Longread #147 -- The Immortal Horizon -- 8/30/12

You may have heard before of elite marathoners or ultra racers -- people who run ridiculous distances in places like Death Valley, California. This longread documents another type of endurance competition, but what sets this one apart is its unique setting and the challenges it poses. I can't say that I really understand the motivation for embarking on this kind of race (or an ultra-marathon, either), but I thought this article did a good job of exploring that issue.

Here's hoping that my upcoming vacation through the heart of America goes much more smoothly than this race does for its participants. On that point, a short programming note -- there will be no blog posts next week as I'll be away from the computer. Posts will resume on 9/10. Happy Labor Day and safe travels!

"The Immortal Horizon" by Leslie Jamison
Published in the Believer, May 2011
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201105/?read=article_jamison

Eric

Longread #146 -- Voter Fraud -- 8/29/12

As election season continues to heat up, one issue that keeps popping up is about election fraud. A handful of states have or are pushing requirements to provide photo ID to vote, sparking allegations on both sides of vote manipulation. On the right, the claim is typically that voter fraud is allowing voting by people with no right to vote (including dogs and dead people to name only a few examples). On the right, the claim is that voter ID laws are part of a mass campaign of helping conservatives win elections through mass disenfranchisement. This article looks at all of these claims and finds that both are flawed. Voter fraud is rare, but at the same time, voter ID laws don't tend to discourage many likely voters from going to the polls. Regardless, these facts tend to be ignored in order to use the issue to drum up fundraising dollars. Moreover, even if voter restriction laws don't actually limit a great deal of voting, their very nature is still discriminatory based on the fact that they target specific groups of people that are often already disempowered.

"The Dog That Voted and Other Election Fraud Yarns" by Kevin Drum
Published in Mother Jones, July/August 2012
http://www.motherjones.com/print/178281

Eric

Longread #145 -- The Heretic -- 8/28/12

Today's longread is an interesting look into the history of research on LSD and psychedelic drugs in the U.S. While there is obviously the potential for abuse, it seems clear that government policy has stunted what could have been a number of promising research projects into the benefits (and risks) of these drugs. The nature of consciousness is such a fascinating topic that it is sad to me that even controlled experiments have been prevented that might better our understanding.

"The Heretic" by Tim Doody
Published in the Morning News, July 26, 2012
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-heretic?src=longreads

Eric

Longread #144 -- Paterno -- 8/27/12

Joe Posnanski is one of my favorite sportswriters. For much of my youth, he was a columnist for the Kansas City Star. Initially, I much preferred the style of KC's other main sports columnist, Jason Whitlock, whose opinions and writing style tended toward the bombastic. It took awhile for me to warm up to Posnanski's more subtle, storytelling style, but over time, I've really come to appreciate his talent as a sportswriter.

Over a year ago, Posnanski decided to write a biography of Joe Paterno and moved to Happy Valley, Pennsylvania to begin the research for the book. While he was there, the scandal at Penn State erupted and the tragic details of child molestation came to the fore. Obviously this dramatically changed the nature of the biography, but if any sportswriter was equipped to manage this type of difficult subject matter, I figured it would be Posnanski.

Unfortunately, though it sounds as though Posnanski's book, Paterno, struggles in dealing with the scandal and Paterno's legacy. I haven't read the book for myself (and honestly, I don't plan to), so perhaps some of these criticisms are off-base. But at the least, I appreciated this review because of its willingness to take on even a well-established and highly-respect sportswriter. And as I learned with the whole Jonah Lehrer situation, it is important to constantly question the work even of the writers who you admire the most.

"'Paterno': A Relentless, Failed Defense of Penn State's Disgraced Coach" by Allen Barra
Published in the Atlantic, August 21, 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/paterno-a-relentless-failed-defense-of-penn-states-disgraced-coach/261376/

Eric

Longread #143 -- Big Trouble -- 8/23/12

Todaly's longread is the last for this week's theme regarding health care. This article is a few years old but still documents a troubling issue in the medical field -- providing care to the obese. Not only does obesity increase a person's risk of many health problems, it also complicates the ability to receive quality care. This happens for several reasons ranging from the way that most diagnostic equipment works for the obese to the often demeaning attitudes that health professionals take to obese patients. Reading this article is just another reminder of all of the complexities that go into providing care and how many challenges have to be overcome  to design methods of health care delivery that can serve everyone.

"Big Trouble" by Jason Zengerle
Published in the New Republic, November 12, 2007
-http://www.tnr.com/article/health-care-special-issue-big-trouble

Eric

Longread #142 -- Weight-Loss Pills -- 8/23/12

This is one of the shorter longreads you'll ever find on here, but it touches on a handful of topics that I find to be very relevant to our discussions of health care.

1. Priorities in drug development. This point has been made by many others before, but it is sometimes shocking to think of how much time, money, and effort has been put into developing pills for things like weight loss, erectile dysfunction, and acne when there are many diseases for which there are no drug treatments or inadequate drug production (malaria, for example). Again, this goes to the profit motive for a pharmaceutical company. The return on investment for a drug like Viagra that is marketed to mostly wealthy people in developed countries is much higher than the ROI for drugs that are marketed to mostly poor people in developing countries. This raises difficult questions about how the pharmaceutical industry should be regulated or supported. As a company, the responsibility is with the shareholders. So how do you align the interests of the shareholders with the greater needs of society (not just in the US but worldwide)?

2. Drug approval. Most of us place a lot of trust in the FDA. However, over the years, the FDA has made a number of errors that have had serious consequences for consumers. It is hard to say whether those errors were honest mistakes or were a result of incompetence, negligence, or politics. I think the biggest concern -- and one that is not at all unfounded -- is that the political power of large pharmaceutical companies influences the drug approval process. As this article demonstrates, this is a scary proposition.

3. The failures of the health consumer. I went to a talk last year about reforming the health care system, and a huge portion of the talk focused on how consumers needed more information so that they could take control of their own care. In many ways, my own job fits squarely into this narrative that if we just give consumers all the information, they will make better decisions. Unfortunately, as many of the studies on neuroscience and decision-making have shown, simply having "the facts" often doesn't compel people to make the most rational decision. This is complicated even further when other variables are introduced such as the need to balance short-term and long-term benefits and risks or the need to understand what can be very complex and technical medical information. As this article points out, what we understand as "the facts" can be strongly influenced by marketing efforts (of the health care industry or doctors or even the anecdotal story of a friend/neighbor, etc.).

4. The search for the "magic bullet," especially with weight loss. I won't delve into this too much, but sometimes I wonder how much more benefit might be gained by focusing all the R&D funds for a weight-loss pill instead on trying to reach parents and kids early in life to encourage healthier habits. Losing weight is hard, and the appeal of a silver bullet is hard to resist. The upshot is that people take dangerous medications that often have limited or only fleeting benefits. How can we transition from a focus on "treating" obesity to preventing it in the first place?

Lots of big questions with very few real "right" answers. Welcome to the world of health care and health care policy.

"An Endless Quest for Weight-Loss Pills" by Danielle Ofri
Published in the New York Times (Well Blog), May 10, 2012
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/an-endless-quest-for-weight-loss-pills/

Eric

Longread #141 -- The Measured Man -- 8/22/12

While Monday's longread looked at how the medical system in the U.S. may focus too much on individual customization, today's article highlights a completely different approach. It documents the efforts of a particular researcher to scientifically categorize and measure everything that happens in the body. It's an enticing proposition, and I think there is likely a lot to be learned from these sorts of efforts. That said, I feel that ultimately this sort of project is overly ambitious and carries a certain level of discomforting hubris. There are so many interdependent systems within the body that I am skeptical of any approach that believes it can reduce them all to quantitative measuring and analysis.

"The Measured Man" by Mark Bowden
Published in the Atlantic, July/August 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/the-measured-man/309018/?single_page=true

Eric

Longread #140 -- Learning From Third World Healthcare -- 8/21/12

Just as yesterday's longread looked at what the U.S. healthcare system can learn from an unlikely source -- chain restaurants -- today's longread examines what the vaunted U.S. system might learn from oft-maligned third world health systems. As this article argues, too often U.S. health care providers try to "reinvent the wheel" rather than taking small steps to advance individual and community health.

An interesting example that comes up in the article is people remembering to take their medications. Even in cancer treatment, this can be a real issue. One type of leukemia, CML, is typically very effectively treated with a drug called Gleevec. However, some patients relapse after initial positive response, and the most common cause is "poor adherence" -- a fancy way of saying people not taking their meds. Especially given the costs of prescriptions, many patients try to stretch medications by skipping doses or cutting pills in half. In other cases, people just forget. Whatever the reason, it is important to remember that no matter how much we spend on mapping genomes and conducting advanced drug development, it only matters if people do the seemingly simple things like take their pills.

This isn't to say that reminding people to take their pills will solve the problems of our healthcare system. But it is an indication that we may not always need massive reforms and overhauls to make significant improvements in the quality, efficiency, and costs of care in the U.S.

"What We Can Learn From Third-World Health Care" by Pauline Chen
Published in the New York Times, July 26, 2012
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/what-we-can-learn-from-third-world-health-care/

Note: Information on poor adherence for CML comes from the National Cancer Institute website, http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/childAML/HealthProfessional/page11

Eric

Longread #139 -- Big Med -- 8/20/12

Today's longread revisits the issue of health care in America. Health care is an interesting issue because there is virtually no one who argues convincingly in favor of the current system. While a handful of large insurance companies have profited under the system, very few would argue that it has done an effective job of providing care that is either efficient or of a high-quality. The system frustrates doctors and patients alike, and has caused the U.S. to slip relative to other countries on key health indicators despite massive growth in the amount being spent. In this article, Atul Gawade, who has written about these issues on several prior occasions, investigates the trend of hospital consolidation and whether a new paradigm for health care delivery might use chain restaurants (like the Cheesecake Factory) as a model.

"Big Med" by Atul Gawade
Published in the New Yorker, August 13, 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/13/120813fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

Eric

Longread #138 -- The Vibrant City -- 8/17/12

A growing trend in city planning and development has been a focus on "vibrancy." In today's longread, Thomas Frank looks at the obsession with vibrancy and tries to identify the underlying dynamics that have fueled it. He concludes that vibrancy is a vague term that has been seized upon as a way of avoiding more fundamental initiatives to make places desirable. For example, fostering an artistic and creative "scene" becomes a higher priority than generating well-paying and durable jobs. While vibrancy is promoted as a means to economic development, it is unclear how or if that happens.

It seems that a big part of the critique here is the attempt by bureaucratic city planning institutions to try to create vibrancy. Seattle feels like a vibrant city to me (by whatever definition), but that seems to me to be something that is the result of the characteristics of the city and population (diversity, generally well-educated, beautiful natural environment, long-standing music and arts appreciation, etc.) rather than something foisted upon the city by government planners. In this context, vibrancy is good because it is a natural outgrowth of a generally healthy city rather than a cookie-cutter attempt to make a city desirable.

Then again, I love Seattle, so I'm probably just a little bit biased...

"Dead End on Shakin' Street" by Thomas Frank
Published in the Baffler, July 26, 2012
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/dead_end_on_shakin_street/print

Eric

Longread #137 -- Welcome to Your New Government -- 8/16/12

As with the previous two days posts, this longread focuses on how different groups are stepping into the void left by withering city services. In this case, nonprofit groups have taken on what are traditional municipal tasks in several neighborhoods of Detroit. As with the other cases, a situation like this one raises interesting questions about representation/democracy, equality, and efficiency in thinking about how cities are organized and run. Ultimately, I think that strong municipal governments are important to provide a floor for basic services, and nonprofit groups can play a vital role in expanding services and community-based resources above that floor. In any case, it is clear that in many places the traditional model of city planning is faltering, which has created a very dynamic and intriguing situation about what comes next.

"Welcome to Your New Government" by Anna Clark
Published in Forefront (by Next American City), July 9, 2012
http://americancity.org/forefront/view/welcome-to-your-new-government

Eric

Longread #136 -- Tee Time in Benton Harbor -- 8/15/12

Today's longread is about another unconventional city management approach. In this case, the city's development has been driven largely by profound economic distress. In trying to adapt to this situation, planners have rebranded the city around a major golf course, which serves as a troubling juxtaposition to parts of the city that are woefully neglected in terms of development and public services. While it's easy to poke holes in the golf course plan, it's much harder to propose alternate ways to rebuild the city that are likely to be effective. Another element of all this relates to the ramifications of how the state of Michigan's appointment of city managers in place of elected officials affects the government's accountability to the public. While it depicts an extreme case, this longread nevertheless demonstrates the types of struggles that cities across the country are grappling with.

"Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich." by Jonathan Mahler
Published in the New York Times, December 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/magazine/benton-harbor.html?pagewanted=all

Eric

Longread #135 -- Private Cities -- 8/14/12

Given the financial disaster that is the budget of many municipalities across the country, this story of privatization presents an interesting case study. Privatization is a hot-button issue because while it typically comes with big promises of efficiency and cost-savings, it often falls far short of delivering on those promises.  As this article discusses, one of the keys is precision in writing contracts and actually leveraging a competitive bid system. I am concerned, though, about how well a model like this would translate to a larger, more diverse, and less affluent city. As highlighted in the article, there are also significant concerns about this sort of privatization plays out from an equality perspective -- "separate, yet equal" typically is only the former.

"A Georgia Town Takes the People’s Business Private" by David Segal
Published in the New York Times, June 23, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/a-georgia-town-takes-the-peoples-business-private.html?pagewanted=all

Eric

Longread #134 -- Walking in America -- 8/13/12

This week's longreads will look at various issues related to city planning and city management in America. The first of these longreads comes from a series in Slate about the crisis of walking in America. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, American cities and suburbs have been built in such a way that makes residents car dependent. It is not always a simple matter of distance. For pedestrians, walking in these places is unsafe, unsightly, or inconvenient (or a combination of each of these). Given the growing knowledge of the health benefits of walking as well as further understanding of the negative effects of car culture (from an environmental perspective as well as studies showing that longer driving commutes decreases happiness), it seems that increasing the walkability of our cities should be a central part of future city planning.

I love walking. It's my primary mode of transportation in Seattle, and luckily, I live and work in a part of town where that is feasible. However, even here, sidewalks are often in horrible shape, crosswalks are poorly marked, and drivers are often unaware of pedestrians. Hopefully over time we will start to see the pendulum swing back in the direction of walkers instead of drivers.

Note: if you like this article, make sure to check out the other 3 articles in the series from Slate.

"Learning to Walk" by Tom Vanderbilt
Published in Slate, April 13, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/walking_in_america_how_we_can_become_pedestrians_once_more_.html

Eric

Longread #133 -- The World Economic Forum -- 8/10/12

Every year, people from around the world converge on Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. While the WEF features a host of presentations and formal events, in many ways it is really a huge networking event for the world's financial elite. Powerful people from government and the private sector rub elbows and make a point of seeing and being seen. This longread is a chronicle of one writer's experience in trying to understand what really happens at Davos.

"Magic Mountain" by Nick Paumgarten
Published in the New Yorker, March 5, 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/05/120305fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all

Eric

Longread #132 -- The Money-Empathy Gap -- 8/9/12

Today's longread is a look at recent neuroscientific studies about how money affects behavior. Much of this research seems to indicate that people with more wealth have less empathy, but there are many remaining questions about the validity of this data as well as the underlying explanations for why this might be true. For example, there is a chicken-egg question -- are people with less empathy more likely to become wealthy? Or does the process of obtaining wealth change how someone will relate to others? These are fascinating issues that are extremely relevant to this week's topic of the rich and how the unequal distribution of wealth affects our society.

"The Money-Empathy Gap" by Lisa Miller
Published in New York Magazine, July 1, 2012
http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/?mid=longreads

Eric

Longread #131 -- Celebrity Philanthropists -- 8/8/12

Today's longread profiles someone who fits squarely into the service industry for the super-rich -- a man whose agency focuses on helping celebrities coordinate philanthropic efforts. While high-profile philanthropy can be incredibly powerful, it can also create numerous headaches for nonprofits and raises a host of difficult questions about a celebrity's "true" intentions. Something about the individual/agency profiled in this article rubbed me the wrong way, but on balance, I think it's good for celebrities and the rich to have help in making the most of their giving.

"When Celebrities Become Philanthropists" by John Colapinto
Published in the Guardian, July 28, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/29/when-celebrities-become-philanthropists/print

Eric

Longread #130 -- The Art of Divorce -- 8/7/12

The Seattle Times has provided a lot of coverage of the divorce of one of the area's richest people, former Microsoft executive Christopher Larson. Normally, these types of stories garner virtually no interest from me for the same reasons why I don't read People or US Weekly. However, I thought this article provided an interesting look into the world of assets. We don't always get a clear picture of how the super-rich spend their money, but that changes when there is a divorce that requires dividing everything up. In this article, writer Ken Armstrong focuses specifically on how the couple's art collection was divided. It offers a glimpse into how much money can be invested in things like art as well as how many different ways some of the most expensive art can be appreciated and valued.

"The Art of Divorce" by Ken Armstrong
Published in the Seattle Times, July 28, 2012
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018791206_larson29m.html

Eric

Longread #129 -- The Billionaire Service Industry -- 8/6/12

Since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, more and more attention has been drawn to the 1% -- the economic elite who possess an enormous amount of wealth relative to the rest of society (the 99%). Even within the 1% is an even smaller class of super-rich families who possess assets that are hard for many of us to even conceptualize. The clash between the interests of the rich and everyone else seems to be gaining momentum in American politics especially since Mitt Romney, if elected, would be among the richest sitting Presidents of all time.

With each longread this week, we'll explore the world of the rich. Today's article is several years old but looks at the "Billionaire Service Industry." As the name implies, this is an entire component of the economy that has arisen specifically to meet the tremendous demands of the super-rich.

"Inside the Billionaire Service Industry" by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Published in the Atlantic, September 2006
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/09/inside-the-billionaire-service-industry/5117/

Eric

Longread #128 -- Life in the Blurbs -- 8/3/12

I've had a lot of friends send me interesting takes on the Jonah Lehrer debacle, and I was planning to post another article about that today. But as I was getting that post ready, I decided that since it's Friday and all, it's time to go for something a little bit lighter instead. This article is from A.J. Jacobs, who has written a number of well-received books that usually focus on adopting some lifestyle for a year (such as his book The Year of Living Biblically). Even though this is a lighter piece, it still touches on many of the issues of academic integrity, the challenges of creativity, and the business and marketing side of publishing.

"How to Blurb and Blurb and Blurb" by A.J. Jacobs
Published in the New York Times, July 27, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/books/review/a-j-jacobs-on-his-blurbing-problem.html?_r=2&ref=review&pagewanted=all

Eric

Longread #127 -- Scientific Retractions -- 8/2/12

This article has been sitting in my folder for the blog for a long time, and seems especially timely in light of everything that has happened with Lehrer recently. While I'm still reading a lot of interesting things about Lehrer specifically, I think it is important to broaden the discussion a bit, too. There are a few interesting things that I take from this article about scientific retractions:

1. Clearly fraud is not limited just to the genius intellectual that was discussed in yesterday's article. Most of these articles that are published are pretty obscure as far as the public eye goes. Nevertheless, there are a host of inaccuracies and falsifications.

2. As someone who believes in the concept of the scientific process, it's frustrating to hear that retracted publications continue to get cited. In fact, it's kind of shocking that this problem exists in the first place let alone that it is getting worse.

3. There's something interestingly circular about linking to an article about retractions that was written by Jonah Lehrer. I tried to follow the WSJ article linked at the beginning, but I don't have subscriber access. I did follow the link to the journal article of the UW researchers, and it looked like that quotation was accurate.

"Why Are Scientific Retractions Increasing?" by Jonah Lehrer
Published in Wired, August 15, 2011
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/why-are-scientific-retractions-increasing

Eric

Longread #126 -- Jonah Lehrer Throws It All Away -- 8/1/12

As I wrote yesterday, we'll continue with the topic of Jonah Lehrer today. This article by Roxane Gay argues that the problem is not so much with Lehrer himself (although he certainly is responsible for his own actions) but with our societal desire to have a "boy wonder" intellectual in the form of a young, white male. Gay's position is that these types of falls from grace are enabled by our obsession with this archetype, which also functions to exclude writers and thinkers who don't fit the mold from wider public acceptance.

Though I wish it weren't the case, I think it would be naive to say that I'm not influenced by this vision of the transcendent genius. In many ways, our focus on the author shapes how we perceive the content. In fact, I think a pretty interesting study would be to keep a passage or article constant but change the name/bio/picture for the author and see how it shapes the reader's response. To be clear, I don't think we should ignore the author. If someone writes an article or a book that you enjoy, it's natural to believe that his or her other works are also likely to be enjoyable for you. But I think it's also important that we not take this for granted nor fail to critically examine how our perceptions of an author affect how we read that author's works.

"Jonah Lehrer throws it all away" by Roxane Gay
Published on Salon.com, July 31, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/31/jonah_lehrer_throws_it_all_away/

Eric