Tag Archives: jobs

The Chattering Classes Are Now in Full Chicken Little Mode

by Kiera5434lfzrmb Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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We are in full feeding frenzy mode. Politico, by my count, has no fewer than 14 front page headlines today about the great Obamacare debacle. The Washington Post’s four top news articles and its four top op-eds are all about Obamacare, and the top op-eds are uniformly panicky.

Is panic just built into political observers, or what? Ruth Marcus thinks Obama’s entire presidency at risk. Ditto for Milbank. And if that’s not bad enough for you, Krauthammer suggests that yesterday’s events spell doom for the entire liberal project. It’s almost a relief to get down to the unsigned editorial, which is merely troubled, not in full-scale meltdown (or, in Krauthammer’s case, glee).

So what causes this? It’s pretty obviously ridiculous, and I suspect that even the folks writing this stuff would agree about that if they took a breath. But they write it anyway. Are they truly that panic-stricken? Do they simply need something exciting to write? Or what?

Well, this isn’t very exciting, but here’s what really happened yesterday. Obama made a short speech and then took questions. It wasn’t the high point of his presidency, but virtually no one outside the Beltway thought it was a disaster. It was just another forgettable presidential press conference. The Obamacare website is in deep trouble, but the evidence is pretty clear that it really is getting better, and will continue to get better. Lots of people are suffering from rate shock, but not as many people as Republicans and the press would have you believe. It’s early days, and signups will continue to improve as we get closer to the deadline. Insurers are upset with Obama’s new fix, but they’ll calm down. Their denunciations yesterday were pretty pro forma.

This is a bleak moment for Obama, but it’s not his Iraq or even his Katrina. Within a few months everything will settle down. Republicans have an obvious political motive for stoking panic, but the rest of us should be a little smarter about buying into it. OK?

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The Chattering Classes Are Now in Full Chicken Little Mode

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 15, 2013

by SandraJohansen Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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Members of the Utah Army National Guard 2-211 Aviation Battalion assist members of the 19th Special Forces Group with freefall and static line parachute jumps near Camp Williams, Utah, Oct. 30, 2013. The 2-211 assisted the 19th SFG with maintaining airborne qualification as well as jump master qualifications. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt.Tim Chacon.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 15, 2013

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Study: Recent Warming May Have Been Dramatically Underestimated

by kosiczek1910 Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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The so-called global warming “pause”—in essence, the contention that global warming has slowed down or even stopped over the past 15 years—drew dramatic media attention. Arguably, it derailed the entire rollout of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report back in late September.

All that….and yet a new study in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society suggests there might not have even been a global warming “pause” at all. Rather, the notion of a “pause” may just be the result of incomplete data: In particular, a lack of weather stations in the remote Arctic region. That gap is problematic because we know that Arctic amplification is occurring and global warming is moving particularly fast there. The dramatic new low in Arctic sea ice extent in the year 2012 put an exclamation point on that finding.

The new paper, by Kevin Cowtan of the University of York in the UK and Robert Way of the University of Ottawa, uses an array of techniques to show that the lack of Arctic coverage probably biases global temperature estimates, and particularly those from the Hadley Center in the UK, in a cool direction. Then the study use two approaches, including one drawing on data from satellites, to try to fill this well known gap in observational temperature data. The upshot is quite dramatic: as RealClimate.org points out, the new temperature trend over the past 15 years falls directly into line with the larger warming trend. The alleged global warming slowdown vanishes.

On the just released episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast (stream above), Penn State climate researcher Michael Mann commented on the new study and its significance. “We’ve known for some time that there’s a potential bias in some estimates of the global average temperature from not including some parts of the Arctic, where the data are sparse, but where we know most of the warming is taking place,” Mann explained. “And if you don’t sample that part of the Arctic, you’re underestimating the rate at which the globe is warming.”

The whole idea of a global warming pause is “really not supported by good science,” concludes Mann.

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Study: Recent Warming May Have Been Dramatically Underestimated

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There Will Be No Congressional Fix For Canceled Health Care Policies

by Gwenn Record Posted on November 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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This is just a quick note to anyone who’s worried and/or hopeful that Congress will pass some kind of legislative fix for people whose health insurance has been canceled due to Obamacare. It won’t happen. Republicans are interested only in Obamacare’s failure and will refuse to support any Democratic bill that genuinely addresses the problem. Conversely, Democrats are interested only in improving Obamacare and relieving the political pressure they’re feeling. They will refuse to support any Republican bill that contains an obvious poison pill. Unless I’m missing something, the intersection of these two positions is the null set. Thus, there is no bill that can pass Congress.

This is not a joke. No one should waste any time reporting or commenting on the various bills that are likely to pop up over the next few weeks. It’s all just posturing. Obama’s regulatory fix is the only one we’re going to get.

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There Will Be No Congressional Fix For Canceled Health Care Policies

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Watson Not Just for Jeopardy! Anymore

by ElmoDonohoe Posted on November 14, 2013

Mother Jones

IBM plans to make Watson, the computer that beat the all-time Jeopardy! champs, available on the web to everyone. But why? In addition to the PR value for its cloud computing business, I suspect the answer is at the bottom of this New York Times story:

Besides gaining bragging rights and a much bigger customer base, IBM may be accelerating the growth of Watson’s power by putting it in the cloud. Mr. Gold said that Watson would retain learning from each customer interaction, gaining the ability to do things like interacting in different languages or identifying human preferences. IBM has taken steps to keep these improvements for its own benefit, by retaining rights in user agreements that customers are required to sign.

Once it’s publicly available, Watson is going to receive a tidal wave of new interactions that it can learn from. Basically, the public will be doing IBM’s beta testing for it. Everybody wins.

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Watson Not Just for Jeopardy! Anymore

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Am I Really Ambi-Cognitive?

by bestpage Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Megan McArdle just made me waste 30 seconds on a test that’s designed to show whether I’m left or right brained. The answer, supposedly, is that I use both sides equally, which strikes me as fairly unlikely. I’m also suspicious of the test. One question asks, “Put your hand on your head. Which hand did you use?” Well, I used my left hand, but that’s because my right hand was on the mouse. So does that count?

But forget the kvetching. Here’s one question that perplexed me: “Look at an object and close one eye. Which eye is still open?” I did that, and my right eye was open. But just as I clicked that answer, I realized something was wrong. I’m left eyed. When I look through a camera viewfinder, for example, I always use my left eye. Using my right eye would feel as awkward as using my left hand to write.

But, in fact, if I just close an eye to look at something in the distance, I do indeed close my left eye and use my right eye. I just tried this a few times, and it turns out there are two reasons for this. First, I have better control over my left eye muscles, so closing my left eye is a little easier than closing my right eye. Second, my right eye seems more comfortable to use, even though I’m wearing glasses that correct both eyes to 20/20.

And yet, I still use my left eye for a camera viewfinder (or a microscope or a telescope or anything similar), and I always have. That’s kind of weird. I wonder what accounts for it?

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Am I Really Ambi-Cognitive?

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

by Anatoleia3 Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Via Tyler Cowen, here’s a chart of starting salaries for attorneys from Peter Turchin. It shows what’s now a fairly familiar bimodal distribution: there’s a relatively normal spread of salaries on the left centered at $50K and declining close to zero at $100K. And then there’s a second peak on the right.

This bimodal distribution didn’t exist 20 years ago, and there are several theories to explain how it evolved. But that’s not what I’m interested in for the moment. What I’m curious about is how sharp the second peak is. It’s not really a second distribution at all. Nearly 20 percent of starting attorneys belong to the super-elite group that gets high pay, but they all get exactly the same high pay: $160,000. Why is that? Can it really be the case that all of these super elites are precisely as elite as each other? Is there really not even a whit of sub-competition for this lucky 20 percent that would produce a few of them getting $180,000 or $200,000?

Why is the second peak so sharp? Normally, I’d toss out a few ideas, but I can’t really think of any aside from some kind of weird cultural collusion among top law firms. But that doesn’t really sound right. So what’s going on?

UPDATE: Based on comments, the answer seems, indeed, to be “weird cultural collusion among top law firms.” Except that it’s not really all that weird. It’s like one gas station lowering its price and suddenly all the other gas stations on the same corner start charging the exact same price. There are only a few dozen super-elite law firms, and they pretty much all offer the exact same super-elite starting salaries. From comments:

The Commentor: The primary reason for the spike is that large law firms have a herd mentality. No one wants to be below the market when recruiting from the 14 or so schools we all recruit from. There is close to perfect information about the salaries at the firms on the Internet and if the market leaders pay 160K for a kid from one of these schools, then the other top 50 or so firms will all largely pay the same too….Truth be told a very small percentage of graduates get into top law firms. We are hiring far fewer than we used to. They have next to no chance to make partner, and most try to stay long enough to pay off their 200K+ of student debt before we fire them or they leave.

Mannahatta: There are multiple outlets (websites, magazines, directories) that publish starting salaries for big law firms. So, there absolutely is a level of implicit collusion that goes on between law firms. For the most part these firms are difficult to distinguish for law students, and it’s difficult for firms to make fine distinctions between someone with a certain GPA from one law school or another. So firms tend to compete for graduates on the basis of potential bonuses, what the firm has to offer in terms of specialties, training, etc., rather than starting salaries.

Read the full comments for more details. Via email, a couple of folks who work in Big Law say that Cravath has traditionally been the first mover in this super-elite competition. “But, during the real estate bubble that led to a biglaw bubble, Simpson Thacher, another top firm, started offering $160k in an attempt to jump Cravath. To stay competitive, everyone had to follow suit.”

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Starting Salaries for Attorneys Are Pretty Weird

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 13, 2013

by ChesterRi Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Sergeant First Class Adam Silvis, a medical platoon sergeant with the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, moves under fire during Expert Field Medical Badge testing on Camp Buehring, Kuwait, Oct. 13, 2013. This is the first time in 14 years that EFMB testing has been conducted in Kuwait. Photo by Sgt. Adam C. Keith, U.S. Army Central.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 13, 2013

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MAP: Is Your State Ready for Climate Disasters?

by dwsfwa Posted on November 12, 2013

Mother Jones

Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

Whether it’s wildfires in the West, drought in the Midwest, or sea level rise on the Eastern seaboard, chances are good your state is in for its own breed of climate-related disasters. Every state is required to file a State Hazard Mitigation Plan with FEMA, which lays out risks for that state and its protocols for handling catastrophe. But as a new analysis from Columbia University’s Center for Climate Change Law reveals, many states’ plans do not take climate change into account.

Michael Gerrard, the Center’s director, said his team combed through all 50 reports to see how accurately and comprehensively climate change was taken into consideration, if at all, and grouped them into four ranked categories:

  1. No discussion of climate change or inaccurate discussion of climate change.
  2. Minimal mention of climate change related issues.
  3. Accurate but limited discussion of climate change and/or brief discussion with acknowledgement of need for future inclusion.
  4. Thorough discussion of climate change impacts on hazards and climate adaptation actions.

While FEMA itself acknowledged this summer that climate change could increase areas at risk from flooding by 45 percent overt the next century, states are not required to discuss climate change in their mitigation plans. The Columbia analysis didn’t take into account climate planning outside the scope of the mitigation plans, like state-level greenhouse gas limits or renewable energy incentives. And as my colleague Kate Sheppard reported, some government officials have avoided using climate science terminology even in plans that implicitly address climate risks; states that didn’t use terms like “climate change” and “global warming” in their mitigation plans were docked points in Columbia’s ranking algorithm.

Gerrard said he wasn’t surprised to find more attention paid to climate change in coastal states like Alaska and New York that are closest to the front lines. But he was surprised to find that a plurality of states landed in the least-prepared category, suggesting a need, he said, for better communication of non-coastal risks like drought and heat waves.

“We had hoped that more of the states would have dealt with climate change in a more forthright way,” he said.

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MAP: Is Your State Ready for Climate Disasters?

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Will Robots Dream of Electric Anythings?

by Constantinee9g Posted on November 11, 2013

Mother Jones

Today Paul Waldman interviews James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era. I thought this was an interesting assertion:

Furthermore, at an advanced level, as I write in Our Final Invention, citing the work of AI-maker and theorist Steve Omohundro, artificial intelligence will have drives much like our own, including self-protection and resource acquisition. It will want to achieve its goals and marshal sufficient resources to do so. It will want to avoid being turned off. When its goals collide with ours it will have no basis for valuing our goals, and use whatever means are at its disposal for achieving its goals.

But why? Animals have these drives because we evolved them. In the biological world, these are extemely survival adaptive traits, and species that have them will outbreed species that don’t. But they have nothing to do with intelligence or consciousness. They’re mindless drives that we possess for no reason except that all of our ancestors possessed them and then passed them down to us.

Intelligent machines might end up having these drives, but then again, they might not. There’s no special reason that an AI construct would be especially curious, or fearful of death, or expansion-minded, or any of the other things we almost automatically associate with intelligence. Intelligent machines might not care one way or the other if they’re shut off. They might not want more resources. They might not care about running the world. All of these mindless drives that so dominate biological life might be matters of no urgency at all to a machine that didn’t evolve them.

Then again, they might be. But I don’t think it’s inevitable.

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Will Robots Dream of Electric Anythings?

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