Thursday, May 29, 2003
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Some interesting tidbits on the NY Times scandal at Seth Mnookin's Raw Copy. First is NY Times reporter Tim Egan - "Hopefully, we’ll go back to valuing what we have: people who care about the drift of this country, and are given the time and respect to tell it right.”
So what the Times has is ... a bunch of people who care about the (apparently rightward) drift of the country. It seems that in his opinon, this is, if not the only common trait they share, at least the most important. I'm sure that in 'telling it right' they all make sure to eliminate their common bias.
The second item is from Todd Purdum, where he says in part, "But Rick Bragg’s method is not typical. It’s aberrant and repellent. Some of our colleagues have known this for years. Now the world knows it, and we’re all the poorer.”
So Bragg's methods were known 'for years', with no repurcussions. As if this isn't bad enough, Purdum seems to be at least as upset that the truth has gotten out, and as a consequence "we're all the poorer". I always thought that reporters were supposed to believe in exposing truth. I have to wonder who the 'we' that he refers to are. Are 'we' the NY Times, because of the loss of respect, deference, and influence? Are 'we' reporters in general for much the same reason? Or are 'we' Americans, poorer for losing an untrue illusion regarding the NY Times' standards and 'balance'?
So what the Times has is ... a bunch of people who care about the (apparently rightward) drift of the country. It seems that in his opinon, this is, if not the only common trait they share, at least the most important. I'm sure that in 'telling it right' they all make sure to eliminate their common bias.
The second item is from Todd Purdum, where he says in part, "But Rick Bragg’s method is not typical. It’s aberrant and repellent. Some of our colleagues have known this for years. Now the world knows it, and we’re all the poorer.”
So Bragg's methods were known 'for years', with no repurcussions. As if this isn't bad enough, Purdum seems to be at least as upset that the truth has gotten out, and as a consequence "we're all the poorer". I always thought that reporters were supposed to believe in exposing truth. I have to wonder who the 'we' that he refers to are. Are 'we' the NY Times, because of the loss of respect, deference, and influence? Are 'we' reporters in general for much the same reason? Or are 'we' Americans, poorer for losing an untrue illusion regarding the NY Times' standards and 'balance'?
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Well, it's obviously been quite awhile since I posted. I saw the news about NZ Bear's little contest, and thought I might as well start it up again. The chances of my actually winning a week is pretty slim, but what the heck.
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
Let's talk a little about statistics, data, and the uses they are put to in public analysis. Probably due to my accounting background, I tend to easier recognize problems inherent in certain types of comparisons. I want to use three different subjects to illustrate the basic point: education, crime (with a focus on the specific crime of murder), and economy.
With the ongoing problems with our public school system, it is natural for people to look to find some objective criteria to judge which schools, states, programs, etc. are working and which aren't. Given the importance of this area, obviously there is a lot of attention focused on the problem. Unfortunately, almost all of the data that people try to use to perform this task are woefully inadequate and/or misused. That those who use this data are by and large unaware of the problem only compounds it. Two of the most egregious examples, to my mind, are drop-out rates and SAT/ACT scores.
While drop-out rates are important in some respects, it is important to keep in mind the accounting principle of comparability. When comparing the financial statements of two different companies, it is vitally important for any type of meaningful analysis that they are following the same rules in recognizing income, expenses, etc (see. Enron et. al). It is just as important when comparing drop-out rates between states, and thus in effect makes any such valid comparison impossible. The reason is that differing states can have wildly differing stances on social promotion, widely different demographics, varied levels of difficulty in curricula, require passing grades on a certain standardized tests (versus not doing so), etc. etc. Drop-out rates can be a valuable tool for evaluating a particular school, or school district, but it's usefulness does not extend much farther in scale. It's also important to keep in mind that drop-out rates generally say something about how well a school or school system does with the children at the bottom, but says little about it's utility for the average or 'gifted' student .
SAT scores are just as bad. First, they have the converse problem to drop-out rates: they only measure the students who are planning to go (or at least wish to go) to college. The fact that the percentage of students who fit this criteria varies from school to school, from school district to school district, from county to county, and from state to state, should thus put you on your guard that composite SAT scores are highly misleading. Yet every year, state rankings are announced with great fanfare across the country, generally with only token or no acknowlegement of the limitations. This is one of the few pieces I have seen to highlight these limitations, though it is notable that it is in response to a politician trying to make hay out of the raw numbers.
With regard to murder rates, you would think that it would be pretty easy to come up with a murder rate that would compare quite well between different states and countries. It seems that you would be wrong. From this Reason article comes the startling news:
[i]"The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn’t subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible. [/i]
In other words, if someone kills another in self defense, that death would be counted as a 'murder' in the US, but not in the UK. Also, if someone drives recklessly and kills another in a car accident and eventually pleads to vehicular manslaughter that would be counted as a murder in the US, but not in the UK. There are clearly any number of similar scenarios which would result in something counted as a murder here but not there. This goes a VERY long way to explaining how the UK can have such a higher violent crime rate, and yet have a lower murder rate. The disconnect had puzzled me for years, and, as far as I have been able to determine, the Reason article is the only place that this difference of methods has been articulated, and even here it was somewhat buried in the middle, and not given nearly the attention it deserves.
We finally get to the economy and where the idea for this post originated. When looking over what John Quiggin wrote (see below), he was relying in part on country-wide productivity measures.
Friday, December 27, 2002
Well, that obviously hasn't panned out. I did get as far as reviewing everything Quiggin had written in on the subject in both the posts and the comments, and it didn't really amount to as much of a substantive challange to the "American Triumphalist" opinion as I had originally believed. Therefore, if I do find the time, I will instead address those subjects that he did raise.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
I have been meaning to write a short essay on the coming crisis in Europe, but, as with so many other things, haven't found the time to do a decent job of it. This essay from The American Enterprise by Karl Zinmeister seemed to obviate any need to do so. He made most of the same points I would have, and the article seemed to possess a wealth of data that I would never have had time to locate, even if I knew to look for all of it.
I subsequently found this critique (via USS Clueless) which, while I had reservations on several points, seemed well reasoned and rather devastating to Mr Zinmeister's puported data, and by extention to his arguments. Zinmeister's response to the criticisms was, to be charitable, disappointing.
There are few things more irritating than to see someone arguing - poorly! - in favor of position you hold. When you combine that with intellectual dishonesty, it compounds the problem. Therefore, in a follow up post, I will attempt to formulate a more credible reply.
Several months back I read a story on China which made the (to me) startling statement that their economy would surpass ours within the next 20-25 years. I thought that was idiotic, but I have since seen other statements by experts on the issue which tended to support it.
It is with that background that I read this welcome bit of contradictory information:
TNR (requires registration)
Quote:
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But what if they're wrong? Look closely at the Chinese economy, and you'll find a far less rosy situation than that portrayed in most of the business press. The country's growth rates are vastly overstated, the result of cooked books and massive deficit spending. Companies selling to the Chinese market--foreign and domestic alike--are struggling just to break even. The economy is plagued by persistent deflation and a useless banking system. "Businesspeople have created a lemming effect," says Graeme Maxton, a specialist on China's auto industry. "They have convinced themselves they have to be in China or their competitors will overtake them, so they ignore economic fundamentals." The Chinese economic miracle, in other words, is largely a house of cards. And, when it falls, the consequences could be catastrophic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is with that background that I read this welcome bit of contradictory information:
TNR (requires registration)
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But what if they're wrong? Look closely at the Chinese economy, and you'll find a far less rosy situation than that portrayed in most of the business press. The country's growth rates are vastly overstated, the result of cooked books and massive deficit spending. Companies selling to the Chinese market--foreign and domestic alike--are struggling just to break even. The economy is plagued by persistent deflation and a useless banking system. "Businesspeople have created a lemming effect," says Graeme Maxton, a specialist on China's auto industry. "They have convinced themselves they have to be in China or their competitors will overtake them, so they ignore economic fundamentals." The Chinese economic miracle, in other words, is largely a house of cards. And, when it falls, the consequences could be catastrophic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
A prescient article from 1990:
Quote:
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Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.
We should not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem. The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility. There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations; there is still an imposing Western presence -- cultural, economic, diplomatic -- in Muslim lands, some of which are Western allies. Certainly nowhere in the Muslim world, in the Middle East or elsewhere, has American policy suffered disasters or encountered problems comparable to those in Southeast Asia or Central America. There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.
At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the "enemies of God."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cause most frequently adduced for anti-American feeling among Muslims today is American support for Israel. This support is certainly a factor of importance, increasing with nearness and involvement. But here again there are some oddities, difficult to explain in terms of a single, simple cause. In the early days of the foundation of Israel, while the United States maintained a certain distance, the Soviet Union granted immediate de jure recognition and support, and arms sent from a Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia, saved the infant state of Israel from defeat and death in its first weeks of life. Yet there seems to have been no great ill will toward the Soviets for these policies, and no corresponding good will toward the United States. In 1956 it was the United States that intervened, forcefully and decisively, to secure the withdrawal of Israeli, British, and French forces from Egypt -- yet in the late fifties and sixties it was to the Soviets, not America, that the rulers of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and other states turned for arms; it was with the Soviet bloc that they formed bonds of solidarity at the United Nations and in the world generally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us.
We should not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem. The Muslim world is far from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility. There are still significant numbers, in some quarters perhaps a majority, of Muslims with whom we share certain basic cultural and moral, social and political, beliefs and aspirations; there is still an imposing Western presence -- cultural, economic, diplomatic -- in Muslim lands, some of which are Western allies. Certainly nowhere in the Muslim world, in the Middle East or elsewhere, has American policy suffered disasters or encountered problems comparable to those in Southeast Asia or Central America. There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as "advisers." But there is a Libya, an Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms, and above all baffles Americans.
At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the "enemies of God."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cause most frequently adduced for anti-American feeling among Muslims today is American support for Israel. This support is certainly a factor of importance, increasing with nearness and involvement. But here again there are some oddities, difficult to explain in terms of a single, simple cause. In the early days of the foundation of Israel, while the United States maintained a certain distance, the Soviet Union granted immediate de jure recognition and support, and arms sent from a Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia, saved the infant state of Israel from defeat and death in its first weeks of life. Yet there seems to have been no great ill will toward the Soviets for these policies, and no corresponding good will toward the United States. In 1956 it was the United States that intervened, forcefully and decisively, to secure the withdrawal of Israeli, British, and French forces from Egypt -- yet in the late fifties and sixties it was to the Soviets, not America, that the rulers of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and other states turned for arms; it was with the Soviet bloc that they formed bonds of solidarity at the United Nations and in the world generally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm
Thursday, October 10, 2002
On a recent note on The Corner, Jonah Goldberg stated:
I don't blame homeschoolers for choosing to educate their kids at home. To me it seems like a rational response in many circumstances, in much the same way it is a rational response -- and strategic retreat -- to put your kids in a Catholic parochial school even if you're not Catholic. But, what I am saying is that if the public schools weren't such a mess, if the educational culture in this country were in better shape the need to homeschool or for school vouchers for that matter would be much smaller and so would the numbers of people who homeschool.
I understand what he's saying, and to a certain extent agree. When my wife became pregnant with our now 3 year old son Alexander, we decided that we were going to homeschool him. If public (or government, which does seem more appropriate if you think about it) schools were better then we would undoubtedly never have considered it. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. However, that doesn't mean that if in the next 2-3 years public schools were 'magically' cured of PC problems, crime, poor teachers, etc., etc. and reverted back to some 'golden era' of public schools that we would then decide to send him there. The wretched state of public schools was just the impetus for us to consider the question. After looking at the issue in depth, we would never send a child of ours to any public school, and very few private schools either.
The real problems with schools are embedded in their very foundation. If anyone is interested in some radical perspectives on our school system, I highly recommed that they read just about anything by John Taylor Gatto (a conservative) or any of a number of books written by the late John Holt (a liberal). A sample of each:
Gatto
From the Six Lesson School Teacher
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
Holt
"Children begin life as eager, successful learners, Holt points out, but their lust for learning soon dies. "What happens," he writes, "is that it is destroyed, and more than by any other one thing, by the process that we misname education—a process that goes on in most homes and schools."
Schools and parents unwittingly do this damage, Holt explains, by making children perform senseless, tedious tasks; by encouraging and compelling them to "work for petty and contemptible rewards"; by breaking up life into "arbitrary and disconnected hunks of subject matter"; but most of all "by making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other people want, of not pleasing, of making mistakes, of failing, of being wrong."
And we do all this, Holt writes, "without knowing that we are doing it, so that, hearing nonsense shoved at them as if it were sense, [children] come to feel that the source of their confusion lies not in the material but in their own stupidity."
Holt lays out this harsh indictment in his final chapter. But How Children Fail is not long on sweeping generalizations; rather, it is filled with stories about the kids in Holt's classes and his thoughts as he puzzles through their struggles and failures. This is the beauty—and the weight—of the book. We know these children, and we recognize their difficulties. Holt makes us squirm because so much of what he's saying rings true."
I don't blame homeschoolers for choosing to educate their kids at home. To me it seems like a rational response in many circumstances, in much the same way it is a rational response -- and strategic retreat -- to put your kids in a Catholic parochial school even if you're not Catholic. But, what I am saying is that if the public schools weren't such a mess, if the educational culture in this country were in better shape the need to homeschool or for school vouchers for that matter would be much smaller and so would the numbers of people who homeschool.
I understand what he's saying, and to a certain extent agree. When my wife became pregnant with our now 3 year old son Alexander, we decided that we were going to homeschool him. If public (or government, which does seem more appropriate if you think about it) schools were better then we would undoubtedly never have considered it. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. However, that doesn't mean that if in the next 2-3 years public schools were 'magically' cured of PC problems, crime, poor teachers, etc., etc. and reverted back to some 'golden era' of public schools that we would then decide to send him there. The wretched state of public schools was just the impetus for us to consider the question. After looking at the issue in depth, we would never send a child of ours to any public school, and very few private schools either.
The real problems with schools are embedded in their very foundation. If anyone is interested in some radical perspectives on our school system, I highly recommed that they read just about anything by John Taylor Gatto (a conservative) or any of a number of books written by the late John Holt (a liberal). A sample of each:
Gatto
From the Six Lesson School Teacher
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
Holt
"Children begin life as eager, successful learners, Holt points out, but their lust for learning soon dies. "What happens," he writes, "is that it is destroyed, and more than by any other one thing, by the process that we misname education—a process that goes on in most homes and schools."
Schools and parents unwittingly do this damage, Holt explains, by making children perform senseless, tedious tasks; by encouraging and compelling them to "work for petty and contemptible rewards"; by breaking up life into "arbitrary and disconnected hunks of subject matter"; but most of all "by making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other people want, of not pleasing, of making mistakes, of failing, of being wrong."
And we do all this, Holt writes, "without knowing that we are doing it, so that, hearing nonsense shoved at them as if it were sense, [children] come to feel that the source of their confusion lies not in the material but in their own stupidity."
Holt lays out this harsh indictment in his final chapter. But How Children Fail is not long on sweeping generalizations; rather, it is filled with stories about the kids in Holt's classes and his thoughts as he puzzles through their struggles and failures. This is the beauty—and the weight—of the book. We know these children, and we recognize their difficulties. Holt makes us squirm because so much of what he's saying rings true."
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
According to this statute (19:3-10), Lautenberg isn't the legal Democratic nominee even if the 51/48 day deadline is thrown out by judicial fiat. It states:
Quote:
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19:3-10. Name not printed on ballot; next highest name printed
If it shall be determined in a manner hereinafter provided, that the nomination for an office of a successful candidate at any primary election is null and void, and if such determination shall have been made ten days before the election at which the candidates nominated at such primary election are to be voted for, an order shall be made by the court or judge making such determination prohibiting the printing of the name of such candidate on the ballot to be used at such election, and the name of the candidate for nomination or party position at such primary election receiving the next highest number of votes shall thereupon be printed upon the ballot as the nominee for the office.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I've hunted and hunted for the breakdown of the Democratic primary results, but to no avail. Every news report I've found merely states that Torricelli ran unopposed. However, if you look at two different pages of the NJ Division of Elections website, it is clear that someone else received votes.
Compare this page: "Total primary ballots cast" with this page: "Official Primary election results". There are over 60,000 Democratic votes unaccounted for in the "official results", plus about 30,000 unaccounted for Republican votes (so those 60,000 votes aren't 'cross-overs'). Who did those 60,000 Democrats vote for? It seems that by NJ law, whoever received the most of those votes should be the de facto Democratic nominee - NOT Lautenberg.
Quote:
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19:3-10. Name not printed on ballot; next highest name printed
If it shall be determined in a manner hereinafter provided, that the nomination for an office of a successful candidate at any primary election is null and void, and if such determination shall have been made ten days before the election at which the candidates nominated at such primary election are to be voted for, an order shall be made by the court or judge making such determination prohibiting the printing of the name of such candidate on the ballot to be used at such election, and the name of the candidate for nomination or party position at such primary election receiving the next highest number of votes shall thereupon be printed upon the ballot as the nominee for the office.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I've hunted and hunted for the breakdown of the Democratic primary results, but to no avail. Every news report I've found merely states that Torricelli ran unopposed. However, if you look at two different pages of the NJ Division of Elections website, it is clear that someone else received votes.
Compare this page: "Total primary ballots cast" with this page: "Official Primary election results". There are over 60,000 Democratic votes unaccounted for in the "official results", plus about 30,000 unaccounted for Republican votes (so those 60,000 votes aren't 'cross-overs'). Who did those 60,000 Democrats vote for? It seems that by NJ law, whoever received the most of those votes should be the de facto Democratic nominee - NOT Lautenberg.
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