Pacific Standard. Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. |
- Would Pre-1967 Segregation Reduce Violence in Jerusalem?
- ‘Reasonable Suspicion’ That Race Matters in the Immigration Debate
- Fresno’s Detroit Problem
- Celebrate International Criminal Justice Day: Go Arrest a Dictator
- Is Obama Delivering on His Promise of a ‘21st Century’ Approach to Drugs?
- America Has a Stadium Problem
- Kings and Commoners: The Great Diversity of the America’s Cup
- The Healing Power of the Written Word
| Would Pre-1967 Segregation Reduce Violence in Jerusalem? Posted: 17 Jul 2013 03:07 PM PDT  In June, Israeli deputy defense minister Dany Danon told a television interviewer, "A Palestinian state on the 1967 line is something dangerous for Israel, and therefore I oppose that idea." But borders based on the 1967 lines—armistice lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip—may be the solution for a more peaceful Jerusalem, according to a new computer model developed to understand the sources and patterns of violence in urban areas. Israeli leaders opposed to a return to 1967 borders appear to be losing ground in international support.The model, developed by ETH Zurich and contributing universities, utilized geocoded data on the location, size, and shape of Jerusalem's 77 neighborhoods. This data included all deaths and injuries related to political conflict from 2001 to 2009, reported by newspaper articles, NGOs, and police reports. Within the model, researchers looked at the way violence was distributed in four separate scenarios proposed for the future of Jerusalem: “a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, a scenario based on the Clinton Parameters of 2000, a scenario following the outlines of a Palestinian proposal, and a scenario assuming the return to the borders of 1967.” Results revealed the Palestinian proposal, which asks for more autonomy, and the Clinton Parameters scenario would both reduce violence. However, the plan with the greatest violence-reducing effect was a return to the lines of 1967, borders that are currently supported by the U.S. and demanded by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as the basis for a future Palestinian border. Ravi Bhavnani, who initially conceived the project, states that the model is one of the first to utilize empirical data and cultural factors to explore solutions for "an age-old problem" in a "complex area." But the study notes that segregation caused by the 1967 lines is not an end-all solution; segregation itself could trigger new tensions between demographic groups. For now, Israeli leaders opposed to a return to 1967 borders appear to be losing ground in international support. On Tuesday the European Union decided it will not provide funding for Israeli projects unless they are operating in pre-1967 borders and not East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Golan Heights. |
| ‘Reasonable Suspicion’ That Race Matters in the Immigration Debate Posted: 17 Jul 2013 02:00 PM PDT  Like so many contentious issues in modern America, when talk turns to immigration there are usually two or more conversations happening simultaneously, some of them sotto voce. The jousting terms used in these conversations give a clue to their tenor—are these "illegal aliens," suggesting they're both unlawful and somehow out of place, or are they "undocumented workers," people who dutifully labor away but haven't taken care of all the paperwork niceties their presence requires. The call for tougher immigration laws—fix the border, deport the scoundrels, no amnesty for law-breakers—tends to cite the idea of illegality, that these immigrants are criminals because they broke the law when they crossed the border. The counter argument tends to run along ethnic lines—the immigrants we're afraid of are Mexican and that efforts to push or punish them are based on racial considerations, and therefore any effort to crack down is just thinly veiled racism (and yes, we understand that Latino is an ethnic, not racial, designation). Researchers found students were harder on people they assumed were law-abiding immigrants from Mexico than they were on people they assumed were law-breaking immigrants from Canada.That being tough on immigration and immigrants has hurt Republican chances to win over the growing Latino electorate is accepted wisdom, rightly or wrongly, on both sides of the aisle, even as legislators reject the underlying implication. “This law is not about race. It's about what is illegal,” Arizona legislator Russell Pearce told his colleagues during debate on the now infamous SB1070, which allows Arizona law enforcement to stop and check the immigration status of anyone they have "reasonably suspicion" of being in the U.S. illegally. Meanwhile, there's "reasonable suspicion" that it is, at least partly, indeed about race, according to a new research by three psychologists at the University of Kansas. Pearce's quote opens the paper (appearing in a special issue of the journal Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology), which directly asks if tougher legislation is more about "enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion." The research, led by grad student Sahana Mukherjee, is an imperfect vehicle to deliver a final answer on the question—test subjects are young, white undergrads in Lawrence, a flawed proxy for the American electorate or legislators as a whole—but it's a start. In two different experiments, researchers found that students were harder on people they assumed were law-abiding immigrants from Mexico than they were on people they assumed were law-breaking immigrants from Canada. Although unstated, the Mexican immigrant presumably was Latino—his name was Josè—while the Canadian (Joseph) was likely white. "These patterns," the researchers write, "suggest that support for tough immigration legislation and tolerance for intrusive measures have a basis in something beyond interest in enforcement of laws, as this interest should not differ as a function of immigrant national origin." In the first experiment, 98 undergrads—selected in part because they self-identified as white—read an apparent local newspaper story about a cop stopping a man acting suspiciously at an ATM and asking him to produce ID, a la SB1070. Using a seven-point scale, they rated their reactions to the detainee and what happened to him. Their responses, taken as a whole, "endorsed tough punishment and tolerated intrusive enforcement when the detainee was Mexican, but excused illegal behavior and objected to intrusive enforcement when the detainee was Canadian. Indeed, results … suggest greater concern about protecting human rights—rating tough treatment as less fair and endorsing derogation of the arresting officer—of a law-breaking Canadian immigrant than a law-abiding Mexican immigrant." The second experiment, with 172 undergrads, offered the same story but this time the guy being hassled was described as either an undocumented immigrant or a U.S. citizen. Not surprisingly, given the earlier study, tougher enforcement was perceived as OK for undocumented Josè, but not for the undocumented Joseph. (And it was not OK, for either Josè or Joseph, when they were documented, the participants ruled.) The takeaway, write the researchers, is that if your concern about immigration reform is based solely on a neutral application of the law, "one should expect equal punishment of illegal behavior and equal protection of human rights, regardless of national origin." That in these experiments it didn't suggests that some concern about keeping the "other" out—what the academic see as ethnocentric exclusion—played a role. Again, this is not the last word on the subject. The study participants were by design only a shrinking subsection of the American electorate, and they were chosen more for convenience of the study that because they were ardent culture warriors on the subject of immigration. And as university students, albeit from beet-red Kansas, they presumably might be more liberal than the average voter. But it does add meat to the bones of those arguing the current immigration debate is more about keeping America majority-majority than majority-minority (good luck on that) than it is about enforcing laws. Ironically, such attempts have already backfired: Having a "secure" border helped create a permanent undocumented underclass, since historically workers who passed back and forth through a porous dotted line now choose to stay put north of a solid line. |
| Posted: 17 Jul 2013 01:13 PM PDT  I call this problem the Ann Arbor Dilemma. Ann Arbor has trouble attracting talent because it is located in a Rust Belt state and all too close to the face of urban failure, Detroit. This cute college town is plenty cool enough. More amenities won’t work. Branding campaigns whither in the face of geographic stereotypes, the mesofacts. Remember Ann Arbor the next time someone floats another Creative Class boondoggle. California is the new Michigan. Silicon Valley is the next Detroit. Visalia (near Fresno) struggling with the Ann Arbor Dilemma:
Emphasis added. You go where you know. Visalia is located in Rust Belt inland California, all too close to Fresno’s reportedly high unemployment and threatening municipal bankruptcy. More from the public radio segment:
Greater Fresno has the job openings. It can’t attract the talent. It can’t attract talent because everyone knows California is doomed. There are no jobs. The state government is bloated and ineffective. Opportunity is elsewhere, in Texas. Geographic stereotypes heavily influence relocation decisions. Mesofacts are difficult to change. Greater Fresno could do all the right things and still lose, no matter what the real estate developer or Mayor Bloomberg promises. |
| Celebrate International Criminal Justice Day: Go Arrest a Dictator Posted: 17 Jul 2013 10:30 AM PDT  Are you Sudanese strongman and International Criminal Court fugitive Omar al-Bashir? If so, today you may be celebrating International Criminal Justice Day, which marks the establishment of the same ICC that’s out to get you. The Hague-based court has only existed for a little over a decade, but in that time it has received mixed reviews for its inability to do anything other than bring toothless indictments. With no enforcement power, the ICC needs local governments to turn over fugitives; they usually don’t. al-Bashir recently visited Nigeria, for example, even though the Nigerian government is a signatory to the treaty that created the court. Though the world body brought charges of human rights violations against al-Bashir in 2009 for his hand in the brutal Darfur massacres of earlier in the 21st century, the rogue leader can be found anywhere but a courtroom, and the Hague body isn’t empowered to do a single thing about it. What happens without enforcement power? Besides not giving al-Bashir his day in court, the ICC also can’t promise victims of an ICC target much justice. That invites local justice by other means. In perhaps the most famous case, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity, fell into the hands of an armed opposition during Libya’s civil war; he was shot dead on the spot rather than turned over for prosecution. That wasn’t particularly surprising: the ICC indictment had been, at best, a symbolic step. So what’s really being celebrated today? An ICC representative, Estonian diplomat Tiina Intelmann, tries to sum it up, at the Huffington Post:
Not much to celebrate. That “high-level visitor” she’s referencing would be al-Bashir again, whose ICC war crimes indictment hasn’t affected his travel schedule around his neighborhood for years—long before his recent jaunt to Lagos. Intelmann knows this, of course:
Starkly, every case brought by the ICC in its first decade-plus has involved African leaders (a helpful summary, by the Institute for Security Studies’ Solomon Dersso, is here). An analysis in Kampala’s Observer newspaper by reporter Emma Mutaizibwa argued that the ICC’s dependency on local governments has let politicians use ICC indictments as political footballs. Sub-Saharan African nations enthusiastically embraced the ICC’s formation. Other regions and countries didn’t—the U.S., for example, isn’t a signatory. Though envisioned as a global body, the ICC so far appears to be evolving into a narrow, heavily political instrument. “Part of the African leadership has used the ICC to solve its internal problems,” a local law professor told Mutaizibwa, the Observer writer. |
| Is Obama Delivering on His Promise of a ‘21st Century’ Approach to Drugs? Posted: 17 Jul 2013 10:00 AM PDT  When the Obama administration released its 2013 Drug Control Strategy, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske called it a “21st century” approach to drug policy. “It should be a public health issue, not just a criminal justice issue,” he said. The latest plan builds on Obama’s initial strategy outlined in 2010. Obama said then the U.S. needed “a new direction in drug policy,” and that “a well-crafted strategy is only as successful as its implementation.” Many reform advocates were hopeful the appointment of former Seattle Police Chief Kerlikowske as head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy signaled a shift in the long-lasting “war on drugs.” But a government report released a day after the latest proposal questioned the office’s impact so far. “As of March 2013, GAO’s analysis showed that of the five goals for which primary data on results are available, one shows progress and four show no progress,” the report by the Government Accountability Office found. For instance, the GAO noted that there’s actually been an increase in HIV transmissions among drug users and drug-related deaths, as well as no difference in the prevalence of drug use among teens. Many public health experts say the administration deserves credit for increasing access to drug treatment. But others say despite an increase in funding for rehab, the administration has continued to push programs and policies built to punish drug users. As the administration lays out its latest plan on a new approach to drugs, here’s look at what’s in it, and what they’ve done so far. Advocates have praised Obama’s decision to endorse increasing access to Naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses. Some lawmakers have criticized that position, saying it essentially encourages drug abuse.“BREAK THE CYCLE OF DRUG USE, CRIME, DELINQUENCY AND INCARCERATION” FBI records indeed show a drop in drug arrests, from 1.8 million in 2007 to 1.5 million in 2011. But overall, the government spends roughly the same proportion of the drug policy budget on law enforcement now as was spent during Bush’s final years in office. In Obama’s 2014 budget proposal, 38 percent is allocated for domestic drug law enforcement, while another 20 percent would be spent to crack down on drugs along U.S. borders and abroad. The Obama administration has also renewed funding for controversial programs like the Justice Assistance Grant program, formerly known as Byrne Grants, which had been cut under President Bush. The funding created local drug task forces, which critics say were quota-driven and increased corruption and misconduct. Budget-minded conservatives like the Heritage Foundation also argued the grants hadn’t led to a decrease in crime. States like California and New York have used some funding from the program for treatment instead of enforcement. The administration has made progress when it comes to overcrowding in prisons: One Department of Justice program gives states money to support research toward policymaking that reduces recidivism. Several state legislatures have independently lessened mandatory minimums, reformed parole policies, and passed other laws aimed at cutting the high cost of incarceration. Obama also signed the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, which ended a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for crack possession at the federal level, and lessened the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of inmates in state prisons dropped roughly two percent from 2010 to 2011. Seventy percent of that is from a decrease in California’s prison population, after the Supreme Court upheld an order for the state to reduce overcrowding. But as a recent Congressional Research report highlights, the number of inmates in federal prisons continues to rise, increasing over three percent from 2010 to 2011. Over half the current federal prison population is drug offenders. “SUPPORT ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION” A 2011 GAO report found statistics suggest drug courts reduce recidivism, but there’s not enough data to fully assess their effectiveness. Some critics argue drug courts still fall short, by taking a criminal justice approach to a public health problem. “INCREASE ADDICTION TREATMENT SERVICES” Despite that, only one in 10 of the 21.6 million Americans in need of drug or alcohol addiction treatment received it in 2011. The number of people receiving treatment has stayed roughly the same since 2002. The treatment gap should narrow as Obamacare goes into effect: Roughly five million more Americans currently facing drug addictions will soon have insurance coverage for treatment. “That’s the biggest expansion of treatment in 40 years, and maybe in the history of the U.S., ” said public health professor Keith Humphreys, who has served as a policy advisor to the ONDCP. But a recent Associated Press analysis said current clinics will be overwhelmed by the new demand for treatment. State-level budget cuts have hit organizations hard, and treatment centers in over two-thirds of states are at or close to 100 percent capacity. ONDCP spokesperson Rafael Lematire said the administration’s latest plan calls for an increase in the number of health care workers to treat newly insured patients. “REVIEW LAWS AND REGULATIONS THAT IMPEDE RECOVERY FROM ADDICTION” “While we encourage housing authorities to give ex-offenders a second chance, the decision to admit or deny to public housing remains with the housing authorities,” said HUD spokeswoman Donna White. Obama’s administration has not announced any plans to address the 1996 federal ban on food stamps or cash assistance for those convicted of drug felonies. Most states have opted out of or amended the law. “REDUCE DRUG-INDUCED DEATHS” In 2011, the government released a plan to crack down on the abuse of prescription drugs. There’s little current data on overdose deaths, but recent studies have indeed noted a drop in prescription drug abuse. Advocates have praised Obama‘s decision to endorse increasing access to emergency drug Naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses. Some lawmakers have criticized that position, saying it essentially encourages drug abuse. In 2009, Obama also attempted to end the federal ban on funding for clean needle exchange programs, but Congress reversed the decision. “CURTAIL ILLICIT DRUG CONSUMPTION IN AMERICA” Obama remains staunchly opposed to legalization, but it’s unclear how hard the administration plans to come down on states loosening marijuana laws. Obama has overseen far more medical marijuana raids than under the Bush administration. For states that have legalized pot, Attorney General Eric Holder said he intends to “enforce federal law,” though Obama said he had “bigger fish to fry.” The Department of Justice said it is still reviewing the latest laws. This post originally appeared on ProPublica, a Pacific Standard partner site. |
| Posted: 17 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT  If it were its own country, Chester, Pennsylvania's per capita income would rank between Turkey and Dominica. On average, its residents are poorer than those of Uruguay, Lebanon, and Antigua and Barbuda. The city has been part of a program for economically distressed communities since 1995. And in 2010, PPL Park, a $117 million soccer stadium, was opened in Chester's southwest corner, overlooking the Delaware River. With 97 percent of funding coming from the public, that's $3,334.90 for every man, woman, and child in Chester. Over the past 20 years, 101 new sports facilities have opened in the United States—a 90-percent replacement rate—and almost all of them have received direct public funding. The typical justification for a large public investment to build a stadium for an already-wealthy sports owner has to do with creating jobs or growing the local economy, which sound good to the median voter. "If I had to sum up the typical [public] perspective," Neil deMause, co-author of Field of Schemes and editor of the blog by the same title—the go-tos on the ongoing stadium subsidy story—told me via email, "I’d guess it’d be something along the lines of 'I don’t want my tax money going to rich fat cats, but anything that creates jobs is good, and man that Jeffrey Loria sure is a jerk, huh?'" This confused mindset has resulted in public coffers getting raided. The question is whether taxpayers have gotten anything in return. All in all, building a stadium is a poor use of a few hundred million dollars.Economists have long known stadiums to be poor public investments. Most of the jobs created by stadium-building projects are either temporary, low-paying, or out-of-state contracting jobs—none of which contribute greatly to the local economy. (Athletes can easily circumvent most taxes in the state in which they play.) Most fans do not spend additional money as a result of a new stadium; they re-direct money they would have spent elsewhere on movies, dining, bowling, tarot-card reading, or other businesses. And for every out-of-state fan who comes into the city on game day and buys a bucket of Bud Light Platinum, another non-fan decides not to visit and purchases his latte at the coffee shop next door. All in all, building a stadium is a poor use of a few hundred million dollars. This isn't news, by any stretch, but it turns out we're spending even more money on stadiums than we originally thought. In her new book Public/Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities, Judith Grant Long, associate professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, shatters previous conceptions of just how much money the public has poured into these deals. By the late ’90s, the first wave of damning economic studies conducted by Robert Baade and Richard Dye, James Quirk and Rodney Fort, and Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist came to light, but well afterwards, from 2001 to 2010, 50 new sports facilities were opened, receiving $130 million more, on average, than those opened in the preceding decade. (All figures from Long's book adjusted for 2010 dollars.) In the 1990s, the average public cost for a new facility was estimated at $142 million, but by the end of the 2000s, that figure jumped to $241 million: an increase of 70 percent. Economists have also been, according to Long, drastically underestimating the true cost of these projects. They fail to consider public subsidies for land and infrastructure, the ongoing costs of operations, capital improvements (we need a new scoreboard!), municipal services (all those traffic cops), and foregone property taxes (almost every major-league franchise located in the U.S. does not pay property taxes "due to a legal loophole with questionable rationale" as the normally value-neutral Long put it). Due to these oversights, Long calculates that economists have been underestimating public subsidies for sports facilities by 25 percent, raising the figure to $259 million per facility in operation during the 2010 season. All the while, American cities, counties, and states continue to struggle. Glendale, Arizona, may actually sell City Hall so they can afford to keep subsidizing a hockey team that few people actually pay to see. Detroit isn't exactly the paragon of fiscal responsibility, with its Emergency Manager—they have an honest-to-god “emergency manager”—offering a stern warning:
But, they're somehow on the verge of finding $450 million for a new hockey arena. And in Hamilton County, Ohio, where a combined $805 million in taxpayer money built the new football and baseball stadiums, police and education budgets have been slashed, while one in seven people live below the poverty line. Why, then, do we keep paying? THE BASIC EVOLUTION BEHIND subsidies for sports stadiums is as follows: owner wants new stadium to make more money and increase the value of the franchise. Owner threatens to move team. Politicians save face by pretending they won't offer millions of dollars in subsidies. Politicians eventually offer millions of dollars in subsidies and keep the team in the city. If there's a justification for all this, it comes from the concept of a public good. "The traditional definition of a public good is that the benefits aren't scarce, they're non-rival and non-excludable, so the consumption by one person doesn't limit the consumption by someone else," Professor J.C. Bradbury, a sports economist at Kennesaw State University and author of Hot Stove Economics, told me over the phone. "So if I'm happy Charlotte has a basketball team, that doesn't make anyone else less happy." The stadium itself, though, is a private good. There are only a limited number of seats, and if my ass is in Section 101, Row V, Seat 21, your ass isn't. Still, the thinking goes, a fan can enjoy a team without giving the franchise a penny. If you don't buy Sunday Ticket, don't attend any games, and don't purchase any merchandise, then your favorite football team won't see any of your money, no matter how passionately you follow them. But how do you quantify this? This is where Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), a survey method originally designed by environmental economists to value public park space or clean air, comes into play. CVM asks people a hypothetical question: suppose their local team was going to move if they didn't get a new arena. How much would you be willing to pay per year in higher taxes in order to keep that team? Professor Bruce K. Johnson of Centre College, one of the best-known practitioners of this method, has repeated the CVM technique in various cities, and the results are almost unanimous: the willingness to pay is much smaller than the typical stadium subsidy, about one-fifth on average. The theory goes that the subsidies ought to be highest in cities where there is only one major league team because it contributes most to civic pride in making the city "major league" and bringing national respect and attention. But the data doesn't back that up. "[In Jacksonville, surveying the Jaguars] it was something like 75 percent of respondents said 'yes, this makes us a major league city, it makes us proud to live here,'" Johnson said. "But way less than half the people were willing to pay anything in the way of higher taxes to keep the Jaguars in town … it comes out to be on the order of between $20 to 30 million." Jacksonville subsidized EverBank Field to the tune of $260 million in 2010 dollars by Judith Grant Long's calculations, with another $50 million for a new scoreboard on the way. Professor Johnson has shown there's perhaps a very real justification for public subsidies to even out the true value a sports team brings to a city—even if they often don't. But, as deMause told me, "I’m a sports fan, and I’d be the first to agree that there’s absolutely a non-economic value to having a sports team in a city. The question is, how much is that worth? Would your city benefit more from devoting $300 million to a new sports facility or, say, from $300 million worth of extra spending on schools?" We waste $20 on lots of things all the time. What's one more stadium?PROFESSOR JOHNSON HASN'T SURVEYED the Baltimore area, but whether they were willing to or not, Baltimoreans are paying about $20 per capita per year for Camden Yards. Camden Yards rejuvenated baseball in Baltimore and spurred a trend of new retro-style baseball stadiums with modern amenities across the league, making baseball owners everywhere all the richer. And it's why stadiums continue to be built with limited opposition. In the world of stadium financing, the few people who stand to gain millions (or billions) from subsidies (owners, developers, contractors, leagues) will invest heavily in lobbyists and campaigning efforts to see that their project is approved, whereas regular voters who only stand to lose $20 per year will invest very little in fighting an issue they may or may not care about. Public choice economics (and common sense) say this is a terrible way to decide how to allocate tax dollars because it kind of goes against the whole democracy thing. Unfortunately, more and more often, it seems to be the way tax dollars actually are allocated. When I asked Professor Bradbury if he thinks the issue of stadium financing is fundamentally a public choice problem, he said, "You have classic concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, and politicians have time preferences. They want to get re-elected now, and paying it off later is someone else's problem." While Professor Johnson was more direct: "I think that's really what's going on here." He recalled that voters in Pittsburgh initially voted down referendums on funding new stadiums for the Pirates and the Steelers, but they got built anyway (which is not an uncommon occurrence). The really bad news: Public choice problems are incredibly hard to solve. As Professor Johnson pointed out to me, people care about all sorts of things, almost always more than they care about a small amount of tax revenue that may or may not go to a billionaire sports owner. The principle of the matter is gross—the rich taking from everyone through tax dollars to build a new playhouse so they can be worth more money—but people don't care for a very rational reason. We would rather concern ourselves with supporting a candidate who will let us have an abortion/not let us have an abortion or any other seemingly more important issue. We waste $20 on lots of things all the time. What's one more stadium? Except it goes beyond that. The problem arises when our children become undereducated, our police forces understaffed, and our firehouses emptied while stadiums are built with those same dollars. The problem becomes an epidemic when it’s $31 billion-with-a-B spent by American taxpayers subsidizing privately-owned stadiums, and a merely 20-year-old stadium is being replaced months after the city it's in threatened to raise taxes or shrink the budget by $20 million. The problem becomes unsolvable when voters rarely get to actually vote on the issue, and when they vote "no,” the stadiums get built anyway. IN THE BACKGROUND OF PPL Park’s beautiful Delaware River-front view sits the Commodore Barry Bridge, which could be mistaken for a much more famous bridge if you didn't know any better. After the game, everyone makes their way to the highway that spans the bridge, not spending a dime in Chester; there's nowhere to spend any money, really, other than a place called "Just Pizza," where I suspect bad things would happen if you asked for a sandwich. When I was there last month, we passed by a row of vacated houses. Outside one house, by the side of the road, was a mountain of garbage almost as high as the two-story structure itself. Car after car filled with soccer fans passed by this monument to Chester as quickly as the traffic cop would allow them; they just wanted to get to the highway. You've heard about all the ways in which sports are a metaphor for society, how the crack of a bat on a hot summer afternoon represents something great about the workaday spirit of the American life, and whatever else. But as I drove out of Chester, that Kilimanjaro of garbage was no metaphor. Those 117 million dollars built a soccer stadium instead of helping whoever left that pile of waste on the side of the street keep their house, instead of hiring someone to clean it up, instead of addressing a whole bunch of other more pressing matters for the city than a new sports venue. Yet we keep going to the games, driving by the garbage and trying our best not to think too hard about how it got there because the stadium is just around the corner, the highway just around the bend. |
| Kings and Commoners: The Great Diversity of the America’s Cup Posted: 17 Jul 2013 06:00 AM PDT  Since King Charles II personally imported the Dutch word yacht into English in the 1600s, yachting has defined elitism. The America's Cup, the longest active international trophy event in sport, has, from its 1851 start, drawn monarchs and moguls. Yet the Cup has also—and also from the start—drawn the masses. The mixed-up, high-tech, crowd-pleasing, media-maneuvering confusion of the America's Cup: • San Francisco is expecting some two million visitors over the 55 or so race days this summer. An estimated $22.5 million in public money is being used to spruce up the waterfront. During the 1899 races, The New York Times reported on the “large and demonstrative crowds” spilling around its offices awaiting bulletins of race progress.• Boats now use pioneering composite materials—including materials laced with electronic sensors and low-drag microstructures that mimic the ridges on the skin of fast-moving sharks. And hemp ropes gave way to performance-enhancing materials like Kevlar and liquid-crystal polyester. • Those new yachts have mutated into winged catamarans that go faster but capsize easier, and break apart dramatically—as we saw in the May accident that killed British sailor Andrew “Bart” Simpson. • This year’s Larry Ellison-approved models run about $8 million each; but to mount an America’s Cup challenge, figure on at least $100 million for multiple boats, personnel, travel, and the like. • Yachting has been called the greatest spectator sport of the 19th century. During the 1899 races, The New York Times reported on the “large and demonstrative crowds” spilling around its offices awaiting bulletins of race progress. • Radio had gone nowhere in the 20 years since its creation, until inventor Guglielmo Marconi agreed to transmit a play-by-play of the 1899 races to Times competitor the New York Herald. The Herald trumpeted two winners: the sailboat Columbia and “reported by wireless.” • In 1899 and 1901, Thomas Edison made highlight reels to show how newfangled motion pictures could let the public see the Cup. • In 1983, viewer demand forced ESPN—which had spurned exclusive rights to cover the Cup—to interrupt programming to show coverage of the final race—garnering record ratings for the four-year-old network. • TV honchos and chambers of commerce are pushing races closer to shore, where the action is more viewable, and winds are trickier. This summer, the computer-generated course can be changed during the race to establish better TV angles, and to better fit TV time. |
| The Healing Power of the Written Word Posted: 17 Jul 2013 04:00 AM PDT  For anyone still doubting the notion that our emotions—and whether we express or repress them—impact our physical health, a new study from New Zealand should settle the matter. It reports that the physical wounds of healthy seniors healed more quickly if they wrote about their most traumatic experiences. This confirms the results of a 2010 study, and extends those findings to cover older adults—a group that is prone to suffer wounds (as from surgery), and one with less access to other ways of lowering tension (such as exercise). Even if they weren’t consciously aware of feeling more positive, expressive writing appears to have triggered some sort of bodily reaction that hastened recovery.Writing in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, a research team led by the University of Auckland's Elizabeth Broadbent describes a study featuring 49 healthy adults ranging in age from 64 to 97. They were assigned to write for 20 minutes per day for three consecutive days. Half were asked to "write about the most traumatic/upsetting experience in their life, delving into their deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions about the event, ideally not previously shared with others." The others were asked to "write about their daily activities for tomorrow, without mentioning emotions, opinions or beliefs." Two weeks later, all participants received a standard 4mm skin biopsy on their inner arm. The resultant wounds were photographed regularly over the following days to determine the rate at which they healed. On the 11th day after the biopsy, the wounds were completely healed on 76.2 percent of those who had done the expressive writing. That was true of only 42.1 percent of those who had written about everyday activities. "The biological and psychological mechanisms behind this effect remain unclear," the researchers write, noting that those who had done the expressive writing did not report lower stress levels or fewer depressive symptoms than those in the control group. Even if they weren’t consciously aware of feeling more relaxed or positive, however, the expressive writing appears to have triggered some sort of bodily reaction—presumably involving their immune systems—that hastened their recovery. Psychologists often talk of healing emotional wounds. This study provides additional evidence that implementing their insights can help heal physical ones as well. |
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