Tag Archives: jones

Chart of the Day: Hooray for the Economy!

by ChristeCarder Posted on December 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday featured several gloomy posts—strictly a coincidence, I assure you—so today here’s some good news. Matt Yglesias passes along the word that for the first time since the Great Recession, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index broke into positive territory this week. Here’s Gallup’s explanation for the steady rise since mid-September:

While various factors likely contribute to the rise in economic confidence, the weekly average price of gas in the U.S. began to fall precipitously in the late summer and, over the last four months, the price has fallen by nearly 30% — an economic boon to most Americans. In fact, for the week of Dec. 22, the average price of gasoline was as low as it has been since the first half of 2009. Additionally, the U.S. stock market rose in December to its highest levels in history while Gallup’s unemployment rate fell to the lowest since its daily tracking began in January 2008.

So there you have it. A little late to help Democrats in the November midterms, but not too late for 2016.

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Chart of the Day: Hooray for the Economy!

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Today’s Birthday Advice: Celebrate Responsibly

by RandalHardwick Posted on December 29, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s a fascinating new factlet. University of Chicago economics researcher Pablo Pena, who is apparently dedicated to putting the dismal back in the dismal science, tells us that we’re more likely to die on our birthdays. If you’re in your 20s, you’re 25 percent more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day. On weekends this rises to 48 percent.

Now, your chance of dying on any day is pretty small if you’re in your 20s, so a 25 percent increase isn’t actually much. Still! Watch out for those drunken birthday bashes! If you’re under ten, watch out for the sugar highs from too much cake and punch. If you’re in your 50s, watch out for….something. I’m not sure what. Above 60, apparently we all give up on birthday Saturnalias and our risk of dying isn’t much higher than average.

This comes via Wonkblog’s Jason Millman, who provides this sage advice: “celebrate responsibly.” I always do.

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Today’s Birthday Advice: Celebrate Responsibly

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The NSA Is Surprisingly Open-Minded About Analysts Spying on Their Spouses

by BarneyNiland Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Via Bloomberg, we learn that the NSA chose Christmas Eve to release its latest set of reports on violations of surveillance rules by its analysts. Nice work, NSA! For the most part, the reports don’t appear to contain anything especially new, but I was struck by this particular violation:

The OIG’s Office of Investigation initiated an investigation of an allegation than an NSA analyst had conducted an unauthorized intelligence activity. In an interview conducted by the NSA/CSS Office of Security and Counterintelligence, the analyst reported that, during the past two or three years, she had searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting….Although the investigation is ongoing, the analyst has been advised to cease her activities.

Wait a second. She was caught using NSA surveillance facilities to spy on her husband and was merely told to cease her activities? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to, say, fire her instantly and bar her from possessing any kind of security clearance ever again in her life? What am I missing here?

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The NSA Is Surprisingly Open-Minded About Analysts Spying on Their Spouses

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Chart of the Day: War on Christmas Continues to Take a Drubbing

by JoeannR90dydqr Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

With the Christmas season now officially closed, I figured everyone would appreciate a final update on how our troops performed this year in the War on Christmas™. And since my Wikipedia entry insists that this blog is known for “original statistical and graphical analysis,” that’s what you’re going to get.

So then: the chart below is a Google Ngram showing the popularity of Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays. I’m sorry to report that contrary to suggestions from certain quarters, Happy Holidays has been taking a terrific and sustained beating ever since the mid-70s. I took the liberty of extending the trendline based on an extensive personal sampling of popular music and TV shows, and I’m afraid the results were devastating: 2014 was yet another year of Happy Holidays getting its ass kicked. In 1975 we were behind by 2 x 10-5 percentage points. Today we’re behind by 5 x 10-5 percentage points, and falling farther behind every year.

I know this might be discouraging news to some of you, but buck up, urban liberals! Happy Holidays is still doing better than the Lakers, the Bears, and the Knicks. Just wait ’til next year.

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Chart of the Day: War on Christmas Continues to Take a Drubbing

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Christmas Movies Are Now Just As Horrible As Everything Else Related to Christmas

by bisericidinlemn Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Well, this answers a question for me. Dan Drezner describes the standard Jewish ritual for Christmas day:

Chinese food and a movie. Perfectly pleasant rituals, made special by the fact that the Gentiles are all at home or at church….

No longer.

I don’t know when it became a thing for Christian families to also go see a movie on the day commemorating the birth of Jesus, but personal experience tells me this is a relatively recent phenomenon — i.e., the past 15 years or so. All I know is that what used to be a pleasant movie-going experience is now extremely crowded.

Several years ago I naively decided that it might be nice to see a movie on Christmas. I figured the crowds would be really light and we could just slip right in. Needless to say, I was disabused of this notion quickly, and headed for home just as fast as my car would take me. At the time, I wondered what was going on. Had things changed? Was I just unaware that Christmas had always been a big movie day? Or what?

I guess it’s the former. There really was a golden era when Christmas movies were uncrowded, but it disappeared before I even knew it existed. Sic transit etc.

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Christmas Movies Are Now Just As Horrible As Everything Else Related to Christmas

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Someone Needs to Invent a Great Non-Opioid Painkiller

by JulianaWillifor Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Austin Frakt writes about the stunningly widespread use and abuse of narcotic painkillers in the US:

Opioids now cause more deaths than any other drug, more than 16,000 in 2010. That year, the combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen became the most prescribed medication in the United States. Patients here consumed 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone, the opioid in Vicodin. They also consumed 80 percent of the world’s oxycodone, present in Percocet and OxyContin, and 65 percent of the world’s hydromorphone, the key ingredient in Dilaudid, in 2010. (Some opioids are also used to treat coughs, but that use doesn’t seem to be a major factor in the current wave of problems.)

When I got out of the hospital a couple of months ago, I was in considerable pain. The answer was morphine. For about two weeks, I took a couple of low-dose morphine tablets each day. Then the pain eased and I stopped.

I resisted the morphine at first, and my doctor had to argue me into using it regularly. “You broke a bone in your back,” she told me. “Your pain is legitimate. We have a lot of experience treating pain with morphine, and you’ll be all right.”

I finally listened, and the morphine did indeed work as advertised. But it somehow got me thinking. Morphine? That’s the best we can do? This stuff was invented 200 years ago. And while there are newer painkillers around, they’re all opioids of one kind or another with all the usual horrible side effects1. How is it that in over a century of research, we still know so little about pain that we haven’t been able to create a powerful, non-opioid painkiller?

I’m not really going anywhere with this. I’m just curious. Are there any good books, or even long magazine articles, about this? Why is that even after gazillions of dollars of effort, we’re still relying on variants of the opium poppy for serious pain relief? It’s the 21st century. How come we can’t do better?

1Addiction, nausea, wooziness, constipation, etc.

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Someone Needs to Invent a Great Non-Opioid Painkiller

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Friday Cat Blogging – 19 December 2014

by JeremiaMack Posted on December 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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I have to run, but before I do here’s what passes for an action shot of the dynamic duo. It’s about the best I can do these days. As you might guess, they’re entranced with something we’re waving around just outside the frame. Maybe a pencil? I’m not sure. But with cats, the cheapest cat toys are always the best.

(Seriously. Hopper’s favorite, by far, is an empty toilet paper tube. She just goes nuts over them.)

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Friday Cat Blogging – 19 December 2014

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

by ChristiGuest Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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From James Pethokoukis:

The energy sector gives, and the energy sector takes. The stunning drop in oil prices looks like bad news for the “Texas Miracle.” (Texas is responsible for 40% of all US oil production — vs. 25% five years ago — and all of the net US job growth since 2007.) This from JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli: “As we weigh the evidence, we think Texas will, at the least, have a rough 2015 ahead, and is at risk of slipping into a regional recession.”

Man, Rick Perry is one lucky guy, isn’t he? It’s true that the “Texas Miracle” may not be quite the miracle Perry would like us to believe. As the chart below shows in a nutshell, the Texas unemployment rate has fared only slightly better than the average of all its surrounding states.

Still, Texas has certainly had strong absolute job growth. However, this is mostly due to (a) population growth; (b) the shale oil boom; and (c) surprisingly strict mortgage loan regulations combined with loose land use rules, which allowed Texas to escape the worst of the housing bubble. Perry had nothing to do with any of this. And now that oil is collapsing and might bring the miracle to a sudden end, Perry is leaving office and can avoid all blame for what happens next.

One lucky guy indeed.

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

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Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

by Aileen5637 Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama and other world leaders are in Australia for the G20. They spent the day doing world leader things like talking about climate change and tourist things like holding koalas.

President Obama holds a koala before the start of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Nov 11, 2014 at 2:19pm PST

Also, via Mother Jones’ Senior Australian correspondent James West, the Daily Telegraph has had better days:

Our friends at the Huffington Post have a whole gallery of heads of state passing koalas around like they’re going out of style..

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Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

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Let John Oliver Explain the Insane Amount of Power Your Bizarre State Legislature Holds

by ClarissR57 Posted on November 3, 2014

Mother Jones

With the midterm elections finally arriving tomorrow, John Oliver is asking voters to do everyone a solid and pay attention to what’s happening on the local level. Though they often resemble ridiculous shit shows, state houses actually wield an incredible amount of power and affect everything from abortion laws to gun control.

“All those conspiracy theories about a shadow government are actually true,” Oliver explained on the latest Last Week Tonight. “Only it’s not a group of billionaires meeting in a mountain lair in Zurich. It’s a bunch of pasty bureaucrats meeting in a windowless committee room in Lansing, Michigan.”

It’s these “pasty bureaucrats” who are quietly creating legislation all around the country. According to Oliver, while Congress passed only 185 bills this session, state legislatures passed an astounding 24,000. And as Mother Jones reported recently, state legislatures are looking awfully red, with Republicans currently boasting single-party control both houses of state legislatures in 23 states.

“The senate is likely to remain inactive no matter which party controls it after Tuesday,” Oliver said. “So why all this attention on the national level where almost nothing is happening, when down on the local level everything is happening?”

Great question. Watch below for more.

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Let John Oliver Explain the Insane Amount of Power Your Bizarre State Legislature Holds

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