Category Archives: Web Article Review

teenagers and green environments

This article says that teenagers in green environments are less aggressive, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors.

The researchers describe several “possible pathways” that could explain their results. Easy access to the natural world may reduce maternal stress, which can lead to children acting out. It can encourage physical activity, reduce air pollution levels, and “act as a buffer for ambient noise.”

In addition, they write, green space in urban areas has been shown to preserve “the microbial biodiversity needed to drive immunoregulation, and to optimize brain health.”

the iceberg model

The “iceberg model” is supposed to help you think through the parts of a problem that are obvious and visible versus the (possibly much more significant) parts that are hidden beneath the surface.

LEVELS OF THINKING

1. The Event Level

The event level is the level at which we typically perceive the world—for instance, waking up one morning to find we have caught a cold. While problems observed at the event level can often be addressed with a simple readjustment, the iceberg model pushes us not to assume that every issue can be solved by simply treating the symptom or adjusting at the event level.

2. The Pattern Level

If we look just below the event level, we often notice patterns. Similar events have been taking place over time — we may have been catching more colds when we haven’t been resting enough. Observing patterns allows us to forecast and forestall events.

3. The Structure Level

Below the pattern level lies the structure level. When we ask, “What is causing the pattern we are observing?” the answer is usually some kind of structure. Increased stress at work due to the new promotion policy, the habit of eating poorly when under stress, or the inconvenient location of healthy food sources could all be structures at play in our catching a cold. According to Professor John Gerber, structures can include the following:

1. Physical things — like vending machines, roads, traffic lights or terrain.

2. Organizations — like corporations, governments, and schools.

3. Policies — like laws, regulations, and tax structures.

4. Ritual — habitual behaviors so ingrained that they are not conscious.

4. The Mental Model Level

Mental models are the attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, and values that allow structures to continue functioning as they are. These are the beliefs that we often learn subconsciously from our society or family and are likely unaware of. Mental models that could be involved in us catching a cold could include: a belief that career is deeply important to our identity, that healthy food is too expensive, or that rest is for the unmotivated.

– See more at: https://nwei.org/resources/iceberg/#sthash.XutaQX5M.dpuf

 

meatless Monday, July 4

Since I’m writing this on July 4, what the hell, I’ll write about burgers today. There is a sustainability connection after all because if more of us were vegetarians, our ecological footprint would be less, and as developing countries not only grow in population, but people shift to eating a lot more meat than they used to, the footprint can grow explosively. Certain traditional nomadic ways of life might get a pass, if they are grazing their animals on natural vegetation on lands that are not suitable for crops. Most of us don’t fall in this category. So, a blog called Meatless Monday provides us with a number of meatless “burger” recipes, plus ideas for grilling veggies. I’m determined to give some of these a shot.

I’m a hypocrite to some extent though – I admire vegetarians and I’ve reduced my meat consumption over the years, but I still like it and find it hard to imagine giving it up entirely. Certainly not eggs and cheese. I also have a policy that if someone cooks something for me, I eat it! If like me you like the idea of being vegetarian for environmental and ethical reasons (and environmental reasons are ethical reasons), but dang it you still like meat, I think the best way to think of it is as a treat – save it for holidays and special occasions, or give yourself a cheat meal once a week. Anyway, just to round out this post here are a few points/links about meat:

  • If you decide to indulge in a pork chop for that special occasion or cheat meal, it is okay to cook it medium rare. This article recounts the horrors of trichinosis, then says it is no longer an issue in the modern world. You should still cook ground meat thoroughly, however.
  • And finally, here are a bunch of recipes for various complicated, creative gourmet burgers.

the recession and the right

This editorial on History News Network links the rise of the right in Europe to the 2008 financial crisis and recession caused by American banks.

What many Americans fail to admit is that the 2008 bank-induced economic downturn was of global proportions. It triggered an international depression which caused tremendous financial pain to the industrialized West. New Right parties throughout all of Europe (National Front in France; UKIP in the UK; New Right in the Netherlands; and the New Right in Germany, for example) viewed the West’s financial-sector breakdown as an opportunity to ramp up their message. First, international agreements such as the European Union is undemocratic; and second, that immigrants are displacing ethnically pure nationals from jobs, university acceptances, what have you. “Austerity” measures passed by many European governments, at the bequest of the EU, didn’t help but only deepened the insult. To many in Europe, the 2008 depression triggered social cutbacks aimed squarely at the poor and middling ranks of society while giving a pass to the wealthy financiers who created the problem in the first place.

This dual rhetorical message, poured on thick and heavy since 2008, should give considerable pause to all those citizens that fought in, or still remember, the horrors of the Second World War. The Great Depression (1929-1937) aided Adolph Hitler’s rise. One then wonders whether our current depression (2008-??) will create another?

The saddest thing to me is that Western Europe seemed until a few years ago like the part of the world that had done the most to solve the problems of war and peace, economic and social integration. The rest of the world just needed to catch up. Now that seems somewhat in doubt. Still, war between European nation states seems all but unthinkable, and it is hard to imagine that changing anytime soon.

Tolkien and World War I

Here’s an article on how J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels were influenced by his experience in World War I.

The descriptions of battle scenes in “The Lord of the Rings” seem lifted from the grim memories of the trenches: the relentless artillery bombardment, the whiff of mustard gas, the bodies of dead soldiers discovered in craters of mud. In the Siege of Gondor, hateful orcs are “digging, digging lines of deep trenches in a huge ring,” while others maneuver “great engines for the casting of missiles…”

In “The Lord of the Rings,” we meet Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, Hobbits of the Shire, on a fateful mission to destroy the last Ring of Power and save Middle-earth from enslavement and destruction. The heroism of Tolkien’s characters depends on their capacity to resist evil and their tenacity in the face of defeat. It was this quality that Tolkien witnessed among his comrades on the Western Front…

Beside the courage of ordinary men, the carnage of war seems also to have opened Tolkien’s eyes to a primal fact about the human condition: the will to power. This is the force animating Sauron, the sorcerer-warlord and great enemy of Middle-earth. “But the only measure that he knows is desire,” explains the wizard Gandalf, “desire for power.” Not even Frodo, the Ring-bearer and chief protagonist, escapes the temptation.

Great stories tend to have a clear cut line between good and evil. In real life, we tell ourselves stories about good and evil, often to rationalize our own actions. But the vast majority of evil outcomes in the real world are not caused by intentionally evil acts, but by ignorance, negligence, and amorality. People don’t have the mental tools to understand and make good decisions about the complex systems we are all embedded in, and don’t think enough about right and wrong in their daily actions. How do you tell compelling stories about that?

divide and conquer

This article on History News Network goes through a long account of “divide and conquer” strategies of the white elite in the U.S., which led poor and working class white people to support the rich elite rather than unite with poor and working class black people. It goes all the way from slavery and civil war through to the Nixon and Reagan years and on to Trump. But he suggests that it won’t work for Trump because the white working class itself is shrinking and divided.

Nate Silver weighs in

Nate Silver has launched his general election forecast page. He gives Hillary about an 80-20 chance of winning. He has a long discussion post about it here. I found this last paragraph interesting, where he relates a 20% chance of winning to a baseball game:

A 20 percent or 25 percent chance of Trump winning is an awfully long way from 2 percent, or 0.02 percent. It’s a real chance: about the same chancethat the visiting team has when it trails by a run in the top of the eighth inning in a Major League Baseball game. If you’ve been following politics or sports over the past couple of years, I hope it’s been imprinted onto your brain that those purported long shots — sometimes much longer shots than Trump — sometimes come through.

It’s an interesting way of thinking about risk. Let’s say your favorite team is in game 7 of the World Series, down by a run in the top of the eighth. The game is insanely late on the east coast as they always are, and you have to do something important early the next morning, like interview for a job or operate heavy machinery. Do you turn the TV off? No, of course not, you stay tuned.

Brexit

Well, I suppose I have to write a Brexit post. The main argument seems to be that the combined UK-EU economy, with free trade and movement of people and money, was larger than either the UK or EU will be separately, and that is going to hurt both while also emboldening Russia. It seems to me that they could just negotiate some treaties to keep most of that in place, at least free movement of trade and capital if not people, but it sounds like politics may get in the way of that because some in the EU will think if they do that, it will embolden others to leave. But there is at least an argument that it could strengthen the EU in the long term.

In the immediate future, the EU will face a serious dilemma. If it allows Great Britain to withdraw from common structures only to a limited extent, it would signal to all Euroskeptics that they can do as they please. But if EU leaders impose high costs on the UK – namely, by restricting its access to the single market – Europe could end up cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The tragedy of today’s situation is that the EU could still save itself and come to its senses. It could compensate for the losses caused by Brexit by transforming the current crisis into an opportunity for true integration – something that up until now had been blocked by the UK. Such an exercise in renewal would demand that EU institutions be granted real authority to create common fiscal, defense, and energy policies, while at the same time pursuing democratization (along the lines of “one citizen, one vote”).

Under this scenario, Europe could finally emerge as a strong actor in international affairs. It could be the world’s third-largest country, with English, ironically, as its administrative language – the United States of Europe. But, sadly, the political will to achieve such an outcome is unlikely to emerge – if it ever does – until conditions in Europe become considerably worse than they are now.

inequality and mobility

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has an interesting study of income mobility in the U.S. It appears to be true that the poorest families tend to stay poor (between 2003 and 2013, 64% of families in the poorest 20% stayed in the poorest 20%), while the richest tend to stay rich (72% of families in the richest 20% stayed in the richest 20%). Looking at the table if you are in one of the middle quintiles, (between the 20th and 80th percentiles, your chances of moving up or down to the adjacent quintile look to be about even. This measure of mobility increased somewhat in the 80s and 90s, but appears to be on the decline since then. Mobility is harder to measure across generations, but it does appear to be much higher than within a single generation, which you would expect. Mobility in the U.S. is lower than in other developed countries, both the northern European socialist ones where you might expect it, but also the Anglo-American peers like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, although the UK, France, Italy are in the same ballpark as the U.S. If you’re interested in this, stop reading my wordy description and go look at the data!

prime age males

Here’s an interesting report from the President’s Council of Economic Advisers on the long-term decline in labor force participation by “prime age males”, defined as between the ages of 25 and 54 (this seems like a pretty broad definition, I’m glad to know I’m still in my prime!).

For more than sixty years, the share of American men between the ages of 25 and 54, or “primeage men,” in the labor force has been declining. This fall in the prime-age male labor force participation rate, from a peak of 98 percent in 1954 to 88 percent today, is particularly troubling since workers at this age are at their most productive; because of this, the long-run decline has outsized implications for individual well-being as well as for broader economic growth. A large body of evidence has linked joblessness to worse economic prospects in the future, lower overall well-being and happiness, and higher mortality, as well as negative consequences for families and communities…

• Participation has fallen particularly steeply for less-educated men at the same time as their wages have dropped relative to more-educated men, consistent with a decline in demand. o In recent decades, less-educated Americans have suffered a reduction in their wages relative to other groups. From 1975 until 2014, relative wages for those with a high school degree fell from over 80 percent of the amount earned by workers with at least a college degree to less than 60 percent. • CEA analysis using State-level wage data suggests that when the returns to work for those at the bottom of the wage distribution are particularly low, more prime-age men choose not to participate in the labor force: o The correlation is strongest at the bottom of the wage distribution: at the 10th percentile, a $1,000 increase in annual wages, or a roughly $0.50 increase in hourly wages for a full-time, full-year worker, is associated with a 0.13 percentage-point increase in the State participation rate for prime-age men. • This reduction in demand, as reflected in lower wages, could reflect the broader evolution of technology, automation, and globalization in the U.S. economy…

Conventional economic theory posits that more “flexible” labor markets—where it is easier to hire and fire workers—facilitate matches between employers and individuals who want to work. Yet despite having among the most flexible labor markets in the OECD—with low levels of labor market regulation and employment protections, a low minimum cost of labor, and low rates of collective bargaining coverage—the United States has one of the lowest primeage male labor force participation rates of OECD member countries. • U.S. labor markets are much less “supportive” than those in other OECD countries. The United States spends 0.1 percent of GDP on so-called “active labor market policies” such as jobsearch assistance and job training that help keep unemployed workers connected to the labor force, much less than the OECD average of 0.6 percent of GDP, and less than nearly every other OECD country. The contrast in participation rates reveals a flaw in the standard view about the tradeoffs between flexibility and supportive labor policies. • Another unique feature of the U.S. experience has been the rapid rise in incarceration, especially affecting low-skilled men. o By one estimate, between 6 and 7 percent of the prime-age male population in 2008 was incarcerated at some point in their lives. o These men are substantially more likely to experience joblessness after they are released from prison and in many States are legally barred from a significant number of jobs.

So if you are going to let companies hire and fire at will, which overall is a good thing in my view, you need to have programs to education and train workers, not just as children but to retrain and upgrade their skills throughout their adult lives. Globalization and accelerating technological change make this need even more urgent.