there once was a very bad mutt
other dogs' throats he wanted to cut
but he also was cute
and despite disrepute
received scratches galore on his butt
read..
(1) camus says, "one must imagine sisyphus happy" and not that he is happy
it's fine not to be convinced by a philosopher
struggling, not content
the gods can make us toil, but they cannot make us miserable
there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn
buddhism provides a simple commentary: we cannot control external conditions, only our response to them
that camus imagines sisyphus alone is another idiocy of modernity that eulogises solitude
aphantasia (the inability to imagine)
(2) as in spikes, not backbones
about 2.7 million years (ma) ago
analogous
interchanges occurred earlier in the cenozoic, when the formerly
isolated land masses of india and africa made contact with eurasia about
56 and 30 ma ago, respectively
crocodyliforms with ziphodont teeth
one of the largest turtles of all time
the independent development of spines by new and old world porcupines is another example of parallel evolution
tortoises are aided in oceanic dispersal by their ability to float with their heads up, and to survive up to six months without food or water. south american tortoises then went on to colonize the west indies and galapagos islands
surprisingly, south america's burrowing ambhisbaenians and blind snakes also appear to have rafted from africa, as does the hoatzin, a weak-flying bird of south american rainforests
terror birds
southwardly migrating nearctic species established themselves in larger numbers and diversified considerably more, and are thought to have caused the extinction of a large proportion of the south american fauna. (no extinctions in north america are plainly linked to south american immigrants)
before 12,000 years ago, south america was home to about 25 species of herbivores weighing more than 1,000 kg
the pacific coast of south america cooled as the input of warm water from the caribbean was cut off. this trend is thought to have caused the extinction of the marine sloths of the area
during the last 7 ma, south america's terrestrial predator guild has changed from one composed almost entirely of nonplacental mammals (metatherians), birds, and reptiles to one dominated by immigrant placental carnivorans
any species that reached panama from either direction obviously had to be able to tolerate moist tropical conditions. those migrating southward would then be able to occupy much of south america without encountering climates that were markedly different. however, northward migrants would have encountered drier or cooler conditions by the time they reached the vicinity of the trans-mexican volcanic belt
brainier
dire wolves
lions, dholes, cheetahs
poison dart frogs
silky anteater
lungless salamanders
the quaternary extinction event that delivered the coup de grace
although he opposed an anti-lynching bill, talked about the "yellow peril" of asian immigration, and said he was a proud member of the "greatest of all the races, the caucasian race," bryan was, on most other issues, a progressive. he supported labor unions, women's suffrage, the income tax, public ownership of utilities, a ban on corporate campaign contributions, and food and drug safety laws. not for nothing was he known as the "great commoner"
extra police from chattanooga
street performers offered the chance to be photographed with chimpanzees
"a group of university students . . . petitioned the legislature to consider a few more bills" to "amend the law of gravity, for instance, and do something about the excessive speed of light"
if the serpent had been condemned by god to forever slither on its belly, darrow asked, how had it gotten around before then? on its tail?
many women no longer include the word "obey" in their wedding vows
darrow
had supported bryan in two presidential campaigns. bryan volunteered
as prosecutor out of christian belief, not vindictiveness: he even
offered to pay scopes's fine
the rise of a wasteful and extractive financial sector, the atomization and immiseration of formerly unionized workers, the pervasiveness of tax avoidance and evasion
what is the moderate, piecemeal path that leads to child slaves in the drc being treated with dignity and respect?
in a surprising convergence with the sweaty imagination of j.d. vance, parents should get votes for their children
indian independence - something churchill spent decades opposing, claiming that democracy was impossible "east of the suez"
to awaken the consciousness of the global bourgeoisie
i am not free to eat your dinner, even if i am starving and you intend to throw it away - even if i cooked it. hence the basic insight of amartya sen and jean dreze that famines can take place without anyone's property rights being violated
the notion that capitalism and democracy are mutually harmonious is a relic of cold war ideology..nineteenth-century capitalism did not widely overlap with democracy: the british empire and the united states were not places with egalitarian universal suffrage
wolf does not say that any of his earlier critics have been proved right by subsequent events. he was not wrong; "the prevailing assumption" was..the distinctive elite construction that the journalist william schneider named the "past exonerative"
warren buffett's famous quote that "there's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning"
(5) during macron's first term, from 2017 to 2022, his main opposition was the street
peak matcha latte
the french tax authority now includes "influencer" as a self-employment category
macron as "a spiritual londoner"
it is tempest-tossed but does not sink
its mushroom-colored stone
(6) gisèle pelicot insisted on a public trial
the video was screened, the first time the accused had seen it. 'i think i pleased the husband, not the couple,' he conceded
they all met in a chatroom called 'without her knowledge'
her
state would have been more akin to a coma than traditional sleep. this
did not stop more than one of the defendents from putting his penis in
her mouth, in some cases prompting her to choke
the iww regarded the afl as too conservative and opposed their decision to divide workers on the basis of their trades
industrial democracy
separation rather than unity within groups of workers by organizing according to narrow craft principles
the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class
carry on production
helen keller, iww member, 1911
decentralize
community co-op grocery stores
mainstream-media blackout
the australian..labor party..declared the iww an illegal organization
the spanish revolution..the cnt's ensuing defeat at the hands of both fascist and republican forces
parodies of christian hymns
pie in the sky has passed into common usage
(8) mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of iraq: cluster sample survey by burnham et al.
two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster
violence was the primary cause of deaths
58 times higher(95% ci 8.1 - 419)
air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths
no surveys or census-based estimates of crude mortality have been undertaken in iraq in more than a decade
morgue-based surveillance data
we assumed that every household had seven individuals
to lessen risks to investigators, we sought to minimise travel distances..by clumping pairs of governorates
because the probability that clusters would be assigned to any given governorate was proportional to the population size in both phases of the assignment, the sample remained a random national sample. this clumping of clusters was likely to increase the sum of the variance between mortality estimates of clusters and thus reduce the precision of the national mortality estimate. we deemed this acceptable since it reduced travel by a third
we assumed the population was living within a rectangle
once at that point, the nearest 30 households were visited
interviewers asked about any discrepancies between the 2002 and 2004 household compositions
at the end of interviewing every 30 household cluster, one or two households were asked if in the area of the cluster there were any entire families that had died
stata (release 8.0)
five (0.5%) of the 988 households refused to be interviewed
no households were identified in which all the household members were dead or gone away, except in falluja, where there were 23
more than a third of the reported post-attack deaths (n=53), and two-thirds of violent deaths (n=52) happened in the falluja cluster. this extreme statistical outlier has created a very broad confidence estimate around the mortality measure and is cause for concern about the precision of the overall finding
in our falluja sample, we recorded 53 deaths when only 1.4 were expected under the national pre-war rate
with modest funds, 4 weeks, and seven iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained
(9) bias in epidemiological studies of conflict mortality by spagat et al. dr. c once told me (re accepted methodology) survey statistics is a bloodbath
residents of households on cross-streets to the main streets are more likely to be exposed to violence than those living further away
a natural habitat for patrols
non-coverage bias
many cities worldwide have homicide rates which vary by factors of ten or more between adjacent neighbourhoods
the cross-street sampling algorithm will miss any neighbourhood not in the immediate proximity of a cross-street
our model makes no assumption whatsoever about whether people are killed in their homes or not
if r=3 actually is the true ratio, then they overestimate the number of deaths by a factor of 3. indeed, the survey of iraq family health survey study group (2008) covered virtually the same time period as the burnham et al (2006) study, used census-based sampling techniques, and produced a central estimate for violent deaths that was one-fourth of the burnham et al. (2006) estimate
if q=1, violence is not localized
release of high-resolution data by the authors..would facilitate progress on the issue of bias
standardize epidemiological surveys of mortality and nutrition in emergency situations
cluster sampling is used primarily for reasons of convenience, practicality, and safety
(ten out of ten) comparing seven approaches to poverty measurement in terms of their relevance to wellbeing by kathryn o'neill, 1 may 2024. how income, wealth, and consumption measured predict wellbeing, compared to the u.s. opm. at her talk i attended october 12th fcsm 2024, she'd expanded the comparisons to all vs. all. keep linear variables "poorer v richer" rather than truncating information to binary "poor v rich" if you can
within-person, within-age, and within-cohort variation
there is little clear consensus on the prevalence and definition of poverty
one reasons this measure has persisted is a lack of consensus about an alternative
household income is measured using high-quality income data, incorporating taxes and transfers, using the cross-national equivalent file (cnef) supplement to the psid
the wealth poverty measure also frequently predicts health, though it often does not remove the significance of the income-based opm
in 1963, a statistician in the social security administration, mollie orshansky, constructed an estimate of poverty based upon 1955 family consumption data
orshansky never intended this measure for policy, president johnson's administration chose to adopt it as the official poverty measure (opm) as they began their "war on poverty." orshansky criticized this decision promptly
for example, adults living in the same home who are not related by blood, adoption, or marriage are not considered to be in the same household by the opm, even though unmarried couples now make up a substantial portion of u.s. households
the phenomenon of poverty
as many as a third of u.s. households are net-worth-poor, and the majority of these are not also poor in terms of the u.s. official poverty measure, suggesting net-worth poor households represent a largely separate group of households
material hardship is more severe for those with low consumption than for those with low income
the richer the country, the more income becomes a better measure
relative measures of income have been shown to be better predictors of health than absolute measures of income
examining only the relative poverty measure may obscure relevant changes to the income distribution. anchoring the poverty threshold to a year prior to an economic shock can provide a clearer image
multiple observations are needed for fixed effects analysis
the consumption/expenditures data in the psid is rarely used
the psid definition of a household differs from the opm definition
the only measure considered here which adjusts thresholds for geography, urbanicity, and renting or owning
an estimated 75.6% of respondents in this sample are considered to be poor by at least one of these measures in at least one year that they are observed by the psid
there is a great deal of movement into and out of poverty, however measured
50% of person-years considered wealth poor are poor only by this measure
the pattern of results for life satisfaction is quite distinct. the opm never significantly predicts respondents' life satisfaction, while all other poverty measures do. anchored poverty and wealth poverty appear to have the strongest ability to predict life satisfaction
the limitations of using binary poverty thresholds
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