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	<title>The Ash Twins Blog</title>
	<link>http://ashtwins.com</link>
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		<title>David Barstow and Freedom of Information</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We discussed David Barstow&#8217;s article on the Tea Party movement in a previous post. Barstow, a New York Times reporter, spoke at a conference that I attended last Thursday. I summarize his words here.
While Barstow is best known for his work on the Pentagon military analyst propaganda program, the subject of his speech was journalistic [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/762</link>
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		<title>Irrational premises in the conservative populist movement</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The other interesting aspect of these populist movements is that their bedrock premises are irrational. I can&#8217;t help but empathize with these just-plain-folks being shaken out of their anesthesia and wanting to stick it to the man. I think this emotional resonance draws people in to the cause.
Unfortunately, the movements&#8217; plans for improving society are [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/766</link>
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		<title>Errant emotional valuation in the conservative populist movement</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I read some articles this week about the Tea Party Movement. The first was in the New York Times by David Barstow (previously mentioned on the blog). The second was sent to me by my dad, from prisonplanet.com.
The excessive emotion in these debates is fascinating. Subjects as innocuous (to me)  as meteorology, clinical diagnosis, or [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/763</link>
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		<title>Pentagon Papers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The following is an excerpt from Stone (2004) about the Pentagon Papers:
Although most of what was in the study was common knowledge, it shed important light on key aspects of America&#8217;s involvement in Vietnam. It documented, for example, that at the end of World War II President Truman had rejected urgent appeals from Ho Chi [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/760</link>
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		<title>The GDP Paradox</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This 2009 paper by Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh discusses &#8220;the GDP Paradox,&#8221; which refers to the popularity of GDP as a measure of social welfare. GDP, which stands for &#8220;gross domestic product,&#8221; is defined as &#8220;the monetary, market value of all final goods and services produced in a country over a period of a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/758</link>
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		<title>De Beers Invented Diamond Engagement Ring Tradition</title>
		<description><![CDATA[According to this excerpted interview with Janine Roberts, author of Glitter          &#38; Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel, diamond monopolist De Beers invented the tradition of a diamond engagement ring:
Diamonds became engagement stones around the end of the recession.      [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/756</link>
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		<title>Bad-Ass Grannies Havin&#8217; a Tea Party</title>
		<description><![CDATA[David Barstow at the New York Times recently published a great article on the &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; movement. One of the interesting things, which might just be a product of Barstow&#8217;s reporting choices, is that elderly women are some of the most important activists in the movement:
As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/754</link>
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		<title>Some Evidence on the Effects of Religion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The following bullet points summarize the results from recent empirical work on the effects of religion:

Eskin 2004: &#8220;Suicide ideation was more frequent in adolescents undergoing secular education than in those undergoing religious education. The secular group was more accepting of suicide than the religious group. Those from the religious group, however, were more accepting of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/752</link>
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		<title>Goldfish have a prehensile throat</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Carassius carassius, better known as the goldfish, is another fish of interest to comparative neuroanatomists. The fish has an exceptionally large vagal lobe, a brain stem structure which mediates swallowing, among other things.
Aside: the name vagal comes from the vagus nerve, which is the major input and output nerve of the vagal lobe. Vagus, which [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/717</link>
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		<title>Bailout Corruption</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone provides a concise history of how the investment banks became the prime beneficiaries of the government response to the financial crisis.
First, the government&#8217;s peculiar bailout of AIG precluded it from entering normal bankruptcy procedures, which would have reserved an equitable amount of AIG&#8217;s assets for all of its creditors:
As AIG [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://ashtwins.com/archives/740</link>
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