Thursday, June 19, 2008

Long ass shorters, Part 3

let's get right to it.

Inherit the wind:

Bryan Caplan points to a study showing that the cognitive effects of upbringing evaporate over time.
...
I confess I still don't understand it
I know that's an unfair quote to put together, and I don't care.

Bonus second shorter:
There are lots of things that early childhood environment does affect: the Perry Preschool Project, for example, produced significant reductions in criminality, while improving high school graduation rates and modestly increasing future income. But we're talking about moving from Popeye's to a steady job in a warehouse or at the Post Office, not mass movement into the professional class.
So who cares? Stupid proles.

By request: consumption taxes:
The bourgeois moral affection for savings is a socially useful cultural belief, but it is not actually a moral law.
Megan is aware of all moral laws.

Untitled:
I don't have any way of assessing whether Halliburton's prices are reasonable. But keep in mind that such arrangements often make non-cash economic costs explicit, which makes them seem more expensive.
This is the closest Megan will come to admitting she lacks basic common sense.

So as not to keep you in suspense . . .: No, Megan was not talking about Kathy G in the grad student post, and it means you are the one projecting your own issues with her if you thought that, and thus misunderstood Megan. She was being passive aggressive towards someone completely different.

Emendation to Railroad post:
My father writes to point out that I have confused Detroit and Cleveland. This is a very common mistake, at least among those of us who have never been to either city. Please open your textbooks and cross out "Detroit", substituting "Cleveland". That is all.
It must be nice to be able to dismiss your own errors so flippantly. Me, I tend to examine them to see if I can learn something.

By request: hiring convicts:
And prison doesn't improve them.

Mark Kleiman has done some sterling work on ways to deal with the impulse control problem--close monitoring of parolees with small immediate punishments, rather than rare but severe punishments. In this way, you try to move groups of felons to a new, lower crime equilibrium, and then switch monitoring resources to the next group.
And if that doesn't work, you fix them with electric shock collars and give them a jolt when they're bad, or when they look like they're thinking something bad.

Share and share alike:
Ross defends the notion that viewing hard porn is somewhat equivalent to adultery. Julian Sanchez dissents. I want to know this: if you watch the porn together, are you both cheating? Or are you swinging?
................ pass.
Then she followed up with the British boarding school sex ed scene from Python's Meaning of Life. You cannot kill Python, Megan, no matter how hard you try. For one, you clearly only know their greatest hits, so the real treasures are safe from you.

That's all for now, tho M. has something to talk about when he next comes through.

1 comment:

M. Bouffant said...

I do? Please don't think I'm selling out. No money involved.

By the way, what could one learn from an error like confusing Detroit & Cleveland? It's so dense I doubt if it could be repeated, even. And it's sadly obvious Megan'll never learn to proof her work; after all it's just a blog. And when she's associate editing for the magazine (Investigate the July/August "Ideas" issue, wherein
La McArdle speaks for "Carbon Consciousness" in "The 11½ Biggest Ideas of the Year." Or don't.) someone must at least scan whatever she sez.