Month: September 2011

In urban design, Emily Badger defends the grid system:

Most of the oldest cities in America – not to mention the oldest capitals in Europe, or in the Roman Empire, for that matter – were laid out in neat, densely interconnected grids that enabled people to get around before cars came along. Manhattan looks like this. So does Savannah, New Haven and Washington, D.C. … Americans lost sight of that tightly knit model when we got into cars and began to envision something else: the Garden City.

Felix Salmon nods:

Shorter distances mean that you’re more likely to walk or bike; they also make the neighborhood feel smaller. For many decades, suburbia was designed on the idea that Americans want to feel as though they’re far away from each other, but the fact is that we need community and linkages just as much as we need a space of our own.

What they have in common, according to Michael Pollan:

When change depends on overcoming the influence of an entrenched power, it helps to have another powerful interest in your corner—an interest that stands to gain from reform. In the case of the tobacco industry, that turned out to be the states, which found themselves on the hook (largely because of Medicaid) for the soaring costs of smoking-related illnesses. So, under economic duress, states and territories joined to file suit against the tobacco companies to recover some of those costs, and eventually they prevailed. The food movement will find such allies, especially now that Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has put the government on the hook for the soaring costs of treating chronic illnesses—most of which are preventable and linked to diet. No longer allowed to cherry-pick the patients they’re willing to cover, or to toss overboard people with chronic diseases, the insurance industry will soon find itself on the hook for the cost of the American diet too.

A sign of impending doom?

Architecture isn’t in itself a cause of corporate decline—that notion is ridiculous—but overbearing buildings can sometimes be a symptom of companies losing touch with reality, and this problem will manifest itself in other ways. It’s said that Steve Jobs considers this building to be a key part of his legacy, which would be unfortunate, because it would mean that his last contribution to his company might well be his least meaningful.

Not looking good:

At current estimates, the CBO assumes that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP will equal about 20% in 2015, up from about 15% today. That 5% increase is based almost entirely on the idea that unemployment will fall dramatically. If it doesn't, every 1 percentage point they're off by adds $180 billion a year to deficits. Tack on the same amount for higher unemployment benefits. Bottom line: A crude, back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if unemployment averages 7% between 2012 and 2021 — instead of the 5.2% currently projected — the budget deficit could be $2 trillion to $4 trillion higher than now envisioned.

The drycleaner's:

Diego Stocco explains:

I used a puff iron, press and dry cleaning machines, a washer, clothes hangers, and a bucket full of soap. The bass and lead sounds were created from the buzzing tones coming from the conduits and engines. There are no additional sounds from any traditional or electronic instruments.

David Dobbs explores its quirks and purpose:

Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.

Not as much:

The economist Douglas Hibbs has found that, historically, Democratic voters were more likely to punish incumbents for presiding over periods of high unemployment, while Republican voters were likely to punish incumbents for presiding over periods of high inflation. … Voters, it seems, don’t expect Republicans to do much about jobs, so they’re not penalized as much for inaction. Uncoöperative Republicans are really just delivering what their constituencies expect.

Peter Hessler profiles a small-town pharmacist, Don Colcord. Colcord is the only game in Nucla, Colorado, and he offers credit to those who can't afford their drugs. Don once befriended Tim Brick, a lonely stranger who moved late in life into town:

In his will, Mr. Brick left more than half a million dollars in cash and stock to the local druggist. After taxes and other expenses, it came to more than three hundred thousand dollars, which was almost exactly what the community owed Don Colcord. But Don didn’t seem to connect these events. He talked about all three subjects—neglecting his dying brother, offering credit to the townspeople, and helping Mr. Brick and receiving his gift—in different conversations that spanned more than a year. He probably never would have mentioned the money that was owed to him, but somebody in Nucla told me and I asked about it. From my perspective, it was tempting to apply a moral calculus, until everything added up to a neat story about redemption and reward in a former utopian community. But Don’s experiences seemed to have taught him that there is something solitary and unknowable about every human life. He saw connections of a different sort: these people and incidents were more like the spokes of a wheel. They didn’t touch directly, but each was linked to something bigger, and Don’s role was to try to keep the whole thing moving the best he could.

Freshman students at Harvard this fall were invited to sign one. Virginia Postrel takes issue with equating kindness and civility:

Kindness isn’t a public or intellectual virtue, but a personal one. It is a form of love. Kindness seeks, above all, to avoid hurt. Criticism — even objective, impersonal, well- intended, constructive criticism — isn’t kind. Criticism hurts people’s feelings, and it hurts most when the recipient realizes it’s accurate. Treating “kindness” as the way to civil discourse doesn’t show students how to argue with accuracy and respect. It teaches them instead to neither give criticism nor tolerate it. …

Douthat concurs:

The pursuite of niceness and the worship of success can complement one another as easily as they can contradict. But the kind of culture that’s created when they combine — friendly and deferential on the surface, boiling with resume-driven competitiveness underneath — isn’t one that a great university should aspire to cultivate.

Along the same lines, Harry Lewis, a professor and former Harvard dean, fears the pledge's precedent. In a letter to the Crimson, law professor Charles Fried goes further. John Sides disagrees:

It strikes me that the bulk of the socialization that goes on in universities is not intellectual or scholarly; it is instead emotional and social.  And so how college students treat each other is important.

Niall Ferguson credits ideas and institutions: