A few interesting numbers here, bug the last item (below) is certainly true in the local area (food deserts).

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-tuesday-dec-8-2015/?ex_cid=538twitter

"Food deserts — areas without supermarkets where fresh, healthy food is scarce — were a major target of first lady Michelle Obama’s nutrition initiatives. Still, in the past four years, only 1.4 million of the 18 million people living in a food desert got a new supermarket."

Interesting terms: zombie and cockroach (as related to ideas).

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/obamacare-and-the-cockroaches/?smid=tw-nytimeskrugman&smtyp=cur&_r=0

"Zombie ideas are claims that should have been killed by evidence, but just keep shambling along, like the notion that vast numbers of Canadians, frustrated by socialized medicine, come to America in search of treatment. (It was in a paper about that and other myths that I first encountered the zombie terminology.) Cockroaches are claims that disappear for a while when proved ludicrously wrong, but just keep on coming back."

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/4/9849524/gun-race-statistics

"Part of the problem with the gun debate in America is that gun owners and people who aren’t comfortable with gun ownership are, to a certain extent, just different kinds of people."

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/detecting-bs/

"Vacuous statements may also act as a type of Rorschach test – people reflect their own belief onto the statements. This follows an intuitive style of thinking. It is a similar phenomenon to thinking that astrological readings accurately describe oneself, or finding accuracy is a psychic’s cold reading. Rather than critically dissecting what the statement is actually saying (or not saying) they fill the empty vessel with their own “wisdom.”"

https://news.vice.com/article/how-to-cut-through-the-bullshit-and-read-the-news-like-a-defense-analyst?utm_source=vicenewsfb

"Becoming an active analyst rather than a passive consumer of news changes the power dynamic inherent in traditional media. Taking control of your information is the first step in taking control of your world."

Lot of good stuff…

http://www.epi.org/blog/updating-an-annual-tradition-arguing-economics-at-the-dinner-table/

http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government/

"Currently, just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run. And elected officials are held in such low regard that 55% of the public says “ordinary Americans” would do a better job of solving national problems.

"Yet at the same time, most Americans have a lengthy to-do list for this object of their frustration: Majorities want the federal government to have a major role in addressing issues ranging from terrorism and disaster response to education and the environment.

"And most Americans like the way the federal government handles many of these same issues, though they are broadly critical of its handling of others – especially poverty and immigration."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-the-new-machine

“A “poll” used to mean the top of your head. Ophelia says of Polonius, “His beard as white as snow: All flaxen was his poll.” When voting involved assembling (all in favor of Smith stand here, all in favor of Jones over there), counting votes required counting heads; that is, counting polls. Eventually, a “poll” came to mean the count itself. By the nineteenth century, to vote was to go “to the polls,” where, more and more, voting was done on paper. Ballots were often printed in newspapers: you’d cut one out and bring it with you. With the turn to the secret ballot, beginning in the eighteen-eighties, the government began supplying the ballots, but newspapers kept printing them; they’d use them to conduct their own polls, called “straw polls.” Before the election, you’d cut out your ballot and mail it to the newspaper, which would make a prediction. Political parties conducted straw polls, too. That’s one of the ways the political machine works”

The original study may not have looked far enough…

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/11/to-understand-climbing-death-rates-among-whites-look-to-women-of-childbearing-age.html

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-year-out-ignore-general-election-polls/?ex_cid=538twitter

"History’s lesson is clear: Don’t pay attention to general election polls a year before the election."