Vox Popoli

"Mission-oriented" global warming science

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Well, the most recent AGW/CC unmasking certainly shows how the behavior of those pushing the great scientific fraud is nicely described by Michael Shermer's concept of Darwin's Dictum. Here's a searchable archive of the infamous AGW/CC-related emails written by the con artists calling themselves "scientists" at the Climate Research Unit. As usual, the blogosphere is proving itself to be miles ahead of the mainstream media, who are still trying to ignore the giant woolly mammoth in the bathroom. There's all sorts of stuff like this:

"I've got something quite interesting in progress here. If you look at the original 1989 paper, you will see that Jacoby "cherry-picked" the 10 "most temperature-sensitive" sites from 36 studied. I've done simulations to emulate cherry-picking from persistent red noise and consistently get hockey stick shaped series, with the Jacoby northern treeline reconstruction being indistinguishable from simulated hockey sticks. The other 26 sites have not been archived. I've written to Climatic Change to get them to intervene in getting the data. Jacoby has refused to provide the data. He says that his research is "mission-oriented" and, as an ex-marine, he is only interested in a "few good" series.

Jacoby has also carried out updated studies on the Gasp� series, so essential to MBH98. I've seen a chronology using the new data, which looks completely different from the old data (which is a hockey stick). I've asked for the new data, but Jacoby-d'Arrigo have refused it saying that the old data is "better" for showing temperature increases. Need I comment? I've repeatedly asked for the exact location of the Gasp� site for nearly 9 months now (I was going to privately fund a re-sampling program, but Jacoby, Cook and others have refused to disclose the location.) Need I comment?"

So, how about that debate, PZ?

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:02:00 +0000

Directly contra his past excuse-making, PZ Myers has reversed himself and decided that he is willing to engage in public debates with Unworthy Opponents again. Debates sponsored by Christian radio stations, no less! So, how about that public radio debate on the evidence for gods that Northern Alliance Radio is willing to host, PZ? Or even one on the scientific evidence for evolution? Or, in light of the very public unmasking of the AGW/CC charade, we could debate your manifestly unscientific belief in "global warming" aka "climate change".

After all, an internationally known skeptic who appears regularly on radio shows around the world thanks to a series of correct economic and financial forecasts can't possibly be less of a Worthy Opponent than an erstwhile Jehovah's Witness and Intelligent Design enthusiast, right?

As everyone who posseses either above-average intelligence or a functional understanding of human nature has realized at this point, PZ is afraid to debate me because he knows perfectly well that I'll destroy him regardless of the subject. His fear is not misplaced; he has the advantage of educational quantity whereas I have the advantage of educational quality as well as an additional 25-35 IQ points. We both know it, even if he's not about to admit it in public. But the real problem is not that PZ is a coward, it is that he is a liar. That is why why he says he won't debate crackpots before going on to debate crackpots and why he refuses to make an appearance on the "hostile territory" of a secular radio station before appearing on an openly Christian one.

Unfortunately, I can't offer him a debate on teaching intelligent design in science classes because I don't believe it should be taught there either. Nor, for that matter should evolution by natural selection. In fact, I believe the very notion of science classes for the great majority of students is eminently absurd. We know the American schools cannot teach reading, writing, logic, and personal finance to the great majority of their students, so it is easy to demonstrate that there is neither reason nor evidence to support the notion that the schools are capable of effectively teaching science of any kind.

Speaking of predictions, I note with some amusement that yesterday mainstream economists were reported to be expecting the exciting 3.5% third quarter Advance report to be revised below three percent in the 2nd report. (Remember, more than half of that was reported to be the direct result of the government-incentivized Cash for Clunkers-related increase in C.) In addition to the two scheduled revisions, I think we can safely expect further post facto revisions to the third quarter of 2009 in 2010 and beyond.

The Igon Value of Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Steven Pinker bitchslaps Gladwell:

What Malcolm Gladwell calls a “lonely ice floe” is what psychologists call “the mainstream.” In a 1997 editorial in the journal Intelligence, 52 signatories wrote, “I.Q. is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic and social outcomes.” Similar conclusions were affirmed in a unanimous blue-ribbon report by the American Psychological Association, and in recent studies (some focusing on outliers) by Dean Simonton, David Lubinski and others.

Gladwell is right, of course, to privilege peer-reviewed articles over blogs. But sports is a topic in which any academic must answer to an army of statistics-savvy amateurs, and in this instance, I judged, the bloggers were correct. They noted, among other things, that Berri and Simmons weakened their “weak correlation” (Gladwell described it in the New Yorker essay reprinted in “What the Dog Saw” as “no connection”) by omitting the lower-drafted quarterbacks who, unsurprisingly, turned out not to merit many plays. In any case, the relevance to teacher selection (the focus of the essay) remains tenuous.

Actually, depending on the blog, you might be better off to bet on it over the average peer-reviewed article. "Peer-review" is just a sciency name for what is more commonly known as "editing". And you have only to look at a newspaper to see that no amount of editors necessarily precludes egregious errors of fact and logic. But otherwise, yeah. Gladwell is a twit. Sure, he's sold a lot of books, but then, so did whoever wrote "Who Moved My Cheese" and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie". Does anyone seriously ascribe intellectual relevance to those best-selling authors?

Steve Sailer follows up Pinker's stake-and-garlic with a beheading, showing that Gladwell isn't just a twit, he's apparently a clueless and cowardly little bitch as well:

Without admitting it, Gladwell seems to have given up former position that NFL achievement "can't be predicted," there's "no connection," etc. etc. He now seems to be saying that, when you take into account the higher pay of higher draft picks, NFL teams aren't economically optimizing their draft picks, which is a wildly different thing.

NFL teams aren't economically optimizing their draft picks! I'm sure Detroit fans will be SHOCKED... as are those who have suffered through seasons of the Tarvaris Jackson Experiment (2nd round, 2006). Gladwell obviously pays zero attention to professional football or he could not have possibly have written this: "And what Berri and Simmons in particular—and Massey and Thaler in general—remind us is that that kind of blind faith in the likes of Matt Millen and Al Davis simply isn’t justified."

Yes, because there were just massive legions of fans in Detroit and Oakland with blind faith in Davis and Millen.... For crying out loud, why do some people find it so impossible to admit that they're wrong even when smart people are rubbing their noses in their mistakes in the national media? Everyone is wrong from time to time. Absolutely everyone! I despise those who try to move the goalposts once they've been cornered and proven wrong; are they so stupid that they genuinely believe that no one is going to notice that what they're saying now is not what they were saying before?

AGW/CC travesty confirmed

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

There isn't any science to support the outrageous conclusions driving Kyoto and Copenhagen. None. Cram this statement from one of the leading IPCC scientists down the throat of the next idiot you hear using the term "global warming denier":

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.
- Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change

Here's another one: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

The so-called scientists know their models are wrong. They know the global warming they predicted isn't happening. And yet they are trying to keep it quiet, so that all the credulous science fetishists who believe wholeheartedly in the "science" won't lose faith in the cause and pull out the scientific supports from the global governance scheme. Speaking of which, here's another: "One particular thing you said - and we agreed - was about the IPCC reports and the broader climate negotiations were working to the globalisation agenda driven by organisations like the WTO."

This is confirmation that AGW/CC is indeed what I said it would turn out to be, namely, The Biggest Science Fraud Yet. Of course, if the climate scientists had one-tenth the integrity that the fetishists claim they do, it wouldn't have been necessary to learn what they really think about the matter from a whistleblower releasing hacked emails.

Ian Wishart's Investigate Magazine confirms the emails are real(4.1 meg PDF):

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine. In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."

In a word: awesome! Whoever did this merits knighthood by the Legion of Doom.

Multiculturalism in Minnesota

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:43:00 +0000

I tend to suspect the reported "racial tensions" aren't actually about race. There were certainly never serious problems of this sort at North, South, Washburn, or Roosevelt when I was in school and there was not exactly a shortage of brothers there:

Racial tension has been building at Owatonna High School this week after a fight broke out Monday between white and Somali students, prompting heightened police presence, backpack searches and widespread parental worries. Owatonna Police Chief Shaun LaDue said between six and 15 officers have been assigned this week to the school, which usually uses one liaison officer.

Principal Don Johnson said the problems began when two white students wrote papers in recent weeks that were "inflammatory and very disrespectful." One student handed out copies of his paper to friends, while the other posted his on a class blog. Both were suspended from the school of 1,600 students -- about 100 of whom are Somali.

Johnson said that before the second student returned to school Monday, the student sent text messages over the weekend to white and Somali students that were "unapologetic and in your face." He then walked into a common area Monday where more than 20 Somali students were gathered and sat down. An altercation erupted that sent one of the white students to the hospital for observation.

Isn't it lovely to see such vivid cultural vibrancy filling what was once a pallid and boring German-Scandinavian enclave! It's such a pity that the Somali students can't be left alone to prepare for their future jihads in peace. Of course, given the reported bomb threat, perhaps they won't even bother returning to Somalia before detonating themselves.

UPDATE: The only reasonable answer is to deport the criminal aliens. If they are so desperate for excitement, there is plenty to be found in their homeland. Given Minnesota carry laws, it's only a matter of time before one of the foreign idiots attacks the wrong individual and gets blown away. At which point, no doubt the Star & Sickle will run the usual sob story about the tragic end of the ~~dead imported thug~~fine, upstanding example of foreign vibrancy just trying to live the American dream. And, of course, the need for gun control.

Overselling swine flu

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:29:00 +0000

I've been wondering about swine flu since the time the English papers were full of panic-stricken reports that a perfectly healthy child had died of swine flu. Upon reading the details, it became clear that she had only died of it after first suffering through the medical equivalent of getting run over by a truck twice:

If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all. That's according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation.

What I don't understand is why the medical authorities seem so determined to see an epidemic of one sort or another take place. First bird flu, now swine flu, and in two years time we'll probably be instructed to quake with fear over the lethal dangers posed by Malaysian Spitting Frog Flu. I've never seen anything like the media coverage of medical matters like the last five years. Even the height of the AIDS scare was nothing like this.

Is that really a good thing?

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:04:00 +0000

Chad the Elder writes of the new conservative critic-in-chief:

It might seem unlikely that a man who was born in Quebec, trained as a psychiatrist, once a speechwriter for Walter Mondale, and a writer for the New Republic would become one of the foremost conservative critics of the Age of Obama. But fate has worked in favor of conservatives in the case of Krauthammer and we're fortunate to have his voice leading the resistance.

While I think Krauthammer is a less obtuse individual than most of the big op/ed names, I think the constant elevation of non-conservatives to positions of conservative leadership in the media is one reason that the conservative movement continues to find itself in such intellectual disarray. Why are they so reluctant to elevate those who are genuine conservatives and have always been genuine conservatives rather than liberals who belatedly claim to have seen the light?

But the fact that Krauthammer may be reliably correct in his analysis of Obama doesn't mean that his ideology is reliably compatible with the conservative grass roots, and indeed, I note that he supported TARP even if he subsequently turned against the automotive bailouts. He has also been generally supportive of the neocon's world democratic revolution, which is a profoundly non-conservative position of zero national interest to Americans. So, if Krauthammer does, in fact, become the chief voice of the ideological opposition, I suspect conservatives will once again find themselves regretting what was always more of a temporary alignment of anti-Obama interests rather than genuine ideological opinion leadership.

This isn't a criticism of Krauthammer. He's just doing his job and I'm merely pointing out what I think to be the obvious. Conservatives need actual conservative leadership and they need to stop settling for liberals, neocons, and nominally reformed liberals as their intellectual leaders. My feeling is that anyone who supported the banking bailouts, much less dismissed opposition to them as "know-nothingism" should be completely disqualified from any sort of conservative leadership, opinion or otherwise. If you're capable of falling for demands for money from the cynical Chicken Littles of the world, you're far too much of a naif to be a conservative leader.

Al Gore commits an Igon error

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:30:00 +0000

As I have said many, many times before, AGW/CC is a complete crock of steaming bovine ejectus. The "scientists" who subscribe to the theory are either corrupt, ignorant, or ideologically supportive of global governance and this will become increasingly obvious to everyone over time. So, it should come as no surprise that the leading AGW/CC salesman should demonstrate that he has very little grasp of temperature as his numbers are off by an order of magnitude:

Conan: Now, what about … you talk in the book about geothermal energy …
Al: Yeah, yeah.
Conan: and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that's generated from the core of the earth …
Al: Yeah.
Conan: … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

The interior of the earth is actually somewhere between 3,700 and 6,000 degrees Celsius, depending upon the estimate. Needless to say, this suffices to show that no intelligent individual should pay any attention whatsoever to Al Gore's statements about planetary temperature, past, present, or future. Everyone makes mistakes, but in this particular case, as with Gladwell's infamous Igon Value, the nature of the error indicates the degree of the ignorance.

Krugman and the babysitting coop

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:06:00 +0000

Paul Krugman loves to use the story of the baby-sitting coop told in an article published by Joan and Richard Sweeney in the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking in 1978 and has repeatedly recycled it, all the while failing to understand that it is a very poor analogy for the American economy and that the lessons he draws from it are false. I have updated and modified it to explain what is actually going on in the U.S. economy as well as to show why Krugman's proposed solution - print more money - cannot possibly work:

Twenty years ago I read a story that changed my life. I think about that story often; it helps me to stay calm in the face of crisis, to remain hopeful in times of depression, and to resist the pull of fatalism and pessimism....

A group of people (in this case about 150 young couples with congressional connections) agrees to baby-sit for one another, obviating the need for cash payments to adolescents. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: A couple that already has children around may find that watching another couple's kids for an evening is not that much of an additional burden, certainly compared with the benefit of receiving the same service some other evening. But there must be a system for making sure each couple does its fair share.

The Capitol Hill co-op adopted one fairly natural solution. It issued scrip--pieces of paper equivalent to one hour of baby-sitting time. Baby sitters would receive the appropriate number of coupons directly from the baby sittees. This made the system self-enforcing: Over time, each couple would automatically do as much baby-sitting as it received in return. As long as the people were reliable--and these young professionals certainly were--what could go wrong?

Well, it turned out that there was a small technical problem. Think about the coupon holdings of a typical couple. During periods when it had few occasions to go out, a couple would probably try to build up a reserve--then run that reserve down when the occasions arose. There would be an averaging out of these demands. One couple would be going out when another was staying at home. But since many couples would be holding reserves of coupons at any given time, the co-op needed to have a fairly large amount of scrip in circulation.

Now what happened in the Sweeneys' co-op was that, for complicated reasons involving the collection and use of dues (paid in scrip), the number of coupons in circulation became quite low. As a result, most couples were anxious to add to their reserves by baby-sitting, reluctant to run them down by going out. But one couple's decision to go out was another's chance to baby-sit; so it became difficult to earn coupons. Knowing this, couples became even more reluctant to use their reserves except on special occasions, reducing baby-sitting opportunities still further.

In short, the co-op had fallen into a recession.

Since most of the co-op's members were lawyers, it was difficult to convince them the problem was monetary. They tried to legislate recovery--passing a rule requiring each couple to go out at least twice a month. But eventually the economists prevailed. More coupons were issued, couples became more willing to go out, opportunities to baby-sit multiplied, and everyone was happy.

Later in the article, Krugman goes on to explain how the coop's "central bank" can manage the coupon supply to prevent couples intent on staying in from accumulating too many coupons and acquire coupons on loan if they found it necessary to go out more often than they'd planned. But what he fails to anticipate is the situation where the coop board has provided lots and lots of coupons to the various couples in anticipation of their future use for an extended period of time. In short, he fails to account for the possibility that the "recession" is not caused by a coupon shortage, but rather by the limits of babysitting demand.

There are three limits to the demand for babysitting coupons, one physical, one practical, and one psychological. The physical limit is that a couple cannot possibly make use of more than seven evenings-worth of coupons per week since that is the maximum number of evenings they can go out and leave the children home. The practical limit is the financial resources the couple has to spend on going out, and the psychological limit is based on the amount of the couple's desire to actually spend evenings with their children. If, in a given time period, any of these three limits are exceeded by the amount of the coupons distributed or loaned out to the couple, the couple will not make use of them regardless of how many more coupons they are given. Therefore, it should be obvious that any decline in the amount of going out that is based on one of these three limits of demand cannot be solved by simply distributing more coupons for babysitting.

In fact, for the coop, the correct policy prescription is to do exactly the reverse of what Krugman is recommending. Not only should more coupons not be distributed, but all coupon distribution should stop so that people can use up the coupons they have. Coupons given out on loan should be either repaid or simply cancelled; more coupons can be distributed once people have used up their existing supply and actually require more babysitting.

Note: the fact that babysitting coupons are less fungible and important to the coop than money is to a national economy means that one cannot concoct an example of the Austrian business cycle utilizing this analogy. The coupon supplier is not causing the problems here; they are exogenous to the coupon supply. But, this invocation of the material and immaterial limits of demand should demonstrate that Krugman's analogy is not necessarily relevant to the present economic situation, and to the extent that it can be shown that the American consumer has exceeded the limits of his demand, it shows that his conclusions are demonstrably inapplicable.

Malcolm Gladwell is a whiny little liar

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:16:00 +0000

His hapless attempt at CYA isn't going to convince anyone who isn't already foolish enough to take the silly man seriously:

It is always a pleasure to be reviewed by someone as accomplished as Stephen Pinker, even if—in his comments on “What the Dog Saw” (Nov. 15)—he is unhappy with my spelling (rightly!) and with the fact that I have not joined him on the lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism. But since football has been on my mind these days, I do want to make one small observation about his comments.

In one of my essays, I wrote that the position a quarterback is taken in the college draft is not a reliable indicator of his performance as a professional. That was based on the work of the academic economists David Berri and Rob Simmons, who, in a paper published the Journal of Productivity Analysis, analyze forty years of National Football League data. Their conclusion was that the relation between aggregate quarterback performance and draft position was weak. Further, when they looked at per-play performance—in other words, when they adjusted for the fact that highly drafted quarterbacks are more likely to play more downs—they found that quarterbacks taken in positions 11 through 90 in the draft actually slightly outplay those more highly paid and lauded players taken in the draft’s top ten positions. I found this analysis fascinating. Pinker did not. This quarterback argument, he wrote, “is simply not true.”

I wondered about the basis of Pinker’s conclusion, so I e-mailed him, asking if he could tell me where to find the scientific data that would set me straight. He very graciously wrote me back. He had three sources, he said. The first was Steve Sailer. Sailer, for the uninitiated, is a California blogger with a marketing background who is best known for his belief that black people are intellectually inferior to white people. Sailer’s “proof” of the connection between draft position and performance is, I’m sure Pinker would agree, crude: his key variable is how many times a player has been named to the Pro Bowl.

First, describing an eigenvalue as an "Igon Value" is not a spelling error, it's strong evidence that you don't know what the hell you are writing about. It's like an economist writing about Gross Domestic Prada; the nature of the mistake reveals the full extent of the ignorance. Second, as Steve Sailer points out, Gladwell did not write "that the position a quarterback is taken in the college draft is not a reliable indicator of his performance", instead he claimed that there was "no connection between where a quarterback was taken in the draft... and how well he played in the pros." This clearly reveals that Gladwell is not only ignorant of eigenvalues, but of the NFL as well. Yes, JaMarcus Russell sucks, as anyone with half a brain knew he would, but it's not hard to note that the distribution of the excellent young quarterbacks in the league, from Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers and Ben Rothlisberger to Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco, was not random throughout the draft as it would be if Gladwell's thesis was correct. When it's Gladwell vs Football Outsiders, who are you going to believe?

Third, Pro Bowls are a perfectly reasonable measure of NFL excellence, the players' voting bias towards past performance notwithstanding. More importantly, though, it's only one of several measures that Sailer has cited, all of which demonstrate Gladwell's ridiculous assertion to be false. And fourth, Gladwell's attack on Sailer as a source for Pinker is nothing but a naked genetic fallacy and suffices to show what a scrawny little slimeball he is.

Three RGD reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Vox Day's Return of the Great Depression is an short, ambitious book which attempts to make a case that the mainstream economists are very wrong about where things are headed economically, and more importantly that we are headed towards another depression which will be worse than the first. While technical subject matter by nature it is written in a readable style and peppered personal anecdotes, pop culture references, and some humor.... In all an excellent, if too short of a book, which one would do well to read and decide for oneself which way the economic winds are blowing.
- J. Simonsen

Interest in economics appears to be inversely proportional to the strength of the economy. When wealth seems to be expanding--when houses can be bought, flipped, and resold quickly and at great profit, or when IPOs of Internet startups make everyone involved filthy rich--only contrarians and pessimists question the soundness of what is universally regarded as a good thing. But when the boom turns to bust, it becomes imperative to understand where things went wrong.... If Saint Bernanke and his fellow central bankers have actually ended the current recession, government intervention will see a boost of popular support, while the doomsayers, Day among them, will be justly ignored. On the other hand, if Day is correct, the coming depression presents an opportunity to diminish the role central bankers, bureaucrats, and politicians play in the economy. A freer, more prosperous world depends on radical adjustments to the structure of our economic system. Although the picture it paints is rather dark, RGD ultimately provides a useful blueprint for a better economic future.
- Eric Jackson

Excellent book on the financial crisis with unique perspectives you are unlikely to find anywhere else. I enjoyed this book for the way it elucidates the major perspectives on the crisis, including Keynesian, monetarist, and Austrian economic theories, the latter being the author's preference. The book critiques much of the mainstream thinking on the crisis, with a particular emphasis on our favorite Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. I now feel I will be able to read Krugman's columns with more understanding, but not with any less exasperation!
- Heather Veinott

Where is the money?

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Here's something I wish I'd been able to devote some space in RGD. Where is all the stimulus money? Where is the TARP money? Consider the non-defense Federal expenditures plus Federal investments in the most recent GDP report.

3Q08 $344.7 billion
4Q08 $355.4 billion
1Q09 $356.0 billion
2Q09 $362.1 billion
3Q09 $368.4 billion

So, according to the GDP reports, non-defense government spending has increased only $23.7 billion despite the fact that we know $700 billion was spent in the banking and automotive bailouts and at least $336 billion was spent in the Bush and Obama stimuli to date. Where is it? Why does it not show up in the GDP reports as government expenditures or anything else? Even if items such as the automotive bailouts are considered loans, it should have showed up as expenditures by Chrysler and GM. And moreover, the $100 billion in TARP loans to bailed-out corporations that went bankrupt should be written off as an expenditure since they're never going to be repaid.

More Apple technofascism

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Lest you doubt my description of Apple's design philosophy:

Apple has invested in research to develop what it calls an “enforcement routine” that makes people watch ads they may not want to watch. Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.

I very much look forward to hearing the Macintossers' rationalizations for how having their machines held hostage to Apple's advertising revenue stream will provide an objectively superior lifestyle experience for the members of the cult. As I've said before, you don't have to be a techno-retard to prefer Apple products. But nevertheless, that is exactly for whom they are specifically designed.

Forced ad viewing... it's insanely great!

Now, a patent doesn't prove that Apple will come out with products designed around the patented technology. But it certainly proves beyond any shadow of a doubt the fascistic elements inherent in Apple's design philosophy.

Unreliable retail numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:36:00 +0000

Karl Denninger explains why the "positive" retail numbers reported today are, in fact, nothing of the kind:

We start with one store in the world that has net sales of "100".

Store #2 opens with sales of 10. Half of that is new activity, half comes from Store #1. First month shows a sales report of "95", a decrease. But in the next month Store #2's numbers come online, the "95" is revised to the (true) 105, and Store #2s numbers (which have climbed to 60, while Store #1 has lost share and now also has an amount of 60) are all reportable. Net activity is now accurate at 120 and the previous month is revised to the (true) net 105.

Store #1 and #2 both are operating with sales of 60. Store #2 fails, and half of its business goes to Store #1. In the month it fails Store #1 shows an increase and Store #2's numbers are DROPPED ENTIRELY, since it did not report. This is not revised. We now report a "50% increase" in retail activity, which is total crap - we really had a 25% net decrease for the current month. But the revision to the previous month does get posted, and depresses the previous month's numbers.

Did this just happen?

The August to September 2009 percent change was revised from -1.5 percent (±0.5%) to -2.3 percent (±0.3%).

Oh, it did! Now we know where the revision to the previous month came from - stores closed in the present month and their sales loss was intentionally dropped from the current month.

Of course, it's relatively easy to tell if the retail sales numbers are cooked or not. If the state sales tax numbers are falling while "retail sales" are increasing, then it's obvious that the model is an inherently unreliable one.

A smart call

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:15:00 +0000

I know Bill Belichick is getting ripped to shreds by the Monday Morning Quarterbacks, but I think his decision to go for it on 4th and 2 was a smart one. The intelligence of a decision isn't based upon whether the fickle fortunes of Fate smiled upon it or not, but if it was the right way to bet in the circumstances.

Peyton Manning has proven that he can take this year's Colts 80 yards for a TD in 28 seconds. Given how the Colts were moving the ball in the second half, with Manning taking them 79 yards to score in only six plays, there was no reason to believe that the New England defense was likely to shut them down if the Colts were given the ball on their own 30 with two minutes and three timeouts to spare. The fact that most coaches will mindlessly throw their defenses under the bus by taking the less probable option that conveniently lets them off the hook doesn't mean that Belichick was wrong to take the responsibility and play the odds even though it didn't work out for him. In fact, I would argue that his controversial decision demonstrates why he is a great coach for whom players want to play.

WND column

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:26:00 +0000

Fallacy of Recovery

A one-time skeptic of fiscal stimulus, [German chancellor] Ms Merkel plans what amounts to a third stimulus package worth about € 7 billion ($10.4 billion), starting on January 1st.
– The Economist, Oct. 31, 2009

The mainstream media is full of reports of economic recovery and an end to the recession of 2008, even though the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has not yet spoken its official word on the matter. The significant rise in the stock markets and a single advance GDP report has been enough to convince nearly every economist and financial analyst that the worst is past, that 10.2 percent unemployment is a lagging indicator, and that the primary concern at hand is now too much monetary and fiscal stimulus leading to inflation.

Read the rest of the column at WND

Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker appears to have reached the same conclusion. Note that I wrote my column prior to reading his post To the Barkers: Answer This Question:

"The recession ended in June": Dennis Kneale

"The recession was definitely over in September": Any one of a number of people.

Ok. Let's say that I accept all this at face value, even though while driving through my definitely-beach-oriented local town here this afternoon I noted even more closed-and-gone storefronts than there were a couple of weeks ago, and last night at the local open-air mall, although the evening was absolutely gorgeous, you could have fired a 155mm Howitzer down the "main drag" without killing anyone - because there was almost nobody there, and literally not one shopping bag was in evidence.

I simply have to ask the pundits and the carnival barkers, of which CNBC is the worst (but certainly not the only sinner) the following - why do we need any of these programs if in fact the economy is growing again:

Something clearly isn't adding up. So, who is more likely to be correct? The skeptical economists looking at the evidence and seeing that nothing fundamental has changed or the mainstream economists utilizing the very same models that didn't let them see a recession coming in the first place? And furthermore, if the models are known to be unreliable, then how does it make any sense to put faith in an estimate that is constructed on the bases of those models?

VPFL Week 9

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +0000

92 Masonville Marauders (5-4)
75 Winston Reverends (4-5)

89 Judean Front (7-2)
81 Burns Redbeards (2-7)

85 Alamo City Spartans (7-2)
54 Black Mouth Curs (4-5)

81 Bane Silvers (4-5)
55 Mounds View Meerkats (5-4)

50 Greenfield Grizzlies (3-6)
42 Valders Valkyries (4-5)

As always, this is your NFL Open thread

Gladwell and the Igon Value

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:35:00 +0000

I can't honestly say I dislike Malcolm Gladwell's books or even Gladwell himself. How can you possibly develop a dislike for a genuinely curious dilettante who writes entertaining pop social science? But to call him even a minor genius is to considerably overrate the man:

The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.... An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “saggital plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.

The ironic thing is that mass popularity of the sort that Gladwell enjoys is not only not evidence of surpassing brilliance, it is almost always precisely the opposite. To be able to belabor the obvious to the clueless masses in an interesting manner is a useful gift, to be sure, but it helps to be closer to their average level of intelligence, not farther away. I find it very strange that most people intuitively understand there tends to be an inverse relationship between brilliance and mass popularity when it comes to popular music and popular television shows, but not popular books. Regardless of whether one is talking about Gladwell, Dawkins, Rowling, or Brown, their appearances on the bestseller lists is no more indicative of literary accomplishment than the consistent chart-topping of Britney Spears or 50 Cent is indicative of musical greatness.

Don't get me wrong and think this is some sort of sour grapes or something based on the failure of my latest book to make its mark on the bestseller lists. (It won't, so long as the recovery theme remains in effect throughout the mainstream media. In fact, I suggest that we can track the public perception of the state of the economy by how well the book is selling.) Now, I love the Sports Guy and I'm delighted that The Book of Basketball actually hit #1 on the NY Times Bestseller list. But as much as I happen to enjoy the Sports Guy's writings and find them entertaining, don't believe that BoB or any of the present #1 bestsellers written by Mitch Albom, John Grisham, or Joel Osteen are particularly well-written or brilliant books.

Returning to Gladwell, Steve Sailer twists the knife: "Should I pause before I publish and apply reality tests to Dr. Frink's theory ... Nah! Dr. Frink is a wonderful genius! This time I'm clearly not overlooking any problems with the basic idea of my article." The amusing thing is that as with Paul Krugman and his claim that half of all U.S. banks failed in 1931, the error is a long-standing one. In this case, Gladwell first introduced the concept of the Igon Value to an unsuspecting world six years ago.

As one of Sailer's commenters notes, a Bertrand Russell quote would appear to be more than a little applicable here: "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

A pair of RGD reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Salt writes on Amazon:

Imagine you're drowning in debt and your investment adviser or banker, trusted TV pundit, or some Nobel prize winner recommends you take on more debt and all will be made well. Vox Day explains what should be the obvious lunacy of such, but if one is familiar at all with current events, apparently isn't.Vox Day explains what should be the obvious lunacy of such, but if one is familiar at all with current events, apparently isn't. RGD is highly educational. I recommend everyone read it, and perhaps just once listen to your instincts and you might be the better off, viewing critically what those having a vested interest have been telling you.

DocintheATL writes on Amazon:

Very good read that probes the reasons behind our economic mess. The book starts off in Japan during the boom years, which develops a baseline for the remainer of the book insofar as the futility of government to correct the subsequent bust. The book does a good job deconstructing various macro-economic theories before addressing the one theory that fits well with most of the available evidence. Vox describes the limits inherent to GDP, CPI, and unemployment figures that are at the center of mainstream economic thought.

I very much appreciate those who liked the book and take the time to write reviews for it. There's a reason most best-selling books are written by radio and television personalities these days, because their public platform is about the only way people hear about books now. Intelligent and substantive reviews on highly visible sites like Amazon are one of the best ways of circumnagivating this effective limitation on public mindshare.

The brilliant sociopathy of Gervais

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:13:00 +0000

A very interesting interpretation of The Office as a structural re-envisioning of corporate culture. I have to admit that in my experience, the Gervais Principle, as the author names it, is superficially more convincing than either the Peter or Dilbert Principles.

This is where Gervais has broken new ground, primarily because as an artist, he is interested in the subjective experience of being clueless. For your everyday sociopath, it is sufficient to label someone clueless and work around them. What Gervais managed to create is a very compelling portrait of the clueless, a work of art with real business value.

Here is the ultimate explanation of Michael Scott’s (and David Brent’s) careers: they are put into a position of having to explain their own apparent, unexpected and unexamined success. It is easy to explain failure. Random success is harder. Remember, they are promoted primarily as passive pawns to either allow the sociopaths to escape the risks of their actions, or to make way for the sociopaths to move up faster. They are presented with an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance: being nominally given greater power, but in reality being safely shunted away from the pathways of power. They must choose to either construct false narratives or decline apparent opportunities.

The clueless resolve this dissonance by choosing to believe in the reality of the organization. Not everybody is capable of this level of suspension of disbelief. Both Ricky Gervais (David Brent) and Steve Carrel (Michael Scott) play the brilliantly-drawn characters perfectly. The most visible sign of their capacity for self-delusion is their complete inability to generate an original thought. They quote movie lines, lyrics and perform terrible impersonations (at one point Michael goes, “You talking to me?” a line he attributes, in a masterful display of confusion, to “Al Pacino, Raging Bull“). For much of what he needs to say, he gropes for empty business phrases, deploying them with staggering incompetence. When Michael talks, he is attempting, like a child, to copy the flawless buzzspeak spoken by sociopaths like Jan and David Wallace. He is oblivious to the fact that the sociopaths use buzzspeak as a coded language with which to simultaneously sustain the (necessary) delusions of the clueless and communicate with each other.

Of course, one would be remiss to fail to point out the way in which this postulated analytical brilliance strongly suggests Gervais's own sociopathy. This may offer partial explanation for his atheistic hostility to religion, (not his disbelief, mind you, just the hostility), whose creators and leaders he would naturally assume to be as sociopathic as he knows himself to be.

It would appear that I may have a sociopathic trait or two myself, as the author brings up one of my favorite tactics, the last sentence aside, in extra credit for his Law Number Five: "Quoting your opponents more accurately than they can quote themselves is one of the most fascinating moves you can employ. The original speaker is put on the defensive, forced to fumble and clarify, and in the process loses control. If you want to experience true schadenfreude listen closely to what your opponents say. Do not admit to enjoying this experience." Of course, despite the best efforts of many critics over the last eight years, this has seldom worked on me. Since I make habitual use of the tactic myself, I never cease to anticipate it. Also, there are few things more amusing than seeing an arrogant and insufficiently analytical critic snap at the bait you've laid before him.

This is "the real world"

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:10:00 +0000

Gentlemen, I suggest we are not missing anything:

Gosh, my palms are sweating even now as I prepare to write his name. I am not a teenager, but a happily married 37-year-old. And yes, I have fallen madly, painfully, utterly in love with Robert Pattinson, along with ten million other women.... I can understand exactly why a crowd of 5,000 frenzied girls queued for hours in London's Battersea Park on Wednesday to get a glimpse of him (while he was promoting the release of Twilight's sequel, New Moon), just as it is perfectly clear to me why he was chased into the path of an taxi by a stampede of women in New York.

Of course, I am not the kind of person who'd ever normally consider writing 'Bite me' on my forehead, as one girl did on Wednesday, or scream my head off at some actor, but I would have gone to Battersea Park - if only I could have got a babysitter. Instead, I've been sleeping with the December issue of Vanity Fair, which features Pattinson as a cover boy, under my pillow, much to my husband's mirth.

If that's the real world, then by all means, count me out. If you'll excuse me, I'll be off racking up head shots in MW:2 for the next few hours.

The obvious solution

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:41:00 +0000

Disarm the military:

As a number of others have already pointed out, the mainstream media are doing their best to turn a mass murder committed by someone who worshipped at the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers, made repeated attempts to contact al-Qaeda-supportive clergy, and shouted “Allahu Akbar” at the start of the attack into something other than an Islamic terrorist attack. If this wasn’t such a dreadfully serious matter, it would almost be funny watching Democrats insist that there’s no elephant in the bathtub. Perhaps the most bizarre of these claims is that of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who insists that the core problem behind Fort Hood is that “America loves guns.”

Clearly the solution is not to remove all Muslim jihadists from the U.S. military, but to take away all of the military's guns. I am told that historically, soldiers are known to have been particularly prone to shooting people with them, so the time is long past to disarm the soldiery. While some might think this would make the military's task in Afghanistan and Iraq more dangerous, that's obviously not the case. Since the battle for hearts and minds concerns niceness and school-building, not breaking things and killing people, it is self-evident that an armed military is actually inhibiting the pursuit of victory in those countries.

After all, people are people everywhere you go, and if the military doesn't require armaments in the USA, why should they require them anywhere else?

The whine of the game widow

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Especially considering that it's not an actual male holiday like Madden Day or something:

Something momentous took place in The World of Men this week, something that those living in The World of Women – that is, largely, The Real World – may yet be unaware of. At midnight on Monday, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 went on sale. Should you be a reader of the female persuasion your reaction is likely to be mystification followed by the dawning realisation that this accounts for your partner’s having since gone AWOL....

Modern Warfare 2 allows participants to play the part of soldiers facing a series of combat scenarios, and is so bloodthirsty that it includes a couple of “checkpoints” where those without the stomach can opt out. It comes with an 18-certificate, however an army of forsaken women will argue that it should also carry a relationship health warning.

I have to admit, I've never understood how women, who apparently spend considerably more time in front of the television on average than men, can possibly complain about the male preference for electronic games. Let's face it, you had better be one scintillating conversationalist and/or contortionist if you seriously expect to compete with CoD. Now, I do occasionally fear for the fate of the human race when talking to younger gamers who genuinely don't seem to understand that real flesh-and-blood women could at least occasionally be preferable to porn and PS/3; at least back in the Golden Age, game geeks realized that they were compensating for missing out on something.

Anyhow, whatever, on to more important matters. Let's say, for example, you're playing CoD on the PC. And let's say you have a mouse that just happens to have a joystick on the side. Do you prefer to assign WASD there for the movement? Or, do you leave that up to your left hand and assign Lie Down, Crouch, Stand Up, and Reload to the joystick? I've been playing both ways and I think I find the latter to be more efficient, but I was wondering what the other CoDers here might think.

The man who predicted the Great Depression

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Mises finally gets his rightful due from the Wall Street Journal:

"Theorie des Geldes" did not become the playbook for policy makers. The 1920s were marked by the brave new era of the Federal Reserve system promoting inflationary credit expansion and with it permanent prosperity. The nerve of this Doubting-Thomas, perma-bear, crazy Kraut! Sadly, poor Ludwig was very nearly alone in warning of the collapse to come from this credit expansion. In mid-1929, he stubbornly turned down a lucrative job offer from the Viennese bank Kreditanstalt, much to the annoyance of his fiancée, proclaiming "A great crash is coming, and I don't want my name in any way connected with it."

We all know what happened next. Pretty much right out of Mises's script, overleveraged banks (including Kreditanstalt) collapsed, businesses collapsed, employment collapsed.

This is why I'm pretty relaxed about RGD. As an economist, I'm not fit to replace the battery on Mises's calculator. If he wasn't afraid to be dismissed as a lunatic for standing against the socialist tide, I'm not afraid to risk the same for standing against the Neo-Keynesian one. The market and the GDP statistics are totally irrelevant in my opinion. The former looks terrible when measured in terms of gold or any foreign currency and the latter have been twisted and contorted so greatly that I suspect it will have to be trashed altogether by the time the Great Depression 2.0 comes to an end.

Remember that GDP comparisons to the Great Depression are intrinsically questionable because GDP didn't exist until it was created in order to measure industrial output in World War II. Which, astute history buffs will recall took place after the economic events of 1929-1933.

Darwin's killer disciples

noreply@blogger.com (Vox) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:19:00 +0000

The murderous children of evolution are a real problem, even if the Darwinists don't like to admit it:

Darwin would no doubt have been horrified by all this, but it’s easy to see why some of his ideas might appeal to the disturbed adolescent mind. One conclusion implicit in evolutionary theory is that human existence has no ultimate purpose or special significance. Any psychologically well-adjusted person would regard this as regrettable, if true. But some people get a thrill from peering into the void and acknowledging that life is utterly meaningless.

Darwin also taught that morality has no essential authority, but is something that itself evolved — a set of sentiments or intuitions that developed from adaptive responses to environmental pressures tens of thousands of years ago. This does not merely explain the origin of morals, it totally explains them away. Whether an individual opts to obey a particular ethical precept, or to regard it as a redundant evolutionary carry-over, thus becomes a matter of personal choice. Cheerleaders celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday in colleges across America last February sang “Randomness is good enough for me, If there’s no design it means I’m free” — lines from a song by the band Scientific Gospel. Clearly they see evolution as something that emancipates them from the strict sexual morality insisted upon by their parents. But wackos such as Harris and Auvinen can just as readily interpret it as a licence to kill.

The truth or untruth of natural selection, or evolution by natural selection, doesn't depend upon their consequences. But the inability of biologists to recognize the obvious logical implications of the freedom from the limits of traditional morality that they celebrate only serves to demonstrate their complete incompetence as philosophers. If it's no longer evil to freely fornicate or worship idols, it's no longer evil to freely rape or murder either. And a description of a theorized process of historical moral development is no rational basis for subsequent cherry-picking between those developments you happen to believe are positive and those you happen to believe are negative.