delanceyplace.com 11/20/09 - innovation

In today's excerpt - historically, 85% of the increase in
per capita GDP (gross domestic product or wealth) in
the U.S. economy has come from innovation - the
invention of new products and services or the
invention of better ways to make existing products and
services. It follows that any durable and sustainable
program to create jobs in an economy would focus
foremost on innovation:

"Since the 1950s, economists have understood that
innovation is critical to economic growth. Our lives are
more comfortable and longer than those of our great-
grandparents on many dimensions. To cite just three
improvements: antibiotics cure once-fatal infections,
long-distance communications cost far less, and the
burden of household chores is greatly reduced. At the
heart of these changes has been the progress of
technology and business.

"Economists have documented the strong connection
between technological progress and economic
prosperity, both across nations and over time. This
insight grew out of studies done by the pioneering
student of technological change, Morris Abramowitz.
He realized that there are ultimately only two ways of
increasing the output of the economy: (1) increasing
the number of inputs that go into the productive
process (e.g., by having workers stay employed until
the age of sixty-seven, instead of retiring at sixty-two),
or (2) developing new ways to get more output from
the same inputs. Abramowitz measured the growth in
the output of the American economy between 1870
and 1950 - the amount of material goods and services
produced - and then computed the increase in inputs
(especially labor and financial capital) over the same
time period. To be sure, this was an imprecise
exercise: he needed to make assumptions about the
growth in the economic impact of these input
measures. After undertaking this analysis, he
discovered that growth of inputs between 1870 and
1950 could account only for about 15 percent of the
actual growth in the output of the economy. The
remaining 85 percent could not be explained through
the growth of inputs. Instead, the increased economic
activity stemmed from innovations in getting more stuff
from the same inputs.

"Other economists in the late 1950s and 1960s
undertook similar exercises. These studies differed in
methodologies, economic sectors, and time periods,
but the results were similar. Most notably, Robert
Solow, who later won a Nobel Prize for this work,
identified an almost identical 'residual' of about 85
percent. The results so striking because most
economists for the previous 200 years had been
building models in which economic growth was
treated as if it was primarily a matter of adding more
inputs: if you just had more people and dollars, more
output would invariably result.

"Instead, these studies suggested, the crucial driver of
growth was changes in the ways inputs were used.
The magnitude of this unexplained growth, and the
fact that it was exposed by researchers using widely
divergent methodologies, persuaded most
economists that innovation was a major force in the
growth of output.

"In the decades since the 1950s, economists and
policymakers have documented the relationship
between innovation - whether new scientific
discoveries or incremental changes in the way that
factories and service businesses work - and
increases in economic prosperity. Not just identifying
an unexplained 'residual,' studies have
documented the positive effects of technological
progress in areas such as information technology.
Thus, an essential question for the economic future of
a country is not only what it produces, but how it goes
about producing it.

"This relationship between innovation and growth has
been recognized by many governments. From the
European Union - which has targeted increasing
research spending as a key goal in the next few years -
to emerging economies such as China, leaders have
embraced the notion that innovation is critical to
growth."

Josh Lerner, Boulevard of Broken Dreams,
Princeton, Copyright 2009 by Princeton University
Press, pp. 43-45.

delanceyplace.com 11/19/09 - scientists

In today's encore excerpt - science becomes
a profession:

"It is natural to describe key [scientific] events in terms
of the work of individuals who made a mark in
science - Copernicus, Vesalius, Darwin, Wallace and
the rest. But this does not mean that science has
progressed
as a result of the work of a string of irreplaceable
geniuses possessed of a special insight into how the
world works. Geniuses maybe (though not always);
but irreplaceable certainly not. Scientific progress
builds step by step, and as the example of Charles
Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace [who independently
and simultaneously put forward the theory of evolution]
shows, when the time is ripe, two or more individuals
may make the next step independently of one another.
It is the luck of the draw, or historical accident, whose
name gets remembered as the discoverer of a new
phenomenon.

"What is much more important than human genius is
the development of technology, and it is no surprise
that the start of the scientific revolution 'coincides' with
the development of the telescope and the
microscope. ... If Newton had never lived, scientific
progress might have been held back by a few
decades. But only by a few decades. Edmond Halley
or Robert Hooke might well have come up with the
famous inverse square law of gravity; Gottfried Leibniz
actually did invent calculus independently of Newton
(and made a better job of it); and Christiaan
Huygens's superior wave theory of light was held back
by Newton's espousal of the rival particle theory. ...

"Although the figure of Charles Darwin dominates any
discussion of nineteenth-century science, he is
something of an anomaly. It is during the nineteenth
century - almost exactly during Darwin's lifetime - that
science makes the shift from being a gentlemanly
hobby, where the interests and abilities of a single
individual can have a profound impact, to a
well-populated profession, where progress depends
on the work of many individuals who are, to some
extent, interchangeable. Even in the case of the theory
of natural selection, as we have seen, if Darwin hadn't
come up with the idea, Wallace would have, and from
now on we will increasingly find that discoveries are
made more or less simultaneously by different people
working independently and largely in ignorance of one
another. ...

"The other side of this particular coin,
unfortunately, is that the growing number of scientists
brings with it a growing inertia and resulting
resistance to change, which means that all too often
when some brilliant individual does come up with a
profound new insight into the way the world works,
this is not accepted immediately on merit and may
take a generation to work its way into the collective
received wisdom of science. ...

"In 1766, there were probably no more than 300
people who we would now class as scientists in the
entire world. By 1800, ... there were about a thousand.
By ... 1844, there were about 10,000, and by 1900
somewhere around 100,000. Roughly speaking, the
number of scientists doubled every fifteen years
during the nineteenth century. But remember that the
whole population of Europe doubled, from about 100
million to about 200 million, between 1750 and 1850,
and the population of Britain alone doubled between
1800 and 1850, from roughly 9 million to roughly 18
million."

John Gribbin, The Scientists, Random House,
Copyright 2002 by John and Mary Gribbin, pp. xix-xx,
359-361.

delanceyplace.com 11/18/09 - occupiers and plebiscites

In today's excerpt - occupiers often manipulate
plebiscites or other data to "prove" that their new
subjects support them. But that often masks a
pending revolt. And so it was with the British
occupation of Iraq (Mesopotamia) in 1917 - which
locals viewed as a British attempt to extend their
empire - and the violent revolts that followed. Given
Woodrow Wilson's world-shaking proposal in the
aftermath of World War I that all people should be able
to self-determine their own government, such
plebiscites had become especially crucial:

"On March 11th, 1917, British and Indian soldiers of
the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force (MEF)
marched into Baghdad and occupied it in order to
restore order and halt the looting that had followed the
city's evacuation by Ottoman forces the previous day.
On March 12th, the British War Cabinet issued a
proclamation to the inhabitants of Baghdad. This
flowery document pledged that 'our armies do not
come into your cities and lands as conquerors or
enemies, but as liberators'. ...

"After March 1917 the emphasis of [British] operations
in Mesopotamia shifted towards the pacification of the
British-occupied areas and the introduction and
extension of civil machinery designed to regulate the
mobilization and extraction of the manpower, food and
fodder needed in ever greater quantities for the
military. This involved the 'submission by political
means' of local tribes and the visible downward
penetration of British control to all levels of
society. ...

"The logistical requirements of maintaining and
supplying the MEF, which peaked at 420,000
combatants and non-combatants in 1918, made
enormous demands on local resources of manpower,
food and fodder, ... causing great hardship to a
populace already weakened by poor harvests in 1916
and 1917, and the commercial dislocation caused by
three years of war.

"At the end of the war, Mesopotamia remained under
British occupation. With President
Woodrow Wilson and the peace-makers in Paris
championing self-determination, the British
administration in Baghdad sought to find 'up to date
reasons' for continued British rule that would make
them 'both indispensable to, and acceptable by, the
native community', even as they entrenched
themselves more firmly in the region. ... The British
failed to identify the true degree of opposition to their
presence in Mesopotamia. They manipulated and
misrepresented the results of a plebiscite on 'local
opinion' in 1919 to produce what one Cabinet
member in London, Edwin Montagu, called
an 'authoritative statement' to President Wilson and
the peace conferences indicating popular local
support for British policies.

"British demands for labour and foodstuffs continued
throughout 1919 and 1920 and the methods of
collection became more effective. They combined with
the cumulative impact of food shortages, high price
inflation and the introduction of taxation to create
significant pools of discontent as British control
became increasingly visible, ... creating a multitude of
grievances that eventually found their outlet in violent
unrest. The speed and ferocity with which the [Iraqi]
revolt took root and spread between July and October
1920 shook the foundations of British rule in
Mesopotamia and necessitated a level of financial
and military expenditure that London could ill afford at
a time of significant discontent in India, Ireland and
elsewhere. ...

"[Prominent among the revolt leadership was] a family
called Sadr, [whose grandson Moqtada al-Sadr is a
belligerent in the current Iraqi War]."

Kristian Ulrichsen, "Coming as Liberators," History
Today, January 2007, pp. 47-49.

delanceyplace.com 11/17/09 - subjugating ireland

In today's excerpt - subjugating Ireland in the early
1600s. England, having recently broken away from the
Catholic Church, feared that Catholic Spain would use
still-Catholic Ireland as a stronghold for invading
England, and therefore had incentive to subjugate
and "colonize" Ireland. England could look to the new
European experiences in the New World for examples
of how to colonize and subjugate. And the colonizing
mission required colonists to wear civilized clothes
and inhabit civilized housing - however impractical that
might be:

"Ironically and perhaps fatefully, early English
conceptions of Indian life and character became
intertwined with the justification of another colonizing
venture. Ireland was nominally under English rule, but
effective control did not extend beyond the small
district known as 'the Pale,' centered on Dublin. The
rest of the island was home to 'the wild Irish,' who
were divided into loose collections of warlike people
with a common interest in defying the English. With
the Spanish seemingly set on ruling the world,
England awakened to the danger that Catholic Spain
might take over Catholic Ireland as a stronghold for
invading England. Subjugating the Irish became a way
of forestalling Spain. Elizabeth began by parceling out
the country to her favorites, [Sir Walter] Ralegh among
them.
These English overlords could either tame their wild
Irish tenants or supplant them with a more productive
and tractable population. It was the same problem
that Ralegh faced at Roanoke and the Virginia
Company would face at Jamestown, not to say the
problem the United States would face in its long
march across North America.

"[To the English,] the Irish shared with American
Indians a profound
deficiency that required correction if they were to make
proper subjects: they were not civil. That word carried
hidden meanings and connotations that would
reverberate throughout American history. Civility was a
way of life not easily defined, but its results were
visible: substantial housing and ample clothing.
Uncivil peoples were naked and nomadic. Civility
required of those who deserved the name a sustained
effort, physical and intellectual. It did not require belief
in Christianity, for the ancient Greeks and Romans
had it; but Christianity, or at least Protestant
Christianity, was impossible without it. The Irish
Catholics and those Indians converted by Spanish or
French missionaries were not, in the English view,
either civil or Christian. The objective of colonization
was to bring civility and Christianity to the uncivil, in
that order.

"The objective was threatened, indeed civility itself
was
threatened, if lazy colonists, coveting the unfettered life
of the uncivil, went native, or, it might be said, went
naked. 'Clothes were of tremendous importance, ...
because one's whole identity was
bound up in the self-presentation of dress. The Scots
and Irish - and soon the American Indians - could not
be civil unless they dressed in English clothes, like
civilized people, and cut their long hair,' signs of a
capacity to submit to the enlightened government of
their superiors.

"England's preferred way of civilizing the Irish was
through force of arms, but after ruthless military
expeditions failed to bring widespread peace, and
with it civility, the new solution was to plant the country
with people who already rejoiced in that condition.
Refractory natives would learn by example, or simply
give way, left to a wretched existence on the margins
of a profoundly transformed Ireland. Not long before
the Virginia Company began supplying people to
Jamestown for much the same purpose, the English
authorities began settling far larger numbers across
the Irish Sea, an estimated 100,000 by 1641."

Edmund S. Morgan and Marie Morgan, "Our Shaky
Beginnings," The New York Review of Books,
April 26, 2007, pp. 21-22.

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delanceyplace.com 11/16/09 - washington's half-brother

In today's excerpt - for young George
Washington, a
father dying young, the resulting
interruption of his
education, and the dashing example of an older
half-brother helped forge a burning ambition and
determination:

"At his birth in 1732, George Washington's
prospects
were poor. He was a product of his father's
second marriage. The sons
from the first marriage, George's
half-brothers, had been provided a formal
education, including study abroad. They also
received a bountiful inheritance when their
father, Augustine Washington, died in 1743.
But Augustine's demise appeared to stop
George's ascent before it began. There was
no money for continuing George's formal
education, much less for sending
him to England to complete his schooling, and
his inheritance was meager.
George received ten slaves and Ferry Farm, a
worn-out tract across the
Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg,
Virginia. With that bequest he
might become an important figure in King
George County, though no one
in the broader world would know him. But from
an early age, George Washington wanted more.
He wanted to stand apart from others. He
wanted to
be seen as a man of substance.

"George said almost nothing about his father,
mentioning him in only
three passing references in thousands of
pages of correspondence. Augustine had
accumulated a small fortune as a tobacco
planter, land speculator,
and proprietor of an iron forge, and he was a
prominent figure in northern
Virginia, where he held several local
offices. Ambitious young males usually
aspire to surpass the accomplishments of
their fathers, and that appears to
have been true of George. Yet it was not
Augustine who was George's role
model. It was Lawrence Washington, an older
brother from their father's
first marriage.

"Fourteen years older than George, Lawrence
had studied in England.
After returning home, he enlisted as an
officer in a colonial army raised to
fight alongside British regulars in a war
with Spain, the oddly named War
of Jenkins' Ear that erupted in 1739.
Lawrence was sent to the Caribbean,
then to South America, where he experienced
combat. The war was a
bloodbath for the American troops, and
Lawrence was fortunate to survive
and return home. Worldly, educated,
well-to-do, dashing in his resplendent
uniform, and deferred to as a hero by the
most influential men and
captivating women in Virginia, Lawrence cut
an impressive figure.

"His
stature increased when he was appointed
adjutant general of Virginia, a
post that made him the foremost soldier in
the province. Soon, he was
elected to the House of Burgesses, Virginia's
assembly, a feat never realized
by Augustine. The crowning touch came in
1743. Lawrence married into
the Fairfax family, which claimed title to
six million acres in Virginia and,
needless to say, was the most prominent clan
in the Northern Neck, the
area around the Rappahannock and Potomac
rivers. Lawrence and his bride
took up residence on a lush green rolling
estate overlooking the Potomac
River. Having inherited the property from his
father, Lawrence named his
country farmhouse in honor of a British
officer under whom he had recently served. He
called it Mount Vernon."

John Ferling, The Ascent of George
Washington, Bloomsbury Press, Copyright 2009
by John Ferling, pp. 9-10, 13.

delanceyplace.com 11/13/09 - chinese myths

In today's excerpt - Chinese myths:

"The Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Long
March, even the Giant Panda? Myths, declare
the revisionist scholars. ...

"Contrary to the tourist brochures, the Great
Wall has been shown to be
not 'over 2,000 years old', not '6,000 miles
[9,700 kilometres] long', not 'visible
from outer space' - not visible on the ground
in many places - and never
to have been a single continuous structure.'
It did not keep out marauding
nomads nor was that its original purpose;
instead of defending and defining
Chinese territory, it was probably designed
to augment and project it.' Those
sections near Beijing that may conveniently
be inspected today have been
substantially reconstructed for just such
inspection; and the rubble and footings from
which they rise are those of Ming
fortifications no older than the
palaces in the Forbidden City or London's
Hampton Court.

"Likewise the Grand Canal. Reaching from the
Yangzi delta to the Yellow
River (Huang He), a distance of about 1,100
kilometres (700 miles), the canal
is supposed to have served as a main artery
between China's productive
heartland and its brain of government. Laid
out in the seventh century
AD, it did indeed connect the
rice-surplus south to the often
cereal-deficient north. Yet it, too, was
never a single continuous
construction, more a series of
well-engineered waterways. ... The system was
rarely operational
throughout its entirety because of variable
water flow, the rainy season in
the north not coinciding with that in the
south; colossal manpower was
needed to haul the heavily laden transports
and work the locks; dredging
and maintenance proved prohibitively
expensive; and so frequent were the
necessary realignments of the system that
there are now almost as many
abandoned sections of Grand Canal as there
are of Great Wall.

"More controversially, the Long March, that
1934-35 epic of heroic
communist endeavour, has been disparaged as
neither as long nor as heroic
as supposed. It is said the battles and
skirmishes en route were exaggerated, if not
contrived, for propaganda purposes; and of
the 80,000 troops
who began the march in Jiangxi in the
south-east, only 8,000 actually
foot-slogged their way right round China's
mountainous perimeter to
Yan'an in the north-west. As for the rest,
some perished but most simply
dropped out long before the 9,700-kilometre
(6,000-mile) march was
completed. And of those who did complete it,
one at least seldom marched;
Mao, we are assured, was borne along on a
litter.

"Maybe the Giant Panda, a byword for
endangered icons if ever there
was one, is on safer ground. In the 1960s and
'70s the nearly extinct
creature, together with some acrobatic
ping-pong players, emerged as a
notable asset in the diplomatic arsenal of
the beleaguered People's Republic.
Much sought after by zoos worldwide, the
pandas, especially females, were
freely bestowed on deserving heads of state.
The presentations were
described as 'friendship gestures', and
experimental breeding was encouraged as if a
successful issue might somehow cement the
political entente.
But not any more. From sparse references in
classic texts such as the 'Book
of Documents' a pedigree of undoubted
antiquity has been
constructed for the panda and a standard name
awarded to it. Now known
as the Daxiongmao or 'Great Bear-Cat', its
habits have been found sufficiently
inoffensive to merit its promotion as a
'universal symbol of peace';
its numbers have stabilised, perhaps
increased, thanks to zealous conservation;
and lest anyone harbour designs on such a
national paragon, no
longer may Giant Pandas be expatriated. All
are Chinese pandas. Foreign
zoos may only lease them, the lease being for
ten years, the rental fee
around $2 million per annum, and any cubs
born during the rental being
deemed to inherit the nationality of their
mother - and the same terms of contract. Like
its piebald image as featured in countless
brand logos, the Giant Panda has itself
become a franchise."

John Keay, China, Basic Books,
Copyright 2009 by John Keay, pp. 1-3.

delanceyplace.com 11/12/09 - the dust bowl

In today's encore excerpt - the American Dust
Bowl, which lasted from 1930 to as late as 1940 in
some areas. Rated the number one weather event of
the twentieth century, the Dust Bowl covered one
hundred million acres in parts of Nebraska, Kansas,
Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, and left
thousands dead, diseased and destitute:

"The rains disappeared - not just for a season but for
years on end. With no sod to hold the earth in place,
the soil calcified and started to blow. Dust clouds
boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and
rolled like moving mountains - a force of their own.
When the dust fell, it penetrated everything: hair, nose,
throat, kitchen, bedroom, water well. A scoop shovel
was needed just to clean the house in the morning.
The eeriest thing was the darkness. People tied
themselves to ropes before going to a barn just a few
hundred feet away, like a walk in space, tethered to
the life support center. Chickens roosted in
mid-afternoon. ...

"Many in the East did not believe the initial accounts of
predatory dust until a storm in May 1934 carried the
windblown shards of the Great Plains over much of
the nation. In Chicago, twelve million tons of dust fell.
New York, Washington - even ships at sea, three
hundred miles off the Atlantic coast - were blanketed
in brown. Cattle went blind and suffocated. When
farmers cut them open, they found stomachs stuffed
with fine sand. Horses ran madly against the storms.
Children coughed and gagged, dying of something
the doctors called 'dust pneumonia.' In desperation,
some families gave away their children. The
instinctive act of hugging a loved one or shaking
someone's hand could knock two people down, for
the static electricity from the dusters was so
strong. ...

"By 1934, the soil was like fine-sifted flour, and the
heat made it a danger to go outside many days. In
Vinita, Oklahoma, the temperature soared above 100
degrees for thirty-five consecutive days. On the thirty-
sixth day, it reached 117. ...

"On the skin, the dust was like a nail file, a grit strong
enough to hurt. People rubbed Vaseline in their
nostrils as a filter. The Red Cross handed out
respiratory masks to schools. Families put wet towels
beneath their doors and covered their windows with
bed sheets, fresh-dampened nightly. ...

"Black Sunday, April 14, 1935, [was the] day of the
worst duster of them all. The storm carried twice as
much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the
Panama Canal. The canal took seven years to dig; the
storm lasted a single afternoon. More than 300,000
tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne that day. ...
As the black wall approached, car radios clicked off,
overwhelmed by the static. Ignitions shorted out.
Waves of sand, like ocean water rising over a ship's
prow, swept over roads. Cars went into ditches. A train
derailed."

Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time, Mariner,
Copyright 2006 by Timothy Egan, pp. 5-8.