Quotulatiousness

April 27, 2012

Social polarization in America

Filed under: Economics, Education, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Frank Furedi reviews the latest book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

The nineteenth-century British politician Benjamin Disraeli once characterised ‘the rich and the poor’ as ‘two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets’. It is a description that applies uncannily to contemporary American society.

I recall the first time I travelled to America — back in 1967 — having a discussion with my then girlfriend about how difficult it was to distinguish between the well-off and the not so well-off people on the streets of the places we visited. That was then. When I visit these days, I am struck by the contrast in appearance between rich and poor white citizens. They now look so different. They eat different food; they pursue different cultural interests; they speak differently; and, most important of all, they communicate values and attitudes that are often strikingly at odds with one another. It is all very redolent of the kind of social and cultural polarisation so prevalent during the nineteenth century.

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray’s exploration of the socioeconomic segregation that divides the US, is a valiant attempt to give a coherent account of this polarisation. What is important about Murray’s discussion of the intensification of the socioeconomic segregation of America is that it shows not simply the economic but also the cultural drivers of this process. So differences in income and living standards, and growing economic inequality, are also paralleled by a divergence in ‘core behaviours and values’. For example, Murray focuses on divergent attitudes towards marriage, industriousness, honesty and religion to demonstrate the disturbing fact that upper-class and lower-class Americans inhabit very different moral communities. His thesis is that this polarisation of cultural attitudes threatens the coherence of society and puts the American project at risk.

“Trader Rick” Spielman gets unexpected value for trades

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

As I mention every year, I don’t follow college football, so the draft is something I don’t have particularly strong opinions on — I have opinions on which positions the Vikings should be drafting, but not on the specific players who could fill those roles. I depend on the sports writers at the Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press, and 1500 ESPN to do the legwork for me, and the Vikings fan bloggers, like the Daily Norsemen to opinionate.

The Vikings came into the first round of the NFL 2012 draft with ten picks over the three day draft. At the end of the evening, having selected the top prospect at left guard tackle and a safety, they still have ten picks in the subsequent rounds. New boss Rick Spielman got great value from trading the #3 pick to Cleveland for the #4 pick plus extra picks in the 4th, 5th, and 7th rounds (that’d be #118 overall, #139 overall, and #211 overall). A nifty bit of trading.

Spielman followed up that trade by selecting Matt Kalil from USC (who was the overwhelming favourite pick of both the Minnesota sports media and the fan blogs). Toward the end of the first round, Spielman then swapped Minnesota’s 2nd and 3rd round picks with Baltimore for their 1st round pick (#29 overall), using that pick to select Harrison Smith of Notre Dame.

Here’s Christopher Gates of the Daily Norseman to summarize the first day of the draft from the Vikings’ point of view:

Minnesota selected USC offensive tackle Matt Kalil, a guy that said that he could really envision himself being in Minnesota after the time he spent with the Vikings. When he met with the team a few weeks ago, he told them that if the Vikings took him, they wouldn’t have to worry about a left offensive tackle for the next decade, and apparently the Vikings agreed. His acquisition will officially put Charlie Johnson into the left guard spot vacated with Steve Hutchinson’s release. . .something you knew if you listened to Eric’s audio from Rick Spielman’s press conferenceafter the pick. . .and solidify two spots on a Minnesota offensive line that was overmatched for the majority of last season. I said for weeks that Matt Kalil was really the “duh” pick for the Vikings, and I’m happy that the team not only made the correct decision, but did so while acquiring three more selections.

The trade gave the Vikings thirteen total picks, and they used some of that ammunition to move back into the first round at number 29 overall. In order to make that jump, they sent the Baltimore Ravens the #35 and #98 overall selections. The Vikings took Notre Dame safety Harrison Smith with that selection, as they try to solidify another unit that was disastrous in 2011, the defensive secondary. Smith projects as more of an “in the box” type of safety at this point, as he’s willing to come up in run support and in generally a very sure tackler. However, he has shown enough athleticism to be able to be solid in coverage as well. The pick was a bit of a surprise. . .I thought the Vikings would go with a receiver like Stephen Hill after they jumped back into the first round. . .but Smith is a pretty solid pick and should be able to immediately contribute.

Tom Pelissero has a Q&A with Matt Kalil:

Matt Kalil had a hunch he was going to end up with the Minnesota Vikings.

Well, more than a hunch.

Not only did Kalil believe the Vikings would select him in the first round of the NFL Draft, the left tackle out of Southern California said on Thursday night he was “really relieved” when he saw a Minnesota number on his cell phone while they were on the clock after trading back to No. 4.

“I think that I had an idea that’s where I might end up,” Kalil said. “But the way the draft works, and especially right now, all these trades going down and everything, I was trying to keep open-minded.”

He was scheduled to arrive in the Twin Cities early Friday and meet with reporters at 1:30 p.m., along with fellow first-round pick Harrison Smith.

Mark Craig (from whom I stole the “Trader Rick” nickname for my headline) has a brief entry on Harrison Smith:

Smith, a 6-2, 213-pounder, had been considered a second-rounder who might climb into the bottom of the first round, which he did. He also fills a huge need for a Vikings team that had only three safeties on the roster, including Eric Frampton, who’s strictly a special teams guy.

Smith will likely start immediately alongside Mistral Raymond. Considering the lack of depth at the position, don’t rule out possibly re-signing Husain Abdullah. The Vikings had an offer on the table for Abdullah.

April 26, 2012

Organic farming: larger “footprint” to produce compared to non-organic

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Food, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:57

Summary of a recent study published in Nature, which found that organic farming has a lower production per acre than non-organic methods:

Organic farming may yield up to a third less of some crop types, according to a study proposing a hybrid with conventional agriculture as the best way to feed the world without destroying it.

Organic farming seeks to limit the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, but critics suggest lower crop yields require bigger swaths of land for the same output as conventional farms.

This would conceivably require parts of forests and other natural areas being turned into farmland, undoing some of the environmental gains of organic tilling methods, they say.

The new study by Canadian and American researchers, published in Nature Wednesday, reviewed 66 studies comparing the yields of 34 different crop species in organic and conventional farming systems. The review limited itself to studies assessing the total land area used, allowing researchers to compare crop yields per unit area. Many previous studies have shown large yields for organic farming but ignored the size of the area planted — which is often bigger than in conventional farming.

This means, as most people probably suspected, that true “organic” farming methods are likely to be a boutique for well-off western consumers rather than a solution to malnutrition and poverty in developing nations.

Romney’s biggest challenge in selecting a running mate

Filed under: Government, Humour, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

Steve Chapman outlines the big issue that Mitt Romney needs to consider while ruminating over who’ll be his running mate this year:

As he begins his search for a running mate, Mitt Romney needs to keep one question foremost in his mind, because the decision could affect us all for years to come. He needs to ask: Will this person be good for American comedy?

The prospective Republican nominee will have a tough time living up to recent standards. It’s hard to imagine a Romney vice president who would inspire a story like the one in The Onion: “Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway.”

Nobody is ever going to have a run like Tina Fey had with Sarah Palin. The chances are slim that the next veep will accidentally shoot someone in the face.

[. . .]

Dan Quayle instantly became a national joke while riding to victory with George H.W. Bush in 1988. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket in 1984, couldn’t keep Ronald Reagan from capturing 55 percent of the female vote.

In 2000, when Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to be the first Jewish running mate, the Democratic share of the Jewish vote soared to 79 percent — from 78 percent four years earlier. Dick Cheney brought the GOP the shimmering promise of Wyoming’s three electoral votes, which hadn’t gone to a Democrat since 1964.

It’s a rare vice presidential nominee who affects the outcome. Even if Palin hadn’t cost John McCain 2 percent of the overall vote, as one study calculated, Barack Obama would still be president.

Canada’s strange and imperfect approach to the abortion debate

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

It’s a highly contentious topic that nobody really wants to tackle (well, no politician anyway). Canada has had no abortion laws on the books, and just the hint that someone wants to bring some in is cause for panic in certain quarters:

Canada’s “consensus” on our unlimited abortion licence — any time, for any reason, fully funded by tax dollars — is a strange one. First of all, it’s not really a consensus, as only a minority of Canadians, when polled, support the extreme position we currently have.

Yet the faux-consensus is apparently so essential that any attempt to moderate Canada’s abortion enthusiasm is thought to be unpatriotic, as if adopting, say, French or German abortion policies would be to accede to the most retrograde social policies imaginable. At the same time, the faux-consensus is so fragile that every attempt must be made to prevent any discussion about it.

This odd consensus produces odd behaviour. This week, Conservative backbench MP Stephen Woodworth has a private member’s motion coming up for debate in the House of Commons. Given that Stephen Harper is committed to maintaining the status quo, pro-life MPs must resort to nibbling around the edges of issues that perhaps, one day, under certain circumstances, might lead to questions being asked about why Canada has the most extreme abortion licence in the world, save for China, where abortions are sometimes compulsory.

The public choice analysis of the “Jeremy Hunt affair”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

On the Adam Smith Institute blog, “Whig” explains why the Jeremy Hunt affair should be no surprise to anyone, regardless of their party affiliation:

First of all, it is salutary to remember that this is not a party political issue. As evidence to the Leveson Enquiry itself shows, politicians are drawn to newspaper proprietors and editors like flies to the proverbial. The two have a symbiotic relationship with each other, and always have done. Clearly this relationship is the result of a classic public choice style problem — politicians have power but need votes and newspaper editors can deliver votes in exchange for a chance to influence how that power is directed. Of course, this is a very reductive description of the relationship but that is what it boils down to.

Such a relationship is evidently corrupting and open to the exploitation of special interests at the expense of general ones. How should we prevent this? Whilst party politics calls for the minister to fall on his sword, such an action will hardly prevent future occurrences. The general tone of public discourse suggests the introduction of rules, guidelines and procedures on ministers with greater bureaucratic control and less personal control by the minister. In many ways this represents the general trend of constitutional developments over the past 100 years or so. Powers should be vested in ‘disinterested’ civil servants or, better yet, in ‘independent’ Quangos like OFCOM or the Competition Commission, rather than politicians.

The bureaucratic solution, however, is no more acceptable — as any fan of Yes Minister will confirm. Aside from the issues of democratic accountability such developments raise, we should remember that civil servants and bureaucrats are human beings and have a series of vested personal and ideological interests of their own. Bureaucratic rule-making is just as susceptible to corruption as ministerial rule-making. This is especially true in the case of newspapers, which are extremely well-placed to use their influence in order to promote their own interests. Again, the Leveson Enquiry shows us exactly this situation: journalists allegedly entering into corrupt relationships with police officers.

Rupert Murdoch: the secret ruler of Britain

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:09

At least, it’s quite clear that most of the chattering classes consider Murdoch to be the arch-manipulator/secret ruler of British life. Brendan O’Neill disagrees:

So there he was, the secret ruler of modern Britain, the dark, rotting heart of the British state, the man who has wielded his ‘extraordinary power’ in order to ‘manipulate officialdom’ and extend his influence over ‘politics, the media and the police’. I hope you weren’t fooled by Rupert Murdoch’s diminutive stature or his octogenarian demeanour as he appeared before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday, or his denials about using his ‘political power to get favourable treatment’. Because this small, old newspaper owner is, in fact, the mastermind of a ‘shadowy influence-mart’ who has exercised a ‘malign influence on our politics for the past 30 years’. And now, thanks to Lord Leveson, we finally have an opportunity to ‘banish’ this ‘tyrant’ from our shores and a ‘glorious opportunity for meaningful reform’.

At least, that’s what the Leveson cheerleading squad, the media and celebrity groupies of this inquiry into press ethics, would have us believe. These people are rapidly taking leave of their senses. Their depiction of Rupert Murdoch as the dastardly puppeteer of the British political sphere has crossed the line from rational commentary into David Icke territory, sounding increasingly like a conspiracy theory about secret rulers of the world. And their claim that Murdoch singlehandedly ruined British politics — that he is, in the words of one commentator, the architect of modern Britain’s ‘heartlessness, coarseness and spite’ — speaks to their inability to get to grips with the true causes of political crisis today. Yesterday’s shenanigans made it pretty clear that Murdoch-bashing has become a cheap substitute for grown-up debate.

It is of course true that Murdoch is very influential, as you would expect of a man who, in Britain alone, owns both the newspaper of record (The Times) and the bestselling tabloid (the Sun). But not only do the Murdoch-maulers overestimate how influential he is; more importantly they misunderstand the origins and nature of his influence in modern Britain. It is not that Murdoch set out to create a ‘shadow state’ that could ‘intimidate parliament’, as madly claimed by Labour MP Tom Watson. Rather, it was the increasing alienation of parliament and politicians from the public which boosted Murdoch’s political fortunes, making him the go-to man for ministers and MPs desperate to make a connection with us. In other words, Murdoch didn’t destroy British politics in his scrabble for greater influence — it was the already existing death of British politics, its loss of meaning and purchase, which, by default, made Murdoch influential.

April 25, 2012

The War on Drugs: “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong”

Filed under: Economics, Health, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:59

The Wall Street Journal looks at the drug war and considers alternatives:

Our current drug policies do far more harm than they need to do and far less good than they might, largely because they ignore some basic facts. Treating all “drug abusers” as a single group flies in the face of what is known as Pareto’s Law: that for any given activity, 20% of the participants typically account for 80% of the action.

Most users of addictive drugs are not addicts, but a few consume very heavily, and they account for most of the traffic and revenue and most of the drug-related violence and other collateral social damage. If subjected to the right kinds of pressure, however, even most heavy users can and do stop using drugs.

Frustration with the drug-policy status quo — the horrific levels of trafficking-related violence in Mexico and Central America and the fiscal, personal and social costs of imprisoning half a million drug dealers in the U.S. — has led to calls for some form of legalization. Just last week, at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, President Barack Obama got an earful from his Latin American counterparts about the need to reverse current U.S. drug policy.

In brief, American (and to a lesser extent, Canadian) drug policies follow this pattern: 1) identify a problem, 2) pass laws against it, 3) discover that the laws haven’t solved the problem, 4) double-down and ratchet up enforcement and penalties. In other words, if it’s not working, then derp it again.

The quote in the headline is, of course, from the writings of H.L. Mencken.

Identifying the potential profits from asteroid mining

Filed under: Economics, Space — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:06

In his Forbes column, Tim Worstall spins a tale that is worthy of Dr. Evil or other movie bad guy multi-billionaires:

We’ve now had the announcement of the business plans of Planetary Resources. Enough to excite everyone who read Heinlein or Jerry Pournelle as a teenager. But the big problem is how might they actually turn a proft? To which the answer is manipulation of the futures markets.

[. . .]

So, imagine that they have reached one of the nickel iron asteroids, it is high in the platinum group metals, they can mine it and they can deliver those pgms to Earth. The moment everyone knows that there is some hundreds of tonnes of these metals on the way down the price will collapse. The answer? Sell the metals in advance, through the futures markets. Get today’s price for delivery in the future.

In fact, sell many more futures than the amount of metal which is to be delivered: go short. As an example, say platinum is $2,000 an ounce (not far off the real price, $62 million a tonne). Planetary Resources is going to deliver 100 tonnes. But instead of selling $6 billion’s worth of platinum for delivery in three months, sell 10 times as much: $60 billion’s worth*. When that 100 tonnes splashes down, in fact when the market knows that the 100 tonnes is likely to splash down, then the market price will fall. Substantially but for illustration we’ll say to $200 an ounce.

The company then delivers that 100 tonnes for which it is paid the $6 billion agreed on those futures deliveries. It still owes the market another 900 tonnes but it can now cover its short at $200 an ounce having sold the futures at $2,000 an ounce. Use the $6 billion that’s going to be incoming to do so and what do we have at the end?

The company has $60 billion incoming from having sold futures. It has delivered 100 tonnes at $6 billion and covered the short for that $6 billion. Net profit $54 billion minus the cost of the space program. Which is pretty good really.

But it gets better … and more Bond-villainous.

Complaint submitted to CRA over the David Suzuki Foundation’s charitable status and partisan political activity

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

It’s been an open secret for years that some organizations with charitable status under the Canada Revenue Agency’s rules are stepping over the line with regard to partisan political activities. A complaint has been lodged with the CRA over the David Suzuki Foundation on these grounds:

The David Suzuki Foundation on Tuesday became the target of a complaint to the Canada Revenue Agency, just days after its namesake co-founder stepped down amid heightened tensions between environmental charities and the Conservative government.

EthicalOil.org, a non-profit organization that promotes oil from Canada and other democracies, sent a letter to the agency asking it to investigate whether the David Suzuki Foundation is breaking rules that pertain to political activity. Registered charities are allowed to devote only a small fraction of their resources to political activity, although they can never be partisan.

“If you find the Suzuki Foundation is in contravention of the CRA rules, then we request that you consider whether the Suzuki Foundation should have its charitable status revoked or otherwise be sanctioned,” EthicalOil.org said in its 44-page letter, which was drafted by Calgary-based JSS Barristers and obtained by the National Post.

Why fly?

Filed under: Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Amy Alkon on yet another blatant attempt by the TSA to lord it over passengers, especially the young, weak, and vulnerable:

Chris Morran on Consumerist excerpts a Facebook post from a Montana mom, Michelle Brademeyer, who was flying home from Kansas with her two young children and their grandmother. Grandma apparently triggered some alarm at the checkpoint, and was forced to have a seat and wait to be groped by an agent. That’s when the 4-year-old ran over to give Granny a hug. Sweet — until the TSA went all police state on them. The mother writes:

[. . .]

First, a TSO began yelling at my child, and demanded she too must sit down and await a full body pat-down. I was prevented from coming any closer, explaining the situation to her, or consoling her in any way. My daughter, who was dressed in tight leggings, a short sleeve shirt and mary jane shoes, had no pockets, no jacket and nothing in her hands. The TSO refused to let my daughter pass through the scanners once more, to see if she too would set off the alarm. It was implied, several times, that my Mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.

My child, who was obviously terrified, had no idea what was going on, and the TSOs involved still made no attempt to explain it to her. When they spoke to her, it was devoid of any sort of compassion, kindness or respect. They told her she had to come to them, alone, and spread her arms and legs. She screamed, “No! I don’t want to!” then did what any frightened young child might, she ran the opposite direction.

That is when a TSO told me they would shut down the entire airport, cancel all flights, if my daughter was not restrained. It was then they declared my daughter a “high-security-threat”.

[. . .]

The TSO loomed over my daughter, with an angry grimace on her face, and ordered her to stop crying. When my scared child could not do so, two TSOs called for backup saying “The suspect is not cooperating.” The suspect, of course, being a frightened child. They treated my daughter no better than if she had been a terrorist…

A third TSO arrived to the scene, and showed no more respect than the first two had given. All three were barking orders at my daughter, telling her to stand still and cease crying. When she did not stop crying on command, they demanded we leave the airport. They claimed they could not safely check my daughter for dangerous items if she was in tears. I will admit, I lost my temper.

Finally, a manager intervened. He determined that my child could, in fact, be cleared through security while crying. I was permitted to hold her while the TSO checked her body. When they found nothing hidden on my daughter, they were forced to let us go, but not until after they had examined my ID and boarding passes for a lengthy amount of time. When we arrived at our gate, I noticed that the TSOs had followed us through the airport. I was told something was wrong with my boarding pass and I would have to show it to them again. Upon seeing the TSO, my daughter was thrown into hysterics. Eventually, we were able to board our flight.

Terrorize ’em young and they stay terrorized, pliable, and afraid to confront authority. It won’t be long before the TSA is Tasing ’em before they can run away (if they don’t already have that power).

April 24, 2012

ArenaNet founder says “We’re in it to win” with Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:42

A recent interview with Mike O’Brien, founder of ArenaNet, in Forbes:

“Guild Wars beat all of our expectations and our company grew as we put out four expansions and we came together as a team and learned how to build content,” said O’Brien. “We got to a point where we wanted to see what we could accomplish next, so in 2007 we announced to our fans that we were going to start working on Guild Wars 2 and we’d be quiet for a while.”

That long wait is finally coming to a close with an open beta test this coming weekend, where fans will get their first tour of the new Tyria, set 250 years after the events of the first game.

“We’re in it to win it this time,” said O’Brien. “We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO. I think we have something unique here and players are going to see it and understand why dynamic events are a way better content model than people have experienced before in online worlds. Word-of-mouth will get people to understand that we really are doing something new and different. The sky’s the limit once this game is out. Online worlds have a networking effect. People will bring friends to Guild Wars 2. We hope all the people who play the beta weekend will tell their friends about it.”

The Hunger Games as a fictionalized version of the UN’s “Agenda 21”

Filed under: Books, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

In a letter published in the most recent issue of Libertarian Enterprise, David Walker points out the quite notable similarities between the fictional world portrayed in The Hunger Games and the United Nations’ Agenda 21:

The Hunger Games “universe” is the inevitable result at the attempt to implement Agenda 21.

  • Herding the population into tightly controlled resource production “districts”.
    While there are no “arcologies/super cities” as forwarded by Agenda 21, I don’t think such things could possibly be created by such a system anyway. The Agenda 21 structure is simply too anti-technological and too government heavy. The “Hunger Games” police state “Districts” is a much more believable result of enforced population reduction & control.
  • In the “country” of “Panem” no one is allowed out into “the wild”. Agenda 21 demands “rewilding” of all space outside of habitation districts. In the Hunger Games, crossing the electrified fence can get you shot. Killing wild game (poaching the government’s animals) will get you shot. Pristine Earth policed with heavy weapons. Sound familiar?
  • Travel is largely by High Speed Rail, and solely by High Speed Rail between Districts. Cars/trucks are only mentioned in the Capitol. The more poor the district, the more likely you are to be forced to walk everywhere. Only the Military has anything resembling air travel and even that is curtailed (one character dreams/reminisces about winged flight vs. hovercraft).
  • The utter disdain for Carbon Based Fuels.
    The Heroine from Hunger Games comes from the Coal Producing District (District 12). As described, there simply could not be enough coal produced by that district to have coal be a viable energy source, therefore the coal must be being used for other non-energy-related tasks. Likewise, “District 12” is the pariah of the Districts. Nobody loves Coal, and nobody loves the people who produce it. “Power” is produced by a nameless “District 5” by nameless means, though Nuclear is suggested on the website.
  • There is no Religion in the Hunger Games world.
    Agenda 21 specifically declares non-pantheistic/non-“natural” religions (particularly Judaism, Islam & Christianity) as something that must be eliminated. “Nature worship” is apparently OK.
  • The Government is Hollywood/Hollywood is Government.
    Hollyweirdoes love Agenda 21. The 3 books of the series are not kind to Hollywood and the kind of government the majority of those weirdoes would create. It presents “The Capitol” as a cross between San-Francisco Body Modification, Hollywood & Rome where nonproductive decadence, self importance, absurd vanity and utter banality are the rule. Any wonder the Movie(s) (will) suppress this aspect of the books?

Other Themes, late in the series: Revolutions aren’t always led by noble causes.

Is your boss a baboon? You’re quite correct

Filed under: Media, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

Matt Ridley reviews a new book, Games Primates Play by Dario Maestripieri:

Generally, junior professors write long and unsolicited emails to senior professors, who reply with short ones after a delay; the juniors then reply quickly and at length. This is not because the seniors are busier, for they, too, write longer and more punctually when addressing their deans and funders, who reply more briefly and tardily. The asymmetry in length and speed of reply correlates with dominance.

When a subordinate chimpanzee grooms a dominant one, it often does so for a long time and unsolicited. When it then requests to be groomed in turn, it receives only a brief grooming and usually after having to ask a second time.

[. . .]

He observes two university colleagues in a coffee shop and notes how the senior one takes the chair with the back to the wall (the better to spot attacks by rivals or leopards), is less attentive to her colleague’s remarks than vice versa, stares down her colleague when a contentious issue comes up and takes the lead on walking out the door at the end-all of it neatly corresponding to the behavior of two baboons when one is dominant.

(A new member of a committee on which I served once asked me why a senior colleague was being so horrible to him. I replied: “Oh, it’s because when a new male baboon joins a troop, it’s traditional for the alpha male to beat him up before becoming his best friend — soon he’ll think the world of you.” I was right.)

It includes a fascinating insight into the benefits and problems of peer review.

Colby Cosh on the “Alberta surprise”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

From his most recent column at Maclean’s:

An Alberta astronaut returning from Titan and seeing the result of last night’s election would say “Meh, so what else is new? The PCs carried 61 of 87 seats? Kind of an off year for them, I guess.” Yet the ostensibly boring, familiar outcome wrong-footed much of the media and absolutely all the pollsters. Even PC insiders, correctly detecting a last-minute shift away from the Wildrose Party heirs-presumptive, envisioned a much smaller vote share than the 44 per cent Alison Redford’s party achieved. The public polling firms all botched the job, with none forecasting anything but a Wildrose majority even on the final weekend.

The Wildrose Party’s final count of 17 seats must surely leave its braintrust, heavily stocked with Conservative Party of Canada veterans, obliterated with horror. The CPC has built a pretty good electoral machine, but as old Ralph Klein hand and Wildrose supporter Rod Love reminded CBC, the Alberta PC brand is the most successful in the country. He probably could have gone even further afield if he wanted to. (On August 24, 2014, the PCs will officially become the longest continuously serving government in the annals of Confederation.) In 1993 the PCs were in trouble late, but succeeded in outflanking a popular Liberal opposition and running against their own record. They did it again in 2012. Redford succeeded in making herself the “change” candidate — though not without help from the Wildrose insurgents, who suffered late “bozo eruptions” of the sort the CPC itself has long since succeeded in extinguishing.

Update: Even Colby can’t seem to avoid the “Ten things” meme:

1. Proportional representation just won itself a whole passel of new right-wing fans.

2. Alberta Liberal morale remained high throughout an election in which pollsters warned continually of disaster. And the pollsters proved to be almost exactly right about this (if nothing else). Yet even as the mortifying results rolled in, Alberta Liberal morale still remained high. Then their egomaniac not-really-Liberal disaster of a leader, Raj Sherman, won his seat by the skin of his teeth. This means he will not have to be replaced unless an awful lot of people smarten up fast. Alberta Liberal morale after this event? Easily, easily at its highest point in ten years. “Please, sir, may I have another?”

[. . .]

5. Those who did boycott the Senate election seem awfully proud of themselves, because it was a “meaningless” election. Why, one wonders, does it have to be meaningless? The “progressive” parties could have agreed on a single Senate candidate in advance; if they had done so, that candidate would certainly have ended up first in the queue, and provided an excellent test of Stephen Harper’s integrity, which I am told is much doubted.

The problem is that Harper might pass the test, you say? Then what’s the harm? You get some smart, popular left-wing independent speaking for Alberta in the Senate? That’s bad for “progressives” how?

I’m still waiting for the definitive post-election analysis of why all the polls were so far off: I didn’t see a single poll in the last two weeks of the election that didn’t have Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party in clear majority territory. Nobody was predicting another PC victory in that time period (or if they were, the national media wasn’t picking it up).

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