Afternoon roundup

Finally, a break from blogging the BERL report. Apologies for the tedium for those not interested in that thread.

• Will Wilkinson nails the "green avatar" signaling issue

  So folks on Twitter have been turning their avatars (little profile photos) green to show solidarity with the protesters in Iran. There are websites to help you do this. But why do this? How does it help? I want the Iranian people to live in freedom, just as I want all people to live in freedom. But the point of the gesture eludes me, unless the point of the gesture is to be seen making the gesture by others who will credit you for it. Like so many political gestures, it is vanity dressed up as elevated moral consciousness. It doesn’t help. Is it harmless?

• Radley Balko in The Atlantic (part 2) (part 3)
• Harford on retrospective voting
• More reasons to not to ban genetically engineering crops