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This may come as a surprise to some, but I really enjoy rap and hip-hop. One of my favorite rappers is Rick Ross, whose sonorous Bigge-esque raspy voice is wonderful to listen to. I’ve also noted to Ross, a/k/a @RickyRozay on Twitter, has been a social media fiend. I was pleasantly surprised to see a piece in Saturday’s Times profiling Ross, and his innovative use of Twitter to assemble his crew, Maybach Music Group.

Where did Mr. Ross meet his new friends, the members of Maybach Music Group? It’s 2011: he met them on the Internet.

Well, maybe that’s not where he met them, but it’s where they’re from, more or less, where they’ve achieved their greatest notoriety outside their hometowns. The new crew members — Pill, Meek Mill, Wale, among others — with heavy presences on hip-hop blogs, exemplify the modern way of getting attention.

Judging by the composition of Maybach Music Group, the speed with which it was assembled and the subsequent speed with which its album was released, it’s hard not to think that Mr. Ross used rap blogs as a scouting tool, as a virtual farm team, and also as an inspiration. The group’s rollout shows no fear of the Internet as a distribution platform or as a cannibalizer of sales: about half of the songs on “Maybach Music Group Presents: Self Made, Vol. 1” (Maybach Music Group/Warner Brothers) were made available online in the weeks before the album’s release.

Self Made looks like a sick album. Props to Ross for using social media to reinvent hip-hop.

A headline from today’s LA Times:

“California won’t have to free dangerous criminals to meet the Supreme Court’s mandate.”

This headline sums up what I view as the real fear animating the dissents in Brown v. Plata, and most constitutional law–people don’t want dangerous people bothering them. That, in Lockean terms, is one of the reasons why people leave the state of nature and delegate their executive power to the state: they want the state to protect them. This concern takes on a constitutional element in what I have dubbed the Constitutionality of Social Cost. Putting aside all normative claims of constitutional law–originalism, textualism, living constitutionalism, etc.–the balance between individual liberty and the needs of the state all boils down to one concern. If people think that some right or privilege will harm them, they do not want that right to be exercised unabridged. Key among these rights is the Second Amendment, but likewise, the right of the prisoners in California to be released neatly fits into this dynamic. In dissent, Scalia warned “terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order.” Alito cautioned “Before putting public safety at risk, every reasonable precaution should be taken . . . I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see.”

Now, we see the LA Times pushing back against this fear, to normalize and de-stigmatize the release of these prisoners (effectively the liberty interest). The Times writes:

But Californians shouldn’t panic. The state won’t have to throw open the prison doors to meet the court’s order if it embraces very modest sentencing reforms.

…

California could safely reduce its prison population by modestly reducing time served for low-risk offenders (something Gov. Pete Wilson tried successfully), by transferring low-risk inmates to county supervision (as happened under Govs. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and Ronald Reagan) and by slightly reforming the parole system (something that was partially enacted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and continued by Gov. Jerry Brown).

…

It is worth noting that a number of states, including Texas, Florida, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Ohio and Washington, have reduced their prison populations over the last 25 years, and independent research has found that not one of these states experienced an increase in crime or recidivism following the reductions. In fact, if drug treatment and other reentry services were provided, the rate of repeat offenses often went down.

…

There are some very dangerous people in California prisons, but these are not the inmates who will be released early. There are also, however, thousands of low-risk offenders who are incarcerated for minor drug crimes, petty violations of parole rules and other nonviolent and nonsexual crimes. There are almost 50,000 inmates who now serve fewer than 90 days before they are released. California prisons also house more than 10,000 women, most of whom are no real threat to public safety and are often victims of violent crimes themselves.

Jammed prisons offer no chance for education, mental health or rehabilitation programs. And they can be breeding grounds for more violent crime and victimization. To make our community safer, we must invest in reentry programs to ease the transition from prison back to our neighborhoods. The court’s ruling, far from being a threat to public safety, is an opportunity to reform the broken California penal system, which could mean better outcomes for all of us.

Now that doesn’t seem too bad? Releasing low-risk offenders. Demagoguing that the prisons will release murderers and rapists, rather than two-bit criminals, helps to minimize any concerns liberty interests of those incarcerated in deplorable conditions, and stoke fears among the populace. Rather, releasing low-risk offenders, who may be better served outside of prison in some sort of rehab than in a prison, is much more societally palatable.

I would love to see similar pieces extolling the benefits of the Second Amendment, and showing that firearm restrictions will not yield many of the doomsday concerns demagogues routinely preach.

It seems the Egyptian government, in an unforseen post-Mubarak shakeup, has issued an order to all Jews in the Diaspora to return to the land of our forefathers, and make much-needed repairs to the Pyramids.

Citing thousands of years of grueling wear and tear on its famed pyramids, the Egyptian government recalled the Jewish people yesterday. The Jews, though currently spread throughout the world in a global Diaspora, are in the process of returning to Egypt to repair damages the Pyramids have suffered over the last 4,000 years.

The Jews were urged to return by a forceful letter sent to every Jewish household in the world. The letter strongly suggested they return, if they knew what was good for them.

I’ll go, begrudgingly, but I’m still waiting for my reparations for my ancestor’s bondage. I hope the reconstruction effort needs a liveblogger. I’m not sure how useful I’ll be schlepping large stones. I hear Egpyt has a dry heat. It can’t be much different from Scottsdale!

Tyler Cowen, America’s Hottest Economist, has a cool piece in the Times about the economic implications of the driverless car, such as Google’s new prototype.

The purpose of the Op-Ed is to prevent a regulatory backlog that could stifle this novel technology before it gets started

The point is not that such cars could be on the road in large numbers tomorrow, but that we ought to give the cars — and other potential innovations — a fair shot so that a prototype can become a commercial product someday. Michael Mandel, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute, compares government regulation of innovation to the accumulation of pebbles in a stream. At some point too many pebbles block off the water flow, yet no single pebble is to blame for the slowdown. Right now the pebbles are limiting investment in future innovation.

The driverless car is illegal in all 50 states. Google, which has been at the forefront of this particular technology, is asking the Nevada legislature to relax restrictions on the cars so it can test some of them on roads there. Unfortunately, the very necessity for this lobbying is a sign of our ambivalence toward change. Ideally, politicians should be calling for accelerated safety trials and promising to pass liability caps if the cars meet acceptable standards, whether that be sooner or later. Yet no major public figure has taken up this cause.

I’d imagine many politicians who would be the ones to regulate this technology have chauffeurs funded by tax-payer dollars, so this technology may not be as appealing to us plebeians (I used that word twice in one day. ha!). The benefits of driverless cars could be staggering. I can’t imagine how much more productive I would be if I had a chauffeur to take me anywhere I want to go.

The benefits of driverless cars are potentially significant. The typical American spends an average of roughly 100 hours a year in traffic; imagine using that time in better ways — by working or just having fun. The irksome burden of commuting might be lessened considerably. Furthermore, computer-driven cars could allow for tighter packing of vehicles on the road, which would speed traffic times and allow a given road or city to handle more cars. Trips to transport goods might dispense with drivers altogether, and rental cars could routinely pick up customers. And if you worry about the environmental consequences of packing our roads with cars, since we can’t do without them entirely, we still can make those we use as efficient — and as green — as possible.

Some more Cowen-wisdom. Keep in mind what is seen, and unseen.

Consider this thought experiment. Assume that driverless cars could certainly reduce deaths by avoiding accidents caused by people who drive while intoxicated or who simply make stupid driving decisions, like driving on the wrong side of the road. Add in the likelihood that even after they are perfected and well inspected, driverless cars would lead to special problems, perhaps if the computers don’t respond properly to some unusual situations.

To continue this experiment, imagine that the cars would save many lives over all, but lead to some bad accidents when a car malfunctions. The evening news might show a “Terminator” car spinning out of control and killing a child. There could be demands to shut down the cars until just about every problem is solved. The lives saved by the cars would not be as visible as the lives lost, and therefore the law might thwart or delay what could be a very beneficial innovation.

More on Marginal Revolutions from Cowen.

I previously blogged about Google’s efforts to lobby Nevada to legalize driverless cars.

The American Academy of Pediatrics warns of a a new ailment plaguing teenagers: Facebook Depression:

It results from being bombarded with friend tallies, status updates, and photos of people happy, having the time of their lives, when you are not.

Here is the abstract of the report:

Using social media Web sites is among the most common activity of today’s children and adolescents. Any Web site that allows social interaction is considered a social media site, including social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs. Such sites offer today’s youth a portal for entertainment and communication and have grown exponentially in recent years. For this reason, it is important that parents become aware of the nature of social media sites, given that not all of them are healthy environments for children and adolescents. Pediatricians are in a unique position to help families understand these sites and to encourage healthy use and urge parents to monitor for potential problems with cyberbullying, “Facebook depression,” sexting, and exposure to inappropriate content.

Complains one student, who feels left out of all the fun:

“If I’m just like sad or something and just kind of chillin’ at home and I see pictures of people having a party I’m like oh that’s awesome… like I’m not there… that’s kind of depressing,” explained high school student Elizabeth Kisch.  But Kisch also says she doesn’t take Facebook too seriously.

High school is a depressive place for many reasons. I can assure Elizabeth, though, that the “cool” people at the “awesome” parties are usually not too happy. Usually the people at the top of the social pyramid are those with the deepest depressions; they’re just better about hiding it because they’re so, well, “cool.”

Just today the LA Times has a story about what made geeks outsiders in high schools makes them stars in the world.

In the adult world, being out is in. “Geek chic” and “nerd merch” are on the rise. Nerdcore hip-hop artists have penetrated mainstream consciousness. And the nerd prom known as Comic Con draws high-profile celebrities and throngs of smitten fans. They’re all part of what Jerry Holkins, creator of the Penny Arcade webcomic and video game conference, calls “the social pariah outcast aesthetic.”

Adults tend to be mature enough to recognize that there would be no progress — cures for diseases, ways to harness new energy sources — without people who are different. Successful scientists think distinctively.

So what happens to high school’s popular students? Research shows that they are more likely than outsiders to conform, which can also mean they’re less likely to innovate. They are more likely to be both targets and instigators of aggression — whether physical or relational, which includes rumors, gossip and backstabbing. They are more likely to drink and engage in other risky behaviors. Students who are popular and involved in aggression are less likely to do well in school. Psychologists point out that high-status cliques teach the exclusionary behavior that may be the foundation for eventual racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and other forms of bigotry.

Rest assured, I was never, ever cool in high school, and most certainly was, and still am, a geek; and damn proud of it.