Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. How Safe Was the Wuhan Lab?

This past month, the White House ordered a formal investigation into the origins of COVID-19. If you’re interested in the subject, you can’t miss the exhaustive report in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. While explicitly inconclusive, there is overwhelming evidence that international virus research is fraught with peril:

The benefits of the research in preventing future epidemics have so far been nil, the risks vast. If research on the SARS1 and MERS viruses could only be done at the BSL3 safety level [on a scale of 4], it was surely illogical to allow any work with novel coronaviruses at the lesser level of BSL2. Whether or not SARS2 escaped from a lab, virologists around the world have been playing with fire.

What is remarkable about this report is that its observations are not new. It cites a cable sent by the State Department after a team of inspectors visited Wuhan in 2018: “The new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”

2. Slow Company

Fast Company has published some of the first detailed data on employee attitudes about going back to the office. Their findings are not encouraging for companies who want workers at their desks. Many employees have moved to homes further from the office. Others find that employers have no meaningful explanation of why they need to be back after a year of productive remote work:

Orchestrating team outings and other get-togethers were actually pushing workers away, and that this type of “culture building” was not welcome. One worker’s company “had everyone come into the office for an outdoor luncheon a week ago,” according to a post, adding: “Idiots.”

3. I Saw Enough

What are A-list actors Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson doing in Spiral, the latest chapter of the Saw torture/horror series? Not much, according to this cutting review in Rolling Stone:

Most of the performances in Spiral rank between Silver Birch and Sequoia in terms of woodenness. The style leans heavily on the sort of jittery, sped-up stock creepiness lifted from Seven‘s credits sequence and vintage Marilyn Manson videos, only diluted to the point of dullness. The story can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be a police procedural attached to a horror movie, a horror movie attached to a police procedural, or a Bulgarian knock-off of Law and Order: Special Hostel Division.

4. The 240 Characters of Economics

Tyler Cowen reflects on the evolution of economic debate. In the 1980s, the typical economics paper ran about 20 pages in a top academic journal. Today it’s closer to 90 pages. Then there’s active debate on Twitter. What’s it all mean?

Here’s the dirty little secret that few of my fellow economics professors will admit: As those “perfect” research papers have grown longer, they have also become less relevant. Fewer people — including academics — read them carefully or are influenced by them when it comes to policy. Actual views on politics are more influenced by debates on social media, especially on such hot topics such as the minimum wage or monetary and fiscal policy. The growing role of Twitter doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Social media is egalitarian, spurs spirited debate and enables research cooperation across great distances. Still, an earlier culture of “debate through books” has been replaced by a new culture of “debate through tweets.” This is not necessarily progress.

5. Britain’s Mythical Housing Shortage

Martin Wolfe, the dean of economic columnists, launches a broadside against the notion that Britain’s farmland cannot be used to build more housing. As he points out, houses and gardens occupy just 5.9 per cent of available land – and land with permission to develop can be worth 100 times as much as land without it:

The idea that we have no land left for houses or that every bit of farmland has imperishable amenity value is absurd. Is it not far more important that children grow up in large houses with gardens? Are urban green spaces not far more valuable than vast acreages of monocrop production? The opposition to any erosion of the greenbelt is also hysterical. These are not sacred oases: they are cordons sanitaires intended to keep hoi polloi out of leafier areas.

According to Wolfe, the planning system for British housing is the biggest market distortion in the economy. “Almost all the debate,” he harrumphs, “is cast in Soviet terms.”

6. Road Warrior

If the pandemic has made you hungry for a western road trip and the luxurious freedom of an Airstream trailer, you’d better think twice. John Pearley Huffman’s Car and Driver travelogue describes a white-knuckle journey from California to Wyoming:

The Airstream Classic is the polished-aluminum embodiment of American wanderlust. The top of Airstream's travel-trailer line, the model I borrowed, stretches 31 feet, three inches long; has a claimed dry weight of 7788 pounds; can sleep up to five; and, with a base price of $161,900, is decidedly not free. It's a condominium on four alloy wheels. The Classic looked majestic waiting for us at Airstream Los Angeles. Neither of us had ever been RVing before, much less towed such a lengthy beast for so long.

Websites Worth Reading

History of Pitchfork album reviews: Indispensable archive of album reviews

iPhone Apps: Just released must-have phone appsl

Favorite Dylan Songs: The Dylan songs famous people like

Feeds We Follow

@urbanistOrg: Improving cities one tweet at a time

@RafaelNadalFC: King of Clay fan stream

@jimfarley98: The CEO of Ford has a good feed