Amy Chozick

You are currently browsing articles tagged Amy Chozick.

“I Had This Sense Of Surreality”

February 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Donald Trump, a human oil spill, apparently requested that the Obama Administration make him czar of the BP cleanup effort, according to David Axelrod’s new book. From Amy Chozick in the New York Times:

Question:

Some anecdotes in the book make clear that, as a senior adviser to the president, you dealt with some odd requests. Donald Trump asked you to put him in charge of cleaning up the BP oil spill.

David Axelrod:

You owe it to the president to be polite and to give folks a hearing. But even as I was going through these conversations, I had this sense of surreality. I was watching the scene and thinking, Man, this is really bizarre. I gotta write about this someday. Nobody will believe this.•

Tags: , , ,

“Crack Wasn’t The Real Problem”

June 27, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Neuroscientist Carl Hart shares contrarian views about drugs in his new book, High Price. In addition to refusing the idea that methamphetamines destroy a person’s looks–that widely held belief is just the result of a very successful anti-drug propaganda campaign, he argues–Hart doesn’t think crack is nearly as addictive as it’s made out to be. From an interview by Amy Chozick in the New York Times Magazine:

“Question:

You begin your book High Price with a story about an experiment you did. You offered a crack addict a hit or $5.

Carl Hart:

He chose the cash. Why did you lead with this? We have rigorous science to support that crack cocaine is not as addictive as people think and that they have been hoodwinked. I was hoping people would want to read further if they had a myth busted right up front.

Question:

How do you think Hollywood plays into our perceptions about drugs and addiction? It’s not only Hollywood.

Carl Hart:

One of Public Enemy’s bigger songs, ‘Night of the Living Baseheads,’ is all about this crack addict who’s just fiending. Public Enemy did so many good things, but on that song, they were wrong. And New Jack City is on TV, like, every week. Remember New Jack City?

Question:

Yes, the movie about a drug kingpin who turns an apartment complex into a crack factory.

Carl Hart:

Again, the filmmakers were trying to help their community, but the problem was that crack wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was unemployment, lack of education, lack of skills. Politicians are happy not to have to focus on those larger issues. You can just focus on crack cocaine, put more cops on the street and make tougher laws.”

Tags: ,

“When Recorded Sound Came Along, Most People Became Passive Receivers”

March 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a New York Time Magazine interview conducted by Amy Chozick, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger explains how contemporary technologies have democratized expression whereas some older ones inhibited it, making non-experts passive:

“Question:

You’ve played piano since you were a child, and you’ve written about parallels between this pursuit and digital news. Can you explain that?

Alan Rusbridger:

Amateur music-making used to be very commonplace and was valued in its own right. When recorded sound came along, most people became the passive receivers of other people’s music. I do think that mirrors something that’s going on in journalism at the moment, which is that anybody can blog, anybody can tweet, anybody can write and publish.

Question:

You’ve said you want to make The Guardian a platform as well as a publisher. Is this an effort to tap into that?

Alan Rusbridger:

Absolutely. For years, news organizations had a quasi monopoly on information simply because we had the means of distribution. I think if as a journalist you are not intensely curious about what has been created by people who are not journalists, then you’re missing out on a lot.”

Tags: ,

“It Could Just Be A Coincidence”

February 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

As baseball season gets closer, I think back on puzzling display copy for a New Yorker article from three seasons ago about Tampa Bay’s then-spare outfielder Sam Fuld. There wasn’t anything wrong with the actual piece by Ben McGrath–Fuld is an interesting topic as a brainy last guy on the bench who’s overcome diabetes–but the headline was destined to be very wrong the second it was published. It read “Super Sam: Early Success for a Late Bloomer.” Except there was little chance that the veteran, who enjoyed a great April, would overcome a poor hit tool, no power and a history of offensive deficiency to become a “late bloomer.” 

Fuld was just a subpar player who had a hot first month of the season, most likely because a lot of batted balls that were usually caught were finding holes. It was a statistical outlier, apt to happen from time to time, and just as likely to be corrected as more at-bats piled up. He ended that season with a .673 OPS (very substandard) and will have a tough time making the major-league squad in Oakland this spring. (Again: In all fairness to McGrath, he suggested that Fuld was just a shooting star. It’s more the hed and dek that were misleading.)

If this kind of statistical outlier happens during the middle of a season, it’s hardly noticed. But when it happens at the beginning of one, headline writers have a tendency to create a narrative that isn’t true. A player has magically improved! It will occur this season with some other player who, like Fuld, is fungible with guys in the minors.

But baseball and lesser sports don’t have ownership of such misreadings. It can also be the case with serious things like cancer clusters. We always want to investigate health crises that might have an unnatural origin, but we must remember that sometimes it’s just the numbers, merely an outlier.

From Amy Chozick’s New York Times Magazine interview with mathematician David J. Hand:

“Amy Chozick:

You also write that geographical clusters of people with diseases might not necessarily be a result of environmental issues.

David J. Hand:

 

It could just be a coincidence. Well, they could be due to some sort of pollution or infectious disease or something like that, but you can expect clusters to occur just by chance as well. So it’s an interesting statistical problem to tease these things out. Is this a genuine cluster in the sense that there’s a cause behind it? Or is it a chance cluster?

Amy Chozick:

So we shouldn’t dismiss those coincidences?

David J. Hand:

No, but if you do see such a cluster, then you should work out the chance that you would see such a cluster purely randomly, purely by chance, and if it’s very low odds, then you should investigate it carefully.”

Tags: , ,

“A State Can End War, But A Traditional Society Cannot”

January 12, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Amy Chozick’s New York Times Magazine interview with Jared Diamond in which the scientist defends his recent book, The World Until Yesterday, from criticism:

“NYT:

On the other hand, the book has been criticized for saying traditional societies are very violent.

Jared Diamond:

Some people take a view of traditional society as being peaceful and gentle. But the proportional rate of violent death is much higher in traditional societies than in state-level societies, where governments assert a monopoly on force. During World War II, until Aug. 14, 1945, American soldiers who killed Japanese got medals. On Aug. 16, American soldiers who killed Japanese were guilty of murder. A state can end war, but a traditional society cannot.

NYT:

People have called the book racist, saying it suggests third-world poverty is caused by environmental factors instead of imperialism and conquests.

Jared Diamond:

It’s clearly nonsense. It’s not as if people in certain parts of the world were rich until Europeans came along and they suddenly became poor. Before that, there were big differences in technology, military power and the development of centralized government around the world. That’s a fact.”

Tags: ,

“What Makes Wikipedia So Valuable For Users Is What Gets In Its Way Of Becoming A Valuable”

June 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire” is the title of Amy Chozick’s short, sharp New York Times Magazine portrait of the Wikipedia founder, a singular figure in the Information Age, who was right about crowdsourcing knowledge when almost everyone else thought he was wrong, when he was treated like a punchline. The collective nature of the virtual encyclopedia made it impossible for Wales to cash in, but somehow I think he’ll slide by. Let’s weep for others. An excerpt:

“Wikipedia, which is now available in 285 languages, gets more than 20 billion page views and roughly 516 million unique visitors a month. It is the fifth-most-visited Web site in the world behind Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook; and ahead of Amazon, Apple and eBay. Were Wikipedia to accept banner and video ads, it could, by most estimates, be worth as much as $5 billion. But that kind of commercial sellout would probably cause the members of the community, who are not paid for their contributions, to revolt. ‘The paradox,’ says Michael J. Wolf, managing director at Activate, a technology-consulting firm in New York and a member of the Yahoo! board, ‘is that what makes Wikipedia so valuable for users is what gets in its way of becoming a valuable, for-profit enterprise.’

Wales suffers from the same paradox. Being the most famous traveling spokesman for Internet freedom brings in a decent living, but it’s not Silicon Valley money. It’s barely London money. Wales’s total net worth, by most estimates, is just above $1 million, including stock from his for-profit company Wikia, a wiki-hosting service. His income is a topic of constant fascination. Type ‘Jimmy Wales‘ into Google and ‘net worth’ is the first pre-emptive search to pop up. ‘Everyone makes fun of Jimmy for leaving the money on the table,’ says Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia.

Wales is well rehearsed in brushing off questions about his income. In 2005, Florida Trend magazine reported that he made enough money in his brief stint as an options-and-futures trader in Chicago, before starting Wikipedia, that he would never have to work again. But that was before he had to pay child support and rent for homes in Florida and London. When I brought up the topic recently, Wales seemed irritated. ‘It rarely crosses my mind,’ he said. ‘Reporters ask me all the time and expect me to say: ‘I’m heartbroken. Where’s my billion dollars?’  On two occasions, he compared himself to an Ohio car salesman. ‘There are car dealers in Ohio who have far more money than I’ll ever have, and their jobs are much, much less interesting than mine,’ he said during one conversation. When his net worth came up again, he brought up Ayn Rand. ‘Can you imagine Howard Roark saying, ‘I just want to make as much money as possible?’ Wales asked rhetorically.

Wales likes to invoke the higher purpose of Wikipedia.“

•••••

Encyclopedia Britannica infomercial, 1992:

Tags: ,