Now that the royals and their supporters are all distracted by a lavish wedding, this would be the perfect time to finally overthrow the monarchy. Rise up allready.
An Insurance Company With An Army
When you talk about federal spending, you’re overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. And the bulk of the insurance — all of Social Security and Medicare, about 2/3 of Medicaid — is for the elderly and disabled. … Put it this way: Whenever someone talks about making government smaller, he should be… Continue reading An Insurance Company With An Army
Motivated Reasoning : The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience [7] (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter… Continue reading Motivated Reasoning : The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
Reducing Health Costs With Voluntary Death Panels
If you’re 77 years old and receive a medical diagnosis that implies you have eighteen months to live without treatment, the government will spend large sums of money on trying to extent your life twelve months further. The government won’t pay for you to take a trip to visit the Church of the Nativity in… Continue reading Reducing Health Costs With Voluntary Death Panels
A working robot controlled by a slime mould, Dalek anyone?
A working robot controlled by a slime mould, and designed and built in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, will play a starring role in a major BBC4/Discovery Channel feature to be aired in the autumn. A production team from BBC Scotland spent a whole day in ECS this week, filming with… Continue reading A working robot controlled by a slime mould, Dalek anyone?
European and US Employment
Lots of people have an image of Europe as an economic pit of doom, with millions of prime-age workers sitting idle thanks to the welfare state. And there was some truth to that image 15 years ago. But things got better over there even as they got worse here: Even before the Great Recession struck,… Continue reading European and US Employment
Freedom and The Weak State
Francis Fukuyama challenges the assumption that freedom and a strong central state are opposing values: … In contemporary China, many of the worst abuses of peasant rights, violations of environmental and safety laws, and cases of gross corruption are the work not of the central government in Beijing but of local party officials or of the… Continue reading Freedom and The Weak State
Marxist class struggle as the root of Conservative activism
If you replace the phrase Liberal Elite with Bourgeoisie the rants of many social conservatives sound disturbingly like Marxist class struggle. Notably, talk about the Liberal Media is phrased like Marxist class struggle with the phases like real American as place holders for the word proletariat.
The Moore’s Law of solar energy
That is changing. Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a “Moore’s law” in solar energy. In computing, Moore’s law dictates that the number of components that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months. More practically… Continue reading The Moore’s Law of solar energy
Paul Ryan booed at his own town hall
A constituent lays out the problem of growing concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent of the U.S. population, and then questions the wisdom of continuing to give tax breaks to the wealthy. He is applauded by the audience. Ryan, in response, attacks the notion that wealth should be redistributed, and says “we do… Continue reading Paul Ryan booed at his own town hall