You Think?

From a post on sex at Barking Up the Wrong Tree:

"Taking the data set as a whole, almost the only way to make the men’s and women’s answers consistent is for there to be some women in the United States who have enormous numbers of sexual partners without reporting that fact in our survey data. It is possible that this is because of the existence of prostitutes. An alternative, and perhaps more likely, explanation is that men overestimate."[emphasis added]

Central Cities Safer Than Suburbs?

That's the gist of a Grist post, based on a UVA study. Turns out the risk from things like car accidents and drunk driving outweighs the risk from the crime we think of when "central cities" are mentioned.

Cash Leasing Increasing?

Extension reports an increase in cash leasing as opposed to shares, suggesting an increase in the use of crop insurance to handle risk means farmers are more able to accept the increased risk of cash leasing.  There's another possible contributory cause: the declining impact of farm program payments. Relatively speaking, such payments are less important these days; payments have gone down and prices have gone up.  When payment limitation is a problem, there's an advantage to share leasing. But with the lesser importance of farm programs, there's also less incentive to worry about payment limitation in managing your affairs.

Merry Christmas from a Procrastinator

Haven't finished a lot of posts I wanted to, but I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Let All Populists Rejoice

According to this blog post of a study, Harvard Law students are no good (i.e., their free representation of indigents didn't help, and actually delayed decisions).

I Use E-Mail, I'm a Geezer

All that fits this Times piece: usage of email by oldtimers is up; by teens is way down.

What Gripes Me: The Golden Rule

As in this case reported in the Times:

"Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $553 million and admit to criminal wrongdoing on Tuesday, settling a long-running investigation into tax shelter fraud that prosecutors say generated billions of dollars in bogus tax benefits."

"... Deutsche Bank will avoid prosecution for helping 2,100 customers evade taxes through 2,300 financial transactions. The arrangements, which took place between 1996 and 2002, helped wealthy Americans report more than $29 billion in fraudulent tax losses, according to the Justice Department."

Them as has the gold, rules; or at least break the rules.  (I know, Republicans, this is class warfare.  The war of class on the masses. Can anyone guess I'm not in a holiday mood today?)

Bronze Star Cook

Via Marginal Revolution, this short post on the Army Ranger and Bronze Star winner who's also a great pastry cook: no. 3 in the world.

Render Unto Caesar

A friend argues we should not have any marriages recognized by the civil authorities; everyone should use civil unions and leave marriages to the churches. That almost feels like Matt Yglesias on Christmas: let's have a universal secular festival on the solstice and leave Christmas and Hanukkah to their respective religions.

Government Project Wastes Millions on Failed Projects

A big government project, announced with much fanfare 5 years ago, admitted today it had failed to achieve its objectives after spending $450 million of taxpayer money. Few would be surprised by such a story.  But it turns out that the sentence (mis)describes a Bill Gates project.  Best I can tell, the project was similar to something the government might have done, particularly if you had someone like Rep. Dingell pushing NIH and funding its efforts. It actually was a group of projects, mostly conceived as top-down efforts, some of which were successful but most of which didn't meet their objectives.  

To be clear, I don't regard this as a waste of Mr. Gates' money, but I am intrigued with the similarities and differences with similar government efforts.