Free Republic

A trio of labor economists suggest that effort at work is correlated with race… As The Economist writes, given the long history of making racial slurs about the efforts of some workers, any study casting black and Hispanic men as lazier than whites and Asians is sure to court controversy. But, a provocative working paper by economists Daniel Hamermesh, Katie Genadek and Michael Burda sticks a tentative toe into these murky waters. They suggest that America’s well-documented racial wage gap is overstated by 10% because minorities, especially men, spend larger portions of their workdays not actually working. Uncomfortable though the...

A recently-released research study sheds light on the values of white working-class voters in the United States and the reasons these voters strongly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Three researchers from three different universities authored the study, titled “White Working-Class Views on Belonging, Change, Identity and Immigration.” Open Society Foundations, a network of political organizations controlled by left-wing billionaire George Soros, funded the study. The trio of researchers conducted the study by visiting four places between August 2016 and March 2017: Birmingham, Alabama; Dayton, Ohio; Tacoma, Washington; Phoenix, Arizona; and — for some reason — the New...

Microscopic pieces of plastic have infiltrated tap water systems around the world, according to new research on worldwide water systems. According to Orb Media, a non-profit data journalism newsroom in Washington, 83 percent of the tap water sampled globally was contained with microscopic plastic particles. The U.S. had the highest contamination rate at 94 percent, and water sampled from Europe to India and in parts of the Middle East had plastic contamination above 70 percent, according to the Orb study. Sites sampled in the U.S. included “Congress buildings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters and Trump Towers,” the Guardian reported....

A toll feasibility study is up in the air for the future Interstate 49 bridge over the Arkansas River with extensions connecting Arkansas 22 to Interstate 40 at Alma. Following approval last year of $10 million in I-49 project development, the Arkansas Department of Transportation solicited bids for a consultant to conduct an I-49 toll feasibility study. They are currently in a negotiation phase, according to ArDOT District 4 Construction Engineer Jason Hughey. ArDOT selected HNTB on June 23 to conduct the “I-49 Alternative Delivery Study.” The negotiations are over the scope of work and process has been “fluid,” ArDOT...

When it comes to spending and infrastructure, one of South Carolina’s great white whales rose from the deep with news last week that the Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit to begin work on the South Carolina leg of I-73. Ultimately, the interstate highway could take motorists from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula straight down to Myrtle Beach.The permit covers the whole state length, slicing across its northeastern corner, starting near Bennettsville. Construction could begin within two years, supporters say, on a project first contemplated in 1982.The southern half alone, linking I-95 to the Conway Bypass, is estimated to cost more...

A new American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study says that french fries are linked to a higher risk of death.The study looked at potato consumption for people over 45 but younger than 79. Of the 4,400 people tested over eight years, 236 passed away.

Guest Essay By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website. Summary: To boost our fear, activists and journalists report the weather with amnesia about the past. Ten year records become astonishing events; weather catastrophes of 50 or 100 years ago are forgotten. It makes for good clickbait but cripples our ability to prepare for the inevitable. California’s history of floods and droughts gives a fine example — if we listen to the US Geological Survey’s reminder of past megafloods, and their warning of the coming ARkStorm. ” A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern...

BEIJING — Fear of mortality is one reason Americans spend so much on “antioxidant” products, including Vitamin C supplements and beta-carotene, which promise a longer healthier life. According to the National Institutes of Health, more than half of adults in the U.S. consume some kind of antioxidant product, spending $37 billion each year. But a study conducted in China – where aging is akin to a national obsession these days – claims that antioxidants don’t work as billed. The study is published in the journal Redox Biology. A new study finds that antioxidant supplements may be more harmful to the...

South Dakota narrowly overtakes Oregon, which held the top spot for the previous three years, as the nation's "Top Moving Destination." This is the first time South Dakota has held the no. 1 spot. Vermont inched out Oregon for the no 2. position, with Oregon rounding out the top three. Those are the results of the United Van Lines' 40th Annual National Movers Study, which tracks customers' state-to-state migration patterns over the past year. Retirees are continuing to move to the Mountain and Pacific West.

Research has found that being attractive influences many things in a person's life -- their salary, their popularity and grades in school, even the prison sentences they receive. So why not their politics? A recently published study in the Journal of Public Economics concludes that the attractiveness of a candidate does correlate with their politics. They find that politicians on the right are more good looking in Europe, the United States and Australia. The research also suggests that voters correctly see candidates who are more good looking as more likely to be conservative.

You've been had, America You know that massive rash of racist police shootings in which white officers shoot black suspects just because they’re black? Right. Neither do I. Because a few overhyped videos presented by the media without context don’t prove that any such thing is happening. Of course, that’s not stopping gullible celebrities and athletes from protesting and declaring “this isn’t right.” There is no solid information to suggest that a “this” even exists, but when you’re engaging in very public moral preening, you’re not going to let that stop you. But what might stop you is some actual...

GREENSBORO, NC -- Are some Walmarts "better” than others? We're talking good customer service. Clean stores. Stocked shelves. Short check-out times. According to a new study, yes. Andy Reich, a Columbia University Assistant Professor of Sociology says his study has revealed not all Walmarts are created equal. To simplify his findings, he says, White and rich neighborhoods have better Walmarts than Black and poor neighborhoods. “People used words like ‘unorganized’, ‘nasty’ and ‘worst’ to describe stores in communities of color much more than they used those words to describe Walmarts in Whiter communities,” Reich said in a Skype interview....

f you ever need an argument settled, once and for all, just ask a Harvard professor to conduct a study. They do it right. And, to their credit, they report on the results–even when those results don’t support their own agendas. Check out the bomb they’ve just dropped on Black Lives Matter and all of the armchair pundits.

The youngest black professor ever to receive tenure at Harvard and recipient of an economics prize for “most promising American economist under 40” has just upended the conventional wisdom on police shootings. There is no racial bias when officers fire on suspects, according to a new study by Prof. Roland Fryer – black suspects are actually less likely to be shot than other suspects.The study looked at more than a thousand shootings in 10 major police departments, The New York Times reports. Fryer and student researchers spent 3,000 hours putting together data from police reports in Houston, Austin, Dallas and...

Paris (AFP) - A rapidly melting glacier atop East Antarctica is on track to lift oceans at least two metres, and could soon pass a "tipping point" of no return, researchers said Wednesday. To date, scientists have mostly worried about the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets as dangerous drivers of sea level rise. But the new study, following up on earlier work by the same team, has identified a third major threat to hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas around the world. "I predict that before the end of the century the great global cities of...

Washington (AFP) - Global warming could make the planet far hotter than currently projected because today's scientific models do not correctly account for the influence of clouds, researchers said this week. The study in the journal Science was led by researchers at Yale University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When climate scientists look ahead to how much the planet's surface temperature may warm up in response to a doubling of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of fossil fuel burning -- they typically predict a rise of between 2.1 and 4.7 degrees Celsius (3.75 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit). But these models...

This is not a philosophical riddle. Despite their highly variable appearance, dogs can recognize each other by sight alone. Do you see dogs everywhere? My ears perk up to the jingle jangle of metal-on-metal, hopeful that it predicts a dog and his collar, disappointed when it turns out to be keys on a belt (boring). A person walking down the street with their arm outstretched holds the promise of a leash with a dog on the other end (sometimes it's a stroller holding a kid. Oh well). From a distance, my eyes play a cruel trick on me, where shopping...

Despite its name, the primary goal of the Affordable Care Act was to expand health care coverage to millions of Americans who had been uninsured. And while it's done that - 15 million non-elderly adults have gained coverage - making that insurance "affordable" remains a significant challenge. Government subsidies for enrollees with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level were designed to help with that, but rising premiums and high deductibles mean that getting health care coverage and treatment remains a financial burden for many Americans. A new study from the Urban Institute shows just how high the...

Man's best friend came about after generations of wolves scavenged alongside humans more than 33,000 years ago in south east Asia, according to new research. Dogs became self-domesticated as they slowly evolved from wolves who joined humans in the hunt, according to the first study of dog genomes. And it shows that the first domesticated dogs came about 33,000 years ago and migrated to Europe, rather than descending from domesticated European wolves 10,000 years ago as had previously been thought.

Ten years in the making under the editorship of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, using beautiful font, and published by Harper Collins, the Study Quran is modeled after various Study Bibles, such as the NIV, ESV, NASB, Catholic Study Bible, to name only those. It is a new translation of the 114 surahs (suras) or chapters. Then on nearly every verse, sometimes down to a phrase or clause within a verse, the team of scholars offers comments. First, in the General Introduction, Nasr says he wanted to employ only Muslim commentators who accept the Quran as the Word of God. He...