In spring of 2012, Ferguson and his colleagues solicited and received 24 popular introductory textbooks, and then got to work evaluating them. Specifically, they evaluated those textbooks’ coverage of seven “controversial ideas in psychology†— ideas where there’s genuine mainstream disagreement among researchers — and also checked for the presence of five well-known scientific urban legends that, as far as the psychological Establishment is concerned, have been debunked.
Basically, the study found that the texts tended to be biased and frequently reported garbage as fact.
That’s not new. It was true half a century ago, too.
I may have told this story before but the only class in college I was ever kicked out of was a mathematical psychology class. At the end of the first session the prof called me to his desk and politely told me to get out on the grounds that I knew too much math. As an alternative he gave me an independent study that I spent developing mathematical models of psychological experiments.
The Chinese see the United States in three ways. First, the U.S. has an extremely powerful Navy. Second, the U.S. is highly unpredictable in how it responds to challenges. The Chinese saw this unpredictability in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Operation Desert Storm, Iraq and so on. At times, the U.S. does not respond. Other times it over-reacts, from the Chinese point of view. Third, the U.S. prefers economic sanctions that at times include physically blocking the trade of a given country.
Given these three facts about China’s potential adversary, China finds itself in an extremely difficult position. It cannot match American naval power. It cannot predict what the U.S. will do. To the extent that the U.S. might choose, sanctions that include interference with Chinese trade are the most likely opening move. Therefore, the geography of the Western Pacific archipelago poses a potential threat to core Chinese national interests.
I don’t believe that China can accomplish all of its goals by either of the means that Mr. Friedman outlines (direct military confrontation or supporting insurgencies to destabilize other countries in the region). One of those goals is getting the respect that the Chinese believe they are being denied. They won’t get that by either of those means.
Let’s face it. Most remakes of classic movies are lame. But not always.
Most people don’t realize it but the classic 1941 picture, The Maltese Falcon, is a remake of The Maltese Falcon made in 1931 and starring Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels. The 1931 version is a good picture; the 1941 is a great one.
Another example of a remake that transcended the original is the 1944 movie Between Two Worlds—it’s a remake of the 1930 movie Outward Bound starring Leslie Howard and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Here are some other examples of remakes that are better than the originals:
Payback (1996) is a remake of Point Blank (1967) Beau Geste (1939) (the first version was made in 1926) Four Brothers (2005) is a remake of The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) Holiday (1938) (the first version was made in 1930) The Parent Trap (1998) (the first version was in 1961)
My wife and I are still debating whether the Mel Brooks version of To Be Or Not to Be is better than the Jack Benny version. She prefers Brooks; I prefer Benny. They’re both good.
Any other ideas of remakes that are better than the originals? To qualify a movie
Must be better than the movie it’s a remake of and
Must be a remake (not just have the same name or have related themes). For example, the Errol Flynn The Adventures of Robin Hood isn’t a remake of the Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood—they’re different adaptations of the Robin Hood legends.
At The Moderate Voice Tim Crass presents what looks to me to be a correct analysis of what will happen to Illinois following the decennial census and subsequent redistricting:
The “Land of Lincoln†will definitely be losing one of its 18 Congressional seats but population trends signify that dropping two seats is not out of the realm either. In fact, the state was one of eight to suffer a population loss in 2016 as residents continue to pour into the South and West – and this is the third year in a row. It is under that premise that I will assume a two seat loss is likely and explore a scenario for a map that might result. I am also going to assume – and it’s admittedly a big one with an election two years ago, that Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, will be a one-termer. Though he has vowed to put $50 million into his war-chest to win a second term, his job approval is not particularly strong so, I will foreshadow a takeover. If not, I’ll have some revisiting to do but that would portend good news for Democrats.
Read the whole thing. To expand beyond Illinois, expect Texas to pick up at least two seats and possibly three and Florida to pick up two seats. Don’t be surprised if all of the Trump Blue States lose seats.
Another thing you should not be surprised by: I suspect that the idea of changing which residents count in the census and subsequent redistricting will be revisited. To refresh your mind there was a case brought in Texas challenging the counting of non-citizens for the purposes of reapportionment and redistricting. We presently have as many non-citizens living in the United States as at any time in our history, that’s producing stresses, and the stresses are resulting in reactions. The “one man one vote” formulation was enunciated under very different circumstances than prevail now—when we had a third as many immigrants as a percentage of the population.
I believe that the coming fight over reapportionment will be one of the bitterest in our history.
According to a regulatory filing on Friday, Apple said its annual sales of $215.6 billion were 3.7% below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target.
As a result, company executives got 89.5% of their targeted annual cash incentive. In 2015, the executives got 100%. In all, Mr. Cook received $8.75 million in total 2016 compensation, down from $10.28 million in 2015. Other executives also received lower pay.
Apple last year faced declining revenue as it grappled with the first prolonged slump in iPhone sales.
it reminded me that Apple was forced to drag Steve Jobs back, twelve years after it had fired him. Apple isn’t just a company; it’s a cult—a combination of innovation and aesthetics that’s darned hard to sustain. An Apple CEO doesn’t just have to manage. He or she must inspire, drive, insist on the highest of standards and push the envelope. It’s hard to get that in one package.
While the anti-Muslim hate crime rate rose substantially in 2015, it remained well below rates of anti-Jewish and anti-gay crimes. Also note how low the anti-Muslim hate crime rate was in 2014 relative to these two other groups. The most dramatic change from 2002 to 2015 was the drop in the anti-black hate crime rate.
[…]
Furthermore, it is a mistake to associate hate crimes exclusively with white Americans who are the target group for alleged right-wing incitement. FBI statistics do not isolate the racial distribution of the perpetrators of assaults against Muslims. However, the FBI does identify the racial distribution for all hate crime assaults. In 2015, 53.2, 28.7 and 9.2 percent of hate crimes were committed by white, black, and multi-racial individuals, respectively.
Most striking, however, is the dramatic 60 percent decline in anti-black hate crimes over the last decade. These data counter the narrative, promoted by writers such as The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, who laments: “To be black in a white supremacist society is to live in constant fear of disembodiment.â€
What is more, before 2015, anti-Jewish hate-crimes and assault rates were higher than anti-Muslim or anti-black rates. The implication? We should not be so quick to associate the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes with widespread Islamophobia just as we should not associate high anti-Jewish hate crime rates with widespread anti-Semitism.
That’s an important point that I think is too little recognized. The evidence for widespread anti-Semitism or widespread Islamophobia of an intensity sufficient to rise to violence is scanty.
What does seem to be happening is that although as a society we’re becoming more tolerant there are nonetheless a small number of individuals, the intensity of whose hatred is increasing. It might be politically satisfying to trumpet that small number of individuals as evidence of a hate-filled society but that isn’t really supported by the facts.
As I read Robert Zoellick’s op-ed in the Washington Post proposing some course corrections in what the president-elect has had to say about trade two thoughts occurred to me. First, I think Mr. Zoellick would be horrified at the prospect of genuinely free trade. What we have now isn’t free trade. It’s an elaborate edifice of protections and penalties that picks winners and losers. Licensed service providers and owners of intellectual property, just to name a few, are winners. Textile manufacturers are losers. Indeed, just about any industry that employs lots of people is a loser.
And second when China engages in illegal practices (like dumping), the U. S. files a claim with the WTO, wins and imposes tariffs, and China retaliates by imposing tariffs or quotas of its own, it’s the Chinese who are the aggressors. Complaining that we’re risking a trade war is frivolous.
We’re already in a trade war. Our efforts at defense are phlegmatic. If our efforts after Pearl Harbor had been that phlegmatic, Californians would be speaking Japanese.
The big losers in China’s predatory trade practices are people in Mexico, Brazil, and the dozens of other countries that would like to follow the path that Japan and South Korea and China have to develop their economies.
Just to go on the record, I don’t believe that cuts in the personal income tax will of themselves boost economic growth. Let’s be clear: nobody is proposing simply to cut the marginal rates in the personal income tax. They’re proposing to trim the marginal rates and borrow to fill the hole in the budget the loss of revenue the reduction in tax rates will cause. There’s no way they can cut spending to fit the loss of revenue without doing just about the opposite of what the incoming administration has been saying.
The idea that cutting the personal income tax will cause a substantial increase in domestic investment hasn’t been thought out. It will probably produce a small increase in domestic investment but it will also produce additional consumption (mostly of imported goods and possibly real estate) and overseas investment. How much of each? Nobody knows.
If the plan is to expand the private economy, more will need to be done than cuts in the personal income tax. We’ll need incentives for domestic investment and disincentives for overseas investment, too.
Further, there’s no particularly good reason that increasing federal borrowing to pay for a tax cut will have much more effect than increasing federal borrowing without a tax cut. Keep all of this in mind when you listen to the incoming administration and Congress’s plans for the future.
What do I think should be done? I think that we should bring the business income tax into line with the business taxes in other OECD countries and pay for the reduction in revenue that would produce by adding a new, higher bracket above the present top bracket. I also think we should replace the personal income tax with a VAT but that’s a subject for another time.
If the incoming administration wants to cut personal taxes they should do so by advocating a reduction in the payroll tax, replacing the lost revenue from the tax with general revenues. Heck, I think we should abandon the present fund accounting but that, too, is a subject for another time.
If this works as described, it’s a really beautiful technology. The MIT Technology Review describes an Indian coal-fired power plant that captures the carbon dioxide and turns it into baking soda:
In the southern Indian city of Tuticorin, locals are unlikely to suffer from a poorly risen cake. That’s because a coal-fired thermal power station in the area captures carbon dioxide and turns it into baking soda.
Carbon capture schemes are nothing new. Typically, they use a solvent, such as amine, to catch carbon dioxide and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere. From there, the CO2 can either be stored away or used.
But the Guardian reports that a system installed in the Tuticorin plant uses a new proprietary solvent developed by the company Carbon Clean Solutions. The solvent is reportedly just slightly more efficient than those used conventionally, requiring a little less energy and smaller apparatus to run. The collected CO2 is used to create baking soda, and it claims that as much as 66,000 tons of the gas could be captured at the plant each year.
Its operators say that the marginal gain in efficiency is just enough to make it feasible to run the plant without a subsidy. In fact, it’s claimed to be the first example of an unsubsidized industrial plant capturing CO2 for use.
Presumably, the baking soda can be sold, too.
I expect that we’ll see a lot more solutions like this coming out of India. They have a lot of clever, educated people, probably as many engineers per 100,000 population as anywhere in the world and they don’t have a lot of money to mess around with diseconomic schemes.
At the Guardian Al From makes a pitch for the Democratic Party to reconsider the Third Way strategy rather than taking the populist turn suggested by the rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:
Restoring upward mobility and reducing inequality should be central to the Democratic agenda. But a populist approach is not the way to achieve that. Senator Paul Tsongas once said to me: “The problem with the Democratic party is that we spend so much time worrying about passing out the golden eggs that we forget to worry about the health of the goose.â€
Simply put, redistribution doesn’t work if there is nothing to redistribute. This economic growth can only be generated by a robust private sector, generating high-skill, high-wage jobs and programs that equip every American with the opportunities and skills that he or she needs to get ahead.
One problem is that when every scrap of incremental growth is absorbed by greedy professionals it’s no better for average people than when that growth is absorbed by the top .1% and that’s what the Third Way has come to stand for.
I see Mr. From’s plea as a mad scramble for relevance. Now that Hillary Clinton has been defeated with the Clintonistas not far behind, what role is there for them in a post-Clinton Democratic Party?
