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In "Commit Yourself" (page 34),
adapted from his new book We Have Seen the Enemy (Penguin
Press), Daniel Akst examines the practice of "precommitment," in
which individuals give themselves clear and immediate incentives to
stick to their word and complete tasks. Akst, whose 1996 novel
St. Burl's Obituary was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner
prize, sees conflict over incentives as the heart of fiction.
"Short-term rewards and long-term goals are so often at variance,"
the 54-year-old writer says. "I'm not sure we'd have novels if they
weren't. Akst has yet to employ precommitment in his own
life, however. "I'm sort of afraid of it," he says. "But I think
I'm about to use precommitment to get another novel written."
Josh Brokaw is
reason's Burton C. Gray Memorial intern. Brokaw,
24, participated in the 2001 National Spelling Bee, although he's
not sure how helpful the experience was. As a skill, he says,
spelling is "pretty useless in the age of spell check." Prior to
interning at reason, Brokaw ran a blog called
Fire Paul Krugman. He also worked at a construction firm
where his main skills were "stringing orange fences tight and
digging up and replanting road signs."
reason's other intern,
Stephen Smith, previously interned at the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, where "the stories I heard about
people with chronic illnesses spending $1,000 each month on pot
were pretty crushing. Sometimes you forget that it's also highly
effective medicine." In his free time, Smith, 22, maintains
Market Urbanism, a libertarian urban planning blog, and
listens to "a lot of dubstep and drum 'n' bass, which I guess puts
me outside of reason's guitar-centric
mainstream."
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