Security: Muslim Publics Divided on Hamas and Hezbollah

For more, see Muslim Publics Divided on Hamas and Hezbollah December 2, 2010 at Pew Research Center.

Government: Senate's Returning Democrats Unanimously Favor Filibuster Reform

Among the chief revisions that Democrats say will likely be offered: Senators could not initiate a filibuster of a bill before it reaches the floor unless they first muster 40 votes for it, and they would have to remain on the floor to sustain it. That is a change from current rules, which require the majority leader to file a cloture motion to overcome an anonymous objection to a motion to proceed, and then wait 30 hours for a vote on it.

There need to be changes to the rules to allow filibusters to be conducted by people who actually want to block legislation instead of people being able to quietly say ‘I object' and go home, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Hopefully that gives [Reid] the juice he needs to negotiate reasonable changes so we can stop the abuses next year, McCaskill said.

Merkley said on Tuesday it was too early to tell what proposal Democrats will ultimately push because talks, including conversations between the Democrats and Republican leadership continue.

For more, see Senate's Returning Democrats Unanimously Favor Filibuster Reform by Dan Friedman, December 22, 2010 at National Journal Magazine.

Mind: Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes

72 undergraduate students sat at a computer screen displaying a drawing of a face. The volunteers were instructed to keep their eyes on the face, but were told that the face was irrelevant.

Initially, the face had no pupils, but shortly after the experiment began, pupils appeared and started moving left or right. Just after that, a target image showed up on either the left or right side of the screen, unrelated to the angle of the pupils. The volunteers' job was to press the spacebar key the instant they saw the target image appear.

Despite being told to ignore the face, the participants were generally 10 to 15 milliseconds faster at responding to the target if the pupils appeared to be looking at the spot where the target image would appear. That's a standard result and not so surprising, Dodd said. But when the researchers divided the students by their political beliefs, they found that liberals responded 20 milliseconds more quickly to gaze cues than did conservatives, who didn't show any indication that the face's gaze affected them.

There are several possible explanations for the result, Dodd said. One possibility is that liberals are more empathetic and thus more responsive to others. Another theory is that conservatives are better at following instructions and were thus more likely to listen when the researchers said to ignore the face.

Dodd and his colleagues believe that a more likely explanation is that conservatives value personal autonomy more than liberals, making them less likely to be influenced by others.

For more, see Political Leanings Revealed by the Eyes by Stephanie Pappas, December 27, 2010 at Live Science.

Security: 'Six Crimes a Day' Solved by CCTV, MET Says

CCTV cameras across London help solve almost six crimes a day, the Metropolitan Police (Met) has said.

For more, see 'Six Crimes a Day' Solved by CCTV, MET Says December 26, 2010 at BBC.

Government: Foreign Policy: The Miracle Cure for Corruption

Corruption isn't the only explanation for why [government] contracting goes awry. Even relatively clean governments are hardly models of efficiency, and private competition can often deliver better for less. The problem is transparency. When a government contracts out work, the distance between the people delivering the services and the ultimate customer — the taxpayer — grows. Contractors have little incentive to save the rest of us money, and our ability to make sure they're doing it is too limited. If a contract is failing, it may well remain a secret between one or two bureaucrats and the company concerned. Government audit agencies might uncover a problem if they are alerted or perform a random investigation. But the rest of us can't hold contractors (or the officials who hired them) to account if we don't even know what's meant to be delivered.

There's an answer to these problems: Publish the contract. That would allow citizens, watchdog groups, even competing firms to see whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth. It would also considerably reduce the legal costs of contracting (because we wouldn't continually have to reinvent the wheel when it came to writing contracts in the first place) and allow the spread of better contracting practices. [Emphasis added].

It is no surprise that where greater contract transparency is introduced, there is evidence that costs fall. A World Bank infrastructure project in Bali, Indonesia that included transparency combined with audit and complaint mechanisms reduced prices for goods and works by 21 percent compared with non-project contracts with less disclosure. Complaints related to contracts disclosed have led to contractors returning fees. Contract transparency also allows for improved delivery. You only need one expert — or an amateur with patience — to uncover issues if they know what's meant to be delivered. That's an approach that has allowed NGOs monitoring schoolbook procurement and distribution in the Philippines, for example, to reduce textbook prices by half while increasing the speed and reliability of delivery.

The usual argument against greater contracting openness is that it would disclose contracting firms' trade secrets or invade the personal privacy of staff, that it would betray information vital to national security, or that it would simply be too much work. But the experiences of the governments that are already publishing contracts give the lie to these complaints.

For more, see Foreign Policy: The Miracle Cure for Corruption by Charles Kenny, December 21, 2010 at National Public Radio.

Economics: Stimulus, Without More Debt

... here's some good news extracted from economic theory: We don't need to go deeper into debt to stimulate the economy more.

For economists, of course, this isn't really news. It has long been known that Keynesian economic stimulus does not require deficit spending. Under certain idealized assumptions, a concept known as the balanced-budget multiplier theorem states that national income is raised, dollar for dollar, with any increase in government expenditure on goods and services that is matched by a tax increase.

The reasoning is very simple: On average, people's pretax incomes rise because of the business directly generated by the new government expenditures. If the income increase is equal to the tax increase, people have the same disposable income before and after. So there is no reason for people, taken as a group, to change their economic behavior. But the national income has increased by the amount of government expenditure, and job opportunities have increased in proportion.

For more, see Stimulus, Without More Debt by Robert J. Shiller, December 25, 2010 at The New York Times.

Security: The New START Treaty

The clause in the preamble of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which some Republicans object to ...

Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties,

For much more, see Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (PDF) at U.S. Department of State.

Technology: Robot English Teachers Start Work in South Korean Schools

Almost 30 robots have started teaching English to youngsters in a South Korean city, education officials said Tuesday, in a pilot project designed to nurture the nascent robot industry.

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by English teachers in the Philippines -- who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he said.

For more, see Robot English Teachers Start Work in South Korean Schools December 28, 2010 at FoxNews.com.

Economics: Federal Reserve Rules Led Small Banks to Big Risks

Back to 2005 ...

The Federal Reserve Board, chastised for regulatory inaction that contributed to the subprime mortgage meltdown, also missed a chance to prevent much of the financial chaos ravaging hundreds of small and midsize banks.

In early 2005, when the housing market was overheated and economic danger signs were in the air, the Fed had an opportunity to put a damper on risk-taking among banks, especially those that had long been bedrocks of smaller cities and towns across the country.

But the Fed rejected calls from one of the nation's top banking regulators, a professional accounting board and the Fed's own staff for curbs on the banks' use of special debt securities to raise capital that was allowing them to mushroom in size.

Then-Chairman Alan Greenspan and the other six Fed governors voted unanimously to reaffirm a 9-year-old rule allowing liberal use of what are called trust-preferred securities.

This was like a magic bullet for community banks that had few ways to raise capital without issuing more common stock and diluting their share price. The Fed allowed the banks to account for the securities in a way that left them free to borrow and lend in amounts 10 times or more than the value of the securities being issued.

Data emerging from the carnage of collapsed and teetering banks leave little doubt that the Fed rule, and regulators' failure to adequately police the issuance of these securities, created big cracks in the already shaky foundations of the nation's banking system.

For more, see Federal Reserve Rules Led Small Banks to Big Risks by Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall, December 23, 2010 at CharlotteObserver.com.

Education: What's a Good Teacher Worth to You? Try $400,000

In 2009, McKinsey released a report finding that if we raised our education performance to the level of Korea, we would improve the US economy by a sixth of GDP, or more than $2 trillion. In other words, if our students could read and multiply as well as South Korea, our GDP would add the economic equivalent of Italy.

Here's a new report from NBER reaching a similar conclusion, that the benefit of a good teacher over an average teacher can add more than $400,000 to a student's future earnings. Multiply that out over an economy, and you would see gains in the hundreds of billions.

A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

For more, see What's a Good Teacher Worth to You? Try $400,000 by Derek Thompson, December 21, 2010 at The Atlantic.

Miscellaneous: Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours

If you want to know what happened during the April 20th drilling rig explosion in the Gulf, read Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul, December 25, 2010 at The New York Times.

Economics: Japan: Too Big to Bail

... even at today's low interest rates, Japan's interest on its debt is eating up a scary proportion of its tax revenue—more than 25 percent (not including the funds that come from issuing yet more debt), according to government figures. In addition, much of Japan's debt is relatively short-term in nature, meaning that the government last year had to "roll" at least 140 trillion yen [1.7 trillion dollars] in debt (i.e., replace retiring debt with new debt) even as it issued some 50 trillion [600 billion] in fresh debt to fund the growing gap between what the government spent and what it took in.

If Japan's interest rate merely doubled, from 1.5 percent to 3 percent, then interest expense would be more than half of the government's tax revenues. [Emphasis added].

While any deterioration in Japan's finances should, mathematically speaking, happen gradually—savers don't yank their money out of the system all at once—modern markets have a way of accelerating underlying problems into crises with remarkable speed. If there's a lesson we should all have learned, it's that once fear takes hold, anything can happen. And if Japan is a problem, it's a problem for all of us. After all, Japan is still the world's third-largest economy. Unlike Greece and Ireland, it is simply too big to bail out, even if the world were willing to do so. China and Japan are the largest foreign holders of U.S. debt. One obvious question is, what happens here if Japan starts selling?

For more, see Too Big to Bail by Bethany Mcleanposted, December 21, 2010 at Slate.

Climate: A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning

When Dr. Keeling, as a young researcher, became the first person in the world to develop an accurate technique for measuring carbon dioxide in the air, the amount he discovered was 310 parts per million. That means every million pints of air, for example, contained 310 pints of carbon dioxide.

By 2005, the year he died, the number had risen to 380 parts per million. Sometime in the next few years it is expected to pass 400. Without stronger action to limit emissions, the number could pass 560 before the end of the century, double what it was before the Industrial Revolution.

The greatest question in climate science is: What will that do to the temperature of the earth?

For much more, see A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning by Justin Gillis, December 21, 2010 at The New York Times.

Government: Is the Grass Greener for Federal Workers?

In 2009, the average annual total compensation of federal civilian workers was higher than that of their counterparts in the private sector and state and local government. But two important factors are that many federal workers are older and highly educated.

From Is the Grass Greener for Federal Workers?, December 21, 2010 at The Washington Post.

Politics: Regular Viewers of Fox News More Likely to Be Misinformed

Last week, the Program on International Policy Attitudes released another, wider-ranging report on "Misinformation and the 2010 Election," which examined the accuracy of news consumers' views on tax policy, government bailouts, the economy, climate science, and President Obama's background. The findings were in line with the 2003 survey -- Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely" to be misinformed:

In the great majority of cases, those with higher levels of exposure to news sources had lower levels of misinformation.

There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue.

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that:

• most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)
• most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)
• the economy is getting worse (26 points)
• most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)
• the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)
• their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)
• the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)
• when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)
• and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

These effects increased incrementally with increasing levels of exposure and all were statistically significant. The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

For more, see UMD Report: Regular Viewers of Fox News More Likely to Be Misinformed by Simon Maloy, December 17, 2010 at MediaMatters.

Economics: Could You Retire Without Social Security?

According to the most recent survey by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, a think tank specializing in the topic, fewer than half of workers have even saved $25,000, and only a third have saved as much as $50,000. Forty-four percent have saved less than $10,000, and a quarter have basically saved nothing at all.

For more, see Could You Retire Without Social Security? by Brett Arends, December 17, 2010 at The Wall Street Journal.

Society: Map: Rural America Losing Population

From Map: Rural America Losing Population December, 2010 at Los Angeles Times. Thank you, Martha.

Politics: Politifact's Lie of the Year: 'A Government Takeover of Health Care'

In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a "government takeover."

"Takeovers are like coups," Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. "They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."

The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the "public option" concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.

But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn't let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry.

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.

For more, see Politifact's Lie of the Year: 'A Government Takeover of Health Care' by Bill Adair, Angie Drobnic Holan, December 16, 2010 at PolitiFact.

Economics: U.S. Called Vulnerable to Rare Earth Shortages

The United States is too reliant on China for minerals crucial to new clean energy technologies, making the American economy vulnerable to shortages of materials needed for a range of green products — from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines.

So warns a detailed report to be released on Wednesday morning by the United States Energy Department. The report, which predicts that it could take 15 years to break American dependence on Chinese supplies, calls for the nation to increase research and expand diplomatic contacts to find alternative sources, and to develop ways to recycle the minerals or replace them with other materials.

Still, the report presents a fairly gloomy assessment of the United States' ability to wean itself from Chinese imports. For as long as the next 15 years, the supplies of at least five minerals that come almost exclusively from China will remain as vulnerable to disruption as they are absolutely vital to the manufacture of small yet powerful electric motors, energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and other clean energy technologies, the report said.

The five minerals are medium and heavy rare earth elements of which China mines an estimated 96 percent to 99.8 percent of the world's supply: dysprosium, terbium, neodymium, europium and yttrium.

China also increasingly dominates the manufacture of clean energy technologies that require such minerals, including the production of million-dollar wind turbines. Chinese export restrictions have added up to $40 a pound to world prices, which makes a big difference particularly for some of the less expensive rare earths, like lanthanum, that sell for several dollars a pound in China.

That is among the reasons, along with cheap labor and extensive Chinese government subsidies, that many clean energy manufacturers have found it cheaper to shift production to China.

For more, see U.S. Called Vulnerable to Rare Earth Shortages by Keith Bradsher, December 15, 2010 at The New York Times.

Science: Chemistry Differs by Isotope

Modern analytical techniques can measure the atomic weight of elements quite precisely, which can provide a number of practical applications, such as anti-doping campaigns in athletics.

Performance-enhancing testosterone can be identified in the body of an athlete because the atomic weight of carbon in natural human testosterone is higher than in pharmaceutical testosterone.

... it can be used to help detect food adulteration by looking at the carbon in the sugar to see if a product has been artificially sweetened or it can track the source of pollutants.

From Atomic Weight of 11 Elements on What Was a Constant Periodic Table Are Changing by Scott Edmonds, December 14, 2010 at Yahoo! News.

Drugs: Ratio of Fatal Dose to Effective Dose

Watch out for nutmeg!

From "Being Keelhauled by a Freight Train on a Transcontinental Run" by Andrew Sullivan, December 15, 2010 at The Daily Dish.

Climate: Fox Boss Ordered Staff to Cast Doubt on Climate Science

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."

This latest revelation comes after Media Matters uncovered an email sent by Sammon to Fox journalists at the peak of the health care reform debate, ordering them to avoid using the term "public option" and instead use variations of "government option." That email echoed advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn public opinion against health care reform.

For much more, see Foxleaks: Fox Boss Ordered Staff to Cast Doubt on Climate Science by Ben Dimiero, December 15, 2010 at MediaMatters. Thank you, Andrew Sullivan.

Technology: Gorilla Glass, the Smartphone's Unsung Hero

[Gorilla Glass] covers the screens of 280 gadgets from 20 brands — Samsung, LG, Dell, Motorola, Acer and so on. Needless to say, it's been a hit; sales of Gorilla Glass were under $100 million last year, will be $250 million for 2010, and, if the TV market takes off as Corning expects, will hit $1 billion next year.

Corning's Web site goes into some detail on how this glass is made: The glass is placed in a hot bath of molten salt at a temperature of approximately 400°C. Smaller sodium ions leave the glass, and larger potassium ions from the salt bath replace them. These larger ions take up more room and are pressed together when the glass cools, producing a layer of compressive stress on the surface of the glass. Gorilla Glass's special composition enables the potassium ions to diffuse far into the surface, creating high compressive stress deep into the glass. This layer of compression creates a surface that is more resistant to damage from everyday use.

For more, see Gorilla Glass, the Smartphone's Unsung Hero by David Pogue, December 9, 2010 at The New York Times.

Society: A Visualization of Life Expectency and Wealth by Country Over Time

Very nice. Click the lower right "button" to watch it full screen.

From Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - the JOY of Stats - BBC Four November 26, 2010 at YouTube. Thank you, David Brooks.

Politics: Bernie Goldberg Tells Bill O'Reilly: Jesus Probably Would Be a Liberal Democrat

Surprise!

[Bernard] Goldberg has nothing against poor or middle class people, but "try to imagine an America without rich people!"

O'Reilly countered by quoting Matthew 19:24 from the Bible: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Goldberg shot back: "I don't care what the bible says on matter! Jesus probably would be, except for one or two issues, a liberal democrat today."

For the video, see Bernie Goldberg Tells Bill O'Reilly: Jesus Probably Would Be a Liberal Democrat by Ujala Sehgal, December 14, 2010 at Business Insider.

Economics: Block Those Metaphors

The root of our current troubles lies in the debt American families ran up during the Bush-era housing bubble. Twenty years ago, the average American household's debt was 83 percent of its income; by a decade ago, that had crept up to 92 percent; but by late 2007, debts were 130 percent of income.

It's true that we're making progress on deleveraging. Household debt is down to 118 percent of income, and a strong recovery would bring that number down further. But we're still at least several years from the point at which households will be in good enough shape that the economy no longer needs government support.

Which brings me back to the Obama-McConnell deal. I'm often asked how I can oppose that deal given my consistent position in favor of more stimulus. The answer is that yes, I believe that stimulus can have major benefits in our current situation — but these benefits have to be weighed against the costs. And the tax-cut deal is likely to deliver relatively small benefits in return for very large costs.

For more, see Block Those Metaphors by Paul Krugman, December 12, 2010 at The New York Times.

Healthcare: Opposition to Health Law Is Steeped in Tradition

We are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, said one prominent critic of the new health care law. It is socialized medicine, he argued. If it stands, he said, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

The health care law in question was Medicare, and the critic was Ronald Reagan. He made the leap from actor to political activist, almost 50 years ago, in part by opposing government-run health insurance for the elderly.

The federal income tax, a senator from New York said a century ago, might mean the end of our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom. Social Security was actually a plan to Sovietize America, a previous head of the Chamber of Commerce said in 1935. The minimum wage and mandated overtime pay were steps in the direction of Communism, Bolshevism, fascism and Nazism, the National Association of Manufacturers charged in 1938.

After Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, 101 members of Congress signed a statement calling the ruling an instance of naked judicial power that would sow chaos and confusion and diminish American greatness. A decade later, The Wall Street Journal editorial board described civil rights marchers as asking for trouble and civil rights laws as being on the outer edge of constitutionality, if not more.

This year's health care overhaul has now joined the list.

For much more, see Opposition to Health Law Is Steeped in Tradition by David Leonhardt, December 14, 2010 at The New York Times.

California: Split Personality Voters

As Jerry Brown prepares to roll out his second act as governor (Moonbeam: The Sequel?) the toughest problem he faces is neither the state's financial woes nor the Capitol's political dysfunction: It's California's dual-personality disorder.

• By a huge plurality — 44-to-6 percent — voters said they would rather cut spending than raise taxes to address the state's $25-billion deficit (another 44 percent opted for an unspecified combination of cuts and taxes).

• By an even larger margin, however, voters said they either oppose any cuts or favor more spending on education and public health programs — the two largest items in the budget. The only area where there is broad agreement for reducing expense is on prisons, which represent just 7 percent of the budget.

• By 70-to-24 percent, voters said that there is enough waste and inefficiency in government spending that we can reduce most of the state deficit by cleaning up programs without cutting programs like health care and education — an implausible scenario that belies the fact that health care and education alone account for nearly two-thirds of total state spending.

For more, see Split Personality by Jerry Roberts, December 9, 2010 at The Santa Barbara Independent.

Happiness: Global Study: Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

If you look at snapshot data, richer people are happier than poorer people, and wealthier countries have more satisfied populations than less well-off nations. But when you look at data collected over time, more income doesn't bring happiness.

The paradox seems impossible on the surface, but there's good reason happiness and income could be linked in the short-term and not over many years, according to Easterlin. As people's incomes rise, he said, so do their aspirations. When incomes fall, he said, aspirations don't. No one wants to give up the standard of living they've grown accustomed to. So in the short term, an economic collapse is painful, while growth feels good.

But in the long run, Easterlin said, more wealth simply creates more want.

"The higher your income goes up the more your aspiration goes up," he said. "Over time, the change in aspirations negates the effect of changing income."

The results suggest that individuals and policy makers should focus on non-monetary factors, like health and family concerns, that influence happiness, Easterlin said.

But ...

Writing for the New York Times' Freakonomics blog, University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers argued that the new study doesn't prove the Easterlin paradox exists.

For more, see Global Study: Money Doesn't Buy Happiness by Livescience, December 14, 2010 at FoxNews.com.

Government: Accounting for Public Pensions

This week, three Republican members of Congress, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, proposed legislation to force states and cities to report pension fund liabilities on the same basis, and to force them to disclose market values of assets.

For more, see Accounting for Public Pensions by Floyd Norris, December 9, 2010 at The New York Times.

Mind: Stanford Marshmallow Experiment

In one of the most amazing developmental studies ever conducted, Walter Michel of Stanford created a simple test of the ability of four year old children to control impulses and delay gratification. Children were taken one at a time into a room with a one-way mirror. They were shown a marshmallow. The experimenter told them he had to leave and that they could have the marshmallow right then, but if they waited for the experimenter to return from an errand, they could have two marshmallows. One marshmallow was left on a table in front of them. Some children grabbed the available marshmallow within seconds of the experimenter leaving. Others waited up to twenty minutes for the experimenter to return. In a follow-up study (Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990), children were tested at 18 years of age and comparisons were made between the third of the children who grabbed the marshmallow (the "impulsive") and the third who delayed gratification in order to receive the enhanced reward ("impulse controlled").

The third of the children who were most impulsive at four years of age scored an average of 524 verbal and 528 math. The impulse controlled students who scored 610 verbal and 652 math! This astounding 210 point total score difference on the SAT was predicted on the basis of a single observation at four years of age! The 210 point difference is as large as the average differences between that of economically advantaged versus disadvantaged children and is larger than the difference between children from families with graduate degrees versus children whose parents did not finish high school! At four years of age gobbling a marshmallow now v. waiting for two later is twice as good a predictor of later SAT scores than is IQ. [Emphasis added].

From Stanford Marshmallow Experiment by Arnold Kling, October 5, 2007 at Library of Economics and Liberty.

California: Jerry Brown, California Politicians Lay Out Grim Realities

Trouble ...

Also ...

Future threats to the state's fiscal health are adding to the current ailments. The state faces as much as $500 billion in future pension liabilities, a depletion by $10.3 billion in the unemployment insurance fund, $15.3 billion in costs for borrowing and $3.5 billion for health care reforms.

For much more, see For more, see Jerry Brown, California Politicians Lay Out Grim Realities by Steven Harmon, December 9, 2010 at MercuryNews.com.

Government: Challenging the Filibuster Old Guard

"The public believes the filibuster is an opportunity to enhance debate by allowing people to take a stand before the American people and personally invest time and energy in slowing down the Senate to make their point heard," Sen. Jeff Merkley says. "We should make it so."

Merkley has floated a proposal to reform the filibuster by forcing senators to actually take to the floor to obstruct Senate debate and by limiting the number of times the maneuver can be used to stop a piece of legislation. He and several allies hope it will win the support of 51 senators when the new Congress comes into session in January, the easiest time to amend the Senate's rules.

Merkley argues that the legislative strategies needed to surmount filibusters -- packing as many ideas as possible into single, huge bills and limiting the ability of senators to offer amendments (since each one offers an opportunity for filibustering) -- produces low-quality bills. If Senate leaders didn't have to worry about everything coming to a halt all the time, the theory goes, it would free up debate and result in better laws.

For those reasons, and because of a desire to attract Republican votes (and protect any future Democratic minorities), Merkley also proposes a procedural shift that would give the minority the ability to introduce, debate, and vote on amendments without unanimous consent of the entire body.

Even longtime congressional observers like Norm Ornstein argue that much has changed since the 1960s, when there were about three filibusters a year. Today, there are more than two a week.

For more, see Challenging the Filibuster Old Guard by Tim Fernholz, December 8, 2010 at The American Prospect.

Drugs: Teen Marijuana Use Continues to Rise

Marijuana use by 8th, 10th and 12th grade students increased in 2010, with more American teenagers now using marijuana than cigarettes for the second year in a row, according to numbers released today by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan as part of the annual Monitoring the Future survey. In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the last 30 days, while 19.2 had used cigarettes.

It's really no surprise that more American teenagers are using marijuana and continue to say it's easy to get. Our government has spent decades refusing to regulate marijuana in order to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers who aren't required to check customer ID and have no qualms about selling marijuana to young people, said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. The continued decline in teen tobacco use is proof that sensible regulations, coupled with honest, and science-based public education can be effective in keeping substances away from young people.

For more, see Teen Marijuana Use Continues to Rise by Mike Meno, December 14, 2010 at MPP Blog. Thank you, Andrew Sullivan.

Religion: Why Religion Makes People Happier

Religious people are more satisfied with their lives than nonbelievers, but a new study finds it's not a relationship with God that makes the devout happy. Instead, the satisfaction boost may come from closer ties to earthly neighbors.

According to a study published today (Dec. 7) in the journal American Sociological Review, religious people gain life satisfaction thanks to social networks they build by attending religious services.

"We think it has something to do with the fact that you meet a group of close friends on a regular basis, together as a group, and participate in certain activities that are meaningful to the group," Lim said. "At the same time, they share a certain social identity, a sense of belonging to a moral faith community. The sense of belonging seems to be the key to the relationship between church attendance and life satisfaction."

While a higher number of secular close friendships were also associated with life satisfaction, church friendships seem to involve something that lifts satisfaction even more, Lim said.

For more, see Why Religion Makes People Happier (Hint: Not God) by Stephanie Pappas, December 7, 2010 at Live Science.

Society: Outstanding, Superlinear Cities

Bigger cities are more intense by nature: richer, more productive, more creative and more dangerous. Indeed, Bettencourt and his colleagues have shown, doubling the population of a city gives a 15 percent premium on each of these factors. Since New York City is the most populous city in the United States, New Yorkers should make more money, for example, than other Americans on average. To be exceptional, New Yorkers would need to be raking in even more than the princely sums you'd expect.

Turns out they're not. In an article this month in PLoS ONE, Bettencourt and his team created a way to measure how exceptional cities are by comparing their characteristics with what mathematics would predict for their size. The team then ranked the exceptionality of 300 U.S. cities based on personal incomes, gross metropolitan product (GMP), number of patents and number of violent crimes. On income, the New York metropolitan area came out a measly 85th place, just 3.8 percent above what one would predict for its size. On GMP, it ranked 167th, and on patents, it ranked 178th. The only exceptional number was for crime, which was surprisingly low: 267th out of 300, a whopping 22 percent below the typical rate for its size.

San Francisco, on the other hand, is rich, productive, creative and moderately safe for its size. By the team's rankings, the San Francisco metropolitan area comes out 12th for personal income, 19th for patents, 27th for GMP and 131st for violent crime.

To identify what's special about a place, you have to separate out the factors that are really just about its size, Bettencourt says. Then you can disentangle the general effects of urbanization from the specific character of a town.

Ideas, the team believes, are the real driver of economic activity and creativity, and when people are in closer contact — as they are in big cities — they tend to share those ideas more. A magazine designer in New York, for example, is much more likely than one in Huntsville, Ala., to bump into someone who knows about new design software or a clever layout trick. As a result, twice as many people are more than twice as productive — a phenomenon known as superlinear scaling, since the increase is faster than a linear equation would predict. That's the origin of the 15 percent premium on per capita income, patents and GMP that Bettencourt and his colleagues have documented in cities around the world. Similarly, crime increases superlinearly as people share bad ideas.

For more, see Outstanding, Superlinear Cities by Julie Rehmeyer, December 6, 2010 at ScienceNews.

Mind: Social Science Palooza

From a column of snippets about the mind ...

Female mammals tend to avoid close male relatives during moments of peak fertility in order to avoid inbreeding. For the journal Psychological Science, Debra Lieberman, Elizabeth Pillsworth and Martie Haselton tracked young women's cellphone calls. They found that these women had fewer and shorter calls with their fathers during peak fertility days, but not with female relatives.

And ...

Self-control consumes glucose in the brain. For an article in the journal Aggressive Behavior, Nathan DeWall, Timothy Deckman, Matthew Gaillot and Brad Bushman found that research subjects who consumed a glucose beverage behaved less aggressively than subjects who drank a placebo beverage. They found an indirect relationship between diabetes (a disorder marked by poor glucose toleration) and low self-control. States with high diabetes rates also had high crime rates. Countries with a different condition that leads to low glucose levels had higher killing rates, both during wartime and during peacetime.

For more, see Social Science Palooza by David Brooks, December 6, 2010 at The New York Times.

Law: Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court's Rulings

Thirty-nine states elect judges, and 30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign. As the amounts rise, questions about whether money is polluting the independence of the judiciary are being fiercely debated across the nation. And nowhere is the battle for judicial seats more ferocious than in Ohio.

An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O'Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court.

In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors' cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.

Three recent cases, two in Illinois and one in West Virginia, have put the complaints in sharp focus. Elected justices there recently refused to disqualify themselves from hearing suits in which tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. The defendants were insurance, tobacco and coal companies whose supporters had spent millions of dollars to help elect the justices.

After a series of big-money judicial contests around the nation, the balance of power in several state high courts has tipped in recent years in favor of corporations and insurance companies.

For much more, see Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court's Rulings by Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts, October 1, 2006 at The New York Times.

Taxes: Who Needs a Tax Cut?

More on income inequality ...

The [following] chart shows the change in the various groups' pretax income since 1980. A household that has been at the 99.99th percentile of the distribution over this period — that is, making more money than 9,998 out of 10,000 other households and less money than one out of 10,000 — has more than quadrupled its pretax income. Today, this household is making $9.1 million. Income for a household at the median has risen only 13 percent since 1980. Today, it is making about $50,000. [Emphasis added].

And what about tax rates? They have aggravated the trends in pretax incomes. Not only have affluent households received the largest pretax raises, but they've also benefited from a much larger cut in their tax rates.

The following shows the total federal tax rate for different groups (including the income tax, the payroll tax, the estate tax and investment taxes).

For more, see Who Needs a Tax Cut? by David Leonhardt, December 3, 2010 at Economix Blog, New York Times.

Education: Western Nations React to Poor Education Results

This includes an unusual concept: Learn from another country.

A respected international survey that found teenagers in Shanghai to be the best-educated in the world has prompted officials elsewhere across the globe to question their own educational systems, and even led the British education minister to promise an overhaul in student testing.

In Britain, where results showed students falling behind peers in Estonia and Slovenia, Education Minister Michael Gove promised to overhaul the examination system to make it tougher, using tests from China and South Korea as benchmarks. Britain will explicitly borrow from these education tiger nations, Mr. Gove said.

The survey also showed Finland and South Korea far ahead of the United States in reading comprehension, mathematics and science, ...

The report also included a finding that in every country surveyed, girls read better than boys — a gap that has widened since 2000. Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.

For more, see Western Nations React to Poor Education Results by D.D. Guttenplan, December 8, 2010 at The New York Times.

Economics: Efficiencies of Types of Fiscal Stimulation

According to a recent Congressional Budget Office report on the impact of the Recovery Act, tax cuts had among the smallest ripple effects of all the act's major stimulus components. Purchases of goods and services by the federal government and transfer payments to state and local governments for infrastructure projects, on the other hand, appeared to produce a bigger bang for the buck.

A chart from the report showing these various output multiplier effects of each piece of the Recovery Act is below. A higher output multiplier generally translates to greater job growth.

For more, see Just How Stimulating Is the New Tax Cut-Jobless Benefit Deal? by Catherine Rampell, December 7, 2010 at Economix Blog, New York Times.

Mind: Confederate Flag Activates Racist Mindset

The Confederate flag, which continues to fly on buildings throughout the American South 150 years after the Civil War, is a potent symbol. But of what? Cultural heritage, answer many Southern whites. Lingering racism, insist many blacks.

Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter view. It suggests exposure to the flag evokes anti-black sentiments among whites, regardless of their stated beliefs on racial issues.

Specifically, white students at a large state-supported Southern university who were exposed to images of the still-ubiquitous battle flag judged a fictional black character more harshly. They expressed less willingness to vote for presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

For much more, see Confederate Flag Activates Racist Mindset by Tom Jacobs, November 29, 2010 at Miller-McCune.

Diversion: Chinese Vending Machine Sells Live Hairy Crabs

Never a part of the world to let common sense stand in the way of a good vending machine, China has now invented a machine that, for the equivalent of a couple of dollars, pops out a live crab.

Grab one for a snack on the train!

A demonstration is at 1:00 into the first video in Video: Chinese Vending Machine Sells Live Hairy Crabs by Paul Adams, October 21, 2010 at Popular Science.

Taxes: Job Creation Is Little Affected by Upper Class Tax Cuts

Politifact fact checks ...

[The National Association of Manufacturers] said that "manufacturers strongly support extending the 2001 and 2003 tax rates for all taxpayers. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, fully extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would add between 600,000 and 1.4 million jobs in 2011 and between 900,000 and 2.7 million jobs in 2012."

NAM is accurately quoting the numbers on the Republican alternative but conveniently leaving out the detail that the Democratic alternative is nearly as good at creating jobs. It also ignores the CBO's conclusion that extending the tax breaks for upper-income Americans offers diminishing returns. On balance, we rate the statement Half True.

For more, see National Association of Manufacturers Cites CBO Support for Job Creation Powers of Full Bush Tax Cut Extension by Louis Jacobson, December 3, 2010 at PolitiFact.

Education: Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by Bill Gates

Now Bill Gates, who in recent years has turned his attention and considerable fortune to improving American education, is investing $335 million through his foundation to overhaul the personnel departments of several big school systems. A big chunk of that money is financing research by dozens of social scientists and thousands of teachers to develop a better system for evaluating classroom instruction.

The effort will have enormous consequences for the movement to hold schools and educators more accountable for student achievement.

The Gates research is by no means the first effort of its kind. Economists have already developed a statistical method called value-added modeling that calculates how much teachers help their students learn, based on changes in test scores from year to year. The method allows districts to rank teachers from best to worst.

Value-added modeling is used in hundreds of districts. But teachers complain that boiling down all they do into a single statistic offers an incomplete picture; they want more measures of their performance taken into account.

The Gates research uses value added as a starting point, but aims to develop other measures that can not only rate teachers but also help educators understand why one is more successful than another.

For the story, see Teacher Ratings Get New Look, Pushed by a Rich Watcher by Sam Dillon, December 3, 2010 at The New York Times.

Economics: Fed Papers Show Breadth of Emergency Measures

A reminder ...

The Federal Reserve released documents Wednesday showing that its efforts to help stabilize the markets at the height of the financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street and deep into the economy.

The crisis in the market for commercial paper, for example, the lifeblood of daily business, was more extensive and lasted longer than was previously known.

Even bedrock corporations like Caterpillar, General Electric, Harley Davidson, McDonald's, Verizon and Toyota relied on a Fed program that supported the market for commercial paper — the short-term i.o.u.'s that corporations rely upon to make payroll and pay their suppliers. During the worst moments of the crisis, in the fall of 2008, even creditworthy corporate borrowers found this source of financing had dried up, and had to turn to the Fed for help.

The documents show that during the financial crisis, the central bank extended nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans — an amount that is more than half of the national economic output of the United States — to financial institutions under a program called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility. [Emphasis added].

The Fed ... emphasized that most of the programs closed earlier this year and that taxpayers did not incur losses.

For more, see Fed Papers Show Breadth of Emergency Measures by Sewell Chan and JO Craven Mcginty, December 1, 2010 at The New York Times.

Science: Bacteria Stir Debate About 'Shadow Biosphere'

All life on Earth - from microbes to elephants and us - requires the element phosphorus as one of its six components.

But now researchers have discovered a bacterium that appears to have replaced that life-enabling phosphorus with its toxic cousin arsenic, raising new and provocative questions about the origins and nature of life.

All life as we know it contains six essential elements - carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus - that have qualities that make them seemingly ideal for their tasks. A form of phosphorus, for instance, is near perfect for building the framework for the DNA molecule, and another form is crucial to the transfer of energy within cells.

These forms of phosphorus are well suited for their job because they are especially stable in the presence of water. Arsenic is not, and that fact is one that raises concerns for some researchers familiar with the Mono Lake bugs.

For more, see Bacteria Stir Debate About 'Shadow Biosphere' by Marc Kaufman, December 2, 2010 at The Washington Post.

Economics: TARP Expected to Cost U.S. Only $25 Billion, CBO Says

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was widely reviled as a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street titans, is now expected to cost the federal government a mere $25 billion - the equivalent of less than six months of emergency jobless benefits.

The TARP was conceived in the final days of the Bush administration and pushed through a reluctant Congress in less than three weeks. It is widely thought to have helped stabilize a financial sector on the verge of collapse, though it remains hugely unpopular with the public. In the recent midterm elections, numerous lawmakers lost their jobs or failed in bids for new ones because of their support for the program.

For more, see TARP Expected to Cost U.S. Only $25 Billion, CBO Says by Lori Montgomery, November 29, 2010 at The Washington Post.

Diversion: The True Size of Africa

From The True Size of Africa by KAI Krause, October 14, 2010 at Information Is Beautiful.

Economics: Banks Had 40% of All the Profits

[There] could be a fundamental rebalancing of the U.S. economy in which a smaller portion is devoted to finance.

That would be a reversal from the last two decades. From the 1950s through the 1980s, financial firms counted for 10 percent of all profits in the U.S. economy. In the 1990s, that figure rose to 22 percent. By the time of the financial crisis, it had hit 40 percent

For more, see Days of Rapid Growth and Focus on Trading Are over for Banks, Analysts Say by Jia Lynn Yang, November 29, 2010 at The Washington Post.

Mind: To Read Others' Emotions, It Helps to Be Poor

In multiple experiments, people of high socioeconomic status (or people who perceived themselves to be well-off) were worse at judging other people's emotions than those of low socioeconomic status, both when looking at photographs and interacting with real people.

Kraus' earlier research has found that wealthier people are ruder than poorer people in conversations with strangers. They've also found that the poor are more generous with their wealth than the rich. Their greater empathy could be the root of that charity, Kraus said.

[In the third experiment] they asked some of the students to visualize an extraordinarily wealthy individual — someone like Bill Gates, Kraus said.

Next, the students were told to place themselves on the socioeconomic ladder, imagining their wealthy individual at the top. Thinking of the Gates-like figure triggered the students to place themselves lower on the ladder than they otherwise would have. Other students were told to imagine someone completely destitute; those students placed themselves relatively higher on the ladder.

Finally, the 81 students looked at 36 close-up photographs of eyes and judged the emotions portrayed in the pictures. Sure enough, those manipulated into seeing themselves as lower-class scored 6 percent better than those manipulated into perceiving themselves as well-off. [Emphasis added].

For the other experiments, see To Read Others' Emotions, It Helps to Be Poor by Stephanie Pappas, November 16, 2010 at Live Science.

Economics: The Most Socialist States in America

We started from the core definition of socialism as a form of government in which the state owns the means of production and allocates resources to its citizens at its discretion.

...

Since no part of the U.S. can be considered purely socialist, we measured total [government] expenditures as a proportion of total economic output to compare the size of the public sector in each state.

The results ...

10. Rhode Island -- 15.9%
9. Hawaii -- 17.8%
8. Arkansas -- 18.1%
7. Wyoming -- 19.0%
6. Mississippi -- 20.2%
5. New Mexico -- 20.7%
4. Vermont -- 21.0%
3. Alabama -- 27.4%
2. Alaska -- 31.3%
1. West Virginia -- 32.1%

For more, see The Most Socialist States in America by Greg Bocquet, November 26, 2010 at CNBC.