Month: May 2009

“You Can’t Regulate God”

By Patrick Appel

Democracy in America addresses Rep. Barton's latest buffoonery:

Please don't get me wrong, it's not simply that Mr Barton is a climate-change skeptic. There are plenty of those and some make decent arguments against moving ahead with measures to control emissions. The problem with Mr Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe. Yet this is who the Republicans have out in front on the issue of global warming. It is well past time some of the party's brighter lights pushed back against this anti-intellectual offensive.

Class and Innovation

by Richard Florida

Yesterday, we looked at the effects of class on economic growth. Today, we turn to the relationship between class and innovation.

It's a well-established truism that innovation drives economic growth and development. Nations and regions around the world go to great measures to stimulate innovation in their attempts to create the "next Silicon Valley" which will generate new technologies, improve economic growth, and lift their living standards.

To examine the relationship between class and innovation, Charlotta Mellander used data on patents by country available from the World Intellectual Property Organization. Despite some limitations, patents are the best-available measure of innovation.

The relationships between class and innovation are, if anything, even stronger than between class and economic activity.

The first graph shows the close relationship between innovation and the creative class. The larger the percentage of the creative class in a country, the higher its level of innovation.

The working class and innovation – not so much. Countries with a large working class have much lower levels of innovation.

Source of all graphics: Martin Prosperity Institute

The Incoherent Cowardice Of Harry Reid, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I have had a bit of a rough week, haven't smiled or laughed nearly as much as I usually do, but that changed when I saw video of Harry Reid maintaining that you can't put accused terrorists in prison without releasing them. I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt afterward and my patient husband had to put up with me backing up the Tivo several times just to see it again and again.

I am in awe over the scaredy-cat crap coming out of our senators' mouths (with the excellent exception of Dick Durbin). What is wrong with these people? They act like the detainees have crazy superpowers, like they are going to transform into a millimeter-high insect and crawl out under the cell door into the shoe of a correctional officer and then ESCAPE.

Roots Of The Deinstitutionalization Movement, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Deinstitutionalization did began during the Reagan administration.  However it was during his 1966-1974 terms as Governor of California.  Liberal Californians wanted to move mentally ill people from institutions to community-based care, which conservatives went along with as a cost-cutting measure, but conservatives blocked spending on the community-based care (helped tremendously in 1978 by the passage of Prop 13, which has created fiscal chaos at all levels of government in California for 30 years). 

The Mystery Of Great Prose, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

"These are the times that try men's souls" is essentially a traditional poetic line. It scans. As in, it's iambic. "These," "the," and "that" also act as an assonant triangle, creating balance, room, and rhythm in the sentence. And rhythm, or poetic meter, is about the interplay between what's strong (stressed) and what's weak (unstressed). The sentence alludes to strength and weakness — the soul is tried, not overcome, by the force of the times — and requires this syntactic manifestation in order to be something really special.

"Times like these try men's souls" doesn't scan iambic. Every word is a stressed syllable, which creates a sprint effect, one that hurries past the burden, the struggle, the rumination of the sentiment. The sentence has no syntactic relationship to its content. That's why you're just not feeling it. And that, dear Strunk & White (& Sullivan) readers, is the operative buried treasure in great poetry — and great prose.

Another reader adds:

It's a trivial observation, but the rhythm is different.

You can divide "These are the times that try men's souls" into two parts. "These are the times" is said more quickly than "that try men's souls." The most dramatic pat of the phrase is highlighted by the slowness. Another way of putting it is that the way the phrase sounds fits the meaning. And it's got 8 beats, which is a good number of beats to have. When you've got 8 beats, you don't feel like you're missing something.

"Times like these try men's souls" is like two triplets. It's not interesting, it's six beats long, (two are missing!) and it's monotonous. It doesn't stress the important part — the trying of men's souls. It's all the same — click clack clack, click clack clack. A lame, tinny waltz.

Crisis and Creativity

by Richard Florida

The New York Times asks artists how the recession is affecting their lives and work (h/t: Alison Kemper). Money quote:

" I love it. The only thing that makes me sad is that I can't make a living right now."

While the responses comprise a small, ad hoc sample, my read is that the artists in major centers like NYC and San Francisco seem more upbeat than those in harder-hit Rustbelt communities.

Marriage Equality Update

by Patrick Appel

New Hampshire legislators have voted down their marriage equality bill because of religious liberty clauses inserted by the governor:

State Representative Steve Vaillancourt, a gay Republican from Manchester, was a leading voice against the amendment securing religious liberties, saying that the House should not be "bullied" by the governor.

Now the bill goes to committee to try to resolve differences. Andrew's endorsement of the religious liberty compromise is here.

Realpolitik of Openness and Tolerance

by Richard Florida

Stephen Walt spells out the advantages of tolerance, openness, and cosmopolitanism from the realist respective (thanks to Jon Rauch for the pointer). He goes to great pains to point out that he is talking about cosmopolitan openness not just ethnic assimilation.

[T]he pressures of international competition give an advantage to any society that can "cream" some of the smartest and/or hardest working people from all over the world. How? By making that society an attractive place to live and work, mostly by creating an atmosphere of equality and toleration…

And note that this argument isn't just about ethnic assimilation. In effect, what I'm suggesting is that from a realist perspective, there is a strong case for "small-l" liberal toleration. All else equal, societies that establish strong norms and institutions that protect individual rights and freedoms (including those governing sexual preference, I might add) will become attractive destinations for a wider array of potential citizens than societies that try to maintain a high degree of uniformity. And when you can choose from a bigger talent pool, over time you're going to do better.