Ron Paul vs Paul Krugman

Ron Paul vs Paul Krugman:



The two debated on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Cowen scores the exchange:

There were too many times when RP simply piled polemic points on top of each other and stopped making a sequential argument.  He overrates the costs of inflation, including in the long term, and for a believer in the market finds it remarkably non-robust in response to bad monetary policy.  Still, given that Krugman is a Nobel Laureate in economics, and Paul a gynecologist, the score could have been more lopsided than in fact it was.

Krugman throws up his hands:

[Y]ou approach what is, in the end, a somewhat technical subject in a format in which no data can be presented, in which there’s no opportunity to check facts (everything Paul said about growth after World War II was wrong, but who will ever call him on it?). So people react based on their prejudices. If Ron Paul got on TV and said “Gah gah goo goo debasement! theft!” — which is a rough summary of what he actually did say — his supporters would say that he won the debate hands down; I don’t think my supporters are quite the same, but opions may differ.

Drum uses the exchange to bash debates as a whole.

Gay Mitt Romney spokesman resigns

Gay Mitt Romney spokesman resigns: A openly gay spokesman for US presidential candidate Mitt Romney resigns, citing personal reasons but amid criticism by anti-gay conservatives.

Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it

Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it:

The unique privilege of jumpsuiting up and prowling the Foxconn factory floor may be reserved for the likes of Tim Cook and Nightline's Bill Weir, but thanks to American Public Media's Marketplace, we can all take a peek at the iPad production line. The above video is part of Rob Schmitz' ongoing look at Foxconn's factory conditions. Schmitz is partially responsible for debunking Mike Daisey's "theatrical" deception, and now hopes to educate readers on the reality of Foxconn's Longhua facility.

"When I gave examples of some of the American media coverage of the working conditions at Foxconn, many workers laughed, telling me it's not really that bad" Schmitz writes. "But that doesn't mean the workers don't have complaints." Through a series of interviews, Schmitz unveils how workers feel about their supervisors, jobs, pay, family back home and their dreams for the future. So, how's that iPad made? Check out the source link below, and find out.

Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dork Tower Monday

Dork Tower Monday:

Dork Tower #1055 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.
Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

Why So Few Women In Congress? Ctd

Why So Few Women In Congress? Ctd:

by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:

With regards to your post about women not running, Fox and Lawless followed up the study with a book, It Takes a Candidate.  They found that women don't run for office because they feel less qualified than men to run.  Lawless and Fox interviewed women and men from four professions that candidates tend to come from: education, medicine, non-profits, and the law.  Women were far less likely to say they felt they were qualified to run for office than men, even though they have the same credentials.
Also, women are more likely than men to point to the invasion of their personal and family lives as reasons they don't want to run for office.  Therefore, it is the problem with gendered psyche and traditional family roles that tends to be the reason that women don't run.  The other problem they found was that men are far more likely to be asked to run by members of the political community, and as a result men tend to have better political support systems prior to declaring their candidacies.

Speaking of women in politics, below are some details about the upcoming HBO series "Veep" (trailer above):

Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice-President Selina Meyer, who is neither corrupt nor politically extreme but harried, maddened by her job’s taunting combination of power and powerlessness, and forever at risk of public embarrassment. Meyer’s dominant mood—panic blunted by exhaustion, as she attempts, cursing, to outrun a political shit storm—will be familiar to viewers of "The Thick of It," Iannucci’s fine BBC sitcom about British ministerial life, or "In the Loop," a companion film that used some of the same actors to tell a darker story of Anglo-American ineptness and bad faith in the prelude to an Iraq-style war.
"Veep" is the second attempt to bring Iannucci’s political satire to American television. The first, an ABC pilot made in 2007, transposed the action to the office of a goofily innocent U.S. congressman; Iannucci, who was not in charge of that production, says that the experience left him feeling "slightly soiled."

Intel Launches Z77 Motherboards, Preparing For Ivy Bridge

Intel Launches Z77 Motherboards, Preparing For Ivy Bridge:



MojoKid writes "In preparation for the arrival of their 3rd Generation Core processor products based on their Ivy Bridge microarchitecture, Intel has readied a new chipset dubbed the Z77 Express. New socket 1155 Ivy Bridge processors offer 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 connectivity on-die and they feature integrated dual-channel, DDR3 memory controllers with maximum officially supported speeds of up to 1600MHz. The processors are linked to the Z77 chipset via Intel's FDI (Flexible Display Interface) and 20Gb/s DMI 2.0 interfaces. The chipset itself is outfitted with 8 more PCIe 2.0 lanes, six ports of SATA (II and III), an integrated Gigabit MAC, and digital display outputs for up to three displays. Making its debut for the first time in an Intel chipset is also native USB 3.0 support with four USB 3.0 and ten USB 2.0 ports built in."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trayvon Martin case: How 5 young black men see race and justice in US

Trayvon Martin case: How 5 young black men see race and justice in US:
The Monitor approached, at random, five young black men in Boston, Los Angeles, Coral Gables, Fla., and Louisville, Ky., and asked them to talk about the Trayvon Martin case, race relations, hoodies, and, of course, their own life experiences. Here's what they had to say.