Markmaking

Steven Pearlstein - In Hollywood, Reshaping a Business Model That Emerged With the Talkies

Steven Pearlstein - In Hollywood, Reshaping a Business Model That Emerged With the Talkies.

"Certainly if this didn't exist, we couldn't afford to build it today," said Credle as we walked through the studio's back lots and manicured gardens. "The models for this business are being challenged every day in every imaginable way, and nobody knows where it ends up. . . . What you see here is going away, and it's not obvious what is going to replace it." 

The world will always need entertainment, and Southern California is the odds-on favorite to produce it. It has the history, the people, the infrastructure and the creative energy. But as Detroit automakers and New York's financiers have learned, these natural advantages can disappear when an arrogant and insular industry comes to view its dominance as inevitable and its outsized compensation as an entitlement.

Against "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

No Paycheck, New Plans - WSJ.com.

The category killer in the get-a-job bookshelf -- "What Color Is Your Parachute?" -- could stand to be retired. First published 39 years and 10 million copies ago, the book keeps coming out in annual editions. But with its clumsy charts and checklists, its hokey visualization devices and hollow platitudes -- "Job-hunting is not a science; it is an art" -- it feels less like a book than the rummage of a community-college guidance counselor. And dusty rummage at that. You can get a sense of the vintage of "What Color Is Your Parachute?" from the fact that it is illustrated here and there with Ziggy cartoons. You can get a sense of its sloppiness from the fact that, in the 2009 edition of "Parachute," the same Ziggy cartoon runs on page 41 and page 167, without anyone at publisher Ten Speed Press seeming to notice. For that matter, the same Peanuts cartoon appears on page 129 and page 282.

Steven Pearlstein - California's Wipeout Economy

Steven Pearlstein - California's Wipeout Economy.

It is hard to overstate how reliant the Southern California economy has always been on population growth to drive its economic growth -- in oversimplified terms, building houses for the next wave of home builders. In the beginning, the early developers could be pretty confident that if they built it, they would come -- from the Northeast and Midwest, and then from all corners of the globe. But in recent years, this perpetual growth machine has pretty much run out of steam as residents old and new confronted the realities of two-hour commutes, bad air, a shortage of water and a backlash against illegal immigration. 

Moreover, without the steady growth in tax revenue that came with population growth, the Ponzi scheme that passes for public finance in California was suddenly and painfully revealed. Much of the blame lies with public employee unions and a handful of other special-interest groups that have essentially hijacked political control of state and local governments. Now, despite decades of high taxes and rapid growth, state and local governments find that they not only don't have the revenue to provide even basic services, but are saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities and infrastructure needs.

Fenton on Palladio

James Fenton on Palladio - TLS

But still, what grips us about the old photographs when we can see them (there are none at Burlington House) is the glimpse we have of the functioning rural economy in which these crucial structures played their part, caught in the years when it was coming to an end, when the threshing machines were making their first appearance. Perhaps it is a snapshot of an old peasant squatting in the barn of a villa long since destroyed, but it is immediately instructive how much of the height of the barn he needs for his supplies. Perhaps it is just a carriage seen under an arcade, or a row of men harvesting in a field, or a line of scythed grass waiting to be stacked for hay. One is reminded that if many of these farm complexes were enormous, longer than the Piazza San Marco in Venice, they were long because they needed to be long. There was so much produce to handle. 

To sleep, like the nobility, sandwiched between the wine and the grain (the grain in the attic, the wine fermenting on the ground floor) no doubt held its anxieties, for the cheating peasant is a well-established figure in the literature. But it was conventionally held to be bliss itself in comparison with the treasonous pressures of the city. To sleep like the peasantry was to dream of famine – those recurring shortages which brought the peasants into the city, to die outside the Doge’s Palace, or to beg outside the churches, “hunger written on their faces, their eyes like gemless rings”.

The travails of French: Franklin and Adams in Paris

Franklin in Paris: an article by Stacy Schiff about Benjamin Franklin's plans with John Adams in Paris after the American Revolution | The American Scholar.

Eight days after his arrival in Paris, Adams registered his disillusionment at the state of Franklin’s French, which he had assumed was fluent. He was startled to note that his colleague’s grammar was inexact, even more surprised to hear Franklin confess, when queried, that he paid no attention to the stuff. That invited some sleuthing on Adams’s part: “His pronunciation too, upon which the French gentlemen and ladies compliment him, and which he seems to think is pretty well, I am sure is very far from being exact.” It is difficult to read in that line which was the greater offense: Franklin’s inadequacy; the high marks French society bestowed on this teacher’s pet; or Franklin’s seeming obliviousness to the preferential treatment. In settling the matter, Adams could not always procure the satisfaction he came increasingly to crave. After the winter of 1778, he began to collect the compliments he received at his colleague’s expense. He was delighted to hear a friend contradicted over a 1779 dinner table, when that friend asserted that Franklin spoke excellent French. He did nothing of the sort, protested a diplomat. Days later that diplomat further endeared himself by elaborating on the subject, to Adams: “You speak slowly and with difficulty, like a man who searches for his words; but you don’t sin against pronunciation. You pronounce well. You do so far better than Mr. Franklin. He is painful to listen to.” The triumph was short-lived. The diplomat’s secretary reminded Adams, as Adams often needed to be reminded, of the uses of flattery. The straight-shooting secretary then leveled with Adams. Both Adams and Franklin spoke French badly.

E. D. Hirsch: Core Knowledge

Op-Ed Contributor - Reading Test Dummies - NYTimes.com.

Students now must take annual reading tests from third grade through eighth. If the reading passages on each test were culled from each grade’s specific curricular content in literature, science, history, geography and the arts, the tests would exhibit what researchers call “consequential validity” — meaning that the tests would actually help improve education. Test preparation would focus on the content of the tests, rather than continue the fruitless attempt to teach test taking. 

A 1988 study indicated why this improvement in testing should be instituted. Experimenters separated seventh- and eighth-grade students into two groups — strong and weak readers as measured by standard reading tests. The students in each group were subdivided according to their baseball knowledge. Then they were all given a reading test with passages about baseball. Low-level readers with high baseball knowledge significantly outperformed strong readers with little background knowledge. 

The experiment confirmed what language researchers have long maintained: the key to comprehension is familiarity with the relevant subject. For a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge.

Marcia Pally - Die hintergründige Religion

Marcia Pally - Die hintergründige Religion.

Die Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Evangelikalismus und demokratischem Liberalismus in Amerika gehören zu den großen historischen Erfolgsgeschichten. Der Evangelikalismus, Amerikas dominierende Religionskultur von der Kolonialzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, beeinflusst bis heute die Werte und Überzeugungen der Nation. Neben dem ökonomischen Interesse haben diese Überzeugungen die amerikanische Politik mitbestimmt - unabhängig von der jeweils regierenden Partei. Dies traf für Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy und Clinton ebenso zu wie für Eisenhower, Reagan und Bush - und das wird auch für den nächsten Präsidenten gelten. Wenn auch die heutige evangelikale Bewegung in den USA mit konservativer Politik in Verbindung gebracht wird, so war sie doch für die meiste Zeit der amerikanischen Geschichte radikal progressiv.

Ethnic Makeup of the Union Army

Ethnic basis of the Union Army - Wikipedia

Many immigrant soldiers formed their own regiments, such as the Irish Brigade (69th New York, 63rd New York, 88th New York, 28th Massachusetts, 116th Pennsylvania); the Swiss Rifles (15th Missouri); the Gardes Lafayette (55th New York); the Garibaldi Guard (39th New York); the Martinez Militia (1st New Mexico); the Polish Legion (58th New York); the German Rangers (52nd New York); the Highlander Regiment (79th New York); and the Scandinavian Regiment (15th Wisconsin). But for the most part, the foreign-born soldiers were scattered as individuals throughout units. 

For comparison, the Confederate Army was not very diverse: 91% of Confederate soldiers were native born and only 9% were foreign-born, Irish being the largest group with others including Germans, French, Mexicans (though most of them simply happened to have been born when the Southwest was still part of Mexico), and British. Some Southern propaganda compared foreign-born soldiers in the Union Army to the hated Hessians of the American Revolution. As well, a relatively small number of Native Americans (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek) fought for the Confederacy.

Calling the Baby Ugly | Print Article | Newsweek.com

George Will likes Arne Duncan:

Asked by an impertinent interviewer if education schools are a net subtraction from the quality of teachers, Duncan answers obliquely, which is a good sign: He says only that by the end of his Chicago tenure 20 percent of the new teachers being hired had "alternative certification"—credentials other than those provided by ed schools. Such people had "hitherto been locked out." Asked which he would choose, hiring 100,000 new teachers or firing 100,000 bad teachers, there is a long pause—another good sign—before he says he would take the new teachers because most of the worst teachers are older and are retiring. 

He thinks finding talented teachers is more important than reducing pupil-teacher ratios—a third good sign—and he sees a silver lining on today's dark economic clouds

Re-branding No Child Left Behind

Eduwonk » Blog Archive » Winner!.

Joe Williams for suggesting Caitlin, because everyone is naming things Caitlin these days.  The entries  “Mind the gap” and  “Mental Asset Recovery Plan (MARP)” as well as ”Peter” for two different entries that the judges understandably loved:  “We’re Coming For You, Japan (WCFYJ)” and the “Keep Our Daughters Off the Pole Act of 2009 (KODOPA)”, and finally the Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Behind Act also earns a book. 

The runner-up, who gets one of those coveted “Obama Loves Charter Schools” buttons that are circulating: 

Peter, again, for, These Colors Don’t Run (from Calculus) or TCDRC.  

And the grand prize winner, who gets the highly sought-after signed picture of Justin Cohen in a tacky frame: 

The Elementary and Secondary Educational Excellence Act.   If you’re going to add an ‘e’ it’s hard to beat excellence.

Mark Knopfler's Second Act : Rolling Stone

Mark Knopfler's Second Act : Rolling Stone.

The song begins, "I'm going to San Bernardino/Ring-a-ding-ding," nine words that perfectly fix Kroc's tale in the American Fifties of Frank Sinatra. Kroc is flogging milkshake mixers, and he sells to a couple of guys with a successful hamburger stand, which they in fact call McDonald's, and Kroc is overtaken with a blinding vision of what could be: 

The folks line up all down the street
And I'm seeing this girl devour her meat
And then I get it, wham clear as day
My pulse begins to hammer and I hear a voice say:
These boys have got it down
Oughta be one of these in every town
These boys have got this touch
It's clean as a whistle and it don't cost much
Wham, bam, you don't wait long
Shake, fries, patty, you're gone.

T J Clark on Picasso

Q&A with 2009 Mellon Lecturer TJ Clark, part two - Modern Art Notes .

If you want a sort of leitmotif of the whole series, it comes down to saying: Cubism now, to me in retrospect, is like an art of a certain kind of interior space, room space, space that's intimate and proximate and in which the world is a world of small things musical instruments, bottles, newspapers, possessable items, that is to say: Possessions. 

You won't be surprised to hear that from me, as I'm someone who still certainly wishes to work within the Marxist tradition. I'm very interested in the way in which cubism commemorates and celebrates a certain kind of bourgeois intimacy. That's under threat of course, that bourgeois world. (That is, in the early 20th-century it's under threat.) Massively under-threat.

Unions vs. Good Government

Why it's a terrible time to be a governor. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine .

During my tenure as governor, we sought to restructure New York's $60 billion Medicaid program, per capita the most expensive in the nation, by creating a program focused more on community and preventive care, enrolling all eligible children, and shifting care away from expensive teaching hospitals and emergency rooms. It was the right step from both a health policy and budgetary perspective, and the plan was endorsed by thoughtful voices. As a political matter, it was Armageddon. After what can only be described as a political brawl, we had moderate success at a policy level, saving a bit more than 3 percent of the state dollar allocation to Medicaid. The opposition—all the major teaching hospitals and health care unions—spent about $10 million in negative TV advertising directed at me personally. Not surprisingly, other governors are not rushing to try similar programs.

Genetic surveillance for all? - By Jeffrey Rosen - Slate Magazine

Genetic surveillance for all? - By Jeffrey Rosen - Slate Magazine .

The legal limits on family searches and DNA databases are murky, but the political implications are explosive for one big reason in particular: race. African-Americans, by several estimates, represent about 13 percent of the U.S. population but 40 percent of the people convicted of felonies every year.

Andres Duany on New Orleans

Restoring the Real New Orleans | Newgeography.com .

You see, the lost housing of New Orleans is quite special. Entering the damaged and abandoned houses you can still see what they were like before the hurricane. These houses were exceedingly inexpensive to live in. They were houses that were hand built by people's parents and grandparents, or by small builders paid in cash or by barter. 

Most of these simple, and surprisingly pleasant, houses were paid off. They had to be, because they do not meet any sort of code, and are therefore not mortgageable by current standards. 

I think that it was possible to sustain the culture unique to New Orleans because housing costs were minimal. These houses liberated people from debt. One did not have to work a great deal to get by. There was the possibility of leisure.

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » The Sledgehammer of Modernism

R. R. Reno: The Sledgehammer of Modernism.

Not only is the juxtaposition striking, it is telling. If you approach from the back, the Faculty Club offers an inviting hip-high gateway that opens on to a brick patio and the rear entrance, which gives access to a large, old-style solarium. Visually, the scene is varied, balanced, and above all inviting. The brick, the white-painted wood trim, and the many-paned windows bespeak craftsmanship. Everything is on a human scale. It is the sort of place you could easily imagine wanting to spend a late spring evening drinking gin and tonics with friends. 

The Carpenter Center, by contrast, presents a four-story windowless concrete wall. Concrete stairs and an unadorned metal handrail lead down to a sunken expanse of more concrete underneath upper stories supported by concrete pillars. It seems ugly, but the fans of modernism typically wave away such judgments. More important, to their minds, is the fact that the building does not embody Ivy League leisure and privilege, qualities very much celebrated by the design of the Faculty Club. Fair enough.  But the scene has all the charm of a parking garage. It is a faceless, empty place. It reminds one of the many sterile urban plazas that we all hurry through on windy wintery days. This does not surprise me. When men are forced to be free and compelled into an imagined state of equality, we invariably end up with grey ugliness—and the vague odor of violence that empties public spaces.

George Washington Patrols the Pacific by Guy Sorman, City Journal Winter 2009

George Washington Patrols the Pacific by Guy Sorman, City Journal Winter 2009.

After some 50 years of “neutrality,” including a long pro-Soviet period, India has become a strong American ally, thanks to the active diplomacy of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “We were surprised to discover our common background,” notes Bird. The American and Indian navies share a British maritime culture, which made joint operations smooth. India now seems as committed as Japan to an alliance with the U.S.—and as uneasy about China; India also finds itself more destabilized daily by domestic Islamic radicals. 

For a stark example of what the region would be like without the American presence, look at the piracy occurring these days along the Somali coast, an area that America does not patrol. Pirates hijack and ransom tankers, interrupting the flow of oil, increasing insurance premiums, and ultimately raising the price of gas. In the Pacific, however, pirates act cautiously or not at all because they know that the Seventh Fleet is never far off.

More Important, What Do These Guys Major In? - WSJ.com

More Important, What Do These Guys Major In? - WSJ.com.

Overall, there is an astonishing dearth of liberal arts majors. Only two athletes listed their majors as English and only nine chose history. A few schools were notable for the breadth of study by their basketball teams. Duke, for instance, features majors in international comparative studies, political science, psychology and visual arts. 

Among the more curious majors: public relations, meteorology, nuclear engineering and something called "agricultural leadership." One player, Washington senior forward Artem Wallace, is majoring in Russian language and literature. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he isn't getting big minutes. But anyone with time to learn both the zone defense and the finer points of Turgenev deserves a trophy of his own.

Alain Bashung 1947-2009

Alain Bashung, gentleman rocker and chevalier in the Legion of Honor, est mort.

Sarkozy: "A prince has left us."

S. Royal: "France has lost one of its greatest singers."

Obits and homages:

Radio France (in English)

Nouvel Observateur

Le Monde

Liberation

Liberation: homages

AFP

Social Science Statistics Blog: English First Names for Chinese Americans

Social Science Statistics Blog: English First Names for Chinese Americans.

The three most popular Chinese male first names are also very popular in America as a whole. A more interesting question is the one about P(Chinese | Name n) -- which English first names are much more common among Chinese Americans than among all Americans? To answer that, I conducted a binomial proportion test and sorted the results by p-value, identifying the most extreme differences. The top 10 male and female differences are given below. 

Some of the top results are nicknames -- Chinese are much more likely to pick "Andy" or "Jenny" as a legal name, while general Americans are formally named by the longer versions. 

The other names on the list are more interesting. For males, "Andrew," "Eric," "Peter" and "Albert" are much more common among Chinese than among Americans. For females, it's "Amy," "Grace," "May" and, yes, "Vivian." By comparing the frequencies, you can see that these names are all over five times more popular among Chinese Americans! 

I'll leave interpretation to the sociologists.

Why KIPP Schools Work by Charles Upton Sahm, City Journal 13 March 2009

Why KIPP Schools Work by Charles Upton Sahm, City Journal 13 March 2009.

It’s difficult to replicate a successful school model on a grand scale, but KIPP, after trying a few different approaches, figured out a way to develop and monitor new schools. The process starts with the recruitment and training of “Fisher Fellows,” the handful of people selected to become potential leaders of new KIPP schools. They attend a rigorous six-week summer leadership course at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where they study topics such as curriculum, how to choose effective teachers, school management, and fund-raising. (It’s telling that the Fisher Fellows have no involvement with Berkeley’s education school; KIPP adheres to a results-oriented business-school ethos, rather than the soft-headed nonsense taught at most ed schools.)

Pushing hard, with no excuses -- baltimoresun.com

Pushing hard, with no excuses -- baltimoresun.com.

Historically, the Baltimore school system offered employment opportunities to African-Americans blocked by racism from jobs in private industry. 

Over time, however, that led to a system in which patronage and loyalty sometimes helped determine promotions and in which people became wary of outsiders, particularly those who weren't black. When Alonso arrived, his office was decorated in peachy pink and light green: the sorority colors of Alice Pinderhughes, the system's first African-American female superintendent, who had been gone for 20 years. 

One of Pinderhughes' proteges was Charlene Cooper Boston, the acting CEO whom the school board passed over for the permanent job in favor of Alonso. To Jimmy Gittings, longtime president of the administrators union and son of Baltimore's first black assistant superintendent, it was a "cold slap in the face" to a woman who had dedicated her career to the city schools.

The Claremont Institute - The Roots of Liberal Condescension

William Voegeli - The Roots of Liberal Condescension.

Thus, if patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal arts major. The striver may wind up with the bigger house, better car, and nicer vacations, but the very meretriciousness of these aspirations confirms the liberal arts major's belief in the striver's inferior taste and barren inner life. Conspicuous consumption advertises not the wealth but the cluelessness of the consumer who acquires to flaunt. It has been supplanted by conspicuous disdain for conspicuous consumption. The Toyota Prius is a testament to its driver's virtue, not a mark of his prosperity. Its distinctive homeliness has made it a hit, at a time when Honda has cancelled production of the hybrid version of the Accord: it turned out nobody wanted to buy a hybrid that was indistinguishable from an iceberg-melting V-6.

William Langewiesche on Somali pirates | vanityfair.com

William Langewiesche on Somali pirates | vanityfair.com.

Among the national groups, the French were the easiest to handle, if not necessarily to like. They slept late, savored the refined cuisine, and demanded little of an itinerary beyond the chance to lie in the sun. They could be imperious with the waiters and maids, but overall they were simple to satisfy. American passengers were different—individually more accessible than the French, but collectively exhausting. The problem seemed to stem from a lack of skepticism, or of philosophical distance from themselves. Certainly this was not true of all Americans, but it did seem to apply to the types who came to these cruises. They sincerely regarded traveling on the Ponant as an opportunity for self-improvement. They would read up beforehand (from recommended lists), and then appear for the trips with sunblock creams and special shoes, accompanied by lecturers who were expected to enrich their minds. They were nice people, but of the sort who go for swims wearing long-brimmed visors and drawstring hats. Rather than lingering late in the Ponant’s bar, they retired after dining because they wanted to be fresh for sunrise departures and goal-oriented hikes. They did not walk, but trekked. They did not like long lunches of nouvelle cuisine. Midday they preferred quick meals of barbecued burgers and New York cheesecake, or Caesar salad. They did not mean to offend. But their tastes were insulting to the chef, and upsetting by birthright to the crew.

How to Be Silicon Valley

Paul Graham: How to Be Silicon Valley.

Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like. 

Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list? 

I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.