Romer chairs the White Council of Economic Advisors, and her interview with Greg Ip at a conference last week mostly amounted to a standard defense of the administration's economic record. But I thought the following exchange with an audience member was interesting in that you don't normally expect an economist to be asked about this topic:
Question 4: Hi. Thanks for coming today. The title is "Innovation and the Future of the U.S. Economy", and you mentioned science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) investments. What I didn’t hear was any talk about how the government is addressing design thinking. Science, technology, engineering, math, great. But what about design thinking? What about actually literacy for that? We’re going to have some other people talk tomorrow about that. I think it’s exciting. But it’s the thinking of how we actually solve those problems by actually listening to users, and user-centered design, and how we actually do creative thinking about the future. As our art programs are disappearing and other things, the investment in science, technology, engineering, math seems like it’s missing some talk about design thinking. And I guess I just wonder where your group is in that space.
Christina Romer: I love that question because actually one of the first things that the Council did—that’s where I wrote lots of reports on health care and on the fiscal stimulus and all of those things—but we also wrote a report on jobs of the future and what do we think jobs are going to be like; how are labor markets going to be changing; the very idea that rather than having one employer for your whole life, you’re probably going to have five or more jobs. But one of the things I think that literature very much talks about is exactly the changing nature of jobs and the degree to which they involve interaction, communication, and the flexible thinking. So I think you’re absolutely right, and in terms of for an audience thinking about innovation, of course, math and science, that’s absolutely crucial. But the ability to bring it all together and communicate and interact with people is unbelievably important. So I think that is absolutely important. I’ve highlighted what we’re dong on the math and science education. I think one of the things, of course, the president has had a very broad agenda on education more generally. We’ve talked about the science of science. And the Race for the Top Fund on education—that is using competitive grants as a way of trying to get the best ideas out there and making sure that we’re rewarding quality, and we’re going to monitor it and figure out what really works so you can pass that on to others. But I think the in-general improving education is going to be unbelievably important. And here, I can’t help but put in one last little plus. You can tell health care is really important in my life today, because this is a really big day. But the piece that’s getting missed in the reconciliation bill that will pass the House and the Senate, there’s also an incredibly important education piece going to direct student lending. The Congressional Budget Office says that frees up about $61 billion that was being wasted in the current student-loan program. A big chunk of that is going to go to Pell grants to just make it easier for low-income people to go to college. But there’s some $2 billion for community colleges. If you want to say, How do you take American workers and make sure they can always be trained for those multiple jobs over their careers or how do you encourage them to just be able to think, be able to write, be able to talk, I think more analytical kind of education is incredibly important.
Will technology that splits water be able to power the world cheaply in the future? Who knows, but I liked this graf from a story that about this very possibility: "After all, in 1898, concerned civic leaders from around the world
gathered because estimates predicted that London would be buried under
three meters of manure at then current rates of growth; New York City
would have piles reaching to the third story of buildings. Within two
decades, that problem was entirely gone. 'They didn't see the
automobile industry coming,' Nocera said. 'Shift happens.'" Scientific American
My friend Eric Jaffe discusses the upcoming book by Michael Lewis from the perspective of behavioral psychology (and in the process labels me a "Fellow Headcase"). Psychology Today
March Madness advice: "We demonstrate that individuals predict more upsets (i.e., wins by a higher seeded team) than would be considered rational by a normative choice model, and that individuals are no better than chance at doing so." Bakadesuyo
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, whose interview with Wired I just linked to, on the Colbert Report:
Wired.com: So the Big Bang starts it all. But you theorize that there’s something before the Big Bang. Something that makes it happen. What’s that?
Carroll: If you find an egg in your refrigerator, you’re not surprised. You don’t say, “Wow, that’s a low-entropy configuration. That’s unusual,” because you know that the egg is not alone in the universe. It came out of a chicken, which is part of a farm, which is part of the biosphere, etc., etc. But with the universe, we don’t have that appeal to make. We can’t say that the universe is part of something else. But that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m fitting in with a line of thought in modern cosmology that says that the observable universe is not all there is. It’s part of a bigger multiverse. The Big Bang was not the beginning.
And if that’s true, it changes the question you’re trying to ask. It’s not, “Why did the universe begin with low entropy?” It’s, “Why did part of the universe go through a phase with low entropy?” And that might be easier to answer.
Wired.com: In this multiverse theory, you have a static universe in the middle. From that, smaller universes pop off and travel in different directions, or arrows of time. So does that mean that the universe at the center has no time?
Carroll: So that’s a distinction that is worth drawing. There’s different moments in the history of the universe and time tells you which moment you’re talking about. And then there’s the arrow of time, which give us the feeling of progress, the feeling of flowing or moving through time. So that static universe in the middle has time as a coordinate but there’s no arrow of time. There’s no future versus past, everything is equal to each other.
Why saying "no offense" means you are probably about to offend Overcoming Bias
"The problem, I say, isn’t with full-content RSS feeds, but rather with
a business model that hinges solely on web page views. The precious
commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers." Daring Fireball
"Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data,
search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed
apology to its millions of users Monday." The Onion
Watching the important movies of the past year has been a depressing experience. From those I've seen in the last three days alone, the characters have included an alcoholic country singer, a suicidal professor grieving for his dead lover, a homeless high-schooler, and a teenage girl twice impregnated by her rapist father. Pretty soon Fandango will start selling Xanax along with your tickets.
My only general observation of this year's class is that no fewer than six of the best movies---A Serious Man, Crazy Heart, Up in the Air, A Single Man, Up, and Anvil---are about aging and decline, or have it as one of their main themes.
Anyway, let's get started. This is how I would rank the nominees for Best Picture, with embedded links to each flick's Rotten Tomatoes page:
1. A Serious Man is my favorite movie of the year, on or off this list. I'm also well aware that opinions about it are highly polarized, with many people wondering just what the hell was the point. But I'm sticking with it, and you can click here to read my longer comments about it earlier this week.
2. Up was sad and sweet, and the opening montage about an aging couple's marriage was as romantic as anything I've come across lately. Another win for Pixar.
3. The Hurt Locker is a war movie that doesn't get preachy. It simply lets us watch Jeremy Renner's character do his job as his disturbed nature reveals itself to us. Of the five nominees, Katheryn Bigelow would be my choice for Best Director.
4. Precious had two of the best acting performances of the year, and Mo'Nique would be my pick for Supporting Actress. Best Actress is a tougher call, but Gabourney Sidibe is a justifiable choice.
5. District 9 is an efficiently executed movie with powerful sociological lessons. These lessons are obvious enough (maybe too obvious) that I don't need to say more about them here, so I'll just add that Neill Blomkamp deserved a nod for Best Director, certainly ahead of Jason Reitman (of Up in the Air).
6. Inglorious Basterds was fun, but to be honest I haven't been able to shake these thoughts from Tyler Cowen, who might be reading too much into it but also might be right. I also agree with The Horror Chick that Eli Roth is out of place in front of the camera.
7. An Education was on its way to being the best film of the year for the first 30-40 minutes, then stepped badly wrong in the crucial scene where Jenny confronts David about his thieving. He gives a feeble and poorly worded speech that (we are meant to believe) instantly sways this brilliant and spunky young girl to stay with him. Bullshit. There were other problems that I won't get into now, and the ending was also royally botched. That said, Carey Mulligan is magnificent in this movie and would be a solid Best Actress. Click here to read about the true story of Lynn Barber, on whom Jenny is based.
! We pause to announce a sharp break in quality between the above seven movies and the following three. Thank you.
8. Up in the Air is the most overrated movie of the year. Here are two general rules to follow when making a movie about the dangers of thinking that relationships hold people back: 1) Don't cast the glamorous George Clooney as your supposedly hapless itinerant, and 2) don't have the non-Clooney meet the curvaceous Vera Farmiga in a dark airport bar, like something out of a wet dream, and then proceed to have sporadic sex romps with her while flying first class around the country. Also, I pretty much agreed with the entire "What's in your backpack?" speech, and I'm fairly certain the movie intended to convince me of the opposite. It failed.
9. Avatar was a once in a lifetime experience, and I mean that literally: there is no need to ever see this movie again. The story sucked, but yes: all props to James Cameron for again breaking through the previous limits of what special effects can accomplish. It should sweep the visual categories, though nobody gives a shit about those.
546. The Blind Side doesn't belong anywhere near a Best Picture list, so I'm just pretending it wasn't on this one. Sure, I understand why parts of it were affecting, but mostly it was a predictable bore. And my friend Salil just reminded me that the movie included this exchange: "You've changed that boy's life." "No, he's changed mine." Get the fuck outtahere.
MOVIES NOMINATED IN OTHER CATEGORIES
A Single Man is the only movie discussed here that I knew nothing about when I walked into the theater, and I loved it. Colin Firth, in a difficult and complicated role, hits just the right notes as a suicidal man with an intelligent and likable, even magnetic, personality. His students recognize his willingness to test the boundaries of what is acceptable to say in class, and they sense that he has daring and perceptive ideas to offer in a fearful time. Three different people in the movie find themselves drawn to him; they appreciate his wisdom and also see the pain he is trying to hide. The movie also makes fantastic use of atmospheric music.
Crazy Heart is pretty good despite some really jarring elements. To begin with, the Jeff Bridges character looks exactly like Jeffrey Lebowski in a cowboy hat. And where do we see him in the movie's first scene? That's right, in a bowling alley, and within the first ten minutes he's having a conversation about "leads" of some sort or another. Then we're supposed to believe that Colin Farrell is a country singer; Farrell is about as country as his morning bowl of Lucky Charms. And at one point Robert Duvall shows up for ten minutes of screen time as a friendly neighborhood bartender whose entire role could have been cut without any loss to the movie. I mean, Robert Duvall---Tom Hagan, The Great Santini, Bill Fucking Kilgore! Was he so nostalgic for his turn as a hillbilly in Days of Thunder that he would take this shitty bit role? Despite these distractions, I actually did enjoy it, and that probably owes everything to the truly fine performances of Jeff Bridges, who is a decent choice for Best Actor, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
THE SNUBS (MOVIES THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR SOMETHING, BUT WERE NOT)
Anvil! the story of Anvil is a documentary I loved. It's about many things: disappointment, marriage, friendship, failure, and even leadership. But maybe the most interesting theme in the movie is about the power of self-delusion. We know it's unlikely that the band will ever make it big. But without the irrational hopes of the lead singer, Lips, they never would have done the European tour, or played the concert in Tokyo, or cut another album. They probably wouldn't even be playing music anymore. But is it necessarily a good thing that they still play? It's not obvious one way or the other. The band is constantly frustrated and angry, and we see the financial consequences of Anvil's persistence and the hardship on the band's families. It's sad to see that the obsessive drive responsible for the band's mild successes also prevents the band from enjoying them.
Broken Embraces was a movie that made me think a lot about movies, and also one of the few I plan to see again. To be fair, I haven't seen the other foreign-language nominations, which I've heard are great this year, but I simply can't believe this one didn't make the cut. Is there an Almodovar backlash going on? By the way, Broken Embraces is also this year's Annual Spanish Movie That Displays Penelope Cruz's Naked Bosom Just Because The Director Felt Like It. Previous editions include Abre los Ojos and La Nina de tus Ojos, and those are just the ones I'm aware of.
Me and Orson Welles is somewhere on my personal top ten list, and in a just world Christian McKay would be a serious contender for Best Actor. He portrays Welles as an artist so impressed with himself, so enthralled by his own talent, that he seemed to always be in character. Welles believed that if such a great man as he could be so fully subservient to his art, then he could rightly expect others to be fully subservient to him, or at least to his artistic vision.
RANDOM COMMENTS ON OTHER MOVIES
500 Days of Summer made me crazy for Zooey Deschanel, and reminded me of this line from Anthony Lane's review of Before Sunset:
Then, there is the matter of Julie Delpy, a stern reminder that the first duty of a film critic---the sole qualification, to be honest---is to fall regularly, and pointlessly, in love with the people onscreen.
I interpreted Deschanel in 500 Days as the opposite of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a concept you can read about here.
The Time Traveler's Wifeis a movie I'll never see, but my buddy Salil had this funny comment about it:
Let me get this straight. A guy travels back in time, shows up naked, and tells the 9-year-old version of his future wife that someday she'll marry him. How was her response anything other than, Sir, you seem nice, but I'm calling the cops??
Zombieland is the only zombie movie I'm aware of that could aptly be described as "cute". Improbably, it succeeds in communicating a message about what defines a family in a world where the traditional version makes little sense and it seems everybody has lost their fucking mind. Not bad.
Drag Me to Hell had tense, terrific horror scenes and uninspired everything-else scenes.
Jennifer's Body was roundly panned by the critics, but I liked it. No, I'm not saying that because I was hypnotized by the occasional semi-nudity of Megan Fox. It really was much better than people said, and I'd compare it favorably with Mean Girls as an exploration of high school friendship and status games. The biggest problem with Jennifer's Body is that it was supposed to be a horror movie, but isn't remotely scary.
The Invention of Lying had the year's most unexpectedly touching moment, when Ricky Gervais fights through tears to comfort his dying mother with lies about the afterlife. Some fascinating commentary on this movie, courtesy of Robin Hanson, is here.
Scientists have come up with a formula for the "perfect wife" Telegraph (via Shanny Basar)
"Israel’s Army Radio reported on Wednesday that a raid on suspected
militants in the West Bank planned for Wednesday was called off by the
country’s military because a soldier posted details of the operation on
Facebook." The Lede
Eric Barker has a digest of posts on how to quickly and easily improve your life Bakadesuyo
"You have to be a little crazy to be a writer or an artist or an entrepreneur" Stephen Pressfield
A handwritten note from GNR guitarist Slash, age 14, to a girlfriend
who broke up with him because he talked about his guitar all the time.
The letter is gracious, sweet Letters of Note
"There's a fine line between crazy and entrepreneurial... The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility" Scott Adams
Slides from a talk about the future of the Internet PewInternet
An asshole professor takes a student's laptop, freezes it in liquid nitrogen, then smashes it on the ground (props to Gizmodo for the video and for noticing that the jerk resembles Egon from Ghostbusters):
The secret to getting a job, and quantifying the importance of networking Bakadesuyo
"Happiness ain't all it's cracked up to be." For one thing, it could make you more selfish, though this is one of those experiments whose findings, I suspect, don't hold in the real world. NewScientist
From last week, a wonderful essay by Russ Roberts on the limits of economics. It's an issue he's beenexploring at length since the start of the crisis WSJ
A frustrated lawyer has listed his $100k law degree on Craigslist for the "bargain price" of $59,250: "This priceless collectible will permit you to be surrounded by
hobby-less assholes whose entire life is dictated by billing by the
hour and being anal dickheads." Craigslist
"It's a funny thing, this list. Assembling so many rules from so many
authors serves to highlight the essential hopelessness of giving advice
on how to write." More Intelligent Life
Some commentators in Britain sneered at the “crocodile
tears” of the masses over the death of Diana. On the contrary, Leader says,
this grief is the same as the old public grief in which groups got together to
experience in unity their individual losses. As a saying from China’s lower
Yangtze Valley (where professional mourning was once common) put it, “We use
the occasions of other people’s funerals to release personal sorrows.” When we
watch the televised funerals of Michael Jackson or Ted Kennedy, Leader
suggests, we are engaging in a practice that goes back to soldiers in the Iliad
mourning with Achilles for the fallen Patroclus. Our version is more mediated.
Still, in the Internet age, some mourners have returned grief to a social
space, creating online grieving communities, establishing virtual cemeteries,
commemorative pages, and chat rooms where loss can be described and shared.
I think this is interesting as an example of how an action that seems illogical---grieving for the death of a famous person you’ve never met
and who would not have grieved at your death---has a non-obvious but useful social purpose.
It’s easy to be condescending toward the waves of sympathy that
sometimes greet celebrity deaths, but public grief is for some people a natural and healthy
process---and as O’Rourke explains, one that was quite common until just a
century ago, when grief started to become a largely private matter.
And even if you do think public grief is silly, at least it's harmless. A related point was made in this blog post from last June
after the death of Michael Jackson, in which Bryan Caplan argued that grieving
for celebrities gives people an outlet to express feelings that would
otherwise manifest in more troublesome ways.I don’t agree with everything Caplan says, but this seems
right:
Samuel Johnson once
wisely observed that, "There are few ways in which a man can be more
innocently employed than in getting money."I'd like to add that "There are few ways in which a man
can be more innocently hysterical than in grieving over a celebrity."
