Tuesday, January 5, 2010

An Image of the Need for Health Care Reform

Richard Beck (at Experimental Theology) shared this scatterblot by Andrew Gelman. If this isn't an image of the need for health care reform in the US, I don't know what is.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Percentage of Women Legislators in Selected Countries

I was catching up on some blogs today and stumbled upon a link to an article on www.fivethirtyeight.com that was a response to a Politico article about the low numbers of Republican women legislators (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/republicans-far-behind-on-women.html). The response notes that this is not just a Republican issue but a US issue and includes this table, which gives the percentage of women legislators in various countries. The US is 70th!!!!! Note that among the countries ahead of the US are Iraq and Pakistan. I find this table particularly troubling and see it as further evidence that the US is not as far along on women's issues as many Americans tend to think it is.