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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Saturday, July 12, 2003 :::
I doubt that Iran could have a better president than Khatami under its current constitution.
::: posted by Steven at 6:05 PM
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Reason Magazine has a review of the new Harry Potter.
::: posted by Steven at 6:04 PM
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That almost car accident this morning on the Dan Ryan was me when WBBM reported that President Mohammad Khatami said in a speech he would resign if people want him to, amid growing public dissatisfaction over his failure to meet promises of democratic reform, a newspaper reported Saturday. Link from a heinous page on the website of WBBM.
::: posted by dWj at 12:33 PM
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Friday, July 11, 2003 :::
I have less than full-throated approval for some of the anti-rich snarkiness in this editorial from OpinionJournal on vouchers for D.C. students, but am willing to exploit the opportunity to babble incoherently on a philosophical topic of some relevance here.It is routine for opponents of vouchers to complain that supporters are "giving up" on public schools, in spite of the studies suggesting that public schools improve where voucher programs are introduced; as a tool to improve public schools, rather than merely one to educate children (and I can't think this isn't the higher priority, but put that aside), vouchers are essentially a management solution, and I think it's hard for some people to accept that as a "real" solution. It doesn't tell how to teach differently, how to change curricula, what books to use; it just changes the environment in which the people making these decisions are making these decisions. (This is, to some extent, true of increased testing as well, especially insofar as the tests tell us that the kids are dumb rather than what their specific weaknesses might be.) Management solutions are really the kind that we should expect from elected officials, though; they can't go from classroom to classroom enforcing a new teaching style, nor do they have the expertise to decide what the correct teaching style is. What they can do is create a system in which the skills of others are best applied to the problems that are there, and that is what Congress may finally be doing.
::: posted by dWj at 1:41 PM
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In today's Bleat, Lileks introduced two expressions that could well catch on. First, he describes a piece of software as "buggier than a whore-house mattress," which is funny if you don't give it too much thought, and kind of sickening if you do. More important is his discussion of "lumpers", people who make broad generalizations about their ideological adversaries.
::: posted by Steven at 12:00 PM
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The Kitchen Cabinet informs us of a Hulk doll which is... well, "anatomically correct" isn't quite right, but his shorts have more padding inside them than most dolls'.
::: posted by Steven at 11:36 AM
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See this on the cancelation of the BRKa charity program to which my brother refers; aside from providing a bit more of the story, it hinges on what is becoming an increasingly important insight into the functioning of a large, acquisitive company sitting on piles of cash because it doesn't see anything to do with them right now:Pampered Chef is a minuscule component of the Berkshire family, so why on earth did Warren Buffett change one of the most beloved programs at the company for the sake of a few gnats biting at it? Success or failure at Pampered Chef has the next best thing to zero effect on Berkshire's overall performance, and every company in history is going to do something that brings the wrath of the one-song orchestras.... Warren Buffett has earned billions for his shareholders by creating an environment in which he receives the "first call" from business owners interested in selling. This is a carefully managed component of Berkshire's success -- and a negative outcome for a new, small Berkshire subsidiary due to policies at the corporate parent is not something that Buffett can risk. He has to react to the problems at Pampered Chef, lest the next business owner ready to sell uses his first call to reach out to someone else. This is largely the same best reason I've heard for the issuance of negative interest rate convertible bonds last year; as I've said above, Berkshire doesn't want the cash. He did it to show that he can; while Berkshire is well known in the United States among companies it might want to buy, it has been less well known overseas, and this was a publicity stunt to increase its profile abroad.
::: posted by dWj at 10:29 AM
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Warren Buffett lunch sells for $250,000 A bidder at an auction conducted in San Francisco Thursday night and on auctioneer eBay Inc.'s Web site agreed to pay $250,000 to lunch with Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man.The auction was sponsored by San Francisco magazine and the Glide Foundation, a non-profit organisation offering programmes to the poor, hungry and homeless in San Francisco. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will donate the proceeds to Glide. Glide said on Friday the lunch went for a higher bid than the past three years' lunches with Buffett combined. The buyer can take delivery in New York or Omaha.
::: posted by dWj at 10:21 AM
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My brother notes a complete breach of duty by the Nevada State Supreme Court, and says it's not subject to further appeal because it's based on state law. Thing is, I'm pretty sure the fourteenth amendment has been used as Constitutional grounds for pulling a really, really bad decision out of the state system; I think they're refered to in here somewhere.As for Steve's immediately preceding post, my initial thought on that news item was a much shorter note, along the lines of "Dear Congressman, My professor" insert name here "who lives at" insert address here, insert description of assignment here. "This seems to me to be grounds for an investigation by the FBI. Godspeed," insert signature.
::: posted by dWj at 10:16 AM
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Forclosure on the Sear's Tower?Still struggling for tenants nearly two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Sears Tower will be handed over to its lender to prevent the skyscraper's owner from defaulting on its massive mortgage, sources close to the deal said Thursday.
::: posted by dWj at 9:59 AM
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Since the early '80s, Berkshire Hathaway has had a shareholder-designated charity contribution plan, whereby each class A shareholder is allowed to designate a charity, and Berkshire Hathaway sends a check. I believe the amount was $18 per share last year, or about one four-thousandth of the price of a share, so it's not a lot, but it's an interesting way to allow shareholders to donate to charities in a way that doesn't provide them with any tax liability, and allows Berkshire to write off the contributions (you'll note that if Berkshire paid out a dividend of $18 and the shareholder signed it over to a charity, the shareholder still wouldn't have a net tax effect, but Berkshire wouldn't be allowed to write it off).
In recent years, this has come under attack, mostly by pro-lifers who object to the fact that a lot of the funds (much of plurality-shareholder Warren Buffett's portion) goes to Planned Parenthood, and by shareholders concerned about the impact of a potential boycott. I think there was a shareholder-sponsored resolution to scrap it at the 2002 annual meeting (it might have been a year earlier). Apparently, they're discontinuing the program. The original press release is available in PDF.
Berkshire Hathaway has terminated its shareholder-designatedcontributions program, which has distributed approximately $197 million since it was begun in1981. This program has allowed holders of Berkshire’s A shares to designate a per-share sumfor the company to contribute to as many as three charities, the only requirement being that thedesignee have 501(c)(3) status. The program thus allowed a wide diversity of donations, someof them controversial but all outside the control of Berkshire.
In recent years, about 3,500 charities have been designated annually, with schools thefavorite (about 800 different institutions have benefited), followed by more than 400 churches and synagogues.
I'm a little bit disappointed (even though this slightly benefits me, since my class B shares lose nothing except a small annual leak of funds to charities designated by others). But I don't think anyone -- the boycotters or the board of directors -- has behaved irrationally. An email forwarded to me by one of my housemates seems to imply that Berkshire had a "planned parenthood contribution" program, ignoring that there were a lot of other charities receiving funds (many of which -- churches and synagogues -- could be considered on their side). But that's just the simplification of politics, and it's entirely possible that the contributions to Planned Parenthood exceeded the combined contributions to pro-life causes.
::: posted by Steven at 1:03 AM
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According to Reuters:
U.S. troops in Iraq face 10 to 25 attacks a day, partly because they are hunting for Baathists, "jihadists" and fighters crossing the border from Syria, Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the war against Baghdad, said on Thursday.
Iraq has a population similar to that of New York. How often do police in New York encounter potentially violent situations? Less often, I'm sure, but before Giuliani was the mayor of its largest city, it was pretty close, wasn't it?
::: posted by Steven at 12:40 AM
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Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Owen Kerr writes about knock-off handbags and Napster, arguing that the reason people don't take Napster-assisted copyright violations seriously is, essentially, one of self-reinforcing social norms. In other words, nobody takes them seriously because nobody's friends take them seriously.
Also at the Conspiracy, the Professor himself points out a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court, which is on a matter of state law, therefore isn't subject to further appeal. Bad US Supreme Court decisions talk their way around the law; many Candian Supreme Court decisions don't even pay lip-service to the law. This decision brings up the relevant law to pee on its leg. Volokh's not a fan of the decision, which is on the web.
::: posted by Steven at 12:17 AM
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Thursday, July 10, 2003 :::
Fresh from California ("the land of fruits and nuts"):
A political science instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College is being investigated by the Secret Service for telling his students to compose an e- mail to an elected official that included the words "kill the president, kill the president," a school administrator said Wednesday.
Michael Ballou, a part-time lecturer who teaches an "Introduction to U.S. Government" course at the college's Petaluma campus, intended the assignment to be an "experiential exercise that would instill a sense of fear so they would have a better sense of why more people don't participate in the political process," said Doug Garrison, the vice president and executive dean of the Petaluma campus.
I'll have a go at this:
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
I am a student at Santa Rosa Junior College. My political science instructor has instructed me to write an email to an elected official using the words, "kill the president, kill the president." While many of the professors at the public schools in this state are biased, inept, or both, this is the first time I have seen a clear sign of actual insanity.
While I appreciate the value of diversity on campus, I hope that you will work with the legislature to ensure that faculty meet certain standards. For example, any faculty member who is not actually from this side of the looking glass should be required to have assimilated well enough to fake it.
Thanks and Good Luck,
S
I encourage other bloggers to write their own versions. Let me know what you come up with. Link from the Corner.
::: posted by Steven at 10:14 PM
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As you know, last year John McCain and Russ Feingold sponsored a law limiting political speech. Now they want to change the make-up of the FEC, which they say isn't enforcing the law.
Incidentally, McCain has recently decided that the first amendment is important, and has defended it by using his position in the Senate to intimidate private citizens who take positions he disagrees with.
::: posted by Steven at 9:28 PM
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The National Review wishes that elected Republicans were conservative.
::: posted by Steven at 9:08 PM
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Bush visited some elephants on a nature reserve: Although the animals appeared to have been pre-positioned, their carnal instincts were beyond official control. After Bush posed for photographs with his hand on a tusk and climbed back into the truck, one of the elephants mounted his mate.
That prompted the president to whisper something to his wife. The first lady responded by slapping him on the leg.
That's my President!
::: posted by Steven at 3:49 PM
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I got a kick out of this comment from an OpinionJournal piece on the recall in California of its fairly stiff governor:The success of "Terminator 3" can only help him in any race for governor, says Dan Walters, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. "The publicity helps him and some say the Terminator plot is tailor-made for his campaign pitch: it's about a good guy who saves the world from a robot."
::: posted by dWj at 1:12 PM
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Well, governor Blagojevich has required that car insurance cover oil changes. No, wait, that's not it. He's required health "insurance" to cover birth-control pills. It's only health care where we think we should "insure" against perfectly predictable events.I'm sure you all know me well enough to know the contents of this paragraph, but let's get it out there: I have no problem with individuals and insurance company writing in whatever terms they want, with or without the intermediation of an employer, etc. "It's just not fair when insurers reimburse men who use Viagra but deny coverage to women who use birth control," says Blagojevich. As in the past, I put forth that "fair" is what is agreed to when the contract is signed, whatever that contract says. I certainly don't support requiring that prescripion coverage include Viagra. Covering Viagra, though, seems somewhat more insurance-like to me than covering birth-control pills, perhaps akin to having car insurance cover repairs after the breakdown of a Korean-made car; when it gets old it can't be considered abnormal that certain parts are going to quit functioning normally, but 1) it's still not virtually certain, and 2) the timing can't be foreseen. The possibility that one will need Viagra in the next ten years seems a reasonable risk against which to insure; the possibility that one will be fertile in the next ten years seems less so. I do like a good compromise, though, so I propose the following: prescription insurance should be required to cover birth control (all forms) if the fertility is the result of an unexpected illness or accident.
::: posted by dWj at 12:11 PM
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The Corner points out this March article on Bush's failure to restrain spending.
Mr. Bush's dismal record on spending when measured against Mr. Reagan's nullifies [the temptation to compare the two]. Better yet, in light of President Bush's spending it looks like it would be more accurate to compare him to Jimmy Carter than Reagan.
Ouch.
::: posted by Steven at 11:28 AM
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As I said the other day, Howard Dean scares me. Not in a cross-the-street-if-you-see-him-coming sort of way -- on the contrary, he seems quite personable to me. I'm worried that he could win without moving to the center, as Reagan did a generation ago.
On the flip-side, I think Bush can take John Kerry without any problem. People don't even have to know what Kerry stands for to be put off by him.
::: posted by Steven at 9:34 AM
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Wednesday, July 09, 2003 :::
Norwegians with high levels of education apparently don't change their underpants as often as those with less education. So says a new survey by an underwear manufacturer.
::: posted by Steven at 9:00 PM
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Incidentally, reMany spent nothing at all each year. Is this so terrible? Isn't it just like burning the money? Is that what a wise philanthropist should do, simply burn his or her money, and make the money of others worth that much more? , it seems to me that - The money likely to be burned has probably been low velocity money for a while; what he's talking about is literally making it zero-velocity, rather than actually burning it, though he notes it amounts to the same thing. Comparing to a future in which it is spent, though, not spending it is a change. On the other hand,
- Burnt money probably ends up in the hands of the government. If monetary policy were on a fixed plan of print a fixed amount of money each year, burning money might have a counter-inflationary effect, but in the world as it is, it seems more likely that a similar amount of money (at least in terms of economic effect) would be printed by the federal reserve that wouldn't otherwise be printed.
I'll try to let this lie now until someone else gives me something to respond to.
::: posted by dWj at 12:05 PM
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I would like to do some Chicago promotion now; it was 110 years ago today that the first successful open-heart surgery was performed in Chicago.
::: posted by dWj at 10:27 AM
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My brother offers a critique of a dissertation over at Volokh, and I have some responses I want to make. First, I find it terribly disappointing that Cowen doesn't seem, on point 1, to actually try to estimate the time preference for foundation spending at all. He seems to suggest that it's the same as the return rate on T-bills, but I have no idea why this would be. As for your comment on point 2, Steve, I believe Cowen is right when he says that historically T-bills have yielded less than 1% in real terms; real growth has surely exceeded that. I'm willing to argue backward, that the silly result (infinite present value) means that this is the wrong discount rate to use for this problem (this may be an issue of marginal versus average return), but it's then worth noting, as Cowen implicitly does, that any argument that they shouldn't spend spend spend, assuming that time preference is equal to the T-bill rate, requires a discount rate higher than that.If the idea that the time preference is equal to the T-bill rate is from the principle that the market is efficient, then it seems a bit like suggesting that the pressure in a balloon I'm squeezing is equal to the ambient pressure, because they equalize in equilibrium. We're trying to figure out the equilibrium here, and, in particular, ask whether it always or sufficiently often exceeds "spend 5% a year". As (current) foundation spending drops toward zero, the time preference presumably increases; as we spend sooner, it presumably decreases. Do you know what else he might be thinking?
::: posted by dWj at 10:26 AM
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My brother notes that Dusty Baker suggested that blacks and latinoes prefer playing in the heat (this is what it sounded to me like he said; not, as seems to be reported, that they like it better than white people do, but that they like it better than more moderate temperatures); he went on to suggest that was why blacks were brought over here in the first place, which is historically suspect but seems to echo Jimmy the Greek pretty closely. And this, I think, is the there there, the feeling that he should be disciplined because a white guy who said the same thing would be.My first thought, though, was the same as Volokh's: "I wonder whether that's true." (This was on hearing what he supposedly said, before hearing the actual extended clip. That black people in general actually do prefer the nineties to the seventies would surprise me somewhat, but I'm sufficiently confident of my ignorance not to let it shake me too much.)
::: posted by dWj at 10:06 AM
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Lileks has an Iran story. Personal, as Lileks always is. He suggests some links at the bottom.
::: posted by Steven at 4:07 AM
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Tyler Cowen, also at the Conspiracy, addresses the proposal to change the rules for minimal foundation giving that Dean mentioned a few days back. He suggests four ways of looking at it, in two pairs. The first pair plays with discount rates, and the second pair looks at how much an intelligent actor should be bound by unintelligent rules (to clarify -- I'm not using the word "unintelligent" to mean that the rules are ill advised -- I'm literally pointing out that the rules have no intelligence or judgment, while the trustees do (one hopes)).
1. Simple models from capital theory -
Does the risk-adjusted, expected rate of return on assets exceed the social rate of time preference for foundation spending?
Cowen comes to the conclusion that it does, perhaps because he's discounting risky investments at a risk-free rate -- I'm not sure I'm reading that paragraph correctly. At any rate, I'd think any model that doesn't assume efficient markets doesn't count as "simple", and any model that does assume efficient markets would have to call the spending vs. investing battle a draw (i.e., the appropriate discount rate to use is in equilibrium with the expected return on the market).
2. Macroeconomic growth theory -
If the rate of growth of the economy exceeds the real interest rate, the present value of future wealth is massive, possibly infinite.
I.e., if you use a silly discount rate, you get a silly result.
3. Agency theory, or don't trust them -
Perhaps the people who run foundations spend all the money on plush carpets, unconstrained by market forces. If we make them spend down their corpus, they will be forced back into the market for funds, which will improve accountability and improve the quality of their giving. Starve them of cash, and make them compete. Make them spend more.
This, as Cowen suggests in his last paragraph, might be why the rule exists in the first place. It's a compelling idea to me. Whether for-profit or not, a management that has to get a majority vote from shareholders to stay in place will have some accountability, but management that has to justify itself to new investors will have more.
4. Trust them
Foundations are remarkably wise and far-sighted. Why constraint such smart people? They know best how to spend or save the money. And it is best if they are insulated from marketplace constraints, that is the whole point of the non-profit sector. Of course this contradicts #3, directly above.
The contradiction is wholely caused by contradictory assumptions -- the balance between trusting foundation managers to do "the right thing" (or defining "right" to mean whatever they want to do), vs. requiring them to be able to get new funds or die out.
Most rules share a problem which Cowen is pointing to here -- specifically, that if a 5% annual distribution is required, and an honest and wise trustee observes one year that the opportunities to donate are temporarily meager, they are bound to take an inferior path.
Cowen goes on:
Note that before the five percent requirement existed, many foundations were mere storehouses/tax shelters for private wealth. Many spent nothing at all each year. Is this so terrible? Isn't it just like burning the money? Is that what a wise philanthropist should do, simply burn his or her money, and make the money of others worth that much more? Why should a philanthropist think he can spend money more effectively than other people can? Is the philanthropist simply finding a socially acceptable way of being a paternalist? Should he get out the matches instead?
First of all, I'm neither going to concede, nor going to contest, that burning money causes the rest of the money supply to increase in value by exactly the same amount -- i.e., that wealth is neither created nor destroyed, but simply redistributed.
I will assert that the paternalism isn't dangerous, unless it's terribly concentrated, and I'll point out that it's useful. The managers of a successful philanthropy will tend to be better than the average person at determining how to allocate their funds because they concentrate on the subject matter, and if they don't concentrate on it very well, they are likely to attract less funds than those managers who do.
I might have had an other point or two, but my brain is tired, and I shouldn't be blogging in my current state (which would be Massachusetts). [See? Doesn't that joke prove my point?]
::: posted by Steven at 3:16 AM
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The manager of the Chicago Cubs said over the weekend that darker-skinned people are better at tolerating heat than lighter-skinned people. He's catching flak for it, but I agree with Volokh the Elder on this. It shouldn't be a big deal.
::: posted by Steven at 1:23 AM
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It's 9:20 a.m. in Iran, as I write this, and I'm not seeing news of any protests yet (not a huge surprise -- it's still early). But there's this story from yesterday to whet your appetite.
Iran's authorities are hoping that Wednesday's fourth anniversary of bloody student riots here will go off with a whimper rather than a bang, having taken almost every measure within their powers to avert a resumption of anti-regime demonstrations.
In a bid to prevent student activists from even thinking about staging a rally to mark the 1999 unrest, during which at least one student was killed and hundreds were injured or arrested, the government has slapped a ban on all off-campus gatherings.
::: posted by Steven at 12:57 AM
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Tuesday, July 08, 2003 :::
Apparently, I'm more nervous about Howard Dean than Karl Rove is.
::: posted by Steven at 4:59 PM
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The web site of the day is NITV, the Iranian exile television station run from L.A. Actually, it's probably tomorrow's web site of the day.
::: posted by dWj at 4:31 PM
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On the pentaquark, it turns out this was sitting in my email for more than a week (emphasis and some mark-up added):... Efficient detectors downstream of the collision area looked for the evidence of the existence of various combinations of particles, including a short-lived state in which the K+ and the neutron had coalesced (drawing will be posted soon at www.aip.org/mgr/png ). In this case the amalgamated particle, or resonance, would have consisted of the three quarks from the neutron (two "down" quarks and one "up" quark) and the two quarks from the K+ (an up quark and a strange antiquark). The evidence for this collection of five quarks would be an excess of events (a peak) on a plot of "missing" masses deduced from K- particles seen in the experiment. ... Confirmation of this discovery comes quickly. A team of physicists in the US, led by Ken Hicks of Ohio University working in the CLAS collaboration at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, has also found evidence for the pentaquark. ...The discovery of a 5-quark state should be of compelling interest to particle physicists, and this might be only the first of a family of such states. Not only that but a new classification of matter, like a new limb in the family tree of strongly interacting particles: first there were baryons and mesons, now there are also pentaquarks. According to Ken Hicks, a member of both the SPring-8 and Jefferson Lab experiments, this pentaquark can be considered as a baryon. Unlike all other known baryons, though, the pentaquark would have a strangeness value of S=+1, meaning that the baryon contains an anti-strange quark. Past searches for this state have all been inconclusive. Hicks attributes the new discovery to better beams, more efficient detectors, and more potent computing analysis power. (Additional website: http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~hicks/thplus.htm) I suppose any unstable particle whose primary decay mode is into pieces that are already there (rather than one in which the fundamental constituents change their spots) can be called a resonance; the problem with resonances (by which I mean the reason I seem to be disparaging of them) is that there are so many of them. In the sixties, before the quark model had really taken hold, so many of these were discovered, each seemingly a new fundamental particle, that one prominent physicist facetiously suggested that the next year's Nobel Prize go to whoever did not discover a new particle that year.By the way, "Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility", or "Jefferson Lab", is still known to some of us as "CEBAF", pronounced "SEE baff", which was its original name, as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility. It was just coming on line when I visited it ten years ago this month; it was renamed a couple years later. Update:Now that I look at that, I'm skeptical that this is the first baryon with strangeness of +1, though it's possible. Certainly particles have been seen (in abundance) whose antiparticles would be baryons with strangeness of +1, but I'm not certain those antiparticles have necessarily been seen.
::: posted by dWj at 11:04 AM
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Some Israeli computer scientists have written software that determines the sex of an author based on a sample of writing. They claim 80% success.
For example, Koppel's group found that the single biggest difference is that women are far more likely than men to use personal pronouns-''I'', ''you'', ''she'', ''myself'', or ''yourself'' and the like. Men, in contrast, are more likely to use determiners-''a,'' ''the,'' ''that,'' and ''these''-as well as cardinal numbers and quantifiers like ''more'' or ''some.'' As one of the papers published by Koppel's group notes, men are also more likely to use ''post-head noun modification with an of phrase''-phrases like ''garden of roses.''
It seems surreal, even spooky, that such seemingly throwaway words would be so revealing of our identity. But text-analysis experts have long relied on these little parts of speech. When you or I write a text, we pay close attention to how we use the main topic-specific words-such as, in this article, the words ''computer'' and ''program'' and ''gender.'' But we don't pay much attention to how we employ basic parts of speech, which means we're far more likely to use them in unconscious but revealing patterns. Years ago, Donald Foster, a professor of English at Vassar College, unmasked Joe Klein as the author of the anonymous book ''Primary Colors,'' partly by paying attention to words like ''the'' and ''and,'' and to quirks in the use of punctuation. ''They're like fingerprints,'' says Foster.
There's an interesting sideline to this story, too:
When the group submitted its first paper to the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the referees rejected it ''on ideological grounds,'' [lead author] Koppel maintains. ''They said, 'Hey, what do you mean? You're trying to make some claim about men and women being different, and we don't know if that's true. That's just the kind of thing that people are saying in order to oppress women!' And I said 'Hey-I'm just reporting the numbers.'''
...
Critics charge that experiments in gender-prediction don't discover inalienable male/female differences; rather, they help to create and exaggerate such differences. ''You find what you're looking for. And that leads to this sneaking suspicion that it's all hardwired, instead of cultural,'' argues Janet Bing, a linguist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. She adds: ''This whole rush to categorization usually works against women.'' Bing further notes that gays, lesbians, or transgendered people don't fit neatly into simple social definitions of male or female gender. Would Koppel's algorithm work as well if it analyzed a collection of books written mainly by them?
Koppel enthusiastically agrees it's an interesting question-but ''we haven't run that experiment, so we don't know.'' In the end, he's hoping his group's data will keep critics at bay. ''I'm just reporting the numbers,'' he adds, ''but you can't be careful enough.''
Deborah Tannen is also mentioned, saying that she has conducted (less scientific) explorations into "men's magazines" and "women's magazines", finding much more of a difference in the writing between the two genres than between pieces within the same genre written by authors of different sexes. In other words, the audience a piece is written for matters more than the sex of the author does.
Anyway, the paper is available for download at Moshe Koppel's website.
::: posted by Steven at 10:33 AM
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I was going to comment on this, but I don't think I can add anything. As the saying goes, some folks you don't have to satirize -- you just quote 'em:
Now a University of British Columbia researcher who has investigated [Stonehenge] for several years has announced he has uncovered its true meaning: it is a giant fertility symbol, constructed in the shape of the female sexual organ.
::: posted by Steven at 10:22 AM
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The Iranian opposition is scheduled to be in the streets tomorrow, as you may have heard. Read up on some of the leaders.
::: posted by Steven at 10:14 AM
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Monday, July 07, 2003 :::
Hands in the air if your Governor rescued a family after their boat sank last weekend.
Gov. Mitt Romney rode to the rescue over the weekend during a vacation trip - using his Jet Ski to help pluck a New Jersey family and their dog out of Lake Winnipesaukee after their boat sank.
::: posted by Steven at 6:08 PM
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A brief discussion of a Congressional effort to change the 5% distribution requirement on charities. For their part, foundations argue that what outsiders may view as administrative costs — conducting research, assisting grantees, finding new beneficiaries, soliciting new grants — are an essential component of the charitable work. Okay, that's what I was thinking, too; that makes sense to me. But the paragraph continues,In light of the recent and significant economic decline, the historic return of 7.62 percent may be difficult to replicate. Interest rates on government bonds yield significantly less than 5 percent, and the stock market has declined recently. The Council of Foundations argues that when you consider investment management costs and inflation, "a foundation must earn an average return of 9.5 percent return on its investments to sustain the purchasing power of its corpus, pay its investment management costs, and distribute 5 percent of its assets annually for charitable purposes." This is a point made in the book "Irrational Exuberance" (in the context of advice for foundations, not legal requirement), but without any apparent awareness that At root, the bill exposes the conflict over whether foundations exist to make an impact quickly and divest themselves of assets, or whether they exist to perpetuate themselves.... Presumably some the former and some the latter, and I certainly have no problem with someone who wants to set up a fund to provide scholarships into the distant future, but any big organization receiving regular donations and continuing to build its endowment has to ask itself under what conditions that money would ever be spent, and why it's amassing it. Keeping money on hand to manage irregularies in the receipt of donations seems prudent, especially for those organizations whose missions are explicitly counter-cyclical, e.g. helping people who are in poverty whose numbers may grow when the economy weakens and donations decrease. A college or university, especially a small one, may have irregular expenses, e.g. an occasional need to build a new building, with time spent between such events. The way most schools hoard their endowments, though, reminds me of a Dilbert strip in which Dogbert, as a banker, offers his best rates on "perpetual CDs" — they earn a lot of interest, but you can never take your money out.Between those paragraphs is the comment that There is a more compelling financial argument to be made on behalf of lower pay-out levels. Less spending in the short term means more spending in the long term. The DeMarche study found that over the time period it examined, a foundation spending 5.5 percent of net assets annually would wind up giving more than it would have if it had been spending 6.5 percent annually. I'm having trouble imagining that there's anything to this study; if you assume a positive rate of return, and add the distributions without discounting future values (or use a discount rate below that of the return rate), of course investing the money results in a larger total disbursement. Perhaps the answer, ultimately, is the same as it always is to this question, whether it's faced by households, for-profit businesses, or non-profit charities: if the spending now is worth giving up what the money would otherwise (if invested) be worth in the future, spend more now, and otherwise cut back.
::: posted by dWj at 2:10 PM
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"[I]gnorance of the law is no defense", my brother notes, and that is a principle that makes sense so long as the law is reasonably knowable; it creates the appropriate incentives for people to be informed of the law, while the converse encourages ignorance of it. What is missing is an incentive for the government to make knowledge of the law cheap and easy; too much modern analysis of public policy in the popular press seems to suppose that incentives for government aren't necessary. Remember, Constitutional inefficiencies were put there on purpose.On a not entirely unrelated note, I'm not opposed to the state government using its real estate holdings as a rainy-day fund, though it seems a bit misleading to claim to have thereby balanced the budget in any but a statutory sense.
::: posted by dWj at 12:29 PM
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Looking into pentaquarks, I'm probably less impressed than I should be. I'd almost rather call it a K+- n resonance than a new particle, though that's probably understating the case; certainly it sounds surprisingly stable, and — cf. the news of the quark-gluon plasma — the quarks don't seem to really be grouped into a neutron and a Kaon in the middle; there may be more fraternization than in a standard nuclear resonance. (It's certainly being done at much lower temperatures and densities than the q-g plasma required.)
::: posted by dWj at 12:28 PM
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An applicant to my network of spies passes a credibility test if we go to Orange Alert in the near future. (A hallmark of the monger of metaphorical snake-oil is the prediction without specifics, and I should have pressed on how long the near future is, at least in terms of a decay length or something. My impression was a week or two; certainly if it's longer than that, it's not so much impressive.)
::: posted by dWj at 11:06 AM
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