The Limits Of Cheap Construction

FastCompany magazine features a new approach to building a decent quality house (basically a modern cottage) for just $20,000 of construction costs for the structure itself. It is a one bedroom, one bath house that would occupy half of a city lot and is too small to get zoning approval without a waiver from planning officials, probably well under 1000 square feet with no basement or garage. But, it turns out that there is a lot more that goes into a house than construction costs.

What would it actually cost to build one in Colorado on a for profit basis?

My estimates for Castle Rock in Douglas County, Colorado ($200,000 with $1,650 per month of housing related costs) and for Denver, Colorado ($160,000 with $1,400 of housing related costs) are spelled out below. 

The Castle Rock housing cost is more expensive than existing one bedroom apartments in Castle Rock by $519 a month, so it would make no improvement in housing affordability, even considering the benefits of owning versus renting.

The Denver housing cost would be pretty much identical to existing one bedroom apartment rents (with with a hedge against rising rents and an eventual path to own the home and pocket appreciation in its value over time).

Honestly, you can probably already get a one bedroom, one bathroom single wide manufactured house which is uglier and shoddier (with a shorter useful life and more risk of storm damage), for about the same price ($22,000) which would actually have fewer building code issues due to federal regulations prohibiting anti-manufactured housing building codes, for a comparable price without any major innovations in construction methods.

This is pretty much the rock bottom of what you could do in terms of single family home housing affordability in cities with jobs in abundance that is achieved through reduced construction costs, which you can see is pretty modest even with state of the art efforts to reduce construction costs. But, the real gold in the affordable housing game is to find a way to tweak zoning laws and building codes that are barriers to affordable housing.

In contrast, if these kinds of houses could be added as accessory dwelling units (granny flats) by existing Denver home owners in areas zoned only for single family homes, this could be an extremely affordable option ($950 a month) opening up one bedroom units that could rent for about $450 a month (32%) less than the existing average one bedroom rent. Renters in these accessory dwelling units would get a quality residence that looks nice and is sturdy in a decent existing neighborhood which is probably safe and has decent schools, that would only need minimal new infrastructure to meet the needs of its growing population.

It would expand diversity in residential neighborhoods, without creating a concentration of poverty (since more than half of residents in these neighborhoods would be existing single family home owners who are much more affluent) and would probably involve better than average tenant vetting (since owners are finding a single tenant who will live in their backyard). It would also fix a serious affordable housing shortage in Denver where housing costs are growing because new construction can't keep up with new people moving to Denver, and would put downward pressure on rents for all units in the city, including conventional apartments.

Castle Rock, Colorado as a single family home on a normal sized residential lot.

Build a house like that in Castle Rock, Colorado and your sticker price to a buyer purchasing it new is closer to $200,000:

* $80,000 for a water tap hook up

* $20,000 to build the structure

* $5,000 for a foundation 

* $2,000 per unit for xeriscaping

* $50,000 for the lot

* $12,000 for a realtor to sell it when you're done,

* $20,000 per house profit (10% which you need to in order to make it worth a developer's time)

* $8,000 per unit for development fees (to pay for municipal improvements like sidewalks, parks, storm sewer extensions, city road extensions and school infrastructure)

* $3,000 per unit for haggling with the building code inspector and getting a zoning variance for the size of the house and setting up an HOA which land use officials would require. 

There are big economies of scale if you build more in the HOA and entitlements department, but it is harder to get a zoning variance if you build a lot of units in one neighborhood, since suburbanites fear that affordable housing means crime and bad schools. 

Still this is affordable in an area where low end single family homes cost $300,000 to $500,000 each.  On the plus side, this solves your too small to get a mortgage problem (it isn't cost effective and there isn't a financing infrastructure in place to get a $16,000 mortgage).

Suppose that the buyer gets a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with 4% interest, no points, and a 5% down payment plus all closing costs (about $2,500) out of pocket.

Our buyer has to come up with $12,500 ($10,000 down and $2,500 closing costs), roughly a full three month emergency fund's worth for someone with an income high enough to afford it.

You could get an owner's monthly payment for buyers with good credit down to $1,650. This breaks down on a monthly basis as:

* $955 principal and interest

* $100 property taxes

* $100 homeowner's insurance

* $140 gas and electric bills

* $115 internet service

* $  45water, sewer, and trash pickup with xeriscaping

* $  50 HOA dues

* $145 allowance for modest home and xeriscape landscaping maintenance

This is quite a bit more than the average rent for a one bedroom, one bath apartment in Castle Rock of $1,131 a month.

A working class couple holding down one full time minimum wage job ($10.40 per hour in Colorado) at $20,800 per year would make $41,600 per year combined (a lower middle class single person working full time at $20.80 per hour would be in the same position). A couple (or individual as the case might be) could afford that monthly payment.

There'd be no room for kids beyond maybe on infant though, but modest income empty nesters or young couples or same sex couples or single people in their 20s or 30s, could be good fits to the situation.

Denver, Colorado on half of a normal residential sized lot.

Build a house like that in Denver, Colorado and your sticker price is closer to $160,000, because the land is more expensive, but the infrastructure is in place and you wouldn't need an HOA.

* $100,000 for the lot

* $20,000 to build the structure

* $5,000 for a foundation 

* $2,000 per unit for xeriscaping

* $12,000 for a realtor to sell it when you're done,

* $16,000 per house profit (10% which you need to in order to make it worth a developer's time)

* $5,000 per unit for haggling with the building code inspector and getting a zoning variance for the size of the house. 

You could cut the 5% down payment and closing costs combined to about $10,500 ($8,000 down and $2,500 closing costs), again the entire emergency fund of a family that could afford it.

You could get the monthly cost to about $1,400 a month (no HOA and a smaller principal and interest payment) which includes some payment of principal on the mortgage every month and hedges against Denver's rapidly rising rents with a fixed rate mortgage. 

This compares to an average rental cost for a one bedroom apartment in Denver of $1,390 a month, pretty much the same cost as renting.

It might be possible to afford with this a combined income of $34,000 a year, which is possible on two minimum wage jobs (on 40 hours a week and one 25 hours a week), or one $17 an hour full time job. 

This would be very competitive with rent for a one bedroom apartment for a working class couple or lower middle class individual.

Denver, Colorado as a Granny Flat rented by the existing home owner.

The economics would change dramatically if Denver allowed owners of home currently zoned single family to build accessor dwelling units of this size with straight zoning on their lots either for family, or to rent, financed by the existing home owner with a home equity loan on the existing home for the entire amount.

It turns out that affordability is all about leveraging the sunk costs of existing infrastructure and maximizing the efficiency with which we use valuable city land (which is valuable precisely because it is developed).

Total cost: $40,000

* $20,000 to build the structure

* $10,000 for new utility hookups (water, sanitary sewer, natural gas, cable, electricity)

* $5,000 for a foundation 

* $2,000 per unit for xeriscaping

* $2,500 per unit for zoning and building compliance, getting a new mail box, etc.

* $   500 HELOC charges

The monthly additional principal and interest payment would be $190 a month, and once you add additional property taxes and insurance costs, and an allowance for additional maintenance you are up to maybe $240 a month, add $560 a month for utilities for the new units, and the owner's marginal monthly cost for the new unit is $800 a month.

The owners might very well be wiling to rent this one bedroom, one bath stand alone unit in their backyard for $950 a month, netting a profit of $1,800 a year plus all principal payments on the loan and increasing the value of the owners' home in the long run by at least $40,000 for no significant out of pocket costs not financed by the rent. This is an investment many homeowners in Denver would be happy to make. It would also potentially facilitate housing an extended family since as an adult child who still lives at home, or a parent or parents living with their children on a pretty affordable basis.

This compares to an average rental cost for a one bedroom apartment in Denver of $1,390 a month, so it would be much more affordable (32%) than existing market rent rentals.

This would be challenging to afford for working class individual holding down a full time minimum wage job ($10.40 per hour in Colorado) at $20,800 per year. Ideally, a renter would have at least $26,000 a year of income which would imply a full time job at $13 a year, which is still very much a working class job in Colorado. Alternately, you could have have a couple holding two part-time minimum wage jobs each working 25 hours a week, or perhaps one working 30 hours a week and the other working 20 hours a week, which would be very doable.

UK v. US Legislative Productivity

The parliament in the U.K. passes something on the order of 30 to 40 statutes in a two year session. In the 1970s, it was closer to ca. 80 per two year session.

About three-quarters of those bills are "government bills" sponsored by the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet. Only about a quarter of the bills that pass are sponsored by individual legislators as opposed to as part of a cabinet program of legislation. Only about one in 100 individual legislators gets legislation passed in a given session.

Keep in mind that the parliament in the U.K. is serving, for England at least, as not only the equivalent of Congress in the U.S., but also as the equivalent of a state legislature, and is also serving some of the roles served by local governments in the U.S. because local governments in the U.K. have far less autonomy than in the U.S.

Yet, Congress passes 300 to 600 or so bills per two year session, and a typical state legislature passes hundreds of bills per year, and local governments that have autonomy lacking in the U.K. also pass a significant amount of legislation. Taking the 114th Session of Congress as an example, many of those bills are trivialities, but far more than 30-40 of them involve matters of substance. Fore example, by my count, there were 100 bills passed in the 114th Session that were more than extensions of existing programs, symbolic and naming legislation, directions regarding how administration discretion should be authorized, or appropriations, and were instead substantive legislation.

Apparently there are alternatives to parliamentary legislation in the U.K. such as "statutory instruments or Orders in Council" and government agencies simply have more authority than in the U.S., but it isn't as if the United States does not empower its agencies to pass regulations and its heads of government to pass executive orders.

Cepholopods!

Octopus mural at the entrance of MSKU - Faculty of Aquaculture (in Turkey). 

Credit: Ketrina Yim — with Josh Sommerfeld andSonia Margot Huambachano Castro.

Quote of the Day

“Sexual harassers for the Second Amendment” isn’t a compelling cultural message. If you make vile people your champions, you can’t be surprised if Americans begin to associate the cause with its advocates. . . . An angry, defiant, and dishonest credibly accused child abuser is a disaster, a walking commercial for the other side. His one vote out of 100 simply isn’t worth the cost.

From David French at The National Review (a magazine of conservative opinion).

Not Giving Up Yet

I’ve made it pretty clear I take a dim view of the prospects for this liberal democracy of ours over the next generation or so.

- Razib Khan 

He's certainly not the only pessimist out there. And there is absolutely reason to feel that way.

In Poland, 60,000 neo-Nazis marched in its streets on its independence day. This dark movement has also made gains in Czechia, Hungary, and France. The U.K. has voted to leave the E.U. Spain's reaction to the Catalan independence is little more than naked brutality. A Nobel peace prize winner who attained political power after decades of repression has launched a campaign of mass rape, genocidal murder and ethnic cleansing directed at one of Burma's ethnic minorities. North Korea has brought us to the brink of a nuclear World War III. There are slave markets again in Libya. Even as ISIS is almost defeated in Iraq and Syria, the movement it represents is thriving and deadly in the African Sahel. Most of the revolutions of the Arab Spring failed and left repressive dictatorships in place in their wake.

In American politics, the madmen have seized control of the asylum. Bizarro world nut cases who are detached from reality and viciously hateful like Donald Trump and Roy Moore win support from the Republican grass roots. The Republican herd chases all manner of policies long proven to be just plain wrong as a matter of empirical evidence and so many of them really are morally deplorable. The NRA's grip on our nation's politics is unshaken by a rising tide of mass murders. Solid science is stubbornly dismissed in policy making, foxes are placed everywhere to guard the hen houses, and the involvement of Russian autocrats in the highest level of the current administration is shocking.

Despite every reason for pessimism, deep down, the hope is still burning. Liberal democracy can't afford to rest on its laurels, but necessity is driving a steely determination to fight back. We know what the promised land looks like and aren't willing to abandon it. We know what works and aren't divorced from reality. We are holding together an incredibly diverse coalition as the right fractures despite its homogeneity.

We aren't winning every battle, but we are winning some elections that have long seemed impossibly out of reach and are winning legislative battles by turning the handful of establishment Republicans who have had enough of this insanity. Saudi Arabia's recklessly bold new crown prince is taking on his nation's religious conservatives knowing that they are holding his country back. The military in Zimbabwe is ousting a dictator. Technology is continuing to develop and it has a liberal bias. Years of judicial appointments are restraining Trump's effort to run roughshod over legal and political norms. The ranks of the secular are growing, while the ranks of the religious, especially white Christians, are waning.

Long before the Civil War, the North was in a dominant position over the South, because the productivity advantage that it developed from water wheels grossly outmatched what the South attempted to gain with slave labor. Something similar is true today. The left may have a slight popular vote majority that gerrymandering and vote suppression can overcome. But, in terms of economic power, the vastly more economically productive blue cities tower over the economically stagnant red rural areas. And, ultimately, the Marxists are right in noticing that economic power usually prevails politically in the end.

They say that it is darkest before dawn. So far, I'm still willing to believe that.

(And, to be clear, I understand that Razib is no liberal. But, he does recognize the virtues of liberal democracy, another thing entirely, as so many on the right these days do not.)

Stray Bankruptcy and Insovlency Ideas

I've noted some of these things before, but I'm jotting down some stray ideas on bankruptcy and insolvency law reform in one play without a lot of elaboration and support as a reminder to follow up on them in greater depth at some point.

1. There are certain classes of debt that should be subordinate:

a. Exemplary damages.
b. Default interest in excess of non-default interest rates or statutory interest rates where no non-default interest rates is stated.
c. Late fees.
d. Civil and criminal fines.
e. Penalties such as tax penalties.

Basically, everyone should have what their basic obligations are paid before anyone gets something extra and there should not be an incentive to burden defaulting debtors which could actually lead to a tipping point that sends them into insolvency or bankruptcy simply for the strategic reason of getting ahead of other creditors.

2. Debts owed to insiders should be subordinate to debts owed to outsiders harmonizing the law of preferences and CUFTA and common law rules. This would still be prior to the statutorily subordinated debts mentioned above.

3. Trade credit of businesses should have priority over long term debt, not just selected wage and services debts.

4. Limited liability entities, at least if they are publicly held or subsidiaries or affiliated of publicly held companies, should be required to be bonded as to trade creditors so that only long term creditors are taking credit risk and are doing so consciously. All limited liability entities should also be required to have adequate insurance determined in some formulatic way.

5. Ordinary income tax debt should not have priority over other creditors. Tax priority ought to be limited to taxes subject to perfected liens, property tax liens, and withheld taxes where there is a trust fund obligations (e.g. withholding taxes on employees).

6. The non-dischargeability of student loans under current law is too severe. It should not apply to loans to attend schools that are unaccredited during attendance or to loan balances not yet repaid for schools that lose their accreditation before they are paid in full. Loans for attendance at accredited schools from which the student graduates should lose their exemption from discharge at the end of the originally contemplated amortization period of the loan. The standard for hardship discharges of student loan debt should be lower in cases where the student did not graduate and in cases where the student did not obtain licensure and/or employment in the student's chosen field following a pre-professional course of instruction. For example, the hardship standard should be lower for someone who does not pass the bar exam following law school than for one who does.

7. Cram downs of personal residences and of personal vehicles should be allowed in personal Chapter 11s and in Chapter 13.

8. There should be a streamlined reorganization process for Chapter 11 reorganizations that extinguish all equity, extinguishes all subordinated debt if it would not reasonably have been paid in a Chapter 7, and converts non-trade credit general creditors into equity holders, that does not disturb the operations of the company at all.

9. The amount of future income contributions to a bankruptcy estate that are required should generally be fixed at a certain percentage of income for a certain period of time. To mirror non-bankruptcy law, an amount equal to 25% of income in excess of 30 hours a week at minimum wage (the maximum wage garnishment for ordinary debts) for three years (the low end of existing Chapter 13 plans) should be normative, with exemptions more or less identical to wage garnishment exemptions, generalized to self-employment. There might be exceptions to including future income, for example, for disability, but they should be fairly narrow. This might greatly reduce the distinction between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13.

10. It should be easier to declare non-dischargeable debts not discharged than the strict deadlines and definitions and standards of proof of current law.

11. A new chapter should be added to allow a stay to be obtained by insolvent probate estates.

12. Exemption from discharge for fraud debts should be limited to out of pocket losses and not a benefit of the bargain measure.

Gun Ownership Rates And Well Regulated Militias

Gun Ownership and Conscription

Four of the five countries with the highest civilian gun ownership rates in the world (Yemen, Switzerland, Finland and Cyprus) have mandatory military service for men. So does Austria, which is also in the top ten. In these countries, the link between the existence of a "well regulated militia" and bearing arms is direct and obvious.

Among countries without mandatory military service, the rates of civilian gun ownership per 100 residents are (numbers eyeballed from chart above):

* United States 89

* Saudi Arabia 35

* Iraq 34

* Uruguay 32

* Canada 31

Only four countries in the world without military service have even one-third of the civilian gun ownership rates of the United States.

Gun Ownership and The Death Penalty

There is considerable overlap between the countries with the highest gun ownership rates and those with the most executions per capita (source data available to download here). The raw numbers of executions per country in 2016 are as follows:

1. China 1,000s
2. Nigeria 527
3. Pakistan 360+
4. Bangladesh 245+
5. Egypt 237+
6. Thailand 216
7. Cameroon 160+
8. Iraq 145+
9. India 136
10. Lebanon 126
11. Zambia 101
12. Democratic Republic of the Congo 93+

13. Sri Lanka 79+
14. Viet Nam 63+
15. Indonesia 60+
16. Somalia 60 (Puntland 45; Somaliland 8; and Federal Government of Somalia 7)
17. Algeria 50
18. Kuwait 49
19. Tunisia 44
20. Saudi Arabia 40+
21. Malaysia 36+
22. USA 32
23. Mali 30
24. United Arab Emirates 26
25. Kenya 24+
26. Palestine (State of) 21, Hamas authorities, Gaza
27. Sudan 21+
28. Tanzania 19
29. Ghana 17
30. Jordan 13
31. Niger 11
32. Zimbabwe 8
33. Singapore 7+
34. Morocco/Western Sahara 6
35. Liberia 5+
36. Sierra Leone 5
37. Afghanistan 4+
38. Belarus 4 (Sole European Country to execute anyone in 2016).
39. Qatar 4
40. Barbados 3
41. Laos 3+
42. Myanmar 3+
43. Japan 3
44. Ethiopia 2
45. Maldives 2
46. Taiwan 2
47. Trinidad and Tobago 2
48. Libya 1+
49. Guyana 1
50. Kazakhstan 1
51. Malawi 1
52. Papua New Guinea 1
53. Iran +
54. North Korea +
55. South Sudan +

Policy Differences Dramatically Impact Gun Homicide Rates

From here.

Local Government Involves Real Money

The annual budget of the City and County of Denver is larger than the annual budgets of 90 countries (counting autonomous dependencies separately). There are about 137 countries with larger annual budgets.

Immigrants Save Dying Rural Areas

Immigration isn't just the solution for rust belt cities. It also revitalizes dying rural areas.

2017 Denver Election Results

All of the ballot issues facing Denver voters in 2017, including Issue 300, the Green Roofs initiative, a long list of bond measures, and a name change for a Denver government department all passed.

Issue 300, an initiated ordinance won 52% of the vote. Referenda 2A to 2H each got more than two-thirds of the vote.

In the four Denver school board races the outcomes were as follows:

"Reformer" Barbara O'Brian won re-election in the at large race with 42% of the vote in a three way contest against a teacher's union backed candidate, Robert Speth, and another challenger, Julie Banuelos.

In District 2, incumbent "reformer" Angela Cobian defeated Xochitl "Sochi" Gaytan with 54% of the vote.

In District 3,  Carrie A. Olson, backed by the teacher's union, defeated incumbent "reformer" Mike Johnson with 52% of the vote.

In District 4, Jennifer Bacon, backed by the teacher's union, defeated incumbent "reformer" Rachele Espiritu and Tay Anderson, a teenager who just graduated from high school, with 43% of the vote in the three way race.

The U.S. Department of Defense System For Developing New Weapons Sucks

Richard B. Levine provides a brief but useful history of the many failures and rare successes of the U.S. Department of Defense in developing new weapons systems in the last several decades.

It is an ugly history of projects that are over budget, behind schedule, and terminated at the cusp of production or with greatly reduced numbers of units produced that drive up per unit costs dramatically.

The present procurement process is pocked by the cancellation of new weapons on the cusp of production. This has resulted, since the beginning of this century, in dead-weight losses approaching $60 billion, which equates to hundreds of billions of dollars of planned and expected programs that the U.S. military never fielded. 

Examples of cancelled programs include the XM2001 Crusader howitzer: $2 billion was spent before cancellation in 2002; the Crusader was to be superseded by the proposed XM1203 non-line-of-sight cannon; it, too, was cancelled, in 2009, after expenditures of at least $18 billion in development and termination costs, including the cancellation of its sister, FCS vehicles. In all these new programs, not one operational unit was fielded. 

The RAH-66 Comanche, begun in 1982, was terminated in 2004 after no operational helicopters were produced; program costs exceeded $6.9 billion, plus a half-billion dollars in termination fees that the government was obligated to pay the prime contractors. The Comanche was superseded by the development of the ARH-70 Arapaho, which, too, was not produced, despite the expenditure of millions. 

Other important programs such as the F-22 were terminated after very small, inefficient buys. 750 Raptors were originally planned to cost $26.2 billion; the program was cancelled after 187 operational aircraft were built at a cost of over $67 billion. The Zumwalt-class was to have been a 32-ship program; this was reduced to a procurement of three vessels in 2009, thus requiring that the development costs of $9.6 billion be spread over just three ships. Total program costs, for the three ships, stand at $22.5 billion, though per-ship costs were estimated originally to be approximately $2.5 billion, given a full program buy.

The list is certainly not comprehensive. 

The Sea Wolf attack submarine program was terminated after a greatly reduced purchase relative to the original plan. The Marines have struggled to field a new armored amphibious personnel carrier for decades. A suite of new XM small arms for the Army was cancelled. Most of the mine sweeping fleet of the U.S. Navy was dispensed with before the replacement Littoral Combat Ship modules were in service. The B-1 bomber program was cut short at far fewer units than planned. A nearly operational combat drone equivalent to fighter aircraft has been proven for both aircraft carrier and Air Force versions.

We can get far more for our money as a nation with our defense dollars than we do.

Video Recordings And Crime

Commercial Video and Crime

Someone shot and killed three people, seemingly at random, in a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado yesterday evening.

Because the store and its parking lot are covered with cameras, primarily intended to catch shoplifters, we can say with great confidence that the man arrested, a 47 year old man by the name of Scott Ostrem, is very likely the man who committed the shooting, even though this is one of the very rare cases where a multiple homicide shooter did not die in the act and was not captured at the scene of the crime.

His actions from the time he entered the store, to the shooting in the store, to his departure from the store in his vehicle, were all caught on camera, and the quality of security video has increased greatly from the days when it was introduced.

Whether or not Ostrem is guilty of a homicide crime, and which homicide crime he is guilty of, may depend upon a potential insanity defense and questions of the nature of his intent. But, there will be no reasonable basis upon which to doubt that he was the shooter whose firearm killed the three victims.

Dash Cam Video And Law Enforcement Liability

Video recordings are also significantly increasing the extent to which law enforcement officers are prosecuted and sued for crimes, even when they lie about the facts. For example, as the official synopsis of an opinion in the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit yesterday explained:

The panel held that in this case, a jury could reasonably conclude that Higgins could have sufficiently protected himself and others after Zion fell by pointing his gun at Zion and pulling the trigger only if Zion attempted to flee or attack. Although Higgins testified that Zion was trying to get up, the panel determined that in light of the video footage to the contrary, the issue of whether Zion attempted to flee or attack involved a dispute of fact that had to be resolved by a jury.

The relevant portion of the opinion itself says (legal citations omitted, emphasis added):

Plaintiff doesn’t challenge Higgins’s initial nine-round volley, but does challenge the second volley (fired at close range while Zion was lying on the ground) and the head stomping. By the time of the second volley, Higgins had shot at Zion nine times at relatively close range and Zion had dropped to the ground. In the video, Zion appears to have been wounded and is making no threatening gestures. Lopez Video 3:04. While Higgins couldn’t be sure that Zion wasn’t bluffing or only temporarily subdued, Zion was lying on the ground and so was not in a position where he could easily harm anyone or flee. A reasonable jury could find that Zion was no longer an immediate threat, and that Higgins should have held his fire unless and until Zion showed signs of danger or flight. Or, a jury could find that the second round of bullets was justified, but not the head-stomping. 

Defendants argue that Higgins’s continued use of deadly force was reasonable because Zion was still moving. They quote Plumhoff v. Rickard: “[I]f police officers are justified in firing at a suspect in order to end a severe threat to public safety, the officers need not stop shooting until the threat has ended.” But terminating a threat doesn’t necessarily mean terminating the suspect. If the suspect is on the ground and appears wounded, he may no longer pose a threat; a reasonable officer would reassess the situation rather than continue shooting. This is particularly true when the suspect wields a knife rather than a firearm.2 In our case, a jury could reasonably conclude that Higgins could have sufficiently protected himself and others after Zion fell by pointing his gun at Zion and pulling the trigger only if Zion attempted to flee or attack. 

Higgins testified that Zion was trying to get up. But we “may not simply accept what may be a self-serving account by the police officer.” This is especially so where there is contrary evidence. In the video, Zion shows no signs of getting up. Lopez Video 3:01. This is a dispute of fact that must be resolved by a jury.

[2] It may be that, once on the ground, Zion had dropped the knife. Whether the knife was still in Zion’s hand or within his reach, and whether Higgins thought Zion was still armed, are factual questions that only a jury can resolve.

In the days before video of these incidents was frequently available, this excessive force lawsuit would very likely have been dismissed on the strength of the law enforcement officer's sworn lie in videotapes that the trial court had apparently sealed.

Even with video, the trial court judge granted summary judgment in favor of the police officer in the face of video evidence flatly contradicting the officer's testimony:

What happened next is captured in two videos taken by cameras mounted on the dashboards of the two police cruisers.1 Zion is seen running toward the apartment complex. Lopez Video 2:58. Higgins shoots at him from about fifteen feet away. Higgins Video 3:25. Nine shots are heard and Zion falls to the ground. Lopez Video 2:54. Higgins then runs to where Zion has fallen and fires nine more rounds at Zion’s body from a distance of about four feet, emptying his weapon. Id. at 3:00–03. Zion curls up on his side. Id. Higgins pauses and walks in a circle. Id. at 3:05. Zion is still moving. Id. at 3:00–12. Higgins then takes a running start and stomps on Zion’s head three times. Id. at 3:11–20. 

Zion died at the scene. His mother brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming Higgins used excessive force. She also claims Higgins deprived her of her child without due process. She raised a separate substantive due process claim on Zion’s behalf, municipal liability claims and various state law claims. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants on all claims.

[1] The videos can be viewed at https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/ 15-56705/evidence/Lopez (Lopez Video) and https://www.ca9.uscourts. gov/media/15-56705/evidence/Higgins (Higgins Video).

The appellate opinion also ordered that: "The videos—Exhibits A and B—shall be unsealed."

The simple truth is that the trial judge in this case (Central District of California District Judge James V. Selna) to whom the case has been remanded, a George W. Bush appointee, has no business serving as a judge in this case after ignoring the fact that two video recordings flatly contradicted the police officer's testimony and nonetheless finding his testimony to be credible. This dishonest and reprehensible conduct by judges in cases involving police officers, is, unfortunately, all too common.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (H.R. 1): The Estate Tax Provisions

House Republicans have released the full text of their tax bill, a good summary of which is available at the Tax Foundation.

In the area of estate planing, the bill increase the exemption from the estate tax, which is currently $5.49 million for 2017 per person, per lifetime for taxable gifts and all assets owned at death (for estate tax purposes) combined, with unused portions inheritable by a surviving spouse, to $10 million (indexed for inflation) for the years 2018 through 2023. After that the estate and generation skipping transfer tax are abolished and only a gift tax with a $10 million lifetime exclusion remains. The step up in basis of capital assets at death remains.

So, there is a tax break for heirs of estates of more than $11 million (which is 100% for estate of less than $20 million) for six years, followed by a complete elimination of the estate tax for people who die in 2024, if Congress doesn't change its mind before then.

Since indefinite deferral of rolled over capital gains from real estate are retained and the step up in basis at death is retained, this means that a married real estate investor can make up to $20 million of capital gains from real estate investments in a lifetime, entirely tax free, and pass those gains onto his or her children entirely tax free who can the liquidate the real estate and spend it any way that they like.

For the vast majority of Americans, who expect to have a family net worth of under $11,000,000, the new estate tax law changes nothing.

The incentive to make charitable gifts from large estates is further reduced.

The threshold at which it starts makes sense from a tax perspective to make gifts during life rather than at death (which I call the transition from the "Scrooge" regime to the "Santa Claus" regime) shifts from about $14 million of net worth to about $25 million of net worth.

Legalizing Vice Reduces Crime

Legalizing prostitution materially reduces sexual assault and drug crime rates.

Mueller And The Rule of Law

Former FBI Director Mueller indicted President Trump's former campaign director and one of his main deputies for illegal ties to Russia and has already accepted a guilty plead to the crime of lying to the FBI from another person connected to the Trump campaign.

This is really some of the most encouraging news we've had about American political culture for a while.

Also on the encouraging front, because they demonstrate that the political system is not entirely devoid of checks and balances, were the defeat of unpopular legislation to kill Obamacare in the U.S. Senate, the shelving of a law to legalize silencers following the Las Vegas mass shooting, and judicial invalidation of his Muslim ban, his effort to ban transgender soldiers, and his effort to prevent a young women facing deportation from getting an abortion.

Mueller is a special prosecutor, appointed by the executive branch, who is investigating and charging officials from the campaign of a sitting President, the current head of the executive branch, with crimes.

If the cynics were right that our government was hopelessly corrupt, this couldn't happen, and it is certainly happening over the strong objections of the sitting President who is fit to be tied over it. But, so far, Trump has not shut down the investigation by firing Mueller or pardoning the officials from his campaign who were indicated or pleaded guilty.

Trump has the bare legal authority to do either, but if he did, he would be likely tip enough moderate/establishment Republicans and unaffiliated voters into concern about unchecked authoritarianism to cause him to be impeached, to cause the Republican party to lose control of Congress, or to cause Congressional Republicans to cease to cooperate with Trump far more aggressively and openly than it has thus far. It would cement the arguments of Trump critics that he is an authoritarian with no respect for the rule of law, and as President, Trump needs respect for the rule of law to exercise power. Simply put, if he did so, Russia gate would rapidly blossom into Watergate.

The fact that the rule of law can prevail over partisan and political considerations in this case (and Mueller is no die hard liberal), in order to punish corruption, suggests that we haven't reached a constitutional crisis yet, and that a political culture in the country that was reasonable healthy prior to Trump's election, hasn't withered and died quite yet.

It is also reassuring that truly bad municipal judges have twice resigned in recent months when their disregard for the law manifested by their punishments of people who can't pay fines came out (in Mississippi and Colorado).

A blatantly corrupt contract to re-electrify Puerto Rico is a concern, but the backlash and prompt termination of it that has come from FEMA and the Governor of Puerto Rico, is somewhat reassuring as well.

Stranger Things As Evolutionary Psychology Realized

Humanity spend hundreds of thousands of years of its evolutionary history fighting and defeating large, creepy, dangerous animals that threatened our very existence with small groups using rocks, spears, clubs, fire and in the last 70,000 years or so, bows and arrows.

We won that never ending war many thousands of years ago. Animals, wild and domestic, kill a tiny, tiny share of all humans today. It isn't quite zero, but out of 7,600,000,000 people on the planet, the number of people killed by animals in on the order of one in ten million worldwide per year and certainly less than one in a million worldwide per year.

The only living things that are dangerous to us in any significant numbers are microbiological threats like viruses and bacteria and single cell organisms, fungi and plant poisons. Even tiny parasites are mostly a concern in only some regions of the world like tropical rain forests. For the most part we should fear germs and toxins, not lions and tigers and bears and wolves and sharks.

In Europe, we were so thorough that even almost all of the seriously poisonous snakes, frogs and spiders are gone.

The only megafauna, or for that matter non-microscopic fauna, that poses a serious threat to us anymore is man.

But, we still have innate fears that served us well for well over 90% of our evolutionary history. We are built to fear snakes and spiders and killer animals lurking in the dark and falling. We are built to battle monsters. If there are none, we are compelled to invent them mythologically so we can fulfill our already achieved destiny vicariously. It is terrifying, but it is also exhilarating and an embrace of our humanity.

Stranger Things and a thousand other manifestations of our culture stokes those ancient atrophied instincts. Until ten thousand years ago, we were all hunters and gatherers, some on land and some in the sea. It took thousands of additional years until most of us were farmers and herders. Even Europe had hunters and gatherers as recently as a thousand years ago or so.

Now, hunters and gatherers in any meaningful sense, number in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands globally. The other 99.99%+ of us rely on farming for food and in the developed world, more than 95% of us don't produce food or other natural resources at all. Well over two-thirds of us don't even directly manufacture or build anything from natural resources, except as a minor, economically irrelevant hobby. Increasingly few of us even hunt as a hobby.

Reconciling hundreds of years of evolution with modern life is one of the most fundamental big picture issues for humanity as we build a new civilization and society. And, it only gets worse going forward. 

Planes and automobiles are starting to drive themselves, leaving us one visceral experience using hand-eye-foot coordination and our spatial sensations in our lives.

As we learn the hidden medical dangers of contact sports, like the epidemic of concussions in football, we will back away from that outlet as well.

Bit by bit we are engineering our society so that violent crime is suppressed, and with it the usefulness of self-defense training. And, the violent crime that remains is often committed with guns, which are instincts aren't terribly well honed to respond to in optimal ways.

Video games remain one of the few outlets for these natural instincts. Is it any wonder that some many people are utterly absorbed by them?

As a species, we are trying to learn how to domestic ourselves, because the world isn't wild anymore. But, these instincts run so deeply into who were are as people, that the task is not a trivial one.

This is particularly challenging in a democracy. Democracy is relatively new under the sun. And, to the extent it works, it leaves us with a government run people masses of people not designed to face modern challenges, not rigorously trained to overcome circumstances where instinct and good policy are at odds. Large cities and massive empires aren't unprecedented in history, but they are themselves recent inventions. We were not built to operate such huge social collectives. We have social instincts built for hunting bands and chiefdoms, not empires and metropolises. Why should we think then, that the public will of the masses is going to provide wise insight into running these institutions?

Long Term Exposure To Pollution Increases Criminality

A new California study of the link between air pollution exposure and delinquency shows a statistically significant link between pollution exposure and delinquency. A related study shows the impacts on air pollution exposure on cognitive development.

Who Carries Guns? Does It Work?

The NRA is wrong on the fact and the bad policies it has advance kill thousands of Americans every year. People who carry loaded handguns are a clear and present danger to the American public. Nine empirical studies published in the last three years establishes many key facts relevant to the gun control debate.

Roughly 3 million Americans carry loaded handguns with them every day, primarily for protection, according to a new analysis of a national survey of gun owners published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The information comes from the National Firearms Survey, which the authors – a group of public health experts at the University of Washington, Harvard University and the University of Colorado – administered in 2015. The nationally representative survey was conducted online with 4,000 U.S. adults, including more than 1,500 who identified themselves as handgun owners. The survey asked handgun owners how often they carried a loaded handgun on their person when away from home.

The peer-reviewed study concluded that roughly 9 million people carried loaded handguns at least once a month, including 3 million who carried them every day. People who carry handguns at least once a month were disproportionately likely to be conservative men between the ages of 18 and 29 residing in Southern states.

Four out of 5 of them said that personal protection was the primary reason they carried a loaded handgun. Nearly 6 percent reported being threatened by another person with a firearm at least once in the past five years. And 1 out of 5 reported carrying a concealed handgun without a permit, even in states where such a permit is required. . . . .

Many states have broadened their concealed-carry policies in recent years. Before 2003, for instance, Vermont was the only state where a person could legally carry a concealed handgun without a permit. Since then, 11 other states have passed laws eliminating permit requirements for concealed carry. Many other states have passed laws making it easier to obtain concealed-carry permits. The result has been an explosion in the number of concealed-carry permit holders in the United States, from 2.7 million in 1999 to 14.5 million in 2016. That figure doesn’t account for individuals living in states without permitting requirements. . . .

Examining crime data from 1991 to 2015, the study, conducted by a team of researchers from Boston University, Children’s Hospital Boston, and Duke University, found that “shall-issue concealed carry permitting laws were significantly associated with 6.5% higher total homicide rates, 8.6% higher firearm-related homicide rates, and 10.6% higher handgun-specific homicide rates compared with may-issue states.”

The study also offered an explanation for why earlier studies, using data primarily from the 1990s and earlier, showed different results. Demand for handgun permits was relatively modest in earlier decades. But during the concealed-carry boom of the 2000s, demand for handguns soared. Gun manufacturers’ output increased dramatically.

From here.

Some other research:

* Another survey in 2015 also adds information about how many guns are purchased without background checks:

The national survey of firearms ownership reported by Miller and colleagues provides much-needed estimates of the household ownership of guns and the transactions by which private citizens acquire their firearms. For guns acquired in the 2 years before this nationally representative survey in 2015, 22% of the transactions (whether a purchase, a gift, an inheritance, or other) did not include a background check. . . . the proportion of transactions involving a retail dealer has not changed much, if at all, since the earlier survey—Miller and colleagues estimate 64%, compared with the NSPOF [1994] figure of approximately 60% (with some uncertainty due to inconsistent responses and sampling error). A few states have closed the private-sale loophole since then, whereas others have repealed their background check requirement. . . . [C]onsiderable evidence indicates that gang members and other active offenders obtain their guns from private transactions rather than from retail dealers

Citing:

*Miller, M., Hepburn, L., Azrael, D., "Firearm acquisition without background checks. Results of a national survey." 166 Ann Intern Med  233-239 (2017) (this is down from 40% in 1994, per the NSPOF, which was prior to implementation of the Brady Act).

* Cook P.J., Parker S.T., Pollack, H.A., "Sources of guns to dangerous people: what we learn by asking them.", 79 Prev. Med 28-36 (2015).

* Another study:

In the USA, homicide is a leading cause of death for young males and a major cause of racial disparities in life expectancy for men. There are intense debate and little rigorous research on the effects of firearm sales regulation on homicides. This study estimates the impact of Missouri's 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law on states' homicide rates and controls for changes in poverty, unemployment, crime, incarceration, policing levels, and other policies that could potentially affect homicides. Using death certificate data available through 2010, the repeal of Missouri's PTP law was associated with an increase in annual firearm homicides rates of 1.09 per 100,000 (+23%) but was unrelated to changes in non-firearm homicide rates. Using Uniform Crime Reporting data from police through 2012, the law's repeal was associated with increased annual murders rates of 0.93 per 100,000 (+16%). These estimated effects translate to increases of between 55 and 63 homicides per year in Missouri.

Webster, D., et al., "Effects of the repeal of Missouri's handgun purchaser licensing law on homicides." 91 J. Urban Health 293-302 (2014).

* Mental health and access to guns:

Analyses from the National Comorbidity Study Replication provide the first nationally representative estimates of the co-occurrence of impulsive angry behavior and possessing or carrying a gun among adults with and without certain mental disorders and demographic characteristics. The study found that a large number of individuals in the United States self-report patterns of impulsive angry behavior and also possess firearms at home (8.9%) or carry guns outside the home (1.5%). These data document associations of numerous common mental disorders and combinations of angry behavior with gun access. Because only a small proportion of persons with this risky combination have ever been involuntarily hospitalized for a mental health problem, most will not be subject to existing mental health-related legal restrictions on firearms resulting from a history of involuntary commitment. Excluding a large proportion of the general population from gun possession is also not likely to be feasible. Behavioral risk-based approaches to firearms restriction, such as expanding the definition of gun-prohibited persons to include those with violent misdemeanor convictions and multiple DUI convictions, could be a more effective public health policy to prevent gun violence in the population.

Jeffrey W. Swanson, et al., "Guns, Impulsive Angry Behavior, and Mental Disorders: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R)" 33 (2-3) Behavioral Sciences & The Law 199-212 (June 2015).

* Gun use in self-defense:

Objectives 

To describe the epidemiology of self-defense gun use (SDGU) and the relative effectiveness of SDGU in preventing injury and property loss. 

Methods 

Data come from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2007–2011, focusing on personal contact crimes. For property loss, we examined incidents where the intent was to steal property. Multivariate analyses controlled for age, gender of offender and victim, if offender had a gun, urbanicity, and thirteen types of self-protective action. 

Results 

Of over 14,000 incidents in which the victim was present, 127 (0.9%) involved a SDGU. SDGU was more common among males, in rural areas, away from home, against male offenders and against offenders with a gun. After any protective action, 4.2% of victims were injured; after SDGU, 4.1% of victims were injured. In property crimes, 55.9% of victims who took protective action lost property, 38.5% of SDGU victims lost property, and 34.9% of victims who used a weapon other than a gun lost property. 

Conclusions 

Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that SDGU is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.

David Hemenway and Sara J. Solnick, "The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007-2011", 79 Preventive Medicine 22-27 (October 2015).

Suicide and gun ownership:

Importance Suicide is the second leading cause of death among US adolescents, and in-home firearm access is an independent risk factor for suicide. Given recommendations to limit firearm access by those with mental health risk factors for suicide, we hypothesized that adolescents with such risk factors would be less likely to report in-home firearm access. 

Objectives To estimate the prevalence of self-reported in-home firearm access among US adolescents, to quantify the lifetime prevalence of mental illness and suicidality (ie, suicidal ideation, planning, or attempt) among adolescents living with a firearm in the home, and to compare the prevalence of in-home firearm access between adolescents with and without specific mental health risk factors for suicide. 

Design, Setting, and Participants Cross-sectional analysis of data from the National Comorbidity Survey–Adolescent Supplement, a nationally representative survey of 10 123 US adolescents (age range, 13-18 years) who were interviewed between February 2001 and January 2004 (response rate 82.9%). 

Exposures Risk factors for suicide, including a history of any mental health disorder, suicidality, or any combination of the 2. 

Main Outcomes and Measures Self-reported access to a firearm in the home. 

Results One in three respondents (2778 [29.1%]) of the weighted survey sample reported living in a home with a firearm and responded to a question about firearm access; 1089 (40.9%) of those adolescents reported easy access to and the ability to shoot that firearm. Among adolescents with a firearm in home, those with access were significantly more likely to be older (15.6 vs 15.1 years), male (70.1% vs 50.9%), of non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity (86.6% vs 78.3%), and living in high-income households (40.0% vs 31.8%), and in rural areas (28.1% vs 22.6%) (P < .05 for all). Adolescents with firearm access also had a higher lifetime prevalence of alcohol abuse (10.1% vs 3.8%, P < .001) and drug abuse (11.4% vs 6.9%, P < .01) compared with those without firearm access. In multivariable analyses, adolescents with a history of mental illness without a history of suicidality (prevalence ratio [PR], 1.13; 95% CI, 0.98-1.29) and adolescents with a history of suicidality with or without a history of mental illness (PR, 1.20; 95% CI, 0.96-1.51) were as likely to report in-home firearm access as those without such histories. 

Conclusions and Relevance Adolescents with risk factors for suicide were just as likely to report in-home firearm access as those without such risk factors. Given that firearms are the second most common means of suicide among adolescents, further attention to developing and implementing evidence-based strategies to decrease firearm access in this age group is warranted.

Joseph A. Simonetti, MD, MPH, et al., "Psychiatric Comorbidity, Suicidality, and In-Home Firearm Access Among a Nationally Representative Sample of Adolescents" 72(2) JAMA Psychiatry 152-159 (February 2015).

Mass shootings and gun ownership:

Objective: Model the global distribution of public mass shooters around the world. 

Method: Negative binomial regression is used to test the effects of homicide rates, suicide rates, firearm ownership rates, and several control variables on public mass shooters per country from 1966 to 2012. 

Results: The global distribution of public mass shooters appears partially attributable to cross-national differences in firearms availability but not associated with cross-national homicide or suicide rates. 

Conclusion: The United States and other nations with high firearm ownership rates may be particularly susceptible to future public mass shootings, even if they are relatively peaceful or mentally healthy according to other national indicators.

Lankford, Adam, "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries" 31(2) Violence and Victims; New York 187-199 (2016).

Douglas Zatzick, MD^3,7; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH^3,5,6,8doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.1760

When Do Higher Tax Rates Lead To Lower Tax Collections?

The Laffer curve peak at which higher tax rates lead to lower tax revenues is quantified for 27 OECD countries here. It ranges from top marginal rates of 60% to 76% by country, with the U.S. at the highest end of that range, and Luxembourg at the low end. Top rates exceed the Laffer curve peak as estimated by this study in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Sweden is the furthest beyond this peak.

Czechia (46%), Mexico (33%), New Zealand (44%) and Poland (47%) are the only countries with a lower top marginal rate than the U.S. (48%) by this methodology. The top rate in the U.S. is lower relative to its Laffer curve peak than every other OECD country except Slovakia which ties it at 30% and Mexico which is at 28%.

The notion that the U.S. has uncompetitively high tax rates relative to its economic peers is simply not born out by the evidence.

ASGH 2017 Abstracts

The abstracts of the conference presentations at the American Society of Human Genetics Conference in Orlando, Florida for 2017 which is currently in progress is available here. It sorts by first digit of the paper number so, for example, 2, 20, 201 and 2001 are all adjacent to each other. Plenary and platform talks have numbers up to 372. Higher numbers are poster-presentations.

General observation. Lots of studies looked at whether disease predictive tools like risk scores work across ancestry lines. Generally they do, but often they omit additional ancestry specific genes with similar phenotypic consequences.

14 Sperm have more de novo mutations than other kinds of cells

Various sporadic human diseases, ranging from autism spectrum disorders to congenital heart disease and muscular dystrophies, are caused by de novo mutations. In a classical model, these are assumed to occur at a low rate in the parental germ cells (10-4-10-8). Consequently, de novo mutations identified by genetic testing are often assigned a low risk of recurrence in siblings. This idea is increasingly challenged by the detection of mosaicism in the parents. However, previous studies were largely restricted to the analysis of somatic tissues, whose genetic information is, by definition, not transmitted to the next generation. Here, we directly assessed the presence of inherited “de novo” mutations in paternal sperm and discovered abundant, germline restricted mosaicism. These samples were collected from a panel of fourteen families with a proband presenting with autism spectrum disorder. For all of these a candidate de novomutation had been identified in our ongoing genetic studies of this disorder. Employing digital droplet PCR, the causative variants were detectable in 4 sperm samples, but virtually absent or drastically reduced in the somatic tissue for 3. The latter mutations were present a high allelic fractions (AF), comprising SNVs in NR2F1 (AF=8%) and GRIN2A (AF=15%), as well as a large deletion of CACNG2 (AF=10%). As a consequence, the GRIN2A variant, despite being undetectable in the father by classical genetic testing, was inherited by three siblings presenting with phenotypes consistent with this mutation.

We next used deep whole genome sequencing (90x) of matched sperm and blood samples of four fathers to test for germline mosaicism of all de novo variants present in the offspring. 5-10% of these mutations were detectable in the paternal sperm, half of which were absent or at very low levels (<2%) in the matched blood. These data, together with an unbiased analysis employing mosaic variant detection algorithms, suggest that germline-specific or germline-enriched mosaicism is currently underestimated. This information has important potential implications for clinical practice. Based on our results, genetic analysis of sperm has the potential to quantify individualized recurrence risks for affected families, but could also have predictive value for prospective fathers.

18 Alternative splicing of brain-expressed transcripts distinguishes major adult psychiatric disorders

19 Sexually dimorphic DNA methylation in human brain and relevance to psychiatric disorders

134 Gene x environment links between obesity and depression

204 Migraine risk inheritance patterns in Finland

216 Genome testing is very useful in treating NICU patients

1033 Genetics of child onset psychosis

1038 Gene associated with intellectual disability with severe self-harm

1048 DNA testing determines cause of 30% of intellectual disability cases not otherwise determinable

1287 Estimating contamination in DNA samples without doing comparisons

1314 Estimating genetic condition frequency with a combination of determination of frequency in people with monogenetic cause disease and review of population sample of genomes

1461 Infant development is affected by their microbiomes.

1596 Large, long term study evaluates stroke risk

1611 Search for opiod addiction gene in white women

1612 New markers for schizophrenia severity (about 80% hereditary)

1700 Genes involved in disorders of sex development (e.g. hemaphrodites)

2059 FASD (Fetal Alcoholism Spectrum Disorder) is indistinguishable from ADHD and has genetic origins rather that prenatal alcohol exposure origins; FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) has an environmental cause and is very distinct from FASD and ADHD.

2099 Some ADHD genes found in African-Americans are not found in other populations. A stable 6%-7% of kids are diagnosed with ADHD which is 75% to 90% genetic. (One of the other studies notes an 80% persistence from childhood to adulthood.)

2144 Genetics of ADHD hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention dimensions are quite different

2199 Most lifespan benefits of education are mediated through smoking or not

2468 DNA studies of kids with ADHD are worth it 8%-13% of the time.

2523 Discusses mosaicism and chimerism in humans

2579 Aging as measured by telomeres in preschoolers already differs based on sex and race in New Zealand children

2767 BMI is 48%-60% hereditary

2842 Alcoholism is 50%-65% hereditary

Military Works On Plan B If GPS Navigation Fails

The U.S. Army is working on "systems that combine cameras with inertial measurement units, or IMU, which are made of sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers. By joining this sensor data to a camera’s visual feedback, a soldier would be able to navigate effectively, even without GPS."

The idea is that you start from a known location (your last GPS ping), and then keep track of how far you've moved in each direction, while calibrating drift in your inertial measurements by using cameras to compare landmarks and landforms to what should be there is the IMU is on track.

While this is a military development, there's no obvious reason that similar capabilities couldn't be put in a small unit that would communicate via Bluetooth with your civilian smartphone where the camera element and "brains" of the system could be housed.

Shout Out To IT Folks For No Good Reason

From here.

Have a nice day!

The Culture That Is Japan

The Japanese are very good at rapidly self-organizing themselves. Elevator etiquette is no exception. As an article at Boing Boing explains, they have a system for determining who on an elevator is the "elevator captain", with simple rules of succession, and the elevator captain is responsible operating the buttons on the elevator for maximum efficiency.

Americans tend to think mostly about individual competencies and fail to recognize the extent to which groups can have collective competencies as well, which the Japanese hone far more than we do. Something that is particularly important about these group competency is that unlike individual competencies which are to a substantial extent inherited, and hence can only be improved so much through instruction, group competencies are almost entirely learned and hence can be improved with proper socialization.

Quote Of The Day

French special forces listen to philosophers yelling at each other.

From Questionable Content.

The Gifted (Episode 2) And Other Rants

Isn't it amazing that the same TV network that provides us with Fox News can also offer up a show like Marvel Universe project The Gifted which is hardly a conservative TV show in the tradition of Walker Texas Ranger or Naval Criminal Investigation Services or Touched By An Angel?

Episode 2 of the show brought echoes of Orange Is The New Black, and boldly advances stories about oppression, injustice and abuse of the federal government's powers against people who are treated as second class citizens.

Almost nine months into the Trump administration, the political center and the political left in the United States is learning what it looks like to see a decade of gains systemically rolled back by a mad king. Someone his Secretary of States called a "fucking moron" and the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, a ranking member of his own party from Tennessee, a place that strongly backed Trump in the Presidential election, complains that Trump has turned the White House into an "adult daycare center." This is not normal.

But, the center-left is learning the lesson that politics isn't a game anymore. The right has lost its decency. White supremacists and Nazis are coming out into the light. The President has pardoned a Sheriff who defied federal judges and violated civil rights en masse. The knives are out and people are starting to get hurt. It is war now, and lots of people are fighting for their very existence.

The right has overplayed its hand.

Ultimately, the prosperity of the United States doesn't come from rural American and small towns, it comes from university towns, coastal megacities, and the I-25 corridor in Colorado. Blue America is vastly more economically productive, and vastly less dysfunctional, than Red America. Blue America connects us to the global economy. Red America can't find North Korea on a map. Blue America has scientists, economists, lawyers and MBAs. Red America has blue collar men who can't hold down jobs and refuse to adapt to a changing economy. Blue America grapples with reality. Red America can't handle the truth. Blue America knows how to use policy to solve social problems. Red America thinks that gun violence and police brutality are inevitable and pretty much welcomes and praises both.

Blue America got complacent after eight years of benign rule under President Obama followed by polling that inaccurately predicted that Hillary Clinton was sure to win the Presidency. But, Blue America is now acutely aware that the political system in the United States is rigged by gerrymandering, voter suppression and the electoral college, and it is going to have to play dirty and do whatever it takes to regain power and prevent our nation from rushing headlong into decline. I believe it can prevail.

Indigenous Peoples' Day

It is officially Indigenous Peoples' Day in Denver. (Accompanied by a snow storm and freezing temperatures following a 75 degree and sunny day yesterday.)

Some thoughts:

* Indigenous Peoples' Day was invented as a substitute for Columbus Day.

* Columbus Day, in turn, was an effort of the Knights of Columbus and Italian-Americans, generally, then a comparatively young and disadvantaged immigrant population and minority Roman Catholic religious population, to gain a focus for their "tribes." Since then, white Roman Catholics, generally, and Italian-Americans, in particular, have increasingly come to identify as white Americans rather than identifying strongly with their particular national origin, as they have assimilated over roughly a hundred years since the main wave of Italian immigration to the United States. 

* The indigenous population of the Americas collapsed more than 90% following the arrival of Columbus in 1492 CE, as a proximate result of the arrival of Columbus and his crew. 

* Most of that decline was due to the arrival of Old World diseases that people in the New World did not have resistance to, a result that no one could have anticipated at the time and that Columbus, his crew, and subsequent waves of Old World colonists did not fully understand. In what would become Mexico, the primary cause determined from examining bodies in mass graves dug when the population was collapsing, was a virulent strain of salmonella. In North America, a couple of centuries later, small pox was the main culprit. The germ theory of disease would not be widely accepted for centuries and wouldn't even be proposed for another half a century.

* There was a spread of new diseases from the New World to the Old World, most notably, syphilis, which Columbus's crew brought back to Europe with them. But, it wasn't proportionate.

* This isn't to say that early European visitors to the New World treated the indigenous population well or in good faith. They leveraged the advantage they obtained from massive disease deaths to conquer indigenous populations. The harm caused by forced relocation and loss of land was far worse than the actual battle deaths in the "Indian Wars" as the U.S. military defines them.

* It is hard to argue that what indigenous people in the United States have ended up with ca. 2017, is a raw deal.

* This has left a lot of distrust, with the consequence that Native American populations in the U.S. have largely refused to cooperate with efforts to document their populations and heritage with DNA tests of contemporary populations and with ancient DNA, in a loss to science that can't fully be restored if Native American populations embrace these efforts to discern their heritage later on.

* Some of the most despised efforts, like forcible boarding schools for Native American populations designed to assimilate them into modern U.S. culture, erased cultural ties and destroyed families, while simultaneously producing the greatest levels of conventional socio-economic success for their alumni compared to people who grew up in reservations.

* Historically, the Native American criminal justice system has erred on the side of under enforcement of Indian on Indian crime, rather than by being too harsh.

* Sovereignty hasn't been used in a very economically advantageous manner by Indian Nations with reservations. Casino gambling, tax dodges and acceptance of toxic and nuclear waste dumping sites have been some of the main economic uses to which it has been put. Reservations are often too small, to poor in land quality, and too removed from the traditional territories of their inhabitants, to make continued use of traditional subsistence living viable economically.

Quote Of The Day Regarding Modern India

[H]ow about there being no state called “India” in the past and that India is really a modern nation state? I think this holds a lot more water than most people (Indians) realize. India is a modern nation-state, and its political culture differs from what came before in very important ways. E.g. there’s no denying the fact that India never had any culture of universal adult franchise before, or never before in India was an exercise in active, top-down social engineering been attempted (cf. caste reservations for the uninitiated), or women given legally equal status as men, or the existence of a single federal state unifying everything from the Andaman & Nicobar Islands to Ladakh etc. These laws and the culture that animates them are thoroughly unIndian in provenance. To a guy from, say, the Gupta Empire modern India would therefore be politically foreign, revolting and fascinating in equal measure.

From Brown Pundits.

MBAs v. Lawyers Quote Of The Day

Amazon.com Inc. is hiring 1,000 MBAs a year: 

Tech companies, once averse to hiring PowerPoint-loving B-school grads, have embraced them in the past few years. Ms. Park said business students understand Amazon’s customer-obsessed ethos and tend to be “risk oriented,” scrappy and analytical. 

One might question whether an MBA is likely to be "scrappier" than someone who didn't spend $100,000 on an MBA, or more "analytical" than a computer scientist, but certainly "risk oriented" is a standard descriptor. Going to business school is a fairly safe, conventional, keep-your-options-open career move, and so the stereotype is that MBAs tend to be fairly risk-averse. Not risk-averse like law students -- no one's as risk-averse as law students -- but, compared to a college dropout starting a company in her garage, you'd expect an MBA to be a bit more cautious, a bit less likely to "move fast and break things." And that is a big part of why tech companies were once averse to hiring them: If your goal is to disrupt the status quo, why hire someone who has spent her life trying to fit into it? 

But as "tech" has eaten the world, that mindset has changed, or at least diversified. Amazon is a disruptive force in many ways, but it is also a $464 billion market-cap company that is the dominant retailer of many products. There are plenty of startups in garages that still want to move fast and break things and disrupt the status quo, but Amazon is the status quo, and it doesn't necessarily want to break any of the things that have made it so gigantic and successful. So it brings in the MBAs.

From here.

Fun With What3Words

My office (not just my office suite, by my personal office) is located at task.people.transmitted on the 20th floor according to the What3Words system for identifying locations in lieu of latitude and longitude, which is really pretty darned cool.

The Gifted

The new Fox TV series, "The Gifted", an X-Men spin-off whose pilot aired on Monday, is remarkably good. It captures the zeitgeist of our era.  (I streamed it the day after. I don't have cable or satellite TV or a working antenna to get broadcast TV.)

The premier was sandwiched between oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court on two cases addressing how the law treats undocumented immigrants, the same day that the U.S. joined countries like Saudi Arabia to vote at the U.N. against condemning the death penalty for LGBT people just for being gay, and as the President tries to secure funds for a border wall with Mexico. 

It deals with how a tiny minority of mutants is bullied, treated inhumanely by authorities, detained and mistreated in detention, singled out, and often forced to live underground. Mutants and their families cross the border with Mexico illegally, to get into Mexico where life is better for them.

One of the issues discussed in the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday was the plight of pregnant women in immigration detention while facing deportation, and one of the mutant detainees in the series is pregnant.

It imagines a public distressed by dramatic incidents of mutants out of control uses of their powers that police are ill suited to respond to, the day after the biggest gun massacre in modern times takes place in Las Vegas.

In an era where the military and to a lesser extent police, are turning to use drones for reconnaissance and armed with weapons, the protagonists experience what it is like to have to flee for their lives from drones.

The ensemble script allows many promising actors who work well together to shine without requiring a single star to carry the entire show.

While it is a spin-off of the X-Men in the X-Men universe, it is decidedly not an "X-Men" themed production. The X-Men themselves disappeared a number of years ago in this reality. These mutants are not using their powers to change the world as comic book superheroes. Instead, they are merely to survive in a world that fears them. Their powers protect family members and friends, rather than putting arch-villains in their place.

One curious feature of the show, driven purely by a chase after state film agency subsidies, is that the show is set in greater Atlanta, but is filmed in Texas.

TANF Block Grants Were A Failure

Look at what happened with welfare, or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which was turned into a fixed block grant to the states during the Clinton administration and has become a Republican exemplar of the efficiency argument ever since. “In 1996, we block-granted money for welfare reform, and it worked like a charm,” Graham said at a news conference this month, making the case for his health-care legislation. “We put governors in charge of the program. We held them accountable.” 

But the welfare rolls shrank mostly because states kicked people off of the program, not because the program got more effective and efficient. An initiative that used to cover 68 of every 100 families in poverty now reaches just 23 of every 100 with cash benefits, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has found. Plus, given more flexibility and authority, states started using the money for initiatives other than cash benefits for poor mothers, such as early-childhood education and job training. That led to wide state-by-state differences in program outcomes. California covers 65 out of every 100 families in poverty with cash benefits under TANF, for instance, while Louisiana covers just four. 

From The Atlantic.

It also notes that Social Security and the IRS are both extremely efficient at what they do compared to either the states or other countries.

The Platte River Basin

Denver is a part of the Platte River basin that in turn feeds into the Mississippi River basin (other parts of Colorado are sources for many of the other major U.S. river basins). The Platte River basin is part of the Louisiana Territory as the French had claimed the entire Mississippi River basin as their own. The territory of Colorado that is west of the Continental Divide and much of Southern Colorado, in contrast, was not part of the Louisiana territory. Much of that territory was part of "Old Mexico".

Here is a nice map of that river basin via a Facebook post by John Orr whose blog is Coyote Gulch.