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Gender differences in first episode psychotic mania
Psychotic disorders
The aim of this paper was to delineate the impact of gender on premorbid history, onset, and 18 month outcomes of first episode psychotic mania (FEPM) patients.
Medical file audit assessment of 118 (male = 71; female = 47) patients with FEPM aged 15 to 29 years was undertaken on clinical and functional measures.
Males with FEPM had increased likelihood of substance use (
Clinically meaningful gender differences in FEPM were driven by risk factors possibly associated with poor outcome. For males, substance use might be associated with poorer clinical presentation and functioning. In females with FEPM, the impact of sexual trauma on illness course warrants further consideration.
Gender differences in incidence, pre-illness characteristics, onset and course have been widely documented in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia
There have been inconsistencies regarding age of illness onset for bipolar I disorder with some studies reporting absence of gender differences in age of onset
Reported gender differences in course of illness have also been varied. In terms of symptomatology, females may have more severe depressive symptoms
Less is known about gender differences in social and occupational functioning, with more emphasis being placed on symptomatology. However, Miquel et al.
Unrepresentative and small samples may contribute to the variability in findings on gender differences in bipolar disorder. Often chronic patients or inpatients have been recruited; such cohorts have experienced a broad range of primary stressors prior to illness as well as secondary stressors associated with the illness (e.g., acute illness phases, relapses and medication).
To date, research on the gender differences in patients with first episode mania (FEM) is sparse. There appears to be only one study that has involved the investigation of gender differences in a FEM cohort. Kennedy et al.,
None of the studies conducted to date have examined gender differences in the subgroup of patients who have first episode psychotic mania (FEPM). Indeed, approximately 50% of patients will have psychotic symptoms at some stage of their illness
Therefore, in the current study, we report on gender differences in illness course of an epidemiologically representative treated cohort of patients with FEPM, aged between 15–29 years of age. It was hypothesized that there would be gender differences in clinical and functional characteristics of patients presenting with FEPM.
Sample and setting
One hundred and eighteen patients with a discharge diagnosis of FEPM were selected from a larger cohort of patients with first episode psychosis (FEP) from the First Episode Psychosis Outcome Study (FEPOS). FEPOS comprised a file audit of all 786 FEP patients treated at the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) between January 1998 and December 2000
Institutional ethics approval was obtained from Mental Health Research and Ethics Committee, Melbourne Health, Victoria, Australia. As this was a medical file audit study, informed consent was not required to be obtained from patients.
Materials and procedure
The Early Psychosis File Questionnaire
Clinical diagnoses at EPPIC are derived through consensus during an intensive diagnostic and treatment process. An initial diagnosis is determined during the first 6 weeks of admission by the team of well-trained clinicians, and is reviewed over the course of treatment. FEPOS diagnoses were given according to DSM-IV and on the basis of all information detailed in the medical file
Pre-morbid characteristics recorded included: past history of DSM-IV psychiatric disorder; past history of DSM-IV substance use disorder; suicide attempts (classified on ICD-10 criteria); family history of psychiatric disorder; premorbid adjustment as assessed by the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF); age at onset of psychotic symptoms; and duration of untreated psychosis (age of entry into EPPIC subtracted by age when first sustained positive psychotic symptoms longer than a week duration).
At service entry, clinical diagnoses (including substance use) were ascertained according to DSM-IV criteria. Illness severity was assessed according to scores on the Clinical Global Impressions–Severity of Illness Scale
Global functioning was assessed using the GAF. Vocational functioning was determined using the Modified Vocational Status Index (MVSI) and the Modified Location Code Index (MLCI) was used to determine independent living status
Treatment information included: suicide attempts; inpatient admissions; medication non-compliance (≥1 week without taking medication); and service engagement.
At service discharge, the final file DSM-IV clinical diagnoses were recorded. Symptom severity was determined using CGI-S, CGI-BP, and the insight scale. The GAF, MVSI, and MLCI, were used to assess discharge functional status. Patterns of substance use over treatment was also documented and characterised by three categories: (i) no SUD; (ii) decreased or remitted (decrease in quality and frequency of ≥50% or remission of baseline at 18 months or time of discharge); and (iii) persistent SUD (either increased SUD or unchanged SUD)
Reliability and validity
Estimates obtained for inter-rater reliability for the CGI, CGI-BP, GAF, and insight for 40 files were good (range:
Data analysis
A series of logistic regression analyses were conducted with gender as the dependent variable (male as the reference category), and the individual premorbid and service entry variables as predictors. From these analyses, odds ratios (
Multivariate logistic regression with forward stepwise variable selection (based on the likelihood ratio) was used to determine which factors best differentiated males and females with FEPM. Variables included in the equation were those that were different by gender in the univariate analyses at the
Given the exploratory nature of the study, alpha (α) was set at .05 for all analyses. No adjustments were made for multiple comparisons because they can result in a higher type II rate, reduced power, and increased likelihood of missing important findings (Rothman, 1990).
The majority of patients were male (60.2%,
The average age of onset of illness was 22.2 years (
Males with FEPM were more likely to have a past history of substance use (
At service entry, males were significantly more likely to have substance use issues (
A range of variables in the univariate analyses distinguished males and females at the
To our knowledge, this the first study to comprehensively examine gender differences in illness onset and course in a treated epidemiological cohort of patients with FEPM. A further strength of the study is that we included all patients who first presented for treatment and not just those patients with more severe or chronic illness or those who have had their first inpatient admission. Similar to previous studies into patients with chronic illness and bipolar I disorder, we found an array of gender differences in patients with FEPM between the ages of 15 to 29 years. Key differences were found with respect to premorbid history, severity of illness at entry, treatment and discharge characteristics.
Univariate analyses indicated that males with FEPM were more likely to have a history of substance and forensic issues. It has previously been shown that males with bipolar disorder are more likely to have conduct problems or antisocial tendencies in childhood
Gender differences in the prevalence of substance use disorders have been reported in the general population, with males being more likely to abuse or be dependent on drugs
Males were more likely to use cannabis than females with FEPM; but no such gender differences were found with alcohol or polysubstance use. Cannabis use is common in patients with bipolar disorder, particularly in younger patients (< 30 years)
During treatment, males were more likely than females to decrease or cease their substance use. Increased familial support in males might have contributed to the reduction of substance use. Males who are ill with a first episode of psychosis are more likely than females to receive understanding and support from family members
Females were seven times more likely to have experienced sexual abuse than males with FEPM. A recent meta analysis indicated that the prevalence of sexual abuse is higher in females (19.7%) than males (7.9%) in the general population
A history of sexual abuse may also explain why females with FEPM were less likely to be living with their families at discharge from the service. If the abuse occurred within the context of the family networks, then this is a unsurprising finding. However, it should also be noted, a history of sexual abuse and/or trauma is linked with markedly poorer social functioning especially with respect to building constructive and trusting relationships
With regards to the characteristics of the current study, a number of factors need to be kept in mind in interpreting the data. FEPM cohorts may offer a unique window into the disorder, as the effects of illness progression and treatment are controlled for. The primary limitation of this study is the use of a retrospective medical file audit. There can be numerous problems with such an approach including: (i) poor quality of documented information; (ii) clinical experience of raters; (iii) lack of inter-rater reliability; and (iv) questionable data validity. Numerous strategies were adopted in the current study to minimise the impact of such limitations including: (i) medical files at EPPIC were systematised according to FEP guidelines
A further study limitation was the lack of information recorded regarding psychopathology (e.g., mood episodes, psychotic symptoms, relapse) and type and dosage of pharmacological treatments; these factors could have had an effect on the degree of gender difference at discharge.
It appears that there are substantial differences between males and females with FEPM in terms of past histories, presentation, and discharge outcomes; however, these differences may be driven by putative risk factors such as substance use and exposure to sexual abuse. Importantly, these risk factors occur prior to the onset of full threshold disorder. These risk factors might be markers of a disease that has already been under development for some time. However, given current evidence, it is difficult to ascertain whether substance abuse and/or sexual abuse are a cause or consequence (e.g., prodromal phase of illness) of illness.
There is growing interest in identifying individuals at "ultra high risk" of developing bipolar disorder
aFor ease of interpretation, female was the reference category for the calculation of this odds ratio.
FEP: First episode psychosis; FEM: First episode mania; FEPM: First episode psychotic mania; FEPOS: First Episode Psychosis Outcome Study; EPPIC: Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre; DSM-IV: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – fourth edition; ICD-10: International Classification of Disease – 10th edition; CGI-S: Clinical Global Impressions Scale – Severity; CGI-BP: Clinical Global Impressions Scale – Bipolar Disorder; GAF: Global Assessment of Functioning; MVSI: Modified Vocation Status Index; MLCI: Modified Location Code Index; OR: Odds ratio; CI: Confidence interval
Competing interests
Prof. Lambert, Prof. Conus, Prof. Schimmelmann, and Prof. McGorry have served on the speakers' board of Eli Lily. Prof Berk Berk has served on advisory boards and received funds and/or honoraria from Astra Zeneca, Eli Lilly, Janssen Cilag, Lundbeck, Servier, Glaxo Smith Kline, Organon, Novartis, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi Synthelabo and Solvay.
There are no other relevant disclosures.
Authors' contributions
ML, PC, and PM contributed to the design and conduct of FEPOS. SC and MB developed the ideas for this paper. SC wrote the draft of the manuscript and conducted all statistical analyses. ML, PC, PM, FJB, and BGS collaborated in writing and editing of the paper and approved the final manuscript.
The First Episode Outcome Study (FEPOS) was supported by a grant to Prof. Martin Lambert from Eli Lilly Company Australia, and a grant to Prof. Philippe Conus from the Leenaards Foundation, Switzerland. Eli Lilly Australia funded the assessment of files on a subgroup of this cohort treated with olanzapine and risperidone. Associate Prof. Sue Cotton was supported by the Ronald Phillip Griffith Fellowship, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne.
Gender differences in premorbid, entry, treatment and outcome characteristics in a treated epidemiological sample of 661 patients with first-episode psychosis
Gender differences in schizophrenia
Causes and consequences of the gender differences in age of onset of schizophrenia
Gender differences in young adults with first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders at baseline in the Danish OPUS study
Is sex important? Gender differences in bipolar disorders
Prevalence, correlates, and comorbidity of bipolar I disorder and axis I and II disorders: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and related Conditions
Gender differences in incidence and age of onset of mania and bipolar dsiorder over a 35-year period in Camberwell, England
Gender differences in bipolar disorder: age of onset, course, comorbidity, and symptom presentation
Gender and depressive symptoms in 711 patients with bipolar disorder evaluated prospectively in the Stanley Foundation Bipolar Treatment Outcome Network
Gender differences in bipolar disorder
Issues in the treatment of wormen with bipolar illness
Gender differences in psychotic bipolar mania
Diagnosis and treatment of mixed mania
Gender differences in bipolar dsiorders: retrospective data from the first 500 STEP-BD participants
Gender differences in outcomes of acute mania: a 12 month follow-up study
Prevalence and description of psychotic features in bipolar mania
The National Depressive and Manic-depressive Association (DMDA) survey of bipolar members
Prevalence, predictors, and consequences of long-term refusal of antipsychotic treatment in first episode psychosis
Rates and predictors of service disengagement in an epidemiological first-episode psychosis cohort
The First-Episode Psychosis Outcome Study: premorbid and baseline characteristics of an epidemiological cohort of 661 first-episode psychosis patients
The impact of substance use disorders on clinical outcome in 643 patients with first-episode psychosis
Suicide attempt in first-episode psychosis: the demographic, premorbid and clinical predictors of suicide attempt in young people with first-episode psychosis
Diagnostic stability 18-month after a first diagnosis of psychosis
Predictors of service disengagement with treatment in first-admitted adolescents with psychosis
Pre-treatment, baseline, and outcome differences between early-onset and adult-onset psychosis in an epidemiological cohort of 636 first-episode patients
Impact of duration of untreated psychosis on pre-treatment, baseline, and outcome characteristics in an epidemiological first-episode psychosis cohort
Sudden death among young people with first-episode psychosis: An 8–10 year follow-up study
EPPIC: an evolving system for early detection and optimal management
Two-year syndromal and functional recovery in 219 cases of first episode major affective disorder with psychotic features
Bipolar and violent crime: new evidence from population based longitudinal studies and systematic review
Comorbid substance use disorders among youth with bipolar disorder: opportunites for early identification and prevention
Gender differences in bipolar disorder type I and II
The specific burden of comorbid anxiety disorders and substance use in bipolar I disorders
Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM-IV drug abuse and dependence in the United States: results from the national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions
Presence of co-morbid substance use in bipolar patients worsens their social functioning to the level observed in patients with schizophrenia
Patterns of Axis I comorbidity in relation to age in patients with bipolar disorder: a cross-sectional analysis
Excessive cannabis use is associated with earlier age at onset in bipolar disorder
The influence of gender on clinical and social characteristics of patients at psychosis onset: a report from the Psychosis Incident Cohort Outcome Study (PICOS)
Relationship between childhood adversity and clinical and cognitive features in schizophrenia
Substance use and abuse in first episode psychosis: prevalence before and after early intervention
Psychological needs of adolescents in the early phase of bipolar disorder: implications for early intervention
Evidence and implications for early intervention in bipolar disorder
The prevalence of child sexual abuse in community and student samples: a meta-analysis
Psychosis, victimisation and childhood disadvantage: evidence from the second British National Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity
Trauma and psychosis: an analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey
Pretreatment and outcome correlates of past sexual and physical trauma in 118 bipolar I disorder patients with a first episode of psychotic mania
Pre-treatment and outcome correlates of sexual and physical trauma in an epidemiological cohort of first episode psychosis patients
Gender differences in the association between childhood abuse and psychosis
A prospective study examining the effects of gender and sexual/physical abuse on mood outcomes in patients with co-occuring bipolar I and substance use disorders
Prevalence and correlates of physical and sexual abuse in children and adolescents with bipolar disorder
A longitudinal study of the effects of childhood trauma on symptoms and functioning of people with severe mental health problems
A preliminary evaluation of the validity of at risk criteria for bipolar disorders in help-seeking adolescents and young adults
Characterisation of the prodrome to a first episode of psychotic mania: results of a retrospective study
Setting the stage: from prodrome to treatment resistance in bipolar disorder
Pre-publication history
The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:


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Going travelling? Sign in and write about it on Adventure Bike Rider. It's free, it's easy and we'd love to read all about it.
Ask questions, find answers, help others, say what's on your mind. Join the ABR community.
More to come on this Sports Tourer Motorcycle
Got my 2005 - FJR1300A in May last year and I have done 17000Kms since then, throughout Europe and loved every minute. This bike ticks all the boxes for me. Bucket fulls of power from low down sometimes feels like a Auto as it will pull from 30KMS/h to max in 5th gear like a train. Its comfortable and reliable with a good fuel range thanks to the big 25L tank. The adjustable winscreen is another major plus which makes my mates enviouse no more buffeting down motorways put the screen up and hide in the quiet zone.
Due to the low scoop faring this is not any good for off roading as there is a very low ground clearance plus the heavy weight can be a problem to balence.
The only regret I have is that the bike could do with a 6th gear as it has the grunt for it, I keep finding myself trying to change up on motorways.
I went on a couple of trips with mates on Hyabusa and a Fireblade and kept up with them without any problem although it is a heavy long bike so tight bends have to taken carefully.
The only changes that have made are to change the standard Continental tyres for new Dunlop Sports MAX which has transformed the handling and the brake pads thats it.
I have installed a Garmin Zumo 660 GPS, a 12v power socket.
The bike is very easy to maintain and service myself which is satisfying and saves money.
Satisfaction 90%
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Running cost Low just depends how much you open the taps for fuel economy
Build Quality 95%
6th Gear
Reduced weight
I have no intention of changing it in the future and loking to soaking up ore tarmac in the comming seasons.
I've owned my FJR for 4 years. Its a 2001 model, in black, and I have updated it with an MRA screen, Tomtom rider satnav, heated grips and a few other bits and pieces.
It is definately the best bike I have owned in the 21 years that I have been riding.
The engine is amazing. Even fully loaded it will pull to warp factor speeds with little or no effort.
I have used it for 4 trips across to Europe and it has never let me down.
I recently looked at trading it in for a R1200 GSA. I test rode several BMWs and even though I enjoyed them when I got back onto the FJR I realised just how comfortable it was.
An added bonus for me is my annual insurance cost, fully comp/protected NCB is £65.....
Overall - an awesome bike that I would not hestitate to recommend to anyone.
I bought my FJR unseen un ridden based completely on the write ups in the bike media and of course the renowned pedigree of the FJ100 and FJ1200. It was one of the 1st FJR1300's on the road in 2001. And I have never been disappointed.
If I could only ever have one bike The FJR1300 would deffiatively be IT! last answer ;)
I Have covered 140,000 Kms mostly 2 up on this outstanding bike and it is still as strong and interesting to ride as the day I bought it. I also own a Triumph Rocket III and a Moto Guzzi Stelvio 4v
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subset: commoncrawl


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It's far to early in the month for red stockings hanging by the fireplace. Yeah, I'm a Christmas grinch ... bah humbug! But when I catch a look of Dato Foland and Donnie Dean lounging in their pajamas and long johns, I can't resist getting in the mood. Who wouldn't want to be lying in front of that fireplace with either of these two sexy men? Or both of them?
This is the first scene of Lucas Entertainment's five-scene Christmas series. It features seven friends who have left their families behind to head off to a mountain cabin to fuck their way through the holidays. Now that sounds like a perfect Christmas, doesn't it? Dato Foland and Donnie start things off in the first scene, then Nigel Banks joins them in the second. Donnie Dean fucks Ivan Gregory in the third, and Lucas Knight, Tanner Bradley, and Santiago Figueroa have a threeway, then everyone cums together for a gang bang in the finale.
This is Donnie Dean's bareback debut. I don't care really, he's one of the best cocksuckers in Pornland -- I could watch this man service dick all day. Donnie pulls Dato's boner out of his pajamas and starts licking and kissing Dato's beautiful cock. After the teasing, Donnie swallows the whole thing and it looks as though Dato's going to weep. Donnie gives Dato head for most of the movie and he does it superbly.
I was confused because the video clock is advancing towards the end and the guys haven't started fucking yet. In fact, there's only about two minutes left when Dato finally shoves his bare cock in Donnie's ass. Dato pumps a couple of times then pulls out and douses Donnie's hole with a healthy load of cum. Well, that was short, wasn't it? But what I didn't realize, and what Lucas Entertainment doesn't tell us, is that this is just the beginning of a longer scene. Nigel Banks is waiting in the wings to join these two. That scene should be out next week, so you won't have to wait long to see Dato giving Donnie one of his signature poundings.
See more at Lucas Entertainment


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The Player of the Year race is heating up.
Tuesday, The Los Angeles Athletic Club released its 25 midseason finalists for the Wooden Award as chosen by the Wooden Award National Advisory Board. ESPN.com also released a straw poll that had Kansas' Thomas Robinson leading the voting.
Below the jump, you'll see the 25 official finalists. The award is voted on by more than 1,000 sports writers from all 50 states, and the winner is announced the weekend of April 6-8, 2012.
Criteria for the award includes: the student-athlete must have a cumulative grade point average of 2.00 or higher throughout the candidate's college career.
The 25 finalists (in alphabetical order):
Harrison Barnes, North Carolina
Will Barton, Memphis
William Buford, Ohio State
Anthony Davis, Kentucky
Marcus Denmon, Missouri
Draymond Green, Michigan State
John Henson, North Carolina
John Jenkins, Vanderbilt
Orlando Johnson, UC Santa Barbara
Darius Johnson-Odom, Marquette
Kevin Jones, West Virginia
Perry Jones III, Baylor
Kris Joseph, Syracuse
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Kentucky
Jeremy Lamb, Connecticut
Damian Lillard, Weber State
Scott Machado, Iona
Kendall Marshall, North Carolina
Doug McDermott, Creighton
Mike Moser, UNLV
Arnett Moultrie, Mississippi State
Thomas Robinson, Kansas
Mike Scott, Virginia
Jared Sullinger, Ohio State
Cody Zeller, Indiana
First-place votes in parentheses.
Football coaches' poll
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Zilog Z80000
The Z80000 ("zee-eighty-thousand" American, "zed-eighty-thousand" British) is Zilog's 32-bit processor, first released in 1986. It is essentially a 32-bit expansion of its 16-bit predecessor, the Zilog Z8000. It includes multiprocessing capability, a six-stage instruction pipeline, and a 256-byte cache. Its memory addressing system can access 4 gigabytes of RAM. Described at the time as a "mainframe on a chip", the processor is in many ways an equivalent to Intel's 80386. It can execute code written for the Z8000, but is not compatible with the Intel x86 architecture, nor is it compatible with the Z80.
Sixteen general-purpose registers of variable size are available through use of a 64-byte "register file". The processor includes a memory management unit that provides protected memory, important for multitasking, and virtual memory addressing for temporary storage of RAM on a hard disk. The processor has three methods of accessing memory:
- compact mode – meant for small programs, could only access 64 KB (16-bit addresses, equivalent to the Z8000's non-segmented mode)
- segmented mode – 32,768 segments of 64 KB (16-bit address) or 128 segments of 16 MB (24-bit address), making a total of 2 GB (31-bit address) of accessible memory
- linear mode – direct 4 GB (32-bit address) accessible memory
The processor is designed to interoperate with other integrated circuits designed for use with the Z8000, such as the Zilog Z8070 floating-point coprocessor.
The Z320 was the CMOS version of the Z80000.
|This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (July 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
- Zilog Z80,000 CPU Preliminary Technical Manual (pdf). San Jose, California: Zilog. September 1984. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
External links[edit]
|This microcomputer- or microprocessor-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.


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A Manly Meal for Dad
Market District
Thursday, May 29, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Event Details
A Manly Meal for Dad
Hands-On with Mario Porreca & Kirk Kolich
Thursday, May 29, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Learn to cook a meal your father will love in that sexist stuff-guys-like way! Recipes include Blue Cheese-Crusted New York Strip Steak, Port Wine Reduction, Bacon and Smoked Cheddar Mashed Potatoes, and Roasted Asparagus and Red Peppers and a Dark Chocolate Brownie Sundae for dessert. $50
If you prefer to pay with cash or gift cards, please visit the Cooking School upstairs at the Robinson Market District. The Cooking School staff will confirm if seats are available for this class, and you will pay at the registers. After you have paid, bring your receipt back to the Cooking School immediately to reserve your seat in the class.
When & Where
Robinson Market District
100 Settlers Ridge Center Drive
Thursday, May 29, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my calendar


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Blantyre Map
16 Blantyre Rd.
413-637-3556 | Make Restaurant Reservations
The location of Blantyre is marked on the map below with a green arrow. Click on it to get directions if you don't see a pop-up. Enjoy your meal at Blantyre!
Find out which restaurants and chefs top the list of GAYOT's 2016 Annual Restaurant Awards.


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Leather Wench here, your one and only source into Myrtle Beach's Leather world. Jamin Jamie is at it again. With all of our new merchindise coming in, of course we have to get New Models too! Although I'll let you in on a little secret. Some of the products arent't exactly new, just improved. But they look brand new on our stunning models. Can you guess which items are new and which ones are updated? Thats all for now. Until next time..
Leather Wench.
P.S. The handsome fella below is actually here during bike week ;)


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Archive for the 'economics' Category
no complexity theory in economics
Roger E. Farmer has a blog post on why economists should not use complexity theory. At first, I though he was going to argue that complexity models have been dis-proven or they use unreasonable assumptions. Instead, he simply says we don't have enough data:
The obvious question that Buzz asked was: are economic systems like this? The answer is: we have no way of knowing given current data limitations. Physicists can generate potentially infinite amounts of data by experiment. Macroeconomists have a few hundred data points at most. In finance we have daily data and potentially very large data sets, but the evidence there is disappointing. It's been a while since I looked at that literature, but as I recall, there is no evidence of low dimensional chaos in financial data.
Where does that leave non-linear theory and chaos theory in economics? Is the economic world chaotic? Perhaps. But there is currently not enough data to tell a low dimensional chaotic system apart from a linear model hit by random shocks. Until we have better data, Occam's razor argues for the linear stochastic model.
If someone can write down a three equation model that describes economic data as well as the Lorentz equations describe physical systems: I'm all on board. But in the absence of experimental data, lots and lots of experimental data, how would we know if the theory was correct?
On one level, this is a fair point. Macro-economics is notorious for having sparse data. We can't re-run the US economy under different conditions a million times. We have quarterly unemployment rates and that's it. On another level, this is an extremely lame criticism. One thing that we've learned is that we have access to all kinds of data. For example, could we have m-turker participate in an online market a million times? Or, could we mine eBay sales data? In other words, Farmer's post doesn't undermine the case for complexity. Rather, it suggests that we might search harder and build bigger tools. And, in the end, isn't that how science progresses?
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
the pager paper, sociological science, and the journal process
Last week, we discussed Devah Pager's new paper on the correlation between discrimination in hiring and firm closure. As one would expect from Pager, it's a simple and elegant paper using an audit study to measure the prevalence and consequences of discrimination in the labor market. In this post, I want to use the paper to talk about the journal publication process. Specifically, I want to discuss why this paper appeared in Sociological Science.
First, it may be the case that Professor Pager directly went to Sociological Science without trying another peer reviewed journal. If so, then I congratulate both Pager and Sociological Science. By putting a high quality paper into public access, both Professor Pager and the editors of Sociological Science have shown that we don't need the lengthy and cumbersome developmental review system to get work out there.
Second, it may be the case that Professor Pager tried another journal, probably the ASR or AJS or an elite specialty journal and it was rejected. If so, that raises an important question – what specifically was "wrong" with this paper? Whatever one thinks of the Becker theory of racial discrimination, one can't critique the paper on lacking a "framing" or have a simple and clean research design. One can't critique statistical technique because it's a simple comparison of means. One can't critique the importance of the finding – the correlation between discrimination in hiring and firm closure is important to know and notable in size. And, of course, the paper is short and clearly written.
Perhaps the only criticism I can come up with is a sort of "identification fundamentalism." Perhaps reviewers brought up the fact discrimination was not randomly assigned to firms so you can't infer anything from the correlation. That is bizarre because it would render Becker's thesis un-testable. What experimental design would allow you get a random selection of firms to suddenly become racist in their hiring practices? Here, the only sensible approach is Bayesian – you collect high quality observational data and revise your beliefs accordingly. This criticism, if it was made, isn't sound upon reflection. I wonder what, possibly, could the grounds for rejection be aside from knee jerk anti-rational choice comments or discomfort with a finding that markets do have some corrective to racial discrimination.
Bottom line: Pager and the Sociological Science crew are to be commended. Maybe Pager just wanted this paper "out there" or just got tired of the review process. Either way, three cheers for Pager and the Soc Sci Crew.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
gary becker 1, rational choice haters 0
One of the most striking arguments of Gary Becker's theory of discrimination is that there is a cost of racial discrimination. If you hire people based on personal taste rather than job skills, your competitors can hire these better works and you work at a disadvantage. I think the strong version argument isn't right. Markets do not instantly weed out discriminators. But the weak version has a lot of merit. If you truly avoid workers based on race or gender, you are giving away a huge advantage to the competition.
Well, turns out that Becker was right, at least in one data set. Devah Pager has a new paper in Sociological Science showing that discrimination is indeed associated with lower firm performance:
Economic theory has long maintained that employers pay a price for engaging in racial discrimination. According to Gary Becker's seminal work on this topic and the rich literature that followed, racial preferences unrelated to productivity are costly and, in a competitive market, should drive discriminatory employers out of business. Though a dominant theoretical proposition in the field of economics, this argument has never before been subjected to direct empirical scrutiny. This research pairs an experimental audit study of racial discrimination in employment with an employer database capturing information on establishment survival, examining the relationship between observed discrimination and firm longevity. Results suggest that employers who engage in hiring discrimination are less likely to remain in business six years later.
Commentary: I have always found it ironic that sociologists and non-economists have resisted the implications of taste based discrimination theory. If discrimination in markets is truly not based on performance or productivity, there must be *some* consequence. However, a lot of sociologists have a strong distrust of markets that draws their attention to this rather simple implication of price theory. I don't know the entire literature on taste based discrimination, but it's good to see this appear.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
the three student loan crises
Among higher ed policy folks, there's a counter-conventional wisdom that there is no student loan crisis. For the most part (the story goes), student loans are a good investment that will increase future wages, and students could borrow quite a bit more before the value of the debt might be called into question. Indeed, some have argued that many students are too reluctant to borrow, and should take on more debt.
Just this month, two new pieces came out that reiterate this counter-narrative: a book by Urban Institute economist Sandy Baum, and a report by the Council of Economic Advisers. Yes, everyone agrees the system's not perfect, and tweaks need to be made. (Susan Dynarski, for example, argues that repayment periods need to be longer.) Fundamentally, though, the system is sound. Or so goes the story.
What can we make of this disconnect between the conventional wisdom—that we are in the throes of a student loan crisis—and this counter-conventional story?
To understand it, it's worth thinking about three different student loan crises. Or "crises", depending on your sympathies.
First, there's the student who has accrued six figures of debt for an undergraduate degree. Ideally, for media purposes, this is a degree in women's studies, art history, or some other easily-dismissible field. The New York Times specialized in these for a while.
Since student loan debt is not bankruptable, these people really are kind of screwed, although income-based-repayment options have improved their options somewhat. And they make for a dramatic story—as well as lots of moralizing in the comments.
Second, there's the student who took on debt but didn't finish a degree. These people often struggle, because their income doesn't go up much, if at all. In fact, the highest default rates are among those who left school with the smallest debts (< $5000), presumably because they didn't graduate.
These folks disproportionately attend for-profit institutions, whose degrees have less payoff anyhow, but even more importantly, have abysmal graduation rates. (Community colleges have low graduation rates too, but they're a lot cheaper.) The debt-but-no-degree people are also kind of screwed, although again, income-based repayment plans can help them a lot, as would a bankruptcy option.
So we've got the crisis of people who borrow too much for a four-year degree, and the crisis of people who borrow a little, but don't complete the degree, often because they're attending a school whose entire business model is to sign up new students for the purpose of taking their loan money.
These are both problems—even "crises"—but they are solvable. For the first, cap federal loans (including PLUS access) for undergraduate degrees, and make all loans bankruptable, so private lenders are leerier of loaning large amounts to students.
For the second—well, I'd probably be comfortable eliminating aid to for-profits, but let's say that's beyond the political pale. Certainly we could place a lot more limitations on which institutions are eligible for federal aid, whether that's tied to graduation rates, default rates, or some other measure. And, again, making student loans bankruptable would help people who really needed to get a fresh start.
Wait, so what's the third crisis?
The thing is, these two "crises" may be devastating to individuals, but in societal terms aren't that big. The six-figure-debt one really drives policy wonks crazy, because every student debt story in the last ten years has led with this person, but the percentage of students who finish four-year degrees with this many loans is very small. Like maybe a couple of percent of borrowers small.*
Proponents of the Counter-Conventional Wisdom (C-CW) take the second group—those who borrow but don't finish a degree—more seriously. This group is often really hurting, despite having smaller loan balances. But they only make up perhaps 20% of borrowers, and since their balances are relatively low, an even smaller fraction of that $1.4 trillion student loan figure we hear so much about.**
The real question—the one that determines whether you think there's a third crisis—is how you react to the other 75-80% of borrowers. The C-CW crowd looks at them and says, eh, no crisis. These folks come out with four-year degrees, $20 or $30,000 of government-issued student loan debt, will pay $300 a month or so for ten years, and then move on with their lives. We could argue about how much of a burden this is for them, but it's clearly not a crisis in the same way it is for the NYU grad with $150k in loans, or for the Capella University dropout trying to pay back $7500 on $10 an hour.
This C-CW is based on the premise that 1) college is a human capital investment that is worth taking on debt for up to the expected economic payoff, 2) individual borrowing is a reasonable and appropriate way to finance this investment—indeed, more sensible than paying for the costs collectively—and 3) as long as debt is kept to a "manageable" level (as indicated by students not going into default and having access to forbearance when their income is low), then there's no crisis.
Why this understates the problem
I take issue with this position, though, on at least three fronts.
1. "Typical" student debt is increasing .
Individual borrowing levels are still rising rapidly, and there's no reason to think we've neared a max. A recent Washington Post editorial cited the CEA report as saying that "[t]he average undergraduate loan burden in 2015 was $17,900." But that's not what the average graduate holds. That's what the average loan-holder holds, including those who have already been paying for a number of years. Estimates for the average 2016 graduate, by contrast, are considerably higher—in the $29,000 to $37,000 range—and growing. The fraction of all students who borrow also continues to increase.
College costs keep rising. State budgets are still under pressure. The penalties for not completing college keep increasing. We can only expect loan sizes to continue to go up. At what point does "reasonable borrowing" become "unreasonable burden"? And tweaks like expanding income-based repayment or extending the standard repayment period won't bend the curve (to borrow from another debate)—if anything it will enable the further expansion of lending.
2. We are all Capella now.
These debates often overlook the effects of federal aid policy on colleges as organizations, something I've written about elsewhere. (The exception is the attention given to the Bennett hypothesis, which suggests that colleges will simply turn federal aid into higher tuition prices.)
But that doesn't mean organizational effects don't exist. Continuing to shift the cost burden to individual students is going to accelerate the already intense pressure on public colleges in particular to recruit and retain students, because with students come tuition dollars.
The drive to attract students is already undermining a lot of traditional values in higher education. It encourages schools to spend money on marketing and branding, rather than education. It promotes a consumerist mindset among students who quite reasonably feel that they have become customers. It encourages schools to develop low-value degree programs simply to generate revenue, and recruit students into them regardless of whether the students will benefit.
The values that limit colleges from doing kind of thing are what separates nonprofits from for-profits in the first place. If they go away, we all become Capella. And allowing "reasonable" lending to keep expanding moves us straight in that direction.
3. It gives up on actual public education.
Ultimately, though, the biggest problem I have with this position is that it concedes the possibility, or even the value, of real public higher education entirely. It doesn't matter whether that's because the C-CW sees it as a pipe dream, or because it sees it as an irrational use of public funds, since individuals benefit personally from their education in the long run.
This post is already too long, so I won't go into a detailed defense of public higher ed here. But I do want to point out that if you accept the premise of the C-CW—that student loan debt will only become a crisis if it increases individual costs beyond the returns to a college degree—you've already given up on public higher education. I'm not ready to do that.
And it looks like I'm not the only one.
* This number is actually surprisingly difficult to find. In 2008, it was only 0.2% of undergrad completers, but average debt for new graduates has increased about 40% since then, so the six-figure camp has undoubtedly grown.
** Again, exact numbers hard to pin down. 15% of beginning students who borrowed from the government in 2003-04 had not completed a degree six years later, nor were they still enrolled. This figure has doubtless increased as nontraditional borrowers—who are less likely to finish—have become a bigger fraction of the total pool of borrowers, hence my 20% guesstimate.
a history of "command and control", or, thomas schelling is behind every door
I'm working on a paper about the regulatory reform movement of the 1970s. If you've read anything at all about regulation, even the newspaper, you've probably heard the term "command and control".
"Command and control" is a common description for government regulation that prescribes what some actor should do. So, for example, the CAFE standards say that the cars produced by car manufacturers must, on average, have a certain level of fuel efficiency. Or the EPA's air quality standards say that ozone levels cannot exceed a certain number of parts per billion. Or such regulations may simply forbid some things, like the use of asbestos in many types of products.
This is typically contrasted with incentive-based regulation, or market-based regulation, which doesn't set an absolute standard but imposes a cost on an undesirable behavior, like carbon taxes, or provides some kind of reward for good (usually meaning efficient) performance, as utility regulators often do.
The phrase "command and control" is commonly used in the academic literature, where it is not explicitly pejorative. Yet it's kind of a loaded term. Who wants to be "commanded" and "controlled"?
So as I started working on this paper, I became more and more curious about the phrase, which only seemed to date back to the late 1970s, as the deregulatory movement really got rolling. Before that, it was a military term.
To the extent that I had thought about it at all, I assumed it was a clever framing coined by some group like the American Enterprise Institute that wanted to draw attention to regulation as a form of government overreach.
So I asked Susana Muñiz Moreno, a terrific graduate student working on policy expertise in Mexico, to look into it. She found newspaper references starting in 1977, when the New York Times references CEA chair Charles Schultze's argument that "the current 'command-and-control' approach to social goals, which establishes specific standards to be met and polices compliance with each standard, is not only inefficient 'but productive of far more intrusive government than is necessary.'"
And sure enough, Schultze's influential book of that year, The Private Use of Public Interest, uses the phrase a number of times. Which makes sense, as Schultze was instrumental in advancing regulatory reform and plays a key role in my story. But he's clearly not the AEI type I would have imagined coining such a phrase—before becoming Carter's CEA chair Schultze was at Brookings, and before that he was LBJ's budget director.
Nevertheless, given Schultze's influence and the lack of earlier media use of the term, I figured he probably came up with it and it took off from there.
But I started poking around Google Scholar, mostly because I wondered if some more small-government-oriented reformer of regulation had been using it prior to Schultze. I thought James C. Miller III might be a possibility.
I didn't find any early uses of the term from Miller, but you know what I did find? An obscure book chapter called "Command and Control" written by Thomas Schelling in 1974.
Sociologists probably best know Schelling from his 1978 book, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, and its tipping point model, which shows how the decisions of agents who prefer that even a relatively small proportion of their neighbors be like them (read: of the same race) can quickly lead to a highly segregated space. Its insights are regularly referenced in the literature on neighborhoods and segregation.
(If you haven't seen it, you should totally check out this brilliant visualization of the model, "Parable of the Polygons".)
Economists know him for a broader range of game theoretic work on decision-making and strategy—work that was recognized in 2005 with a Nobel Prize.
Anyway, I just checked out the chapter—and I'm pretty sure this is the original source. Like most of Schelling's work, it's written in crystal-clear prose. The chapter itself is only secondarily about government regulation; it's is in an edited book about the social responsibility of the corporation. It hasn't been cited often—29 times on Google Scholar, often in the context of business ethics.
Schelling muses on the difficulty of enforcing some behavioral change—like making taxi passengers fasten their seat belts—even for the head of a firm, and considers how organizations try to accomplish such goals: for example, by supporting government requirements that might be more effective than their own policing efforts.
It's a wandering but fascinating reflection, with a Carnegie-School feel to it. And the "command and control" of the title doesn't refer to government regulation, but to the difficulties faced by organizational leaders who are trying to command and control.
In fact, if I didn't know the context I'd think this was a completely coincidental use of the phrase. But the volume, Social Responsibility and the Business Predicament, is part of the same Brookings series, "Studies in the Regulation of Economic Activity," that published Schultze's lectures in 1977, and which catalyzed a network of economists studying regulation in the early 1970s.
So while Schultze adapts the phrase for his own needs, and it's possible that he could have borrowed the military phrase directly, my strong hunch is that he is lifting it from Schelling. Which actually fits my larger story—which highlights how the deregulatory movement built on the work of McNamara's whiz kids from RAND, a community Schelling was an integral part of—quite well.
I can't resist ending with one other contribution Schelling made to the use of economics in policy beyond his strategy work: the 1968 essay, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." (He was good with titles—this one was borrowed from a Flannery O'Connor story.) This introduced the willingness-to-pay concept as a way to value life—the idea that one could calculate how much people valued their own lives based on how much they had to be paid in order to accept very small risks of death. Controversial at the time, the proposal eventually became the main method policymakers used to place a monetary value on life.
Thomas Schelling. He really got around.
tying our own noose with data? higher ed edition
I wanted to start this post with a dramatic question about whether some knowledge is too dangerous to pursue. The H-bomb is probably the archetypal example of this dilemma, and brings to mind Oppenheimer's quotation of the Bhagavad Gita upon the detonation of Trinity: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
But really, that's way too melodramatic for the example I have in mind, which is much more mundane. Much more bureaucratic. It's less about knowledge that is too dangerous to pursue and more about blindness to the unanticipated — but not unanticipatable — consequences of some kinds of knowledge.
The knowledge I have in mind is the student-unit record. See? I told you it was boring.
The student-unit record is simply a government record that tracks a specific student across multiple educational institutions and into the workforce. Right now, this does not exist for all college students.
There are records of students who apply for federal aid, and those can be tied to tax data down the road. This is what the Department of Education's College Scorecard is based on: earnings 6-10 years after entry into a particular college. But this leaves out the 30% of students who don't receive federal aid.
There are states with unit-record systems. Virginia's is particularly strong: it follows students from Virginia high schools through enrollment in any not-for-profit Virginia college and then into the workforce as reflected in unemployment insurance records. But it loses students who enter or leave Virginia, which is presumably a considerable number.
But there's currently no comprehensive federal student-unit record system. In fact at the moment creating one is actually illegal. It was banned in an amendment to the Higher Education Act reauthorization in 2008, largely because the higher ed lobby hates the idea.
Having student-unit records available would open up all kind of research possibilities. It would help us see the payoffs not just to college in general, but to specific colleges, or specific majors. It would help us disentangle the effects of the multiple institutions attended by the typical college student. It would allow us to think more precisely about when student loans do, and don't, pay off. Academics and policy wonks have argued for it on just these grounds.
In fact, basically every social scientist I know would love to see student-unit records become available. And I get it. I really do. I'd like to know the answers to those questions, too.
But I'm really leery of student-unit records. Maybe not quite enough to stand up and say, This is a terrible idea and I totally oppose it. Because I also see the potential benefits. But leery enough to want to point out the consequences that seem likely to follow a student-unit record system. Because I think some of the same people who really love the idea of having this data available would be less enthused about the kind of world it might help, in some marginal way, create.
So, with that as background, here are three things I'd like to see data enthusiasts really think about before jumping on this bandwagon.
First, it is a short path from data to governance. For researchers, the point of student-level data is to provide new insights into what's working and what isn't: to better understand what the effects of higher education, and the financial aid that makes it possible, actually are.
But for policy types, the main point is accountability. The main point of collecting student-level data is to force colleges to take responsibility for the eventual labor market outcomes of their students.
Sometimes, that's phrased more neutrally as "transparency". But then it's quickly tied to proposals to "directly tie financial aid availability to institutional performance" and called "an essential tool in quality assurance."
Now, I am not suggesting that higher education institutions should be free to just take all the federal money they can get and do whatever the heck they want with it. But I am very skeptical that, in general, the net effect of accountability schemes is generally positive. They add bureaucracy, they create new measures to game, and the behaviors they actually encourage tend to be remote from the behaviors they are intended to encourage.
Could there be some positive value in cutting off aid to institutions with truly terrible outcomes? Absolutely. But what makes us think that we'll end up with that system, versus, say, one that incentivizes schools to maximize students' earnings, with all the bad behavior that might entail? Anyone who seriously thinks that we would use more comprehensive data to actually improve governance of higher ed should take a long hard look at what's going on in the UK these days.
Second, student-unit records will intensify our already strong focus on the economic return to college, and further devalue other benefits. Education does many things for people. Helping them earn more money is an important one of those things. It is not, however, the only one.
Education expands people's minds. It gives them tools for taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves. It gives them options. It helps them to find work they find meaningful, in workplaces where they are treated with respect. And yes, selection effects — or maybe it's just because they're richer — but college graduates are happier and healthier than nongraduates.
The thing is, all these noneconomic benefits are difficult to measure. We have no administrative data that tracks people's happiness, or their health, let alone whether higher education has expanded their internal life.
What we've got is the big two: death and taxes. And while it might be nice to know whether today's 30-year-old graduates are outliving their nongraduate peers in 50 years, in reality it's tax data we'll focus on. What's the economic return to college, by type of student, by institution, by major? And that will drive the conversation even more than it already does. Which to my mind is already too much.
Third, social scientists are occupationally prone to overestimate the practical benefit of more data. Are there things we would learn from student-unit records that we don't know? Of course. There are all kinds of natural experiments, regression discontinuities, and instrumental variables that could be exploited, particularly around financial aid questions. And it would be great to be able to distinguish between the effects of "college" and the effects of that major at this college.
But we all realize that a lot of the benefit of "college" isn't a treatment effect. It's either selection — you were a better student going in, or from a better-off family — or signal — you're the kind of person who can make it through college; what you did there is really secondary.
Proposals to use income data to understand the effects of college assume that we can adjust for the selection effects, at least, through some kind of value-added model, for example. But this is pretty sketchy. I mean, it might provide some insights for us to think about. But as a basis for concluding that Caltech, Colgate, MIT, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (the top five on Brookings' list) provide the most value — versus that they have select students who are distinctive in ways that aren't reflected by adjusting for race, gender, age, financial aid status, and SAT scores — is a little ridiculous.
So, yeah. I want more information about the real impact of college, too. But I just don't see the evidence out there that having more information is going to lead to policy improvements.
If there weren't such clear potential negative consequences, I'd say sure, try, it's worth learning more even if we can't figure out how to use it effectively. But in a case where there are very clear paths to using this kind of information in ways that are detrimental to higher education, I'd like to see a little more careful thinking about the real likely impacts of student-unit records versus the ones in our technocratic fantasies.
economics and sociology, part cdlxvii: comments on a blog post by noah smith
A few weeks ago, economics columnist Noah Smith wrote a blog post about how economics should raid sociology. This raises interesting questions about how academic disciplines influence each other. In this case, why has sociology not been a good a receptor for economics?
I start with an observation, which Smith also alludes to: Sociology has already been "raided" by economics with only moderate success. In contrast, economists have done very well raiding another discipline, political science. They have done fairly well in establishing pockets of influence in public policy programs and the law schools. By "success," I do not mean publishing on sociological topics in economics journals. Rather, "success" means institutional success: economists should be routinely hired sociology programs, economic theory should become a major feature of research in graduate programs, and sociological journals should mimic economics journals. All of these have happened in political science but not sociology.
Here's my explanation – Sociology does not conform to the stereotype that economists and other outsiders have of the field. According to the stereotype, sociology is a primarily qualitative field that has no sense of how causal inference works. In some accounts, sociologists are a bunch of drooling Foucault worshipers who babble endlessly in post-modern jargon. Therefore, a more mathematical and statistical discipline should easily establish its imprint, much as economics is now strongly imprinted on political science.
The truth is that sociology is a mixed quantitative/qualitative field that prefers verbal theory so that it can easily discuss an absurdly wide range of phenomena. Just open up a few issues of the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology or Social Forces. The modal article is an analysis of some big N data set. You also see historical case studies and ethnographic field work.
It is also a field that has import traditions of causal identification, but does not obsess over them. For example, in my department alone, there are three faculty who do experiments in their research and one who published a paper on propensity scores. Some departments specialize in social psychology which is heavily experimental, like Cornell. There are sociologists who work with data from natural experiments (like Oxford's Dave Kirk), propensity scores (like IU's Weihua an), and IV's (I actually published one a while ago). The difference between economics and sociology is that we don't reward people for clever identification strategies or dismiss observational data out of hand. If possible, we encourage identification if it makes sense. But if an argument can be made without it, that's ok too.
So when economists think about sociology as a non-quantitative field, they simply haven't taken the time to immerse themselves in the field and understand how it's put together. Thus, a lot of the arguments for "economic imperialism" fall flat. You have regression analysis? So does sociology. You have big N surveys? We run the General Social Survey. You have identification? We've been running experiments for decades. One time an economist friend said that sociology does not have journals about statistical methods. And I said, have you heard of Sociological Methodology or Sociological Research and Methods? He's making claims about a field that could easily be falsified with a brief Google search.
In my view, economics actually has one massive advantage over sociology but they have completely failed to sell it. Economists are very good at translating verbal models into mathematical models which then guide research. The reason they fail to sell it to sociology is for a few reasons.
First, economists seem to believe that the only model worth formalizing is the rational actor model. For better or worse, sociologists don't like it. Many think "formal models = rational actor model." They fail to understand that math can be used to formalize and study any model, not just rational choice models.
Second, rather than focus on basic insights derived from simple models, economists fetishize the most sophisticated models.* So economists love to get into some very hard stuff with limited applied value. That turns people off.
Third, a lot of sociologists have math anxiety because they aren't good at math or had bad teachers. So when economists look down at them and dismiss sociology as whole or qualitative methods in particular, you loose a lot of people. Instead of dismissing people, economists should think more about how field work, interviews, and historical case studies can be integrated with economic methods.
I am a big believer in the idea that we are all searching for the truth. I am also a big believer in the idea that the social sciences should be a conversation not a contest of ego. That means that sociologists should take basic economic insights seriously, but that also means that economists should turn down the rhetoric and be willing to explore other fields with a charitable and open mind.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
** For example, I was once required to read papers about how to do equilibrium models in infinite dimensional Banach spaces. Cool math? Sure. Connection to reality? Not so sure.


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Since the 2003 Superbowl blunder where the Oakland Raiders lost 49-21 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the franchise has been on the decline. The Raiders haven't had a winning season since 2003, and they have had various incidents of drama surrounding the franchise. In 2011, the Raiders finally had a decent offense and defense, and were predicted to make a tough fight to win the AFC West division. The Raiders, under the new direction of head coach Hugh Jackson and his creative offensive formations, had all the right pieces in motion. The franchise had a good start to the 2011 season, but in October 2011, long-time Raiders owner Al Davis died after complications from surgery. Davis was the face of the Raiders, but he was also a pioneer in the development of the NFL.
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Taylor Swift is just so charming sometimes.
The 24-year-old singer posted a funny video to her Instagram account on Friday (Feb. 7) before she hopped on a flight to Berlin. In the video, the 5'10" stunner tries to show just how comfortable the airport couches are by lying down on one. (Let's just say she could use a bigger sofa.)
"About to fly to Berlin. Just relaxing on this comfortable couch at the airport...," Swift captioned the video.
Yup, just when you thought Taylor couldn't be any more awkward ...
Taylor Swift


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Foot injury sidelines Colts TE Allen
Tight end Dwayne Allen missed a second straight day of practice with an injured foot that has prompted the Colts to get a second opinion.
Coach Chuck Pagano said he did not have details about the injury, only that he does not expect Allen to play in Sunday afternoon's preseason opener against Buffalo.
"Dwayne Allen went for a second opinion. Have not gotten the results back yet," Pagano said following Indianapolis' second workout Friday. "He's due back in town sometime this evening. Just waiting on that. When we have an answer, we'll give it to you."
Allen came in for treatment Wednesday, an off-day for Indianapolis, complaining of foot pain. He hasn't been on the field since then.
Injuries have been a dominant theme throughout the first two weeks of training camp.
Earlier this week, the questions were about Darrius Heyward-Bey, the receiver who sprained his left knee Sunday.
The former first-round draft pick missed Monday's practices and walked around gingerly with a brace covering the left knee. He returned to practice Tuesday night for group workouts, and did some team work Thursday afternoon. On Friday, Heyward-Bey ramped up his activity in the team portion of Friday's afternoon workout.
Pagano has not ruled out Heyward-Bey for Sunday's game, but it is likely he won't play.
Losing Heyward-Bey for any significant time would be a big blow for a team that has two starting receivers back — Reggie Wayne and T.Y. Hilton — but will be missing second-year receiver LaVon Brazill for the first four games after violating the league's substance-abuse policy for the second time.
But if Allen misses much time, it could make things even tougher for Indianapolis. New offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton has built the playbook around a more power-oriented running game and is likely to feature double-tight end formations.
Without Allen, the Colts have just three healthy tight ends on the roster — Coby Fleener, a second-round pick in 2012; Justice Cunningham, this year's Mr. Irrelevant; and Dominique Jones, who caught one pass in four games with the Colts last season.
The Colts took Allen in the third round of the 2012 draft, and he wound up with 45 receptions for 521 yards — both league-highs among rookie tight ends in 2012. Allen also broke Ken Dilger's franchise rookie record for receptions by a tight end, and he proved to be a capable blocker, too.
Pagano declined to say how concerned the team was.
"It's not my area. I'm not a doctor," Pagano said. "I wish I could give you a definitive answer right now."
Also sitting out Friday was linebacker Bjoern Werner, Indy's top draft pick. Werner has a sore knee, though it didn't appear to be too serious.
"We just decided to hold him out today and let him rest, but we expect him to play (Sunday)," Pagano said. "The other guys are on the mend and it looks like we'll get a few guys back, hopefully."
Pagano said rookie offensive lineman Hugh Thornton (right ankle) and Khaled Holmes (right ankle) would not play against the Bills. Thornton was injured in a rookie mini-camp at the team facility just before the team made the roughly 25-mile trek to Anderson University. Holmes was injured on the third day of workouts and has not practiced since.
But Pagano said he was hopeful some other injured players, including two-time Pro Bowl safety LaRon Landry (knee) would be able to play Sunday afternoon.
"We're holding out hope," Pagano said. "We haven't ruled any of those other guys out."
FOX Sports Go


text: Andy Butler is the driving force behind retro-futurist kingpins Hercules & Love Affair but also a DJ of the first order. His devotion to dance music always ran parallel to Andy's fascination with the freedom offered by disco's hedonism. From his teenage years, DJing at underground leather nights in his native Denver, to his escape to New York, home to the original wild gay nightworld that gave birth to rave culture, to inventing Hercules & Love Affair as an outlet for his songs, music was always at the heart of it.Andy Butler's biography Andy Butler Musician


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The Ghar live only to destroy lesser humans, and will not rest until they finally prevail over a universe emptied of all that verminous race. They were created in ages past – even they do not know when or why – and whoever engineered them eradicated all traces of pity and compassion from their being. Out of their armoured suits they are scrawny and wretched things, but once encased in battle armour, attached to their suit's control by neural plugs driven into their spines, they are transformed into the ultimate warriors!
The Disruptor Bomber Squad is built around Ghar armed with a deadly Disrupter Bomber accompanied by Ghar armed with Scourer Cannons to protect the squad from attack. The Disruptor Bomber is a primitive launcher use a plasma/steam mix to lob a disrupter bomb into the air and on top of the enemy. Disruptor bombs release a powerful quantum gravity blast when they explode. This tears apart physical matter, wreaking havoc with sophisticated nano-based technologies, and creating residual spacial distortion that can often render battlefields uninhabitable for years.Ghar Bomber Squad contains the following plastic mutli-part plastic models:
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text: Deane Young was born in California in 1963. He has been an Ordained Minister with the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, since the year 2000. Deane served as associate Pastor for four years while stationed in El Paso, Texas. He ministered the Word of God and played the guitar while stationed in Kuwait, and lead Bible studies while deployed to Iraq. He holds a Master of Business Administration Degree (MBA), Cum Laud, and a Bachelor of Science Degree (BS). He served 22 years in the United States Army and retired in 2007 as a Sergeant Major, he is a graduate of the United States Sergeant's Major Academy. He lives with his wife Shelia of 29 years. They have two children, Christopher and Shannon, and four grandchildren, Kaitlyn, Shanna, Arianna, and Brianna. They are Co-Founders of Bread of Life Ministries in Overgaard, Arizona. Deane currently serves as an Evangelist and Teacher. Deane is a self-taught guitar player and plays as part of the Praise and Worship Team for their church.


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The 2010 vintage in Napa was cool, late, and long, yielding elegant, focused, almost Bordeaux-styled wines — a definite departure from recent great vintages in which heat, drought, sun, and fruit driven power are the hallmarks. These are solid, structured wines that will need a few years to shed their youthful grip and tension. It will be interesting to watch how the 2010s age, but if you're fond of restrained, classically-styled Napa Valley Cabernet, this is your vintage.
The season started late, with ample rainfall. After several years of very dry conditions, rain was welcome, though it pushed back the ripening cycle (bud break, flowering, and fruit set) by about two weeks. Frost was never a problem. The summer that followed was cool, and growers worked to adjust canopies and crop loads to accommodate the slow pace of ripening. Veraison occurred about two weeks late, and by the middle of August many were predicting that harvest would be almost three weeks later than average.
With vineyards pruned and canopies thinned for the cool conditions (temperatures regularly topped out around 70℉ during mid-summer), a couple of heat spikes in late August and early September (some to well over 100℉) presented challenges for growers. Many vineyards that were set up for optimal sun exposure in the cool conditions were damaged by sunburn. This required hard work to isolate and drop the damaged bunches. A reduction in yields was part of the collateral damage. After the spikes, cool temperatures returned, and September stayed cool except for a brief warm spell at month's end.
The harvest was late but the grapes needed the extra hang time to develop. The brief warm spell at the end of September, and another in the middle of October, helped the plants eke out a little more ripeness. With rain predicted in the third week of October, it was time to pick, ready or not.
Overall, it was a tricky and challenging year. Managing the cool summer and then dealing with the heat were major obstacles. The best, but most labor intensive and painful strategy, seems to have been to thin bunches and set up for maximum ripening, meticulously select out the berries damaged by heat, and then pick as late as possible before the rain. The growers that did this ended up with a small but concentrated and classically balanced crop. It was certainly labor intensive, and costly, in terms of the reduced yields, but who said grape growing was easy?
The best wines from this vintage are solid and deeply colored, with beautiful aromatics, concentration, purity, and detail. Generally speaking, alcohols are lower than the norm, and the wines express lively, deep, dark fruit notes, elements that only come from long, cool growing seasons. They have the acidity, tannin, and structure to match the fruit, and should be long-lived, classy wines. Where growers got it wrong, you can find green notes and a weird combination of cool-climate unripe, herbal tones, oddly mixed with overripe, candied or bitter, burnt characteristics (from bunches affected by the heat that weren't sorted out). From the weather to the wines, we're talking about a vintage of peaks and valleys, but when winemakers and growers really got it right, quality is outstanding.
Cathy Corison has been crafting some of the most exquisitely balanced, elegant, and expressive wines in Napa Valley for more than 30 years. She got her start working at Freemark Abbey, Robert Sinskey, and Chappellet, but has made wine under her own eponymous label since 1987. Focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon from prime vineyards located in a small stretch of bale loam soils on the Rutherford Bench, she has never strayed from her ideals or yielded to the pressures to pump up her wines. There is something to be said for this kind of commitment and continuity — one winemaker, one region, and many years of experience.
I sold Corison wines retail for many years, and they were always built for classicists, enjoyed by those inclined to Europe's more restrained wine styles than the typical Napa Cabernet client who was monitoring the scores and seeking ever increasing amounts of power, oak, and mass. I am sure it was not the easiest path to take, and there must have been days when doubt and the reality of the bottom line crept into Cathy's thoughts. She surely deserves a medal for persevering.
Cathy's steadfastness and commitment to her winemaking philosophy begins in the vineyard. A joke told yearly around harvest time in Napa goes, "Cathy's picking, think we better start sampling?" While other producers wait until the last minute to harvest super-ripe grapes, Cathy has other ideas. "I just need to get past green and I can then capture the full spectrum of flavors and aromas I want, from red and blue to darker purple and black fruits, with focus of freshness and acidity, and avoidance of desiccation, and other roasted and over-ripe notes." Clearly there are many different ideas on what "ripeness" is all about. Hallelujah!
Early on in her career, Cathy received only sporadic coverage in the press — her style simply wasn't that popular. Recently though, there seems to be a groundswell in California, away from the extremes of ripeness, sweetness, and sheer size, towards a slightly more elegant and detailed expression of Napa Cab's charms and diverse terroirs. Through this shift, Cathy has been hailed as the real deal. After drinking her wine, Alder Yarrow of Vinography said, "This is how integrity tastes." The New York Times' Eric Asimov went even further, exclaiming that, "Corison is one of the greatest producers of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley today." The icing on the cake may have been her award as "Winemaker of the Year" from The San Francisco Chronicle in 2011. Perhaps the best revenge is surviving long enough to come back into fashion, but I can honestly say, having tasted dozens of her wines over the years, that Cathy always had it right, fashion be damned.
The downside to her recent success? Purely selfish! Prices have crept up a bit, and deservedly so, though they are still quite reasonable in comparison to other wines of similar quality. Also, Cathy's once ample supply of library wines has been depleted, scooped up by savvy buyers. While older vintages are still on offer, there are fewer than there were just a few short years ago when I attended a spectacular retrospective of her wines from 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994-1997, 2001, and 2004-2008. On that day I witnessed an incredible display of the age-worthiness and consistent, impeccable quality of Cathy's wines — power and elegance, seamlessly interwoven, capturing the Rutherford Bench character through the lens of each vintage's personality, with finesse, detail, and incredible freshness and precision.
Fruit for the wines is both sourced and estate grown. The crown jewel of Cathy's holdings is undoubtedly the extraordinary Kronos vineyard, an 8-acre parcel that surrounds the winery in Rutherford. Planted in 1971, these gnarled old vines have been organically farmed for 19 years and are on Saint George rootstock, a rarity in these parts. Yields have averaged a scant 1.25 tons per acre over the entire 19-year span she has owned it (great for quality, tough on profit!), and she crafts a tiny amount of single-vineyard wine from a selection of the best grapes. The vineyard is dry farmed for the most part, although in extreme situations she has the ability to irrigate. Cathy monitors the vineyards incessantly (in addition to the national weather service, checking in every six hours or so) to keep ahead of the weather and make fine adjustments in canopy, crop load, and soil moisture content. While Cathy manages all the vineyards that she sources grapes from, she notes, "I'll only make a single-vineyard wine from a vineyard I own. And not only does it have to be of superb quality, it has to have something to unique to say — an individualistic and recognizable character." There is no doubt that the wizened old Kronos vines have a story to tell.
On my visit, Cathy told me that she had also purchased another vineyard — a 7-acre parcel on Inglewood Road, just a couple of blocks north of Kronos. This vineyard, whose name is still being registered, belonged to three different owners before Cathy was able to snatch it up. She was already familiar with it, however, having sourced the vineyard's fruit several times for her Napa cuvée. This is a younger vineyard — the vines were replanted some 15-20 years ago due to phylloxera. It was exciting (and an honor!) to be one of the very first to taste it from barrel.
The winery is housed in a refurbished farmhouse, originally built in 1898. Classic, elegant, and understated, the design mirrors the wines produced here. There are several large stainless steel tanks for custom crush clients and several smaller ones, which Cathy uses for her own wines. The smaller tanks allow her to handle very precise picks and fermentations on an individual scale. Cathy's winemaking process is straightforward, with no additions or acidification. Wines are usually aged in 50% new oak barrels, but there are no rigid formulas — each year, it all depends on what the wines are telling her.
Cabernet Sauvignon has been the flagship red grape of the California wine industry for decades, and its popularity shows no sign of abating. Napa Valley is the heart of Cabernet Sauvignon production and is clearly an ideal region for creating world-class wines. If any Cabernet-based wine is capable of giving Bordeaux a run for its money, it's Napa Valley's examples. However, due to the extremely high cost of purchasing and developing vineyards in California, and the cachet of Napa Valley on the label, this has largely become a category for the well-heeled wine lover.
At their best, Napa Valley's Cabernets are characterized by fruit notes of cassis, black cherry, and licorice and sweet oak notes of chocolate, mocha, cedar, and tar. Today, most of the best wines are aged entirely or almost completely in French oak barrels, which tend to produce somewhat more refined wines than do most American barrels. (These latter barrels often introduce exotic and pungent suggestions of scotch, bourbon, tar, coconut, and dill.) But the use of expensive French oak is no guarantee of a good bottle: too many wines today, due to high crop levels or insufficiently ripe fruit, do not have the stuffing to support their oakiness and can quickly be dominated or even dried out by their wood component. The best California Cabernets mellow and soften with five to ten years of bottle aging, developing more complex and less fruit-dominated notes of tobacco, leather, and earth, with mellower wood tones. Compared to the top Bordeaux, however, many California Cabernet Sauvignons merely endure in bottle rather than truly become more interesting. There are no shortage of quality producers, even if these wines are rarely values. And it remains to be seen if today's outsized showstoppers, made from superripe grapes and undeniably impressive on release, will reward extended bottle aging or will turn out to have been best suited for drinking in their youth.
Many wines labeled Cabernet Sauvignon contain small percentages of other so-called Bordeaux varieties -- chiefly Merlot and Cabernet Franc but also Petit Verdot and even Malbec (varietally labeled wines in California must contain at least 75% of the variety named).
Cabernet Sauvignon also flourishes in Washington State, Australia and even Chile. In Washington, prices have been creeping up at the high end, with some producers aiming to compete with cult wines from the Napa Valley. Consider Chateau Ste. Michelle and Woodward Canyon. In Australia, look to the Coonawarra and Margaret River regions. Chile can reveal excellent bargains to those who know where to look: Montes makes a strong range of quality bottlings, as does Casa Lapostolle.
As Cabernet Sauvignon is bold and assertive on the palate, it pairs best with foods like grilled red meats. Taken together, the proteins and fats in the food neutralize some of the stronger tannic qualities of the wine, leading to a harmonic combination that enhances both partners.
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