Month: May 2009

by Andrew

Jeffrey Goldberg gets a scoop (as he often does):

A woman looks through her safety goggles at the Gotcha playground on May 21, 2009 in Vysocany, Czech Republic. The German government has abandoned its plan to ban paintball. The idea to ban the game emerged after the massacre, by a 17-year-old boy, of 15 students at a school in the German town of Winnenden in March. The Christian Democrat and Social Democrat coalition parties were flooded with angry responses when they announced their plan to forbid the game earlier this month. (By Miguel Villagran/Getty)

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

While I agree with the broader point (who wouldn’t) Ms. Wallace is making in her post on risk, this business of airplane vs car safety seems to be an often misunderstood notion. the stats in question (link from original post) give the following (2005 figures – dividing fatalities on board by total miles or total departures):

0.0025 deaths per million miles and 0.18 per 100,000 departures

Sounds good, right? Well, yes, but let's compare this to road accidents (ntsb and bureau of transportation statistics):

0.009 deaths per million miles and 0.009 per 100,000 trips (10 miles average trip length)

Air travel and road travel have about the same death rate per mile (air travel seems a little better – factor of 4), but cars win out on a per trip basis by over an order of magnitude (factor of 20). Hence, I'm really not sure that claiming air travel is safer than travel on foot is really justified – it seems very much to be a question of one one slices the data. Moreover, I would argue that the sensible statistic is deaths per trip, in which case road travel is clearer safer. There's probably a broader point that should be made here about the ease with which one can make data tell many different stories when asking imprecise questions, but I should really get back to pretending to work.

by Patrick Appel

Ezra Klein looks at the Republican health care alternative:

Karen Tumulty has more.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

You posted some reactions to Cheney's torture speech, including this bit from Peter Kirsanow:

As a friend succinctly puts it, "When that big asteroid finally heads toward Earth, who's the person you'd most want to be in charge?" I suspect Cheney would score at or near the top.

It says something about our former VP that when I imagine this scenario, it has President Cheney contacting us from his undisclosed space station to wish us all the best in the minutes before all life is wiped out, promising that he and his selected survivors will dedicate their work at rebuilding the Earth in our memory.

I found some footage of that moment on YouTube:

by Chris Bodenner

Watch and marvel.

 by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Although the benefit of preventive care for the long-term health of an individual is obvious, it's less clear that it benefits that individual's insurance company to the same degree. Americans change jobs and employers more often than they used to – and thus, are less likely to be covered continuously under the same insurance company.

Insurance companies are not in the health business; they make money by applying actuarial principles. They surely can determine, based on average length of enrollment, exactly how much and what kind of preventive care is worth paying for. Suppose John's extreme hypertension gives him an 80% chance of having an expensive heart attack next year, while Steve's moderate hypertension gives him the same odds of having an expensive heart attack 20 years from now. Treating John now is almost certain to save his current insurance company money, but treating Steve now – depending on the % likelihood of his changing jobs or insurance coverage at some point in the next 20 years – is not so clearly beneficial to the company.

If the employment market is volatile enough, or the insurance playing field particularly unbalanced, an insurance co. may even perceive preventive coverage as helping a competitor's bottom line more than it helps its own.

by Patrick Appel

Andrew Sprung thinks Richard Florida may have made a mistake:

Florida tells us that the study finds that GDP per capita is negatively associated with the transition to democracy. The study authors write that GDP growth is negatively associated with transition — in either direction. That's a big difference. Contra Florida, richer countries are not less likely to transition (though they may not be more likely to). Growing countries are less likely to transition.

by Richard Florida

Wendell Cox writes (pointer via Planetizen):

Most suburban growth is not the result of declining core city populations, but is rather a consequence of people moving from rural areas and small towns to the major metropolitan areas. It is the appeal of large metropolitan places that drives suburban growth.

Larger metropolitan areas have more lucrative employment opportunities and generally have higher incomes than smaller metropolitan areas. This is particularly the case in developing countries. As a result, the big urban areas attract people seeking to escape what are often the stagnant or even declining economies in smaller areas.

A very Jane Jacobs insight, and one I find compelling.

In The Economy of Cities, Jacobs controversially argued that virtually all of economic growth traces back to cities; in her view, cities actually precede agriculture. Early cities, according to Jacobs, spurred agricultural development by providing trading centers for agricultural products.

While it's common to think of suburbs as draining off city assets, today's metropolitan areas with their urban cores and suburban and ex-urban rings, are really expanded cities. Up until the early-to-mid 20th century, cities were able to capture peripheral growth by annexing new development, until suburbs figured out they could prosper by becoming independent municipal entities – thus the now-famous concentric-ring or, in some cases, the hole-in-the-donut pattern of our metro regions. The growth of gargantuan mega-regions like the Boston-New York-Washington corridor is essentially the next phase of this process of geographic development.

It's important to understand how these two interrelated geographic processes – outward geographic expansion and the more intensive use of existing urban space – combine to shape economic progress.

Matt Steinglass looks at MIT's new study on climate change. He begins with some satire:

(CO2 levels of 450 ppm probably mean “an ice-free planet”, according to a recent study [pdf] by NASA and Yale authors.) The reasons: the carbon “sinks” are maxed out, and positive feedback loops are stronger than previously understood. Romm writes: “How could Greenland’s ice sheets possibly survive that?” Melting the Greenland ice sheet would raise global sea levels by 7 meters.

The latest fad among climate-change “skeptics” and “non-orthodox” thinkers has been to throw up one’s hands and declare that China, India and the rest of the developing world will never go along with serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, so there’s no point trying to stop the warming. We should just adapt. On another front, orthodox environmentalists are saying that China will never voluntarily go along with serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, so we should threaten them with trade sanctions.

I think this is wrong. Paul Krugman has talked to far more influential people in China than I have. But here in Vietnam, influential people are extremely worried about climate change and eager to participate in international efforts to slow it down. Climate change is spelling disaster for Vietnam, and people are already starting to feel it.

Of course this isn't W-M specific, which is what Manzi is really looking for, but it does provide a counter argument, if not a fully convincing one, to some of his other points.