It Could Be Worse

There are places in the world that are worse than the rather sorry state of the United States of America these days. We have fallen far, but we are still no where near the bottom on this planet of ours.

There are at least twenty-two places that are clearly worse than most places in the United States, and that list isn't anywhere close to being comprehensive.

* We do not live in Russia where gangsters and oligarchs rule, unprovoked wars are fought, and alcoholism and suicide are so rampant that the life expectancy of men has plummeted.

* We do not live in Venezuela which is experiencing an economic melt down.

* We do not live in China which has capricious waves of crackdown on unpopular factions and propaganda talk out of Orwell's "1984", and minority populations on the fringes are treated little better than Jews in Nazi Germany.

* We do not live in Syria or Yemen which are currently in the midst of active civil wars with international dimensions that transform these wars in proxy wars of a kind not seen since the Cold War.

* We do not live in Saudi Arabia which is a vile theocratic monarchy.

* We do not live in Afghanistan which is in the midst of a slow burning civil war that has been interrupted only briefly since 1979.

* We do not live in South Sudan where bands of child soldiers bounce around a country that has never really found its stride.

* We do not live in North Korea where an emerging monarch arbitrarily executes people, starvation is rampant, and the entire outside world is shut out.

* We do not live in Northern Nigeria where underfed herders fight genocidal wars against marginal subsistence farmers and high school girls are kidnapped en masse and turned into sex slaves.

* We do not live in Uzbekistan where torture is the tool that is used to keep the masses under the leadership's thumb.

* We do not live in Myanmar where soldiers kill and rape and burn down villages of a Muslim minority with abandon.

* We do not live in the Philippines were a murderous thug fans indiscriminate violence and disasters routinely take great tolls on people's lives.

* We do not live in El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, where gang violence and unchecked criminal activity have reached such epic proportions that people are fleeing the country as refugees.

* We do not live in Gaza where there are no resources, an embargo of the outside world, privation, oppression and sporadic military incursions, while local "democratic" leaders are often warlords and terrorists.

* We do not live in Botswana where development is woefully behind and more than 15% of the population has AID/HIV.

* We do not live in Somalia where warlord managed anarchy is still the rule, war driven famine is common place, and there is no legitimate government which can exercise meaningful control over the nation.

* We are close on the heels of Hungary and Poland in backing away from and dismantling democratic institutions, but we aren't quite there yet.

* We have a mixed set of economic signals, with falling unemployment but also falling real wages, with a trade war looming, but not yet in full bloom. But, we have not had to weather the economic collapse that struck Greece not so long ago.

We are no longer a shining beacon on a hill. We are no long the best place in the world to live. We have lost our leadership on so many fronts. But, we are far from the worst place in the world to live either.

What Motivates Political Violence?

One of the conventional political theory explanations of political violence is that it is a response to the apparent futility of using the political process.

But, experience seems to be telling us another story.

For the last two years, Republicans have controlled the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as many state governments in "red" states. They have as much political power as they have ever had in the United States.

Republicans also controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress fro the first six years of George W. Bush's eight year Presidency (from January 2001 to January 2007), but the filibuster in the U.S. Senate was still meaningful then and the Republicans didn't have a filibuster-proof majority in any of those years. The U.S. Supreme Court was moderately conservative in those six years, but not nearly so conservative as it is now, following Gorsuch's and Kavanaugh's appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. So, Republicans really have more power under Trump now, than they did then.

Prior to George W. Bush, the last time that Republicans controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress, however, was in March of 1933 during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover, at a time when the Republican party was a very different, pre-realignment party.

Yet, politically motivated violence and threats of violence remain overwhelmingly right wing political tactics in the United States.

What explains this observation? Why is the right wing continuing to resort to violence and violent threats when it has all of the political power through electoral means? Is political violence just a lagging indicator?

Historically, terrorism has not been exclusively right wing, but has been right wing much more often than it has been left wing.

Truth

From here.

Americans From South Asia Are Much More Genetically Diverse Than Chinese Americans

Razib does some basic analysis of with the genomes of Americans ancestrally from South Asia and from China, respectfully. It is summed up in this chart:

In both case, immigration to the United States is not uniform. Some geographic areas and some castes in India are greatly overrepresented. In the case of China:

[T]he American Chinese community has been historically biased toward being mostly Cantonese. More recently, there have been migrants from Fujian.

In the case of South Asia:

[T]he middle Indian cluster are South Indian brahmins who have high levels of ANI and the top cluster is North Indian brahmins/? probably punjabis more in the north. there aren’t many ppl from the cow belt in the USA. some south indian brahmins, but they’ll be in the same position as a lot of gujus.

But, as the chart above illustrates, the genetic diversity of the various South Asian populations that have immigrated to the United States is vast compared to that of the ethnically Han immigrants to the United States from China.

This reflects the underlying reality that South Asia itself has much more genetic diversity than China does.

New Tax Bills Pass The House Of Representatives

On Friday, September 28, 2018, three new tax bills passed the Republican controlled Congress. They have significant budget implications and were mostly not notices when all eyes were on the hearings regarding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 

All or part of one or more of the bills has a decent shot of passing the U.S. Senate and being made into law before the November 6, 2018 midterm elections take effect (it may be the last shot that Republicans have to control tax reform). Motley Fool, at the link above, explains the bills (emphasis in italics added):

Technically, Tax Reform 2.0 is a collection of three bills, each with its own unique purpose. Here are the highlights of each:

• The Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018 would make the individual tax changes that were passed in late 2017 permanent. Currently, the lower marginal tax rates, higher Child Tax Credit, and most of the other tax changes that affect individual taxpayers are set to expire after 2025. This bill also would extend the more generous medical deduction threshold of 7.5% of AGI, which is currently set to expire after the 2018 tax year, for another two years.  

• The Family Savings Act of 2018 would make several changes affecting retirement, education, and general savings in the United States. It would remove the age limit of 70 1/2 for making traditional IRA contributions and also exempt Americans with less than $50,000 in their retirement accounts from required minimum distributions, or RMDs. The bill also would help families by allowing up to $7,500 in penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts for expenses related to a new child. Additionally, it would create a new type of savings account, known as a Universal Savings Account, which would have a similar tax structure to a Roth IRA but would allow $2,500 to be set aside on a tax-advantaged basis for any purpose, not just retirement. Finally, the bill would make some small tweaks to allowable expenses for 529 accounts and make it easier for smaller companies to join together to offer 401(k) plans.  

• Finally, the American Innovation Act is the shortest bill of the three and is designed to encourage Americans to start their own businesses. It would do this by allowing qualified new businesses to deduct as much as $20,000 in start-up costs in the year they are incurred. 

An uphill battle ahead 

While the Tax Reform 2.0 bills have passed the house, they face a challenging road ahead of them in the Senate, to say the least. In fact, the Senate isn't expected to debate this legislation at all. 

Simply put, there are a lot of changes in these bills that aren't popular among Democrats and even some moderate Republicans. Cost is one major issue -- these bills would cost an estimated $627 billion over the next 10 years on top of the $1.5 trillion estimated cost of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It's not likely that any Democrats would go along with such a high cost, especially for legislation that's seen as a tax cut that disproportionally benefits the rich. 

Having said that, some of the retirement-savings changes in the Family Savings Act could end up being considered by the Senate, as they do have some bipartisan appeal. For example, getting rid of the traditional IRA age limit for contributions is quite popular on both sides of the aisle. In fact, there's currently a Senate bill known as the Retirement Enhancement Security Act that contains many of the same provisions that could potentially be voted on later this year. 

The bottom line is that we could see some of the retirement-specific changes proposed by Tax Reform 2.0 ultimately become law. On the other hand, the bills that would make the individual tax cuts permanent and allow for small businesses to deduct expenses immediately are likely to go no further.

In addition to these changes, President Trump is (so far unsuccessfully) attempting to index capital gains for inflation via a Treasury regulation rather a new statute.

Evil Personality Traits Are Highly Correlated

Egoism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, spitefulness and others are among the traits of the malevolent side of human personality. As results from a recently published German-Danish research project show, these traits share a common "dark core." People with one of these tendencies are also likely to have one or more of the others.

From here.

Religious Affiliations Rated From Good To Evil

This post is an unscientific, only half serious ranking of different kinds of religious affiliations on a scale that I describe as "good to evil." The ranking is from good to evil, in order, so the first listed religious affiliation is the most good, and the last is the most evil.

It is a rating of an average person with a given religious affiliation and recognizes that every category has a range of individuals. Even the most highly rated religious affiliation will have some people whose conduct and actions are particularly evil, and even the lowest rated religious affiliation will have some people who live exemplary lives. Religious affiliation definitely influences how likely it is that someone conducts their lives in a good or evil way, but it is not destiny. 

I strongly support the view that one should not discriminate based upon religious affiliation in making decisions about particular individuals because the variation within any religious affiliation is so great.

Additional caveats and definitions follow the rankings. Commentary follows some rankings in italics.

The Rankings 

1. Society of Friends (Quakers)

2. Humanists

3. Atheists (not connected to a Maoist or Lenninist Communist ideology)

4. Satanic Temple members

5. Buddhist and/or Shinto and/or Taoist/Daoist (excluding Tibetan Buddhists). This category is "and/or" because any people of Japanese origins simultaneously adhere to Buddhist and Shinto and Taoist religious practices and beliefs in addition to Confucian ethical precepts. Daoist is an alternative transliteration of Taoist into English language spelling.

6. American Ethical Union (a Humanist affiliation mostly made up of people who were historically Jewish)

7. Reformed Jewish

8. Unitarian Universalist (including Unitarian Christians within this otherwise non-Christian denomination).

9. Reconstructionist Jewish (the most "liberal" of the main organized American Jewish "denominations").

10. Secular Jewish

11. Agnostic

12. Episcopalian

13. Confucians (who are not adherents to a religion) 

14. Bahai

15. Metropolitan Churches (a predominantly LGBT Christian denomination)

16. Native American folk religion adherents

17. United Church of Christ and Congregationalist Churches (descendants of the historical established church of New England)

18. Church of the Brethren

19. Orthodox Jews

20. Sikhs

21. Tibetan Buddhists

22. Spiritual but not religious

23. New Age Spiritualists, Neo-Pagans and Wiccans (except White Supremacist Nordic Neo-Pagans)

24. LeVey Satanists

25. Orthodox Church in America

26. Druze

27. Catholic denominations that split from the Roman Catholic Church

28. Eastern Rite Catholics

29. Greek Orthodox

30. Hindu (other than Hare Krishna)

31. Non-Religious

32. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

33. Muslims who emphasize Sufi spiritualism in their lives (whether Shiite or Sunni)

34. Amish

35. African Methodist Episcopal (AME) A predominantly African-American group of denominations

36. Ethiopian Orthodox and Coptic Christians

37. Nation of Islam

38. Presbyterian (USA)

39. Roman Catholic There is a particularly broad range of diversity within this, the largest Christian denomination in the world.

40. Syrian Orthodox

41. United Methodist This is close to the median for people in the United States outside the South and something of a default point until someone proves otherwise

42. Christian Church (Disciples)

43. Parsi (South Asian and Iranian Zoroastrians)

44. Korean Protestant

45. Reformed Church (descendant of European Calvinist churches)

46. Hare Krishnas

47. Latino Pentecostals

48. Christian Scientist

49. American Baptist Church

50. Latino Mormons

51. Alevi and Alawite Muslims

52. Rastafarian

53. Community of Christ (a smaller Mormon denomination)

54. Shiite Muslim (not elsewhere classified)

55. Mormon (not elsewhere classified)

56. Lutheran, Missouri Synod

57. Anglican (affiliated with African Anglicans but predominantly white in the U.S.)

58. Unification Church (Moonies)

59. African American Baptist Churches

60. Church of God (several predominantly African-American Pentecostal denominations)

61. African immigrant animists

62. Sunni Muslim (not elsewhere classified)

63. Maoist Atheists

64. Jehovah's Witnesses

65. Messianic Jews

66. Lenninist Atheists

67. Russian Orthodox

68. Non-denominational Christian churches and megachurches (this category has broad internal variation)

69. Seventh Day Adventists

70. Polygamous Mormon denominations who live in the larger community

71. African immigrant Protestant churches

72. Lutheran, Wisconsin Synod

73. Presbyterian Church in America

74. Scientologists

75. Assembly of God

76. Southern Baptists

77. Evangelical televangelists and Christian revivalist ministers

78. Various splinter small predominantly white Evangelical denominations

79. Salafist Muslims and adherents of similar Muslim movements (e.g. the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi movement and the Taliban)

80. Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) church

81. Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS (the "God Hates Fags" church)

82. White Supremacist Nordic Neo-Pagans

83. Various restrictive cult of personality churches (e.g. the Branch Dravidians)

Caveats and Definitions

Descriptive

This ranking is a descriptive one. Thus, it is based upon how people with this religious affiliation live their lives individually and collectively, not upon how the doctrines and beliefs associated with their religious affiliation says that they should act.

Criteria

It is based primarily upon my personal perception of how ethically and morally people who consider themselves to have this religious affiliation tend to act when faced with a decision or an opportunity to act morally or immorally. 

One of the important subsets of this first criteria is how people with this religious affiliation would be likely to treat a stranger of unknown religious affiliation who faces persecution or simply needs help.

As a secondary consideration given significant less weight than the primary consideration, I consider the extent to which people who share this religious affiliation tend to engage in effective collective action for the benefit of others either within or outside that religious affiliation. The collective action involved may be, but ins't necessarily, itself affiliated with the religious affiliation itself. If people with a religious affiliation often engage in effective ecumenical or secular collective action for the benefit of others, this still counts. On the other hand, if people with a particular religious affiliation often attempt to engage in collective action for the benefit of others, but their attempts tend to be disorganized and ineffective, their collective action is not a plus factor.

Non-Quantitative

No effort is made to quantify the extent to which religious affiliations are good or evil, it is simply a relative rank ordering.

Based Upon U.S. Adherents

All of these rankings are based upon the subset of people with this religious affiliation who live in the United States of America, even though, in the case of many religious affiliation that has primarily non-U.S. adherents, the people who have that religious affiliation in the United States may be highly atypical of the global population of people with that religious affiliation.

For example, Hindus are ranked here based upon the subset of Hindus who live in the United States and not upon Hindus in India.

This said, familiarity with the most distinctive aspects of a religious affiliation with many non-U.S. adherents does inform the rankings to some extent where there is no reason to believe that U.S. adherents of a religious affiliation are typical. 

Categorization and Ethnic Subgrouping

In some cases, people who have the same religious affiliation or identity, strictly speaking, are strongly segregated ethnically and would, for example, rarely worship together. 

For example, even though most Protestant churches in immigrant Korean communities in the United States are affiliated with a larger, predominately white U.S. Protestant denomination, in practice, people affiliated with Korean Protestant churches are very similar to each other, regardless of their particular denominational affiliation in the United States and are relatively speaking more dissimilar for the purposes evaluated in this ranking to white American members of the Protestant denomination with which they are formally affiliated.

So, to the extent possible I have made this distinction in all cases except the Roman Catholic Church, which despite its great internal diversity, does not quite reach the threshold where, for example, one can meaningfully segregate out Latino Roman Catholics from ethically Irish or ethnically Italian or ethnically French Roman Catholics. At any rate, even to the extent that it is possible to do this, I am not knowledgable enough about the inner subcultures of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to do so.

I also recognize that there are more subgroups within both Shiite and Sunni Islam than I identify, but have not disaggregated them for the purposes of this ranking at this time.

I try to be as comprehensive as possible, but some religious affiliations, for example, Yazidis, I have insufficient knowledge and data to make any kind of evaluation.

But Why Would You Want One?

The Army is working on a howitzer with a 1150 mile range. But, why would you ever want one instead of aircraft or a missile that can already accomplish the same thing.

Sometimes it is indeed hard to get to the front lines of a battle zone with artillery. 

But, given that long range strike missions are already something that the U.S. does much better than any other country in the world, do we really need a cannon that can hit a target in Chicago from Civic Center Park in Denver? 

Existing Army artillery would struggle to hit a target in Denver's outer ring suburbs from that point of origin.

One thing is sure, however. Any attempt to build this superfluous beast would be wickedly expensive, over budget, incredibly behind schedule, and have capabilities less impressive than those of the initially pitched weapons system.

Stray Thoughts

Philosophy

* Does philosophy involve a higher level of cognition that almost all other animals and many humans are capable of? Or, it is a wasteful side effect of high cognitive abilities?

Culture Wars And Cultural Evolution

* Two important cultural alternatives to the emerging culture of the global establishment, at a very high level of generality, are the cultures of white conservatives in the U.S. and Islam. Those macro-cultural families, like all other living cultures are constantly transforming internally. What is going on in each? Where is each one headed? What promising opportunities and threats are associated with these changes?

* A lot of this dependents upon what we can do to change our economy to offer a better deal to people who have less education and less capacity to attain it. Getting men into pink collar jobs could help too.

Education

* Socio-economic and educational attainment are significantly influenced in the U.S. by family wealth (which impacts the rate of college completion and the type of college attended relative to academic ability), not just genetics. Another powerful demonstration of this fact is the huge disparity in college attainment between black men and black women who have extremely similar intelligence related genes - disparities in the way conduct is treated (often discriminatorily) and manifests (men are more violent than women) between men and women are likely a major cause. One seems something similar in people who earn GEDs, most of whom went to prison and/or dropped out of high school for prolonged periods due to conduct or pregnancy issue. GED earners have IQs similar to or in excess of average high school graduates, but the GED is a far less valuable educational credential. 

* Most students who need remedial work before college are deficient in mathematics, which is notable because on one hand, it is hard to fake mathematics competence, but on the other hand, it is a fairly compact body of information which is more amenable to improvement with instruction than reading and writing skills.

* Insufficient mathematics mastery is also a major barrier to people pursuing STEM majors (and in some programs that require calculus for it, such as Miami University of Ohio, economics and business majors). The two most failed course in higher education are Calculus I and Chemistry 101, both of which approach 50% and both of which are highly quantitative subjects where non-mastery of the subject matter can't be faked. In part, this is because high school graduates are ill prepared for these subjects and, in part, this is because these classes are ill taught, often in large sections with teaching assistances who aren't fluent in English, with a sink or swim attitude. There is also some evidence that these courses and quantitative STEM majors generally have a minimum threshold of math ability that many students are simply incapable of surpassing, which suggests that college course advising is also weak and unrealistic in these areas. In some cases, Calculus and/or Chemistry may be an inappropriate tool to weed out students because it is not really relevant to higher subject matter in the field.

* Students who are not sufficiently academically strong have immense college dropout rates, and show less value added in terms of knowledge and competencies gained even in the cases where they manage to graduate. Much of the benefit of "some college" is a pure sorting effect rather than value added from attending college. Society would be better off if the threshold for starting a college education were higher and higher education resources were concentrated on those with a greater likelihood of benefitting from college. We waste a lot of resources in our society providing college instruction to students who aren't ready for it academically (although they might be ready at some future point). This also isn't a terribly costly policy, since on average, lower income students are less academically successful.

* Society would also be better off it education aid were more heavily need based. Too few academically able low income students go to college and their extremely valuable human capital is underutilized. Too many high income students who aren't academically ready for college wastefully attend it and inappropriate receive signaling related economic benefits as a result.

* The K-12 education system wastes the time of a huge share of its students and the system by trying to shoehorn students who will not realistically be academically ready for college into a watered down college preparatory program. Meanwhile, the state of vocational education for "mid-level" occupations that don't require a four year college degree, but require some education or skill development beyond the standard watered down college preparatory program, is overall dismal although there are occasional bright spots that have happy and economically successful students.

* High schools have bad incentives to offer AP/IB/concurrent enrollment college courses to students who aren't ready for those classes, and to encourage students who aren't academically ready to succeed in college to attend college.

* Education programs that are most effective in "value added" involve behavior modification with some buy-in in the form of student/parent choice.

* School choice programs are mostly beneficial, where they work, not because they great more excellent schools, but because they more swiftly shut down more mediocre schools that undermine student performance.

* IQ needs to be nurtured through schooling and some kinds of education, like STEM education, like learning to solve a Rubik's Cube, permit improvements in capabilities that cannot be achieved regularly in any other way. But, IQ and heredity are not very influential with regard to competencies that reside not in the individual, but in group interactions. We can't consistently make kids who are dumb a lot smarter in relative terms, but we can socialize all children much better than we do on average.

Criminal Justice

* We overuse pre-trial incarceration in a way that impairs substantive rights based on wealth.

* We inappropriately use incarceration for debt collection.

* We overused incarceration in cases of technical violations of parole conditions and "technical" escapes such as walk aways from half way houses.

* Drug crime sentences are inappropriately long relative to their seriousness as are federal child pornography sentences.

* We do a poor job of treating substantive abuse and mental health issues that are very common among incarcerated people.

* The importance of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as a cause of crime and misconduct while incarcerated cannot be exaggerated. It is one of the dominant factors and that should spawn pervasive efforts across society to make more serious attempts to prevent TBI.

* Both minority street gangs and the white supremacy movement are nurtured by existing misadministration of prisons and jails which is the norm in American practice today.

* We do a dismal job of holding bad cops and bad prosecutors accountable and getting them out of the criminal justice system.

* High IQ and college degrees are stunningly protective against incarceration in prison, despite the substance abuse and mental health issues still present in those populations.

* Castration or the equivalent is underused to a recidivism reducing sanction that could greatly reduce incarceration.

* Prison conditions in the U.S. often fail to meet international human rights standards.

* Juvenile secrecy does more harm than good in most cases, so do mandates that employers not ask about criminal records in employment applications.

* Felon disqualification from voting is counterproductive.

* The number of people who ultimately obtain shorter sentences or acquittals through post-conviction appeals, collateral review of judgments in the courts, and the commutation and pardon process is pretty stunningly small compared to naive intuition.

* The trial penalty in the criminal justice system is too high.

* The incentives discouraging criminal defendants from testifying in their criminal proceedings are too great.

Personal and Public Health

* I've lost about 30 pounds since starting a diet in April. It has not been easy and has required prescribed medication assistance. Basically, I have followed a fairly strict low carb diet which the drugs have helped reinforce and have helped me to continue to follow. I've only modestly increased exercise so far. I've also caught up on deferred dental work this summer and fall.

* How long will it take for culture to evolve enough to rebalance diet and exercise to avoid the obesity and related health issues that traditional patterns of diet and exercise prevented until certain aspects of modern culture that made us more sedentary and changed our diets arose? I think that eventually this will happen and the public is responsive to health recommendations for diet albeit on a lagged basis as statistics on how what we eat has changed over the decades.

Quote of the Day and Book Review

"Guess I won't ask you to borrow one of those condoms." 

"Take them all," I say, plucking the foil wrappers from my purse and tossing them on her binder. "Although I'm sure Mrs. Hill has plenty she would happily give you." 

Faye laughs. A normal person would probably shove them out of sight, but she just leaves them there, prompting some strange looks from our classmates. 

"Oh, and Faye? The correct question would have been to ask me to give one to you. Borrowing implies that you'll give it back. Please don't."

- Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, "Firsts" (2016).

As the United States Center for Disease Control reminded us via Twitter on July 23, 2018:

"We say it because people do it," they wrote. 

"Don't wash or reuse condoms! Use a fresh one for each sex act."

A Short Book Review of "Firsts".

Ms. Flynn's debut novel, by the way, is worthwhile, filling a much needed gap in the literature for teens who are, or are considering being, sexually active.

"Firsts" is necessarily much more explicitly sexual the most teen fiction, in which heroines tend to get laid for the first time, by their one true love, half way through the second volume of a three volume novel, or at the very end of a stand alone novel close to the novel's own climax, double entendre intended. 

But, she does its topic justice by exploring the complex emotional and interpersonal dimensions of being sexually active in a relatively realistic, albeit slightly exaggerated, way. 

Flynn also refrains from sex shaming (something that even horror movies love to do) or obsessing over consequences like STDs and pregnancy that can be largely avoided if one, like her heroine, practices safe sex, while addressing the various serious issues like improper pressure to have sex and very early teen sexuality and exploitation, without being completely overwhelmed by the negatives.

Other resources that are available don't meet that need.

In contrast, webcomics like "Boo! It's Sex" and "Oh Joy Sex Toy!", and a great many "medically" oriented sites, are really little more than illustrated sex education classes or background medical research. But, while reproductive health is important, that isn't all that there is to sex.

Cosmopolitan magazine covers somewhat similar ground in pseudonymous sex articles delivered with a similar attitude, but aimed at an older audience that thinks it is more sophisticated than it really is, of twenty-something single women in the big city looking for an eventual husband. 

And, both pornography (which is ubiquitous on the Internet for free in all of its form), and genre romance fiction, are such unrealistic fantasies that they are misleading. Pornography, of course, also never addresses the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of sexuality at all, even though it illustrates some of the mechanics of having sex in a way that comprehensive sex education classes, despite their description, do not. Romance novels, however, also tend towards either idealized sex, or rape fantasies, and tend to put sex on a pedestal, rather than integrating it into the lives of its characters as just one more part of their lives.

"Firsts", along with some isolated premium cable television network series, in contrast, integrate realistic descriptions of sex into its narrative more holistically, without quite crossing the line over into erotic fiction, which is simply pornography in written form.

The Best of Times, The Worst Of Times

The Best Of Times

There are things about living today that are the best that they have ever been.

For example, one of the things I dreamed about when I was in high school was being able to experience pop culture from all over the world. Now, with streaming services like Spotify, Netflix and Hulu, with art house theaters (which didn't exist in my small town childhood), and with book stores that have more cosmopolitan offerings, at least to some degree, this is possible.

Likewise, the culinary delights of almost any place in the world is just around the corner, who a huge variety of grocery and restaurant choices.

Moveable goods are cheap. Products like 3D printers, computers, GPS and smart phones make possible things we could barely even have imagined.

Cars are safer and last longer and are more fuel efficient and less polluting, and speed limits are higher, We are on the brink of transitioning from gasoline and diesel powered motor vehicles to self-driving electric vehicles. Active efforts are underway to restore supersonic passenger flight. Renewable energy technologies have crossed key thresholds. High speed trains are an effective mode of transportation in Europe, Japan, China and the Northwestern United States.

Teen pregnancies and crime rates are near long time lows for the United States. The average American is more educated than ever and racial disparities in education are less than they were. Gay rights are near a high water mark. The nation is more non-religious and less Christian than it has been since the Enlightenment. The #MeToo movement has brought accountability to sexual abusers in many positions of power (although not the President yet), and the Roman Catholic church under one of its best Popes in decades is cleaning up its own house.

The mindless march towards higher incarceration rates has finally ebbed. Marijuana legalization has probably crossed a point of no return.

We know everything there is to know about fundamental physics that has engineering applications even if we haven't scraped out every last secret that Nature has to offer and sometimes don't know how to apply what it is that we do know. We remain hot in pursuit of more knowledge on this front.

We haven't had a draft since Vietnam and many other countries in the developed world have followed suit. We aren't exactly at peace, but we are not fighting a major war either. Precision munitions and drones have dramatically changed warfare to the point were knowing where to strike is a bigger problem than being able to do so. The Islamic terrorism threat that was at the forefront in the U.S. after 9-11 has largely failed to materialize in the U.S.

We have developed new vaccines like HPV, are making serious progress on an HIV vaccine, can cure near sightedness with lasers, have made real progress in reducing trauma mortality, and may have discovered a cure for most sepsis cases. Again, efforts towards further medical advances are vigorous.

The Worst Of Times

Not all of the news is good, however, and the United States feels to many on both the left and the right like an empire in decline.

Opioid deaths have been surging. So has cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol abuse. We are growing obese as our traditions are not long sufficient to keep us well exercised with a healthy diet to match our lifestyles.

Our President is a delusional idiot and about a third of American voters, disproportionately older, white, male, rural and Southern, back him. We are taking steps backwards as he leads us towards a more racist, more xenophobic, more protectionist, more misogynist, more homophobic, more anti-Semitic, more anti-Muslim, more cruel and more hateful world. Nazi and white supremacist politics are resurgent in Europe and the United States.

His movement has disavowed the legitimate media, higher education, science, and the rule of law. They practice a Bizarro World Christianity that hates the poor and loves the rich, that hates the foreigner and is stripped of compassion and mercy.

It is more dangerous to be LGBTQ. It is more dangerous to be black or a foreigner.

We have the most corrupt Presidential administration since Andrew Jackson, and senior staff positions full of people who want to undermine their agencies.

Mass shootings have sprung up at an unprecedented rate. Right wing terrorism is resurgent. Unjustified police violence that goes unsanctioned remains all too common and is encouraged by the President.

The United States has health care less universal than anywhere else in the world, at by far the highest cost in the world, with results that aren't the best by far. Huge tragedies like lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan and the failure to provide adequate relief to Puerto Rico after its most recent losing fight with a Hurricane remain without a remedy.

Since the 1970s, the working class has seen economic stagnation, has found it harder and harder to make marriages work, and has struggled to get by with more work, while education and health care costs, for example soaring. There has been economic growth, but only confined to the upper middle class and far more than that to the 1%.

U.S. international goodwill is gone and so is our commitment to human rights, and we have failed to intervene constructively in miserable wars in places like Yemen and Syria.

Our K-12 education has declined even as our universities remain national leaders.

Despite progress on renewables and green technologies, the administration is working hard to undermine environmental standards, to encourage more pollution, to deny that man made climate change is real, against the entire world.

The democratic institutions of the United States are deeply troubled. Republicans are actively working on voter suppression. The electoral college and gerrymandering are systemically biased against urban and liberal voters. Russians interfered with out most recent election and many Republicans think it was good thing. Lobbies for anti-social big business interests and the NRA remain absurdly powerful. Third-parties voters hurt their friends and are manipulated nefariously. Republicans have abused legislative norms in Congress while Democrats have not responded in kind and have been taken advantage of in the process. The U.S. Supreme Court is shifting left as a result of a variety of dirty tricks. We have no way to swiftly remove a madman like Trump. Media giants like major urban newspapers are in decline, and more than a third of voters ignore them anyway drawn in by misleading partisan journalism and fake news from Fox and less reputable less well known sources. Social media is vulnerable to demagogues. Political party elites couldn't contain a baser rank and file.

It is infuriating that we know what the problems are, we know who in the administration is dirty, we know the President's deep, deep faults and yet, nothing seems to happen.

The left has mobilized and might get things on the right track again in the mid-term elections in two months, or they could have another stunning and unexpected failure like 2016. All hope is not lost, but right now the future looks like a dark one. We need an unprecedented Blue Tsunami, and that may or may not happen.

There is no vision for a way forward.

Pro-Basketball Players Are Not Mutants

Do very tall people like pro-basketball players have special genetics mutations that make them really tall?

Or, do they just have a nearly complete collection of the common genetic variants that tend to make people taller as a matter of more or less random chance?

The answer is the latter. 

All of the height of a very tall pro-basketball player whose genome was examined (citing this study) can be explained by having an above average (at the 4.2 standard deviation level, which is 198 more than the average) proportion of the 2,910 known common height related genes that favor greater height (technically speaking, this is actually 198 more than the average proportion of 2,910 "single nucleotide polymorphisms" a.k.a. SNPs, rather than "genes" in the narrow technical sense of that word).

These individuals just happen to be at the extreme end of the bell curve for height.

Delayed Gratification Is A Powerful Predictor Of Future Income

Traditional methods used by psychologists (such as correlations and regression) haven't allowed for a simultaneous comparison of different factors relating to an individual's affluence. This study collected a large amount of data -- from more than 2,500 diverse participants -- and split them into a training set and a test set. The test set was put aside while the training set produced model results. The researchers then went back to the test set to test the accuracy of their findings. 

Unsurprisingly, the models indicated that occupation and education were the best predictors of high income, followed by location (as determined by zip code) and gender -- with males earning more than females. Delay discounting was the next most-important factor, being more predictive than age, race, ethnicity or height.

From here citing:

William H. Hampton, Nima Asadi, and Ingrid R. Olson, "Good Things for Those Who Wait: Predictive Modeling Highlights Importance of Delay Discounting for Income Attainment." Frontiers in Psychology (2018). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01545

Perceived Scarcity Drives Conservatism

A new study shows that "in the 2016 presidential election, with Republicans making gains in counties that had 2.5 times more deaths from suicide, alcohol, and overdose."

Counties with a net gain in the percentage of individuals who voted for the Republican candidate had a 15 percent higher 2015 age-adjusted death rate than counties with a net gain in Democratic voters. The increase in death rates due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide was also 2.5 times higher in counties where Republicans made gains compared with counties where Democrats made gains. 

"It's commonly argued that President Trump won by receiving more votes from people who have been left behind economically -- especially older, less-educated, and less-urban, white voters," said Dr. Goldman. "Based on our data, we can also say that changes in life expectancy were an independent factor in voting choices. Reduced health prospects are an important marker of dissatisfaction, discouragement, hopelessness, and fear -- sentiments that may have resonated with voters who sided with President Trump. Although correlation does not imply causality, our findings also suggest that plausible improvements in life expectancy in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin might have shifted their electoral votes to Secretary Clinton.

This isn't a great surprise and corroborates previous data.

General, but less widely disseminated political theory explains why this is so.

Basically, conservatism (and religiosity) is associated with economic hardship and uncertainty, while liberalism and secularism are associate with economic prosperity and security.

If personal survival is the key, you focus on looking out for yourself and perhaps your family, at the expense of empathy for others specifically, or in the abstract in the sense of the larger community and environment.

Suicide, alcohol related and overdose related deaths are symptoms of psychological stress and despair that tend to be associated with economic hardship and uncertainty. So, survival oriented thinking, which tends to be conservative, prevails.

The paper is:

Lee Goldman, et al., "Independent Relationship of Changes in Death Rates with Changes in US Presidential Voting." Journal of General Internal Medicine (2018). DOI: 10.1007/s11606-018-4568-6

Quote of the Day

Unless you are like Saudi Arabia sitting on the bulk of the world reserve of ‘spice’, you cannot really afford being crazy asshole and still remain in long durable alliances.

From a comment posted by Shafiq R at September 5, 2018 at 3:21 am (the literary reference is to Frank Herbert's "Dune" series).

The Challenges Of Reforming Traditional Lifestyles

People do lots of things out of custom and tradition that are the product of cultural evolution and are adaptive. 

But often, conventional wisdom regarding why those customs and traditions are adaptive completely wrong. 

For example, many superstitious divination techniques are functional not because they are accurate, but because they randomize decisions that would otherwise be sub-optimal due to dysfunctional cognitive biases if made consciously.

If you are like most people and have inaccurate understandings of the reasons that the status quo works, then your reforms of the status quo is likely to have unexpected and unintended consequences. This isn't a problem, of course, if you actually do know what it is about the customs and traditions that has a functional purpose. But, it is very hard to both gain the nuanced knowledge of how the customs and traditions work in intimate detail so that you can discern the critical details about them, and to also have enough of an outsider's perspective to ignore conventional wisdom in order to discern the true reasons that these cultural practices are functional.

Reformers like Turkish founding figure Ataturk who insisted that his people wear Western style clothing in a climatologically inappropriate place as part of a general scheme of reforms, was aware at some level of his own incapacity to discern what was and wasn't an important cause of the outcomes he desired, so he adopted foreign cultures he saw as successful wholesale to avoid the risk of missing a non-obvious but critical component of what made those cultures work.

But, in a rapidly changing world, refusing to change is also perilous.

Ideally, change that occurs in a manner sensitive to the hidden functionality of existing customs and traditions (as well as an understanding of how they become dysfunctional in a changing world), can allow that change to be less disruptive and more adaptive. Probably the best historical example of thoughtful and selective adoption of outside innovation into a culture in a manner that brings benefit without being unduly disruptive is early modern Japan.

But, since striking the right balance between preserving customs and traditions with hidden mechanisms and functions that have value, and making necessary changes and reforms to adapt to modern society, is a highly challenging task, copying successful models from elsewhere in a wholesale fashion is one popular method of reform that often works reasonably well, even though many of the changes made will not have value to the adopting society and even though this may trample useful contributions that the adopting society could have made from its own traditions.

Should The Criminal Justice Process Make It Easier For Defendants To Testify?

Over one million defendants pass through the criminal justice system every year, yet we almost never hear from them. From the first Miranda warnings, through trial or guilty plea, and finally at sentencing, most defendants remain silent. They are spoken for by their lawyers or not at all. The criminal system treats this pervasive silencing as protective, a victory for defendants. 

This Article argues that this silencing is also a massive democratic and human failure. 

Our democracy prizes individual speech as the main antidote to governmental tyranny, yet it silences the millions of poor, socially disadvantaged individuals who directly face the coercive power of the state. 

Speech also has important cognitive and dignitary functions: It is through speech that defendants engage with the law, understand it, and express anger, remorse, and their acceptance or rejection of the criminal justice process. Since defendants speak so rarely, however, these speech functions too often go unfulfilled. 

Finally, silencing excludes defendants from the social narratives that shape the criminal justice system itself, in which society ultimately decides which collective decisions are fair and who should be punished. 

This Article describes the silencing phenomenon in practice and in doctrine, and identifies the many unrecognized harms that silence causes to individual defendants, to the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and to the democratic values that underlie the process. It concludes that defendant silencing should be understood and addressed in the context of broader inquiries into the (non)adversarial and (un)democratic features of our criminal justice system.

Alexandra Natapoof, "Speechless: The Silencing Of Criminal Defendants" 80 New York University Law Review 1449 (2005).

The body text goes on to note that:

The United States's criminal justice system is shaped by a fundamental absence: Criminal defendants rarely speak. From the first Miranda warnings through trial until sentencing, defendants are constantly encouraged to be quiet and to let their lawyers do the talking. And most do. Over ninety-five percent never go to trial, only half of those who do testify, and some defendants do not even speak at their own sentencings. As a result, in millions of criminal cases often involving hours of verbal negotiations and dozens of pages of transcripts, the typical defendant may say almost nothing to anyone but his or her own attorney.

Natapoof cites for the percentage of cases that never go to trial: BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, SOURCEBOOK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE STATISTICS tbls. 5.17 & 5.46 (2002).

Natapoof cites for the percentage of cases that go to trial in which defendants do not testify: Stephen J. Schulhofer, Some Kind Words for the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, 26 VAL. U. L. REV. 311, 329-30 (1991) (describing 1980s Philadelphia study where forty-nine percent of felony defendants and fifty-seven percent of misdemeanor defendants chose not to testify).

Notably, at least one study, found that statistically juries, in practice, penalize defendants who do not testify by a margin similar to those who do testify and have their prior criminal records revealed in the process. So the benefits of not testifying, in terms of jury outcomes, may be illusory. As the abstract of that 2017 article explains (emphasis added):

This Article explores this complex dynamic, focusing on empirical evidence from mock juror experiments – including the results of a new 400-person mock juror simulation conducted for this Article – and data from real trials. It concludes that the penalty defendants suffer when they refuse to testify is substantial, rivaling the more widely-recognized damage done to a defendant’s trial prospects by the introduction of a criminal record. Moreover, these two penalties work in tandem, creating a “parallel penalty” effect that systemically diminishes the prospects of acquittal and incentivizes guilty pleas.

Also notably, the British criminal justice system establishes fewer penalties for a defendant's testimony, who is unsworn and hence not punishable by a perjury prosecution, and which is not subject to impeachment by a defendant's prior criminal record. 

Metformin As A Cancer Drug

I was thinking about a couple of one line quips I'd seen about oxygen based v. sugar based metabolism of cancer cells and the potential of Vitamin C as a cancer therapy yesterday, and why neither had been exploited, when it occurred to me that the drug metformin usually used for other purposes might be a good cancer drug based on those theories. 

I googled the idea, and what did I get?

Metformin is a standard clinical drug used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and polycystic ovary syndrome. 

Recently, epidemiological studies and meta-analyses have revealed that patients with T2DM have a lower incidence of tumor development than healthy controls and that patients diagnosed with cancer have a lower risk of mortality when treated with metformin, demonstrating an association between metformin and tumorigenesis. In vivo and in vitro studies have revealed that metformin has a direct antitumor effect, which may depress tumor proliferation and induce the apoptosis, autophagy and cell cycle arrest of tumor cells. 

The mechanism underpinning the antitumor effect of metformin has not been well established. Studies have demonstrated that reducing insulin and insulin-like growth factor levels in the peripheral blood circulation may lead to the inhibition of phosphoinositide 3-kinase/Akt/mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling or activation of AMP-activated protein kinase, which inhibits mTOR signaling, a process that may be associated with the antitumor effect of metformin. The present review primarily focuses on the recent progress in understanding the function of metformin in tumor development.

Fuming Zi, "Metformin and cancer: An existing drug for cancer prevention and therapy" 15(1) Oncol Lett. 683 (January 2018) (published online November 14, 2017) (emphasis added) 

doi: 10.3892/ol.2017.7412

Word Of The Day

Yahrtzeit is a Yiddish word that means “anniversary,” and is used specifically to refer to the day on which a person passed away.

From here.  Hat tip Lori Goldman.

Bacon Cheese Burgers Are Transgressive

At certain religiously significant times of year, I like to eat bacon cheese burgers with ketchup with caffeinated drinks and beer, especially on Fridays during Lent. 

I am thinking about it now, however, in light of attention to halal considerations near the Muslim Holy Day of Eid at-Fitr which ended this evening.

* They are not kosher (i.el they violate Jewish dietary codes).

* They are not halal (i.e. they violate Islamic dietary codes).

* They violate dietary restrictions for Roman Catholics that apply on Fridays during Lent.

* They are at odds with most Hindu dietary codes that prohibit consumption of beef (i.e. the "sacred cow" rules).

* Caffeine and alcohol violates Mormon dietary laws.

* Many religious sects forbid alcohol consumption.

These are also problematic for modern day dietary Puritans.

* They are neither vegetarian nor vegan.

* The ingredients are also often not organic and not GMO-free.

* The ingredients are often not locally made.

* They can be problematic for lactose intolerant people.

* The buns are generally not gluten free.

* They are no go's for low carb diets, low sugar diets, and low fat diets.

Despite the fact that bacon cheese burgers and beer and caffeinated drinks can be transgressive, particular at certain times of the year, they are nonetheless, widely available in the United States, even at the most religiously sensitive times.

Against Trans-Substantive Health Care Policy

I understand the impulse, particularly in the area of mental health care and reproductive health care for these red haired children of the main allopathic medical system's institutions and health care coverage.

But, I am not convinced that this is a good approach, not withstanding the undeniable existence of strong mind-body connections in certain kinds of conditions.

From an economic perspective, reproductive health care "naturally" is tied to the entire life cycle. Pregnancies in modern civilization are a few times a lifetime thing, at most, so an annual expenditure oriented health care lan isn't a good way to spread the economic burdens associated with them.

Also, reproductive health care happens to be the focal point of intense, intransigent and enduring political conflicts in our society, while making up only a tiny percentage of total health care costs. 

Insulating this controversial but not very expensive part of the health care system from the ordinary uncontroversial heartland of allopathic medical treatments for predominantly physical conditions, which are exceedingly expensive in the United States, and vice versa, makes sense. A lack of controversy, comparatively, is a good step towards securing widespread public support for the expensive ordinary health care portion which it needs.

Meanwhile, mental health care has very modest functional overlap between the personnel who deal with one and those who deal with physical health. One can be a competent mental health practitioner without having a full fledged medical doctor's education the way that a psychiatrist does, and MD's are an extremely high cost way to provide mental health services that less expensive specialist practitioners could provide just as well.

Also, physical health care institutions, for the most part, are designed, perhaps poorly, for patients with mostly episodic acute afflictions for which the normative treatment is a cure or one time recovery, who can effectively advocate for themselves in a large bureaucratic system or have someone to do so on their behalf.

But, a good mental health care system, almost by definition, needs to meet the needs of patients who often by virtue of the condition that they seek to treat are ill equipped to advocate for themselves in a large bureaucratic system, and are paradigmatically chronic, incurable conditions that are part of who someone is as a person, that need to be managed for a lifetime.

Further, some kinds of care like dentistry, hearing and vision care, while superficially like other kinds of allopathic physical health care, seem to work well with different business models based upon narrow specialization among health care practitioners, relatively non-urgent timing needs for care in most cases, and a focus on continuing maintenance and management of symptoms as much as cures, that make conventional capitalist consumer goods and services business models work better for them than for other parts of health care.

Why take sub-industries of the health care system in the U.S. like dentistry and vision care that aren't deeply broken and try to fold them into the rest of the health care system in the United States which is deeply broken? 

Timing Matters

In state and federal politics, what matters is how the subset of people who actually vote feel about their electoral choice on a small range of days in late October and early November, once every two years.

When public opinion is stable, this is no big deal. But, when public opinion is volatile and has lots of almost random noise variation from day to day and week to week, timing becomes critical, because some tactics are more effective at some times than others. When that happens, improbable things that don't reflect the typical or average views of the populace can prevail.

Mid-term election day is about two and a half months away, with mail in ballots going out in October.

The drumbeat of hits against the Trump administration has been relentless, pretty much from the day that he was elected, and mostly in "own goal" and "run on errors" situations that were easily avoidable. There has been one atrocity after another.

Today, Manafort (Trump's former campaign chairman) and Cohen (Trump's former lawyer) were convicted of serious corruption charges, while a California GOP politician and his wife were indicted for campaign finance violations.

The trick for a campaign strategist is to get the timing right. 

Tee public can only think about so many issues at once. If too much happens at once, only the greatest outrages will get notice and the rest announced at the same time will be ignored.

The public has a short memory. If something happens too soon, it may be forgotten. 

If something happens too late, it may not be in time to make an impact. For example, in Colorado, a very large share of all ballots have already been cast on election day, so news then has little impact.

Bad news to spur people to action, has to be balanced against good news like a special election win or near win in a district that should have been unwinnable in normal times.

Our doctors are too educated.

This thoughtful piece in the Washington Post identified the shortage of physicians as a key problem and suggests a solution: fewer years of training for would be physicians, although it begs the question of why we don't simply open up more med schools when there is an ample supply of qualified would be med students.

Another way to shorten the amount of education to be a doctor would be to eliminate the requirement that pre-meds, like pre-law students, earn an unrelated undergraduate degree with only minimal prerequisite course work, before advancing to their professional educations.

In both cases, dispensing with undergraduate educational requirements would also make it easier for the women (who, if they want to establish themselves in profession before having children, are racing a biological clock), and the less affluent, for whom each year of educational requirements removed reduces the cost of getting that education.

An aging population with numerous health needs and a declining physician workforce have combined to create a physician shortage — the Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortfall of up to 100,000 doctors by 2030. 

Policymakers have proposed many solutions, from telemedicine to increasing the scope of nurse practitioners. But I can think of another: Let students complete school and see patients earlier. 

U.S. physicians average 14 years of higher education (four years of college, four years of medical school and three to eight years to specialize in a residency or fellowship). That’s much longer than in other developed countries, where students typically study for 10 years. It also translates to millions of dollars and hours spent by U.S. medical students listening to lectures on topics they already know, doing clinical electives in fields they will not pursue and publishing papers no one will read. 

Decreasing the length of training would immediately add thousands of physicians to the workforce. At the same time, it would save money that could be reinvested in creating more positions in medical schools and residencies. It would also allow more students to go into lower-paying fields such as primary care, where the need is greatest. 

These changes wouldn’t decrease the quality of our education. Medical education has many inefficiencies, but two opportunities for reform stand out. First, we should consolidate medical school curriculums. The traditional model consists of two years of classroom-based learning on the science of medicine (the preclinical years), followed by two years of clinical rotations, during which we work in hospitals. Both phases could be shortened. In my experience, close to half of preclinical content was redundant. Between college and medical school, I learned the Krebs cycle (a process that cells use to generate energy) six times. Making college premedical courses more relevant to medicine could condense training considerably.  Meanwhile, the second clinical year is primarily electives and free time. I recently spoke with a friend going into radiology who did a dermatology elective. While he enjoyed learning about rashes, we concluded it did little for his education.

In the past decade, several schools have shown the four-year model can be cut to three. For instance, New York University offers an accelerated medical degree with early, conditional admission into its residency programs. The model remains controversial. Critics contend that three years is not enough time to learn medicine. Yet a review of eight medical schools with three-year programs suggests graduates have similar test scores and clinical performance to those who take more time. 

Finally, we can reform required research projects. Research has long been intertwined with medical training. Nearly every medical school offers student projects, and more than one-third require them. Many residencies do as well. Students have responded: The number pursuing nondegree research years doubled between 2000 and 2014, and four-year graduation rates reached a record low. Rather than shortening training, U.S. medical education is becoming longer. The additional years aren’t even spent on patient care. 

Done right, this could still be a valuable investment. Intellectual curiosity and inquiry drive scientific progress. But that’s not why most students take research years. I conducted a study showing that less than a quarter do so because of an interest in the subject matter. The most common reason was instead to increase their competitiveness for residency applications. 

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

Trump Tweets Aren't Well Liked

Justin Bieber tweeting about his breakfast gets more likes than the president. So I compared his likes to those of Obama, Hillary and Biden. All of them had massively more popular tweets than Trump--and it wasn't even a good week for them. Their tweets get 3 to 6 times the likes as Trump! While Trump occasionally breaks 130K Bidden hit nearly 700K last week, Hillary nearly 300K and every Obama tweet beat Trump--and Obama didn't even really say anything this week! When he does he's up around 1 million. I don't think a Trump tweet has ever come close to that. The dude has 53.7 million followers and he's averaging about 100K likes--that 1/10 of 1% of his FOLLOWERS likes what he says. And that should give us hope. This guy just isn't popular.

- Via a closed Facebook forum

Quote of the Day

Bacon is the most loved food in the universe and the route to all things swine and divine.

- Via Westword

Women Want Pockets!

Beards Are Back

Men's fashion is also shifting towards a more "natural" look as beards have made a comeback. The result is that razor and shaver sales are way down.

Stories linked to in a previous post on the decline of bras and panties in women's fashion noted reduced spending on underclothes as one reason among many for that trend and shaving less is also less expensive than devoting the time and money to stay clean shaven. Are these trends, in part, a product of tighter economic circumstances for lots of Americans in recent years?

Women's Underclothing Fashion Trends

Middle aged women (a.k.a. Generation X) have stopped wearing panties in large numbers. About 20% no longer wear them even once a week. The numbers aren't quite as great in younger generations, but are much higher than you might naively expect.

Meanwhile Millennial women have in the last few years fairly abruptly decided that they usually won't wear bras in large numbers, a trend that has sent Victoria Secret's holding company's stock into a tailspin. And, it isn't just American women either. Bras are also on the decline in Japan.

Who knew?

Why Did The American Colonies Choose Democracy?

The migration out of Europe and the establishment of North American colonies presents us with a great puzzle: Why did the colonists establish democratic forms of governance? Considering that early democratic colonies appeared even before philosophical works such as those of Locke and Montesquieu were written, it is difficult to make the case that ideology was the driving factor. We show that the calculus of consent model proposed by Buchanan & Tullock (1962) offers a simple but subtle solution this puzzle. Because migrants formed homogeneous communities, and because, thanks to the large geographical expanse, the inter-jurisdictional externalities were small, the efficient level of consensus within each colony was much greater than in Europe, and the scope of efficient centralized decision-making was much smaller. Hence, a structure of decentralized democratic communities emerged as the efficient outcome.

We explain why the calculus of consent is particularly well suited to understand the institutional effects of mass migration, develop three calculus of consent theorems about how the equilibrium decision rules are affected by changes in the underlining costs, and show how these theorems can be used to make pattern predictions about changes in democracy, federalism and economic freedom. We apply the model to explain the differences between Britain and North American colonies. and show that the model also provides useful insight about the differences between colonies, in particular between New England and Chesapeake colonies. In conclusion we briefly discuss the fact that the calculus also provides a quick explanation for the institutional evolution in United States and Europe, in particular for the growth of government.

From Tarko, Vlad and O'Donnell, Kyle W., "Escape from Europe: A Calculus of Consent Model of the Origins of Liberal Institutions in the North American Colonies" Constitutional Political Economy, Forthcoming (June 19, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3199452