Dr. Sacks explored some of the brain’s strangest pathways in best-selling case histories like “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” achieving a level of renown… nytimes.com|By Gregory Cowles

” “And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.” ”

Oliver Sacks Dies at 82; Neurologist and Author Explored the Brain’s Quirks

Dr. Sacks explored some of the brain’s strangest pathways in best-selling case histories like “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” achieving a level of renown…

nytimes.com|By Gregory Cowles

Rui Hai International Logistics, the company whose warehouses were hit by the deadly blasts, has become a symbol of the high cost of rapid industrialization in… nytimes.com|By ANDREW JACOBS

There is tremor in the force from China.
“Now, more than two weeks after explosions at its warehouses leveled a swath of that district, killing 145 people, injuring more than 700 and leaving millions here fearful of toxic fallout, Rui Hai has become a symbol of something else for many Chinese: the high cost of rapid industrialization in a closed political system rife with corruption.”

Behind Tianjin Tragedy, a Company That Flouted Regulations and Reaped Profits

Rui Hai International Logistics, the company whose warehouses were hit by the deadly blasts, has become a symbol of the high cost of rapid industrialization in…

nytimes.com|By ANDREW JACOBS

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David Lindsay The comments at the NYT: Look Ahead is a trusted commenter WA 7 hours ago

“a symbol of the high cost of rapid industrialization in a closed political system rife with corruption”

Reminds me of a tragic fire and explosion at an ammonium nitrate warehouse in West, TX, which killed 15 and injured 225, because of the proximity to a town and the absence of fire codes.

The state of Texas legally prohibits local governments from having their own codes or rules because they are unfriendly to business, while providing none at the state level.

Only 23.8% of adult Texans managed to vote in 2014, a legacy of a corrupt, gerrymandered districting system that reliably delivers an ideologically driven legislature and predictable results like West, TX and the highest health care uninsured rate in the country at 24.4%.

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America’s Dangerous Bargain With Turkey – The New York Times

“Shortly after granting access to the base, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launched a wave of airstrikes on Kurdish targets, reigniting a conflict that had been on the road to resolution. To make matters worse, Turkey has struck hard at Syrian Kurds who have, until now, been America’s most reliable ally in fighting the Islamic State, often called ISIS, in northern Syria.PhotoA demonstration against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party on August 16 in Istanbul. Credit Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAmerican and Turkish policies toward Syria were always rooted in different visions of what Syria would look like if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell.”

Source: America’s Dangerous Bargain With Turkey – The New York Times

Time to Fix the Fafsa – The New York Times

“Susan Dynarski, a professor at the University of Michigan, says that the information needed to calculate eligibility for aid is already collected by the Internal Revenue Service. In a simplified system, she says, tax filers could just check a box on their 1040 and immediately learn of their eligibility for federal grants and loans.”

Source: Time to Fix the Fafsa – The New York Times

Wednesday’s killings provide further evidence of the need for more restrictive gun policies in the United States. nytimes.com|By Nicholas Kristof

We the People need to dis-empower the NRA and restrict access to guns like the rest of the first world does.

Nicholas Kristof:
■ More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides every six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

■ More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.

… See More

Lessons From the Murders of TV Journalists in the Virginia Shooting

Wednesday’s killings provide further evidence of the need for more restrictive gun policies in the United States.

nytimes.com|By Nicholas Kristof

Birds that once feasted on misfortune are collapsing — part of a broader decline in vultures that illustrates the far-reaching effects of human interventions. nytimes.com|By MARC SANTORA

Sometimes I feel like the guy in the old cartoon, who is holding up a sign that says, The end is near!

As Vulture Populations Wane, Perils to Ecosystems Circle Overhead

Birds that once feasted on misfortune are collapsing — part of a broader decline in vultures that illustrates the far-reaching effects of human interventions.

nytimes.com|By MARC SANTORA

Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs – The New York Times

Too many law school graduates drown in debt.

“WILMETTE, Ill. — Ten months after graduation, only 60 percent of the law school class of 2014 had found full-time long-term jobs that required them to pass the bar exam.”

via Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs – The New York Times.

Krugman’s Dopey Diatribe Deifying The Public Debt, David Stockman| David Stockman’s Contra Corner

Here is a contrarian point of view.

“Actually, dopey does not even begin to describe Paul Krugman’s latest spot of tommyrot. So here are his own words—–least it appear that the good professor is being unfairly caricaturized. In a world drowning in government debt what we desperately need, by golly, is more of the same:

That is, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt.

Yes, indeed. There is currently about $60 trillion of public debt outstanding on a worldwide basis compared to less than $20 trillion at the turn of the century. But somehow this isn’t enough, even though the gain in public debt——-from the US to Europe, Japan, China, Brazil and the rest of the debt-saturated EM world—–actually exceeds the $35 billion growth of global GDP during the last 15 years.”

via Krugman’s Dopey Diatribe Deifying The Public Debt | David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

Signs, Long Unheeded, Now Point to Risks in U.S. Economy – LANDON THOMAS Jr., NYT

“What was driving weakness in all these countries was the gradual slowdown in the Chinese economy. As China bought less steel from Brazil, iron ore from Australia (its stock market was down by 22 percent during this time frame) and less mineral fuel and oil from Indonesia, the effect on these economies was immediate.

When it comes to warning indicators from China, there are many from which to choose. One is that, according to their 2014 balance sheets, four out of five of the world’s largest banks are Chinese. Or one could choose the Chinese debt ratio, which McKinsey & Company has estimated to be over 280 percent of the country’s total economic output.”

via Signs, Long Unheeded, Now Point to Risks in U.S. Economy – The New York Times.

Removing the application for federal aid would encourage more qualified low-income students to apply to college. nytimes.com|By Susan Dynarski

This article makes sense to me. Follow the data. My FAFSA form was so long, it included all of my income tax form anyway, so they might as well just use them, and drop the fafsa form.
Susan Dynarsky wrote “To quantify just how much the aid bureaucracy discourages college attendance, a team of economists ran a randomized trial in which families applied for aid in a radically simplified process. The results were striking: The streamlined process increased the share of low-income young people who attended college for two years by eight percentage points (to 36 percent from 28 percent).”

Fafsa Follies: To Gain a Student, Eliminate a Form

Removing the application for federal aid would encourage more qualified low-income students to apply to college.

nytimes.com|By Susan Dynarski