The Ash Twins Blog

From Gerdes, Uhl, & Alpers (2009):

Abstract:

Because all spiders are predators and most subdue their prey with poison, it has been suggested that fear of spiders is an evolutionary adaptation. However, it has not been sufficiently examined whether other arthropods similarly elicit fear or disgust. Our aim was to examine if all arthropods are rated similarly, if only potentially dangerous arthropods (spiders, bees/wasps) elicit comparable responses, or if spiders are rated in a unique way. We presented pictures of arthropods (15 spiders, 15 beetles, 15 bees/wasps, and 15 butterflies/moths) to 76 students who rated each picture for fear, disgust, and how dangerous they thought the animal is. They also categorized each animal into one of the four animal groups. In addition, we assessed the participants’ fear of spiders and estimates for trait anxiety. The ratings showed that spiders elicit significantly greater fear and disgust than any other arthropod group, and spiders were rated as more dangerous. Fear and disgust ratings of spider pictures significantly predicted the questionnaire scores for fear of spiders, whereas dangerousness ratings of spiders and ratings of other arthropods do not provide any predictive power. Thus, spider fear is in fact spider specific. Our results demonstrate that potential harmfulness alone cannot explain why spiders are feared so frequently.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/can-charter-cities-change-the-world-a-qa-with-paul-romer/

Excerpt:

Suppose you wanted to do for Cuba what Deng Xiaoping did for China: engineer the transition from communism to rapid market-led growth. To do this, you might want to create a special zone where some of your citizens could opt-in to the market system without forcing others to make this change. You might be able to do this with a charter city that you control out of the president’s office.

Now suppose you also want to make a binding commitment to rule-of-law protections for the foreign investors and potential residents from foreign countries you’d like to attract to this city. Investors from the rest of the world could finance the infrastructure for a new city in exchange for fee income from users. Entrepreneurs and managers from the rest of the world might come and run the businesses that would hire millions of people. Many of these highly educated and experienced people might be émigrés who left when the island turned to communism. These investors and these potential residents will come only if you can promise them the protections afforded by the rule of law.

By yourself, with the Cuban institutions that you control, there is simply no way for you to make a credible binding commitment to the rule of law. You could simply change your mind later. More importantly, your successor, whomever that may be, might want to back out of any promises you make.

The only way for you and your contemporaries to make a binding, long-term commitment is to sign a treaty with a country like Canada and to use it as a third-party guarantor. In effect, what a treaty lets you do is leverage the existing credibility of Canadian institutions and bring in the rule of law.

From Bingham et al (2006):

This study used telephone interview data on booster seat use from a state-wide probability sample of parents with children ages 4–8-years-old who were living in Michigan. Interviews were completed with parents of children in 350 households. Analyses examined the entire sample, and three sub-groups: always users, part-time booster seat users, and booster seat non-users. Results indicated that booster seat legislation was a key determinant of the level of use and the motivation to use booster seats. Nearly 70% of part-time users said that they used booster seats because they believed it was the law. Similarly, 60% of part-time and non-booster seat users said that they would be more likely to use booster seats if use were mandated by law, with non-users being 3.5 times more likely than part-time users to agree that a law would increase their booster seat use. Finally, over 90% of part-time and non-booster seat users said it would be easier for them to use booster seats if a law required it, and non-users were almost six times more likely than part-time users to agree that a law would make use easier.

Berkeley Law Professor Brad DeLong offers useful commentary on the case for Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo’s termination:

It appears that what happened is this: The Bush White House directed the U.S. armed forces and the CIA to torture people we had captured, some of whom were terrorists, some of whom saw themselves as lawfully fighting a just war against invaders, and some of whom were innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time, people whose names had been screamed out by others on the rack or had been sold to the CIA by local enemies or opportunists.

When the CIA and armed forces interrogators and lawyers resisted this demand, Vice President Richard Cheney’s staff went to Yoo at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and asked him to write a memorandum stating that the tortures they envisioned were perfectly legal. Cheney and company then went back to the armed forces and the CIA: Here is a letter from the Justice Department stating that this is all perfectly legal, they said. There is no way that anything bad will happen to you if you obey the president’s orders. You have a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Without John Yoo or his colleague Jay Bybee (or somebody else willing to write a similar memo) the torture would not have gone forward, and the United States would not have sustained the enormous damage that was inflicted on it.

[...]

Yoo’s memos concern presidential powers in a time of war. One famous precedent with which any lawyer would have to grapple is the Supreme Court’s decision in Youngstown, concerning President Truman’s seizure of the country’s steel mills to keep them rolling during the Korean War. The Supreme Court ruled his action unconstitutional. The Youngstown case set out the Supreme Court’s judgment as to how far the president’s inherent powers go in a wartime emergency and to what degree those powers are subject to congressional authority.

In his memos, however, Yoo never mentioned Youngstown—either to distinguish it as sufficiently different that the decision does not control, or to argue that it was wrongly decided and should be overturned. This, the lawyers say, is compelling evidence that Yoo was acting not so much as a lawyer but as a political hatchet man.

However, most of my colleagues say that just because John Yoo did a bad thing while working for the Bush administration doesn’t mean the university has cause to censure or dismiss him. We believe in academic freedom, they say, that professors have the right to say what they think and believe without fear of sanction—as long as they act in good faith.

[...]

But in The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton, a book published in 2000 by the libertarian Cato Institute, John Yoo took an entirely different view of “The Imperial Presidency Abroad,” as his contribution was titled.

Yoo wrote: “President Clinton has exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the upmost … [and] undermine[d] notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law … .”

It’s a provocative claim, especially coming from Yoo. How does he claim that Clinton did so? By using his powers as commander in chief to place American troops under the command of British NATO generals. “War power questions to one side, President Clinton’s military adventures raise a second legal and constitutional difficulty—their unprecedented reliance on multilateral cooperation,” Yoo writes. “That position has serious constitutional and policy defects …. [T]he Constitution nowhere permits the president … to delegate federal power completely outside of the national government.”

Yoo’s Bush-era writings support presidential powers so wide-ranging that the president can order the torture of captives regardless of what treaties the U.S. has signed or what laws the U.S. Congress has passed. Yet we are expected to accept that Yoo previously believed that the president’s power as commander in chief is so puny and circumscribed that he cannot lawfully put American troops under the command of allies?

Dwight D. Eisenhower—not the commander in chief but merely the theater commander—in December 1944 placed the U.S. First Army under the command of British Field Marshal Montgomery. President Wilson put the army of Gen. Pershing under the command of French Field Marshal Foch. Commander in chief George Washington put American troops under the command of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur and Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier.

From Bertrand et al (2009):

We analyze a direct mail field experiment in South Africa implemented by a consumer lender that randomized advertising content, loan price, and loan offer deadlines simultaneously. We find that advertising content significantly affects demand. Although it was difficult to predict ex ante which specific advertising features would matter most in this context, the features that do matter have large effects. Showing fewer example loans, not suggesting a particular use for the loan, or including a photo of an attractive female increase loan demand by about as much as a 25% reduction in the interest rate.

According to (Dahl and DellaVigna 2007),

Laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run. We analyze whether media violence affects violent crime in the field. We exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies. The effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation: between 6PM and 12AM, a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1 to 1.3 percent. After exposure to the movie, between 12AM and 6AM, violent crime is reduced by an even larger percent. This finding can be explained by the self-selection of violent individuals into violent movie attendance, leading to substitution away from more volatile activities. In particular, movie attendance appears to reduce alcohol consumption. We find suggestive evidence that strongly violent movies trigger an increase in violence; however, this increase is dominated by a substitution away from more dangerous activities. Overall, our estimates suggest that in the short-run violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. While our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects, we find no evidence of medium-run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure.

According to Andrew Biggs at the American Enterprise Institute,

A new Republican talking point in the healthcare debate defends Medicare as an earned right. Seniors, according to this argument, have paid for their Medicare benefits through the taxes, and the president’s plan to cut Medicare to finance expanded health coverage for the uninsured breaches a moral obligation. These cuts have spurred seniors’ opposition to the administration health plans, graphically illustrated at town hall meetings.

Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, appearing on the Fox News Channel, echoed these concerns, putting Medicare cuts in terms of fairness to those who paid for them. Going further, this ad from the conservative 60 Plus Association plays the Greatest Generation card to the hilt, with images of the Great Depression and D-Day telling of the sacrifices seniors made on behalf of the country…

According to the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report, the average Medicare benefit per person in 2008 was $11,012. From this, we subtract the average Medicare premium of $1,288 to produce an average net benefit of $9,724. I’ll assume that this person collects the average Medicare benefit from age 65 through age 83 (his life expectancy as of age 65)…

To make taxes and benefits comparable, I convert each to present value terms, assuming a real interest rate of 3 percent. This means that taxes paid in the past have 3 percent interest added each year, to account for the fact that these taxes could otherwise have been invested. Likewise, future benefits have 3 percent annual interest deducted, to account for the fact that retirees must wait to receive them.

So what do we get? This typical person paid around $64,971 in Medicare payroll taxes over his lifetime. Likewise, after netting out Medicare premiums, he’ll receive around $173,886 in lifetime Medicare benefits. The net? He can expect to receive around $108,915 more in benefits than he paid in taxes over his lifetime.

This is old news, but I missed it:

http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/obama-justice-department-defends-doma.html

In three parts:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/what-should-colleges-teach-part-2/

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/what-should-colleges-teach-part-3/

From Mead (2007):

Over the past decade, it has become conventional wisdom in many education circles that sufficient stimulation in the first three years of life can go a long way toward hardwiring the brain for success. Bookstores are brimming with books with titles like Smart-Wiring Your Baby’s Brain, states have launched Smart Start programs, and a booming, multi-billion dollar industry led by companies such as Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby has tapped into parental angst over doing enough for their kids with foreign-language classes for newborns, toddler day spas, and a host of other products and services aimed at unleashing a baby’s inner genius…

Look in the parenting section of any major bookstore, and you’ll find scores of books that promise to help parents turn their newborns into smarter, happier, more successful adults by providing them with  esearch-based stimulation and activities. There’s Smart-Wiring Your Baby’s Brain; Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain; and Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten…

Early childhood development gurus also promised that the right kind of stimulation during the first three years of life would ensure that a child’s brain is properly wired, boosting his or her intellectual potential and preventing the dangerous emotional scars that negative stimulation can cause. They also argued the flipside to this appealing promise: If parents miss this chance to shape their infants’ and toddlers’ brain development, they will lose forever the opportunity and do lasting damage to their children’s potential…

During the 1990s, the importance of a child’s first three years became a widely accepted fact in public discourse. This newfound attention to early learning also influenced policy decisions at the local, state and federal levels. States like California, Georgia and North Carolina passed legislation to provide young children with rich and stimulating learning environments. At the federal level, President Bill Clinton created the Early Head Start program to provide early care and education services to poor children from birth to age three, in response to fears that Head Start, which primarily serves four-year-olds, started too late to significantly impact children’s development. Early Head Start’s funding tripled in the late 1990s, and it currently serves 62,000 children at a cost of $684 million…

Early childhood advocates often assume that findings about the shape, size or activity of brain structures say something useful about how people learn, think or behave. But if the brain shows more activity or growth during a certain activity, it does not necessarily mean that more learning or thinking is going on…

The most significant instance of the form-is-function fallacy as it relates to early childhood involves the rapid growth of synapses. Some early childhood advocates have misinterpreted the significance of the rapid development of synapses, arguing that the increased number of young children’s synapses means that they have greater learning capacity than older people. This is not accurate. While synaptic connections are important, the number of connections does not tell us anything about learning capacity…

It would be foolish to conclude that because one vitamin is better for you than no vitamins, swallowing an entire bottle of vitamins must be even healthier. However, early childhood advocates often make the same logical mistake when they interpret neuroscience findings. For instance, studies show that children who were severely abused or neglected in early childhood suffer developmental delays and other problems.14 But early childhood advocates don’t simply tell parents not to neglect their children; they encourage them to provide their children with extra stimulation in order to promote brain development. “Based in part on such observations,” writes Harvard’s Shatz, referring to research on neglected and abused children, “some people favor enriched environments for young children, in the hopes of enhancing development. Yet current studies provide no clear evidence that such extra stimulation is helpful.”…

The idea of a developmental critical period comes from a series of experiments conducted during the 1960s by David Hubel and Torsten Weisel. As part of the research, the scientists sewed shut one of a newborn kitten’s eyes. A few months later, they reopened the eyes and found that the kittens were virtually blind in the eye, because the parts of the brain that normally receive input from the eye had not developed properly…

Early childhood advocates took this idea and applied it to children, arguing that society needs to provide a rich, stimulating environment for babies and toddlers before they lose their ability to learn. But this is a very dangerous leap. The critical period identified by Hubel and Weisel was a critical period for the development of very specific visual functions in kittens, not a generalized critical period for all aspects of development. Research has also shown that critical periods occur for very specific sensory and motor functions, not for entire sensory systems. And no researcher has found a critical period for culturally
transmitted knowledge and skills such as vocabulary, reading or math…

Parents have been the most obvious victims of the zero-to-three hype because it hits them with a striking threat: The experiences you provide your child during the first three years hardwire the brain and forever set your child’s intellectual potential. Fail to provide the right stimulation during early childhood and your child will suffer devastating consequences. Pass on baby water aerobics, in other words, and you can say goodbye to college.

This threat leads parents to waste billions of dollars every year on products that promise to help them foster brain development. The merchandise from Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby and other companies subtly—and sometimes not so subtly—references neuroscience findings about the importance of the first three years. Brainy Baby, for instance, advertises its materials with the slogan “a little genius in the making!” and sells “right brain” and “left brain” educational videos. The Baby Prodigy company explicitly claims its product will help parents raise a “smarter, happier” baby. The text on the back of a Baby
Prodigy DVD case reads, “Did you know you can actually help to enhance the development of your baby’s brain? The first 30 months of life is the period when a child’s brain undergoes its most critical stages of evolution. …Together we can help to make your child the next Baby Prodigy!”

For the companies, the products have been a boon. The toys are sold at stiff prices—a set of 12 Baby Einstein DVDs costs $179.99—and there is a seemingly endless demand. The educational baby toy industry, virtually nonexistent a generation ago, is now a multi-billion dollar business and continues to grow rapidly. For parents, however, the money spent on these educational toys might be better off in a college savings account or used to meet other family needs.

Zero-to-three advocates have convinced state and federal lawmakers to funnel millions into early childhood interventions—many of which have shown little result. The Comprehensive Child Development Program, for instance, a federally funded pilot program that used a case management approach to intervene as early as possible in the lives of very at-risk infants, demonstrated no positive impacts for children or their families, even though it cost nearly $16,000 per participating family per year…

Importantly, by misusing the neuroscience research, early childhood advocates might undermine the very thing they so desperately desire: more funding for young kids. By not focusing on effectiveness, early childhood advocates encourage policymakers to make sloppy decisions about how to invest in young children, and over time the failure of unproductive programs may undermine public support for all types of early childhood investments…

Overselling the importance of the first three years also has serious implications for education policy. The key debate of the accountability era is whether or not it is reasonable to expect schools to close the large achievement gaps that currently exist between poor and affluent students and between white and black or Hispanic students. But if, as the supporters for zero to three contend, the brain becomes hardwired in the first three years of life, then schools shouldn’t be responsible for closing achievement gaps: Learning abilities are set in a child’s brain before they enter kindergarten, and little can be done to alter them…

These views are dangerously deterministic—and do not jibe with the research. For one, the door for learning does not slam shut at age three. Indeed, recent neuroscience research has shown that the mind is amazingly supple and continues to develop well into old age… Reviewing the evidence on early childhood intervention programs, economist Janet Currie concludes that it does not prescribe an optimal age for early childhood interventions. In fact, some of the programs with the strongest evidence of positive effects are high-quality preschool programs serving four-year-olds. Some high-quality intervention programs for at-risk youth have shown significant positive impacts even though they focused on children and adolescents well-past the age of three.

Ryan: A post-doc who used to work in my lab wrote a book about emotional development in babies and shopped it around to different publishers.  The publisher she choice offered a million-dollar advance. She stopped coming to lab after that.