IS PROSTITUTION WRONG? I’m gonna go with no. Is it necessary for marriage? Uh, I’m gonna go with “no,” again.
Archive for 2013
December 16, 2013
YOU’D BETTER HOPE THAT FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, because we’re totally unprepared for global cooling.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES OUT IN THE COLD. “Electric vehicle range drops in cold weather, and technological solutions are years away.”
SPYING: Judge: NSA phone program likely unconstitutional. “A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely to be unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the so-called metadata had helped to head off terrorist attacks. Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Massad Ayoob: How To Shoot A Handgun Accurately.
FASTER PLEASE: World’s Smallest Pacemaker Can Be Implanted without Surgery.
Pacemaker surgery typically requires a doctor to make an incision above a patient’s heart, dig a cavity into which they can implant the heartbeat-regulating device, and then connect the pulse generator to wires delivered through a vein near the collarbone. Such surgery could soon be completely unnecessary. Instead, doctors could employ miniaturized wireless pacemakers that can be delivered into the heart through a major vein in the thigh.
On Monday, doctors in Austria implanted one such device into a patient—the first participant in a human trial of what device-manufacturer Medtronic says is the smallest pacemaker in the world. The device is 24 millimeters long and 0.75 cubic centimeters in volume—a tenth the size of a conventional pacemaker. Earlier this year, another device manufacturer, St. Jude Medical, bought a startup called Nanostim that makes another tiny pacemaker, and St. Jude is offering it to patients in Europe. This device is 41 millimeters long and one cubic centimeter in volume.
Doctors can implant such pacemakers into the heart through blood vessels, via an incision in the thigh. They use steerable, flexible tubes called catheters to push the pacemakers through a large vein.
It’s not nanotechnology, but it’s a great improvement.
ASIANA FLIGHT 214: What Went Wrong. Very interesting, and it’s hard to avoid thinking that it ought to have been much worse except for luck.
THREE CHILDREN AND A DOG: The secret to a successful marriage?
POLL: Americans want the government to stop banning everything they like. Pitchforks.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 221.
QUICK, SOMEBODY SEAR IT INTO HIS MEMORY: Secretary of State John Kerry Doesn’t Know That North Korea Has Nuclear Weapons.
KAY HYMOWITZ: Boy Trouble: Family breakdown disproportionately harms young males—and they’re falling further behind.
The claim that family breakdown has had an especially harsh impact on boys, and therefore men, has considerable psychological and biological research behind it. Anyone interested in the plight of poor and working-class men—and, more broadly, mobility and the American dream—should keep it front and center in public debate.
In fact, signs that the nuclear-family meltdown of the past half-century has been particularly toxic to boys’ well-being are not new. By the 1970s and eighties, family researchers following the children of the divorce revolution noticed that, while both girls and boys showed distress when their parents split up, they had different ways of showing it. Girls tended to “internalize” their unhappiness: they became depressed and anxious, and many cut themselves, or got into drugs or alcohol. Boys, on the other hand, “externalized” or “acted out”: they became more impulsive, aggressive, and “antisocial.” Both reactions were worrisome, but boys’ behavior had the disadvantage of annoying and even frightening classmates, teachers, and neighbors. Boys from broken homes were more likely than their peers to get suspended and arrested. Girls’ unhappiness also seemed to ease within a year or two after their parents’ divorce; boys’ didn’t.
Since then, externalizing by boys has been a persistent finding in the literature about the children of single-parent families. . . .
By the 1990s, as divorce rates eased and the ranks of never-married mothers expanded to include more women in their twenties, researchers were able to exclude the trauma of a parental crack-up and teen motherhood as primary causes of the son/single-mom disadvantage. Even controlling for mothers’ age and parents’ marital history, boys in fatherless homes were still getting into more trouble compared with their sisters and male peers with married parents. Autor and Wasserman cite a large study by University of Chicago sociologists Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan, showing that, by fifth grade, fatherless boys were more disruptive than peers from two-parent families, and by eighth grade, had a substantially greater likelihood of getting suspended. “The gender gap [between boys and girls] in externalizing behavior in fifth grade and suspension in grade eight . . . is smallest in intact families,” the authors summarized their findings. “All other family structures appear detrimental to boys [my italics].”
Read the whole thing.
FOREIGN POLICY: America is resurrecting the same strategy that failed in Iraq — and ground troops will pay the price. “Today, we are resurrecting the exact same strategies — most notably in the concept of Air-Sea Battle advocated by many in the Pentagon — and we are acting as if they are the solution to the problems encountered in Iraq rather than their cause. A coalition of parochial retirees, think tanks, and special interests are using the current political winds to engineer a flawed defense strategy. Their plan virtually ensures the United States will be unprepared for the next war.”
AT AMAZON, browse the Top Holiday Deals. New ones appearing all the time.
Also, take $25 off a $100 Bosch purchase.
Plus, today only: Roku LT Streaming Media Player (Purple) (2700R) (2013 Version), $36.99. Love my Roku, which is a couple of generations older — and which cost a lot more.
Also today only: Black & Decker 20-Volt Lithium-Ion Drill Kit, $49.99 (50% off).
JOHN FUND: What Peter O’Toole Learned About Taxes From His Driver. “He recalled that after he struck it rich in the 1960s, he tried to bully everyone in his household into voting Labour. He thought he had succeeded with everyone, until his working-class driver told him he had taken the Rolls down to the polling station and voted Conservative because his own taxes were too high. That, he said, got him to thinking. He admitted his fellow actors Michael Caine and Sean Connery had a point when they said Britain’s high tax rates did discourage work, and moved themselves overseas. The year we spoke, Margaret Thatcher began cutting Britain’s tax rates, negating the need for O’Toole to ponder joining them.”
ALCOHOLIC PORK: Senate goes after corn ethanol targets for fuel.
Senators on both sides of the aisle are pushing measures that would whack the corn ethanol portion of federal biofuel blending targets, unswayed by a recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal to slash next year’s goal.
The efforts come as the House remains stalled on its legislative proposal, and after some lobbyists have suggested the EPA action last month could reduce congressional appetite to change the Renewable Fuel Standard.
“The hearing on Wednesday was a bit of a surprise,” Michael McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association, said of a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the Renewable Fuel Standard. “A lot of people thought that when the EPA released the rule that it would cut the legs out of doing anything legislatively.”
Ethanol makes food more expensive, hurts engines, and is bad for the environment. It’s liquid pork.
SO LONG AS IT’S NOT MOTIVATED BY PARTISAN POLITICS, INCREASED SCRUTINY OF THE NONPROFIT SECTOR IS GOOD: IRS Commissioner Nominee Pledges to Look Into ‘Significant Diversion of Assets’ by 1,000 Charities.
UPDATE: In the comments, there’s considerable — by which I mean, universal — skepticism that this politicized IRS is capable of doing anything not motivated by partisan politics. Well, that’s probably right.
THE HILL: Tax Reformers See Hope In Deal.
Congressional tax writers, left reeling after a string of setbacks to tax reform, say ratification of the budget pact could give them new momentum next year.
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) have seen their efforts stymied and criticized in recent months.
But the budget deal struck this week includes no new revenues from ending tax breaks, giving them free reign to pursue full-scale rewrite of the tax code.
“Provisions that were not part of the budget are going to be part of tax reform,” Baucus told The Hill this week. “Oh yeah, it very much helps.”
Plus, the mere fact that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) were able to shake hands on a agreement indicates that the parties can still work together on tough issues.
Tax writers also argue that, by setting top-line spending numbers for the next two years, the deal could shift Congress out of crisis mode and give other meaningful issues time and space to proceed.
I’m not sure that’s good news. Also, it’s “free rein,” not “free reign.” Unless you’re a king.
OF COURSE THEY DO: D.C. Lobbyists Cheer Boehner’s War On Tea Party. “The Chamber of Commerce said it will target conservatives in the 2014 midterm election, especially those who oppose amnesty.”