Links, October 19

From A “one dollar, one vote” explanation of the welfare state
"According to the one dollar, one vote theory of the welfare state, the faster growth of the rich's income in the US allowed the rich to increaseits political influence and tilt policy closer to its most preferred redistribution which involves a smaller welfare state. As a result, the growth of redistribution in the US lagged Europe’s."
quoted in Elitism in the Senate.
In USA Which undergraduate institutions produce science PhDs?. Top ten are private institutions and half of them liberal arts colleges (via Rajib Khan)

From a review of a paper on sex by Rajib Khan Sex with thee and the last woman:
"A new paper in Nature tackles sex through experimental evolution. In may ways the answer it offers to the question of sex is old-fashioned and straightforward. Higher rates of sex evolve in spatially heterogeneous environments......
What does this mean in the long-term? Well, it may be that sex, and males, are adaptations to an unpredictable and wild world whose caprice we can not account for. As humanity, or perhaps more generally sentient beings, begin to control nature and buffer themselves artificially from the volatile fluctuations, will we need sex and males? At the end of history when conditions are stable, and all that is before us is the terminus of heat death, perhaps what awaits us are a series of mindless and boring clonal lineages, perfectly adapted to turning nutrients into flesh, generation to generation."
P.S. Many more links in 'A Blog Around the Clock" Quick Links….a lot of them…all good.