Below are some things that caught my attention during my recent listening of The Economist (These are from the June 19th – 25th 2010 print edition, the text of which is available at http://www.economist.com, although full access may be limited to subscribers). More background on these listening activities appears at the bottom of this post.
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“The federal agency in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declared that the mortgage pair would no longer trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Fannie and Freddie have received $145 billion in government bail-outs; Fannie’s share price, which was worth around $70 in 2007, has recently been trading on the NYSE for less than $1.” (The world this week – – Business this week – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“FACED with the difficulty of ruling a region as tumultuous as Central Asia, Stalin divided it into a patchwork of states whose borders were designed to fracture races and smash nationalism. He succeeded in preventing ethnic groups from uniting against him, and also in ensuring that each state is a hotbed of ethnic rivalry.” (Leaders – – Kyrgyzstan – – Stalin’s latest victims – – The Kyrgyzstani government deserves help in dealing with history’s dangerous legacy – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“THE recession may have hurt, but re-regulation could hurt almost as much. So in the first quarter of this year the financial services, insurance and property industries spent nearly $125m on lobbying, up more than 11% from last year. The Centre for Public Integrity, a non-partisan research group, reckons the financial-services industries alone hired more than 3,000 lobbyists to influence the financial reform bill now before Congress. On June 14th came news that the Office of Congressional Ethics has launched a probe into the fund-raising activities of eight lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services or Ways and Means Committees. They are thought to have held fund-raisers days before they voted on financial reform.” (United States – – Money from Wall Street – – Cheques and imbalances – – Financial firms bet on Republicans to fight for their interests – – Jun 17th 2010 | NEW YORK)
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“IN A country where independent information-gathering is kept in check, what China’s leaders know and how they know it matters hugely. A recently leaked speech by Xia Lin, a senior editor at Xinhua, China’s government-run news agency, suggests that even though press controls have been somewhat loosened in recent years, leaders still rely heavily on secret reports filed by Xinhua journalists. Other evidence indicates this fault-prone system is actually gaining in importance . . . [F]iling secret bulletins to the leadership is one of Xinhua’s crucial roles. Many of China’s main newspapers also have classified versions covering news considered too sensitive for public consumption.” (Asia – – China’s secret media – – Chinese whispers – – Not believing what they read in the papers, China’s leaders commission their own – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“Joining today’s union is not like entering the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) . . . First, imagine a NAFTA single market, with legal powers to ban congressional aid intended to stop a Detroit car factory moving to Mexico . . . Second, consider a NAFTA arrest warrant, based on “mutual recognition”, ie, the principle that a Mexican court’s ruling is as valid as one from Ohio . . . On numerous measures, Europe is more diverse than America. Per-capita wealth in Mississippi, the poorest state, is almost two thirds the national average. But the poorest EU member, Bulgaria, stands at 38% of the union average.” (Europe – – Charlemagne – – If only it were that easy – – American comments about Turkey betray a lack of understanding of the European Union – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“The price of democracy in America has risen in recent years. Kantar Media, which tracks political advertising, reckons $2.6 billion was spent on the 2008 general election—up from $1.7 billion four years earlier. It thinks slightly more could be spent in this year’s mid-term contest. In January the Supreme Court removed almost all limits on corporate political giving. For television firms stumbling out of recession, it could not have come at a better time.” (Business & Finance – – Political advertising in America – – Buying votes – – Nobody loves a tight political race as much as a media firm – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“Perhaps the Sage of Omaha, as Mr Buffett is known, was listening. On June 16th, with Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, he launched a campaign to persuade America’s billionaires to give away much of their fortunes. They are invited to take the `giving pledge’ by writing a public letter promising to donate 50% or more of their wealth. Mr Buffett himself has written the first, which is published on a website, givingpledge.org. He says he will ultimately give away 99% of his wealth, most of which he has already pledged to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Although the letters will not be legally binding, they are intended to create a moral obligation which will be reinforced by peer pressure from others who take the pledge—a bit like members of Alcoholics Anonymous who promise to stay off the booze. ” (Business & Finance – – Philanthropy – – Keeping up with the Gateses – – The world’s leading philanthropists ask other tycoons to join their movement – – Jun 17th 2010 | NEW YORK)
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“Pixar’s approach to creativity is striking for two reasons. The first is that the company puts people before projects. Most Hollywood studios start by hunting down promising ideas and then hire creative teams to turn them into films. The projects dictate whom they hire. Pixar starts by bringing in creative people and then encourages them to generate ideas. One of its most successful recruits has been Brad Bird, who has presided over two Oscar-winning feature films, `The Incredibles’ (in which he also provided a character’s voice) and `Ratatouille’.” (Business & Economics – – Schumpeter – – Planning for the sequel – – How Pixar’s leaders want to make their creative powerhouse outlast them – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“Alzheimer’s is estimated to cost America alone some $170 billion a year. And it is getting commoner as average lifespans increase. The number of people suffering from the disease is expected to triple by 2050. Effective treatments would thus be embraced with enthusiasm by sufferers and society alike. The right Alzheimer’s drug could earn a drugmaker a lot of money. The incentives are there. But the science has still failed to deliver.” (Science and technology – – Alzheimer’s disease – – No end to dementia – – Ten years ago people talked confidently of stopping Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks. Now, they realise they have no idea how to do that – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“During the surgery, a camera sends back two live video feeds taken from slightly different angles, as it surveys the abdominal cavity from within. The signals are polarised in opposite directions, and the resulting images displayed as alternating rows of pixels on a high-definition television screen. The polarising lenses of the glasses filter these images, meaning each eye sees only one of them. The brain then adds them together as if they were natural, to create the impression of depth, as well as width and height. The resulting vista of receding cavities and organic bulges allows for more accurate cutting and stitching. The first gall bladder removed by Mr Jourdan using the new system was extracted in 30 minutes, less than the normal average. ” (Science and technology – – Surgical technology – – An in-depth operation – – 3D: coming soon, to an operating theatre near you – – Jun 17th 2010 | Guildford)
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“The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. By Richard McGregor. Harper; 302 pages; $27.99. Allen Lane; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk – – `We are the Communist Party and we will decide what communism means.’ . . . The system, Mr McGregor rightly points out, still relies, ultimately, on terror. But no longer are party rule and terror absolutely synonymous . . . But this in turn leads [the generals] to think of themselves as professional soldiers defending China when their job is to serve the Communist Party . . . [T]here is the paradox that China’s leaders recognise that the main threat to their authority is corruption, yet their power rests on a system that makes it almost inevitable.” (Books and arts – – The Chinese Communist Party – – The permanent party – – An entertaining and insightful portrait of China’s secretive rulers – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. By Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Bloomsbury; 368 pages; $27 and £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk – – In this powerful book, Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, two historians of science, show how big tobacco’s disreputable and self-serving tactics were adapted for later use in a number of debates about the environment. Their story takes in nuclear winter, missile defence, acid rain and the ozone layer. In all these debates a relatively small cadre of right-wing scientists, some of them eminent, worked through organisations sometimes created specially for the purpose to take on a scientific establishment that they perceived to be dangerously unsympathetic to the interests of capital and national security.” (Books and arts – – The misuse of science – – All guns blazing – – A question of dodgy science – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“These 44 images chronicle life as it is lived in the city: kinetic and rough, with little beauty but plenty of pride. Levinstein, who died in 1988, often shot his subjects up close and at odd angles. The result is often unflattering but affectionate, full of the small pleasures of the day-to-day. The gallery seems fragrant with cigarette smoke, cheap perfume and fried chicken.” (Books and arts – – Leon Levinstein’s New York – – Cheap perfume and fried chicken – – A new show of photographs should help to revive a forgotten name – – Jun 17th 2010)
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“When he left school in 1941, Norman wrote later, `my first job was a public-sector one, with public-sector productivity, as a teenager supposed to throw bombs about as an RAF navigator, creating a slum in the heart of the continent. By the time I got there, the Russians were coming in from the other side. All the politicians, including Churchill and Roosevelt, told us these were fine liberating democrats. And of course I knew from those school summer holidays so briefly before that those were astonishing lies. That has given me one advantage in my 40 years as a newspaperman. I have never since then believed a word either politicians or public relations officers have said.’” (Obituary – – Norman Macrae – – The unacknowledged giant – – Few journalists have had as great an influence—or been proved right so often—as the man who, for 23 years, was the deputy editor of The Economist – – Jun 17th 2010)
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NOTE ABOUT MY LISTENING ACTIVITIES: I listen to The Economist each week by downloading mp3 files available to subscribers, then using a cheap mp3 player while running, working out at the gym, commuting, or doing chores. There are about 8 hours of audio per week, sometimes more when The Economist has a special edition or includes a supplement, such as their quarterly technology update. By noting certain items I heard I reinforce my memory of them, and this written record will help me be able to refer to them in the future. And, if these things appeal to you, the entire articles, or the entire edition of the “newspaper,” may be of interest to you. If you go to http://www.economist.com, you’ll find a tab toward the upper left of the homepage that will take you to “this week’s print edition,” from which you may also find “previous print editions.” (Don’t go to http://www.theeconomist.com, unless you want to see a website put up by some fan of Alan Greenspan)
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