The (Two Blocks Away From) Ground Zero Mosque

This is really ugly. I guess I just thought that freedom meant the freedom to build houses of worship wherever you want. I was obviously wrong. Right wingers everywhere are upsets about the plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. It really reminds me of the "First they came for the..." posts that are so common on the right.
Michelle Malkin: First, They Came For The Cartoonists. First, They Came For The Cheerios.
Instapundit: First, They Came For The Pilots. First, They Came For The Bloggers.
Of course, you are not going to see Malkin or Instapundit making the argument, "First, they came for the mosques, and I said nothing, for I was not a mosque."
Note: I think that slippery slope arguments are generally stupid. Usually, they are invoked to argue against a minuscule shift in the status quo, based on the argument that it will inevitably lead to either fascism or communism, depending on the direction of the shift.

The Dastardly New Black Panther Party

The Washington Post is finally getting around to exposing the threat the NBPP poses to America. After a brief summary of the story, they add the inevitable he said/she said:

Abigail Thernstrom, a commission member and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, called it "small potatoes" and said conservatives should pursue more important issues against the Obama administration.

[snip]

Thernstrom said that she did not find Adams's testimony convincing and that the facts of the case raised doubts in her mind, noting that the Black Panthers were standing in front of a majority-black precinct that had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in previous elections -- not a prime
spot for intimidating white voters. 

Todd Gaziano, director of the center for legal and judicial studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation who also serves on the commission, disagreed. 

"Anyone who has seen the video and who reads [Adams's] testimony knows this is something that needs to be investigated," he said.

Thernstrom offers a fact to support her position. Gaziano essentially says that he believes this needs to be investigated. A pox on both their houses, I say.

Fun with Numbers

Tom Nelson seems to have figured out that global warming is all a fraud. He has found a bunch of headlines showing areas where the warming is higher than average, and asks, "Can everyplace really be warming much faster than everyplace else?" He provides links to articles claiming that Africa, the North Pole, Australia, Kuwait's waters, Antarctic air, Tibet, Sundarbans' water, China, the U.S. West, the Arctic, Lake Superior, the Himalayas, and the Korean Peninsula. Nelson obviously believes that this is really strong evidence that it's all quackery.
Of course, if you look at a map, you will realize that over 70% of the Earth's surface is water. It would in fact be possible for the entire landmass of Earth to be heating faster than the global average.

Some People Really Hate Muslims

Apparently, the Science Museum in London is running an exhibition entitled 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World. This exhibition "traces the forgotten story of a thousand years of science from the Muslim world, from the 7th century onwards". According to Toby E. Huff:

Our concern is with the fact that from the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth, Arabic science was probably the most advanced science in the world, greatly surpassing the West and China. In virtually every field of endeavor - in astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics, and so forth - Arab scientists (that is, Middle Eastern individuals primarily using the Arabic language but including Arabs, Iranians, Christians, Jews, and others) were in the forefront of scientific advance. The facts, theories, and scientific speculations contained in their treatises were the most advanced to be had anywhere in the world, including China.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? It is exactly the sort of thing I would expect to see in a science museum. Of course, if you think that, you are being duped by a vast conspiracy. Alexander Levkovsky:

The main mission of the exhibition is to obscure the hard fact that for the last several centuries the vast Islamic world has contributed almost nothing at all to the great treasury of human civilization!

You see, the exhibition should be focusing on the lack of inventions by Muslims in the last several centuries. This is what a science museum should do. However, it is unclear if this alternative exhibit should also focus on the lack of inventions by Christians during the golden age of Islam. Otherwise, it could rightfully be accused of obscuring the hard fact that from the 8th to the 14th century, the vast Christian world contributed almost nothing at all to the great treasury of human civilization!

Death Panels Exposed

Over at Big Government, Capitol Confidential has exposed the "government's rationing toolbox". At issue is a cancer drug, Avastin, which the FDA is seeking to de-label for breast cancer treatment. From Big Government:

No one disputes that the drug helps extends life for terminal patients.

The National Cancer Institute on E2100, the initial trial to test Avastin:

The results of E2100 had not shown an increase in overall survival

It turns out the actual issue is a new metric being considered for oncology trials, progression-free survival (PFS). The standard metric is overall survival (OS).

The difference between PFS and OS is that PFS measures the time from a patient's random assignment to one treatment arm or another until the patient's cancer begins to grow again or the patient dies from their cancer; whereas OS measures the time from randomization until death from any cause.

 If you follow the link, it is actually a fascinating look at the complexities of the metrics used for oncology research. Near the end of the article, there is a good quote from Dr. Richard Pazdur, the director of the FDA Office of Oncology Drug Products:

I have no problem accepting that, in a lethal disease such as metastatic cancer, delaying progression is a clinical benefit in itself, provided that the magnitude of the benefit is sufficient and the side-effect profile acceptable.

In other words, there is a risk-benefit analysis that must be performed. No one wants an extra month before the cancer begins to grow if it means that they have to endure a horrible side effect during that month. Note that this is a risk-benefit analysis, not a cost-benefit analysis. On Avastin, Dr. Pazdur notes:

Because treatment with Avastin is associated with considerable toxicity, the magnitude of PFS improvement—especially if not supported by an improvement in overall survival—should be substantial, clinically meaningful, and be able to be replicated in additional trials.

By a vote of 12-1, a review by a panel of 13 medical professionals found Avastin to fail this risk-benefit analysis. Or, as Capitol Confidential puts it:

The Avantis case is setting the precedent for the government to arbitrarily deny coverage to millions of American’s based on cost alone.

If Capitol Confidential believes that the decision to de-label Avastin was based "on cost alone", he (she?) must be outraged at the composition of the panel that made the decision. There is not a single economist (PDF) on the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee! The members all have irrelevant degrees, like M.D., Pharm.D., Ph.D., RN, M.S., F.A.C.P., and D.O. This is the true outrage!

Back in the DPRK

Apprently, North Korea has a website where you can apply to visit the country. For a mere 2050 Euros (1850 Euros for Korea Friendship Association members), you can visit the Dear Leader. However, you will have to pay an extra 440 Euros for the round trip flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. There are only 20 spots, and the tour leaves August 12th, so make your booking today! You must prepay 350 Euros by credit card to reserve your spot, with the remainder due in cash Euros at the beginning of the trip.
Unfortunately, the following items are banned:

Video-Camera, Plants, animals, drugs, explosives, weapons, any kind of pornography, mass printed propaganda, radio, wireless or satellite communicator (GPS), mobile phone (can be left at airport locker).

Luckily, the following are allowed in the DPRK:

Photo-camera (analog or digital), laptop (without wireless/radio communication devices), PDA, CD Player, MP3

 Of course, you may have difficulty finding a laptop that does not have a built-in wireless.

Bill O'Reilly More Pro-Gay Than Obama

Andrew Sullivan has a post up entitled: "Bill O'Reilly: More Pro-Gay Than Barack Obama". He links to an interview on Leno in which O'Reilly says:

"President Obama has the power to stop this 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' business. Just sign an executive order. I don't know why it's taking so long—it's not fair. We should stop this nonsense."

Sullivan then adds, "Or maybe just not paralyzed by Clintonian fear." Of course, O'Reilly never says that he supports ending DADT. He just says that Obama could stop it with an executive order. As for "Clintonian fear", on Fox News, this is what O'Reilly had to say about DADT:

It's not about anti-gay. It's about being comfortable in the barracks. It's not about anti-gay.

 Such bold and fearless advocacy for gay rights! No "Clintonian fear" for Papa Bear O'Reilly!

A New Kind of Crazy

Occasionally, while clicking one link after another, you end up stumbling upon something you've never seen before. And so I stumbled upon Pejman Yousefzadeh's blog post entitled Bring Back Dueling:

Of course, I wouldn’t take this position were it not for the fact that codes associated with dueling seek to bring about peaceful resolutions to conflicts before any blood is shed, but even if this were not the case, innocent lives would be saved by ensuring, through the presence and organization of duels regulated by a code of conduct, that noncombatants would be nowhere near the line of fire if antagonists decided to use violence to settle their disputes.

How many gun-related murders do you suppose occur in which the victim had a long-standing grudge against the perpetrator? Remember, you can only have a duel if both people agree. I would guess that most gun murder victims are innocent of any crime. The obvious exception, of course, is gang violence. The article to which Yousefzadeh links, written by Jamie Brooke, offers dueling as a way of avoiding the deaths of innocent bystanders in gang wars:

Much violence is based on a desire for respect and in reaction to perceived slurs in gang dominated sections of society. Outside these gangs the same problems are dealt with entirely differently, however this was not always the case. Medieval knights, noblemen and royals would do anything to be seen as courageous and to preserve their honour, and as is the case with modern city gangs were prepared to die defending that image. The system that was established is that of duelling.

"Much violence is based on a desire for respect and in reaction to perceived slurs in gang dominated sections of society." Assuming for argument's sake that this is true (and I doubt it is), does Brooke seriously believe that he can change the gang culture to one of chivalry? That gang members can be convinced that, rather than shoot the offending speaker on the spot, they ought to challenge them to a duel? Why would you agree to a fair fight if you can shoot them in cold blood on the spot?

Lynching

This article by Jeffrey Lord has been making the rounds, and I have to comment. Shirley Sherrod, the fired USDA official, has said that her uncle was lynched. Lord describes what happened to the uncle:

The arrest was made late at night at Hall's home on a warrant charging Hall with theft of a tire. Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to "get" him.

The Supreme Court then ruled:

Upon review of a judgment affirming the conviction, for violation of § 20 of the Criminal Code and conspiracy thereunto, of local law enforcement officers who arrested a negro citizen for a state offense and wrongfully beat him to death, the judgment is reversed with directions for a new trial.

And Lord's following paragraph is:

It's also possible that she knew the truth and chose to embellish it, changing a brutal and fatal beating to a lynching. Anyone who has lived in the American South (as my family once did) and is familiar with American history knows well the dread behind stories of lynch mobs and the Klan. What difference is there between a savage murder by fist and blackjack -- and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday -- a very long time -- of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal "anti-black jack" or "anti-fisticuffs" laws. Lynching had a peculiar, one is tempted to say grotesque, solitary status as part of the romantic image of the Klan, of the crazed racist. The image stirred by the image of the noosed rope in the hands of a racist lynch mob was, to say the least, frighteningly chilling.

Lord seems to be under the impression that the only way to lynch someone is by "dangling rope". And so, to Lord, Eli Cooper must not have been lynched:

The case of Eli Cooper is illustrative. One night in late summer 1919, a gang of fifteen or twenty white men abducted Cooper, a black man, from his home in Cadwell in Laurens County and transported him to Petway's Gift Church in Dodge County, a few miles away. The gang shot Cooper, set the church on fire, and pitched his body into the flames.

To paraphrase Lord:

What difference is there between a savage murder by [burning] -- and by dangling rope? Obviously, in the practical sense, none. But in the heyday -- a very long time -- of the Klan, there were frequent (and failed) attempts to pass federal anti-lynching laws. None to pass federal "[anti-burning]" laws.

As a side note, where the hell were the editors on this one?

Whoops!

In my previous post about Greg Mankiw's recent article, I forgot to mention my original point. Mankiw has an extended critique of Obama's stimulus in which he seems to accept the Keynesian framework that stimulus, whether through tax cuts or government spending, will increase GDP growth. However, he argues that tax cuts are significantly more effective than government spending. Upon seeing the unemployment rate rise much higher than expected, Obama's economic team scrambled for an explanation. Mankiw writes:

To the question of why their patient — the U.S. economy — did not respond as expected, the Obama team's answer is that the patient was sicker at the beginning of 2009 than they had originally thought, not that they administered the wrong medicine. The spending-heavy fiscal stimulus, they argue, was the right approach and did some good; if the stimulus bill had not been enacted, unemployment today would be even higher. The reason the stimulus failed to cure the economy's woes is not that it was the wrong course of treatment: It simply wasn't a big enough dose. (Hence the repeated calls for a "second stimulus.")

[snip]

The trouble is, we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct. To react to a model's failure to predict events accurately by insisting that the model was nonetheless right — as Obama's economic advisors have done — is hardly the most obvious course. Careful economists should instead respond with humility. When their predictions fail — as they often do — they should not dig in their heels, but should instead be willing to go back to their starting assumptions and question their validity.

Mankiw believes that there are two problems with the starting assumptions. "Chief among these considerations is whether government can spend money both quickly and wisely." He goes on to argue that the government cannot. However, looking at the actual stimulus spending, it is clear that the government can in fact "spend money both quickly and wisely". On the spending side, the largest items are "Help states with Medicare costs" ($87.1 billion), "Help states prevent cuts to essential services like education" ($53.6 billion), "Provide money for highways and bridges" ($27.5 billion), "Health coverage under Cobra" ($25.1 billion), and "Increase food assistance" ($20.9 billion). It is difficult to argue that any of these are unwise, and only the highways and bridges money could be considered slow.

The administration's second assumption, meanwhile, is a matter of academic theories about the sizes of the relevant economic multipliers.

Obama's stimulus plan assumed that the multiplier for direct spending would be 1.57, while the tax-cut multiplier should be 0.99. Mankiw does not argue with the direct spending multiplier, but claims (based on the work of Romer & Romer) that the tax-cut multiplier should be 3. Unfortunately for Mankiw, this destroys his own argument.

Throughout the article, Mankiw implies that the Obama team leaned too heavily on spending in the stimulus. Never does he inform the reader that, as of April 20, the Obama stimulus was 43% tax cut and 57% direct spending. Using the Obama administration's numbers, the overall multiplier is 1.32 (1.57 * 0.57 + 0.99 * 0.43). Using Mankiw's numbers, the overall multiplier is 2.18 (1.57 * 0.57 + 3 * 0.43). In fact, using Mankiw's preferred multiplier of 3 for the tax-cut portion of the stimulus, the direct spending multiplier could be zero and the overall multiplier would still be 1.29.

As a professor of economics at Harvard, Mankiw must know this. However, he is clearly not seeking to inform his readers about a matter of economics. He is trying to win a political argument about Obama.

Mankiw Does Not Seek to Inform

Reading over Greg Mankiw's recent post on the stimulus, it becomes rather apparent that Mankiw is looking to win a political - rather than economic - argument. Citing a now-famous paper by Romer and Romer, Mankiw states:

The Romers' conclusion, which is at odds with most traditional Keynesian analysis, was that the tax multiplier was 3 — in other words, that every dollar spent on tax cuts would boost GDP by $3. This would mean that the tax multiplier is roughly three times larger than Obama's advisors assumed it was during their policy simulations.

[snip]

But several studies on government-spending multipliers have been conducted using techniques similar to those used by the Romers.

[snip]

Ramey finds a government-spending multiplier of about 1.4 — a figure close to what the Obama administration assumed, but much smaller than the tax multiplier identified by the Romers.

Of course, back in early 2009, Brad Delong made the following comment:

The two studies [Romer and Romer, and Ramey] use very different methodologies. They are not comparable. For example, the Ramey study on the effects of government spending--while a superb contribution to the literature, and one that I have assigned to my graduate students--does not fully control for the tax increases that often accompany spending increases. Thus it is very likely to understate the effects of spending increases alone: her study assesses the impact of the Korean-War military spending increase without taking account of the fact that it was accompanied by a large tax increase.

And so we have Mankiw baldly asserting that "several studies on government-spending multipliers have been conducted using techniques similar to those used by the Romers", and Delong arguing the opposite while offering a persuasive argument about how they are different.

Mankiw offers two more examples of the stimulative superiority of tax cuts. I do not know enough about the first one (Mountford and Uhlig) to comment. However, the second one is garbage:

Alesina and Ardagna then separated those plans that were in fact followed by robust economic growth from those that were not, and compared their characteristics. They found that the stimulus packages that appeared to be successful had cut business and income taxes, while those that evidently did not succeed had increased government spending and transfer payments.

To believe that this proves anything is to be willfully blind. Read Paul Krugman.

Also at The Daily Caller

From the previous article, I found this gem by Juan Williams. Talking about the Shirley Sherrod episode, Williams writes:

How is it possible that such a bright man as the president repeatedly reacts without the facts when it comes to a topic so explosive as race?

[snip]

How is it possible that the once glorious NAACP – the leading name in America’s fight against racial segregation – has come to the point where it is pushing the first black president to fire anyone – but especially a black woman — on a charge of racism without checking to be sure she was a hateful racist?

The entire first page of the article is spent bashing Obama and the NAACP. After describing the life story of Sherrod, Williams finally gets around to why the scandal happened in the first place:

But then someone – still unknown – took Sherrod’s touching speech and edited it to create the impression that she was a black racist. The editor made it appear that Sherrod claimed to a black audience that she withheld help from a white man because he is white.

That twisted tape was placed for all to see on a right-wing website, BigGovernment.com, as a two and half minute video clip.

[snip]

Everyone – the White House, the Agriculture Department, the anonymous editor, the website – has political dirt and racial guilt all over their hands.

A pox on both their houses, I tell you. Can't we all just agree that they are all equally guilty? Interestingly enough, Williams doesn't assign any blame to Breitbart by name. Perhaps because the article was originally posted on Fox Forum?

The Public Has a Right to Know

Tucker Carlson, on why he is refusing to release the entire text of the e-mails he is excerpting:

The second line of attack we’ve encountered since we began the series is familiar to anyone who has ever published a piece whose subject didn’t like the finished product: “You quoted me out of context!”

The short answer is, no we didn’t. I edited the first four stories myself, and I can say that our reporter Jonathan Strong is as meticulous and fair as anyone I have worked with.

That assurance won’t stop the attacks, of course. So why don’t we publish whatever portions of the Journolist archive we have and end the debate? Because a lot of them have no obvious news value, for one thing.

[snip]

Plus, a lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.

Okay, so most of it is "pretty banal" and has "no obvious news value". However, some of the e-mails are obviously interesting enough, with enough "obvious news value", to excerpt on The Daily Caller. If they pass this test, why won't he release the entire e-mail? Are only the excerpts newsworthy and interesting?

However, Carlson does make a valid point when he says:

Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself.

I guess for people in Washington, this is another game of "screw over the opposition", but I was under the impression that the point of journalism is to shine a light. Why, in a spat between two groups of reporters, is neither side willing to release the e-mails over which they are arguing?

Another Blog Post With a Conclusion Listed as a Question?

This post by William Easterly at Aidwatch asks, "Was the poverty of Africa determined in 1000 BC?" Easterly cites an article by Diego Comin, Erick Gong, and himself:

78 percent of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is explained by technology differences that already existed in 1500 AD – even BEFORE the slave trade and colonialism.

Moreover, these technological differences had already appeared by 1000 BC. The state of technology in 1000 BC has a strong correlation with technology 2500 years later, in 1500 AD.

Whenever looking at a "strong correlation", it is important to ask yourself, "Could some third variable explain both factors?" My immediate thought is there are probably two confounding variables. Firstly, Africa is largely landlocked, with a dearth of navigable rivers, making trade and the diffusion and adoption of technology much more difficult. Secondly, Africa has conditions that are ideal for the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria.

When the authors do not control for these factors, they find that "78 percent of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is explained by technology differences that already existed in 1500 AD".

However, when the authors add independent variables for "distance to equator", "distance to equator squared", and "landlocked", the regression coefficient for "migration-adjusted technology level in 1500 AD" drops to 1.770 (significant at the 5% level). With this coefficient, only 42% of the difference is attributable to technology differences in 1500 AD.

Lastly, when the authors perform a regression analysis using "landlocked" and "tropical dummy" as independent variables, they find that the regression coefficient for "migration-adjusted technology level in 1500 AD" is 2.590 (significant at the 1% level). This coefficient explains 62% of the difference in income between Europe and Africa in 2002.

I also have a fairly major quibble with the "landlocked" variable. If you look at Wikipedia's list of landlocked countries, you will notice that DR Congo is not considered landlocked because it has 40 km of coastline. However, looking at a map, you will see that DR Congo is effectively landlocked. Furthermore, the "landlocked" countries of Western Europe seem to all be outliers in terms of GDP per capita on a purchasing power parity basis: Luxembourg (#3), Liechtenstein (#1), San Marino (#18), Switzerland (#19), and Vatican City (not ranked). In fact, if you were to only look at Western Europe, you would say that being landlocked is in fact an advantage. The only non-landlocked country in Western Europe with a higher rank than Switzerland is Ireland at #16 (and I have a feeling that they may have fallen a bit in the standings since 2009).

A Shallow Idea Visualized

David McCandless at Information is Beautiful has a graphic visualizing the fact that US adults spend 200 billion hours watching TV, while it only took 100 million hours to create Wikipedia. He introduces the graphic thus:

I was listening to writer Clay Shirky talk about cognitive surplus – the idea of spare brainpower in the world’s collective mind just sitting there waiting, wanting, to be harnessed.

I cannot believe that Clay Shirky would be so self-centred (not in the sense of vanity, but rather of lack of ability to see the world from others' perspectives) to believe that all those people watching TV would rather be spending their time under high cognitive workload, such as editing Wikipedia articles. I know that when I watch TV, it's because I don't want to think.

The Badder-Meinhoff Phenomenon Strikes Again

I was reading Christopher Hitchens in Slate, and stumbled upon the phrase "a Niagara of cloacal abuse". Having never previously encountered the word cloacal, I looked it up. It is either a "sewer", a "cesspool", or "the common chamber into which the intestinal and urogenital tracts discharge especially in monotreme mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and elasmobranch fishes".

Later, I decided to watch the Futurama episode "30% Iron Chef", and Dr. Zoidberg says, "When the professor finds out, he'll tear me a new cloaca." And that is how I learned how to pronounce cloaca.

It's Not a Straw Man If People Are Arguing For It

Tearing into Ezra Klein's latest defense of the JournoList, Andrew Sullivan writes:

It's telling to me that he sets up a straw-man. There was no "conspiracy" on Journolist, so far as I can tell, and I haven't claimed there was.

Of course, other people have. A quick search reveals many such accusations. At Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, John Sexton wrote:

Turns out the real irony here is that people who viewed it as a “secretive conspiracy” were right.

At The American Thinker, Rick Moran:

The Daily Caller has acquired documents that show the conspiratorial nature of the list and its ability to massage and manipulate the news.

Over at beliefnet, Rod Dreher:

It is true that there is a sense of tribalism among some leading journalists on the Right that often prevents them from taking on conservative sacred cows, but I never saw anything remotely close to the Journolist conspiracy -- and would have been disgusted if I had, and left the room, so to speak.

I could go on. Sullivan is upset that Ezra Klein has not responded to Sullivan's complaints. This is a valid complaint. But then he argues that Klein is setting up a straw man. This is not true. He is arguing against a huge number of people who have claimed there was a conspiracy.

Following the NYT Style Guide

Silly Glenn... don't be daft. At issue is this passage by New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein:

Others named in the same warrant and caught by the Chinese police had described beatings, suffocation, electric shocks, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture to get them to disclose details about the human rights group to which they all belonged.

However, we know that the NYT does not allow calling beatings and sleep deprivation torture, as this would involve taking sides in a political dispute over what is and is not torture. What Bernstein ought to have written is this:

Others named in the same warrant and caught by the Chinese police had described beatings and sleep deprivation to get them to disclose details about the human rights group to which they all belonged. They also described suffocation, electric shocks, and other forms of torture.

It is unfortunate that Bernstein is such a poor reporter that she is unable to follow the NYT's own style guide.

Who Do You Believe?

From Slate:

Scholars have since theorized that the $ sign evolved out of an abbreviation for peso: The plural for pesos was "ps," which eventually became "ps," and then simply an "S" with a single stroke denoting the "p." One early instance of the $ symbol crops up in a letter written by the merchant Oliver Pollock in 1778. Pollock also uses the "ps" abbreviation, making the letter a bridge between the two. The double-line through the S variation is less easily explained. Some believe they represent the twin pillars of Gibraltar depicted on the Spanish coat of arms. Others say it's shorthand for the letter "U" superimposed over the letter "S"—for U.S.

Since reading Atlas Shrugged, I thought that the latter explanation was the correct one:

Incidentally, do you know where that sign [the dollar sign] comes from? It stands for the initials of the United States.

Looking up this quote in Atlas Shrugged, I stumbled upon this hilarious quote:

Do you know that the United States is the only country in history that has ever used its own monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it. It was the only country in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade...

Ah yes, America... the land where wealth was not acquired by force or looting, but by production and trade. You might want to ask the Native Americans about that one...

A False Equivalence

I know we're not supposed to trash right-wingers when they take on right-wing myths, but this article by Kevin D. Williamson is getting a lot of play in liberal blogs, and it's wrong.

Both are rooted in magical thinking: Naïve supply-siders believe tax cuts pay for themselves, naïve Keynesians believe spending pays for itself through the magic of the multiplier effect.

Well, it may be technically correct: naïve Keynesians may believe that "spending pays for itself through the magic of the multiplier effect." However, Keynesians who understand its theoretical underpinnings do not believe this. They believe that, during a severe downturn in demand, government can increase demand by spending money (stimulus). This spending must be temporary, so that as the recession ends, government spending returns to its previous level. As a result of the stimulus, the recession is shallower and does not last as long. As GDP returns to the pre-recession trendline, the country is richer than it would have been had the stimulus not occurred. Remember, however, that the country borrowed money to finance the stimulus. In the future, therefore, the government has to raise taxes to pay off that debt. Fortunately, the increase in taxes owed due to the stimulus is less than the increase in GDP due to the stimulus, so the country is richer than it would have been had the stimulus not occurred.

Quote of the Day

Marc Ambinder, world-renowned anthropologist:

Her primary means of communication is via Facebook and Twitter...

You know who he's talking about.

Hackery and Quackery

In a post yesterday at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links to a study claiming that taxing sugary soda would "reduce net calorie intake from all beverages". Drum argues that, even if the study is correct, "it's pretty likely that you'll just make up the calories somewhere else. In fact, if this study is correct, it's possible that you might increase your total calorie intake." [Italics in original]

Unfortunately for Drum, the article merely shows a correlation between drinking a lot of diet soda and being overweight/obese. It does not prove that drinking diet soda causes obesity. From the article:

Fowler [the lead investigator on the study] is quick to note that a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity. More likely, she says, it shows that something linked to diet soda drinking is also linked to obesity.

Drum appears to have missed this sentence in the article, which is very excusable, since the quote is about 2/3 of the way down the first page.

More seriously, I do not know how Drum found this study, but if you search on Google for "diet soda causes obesity", the first link is to the article Drum cites. It gets even uglier if you look at the screenshot for the search result (click on the picture for a larger size):

The text from the article under the link specifically states "a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity". I do not know how Kevin Drum could accidentally mislead his readers like this.

Note: To me, Drum's theory that if you drink more diet soda, "it's pretty likely that you'll just make up the calories somewhere else" sounds plausible but wrong. I find that sugary beverages fill me up no more than water fills me up. However, I have not looked into the research, so I do not feel qualified to argue one way or the other.

Fighting straw men

Doug Mataconis has a piece up defending air-conditioning:

It’s hard to tell if Cox and others like him hate air-conditioning because of it’s impact on the environment, because it caused people to move south, or because it allegedly led to the resurgence of the Republican Party as a Southern-SouthWestern party. Whatever the reason, it hardly qualifies as serious scholarship. If Cox wants to spend the next week without air-conditioning, that’s is choice. I, on the other hand, will be keeping him at a tolerable temperature completely guilt-free.

I don't know about Cox, but most environmentalists hate air-conditioning because, as Cox's article states, "Americans now use as much electricity to power our A.C. as the entire continent of Africa uses for, well, everything." Air-conditioning is a major factor in power consumption, and its prevalence makes tackling global warming that much harder.

Andrew Sullivan, in one of his unthinking "lefty environmentalists like it, so I've gotta hate it" moments, adds:

The worst thing about the Cape is that they pride themselves on not needing much air-conditioning. And then this current heat wave happens, and you end up hotter out here than in the oven that is Washington DC. I regard air-conditioning as one of the greatest contributions to human well-being in the last century.

The worst thing about the Cape is that the residents enjoy not having to spend money on air-conditioning? And "one of the greatest contributions to human well-being in the last century"? Really? Off the top of my head, items that I think are greater contributors to human well-being: vaccines (measles, mumps, smallpox, polio), organ transplants, automobiles, airplanes, the Internet, computers (even without the Internet), cellular phones, plastics, the liberalization of trade, the peaceful fall of the Soviet Union, the peaceful rise of China... I could go on. Unfortunately, Mr. Sullivan frequently feels the need to distance himself from the DFH's, and so air-conditioning is "one of the greatest contributions to human well-being in the last century".

One of these things is exactly like the other

Via Andrew Sullivan, I stumbled upon Dana McCourt making a very weak argument. After acknowledging that it "strikes me as completely plausible that Palin exaggerated the extent to which she was in labor during the plane flight", McCourt then compares it to other politicians:

I have heard that male politicians have sometimes exaggerated their influence in important legislation or their status as a war hero.

What bothers me is the epistemic leap from Palin probably isn’t wholly truthful big friggin’ shocker to Therefore, we have a right to demand the birth certificate of her child to prove that she’s the mother. [Italics in original]

I don't know if we have a right to demand a birth certificate, but we do have a right to demand to know whether or not she lied about the plane flight. After all, could you imagine the press ignoring a story about a male politician exaggerating their status as a war hero? I can't. In fact, Talking Points Memo has an entire page devoted to politicians whose lies about war service hurt their careers.

Joe Klein does not understand the implications of his argument

Over at Swampland, Joe Klein thinks that we should be having a "race to the top" in public services:

There aren't so many high-paying manufacturing jobs anymore; the relative security of government work doesn't need to be augmented by ridiculously obstruse [sic] procedures for firing incompetents or by 20-year pension packages. A nice 401k, with healthy matching funds, should be sufficient.

Does he seriously think that the government is competing for the same workers as the manufacturing industry? However, his analysis gets worse:

This is a sad choice, but an essential one. We can either continue to fund the pension system and lose essential services; or we can change the pension system and continue the service-levels--the policing, firefighting, emergency response and garbage pickup--that we've come to expect. The public seems quite unwilling to continue to pay the higher taxes necessary to sustain both. And given our straitened circumstances, and the need to encourage a new burst of private entrepreneurialism, there is a strong argument that any further government stimulus needs to be accompanied by a rigorous program of governmental reform.

By "a rigorous program of governmental reform", he actually means a dramatic cut in compensation for public employees, coming entirely from their pensions. Yet he doesn't seem to ponder the implications of cutting the pay of police, firefighters, and garbage collectors. His preferred option is to "change the pension system and continue the service-levels ... that we've come to expect." However, his changes to the pension system involve making it significantly less generous. Of course, cutting the compensation of public employees will result in lower-quality public employees, who will not provide the level of service to which Americans have become accustomed.