Lazy Linking, 197th in an Occasional Series

 Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

197.1 @tcarmody on how unique, essential, & powerful water is bit.ly/2zXwqSO @kottke

197.2 Since we're all talking about sexual harassment, you should know Congress sets its own rules wapo.st/2yb9PFs @washingtonpost

197.3 If this article about "flyover country" makes no sense to you, then you are a coastal elite theatln.tc/2i0DCFS @theatlantic

197.4 A penetrating (& s'times unflattering) history of American Bandstand's West Philly days bit.ly/2hiIgPW @mattdelmont

Paint as a 3D medium; prepare to be blown away bit.ly/2yGIY3v @thisiscolossal

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet XCIX

Here's an excerpt from a book I recently read, "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream," by Tyler Cowen:

Whether or not you agree with all of their complaints and grievances, the protesting groups of African Americans are among the most vulnerable elements of American society. They respond first and complain first and exhibit signs of dissent from the complacent class. They are, in varying ways, trying to renegotiate or secede from the current deal, and that is a sign that something is deeply wrong beneath the surface. I read and hear many critics alleging that these complaints are not serious enough, not practical enough, and do not reflect real hardships, given that Americans, even poor ones, live in a time of such great plenty. There is lots of talk, not all of it on the surface, that the complainers have been spoiled or coddled. I think those responses are missing the point, whether or not you agree with all of the complaints on the table. Most of all, the complaints are a warning signal that the current system is in some ways broken and that the complacent class, for all its good intentions, has in some ways failed America. It’s better to debate that issue straight on rather than trying to take down the complainers by finding possible holes or hypocrisies in their arguments.

The Future of Driverless Cars

Having just returned from a long car ride (an overnighter to State College for a conference I was speaking at), I am still thinking about a conversation with my traveling companion on a topic that often comes up when I’m on a long car ride, which is the future of driverless cars.  So consider this blog post a dumping grounds for some things I think I think about the future of autonomous vehicles.

First, I am sure our grandkids will be astonished that humans were allowed to drive.  “That sounds dangerous!  Did people die or get seriously hurt?  Yes?  This is terrifying!”

Second, it seems to me that trucking will automate way sooner than personal vehicles.  Drivers who will lose their jobs are going to be a bloc that matters in future presidential elections.

Third, with personal vehicles, way before we get full automation, you’ll see way faster adoption of driverlessness when the car is empty.  In other words, once you get out of the car, the car puts itself away.  This will happen far sooner than the cars driving us around, and it will seriously upend how we do parking.  Valets will lose their jobs, parking no longer needs to be near where we live/work/play (with massive implications for land use patterns and real estate markets), and car designers will be figuring out some way to visually or audibly signal that a car on the road is empty.

Fourth, and speaking of which, over time cars to ride vs. cars to drive will diverge in design and come to look fundamentally different, and I mean both interior and exterior.  I’m not a designer so I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but not having to drive a car will reorient how people sit in a car.  As for the outside, cars to ride will be optimized (to the point of homogeneity) for efficient travel, whereas cars to drive will proliferate in character and look.

Fifth, and on a related note, daisy chaining cars, especially on the highway, will vastly improve congestion.  No space between cars, no need for lanes, and no uncertainties associated with erratic human behavior means probably something like two to ten times more cars on the road with no loss in speed.  Or, if you want to look at it another way, the same amount of cars going way faster.  Ah, but regions must be beware of letting that make them think that you can drive your way out of your congestion problem.  It will get better at first, by a lot, but you still have to prepare for a more multi-modal world.

Sixth and finally, and picking up on the idea above, there will of course be a transition period in which there are regular cars and driverless cars.  During that period, highways will be converted from HOV vs. no HOV, into driven vs. autonomous.  This will be a major prod towards driverlessness, as drivers watch, right next to them, driverless cars going way faster and being way safer. Viscerally, the advantage will be stark and the adoption will be fast.

Will this all happen?  Oh yeah.  When will this all happen?  Very soon.

The Myth of the Individual Innovator

Close your eyes on imagine innovation, and you might be tempted to v
isualize a single inventor, toiling away in a lab day after day until his "aha!" moment.  Except that that is not how innovation happens.  Innovation is inherently collaborative, interdisciplinary, and iterative.

Innovation is inherently collaborative, in that ideas form not whole cloth from one person but from the interplay between multiple people.  Furthermore, as much as technology has shrunk the world, intellectual breakthrough usually happens when people bounce ideas off each other in person.

Innovation is inherently interdisciplinary, in that the more diverse are the perspectives of the people bouncing ideas off each other, the more likely something that has never been imagined before can be borne into existence.  This is the power of diversity: the fact that I don't come to the table from the same perspective as you is precisely what will allow me to help you be better within your perspective.

Innovation is inherently iterative, in that the breakthrough never happens on the first try or even the second or the tenth.  Try hundreds of tries.  Which means hundreds of failures.  Which means avoidance of failure is equivalent to avoidance of progress.

We know how innovation happens, and yet we continue to ignore the importance of people being close together, people being different from one another, and people being ok with failure.  This has profound consequences for how we organize our schools, our cities, and our economies.  We can do better.  The future is counting on us.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet XCVIII

Here's an excerpt from a speech I just read, delivered by George W. Bush on Oct. 19, 2017 at the at the “Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" event in New York.



Our identity as a nation – unlike many other nations – is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed.  And it means that the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation.

Consider It All Joy When You Encounter Various Trials

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." - James 1:2-4

Much of what counts for American Christianity today would be unrecognizable to 1st century Jesus followers, and has little appeal to those unfamiliar with or uninterested in Christian ways.  Too much of our faith just looks like affluence and privilege to the outside world, as we thank God for our abundance or petition Him to alleviate what ails us.  I consider myself a fairly mature Christian, and one who is in particular sensitized to the seduction and idolatry of comfort, and yet if I am honest what I generally give thanks to God for and pray to Him about betrays the shallowness of my faith.

The trials James's audience were facing were not a nagging medical ailment, a stubborn child, or a leaky sink, just to cite three things I recently lamented to God about.  These were Jewish Christians, scattered throughout the Mediterranean region due to intense persecution.  Among them were people who were refugees, who had lost homes, and whose loved ones had been harmed or even murdered for believing in Jesus.  Most of us have not once suffered such hardship in our lives.  Literally James' first word to this group was that such trials should be received with great joy. 

As with James' audience, we face trials of all kinds, and it is not wrong to petition God for relief and rescue for any problem big or small.  But it is telling that James' primary concern for his audience is not a solution to their trials but a purpose for their trials, and not just any purpose but a great and completing purpose.  And so it ought to be with us, as we encounter various trials, which we invariably will, which is that we count them as opportunities to be joyous, because they represent tests of faith that build our intestinal endurance to the end of perfecting us.  

The Christian life is not about ease, and for many of us who are fortunate to live in America and have means, ease is most of what we know, whether financial security or personal safety or emotional health or social acceptance.  All the more important, and all the more joyous, when we encounter various trials, for such is God's finishing process in us.  Let us therefore not whine, and let us be mindful of how we approach God in our distress, for while trials are in no uncertain terms difficult and soul-wrenching, they are also opportunities for joy, for they are opportunities for God to complete us. 

What Am I Working On

As has become my custom every three months, here's what I'm working on now at work. I won't repeat anything from last time that I happen to still be working on, and for confidentiality's sake I have to blur some of the details for some of these studies.

* Making the economic case for a statewide association of social service providers in advance of state budget talks.

* Helping a neighborhood serving organization develop an alternative financial services mechanism for its historically underserved population.

* Estimating the economic, community, and social impact of a historically black university.

* Developing a competitive analysis for a fresh food market.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet XCVII

Here's three excerpts from a book I recently read, "Half of a Yellow Sun," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:



“Did you go to school?” 

“Standard two, sah. But I learn everything fast.” 

“Standard two? How long ago?” 

“Many years now, sah. But I learn everything very fast!” 

“Why did you stop school?” 

“My father’s crops failed, sah.” 

Master nodded slowly. “Why didn’t your father find somebody to lend him your school fees?” 

“Sah?” 

“Your father should have borrowed!” Master snapped, and then, in English, “Education is a priority! How can we resist exploitation if we don’t have the tools to understand exploitation?”

“Of course we are all alike, we all have white oppression in common,” Miss Adebayo said dryly. “Pan-Africanism is simply the most sensible response.” 

“Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe,” Master said. “I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”

In the morning, Odenigbo woke her up by taking her finger in his mouth. She opened her eyes; she could see the smoky light of dawn through the curtains. 

“If you won’t marry me, nkem, then let’s have a child,” he said. 

Her finger muffled his voice, so she pulled her hand away and sat up to stare at him, his wide chest, his sleep-swollen eyes, to make sure she had heard him properly. 

“Let’s have a child,” he said again. “A little girl just like you, and we will call her Obianuju because she will complete us.” 

Olanna had wanted to give the scent of his mother’s visit some time to diffuse before telling him she wanted to have a child, and yet here he was, voicing her own desire before she could. She looked at him in wonder. This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles. “Or a little boy,” she said finally.

Book Bleg

Maybe I missed it because I went on vacation in late August, but on August 31 Half.com, my beloved go-to place for used books, shut down.  I had used the site for years, not only to buy used books but also to keep a running wish list of books that I eventually wanted to buy and read.  Recommendation from a friend?  Interesting reference from an online article?  Perusing a real bookstore?  Whenever I came across a title I found interesting, I added it to my Half.com wish-list.

I returned from vacation to find that list, and the entire site, vaporized.  Oh well.  I'm sure many titles I wanted to keep tabs on are lost from my recollection, never to be remembered.  So it's time to build that list back up.  I'm using Amazon and you can find it here.  Maybe it'll cause you to add some titles to your list.  And maybe you have titles to recommend to me.  I'd love to hear it!

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet XCVI

Here is an excerpt from an article I recently read, "China Snaps Up America’s Cheap Robot Labor," in Business Week:

“Made in America” will soon grace the labels of T-shirts produced by a Chinese company in Little Rock. 

By early 2018, Tianyuan Garments Co., based in the Suzhou Industrial Park in eastern China, will unveil a $20 million factory staffed by about 330 robots from Atlanta-based Softwear Automation Inc. The botmaker and garment company estimate the factory will stitch about 23 million T-shirts a year. The cost per shirt, according to Pete Santora, Softwear’s chief commercial officer: 33¢. 

“Around the world, even the cheapest labor market can’t compete with us,” Tang Xinhong, the chairman of Tianyuan, told the China Daily about the factory in July. The company, one of the biggest apparel makers in China, supplies Adidas, Armani, Reebok, and other major brands.

“The Tianyuan story shows that the labor cost for each T-shirt in the Arkansas plant is unbeatable,” says Jae-Hee Chang, a researcher in advanced manufacturing at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. The machines are part of a new generation of industrial robots that Chinese manufacturers like Tianyuan are using to overcome the constraints of higher wages and aging workers. As China’s labor force has shrunk over the past five years, employers have hiked wages more than 10 percent a year to lure better-educated, younger workers.

The garment industry has been slower to automate than others, such as automobiles and electronics. Developing a robot that can match the dexterity of a human hand to manipulate and stitch fabric is an expensive proposition, Santora says. Stitching a dress shirt with a breast pocket requires about 78 separate steps. Tricky, but such a bot is coming, says the chief executive officer of Softwear Automation, Palaniswamy Rajan: “We will roll that out within the next five years.”

Do We Really Want Diverse Neighborhoods

A couple of years ago I tweeted this:

We say we want mixed income nhds but then resist rich ppl moving into poor nhds or poor ppl moving into rich nhds. Discuss.

— Lee Huang (@leehuang) November 11, 2015

As you can imagine, race and class inform both pushbacks.  We are nervous about rich folks moving into poor neighborhoods because we have seen the effect of gentrification on households and communities, an effect that has historically fallen disproportionately on households of color.  On the flip, affluent communities use things like minimum lot sizes to zone out poorer households from being able to share in their neighborhood amenities and quality schools, and this often has a racial dimension to it.  People feel strongly in both cases, enough to turn up the heat socially or regulatorily such that it's hard to make and then keep a truly mixed-income neighborhood.  (Taking a snapshot in time of a rapidly transitioning community of course doesn't count.)

My neighborhood is a rare example of income diversity, although it's not without its detractors on both sides.  Many people consider it to be gentrified, and blame Penn for setting forces into motion that have led to the displacement of long-time residents in this historically African-American neighborhood.  Others offer a wide range of protests against new developments, some high end and some low end, which has the effect of making it harder to add new housing supply and therefore impairs affordability. 

I hope and anticipate that our neighborhood will continue to be a welcome place for households at all price points and walks of life, for which I am grateful.  That is important for my own quality of life and for the kind of education and neighborhood experience my kids are growing up in.  I imagine many people share similar values, and yet the way things are structured (which we then actively and passively participate in), we end up in socio-economically homogeneous communities.  Speaking to those of us who are of means and therefore have choices, as much as we are increasingly attuned to the importance of diversity and express a heightened willingness to fight for it, still we sort ourselves with people like us and do other things that prevent more diversity from happening.  Do we really want diverse neighborhoods?

Walk a Mile in Someone Else's Shoes

In these polarizing times, there’s a lot of lip service to wanting to meet in the middle but not a lot of actual work on either side to do so.  As a legendary racial reconciliation advocate once described it, “the thing about bridges is that sometimes they get walked on from both sides.”  So yeah, trying to bring everyone together sometimes means you enrage everyone.  (Welcome to much of my world, in which I try to explain conservative perspectives to liberal friends or vice versa, or express sympathy towards areligious positions to my religious friends or vice versa.)

Which means that hearing out others whose viewpoints are different from yours takes real effort.  Think about if you were a Hillary supporter attending a Trump rally, or a devout Christian going to a talk by an atheist; you might not feel welcome in such a setting, and afterwards you might hear it from your friends.  Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is so necessary and yet so very hard. 

So you’ll excuse me if I’m cynical about people’s true desire to be open-minded, respectful of differing perspectives, and intentional in keeping diverse company.  We say so but then not only put forth so little effort to do so but actively discourage others from doing the same.  I remember meeting a friend for coffee once, and he came out to see me and saw that I had a Ronald Reagan biography in my hand and practically spat at me while saying, “How can you possibly read that crap, do you realize how evil that man was?”  Never mind that Ronald Reagan is a historical figure that biographies have been written about, that I could’ve been reading about him to better understand just why his policies were so misguided, or that I could’ve been a huge Reagan booster and did that really justify a friend lighting into me for holding such a belief.  People not only want to not walk a mile in someone else’s shoes; they want to make fun of those shoes and roundly condemn anyone for even trying them on. 

And reading books from a diversity of viewpoints is a pretty tame way of keeping an open mind and learning about differing perspectives.  Attending meetings or even joining groups where you are clearly in the minority is a bigger step still, and can be a powerful way to really learn, understand, empathize with, and in some cases agree with opinions different from yours.  Alas, we’ve all experienced the online version of this, in which a political discussion where folks are piling on is intruded upon by someone who represents an opposing viewpoint, and then the fireworks really start to fly and people end up irritated and unfriended.  It’s enough to make us want to stay in our corners.  But no one learns or gains from such polarization.

By the way, I have found that learning another language is another good practice.  It reminds me that there is not one way of saying something, and everyone else is talking funny, but that there different ways of communicating.  This may sound obvious, but the typical American at least is probably guilty of thinking that non-native English speakers are slow, dumb, or inarticulate.  They’re communicating with you in their second (or third or fourth) language, and doing their best to hold their own!  As I run roughshod over my attempt to learn Mandarin, I am faced with just how prodigious a feat it is to hold a conversation, let alone live a life, in a language that is not your mother tongue. 

There are many ways to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.  It can be costly to do so but we desperately need more of it.  Be encouraged if you are trying and you’re getting roughed up.  It’s not supposed to be easy.  And you might get walked on by both sides.  But it's so worth it.

Limits and Catalysts to Urban Growth

Having transitioned from growing up in suburban San Jose to putting down roots in urban Philadelphia, I acknowledge my perspective on cities and transit is biased, but hopefully it still contains some truth and utility.  Whether you are thinking in terms of individual preferences or regional competitiveness, there is a lot to commend transit-rich Northeast Corridor cities over their more auto-dependent peers in other parts of the country.  Millennials in particular seem to be opting for places where they can do without owning or even setting foot in a car, whether for financial, environmental, or convenience reasons, so it would seem that the future will bend even more in this direction.  Many newer cities without major transit systems seem to agree, frantically investing financial resources and political capital to build up bus network and light rail. 

But wait.  Some of the downsides of cars may be mitigated through innovation.  Alternative fuels will reduce or eliminate the ecological cost driving imposes on our planet, right?  And surely autonomous vehicles will significantly streamline the twin problems of traffic (cars can move and fit more efficiently when computers and not humans are operating them) and parking (we don’t need to devote massive amounts of space to parked cars right next to where people are, because they’ll be able to drive themselves to less valuable locations to sit and wait for when we need them again).  So maybe our more sprawled out regions won’t need to build a parallel transit network to supplement roads and highways, no?

I do think that alternative fuels and autonomous vehicles will turn back the clock a bit, but not by much.  In the long run, more car use, irrespective of how they are fueled, is bad for the environment.  And while daisy chaining cars allows you to fit more on any given road or highway, that too will reach a limit, whereas transit is more easily scalable.  I predict that the Los Angeles metro area in particular (being hemmed in by mountains and ocean, and being so car-crazy) will at first see their traffic and parking problems ease, but over time they will rue the decisions made over the past 100 years to remove transit infrastructure and then to not bite the bullet to replace it. 

Big picture, America will continue to grow, and that growth will likely want to happen disproportionately in our metro regions.  Whether a given region can scale up to meet that growth, in terms of being able both to contain all of the places people want to live/work/play and to move people around, will determine its overall competitiveness and livability.  Again, I’m biased, but in the long run, I’d bet on places more like Philadelphia and less like San Jose.