Random links
- Zombie Nouns
- "At their best, nominalizations help us express complex ideas: perception, intelligence, epistemology. At their worst, they impede clear communication. I have seen academic colleagues become so enchanted by zombie nouns like heteronormativity and interpellation that they forget how ordinary people speak. Their students, in turn, absorb the dangerous message that people who use big words are smarter – or at least appear to be – than those who don’t." I think that the longer I've spent in school the more boring my writing has become. Not sure that's a good thing.
- The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
- Watched this on Netflix just as it was about to disappear, but it turns out the full movie is available on Youtube now. A fairly decent case for marijuana legalization
- Comparing 2012 Drought Costs to 1980 and 1988
- The 2012 drought in the US seems to have damages initially estimated at 0.08% of GDP and is pronounced in the news somewhat like the end of the world. Compare to the other droughts the post mentions which scored in at 0.72 and 0.78% of GDP - much worse as a fraction of the economy.
- Sicily’s Fiscal Problems Threaten to Swamp Italy
- Found this via MR which, amongst other things, highlighted that "the island employs 26,000 auxiliary forest rangers; in the vast forestlands of British Columbia, there are fewer than 1,500." In the article you've got a few more of the million examples of intergenerational wealth transfer: "One retired politician recently won a case to keep an annual pension of 480,000 euros, about $584,000" and "'Of course that’s too many,' Mr. Lombardo said of the forest rangers. But he said it was difficult to cut back because state workers have job protection. 'We have to wait for them to retire.'"