1883. Before that, each city had its own time standard based on its calculation of apparent solar time (when the sun is directly over-head at noon) using sundials. That led to more than 300 different American time zones. This made operations very difficult for the telegraph and burgeoning railroad industry. Railroads operated with 100 different time zones before America moved to four, which was consistent with Britain’s push for a global time standard. The following year, at the International Meridian Conference, it was decided that the entire world could coordinate time keeping based on the British Prime Meridian (except for France, which claimed the Prime Median ran through Paris until 1911). There are now 24 (or 25, depending on your existential view of the international date line) time zones, each taking about 15 degrees of longitude.

Now the world has evolved further—we are even more integrated and mobile, suggesting we’d benefit from fewer, more stable time zones. Why stick with a system designed for commerce in 1883? In reality, America already functions on fewer than four time zones. I spent the last three years commuting between New York and Austin, living on both Eastern and Central time. I found that in Austin, everyone did things at the same times they do them in New York, despite the difference in time zone. People got to work at 8 am instead of 9 am, restaurants were packed at 6 pm instead of 7 pm, and even the TV schedule was an hour earlier.

There is more here.