James Taranto on nature and nurture

He writes:

Here's our hypothesis to explain the Hart-Risley findings [on academic success in young children]: The variables they studied--again, the parents' loquaciousness and the children's IQ and school performance--were all effects. The main causal factor was something the researchers apparently didn't think to measure: parental IQ.

Steven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive psychologist, seems to be thinking along similar lines. This morning in response to the Rosenberg post he tweeted: "The Blank Slate lives: Yet another story on parent-child correlations that dares not mention the g-word."

"The g-word" is "genetics," and "the Blank Slate" refers to the view that human beings are essentially fungible--that all differences between individuals and groups, or at least all those that have important social consequences, are the product of nurture rather than nature. It follows from this view that inequalities between individuals or groups can be eliminated by social engineering--by changing the environment in which individuals develop.

Quotes of the day

Showtime does not exist to make shows you want to buy on iTunes; it makes shows you want to watch in order to get you to buy a subcription to Showtime.--Megan McArdle

 A ... key to understanding [Nassim] Taleb is that he has a French post-modern tendency to write to impress rather than explain. He provides hundreds of loosely related anecdotes, reminding me of the Talmud quote that 'when a debater’s point is not impressive, he brings forth many arguments.'--Eric Falkenstein

Most of the D.C. boom is from lobbyists and PR people, and others who are retained to influence what the government does. It's a cold calculation: You're likely to get a much better return from an investment of $1 million on lobbying than on a similar investment in, say, a new factory or better worker training. So Washington gets fat, and it does so on money taken from the rest of the country: Either directly, in the form of taxes, or indirectly in the form of money that otherwise would have gone to that factory or training program.--Glenn Reynolds

... prior to 1993 Asian enrollment had often changed quite substantially from year to year. It is interesting to note that this exactly replicates the historical pattern observed by Karabel, in which Jewish enrollment rose very rapidly, leading to imposition of an informal quota system, after which the number of Jews fell substantially, and thereafter remained roughly constant for decades. On the face of it, ethnic enrollment levels which widely diverge from academic performance data or application rates and which remain remarkably static over time provide obvious circumstantial evidence for at least a de facto ethnic quota system.--Ron Unz

You have the life that has unfolded for you, and I the life that has unfolded for me, and all of us have a very simple and terrifying responsibility, which is simply to answer the question, as Victor Frankl would say, that our lives are asking us.--Tony Woodlief

Quotes of the day

Too much schooling is a bad thing.--Eric Falkenstein

Some claim that what sets us apart from other animals is our use of tools. Au contraire. Even sea otters -- a species that has neither reached the moon nor invented the beer cozy -- use stones to crack open the shells of their prey. No, what makes us unique is our staggering imagination and creativity, mostly when it comes to ostensibly obeying laws while utterly circumventing their spirit. We are homo loopholeus.--Patrick Hruby

... the startup job creation rate has collapsed during the last three years and actually fallen lower in 2011 than ever before. I’ll ask: Why did the IRS start cracking down on companies that hire American contractors in 2009?--Tim Kane

Quotes of the day

High frequency traders are very sensitive to cash flow (note Trading Machines shut down pretty quickly after not finding a niche), so they aren't building palaces based on unrealistic expectations like, say, California or or NYU journalism majors.--Eric Falkenstein

... the 93% increase in JPMorgan VaR from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012 is solely due to the sudden "realization" that the world's biggest bank by derivative holdings (at just about $73 trillion) is in reality nothing but a glorified hedge fund.--Zero Hedge

[Peter] Orszag’s [compulsory voting] proposal and others like it are potentially harmful solutions to a non-problem. There is no evidence that nations with compulsory voting are, as a result, better governed than those where voting is voluntary. As Tim Cavanaugh points out, the former category includes many states such as Argentina, Lebanon, Egypt, Congo, and others that are hardly paragons of civic virtue. By contrast, one of the few democracies that has even lower turnout rates than the United States is Switzerland, which is widely considered one of the best-governed nations in the world. ... More generally, we should spend less time worrying about turnout and more about whether those who do turn out actually understand what they are voting on.--Ilya Somin

Obama campaigned as a consistent critic of the Bush administration’s understanding of executive power — and a critic with a background in constitutional law, no less. But apart from his disavowal of waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without trial.--Ross Douthat

I really dislike fawning Keynesians because I used to be one when I was a TA for Hyman Minsky back in college ... In contrast to the Keynesian vision of us all trying to figure out how to spend our endless vacation, there's Eric Hoffer, the enigmatic philosopher who appeared out of nowhere around 1934 in California at age 34 ... A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding, and so those unhappy with their own meaningless affairs will focus on minding other people's business. Hoffer noted one must not merely provide for those without meaning in their lives, but provide against them, because in a democracy and market economy their preferences will have power. Those who see their lives as inferior and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom, and this can cause a Republic to fall to a democracy, and ultimately a tyranny. ... In other words, Hoffer describes the essence of the Liberal desire to micromanage society into perfect equality at the expense of liberty. A coalition of intellectuals and the underclass, both of whom feel unappreciated. We haven't figured out a good outlet for these do-gooders, or a good way for those without a purpose to find life rewarding, so they continue to plague us with their plans and angst. That's a realistic vision of society, a future problem that is real yet potentially soluble.--Eric Falkenstein

Walmart often faces strong local opposition when trying to build a new store. Opponents often claim that Walmart lowers nearby housing prices. In this study we use over one million housing transactions located near 159 Walmarts that opened between 2000 and 2006 to test if the opening of a Walmart does indeed lower housing prices. Using a difference-in-differences specification, our estimates suggest that a new Walmart store actually increases housing prices by between 2 and 3 percent for houses located within 0.5 miles of the store and by 1 to 2 percent for houses located between 0.5 and 1 mile.--Devin Pope & Jaren Pope

Reading is fun, not mental

... the lowest reading-level result on any writing sample that I tested came from people I am certain are the dumbest writers on the internet: the folks who left comments on Yahoo! Sports articles. They wrote at a 3.3 grade level.--Ben Blatt

Talk show transcript excerpt of the day

Larry King: What, Professor, puzzles you the most? What do you think about the most?
Stephen Hawking: Women
Larry King: Welcome aboard.

Source here.

Quote of the day

Yeah, [I like Obama:] I’m living in London and I’m socialist. What do you expect?--Elle MacPherson, former supermodel, and current policy expert

Every large public school system has many excellent and good teachers. Unfortunately, every public school system also has really bad teachers who cannot be fired. Some miss many classes, others do not know the materials they teach, while others do not really try to teach, and prefer to joke around or mainly give their opinions. They should be fired, but they cannot in part because of the tenure system. Having the power to get rid of the bad teachers would improve everyone’s teaching, partly by raising the incentives and morale of other teachers.
...
Teachers’ unions are the major force opposed to abandoning the tenure system, as they are the major opposition to pretty much every major school reform that has ever been suggested- including charter schools, school vouchers, and evaluations of teacher performance. They are an important hindrance to improving the quality of teaching and the performance of students.
...
I oppose teachers unions and the tenure system for teachers (including university teachers) partly because they are especially detrimental to the education received by students from low income and more disadvantaged backgrounds.--Gary Becker, some dude that is much less famous than supermodels

Quotes of the day

If you can't sell 'em, rent 'em.--agent Paul Larson of Coldwell Banker Burnet, via Mark Perry

... our own regulatory ingenuity ...somehow or other, always manages to backfire.--Richard Epstein

Bernanke's change of mind reflects his shy personality plus groupthink.--Bryan Caplan

Many mediocre minds are impressed by famous colleagues, graduate degrees, Harvard, or equations. Those people aren't worth impressing. While such signals are correlated with good ideas, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for a good idea. When someone emphasizes these signals, however, that should lower their credibility among thoughtful people because it suggests bad faith, a preference towards pretentious irrelevancies. I've seen this a lot, hiding behind equations. It often works because one does not want to sit down, understand what all the variables mean and how they are measured, etc. I just don't feel impressed at all by such equations because my Bayesian prior is they merely have a bad idea in equation form, so I don't give them the benefit of the doubt even when I'm lazy and have not enough time to evaluate their math.--Eric Falkenstein

We’ve seen from Republicans in–particularly Republicans in the House, but with Republicans generally, that they don’t want to be part of any plan that raises taxes at all. The president’s budget has $1 of revenue for every $2 1/2 of spending cuts.--Jack Lew, White House Chief of Staff and former Budget Director

Contrary to Mr. Lew’s assertion, the President is proposing at least $1.20 of tax increases for every dollar of proposed spending cuts. The President’s budget locks in historically high spending levels and relies more on tax increases than spending cuts for the limited deficit reduction it proposes.--Keith Hennessey

Photo link here.

One of the reasons why I'm a libertarian

comes from my experience with financial regulators. They are totally out of their depth, not understanding where risk really lies because the essential information simply can't be grasped by flying in and looking and talking to people for 2 weeks. I have never worked in a financial firm where I felt I understood what was really going on for at least a couple years. They fill out reports conceived by someone ten years ago that would have caught last decade's big error, and come back next year.--Eric Falkenstein

Me, too.--Cav

Quotes of the day

Economics blogs are ... “dim sum for the mind.”--Alex Tabarrok

We are mistaking high resolution and portability as an advancement of culture.--Rick Brookstaber

... we notice the monetary shocks that make us poorer much more than we notice the real shocks that make us richer.--Scott Sumner

Our economic system’s collapse may not seem as exciting as melting ice caps, but people really aren’t going to like it — at least, according to computer models.--Frank J. Fleming

... redistributionist government ... is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.--George Will

The table is set for the Patriots to be in the Super Bowl. A Bronco team comes to town that you already handled Dec. 18, on their home turf. So the chances of getting by Denver are good. I ask you this: Which QB scares you -- Joe Flacco or T.J. Yates? I say neither. Not only is it there for the Patriots to win this week, but if they don't make the Super Bowl, I'd be very disappointed.--Tedy Bruschi

Quotes of the day

Public-sector unions and other interest groups wrap their causes in the rhetoric of equality. Often, what they’re really protecting are privileges that raise the cost of public services to everyone else — including citizens who earn a lot less than civil servants. Yes, Wall Street’s bonuses are stratospheric. But the New York Times recently reported that Medicaid was paying nine executives $500,000 or more per year to operate nonprofit homes for the mentally disabled. Okun’s message is that equality is a public good, whose benefits — social cohesion, political stability and the like — are worth paying for. The trick is not to overpay.--Charles Lane

I spent hours upon hours toiling away at a register, scanning, bagging, and dealing with questionable clientele. These were all expected parts of the job, and I was okay with it. What I didn’t expect to be part of my job at Wal-Mart was to witness massive amounts of welfare fraud and abuse.

...

I understand that sometimes, people are destitute. They need help, and they accept help from the state in order to feed their families. This is fine. It happens. I’m not against temporary aid helping those who truly need it. What I saw at Wal-Mart, however, was not temporary aid. I witnessed generations of families all relying on the state to buy food and other items. I literally witnessed small children asking their mothers if they could borrow their EBT cards. I once had a man show me his welfare card for an ID to buy alcohol. The man was from Massachusetts. Governor Michael Dukakis’ signature was on his welfare card. Dukakis’ last gubernatorial term ended in January of 1991. I was born in June of 1991. The man had been on welfare my entire life. That’s not how welfare was intended, but sadly, it is what it has become.

...

Other things witnessed while working as a cashier included people ignoring me on their iPhones while the state paid for their food. (For those of you keeping score at home, an iPhone is at least $200, and requires a data package of at least $25 a month. If a person can spend $25+ a month so they can watch YouTube 24/7, I don’t see why they can’t spend that money on food.)--Christine Rousselle

At 25 I made the naïve mistake of getting an MFA in Creative Writing at a private college in New York City.

... 

I hadn’t done any research on schools with funding or really given it much thought at all. I thought when I graduated I’d just sell my novel and pay my student loans with the book advance. Needless to say that didn’t happen and when I graduated in 2005, I had $37,000 to pay back. Not only that but the MFA program was super unsupportive—both the faculty and students. Despite doing well in the program and really trying to connect with people I finished feeling no better off than when I’d started. A few years later when applying to residencies and then PHD programs I couldn’t even get letters of recommendation from most of my former teachers.

... 

I felt like the school had taken advantage of my naiveté by charging all this money for essentially a useless degree.

... 

I started to realize the least common denominator in all of my problems was me and my thinking. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself for all the things life wasn’t giving me and start being grateful for what I had. As for my job I was clearly in this dog walking profession for a reason and maybe instead of thinking it was beneath me, I’d just try to do the best at it I could. I finally grew up and accepted life on life’s terms and decided to go out there and do the best I could with what I had. This is when things really started to change for me.

...

When I’d have fear about money I’d pay more on my loans, or give an employee a raise, or contribute a little to a charity. I call this daring God to financially take care of me—faith in action. I wanted proof that I’d be taken care of. Initially, I’d do it and sort of cover my eyes afterwards waiting for the ceiling to fall in. It never did. Inevitably, I’d get a new client or business would pick up with training or pet sitting.--Susie DeFord

Occupy, are you listening to this?--Cav

Christopher Hitchens and I were friends for 40 years, plus another five when we were enemies. He took ideas so seriously that if he disagreed with you on a matter that he deemed important, he’d literally throw you in a ditch. It was 1972, the height of our mutual virility. He and I went to a pub to celebrate his most recent intellectual victory over the establishment press. I intimated that sometimes women could be funny on purpose. Even back then, the thought enraged him. Hitchens threw a drink in my face, pressed a lit cigarette into my neck, and hit me over the head with a barstool. The next thing I knew, it was two days later and I was lying hogtied and naked beside the M5. Hitch had already severely damaged my reputation in a vicious essay in the Guardian. But that’s how he operated, and that’s why we loved him.--Neal Pollack

Washington state’s creation of the ferry monopoly is what governments have increasingly done since courts misconstrued the Constitution in a way that licenses governments to dispense particular economic favors by restricting general economic liberty. It is now routine for government to have transactions with rent-seekers — private interests who want public power used to confer advantages on them, or disadvantages on competitors.--George Will

Even though the average congressperson might have more information than the average taxpayer...the cumulative information held by 150 million taxpayers far exceeds the cumulative information held by 538 congresspeople. When it comes to the efficient allocation of public goods...we need to consider sums...not averages. It's interesting to consider though just how many average taxpayers it would take to equal the amount of information held by the average congressperson.--Xerographica

In a market -- one of your beloved markets -- an entrepreneur who presents the same product over and over, deriding customers for not buying it, would be the real fool. You'd laugh at such a fellow and tell him he deserves what he gets -- bankruptcy. Yet, you never view your political program that way, do you?--David Brin

Behind Door #1 are people of extraordinary ability: scientists, artists, educators, business people and athletes. Behind Door #2 stand a random assortment of people. Which door should the United States open? In 2010, the United States more often chose Door #2, setting aside about 40,000 visas for people of extraordinary ability and 55,000 for people randomly chosen by lottery. It's just one small example of our bizarre U.S. policy toward high-skill immigrants.--Alex Tabarrok

We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn't seem like something we should have to protect. But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

...

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings. But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself.--Jeb Bush

Evaluate ideas by their consequences (consequentialism)
Be aware that your ideas may be wrong and may fail (fallibilism)
Don’t be hypercritical (anti-skepticism)
Try out, debate, and evaluate alternatives (experimentalism).--Elmar Wolfstetter

Quotes of the day

There was no point to continue to support an institution [SUNY] that the state was backing away from. Inexpensive access to mediocrity is not doing anyone such a favor.--Jim Simons

No child was ever born without having been conceived.--Filipino

For all of [Jerry] Jones' Hall of Fame accomplishments, his inability to replace Jimmy Johnson remains his greatest flaw. Since Barry Switzer's tenure ended in 1997, a run that included a championship won with Johnson's players, the Cowboys have won only a single playoff game.--Mike Freeman

[Phil] Jackson's NBA impact has been massive, but his ongoing influence will be muted. It appears that he will not be remembered as the NBA coach who ran the Triangle best; in all likelihood, he will be remembered as the only NBA coach who ran it at all. If the Triangle truly dies, it dies with him.--Chuck Klosterman

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought. The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured.--Reuters

... very vague.--Steven Cohen, on insider trading rules

Conspiracy theories abound with Bernanke, and I’m sure somebody somewhere really thinks that Ben Bernanke intentionally put the U.S. on a path to the Weimar-style hyperinflation that is coming any day now just to save a hundred bucks a month on his mortgage payments, but…I’m with her that it’s an amusing coincidence.

...

If you like a slightly different flavor of conspiracy, though, you might ask: why wasn’t Bernanke refinancing in, say, July or August? Sure, maybe he was busy with the whole stewardship of the economy and/or after-dinner Kindle reading. Or maybe he knew that the Fed was going to move to lower long-term rates and so abstained from trading based on that. Maybe he was taking advantage of his insider knowledge to make a personal profit, or at least avoid a loss.

...

Or not, whatever, what a stupid thing to think. But I thought of it again when I read Mr. Steven A. Cohen’s cogent argument that insider trading rules are somewhat more ambiguous than the proper form of address for him.--Matt Levine

If Sarbanes-Oxley did not deter MF Global, did it deter anyone? Or is this a case of a law which obtained compliance (at great cost in terms of scarce executives' time) from honest firms, while doing nothing to deter dishonest ones?--Arnold Kling

So [Donald Trump] was more upset at the Chinese government for giving American consumers a low price than at OPEC for charging Americans too high a price.--David Henderson

Two politicians — President Obama and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine — made pronouncements last week about financial failures. One of them was hiding something, or just didn't understand much about the job that he was supposed to do. The other one was Jon Corzine.

...

Obama, too, may be clueless rather than disingenuous. In his Kansas speech last Tuesday, Obama had this to say about the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law: "Now, unless you're a financial institution whose business model is built on breaking the law, cheating consumers and making risky bets that could damage the entire economy, you should have nothing to fear from these new rules."

...

To the contrary, Americans have plenty to fear. Dodd-Frank took the fatal errors that American politicians and regulators made in their stance toward the financial industry in the years leading up to 2008 — and wrote them all down as a model.

...

Dodd-Frank's biggest problem is that it treats big, complicated financial firms differently from how it treats littler, simpler firms.--Nicole Gelinas

So why did 6.3 million jobs disappear between September of 2008 and June of 2009?--Russ Roberts

Liberals often point out that public employment has been declining in 2010 and 2011, partly offsetting job growth in the private sector. They bemoan budget cuts that lead to shrinking headcounts. But then they — including President Obama — defend a public-sector collective-bargaining regime that takes non-layoff savings options off the table. If liberals really want state and local governments to be able to maintain their headcounts, they should push to end collective bargaining for public employees, not to strengthen it.--Josh Barro

Graduate from high school, get married before you have children, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. Fewer than 10 percent of families that follow his blueprint live in poverty, while 79 percent of those who don't follow the three-step plan end up poor. There is no redistribution scheme imaginable close to this in reducing poverty.--Eric Falkenstein

We were in New York this weekend, and we took an architectural tour of some recent skyscrapers. The tour guide said that the way to get rich is to be a zoning lawyer. He also said that a lot of zoning issues end up being resolved politically, that is by developers buying off politicians. The result is to make real estate in New York a field for crony capitalism. And it is not surprising that any attempt by anyone to try genuine capitalism is likely to run afoul of the law.--Arnold Kling

"Protesters" named Time Magazine Persons of the Year; SEAL Team 6 not available for comment--Iowahawk

Photo links here, here, here and here.

New study shows no gender differences in math abilities

here.

I believe that gender differences exist, because (among other things) I believe in Darwin's sexual selection theory.

I wonder why Morocco and Tunisia are the best counterfactuals that authors can trot out.  For one thing, they are rather distinctively different in culture from much of the educated world.  For another, they only achieve approximately 5% and 10% the GDP per capita of the U.S.

I have a theory that math abilities can converge in lower socioeconomic subcultures, and diverge in higher socioeconomic cohorts. The findings of this study would seem to support that theory.

I think there's some more wood to chop here.  But I am ready to eliminate math ability as a gender difference.

Quotes of the day

We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst, and we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and the cattle, or fought in evil feuds with one another, but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living.--Theodore Roosevelt

95% of individual traders lose money over ANY 10-year period.--Joe Fahmy

I am the 5%.--Cav

Majority of the money management industry believes through better study of the facts, the investor can beat the markets. Wisdom of Crowds disputes this generally held notion. The edge does not lie in superior information/higher intelligence alone. The game is won or lost elsewhere. Just ask Tebow’s critics.--Vedant Mimani

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.—Western Union internal memo, 1876.

... the ranks of police officers have fallen by less than 1% after rising by 9% since 2000 alone. That, and the fact that America is a far safer place today than 10 or 20 years ago, suggests that Vice President Biden's claim that "the result [of police layoffs] has been—and it's not unique—murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up," is simply, as the Washington Post observed, "absurd."

...

It's important to keep the long rise in local government employment in mind amid the debate over sending more federal aid to cities and states. Steadily increasing municipal-government payrolls, combined with sharply higher employment costs—including rich pension benefits and soaring health-care outlays—have made many local budgets unsustainable. The National Governors Association recognized as much last year when it issued a report predicting a long period of fiscal "austerity" that local governments must solve in part by better controlling personnel costs.

...

That almost certainly means that more layoffs are coming. But hyperbolic talk aside, local governments are well-staffed by historical standards and have the troops to do the job at hand.--Steven Malanga

We can agree at the injustice of transferring money from moderate-income pensioners to wealthy bondholders. But I think the even more important question is what makes the average Joe better off. And it's not clear to me that "stiffing the creditors" is the right answer.

...

For starters, some of those creditors--maybe a lot of those creditors, depending on the country--are insurance companies and pension funds that serve the aforementioned Average Joes. But leave that aside. Europe is not, at least as I understand it, making the creditors whole because of their abiding love for foreign holders of European sovereign debt. They're stepping in and guaranteeing this debt in order to prevent a run on their banks and their bond markets.

...

Runs on financial markets, as far as I can tell, do not righteously limit their damage to rich jerks who didn't need the money anyway. In fact, the people who suffer the worst from a rapid contraction of the credit markets are the poor. They're the ones who actually end up hungry and on the street when companies start failing and they can't get jobs.--Megan McArdle

To backtrack a couple thousand years, the general assumption regarding the fall of Rome is that the contemporary leadership was characterized by the same kind of ignorant as POTUS. The historical record, however, clearly displays that the intelligentsia of the time was well aware of Rome’s failings, they just couldn’t figure out a way to fix them. Pointedly, the corruption of the Senate and political control by wealthy elite paved the way for the dissolution of democracy and the onset of empire. They were not ignorant, contrary to popular belief, just overrun by socioeconomic trends too powerful to harness.

...

Returning to modernity, it is clear from McArdle’s post that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was, with the spin-off strategy, attempting to address very real structural issues within his firm. The plan clearly ended up as an online Bay of Pigs, but the drivers behind it are completely explicable with a modicum of research. I would argue that the behavior of politicians is similarly intelligible, with electoral money-raising, pandering to constituents and poll-watching replacing rising digital streaming rights as major motivational culprits.

...

Labeling corporate or political celebrities “idiots” is to some extent to self-identify as part of the problem. Getting rid of these “idiots” will solve nothing, except to provide new vessels for sneering, self-congratulatory scorn. Focusing on the forces that makes these people appear to be morons, and widely publicizing these drivers to the point where they enter the general consciousness, actually provides an avenue for progress.--Interloper

Local McDonald's employees tell SF Weekly the company has devised a solution that appears to comply with San Francisco's "Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance" that could actually make the company more money -- and necessitate toy-happy youngsters to buy more Happy Meals.--Joe Eskenazi

Photo links here and here.

A really smart scientist is probably also a really awful

venture capitalist.

Right, Dr. Stevie?

Photo link here.

Happy belated Thanksgiving

I was out of town, busy with family, and did not blog. I did not eat turkey, first time in a few decades, but did feast on seafood and steak and need to exercise, as December could be fattening.

Here is the best thing I read this holiday:

In fairness, Krugman probably doesn’t understand what actually happened at Plymouth. He certainly doesn’t favor an extreme form of socialism where there’s zero incentive to produce. But if you want to mock conservatives for believing that an economic system based on sharing could leads to all sorts of unspeakable evils, you might want to pick an example that doesn’t prove their point.

Photo links here and here.

Quotes of the day

Hugo is the ultimate kid’s movie, in a sense, because its director, Martin Scorsese, turns out to be the ultimate kid. It’s a movie about movies, and the ways in which they came to occupy people’s hearts and minds. There’s a pair of inquisitive children, a hazardous quest, and a wondrous treasure. But the child at the center of the story, looking back more than a hundred years to the wellspring of his art, is Scorsese himself.--Kurt Loder

When Teddy [Forstmann] got to one [Croatian refugee] camp where all the kids seemed to be down with colds and the flu he was distressed. How could such conditions exist in civilized Europe? He pledged a few million dollars to rebuild the camp with proper sanitation. And just before leaving, Teddy spotted a very fetching young lady and gave her his coat. He figured she would need it in the winter. If there was a pretty woman present Teddy would spot her. He was fun in a good cause or a great deal. There was no one else like him.--R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.

... a wave of firings that has washed away more than 200,000 jobs in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. BNP Paribas (BNP) SA and UniCredit SpA (UCG) announced cuts last week, and the carnage likely will worsen as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis roils markets.--Max Abelson and Ambereen Choudhury

The text of the Second Amendment is maddeningly ambiguous. It merely says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yet to each side in the gun debate, those words are absolutely clear.
...
The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.
...
For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the “individual mandate” that has proved so controversial in President Obama’s health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
...
Justice Scalia [the foremost proponent of constitutional originalism], in other words, embraced a living Constitution. In this, Heller is a fine reflection of the ironies and contradictions—and the selective use of the past—that run throughout America’s long history with guns.--Adam Winkler

In the twentieth century philosophy of mind became one of the central areas of philosophy in the English-speaking world, and so it remains. Questions such as the relationship between mind and brain, the nature of consciousness, and how we perceive the world, have come to be seen as crucial in understanding the world. These days, the predominant position in philosophy of mind aims at equating mental phenomena with operations of the brain, and explaining them all in scientific terms. Sometimes this project is called ‘cognitive science’, and it carries the implicit assumption that cognition occurs in computers as well as in human and animal brains, and can be studied equally well in each of these three forms.--Laura Weed

Do you see the problem with [Ronald] Green’s assertion? He asks us to believe that just because obesity is 80% genetic, it can’t also be 80% due to laziness. But why? What are those two hypotheses viewed as mutually exclusive? Is it because genetic characteristics are viewed as “not one’s fault,” whereas laziness is viewed as a character flaw? But why shouldn’t character flaws be genetic?--Scott Sumner

Students want not knowledge, but certification. Future employers only see your grade and diploma - and the less a professor teaches, the less students have to learn to get the grade and diploma they want. So, human capital extremists, what gives? Do you deny that canceling class makes students happy? If not, how can you reconcile your theory with the facts?--Bryan Caplan

The tax attacks on Republicans therefore look like this:

• Republicans refused to raise taxes as part of a deficit deal. No longer valid.
• Republicans refused to buck Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. Invalid.
• Republicans refused to raise taxes on the rich. No longer valid.
• Republicans would not raise taxes enough.
• Republicans would not raise taxes on the rich enough.

As you follow the deficit reduction debate over the next year, it will be important to remember how significantly the Super Committee Republicans changed the negotiating playing field during these negotiations, and how their offer has changed the nature of the fiscal policy debate.--Keith Hennessey

In short, the modern revolutionary, being an infinite skeptic, which he must be, is always engaged in undermining his own mind.  In his books on politics he attacks persons for trampling on morality, but in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on persons.  Therefore the modern rebel has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt by rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything…  There is a kind of thought that stops thought, and that is the only kind of thought that ought to be stopped.--G.K. Chesterton

I could summarize the employment environment of the times this way:

Lots of jobs for people who were willing to relocate
Low entry-level pay
Company-paid healthcare
Company-paid training, including external degree courses
Inexpensive cost of living
Clear opportunities for advancement

How's that different from today? The quick answer is that every part of what I described is different. And you need the whole system in place or else the economy can't be a sustained job creation machine. So I don't think we can tweak the current economy, or stimulate it, enough to make much difference. What we need is Cheapatopia.--Scott Adams

Quotes of the day

Might the rising share of the top 1 percent be related to the increasing use of English as a global language?--Greg Mankiw

International marriages are often attacked as exploitative, because they typically take place between an older richer man and a younger, less well-educated woman from a poor country. Terrible examples of abuse do exist. Yet the evidence suggests that international marriages often last longer than average and that migrant wives come to play important roles in their husband’s host country. Marriage remains, for the most part, an institution that promotes economic improvement and personal happiness. It also tends to boost social assimilation—the main exception being when a second-generation immigrant weds a girl from a village his parents had left long before.--Economist

So it's one thing to say [skill players who can dictate terms to the defense] they are the future and another to actually find enough people to make that future a reality. Just like at the quarterback position, there are simply more job openings than there are qualified candidates. Wanted: 6-foot-6 freak athlete who can run a 4.5 40, has incredible hands, is willing and able to block 300-pound defensive ends, and can immediately memorize a 1,000-page playbook. No appointment necessary.--Chris Brown

THE Occupy Wall Street movement has raised important questions about the respect paid to wealth in our society. There is a good deal of unfairness in the American economy, and by deliberately targeting the “top 1 percent,” the demonstrators have opened up a dialogue that is quite useful. Nonetheless, as someone from a conservative and libertarian background, I find that I am hearing too much talk about riches and not enough about values. It’s worth recalling why so many Americans have respected the wealthy in the first place.
...
The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.--Tyler Cowen

The Clinch River Breeder Reactor. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation. The hydrogen car. Clean coal. These are but a few examples spanning several decades — a graveyard of costly and failed projects. Not a single one of these much-ballyhooed initiatives is producing or saving a drop or a watt or a whiff of energy, but they have managed to burn through far more more taxpayer money than the ill-fated Solyndra. An Energy Department report in 2008 estimated that the federal government had spent $172 billion since 1961 on basic research and the development of advanced energy technologies. What does Washington have to show for these investments? And should the government even be in the business of promoting particular energy technologies?--Steven Mufson

... Hoover's Peter Schweizer's new book claims that 80% of the loans in the DOE program that Solyndra tapped went to companies owned or run by Obama backers.  Of course, one would expect that most "green energy" types would be enthusiastic Democrats.  Still, the thing has a certain whiff about it.  Then today we learn that Solyndra, which was originally going to announce layoffs in late October 2010, held off on the announcement until November 3rd (aka election day).  And they seem to have done so at the behest of the White House.  I think the very least you can say is that the political side became inappropriately entangled with the technocratic side of this loan.  It undermines one's faith in both the program, and the administration.  Obviously, this is not the worst thing that any president has ever done, or even in the top 100.  But it's not a good thing.  And the people who support these sorts of technocratic subsidies should be the first people, not the last, to decry the actions which have tainted the program.--Megan McArdle

Both [Paul] Krugman and [Larry] Summers spent a lot of time saying that they agreed with each other — with one big difference. They both quoted Keynes as diagnosing “magneto trouble” — the engine of the economy is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Summers has faith that, in Churchill’s phrase, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities” — the right thing, here, being to fix the magneto with expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. Krugman, by contrast, sees political gridlock as far as the eye can see, and says that it doesn’t matter how innovative or philanthropic or demographically attractive the U.S. is — if you don’t fix the magneto, the car won’t start, and America’s magneto ain’t gonna get fixed any time soon.
...
So, do I think that North America faces a Japan-style era of high unemployment and slow growth? I’ll agree with Summers and Krugman on this one: yes, it does. Will it manage to do what’s necessary to avoid that fate? That’s something no one can know with any certainty. But life’s certainly a lot easier if you believe that it will.--Felix Salmon

Banks pour huge amounts of money into one particular asset class. They are encouraged to do this by public policymakers, although there is some dispute about whether that was the main reason for their decisions. These assets have a long tradition of doing well, although a close look at the evidence would have raised red flags. The asset market in question suddenly takes a big dive as default risk increases sharply. This drags down many large banks, forcing policymakers to provide assistance. What have I just described? The sub-prime fiasco or the PIGS sovereign debt fiasco? I’d say both. I’d say these two crises are essentially identical.--Scott Sumner

There is one group that is not smiling about these new, low-cost teeth-whitening services: the Connecticut Dental Commission. In June, the Commission ruled it is a crime punishable by up to five years in jail or $25,000 in civil penalties for anyone but a licensed dentist to offer teeth-whitening services, even if the customers apply the product to their own teeth. Teeth-whitening products are regulated by the FDA as cosmetics, which mean anyone—even a child—can purchase them and apply them to his or her own teeth without a prescription and without supervision or instruction. The Dental Commission's ruling has nothing to do with public health or safety and everything to do with protecting licensed dentists from honest competition.--Institute for Justice

People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.--P.J. O'Rourke

The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.--P.J O'Rourke

Quotes of the day

We want social returns, as well as financial ones. When you look at the major financial institutions, you have to realize there is greed involved.--Sister Nora, the Sisters of St. Francis

I completely agree, Sister Nora, but greed also infects non-financial institutions, including governments and charities and church.--Cav (who may have more cross-institutional experience than Sister Nora)

Jay-Z is releasing a new line of T-shirts in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement Friday via his Rocawear clothing label, but he doesn't plan to share any of the profits with the protesters.--Kimberly Nordyke

There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy. So it's not illegal, but I think it's highly unethical, I think it's highly offensive, and wrong.
...
For example insider trading on the stock market. If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply.
...
They do. The fact is, if you sit on a healthcare committee and you know that Medicare, for example, is-- is considering not reimbursing for a certain drug that's market moving information. And if you can trade stock on-- off of that information and do so legally, that's a great profit making opportunity. And that sort of behavior goes on.
...
It's really the way the rules have been defined. And the people who make the rules are the political class in Washington. And they've conveniently written them in such a way that they don't apply to themselves.
...

If you were a senator, Steve, and I gave you $10,000 cash, one or both of us is probably gonna go to jail. But if I'm a corporate executive and you're a senator, and I give you IPO shares in stock and over the course of one day that stock nets you $100,000, that's completely legal. And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs. --Peter Schweizer

All of a sudden [a congressman] from a background maybe in law, maybe in some other unrelated business area, all of a sudden is picking winners and losers in the market.--Jack Abramoff, disgraced Washington lobbyist

How then can we explain the high and persistent levels of long-term unemployment during this recession? One clearly important factor is the extension in July of 2010 of unemployment insurance to cover workers who have been out of work for 99 weeks instead of having their payments end after 6 months of unemployment. Studies have shown that many unemployed find jobs just about when their unemployment payments expire, after 6 months of collecting benefits under the old system. It does not require any complicated economic analysis to conclude that the extension of unemployment payments to 99 weeks will encourage many individuals to remain unemployed after 6 months of unemployment, although they would have found jobs under the old rules. They will turn down jobs that may not be as good as those they had before becoming unemployed in order to continue to collect unemployment benefits. For that reason I opposed the extension to 99 weeks in my post on 7/25/2010 Should Unemployment Compensation be Extended?.
...
Long-term unemployment may also partly be the result of uneven employment opportunities and uneven prospects for housing prices in different states and regions of the US. States like California, Nevada, and Florida that had major construction, jobs, and housing booms in the years before the onset of the recession suffered the largest hits to employment and to housing prices. Unemployed workers in such states may be reluctant to move to states where more jobs are available at good wages since they may be involved in foreclosure litigation and other issues related to the depressed housing market. They may also turn down jobs that pay much less then the unusually good wages they had during the boom times to continue to collect unemployment benefits for up to 2 years.
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Other factors are also involved in the sharp rise in the number of workers unemployed for over 6 months. Yet overall they do not justify the conclusion that many unemployed individuals are unable to find jobs because the American economy has too little demand for their set of skills.--Gary Becker

We're running out of guys there [in the defensive secondary]. [College quarterback and NFL receiver Julian Edelman] stepped in and made a nice hit there and a made a nice tackle on [LaDainian] Tomlinson. You never know. It's a long season. We have a lot of games left. Who knows who will be playing where, but I know one thing: These guys are tough, mentally and physically. They'll stand up to the challenge and give their best. That counts for a lot. The game's not too big for them.--Bill Belichick

There’s so many things I’ve learned from him over the years about mental toughness. His ability to stay even-keeled through the wins and the losses. I remember the year that we went undefeated, you never would have thought we were undefeated. You would have thought we were 0-16 the way that he coached us. The last two weeks have been rough, but he never lost faith in us or confidence in what we were doing. He just said ‘Look we just gotta do better.’ He doesn’t ride those highs and lows and he comes in every week with a goal in mind. All the guys who play for him really appreciate that and appreciate his consistency and appreciate the way that he listens to the team as well.--Tom Brady

How Muhammad Wilkerson doesn't get that [dropped] ball is beyond me. For Brady to go in there and fight for that ball was a great sign of how tough that guy is. I know what goes on in those piles. It's a dark place. A lot of things are done I can not speak of. Kudos to Brady.--Tedy Bruschi

Victories since Oct. 23: Tebow 3, Tom Brady/Michael Vick/Philip Rivers (combined) 2.--Peter King

Historically, investors have assumed 25% to 30% of student loans bundled into their bonds will default. But today they are baking in between 30% and 40% default rates among the current crop of graduates, said Chris Haid, a director in asset backed trading at Barclays Capital. Even those assumptions are a best guess and defaults could ultimately go higher if unemployment rises, Mr. Haid said. This analysis translates into some surprising insights for students and policy makers. For example, in the current economy, it may make more sense to enter a technical college than to go to law school. Not all lessons from the bond market are so counterintuitive. The most important, in fact, is a slight twist on a maxim most students know from childhood: stay in school, just not too long.
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In recessions, law school graduates have a harder time finding work than other graduates from professional programs and are more likely to default on their student loans.--Matt Wirz

When you see a guy in a loan made in 2005 that is still in school, you throw that away.--Rubin Bahar

I’m amazed that in a park full of revolutionaries, there are large contingents that can’t throw away their own trash.--Jordan McCarthy, a member of the protesters’ sanitation team

I am amazed that she is amazed.--Cav

Photo links here and here.

Top 10 Debate Brain Freeze Excuses

I need to memorize these when I get home late, and need to give my wife a full report:

10. Actually, there were three reasons I messed up last night: 1) was the nerves and 2) was the headache and 3) um…uh…oops.

9. I don’t know what you’re taking about - I think things went well.

8. I was up late last night watching “Dancing with the Stars.”

7. I thought the debate was tonight.

6. You try concentrating with Mitt Romney smiling at you. That is one handsome dude!

5. Uh, El Nino?

4. I had a five-hour energy drink six hours before the debate.

3. I really hoped it would get me on my favorite talk show, but instead, I ended up here.

2. I wanted to help take the heat off my buddy Herman Cain.

1. I just learned Justin Bieber is my father.