Month: September 2011

Krugman defends the idea:

Look at the IRS data on returns for the 400 highest incomes in America (pdf) — specifically, Table 43. If you look at the numbers since 2004, you’ll see that in a typical year between 30 and 40 percent of those super-high-income players paid an average tax rate of less than 15 percent; most of them paid less than 20 percent. Bear in mind that for the very wealthy the payroll tax — the main burden on working-class Americans — is trivial, because of the cap on Social Security and the fact that it only applies to earned income. And what becomes clear is that the Obama/Buffet claim is absolutely, totally true.

McArdle is against the tax. Reihan suggests an alternative.

A reader writes:

It’s not a major league team sport, but there has been an out MMA fighter for some years, Shad Smith.  Here's a NYT article about him from 2008. He’s about as masculine as it gets.

Another writes:

In response to my claims on Martina as the real groundbreaker, another reader claims, "So, not to take anything away from the contributions of lesbians to athletics, but lesbians in athletics are not exactly forging new territory. In fact, lesbians comprise such a large number of WNBA players and what may be a majority of WNBA fans that out-lesbianism isn't worth blinking an eye."

While he may be correct that many WNBA players are lesbians, there are actually very few of them that are out lesbians.

I can only think of one who's playing right now, Sheryl Swoopes. Maybe three that no longer play. The reader's basing his "facts" on the old presumption that the majority of female athletes are lesbians, when in fact, that's just not true. As a former Division I college basketball player, I can attest to the fact that the majority of my teammates were straight. And I can also attest to the fact that the perception of lesbians in sport has actually had the effect of making the closet deeper for lesbians because coaches, administrators and now business people in the WNBA fear lesbians will ruin the "family market" and the spread of sports to "regular" girls. All because of those scary lesbians.

In college ranks, it's just as bad. When I was playing in 1985, I was told to my face I would lose my scholarship if I came out as gay or if it became to obvious that I was. The fear that created in me held me back from coming out for another decade after college. In women's Division I college basketball right now, there is just one women's coach who is an out lesbian. One. There are clearly many more coaches who are lesbians, but they are afraid of how their program will be punished by negative recruiting from other coaches saying, "You don't want to go there…it's not a program with a family atmosphere." The code for a lesbian coach to scare off parents from sending their daughters to those dreaded predatory lesbians who will recruit them into the lifestyle.

In light of the still lagging ability of women to be out in sport, despite and because of the perception that they're all gay anyway, it makes Martina's courage to come out in 1981 all that much more remarkable. She forged ground that men, and many women, still fear to tread. I get a sense that the reader imagines it's somehow easier for women athletes to come out than it would be for men. I'd say the challenges for each group are much different, but the pressures and associate fear are very much the same.

(Photo: WNBA Legend Sheryl Swoopes paints at Learn with the City Year during a NBA Cares All-Star Day of Service on February 18, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. By David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

To solve a puzzle in AIDS research that has "stumped scientists for over a decade," the University of Washington harnessed the speedy ingenuity of online gamers:

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," said Firas Khatib, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. … Seth Cooper, a co-creator of Foldit [a program created by the university a few years ago that transforms problems of science into competitive computer games], added, "People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at. Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."

Full study here (pdf). Carl Franzen thinks even bigger:

Foldit represents one of the most concrete examples of an emerging discipline known as the gamification of society - the idea that videogaming skills and conventions can be harnessed to solve all sorts of real-world problems in medicine, health, architecture, personal responsibility, employment, traffic dynamics and law enforcement.

Yochi Dreazen examines how the debate over American troops in Iraq looks in each country's respective capital:

In Baghdad, a city that continues to bear the scars of eight years of military force, terror attacks, and sectarian violence, politicians from across Iraq's political spectrum either openly call for a full American pullout or offer, like Allawi, tepid backing for an extension. The U.S. military presence is deeply unpopular and Western diplomats say Iraqi public opinion is even more anti-American now because many Iraqis fear that the presence of U.S. troops in the country past the end of the year would trigger new attacks by Shiite and Sunni militants. In Washington, by contrast, politicians from both parties talk as if the Obama administration could leave as many troops in Iraq as it would like. The wishes of the Iraqi government rarely enter into the conversation.

In a heartbreaking counterpoint to the end of DADT, 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, above, committed suicide on Monday:

The Rodemeyers said that Jamey's first three weeks of high school seemed to be going better and that there was "no indication that he was in pain." But upon finding him dead, they admitted that he likely just got better at hiding the abuse he faced. "He fooled everybody," said Jamey's father. "He put on a brave face and I wish he wouldn't have."

Dan is crushed.

Jason Peters relays facts collected by Harper's Index:

— Seventy-one percent of current U.S. debt was accumulated during Republican presidential terms.

— Two-thirds of debt-ceiling elevations since 1960 have been signed into law by Republican presidents.

— In 1961 the percentage of corporate profits paid in taxes was nearly forty-one; now it is less than eleven.

— Seventy-five percent of the increase in corporate profit margins since 2001 has come from depressed wages.

The Daily What serves it up:

5000 miles + 3000 photos + 923 people + Tom Green + a few naked girls = Benjamin Jenks amazing hitchhiking journey from LA to Maine, captured in a single slightly seizure-inducing time-lapse video.

Pivoting off Jeffrey Sachs, James Hamilton urges policymakers to consider long-run structural challenges as we confront the short term. While Sachs focuses on American manufacturing, Hamilton emphasizes our natural resources: 

For over a century, the U.S. produced more oil than any other country, and even today we are still the third biggest oil producer in the world. The U.S. today is the world's leading producer of items such as lumber, corn and poultry, number 2 in coal, oranges, soybeans, and gypsum, and third in cotton and lead. Our abundant natural resources have always been an important advantage for America, and are still an important advantage today. And it is within our power to do more with our natural resources. A decade ago, the U.S. was the second biggest producer of rare earth elements, which play a critical role in many of today's high-tech devices and systems. 

Michael Robbins and Mark Tessler decode a new survey on political views post-Mubarak:

While 78.7 percent of Egyptians agreed that "despite its problems democracy is the best for form of government," their support for democracy is at least in part driven by a belief that such a system is good for the economy. Of the respondents, 64.4 percent defined the most essential characteristic of democracy as either a low level of inequality or the provision of basic necessities for all citizens. Another 12.1 percent stated that it is eliminating corruption. By contrast, only 6.0 percent defined democracy's most essential characteristic as the ability to change the government through elections and only 3.9 percent defined it as the right to criticize those in power. With 84.2 percent of respondents saying that the economy represents Egypt's greatest challenge, these findings should offer some powerful lessons to all of those interested in supporting Egypt's transition.

Stephen Cook zooms in on the internal debate.

Tom Finn heralds the rise of military robots:

After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Target confirmed. This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial “Terminators,” minus beefcake and time travel.

Thomas P.M. Barnett comments:

The whole slog of counterinsurgency is about two sides trying to create a sense of strategic despair ("How can we possibly win?") in the minds of the other side. The more the US signals its usual historic approach ("We will win with technological stuff in large numbers that keeps our casualties low"), the more we create strategic despair on the other side. This sort of technology will go a long way toward creating such despair.

Previous coverage of drones and war bots here.