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A new paper in Health Affairs estimates the impact of smoking cessation on future health care costs among persons covered by TRICARE, taking account of changes in life expectancy.
December 10th, 2012
Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown’s interview in the current Journal of International Affairs makes the important point that transactional crimes (e.g., drug trafficking) have no inherent association with violence. The Mexican drug gangs are violent, their fellows in the Japanese Yakuza are not, for example. Even the same trafficking organization acts differently depending on the law enforcement and civil society surround:
You want to have the kind of traffickers that you have in the United States. Often these are the same groups that operate in Mexico, but when they are arrested, they do not react by shooting at the policemen; they react instead by extending their hands to allow for the handcuffs to be placed on them, because they understand the consequences of being a major challenge to the state of law enforcement, and that it is not tolerated.
Greater law enforcement capacity thus clearly reduces violence by criminals, as does reduced access to weapons. An intriguing third factor noted by Felbab-Brown concerns whether the criminal organisation is made up of younger, less experienced criminals or old hands:
In the late 1990s, Hong Kong and Macau were trying hard to hide the major escalation of violence between the Chinese tong and the triads. The reaction by the police chief in Macau was somewhat humorous and absurd, but at the same time not completely so. In an effort to assure people, especially tourists coming to Macau, that they did not need to be afraid of all the gang violence, he claimed that Macau had “professional killers who don’t miss their targets,” and who never kill innocent bystanders. In Mexico today, you have very much the opposite, such as a boy being hired to kill ten people in the hope of getting among them the intended victim. This is very different from when someone pays $400,000, for example, to hire a professional hit man to kill one person. It is a very different market that has a lot to do with internal management and the agent capacity of the criminal manager, as well as the capacity of the law enforcement.
This recalls an observation made by Debbie Reynolds regarding why she always felt safe doing shows in mob-controlled Las Vegas “No one got killed who wasn’t supposed to”.
December 10th, 2012
Or gals. Either way, some political anthropology is in order.
Via Drum, Dave Weigel objects to the media narrative about the supposed new Republican flexibility on raising taxes on those making more than $250,000:
When I carp about Meet the Pressistan, this is what I’m talking about — a mobius strip conversation among the same handful of people, giving the illusion that a broader conversation must also be moving the same way. For two weeks, Tom Cole has been on the record for raising the top rate. Tom Coburn has been talking this way for two years. When will somebody sit down the Sunday show bookers and tell them that the votes of reluctant House members, very vulnerable to primaries, matter more than whatever a compromise-friendly Republican senator is re-re-re-re-stating?
Before you can influence your target audience, though, you need to know something about them. And in this case, Blue Blogistan has little actionable intelligence on Meet the Pressistan; who are these Sunday Show Bookers anyway?
I’ve been wondering this for a while. We all know that John McCain has been on a Sunday show something like 765 straight weeks. But who makes this decision and why? Many of the normal variables don’t seem to apply here. Because people want to look at him (aka “the Megyn Kelly Effect”?). That won’t work, unless my straight male body is really missing something. Is it because McCain gets great ratings? Unlikely, because the point of ratings is that you are trying to present something new and different. In any event, IIRC, none of these shows gets good ratings: they are loss leaders for the networks and maybe even for the RNC Fox.
If we really want to try to advance what is called, in one of the great political euphemisms of all time, the “national conversation” (in the euphemism department this even beats “enhanced interrogation techniques”), then we really need to know who makes these decisions and on what basis they are made. I don’t even know if there are people who really have the job of “Sunday show bookers” — probably someone called a “producer” or “associate producer” or some such. How does one get those jobs? Are they journalists? Who tells them what to do? What are their or their bosses’ incentives? The Sunday show seems to me one of the great paradoxes of what passes for modern journalism: the cognoscenti spend a great time watching them and complaining about them but few people really seem to know how they actually work.
And if we don’t know that, we might as well find ourselves jumping off a high cliff into a river.
December 10th, 2012
Category: Humor
Q: What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
A: Make me one with everything.
December 9th, 2012
Category: Watching Conservatives
Naturally, the anti-American, socialist-sympathizing Democrats are all in an uproar because the Republican minority in the Senate blocked ratification of a treaty that basically writes the Americans with Disabilities Act into international law.
What part of “American exceptionalism” don’t they understand?
If we let all those other countries, full of funny-looking people with weird names, imitate our laws, then what will be special about the Greatest Country on Earth? Moral leadership is all well and good, but to lead you have to be ahead, and stay ahead. So we can’t let everyone else catch up with us in treating people with disabilities decently.
And yes, Marco Rubio voted against it. Here’s looking forward to wheelchair blockades of every Republican fundraiser and Presidential debate in 2016.
December 9th, 2012
Category: Higher education
No one is ever going to confuse me with a graphic designer, even in very dim light. But starting with Mike’s suggestion of a Fresnel pattern to pun on “Let There Be Light” and switching to a Moire, I came up with this. No, it doesn’t say “University of California.” It doesn’t have to, because we’re the farking University of California, and if we make this our logo people will recognize it.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
1868
Of course anyone with superior skills and tools – that is to say, nearly anyone – could easily do better. This thing is too dark and too contrasty. But I claim that this does, as the other thing does not, look as if it might be the logo of someplace whose logo you’d care about.
December 9th, 2012
Category: MSM (mainstream media), Watching Conservatives
Regular readers might surmise that I’m a fan of MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes Saturday and Sunday morning talk show. You might assume I watch because I (mostly) share the host’s liberal views. I do, but that’s not why I tune in. I watch because the show provides a rare opportunity to hear people of diverse views speaking substance–and actually learn from and listen to each other across various political and ideological divides.
Not coincidentally, few guests arrive under the vague identifications “Democratic strategist” or “Republican strategist” to parrot partisan talking points. Many guests are left-liberals or policy experts such as Donald Berwick talking about health reform, climate change, immigration, voter ID laws, gay marriage, and other concerns. Yet the show features others–for example Avik Roy, Reihan Salam, and Josh Barro–who reside in different places on the ideological spectrum. Moreover, serious conservatives and libertarians appear as more than weak rhetorical foils for the host. They are allowed to speak their piece, and (often) to keep the host or other guests honest when they get sloppy or caricature opposing views.
Up with Chris Hayes is recognizably liberal in the choice of topics and in various other ways. If you’re liberal, you’ll find ideologically congenial experts to provide reliable information on the fine print on many issues. If you’re moderate or conservative, you’ll see what smart liberal activists and policy wonks believe about key issues, and what the important counterarguments are likely to be. I’m not sure this model would prove commercially viable five times a week in prime time. It fills a critical void Sunday morning.
What strikes me is the dearth of conservative-leaning shows built on the same model. Most FOX discussion shows are virtually unwatchable—not because they’re conservative, but because they offer so little intellectual nutrition to their core audience. Sticking to our home topic of health policy, legitimate conservative experts such as James Capretta and Tevi Troy are drowned out by less honest or reputable figures such as Betsy McCaughey and Dick Morris. The typical conservative FOX viewer is thus fed Pravda-style misleading information about what the Affordable Care Act really entails. The typical non-conservative FOX viewer—to the extent non-conservatives tune in at all—have no way of knowing what reputable Republican or conservative policy analysts are really thinking, or, indeed, who these experts really are.
From a stark political perspective, this television wonk-gap may not have much mattered since 2008. The core partisan mission of FOX news was to mobilize, by any means necessary, political opposition to the Obama administration. When you’re counterpunching from an ideologically narrow opposition perspective, you don’t have the same imperative to form coalitions or to make the numbers add up. On the other hand, FOX’s approach certainly played a role in forcing GOP primary candidates further to the right, and thus nudged Governor Romney further away from the general election median voter.
Leading up to 2016, though, the costs of this model may be more apparent. Republicans are seeking to rethink and to rebrand party positions on matters ranging from immigration to universal health coverage. At some point, Republicans will recapture the presidency and enjoy a short political window during which they might enact their own core priorities into law. The substance will actually matter. So will the rhetorical framing and policy conversation Republicans cultivate in upcoming years.
A high-quality talk show is hardly Republicans’ most important unchecked box here. Yet its absence remains telling.
One more thing. If FOX sought to fill this void, I promise they would win at least one new viewer. And FOX—if you need a host, I’m available.
December 9th, 2012
Having shared some very snarky jibes on a UC listserv about the new UC ‘logo’ that Mark deplores, I’m now feeling some remorse. As a piece of graphic design, I think it’s not a success on its own or for its purpose. But it’s not a replacement for the seal, in fact the designer says “our goals were two-fold: first, to reinstate the systemwide seal’s authority and gravitas after years of casual, indiscriminate use; and second, to create a coherent identity that would help us tell the UC story in an authentic, distinctive, memorable and thoughtful way” and these are not silly or trivial objectives. And as an erstwhile architect and current designer of non-physical environments, I am sensitive to the long, sad history of people who should know better lambasting new stuff–from the Eiffel Tower, that was universally despised for its first forty years, to Wagner’s music and Bird’s (maybe Byrd’s, too, back in the day), to the Nude Descending a Staircase–by making fun of it because it’s easier than making a fair effort to engage, and because dissing something gives you a quick hit of feeling superior and sophisticated.
As a mea culpa, here are some serious comments about the project and the design. Read the rest of this entry »
December 9th, 2012
Category: Personal moment, Psychology
At an annual conference, I have lunch with a colleague whom I don’t know very well. When the bill comes he says that he paid when we had lunch once before a few years back, and he even remembers the approximate amount. I pay the bill, tip generously to make it equal to his prior spend, and resolve never to have lunch with him again.
A woman at a party says that she likes the new Italian restaurant in town. She and her husband ate there last week and really enjoyed it. Before she can finish her account, a guy overhears and snorts “HA! The BEST Italian restaurant in town is X” and then goes on to explain in boring detail why his favorite Italian restaurant is in all ways superior to the one she liked. The woman lapses into stunned silence.
I call these sorts of things the “zero sum view of life”, and I find them toxic to my spirit. The lunch buyer ostensibly did something kind a few years ago: He bought me lunch. But it wasn’t truly generous because it went on a mental balance sheet in his head that I *owed* him. He’s very professionally successful and doesn’t lack for money, but apparently lacks something else in his worldview that is possessed by most people I hang with, who could not tell you who paid last but will certainly fight to pay the current bill regardless.
In the second example, the woman thought she was sharing an enjoyable experience with other people who might pursue the same. But the listener heard something different: A contest had been announced about who knew the best Italian restaurant and there could only be one winner. The thought that two good Italian restaurants could exist in the same city, or even that two different people could have different favorite Italian restaurants and de gustibus non est disputandum was not admissible in his philosophy.
Speaking with my psychologist hat on, I wonder where the zero sum view of life comes from and what the emotional payoff is for the person who holds it. It seems, based on casual observation, more prevalent among men than women, but that’s the only pattern I see. I find it hard to understand why people would live life with such constant resentment of others and sense of competition with the world; I am only sure that it’s worth significant effort to avoid them.
December 9th, 2012
Category: Airline Industry and Travel, Humor
Like most people who have accumulated a pile of frequent flier miles, I am wary of the proposed merger of American Airlines and US Airways. The only reassuring thing is my knowledge that skilled, responsible corporate managers will be handling the details.