links for 2010-11-06

A murder costs society $17.25 million, or about 50 times an armed robbery, according to a research team from Iowa State University. A paper from Spain put the average "price" of a pack of cigarettes for men at about $150. And a group of U.K. health experts considered a range of social, economic and health costs when trying to determine which recreational drug was most harmful. Alcohol won.

Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, Aliza Greenblatt, a prominent Yiddish poet who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Guthrie – the Oklahoma troubadour – and Greenblatt – the Jewish wordsmith – often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor activism.

Those progressives are angry at the Senate for, in their view, bumbling the legislation Democrats passed in the House, and making it less popular. They have polling proving that the public option was more popular than the health care mandate. This is yet another reason that the "listen to the Blue Dogs" argument falls flat with them — if they'd listened to the Blue Dogs, they'd have had even less to show voters. In terms of progressive legislation, Pelosi was the most successful Democratic speaker since Sam Rayburn.