Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified corn | StarTribune.com

Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified corn | StarTribune.com:

And we’re surprised why?   Technology can’t overcome gross stupidity…

Hungary's Slide into Authoritarianism

Hungary's Slide into Authoritarianism

Robert Reich (The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency)

Robert Reich (The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency)

How U student with MS came to doubt her neurologist's motives | Second Opi

How U student with MS came to doubt her neurologist's motives | Second Opi

Don’t Tax Soda, Tax Sweeteners - Miller-McCune

Don’t Tax Soda, Tax Sweeteners - Miller-McCune

Gingrich led conservatism once before, off a cliff | StarTribune.com

Gingrich led conservatism once before, off a cliff | StarTribune.com

Adjust Your Car Mirrors Property To Avoid Accidents

Adjust Your Car Mirrors Property To Avoid Accidents

GOP presidential campaign: a series of flashes in the pan.

GOP presidential campaign: a series of flashes in the pan.

Newt Gingrich will never be president; I will never stop loving this video | Grist

Newt Gingrich will never be president; I will never stop loving this video | Grist

Technology once protected our privacy, now erodes it

Technology once protected our privacy, now erodes it

xkcd: Money

xkcd: Money:

You’ll learn more from this infographic than you’d ever imagine. 

A case study in how media bias works against clean-air rules | Grist

A case study in how media bias works against clean-air rules | Grist

Prosecutions for Bank Fraud Falling

Prosecutions for Bank Fraud Falling

Comcast puts on great security theater

At the urging of a friend I recently decided to buy my own cable modem
and save the $7 a month Comcast charges me to lease their equipment.
The only complicating factor is having to contact Comcast to
let them know the equipment MAC address and serial number so they can
properly provision it.

And as you may guess, contacting Comcast is like getting a root canal
when all you really needed was a good floss.

I went for the live chat option, hoping that incompetence would seem
less frustrating via IM than phone and knowing that relaying a
15-digit serial number verbally was asking for trouble.   I filled in my
details (name, address, account #) and enter the chat room. The agent sends me the usual canned
text about being happy to help and asks for account verification (basically, everything I've already typed in plus the last four digits of the account holder's SSN).

Note: the account is in my wife's name, but I have been added as an
authorized agent at least twice, and remember vividly the last time
when I had called during the MLB playoffs in 2010 to clarify why I couldn't
watch.

Everything seems fine, I'm thanked for the information, they ask what I
need and I tell them I need to set up my own equipment.  They leave for a
bit to play solitaire look up an answer and the agent says that I'm not an
authorized user and they can't discuss the account.

I explain that I can actually tell them the date and time I was (most
recently) authorized to suffer through this indignity.  Amazingly, I
got an honest answer about why I keep having to be added to the account.

Comcast has a notes section on each account where they record things
like authorized users.  The rep informs me that these notes are
regularly purged if they "get too long" and that this precaution is a
matter of security in an era of identity theft, so this is really for
my own good.

Using simple words, I share my sentiments with the rep, end the chat,
and promptly start a new one posing as my wife.  Five minutes later,
we're done.

Thanks for keeping my identity safe, Comcast.

Obama plays the George Washington card | Eric Black Ink

Obama plays the George Washington card | Eric Black Ink

why the Occupy Wall Street protestors are mad: (On OWS, fairness, and why w

why the Occupy Wall Street protestors are mad: (On OWS, fairness, and why w

Parenting in charts

The True Cost of Commuting: You Could Buy a House Priced $15,900 More for Each Mile You Move Closer to Work

The True Cost of Commuting: You Could Buy a House Priced $15,900 More for Each Mile You Move Closer to Work

The most amazing presidential election analysis you have ever seen

Seriously.  When you combine a talented statistician with a talented writer (in one person) with the talented multimedia crew at the New York Times, you get this unbelievable tool for looking at Republican prospects for the presidency in 2012.

Peel garlic in 10 seconds

Just watch this.  Damn.



How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds from SAVEUR.com on Vimeo.

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science

Vikings stadium: Let's inject fiscal sanity into the debate | Community Vo

Vikings stadium: Let's inject fiscal sanity into the debate | Community Vo

open letter to 53% guy - why the 99% are protesting

open letter to 53% guy - why the 99% are protesting

Five proposals for the 99% of America

A brilliant prescription for tilting class warfare back in favor of the middle class.
1.              Pass this constitutional amendment: Corporations are not people

2.              Pass this constitutional amendment: Money is not speech

3.              Tax financial transactions

4.              Tax all income as ordinary income

5.              Declare a moratorium on foreclosures

For more on these proposals, read David Morris' piece in Minnpost.com

When doors open, introspection begins

So I received a job offer of sorts today.  It's interesting.  Directing a very small advocacy organization committed to a democratic approach to developing renewable energy.  The mission is nearly indistinguishable from the place I work now.  The work would be a lot different.  Less typing and calculating, more talking and persuading.  Much more responsibility and pay, much less family time.

I'm nowhere near deciding if it's worthwhile.  But it has made me think hard about where I am and what I do, and for how long I should stay.

For starters, where I work now - there's hardly a better place to be if you have family.  Flexible hours, great benefits, good pay, wonderful people.  And the kind of loyalty to employees that has the upper ranks cutting salaries to save the rest of us.  And it's been a mind-opener, a place with enough guidance to hone my edges and enough freedom to make mistakes.  I'm still growing after five years on the job.  Good for home life and good for career.  Hard to beat.

If I knew I'd be happy doing research forever I doubt I'd even consider a change.  But it was freshman year of college when I decided to run for student senate that I realized how much it mattered whether or not I could make a difference - that life was not just about maximizing my happiness, but also about improving the world around me.  I've always felt the best way to do that is politics.

There's no higher calling than public service, no greater challenge than balancing the very different demands of your constituency with the demands of your own conscience.  And making laws has the potential to truly alter the lives of millions for good: Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health Care, renewable energy; or ill: massive tax cuts, wars, constraining civil liberties.

This new opportunity would run closer to politics.  And it would feel like politics, with more time spent raising money, schmoozing, and running around trying to build coalitions.  Some of that seems exciting and challenging; some of it seems really distasteful.

Ultimately, I feel like there will be a tradeoff at some point.  To put more energy into a career means less for home, and that should only happen if the potential to do good is significantly higher than my current role and if I'm uniquely suited to it.

Is it?  Am I?  Good questions.

(via 9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph | Jared Bernstein | On the...

(via 9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy)

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/republican-jobs-plan-6513602#ixzz1anx

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/republican-jobs-plan-6513602#ixzz1anx

Saved at the last second

You haven't seen much in this digital space, because that's what having two kids does to you.  My daughter, M, was born in late May and managing two children (despite having the most wonderful wife in the world) does not leave much time for blogging.

Last night, I almost pulled the plug on this whole thing, figuring it was better to delete it than not, especially since I had to split the blog in two to easily post interesting stories from my phone's Read It Later app to Tumblr.  But ifttt to the rescue, allowing me to push all those Tumblr blog posts back here.

So here's what's up.  Work has been great, I just hit my 5-year anniversary at my job and am loving it.  I finally feel like I know what I'm talking about, and so do a few others in the field.  Very cool.  I'm hopeful that it means I'm having an impact.

Two kids are great.  M is the world's greatest sleeper, almost letting me forget that she's got a bad case of acid reflux just like her brother.  She also has to have physical therapy for torticollis, which means I'm seen on the front porch twisting her head in strange ways.  Bet the neighbors love that.

If you haven't seen it, read up on the Occupy Wall Street folks.  The Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement of Fox News meant (heck, it's the third entry when I search Google for "astroturf") to cram budget cuts to save millionaires pocketbooks, but this is the real deal.   These folks are protesting the absurd and unconscionable class warfare of the rich on the middle class since Jimmy Carter was president.  There won't be a middle class if things continue as they are, no amount of cheap crap at Wal-Mart can make up for stagnant incomes.

So if you aren't mad as hell, you've not been paying attention.   

Anyway, I can't promise lots more posts, but you will at least get the good articles from blog #2 right here from now on.  And maybe I'll even write once in a while, too.

Change GDP, change the world

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tumblr/RwbX/~3/jNvLe516E7k/11257534878
Change GDP, change the world

Op-Ed Columnist: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tumblr/RwbX/~3/JSKKrtyyHMo/11257246554
Op-Ed Columnist: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries

Vote blue if you care about deficits, the economy or wages

The Democratic Party is failing

From the Nation:

— For months, poll after poll has showed that rank-and-file Americans of all political persuasions believe that revenues (the nice way to say taxes) should be a part of any deal to resolve our debt crisis. Seventy-two percent of Americans polled between July 14 and July 17 said taxes should be raised on those making more than $250,000 per year, including 73 percent of independents and a stunning 54 percent of Republicans. Fifty-nine percent wanted taxes raised on oil and gas companies, including 60 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans. Yet Republicans refused to vote for a deal that included any revenues at all, and the Democratic leadership capitulated despite the fact that the position was exactly the opposite of what large majorities wanted.

Americans don't believe we have the greatest health care system in the world | Eric Black Ink

Americans don't believe we have the greatest health care system in the world | Eric Black Ink: "

It always drives me a little nuts when, at Republican events, the U.S. health care system is routinely described as The Greatest Health Care System In The world (GHCSITW). The crowd always goes wild at the ritualized invocation of American greatness. In recent history, the invocation of the GHCSITW is, of course, always in the context of denouncing the depredations that will be visited upon the GHCSITW if Obamacare passes (before it did) or is not repealed (now that it has).

Perhaps there is a statistical torture chamber sufficiently nimble to produce some measure by which the U.S. system is the GHCSITW. It’s often pointed out by GHCSITW defenders that the unimaginably wealthy Arab royals like to come to the Mayo Clinic when they are sick, although this measure of American greatness may be difficult to wrestle into a statistic.

Still, you don’t have to be terrifically well-informed to know that by the most sensible and obvious measures of a health care system’s efficiency and effectiveness – for example, how comprehensive it is, the results it produces, how much it costs and even how it treats the less wealthy within a given society – the U.S. has pretty much the worst health care system in, at least, the developed world.

Our GHCSITW is the most expensive in the world (by far) on a per capita basis, leaves by far the biggest portion of its population without health insurance and compares very badly with Europe, Canada, Japan, etc. in life expectancy, infant mortality, death by various preventable illnesses, etc. etc.

So it’s a little hard to know why anyone other than those ignorant of the facts or who hate factuality itself are so willing to applaud the ritual invocation of the GHCSITW.

Now comes some recent evidence of what the general public thinks from a poll done by Harris for the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. When asked what letter grade they would give to the U.S. health care system, here is how Americans graded it:

“A”: 3%

“B”: 19%

“C”: 42%

“D”: 24%

“F”: 12 %.

DeLoitte got similar results with the same question in 2009 and 2010.

When asked whether the U.S. health care system works better than most systems in the world (which is a substantially lower standard being GHCSITW), 23 percent said yes.

Hat tip to Dave Durenberger whose latest “commentary” called attention to the Deloitte survey.

A long writeup of the survey is here.

Click to write a comment or read comments about this post.

"

If we want to swap polarization for moderation, we should adopt Ranked Choice Voting | Community Voices

If we want to swap polarization for moderation, we should adopt Ranked Choice Voting | Community Voices: "

If we want to swap polarization for moderation, we should adopt Ranked Choice Voting

By Cyndi Lesher | Friday, July 22, 2011

I'm a lifelong moderate and have always thought of myself as results-oriented — in work and in life. When there's a problem to solve, I'm not concerned with dogma or ideological preconceptions; I'm interested in what works.

That's how I've approached my career in corporate leadership, and it's how I've approached my public service, including my work on the U of M Board of Regents and my tenure as chair of the Governor's Workforce Development Council. My pragmatic focus on real-life solutions has served me well as an innovator and a leader.

And it's precisely why I'm such a strong believer in Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Because, as this shutdown has so clearly underlined, politics in Minnesota is in dire need of innovation. Because, unless you have a vested interest in political polarization, mudslinging and rancor, the electoral system we've got right now is not working — and it sure isn't good for the Minnesota business community I represent.

We shouldn't accept 'politics as usual' as a fact of life. It isn't. There's a better way to run a democracy, and it's our responsibility — yours and mine — to demand it: RCV.

Father risked everything
My father was my greatest role model. He taught me, by example, the importance of integrity, and of standing up for what you believe in. When I was a teenager, he risked everything — his business, many friendships, even his neck — by discovering and reporting several cases of insurance fraud by some very prominent individuals. Indictments followed, and my father's life was threatened.

I remember asking him, 'Dad, why did you have to be the one? Why can't somebody else speak out?' His answer: 'Because it's right. And if not me, Cyndi, then who?'

I've carried that all my life and tried to apply it in all kinds of different situations. It's why I volunteer my time on the board of FairVote Minnesota — because I know that our political system is broken, and we can't just wait for others to fix it.

There was a time when it didn't matter so much who won election: Democrat or Republican, I could trust they would govern in the interests of the majority of Minnesotans. This was the Minnesota way.

Those days are now gone, and I have no illusion they'll return. Appealing to candidates and the parties to tone down the attacks, engage in civil discourse and rise above the narrow interests of their base hasn't worked — and won't work as long as the system is hard-wired to reward this political behavior.

Under our 'plurality-take-all' system, candidates win by mobilizing their party base and scaring undecided and independent voters away from their opponents. Divide-and-conquer campaigns work in a system that locks voters into a 'lesser-of-two-evils' choice.

Current process jeopardizes state's health
Our electoral process is jeopardizing the long-term health of our state.

Satisfying the party's 'base' is a winning strategy in a system where elections can be won with as little as a third of the vote. But it's a dangerous way to elect officeholders who have to govern an entire state. Elected officials who are indebted to their base enter office with their hands tied by single-issue pledges that put thoughtful deliberation and consensus out of reach.

Moreover, they can't work productively together when just weeks before they waged nasty ad campaigns belittling each others' character and reputation. As the shutdown and lose-lose budget deal have revealed, problems are simply pushed off to the future, exacerbating their size and scope and prolonging their resolution.

We must change the system if we want to swap polarization, zealousness, and deadlock for thoughtfulness, moderation, and compromise. We must put the incentives in place to compensate these outcomes. Ranked Choice Voting does this.

Under Ranked Choice Voting, voters 'rank' their preferences — 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. In a single-seat race (e.g. governor), if no candidate receives a majority of first choices, the least popular candidates are eliminated and their votes are reassigned to remaining candidates until one receives a majority of continuing votes. It works like a traditional runoff but happens in a single election, saving taxpayers the cost of a second election, candidates the expense of another campaign and voters another trip to the polls.

Under this kind of system, third-party candidates can run and capture votes without being labeled a 'spoiler.' Voters can rank No. 1 the candidate they think will do the best job without concern that they'll 'throw their vote away' or help toss the election to the candidate they least favor.

More choice to voters
RCV gives more choice to voters and makes third parties more competitive. In multicandidate races, candidates must reach beyond their base to appeal to voters for their second choices. It rewards candidates — and parties — who strive to represent the broad interests of the majority and penalizes those pushing ideologically extreme, single-issue agendas. Finally, it produces winners who take office with the affirmation of a majority.

RCV isn't just smart, it's doable. We know from its use in Minneapolis (and several other cities across the country and countries across the globe) that it works. St. Paul debuts RCV this year, and other Minnesota cities are working toward it. As counties across the state replace their voting equipment in the coming years, they can install machines able to tally a ranked ballot. The technology already exists.

RCV is within reach, and I hope Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature will put this critical reform on their list of priorities in the next session. Please join me in asking our elected leaders to enact RCV statewide.

Minnesota can't wait.

Cyndi Lesher is a retired CEO of Northern States Power, an Xcel Energy Company, and served as president of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Host Committee for the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Click to write a comment or read comments about this post.

"

Practical Government

The more I think about a short description for my political positions, the more I come back to this idea: practical.  Especially in the issue of public v. private.

For some folks, it's a matter of principle that the government should do least, letting the private or charitable sectors handle the rest.  But what happens when the private sector (contrary to our conventional wisdom) is not the most cost-effective (let alone effective)?

Take health care. We know that we can do health care more cheaply with a public system (Medicare) than with a private one (Medicare Advantage, etc.). So rather than waste economic resources on private health care, let's create a public health care system and re-dedicate our savings to a more useful economic pursuit.

There are some other great examples.  Publicly-provided education loans leave fewer students in default of their debts (and more able to take risks, be entrepreneurial, and buy things), as well as costing taxpayers less money.

Community-owned broadband networks deliver superior services at costs below what the private sector does, and the high quality and low cost create massive economic multipliers as the private sector takes advantage of the better public infrastructure.

Government is often better than the private sector, especially for essential services and the basic infrastructure of a market economy.  It's time we made better choices about when to use it.

You can't always be in the bike lane

Posted for my wife:

It's so true

How the media fail to stop rumors

They did it with ACORN, which lost federal funding despite being cleared on all counts of the allegations trumpted by FOX News.  Now Planned Parenthood is getting the rumor mill treatment and the media is helping.  From Minnpost, a headline saying that "Bachmann says..."

There's absolutely no way that Rep. Bachmann should ever get a headline like that.  She lies.  A lot.

Whither economic justice?

Not only has the last decade been remarkable for its lack of economic growth, but it's been even worse for the middle class.  The growth of middle class wages over the past ten years has been just 4 percent, total.  That's 1 percentage point less than the period 1929-39 (the Great Depression).

And the economic problems continue for the middle class:

Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills.

And employment has not really improved since the start of the recession.  Rather, the employment:population ratio has fallen 5 percentage points and has not recovered any ground:

To make matters worse, the social safety net has been eroded significantly compared to earlier recessions, thanks to "welfare reform" in the 1990s.  Rather than move families to work, welfare reform has simply dropped them through the cracks and made the poor poorer by allowing states to shift from cash assistance to the poor to other services.

What else do we know about the economic distress of the middle class?  Well, workers at the bottom are not only struggling to stay employed, but also struggling to maintain their pay.  Service workers at Minnesota grocery chains have seen wages fall 25 percent in recent years.

There are other broader problems for the middle class.  Take these two items from the 20 things everyone should know about inequality (hat tip Economist's View).  One, unions helped maintain private sector wages (and middle class living standards):

And second, upward mobility is declining, putting the American dream further out of reach for many Americans.

Ultimately, unemployment is a political failure, with one major party committed to policies that actively reduce middle class welfare (Republicans) and the other abdicating its commitment and instead focusing on the deficit bogeyman (which is also a political will problem of paying our bills).  While traditional strategies have been employed, if insufficiently (an economic stimulus), Krugman notes that there are a number of other strategies that could be deployed to get Americans back to work.

It's a absolute shame that lawmakers are more focused on the largely fabricated deficit issue rather than the ongoing economic crisis.  JOBS!

Feeling dumb

Had a problem months ago with variable volume when typing on my iPhone.  Thought it must be a software problem and did a lot of forum searching.  Just realized yesterday that I put my pinky finger under the phone to hold it up when I type in portrait mode, right over the external speaker.

Smart.

Social Insurance Keeps Millions Out of Poverty

Why would we even think of reducing anti-poverty programs before increasing taxes on the wealthy, say to where they were before George Bush decided that we needed to get rid of Clinton's budget surplus (one of the few things he did well)?:

Public Programs Keep Millions Out of Poverty, CBPP: With anti-poverty programs under serious attack in Washington, here’s something to keep in mind: a major new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds that public programs keep one in six Americans out of poverty — primarily the elderly, disabled, and working poor — and that the poverty rate would double without these programs.

...read more...

How Many Fruits and Vegetables Should I Eat: A Visual Guide

From Chow.com:

Vegetables

Asparagus: About 4 spears

Beans, Cooked (black, garbanzo, etc.): 1 cup

Bell Pepper: 1 cup chopped or 1 large pepper (about 3 inches in diameter)

Broccoli: A generous fistful (tennis ball size) of florets or about 16 small florets

Carrots: 1 cup chopped or 2 medium whole carrots (6 to 7 inches long)

Cauliflower: A little less than a 1/4 head of florets

Celery: 1 cup diced or 2 stalks (11 to 12 inches long)

Corn: 1 cup of kernels or 1 large ear (8 to 9 inches long)

Cucumber: 1 cup sliced/chopped or about 1/2 of a medium cucumber (8 to 9 inches long)

Green Beans: 1 cup cooked (we counted: It's about 19 to 20 beans)

Greens, Cooked (kale, chard, etc.): 1 cup

Greens, Raw (lettuce, spinach, etc.): 2 cups (about two large leaves of chopped romaine)

Summer Squash: 1 cup cooked/sliced/diced squash or 1 whole zucchini (7 to 8 inches long) or about 1/2 of a large yellow crookneck

Sweet Potato: 1 cup mashed or 1 large baked potato (about 2 1/4 inches in diameter)

Fruit

Apple: 1 small apple (about 2 1/2 inches in diameter, a little smaller than a baseball)

Banana: 1 large banana (8 to 9 inches long)

Cantaloupe: 1 cup diced or about 1/8 of a large melon

Dried Fruit: 1/2 cup

Grapefruit: 1 medium grapefruit (about 4 inches across)

Grapes: About 32 average grapes

Orange: 1 large orange (a little bigger than a baseball)

Peach: 1 large peach (about the size of a tennis ball)

Pear: 1 medium pear

Pineapple: 1 cup chopped (a little less than 1/4 of a pineapple)

Plum: 2 large plums

Strawberries: 8 large berries

Tomato: 1 cup chopped or 1 large tomato (about 3 inches in diameter, about the size of a baseball)