Every time I read about a shooting incident in the US, my first visceral response is one of befuddled anger. How is it possible for such an advanced polity to be captured by such an obviously wrong policy? However, one of the things that I have learned over the years is that when you can’t explain a social norm, look to the cultural context. The history of the founding of the United States, the ravages of the Civil War, and the combination of geographical and civic factors have combined to produce some unique mores in the US.
Which other country can produce a story as grippingly astonishing as the story of how the bears came to Grafton, a tiny town in rural New Hampshire? Grab a cup of coffee and dive into this long-form piece that gets crazier with every sentence.
Links of the Week
Non-fiction - A story of libertarians, guns, fake news, and bears from rural New Hampshire. Top-notch stuff. (Link)
People in Grafton said that, year after year, the bears were getting bolder. The same anti-authority ethos that gave rise to Tent City convinced locals that the threat needed to be dealt with, no matter what any government data said. It’s illegal to kill a bear in New Hampshire without a special hunting license, yet I heard whispers that a vigilante posse had embarked on a clandestine hunt.
Construction - Why is it so hard to industrialize home construction? This story of Operation Breakthrough where the US govt tried to incentivize mass production of houses is quite instructive. (Link)
Breakthrough was conceived and implemented at the peak of the Apollo Program, and it was thought the approaches and organizations responsible for that success could be applied to other industries. The director of Breakthrough, Harold Finger, was a former NASA administrator and literal rocket scientist, and Breakthrough was deliberately modeled after successful aerospace and R&D projects.
Innovation - Is there stagnation when it comes to creating timeless art or science? This deep-dive by Harold Karnofsky tries to answer the question: Where are today’s Beethovens? (Link)
The broad theme is that across a variety of areas in both art and science, we see a form of "innovation stagnation": the best-regarded figures are disproportionately from long ago, and our era seems to "punch below its weight" when considering the rise in population, education, etc.
Memory - Why don’t we have any memories from when we were infants (apparently called infantile amnesia)? Interesting throughout. (Link)
Despite vast differences in the details, these memories do have a couple of things in common: They’re all autobiographical, or memories of significant experiences in a person’s life, and they typically didn’t happen before the age of 2 or 3. In fact, most people can’t remember events from the first few years of their lives – a phenomenon researchers have dubbed infantile amnesia.
Physics - How do you define a kilogram? A brief refresher if you have forgotten your high school physics. Also featuring a strong Max Planck cameo. (Link)
When I taught physics some years later, we used a standard textbook, which I still have. It is so heavy that I can barely lift it. The authors did not attempt to define mass and wrote only that the mass of anything should be compared to a standard platinum alloy cylinder which was created in 1889 and is stored in Paris. This struck me as like defining an animal—say, an owl—by comparing its attributes to those of my neighbor’s cat.
Science - What causes nightmares and how could we try and cure someone having them? Scott over at ACX does a detailed overview of the current literature. (Link)
Anxiety is a bias for the brain to interpret information in a threat-related manner. Instead of generating completely random data, the anxious brain, when deprived of sense-data, generates data with a bias towards threatening stimuli. A sufficiently threatened, stressed, or traumatized person will naturally have more threatening dreams.
Economics - Charter cities are an interesting innovation in the area of governance systems. This article lays down the case for charter cities. (Link)
A charter city is a new city with a special jurisdiction that grants a wide range of autonomy. The blank legal and administrative slate allows the charter city to truly start from scratch, to build new institutions that are more responsive to residents and businesses, instead of being moribound and tied to existing bureaucratic sclerosis. A well designed charter city would have a government capable of acting, providing rule of law, public goods, and effectively fighting pandemics.
Happy reading!