PHILADELPHIA — The man in the hospital bed was playing video games on a laptop, absorbed and relaxed despite the bustle of scientists on all sides and the electrodes threaded through his skull and deep into his brain.
The man, Ralph, a health care worker who asked that his last name be omitted for privacy, has severe epilepsy; and the operation to find the source of his seizures had provided researchers an exquisite opportunity to study the biology of memory. Continue reading Probing Brain’s Depth, Trying to Aid Memory | NYTimes→
Wendy Davis takes local view on border, chemical safetyWendy Davis, Texas state senator and Democratic candidate for governor, talks with Rachel Maddow about Greg Abbott’s change in Texas policy on chemical plant safety, and how to deal with the influx of unaccompanied undocumented minors across the border.
Wayne Slater, senior political writer for the Dallas Morning News, talks with Rachel Maddow about Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott allowing chemical plants to keep their contents secret, a move that benefits Koch Industries, and a campaign donor.
I first heard Georges Moustaki’s “Le Métèque” when I was six or seven. I couldn’t possibly have understood the lyrics in their entirety without an adult’s life experience, but there were parts, however, that struck me viscerally, as I heard it for the very first time. I knew the “metic” was me, too, even before I fully understood what it meant to be me. Continue reading The Metic ( Le Métèque )→
On Sunday The Times published an article by the political scientist Brendan Nyhan about a troubling aspect of the current American scene — the stark partisan divide over issues that should be simply factual, like whether the planet is warming or evolution happened. It’s common to attribute such divisions to ignorance, but as Mr. Nyhan points out, the divide is actually worse among those who are seemingly better informed about the issues. Continue reading Paul Krugman: Beliefs, Facts and Money | NYTimes→
A few weeks ago, during the evidentiary dustup between Piketty and the FT, I quasi-favorably quoted a Matt Yglesias line re empirical evidence being overrated. A number of readers were understandably unhappy with that assertion, arguing that they come here to OTE for fact-based analysis based on empirical evidence (with, admittedly, a fair bit a heated, if not overheated, commentary). If facts all of the sudden don’t matter anymore, why not just call it a day and join the Tea Party?
So let me add a bit more nuance. The statement is about the quality and durability of evidence, which is not only varied, but, at least in the economic policy world, increasingly problematic. A number of developments have significantly lowered the signal-to-noise ratio. Continue reading Jared Bernstein: Evidence: Is It Really Overrated? | More on Evidence→
You often find people talking about our economic difficulties as if they were complicated and mysterious, with no obvious solution. As the economist Dean Baker recently pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. The basic story of what went wrong is, in fact, almost absurdly simple: We had an immense housing bubble, and, when the bubble burst, it left a huge hole in spending. Everything else is footnotes. Continue reading Paul Krugman: Build We Won’t |NYTimes→
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