July 14, 2006

Can we all finally agree that it is at least possible the recent increased popularity of MySpace is responsible for the hottest year on record? The timing of these announcements cannot be ignored.

The first half of the year was the warmest on record for the United States.

The government reported Friday that the average temperature for the 48 contiguous United States from January through June was 51.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 3.4 degrees above average for the 20th century.

That made it the warmest such period since recordkeeping began in the National Climatic Data Center reported.
[First Half of 2006 Is Warmest on Record - AP - 07-14-06]

May 14, 2006

Even the President's closest economic advisors warned him that tax-cuts do not pay for themselves.

Mankiw reckons that over the long run (the long run being generous to his argument), cuts on capital taxes generate enough extra growth to pay for half of the lost revenue. Hello, Mr. President, that means that the other half of the lost revenue translates into bigger deficits. Mankiw also calculates that the comparable figure for cuts in taxes on wages is 17 percent. Yes, Mr. President, that means every $1 trillion in tax cuts is going to add $830 billion to the national debt.

Let's engage in what Bush might call the soft bigotry of low expectations and cut Republicans some slack. Hey, maybe they just overlooked that Mankiw paper? Or maybe, despite hiring Mankiw to head the Council of Economic Advisers, they later acquired reasons to doubt his judgment? In that case they should at least have listened to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, another conservative economist who worked in the Bush White House and who went on to run the Congressional Budget Office.

In a study published under Holtz-Eakin's direction last December, the CBO estimated the extent to which a 10 percent reduction in personal taxes might pay for itself. The conclusions confirm that the free-lunch mantra is just plain wrong. On the most optimistic assumptions it could muster, the CBO found that tax cuts would stimulate enough economic growth to replace 22 percent of lost revenue in the first five years and 32 percent in the second five. On pessimistic assumptions, the growth effects of tax cuts did nothing to offset revenue loss.

So Mankiw isn't with them. Holtz-Eakin isn't with them. Which raises a question: When top Republicans go around claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves, which economic authorities are they relying on? None, is the answer. These people's approach to government is to make economics up.
[The Return Of Voodoo Economics - WashingtonPost - 05-15-06]

March 30, 2006

Do something useless, or be more like God and wish them the best of luck.

Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, according to the largest, best-designed study to examine the power of prayer to heal strangers at a distance.

The study of more than 1,800 heart bypass surgery patients found that those who had other people praying for them had as many complications as those who did not. In fact, one group of patients who knew they were the subject of prayers fared worse.

The long-awaited results, the latest in a series of studies that have failed to find any benefit from "distant" or "intercessory" prayer, came as a blow to the hopes of some that scientific research would validate the popular notion that people can influence the health of others even if those people don't know someone is praying for them.
[Study: Praying Won't Affect Heart Patients - Washington Post - 03-30-06]

March 22, 2006

This study followed 95 people through 20 years of their life. The study first noted their behavior as toddlers. Twenty years later, those studied supported the finding that children observed as whiney brats 20 years ago mostly identify as "conservatives" while resilient, self-reliant children tended to be liberal.

How are older conservatives reacting to this study? Whining, crying, name calling tantrums...

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
[How to spot a baby conservative - Toronto Star - 3-21-06]