Sunday Reads...

An irregular round up of interesting reads.  Most of these made me go "hmmmmm," none of them imply concurrence:

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
The Antitrust laws—an unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable mess of contradictions—have for decades kept American businessmen under a silent, growing reign of terror. Yet these laws were created and, to this day, are upheld by the “conservatives,” as a grim monument to their lack of political philosophy, of economic knowledge and of any concern with principles. Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.” There is only one difference in the legal treatment accorded to a criminal or to a businessman: the criminal’s rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessman’s. - Ayn Rand

Today's quote comes to mind in the context of the nutty FTC-led "anti-trust" charges in the headlines. 

• New study suggests a cause (and hints at a therapy) for ADHD and autism.
• Charting the internet-addiction spectrum.
• A round-up of work-from-home trends, data and impact.  Most of the data is essentially polling, not empirical evidence, nevertheless that the value of WFM is reported by team members as equivalent to 8% of their income is of note. 
• A good reminder when reading social “science” studies: 60% of them cannot be replicated.  Meaning, their informative not definitive.
• For those whose believe that disparate impacts (correlation = causation) are dispositive, then the evidence is now clear that the IRS is a racist government agency.
• The evidence continues to demonstrate the liberals are challenged at being “good” or empathic people.
• However, the troubling signal that partisan schadenfreude is on the rise.  Abuse of power is directly correlated to the availability of power.
• Two-parent families apparently provide higher income mobility probability to children.
• Ditch the phone.  Evidence that even in social situations it distracts and retards the benefits of prosocial interactions.
• The Law of Attraction or value of anti-diverse social interaction remains founded in reality.
• Fiscal hypocrites are a bipartisan problem, “we the people,” created.
• Critical review of Ibram X. Kendi’s reductionist racism mounts.
• Higher Ed bloat?  Some cut options.
• Shocker.  When you pay people not to work – they don’t.
• The case against the Jones Act.
• Three questions for the man who lied to Congress, who is commonly called Dr. Fauci.
• The corruption of “science” and “medicine.”