A note for the reader: Before this newsletter moved to Substack it was an email thread between friends. I’m posting the previous emails here for completeness, and so that if I invoke a previous comment readers can refer to them.
Hi all,
I have discovered a rough gauge of telling how busy the week is in my personal life and/or in the news: how many WSJ and NYT push notifications have been left unread on my phone by Friday evening. This week? Twelve.
1) Legal Frontiers: Who owns crowdsourced material that then is commercialized? A legal battle over this question is being waged over wolfish erotica.
2) Metrics: A good reminder that what you measure matters. The busiest airport in the world? Sometimes Anchorage, thanks to COVID. (S/o to Aren for the recommendation)
3) South of the Mason-Dixon: I often am given a hard time for being born in Alabama, and some of it is deserved — but people often fail to realize how beautiful the state is.
4) Eyes on the Prize: The NSF is, and should always be, about basic science. While I support Schumer and Young’s bill, we must stay vigilant that the pure science mission of NSF is preserved if the restructuring becomes law. Basic science is not flashy, and it does not deliver consistent returns. You have to invest big and be ok with it not always working out. At the end of the day though, it is the path forward. At the end of the day we must have systems abstracted from political winds, and aimed at the big questions, discussed in terms of progress occurring over decades, not months We are shooting rapids here. It is necessary for the NSF to grow and this restructuring is a useful way to do it. But be vigilant, threats abound.
5) Living with ‘Rona: Speaking of the unexpected benefits of scientific research, put your headphones on for this exploration of how an NYC day has gone from a roar to a whisper.
6) Block-ade Runners: How do you get around strict censorship? Why, with Minecraft, of course (Read “What gamers are reading” section).
7) Critic’s Corner: This is a great example of a good idea with bad execution. Ok so Coconut Oil seems bad for you…but what does that mean? How often should you use it? Oatmeal every meal certainly is not healthy. Additionally, consider sushi’s place in the coordinate system. In its purest form — sashimi or nigiri, it surely is healthy, but what if most Americans picture something different? Same with shrimp boiled versus deep fried at Red Lobster. A lack of clarity over what the words actually mean, and what images they conjure for specialists and lay Americans, adds to a confusing article, but also highlights a more subtle point about the troubles of trying to convey nutritional information.
8) Sign of the Times: A word you didn’t know you needed: Cassandrafreude.
9) A Significant Loss: Alberto Alesina died this past week while on a hike. If you read only one paper of his, I’d recommend this one on how the geographic spread of the use of the plough generations ago might have had a hand in shaping today’s gender roles.
10) Happening now: If you missed it, go back and watch the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon today (5/30). It is hard to be overstated how important this day is in the history of American space travel. Bridenstine (NASA Administrator) is a GOP shill, but his hyping of this mission is not unfounded. This is the first launch on a US craft that was privately contracted (via SpaceX), and if all goes well, one that can be reused. This will open a new era in the affordability and speed of space travel. We have far to go in pushing the boundaries of the final frontier, but this is a giant leap.
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Your weekly recommendation: A mentor of mine sent me a chain-email requesting book recommendations. I usually discard such things but, out of respect for him, put sent one in to the person at the top of the chain and forwarded the chain along to some folks who I thought would give him a great recommendation. I settled on two books out of many, which I thought were the biggest impact for the time spent reading them: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Hayes translation) and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Both are very short but profoundly important.
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Graphs of the week:
1) Just one this week from WSJ. Some good news — Renewable energy consumption past coal for the first time since the 1885 (back then it was mostly wood power. Hydroelectric became popular in the 1880s)
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Harrison