Comedian Steve Gerben has a new talk entitled “On Increasing Immigration” that is funny, informative, and to some extent moving. If you wonder why some people advocate for (more) open immigration,[ref]I’ve blogged about immigration here at Difficult Run before multiple times.[/ref] but prefer your academia presented in an entertaining fashion, then Gerben’s talk is for you. Check it out below.
Society
Education & Inequality: Roland Fryer Lecture
Recent Clark medalist Roland Fryer gave a fascinating lecture for the inaugural Buchanan Speaker Series event at George Mason University towards the end of last year. The topic was “Education, Inequality, and Incentives.” Fryer has done impressive work on education, heading the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University. The need for education reform is real. In the conclusion of his lecture, after pointing out the long-term effects for children who got into the Harlem Children’s Zone (i.e. 5x reduction in pregnancy for girls and 3x reduction in incarceration for boys), he movingly says,
Do know how frustrating that is for a guy like me who grow up in these [low-income] neighborhoods? It’s almost maddening. It’s the lottery. We’re by random coin flip deciding who is going to have a 5x lower probability. And no, we don’t do it directly because that’d be mean. We do it indirectly by not doing what we know works. We talk about “no-excuses” schools. It’s time to have a no-excuses society. What other excuses do we have? We’ve seen the stuff from charters, we’ve seen the stuff from meta-analysis, you put it into the traditional public schools, the test scores go up. When the test scores go up using similar interventions, we get better social outcomes! What else!
…These are our children. It’s not a philosophical debate anymore…I got lucky. People look at me a lot and say, “Well, see! It can happen.” Well, shit, you can also drive a car with your feet, but it doesn’t make it a good idea…We know what works…The question is do we really have the courage and will to do it. Or deep down do we really not think this is possible.
See the lecture below to see what works.
Deflecting Asteroids: The AEI-Brookings Poverty Report
The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have come together to produce a report on reducing poverty. Recognizing the increase in child poverty with in the U.S., the group recommends multiple policies to combat it, including:
- Promote marriage as the most reliable route to family stability and resources.
- Promote delayed, responsible childbearing.
- Promote parenting skills and practices, especially among low-income parents.
- Promote skill development, family involvement, and employment among young men as well as women.
- Expand opportunities for the disadvantaged by improving their skills.
- Make work pay better than it does now for the less educated.
- Expand both work requirements and opportunities for the hard-to-employ while maintaining an effective work-based safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society, especially children.
- Make more jobs available.
- Increase public investment in two underfunded stages of education: preschool and postsecondary.
- Educate the whole child to promote social-emotional as well as academic skills.
- Modernize the organization and accountability of the educational system.
- Close resource gaps to reduce education gaps.
The project is based on three core values:
- That all Americans should have the opportunity to apply their talents and efforts to better themselves and their children, regardless of the circumstances of their birth;
- That all Americans have a responsibility to provide for themselves and their families to the best of their abilities before asking others for help;
- That all Americans are entitled to a basic level of security against the vicissitudes of life and, in a nation as rich as ours, to a baseline level of material well-being.
Perhaps even more interesting than the data and policies is the backstory of the project. It was ultimately the brainchild of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (who has been mentioned frequently here at Difficult Run) known as The Asteroids Club. He explains, “The metaphor was that American political life consists of each side pointing to real threats, real asteroids hurtling toward the Earth, but neither side is willing to turn its head for a moment to look at the other side’s perceived asteroid. If we could at least acknowledge that the other side’s concerns are valid, maybe we could help each other deflect our asteroids.” You can see him describe the origin and results of the project below.
This is what our political system needs and Haidt’s successful project provides me a little hope.
National Review: “When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense”
I know we’ve had a lot of pro-life pieces here recently, I guess the March for Life that coincides with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade brings it out in us. The National Review has a great piece from an early 70s “anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student” who once believed the pro-choice message. The piece explores how she was eventually persuaded otherwise (hint: science, the absence of rarity, and pro-womanhood.) It includes great quotables like
Abortion can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle.
and
Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.”
and
We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child?
Bam. Bam. Bam. It’s great, check it out.
“You Can’t Use Media If You Want To Understand the World”
So says statistician Hans Rosling in the Swedish Deadline interview below. Modern journalism often distorts our perception of the world, making many believe that we are headed to hell in a handbasket. But we’re not. Rosling explains to his skeptical interviewer that most countries are “in the middle” in terms of prosperity and the people of these countries “go to school, they get vaccinated, and they have two child families.” The overpopulation scare is nonsense, according to Rosling, because “the number of children in the world has stopped increasing[ref]This happens when people become more prosperous.[/ref] because most people use contraceptives.”[ref]Whether we should be happy that the population has stopped growing is another matter. Of course, there is the factor of abortion. However, both the support for and practice of abortion may be waning in the U.S. The American pro-life movement has made some progress in the last 20 years.[/ref] In response to the claims of “war, conflicts, chaos,” Rosling points to Nigeria’s “fantastic election,” the 2014 election in Indonesia, and India’s elimination of tetanus. The problem, in Rosling’s view, is that news outlets “only show a small part and call that “the world.”” When challenged as to what evidence provides the base for his worldview, Rosling’s concluding remark is priceless: “I use normal statistics that are compiled by the World Bank and the UN. And that’s not controversial. This isn’t something to discuss. I am right and you are wrong.”
If you haven’t seen Rosling’s site Gapminder, you should. Check it out.
Colbert Palin-Endorses Each Presidential Candidate
Stephen Colbert did an incredible bit on Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump. It begins with Colbert enjoying Palin’s strange speech, and then he Palin-endorses the other presidential candidates. I only wish he had done Bernie Sanders. Enjoy.
The Fourth Trimester
A mom’s photo of her post birth body has gone viral thanks to the raw understanding among women that (most[ref]I knew someone who wore skinny jeans without a bump immediately after birth. If you want to run 6 miles a day while pregnant, that may work for you too.[/ref]) women still look pregnant weeks and months after giving birth. It reminds me of Kate Middleton’s post birth photos that showed she, too, had a bump. One week after having my first child, I was at Target, alone (my daughter was still in the hospital) and I got the inevitable “When are you due?” question. I looked the same as I did 6 months pregnant. When I told the lady I was postpartum she looked at me horrified and sprinted away, not allowing me the chance to say “I know I still look pregnant, and it’s OK.” Truth is, most people don’t look like movie stars postpartum, or any other time.
Gun Safety vs. Gun Control
Nicholas Kristof has an excellent piece in The New York Times on what he calls “inconvenient facts” surrounding gun violence and gun laws. These include:
- “The number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993, and in that same period the gun homicide rate in the United States has dropped by half.”
- “A 113-page study found no clear indication that [the assault rifle ban] reduced shooting deaths for the 10 years it was in effect.”
- Overblown fears regarding open-carry and conceal-carry laws.
- “One poll found that 74 percent even of N.R.A. members favor universal background checks to acquire a gun.”
- “New York passed a law three years ago banning gun magazines holding more than seven bullets — without realizing that for most guns there is no such thing as a magazine for seven bullets or less.”
- “Some public health approaches to reducing gun violence have nothing to do with guns. Researchers find that a nonprofit called Cure Violence, which works with gangs, curbs gun deaths. An initiative called Fast Track supports high-risk children and reduces delinquency and adult crime.”[ref]This may be particularly important given that, statistically speaking, gun violence is experienced differently depending on race.[/ref]
Kristof concludes, “In short, let’s get smarter. Let’s make America’s gun battles less ideological and more driven by evidence of what works. If the left can drop the sanctimony, and the right can drop the obstructionism, if instead of wrestling with each other we can grapple with the evidence, we can save thousands of lives a year.”
Give it a read. And then give Nathaniel’s piece on the subject another read.
Atheist + Pro-Life
Kelsey Hazzard, president of Secular Pro-Life, an organization that promotes a pro-life stance based on science, has a excellent piece at Opposing Views about the religious tone of many abortion advocates. Hazzard discusses how this “magical thinking” was the basis of the Roe v. Wade decision and is a current pro-choicers are happy to ride, even if they are stereotypically the kind of people who would promote science first, as long as the result is more pro-choicers and more abortions.
Indeed, magical thinking is embedded in Roe v. Wade itself. The majority opinion discusses a variety of views concerning when human life begins… The notion that science is just one possible approach among many is a hallmark of magical thinking. The consensus of modern embryologists, and the beliefs of a civilization that thrived a millennium before the invention of the sonogram, are not equally valid. That the Supreme Court of the United States pretended that they were, and that such a farce remains good law more than forty years later, is an embarrassment to our legal system.
Check out the full piece here.
Religion Is Good for Families
Is religion bad for kids and for families? One recent study claims that religious kids are less altruistic than their secular peers. Now, this claim is based on kids in a non-random sample (not) giving stickers to each other. Stickers. But sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox explains why those eager to use studies like this to point out religion’s deficiencies are missing the mark:
On average, religion is a clear force for good when it comes to family unity and the welfare of children — the most important aspects of our day-to-day lives. Research, some of it my own, indicates that on average Americans who regularly attend services at a church, synagogue, temple or mosque are less likely to cheat on their partners; less likely to abuse them; more likely to enjoy happier marriages; and less likely to have been divorced.
He continues by pointing to data from the General Social Survey demonstrating that religious service attendance “seems to be a net positive for marriage in America” (it increases marriage and fertility worldwide as well). Further research “tells us that religious parents spend more time with their children.” Finally, “religious teens are more likely to eschew lying, cheating and stealing and to identify with the Golden Rule. Children from religious families are “rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents,” according to a nationally representative study of more than 16,000 children across the United States.” Despite its flaws, “religion in America is not the corrosive influence that it’s often made out to be nowadays. On the contrary, for many Americans, it’s a source of inspiration that redounds not only to their benefit, but also to their families and communities.”
Check out the full article for lots on interesting research.