Quotulatiousness

February 3, 2012

Lemonade stand economics and government accounting

Filed under: Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:14

An amusing illustration of the differences between real world profit and loss and the government’s accounting methods:

Parents, wanting to encourage the idea that working and making money is a good idea, drive around to buy the lemon, sugar, designer bottled water, cups, spoons, napkins, a sign or two, and probably a paper table cloth.

Aside from time and gas, the outing adds up to something north of $10. At the opening of business the next day, the kids find business is slow to nonexistent at $1 per cup. So, they start to learn about market demand and find that business becomes so brisk at only 10 cents per cup that they are sold out by noon, having served 70 cups of lemonade and hauled in $7.

[. . .]

There is a strand of economics, we’ll call it the K-brand, that sees all this as worthwhile. They add together the $10 spent by the parents to back the venture and the $7 spent by the customers and conclude that an additional $17 of spending is clearly a good thing. Surely, the neighborhood economy has been stimulated.

To the family it is a loss, chalked up as a form of consumption. If this were a business enterprise it would be a write-off. In classical economics it is a “mal-investment.”

[. . .]

But that is not how it works in government accounting. While a private business must adjust its books to reflect the losses from an intended investment that went bad, governments never do that.

When a government “invests” in, say, an airport in Johnstown, Pa., all the expenditures for labor and materials are recorded as investments and are additions to national output. Never mind that when it is later discovered that only three people a day want to fly to or from the airport, no adjustment to national wealth will reflect the folly of this “mal-investment.”

If the airport had been financed by purely private, commercial enterprises, the initial expenditures would have been recorded as investment spending, but when reality struck and the entire project was written off as a total loss, the business-profit component of national output would decline. That is, a previous bad “investment” reduces, rather than augments, current national income.

January 17, 2012

To help kids stay healthier, don’t be a clean fanatic

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

I’ve suspected for quite a while that the “epidemic” of food allergies and other ailments among today’s children was related to the extremely hygienic conditions of modern homes (that is, kids’ immune systems were insufficiently stressed by exposure to germs, which meant higher risk of immune system over-reaction later in life). I’m not a scientist, so my suspicion was just based on less-than-statistically valid observation of my son and his friends while they were growing up — the kids with the most sterile home environments did seem more likely to have serious allergy issues come up later.

I could have been on the right track, after all:

I do wonder, however, whether we’re all becoming a bit too paranoid about germs. I include my own family in this group. Once we left the doctors’ office, for example, my wife and I encouraged our children to use a hand sanitizer. When our kids were toddlers our house had alcohol wipes and Purell vials all over the place. But is all this washing and disinfecting really necessary? Is it proactive prevention? Or overly paranoid fear?

That, at least, is the thinking behind the “hygiene hypothesis,” a school of thought first proposed by David P. Strachan in 1989, and now experiencing a resurgence that’s probably a response to society’s mania for cleanliness. Strachan’s original study sought to explain why British kids with greater numbers of older siblings had fewer incidences of hay fever, speculating that perhaps it could be the fact kids with lots of older siblings tend to be exposed to greater numbers of germs. While it was greeted with skepticism early on, Strachan’s theory has since been confirmed. In fact, in the decades since, greater exposure to germs early in life has also been associated in epidemiological studies with lower levels of asthma, some allergies and even such autoimmune diseases as type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

[. . .]

“These data support the idea that the greater diversity of microbial exposure among children who live on farms is associated with the protection from the development of asthma,” study researchers reported, speculating that microbial exposure may encourage development of immune system cells that in turn suppress the production of the sort of immune-system cells that trigger asthmatic reactions. Researchers’ next hope to determine which microbes are most responsible for preventing asthma — and that, perhaps, may lead to new therapies, such as targeted microbe exposures, for the dreaded respiratory malady.

More broadly, the study is a reminder that humans have been living and fighting off germs for tens of thousands of years. Particularly when we’re young, germs serve an important purpose for the development of the immune system. By depriving our children of exposure to germs, we may be depriving them the benefits of a process the human body has evolved over aeons, a process that helps to create healthy and allergy-free adults.

January 11, 2012

“I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

The further criminalization of what used to be ordinary childhood behaviour:

Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing “inappropriate” clothes and being late for school.

In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.

“We’ve taken childhood behaviour and made it criminal,” said Kady Simpkins, a lawyer who represented Sarah Bustamantes. “They’re kids. Disruption of class? Every time I look at this law I think: good lord, I never would have made it in school in the US. I grew up in Australia and it’s just rowdy there. I don’t know how these kids do it, how they go to school every day without breaking these laws.”

The British government is studying the American experience in dealing with gangs, unruly young people and juvenile justice in the wake of the riots in England. The UK’s justice minister, Crispin Blunt, visited Texas last September to study juvenile courts and prisons, youth gangs and police outreach in schools, among other things. But his trip came at a time when Texas is reassessing its own reaction to fears of feral youth that critics say has created a “school-to-prison pipeline”. The Texas supreme court chief justice, Wallace Jefferson, has warned that “charging kids with criminal offences for low-level behavioural issues” is helping to drive many of them to a life in jail.

January 10, 2012

Parents (absolving themselves from any responsibility) want Ottawa to solve child obesity problem

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

Parents who fear to let their children go outside want the federal government to magically fix the problem the parents have created:

The majority of parents believe they play a major role in whether their children are overweight, but many also want the government to build more recreation centres.

[. . .]

The survey done by Ipsos Reid talked to 1,200 people, and most feel obesity is the leading health issue facing children today — more so than drugs, smoking and alcohol.

The survey found that 61 per cent of Canadians don’t think Ottawa is doing enough, and 70 per cent strongly support government initiatives that would educate children on healthy choices.

If you don’t let your children go outside unattended (hence the desire for “recreation centres”, where the little snowflakes will be supervised at all times), they won’t get as much exercise. Without exercise, on a typical modern diet, they’ll gain weight. Having gained weight, they’ll be even less likely to voluntarily exercise. Rinse and repeat for 18 years.

December 29, 2011

Girls from single-parent homes “more resilient” at school than boys

Filed under: Britain, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

An article in the Guardian summarizes a recent study’s findings:

Girls appear to be more resilient than boys in preventing problems at home from affecting their behaviour in school, according to a study which aims to explain the educational achievement gap between the genders.

The tendency for girls to perform better in the later years of school has become increasingly pronounced in the UK in the past two decades. In 2011 the percentage point gap between the proportion of girls gaining A* or A grades in GCSE subjects and that for boys hit a record 6.7, up from just 1.5 percentage points in 1989.

Educational researchers have sought to explain the difference through a variety of factors connected to both physiology and environment, including theorising that boys are inherently more resistant to a formal educational system.

But the new study, based on detailed data from 20,000 US children over a decade, found no particular evidence of school-based factors being significant. Instead, it discovered that boys raised outside a traditional two-parent family were more likely to display behavioural and self-control problems in school and were suspended more often. The data ended when the children were about 14, but suspensions are seen as a strong indicator of subsequent poorer educational performance.

This finding, if validated by other studies, implies that the gender gap will continue to widen as more children are being raised in single-parent households now than ever before. Girls’ increasing share of university entrance will continue to grow — although the system will still likely consider girls and young women “more vulnerable” and in need of more systemic support.

December 24, 2011

Repost: Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:04

If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!

December 22, 2011

Why Nazis?

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:56

A British MP is being investigated for attending a “Nazi-themed” party. A member of the royal family is photographed wearing Nazi regalia to a costume party. World War 2 fiction about Nazi Germany vastly outsells similar fiction about Fascist Italy or Imperial Japan. What is it about the Nazis that Brits find so fascinating? In a Spectator article from 2002, Guy Walters tracks the onset of the Nazi fascination in young Brits:

In some Englishmen this interest has mutated into a not-so-guilty admiration for the Nazis and their uniforms, their pageantry, their military brilliance and — this is the really terrible part — their brutality. It is emphatically not a condoning of the Holocaust; rather, a fetish that exists despite it. In its advanced state the fetish will have evolved into a secret yearning to march up and down a bedroom in the togs of a Hauptsturmführer, riding-boots shining, the red swastika armband set smartly against the blackness of the tunic, the silver death’s-head badge glinting on the peaked cap. Of course, the Beevor reader is a far cry from a Nazi fetishist; but I wonder whether Beevor would enjoy such staggering sales figures if he had written only about the war in the Far East.

[. . .]

At the end of term, the flu now conveniently in remission, Mr Priestley unearths the projector and makes a selection from the school’s extensive range of films. The product of a broad mind, the library consists of just two works, The Guns of Navarone and Force 10 from Navarone. Our nascent fetishist will be particularly drawn by the stylish ease with which David Niven carries off the wearing of an SS officer’s uniform. He will be less than impressed, however, with Edward Fox’s absurdly pukka sergeant in the latter film.

His small head brimming with Nazis, our subject goes home for four solid weeks of constructing Airfix Messerschmitts, Stukas, Heinkels and Dorniers. He will know that the correct colour of the underside of most Luftwaffe aircraft corresponds to Humbrol’s ‘duck-egg blue’. If his condition is particularly advanced, the subject’s mother will be asked to purchase a Tamiya Jagdpanther tank, which he will place in a ‘diorama’, a word he will use in no other context. By now, he should be showing further classic early symptoms of a Nazi fetish: Allied aircraft and armour will hold little or no interest. Most of the young fetishist’s exercise books will be adorned with thousands of tiny swastikas.

[. . .]

By puberty, the fetishist will have repeatedly watched every war film available, including A Bridge Too Far, The Night of the Generals, The Dirty Dozen, The Eagle Has Landed, The Boys from Brazil, Cross of Iron and, for a younger generation, Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. He will have read Pat Reid’s Escape from Colditz and Airey Neave’s They Have Their Exits.

When our subject starts in the sixth form, it is here that the fetish can be incorporated into, and disguised by, his academic studies. Naturally he chooses modern history for one of his A-levels, and his special topic will, of course, be Nazi Germany. He will now be introduced to the diaries of Nazi bigwigs such as Albert Speer, which will breathe life into sinister figures such as Himmler and Goering. In fact, the widespread predilection for Nazi Germany as an A-level subject has angered many university tutors, who have complained recently that it is the only period of history about which undergraduates have any real knowledge.

December 21, 2011

Barbara Kay: Spousal abuse is remarkably gender-balanced

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:18

Everyone knows the old myth about a spike in wife-beating after major sporting events (most frequently referenced is the Superbowl, but the same factoid is trotted out about every “big game”). Barbara Kay reveals the awkward truth that nearly half of all spousal abuse is by female partners:

One of first-wave feminism’s great achievements in the 1970s was to end the denial surrounding wife abuse in even the “best” homes. Resources for abused women proliferated. Traditional social, judicial and political attitudes toward violence against women were cleansed and reconstructed along feminist-designed lines.

But then a funny thing happened. The closet from which abuse victims were emerging had, everyone assumed, been filled with women. But honest researchers were surprised by the results of their own objective inquiries. They were all finding, independently, that intimate partner violence (IPV) is mostly bidirectional.

But by then the IPV domain was awash in heavily politicized stakeholders. Even peer-reviewed community-based studies providing politically incorrect conclusions were cut off at the pass, their researchers’ names passed over for task force appointments and the writing of training manuals for the judiciary. Neither were internal whistle-blowers suffered gladly. Erin Pizzey, who opened the first refuge for battered women in England in 1971, was “disappeared” from the feminist movement when she revealed what she learned in her own shelter: She committed a heresy by asking women about their own violence, and they told her.

[. . .]

(While the CDC survey does not reference Canadian data, our IPV statistics vary significantly from the U.S.’s in certain respects. “Minor” wife assault rates as measured on the commonly employed Conflict Tactics Scale are identical, but “severe violence” rates in Canada fall as the violence ratchets up. For “kicking” and “hitting,” Canadian rates were 80% of the American rate; for “beat up,” they were 25%; and for “threatened with or used a gun/knife,” they were only 17%.)

By now there is no excuse for the failure of governments at all levels to follow through on — or at least acknowledge — the settled science of bilateral violence. Yet just last week the Justice Institute of British Columbia issued a lengthy report on “Domestic Violence Prevention and Reduction,” and sure enough, it defines domestic violence as “intimate partner violence against women,” recommending only that government work “to bridge gaps in the services and systems designed to protect women and children.”

One area where the majority of abusers are female is child abuse: women are much more likely to batter their children than men.

December 17, 2011

Megan McArdle: There is no “quick fix” for poor communities

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:23

If the “nudge” notion of government worked, it’d be pretty creepy:

If poor people did the stuff that middle class people do, it’s possible — maybe probable — that they wouldn’t be poor. But this is much harder than it sounds. As John Scalzi once memorably put it, “Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.” Which often means, he might have added, spending your whole life doing the sort of jobs that middle class people sometimes do when they’re 14. It isn’t that people can’t get out of this: they do it quite frequently. But in order to do so, you need the will and the skill — and the luck — to execute perfectly. There is no margin for error in the lives of the working poor.

And some problems are collective problems. It’s all very well to say that poor women shouldn’t have kids unless they can find a solid man to help raise them. (And I agree that this is a superior strategy). But men with solid jobs are rather scarce in many poor communities, not least because we’ve imprisoned so many of them. What you’re asking poor women to do is actually, for most of them, to not have babies. This is an easy edict to deliver from a comfortable middle class home where you have all the kids you want. It probably sounds pretty shitty, however, to the poor women who you are blithely commanding to spend their lives alone.

[. . .]

What I am struggling to say is that however much those choices are now inflected by what went before — and the problems of other people in their families and communities — they are choices. We understand that the middle class girl I grew up with is driving her situation by behavior that is probably not very amenable to outside influence. Why do we assume that people who grew up poor are somehow more pliable simply because similar choices are influenced by decades of generational poverty?

As adults they are the products of everything that has happened to them, and everything that they have done, but they are also now exercising free will. If you assume you know the choice they should make, and that there is some reliable way to entice them to make it, you’re imagining away their humanity, and replacing it with an automaton.

Having higher wage jobs available would give people more money which would be a good thing, and it would solve the sort of problems that stem from a simple lack of money. But it would not turn them into different people.

Public policy can modestly improve the incentives and choice sets that poor people face — and it should do those things. But it cannot remake people into something more to the liking of bourgeois taxpayers. And it would actually be pretty creepy if it could.

December 10, 2011

QotD: G.K. Chesterton on waiting for a train

Filed under: Quotations, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:21

[. . .] And most of the inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences — things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my life have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose, under water. I have been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said, everything depends upon the emotional point of view. You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.

G.K. Chesterton, “On running after one’s hat” (1908), republished in Quotidiana, 2007-12-10.

November 16, 2011

Will Penn State cancel its football program?

Filed under: Football, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

Given that they generated $50 million in profits from a $70 million revenue stream, the “smart money” is betting against:

If the Allegations Are True, Penn State Should End Its Football Program: Next week, Penn State plays Ohio State in a battle of scandal-plagued programs. The thought of these two facing off ought to send chills through the NCAA, any alum of either school, and anyone who loves college sports. Penn State and Ohio State seem determined to convince America that big-college athletics is beyond redemption. Just bear in mind: What Penn State is accused of is 10,000 times worse than what Ohio State did.

At Penn State, one of two must be the case: Either the accusations are false or they are true. If false, then Penn State, Joe Paterno and all others implicated deserve their honor back. If the grand jury presentment is true, we have barely scratched the surface of Penn State’s disgrace.

If the charges are true, not only did the Penn State football program allow its facilities to be used for the abuse of children, Penn State athletic officials and academic administrators were more concerned with preserving their money and power than with stopping future molestation. (The grand jury found the Penn State administrators’ explanations for inaction “not credible.”) If the charges are true, the phrases “Penn State” and “Joe Paterno” forever will be synonymous with the word “shame.”

[. . .]

Joe Nocera of The New York Times notes, “In 2009, Penn State football generated a staggering $50 million in profit on $70 million in revenue, according to figures compiled by the Department of Education. Protecting those profits is the real core value of college football.”

If Penn State’s trustees and new administration really cared about shame at the school, the remainder of the football season would have been canceled. Their actions suggest that what Penn State’s trustees and new administration really care about is making the public think honor has been restored, in order to keep the money flowing.

If the charges are shown to be true, the way Penn State could prove contrition, and recover perspective, would be to end its football program. Penn State is talking about contrition, but talk is cheap. Ending the Nittany Lions’ football program would prove contrition.

November 14, 2011

Bullying is bad: banning bullying would be worse

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Wendy Kaminer on the District of Columbia (DC) City Council’s proposed anti-bullying rules:

It started on college and university campuses, where repressive speech codes have been teaching generations of students that they have no right to offend someone, anyone, who can claim membership in a growing list of presumptively disadvantaged groups.

Now, this mindlessly censorious movement to force us to be nice to each other is encroaching on public life, off-campus: The District of Columbia (DC) City Council is considering banning the ‘harassment, intimidation, or bullying’ of students in public libraries and parks, as well as schools (including the District’s public university). Bureaucrats in charge of all relevant supervisory agencies are required to promulgate detailed policies that define bullying and harassment ‘no less inclusively’ than the City Council.

It would be difficult to define bullying more inclusively: according to the council bill, ‘harassment, intimidation or bullying’ is ‘any gesture or written, verbal or physical act, including electronic communication, that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or a mental, physical or sensory handicap, or by any other distinguishing characteristic’, which a ‘reasonable person’ would foresee as effectively intimidating or harmful to students or their property, or as effectively ‘insulting or demeaning’ to any student or group of students so as to disrupt ‘the orderly operation of a school, university, recreational facility, or library’.

Don’t bother trying to figure out what this vague and verbose definition of bullying includes. Focus instead what it might exclude — not much. Virtually no speech or behaviour that a student self-conscious about any ‘distinguishing characteristic’ might consider hurtful or that a petty bureaucrat might find offensive is beyond the reach of this ban. Its scope is simply breathtaking; although, sad to say, the ‘inclusiveness’ of this bill doesn’t distinguish it from other state and local bullying laws or campus speech codes. It is, however, shamefully distinguished by its application outside of schools to public libraries and parks. Imposing a subjective sensitivity code on the general public, it displays an astonishing contempt for the most obvious and fundamental freedoms of speech and belief, as well as astonishing ignorance of constitutional rights.

November 10, 2011

John Scalzi on the Penn State child rape cover-up

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Football, Law — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

In four points, John Scalzi walks us through what should have happened at Penn State when the first incident was discovered:

1. When, as an adult, you come come across another adult raping a small child, you should a) do everything in your power to rescue that child from the rapist, b) call the police the moment it is practicable.

2. If your adult son calls you to tell you that he just saw another adult raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, and then asks you what he should do, you should a) tell him to get off the phone with you and call the police immediately, b) call the police yourself and make a report, c) at the appropriate time in the future ask your adult son why the fuck he did not try to save that kid.

3. If your underling comes to you to report that he saw another man, also your underling, raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, you should a) call the police immediately, b) alert your own superiors, c) immediately suspend the alleged rapist underling from his job responsibilities pending a full investigation, d) at the appropriate time in the future ask that first underling why the fuck he did not try to save that kid.

4. When, as the officials of an organization, you are approached by an underling who tells you that one of his people saw another of his people raping a small child at the organization, in organization property, you should a) call the police immediately, b) immediately suspend the alleged rapist from his job responsibilities if the immediate supervisor has not already done so, c) when called to a grand jury to testify on the matter, avoid perjuring yourself. At no time should you decide that the best way to handle the situation is to simply tell the alleged rapist not to bring small children onto organization property anymore.

For “organization”, feel free to substitute “Catholic church” for “Penn State University” as required.

November 9, 2011

Penn State’s problem

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Football, Law — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

Russ from Winterset loses his temper over the truly disturbing way Penn State is handling their child rape issues allegations:

So Joe Paterno is going to retire at the end of the season?

Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? Does Joe think he is going to be carried off the MISS PIGGY field to the BEAKER cheers of the DR. BUNSEN HONEYDEW crowd after leading Penn STADLER State to another GONZO bowl game? FOZZIE BEAR that noise. He should have the common DR. TEETH & THE ELECTRIC MAYHEM decency to slink out the back door of the coaching offices in shame like John SAM THE EAGLE Edwards leaving a session of a Federal RIZZO THE RAT Grand Jury.

That moderation expressed in my first update? KERMIT that. If Joe JANIS THE BASS PLAYER Paterno is allowed to coach another ANIMAL football game at Penn RALPH THE DOG State University, every WALDORF fan in the stadium who so much as smiles when their BERT team scores their first ERNIE touchdown can go Suck The Barbed Cock of Satan as far as I’m concerned.

BIG BIRD! Now I’m pissed.

And when you come back with the “look at all he’s done for the community” card, tell me this. How many other kids have been raped since 2002 because JoePa and the other jackasses at Penn State didn’t think it was necessary to get the police involved in this situation? Ten? Five? Even one? Is that a fair trade for all that Joe Paterno has done for his community?

If it’s not quite clear from context, he “replace[d] all but one of my f-bombs in the original draft of the post with the names of Muppet Characters”

October 29, 2011

The Halloween fun-snatchers

Filed under: Randomness, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:43

Tristin Hopper has a scary list of all the folks who are out to prevent any fun from happening this October 31st:

This Halloween, some Barrie, Ont., elementary students will not go to school dressed as witches, goblins or zombies — but in simple shades of orange and black. The dress code is “an effort to respect the diverse value of … families,” according to a letter sent out by one school.

Similar ”orange-and-black” days have been decreed around Ottawa schools this year by parents and teachers. In parts of Quebec, costumes are permitted — but junk food restrictions have barred teachers and administrators from distributing candy to students.

[. . .]

Since the 1970s, Halloween fears have mostly involved tainted treats; razor blades in apples and chocolate bars injected with rat poison. Spooked by rumours of sabotaged Halloween candy, dozens of municipal councils enacted trick-or-treating bans, and home-baked treats quickly became a quaint relic. But to date, the only confirmed case of tainted Halloween candy occurred in 1974 when Houston dad Ronald Clark O’Bryan murdered his eight-year-old son as part of a life insurance scam by spiking a package of Pixy Stix with cyanide.

[. . .]

Halloween’s pagan origins have earned it official scorn from most major religions, and when trick-or-treaters come to the door of Calgary-area pastor Paul Ade, they walk away not with candy, but with a Bible.

Mr. Ade is the founder of JesusWeen, a Christian alternative to Halloween gaining traction in Canada, the United States and the U.K. Instead of chocolate bars and lollipops, JesusWeen participants hand out Bibles, pieces of scripture or other Christian-themed gifts. JesusWeen participants can even dress up — although as superheroes and princesses rather than witches or ghosts. “We as Christians believe in life, not death,” Mr. Ade explains.

[. . .]

In the United States, religious calls to ban Halloween reached a boiling in the 1990s as a retaliation to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union to scrub any mention of religion from the school system. In 1989, a small county in Florida banned Halloween on the grounds that it was a pagan religious holiday. By century’s end, dozens of school boards across the country had followed suit. Anti-Halloween sentiment soon spread to Canada. In 1998, three Thunder Bay Catholic schools banned Halloween for promoting “evil” values.

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