MICHAEL BARONE: The Fall Of The Midwest Economic Model. “In 1970, the future seemed to belong to Michigan’s example of big companies and big unions. Not anymore. . . . In 1970, Texas had 11 million people. In 2010, it had 25 million. In 1970, Detroit was the nation’s fifth-largest metro area. Today, metro Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex are both pressing the San Francisco Bay area for the No. 4 spot, and Detroit is far behind. Adversarial unionism is one reason the Midwest slumped. It turns out that the 1970 assembly line, with union shop stewards always poised to shut it down, was not the highest stage of human economic development.”
Archive for 2011
August 16, 2011
HOWARD PORTNOY: What Obama’s Brush With The Tea Party Reveals About Him.
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FREEDOM: San Francisco Subway Shuts Cell Service to Foil Protest; Legal Debate Ignites. In an unrelated note, I’d suggest that the ability of a few protesters to snarl commutes this way is an argument against mass transit.
HEALTH: Pathogens May Change, But Fear Is The Same. “Angry, vocal Americans led by people like Mr. Kramer get $15,000-a-year drugs at government expense. Silent, fatalistic Africans do not, even when the price is a mere $100. . . . And what coughing did for smallpox, lying does for AIDS. A 2007 study by Columbia University scientists found that almost 60 percent of gay American men who knew they were infected and were still having unprotected anal sex did not mention it to all their casual partners. One can only imagine what a survey of prison rapists would find, or one of prison rape victims returning home.”
STEPHEN HAYES: Paul Ryan For President?
Related: The worst kept secret in D.C.: Conservatives trying to get Ryan to run.
WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE:
Akron police officer Donald Schismenos, an 18-year veteran, has been placed on leave with pay pending the completion of an internal investigation, city officials say. . . .
Schismenos was suspended by Mayor Don Plusquellic because he allegedly went against a superior’s orders and filed felony charges against an Akron woman who filmed him making an arrest in June 2009.
Dude, you don’t have a right to be free from public scrutiny while doing your job. I predict an unhappy outcome for officer Schismenos. Meanwhile, some remedial reading on photographers’ rights.
SPENGLER IS now blogging at PJM.
INSTAPUNDIT TEST DRIVE: Lexus CT200 Hybrid. So I drove past the Lexus dealer and they had one out front, and since I had some free time I gave it a test drive. This is the “Lexus Prius,” a compact 4-door hatchback hybrid that gets 40+ MPG. I have to say I was pretty impressed. While the get-up-and-go wasn’t overwhelming, I went from a standing stop to merging in 65 mph traffic at the top of the ramp with no trouble. Handling was nice — somewhat reminiscent of a VW Golf — and the car had an overall feel of quality and solidity that was a solid step up from the Prius. The seats were comfortable and the interior was high-end, very attractive and functional. With the rear seats folded, the hatchback opened to decent-sized cargo space; with them up it still wasn’t bad, though the cargo compartment floor seemed a bit high, I suppose because of the batteries.
I also sat in, but didn’t drive, the larger HS hybrid, which I didn’t like quite as much. The interior seemed a bit less luxurious, and even though it’s a bigger car, it seemed to lack headroom for me. Granted I’m 6’3″ — but the smaller CT had plenty of headroom. Anyway, if you’ve thought of a Prius but want something a bit fancier, this might be worth a look.
CHANGE: Trouble at Aptera? Car Company Returns EV Deposits. Bummer. The prototypes seemed very cool.
HOW CANCER SPREADS: Protein JAK Makes Cancer Cells Contract, So They Can Squeeze Out Of A Tumor. Coming soon, I hope: JAK blocking agents.
UPDATE: Derek Lowe emails:
Saw your mention of JAK (Janus Kinase) inhibitors, so I thought I’d send you an update from inside the drug industry. There are indeed such compounds in development, for several different diseases. I haven’t written about them on the blog, but they’re quite interesting.
The thing is, there are three different kinds of JAK (and one other closely related kinase), each of which do different things. The paper you mentioned is a JAK1 effect. There’s a Pfizer compound that hits JAK1/2/3 that’s already been through some Phase III work, a Novartis/Incyte compound that hits JAK1 and JAK2, which is now in Phase III, and a Lilly/Incyte compound that also hits JAK1 and JAK2 that’s in Phase II. There are also selective JAK1 and JAK3 inhibitors a bit further back in the pipeline. These things are going for several indications, chief among them rheumatoid arthritis, but also some rare cancers that look particularly susceptible.
So it’s a very lively area of research, being watched very closely by a lot of different players. There’s a lot of promise, but (as usual) a lot of potential problems. Messing too strongly with various members of the JAK family could (in theory) lead to anemia, heart problems, trouble with the immune system, and other such undesirable things. So far, though, the progress through the clinic has been pretty encouraging. That’s the latest!
Faster, please.
A LOOK AT Rick Perry and Texas job numbers. “My advice to anti-Perry advocates is this: Give up talking about Texas jobs. Texas is an incredible outlier among the states when it comes to jobs. Not only are they creating them, they’re creating ones with higher wages.”
SCIENCE: “The typical woman spends more than five hours a day — more than a third of her waking hours — chatting and gossiping, a study has revealed.” I believe the proper term is displaying superior communication skills.
Plus this: “The report also found women spend 24 minutes a day discussing their weight, diets and dress size.” In other words, women pay closer attention to their health and fitness than do men. There, fixed it for you.
OBAMA ON TOUR: “I MAKE NO APOLOGIES FOR BEING REASONABLE.” And I make no apologies for being Marie of Roumania.
UPDATE: Reader David Ringelman emails: “Every time I hear the President reel off the list of ‘economic headwinds’ he’s had to deal with and his string of ‘bad luck,’ it makes me think of this:”
MORE: Ric Locke has another suggestion.
THE PRESS’S GAY MARRIAGE HYPOCRISY. “So why don’t reporters pepper Obama with hostile questions on gay rights? (Put aside for the moment the fact that Obama rarely answers questions from anybody.) The answer, presumably, is that reporters don’t believe Obama when he says that he opposes gay marriage, while they do believe Bachmann.”
WELL, GOOD: Swedish Government Apologizes to Baltic States for its Failure to Recognize Communist Crimes. “Soviet repression in the Baltic states went far beyond merely ending their independence. For example, they killed some 3% of Estonia’s population and imprisoned or deported several times that number. Latvia and Lithuania didn’t fare much better. The Swedish government deserves credit for recognizing its errors and striving to correct them. Unfortunately, this is just one small step towards rectifying the broader neglect of communist crimes that still persists in many countries.” Indeed.
PETER REILLY: We Won’t Get Ahead By Taxing Warren Buffet More: Jennifer Anniston, Maybe.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Though I’m thinking that a special excise tax on jet fractional-ownership operators might be a good idea. It’ll discourage carbon emissions and stuff, too, which is Vitally Important.
INDEED: “You are your own first responder.” Why?
By every account the response by every responsible entity – Mayor Ballard’s outstanding police and fire forces – our own Indiana State Police, the security force of the State Fair itself, emergency management personnel, was instantaneous and highly professional. It’s equally important to say what I heard over and over and over again last night – that individual Hoosiers ran to the trouble, not from the trouble, by the hundreds, offering in many cases their own professional skills. I’ve heard it from everybody I’ve debriefed this morning. People rushing up, ‘I’m a nurse, I’m a doctor, I’m a trained EMS responder.’ But also people who simply pitched in. -Gov. Daniels
I had some similar thoughts here.
JERRY POURNELLE AND HIS READERS DISCUSS Soaking the rich, distributism, and no child left behind. Pournelle’s comment: “I do not want to encourage entitlements; I do not think a Republic can survive when those who pay little or no tax determine the size of government and the entitlements to the citizens. I do not want to encourage a society in which all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sins – or for his dinner, for that matter. . . . But in any event, to my thinking, increasing government revenue is itself the wrong course of action. Is there any indication that if they had more money to spend they would spend it wisely?”
PHILADELPHIA MAYOR BECOMES LIGHTNING ROD ON “FLASH MOBS.” “The crackdown on ‘flash mobs’ by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has put him in the center of a debate about how black leaders should respond to violence within their own community.”
I’VE UPLOADED A NEW, AND MERCIFULLY BRIEF, PAPER ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Second Amendment Penumbras: Some Preliminary Observations. This is just a draft, but you may find it interesting. And since it is just a draft, if you’ve got any comments, feel free to email ’em. (Bumped).
ADVICE FOR NEW FRESHMEN: The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College.