Random Walk

GoP Getting Stuck in "Newt"-ral

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

The French have an expression: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Simply put, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

At the weekend, Republican voters in South Carolina went to the polls...and voted to select Newt Gingrich as their candidate to take on President Obama in November.

Yes; Newt Gingrich. The same guy who was forced out as Speaker of the House under a cloud of scandal and shame more than a decade ago. The same guy who not once, but twice left a sick spouse following an extra-marital affair (and who all the while has pushed to block same-sex marriage to "protect the sanctity" of the institution. The same guy who took $300,000 from the disgraced Freddie Mac, as he puts it, for his consulting services as a historian. And the same guy who recently attacked Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan's budget plan as "dangerous social engineering."

Gingrich, in his attacks on Romney's career at Bain Capital, is making a more persuasive argument for the re-election of President Obama than Rahm Emanuel ever could. If Newt himself doesn't believe in free-market capitalism, then how, exactly, is he the voice to argue against Mr Obama's "stimulus," his octopus-style state of choking regulation, and other attacks on the market?

Mr Gingrich styles himself as the antidote to the current occupant of the White House, as the true defender of "conservative" value, all the while using a more or less scorched-earth policy on his chief rival, Mitt Romney.

I'm no big supporter of Mr Romney, but what, really, is Mr Gingrich's campaign, aside from a flight of narcissistic fancy?

Setting to the side his obvious hypocrisy, the practical question arises: Are we going to do "Stonehenge" tomorrow? No; that's not it.

Does he have a chance?

The data indicate that the only thing less believable than Gingrich's "consulting as a historian" whopper is his claim that he alone can take Obama on.

These data on the electoral fates indicate that as Gingrich rises, the Republicans sink. Just over the weekend, his victory in South Carolina alone increased the likelihood that President Obama will gain re-election by 10% (from 51% to 56%).

Here is how, graphically, the fates of Gingrich, the GoP, and the President play out:

Florida is going to be a key mile-post in the slog, and as someone who thinks that President Obama really needs to be shown the door for a remarkably inapt performance, I would suggest that the voters in the Sunshine State consider seriously whether they want to follow the Republican Pied Piper over the cliff.

Zombies, Zombies Everywhere

2011-12-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

Quick update to last week's observation about the attraction zombies and zombie flicks hold. My six year old son "discovered" a mini-game available for our iPhone, "Plants versus Zombies," and wrote off to Santa asking for it. Of course, the Man in Red delivered ($2.99 - a bargain), and Alastair is now enamoured of the game.

Zombie on Traffic Cone

Zamboni Zombie

I have to admit to a certain creeping addiction of my own. The Pea Shooters and Cherry Bombs are particularly amusing, as is the Disco Zombie, who gives a whole new meaning to "Death before Disco."

They're COMING for You, Barbara!

2011-12-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

This past week, I watched the season finale for the excellent AMC series The Walking Dead. I like the show on several levels - it's an entertaining melodrama which raises multifaceted issues, the acting is generally good, and let's face it, you can never get enough living dead shambling about threatening the protagonists in ever creepier ways.

Judith O'Dea, "Barbara" from the 1968

George A Romero classic that started it all

The show will return, apparently, in mid-February, so I've a couple of months to wait to see what is going to become of the shrinking band of survivors struggling to escape suburban Atlanta.

I've long enjoyed these sorts of films, whether the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, its various follow-on films (Dawn and Day), or similar films like the terrific 28 Days Later (from Danny Boyle, who went on to direct Slumdog Millionaire to great acclaim) or the re-imagined Dawn of the Dead from the early 2000s.

Oddly, one thing to the "zombie" movie genre is that one never hears the word "zombie" ever used by one of the characters. "Ghouls." "Things." "Walkers." Sure. But never the "Z" word. Even the recent best-seller, obviously about zombies, is titled World War Z. Just cannot bring themselves to say it. But I digress.

My wife hates them, and considers the whole premise ridiculous, but whenever I watch these films, there are several things I cannot escape thinking, and perhaps that's why they captivate me (and apparently, lots of other people).

First is, the irresistible temptation to imagine "what would I do if I were in that spot? Would I be able to survive, and if so, how?"

It strikes me that in virtually all of these scenarios, the survivors would probably end up being OK if they were just able to keep their wits about them. In 28 Days, the outbreak is contained to an island (in this case, Great Britain.) Because the problem is spread, quickly, through blood, it's next to impossible to imagine how the epidemic could spread beyond the English Channel, and in fact, towards the very end of the movie, the protagonist lies at the edge of death, sure that the world is on the edge of being wiped out, when he sees the contrail of a jet flying over, as if nothing has happened. OF COURSE, the virus is only in Britain, and the rest of the world has gone on pretty much normally, as is evidenced in the sequel. And since the victims of "rage" become raving, homicidal maniacs, all that would be required would be to find a secure place, and wait for them to die of thirst or starvation - a few weeks perhaps.

The same is almost surely true in the other Dead-inspired movies. One suspects that, given time, the undead would, quite literally, fall apart. Though mobile, they are not immune to rot and decay (as the special effects of wizard Tom Savini attest), and if the living could just hang on and let nature take its course....

Interestingly, a "study" - a simulation - was done by a group of epidemiologists at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada was published in 2009. They modelled various scenarios of zombie outbreaks, and the chances for the human race at survival, given various responses. The results are not, to say the least, encouraging. It's a bit math-heavy, but a very good read, IMHO.

Which brings me to one of the other unifying themes, and that is, in virtually all of these films and stories, the real "bad guys" turn out not to be the dead, but the living. Yes; the zombies represent an existential, and omnipresent, menace. But inevitably, it's panic and internal bickering that prove to be something the survivors cannot overcome. There is as least as much blood shed by the protagonists as the zombies.

I suppose the writers are saying that, even when confronted with extinction, our innate nature to destroy each other cannot be controlled.

Finally, in several of the movies (28 Days in particular), an interesting, quasi-Dr Strangelove question is raised. Soldiers near Manchester, England have set a sort of trap for survivors, promising food and protection for those who can make it. It's revealed later that they intend to kill any men who arrive, and have other plans for the women. The lieutenant, almost apologetically, explains when asked why such a monstrous plan was devised, that he promised his (all male) outfit that he would find some female survivors.

We fight off the infected or we wait until they starve to death... and then what? What do nine men do except wait to die themselves?

In the films, at some point the issue of the value of survival is always raised, though perhaps not so bleakly as that.

It reminds me of the famous tortoise "Lonesome George," the last of his kind, living in the Galapagos Islands. George, estimated to be between 90 and 100 years of age, is the last Galapagos Giant Tortoise. Tortoises, for all their charm, and not particularly circumspect, but it's a rather sad idea to imagine that when he inevitably is gone, that's it, since there are no more females of his kind.

How would human beings react in such a situation? In 28 Days Later, somewhat violently.

Anyways, Walking Dead returns in about eight weeks. I'm marking my calendar.

You Never Know

2011-12-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

This morning, I saw a sports news article that left-hand pitcher Dontrelle Willis has signed a contract to pitch next year for the Philadelphia Phillies. In and of itself,. a rather unremarkable story, really. Guy was 1-6 last year in Cincinnati, ERA of 5.00. The Phils are taking a chance on him, with a plan to use him as a lefty-lefty specialist next year in the bullpen (lefties hit .127 against Willis last year, which means that right-hand batters must have clobbered him, given his ERA). There's a ton of these guys who hang around to come in to games in the seventh or eight innings, ostensibly to get one batter out.

What's interesting, and in my view, sad, about this story is the trajectory of Willis's career. He was the rookie of the year in 2003, and was the runner-up for the Cy Young Award in the National League in 2005, when he went 22-10, tossing five shutouts in 34 starts. At the time, Willis was 23 years old, and looked to have a long, bright career.

Since the season he chalked up 22 wins, he was won a total of 26 games.

Over six seasons.

And 22 of those 25 were in 2006 and 2007. For the past four years, Willis has bounced around, pitching pretty poorly for three teams, and winning four games.

Dontrelle Willis, by all accounts I've read, is seen as a pretty good guy. He never gets in the news for bringing a gun to a nightclub. Or fighting with a photographer. Or sending lewd "tweets" to some woman not his wife.

It's truly a bizarre and unfortunate turn of events. Apparently, his control simply abandoned him, bringing to mind the old maxim (I think from Casey Stengel): "A pitcher who ain't got control, ain't got much."

Essentially, Willis is looking to hold on to what's left of his professional career, which may be over. He is 29 years old. You really never know how things are going to work out, and if you need any evidence of why to be grateful for the opportunities and successes you've got when you have them, a reason not to look with envy or complaint about what you don't have, think about Dontrelle Willis and his career trajectory.

Willis is joining his boyhood friend Jimmy Rollins in Philadelphia, and had this to say about the announcement:

Wherever they need me, whatever role. I heard someone talking about pinch-hitting, so whatever role. With all of these starters going nine and 10 innings, I'm not sure I'll get the chance to do that. But I just want to get into the best shape I can be and I feel great. I'm not going to rock the boat; I just want to get on.

It's a refreshing, and realistic assessment. No whining; no complaining. No demand to be a starting pitcher or else.

I sincerely hope that the "D-Train" will make the Phils next year, and have a great season within whatever parameters he is allowed to operate.

E Pluribus Nevermind

2011-12-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, Vice President, future Nobel Laureate, venture capitalist, and all-around (generally acknowledged) genius and renaissance man Al Gore made a remark that the US was, true to its motto (e pluribus unum), "from the one, many."

Of course, Mr Gore got the Latin wrong, but for a guy who invented the internet, put a stop to the unfortunate drowning of polar bears, and gave us the media-shattering "current.tv" (without which, how could the eight people who tune in each night watch Keith Olbermann fulminate to the point of near self-implosion), it's a small error.

And in retrospect, perhaps Al Gore was speaking the truth.

To wit: this weekend in the New York Times, there appeared a brief screed attacking the state of Texas, and how it has re-drawn its electoral map, post-2010 census. In an editorial entitled "Voting Rights and Texas," the Editors complain that, as Texas has added four new congressional seats, the legislature re-drew its boundaries to an effect that there are now 26 "safe" Republican seats (up from 21), whilst at the same time, districts in which "minorities" (largely, Hispanic people in this case) make the majority has fallen from 11 to 10. All of this, despite the fact that (according to the Times), "almost half of all that growth (in population) came from new Hispanic residents."

Thus, the Times conclude, Texas's new congressional seats represent a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and since Texas is under remediation orders stemming from Jim Crow era laws (yes; the Act is renewed every time it comes up for vote, and thus, one might conclude that how Texas draws its districts, unlike, say, California or New York, will be under federal review forever), the Feds need to step in.

I don't have the data to argue that the Times analysis is correct, but let's presume that they are correct.

There is at least one huge problem with this "analysis," and that is, the number of new Hispanic residents in Texas has accounted for half of the population growth. Unfortunately, only citizens may vote - so in a sense, it doesn't really matter on its face how many new residents a district has when talking about the Voting Rights Act.

But the most egregious problem in the Times' piece is their word choice:"They (the legislature) reduced the number of districts where minorities could elect the candidate of their choice to 10 from 11. (emphasis added)

Huh?

What is implicit in this argument is a couple of things. First, that the "candidate of their choice" for Latino voters is necessarily a Latino one, and second, that a Latino candidate cannot win a district where Latinos are not the majority.

Aside from the obvious fact that a black man is now the president of the US, with a plurality of white votes, this sort of "logic" represents a further slide of our nation into the sort of Balkan nonsense elsewhere. Have we really reached a point where we should be setting aside seats in our government, virtually explicitly, based upon the ethnic makeup of the land?

That's an extreme endgame of what Mr Gore (mistakenly, one presumes) said out loud. And was endorsed when the Justice Department blocked the new map as it is allowed to do under the 1965 Act. Big shock, of course, given that the alternative map proposed actually INCREASES the number of seats that the Democrats regard as "safe" by three.

To his credit, the AG for Texas argued that the courts, who will judge ultimately this case, have as their job to "apply the law, not to make policy." The Times counter that the VRA, Section 2, impels the courts to act because of the imperiled ability of "minority groups to elect the representative of their choice."

In a land where we are putatively equal before the law, "groups" do not elect anybody. In a land where, if Martin Luther King's messages are to be believed, one's "representative of choice" need not be someone of the same race as yourself.

In a nightmare scenario, played out in places like Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia, we will allot our government to groups rather than people, and our representatives must "look like" the group they represent. A black man necessarily cannot represent a white constituency, or an Asian a Latino one, etc.

And I have no idea what it is going to mean for my mixed-race son.

THAT does not bode particularly well for a country that is projected to be one with no majority in my lifetime.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US; families will come together, some who have not seen each other for some time. A lot of turkey will be eaten. Even some tofurkey (it's the 21st century, after all). Some will watch football. Hopefully, we will all give thanks, which is the point.

I'm not one who wears religion on his sleeve, and tend to recoil or regard with suspicion those who are ostentatiously religious. However, in these days for giving thanks, and the coming time of reflection that the Advent of the coming of our Lord provoke, well, reflective thoughts about what gratitude and good will towards men means.

In Church this past Sunday the Gospel reading was the famous parable of the sheep and the goats of Matthew's Gospel. In it, the righteous are thanked by Jesus for feeding the hungry, providing drink for the thirsty, kindness to the stranger, and ministry to the sick.

Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

Likewise, the wicked are reminded that they failed in similar regard

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.

Both of course question how this could be, for neither remembers having tended to (or, contrarily, ignored) the needs of their fellow man. And to each, Jesus answers

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

It's one of my favourite readings, and to me reminds me of one of the central commandments of our faith. Basically, before almost everything else, we are to see, truly and clearly, the needs of those weaker and less fortunate than ourselves, and to help where we can.

It's my hope that in the season of thanks and celebration, I will do the best I can to see when a hand in need of help is reaching out, and that I will extend my own open hand to do so.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ah, Sweet Semantics.

2011-10-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law has jumped into the blogging pool with both feet this month; her writing is more of a personal nature than mine, discussing life events rather than complaining about the state of the world.

Today, she has posted some observations about accountability that I think are particularly useful and timely, given what's going on around us. I won't steal her thunder, of course, but her comments provoked me to consider what "accountability" really means, and how it plays out in the modern world.

Every day, we hear all sorts of people talking about "accountability." The President talks about accountability for the financial mess we're in. Executives speak of how they pledge to be "accountable" to their shareholders, workers, and customers for decisions. Janet Reno, the former AG, spoke to much acclaim from the press about how she accepted "full responsibility" for the disastrous raid on the Waco compound of religious fanatics (of course, "responsibility" and "accountability" are not precisely the same, but close enough to be useful here). The Occupy Wall Street protesters are demanding that "The One Per Cent" be held to account for the myriad ills they perceive.

One can, of course, flip open a dictionary (or even more conveniently, look it up on-line, which carries far less risk of a paper cut) to see what the word "accountability" means.

It's one man's observation, of course, but I find that none of these people who claim to accept "accountability" actually do so. Accountability means more than just insincere (or even sincere) mea culpas on "60 Minutes." Part of the deal is that there be parallel consequences. People are willing to do the former, but precious few are really prepared for the latter.

In the operetta "The Mikado," the eponymous character at the beginning of the second act sings of his goal to make the punishment fit the crime, and then proceeds to list precisely how he plans to carry this out. It's parody of course, but I highly recommend a listen.

The head of a bank that twisted the rules to the limit of breaking so he could fatten his bonus is not really accepting "accountability" by saying "Sorry. I won't do it again." Sure; his firm may pay some fines (the source of which is more than likely to be recovered in fees passed on to some of the customers he defrauded). He's ain't giving up his home in the Hamptons. He may toss a few low-level employees to the wolves, of course. SOMEONE has to be accountable, I guess.

Janet Reno said she would take responsibility for incinerating dozens of people, including small children. She continued on for many years as AG, and even ran for governor of Florida and currently tours the country making lucrative speeches about the criminal justice system.

Is that "responsibility" in any real way?

Has anyone on Wall Street really been held to accounts in any tangible way? Any CEO or other executive appeared in the dock to answer for what they did?

The Occupy Wall Street people are right to demand that those responsible for facilitating our economic meltdown should be made accountable for what they've done.

But are even they willing to be responsible? Responsible for borrowing money to buy a house that they could not afford? For running up massive debts to buy gadgets that they did not need or to spend six years partying in college, ultimately, in many cases, failing to obtain a degree of dubious value to begin with?

When I was child, it was understood that if I broke the rules, my parents would hold me to account - and they largely did. I don't know if that's still universally true (a few years back, some wealthy parents in Saratoga, California actually threatened to take their school to court if it disciplined their children who had admitted cheating on the AP exams), but most kids do get that if they get caught breaking the rules, they will be punished.

And that punishment will not likely include being allowed to keep millions of dollars in bonuses that were gained as a result of their misdeeds.

Accountability must include real contrition, and also must include consequences that, more often than not, will at least discomfit the person "accepting" accountability.

The Day the Music Died, ca. 2011

2011-10-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

An era of sorts came to an end today. More truthfully, it was yesterday - the event itself occurred yesterday, but I read the news today, oh boy.

Of course, I am talking about the passing of Apple co-founder and tech icon Steve Jobs, who died at the age of 56. A lot has already been written about Mr Jobs, most of it glowing comments on how much he and his ingenuity changed the world. I've never been a big fan of Steve Jobs, and I have long thought of Apple as a sort of cult for gadget-worshiping acolytes.

There's a centuries old admonition not to speak ill of the deceased, and I am absolutely sure that Mr Jobs's passing, particularly at such a relatively young age (56) will leave a tremendous scar on his family and friends. I lost my own father when he was 53 a decade and a half ago, and indeed, it leaves a hole that is never really filled or covered-over.

That said, I would tend to point to the observation that Senator Edward Kennedy made of his brother Robert F Kennedy during his famous eulogy in 1968 - one should not make more of (Jobs) in death than he was in life.

Was Steve Jobs a "visionary?" Did he really make the world a better place, as some would have you believe?

To the former, I would have to say a qualified "yes." He certainly had a vision - of user-friendly, slickly packaged products. The fact that Apple is now the most valuable tech company in the world, and the second most valuable company (behind only Exxon Mobil) speaks to the consequence of that.

Did he make the world a better place? I would say that the latter conjecture is somewhat of a mixed bag.

Mr Jobs did not actually invent any of the technologies or products that had so profound an impact on the world. The smart phone; the mp3 player. The GUI. The mouse interface. None of these was pioneered by Jobs or even Apple, for that matter.

But what Steve Jobs's real genius was was taking someone else's great ideas and packaging them in such a way that they appealed to more than just a handful of tech geeks in San Jose, California. He was able not to see a need, but to create one, almost out of whole cloth. No one, of course, needs to have a $400 telephone with a slick interface and the ability to "tweet" 140-character esoterica 24/7. But when Mr Jobs, the Prophet in the Black Turtleneck pitched the latest gadget from a stage in the Moscone Centre in San Francisco, that item immediately became a totem. Either you had the newest geegaw, or you didn't.

And the Macnostic cultists responded. Queues, days in advance at times, formed outside the Apple Store to hand over money.

Are we better off? In many ways, yes we are. We can now stay in touch, get information, and run our lives from virtually anywhere in the world. An array of music, entertainment, and connection is now at our fingertips, virtually wherever and whenever we want.

THAT has real value.

The cost, of course, is the stoking of desire for expensive toys that not all can afford (perhaps most cannot). More to the point, as our linkages grow, our ability to disconnect shrinks. We are now virtually never "free." And of course, with the proliferation of iPads and iPods, our real, personal connections are replaced by virtual ones. Music, once a shared experience, is now increasingly a solitary one. We speak to each other face to face less, and with "twitter" more.

That's not necessarily a good thing. Technological advance is not without price.

Ultimately, in assessing the impact of Steve Jobs, I return to the idea that he, more than anything, was perhaps the greatest marketeer who has ever lived. This is perfectly, if indirectly, summed up today reading the encomia about his life.

In one obit circulating, ironically, Mr Jobs is spoken of as a co-founder of Apple with "a friend from high school." The fact that Steve Wozniak - the actual creator of the Apple computer is not mentioned by name until about 90% of way through, and then as a sort of aside, is perfect testimony to how great Steve Jobs's ability to package the world as he saw it really was.

Steve Jobs in my estimation was the PT Barnum for the 21st century. He did not really discover "Dumbo," but brought the beast to the masses. He less fulfilled needs than created desires.

His life represents a triumph of will, really, and the ability to convince the world that his vision of how things could or should be needed to prevail. He's now gone, and it will be interesting to see how Apple carries on in his absence. I suspect for the Macnostics, this is somewhat akin to the death of Peter in the early days of the Church. I reckon the search is going on for a new Pope to shepherd the faithful.

RIP.

You Lie! (AGAIN)

2011-09-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

Remember when SC Congressman Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" at President Obama? How scandalous it was? Why, you'd think he farted in Nancy Pelosi's personal elevator.

Well, it turns out Mr Wilson was more or less correct, which perhaps explains the phony outrage.

You see, this weekend President Obama proposed to control our spiraling deficits with a "Buffett Tax."

It's a big lie, of course.

First, even most optimistic projections are the proposal will raise $1.5 trillion OVER 10 YEARS. Our current deficit for the current fiscal year is $1.6 trillion for 2011. Alone.

Second, the "Buffet Tax" will get most of its revenues from taxes on families earning between $250,000 and $1 MM. It's not even a millionaire's tax, let alone a tax on a hypocritical plutocrat like Buffett.

Are the Democrats simply incapable of telling the truth because they no longer know what it actually is, or do they just reckon we can't handle it?

Blowin in the Wind

2011-08-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene blew through town this weekend, leaving in its angry wake downed trees and no power - PG&E say it may not be restored until Sunday, giving us a full eight days without power.

The Toronto Blue Jays have all but wrapped up a dismal homestand against Kansas City and Tampa Bay. The Royals came to town having not won a series since June, and not having taken a series in Toronto in nine years - and the Blue Jays were lucky to take one of the games. Tampa has thus far made the Jays look like little leaguers, winning the first three easily. Sunday afternoon's game was an embarrassing 12-0 loss, with Rays' starter David Price combining with two relievers to whiff a Toronto team record 18 batters.

Now I know why the winds were so strong at the weekend - it had nothing to do with Irene. It was all that fanning going on by Toronto bats.

Kelly Johnson, the newest Jay acquired from Arizona collected the Golden Sombrero, with four Ks in four ABs.

It's an odd stat, but if one combines the final week Johnson played in Arizona (a team in contention for the playoffs) with his first four games as a Jay, Johnson has not played for the winning team since August 16th, a 3-2 win in Philadelphia.

Johnson has participated in 10 straight losing efforts, and has not walked on the field to shake hands in a victory in two weeks.

Yeah - that trade is working out brilliantly.

Mike Flanagan, RIP

2011-08-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

Read today of the passing of former left-hand pitcher Mike Flanagan, a guy who got as much out of a batting practice fastball as anyone.

Flanagan was 60 years old, and best remembered as the guy who won the 1979 Cy Young award; he went 23-9 for the Baltimore Orioles team that lost to the disco-themed "We Are Family" Pittsburgh Pirates.

Just thinking about those two items (that Pittsburgh AND Baltimore made the World Series, and that disco was sufficiently main stream that it was featured in a non-ironic way) makes me feel old.

My best recollection of Flanagan was his remarkable performance, as a fading former star, in the penultimate game of the ultimately doomed Toronto season of 1987. Flanagan faced off on the final Saturday of that season against Jack Morris and the Detroit Tigers at Tiger Stadium. The teams entered the game tied for first, but heading in opposite directions.

At 36, Flanagan pitched 11 innings, giving up one earned run; the Tigers ended up winning in the 12th on a double-play ball off the bat of Alan Trammell that rolled under the glove of Jays' rookie shortstop Manny Lee (Lee was playing in place of All Star Tony Fernandez, who had had his elbow broken the week before, in a game also against the Tigers).

Toronto went on the lose the final game of the season, and the pennant, the next day, in a 1-0 game - interestingly, pitched by another very soft-tossing lefty: Frank Tanana. The loss capped an epic collapse - Toronto lost its final seven games of the season, squandering what had been a five game lead with seven to play.

Interestingly, and I was unawares of this fact - Flanagan had been a teammate of Julius Erving on the UMass basketball team. He quipped in an interview that, after guarding "Dr J" in practice, he realised he ought to pay more attention to his pitching mechanics.

Flanagan was a quick wit, apparently, in addition to being a class act.

RIP.

Is "Crazy" Rick Perry Pinky or the Brain?

2011-08-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Although it's only August of the year before the 2012 presidential elections, the air is, as they say, heating up. I fear from the rhetoric it's going to be a particularly nasty campaign, which given the way 2010 went, is saying a lot.

The governor of Texas, the unctuous Rick Perry, has apparently tossed his ten-gallon hat into the ring, and I have to say, I am shocked by the reaction of the Democratic party noise machine to the announcement.

Perry is behind at least a couple of other candidates in the GoP (most notably, the ideologically pliant Mitt Romney), so it's odd that the mouthpieces are focusing on him; more to the point, not so much that they are focusing on Perry, but how they are focusing.

In reading political blogs, editorials in mainstream newspapers, and listening to broadcast and cable news, the apparent meme that is going to be deployed against Rick Perry is not that he's done a bad job in Texas, or that his performance is somehow disqualifying, or that he lacks experience. Or even, for that matter, that the current president deserves to be re-elected because he's done such a bang-up job.

No; what has been said, over and over again, is that Perry is not wrong in his thinking, but that he is "crazy."

Several friends and peers on social media have picked this up and run with it. One friend actually wrote that Rick Perry is "bat shit crazy."

"Bat shit crazy?" That's not something I've ever seen in the DSM-IV manual, a book that I use in my job in neuroscience research frequently.

What exactly has Rick Perry done to provoke this diagnosis? Well, among other things, he proposes to repeal the 16th and 17th amendments. The former, of course, empowered the federal government to levy income taxes; the latter took the election of senators from the hands of state legislatures and provided for direct elections by the people. In the words of the writer, Perry is crazy because he wants to "bake his personal opinions and bias into the Constitution."

Now, setting aside the absolute and frank irony that "baking his opinions" into the constitution here is in fact overturning amendments that themselves were the result of a previous person's "baking his opinions" into the Constitution, I don't see how a person, seeing an obvious problem, proposing to follow the laws set out by the framers to alter the Constitution as it was meant to be amended is "crazy."

Perry may be wrong; but it apparently is no longer enough to argue that the opposition is simply wrong. They are insane. They are wild-eyed, bigoted lunatics sort of like cartoon characters Pinky and the Brain.

Governor Rick Perry, Wild and Crazy Guy

This particular line is being used not just on Rick Perry, but other Republicans (Michelle Bachmann recently appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine in a particular example of extreme yellow journalism, in a photo plainly chosen to fit the theme that she, like Perry, is simply as mad as a March hare.)

I expect we're going to be treated to this for the next 15 months - the GoP candidates and their solutions are not wrong per se, but just too nutty to even consider. We're going to hear over and over how they are "anti-science" (whatever that means), irrational, crazy, raving lunatics. We'll hear about how they are climate-change "deniers" (a very carefully chosen and market-researched term to parallel the lunatic fringe who deny the Holocaust). That they believe in "intelligent design," and reject "evolution," which is a truly bizarre attack, given that a President's belief in the origin of the species seems to me to have nothing to do with the powers he or she has as the chief executive.

To those who have studied history, it is worthwhile to recollect that, during the Soviet era, "enemies of the state" were often put away based upon phony charges of insanity. Rather than sending political dissidents off to prison, they were "diagnosed" as crazy (not sure how you translate "bat shit crazy" into Russian) and put into mental hospitals.

You see - if you "denied" that the status quo wisdom being offered by The Party was the right course, well, that was ipso facto evidence that you must be out of your tree.

I reckon in the 2012, the Democrats will rely on this line not because they are communists (itself a laughable attack one hears from the right), but because they frankly have nothing else to say.

President Obama can hardly run for re-election based on how well he has handled the country. He cannot point to Texas, which according to an analysis of the data here show the state to have stood apart from the employment collapse of the rest of the country and argue how that disqualifies Governor Perry. He could try to argue that the governor doesn't really affect job creation, but then the whole argument propping up his tax and spend agenda of never-ending stimulus collapses.

So what's left then is to smear Perry with a lot of emotional, if dubious, attacks of the sort we are now seeing.

Swing and a Miss

2011-08-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

The Philadelphia Phillies seem well on their way to another NL East title, largely due to an incredible pitching staff. (Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Roy Oswalt). Their number four starter in his career averages a 16-9 record, with a 3.21 ERA.

That is damned impressive. One could debate whether there has been a better staff in the past to years (Atlanta, 1995? Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, Avery. The 1971 Orioles boasted four twenty-game winners, though not sure Pat Dobson is the equal of Oswalt.)

What I find most interesting though, is the Phils' set-up man and lefty specialist, Antonio Bastardo. Aside from the obvious intrigue of his unfortunate sur-name, Bastardo has quietly racked up some unbelievable stats this year.

To wit: in his 50 appearances, covering 46 innings, Bastardo has allowed 18 hits.

That's not a mis-print. 18 hits in 46 innings.

That figure works out to 3.5 hits per nine innings. The league is hitting .118 this season against him.

To put it into context, Nolan Ryan, the owner of six career no-hitters, in his best season (1972) allowed 166 hits in 284 innings, a rate of 5.26. Ryan allowed fifty per cent more hits per nine innings. Oh, and he also tossed in 157 bases on balls, so Ryan - in a great season - allowed 323 baserunners in his 284 innings.

Bastardo has walked 16, so he has allowed 34 baserunners in 48 innings.

Tom Henke was another guy who could come in and simply blow hitters away. In his best season (1987), The Terminator gave up 62 hits in 94 innings, or 5.94 per nine innings. Henke walked 25, so his runners per nine innings was better than Ryan's (87 runners in 94 innings), but again, not close to the numbers Bastardo has put up.

And Henke, as a relief pitcher for a team that collapsed, in an epic fashion, received MVP support for his efforts.

It's a relatively small sample size, of course, but the almost complete failure of National League hitters to hit Bastardo is truly remarkable; it's sufficiently low that I wonder, has there ever been a guy who put up seasonal figures like that, tossing a minimum number of innings.

Paul Meier, RIP

2011-08-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

Chances are pretty good you've never heard of Paul Meier. But if you've taken an FDA-approved medication, or purchased life insurance, your life has been affected in a profound way by his work.

This weekend, read the announcement of the passing Dr Meier, who was one of the true giants of mathematical statistics. In my opinion, his work with Edward L Kaplan (put the two names together, and perhaps if you've trained in stats or clinical research, you may be closer to recognition) has had more impact on clinical research than any other statistician, and perhaps more than any clinician of any other scientific discipline.

In 1958, Drs Kaplan and Meier submitted to the Journal of the American Statistical Association a manuscript titled "Nonparametric estimation from incomplete observations," in which a method for estimating life expectancy and mortality from data including missing or censored observations was outlined.

It's safe to say that there is almost no pharamacological research programme today that does not involve Kaplan-Meier curves. From cancer survival to outcomes of heart surgery, this single paper is pretty close to fundamental in clinical trial design.

That same year, Dr Meier also authored a paper called "Clinical evaluation of new drugs," which was published in the journal Annual Review of Medicine, in which he argued that randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were essential in establishing the safety and efficacy of new medicines.

It's hard to fathom nowadays that there actually was an argument for assigning to random placebo and treatment arms patients to assess the effectiveness of a potential treatment, but it was quite controversial at the time.

Modern medical research is based upon the RCT, and countless lives have been saved/improved as a result.

RIP.

Skin in the Game

2011-08-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

In the recent roiling of the nation over the ludicrous deficits we face, I came across the following commentary by John Derbyshire at National Review.

The notion that we should all have some “skin in the game” by paying federal income taxes strikes me as profoundly un-conservative, and to be resisted. We have “skin in the game” by virtue of being U.S. citizens. The nation’s misfortunes are our misfortunes. I have never heard that being American requires payment of an annual fee, like a golf club membership.

Mr Derbyshire's post is, as usual, provocative. He's got a mathematical background, so I am reminded of one of the controversies of the 20th century in mathematics - the so-called "axiom of choice." To make a long story somewhat less boring, arguments in mathematics are more or less soluble once one accepts a set of axioms from which to begin.

Here, the problem inherent is that Mr Derbyshire assumes as an axiom that the income tax need not exist. In fact, the income tax is, I would think, a permanent element of our society. If we could do away with the income tax, I think his argument makes sense.

But given that the income tax exists, and will continue to exist, his argument I think collapses. A system where 50% plus one of the population do not pay any visible income tax, where a sizeable chunk get government "services," and where we swim in waters where the message of tax-funded assistance is "compassionate" is ambient - well, such a system is fundamentally ultimately unsustainable.

In economic terms, the perceived demand for something without a perceptible cost is unbounded. Unlimited. The comments of the Georgia governor on his state's ratification of the 16th Amendment are instructive:

When asked why his state legislature had ratified, he replied that it was a matter of no importance to Georgians, since nobody in the state made enough to qualify for the income tax.

Thus the real question barking around the edges of Mr Derbyshire's column are, "What limit is there to the tax rates on the minority of citizens who pay them for ever more government freebies? What do I care if someone else has to pay 35, or 50, or even 90 per cent of his income in taxes if some "essential" programme is at stake."

It's really the root of the divide and rule messages we hear constantly from Mr Obama and his enablers at MSNBC and the New York Times that he ought to let the tax breaks "for the rich" expire to help reduce the deficit, when their own data show that the relative share of the deficit that tax cuts for the $250,000+/$250,000- segments represent are $700BB and $3,100BB.

Those numbers were printed in the Sunday Times this past week in an editorial. The "middle class" share of the hated "Bush Tax cuts" is more than 80%

It's not about "deficit reduction" at all. It's about pure power politics. Period.

Mr Derbyshire is right philosophically that citizenship should not be measured by whether one has economic "skin in the game." But unfortunately, reality intrudes, and thus precisely that is necessary to keep the nation sustainable.

Incredible Stat of the Day

2011-07-01T08:48:00.001-07:00

The Blue Jays have used a pretty motley crew at 3B this season: Edwin Encarnacion (initially, the regular, but his glove work was so bad, it lead people to believe "Encarnacion" must be Spanish for "throwing error.") and Jayson Nix. Nix quickly proved he could neither field nor hit, with a .169 BA, and OPS of .554.

Not quite panicking, RF Jose Bautista has been shifted to the hot corner.

Incredibly, it's NOT the worst in the league. Chone Figgins, before he was benched, put up a .186 BA, and .234 (!!!) slugging pct. He has an incredible OPS of .481.

Green and Red: Not Just for Christmas Anymore

2011-06-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

Came across this article in a recent New York Times edition, titled as "Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy." The alpha and omega of the story is that many urban governments in Europe are intentionally adopting policies designed to make it difficult to use a car within their cities. Apparently, it's part of a conscious effort to discourage the use of cars and steer people towards public transit, walking, and/or bicycle use.

It's all ostensibly part of the so-called green agenda, you see.

European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.

Now, whilst I tend to be pretty right-wing in much of my politics, I here put some distance between myself and many of my fellow-travellers, in that I accept the science that indicates that climate change is real, and that there is a very, very good chance that human activity is at the least a significant factor.

I believe that the goal of reducing pollution is a good one, and I support improving the quality of life in our cities. People should make the effort to walk more for their own health, and the more people on buses, trains, and other public transport, generally, the better.

But this story indicates to me a couple of things.

First, the "green movement" in no small part mixes significant amounts of red into the tint; and by that, I mean much of what it is attempting to accomplish is less about the environment, and more about giving government more control over our choices and behaviour.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, (Zurich's) city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

In the San Francisco Bay area, the city of Menlo Park has for decades used similar thinking to hobble traffic flow and block development.

Second, I live near New York City, where automobile transport is essentially impossible, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been trying for some time to implement "congestion pricing" to drive up the cost of bringing a car into Manhattan (note: it's ONLY Manhattan, and ONLY upon entering Manhattan, so if you live in an expensive converted loft in TriBeCa, the toll would not apply to you). We also recently returned from London, where just such a scheme already exists.

I wonder if there is a somewhat subtle subtext here about turning urban centres such as Central London or Manhattan into sorts of Disneylands for self-selected urbane elites.

Put simply, as it becomes increasingly difficult to get into and around city centres (whether to work, shop, visit a cultural attraction), there will be increasing pressure on the housing stock in or near these attractions. I am sure that there are many, many people who would LOVE to ride a bicycle to their jobs in lower Manhattan or walk around shopping in Knightsbridge. If you happen to be Leonardo Di Caprio and can afford to live in TriBeCa, that's an option. If you're a mid-level manager, it's not.

No; you will have to ride two hours from your affordable suburban home.

Walkable cities is a terrific idea in theory. But far too often, putatively "enviromental" restrictions such as zoning laws are pushed quietly behind the scenes by people who own land and property that will be made more valuable. It's a sort of perverse win-win: the government gets more control. The connected get more money. And the elite get to filter out the people from their urban playgrounds whom they deem as undesirable.

All for the good "of the planet," of course.

300: A Good Batting Average

2011-06-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

The oddball season for the Toronto Blue Jays continues. I wrote in this post a few weeks ago that the Blue Jays were (at the time) 3-13 during day games, and 12-6 at night.

The Jays yesterday lost their fourth straight in the final game of a three game sweep in Atlanta (by the Braves). It was, no surprise, a day game. (As an aside, the Blue Jays amassed a total of 2, 5, and 5 hits, a 12 for 93 performance in the series; that's a nice .129 batting average, prompting number one starter Ricky Romero to pop off).

The Jays are now 9-21 during day games. That's a .300 winning percentage, not bad for a batting average, but would, over the course of a 162 game season, approach the record for the worst in modern history.

Toronto continues to essentially appear to be two different teams between day and night, posting a 27-18 record during night games (which includes two of the three losses in Atlanta). That computes as a .600 winning percentage.

If the Sunlight Blue Jays were to compete in a division with the Moonlight Jays, the standings would look like this:

W L PCT GB
Moonlight 27 - 18 (.600) --
Sunlight 9 - 21 (.300) 10.5

Over the course of two hypothetical 162 game seasonS, the Moonies would finish with a 97-65 record, perhaps competing for the AL East crown. The daytime bunch would finish with a 48-114 record, a shocking 49 games behind.

Neither team would hit with runners in scoring position, so at least that would remain stable.

Stanley Cup to Remain Hostage in US

2011-06-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Boston blanked Vancouver last night, 4-0, to wrap up the Stanley Cup and deny its return to Canada for at least another year. Though it's Boston (ick), at the least, this year it was one of the Original Six, and not a team in, say, South Florida who got to hoist the Cup this year. Still, as a Canadian, it was a sad outcome.

Some reflections on the playoffs:

The seven game series really was among the most lop-sided ever. Vancouver won its three games 1-0, 3-2 (OT), and 1-0. Three wins by a total of three goals, with one of the games ending in regulation at a tie. The Bruins won their four games 8-1, 4-0, 5-2, and 4-0. That adds up to a 21-3 goal differential. It really wasn't close, and Tim Thomas was remarkable.
It was ironic that, on the day of Game 7, an ESPN headline reported that the Boston PD were adding additional police offers in anticipation of potential trouble should the Bruins win and the Boston revellers get out of control. History was on their side, given the violence that followed the Red Sox World Series titles in 2004 and 2007, which resulted in the killing of a student (2004) and numerous fires and overturned vehicles (2007). This year, it was the fans in Vancouver who burned cars, smashed windows, and looted, perhaps undermining the generally accepted wisdom of Canadians as orderly and polite.
It was sort of a nice touch to see Marc Recchi get one more championship and get to retire on a high note. Recchi is older than I am by a couple of years, and I honestly had thought he had hung up his skates already. My five year old has this winter started to learn to play (which at this point, largely means learning how to skate around with a stick, and to keep his focus on the puck and not randomly wobble around the ice), and I had told him about "The Wrecking Ball," a nickname that has obvious appeal to a five year old boy. Of course, in the world of five year old hockey, they're all more or less "Wrecking Balls" on the ice - meaning that one will crash into the rest, usually clustered in front of the goal, and knock the lot over like an old building that is being razed.
The 2010-2011 season marks the 44th consecutive year that the Maple Leafs have not appeared in the Cup finals, which is by far the longest streak in the NHL. Better still, the team did not even make the playoffs, extending that streak to 7 seasons. The Leafs' last appearance in the Cup finals was the year my parents got married (1967)....

A Statistician Raises the White Flag

2011-06-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

I love baseball. I enjoy numbers. I make my living with mathematics.

So naturally, combining the three seems a natural interest. But there is an old saw that goes something to the effect of the following apocryphal story:

Two Hollywood producers are brainstorming over a new movie idea. One says to the other, "Hey; everyone likes Abe Lincoln. Everyone likes dogs. Everyone is interested is fascinated by movies about doctors. So let's make a movie about Abe Lincoln's doctor's dog."

But like the story above, the three often make for a nauseating combination. And as a statistician who watches baseball games wherein we are inundated with cobbled-together and often meaningless meta-statistics, I raise the white flag.

Enough. No more stats about how a hitter hit against a pitcher in a certain count in a certain inning, in road games, during a full moon.

Last night, the Toronto Blue Jays beat Baltimore, 6-5 in 11 innings. (As an aside, thank God for the Baltimore Orioles, who year in, year out can be counted on to provide soft-landing cushion to keep the Jays out of the AL East cellar). The game ended when Adam Lind hit a homer to lead off the 11th.

Sure enough; the ESPN laughing boys chattered about how Lind had hit a "walk off home run" to end the game. The ubiquitous use of cliches like this are chronicled in a rant here about LeBron James over at National Review, but needless to say, this term (like many others) is well past its sell-by date.

But the folks at ESPN are not satisfied just to bore us to death with idiotic cliches like "Walk Off" this, that, or the other, the headline today for the game blared:

"Lind Ties Jays Record."

Hmmmm... The team is in the midst of its annual battle with mediocrity, so that's not the likely "record" they speak of. Lind's homer was his 12th of the season, and sad as the team has been of late, that's not close to any sort of significance.

So, what 'record' did he tie, exactly?

Well, it's the third "walk off" homer of his career.

Boy, I wish I had been at the game and saved the ticket stub for posterity. I could show my grandson in 40 years the evidence that I had been in attendance the night Adam Lind tied the team record for "walk off home runs."

It's a 'record' he now shares with Jesse Barfield, George Bell, Joe Carter, Carlos Delgado, and Vernon Wells.

I wonder if Cooperstown want the ball?

Dr Strangeglove: The 2011 Remake

2011-05-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

Toronto beat the Yankees last night at Yankee Stadium to even the season series at three and three. It was an unremarkable game, really; final score 7-3.

That's not to say it was totally uneventful. Toronto third baseman Edwin Encarnacion (I don't speak Spanish, but it looks remarkably like a translation of "Second Coming of Butch Hobson") made his 11th error, booting a ground ball.

Encarnacion has split his time between third and first base, starting 16 games at the hot corner. In those 16 games, he's committed eight errors. For those whose maths skills are roughly the equivalent of E-squared's fielding skills, that's an error every other game, a remarkable feat. The most errors committed at third in the past 100 years is 43, a record that EE would not only break over a full season, but bury the pieces.

How bad is EE's glovework?

ESPN had a list of other Strangegloves who have played third (e.g., Butch Hobson, who made the aforementioned 43 miscues), and their abysmal fielding percentages were generally between .850 and .899.

It's awful to have a FA below .900 (meaning you boot one of every ten plays).

Encarnacion's fielding average this hear is below .800 (.784). This means that one of every five balls hit to Encarnacion results in an error.

That's not particularly good for someone playing in Pony League.

Oh - for good measure, E-squared has made three errors in 60 innings of play at first base.

Mr Toad's VERY Wild Ride

2011-05-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

Just returned from a couple of days' vacation in Orlando, Florida. The heat, humidity, and infestation of "love bugs" (you've really got to go to Florida in May to believe it) to the side, it was a great trip. It was a fun experience taking our five year old to Disney World.

Found one particular thing quite disturbing, however. In the Orlando Magic Kingdom park at WDW, it seems that "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" is now gone, if not forgotten; replaced, as it were, by the "Winnie the Pooh" ride. Now, "Winnie the Pooh" is a fine child's story, and Alastair greatly enjoyed the ride (he is still humming the tune from "Heffalumps and Woozles").

But did they HAVE to get rid of the iconic Mr Toad?

And for those wondering, Mr Toad is, in fact, not TRULY gone. We were waiting in the queue for one of the other rides (itself part of the real Disney experience) and spotted him.

If you're in WDW in the near future, go to the Haunted Mansion ride. Just outside, there is a pretend "Pet Cemetery" with odd pet headstones (a bird, a snake, a frooey-frilly poodle). Look at the back left of the graveyard.

Yep. The Final Resting Place for Mr Toad can be seen. It seems that, whenever Mr Toad was closed, they took the statue of the old gent from the ride and put it neatly in the back of the cemetery.

I guess that he took one of the turns in the ride just a bit too wildly.

Weird Stats of the Day

2011-05-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Toronto, in its quest to extend a streak of futility to two decades (that is to say, they have not only not won the World Series, nor even appeared in the playoffs in 18 years, they've not even really nodded at contending) lost again yesterday afternoon to the Detroit Tigers.

This loss followed a previous 9-0 defeat on Saturday afternoon in a game that, aside from the no-hitter (and near perfect game - a single walk spoiled that) by Detroit's Justin Verlander, was pretty unremarkable.

Sunday's loss dropped the Jays to 3-13 thus far in day baseball games (source: ESPN.COM). Now, the Blue Jays are 15-19 over-all, which means that the team is 12-6 in night baseball games.

Put those two records side by side:

Day: 3-13
Night: 12-6

That's a very odd juxtaposition, don't you think?

During the day, the Blue Jays as a team are hitting a robust .204, the worst in the American League (the league average is .253). At night, the team hits .282, which is not only the highest in the American League, but is so by a fairly healthy margin (Cleveland is second, at .268). For what it's worth, the AL batting average is, collectively, .246 at night.

The pattern is not repeated for Toronto pitching, who yield a .240 BA during day games, and .239 at night.

So not only do the Jays see widely different fortunes in their day/night splits - basically going from the 1968 Washington Senators to the 1927 Yankees in a sense - but have exactly the opposite pattern the rest of the league shows.

It's generally thought to be easier to hit during the day, when natural light makes it easier to see the ball, so I'm curious as to just why this might be.

A second fun stat is that yesterday's losing pitcher, Jo-Jo Reyes, has now failed to win a game in 25 consecutive starts, spanning back nearly three years (his last win was in June 2008, with Atlanta). In that span of games, Reyes has gone 0-12, with an ERA of 6.11.

In my lifetime, only two pitchers have gone that long without a win. Anthony Young went 27 starts between 1990 and 1992 without a win (0-17), and Matt Keough set the pace with zero wins in 28 straight starts from 1977-1978 (0-18).

Keough, of course, was famous for setting the standard for futility in the modern era, with a 2-17 W/L record in 1979.

We may see history of a sort made this year - if Reyes, who is "out of options" keeps going out to the mound.

Stay tuned.

Somewhere, Over a Barrel

2011-05-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

The price of oil (and therefore, gasoline and just about everything else) is up. That's not so good. But I really had to laugh at the hypocrisy of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Land of Make Believe), who is now calling for hearings into price spikes and "speculation."

In the past, I thought that fossil fuel consumption was "bad." Senator Boxer has been amongst the loudest voices calling for "carbon taxes," and has been a leader in searching for ways to curb the use of fossil fuels.

What does the esteemed Senator from California THINK would happen if her taxes were put in place??? Is she really that ignorant of economics? It seems that, if gasoline prices go to $4 or $5, or $8 per gallon (Think: European-style pricing) due to taxes, that's A-OK. But if market forces somehow result in high prices? Well, that just won't do.

It's one thing if "The Government" get the money to play around with. But private individuals? Ms. Boxer and the nanny-staters have deemed profits to be unsuitable for your use... you're such children, after all.

I truly suspect in this case that Senator Boxer really is dumb, and not just trying to score cheap, political points.

Apparently, in a speech on 15th July 2008 (the last time we saw large price spikes), her mathematical ignorance was on full display, when she offered that "8 years, divided by 2 Oil Men in the White House, equals $4 per gallon."

WELLLL.... now that the White House has two decidedly "non-oil men" (a "community organiser" and whatever it is the Biden was doing when not getting bad hair replacement surgery), how does Ms. Boxer's ratio hold up?

Eight years divided by two "oil" men = $4 per gallon gasoline.

Two years divided by zero oil men equals... Uh-oh...

Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak (or, at Least to Read and Write?)

2011-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

The above question was posed a century ago , first in Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion," and later, in the more well-known adaptation, "My Fair Lady."

The question is followed up by the observation:

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're regarded as a freak.
Oh, WHY can't the English learn to speak?"

It turns out, not only are the English unable to speak, a good lot of them can't read or write, either. According to a recent article by U.K. Secretary for Education Michael Gove, writing in the Daily Telegraph, 63% of white, working-class English children could neither read nor write properly.

His solution is to try to encourage a culture of reading, which of course, I am all for. It's a terrific idea that children should carry around books rather than tweeting, bleating, blinking gadgets.

I do, however, find it somewhat amusing Mr Gove's observations that similar U.S. youngsters have an inculcated love of books and reading, and that, for once, someone is wishing the youth of his nation be more like Americans:

Visiting America last month, I was struck by the way a culture of reading is instilled in every child at the earliest possible age, even in schools serving the poorest pupils. In Washington DC, a group of children stopped, in the middle of an engineering project, to tell me about their favourite novels

All I can say to that is, "Huh?"

Shaw, also in "Pygmalion" commented, on the use of English, that "well, in America, they haven't used it for years."

Shaw once famously quipped that the British and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language. Here, I might suggest to Michael Gove that that separation has been replaced by a common intellectual sloth and laziness. In the abandonment of proper diction and grammar, I would suggest that that gap has closed, though who has raced to close it is subject to debate.

Hint: In my opinion, it's not that Americans have run to catch UP...

Here There Be Dragons

2011-03-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

The full data from the 2010 U.S. Census are starting to come out in spits and spurts. These publications pique my interests both as a mathematician and a curious observer of political trends. That our national population is now greater than 300 million, and that what accounts for the "typical" face has changed since 1965, and is accelerating should surprise no one other than, say the residents of a sketch comedy skit from 20 years ago who pronounced to be shocked at the killing of President Kennedy (on the 25th anniversary of the event) because they "were watching another channel."

No; one has to delve a bit further down into the data to start coming across little nuggets of truly novel information. One such analysis of U.S. Census data projected that the population of this country would grow to nearly 400 million, and that roughly eight of nine new residents (86% of the growth) will be due to immigration trends post-1992. The plot below puts it somewhat more graphically:

I haven't run or attempted to validate the models, but assuming this chart is even half correct, this trend is likely to have consequences. Now obviously, the creator of the plot has shaded the impact significantly with a notorious trick - the vertical axis does not start at zero, giving the somewhat misleading impression that the "native" population will be dwarfed by newcomers, when in fact, the TOTAL population of pre-1970s Americans will remain roughly two out of three (250 of 400 million), but the point is made.

As I once read, it's useless to pretend it won't happen, so let's get realistic an assessing what the outcome in a more or less sanguine way when it does. Some changes will be good (think of all the new dining options we will have access to). Some less so. But it seems almost axiomatic that the very nature of what it means to be "American" will be different if these data and models are true.

The U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron got into a bit of hot water recently, when he commented somewhat disparagingly on the impacts of mass immigration and multi-culturalism. His remarks were chided from a somewhat ironic angle by National Review writer John Derbyshire, in a column he wrote entitled "Muscular Liberalism".:

So Britain is now no longer the home of the British — the people Winston Churchill, in that shamefully reactionary way of his, called "The Island Race." It is just another "proposition nation" — just a place, really.

There would of course be no need for David Cameron to threaten his voters with "muscular liberalism" (it sounds even bossier and more arrogant than regular liberalism) nor to tell them that they can only "belong here" if they sign up to a list of poli-sci propositions (if a native of Madagascar assents to those propositions does he thereby become British? if a Briton declines to assent to them, will he lose his citizenship?) — there would be no need for any of this vapid blather if Cameron and his predecessors had not opened up their country to settlement by millions of aliens from radically different cultures.

Generally, I enjoy Mr Derbyshire's writing, and agree with a lot that he has to say. But the conclusions he draws from his conjecture seem to be...well, wrong. I do agree with the basis of his musings - namely that in England, there has been an erosion of manners, a rise in the churlish hooliganism in the northern towns. People are just less respectful and more disorderly. Crime and welfare and lone-parent households have risen. Basically, all of the things Americans ascribe to the stereotypical Englishman in a starched collar, rain jacket, and bowler hat with his stiff-upper lip have gone, to be replaced by the somewhat tepid soup of "Cool Britannia" mixed with a generous seasoning of general bumptiousness.

I would suggest to Mr Derbyshire that the loss of these cultural norms was orchestrated not by the immigrants from Pakistan, but rather, was fostered by the likes of the idle sons of the bored and wealthy, like the son of Pink Floyd front man David Gilmour, who was recently arrested dangling from the Cenotaph. The growing confidence of immigrant minorities in the bravado of their own culture is the predictable consequence of the shrinking understanding and pride in what it meant to be English, not the cause of it.

I don't personally like the frankly ironic idea of "muscular liberalism," but I WOULD suggest that the answer to Mr Derbyshire is that what it means to be "British" (or more directly here, "American") is an acceptance in the ideals that make up the society, not where you were born. More directly, to answer his question "if a native of Madagascar assents to those propositions does he thereby become British?" I would reply, simply, yes. A nation is made up of ideas, not genetics. It's made of a common understanding of culture and values, not ancestry and parentage.

How else to explain the famous 1967 quip of the U.K. Foreign Secretary that Lew Kwan Yew (prime minister of Singapore) was "the best bloody Englishman east of Suez?"

In the more proximate discussion on what it means to be American, I would say simply that those who wish to come to our shores, embrace the ideals of our country (life, liberty, respect for the rule of law, self-reliance, and the premise that we are all created equal), then that is an American, much more so than having the good fortune of having been born here.

Big Mac Falafal, and a Side of Fries

2011-03-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

I was today reading the comments of one of my favourite "bloggers," Joanne Jacobs, who writes mostly about education and education issues. (Jacobs for many years wrote a column for the San Jose Mercury News, which was the newspaper in San Jose, California, where I lived at the time).

As usual, Jacobs's musings provided an interesting potpourri of observations about the state of schools and education more broadly. I was struck by an article she had found, published initially in the Financial Times by the renowned writer Katie Roiphe. Roiphe, it seems, is now in the midst of the angst-ridden battle that afflicts people of a certain class on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Whilst the bulk of us perched more precariously on the edge of what the playwright Sam Shephard called "the striving class" concern ourselves with filling out brackets for the annual NCAA tournament (including people who pose as working class heroes, only with expensive, designer clothes, Secret Service protection, and access to a 747 jet at whim), a different sort of "selection" drama unfolds for people in Roiphe's circle.

Namely, the annual "which exclusive private school will my kid get into?" Oh, and we're not talking about Harvard. Or Andover.

Nope - this is about PRESCHOOL.

In Roiphe's own words:

When T.S. Eliot wrote about the cruelest month "mixing memory and desire", he might also have had in mind that this is the season of school admissions in New York City. So as the sooty piles of snow melt into gray puddles, parents obsess over the letters they will and won't receive from the school that will or won't confer on their radiant progeny the blessing of its approval.

You see, the ultimate fate of little Aiden or Sasha or Maya (or some other vaguely bohemian-sounding name - John just won't do) hangs in the balance, and will ultimately be determined, by the age of five.

Now, mocking the foibles of our cultural betters has been around at least since the first time a school boy set down Pride and Prejudice in a fit of boredom and stared out the window, so there's nothing new here. But what I found funniest was Roiphe's keen insight that the lot of limousine liberals want to impute to themselves a certain hip, diverse, but not-at-all-concerned-with-money-coolness, and the best means by which to do this is by sending the precious family dauphin to just the right school.

It HAS to have diversity, of course. But for heaven's sake, not TOO much diversity. Again, to quote Roiphe

These same parents will also very quickly point out that their school is "diverse". The reality is that their school, like all the other schools, is a tiny bit diverse. There are a few kids who will come a very long way every morning, from another neighbourhood, on a scholarship, but the large bulk of the class very much resembles in background the other kids in the class. This is a puzzling word, "diverse", thrown around all the school promotions, into pamphlets and brochures and websites, because if you were truly committed to sending your children somewhere "diverse", would you not be selecting a different school, one that doesn't require almost all of its students to pay tuition that could support several villages in Africa? If the catalogues were being totally honest about what parents are looking for, they advertise soupçon of diversity...

Basically put, the "diversity" in places like the sort Roiphe and others chase after the way an aging debutante in a Tennessee Williams play pursues gentlemen callers of shady means is rather like the side salads places like Wendy's offer to make us feel less guilty when ordering a Triple and a Frosty.

Goodbye (Magnetic) Yellow Brick Road

2010-10-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, the Sony Corporation announced it would cease production of its famous "Walkman" devices. For those unawares that music was actually once something one either paid for or waited patiently to hear on the radio rather than "on demand," this machine was a revolutionary little device that allowed one to listen to FM radio or cassette tapes whilst exercising, working in the yard, or engaged in some other mobile pursuit.

Oh; I reckon I ought to add that a "cassette" was a type of media that was popular somewhere back in the late Cretaceous Period that allowed one to record music for later playback. And it involved moving parts.

My first "Walkman" was about half the size of a tissue box - it seemed incredibly compact at the time, and I used it walking back and forth to school or when cutting the lawn. In those days, that latter task was not yet one "Americans wouldn't do."

There is little doubt in my mind that the pace of technological advancement is getting faster (see Moore's Law as an example; devices are becoming obsolete quicker than you can say "Akihabara." ), and that generally, this is a good thing. I don't lament the passing of the Walkman.

My thoughts today are about how, with the change in technology comes another sort of evolution that is going unrecorded, and that is around the obsolescence of language itself. In 10 years, will people know what a "cassette" was? Or, more obliquely, will euphemisms like "rewind" remain, even though the meaning is lost?

It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but not one that's unprecedented. Examples are manifold. Think of the colloquialisms that are common in our language"

"Dial" a number
"Turn" the channel
In the same "Area Code"
Performing "in the clutch."

My brother in law is only 10 years younger than I am, but when I was discussing music with him some years back and mentioned listening to "45s," he was truly puzzled. I might as well have said I heard it on the wireless or purchased scrolls for the Victrola.

No one owns a rotary phone, so "dialling" is essentially meaningless. We use digital tuners on our televisions. Area codes, once actually tied to physical locations are no longer applicable (my mobile is in the 408 "Area Code," which is 2500 miles away.)

So, to the Walkman, I simply quote an oldie by the Stone Ponies (a band from the late 1960s):

"Goodbye... I'll be leaving. I see no sense, in crying and grieving."

Were the Good Old Days REALLY that Good?

2010-10-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Time waits for no man, as the saying goes, and thus I like everyone fortunate not to run into medical (or other) problems of a serious sort, confront the wonders of middle age. In looking back at memories that grow longer from a life that grows shorter, I am often struck with nostalgia.

But I wonder... Were the old days really that "good?"

Case in point. A couple of weeks ago, in travelling home from a trip to Hawaii, we stopped for breakfast in a restaurant in LAX called "Ruby's Diner." For those of you unfamiliar with Southern California, it's a retro-themed diner that claims to be a purveyor of "40's style food and fun" (emphasis added).

I'm not sure, exactly, what "40's style food" is (my imagination is a lot of simple meat-heavy meals fried heavily in lard), but I was struck by the idea of "40's style fun." When I think of the 40's, I think of a terrible war, rationing, and austerity.

What of that is "fun?"

One might argue that the times were simpler (some aspects of that may be good, some less so), or that the movies were better, or perhaps the music. But it seems more likely just an appeal to nostalgia.

I wonder if, in history, people have always been so eager to recollect earlier times so fondly? I'm not talking about on a personal level - most of us who are over 40 recall with some fondness our youth, when we had less responsibility, less pressure, and perhaps less weight around the middle.

Retro-style seems to be omnipresent, whether it's the new wave of nostalgia for the 1980s that has arisen with Sony's announcement that it will discontinue the "walk man," or flashback music on the radio, or movies that paint the times of Queen Elizabeth I in soft-cell light (ignoring of course the abysmal hygiene and squalor that the time held for most).

I'm a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, who wrote light opera in the Victorian era. One of their most famous works - a play that formed the subject of the acclaimed movie "Topsy-Turvy" about 10 years ago, is "The Mikado," a comedy ostensibly about Imperial Japan, but less obviously, a satirical commentary on Victorian England itself. In the First Act, the Lord High Executioner has a song called "I've Got a Little List," wherein he delineates a group of people who, if necessity arose, would go onto his list of convenient "customers" whom society would not miss.

On his list is the

Idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone.
All centuries but this and every country but his own.

So apparently, at least these to recognised the theme of remembering the past as being better than it really was.

It's my opinion that at some points in history (the 1950s, perhaps) the focus was on the future and not the past. It was the space-age. Cars looked sleeker. People envisioned space travel.

Then again, maybe I'm guilty of my own nostalgic myopia. The 1950s also was a time of yellow and avocado coloured appliances, polyester suits, and cars with monstrously ugly tail fins.

.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad (and Foreign) Wolf?

2010-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

Fear is back in fashion, at least if the chattering classes are to be believed. Not that it ever went out, of course.

In the space of a week, we've seen at least a couple of flaps that lead to cries of 'xenophobia.' First, German chancellor Angela Merkel, in addressing young members of her party, made the comment that Germany's attempts at building a "multicultural society have utterly failed." And more recently, liberal columnist and writer Juan Williams was excommunicated from even more liberal National Public Radio for comments he made regarding his personal fear of people who "are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims."

Both cases resulted in a wave of editorials on the impolitic nature of the comments. In particular, James Carroll of the Boson Globe here declaimed a perceived rising tide of xenophobia.

Whatever one's opinions of the comments, I think it's fair to ask, "where does one draw the line between a legitimate desire for a nation and its people to ask those who wish to join them to accommodate their new homeland, not the other way round, and real, honest-to-goodness xenophobia - the irrational fear of those who are 'foreign' solely because they are foreign."

Setting aside the history of Germany towards its ethnic and religious minorities and semantic arguments about what a "Christian" country is, if one examines the facts on the ground - not only in Germany, but more generally in Western Europe - is it fair to ask how successfully the so-called multi-cultural model has actually worked, and not in some sort of Pollyanna way, but in reality? Are ethnic Germans and ethnic Turks skipping through fields of daisies singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke?"

Carroll's own article points to second and third generation immigrants with scant language skills, stuck on the economic fringe. The Guardian in London - hardly the English equivalent of National Review commented on, e.g., the fact that German mosques need to bring in Turkish imams because the population doesn't speak German sufficiently well, and there are simply none trained in Germany who can speak Turkish. Regularly, we are treated to stories about riots in the ethnic banlieues of Paris, or the murders of people like Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands.

I disagree with Angela Merkel on at least this - Western democracies, and in particular the US, are pluralistic societies, and to some degree, innovation, growth, and advancement in the arts, science, culture, and industry have been the hallmarks of the West for nearly 500 years because of our willingness to incorporate new ideas. And I think that our societies benefit enormously when industrious, enterprising people are welcomed to our shores. Nations that shut their doors to new paradigms are doomed to stagnation and decline - one need look no further than China during the end of its imperial days, or the Arab middle east today.

But I think it's entirely appropriate as part of the bargain that those coming make an attempt to assimilate to the nation that they've chosen to join. And it's not xenophobia to ask that some core principles that can define a nation beyond simply a geographic, economic, and political corporation be identified.

E pluribus unum, despite what Al Gore mis-spoke some years ago, means America is more than a place to sleep and way to earn a dollar.

Put simply - Carroll is right that this is not a "Christian" country; but separation of Church and state equally applies to separation of Mosque and state. And in this respect, Williams's comments that those who self-identify ostentatiously that, first and foremost, they are any particular religious adherents and then and only thenAmericans are cause for pause, whether they be extremist Christians, Jews, or, yes, Moslems.

Educating Sebastian - Education and the Crab Pot

2010-07-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away

While we devotin'
Full time to floatin'
Under the sea

Just finished reading the excellent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System by acclaimed education researcher and writer Diane Ravitch. On the whole, it's an excellent, fair treatment of the current infatuation with school testing, accountability, and choice in the zeal to reform our troubled system of public education. I don't agree with much of what Ravitch writes, and she's a bit too unquestioning of the motives of the big teacher unions, but the book is a good read.

Her ultimate conclusion - that applying corporate models of statistical testing and reward or rebuke - is at the least, not a panacea for the problems of public education and perhaps actually is undermining the real purpose, which is to offer the best education to the most students possible.

One area I do find particularly problematic is her conclusion that the introduction of school choice, either through vouchers, charter schools, or some admixture of the two will lead to an even worse situation than the current status quo, in large part because the results show that the benefits of this sort of reform lead to the decidedly muddled result that some students do particularly well under such a scheme, and some students show little to no benefit or even do worse.

Her analysis asks "Who are the students who benefit?"

Well, the most important predictor of who will receive the most benefit from vouchers/charters are those students whose parents are heavily involved and invested in their childrens' educations, and those students who are most motivated to learn. Those whose parents do not bother to go to parent/teacher conferences, who spend hours in front of the tee vee and not books, and who are more interested in disrupting the class than learning do not show any significant benefit from being placed into a "better" learning environment.

The charters/private schools that do succeed succeed because they have the ability to impose discipline on their students, demand that they listen to their teachers, and can remove from the classroom or expel students who fail to do both.

In short, the "good" students.

Carrying her argument a bit further, if the "good" students are removed and sent to the charter/private school, what's left back in the "regular" public schools are the kids who need the most "help."

This of course is no revelation, at least not if one spends any time to think about the problem.

What I find troubling here is then the question that Ravitch asks implicitly: "What is the role of universal, public education, especially in poor urban areas? She is troubled (rightly) that the current reform agenda will undermine the traditional, democratic role of the public schools, perhaps leading to ever more unequal outcomes for those at the bottom.

I suppose that Ms. Ravitch has the luxury of worrying about such a thing whilst all the time her children presumably attend "good" schools, and live in a home where books and learning are valued.

The issue with Ms. Ravitch's proposal is what is called the crab pot analogy. Simply put, if crabs are captured and placed into temporary holding pots, some may struggle towards the top and escape, but will ultimately be pulled back into the pot by others at the bottom, and thus, none escapes.

Trapped in terrible schools are students who truly want to learn, who will do as they are instructed by their teachers, will put in the extra effort over their books, who will eschew television to complete their work, and whose only real means of escaping poverty is education. Students who, if not offered the scholarships/vouchers/charter schools will in all likelihood be condemned to remain in the crab pot.

Ultimately, our public schools should have a vision of providing the best education to as many students as they can. But is there not room for some sort of help for the poor who value education and are willing to put the time and effort into obtaining it? If I were the parent of a bright, motivated child whose only crime was being poor, I would be somewhat angry at the misplaced concern of the upper middle class about democracy in my neighbourhood.

Question: Is There Actual Value to an MBA?

2010-04-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

The title of today’s walk on the random side is of course a rhetorical device. Obviously, an MBA degree itself does have value. It is at the same time a credential and the keys to the door behind which the higher steps on the career ladder are hidden. This door, in my personal experience, is jealously guarded by those who already have the key (i.e., other MBA types) who do not want the barbarians - people with other types of education and skills - past the gates. It's equally apparent that inside our top biz schools, valuable instructions on hair styling, shoe polishing, and how to insert flashing transitions into impenetrable and opaque PowerPoint slide decks are being provided.

No; the question I ask is, beyond the ipso facto value of putting those three letters on to your curriculum vitae, is the information taught in an MBA school of any actual, demonstrable value?

The question came to mind today as I read through the brilliance on display at the blog for the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

The article, titled “Pharma’s Future Depends on These Three Trends,” was prepared by Sunil Gupta, a chaired professor of “business administration.” Professor Gupta holds forth over a number of paragraphs over what the pharmaceutical industry needs to do to succeed. The tone taken implies that the industry itself is in peril, which in at least my opinion, greatly overstates the case.

What earth-shaking trends does the professor identify? The incursion of generic products, the importance of emerging markets, and the dawn of evidence-based medicine.

Taken as a group, all of these ideas are more or less correct. The value of such information is, shall we say, dubious.

Whilst all of these "insights" are relevant, and may in fact be helpful to people unfamiliar with the current state of pharma (e.g., MBA students at Harvard), they are all well-known and part of the DD process in the pharma companies I know of. "Evidence-based medicine" and individualised treatments are not a wave of the future, but in fact are here, now. And have been for some time. The approach is successful, but any company that is not currently operating with this in its workstream is one that is almost sure to fail. Soon.

The branded generics approach is one that has been considered by all of the big, branded pharma companies; some have adopted it (e.g., sanofi-aventis) and some have not. The jury is out as to how well this will play.

Professor Gupta’s points about emerging markets, especially

India

, are somewhat novel and intriguing.

India

as a market presents challenges unique to

India

China

has its own basket of opportunities and challenges, but I think is a far better bet in the long term. And there are other emerging markets that may in the short to medium term present even better opportunities.

In short, the challenges facing pharma are not marketing; not in the traditional sense. Increasing strains on large, frequently government-payors, demands for increasing evidence of value for medicine, and massive demographic shifts are putting pressure on the drug development process that no amount of marketing wizardry is going to solve. The solutions, such as they are, are going to revolve around development strategies, reliance on genetic and other bio-markers for identification of targeted patient populations and sub-populations, increased use on economic models to support the clinical process, and creative ways to work with and help payors circumscribe their budgets. They do not involve clever, short-sentenced, poorly-referenced PowerPoint slide decks.

The bottom line here is that what I see coming out of the mouths (and pens and keyboards) of high-priced MBA graduates is largely bromides, case studies, obvious “solutions,” and generally cliches of marginal utility. Very, very little creative, innovative, or provocative ideas ever emanate from their well-coiffed heads. The reason may be that business school ‘classes’ largely consist of case studies, many of which represent mistakes made in the past by businesses.

These suggestions would be of very high value to, for example Wile E. Coyote, who seems forever doomed to fall into the same traps, Saturday after Saturday. Perhaps if he got an MBA, he would not use ACME for his instant-hole, explosive, and propulsive needs. Better yet, he might figure out that the coyote-bird-meal paradigm needs to be re-examined.

But for a business looking for actual, workable change solutions, I am less sure.

Does Lady Gaga "Fit the Suit?"

2010-03-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Those who don't study history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. This is not a good thing, no matter how "groovy" some of the past may be.

This was brought to mind recently when I saw a FaceBook discussion about the pros and cons of Lady Gaga. To make a short story even shorter, one party was of the opinion that Lady Gaga is a star more or less in spite of herself, because she has no remarkable talent other than an ability to package and publicise herself. The other party offered that the ability to package oneself is a kind of 'talent.'

Whilst I have no particular objection to Lady Gaga (I agree her 'singing,' such as it is, does not likely provoke jealousy in Julie Andrews) I do tend to think that she is a bellwether of sorts - that we have almost come full circle from where the music business was in 1962.

Put simply, I wonder if Lady Gaga (and 'Fergie' and American Idol) were not foretold more than 30 years ago? A lot of people of roughly my age watched countless hours of Brady Bunch repeats, and thus will react with a knowing nod to the name 'Johnny Bravo.'

He Fit the Suit

In this 1973 episode, Greg Brady was selected to be a singing star - not because he was particularly talented, but because "he fit the suit." Whether he could sing or not was beside the point.

In an age where a person need only sing in the same postal code as the key of the song in order to allow sound engineers with elaborate equipment to work their magic, I think Greg could have had a brilliant career. That one need only "look the part" is the ultimate triumph of style over substance.

The bad perm, gull wing collars, and mood rings may be gone, but Johnny Bravo is back.

Those who know rudimentary music history of the 1950s and 1960s will recall the struggle between musical acts (e.g., the Beatles) and the record labels and writers (e.g., Leiber and Stoller). With few exceptions (Chuck Berry), prior to Lennon and McCartney, the acts were pretty much puppets; think: the animatronic "children" in Disney's Small World ride. Lennon and McCartney changed the paradigm, though not without a struggle. One of the attempts to keep control - the Monkees - gave Don Kirshner one last shot. The story, ironically, is played out in one of the episodes of The Monkees ('The Devil and Peter Tork').

Who knew that, 40 years later, the ghost of Kirshner would return, and Johnny Bravo would not be saying "Adios."

Randy Jones and Randy Johnson: An Epic in Two Acts

2010-01-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

Recently, San Francisco Giants left-hander Randy Johnson announced his retirement, ending a long, successful, peripatetic career. It seems silly now, but there was a time when he so struggled with his control that he was a guy who was considered a high-risk prospect. Enough so that he was not the main guy in the trade that brought Mark Langston from Seattle to Montreal (look up Brian Holman).

Johnson now is a guaranteed Hall of Famer; second all-time in strikeouts. More than 300 wins.

In reading about Johnson, one often sees comments about his being a hard-throwing lefty, with frequent comments about the stereotype of left handers being soft-tossers who get by on guile and trickery. What serious baseball fan is unawares of the phrase "crafty left-hander?" There has been no shortage of lefties who had long, even successful careers who seemed like their fastballs would not break a window pane. Randy Jones won the 1976 Cy Young award, for example. Jesse Orosco pitched until he was 100. Frank Tanana had a very long career with a fastball that would not bruise a baby's butt. That's not entirely true of course; Orosco was only 72 when he retired, and a lot of people forget that at the start of his career, Tanana had a good fastball.

Johnson certainly went against the common thinking, which of course, is frequently wrong.

But why does this perception exist? ARE left hand pitchers more likely to have less than blistering fastballs?

Of course, only a real analysis would reveal the truth, but here is a thought. There certainly is a tremendous bias in big league scouting for guys who can throw hard. For the most part, this bias is useful - a pitcher who can only throw 82 mph had better have some extra-ordinary other talent. All else being equal, the guy who can throw 95 is going to have a much better career than the guy who can only throw 88.

But looking at the distributions I think reveals something. Demographic and epidemiological data show that in the US, about 11 per cent of the population (one in nine) is left-handed. If this were to transfer to major league rosters, a standard pitching staff (10 pitchers) would have about one lefty. This is not the case. Usually, a roster will have at least one starter, one "left hand specialist," and one other left hand pitcher. A cursory look at the rosters reveals that left hand pitchers have about a 300 per cent premium to their value versus right handers.

To see this effect, look also at the roster of outfielders (infield is a biased sample, since there are NO left hand throwers playing any of the positions other than first base for obvious, physical reasons), and compare the percentage of left hand throwing outfielders to left hand pitchers.

What is the implication?

In order to fill the rosters with lefties, teams have to go deeper into the talent pool. Guys who if they were not left-handed would have quit baseball and taken up work elsewhere are on big league rosters. That means a lot of pitchers with mediocre, or worse, fastballs.

Put simply, pitchers like Randy Johnson seem like exceptions to the rule because there are a lot more guys on rosters like Scott Schoenweis than guys like Doug Jones.

The MG as Metaphor for "Authenticity"

2010-01-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

I have a handful of passions in my life; my wife and son, naturally. Baseball, though this grows more lukewarm as time (and awareness of the more Mondrian aspects of professional sport) erodes the soft sand at the edges of youth's shore. Mathematics. And more recently, classic cars.

In a quick historical synopsis, the funds I earned from my first job (refinishing wood floors) I put towards purchasing my first car. Having grown up in the US, which is to put it mildly, a car-culture, this is a big event for a lot of males in the demographic 16-25 (at the time, I was 20). The car I *wanted* to buy was a nearly half-century old MG. It's not a terribly practical car - two seats; no trunk. Built before Ralph Nader helped squeeze a lot of the joy out of motoring and therefore not equipped with seat belts. It had the rumoured reliability of a Central American junta. And thus, unsurprisingly, common sense (in the verbum caro factum of my mother) intervened, and a much more reasonable Datsun Stanza ended up in the driveway. Over the next 20 years, I often thought of that car, and thus as middle-age-dom settled in, and along with it the means to essentially spend money on some things that propriety and youth made impossible, I acquired the car I had wanted in my youth.

For a visual, think of the film American Beauty, where Kevin Spacey (the anti-hero) says to his wife, "It's the car I always wanted, and now I have it. I rule."

Because I am not terribly mechanical, when this or that goes wrong, I turn to the internet for help and suggestions on fine tuning, and one of joys of classic car ownership is that there exists a quite interesting brotherhood (and it's mostly, though not exclusively male) of people who share this interest, and are very helpful and keen on helping out one of the bretheren, no matter the level of mechanical skill.

At the site I visit, there recently appeared a discussion about what will become of the objects of our passion when we are gone. I am on the young end of the spectrum, and the fear is that the younger generations will not have the appreciation or the knowledge to maintain vehicles that will by then be in the range of 75 years of age. And I got to thinking about these vehicles as a metaphor for the common buzzword one hears, "authentic."

Personally, I find one of the charms of these cars (and there are of course other things that fit this category equally well) is that they are at once elegant and simple. My day to day car is a PT Cruiser; it has a lot of technical gizmos, including little lights that illuminate when something is wrong. It even can self-diagnose a problem and display it in the digital odometer. And yet, if something goes wrong, despite (because of?) all this wizardry, I simply have no hope of fixing the problem. It's almost a perfect metaphor for the problems of modern medicine - we can diagnose the illness, but not really treat it. For example, most recently, my PT Cruiser, which was running seemingly perfectly, popped up the check engine light. A couple of quick turns of the key, and the problem (P-0441) appeared, which is apparently something that the computer detects is wrong with the emissions control.

Contrast that to my MG; it has *no* computers. The body is attached to its frame with simply, flat-head screws. There is no fuel injection. It cannot tell me when something is wrong. There is not even a fuel gauge to let me know when it is running low. Knowing that there is a problem requires me to be aware of the idiosyncracies of the car - is the engine making strange noises? Does it take longer to start? How far have I driven since I put gasoline in? I have to pay attention to how the engine looks and how the whole of the thing performs. In short, I have a much more "real" connection to it.

And if something goes wrong, almost surely it's a problem that even I can delve in to with a simple armamentarium of a rubber hammer, a couple of spanners, and a flat-head screwdriver.

It's a throw-back to a time when machines were simple, not because of faddish, Hollywood-derived ideas of authenticity (think "Slow Food"), but because life itself was simpler. That is not to say that they were better, necessarily - these cars tended to break down more often. They could not go from 0 to 60 in five seconds, or cruise at 80 MPH like even the most basic econobox of today. But they came with the explicit understanding that you, as the driver, would invest something in their day to day use, and that that time could accomplish something.

And I think in that is something charming to these cars, something "real." To me, from time to time getting your hands dirty is what "authentic" means, and that is why I think that these cars will persevere, even when the brotherhood of current caretakers passes.

Two Roads Diverged in the Woods...What Will We Leave Behind

2010-01-12T13:40:00.000-08:00

A couple of items have me thinking today. The first is a thread on my favourite MG Bulletin Board Site; the second is a song from the "Mary Poppins" soundtrack, now a favourite of my four-year-old son. Seemingly divergent ideas, but both speak to me in a similar way.

The former, the thread about MG cars, discusses the question of who will take on our passions for antique cars (in my case, a 1952 MG-TD) once we are gone. The latter is an observation made towards the end of the film, where Mr Banks is ruminating on his apparent, perceived ruin:

A man has dreams of walking with giants

To carve his niche in the edifice of time

Before the mortar of his zeal has a chance to congeal

What I'm thinking about today is the modern view of time, its passage, what we want to leave behind, and indeed, if we ought to leave anything behind at all. Our ideas of permanence and impermanence have taken different views over time, of course. As has modernity. What we value changes. The Victorians definitely had ideas of grand monuments; Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote his epic poem Ozymandias about the folly of such an idea. Today we claim to value "authenticity," but talk about footprints in not always good terms.

I plan a couple of my own thoughts, but am curious about how others think about what constitutes lasting value, what "lasting" even means, and what we would want to leave behind if we could, Ozymandias be damned.

Christmas Time Is Here

2009-12-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

Well, it's one week until Christmas. Tree is up. Presents are bought (if not wrapped). Plans made. Much misteltoeing. Kids jingle-belling. Everyone is, indeed, telling you'll be of good cheer.

Here in the Great Garden St, despite the economic mess, people are optimistic. A new regime is going to Trenton in January. Maybe Chris Christie will succeed where Jon Corzine failed.

Why do I sense a bit of grinchiness in the air?

Glad you asked.

On the radio the past couple of days, battling ads are running about a possible vote to "legalise" gay marriage. You see, the lame duck legislature have been debating these past few days whether to extend marriage rights to gay couples. Setting aside that Gov. Corzine has had four years to do this, and that this plainly looks political, I am struck by the general nastiness of the tone of those who putatively are out to "protect" marriage.

Now, I typically tend to lean to the right of Atilla the Hun on most issues, and generally think that the Democratic Party are out to sea - and have been out there for so long that they've long forgotten why the set sail to begin with and the general direction of the land - on virtually everything. My right-wing bona fides are seldom under question. I personally have been called a crypto-fascist by Morton Kondracke, and I assume he does not hand out that badge the way John D. Rockefeller used to hand out dimes.

But on this issue, I think that largely, the conservatives are about as wrong as they possibly could be.

The arguments range from the bizarre and absurd (allowing gay couples to marry will lead to various pairings such as man and goat, or triplings, or others in a smorgasbord of weird permutations) to the sincere and wrong (religious objections).

I honestly do not see how any of these can stand scrutiny.

What is marriage? I don't mean from the sense of playing card games like sixty-six or from a cultural or nostalgic point of view. What I mean is, since this is largely a discussion about government and the laws, what is marriage in the way it is viewed by the State? How it ought to be viewed by the state?

Simply, in my estimation a marriage is a contract between two people that spells out certain privileges and obligations. It's not about love (though a good marriage should have a healthy dose of that). It is a commitment between two parties that they will share debts, legal burdens, be allowed to make certain decisions should the other become incapacitated, who will get what in the inevitable instance that one dies.

That's pretty much it.

The human-goat (thanks Michael Savage for that one) argument is patently absurd, since a contract cannot be entered into by a party that is non compos mentis.

I understand the religious tradition, and even the utilitarian perspective that marriage ought to promote fidelity, stability, and continuity. I've seen the data, and am completely convinced that children are far better off raised in married families. But that's beside the point. Allowing gays to enter into legal contracts will not make unmarried couples less likely to have children out of wedlock, and they can scarcely make the data on illegitimacy or divorce for that matter worse.

From a religious perspective, I go to Mass pretty much every Sunday. My own personal views on morality of homosexuality are irrelevant. What the people living next to me, let alone in California or Maine do has no bearing on my marriage or my views of marriage. Unless one of them is my father in law, I don't really see how they can, and if how other people live their lives somehow undermined the serious regard I have or do not have for the sacrament of marriage then my faith would have to be pretty shallow indeed.

There is a famous passage in the Gospels where Jesus, confronted with the conundrum of whether to pay tax (which the Pharisees viewed as potential blasphemy) or not (which they new was a crime under Roman law), answered by showing a coin and asking whose image was on that coin. When the answer came back Caesar, he famously said that one is to render unto God what is God's, and to render unto Caesar what is Caesar.

From my understanding of the Gospels, he was not saying you should pay your taxes, but rather, that His Kingdom was not of this earth, and things such as money (and by extension, contracts) were of this world. The coin of His realm is the soul, and the wage is how we behave and how we treat one another. Whether you view homosexuality as a sin, He also was quite plain in saying to whom judgment was reserved, and I am pretty sure it's not me.

Frankly, the only real reason I see for anti-gay marriage ads is meanness. I do not know a lot of gay people, but I do know more than one. Some are nice people. Some are obnoxious. Whether or not I think gays are acting according to God's will, I do not see why the government should deny them the basic right to enter into contracts with one another, and to treat those contracts with the same respect as any other.

So this year, at Christmas time, in the time of miracles and of the forgiveness of man (the reason Christ came into the world), instead of puffing ourselves up "defending" marriage and righteousness, let's take a look at how we are living up to one of the few things that He asked when He came to the world.

How are we treating our fellow man?

The answer to that question is far more relevant in my view than any Propositions we sign or lawmakers we call to defend marriage against a threat that just does not exist.

Farming Out the World Series

2009-10-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight the Fall Classic (to be completed in November) begins. Yankees. Phillies. Baseball's all-time winningest franchise (26 titles) versus its all-time losingest (first team to amass 10,000 losses). The Jersey Turnpike Series.

There was an interesting article today at MLB.COM that made the case that money alone does not account for the Phillie-Yankee series; the implication here is that the two teams have more or less gotten to the pinnacle of the baseball world along the same, home-grown model.

In a nut-shell, I wonder what reality the article's author is operating in.

Now, I have great respect for the Yankees' success. The team certainly is a collection of great talents, and winning in New York is not always the easiest thing in the world. The fans are demanding. The Boss is legendary. But friends, the idea that money does not play a role - in fact, an enormous role - is nuts.

I am a mathematician, and in maths, there are two ideas that are complimentary. One is that evidence be necessary; the other that evidence be sufficient. NO ONE is saying that money is sufficient as a criterion for success (c.f., the New York Mets). But it is becoming harder and harder to argue that it is not necessary.

The New York Yankees have the highest payroll, by a wide margin, in professional sport. They also have been in the playoffs in 12 of the past 13 seasons. During that span, the Pittsburgh Pirates, with a payroll that is less than the Yankee infield collects, not only have not made the playoffs, but have not had a winning season since 1993. Ironically, that's also the year that Barry Bonds left Pittsburgh when shown the money by the SF Giants.

The argument in the article is that the Yankee core (Jeter, Petite, Posada, River, Robinson Cano) are home-grown talents.

That much is true.

But the point is, in order to build a winning team, you need more than two or three good players, and those players need to play together to develop. Given the economics of baseball today, to draft three high quality players, you realistically need to get good picks over a period of five years. Those players then need to be "hits" (i.e., they cannot be guys like Mark Lewis or Corey Snider). They cannot get hurt or wash out. And it takes time for them to reach the big leagues, mature, and gel.

There is a reason why New York could keep Jeter and Posada and Rivera, and that the Cleveland Indians could not keep Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia. When these players get near their peak value - i.e., when you are in position to build a championship team - they will be going off to New York. Or Boston. Or the Dodgers.

And that ignores the fact that the Yankees are able to add to this "core" with stars like Mark Texeira and Alex Rodriguez when necessary, to fill gaps. Teams like the Yankees sign Johnny Damon. Teams like the Toronto Blue Jays sign guys like Lyle Overbay.

The fact that the Yankees can shop for all-stars is covered to some degree by sports writers. The other side of the coin - that they need not worry about their best players bolting - is not, and I would argue is at least as important a result of the economics of the game today.

2009 World Series by Proxy

2009-10-27T08:02:00.001-07:00

Well, it's finally here. The Fall Classic. The Jersey Turnpike Series (Yankees and Phillies) begins tomorrow night (Wednesday the 28th). That's 28th of October, of course, meaning that the games almost surely will be played, by schedule, in November. Who will be the first Mr November (apologies to Reggie Jackson)?

Could not help but notice, the Game One starters are slated to be C.C. Sabathia (Yankees) and Cliff Lee (Phillies), winners of the two previous Cy Young awards...for the Cleveland Indians. The Yankees are a talented team, but looking at the roster, one sees the predilection of Mr. Steinbrenner to collect prize players the way the rest of us collected their cards.

It got me to thinking about the economics of the game as they exist in the early 21st century. My team, the Toronto Blue Jays, also has a prized pitcher (Roy Halladay, himself a prior Cy Young winner) who was the subject of relentless talk this summer about possible trades to the Yankees and Phillies and Boston and a number of other teams. Ultimately, they decided not to cash him in in yet another chapter in the almost criminal incompetence of its now former regime. Due to the economics of the game (a handful of teams - the Yankees, Boston, the Dodgers) have seemingly unlimited financial resources that allow them to plug any perceived gaps, and thus make the playoffs year in and year out (either Boston or the Yankees has been in the post-season every year since 1994). At the other end are teams like Cleveland who from time to time will get in through a bit of luck and development of young talent. Inevitably, they are forced due to the massive chequebooks of the "big market" teams to trade their best talent for a Whitman's Sampler of "prospects" and mediocre veterans.

So, I am very curious at exactly what point the managers and GMs of the talent producers (Cleveland) are going to recognise the reality that it's in their best interests to get as much out of their talent right now, while they still have it, instead of worrying about the mid and late-stages of these guys' careers?

Over the past 30 years or so, the workload of pitchers has been increasingly monitored - first in the number of innings thrown, until now, where each pitch is counted. In 1980, the Oakland Athletics had a staff that averaged 20 complete games per year. This year, Roy Halladay lead the league with nine.

Does that strategy make sense?

Put simply, if you were the GM of the Cleveland Indians, and you had a pitcher of the talent of Cliff Lee or C.C. Sabathia, why would you worry about how many innings the guy throws, when the rent on that is not going to come due until he is in New York, Boston, or Los Angeles? Today, pitchers are kept on more or less strict pitch counts and inning limits, with the recognition that has arisen that a high workload early in a pitcher's career will have an impact when he reaches 30 or so.

But if the future for C.C. Sabathia is in New York, why is that the concern of the Cleveland Indians? If I were the Indians' management, I would want to get 300 innings out of Sabathia every year I had him.

At some point, I fully expect that the small-market teams are going to wise up to the fact that economics and the future are not on their side.

The New New Media

2009-10-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Today got "tweeted" an interesting feed via Twitter (Motto: you cannot spell "Twitter" without "Twit."), from Guy Kawasaki. Normally, I would pass right over anything from a source such as Mr Kawasaki, since he is one of the most infamous of the Apple Cultists.

In this article, Judy Shapiro (a marketing professional for various e-interests) makes a case for salvaging the traditional media (e.g., the NY Times and other print media) in various ways. Not surprisingly, given her job and her expertise, the advice includes the usual bromides about building "communities" of users, making content more "fun," shifting paradigms (maybe Bain and Company have finally triumphed with their cliches and cereal box sophistries), and generally moving away from the expensive and generally old-fashioned, un-hip "push" model for information to the internet model of information "pull" to draw in news "consumers" and ultimately creating not readers, but "affiliates."

I'm willing to set aside the absurd notion that the creation of information for an educated populace of the sort a real democracy needs to function can be created in a sort of ersatz C-Net on Sesame Street, but there is a number of enormous, existential problems here.

What Ms Shapiro and other proponents of the "new" media fail to grasp is that it's not the entertainment value of the 'news' content that makes it vital, but rather, the quality of that information. It's indisputable that the internet revolution, such as it is, has created an enormous quantity of information that can be had for, at most, nominal charge. For those who want to find out what the actual name of the Skipper character on Gilligan's Island was or who played first base for the 1975 Boston Red Sox was, or other such trivia, all are readily available. But this explosion in quantity has not been accompanied by an equal growth in accuracy or wisdom. One need only go to Google, and enter in a search of "Vince Foster" or "Barack Obama Birth Certificate" to confirm that there is a wealth of junk masquerading as news that is equally available. In short, it's the difference between Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Gathering news is serious business, and relies on serious, professional reporters. That does not include Arianna Huffington.

Ms Shapiro goes on to argue that the current model (fee for content) cannot work because, ultimately, there are too many "leaks" in the systems - security and other holes that can be exploited. So, once the Times publish something, it ultimately will escape and be had by people for "free."

That may be true, but what is the end-game of the exercise Ms Shapiro is proposing - where 'news' is gathered by 'communities' or 'affiliates?' Right now, when you or I goes hunting for the news on our favourite blog or link, free of charge of course, chances are pretty damned good that if it is real news, then a paid reporter, working for Reuters or the Times or some other such outfit actually dug the information up, published it, and it was picked up and communicated via the various channels that lead to your browser. But if the reporter is gone, that information is going to be gone as well, and thus you will no longer have access, either.

Ms Shapiro's argument is akin to saying that the because there are too many leaks in distributing food, we ought to do away with farms. But friends, as the bumper sticker says, no farms, no food.

Finally, as to the argument about "push" versus "pull" content, and making the news more likely to attract "communities," I would offer the obvious example. Which news outlet saw, during the past 10 years, its "community" grow the quickest? It's an outlet that has re-designed its news "brand" to be more "fun," given its consumers what they want, pulled viewers, and last month, via hidden cameras in various ACORN offices, turned a couple of its viewers into affiliates.

The end game of Ms Shapiro's 'new' media is in fact, already here, and it's not my idea of a high-quality news organisation.

It's Fox News.

The New Math, 2009

2009-10-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

It's election season (again). Funny how one fantasy about people passing out free goodies follows right after another (Hallowe'en). Personally, I think it's more likely that the Great Pumpkin will rise out of a farmer's field than that the current crop of slick stooges will raise the country up out of the muck.

Here in New Jersey, we are currently being treated to the very real possibility that a man who has the following baggage may actually get re-elected:

1) zero charisma

2) arguably the worst performance in the history of the state

3) images of his political pals being frog-marched en masse off to prison for

money laundering

4) track record as head of Goldman Sachs, who recently were called a

"blood sucking vampire squid"

He's basically George W. Bush without the aw-shucks charm.

Given that the state is and has been run by a foul ad-mixture of corruption and incompetence perhaps only exceeded by the circus in California, one would expect his challenger would practically waltz into Trenton.

Think again. This is the Soprano State, where political bosses and public employee unions have power perhaps only matched by Johnny Sack. Add in that his main challenger, Chris Christie, is running perhaps the worst campaign in the history of politics, and it's a horse race.

But what's really galling is the impact of the mathematical sleight of hand of independent candidate Tim Daggett, who has slowly but surely undermined Mr Christie's campaign by simultaneously attacking his plan for tax reform, and proposing tax reform of his own through shifting New Jersey's infamously high property taxes to sales and other use taxes.

It's the same shell game one hears every few years. It has appeared before as the "flat tax," and the "fair tax."

The bottom line here is that no tax "reform" is going to work unless and until solid proposals to cut government spending are made. Put simply, think of a five foot bed sheet that must cover a six foot bed. You can pull it up to cover your neck, but you are going to expose your feet. Unless you get a smaller bed or a bigger sheet, something is going to get cold.

New Jersey has usurious property tax burdens - the highest in the country. The effect is that it is driving people out of the state. But if property taxes are reduced by 20 per cent, without cutting spending an equal mount, will require that the same amount be raised elsewhere. So, you'll save a few thousand a year in property taxes, but pay the same amount in sales tax or car tax, or other tax, is going to result in the same tax burden. And worse, these other taxes are going to be more difficult to itemise and deduct elsewhere.

Our state has a budget gap that is conservatively described as 'yawning.' The problem is because of spending; the liberal media (e.g., the NY Times) endorsed Mr Corzine, pointing out among other things that Mr Christie has no 'concrete' plan to fix this problem and laughably, on a few occasions exceeded the $400 per night hotel travel limit.

Mr Corzine not only has no concrete plan to fix the problem, but in fact has a defined record of exacerbating it; he is a hand puppet of the unions, and pensions, out-sized raises, and patronage (Mr Corzine once dated the head of the unions) alarms me far more than Mr Christie's hotel bills.

It remains to be seen if the people in this state are any better at maths than they are at civics.

Dr Stangelove 2009, or, How I Learnt to Stop Fearing Socialism and Love the Public Option

2009-10-09T06:52:00.001-07:00

I have always been sceptical of people who support increased government power explaining why this or that further incursion is “for my own good,” or prop up the action by offering that opposition to it must necessarily be due to lack of clarity, or worse, because of propaganda that has obscured. Now that the Democrats appear to be on the verge of passing some sort of health care bill (really, calling a piece of legislation that is physically larger than the Manhattan yellow pages is a stretch), and Speaker Pelosi has said that it *will* include some sort of ‘public option,’ I’ve decided to set aside my worries about Big Government and embrace the creeping socialism.

Before I get into any further detail, I’d like to start with a few clarifications ahead of time.

I think the Republican Party has contributed in a large way to the mess we are in. I voted for President Obama. I do not believe he is a crypto-Moslem plant, nor was he born in Kenya or an illegitimate president. I don’t watch Glenn Beck or listen to Rush Limbaugh. I think Fox News is tabloid rubbish. I do not own a gun, do not think that the Democrats are trying to disarm us and install a Soviet or Nazi regime. I have never seen black helicopters flying over, and am not particularly concerned about the Masons or that a black man is president.

But I do believe that the “public option,” as is being discussed by the Democrat House leadership, is a kind of soft socialism. Using monies taken by taxation from one group of people to redistribute in the form of services to others who have not paid for those services is almost the definition of socialism.

Accept it, and move on.

So, in that spirit, here is what I propose as a sort of sugar (Splenda, perhaps?) to help the socialism go down.

Let’s have a public option. But let’s make it a real option, not something delivered at the point of a tax policeman’s gun.

Let the federal government set up a true insurance scheme, run and administered by government experts. Put whatever rules into the plan that they think will make it ‘work’ (i.e., it must cover this that or the other procedures, cannot charge higher premiums according to actuarial data, cannot refuse care for pre-existing conditions, etc.). Allow it to negotiate fees, prices, and co-pay rates. Give people the option of buying into this system or opting out. The profit motive presumably would be removed, and the only goal of such a scheme would be the health of its participants.

That is what proponents such as Dennis Kucinich and Bernard Sanders argue is the fundamental problem with private insurance, and hence the motive of pushing a public option.

But this public option must be subject to the same rules as other choices. Doctors and other health care providers can freely look at re-imbursement and other factors, and choose not to take patients who use the public option.

And, most important of all, require that this public option be self-sustaining. Put simply, it cannot use tax money for funding, and must be sustained by the premiums paid in by its participants. The bottom line here is, the word “option” implies that one has choices, and that participation is voluntary, not compulsory. I like the current health insurance I have, and I do not want to see my quality of care go down (which it would with the sort of single payer scheme seen in Canada or the UK) and my costs go up (which I suspect they would given what Speaker Pelosi is pushing – expanding “coverage” to 45 million additional people).

The maths simply do not work – you cannot provide the same level of care to a larger group of people without an increase in total cost. And presumably, since these additional 45 million (or whatever number you choose) currently do not participate in the current system because they cannot afford to, they would use resources without contributing a proportional amount of money.

Put simply, health care reform, with a public option, must not be yet another means by which federal kommisars rob Peter to pay Paul.

I propose we go forward with this reform, inclusive of such a public option, and after a period of years, see how it has worked out.

Just the Facts, Ma'am.

2009-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

If it's 1 PM, Monday through Friday, chances are pretty good I've just returned from my company gym. The hour or so at lunch is one of the few times I am able to set aside and do nothing productive, so I usually go for some exercise, which does little to advance shareholder value, increase the GDP, slow global warming, or put an end to the John-Kate feud. But it does make me feel a bit better, and I guess that has some value.

Today I ran my customary 10 kilometres (around 6.2 miles), completed in 43 minutes and 53 seconds. None of those numbers is particularly remarkable, but I did today cross the 11,000 mile marker. Yes; I keep pretty close track of data - it's, as they say, in my nature. I'm a mathematician, and numbers heavily influence my world. In my life, numbers are a bit like a drop of red dye in the wash; as Homer Simpson discovered when Bart's red hat got in, that single drop tends to colour everything just a bit pink, and so it is with me and data.

As an aside, I took to running almost exactly 15 years ago, following the death of my father from cancer. Part of his grim prognosis was because he was not a candidate for surgery - his lung capacity precluded it, so I reckon, if I get sick, I want to increase my odds as much as possible. In those 15 years and two months, I've now covered 11,001 miles. I thought I would take a look at this milestone by the numbers.

11,001 miles in 182 months is about 725 miles per year.

That works out to about 60.5 miles per month, or 14 miles per week.

The most miles I ran in any one year (1998) was 1154. The most in any one month was 132, in May 1998.

In this current year, I've now covered 664 miles, and hope to reach 850 by year's end.

The earth is approximately 24,000 miles in diameter, so I am not 999 miles from the half-way point. Put another way, if I started at the North Pole, I would now be more than half-way through Chile on my way to the South Pole. Using current projections, I'll reach that point sometime in November 2010.

The best "pace" I've ever set was in March, 1998, when I covered 8 miles in 53 minutes and 13 seconds. Age is obviously slowing me down.

I've run the Bay to Breakers four times (an iconic "race" in San Francisco, California). I've seen, inter alia, naked people, people dressed up as chess pieces, various animals, centipedes, cultists, Democrats, Republicans, and people hauling beer kegs. Because of the staggered start (there are literally thousands of participants, some walking), I usually start after the "winner" is done. One year, I ended up sprinting the last 500 metres or so to pass a guy who pushed a barbeque (you read that right - a round, Weber kettle) the 12 kilos. I'll be damned if a cooking implement will beat me.

My best memory is looking at the Hale-Bopp comet in awe in the Winter of 97-98, thinking that it will not be back for more than a millennium.

I wear out two pairs of shoes per year, so that's 30 pairs of Nikes, New Balance, Asics gel, and Reeboks. I've never tried the froo-froo brands (Saucony, Etonic).

Countries I've jogged in include (in no particular order) Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and Germany.

All in all, I think, an interesting history for a guy who used to view running as a sort of punishment for mouthing off to the coach in junior high.

Luck Be a Lady

2009-09-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

One of the most common aphorisms you hear in a given week is that this or that is "a toss of a coin." Usually, the implication is one of the randomness or vagaries of life. Coin tossing permeates the culture in song, book, and film. Two recent very popular movies ("The Dark Knight" and "No Country for Old Men") feature villains who make life and death choices using a coin - of course, Harvey "Two Face" uses a coin which has two heads, removing any actual chance, but the point is made.

My own academic training is in maths and applied statistics, and it's actually very helpful to reduce almost all questions around probability to variations of the coin toss.

But "randomness" does not imply "luck," and I personally don't believe in luck. A coin will land heads or tails based on a number of physical properties, some subtle (how much air resistance) and some not (when you grab it out of the air), but the process itself is deterministic once the coin is thrown into the air. Similarly, for cards, the shuffle, cut, and deal set in motion a series of events that is not at all based on luck. We think of luck perhaps as whether the gambler chooses heads or tails, takes a hit to 15, etc., and in these perhaps there is an element of luck.

I got to thinking about luck last night as I listened to the Toronto Blue Jays lose yet another late-inning, one-run game. The team has lost more than its share of such games this year (this, plus the lack of budget and hence talent has contributed to yet another dismal finish far out of contention), and I was curious to see just how badly it has done.

The results are remarkable.

In one-run games - games that more often than not are decided by tiny, tiny differences (a ball inches fair or foul here, a single swing of the bat that misses the sweet spot by fractions of an inch there) have an exaggerated effect on the outcome - Toronto is 18-27, the poorest record in the American League. (The California Angels, 27-18, have the best). In extra-inning games, the Blue Jays are 5-12, easily the worst in the Major Leagues.

The question is, is this luck, or something else?

In baseball, Bill James some years ago created what he called the Pythagorean Theorem, which, like the famous eponymous theorem of geometry, estimates a team's winning percentage as the ratio of the square of its runs scored to the sum of its runs scored and runs allowed squared. Put simply, if you score exactly the same number of runs as you allow, over the course of a season, you will win approximately half of the games you play.

What's useful as an exercise here is that teams that win a lot of close games, but lose a majority of the games that are blow outs will post a winning percentage much better than the one estimated by the Pythagorean Theorem. A team that loses a lot of close games, but wins the majority of the blow outs will do relatively poorly.

To convince yourself, consider Team A, which in a series of 10 games, wins 8 games 2-1, and in the other 2 games loses 4-0 in each. This team scores 16 runs, and allows 16. The theorem predicts it should win 5 and lose 5. Given that it won 8, it has won an excess of 3 games.

The idea here is that games that are close tend to be more influenced by random events (the one ball inches foul) than games that are not close. Good teams will win more blow-out games as a percentage than bad teams will. Of course, the good teams will also win a majority of the close games as well, but they tend to win a much higher percentage of the lop-sided ones. If the Yankees were to play the Baltimore Orioles, it's far more likely that the Yankees will win 10-0 than Baltimore. Not in a given game, mind you, but over a long series, the better team will almost always predominate.

This in mind, I looked at how Toronto (and the rest of the AL) had done for the past 5 years, plus this one.

This year, the Jays have scored more runs than they have allowed (a slight difference, but there you have it). They currently are 15 games UNDER .500. The Pythagorean Theorem predicts that they ought to have won 9 more games than they have. That is a serious under-performance.

But is it "luck?"

For the years 2004-2008, Toronto has won fewer games than the theorem predicts IN EVERY SINGLE SEASON. Put another way, they have tossed a coin and gotten five consecutive tails. This year almost certainly will be number six in a row. The "odds" of six straight heads are 1/64, or less than two per cent.

Cumulatively, the team was won 31 fewer games than the runs scored/allowed formula predicts.

Both of these figures are the worst in the American League (the Cleveland Indians are next, having been shorted 26 wins). Oddly enough, the California Angels (this year's best performer in one-run contests) have exceeded predictions in all five years, and this year will certainly make six, unless they lose a couple of games 20-0.

This is not "luck," for a team to be worse, every single year, than it ought to be. The players are different; the opposing rosters are different. Only the GM and management are the same.

I think the evidence is clear, and the prosecution rests. It's time for the management in Toronto to go, from top to bottom.

More on the Cold-Blooded Murder of English

2009-09-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Read a headline this morning; "Warren Buffet: 'Rich Need to Pay More" sent to me by a somewhat liberal friend.

This little fiction was advance further by various and sundry Democrats (e.g., Claire McCaskill [D-MO]), whose job it is, I suppose to conjure up tortured arguments to separate you from your money. Ms McCaskill said "[Mr Buffet] said rich people are not paying enough taxes."

Now, what in fact Mr Buffet said was that the taxes on dividend (and perhaps, other investment income) should be put in line with the tax rates on ordinary income, as a matter of fairness. He used as an example that he pays only 15 per cent on his income, which is largely from investments in, inter alia, Berkshire Hathaway funds, whilst his employees who are wage earners pay at a 25 per cent rate. Now, setting aside that in fact, few people in the lower income brackets (less than 50,000 per year) actually pay the 25 per cent marginal rate, once deductions and the like are taken, it's startling to see how this little proposition (that investment income ought to be treated the same as wage income) is transmogrified into a "the rich need to pay more" argument.

One can agree or disagree about the fairness of taxing income streams differently, and in this, I am in agreement with Mr Buffet, but it's intellectually dishonest to equate these two points. I expect hand-waving from the kleptocratic Democrats in the government. But for news agencies to be so duplicitous is quite alarming.

If the Democrats and Mr Buffet want to debate setting income tax rates of different income streams to parity, that's fine. If dividend income is to be taxed more steeply, then that is going to be done irrespective of the income level of the payor. But that's rather a different thing from saying, essentially, that we ought to raise the top marginal rates, which is the reductio ad absurdum of the "rich do not pay enough" proposition.

Given the shell game that Mr Obama and the Dems are currently trying, I suggest people pay very, very close attention to what they say, and how their words are reported.

Green Day, the English Language, and US Debate

2009-09-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Among other somewhat eccentricities, I'm a fan of the band Green Day. Sort of clashes with my instinctive, right-wing politics and only-feel-comfortable-in-a-suit-at-work personality, but there you have it.

Some years ago, they had a song called "The Grouch," which has catchy riffs and amusing lyrics. Among them, the singers bemoan "Oh my God, I'm turning outlike my dad."

Truer words never were spoken.

My father, who has been gone now for 15 years, used to be somewhat a curmudgeon with respect to the King's English, and most particularly, its grammatical rules. And by "somewhat," I mean that if you dared confuse, e.g., the subjunctive, you would be met with a pained, dismissive stare.

I was thinking of this whilst looking over what passes for a debate about health care reform: the raucous town-hall meetings. The petulance of Nancy Pelosi. President Obama trying to rescue his top domestic policy with a pretty purple speech last night. In all the sturm und drang, the first casualty has been the English language.

What, pray tell, would Professor Higgins, who would have had Eliza Doolittle "taken out and hung (sic)?"

No one seems to know what words mean anymore.

The NYTimes, who have become little more than a lap-dog to the Obama administration, chastise opponents of the President's plan for calling Mr Obama a 'socialist,' saying that there is little resemblance between his plans and the authoritarian raj of the Soviets. Oh, how the mighty have fallen (William Safire is an alum). Surely, they know that socialism is an economic system, and the totalitarian regime of the old Soviets was a governing system. And that ignores the fact that much of our current health care system - Medicare, for example, IS socialist both de facto and de jure.

We have the spectacle of the failed former VP candidate talking about "death panels" when she speaks of the rather mundane task of deciding how scarce resources will be allocated. Whether you know it or not, your insurer, whether private or public, makes decisions every year about what treatments it will re-imburse and what treatments it will not, using cost effectiveness models. Surely, as a Republican, Mrs. Palin understands that the allocation of finite resources to attempt to cover infinite demand is the very definition of economics.

And finally, we have the President of the US and too many others talking about getting "insurance" to cover "pre-existing conditions." Now, the term "pre-existing conditions" is itself so Orwellian as to conjure up an image of a boot stomping on a human face forever, but that's only half the whopper here.

In point of fact, you cannot buy "insurance" to cover a condition you already have. Insurance is a bet that you make, against yourself, that something is going to happen. You make your wager in the form of a premium, and if, by God by grace, you get sick, THEN you collect. The premium is a fraction of what the cost of treatment will be, and you are able to do this because you are pooling your risk. If 100 people pay the premium, perhaps one will "win" the bet.

Buying "insurance" for an illness you have is about the same thing as walking into a casino, sitting at the roulette table, watching the ball land in red 26, and then asking to be allowed to put a bet down on red 26.

That isn't insurance; that is welfare.

All in all, our "leaders" (hmmm, am I guilty, too?) are betting on the fact that the average man on the street is simply too dim to catch the abuse.

A bet that, to paraphrase Mencken, is a sure thing.

One Definition of "Shared Responsibility"

2009-05-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

First, a mea culpa. I voted for the current occupant of the White House. I remain glad that his opponent did not ascend to the throne. But I am getting an increasing feeling of buyer's remorse. Here is, inter alia, one of the reasons.

The Democrats are very, very fond of talking about "shared responsibility," and people paying "their fair share." (nota bene the use of the word "share" in each talking point.) What, exactly, do they mean:

http://tinyurl.com/CreditRedux

Yep; as with the housing melt-down, and the spending of tax money like Frank Sinatra on shore leave, those of us who now are foolish enough to actually use our credit cards responsibly - who apparently have been "getting a free ride" - will further subsidise those who don't. Our fees will go up; our interest rates will rise. All so that those who do NOT use credit properly can be cushioned from their own sloth, cupidity, and downright foolishness.

I ask Mr Obama and Ms Pelosi: At what point are you going to stop telling me how much "responsibility" for others I need to share, and start asking those who are getting us into this mess need to share some responsibility for themselves?

After all, when I was in kindergarten, "sharing" involved more than one person.

Stranger in a Strange Land

2009-04-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Life is made of small sacrifices; one of mine that parent-hood brought on was sufficient time to read, which is now a precious commodity. The book I am currently reading, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, is a journey into the subject of quick decisions and how the human mind parses micro-slices of information.

On page 214 of the book is a discussion of autism and, in layman's terms, describes its impact on the ability to read faces. One of the studies mentioned is by a professor at Cambridge University in England called Simon Baron-Cohen, who is a pre-eminent researcher into autism spectrum disorder.

Now, most people who come across that name would pass over it without a second thought, but if I mentioned another name, Sacha Baron-Cohen, some eyebrows might go up. If I said "Ali-G," a few more would have a glimmer of recognition. But if I said "Borat," virtually everyone in the US between the ages of 18 and 40 would immediately have an a-ha moment.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a world-renowned researcher into autism, is the cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, an actor and comedian who created the character Borat.

Small world.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Bernie Madoff

2009-03-19T07:10:00.001-07:00

Forget the NCAA Tournament and March Madness - for me nothing can beat the Opera Bouffe that following the financials presents. I came across this little nugget today at Yahoo Finance:

http://tinyurl.com/WeepForTheRich

The piece was written by a man called James Stewart, which is itself rather a bit of an inside-joke, given that James Stewart the actor often starred in films that glorified the little guy in his fight against the plutocrat. This incarnation would seem to favour Lionel Barrymore.

Mr Stewart - the writer, not the actor - raises what I am sure he thinks is something of a defence of the so-called rich, and deploys as his foot-soldiers various numerical arguments. The fulcrums (fulcra?) on which this rests are the suppositions that the "rich" are not necessarily so rich, have suffered more than the general population in the current economic downturn, shoulder a larger tax burden, and are largely not criminals.

Now, most people who have more than the intellectual discipline of a housefly understand that the final point is a straw-man. Of course most of the rich are law-abiding, his plaintive comment: "Yet, as hard as it may be to believe, the overwhelming majority of people earning six-figure incomes aren’t criminals or spendthrifts" notwithstanding. Mr Madoff is a criminal, but the guys over at AIG who approved "retention" bonuses are only criminally stupid, which itself is not yet illegal. We are still waiting on the California Supreme Court to rule on that one.

But looking through the rest of Mr Stewart's opus, there are three essential points.

One, those who are high earners (six figures) have suffered greater losses than the typical man on the street.

The Federal Reserve released statistics last week that showed Americans collectively lost $5.1 trillion of their net worth during the last three months of 2008 and $11.2 trillion for the full year. The numbers don’t break that down by income level, but I think it's fair to say that much of the drop came from the steep decline in stock prices, and stocks are owned disproportionately by high-income people. Indeed, stock ownership is so skewed to upper-income households that the percentage declines are probably much steeper for them, more likely in the 30% to 40% range.
That means anyone who was a millionaire at the beginning of 2008, and had a million dollars invested in stocks, has lost about $300,000 to $400,000, which is in line with what I’ve been hearing anecdotally. And the losses have only multiplied this year as the market continues its descent.

Now, the first problem with this argument is practical. There are not actual data to show exactly how the losses have skewed; Mr Stewart instead says "it's fair to say" that because the decline is largely driven by stock losses, that stock ownership skews to the wealthy, and therefore, losses are "steeper" for them.

I'd like to see the numbers before I agree what is fair, and more important, what is accurate.

It's true that the average guy is less likely to own stock, but he likely does have a pension and/or 401-k, which is intrinsically linked to stock performance. I know my own 401-k is off by about 35 per cent, and my son's college fund has lost about 40 per cent.

Second, he fails to make the distinction between "a millionaire" and those who have "a million dollars invested in stocks." Americans to a large degree are disgracefully innumerate, and do not understand the differences along a scale of someone whose net worth is $100,000; $1 million, and $10 million. The differences are, to say the least, enormous. And when he conflates someone with an income between $200,000 and $300,000 (which comes later) with the jet-set who have a million dollars worth of stock, he is directly playing on this ignorance.

And this ignores the existential issue that the "losses" in this case are largely paper losses. If your stock portfolio drops 30 per cent, you only "lose" that money IF YOU SELL when it is down. So while it is true that Warren Buffet's net worth has declined, he in actuality has not "lost" anything in this regard. In fact, to use Mr Stewart's own implied argument, "I think it's fair to say" that, given the current low stock prices, many of the super wealthy are quietly acquiring stocks at bargain prices that their other assets allow them to acquire, and when the market turns up, they will have grabbed an even larger share of the wealth pie than they had before. To extend the Stewart/Barrymore metaphor, as George Bailey said of Mr Potter, he's not selling, he's buying. In five years, we'll see the endgame of the current situation.

Second, Mr Stewart raises the issue that the rich are taxed at disproportionately higher rates:

This group also pays a disproportionate share of income taxes, even before Obama's proposed tax increases. The top 1% of earners are expected to pay 25% of all personal income taxes this year, and the top 5% to pay 40%, according to Tax Policy Center's latest figures. It's no wonder that the people I know who earn $200,000 to $300,000 are incredulous to be branded as “rich.” They certainly don’t feel that way.

and

By contrast, let’s take a look at the top 400 earners, who in 2006 (the most recent year for which data are available) earned an average of $263.3 million. Now that’s what I call rich. These 400 people paid on average $45.2 million each, and collectively paid a remarkable 1.77% of all personal income taxes that year, the highest percentage since the IRS has been keeping records. They also paid an average rate of just 17%, the lowest ever, largely because of their massive capital gains, which are taxed at a low rate. Presumably those gains will seem a distant memory by the time the 2008 data are compiled. But imagine if they were paying at the top rate of 35%. That would roughly double their taxes paid in 2006, to $90 million each, or a total of roughly $36 billion. And that’s only 400 people

What a fair distribution of the *income* tax burden ought to be is subjective - I am certainly no communist who thinks that the tax burden ought to be borne exclusively by the wealthy, and think that the Obama plan (like the "fix" passed last month in Sacramento) represents if not socialism galloping at full speed, is at least of the creeping sort.

But let's get real here.

This argument obscures the truth in two ways. First, it focuses exclusively on income tax, ignoring sales, property, and other taxes that all essentially pay. Rich or poor, if you go to purchase a shirt, you pay the same sales tax. And second (and more important), the author focuses on income, not wealth. In this point, the top one per cent of earners are said to pay 25 per cent of all income taxes. Well, what share of the national wealth does this one per cent control?

Third, there is the argument that the wealthy are not, in fact, rich as they are portrayed. Mr Stewart opens with comments about resorts, private jets, and luxury condos, and ends up talking about people earning "six figures" and/or the theoretical target of the Obama "rich guy" tax ladder ($300,000 per annum in income).

The two (three) groups are not the same. A private jet of the sort that Steve Jobs flies around in is tens of millions of dollars. I would suggest that virtually no one earning $250,000 flies frequently in a private jet, or goes to the sort of resort that Jobs or Dick Fuld is able to frequent. To this point, there is a huge problem in homogenising "six figure" incomes - itself an enormous range of 100,000 to 999,9999 - someone earning $300,000, and multi-millionaires.

Mr Stewart again is using the fact that Americans simply do not understand the enormous gulf between 100,000, one million, and ten million as a blunt club.

He turns to a hypothetical individual with an annual income of $200,000, living in Manhattan:

In New York City, for example, $200,000 in income yields roughly $100,000 after all taxes (including the unincorporated business tax, which applies to anyone who’s self-employed). If you're following the prudent rule of thumb that you should spend no more than one-third of your after-tax income on housing, that means $33,000, or less than $3,000 a month, can go toward housing — barely enough for rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. As for buying, the collapse in stock prices has wiped out much of what many people invested toward a down payment. New York may be atypically expensive, but many people who earn $200,000 and up have little choice but to live in a high-tax, high-cost location.

Now, it might be pointed out that the guy at $200,000 is, as of now, NOT going to be affected by the Obama tax rise, but that's somewhat akin to Titanic passengers complaining that their food was too cold.

What truly plagues this example are that, a) it is *not* the case that the person must live in Manhattan, and b) the 1/3 rule for after tax really does not scale up linearly.

For (a), the choice to live in Manhattan in the tiny one bedroom apartment is a choice. There is plenty of housing, along train lines, at much lower cost available in Brooklyn or Queens or Northern New Jersey. There are plenty of people who work at much lower salaries than $200,000 for whom Manhattan is simply not even a choice.

For (b), if one thinks about the application of the 1/3 rule for a second, the fallacy arises pretty quickly. Someone with an income of $75,000 who thus has an after-tax income of about $36,000 would have about $3,000 per month - $1000 for housing. THAT is a crunch, and leaves a total of 24,000 for all other expenses ($2000 per month) The guy in the example would similarly have 33,000 for housing, but $67,000 for other expenses, which is 5500 per month. I don't know about you, but 5 grand per month is a *lot* of money for discretionary spending. What he can buy with the difference in discretionary income over the person with the $75,000 income (more than three thousand dollars PER MONTH) is what makes him relatively "rich."

But more to the point, using this same model, someone who is right in the middle of the "six figure" income, $500,000, would pull down about $250,000 after taxes. If we apply the 1/3 rule to this, that's $83,000 for housing, or $6900 per month, leaving $167,000 for discretionary spend, or more than $13,000 per month. He has more than eleven thousand dollars every single month than the guy making $75k to spend on whatever he wants.

That's an awful lot of downloads from iTunes, isn't it?

To be fair to Mr Stewart, the person making $500,000 per year may not "feel rich," to be sure. But my guess is it's because he is looking from his apartment in Greenwich Village at people in his company who live on the upper East Side, or in Westchester County, and not the bridge and tunnel person who works for him.

So all things considered, the rhetorical question asked by Mr Stewart: "Considering taxes, who wants to be a millionaire," I suggest he look at the famous Pink Floyd song for an answer:

But if you ask for a rise, it's no surprise that they're giving none away.

There Is a Fine Line...

2009-02-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

between clever, and stupid.

Anyone of roughly my chronological age and intellectual maturity will immediately recognise the quote of one David Saint Hubbins (of the fictitious, eponymous band Spinal Tap).

I was thinking of Mr Saint Hubbins two evenings ago as I watched the infomercial that was being masqueraded as a press conference by President Obama. Other than the embarrassingly inappropriate question about Alex Rodriguez, and the bumptious interruption about Joe Biden's latest brilliance - what, exactly, is the confidence interval around his 30 per cent point estimate for the probability of failure - the questions were largely not even softballs, which at the least are moving. The questions were rather more like balls teed up for a six year old. I am curious; who decided, for example, that the Huffington Post is part of the press in any real way, or that, aside from the voices in Patrick Leahy's head, who exactly is clamouring for a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission?

I voted for Mr Obama in November, but I have to say, he is off to a rough start. One of the reasons I did vote for him is that unlike his opponent, he at least had a veneer of change and ran on hope rather than fear. But I'll be damned if he did not sound a lot like George W Bush last night, even if only as a different libretto to the same score of fear and anxiety.

As for change, is there anyone left who honestly believes that things are going to be done differently by a cabinet with more re-treads that the 1989 Yankees? Looking over the cabinet (Hillary Clinton? Wasn't she born in the Watergate Hotel), I am reminded of the old English sit-com "Are You Being Served," which ran when I was much, much younger. There was an episode in which the Ladies department had to share with Gentleman's Ready-Mades during a renovation. After all the hilarity of Mrs Slocombe's bras atop Mr Grainger's trousers, the curtains were revealed to show.... that nothing had changed.

"It's just the same," Mrs Slocombe exclaimed.

Young Mr Grace responded that everything had been outfitted with new wood.

I would offer that the new administration is a lot like Grace Brothers.

The cabinet is in fact, all new wood.

But aside from that, Mrs Slocombe, green hair and all, would recognise that this administration and what it is sellling is just the same.

Don't Try This at Home

2009-02-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

Another day, another incredible story. According to Reuters, the state of California is mulling refusing to release tax refunds to those who overpaid their taxes in 2008.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090202/us_nm/us_usa_economy_california

Now, aside from the fact that this is basically theft, where does State Controller John Chiang get the chutzpah to tell people, whose money this actually is, that they must wait 30 days (or perhaps more) to get their money back?

What do you think the IRS, or in the case of Sacramento, the Franchise Tax Board, would say if, come 15th April, you said: "I know that I owe a few thousand dollars, but I am facing a 'cash shortfall,' and so I am going to hold back my taxes for 30 days?" For some reason, I think interest and penalties at the least would descend on you like the winged monkeys from "The Wizard of Oz."

California's fiscal irresponsibility apparently knows neither bounds nor shame. Some are saying the state is on the edge of a financial abyss. Could all those years of reckless spending finally be coming home to roost? Ah the joys of one-party rule.

Tax Cut Redux

2009-01-28T09:10:00.000-08:00

One of today's headlines is discussing just what sort of "stimulus" is going to be coming from Washington; in this Whitman's Sampler of bad ideas lurks what some are calling "tax cuts," a great deal of which are in fact, not tax cuts at all, but tax credits and other goodies to try to coerce people into the behaviours that our Morlock Overseers want to engender in us.

Some months ago, I posted a comment on this blog

http://sjrefugee.blogspot.com/2008/11/brave-new-world-of-taxes.html

a question about what responsibilities one bears as a citizen of a country. I am reminded of the question today, as the folks in Washington debate just how to get us out of the mess we now find ourselves in due largely to our sloth, greed, and frankly, stupidity.

Put simply, what I see is more and more people being removed from the tax rolls, who, freed from the nuisance of having to pay for the "services" that they receive, will vote to expand their goodie bags at the increasing expense of the few of us who actually have to pay for them.

I once heard a quote that pretty aptly describes liberal compassion:

Compassion is A and B voting what they are going to force C to do to "help" D.

As you consider the so-called "stimulus package," ask yourself if you are a C or a D.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

2009-01-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

If Christmas is the time of miracles, then surely, early January is the time of lists. This one landed in my mail box this morning:

http://tinyurl.com/BestPlacestoWork

It's basically a back-of-the-envelope accounting of where the 50 "Best Places in America" to work are. Now, obviously this sample based on self-reported "satisfaction," carries with it all of the psychometric freight of that word as well as the inherent sampling bias. But setting that aside, a quick review of the list renders the following, most interesting top-line.

Eight of the 50 firms are in management consulting (e.g., McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting). That's almost 20 per cent of the field. Now, given that in the industry I work in, consultants are the modern day equivalent of the biblical publicans - not sure if Jesus Christ himself would sit and have a meal with them - this is strange. And if Scott Adams is to be believed, the view goes beyond just my immediate neighbourhood. I guess these 25 year olds are just good enough, smart enough, and dog gone it, people PAY them.
10 of the 50 (20%) firms are new-styled tech (apps, software, services) companies - companies like Google, salesforce-dot-com, Citrix. I guess that there must be something to be said for loving what you do, since these guys are spending the lion's share of there time at the office working and playing ping-pong with their colleagues rather than at home with their families.
There are several banks (Goldman Sachs is 26th). If this report were adjusted using linearly-weighted moving averages or some other tool for adjusting for the time component and hence implosion of Wall St, what would the outcome be?
General Mills tops the list. No wonder Jerry Seinfeld always has a box or bowl of cereal in view in every episode of his show. After all, maybe they really are magically delicious.

Enjoy 2009!

Time To Break Up Oprah?

2008-12-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Two interesting news pieces hit the wires today. They strike the Random Walker as oddly related.

The first is that, apparently, due to Oprah Winfrey's imprimatur, the Amazon-dot-com product "Kindle" (more or less, an electronic vessel into which books, magazines, and newspapers can be poured) is selling so fast that it will not be available for most peoples' Christmas lists.

The second is that the aforementioned Winfrey's weight has topped the 200 pound plateau (despite the war, the arrest of the governor of Illinois, the implosion of our economy, it seems a slow news day).

The fact that she can affect not only the sales of an esoteric product, but apparently, gravity itself in such a huge way, I cannot help but ask the question: "Has Oprah Winfrey now officially, physically, and metaphorically gotten too big for her britches?"

The Apple Cult: Anything Behind the Curtain?

2008-12-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've long maintained that Apple Computer, and its hygiene-challenged motley crew of devotees are something of a religion. Admittedly, it's a tongue-in-cheek point, but as time goes by, the position of tongue and cheek has become somewhat less firm.

I can recall the first time I went into an Apple Store that had appeared on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, California. It was truly like walking into some sort of Silicon Valley re-imagination of St Peter's Basilica.

There were the glassy-eyed True Believers, assured in their faith that They. Had. Arrived.

There were the icons wherever you looked around.

There were slogans that, if they were in Latin, could be set to music and pass for Gregorian Chants.

There were the religious relics of Lisas and and Macintosh SEs and Quadras that had gone before.

And of course, at the centre, Apple's own Pope, if not Deity himself, Steve Jobs, risen from the corporate dead. Jesus Christ in a black turtleneck and ill-fitting jeans, if you will. Of course, he took several years, and not three days, to return from the grave, but Silicon Valley can be forgiven if it moves more slowly than the Lord himself.

Apple IS a sort of cult, and if you doubt it, pay a visit to the local Apple Store near you. But if you need further proof, simply check the reaction to today's news that (apparently) Wal-Mart has struck a deal to sell i-Phones:

http://tinyurl.com/Cult-of-Apple

Peruse the comments and look at the fury of the Macnostics, half of whom rage about the selling out to the devil of Bentonville, and half of whom of course, worship the brilliance of Jobs, tricking the devil into selling antiquated, knock-down versions to the rubes who have not been baptised into the cult.

I wonder if the people in the Cult of Apple realise that the marketing folks in Cupertino are slicker than any team of bishops, and that their devotion to the Apple Brand has become a quasi-religion?

Steve Jobs may in fact be a genius - it's been said that the greatest feat the devil ever pulled off was convincing men that he did not exist. Jobs has done, perhaps, one better, by convincing shallow, attention-starved nerds that nirvana exists in cheap gizmos manufactured in China that can play games AND function as phones. And get them to pay a couple of hundred bucks that they don't have for the privelege.

And These People ARE Rocket Scientists

2008-11-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

A hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there. Pretty soon, it adds up to real money.

Imagine my surprise to see that a team of astronauts, on a spacewalk, allowed a kit of tools to simply float away into space. (I can see the product placement opportunities right now: Space helmet: $2 million; bag of tools: $100,000. Remembering that there is no gravity in space and tethering your equipment so it doesn't float away: priceless).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081120/ap_on_sc/space_shuttle

Once when I was much younger and still living at home, I had to repair one of the headlamps of my car. The housing was not difficult to get at, and the job completed in about 10 minutes (plus time to drive to Pep Boys). I was so pleased with myself, I forgot to unlock the spanner from the engine block, where I had temporarily fixed it to throw the burnt out bulb away.

About six months later, when I popped the hood to check the coolant, there was my father's vise grip where I had left it, and subsequently driven from Cleveland, OH to Palo Alto, a trip of about 3000 miles.

When Liberals Eschewed the Limousine

2008-11-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

The past couple of days, we've been treated to the spectacle of the heads of our automotive industry (the no-longer-so-big-three) with hats in hand before the Congress, begging for some money to keep their respective shops open. They have faced a great deal of recrimination, and rightly so. The market share that GM alone once held apparently has eroded from 53% to 20% today. There is plenty of blame to go around, from poor quality, bad designs, foolish contracts, greed by executives, laziness from union workers.

It's a Whitman's sampler of misery, really.

But what seems missing from a lot of this discussion is, "Just where are the unions and their advocates?" Do the unions actually stand up for the working man any more? Do the Democrats who have just been swept into power by a tsunami of righteous anger at the corrupt GOP stand for much more than being mouthpieces of various grievance groups? Believe it or not, there once was a time when unions actually advocated FOR their rank and file.

All of this puts one in mind of the term "limousine liberal," which is apropros, considering that if GM and Ford go under, who will be left to manufacture the Town Cars and Cadillacs, and at that point, Palo Alto liberals may be forced to actually take mass transit.

We are now just over two weeks beyond the 4th November election. Amid the hoopla and good feelings was one dark spot - out in left wing California, Proposition 8 was passed, easily as it turns out; it's an amendment to the California state constitution that explicitly forbids homosexual marriage. Turns out, the "get out the vote" campaign in support of Barack Obama planted some ACORNs that yielded mighty oaks that were not so gay-friendly. Who knew that (largely) Catholic Hispanics and Black people are not on board with gay marriage?

Now, whatever ones' feelings on Proposition 8 (for the record, I would have voted NO, just as I voted NO on Proposition 22 almost a decade ago, which was more or less the same thing), looking at the list of who the big NO on 8 givers were, must strike one as odd:

The California Teachers Association (more than a cool million)
The local SEIU (a half million)
The hotel workers' union (small potatoes at only 100 grand)

Proposition 8 is, in my opinion, nothing more than just plain meanness by people who don't like gays. And stupid, of course, since it is just a matter of time until it, like Prop 22, is found unconstitutional.

But what this has to do with the needs of the teachers or hotel bus boys, or the guys who pick up the rubbish escapes me.

My sister is a teacher in California. She faces layoffs because the state so foolishly squanders its money. The schools are already among the worst, if not the worst, in the country. The abysmal state of education was a big contributing factor as to why my family decided to leave California.

You would think the CTA has more pressing matters; apparently, they don't. More than a million dollars was taken from dues-paying teachers and donated to a cause that has nothing to do with education. My guess is that rank and file teachers, or dustmen, or hotel workers were not even polled before this happened.

But Prop 8 is a pet, liberal cause of the union "leadership," so the money was appropriated.

So the next time I see one of those nauseating ads from one of the teachers' unions, one about how they are "there for our kids," I cannot help but wonder how blowing more than a million dollars helps my kids.

I've said it before - the idea that the teacher unions are advocates for good schools is equally as laughable as the idea that the auto workers union is an advocate for the motoring public. The difference is now, I say it with an increased cynicism because neither union really even cares about its actual constituents.

Brave New World (of Taxes)

2008-11-14T13:59:00.000-08:00

I was listening to the radio on my way home last night, and Rahm Emmanuel was being interviewed. Mr Emmanuel, the new proposed Chief of Staff for our incoming President, made a comment about how forced "volunteerism" will teach young Americans what it means to be an American. Now, setting aside the obvious, Orwell-style problem with such definitions of volunteerism, or even that forcing people to serve the State is somehow compatible with being an American, I am struck by the idea of just what it *does* mean to be an American. Is it participation? Is it contributing to the general well-being? What, exactly?

I was listening to the radio on my way home last night, and Rahm Emmanuel was being interviewed. Mr Emmanuel, the new proposed Chief of Staff for our incoming President, made a comment about how forced "volunteerism" will teach young Americans what it means to be an American.

Now, setting aside the obvious, Orwell-style problem with such definitions of volunteerism, or even that forcing people to serve the State is somehow compatible with being an American, I am struck by the idea of just what it *does* mean to be an American. Is it participation? Is it contributing to the general well-being? What, exactly?Then today, I saw a datum from the Tax Foundation, a think tank in Washington who advocate for various tweaks to the tax code. (www.taxfoundation.org)According to their data, in 2006, approximately 1/3 of filers, 45.6 million, were ultimately responsible for *no* income tax. That number will rise in 2009 to 47 million. Under President Elect-Obama's plan, the number will jump to 63 million. Yes; 44 per cent of all filers will not be responsible, at all, to contribute via income tax to the running of our country.

Does this strike anyone else as strange?

f we all rise and fall together, then what is it, exactly, we are asking of the bottom half of our citizenry so far as keeping the government going? Should we not ask that they contribute, if even a token amount, to this?

Anyone who knows me knows that I am sceptical to taxation as social policy, but I am also not a zealot or an anarchist. The government does provide services- services that apparently a majority of us wants. And like it or not, those things cost money. Is it really too much to ask that all of us who think that these services are worth while pony up something to pay for them?

I am no economist, but I understand one fundamental truth: the DEMAND for something for which there is no apparent PRICE will be unbounded. And nothing better crystalises our real values - not those things we say we like or pretend are important, but those things that empirically are valued - than what we are willing to spend.

If these programmes are valuable, if there are truly shared burdens, then let's all answer the call.

Put it on someone else's bill just ain't going to cut it any more.

Is Everybody Going Crazy?

2008-11-13T10:10:00.000-08:00

Like many people who work for a publicly traded company, I probably am spending more time than I ought watching my stock (and hence net worth) evaporate in front of my eyes. I am not one given to a Howard Beale type melt-down, but with the events unfolding before us, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain sanguine. Companies are failing. Stocks are falling. Jobs are leaving.

And yet, we still see stories of the sort reported today in Yahoo Finance that executives at places such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the other gang who could not shoot straight are preparing for their year end pig out:

(http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/125352/Bail-Outrage-Misuse-of-Funds-Lack-of-Transparency-a-National-Disgrace?tickers=GS,MS,JPM,BAC,C,WFC,XLF)

They argue that they will *reduce* bonuses this year. They argue that they have to pay their "best" people or those people will leave. They argue that they will use "other" money, and not bailout money to pay.

To quote a recent pop song, "Is every body going crazy?"

If these "best" people engineered losses and stupidity of the scope we've seen, then I shudder to think what our MBA factories are turning out on the average. That these best people would have other jobs to go to, when the rest of us try to keep our heads down so they don't get chopped indicates that something is broken here. And the idea that there is "other" money is so laughably wrong-headed, all one has to do is say "Bill Clinton budget surplus" to see that that dog doesn't hunt.

Folks, this is not capitalism. It's not free markets. This is piracy. With your money. And mine.

Election 2008: The Aftermath

2008-11-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

I, like apparently a majority of Americans, am happy with the outcome last night. I haven't really been this pleased with an election since the recall of Gray Davis.That having been said, I find my feelings are somewhat mixed on the so-called day after in the reaction to the outcome. In watching the Simple Simons on CNN (Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper) "analyse" the outcome, it troubles me that they pick "winners" and "losers," and even more, that the "winners" include "minorities."Setting aside that Obama himself in his terrific victory speech re-iterated that the time for splitting the country into us and them is over, putting people into groups such as "minorities" is tremendously deflating.

First, what is a "minority?" Do they mean Black Americans? Surely, most people understand that the Black/White dichotomy no longer really applies. It is frankly, WAY past time to stop forcing an obsolescent model on the reality of our country.

Second, even accepting the flawed terminology, how, exactly, do "minorities" win? Simply because a Black man has been elected? Do Blacks "win" more than Hispanics? How about Asians? It remains to be seen what sort of path Mr Obama is going to take before we can simply say "minorities" have "won" in any real sense. If, for example, he inspires non-White Americans that they can aspire to greatness, in a sense the whole country will "win." On the other hand, if he further entrenches inherently racist policies of Balkanisation such as Affirmative Action, I don't see how, for example, Jewish or Asian Americans will "win" under that scenario.

And finally, the very idea that Barack Obama is a Black man bothers me, in no small way because my own son is biracial. Barack Obama is of similar ancestry, and saying he is "black" denies half of who he is. Which one of his parents will he reject? How will people like Soledad O'Brien classify my son? And as someone who is an ethnic minority, but not one of those who benefit from the current racial spoils system, is he a "winner" to the extent that CNN say he is?

I agree with Barack Obama that there should not be a Blue or a Red America. To that end, I also reject that there are ethnic "winners" (and therefore, by necessity, ethnic "losers"). It's up to him, and not talking heads with little to recommend them beyond good hair (e.g., Anderson Cooper) to decide that America, and not splinter groups, have won.

And I guess that is part of the change I am hoping for.

Random Walk

GoP Getting Stuck in "Newt"-ral

Zombies, Zombies Everywhere

They're COMING for You, Barbara!

You Never Know

E Pluribus Nevermind

Happy Thanksgiving

Ah, Sweet Semantics.

The Day the Music Died, ca. 2011

You Lie! (AGAIN)

Blowin in the Wind

Mike Flanagan, RIP

Is "Crazy" Rick Perry Pinky or the Brain?

Swing and a Miss

Paul Meier, RIP

Skin in the Game

Incredible Stat of the Day

Green and Red: Not Just for Christmas Anymore

300: A Good Batting Average

Stanley Cup to Remain Hostage in US

A Statistician Raises the White Flag

Dr Strangeglove: The 2011 Remake

Mr Toad's VERY Wild Ride

Weird Stats of the Day

Somewhere, Over a Barrel

Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak (or, at Least to Read and Write?)

Here There Be Dragons

Big Mac Falafal, and a Side of Fries

Goodbye (Magnetic) Yellow Brick Road

Were the Good Old Days REALLY that Good?

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad (and Foreign) Wolf?

Educating Sebastian - Education and the Crab Pot

Question: Is There Actual Value to an MBA?

Does Lady Gaga "Fit the Suit?"

Randy Jones and Randy Johnson: An Epic in Two Acts

The MG as Metaphor for "Authenticity"

Two Roads Diverged in the Woods...What Will We Leave Behind

Christmas Time Is Here

Farming Out the World Series

2009 World Series by Proxy

The New New Media

The New Math, 2009

Dr Stangelove 2009, or, How I Learnt to Stop Fearing Socialism and Love the Public Option

Just the Facts, Ma'am.

Luck Be a Lady

More on the Cold-Blooded Murder of English

Green Day, the English Language, and US Debate

One Definition of "Shared Responsibility"

Stranger in a Strange Land

Lies, Damned Lies, and Bernie Madoff

There Is a Fine Line...

Don't Try This at Home

Tax Cut Redux

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Time To Break Up Oprah?

The Apple Cult: Anything Behind the Curtain?

And These People *ARE* Rocket Scientists

When Liberals Eschewed the Limousine

Brave New World (of Taxes)

Is Everybody Going Crazy?

Election 2008: The Aftermath

And These People ARE Rocket Scientists