The FCC is proposing new laws that would force cable TV operators and radio broadcasters to publish information online about who buys political ad time and for how much. The legislation would make it much easier for media watchdogs, concerned citizens, and journalists to track political spending across the country and would be an important tool for political transparency — especially as campaigns begin using more and more targeted ads to win over voters.
The Many Causes of America’s Decline in Crime →
So incarceration skyrocketed and crime was in free fall. But conflating simple correlation with causation in this case is a costly mistake. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, called What Caused the Crime Decline? finds that increasing incarceration is not the answer. As Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in the foreword, “This prodigious rate of incarceration is not only inhumane, it is economic folly.”
Our team of economic and criminal justice researchers spent the last 20 months testing fourteen popular theories for the crime decline. We delved deep into over 30 years of data collected from all 50 states and the 50 largest cities. The results are sharply etched: We do not know with precision what caused the crime decline, but the growth in incarceration played only a minor role, and now has a negligible impact.
...We find that this growth in incarceration was responsible for approximately 5 percent of the drop in crime in the 1990s. (This could vary from 0 to 10 percent.) Since then, however, increases in incarceration have had essentially zero effect on crime. The positive returns are gone. That means the colossal number of Americans cycling in and out of prisons and jails over the last 13 years was not responsible for any meaningful fraction of the drop in crime.
...Incarceration is not just any government policy. Mass incarceration comes at an incredible cost. "A year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard," Stiglitz points out. Taxpayers spend $260 billion a year on criminal justice. And there will continue to be less and less to show for it, as more people are incarcerated.
There are significant human costs as well—to individuals, families, communities, and the country. Spending a dollar on prisons is not the same as spending it on public television or the military. Prisons result in an enormous waste of human capital. Instead of so many low-level offenders languishing behind bars, they could be earning wages and contributing to the economy. Incarceration is so concentrated in certain communities that it has disrupted the gender balance and marriage rates. The costs are intergenerational. There are 2.7 million minor children with a parent behind bars. More than 1 in 9 black children have a parent incarcerated.
Research also shows that incarceration can actually increase future crime. Criminologists call this the “criminogenic effect” of prison. It is particularly powerful on low-level offenders. Once individuals enter prison, they are surrounded by other prisoners who have often committed more serious and violent offenses. Prison conditions also breed violent and anti-social behavior. Former prisoners often have trouble finding employment and reintegrating into society due to legal barriers, social stigma, and psychological scarring from prison. Approximately 600,000 prisoners reenter society each year. Those who can find employment earn 40 percent less than their peers, and 60 percent face long-term unemployment. Researchers estimate that the country’s poverty rate would have been more than 20 percent lower between 1980 and 2004 without mass incarceration.
Why Hacking the Atmosphere Won't Happen Any Time Soon →
It’s worth spending some more time on the National Academy of Sciences reports on geoengineering prospects and concerns — the concerns mainly being about adding sun-blocking particles to the atmosphere to counteract global warming driven by the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
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Pierrehumbert’s prime concern (there are plenty more, all legitimate) is that any sun-blocking intervention done at climate scale would have to continue unabated for millenniums, or until CO2 removal was in high gear — or risk climatic whiplash if veils of reflective materials dissipated.
That should be enough to deter any countries from going global with such efforts.
But I’ve long seen plenty of other reasons why this is almost assuredly a nonstarter in any case. The main one is diplomatic, not technological. Who sets the thermostat?
Canada's Right-to-Die Ruling May Fuel U.S. Movement: Experts →
The Canadian Supreme Court's reversal of a 21-year ban on doctor-assisted death offers a bold, new legal argument that could propel the American movement—in short: Aid-in-dying is pro-life, activists assert.
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To qualify for assisted dying in Canada, an individual must be a consenting, mentally competent adult with a "grievous and irremediable" condition that causes "endless suffering," physical or psychological, the court said.
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"People [in most states] who are terminally ill and looking forward to some sort of horrific symptoms before they die are forced to end their lives prematurely … while they can still boost themselves over the balcony or in front of the train or put a gun in in their mouths," Coombs Lee told NBC News.
If death-with-dignity was legal across the U.S., those people might live longer, knowing they could have a "peaceful aid-in-dying option," she said. "It prolongs lives, pure and simple."
Only five U.S. states allow aid-in-dying: Oregon, Washington and Vermont by legislation; and Montana and New Mexico by court rulings currently being challenged. Forty states explicitly ban the practice.
New Evidence that Half of America is Broke →
I'm unsure of the reliability of these statistics, but they would not surprise me.
If I die on Mars: meet the people on a mission to be first on the red planet ... and stay there – video →
Three volunteers are on the shortlist to be among four people on the Mars One programme, the first manned space flight to Mars – a one-way trip that's effectively a suicide mission. A physics student in the UK, a young doctor from Mozambique and an Iraqi-American woman, all happy to sacrifice their futures for a place in history. Why do they want to leave Earth, and who are they leaving behind? As the list of potential Mars explorers is whittled down further on 16 February, meet those competing to be the first to land on the Red Planet.
‘SO THE OPPOSITE OF ADDICTION IS NOT SOBRIETY. IT IS HUMAN CONNECTION.’ →
We are social creatures.
Obama Sends Letter to Congress Seeking Authorization of ISIS Fight →
President Obama on Wednesday formally asked Congress to authorize a three-year military campaign against the terrorist group the Islamic State that would avoid a large-scale invasion and occupation but in addition to air power could include limited ground operations by American forces to hunt down enemy leaders or rescue American personnel.
A proposal sent by the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday would formally give the president the power to continue the airstrikes he has been conducting since last fall against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as well as “associated persons or forces.” The measure would set limits that were never imposed during the wars of the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq by expiring in three years and withholding permission for “enduring offensive ground combat operations.”
But in a letter to Congress accompanying the proposal, Mr. Obama, who has said there would be no boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, envisioned limited ground combat operations “such as rescue operations” or the use of “Special Operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.” He also said the legislation would allow the use of ground forces for intelligence gathering, target spotting and planning assistance to ground troops of allies like Iraq’s military.