Josh.kaushansky

Whee!

Our galaxy is set to merge with its closet neighbor four billion years from now, give or take:

Recent observations confirm that Andromeda is heading straight toward us at about 60 miles per second, and will traverse the 2.5 million light-year distance currently separating our galaxies in about four billion years. While the collision of two galaxies might conjure up images of mass devastation, the event will be largely imperceptible to our descendants, if any are still around. (They will have had to find another home: By that time, the increasing luminosity of our sun will have rendered Earth uninhabitable.) Galaxies are mostly empty space, so almost no stars or planets will actually collide.

Nonetheless, the Milky Way as we know it will cease to exist. Initially, the two galaxies will slide past each other and draw apart until gravity hits the brakes and pulls them back together. As Andromeda and the Milky Way merge, both will lose their disk-like structure, forming a single elliptical galaxy that some astronomers have dubbed “Milkomeda.”

(Photo: A stunning view of the Milky Way from Assekrem (meaning “the end of the world” in old local language) in the Hoggar Mountains, Sahara, southern Algeria. By Babek Tafreshi/SSPL/Getty Images)

Here are my forecasts for 2014, guaranteed to not be wrong:

Category	Forecast
Dow Jones Industrials	No idea
S&P500	WTF are you asking me for?
10 Year Bond	Could not fathom a guess
Emerging Markets	Who knows?
Fed Fund Rates	Haven’t a clue
US Housing Market	That’s a really good question
Inflation	Not a clue
GDP	Yes, we will probably have a GDP
Unemployment	Thhhhpppptttt?
ECB Rates	$%^&*!
Growth in China	XXXX
European Sovereign Debt	Hmmm, interesting . . .
2014 Election outcome	HTF should I know?
Abenomics & Japan	Domo Arigato
Possibility of Recession in 2014	Possibility & Probability are 2 different things

That’s the most honest set of predictions you will read this season.

(This was part of a prior piece I wrote for Bloomberg earlier this month)

Considering the question last year, Andrew Santella offered a “less well-known explanation for the Dec. 25 date—one with appeal for anyone uncomfortable with a connection between Christmas and the old solstice festivals”:

According to some scholars, Christmas was set near the winter solstice not because of any pagan traditions but based on a series of arcane calendrical computations. This argument hinges on an ancient Jewish tradition that had the great prophets dying on the same dates as their birth or, alternatively, their conception. Thus, to follow this peculiar assumption, the first step in dating Jesus’ birth would be to date his death, which the Gospels say happened at Passover. The early Christian writer Tertullian calculated that the date given for Jesus’ death in John’s Gospel corresponds to March 25 in the Roman calendar. Many Christian churches came to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, marking the angel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would become the mother of Jesus, on this date. Adding nine months to this date produces a Dec. 25 Christmas. This alternative explanation is sometimes deployed to dismiss the notion that the holiday had pagan roots.

Americans’ obsession with the furry creature is “almost impossible to believe,” according to one Chinese newspaper:

This was no passing remark: The Dec. 4 article in the Communist Party paper Beijing Youth Daily stood out among China’s sometimes shoddily-researched, state-run media with its convincing,sourced points. The paper noted that Chinese pandas on loan to the zoo in Washington, D.C. have drawn visitors from around the country, and that even frequent treks to see the pandas at the zoo “could not satisfy the demand” of the American people, some of whom watch the adorable symbols of US-China friendship online via a newly-installed Giant Panda Cam. Pandas “easily find their way into the pages of major,mainstream U.S. papers,” wrote the paper with evident amazement, “on their birthdays, 100-day celebrations, or even when they get headaches.”

America’s panda obsession – US-based news agency UPI reported the then-unnamed BaoBao’s uneventful first check-up on Aug. 25 – has long fascinated and bewildered Chinese people. In Feb. 2010, the major news site China Youth Online reported that Chinese found it “hard to understand” why fans in the United States were “brokenhearted” over the return to China of a giant panda named Tai Shan. Villagers living just miles from Tai Shan’s new home in central Sichuan province, the article pointed out, did not care: One of the bear’s new neighbors told China Youth Online that despite his proximity to the panda center, he had only seen the animals on television, explaining, “They have nothing to do with my life.” In an attempt to explain foreigners’ fixation with China’s national symbol, the article observed that pandas are objectively “adorable,” and also that the online broadcast of Tai Shan’s birth may have led its many US viewers to feel a connection to the cub.

(Photo of the National Zoo’s newly named panda cub “Bao Bao” by Abby Wood)

Ads:

The preliminary report, a joint effort of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Endowment for the Arts, reveals that advertising dwarfs the economic clout of every single other creative endeavor, followed by arts education in a distant second place. The report finds that the total size of the arts and culture economy is 3.2 percent of GDP, coming in at $504 billion. In the broader leisure economy, the report notes, this sector supplants travel and tourism, which clocks in at 2.8 percent of GDP. The report also finds that the national economic recovery has lagged, jobs-wise, in the culture sector.

That advertising is a major fiscal engine should of course not be terribly surprising, but the small size of the “Independent artists and performing arts” ($48.9 billion) compared to the “Arts education” category ($104 billion) should provide some pause as far as the economic linkage that exists between arts education and the production of what we consider high (or “fine”) art: teaching art — i.e. the promise of art — is a more lustrous pearl than the actual messy business of producing it.

Rick Santorum, a Catholic fighting against universal healthcare, compares the Affordable Care Act with … apartheid:

[Mandela] was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that.

I just don’t know what to say about that. I really don’t. Except that Santorum’s mind is simply unhinged, and that the reflexive need to describe anything that this president has done as pure evil has become a kind of sickness of the mind and soul on the right. It has abandoned any connection to the real world. It lives in a narcissistic, warped, ideological echo-chamber of victimhood and utter obliviousness to the real tragedies of human history.

(Photo: Former US Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 15, 2013. By Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.)

Everything in the SMBC Store is 15% off, today only!

AND BONUS, the new SMBC BOOK (of 100% nerd jokes) is now available for sale!

Be thankful that America sucks just a little less than the rest of the world:

Christian Jarrett considers a new study suggesting that human touch, and possibly stuffed animals, can reduce existential angst for people with low self-esteem:

For an initial study, a female experimenter passed a pair of questionnaires measuring death angst and self-esteem to each of 61 participants (35 men) who took part. If she touched a participant gently on the back for one second as she passed them the papers, then afterwards they tended to report having less fear of death, as compared with if no physical contact was made. But crucially, this was only the case for participants with low self-esteem. …

Next, 50 participants were asked to estimate the value of a metre-high teddy bear enclosed in a box and viewed through a plexiglass panel. Those who’d first been reminded of death and who had low self-esteem put a price on the bear of €23. In contrast, participants with high self-esteem who were reminded of death, and all participants not reminded of death, valued the teddy at just €13. This shows that thoughts of death “increased the desire for touch among individuals with low self-esteem,” the researchers said.

Unfortunately we can’t be confident this is true. Because there were no control conditions in which participants rated the value of other objects, we can’t know if low self-esteem individuals reminded of death wouldn’t have placed a higher value on any product.

(Photo by Flickr user christopher frier brown)

In a 1977 interview, the late Kurt Vonnegut — born 91 years ago this week — stressed the importance of plot in modern storytelling:

VONNEGUT: I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Now, there’s an admirable practical joke for you. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are—

INTERVIEWER: And what they want.

VONNEGUT: Yes. And you can put him to sleep by never having characters confront each other. Students like to say that they stage no confrontations because people avoid confrontations in modern life. “Modern life is so lonely,” they say. This is laziness. It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all. If a writer can’t or won’t do that, he should withdraw from the trade.

(Hat tip: Sadie Stein)

Pew! Pew! Pew!

Julia Ioffe describes what it’s like to have whooping cough:

At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing – also a common side effect.

Unsurprisingly, she has some choice words for vaccine denialists:

How responsible are these non-vaccinating parents for my pertussis? Very. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics indicated that outbreaks of these antediluvian diseases clustered where parents filed non-medical exemptions – that is, where parents decided not to vaccinate their kids because of their personal beliefs. The study found that areas with high concentrations of conscientious objectors were 2.5 times more likely to have an outbreak of pertussis.

Yes, she was vaccinated in childhood:

The problem, in part, is that the protection offered by the pertussis vaccine wears off by the time you reach adulthood. Until recently, however, this was not a problem. Back in those halcyon days when we vaccinated our children, the disease was not bouncing around our population and so it was okay that adults did not get re-immunized. (That’s the whole point of herd immunity: it’s hard to get sick from people who aren’t sick.)

Razib applauds Ioffe for her strategic shaming:

Over the past few years I’ve become much more aware of cultural streams in public health, and the public’s reaction to that health advice, because I have become a father. More specifically, when my wife was pregnant with my daughter, and after she was born, we encountered major pressure from peer networks to not vaccinate. In the social circles in which we were embedded, “progressive,” “crunchy,” and “alternative,” vaccinating one’s child was the heterodox decision. It was rather obvious to us that one of the major reasons that many people do not vaccinate their children is that many of their friends, and vocal people whom they trust, do not vaccinate their children. … [T]his groundswell of denialism must be countered by public opprobrium, and yes, shaming. Peer pressure kills, but it can also save lives.

(Infographic: Jen Kirby)

Source: dshort.com

 

The American Automobile Association reports that the average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.19. (The U.S. Energy Information Administration has regular gas at about $3.26).

Since peaking at the end of July 2008 at $4.11, then collapsing to $1.65 that December, Gasoline prices have been on a wild ride. Since rallying back to almost $4 in May of 2011, gas prices have been range-bound, gradually drifting lower.

There are a few factors driving this . . .

Continues here

I believe every man should know how to cook. That being said, I’m realistic enough to know that many of you are likely to “outsource” cooking to others — be it your wives, moms, roommates, or the chefs and cooks at your local restaurants. So be it.

However, I believe every man should have a recipe (or 5) up their sleeves. That’s where I come in.

I’ve put together an awesome recipe to satisfy almost any manly occasion — be it an appetizer, something to share, a hot lunch, a hearty soup, or dinner for one.

So the next time you get asked to whip something up, or you are looking for a satisfying meal – don’t buy a bunch of cold cuts on a platter or rely on a brown bag of fast food. Check out my creations, and I can promise you’ll stand apart from the pack!

Appetizer: Loaded Guacamole

Avocados are typically on sale at the market this time of the year, which makes this dip not only delicious, but rather affordable too. I love whipping up a batch of this guacamole to entertain friends for the big game, or store it for use on sandwiches, omelets, or as a simple quick snack throughout the week. Loaded with good fats, this is one dish that’s both delicious and healthy. (Prep 10 mins, Cook N/A, Serves 4)

• 4 ripe Hass avocados
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tomato, seeded and finely diced
• ¼ red onion, finely diced
• ¼ cup chopped cilantro
• 1 lime, juiced

Remove outer layer of avocado and pits; roughly dice avocado and place in mixing bowl. On a cutting board, combine salt and garlic – use the side of a chef’s knife to smash the garlic into a paste, using the salt as an abrasive; add to mixing bowl. Combine remaining ingredients and mash with a fork to combine; do not overly mash, as you want the texture to remain chunky. Serve.

Note – if preparing in advance, cover the top with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the guacamole to prevent any air from reaching the mixture, otherwise it will turn brown.

To Share: Grilled Wings

Every man should master making wings at home. Instead of relying on the deep fryer, follow my fool-proof process to get that crispy skin, and tender, moist chicken without all the trans-fat and calories. Trust me, I’ve perfected this recipe over the years – you’ll forget that these are not fried. Toss in your favorite BBQ or hot sauce, or serve plain. (Prep 10 mins, Cook 2.5 hrs, Serves 10)

• 3 lbs chicken wings, separated into drumettes and flats, tips removed
• Kosher salt
• Fresh cracked pepper
• BBQ or hot sauce, if desired

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Arrange wings onto a rimmed baking sheet into a single layer; season both sides generously with salt and pepper. Put wings into the oven and roast, uncovered, for 2 hours. Remove from oven and prepare grill. Setup a grill for indirect heat (turn on one side to high, and the other to very low). Place wings over indirect (low) heat and grill, turning often, for 30 minutes. Skin should be crisp and slightly charred. Toss in sauce, if desired, and serve warm.

Lunch: Hot Chicken Sandwich

A play on my favorite college sandwich from Sons of Italy in Athens, GA. Though the restaurant no longer exists, I’ve brought their famous “Jimbo” sandwich back to life. In my opinion, this is the best sandwich in the world. For other awesome sandwiches, check out the free AoM sandwich e-book. (Prep 5 mins, Cook 15 mins, Serves 1)

• 1 sub roll, sliced
• 2 large frozen chicken tenders
• 2 tablespoons hot wing sauce
• 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
• Blue cheese dressing, for dipping

Prepare chicken tenders according to product instructions (oven or fried). While hot, toss in wing sauce and add to the sliced sub roll. Top the remaining sub roll (cut side) with mozzarella cheese. Add sandwich to an oven heated to 500 degrees F until the edges are browned and the cheese is melted. Serve with blue cheese dressing.

Soup: Taco Soup

I’m a big fan of making chili throughout the fall, which is why I love this simple remake of a classic. On Sundays, I make up a batch of this for a quick snack throughout the week – as it keeps for several days in the fridge. Just pull out what you need and heat it up. Simple, affordable, and tons of flavor! (Prep 5 mins, Cook 35 mins, Serves 8)

• 2 lbs ground chuck
• 1 package original taco seasoning mix
• 1.5 cups beef stock
• 1 (4oz) can diced green chiles
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• 1 can Ro-tel tomatoes
• 1 can corn, drained
• 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can mild chili beans
• 1 (1 oz) package ranch dressing mix
• Shredded cheese (topping)

In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, brown ground beef until no longer pink. Drain excess fat, add taco seasoning. Add the remaining ingredients – except for the cheese, and cook at a simmer over medium-low heat for 30 minutes. Serve.

Dinner: Filet Mignon + Baked Potato

Eat like a man – a wealthy man – on a pauper’s budget. That’s my philosophy with this meal. Most of us end up having to eat alone every now and then, so I like to treat myself on such occasions with a tender beef filet and baked potato. Keep an eye out for when your grocery store has beef tenderloin on sale – often they run them as cheap as $10 bucks a pound, which for a half-pound portion equates to $5 bucks. Throw in a cheap baked potato with some toppings, and you are eating like a king at Subway prices. That should motivate you to get in the kitchen! (Prep 5 mins, Cook 45 mins, Serves 1)

• 1 large Russet baking potato
• 1 8 oz. filet mignon
• Kosher salt
• Fresh cracked pepper
• Butter (potato topping)
• Sour cream (potato topping)
• Chives (potato topping)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Poke potato a few times with a fork and put in oven. Bake for 45 minutes, or until tender. (Note – you can also “bake” the potato in the microwave if preferred. Poke the potato with a fork and cook on high for 5 minutes, turn over, and microwave for another 4-5 minutes).

Meanwhile, heat a grill or grill pan over direct heat. Season the steak liberally with salt and pepper. Grill over direct heat for two minutes, turn the steak 45 degrees to create nice grill marks, and grill for another 90 seconds. Flip steak, move to indirect heat, and grill for 4-6 minutes, depending on the thickness, for medium-rare – an internal read thermometer should read 130 degrees F. Cook for a few minutes longer if you desire a medium consistency. Remove steak from grill and allow it to rest for 5 minutes before serving. Slice potato lengthwise and add desired toppings; season with salt and pepper. Serve.

#MillionMaskMarch #Turkey Istanbul Now! pic.twitter.com/Usb5IpwvwG via @annonymci

— #MaVi (@koyumavi9) November 5, 2013

Steven A. Cook reports on a recent surge of xenophobia and media crackdowns within Turkey, as the government continues to lash out against coverage of the summer protests:

[I]n the last six months, something has changed. Turkish political discourse is darker and the attacks on foreign observers of Turkish politics have become relentless. During the Gezi Park protests, the thuggish mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, accused a BBC reporter of Turkish origin of being a traitor because she was reporting on the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in his city. Recently, a Dutch journalist named Bram Vermeulen, was informed that his press card was not renewed and that he would not be permitted back into Turkey after his current visa expires, apparently in revenge for his reporting on Turkey’s recent tumult. The Gezi Park protests represent an important point of departure for the AKP [ruling Justice and Development Party] establishments and its supporters.

Rather than a cause for introspection about why so many Turks—though not a majority by any means—are angry at their government, the ruling party and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cynically framed the narrative in a way that places blame for Turkey’s political turbulence on outsiders seeking to bring the country to its knees. The fact that they have been successful speaks to the continuing trauma of the post-WWI period when foreigners—the British, Greeks, French, and Italians—did actually seek to carve up Anatolia. As a result, a depressingly large number of Turks blamed CNN, the BBC, the “interest rate lobby,” “Zionists,” the American Enterprise Institute, and Michael Rubin for the events surrounding Gezi.

Previous Dish on the Turkish upheaval here.

Emily Esfahani Smith explains:

Brain size generally increases with body size across the animal kingdom. Elephants have huge brains while mice have tiny ones. But humans are the great exception to this rule. Given the size of our bodies, our brains should be much smaller—but they are by far the largest in the animal kingdom relative to our body size. The question is why. Scientists have debated this question for a long time, but the research of anthropologist Robin Dunbar is fairly conclusive on this point. Dunbar has found that the strongest predictor of a species’ brain size—specifically, the size of its neocortex, the outermost layer—is the size of its social group. We have big brains in order to socialize.

This helps explain why socialization is so strongly connected to our happiness:

When economists put a price tag on our relationships, we get a concrete sense of just how valuable our social connections are—and how devastating it is when they are broken. If you volunteer at least once a week, the increase to your happiness is like moving from a yearly income of $20,000 to $75,000. If you have a friend that you see on most days, it’s like earning $100,000 more each year. Simply seeing your neighbors on a regular basis gets you $60,000 a year more. On the other hand, when you break a critical social tie—here, in the case of getting divorced—it’s like suffering a $90,000 per year decrease in your income.

Probably not when you first wake up:

[I]f we are drinking caffeine at a time when your cortisol concentration in the blood is at its peak, you probably should not be drinking it. This is because cortisol production is strongly related to your level of alertness and it just so happens that cortisol peaks for your 24-hour rhythm between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on average (Debono et al., 2009). Therefore, you are drinking caffeine at a time when you are already approaching your maximal level of alertness naturally. …

Although your cortisol levels peak between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., there are a few other times where–on average–blood levels peak again, like between noon and 1 p.m., and between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. In the morning then, your coffee will probably be the most effective if you enjoy it between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., when your cortisol levels are dropping before the next spike.

The White House's biggest frustration right now is that Obamacare's technical failures are obscuring its great success: Premiums are much lower than the Congressional Budget Office estimated when the law first passed.

In a new report for the liberal Center for American Progress, Topher Spiro and Jonathan Gruber quantify exactly how much lower. Spiro and Gruber find that the average individual premium in the Affordable Care Act's insurance marketplaces was projected to be $4,700 in 2014. In fact, it's more like $3,936 -- $764, or 16 percent, lower than expected.

That's a big deal in terms of cheaper premiums, but it's also a big deal in terms of the budget: If the savings hold, the Affordable Care Act will cost $190 billion less than the CBO estimated over the next decade.

At the same time, people who are currently buying insurance in the individual market are moving to the Obamacare's insurance exchanges and many are reporting that they're seeing significantly higher premiums for very similar plans.

This almost seems like a paradox: How can premiums in Obamacare both be lower than expected and, for some people, higher than they were before?

In any conversation like this, a disclaimer is necessary. When people talk about "premiums under Obamacare," they're not talking about premiums for people who get insurance through their employers, or through Medicaid, or through Medicare. They're talking about the so-called "individual market," which serves about 5 percent of the country now, and which, if Obamacare succeeds, will serve about 10 percent of the population. So we're talking about insurance premiums for a small minority of the population. But it's still millions of people.

The conversation over these premiums has been confused to the point of being outright misleading. It's become common, for instance, for the Affordable Care Act's critics to compare prices sticker prices in the individual market to the prices in the exchanges now. Since it was routine before for a quarter of people to be turned away or quoted a higher price after revealing their health history, this isn't just comparing apples to oranges. It's comparing apples to oranges that many people couldn't even buy.

The right way to understand this is to think of premiums as a "trilemma" between comprehensiveness, accessibility, and affordability. Imagine this as a triangle:

In the individual market, insurance premiums depend on the balance you strike between these values. A plan could have extremely comprehensive benefits and be extremely cheap so long as it's not open to people who are sick, or are likely to get sick. That would look like this:

You could also imagine a plan that was open to all comers and very affordable -- so long as it didn't cover much. That might look like this:

Prior to the Affordable Care Act, insurance in the individual market kept costs down by turning the away the sick, raising prices on the likely-to-get-sick, and offering, in many cases, pretty stingy benefits. So let's say it was here:

The Affordable Care Act makes individual market insurance both more accessible and more comprehensive. The accessibility comes from barring discrimination based on health status and limiting discrimination based on age. The comprehensiveness comes from setting minimum standards about what insurance needs to cover and what kind of limits it can set for out-of-pocket expenses, etc.

What's important to understand about this trilemma is that it means, roughly, that every change has winners and losers. Put bluntly, the Affordable Care Act's changes are raising insurance premiums for some people who did well under the old system and lowering them for many of the people who were locked out or discriminated against.

A good example of the tradeoffs is the case of Dianne Barrette, a 56-year-old Florida woman who's been featured in the media because her current plan will cost 10 times more under Obamacare. As Erik Wemple discovered, her old plan was health insurance in name only. It didn't cover inpatient hospital care, it didn't cover ambulance services, and so forth. Under Obamacare, all plans have to cover those benefits. So Barrette's old plan was extremely affordable -- $56 a month -- because it covered basically nothing. Her new plan is much more expensive but also much more generous.

But it's not all zero sum. The law pumps a trillion dollars of subsidies into the market to help people making less than 400 percent of the poverty line -- which is $94,200 for a family of four -- afford insurance. So now the actual premiums people are paying exist on a continuum, with some people seeing premiums increases and some people paying literally nothing at all:

The final factor here is increased transparency and competition among insurers -- which should bring down premiums over time. Spiro and Gruber credit competition for Obamacare's lower-than-expected premiums. We'll see if it sticks.

So the bottom line is that Obamacare makes insurance more accessible and more comprehensive, which raises average premiums, but it adds subsidies and competitive markets, which lower premiums. Whether premiums are higher or lower for an individual person depends on their precise situation. But premiums are, in general, lower than was expected when Obamacare passed.

One thing to note about the media coverage around this is that some of the old plans in the individual market are being canceled or moved onto the exchanges at a time when the exchanges aren't really working. So we're hearing from people losing something but we're not hearing much yet from the people who're gaining insurance, or lower-priced insurance, through the law. That's another consequence of the web site's failures, but it's a temporary one. There will be some losers under Obamacare, but because of the subsidies, many more winners.

We are now selling the "first human" comic in the store as a nice big poster.

Back in 1984, then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton and Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton came to an agreement.

A garment manufacturer in the state was about to declare bankruptcy. Seeking to preserve as much of his industrial base as possible, the young governor sat Walton down with the garment executive and a dozen others and asked him a favor: Would you buy from this company, rather than one overseas, to keep those jobs alive?

According to a 1992 report in The Washington Post, Walton agreed, and not just for that one manufacturer. The luncheon was the genesis of a broader "buy America" campaign, which was supposed to stem the tide of factory jobs going overseas. The initiative dragged into the early 1990s, and Wal-Mart said it had brought 100,000 jobs back to the United States from foreign suppliers.

It didn't take long, though, for the media to find that some of the retailers' goods had been falsely labeled "made in the U.S.A." and that some factories had closed. Wal-Mart responded by asking its U.S. suppliers to run ads supporting the program, but the campaign petered out; it was just too cheap to produce goods outside the United States.

Two decades later, the idea has cropped up again. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart announced that it would commit to spending an additional $50 billion over 10 years on sourcing goods in the United States as part of an overall drive toward "American renewal." It's easy to dismiss such pronouncements as purely P.R., especially when that dollar amount is a small fraction of Wal-Mart's U.S. sales. But month after month, the company has made new announcements about suppliers expanding or opening new facilities here at home, most recently at this week's SelectUSA conference in Washington, where chief executive Bill Simon talked the talk about making this a long-term trend.

"There can be a lot of issues that change the equation, but these equations are very, very long in cycle," Simon said. "They're generational. The equation that led to the migration out was a 30-year cycle. So I think there can be changes in legislation or changes in macroeconomic conditions that could impact it, but we believe that we're on the front end of a very long cycle."

Is Wal-Mart for real this time? There are a few reasons to think that it might be.

1. The economics make sense.

All the factors that Simon identified as motivating the insourcing trend -- America's natural gas boom, rising labor costs in China, the risk of global supply chains -- are real. According to a Boston Consulting Group analysis, those combined factors have brought cost of production in the United States down almost to China's level:

That's the reason Wal-Mart is getting its suppliers to reevaluate where they make their goods. Jeff Clapper, of the Bentonville, Ark.-based consultancy 8th and Walton, has been advising companies that sell to Wal-Mart for seven years. "The suppliers we work with are taking it seriously," Clapper says. "Some of it is because Wal-Mart has asked them to. But also the math of it is making more sense."

2. Good P.R. helps Wal-Mart not do things it really doesn't want to do (i.e. unionize).

Wal-Mart has done this kind of thing before. A few years ago, it embarked on a big environmental push. Energy efficiency made all the financial sense in the world, and the company was able to use its massive scale to secure deals on green products that lowered the cost premium for everyone. But by burnishing its image with measures that save money, Wal-Mart has also bought some cover for less savory business practices that would cost it money to change, such as paying low wages and busting unions.

Bringing some manufacturing back the United States could be a similar move on the retailer's part. And this time, having made a huge public deal out of the effort, it would be difficult for Wal-Mart to back out. In one sign that it's serious about its plan, the company is starting to sign more long-term contracts with suppliers that invest in U.S. production, to provide them with some security for taking the risk.

"If my costs have gone up, and they're not supported by Wal-Mart in the near future, it might've done more harm than good," Clapper says. "I think for that reason, it's important that they stick with it."

3. Other countries are buying their own stuff, too.

Wal-Mart is actually selling more in the markets where it has long been manufacturing products. Chinese consumers are buying lots of Wal-Mart products that are made in China; Mexicans are buying things made in Mexico, etc. Wal-Mart can shorten those lead times by keeping production close to the buyer on both ends, in America and around the world.

4. American poverty is starting to hurt Wal-Mart's bottom line.

As competitive as Wal-Mart's price are, when consumers don't have much money -- very much the case in recent years -- they can't fill their shopping carts as high. To the extent that Wal-Mart must pay somebody to make the stuff it sells, those workers might as well be people who wouldn't otherwise have an income so that they can now buy things from the company that supplies their paycheck.

Whether or not you're a Wal-Mart fan, in the interest of American prosperity it makes sense to hope this initiative is a serious one. When the world's biggest retailer asks its suppliers to move back to the United States, those suppliers are suddenly able to make products for other U.S.clients, as well.

Then the challenge is to make sure that those new jobs are the kinds of good jobs that Wal-Mart has otherwise had a reputation for destroying, not creating, in the past.

Stephen Smith of The Next City reports that the Federal Railroad Administration will soon allow modern European train designs on tracks throughout the country. This decision matters more than you might think:For decades, the Federal Railroad Administration had effectively banned modern European trains from American mainline rail networks. European and Asian manufacturers have been slimming down their rolling stock for years to improve performance — energy efficiency, braking and acceleration, even track and train maintenance — while U.S. transit agencies were stuck with bulked-up versions of sleek European cars, weighted down and otherwise modified to meet FRA regulations.The Acela, on
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Russell Wilson was sacked a season-high 7 times by the St. Louis Rams on Monday Night Football. But it's not as bad as the stat line suggests. In fact, it's worse. Wilson was hurried and hit on many non-sack plays; and with just 25 dropbacks, the Rams' sack percentage is a mind-numbing 28%.

Seattle recorded just 7 first downs and 135 yards of total offense in the win, causing advanced analytic models everywhere to curl up in the fetal position and cry for mercy.

But these things happen, right? There are undoubtedly multiple issues and non-repeatable random factors. There's no need to point the finger. And we absolutely shouldn't oversimplify things. Right?

Wrong.

This is America. This is the NFL. We are sports fans.

Someone is to blame.

They all we got

One criticism drifting among Seahawk fans is that our current backups (and even some starters) "aren't getting it done", and, therefore, the front office should have "done something."

But we have become a bit spoiled by Pete Caroll and John Schneider's ability to acquire talent that has been overlooked by other teams. They've found ways to utilize the strengths of an oversized strong safety, too-tall cornerbacks, a short wide receiver, a lightweight defensive end, and an undersized defensive tackle (Chancellor, Sherman/Browner, Baldwin, Clemons, and Bryant).

This doesn't work for an offensive lineman. When pass blocking, a player is at the mercy of the opposing rusher's strength. What's more, the necessary timing can only be demonstrated against a live opponent at full strength and full speed.

And what's true for evaluation is doubly true for development.

There are no tricks, no hidden treasures, no developmental techniques that can give a team a leg up in acquiring quality blockers. You just gotta pay for them.

Seattle has $14 million of its cap currently paying offensive linemen who were acquired in, or kept from, free agency (Giacomini, McQuistan, and Unger). Along with the contracts for Carpenter and Okung, that's $25.5M, about 22% of the current cap spending (excluding dead money). In four drafts, Carroll and Schneider have used 3 out of their highest 8 (first and second round) draft picks on the offensive line.

Front office: pass

They all we need

Another popular choice for scapegoat-of-the-week is Tom Cable. He is, after all, the offensive line coach.

But look at Seattle's last four opponents' defensive efficiency rating:

Arizona: -17.5% (2nd)
Indianapolis: -4.4% (9th)
Tennesse: -1.2% (15th)
St. Louis: +3.3% (23rd)

The defensive rankings from Advanced NFL Stats are similar (5th, 14th, and 19th; and 25th for the Rams).

In the three previous games, Seattle gave up a sack on 7.1% of dropbacks. Lynch and Turbin averaged 4.5 yards per carry and just over 100 yards per game. Wilson passed for 222 per game.

Clearly, the offensive line can. This is Cable's responsibility.

Against St. Louis, the offensive line didn't. This falls on the offensive coordinator.

"We tried a million different things"

... said Pete Carroll in the post-game presser. What he didn't add was that they quickly scrapped anything that seemed to work.

Seattle ran the read option on their second possession, with Marshawn Lynch gaining 16 yards (nullified by an unnecessary holding penalty). Of course you can't use this on every play. But there's no reason not to run it more than once.

On their fourth possession, Wilson ran a designed keeper and scampered for 17 yards. And he did not get hit. Excluding plays on the opponent's goal line (where the compacted defense changes everything), there were no more desgined runs for the quarterback.

Russell Wilson was sacked repeatedly in the pocket. I recall seeing exactly one rollout. Like everything else, a rollout or a bootleg can be defeated if the defense anticipates it. But it won't work if you don't try it, and the opposing defense won't have to anticipate it if you never use it.

Pressure came consistently from the defensive ends beating tackles on the outside. This is easy to constrain with a running back or tight end who chips the defensive end before releasing into his route. Again, it works if you mix it up. Replays on ESPN showed the backs and tight ends repeatedly going into long routes without bothering to chip, leaving Wilson to get sacked or hurried into an incompletion.

Last year, Seattle scored go-ahead touchdowns against both the Patriots and the Vikings on a two-man route. That's two receivers going out for a pass and eight guys blocking. On the deep touchdown to Tate against the Rams, there were seven players assigned to block (and block only; no chips into routes). Seattle has been very successful using max-protect: it complements Wilson's deep ball skills and provides him more lateral room to scramble in the backfield if needed.

And here's another, slightly crazy idea: Run the damn ball. Even if it's not working very well, you're at least beating up on the opposing defense instead of letting them beat up on your quarterback. Seattle handed the ball off to a running back just 12 times on Monday night, netting 28 yards with an average of 2.33 yards/carry. For comparison, Seattle's first 12 passing plays produced a net of 20 yards, or 1.7 yards per dropback. After 19 passing plays, Seattle had netted exactly 1 yard of passing (with yards lost to sacks), for an average of 0.05 yards per dropback. Mathematically, the running game to that point was 44 times more effective.

Two of those running back plays were an attempt to gain punting room with Seattle backed up against its own goal line. Seven of them came on 1st and 10. Which leaves just three handoffs in non-obvious situations. Which leads us to the biggest problem:

Bevell is too predictable

A week ago against the Cardinals, Seattle faced 2nd and 1 at the Cardinals' 43-yard-line. Bevell called three consecutive running plays and Seattle turned it over on downs.

He displays the ignorance and arrogance of a coach who refuses to engage in strategic optimization because "our defense should be able to make a stop here", then comes back the following week facing the same situation in reverse and claims that "our offense should be able to convert here". NFL football is damned competitive. It is insufficient to have superior talent and good execution if you're going to hamstring your players with bad play calls.

Darrell Bevell is like a man playing rock-paper-scissors, but with Seattle's superior talent he has a "cheat": his rock crushes an opponent's rock. Over the course of many plays, this cheat should guarantee victory. But if you keep calling rock, eventually a smart guy like Jeff Fisher is going to call nothing but paper and hand you your ass.

I compiled a spreadsheet of every offensive play Seattle has ran this year to examine Bevell's tendencies. I threw out the last three minutes against San Franciso (running out clock with a 26-point lead) and the Tarvaris Jackson garbage time against the Jaguars. I also eliminated plays inside an opponent's 10-yard-line, where the compressed field changes the dynamics.

For the season, on second down with 1 or 2 yards to go, Seattle has run the ball 6 times and passed just once. Not only is that a wasted opportunity, but Bevell's tendency to trot out the jumbo package ("we should be able to convert") has made it easy for opponents to respond. Just half of those runs converted a first down.

It gets worse.

On 3rd and 4th down, with 1 or 2 yards to go (again excluding plays inside the opponent's 10-yard-line), Bevell has looked terrible:

Wilson run: 1/5
Pass play: 2/5
Handoff: 2/7

It looks like he's at least mixing it up, but those who've watched the Seahawks know that almost all of these plays were run out of a tight, heavy formation with no threat downfield. The two successful passes went for just 4 and 7 yards. Opponents are being allowed to bring the entire defense forward and play with goal-line tactics, ignoring the field behind them.

By contrast, Seattle has converted 3/5 passing attempts on 3rd and 7. These three passes went for 24, 8 and 14 yards. When passing on 3rd/4th down, with between 3 and 7 yards to go, Seattle has made 13 successful conversions. Despite a low overall conversion rate, eight of the successes-- 62%-- were at least 6 yards more than the line to gain. Stretching the field works when Seattle is forced into it, but Bevell won't do it otherwise.

It gets worse.

Much worse.

Seattle has faced 3rd/4th down with between 3 and 7 yards to go 38 times (again excluding plays inside the opponent's 10-yard-line).

I picked 7 yards as the upper boundary because that's where the potential for running starts to fall off. Runs from further back tend to be "give-up" plays. So before we go any further, let's look at how often Seattle's running backs reach a certain mark:

Lynch and Turbin combined, all carries on the season (excluding goal-line):
at least 3 yards: 84/146 58%
at least 4 yards: 70/146 48%
at least 5 yards: 54/146 40%
at least 6 yards: 43/146 29%
at least 7 yards: 35/146 24%

(Note: Lynch is slightly better at 4 and 6 yards, while Turbin is slightly better at 3 and 5 yards, meaning there's no variance between the two for this range of yardage beyond statistical noise.)

Got that? Now, let's look at what Bevell has called on 3rd/4th down, and how Seattle has fared:

Seahawk Conversions by play type, 3rd & 4th down:

Yards to go	pass attempts	pass success	Wilson run	RW run success	RB attempts	RB success	Total Success
1	3	2	3	1	5	1	36%
2	2	0	2	0	2	1	17%
3	12	7	1	1	0	0	62%
4	7	1	1	1	0	0	25%
5	8	2	1	1	0	0	33%
6	2	0	1	0	0	0	0%
7	5	3	0	0	0	0	60%
1 or 2	5	2	5	1	7	2	29%
3 - 7	34	13	4	3	0	0	42%
4 - 7	22	6	3	2	0	0	32%
1or2 all downs	6	2	5	1	13	5	33%

Yeah, that's not a misprint. In 38 situations (with 3-7 yards to go on 3rd/4th down), Seattle has handed off the ball zero times. Oh-for-thirty-eight. Despite the fact that the running success rate (based on other runs) is equal to the actual passing success rate at 3 yards, and significantly greater at 4, 5 and 6 yards.

Does Darrell Bevell think that Jeff Fisher is incapable of reading a stat sheet?

I tire of the apologists who say that there is more to coaching than numbers. Of course there is. Just like there's more to coaching than sports medicine. In both cases, it is vital that the coach have a solid understanding of the principles and that he rely on experts to cover any gaps.

What would you do with a coach who responded to injury by waving around a voodoo doll, chanting a spell, and then telling the injured player to get his "cured" self back onto the field?

Fire his ass.

Bevell's inability to understand game theory and predictability makes him unfit to call plays. Whatever other value he provides the team, he should at least be stripped of those duties and assigned book reports on Clausewitz and Sun Tzu.

In the meantime, you can replace him with these:

EDIT, NOTE: jhmg16 has posted a comparison of Seattle's situational running in 2011-2012 and several other teams' 3rd-and-medium rush percentage in 2013.

This has been a depressing year for people who believe in good government. Shutdowns! Sequestration! Health insurance Web sites that don't work!

So let us pause to honor a rare example of government making a sensible decision that will make life a little better for millions of people.

Passengers on U.S. commercial flights will be able to leave their personal electronic devices on, eventually with permission to read e-books, play games and watch videos on their devices throughout flights, the Federal Aviation Adminsitration has ruled. They can leave their phones on in airplane mode, with cellular reception turned off (this point is pretty much moot, as you generally can't get cell service in flight, anyway).

You're welcome, Alec Baldwin.

The FAA has applied vast amounts of time and technical expertise to figuring out whether this policy change could cause planes to start dropping from the sky. There is an easier way to reach the same conclusion:

On virtually every commercial flight today, there are at least one and often dozens of people who ignore the rules and leave their phones and other devices on. Some are trying to surreptitiously entertain themselves away from the flight attendant's glare. Others just forgot to turn it off. Either way, if there was any genuine threat to air safety from devices being on, we would have heard something -- anything -- about those risks manifesting themselves.

It is great that we take air safety so seriously. It is one of the true triumphs of modernity that millions of people fly on commercial airlines every day and virtually no one is injured or killed in the process. The risk of death over the last five years has been one in 45 million flights; for practical purposes, you're at no greater risk of death from flying across the country than you are from sitting in your living room for five hours.

It was a certain obsessiveness out of the air safety regulators that got us to that remarkable record. But just because safe air transport is a great thing doesn't mean we should keep inconvenient policies that don't actually make us any safer.

Or, as Toby Ziegler on the "West Wing" memorably put it: "We're flying in a Lockheed Eagle series L1011. It came off the line 20 months ago. It carries a Sim-5 Transponder tracking system. Are you telling me I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?"

The federal government's 2013 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, though most of us were so busy focusing on the government shutdown that accompanied the new fiscal year that there wasn't much time to reflect on the year that had passed.

Now the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget is out with the final budget results. Surprise! The deficit fell quite a bit in 2013. The federal government took in $680 billion less revenue than it spent, or about 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. In 2012, those numbers were $1.087 trillion and 6.8 percent of GDP. That means the deficit fell a whopping 37 percent in one year.

This is the first sub-$1 trillion and sub-5 percent of GDP deficit since the 2008 fiscal year, which ended the very month that Lehman Brothers fell and a deep crisis set in.

What's behind it?

Most of all, there was more revenue. Government receipts totaled $2.774 trillion, up $325 billion from 2012, and rising to 16.7 percent of GDP from 15.2 percent. That reflects in part a stronger economy that increased income and payroll taxes. It also includes the expiration of a payroll tax holiday that increased tax receipts, and higher rates for upper-income Americans agreed to for this calendar year.

There was less spending, amid the drawdown of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, lower unemployment insurance benefits due to an improving economy, and the enactment government enacted budget cuts called for in the 2011 debt ceiling deal, including the sequestration automatic spending cuts that began in March. Overall outlays were $3.454 trillion, the treasury said, falling $84 billion compared with the 2012 fiscal year. That fall moves government outlays from 22 percent of GDP to 20.8 percent.

It remains true that there are longer-term challenges facing the U.S. government finances, particularly around rising health-care costs. But the reality is that much of the conversation around debt and deficits is missing this basic fact: Deficits are, for now, falling fast. If anything, too fast. Just Wednesday, the Federal Reserve concluded a policy meeting with a statement that asserted, as it has in the past, that "fiscal policy is restraining growth" and that its forecasts are "taking into account the extent of federal fiscal retrenchment over the past year." Independent economists outside the government have reached similar conclusions, and now worry that deficits will fall so fast as to undermine the recovery.

It might make for a more interesting primary season in 2014. But, of course, the politicians are resisting. The poll (pdf) was taken just a few days before the New Hampshire House of Representatives Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted 11-7 against recommending the passage of HB492 yesterday, a bill to regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol. Living free in New Hampshire remains an aspiration.

Are you near New Jersey and a turbogeek? My friend is putting on a show for you!