Nuclear waste safer than coal ash?

Mara Hvistendahl writes that Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste.

The article ends with a clarification:

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Plastic bag bans may make us sick

Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in Are Plastic Bag Bans Making Us Sick? that:

The study, by Jonathan Klick of University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Property and Environment Research Center and Joshua D. Wright of the George Mason University School of Law, found that in jurisdictions where plastic bags were banned saw ER visits increase by about one-fourth, with a similar increase in deaths compared with neighboring counties where the bags remained legal.

Basically people were schlepping leaky packages of meat and other foods in their canvas bags, then wadding to the bags somewhere for awhile, leaving bacteria to grow until the next trip, when they tossed celery or other foods likely to be eaten raw in the same bags.

Washing plastic bags reduces the risk apparently, although it seems no one does it. What isn't discussed is the environmental cost in washing the bags.

More failings of the Canberra Press Gallery

In The everyday shit they call journalism the news with nipples takes apart a story by Mark Kenny and Jonathan Swan:

There’s a story in the Sydney Morning Herald today that’s a great example of how meaningless political journalism has become. It’s not about a manufactured scandal, or a gaffe, or something that happened decades ago, but is just the everyday political journalism that is, frankly, rubbish.

Pirates buy more music

Betsy Isaacson reports that Music Pirates Buy 30 Percent More Songs Than Non-Filesharers: Study.

But as Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica points out, pirates are not necessarily good for the industry just because they buy more music. "It's possible, for example, the most avid music fans are also the most likely to be drawn to peer-to-peer networks," he writes. "Perhaps without those networks they would have purchased even more music from legitimate services."

Even so, the music industry likely should not ignore the news that pirates are some of its best consumers -- and thus perhaps a bad demographic to alienate.

Give yourself a pat on the back Australia

In Australia is a bigger deal than we give ourselves credit for Jessica Irvine details how Australia punches above its weight economically.

Paul Krugman on Government spending as a share of potential GDP

Paul Krugman has an interesting post, The Non-Surge in Government Spending, looking at Government spending as a share of potential GDP. It would great if someone did something similar for the Australian economy.

New study identifies CTE in living ex NFL players.

In New Study Finds Brain Damage in Living Ex-NFL Players Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada report on a study identifying disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, in living former NFL players.

Why Obama isn't a socialist

In Progressive? liberal? socialist? Where is Obama coming from? Charles Richardson writes that both sides seek to label Obama as a socialist, although for different reasons:

That conclusion suits the interests of pundits on both left and right. For the right, Obama is a target of fear and loathing, for reasons that range from the simply partisan to the deeply pathological, so “socialist” or some near equivalent is a natural charge for them to make. For the left, Obama is recognised as “one of them” (again for a complex of reasons, some of which I’ll come to shortly), and since most left-wingers still have an emotional if not rational attachment to big government, they bring him within the same tent.

Richardson concludes that the label is wrong.

Some interesting articles on politics

Michael Gawenda on Time wrought Gillard's transformation.
Gay Alcorn on Media's character put to the test in federal election campaign.
Gabrielle Chan on Gillard's Captains Pick.
Dennis Atkins on Incumbent Northern Territory Senator Trish Crossin caught in indigenous vote crossfire.

And one on Nova Peris by Catriona Wallace:  Nova Peris: Achievements of an Outstanding Woman.

Occupations most likely to attract psychopaths

In Journalism is Among Top 10 Occupations to Most Likely Attract Psychopaths Vicki Salemi looks at the occupations with the highest and lowest rates of psychopathy.

Compartmentising conflicting beliefs

In The Mind’s Compartments Create Conflicting Beliefs Michael Shermer looks at "how our modular brains lead us to deny and distort evidence".

If you have pondered how intelligent and educated people can, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, believe that evolution is a myth, that global warming is a hoax, that vaccines cause autism and asthma, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, conjecture no more. The explanation is in what I call logic-tight compartments—modules in the brain analogous to watertight compartments in a ship.

Australia's recent heat wave

NASA has an interesting map of Land Surface Temperature Anomaly during Australia's recent heatwave.

A number of climatologists from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have written What’s causing Australia’s heat wave?:

This warming has been strongly attributed to increasing greenhouse gases from human activities. While there are a number of influences on the climate system, such as changing solar radiation and changing atmospheric aerosols, it is very clear that warming has been dominated by increased carbon dioxide levels.

Perception of employment benefits by income level

Possum Comitatus posted this graph on Twitter. I think it's very informative.

BEST Study: Climate changed result of green house gases and volcanoes

In BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes Slashdot is reporting that:

"The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature studies latest release finds that land surface temperature changes since 1750 are nearly completely explained by increases in greenhouse gases and large volcanic eruptions. They also said that including solar forcing did not significantly improve the fit. Unlike the other major temperature records BEST used nearly all available temperature records instead of just a representative sample. Yet to come is an analysis that includes ocean temperatures."

America's fascination with often flawed financial advice

In Saving on lattes will not make you rich the Economist interviews Helaine Olen, author of "Pound Foolish" on  the deeply flawed financial advice Americans receive.

On poverty

In This is Poverty Nikki McWatters describes the hardship of raising three kids on a single parent pension.

Ninety per cent of dole recipients live in a state of deprivation and poverty. It is a cruel maze, difficult to escape from and not one any parent would choose willingly. To blame the poor for their condition is to crawl back to post-industrial England.

Principles of Australia's welfare system

According to Matt Cowgill in Welfare reform: can we have it all?:

Three central principles in the Australian welfare system are:

• Payments should be sufficient to protect people from poverty.
• Payments should be means tested and targeted to people on low incomes.
• ‘Poverty traps’ should be avoided. It should be financially worthwhile for people to take a job, or to increase their hours of work.

 Matt shows, using some simple examples, that you can implement policies that can achieve two of these principles, but not all three:

If you want to argue that our welfare system, which already has less ‘middle class welfare’ than any other in the OECD, should be even more tightly targeted to low income earners then that’s fine. Just don’t pretend that by doing so you can also call for an adequate payment and one with low barriers to work. Pick any two out of three; you can’t have it all.

Worth reading.

The irrationality of religion

Jared Diamond has an interesting piece on why it's irrational to be religious.

Are high wages the driver for innovation

In What really powers innovation: high wages Tim Harford ponders the question "Why did the industrial revolution take off in the UK rather than in China?". His answer, the UK had higher wages and lower energy costs which acted as an economic incentive to increase automation. By contrast countries like India and China were the opposite.

According to Bob Allen’s calculations, had a French entrepreneur been presented with easy-assemble instructions for the spinning jenny in 1780, it would scarcely have been worth building it. In India, it would have been a definite loss-maker. But in the UK, the annual rate of return was almost 40 per cent. So much for the genius of British engineering: it wasn’t that nobody else could develop labour-saving machines, it was that nobody else needed them.
This is a persuasive explanation for the location of the industrial revolution, but it is also a solution to the puzzle with which this column began, because Bob Allen’s view of innovation points towards a self-reinforcing spiral. High wages lead to investment in labour-saving technology; that investment means that each worker will be operating more powerful equipment and producing more; this process in turn raises the productivity of labour and tends to raise wages. The incentive to innovate further only continues.

An interesting idea.

Why Government debt isn't necessarily bad

In Avoiding the B word the Mainly Macro blog gives an imaginary interview explaining why Government debt can be good.