Lives in a Shoe

Dutch Man Arrested for Pig Hat

From a bystander:  ‘Whether or not it was provocation, it is and remains a pig hat.’”

 

Anybody Believe the FBI Isn't Out to Defeat Encryption?

Read the whole thing, then give it some thought.

FBI Director James Comey starts his defense of their effort to force Apple to help them break into the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist and killer Syed Farook with a sentence that is that is extremely hard to take seriously: "The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message."

Where Is the Outrage?

 

Women, if you’re selling something new on eBay, you’ll make more money if you get a male friend to sell it, according to a new study.

The findings, published Friday in the Journal Science Advances, revealed that on average, women make about 80 cents for every dollar a man does when selling the identical new product. The gender gap is much less acute on used goods, with women making 97 cents for every dollar on the same product sold by a man.

Universal Pre-K. Wait -- What?

Why Grit is Highly Overrated, The Globe and Mail:

The most significant predictor of how kids will do in school is how their parents did in school. Nothing the education system has tried so far has changed that. The latest confirmation comes from a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It assessed the data from test results in the U.K., where everyone takes a universal exam at the ageof 16. The researchers focused on the test scores of 2,321 twin pairs, who are part of a long-term study to determine the various influences of environment and heredity on behaviour and life outcomes. Their conclusion is both good news and bad news for those who think intelligence is highly overrated. They found that educational achievement does indeed depend on far more traits than just IQ. The bad news: Those traits are highly heritable, too.

..

At this point, a lot of folks will be inclined to stick their fingers in their ears and say “Na, na, na, I can’t hear you.” Fifty years of social science, education theory, parenting beliefs and progressive thought depends on the blank-slate view of human nature, which holds that kids are unformed lumps of clay who are entirely shaped by their environment. Despite the evidence all around us, it is not polite to say this isn’t so. It is not polite to say that people differ in their innate abilities, and that there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Better to pretend we live in Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average and could probably go to Harvard if only they had the right social advantages...

If Only

From My Cold Dead Hands?

The Ban On Cash Is Coming, Soon

Negative interest, unintended consequences...

Antonin Scalia RIP

 

Best buds: Scalia, RBG, and the friendship that rose above progressive bloodlust.  

In many interviews, Scalia said that you cannot be a judge if you cannot disagree with your colleagues in a professional manner–and he never took disagreements with his colleagues personally over his long legal career. While the subject of a 60 Minutes segment on CBS, Scalia told Lesley Stahl “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can’t separate the two, you got to get another day job. You don’t want to be a judge–at least not a judge on a multi-member panel.”

You can see how that in the deluge of admiration, love, and respect that was outpoured by the legal community and his colleagues, many of whom he most certainly had sharp disagreements, though all acknowledged the great imprint he left on American jurisprudence. While not doing law, Ginsburg and Scalia often celebrated New Year’s Eve together with their families. Besides being a fan of the opera, he was an avid hunter, with Justice Elena Kagan being his “hunting buddy.” Scalia had directly suggested to David Axelrod, then-senior adviser to President Obama, that they should send Elena Kagan to sit on the Supreme Court. Axelrod was seated at the same table as Scalia during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner several years ago, which is when he made the suggestion. Sonia Sotomayor was nominated instead, but when John Paul Stevens decided to retire–Kagan’s number was called up. Axelrod later found out, like Ginsburg, that both were friends as well. Why suggest a liberal be on the Court? Well, there’s a Democratic president, meaning a no-go on an originalist candidate, but she’s “smart,” and qualified to be on the Court. On the latter two, Scalia’s odds were better.

While viewed as one of the anchors of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, Scalia held positions that put him at odds with others who share that label, specifically many voters in the Republican Party. He voted to strike down Texas’ flag desecration statute, arguing that burning American flags is protected free speech. At the same time, he did comically say that he would throw this person into jail if he were king.

Good News From the World Bank

The number of people living in extreme poverty around the world is likely to fall to under 10 percent of the global population in 2015, according to World Bank projections released today, giving fresh evidence that a quarter-century-long sustained reduction in poverty is moving the world closer to the historic goal of ending poverty by 2030.

Flint

 

Flint Lead Crisis Getting a Tad Overdone.  

Flint's 8,000 children have not had their lives destroyed...Taken as a whole, in fact, Flint's kids are better off than the previous generations of Michigander kids in at least one important way. Even after Flint’s disaster, the city’s children have far less lead in their blood than their parents or grandparents did at the same age.

***

So all the hoopla is about an additional 3.8% of children having blood lead levels exceeding 5 micrograms per deciliter.

If you don’t know anything about lead, that might sound like some great tragedy. But as this CDC chart shows, it is no big deal.

Almost 90 percent of 70s-era children had blood lead levels in excess of 10 micrograms per deciliter… And the blood lead levels were likely even higher for children from earlier 20th century decades — all without harm.

Lead hysteria was fueled by the junk science of the University of Pittsburgh’s Herbert Needleman.* Though debunked (federal investigators concluded Needleman’s work was “difficult to explain as honest error”), it is the basis for today’s lead hysteria.

**********

 

The More Things Change, the More They Stay The Same

Gloria Steinem, interviewed by Bill Maher, indicates young women support Bernie so they can meet boys.  "The boys are with Bernie."