Deinonychus antirrhopus

This is Simply Pathetic

I find this so sad. I mean to cling to some deluded belief that Kerry actually won FL based on such a dubious extrapolation is...simply sad and pathetic.

Update: A poster at DU actually posts accurate information! The first post in that pathetic thread holds that if the recounting differences for Suwannee county held for the entire county (only part of the ballots were counted) then Kerry could pick up 1,200 votes. Applying this change statewide would mean a 400,000 increase for Kerry, and obvously a Kerry victore. Clear unequivocal proof Shrub stole the election.

But this last poster notes that when you look at the data more closely the results are not what they seem. The precincts selected in Suwannee county were those precincts where Kerry had the most support. Whooops. Buh-bye hypothesis.

My prediction is that eomer will have his posting previlges summarily revoked. Can't have a rational, intelligent guy like him gumming up the works. Why eomer is worse than Repukes in that he proclaims to be a progressive, but does stuff like this to help the Repukes. Burn him! Burn HIM!

Rent Seeking in Action

Via Jeff Jarvis comes this article. The gist of the article is to get the FCC to change Part 25 of the FCC's pending satellite radio rules to include an indecency section. The goal is to "level (the) playing field."

The problem from terrestrial radios standpoint is that satellite does not have the indecency restrictions and those people who want to hear Stern and others in all of their raunchy...uhhh glory(?) will be tempted to switch. So to reduce the playing field and hamstring we have this attempt to change the rules for satellite radio.

Lets toss in that Levine owns several terrestrial radio stations and we get a pretty clear picture here: Levine sees a threat to his economic interests and is using the government to protect them. Classic rent seeking. What is truly repugnant is that Levine wants to undermine freedom of speech in the name of his economic interests.

This part of the article is funny though,

But the "pervasiveness" argument breaks down when talking about satellite radio, a Senate staffer familiar with the issue says.

"Satellite radio is a paid service," the staffer says. "You elect to have it, you elect to buy it and you elect to turn it on. It's something that you choose."

The only difference between satellite and terrestrial radio is that you don't pay (directly) for terrestrial radio. Other than that there is still quite a bit of choice on what you listen too. Or do those who support the FCC think that I am somehow compelled to turn on my radio and listen to programming I don't like?

Moron Redux

Another gem from Oliver Willis:

The right morphed global warming into climate change, and never missed a beat.

Uhhh, no. Climate change is what global warming morphed into when people started pointing out things like record low temperatures, bad winters and so forth. Kind of hard to blame a really bad winter on Global Warming, so what happened was the name changed to Climate Change. The idea being that as the globe warmed it would cause weather to become more extreme, so it could be warming but at the same time we could have bad winters.

It is a cute trick of taking evidence that some might point out is contrary to the warming hypothesis and co-opt as evidence for the warming hypothesis. Basically it allows those who support the warming hypothesis to point to any anomaly and claim it is the result of global warming. Bad El Nino? Why it is because of global warming...oh excuse me global climate change. Lots of hurricanes? Global climate change, of course.

Let us also not forget that the big report on climate change is called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). I suppose that name was the result of a masterful plot by Karl Rove, Richard Mellon Scaife, or someother cunning right wing ne'er-do-well. I hope Willis' Brand Democrat takes off so he can afford to go buy a clue.

One Third of Americans: Biblical Literalist?

I found the results of a Gallup poll presented in this article rather disquieting.

• Public acceptance of Darwinian evolution is well below 50%.
• Only 35% say evolution is supported by the facts.
• 35% say that evolution is one of many theories and is not well supported by the facts.
• 45% of Americans believe that God created man as he is now with no evolution taking place.
• 29% say they don't know enough to make a decision.

Sad really. I'd be curious as to the other viable "theories" to explain the fact that evolution¹ has been observed. I sure hope they aren't thinking of Intelligent Design as that is not a theory. Beyond that I have no idea of what they could possibly see as another theory. I sure hope it isn't Biblical Creation as that is dogma.
______
¹By evolution I mean the random mutation of genes.

Third Quarter GDP Revised Upwards

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has revised its estimate of third quarter GDP up to 3.9%.

The press release also contains something that puts the lie to the oft repeated claim by the Left:

The major contributors to the increase in real GDP in the third quarter were personal consumption expenditures (PCE), equipment and software, exports, government spending, and residential fixed investment. The contributions of these components were partly offset by a negative contribution from private inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

There is this idea put forward frequently by the Left that Bush messed up with the tax cuts. That Bush should have actually not cut taxes, but transferred income from people at the upper portion of the income distribution to the lower portion to spur consumer spending. But the data shows that consumer spending is not the problem. Even during the recession consumer spending was the one area that did not go down that much.

What many on the Left seem to forget that while $150,000 is a very good income in Missouri, in Southern California, New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco it is simply okay to good. These people are likely going to spend the bulk of their income and that includes the extra money from the tax cuts.

The bottom line is that tax cuts and deficit spending are expansionary fiscal policies. The tax cuts Bush pushed were in time to help counter the impact of the recession. Yes, it is true that was not the justification for the tax cuts, but that still does not negate the point that tax cuts are expansionary. And yes, it is true that now that the economy is out of the recession the deficit spending should be curtailed as much as possible without sending the economy back into a recession. But again that does not negate the point that deficits are a standard fiscal policy response to a recession. You could argue that the long term crappy outlook for the deficit is a problem, but that is a bit different than arguing that deficits are universally bad. Or for you liberals out there, do you really think cutting spenidng and/or raising taxes during a recession is a good idea?

Supreme Court (non)decision

High court won't review Mass. gay marriage law.

The Supreme Court sidestepped a dispute over gay marriage on Monday, rejecting a challenge by conservative groups to the status of Massachusetts as the only state that sanctions same-sex marriages.

Justices had been asked to overturn a year-old decision by the Massachusetts high court that legalized gay marriage. They declined, without comment.

They ducked.

It appears that gay marriages in Massachusetts will remain legal for the foreseeable future. The legislators and voters of Mass. can still change this with a constitutional amendment, but the process is complicated. IIRC, an amendment has to pass in two consecutive legislatures before going to the people for a vote.

I'm happy with the outcome of this non-decision, but I really don't like the method for getting there. My fear is that judicial impositions will cause a backlash, e.g., the amendments passed in other states in the last election. It may even provide some impetus for the FMA.

My hope is that the gay marriages will be at least as successful as hetero-marriages. It will take a couple of years for Massachusetts to pass an amendment -- hopefully during that time the voters will realize that allowing gay marriages isn't that big of a deal.

Link provided by Boi from Troy.

Moron

Well Oliver Willis proclaims Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc. are wannabe mass murders. That if the Constitution were suspended (and apparently these guys wasnt to suspend the Constitution) they would be shooting women and homosexuals in the head.

In listening to the audio file, my favorite part was how Creatioinism is destroying our country. I think the reader would be hard pressed to find anybody more ardent in their oppostion to Creationism than me. But the idea that it is destroying our country is just rubbish. It is something that periodically rears its ugly head in a few places and while bad from a scientific stand point, there are many more issues that represent more of a danger to the U.S. than Creationism.

Basically a fine example of over the top political rhetoric. We all know that Robertson, Falwell, et. al. are quite hostile to homosexuals and want to make abortions illegal. I don't think we need to compare them to the guys who actually did shoot women in the head for trivialities.

The Nanny State

I was thinking over the long weekend about all the various issues that are popular during election years, and even non-election years. Things like health care, Social Security, Medicare, the FCC and broadcast standards, and so forth. The one thing running through all of these issues is the Nanny State.

People seem loath to take responsibility (and charge) of their lives. For example the FCC and television issue. Whose responsibility is it to be sure of what television programs their children watch? The FCC? No, the parents. It is the parents who are responsible. If there is a program that tends to have content that is questionable on, then don't let your child watch it. If all of television is bad in your opinion, then don't let them watch any television. Part of the problem here is that too many poeple use the television as an electronic babysitter. "Okay, were home, Johnny go watch television while dad gets dinner ready, and mom takes care of the bills." Why not have Johnny do is homework, read a book, or talk to dad in the kitchen?

Similarly with health care. People don't have health insurance! We must do somehting about it. First, there are those people who don't have insurance due to rational decision making. To get these people to opt for coverage the price they pay is going to have to decrease pretty substantially. These are people who are most likely young and healthy. For these people health care is a suckers game.¹ Of those who might like to get health care, but simply can't afford it there is the issue of incentives. For example, what about a family who would like to have another child, but couldn't. But if the extra child suddenly qualifies them for subsidized health care having that child might become feasible. You might say, "C'mon how many families are like that?" Don't forget that we have tens of millions of families. The program could cost billions of dollars directly, not to mention the indirect costs of things like schooling the additional children such a policy would produce.

The next response is, "Couldn't we simply structure the program so there isn't this problem?" The short answer is usually going to be: No. The reason is that there will be people who would suddenly qualify for such a program, but because of the rule prohibiting from recieving such benefits they wouldn't. They'd complain that it isn't fair. They weren't trying to game the system, so why should they be punished. That wonderful concept of time inconsistency says that the government policy makers will have an incentive to alter the initial rule prohibiting such people from benefitting. Further, there is no political pandering here; just a desire to improve people's lives.

The issue of responsibility here is not having more children than you can afford to support. If you can't have any, well that's tough, but why should I or anybody else have to foot part of the bills? Do I now get a say in how you raise your child. Whooops. There is that ugly aspect to consider. By handing over responsibility for these things you also hand over some of your rights, IMO. The FCC impinges on the right to free speech in the name of decency (whatever the heck that is). Health care, Social Security and Medicare in effect take part of your life. By taking part of your earnings you are in effect giving awya your labor--i.e., part of your life.

And there appears to be little end in site. There seems to be this overwhelming desire to do good, to help the needy, and to do it by forcing others. Granted there really are people who could use a hand getting back on their feet. However, when the helping hand is the result of government coercion it comes with a host of other problems that many seem to want to ignore.

• Time inconsistency,
• incentive problems,
• rent seeking.

Not to mention the more mundane things like the inefficiencies things like taxes can impose on markets. These inefficiencies are themselves welfare losses for people. There is a stupid cliche that summarizes the problems with the Nanny State, and most people know it: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
_____
¹Actually purchasing health care if you are sick and have no assests is also a suckers game. Given the legal insitutions in this country if you are sick and have no insurance that will not stop you form recieving care. I know this is a very popular myth, but it is just that a myth. Health care is not given or witheld on ability to pay.

Over the Top Political Rhetoric

Why is political rhetoric often so over the top? In this post I noted that some on the Right side of the political spectrum are calling/hoping for something unpleasant to happen to Kevin Sites, the journalist who video taped the Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in Fallujah. On the Left Bush was compared to Hitler. Each side can point to ugly rhetoric by the other side. Cries that Kerry was a traitor, Bush is a warmonger and so forth.

In the run up to the last election there were attempts to link John Kerry to Jane Fonda. Some attempts used photoshopped pictures showing Kerry and Fonda sharing the stage at an anti-war demonstration. Yet another picture showed John Kerry sitting well behind Fonda (and quite out of focus too). This was basically an attempt at guilt by association. Jane Fonda did some foolish things in her youth, and since John Kerry sat near her on one occasion John Kerry is also guilty. Or so the story goes.

Something similar went around the internet with a picture of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Now in this picture Rumsfeld is shaking hands with Hussein. The implication being that Hussein was a tool for the U.S. in the mid-east, and that the current policies are hypocritical and that Rumsfeld is also a hypocrite.

Both of these pictures, in my view, have something in common: a lack of context. Why was Rumsfeld in Baghdad shaking hands with Hussein? Well Rumsfeld was the special envoy of President Reagan in 1983. He was there as part of his job and doing what his President had asked him. Now, granted it was the case of making a deal with a tyrant and one that would later become a problem, but this is often how U.S. foreign policy works. Deals are often struck with despicable characters. Another example was the Clinton Administrations deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and its nuclear program. Was this a bad thing? In hindsight yes, but at the time the deal was to keep North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, which is a laudable goal.

LEIF SKOOGFORS/CORBIS

Similarly with the Kerry/Fonda picture. Kerry was at an anti-war rally. Jane Fonda was at the same anti-war rally. Does this mean that there was some sort of cooperation between Kerry and Fonda, that they were hatching some grand plan? I doubt it very much as it seems the contact between Fonda and Kerry was limited to sitting about 20 feet apart at one point during the rally.

So why am I bringing this up? Well, I posted a picture of that anti-war rally, and recently was contacted by the photographer, Leif Skoogfors, about the copyright violation.¹ In doing a bit of research on Mr. Skoogfors work after this I came across an article at the Digital Journalist where Mr. Skoogfors discusses this picture. Apparently some on the right were using the picture to try and attack Kerry. When Mr. Skoogfors expressed his disappointment with his picture being used in this manner given that it lacked the context of the picture and requested that such pictures be taken down for copyright violations Mr. Skoogfors was attacked. He was called a traitor and being in favor of some sort of Jihad. Ironically, when the picture started popping up on Leftist sites Mr. Skoogfors encountered similar resistance in his attempts to get the situation under control.

Needless to say, the idea of attacking Mr. Skoogfors is out of line. Just as wishing/advocating harm is done to Kevin Sites is out of line. Similarly, it is out of line to ignore the context of the photo showing Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. But there is a larger point here as well. Why must each side not only disagree with the other side, but demonize them as well? We see it with the debate on trying to fix Social Security/Medicare. Those who favor privatization are depicted as wanting the elderly to suffer and die so that some people on Wall Street can supposedly get richer. Why? I was quite strong in my support for privatization and I can assure you there would be little or no benefit to me if some Wall Street executive getting richer. Couldn’t it just be that people who favor privatization see it as a good solution to a problem?

There is often a bemoaning of the vitriol in politics. Granted it probably cannot be removed entirely. But one thing that can be done is not attack the messengers simply because they are bearing news you don’t like. Now this doesn’t mean that we give the messengers a pass on any news they bring to us. If the messenger is ignoring some part of the news, then that is a legitimate complaint. If the messenger is distorting the news, then that too is a legitimate complaint. Another thing that can help is stopping the blanket negative statements. Not all Republicans are happy with Bush’s deficits, as an example. Not all Democrats are in favor of pursuing less aggressive military options (Joe Lieberman comes to mind). The bottom line is that when the rhetoric gets out of hand, the reasonable discussion becomes impossible, and without reasonable discussion solving these problems becomes far more difficult.
_____
¹The above picture is used with permission of Mr. Skoogfors.

I want my global warming NOW

We got four to six inches of snow last night. While that isn't really a lot of snow for this area, it was unseasonably early. A lot of trees haven't completely shed their foliage, and the heavy wet snow knocked tree branches onto powerlines.

Maybe I should move to California. Or Texas.

Holiday Fluff -- Alexander

It's getting panned, severely, so I don't know if I'll go see it or not. John Podhoretz has a good reason not to:

At a screening on Monday night, during the death scene of Alexander's lover Hephaiston, people were screaming with laughter as Alexander made a big speech while, behind him in soft focus, Hephaiston went into a conniption fit and croaked. ... It's almost worth seeing, but don't, because if you're like me and want to see Oliver Stone utterly destroyed for his artistic and political crimes, you will make sure not to contribute to the box-office coffers of what is sure to go down in the annals of moviedom as Heaven's Gate with rampaging evil elephants (no, I'm not kidding).

He's stretching it a bit to call Hephastion "Alexander's lover" since (according to the review I read) Stone essentially ignored their relationship.

Somebody Figured Out How to Use A Calculator

Georger Monbiot takes a close look at the use of biofuels and decides that it just isn't feasible. Here is the money paragraphs,

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the UK. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This is quite similar to what I have noted for solar energy for generating electricity. Imagine covering acres and acres with solar panels. It should be obvious to anybody with a brain that doing something like this would result in a huge environmental impact. Thus, the unpleasant conclusion is that environmentalists have no brains. But lets not get sidetracked here, the topic is biofuels from crops.

One thing that Monbiot missed was fertilizers and pesticides. With a massive increase in farming there would also be a masive increase in the use of fertilizers and pesticides. These of course, present environmental problems.

The bottomline is that Monbiot is actually right about this topic...for once. Oh well, the blind chicken and the kernel and all that.

Article via Debunkers and title via Llamas at Debunkers.

The Likelihood Principle and Statistics

I've had a couple of requests to give some ideas of how the likelihood principle works when applied to statistics. One manner of implementing the likelihood principle is to use Bayesian approach.

The Bayesian approach to statistical inference starts with what is called a prior probability. That is suppose we have two hypotheses, H₁ and H₂. We assign probabilities to these hypotheses being true, P(H₁), and P(H₂).

Then an experiment or data are gathered (call this evidence E). Then based on the following conditional probabilities P(E|H₁)and P(E|H₂) the following probabilities can be calculated

The conditional probability P(E|H_i) is the probability of observing the evidence E, given one of the hypotheses in question. The probability P(H_i|E) is the probability of hypothesis H_i being truce given that we observed evidence E.

Now note that the only evidence we take into consideration is the evidence that is observed. Evidence that could have been observed, but was not is not considered. In this way, Bayesian inference is in agreement with the likelihood principle.

Now take advantage of the Theorem of Total Probability (see page 207 of Real Analysis and Probability, by Robert Ash) we can rewrite the denominators above as simple P(E). The ratio's,

measures the impact of the evidence on the hypothesis in question. For example, if it is unlikely to observe E unless the hypothesis is true then the above ratio will be large. A large ratio will increase the probability P(H_i|E).

To make this somewhat concrete suppose we have two hypotheses. The first one is that autism is caused by tuberous sclerosis. The second hypothesis is that autism is caused by thimerosal in vaccines. Now, we have to pick a prior to represent our beliefs that either of these hypotheses is true. If we had some reason to suspect one hypothesis of being true over the other we could give that hypothesis a higher prior.¹ As it is, lets start with a prior that assigns the same probability to each hypothesis (i.e. a prior of 0.5).

Now, we also need to know what is the probability of observing E, given each hypothesis. That is what is the probability of observing a child having autism if it is the vaccine hypothesis is true, vs. the probability of observing a chile with autism due to tuberous sclerosis. Let's assume the probability of observing autism given that the tuberous sclerosis is true is 0.25 and 0.05 if the vaccine hypothesis is true. Then using the Bayes theorem calculator we get the following probabilities for if we observe a child with autism:

P(Autism|Vac) = 0.167
P(Autism|TS) = 0.833.

In other words, observing a child with autism lends support to the tuberous sclerosis hypothesis and takes support away from the hypothesis that it is vaccines.

We can use these new probabilities (called posteriors) and use them as new prior probabilites when we obtain more data. Thus, the Bayesian approach provides a mechanism that allows one to consider new evidence and its impact on your beliefs. Frequentist statistics does not really have such a mechanism. Once you do a given study, there is no "updating" mechanism is a new study is done. Given the initial study, there is no way to take the findings of that study and incorporate them into a new study in terms of the statistics.

Thus, the Bayesian method allows for "learning". This is precisely how the Bayesian spam filters on many e-mail programs work. As the user marks more and more e-mails as spam or ham, the filter learns and is able to automatically flag e-mails as spam even before they end up in the inbox.

As for the autism example, one glitch is the rise in the rates of autism over time. Many point to this event and the rise of vaccines as evidence supporting the vaccine as a cause of autism. While it maybe true, the best way to go about this is to look at the alternative hypothesis such as a rise in tuberous sclerosis or the other factors that can play a role in changing the risk factors for autism. Another possibility is the mercury content in fish. While there has been no connection found, I would argue that the same holds for thimerosal as well. This is definitely an area that needs more research and I would argue that analyzing the data using Bayesian methods would be better than Frequentist methods.

One of the things that puts off many people from using Bayesian methods is the amount of work that goes into it. There are quite a few statistical software packages that have Frequentist techniques built into them. It is quite easy for even somebody with little or no understanding of statistics to dump some data into them and crank out results. Bayesian methods on the other hand require quite a bit of thought from the research prior to obtaining any results. That is, there is no mindless number crunching.
____
¹Some might object to the term belief, but beliefs are formed what we all have when it comes to scientific hypotheses. We believe one hypothesis is true vs. the other. Also, the idea of picking prior probabilities leaves some doubtful of the efficacy of Bayesian methods, but even a high initial prior probability will be swamped if the evidence continually favors the other hypothesis.

Employee Medical and Retirement Benefits

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics employer provided medical and retirement benefits are declining(pdf file). The data starts in 1992/93 and goes through 2003. The trends are pretty clear in that these kinds of benefits are being provided less and less by employers.

Now not all of these changes are necessarily bad. For example, the paper notes that one of the reasons for decline in retirement benefits is the rise of 401(k) plans. Also, there is the possibility that employees themselves are opting for less coverage by say moving from high coverage industries to low coverage industries. This may be due to a completely rational calculus.

For those who may be thinking of blaming this on Bush and Repbulicans note that the data start in 1992/93 and the declines appear to be present even during the economic boom years of 1993 - 2000.

Here is an interesting portion of the article,

The evidence so far suggests one factor leading to the declinein medical care coverage is that, even when offered,employees are not choosing to participate in an employerplan. There may be various reasons for such a choice, includingthe availability of coverage from other sources. In a 2002study, David Cutler attributes declining medical care coverageto employee decisions not to accept coverage, and furtherattributes those decisions directly to the increase in employeecosts.

In other words, employees are looking at the decision to participate in an employer program and some are deciding not to participate. Part of the reason appears to be the cost. It isn't clear that all of these people are going without coverage and may be obtaining it via other means.

Also, one must remember that for the young and healthy with relatively no assets, participating in a high cost plan is a suckers game given the legal setting in this country. If you are healthy and suffer a catastrophic accident and you don't have insurance you will not be allowed to simply die without any care.¹

The article notes that more analysis will be forthcoming. Hopefully there will be more data available of why people elect not to participate in employer plans and what alternative methods if any they use to obtain medical coverage.
_____
¹This is even true if you are old and unhealthy. The myth that people without health care recieve no treatment for medical problems is just that a myth. Now they may not recieve regular care if they are sick, and that is one of the many problems with the current system. But the idea that one will be gravely ill or injured and recieve no medical care is a complete myth.

Uggghhh

I've seen lots of complete idiocy surrounding the shooting of the wounded Iraqi by a Marine.

On the Left side we have Matthew Yglesias acting like a complete blithering moron.

Over at FreeRepublic.com there is a feeding frenzy about how Kevin Sites, the reporter who shot the footage of the aforementioned event, should be, basically, murdered.

My view on the whole thing is that the Marine was probably quite uncertain as to the threat the wounded Iraqi posed. In listening to the tape he seemed very tense about the Iraqi and not at all sure he was no longer a threat. If this is true shooting the Iraqi was probably justified. The rush to condemn the Marine is rather despicable, IMO. At the same time Kevin Sites didn't do anything that would justify murdering him.

Hopefully the investigation will lead to the truth and justice served. Killing Kevin Sites is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Getting Rid of the FCC

My latest post at Outside the Beltway is up. It is about why it is time to do away with the FCC.

Marriage is Between a Man and a Woman*

* -- unless, that is, the woman used to be a man.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) - Sandy Clarissa Gast has identified as a woman all her life and should have been considered one even before her sex-change surgery, a psychologist testified Tuesday in Gast's trial on a charge of lying on a marriage license form.

The 49-year-old defendant, born Edward Gast, went on trial Monday on a misdemeanor charge of false lying, which carries a $500 fine. She is accused of falsely signing as a woman on a marriage license application in February....

{snip}

[Topeka psychologist George] Hough testified that Gast had a sex-change operation Oct. 19 in Trinidad, Colo. He read a letter from Gast's surgeon stating that Gast should be considered female.

The prosecution is a direct result of a 2002 Kansas decision invalidating (for the purposes of inheritance) a marriage between a man and a TG woman.

I profess very little understanding of transgenderism. I can't imagine having those feelings -- it's just not in my nature. I also realize that some heterosexuals have that same outlook towards me -- they can't imagine being attracted to the same sex. So while I don't share Gast's feelings, I can certainly empathize.

What I don't understand is the prosecution's motivation. This person has gone to enormous trouble and expense getting a sex-change operation, and has even had her birth certificate amended to say she is female. Other than her Y chrmosome and an inability to procreate, she is a female. Yet she's accused of lying for saying so.

I wonder, will the prosecutors go after people with Klinefelter's Syndrome for falsely identifying themselves as men? Or chromosomal mosaics for identifying themselves as either sex?

(What really irritates me about this article is the term "falsely lying". What other kind of lying is there?)

Blonde Jokes Foil Bayesian Spam Filters

A Bayesian spam filter will rely on past e-mails to determine whether an e-mail is spam or ham. Since people often e-mail jokes to each other, the use of a joke in a spam e-mail has provided a means of getting around the spam filters.

I would imagine that this is a short term effect though, as the neat thing about Bayesian methods is that they provide a method for learning. As these e-mails are flagged as spam the filter should learn and correct itself.

Game Theory and Politics

An interesting article on the application of game theory to the decision of which swing state should candidates visit. Here is the problem (with some simplifying assumptions).

To simplify our problem, let's suppose it's the weekend before Election Day and each candidate can only schedule one more visit. We'll concede Pennsylvania to Kerry; then for Bush to win the election, he must win both Florida and Ohio. Let's say that Bush has a 30 percent chance of winning Ohio and a 70 percent chance at Florida. Furthermore, we'll assume that Bush can increase his chances by 10 percent in either state by making a last-minute visit there, and that Kerry can do the same.

The article even links to the previous weeks article on Bayesian inference. Very cool.

Zogby Flushes Reputation Down Toilet

I can't believe he would be this stupid. Lending credence to the "Bush stole the election" meme. Sheesh.

With regards to the model of using voter registration to predict the vote see this CalTech/MIT paper. The diecrepency in places like Florida between party affiliation and who the voters vote for is nothing new. It was like this in 1996 and 2000.

Update: Zogby site removed the article. Ha ha ha. What a freaking idiot Zogby is. Here is Google's cached version. I'm going to see if I can get some screen shots of the cached version.

Here is the article in the Freezerbox.

Update II: Well all signs of that article have been "purged" from the Zogby site. That was quick. I guess Zogby isn't that stupid.

Federal Debt Limit

The federal government is at its debt limit of $7.384 trillion dollars. That is, the government can no longer take on anymore new debt according to federal law. Is this something to worry about?

If the worry is that the government wont be able to issue new debt and meet its obligations no need to worry. In the last 64 years Congress has voted 80 times to increase the debt limit. No politician is going to risk not being able to bring home the bacon due to a debt limit.

Is there any reason to be worried about the debt from an economic perspective? That is a harder question to answer. Government debt means that at some future point taxes will have to be raised to pay for it (unless economic growth and hence growth of government tax receipts manages to outstrip the growth in spending). However, from a historic perspective the debt level isn't that out of line. In looking at other countries it is again fairly typical if not on the low side (France has a little less public debt and Germany a little more).

Overall it is hard to tell what the debt limit and the current levels of debt mean for the economy. The debt is below the levels seen in the late 1980's and early 1990's, but it is higher than in the late 1990's, but only slightly so. So it isn't clear we need to be worried about this like some on the Left.

Hyperventilating Liberals

John Henke has the story on how the Left Side of the blogosphere is hyperventilating about Bush's reorganization of the C.I.A. First off, this has been done before...10 years ago. Clinton and his Administration didn't like what the C.I.A. were telling him so he purged the agency.

Now, is it any wonder that Bush is a lame duck they he wants to get rid of those who have a different political viewpoint and might very well be using their position to influence things like elections? Not really. For example Steve Gilliard writes,

If loyalty to Bush is the criteria, a LOT of the agency will be leaving. Now, I was under the impression that the CIA was at war. Yet, the most important thing is loyalty to Bush?

Ok, remember, as long as they work for the agency, they cannot attack the Administration. If you force them out, they can piss and moan all day long.

This is another good day for Osama and his Saudi allies as well as the Iraqi resistance. So when Allawi is killed, and that day is coming, and the CIA misses it, what will Bush say then?

There are definitely two ways of looking at this. One is that there are those inside the CIA who oppose what Bush is doing and are working to prevent him from doing it. Now is this bad? Maybe, if what Bush wants to do is really bad. I'm not convinced that it is, and I'm also not convinced that it isn't either. My point is that simply getting rid of those who aren't helping your team is pretty standard for most things in life. For example, suppose you are running a business. One of your managers comes in and says, "I think you are doing everything wrong and I am going to do everything I can to stab you in the back." Do you,

1. Fire him on the spot.
2. Leave him in his position to undermine your efforts and authority?

Seems pretty damn obvious that everybody, including the hyperventilating liberals, would fire the guy on the spot.

Update: For giggles check out Kevin Drum and his commenters. This comment I particularly like,

Its important, during the next four years, that Bush drive incompetency down to the lowest levels of the Federal Government, not just at the surface level.

Perhas this is a good thing. It should hasten the decline of the United States as a world power, and given America's values (belief over evidence, and imperialims over cooperation) and ideology (freedom sans fairness) its just as well be hastened.

I agree with the Salon article today, there is a new cold war - this time between Europe and The U.S. And the war is over ideology. The two different ideologies are 1) Freedom-without-fairness (America) and 2) Freedom-with-fairness (Europe).

The former represents a power and wealth grab by an elite clique empowered by reactionary conservative protestant theism. It is destined to go the way of the dinosaur, but is capable of causing all manner of neadless suffering and harm. The sooner and the quicker it dies, the better.

So let Bush push incompetency to every level of government and push spending beyond the ability or desire of the world to finance it and let it hasten the decline of America. Bush will break America, and then we will fix it all over again without the hubris ignorance that forms the head wind to any kind of progress ever occuring in this land.

You know it is hard not to wonder if these guys want the U.S. attacked again so they can sit there and smugly tell Bush supporters that they asked for it.

Prematurely Dancing on his Grave

The DU reacts to Cheney's hospitalization for shortness of breath.

15. wants to upstage arafat

From any other source, I'd assume that was sarcasm.

31. My goodness. God IS hearing prayers

195. i agree...this is just...well...TRANSPARENT!

258. Interesting That This Is Happening Now
Just as the votes are going to be recounted in NH, NC, Ohio and parts of Washington, California and New York.

Can we say Diversion?

Get out the moonbat-bat.

Blind Squirrel

Just when I'm ready to write off my hometown newspaper as an NYT-esque liberal rag, they go and write an editorial like this.

Arafat's death unlocks new hope for Mideast peace

A few key facts tell the story of Yasser Arafat: He dies without a Palestinian state but with abundant praise from Arab autocrats and a secret fortune that may well amount to several billion dollars.

The strange story of this corrupt and brutal man closes on a final curious note: He is being honored in death as the embodiment of the Palestinian aspirations that he in fact betrayed.

Unfortunately, sufficient attention will not be given to the many innocent people who have died over the decades as the result of Arafat's terrorism.

Those victims — Olympic athletes, Israeli schoolchildren, American tourists, Palestinian moderates and many others — are the ones who need to be remembered as the world reflects on Arafat's career.

{snip}

Arafat's death creates an enormous power vacuum; the months and perhaps years ahead are likely to be filled with uncertainty and internal conflicts for the Palestinians. But after decades of Arafat's lies, corruption and violence, they now have at least some hope for a brighter future.

Bravo, Kansas CIty Star editorial board.

Significance Testing and Philosophical Issues in Statistics

Over at Outside the Beltway, and in other forums I have argued against the Frequentist view on statistics, generally speaking. The post right below this one was designed to highlight one of the problems with Frequentist statistics.

Also, I have exchanged e-mails with Kevin Brancato of Truck and Barter on one of these problems (the interpretation of 95% confidence intervals as 95% probability intervals). The table below will help, I hope, show the problem with the Frequentist notion of confidence intevals.

Confidence intervals get their name (and the name is important here) from the underlying procedures used to construct the intervals. The procedure is designed so that in a large number of trials the procedure will "capture" (i.e., the parameter of interest lies inside the interval--hereafter POI) what we are "looking for" 95% of the time. Now lots of people look at this and say, that this pre-experimental nature of confidence intervals means that any confidence interval has a 95% probability of capturing the POI. Not so.

Look at the table below. We are interested in a parameter that can take on the value of 1 or 2. The distribution for this parameter is denoted by P_i. The data can take on the values 1, 2 or 3.

	X
Distribution	1	2	3
P1	0.009	0.001	0.990
P2	0.001	0.989	0.010

Now, given the information above the most powerful test is one that rejects the POI is 1 when x=3 and accepts it otherwise. The error with this test is 0.01 (1% error). Sounds good right? Upon observing x=1 the Frequentist would be quite right in saying that he rejects the POI being 1 with a 1% confidence. But does that make any kind of sense?

No! Absolutely no. We know the data, x=1. But we are saying that our test has a 1% error rate when we are rejecting the hypothesis, given the data, that is 9 time higher than the alternate hypothesis. Given the data the probability that the POI is 1 is 0.009. Granted it is a small probability, but the probability that the POI is 2 0.001. Doesn't it seem silly to keep saying that given the data the test has a 1% error level?

Why does Frequentist statistics do this? The reason is simple. Frequenstist statistics considers not only the data that did happen, but data that might have happened. So, when using Frequentist statistics on the Presidential election, for example, you have to look not only at the data we have (that Bush won, that he won over 51% of the popular vote, etc, etc.) you also have to look at all possible permutations. Not only that Kerry might have won, but that Ralph Nader could have won also. Still comfortable with Frequentist methods? I should hope that this example, for you number crunchers, is giving you pause to think and re-evaluate your views on statistics.

The idea that a 95% confidence interval implies a 95% probability is utterly false once the data is in hand, generally speaking. Going from this faulty premise to constructing yet more probabilities from these confidence intervals is bad as well as it rests on a faulty premise. Yank out the shakey ground on which your first probability assesment rests and your entire argument can collapses in on itself. Now if you really want to use intervals like confidence intervals for probability statements you must jettison the Frequentist approach. You need to adopt a likelihood based approach.

Foundational Issues in Statistics

Suppose a substance to be analyzed can be sent either to a laboratory in New York or California. The two labs seem equally good, so a fair coin is flipped to choose between them, with "heads" denoting that the lab in New York will be chosen. The coin is flipped and comes up tails, so the California lab is used. After awhile, the experimental results come back and a conclusion must be reached. Should this conclusion take into account the fact that the coin could have been heads, and hence that the experiment in New York might have been performed instead?

Click on the extended entry for more on this.

The idea here is to show what many consider to be a "problem" with Frequentist statistics (i.e., the type of statistical techniques that come with every canned stats software package). Frequentist statistics requires that the researcher consider not only the data that did occure, but also data that might have occured. The Frequentist would indeed have to factor in that the sample could have been sent to the other lab and that the results could have been different. Now ask yourself, how come Frequentist methods (which if you do any statistical analysis for you job this is probably what you use) requires something you consider to be counter intuitive?

Bush Stole the Election?

Check out my post on this over at Outside the Beltway. The answer according to CalTech/MIT is, "No".

Social Security, Personal Biases, & the Magic ATM Visa Card

You know it is funny how people behave. A conservative says something and a liberal will likely discount it. A liberal says the same thing and the same liberal who discounted it earlier now accepts it. Case in point this post by Kevin Drum.

Kevin is responding to a post by Brad DeLong on Social Securityp privatization. And focuses on one part in particular,

I can imagine private account plans that I would think are worth risking. I'm impressed enough by the large size of the equity premium to think that there are some $1,000 bills left on the table here that the Social Security system might as well try to sweep up. Propose a private accounts plan by which Social Security beneficiaries' private accounts are managed by the Treasury employee's Thrift Savings Plan, and according to which accounts cannot be tapped or pledged before retirement, and you could get me to sign on.

Now what caught my eye is that Brad DeLong is basically saying the feds should administer the individual accounts that would be created under Bush's proposed plan. Contrast this to this post where I said basically the same thing.

I put quotes around private investments as it is not like the individual will have complete choice over where to invest his/her funds. They will still be largely controlled by the government.

Kevin responds with,

Besides, what's the point? If we're going to give back two percentage points of payroll taxes to individuals (the most commonly disucssed plan), why should the feds invest it? Why not just reduce SS taxes and let people do whatever they want with the extra money?

DeLong says it...no problem. I say it and it is just silly. Oh well, guess it must be my evil conservative demeanor (lets ignore the fact that I'm in favor of keeping abortion legal, think Ashcroft's crusade against porn in general is a waste of time, I oppose creationism in schools, I'm in favor of gay marriage, etc.).

Kevin also makes a big mistake at the end of the post as well. Kevin writes,

But in the end it's not really about money. It's about the fact that at any given point in time, there are a certain number of workers who produce stuff, and a certain amount of this stuff is turned over to the nonworking elderly. It's true that the elderly use money to buy this stuff, but it doesn't really matter where the money comes from. All that matters is that they're hoovering up a certain percentage of the goods and services that workers create. As the number of elderly increases, this means that individual workers are forced to give up a larger and larger percentage of the stuff they create.--italics added

Lets use an analogy here. My son is almost seven. He likes movies alot (gets it from me). He wants lots of movies right now. From his perspective I have something that will allow him to satisfy all these wants and then some: an ATM/VISA card. To him it represents a limitless supply of money for purchasing the things he wants. Basically he is having a hard time getting his head around the idea of a budget constraint...of course, he is only six (almost seven he would point out).

With the elderly it is quite similar. Granted the elderly realize quite nicely what a budget constraint is. If we gave the elderly accounts with a fixed dollar amount and said, "that's it spend it wisely," they'd generally behave differently than if we said, "don't worry the government's got you covered." In the latter case the elderly would realize that their needs are covered by all tax payers. What is the big deal is 100,000,000 tax payers chip in only a penny...or two (that is $1,000,000 to $2,000,000)? From the eldelry person's perspective the government looks to them alot like how my ATM/VISA card looks to my son: a limitless supply of money.

On top of this we have the fact that we live in a society where the government is to some extent determined by elections. Thus, the eldelry, who are more likely to vote than other demographics, have lots of clout politically. There is a great temptation for each candidate to pander to the elderly vote by throwing money at them (can we say Medicare Prescription Drug Plan...I knew you could).

So for these reasons it matters a great deal where the money comes from. But it doesn't stop there. Kevin continues.

So suppose the whole thing works swimmingly. The government invests payroll taxes in the stock market and gets spectacular returns. This money is turned over to retirees. Result: tax rates stay low, but the elderly have as much money to spend as ever.

Which in turn means that workers are still forking over the same amount of goods and services as ever. So what's the difference? Who cares whether the money comes from tax payments or from government mandated investment income? One way or another, workers are still being forced to give up the same percentage of the stuff they produce to retirees. And it's stuff, not money, that ultimately matters.

The problem with Kevin's thinking is that workers are not forced to fork over anything. They hand over goods and services as a result of voluntary transactions in the market place. That is the basic idea behind the market: voluntary transactions. This point is often lost on many on the Left. This is one reason, in my view, that the market is a more ethical method of allocating resources. People are, generally, doing what they feel is in their best interest. Now it doesn't always work that way, but compare it to countries where the government makes decisions for people and I think the track record is pretty clear.

I'm guessing the deleted email address...

...is from somewhere in Nigeria. DUer's buy into a hoax email.

Kerry to UNCONCEDE if case made for vote fraud?? Is this legit???

"BREAKING---KERRY TO UNCONCEDE IF THERE IS EVIDENCE OF FRAUD

FORWARD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
EMAIL FROM DC LAWYER CYNTHIA BUTLER

I am angry and getting emails and recrimination from people wondering why KERRY just caved and is not fighting this before the final count in Ohio, before any of the fraud was challenged, before New Mexico and Iowa even came in.

There is widespread feeling that he did not lose the election and that it was taken from him.

There is enough here to warrant investigation and enough to challenge the results. It's coming from all corners.

I understand that he has until the official count certification in Ohio to Un Concede which is several days from now.

Anyone who thinks that he should unconcede should give reasons why -
whatever they noticed, particularly in Red Republican Governed States using electronic machines- and send them directly to Cameron KERRY, John Kerry's brother at his law firm at the address **********

At least it isn't asking for bank account numbers.

Creationist Dodges

In light of my post below I thought I'd post some of the more common dodges used by creationists.

First up is the macro/micro evolution distinction. Many point to this as a last ditch defense of some view of creationism, weakness of evolution, etc. However, it is definitely a dodge. The problem with this dodge is that the underlying process (random mutation of genes and natural selection) is at work in both micro and macro evolution. Macro evolution is a change at or above the species level. It is usually coupled with coupled with geographical isolation that leads to reproduction isolation. Bottomline: for this criticism to hold the anit-evolutionists need to come up with a theory of why what works at the micro level fails at the macro level.

Next is the old saw: genetic mutations are almost always fatal. Completely untrue. Most mutations of the genes are benign. Some are beneficial and some are harmful, but the vast majority are neither. Not much more to say here. It is a completely misleading dodge.

The lack of transitory fossils dodge. This is a favorite dodge of many anti-evolutionists. They wonder why there aren't more transitionary fossils in the fossil record. Well the truth is that there are transitionary fossils and fossils (for land animals) are damn rare. The conditions for a dead animal to become fossilized have to be just right or you get no fossils.

Evolution does not explain how life started dodge. This is great dodge in that it uses both the truth and misdirection. It is true that evolutionary theory says nothing about the origins of life. But remember Darwin's great work was title The Origin of Species, not The Origin of Life. It is misleading in the extreme to use the issue of abiogenesis as a means of trying to discredit the theory of evolution.

Mutations are rare dodge. No, mutations are ubiquitous. This is a variant of the mutations are harmless dodge. Mutations happen all the time, and your DNA probably has quite a few mutations.

Some systems are irreducbily complex dodge. This is a God of the Gaps argument that has been slutted up to look more attractive to the unwary. Basically this argument says, that a "biological system" can't function with any one of its "parts" missing hence it couldn't have evolved via incremental steps. The shorter version is: we don't know or see how it could evolve thus it didn't evolve. That is precisely the God of the Gaps argument. It is a logically faulty argument. For more on this one go here.

The bottomline to all of this is that there are damn few if any serious anti-evolutionist objections to the current theory of evolution.

Evolution Disclaimers?!

Well, looks like it is Georgia's turn in the idiot chair. The trial on Cobb County's textbooks with disclaimers about evolution is getting underway. Disclaimers for evolution? Hasn't anybody told these people that evolution is a fact. Lifeforms evlove. It has been observed. The only possible question is in the theory of how life evolves.

"What the [Cobb County] school system did was dramatically improve its evolution instruction," said school system attorney Linwood Gunn, defending the disclaimer inserted into Cobb's science textbooks that says evolution is "a theory, not a fact."

Whooops, I guess somebody forgot to tell the attorney evolution is a fact.

Here is an analogy. Suppose I have a coin. I flip it a large number of times and we get roughly the same number of heads as tails. Now we come up with the hypothesis that the coin is "fair". Lets call this hypothesis/theory the Fair Coin Theory. We point to the data of roughly the same number of heads as tails. The heads and tails are facts. We obtained them via coin flips. They are what they are. Now the theory that explains the number of heads to tails is "just a theory". The results of the coin tosses are facts. Indisputably.

So when some bumpkin attorney says that evolution is a theory not a fact, you know you are dealing with somebody who is scientifically ignorant. If this is the attitude of the Cobb County Board of Education (or whatever the body is that makes decisions about textbooks) then they are guilty of also being scientifically ignorant. The latter is particularly egregious in my opinion.

The parents contend the placement of the disclaimers restricts the teaching of evolution, promotes and requires the teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design and discriminates against particular religions.

Anybody who thinks that creationism and Intelligent Design are not synonymous is a fool. Intelligent Design (ID) theorists are quite coy about their "theory". They usually work rather hard to omitt any reference to God, and instead talk about a "Designer". They leave it open so you could have aliens, God, or little pink bunnies with lollipop whiskers as the designers. The only problem is that with any designer other than God, you run into the problem of infinite regress. Who defined the aliens? More aliens? Well who designed those aliens? Yet more aliens?

Further, ID is not a theory. A theory must explain the data. Like in our coin example above, the data is explained quite nicely by the theory that the coin is fair. A new theory about the coin would have to explain the data either in a more parsimonious manner or perhaps explain something that the current theory does not. ID fails on both counts. ID points to gaps in the current theory and says, "Magic". We don't know how that data was generated, and we will never know...hence magic, or God, or aliens. That is not a theory at all, but an embracing of ignorance and supersition.

The people of Georgia should be embarassed by this. It isn't that religious beliefs are bad, wrong, or stupid, but that they are not science and trying to sneak these beliefs into the classroom is embarassing. Ask yourself this, if you are in favor of ID, would you be open to a discussion in the classroom of Allah being the designer and reading parts of say the Koran if applicable to the issue of diversity of life? How about some the Hindu, Aztec and Norse religions?

Update: Looks like Wisconsin also decided to join the Legion of Idiots.

Joining the ranks of school boards in Kansas and Ohio, the Grantsburg School District has passed a motion permitting "various theories/models of origins" to be incorporated into its science curriculum.

Unlike the motions in those two states, which were overturned, Grantsburg's is active - making the public school board the only one in the nation to allow theories other than evolution to be taught in the classroom.

I find it amazing that a teacher of science can hold the following views.

But Greg Stager, who teaches physics, chemistry and environmental science at Grantsburg High School, agreed with Burgin.

"Evolution is a theory, just as much as creationism is a theory," he said. "There is contradictory evidence for both."

Contradictory evidence for evolutionary theory. I suppose he'd trot out some sort of bunkum much like the crap William Dembski pushes.

Outside the Beltway

I'm guest blogging at James Joyner's blog, and my first post is up.

Muslim School Bombed

And no, it wasn't here in the U.S., but in the Netherlands. Fortunately nobody was injured.

In the past three days, attacks against Muslim targets were reported in the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Breda and Huizen.

It is interesting though that things like this are happening in Europe. I thought they were the more civilized culture and here in the U.S. we are "The self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport-ownin' rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land 'free and strong'".

Link via James Joyner.

Mathematical Malapropism

In this article about how horrified Hunter Thompson is about the election outcome, Thompson says the following,

"The news is getting logarithmically more horrible," Thompson told another caller as the night wore on. "They're all committing suicide up in Boston."

Somehow I think the poor dolt meant the inverse of the logarithmic function, or exponentially worse.

A Ray of Sunshine from DU

Regarding the U.S. military and the impending attack on Fallujah:

Dhalgren

16. Has no one in the chain of command ever heard of...

..."Stalingrad"? Is the "Officer Corps" of this corrupt military eaten up with dim-witted sycophants who spout Bible verses and look for jobs with Haliburton? Is there really this much incompetence in our military? I know that our voting nation and our government have no morals and no shame, but has our military none, as well?

Here is one person expressing his feelings about future military personnel killed in Iraq.

Blue_Tires

34. lol...my fellow americans get an early example...

...of exactly what they voted for...when those triangle flags start coming home to moms and pops, all i'm going to say is deal with it, fuckos

Kevin Drum on Social Security Privatization

I usually tend to critique Kevin more than agree with him. However, this post isn't that bad as far as it goes.

Kevin is right that the current plan for privatizing social security is likely to increase the budget deficit. Not bad. I expected him to go into full mouth-breather mode and start going off about cutting benefits. Instead Kevin notes there is little interest in cutting benefits for current recipients.

However, Kevin does fail to note a couple of points about the plan for privatizing Social Security. First is that the plan's goal is ultimately to return the system to long term liquidity. The way this will be accomplished is to reduce future benefits for those who invest part of their taxes in "private investments".¹ Thus, the goal is to reduce future deficits, and as Kevin notes it will mean an increase in current deficits.

That is part of what Kevin omitts from his post. Currently Social Security, if nothing is done, is going to run out of money and will initially increase the deficits and then start gobbling up more and more of non-Social Security tax receipts. The end results are permenant deficits with no end in sight for 70+ years.

The second thing that Kevin fails to note is that the plan is a bipartisan plan in that one of the primary architects was the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Not exactly a screaming right wing kook.

Is it a good plan? I have become less enthused about privatizing Social Security when considering the problem of time inconsistency, but the idea that it is a horrid plan just isn't there, IMO.
______
¹I put quotes around private investments as it is not like the individual will have complete choice over where to invest his/her funds. They will still be largely controlled by the government.

Weekly Leading Index

The Weekly Leading Index from ECRI is also up.

However, despite the good jobs news for last month the index is still basically saying the economy is going to be sluggish for several months at least.

"Despite today's strong job report the index is telling us there remains no clear signs of a reacceleration to strong growth like we saw at the beginning of the year," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of ECRI.

Update: ECRI's inflation gauge also rose in October suggesting that despite the economic sluggishness inflation pressures remain somewhat high. My guess is that interest rates will continue to creep back up.

"The clear message is inflation pressures remain elevated despite the economy slowing down in terms of its overall growth," said Lakshman Achuthan, Managing Director of ECRI.

A Little Late...Good Jobs Numbers

The latest jobs numbers from the BLS are pretty good. Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 337,000 in October. That is a decent number of new jobs. The unemployment rate held at 5.5%.

Also, the numbers for September were revised upwards from 96,000 to 139,000. Similarly for August being revised up from 144,000 to 198,000. While these numbers are still rather anemic, it is a little less anemic. Since August of 2003 the job growth in the Jobs Survey has been 2.2 million.

Offshoring

I was checking out the National Taxpayers Union's site and ran across this paper on offshoring (aka outsourcing). It is pretty good and I recommend that everybody who has some interest in the issue of offshoring read it. The bottom line is that despite all the hysterical news headlines the idea that lots of jobs are moving offshore is over blown. Big shock. The article covers such things as

• Offshoring scare mongers rely on gross numbers not net numbers. For example, recently headlines were made with a report that suggests 3.3 million jobs will move offshore. There is no attempt to find out how many jobs will move "onshore" so that a net loss or gain number can be determined.

• Many of the jobs that are offshored, contrary to popular belief, are not high paying jobs. In fact, most jobs threatened by offshoring pay a wage below the U.S. average. Also of the 12 IT occuptaions that pay more than $50,000 in 2002 8 of those occupations increased their employment from 1999 to 2002.

• The U.S. maintains a sizable trade surplus in the provate services sector. That is the U.S. exports more services than imports (note that importing services is basically offshoring).

• BLS has now started looking at this issue and some of its initial findings argue agianst the seriousness of offshoring. Of the 239,361 nonfarm workers who were seperated from their jobs 31 days or more in quarter of 2004, only 4,633 lost their jobs to offshoring.

So this idea that offshoring is a big problem, is yet another example of the media hyping a non-issue.

Further, one reason why we are seeing more about service importing is that parts of the third world are starting to "catch up" in some areas like education. India for example, is not merely a source of cheap labor, but a source of cheap educated labor. I find it is amusing that many of the people who point to the shabby way the U.S. treats its allies are often the same ones who say that something has to be done about offshoring--i.e., punish these very same allies for out competing the U.S.

Part of the problem may also be traced back to the poor K-12 education in the U.S. in terms of math and sciences. According the the article, the U.S. ranks 37th in the world in terms of educating pupils in math and sciences. Odd isn't it how the Left, which was complaining about offshoring, is also in the pocket of the teachers unions and there is considerable resistance to correcting the problems in regards to teaching sciences and math.

Anyhow, read the paper, it has lots of interesting information.

How Long...

...will they keep Arafat on life support? My guess is quite sometime.

I have to say it is quite funny to watch the antics of these creeps as they try to find out what the chief sleaze bag did with his ill gotten loot.

Arafat controls billions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people. In a word, he stole it, intelligence sources said, according to a report in the current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com.

No! He stole from his own poor suffering people. I'm shocked, shocked! With a leader like this who needs enemies?

True to Form

True to form, Democratic Underground is all worked up claiming that the election was stolen again. Nevermind that Bush looks like he has won both the electoral college and the popular vote. Nevermind that Bush's win is by 3,000,000 votes in the popular vote. Nevermind, that even in the close elections still waiting to be called the number of votes are several orders of magnitude larger than in Florida. Bush still stole the election.

Local Election (s)news

County Question 1 ($0.0025 sales tax for arts and sports) goes down in flames, and there was much rejoicing.

It was rejected by 4 of the 5 counties voting on it. The only county to vote for it was Jackson County MO, which, oddly enough, is where all the arts and sports projects are located.

Go figure.

Oh, yeah, and there was another election going on... what was that for?

The Lancet Study

A recent study in the Lancet claims that the number of deaths post invasion due to violence is up 100,000 than it otherwise would be. Some are saying the study is bogus, others that it is valid...or something.

My take on it is it is bogus. It is bogus due to this reason right here,

Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1•5-fold (1•1–2•3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98 000 more deaths than expected (8000–194 000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included.

Normally, if your confidence interval for your risk ratio contains 1 the results are considered to be statistically insignificant. In this case, the lower bound of the confidence interval is just a hair above 1. This study is hanging it's hat on a tenth.

Further, the concept of a confidence interval means that you are confident that 95% of similarly constructed intervals would contain the true parameter of interest.¹ So the true value could be anywhere inside that interval or even outside of that interval. So the value just as well be 1.1 vs. the 1.5 that the authors are going with in their interpretation.

Would we expect to see an increase in the number of violent deaths when a country is invaded? Sure. Would we expect to see a study that is wildly at odds with other studies? Agin, sure. But it is a mistake to assign a great deal of weight to this study.

Also, despite the claims of Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber, the accelerated publication time frame is eyebrow raising.

There is something intrinsically suspect about accelerated peer review. As John pointed out not so long ago, the time taken for peer review is determined by academic procrastination above all other factors. Every academic paper could complete its peer review very quickly if the reviewers got their finger out because they thought it was important. The suggestion that people are trying to make here is that reviewers for the Lancet usually spend six months humming and hawing over the data, to the exclusion of all other activity, and that this process was short-circuited by politically motivated editors wanting to rush something into print without anyone having a proper look at it. No such six month scrutiny ever takes place, and this objection is also Simply Not True.--italics in the original

It is true, that the research could be deemed highly important from a medical/scientific viewpoint and thus the publication process is sped up. However, this article basically has the message: War Kills Civilians Too. That isn't shocking it is to be expected. Another reason that "the reviewers got their finger out because they thought it was important" is because it was viewed as being politically important. The above complaint about viewing the shortened review/revision/publication process with suspicioun is just lame.

Finally, the issue isn't that there are fewer deaths due to the war, at least for me. I question the notion of 100,000 dead due to the war. Daniel Davies, wants the confidence interval to include zero. Why? I don't have a clue. When a confidence interval for relative risk ratio's contain 1, then there is no effect (statistically speaking, there could still be a real effect, but you have a bad sample or something). Zero is just outright weird. In any event, I don't doubt that the number of violent deaths increased with the war in Iraq, what I'm suspicious of is the magnitude this paper is reporting, it strikes me as a high.

Update: In comments Daniel Davies notes that his zero comment pertained to excess deaths not the relative risk ratio. This does make alot more sense in that a relative risk ratio of 1, would imply that a confidence interval for excess deaths would also contain 0.

Unrelated to Daniel Davies comment is the problem with data such as this. When John Lott was doing his analysis of gun's and crime there was a problem where some counties might not have any murders for an extended period of time. This proved to be a bit of a problem is you just used standard regression analysis. I could see a similar problem here as well in that say a single unfortunate incident of a high percision bomb going astray and hitting a school at the wrong time of the day could inadvertenly drive up the body count for children. Extrapolating to the entire population, especially that part of the population living in areas where there was little or no tageting would be methodologically wrong (note there is no evidence this happened, but it is a potential problem with this kind of analysis).

Another possibility is the use of children as soldiers. This too could raise the death toll for children and not be representative of the country as a whole (again I have no evidence of this, but it is something to keep in mind when reading the report or listening to the new coverage about it).

In regards to the issue of the motivation, I think the final paragraph contains some explanation for the motivation.

In view of the political importance of this conflict, these results should be confirmed by an independent body such as the ICRC, Epicentre, or WHO. In the interim, civility and enlightened self-interest demand a re-evaluation of the consequences of weaponry now used by coalition forces in populated areas.

Hence, I don't see this paper as being motivated by a dispassionate scientific inquiry, but with a motive of changing the rules of modern warfare by coalition forces. Hence the notion that publication was rushed for political reasons seems not as silly as some have suggested.
_____
¹This does not mean that any single confidence interval contains the parameter of interest with a probability of 95%. That is an incorrect interpretation of confidence intervals.

Just for Fun

NRO has 57 Reasons Kerry Can't Win. [grammar gestapo alert -- it should be "shouldn't" not "can't".] This one should make Steve's hair stand on end:

50. Energy Secretary Gray Davis

I know it's satire, but can you imagine? Electricity for $0.35/kWh and nation-wide rolling blackouts.

Fiscal Conservativism

Victor over at Dead Parrots argues that the term "fiscal conservative" is now a meaningless term. I am inclined to agree with him. When somebody like John Kerry is considered to have instincts of a "fiscal conservative" the term has lost all meaning.

Victor poses an interesting question at the end of his post.

This, of course, leaves "limited government" types like me a bit in the lurch. Do we attempt to retake the language and the words "fiscal conservatism"? Or do we approach with new rhetoric? I have a hunch that this strikes to the heart of the inevitable Republican post-election introspection: how do we frame the issues so that small government will become popular again?

I don't know what the answer is to return real limited government to a more popular position in politics. Right now the idea of being a "fiscal conservative/small government" candidate has been completely co-opted by spendthriffts.

Election Day

Well I'm glad it is here and the election will be over soon. As I noted earlier I hope which ever candidate wins wins by a big enough margin to make all the possible lawsuits irrelevant.