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Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 7/6/12

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Anna:

All other developed countries have health care for all. But so do some developing nations—Brazil, Thailand, Chile. These countries are mostly middle income. But one country on the list is among the poorest of the poor: Rwanda.

The point is not that Americans should envy Rwanda’s health system — far from it. But Rwanda’s experience illustrates the value of universal health insurance.  “Its health gains in the last decade are among the most dramatic the world has seen in the last 50 years,” said Peter Drobac, the director in Rwanda for the Boston-based Partners in Health, which works extensively with the Rwandan health system.

It couldn’t have happened without health insurance.

My life in iPhone apps…. What happens to us when we have hand-held tools to meticulously track and document all aspects of our lives—sleep, food, weight, moods, spending, water intake, TV watching, “quality time.” Here’s one writer’s defense (and confessional) about tech-aided self-quantification.

And, again from Salon, are Americans working ourselves to death, while people in other countries take holidays and get family leave? Read about “Europe’s Amazing Vacation Laws.”

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Weekend Reading 6/22/12

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Clark:

Conservative blogger James Bacon makes the case for smart growth, largely founded on eliminating government subsidies for cars, and relaxing zoning restrictions so that homes and businesses aren’t so rigidly segregated. An example:

Many counties have imposed density limitations on new growth with the thought that they would limit the impact of development on roads and schools. But smearing 1,000 people over 1,000 acres of land is impossible to provide with roads, utilities and services as efficiently as if they were concentrated in 100 acres, or even 10 acres, of land. Fiscal conservatives should object to such inefficiency. And property rights advocates should object to the restrictions placed on what property owners can build on their land.

I don’t particularly think of myself as a conservative, but I found myself nodding my head throughout the essay. In theory, it seems, support for smart growth can reach across political divides. But in practice, it seems as if NIMBY-ism more typically unites folks of wildly different political stripes.

Looking for tips on how to live a green lifestyle? Check out Cooler Smarter: Practical steps for low-carbon living by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Of if you want the nickel version, here’s the once sentence summary from a YouTube interview with one of the authors,

[T]he key things that matter when it comes to global warming are: what you drive and how you drive it; how you heat and cool your home; the electricity you use in the appliances and electronics around the house; and what you eat.

Part of their message is that some things we do with the intention of helping the climate really aren’t particularly helpful—they’re not bad, just not as good as we hope. So if you have limited energy, money, and attention, focus on the really important choices: where you live, major appliances, cars, home heating, and the like.

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Weekend Reading 6/15/12

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Eric dP:

I’ve got a pair of good suggestions this week.

In the Vancouver Observer, Barry Saxifrage looks at national emissions trends and reveals that the world leader is—it’s hard to believe it, but it’s true—the United States. And as he points out, US reductions are no small potatoes:

How big is a cut of 430 million tonnes of CO2? It’s equal to all CO2 from all Canadians outside Alberta. From a US perspective, it’s equal to eliminating the combined emissions of ten western states: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.

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Weekend Reading 6/8/2012

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Alan:

A year or two ago, sociologist Dalton Conley issued an updated 10th anniversary edition of an important analytical book on race in the United States. In it, he does compelling work disentangling the relative contributions of race and class (and especially wealth rather than income) to the achievement gaps that separate American blacks and whites. The policy implications are huge.

Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America sums up its findings:

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Weekend Reading 6/1/2012

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Anna:

Are you eating flame retardants with your peanut butter and jelly?

A bunch of big US corporations publicly claim to support climate change science and solutions, but behind the scenes they’re contributing heavily to politicians and research groups that deny or play down the threat of global warming, according to a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Can bisphenol A make you fat?

Walkability boosts property prices. Here’s Better Cities and Towns with a Seattle-area real estate parable.

Property values in Redmond, Washington, and Seattle’s Capitol Hill used to be equal. The desire for urban density, walkability, and access to parks has now tilted values decisively in city neighborhoods’

From the How Our Brains Work Dep’t: David Ropeik weighs in both on Nobel Prizewinner Daniel Kahneman’s idea that we think both fast and slow and on Dan Kahan’s studies illustrating “cultural cognition.” And for those who aren’t familiar with “cultural cognition,” here’s Ropeik’s summary:

Cultural Cognition theory…finds that though we employ facts as weapons in our battles over issues and ideas, the real war is about tribal identity and cohesion. We interpret the facts – no matter how many of them we have at our disposal – so our views agree with the groups with which we most closely identify. And we fiercely defend the views of our group because our own identity, and even our personal safety, rely to a great degree on being a member of the tribe in good standing.

See also: Dave Roberts’ take on Kahan’s recent article in Nature demonstrating the cultural cognition problem for climate deniers.

Clark:

Portland-based economist Joe Cortright says smart things about how we measure congestion—namely, that we measure it very, very badly.

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Weekend Reading 5/25/12

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Clark:

Researchers believe that the world’s large subway systems are gradually converging on an ideal form:

Roughly half the stations in any subway will be found on its outer branches rather than the core. The distance from a city’s center to its farthest terminus station is twice the diameter of the subway system’s core. This happens again and again.

Sure, it’s possible that the world’s big subway system designers are simply copying one another. Yet the topology of each subway system has evolved independently; many started out with remarkably different configurations, and yet as they’ve gotten larger, they’ve grown to resemble each other more, rather than less.  It’s almost as if there’s a hidden dynamic that governs the design of an efficient transportation system. Interestingly, some researchers find that brainless slime molds create transportation networks that look a lot like our own—which suggests that convergent design may be as much about basic geometry as about human foibles.

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Weekend Reading 5/18/12

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Eric dP:

Joel Connelly deserves many kudos for being the first to draw attention to the fact that Tim Eyman’s proposed latest “two-third majority” anti-tax ballot measure is really just a stalking horse for Big Oil. You can tell, as Connelly points out, because oil refiners have already thrown a staggering $350,000 behind his initiative.

I really think it’s worth being clear about this: tax policy in Washington State is now being written by oil companies with headquarters elsewhere.

Amidst all the hullabaloo in Seattle about a possible new NBA arena, I enjoyed reading Brian Phillips’ open letter to Seattle SuperSonics fans from an OKC Thunder supporter.

Finally, I loved this time-lapse photography of a crane being assembled in my neighborhood. I’ve always wondered how they did that.

Clark:

How to dry your hands with just one paper towel.

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Weekend Reading 5/11/12

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Anna:

Jon Stewart gives the best explanation I’ve seen of cognitive dissonance and how it plays out: Two rats in a bag!

And in related cognitive dissonance news: Want partisans to listen to ideas that contradict their views? Give them an ego boost.

Our other big pollution problem: Antibiotics.

The Heartland Institute went too far lumping mass murderers and terrorists with everybody who’s concerned about climate change. A bunch of their backers are pulling away.

Clark:

Back when I was a wee lad, a more productive economy meant a more prosperous middle class.  Whenever technological advances made it possible to squeeze more value out of an hour of labor, employers would pay more for a worker’s time—and everyone saw some benefit from rising productivity.

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Weekend Reading 5/4/12

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Alan:

More than slogans and sound bites about the causes of the record-setting low teen birth rates in the United States.

President 42 on President 36.

Liz Canning in the Bay Area is crowdsourcing a film about cargo bikes, and the trailer for it is the coolest cycling video I think I’ve ever seen. (And I’ve seen a lot.) Check it out and, if you’re a cargo-ista, shoot some footage to share. Let’s get Cascadia well represented in the film.

Anna:

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones asks: Are food deserts really the right problem to solve? A few new studies, including one from our very own University of Washington, find that 1) access to different kinds of stores didn’t have any impact on weight gain among elementary-school-aged children; 2) obesity rates are tied more closely to income than access to healthy food; 3) most people don’t shop in the stores nearest their homes anyway; and 4) looking at teens’ self-reported diet, their weight, and the food available within a mile from their home, it became clear that “living close to supermarkets or grocers did not make students thin and living close to fast food outlets did not make them fat.”

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Weekend Reading 4/27/12

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Anna:

I just read a book—on a whim—called Skinny Bitch. Yes, it’s a diet/self-help kind of thing. I picked it up at the library for some bitchy straight talk about some addictions I want to kick—namely, sugar and dairy (a chapter is devoted to each). It turned out to be a really great read about the politics of big Ag, the dairy and meat industries, and how industry money and power in our food safety agencies render them kind of useless (all that in what I’d describe as a Modeling-Agency-Drill-Instructor tone).

After that, I was eager to read this pair of NYT pieces (one opinion, one multiple opinions): First, Is Veganism Good For Everyone? And then a look at “ethical eating”: A Visit With ‘The Greatest Living Food Writer’.

I’m an omnivore (I like to know where my meat-in-moderation comes from). But, with all this, I’m starting to think twice. Here’s one more from Mother Jones to tip the scales: “pink slime isn’t even the worst that the meat industry has to offer.”

Eric dP:

With a tip o’ the hat to Sightliner Meaghan Tracy Robbins, this logical fallacy infographic was so good I’m thinking of wallpapering Sightline’s office with it.

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