The Wondering Mind

It’s typical to hear people bemoaning the dropping standards in broadcast media the world over. Whether you agree with such sentiments is really a matter of opinion, depending more, I suspect, on your tastes than fact.

For the British, and Anglophiles, the supposed drop in standards at the BBC has probably been a hot topic ever since the beloved corporation started broadcasting. With what seems like an endless pursuit of naked commercialisation of just about everything in Britain these days, such lamentations carry a little more weight than they perhaps did before, especially when they come from such respectable, and respected, sources like John Simpson.

Personally, I think their standard of journalism is simply not as exacting as they used to be. I seem to remember them being much more challenging. Much closer to some of the interviews on ‘Newsnight’ in tone and difficulty (although I do think Jeremy Paxman is an arrogant prig).

While that may be due to my memories playing tricks on me, I am apparently not that far off worrying about the standards of reporting at least. Just read this sorry excuse for a report. The most glaring errors are the typographical errors reporting the various band names, probably due to the reporter’s lack of familiarity with the said bands. (For the record, it is “Vampire Weekend”, “Gym Class Heroes”, and “Death Cab for Cutie”, not “Vampire weekend”, Gymclass Heroes”, or “Death Cab For a Cutie”.)

What may not be so jarring, but I think just as obvious, is that this reporter seems to be confusing celebrity endorsements with celebrity efforts to persuade people to vote. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS!

For the reporter’s benefit, I would like to point out that encouraging people to vote involves the celebrity telling people they should vote. That’s it. Celebrity endorsement is the celebrity telling people why they think the public should vote for a particular candidate.

This is important because the report doesn’t make much sense unless you make that distinction clear. While you may not agree with a particular celebrity endorsement, it may still persuade the audience to vote (perhaps for the opposition).

Once you recognise the distinction, it is not clear if there is a difference in conclusion of the two studies mentioned, as they may be talking about two different things. It also helps decypher the following comment.

Twenty-one-year old Michael Hangtan isn’t so sure.

“I think celebrities getting involved is kinda absurd… I think I’m gonna take it with a grain of salt,” he says.

Why would Hangtan think celebrities telling you to vote is “ridiculous” and should be taken “with a grain of salt”? That makes no sense. But if he is talking about celebrity endorsements, then that statement makes much more sense.

Aren’t news organisations supposed to have copy readers and editors, or something?

What are the chances that either McCain or Palin, especially Palin, know anything about the true origin of the term “maverick”?

On the other hand, Palin apparently reads “all” newspapers, so she probably read this article. In fact, I’m sure she must have read it. Sure, she does mock the Grey Lady on a regular basis, but she is not above quoting it when it suits her.

This proposed advertisement from Microsoft is, I guess, a continuation of their recent advertising campaign. Not too surprising, then, that it is terrible.

Look Microsoft: if you really have a bundle of cash you need to waste, just give it to me…

With all the controversy surrounding the current Olympics, you would think the IOC would refrain from doing anything to embarrass itself. But no.

Apparently, when they decided to discipline a Swedish wrestler for “violating the spirit of fair play of the Games”, they felt no sense of irony or sheepishness.

The I.O.C. accused him of violating rules of the Olympic Charter that ban demonstrations in official Olympic areas and prohibit the showing of disrespect for other Olympic athletes.

“The awards ceremony is a highly symbolic ritual,” the I.O.C. said in a statement. “Any disruption by any athlete, in particular a medalist, is in itself an insult to the other athletes and to the Olympic movement.”

You would think with their history, the IOC would just penalise the guy for bad sportsmanship and leave it at that. But no. They had to bring up the ban on demonstrations in an official Olympic area.

This is something that was already a source of criticism during the Beijing games, where protesters have to petition the Chinese government for a permit to protest in designated areas, miles away from the games. And we all remember the last time this clause was infamously invoked by the IOC.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were expelled from the 1968 Mexico City Games after their glove-fisted salute during the awards ceremony for the 200-meter race. The expulsions have since come under immense criticism, and Smith and Carlos have drawn widespread praise for their nonviolent protest of social and racial inequality.

IOC and George W. Bush: separated at birth?

Having commented on the rather odious hypocrisy of Monbiot, it was gratifying to find this devastating critique of another piece by Monbiot by someone working for the same publisher as Monbiot.

Sure, we are hypocrites. Every one of us, almost by definition. Hypocrisy is the gap between your aspirations and your actions.

No, Mr. Monbiot. I quote the Oxford English Dictionary Online:

The assuming of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, with dissimulation of real character or inclinations, esp. in respect of religious life or beliefs; hence in general sense, dissimulation, pretence, sham. Also, an instance of this.

Unlike what politicians and Monbiot would have you believe, the gap between one’s aspirations and one’s actions doesn’t have mean hypocrisy.

When I saw that Arthur Scargill had written an op-ed in the Guardian, I had to read it.

For those who did not grow up in Britain, Scargill used to be the leader of National Union of Mineworkers. He led the miners on a disastrous strike when Maggie Thatcher decided to end massive subsidies on British coal, resulting in the closure of many, if not most, mines in Britain. He was also the man who perhaps single-handedly drove British politics right and tarred the labour movement for at least a generation. In other words, the man is a douche bag or an idiot.

Scargill represented all that was wrong with the labour union movement in Britain at the time. The mines were completely uneconomic and made no sense. At the time (early 1980’s) Britain was still recovering from an economy that was so poor for so long it was almost bailed out by the IMF. Under those circumstances, overpaying miners for coal no one wanted (because it was over priced) was never going to get the sympathy of the general public.

Urged by the zealotry of Scargill, many miners engaged in violent demonstrations which appalled most people and resulted even in several cases of deaths. Instead of arguing for help for unemployed miners, who had no other career prospects, and their families, Scargill demanded things remain exactly as they were. Instead of campaigning for communities decimated by the closure of the largest, and only major, employer in town, he railed against cheaper coal from Poland and elsewhere.

This lunacy helped shape the opinion of a generation, who became convinced that the labour movement offered no solutions for society.

Now we have him writing for the Guardian. I can’t wait to read what he has to say.

Sure enough, it’s nothing less than I would expect from a myopic firebrand. I won’t spend too much time writing off his silly arguments, except to note the following. There is currently no system of carbon capture available commercially. None. And most obviously, coal has the most CO2 emissions of any fossil fuel; that is a fact. If we are to adopt CO2 emission controls he suggests, we would be much better off using every other fuel except coal first.

Scargill is still fighting the same war he waged against Maggie Thatcher. He’s on an ideological quest of Quixotic proportions, and it really has nothing to do with doing what’s best for our environment.

But as someone concerned about environmental issues, it’s disheartening to read something like the op-ed that Scargill was railing against. It’s really depressing, as some environmental campaigners appear to be taking a similar position.

To start, I will state that nuclear energy is hugely expensive and potentially dangerous, requiring, without exception, subsidies to work anywhere in the world. A large part of the reason it’s so expensive is that there is no good way to deal with the nuclear waste. The best solutions are to store it somewhere far away from any human habitats and hope the thing won’t leak into anything for the thousands of years it takes to become non-radioactive. Oh, and then you still have to deal with the waste as much of the waste is also toxic (something nobody ever likes to talk about).

What I really object to about stances like that of Monbiot is that he is happy to take this path as it effectively passes the buck. He doesn’t have to deal with the nuclear waste question since he’ll be dead, so great! Maybe he hates kids.

As many true environmental campaigners have pointed out, because nuclear energy is so expensive, you can give the development of alternative energy sources a huge boost by putting the nuclear money into alternative energy.

This argument does have one major drawback. Like drilling for more oil, it wont’ fill any of today’s need for energy. In fact, because much development still needs to be made, the payoff is uncertain, as is our expectation of when that payoff might arrive. So if you take this path, you may have to face the prospect, for now, of living with energy supplies insufficient to meet your needs. This will probably cause economic suffering (or at least compromise) of an unknown degree.

The argument for nuclear energy, however, demonstrates a breathtaking degree of selfishness. Monbiot is making the argument that because he and his generation are unwilling to make sacrifices now, he wants to force future generations to make sacrifices on his behalf. Producing energy now so that he can drive around, watch TV, and fly to Majorca for his vacations is of no benefit to future generations, yet they are the ones left cleaning up the mess of his lifestyle.

Like almost everything else in the public sphere, there is no leader willing to make the argument that we need to make sacrifices to do the right thing. You see it in budget surpluses, going to war, and now the environment as well.

The environmental problems we face today aren’t really about carbon capture and nuclear waste. It’s about the fact that as a generation, we seem to have lost something in our collective character since the times when we knew how to make sacrifices in striving for greater things.

Those of you keeping up with international events, the currency in Zimbabwe is a running joke, at least for those of us not having to use it. It is literally a currency not worth the paper it’s written on. So it was only a matter of time before the economy reverted to some form of bartering.

Now we have news that people in Zimbabwe are using petrol (gas to the American audience) coupons as hard currency. The coupons have value, whereas the official currency does not, because it is pegged to a valuable commodity: petrol. This is historically how fiat money (the type of money that we use: one that has no intrinsic value except one that we all arbitrarily, or by government fiat, agree to give it) has obtained value.

For historians among you, you will note that the Bretton Woods Agreement created an international monetary system which pegged many countries’ currency to the US dollar. The value of the dollar and the other currencies were pegged to, and backed up, by the value of gold, which is historically how many currencies were valued. One of the reasons why countries have been able to adopt free exchange rates, and effectively abandon the need to back their currency with gold reserves, is that the initial system, a quasi-barter system, succeeded in establishing sufficient confidence in the currencies that people no longer required actual commodities backing the currencies as assurance.

The adoption of coupons is terrible on security grounds, as the coupons have none of the anti-counterfeiting measures that a real currency note has. This would inevitably tempt counterfeiting, which, when it becomes rampant, will subject the coupons to devaluation themselves, as people lose trust in the validity of the currency.

The wide availability of counterfeit coupons will also mean that the supply of coupons will outstrip the supply of petrol to back them up. The coupons will necessarily, and naturally, lose value as a result. The net effect will be return of inflation, as the coupons begin to lose value much as the official currency before them did.

All this is macro economics 101. Which is why it’s enlightening to compare what’s happening in Zimbabwe to what happened with the U.S. housing crisis. As the latest round of news about losses comes out, you have to wonder about the business men who took us to this crisis, and the politicians who let them.

Look at how the banks sold the mortgages and the bonds tied to them, and there is no way any of it ever made sense, except as a scam. There was, and is, no logical way that there was anything to back up the value of these inflated instruments. The Zimbabwean currency is worthless because their people can recognise that; why couldn’t highly paid bankers and politicians in the U.S. do the same?

Fact is, they did. They just ignored the facts and reality because they could make a quick buck by doing so. All the more depressing when you consider how many of these people have such an inflated view of their self worth, and an appallingly low opinion of fellow men.

This is not going to be a detailed exposition on the pitfalls of managing health care. It’s a complex issue and I don’t have that much time to write this blog. But an article about the British National Health clearly illustrates a key limitations of the debate on this issue, especially in the U.S.

The article contains a quote from Professor John Wagstaff, the director of the Wales Cancer Trials Network.

The possibility that we clinicians may be prevented from offering Sutent to our patients is an outrage and a devastating blow to the kidney cancer community.

This statement is so unreasonable as to be silly. His patients are not the only patients in need of treatments to be paid by the National Health Service. Unless he is suggesting that people in Britain pay more taxes to pay for his precious drugs, following his advice would mean patients in need of some other treatment going without. That is a debate the people and parliament can have, and if they decide to pay more taxes, all well and good.

Otherwise, with limited resources to pay for health care, the most responsible thing for the NHS to do would be to give priority to those treatments deemed to provide the greatest benefit to the taxpayers in general.

We should certainly treat cases such as this with sympathy, as Nice appears to have done in this instance. But if we are going to come to grips with health care costs, people such as Wagstaff must learn to temper their unrealistic demands and expectations from modern health care.

Apparently some apparatchiks in the EU bureaucracy were given the enviable job of figuring out how to protect EU citizens. Their answer? Take away all rights from the citizens.

The report of this little cabal highlighted two things which seem so obvious the only people who fail to see it are politicians and “security officials and experts”.

First, the report was

drafted by the Future Group of interior and justice ministers from six EU member states – Germany, France, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

This likely group

calls for Europe to create an expeditionary corps of armed gendarmerie for paramilitary intervention overseas.

None of these countries have large military forces and have seen very little actual military action in recent years. (Depending on your politics, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the countries or their military.)

Out of the six countries, I am only aware of Germany having a significant number of troops currently involved in intervention action; in Afghanistan. But all reports state that German troops are effectively hiding in areas of the country where they are not needed, and Germany has refused to move any of its troops into the areas where military intervention is needed.

If these six countries do indeed form some gendarmerie, I will guarantee that they will spend all their time sitting around while politicians in Berlin and Paris wring their hands until any crisis is all over and the time for intervention has passed.

The other thing of note is who was involved in the group; only interior and justice ministers. In other words, people whose job is to deal with internal security in their countries. Then is it any wonder that their solution is for more security, more surveillance, and less privacy? Like the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer…

I’m not ignoring the fact that these people do have a real job to do, of protecting the lives of citizens. I just can’t help but notice that these people, and others like them, always claim to be protecting us, by taking away from us the very things that make living worthwhile.

If you’ve had the pleasure, or the pain, of reading a lot of academic papers, you’ll know that academic research papers which say anything worthwhile are few and far between. Which is very depressing, when you consider that even among papers with something to say, finding those that are well written and readable is much harder than you would think, or hope.

So I’m always excited when I find news articles about interesting research; they usually tell me everything I need to know in a readable format, and I can go look up the original paper if I was so inclined. Which is why when I found this article, I was keen to find out what it was all about. Imagine my disappointment when I realised what a poor piece of “research” it was.

(I feel I should point out here that this research appears not to be easily available on the web, so I have not been able to read the original report. It is possible that the original paper addresses many of the points I am about to make and the news article has done an injustice not addressing them. Unless the article actually misrepresented the research, however, I doubt it.)

Anyone who has attended college could have told you the results of this research. College is very much a time of extended adolescence for many students. High school graduates who don’t go onto college usually have to find a way to pay the bills, so they may not “grow up” any faster, but they do have more obligations they now have to live up to. This means less time for “unstructured socializing” among non-college students.

For many students, the greater “hanging out” with friends is usually accompanied by drinking. This is a combination which often results in stupid behaviour, like property theft, in most demographic groups, not just college students.

Then what’s so surprising about this study? Well, according to Patrick M. Seffrin, the study’s primary investigator and a graduate student and research assistant in the department of sociology and the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University,

“College attendance is commonly associated with self-improvement and upward mobility. Yet this research suggests that college may actually encourage, rather than deter, social deviance and risk-taking.”

That’s supposed to be the “take-away” from this study. Unfortunately, it’s not the only possible interpretation, and it is probably the wrong one.

College attendance is associated with self-improvement and upward mobility. But Mr. Seffrin is implying with his statement that college attendance causes self-improvement and upward mobility. Students of basic econometrics will tell you that even if you establish correlation, that does not necessarily demonstrate causality.

Specifically, we have the potential problem of self-selection. That means that when we see people with more education doing better later in life, we can’t be sure whether that was because of the extra education, or because those people who are more likely to succeed tend to seek out more education. This is an issue that is far from settled in the study of education. So right off the bat Mr. Seffrin is making assumptions he shouldn’t.

Thinking along those lines, it is entirely possible that the type and rate of social development of people who go to college may be different from the types of people who do not. That may be the explanation for what is going on here, in which case people who go to college may simply develop later even if they did not go to college. That’s a difficult question to answer, but it needs to be addressed for Mr. Seffrin to be making the claims he is. I doubt the study contains enough information to address this issue.

Even if we assume that “college may actually encourage, rather than deter, social deviance and risk-taking” as Mr. Seffrin suggests, there are still problems with the report’s conclusions. Those are loaded terms Mr. Seffrin is using, suggesting that college students are engaging in behaviour that should be detrimental to their later development. But unless there is more information contained in the results which were omitted from this report, that is simply a subjective interpretation of the data. And it’s probably the wrong interpretation.

Social deviation is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the social norm. For example, being for emancipation of slaves probably made you a social deviant in the pre-Civil War South. And deviance and risk-taking, during a period of development could be a good thing for young people. It really depends on the type of activity, and just how far it goes. Having the opportunity to take risks and experiment in a relatively safe environment, like a college campus, may actually be a growing and learning experience that is good for you in the long run.

To be fair, you can probably find lots of studies out there that are trivial or questionable like this one. It’s a result of the over-preoccupation with econometrics that seems to have gripped social sciences today.

Use of statistics and econometrics had been a boon to many social sciences, especially economics. It has enabled social scientists to test their theories against empirical data as physical scientists have done for centuries. This has allowed them to develop and refine their theories by observing real life and conducting experiments and comparing their theories against their observations.

Having had more than my fair share of econometrics, I can definitely say that it is a difficult and rigorous discipline. It is a challenge finding the correct econometric method to use and to apply it correctly. Which is why social scientists are so enamoured with good econometrics. But good econometrics is no substitute for insight.

Thomas Edison said,

Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

People would do well to remember that still requires at least one percent inspiration.