2/28/15 Today's Inquiries

Snow on the ground. Working lots. The culture that is Kentucky:
Patient: Will my heart catheterization be done by 4? I want to watch the UK game.


The Links:

Opiates! Get yer opiates here! No. Literally. This is definitely the place to get narcotic pain medications. How one American pharmaceutical company created our opiate epidemic.

After more than seven years of battling the evasive legal tactics of Purdue Pharma, 2015 may be the year that Kentucky and its attorney general, Jack Conway, are able to move forward with a civil lawsuit alleging that the drugmaker misled doctors and patients about their blockbuster pain pill OxyContin, leading to a vicious addiction epidemic across large swaths of the state.

A pernicious distinction of the first decade of the 21st century was the rise in painkiller abuse, which ultimately led to a catastrophic increase in addicts, fatal overdoses, and blighted communities. But the story of the painkiller epidemic can really be reduced to the story of one powerful, highly addictive drug and its small but ruthlessly enterprising manufacturer.

Homeland Security is funded for 1 more week.

Which is good news because I have a handy guide for you to be able to request your photos and information from DHS. Nobody said big brother wouldn't share!

You may have seen the headlines this past week about the big ISIS bust in Brooklyn. The official story of that these men were planning to either send money to ISIS or to travel to Syria to join the group. However, the real story is more complicated. It seems that, yet again, the FBI is behind the sting. When I say behind, I mean that they are the ones who originated the plot, found vulnerable individuals, radicalized them, and tricked them into joining a "plot."

Meanwhile, Chicago police have an off the books site where they detain people and deprive them of their rights to attorney, trial, and due process. More here.



American foreign policy is delivering unpredictable instability worldwide.

The Road from Westphalia. NYRoB looks at America in Retreat and World Order.

At its extreme, this reasoning holds that the US should not be bound by international rules, even those it has itself developed, but should occupy a position above the rest. In this view, it is in the world’s interest, not merely the American interest, for the US to do so. 

Thinking about human capital. Post decides to use the metaphor of Bruce Campbell's chainsaw arm.

So how should we think about human capital? Here's an analogy that I think works well. You agree that a chainsaw is capital, right? OK, now imagine a chainsaw that you graft permanently onto someone's arm, like Bruce Campbell in the movie Evil Dead 2. It's so thoroughly grafted on that you can't remove it without making it permanently useless.

Yellen's testimony in front of Congress a few days ago. I for one, can't wait for the interest rates to go back up. There will be so much money flowing in the US at that point, it'll be insane.

The FOMC's assessment that it can be patient in beginning to normalize policy means that the Committee considers it unlikely that economic conditions will warrant an increase in the target range for the federal funds rate for at least the next couple of FOMC meetings.

Walker's Wisconsin: lagging behind all its neighbors.

So, in summary, the data I have indicate that Wisconsin’s economic performance since 2011M01 has been lackluster.

Are shifts in industry composition holding back wage growth?

Would average wages have been higher if we had the same mix of employment across industries as we had before the recession? The answer seems to be yes, but not much higher. If nothing had changed in the economy's industry employment mix since 2007, then average wages would have been about 12 cents higher.

More new jobs are being added in cities while employment growth shrinks in suburbs. That's even worse than it sounds because there are added costs to living in the burbs: transportation being the most significant in my mind.

The decline in on-the-job training. The new normal.

Thus, types of skills, who pays for them, and how they are paid for can be sliced various ways. But just looking at the overall pattern, a decline in employer-sponsored and on-the-job training suggest that workers who wish to keep building their skills are getting less support from their employers.

Sweden hates cash.

People who feel they've been unjustly treated will often misdirect their vengeance against innocent third parties.

Jewelry go missing? Torture your housekeeper until she confesses.

Gamer Gate troll says it was all just for the lulz and he wasn't really gonna do anything. Of course, harassment feels real to anyone on the receiving end and Wu obviously thought his threats were real.

This sounds like the least feminist movie I could imagine. Not the most chauvinist or most misogynist just the least feminist.

It’s a movie that Gamergate participants will unabashedly love, in that there is only one woman in it, she is insanely beautiful, all she does in the film is wear minimal clothing and ask men to impart all their manly wisdom, and all the men do in her presence is talk about “hitting that” and distract her with sparkly pink flower necklaces and imagine her having sex with other women and complain that she’s having “the world’s longest period.”

It might surprise you (it does me!) that movies like this still get made without anyone poking their head in to point out that not all wives are nagging shrews, and not all beautiful women are “skanks,” and not all men are experts whose wisdom women crave with every fiber of their Juicy Coutured beings.

Big data is the new phrenology. Get the calipers! Are we supposed to be surprised when companies that use these tests tend to employ only privileged whites? See also: IQ tests are biased against minorities.

Basically the idea is you play video games and the machine takes note of how you play and the choices you make and comes back to you with a personality profile. That profile will help you get a job or will exclude you from a job if the company believes in the results. There’s been no scientific tests to see if or how this stuff works, we’re supposed to just believe in it because, you know, data is objective and everything.

It would seem that period tracking apps are only meant for one kind of woman. More evidence that the tech universe is easily the most socially conservative one imaginable.

The second thing I noticed was that I had a fertile window. Why the fuck do I have a fertile window? It would take a miracle of biblical proportions for me to conceive with my current partner. This makes even the idea of a fertile window completely irrelevant to me.

We must bulldoze what's left of the nerdy white man's internet.

YouTube is not making any money. Maybe there is something behind all these insane Apple valuations. After all, they are actually making money! Amazon doesn't turn a profit. Google does but it loses it elsewhere (YouTube, Glass, search). Yahoo! has been in the hole for quite some time. Microsoft is, well, they might be, umm, yeah.

We all want security but we also want  our technology to have access to all of our data. If only there was a way to encrypt the data on the device and only share it with selected parties.

Professors behaving badly. Getting caught citing yourself.

Spock died yesterday. Which is sad because there's not quite anyone else like him. Also, don't smoke. COPD sucks.



This dress thing has gotten way out of hand. The Amazon reviews are fantastic.

And, we've got trailers: