The Angry Bear

A bit of Kevin Drum: “Raw data: Gasoline during my lifetime,” jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum. I had just been discharged from Marine Corp active duty in 71, married, and bought a boxy Datson 510 to get around in the Chicago suburbs. Finished up at one college in 72 and started finishing my BA at another college 40-something miles away. The1.8 litre with a three speed Borg Warner transmission Datsun paid off at 30 miles to the gallon. I hauled...

Out-of-pocket healthcare costs are $15 billion higher for US women than men, qz.com, Clarisa Diaz Healthcare financial burden on women persists outside of maternity related care. That is the crux of the issue. Women pay more for healthcare. Consulting firm Deloitte: The analysis of the resulting costs after the current benefit coverage is applied, indicates a women’s out-of-pocket medical costs are significantly higher than men’s for every...

Weekly Indicators for September 25 – 29 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Interest rates continued to head higher, with mortgage rates briefly going over 7.5%. With the long leading indicators having worsened, With the decline in commodity (including gas) prices over, I am looking for evidence that the short leading indicators are also beginning to turn lower. As usual, clicking...

I really don’t have much to add to this excellent article on mosquitoes in Sao Tome and Principe. It includes an explanation of how to make mosquitoes resistant to malaria and maybe eliminate malaria at very low cost. The a non explanation of why this isn’t being done (there is no law against it but it appears that In Sao Tome & Principe as well as Germany everything is forbidden if it isn’t specifically allowed — and the parliament is too busy...

It appears Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is well on his way to implementing his modernization vision of the future US Post Office. The is not going to be pretty. If even half of the claims made by Steve Hutchins and Mark Jamison are true, the nation will suffer a loss which will be impossible to reclaim. The report fails to focus on the operational and labor portions of the new USPS system. OIG reports on Sorting & Delivery Centers, Save the...

For less than $1 thousand a pop, Ukrainians are taking out Russian tanks costing $3 million. For less than $300 thousand a pop, they are taking out Russian warships costing $ billions. Ukraine is doing these things with homemade cardboard drones, store-bought drones, and their roll-your-own mostly-submerged drones. Ukraine’s TLK-150 and TLK-400 submersible drones with 700-1200 mile ranges and up to 500 lb payload cost around $250k apiece. One US...

Consumer spending holds up well in August, despite ending of disinflation  – by New Deal democrat  As I have repeated for the past several months, in the current economy the personal spending and income report is just as important as the jobs report. That’s because, despite the downturn in manufacturing production and many parts of the housing market, consumer spending especially on services has continued to power the economy forward....

The New Yorker has an interesting article by Manvir Singh about fad diets, with a focus on all-animal diet as ostensibly the diet best suited to our species. A character who brands himself “The Liver King” specifically endorses grassfed beef liver. The paleo diet industry insists that humans evolved to kill animals and devour their tissues and organs, eating plant matter in desperate circumstances.In reality, the best research we have suggests that...

I am struggling with thoughts about status quo bias. I see many issues where a proposal to do something new is subject to severe scrutiny which is not applied to the implicit proposal to keep doing what we have been doing. The logic is small c conservative — better to stick with what we know than to take a chance. In many critically important cases, this makes no sense, as we are not in a steady state and things won’t stay the same (being what we...

The US government will shut down tomorrow. Two people are responsible. One is Kevin McCarthy who will not allow a vote on the Senate’s continuing resolution. The other is Senator Rand Paul who will not allow waiver of the absurd official rules of the Senate so the Senate will not vote on the bill before the shutdown. “ “RandPaul To avoid a government shutdown, I will consent to an expedited vote on a clean CR without Ukraine aid on...