No longer true, to be honest. People (read countries) still take it, but they're no longer happy about it. In fact a lot of them are planning to move away from it. The biggest customer for US Treasuries is the US Federal Reserve nowadays . Go figure.

Because although companies may change, the humans that run them are exactly the same. Call me when human nature changes.

Let's concede for now that the data might show that today's youth has less *dispositional* empathy than say, forty years ago when I was a teenager. And today we have kids spending a lot of time with "apps", which didn't even exist back then. It's a heck of a stretch to attribute the change in stable, ongoing concern for others to the corrupting influence of apps on the young brain.

I'll tell you one of the big differences between today and the 70s: its a more complex, demanding world, and we spend more time preparing to live in it. When I was maybe ten years-old, it was not uncommon for people to get married when they were 18 - 22 years old. Two of my older siblings did. Going to college was not as nearly universal as it is today in the middle class.

Now it's more common for people to go to college, possibly spend five or six more years as single professionals, and then get married around thirty. That really got going with my cohort; I got married when I was almost 30, and when our first child came my wife's obstetrician said that mid 30s had become the usual age to have a first child. When she'd started in the professions it was mid to late 20s.

Sure, we have apps now and didn't back in the day, but that's nothing when you've considered we've effectively extended the length of childhood by some seven or eight years. Not "childhood" exactly, but more like an extended period of young adulthood where you are still learning the ropes and are expected to shoulder than full adult roles.

One of the hallmarks of middle adulthood is taking on caretaker roles. Parenthood is the ultimate caretaker role, but there's also taking care of aging parents. At work you find yourself moving into supervisory positions, or taking on the role of the voice of experience. It may not be coincidental that people much younger and older have both fewer caretaking responsibilities AND display less stable dispositional empathy.

What is "it"?

Let me summarize why the article is news. According to the California AG's office, the Koch brothers have set up a fraudulent scheme that allows them and their allies to illegally deduct money spent on political projects from their taxes.

I sympathize with your strong feelings about the excessive influence of money in democracy, but the story is about more than billionaires spending their money on politics. It's about the Koch brothers allegedly committing fraud while they do that.

I dunno. Nerds like complicated machines. This story happens to be one constructed out of legal entities. The machine too complicated for the average attention span, so somebody who has a mentality that isn't daunted by a simple activity diagram ought to be paying attention.

Maybe "News for Nerds" doesn't must mean "Nerdy Stuff". Maybe it could also mean "News for Nerds to Pay Attention To".

I take it then that: is = 1.

I'm just going by what the Gallup poll said. There may be methological flaws, of course, such as relying upon self-reported party affiliation.

As for the power of the religious right in the Republican party, I think the poll's estimate is probably high if you look at people *highly* involved in Republican politics, such as people who volunteer on campaigns or run for office. But if I'm right, that doesn't mean that the religious right isn't influential. Political power is dependent upon your ability to swing results. You don't need to be a majority in the party to have influence; you need to be necessary to forming a winning coalition.