Via Dan Savage, a meta-analysis showing a correlation (not necessarily causation) between religious dogmatism and racism:

The February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review has published a meta-analysis of 55 independent studies conducted in the United States which considers surveys of over 20,000 mostly Christian participants. Religious congregations generally express more prejudiced views towards other races. Furthermore, the more devout the community, the greater the racism.

This study finds that a denomination's demand for devout allegiance to its Christian creed overrides any humanistic message. By demanding such devotion to one specific and dogmatic Christianity, a denomination only encourages its members to view outsiders as less worthy.

Moreover, the study found that agnosticism correlates with tolerance, to which I think one should add "Q.E.D."

Again, the study doesn't show causation, only correlation. Religion doesn't itself make one racist. Possibly the conditions that lead someone to religious dogmatism also lead to racism; possibly the communities in which more-devoted religionists live are in areas with historically higher racism.

In the U.S., today is 3.14. The rest of the world will celebrate Pi Day when we have 14 months in a year, because most places write dates "14/3". So we'll just have to wait until International Pi Month in March 2014.

Too bad most of us slept through 3.14 1:59:26...and then lost an hour of sleep 34 seconds later.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

The Chicago Tribune has a story this morning about the controversy blowing through DeKalb County (about 150 km west of Chicago) because of wind turbines:

Ben Michels' friends say he may have the worst of it. Five turbines stand in a line behind his home, the nearest 435 m away; the county restricts turbines from being any closer than that.

Michels, who has raised goats for 20 years and averaged one death per year, said nine have died since December. Autopsies didn't reveal anything physically wrong with them. But he said veterinarians told him the goats may have suffered from stress. "Common sense tells me, it's got to have something to do with the turbines," Michels said. Other farmers say the turbines have spooked their horses and other animals.

I don't think we've seen a better encapsulation of the public policy reasoning of many voters in a long time. First, a spike in something coinciding with something else. Then, an appeal to common sense. Finally, an anecdote about unnamed but similarly-situated people that reinforces the original opinion.

The Tribune doesn't make explicit a clear pattern that emerges from the people who they interviewed: the ones most opposed to the turbines don't own them. At least the article notes "each turbine, which takes up about 1.2 ha total, pays...about $9,000 per year.... That compares with the going rate of about $73 per hectare per year to lease farmland in DeKalb County, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

Ah. Yes. Goats dying and migraine headaches caused by other people profiting from the goat-killing headache machines. (I commend to the reader the chapter in James Davidson and Mark Lytle's brilliant textbook After the Fact on the economic situation in Salem, Mass., in the 1680s.)

I especially enjoyed the top sour-grapes quote of the article:

Yet not everyone who could have profited from the turbines did so.

Ken and Lois Ehrhart originally agreed to allow NextEra to run a power line through their property in Shabbona but then changed their minds. Leasing part of their 320 acres would have provided money to pay off a large hospital bill.

"I says nothing doing," recalled Ken Ehrhart, who raises soybeans, wheat and corn. "We're not the highfliers for all the modern ideas."

In other words, "Get your damn turbines off my lawn, you young whippersnapper!"

Such is progress. Imagine the outcry if someone tried to put a nuclear plant in DeKalb County. Or a coal one.

Via Freakonomics, the City of Edmonton noticed some unusual water-use patterns during the U.S.-Canada hockey game February 27th:

The end result, of course, is that Canadians were flushed with pride.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has run out of patience:

Many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we've made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we've added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support. We will not. We will finish the job.

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree.

At the end of the process, the bill can pass only if it wins a democratic, up-or-down majority vote. If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug 'donut hole' for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so.

All right. Can we get health-care reform already?

After months of beautiful weather I finally arranged a flight check-out at a local flight school. I had to get an hour of additional training to learn how to use the Garmin G1000 flight instrument panel yesterday, but today's flight went just like any other check-out. (Google Earth track.)

My passport, unfortunately, is at the Chinese Consulate in Chicago getting a visa stuck in. So I'll have to wait until I get it back to rent planes. This is because the TSA believes, as would anyone, that only U.S. citizens (or aliens we really, really like) are to be trusted with small airplanes. This will prevent any non-citizens from doing bad things with them, of course.

Via reader AS, Floating Sheep analyzed the relationship between bars and grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada:

We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".

Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.

On average there are 1.52 bars for every 10,000 people in the U.S. but the states that make up the beer belly of America are highly skewed from this average.

I notice that Chicago has fewer bars than grocery stores, and I am confused. Chicago is the land of bars on every street corner identified only by Old Style signs and dirty windows. Maybe there are gypsy grocers no one sees lurking in the neighborhoods?

Can anyone figure out the Best Picture voting, and why they changed it? One economist tried:

To dig deeper into the radical change made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists we turned to Justin Wolfers, associate professor of economics in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School.

This year's Oscar voting is, Wolfers says, "a fairly common election system. We call it the 'exhaustive preferential' system, or 'instant runoff system,' and it’s the way we elect our parliament in Australia."

Backing up, Wolfers gives me a quick lesson in the relation between elections and voting systems. "Political scientists and mathematicians have forever been engaged in the search for a perfect voting system," he says. "[Economist] Kenneth Arrow won the Nobel Prize for his 'Arrow Impossibility Theorem,' in which he wrote down all the things that a good electoral system would do and then proved that there is no system that meets all of those criteria. So we are always choosing the least worst system."

But 10 nominees? My god, the show's going to take days...

A North Carolina congressman wants to put Reagan on the fifty:

It's a Republican -- Rep. Patrick McHenry -- who has introduced the bill to replace the general who led the Union to victory in the (War Between the States) and led the nation as well with another more modern president, the late Californian and great communicator, Reagan.

Reagan transformed the nation's political and economic thinking, the way McHenry sees it. He maintains that "every generation needs its own heroes."

Grant may have had his problems, and he was, after all, a Republican. But let's wait a little bit before replacing him. Maybe we can put Reagan on a new 99c coin (which would be at least somewhat useful).

Citizens of the District of Columbia are now free to marry:

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stop same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia, clearing the way for couples to register to wed beginning Wednesday. Equal-rights opponents in the capital had asked Chief Justice John Roberts to prevent the issuing of licenses until residents had voted on the issue. Lower courts had denied requests to place a moratorium on issuing of licenses.

"It has been the practice of the court to defer to the decisions of the courts of the District of Columbia on matters of exclusively local concern," wrote Roberts, who made the decision without bringing in the full court.

Roberts also cited the fact that although D.C. is autonomous, Congress could have passed a bill to disallow the city government from enacting the law, and it did not do so.

Marriages may be performed beginning March 9, as there is a waiting period of three business days after the issuance of licenses.

In response to the D.C. marriage equality law, Catholic Charities will no longer offer spousal benefits to any new or newly-married employees:

[On March 1st], Catholic Charities President and CEO Edward Orzechowski sent out a memo to staffers informing them of the change to the health care coverage, which will go into effect [March 2nd].

In short: If you and your spouse are already enrolled in Catholic Charities health coverage, your spouse will be grandfathered in. Starting tomorrow, however, new employees (or newly married employees, hint hint) will not be allowed to add spouses to the plan. So: Longtime employees will receive the spousal benefits they’ve always had; Catholic Charities will get to keep its pool of covered spouses gay-free; only fresh employees and gays will feel the sting on this one.

Orzechowski's memo to employees closes with, "Thank you for your understanding in this matter, and let me again express my appreciation for your support and patience over these past months as we have worked hard to arrive at a decision that allows us to continue to serve others in a manner that is consistent with our religious beliefs." Now, I'm not Christian, but I've read the instruction manual, and I'm not sure how exactly bigotry is consistent with it. But, you know, Orzechowski's a grown-up, he can make his own choices. Still, I'd pay real money to watch their financials over the next 24 months...

Columnist Jonah Lehrer thinks about insomnia:

[W]henever we try not to think about something that something gets trapped in the mind, stuck in the recursive loop of self-consciousness. Our attempt at repression turns into an odd fixation.

This human frailty has profound consequences. Dan Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard, refers to the failure as an "ironic" mental process. Whenever we establish a mental goal — such as trying not to think about white bears, or sex, or a stressful event — the goal is accompanied by an inevitable follow-up thought, as the brain checks to see if we're making progress. The end result, of course, is that we obsess over the one thing we're trying to avoid.

I will be thinking about that tonight, I'm sure.

"[I]f James Carville and Jim DeMint are correct to argue that failing to pass HCR will be 'Obama's Waterloo' then the converse must also be true and, therefore, passing the bill could also be 'Obama's Waterloo' because, you know, Waterloo was a significant victory for some of us." —British journalist Alex Massie.

She goes on to say: "And even if it's not a final, crushing victory on the scale of Waterloo, it might be considered 'Obama's Peninsular War.' That's not nothing, either. Right?"

Diane and I completely unplugged this weekend so I'm spending the evening catching up. I'll have photos probably Tuesday, depending how crazy tomorrow goes for me. Meanwhile, a joke from one of my clients:

A noob used the following password: "MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento" When asked why he had such a long password, he said he was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

Paul Krugman has a review posting explaining the concept:

Core inflation isn’t supposed to measure the cost of living, it’s supposed to measure something else: inflation inertia.

Think about it this way. Some prices in the economy fluctuate all the time in the face of supply and demand; food and fuel are the obvious examples. Many prices, however, don’t fluctuate this way — they’re set by oligopolistic firms, or negotiated in long-term contracts, so they’re only revised at intervals ranging from months to years. Many wages are set the same way.

Why the review? Because we're becoming like more Japan in the 1990s:

[I]nflation tends to be self-perpetuating, unless there’s a big excess of either supply or demand. In particular, once expectations of, say, persistent 10 percent inflation have become “embedded” in the economy, it will take a major period of slack — years of high unemployment — to get that rate down. Case in point: the extremely expensive disinflation of the early 1980s.

...And what these measures show is an ongoing process of disinflation that could, in not too long, turn into outright deflation.

It's not quite end-of-the-world stuff, but it does make one nervous.

Chicago Public Radio's David Hammond investigated raw-milk cheese, which is illegal to sell in Illinois:

HAMMOND: ...[W]e got together with a group of chefs and other food enthusiasts in Itasca at a wine bar called Wine with Me to sample both raw and pasteurized milk versions of camembert. No money changes hands, and we’re all consenting adults, so technically there’s no illegal activity taking place. Sitting around a big wooden table, we’re confronted by two very different looking cheeses. As part of this taste test, neither cheese was labeled, but the differences were very apparent. One cheese was rigid and uniform; the other was collapsing in on itself. We started by putting our noses into the stuff. Gary Wiviott is a Chicago food writer and author.

WIVIOTT: Of the two cheeses, one has a distinct ammonia smell and the other smells funky, earthy, almost a little mushroom-y, like a damp forest on a fall day, when the leaves are just starting to break down, very appealing, a very appealing aroma. And the other has a less appealing aroma…I just want to dive into the softer, slightly gooey looking one. I just want to take a big bite out of the darn thing.

Is there a black market for raw-milk cheese in Illinois? Or do I have to go to France to get some?

The Tribune today has a guide to pub trivia in Chicago.

With my nights free and my dog in another time zone (i.e., no need to rush home and walk him after work), I will try some of them. Any other recommendations?

Answer: Tallinn.