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From Examine.com, "Your Unbiased Source on Nutrition and Supplements":
There are no studies that indicate any long-term health risks from drinking diet soda. . . . There is no evidence that diet soda inhibits fat loss, or that it even spikes insulin levels to levels that would be detrimental to health.
"Don’t get me wrong. I think self-driving cars will be one of this century’s greatest technical achievements. But I am just astounded at how little work has been done by the companies planning to populate our streets with two-ton vehicles being controlled by software but little testing."
They must be celebrating in Baghdad by the Bay.
In 2012, the Civic Center station made headlines when a work crew pulled apart a broken escalator and discovered so much human excrement inside, they had to call a hazardous-materials team.
So, yes, it could be worse.
The Colonel's secret is out. (Coming soon to a social science journal near you: the effect of the recipe release on KFC's sales.)
Related: "Uncovering the secrets of NYC’s favorite foods".
The cause of sclerotic growth is the major economic policy question of our time. The three big explanations are 1) We ran out of ideas (Gordon); 2) Deficient "demand," remediable by more fiscal stimulus (Summers, say) 3); Death by a thousand cuts of cronyist regulation and legal economic interference.
On the latter, we mostly have stories and some estimates for individual markets, not easy-to-use government-provided statistics. But there are lots of stories.
George Leef has great fun reviewing a new book claiming "college professors [are] harried and overburdened to the point where they’re putting their very health at risk".
Oddly, Berg and Seeber present data showing that actual corporate chief executive officers feel less stress and more ability to get their work done than do college professors working in their non-profit environment from which people are rarely fired. According to an MIT study they cite, 62 percent of college faculty reported that they feel “physically or emotionally drained at the end of the day,” while only 55 percent of the CEOs said that they felt that way.
To me, this story illustrates the need for detailed, location-specific information in helping students and running schools.
"Bookworm" from the Bookworm Room:
With a child heading off to college, I’ve decided to start a new feature at my blog. As the spirit moves me, I’m going to quote, verbatim, from college catalogs. I’m not going to go the cheap and easy route of quoting from the Women’s Studies or Queer Studies departments. Instead, I’m interested in what passes for education in the traditional liberal arts: History and English.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget presents the discouraging forecasts.
CBO now projects deficits more than tripling, from $438 billion in 2015 to $1.24 trillion by 2026, with trillion dollar deficits returning by 2024. CBO now projects the deficit for 2016 to be $152 billion higher than 2015 at $590 billion.
Debt held by the public, meanwhile, will grow by $10 trillion from $13.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $23.1 trillion by 2026. As a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), debt will grow from 74 percent of GDP in 2015 – already twice its pre-recession levels – to 85.5 percent of GDP in 2026.
Very nicely done by Donald Boudreaux.
Put differently, to say “let the market handle it” is just a shorthand way of saying “Let whoever is most willing, most able, most experienced, most knowledgeable, and best equipped be free to try his or her hand at dealing with each specific problem.” And to say “let the market always handle it” is not – contrary to what Rodrik’s argument suggests – to propose a single, simple fix for all problems; it is to propose that the field be left open for as many fixes as are feasible to be tried. To say “let the market always handle it” is to warn that using government as a fix crowds out – prevents – experimentation with many other possible fixes.