Lev Davidovichgood review. i like the reviewer's rigor in using putnam's data to disprove him (as pasted below), but empiricism isn't enough to say that putnam is wrong. i happen to be open to putnam's recommendations, though more certainly could be done (ie tax, wage and economic policy).
"His passion about the need to change this situation overwhelms his social scientist’s epistemological caution. The data simply don’t support his conviction: “But—and this ‘but’ is crucial for this book—conventional indicators of social mobility are invariably three or four decades out of date.” Therefore, he insists, the evidence he presents in Our Kids “will foreshadow changes in social mobility.” In other words, Putnam has to resort to predicting that a major finding undergirding much of his argument, a decline in relative mobility, will appear some time in the unspecified future, because such a change hasn’t occured in the present. It’s a sign of how sure he is that the lack of proof doesn’t deter him from making the assertion.
"If Putnam were more focused on absolute mobility, which was the real engine of the American Dream for his generation, then he might have spent more time exploring economic policy generally or ways of recreating the widely distributed economic growth that so much helped Americans his age. Though he does acknowledge its importance, he largely ignores most of the specific ideas that come up in discussions of how to remedy inequality—like making tax rates more progressive (think of Piketty), or aggressively using monetary policy to tighten labor markets (think of Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve), or raising the minimum wage, or more tightly regulating financial companies. Instead he is most intensely focused on increasing opportunity for individuals, and he believes the primary way to do that is by increasing their locally available store of social capital—through improved ways of rearing children, and encouraging activities and associations that will increase their chances in life."
Robert Putnam is convinced that today relative mobility, as well as absolute mobility, is declining alarmingly—that most Americans are more firmly destined to remain where they started out than they were when he was young. His passion about the need to change this situation overwhelms his social scientist’s epistemological caution.
Lev Davidovichhttp://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/302676051.html
what do the energy policy folks think?
Lev DavidovichNoted by Amis:
"Bellow here insists that by a very considerable margin “most novels have been written by ironists, satirists and comedians.” I have been thinking that for years. Look at Russian fiction, reputedly so gaunt and grown-up: Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act); and also because fiction, unlike poetry and unlike all the other arts, is a fundamentally rational form. This latter point is not the paradox it may appear to be. In the words of the artist-critic Clive James:
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humor are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.”
Lev Davidovich“What is neither clear nor inarguable is the decision to confer an award for courageous freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo or what criteria exactly were used to make that decision.”
i'm guessing criteria was courageous freedom of expression in face of threat of violence and violence.
Lev Davidovichto read
Lev Davidovichfeynman
Electric car maker Tesla Motors is introducing battery systems for homeowners, businesses and utilities. Read the rest
Lev Davidovichsuperstition beat? or marketing.
On Monday, Chipotle announced that it has finally accomplished something no other national restaurant chain has done — it has stopped serving foods made directly from genetically modified ingredients.
To be clear, people who eat at Chipotle will gain no health benefits whatsoever from this move. Zero. Numerous scientific studies have concluded that the GMO crops currently on the market are just as safe to eat as conventional crops. Here's what the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said in 2012: "The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe."
Even so, Chipotle is responding to a growing fraction of the public that is strongly opposed to GMOs. Sometimes these opponents raise reasonable concerns, say, about the environmental impacts of overusing herbicide-tolerant crops (see here for more on this debate). Unfortunately, there's also a loud contingent of activists who have managed to spread total nonsense about the health dangers of eating GMOs — like the ever-popular "Food Babe." And that pseudoscientific message appears to be catching on.
Here's the statement by Chipotle's co-CEO Steve Ells about his company's move:
"There is a lot of debate about genetically modified foods," said Ells, in a statement. "Though many countries have already restricted or banned the use of GMO crops, it's clear that a lot of research is still needed before we can truly understand all of the implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption. While that debate continues, we decided to move on non-GMO ingredients."
Chipotle is hardly alone in trying to appeal to GMO opponents. Whole Foods is promising to label all products with GMO ingredients by 2018. Even Walmart has been trying to appeal to the anti-GMO crowd.
This won't be an easy move for Chipotle, logistically speaking. After all, more than 93 percent of corn and soy in the United States has now been genetically modified to be either herbicide tolerant or insect tolerant (or both). That means it's very hard to find corn meal or soy oil that doesn't contain GMOs.
The company has been scouring the country for suppliers who can help with the task. Stephanie Strom of the New York Times has the best blow-by-blow on how it happened:
Getting rid of genetically engineered corn was easiest. Chipotle’s primary tortilla supplier was already producing non-GMO corn flour in small amounts, and it agreed to increase its production.
[But replacing soy oil to fry chips and tortilla was harder.] Chipotle’s chefs preferred sunflower oil but finding enough was tricky. Chipotle found a farmer willing to increase his production of sunflower, but the company needed more oil than he could produce.
So instead of using one oil for the majority of its needs, Chipotle now uses sunflower to fry its chips and tortillas, while a non-G.M.O. rice bran oil will be mixed into rice and used to fry fajita vegetables.
The flour tortillas posed a bigger problem. "The shortening had an oil in it that was derived from soybeans," said Chris Arnold, Chipotle’s spokesman. ... So Chipotle’s flour tortillas are now made with a non-G.M.O. canola oil, which costs more, and the company said last week that it might have to raise prices slightly this year.
It's worth noting that Chipotle's menu won't be entirely GMO-free. After all, many of the soft drinks it serves will still container sweetener made from genetically modified corn. And the chicken and pork the chain serves could well be raised on GMO feed. Still, the restaurant has gone much further than many of its competitors.
For more on this issue, here's our full guide to GMOs:
WATCH: 'Bill Gates on GMOs potential to help eradicate hunger by the year 2030'
Lev Davidovichnotable for the vox critique of bush's critique. point one, obama already does this (which means its not a critique, or its a critique of bush and obama, or it's the right thing to do), and point two, killing 'em in iraq failed (which is ironic given obama's withdrawal, more failure, and subsequent US troop assistance).
George W. Bush hasn't had much to say about Barack Obama's approach to the Middle East. But in comments at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting, first reported by the New York Times, Bush slammed Obama's approach to ISIS — in a way that suggests the bitter fruits of the former president's policies in the region haven't changed his mind one whit.
When asked about how to handle terrorists, Bush said, simply enough, "You kill ‘em." To deal with ISIS, he said, "You call in the military and say, ‘Here's my goal. What's your plan to help me achieve that goal?'"
This is a pretty bizarre criticism of Obama's approach to terrorism on at least two levels. First, Obama has been pretty aggressive about trying to kill people he thinks might end up threatening the US. Think about the targeted killing/drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen, or the ongoing aerial war against ISIS.
Second, "You kill 'em" worked out terribly for the Bush administration in Iraq specifically. The invasion itself, in hindsight, was a disaster. For years, a massive American ground force trying to kill terrorists only ended breeding more of them. Bush called ISIS the "second act" of al-Qaeda — but the Iraqi franchise of the group, which would eventually grow into ISIS, was created by Bush's invasion.
Though Bush touted the 2007 troop surge and shift to counterinsurgency tactics as evidence that his approach helped save Iraq — "when the plan wasn't working in Iraq, we changed" — that's a bit misleading. The shift in US strategy helped reduce the violence in Iraq, but it was the growth of an Iraqi Sunni anti-al-Qaeda movement that really broke the Sunni insurgency's back. And even those gains were temporary: unresolved tension between Sunnis and Shias was one of the key reasons al-Qaeda in Iraq was able to reconstitute itself as ISIS at all.
The Obama administration isn't blameless in all of this: its support for authoritarian former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki certainly didn't help matters in Iraq. But Bush's comments, at least as reported, aren't nearly so nuanced. He still sounds about as cowboy-esque as he did in 2003.
WATCH: 'ISIS is losing. Here's why'
Lev Davidovichmust watch.
Lev Davidovichi like and hate this. calling out an issue du jour and how people pay lip service but don't change is great. at the same time, the policy side of me cringes at the suggestion that small changes (even when they are important, necessary and good) can lead to transformative change on such an intractable issue. it's the system, man.
Lev DavidovichCited: In case Congress moves to freeze Guantanamo's population, the administration is "exploring options for the unilateral closure of the prison and moving detainees into the United States." great presidents make things happen, right? why not this?
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, center, poses for photographs with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), right, and ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Despite an effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to prevent the Senate Finance Committee from considering legislation to give the Obama administration "fast track" trade negotiating authority, the committee is expected to clear the bill later this evening.
[The Hill / Jordain Carney]A deal reached between the administration and Republicans in Congress would give legislators months to review the huge Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal Obama's negotiating with a number of Asian countries, delaying passage until October or even later.
[NYT / Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear]In committee markup, an amendment cracking down on currency manipulation by other countries was approved, receiving heavy backing from Midwest senators who feel manipulation harms US exports.
[AFP / Michael Mathes]Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew had pled with Congress to not pass such an amendment, saying it would "likely derail the conclusion of the TPP."
[The Hill / Vicki Needham]Many Congressional Democrats, most notably Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, are strongly opposed to fast track authority.
[Huffington Post / Laura Barron-Lopez]Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has emerged as the leading critic of TPP and fast track authority in the Senate, with President Obama criticizing her by name for her opposition.
[Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]Not big on trade policy? This explainer should get you up to speed on all of this.
[Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]
(Carl Court/Getty Images)
The Pentagon is hoping to transfer 57 inmates from Guantanamo Bay, cutting its current population of 122 nearly in half.
[Washington Post / Missy Ryan and Adam Goldman]Already this year, five Yemeni inmates were transferred, four to Oman and one to Estonia; that came shortly after four detainees were sent to Afghanistan and five to Kazakhstan in late 2014.
[MSNBC / David Taintor]Administration officials have said that the goal is to "deplete the Guantanamo prison to the point where it houses 60 to 80 people and keeping it open no longer makes economic sense"; if 57 more inmates are transferred, that'd leave 65 detainees, right in that range.
[NYT / Helene Cooper]President Obama has been trying to close the prison for his entire presidency, but has been blocked by Congress.
[Miami Herald / Carol Rosenberg]In case Congress moves to freeze Guantanamo's population, the administration is "exploring options for the unilateral closure of the prison and moving detainees into the United States."
[Washington Post / Missy Ryan and Adam Goldman]The administration has drafted up options for closing it without Congressional approval for months, which would spark a massive legislative fight.
[WSJ / Carol Lee and Jess Bravin]Google is unveiling its own cellphone coverage plan, known as Google Fi.
[Google / Nick Fox]Rather than relying on cell towers, the plan mainly uses existing wifi networks and only uses cell networks (Sprint's and T-Mobile's, specifically) when wifi isn't available.
[Vox / Timothy B. Lee]The plan would be as cheap as $30 a month for 1 GB of data; comparable plans from traditional carriers cost $50–70 (although they also provide family plans, which Google Fi won't).
[The Verge / Chris Welch]Initially, the plan is only available on Google Nexus 6 phones, so iPhone users and people with Android phones from Samsung or HTC are out of luck, at least for now.
[WSJ / Ryan Knutson and Alistair Barr]Google isn't the first company to think of this; Republic Wireless has been operating wifi-based plans since 2011.
[Vox / Timothy B. Lee]Welfare reform was supposed to push people into the workforce. A new study finds it did the opposite.
[Mother Jones / Kevin Drum]One big problem for restaurants trying to abolish tipping: sticker shock from the menu mark-ups.
[Washington Post / Maura Judkis]A+++ headline: "Ray-Ban Bans Rand Paul’s Ray-Bans over Brand Ban"
[Mediaite / Evan McMurry]It's trendy to worry about hyperintelligent robots. But dumb bots can be just as dangerous.
[Slate / Adam Elkus]Do the best arguments for gun rights imply that we should give guns to prisoners?
[Practical Ethics / Jeff McMahan]If you're a fan of the directors Anderson (PT and Wes), this supercut on how they learned from Jonathan Demme's close-up shots is really edifying.
[Slate / Forrest Wickman]"How often does he really connect with his interviewees? 'Have you seen the show? Mostly, I’m not even listening.'"
[Jon Stewart and The Guardian / Hadley Freeman]"The sense that having children is the most worthy of human activities is questioned by the writer Tim Kreider, who argues that it’s 'a pretty low-rent ultimate purpose that’s shared with viruses and bacteria.'"
[The Atlantic / Sophie Gilbert]"Arch-conservative Mississippi, in other words, is actually home to some of the most vocal Amtrak supporters in the country. (Former Republican Senator Trent Lott, another rail fan who now lobbies for freight companies, was persuaded to fight against cuts to the Crescent when Smith called him up and told him, 'The Yankees are after our trains again.')"
[National Journal / Simon van Zuylen-Wood]"When I first started making tons of money, it freaked me out. I would always get 10 grand in cash every show because I needed to touch the money."
[Louis CK to Hollywood Reporter / Lacey Rose]"At that time, the only thing airing on AMC was a show called Broderick Names Them Roderick, which was a reality show about Matthew Broderick holding divorced men at gunpoint and forcing them to change their legal name to Roderick against their will."
[Clickhole]"'It was sort of a haters going to hate, to quote Taylor Swift.' 'Never do that again.'"
[PBS NewsHour / Tamara Keith and Gwen Ifill]Add your email to receive a daily newsletter from Vox breaking down the top stories of the day.
By signing up, you agree to our terms.
David Cyranoski and Sarah Reardon report:
In a world first, Chinese scientists have reported editing the genomes of human embryos. The results are published1 in the online journal Protein & Cell and confirm widespread rumours that such experiments had been conducted—rumours that sparked a high-profile debate last month about the ethical implications of such work.
In the paper, researchers led by Junjiu Huang, a gene-function researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, tried to head off such concerns by using ‘non-viable’ embryos, which cannot result in a live birth, that were obtained from local fertility clinics. The team attempted to modify the gene responsible for β-thalassaemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder, using a gene-editing technique known as CRISPR/Cas9. The researchers say that their results reveal serious obstacles to using the method in medical applications.
“I believe this is the first report of CRISPR/Cas9 applied to human pre-implantation embryos and as such the study is a landmark, as well as a cautionary tale,” says George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Their study should be a stern warning to any practitioner who thinks the technology is ready for testing to eradicate disease genes.”
There were too many off-target mutations, but the Chinese attitude seems to be if at first you don’t succeed…
…there are reports that other groups in China are also experimenting on human embryos.
The article is interesting throughout, for instance:
Huang says that the paper was rejected by Nature and Science, in part because of ethical objections; both journals declined to comment on the claim (Nature’s news team is editorially independent of its research editorial team.)
There is more here. And Carl Zimmer wrote an explainer on it.
Lev Davidovichof note. interesting throughout.
"Also during the 1950s and the 1960s, the CIA, paradoxically, was the federal agency that seemed most ready to enlist liberals and leftists in its activities."
“If I had the choice, I would do it again,“ said Gloria Steinem about working for the CIA. Other intellectuals were not so candid… more»
Lev Davidovichmidway growth good. comcast contract bad: http://www.connectsaintpaul.org/comcast-forever/
Lev Davidovichsome worthy entries in the t-shirt contest.
also of interest: http://www.complexityexplorer.org/news/18-ties-that-bind-the-goodness-of-social-networks
The Twin Cities metro area, my home for the past 20 years, is also home to the worst racial disparities in the nation – not only in unemployment, but also in health, education, and criminal justice.
If my life as a middle-class white male had rolled out differently – if I’d had different parents or friends or other role models, lived elsewhere or moved less, gone to different schools, been somewhat less introspective or shy, read different books, held different jobs, developed a different sense of my place in the universe – I can imagine being a person who never quite gets around to thinking much about Racial Disparity in the Metropolitan Region, let alone feeling my place in it or trying to do much of anything in response to it.
As it is, Racial Disparity in the Metropolitan Region seems like a problem.
A problem that seems worth responding to, in fact.
A problem that I’ve started to think that ordinary people like you and me can actually respond to – directly, right now, in a host of ways that are not only interesting and challenging and useful and collaborative and fear-squashing and life-changing, but might even possibly be sort of fun, in fact.
Or at least, that assumption is the price of admission for this blog.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re in.
—
Fortunately, there are more than a few other people who have already devoted a great deal of time and thought and money and energy responding to this problem. Many of these people have been in the trenches on this issue longer than I’ve been a resident here – long before the Economic Policy Institute held up this stark mirror for our examination, and even before the goal of their work was commonly known as Social Equity. Many of these people are in government and the nonprofit sector; some are formal members of community associations or faith-based organizations; many are educators and student activists; a precious handful are business owners; most have at least some knowledge of the wealth of online references such as this one and this one that can help them in their work, as well as the support of other Actively Engaged Persons in their network; all have had whatever combination of role models, education, life experiences, confidence, grit, gumption, brains, humility, and luck was necessary to move them along the rugged trail to action in the first place.
And, I am willing to bet that for every one of these Actively Engaged Persons, there are a hundred more – all very well-meaning, highly effective people with nearly identical qualities and experiences and relative fortunes – who are somehow just under the threshold of putting their book learnin’ and their well-meaning concerns to work – or who want to do more but are not sure where to start, or what to do, or where to turn for support when they screw up or run into dead ends or feel stupid or defensive or overwhelmed or otherwise on the verge of checking out and doing other, much easier things instead.
Rocket science, for example.
And here’s the thing: If the Twin Cities is going to become a more equitable place for everyone to live, it is indeed going to take policy changes and school reform and vocational training of various sorts and a host of other critical investments in our equity infrastructure at the systems level – AND it’s going to take something much simpler and more complicated than all of that, too.
It is going to take ordinary people, including those currently just under the threshold of walking the equity talk, to examine and update a habit or two.
And by ordinary people, I mean all of us: You and me, whoever we are, and everyone we know, whoever they are, and everyone else we decide to go out and meet, today and tomorrow and the next day, whoever they are, and so on and so forth.
What’s more, it’s going to take all of us whether or not we know what to do – which of course nobody does until they’ve up and jumped in and started to do the hard work of figuring it out for themselves, on the ground, in the real world of their own life.
That’s what I’ve decided it’s time to get serious about doing, at least.
—
Anyway: A few weeks ago I quit my job at a local workforce development nonprofit to focus full-time on reading, writing, and talking with as many people as I can, including those already in the Equity trenches, about how ordinary people outside the Policy and Planning communities can help to make the Twin Cities a better place for everyone to live.
And, out of necessity, I’m starting with myself. My goal is to put together a Field Kit of applied theory and a set of practical Field Experiments that I can use to work through a host of my own assumptions and privileges and blindspots, gradually push several boundaries, increase self-confidence and awareness and empathy, reduce defensiveness, expand my capacity to be Productively Uncomfortable in charged social situations, and change my own self-talk and other habits around race in ways that lead to more and better cross-racial relationships, a deeper sense of who I am, and a truer expression of my beliefs and values.
So basically, I want to confront my deepest fears about myself and others and become the person I truly want to be.
I expect this might take a couple weeks.
—
So why have I decided to do a part of this very difficult and humbling and potentially embarrassing work publicly?
Because: If my efforts are going to amount to anything of any worth to myself or others, I am going to need a thousand perspectives and a ton of help.
AND because: If my efforts DO end up amounting to anything of any worth to myself or others, then I want to share what there is to share.
So that’s the work at hand.
Sound like a good time?
Want to come along?
What do you think?
Lev Davidovichto read.
also sharing for this study that religion doesn't make people more moral http://www.livescience.com/47799-morality-religion-political-beliefs.html
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Lev Davidovich@bjorno et al
direct link here: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/
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Lev Davidovichmapping germany is next, right?
The Bomb Sight project is mapping the London WW2 bomb census between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941. Previously available only by viewing in the Reading Room at The National Archives, Bomb Sight is making the maps available to citizen researchers, academics and students. They will be able to explore where the bombs fell and to discover memories and photographs from the period.
The project has scanned original 1940s bomb census maps , geo-referenced the maps and digitally captured the geographical locations of all the falling bombs recorded on the original map. The data has then been integrated into 2 different types of applications:
From Church and State:
An archbishop from St. Louis testified last month that he “wasn’t sure” if he knew it was illegal for priests to have sex with children.
Robert Carlson, now a 69-year-old archbishop in St. Louis but formerly an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, gave a deposition last month for a lawsuit that claims the Minnesota Archdiocese and the Diocese of Winona caused a “public nuisance” by not disclosing information on abusive priests, the MPR news first reported.
Carlson additionally faces a clergy abuse lawsuit as part of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where more than 100 priests and church employees have been accused of sexual abuse, the St. Louis Dispatch reports. Carlson has served as archbishop there since 2009.
Lev Davidovichsomewhat confusing post, but i found this to be interesting nonetheless: " Imagine that smart people who are interested in many topics tend to be contrarian. If they hear a standard claim of any sort, perhaps 1/8 to 1/3 of the time they will think of a reason why that claim might not be true, and decide to disagree with this standard claim."
I’m often interested in subjects that fall between disciplines, or more accurately that intersect multiple disciplines. I’ve noticed that it tends to be harder to persuade people of claims in these areas, even when one is similarly conservative in basing arguments on standard accepted claims from relevant fields.
One explanation is that people realize that they can’t gain as much prestige from thinking about claims outside their main discipline, so they just don’t bother to think much about such claims. Instead they default to rejecting claims if they see any reason whatsoever to doubt them.
Another explanation is that people in field X more often accept the standard claims from field X than they accept the standard claims from any other field Y. And the further away in disciplinary space is Y, or the further down in the academic status hierarchy is Y, the less likely they are to accept a standard Y claim. So an argument based on claims from both X and Y is less likely to be accepted by X folks than a claim based only on claims from X.
A third explanation is that people in field X tend to learn and believe a newspaper version of field Y that differs from the expert version of field Y. So X folks tend to reject claims that are based on expert versions of Y claims, since they instead believe the differing newspaper versions. Thus a claim based on expert versions of both X and Y claims will be rejected by both X and Y folks.
These explanations all have a place. But a fourth explanation just occurred to me. Imagine that smart people who are interested in many topics tend to be contrarian. If they hear a standard claim of any sort, perhaps 1/8 to 1/3 of the time they will think of a reason why that claim might not be true, and decide to disagree with this standard claim.
So far, this contrarianism is a barrier to getting people to accept any claims based on more than a handful of other claims. If you present an argument based on five claims, and your audience tends to randomly reject more than one fifth of claims, then most of your audience will reject your claim. But let’s add one more element: correlations within disciplines.
Assume that the process of educating someone to become a member of discipline X tends to induce a correlation in contrarian tendencies. Instead of independently accepting or rejecting the claims that they hear, they see claims in their discipline X as coming in packages to be accepted or rejected together. Some of them reject those packages and leave X for other places. But the ones who haven’t rejected them accept them as packages, and so are open to arguments that depend on many parts of those packages.
If people who learn area X accept X claims as packages, but evaluate Y claims individually, then they will be less willing to accept claims based on many Y claims. To a lesser extent, they also reject claims based on some Y claims and some X claims.
Note that none of these explanations suggest that these claims are actually false more often; they are just rejected more.
Lev Davidovichthe linked Kissinger article is also worth reading
Lev DavidovichThe who is running chart from this article is a helpful distillation of candidates http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/politics/2016-presidential-candidates.html
and here is a recent article on o'malley carcetti connection http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/09/martin-o-malley-tommy-carcetti-and-2016.html
Lev Davidovichalso of note is this judith miller essay on iraq war myths http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iraq-war-and-stubborn-myths-1428087215?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
A Syrian opposition group claimed Tuesday that Bashar al-Assad's government carried out a chlorine-gas attack in the northern town of Sarmin, killing six people and injuring dozens more on Monday night. Government helicopters reportedly dropped barrel bombs full of the toxic chemical—if inhaled, the gas can burn the lungs, choking victims to death.
The alleged attack would be the latest in a series of reported uses of chemical weapons in the region, and it raises questions about the 2013 deal between Syria, Russia, and the United States to destroy the Syrian regime's chemical weapons stockpile.
What's the Evidence That There Was a Gas Attack?
Collecting the samples needed to verify the details of chemical-weapons attack is extremely difficult in a warzone. A UN investigation into reports that Syria had used chemical weapons in 2013 took weeks, and though it strongly implicated the Syrian regime, it did not definitively identify the government as the perpetrator. Nor did a U.S.-drafted UN Security Council resolution condemning those attacks. And the Syrian regime has already denied responsibility for Monday's reported chlorine attack, keeping with its pattern of blaming opposition forces.
There are also signs that the use of chemical weapons could be spreading in the region: Kurdish authorities alleged in recent days that ISIS had used chlorine gas as a weapon against their forces in northern Iraq in January; last October, Iraqi officials accused ISIS forces of staging a series of chlorine gas attacks in September. Al-Qaeda detonated chlorine bombs in Iraq in 2007.
What Laws Does Chemical Warfare Violate?
International agreements like the 1925 Geneva Protocol—crafted after the use of poison gas in World War I—have created a strong prohibition against the use of chemical or biological weapons, and the Obama administration took a tough stance following the deadly August 2013 sarin-gas attack in a Damascus suburb. “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” he asked. (Obama had called chemical-weapons use a "red line" that would change the American calculus toward Syria's civil war.)
A U.S. strike on Syria was averted by a deal that called for "the complete elimination" of the country's chemical-weapons materials. In June 2014, international weapons inspectors announced that Syria had handed over all of its declared stockpile.
What Does This Say About International Mandates on Chemical Warfare?
If verified, the latest use of chemical bombs would expose a major gap in the weapons deal: Chlorine gas has various industrial and sanitary uses (e.g., pool cleaning) and isn't really considered a chemical weapon until it's used as one. Syria never included it on its list of declared chemical weapons, and Monday's alleged attack would confirm Kerry's fears that "our work is not finished." The AP gave an activist's description of Sarmin after the barrel bombs:
Asad Kanjo, an activist who is based in the nearby town of Saraqeb, said that after the first bomb was dropped, warnings broadcast over local mosque loudspeakers urged Sarmin residents to head for their roofs in order to avoid inhaling the gas, which settles in lower-lying areas.
"There was some kind of chaos," Kanjo said via Skype. He added that residents usually avoid going up to the roofs for fear of being targeted by government aircraft.
Just watched this last night. Most of it I knew before from bits and pieces from the web but having it all out in front of you is pretty compelling. South Park’s episode on Xenu is still embedded in my brain though because when Going Clear was going into the Xenu part, I was expecting subtitles to appear saying “SCIENTOLOGISTS REALLY BELIEVE THIS!”
Lev Davidovichreligion beat
Every Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization made up of some of North America’s most respected economists, releases its latest batch of working papers. The papers aren’t peer-reviewed, so their conclusions are preliminary (and occasionally flat-out wrong). But they offer an early peek into some of the research that will shape economic thinking in the years ahead. Here are a few of this week’s most interesting papers:
Title: “Religion and Innovation”
Authors: Roland Bénabou, Davide Ticchi, Andrea Vindigni
What they found: People who are religious have less favorable views of science and technology and are less willing to accept new ideas and technologies; the greater the religiosity of a state or country, the less innovative it was, as measured in patents per capita.
Why it matters: Economists have found conflicting evidence regarding the effects of religion on economic growth. On the one hand, religious people have been shown to be more trusting and trustworthy (e.g., they’re less likely to take a bribe), leading to a baseline level of cooperation that allows the economy to operate more smoothly. But religion’s effect on innovation seems to cut the other way: Religious individuals tend to be less supportive of new technologies — and innovation is the primary driver of long-term economic growth.
In an earlier 2013 paper, these authors studied the rate of innovation (in patents per capita) across U.S. states and foreign countries, while controlling for income and other variables. Uniformly, places that were more religious were less innovative. In this paper, the authors study the relationship between religiosity and innovation at the individual level. Specifically, the researchers examine people’s attitudes toward science and technology, or their openness to new ideas, versus how important they say religion is in their lives and how often they attend church. Like the earlier study, this one controlled for several possible confounding demographic variables — income, education, age, and so on. The researchers sliced the data 52 different ways and across the board, religiosity was very negatively associated with pro-innovation attitudes.
Key quote: “Historically, religion often played an important role in the spread of general literacy and education, though this is no longer true after the mid-19th century. Since more educated individuals generally tend, as we showed earlier, to be more open to new ideas, change, risk, etc., this might be seen as an offsetting factor to the direct negative relationship between religiosity and innovativeness — albeit a self-limiting one, since religiosity itself declines with education.”
Data they used: World Values Survey.
Title: “Ask Your Doctor? Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals”
Authors: Michael Sinkinson, Amanda Starc
What they found: TV advertisements for a pharmaceutical drug company’s products can cut into competitors’ business while simultaneously boosting sales for the company’s other drugs.
Why it matters: The economic benefits of advertising are questionable. By providing prospective customers with more information, advertising could in theory improve market efficiency and lead to positive spillover effects, like greater sales of other products. Or advertising might just be an arms race between rivals — with each side egged into spending more out of fear that a competitor will steal its business. This paper shows that both scenarios are real. Specifically, in the market of direct-to-consumer TV ads for statins (a type of anti-cholesterol drug), a 10 percent increase in the number of a firm’s ads results in a 0.76 percent increase in the company’s revenue, while its rival sees a 0.55 percent decline in revenue. But advertising is not a zero-sum game, so there is a positive spillover effect, too: A 10 percent increase in ads also boosts sales of a company’s unadvertised products by 0.23 percent.
Key quote: “Our simulations highlight the role of advertising competition, shedding light on strategic interaction between firms. … The simulations highlight the potential for an advertising ban to reduce wasteful advertising spending. While sales of unadvertised drugs fall by nearly 5%, the savings from eliminating television advertising are substantial. Our results help quantify the tradeoffs that policy makers may face when regulating pharmaceutical firms.”
Data they used: Drug sales and usage data from Truven Medstat; advertising data from Kantar Media.
Authors: Seth Gershenson, Erdal Tekin
What they found: The “Beltway Sniper” attacks — random shootings carried out in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area over three weeks in October 2002 — reduced student achievement in Virginia public schools within 5 miles of an attack; the effects were concentrated in schools with a higher proportion of minority and poor students.
Why it matters: Researchers have long studied the effects of chronic community violence on children’s academic success. But while crime has declined nationwide, the frequency of community traumatic events — mass shootings, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and so on — is on the rise. A study by the FBI showed the frequency of “active shooter” incidents is up from 6.4 incidents per year between 2000 and 2006 to 16.4 incidents per year between 2007 and 2013. The authors of this study examined the effect of the 2002 Beltway Sniper shootings on student achievement in Virginia. They compared math and reading proficiency rates before and after the shootings, both for students in schools near a shooting and for those in schools farther away. The shootings had a major negative effect: Fifth-graders’ reading proficiency scores declined 4 percent and their math scores went down 8 percent; the disruptive effect was comparable to having 10 snow days. The effects were more severe in relatively poorer schools, and in those closer to where the shootings happened.
Key quote: “More generally, these findings suggest that local and state education systems might respond to community traumatic events by providing additional resources, support, and guidance to affected schools and communities. … Moreover, targeted support would be justified, given that disadvantaged schools and communities appear to bear a disproportionate burden of the harmful effects. There are also implications for proactive policies designed to eliminate or minimize the proclivity of manmade community traumatic events, as doing so in an efficient manner requires equating the marginal cost and marginal benefit of such efforts.”
Data they used: School-level proficiency rates from the Virginia Department of Education.
Humans are changing the planet, maybe changing evolution as well. That notion is fascinating, far-reaching, and almost certainly nonsense… more»