links for 2010-08-30

• One Set of Shoulders: China’s Hidden Revolution
  For many Westerners, this is a familiar picture. We have not only accustomed ourselves to the atomizing forces of capitalism and modern culture, we idolize them. They only make us freer (we think), and anything that increases our freedom is good (we think), given that freedom is the highest good (our unquestioned questionable assumption). Q.E.D. But China isn’t there yet. People I spoke with my age or older still think in traditional ways about family and society, even as economic growth and the one-child policy promote individualism, selfishness, and narcissism. They are disturbed by the prospect of atomized individuals facing a powerful state and largely un-regulated market forces without mediating social institutions. Western nations have somewhat adapted to the cultural contradictions of capitalism because they are politically and socially democratic. China hasn’t, and isn’t.
  (tags: china children population demographics generation culture competition)

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links for 2010-08-27

• Fresh Air: 'A Psychiatrist's Prescription For His Profession'
  Two years ago, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat wrote a piece in the New York Times Magazine called Dr. Drug Rep, in which he told his story of being paid to push the anti-depressant Effexor to his colleagues.

  Carlat joins Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies today to talk about his new book, called Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry. But the book isn't just concerned with the influence of drug companies in the profession.

  Carlat believes in prescribing medication, but he says too many psychiatrists have all but abandoned talk therapy — leaving in-depth interaction with patients to others — while they pursue medical fixes for mood problems and mental disorders.

  (tags: psychiatry medicine mental interview radio pharma drugs therapy incentives deception health corruption)

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links for 2010-08-26

• How Supermodels are Like Toxic Assets
  Herding and cascades are rather problematic to financial markets; they leads investors to artificially bid up asset values, thereby leading to bubbles and eventual crashes, even if investors knew better all along, which, it turns out in the housing market, they largely did. But because investors, like fashionistas, react to each other as well as to the aggregate traces of fellow investors’ actions (captured well in signaling instruments like options), they exacerbate systemic risk. Essentially, valuing financial goods is a matter of trying to be in fashion, which is a gamble.
  (tags: finance housing gambling crisis market fashion bubble)

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links for 2010-08-19

• The Point of No Return – Jeffrey Goldberg
  For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.
  (tags: to_read iran israel usa war middle_east future nuclear foreign_policy deterrence jeffrey_goldberg)
• The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Chris Andersen
  Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures.
  (tags: wired web future technology history innovation trends)
• The Global Cities Index 2010 – Foreign Policy
  We are at a global inflection point. Half the world's population is now urban — and half the world's most global cities are Asian. The 2010 Global Cities Index, a collaboration between Foreign Policy, management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reveals a snapshot of this pivotal moment. In 2010, five of the world's 10 most global cities are in Asia and the Pacific: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul. Three — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — are American cities. Only two, London and Paris, are European. And there's no question which way the momentum is headed: Just as more people will continue to migrate from farms to cities, more global clout will move from West to East.
  (tags: world cities influence asia economics commerce survey list globalization markets culture innovation)
• Why has extreme weather failed to heat up climate debate? – Bill McKibben
  We've had so much record heat around the world lately that the records themselves are setting records: 17 nations have reached new temperature highs, a new record for records in a year. Pakistan hit (129F) 54C, a new record for all of Asia. Moscow had never hit 100F (38C) before; lately it's been a rare day when the mercury settles lower.

  Now scientists have confirmed what's been pretty obvious: the entire world has just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade on record. Following the hottest June ever, AccuWeather.com yesterday said July was the second hottest July recorded – and the warmest ever for land temperatures alone.

  (tags: bill_mckibben environment weather climate_change flood fire disaster politics)

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links for 2010-08-18

• Military service alone doesn't make you a hero – LA Times
  Simply joining the armed services does not make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat.
  (tags: recommended military war society patriotism nationalism)

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links for 2010-08-17

• The Transformer – By Fred Kaplan | Foreign Policy
  What-if games are dubious enterprises, but it's not unreasonable to infer that, had Gates come into those meetings as skeptical as he'd been before his summertime conversion, the emerging consensus — and Obama's decision — might have tilted toward a smaller deployment and a less ambitious strategy.
  (tags: to_read military defense_secretary foreign_policy afghanistan war ideology surge interview robert_gates imperialism)

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links for 2010-08-16

• On The Media: "60 Years Late: An Untold Story"
  When the atomic bomb exploded over the port city of Nagasaki, Japan in the late morning of August 9th, 1945, tens of thousands of civilian Japanese died immediately. By October, many thousands more were dying of a mysterious disease, but journalists were barred from the affected areas so few accounts of the suffering would reach readers here at home. Brooke talks with Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell about the very first reporter on the scene, George Weller, who wrote a series of articles that weren't published until 2005.

  Also see "White House Meddling in the First Film About The Atomic Bomb": http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/08/13/03

  (tags: radio government propaganda usa japan wwii atomic bomb deception media film journalism hiroshima)
• In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming – NYTimes
  Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.

  The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.

  “The climate is changing,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity.”

  (tags: recommended weather catastrophe climate_change world science environment)

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links for 2010-08-14

• The Best Magazine Articles Ever
  The following are suggestions for the best magazine articles (in English) ever.  Stars denote how many times a correspondent has suggested it. Submitter comments are in italics.
  (tags: articles magazine best_of reading writing list authors)
• The Great Interchange Fee Scam – Kevin Drum
  On average, each cash-using household pays $151 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,482 from cash users every year. Because credit card spending and rewards are positively correlated with household income, the payment instrument transfer also induces a regressive transfer from low-income to high-income households in general.
  (tags: kevin_drum credit_card rewards monopoly regulation finance wealth poverty fees fairness)

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links for 2010-08-11

• David Foster Wallace The String Theory – David Foster Wallace on Tennis – Esquire
  What happens when all of a man's intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.
  (tags: to_read david_foster_wallace tennis intelligence sports entertainment incentives)
• Todd S. Purdum – Washington, We Have a Problem
  What’s the matter with Washington? In a remarkably detailed and nuanced 10,000-word article, Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum attempts to answer that question. Using history as his backdrop, Purdum spends a day inside the West Wing and talks to Obama’s top aides, who tell him about the challenges of playing the Beltway game, ugly as it has become, even as their boss insists they find a way to transcend it.
  (tags: to_read radio recommended white_house president obama interview politics corruption partisanship media shallowness washington history)
• Todd Purdum – 'Is Washington Beyond Fixing?' : Fresh Air
  Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum recently spent a day in the White House following President Obama and his aides around. What he discovered, he says, is that Obama's job "would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors — thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systematic corruption and disintegrating media" in Washington, D.C.
  (tags: radio recommended white_house president obama interview politics corruption partisanship media shallowness washington)

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links for 2010-08-10

• America Goes Dark – Paul Krugman
  In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.
  (tags: krugman politics responsibility budget education transportation infrastructure spending tax usa debt government economics)

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