A big question

It's become a bit of an annual ritual for AFSC in WV to collaborate with the WV Center on Budget and Policy on a "State of Working West Virginia" report. Each one usually has a theme. This year, it's a perennial question about the Mountain State: why is West Virginia so poor?

The report has four parts, including a historical overview (written by yours truly); a look at contemporary data, a statistical regression analysis of factors affecting policy, and policy recommendations to reduce poverty.

In the first section, I tried to explore the two leading explanations for that poverty: culture vs colonialism. You can guess which side I lean towards. If you're really bored, check it out.

A matter of scale

The long view. A Hubble image of deep space by way of wikipedia.

El Cabrero is a big fan of lecture series produced by The Teaching Company (and the libraries that buy them). At the moment, I'm in the midst of one about "Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity" by Dr. David Christian.

I enjoy light subjects...

Anyhow, he had some interesting ideas about getting a handle on the age of the universe (over 13 billion according to recent estimates). To make it easier to picture, he shrinks the scale a billion times.

If the universe was 13 years old,

*earth would have been formed five years ago;

*the first multi-celled organisms showed up seven months ago;

*after a successful run of several weeks, dinosaurs would have gotten wiped out three weeks ago;

*the first hominids appeared 53 minutes ago;

*agriculture started five minutes ago;

*the first agrarian civilizations got going three minutes ago; and

*industrial societies would have been around for six seconds.

Our part of the show is just getting started....or maybe it's just a short feature.

TIME is one of the themes of the Rev. Jim Lewis' latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS. The scientific quest to understand consumer behavior continues.

A CURIOUS CONNECTION seems to exist between marriage and obesity.

NOT HIS BEST. The late writer Michael Harrington may have helped inspire the 1960s War on Poverty, but some of his ideas about the "culture of poverty" did some harm.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED