It's Easy to Lie with Statistics, It's Easier to Lie without Statistics

"There's an interesting fight going on in baseball about whether clutch hitting exists: whether a player can hit better in the ninth inning when there are two runs on, whether he can be a better player when the game is on the line. And once again, there have been countless studies done on it, and not one of them can find any statistical evidence that any person is capable of lifting his game in such moments.

Yet people continue to believe, and they continue to get angry that anyone would suggest that such a thing doesn't exist. It's like, 'I know it exists because I've seen it.'"

Joe Posnanski, interviewed by Kathryn Schulz (via)

You Really Wish That They Wouldn't

As an atheist I, too, have been told by others that they are praying for me, but if they were not to tell me, their prayers would be just as heartfelt and just as effective. Thus, I know that they are telling me for some other reason. Indeed, telling me about the prayers is little more than a subtle condemnation of my beliefs- a way to tell me I'm wrong, while cloaking oneself in the illusion of generosity. I do not mean to imply that all such people who announce their intentions to pray are acting out of such condescension, but rather that those who do are not as hidden from sight as they seem to believe. [...]

[...] I suspect, though I can't say for sure, that upon being told someone is praying for me, I feel much the same way a Christian would feel if told that someone was going to sacrifice a chicken for him or her. Perhaps you appreciate the sentiment, but you really wish that they wouldn't.

Drek, "A Day for a Man Who Does Not Want One"

Take (at Least) One

You can’t get much more different than Hong Kong and Denmark, at least by the criteria used by most people on the left and right. But they all do at least one thing extremely well. They all are exceptionally good at one of the three attributes of a highly successful neoliberal society. Either they are highly civic-minded (Denmark, Sweden), or highly aware of the sorts of policies that produce economic efficiency (Singapore, Hong Kong) or highly democratic.

Scott Sumner, "A post-ideological index of good governance"

Sex Ed: The Basics

I didn't realize until my early twenties that if a man would have sex with me, all it meant was that he wanted to have sex with me, not that he liked me as a person or found me attractive. This is the one thing that was left out of the sex talk that my mom had with me that really would have been helpful to include.

Anonymous answer to the question "What in life did it take you a surprisingly long time to realize you've been doing wrong all along?" (via)

Soziolinguistik

Wegen seiner unglaublichen Arbeit wollten wir Walter gern im Abspann nennen - nicht nur bei Liebe niemals einen Fremden, sondern bei allen Filmen, an denen er mitarbeitete. Er war aber nicht in der Gewerkschaft und durfte deswegen nicht als Toncutter genennt werden. Dann meinte Walter: "Wenn sie das nicht wollen, kann ich mich dann Sound Designer nennen?" Wir meinten: "Das können wir pobieren, dann bist du eben Sound Designer . . ." Ich fand es immer schon komisch, daß Sound Designer diese tolle Berufsbezeichnung wurde, aber sie ist nur deswegen entstanden.

Francis Ford Coppola, zitiert in: Michael Ondaatje, Die Kunst des Filmschnitts: Gespräche mit Walter Murch (S. 57)

Mischel Meets Hardin

A co-worker brings in cupcakes early in the morning to share with everyone. I want to wait to have one so I can reward myself for working hard that day. But I'm worried that if I do so there will be none left. Gratification delay and the commons: antagonistic.

Andy McKenzie: "Three End of Summer Thoughts"

Who Will Think of the Deans?

The suffering of a university dean is no less real than the suffering of a starving child thousands of miles from here. The latter may suffer more, but his suffering is not more legitimate as a human experience. The pleasure of a cold beer on a summer afternoon is not more legitimate than the pleasure of solving a tricky equation. A good writer can communicate all kinds of human experience to all kinds of people--should be able to show an intelligent but uneducated reader what it feels like to solve that equation, to be that dean.

J. Robert Lennon, "Who Are We Writing for?"

Sample Selection Bias for Laypeople

Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. "That's ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!" This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can't justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he's only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity.

Jane Galt (Megan McArdle), "A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other"

Would Be Better Advice If It Contained a Theory about Which Applies When

Sometimes it is foolish to articulate an ambition too early - exposing it prematurely to the laughter and the scepticism of the world can destroy it before it is even properly born. But sometimes the opposite occurs, and the very act of mentioning a thing makes it suddenly seem possilbe, even plausible.

Robert Harris, Imperium, (Chapter V; p. 90)

Was Mussolini a Vegetarian?

To anyone that has attended a political demonstration, trawled a blog, or attended a Western university in the past half century, the scattershot use of “fascist” will ring familiar. And almost as clichéd as accusing an ideological opponent of fascist sympathies is the accurate observation that such charges often demonstrate an utter lack of understanding of just what qualifies as fascist, other than “someone I vehemently disagree with.” As an indicator of a particular set of political beliefs, “fascism” has become a perfectly meaningless pejorative, a political cudgel that is obtuse and imprecise by design.

What, if anything, unites such disparate fascist dictators as Benito Mussolini of Italy, Adolf Hitler of Germany, António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, and Francisco Franco of Spain? Fascism, the historian Stanley Payne writes in Fascism: Comparison and Definition, “is the vaguest of contemporary political terms.” Few ideologies have produced so many academic volumes dedicated to establishing a singular set of definitional criteria. All of the political movements commonly associated with fascism overlap in key areas (opposition to both classical liberalism and communism, for instance) and diverge in others (the Germans rejected Italian-style corporatism in favor of what one historian called a “racist-totalitarian welfare state”).

Michael C. Moynihan, "Crying Wolf: Are We All Fascists Now?"

Also: Scratching One's Balls in Public

Seeing this film is like being catapulted into an IMAX version of a Peter Stuyvesant commercial, back to the days when men smoked and didn't wear underarm deodorant, cars had engine notes, clutches required leg muscles and women enjoyed being flirted with at the office (...and, yes, they actually did!). Rendezvous is a high-adrenaline, condensed style statement with an ending that could have only come from the maker of 'A Man and A Woman'. Underscoring it all is the sexiest soundtrack of all time (John Barry and Shirley Bassey notwithstanding), 12 cylinders and 4 litres of the Ferrari 365 Boxer driven by Lalouch's friend, racing driver Jacky Ickx. I love this film and the era it represents, particularly as I live in one of the most over-regulated, purse-lipped and 'responsible' societies in the world. For anyone that has ever owned, driven or just loved classic Italian sportscars, (and enjoyed raising a little bit of hell), Rendezvous is a must see. I can just imagine our hydrogen-car driving grandchildren shaking their heads in befuddlement as they tuck into their tofu and spring water. I'll be there to explain to them that if you don't smoke, drink, fornicate and drive sexy cars that they actually mightn't live longer...but it sure as hell will feel longer.

jeffbertucen@hotmail.com, "Hairy-chested, un-PC and pure bollocking fun" [Review of C'était un rendez-vous]

Bit Obvious, But Very Nice

- Infinite Loop; see Loop, Infinite

- Loop, Infinite; see Infinite Loop

Steve Sailer, "Infinite Loop" (quoting a computer manual by himself)

Organizational Sociology: The Soap Heuristic

When I worked for large organizations, I never observed a personnel change that was truly driven by policy direction. Personality conflicts were always the main factor. I used to say, "Never ascribe to strategic calculation that which can be attributed to corporate soap opera."

Arnold Kling, "Brink Lindsey, Will Wilkinson"

Levels, Not Changes

Let's say you have two countries, A and B. In country A government spends 50 percent of gdp, mostly on a well-designed welfare state. When the downturn comes, there is only enough extra borrowing to make up for the lost revenue, and there is no designed "stimulus" per se. In country B, government spends 25 percent of gdp, mostly not on a well-designed welfare state. When the downturn comes, country B does an extra three, four, or even five percent of gdp "ramp-up" borrowing and spending.

Which country has a better, more active, and more AD-stabilizing fiscal policy? Well, it depends on the details and the numbers but I would encourage you to consider country A for this honor.

Tyler Cowen, "Measuring fiscal policy and evaluating its results"

How to Make Libertarians Mad

You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. [...] So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

Peter Krämer (interviewed by Spiegel Online) (via)