At the start of last week the latest report from the Social Security Trustees (link) was released, leading to predictable but misleading warnings that the system was going to "run dry." For example, the headline on this article from the … Continue reading
When Banting and colleagues discovered insulin and saved countless lives they refused to profit from it. Their successors are making millions from Americans. The price used to be low, and it's still low elsewhere, but pharmaceutical companies have jacked up … Continue reading
This probably doesn't surprise you, but while mail-in DNA tests to determine ancestry have some validity, they aren't terribly reliable. In some cases identical twins (who by definition share the same DNA) show somewhat different results even when tested by … Continue reading
On Twitter, Aaron Sojurner points out that while U.S. job growth has been steady since the end of the Great Recession, Donald Trump's interpretation of jobs data underwent a drastic change when he wanted to start taking credit. That's not … Continue reading
The middle decades of the 20th century were boom times for Americans. Partly this is because much of the rest of the industrialized world had been devastated by World War II, but actually recovering from that devastation meant that economic … Continue reading
In this video published August 31, pediatrician and medical school professor Dr Aaron Carroll points out that according to independent estimates, the Medicare for All program proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders would reduce total U.S. healthcare spending, in part because … Continue reading
I just ran across an interesting article published on the conservative American Enterprise Institute's website in 2016. Based on data from 2014, the author, Mark J. Perry, compares gross domestic product per capita of U.S. states and a number of … Continue reading
Since the election (even before his inauguration) President Trump has made a number of announcements about jobs created or retained in the United States thanks to his policies, actions, and influence. The nonprofit investigative journalism group ProPublica has followed up … Continue reading
Update 2018 February 7: The launch was successful in every respect but one: The middle of the three booster rockets failed to land on the floating platform as intended because one of the required engine firings didn't happen. Interestingly, the … Continue reading
There are a lot of real jerks out there, most of them men, who harass and worse their students, employees, or just those they happen to run into. The good news is that a lot of these people -- Bill … Continue reading