I'm back. Have three weeks of collected links!

Cool or important stuff
* Krugman (and 9 page Kenneth Arrow PDF) on why markets fail at health care.
* Jimmy Carter breaks with Baptists over gender equality. He's for it.
* Yet another article on the plural 'they'. This one is new in describing whom to blame for the idea that it's bad.
* Racial whitewashing of covers.
* House of Representatives size over time
* Creepy vintage ads
* Some people say rich people are fleeing California due to high taxes. They're wrong. A lot of people have been gloating about people leaving California; none have acknowledged California's population perhaps unsustainably in dot-com and housing bubbles.
* Prenatal air pollution lowers IQ. Ah, poor people, getting shafted even before they're born. "Just work harder!"
* Replacement fertility isn't a constant 2.1. It's approximately the reciprocal of (chance of a girl being born)*(chance a girl will survive to average age of maternity). So given 50% ratio but 50% chance of survival, the average woman would have to have 1/(.5*.5)=4 children just to keep the population going. Current numbers go from 2.05 to over 3.
** Decadent liberal countries having more children
* Obama did get more young voters to turn out.
* Law and order in the West Bank. But some people think they should be expelled.
* Bus rapid transit. Speaking of Third World megacity sprawl, it seems to me that much of LA is well-adapted to rapid busways, e.g. there are spare lanes to hijack.
* If you listened to the media, you'd never think Nobel-winning economists worry the stimulus is too small.
* Poland weathering the recession


Krugman/Stiglitz dump
article on Stiglitz
http://www.newsweek.com/id/207390
Krugman on it
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/morning-joe/
Newsweek on Krugman
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191393?tid=relatedcl
column excerpts
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191398?tid=relatedcl
female Japanese 'Krugman'
http://www.newsweek.com/id/204874?tid=relatedcl

( GOP news )

( fitness links )

( random )

Study of Pueblo, CO over three years after a smoking ban finds a big drop in heart attacks; this is attributed to the effects of secondhand smoke, though a skeptical doctor is found to quote. The CDC apparently attributes 3000 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths per year to secondhand smoke (out of the 440,000 total deaths due to smoking.)

And we've got a new worry, third hand smoke, toxic combustion products accumulated on surfaces, where small children and play with and ingest them. Though the articles aren't about actual health studies, but about a survey of attitudes regarding third hand smoke, which seems weird since I'd never heard of it. But I guess it's been around for a while, at least 2006. Also < href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-08-06-thirdhand-smoke-usat_x.htm">this</a>. Hmm, my parents were heavy smokers (the living room walls went from white to a dark yellow) and I was a bookish child who didn't get out much, and sickly.

Secondhand smoke dangers. And the Mayo Clinic. More.

Tangentially, blood sugar and memory declines.

While our stock market is bobbing up and down, one to three million people will die this year of malaria, including 2700 children a day. Oh, but that's not a crisis, just business as usual.

"Yes, Damien, but why do you bring this up now? Just to make us feel guilty and 'in perspective'?"

Medicine Sans Frontiers today called for free malaria treatment in Africa, to deal with the pervasive crisis.

"That sounds nice, but how much will it cost?"

They say about $5 or 6 billion a year until 2020, about $65 billion (my summation). Not much larger than the stimulus plan we didn't get, and less than 1/10th of Paulson's bailout.

"...that's not much."

Made me wonder what the actual cost of treatment is, it did. CGD says $2.40 for a cutting edge course of treatment. Microbiologybytes says between 8 cents and $5.30 depending on local drug resistance. Note that seems to be for a full course, not just one dose. So ignoring distribution and refrigeration problems, one could buy a treatment, for all of the 3 billion people who have to potentially worry about malaria, for $6 billion. More personally, $100 donation to MSF could help 20+ people with a life-threatening disease.

On the prevention front, Wikipedia says Jeffrey Sachs says malaria could be controlled for $3 billion/year. Roll Back Malaria has more details and higher cost -- more like $4 billion prevention, and almost $7 billion for the whole program in 2010. $7 per First Worlder...

MSF US donation page; if you're in another country they'll probably redirect you.

Wednesday: didn't get nearly enough sleep despite being so tired. Part noisy undergrads, party body stupidity.
Thursday night: was sniffling into Doctor Who.
Friday: yep, sick. Sniffle.
Saturday: sniffle, no sleep due to mouth breathing or something.
Sunday: sore throat. Into the "diluted orange juice" phase of self-treatment. Reflecting that I'm out of ramen or canned soup, and running low on OJ.

So yeah, still owe 2 or 3 Japan posts and lots of photo sorting, but.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080828/ts_nm/who_dc_1

Huge discrepancies also exist within countries, including Scotland where a boy born in the deprived Glasgow suburb of Calton can expect to live 28 years less than one born in affluent Lenzie, just 13 km (8 miles) across town, it said.

That is huge. Why?

American life-expectancy dropping.

Well, more like the poorest -- also Southern -- Americans. And female ones.

100,000 Americans die of hospital-acquired infections every year.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/the-silent-kill.html

The "Islamofascists" can't kill nearly as many people as our lax hospital procedures and abuse of antibiotics. How much scrubbing and autoclaving could the Iraq Fiasco buy?

Alternate post title: "Evolution in Action"

Related, the low hanging fruit of flu prevention
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/09/influenza-and-l.html
Hey, it's only ten 9/11s a year.

"There are very few problems can be solved solely by throwing buckets of money at them (although buckets of money are either helpful or necessary). Annual influenza is one of those problems than can be solved simply by investing more resources."

Don't worry, be happy! -- even if there was, you know, a real reason to be worried.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/07/09/antidepressants/index.html

Article doesn't mention what I just reminded a friend, that exercise (I have a vague idea walks work better than weight-lifting -- I've wondered if it's actually exercise or sensory input which helps) and exposure to greenery seem to help at clinical levels. (There's also some persistent doubt as to whether standard antidepressants work much better than placebos)

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