Weekend Reads

Dear Professor: Is This Class Going to Challenge My Faith and Make Me Uncomfortable?

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Science Isn't Broken

Which political party is best for the economy seems like a pretty straightforward question. But as you saw, it’s much easier to get a result than it is to get an answer. The variables in the data sets you used to test your hypothesis had 1,800 possible combinations. Of these, 1,078 yielded a publishable p-value, but that doesn’t mean they showed that which party was in office had a strong effect on the economy. Most of them didn’t.

Reality Sucks

It’s true that the debate exposed a division within the country. But the division isn’t between the press and the public. It’s between people who listen to evidence—reporters, policy analysts, and many Democrats and Republicans—and an impervious, defiant wing of the GOP.

Renewable Energy Is About To Boom In Africa

Some of the most cost-competitive photovoltaic projects worldwide are already in Africa. For example, the utility-scale solar in South Africa has a generation cost of $0.075 per kilowatt hour, and Gielen added that IRENA expects northern, eastern, and southern Africa to derive power from wind and hydro as well.

Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.

Elections for state legislature rarely make the national news, but they are the fundamental building blocks of American politics. Since they run the redistricting process for the US House of Representatives and for themselves, they are where the greatest level of electoral entrenchment is possible.

And in the wake of the 2014 midterms, Republicans have overwhelming dominance of America's state legislatures.

This study is forcing economists to rethink high-deductible health insurance

In one sense, then, the high-deductible plan did accomplish a key goal: lower health spending. But when the researchers looked at why spending dropped, they found it had nothing to do with smarter shopping. The average price of a doctor visit wasn't dropping.

7 Hobbies Science Says Will Make You Smarter

The general idea is that the brain can develop further and you can do it on purpose. Different activities stimulate different areas of your brain, so you can work on becoming unbeatable at your strengths as well as improving your weaknesses.

These kids were geniuses — they were just too poor for anyone to discover them

Why Did the Democratic and Republican Parties Switch Platforms?

During the 1860s, Republicans, who dominated northern states, orchestrated an ambitious expansion of federal power, helping to fund the transcontinental railroad, the state university system and the settlement of the West by homesteaders, and instating a national currency and protective tariff. Democrats, who dominated the South, opposed these measures.