Quotulatiousness

July 31, 2010

USDOT holding back Toyota report because it’s too favourable to Toyota?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Toyota has been claiming for quite some time that they have found no fault in their cars that could cause unintended acceleration. The US government’s report is reported to support that claim, but officials have been delaying the release of that information:

Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation have at least temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota Motor Corp. in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, according to a recently retired agency official.

George Person, who retired July 3 after 27 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in an interview that the decision to not go public with the data for now was made over the objections of some officials at NHTSA.

“The information was compiled. The report was finished and submitted,” Mr. Person said. “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it,” he added, referring to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair, said NHTSA is still reviewing data from the Toyota vehicles the agency is examining. “Its review is not yet complete. The investigation remains ongoing,” she said.

It could be suspected that the reason the government doesn’t want to release the report is that it pretty much exonerates Toyota after their trial-by-media over the sudden acceleration issue. The US government’s holdings in GM and Chrysler make them effectively competitors with Toyota, and the media has done a fine job of trying to depress Toyota sales (to indirectly benefit GM and Chrysler).

But that would be an unfair thing to suspect, wouldn’t it?

QotD: Take experts’ advice with a pinch of salt

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

More and more, the history of dietary guidelines that our public-health authorities promulgate resembles the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which the main character, awaking from a centuries-long slumber, learns that every food we once thought bad for us is actually good, starting with steak and chocolate. But you wouldn’t know that from government experts’ increasing efforts to nudge us into their approved diets. In 2006, New York City passed the nation’s first ban on the use of trans fats by restaurants, and other cities followed suit, though trans fats constitute just 2 percent of Americans’ caloric intake. Now the Bloomberg administration is trying to push food manufacturers nationwide to reduce their use of salt — and the nutrition panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines similarly recommends reducing salt intake to a maximum of 1,500 milligrams daily (down from 2,300 a day previously). Yet Dr. Michael Alderman, a hypertension specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, observed in the New York Times that because sodium is an essential component of our diets, the city’s effort amounts to a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health that could have unintended consequences. And in 2006, Harvard Medical School professor Norman Hollenberg concluded that while some people benefit from reduced salt intake, the evidence “is too inconsistent and generally too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level.”

Steven Malanga, “Egg on Their Faces: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous”, City Journal, 2010-07

That 77 cents myth again

Filed under: Economics, Education, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:30

Have you heard that women earn only 77 cents for each dollar earned by men? Do you believe it? I hope not, because it’s provably false:

Blau and Kahn found that 59% of the gender differential could be explained by non-discriminatory things: experience, chosen occupation, chosen industry, etc. So the “77 cents” statistic can’t be due to discrimination:

  • Estimated wage gap based on “77 cents” statistic = $0.23 per hour
  • Amount explained by nondiscriminatory factors = $0.14 per hour
  • Amount NOT explained = $0.09 per hour

According to Blau and Kahn, the most that could be attributed to discrimination is $0.09 per hour. And this assumes that their model accounts for ALL legitimate nondiscriminatory factors.

Are there legitimate nondiscriminatory factors that were omitted from their model? Probably — no model is perfect. Some people have argued that men are better negotiators than women, and because of this men tend to get higher starting salaries. Are differences in negotiating skills discriminatory? Perhaps, based on the way that we raise our daughters (that’s a sociological issue). But the employer can’t be held responsible for differences in negotiating skills, can he?

Something else to consider: overtime hours, shift premiums, etc., may cause a difference in earnings between men and women, even though their base rates of pay are the same. If a woman chooses to work fewer overtime hours than her male counterpart, resulting in lower earnings, is that discrimination?

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

Vikings training camp opens

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

The Minnesota Vikings opened training camp yesterday at Mankato. Not attending, as expected, is quarterback Brett Favre. Two players started camp on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list: cornerback Cedric Griffin (recovering from a torn ACL) and wide receiver Sidney Rice (hip injury from the NFC title game).

Pat Williams reportedly lost 18 pounds over the off-season, prompting coach Brad Childress to say “Pat’s big enough to eat hay and (poop) in the street. I’m not sure how he lost those 18 pounds, but I’m happy he did.”

July 30, 2010

Chevy’s re-Volt-ing new song

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 18:45

Iowahawk tries to find the right way to introduce the new Chevy Volt (click through to get the full linkulacious glory):

Consider, if you will, Chevy’s once proud musical history: In the Fifties, Dinah Shore famously saw the USA in her Chevrolet. In the Sixties the Beach Boys saved their pennies and saved their dimes for a 4-speed dual quad positraction 409, while Shutting Down a 413 Superstock Dodge with a fuel injected Stingray; Paul Revere and the Raiders countered with a porcupine Chevelle SS 396. Those vatos from War rocked the Seventies gas crisis in an Impala Low-ri-der, while Sammy Johns was alright with makin’ love in his creepy Chevy Van. In the Eighties, the Dead Milkmen sang the praises of a Bitchin’ Camaro; In the Nineties the Ramones further egged it on with Go Little Camaro Go.

Fine iPod selections all, and in praise of a revered American car brand. Now behold — if you dare — the brave new world of government-sponsored Chevrolet song.

Exactly right

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:32

Blogging will be light

Filed under: Administrivia — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:18

I’m working to a client deadline, so normal blogging activity may resume later today or tomorrow.

July 29, 2010

Symbols matter, but not as much as reality

Filed under: Education, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 20:49

Ace puts his finger on one of the key differences between “the masses” and the “governing class”:

That’s why the “Political Class” — the Gee Aren’t I Terribly Enlightened? crowd — opposes this. They talk about that a lot — the symbolism of the thing.

[. . .]

I’m noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.

And I thought, “Gee, no, actually it’s not a symbol of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division.” Because, see, you’re rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it’s a real-world division because now you can’t get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.

I think there is a type of person — well-represented in the “Political Class” and in progressive politics — that has learned, from college, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.

And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their “symbolic” barricades and all.

QotD: You can’t beat the media

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:16

Stephen Harper is feeling some of that effect from the millions he put into “infrastructure” projects as part of Canada’s own stimulus plan. You will recall that Ottawa solicited proposals from local governments before handing over the money. Inevitably, a goodly number turned out to be . . . shall we say . . . not entirely crucial, leading to articles like this, pointing out that — oh dear — taxpayers were financing bocce courts via deficit spending. Not to mention sending money to rich people in good neighbourhoods! Even funding for the arts — which Harper was previously criticized for providing too little of — was thrown back in his face as a cheap attempt to correct his earlier gaffe. (If he hadn’t corrected the gaffe, of course, it could have been portrayed as a “continuing snub.” Don’t try to beat the media folks, you can’t win.)

So what’s the lesson here? Politicians should ignore the experts and do what makes people happy, even if it’s unlikely to have much long-term benefit? Politicians should never expect the public to appreciate their efforts unless there’s some kind of individual payoff? Politicians should stay out of the economy, because no one is ever satisfied anyway?

Pick any one of those. Just don’t run for president or prime minister if you want to be popular.

Kelly McParland, “Obama could save America and lose the election”, National Post, 2010-07-29

BC government finds an issue to distract the media

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Adrian MacNair linked to this Vancouver Sun article, saying “”B.C. halts penis-arousal test for youth sex offenders” Say whaaaaaaatttt?”

A moratorium has been placed on tests done on B.C. youth sex offenders measuring their penis arousal in response to sexual stimuli after the province’s top child advocate launched an immediate investigation Wednesday.

The device in question is called a “penile plethysmograph” — or PPG. In a lab setting, it is attached to male genitals so technicians can measure changes in “penile tumescence” — essentially erections that reflect the state of arousal in subjects shown photographs of adults, children and even babies in varying states of undress while at the same time being read a story that describes coercive or forced sexual activity.

So, until it came to light, the government was showing provocative images and reading pornographic stories to teenage boys to find out if they got erections during the process? Would anyone be surprised to find that teenage boys found this whole exercise sexually arousing? Teenage boys are hard-wired to find all sorts of things sexually arousing!

The point of the test is to reportedly predict whether offenders have gained control of their deviant arousal patterns through treatment or if they have not learned how to suppress deviance and will be a strong risk for re-offending.

Again, we’re talking about teenage boys . . . I’d be more suspicious if they found that one of them was managing not to react to such stimulus!

Okay, yes, I’m unfairly stereotyping, at least to some degree. But this sort of “test” or “experiment” would be flagrantly illegal if it were being done by anyone other than a government-funded health organization, wouldn’t it?

Replacing one impossible ideal with another

Filed under: Britain, Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Colby Cosh linked to this Guardian article, saying “I’m afraid she’s right. ‘Thin’ is something every girl can at least strive for. Only God can make Christina Hendricks.”

When it comes to the ideal female body-shape the pipe cleaner is out, the hourglass is in — or at least it will be if the new equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, manages to chisel out her will on the perfect body image.

“In the autumn the minister will convene the first of a series of roundtable discussions with members of the fashion industry, including magazine editors, models and advertisers, to discuss how to boost body confidence among the young,” the Sunday Times reported yesterday.

One might think that one of the first steps to boost such confidence might be to abolish school weigh-ins and make puppy fat a normal rite of passage rather than the subject of a health warning via the National Child Measurement Programme. (Can any woman think of anything more likely to have produced a fear of being on the chunky side than turning up to school one morning and being plonked on a set of scales?)

While I’m happy to have any excuse to post a photo of the delightful “YoSaffBridge”, this is another example of Nanny State thinking: (some) women have body image issues, therefore we must spring into action and fix it.

Rather than replacing the old impossible images with new impossible images (as the creative director of Harper’s Bazaar pointed out, the fashion industry exists to create the fantasy you’ll never live up to) an equalities minister should throw out all notions of obsessing about feminine beauty and concentrate on helping young girls think about the size of their achievements rather than the flatness of their navels, and the scale of their ambitions rather than — in Joanie’s case — the rather spectacular power of their bosoms.

An end to ASBOs in sight?

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

BBC News thinks that the much-maligned ASBO may be going away.

Home Secretary Theresa May has signalled the possible end of Asbos in England and Wales, saying it is “time to move beyond” the orders, first introduced by Labour 11 years ago.

They have been imposed on 10-year-old boys and 80-year-old women, used to sober up persistent drunks and mute noisy neighbours.

Of course, one of the more useful aspects of the ASBO has been to allow the media an easy way to find stories to run in the quiet times, like this one:

A 60-year-old man from Northampton was banned from dressing as a schoolgirl.

Peter Trigger’s Asbo stopped him from wearing skirts or showing bare legs on school days between 0830 and 1000 and 1445 and 1600.

The authorities acted after parents complained he was waiting near a primary school dressed in clothes similar to school uniform. He then breached this in December last year by bending over in front of his neighbours repeatedly.

You see, without the ASBO, reporters would have to dig up gems like that themselves, instead of having the local police blotter highlight the most newsworthy items for them.

I often wondered, when reading some of the weird and whacky things that people were hit with ASBOs over, why existing laws weren’t applied (lots of these violations were clearly against the law before ASBOs were created). The intent may have been to give judges more flexibility in sentencing, but in practice it appears to have created a “market” in unusual sentences and distorted the notion of equality before the law.

Other things that (some) economists discover unexpectedly

Filed under: Economics, Government, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:43

Terry Kinder rounds up a few more things that economists find surprising:

Other Things That Surprise Economists (other than the economy sucks):

  • Sunrise
  • Sunset
  • Lifetime Television has a lot of chick flicks
  • Milli Vanilli were lip syncing
  • Summer
  • Politicians lie
  • Gravity
  • Christmas
  • Their own shadows
  • Sneezing
  • Near beer isn’t
  • Knock knock jokes

. . . and a whole lot more.

To be fair, Terry is really poking fun at only some economists, but the 90% that work for the government are giving the rest of them a bad name.

July 28, 2010

“If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.”

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 17:17

If you’re not a bit of a word geek, you can safely skip this post. “Johnson” looks at the role of the copy editor:

Having recently had my forthcoming book copy-edited, I jumped right on the link (at Andrew Sullivan) to read Lori Fradkin’s “What It’s Really Like To Be A Copy Editor”. I’d struggled for hours with my manuscript, wondering what to stet and what not to stet, marvelling both at my copy editor’s care and at the confusion she introduced in places. So I was eager to see what Ms Fradkin had to say about the other side of this relationship.

But the experience isn’t quite what he hopes: Ms Fradkin is inclined to a “because the dictionary says so” approach that “Johnson” finds overly restrictive.

This is not to say “everything is right” and to get back into the tired prescriptivist-descriptivist debate. A debate about hyphens or compounds should have something useful to say about language itself. For example, The Economist hyphenates compounds when they are used as modifiers: interest-rate hikes, balance-of-payments crises, and so forth. These aren’t hyphenated when used as nouns. (“Interest rates must go up.”) I like this hyphenation. It helps prevent so-called garden-path misanalysis, by letting the reader know that even though he’s seeing two nouns in a row, they should be understood as a compound modifier, and another noun is coming up. In other words, if someone asked me why I hyphenate “interest-rate hikes”, this is what I’d tell them, and not “Because the style book says so.” The latter answer is worse than wrong; it’s not interesting.

In some cases I might disagree with our style book. I obey it nonetheless, because rulings, even when arbitrary, keep a style consistent, so readers aren’t finding “Web sites” here and “websites” there in the same article. Readers expect and enjoy uniformity as a mark of quality.

More on that elusive right to photography

Filed under: Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Jon, my former virtual landlord sent me a link to this article, with more on the “you have the right only if they don’t stop you” aspect of imaginary laws and their not-so-imaginary enforcers:

Legally, it’s pretty much always okay to take photos in a public place as long as you’re not physically interfering with traffic or police operations. As Bert Krages, an attorney who specializes in photography-related legal problems and wrote Legal Handbook for Photographers, says, “The general rule is that if something is in a public place, you’re entitled to photograph it.” What’s more, though national-security laws are often invoked when quashing photographers, Krages explains that “the Patriot Act does not restrict photography; neither does the Homeland Security Act.” But this doesn’t stop people from interfering with photographers, even in settings that don’t seem much like national-security zones.

Tennessee law student Morgan Manning has compiled a list of incidents in which individuals were wrongly stopped. Cases like that of Seattle photographer Bogdan Mohora, who was arrested for taking pictures of police arresting a man and had his camera confiscated. Or NASA employee Walter Miller, who was stopped for photographing an art exhibit near the Indianapolis City-County Building and told that “homeland security” forbade photos of the facility. More recently, a CBS news crew was turned back from shooting the oil-fouled gulf coastline by two U.S. Coast Guard officers who said they were enforcing “BP’s rules.”

All of which leads people to believe that there really are laws restricting peoples’ right to take photographs or videos, because police and other government officials keep acting like there are such laws.

So what should you do if you’re taking photos and a security guard or police officer approaches you and tells you to stop? First, be polite. Security people have tough jobs and probably mean well. Ask them what legal authority they have to make you stop. (If you’re in a public place, like a street, a park, etc., they have none; if you’re in a private place, such as a shopping mall, they may have a basis for banning pictures.) Krages advises those hassled by security guards to threaten to call law enforcement. If it’s an actual police officer who’s telling you to stop shooting, ask to speak to a superior. And remember — you never have a legal duty to delete pictures you’ve taken.

More importantly, we need better education among security guards and law enforcement. In Britain, the country’s police chiefs’ association is attempting to educate officers about the rights of photographers. So far, nothing like that has happened in the U.S., but it should. Trying to block photography in public places is not only heavy-handed and wrong but, thanks to technology, basically useless. With the proliferation of cameras in just about every device we carry, digital photography has become too ubiquitous to stop. Let’s have a truce in the war on photography and set our sights on the real bad guys. Who, it seems, don’t carry cameras anyway.

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