Right-Wing comedy is catching up

 

The Conversation - How liberals lost comedy − and helped Trump win

Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz

 

Since the 2000s, broadcast media's comedy has been more liberal, and followed a now predictable pattern: research an issue, discuss it and punctuate it with conservative hypocrisy or stupidity. This formula has an early example in the Daily Show, but has been replicated many times over. It used to be thought that the right-wing couldn't be funny, but as of 2016 there have been upstart comedians that don't try to laugh at hypocrisy from cogent positions or make sarcastic quips from an enlightened perspective but instead make quick jokes and take things less seriously. While the singular influence of any of these podcasters and keyboard warriors is smaller, in aggregate they create an alternative "parasocial bonding" environment where the consumers (we're mostly talking about the coveted "young men" demographic) have their tastes and perspective altered by constant contact. Joe Rogan, who is not overtly right-wing, may be the prime example of this strategy, but Theo Von and Andrew Schulz are also mentioned.

Conservatives get suspended because they share bunk, that's all

 Jacob Sullum - Reason: Can Differences in 'Misinformation' Sharing Explain Political Disparities in Social Media Suspensions?

This is a summary and short discussion of a scholarly publication from Nature: "Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions" by Mosleh et al. The researchers found nearly 1000 registered Democrats and Republicans and asked them to rate the trustworthiness of news websites. These were "laypeople" in that they did not have journalistic training or were active in the media profession. The bipartisan ratings were then compared to the posts on web 2.0 sites like Twitter, Facebook and other sites that moderate content and can suspend content posters. The unsurprising finding was that people who aligned with conservative agendas posted content from untrustworthy sites 4x more than those that aligned with liberals. They were also, then, over 4x more likely to have been suspended by 9 months later. This evidence was cross-cultural (UK, Germany) and also showed a correlation when only Republican laypeople ranked the trustworthiness of media sites. If this wasn't troubling enough, even conservative "elites"-- supposed leaders or more-followed content posters-- shared fake news from untrustworthy sites, which followers then re-posted. The article also has links to other studies that have found similarly: that conservatives share more fake news than liberals. The question of what actually caused the content posters to be suspended by the social media sites is not answered (undercutting my conclusory headline), but one upshot of the study is that it shows there is a completely valid explanation for suspension that is different from "political bias", namely, a desire to limit fake news.

 

Raygun is not a fraud

 

Vox - How Raygun earned her spot — fair and square — as an Olympics breaker

Aja Romano 

Rachel Gunn, a doctor in dance in Australia, recently competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics in the break dancing competition. Her strange movements were widely criticized but she qualified for the Olympics fairly, winning a national tournament. Australia does not have a large break dancing community, so the small number of competitors may have been a factor in her promotion. While it does not appear to be fraudulent at all, she may be a beneficiary of privilege, being able to support herself in this sport and get a PhD relating to it. Her movement at the Olympics was creative, and tried to be more expressive.

The New Right is authoritarian in surprising ways

 Reason - The Post-Liberal Authoritarians Want You To Forget That Private Companies Have Rights

 

Stephanie Slade

JD Vance observes that government and corporate activities are significantly intertwined, concluding that "there is no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the American regime". He appears to not be arguing about whether there should be or not, but observing that a strict division between private activity and public policy is blurred. For him, however, it is not that private interests dominate the government; government attitudes and policies have already bent the private sector into "woke" positions. In response, he wants to wield the power of government not to create a new division between public and private (a "Burkean" model), but to install conservative values into the private sector. The magazine Reason, not being of the New Right, finds this abhorrent and downplays both regulatory capture and government influence. One option that allows for a lack of coordination is explained by the blogger Mencius Moldbug, who argues that there is a pattern of similar action that, while it may not be done by actual conspiracy, acts together as though it was coordinated.

Canceling academics was a right-wing goal before Web 2.0

 Slate - Today’s Campus Protest Crackdowns Are All Too Familiar to Me

David Faris

Right-wing groups like Campus Watch existed before the days of social media, compiling lists of professors and scouring their work to expose any controversial statements they might have made. The goal here was to drum them out of their positions, either by getting fired or denied tenure (which usually means you must leave that school sooner rather than later). As some high-profile professors were, in essence, "canceled" by their host institutions, this had a chilling effect on academic freedom. These days, the pro-Israel right-wing has been using similar tactics not only on professors but also on protesting students, since they now have extensive digital presence. Protestors are having job offers rescinded and may be "blacklisted" by the likes of Bill Ackman.

Fraternities are influential and the top ones are morally bankrupt

 Salon -"There’s social status in breaking social norms": When the corrosive effects of Greek life spill out

 

Chauncey DeVega interview with Max Marshall

 

 This interview with Marshall covers some of the history of fraternities (trying to exclude the rural poor from their clubs) , and their current status (still enormously influential as a network). The most popular, richest frats are not gentleman's clubs, but really a den of illegality and immorality-- the power in being the bad guys. They do not believe that the law or social conventions apply to them, but this is not just the cynical exemptions that those in power seek. Marshall suggests that the values are indeed inverted: there is more status in being wicked than honorable. One interesting point Marshall makes is that the movie "Animal House" saved frats-- they were languishing as establishment bastions in the 70s, but rebranded themselves as counter-cultural havens (without the economic resistance) after the movie was so successful.

The Triune theory of cognitive evolution is popular but (probably) wrong

 Big Think - What Carl Sagan Got Very Wrong About the Human Brain

Ross Pomeroy

Carl Sagan wrote a book about human evolution (a field admittedly out of his ken) that advocated for a particular and rather fringe academic theory. The Triune brain theory by Paul MacLean theorized that the human brain had three parts of layers: a reptilian, mamalian/limbic, and cognitive (primates and humans). This theory did not have much respectability with academics who studied the issue then (or now), but Sagan's reputation and popularization of the theory means it is has had a widespread effect on popular understanding (e.g. the bad theory is often found in text books).

The insecurity machine of capitalism is countered by Democratic values

 Vox - Democracy is the Antidote to Capitalism

Sean Illing

This is an interview with Astra Taylor, who wrote a book called The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart.

What are the origins of the feeling of insecurity, as a forward-looking anxiety? The idea here is that the stripping away of common land rights for the peasants (the enclosure movement, in England's 17th century) created a new kind of economic insecurity and simultaneously created labor availability, but at the mercy of an employer. This kind of permanent insecurity is, Taylor argues, a fundamental feature of a market society-- not a society with markets, but a society governed by market exchange.

In the interview, Taylor offers little by way of a solution, but instead wants to highlight the fact that even "winning" in today's capitalistic economic system still does not do away with much of the insecurity; for instance: successful retirement is based on the vicissitudes of the stock market. Imagining a different dynamic, especially with power-sharing through democratic practice, appears to be her tentative prescription.

The Psychology of Victim-Blaming
Kayliegh Roberts

Victim-blaming is many things but a few measurable elements of it is the treatment of the victim as somehow contaminated, and second-guessing the victim's choices that led to their becoming a victim. The idea here is that "there must have been something" that the victim did (or didn't do) that made them into the victim (of a crime, or an insult, or some other misfortune). The tendency to do this is part related to the "just world hypothesis", which says that bad things don't happen to people who don't deserve them. Another part seems to be the fear of becoming a victim yourself-- if you imagine that there was something else that the victim could have done, you can imagine that you yourself would do add that extra layer of protection and therefore avoid becoming another victim.

Laura Niemi and Liane Young are two psychologists who have studied the dynamics of victim-blaming through a series of studies. In one, subjects were given a story about a date-rape scenario. In some, the focus of the story was the eventual victim. In others, the focus of the story was the eventual rapist. Simple sentence structure was changed, like making the rapist the subject of sentences or altering the sentences to make the victim the subject, and through using the passive voice. The interesting outcome was that when the focus of the story was on the victim, people responded by asserting that there was something she could have done differently. When the focus of the story was more on the perpetrator, these kinds of alternate things the victim could have done diminish and the perpetrator is given more of the blame. One takeaway might be that despite wanting to tell the victim's story to gain sympathy, it might also trigger the victim-blaming response by making the victim the focus of the story and reducing the agency of the perpetrator.

Niemi and Young also found that moral reasoning revolves around two axes (at least in this context): the binding or the individualizing. The binding tends to look at group interests, while the individualizing tends to look at fairness to an individual. Interestingly, the individualizing pole is less likely to victim blame than the binding one.

A brief history and current outlook on Basic Income

Reason - The Indestructible Idea of the Basic Income
Jesse Walker

This article is a survey of the scholarly and activist history of the idea of a "basic income", the provision of money without conditions. It has quite a history, going back to the 16th century and being supported on both sides of what we might consider the Right and the Left. Some are concerned with rising automation, others with-- seemingly paradoxically-- undoing government bureaucracy.
The article goes through the history of the idea, starting with Thomas More (to reduce crime) but really getting a full-throated backing by Thomas Paine in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice. The idea there was that natural, uncultivated land was common property, therefore landowners should provide "ground-rent" as a matter of "justice, and not charity". The article contrasts this basic income proposal with what the landowners of Speenhamland did in 1795: they provided universal bread to all the poor within the village. The practice caught on in other parishes and lasted roughly 40 years, until it was declared a failure by a royal commission concomitant to a new poor law that required the poor to work if they wanted relief.
Many different supporting thinkers and politicians since then are mentioned, culminating on it being 'in the air' in the 1960s. The adoption from different quarters was assisted by an alternative understanding, one that resolved the apparent paradox of government-supplied basic income and small government: it isn't "basic income" but instead a share of society's resources, redistributed equally. Or, perhaps, it isn't "basic income" but instead a tax-rebate for being poor: Friedman's term for unconditional money for the poor was expressed in his "negative income tax". The negative income tax version of basic income made it to Nixon, who supported it because it would "get rid of social workers". The bill failed because it was a hodge-podge of compromises in the early 1970s.
Other city-oriented attempts in the late 60s and 70s did have a relatively modest affect on workloads (10% less work) and some positive health effects, but the programs got a reputation for making women independent and raising divorce rates. These conclusions were later disputed, but it was enough to kill most of the American programs. Other countries, notably Iran, which did universal basic income after it revoked many state subsidies on basic goods, are also surveyed.
The alternate understanding of a dividend for a share of the state's resources enjoyed more success, and Alaska's oil checks is the prime example. Native Americans also distribute dividend checks to their tribes as well for their gambling operations.
Another place where basic income is employed is in the aid-giving community, where wealthy first-world donors give to needy individuals either with some conditions, or even unconditionally. GiveDirectly has even established different experiments in giving to each member of the community, over short or long periods of time, or in a lump-sum fashion, to measure what the effects might be. 
The article concludes with a discussion of the various current ideas and support from various places, and the apparent resurgence of convergence. Finally, there is a set of incremental policy prescriptions.

The new yuppies look familiar, and are not helping society

The New Republic - The New Yuppies
JC Pan

This article explores who is the new generation of the demographic that would have been called "yuppies" in the 1970s and '80s. Yuppies, understood as conspicuous consumers belonging to the upwardly mobile "PMC" (Professional-Managerial Class-- a phrase coined by Ehrenreich) have been on the wane recently, but have the upwardly-mobile, "aspirational", (and perhaps classist) attitudes? This article looks into two books written on the subject (one by Cowen, and other by Currid-Halkett) and sketches some stereotypes of that the new yuppie is like: understated materialism, cultural capital, values-based purchases of products and services, cutting edge adoption of betterment practices.
Here is a brief sketch:
1. cultural signifiers of cultural capital matters. The right media, food, vehicle, etc. for self-improvement.
2. conspicuous consumption is irrelevant in an age of abundance and knock-offs. Instead, what is conspicuous is values, morals, knowledge. This translates into enormous expenditures in knowledge acquisition and education.
3. the "moral consumerism" of the aspirational class ("the heirloom tomato" signifier) obscures the class divisions their spending exacerbates and instead leaves them feeling individually blameless for systematic economic disparities. Cowan analyzes this as "self-satisfaction" in their individualistic pursuits.
4. There is a lack of urgency, or restlessness, in solving societal or environmental problems (complacency). This isn't just an aspirational characteristic; Cowan diagnoses this as a problem with all classes, elite on down to the poor. The upper classes have a desire to maintain the status quo, which is now more segregated than it has been in the past 50 years.

After the character-sketch-amalgamation of the two books, the article offers a choice for the waning PMC: align with the working class or cling to a shrinking elitism. It sorts the Occupy movement and young college-educated Bernie Sanders supporters into the "alignment" tact, and the Democratic party establishment into the "cling". 

Steve Bannon, Trump's top adviser, has a three-part philosophy

Quartz - What Steve Bannon Really Wants

Steve Bannon is probably the top adviser to President Trump and has recently avoided extended public interviews about his worldview. In this long article, the writers comb through Bannon's speeches, documentaries, writings and radio shows to intuit three philosophical positions that are supposed to interlock. The article gives a biographical sketch on Bannon, but most of the time it focuses on his three core political-economic-cultural beliefs:
1. Capitalism is in crisis and needs rescuing
2. Judeo-Christian values are in decline and need reviving
3. Nationalism in Western nations is a good thing
Briefly elaborated,
1: Capitalism used to be about "moderation" and concern for each other (within the Christian charitable framework)-- a kind of "enlightened capitalism". This declined in the 60s and 70s as a new culture of selfishness destroyed the hard work of the greatest generation. In short, society needs to change conservatively, not through the kind of cultural revolution that took place during those decades. Here Bannon sounds like Edmund Burke. The cultural revolution swept the old mentalities away and "liberal" pluralism and globalistic concerns infiltrated US institutions. This created a global elite who did not care for the borders of any country as defining their morality. While this explains his opposition to "welfare for the rich", it does not seem to underwrite his animus toward regular welfare. [Perhaps because it robs from the moderately successful and gives to the lazy, and he believes it is unsustainable & establishes some sort of "dependency"?]
2. The traditions that each generation should be passing to the next, in a kind-of Burkean manner, are those of the "Judeo-Christian tradition", which reinforces capitalism (with moderation and charity); in turn, capitalism (when done right) provides the wealth and success of western civilization and its hegemony. The ultimate belief in God as a grounding for the moral order (and therefore government) is what moors government from becoming tyrannical. While not everyone must be a believer, this must be the dominant position of the country and its inhabitants must continue to inculcate that tradition. Hence...
3. Nationalism is essential to protect the traditional values but also to protect against the interests of the global elites. Incoming people must adopt the traditions of the nation or they are unwelcome. To Bannon, global capitalists will move their capital to more favorable places (with lower wages), or engineer laws to flood the country with immigrants who work for less (leaving the middle class to pick up the bills for educating, housing, etc them). This must be fought in order to protect the accumulate wealth of citizens who are less mobile than the global elites.

These three pieces do form an interlocking philosophy [except, perhaps, for his tea party love of limited government-- how can you have nationalism without a government?]. On top of all this, Bannon believes in a loose kind-of "generations" or cyclic nature of history (Neill/Strauss), which goes through stages every 80 years or so, from High to Awakening to Unraveling to Crisis. There was the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Depression/WWII, and now? Time for "Crisis". Bannon sees the crisis of capitalism as needing a resolution, and, historically speaking, it is a violent, bloody one. It appears, too, given his nationalism and emphasis on Judeo-Christian values as the key pillars of Democratic government, that Islam is his bete noir. 

The last parts of the article tries to capture some of Bannon's loose comments and threads and then tries to find evidence of his philosophy in the speech and actions of Donald Trump, perhaps his unwitting thrall.

Why (and how) is English such a weird language?

Aeon - English Is Not Normal

This long-form article traces the history of English from its Celtic origins in England up to today. Throughout the piece, author makes examples of the weirdness of English, for instance the weird conjugations of verbs and the unique usage of the verb "do" in questions and as filler in sentences like "I do walk". The Celts were conquered by Germanic peoples (Anglos, Saxons, Jutes), but their language wasn't eradicated but because the Celts outnumbered their conquerors. Thus, Old English was mainly spoken by Celts, creating the fist mixture of Celtic and German. The Celts used "do" in the unique way that we still do in English. Later (9th century), Norsemen came into England aplenty, but married locally and tried to speak the Old English. The subsequent generations of these poor English speakers changed the language further. Much later, Normans invaded England and spoke French. The language received a "firehose" of roughly 10,000 new words, many of which created doublets and triplets of existing (approximate) meanings; compare "kingly" "royal" and "regal". Lastly, scholars in the 15th century adopted Latin as more sophisticated, and added even more vocabulary ("regal") to the language. Greek came into the picture with scientific usage in the 18th-19th century, making etymology even more complex. The long article is worthy of a read for a relativistic and historical perspective on language, particularly the peculiarity of English.   

Bernie Sanders is just the most recent factional candidate

Slate - There Is No Bernie Sanders Movement

This piece places the rise of Bernie Sanders into the context of the challenges to the Democratic party mainstream that have historically come from the left during the primary process. The argument is that he follows the same general "good governance" rhetoric that Howard Dean and Bill Bradley did in 2000 and 2004, or even going back to Jerry Brown and George McGovern. The problem isn't that their messages don't resonate with young, white, (mostly college educated,) liberals. The problem is that this demographic does not make up the majority of the Democratic party. While they make up a greater share of the party than they have historically (due more to the collapse of other elements of the party, cf social conservatives), and are enabled more than ever before with social media and distributive fund raising, they still do not have traction with other parts of the party. Instead, parties are coalitions and Sanders has not been a coalition builder (with the notable exception of Michigan-- an example that is informative). Sanders seems to have the biggest problem with black voters, who have their own priorities and are not motivated by the "get big money out of politics" as a dominant voting issue. In addition, modesty about Sanders is requisite: while he is popular with youth, the youth isn't a dominant voting block, and his energy isn't turning out more voters than 2008's Obama.
The piece talks about the possible future for Bernie Sanders-inspired politics. Bouie takes a look at the Barry Goldwater defeat for the GOP and how they built an ideological core that started to influence organizations, then local- and state-elections, finally taking over the GOP with Reagan. There isn't an analogous playbook for Democrats, but if the idea is that to make "Sanders Democrats", e.g. his ideology into the majority of the Democratic party, a primary is not the way to do it. The prescription is to take the Sanders energy to down-ballot races, local organizations, and to work in different communities over the long term.

The highway has been doubly destructive on the American city

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/474282/
The Atlantic - The Role Of Highways in American Poverty

This article is a brief and selected history from the 1940s until very recently relating to the use of highways and their construction in cities. Semuels asks us to imagine that city planners in the 40s-60s used a kind-of planning heuristic of the human body to analogize the American city. The rapid growth in automobile ownership (from 60 to 80% of the public from 1940 to 1960) and growth in developing cheap land in the suburbs lead to traffic (congestion) that needed to be alleviated by making "arteries" for transport of blood (labor) into the cities. Where did the money to build these expensive highways come from? The Federal government would cost share with the states, starting at 50% in 1944 and reaching 90% cost coverage by 1956. The first trouble was that it was predominately white people who moved to the suburbs, due to restrictive covenants, redlining, and other racist practices.
People of color remained in the cities, living in dirtier and more crowded conditions. These neighborhoods were then considered unhealthy-- slums-- by city planners. The trouble was that while there was money available for urban renewal, renewal was expensive and planners instead found it easier to simply destroy the old neighborhoods by putting new highways into them. The highway, then, was considered the low-cost solution not just for white flight but also for displacing people of color. And yet displacing black neighborhoods led to more white flight. The example of Syracuse, NY is offered as a prototypical case.
It isn't surprising that people born into poor neighborhoods have a very difficult time getting out of them, even as redlining and other overtly racist practices are now illegal. Greater integration is better for combating poverty, and the highway has been not just the literal but also symbolic divide between better and worse economic conditions. This trend is starting to reverse, as outlined by some more progressive thinking in some cities over the last decade or so.

Inflation hawks have been wrong, and will most likely continue to be so (Opinion)

Pragmatic Capitalism - No, The Inflation from QE is not Inevitable

Since the Great Recession, the US Federal Reserve has used Quantitative Easing (QE) to put massive amounts of cash into the economy and financial system. Critics of this policy (often the same ones who are seminal critics of Obama or "Big Government") argue that it both hasn't worked and is also creating inflation. This article looks at the arguments for these two claims and attributes them to misunderstandings or missing the macroeconomic forest for the trees. What is astounding is that the theory that QE would cause inflation has not been true, at least so far (7 years and counting). So there have to be two sets of reasons for such a proponent:
(1) How QE will cause inflation AND
(2) Why QE hasn't yet caused inflation
The trouble is, if there isn't a good argument for (2), then this significantly undercuts any seemingly valid case for (1). In other words, QE hasn't caused inflation. If we can see why it hasn't, then there's no reason to believe it will or should. The biggest argument made here is that QE hasn't caused inflation for a very good reason: households were de-leveraging. When loans are paid back, or forgiven, or otherwise taken off the books, this is the opposite of the process for making a loan. When a bank makes a loan, it creates money due to relying on fractional reserves. When loans are paid back, money is destroyed through the same process [this is just as counter-intuitive as fractional banking is]. With household de-leveraging, money was being destroyed. This would create deflation if it hadn't been for QE re-flating the system.

The other arguments for how QE will cause inflation, or hasn't yet, are considered:
-the stock market is inflated by QE. Response: more likely the stock market is perhaps partially influenced by low yields but let's not discount record positive corporate earnings, the real driver of the stock market over the long term.
-the interest on excess reserves that the Fed gave the banks kept them from putting the QE money into the system. Response: more likely it was because banks couldn't find good enough creditors, not because they preferred a small riskless return over a much larger low risk return).
-and finally, inflation will rise once money velocity increases. Response: "It’s little more than another construct utilized by some economists trying to simplify a complex financial system down into one neat little (useless) mathematical equation".

Value for expertise in labor is declining rapidly in an era of "Crowdsourcing"

The Baffler - The Crowdsourcing Scam

This long-form article explores the dynamics of "crowdsourcing", a common method employed by both tech startups and monolithic multinational corporations to get work done cheaply or for free through users of internet-based applications. It starts with drawing similarities between modern life and a science fiction short story "Codemus" written in the late 60s by Tor Åge Bringsværd, in which everybody has a benign personal robot that tells them what to do and when, for the ultimate betterment of an increasingly isolated society. The focus then widens and compares that fiction to how our workflow and, increasingly, our entire daily lives, are run by computer software and mobile devices.

This isn't a "computers are taking over our lives" rant. Instead, it is a sustained discussion about how the trend to crowdsource content that became ubiquitous with Web 2.0 has increasingly turned into crowdsourcing labor either for free (see: Duolingo, CAPTCHA) or for rates at far below what society has historically priced labor (see: iStockphoto, Innocentive). Uber and TED talks are brought up as different examples: TED talks are transcribed and translated incredibly cheaply by a crowd of amateurs rather than a professional translator, Uber (ostensibly) employs thousands of amateur drivers cheaply to do the work of cabbies. The owners of these systems reap an increasingly greater share of the profits, while labor expertise declines. Amateurs armed with technology take the place of experts, but collectively get paid a fraction for it. People become isolated and job security disappears as their "managers" are, increasingly, computer programs that tell them what their next task is, to be accomplished efficiently or not at all, since somebody else is waiting for their next "micro-job". The argument is that this is the next generation of outsourcing.

The Dollar-Store mergers are textbook cases of what's wrong with US economics

Quartz - The Family Dollar deals embodies everything wrong with American capitalism

Dollar Stores are the low-end competition to discount retailers like Walmart. (In my opinion, it's debatable whether these stores, which undercut price on a big box retailer that became successful by undercutting price on local Main St retailers, themselves represent problems in US economics.) Due to a combination of poor management at Family Dollar and also margin compression (read: the poor can't even afford to shop at Dollar Stores anymore) in that retail segment, billionaire investors have been pushing for a merger. Typically, these mergers cut expenses (read: layoff workers) with "synergies" between the two companies, making one larger company with more market share and therefore more price control (read: higher prices). While all the details of the deal aren't entirely disclosed in the article, it appears that the new company will be saddled with the debt used to make it. The owners (and mediocre CEO) will get healthy sale prices for their stock, exquisite profit for combining two companies that are struggling because the poorest of the US are struggling. This is considered a textbook confirmation of Thomas Piketty's observations in his book, Capital in the 21st Century. 

Magic mushrooms create novel brain connections

Discover - This is your brain on psychedelic drugs
and
Business Insider - How tripping on mushrooms changes the brain

Researchers gave subjcts 2 mg of psilocybin (the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms") intravenously and then measured their brain activity (using fMRI), specifically using a new method that tries to find connections between different areas of the brain. The subjects who took the dose had a sort-of stimulative effect in their brains compared to the placebo, where connections (albeit mostly fleeting ones) between usually unconnected parts of the brain were formed. The surprise was that all the new connections weren't fleeting: some novel pathways remained well after the effects of the dose wore off. The findings help explain behavior during psychedelic experiences. This may further the theory that mushrooms are good for depression. It was thought that portions of the brain that correlate to sense of self became muted, now it may be instead that those portions connect to a wider context to alleviate obsessive, solipsistic thoughts.

Liberal cities are more expensive, but the relation to liberalism isn't known yet

The Atlantic - Why middle-class Americans can't afford to live in liberal cities

There is some evidence that cities with more liberals have worse income inequality and higher real estate prices. It seems that this is so in aggregate, since some conservative cities also have high real estate prices as well. So overall, there are higher average per square foot prices in more liberal cities than conservative ones, with the politics being measured by margin of victory in Romney vs Obama. In California, a 2010 study found that more liberal cities issued fewer new housing permits. However, it is difficult to pick apart the politics from historical or geographic reasons: in Texas, for instance, where land is flatter and cities aren't constrained by geography in their expansion, more real estate, and hence more affordable housing, is easier to come by than, perhaps, cities within peninsulas or on mountain slopes. The definitive causes remain unknown, and researchers offer different reasons: liberals might be more concerned about environmental impacts of development, or perhaps want to apply "historic preservation" more than market-driven conservatives would.

US suburbs are growing, but also growing poorer

Slate - How the Suburbs Got Poor

There are multiple factors that have contributed to the relative decline of suburban life; though Slate may misinterpret the facts about the decline: while suburban poverty grew twice as much as urban poverty did from 2000-2011, there is still a higher rate within US cities, notably because three times as many Americans live in the suburbs than the cities. But still, in the last decade, the growth in suburban life (most especially in the US South, in conjunction with job growth) has been accompanied by an historically disproportionate growth in the suburban poor. Partly this is because low-paying jobs accompany higher-paying ones, as middle- and upper-class people occupy the suburbs. Another reason is because of urban gentrification that pushes the poor to the suburbs. Long-standing historical forces include successive waves of white flight even from suburbia, and the great diminishing of the single-earner, two-parent household for the single-household/single-parent phenomenon. With living preferences changing, so is the appeal of the house maintenance and civil engagement common in the post-war era. The implication is there is a negative feedback loop, from white flight & urban gentrification to diminishing property values to fewer local revenues to, finally the Ferguson-esque methods of preying on the poor in search of local revenue: exorbitant traffic fines and penalties that prop up town budgets. The article talks about the two kinds of successful suburban landscapes: walkable towns with mixed use buildings and living arrangements, and, paradoxically, staunchly middle- and upper-class suburbs that fiercely protect their property values (and pay concomitant property taxes) to protect the "character of their neighborhoods".

Adult intervention can hamper child social development

Janet Lansbury - Share… Wait Your Turn… Don’t Touch… Playdate Rules That Limit Learning (And What To Try Instead)

This blog post uses examples to discuss how to treat children who are playing together. The initial examples highlight potential conflicts between children and how they are alleviated not be insisting on "taking turns" or adjudicating who deserves the object of mutual desire (a toy that both children want), but by acknowledging the conflict and expecting the children to work it out themselves. The idea here is that using adult intervention in the conflict will not help children play together, instead it separates, focuses on objects rather than people, and trains the child to rely on the adult to manage a situation. While a firm "no hurting each other" rule is in place, most of the adults in the alternate daycare discussed here pay attention to a situation and reflect the situation as it unfolds, openly and verbally. The idea is to let the children learn that struggle in social interactions is acceptable, even expected.

Fear of sickness from "night air" persisted in the US until just a century ago

Wired - Fantastically Wrong: Why People Were Terrified of Nighttime Air Until the 1900s

A summary of a summary: this article mainly summarizes the essay from Peter Baldwin's "How Night Air Became Good Air" in Environmental History. The speculation is that humans have a biological fear of the dark (or, at the very least, an apprehension), and that it was this fear that continued to influence our thinking about the "night air" even once we moved past the hunting-gathering stages of our history and into agrarian and urban civilization. According to the essay, Americans suspected the night air of carrying sickness, a combination of a fear of "miasma" emanating from swamps and other decaying (organic) bodies and the coolness of night "moisture, which brought the chills. There were skeptics, as proved by John Adams' recollection of an attempt to shut himself into a room he was sharing with Benjamin Franklin, who refused, and lectured him about the silliness of the dread deep into the night. Further dissent came when examining the air within houses that were poorly ventilated: this air was worse due to the excrement we give off from exhaling and through our pores, argued Catherine Beecher and Beecher-Stowe. This led to the belief that the higher the concentration of people, the worse the air: the urban slums would be the worst. Thus in the 1800s the early examples of the affluent fleeing the urban core. Perhaps, however, there was some wisdom in the practice of shutting up the house since (at least in North America), native mosquitoes are most active at night and can carry many serious diseases. Ultimately, the blame was turned to mosquitoes, and interesting methods of eliminating them were tried, including, notably, pouring huge amounts of kerosene into lakes, ponds, and un-drained swamps to discourage breeding!

The GOP is in a low point in the "Culture War" (Opinion)

Politico - How Republicans Lost the Culture War

This piece focuses on two issues in the "culture war" between liberals and Christian conservatives: women's reproductive rights (contraception and abortion) and homosexual rights (in this case, marriage). How is it that the GOP has lost? Gay marriage is soon to be legal for over half the US population (according to the states where it is either legal or soon to be), and regarding abortion, current GOP candidates are refining and "recalibrating" their message to be softer. (There is likely going to be some debate as to whether these candidates' messages constitute a trend.) Perhaps the changing electorate makes this loss explainable, but the argument is that 3 major errors over the past 20 years lead to a GOP loss on these social issues:
1. The GOP stopped trying to find weak points in liberal positions and hammer them and instead tried for all-out victory. The GOP had pursued an incremental strategy of limiting and circumscribing abortions during the Clinton era, but accelerated as the GOP took control of Congress and the White House. The incremental strategy was "abandoned" during Obama's presidency due to the extreme reaction the GOP had to Obama. Instead, a focus on ideological purity became prevalent. Thus the roles reversed: GOP candidates were seen as having incoherent or uncompromising views and it was the Democrats turn to hammer on them.
2. The GOP lost its way on birth control: interestingly the same mandated coverage that the GOP either tolerated or advanced during the GW Bush presidency was renounced when it became part of the ACA. Again, author attributes this to the negative reaction to Obama.
3. The GOP made the wrong bet on gay marriage. While the gay marriage issue propelled GOP voter turnout in 2004 for GW Bush, it was entirely predictable that attitudes against it would wane, especially with younger and more urban voters. Continuing to oppose this was a loser for the GOP, yet they held on to it well past when it was tactically fortuitous.

Reverse the Effect of Sitting for Prolonged Periods

http://boingboing.net/2014/09/10/walking-for-5-minhour-prevent.html
and
http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2014/09/slow-walking-sitting-study.shtml

A quick note -
A simple, slow five-minute walk per hour can reverse the deleterious effects of prolonged sitting! Prolonged sitting creates slack muscles in the legs and torso which fail to pump blood effectively, causing the arteries of the legs to lose their ability to expand to accommodate increased blood flow.  This decrease in ability is an early marker of greater cardiovascular disease.

This is the first experimental evidence available to suggest that a short break in sitting - as little as 5 minutes of walk at a 2-mile-per-hour pace - can help stave off a decline in the arterial functionality, and aid in reversing the effects of the sitting.  It was also a very small study - 11 male subjects in total, non-obese, and relatively healthy and young (ages 20-35).

US empire is reviled by the Middle East as the free market "religion" hurtles the world to destruction (Opinion)

Common Dreams - Is the World Too Big To Fail?

This long-form article written by Chomsky in 2011 sketches the historical backdrop to the "Arab Spring". The first part is to recount the strategic planning that the US military and economic advisers conducted in the wake of WWII: to control the world's energy source, the Middle East. The US-led NATO now secures (by force) shipping lanes, oil pipelines, and in other ways secures the "access to markets" because of they are "crucial infrastructure" to the energy economy. The Arab Spring poses a difficulty for US hegemony because of the highly negative public sentiment toward the US (and Israel), most notably in Egypt, which is shows over 90% of the public regards the US (and Israel) as the major threat to the country. Why do so many populations in the Middle East dislike and distrust the US? US government studies concluded, both in the 1950s and also after 9/11, that these attitudes are due to the (accurate) perception that the US supports dictators and stifles democratic movements when they threaten political-economic dominance.

The look back in history takes the two cases of Egypt and the US and looks at them in the early 1800s. During that time, cotton production and textiles were the most important domestic products, which the US developed under slavery and high tariffs, essentially protecting itself from more efficient producers like England. Egypt, on the other hand, couldn't accomplish this due to being conquered by England and therefore stuck to producing the lower-value cotton for export and importing English (value-added) textiles. The progenitor for the doctrine of not using protective tariffs but instead allowing free (international) competition was Adam Smith, and to this day similar strategies are used today to encourage the development of third-world countries. Interestingly, Chomsky points out that even Smith noticed that higher profits could be made using cheaper overseas labor, which would debilitate the domestic labor availability, but that domestic producers would be swayed to keep jobs local by a kind of patriotism, an "invisible hand" to keep production in their home countries.

The discussion then turns to Iran and the threat it might be to the US. Its military is not significant and mainly defensive. Given the fact that the US invaded two of its neighbors, it does seem reasonable to develop a nuclear deterrent. But the political, not military, power that Iran projects to its neighbors is "destabilizing", while invasions, coups, etc., at least when conducted by US or US-proxies, is "stabilizing". Another "threat" is China, which isn't a threat to the US homeland but instead a threat to develop its own sphere of influence, which is of course a threat to US hegemony. One solution to Iran developing nuclear weapons is to make the Middle East a non-nuclear weapon zone, but of course the US has openly stated that this could happen only if Israel is exempt. In other words, no nuclear weapons for non-allies.

A brief run-down of economic and political changes in the US since the 1970 ensues, with a vicious cycle of exporting production and deregulating financial markets causing elections to become enormously influenced by the business class as their wealth grew (Adam Smith's hopes against owners not exporting their stock notwithstanding). To distract from the real roots of these crises there must be fictitious targets, and Chomsky argues that these are the public sector employees (teachers) and, familiarly, immigrants. The hypocrisy regarding immigrant refugees from third world countries who have been ravaged by the US (or other European countries), either by force or by breaking down tariffs, is especially glaring. Due to NAFTA, Mexican agro-businesses couldn't compete with the (subsidized) US ones, thus unemployed Mexicans flooded the US to work for the winning team; only to be demonized. Chomsky discusses the popular response to immigrants in Europe: ultra-right racist parties gaining popularity. The ending to the piece discusses the likely destruction of the planet through global warming, propelled by business which knows full-well the outcome but must continue to maximize short-term profits.

A quick (dated) survey of the debate over how to be the American Empire

New York Times - American Empire, not 'If' but 'What Kind'

This piece written (in 2003) by two senior fellows at the Brookings Institution takes a quick survey of well-known pundits and policymakers who already assume that the US is a global empire. The only people quoted who deny it are those whose job it is to do so: President GW Bush (and, famously, Donald Rumsfeld), plus a Bush-friendly national security strategist (Zelikow) who doesn't appreciate the moniker but now seems to counsel toward imperious behavior. The substantive discussions are about whether the US should continue to be an empire (Buchanan and Chomsky say no), and since it is one, how much of one it should be (Kristol and Boot). The article continues by giving a history of US empire, but also, fascinatingly (given out current condition), to talk about how easy it is for the US to dominate the globe. US military spending dwarfs the rest of the world and yet it simultaneously accounts for a smaller portion of US GDP than during "the height of the cold war", hence the conclusion that empire comes "on the cheap". The article finishes with a discussion of attempts to manage the downsides of empire, most especially the resentment that it breeds from other nations. 

Propane grilling better for you than charcoal

Men's Health - Is it healthier to grill with propane or charcoal?

This quick little bit runs down the reasons to grill with propane rather than charcoal. In short, charcoals get hotter than propane, which means that fat drippings onto charcoal cause more flare ups of smoke and fire. The fire chars the meat, and the char is a known carcinogen. The smoke is also carcinogenic, and as the smoke hits the meat it covers the meat in the carcinogen. Of course both smoke and char occur in propane grills too, but scientists have found them to a greater extent on charcoal-cooked meat. In short, if you're going to grill, avoid flare ups and char by trimming fat and marinate, which reduces the char on meat by 90%.

No realistic economic model predicted Bush's tax cuts would "pay for themselves"

Free Republic - 'Dynamic' Scoring Finally ends Debate on Taxes, Revenue
(As published by Alan Murray in the Wall Street Journal)

 This piece published back in 2003 reviews how a Republican economist working at the White House was given the directorship of the Congressional Budged Office, a non-partisan bureau. While there, he used a new method called "Dynamic Scoring", rather than the standard "Static" method, to assess the effects of the GW Bush tax cuts under EGTRRA. The static method apparently assumes that raising taxes has no effect on economic growth, while the dynamic one takes into account various assumptions about the effects that changes in the tax code will have on economic growth, the budget deficit, and so on. The dynamic scoring method was undertaken on the Bush tax cuts and showed that this method also does not come close to providing evidence that tax cuts provide enough increases in taxable income to balance out the loss of government revenues. Under one set of assumptions, the budget deficit actually did decrease. The assumptions were as follows:
1. Taxes revert back to their pre-EGTRRA rates in 2013 (as scheduled)
2. People realize this and increase their incomes as much as possible prior to 2013
Dynamic scoring, like static scoring, finds that tax cuts have yet to provide enough economic stimulation to increase government revenue.

Salt isn't as bad for you as they think

USA Today - Americans' salt intake unchanged for 50 years
and
Business Insider -THE TRUTH ABOUT SALT: It's Not As Scary As The Government Says It Is

Researchers did a meta-study on studies that measured people's salt intake going as far back as 1957 up to 2003, making it the largest study about salt intake. The finding: in the US, salt intake as been about the same over this time period, at ~3,700mg/day. This is well above the CDC-recommended  2,300mg/day, despite the increases in processed foods and heart disease since 1957. Another study looked at a 24-year period across 33 diverse countries with roughly 20,000 participants and came up with the same salt intake: ~3,700mg/day. The second article takes a tougher stance than the first, insisting that the evidence from which the CDC recommendation is based is poor and oriented toward the short-term. However, there are some studies showing that very high amounts of salt intake increase production of a certain white blood cell that can be responsible for auto-immune disorders, like MS or Type 1 Diabetes. The over all conclusion seems to be that those with high blood pressure or obesity or other ailments may do better by lowering salt intake, but for most people the CDC number is unreasonably low.

Historical studies show only a small disincentive to earn income when taxes rise

NYT - That Wishful Thinking About Tax Rates

This slightly dated piece was written by economist Christina D. Romer, who studies the effects of income tax cuts and increases. There are a few (oft-repeated) beliefs about taxes, incentives, and revenues that she discussses:
Belief 1: Tax increases will decrease the incentive to earn more "at the margins", in short, decreasing economic activity. While this seems to be common sense, history shows very little correlation, if there is one at all. Of course, increases may indeed cause a decrease in incentive but if so, that effect is made up for by other factors. This economist's particular study was for a period between WWI and WWII, where tax rates went up on the super-rich: reported income decreased but only slightly. In other words, the rich didn't stop working because their marginal tax rate went up from 63% to 79%.
Belief 2: Tax cuts will pay for themselves by stimulating economic activity and thereby raising incomes to be taxed (albeit at a lower base), creating equal or greater revenues. Historical data again do not show this to be anywhere near the case. In fact, reported income seems only mildly sensitive to tax cuts.
The conclusion of this piece suggests that modest tax increases may have a modest affect on reported income, but not one that isn't tolerable in order to fund government.

Adrenaline is best guess for extraordinary feats

LiveScience - How Powerful is Willpower?

There are stories of ordinary people performing incredible feats of strength/endurance that they would ordinarily be unable to do. How is this possible? The experimental evidence is underdeveloped, so this article just lays out the basic structure that scientists believe enable such performance. Under normal circumstances, the "motor units" in muscles needed for a given task are the only ones activated; when adrenaline stimulates the nerve endings & muscle groups, more muscles are able to respond. Furthermore, adrenaline reduces fear and therefore the risk assessment of an activity, enabling someone to perform what they ordinarily wouldn't. Researchers use the "fight or flight" response to refer to the collection of physical changes that take place and allow incredible feats.