matched the current population survey exactly with r. hot shit. added a readme too.
got my first canadian citation. and, for slightly different work, my first by the new york times editorial board.
want to buy-in to medicare. now.
found the universal remedy.
learned a kenya travel tip: always check the faucet has running water before slathering your hands with soap.
woke up at dawn.
drove.
flew.
sailed.
landed in lamu.
followed the footpaths, no vehicles allowed.
arrived at one insane guesthouse.
snuck out for chapati n crab lunch.
worked in friday-style.
put on our adventure caps..
and to think, i grew up playing with dumb old legos
mother with kitten #1
mother with kitten #2
mother with kitten #3. hey wait.
three-wheeled ambulai
license plates
we are not alone sand dollars
paths to nowhere, everywhere
mango markets
do-it-yourself drydocks
rock-removal tag-teams
camera-shy locals
feel the same way about my alarm clock.
walked to the beach.
paid in-kind.
returned to nairobi, back to work amidst city smells of mud, pot, peanut shells.
read some..
(1) the university's place in modern society
online education, when provided without such backup, is another and a nobler word for extorting tuition money for nothing
(2) day-to-day pediatrics
like assembling a large jigsaw puzzle, but you did not receive the pieces all at once: rather, you had to guess which next piece to seek by ordering one diagnostic test or another
only the mediocre take refuge in obfuscation or omniscience
the majority of medical mistakes are not caused by technical errors but are due to thinking traps
"anchoring" occurs when we latch onto the first bit of clinical data, skewing our thinking
(3) nyrb predicts the mandate decision..
both national and state governments steadily coerce people to do just that through taxation: they make them buy police and fire protection and pay for foreign wars whether they want these or not
the act was..a form of taxation and therefore should be held constitutional in virtue of the explicit taxing power even if not under the interstate commerce clause
..plus an exchange between two of my favorites that cites us.
(4) quantifying politics
it's natural that political scientists would look to economic factors first. they find it difficult to quantify the impact, for example, of palin's disastrous 2008 interview with katie couric, when she couldn't name a newspaper she read or a single supreme court case beyond roe v. wade, so they tend to downplay these kinds of events
romney can't retreat from endorsing paul ryan's budget and its dark implications for medicare
(5) de-funding the big questions
for promoting invention, big science in this sense is the technological equivalent of war, and it doesn't kill anyone. but spin-offs can't be promised in advance
before the texas site was chosen, a senator told me that at that time there were a hundred senators in favor of the scc, but that once the site was chosen the number would drop to two
(6) after sex and the city
we think we're beyond being surprised by graphic sex scenes
(7) the history of zero and one
broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things
(8) drug decriminalization in the americas
fifty thousand people have been killed since the mexican government launched an all-out antidrug offensive five years ago
it's a question of public health, and not criminal law
(9) manufacturing crisis in education
how is it possible that this nation became so successful if its public schools, which enroll 90 percent of its children, have been consistently failing for the past generation or more?
american schools with a low level of poverty rank first in the world on international tests of literacy
it is peculiar to criticize public elementary and secondary schools for the lack of trained linguists in afghanistan and other international hotspots
milwaukee has had vouchers for twenty-one years, intended to allow disadvantaged students to escape from failing public schools, but on average the students in vouchers schools achieve the same test scores as those in regular public schools
none of the states whose children outperform us students is a potential rival. barring major foreign policy blunders unrelated to k-12 education, no country is likely to match us military power or overall technological supremacy for decades
naked, if not ridiculous
(10) the latest decade of exxon
the good lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes
crossed into disinformation
(11) american nuns
the vatican says that nuns are too interested in "the social gospel" (which is the gospel), when they should be more interested in gospel teachings about abortion and contraception (which do not exist)
banning "political" activity..what rome calls social work
(12) economies
among non-european countries colonized by europeans during the last five hundred years, those that were initially richer and more advanced tend paradoxically to be poorer today..when former colonies achieved independence, they variously inherited either the extractive institutions that coerced the masses to produce wealth for dictators and the elite, or else institutions by which the government shared power and gave people incentives to pursue
notoriously deforested countries - such as haiti, rwanda, burundi, madagascar, and nepal - tend to be notoriously poor and politically unstable
when the wrong choice is made (as it was when ireland rejected the eu constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the 'democratic' process be repeated in order that the mistake be corrected
greece is not an exception. it is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy.
(14) just across the border
every day someone is killed, every day people disappear
the cartels are better financed, better organized and no doubt better equipped than the state
the semiotics of the corpse: no shoes = he was kicked out of the gang; hands cut off, placed in pockets = he stole from the cartel; one finger cut off, stuck in the mouth or anus = he snitched; skin of the face flayed, peeled back like a banana skin = he was a traitor
lower their trousers to shoot up in the iliac vein, just above the pubis, without any fuss or embarrassment
no ceremony, just a mad, avid greed
(15) texasbooks
income tax was contrary to the word of god in the scriptures
the new deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in american history
the deletion of toll-free numbers for gay and lesbian groups and teenage suicide prevention groups
light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution
board members hated the word "democratic," for which they consistently substituted "constitutional republic." they also really disliked "capitalism" (see rather: "free enterprise system") and "natural law"
(16) the health advocates of 2009
few federal laws in history approach it in terms of scope, breadth and ambition
8/30