As expected, but contrary to press hysteria, Twinkies and other Hostess products are being manufactured again. Two private equity firms bought the rights to most of the snack products - and also bought four of their bakeries - and they will be available again at most outlets on Monday ( Read more... )

It's clear that the Tsarnaevs are jihadist terrorists, and we can stop dancing around that fact.

A week ago, no one knew what a pressure cooker bomb was. Now, everyone does. But where does the idea come from?

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Last week I discussed Japan's lost decades, and how the underlying cause of their recession is that a larger proportion of economic output is being taken by retirees, leaving less to be provided as pay and thus as incentives for those not yet retired to work ( Read more... )

Since our daughter will be kindergarten age in the fall, Elizabeth and I have been spending a lot of time researching public schools in the area. Our primary figure of merit has been Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System - MCAS - test distributions as adjusted for ethnic composition, not because we think that's a great way of grading ( Read more... )

In my last article, I pointed out that successful bystander intervention against a spree shooter reduces the average number of fatalities from about 14 to about 2. Here is a first hand account by a survivor of a spree shooting that killed 23, including both her parents, describing how gun control laws prevented her from intervening:

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With the recent Connecticut school shooting, the debate is on with regard to whether the solution is more guns or fewer guns. One of the issues in that debate is whether legitimate firearms in the hands of private citizens would reduce the number of deaths by stopping mass shootings earlier. I wasn't able to find any peer reviewed articles on the ( Read more... )

The general trend in crime rates for the past half century has been a general increase from the low levels of 1960 to a peak in 1980, followed by a general decline to fairly low levels today:


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The Republican steering committee recently removed and replaced four Republican members of policy making committees. Since this action is extremely rare - the last time it happened was decades ago - it has raised some controversy, and of course objections from the removed members, who claim that conservatives are being removed from leadership ( Read more... )

If you're confused about the chaotic news reports on the "fiscal cliff", the thing to understand is this: the fiscal cliff isn't about deficits being too big. It's about deficits being too small. And if that confuses you, you've been reading too many articles from journalists who don't understand the concept.

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Those closely following the 2012 election results likely know by now that the number of votes cast was far lower this year than it was in the last presidential election. Obama's popular vote was down by 7.7 million from 2008; Romney's popular vote was down by 1.4 million from McCain's ( Read more... )