Rotundus.com

Science, Religion and the Great Stagnation

"Question for the day: What if the science-religion conflict is hurting the economy? ... Here’s the speculation: we’re stuck in a Great Stagnation in part because the social status of scientists is too low. Fewer smart people become scientists, who in turn engage in less research and innovation, which in turn leads to fewer economic advances. Why the decline in social status? Perhaps because many scientists and public intellectuals have conjoined science with an anti-religious ideology, naturalism, that has soiled science in the minds of the largely religious American public (in part via the political activism of naturalists). One way to raise the social status of scientists is to break this connection. Thus, one way to exit the Great Stagnation is to sharply distinguish between the social practice of science and the ideology often held by its practitioners."

A Christmas Prayer for North Korea's Christians

A December 2012 piece from the Wall Street Journal on Christianity in North Korea.

6 Places You'll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie

Some stuff just appears over and over again...

Modern Parenting May Hinder Brain Development, Research Suggests

Darcia Narvaez, Notre Dame professor of psychology: "Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will 'spoil' it." Effects suggested by the research: "Studies show that responding to a baby's needs (not letting a baby "cry it out") has been shown to influence the development of conscience; positive touch affects stress reactivity, impulse control and empathy; free play in nature influences social capacities and aggression; and a set of supportive caregivers (beyond the mother alone) predicts IQ and ego resilience as well as empathy. The United States has been on a downward trajectory on all of these care characteristics, according to Narvaez."

I've been pondering a few bits of Obama's recent inaugural speech. One thing he talked about was the issue of climate change:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. ... We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

It's the last bit (emphasis mine) that left me particularly thinking. Acting now on that sort of thing would me current pain for a hopefully brighter future. Yet at the same time, I wonder how this particular topic tends to get addressed when other topics that may mean current pain for a hopefully brighter future are seldom spoken of.

I'm talking of things like actuarially unsound financial policies - i.e. promises made that there isn't a coherent plan to pay for. This isn't just a Democratic thing or an American thing but something leading to a situation in which, to quote the Economist, "most developed governments are effectively insolvent ... Morgan Stanley reckons the shortfalls are so large (between 800% and 1,000% of GDP in the US and UK) that the situation is hopeless."

Obama talked of the US social support system:

... we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. ... We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

One thing that seems inevitable with "twilight years" getting significantly extended in length for the average person to make a sustainable system those people need to work longer, but the political will to ensure this happens just doesn't seem to be there. Instead... countries just seem to be spending themselves into the ground. A failure to address this means that not only will twlight years be spent in poverty but entire lives will be spent in poverty.

There's certainly a need to do something about problems - job loss, illness, natural disasters, etc. - yet at the same time such programs may be extraordinarily tough to structure well.

There's also a need to face the reality that sometimes short-term pain can produce long-term gain. Consider things like marriage with government policies currently incentivizing its end whenever issues crop up. Divorce is extraordinarily expensive and typically doesn't improve the situation. Note that "Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married." and "Two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later." (Domestic violence is certainly a problem, but only affecting a small minority of even unhappy marriages, and this doesn't yet get into the negative effects on the children of divorce).

The standards are also too high:

Our journey is not complete until all our children... know that they are ... always safe from harm.

Assuming that the "journey" is one of extending the social support system to address problems, people being "always safe from harm" is an impossible standard. No matter how well structured the government something is always going to go wrong somewhere. Accidents happen, people do stupid things, or else eventually those twilight years come to an end. There's a need to take certain actions to address problems, but sometimes actions may do more harm than good.

Egyptian court sentences Christian family to 15 years for converting from Islam

Courtesy of the country to which the US is donating fighter jets: "The 15-year prison sentence given to a woman and her seven children by an Egyptian court for converting to Christianity is a sign of things to come, according to alarmed human rights advocates who say the nation's Islamist government is bad news for Christians in the North African country."

Teacher avoids prison in affair with student by marrying him

"42-year-old Leah Gayle Shipman waited until her divorce was final, then married Johnny Ray Ison six days later. By that time, Ison was 17, and his mother had to give permission since her son was still a minor. Shipman was facing 15 years in prison on charges of statutory rape; but now, under North Carolina law, Ison can’t be compelled to testify against his new wife."

Democratic Germany leads free-market England in football's recovery

Would be interesting if more professional sports leagues were run like this: "A league regulation, maintained by the clubs, holds that these football companies must be majority owned (50% plus one of the shares) by its member association. So even the mightiest of clubs, the multimillion-pound giants on the European stage Bayern Munich and Dortmund, are majority-controlled by their supporter-members. ... The way the clubs work in practice varies, but all the member-owned clubs incorporate democracy."

The new face of eating disorders: Men starving themselves to look like the pictures in magazines

"Community-based studies suggest one case in three of anorexia nervosa is a male, said Dr. Blake Woodside, director of the program for eating disorders at Toronto General Hospital. For bulimia, it is about one in four. 'And that’s a dramatic finding, because in clinical samples (based on people in treatment) it’s more like one in 15, or one in 20,' Woodside said."

I've talked a fair bit before about issues with automation replacing human labor through things like burger-making bots and it seems that, at least in the coffee world, even the high-end labor is already being replaced by machines:

In the UK, more than 15 Michelin-starred restaurants use Nespresso, the market-leading capsule system, to make their coffee — including Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Berkshire, and The Ledbury in London. In France, Nespresso supplies more than 100 Michelin restaurants, including the legendary L’Arpège in Paris. Even in Italy, where the first espresso machine was patented in 1884, more than 20 Michelin restaurants use the new capsule system, and many others around the world use it or its rivals developed by Illy, Kimbo, Lavazza and Segafredo. Push-button espresso began as a domestic product, a way to simulate espresso at home without the mess and fuss. But in recent years it has rapidly, if quietly, started to take over the restaurant world.

Source: Aeon Magazine

For those not snooty enough to have encountered restaurant names like The Fat Duck before it was ranked in 2005 as the world's best restaurant, holds 3 Michelin Stars and has a ratio of one chef per customer. That's the sort of establishment already seeing this level of coffee automation. (And in the taste tests later in the article Nespresso came out on top).