Imagine two neighborhoods in the same city subject to the same laws. Assume the crime rate is the same. Then you would expect arrest and prosecution rates to be the same. Now, assume two other neighborhoods, also in the same city and subject to the same laws. Call them A and B. Assume the arrest […]

From Pew: Americans eat more chicken and less beef than they used to. They drink less milk – especially whole milk – and eat less ice cream, but they consume way more cheese. Their diets include less sugar than in prior decades but a lot more corn-derived sweeteners. And while the average American eats the […]

The letter below summarizes my thoughts on a touchy subject. I have put them in the form they are in because I don’t think my son is old to have that discussion in its entirety right now. To My Dear Son, One of your mother’s hobbies is investigating her ancestry. She spends a lot of […]

I don’t have the patience to sit on the couch and just stare at the tube like a lot of people seem to enjoy doing. I do however watch movies while exercising or doing chores. The result is that I start and stop whatever I am watching frequently, and there are times it might take […]

I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being star struck. I pay very little to celebrities, and I probably couldn’t tell you who most of the people being profiled in any given edition of People magazine are. With the exception of Jimmy Stewart, who was way before my time, I don’t recall ever […]

Here’s an analysis of LinkedIn user data by the company’s Education & Millennials Editor. The analysis is entitled Here’s where 2016 grads went to work — and how much they got paid. The study is based on the company’s internal data so it skews heavily white collar. I found the first two tables to be pretty […]

What follows is from Today’s Democratic Party: Meeting America’s Challenges, Protecting America’s Values, a.k.a., the 1996 Democratic Party Platform. This is the section on immigration.  I took the liberty of bolding pieces I found interesting. Democrats remember that we are a nation of immigrants. We recognize the extraordinary contribution of immigrants to America throughout our […]

I have written a number of posts, some using data and some not, on immigrstion. Some of those posts attracted vitriol in comments, including from some who keep accusing me of hiding my punchline. Personally I find myself repeating myself, or trying to restate a point yet a different way so it will sink in. […]

I have always been leery of libertarians, finding that most of them come from one of two infuriating groups: those who pretend negative externalities are trivial and (a much smaller group) those who are open about negative externalities not being trivial but look forward to the opportunity to inflict them on other people. That said, […]

One of the more unique books on my shrinking number of bookshelves (we are in the e-book era after all, so every time we move, fewer hard copies move with us) is called Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? It was written by a Soviet dissident named Andrei Amalrik and published in 1970. I […]