1
Science
These Females Prefer a Familiar (Fish) Face
A certain neuron prompts female medaka fish to consent faster to mating, researchers says, and may lead to further insights regarding social decision making.
2
Technology
Taking Along iCloud Calendars
Apple’s iCloud data service works best with Apple’s own devices, but it is possible to make it work with other companies’ hardware.
3
Health
Laser Hair Removal's Risks
The treatments can cause severe burns and disfiguring injuries, and a rising percentage of lawsuits involve operators who are not physicians.
4
Home & Garden
Video: Hawaiian Roots
Armed with hatchets and herbicides, Paul Zweng and his volunteers thin a forest of invasive trees one section at a time. Their mission: to return the land to its natural state.
5
Health
High-Dose Vitamin E Slows Decline of Some Alzheimer’s Patients in Study
A daily dose of 2,000 I.U.’s slowed the decline of people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease in a study of more than 600 veterans at hospitals across the country.
6
Opinion
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reader
The convergence of several trends leaves the book-buying public out in the cold.
7
Opinion
Indoctrinating Religious Warriors
Republican party leaders employ a tactic to divert the attention of the rank-and-file from areas of common sense.
8
Booming
I May Be 50, but Don’t Call Me a Boomer
There’s definitely a gap between the two halves of the baby boom, and those significant differences define us.
9
U.S.
For Cheney, Realities of a Race Outweighed Family Edge
Abruptly ending her challenge in Wyoming’s Republican Senate primary, Liz Cheney, the elder daughter of the former vice president, cited “serious health issues” in her family.
10
Science
A New Test for Malaria, No Blood Required
Rice University researchers have developed a rapid malaria test that uses a laser pulse and may be able to detect the disease when only one red blood cell in a million is infected.
"Malaria parasites feeding inside blood cells contain minute amounts of hemozoin, iron crystals left over from the digestion of hemoglobin. A laser burst of a fraction of a second heats the crystals until they create a bubble, which pops.[implodes]
The acoustic signature of that pop, which lasts one ten-millionth of a
second, can be detected “in the same way a destroyer detects a
submarine,” Dr. Lapotko said."
"With a fiber-optic probe attached to a finger or ear lobe, the device
could screen one person every 20 seconds for less than 50 cents each."
I wonder why it is so slow and expensive.
I speculate it is the cyclic rate of the laser.
11
Style
Taking an I.V.F. Journey to Israel
After my last round of in vitro fertilization failed, Solomon and I knew it was time to move on to Plan I: Israel.
12
World
Human Rights Chairman Said to Resign Over Harassment Accusation
A.K. Ganguly had been under pressure to vacate his post since a Supreme Court panel found he had shown “unwelcome behavior” toward a law intern in a hotel room.
13
Multimedia/Photos
Video: Times Minute | ‘Polar Vortex’ at Work
Also on the Minute, Also in the Minute, Liz Cheney quits the Wyoming Senate Race and "Spider-Man" closes on Broadway.
14
Opinion
Kale? Juicing? Trouble Ahead
“You’d be better off with chocolate and cola,” the dentist told me.
15
Crosswords/Games
Daniel Finkel's Stained Glass Window Problem
Can you help a pilgrim design stained glass windows for a shrine?
16
World
Saudis’ Grant to Lebanon Is Seen as Message to U.S.
Saudi Arabia’s $3 billion gift to the Lebanese Army was intended as much to send a message to the United States as to shift the military balance, analysts said.
17
World
Gaza: Hamas Lawmakers Approve Large Budget Deficit
Hamas lawmakers on Tuesday approved a 2014 budget totaling $589 million for the Gaza Strip that included a staggering 75 percent deficit.
18
Business Day
Slowly, Asia’s Factories Begin to Turn Green
Multinationals and local suppliers are increasingly going beyond local regulations in designing factories that cut energy costs and pollute less.
19
Opinion
How the Obama Administration Can Get Bluefin Tuna Off the (Wrong) Hook
The public’s help is sought in a push to restrict wasteful fishing practices that are harming rare bluefin tuna.
20
N.Y. / Region
Cuomo Issues Pardons for First Time in Office
Mr. Cuomo on Tuesday granted pardons to three men who had already completed their sentences.On Fighting the Last War (On Poverty)
Sorry about radio silence — I’ve been on the road, and busy. And I still am.
I wanted, however, to say something about the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
By 1980 or so, as the linked CBPP piece says, there was widespread consensus that the WoP had failed. As CBPP also says, that conclusion doesn’t stand up once you do the numbers right: poverty measures that take into account government aid — aid of the kind provided by the war on poverty! — do show a significant decline since the 1960s. There’s more sheer misery in America than there should be, but less than there was.
Even so, progress against poverty has obviously been disappointing. But why? Here’s where it’s important to realize that conservatives are stuck with a fossil narrative — a story about persistent poverty that may have had something to it three decades ago, but is all wrong now.
The narrative in the 1970s was that the war on poverty had failed because of social disintegration: government attempts to help the poor were outpaced by the collapse of the family, rising crime, and so on. And on the right, and to some extent in the center, it was often argued that government aid was if anything promoting this social disintegration. Poverty was therefore a problem of values and social cohesion, not money.
That was always much less true than the elite wanted to believe; as William Julius Wilson showed long ago, the decline of urban employment opportunities actually had a lot do with the social disintegration. Still, there was something to it.
But that was a long time ago. These days crime is way down, so is teenage pregnancy, and so on; society did not collapse. What collapsed instead is economic opportunity. If progress against poverty has been disappointing over the past half century, the reason is not the decline of the family but the rise of extreme inequality. We’re a much richer nation than we were in 1964, but little if any of that increased wealth has trickled down to workers in the bottom half of the income distribution.
The trouble is that the American right is still living in the 1970s, or actually a Reaganite fantasy of the 1970s; its notion of an anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare. The reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don’t pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn’t sunk in. And the idea of helping the poor by actually helping them remains anathema.
Will it ever be possible to move this debate away from welfare queens and all that? I don’t know. But for now, the key to understanding poverty arguments is that the main cause of persistent poverty now is high inequality of market income — but that the right can’t bring itself to acknowledge that reality."
I wanted, however, to say something about the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
By 1980 or so, as the linked CBPP piece says, there was widespread consensus that the WoP had failed. As CBPP also says, that conclusion doesn’t stand up once you do the numbers right: poverty measures that take into account government aid — aid of the kind provided by the war on poverty! — do show a significant decline since the 1960s. There’s more sheer misery in America than there should be, but less than there was.
Even so, progress against poverty has obviously been disappointing. But why? Here’s where it’s important to realize that conservatives are stuck with a fossil narrative — a story about persistent poverty that may have had something to it three decades ago, but is all wrong now.
The narrative in the 1970s was that the war on poverty had failed because of social disintegration: government attempts to help the poor were outpaced by the collapse of the family, rising crime, and so on. And on the right, and to some extent in the center, it was often argued that government aid was if anything promoting this social disintegration. Poverty was therefore a problem of values and social cohesion, not money.
That was always much less true than the elite wanted to believe; as William Julius Wilson showed long ago, the decline of urban employment opportunities actually had a lot do with the social disintegration. Still, there was something to it.
But that was a long time ago. These days crime is way down, so is teenage pregnancy, and so on; society did not collapse. What collapsed instead is economic opportunity. If progress against poverty has been disappointing over the past half century, the reason is not the decline of the family but the rise of extreme inequality. We’re a much richer nation than we were in 1964, but little if any of that increased wealth has trickled down to workers in the bottom half of the income distribution.
The trouble is that the American right is still living in the 1970s, or actually a Reaganite fantasy of the 1970s; its notion of an anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare. The reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don’t pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn’t sunk in. And the idea of helping the poor by actually helping them remains anathema.
Will it ever be possible to move this debate away from welfare queens and all that? I don’t know. But for now, the key to understanding poverty arguments is that the main cause of persistent poverty now is high inequality of market income — but that the right can’t bring itself to acknowledge that reality."
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