In a blog post, Paul Krugman derides Alan Simpson for spreading “zombie lies”, in particular the statement that life expectancy when social security was enacted was only 63. Krugman quickly says: “life expectancy at age 65, which is what matters, was almost 80 for women and 78 for men.” But life expectancy at 65 is not the only thing that matters—if we’re trying to keep the system solvent, the proportion of people who live to age 65 to begin with compared with those in the workforce is important. Life expectancy at birth is a proxy for this. Krugman’s smart enough to know this.
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I edited and wrote part of a short book published by New America in July 2015 and freely available online, about how drones are being used in new ways around the world. It's meant to be useful to people who want to fly drones.The Pioneer Detectives
I published a short book with The Millions.
It's the story of the Pioneer Anomaly, a long-standing mystery. The book is short and fun—the length of a novella—but also, in the words of Amazon's reviewer, "powerful and sad". If you've got any curiosity about how NASA works behind the scenes or why scientists believe what they do, I think you'll enjoy the book.
It is available on Amazon as a Kindle Single and also on Apple's iBooks.Drone Wars
I wrote a chapter on the long history of drone technology going back to the early 20th century in this edited Cambridge University Press volume.