8/6/14 Today's Inquiries

Many thanks to alert readers out there (really just Alex) who pointed out yesterday's bird poop on Putin was a hoax.

Here's the links:

This is what happens when we let big business lobby lawmakers and then staff the upper ranks of enforcement agencies. Community seed banks get shut down because they represent a threat to corporate ownership of all agriculture. Because seed libraries are a threat to the national food supply.

Liberal mayor Rham Emmanuel closes schools and cuts pensions but keeps the slush fund for corporate subsidy alive. Sometimes I think we have only one political party in this country. 

I don't much follow the politics of the immigration debate because the waters are quite muddy with dog whistles and emotional appeals. Basically I'm for open borders with easy pathways to citizenship. Still, it's funny to watch politicians get confronted by people who are living embodiments of what they oppose. What's extra funny here is watching Rand Paul run away at the start of the conversation. Run Rand, Run!

There's a pro gun children's book. I guess that's cool? I also thinks it's kind of self defeating. Most people who own guns and would buy a children's book about guns are probably taking their kids to the shooting range to learn about guns at an early age. For example, this guys like to bring his son with him when he open-carries his guns to the local airport. 

Mike the Mad Biologist points out that Republicans are pretty much creating the country they despise. He sees federal spending in the south, which is proportionately higher than elsewhere, as a large Keynesian stimulus. With Obamacare, they're actually rejecting money which would improve state budgets creating the circumstances which these "fiscal conservatives" claim they are in office to fix.

Andrew Sullivan condences some writing about the imaginary war on whites. I would support a real war on whites. 

The Standard and Poors rating agency, not exactly a pro government or liberal leaning organization, released a report on inequality. Basically, inequality hurts economic growth.

Missing women in the inequality discussion. But, hedge funds run by women outperform those run by men. 

So, what's behind the growth in part time jobs? The Atlanta Fed's Ellyn Terry takes apart the numbers in their recent labor survey. We also get this wonderful chart:

Who identifies as a feminist? Not many. Although the numbers improve slightly when respondents are offered a broad definition of feminism as equally. 

The case against Cards Against Humanity. It's good background reading for the story until now. Basically, the guy who made CAH has been accused of rape and his response has been less than stellar. I think this specific example is exactly why it's so hard to have a conversation about sexual assault and rape accusations.

 Cards Against Humanity is the social version of this, getting us to trust that the other players at the table are decent people who share our values.

But what if they’re not? ...

Every time I play “Surprise sex” as a punchline in Cards Against Humanity I have no way of actually knowing why anyone in particular is laughing. I have no way of knowing if I’m making a rape joke with an actual rapist. 

Indeed. What if the people you're playing CAH with don't find rape funny at all? CAH, like many other games, relies on a specific white male set of social norms. Transgressing those norms is what makes the game "funny" but they're still very limited in scope. The game basically says, you're all just like me!

Lastly, who do we have to blame for the Potato Salad Kickstarter? 

1. People form this dude's hometown. 

2. The Bay Area. 

3. New York City. 

8/5/14 Today's Inquiries

Good morning.

The Links:

A bird pooped on Vladimir Putin in the middle of a speech and he just kept on like nothing even happened.

A map of all the causes of death that are kept out of the "official" statistics. Wake up sheeple!

And, man plays a trombone to his cows:



Whatever happened to the Minute Men Militia mindfully monitoring Mexicans making movements? Mostly a meltdown.

The Dallas Morning News reports on what it's actually like to get from central America to the US. As you might expect, it's much harder than the conspiracy theorists think. No Obama shuttles to ship people en masse to our southern border.

In celebration of John Venn's birthday yesterday, here's the first Venn Diagram ever published:

Perhaps you heard that the two Americans being treated in Atlanta for ebola are receiving an experimental treatment? Maybe you've seen on the Facebook that it's all a conspiracy to kill Africans or to make a cure just to sell it at exorbitant prices? Sometimes reality is just as pernicious. What drug company is going to make a drug for a disease that pops up every few years, kills hundreds, and then vanishes again? What government is going to conduct clinical trials on ebola patients? Which ones get the sugar-pill placebo? I mean, what are the ethics of studying a disease that kills 60% or more of it's victims in days? Ebola gets a different rulebook and the people decrying the experimental treatment ought to consider that its use is precisely so that its effectiveness can be gauged. If it is effective, I bet we will see it produced and shipped to Africa on the government's dime.

Matt Yglesias thinks Tyler Cowen is presenting a false choice when it comes to inequality and globalization.

 Tyler Cowen responds.

Extending unemployment benefits during the rescission helped prevent more than a million foreclosures. This is also a good way to think of unintended consequences. If these people lost their homes that would be bad for them. Also, it is clear that communities were hurt by the drop in home prices and wave of foreclosure. But, with people being subsidized into staying in their homes through various means, does that lengthen the real estate crisis? How many of these people lost their homes anyway because the unemployment insurance ran out? Since the money transfers of unemployment insurance are going into paying mortgages on homes, isn't this just another backdoor subsidy to the banks?

Storyline is running a series on long term unemployment. What it's like to help the unemployed to find work. It ain't pretty.

In interviews, the question is: Why have you been looking for so long?
That question really is: What’s wrong with you?

The Wall St. Journal asks, how hard is it really to get a home? I mean, people complain but you just need money and a good credit score.

Wage earners who have decent credit, stable and easy-to-verify incomes and who are seeking loans on simple single-family dwellings can qualify for FHA-backed loans with the minimum 3.5% down payment.

Again with the government subsidy in the form of loan guarantees.

Who really bought cars in July? Apparently new car sales aren't linked to new car registrations which means the figures don't always match up with reality.

More proof that the government is not expanding at federal or state levels. As a percent of GDP, government spending is smaller now than under Reagan.

And, how austerity (shrinking government) wrecked the recovery. It's the economy stupid. See that blue line lower than all the other lines? That what happens when the feds and every state fire workers like crazy.

White House Press Secretary shot in assassination attempt dies.

More about that guy at National Review who hates nerds and has targeted NdT and Nate Silver among others in recent editorials.

So, this post is kinda wonky but I think it's worth reading. Basically, the value of money differs based on it's marginal utility to the person earning it. $10 to a poor kid who needs a meal is more important than $10 to you or me. That same logic applies to nations. The argument becomes, therefore, that rich nations don't need to chase growth so much because paying for social programs and healthcare is more important than the marginal utility of the next $1 trillion (or whatever sum) added to the economy.

Some common sense about when those damned kids are going to move out of their parent's basement. Guess what the answer is? When they can afford to.

Arnold Kling presents some other ways to think about the effects of gentrification. I took two things away. 1. Hospitals and Universities are major drivers of gentrification because they attract wealthy professionals. 2. Poor people move to suburbs. Also, he wrote a haiku.

See! This is the shit I'm always talking about! It's not the elite colleges that are truly driving the student loan bubble because they leverage their endowments to give pretty much everybody tuition grants. Amherst, for example, has had a nearly flat net cost since 2000.

Barney Frank thinks that Democrats will win the support of corporations. I agree but not for the reasons Frank cites. 1. The big banks love Hillary Clinton because her husband was so very good to them in the 90s. 2. Companies hate uncertainty. They especially hate regulatory uncertainty. The republicans are so hell bent on undoing every legislative act of the Obama years that it's creating more uncertainty. For example, imagine being a health insurance company right now. You just spent years figuring out how to do Obamacare and then SCOTUS and the GOP start picking it apart.

Religious Conservatives Embrace Pollution Fight. More evidence of sea-change among the religious right? We can only hope so.

The British sure know how to have a memorial. To mark the 100th anniversary of WWI, they are placing a single red ceramic flower at The Tower of London for ever Briton or colonial soldier killed.

Image credit: Jim Crossley, via flickr.

8/4/14 Today's Inquiries

Fairly short today. Not much happened in the past 24 hours I guess.

The Links:

Good News Everyone! Long sequestered methane gas is beginning to leak out of the arctic ocean signaling an unstoppable feedback loop of warming and greenhouse gas growth. You will read the rest of this post in Farnsworth's voice.

Reddit's favorite science explainer has gotten himself banned from the site. You can't explain that.

WaPo cautions democrats not to become complacent while waiting for the demographics to shift in their favor. The Economist noted somewhere recently that democrats have been so focused on 2016 that they forgot there's an election in three months.

Paul Krugman defends himself for calling Paul Ryan a con man. Just kidding:

If you fell for the carefully crafted image of Ryan as an honest wonk, you were being taken in — and it’s my job to ensure that you’re properly informed.

Good on him. It's hucksters like Ryan that made the GOP what it is today. Why compromise when you can lie?

Speaking of liars, women fair poorly at negotiations and interviews because men think it's okay to lie to them. Seriously, how good of a negotiator can you be if the other side is just saying shit? No, no sweetie, everybody makes 70% of male pay here.

Let's take a look at job growth under the last 6 presidential administrations. Wow Bush Jr. Just, wow.

Brookings Inst. thinks that the whole "skills mismatch" theory behind persistent unemployment is overblown. For example:

If employers urgently need workers with skills in short supply, we expect them to offer higher pay to prospective new employees who possess the skills. 

But that never happens. Companies know that there are plenty of skilled workers and plenty more who could be trained to do the jobs that need filling.

Thinking of law school? Why not try a lawyer apprenticeship instead? It is widely agreed that law school doesn't really resemble the practice of law and that law firms are having to spend time training new hires. Why not cut out the expensive JD? Plus funny hats!

Ah, life in the suburbs. A persistent trap of concentrated poverty and poor services. We've basically made the old white flight into the new ghettoes. I'll call it Roswell.

Dungeons and Dragons, never has there been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. And sexism. Don't leave out the sexism. As with most things, there's a vocal minority who want nothing to change ever and will actively disrupt any attempt at change by attacking people in the most vile way possible. We usually call them conservatives.

What it's like to try to get a secular marriage in Georgia:

Obviously, the clerk and the rest of the Fulton County Probate Court had never heard the term, nor had they heard of the Humanist Society. After a few more phone calls, I was informed that it was Judge Brock’s final decision to deny the certificate and, hence, it was clear that the couple would have to be married again.

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8/3/14 Today's Inquiries

It's a Sunday so I'm pretty sure there will be lots of political news tomorrow.

The Links:

Starting with some social news, a student has started a class action lawsuit against Facebook. As you might expect, it is a European lawsuit to protect privacy. But also read I Killed Facebook and Left Its Body in the Woods. For those of you ambivalent about leaving Facebook, I've been gone 6 years and I'm okay.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a frequent critic of technology culture. I thought I'd post something which makes technologists more human. TechCrunch interviewed several startup founders about depression in the tech industry. It's worth reading and worth considering that the source of their depression is often some misguided quest for success. Add in the idea that nobody else is dealing with similar problems and you have a lot of isolation. Is it any wonder that the pressure cooker that is startup culture breeds mental illness?

TechCrunch also recently profiled the duo behind the @Hiddencash twitter account. I guess the idea that you're going to limit the giveaway to people already connected to the internet, already having a twitter account, and already living in wealthy areas of San Francisco makes your generosity seem less generous. Maybe I'm wrong. Also a good reminder that giving is often just as much about the giver as the recipient.

This picture just sold for $90,000 on eBay. It came from 4chan.

Medium asks, Why Are Drug Addicted Disgraced Doctors Running Our Drug Trials? Why indeed.

Vox makes a nifty chart showing that healthcare is the new manufacturing.

People newly insured by Obamacare are facing a tough learning curve. I have seen some of this firsthand. People who got insurance through Kynect (Obamacare) still come to the ER for the majority of their treatment. It's pretty much on the staff to explain the concept of a primary care physician. The ER is doubling as a referral center. Also, health insurance is super complicated:

In one sign of widespread confusion, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of programs that helped people apply for marketplace coverage found that 90 percent had already been re-contacted by consumers with post-enrollment questions.

Storyline finds an economics lesson in Toledo's inability to provide clean water to it's citizens. Here's that lesson presented by Bender:



In order to tackle climate change we need to shatter myths about it. Good luck with that.

A hypothetical conversation with someone who assumes that capitalism is a moral framework.

Our entire notion of freedom is founded on the existence of slavery. And there are good Melville references to boot!

Slate's Mark Stern thinks that religious morality tales are bad for children and he has the research to prove it.

Battle Tested is a book about women in combat. That's important because we almost never hear about them unless their rescue is being fabricated by the Bush administration.

Good news male gamers, nobody is coming to take your man games away! That you ever thought they were shows just how far down the rabbit hole you'd gone. I think sometimes people think that a call for something different is a call for replacing everything with that different something.

Lessons from behind the counter of a comic book store. See my comment above. Thor can be a woman. The. End.

Apparently white male writers have a really tough time reading about women, gays, non-whites, etc.

Todd VanDerWerff argues that Lucy is a feminist film afraid of its own feminism. This is what happens when you let women's blood flow to the uterus get diverted to the brain. Patriarchy falls.

Finally, there's this moment in the film Aliens that has been driving fans crazy for years. You see, the marines have apparently encountered aliens before but also have never encountered aliens before. I think fans are giving James Cameron too much credit. Either way, the linked fan site int he article is a great way to waste a lot of time today.

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8/2/14 Today's Inquiries

Plenty to see and do. Heavy on the videos because reasons.

The Links:

Michael Keaton plays a washed up actor who is best known for his role as a superhero two decades earlier.



An Illustrated History of the Console Wars. Warning, this is a slideshow. I do, however, love reminiscing about the very first time I played a console. I was a little kid visiting my grandparents. They had a Nintendo. The game was called Zelda II: The Adventures of Link.

Another trailer:



Kinda looks like The Cube for teens.

American firms are getting older. Moreover, the "entrenched" firms have figured out how to rig the game. Why compete when you can capture the regulatory and legislative apparatus?

White people are still way, way richer than everyone else. Even more so if you look at married whites.

Moody's Analytics thinks there's a connection between declining mobility and workers dropping out of the workforce. I think the costs associated with relocating have increased. I also think there's been a decline in regional employment uniqueness. Think about it this way. If you're a low skilled worker with, say, an English degree, what are the odd's you'll get a job in Atlanta vs Dallas vs LA vs Seattle? Probably about the same. In the past, maybe you'd be able to go to a region with lots of growth in publishing or some such thing. In the past, high school dropouts could move to the rust belt and work in factories. That world doesn't exist anymore. The same shitty employment opportunities are everywhere.

The Economist notes that people are starting to worry that hedge funds are going to tank the world economy.

Helpful advice: How to tell a sociopath from a psychopath. I like to try and apply this to each character of Always Sunny.

Here's a question: Is poverty mostly structural or mostly individual? The post links several other people's arguments but they're all strictly from an economic perspective and a fairly macro one at that.

Wonkblog says that the best way to live longer is to send your children to college. I'm just going to mumble something about correlation and causation here.

Also at Wonkblog, suddenly Obamacare is more unpopular than ever. Why? Nobody knows. However, maybe the uptick is related to recent court rulings?

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that law schools are responding to changing demands in the lawyer market. Law takes a back seat to business and technology as the lawyers are again reminded that they are only pawns for the truly rich and powerful. Sorry Laura.

With all the crazy swirling around the Facebook and stuff, I figured this article is a good counterpoint.
Why You're not going to get Ebola in the US.

Yup, we tortured "folks".

And we use metadata to kill people.

Which makes this product look a little less crazy. Only a little, though.



I anticipate the shooting down of drones ending poorly.

So, this animated chart mostly focuses on men of European ancestry. It's obviously incomplete. But still very cool.



Climate change strikes again! Toledo Ohio's water is full of toxic algae from Lake Erie. Boil it!

So, since we're obviously going to burn every last bit of hydrocarbon on the planet, and global warming is an unavoidable reality, where should we live to avoid it's worst consequences? This blog says The Pacific Northwest. I'd go a little further, like, say, Vancouver. Are they still Homesteading Crown Lands in northern Canada? Winnipeg might be a good place to go.

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8/1/14 Today's Inquiries

Happy Friday.

The Links:

Paul Krugman doubts knowledge is power. Mostly, he is pointing out that the smart people rarely end up in power or influence those in power. Which lets me use this obligatory image:

But, Krugman's intro to economics textbook fails his own test!

Similarly, Menzie Chinn follows up her post with a quick look at anti-intellectualism in the blogosphere. I love that she's calling out one of her commenters. If the guy doesn't know why you'd use log in a graph, he's not worth responding to. I also don't agree that he's not a troll.

Since we're on the subject, trolls killed the conservative version of Facebook, Reaganbook, pretty much by using pornography and face avatars. Although I doubt the people behind it took adequate precautions to provide a good service. Probably just another stab at the sweet redneck money.

So, if you're a conservative who needs to find a friendly place on the internet, take a logo at Gizmodo's roundup of 7 conservative alternatives to the internet's most popular sites.

In Scary News, the US patient infected with ebola will be coming to Atlanta. While terrifying, it's probably a good opportunity to study the virus in an advanced clinical setting with lots of resources at hand.

Five-thirty-eight urges caution at celebrating the drop in long term unemployed workers that's likely to appear in today's employment report. The number appears to be declining because people are simply dropping out of the workforce altogether and are no longer counted in the employment statistics.

Comparing the US's middle class to that of China. A Tale of Two Middle Classes

Capitalizing on Congress: Informed Trading by Hedge Fund Managers. Yes, it's as corrupt as you'd expect.

This paper examines the hypothesis that hedge fund managers gain an informational advantage in securities trading through their connections with lobbyists. Using datasets on the long-equity holdings and lobbyist connections of hedge funds from 1998 to 2012, we show that hedge funds outperform by 63 to 87 basis points per month on their political holdings when they are connected to lobbyists. Furthermore, the political outperformance of connected funds decreased significantly after the STOCK Act was signed into law. Our study provides evidence on the transmission of private political information in the financial markets and on the value of such information to financial market participants.

At Vox, Libby Nelson tries to figure out how most Americans pay for college. Apparently low income families think the burden should fall on the student while high income families think the burden should fall on the parents. About 30% of the money comes from grants and scholarships and another 30% comes from parents. I would like to know more about the kinds of grants and scholarships as well as the SES of the recipients.

Storyline returns to West Virginia to see if last winter's chemical spill has had effects on Whitewater rafting. Yes. It has.

You know, I use a PS2 (the old style) keyboard. Mostly because sometimes I need it for old BIOSes that don't automatically recognize USB inputs. Apparently it keeps me safe from spyware too! Still, it's bad when pretty much the entire universe uses a standard like USB and that standard is compromised.

NPR takes a dive into curated consumption. I'll have to check this out.

And a review of Child of God. I hear the book is better.

Lastly, David Simon is making a new series about the youngest mayor in US history, Ben Wayatt Nick Wasicsko. Okay, so, Baltimore, New Orleans, and then Yonkers? I get the failed city thing but is Yonkers really comparable?

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7/31/14 Today's Inquiries

Coffee 'n Links for breakfast.

The Links:

Andrew Sullivan checks in on Medicare and find that it's fiscal outlook has improved. Cost saving measures and payment reform have made the program solvent through 2030. More proof that the Very Serious People who constantly claim social programs are bankrupting the nation are full of it.

James Temple at Re/Code rounds up the various medical consultation apps out there. It is tough to see a doctor on short notice and many of the ER folks we see really don't need to be in an ER. Maybe "telepresence" in medicine is a good thing.

Healthy eating at $35 a week. Lisa and I have been working hard to keep our grocery bill down. One area where we seem to overspend is cereal. Unless you're buying super sugar fruit puffs, you're spending $4-5 on a box that lasts about a week.

US GDP showed a healthy 4% growth rate int he second quarter of the year. Now we need an equally good jobs number.

Bloomberg notes that employee pay is a small portion of overall compensation than in the past. What's taking it's place? Dividends and Interest. The big myth of becoming wealthy is that you have to earn your money. No, you have to earn enough money that you can buy more money through owning capital.

Menzie Chinn digs into Kansas's neoclassical economics policy and finds it a complete wreck. I can already hear conservatives arguing that it's only bad policy at the state level, when a whole country does it, things will be better! Or, maybe, the liberal media hasn't given Kansas a chance to succeed yet, just wait, you'll see.

The Economist says, Choose Your Parents Wisely.

Republicans sue the president. Remember, this is a political stunt and not designed to produce any real change. The hope is that a judge appointed by Obama throws the case out. Then they get the maximum outrage for minimal effort. One problem, the Tea Party wants to impeach the president and don't see the lawsuit as going far enough. The democrats are happy to highlight impeachment because it mobilizes their own base ahead of the midterm elections.

Charter schools are a cesspool of corruption. Not that regular schools aren't but thinking that there's going to be a meaningful difference is silly. At least this way, school CEOs can simply take the money and not have accountability.

One school district in NJ killed it's student-laptop program. Basically, the district was spending tons of time repairing the computers and tons of time constantly monitoring the kids' web use and blocking pornography. That's a tough bind. The schools are legally bound to prohibit children from accessing certain kinds of material on the internet. Any device purchased by the school has to uphold a nearly impossible standard of web-cleanlieness.

Scratch Jr. Coding for Kindergarteners. Great! In 12 short years all students will be perfectly logical thinkers. They will be proficient coders and linear logicians! All of America's employment problems will be solved and everyone will go work in the Bay Area.

As evidence of how perfectly a coder thinks, I present Google's pro slavery Software Engineer, Justine Tunney. Slavery. It's only logical.

Well, if coding in kindergarten can't save the world, maybe beavers can. Apparently these little engineers can save the Western US.

But, Coal leasing in the American West is the hidden flaw in Obama's climate plan. That's right, Obama allows energy companies to lease public land cheaply and then mine it for coal.

Also at Vox, Matt Yglesias seriously loves Star Trek because conservatives hate Star Wars and Neil deGrasse Tyson and stuff. I don't know. You see if you can figure it out.

Was NAFTA a disasta? Not really. It contributed to growth in the Mexican economy and employment. While it did have a negative impact on US jobs, it paled in comparison to the recession.

Al Qaeda earned $66 million dollars last year from kidnapping ransoms. Also, there are some perverse incentives int he kidnapping business.

Jason Jones asks why it matters that Christians acknowledge evolution. I especially like his closing note that Christian theology has to pass the "greatest commandment" test.

NPR promotes alcoholism among writers. Seriously though, I bet reading in a pub would be awesome. I don't think I ever got around to that in College but there weren't many good quite bars in Athens, even during the daytime.

Then, when you're done reading, you can impress other bar patrons with your age guessing abilities. Ain't statistics grand?

Closing it out today, someone is turning Roadhouse, the roundhouse kicking philosophy, umm, kicking, Patrick Swayze movie into a graphic novel.

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