4/10/15 Today's Inquiries

Sometimes I try to eat healthy. Sometimes I just want bacon.


The Links:

Ferguson 3: The Blackening.Nothing to see here, just a cop killing another black guy who is only in trouble because it was caught on video.

Stunning differences in reporting before and after the video surfaced. More here.

Because three days elapsed between the shooting and the publication of the video of the shooting, the Scott incident became an illuminating case study in the routinized process through which police officers, departments and attorneys frame the use of deadly force by American cops in the most sympathetic possible terms, often claiming fear of the very people they killed. 

The NYPD is very bad at internet. After the Scott shooting, they went full racist on their police message board.

“The perpetrator was wanted for non support and stole the cops lazer and ran like a typical ni**aaa,” user DisGraziato wrote yesterday. “Aren’t police allowed to shoot a fleeing felon?? Eight shots in the back. A good shoot if you ask me..”

What are the shortcomings of establishing health metrics for judging physician performance? The more I hear about these kinds of attempts, the more I am reminded of standardized testing in our public schools. A single metric creates bad incentives and distortions. To be fair, the article is about looking for more well-rounded measures.

The way we usually answer these questions is to count the number of deaths: The more people killed, the more important the problem. Counting deaths is so familiar that few have thought to question it. But death toll alone says nothing about how long people live, and good health is much more than not being dead.

The Geography of Obamacare Nullification.

Once again, the lack of power of the health lobby to move the Red-State Republican political establishments is astonishing. The lack of any sense on the part of the Red-State Republican political establishment that they are there to work for or in any sense represent the working classes of their states is astonishing

Futures markets for babies.

Having caught your eye, I direct you to an article in the April 9, 2015 edition of the Grey Lady. It discusses attempts by various countries to boost domestic birthrates. The same issue had been considered earlier by Noah Smith. There are two questions lurking here. First, what is the optimal population size for a country? If the goal was to shrink the population then a declining birth rate is not a bad thing. Suppose the goal is keep the population fixed, because, say of pension obligations. Then, one wants a replacement birth rate of roughly 2 per couple.

This is the smartest statement I've read in a while:

The ageing societies of the rich world want rapid income growth and low inflation and a decent return on safe investments and limited redistribution and low levels of immigration. Well you can't have all of that. And what they have decided is that what they're prepared to sacrifice is the rapid income growth.

Barry Ritholtz uses facts and data to prove that raising the minimum wage isn't ruining business in cities like Seattle. Then he repeats himself because right wing news outlets are still telling lies.

I think this case from Wisconsin perfectly demonstrates where the GOP really is when it comes to science. It's not that they are anti-science. They're just pro making money. And when science is in conflict with making money, then they'll just shut down the science and appease their base by pretending to be anti science. Also, every decision in a republican governing environment is a political one. Every decision.

The agency’s Bureau of Science Services has recently drawn criticism from state Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst. Tiffany criticized a bureau report on environmental concerns surrounding the now-defunct plan from Gogebic Taconite to build an open-pit iron mine in northwestern Wisconsin. He said the report was biased against the mine.

Tiffany also told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he was not supportive of the bureau doing research related to climate change because the science behind global warming is still “theoretical.”

Young people don't want to go into politics. Considering that generations X and Y are some of the most ethically inclined people in several generations, I'd imagine the politics is anathema.

Speaking of corruption:

A strategist involved with the committees, who asked not to be named because he's not authorized to speak publicly, corroborated those theories. Each of the super-PACs—Keep the Promise and three "sub-super-PACs" dubbed Keep the Promise I, Keep the Promise II and Keep the Promise III—will be controlled by a different donor family, and will likely develop different specialities, such as data mining, television advertising and polling, the strategist said.

Also, economics knowledge makes politicians more corrupt.

I show that those who hold a degree in economics are significantly more prone to corruption than ‘non-economists’. These findings hence support the widespread, but controversial hypothesis in the ‘economist vs. non-economist literature’ that economists lack what Frey and Meier (2004) call ‘social behavior’.

A deep dive into party affiliation. Do read this. It's a comprehensive look at race, gender, ethnicity, age and various other factors are related to political belief.

The Teach Better podcast. How the 1% should be taught.

Why the Confederacy lives. Umm, racism?

For many, the initial attraction to the history of the Confederate States comes from an interest in ancestry and history, yet for others the lure is to a narrative that, replete with recognizable symbols and characters, offers (some) Americans the opportunity to understand themselves as historically distinctive. Add to this the attractive traits of heroism and an underdog struggle against numerical odds, plus a mantra that the Confederacy in the 19th Century fought to preserve all that was good and right about the America of the Founding Fathers, and a potent imaginary political world emerges.

Also, yesterday was the anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox.

General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.

Gatwick airport is not known for being a wonderful place. Now it's going to be even worse because there's a tonne of oil underneath it.