Rotundus.com

Once Upon a Time in Tehran

"Photos of a swinging Iran when the skirts were short, the dance was the twist, and America wasn't Enemy No. 1."

Are You a Lopsided Weightlifter? Recovering the Lost Skill of Reading Fiction

Charles Darwin on reading more than just non-fiction: "... if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

Starting an online store is no easy business

An introduction to Greek bureaucracy ... perhaps one of the main reasons that the country seems to be on the edge of collapse. My favorite amongst the lists of things needed to open an online store selling olive oil products: "At the health department, they were told that all the shareholders of the company would have to provide chest X-rays, and, in the most surreal demand of all, stool samples."

Judge dismisses charges against Muslim man who attacked atheist dressed as ‘Zombie Muhammad’

"Talaag Elbayomy, a 46-year-old Muslim man, allegedly attacked Ernest Perce V, who was dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” and walking with a man dressed as “Zombie Pope” during the October parade. Both men were members of the Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania." I'm slightly amused the name of the atheist group - maybe they'll show up in town in the summer to do some parading. Basically it seems here that a confession from the guy plus an apparently grainy video was judged as not evidence enough by the [Muslim] judge... who decided to tell the guy that in much of the Muslim world he might have been executed for something like this. Apparently for posting audio of portions of the trial, the guy has also been threatened with jail time.

I'd mentioned before that Old Age Security payments in Canada seem to be somewhat of a ponzi scheme, but that's not the only claim that you'll see made, with a Globe and Mail article arguing that "Expert advice commissioned by the federal government contradicts Stephen Harper’s warnings that Canada can’t afford the looming bill for Old Age Security payments."

A counterpoint to this would be the following argument:

Jack Mintz, director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, said Tuesday that research he has done for the federal and provincial governments has shown the OAS system is sustainable on its own. However, he said Old Age Security reforms are likely warranted because the system is one of the mounting fiscal pressures faced by the federal government due to a greying society, while OAS changes are likely a lot more palatable than cuts to medical funding and services.

So if OAS seems sustainable on its own , but that to do so would compromise the ability of the healthcare system to keep those same people healthy, isn't that still the same basic sort of problem?

BTW, here's what the system originally looked like:

When OAS was introduced in 1952, retirement eligibility was 70 years of age while the average life expectancy was 68. Many would have passed away before receiving OAS. During the years 1965-69, the eligibility age was moved down to 65, even though life expectancy was increasing. Now, with life expectancy above 80, most Canadians qualify for OAS for a very long time after 65.

It's much easier to run a benefit system when the age at which benefits start to be paid out is higher than average life expectancy. Now that's changed quite a bit, but to pass such a measure also seems to mean that those currently receiving benefits or going to start receiving benefits in the next few years will be unaffected. Intergenerational wealth transfer... it's not just the national debt that that can be done through.

There are 350,000 Canadians Living and Working Silicon Valley Right Now

"There are just over 34 million people in Canada. Down in Silicon Valley, there are another 350,000. That's right—an amount equal to more than one percent of our entire country's population is living and working in a single dot on the map in America."

Swedish street signs axed over 'perky' breasts

I'm not quite sure what to say...

Cultural Inequality and the Church

Interesting: "The General Social Survey, which measures American values and attitudes, finds that the share of those who profess no religion or who go to religious services no more than once a year has increased at both ends of the economic and social spectrums. In the ’70s, 29 percent of the more affluent group fell into the secular category, increasing to 40 percent by 2010. But the strongest secularization trend is among the working classes, growing from 38 percent about four decades ago to a whopping 59 percent two years ago." Given that 40 < 59, that would seem to suggest that on average the more educated and more affluent are now somewhat more likely to fall into the "religious" category than their counterparts.

How The Creator of CAPTCHA Will Translate The Entire Internet

Seems interesting. They seem to be in beta testing now - concentrating on Spanish and German for the moment. A few other languages also listed as on the way...

Revealed: How atheist Richard Dawkins' family fortune came from the slave trade

I think I'll side with Dawkins on this: "I condemn slavery with the utmost vehemence, but the fact that my remote ancestors may have been involved in it is nothing to do with me." I'm just wondering if he's consistent in some of the historical claims he makes, although philosophical descent vs. biological descent is also a bit different.

I recently came across another article of this sort (I can't bring myself to speak of it as a study).

Basically, it's a let's-add-up-all-the-tasks-a-stay-at-home-parent-might-do thing to come up with some outrageous number several times the median wage. This article compared to others of the sort is actually almost a bit conservative in coming up with a figure only twice the US median full-time wage.

The problems start right at the beginning:

Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most homemakers. From breakfast to dinner, there is plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. The American Personal Chef Association reports that its personal chefs make $200 to $500 a day. Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A homemaker must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and deliver it to the home. Grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $5 to $10.

Total cost for services: $1,005 per five day work week x 52 weeks = $52,260 per year.

Where to start? The US median wage of a head chef / cook is about $40,000. Hiring such a cook would likely get you someone more experience and/or training than than average stay-at-home parent. In addition, to get their $40,000 median wage that median chef would seem to be putting in an average of 5.7 hours per day on food prep, less than that put in by the average stay at home parent I'd guess. (The French lead the OECD in time spent shopping, averaging 32 minutes per day, and the average American spends about 30 minutes per day cooking [src])

So what would happen if this stay at home parent devoted that amount of time to paid employment rather than cooking? Well, if these figures were accurate and that food prep time was that valuable you could hire that median full-time chef at their median wage and still have $12,000/year to buy groceries - probably enough to feed that hypothetical family all year.

Seem reasonable? I think not. It's one thing to claim that stay at home parents are valuable - which I'd agree with - but these studies always seem highly distorted.