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Pat Buchanan's a moron

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113463

He claims, "With black voters going 24 to 1 for Obama, he almost surely won more votes than he lost because of his race."

That's 96% of the black vote going for Obama. An impressive figure, right?

It might or might not be true that Obama won more votes than he lost because of his race. It's not even entirely clear to me what's meant by this statement, and its truth value might differ depending on what's meant.

But in recent years, in national elections, black voters always vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Black voters broke 9 to 1 for Kerry (90%), and constitute less than 10 percent of the electorate. If Obama gained 6% of the black vote relative to Kerry because of his race, that's 0.6% of the overall electorate. Is Buchanan sure that Obama didn't lose more than 0.6% of the vote because of his race??

New, easier URLs

For Celtics Board:
http://www.celtics-board.com
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CelticsBoard

I have just started a new, troll-free message board dedicated to tracking the Boston Celtics. Come on by!

http://www.setbb.com/celticsboard/

Testing homeopathy and single blind tests

Is it possible to test homeopathy? Adherents often say "no," because it's impossible to perform a double blind test.

Is it possible to test the influence of a single blind test?

Regarding homeopathy: Perhaps one cannot prove that it does work, but I think one could certainly prove it doesn't work. The standard claim is that it cannot be tested at all, because one cannot perform a double blind test (i.e., a test where the practitioner doesn't know which treatment he/she is administering).

The reason I claim that one could show that it does not work (depending on experimental results) is that I presume that (1) if the practitioner knows he is administering real drug, he will appear more confident, etc., and that (2) this will tend to improve patient outcomes. Inversely, I presume that (3) if the practitioner knows he is administering placebo, he will appear less confident, and that (4) this will tend to hurt patient outcomes. As a result, if homeopathy outperforms placebo, this might just be because the doctors were more confident. But if homeopathy fails to outperform placebo, despite having the advantage of being administered by doctors who were particularly confident and who believed in the treatment, this would be compelling evidence against homeopathy's efficacy.

But can we test these presumptions (#2 and #4)? Although this might be impossible in the case of homeopathy, I think that with ordinary drugs the influence of a single blind test could be tested as follows:
For (2): provide some doctors real drug and tell them it's real drug; and provide other doctors real drug and tell them it's placebo.
For (4): provide some doctors placebo and tell them it's real drug; and provide other doctors placebo and tell them it's placebo.

It would be interesting to see how the doctor's state of mind while administering treatment influences patient outcomes. Have tests like these already been performed? If so, what has been the result?

A few links

Jeremy Sosenko and Rocky Russo with hilarious "German" versions of a few favorite films:
"Back to the Future": http://bit.ly/14vlCy
"Jurassic Park": http://bit.ly/13p4aU

Keep up the good work, guys!

Tweeting again

http://twitter.com/dslack

In defense of "Swine Flu"

Granjas Carroll de Mexico.

That's the industrial pig farm, partly owned by Smithfield Foods, in the Mexican town of La Gloria that was home to the first human case of the current swine flu. Smithfield is the world's largest manufacturer of pork products. Granjas Carroll is an almost inconceivably large pig farm; it raises one million pigs per year, and keeps them in tight, unsanitary quarters that are ideal for the development and the spread of deadly diseases.

There's a serious rebranding effort under way, led by the pork industry, to call swine flu by its technical name, H1N1. (Actually, its technical name is more accurately AH1N1, but this rebranding effort is aimed not so much at accuracy as at avoiding using the word "swine," so the "A" is typically dropped.) The pork lobby apparently has friends in high places, from CNN to the CDC to President Obama, and the rebranding is starting to stick. But I don't want to play along.

H1N1??

Influenza comes in 3 main strains, A, B, and C, of which A is the most common. These viruses are characterized according to the form of two proteins, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). Both of these proteins can come in multiple, related but slightly different forms, which are given different numbers. The influenza commonly called "avian flu" or "bird flu" is an AH5N1 form. Many (but not most) cases of seasonal flu, which kills ~30,00-40,000 Americans every year and ~half a million people around the world, are caused by an AH3N2 form.

But when was the last time you told your boss you couldn't make it into work because you had a touch of H3N2?

Moreover, not only is the rebranding effort kind of weird, but, under the guise of being more specific and more accurate, it is in fact less specific and less accurate. "Swine flu 2009" did not have a meaning until the outbreak of the current AH1N1 form that showed up in La Gloria and has been spreading around the world since. It now has a very specific meaning; it refers to a particular virus, and when someone talks about swine flu 2009 it specifies the particular virus in the same way as talking about water specifies H2O. AH1N1, however, refers to any influenza virus characterized by the hemagglutanin 1, neuraminidase 1 proteins. Swine flu 2009 is one such virus. Spanish Flu of 1918 was another. And many cases of ordinary seasonal flu are caused by virus that is of the AH1N1 subtype (serotype). In other words, although "H1N1" sounds more sciency and specific than "swine flu," the difference between the terms is actually more akin to the difference between "polar molecule-based liquid" and "water". The former sounds more scientific, but the latter is more specific.

Did the current outbreak swine flu originate at Granjas Carroll? It is not clear. Initial tests indicate that the strain responsible for human infections is not present at that farm, but it will take some pretty good evidence to convince me that a pig-based influenza strain did not have something to do with the million pig farm in the town in which the virus first affected people.

Whatever turns out to be the case, though, this question obscures a larger point. Industrial farms place us all at risk for deadly viral and bacterial infections.

All else being equal, a microbe is more harmful or deadly to the extent that it rapidly makes many copies of itself. There is, of course, a huge amount of scatter associated with this statement. Some microbes produce harmful toxins even without rapidly multiplying, while others (such as E-coli in our gut) can peaceably maintain a symbiosis with us even in very large quantities. But as a general rule of thumb, larger microbe populations tend to be associated with worse host outcomes.

A microbe that maintains a large population in its host increases its probability of spreading to other hosts. There is, therefore, a general selective pressure on microbes to be deadly.

This pressure is generally offset, however, by the fact that sick and dying hosts tend not to be very mobile, and therefore tend to be rather ineffective at spreading the microbe to new hosts. In the wild, forms of viruses/bacteria that completely incapacitate their hosts tend not to be passed on, which means that the prevailing forms tend to be ones that are less deadly, and less incapacitating.

The difference between Ebola and the common cold is instructive. Ebola causes a rapid and rather gruesome death. As a result, people tend to avoid those who are sick with Ebola virus. Ebola, thankfully, has not spread rapidly in human populations, and this might be part of the reason why. Common cold, on the other hand, annoys its victims, but leaves them able to go about their daily activities, where they encounter many new potential hosts for the virus. Everyone gets colds, and the cold virus is so successful in large part because it leaves its victims relatively healthy.

On crowded, cramped, unsanitary industrial farms, the ordinary selective pressure against overly incapacitating a host is removed from the process of microbe evolution. The remaining selective pressure is the standard one: replicate as fast as possible, without regard to the health of the host.

Incidentally, this is why many public health procedures have a dual benefit: (1) the obvious one — reduce rate of transmission; and (2) the nice corollary — make diseases evolve to less deadly forms. As an example of (2), mosquito netting has caused malaria to evolve to less deadly forms. In regions affected by malaria, when there is no mosquito netting, even immobile, dying people can be bitten by mosquitos who carry the disease to new victims. But when houses have mosquito netting, forms of the disease that force victims to stay inside do not get passed on and the only forms that do get passed on are ones that are mild enough to allow victims to walk outside while sick. Similarly with HIV and condoms: in a region where people often use condoms, HIV must keep its host alive for long enough for a rare event (a moment of poor judgment, or a broken condom) to happen that allows it to be passed on. In regions, such as Sub Saharan Africa and Souteast Asia, where promiscuity without use of condoms is common, HIV faces no such selective pressure, and forms of the virus are favored that tend to be deadly much faster.

Did this swine flu come from this particular swine farm? It seems likely to me that it did, but the answer might turn out to be no. But is swine flu related to people and animals associating in close quarters, and to the kind of dense packing of animals that happens at factory farms? While I cannot prove this, it seems incredibly likely. What's more, regardless of the origin of swine flu 2009, future pandemics are likelier in a world that has lots of human-animal interaction at large factory farms than in a world that doesn't.

The pork industry is concerned that the name "swine flu" will lead people to stop eating pork out of worry that it will sicken them. Although it is bad for public health if people think that the only way to get sick from swine flu is by eating pork products (and I do know of at least one person who is under this misimpression), it will be good for public health over the long term if factory farms cease to exist. If people stop eating pork out of a misguided attempt to avoid swine flu, I will still be happy, because the decline of the meat industry will tend to make us all safer over the long run.

The upshot is that meat is too cheap, because when we buy meat we do not pay the full longterm cost. We don't pay for the environmental costs (both the damage to rivers, streams, and the water supply caused by the feces of millions of pigs, cows, chickens per farm; and the contribution to global warming, etc.), and we don't pay for the probability of spawning dangerous diseases. I'm not saying we should eliminate meat. I'm just saying that it should be priced appropriately, taking into full account the negative externalities associated with it.

Changing how we interact with our food constitutes items 117-128 on my to-do list for if I ever become czar of the world. Given that a czarship does not appear to be in my imminent future, I'll just do my small part by proudly continuing to call it "Swine Flu."

Doing vs. not doing

Yesterday, I had a revelation that I found kind of interesting. I used to think that it's easier to avoid doing something that one wants to do than to do something that one doesn't want to do. Example: Let's say a person wants to smoke a cigarette, and wants not to slap himself hard in the face. Previously, I would have said that it's easier to avoid smoking the cig, because that's just being passive, whereas the autovisoslap is an active action. But I think I've changed my mind. (Obviously, the true calculus requires an account of the relative strengths of the desires.) Doing something requires doing it once. Not doing something requires not doing it all the time. A single face-slap will get the unpleasant (but, for some unknown reason, needed) face-slap out of the way, but every second, every instant, is a potential time to smoke a cigarette, and therefore a battle that must be waged.

Clinton ... destroying the Party?

I'll be the 10 bajillionth to write this, but Clinton either hopes to win the nomination this year in a way that will be quite destructive to the Democratic party, or she hopes for something even worse — to damage Obama so badly that he loses to McCain, thereby preserving her own hopes at winning the presidency in 2012.

I hope Pennsylvania breaks hard enough for Obama that Clinton has virtually no choice but to drop out.

Benezet, Manchester, ...

Read this. I'll discuss later.

Good night for Obama

Another big win in Wisconsin. Can he weather McCain + Clinton?

Howard Zinn

Just saw You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train, a documentary about Howard Zinn.

Nearly 10 times as many Gulf War veterans committed suicide after the war as died in the war. Amazing.

I, idiot.

Rumors of Clinton's demise apparently were greatly exaggerated. Like an idiot, there I was trying to guess who Obama's VP candidate would be.

I'll now try to ignore the horse-race crap. If Clinton's the candidate, I wish her well in the general. Same for Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, and the rest.

2008 election, Iowa, NH edition

Bob Somerby has done a good job convincing me that Obama has made some unfair, RNC-like attacks on Clinton (including hyping the Social Security non-crisis as a crisis). Krugman has convinced me that Edwards has a better health plan than Obama. So I've gotten a bit down on Obama. Clinton, however, has made some lame attacks on Obama (abortion? guns?), so I can't like her that much either. So Edwards? Edwards may have unfairly teased Clinton for tearing up while answering a question, which wouldn't have been so cool. Or he may not have. (In any event, how does this, ahem, bullroar come to determine our national elections?)

Also, as Kevin Drum asks, how do the admirably independent voters of New Hampshire swing so quickly for Obama after spending months favoring Clinton just because a few thousand Iowa voters thought differently?

Edwards is wrong on the death penalty and on gay marriage, but presidents don't have much to do with those issues so I don't care much. As far as I can tell he's right on the war (would bringing troops home sooner than anyone else except Kucinich, Dodd, and Richardson), and right on health care. Those are within the purview of the President, so I care much more about those issues. All Democrats would be pretty good on the environment (though probably not good enough, but that's the subject for another post).

Looks like Obama will be the nominee, and he was my original favorite so I can't be too upset about that. But I wish Edwards had done better so far. Would he accept a second VP nomination? I doubt it. But he has been very cordial to Obama (much like he was to Kerry in 2004) so perhaps he's angling for it? I'm predicting an Obama/Biden or Obama/Richardson ticket for the Dems, and McCain/Giuliani or McCain/Bloomberg for the Republicans. And Saint McCain as our next president.

My country

This gentleman was tackled and arrested, trying to enter General Petraeus's hearing with a button that said "I LOVE THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ".

Alberto Gonzales: Perfectly Competent

In the wake of Alberto Gonzales's resignation, John Dickerson of Slate wrote a column examining why President Bush holds onto his incompetent employees for so long. His answer? Loyalty, and stubbornness. Quoting from the article,

As Alberto Gonzales resigns today, he joins Donald Rumsfeld, Harriet Miers, and Michael Brown—animated failures who could not be controlled or improved with good public relations. The pattern has been consistent: The president resists and resists calls for a change. Then he gives in. In Gonzales' case, it's almost as if Bush were perfecting this failed approach, wringing out of his embattled old friend so many embarrassing gaffes that he couldn't be hurt anymore. Then he let him go.

But his column would have made much more sense after the firing of Michael Brown, a man who truly seemed incompetent, even in President Bush's eyes.

Alberto Gonzales, on the other hand, was not at all incompetent at the job he was assigned by the President. He was, of course, highly incompetent at the typical job of Attorney General, in which he is was supposed to serve the People and the Constitution. But that wasn't the job that Mr. Bush wanted him to do. Mr. Bush wanted Mr. Gonzales to fire US Attorneys who were prosecuting Republicans or who were refusing to file bogus charges against Democrats. Mr. Bush also wanted Mr. Gonzales to appear to be forthcoming with Congress while at the same time steadfastly avoiding giving any impression that the directives to politicize the DOJ originated in the Whitehouse, in Karl Rove's and/or Dick Cheney's offices. This was, of course, an impossible task (it required lots of "I don't recall"s and a bit of lying), but Gonzales tackled this job that the President had assigned him masterfully. The Democrats in Congress were hoping finally to be able to pin the politicization of Justice — probably obstruction of justice — on the Whitehouse, and Gonzales entirely stymied them. Almost any other man would have rolled on his bosses, in order to preserve a shred of his own reputation. Not Alberto Gonzales: he allowed himself to be the scapegoat for all that is wrong with the Administration's handling of Justice, and in so doing whitewashed the Whitehouse.

Look at it another way: If Alberto Gonzales is incompetent, exactly what is he incompetent at? Of course, his testimony before the Congress seemed ridiculously mendacious, but it was his job to tell lies. Is the charge that he was incompetent in Bush's eyes because he told the wrong lies, or he did not lie skillfully enough? Watch this video clip. Is that a man who has no idea what he's doing? Instead, I see a man who is, quite competently, laying down in front of a doberman, because that's what his boss expects him to do.

The whole point is, Dickerson implies that Bush sees all these hacks who are doing lousy work by his standards and yet he holds onto them out of loyalty. With Michael Brown, that point seems valid. With Gonzales, it is not. Gonzales may have been a lousy attorney general by your standards and mine (he certainly was by mine), but he successfully politicized the DOJ while at the same time hiding any Whitehouse involvement. In other words, he did exactly what Bush wanted him to do.

Heckuva job, Gonzo!

Celtics get Garnett!

This is the most excited I've been for a Celtics season since 1991. Garnett, Pierce, and Ray Allen could probably reach the Eastern Conference Finals even if my advisor and I took up the last two roster spots.

It has been a busy summer. I'll return to blogging more frequently when the life calms down a bit.

Worst President ever

I just ran a Google search for
worst president ever

All 10 links on the first page refer to George W. Bush. Just thought that was interesting.

Google

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Web	Personalized Results 1 - 10 of about 2,850,000 for worst president ever. (0.11 seconds)

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Rolling Stone : The Worst President in History?

One of America's leading historians assesses Bush, and finds that among historians he is in serious contention for the title of worst president ever. www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history - 35k - Jul 11, 2007 - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

He's The Worst Ever - washingtonpost.com

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 ... I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. ... www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html - Similar pages - Note this

The Worst President Ever

Is George W. Bush the worst President the United States has ever seen? www.thenation.com/doc/20070226/howl - 30k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

The Worst US President Ever?

A University of Vermont professor explains why Bush is quite likely the worst president in the 200-year history of the United States. www.commondreams.org/views05/0708-27.htm - 29k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Worst President Ever - Reasons, Stickers, and Buttons

Reasons why George W. Bush is the worst president ever and buttons and stickers that express that opinion. www.worstpresidentever.net/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

george w bush worst president ever

There is a "truthiness" in that, sure, there were scandals, but all were generated by the right wing to bring down the president. ... www.worstpresidentever.com/ - 15k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Sean Wilentz | The Worst President in History?

The Worst President in History? By Sean Wilentz Rolling Stone .... When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, ... www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042006J.shtml - 50k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Discourse.net: Worst President Ever?

Buchanan seems to be the historians' consensus choice as the worst President ever, fiddling while the country descended into civil war. ... www.discourse.net/archives/2005/11/worst_president_ever.html - 138k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Worst. President. Ever. - Funny Bush Picture

A picture of a banner on a freeway overpass reading Worst President Ever. politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushworstpresident.htm - 21k - Jul 11, 2007 - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Crooks and Liars » Worst. President. Ever.

Worst. President. Ever. By: Nicole Belle on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 5:04 PM - PDT. mcjoan at DailyKos:. From his catastrophic war of choice to fiddling ... www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/07/worst-president-ever-2/ - 60k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

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Sicko is a great movie

Probably more on this soon.

For now,

Independence Day

Yesterday, I read the Declaration of Independence for the first time in a while.

It's a really amazing document. The writing is beautifully fluid. The rhetoric is brilliant. And it really helped restore in my mind a modicum of hope for our government. I feel that any government that is born from such a hopeful document has a prayer of recovery.

My favorite sentence from the whole essay is the second:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This post isn't an homage to the Founding Fathers. For all I know, they may have been as crooked as the folks currently in government. They probably weren't, but that's not the point. Whatever their personal valor, they wrote an incredible essay. The best part of the quoted part, of course, is that all men are created equal. Heck, the people who wrote it didn't even believe that bit (or they didn't believe that slaves were men; but that's not plausible, is it?). And yet they chose not even to debate this issue; rather, they said it is so blindingly obvious that it is self-evidently true. This, in a time of kings and slaves! And government, whose purpose is to effect the People's Safety and Happiness, derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. So, any government that derives its powers otherwise has unjust powers.

The final bit, that breathes life into the brand-new nation, is equally stunning:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

This part sends a shiver down my spine and moistens my eyes every time I read it.

Though it bothers me endlessly to hear politicians reflexively say that "We are the greatest country on Earth", we truly are the results of a great political experiment. We have lost our way, but we have to believe that we can find it once again.

Jury duty

I had jury duty earlier this week.

Had to be at the courthouse (111 Centre St.) at 8:45, Monday morning, which is pretty early by my standards. Still, I was there by 8:40, and in the jury room by 8:50, after making my way through security. When I got in, a lame video about the legal system was playing on large, flat-panel TVs. I sat in the first available seat, and asked the young lady next to me whether I had missed the previews. The joke may have fallen flat.

That video was strange. I think Diane Sawyer was explaining the basics of criminal and civil procedure. I felt ready to take the Bar by the end. Then, the video showed various people who have been associated with the legal system talking about jury duty. A fellow who had served jury duty said, "It's not perfect — any process that involves the judgments of human beings cannot be perfect. But it's the best system of its kind in the world." Really? Does part of serving on a jury include taking a course on comparative legal systems? Then, the chief judge of the state of New York said, "By serving on a jury, you have a more profound influence on the civic process than you do by voting." Yeah, voting's wayyy overrated.

Instructing prospective jurors about the legal process certainly makes sense. But why do they have to knock other countries' legal systems?? And why do they have to knock voting??


Anyway, on Monday, I was seated in the jury box for one case. First degree assault. The judge asked a bunch of questions: Where do you live? What do you do for a living? Have you ever been the victim of a crime? (If so, was anyone arrested, was it prosecuted, and did you testify at trial?) Does anyone in your family work in law enforcement or in the legal system? Etc.

I think two of my answers made me less likely to be selected: I was mugged 10 months ago; and my sister used to work in a public defender's office. Anyway, I was rejected. Just as well — I'm very busy these days.

It was an interesting experience. And it sure as heck beats voting!

Somerby on frameworks for Republicans/Democrats

From today's dailyhowler.com: (sorry to quote so much, but he puts it really well)

SEQUEL—DEVIL OR ANGEL: “Hero tales” and “demon tales” now drive (and decide) our White House elections. These tales come from the mainstream press corps—not just from “the right-wing machine.” You’ll hear these goony tales on the right too. But it’s the mainstream press which can tip our elections—and our mainstream press corps is deeply involved in distinguishing devils from angels.

By the way, in case you’ve missed it: The “hero tales” are bestowed on Reps; the “demon tales” are handed to Dems. The way this works has never been clearer. Consider the treatment handed two pols this week—treatment which differed by party.

Hero tales (Republican): First, consider Republican Fred Thompson. As far as we know, Thompson is a perfectly OK guy, if a bit on the slick, oily side. But at best, he’s a modestly-successful former pol with a mediocre, eight-year Senate record. Since leaving the Senate, he’s had a modest career as a TV and film actor.

Hero tales are for Big Reps. Dems are transformed into demons.

Thompson’s political career has been modest. But what happened to “Ole Fred” in late March when he began making noise about seeking the White House? Of course! On Hardball, Chris Matthews gathered the clan to build standard “hero frameworks” around him. For excerpts from these fawning discussions, see yesterday’s DAILY HOWLER. But according to Matthews and his panel, Thompson is smart, handsome and articulate. He’s a tough guy who looks like a Daddy. He sounds like a president—and he looks like a president. He would win a match-up with Hillary Clinton. And of course, he seems honest and open. Beyond that, Matthews described how he “fell in love” with Thompson during his 1994 run for the Senate. After a weekend’s rest, Matthews continued the gushing. “He looks classic wise man. He has gravitas,” the talker gushingly said. “He’s got that Colin Powell feature, where you just sort of trust him.”

Last Sunday, the Washington Post built these same hero tales around Thompson, comparing him to John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. Outlook’s John Pomfret had scoured the country in search of the dumbest possible writer—and he published the dumbest possible piece about how much fun Ole Fred really is. Liz Garrigan gushed, smooched, pandered and fawned, even telling us that Thompson looks like Work—and, of course, that he’s great with the ladies. Almost two full pages of Outlook were built around this clownish gushing. It came with two pictures of Thompson, one quite large, and a chart which showed us his Reaganesque lineage.

No surprise. At present, that’s what happens to Major Reps when they decide to run for the White House. They’re constantly referred to as “America’s Mayor,” or as the head of the “Straight Talk Express.” Or Outlook decides to pour it on, telling us how much we should like them.

That’s what happened to a Big Rep this week. Now, consider what happened to a Big Dem. Consider what happened to Gore.

Demon tales (Democrat): Al Gore has not had a mediocre career. His Oscar-winning documentary film has been credited with transforming the world debate about warming. He’s now a Nobel Prize nominee for his decades of work in this area. Indeed, he wrote the book on warming all the way back in 1992, with his first best-seller, Earth in the Balance. In his spare time, he warned the country in 2002 against the idea of war with Iraq. Almost everyone now agrees that his advice should have been heeded. Thompson, by contrast, voted for the war resolution in October 2002. Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Ole Dumb-bell has warned us: People, Mars is warming!

By any standard, Gore is one of the most honored public figures in the world. So what happened this week when his new book was published? Of course! In the New York Times, a famous columnist devoted her column to the notion that Gore is just too f*cking fat. And Outlook decided to trash him too; Garrigan didn’t just pander to Thompson, she also filled her bizarre Outlook piece with insults directed at Gore. Her denigrations were so old and so tired that Pomfret seemed to have dug her up from a time machine. In Outlook, Gore was still being described as “road-kill.” Garrigan showed little sign of having heard about Gore’s cosmic successes.

Has it ever been more clear how modern White House politics works? This has gone on for quite a few years—and career liberals have staunchly refused to discuss it. But has it ever been more clear? Has the agenda behind the mainstream coverage ever been more freaking obvious?

Thompson’s a mediocrity—a borderline dope. Gore is one of the world’s most honored public servants. So readers, when even Gore gets trashed this way, isn’t it finally perfectly obvious? That no matter what a big Democrat does, he will be trashed as too fat and too phony? Has it ever been more clear? Has the mainstream press corps—the Pomfrets, the Matthews, the Dowds—ever made it more blindingly obvious?

Dean Barnett on abortion

Abortion —
Dean Barnett wrote a column for the Boston Globe that tries to make a secular argument against abortion. His basic point? He doesn't know when life begins and wants to err on the side of caution. What does he mean by life? Oh, he never says.

Why do people making an anti-abortion argument never bother to clarify what they're actually talking about at this crucial juncture of their argument? Here's a guess: Because doing so would make their position sound silly.

Actually, even without clarifying, Barnett does a pretty good job of that:

You might expect that since I'm pro-life, I would argue that life begins at conception. Actually, that's not quite right. In answering the question of when life begins, the best I can do is say "I don't know." Life may begin at conception. It may begin during pregnancy. Or it may begin at childbirth. While I have a feeling that life begins at conception, I certainly can't prove it.

The only people who can say with absolute certainty and total conviction when life begins do so as a matter of faith or belief, not as the inevitable result of a logical process. This is every bit as true for the pro-choice absolutists who feel that life begins only at birth as it is for people who believe that life begins at conception. Indeed, I would argue that the pro-choice absolutists rely much more on something unknown and unprovable than their pro-life sparring partners.

This is nothing new, but notice how he uses a much more pleasant term for people of his ilk ("pro-life", in contrast to those anti-life bastards) and for absolutists in the anti-abortion camp ("people who believe that life begins at contraception") than for his opponents ("pro-choice absolutists"). Eee gads! Absolutists! These pro-choice absolutists sure sound like scary people.

About the beginning of life: What kind of life? Every cell in your body is alive. A sperm is alive; an egg is alive; and surely a fertilized egg is alive. So is the mosquito you just swatted. So is a carrot or a yeast organism. The question isn't "Will something that's alive end up dead?" The relevant question, it seems to me, is "Will a person end up dead?" Is a fertilized egg a person? It sure doesn't look like a person to me. It has more in common with a cell in my lip than with Bill Murray (or any other human being). How about a blastula? Sure it's alive, but is it a person? Really? It has more in common with a soccer ball than even with a fish. Moving along, an embryo proceeds to take on some amphibious qualities and, as they say, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It's life all along. Barnett need not fret over this issue. The issue worth fretting over is when is it human life. Not just human life in the sense that "human" is the best available adjective to describe it because, well, it comes from people. No, when is it a living human being?

Now I'll use a Barnett-ism: I don't know. But this is the question he should focus on, not a silly distraction of "When is it alive???"

NBA draft lottery

The Celtics did the worst they could possibly do in the NBA draft lottery on May 22, landing the 5th pick in the draft when they went into the lottery with the second-best odds.

Why is there a lottery, anyway? The draft is supposed to help the worst teams most. The lottery is supposed to prevent tanking. But this past season, most observers agree that many teams intentionally lost games, or at least intentionally put lineups on the court that were unlikely to win. So the lottery doesn't accomplish its goal, and it undermines the goal of the draft. Sounds like a great system, right?

At least if the NBA is going to undermine the goal of the draft, they may as well do it in a way that actually provides a disincentive to tank. How about have the 3rd-worst team get the #1 pick, the 2nd-worst team get the #2 pick, and the worst team get the #3 pick? After that, go in inverse order of record. Then there's a strong incentive for the worst teams to keep trying to win, all season long. AND, the worst that the league's worst team can finish is #3, unlike the current system in which the worst team can finish as low as #4, which they did this year.

The habitable zone

It has been a while since ordering from Saigon Grill. I don't even know if the delivery boys are still on strike, but I've been humming L'Internationale in my head ever since.

I just finished an investigation of whether it will be possible to determine the rotation rate of an extrasolar planet through its transit spectrum. You can find it here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0004

Now, I'm trying to calculate the habitable zone of a star. Broadly speaking, the habitable zone is the region around a star where there can be life. People (perhaps taking a parochial view) often take this to mean the region where there can be liquid water. And that's what I'm taking it to mean. There has been some impressive work done already by Jim Kastings and others. I'm just getting started now, but I'm trying to build some on what has already been done. More later....

Delivery boys on strike

Today, I ordered lunch from Saigon Grill, a good Vietnamese restaurant on the Upper West Side. They couldn't deliver because their delivery boys are on strike! I of course ordered from somewhere else, but I was left completely baffled: How can the delivery boys for one restaurant maintain a strike in Manhattan??

Spring is here, swing is here

Today, the weather had improved to the point that I went swing-a-ringing again.

Here's my first swing video, made in August of last summer:

Kerry vs. Gingrich, climate change

Video here.

Kerry vs. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

"Mr. Senator, when I'm asked [for money], I just generally give."

Why any document dumps?

Just a quick question about the US Attorney purge investigation now underway.

The White House is being awfully secretive, invoking executive privilege on an unprecedented range of topics. They may or may not have "lost" over 5 million emails, some of which may contain damaging information. And yet there have been several "document dumps", releasing several thousand pages of emails and other documents related to Department of Justice communications.

My question: Why? There has been some damaging information in the document dumps. Why have they bothered to cooperate at all, when they don't have any shame about flagrantly disregarding Congressional requests and even subpoenas?

Pole vaulting

This is DA reader MB attempting to pole vault 16'9".

Don't confuse weather with climate

It's a cold April. That doesn't mean the world isn't warming. Just as the warm December and early January weren't dispositive proof of anything, either.

I will note, though, that the 70 degree days in December were a bit creepy; and this was the first winter ever on record in which there hadn't been a snowfall in New York City by January 4th (the first snow didn't happen until January 11 this year).

Also, if you hear global warming deniers saying that Mars is warming too, direct them here. The basic point is that Mars probably isn't warming. Some people erroneously inferred warming from receding polar ice caps, but Mars is getting less solar irradiance than it was 5 years ago. The South Pole ice is receding, so something besides a brighter sun is causing the ice to disappear. It's not clear what it is, but it IS clear that it's not a global phenomenon.

Modest proposal for universities too:

This will be a short post, and I'll expand on it later. It's motivated by the same thinking that led to this post and this one.

It's kind of funny that colleges and universities are run by boards of trustees. At unionized campuses, professors have to negotiate for their contracts and benefits with these boards of trustees. It's almost as though the boards of trustees are the owners of the university. But of course they don't own anything. What could they own? They don't own the buildings, the land, ... anything. It seems to me that professors are the group who do the most to make universities run (although this is changing as institutions of higher learning are relying more and more on less expensive short-term labor, like graduate students and adjuncts). Therefore, they should run the university.

Of course, professors shouldn't be managers. But they should hire the managers (president, etc.), not the board of trustees.

What do I want students to learn?

Background:
As a graduate student in astronomy at Columbia, I was required to teach an undergraduate astronomy lab course that's a companion to the introductory astronomy lecture course for non-science majors. I enjoyed teaching this course very much, and I did it for 6 semesters. During my last year of teaching, I was the named the head teaching assistant, which is sort of a misnomer for this course, because we don't assist anyone in teaching it but instead design and teach it ourselves. In my capacity as head TA, I was at least nominally responsible for monitoring the curriculum that other instructors came up with for their classes. Although I didn't really like the feeling of monitoring my peers, I am very interested in pedagogy, and I've read a fair amount about science education and have attended several conferences on it, so I liked thinking about the relative merits of different kinds of curricula.

Just a little more background — Barnard students are required to take a year of lab science courses, and the Intro Astro Lab course that I taught is one among many lab science courses that fulfill this requirement. So, most of the students in the class are Barnard students who want to get this requirement out of the way.

In fact, I know this is true: At the beginning of every semester, I passed out a questionnaire that asked, among other things, why the students are taking the course. Occasionally I'd get answers something like, "I've always been interested in astronomy." But, by far the most common response was, "To fulfill my lab science requirement." To my students, astronomy had for some reason seemed like the least painful way to pass this hurdle on the way to graduation; or maybe, since astro lab meets at night, it was the only course that fit into their schedule.

Teaching Non-Science Majors:
I have spent hours, weeks, and years of my life thinking about what I want to teach the predominantly non-science majors who took my Intro Astronomy Lab course. Unfortunately, I'm still not confident in an answer.

(a) Since my students were not astronomy majors, there wasn't really any specific astronomy knowledge or set of astronomy skills that it was critical for them to learn by the end of the semester.
(b) Furthermore, since biology lab or geology lab would also have fulfilled the lab science requirement, clearly Barnard isn't interested in making sure that all of its students learn any astronomy; instead they must hope that the students will get something out of the course beyond specific facts or skills relevant to one particular field of science.

These two realizations gave me a great deal of freedom to shape the course. But, as Spiderman reminds us, with great power comes great responsibility.

There's a relatively easy way to teach an astronomy lab course. As the instructor, decide on some astronomy facts, principles, and skills that one wants to impart to one's students. Then, each lab class will consist of lecturing to the students for long enough to explain all the nuances of the lab, and then having the students work through some procedure for figuring out the answer to some question. Along the way, they will learn some astronomy, and they will reinforce some skills. The instructor will more or less hold their hands along the way, making sure that the students feel comfortable while they work out whatever it is they're working on. I don't pretend that this is easy — there are major questions the instructor must address, about what content to teach and what exercises will be best (most efficient? most fun? something else?) for teaching this content. But it's easier than the alternative.

The relatively hard way to teach an astro lab course involves figuring out a way to get the students to think scientifically, and to be scientists.

Motivated both by what I think Barnard hopes its students will learn and by what I think the students will be capable of remembering 1, 3, 10, or 30 years from now, I arrived at the following goals for my course — during my course, students should:

1. learn the scientific method: science involves observing the world, making hypotheses (falsifiable models or predictions), and observing the world again to see to what extent it matches the predictions.
2. become investigative practitioners of the scientific method, specifically,
3. (i) observe the world, (ii) think of questions about the world, (iii) hypothesize answers to the questions, (iv) think of methods to answer the questions, (v) carry out the methods, and (vi) analyze the results of investigations.
   
4. become more comfortable talking about science.
5. learn to think about the meanings of numbers. This means,
6. (i) think about how many digits are significant, and, as a matter of scientific integrity and honesty, don't report more digits than are significant, (ii) understand what a margin of error or uncertainty is, (iii) think about what physical thing is being described every time a number is reported, and finally, (iv) don't reach for a calculator every time you have to do some simple calculation.
7. learn how to use a telescope.
8. come to enjoy thinking about science in general and astronomy in particular.

I don't care if they learn how far away the Large Magellanic Cloud is, or if they can reproduce a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram a year from now, and if I don't care about those things a year from now I don't think I should be too concerned if they learn those things now, either.

But how do I teach a lab that results in them becoming better scientists?

It's very hard to get students — especially students with a rather weak science background — to pose interesting, tractable questions about astronomy. So, I often eschewed astronomy in favor of more tractable scientific problems that were inspired by astronomy.

Basically, everything we do in lab as fits into at least one of three categories:
Exercise (e.g. point the telescope, or calculate this distance using parallax)
Experience (e.g. watch this demonstration)
Investigation

And, there are two kinds of investigation: guided or open-ended. In a guided investigation, the instructor poses the question, and the students think of how to answer it. In an open-ended investigation, the instructor provides a rough topic or framework, but the students think of the questions they want to answer and the methods by which to answer them.

If I tell the students how to answer a question, then I've turned what they're doing from an investigation to an exercise. Although there is certainly some benefit to exercises (they help reinforce knowledge or skills), I cared much more about developing their investigative minds (goals 1., 2., and 3., above) than about developing knowledge or skills. So, I spent as much time on investigations as possible, and I assiduously tried to avoid telling the students how to answer questions, or even what questions to ask. I worry that too often in lab courses, items 3. (ii) and (iv) above (in italics) are almost entirely overlooked; I tried to give the students lots of opportunity to do both.

But it's very easy for an investigative lab to make the students feel that the instructor is passive-aggressive. The instructor holds information that the students need, and yet refuses to give it to them. Why won't s/he just tell them how to answer the question? And the students have a response: stall. When the students stall for long enough, the instructor can feel forced to give them what they want so that they can complete the lab before the 3 hours are up. Doing this can have a terrible effect: "Oh, that's what you wanted us to do? Why didn't you just say so?" Well, I didn't say so because there wasn't anything in particular that I wanted you to do; what I wanted you to do was to think and come up with a solution on your own. But the damage is done.

Teaching a lab in an investigative manner can also make the students feel less comfortable, and it can therefore be less fun for them. I'd hate to think that I worked much harder than I otherwise would have, I made the students work harder and feel less comfortable, and in the end they have learned less astronomy and learned that astronomy is no fun. I'd hate to think that 3 years from now their memory of astronomy lab will be, "that time when that passive-aggressive teacher made me suffer pointlessly for 3 hours each week".

Jacob Noel-Storr, who was the Head TA when I started graduate school, had some excellent advice when I was in my first year of teaching: Never lecture, never use the blackboard, and be aware of how much time you are spending talking relative to the students (and make sure this ratio is small!). Of course, it's practically impossible to avoid ever lecturing or using the blackboard, but, if you go into lab with the intention of never doing these things, you end up doing them a lot less.

I believe it's safe to say that in my entire time teaching the lab course, I never spent more than 10 straight minutes talking at the students, and practically never spent more than 3 or 4 minutes talking at them. Many labs, I didn't even talk for more than a minute straight. I kept my blackboard usage to what felt like an absolute minimum, maybe venturing to the board on average 6 times in an 11 week semester.

This advice goes a long way toward addressing goal 4. Instead of me explaining things to the students, I had them explain things to each other. I had them present their results in every class. I often noticed students who were shy at the beginning of the semester become much more comfortable talking about science by the end of the semester, and I feel very good about this.

Goals 5.-7.: I explained why significant digits are not just a procedure for truncating answers so as to make teachers smile, but rather a matter of honesty (I hope they apply this concept to the terribly innumerate world out there); in general, I always made sure they were aware when they were not being adequately attentive to the meanings of numbers; and I had them observe with a telescope as often as possible. I hope that these lessons stick with them as they go through their lives, encountering political polls, descriptions of the efficacy of one medicine versus another, etc. And I hope that using a telescope is at least somewhat like riding a bicycle, and when they have a house in the suburbs someday they can show their kids how to point a telescope at Saturn.

Goal 8? This gets back to my huge fear. Was the extra effort (on my part and theirs) wasted? Did I make them suffer and at the same time lay the groundwork for a future of loathing science and astronomy? Gosh, I hope not. I'm sure that in plenty of cases my students felt very positively about astronomy by the end of the course. But, on the margin, could I have taught them roughly as much (or more) — while along the way making more people feel more comfortable, have more fun, and ultimately feel more positively about astronomy — by teaching the class in a more traditional manner?

Hasselhoff.

Hooked on a feeling.

Big Box Mart

Oh Big Box Mart.

Goodling's 5th Amendment assertion invalid:

From a letter (by Reps Conyers and Sanchez) quoted at TPMuckraker about Monica Goodling's asserting her 5th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination:

The fact that a few Senators and Members of the House have expressed publicly their doubts about the credibility of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General in their representations to Congress about the U.S. Attorneys' termination does not in any way excuse your client from answering questions honestly and to the best of her ability. Of course, we expect (as we are sure you do) your client to tell the truth in any interview or testimony. The alleged concern that she may be prosecuted for perjury by the Department of Justice for fully truthful testimony is not only an unjustified basis for invoking the privilege and without reasonable foundation in this case but also so far as we know an unwarranted aspersion against her employer.

This sounds right to my uneducated ears. The 5th Amendment says

No person shall ... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself....

But this has not historically been interpreted literally. People still must show up in court, and must assert the 5th Amendment privilege on each question that might cause them to be witnesses against themselves.

Although I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that since Ms. Goodling has not been charged with any crime, it is particularly difficult for her to assert a privilege based on fear of her testimony being used against her. Of course, she may properly refrain from answering any question whose truthful answer would show that she had committed a crime. But the letter that Reps Conyers and Sanchez wrote to Goodling's lawyer makes a strong case that fear of an unwarranted prosecution for perjury is not a valid basis for asserting the 5th Amendment privilege. (If it were, then any witness could use this excuse to get out of giving any testimony any time, and subpoenas would rendered impotent.)

A very nice man

I only met Bob twice. First, 2 years ago at a lovely Passover Seder that he hosted with his wife Cindy in Memphis. Next, a few months later at my sister's wedding that he again helped to host at the family's home near Schroon Lake, New York. He was a kind man, unpretentious and attentive to others. When I first met him, I appreciated that he was mindful of my inconvenient dietary restrictions (on which I was very insistent, having just adopted them). He and Cindy made hosting people look easy, even with a crowd of 30 for Passover and over 100 for the wedding.

He just passed, while teaching how to play the card game Bridge, on a cruise. This was to be the first Passover he would miss in a long time. He was too young.

I'm very glad I had the chance to meet you, Bob. I feel very badly for my brother-in-law, Cindy, my sister, and the rest of the people who knew him much better than I did and must feel his loss more acutely.

Stephen Weinberg writes very well.

I like this essay very much.

The prestige of religion seems today to derive from what people take to be its moral influence, rather than from what they may think has been its success in accounting for what we see in nature. Conversely, I have to admit that, although I really don't believe in a cosmic designer, the reason that I am taking the trouble to argue about it is that I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. ...
As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion. ...
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

He sure knows how to turn a phrase. Is he right? I'm not sure. Even if he is, you could just as easily say "...; but for bad people to do good — that takes religion." Which sentence is more right? Don't know.

Oldie but goodie

Back before I became an astronomer, I still could tell there was something funny about the phrasing in this article (or here for cached version):

The scientists believe that the last time large amounts of matter so dense and so hot existed was a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the explosion credited with giving birth to the universe.

(Emphasis added.)

Umm, yeah. There were a lot of other explosions vying for the title, but in the end the Big Bang narrowly edged out Krakatoa and the Hindenburg. Personally, I was hoping Krakatoa would be credited with giving birth to the universe.

Just the facts, Bob.

Why is the Howler making fun of a Russian scientist's name?

Workers and the means of production, and the NBA

DA readers FB and NB have raised some questions about what I'm suggesting with respect to professional sports leagues. Am I saying it should be illegal for rich guys to own teams? Am I saying that team owners don't do anything valuable? Am I discounting the value that coaches provide by teaching the players how to play proper, winning basketball? Am I suggesting that NBA teams should have a different management structure from the one they have?

I'll respond briefly to these specific questions, and then I'll try to re-cast what I'm saying slightly differently.

Q: Am I saying it should be illegal for rich guys to own teams?

A: No. I'd just prefer for it to be different.

Q: Am I saying that team owners don't do anything valuable?

A: No. Team owners choose the people to run the basketball side of the business and the people to run the non-basketball side of the business (the General Manager, and the Team President or CEO, respectively). Hiring two people is certainly worth something, at least if it's the right two people. (I'm not sure if Charles Dolan, owner of the Knicks, did anything of value when he chose Isiah Thomas as General Manager.) Some team owners do some or all of the duties of the GM and/or the CEO, in which case they contribute the value of not just the guy who hires two people (what could that be worth, $100,000 per year?), but also the value of the GM (maybe $3M per year) and of the CEO (maybe $1M per year). So a very active team owner might be worth $4.1M per year.

Q: Am I discounting the value that coaches provide by teaching the players how to play proper, winning basketball?

A: No, not at all. But, a league with really good players and crap coaches will draw much better ratings than a league with really good coaches and crap players. In other words, the players contribute much more value.

Q: Am I suggesting that NBA teams should have a different management structure from the one they have?

A: No, that's not what I'm saying. I don't know what the right management structure is, and that's beside the point. I want a different ownership structure.

* * *

Here's the point: as a consumer of the NBA and as a supporter of labor in general, I wish the players owned the league. They could own the league, as I pointed out in the example in the previous post. The key is that the players already possess the means of production. Sure, they don't contribute all the value – team doctors, coaches, team-builders (General Managers), and others all contribute some value. But the majority of the value of each team is wrapped up in the sinew and gray matter inside the players' bodies.

See, it's difficult for workers to own a business in which they don't own the means of production. If there's a large building, or a fancy machine, or some other physical entity that the workers do not own but that is vital to the business, it is pretty difficult for the workers to own the business.

But when the workers already own the means of production, then there is NO NEED for a rich-dude owner. The NBA owner's $20M/yr is just a huge source of inefficiency. With 30 teams, that's $600M/yr that we, the consumers, ultimately pay for, but for which we receive no value. Insane. Half a billion dollars just completely wasted.

* * *

Finally, here's one more objection that DA reader NB raised: Let's say the players pulled the coup I suggested, and the investment bank went along with their plan, and now it's the Players' Basketball Association (PBA) that everyone watches. Let's say that the public likes it just as much as they used to like the NBA, and the TV contract is just as rich. Well, now there's still that $20M of profit each year per team (on average), only since the players are the owners they just split up the profit amongst themselves. The consumers won't benefit at all; only the players will.

Even if this objection is true, I'd still prefer this scenario to the current economic model. At least the guys making the profit would be the ones who generate the profit through their labor.

Mr. Sampson?

Great question for Gonzales's Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson that was suggested by an anonymous poster on TPM Muckraker's live coverage of the Sampson's Senate testimony today:

Mr. Sampson, if the firing process "wasn't scientific or well-documented" and you didn't make the decision, then how do you know the firings were not for improper reasons?

(comment posted at 01:45 PM, if you're looking for it)

I hope a staffer for some Senator reads that thread (or reads this blog).

Franken, news, the Moon, ...

1. Minnesota candidate for Senate, Stuart Smalley, tonight on the Late Show with David Letterman: "Republicans run for office claiming that government doesn't work, and then they get elected and they prove it."

2. That's what we call the news.

3. Today (3/28) I saw a really interesting talk about the Moon. Specifically, about Transient Lunar Phenomena, or TLPs –

Ever since the invention of the telescope, and even for a while before then, some people who have stared at the Moon for long enough have occasionally seen flashes of light. The TLPs haven't occurred just anywhere – it looks like only about 10% or less of the Moon's surface has experienced these flashes. In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that at least some of these TLPs might be related to outgassing events.

See, the Moon has a (very thin) atmosphere that probably consists largely of gas that sometimes bubbles up from its deep interior. Sometimes when this gas bubbles out, it might flash brightly enough that Earthbound observers notice it as a TLP.

A team from Columbia, led by Arlin Crotts and Cameron Hummels, is building a dedicated lunar monitor that will live at Cerro Telolo and will photograph the Moon every 0.1 seconds ad infinitum (while the Moon is visible in its field of view). Within a year or a few years they will have an unbiased data set that is of superior sensitivity to the entire prior history of human observations of the Moon.

On free markets

DA reader JS points out, in response to the post about why NBA players should own the league, that although I say that the business model according to which sports franchises operate is "funny", it's actually quite common:

I like the idea. But I don't think the NBA model is uncommon. What about things like financial firms? People can own them, and the value comes from the people who work for the firm rather than from any physical entity like a factory. He's right. A lot of the stock market consists of people who provide no value but own the right to draw profit from companies.

I hope to return to this issue, but I'd like to take a slight meandering detour first.

* * *

In my introductory economics course in college, I heard what I think is a pretty standard story:

(a) A perfectly competitive market (PCM) leads to a certain kind of optimal society, one characterized by "Pareto Efficiency".

(b) Pareto Efficiency is defined by the following property: It's impossible to make anyone better off without making someone worse off. There are plenty of societies where you can make someone better off without making anyone worse off, and those societies aren't in a state of Pareto Efficiency. (Example – if I have some bread and jam in the back of my fridge that's going to go bad because I won't eat it, and I give it to a homeless person who's starving, he's better off and no one is worse off, so I think this would show that our society isn't at Pareto Efficiency.)

(c) Many Economists think that a Pareto-Efficient society is the ideal that we should strive for, so they praise PCMs. It's not completely clear to me that Pareto Efficiency would be the ideal society – I could imagine that some people might be doing badly enough in a state of Pareto Efficiency that the society would be better off overall if we improved the lot of the worse-off members, even if it slightly lessens the tremendously advantaged lot of the best-off members. But anyway, I think Pareto Efficiency would be a pretty good status to achieve, and PCMs are, if not part of the perfect society, at least pretty darn good things.

But a free market includes many features that many industries don't have. There is no collusion in a PCM, but tacit collusion is common in many industries and sports leagues are explicitly allowed collective bargaining, which is a form of collusion. There are no barriers to entry in a PCM. There are huge barriers to entry in many industries (including sports leagues). There's perfect knowledge in a PCM (and therefore no need for advertising). There's tons of advertising in many markets (including sports). And so on.

During the intro econ course, the professor will try to demonstrate in many examples that government regulations are bad by asserting (if not proving) that if a society is at a state of Pareto Efficiency and then adds regulations, it will end up away from this optimum point.


But here's the rub:

One final feature of perfectly competitive markets, according to the intro econ professor, is the zero-profit condition. In a PCM there is no profit, because with no collusion, zero barriers to entry, and perfect knowledge among the consumers, new firms will keep entering the market and underselling the existing firms, thereby driving down prices, until they are all selling at cost, at which point there's no profit left.

But wait a minute – many many industries have huge profits, which apparently ipso facto means that they are not at Pareto efficiency. (It's my understanding that only relatively few markets, such as the pork bellies market and timber logs market, are actually close to perfectly competitive.) What, now, is the reason to avoid government regulations? Is it obvious that if you start off away from the optimum point and add regulations you will end up further from the optimum point? Not to me.

I'm sure that serious economists have thought about this and probably have a very good response. But, having only taken a few low-level economics courses at the undergraduate level, I never saw such a response. If you have any comments, please let me know.

A modest proposal: players should own the league (and eat babies)

I'd like to venture away from physics and toward economics:

I had intended for this blog to be more of a commentary on science and on contemporary science-writing, but I haven't posted in half a year so the initial grand designs appear not to tickle my writing bone.

So, while I wait to be inspired with posts related to the original purpose, I'll write a few serial installments of my manifesto.

It seems to me that there's a lot of inefficiency in the economic model according to which professional sports leagues operate. What, exactly, do team owners own? Well, they own the right to make decisions regarding the team and to collect the money the team makes. But that's a weird thing to own, isn't it?

Some sports teams are very profitable. So owning the rights to the profits of a sports team can be a great thing to own. But does it make sense?

In many businesses, it makes some sense for the owner to reap a profit. Although the workers contribute the value of their work, the owner contributes the value of his capital, which is an essential part of the final product. Example: In a factory, the owner provides the factory, and the workers work in it. Of course there's value inherent in the factory – the workers couldn't make whatever they make without the machines they need to make it. Marx wanted the workers to own the means of production, but he didn't deny that there is value in the means of production.

But a sports franchise is a very funny kind of business, because in many cases the owner owns nothing that's related to the means of production (often – as with the Celtics – the owners don't even own the arena). All the owner owns is the right to make money from what the workers – the players – do.

The owners of the Celtics (not to pick on them, but they're my favorite team so I pay more attention to them than to other teams) make something like $20 million per year. Some years it's less. Some years more. Their best player, Paul Pierce, makes only $15M this year. So, the ownership group (led by a fellow named Wyc Grousbeck, who seems like a great fan and whom I have nothing against except for a few quibbles with some management decisions) pockets as much money or more (for contributing no value) as the best player on the team does (for all the obvious value he contributes). If Wyc Grousbeck went on vacation and didn't do anything related to the Celtics for a month or so, fans wouldn't notice a lick of difference. If Pierce went on vacation for a month, well, earlier this season the Celtics lost 18 straight games while he was out, so we know what his absence means to the squad.

I don't think I need to belabor the point that the players contribute nearly all of the value in an NBA franchise. So I'd like to propose a superior economic model.

Imagine this:
° The NBA players all stop playing for the NBA. They then go to some investment bank – Goldman Sachs, for instance – and they say, "We want to start our own basketball league. Will you loan us some money so we can get off the ground?" Goldman Sachs does this sort of thing all the time. They finance people who have a great business idea but don't have enough capital to implement it.
° Goldman Sachs says, "Why will anyone watch your league?"
° The players respond, "Because we're the best basketball players in the world. People might have some affinity for team names like 'Celtics' and 'Knicks', but eventually they'll just want to see the best basketball players in the world."
° Goldman Sachs would say, "Sounds good to us."

In this new system, there wouldn't be an inefficiency to the tune of $20M a year going to a rich guy. The players could hire a management system and organize into teams with coaches and general managers. Because there wouldn't be such a huge inefficiency in the form of these owners, ticket prices would be lower, and ultimately fans would be happier.

And players should eat babies.

Entering the blogosphere

A mere 3 years ago, I had never heard of the word "blog." Now, I'm a daily visitor to Josh Marshall's TPM and Bob Somerby's Daily Howler. Still, I didn't anticipate actually writing one, myself.

But that changed when I came across a recent article that the tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook wrote on Slate.com.

Now, I've followed Easterbrook for a while, and I enjoyed his early days of TMQ on Slate. To be honest, I have recently found his I'm-way-smarter-than-football-people shtick a little grating -- and he should stick a post-it note to his monitor that says "Stop me before I write 'Stop me before I blitz again' again.") Still, I can stomach one or two of his 5000-word columns per season.

But I can't stomach his writing on most non-football issues. That goes for his opinion on Jewish executives in Hollywood, and that goes for his opinion on String Theory.

If you don't feel like ploughing through his Slate article, titled "The Trouble With String Theory," I'll summarize it. In the guise of a review of a recent book by physicist Lee Smolin, Easterbrook harshly criticizes the current state of affairs in physics, comparing physicists to Medieval mystics. Here's a particularly telling excerpt:

string theory seems to contain significant helpings of blather designed to intimidate nonscientists from questioning the budgets of physics departments and tax-funded particle accelerator labs. And consider this. Today if a professor at Princeton claims there are 11 unobservable dimensions about which he can speak with great confidence despite an utter lack of supporting evidence, that professor is praised for incredible sophistication. If another person in the same place asserted there exists one unobservable dimension, the plane of the spirit, he would be hooted down as a superstitious crank.

Finally, he objects to the term word "theory," since as he says, "Darwin's defenders have rightly replied that in science, "theory" does not mean idle speculation. Rather, it is an honored term for an idea that has been elaborately analyzed, has not been falsified, and has made testable predictions that have later proven to be true."


As a PhD candidate in astrophysics, I have a little bit of experience with the hooded monks of string theory. I recently went to a lecture on string theory that began something like,

"It is a bit embarrassing that the first task of string theory is to explain why one of its basic assumptions, which is manifestly wrong, is in fact not necessarily wrong. I'm talking, of course, about the plainly absurd suggestion that our universe has not 3 spatial dimensions, but 10 or more."

The speaker then went on to describe very quickly the standard story of how there might be other dimensions that we'd never notice, and some of what makes string theory so exciting and some of the more serious challenges to it.

If Mr. Easterbrook wants to argue that it should be called "String Conjecture", that's fine by me. Plenty of people have worked on the Riemann Hypothesis and the Poincare Conjecture. Plenty of people also worked on Fermat's Last Theorem, which probably would more appropriately have been called Fermat's Well-Tested Conjecture (credit: Douglas Hofstadter). There's nothing wrong with working on a conjecture or a hypothesis.

But what else of content is he saying? He wants physics to get back to actually figuring stuff out. But guess what: With the standard model of particle physics, a lot of people were heralding "The End of Physics!" As in, there was nothing else to figure out. But of course there was -- most prominently, How does gravity work on the smallest scales? Does Easterbrook propose using God Theory to explain quantum gravity?

See, there's a big difference between God Theory and String Theory. String theory actually does make predictions about our universe that are in principle testable, and many people are working on figuring out various clever ways to test these predictions. Of course, these people are hooded alchemists in Easterbrook's opinion. It's my understanding that string theory has generated enough interesting mathematics that it will continue to be pursued by mathematicians, even if future observations fail to confirm any of its predictions. But the important thing is that physicists CAN give it up, depending on if our universe is consistent with it or not. There would be no reason ever to give up the single extra explanatory dimension that has no predictive power.

Also, he chides string theorists for failing to predict the observation that the universe's expansion seems to be accelerating. But string theory is still in its infancy. Heck, Einstein and Newton didn't predict that, either. Let's throw out gravity with the bathwater.

Finally, he says that the last third of the 20th century was not very productive, because people were "hit over the head by the unexpected, such as dark energy," as though that weren't an important discovery by physicists, but rather something that some idiots who were partially blinded by their droopy hoods stubbed their toes on. As though a key feature of important discoveries is that they be predicted in advance. Right. How many physicists were expecting the electron, or quantized light, or that Newtonian gravity is incommensurate with Maxwell's Equations? By that standard, the first third of the 20th century sucked for physics, too.

It might turn out that in the next decade or so, as tests are developed and performed for String Theory's predictions, that String Theory is not consistent with our universe. If so, then physicists will be forced to turn their attention elsewhere. But not to the plane of the spirit.

Now that Mr. Easterbrook has forced me to turn my attention to the sphere of the blog, I suppose I'll be back soon.