That paper by Angus Deaton and Anne Case about middle-aged white men dying at higher rates seems to be having a second life, so I want to highlight something that I might have buried in my initial post about it: it’s not just middle-aged men. This is right in the paper, with a colorful chart and everything. Every single white age group, from 30 to 65, has seen a big spike in deaths from alcohol, suicide, and drug overdoses:

And it’s white women too:

The change in all-cause mortality for white non-Hispanics 45–54 is largely accounted for by an increasing death rate from external causes, mostly increases in drug and alcohol poisonings and in suicide. (Patterns are similar for men and women when analyzed separately.)

So why is everyone focusing solely on middle-aged men? Because that’s what the paper focuses on. However, the authors make it very clear that every age group is affected:

The focus of this paper is on changes in mortality and morbidity for those aged 45–54. However, as Fig. 4 makes clear, all 5-y age groups between 30–34 and 60–64 have witnessed marked and similar increases in mortality from the sum of drug and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis over the period 1999–2013; the midlife group is different only in that the sum of these deaths is large enough that the common growth rate changes the direction of all-cause mortality.

In other words, the phenomenon they describe applies to all white men and women between the ages of 30-65. The only difference among midlife white men is that declining overall mortality has turned into increasing overall mortality. Among other groups, declining mortality presumably turns flat, or perhaps declines less rapidly—though the authors don’t say.

In other words, midlife men make for a more dramatic chart because the line actually changes direction. But there’s nothing magic about zero. If you go from a slope of -5 to -1, that’s still a lot even if the line hasn’t changed direction. What’s more, whatever it is that makes the change in overall mortality bigger for midlife men, it’s not the suicide, alcohol, and drug overdoses that the authors focus on. The chart above makes that clear. In fact, the midlife group appears to have seen a smaller growth in those things than both the younger group and the older groups. This would be clearer if the chart were drawn differently, but since the authors don’t include a table with raw data, I can’t do that.

Bottom line: There’s been a sharp increase in death by suicide/alcohol/drugs among all whites of all age groups from 30-65. Whatever the reason, it’s not something that applies solely to middle-aged white men.

We all know that Ben Carson has some wacky ideas. We also know that he has some pretty strange views of history. And that a lot of his policy proposals make no sense at all. But he’s long had a pretty good reputation for being truthful. Crazy but honest, that’s Ben. Except that it’s now starting to look like he has some real problems with being honest in his personal life. For example:

West Point

Then: A guy named Bill asked Carson if “it’s true that I was offered a slot at West Point after high school.” Carson replied, “Bill, that is true. I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point.”

Now: He never got an offer from West Point. Apparently some people told him he could probably get in with his ROTC record, but he never even applied.

Mannatech

Then: “Three years ago I had an endowed chair bestowed upon me….I’m proud to say that part of that $2.5 million came from Mannatech.”

Now: He now denies that any of the money for the endowed chair actually came from Mannatech. “He simply got things mixed up,” a campaign spokesman said. That seems a little unlikely since Carson made this claim in a prepared speech given at a Mannatech sales conference.

Plagiarism

Then: “Several sections of potential Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s 2012 book America the Beautiful were plagiarized from various sources, BuzzFeed News has found….In one instance, Carson cites wholesale from an old website that has been online since at least 2002, Socialismsucks.net.”

Now: “I attempted to appropriately cite and acknowledge all sources in America the Beautiful, but inadvertently missed some.” This is such a common excuse among plagiarists that it’s practically become a joke.

Violent Past

Then: “There was a time when I was, you know, very volatile….As a teenager. I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone.”

Now: CNN interviewed nine of Carson’s childhood friends. None of them could recall any violent incidents. Carson’s response: “This is a bunch of lies, that is what it is.”

Drones on the Border

Then: “I’m suggesting we do what we need to do to secure the border whatever that is….You look at some of these caves and things out there one drone strike, boom, and they’d gone.”

Now: “It was quite clear what I was talking about. That drones are excellent for surveillance.”

The Psychology Test at Yale

Then: “The day before I’d been informed that the final examination papers in a psychology class, Perceptions 301, ‘were inadvertently burned’….So I, with about 150 other students, went to the designated auditorium for the repeat exam….[The questions] were incredibly difficult….Soon half the class was gone, and the exodus continued. Not one person turned in the examination before leaving.

“….Suddenly the door of the classroom opened….The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ She smiled again. ‘And that’s you.’ “

Now: The Wall Street Journal reports that “no photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.”

These aren’t policy issues. They’re examples of Carson saying things that he later denies or that turn out to be untrue. If he does it as often as this list suggests, he’s probably done it a few more times as well. We just don’t know it yet. Now that the press is onto this, however, I’ll bet we’re going to come across a few more before long. Anyone who continues to support Carson had better be prepared for the worst.

Wow. I gather that conservatives are making a big U-turn on Ben Carson. This morning most of them were wringing their hands over Carson’s deception about being accepted at West Point. Now they’re defending him and blaming the whole thing on Politico and its typical liberal media hatred of conservatives. Their basic defense seems to be that Carson never said he “applied” to West Point, or even that he was “accepted” at West Point. All he said is that he was offered a scholarship to go there.

Well, here’s what he said in August:

I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do.

Come on, folks. “An offer from West Point” is the same as “being accepted at West Point.” It’s obvious what he was saying here, and it’s equally obvious it isn’t true. Here is Carson’s defense:

In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me — they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”

“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”

That might have happened—though no one would have used the word “scholarship” since West Point is free to begin with. But for the past two decades it’s not what Carson has said. It’s not even close. There’s a world of difference between (a) someone telling you that you could probably get into West Point and (b) actually getting into West Point.

Carson is a nutcase, a policy buffoon, and at the very least, a serial personal embellisher. With a guy like that, you just know more stuff is going to come out. Conservatives should quit while they’re behind and dump the guy. If they stick with him, eventually he’s going to make them all look like dopes.

When I came home from the hospital last year, we (i.e., Marian) scurried around for a few days moving furniture. In the end, one of our sofas ended up getting shoehorned into my study, where it was out of our sight and all too vulnerable to feline claws. So a few months ago we bought a cheap slip cover, basically designed to give the cats something to claw at other than expensive upholstery. It’s mostly worked, but there were unforeseen consequences.

You see, the slip cover has an elastic band around the bottom to keep it in place. When the cats discovered this, they decided it made a great cat hammock. Over on the right, you can see what it looks like from the outside. Basically, it’s just a bulge. I think you can guess what happened next after I took this picture. (Insert Battle of the Bulge jokes here.)

Luckily, I also took some pictures before Hopper showed up, something I’ve been doing for weeks. But as you can imagine, it’s really hard to get a decent photo from underneath the sofa. However, thanks to my persistence, along with my camera’s articulating LCD screen, I eventually got one. Below, you can finally see Hilbert in the the cat hammock close up. It’s pretty obvious what the attraction is. In fact, you’d practically think it had been designed as a cat domicile: dim, cozy, and shaped like a cat. Who knows? Maybe it was, and we just got tricked into buying it.

President Obama has finally killed off the Keystone XL pipeline for good—or until a Republican occupies the White House, anyway. His reasoning was so typically Obamian I almost laughed:

For years, the Keystone pipeline has occupied what I frankly consider an overinflated role in our political discourse. It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter.

That’s Obama for you. He just can’t stand the tiresome political preoccupation with shiny toys rather than stuff that actually matters. And he’s not afraid to scold us about this every once in a while.

Want to know more? Tim McDonnell has the whole story here.

Science News has a big package in the current issue about Gravity’s Century. I’d just like to add a personal note of congratulations to this. I think gravity has had a great century. It has kept me from floating into space for 57 years. It’s kept our atmosphere intact so we can all breathe. It’s remained weak enough that Earth hasn’t spiraled into the sun. It’s helped produce thousands of adorable kitten videos. And black holes! Those are just awesome.

All in all, terrific job, gravity. You deserve all the kudos you’re getting. What’s more, I hope this makes up for our inexcusable neglect of your first big century in 1787. We’re really sorry about that. You deserved better. I guess we were busy with the whole Constitution thing and it slipped our minds. It won’t happen again, I promise.

On the constructive criticism side, though, what’s with all the fancy math? It makes you seem a little elitist. A little KISS could go a long way. Just a thought.

Charles Krauthammer on what’s going to happen if it turns out ISIS was responsible for bombing Metrojet Flight 9268:

“As for the Russians, the Russians have had a decades long struggle with the radical Islam in the Caucasus and Chechnya,” he said. “But they have a reputation of being utterly ruthless – you don’t want to mess with Boris.”

“If this turns out to be an attack on a Russian airline, they’re going to have — either their deterrent is going to be diminished, or they’re going to have to have a furious response,” Krauthammer argued. “Which would incidentally help us, because it would be against ISIS.”

Actually, I’m a little curious about something. Further investigation will probably tell us whether it was a bomb that brought down the plane, but what could possibly tell us that it was an ISIS bomb? Unless ISIS takes public responsibility—and so far they haven’t—it would take some pretty lucky breaks in the investigation to pin the blame specifically on them.

In any case, I think Krauthammer is wrong. Russia does indeed have a reputation for being ruthless against radical Islam on its own soil, and this goes way beyond just Vladimir Putin. But they have no reputation for caring even a tiny bit about radical Islam anywhere else. A “furious response” against ISIS would require a projection of power that they likely don’t have, and a less-than-furious response would make them look weak. So they’ll probably do nothing. Either way, though, I doubt it will change anyone’s beliefs about what they’re willing to do within their own borders.

ISIS can be destroyed. But roughly speaking, this can happen in only a few different ways: (a) a massive ground campaign, (b) essentially a long siege that eventually ravages them—though probably at the cost of lots of civilian life, (c) internal strife that ultimately consumes them, or (d) an impressive, and rather unlikely, improvement in the Iraqi military. It’s hard to see Russia playing much of a role in any of these.

Oh hell. While I was busy nattering on about Ben Carson’s pyramid theory, it turns out that Carson was busily destroying his campaign. Or Politico was, anyway:

Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship” to the military academy.

West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission….When presented with this evidence, Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false.

Evangelicals love stories of youthful rebellion followed by redemption and a full Christian life. They do not like serious lies told many years after finding God. They especially don’t like lies about military service.

If Carson’s fans blow this off, then he’s truly invulnerable. There’s just no excuse. He told this lie in 1992, when he was 39 years old and already director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He wasn’t running for president at the time, so he figured no one would ever check up on it. He deliberately invented a story just because it made him look good.

Ben Carson is either a serial liar or else he lives a very rich fantasy life. At this point, I’m honestly not sure which.

Tyler Cowen thinks we’re all being too hard on Ben Carson for his belief that the pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain:

We mock Ben Carson for this, but we do not make fun of those who believe openly in the Trinity, Virgin Birth, ex cathedra, and many other beliefs which are to my mind slightly less plausible claims. It’s not so different from the old prejudice that Mormon beliefs are somehow “weirder” than those of traditional Christians, except now it is secularists picking and choosing their religious targets on the supposed basis of sophistication. The Seventh Day Adventists, Carson’s church, are of course weirder yet.

….What I find strangest of all is not Ben Carson’s pyramids beliefs, but rather the notion that we should selectively pick on some religious claims rather than others. The notion that it is fine to believe something about a deity or deities, or a divine book, as long as you do not take that said belief very seriously and treat it only as a social affiliation or an ornamental badge of honor.

Generally speaking, I agree. As a nonbeliever, I find pretty much all religious beliefs pretty odd. Some I find odder than others, but this is just a literary reaction. I also find Lovecraft odder than Baum, but is he really?

But here’s what Cowen misses about the pyramid thing: it’s not even a religious belief. Muslims don’t say the pyramids were for grain storage. Neither do Mormons or Jews or Christian Scientists or Southern Baptists or Catholics or Seventh Day Adventists. There’s nothing in the Bible about this. It’s not a religious belief. It’s just Carson’s weird, personal theory.

What’s more, this isn’t something like evolution or the Big Bang, where the evidence is arcane enough that lots of people feel comfortable dismissing it. Our knowledge of the pyramids is plain and unambiguous. I mean, thousands of Christian tourists have been inside. They aren’t hollow. They have lots of passages and rooms. We’ve found burial chambers and sarcophagi. We can read the hieroglyphics on the walls. Anyone with a TV set knows this.

What’s more, Carson’s defense is ridiculous. He figures Joseph needed something big to store all that grain in the Bible, and something that big would still be around. But why? He could have stored it in lots of little things. He could have stored it in medium-sized things. Ten thousand silos a few yards on a side would have provided the same amount of storage space and been a helluva lot easier to construct. Only an idiot would store grain in a few humongous pyramids. Was Joseph an idiot?

Cowen says, “Bully for Ben Carson for reminding us that a religion actually consists of beliefs about the world.” But that’s not what Carson did. His pyramid theory isn’t a religious belief. It has nothing to do with dogma, nothing to do with scripture, and nothing to do with any kind of divine intervention. It’s just a dumb personal invention. Plain old secular dumb.

The American economy added 271,000 new jobs last month, 90,000 of which were needed to keep up with population growth. This means that net job growth clocked in at a brisk 181,000 jobs—nearly all of it in the private sector. Not bad! The headline unemployment rate ticked down to 5.0 percent, and virtually of this gain was because more people were employed, not because folks were dropping out of the labor force. This is pretty good news if it translates into wage growth too.

Which it did. Hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees were up 5.3 percent on an annualized basis, and weekly earnings were up an impressive 9.1 percent, which suggests workers are getting more hours and more overtime.

There’s really nothing much to dislike about this jobs report. As usual, it carries the risk that it will prompt the Fed to raise interest rates, but I think that’s inevitable at this point barring some kind of economic catastrophe. And a small increase won’t have much effect anyway. Now let’s see if we can keep this up through the holiday season.