"There is, for example, Nicole, a young woman Arnett interviews in his book who grew up in a housing project and began working at eight to care for her younger siblings. In a strikingly mature, actually adult way, she managed to hold down a full-time job, take care of her family, and earn a degree. Though this may strike some as a remarkable achievement, this view overlooks how much more fun she could have had if she didn’t have all those pesky responsibilities to weigh her down. “Is it only a grim pessimist like me who sees how many roadblocks there will be on the way to achieving those dreams and who wonders what kind of freewheeling emerging adulthood she is supposed to be having?” Henig laments. Given freedom from economic want, social mores that encourage early marriage, and limits to college access, every poor Vietnamese rice farmer and rural Pakistani bride could be going to yoga classes and selling her handmade textiles on Etsy. Wouldn’t that make the world a better place?"

Urban renewal in 3 pictures.

POTUS SOTU: "WTF" FTW!!!

"Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.” If our brain keeps dwindling at that rate over the next 20,000 years, it will start to approach the size of that found in Homo erectus, a relative that lived half a million years ago and had a brain volume of only 1,100 cc."

In case you haven't seen it yet: The Jenny McCarthy Body Count.

If you follow his site, you see Radley Balko finds stories like this all the time. Feel free to slam your head against the wall while reading.

Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely.

-- Chang Ch'ao via Lin Yutang.

I had a humorous, friendly exchange with a vendor at our neighborhood flea market this fall. My friend was perusing a decorative fabric which promoted "buying local" on it. During the bargaining I noticed the seller had a accent that sounded a little... international.
"So where are you from?" I asked. "England," she replied. "We can't buy from you," I said, "since you're not local!"
"I'm not for sale," she replied.
"Everyone's for sale."

Anyway, here's a brief explanation on why the economics (and the implied morality) of the buy local movement is fundamentally flawed.

Full disclosure: I sometimes enjoy locally sourced foods and goods, but recognize it's a shopping choice, not a moral one, as the authors put it. Some of the gifts I gave at Christmas were locally made, but then I took them to California so I don't know what that means as for "local-ness." One was a book buy a guy who lives in my city, but I don't know where the printing was done. And yes it's a true story above.

Happy Trails to all traveling to celebrate the holidays.

Glenn Greenwald is just killin’ it re: WikiLeaks.(as Will Wilkinson put it so well).
Public calls for assassination, prosecution of new sources, VP leaning on private citizens, distorted facts, US to Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011, it's a topsy-turvy world full of change I am too sad I can believe is happening... or is this the brave new world of Obushma we all new was here forever?

Love of Wikileaks, for restoring our distrust in our most important institutions...

The recent WikiLeaks release, for example, shows the low regard U.S. secretaries of state hold for international treaties that bar spying at the United Nations. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, systematically and serially violated those treaties to gain an incremental upper hand. And they did it in writing! That Clinton now decries Julian Assange's truth-telling an "attack" on America but excuses her cavalier approach to treaty violation tells you all you need to know about U.S. diplomacy.

Meanwhile, Assange is wanted by Interpol...

Update/edit - nice summation on the media's response in general from Glenn Greenwald:

The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon...

"Overall, I'd like to see less posturing in these debates and more Thucydides."

Things to think about as the most traveled holidays in the USA approach... Internet as bulwark of freedom...
First person encounter with the TSA - funny and scary narrative from Penn Gillette - jeez I am actually linking to a Drudge Report site - is this story anywhere else I can link to it?
Anyway stories like that seem to becoming more common since the rise of the nudie scanners and crotch grabbing.

Human dignity must be associated with the idea of the scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier. ... The world, I believe, is far too serious, and being far too serious, it has a need of a wise and merry philosophy.

--Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

A $335,000 purchase in the massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) 'Entropia Universe' has broken the record for largest-ever virtual property transaction.

The medically necessary preparations to host one are the best arguments against marathons being considered anything like a "healthy activity."

Voters - getting things done!

Secret deliberations, sealed court briefs. It's not a terrorism trial, it's the much older war without end we're still fighting.

Admit it. You freaked out, or despaired, after one of the last two presidential elections, didn't you?
Maybe you joined a tea party in '09.
Maybe you thought about moving to Canada in '04.
You might be very worried, stressed out even, about the election next week.
Don't be.
Seriously, ask yourself how much has it mattered, these last two elections? Has your opinion of where this country is going swung wildly up or down? Does this match reality, or just your team affiliation?
Relax. That election day is less important than the candidates want us to believe is a good thing.

You see a barefoot young man join the fight. He pins the teacher against a wall and stands over him. The teacher raises his hands to shield his head, but it does not work. The barefoot man's right fist is tireless. He clocks the teacher six times before the camera turns away. Later you see the teacher's face covered in blood.
You see an older man fighting too. He is thick at the middle, balding, wearing khakis. He punches a woman while the barefoot man holds her arm. He assists in the thrashing of the teacher. You see his right hand whooshing through the air, connecting with flesh, and you look for his left hand but it is gone.
In its place is a metal hook.

Summary of common economic misconceptions among economics students. Examples:

When asked about profits as a percentage of sales the median student guessed 30% (actual rate, closer to 4%).
When asked about the inflation rate over the last year (survey was in 2009) the median student guessed 11%. Actual rate: much closer to 0%. Note, how important such misconceptions could be to policy.
When asked by how much has income per person in the United States changed since 1950 (after adjusting for inflation) the median student said an increase of 25%. Actual rate an increase of about 248%, thus the median student was off by a factor of 10.

Link to study and some comments here. Is there a study of politicians knowledge? as a group they didn't do so well on this test.

Follow-Up: Federal Prosecutors Rarely Sanctioned for Misconduct

Follow up post...
And more still prosecutor misconduct revealed.
"This latest study again confirms what we’ve seen in similar reviews: prosecutors are almost never sanctioned for misconduct, even egregious violations that lead to wrongful convictions."

You may have heard about a recent study showing some pretty low levels of religious knowledge among Americans (here's one reporting of it with some links).
It's entertaining and, pardon the pun, a little enlightening to see that "Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education."
Hmmm...
Are the religious just being rationally ignorant?
Perhaps people don't really believe their religions as much as believe in them.

Egregious Misconduct at the Department of Justice

USA Today has done some serious work on the under-reported phenomenon of federal prosecutor misconduct.
Radley Balko adds to the picture here.

“And it’s frustrating because he does know a lot. I know I’m right, but he is more articulate.”

Admitting your debating opponent is intelligent and more knowledgeable than yourself but refusing to change your opinions is the kind of small mindedness we should laugh about when it comes to things like sports, right? So we should mock that atitude when it's about "important things" I'd think.
Oh wait. Hmm. Yeah, ok, let’s close our ears and keep rooting for our chosen laundry… red teams – blue teams…
Quick roundup of signs you care more about showing loyalty than truth: #16 for example…

The California Beer & Beverage Distributors is spending money in the state to oppose a marijuana legalization proposition on the ballot in November, according to records filed with the California Secretary of State. The beer sellers are the first competitors of marijuana to officially enter the debate; backers of the initiative are closely watching liquor and wine dealers and the pharmaceutical industry to see if they enter the debate in the remaining weeks...

Public Safety First is largely funded by a different industry whose interests are threatened by the legalization of marijuana: law enforcement. Police forces are entitled to keep property seized as part of drug raids and the revenue stream that comes from waging the drug war has become a significant source of support for local law enforcement. Federal and state funding of the drug war is also a significant supplement to local forces' budgets.

Um yeah, England. Advertising Standards Authority in action.
Babysitting the babysitters.
Aa performance license for a shelf stocker. 
Licenses for pub dominoes...
Seriously?

Backing off, apologizing, still not good enough for fanatics, finds out Draw Mohamed Day creator. Looks like she's going into hiding over proposing a day of expression which thousands participated in.
FBI Agent David Gomez:

“We understand the absolute seriousness of a threat from an Al Qaeda-inspired magazine and are attempting to do everything in our power to assist the individuals on that list to effectively protect themselves and change their behavior to make themselves less of a target,” Gomez said.

Man. Shouldn't they be doing everything they can so she doesn't have to change her behavior to avoid murderous wackos?

Quoth the IOZ:

I love this story. I love every single word of it.

Yep, me too.

There’s the 32 percent of Democrats who blame “the Jews” for the financial crisis. There’s the 25 percent of African-Americans who believe the AIDS virus was created in a government lab. There’s support for state secession, which may have been higher among liberals in the Bush era than among Republicans in the age of Obama. And there’s the theory that the Bush White House knew about 9/11 in advance, which a third of Democrats endorsed as recently as 2007.

So are we a nation of potential James Lees, teetering on the brink of paranoid violence?