An article in Scientific American disputes the idea that newborns resemble one parent more than the other:

The paternal-resemblance hypothesis got some scientific backing in 1995, when a study in Nature by Nicholas Christenfeld and Emily Hill of the University of California, San Diego, showed that people were much better at matching photos of one-year-old children with pictures of their fathers than with photos of their mothers. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Case closed? Hardly. “It’s a very sexy result, it’s seductive, it’s what evolutionary psychology would predict—and I think it’s wrong,” says psychologist Robert French of the National Center for Scientific Research in France. A subsequent body of research, building over the years in the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, has delivered results in conflict with the 1995 paper, indicating that young children resemble both parents equally. Some studies have even found that newborns tend to resemble their mothers more than their fathers.

In a 1999 study published in Evolution & Human Behavior, French and Serge Brédart of the University of Liège in Belgium set out to replicate the paternal-resemblance finding and were unable to do so. In a photo-matching trial with pictures of one-, three- and five-year-old children and their parents, subjects identified mothers and fathers equally well.

A more recent study in the same journal employed a larger set of photos than were used by either Christenfeld and Hill or Brédart and French in their studies and still concluded that most infants resemble both parents equally. “Our research, on a much larger sample of babies than Christenfeld and Hill’s, shows that some babies resemble their father more, some babies resemble their mother more, and most babies resemble both parents to about the same extent,” says Paola Bressan, a psychologist at the University of Padova in Italy who co-authored the 2004 study. Bressan added that, to the best of her knowledge, “no study has either replicated or supported” the 1995 finding that babies preferentially resemble their fathers.

My confident memory doesn’t go back to remembering which parent my siblings resembled more as newborns. To some extent all babies resemble Winston Churchill. However, as adults my siblings and I all resemble both of our parents, half of my siblings resembling my dad more and half my mom more.

Although throughout my life I’ve been told by people who knew my dad that I resemble him I think it’s mostly superficial and that I resemble my mother more. I have some of my dad’s mannerisms but he was was tall (for his generation) and had finer features and a more slender build than I do. As a young person I had dark reddish-brown hair, was of medium height and notably stocky build. My neck, chest, and wrist were larger when I was 14 than my dad’s when he was 20 (as was the case in so many things he kept a journal).

And, as I remarked to someone the other day, the character flaws of each of my parents have reached their full flower in me.

The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week. First place in the Council category was The Noisy Room’s An American descent Into Hell.

First place in the non-Council category was Sultan Knish with Redistributing Freedom To Tyranny.

You can see the full results here.

Here are the results for the previous week. First place in the Council category was Joshuapundit’s What Does Peace Mean, Anyway?.

First place in the non-Council category was Iowahawk with Farewell, My Weiner.

You can see the full results here.

In anticipation of Father’s Day tomorrow I thought I might post some observations on good pictures about fathers. Movies about mothers, e.g. Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, are numerous and have even become cult classics. Good pictures about fathers are, I think, harder to come by.

The Kid (1921)

Perhaps it’s ironic that the first picture on my list isn’t about a father at all but about a surrogate father. I think The Kid is one of Chaplin’s best and certainly his most heartfelt. Watch The Kid and you’ll never look at The Addams Family, a TV show in which Jackie Coogan played Uncle Fester, the same way again.

The Champ (1931)

Jackie Cooper, fresh out of the “Our Gang” comedies, became a star in The Champ. The Champ repeats one of the characteristic formulae of movies about fathers: the relationship between father and child doesn’t necessarily hinge on how good a man or even how good a father he is. I admit it: I’m corny. I can’t watch the end of the The Champ without tears in my eyes.

Captains Courageous (1937)

Captains Courageous which won Spencer Tracy an Academy Award for his potrayal of Manuel, the Portuguese fisherman, is nearly a seafaring Fathers and Sons, hinging as it does on different father-son relationships: the absent or distant father, the surrogate father, the deceased father. And then there’s the practically perfect father-son relationship between Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. Rooney’s performance here isn’t the brash Mick of the Rooney-Garland musicals or the Cagney-influenced Mickey Rooney of Boy’s Town. It’s a much more subdued, better performance and the chemistry between Barrymore and Rooney is wonderful. The repeat pairing came hard on the heels of a casting which spawned the Andy Hardy series (albeit with Lewis Stone, a vastly inferior actor, as Judge Hardy in the remainder of the series).

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

This movie pivots on the scenes between father Johnny and daughter Francie Nolan. They won Jimmy Dunn an Academy Award. My mom used to tell me that this relationship reminded her of her relationship with her dad.

Life With Father (1947)

Excellent acting and gorgeous art direction bring sparkle to this movie about a well-to-do turn of the 20th century family. It’s capped by William Powell’s Academy Award-nominated performance.

Father of the Bride (1950)

Spencer Tracy plays a dad determined to give his daughter the wedding of her (and her mother’s) dreams as he comes to realize that he’s become just a bit player. Tracy’s performance ranges from broad comedy to poignancy.

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

Although this picture is more of an ensemble piece than one about a father, Gary Cooper’s performance as Jess Bidwell, a devout Quaker father, is solid and the picture is so great I just had to mention it.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

That this is a movie about a father and a child’s view of her father can be encapsulated in a single quote: “Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing.”

Shenandoah

This picture is about a father’s determination to remain independent and keep his family safe from a war he regarded as none of their business. It also features the best (although not most devout) grace ever said over a meal in a motion picture:

Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be eating it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you Lord just the same for the food we’re about to eat, amen.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of a father’s education in learning to care for his son fight to retain custody of his son garnered an Academy Award. Meryl Streep won an Academy Award as Best Actress in a Supporting Role as his divorced wife and the picture captured awards for its director, Robert Benton and as Best Picture.

I could add a few honorable mentions that aren’t included above in my list of movies: The Yearling, Hole in the Head, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, and, maybe, John Q.

Update

I’m embarrassed to realize that I’ve left out yet another notable Spencer Tracy portrayal of a father in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. The difficulty of portraying someone who faces internal conflict and comes around to support a decision which, while not problem-free, is the most satisfying, integral, and courageous one for himself and his family is enormous but Tracy handles it, even in his terminal decline, with ease. Even on his deathbed we can never catch him acting.

Update 2

More candidates: Shane, The Patriot. I’ve also begun to think that I need an entire category for movies about bad fathers.

It has been far too long since I’ve posted any dog pictures so above is a picture I took of Tally a couple of days ago. You can click on it for a larger version. She turned 13 a couple of months ago. Although she does not quite have the imperial composure that her mother had, she has developed some of the dignity of age and she also possesses that benignity that I have found common in good, old dogs.

Her body is not serving her as well as it did. She’s lost a number of her teeth and it’s clear her arthritis bothers her. On a daily basis she takes a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory formulated specifically for dogs and it appears to be doing her some good. After she’d taken it for a while her liver numbers began to deteriorate so we began giving her milk thistle, a dietary supplement for which there appears to be some scientific evidence for effectiveness in supporting liver function. Her liver numbers bounced back and have been in a good range ever since.

We also give her an Adequan shot (polysulfated glycosaminoglycan) every couple of weeks. Adequan was originally used for aiding in the rebuilding of joints in racing horses and it definitely does Tally some good. We’ve adjusted her diet as she’s aged.

However her body has declined, her spirit is as bright and energetic as ever, sometimes to her detriment. She’ll walk or play ball insistently, to and beyond the point at which she’ll start hobbling.

As you can see from this picture she still enjoys life and relishes nothing more than spending time as reigning queen of the backyard.

Previous posts featuring Tally:

The pack plays together
My girls
My pack
Happy Birthday, Tally!
Dogsledding Chicago, 2007
Tally

Quite the life cycle study.

There’s a commentary on this article by Stephen Roach at FT from Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns that I’d like to commend to your attention:

Don’t be fooled by economists telling you the risks of a Japan disease are not real. They are. And when economists are honest like Janet Yellen has been, they will tell you that it is conceivable that accommodative monetary policy could provide tinder for a buildup of leverage. Moreover, Larry Summers is quite direct in telling us that he views the purpose of fiscal policy is to promote aggregate demand via “borrowing and lending, and spending”. How is that consistent with private sector deleveraging? Doesn’t this actively promote the preconditions for the Japan disease?

I don’t have a great deal to add to the two articles other than to comment on Mr. Harrison’s prescription:

Rather than adding stimulus with the aim of goosing demand by whatever means available to help the economy reach escape velocity, I would say that the central objective of economic policy is to help the economy reach full employment. Doing so will increase demand, increase output, and cut budget deficits tremendously. Policy makers should aid the economy in reallocating scarce resources to areas that will sustain longer-term productivity growth while doing this. In America, that means fewer resources in finance and housing and perhaps more in technology and infrastructure.

Two observations here. First, helping the economy reach full employment and reallocating assets away from finance and housing construction in the near term are, unfortunately, in conflict. The economic dislocation will, in the short term, result in more unemployment rather than less. That’s why the administration and the Federal Reserve have been so active in propping up the failing sectors rather than supporting sectors in which there are some prospects for future growth. Wishing for the status quo ante is an inherent quality of political institutions, not an accidental one.

Second, IMO we should be very careful about just what technology and infrastructure we invest in and how we do it. I believe that we’re enormously over-invested in biotechnololgy, for example. That may pay off enormously. Or it may be an utter waste.

If you define infrastructure as roads and bridges, do we have enough or far too much? I think the latter (building bridges to nowhere, anyone?) and that rather than diluting our resources by trying not only to maintain everything but even to expand it we should concentrate on what’s most important and most productive. Does that argue for the federal government doing these things? I’m not so sure.

Here in the Chicagoland area we have plenty of roads. Our problems are that many of our roads don’t go the right way and we have peak load problems. The reason for the former is political and I don’t think the solution to the latter is more roads.

Megan McArdle has a rather grim post about bacterial antibiotic resistance:

The superbugs have not only gotten bad fast–from “not really an issue” in 1980 to a major problem today–but they seem to be getting badder faster, as they merrily borrow resistance-conferring genes from each other. Researchers now say they’re seeing resistance show up in the lab, before they even put the stuff into people.

Of course, the most worrying thing is not the effect on the budget. It’s the effect on the people. A world without antibiotics is a world of vast suffering and early death.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this problem and a consideration of the history of antibiotics and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) may explain why.

The penicillin antibiotics have been known for more than a century but didn’t come into widespread use until 70 years ago. Their effectivceness in treating staph rendered them invaluable during World War II. 2.3 million doses were produced for the invasion of Normandy in 1944. After the war it made its way into widespread civilian use.

The first known case of MRSA was identified in 1961 in the UK. There is epidemiological reason to believe that it originated in the UK and its eradication there has proved elusive. It took 20 years for MRSA to spread from the UK to the USA to any great degree. Since its emergence the incidence in the US has grown to 31.8 cases per 100,000 and about 20% of those are fatal. See here for the rise in MRSA cases among hospital patients.

I would suggest that the emergence and spread of resistant variants of bacteria can be traced to the following causes:

1. Widespread availability of relatively inexpensive antibiotics.
2. Abuse of antibiotics. I speculate that the urge to overtreat may be a contributing factor.
3. Increased travel. Without travel resistant varieties would just stay where they originated.

Now consider the antibiotic linezolid:

When linezolid (Zyvox) received federal approval in early 2000, it was the first completely new antibiotic compound to reach the pharmaceutical market in 35 years. The synthetic compound even proved effective against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) bacteria, for which no other line of defense existed. Its creator, New Jersey-based Pharmacia, sounded confident that few people would become resistant to the drug. It was not to be. Within months, patients infected with MRSA and VRE were not responding to linezolid.1,2

Such quick resistance epitomizes the dilemma of antibiotics development: Drugs cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take at least a decade to develop, and then become increasingly less effective. (see ‘Renewing the Fight Against Bacteria,’).

In the past, a classic screening approach, which tests in vitro the inhibitory effect of synthetic and natural compounds or extracts, led to the discovery of many current antibacterial drugs. Linezolid, for example, was developed in this way: thousands of compounds were reviewed to find one that kills bacteria. Today, this method yields few, novel, promising structures. The related method of developing second and third generation drugs based on existing pharmaceuticals is no longer considered an option because cross resistance reduces the effectiveness of macrolides (based on erythromycin), rifapentine (based on penicillin), and carbapenems (based on imipenim).

In many places in the world antibiotics are available over the counter and here in United States incentives to do more, effective or not, lead to over-prescription. It has been suggested that the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed contributes to the development of resistant bacterial strains as well.

Modern travel, the wide availability of antibiotics, and misuse both of patients and physicians create an evnironment in which the development of resistant strains of bacteria is inevitable and once established, these strains have proved very difficult to uproot. The increasing cost (even in the absence of regulatory barriers, a frequent target) makes it unlikely that the development of new antibiotics will keep up with the evolution of new resistant bacterial strains.

Barring some development to fight bacteria other than the development of new antibiotics we may well be entering a post-antibiotic age. I don’t look forward to this eventuality. Antibiotics have been very good to my family—without them I probably wouldn’t be here. In the 1880s nearly every adult male in my lineage died from bacterial disease (tuberculosis, staph). Puerperal fever (septicemia following childbirth) was a common cause of death among my female ancestors. As late as 1930 people in my family were dying of tuberculosis but since 1940 nobody in my family has died of bacterial disease. We may be returning to those days.

I had high hopes when I began reading Isabel Sawhill of the Brooking Insitution’s proposal for a compromise on healthcare reform. They were soon to be dashed. She (and presumably the Brookings Institution) proposes a “hybrid solution” with both public and private components:

Democrats would have to accept some form of premium support for the elderly in return for Republicans accepting a public option for the non-elderly. Over time, individuals would then vote via their enrollment decisions on which option they liked better. The government would be forced to compete with the private sector on an equal footing. And the private sector would not be able to raise premiums without limit. Best of all, seniors and working-age Americans would be in the same system, leading to more fairness and greater efficiency for the system as a whole.

This strategy is hampered by a complete and utter lack of understanding of healthcare insurance and the sources of cost increases in the healthare system. First, healthcare insurance companies revenues rise as healthcare costs do. They have little or no incentive to control costs. Second, the majority of employer-provide healthcare insurance plans are in fact self-insurance. Insurance companies act only as administrators for these plans and in general receive a percentage of payouts as their compensation. No incentive there. Third, in every market healthcare insurance is an oligopoly. State regulations ensure that. There isn’t enough competition among the few providers to produce cost savings and precious little incentive to do so.

Why not cut to the chase and go directly single-payer? That’s where that train is heading.

Not that that would produce cost savings, either. A single-payer plan can control costs in the presence of the political will to do so. As evidence of the lack of such will I would submit the enactment of serial “doc fixes”. Time inconsistency, people.

If there’s one thing we should have learned from the last several years of furious thrashing over healthcare reform it is that not much will be done until the whole thing goes kablooey. That may be sooner than we think. Can the Fed continue to be the primary purchaser of Treasuries forever?

Could someone explain to me the reasons behind the big jump in the cost of higher education over the last twenty years? I suspect that it all comes down to healthcare costs.

When healthcare costs rise briskly and the cost of employer-provided healthcare insurance is bundled into compensation (which means that total compensation is rising, too) while wages, i.e. compensation excluding benefits, is more or less stagnant the differential between wages and the costs of all sorts of things will certainly become substantial over time.

I’m open to other explanations but that sounds like the most likely one to me.

To supplement the discussion we were having in comments about conservation strategies, I managed to locate a study from MIT that I recalled from several years ago. In the article the authors (and a classful of students) analyzed a variety of lifestyles, energy consumption profiles, and carbon footprints. Here’s a quick sketch of what they found:

1. Shared services, e.g. defense, roads, education, etc. result in a floor for the impact of individual action.
2. Carbon footprint increases exponentially with income.
3. The combination of the floor mentioned above and carbon footprint increasing exponentially with income means that the ability of people of middle income to reduce their carbon footprints dramatically is actually quite limited.
4. The same factors make it impossible for people at lower income levels to reduce their carbon footprint at all.

So, for example, Bill Gates’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times that of the average person. My calculations suggest that the combined carbon footpints of the 10,000 highest income earners comprise a very high proportion of the whole. Said another way very little can be accomplished while shielding the highest income earners from the effects of whatever policy is put in place or putting in place a policy to which they are unlikely to respond.

A few snippets from the study:

…none of the life styles studied here ever resulted in an energy requirement below 120GJ (in 1997). This includes the life style of a five year old child, a homeless person and a Buddhist monk.

and

…due to the combined effects of subsidies and rebound, the magnitude of possible reductions in energy use for people in the United States by voluntary changes in spending patterns appears limited.

To me at least this suggests that some of the frequently encountered strategies, e.g. carbon trading, a carbon tax, should be re-thought. As I indicated in comments if the objective is to reduce our collective carbon footprint the very most important thing we could do is to reduce the size of our military (with commensurate reduction in military activity). I continue to believe that this can be done without adversely affecting national security.

Beyond that (and in the realm of individual action) the most important actions will necessarily be those taken by the highest income earners. Not only is that where there’s the most to optimize but, frankly, there just isn’t enough to target among the lowest income earners. Strategies that fall hardest on the lowest income earners are very unlikely to accomplish the goal.

It’s not clear to me what a strategy targeted at the super-producers would look like. My offhand guess is that government action probably won’t be effective. I think that shame would be the most effective weapon. However, that would require such a dramatic change in societal attitudes that I despair of such a thing taking place.