Oh, man. I am so going to do this. All I need to do is come up with a prizewinning Big Idea, and I’m set for life, thanks to the MacArthur Foundation’s “100 and change” project. Well, OK, the $100 million is intended to go towards implementing the Big Idea, the solution to some pressing problem, but I could probably name myself as head of the foundation and pay myself a salary, right? And, well, according to the press release, I’d... Read more
From the Society of Actuaries and the American Academy of Actuaries: the Longevity Illustrator. It’s a tool to show you, not just your life expectancy, but your probabilities (or joint probabilities with a partner) of living to given ages, given your and your partner’s overall health. Enjoy — and let me know if the numbers were higher, or lower, than you expected! Read more
It’s baa-aack — the dream that we have a way of fixing poor kids right at our fingertips, a solution that just needs a cash infusion, not a change in behavior or new ideas or insights. All we need is to put those kids, from perhaps infancy on, into daycare, cared for by highly-trained experts. (OK, that’s a bit of a straw man, but allow me to vent anyway.) This time, in the form of a New York Times column... Read more
Or, “no, please don’t fling us into that briar patch!” I had observed the other day that progressives have increasingly abandoned the notion of Social Security as paid for by one’s own contributions over one’s working lifetime, in favor of calling for deficit-elimination and program enhancements paid for by turning the program into just another component of income tax, with no ceiling, and taxing all income, not just wages. Now President Obama has joined that chorus. And the Scandinavian countries... Read more
You remember MAD, right? (I put the periods in the title so that it’s clearer that it’s not that I’m mad about something.) The concept that, because each of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. maintained a nuclear triad with second-strike capability, neither would launch a first-strike nuclear attack because of the certainty that the other would retailate. Mutual Assured Destruction — and it seemed to have worked pretty successfully. I’m thinking of this because Obama’s speech at Hiroshima (see my... Read more
So the Chicago Tribune reported on a new report on affordable housing the other day, “The Gap,” by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. As many of these types of reports do, it sets a marker for the proportion of income that one “should” be spending on housing (or another type of expense, such as childcare), and then measures states and metro areas to see how far they fall short of (or, rather, exceed) this metric. Here’s the executive summary:... Read more
Yes, this year, as Cub Scout pack committee chair, I marched rather than watched. In this picture, an older Boy Scout and a dad are carrying the flags; during the parade each boy wanted a turn carrying the flag, then discovered fairly quickly that it was acutally heavy, and then someone else took a turn. They also had candy to hand out (OK, throw out), and were so over-excited it lasted half the route. Note to self: ration the candy... Read more
On Friday, May 27, President Obama, in Japan for the G-7 summit, made a trip to Hiroshima and spoke at a wreath-laying ceremony. Here’s the speech transcript from the New York Times. That speech has been roundly criticized by the right, for instance, in this commentary calling it “one of the most repulsive speeches in history,” by Ben Shapiro. Obama, we’re told, should have told the Japanese gathered there that it was their own damn fault for starting the war,... Read more
Transsexual — what an archaic term! How quickly we’ve moved from the notion that a person “changes sex” by undergoing surgery, combined with a legal declaration, to the idea that it’s all about how you “identify” — and that your “gender identity” could be pretty much anything and society, institutions, and individuals, must comply with your preferences regarding acknowledgement of that identity. Yes, I know, there is a reasonable-people-disagree type of claim that someone who is transgender experienced brain development... Read more
What happens when the meaning of an artwork is forgotten, then half-rediscovered? In Elgin, in 2003, artist David Powers, in collaboration with students from Judson University, created a set of murals on certain themes of justice, including one on racial justice, based off a photograph of bystanders at a lynching. (I haven’t reproduced the photograph here because I’m not sure of the copyright status.) It was meant to cause the viewer to reflect on that ugly part of the past,... Read more
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