Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics |
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Wish List Der RSS Feed (I think) Links policy Donate to ePatriots Dan is a student at Georgetown University. He is currently trying to think of a new biography for this space. Blogs (more soon) (new) - blogrolling.com reports that the blog was updated in the last 2 hours American Journalism American Prospect Atlantic Monthly Boston Globe Christian Science Monitor Cleveland Plain Dealer CNN Financial Times (US) Foreign Policy Los Angeles Times MSNBC National Journal New Republic New York Times Newsweek The Nation Wall Street Journal Washington Post Global Journalism BBC News Economist Evening Standard Financial Times (UK) Guardian Independent (UK) Intl-News.com International Herald Tribune The Scotsman The Telegraph (UK) The Times (UK) The Western Mail (Wales) Toronto Globe and Mail Useful Information Aerfares.net AskJeeves Amazon.com Borders Union Center for Public Integrity CNNSI Deutsche Bahn (European Rail) Encyclopedia.com ESPN.com MoveOn QJump (British Rail) RailEurope Take Back the Media The Weather Channel Weather (UK) Wikipedia Yahoo! Useless Information Amish Tech Support Canadian World Domination FuckedCompany Georgetown Univ. Haypenny Neal Pollack ScrappleFace Slumbering Lungfish Dybbuk Hostel and All-Night Boulangerie The LSE The Onion The Smoking Gun The Political Graveyard User-agent: * Disallow: / This blog translated: Chinese French German Italian Japanese Korean Portuguese Spanish  Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. "There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Marshall, Mark Twain and many other dead people. Currently reading: Songbook by Nick Hornby The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost White Teeth by Zadie Smith You should read: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby Bobos In Paradise by David Brooks Madam Secretary: A Memoir by Madeleine Albright Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best Books written or edited by my professors (well, only the good ones) Nick Barr The Economics of the Welfare State The Welfare State As Piggy Bank Chris Dougherty Introduction to Econometrics David Gewanter The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell (ed. with Frank Bidart) In the Belly The Sleep of Reason Meredith McKittrick To Dwell Secure John McNeill The Human Web (with William H. McNeill) Something New Under the Sun Max-Stephan Schulze Western Europe: Economic and Social Change Since 1945 Greater Blogtopia Abu Aardvark Across the Atlantic AngryBear Asparagus Pee Blah3.com Bohemian Mama BonoboLand Brazos de Dios Cantina Carl with a K Chip Taylor Clareified Conceptual Guerilla D-Squared Digest Dilettante's Guide to Life Egotistical Whining Enemy of the People Equilibrismi ridanciani Fester's Place Fleeting Impulse Funny Farm Grammar Police Gropinator Hamster Head Heeb Hegemoney Hjordiso I Know What I Know Interesting by Association Impolite Company Internet Activism Jacqueline Passey John Hoke John Lemon John Scalzi Kick the Leftist Kids Korner Kieran Healy Liquid List Loopy Librarian Mark Maynard Martin Stabe Metajournalism More White Teeth MyDD No More Mr. Nice Blog Notes on the Atrocities Open Source Politics Oxytocin Passenger Pachyderms Peevish...I'm Just Saying Pigsqueal Pol3d Politics and Policy Quantum Skyline Radical Review Random Points Risa Wechsler Sha Ka Ree Sick of Bush Signifying Nothing Something's Got to Break Stryder Talking Dog ThomPaul Tom Runnacles Truth is a Blog Undependent Vaguely Right Vast Left Wing Conspiracy Vulgar Boatman We Report... You Deride Wizblog 
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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
A bunch of really minor changes have been made to the template in the last day or two. It still looks pretty much the same, though. I just thought you'd like to know. Kevin Drum is making complete sense in calling for the minimum wage to be indexed to congressional salaries. In fact, it sounds like such a good idea that I doubt it'll ever happen. Things that make this much sense never actually happen in real life. So John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Plame investigation. The question continually running through my mind, though, is ... why? It's not a question of whether he should or should not have done it. It's pretty clear that he should do so - given the large role that the Attorney General plays in generally dealing with the CIA and other security organizations (not to mention political relations with those who are likely being scrutinized within the White House and VP's office), the Attorney General clearly faces a broad conflict of interest in the Plame investigation. (truthfully, the Justice Department encompasses such a wide variety of agencies that conflicts of interests in dealing with legal violations by other agencies under the umbrella are all but inevitable). It's a question of why the Attorney General would actually see fit to recuse himself. It's hardly as if he's been the type to worry about such a thing until now. Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall both have a couple of ideas, mostly centering on the probability that this indicates that the ongoing investigation has made rapid progress and is pointing at the White House. Still, it seems a little early and the evidence a little shaky to clearly say that this is true. So, basically, what the hell is going on here? Monday, December 29, 2003
OK, so I took a bit more than a week off from here. Exams took a bit longer than I expected (more precisely, I had a paper that took a while longer than expected to finish) along with a couple of unexpected and mindlessly boring albeit large tasks that had to be done when I arrived home (including organizing my multi-thousand large baseball card collection for the first time in about a decade) haven't left me with much time to write here. Probably just as well, really, given a feeling of discontent with the whole of the political sphere right now flooding through me. Anyhow, I came across this ... Richard Arum's argument in the WaPo is basically that the school system is increasingly failing and increasingly seeing student violence at the same time as students have been given increased legal rights. Therefore, to rebuild public schools and curtail violence, we must roll back the legal rights accorded to minors. Well, yes, there has been a correlation. But that by no means indicates that there has been any causative relationship. That the purchases of CDs have also increased astronomically over recent decades (from nothing, admittedly), does not mean that we ought to therefore ban CDs in order to deal with violence among young people. Moreover, many of the problems cited by the author have nothing to deal with the extension of civil liberties to minors. That "Students and their parents have also challenged even minor school discipline, such as after-school "double detention," in-class "time outs," lowered grades and exclusion from weekend basketball or football games" is far more indicative of problems within the general legal system in allowing idiotic lawsuits to proceed than a problem resulting from the fact that due process and free speech have been allowed to students in a limited manner. Moreover, there is little that would logically indicate that greater civil liberties inherently make it difficult for school administrators to govern. Rather, these issues would seem far more likely to result from social issues in surrounding neighborhoods as well as chronic underfunding of schools and their infrastructures. Allowing students to speak out hardly means that they'll do it with a gun. Sunday, December 14, 2003
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Ah, yes, it's that time of year again ... exams. Barring something massive, I'll be back here in a week. Friday, December 05, 2003
Y'know, I think it might be time to revoke Dr. Krauthammer's medical license. He's diagnosing Howard Dean with "Bush Derangement Syndrome" for referring to the Bush administration's blockading of the 9/11 report ... while answering a question from Diane Rehm during an interview. Mind you, Dean said nothing remotely false in his response, simply offering up a couple hypothetical possibilities. What a putzhead. UPDATE: And even the quotes were taken out of context ... Tuesday, December 02, 2003
The last post inspired some responses that were far more thoughtful than what I initially put into it. As far as the commenters ... the problem I have with Dodd and Durbin - particularly with Durbin - is not that that they have a problem with showing up for votes but that they don't show up in the press nearly enough. Basically, they need to do a much better job prostituting themselves to the media. They need to work at being a little controversial and learning how to piss the right (or, more specifically, wrong) people off. As far as Leahy, his skeleton is - depending on who you ask - either resigning or being forced off of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the late 1980's over either accidentally allowing a reporter access to a draft of the Iran/Contra Investigation Report or leaking it. In a day and age where politicians need to come across as strong on national security as possible, Leahy would be a sitting target as Minority Leader. As far as Matt Singer's backing John Kerry ... I think having Kerry as Minority Leader would be a good idea, but he won't be available until February or March in all likelihood (then again, the Senate really won't be in session much between now and then, so Daschle's ability to do any damage is limited). As far as Ezra Klein's backing Hillary Clinton ... Hillary is an incredibly polarizing figure, as we all know by now. On one hand, she would certainly bring out the first in the right-wing wing-nuts, making them look like paranoid nutjobs. On the other hand, that also runs the risk of her getting tarred and feathered by a media that is all too pliant to perpetuating smears at times. The second problem is her lack of experience. I'm not trying to argue that we should limit the Minority Leader position to old men, but getting re-elected once should probably be something of a pre-requisite. Finally, as the health care fiasco showed - see Brad DeLong for a little history - Hillary's not really a great manager of people. While the Minority Leader position probably does require someone capable of being a jackass when needed - especially right now - that sort of a record worries me. That said, she is incredibly well-known, far more than all but one or two other Democratic senators (if any) and is a great fundraiser. Those elements, however, would be good reasons to suggest her as a possible Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair.* *The position is currently held by Jon Corzine, no slouch at fundraising either. UPDATE: There's also this dKos post/thread on replacing Daschle. |