California farmers have a water crisis. Not enough of the stuff and the supply keeps shrinking. The coastal urban dwellers aren’t all that sympathetic. A common sentiment: they shouldn’t be growing crops that need so much water, not in such a drought-prone state. Tear up those almond orchards!
The earth’s biosphere is in the middle of a mass extinction event, thanks mostly to the loss of wild habitat to agriculture. We need to shrink the amount of land used for agriculture to expand wild habitat and protect endangered species. Since livestock farming destroys more habitat than other types of agriculture and cattle are the most destructive of livestock animals, it would make sense to go after cattle ranchers and their enablers, aka those who eat beef.
The growing demand for beef is coming mostly from Asia and Africa and no matter how impassioned the pleas from environmentalists and vegans, the people in those regions aren’t going to change their food preferences any time soon - not when memories and stories of widespread hunger still linger in their collective minds.
But demand is only half the equation….
Ingroup favoritism—the tendency to favor members of one’s own group over those in other groups - has been well-documented in social groups across time and place. However, real-world studies are often descriptive, making it difficult to infer underlying process or generalize from specific groups delineated by nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, etc. to other intergroup contexts. The “minimal group paradigm” overcomes the limitations of descriptive studies by using an experimental research design in which participants are given artificial group identities.
Unanticipated events, insufficient time, lack of requisite skills and a multitude of other factors may prevent one from acting as intended. Actual control over a behavior depends on the ability to overcome barriers of this kind, as well as the presence of facilitating factors.
These days I often come across the idea that the brain is some kind of machine, e.g., prediction machine, simulation machine, meaning-making machine, decision-making machine, computation machine. And there’s still a lot of push-back against the idea of being a machine.
However, some risk factors are only causal in the presence of other risk factors. In many cases, no single factor is necessary or sufficient to cause an outcome. Causality lies in how the factors interact with each other. In other words, it’s all in the mix. Take illegal behavior….
The studies and density advocates are assuming that driving and residential energy use will continue to rely on energy sources that emit greenhouse gases. But what about remote work, online shopping, electric vehicles, renewables, smart nuclear, and carbon-capture? Aren’t these (and other) technological developments going to change the equation in the not-so-distant future? As within a decade or so?
Actually, a good number of Americans still want to live in cities. But that doesn’t mean they want to live in high-density urban areas. After all, most American cities have car-friendly residential neighborhoods, which aren’t all that different from suburbs.
Ok, electric vehicles clearly emit less over their lifecycle than conventional gas-only cars, at least in Europe and except for Germany. What’s wrong with Germany, anyway? In a word: coal.
Mmmm. What’s up with Germany and the Nordic countries? These historically protestant countries seem to have lost their work ethic - as opposed to China, the Philippines, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Russia and Ukraine. Let’s dig deeper…
Despite California large and growing economy, the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been declining steadily since 2007 - thanks in large part to the passage of Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), otherwise known as the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. AB32 required the state to adopt a plan to limit GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It achieved that goal four years early. These four charts pretty much tell the tale…
10. Theme: Sweeping generalizations about how clueless people are.
Illustration: “Most people struggle to define the system that dominates our lives. But if you press them, they’re likely to mumble something about hard work and enterprise, buying and selling. This is how the beneficiaries of the system want it to be understood.”
Alternative: People who don’t believe as I do may still have valid points, or not.
“Grasslands evolved with bison, pronghorn and other animals whose hooves and grazing open new areas for plants to grow. The above-ground stems of prairie grasses and flowers rebound quickly after they’ve been eaten, much as pruning backyard trees or shrubs creates healthier plants. When managed carefully, domestic animals such as cattle or sheep can have the same positive impact on grassland ecosystems.” - Pulse of the Heartland by Brianna Randall/National Wildlife Magazine, October-November 2021
Countries that have way more excess deaths than Covid-19 deaths are almost assuredly undercounting Covid deaths. For example, the excess death rates in Russia and Serbia are more than three times their official Covid death rates over roughly the same period. Some countries, such as Russia, have been seriously undercounting Covid deaths for a long time and appear uninterested in correcting their records. Others may be motivated to correct their records but the task is just too daunting to undertake, or at least complete.
I’m going to assume that reducing the Black-white homeownership gap is a worthy goal mainly because homeownership provides a way to build wealth and increase residential stability. For many, homeownership is also a great source of pride, pleasure, and purpose. That said, homeownership is not for everyone, especially those just a few paychecks away from being broke. Helping such individuals buy a home is doing them no favor if they later lose the home to foreclosure or are forced to sell at a loss.
Two principles inform this post: 1) don’t assume you know what other people think; and 2) if you want to better understand what people think, start with what they say. In that spirit, here is how the bans are worded in each of the eight states that prohibit teaching what is often described as “critical race theory”:
The gap in Black-white homeownership rates recently reached 30.1% in the U,S., its highest level in 50 years and larger than when race-based discrimination against homebuyers was legal. Jung Hyun Choi of The Urban Institute has identified three factors that explain most of this gap. They are…
Do these two studies confirm that body cameras have “done nothing” to stop police violence? If so, are these two studies representative of most research on the effect of body cameras on police use of force? How would one know? My Google Scholar search for “body cameras police ‘use of force’ ” got me 21,000 hits. I didn’t check them all, but the first ten looked legit. Hmmm...perhaps the two studies are so convincing, one can simply ignore the other 20,998 (give or take)?
One-sided books and opinion pieces do not meet this standard. Yet the Lancet’s editors are looking the other way. Why? Probably because the journal’s mission is not just to publish some of the best science in the world but also to “transform society” and be “a platform to advance the global impact” of the research it publishes. Unfortunately, pursuing the truth and advancing a cause require different mindsets. As Dhruv Khullar put it in The New Yorker…