20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value.
Vilfredo Pareto
Smoke and Mirrors: Stupid Government Tricks
When I used to watch David Letterman, he had a recurring bit called 'stupid pet tricks'. (He probably still does.) He also has had 'stupid human tricks'; I don't know if he's included government economists and statisticians in that group. A simple Google search shows that I'm not the only person whom has thought of substituting 'government' into the boilerplate.
If you thought federal statisticians aren't simply satisfied with manipulating employment and inflation statistics, there's good reason: they still have enough lipstick left to put on a pig. Take, for instance, GDP....
According to MSN:
Starting in July, the U.S. gross domestic product will officially jump by 3%. The change isn't due to some miraculous economic event but rather from a shift in the way the government looks at statistics in the digital age."We’re capitalizing research and development," [an associate director at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis] Moulton told the Financial Times, "and also this category referred to as entertainment, literary and artistic originals, which would be things like motion picture originals, long-lasting television programs, books and sound recordings." The revisions will make the U.S. one of the first countries to adopt a new international standard for tallying up GDP figures.
Gary North's sarcastic response is priceless:
This is the cost-of-production theory of value resurrected from the conceptual grave!
I guess this means that sinking dry holes are productive.
Well, why not? The government counts government expenditures as productive. Dry holes are surely as productive as the federal government. Probably they are a lot more productive. Think Iraq. Think Afghanistan.
This rewriting of economic history will be funded by the government.
Don’t call this a conceptual dry hole. Call it government productivity.IPPON!
Ron Paul, "Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston", Thumbs UP!
Sometimes I think I live in Wonderland (where's Alice?) I go to a purported libertarian Republican blog and find almost as many articles covering Islamist radicalism as some neo-con blogs; I go to an alleged Tea Party news portal, but I find populist news items critical of immigration and abortion, the Obama Administration (e.g., Benghazi), etc. Granted, I can argue a pro-liberty critique on these topics, generally limited government. pro-market people are interested in scaling back government on both the domestic and international policy. I didn't find a single news item on either portal referencing the heavy-handed police state tactics in the Boston terror manhunt. For that matter, except for certain personalities like radio host Alex Jones and liberal comedian Bill Maher, the response has been muted at best; Reason has done a couple of pieces (e.g., here: apparently, most sampled Boston respondents were willing to throw the liberty of other people under the bus), I really haven't heard major national figures raising the topic, while I have in a couple of segments over the past week. I was curious: I thought I was like the boy observing the emperor is wearing no clothes.
We have facts like this one, which should disturb anyone evolved beyond lynch-mob mentality:
The FBI’s not saying what led police to fire on the boat where Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding, as they reveal he was unarmed while hiding in the boat during a stand-off that lasted an hour and a half. The hunt for a suspected bomber may have been something new for the media, but the indiscriminate shootings shouldn’t be. In Ohio late last year, cops fired 137 shots in about 20 seconds into a car after a chase that started because one cop thought he heard a gunshot. No guns were recovered and the driver and passenger were both killed. And in February, during another manhunt, for ex-cop Christopher Dorner, the LAPD fired more than a hundred times into a truck that was a different make and model than Dorner’s. The two women in the car, a mother and daughter aged 71 and 47, weren’t seriously injured.And where are my fellow fiscal hawks about a third of a billion dollars spent by G-men over the manhunt? Keep in mind--it wasn't the G-men whom found the suspect; he was discovered by a resident finally allowed to go out into his own backyard and noticed his boat cover had been tampered with.
Ron Paul does not fail us; he's written another brilliant essay: A sample:
Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.
Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.Defending Dr. Biden: Cooke, "Diagnosing Dr. Biden: The second lady exemplifies a bloated class of people with irrelevant, unimpressive titles", Thumbs DOWN!
The Vice-President's wife has an EdD; now frankly I have enough disgust with the general state of public education today and dubious Master's degrees that are little more than a ticket to a substantial teacher pay raise without a scintilla of evidence of relevant improved educational performance or productivity. I'm not exactly sure what value there is in an education doctorate given the status quo of our international mediocrity. But I am not going to pass judgment on Dr. Biden's record of research and teaching without reviewing it.
This is not the first time I've looked at this issue; I have a vested interest on this topic because, unlike Barbara Boxer, I earned my title: there's a lot of sacrifice--for 3 years after my MBA, I worked half-time teaching for a stipend that barely covered expenses, I took a number of tough courses (I remember one research design class where I was one of 2 A's in a room largely filled with other PhD students: ask me what I think of today's grade inflation), I had to pass a 2-day written comprehensive exam in my major field, a half-day exam in my minor field, and an oral comprehensive exam (and I had no copies of past exams or even usable advice; I was simply told to expect anything and I would do just fine). Then I had to conceive and propose an original research project and put together a dissertation committee: I had to defend my dissertation proposal and then carry out the research. In my case, that included data collection involving several companies in the Houston area, easier said than done. I then had to defend the resulting dissertation. That's what gave me the right to put "PhD" after my name or to be referred to as "Dr. Guillemette". I'm not saying everyone does the same thing; for example, I know of people whom have done an offshoot study off their chairman's research program. That wasn't the case for me. I didn't even get to enjoy my commencement day. A number of immediate family membeeers attended, but not one brought a camera with him (and the university didn't photograph the event either).
Charles Cooke's snarky column I found offensive because it's a disrespectful attitude which I find more the rule than the exception in America . I unsuccessfully fought at UWM to get them to allow consideration of IT professional/managerial experience in MIS PhD program admissions.My research topics focused on practical issues in the profession, I brought current topics into my classroom lectures, but when a recession ended my academic career, I found many practitioners are/were openly contemptuous and dismissive of "ivory tower/can't function in the real world" academics .
Just a short example to make my point: a few years back I was getting gift solicitations from UH--which addressed my MBA degree, not my PhD. I found that odd; when they followed up with a phone solicitation, I asked why. The confused solicitor promised to check. I was later told that apparently a number of similar dual degree graduates preferred to go by their MBA as "more prestigious".
Professionally and personally, I don't insist on using the title; it depends more on the context. In academia I would. I normally consider its use in non-academic contexts to be indicative of good manners and much-appreciated respect. Some professors (e.g., Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek) don't like the custom (but if you look at his signature letters to the editor, he lists his endowed chair at George Mason University, etc.) I don't recall "Dr. Phil" McGraw, a psychologist, getting questioned on this issue (please don't call me "Dr. Ron").
But let me respond to the general point posed by Cooke. What he doesn't realize is that the term "doctor" was originally used in an academic contexts. For example, Catholics have referred to "Doctors of the Church", and they were NOT physicians. No doubt Cooke didn't take Latin in high school: (Latin doctor, teacher, from Latin docere, to teach). Eventually certain professional degree programs (including MD) similarly assumed the title of doctor, without the same commitment to original research and university teaching.
Answers.com has a good summary and I'll quote:
PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, MD is Doctor of Medicine although both are addressed by the title of Dr. A doctor of Medicine is trained to administer medical treatments to patients who come to her/him for help. A PhD was originally an academic degree, and it still is. The PhD has a similar course requirement for the respective field of study; however the PhD program requires a PhD student to also provide a significant contribution back to their respective field of study also know as a dissertation or doctoral thesis. Bluntly put the PhD has a higher status academically than any professional doctorate (MD, DO, etc.)And just for Cooke's benefit, not one person using the title in addressing me has ever confused me with being a medical doctor; I've never been asked for free medical advice, and no matchmaker has ever fixed me up with a girl with the hope of having a doctor in the family.
What is Cooke's problem with showing Mrs. Biden a little respect for her academic accomplishment? Talk about sweating the small stuff; it's a few seconds in introductions. I suspect it boils down to professional jealousy, and it's petty behavior. It's like some average or short-statured people ridiculing tall people. The reality is most of us secretly wanted to be tall, all other things being equal, but it wasn't in our genes. I myself never teased tall kids; maybe it's because I was a bit of a geek and also got teased over my "Einstein" hair.
What Kind of Education Choice?
Gosnell Trial Closing Arguments
In two and half hour closing, #Gosnell atty McMahon says no "scientific evidence" any babies were alive when necks snipped. - jdmullaneThe picture I'm getting of this late-term abortionist defense attorney is the prosecution is "racist" and his multi-millionaire client is a philanthropist provider of free health care, a pillar of the community. Again, he's making the preposterous case that Gosnell went around severing the spinal cords of already dead babies (Matthew Archbold makes the same point here; some charges were dropped earlier when the judge apparently dropped some charges on the basis some of Gosnell's employees/prosecution witnesses were not suitably medically credentialed to attest to babies being born alive.)
Infanticide: It's Not Just Gosnell
I loathe how "Doctor" Santangelo talks about letting the baby expire, i.e., die, as if a baby is carton of milk. And comparing a prematurely delivered baby to a terminal-stage cancer patient? A baby is not a cancer; he or she is a gift from God. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems to be, at minimum, criminally negligent homicide.
“[What if the baby is born alive?] Technically – you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But, you know, it probably wouldn’t. It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point. Let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know? Then we would do things – we would – we would not help it. We wouldn’t intubate. It would be, you know, uh, a person, a terminal person in the hospital, let’s say, that had cancer, you know? You wouldn’t do any extra procedures to help that person survive. Like ‘do not resuscitate’ orders. We would do the same things here.”
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel and Townhall |
A woman in Florida is being praised for turning in over $36,000 in cash to the police after finding it on a golf course. Authorities are saying it's a selfless move, while the woman is like, “Good. Because I found $80,000.” - Jimmy Fallon
[The IRS signed her up.... Now we know why, according to GAI, Ohama spends over twice as much time on golf and vacation as on meetings on the economy.]
The United States Treasury announced that they will put into circulation a newly designed $100 bill in October. Of course, by that time, it should be worth about 50 bucks, but that's Ok.- Jay Leno
[Unfortunately, it costs them more to print one....]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"
Cool Science: Medical 3D Printing
(HT Carpe Diem) Everything From Implantable Ears To Personalized Cancer Treatment....
