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| Sunday, January 29th, 2012 | | 10:33 pm |
Brilliant!
Two abstracts from the social science literature: The “organic” path to obesity? Organic claims influence calorie judgments and exercise recommendations Jonathon P. Schuldt and Norbert Schwarz, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan Labeling a food as “organic” entails a claim about its production but is silent on its calorie content. Nevertheless, people infer that organic cookies are lower in calories and can be eaten more often than conventional cookies (Study 1). These inferences are observed even when the nutrition label conveys identical calorie content and are more pronounced among perceivers high on pro-environmentalism. Moreover, when evaluating a person with a weight-loss goal, forgoing exercise is deemed more acceptable when the person has just chosen organic rather than conventional dessert (Study 2). These results reflect an “organic/natural”-“healthy” association that is capable of biasing everyday judgments about diet and exercise. The “Fair Trade” Effect: Health Halos From Social Ethics Claims Jonathon P. Schuldt, California State University–Northridge, Dominique Muller, University of Grenoble, and Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan The authors provide evidence that social ethics claims on food packaging (e.g., fair trade) can promote the misperception that foods are lower-calorie and therefore appropriate for greater consumption. In Study 1, participants evaluating chocolate provided lower calorie judgments when it was described as fair trade—a claim silent on calorie content but signifying that trading partners received just compensation for their work. Further establishing this effect, Study 2 revealed that chocolate was perceived as lower-calorie when a company was simply described as treating its workers ethically (e.g., providing excellent wages and health care) as opposed to unethically (e.g., providing poor wages and no health care) among perceivers with strong ethical food values, consistent with halo logic. Moreover, calorie judgments mediated the same interaction pattern on recommendations of consumption frequency, suggesting that amid the ongoing obesity crisis, social ethics claims might nudge some perceivers to overindulge. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed. | | Friday, January 27th, 2012 | | 9:36 am |
Oh, lovely
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17677Are Big-Time Sports a Threat to Student Achievement?
Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen, Glen R. Waddell
NBER Working Paper No. 17677
Issued in December 2011
We consider the relationship between collegiate-football success and non-athlete student performance. We find that the team's success significantly reduces male grades relative to female grades. This phenomenon is only present in fall quarters, which coincides with the football season. Using survey data, we find that males are more likely than females to increase alcohol consumption, decrease studying, and increase partying in response to the success of the team. Yet, females also report that their behavior is affected by athletic success, suggesting that their performance is likely impaired but that this effect is masked by the practice of grade curving. | | Thursday, January 26th, 2012 | | 10:52 pm |
"Coming Apart"
So I was in the library doing my weekend reading. In the Wall Street Journal is a long article (available online) summarizing a new book, Coming Apart by Charles Murray. (See also reviews in Business Week and National Review.) His thesis is that the culture of (white people in) the United States is factionating. In particular, he says that the whites of 1960 were remarkably culturally uniform from near the bottom end of the blue-collar workers to the top end of the white-collar workers, but that in the intervening decades, not only have the economic situations of the two groups drawn apart, but their cultures have done so. The cultural separation is in some ways just miscellaneous class-identification features (what sorts of ethnic food do you eat?), but it is also a much greater geographic segregation along economic lines, and a divergence in behavioral habits that enable or inhibit economic well-being. I gather from the reviews that the end of Murray's book harps on various conservative themes, but the WSJ avoided those and rather reprinted his warning to the "upper class": The “something” that I have in mind has to be defined in terms of individual American families acting in their own interests and the interests of their children. Doing that in Fishtown [poor districts] requires support from outside. There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending “nonjudgmentalism.” Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn’t hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.
Changing life in the SuperZIPs [rich districts] requires that members of the new upper class rethink their priorities. Here are some propositions that might guide them: Life sequestered from anybody not like yourself tends to be self-limiting. Places to live in which the people around you have no problems that need cooperative solutions tend to be sterile. America outside the enclaves of the new upper class is still a wonderful place, filled with smart, interesting, entertaining people. If you’re not part of that America, you’ve stripped yourself of much of what makes being American special.
Such priorities can be expressed in any number of familiar decisions: the neighborhood where you buy your next home, the next school that you choose for your children, what you tell them about the value and virtues of physical labor and military service, whether you become an active member of a religious congregation (and what kind you choose) and whether you become involved in the life of your community at a more meaningful level than charity events. What I found most interesting is Murray's focus on cultural factors, and that through that lens, I and most everyone I know is in the upper class. The ratio of incomes between me and Warren Buffett is far higher than the ratio of incomes between me and the hobo on the corner, but People Like Me have attitudes toward work, education, and family that enable us to make a serious run for wealth in our society, not to mention being primed with a host of minor cultural signals that prevent us from standing out in communities that are far more affluent than our own. (A friend of mine who was waaay down on her luck and applied for a pink-collar job was told by the interviewer "You've been to school [i.e., college]!" because she didn't have a Boston accent. And he meant it as an appreciation, too.) Murray shows his conservative roots by complaining about government welfare programs, but (at least as I saw it) says those aren't going to change. Instead, he goes the actually-true-conservative route and says that the well-off have to become personal ambassadors of the needed changes, and become far more connected to poorer communities. | | Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 | | 4:34 pm |
One way of negotiating when you have no enforcable contract rights
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6348437.htmlWantChina Times and Gameplanet are reporting that some 300 Foxconn employees working on Microsoft's Xbox 360 manufacturing line threatened suicide after the corporation denied a promised compensation package. WantChina Times reports that the Foxconn employees first asked for a raise, which was refused, before being told they had a choice between continuing work at the current pay rate or quitting their positions and receiving a compensation package. According to the report, Foxconn terminated the promised agreement when most of the employees chose the compensation package. The workers climbed onto the building's roof and threatened to jump in protest but were reportedly dissuaded from the suicide attempt by the mayor of Wuhan. Microsoft has since issued the following statement to media in response to the reports: | | Monday, January 9th, 2012 | | 8:52 pm |
| | Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 | | 2:03 pm |
| | Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 | | 10:45 am |
The True Federal Debt
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/the-true-federal-debt/The successor to the consolidated financial statement is now called the Financial Report of the United States Government. The edition for the 2011 fiscal year was published on Dec. 23 by the Treasury’s Financial Management Service to no fanfare.
The Obama administration, like previous administrations, had little interest in telling the American people that their debt problem was vastly worse than they thought. It buried the report on a day when most reporters were preparing for the holidays and unlikely to pore through a 254-page document filled with long columns of numbers punctuated with footnotes and accounting jargon.
Predictably, the financial report was ignored. Even The New York Times took no notice of it. | | Monday, January 2nd, 2012 | | 2:13 pm |
Iowa Electronic Markets report
Romney wins Republican nomination: 80% Gingrich wins Republican nomination: 4% Obama wins general election: 56% Republicans control both houses of Congress: 60% | | Monday, December 26th, 2011 | | 9:51 pm |
| | Sunday, December 25th, 2011 | | 11:20 am |
“He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy. Now piss off!”
Why Naughty Newt Gingrich Would Lose to Our Savior Obamaby Niall Ferguson In these words lies the key to one of the great mysteries of our time: why so many people seriously want the former House speaker Newt Gingrich to be the next president of the United States. It’s because ... he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!
For Americans utterly fed up with President Obama’s repeated failure to feed the five thousand, cure the lame, and turn water into wine, there is something irresistibly attractive about a man who embodies so many human frailties.
Four years ago, a large part of the nation was beginning to succumb to the delusion that a one-term senator from Illinois (of all places) was The One. Well, there’s no danger of any of that kind of nonsense with Newt as nominee. Because he’s as far from being the Messiah as it’s possible to get. | | Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 | | 12:51 pm |
Oh, yeah, we know how this ends
Merrill: ‘Classic bubble’ signs in Canadian housing marketCanada’s housing market shows the “classic signs of over valuation, speculation and over supply,” but Bank of America Merrill Lynch says that’s no reason to think that there will be an epic crash of American proportions.
In a report issued Monday, the bank’s Canadian analysts said record Canadian household debt and increased joblessness are cause for concern over the next year. There will likely be fewer sales, and prices could slip as much as 5 per cent in the next year. [Toronto] Condo investors may head for exitsInvestors rushed to buy Toronto condos in the good times, now there is a worry that they will rush for the exits as the economy weakens and they realize that profits are hard to come by in an overbuilt market.
A record number of condos were built in the past year in the Greater Toronto Area, with some 43,000 units under construction. Anecdotal evidence suggests many of the units were sold to investors who plan to rent them out, but a flood of supply hitting the market at once could drive rents below what’s needed to generate a profit.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch said if this happens, expect investors to slap “for sale” signs in the windows. And they won’t be selling for a profit, which will drag down prices for anyone else in the city putting a place on the market.
In a city accustomed to more than a decade of predictable price gains, the bank’s worst-case-scenario call of a 15 per cent price drop over the next two years is an uncomfortable proposition for many who count their homes as their financial asset. How about a 30 percent price drop? That's what happened in Boston around 1990. | | Friday, December 16th, 2011 | | 10:19 pm |
| | 9:58 pm |
NDAA
To save myself a lot of work, has anyone found any information about how Representatives and Senators voted for/against the anti-habeas corpus sections of the NDAA? The power of the ballot box needs to be invoked... ( 800 years of legal history ) | | 9:33 pm |
| | 8:50 pm |
| | Thursday, December 15th, 2011 | | 10:46 pm |
| | 10:12 pm |
The Republican freak show continues
There Can Be Only One! (in which Todd Kelly uses Highlander to finally figure out the GOP)For a party that is desperately looking to regain not just power but an overwhelming majority to repeal Obamacare, the GOP certainly goes out of its way continually trying to whittle out long-time party members. Like some kind of media-driven Jacobin satire, the GOP base continues to come to the ever-repeating conclusion: “If only there were far less of us, we could totally win every election!” Every time they attempt to reduce themselves by another layer, I find myself sucked into thinking that surely now they will take a step back and see the folly in which they engage. But credit where credit’s due: today’s GOP has the uncanny ability to surprise even an eye-rolling cynic like myself. And with each new round, they push themselves from “entertaining” through “sad and demoralizing,” and all the way back to “entertaining” again.
Labeling David Brooks as a liberal socialist was kind of sad. Doing likewise to Gingrich is funny. | | Sunday, December 11th, 2011 | | 11:23 pm |
Lettres de cachet
I've been reading an annotated translation of The Mystified Magistrate. One of the notes describes the lettre de cachet in ancien regime France: One version is an order from the king that removes a matter from the ordinary judicial proceedings. Another version orders someone imprisoned without any judicial review or appeal. Together, these could be very useful in both suppressing the publicity of a legal case of a family member who was involved in embarrassing trouble and also putting them away permanently so the problem doesn't arise again. The lettre de cachet was abolished in the French Revolution, and arbitrary imprisonment by the executive power has been considered a hallmark of tyranny ever since. As far as I can tell, this opinion has prevailed in "the West" since then. E.g., the chief executive of the one-world government in Stranger in a Strange Land considers it threatening to be accused of using even judicial warrants obtained on flimsy pretexts. So now the Senate is considering a provision in this year's National Defense Authorization Act that would permit the military to capture and imprison without charge or trial civilians -- including American citizens -- anywhere in the world. On top of this, it would require that they be held outside of the United States. As far as I can tell from the news reports, the intention of this provision is to have the military (which is, of course, under the command of the President) capture anyone (US citizen or not) "suspected" of supporting al Qaeda and imprison them indefinitely, without the judicial review of civilian or military prosecution, and without the protections of the Geneva Conventions (which requires hearings to establish whether a captive is actually an enemy soldier). Even worse, since this is an act of Congress, it seems to suspend the right of habeas corpus. The longer I think about this, the more I am disgusted by it. I'm starting to believe that it is properly described by that much over-used word, "fascist", in the true and proper sense of "resembling the distinctive behaviors of a Fascist government". | | 10:39 pm |
| | Thursday, December 8th, 2011 | | 10:24 pm |
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