NYTimes: Bright Scientists, Dim Notions

By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: October 28, 2007

AT a conference in Cambridge, Mass., in 1988 called “How the Brain Works,” Francis Crick suggested that neuroscientific understanding would move further along if only he and his colleagues were allowed to experiment on prisoners. You couldn’t tell if he was kidding, and Crick being Crick, he probably didn’t care. Emboldened by a Nobel Prize in 1962 for helping uncoil the secret of life, Dr. Crick, who died in 2004, wasn’t shy about offering bold opinions — including speculations that life might have been seeded on Earth as part of an experiment by aliens.

The notion, called directed panspermia, had something of an intellectual pedigree. But when James Watson, the other strand of the double helix, went off the deep end two Sundays ago in The Times of London, implying that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on.

Since the publication in 1968 of his opinionated memoir, “The Double Helix,” Dr. Watson, 79, has been known for his provocative statements (please see “Stupidity Should be Cured, Says DNA Discoverer,” New Scientist, Feb. 28, 2003), but this time he apologized. Last week, uncharacteristically subdued, he announced his retirement as chancellor and member of the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he had presided during much of the genetic revolution.

Though the pronouncements are rarely so jarring, there is a long tradition of great scientists letting down their guard. Actors, politicians and rock stars routinely make ill-considered comments. But when someone like Dr. Watson goes over the top, colleagues fear that the public may misconstrue the pronouncements as carrying science’s stamp of approval.

Kary Mullis, after grabbing a piece of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, dove head first off the platform, expounding on the virtues of LSD and astrology and expressing his doubts about global warming, the ozone hole, and H.I.V. as the cause of AIDS. On the latter point he was following the lead of Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who still insists that AIDS is caused by recreational drug use and even by one of the pharmaceuticals used for treatment.

Iconoclasts at heart, the best scientists are faced with an occupational hazard: having left their mark on one small patch of ground, they are tempted to stir up trouble elsewhere.

“With my own advancing years, I’m mindful of the three different ways scientists can grow old,” Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom and president of the Royal Society, wrote in an e-mail message. The first two choices are either to become an administrator or to content yourself with doing science that will probably be mediocre. (“In contrast to composers,” Dr. Rees observed, “there are few scientists whose last works are their greatest.”) The third choice is to strike off half-cocked into unfamiliar territory — and quickly get in over your head. “All too many examples of this!” he lamented.

Creationists still gleefully pounce on a quote from the Cambridge University astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, who late in his career compared the likelihood of a living cell arising through evolution to “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard” and assembling a Boeing 747. This caricature of the evolutionary process led to the coinage of the term Hoyle’s Fallacy. Dr. Hoyle also promoted the notion that epidemics are caused by viruses hitchhiking on the tails of comets.

Sometimes the wandering from one’s home turf extends all the way to the paranormal. In 2001, when officials of the Royal Mail, the British postal service, issued a package of stamps commemorating the centenary of the Nobel Prize, they sought the counsel of Brian Josephson, who shared the prize for physics in 1973 for his superconductivity research. Physicists across Britain recoiled when an official pamphlet accompanying the stamps predicted that quantum mechanics might lead to an understanding of mental telepathy.

“Perhaps we should have checked that,” a spokeswoman for the Royal Mail told Nature at the time. “But if he has won a Nobel Prize for his work, that should give him some credibility.”

With science treading right to the bleeding edge of the knowable, maybe the Royal Mail can be forgiven for mistaking pseudoscience for the real thing. In an article in The Observer of London, David Deutsch, a quantum theorist at Oxford University, dismissed Dr. Josephson’s speculations as “utter rubbish.” Dr. Deutsch is known for proposing the existence of a multiplicity of parallel universes.

There is a difference of course between bold speculations and Dr. Watson’s reckless remarks. In announcing his retirement, in an oddly oblique e-mailed dispatch, he expressed hope that the latest biological research, at Cold Spring Harbor and elsewhere, would lead to treatments for mental illness and cancer. Invoking his “Scots-Irish Appalachian heritage” and a faith in reason and social justice passed on by his parents, he sounded sad and confused, as though this time he had succeeded in dumbfounding even himself.

P. Krugman: A Catastrophe Foretold (On borrower side in subprime mortgage)

From The New York Times
Published: October 26, 2007

“Increased subprime lending has been associated with higher levels of delinquency, foreclosure and, in some cases, abusive lending practices.” So declared Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve official.

These days a lot of people are saying things like that about subprime loans — mortgages issued to buyers who don’t meet the normal financial criteria for a home loan. But here’s the thing: Mr. Gramlich said those words in May 2004.

And it wasn’t his first warning. In his last book, Mr. Gramlich, who recently died of cancer, revealed that he tried to get Alan Greenspan to increase oversight of subprime lending as early as 2000, but got nowhere.

So why was nothing done to avert the subprime fiasco?

Before I try to answer that question, there are a few things you should know.

First, the situation for both borrowers and investors looks increasingly dire.

A new report from Congress’s Joint Economic Committee predicts that there will be two million foreclosures on subprime mortgages by the end of next year. That’s two million American families facing the humiliation and financial pain of losing their homes.

At the same time, investors who bought assets backed by subprime loans are continuing to suffer severe losses. Everything suggests that there will be many more stories like that of Merrill Lynch, which has just announced an $8.4 billion write-down because of bad loans — $3 billion more than it had announced just a few weeks earlier.

Second, much if not most of the subprime lending that is now going so catastrophically bad took place after it was clear to many of us that there was a serious housing bubble, and after people like Mr. Gramlich had issued public warnings about the subprime situation. As late as 2003, subprime loans accounted for only 8.5 percent of the value of mortgages issued in this country. In 2005 and 2006, the peak years of the housing bubble, subprime was 20 percent of the total — and the delinquency rates on recent subprime loans are much higher than those on older loans.

So, once again, why was nothing done to head off this disaster? The answer is ideology.

In a paper presented just before his death, Mr. Gramlich wrote that “the subprime market was the Wild West. Over half the mortgage loans were made by independent lenders without any federal supervision.” What he didn’t mention was that this was the way the laissez-faire ideologues ruling Washington — a group that very much included Mr. Greenspan — wanted it. They were and are men who believe that government is always the problem, never the solution, that regulation is always a bad thing.

Unfortunately, assertions that unregulated financial markets would take care of themselves have proved as wrong as claims that deregulation would reduce electricity prices.

As Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, put it in a recent op-ed article in The Boston Globe, the surge of subprime lending was a sort of “natural experiment” testing the theories of those who favor radical deregulation of financial markets. And the lessons, as Mr. Frank said, are clear: “To the extent that the system did work, it is because of prudential regulation and oversight. Where it was absent, the result was tragedy.”

In fact, both borrowers and investors got scammed.

I’ve written before about the way investors in securities backed by subprime loans were assured that they were buying AAA assets, only to suddenly find that what they really owned were junk bonds. This shock has produced a crisis of confidence in financial markets, which poses a serious threat to the economy.

But the greater tragedy is the one facing borrowers who were offered what they were told were good deals, only to find themselves in a debt trap.

In his final paper, Mr. Gramlich stressed the extent to which unregulated lending is prone to the “abusive lending practices” he mentioned in his 2004 warning. The fact is that many borrowers are ill-equipped to make judgments about “exotic” loans, like subprime loans that offer a low initial “teaser” rate that suddenly jumps after two years, and that include prepayment penalties preventing the borrowers from undoing their mistakes.

Yet such loans were primarily offered to those least able to evaluate them. “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” Mr. Gramlich asked. “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.” And “the predictable result was carnage.”

Mr. Frank is now trying to push through legislation that extends moderate regulation to the subprime market. Despite the scale of the disaster, he’s facing an uphill fight: money still talks in Washington, and the mortgage industry is a huge source of campaign finance. But maybe the subprime catastrophe will be enough to remind us why financial regulation was introduced in the first place.
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Tips

说周杰伦的《彩虹》

我从来就不是周杰伦的忠实歌迷，也不曾是周杰伦作品的反对党。我对他那《不能说的秘密》（联接）没有什么认同感；他的《千里之外》我固然喜欢，不过，我还是比较喜欢费玉清的独唱版，还为此特地买给我父亲费玉清的《青青校树》。

不过，抛开他的唱功不谈，他的许多作曲却展示出一定的真实功夫。比如说，近来他新专辑的第二波主打歌——彩虹。

无可置疑的，这曲的开头就深深地吸引了我。我的脑里当时立马浮现了这个词，Andante Cantabile。如歌的行板。优美的旋律配上杰出的和声运行，还有恰如其分的phrases structure使得歌曲的起始段有着难以抵挡的魅力。与一般的流行曲不同，《彩虹》呈现出严谨的结构性。

我个人认为，这曲有着较多古典乐的影子。

这曲的主旋律本是取自《不能说的秘密》soundtrack里的一首插曲，然后自那里再加以整顿延长形成。也许因为本是为着纯音乐而写，周董谱写此曲的时候更多是受着古典乐的认知和模式去进行，而不是受着流行曲形式的主导。

对于好些人来说，谱写纯音乐和谱写歌唱用的乐曲可以是两回事。流行音乐有好些僵化的格式和路线可行，其中好些惯用的chord的运行是古典乐乐理非常不建议使用的。像是chord ii、iii和vi。古典乐乐理不建议这些chord的使用是有一定的道理，它们固然容易带出“感动”的效果，但是它们却容易让旋律陷入僵化的局面。这就使得流行曲的表现度远远不及古典乐。

因此，在谱写纯音乐的时候许多人就无法继续运用流行乐的形式和格式。想必周董对于这点也是胸有成竹。因而周董在作此曲的时候所用的技巧和方式，就很理所当然的回到古典乐的基础上，毕竟他在这方面有着扎实的基础。显然地，这曲在harmony的progressing上比较过往精巧得多，而后来的慢性rap又把整曲拉回现代上。

我还特别喜欢好些motives的采用和演变。

比起《十一月肖邦》里的那首《夜曲》，这首《彩虹》与古典乐有着更大关系。

《瞭望》：诺贝尔经济学奖的中国价值

陈永伟
2007/10/25

“最难预测”的诺贝尔经济学奖，今年由莱昂尼德赫维奇、埃瑞克马斯金和罗杰迈尔森获得。这三位诺奖得主都和中国很有渊源。赫维奇教授不但曾自学中文，而且还曾经指导了田国强等华人经济学者；马斯金教授是钱颍一、李稻葵等多位华人经济学家的导师；而迈尔森教授则曾多次到过中国讲学。

　　何谓“机制设计 ”理论

　　机制设计理论所讨论的问题主要是：在自由选择、自由交换、信息不对称和分散决策的条件下，我们能否设计、怎样设计一个机制来达到既定的目标。它事实上是我们熟悉的博弈理论和社会选择理论的一个综合应用。

　　机制设计的思想最初可以追溯到上世纪三四十年代的“社会主义大论战”，这场论战的焦点是——究竟社会主义经济机制能否实现资源的有效配置。到了七十年代，一些经济学家把对于机制的考察放到了一个更加一般性的框架中，开创了机制设计理论这个新领域。从此，经济学对于机制问题的研究就从对于某一个具体机制效率的考察转向对于所有可能的机制的考察，并且开始尝试通过对于已有的机制进行修改，或者直接设计新的机制来实现既定的目标。

　　在过去的几十年里，机制设计理论已经成为了微观经济学中发展最为迅猛的领域之一，众多优秀的经济学家在这个领域中作出了重要贡献，其代表人物除了本次诺奖的三位得主外，还有米尔格罗姆、吉巴德、萨特斯维特、乔丹、拉丰等。一些华人经济学家，如田国强等也在这一领域颇有建树。

　　从研究的角度看，在一个既定的目标下，要设计一个机制，最需要注意的问题有两个方面，即信息和激励。

　　在信息方面，一个成功的经济机制应该是在保证达到既定目标的前提下，尽可能少地使用信息，否则由于信息的传递和处理带来的高昂成本就可能破坏机制的效率。以市场和计划两种经济运行机制为例：市场机制的运行只需要一种信息，即价格，就可以达到资源的有效配置。而计划机制虽然在理论上也可以使资源达到有效配置，但在运行中需要大量的信息，计划制定者需要掌握成本、供求等众多的信息才可以制订出有效的资源配置方案，但收集、处理这些信息所带来的巨大成本就可能会导致这种机制的无效率。

　　在激励方面，考虑的是如何设计一个机制来实现个人利益与组织目标的统一。以“公社化”和“包产到户”两种农业生产机制为例，为什么在实行“包产到户”后，同样的人、同样的地，却可以实现比实行“公社化”时高得多的产量呢？其原因就在于，相对于“公社化”，“包产到户”更能使农民的个人利益（能温饱、能致富）和国家的目标（发展农业生产）结合起来，较好地解决了农民在生产中的激励问题，因此从机制设计理论的观点看，“包产到户”就是一个比“公社化”更好的机制。

　　“机制设计”的中国价值

　　在中国这样一个转型经济中，机制设计理论有着现实意义。目前中国在国企改革、医疗改革、金融改革、财税改革、对外贸易等方面遇到的诸多问题，从本质上看，都可以归结为现有机制的不合理。

　　例如在医疗方面存在的医生乱开高价药问题，就源于现存的医疗机制不能使医生的个人利益和患者的利益相统一；又如在地方财政方面出现的“政绩工程”、行政主导性投资过多等问题，就源于现有的政绩考核体制不能让官员的利益和国家的根本利益相一致；再如现在人们广泛关注的大学生就业问题，其根本就在于现有机制下，大学生难以向用工单位发送有效信息；而国企拍卖中存在的国资流失问题，则与现行体制机制中存在阻碍国企拍卖公开化的因素有关：拍卖信息不公开、被拍卖企业信息不透明，都会造成竞拍者利用自身优势人为压低报价的局面。

　　机制设计理论某种程度上可以为解决这些问题提供参考，如在解决高价药问题上，应尽可能寻求医患利益交叉点，通过机制设计使医生为患者着想成为其自觉；改革现有行政体制和政绩考核体系，使官员的利益与国家期待的改革方向相一致，以此充分调动官员的发展积极性和创造性；改善大学生就业信息传导机制，使人才供需对接更为顺畅；革除国企拍卖中阻碍其信息公开透明的体制机制性障碍，使更多的掌握全面企业信息的人参与进来等。

　　应该说，机制设计理论能够帮助我们更好地理解现实经济中的不少问题，并为某些问题的解决提供启发。

贞观回探

贞观之治总是令人向往良多。那个时候有许多千古绝唱，是封建制度的最高典范。像是克己纳谏的李世民、理性贤淑的长孙皇后、卓越但关系良好的君臣情谊，还有以民为本的治国大计。

中学历史对于这些的介绍总是太过简单，以至人们较为难以理解何以炎黄子孙对外总是宣称自己是唐人（当然，还有自称汉人）。贞观盛世，在历史课本的引导下像是理所当然地在玄武门之变之后从天而降，那么地不费吹灰之力。

然而实际情况却复杂得多。

武德九年李世民登上帝位，而太上皇李渊直到贞观九年才离世。在那段期间，李世民自身承受着不小的政治压力，而且还要面对废太子李建成余党的问题。为了安定天下，他立马采取了四项措施：第一，宣布停止佛教与道教的改革；第二，令百官上书言事，对国家政策各抒己见；第三，释放前皇所有的奇珍异宝，下令各地不许进贡；第四，释放宫女三千人。

更重要的还在后头，也就是所谓的贞观之路。

自魏晋南北朝以来，中国就长期处在动乱之中，虽然隋朝的建立多少带来了几年和平。在许久的乱世之后应当以什么方法来统治国家成了李世民最重要的议题，群臣们对此的意见也大有相左。以封德彝为首的关陇贵族主张霸道治国，即用强力、法律来统治天下，这也是当时绝大多数大臣们的观点。唯独魏征，主张王道治国——要以民为本、以德化民。尽管大部分官员不认同，但是李世民最终还是采用了魏征的路线。这对前大半生涯在戎马闯荡的李世民来说并不容易。

李世民常与群臣共论历史，特别是隋朝的灭亡，中国的二十四史中有三分一是在贞观时期完成。唯有从历史的角度清楚地了解自身国家当下的处境，才能对国家未来的走向作出清楚地判断。李世民常克己纳谏，得时时弃小我而成全大我，这对一般人来说已不易，对皇帝来说就更加困难。隋朝的国家政府当然有钱，可是社会却不富足，李世民对这点深深了解；所以他更重视社会财富和力量的积蓄，而不是国家仓库的积蓄。

这些只是众多良景的其中一二。

没有良臣魏征，上述的那些就较难发生。那贞观之路，它既以魏征的观点为基础，它的运作也时时受着魏征的引导。实际上，魏征就是变相的帝王师。“夫以铜为镜，可以正衣冠；以古为镜，可以知兴替；以人为镜；可以明得失。朕常保此三镜，以防己过。今魏征殂逝，遂亡一镜矣。”，这是在魏征离世时李世民说出的千古名言。

贞观之路的故事还有很多很多，像是长孙皇后。长孙皇后三十六岁就撒手人寰，临终对皇帝的三个嘱托听了不禁让人潸然泪下：第一，要相信房玄龄；第二，不要重用外戚（意指不要重用他的哥哥长孙无忌*）；第三，要求薄葬（当初我看连续剧《贞观长歌》看到这段时，我以为那是编剧自己大炮出来的，后来看了孟宪实的讲说才知道是真的）。房谋杜断中的房玄龄，后来没有因为后起之辈的政治斗争落得凄惨的下场，绝大是因为李世民紧遵长孙皇后的嘱托而力保他。

……

无论如何，那是一个充满理性光辉的封建时代，以至封建制度下人们的生活可与民主社会下人们的生活并驾齐驱。

注*：长孙无忌是玄武门之变的主策人，在唐朝开国二十四位功臣中排位第一。然而，在李世民离世后不久他就在斗争中死去。另外，房玄龄虽然安详地离世，但是他的子孙最后满门抄家。这些都是政治的阴暗面，无关房玄龄自身。房玄龄可是中国十大良相之一。

讲摘：亲师布施与六度

摘录：大乘无量寿经讲演；
02-34-38a，新加坡佛教居士林；
净空法师讲。

「深信因果，读诵大乘，劝进行者」，这叫菩萨。三福後面一条四句里面，末後的两句就包括了六波罗蜜，「读诵大乘」是自修自学，「劝进行者」是化他，自行化他这六条就用上了，六波罗蜜就落实。

……

学佛必须要从基础上奠定根基，根基在哪里？在「孝养父母，奉事师长，慈心不杀，修十善业」，这是根。诸位要是真正明白体会到，今天所有修行的人为什麽不能成就？功夫为什麽不能得力？你把这个原因就找到了。所以学佛从哪里学起？从孝顺父母学起，你有没有尽孝道？从奉事师长学起，我们中国人讲孝亲尊师，这四个字做不到，你在佛法上无论怎麽精进，无论怎麽用功，说老实话，你的功夫不会得力，你怎麽可能有成就？这个六度，我们初学的人，六度到哪里修？到家里头去修。怎麽修布施？孝顺父母就是修布施，你以你的劳力奉事父母，这是布施。对父母应该讲供养，供养父母，很细心去照顾父母的生活，这是内财布施；照顾他，为他服务，伺候他。以我们的智慧，在他日常生活当中，他有些习气嗜好，我们都能想到，无微不至的伺候，这是属於法布施。劳力、财力的供养是属於财布施。能够使他安心、使他快乐，离开一切忧恼，是无畏布施。三种布施从哪里做起？从对你父母做起，对你老师做起。

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居士林是一天比一天兴旺，怎麽兴旺的？布施。楼下的餐厅，一年三百六十五天，一天不空过布施，无论什麽人到这个地方来吃饭欢迎。那也不是随随便便的供养，供养真有心，天天菜色、饭食，都在这里研究怎麽样改进、怎麽样好吃；不是随随便便我供养你，我有得给你吃就好了，还有什麽好讲究；天天在讲究。现在二楼餐厅，我看一般现在素菜馆比不上我们。