Kruse Kronicle

Are climate change models becoming more accurate and less reliable?

Scientific American: Are climate change models becoming more accurate and less reliable?

One of the perpetual challenges in my career as a modeler of biochemical systems has been the need to balance accuracy with reliability. This paradox is not as strange as it seems. Typically when you build a model you include a lot of approximations supposed to make the modeling process easier; ideally you want a model to be as simple as possible and contain as few parameters as possible. But this strategy does not work all the time since sometimes it turns out that in your drive for simplicity you have left a crucial factor out. So now you include this crucial factor, only to find that the uncertainties in your model go through the roof. What’s happening in such unfortunate cases is that along with including the signal from the previously excluded factors, you have also inevitably included a large amount of noise. This noise can typically result from an incomplete knowledge of the factor, either from calculation or from measurement. Modelers of every stripe thus have to tread a fine balance between including as much of reality as possibility as possible and making the model accurate enough for quantitative explanation and prediction.

It seems that this is exactly the problem that has started bedeviling climate change models. A recent issue of Nature had a very interesting article on what seems to be a wholly paradoxical feature of models used in climate science; as the models are becoming increasingly realistic, they are also becoming less accurate and predictive because of growing uncertainties. I can only imagine this to be an excruciatingly painful fact for climate modelers who seem to be facing the equivalent of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for their field. It’s an especially worrisome time to deal with such issues since the modelers need to include their predictions in the next IPCC report on climate change which is due to be published this year. ...

A very interesting piece showing the challenges of forecasting the future with mathematical models. I liked this paragraph.

... But the lesson to take away from this dilemma is that crude models sometimes work better than more realistic ones. My favorite quote about models comes from the statistician George Box who said that “all models are wrong, but some are useful”. It is a worthy endeavor to try to make models more realistic, but it is even more important to make them useful.

Five Ways Rich People Live Frugally

Business Insider: Five Ways Rich People Live Frugally

A fat salary isn’t the only way someone can strike it rich. Regardless of one’s income level, people who live below their means, invest wisely, and live modestly are on the path to real wealth.

Here are five frugal habits that many of the upper class have adopted to build long-lasting wealth and financial independence:

Drive a modest car. Your car should only serve the purpose of getting you safely and comfortably from point A to point B—nothing more. ...

Buy a modest house. Warren Buffett famously still lives in the Omaha, Neb., home he bought back in 1958 for $31,500. Take Buffett’s cue and don’t overwhelm yourself with a large monthly mortgage payment. Buy a modest and comfortable home and use the money you save to build your savings and retirement fund.

Don’t carry wads if possible. Try to avoid traveling with a wallet packed with cash....

Don’t pay full price. A great way to keep more of your money is by not paying full price on anything. ...

Have an action mentality. Almost all self-made millionaires have one thing in common: They are people of action. They don’t sit around feeling sorry for themselves waiting for something good to happen to them, as opposed to the people who I would say have the “lottery mentality.” People of action take appropriate risks, are constantly looking to improve themselves, and are addicted to knowledge, as it is the best way to gain a competitive advantage in life’s financial endeavors.

This article reminded my of a book written several years ago called The Millionare Next Door. We tend to confuse high income with high wealth. A great many people with the expensive houses and cars are spending more than earn. Their net worth is zero or less. Most people with a net wealth of one million or more live in modest homes, never buy new cars (or at least not expensive ones), watch expenses like a hawk, and are proactive with their investing. I think the never ending challenge for a follower of Jesus is a three part balancing exercise between personal consumption, giving, and investing wisely to care for one's own needs as well as to have more to give to others. I think the balance can very considerably between individuals, as well as vary over our lifetimes, based on any number of issues ranging from vocation to stage of life. I don't think the church does a very good job of helping us think this through.

How A Family Of Four Manages To Live Well On Just $14,000 Per Year

Business Insider: How A Family Of Four Manages To Live Well On Just $14,000 Per Year

In the years since the recession, the median household income in the U.S. has dropped to just over $50,000, while fixed costs like health care, higher education, and housing have only soared.

Now imagine trying to support a family of four on a fraction of that income.

It's a reality that stay-at-home wife and mother of two Danielle Wagasky has lived for the last four years.

And, perhaps a little surprisingly, she wouldn't have it any other way.

 Wagasky, 28, lives with her her husband, Jason, 31, and their two young children in a three-bedroom family home in Las Vegas, Nevada. While Jason, a member of the U.S. Army, completes his undergraduate studies, the family's only source of income is the $14,000 annual cost of living allowance he receives under the G.I. Bill.

Despite all odds, the family has barely any credit debt, no car payment, and no mortgage speak of.  ...

Why juvenile incarceration reached its lowest rate in 38 years

Christian Science Monitor: Why juvenile incarceration reached its lowest rate in 38 years

The juvenile incarceration in the US rate has fallen 41 percent in the past 15 years, reaching the lowest level since 1975, a new study finds. What is behind the rapid decline?

Fewer young people are behind bars than at any point since 1975, due in part to lower rates of juvenile crime and a shift away from interventions focused on long-term incarceration.

The number of young people in a correction facility on a single day dropped from a high of 107,637 in 1995 to 70,792 in 2010, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that used data from the US Census Bureau. The incarceration rate – the number of young people confined per 100,000 youths – dropped by 41 percent in the same period. 

The trend might be stronger than the data show, says Bart Lubow, director of the foundation’s Juvenile Justice Strategy Group. Some of the biggest decreases in youth incarceration in some states have occurred in the past two years, and those numbers are not included in the report. ...

The main reasons behind the declining numbers:

• A shift in thinking about the best ways to handle kids who break the law.
• A sustained period of decreasing juvenile crime.
• Fiscal pressures on state governments that have many people – including conservatives who in the past espoused tough-on-crime policies – clamoring for less-expensive alternatives to mass incarceration. ...

... “Even with the drops we’re describing in this report, the US, compared to similarly governed countries like those in Western Europe, has a much, much higher [youth] incarceration rate than any of those places,” he says.

America’s incarceration rate for juveniles is 18 times greater than that of France, and more than seven times greater than that of Great Britain. It’s hard to even compare it with the juvenile incarceration rates in places like Finland or Sweden, where young offenders are seldom locked up. ...

What Data Can't Do - David Brooks

New York Times: What Data Can't Do - David Brooks

... Data struggles with the social. Your brain is pretty bad at math (quick, what’s the square root of 437), but it’s excellent at social cognition. People are really good at mirroring each other’s emotional states, at detecting uncooperative behavior and at assigning value to things through emotion. ...

... Data struggles with context. Human decisions are not discrete events. They are embedded in sequences and contexts. The human brain has evolved to account for this reality. People are really good at telling stories that weave together multiple causes and multiple contexts. Data analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.

Data creates bigger haystacks. This is a point Nassim Taleb, the author of “Antifragile,” has made. As we acquire more data, we have the ability to find many, many more statistically significant correlations. Most of these correlations are spurious and deceive us when we’re trying to understand a situation. Falsity grows exponentially the more data we collect. The haystack gets bigger, but the needle we are looking for is still buried deep inside. ...

... Big data has trouble with big problems. If you are trying to figure out which e-mail produces the most campaign contributions, you can do a randomized control experiment. But let’s say you are trying to stimulate an economy in a recession. You don’t have an alternate society to use as a control group. For example, we’ve had huge debates over the best economic stimulus, with mountains of data, and as far as I know not a single major player in this debate has been persuaded by data to switch sides.

Data favors memes over masterpieces. Data analysis can detect when large numbers of people take an instant liking to some cultural product. But many important (and profitable) products are hated initially because they are unfamiliar.

Data obscures values. I recently saw an academic book with the excellent title, “ ‘Raw Data’ Is an Oxymoron.” One of the points was that data is never raw; it’s always structured according to somebody’s predispositions and values. The end result looks disinterested, but, in reality, there are value choices all the way through, from construction to interpretation.

This is not to argue that big data isn’t a great tool. It’s just that, like any tool, it’s good at some things and not at others. As the Yale professor Edward Tufte has said, “The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.”

How The Average American Spends Their Paycheck

Rise of the Freelance Economy

Atlantic Cities has an interesting piece about the rise of the freelance economy. The Geography of America's Freelance Economy.

... Slightly more than 10 million American workers, or seven percent of the workforce, are self-employed, according to estimates compiled by Rob Sentz and his colleagues at Economic Modeling Specialists (EMSI, for short). EMSI's figures are based on data from the United States Census (American Community Survey and Non-employer Statistics). More than four million (43 percent) of those self-employed workers are members of the creative class of scientists and technologists, knowledge workers and professionals, artists, designers, entertainers, and media workers.

... It's high time we temper the the mythology of freelance work with a dose of reality. While the popular image of self-employment is technology or knowledge working free-agents, the reality is that the ranks of the self-employed are populated by a mix of high-skill knowledge work and low-skill, much lower wage service work. Not only do they often earn less money, self-employed Americans lack the basic protections and security that workers and a middle-class society require.

Given the flexibility that has come along with the knowledge and service-based economy and the preference many Americans have for doing their own thing, it will be next to impossible to go back to the old system of long-term employment tenure in "real jobs" of the past. The number of full-employed independent workers is projected to swell to 30 million in the next decade and the total number of freelancers could reach as many as 70 million when as much as half of the workforce could be involved in some sort of freelance work. What's more, 57 percent of freelancers chose to go independent in 2012, as Johnson reports, and only 13 percent say they want to go back to traditional employment.

What's needed is nothing less than a new social compact which reflects the new realities of work. ...

Then Ross Douthart, writing in the New York Times, has this piece: A World Without Work

If such a utopia were possible, one might expect that it would be achieved first among the upper classes, and then gradually spread down the social ladder. First the wealthy would work shorter hours, then the middle class, and finally even high school dropouts would be able to sleep late and take four-day weekends and choose their own adventures — “to hunt in the morning,” as Karl Marx once prophesied, “fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner ...”

Yet the decline of work isn’t actually some wild Marxist scenario. It’s a basic reality of 21st-century American life, one that predates the financial crash and promises to continue apace even as normal economic growth returns. This decline isn’t unemployment in the usual sense, where people look for work and can’t find it. It’s a kind of post-employment, in which people drop out of the work force and find ways to live, more or less permanently, without a steady job. So instead of spreading from the top down, leisure time — wanted or unwanted — is expanding from the bottom up. Long hours are increasingly the province of the rich. ...

Whether or not either of these stories has things framed just right, I do think we are in the midst of a major upheavel in what work and employment look like. I remember reading once that Americans made or grew more than 80% of everything they consumed in 1885. By 1915 is was less than 20%. I suspect this last decade is the leadning edge of changes that may be just as profound, and just as hard to anticipate, as those on the horizon in 1885.

Saturday Links

1. Christian History magazine has an entire issue devoted to Christians in the New Industrial Economy: The World Changed, the Church Responded. It is a priceless collection of essays on how various religious traditions responded to (or failed to) the challenges of the Industrial Revolution.

Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.

2. Orange County Register says Don't count out mainline Protestants yet.

As flocks shrink, denominations that once defined America fight to stay relevant with new ways of reaching out.

3. The Washington Post reports that Megachurches thriving in tough economic times.

"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new survey shows.

Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years. Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."

4. Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate

... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...

... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...

... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...

... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...

5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea

6. The rise of post-industrial China? (Economist)

7. New Geography thinks, U.S. LATE TO THE PARTY ON LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA.

"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.

This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."

8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.

9. A Portrait of U.S. Immigrants

Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey.

10. Marketing Daily says More Latinos See Themselves As Bicultural

With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a Latino market perceived to be homogenous?

11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”

"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about the scarcity of resources.  (If you belong to both of those groups, there is little advice that I can offer.)  However, in between those poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."

12. Being a Republican or a Democrat may all be in your head: Republican Brains Differ From Democrats' In New FMRI Study

... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.

Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...

... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs, however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents' political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the researchers wrote. ...

13. Health Care Without the Doctors Coming to a Walmart Near You

STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.

He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...

... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...

14. Is this a case of marketing going too far? Young Japanese Women Rent Out Their Bare Legs as Advertising Space

15. Nanotechnology Rebuilds the Periodic Table

Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the building blocks for cutting-edge materials.

Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...

16. ExtremeTech says NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane.

17. Atlantic Cities has some great maps showing the impact of railroads on travel time in the early 19th Century, thus shrinking the nation. A Mapped History of Train Travel in the United States

18. A soccer goalie's worst nightmare.

19. You might want to think twice before a game of horse with this cheerleader.

The 20 Greatest Songs About Work

The Pessimist: The 20 Greatest Songs About Work

You might hate your job, but there’s nothing like a good song to make you feel like you’re not alone. (I mean, except when you think about it, and realize that the musicians who performed the song probably no longer have to work in an office, and are most likely drinking Champagne with supermodels in a brand-new Learjet 85, while you’re eating off-brand corn chips you bought from a convenience store that the health department should have closed down a long time ago.)

The point is, labor has been the single most popular subject of pop songs for decades (besides girls, cars, alcohol, parties, religion, and about 10,000 other things). So below, we’ve collected 20 of the best songs about the working life. Think of it as an extremely depressing playlist, like if your local radio station hired a German film director as its morning drive-time DJ. If we missed anything, let us know in the comments! (But be nice, or we’ll tell your boss you’re goldbricking again.)  ...

Take a look at the list. Any songs you would add?

 

Printing Human Organs

Huff Post has an interesting article about using 3-D printing to print a human ear made of live tissue. Included in this post is a TED video about printing any number of organs. Late in the presentation is a presentation of a 3-D printed kidney. This is all still experimental and have no trials have been run on the printed organs, but the progress in this form of bio-tech is truly remarkable.

The Case for Vertical Farming

This is a promotional piece by an Australian company called Vertical Farm Systems. This technology is still in its infancy and there are detractors, but this promtional video is a great summary of how one commerical firm sees the promise of vertical farming.

Is the Default Position Shifting to Subsidiarity?

Catholic Culture: Is the Default Position Shifting to Subsidiarity?

Not so long ago, most ecclesiastical officials and Catholic academicians emphasized solidarity as a political ideal. Owing to a common misunderstanding of both government and solidarity, that emphasis was almost always at the expense of subsidiarity. In recent years, however, the tide in favor of subsidiarity has begun to turn.

It remains true that concern for the poor and marginalized must be a significant political priority, reflected in how we conceive and use government. But what too many Catholics missed for much of the twentieth century was that solidarity is not really a political virtue at all, whereas subsidiarity is. Solidarity is the concern of all for all. It is the sense of responsibility we are all supposed to have for each other. It leads to that true care and reciprocity which are the marks of a healthy society, and it is prior to politics and government.

But insofar as solidarity has been incorrectly viewed as a political virtue, too many Catholics have insisted on the need to mimic solidarity by using government to enforce what they think the results of solidarity should look like. ... 

... In contrast, the principle of subsidiarity is distinctively a political virtue, though not exclusively so. Based on the truth that human dignity includes the right and the duty of persons to freely participate in the solutions to their own problems, the principle of subsidiarity states that everything should be done at the lowest possible level of organization, and that whenever something more is needed, higher levels of organization are obliged to assist lower levels rather than to supplant them. This means that in the political order the virtue of subsidiarity actually preserves and fosters the conditions within which solidarity can flourish, even if solidarity does not necessarily flourish as a direct result. ...

 

Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

Scientific American: Happiness Means Being Just Rushed Enough

... However, despite this broad consensus, and its obvious health and quality-of-life implications, there seems little empirical survey evidence that daily life is truly speeding up. ...

... In that 1965 survey, we found 24 percent of respondents aged 18-64 said they “always” felt rushed, and 48 percent said they had no excess time. When we repeated the questions in the 1990s, these figures had risen to 35 percent “always” rushed and 55 percent with no excess time, where they remained, more or less, until we last asked the questions in a 2004 survey.

This set the stage, then, for our repeating these questions in two separate surveys in 2009-10. Quite contrary to our expectations, both of these surveys now show decreases in Americans feeling “always” rushed particularly among the busiest group of those aged 18 to 64 — a 7-point drop in feeling always rushed to 28 percent — and a drop to 45 percent in those feeling no excess time. ...

... Almost 50 percent of respondents who feel least rushed and who also feel least excess time report being “very happy”, almost twice as high as the rest of the US public. It is an elite group, making up less than 10 percent of the population. They not only seem happier by ignoring the “rat race” and subscribing to a philosophy of “Don’t hurry, be happy,” but by organizing their lifestyles to minimize spells of boredom and lack of focus as well. Thus, there seems dysfunction in having either too much or too little free time. In a society that otherwise seems obsessed with speed and the latest IT gadgets, this would seem to offer a path to a more contented lifestyle.

Would raising the minimum wage destroy jobs?

Christian Science Monitor: Would raising the minimum wage destroy jobs?

Since President Obama proposed an increase in the federal minimum wage in the U.S., from $7.25 per hour to $9 per hour and then index it to inflation, the debate has been raging about whether or not this would make low wage workers better paid or not paid at all (or in other words if they would get unemployed).

The short answer is that it would be a little bit of both, but with emphasis on little. To understand why we must first examine the issue theoretically and then look at current U.S. conditions. ...

... If the legal minimum wage is lower or equal to the current pay level, nothing happens at all. If it is higher than current pay but lower than marginal productivity then workers get higher pay. If it is higher than marginal productivity, workers lose their jobs.

Since minimum wages are usually far below median pay, for most workers nothing happens. For the small numbers that are affected some will receive a raise, while others will lose their jobs. The exact proportion of workers who are unaffacted, of workers who receive higher pay and of workers who lose their jobs depend on the specific conditions in each specific country (or state or city) and each specific period of time and will therefore differ between different locations and different periods of time ...

This fits makes sound economic sense to me. I think most people intuitively know that if you put the minimum wage at $30 you would wreck the economy. There is an upper limit on high you can go before businesses would be paying people more than the economic value of the labor they are getting in return. Presently, $9 is well below that threshold in most contexts and will therefore have only a modest impact on either improving wages or destroying jobs. I suspect the political and symbolic value is greater than the actual economic impact.

Saturday Links

1. The new global top dog in international trade is China. China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation

"U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion."

2. As U.S. birth rate drops, concern for the future mounts

The drop in U.S. births to their lowest level since 1920 is sounding alarms about the nation's ability to support its fast-growing elderly population.

As public concern mounts, a growing number of books, reports and columns are laying out challenges the United States will face because of this demographic upheaval: Fewer babies are being born while the wave of 78 million older Baby Boomers have only begun to retire (the oldest turn 67 this year). ...

3. Raising the minimum wage has become a hot topic once again. Jared Bernstein makes Obama's case in the Huffington Post, saying that numerous careful studies say raising the minimum wage does not have an impact on employment. While that is true, there are also many careful studies that suggest that it does have an impact. My perception is that raising the minimum wage helps some working poor who already have jobs but makes it more difficult for low-skilled unemployed workers, particularly minority men in urban contexts. It is interesting that 25 years ago the New York Times came out in opposition to the minimum wage: New York Times Called To Abolish The Minimum Wage In 1987. Fiscal Times makes their case against the minimum wage hike: Raise the Minimum Wage and Get Minimum Jobs

4. Speaking of low-income workers, The 20 Companies With The Most Low-Wage Workers

5. Last week I wrote a post that linked a Salon article that said we are often swayed toward liking policies we have previously disliked when a political figure we like adopts those polices. (See When liberals ignore injustice) A prime example of rationalizing this inconsistency in this article in the Atlantic: MSNBC Host: Trusting Obama More Than Bush Isn't Hypocritical. The willingness of Krystal Ball to alter the degree of power and discretion a president has based on personal affinity, rather than on an impartial assessment of role of the office, is disturbing (and this is true of left and right.)

6. Gleaming skyscrapers are springing up in major cities of many developing nations. Partly because of practical concerns and partly as status symbols. But not in India. Why India Keeps Its Cities So Short

7. Does the time of year you were born relative to date that determines which year you start school have any impact on your life? How Birth Date Affects Future Success

8. This technology is pretty cool!

9. Let us give thanks the demise of this publishing niche. A Midcentury Travel Guide for African-American Drivers Navigating Jim Crow

10. My former professor at Palmer Theological Seminary is in the news again. Resigning From the AARP

"The AARP is a selfish lobby demanding things for seniors even though modest sacrifices would help us reduce the deficit and enable us to spend more on crucial things like better education for our children. In fact, John Rother (long-time chief lobbyist for the AARP) suggested that in 2011 and promptly lost his job. Selfish seniors protested loudly and the AARP quickly backpedalled."

(For the record, I have never joined AARP. I'm still in denial that I am old enough to join.)

11. There are only a few seconds left in the basketball game. Your team is up by three but the other team is about to inbound the ball. Do you quickly foul in an effort to force two free throws or do you simply play defend against any score? Yet another study about fouling when up 3

How China Became Capitalist

CATO: How China Became Capitalist

... Nonetheless, China has been transformed from the inside out over the past 35 years. This transformation is the story of our time. The struggle of China, in other words, is the struggle of the world. ...

Conclusion

Given our account of how China became capitalist, what can we say about the form of capitalism that has emerged in China? A persisting feature of China’s market transition is the lack of political liberalization. This is not to say that the Chinese political system has stood still over the past 35 years. The Party has distanced itself from radical ideology; it is no longer communist except in name. In recent years, the internet has increasingly empowered the Chinese to exercise their political voice. Nonetheless, China remains ruled by a single political party.

This continuity hides a fundamental change in China’s political reality. With the death of Deng Xiaoping, “strongman” politics was brought to a closure. Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, China is no longer ruled by a charismatic leader. In that sense, Chinese politics today is qualitatively different from the time of Mao and Deng. But the Chinese government has not come to terms with this political change on the ground; there have been few efforts at institution-building to prepare China for the new political reality.

The combination of rapid economic liberalization and seemingly unchanged politics has led many to characterize China’s market economy as state-led, authoritarian capitalism, which many people have rightly recognized as fragile and unsustainable. When and how China will embrace democracy, and whether the Party will survive democratization, are the main questions asked about China’s political future. In our book, a different perspective is offered. It provides a different diagnosis of the main flaw of the Chinese market economy: China has developed a robust market for goods, but it still lacks a free market for ideas.

The market for ideas points to an alternative way of thinking about China’s political future. Our reasoning is mainly based on the following two considerations. First, multiparty competition does not work unless it is cultivated and disciplined by a free market for ideas, without which democracy can be easily hijacked by interest groups and undermined by the tyranny of the majority. The performance of democracy critically depends on the market for ideas, just like privatization depends on the market for capital assets. Second, multi- party competition had virtually no precedent in Chinese history. Indeed, the Chinese word for the “party” (党) has a strong negative connotation in traditional Chinese political thinking. “Forming a party and pursuing self-interest” (结党营私) has been consistently denounced as undermining the political ideal, which is “what is under heaven is for all” (天下为公). In contrast, the market for ideas has a deep and revered root in traditional Chinese thinking; “let one hundred schools of thought contend” has been respected as a political ideal since the time of Confucius. In our view, the market for ideas promises a more gradual and viable approach to rebuilding Chinese politics on the principles of tolerance, justice, and humility.

Over the past 35 years, China has embraced capitalism not just in the economy. The Theory of Moral Sentiments has more than a dozen Chinese translations; the book has won the heart and mind of premier Wen Jiabao. The message of Adam Smith resonates strongly with the Chinese, not least because of its striking affinity with the traditional Chinese thinking on economy and society. A surprising outcome of China’s transition to capitalism is that China has found a way back to its own cultural roots. ...

Fifty Equal States

Fakeisthenewreal.org: Electoral college reform (fifty states with equal population)

Their methodology is pretty interesting. I now live in Nodaway. What do you think?

What is your risk of being killed by an asteroid?

Economist: Danger of death!

What is your risk of being killed by an asteroid compared to other causes of death?

The Nordic countries: The next supermodel

The Economist: The Nordic countries: The next supermodel

Politicians from both right and left could learn from the Nordic countries.

...The idea of lean Nordic government will come as a shock both to French leftists who dream of socialist Scandinavia and to American conservatives who fear that Barack Obama is bent on “Swedenisation”. They are out of date. In the 1970s and 1980s the Nordics were indeed tax-and-spend countries. Sweden’s public spending reached 67% of GDP in 1993. Astrid Lindgren, the inventor of Pippi Longstocking, was forced to pay more than 100% of her income in taxes. But tax-and-spend did not work: Sweden fell from being the fourth-richest country in the world in 1970 to the 14th in 1993.

Since then the Nordics have changed course—mainly to the right. Government’s share of GDP in Sweden, which has dropped by around 18 percentage points, is lower than France’s and could soon be lower than Britain’s. Taxes have been cut: the corporate rate is 22%, far lower than America’s. The Nordics have focused on balancing the books. While Mr Obama and Congress dither over entitlement reform, Sweden has reformed its pension system (see Free exchange). Its budget deficit is 0.3% of GDP; America’s is 7%.

On public services the Nordics have been similarly pragmatic. So long as public services work, they do not mind who provides them. Denmark and Norway allow private firms to run public hospitals. Sweden has a universal system of school vouchers, with private for-profit schools competing with public schools. Denmark also has vouchers—but ones that you can top up. When it comes to choice, Milton Friedman would be more at home in Stockholm than in Washington, DC.

All Western politicians claim to promote transparency and technology. The Nordics can do so with more justification than most. The performance of all schools and hospitals is measured. Governments are forced to operate in the harsh light of day: Sweden gives everyone access to official records. Politicians are vilified if they get off their bicycles and into official limousines. The home of Skype and Spotify is also a leader in e-government: you can pay your taxes with an SMS message.

This may sound like enhanced Thatcherism, but the Nordics also offer something for the progressive left by proving that it is possible to combine competitive capitalism with a large state: they employ 30% of their workforce in the public sector, compared with an OECD average of 15%. They are stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies: Sweden let Saab go bankrupt and Volvo is now owned by China’s Geely. But they also focus on the long term—most obviously through Norway’s $600 billion sovereign-wealth fund—and they look for ways to temper capitalism’s harsher effects. Denmark, for instance, has a system of “flexicurity” that makes it easier for employers to sack people but provides support and training for the unemployed, and Finland organises venture-capital networks. ...

Americans' 90% tax rate

CNN: Americans' 90% tax rate

One of the challenging features of poverty aid is to avoid creating disincentives toward achieving self-sufficiency.

... Take a hypothetical single mother of two, Jane, earning $18,000 a year. Earning an additional $1 will increase Jane's actual cash available to spend by just 12 cents.

How can this be? The effect comes about because governments at various levels give aid to the very poor, such that the extremely low earners face negative tax rates. In short, we pay some poor to work -- this is the "welfare to workfare" move of Bill Clinton's legacy. But then the law takes these benefits back from the near-poor via high marginal tax rates in a "phaseout" range. The most important of these provisions is the earned income tax credit (EITC) located in the federal income tax. This provision pays the working poor up to 40 cents on the dollar up to approximately $10,000 of earnings.

If Jane makes $10,000, the government mails her a check for $4,000. Over a certain range, Jane keeps that money. But as she starts earning more than approximately $18,000, Jane begins to lose the $4,000, at a roughly 20% rate. Add that to payroll taxes (7.65%), the regular income tax (15%, at that range), and Jane is in a rate bracket over 40%, and we are just getting started -- other federal, state and local programs and taxes pile on to the same effect.

You might be thinking that losing a benefit is not a tax. That is an understandable sentiment, but Jane will not be comforted by it. Looking just at the EITC, as Jane's earnings go over $18,000, she loses some of the dollars she is earning to "regular" taxes, and the $4,000 she was getting in assistance is disappearing. It's real, green, money that she is losing. This is the net effect that Shaviro was describing: Compare Jane earning $10,000 in the workplace to Jane earning $25,000, and the latter Jane simply has over $2500 fewer dollars to spend.

If this is all so complex, how can it affect anyone's real behavior? But what we don't know, or don't fully, can affect us. ...

Tax policy is not my strong suit but articles like these explain why the seeming "irrational" or "lazy" of low-income folks is often not that irrational. It is the system they are navigating that is irrational.

Walter Cronkite in the Living Room of 2001 (1967)

Ten Ways to Encourage Vocational Stewardship in Your Church

Re-Integrate: Ten Ways to Encourage Vocational Stewardship in Your Church

Over the years I've had conversations with pastors who want to do more to integreate faith and work but struggle to know where to begin. Re-Integrate has a post with some very practical ideas.

Originally published at www.vocationalstewardship.org

1. During corporate worship services, pray for members by vocation. This could take a variety of expressions:

• pray aloud for a different occupational group (e.g., educators or businesspeople) each week
• invite congregants who are facing difficulties on the job to come forward during or after the service for prayer
• pray for individual members by name and vocation

2. Visit church members at their places of work.

3. Recognize vocational achievements and awards of congregants in the church’s newsletter or on its website. ...

Read the whole post. Excellent ideas!

Saturday Links

1. I love maps and charts. Naturally I was drawn to this: 36 Maps That Explain The Entire World. Here is just one example:

2. Roger Pielke, Jr., says It's Time to Bury the Easterlin Paradox.

"The Easterlin paradox suggest that in terms of human happiness -- a squishy concept to be sure -- there is a limit to economic growth beyond which there really is just no point in attaining more wealth. Further, a decoupling between income and happiness at some threshold would imply that GDP would not be a good measure of welfare, we would need some other metric.

A recent paper (PDF) by Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers argues that the Easterlin paradox is also wrong. ..."

3. John Danforth thinks We Need Less Religion in our Politics and Less Politics in our Religion.

4. I opined about this in yesterday's post but I'm linking it again. One of the better Salon piece's I've read. When liberals ignore injustice

"Why isn't there more outrage about the president's unilateral targeted assassination program on the left?"

5. Arnold Kling with an interesting piece on the role of Jews in the rise of the modern urbanized economic order. The Unintended Consequences of God

"In those days, most people were farmers, for whom literacy’s costs generally outweighed its benefits. However, in an urbanized society with skilled occupations, literacy pays off. As urbanization gradually increased in the late Middle Ages, Jews came to fill high-skilled occupations. Botticini and Eckstein argue that literacy, rather than persecution, is what led Jews into these occupations."

6. New Geography wants to know Is Urbanism The New Trickle-Down Economics?

"But while progressives would clearly mock this policy [trickle-down economics], modern day urbanism often resembles nothing so much as trickle-down economics, though this time mostly advocated by those who would self-identify as being from the left. The idea is that through investments catering to the fickle and mobile educated elite and the high end businesses that employ and entertain them, cities can be rejuvenated in a way that somehow magically benefits everybody and is socially fair."

7. NPR has nice piece on mini-reacters. Are Mini-Reactors The Future Of Nuclear Power?

8. Mark Perry excerpts a quote from green libertarian John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market.

“Capitalism is the greatest creation humanity has done for social cooperation. It has lifted humanity out of the dirt. In statistics we discovered when we were researching the book, about 200 years ago when capitalism was created, 85% of the people alive lived on $1 a day. Today, that number is 16%. Still too high, but capitalism is wiping out poverty across the world. 200 years ago illiteracy rates were 90%. Today, they are down to about 14%. 200 years ago the average lifespan was 30. Today it is 68 across the world, 78 in the States, and almost 82 in Japan. This is due to business. This is due to capitalism. And it doesn’t get credit for it. Most of the time, business is portrayed by its enemies as selfish and greedy and exploitative, yet it’s the greatest value creator in the world.”

9. Economist Gavin Kennedy with some interesting thoughts on the relationship between the state and the economy in developing nations:

The problem is to achieve the right balance between a competitive market economy and an effective state:  markets where possible; the state where necessary.

10. Climate Change: Key Data Points from Pew Research. Highlights some interesting shifts in the public's priorities.

11. Great piece about yet another way family life is changing. Yes, I’m a Homemaker

I’m a guy. My wife works. We’ve got no kids. I’m a stay-at-home dude.

"... What a sweet picture this conjures: the stay-at-home dad nurturing his children, looking after the house and helping support his wife in her budding career and shelving his own big ambitions for later. Now it gets a little awkward. There is no adorable kid, nor plans to have one. No starter home that needs knocking into shape. I'm not just doing this temporarily until I find something meaningful to do. I’m actually a full-time homemaker ... not stay-at-home dad but stay-at-home dude. A conversational pause. Where do you mentally file this guy? Usually I just change the subject. ..."

12. The Atlantic reports that Women Are Often Remarkably Reluctant to Ask for Help Around the House

A new study shows that high-earning women are more likely to let their houses be messy than to hire a housekeeper or get their husbands and kids to pitch in. ...

... "You can purchase substitutes for your own time, you can get your husband to do more, or you can all just do less," Killewald says. "Whether women outsource housework in particular has less to do with resources, but whether or not paid labor is viewed as an appropriate strategy for undertaking domestic work.

Doing less housework seems to be a popular option. ...

13. Business insider reports on a finding that comes as no shock to me: Men Really Do Have A Harder Time Reading Other People's Emotions.

Psychiatrists have concluded that males take longer to assess facial expressions as their brains have to work twice as hard to work out whether another person looks friendly or intelligent.

14. Daniel Kirk with a thoughtful piece Homosexuality under the Reign of Christ

15. Facebook Unfriending Has Real-Life Consequences

In particular, researchers found that 40% of people say they would avoid someone who unfriended them on Facebook, while 50% say they would not avoid a person who unfriended them. Women were more likely than men to avoid someone who unfriended them, the researchers found.

16. The Future of Librarians in an EBook World

... Libraries are responding to the decline of print in a variety of creative ways, trying to remain relevant – especially to younger people – by embracing the new technology. Many, such as New York’s Queens Public Library, are reinventing themselves as centers for classes, job training, and simply hanging out. In one radical example, a new $1.5 million library scheduled to open in San Antonio, Texas, this fall will be completely book-free, with its collection housed exclusively on tablets, laptops, and e-readers. “Think of an Apple store,” the Bexar County judge who is leading the effort told NPR. It’s a flashy and seductive package.

But libraries are about more than just e-readers or any other media, as important as those things are. They are about more than just buildings such as the grand edifices erected by Carnegie money, or the sleek and controversial new design for the New York Public Library’s central branch. They are also about human beings and their relationships, specifically, the relationship between librarians and patrons. And that is the relationship that the foundation created by Microsoft co-founder’s Paul G. Allen is seeking to build in a recent round of grants to libraries in the Pacific Northwest. ...

17. 3-D Printing just gets more amazing. A 3D Printer That Generates Human Embryonic Stem Cells

3-D printers can produce gun parts, aircraft wings, food and a lot more, but this new 3-D printed product may be the craziest thing yet: human embryonic stem cells. Using stem cells as the "ink" in a 3-D printer, researchers in Scotland hope to eventually build 3-D printed organs and tissues. A team at Heriot-Watt University used a specially designed valve-based technique to deposit whole, live cells onto a surface in a specific pattern.

Politicized Christians, Symbolic Hostility, and an Israeli Web-Designer

Many conservative Christians have embrace government as a tool for achieving their moral vision for society, a mindset that dates back to at least the 1970s. Many people are now questioning the wisdom of this alliance. Stephen Prothero recently wrote recently, "Americans have historically opted to split the difference between living in a nation in which church and state are married and one in which they are not allowed to date." The church has role in the public discourse. But when church becomes too closely allied with a political objective, a political party, or a politician, it becomes captive to a mindset of power and domination. That is today’s context. It isn't the first time we have been here and it won't be the last. As Prothero rightly notes, we seem to go through cycles of balance and imbalance on how church and state should relate.

The Christian Left (or progressives) hold themselves up as the antidote to this unholy alliance between the church and state. They are prophetic. Unlike conservatives who were in the tank for Bush and the Republican Party, they stand unflinchingly for justice. Addressing the issue of torture is a good example.

The Bush administration used "enhanced interrogation techniques" like waterboarding. This was torture and torture is never justified, we were told. No amount of oversight, no amount of justification can EVER justify torture. Not only is torture not Christian but it violates commonly agreed upon ethics in the community of nations. There are no exceptions. Add to this Guantanamo Bay and holding prisoners without due process. Bush is not a Christian because no Christian would engage in torture. Bush and his administration are war criminals. Bush should have been impeached but even today he should be brought up on charges of war crimes. The church must take a prophetic stand against injustice. Five and six years ago I can remember a relentless stream of social media posts and conversations by my progressive sisters and brothers in the faith along these lines.

Now fast forward a few years and see where we are now. President Obama's team has not been using "enhanced interrogation techniques" (as far as we know). They simply send in drones to, not torture, but kill anyone they suspect might be a threat, apparently while occasionally killing innocent bystanders. We are learning now that apparently these clandestine acts could be targeting Americans abroad who are suspected of terrorist activity. And, oh yes, last I checked, we are now in Obama’s second administration and Guantanamo Bay is still open with no foreseeable end. Where are the prophetic voices today? Cue the soundtrack with crickets chirping.

Oh sure, there are few voices here and there showing outrage, just as there were conservative voices here and there expressing outrage during the Bush Administration. There are expressions of disappointment at the Obama's "failings" just as there were by conservatives about Bush. Obama has strayed over the line a little and we need to bring him back. After all, it’s complicated. But where is the relentless prophetic vitriol about a war criminal president who is a faux Christian?

Joan Walsh just wrote a piece in Salon yesterday, titled, When liberals ignore injustice.

“Last year Brown University’s Michael Tesler released a fascinating study showing that Americans inclined to racially blinkered views wound up opposing policies they would otherwise support, once they learned those policies were endorsed by President Obama. Their prejudice extended to the breed of the president’s dog, Bo: They were much more likely to say they liked Portuguese water dogs when told Ted Kennedy owned one than when they learned Obama did.

But Tesler found that the Obama effect worked the opposite way, too: African-Americans and white liberals who supported Obama became more likely to support policies once they learned the president did.

More than once I’ve worried that might carry over to bad policies that Obama has flirted with embracing, that liberals have traditionally opposed: raising the age for Medicare and Social Security or cutting those programs’ benefits. Or hawkish national security policies that liberals shrieked about when carried out by President Bush, from rendition to warrantless spying. Or even worse, policies that Bush stopped short of, like targeted assassination of U.S. citizens loyal to al-Qaida (or “affiliates”) who were (broadly) deemed (likely) to threaten the U.S. with (possible) violence (some day). ...”

I invite you to read the whole thing. She is looking at this from a political perspective. But there are powerful lessons here for those of us who are disciples of Jesus. Our affinity for the person or people in power clouds our ability to be truly prophetic. And the more we cordon ourselves off into echo chambers the more prone we are to compromise. But I think there is something else at work here. Look at another controversial issue.

Illegal immigration is ongoing hot-button issue. Many who advocate for the rights of undocumented aliens say that opposition to incorporating undocumented aliens into our society is grounded in racism. Now I can’t recall ever hearing a tight border advocate say, “I hate Mexicans. Don’t let them in.” So why the accusation of racism? Because they perceive symbolic hostility.

It is often culturally inappropriate to express open dislike for a particular class of people. Nevertheless, that dislike seeks an outlet. Symbolic hostility is what happens when those with dislike for a community latch on to initiatives that disadvantage that community but can be supported on a rationale that has nothing to do with the underlying hostility. It is hostility with plausible deniability, if you will. Symbolic hostility may be a calculated decision for some but I suspect for most there is at least a measure of denial. Furthermore, for many, support of a controversial measure may genuinely be uninfluenced by animus. It is often difficult to objectively say exactly what it is that motivates us, much less motivates others. This murkiness is precisely what gives cover to the hostility.

The immigration example highlights symbolic hostility that is usually linked with conservative values. But liberals and progressives claim to be the community of tolerance. Do they engage in symbolic hostility?

Sociologist George Yancey had an interesting post last December where he reviews his research into symbolic hostility. Using data from the American National Election Study, he identified seven religious groupings and measured the affection survey respondents had for each group. Atheists were the most disliked group among respondents, more than twice the degree of dislike over the second highest group. Christian conservatives were in second, followed closely behind by Muslims. Yancey then looked at characteristics of people who had the lowest affection for each group. Not surprisingly, the least tolerance for atheists was found among political conservatives, the highly religious, and the least educated. Political conservatives were the least likely to have tolerance for Muslims. But when it came to tolerance for Christian conservatives, political progressives, the highly educated, and the irreligious had the least tolerance. This lack of tolerance was detected at a statistically significant level. To the degree that there is “Islamophobia” there is at least as that much animosity by progressives toward Christian conservatives.

Yancey goes on to make some distinctions about how animosity is expressed by the different groups. He notes:

“While clearly political conservatives are not all violent, they may have a political philosophy that makes more allowances for violent reactions. [He is not entirely persuaded of a violence differential.] But those with animosity towards fundamentalists are well educated, irreligious and political progressives. Those individuals are more likely to have educational status and a political philosophy that would reject violence.”

He says it is naïve to believe that groups experiencing the progressives’ level of animosity do not act upon it. He offers this insight.

“Given the propensity of the highly educated and political progressives to avoid being labeled as intolerant, symbolic racism is a good way to understand how animosity towards Christian conservatives may be expressed. Individuals with this animosity are likely hesitant to openly express it but that animosity can come out on issues where a different reason can hide a hostile expression.”

And, in this case, being highly educated and in powerful positions, they have the institutional wherewithal to act.

My politics and economics is somewhere to the right of center. I have no doubt that some advocates for some of the positions I embrace are practicing symbolic hostility. Sometimes it is excruciating to have to listen to someone like this make the case for a position I actually support. Furthermore, I am human. I can frequently feel the animosity welling within me toward people who consistently mock and disparage ideals I value. I don’t come to this discussion as innocent objective observer. None of us do and progressive Christians are no different.

Many people have deep moral concerns about violence and torture as practiced by the previous presidential administration. I don’t doubt that. But I also don't doubt that a significant amount of the vitriol of “prophetic” denunciation toward the previous administration was more rooted in the spirit of animus than in the Spirit of God. The relative treatment of the issue with two different presidents is telling. And this is a repeated pattern on the left with many issues, mistaking symbolic hostility for prophetic witness.

Conservative Christians aren’t the only ones who hate. And when being “prophetic” is dependent upon which party has power or my affinity for a politician, it is not prophetic. It is symbolic hostility. It is every bit as damaging to the witness of Jesus Christ as is the alliance of the Christian Right with the state. Are we not called to something higher?

While writing this post, I came across the news that two of Fred Phelps’s daughters have left the Westboro Baptist Church. (See Westboro Baptist Heiress Pens Online Goodbye to Church) Now this is a group that sees no need for symbolic hostility. They wear their hostility proudly on their sleeves. Surely if there was ever a group that most of would agree should be worthy of our hostility, symbolic or otherwise, it is this community. What was the catalyst for change in Megan Phelps-Roper’s life? An online encounter with an Israeli web-designer who patiently and respectfully pushed her to reflect on who God is and God’s mission. That reflection led to repentance. That Israeli web-designer seemed to be employing a tactic used by an Israeli carpenter living 2,000 years ago.

Three lessons I take from these observations:

First, what am I refraining from saying or doing because my team has the upper hand right now? Humans tend to bend their moral standards to comply with positions of people they find admirable. I am human. Do I really wrestle with this?

Second, when the opportunity arises for me to support an action that is hurtful or disadvantageous to people who annoy me, why am I really supporting that measure? And after I’ve engaged in some self-examination and justified an answer to that question, maybe I then need to reflect on why I am really supporting that measure.

Third, we will never be fully free of the Christian Right or the Christian Left. Each camp will continually invite us into their competing games of symbolic hostility. And they may gain power for a fleeting moment in history. It is deeply seductive. But I can’t shake the notion that lasting transformation of the world happens when web-designers, welders, businesspeople, nurses, check-out clerks, scientists, and the whole host of God’s servants in the world, enter into relationships with those they dislike and do what that Israeli web-designer did: Imitate that Israeli carpenter from 2,000 years ago.

How America's Foreign-Born Population Has Changed In The Last 50 Years

Business Insider: How America's Foreign-Born Population Has Changed In The Last 50 Years

What the Public Knows - In Pictures, Maps, Graphs and Symbols

Pew Research: What the Public Knows - In Pictures, Maps, Graphs and Symbols

The latest update of the Pew Research Center’s regular News IQ quiz uses a set of 13 pictures, maps, graphs and symbols to test knowledge of current affairs. (To take the quiz yourself before reading this report, click here.) At the high end, nearly nine-in-ten Americans (87%) are able to select the Star of David as the symbol of Judaism from a group of pictures of religious symbols. And when shown a picture of Twitter’s corporate logo, 79% correctly associate the logo with that company.

At the low end, just 43% are able to identify a picture of Elizabeth Warren’s from a group of four photographs of female politicians, among them Nancy Pelosi, Tammy Baldwin and Deb Fischer. And when presented with a map of the Middle East in which Syria is highlighted, only half are able to identify the nation correctly.

Overall, majorities correctly answer 11 of 13 questions in the new quiz, which was conducted online January 18-24, 2013, among a random sample of 1,041 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The quiz includes several items about leading political figures. When shown a picture of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 73% identified Christie from a list that included Newt Gingrich, Scott Walker and Rush Limbaugh. An identical percentage identified John Boehner in a question with a similar format. To see how each question was presented, see the attached survey topline.

Seven of the 13 items were answered correctly by two-thirds or more of the survey’s respondents. These included identifying the Star of David as the symbol for Judaism (87%), the corporate logo for Twitter (79%), the map of states won in 2012 by President Obama (75%), the photos of Christie and Boehner (73% each), a graph of the unemployment rate (70%) and the symbol for the Euro (69%).

About six-in-ten (62%) could identify the new secretary of state, John Kerry, from a photo lineup of four people. When shown a list of four state maps, and asked which of the states had approved the legalization of same-sex marriage last year, 60% correctly chose the state of Washington. But just 50% were able to identify Syria as country highlighted on a map of the Middle East.

On average, quiz takers correctly answered 8.5 of the 13 questions, a score of 65% correct when graded like a classroom test. ...

Several interesting tables presented in this article. Take a look.

How Green Are Millennials?

New Geography: How Green Are Millennials?

"... President Obama was also right, from a Millennials’ perspective, to emphasize the need for America to become a leader in sustainable energy technologies. Seventy-one percent of Millennials believe America’s energy policy should focus on developing “alternative sources of energy such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology; only a quarter believes that it should focus on “expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas.” Similarly, the RICN’s “Blueprint for a Millennial America,” a report prepared by thousands of Millennials who participated in their “Think 2040” project, placed the development and usage of renewable sources of energy at the top of all other environmental initiatives.

The participants’ proposed solutions to the challenge, however, were not focused on the kind of top-down change so common to Boomers. .Instead the proposals  emphasized taking action at the community level. No one, the RICN blueprint said , should be asked to “make sacrifices without fully considering the cost to communities” whose “texture” is most likely to be impacted dealing with the challenge.

Many politicians fail to notice this unique Millennial perspective. Members of the generation disagree sharply with their elders on the best way to address environmental challenges, preferring to tackle them through individual initiative and grassroots action rather than a heavy-handed top down bureaucratic approach. ..."

That last sentence gives me hope for the future. ;-)

Nordic Countries Reinventing Their Model of Capitalism

The Economist: Nordic Countries Reinventing Their Model of Capitalism

... Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%.

Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period. This allowed a country with a small, open economy to recover quickly from the financial storm of 2007-08. Sweden has also put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy.

Most daringly, it has introduced a universal system of school vouchers and invited private schools to compete with public ones. Private companies also vie with each other to provide state-funded health services and care for the elderly. Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist who lives in America, hopes that Sweden is pioneering “a new conservative model”; Brian Palmer, an American anthropologist who lives in Sweden, worries that it is turning into “the United States of Swedeamerica”.

There can be no doubt that Sweden’s quiet revolution has brought about a dramatic change in its economic performance. The two decades from 1970 were a period of decline: the country was demoted from being the world’s fourth-richest in 1970 to 14th-richest in 1993, when the average Swede was poorer than the average Briton or Italian. The two decades from 1990 were a period of recovery: GDP growth between 1993 and 2010 averaged 2.7% a year and productivity 2.1% a year, compared with 1.9% and 1% respectively for the main 15 EU countries. ...

... The other Nordic countries have been moving in the same direction, if more slowly. Denmark has one of the most liberal labour markets in Europe. It also allows parents to send children to private schools at public expense and make up the difference in cost with their own money. Finland is harnessing the skills of venture capitalists and angel investors to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Oil-rich Norway is a partial exception to this pattern, but even there the government is preparing for its post-oil future.

This is not to say that the Nordics are shredding their old model. They continue to pride themselves on the generosity of their welfare states. About 30% of their labour force works in the public sector, twice the average in the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, a rich-country think-tank. They continue to believe in combining open economies with public investment in human capital. But the new Nordic model begins with the individual rather than the state. It begins with fiscal responsibility rather than pump-priming: all four Nordic countries have AAA ratings and debt loads significantly below the euro-zone average. It begins with choice and competition rather than paternalism and planning. The economic-freedom index of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank, shows Sweden and Finland catching up with the United States (see chart). The leftward lurch has been reversed: rather than extending the state into the market, the Nordics are extending the market into the state. ...

Saturday Links

Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!

1. Strategic Planning and the "Vision Thing" -- Fire, Not Fluff.

"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic plan."

2. Some good thoughts on strategies we should all consider in trying to address controversial issues. Five simple lessons from Shane Windmeyer’s friendship with Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy

3. Anticipating a move? Here's Everything You Should Consider Before Moving To A New City

4. Jordan Ballor has some thoughts on subsidiarity at Political Theology. Subsidiarity ‘From Below’

"In this way a conception of subsidiarity “from below” is focused on the location of sovereignty from the “bottom up” rather than on the delegation of authority from the “top down.” We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity “from above” and “from below” that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of “sphere sovereignty” in the late nineteenth century and beyond."

5. Business Insider offers 21 Surprising Facts About Illegal Immigration.

6. Sarah Posner has an interesting piece. ‘New Evangelical’-Progressive Alliance? Not So Fast

"Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."

7. What has the iPad meant to Apple? A picture says a thousand words. A decade of Apple 'computer' sales

8. Extinction of millions of species 'greatly exaggerated'

"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.

But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."

9. Turns out once culprit in species extinction may be curled up in your lap. Cats Are Ruthless Killers. Should They Be Killed?

10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)

11. The evolutionary plot thickens. Who Was the First Human Ancestor?

From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.

Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.

12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before

"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."

13. More interesting findings early civilization in the Americas. Research Confirms Massive Louisiana Mound Was Built By Archaic Native Americans In Less Than 90 Days.

14. Melissa and I love history and we have always loved old cemeteries. This story makes me sad. Black history dies in neglected Southern cemeteries

15. Okay purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers will no longer be able to fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?

Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines

Harvard Business Review Blog: Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines

Andrew McAfee explains that the resurgence in American manufacturing doesn't mean the creation of new jobs. There is global decline in manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing grows, due to automation. He ends with this:

... Even if total manufacturing employment goes down because of automation, he [Ron Atkinson] writes, other industries will pick up the slack by employing more people. This is because:

"...most of the savings [from automation] would flow back to consumers in the form of lower prices. Consumers would then use the savings to buy things (e.g., go out to dinner, buy books, go on travel). This economic activity stimulates demand that other companies (e.g., restaurants, book stores, and hotels) respond to by hiring more workers."

Fair enough, but what if those other companies are also automating? One of the most striking phenomena of recent years is the encroachment of automation into tasks, skills and abilities that used to belong to people alone. As we document in Race Against the Machine, this includes driving cars, responding accurately to natural language questions, understanding and producing human speech, writing prose, reviewing documents and many others. Some combination of these will be valuable in every industry.

Previous waves of automation, like the mechanization of agriculture and the advent of electric power to factories, have not resulted in large-scale unemployment or impoverishment of the average worker. But the historical pattern isn't giving me a lot of comfort these days, simply because we've never before seen automation encroach so broadly and deeply, while also improving so quickly at the same time.

I don't know what all the consequences of the current wave of digital automation will be — no one does. But I'm not blithe about its consequences for the labor force, because that would be ignoring the data and missing the big picture.

I too wonder about this.