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Fastest Things on Wings – Terry Masear

by Myrna Posted on July 18, 2018

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Fastest Things on Wings
Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood
Terry Masear

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: June 16, 2015

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A heartwarming memoir by “one of California’s hardest-working hummingbird rehabilitators . . .  will leave the average bird lover agog” ( The Washington Post ).   Before he collided with a limousine, Gabriel, an Anna’s hummingbird with a head and throat cloaked in iridescent magenta feathers, could spiral 130 feet in the air, dive 60 miles per hour in a courtship display, hover, and fly backward. When he arrived in rehab caked in road grime, he was so badly injured that he could barely perch. But Terry Masear, one of the busiest hummingbird rehabbers in the country, was determined to save this damaged bird, who seemed oddly familiar.    During the four months that Masear worked with Gabriel, she took in 160 other hummingbirds, from a miniature nestling rescued by a bulldog to a fledgling trapped inside a skydiving wind tunnel at Universal CityWalk, and Pepper, a female Anna’s injured on a film set.   During their time together, Pepper and Gabriel formed a special bond and, together, with Terry’s help, learned to fly again. Woven throughout Gabriel and Pepper’s stories are those of other colorful birds in a narrative filled with the science and magic surrounding these fascinating creatures. “This is a book about birds that is actually a book about love, and Masear does us a favor by risking heartbreak every day” ( Los Angeles Times ).   “I cannot believe what a gripping read this is.” —Robin Young, host of NPR’s Here and Now   “A book that will change forever the way you look at these little birds.” — Los Angeles Times   “This is a charming and lively summertime read, something for the patio or balcony, glass of iced tea at hand, a hummingbird or two zipping around the azaleas.” — Dallas Morning News   “I was riveted, charmed, delighted, devastated, profoundly moved, and taken to a magical place few people ever get to glimpse.” —Stacey O’Brien, author of  Wesley the Owl  

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Fastest Things on Wings – Terry Masear

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Drunk Driving Followup: The Mystery Solved!

by VedaReiter Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

Yesterday I wrote about the mystery of drunk driving: if stricter laws and harsher punishments really are responsible for a decline in drunk driving, why is it that alcohol-related fatalities have only declined at the same rate as every other kind of road fatality? Is it possible that all those laws have been useless?

I got several good responses, which confirmed that there’s a bit of a mystery here but pointed out that my data only went back to 1994. This misses the significant drop in drunk driving during the 80s and early 90s. Then I got an email from Darren Grant, an economics professor at Sam Houston State University, pointing me to a paper that decomposes exactly what happened and when. Grant’s paper, which relies on a microdata-based model of traffic fatalities, concludes that it’s legitimate to use the percentage of all road fatalities that involve alcohol—which has been flat for many years—as a proxy for the amount of drunk driving. It also breaks down the reason for the decline in drunk driving during the 80s and 90s. Without further ado, here is his chart:

There are several takeaways from this:

During the 80s and early 90s, drunk driving decreased significantly.
By the mid-90s, the level of drunk driving flattened out and has been flat ever since.
The effect of laws on drunk driving has been pretty modest. That’s the red band in the chart. Stricter laws are responsible for only a small fraction of the total decline.

There’s potentially some good news here. Grant concludes that the biggest effect by far has been from social forces, namely the increased stigma associated with drunk driving. If you discount demographics, which we have no control over, social stigma accounts for about half the drop in drunk driving. This suggests that what we need isn’t so much stricter laws, but a revitalized campaign to even further stigmatize drunk driving. I’m on board with that.

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Drunk Driving Followup: The Mystery Solved!

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Immigration and the Economy

by Marylou74S Posted on April 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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This post isn’t about immigration and the economy. It’s about immigration. And it’s about the economy. First up, here’s a survey from Pew Research about positive attitudes toward the economy:

Here’s the interesting part. It’s normal to assume that people think better of the economy when one of their own is president. But is it true? During the recovery from the Great Recession, Republicans consistently rated the economy worse than Democrats. When Trump took over, their views suddenly skyrocketed, with a full 61 percent now having a positive view of the economy. Apparently Republicans do indeed view the economy through a partisan lens.

If Democrats followed that pattern, their view of the economy would have plummeted in 2017. But it didn’t. It went up again, at about the same rate as previous years. Democrats, it turns out, don’t view the economy solely through a partisan lens. If you’re looking for an explanation, my guess is Fox News and the rest of the conservative disinformation machine. You can take your own guess in comments.

And now for immigration. Last month, DHS Secretary John Kelly bragged that illegal border crossings were down. This month he crowed about it again. But a sharp-eyed reader pointed out that there’s really nothing unusual about the latest numbers:

Border apprehensions in March have been on a steady downward trend for nearly two decades. This year’s numbers are just following that trend. Last month I thought that President Trump’s fear campaign might be having a real impact, but now I doubt it. There’s no special reason at all to think that anything he’s doing is having much effect at all.

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Immigration and the Economy

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Raw Data: Health Care Spending Growth Around the World

by BlairGaskin Posted on March 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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I got into a conversation today about my contention from last night that national health care systems are better at controlling costs than the private sector. We all know that US health care costs are the highest in the world, but are they growing faster than the rest of the world? And how about different health care sectors in the US?

I haven’t looked at this in years, so I decided to dig up the data and see. First off, here is growth in health care spending among a representative group of rich countries during recent decades:

This data is a little tricky because some countries changed the way they calculated health care spending during this period. I didn’t use any of them, and it’s possible that one or two might have grown faster than us. But the US is certainly in the top two or three, if not at the very top.

One problem with international comparisons of health care spending is that some countries are aging faster than others, and it stands to reason that countries with older populations will spend more than those with younger populations. Here’s a look at spending growth during the period 1970-2002 that controls for aging:

During these earlier decades there are several countries with higher growth rates than the US. I’m a little surprised there weren’t more, given that postwar European countries were still catching up to the US during the first half of this period.

Finally, here’s a comparison of growth rates just within the US:

The data here tells a pretty consistent story. Despite starting at a higher base, the US is in the top two or three in the world—maybe at the very top—for health care spending growth over the past half century or so. Within the US, private health care spending growth has outpaced both Medicare and Medicaid. Both internationally and in the US, government-run health care programs appear to be better at controlling costs than the private sector.

Of course, there are other sources of data and other ways of doing comparisons, so don’t take this as the last word. If I come across any other studies that seem to have interesting ways of slicing the data, I’ll follow up.

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Raw Data: Health Care Spending Growth Around the World

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Trump Thinks Election Day Is November 28

by EdytheHenke Posted on October 12, 2016

Mother Jones

With only 29 days to go until Election Day, the clock is ticking for both presidential candidates to encourage their supporters to register to vote, especially because some registration deadlines are fast approaching in many states. During a rally in Panama City, Florida, on Tuesday, Donald Trump urged people in the state—which just got its registration deadline extended because of Hurricane Matthew—to register and then vote on Election Day.

Unfortunately, he got the date wrong.

“Make sure you get out and vote November 28,” he said. “We’ve gotta win.”

In case you missed it, election day is Tuesday, November 8. But for the GOP nominee, November 28 is also notable because it’s the scheduled court date for the class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University.

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Trump Thinks Election Day Is November 28

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Weekly Flint Water Report: June 17-23

by KalaLefebvre Posted on June 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is this week’s Flint water report. As usual, I’ve eliminated outlier readings above 2,000 parts per billion, since there are very few of them and they can affect the averages in misleading ways. During the week, DEQ took 258 samples. The average for the past week was 12.13.

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Weekly Flint Water Report: June 17-23

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Donald Trump Goes to Bat for Planned Parenthood

by JocelynHCVR Posted on February 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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During Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate, Donald Trump took a controversial stand for a Republican candidate: He vigorously defended Planned Parenthood.

“As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, I’m pro-life, I’m totally against abortion having to do with Planned Parenthood,” the GOP front-runner said during Thursday’s CNN-Telemundo Republican debate from Texas. “But millions and millions of women, cervical cancer, breast cancer, are helped by Planned Parenthood. So you can say whatever you want, but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly.”

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Donald Trump Goes to Bat for Planned Parenthood

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Ben Carson Says Islam Is Not a Religion But a "Life Organization System"

by JanisPolglaze Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ben Carson has a homework assignment for Iowans the weekend before the presidential caucuses: read up on the history of Islam. And what message will they take away? He thinks that, after a bit of studying, “you won’t call it a religion, you’ll call it a life organization system,” one that has a “apocalyptic vision.”

During a speech at the University of Iowa, Carson said that the US needed to take ISIS more seriously. The first step? He implored the Iowans in the room to learn more about the origins of the religion, hinting that ISIS’ violence is an inevitable result of the founding of Islam. “What I would suggest is that everybody here—we’ve got a weekend coming up—take a few hours and read up on Islam,” Carson said. “Please do that. Read about Muhammad. Read about how he got his start in Mecca. Read about how he was seen by the people in Mecca—not very favorably, by the way. How his uncle, nevertheless, was an influential guy. Protected him. When his uncle died, he had to flee. He went north to Medina. That’s where he put together his armies, and they began to massacre anybody who didn’t believe the same way they did.”

I didn’t want to read too much into Carson’s description of Islam, so followed up with him after the event, asking what lessons exactly he wanted Iowans to draw from his reading assignment. “I think they don’t understand all the aspects of it, including Sharia, how that plays in,” he responded. “I don’t think most people actually understand what jihad is. They don’t understand the whole apocalyptic vision that they have. When you understand that, you understand what drives an organization like ISIS.”

Still a bit confused, I double checked to see if those lessons encapsulated the entire religion, or just ISIS. “It doesn’t encapsulate everything,” he replied. “It’s really not, once you read it, you won’t call it a religion, you’ll call it a life organization system.”

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Ben Carson Says Islam Is Not a Religion But a "Life Organization System"

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The Feds Have a Secret Plan to Stop the Next Car Pollution Scandal

by GretchenGatliff Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Days after Volkswagen admitted that half a million cars it sold in the US contained software enabling them to evade clean air laws, top Environmental Protection Agency officials said they are planning to toughen emissions testing for all automakers. The EPA now plans to examine vehicles for so-called defeat devices.

In a letter released this morning, the EPA said that federal regulations allow the agency to “test or require testing on any vehicle at a designated location, using driving cycles and conditions that may reasonably be expected to be encountered in normal operation and use, for the purposes of investigating a potential defeat device.” The EPA said it planned to begin conducting these additional procedures when vehicles undergo emissions and fuel economy testing, and it warned that the new procedures “may add time to the confirmatory test process and…additional mileage may be accumulated.”

“We are stepping up our testing,” Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator, told reporters. “We take seriously our responsibility to oversee the enforcement of clean air regulations. The VW violations have made it clear that we need to adapt our oversight.”

Last Friday, the EPA issued a citation to Volkswagen for equipping nearly 500,000 diesel-powered cars sold since 2009 with software that can detect when the car is undergoing federal testing for smog-forming emissions. During the test, the cars meet the standard; under normal driving conditions, emissions are up to 40 times higher. Similar devices were installed on some 11 million VW cars worldwide, producing illegal air pollution that may contribute to thousands of deaths. The resulting scandal devastated VW’s share value and forced the ouster of its CEO.

The EPA is currently investigating the full extent of the illegal software program and could ultimately deliver up to $18 billion in fines. Today’s announcement doesn’t affect that investigation. Officials said that no recall has been announced and that if one is eventually called for, VW drivers will hear about it directly from the company.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy said the agency is concerned that other automakers could have similar devices that have gone undetected. Even if they don’t, VW is responsible for a new raft of regulatory headaches for all companies that want to sell cars in the US.

Chris Grundler, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation, wouldn’t say how exactly his agency would sniff out defeat devices. But it would add additional time and rigor to the testing process, he said.

“We’re not going to tell them what the test is,” he said. “They don’t need to know.”

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The Feds Have a Secret Plan to Stop the Next Car Pollution Scandal

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Stephen Colbert Shuts Down Ted Cruz Over Ronald Reagan Legacy

by RodericGrasser Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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If there was one clear winner that emerged from last week’s Republican presidential debate, it was Ronald Reagan, whose legacy was repeatedly invoked and showered with 45 instances of praise from his admiring disciples, including Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Texas senator’s Reagan fandom was tested during an appearance on the “Late Show” last night, when host Stephen Colbert pointed out that Reagan famously supported both an amnesty program for immigrants and raising taxes—two policies Cruz has vehemently railed against throughout his own campaign for president.

“Reagan raised taxes,” Colbert said. “Reagan actually had an amnesty program for illegal immigrants. Neither of those things would allow Reagan to be nominated today. So to what level can you truly emulate Ronald Reagan?”

“Could you agree with Reagan on those two things?” he asked.

Cruz was then forced to admit that no, contrary to his previously uncritical adulation of Reagan, he wouldn’t be able to endorse two of Reagan’s major positions.

The two continued to spar on policy items, including gay marriage. During one point, Colbert asked members of the audience to stop booing Cruz, who appeared visibly uneasy in his guest chair. We can’t wait to see how Donald Trump will fare when he swings by the “Late Show” tonight. Stay tuned.

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Stephen Colbert Shuts Down Ted Cruz Over Ronald Reagan Legacy

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