Must Read
- Harold Meyerson, The trade clause that overrules governments
- Cody Fenwick, Boston Tall: Breaking Ground On A Vertical Future
- Ray Pierrehumbert, Climate Science Is Settled Enough
Should Read
- Matthew Yglesias, The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year
- Stephen Walt, Competence Not Required [Ed.: Walt’s thoughts on why we get so many Gov’t dept heads who are lousy at their job. Obama appointees… Bush appointees… It’s not a new phenomenon.]
- Weather Underground, The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)]: Global Warming, Naturally [Ed.: Figure 2 is particularly relevant.]
Environment
- Markus Huber and Reto Knutti, Natural variability, radiative forcing and climate response in the recent hiatus reconciled
- Claudia Dreifus, Forecasts: Hopes and Fears About Climate Change
- Daniel Swain, The Extraordinary California Drought of 2013-2014: Character, Context, and the Role of Climate Change
- Rabett Run, Obdurate Ignorance Meets Flood Insurance
Economics
Health Care
- Elisabeth Rosenthal, Costs Can Go Up Fast When E.R. Is in Network but the Doctors Are Not
Politics
- Adam Vaccaro, Here’s Where Martha Coakley Stands on Noncompete Clauses. Oh Wait, Nobody Has Any Idea [Ed.: Unfortunately, Charlie Baker is no better. Background on noncompete clauses in MA here and here.]
- Josh Barro, Inflation Hawks’ Views Are Independent of Actual Monetary Outcomes
Baseball
- Dan Carson, Derek Jeter Truther Wants You to Know the Captain’s Final Home Game Was Rigged [Ed.: The probability calculation Carson cites is competely wrong but the fact that he got an 86 mph fastball to hit? Yeah, that’s noteworthy. I’ll bet you Jeter’s batting average with respect to 86 mph fastballs is about .350.]
- Alan Schwarz, The Day the Tigers Tipped Pitches for the Mick
- Boston.com, Tommy Harper reveals news facts in Red Sox history of discrimination [Ed.: I believe Boston has changed a lot for the better since Harper was a player and Yawkey and Harrington were owners. That noted, I think one of the reasons I wasn’t a Red Sox fan as a kid is that my father commented from time to time (paraphrasing here) that Yawkey and co were a bunch of bigots.]
Science
Rep. Andy Harris, Brilliant and Underfunded [Ed.: Read the comments. At first blush, Harris’ piece seems reasonable – and elements of it are very reasonable. The commenters point out the flaws.]