Open Thread and Link Farm, by Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be remembered! Edition

Cartoon by Ben Schwartz.

Cartoon by Ben Schwartz.

  1. Alan Rickman’s most memorable film roles and quotes – NY Daily News
  2. Oscars 2016: The nominees are blindingly white. Again. – Vox
    Of the last 40 actors nominated for an Oscar, 40 have been white.
  3. The Angoulême Grand Prix Controversy | Comicosity
    There was a big reaction this year when, of the 30 cartoonists nominated for the Angoulême Grand Prix award this year – a very prominent lifetime-achievement award – none were women.
  4. Military Strategist Explains Why Trump Leads—And Will Fail
    Ben L. linked to this in the last open thread, and I’m re-linking it here, because it’s really the most persuasive article about Trump (and the 2016 election) I’ve yet read.
  5. But on the other hand… GOP Nomination Rules Tilt the Playing Field toward Donald Trump
  6. Bernie Sanders Could Win Iowa And New Hampshire. Then Lose Everywhere Else. | FiveThirtyEight
    Save you a click: White liberals are a much larger portion of the voters in Iowa and NH than almost all other states, and Bernie has (so far) only done well among white liberals. (His home state of Vermont is one of the whitest and liberalest.)
  7. When Teamwork Doesn’t Work for Women – The New York Times
    A new study shows how female economists get less credit for their work than their male counterparts.
  8. Republicans in Congress ended the decades-long funding ban on needle exchange programs – Vox
    Once in a while the GOP does something right. In this case, I can’t give full credit, because if Republicans had been reasonable the ban would have ended years ago – but at least it’s now effectively ended (at the Federal level anyway), and that’s good.
  9. Trucks have hit this low bridge more than 100 times, and officials still haven’t fixed it – Vox
    What makes this awesome is that someone who works nearby has set up cams and regularly posts oddly hypnotic films of trucks crashing into the bridge. (Or, more accurately, into the seemingly invincible bridge protection beam the railway set up about a yard in front of the bridge.)
  10. The Best Facts I Learned from Books in 2015 – The New Yorker
    Do you know that Aaron Burr’s fire-and-brimstone preacher grandpa was Johnathan Edwards? I didn’t.
  11. Drive-By Fat Shaming | Dances With Fat
    Dances With Fat discusses that fat joke in the first episode of “Jessica Jones.” I really liked her comment on the “last acceptable” canard.
  12. Poisoned Democracy: How an Unelected Official Contaminated Flint’s Water to Save Money | Democracy Now!
    The story of lead poisoning in Flint is horrifying on so many levels; in the mindless devotion to cost-cutting and ignoring science, and in the way that systematic racism leads to children being poisoned.
  13. Lawsplainer: Was FAU Prof. James Tracy Fired in Violation of His First Amendment Rights? | Popehat
    Spoiler: probably.
  14. Sorry, grammar nerds. The singular ‘they’ has been declared Word of the Year. – The Washington Post
  15. Conservatives have a version of political correctness, too – Quartz
    “Bashing the left for political correctness has become a popular pastime for many liberals like Jonathan Chait and Katha Pollitt. By declaring your commitment to free speech, you can show your seriousness and relative political moderation. Much of the discussion of political correctness, then, is about inter-left positioning.”
  16. Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories Than Americans – The Atlantic
    I need to think about this more before agreeing or disagreeing, but it’s interesting.
  17. Obsidian Wings: How special effects eat characterization
    It all comes down to the budget.
  18. How the Gender Wage Gap Differs by Occupation | Center for American Progress
  19. To Live And Die Before A Mirror (For those of you who write military fics)
    Tips for fiction writers who are writing characters in the military. I’m not currently, but I still found this entertaining to read.
  20. A Roundtable Interview With the Cast of Hamilton — Vulture
    This is one of the better Hamilton-related interviews I’ve read, with a lot of interesting thoughts from cast members about how they approach their work. I liked Daveed Digg’s explanation for why he never sees the audience until act 2, but I’ll be obnoxious and make you click through to read it.
  21. I’m fed up of having to perform my disability | Scope’s Blog
  22. In angry, defensive memo, Manhattan DA’s office withdraws bite mark evidence – The Washington Post
    Notable for one of the most egregious examples I’ve ever seen of lying by quoting out of context – and the liar is a D.A.
  23. I’m not sure how reliable it is, but this survey of Americans found that 24.8% have less than $100 in their accounts; 23.8% have between $101 and $500; 7.7% have between $501 and $1,000; 16.4% have between $1,001 and $5,000; and 27.3% have more than $5,000 in their accounts.
    So the majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings. I wonder if people who don’t have bank accounts were excluded, or counted in the “less than $100” category.

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19 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, by Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be remembered! Edition

  1. 1
    Charles S says:

    RE: #6, it is a little weird to be linking to a July 8, 2015 article about the primaries (page 71). The poll numbers in that are wildly out of date. The analysis is no longer accurate that Sanders still polls in the single digits with black and Latino democrats. According to the cross-tabs of a recent national IBD poll, Clinton gets ~50% of the black and Latino vote, while Sanders gets ~20%, with ~30% undecided or supporting someone else. Unless that improves (and the 30% undecided gives plenty of room for Sander’s polling to improve), that would probably cost him significantly in states with more black and Latino voters, but Sanders is only behind by 4% nationally in that poll, with Clinton under 50%, so stronger black and Latino support for Clinton is not keeping her in the safe zone (and with proportional representation in delegate elections, the national percentage is probably close to the fraction of delegates he’d have if a national primary were held today).

    Also, Sanders is currently actively campaigning at historically black colleges and universities, working to shift that substantial undecided segment over to his side.

    I’m surprised by all this. I was pretty confident that Sanders didn’t really have any chance of getting the nomination even as recently as mid-December. I still wouldn’t bet on him at even odds, but I no longer think that article is accurate.

  2. 2
    RonF says:

    Re: #6:

    The Charles River runs through the Boston suburbs and then forms the border between Boston and Cambridge until it flows into Boston Harbor (and thus the Atlantic Ocean). On either side there is a divided highway. The one on the Cambridge side is called Memorial Drive (a.k.a. “Mem Drive” to the locals) and is always U.S. Route 2 on it’s entire length and either Massachusetts Route 2 and/or 3, depending on where you are on it.

    As such it runs directly in front of the MIT campus. As such there are numerous bridges across it. MIT is bisected by Massachusetts Avenue which joins Boston and Cambridge, so there is obviously a bridge over Mem Drive there. Immediately west of the bridge is a long row of MIT dormitories.

    It’s 9′ 6″. It’s the first bridge whose height does not permit a semi-trailer to drive underneath it that a truck driver would encounter driving east towards downtown Boston. There have been numerous accidents.

    One fine sunny weekend day, when there were plenty of undergrads out and about – almost all male at that time – a beer truck driver failed to pay attention to numerous very large signs. A loud BOOM alerted a couple hundred undergraduates that something had happened. They quickly discovered that there were thousands of cans of beer all over the highway.

    When MDC and the Mass. State Police showed up, there were scores of undergraduates salvaging (O.K. – stealing) cases, sixers and individual cans of beer and tossing them up to their fellow undergrads, and one frantically screaming truck driver who was being roundly ignored. The cops got rid of the undergrads, but they never got any of the beer back.

    I’ve been back there. That bridge is STILL 9′ 6″ and is not about to change anytime soon. The presence of the Charles River right there would make it pretty complicated to dig another 4.5′ deeper. There’s a turnaround provided for people who pay attention to signs and realize that they’ve made a mistake before they hit the bridge. But that appears to be a subset of all the truck drivers who use Mem Drive.

  3. 3
    closetpuritan says:

    #22–that quote is pretty amazing.

    Balko had another good one recently: Why the ‘wet tea leaves’ drug raid was outrageous

    $250,000 a year is not middle-class–about how promises by Obama, Clinton, and Sanders to not raise any [Obama and Clinton]/most [in Sanders’ case] taxes on families making $206,568 household income are in the top 5%.) I agree, and am surprised this has not received more scrutiny.

  4. 4
    Ampersand says:

    Charles: Good point. I’m really hopeful for how well Sanders is doing – I don’t know if I’d prefer him or Clinton, but I do know that I’d prefer there to be a real race.

  5. 5
    Ampersand says:

    Ron, great story!

    Closetpuritan, I agree, the “we won’t raise taxes” pledges coming from Democrats are a terrible idea.

  6. 6
    RonF says:

    A “We won’t raise taxes” pledge from Democrats would be a terrible idea because no one would believe it and it would simply be considered one more lie by the Democrats.

    From #18:

    Some argue that the wage gap is purely due to “women’s choices,” but such a characterization hides the cultural and social factors that go into women’s decisions to enter or stay in a particular job.

    Perhaps. But so what? Whatever those factors are, they are reasons why women don’t do work or put in the hours at work that would cause them to be more highly compensated. It does not mean that women are being paid less than men for the same work.

    Moreover, even when women choose the same jobs as men, the wage gap persists. For example, male surgeons earn 37.76 percent more per week than their female counterparts.

    But that ignores what’s pointed out in many studies such as this one (with links to click through on it as well). Even though two people have the same job title, it doesn’t mean that they are both putting in the same work and the same hours. For example, if you work long shifts and do 10 surgeries a day, you’re going to make more money than someone who works shorter shifts and does 7 surgeries a day. Additionally, there are specialties within surgery (as in any branch of medicine), and those who work in more demanding (and thus more stressful and time-consuming) specialties will get paid more.

    This also answers for the author’s comments on education as well. You don’t get paid for your education. You get paid for your productivity. Whether or not you get hired for a low paying job or a high paying job is going to be partly a function of your education. And, indeed, single women starting out in professional jobs tend to get the same starting rate as men. But as one’s career progresses, the people who are willing to work longer hours and otherwise spend more time on their career make more money.

    There are many ways to combat the gender wage gap. Policies that help women balance work and family commitments—such as paid sick days, paid family leave, and fair scheduling practices, as well as equal pay protections and pay transparency—can work to combat the many causes of the gender wage gap, both overall and within individual occupations.

    So why is this an objective? Because of various choices and societal structures, women who choose to have families and are less productive for their employer than a man make less than men who choose to make families do. Why is this an issue that requires government intervention? Why should the government force private employers to pay for productivity they don’t get?

  7. 7
    Harlequin says:

    Perhaps. But so what? Whatever those factors are, they are reasons why women don’t do work or put in the hours at work that would cause them to be more highly compensated. It does not mean that women are being paid less than men for the same work.

    I mean…the “so what” is one of the points of the article: the end of the article is talking about public policy as well as employment practices that enable women to engage in the workforce at the same level as men.

    But as to supposed women’s choices in work hours and job duties: If certain specialties within these broad job categories pay more than others, but women are systematically pushed out of those higher-pay specialties by discrimination, that is still a discriminatory gender influence on the wage gap. If–as has been repeatedly demonstrated–employers do not promote women at the same rates as men with the same qualifications and work history, or do not promote women with children at the same rate as men and childless women, then that causes a discriminatory gender wage gap. If women with the same talents and skills as men are not given the same responsibilities and therefore do not work as many hours and/or receive extra pay, then that causes a discriminatory gender wage gap. Since work in the home is not compensated, if women are pressured to preferentially take on those duties, then even if they work the same number of hours as men (and research tends to show that on balance women in heterosexual working couples have less free time, though they work fewer paid hours) their average compensation is less, causing a gender wage gap, and those expectations for working hours can extend even to single people or people in couples who do not arrange the work hours that way.

    All of those are cases of valuing women’s labor less–just not at the level of a one-to-one comparison. Why is the one-to-one comparison the only one that you seem to think we have any power to change?

    (Not to mention, if men are pressured to work extra hours because they are assumed to have a wife to take care of their home life, then that causes a gender gap by negatively impacting the men involved through overwork.)

  8. 8
    Harlequin says:

    Oh, hmm, you added some stuff while I was writing that comment, sorry. So to address this:

    So why is this an objective? Because of various choices and societal structures, women who choose to have families and are less productive for their employer than a man make less than men who choose to make families do. Why is this an issue that requires government intervention? Why should the government force private employers to pay for productivity they don’t get?

    Why intervene? Because, in some cases, those choices are not freely choices by the employees in question, but forced by employers (some women with children would choose to work more but their employers will not give them the hours or promotions; some men would like to spend more time at home but face reprisals of various forms if they do) or alternately caused by employer inflexibility that interacts with social conditioning (neither parent in a family can get flexible enough scheduling to pick up the kids from school even if total work hours and productivity would not be affected; that means one parent must step down working hours or change jobs, and it’s often the woman, but that wouldn’t have to happen with more flexible options for people of any gender, in which case both parents could continue working as they had done before).

    Why should the government force private employers to pay for productivity they don’t get?

    You got a quote for anyone proposing that, or even seeming to imply that, in the article in question?

  9. 9
    closetpuritan says:

    @RonF–well, I’m not sure why you’re mentioning Democrats in particular. You don’t really think one side of the aisle has a monopoly on lying politicians? George Bush I’s “read my lips: no new taxes” is pretty infamous. OTOH, Obama has arguably kept his promise:
    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/07/barack-obama/barack-obama-said-hes-cut-taxes-middle-class-famil/
    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-obama-caused-massive-tax-increase-middle-/

    How you view that depends on what you count as a “tax on the middle class [using the stupid definition of <$250k]". A tax on tanning booths and other sales-tax-related things are not income-based, so it's not "on the middle class", specifically, but some middle-class people will pay that tax.

  10. 10
    Ben Lehman says:
  11. 11
    kate says:

    Discrimination against women is still a factor in the gender wage gap. There are countless studies with strong controls which show that women are still clearly discriminated against, including #7, above.

    While women in the field publish as much as men, they are twice as likely to perish. And this higher rate for women being denied tenure persists even after accounting for differences in tenure rates across universities, the different subfields of economics that women work in, the quality of their publications and other influences that may have changed over time.

    But Ms. Sarsons discovered one group of female economists who enjoyed the same career success as men: those who work alone. Specifically, she says that “women who solo author everything have roughly the same chance of receiving tenure as a man.” So any gender differences must be because of the differential treatment of men and women who work collaboratively.

  12. 12
    closetpuritan says:

    An interesting way that “marked” [in the jargony sense] has come up recently, from Paul Campos:

    Both the Case and Deaton paper and this new analysis are examples of how whiteness in America is increasingly becoming what sociologists call a “marked category” — that is, a phenomenon or group that stands out in its difference from what is assumed to be the normal, the ordinary, and the therefore largely invisible. In other words, until fairly recently the issue of “white drug abuse” would have been much more difficult to notice or even conceptualize, since drug abuse would be framed as either a society-wide problem, and/or a problem for various others, i.e., racial minorities, the poor, counter-culture types etc.

  13. 13
    Irene says:

    The median net worth in the US is around $45K per adult, so I don’t think 23 can possibly be right. We do have unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it’s quite that bad.

  14. 14
    Harlequin says:

    Irene, I don’t think that’s inconsistent with #23. Median net worth includes things like home equity (which tends to be about 3/4 of the net worth number), retirement plans, life insurance policies, and furniture/jewelry/other high-value goods; #23 is just measuring cash on hand.

  15. 15
    Harlequin says:

    I should say, at least 3/4; it can be even higher depending on real estate markets.

  16. 16
    MJJ says:

    In regard to the cartoon, I want to note that at least one of his famous nemeses went ahead of him.

    Specifically, his nemesis as Dr. Lazarus.

  17. 17
    Sebastian H says:

    Median wealth includes the value of your house, which often can’t be accessed at precisely the times that you might need it most (like when you lose your job because the economy tanked).

  18. 18
    Spoonwood says:

    @Harlequin:

    ” If–as has been repeatedly demonstrated–employers do not promote women at the same rates as men with the same qualifications and work history, or do not promote women with children at the same rate as men and childless women, then that causes a discriminatory gender wage gap. ”

    Employers don’t promote women or men as a group. They promote individuals.

    “Since work in the home is not compensated…”

    No, it DOES get compensated. Stay at home motherhood does exist.

    @Kate:

    “Discrimination against women is still a factor in the gender wage gap. There are countless studies with strong controls which show that women are still clearly discriminated against, including #7, above.”

    No, #7 doesn’t concern the gender *EARNINGS* difference. It concerns TENURE, not earnings. Not all academic institutions pay the same. Or require the same amount of work for that matter.

    And there do exist serious studies such as Warren Farrell’s book Why Men Earn More and the CONSAD report which indicate that there may not exist any discriminatory component to the gender earnings difference.

    And it still holds that men predominate in dirty and dangerous jobs. How exactly do you put a price tag on someone, such as a security guard, police officer, firefighter, coal miner, or soldier who puts their health and even their life on the line for their work?

  19. 19
    Harlequin says:

    Spoonwood:

    Employers don’t promote women or men as a group. They promote individuals.

    Could I ask you to clarify the relevance of this statement? I can see only two explanations for what you mean, but both seem unlikely. (One, that you reject the field of statistics, since since a large part of that is examining individual decisions or events in the aggregate; or two, that since decisions are made one by one and not in groups, you think it’s impossible for bias to matter, meaning that racism/sexism/etc do not currently and can never have had any impact on hiring, firing, promotions. housing, the criminal justice system…)

    No, it DOES get compensated. Stay at home motherhood does exist.

    By “compensated” I meant “paid.”