The Links:
The hack that warmed the world: It looks like Carbon-Credits are a huge freaking scam overrun by corruption and outright gangsters. I remember flying to Malmo and being asked when I bought the Ryanair ticket if I would like to pay a 1 pound carbon offset. I though it was a scam for several reasons. 1. The plane is going to fly whether I'm on it or not and whether I pay or not. 2. The money I pay has no effect on the emission of the flight. 3. Ryanair already bought the right to pollute in the form of carbon credits and therefore I'm reimbursing them for that purchase. In other words, I'm subsidizing their pollution.
Here's a fascinating longform article about the heroin epidemic and the "miracle drug" which ought to be made more widely available. It also points out the failure of 12 step programs. There are also several videos within the article, each interesting.
Using religion to brutalize other people is not a Muslim invention, nor is it foreign to the American experience.
Protest is terrorism. Move along citizen. Nothing to see here. NYPD did clarify that they will only bring ordinary guns to protests, not machine guns. Homeland Security, however, is worried that all those consumer drones are going to become flying bombs.
Confessions of a congressman. I like number 7:
Congress is no longer a destination but a journey. Committee assignments are mainly valuable as part of the interview process for a far more lucrative job as a K Street lobbyist. You are considered naïve if you are not currying favor with wealthy corporations under your jurisdiction. It's become routine to see members of Congress drop their seat in Congress like a hot rock when a particularly lush vacancy opens up. The revolving door is spinning every day. Special interests deplete Congress of its best talent.
Don't tell the crowds who lined up a few weeks back to see American Sniper but our Founding Fathers and other important patriots in US history were often very skeptical of the Military. That's because the history of military occupations is more George RR Martin than George C Marshall. We're so far removed from the terror of a military run state that we don't often realize how bad it can be.
Vaccines are continuing to become political as the third GOP presidential hopeful in a week argues against science, public health, and common decency. The fact that there's a perceived audience for this drivel scares me even more than the prospect of getting these guys as president. For example:
the poll was worrying in one political respect: In 2009, there was no partisan difference in attitudes toward these requirements. The latest study did find some small differences along party lines. According to Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political science professor who has done research on effective communication around vaccines, injecting partisan politics into individual decisions about whether to vaccinate could have unintended consequences.
Do the Republicans have an advantage? This is a good counterpoint to the demographics is destiny argument. More here:
Since the dawn of the Obama era, the whole country has shifted to the right. Literally every state but one is now more Republican it was than six years ago.
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| Thanks Obama |
Don't worry, the Republican tax cut deficits will return. Our budget will be back to it's spendiest old self in no time too. It's just going to defense instead of social goods.
Christie moves toward privatizing New Jersey's water. Also, gambling, casino, shocked to have found it:
The bill has the potential to benefit water companies with ties to Christie. Top representatives of American Water and United Water sit on the board of directors at Choose New Jersey, a tax-exempt organization that was created by Christie's office in 2010 to help sell New Jersey as a business-friendly state but lately has been helping pay the governor's expenses for overseas trips.
This was a very solid employment report with 257,000 jobs added, and job gains for November and December were revised up significantly.
As is probably apparent from the above chart, the fastest growing sector in both percentage and absolute terms is professional and business services. It added 2.9 million jobs for an 18 percent gain. The biggest single contributor to that was temporary help agencies, which added 888,000 jobs.
The rich and the Great Recession. Gotta love this conclusion (emphasis mine):
Our results suggest that the standard narrative of the Great Recession may need to be adjusted. Housing played a role, but so did financial assets, which actually accounted for the bulk of the loss in wealth. The middle class played a role, but so did the rich. In fact, the rich now account for such a large share of the economy, and their wealth has become so large and volatile, that wealth effects on their consumption have started to have a significant impact on the macroeconomy. Indeed, the rich may have accounted for the bulk of the swings in aggregate consumption during the boom-bust.
Is your first grader college ready? Did your 10 year old go on any campus visits yet? I feel like this obsession is a symptom of decreasing middle class wages. Also, schools everywhere are merely implementing policy which tells students to go to college or else.
Matriculation is years away for the Class of 2030, but the first graders in Kelli Rigo’s class at Johnsonville Elementary School in rural Harnett County, N.C., already have campuses picked out.
Enrollment targets would be required to be uniform across grades; i.e., you couldn’t offer hundred kindergarten slots but only fifty fourth grades slots. This would prevent schools from using selective attrition to weed out tough to serve kids. Moreover, it would force each school to equally share the burden of midyear enrollees.
As San Francisco parents get more school choice, schools re-segregate. The effects of all that tech wealth are making the bluest city in the US into a red state paradise.
Since 2010, the year before the current policy went into effect, the number of San Francisco’s 115 public schools dominated by one race has climbed significantly. Six in 10 have simple majorities of one racial group. In almost one-fourth, 60 percent or more of the students belong to one racial group, which administrators say makes them “racially isolated.” That described 28 schools in 2013–2014, up from 23 in 2010–2011, according to the district.
If you don't have anything nice to say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS. This American Life contributor interviews her worst online troll.
The ideal amount of jogging for prolonged life, this nuanced analysis showed, was between 1 hour and 2.4 hours each week. And the ideal pace was slow.
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