text:
Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all U.S. workers

Political pressure works, y'all!

  • Even seasonal/temp workers will benefit from the wage raise.
  • The announcement is a direct response to public and political pressure.
  • The change begins November 1 — Merry Happy HoliXmas to folks who work there!

OK, be honest... who just searched for a job on Google with this news?

Counting cash.

Politicians such as Bernie Sanders have spoken and even introduced legislation about the travesty presented by Amazon workers surviving on food stamps to supplement their wages—especially in light of the fact that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes more in one minute than many of these people do in a year.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."

It's a testament to the power of political pressure, and the high-profile nature of Amazon as a company, that it has decided to make progress in this realm.

By the numbers...

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Amazon warehouse workers protest outside the Axel Springer building on April 24, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. Several hundred Amazon warehouse workers from Germany, Poland and Italy protested outside the Axel Springer building, where inside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was scheduled to receive an award for innovation. The workers claim Amazon pays too little and offers too few benefits.

This will apply to 350,00 full time, part time, and temporary/contract workers in the United States who are vital to Amazon's ability to deliver as promised during the upcoming holidays. It also applies to Whole Foods employees, a company purchased last year by Amazon.

However, it also will be increased in some other countries— notably, Europe, where Amazon will raise the minimum to £10.50 (about $13.60) in the London area, and £9.60 ($12.33) for the rest of the United Kingdom.

In its press release, Amazon also stated that it will put pressure on the United States to increase the Federal minimum wage, which hasn't seen a bump from the current $7.25/hr. since 2009. The tipped minimum wage has been at $2.13/hr. since 1991.

Indeed, given the tighter labor market, though many of those jobs are low-wage and few benefits, this might mean other parts of retail and online sales companies will need to work on wages as well, or risk not having enough staff on hand for the coming holiday season.

In a speech today after the Amazon announcement praising Jeff Bezos and Amazon for making this move, Senator Sanders, who just last month introduced legislation called the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies act, told the media in attendance:

"It is no secret that I have been a harsh critic of the wage and employment practices of Amazon and its owner Jeff Bezos. It has been my view that the middle class and working families of this country should not have to subsidize Mr. Bezos, the wealthiest person on Earth, because many of his Amazon employees earned wages that were so low that they were forced to go on government programs like food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing."

"Today, I want to give credit where credit is due," Sanders said.

'Upstreamism': Your zip code affects your health as much as genetics

Upstreamism advocate Rishi Manchanda calls us to understand health not as a "personal responsibility" but a "common good."

Sponsored by Northwell Health
  • Upstreamism tasks health care professionals to combat unhealthy social and cultural influences that exist outside — or upstream — of medical facilities.
  • Patients from low-income neighborhoods are most at risk of negative health impacts.
  • Thankfully, health care professionals are not alone. Upstreamism is increasingly part of our cultural consciousness.
Keep reading Show less
  • A huge segment of America's population — the Baby Boom generation — is aging and will live longer than any American generation in history.
  • The story we read about in the news? Their drain on social services like Social Security and Medicare.
  • But increased longevity is a cause for celebration, says Ashton Applewhite, not doom and gloom.

After death, you’re aware that you’ve died, say scientists

Some evidence attributes a certain neurological phenomenon to a near death experience.

Credit: Petr Kratochvil.
Surprising Science

Time of death is considered when a person has gone into cardiac arrest. This is the cessation of the electrical impulse that drive the heartbeat. As a result, the heart locks up. The moment the heart stops is considered time of death. But does death overtake our mind immediately afterward or does it slowly creep in?

Keep reading Show less

Yale scientists restore brain function to 32 clinically dead pigs

Researchers hope the technology will further our understanding of the brain, but lawmakers may not be ready for the ethical challenges.

Still from John Stephenson's 1999 rendition of Animal Farm.
Surprising Science
  • Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine successfully restored some functions to pig brains that had been dead for hours.
  • They hope the technology will advance our understanding of the brain, potentially developing new treatments for debilitating diseases and disorders.
  • The research raises many ethical questions and puts to the test our current understanding of death.

The image of an undead brain coming back to live again is the stuff of science fiction. Not just any science fiction, specifically B-grade sci fi. What instantly springs to mind is the black-and-white horrors of films like Fiend Without a Face. Bad acting. Plastic monstrosities. Visible strings. And a spinal cord that, for some reason, is also a tentacle?

But like any good science fiction, it's only a matter of time before some manner of it seeps into our reality. This week's Nature published the findings of researchers who managed to restore function to pigs' brains that were clinically dead. At least, what we once thought of as dead.

What's dead may never die, it seems

The researchers did not hail from House Greyjoy — "What is dead may never die" — but came largely from the Yale School of Medicine. They connected 32 pig brains to a system called BrainEx. BrainEx is an artificial perfusion system — that is, a system that takes over the functions normally regulated by the organ. Think a dialysis machine for the mind. The pigs had been killed four hours earlier at a U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughterhouse; their brains completely removed from the skulls.

BrainEx pumped an experiment solution into the brain that essentially mimic blood flow. It brought oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, giving brain cells the resources to begin many normal functions. The cells began consuming and metabolizing sugars. The brains' immune systems kicked in. Neuron samples could carry an electrical signal. Some brain cells even responded to drugs.

The researchers have managed to keep some brains alive for up to 36 hours, and currently do not know if BrainEx can have sustained the brains longer. "It is conceivable we are just preventing the inevitable, and the brain won't be able to recover," said Nenad Sestan, Yale neuroscientist and the lead researcher.

As a control, other brains received either a fake solution or no solution at all. None revived brain activity and deteriorated as normal.

The researchers hope the technology can enhance our ability to study the brain and its cellular functions. One of the main avenues of such studies would be brain disorders and diseases. This could point the way to developing new of treatments for the likes of brain injuries, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and neurodegenerative conditions.

"This is an extraordinary and very promising breakthrough for neuroscience. It immediately offers a much better model for studying the human brain, which is extraordinarily important, given the vast amount of human suffering from diseases of the mind [and] brain," Nita Farahany, the bioethicists at the Duke University School of Law who wrote the study's commentary, told National Geographic.

An ethical gray matter

Before anyone gets an Island of Dr. Moreau vibe, it's worth noting that the brains did not approach neural activity anywhere near consciousness.

The BrainEx solution contained chemicals that prevented neurons from firing. To be extra cautious, the researchers also monitored the brains for any such activity and were prepared to administer an anesthetic should they have seen signs of consciousness.

Even so, the research signals a massive debate to come regarding medical ethics and our definition of death.

Most countries define death, clinically speaking, as the irreversible loss of brain or circulatory function. This definition was already at odds with some folk- and value-centric understandings, but where do we go if it becomes possible to reverse clinical death with artificial perfusion?

"This is wild," Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times. "If ever there was an issue that merited big public deliberation on the ethics of science and medicine, this is one."

One possible consequence involves organ donations. Some European countries require emergency responders to use a process that preserves organs when they cannot resuscitate a person. They continue to pump blood throughout the body, but use a "thoracic aortic occlusion balloon" to prevent that blood from reaching the brain.

The system is already controversial because it raises concerns about what caused the patient's death. But what happens when brain death becomes readily reversible? Stuart Younger, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, told Nature that if BrainEx were to become widely available, it could shrink the pool of eligible donors.

"There's a potential conflict here between the interests of potential donors — who might not even be donors — and people who are waiting for organs," he said.

It will be a while before such experiments go anywhere near human subjects. A more immediate ethical question relates to how such experiments harm animal subjects.

Ethical review boards evaluate research protocols and can reject any that causes undue pain, suffering, or distress. Since dead animals feel no pain, suffer no trauma, they are typically approved as subjects. But how do such boards make a judgement regarding the suffering of a "cellularly active" brain? The distress of a partially alive brain?

The dilemma is unprecedented.

Setting new boundaries

Another science fiction story that comes to mind when discussing this story is, of course, Frankenstein. As Farahany told National Geographic: "It is definitely has [sic] a good science-fiction element to it, and it is restoring cellular function where we previously thought impossible. But to have Frankenstein, you need some degree of consciousness, some 'there' there. [The researchers] did not recover any form of consciousness in this study, and it is still unclear if we ever could. But we are one step closer to that possibility."

She's right. The researchers undertook their research for the betterment of humanity, and we may one day reap some unimaginable medical benefits from it. The ethical questions, however, remain as unsettling as the stories they remind us of.


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Big Think Interview With Tim Maudlin

Question: Why do you think it's valuable to link the study of philosophy to the study of physics?

Tim Maudlin: Well, I think if you think about the history of philosophy, you would have a hard time making a distinction between the two.  If you go back, Aristotle has book called "The Physics." In fact one of the reasons we call a big chunk of philosophy metaphysics is it was the sort of stuff Aristotle thought you should study after studying physics.

Plato has an account of the physical world, Descartes, obviously did a lot of physics, Liebnitz did a lot of physics.  So it’s more the question, "How did they come apart?" than "Why you should put them together?"

And part of the reason they came apart is that the physicists got too good at what they were doing and too specialized.  I mean, they became... mathematical physics became such a power independent tool that you had to devote yourself to it and probably had less time for doing what we would recognize as general metaphysics, general philosophy, talking about how you arrive at the conclusions that you arrive at, what the evidence is, what is really the nature of the physical world is, that lies behind the equations that you are using and things like that.

So I think of philosophers who are interested in physics as addressing the traditional philosophical question, if you will, what exists in the particular case of the physical world because you can ask about mathematics, what kind of existence mathematical objects have?  For example, you can worry about the mind/body problem and you can worry about the kind of existence minds have, which tends not to come up so much in physics.  But just the issue of the nature of space and time, the nature of matter, the nature of physical law.  All of these are recognizably philosophical questions that obviously depend upon understanding physics.

What do physics and philosophy contribute to each other?

Tim Maudlin: I guess the physics – the way things are set up now, physics provides you with a mathematical formalism that has been tested in various ways and seems to be extremely powerful at allowing you to make certain kinds of predictions.  But the mathematical formalism is not self-interpreting.  You can study the mathematics as mathematics in great detail and still not be at all sure what in the physical world is represented by this mathematics, even questions like, which parts of the mathematics represent anything in the physical world, and which parts are just artifacts of having set up the system in a certain way.

And those kinds of questions are more in the province, I think of philosophers or people trained in philosophy.  They’re sort of conceptual questions, questions about evidence, questions about how you sort out, in any kind of representation of the world, which part corresponds to the world in a certain way and which part doesn’t.

So there’s kind of that division of labor, but it’s very artificial to suggest, quite honestly, that there is a strong division.  As it turns out, there’s a general unified community doing foundations of physics, worried about the fundamental conceptual problems rather than worrying about running particular experiments or calculating constants to more degrees of accuracy or doing engineering and lots of interesting things you can do.

But if you ask the very basic conceptual questions, what we call foundations of physics, there’s a community.  And that community is about equally divided between physicists, mathematicians, or mathematical physicists and philosophers and the people live in these different departments in universities, but any of the meetings will have all of them together, all of them talking about the same issues from slightly different angles, maybe, but able to communicate usually quite effectively.

What other disciplines in science could benefit from a philosophical perspective?

Tim Maudlin: We are just beginning to tackle questions in cosmology; I’ll just give you one example because I happen to be thinking about it recently.  And cosmology is, on the one hand, kind of the application of physics, but on the other hand involves particular problems about thinking of the universe as a whole and what it would mean to explain the universe as a whole.  Those are obviously philosophical questions.  You can go back to Cont worrying a lot about what it would mean, or what could it mean to have an explanation of the totality of the universe rather than an explanation of one piece of the universe given in terms of another piece.  So, there are particular conceptual problems that come up in that context that are, I think, people are only beginning to look at.

More recent new sciences are probably too young yet to have clearing of content for a lot of philosophical input.  I mean, you need to have a fairly stable discipline up and running with some very stable principles before, as a philosopher, you go in and have the subject matter you need to try and analyze.

What can applying philosophy to the physical world reveal to us about the nature of reality?

Tim Maudlin: Let me give you a very concrete example.  When you learn chemistry, or physics in high school or in college, you learn that there are electron shells that in a hydrogen atom, for example, there are various orbitals that an electron can be in, and you explain a lot about how the hydrogen works by talking about the electron jumping between different shells and giving off light or absorbing light, depending upon what these jumps are.  And in the books, you’ll see a picture of the shape of these different shells, whether it be an “S” shell that looks like kind of a fuzzy sphere that surrounds the nucleus and these other “P” orbitals, and “D” orbitals that have funny-looking shapes.

Now, one very clear question to ask is, what is that a picture of?  You open the book and you see this funny shaped object.  Is that – does that mean that an electron at a particular moment in a hydrogen atom forms a kind of spherical shell around the nucleus, or does it mean the electron is somehow moving and what you have is a kind of long exposure picture where you’ve allowed – you’ve watched the orbital motion go on for awhile and you see, oh its tracing out a sphere.  Or does it mean that, as often people would say, the electron is sort of popping in and out of existence somehow.  It often doesn’t have any location, but sometimes it sort of shows up, and again, we have a long time exposure and the places it shows up it forms this kind of a shell.

Now that’s a physical question.  It’s asking, what really is an electron, in this case, how does it inhabit space and time?  And you’d think that should be a question that a physicist as a physicist would want to answer in order to understand what their theory is telling them about the world.  It’s not a particularly philosophical question, but we’ve gotten to a situation where most physicists would not recognize it as a physical question and would not attempt to answer it and would some how think it was improper for them as physicists to attempt to answer it, or would say it is somehow a meaningless question or something like that.  And we arrived at that situation through a sequence of philosophical positions, which no longer anyone thinks are tenable and a sort of crisis in physics where you had a mathematical formalism that worked very well and nobody knew quite what to make of it.  And physicists made a fairly self-conscious decision to dissuade their students from thinking about it because they thought that was just going to confuse them and get in their way and prevent them from doing the important physics which involved doing more mathematical calculations and figuring out how to build explosive devices, and so on, which you can do perfectly well without having answers to these questions.

So, insofar as you’re interested in physics as a tool for engineering, you can pretty well ignore all of these questions, but I would think, would hope that most students of physics don’t go into physics in order to become engineers.  They go in initially motivated by a simple curiosity about the world and what they’re hoping is that they’ll find out about the world the way if you’re interested in how biological creatures manage to reproduce and you finally understand how DNA works and how the strands separate and how they replicate.  You say, “Oh there was a real puzzle about how all this works and now I understand it.”  That physics should be like that.  There is a real puzzle about how atoms work and find the four molecules and what’s going on.  And you would turn to physics to answer those questions.

As I say, the peculiar thing, I think the historical peculiar and conceptually peculiar is that physics as a discipline has tended to turn away from those questions and to some extent now is turning back to them.

What is experimental philosophy, and how is it different from conventional philosophy

Tim Maudlin: Now, the stereotypical philosopher sitting in an armchair actually can be doing experiments, but only on one subject, mainly himself, or herself.  Right?  So you can say, “Ah, how does the human mind work? I’ll just reason about things and I’ll introspect and I’ll figure out what I’m doing and I’ll write that down and say, this is how the human mind works.”  Now, anybody thinking about it for a few minutes would think, well wouldn’t it be better to actually go and check other people as well?  Maybe you’re an odd case.  Maybe you don’t have such great insight just by introspection to figure out what the process of the thinking you are going through.  Wouldn’t you do better to examine a lot of people and to ask sort of more – in a more detailed and systematic way in an experimental setting to kind of tease out the way people think?

Well, certain people doing that sit in cognitive science departments and certain people doing the very same thing sit in philosophy departments.  And what’s the difference?  Maybe there’s a slight difference in focus as some people doing philosophy foundations of physics sit physics departments and some people doing foundations of physics sit in philosophy departments.  And the difference is, the people in the physics departments will certainly, probably be doing more calculation, be more worried about solving particular problems, will have more technical things and the philosophers will have more leeway to spend time asking more general questions, more conceptual questions.  But in a way, the project is one project.

So there’s some part of experimental philosophy which is simply observing that traditional philosophical questions are about the way the world works and the best way to find out about the way the world works is to observe it in well defined experimental situations.  And so you just raise the bar in terms of what you are doing.

From that point of view, it’s not anything terribly astonishing and not anything that changes the nature of philosophy.  It just makes certain bits of philosophy a bit better.  Now some people may complain, and it may be correct, I am not myself an expert in cognitive science, that the philosophers interested in doing this, is just not very good cognitive scientists or they’re not very sophisticated in how they set up their experiments, I don’t know.  But in principle, there’s no reason why certain questions that arise you might want to do experiments to figure out.

What I’ve been arguing all along is philosophy, at least certain parts of it, are simply interested in finding out how the world is.  Usually described at a very general, generic level, right?  We’re not that interested in the exact population of Lithuania.  That’s a fact about the way the world is, but you’d say not a philosophically interesting one.  But what’s the difference between asking that and asking about the fundamental nature of space and time?

Well, space and time is a much more sort of general, pervasive thing, but you’re still asking a fact about the world.  That is the kind of fact that a scientist would be interested in.  If you’re asking about the nature of the human mind, which any philosopher over the history of time would do, you are asking about something about the world.  There are minds in the world; they work some way or other.

So the questions... there’s never been in this area, a distinction between a scientific and a philosophical question.  There is a distinction between more empirical method and more as it were, conceptual analysis.  A method that’s a bit further away from experimentation.  But that’s a matter of degree.  And so if these questions that you ask at a more general level can be brought down to an empirical test, then you ought to go and do the empirical test.  And then you’ve got to learn the techniques of good empirical tests, that is, the techniques of properly conducted science.

How can philosophers help us to understand quantum mechanics?

Tim Maudlin: How should anybody think about quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is a perfect example.  So you have Richard Fineman famously saying he can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics.  Right?  One of the greatest physicists of the 20th century who’s main work was in quantum mechanics claiming he didn’t understand it.  He says he himself does not really understand the picture of the world that quantum mechanics is presenting us with.  I would think a physicist, as I say, as a physicist should find that frustrating and upsetting and a failure of physics that this fundamental mathematical theory they’re using they find they don’t really even have in themselves the sense they understand what it’s telling you about the world.

It’s just that if you’re a philosopher, you have the luxury of spending all of your time with that worry of beating your head against it.  As a matter of fact, it’s a hard question and it requires people thinking very carefully and very deeply and furthermore, coming up with detailed physical theories, detailed physical accounts to try to understand quantum mechanics.  And that foundational work tends not to have immediate payoff practically.  It doesn’t mean that the predictions of the theory when you make sense of quantum mechanics will change or will change much.  Sometimes they even change a little.  Sometimes people trying to understand quantum mechanics will propose a way of understanding it that actually means the very predictions it makes will be altered a tiny bit, often such a tiny bit that you can’t even check it in the lab.

But there’s not that much practical payoff, and insofar as you are a physicist who care about practical payoff or you’re embedded in a larger enterprise that cares about practical payoff, then you’re going to regard these questions as not of immediate interest.  Right?  They’re not going to repay you thinking about them.  And the luxury that philosophers have is that as we’re paid to think about things that don’t pay to think about.  And so we can spend our time worried about these foundational issues and not feeling guilty about them.

What is the payoff that you get from this kind of inquiry?

Tim Maudlin: Well there are two things you would like to do.  Ultimately you would like to settle on a clear physical account of the world.  Like, what’s going on, like I say, go back to my electron.  What’s really going on with that electron?  The aim you have is to answer that question.  Now as it turns out, if you look at the precisely defined interpretations of quantum mechanics that exist today; and by precisely defined, I mean the ones where you have a clear mathematical account of what’s going on, in terms that are not vague and ambiguous.  For example, if someone in the standard theory you say, “Oh, a system will develop in a certain way until you measure something on it.  And when you measure something, then things go very differently.”  And as John Bell pointed out, that’s just unacceptable vagueness because, what does it mean to measure something?  You know, you’re saying in on circumstance it does one thing in another circumstance it does another very different thing, but the difference between those two circumstances it not well defined.

So the first ting you want to do is have a clear theory.  A theory that tells you clearly what exists, tells you clearly what it does, and that you see, well given that, I can understand the world around me.  As it turns out, there are various ways to do this; quite different ways to do it.  Ways that give you very, very different pictures of what’s going on in the world in a microscopic scale.

What you’d like to then do is choose among them.  Now, you may not be able to do it.  How do you choose among them?  Ultimately you’d like to do it empirically.  You’d like to say, well there’s some experiment I’d like to run to decide between these.  But in certain cases, it’s sort of provable that no experiment can decide between them.  Or you might hope that one of these pictures and not another, one of these models and not another can be extended to cover gravity or can be extended to cover some new phenomenon.  And then that would give you a reason to prefer one.

It may turn out that at the end of the day, we will never know.  It may turn out that the world has not been made and our brains have not been made and our access to the world through our senses has not been made to allow us to discover all of the facts about it.  And then you’d be depressed a little bit.  Those are the breaks, right.

Where do cognitive science and philosophy interact?

Tim Maudlin: The question, "By what principles do we reason?" has been in philosophy forever.  One of the thoughts about logic is that logic is the theory of how we think, how we infer, how we get from some set of predeces to some conclusion.  Now actual human behavior turns out not to be very good valid, logical thinking.  I mean, there are lots of choices where there are sort of cognitive illusions, or you can show that people don’t think demonstrably in a way that makes a lot of sense.  For example, Kottman and Tversky famously gave these examples.  You’re going into a store to buy to items.  One costs $100 the other costs $15 and you find out that across town, the $100 item is on sale for $95.  Do you bother to go across town to buy it?  And people say, “Naw, probably not.”  You go into a store, you’re going to buy an item for $100 and another one for $15, you find out the $15 item is on sale across town for $10, do you bother to go across town to buy it?  And they’re much more likely to say, yes.  Even though in each case they’re paying the same amount of money for the same two items, but in your mind you think, “Oh, it’s a big sale!” on the $15 item.  I mean, that’s a third off.  And the sale on the $100 item, $5 off, that’s really, you know, that’s just change.  You know, round it up it doesn’t matter.  So the actual process of coming to a decision there is demonstrably irrational.

There’s an interesting question that anybody would have is, well what’s the mind doing?  I mean, I gave a little sketch, a kind of obvious looking sketch of the way it’s thinking and you can sort of see it’s thinking isn’t really coherent, or doesn’t work well.  So again, insofar as philosophers have been – anybody’s been interested in how the mind works, and philosophers have been interested in that forever, they would be interested in cognitive science because it’s just a more systematized way of asking those questions and subjecting them, hopefully to experimental tests to check the answers properly.

It’s changed philosophy of mind in a simple way that as cognitive science discovers things about the way the mind works that anybody doing philosophy of mind has to take account of that.  If they’re trying to give an account of the human mind, you have to take account of what’s been discovered about the human mind.  And if you’ve been thinking about the structure of the human mind, you might come up with questions that you’d like the cognitive scientist to look into.  That maybe they hadn’t thought of.  You might, as a philosopher again, thinking in a more general way about how the mind is organized, say “How could I tell – How could I decide between this account of the organization of the mind and that account?”  Well, here’s a situation where, if it’s organized this way you’d expect people to behave this way and if it’s organized the other way you’d expect them to behave the other way.  And then you have to go to your colleagues on the experimental side and ask them, would you please run an experiment and see which way it goes.

Now the particular details, well, there’s obviously a sense in which, for example, nowadays; there’s a lot of interest in emotion.  There was a focus on, as it were, pure cold, calculative reasoning because you can give a cleaner looking, formal account of that, but as soon as you start looking at how people actually reason, you find that they’re systematically affected by their emotional state.  And I would say that the demonstration of that forces philosophers of mind to think much more clearly about to what extent emotion and affect play a role in our cognitive economy, and probably it’s easier to ignore that question if there aren’t a lot of cognitive scientists running experiments and pointing out that, in fact, emotions play a bit role in how we think.

How is philosophy valuable in our daily lives?

Tim Maudlin: Well if you ask me about what philosophy is, to be engrained, like what – there are detailed philosophical theses of various sorts.  And in day-to-day life, it’s probably not all that – it’s not going to be all that affected by choice among some of these.  If you think of philosophy, and I think this is a bit better and more important.  If you think of the job of the philosopher methodologically is to very carefully figure out by what reasoning you arrived at some conclusion, or why is it you hold some belief.  What are the grounds for it?  How did you get to it and are those grounds good grounds for holding it?  To carefully review arguments and unearth their presuppositions and then hold those presuppositions up to the light of day and ask whether you want to believe them.  That’s what I would say is the foundation of philosophical method.

And this sort of thing that even say in philosophy of physics, physicists are not likely to do.  They’re not likely to take the foundational principles that they’re using and hold them up to the light of day and ask them whether they should believe in them.  They’re more likely to say, well this is just the principles we work with, accept them, use them, and don’t ask about them.  That’s ore or less the story any undergraduate would get about quantum mechanics as they say, “Shut up and calculate.  Don’t ask me why these are the rules.  Just follow them.”

I think in everybody’s every day life, that habit of mind would make a tremendous difference.  I think the amount of belief that people hold for no good reason is distressing.  And that the level of argumentation in our political life is abysmal.  And the room for improvement, of clarity of thought of clarity of expression is almost unlimited.  And if philosophy could help the world, it would be much more – instead of by having people adopt some philosophical doctrine about this or that, it would be to bring them a bit closer to the care and precision of thought that is characteristic, I think particularly characteristic of philosophical work.

Recorded September 17, 2010

Interviewed by David Hirschman

A conversation with the Rutgers University philosopher.

  • A huge segment of America's population — the Baby Boom generation — is aging and will live longer than any American generation in history.
  • The story we read about in the news? Their drain on social services like Social Security and Medicare.
  • But increased longevity is a cause for celebration, says Ashton Applewhite, not doom and gloom.

Do calories even count? Research counters a longstanding assumption.

The calorie is the basic unit of measure of food — and it might be off.

Tourists enjoy a traditional 'Zapiekanka' at Krakow's Main Square. On Wednesday, March 6, 2019, in Krakow, Poland. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Surprising Science
  • In a new article in 1843, Peter Wilson argues that counting calories is an outdated form of weight management.
  • Research shows that labels are up to 20 percent off true caloric totals; 70 percent in frozen processed foods.
  • Not all digestive systems are created equally; humans process foods at different rates under varying conditions.
Keep reading Show less

Yale scientists restore brain function to 32 clinically dead pigs

Researchers hope the technology will further our understanding of the brain, but lawmakers may not be ready for the ethical challenges.

Still from John Stephenson's 1999 rendition of Animal Farm.
Surprising Science
  • Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine successfully restored some functions to pig brains that had been dead for hours.
  • They hope the technology will advance our understanding of the brain, potentially developing new treatments for debilitating diseases and disorders.
  • The research raises many ethical questions and puts to the test our current understanding of death.

The image of an undead brain coming back to live again is the stuff of science fiction. Not just any science fiction, specifically B-grade sci fi. What instantly springs to mind is the black-and-white horrors of films like Fiend Without a Face. Bad acting. Plastic monstrosities. Visible strings. And a spinal cord that, for some reason, is also a tentacle?

But like any good science fiction, it's only a matter of time before some manner of it seeps into our reality. This week's Nature published the findings of researchers who managed to restore function to pigs' brains that were clinically dead. At least, what we once thought of as dead.

What's dead may never die, it seems

The researchers did not hail from House Greyjoy — "What is dead may never die" — but came largely from the Yale School of Medicine. They connected 32 pig brains to a system called BrainEx. BrainEx is an artificial perfusion system — that is, a system that takes over the functions normally regulated by the organ. Think a dialysis machine for the mind. The pigs had been killed four hours earlier at a U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughterhouse; their brains completely removed from the skulls.

BrainEx pumped an experiment solution into the brain that essentially mimic blood flow. It brought oxygen and nutrients to the tissues, giving brain cells the resources to begin many normal functions. The cells began consuming and metabolizing sugars. The brains' immune systems kicked in. Neuron samples could carry an electrical signal. Some brain cells even responded to drugs.

The researchers have managed to keep some brains alive for up to 36 hours, and currently do not know if BrainEx can have sustained the brains longer. "It is conceivable we are just preventing the inevitable, and the brain won't be able to recover," said Nenad Sestan, Yale neuroscientist and the lead researcher.

As a control, other brains received either a fake solution or no solution at all. None revived brain activity and deteriorated as normal.

The researchers hope the technology can enhance our ability to study the brain and its cellular functions. One of the main avenues of such studies would be brain disorders and diseases. This could point the way to developing new of treatments for the likes of brain injuries, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and neurodegenerative conditions.

"This is an extraordinary and very promising breakthrough for neuroscience. It immediately offers a much better model for studying the human brain, which is extraordinarily important, given the vast amount of human suffering from diseases of the mind [and] brain," Nita Farahany, the bioethicists at the Duke University School of Law who wrote the study's commentary, told National Geographic.

An ethical gray matter

Before anyone gets an Island of Dr. Moreau vibe, it's worth noting that the brains did not approach neural activity anywhere near consciousness.

The BrainEx solution contained chemicals that prevented neurons from firing. To be extra cautious, the researchers also monitored the brains for any such activity and were prepared to administer an anesthetic should they have seen signs of consciousness.

Even so, the research signals a massive debate to come regarding medical ethics and our definition of death.

Most countries define death, clinically speaking, as the irreversible loss of brain or circulatory function. This definition was already at odds with some folk- and value-centric understandings, but where do we go if it becomes possible to reverse clinical death with artificial perfusion?

"This is wild," Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times. "If ever there was an issue that merited big public deliberation on the ethics of science and medicine, this is one."

One possible consequence involves organ donations. Some European countries require emergency responders to use a process that preserves organs when they cannot resuscitate a person. They continue to pump blood throughout the body, but use a "thoracic aortic occlusion balloon" to prevent that blood from reaching the brain.

The system is already controversial because it raises concerns about what caused the patient's death. But what happens when brain death becomes readily reversible? Stuart Younger, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, told Nature that if BrainEx were to become widely available, it could shrink the pool of eligible donors.

"There's a potential conflict here between the interests of potential donors — who might not even be donors — and people who are waiting for organs," he said.

It will be a while before such experiments go anywhere near human subjects. A more immediate ethical question relates to how such experiments harm animal subjects.

Ethical review boards evaluate research protocols and can reject any that causes undue pain, suffering, or distress. Since dead animals feel no pain, suffer no trauma, they are typically approved as subjects. But how do such boards make a judgement regarding the suffering of a "cellularly active" brain? The distress of a partially alive brain?

The dilemma is unprecedented.

Setting new boundaries

Another science fiction story that comes to mind when discussing this story is, of course, Frankenstein. As Farahany told National Geographic: "It is definitely has [sic] a good science-fiction element to it, and it is restoring cellular function where we previously thought impossible. But to have Frankenstein, you need some degree of consciousness, some 'there' there. [The researchers] did not recover any form of consciousness in this study, and it is still unclear if we ever could. But we are one step closer to that possibility."

She's right. The researchers undertook their research for the betterment of humanity, and we may one day reap some unimaginable medical benefits from it. The ethical questions, however, remain as unsettling as the stories they remind us of.

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Since the dawn of civilization, trade has been a central pillar of man’s experience that binds peoples from far away places together in a common goal, to gain for himself through the labor of others. While borders have been fluid and ever-changing, and men have waged wars for millennia, trade has persisted in peacefully bringing people who may never see each other into a free marketplace of goods where all gain in seeking what they demand, and in supplying what they have.

From Neolithic farmers to the Silk Road civilizations, to the World Trade Organization, governments have constantly intervened to try and control and manipulate the international free marketplace of goods and services that naturally occurs, often with negative consequences.

Over the past century, much progress has been made in removing government intervention and controls from international trade, yet many authoritarian nations still cling to failed protectionist policies and even developed, free-market-oriented countries still protect certain industries and demand “free” trade deals riddled with semi-protectionist policies.

Despite the overall attitude towards free trade liberalization being positive due to its wide gains, the sharp losses felt by certain industries and special interests often are more politically powerful than the gains felt by the rest of society.

While generally accepted, free trade in the United States and across the developed world is under fire, despite its near-universal support from economists across the political spectrum, due to the rise of nationalistic populism and the apparent collapse in the popularity of free markets, and action must be taken to preserve open trade and to remove its status as a controversial political issue before it is too late.

The main issue at hand for the United States is now whether our trade policy will bend on an arc towards liberalization, or towards protectionism and mercantilism. Based on popularity, the choice is clear. Not just economists, but the American public remains staunchly in favor of trade liberalization.

As Bryan Riley cites in his report for the Heritage Foundation, “A Morning Consult poll from September 2017 found that 52 percent of Americans support an expansion of free trade across borders, versus just 25 percent in opposition” (Riley).

The gains from trade are obvious and logical to voters, but they are often spread among all of society and take years to develop fully, while the pains felt by specific communities or industries are visible and politically influential in the short term. While trade can cause short-term problems for those specific areas, the broad gains from free trade to the United States and across the globe are very well documented.

For example, from that same Heritage Foundation report, it was found that countries with more trade freedom had higher average per capita income, more food security, and cleaner environments, while the top third of nations ranked in trade freedom had average national income per capita of $27,000 versus the lowest third of nations in trade freedom that had an average national income per capita of $3,100 (Riley).

The data is clear; nations with freer trade have more prosperous economies, wealthier citizens, and more effective governments. On a similar note but more specific to the United States, “…economists with the Peterson Institute found that past global trade liberalization… generated between $2,800 and $5,000 in additional income for the average American” and that based on a 2015 study, “America’s poor and middle class… enjoy almost 90 percent of the consumer benefits of trade” (Lincicome).

Not only does trade make countries on average wealthier, but even poor Americans benefit from the greater prosperity and lower consumer costs. The principal case against trade liberalization and in favor of protectionism is that the United States has lost a net 4.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1994, and that those workers displaced due to foreign trade, who often are less educated, can’t find jobs easily, and when they do they are for lower wages (Whitman). Another recent study from three labor economists found similar results, specifically that labor force participation and wages are negatively affected in those areas hit hard by foreign competition (Lincicome).

While trade can cause short-term problems for those specific areas, the broad gains from free trade to the United States and across the globe are very well documented.

It is clear now that the broad gains from trade are apparent and documented, as are the losses felt by certain industries and communities, but the core of the issue remains untouched, which is that free trade in the United States is under assault from both sides of the aisle.

Since President Trump gave his inaugural address over a year ago in which he lamented the loss of factories across the “Rustbelt”, his administration, while not his party in Congress, has been committed to undoing the free trade status quo that has been developing over the past twenty years.

First, President Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the third day of his presidency, which former President Obama and Senate Republicans were hoping to ratify. President Trump has also sought a “renegotiation” of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was implemented in 1994 to facilitate free trade between The U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

At times, the President has even suggested that if his preferred protectionist policies do not get implemented in the renegotiation, he may unilaterally withdraw from the agreement, which would, according to the Heritage Foundation, “jeopardize 14 million jobs… expose businesses to $15.5 billion in new tariffs and increase consumer costs by at least $7 billion” (Roberts). NAFTA has brought historic and lasting benefits to farmers, manufacturers, businesses, and consumers who all benefit from lower costs due to cheaper imports, markets for exporting goods and services, and the easy formation of global value chains among the NAFTA participants.

More recently, with a bitterly divided Congress, a stalled legislative agenda, and midterm elections upcoming, President Trump has pursued an agenda of executive tariff action, first on steel and aluminum imports in the name of national security, and then more on Chinese goods specifically over their abuses relating to intellectual property rights.

The final part of the issue at hand is to remember that tariffs are tax hikes, plain and simple. Remember when the Trump Administration passed the most comprehensive tax overhaul in 30 years that cut taxes on average Americans?

Well, according to the Tax Foundation, “the $60 billion in proposed tariffs is more than 20 percent of the recently passed tax cut expected in 2019” (York). If President Trump wants to maintain his pro-growth record, he should not be raising consumer costs on the middle class and shrinking profit margins of businesses small and large, therefore imperiling job growth and security.

The issue of trade liberalization and the current protectionist threats to it has many different viewpoints and angles, but the discussion here is best split up into two parts: one on the pending tariffs and current trade agreements, and another about the trade deficit and its consequences.

When it comes to the steel and Chinese tariffs, protectionists argue that President Trump’s tariff measures are vital for the survival of manufacturing jobs which have been shredded since the adoption of “unfair” free trade deals with China and others. The facts could not disagree more.

When it comes to the steel and aluminum tariffs, those industries and the unions of their workers claim that “unfair” foreign competition has hurt them drastically, cost jobs for working people, and damaged communities in the process. While those industries may have shed jobs over time, it is unclear, as with most of the manufacturing job losses over recent decades, that much of this at all due to foreign competition.

With steel, domestic output has changed little in 30 years (Grabow). This tells economists that like in other manufacturing industries, productivity has gone up allowing the same amount of steel to be produced with fewer workers. Even if some steel firms reopen or expand, these tariffs on steel for “national security” purposes will actually cause a net job loss due to higher input costs for the many more steel-using industries, as Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs did (Grabow).

Besides just the President’s steel tariffs, his broad tariffs on China, while praised by the domestic industries that would like to compete, will similarly result in a net loss. While supporting inefficient and marginal U.S. industries that would not exist otherwise, these tariffs will raise the cost of Chinese imports that are staples to working families and raise input costs for U.S. companies that rely on imported physical capital from China, hurting their profit margins and imperiling job growth (Griswold).

This is especially dangerous since “More than half of all imports (including those from China) are inputs consumed by other American manufacturers” (Lincicome). The escalating effects of a trade war would be disastrous, hurting American businesses and consumers alike, all just to benefit certain marginal manufacturing firms.

Trade wars are never won, but they are always lost, by American consumers and businesses. When it comes to NAFTA, protectionists claim that NAFTA has had many adverse effects on all the participants, but especially on the United States. Again they focus on the damage done to the “Rustbelt” communities that once thrived on manufacturing jobs were plentiful.

As previously stated, the existence of NAFTA currently supports about 14 million jobs in the United States and has lowered consumer costs by at least $7 billion (Roberts). The value of all goods and services traded annually between the three countries is currently at $1.1 trillion, up from $290 billion before the deal in 1993, and of those 14 million jobs supported, two million are in manufacturing (Roberts).

This large expansion of trade is not only good for wealthy corporate executives as protectionists claim, but it benefits consumers through lower costs for goods and services, access to certain imported crops year round, and lowering input costs for American businesses, thereby increasing the profit margins that they use to expand their workforces and grow.

Looking specifically at the thriving energy sector, now that the United States is a natural gas exporter, the Heritage Foundation estimates that Canadian purchases of goods and services related to the oil and gas industry “will generate $45.6 billion in U.S. GDP over the next decade” (Roberts). The same report even found that the improvements in the Mexican economy since NAFTA was implemented have contributed greatly to the large decline in illegal immigration since the mid-1990s.

One can even look to a state such as Ohio, often used as a “Rustbelt” example of a state “devastated” by free trade and see that trade has been a net positive for the United States. In Ohio, exporters of goods and services supported 370,000 jobs in 2015 alone, and about 259,000 jobs were supported by foreign direct investment in the state in 2015, which is only possible through trade (Whiting).

Along with the rest of the United States, Ohio has experienced no net job loss due to trade with 555,000 more jobs available than in 1994, and Ohio still maintains a manufacturing sector supporting 687,000 jobs as of 2016, with many of their employers relying on cheaper imports as either physical capital or as manufacturing inputs (Whiting). Trade has not destroyed the economy of Ohio, and it supports countless jobs and industries. Trade has not destroyed the economy of the United States.

It has made our country more efficient and prosperous, and the protectionist measures such as the steel tariffs, a Chinese trade war, and the possible exit from NAFTA would have far-reaching and overwhelmingly negative consequences on foreign investment, job growth, business earnings, and consumer costs.

When it comes to trade with China and other free trade partners, protectionists’ largest complaint, and one of the only facts that they use to support their arguments is the net loss of 4.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1994, as mentioned earlier. This sounds frightening and seems logically connected to trade, but the evidence doesn’t line up.

As Edward Conard states in his book about the Great Recession and its aftermath, “High productivity gains in manufacturing have accounted for two-thirds of lost manufacturing employment since 2000” (Conard). This sentiment is echoed by Lincicome in his “National Review” article by observing that the United States has added a net of over 30 million jobs since 1994, the United States has been shrinking its manufacturing workforce since its peak in the late 1940s, that the U.S. is still the world’s second largest manufacturer, while continuing to mention a study that again connects three quarters of manufacturing job losses since the 1990s to productivity gains.

The manufacturing sector hasn’t been decimated, only the inefficient manufacturing firms have been outdone by foreign competition, as they should if they cannot survive in a free and open global market. As Henry Hazlitt wrote in his timely Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt 102):

The X Industry is shrinking or dying… Why, may it be asked, should it be kept alive by artificial respiration? The idea that an expanding economy implies that all industries must be simultaneously expanding is a profound error

Manufacturing output is still high, meaning that those firms who were productive and cost-efficient remained in business, while the inefficient or marginal firms failed, to the benefit of consumers who got equal manufacturing output and lower prices from the remaining firms and the new imports.

Imposing tariffs would only bring back the marginal firms who couldn’t survive with competition, a recipe for market inefficiency, even if it does restore some old jobs.

The market should decide which industries thrive and which ones die, and this is a generally accepted economic concept domestically, but when faced with global competition, too often politicians cater to special interests instead of long-run economic benefits.

Regarding the trade deficit in general, the common claim that protectionists trot out with almost certainty is that the trade deficit is “draining wealth” from our country. To look at the equation for calculating a nation’s gross domestic product (Consumer Spending + Government Spending + Investment Spending + [Exports – Imports]), they seem to be justified.

If you have a trade deficit it subtracts from your GDP. Seems simple enough, but it is based on a false premise.

In the United States’ long economic history, it often ran trade deficits before the 20th century, and yet still remained a beacon of hope for millions of immigrants and was one of the most prosperous nations on Earth, while from after the Second World War until 1975 the nation ran trade surpluses and experienced tremendous growth (Gramm).

Since 1976 the United States has always had a trade deficit, and even during the boom times of the Reagan and Clinton years, when the trade deficit quintupled and quadrupled, respectively (Gramm). Having a trade deficit or surplus hasn’t fundamentally shaped the direction of our economy because it is only one half of the equation. In the balance of payments system, the current account (goods, services, factor income, remittances, etc.) must balance with the financial account (assets) to equal zero. In the context of the United States, it means that while we have a current account deficit we must have a capital account surplus.

That means foreigners are investing in American assets such as stocks, bonds, government securities, or indirect investment like factories or stores. This surplus is precisely why America is the top receiver of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world totaling $384 billion in 2015 (Lincicome). The trade deficit may hurt Ford workers in Detroit but it ends up helping Nissan workers in Mississippi.

The capital account surplus will only increase in the future because of the new tax reform law which is leading to multinational corporations such as Apple to repatriate hundreds of billions of earnings parked overseas, so while this will increase the trade deficit, the new investment in America will be very beneficial for job growth and business expansion (Gramm).

Besides simply the balance of payments system which sheds light on why the trade deficit is misleading, there are also global value chains which mean that an import or export from a country may contain parts from another country than the country of origin, further diluting the relevance of the trade deficit (Lincicome):

According to the WTO… almost 40 percent of all U.S. exports are involved in global value chains; almost 31 percent of exports from China, Canada, or Mexico contain U.S. inputs; and almost 34 percent of U.S. exports contain inputs from these same three countries

This method of global trade integration truly shows how market forces, competition, and the idea of comparative advantage have led to peaceful exchange among countries and why continuing open trade is so important as countries specialize in what they are best at and rely on other countries to help them prosper.

With the protectionist arguments in favor of tariffs and dissolving free trade deals answered and thoroughly dismissed, now comes the time to ponder on the solutions to the trade ills that imperil our economy at this juncture in our history. First, actions must be taken to further liberalize trade and solve legitimate problems in existing trade deals in order to fully experience the benefits of free trade and neutralize its political potency.

The second is that legislative action must be taken to rein in presidential authority on trade and also to provide a sustainable and effective means of helping those hurt by international trade.

On the trade front, the solution to the problem facing us is for those willing in Congress to continue trade liberalization and push for beneficial changes to trade agreements to show that free trade is good for the country. The first action that the United States should take is changing direction in the NAFTA renegotiation.

Instead of creating sunset provisions, complex rules for settling disputes, new labor policies, and creating new carve-outs for certain industries, the NAFTA talks should be reoriented around eliminating any remaining special interest provisions originally in the deal, including forcing member nations to end subsidies to certain industries and dropping all remaining quotas and tariffs. As the American Enterprise Institute puts it, “Where there are no trade restrictions or subsidies and all trade is voluntary, there are no unfair trade practices.

Whether the U.S. runs a trade deficit under such an arrangement has nothing to do with fairness” (Gramm). Pure free trade among the nations will allow whatever prices the market determines best and efficiency would increase as nations who lose certain formerly-protected industries and marginal firms can fail and redeploy those resources to better use elsewhere.

A more specific example of remaining restrictions in NAFTA comes in the Mexican energy sector, which while it has made progress is still very closed off and monopolistic and could provide a boon to the U.S. as our energy sector is growing with current U.S. exports of natural gas to Canada providing billions of dollars (Roberts). On purely trade grounds, the same liberalization that is the prescription to our ills with Canada and Mexico, while beneficial, would not solve the root of the problem the U.S. currently has with China.

While the Trump Administration’s prescribed punishment of tariffs on China is clearly the wrong move, China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property is a serious matter that must be dealt with. China’s leader Xi Jinping has expressed a willingness to work on this issue with the U.S., but too often Chinese promises on this issue are empty and vague.

The only way to truly confront China over their abuses is not through a trade war, but with U.S.-led W.T.O. actions against China for infringing on our rights (Gramm). This is the only peaceful solution that will not produce an economic confrontation of enormous costs. The United States must look to the W.T.O. to enforce basic rules more strictly than they have been in order to preserve free trade. While those two solutions focus on two of the most nagging issues, China and NAFTA, the United States must also take action to enhance free trade more globally to benefit ourselves and to be a leader on this issue.

Two ways the United States can do this are by rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and a more radical idea, unilaterally liberalizing all trade. The former is a more realistic approach that even the President in recent days has seemingly half-endorsed. The TPP is a large trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim nations, that excludes China, and while the United States already has bilateral deals with six of the participants, this deal would go much farther than those and open up five new markets to U.S. exports (Scissors).

While on net it is liberalizing, the deal does have its flaws, in that there are many protectionist measures that continue to benefit certain industries in each of the member countries, and the threat of ratifying it as is that these policies, including strict labor and environmental policies that are protectionist measures under the guise of social justice, could become the norm and prevent further trade liberalization (Scissors).

Scissors’ report is joined in the mixed criticism of the deal by the Cato Institute in a working paper by Daniel Ikenson and others that praise the TPP for overall liberalization but frets over the caveats that reduce its effectiveness (Ikenson). As Ikenson puts it, “the TPP is not really about free trade… the TPP is about managed trade.”

With those roadblocks in mind, it is the position of this paper that if the TPP were liberalized and became a truly “free” trade agreement, it would be a no-brainer to join. While radical, the better solution that this paper endorses would be to unilaterally drop all remaining tariffs and quotas, end all business subsidies and let the global free market and pure free trade decide what happens. While it may be a libertarian fantasy, it is often joked that this is what economists would do if they ran the government. In this scenario, the United States would be a role model and would attain maximum economic efficiency.

It would not hurt the economy, even if the trade deficit increased due to the balance of payments system as has already been discussed. New Zealand lowered all of its tariffs and eliminated most agricultural subsidies, of which it had many of both, starting in 1987 and by 1999, 95 percent of New Zealand’s tariffs were set at zero and this was not accompanied by an economic collapse, but instead by a huge boost in GDP per capita (Tyrell). It is not totally unprecedented.

The only thing holding this reality back are the special interest groups who control Washington and its politicians. From NAFTA to TPP, to the WTO, any solution on the trade issue must liberalize trade, not choke it with protectionist schemes or trade wars.
On the political front, the solutions to the United States’ trade issues are legislatively clear, but murky on their probability of success.

Legislatively, the clearest action to take would be to pass Senator Mike Lee’s (R-UT) bill, the “Global Trade Accountability Act” which would subject all presidential trade actions to congressional oversight, usually meaning an up or down vote if necessary (Grabow). Surely the Founders would be rolling in their graves if they knew that the President could unilaterally and without congressional authority levy tariffs and exit trade pacts, when they specifically granted those rights to Congress by ratifying treaties and raising funds.

This first act would subject the President, whoever they may be, to oversight from the representatives of the people and would be just on all accounts. Under no circumstances should the President except in time of emergency be able to unilaterally make trade decisions at will with no oversight. The second political solution pertains to helping people displaced or hurt by foreign trade in a responsible manner while preserving labor force flexibility.

Currently, the problem is that many of those displaced workers discussed previously remain in those distressed areas and dropping out of the labor force, especially when at older ages, creating the stereotypical economically depressed “Rustbelt” rural town (Lincicome).

Previously the solution presented by Congress has been the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program (TAA). The TAA has existed in one form or another since 1962 when President Kennedy expanded free trade, and its last two major expansions were in 2002 and 2009 (James). Basically, the program provides job training benefits, health benefits, unemployment benefits, and a small benefit for relocation to help people move to those who lose their jobs because of trade, but the program has been found in numerous studies by the Heritage Foundation, the OMB, and the GAO to offer little benefit to the economy, and that it hasn’t raised the wages of participants (James).

Billions of dollars are spent every year on this program, which is targeted at a tiny group of workers, only about one percent of layoffs, and which prolongs unemployment like any other unemployment benefits program (James). Instead of expanding or tinkering with this failed program, lawmakers should transform it in a few ways.

Some of the prescriptions which would be most helpful would be to consolidate the many federal job training programs into one basic course and to transform the TAA from largely unemployment benefits and shift it towards either an education tax credit or a relocation tax credit. The idea is either displaced worker’s train for a new job, go to a community college or a trade school with a tax credit, or relocate to an area with more plentiful jobs.

This would preserve the labor market dynamism more than just another welfare scheme for unemployed workers that discourages them from moving or looking for new jobs. On another note, as Scott Lincicome points out in his “National Review” piece, there are numerous other reforms that could be done to help workers prepare and adapt to a dynamic labor market, including losing one’s job due to productivity gains or even automation along with foreign competition.

Some of these including creating a system of tax-free savings accounts to serve as “Rainy Day” funds, creating new tax deductions for work education expenses not just related to one’s current line of work, reducing the barriers put in place by federal and state occupational licensing laws, and reforming the Social Security Disability Insurance system whose effects are similar to the TAA.

We need to make sure that our government programs are encouraging work and education, not the opposite. All of these small but profound free market and limited government reforms could make the labor market more dynamic by making it easier to train for new jobs, move to new areas, and encourage labor force participation, which is currently its lowest since the 1970s. Clearly, the current system of just using the TAA and a collection of other current government programs isn’t working, and if nothing is done to change how we handle displaced workers, labor dynamism and participation will continue to decrease.

While free trade remains overall popular with the public and economists, in the United States and across the developed world it is under assault as populism flexes its muscles and free markets become less popular among today’s youth, and if no action is taken the global order of free trade may come crashing down.

The Trump Administration, along with newly-emboldened protectionists on both sides of the aisle, is launching an assault on the general policy of trade liberalization and negotiation that has made the United States prosperous and more efficient in recent decades.

If nothing is done to stop this new trend of an outdated philosophy, the United States will be thrown into the very export-driven mercantilist ways that prompted our Revolution against Britain. If the flame of trade liberalization is snubbed by the freest country on Earth, who will remain to spread its agenda of prosperity to the world?

Timothy Callery is am an 18 year old student from Lakeland High School in Yorktown, NY. Timothy is an Eagle Scout, the class salutatorian, and was a member of the debate team. This fall Timothy attending Villanova to study economics and business.

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Warm Mushroom Salad

Let’s say–hypothetically–that you ate too much over the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps you went a little nuts and did something that I’m pretty sure it says somewhere in Leviticus that you’re not supposed to do: you wrapped your poor ol’ turkey in bacon. As if the candied sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and 17 glasses of wine weren’t enough, you had to go and add pork fat.

And let’s just say–hypothetically again of course–that when you returned to the office after your gluttonous Thanksgiving holiday (during which you unrepentingly consumed one whole bacon-wrapped turkey), you discovered said office to be completely devoid of office furniture, computers, telephones, or even filing cabinets.

(Don’t worry folks, it’s being renovated)

Assuming all of these things happened–and I’m not saying they did or they didn’t–you might want to have something light and easy-to-cook tonight for dinner. My vote is for a warm mushroom salad, courtesy of one Ina Garten, who has never to my knowledge ever put out a bad recipe. If you made an Ina recipe and it turned out bad, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it was probably your fault.

The great thing about this recipe is, though it is a salad, it’s great for wintertime. The mushrooms and the mushroom “broth” with sherry or red wine vinegar make this salad seem like anything but. Plus, the proscuitto makes that person in your family who *must* have meat at every meal (you know who you are) happy and delighted that when you said you were going to make a salad for dinner (audible groan) they were pleasantly surprised when you put this on the table!

Though Ina calls for sundried tomatoes in this recipe (and I usually do use them when I make it), I could not find them anywhere in my newly-reorganized Publix grocery store (why must everything change when you go on Thanksgiving holiday!?). I thought the peppers were excellent and fully interchangeable with the tomatoes. The only difference is that I cooked them with the mushrooms to heat them up a bit.

 Also, Ina tells you to “cover each portion” of the arugula with proscuitto slices. Well, I just don’t feel like sitting down to a salad and having to cut my way through it…so I shred the meat with my fingers first. Lazy? No, I prefer industrious. There you have it: the answer to a holiday meal gone over the top and an unusable office.

Warm Mushroom Salad (adapted from Ina Garten’s Warm Mushroom Salad from Barefoot in Paris: Easy French Food You Can Make at Home)

Serves 2 dinner-sized portions

1 pound cremini mushrooms (or whatever mushrooms you have–I had baby portabellas)

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

4 Tablespoons good olive oil, divided

1 teaspoon kosher salt (you may want to reduce this a little because the proscuitto is very salty)

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 bunches of fresh arugula, washed and spun dry (yay, you get to use your salad spinner! Awesome!!)

6 slices good Italian proscuitto

2 Tablespoons red or sherry wine vinegar

chunk of parmesean cheese

4 roasted red peppers, roughly chopped

Clean the mushrooms by brushing tops with a clean sponge. Remove and discard the stems and slice the caps 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

In a large saute pan, heat the butter and 2 Tablespoons of the olive oil until bubbly. Add the mushrooms, salt, and pepper to the pan, and saute for 3 minutes over medium heat, tossing frequently. Reduce the heat to low and saute for another 2 to 3 minutes, until cooked through. During the last 2 minutes of cooking, add the peppers.

Meanwhile, arrange the arugula on 2 plates and cover each with proscuitto (shred with fingers into bite-sized pieces). When the mushrooms and peppers are cooked, add the sherry/red wine vinegar and the remaining 2 Tablespoons of olive oil to the hot pan. Spoon the mushrooms and sauce on top of the proscuitto. With a vegetable peeler, make large shavings of Parmesean cheese and place on top of the hot mushrooms.

Beef and Root Vegetable Stew

Beef and Root Vegetables Stew (Finished)Way at the top of the list of beef stew sins are: a) taking your stew out of the oven too early thereby ending up with beef that is tough and hard to chew, and b) making a broth that is too watery. This stew takes those two sins and whips them in the arse.

How does it do that? Well, first of all, it has a 1/2 bottle of wine in it. The wine gives the broth a wonderfully deep, rich taste and–though I haven’t conducted any sceintific experiments–I think the acidity of the wine helps to break down the beef fibers to make it oh-so-tender.

Beef and Root Vegetables Stew

I adapted this recipe from Jamie Oliver, who says that he tried to make this stew like any other beef stew or boeuf bourguignon recipe, where you first brown the meat, then add the vegetables. But, he said this particular stew came out better without browning the meat at all and just adding the vegetables at the same time. That’s great news for us, because it’s that much easier to make!

Beef and Root Vegetables Stew 2

While Jamie’s recipe called for parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes, I used what I had from the farm–turnips instead of parsnips–and I nixed the Jerusalem artichokes because they are just so freakin’ expensive. One note: I do not peel my root vegetables. I just don’t think it’s necessary when you’re using organically-grown veggies. Besides, how many people have eaten potato skins before? The skin of the carrot or the turnip is the same thing, right? Just wash ’em up real good! Besides, I don’t think a little dirt will hurt you. It’s called terroir–when the food takes on the flavor of the place it was grown. Yeah, this generally refers to wine…but I think it could be true with carrots too.

Beef and Root Vegetable Stew (wine)

Remember, you’re going to be adding a 1/2 bottle of wine to this. I admit, it is hard for me to pour a 1/2 bottle of wine into the pot, thinking about putting it to better use (by actually drinking it), but it is well worth it. I usually choose a wine that I would normally drink anyway (do NOT buy a bottle that you wouldn’t normally drink…it will taste in the stew like it tastes in the glass, so you’ll want to buy something you like. And don’t–under any circumstances–buy cooking wine. It will taste terrible). I really like this line of wines called “Just.” You can find them at Whole Foods and they are under $10.00. They are great for cooking with or for your regular weekday wine intake, when you don’t need anything too fancy, but you also don’t want to drink something icky. Half goes in the stew, and half goes in my tummy while I cook! It’s already a party and I haven’t even eaten anything yet!

Beef and Root Vegetable Stew (finished on stove)

This stew cooks for a while in the oven (3-4 hours). Don’t take it out a moment sooner than that! You want the beef to be nice and tender and to fall apart under your fork. By all means, test it first. I will tell you, the smell of this stew in your kitchen (and throughout your house) is a wonderful, comforting, warm smell, and it is totally worth the wait.

When you take the stew out of the oven, just before serving, add the garlic/rosemary/lemon mixture. It is so fragrant and adds a phenomenal touch to the stew. Don’t skip it! By the way, I made some cornbread to go with this, and it made for great dipping.

As you can see by the picture below, my dog Jack was all-too-happy with this recipe. I shared a little with him, but saved most of it for leftovers. It made for a great weeknight dinner the second time around.

Beef and Root Vegetable Stew (adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Jool’s Favourite Beef Stew)Beef and Root Vegetable Stew (Jack Sniffing)

olive oil

Tablespoon of butter

1 onion, peeled and chopped

a handful of fresh sage leaves

¾lb beef stew meat

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

flour, to dust

4 small turnips, quartered*

4 carrots, halved

½ a butternut squash, halved, deseeded and roughly diced

1lb small potatoes (I used Yukon Golds)

2 tablespoons tomato paste

½ a bottle of red wine

½ pint beef stock

zest of 1 lemon, finely grated

a handful of rosemary, leaves picked

1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 300ºF. Put a Tablespoon of oil and a Tablespoon of butter into an oven-safe dutch oven.

Add the onion and all the sage leaves and fry for 3 or 4 minutes.

Toss the meat in a little seasoned flour, then add it to the pan with all the vegetables, the tomato purée, wine and stock, and gently stir together.

Season generously with freshly ground black pepper and just a little salt. Bring to a boil, place a lid on top, then cook in the preheated oven until the meat is tender. Sometimes this takes 3 hours, sometimes 4 – it depends on what cut of meat you’re using and how fresh it is. The only way to test is to mash up a piece of meat and if it falls apart easily it’s ready. Once it’s cooked, you can turn the oven down to about 225°F and just hold it there until you’re ready to eat.

Mix the lemon zest, chopped rosemary and garlic together and sprinkle over the stew before eating. Just the smallest amount will make a world of difference.

*I do not peel my root vegetables. I use organic vegetables, so there are no pesticides to worry about. I make sure I clean the dirt off as well as I can. Other than that, a little clean dirt will never hurt anyone. I would argue it adds a little local flavor (er, maybe).


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The GDPR of the EU has been in effect for several days and not only I have been cursed over this huge steaming pile of … .

Myself, the SMB:

As a small & medium-sized entrepreneur, the GDPR is more in the way than good. Why is that? Well, as a web designer and media enthusiastic person in general, the GDPR complicates my work in an almost perverse way.

For example, the following scenario:

I have several websites, all more or less to date with Google fonts. Usually only with one font. Through various passages, the GDPR contains the fact that it is not allowed to use any fonts that may transfer data to their authors or providers. Even if it’s just a font.

That’s why I was forced to reorder the system fonts for all my existing websites. An effort that is out of proportion and also painful to the eye.

From the point of view of a small and medium-sized company, the GDPR is a huge pile of steaming shit, made by people who have no knowledge of the matter or the results of their verbal and thought flu.

It could go different too:

We forbid the collection of data simply at the creator level, instead of punishing those, which operate only with the services of the data collectors. Technology needs data, who does not want to disclose data, should live offline. Or do the work of the thousands of browser plugins that have been around for years in the stores of Google Chrome, Firefox & Safari and have been implementing almost all aspects of GDPR for years. Here, however, the convenience factor, which is widespread throughout Germany, comes in the way, because you would have to become active yourself instead of letting others do your own work.

Myself, the consumer and the employee:

As a consumer and employee, the new rights of the GDPR are just right for me. In particular, the right to “forget” and the right to information is particularly appealing when one has such needs.

Either way, the GDPR causes more damage than benefits, which is already recognized by the technology companys deliberately excludes users of the EU, since the simply as a startup does not have any facilities to go GDPR-conform. So we are not futuristic, dear politicians, no we are laughed at and, as you can see, marginalized.

The consequences:

Several media providers from the USA have already blocked their Internet presence for the EU, blogs are being forced by the EU to their knees, which I believe is an act of censorship and as already mentioned above, many service providers want their services for the EU being closed also just in principle sometimes.

In conclusion, I can only say: Well done, EU, the next time you would rather let the pros do this and not the same idiots on whose accounts the GDPR goes.


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The conclusion of Brax and Elle’s story is live on Amazon, Smashwords and Kobo. B&N and Apple to follow soon.

Also remember that Lost in Distraction is on sale until July 28th for 99c.

The Links:

Lost in Distraction

Lost For You

Now, time for a giveaway. Okay. A $10 USD Amazon Gift Card and 5 x copies of Lost In Distraction or Lost For You (winners choice). Winner’s can also nominate someone else to get the prize if they already have the book(s). So 6 prizes total.
Share this Post on your Facebook and Twitter telling your friends and followers what you thought of this book or how much you want to read it, and comment here with your email address and how you shared.

Will draw 24th July 12pm EST.


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indoor riding arena

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Dear John: Designing Arena Kick Walls

Screen Shot 2017-01-30 at 9.31.00 AMHello John,
I’m meeting with an arena builder this morning.  It’s finally clearing up around here, so we hope to start constructing the forms for the barn foundation this week.

Q: Do you have any advice about a design for a canted ring liner?  Or even just describe what is the norm?  We need an idea of how a segment typically is built.

Is it a good idea to go on up vertically after the canted part, another couple feet, to get a better compromise between indoor and covered only??  Or would that be claustrophobic?  We plan to use gale shields (netting panels) to cover the openings/protect from rain and wind.

Thank you!

Northwestern Eventing Rider

A: Dear Northwestern Eventing Rider:

I’m not sure what you mean by “ring liner.”  Do you mean the kick wall?

There are a variety of ways a kick wall can be designed.  I typically design it to the height the owner requests (typically around 4 to 6 feet).  We kick the base of the wall out about a foot from the top so it is slanted to protect the rider’s leg.

The top of the kick wall can go to whatever height you feel comfortable but I would make sure if you are using a steel frame for your arena roof and the interior face of the steel column slopes inward, that you allow some extra space between the top of the kick wall and the front edge of the column so that the rider’s shoulder or head doesn’t come in contact with the column.

I suggest extending the kick wall into the footing to the gravel base. Remember, the bottom boards and the framing behind the kick wall should be constructed of treated wood wherever it comes in contact with the ground or grade.  In most cases the frame is constructed of pressure-treated lumber and the bottom boards are pressure-treated to a point about 18” above the footing surface.

Also, I suggest putting gravel in back of the kick wall to the height of the arena footing to prevent the footing from being driven over time under the kick wall by the pounding of horse hooves.

I hope this is helpful.

Good Luck,

Posted in Equestrian News, News and Press | | Leave a comment >

Circle B Ranch: Arlington, WA

This lush and private ranch is located just north of Seattle. The 100’ x 200’ arena, which features a “crow’s nest” observation area, will be used for hunter/jumper and show training as well as recreation. The new structure, nestled in the Northwest Mountains, fits into the site unobtrusively and reflects the Tudor-style of the existing residence, favored by its owners. Future plans to occur in phases are a 20-stall barn, parking and service buildings, and a caretaker’s cottage.

Program 100’ x 200’ enclosed arena, future phases include 20-stall barn, parking/service buildings, gatehouse

Completion 2010 (arena construction)

Circle B Ranch in Arlington, WA

Posted in Equestrian News, Projects | | 1 comment >


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The QueueMar 20, 2019 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: Here I come to save the day

Save the day, wreck someone’s day… they’re almost the same thing, right? Right.

Q4tLiz: Why are we wasting time on Azerite, when chairs can be used to create indestructible armor, walls, shields? Chairs survived the fall of Theramore, and the destruction of Brill.

Chairs are strong, yes, but do they have magical powers? Even occasionally useless magical powers? No! No, they do not. Do they offer bonuses to intellect or strength? Again, no. Chairs are cursed to simply be chairs. It is a sad existence, to forever be indestructible furniture.

And while chairs certainly seem to have protective power, they simply won’t have the explosive powers Azerite weapons do. You know as well as I do that our primary role in Azerothian society is to kill things real good, and sometimes that involves blowing them up. Azerite — with the help of some engineers — gets the job done in a way chairs just can’t.

Would KT and Zandalari have been better utilized as primary expansion races?

These really should have been in the game at launch. Having the expansion so thoroughly themed around making friends with the Kul Tirans and Zandalari, then making friends with the Kul Tirans and Zandalari, then six months later we’re actually good enough friends with them to be able to play as them ourselves? The pacing of the whole thing felt odd, and while Mag’har Orcs and Dark Iron Dwarves are both interesting races, neither had anything thematically related to the expansion, so recruiting them was more of a shrug moment.

Q4TQ: Who’s you’re favorite new NPC in BfA? I’m going with Bwonsamdi. He has a good story on the Horde side and the first time that I died on my Alliance main and saw him making fun of me I knew I loved him! A close second is that creepy little girl in Drustvar!

“Our poor little village is dead.
All the people have gone stiff or fled.
There is no more noise…
…except me and my toys…
…just like all the dark birdies said!”

Battle for Azeroth has had its annoyances, but it’s had some great character moments — to the point where it’s tough to pick just one. If you twisted my arm, though, I’d agree that Bwonsamdi has been the best of the best. He has a unique voice in the world of Azeroth, and his presence permeates the whole expansion. Barring that, Talanji, who is the very vision of power and grace. From that opening scene on the ship to the latest cinematic of her with her father… wow. She’s incredible.

Oh. And this guy. This guy may actually be the top of the list.

Is there already more Naga activity ingame on the BfA continents, as stated by the new war campaign part?

What class should I level to 120 next? On Alliance I have only my main (void elf shadow priest) and am wondering which to do next.

There are some Naga-related world quests that are new, and I’ve seen reports that there’s more rain, particularly in zones where it doesn’t usually rain. I don’t know if that’s actually Azshara — does she control the rain? are tentacles going to start falling from the sky? — but it is unusual and it is something new.

And while I can’t tell you what would be fun for you to play, I’ll say that I am (slowly) leveling a bear Druid. I’ve been told that to become a better healer, I should learn to tank, and here I am. We’ll see if it lasts.

Q4tQ: What are your predictions for the 8.2 raid?

So many tentacles.

But Mitch, Shadow Reaper Anduin is rotating out of standard next expansion. “The Light betrays me!” and “Shadowy Thoughts.”

You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t enjoy seeing this play out in WoW. You just can’t.

Hearthstone doesn’t have a lot of voice lines per character, but it crams a lot into each of them — particularly that initial line when you play a card. With just a tiny bit of dialog you have this sense of a darker version of Anduin, who feels that the Light is no longer the answer, and is ready to watch the world burn to reach his goals. Perhaps his feelings on the Light could have been swayed by Uther of the Ebon Blade (6:25 in the video).

It may not be a good story direction, but damn it would be entertaining.

I’m probably too late but, Q4TQ: I race changed my 120 void elf lock to a gnome, how much will I regret this? Also how much better is goblin heritage armor going to be then gnome?

My very first World of Warcraft character was a Gnome Warlock, and while I know you have misgivings, I think it is the perfect race/class combination. Gnomes are tiny and precious, with a constant look of wide-eyed innocence and chipper voices. They’re good natured and seemingly harmless. They’re easy to write off.

And that gives Gnomes a significant tactical advantage. There’s no better way to put your enemies off guard than to convince them you aren’t a threat. This is particularly true for Warlocks, who have something of a reputation for being slightly evil. If you were any other race, any race at all, people would be wary of you. But as a Gnome? No one will ever see you coming.

P.s. welcome to the family. We really are pretty good-natured, but that doesn’t mean we can’t throw a punch (or a shadowbolt).

If someone was going to run a D&D game for a bunch of Blizzard Watch writers, should he try and adapt Warcraft to D&D or run a whole new campaign?

Huh, I don’t know why anyone would be thinking about doing that. But if so… well, don’t we already play Warcraft all the time? It seems like doing something different is the point.

And that’s all for now, my friends. Please do leave questions below for whichever mystery Queue writer appears tomorrow. All I know for sure is that it won’t be Adam, so until then, you may all enjoy playing guess-the-Queue, which is a real game that I absolutely did not just make up.

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Vietnamese A-Hole Found/發現越南混蛋

Hue, Vietnam, November 7, 2009

Taking a walk in the old city quarter, heading to a nice restaurant recommended by tour guide books. A man on a motor bike, with a woman on his back seat, approached me. He said the restaurant I am heading to is for tourists. He would recommended a cheap and good place where locals go. He claimed to be an English/Mathematics teacher. The woman was his wife.

As most of Vietnamese I had met so far were very nice. I decided to take a calculated risk, for the reward could be a priceless friendship.

I lost.

The A-hole did take me to a local restaurant. The food was typical and ordinary, but not the bill. When I was about the pay the bill, I saw the owner was having a difficult time writing it up. I guess the A-hole instructed the owner in Vietnamese the total amount she should charged me. The meal for two was about US$10. I would feel cheap only if it was my frist meal after I first arrived in Hue from North America.

He had the guts to ask me if the meal was cheap. I said it was very expensive, espeically the beer. He asked me how much I paid for beer norally. I said VND 8,000 for the kind of beer we had. In that restaurant, I just paid VND 90,000 for 7 bottles. Strange pricing, eh? He said the beer we had was very good, and it came with two grades. We had the better one. Better my rear ends. I did not taste the difference. Later, I asked friends working in a restaurant. They said there is only one kind of beer from that brewry.

VND 60,000

During the meal, he asked me if I were traveling alone, and invited me to a ride on his bike to country side the next day. I was not stupid enough to tell him I was alone. I told him I was traveling with some Canadians. We just had different plans that day.

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