Wealthiness is next to Godliness

And perhaps money does make you happier, or at least more than previous data indicated.  Derek Thompson does his usual thing for the Atlantic  which is to actually read those complicated studies that come out, and not only read them but try and convey their meanings, complexity and all, to the reader.  And with as minimal translation costs as needed.

It's a admirable goal, and one wonks everywhere no doubt appreciate, but I don't imagine he hears warm reviews from members of the Liberal Elite at their Liberal Elite Cocktail Parties - so much as blank stares.  But good can be good for goodness sake, right?

Anyway the gist of Thompson's analysis is that 

"According to the modern godfather of income and well-being research, Richard Easterlin, it is better to be rich than poor, but rich countries don't get any happier as they got richer. They hit a happiness ceiling, essentially. This idea matters a great deal, because in a world where only relative income matters, there might be less need to care about growth or pursue policies that maximized lower-income families' post-tax incomes. The work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers suggests Easterlin was simply wrong. Absolute income matters absolutely, and voters, economists, and policy-makers have everything to gain by putting the spotlight on income gains for the average family."

It seems there is an exception in that most exceptional of countries; the USA.  The authors of the study (who are Sacks, Stevenson and Wolfers, if we are to take Thompson at his word, the sneaky devil), explain this as partly a result of our income equality, and partly because of single-family households; whatever that means.   My guess at a translation would be that Americans don't really share a sense of community beyond the right-in-front-of-us stuff.  Or perhaps we play too many video games?  No, that doesn't seem to be the case...

So all this comes down to an interesting set of propositions: 

1. Making money makes humans happier, to a point
2. A few Americans make more money than God; everyone else can suck it

I hope you'll find my cynicism understandable.  

But the most important part of Derek's entire post is easily lost in all the facts; notice this in his 5th point (latter emphasis mine):

"(5) Europe's lesson: A steadily rising level of satisfaction from a steadily rising level of income. The graphs below are a bit more pointilist and messy, but they make a similarly compelling point. The Eurobarometer survey, which has measured life satisfaction across the continent since 1973, clearly shows that in eight of the nine countries for which the researchers have the most data, well-being has increased through time with economic growth. Except for Belgium. You're weird, Belgium."

Belgium, you are wierd.

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Guns Want to be Free

From a somewhat terrifying post on the development of guns whose important parts can be created by 3-D printers (god save us all?), comes this hilarious comment thread:

PhosPhorious: "That might not seem like a lot. . .  but how often are you in a situation where you need more than six people dead?" 

Lemoutan: "When you're sick of the way they're playing Mendelssohns's Octet?"
PhosPhorious: "No, you can do that in 4 bullets.  By the time the second cello goes down, they've all stopped playing." 

Lemoutan: "Yeah, but I'd still have the nagging doubt that they might start up again. Viola players just don't care."

I would like to thank BoingBoing for creating a fantastic blog full of wonderful posts and cool ideas, and the snarkiest posters ever.

In all seriousness though, I think that this is only a tip of the ice bucket when it comes to 3-D printing.  Clearly someone agrees with me, as NY Representative Steve Israel Corey has proposed a ban on the association who demonstrated this new gun.  Cory Doctorow, the quite brilliant digital social commentator, futurist and blogger at BoingBoing obviously doesn't.

..And after reading the linked article, I'm under the impression that the entire article and comment thread is totally missing the point.

Corey, you're a brilliant guy, and undoubtedly there will be calls to enact dictatorial laws in an attempt to hold back 3-D printing and the scary future.  But is this one of those?  Or this just some random Representative from New York using a random youtube video to renew a (mostly) silly ban on plastic guns.  (Relevant CRS summary here) 

Now this may be a crushing blow to 3-D, amateur DIY marksmen and gun-enthusiasts (which is a negative, although I will be able to get up tomorrow despite their displeasure), but this doesn't really touch on 3-D printing except where it touches on making guns.  Companies won't have to change their printers; the law only applies to the manufacture of these guns and their parts.   No online communities will be affected (with the obvious exception of BoingBoing which will burst into dramaflame) as the law says *nothing* about plans or digital schematics.  

Keep calm and carry on everyone.

"We are punished by our sins, not because of them"

And we should hope this will be a sufficient lesson.

A report on the torture and "so-called enhanced-interrogation techniques" torture (the New York times is still cowardly) was just approved by the Senate Intelligence Commitee.  It was on almost partisan lines, apparently, which is somewhat depressing that the GOP has decided to take the side of evil.  Or, you know, hiding the evil their party committed.  McCain proves he still has a soul;

“What I have learned confirms for me what I have always believed and insisted to be true — that the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence.”

What remains to be seen is how many of the security establishment still have theirs.

Better Living Through Chemistry(!); Making Word Problems Interesting

My friend mentioned how boring word problems are in Math classes.  Considering the importance of understanding the meaning of the math concepts, instead of just the calculation, I think this is a critical issue to solve.
My first idea is to incorporate some sly misdirection into your problems.  Hinting at one question, and then asking another is a great way to keep students on their toes!  You may say that trick questions aren't fair.  On the contrary!  Trick questions allow you to insert some fun into your tests or quizzes!
For example:

 "Jenny is an astronomy enthusiast, and loves watching the stars at night. But her husband always turns on the garage flood lights at night so she will go to bed. Jenny is trying to figure out the blue-shift for a binary system in the NGC 1357 galaxy. If Jenny calculates the wavelength of Cesium (K) emission spectra of the system as 3935.8 Angstroms, the Hydrogen (H) emission spectra as 3969.9 Angstroms, and the Hydrogen Alpha (Hα) emission spectra as 6561.0 Angstroms, how hard should she throw a rock at her husband in order to ensure a quiet, dark night for stargazing?"

See?  With just a few extra steps, Learning can be fun!

Why the Conservatives may actually lose, for once.

Jonathan Chait's post offers a beautiful clarification of my argument from yesterday:

Democrats don’t need to lure Republicans into negotiations in order to raise taxes on the rich. They can just wait until January first and it happens automatically. The more clever of the Republicans realize this and want to strike a deal now, before the Bush tax cuts expire, when they can negotiate from the lower baseline. That’s why some members are floating a willingness to submit to a slightly higher tax rate if Obama will agree to a revenue target “well below” the $1.6 trillion he is asking for.

....

Republicans are only contemplating this method because it follows the path of least resistance, a path dictated by the conservative movement's paranoia about a budget sellout. It doesn't require an agreement with Obama or an affirmative vote to raise taxes. But it also gives Obama the strongest leverage to ultimately set revenue levels. Republicans have constructed all their anti-tax defenses against a bipartisan budget deal, never imagining that higher taxes would transpire through legislative inaction rather than action.

Republicans are following a path that is likely to lead to higher taxes because the entrenched methods of anti-tax politics are preventing them from maneuvering. The conservative movement is designed to prevent a compromise, when compromise is the thing Republicans most need in order to hold taxes low.

Way to one-up me Chait.  Now I look like a vengeful, partisan dick. I suppose after years of conservative madness, that is how I feel.

No Country for Obstructionist Men

Image from Andrew Sullivan (Marry me!). His coloring, the Washpo's graph.

The GOP can suck it.

As surprising as it is, I think a good number of Americans are catching on to the Republican strategy of 2001 to current:

• If Obama wants to avoid the (fiscal-cliff / expiration of Bush tax-cuts / debt ceiling), he has to compromise.  
• If Obama wants to compromise, he has to offer his suggestions in public, so we can savage him for the inevitable hard decisions.  
• If Obama wants more revenues, he has to cut everything we want.
• If Obama wants more revenues, they have to be balanced by tax-cuts in other areas we want.
• If we don't get these things, we will not compromise, except in a way that is barely compromising.  We will only call this "bi-partisanship", and not compromise, because that way we can dupe independents while being able to claim victory on Fox news.
• We will not compromise in any way that exposes us to attacks from our batshit-insane radical base.
• If anything breaks, it's Obama's fault.
• If it's not Obama's fault, it's mostly Obama's fault.
• If it's definitely not Obama's fault, it's Obama's fault because he's made politics too partisan.

This strategy, though nihilistic and somewhat evil (malicious, Machiavellian, mommy-he-hit-me whatever you want to call it), has been working pretty well up through the election.  During a severe recession, throwing a stick in any of the fixes the administration proposed worked pretty well; the economy probably didn't recover as fast, and all that low-information, undecided voters see is partisan hair-pulling.  Rinse and repeat, and you can portray the President as a dead-beat, clueless guy who is Out Of Ideas (no, I don't think they know what that phrase actually means either).

Eventually though, the GOP was bound to run up against a situation like the present, where the ball is in their court and if something isn't done, it will Republican asse(t)s on the line.

But they have a problem: over the last four (or more) years they've steadily built up a base that won't accept compromise.  Fox news has drilled its viewers for years that America(tm) is a land of moral infallibility unless the liberals take charge.  It is also a country of True Conservatives(also tm), who cannot lose elections unless they are not conservative enough.  In this world, ACORN hasn't been dissolved, it helped Obama steal the election.  In Foxland, the only way to save the America that has been besieged by socialists, is to leave it.  In this type of world, it doesn't make any sense for the GOP to compromise with Obama.  Perhaps Tea Party republicans would stomach a compromise to to avoid the fiscal cliff in theory, but in practice it would involve letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the rich, cutting defense spending, and cutting social entitlements that most Republicans actually like, Social Security and Medicare chief among them.

The citizens of Foxland (or 'Foxians' as I will now refer to them) don't want a messy legislative battle.  They don't want to see the GOP compromising, or cutting popular programs, or raising revenues in any way, shape or form.  They want to see Obama crushed, and the Great Liberal Menace pushed back.

Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like helping the country.  They can't be bullied, reasoned, or negotiations.

Yes I'm using hyperbole.  Get over it.  -tryingsense

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