The Price of Lax Gun Control

Access to guns increases the risk of suicide and homicide.  If people have a gun, they are more likely to use it. That's a no-brainer.  Do the benefits of an armed populace outweigh this cost?

Getting Poverty Wrong

What the the GOP gets wrong about poverty:

The war in poverty isn't lost. While it is still too high, the poverty rate has fallen in the last few decades thanks to government programs.

The cost of welfare is the the $1 trillion per year that is touted by the Cato Institute.  A more honest figuru is about $212 billion per year.

Poverty isn't caused by moral decay.  Worker productivity have gone up some 80% while wages have only gone up 4%.  Workers are not reaping the full benefits of their labor.

Poverty reduction programs are not wasteful.  In six of the largest anti-poverty programs, 90 to 99% of the money actually gets into the hands of the clients.

Food stamps don't keep people on welfare.  Some 87% of the food stamp recipients who can work work and that number has been growing.

Big government doesn't keep people poor.  The programs successfully 40 million people out of poverty in 2011, 9 million of whom were children.  Nothing harms opportunity more than poverty and nothing improves it more than the lack thereof.

Anti-poverty programs are not short term solutions.  They yield long-term benefits in children's health, education, and eventual careers.

The statistic that is quoted as the official poverty rate that hasn't changed much is a bad statistic.  It doesn't reflect some sources of income.  The real poverty rate has, in fact, been declining for decades.

Income inequality is a big deal.  It's the highest it's been since 1928.

Marriage doesn't really lift people out of poverty.  The synergy of shared expenses isn't as large as is assumed in the way we take our statistics.

The number of people in poverty is much larger than the official statistic.  According to the census, 1 in 3 fall below the poverty line.

Contrary to the GOP talking point, raising the minimum wage would actually lift half of our working poor out of poverty.

Rather than kill the economy, a higher minimum wage would improve it.  It would grow by $22 billion and add 85,000 new jobs.

"Economic Freedom Zones" won't help poverty.  They just move it around.

Universal Biofuels Production

A chemical process that digests any plant material has been discovered.  This opens the way for biofuel production from almost any feedstock.

Sugar is relatively easy to obtain from things like fruit and seeds, but those are also the sorts of things we like to eat. Most of the sugar in the rest of a plant, however, is locked into a complex polymer called cellulose. Figuring out a way to easily break down cellulose has been one of the major hurdles to the expansion of biofuels.
Now, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have figured out a chemical treatment that, given a bit of time, can completely dissolve any plant matter including wood. The end result is a solution containing mostly sugars, along with a few other organic molecules—some of which can be shunted off to synthesize the key ingredient of the chemical treatment itself.

Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Electricity

By using it as heat-transfer fluid, researchers propose using sequestered CO2 to extract geothermal energy.

In computer simulations, a 10-mile-wide system of concentric rings of horizontal wells situated about three miles below ground produced as much as half a gigawatt of electrical power -- an amount comparable to a medium-sized coal-fired power plant -- and more than 10 times bigger than the 38 megawatts produced by the average geothermal plant in the United States.
The simulations also revealed that a plant of this design might sequester as much as 15 million tons of CO₂ per year, which is roughly equivalent to the amount produced by three medium-sized coal-fired power plants in that time.

Enemies of the Poor

Republicans have this reputation. And sadly, they have earned it with their actions. They oppose Medicaid expansion, unemployment benefits, and education financing.  Every budget the House has passed contained cuts to food stamps and other poverty programs.  They make noise about doing something about poverty buts to really do something effective, taxes on the rich will have to rise.  They simply won't do that.

Why Some Identical Twins Are Noticeably Different

I've always wondered why my set of identical twins sometimes aren't so much. One is left-handed and one is right.

This explains in some measure why identical twins -- products of nearly identical genomes -- can be noticeably different from one another in their appearance and propensity for disease. Living things are, after all, built from cells, and each cell is in turn the product of the genes it expresses. Dynamic and random allelic expression can result in different blends of some traits, even in otherwise genetically identical people.

Incandescent Survivors

Incandescent bulbs are no more dead than are internal combustion engines.  The regulation that has the industry scrambling is about efficiency similar to the CAFE standards for automobiles.  As a result, new, highly efficient incandescent bulbs are being manufactured and marketed.

A Battery for Renewable Energy

With a flow battery the capacity is only limited by the size of the tank.  This may be the way for wind and solar to get out of the deep weeds towards becoming a reliable base-load provider.

We Should All Go Nuclear

According to Greenpeace, strangely enough, fossil energy is much more dangerous that nuclear even when you look at the accidents.  Remember, 20,000 people died at Fukushima just because they lived too close to the coastline.

Which leaves us with the truth about the relative dangers of these forms of energy generation. As The Lancet has reported, nuclear generation kills far fewer people than the other major forms (and yes, this is true of hydro, solar and wind power as well). And even when nuclear suffers a terrible disaster like either Chernobyl or Fukushima, we find that the number of deaths is far lower than just the regular annual toll from coal burning in one country alone, those 1,600 a year just in the UK.

GOP says Obamacare will cancel 80-100 million insurance plans

Not so much.  I call this truly creative prevarication.

Big Governments and Happier People

Dylan Mathews interviews Benjamin Radcliffe about his book, "The Political Economy of Human Happiness." The key to happiness is what he calls "decommodification." If you live an upper-middle class life, you have the opportunity to make choices about what you do in life. If you are further down the economic ladder, happiness depends more about what happens to you from external circumstances. Things like government assistance, strong labor unions, and a strong safety net give the lower classes access to the self-determination similar to what the rich enjoy. Pure capitalism isn't a good policy.

"Now, to be sure, the market economy absolutely contributes to human well-being in other ways — no one can deny that — but we have a macro- vs. micro-problem. At the macro level, capitalism works well. I would agree with Brooks that the market society is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. But at the micro level it depends at the very core of its logic, as even Adam Smith was at pains to point out, on the idea of using other people (employees) as a means to making profits for oneself. The people we hire to do work are just mere commodities in the profit-loss calculations, no more worthy of special concern than barrels of oil or bushels of grain. The last chapter of my book discusses these moral tensions that capitalism creates. My conclusion is that the social safety net, labor market regulations and labor unions all limit the degree to which people become mere commodities, and thus are more likely to lead fulfilling lives."

 For the sake of basic humanity, capitalism needs to be well-regulated.

Utah Is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With One Simple Idea

The solution to homelessness is surprisingly simple: just give people a home!

The state is giving away apartments, no strings attached. In 2005, Utah calculated the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for an average homeless person was $16,670, while the cost of providing an apartment and social worker would be $11,000. Each participant works with a caseworker to become self-sufficient, but if they fail, they still get to keep their apartment.

Utah Same-Sex Couples Getting Marriage Licenses

Utah state constitution amendment ruled unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued a 53-page ruling saying the constitutional amendment Utah voters approved in 2004 violates gay and lesbian couples' rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Shelby said the state failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.

This is huge!  All other DOMA-style amendments and laws across the nation are toast.

Obamacare horror stories? Not so much

It seems that some of the most noted Obamacare horror stories are not so horrible after all.  But will facts triumph over fear?  Only the Shadow knows.

The Future of Obamacare

All the right-wing handwringing notwithstanding, the big insurers are confident the ACA will endure.  They've committed $500 million in advertising to bring in new Obamacare subscribers.

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

It's geeky, I know. But, Quantum Physics may undergoe a remake.  A new theory can replace a 9-page formula with a simple geometric model.

Pope Francis Supports Breastfeeding Enough To Know It Needs To Happen In Public

In an interview, Pope Francis made a point about hunger, for anyone, anytime.

At the Wednesday General Audience the other day there was a young mother behind one of the barriers with a baby that was just a few month s old. The child was crying its eyes out as I came past. The mother was caressing it. I said to her: madam, I think the child’s hungry. “Yes, it’s probably time…” she replied. “Please give it something to eat!” I said. She was shy and didn’t want to breastfeed in public, while the Pope was passing. I wish to say the same to humanity: give people something to eat!

How to Create New Jobs

Just raise the minimum wage.   A $10.10 minimum wage would create 85,000 new jobs.  For reference, it takes a wage of $10.20 for an individual to meet the most basic of needs in the American county with the smallest cost of living.

Under the Sea

Sometimes we can be oblivious to that which is just below the surface if we only think in 2 dimensions.  And the ocean is much more than just the surface.  Ta-dump, ta-dump, ta-dump.

Mathematics and Human Struggles

Here's some more along the Hari Seldon line.  A mathematical formula can be used to describe how humans escalate their behaviors.  It applies to many things from crying babies to cyber attacks to civil unrest.