Adventures in Onionism

Details

2013-05-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

I've got an RA this week, and I've got him working on a lit review on empirical topics like replication, p-hacking, sub-group analysis, pre-specified analysis plans, publication bias, etc.

Anyway, that reminded me of this New Yorker article on how scientific results tend to fail replication: "The Decline Effect." Unfortunately, this article is by Jonah Lehrer, who lost his job because he made up quotes. In a mildly interesting diversion, I came across these articles about Lehrer and the TED conference.

Felix Salmon wrote about Lehrer and the TED conference, and though Lehrer never spoke at TED, he lumps them (and Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks) together. Appropriately, I think. Basically, they don't really understand science very well.

Yes, that's right: I strongly dislike TED. I think it's style over substance. Despite saying TED talks have "a somewhat vaporous tone," this (gated, unfortunately) New Yorker article by Nathan Heller about the history of TED is mostly laudatory:

Why speak rigorously to an audience of hundreds when you can ham it up a bit and spread the fruits of your research to millions?

Wow, that is aggravating. I much prefer the argument of Evgeny Morozov in The New Republic:

But surely, "modern attention spans" must be resisted, not celebrated.

Agreed. I don't think the world is simple. I don't think many useful answers are that simple. Conservatives like to mock the number of pages in Dodd-Frank, or they like to mock the fact that salmon are regulated by a different agency when in freshwater than when in saltwater, and we all know what crap John Kerry got when he said he voted for it before he voted against it, but guess what? The world is complicated. Policy, in order to be good, is most likely going to be complicated. More complicated than a TED talk.

(The salmon and Dodd-Frank bits are from this good Yglesias blog post.)

Hypocrisy or Empathy

2013-05-20T11:13:00.001-07:00

A while ago I posted about what I called hypocrisy, in the form of conservatives' inability to imagine what it's like to be underprivileged or underrepresented unless someone in their immediate family brings it home to them. You might consider that a lack of empathy. Now there's a recent essay in The New Yorker called "The Case Against Empathy." Basically, empathy is horrible at math (read: cost-benefit analysis). Also, conservatives claim they're being empathetic too, just with the over-regulated small business owner instead of the polluted-on inner-city minority, so just claiming we need more empathy doesn't really solve many arguments. And today there's a short bit in The Atlantic about the same thing: military intervention to stop atrocities is really expensive, so likely less cost-effective than other ways to save lives.

I suppose it just boils down to your definition of empathy. If you think it's a blind emotion with no reason, sure, it's not that useful, but that's really only a straw man. The New Yorker piece talks about everyday gun crimes compared to massacres, and preventable diseases and starvation compared to Katrina or the Boston bombing, and says that Americans' over-fascination with the latter of those pairs, along with babies who fall down wells and white girls who get abducted in Aruba, is somehow proof that those who call for a "global empathic consciousness" are wrong. But that's exactly the same point that those who call for more empathy are making--we'd be better off if we spent less money on American babies who fell down wells than we spent on malnourished sub-Saharan African children, and we'd be better off if we sent fewer stuffed animals to the wealthy suburb of Newtown, Connecticut and more cash to something like Haitian orphanages. We're already pretty good at showing empathy for people who are similar to ourselves. It's people who are different that we need to work on.

Tim DeChristopher Released

2013-05-19T19:04:00.001-07:00

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher is out of prison, and saying good stuff on Democracy Now!

Intense staring contest

2013-05-18T10:49:00.001-07:00

One Gallon

2013-05-17T12:31:00.002-07:00

I've never met One Gallon, but I've heard good things from hiker friends. Justifiably, it would seem.

English Countryside

2013-05-16T09:01:00.001-07:00

These 360-degree panoramas of landscapes in England and Scotland are pretty.

To Be Or Not Because It's There, according to Mallory

2013-05-15T19:11:00.003-07:00

“The first question which you will always ask and which I must try to answer is this, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is no use.’ There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It’s no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.” [via Adventure Journal]

Economist Deep Thoughts

2013-05-14T10:56:00.004-07:00

I have trouble taking economic models seriously. I suppose ever since I learned that increasing the minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment (Card and Krueger, Dube, Lester, and Reich), I've basically come to the conclusion that for most models, the exceptions to the rule (externalities, indivisibility of goods, etc.) are more common than things that actually follow the rule. The one exception is that I still do believe that the bias in policy should be towards free trade, but I admit that neither trade models nor trade empirics are my specialty. And instead I heavily lean towards empirical regression analysis. Of course this requires a whole new set of assumptions (linearity, normal distributions), and maybe I'm just not good enough at math to know that these assumptions are just as stupid as assuming magical perfect free markets. Some statisticians (David Freedman, he of "randomization does not justify regression" fame) would probably think I'm foolishly naive for how much faith I put in (well-identified) OLS, even though I think I'm healthily skeptical about things like omitted variable bias, p-hacking, specification searching, publication bias, etc. I hope I'm not deluding myself.

I'm thinking about all this because of the classes I'm teaching. I have very little interest in the standard undergrad models, and I think I just taught a development economics course without drawing a supply and demand curve a single time. I just skipped all that and went straight to regression, the "real" way to get an answer. It might be crazy, but I think maybe not. Several in my cohort in grad school had not been econ majors as undergrads, and I don't recall having seen many supply and demand curves in grad school, so they might be perfectly wonderful economists and not know what a Cournot competition graph looks like.

It also came up in a discussion with an older colleague whom I very much like and respect. He said something offhand to the effect of "we'll have to see if all this quasi-experimental literature is still with us in another 15 years..." which can do nothing but belittle to the point of nothingness everything I know and value. So reasonable people can have different opinions on the matter, apparently. Like many things, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. (But left of center. Definitely left of center.)

Run Log: May 6-12, Berkeley Hills

2013-05-12T20:06:00.002-07:00

It was an off week for running. Monday I flew from JFK to SFO, and I flew back on Saturday, and drove home to Swat today (Sunday). I spent most of the week writing mock final exams (and answer keys) for my students. I only got 35 miles in, but they were pretty good miles--some of my favorite trails in the Berkeley hills, with maybe 2-4x the climbing per mile as I get in Philly.

I did run my 1000th mile of the year this week, so that's something. Just shy of 8 miles a day and 55 a week. I hope I get the average up to 60.

Final exams on Tuesday. Grading, unwinding, and then research. Running, too.

Fall Races

2013-05-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

My fall I-hope-my-job-market-materials-are-all-mailed-by-then-but-they-probably-won't-be race schedule is coming together. Philadelphia Marathon Sunday November 17, and JFK 50-Miler Saturday November 23. 26 miles of flat pavement, then six days later 26 miles of the C&O towpath, then 8 on pavement to the finish. Mr. B is running Philly with me, so that should be fun, but the dogs are going to be killing me at the end of C&O. Time to order some Hoka One One's.

TAL on Thru-Hiking

2013-05-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

This American Life has talked about thru-hiking twice recently.

The more recent one, about a college grad who got fired from his job and walked (mostly roads, it seems) coast to coast asking people what they would tell their younger selves, is here. It's a shortened version of the full piece made by the guy who did the walking. I haven't listened to the full piece, but the TAL abridged version was OK enough.

The one from January is about a guy who sold all his stuff and tried to copy Peace Pilgrim and walk coast to coast. It's a little more offbeat and interesting, despite the fact that he only lasted 3 days.

Urban Stairs

2013-05-07T16:24:00.004-07:00

Remember that time that I hiked all the stairs in Berkeley? Neither do I, because it was boring and I quit halfway. That didn't phase Snorkel, who thru-hiked LA's staircases. (Her blog. LA Mag.)

Run Log: April 29 - May 5, Bear Mountain 50-Miler

2013-05-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

84.53 miles for the week, plus 7 miles of biking, and 12 more walking. The Thursday club run was a little slower this week, as there were fewer of us. Then Saturday I ran TNF's Gore-Tex (not just one corporate sponsor, but two!) 50-miler at Bear Mountain State Park, 30-40 miles from New York City, finishing in just over 12 hours.

Here's the GPS from the 50-miler:

The course was brutal, and I definitely will not be repeating it. The climbing wasn't so bad (I like climbing), but I really don't want to have to wake up at 3:00AM to get to a 5:00AM start. (5:00AM for a 7:00AM start is much more typical.) So I got fewer than 4 hours sleep. Then I had to go to the bathroom at the first two aid stations. Then I dry heaved a few times. And the course was solid anklebreakers. Seriously. So many rocks. It was more like parkour while staring at the ground than running.

And that's on a relatively flat section. I was feeling like garbage around mile 15, but eventually a nice guy from North Carolina passed me, but started a conversation with "This is the part where we take it easy," so I drafted off of him for several miles, and two guys from Puerto Rico, one in a Superman costume, drafted off of me, which really helped me through my lowest point. When we parted ways around mile 26 or 27, it was clear I'd finish the race just fine.

I spent a day or two in NYC after the race. George likes the chicken bones all over the street, but was otherwise underwhelmed.

STFU, Vanguard

2013-05-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

Everyone else charges higher fees, so it's not like I'm going to put my retirement money anywhere else, but I really wish Vanguard would shut the hell up with their bond vigilantism and deficit scolding (to steal a pair of phrases from Master PKrug).
. Why isn't "putting people back to work" the defining economic issue of our generation?

It's pretty simple math, actually. As long as the economy is growing faster, the US can continue to run defecits forever, and yet the total debt will decrease. I think this happened for years after WWII. We didn't run surpluses, yet the total outstanding debt got smaller, because the economy was growing. (Yglesias mentions this all the time.) The recovery is quite weak. Austerity won't help. Getting people working again would.

Oh, and this episode of Frontline might be useful. Economists, my dad, and Vanguard agree: on average, you won't beat the market, and you definitely won't after taxes and fees, so just buy index funds.

PCT Class of 2012 Video

2013-05-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

Jealous. Why have I only hiked this thing 1.3 times?

PCT 2012 Class Video from Alasdair Fowler on Vimeo.

Book Review: The Looming Tower

2013-04-29T18:41:00.001-07:00

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright [Audiobook]

This book is fascinating. Anyone even remotely interested in US foreign policy, or failing that, just looking for a riveting crime thriller, should find it well worth their time. I listened to the audiobook over the past couple weeks and finished it on my drive home from C&O.

The book starts off with Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian scholar and American student whose writings from the 1950's inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current al Qaeda leader, then brings in Osama bin Laden and other major players, and describes their entire lives, from childhood to construction company, to Afghanistan the first time, to Sudan, to Afghanistan the second time, to the embassy bombings, the Cole, and 9/11.

The first half of the book, which discusses Qutb's writings on religion, his dealings with the state of Egypt, and all of Zawahiri's terrorism there, revived all my negative feelings about religion in general. I strongly dislike anything that encourages belief in the supernatural. Let's just leave that there.

As far as the secular stuff goes, this book is still fascinating. Here's what I took away, in no particular order:

The top private security official at the World Trade Center, John O'Neill, started his job there only 19 days prior to the attacks, after being forced out of the FBI and the position of being the top cop working on getting Osama. He was clearly a flawed person with a strong person some disagreed with, but he was acutely aware of the threat al Qaeda posed. This guy's story is enthralling.
Dealing with terrorism like what it is (a crime) is absolutely more difficult than dealing with "regular" crimes. It's tough to get Pakistan/Yemen/Egypt/whomever to not beat up suspects, and then to get them to let FBI people be in the room while suspects are being questioned so that evidence will stand up in a US court, and even to get them to not blow up the hotel all the FBI people are staying in, but it's not impossible. The original Trade Center truck bomb and the embassy bombings prove that, despite our endless Guantanamo detention and/or waterboarding of Cole and 9/11 perpetrators.
Bombing raids are not accurate. Wright thinks that after the embassy bombings, Sudan wanted to get on good terms with the US, and they would have even turned Osama over to us a few years prior. But instead, in response to the embassy bombings, we blew up the factory making half the country's medicine, and also, instead of killing Osama in Afghanistan, we gave him some dud tomahawk missiles he sold to China for $10 million. Obviously, I am making extrapolations to drone strikes in my head right now.
More so than I ever realized before, the Taliban really were responsible for sheltering Osama, and deserved to be taken out as a result. Wright makes the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship sound like it culminated in a quid pro quo: al Qaeda takes out Ahmad Shah Massoud so that the Taliban can rule the whole country, and Osama is then free to pull off his big attack.
Call this Monday morning quarterbacking if you wish, but despite all this, 9/11 was really close to being stopped. I've always thought of "19 guys with box-cutters" (when box-cutters were allowed on planes), and that seemed basically unstoppable to me, since so few people can do so much damage with so little money. But that's really not the case. There was a lot of chatter going on, and were it not for the bureaucratic wall preventing the CIA and the FBI from sharing information, 9/11 would have been prevented. The CIA knew about a planning meeting in Malaysia, and they knew that al Qaeda members had US visas, but they didn't tell the FBI. Not just did they not volunteer the information, they actively withheld it. The FBI reciprocated in kind. Evidence for trials couldn't get mixed up with intelligence for operations. The NSA also didn't share information. Thankfully, one small part of the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act was supposed to adress this.

To summarize: go read this book.

Run Log: April 21-27

2013-04-29T17:32:00.001-07:00

Ran 52 or so this week. Didn't get in anything super long on the weekend because I volunteered at the C&O Canal 100 Saturday and Sunday. The course was basically 25 miles of the canal out and back twice. I manned an aid station that got hit four times with one other person. It was all pretty low key, so I had time to go running on the canal, but I only did 8 because it was supremely flat and boring. I did a nice 8 at 6:50 pace on Thursday with the young rabbit guys from BMRC. Remember when I could run 26 miles at that pace? It's really nice to occasionally be able to gut out that type of speed. Then again, I basically hate running on suburban pavement, so I can only do it because of the group.

Up next weekend--Bear Mountain 50 Miler. Definitely more my style.

Bridges I Run Over

2013-04-29T17:21:00.001-07:00

Here are some bridges I run over.

Wissahickon

East Falls

East Falls and Several Others

Running Events

2013-04-29T17:19:00.002-07:00

Mr B and I went to the Penn Relays, the oldest and largest track meet in the US. There were weird events like the distance medley relay (1200, 400, 800, mile) and the hurdle shuttles (4x110 (female) or 4x110(male), back and forth on the same stretch), as well as age group 100m dash, where former Olympians were still kicking butt, and a few Olympic Development competition groups where hopefuls were showing that they are, in fact, quite fast.

Best of all, a kid from a high school in my home county won the national high school championship in the mile. He led from the gun. (But was nowhere near Alan Webb's record.)

I also volunteered at the C&O Canal 100. So now I can run Western States. It was fun, mostly because it was gorgeous out and I just sat in a camp chair all day. This is only the second time I've manned an aid station overnight, and I was surprised how haggard people looked. "You look strong! You're doing great! How many fingers am I holding up?

Men in a Row

Swat in the lead (temporarily)

Chantilly in the lead (lap 2)

Chantilly in the lead (lap 3)

Chantilly in the lead (lap 4)

Chantilly winning

The Potomac River

John and George at the Lander Rd. aid station

George on the C&O Canal

What have you Philly for me lately?

2013-04-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

The dog park, running back to Marks on Kater, Broad St., etc.

Dogwoods

Investigations

Kater St. Shadow

Broad St. [UPDATE: Notice the guy giving me the finger? Ha ha!]

Blooms at Sunset

Laziest Aid Station Volunteer Ever

2013-04-27T15:59:00.001-07:00

George in Bloom

2013-04-24T18:13:00.001-07:00

Going for Broke

2013-04-23T19:24:00.002-07:00

I am seriously contemplating pulling the trigger on this bike. Thoughts? ("Be safe" and "Wear a helmet" are appreciated, but "How much are you really going to ride it? Isn't George in the car with you 99% of the time you go anywhere, because you only drive anywhere to go running or stay overnight somewhere, so how's that going to work?" might be appreciated more. "Here, buy my similarly priced bike with a sidecar instead" might be most appreciated.

On the topic of shopping, I bought two pairs of Brooks Pure Grit shoes. Mostly because they're last year's and they're cheap ($65). I'm not sure how I feel about them. They don't have rock plates, which to me is almost the definition of a trail shoe, so I'm not sure how much I like them on the roots and rocks around here. I wore Brooks Cascadias nearly exclusively for the last five years (last year's are also cheap), so I should probably stick with them, but I feel like I've moved on to lighter, lower drop shoes. I like Altra's Lone Peaks for trail, and last year's model is also cheap-ish. I'll shut up about shoes now, but I really like Brooks Pure Flow for road, but I do not like Altra's road shoe. I guess I like running on a not-quite-zero-drop pillow when I am forced to run road, and when I run trail, I like a zero-drop shoe with a rock plate. But maybe that's just because that's what I'm used to.

Lastly, what source do people use for hiker news? Is there a website or blog that routinely links to, or writes about, regular joes who break the triple crown speed record, or any individual trail's speed record, or ride their bike around the world, or paddle the entire Amazon, or whatever? I need more vicarious living, and I only find out about these things through word of mouth.

Run Log: April 15-21, Plus Motorcycles

2013-04-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

Last week was pretty bad, with only 34.2 miles. My excuse is coming down with a cold on Thursday night, and having motorcyle safety/licensing class on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The most interesting, if not the longest run of the week was Thursday evening's Bryn Mawr Running Company's Media store run. It's always pretty lame on scenery, and largely just paved streets, but usually makes for good conversation and a really good pace (this time 6.55 mi at 7:29 pace). I never run that fast by myself, but can fairly easily do it with a partner to push me. But it's also on pavement. So which of those is the most important factor? I'll do some regression analysis and get back to you.

Oh, and yes, the previous paragraph does imply that I took a motorcycle safety course. And I passed, so I now have my motorcycle license. I got the temporary permit a few months ago, but now I can have passengers and ride at night. And as far as I can tell, states recognize motorcycle licenses from other states, just like marriage licenses (except for the homophobia part), so I'm set for life. Have I been looking on google and craigslist for nearby bikes to buy since I passed on Sunday evening? I don't know. I don't really want to spend the money on a new Ural, and I think used ones are hard to come by, but I have a dog and a girl friend, so I'd probably ride the Ural much more than I would the Suzuki, even though the Suzuki is ready to go to ride across the country on the TransAm Trail.

[Imagine there was a picture here of George in my sidecar with a scarf and big goggles on, and try and tell me I shouldn't by a Ural.]

Lastly, a buddy of mine is riding his bike from Reno to Prudhoe Bay and back. He's helping to collect data for scientists on the way. Check it out.

The Colorado

2013-04-17T18:04:00.003-07:00

Watch this.

The Colorado River —The Most Endangered River in America 2013 from Peter McBride on Vimeo.
h/t Pmags.