This year’s Battleground Poll (pdf) has been released.

“When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be 1) Very conservative, 2) Somewhat conservative, 3) Moderate, 4) Somewhat liberal, 5) Very liberal, 5) Unsure/Refuse”

And conflating the categories:

Bruce Walker has been paying attention since the June 2002 poll. The percentage for conservative has never fallen below 59%, but the percentage for liberal has never exceeded 38%. It’s a good discussion of political polls in general. Read it.

Captain Ed:

Who’d have thought it? Pelosi and Reid have transformed Bush into a spending hawk.

It’s about time.

One thing about moving here: I’ll never bitch about the Indiana state party again. I’ve vented a few times about the state party here, but now, they’re trying to tell me which judges to retain.

Let’s take this from the top. I have a few incontrovertible principles when I vote. One is that I never vote for a liberal running for any spot in the criminal justice system. Never. And note that I said “liberal,” not “Democrat.”

Here’s another one: I always vote NO! when asked if any judge should be retained. Always, and always have, and always will. I don’t give a frak what party the incumbent judge is, or what his record is. So. PaGOP, that means that no, I will not vote to retain any judge. Period. Stop spamming me about it.

I will reluctantly vote for an incumbent judge if the challenging candidate is some hand-wringing liberal, but only very reluctantly. And since most of the judges on the ballot are local (there are way too many courts and judges in this state), and since none of the local judicial candidates I like are incumbents, I’ll vote for them with a clean conscience.

Now, PaGOP, go away and leave me alone.

These people are nuts. A constitutional convention in Pennsylvania? Are you kidding? It would be one, long, “For the chil-dern!” entitlementfest.

Don’t think so, folks.

Pennsylvania certainly is colorful — literally:

You know it is a new day in Pennsylvania when judges seeking retention across the state fear an old bus that looks like a pink pig!

The pink pig bus tour kicked off this week and will urge voters to vote no to all judges seeking retention in November. Gene Stilp, the activist who campaigned to repeal the pay raise and to toss out incumbent lawmakers who pushed the pay raise, is now targeting judges who benefited from the state Supreme Court decision that made the pay raise illegal for state lawmakers but legal for judges across the state.

And here’s the bus:

I never vote to retain judges anyway, just out of principle. But I’ll be looking forward to the visit from the bus.

One losing candidate at a time.

Here’s the Sheriff:

And here’s the new sign in our yard:

My representative is probably one of the most low-key representatives in the House. Before we moved here, I’d never heard of him. But he’s on the front page of today’s local rag — twice. First, about SCHIP. Apparently, there was a candlelight kumbayah vigil to get him to start crying and vote for this travesty. He said:

Peterson said that in this case, he won’t change his mind.

And there was a debate between Peterson and the hogs thieves Turnpike Commission representatives about this idiotic plan to toll I-80.

Commission representatives countered by saying Act 44 should help reduce the shortfall facing Pennsylvania’s interstate system, and build a stronger and more stable infrastructure.

[ . . . ]

[Peterson] said the shortfall stems from the transportation funding being used to pay for unrelated projects and services, such as state police being funded out of the motor license fund.

“Why should we be fighting drug dealers and crime on the street with … highway money?” he said.

You know what else would take care of that revenue problem? Cutting off funds for the failed Philadelphia public transportation system. There is absolutely no justification for forcing anyone other than Philadelphia residents to pay for it. Think of all the roads you could fix and build. Of all the silly liberal social engineering projects, public transportation is the failure of all failures. Make those who use it pay for it, and only those who use it.

From the same era, Popeye:

Do they show this one these days?

And Rhapsody Rabbit:

Rendell criticizes Pa. student-loan agency’s finances.

No comment necessary.

You’ll remember this from the other day, all of the agricultural (cough, cough) subsidies paid out in Manhattan:

I think we can all agree that Manhattan is about as far from an agricultural area as one can get — Manhattan isn’t just not an agricultural area, it’s the antitheses of an agricultural area. So let’s look at an agricultural area, as in a real agricultural area, dominated by, you know, farms, and see how many ag subsidies are being paid out. By the way, I know this is a heavily agricultural area because I live here. Farms. Everywhere. Farms, farms, and more farms, mostly dairy farms.

“Class, what do you notice about the two? Wait, let’s look at them side by side.”

Manhattan:

Centre County, PA:

“Okay class, do you see anything odd or interesting here? Yes, you in the back, Miss Stevenson.”

“There are a lot more agricultural subsidies paid out in the non-agricultural area than the agricultural area.”

“Very good. Yes, Mr. Schultz?”

“Are the two maps at the same zoom level?”

“That’s an excellent question. The Manhattan map is at a higher zoom, but it doesn’t make any difference, as it turns out. The red circle sizes are not affected by the zoom, because they represent the amounts of the subsidies. The larger the circle, the more money is paid out. Miss Gonzalez?”

“Why are more agricultural subsidies paid out in Manhattan? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, it does make sense, because like all government entitlement programs, this program is being abused. The money is going to political donors, not farmers. And since there are more rich political donors in Manhattan, they get more subsidies.”

“Isn’t that bribery?”

“Why, yes it is! It’s bribery of the worst sort. Class, this isn’t pork. This is lard.”

Actually, I would never say that in the classroom, and I’m not shouting, “Where’s our subsidies?” The dairy farmers here get plenty of pork in the form of state subsidies and state-mandated minimum pricing (there is no such thing as “the cheapest milk in town” in this state — with the exception of convenience stores, all stores sell milk at the state-mandated minimum price). But this pisses me off a lot more than the bridge to nowhere, just because this is nothing more or less than sheer bribery. Legislative abuse. Corruption. That, and just the idea of some pinkie-up Manhattanite sucking at the government teat to grow rosemary in a chic and trendy little rooftop garden.

Check your own area. The data come from the farm subsidy database.

I just called my Representative. You’re thinking I was complaining about something, and you’re wrong. This is why I called:

An amendment prohibiting federal funds from being used to toll Interstate 80 was attached to a transportation bill that passed 268-153 Tuesday night in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pleasantville, and Rep. Phil English, R-Erie, offered the amendment Tuesday to an annual transportation funding bill, Travis J. Windle, communications director for Peterson, said Tuesday night.

Peterson’s my Representative.

Windle said states rely heavily on federal funding for transportation projects such as tolling interstates, and he said Peterson is confident this will be a roadblock for the I-80 toll project if the appropriations bill is signed by President Bush. Without federal funding, the state will have to find other ways of funding the toll booths.

Gov. Ed Rendell’s office could not be reached for comment Tuesday night on what the amendment may mean for the plan to put tolls on I-80.

But state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said the possible lack of federal funding may not hinder the efforts to toll I-80 because federal funds could go toward construction and maintenance of roads while state funding would pay for the proposed booths.

Corman, who opposes tolling I-80, said he applauds the congressman’s efforts to stop the proposed tolling, but said the commonwealth can use the federal money for other reasons and use profits from tolls to build the toll booths.

“The governor and state legislature’s proposal, taking I-80 from PennDOT and giving it to the bloated Turnpike Commission to peppering tolls across rural Pennsylvania, was a terrible decision and would cause irreversible economic damage,” Peterson said in a news release.

Rendell “would rather tax rural folks through tolls to subsidize Philadelphia’s failed SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) program,” Peterson said in a press release.

Peterson, who is a member of the appropriations committee, has opposed the tolls because he says they will tax drivers and businesses in rural Pennsylvania while more funding would go to urban mass transit.

Though the bill does not directly allocate revenue from tolls on I-80 toward urban mass transit, Windle said “all tolls would create more revenue to go to SEPTA by creating alternative revenue to pay for roads and bridges.”

“My boss, his utmost concern is that too much of the money is being sent to mass transit and that rural America is being left behind,” Windle said.

Peterson’s district includes Centre and Clearfield counties, among others, and more of I-80 than any other congressional district in the commonwealth.

For the amendment to gain approval, Windle said the Senate also will need to pass an appropriations bill, and then both the Senate and the House appropriations bills will go to conference committees to work out the differences. One appropriations bill then goes back to the respective chambers and is passed before being sent to President Bush to be signed or vetoed.

Even if Corman is right, and even if the amendment fails, Peterson deserves a round of applause for doing what he can to put a stop to Rendell’s crap. And speaking of crap, Fast Eddie isn’t happy that Peterson and Windle have tossed a wrench in his little extortion game.

Gov. Ed Rendell, angry over a congressional amendment

BWAAAAAAAAA! I WANT MY MOMMY! BWAAAAAAAAA!

Hat tip to Betsy Newmark. Mark Steyn hammers the Senate for their arrogance:

The geniuses who’d cooked up the “comprehensive” immigration bill’s “grand bargain” behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the citizenry to address the actual content of the legislation.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., dismissed critics of the bill as “racist.”

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, complained that the peasants had somehow got hold of his phone number, and he felt “intimidated.”

Sen. Trenthorn Lotthorn, R-Lottissippi, said: Who cares if they call? They could call 1-800-BLOWHARD (and leave off the “D” for “Deal’s already done”) 24 hours a day, and he still wasn’t going to listen to them. “To think that you’re going to intimidate a senator,” he scoffed, “into voting one way or the other by gorging your phones with phone calls – most of whom don’t even know where Gulfport is.” (Gulfport is a port in the Gulf emirate whose grateful people Sultan Trent has ruled o’er lo these many years.)

He also puts his finger on the central issue–which isn’t immigration, legal or illegal:

For “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” this was a much more ominous popular insurrection than the conservative backlash against the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Time and again, the remote insulated emirs were offered the opportunity to rise above their condescension and declined to do so. Sen. John McCain, R- Maverickistan, confidently asserted that he’d worked hard on this bill and knew it better than all these no-account nonentities riled up about it and then had to have it explained to him – by bloggers on a conference call – that he’d misunderstood a key provision of his own legislation: There was no requirement for illegal immigrants to pay back taxes. Their amnesty would come tax-free. Blustering senators who claimed to have drafted this thing had to be told what was in it by critics who’d actually taken the trouble to look at it.

Immigration isn’t going away: Human capital is the great issue facing all advanced societies. But it’s unbecoming for a mature democracy to discuss a critical matter in such a fraudulent way. It’s insulting to tell people that to oppose this bill is to oppose border enforcement. There are immigration laws on the books right now, and they are flouted with impunity by “sanctuary cities,” states and the federal government itself. The political class tells us that a nation on permanent “orange alert” at ports of entry can’t enforce its borders, and a broken immigration bureaucracy that can’t process existing levels of applicants can reliably handle another 20 million people.

And there you have it. Read the whole thing.

Another political quiz (this one is even more simplistic than most), courtesy of Mamacita.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 95% Conservative, 5% Liberal Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal Personal Responsibility: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal Ethics: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

There’s only one terminal at the State College airport, and as I was sitting there waiting to board the plane, I happened to turn around and see three flags. Now, if you saw three flags in an airport, what do you think they would be?

Sure, there was Old Glory. And yes, there was the Pennsylvania state flag. So what do you think the third flag was? It was this flag.

This may be a Pennsylvania thing (Tom Ridge, you know). I did look in Dulles and Charleston, but saw no flags of any variety at either airport. But I doubt it.

Please explain:

• why the Department of Homeland Security needs its own flag
• why taxes should be allocated to produce God knows how many of these flags

And while you’re at it, did you know DHS had its own flag? Did you know that your taxes were used to make this flag?

I have no problem with tax money being used to make, say, American flags. Or tax money being used to make, say, military flags. Or state taxes used to make, say, state flags. But I do have a problem with taxes being used to make DHS flags. Or FBI flags (is there such a thing?) Or CIA flags (again, is there such a thing?)

Yet another of those good government bureaucrats spending your money.

Would you like to know what your elected congresscritters think of you? Are you sure? Then, be my guest — but it’s not pretty. Hat tip to the good folks at Maggie’s Farm.

In our recent, off-year, primary election with a 55.71% turnout, 59.86% of the total ballots cast were Republican and 40.14% Democrat.

From the local rag:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who gained national prominence by targeting illegal immigrants living in his small northeastern Pennsylvania city, cruised to the Republican nomination for a third term on Tuesday - and unexpectedly won the Democratic nomination, too.

Barletta trounced GOP challenger Dee Deakos with nearly 94 percent of the vote. And he beat former Mayor Michael Marsicano for the Democratic nomination by staging a last-minute write-in campaign, all but guaranteeing himself another term, unofficial returns showed.

Barely two months after the last of the election signs from that last election finally came down, they started sprouting up again–and they’re everywhere. Great. And whoever heard of a primary where you have to do more research on candidates than a regular election? Well, that’s exactly what we have coming up Tuesday. Take a look (the Republican ballot):

Justice of the Supreme Court

Paul P. Panepinto
Maureen E. Lally-Green
Mike Krancer

Judge of the Superior Court

Bruce F. Bratton
Cheryl Lynn Allen
Jacqueline O. Shogan

Judge of the Court of Common Pleas

R. Bruce Manchester
Steven F. Lachman (This is the bozo that wants to send criminals to knitting class instead of locking them up. His flyers say he’s an Independent, so what’s he doing on the Republican ballot?)
Jonathan Grine
Pamela A. Ruest
Stephen P. Sloane

All I know is I’m voting for the judge who wants to toss criminals in jail and throw away the key. I’ll have to do some looking around to figure out who that is (for each race).

County Commissioner

Sue Mascolo
Chris Exarchos
Steven Dershem
Andrew A. Sicree

I’m skipping the ones that have only one candidate running.

Sheriff

Doug Kalmbach
Paul Stamm
Bill Kuzio

If you read this, you know how I’m voting in the general election. Course, this is the primary, so he’s not on the ticket. I like Kalmbach’s platform, but I’m going to find out which one is the idiot who criticized Nau for not buying new vehicles and not vote for him. I figure I can wean the choices down by elimination. And the Democrats have the good sense not to run anybody against Nau.

Register of Wills

Do we really need a special office just to handle wills? In Indiana, the County Clerk does that. And from all the flyers and visits to the house, you’d think this was some kind of important race. Sheesh. Having said that, I’m voting for Gable, only because I don’t care who wins, and I’ve met him–he’s the guy who explained the bizarre way local government works in this state.

Kim Barton
Charles R. Gable
Mary Lisko

District Judge

Drew Clemson
Leslie Dutchcot
Robert W. Stewart
Craig Q. Rose
Lynn Herman

Stop the presses! Lynn Herman was the state rep when we moved here. He voted for the pay raise, saw the writing on the wall, decided not to run–and then (surprise, surprise) his handpicked successor lost the election. So now, he’s running for district judge–I guess because judges can keep their pay raises (or so the state supreme court decided). And get this. His campaign slogan is, “Who better to judge violations of our laws than the person who wrote them?” Stop it! You’re killin me, Lynn baby! Idiot.

School Director at Large

There are nine running, and I can only vote for five. Now, I wouldn’t usually care much, except for the crap the current school board has been pulling (see here for everything you need to know about the high school scandal, and more). There’s a story about the candidates in the local rag. All I know is that I want the incumbent bozos out.

You’re going to love the school district referendum (for the reasons behind it, here:

Act 1 School District Referendum

“Do you favor the State College area school district imposing an additional 0.7% earned income tax? The revenue generated from the increased tax rate will be used to reduce school district taxes on qualified residential properties by an estimated $378.00. The current school district earned income tax rate is 0.95%.”

Guess how I’m going to vote. Go ahead. Guess.

UPDATE: Right after I posted this, I got email from the (hold my nose) State GOP, which says, “REMEMBER TO VOTE LALLY-GREEN AND KRANCER FOR SUPREME COURT; AND BRATTON AND SHOGAN FOR SUPERIOR COURT NEXT TUESDAY, MAY 15th, 2007,” and yes, in all caps. I guess that makes things easier–well, a little. I’ll just have to figure out which of the state selected candidates to vote against.

From the Economist (which I’ll reproduce, because it will become inaccessible soon). Why so much medical research is rot:

PEOPLE born under the astrological sign of Leo are 15% more likely to be admitted to hospital with gastric bleeding than those born under the other 11 signs. Sagittarians are 38% more likely than others to land up there because of a broken arm. Those are the conclusions that many medical researchers would be forced to make from a set of data presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Peter Austin of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto. At least, they would be forced to draw them if they applied the lax statistical methods of their own work to the records of hospital admissions in Ontario, Canada, used by Dr Austin.

Dr Austin, of course, does not draw those conclusions. His point was to shock medical researchers into using better statistics, because the ones they routinely employ today run the risk of identifying relationships when, in fact, there are none. He also wanted to explain why so many health claims that look important when they are first made are not substantiated in later studies.

The confusion arises because each result is tested separately to see how likely, in statistical terms, it was to have happened by chance. If that likelihood is below a certain threshold, typically 5%, then the convention is that an effect is “real”. And that is fine if only one hypothesis is being tested. But if, say, 20 are being tested at the same time, then on average one of them will be accepted as provisionally true, even though it is not.

In his own study, Dr Austin tested 24 hypotheses, two for each astrological sign. He was looking for instances in which a certain sign “caused” an increased risk of a particular ailment. The hypotheses about Leos’ intestines and Sagittarians’ arms were less than 5% likely to have come about by chance, satisfying the usual standards of proof of a relationship. However, when he modified his statistical methods to take into account the fact that he was testing 24 hypotheses, not one, the boundary of significance dropped dramatically. At that point, none of the astrological associations remained.

Unfortunately, many researchers looking for risk factors for diseases are not aware that they need to modify their statistics when they test multiple hypotheses. The consequence of that mistake, as John Ioannidis of the University of Ioannina School of Medicine, in Greece, explained to the meeting, is that a lot of observational health studies—those that go trawling through databases, rather than relying on controlled experiments—cannot be reproduced by other researchers. Previous work by Dr Ioannidis, on six highly cited observational studies, showed that conclusions from five of them were later refuted. In the new work he presented to the meeting, he looked systematically at the causes of bias in such research and confirmed that the results of observational studies are likely to be completely correct only 20% of the time. If such a study tests many hypotheses, the likelihood its conclusions are correct may drop as low as one in 1,000—and studies that appear to find larger effects are likely, in fact, simply to have more bias.

So, the next time a newspaper headline declares that something is bad for you, read the small print. If the scientists used the wrong statistical method, you may do just as well believing your horoscope.

Via Andrew Bolt, this rather story:

IT does not happen often, but from time to time you have to feel sorry for politicians.

Take Peter Debnam. He’s Opposition Leader in NSW, and a committed Christian - and there he was yesterday, dressed head to toe in rubber, forced to talk about sex with goats.

Australian politics are so . . . colorful.

From the Chronicle (as always, emphases mine):

Western Europe’s America Problem
By ANDREI S. MARKOVITS

When my father and I arrived in the United States as immigrants from Romania — by way of Vienna — in the summer of 1960, we spent a number of weeks living with American families in the greater New York area. Some were Jews, like us; most were not. But all spoke some German because our English was virtually nonexistent at the time. What impressed me no end, and will always remain with me, was how all those people adored my Viennese-accented German, how they reveled in it, found it elegant, charming, and above all oh-so-cultured. For business and family reasons, my father had to return to Vienna, where I attended the Theresianische Akademie, one of Austria’s leading gymnasia. The welcome accorded to me in that environment was much colder and more distant than it had been in the United States, not by dint of my being a Tschusch and a Zuagraster, an interloper from the disdained eastern areas of Europe, but by virtue of having become a quasi American.

From the get-go until my graduation, many years later, I was always admonished by my English teachers, in their heavily accented, Viennese-inflected English, not to speak this abomination of an “American dialect” or “American slang,” and never to use “American spelling,” with its simplifications that testified prima facie to the uncultured and simpleton nature of Americans. Of course any of my transgressions, be it chatting in class or playing soccer in the hallways, was met with an admonition of, “Markovits, we are not in the Wild West, we are not in Texas. Behave yourself.” Viennese-accented German, wonderful; American-accented English, awful. The pattern still pertains nearly 50 years later.

[ . . . ]

But as of October 2001, weeks after 9/11 and just before the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a massive Europewide resentment of America commenced that reached well beyond American policies, American politics, and the American government, proliferating in virtually all segments of Western European publics. From grandmothers who vote for the archconservative Bavarian Christian Social Union to 30-year-old socialist Pasok activists in Greece, from Finnish Social Democrats to French Gaullists, from globalization opponents to business managers — all are joining in the ever louder chorus of anti-Americanism.

“We are all America!” was horse manure when the Euroweenies were saying it.

Ambivalence, antipathy, and resentment toward and about the United States have made up an important component of European culture since the American Revolution, thus way before America became the world’s “Mr. Big” — the proverbial 800-pound gorilla — and a credible rival to Europe’s main powers, particularly Britain and France. In recent years, following the end of the cold war, and particularly after 9/11, ambivalence in some quarters has given way to unambiguous hostility. Animosity toward the United States has migrated from the periphery and become a respectable part of the European mainstream.

Negative sentiments and views have been driven not only — or even primarily — by what the United States does, but rather by an animus against what Europeans have believed that America is.

[ . . . ]

The Swiss legal theorist Gret Haller has written extensively to a very receptive and wide audience about America’s being fundamentally — and irreconcilably — different from (and, of course, inferior to) Europe from the very founding of the American republic. To Haller, the manner in which the relationships among state, society, law, and religion were constructed and construed in America are so markedly contrary to its European counterpart that any bridge or reconciliation between those two profoundly different views of life is neither possible nor desirable. Hence Europe should draw a clear line that separates it decisively from America. In a discussion with panelists and audience members at a conference on European anti-Americanism at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, on April 29, 2005, at which I shared the podium with Haller, she explicitly and repeatedly emphasized that Britain had always belonged to Europe, and that the clear demarcation was never to run along the channel separating Britain from the European continent, but across the ever-widening Atlantic that rightly divided a Britain-encompassing Europe from an America that from the start featured many more differences from than similarities to Europe. The past few years have merely served to render those differences clearer and to highlight their irreconcilable nature.

That widely voiced indictment accuses America of being retrograde on three levels: moral (America’s being the purveyor of the death penalty and of religious fundamentalism, as opposed to Europe’s having abolished the death penalty and adhering to an enlightened secularism); social (America’s being the bastion of unbridled “predatory capitalism,” to use the words of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and of punishment, as opposed to Europe as the home of the considerate welfare state and of rehabilitation); and cultural (America the commodified, Europe the refined; America the prudish and prurient, Europe the savvy and wise).

Indeed, in an interesting debate in Germany about so-called defective democracies, the United States seems to lead the way. Without a substantial “social” component, a democracy’s defects are so severe that one might as well consider labeling such a system nondemocratic, or at best defectively democratic. To be sure, no serious observer of the United States would dispute the considerable defectiveness of its political system. But what matters in this context is not so much the often appropriate indictment of American democracy, but the total silence about the defects of German and (Western) European democracy. As Klaus Faber, one of this argument’s major progressive critics, has correctly countered, surely most segregated and alienated immigrants in the suburbs of Paris or the dreary streets of Berlin would be less likely than America’s critics to extol German and French democracies as free of any defects. Indeed, if one extends the “social” dimension to include the successful integration of immigrants, surely America’s democracy would emerge as much less defective than the alleged models of Western Europe.

Many of the components of European anti-Americanism have been alive and well in Europe’s intellectual discourse since the late 18th century. The tropes about Americans’ alleged venality, mediocrity, uncouthness, lack of culture, and above all inauthenticity have been integral and ubiquitous to European elite opinion for well over 200 years.

[ . . . ]

America is resented for everything and its opposite: It is at once too prurient and too puritanical; too elitist, yet also too egalitarian; too chaotic, but also too rigid; too secular and too religious; too radical and too conservative. Again, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The Europeans have never moves past feudalism. There was no democratization in Europe, only a change of masters. Europeans still have elites that tell them what laws they may and may not pass, what foods they should and should not eat, what art they should and should not like, what fashions they should and should not wear — and of course this is what Europeans and Europhiles mean by “culture”: Feudalism.

No thanks. Your “culture” isn’t.

Allahpundit hits the nail square on the head: State of the Union: The biggest non-event of the year.

I was reading Maggie’s Farm Wednesday (as I do every day, and you should), and saw a link to an excellent article on simulations in American Thinker. Well, actually, the article is about the problem with global warming — climatological — simulations. It doesn’t offer a lot of information on simulations themselves, what they are, and how they work, and that’s why I’m writing this.

By the way, simulations are a real pain in the *ss to teach to undergrads. Trust me. Despite all the fuzzy math nonsense (or perhaps because of it), undergrads are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. But that’s another topic for another time.

Think of a (mathematical) function. The function takes values as input, processes the values, and spits out a value. A simulation is a lot like a function, with three crucial exceptions. First, a simulation has no real input values, but uses instead simulated input. Second, because the input is simulated, instead of running the simulation only once (as you would with a function), you have to run a simulation many times (iterations), then statistically analyze the output — the simulated output, calculated from the simulated input. Third, because the output of the simulation is simulated output and there are multiple outputs (because the simulation must be run many times), it must be statistically analyzed for reliability and the multiple results must be analyzed statistically.

A function is certain. A simulation is uncertain.

So how does a simulation simulate input values? Usually, by taking real data, analyzing it statistically to determine its frequency and distribution, then using statistics to generate input values using the same frequency and distribution. Note that in order for this to work, one must assume that the data are stable, that is, that the frequency and distribution of the data will not change over time.

The part of the simulation that corresponds to a function is known as the model. Obviously, only an accurate model can produce reliable results (output), and the more accurate the model, the more reliable the results.

Simulations can be powerful tools for making predictions, and are used in many fields, including business. However, because simulations use simulated (that is, not real) input and result in simulated (that is, not real) output, they have no evidentiary power — that is, you cannot use a simulation as evidence for anything, nor can you call the output of a simulation (real) data.

Let’s look at two different simulations.

The first is a business model. The owner of a bakery wants to see if increasing the number of ovens will increase his sales (and therefore, profits). The input of the simulation will be his sales data over the last year. The model will take into account the production per oven, fixed and variable costs, etc., and will generate the revenue and profit for several different numbers of ovens. The consultant can then statistically analyze the results for each number of ovens, and give the owner an answer.

Note that the model is based on hard data. Production per oven, fixed and variable costs, for example, are all absolute values. The model does not need to estimate anything, because all of the data are known.

Now let’s look at a climatological simulation, which generates the frequency and distribution of climatological data, and uses it to simulate input data (and will eventually output climatological data). Given the instability of the climate, this is problematic (if the data used to create the input are not stable, the simulation cannot be reliable). But the real problem — and difference from the business simulation — is in the model.

In the business model as I pointed out above, the data are all absolute, that is, known. In the climatological model, the data in the model are estimated, because climatology is a young science, and nobody is certain how, say, CO2 or water vapor affects the climate. A climatologist, given enough data, can make an educated guess. But it’s still estimated.

You can use estimated data in your model, but doing so inserts another layer of uncertainty into the simulation results. Let me explain.

Since the data in our model are estimated, we must use statistics to determine their validity. Since Mr. Lewis uses dice, I will as well, sticking for the sake of simplicity and clarity to rolling one die.

If you roll a die, the probability that you will roll, say, a 1 is 1/6. If you roll the die a second time, the probability that you will roll, say, a second 1 is 1/6 * 1/6, or 1/36. If you roll the die a third time, the probability that you will roll, say, a third 1 is 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6, or 1/216, and so forth.

Estimated variables in a simulation model must be treated in the same way as rolling a die, because each is uncertain, and each involves probability. Assuming that our climatologist is ethical, each of the estimated variables in his model should fall within the statistical norm of reliability, or be 95% reliable. Given the complexity of climatological models, hundreds of such estimated variables would be necessary, but for clarity’s sake, we will say the model includes only 50 such variables.

That means that the reliablility of the simulation model is 0.95^50 (0.95 raised to the fiftieth power), or 0.0769, or 7.7%. So even if we didn’t have the uncertainty of the simulated input (not to mention the additional uncertainty of assuming that the data are stable), even if there were no uncertainty in our ouputs themselves, our simulation results would only 7.7% reliable.

Climatological simulations cannot be taken very seriously. They can certainly never be taken as evidence or proof, as no simulation can be, because they are simulations. They aren’t real.

What disturbs me about all this global warming warfare is that the climatologists know this. They know that their models have no evidentiary power. Yet, they disingenuously claim the reverse. This isn’t science. It’s politics. It’s dishonest. And it’s a breach of professional ethics and integrity.

This whole global warming thing may be perfectly valid, of course. But simulations won’t tell us one way or the other.

KC Johnson’s promised article is posted, and in it, he raises some points I find disturbing. First, we have Assistant Professor Kim Curtis, who is at the center of the lawsuit:

The basics of the allegations are as follows: in a spring 2006 class, Curtis taught two members of the lacrosse team, one of whom was graduating senior Kyle Dowd. The course required three papers, each worth 25 percent of the final grade, with the remaining 25 percent of the grade devoted to participation. (That percentage is unusually high, given the subjective nature of grading participation.) For his first paper, Curtis gave Dowd a C+. His second paper was due on April 5, at the height of the media frenzy orchestrated by Nifong. (The Group of 88’s statement appeared the next day.) For this paper, Dowd received a C-, even though he had met with Curtis before writing the paper for suggestions on improvement.

By this point, Curtis had adopted one of the most extreme anti-lacrosse positions of any Duke professor. Not only had she signed the Group of 88’s statement and attended rallies denouncing the players (background, in this photo), but on March 29, she emailed fellow Durham activists expressing outrage that defense attorneys had (correctly) stated that no DNA match would occur to any lacrosse player. “The self assurance,” wrote Curtis,

in the statement issued yesterday by the team that they will be exonerated by the results of the DNA testing makes me wonder if we’ve gotten the full story about who was at the house that night. Were there others present who in fact carried out the rape and who are being protected by everyone else who was there? How do we know who was there?

Ponder the implications of that statement. In writing, a Duke faculty member had suggested that Dowd and the other lacrosse player in her class were accomplices to rape.

The two players then suffered identical fates in their third paper. Curtis gave both an F on the final paper.

I find it disturbing that a faculty member — supposedly a professional — would behave like this when these students were in her class. What happened to professionalism? And why did not her chairman — or dean — address this behavior when it happened?

Some years ago, I had students in two different parties running for the student government. There were election irregularities, and though I didn’t take the student government election seriously or much care one way or another, I carefully avoided bringing it up in my classes, lest I be seen as taking one party’s side over another. And that was no contentious rape case full of racial issues — it was a trivial student government election.

I do not understand her behavior. I also do not understand the university’s behavior:

Curtis’ decision to fail Dowd almost blocked his graduation. Only the extraordinary intercession of a fair-minded member of Duke’s administration allowed Dowd to graduate, by arranging for an additional transfer of a course he had taken at Johns Hopkins. But Duke initially refused to do anything about Curtis’ grade, for reasons that appear unclear, before eventually changing the grade to a D. The official justification, peculiarly, claimed that Curtis had miscalculated Dowd’s grade, but did not suggest that she had engaged in grade retaliation. In fact, as one blogger noted, the move suggested that “there is no question that the Fs she gave the lacrosse team players were unwarranted. The university found that there had been a ‘calculation error,’ and changed the student’s grades. So the question of whether she engaged in grade retaliation purely out of personal and political spite is settled. She did exactly that.”

It’s unclear to me why Duke allowed this case to progress to a stage where a lawsuit would be filed. First, the claim of retaliation seems quite strong. Second, as John in Carolina has noted, the Dowds’ lawyer, Joseph E. Zeszotarski, is highly regarded, and has served as past chair of both the Criminal Law Section, North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Criminal Justice Section, North Carolina Bar Association. Finally, the filing of the suit is bad for Duke’s image.

Exactly — and this is why Duke’s behavior throughout has been irrational. Not only, or even primarily, Nifong or the case is injurious to Duke’s reputation, but the university’s own statements, and their lack of action with regard to the Vice Provost (I really don’t understand why they didn’t act there) and Kim Curtis.

I do understand why Duke used the term “calculation error” and avoided the question of whether Curtis engaged in grade retaliation. Universities are PR machines, and their natural reaction to scandal is to sweep the dirty bits under the rug. But this is directly contradicted by Duke’s statements about the case, Duke’s actions toward the lacrosse team, Duke’s failure to control the Gang of 88 — particularly the Vice Provost — and Duke’s failure to respond when Curtis previously engaged in grade retaliation.

Duke’s behavior throughout makes no sense. It’s as if they are torn between their identity politics and their desire to avoid a scandal. And in this case, the choice was one or the other, but not both.

Although I give President Broadhead’s sudden turn-around no weight or respect at all, the faculty of the economics department did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. Yet at the same time, Cathy Davidson, Vice Provost and Gang of 88 member, published a letter in the News-Observer, defending the Gang of 88’s “guilty because white and privileged!” stance that condemned the lacrosse players to unproven guilt. Davidson’s letter will not help Duke’s reputation. Johnson has an excellent discussion of Davidson’s letter here.

What I find most disturbing about this has little to do with the university or the players in this scandal, and everything to do with the reaction to it — rather, who did react, and who did not.

This whole case is a gross miscarriage of justice. Because of Nifong’s electoral ambitions, at least three lives are ruined, and perhaps a fourth, if the accuser’s life wasn’t already ruined. And all of this was easily avoidable, had Nifong only had more respect for the judicial system than he did the votes of the ultra-liberal and the black community. Saying that Nifong made mistakes, as if he tied his shoes with square knots, is euphemistic. Nifong engaged in dishonest, illegal practices to use this case to get elected, and used the press and television extensively to maximize his exposure.

What disturbs me is that at least outside of Duke, primarily conservatives have been decrying this travesty, and liberals have been silent (or have defended Nifong). Why would the fairness of the criminal justice system split along political lines? What, after all, is “conservative” about first adopting a “wait and see” attitude (rather than a “castrate them now!” attitude), then when the case started to smell foul, press for further information? Isn’t that what we all should have been doing?

That anyone could be so hypnotized by identity politics and a victim mentality that he turns a blind eye to such a flagrant violation of our judicial system — that anyone could assign guilt based solely on the race of the accused and the accuser — is what’s so very, very dangerous about liberalism today.

Ultimately, that is what disturbs me most about the Duke case.

Yes, I know, yesterday I said they were boring — boring because most are so poorly constructed they aren’t valid.

Sampling

The first problem with polls and surveys (usually) is the sample. Because polls aren’t descriptive but inferential — that is, a poll is not meant to simply describe the sample, but generalize from the sample to the larger population — that introduces its own set of potential problems:

With descriptive statistics, everything is nice and black and white. With inferential statistics, however, we leave the realm of talking about certainty and enter the realm of probability. Know that from this point on, we are talking about probability, that is, when we draw a conclusion, we can only say that within a certain probability, our conclusion is supported by the data.

Inferential statistics is when we analyze a body of data and infer that our conclusions apply to a larger group that our data represent. The most visible recent examples of inferential statistics have been polls.

A poll asks questions of a group, then applies its conclusions or results to a larger group within a margin of error (there’s the probability). Those questioned (the data) are the sample. The results are applied to the population (the larger group).

Polls aren’t a convincing application of statistics. There is an accuracy problem, though they are more accurate than most people believe (we’ll discuss the exit poll disaster of the recent election presently). Polls share a number of weaknesses with the larger set of survey studies.

One problem is that surveys report what people believe they do (if people don’t out and out lie, and some do), not what people actually do, and there is often a large difference between the two. Also, there is really no statistical way to correct for this. It is an inherent weakness of surveys, so any research based on survey data must be viewed skeptically.

Perhaps the most famous example is the Arizona Garbage Project, carried out by anthropologists at the University of Arizona in 1973. Subjects were given surveys that solicited what they had thrown out in the garbage. These data were then compared to the actual contents of the subjects’ garbage. Unsurprisingly, people did not even begin to accurately report what they had thrown away. The moral of the story: surveys are unreliable, and should be viewed with extreme skepticism, if not discounted immediately (unless they are backed up with hard data).

Another problem is this: if we want our sample to represent the population, our sample must be as large as possible, and randomly selected. Research based on surveys typically uses small samples, but more importantly, all surveys are self-selecting samples.

Consider the exit polls in the recent election. Those people who consented to be polled form the sample; this is a self-selected sample. Those conducting the polls tried to minimize the bias introduced by a self-selected sample by using stratified sampling, that is, by reflecting the percentages of demographic groups in the larger population in their poll sample. This can reduce the bias, but it cannot obviate it.

Take all research based on surveys with a very large grain of salt.

Since political polls cannot take random samples, they use stratified samples. A stratified sample can only have inferential power if it is sufficiently large, and if it accurately reflects the demographics of the population. So how large is sufficiently large? That, of course, depends on the size of the target population, but as a general rule of thumb, a political survey or poll that samples fewer than one thousand people cannot reliably reflect the target population.This is just a general rule of thumb, understand. Pennsylvania has far more districts in the House than other states, and as a result, districts are significantly smaller; therefore, a poll tracking a Pennsylvania House race could use a smaller sample than one thousand — but a Senate poll should have at least one thousand respondents in the sample. The problem with most political polls is that the samples are usually too small.

Then there’s the stratification of the sample. Ankle-Biting Pundits bitinglySorry, I just couldn’t help myself. points out the stratification problems with the most recent Washington Post poll:

In the poll, 22% of respondents aren’t even eligible to vote. And of those 78% that are registered, a full 25% either claimed they would “probably vote”, or that chances were, at best 50/50 that they would do so. And strangely, 78% were registered, 22% weren’t and 3% “had no opinion”. Um, that’s 103%, which strangely does match the historical voting participation rate in many of many urban areas, graveyards, pet stores, homeless shelters (in Democrat wards) and Alzheimer’s wings of nursing homes.

What’s also interesting is that the poll doesn’t ask these people if they actually voted in 2004 (or 2002), and if so, who they voted for.

Further, just looking at the demographics should give you pause. The poll is made up of 35% “Independents” and “Others”, which Republicans only make up 28% of all respondents (Democrats make up 30%). In 2004, only 26% of voters were “Independents”, and that was in a Presidential race. So come on, do these idiots really think that on election day 40% of voters are going to be unaffiliated with either party?

He goes on to point out several other, serious problems I won’t go into here, though the whole post is well worth reading.

Interpretation

There are also interpretation problems. The first of these is the margin of error. Let’s say our poll results look like this:

When you read polls, you should add and subtract the margin of error to find the most conservative (minimum) range. Here, the margin of error is greater than the lead Jones has over Smith, yet a newspaper would summarize this poll as Jones leading Smith by four points. But the poll is invalid — because the margin of error is greater than the lead.

That’s not the only interpretation problem with this poll, however. The other — equally serious — problem is that the undecided vote is greater — significantly greater — than the lead. Reading this poll the way most people do, Jones leads Smith by four points, yet sixteen percent — four times the lead — are undecided.

The poll is crap. It doesn’t tell us much of anything, other than Smith and Jones are running close, but sixteen percent of the sample are undecided. That’s it. It does not indicate a lead for Jones over Smith, nor does it indicate that the Democrats would take over this seat. Note that if you were sitting at the table with the statistician responsible for this poll, he would tell you exactly the same thing I just did. It’s when poll results are released to statistics-illiterate journalists, and are read by a largely statistics-illiterate population that it morphs into “a four-point lead for Jones.”

Unfortunately, many people will be discouraged by these unreliable polls, mistakenly believing that Jones is ahead of Smith (and he may be — but the poll doesn’t tell us either way). Let’s hope most aren’t so discouraged that they don’t vote.

Linked to Stop the ACLU, Bullwinkle Blog

Forgive my cynicism, but with all this Chicken Little hysteria about “obesity!” all over the place, my first reaction is a derisive snort — then a sense of urgency about the health police passing idiotic legislation.

I already knew university students are for the most part not close to obese. And over five decades of life, but I don’t see more obese people. But hey, maybe there’s something to this, I thought, so I’ve been doing a little experiment.

It’s completely unscientific. I’ve just been paying attention to the people I see. Today, for example, I went to the Mall to see the people there (and do a walk around the Mall).

Funny, I didn’t see lots of huge people. I didn’t see lots of huge people at Hersheypark, either. And like I said, this isn’t in any way scientific, but if obesity were the horrible problem we keep hearing it is, and if it’s much worse than it used to be, then I should be seeing evidence.

You know, like on television, when on those obesity spots on the news they show huge person after huge person. If you watch those spots, you’d think everybody walking down the sidewalk looked like that.

But they don’t. And as far as I can tell, there aren’t more big people than there were in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, or the 90s.

So I call bullshit on the howling about obesity — at least until somebody can show me where all these huge folks are hiding.

I fear that we tend, when praising allies, to almost always single out Britain and forget our other “unilateral” allies — such as Australia. I say this with some shame and guilt, because I have done the same. So today, I’ll try to undo that just a bit, and praise Australia and John Howard. I’ll reproduce the whole thing, because newspaper articles tend to disappear quickly (emphases mine):

By Michael Gordon, Chicago
May 19, 2006

NO GLOBAL challenge could be secured without American power and purpose, Prime Howard John Howard has declared in a vigorous defence of the role played by the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“Without American leadership, the trials and tragedies of recent years could be but a prelude of darker days to come,” Mr Howard said in an address yesterday to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. “With American leadership, we can build a better world — not just for us, but for all.”

Sharpening his call for the US to play a greater role in global affairs, Mr Howard told the council: “To the voices of anti-Americanism around the world, to those who shout ‘Yankee go home’, let me offer some quiet advice: be careful what you wish for.”

Mr Howard said the imperative of American global leadership was one of three defining truths “in this age of global opportunity and uncertainty”.

The other truths were that, “we live as never before in a world of blurred boundaries” and that liberal democracies had to respond with “a synthesis of interests and values; a marriage of national strategy with national character”.

Addressing specific global challenges, Mr Howard:

â–  Reaffirmed the commitment to match the resolve of the US in Iraq. “Australia is with you. We will stay the course. We will finish the job,” he said.

â–  Described Iran’s refusal to back down on its pursuit of uranium enrichment as a challenge for the United Nations.

â–  Predicted that the emergence of a global middle class, particularly in China and India, would be one of the most momentous trends of the 21st century.

â–  Defined China’s rise as the defining phenomenon of the age.

â–  Praised Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, saying he was tackling the enormous challenges facing Indonesia robustly and admirably.

Mr Howard also said none of the problems in the Asia-Pacific region — including in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula — could be resolved, or even managed, without US leadership and engagement. He said the key to relations with China was “building on shared interests and widening the circle of co-operation, while dealing openly and honestly on issues where we might disagree”.

Acknowledging a greater wariness towards China’s growth in the US, Mr Howard cautioned that not only China needed to adjust to changing realities.

“The international community must also acknowledge that China is determined to succeed and to reclaim its place in the global order.” Before the speech, Mr Howard played down the personal significance of the glowing reception and lavish praise he received in Washington from President George Bush and others.

“I see everything that has happened over the past few days as a compliment to my country, not to me,” he said. “This is a wonderful endorsement of the importance of Australia to the United States, of the respect America has for Australia no matter who the prime minister is.”

Hat tip: Don Surber

You wouldn’t think you’d have to call a time out to give conservatives a reality check (though the immigration explosion shows that even conservatives from time to time go off the deep end), but you do. Like on a couple of blogs discussing the primary here, where a disturbing number of conservatives are saying things like, “But that wouldn’t work in California. Or New York. Or Massachussetts.” Here’s only one example (the comments, not the article).

Well, duh. And here’s that dose of reality: Nothing is going to work in California. Or New York. Or Massachussetts. And hey, if you live in one of these “we’re entitled to government services!” states, well, there’s really not much point in getting bent out of shape if your Republican congress critter moves to the left to get elected, is there? So if it bothers you that much, maybe you could consider moving from your Peoples’ Republik to the United States, eh?

And if you don’t live in a socialist hellhole but you’re whining that it won’t work there, well, how do you know if you haven’t tried it? And why are you whining, instead of campaigning for a candidate you like better than that RINO you now have in office?

Reality. It’s what’s for dinner. Conservative dinner, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars.

If ads like this one are going to be the Democrats’ strategy, then the election is ours. More, more, more, please more!

From Captain’s Quarters:

Over the past week, many of us have written on the frustration felt by conservatives (especially fiscal conservatives) over the past few years. Some believe that the only manner in which to serve notice on the GOP that it cannot take conservative votes for granted is a massive walkout, a boycott of the 2006 midterms and perhaps even the 2008 presidential elections. Others, such as myself, believe that conservatives will marginalize themselves by doing so and will prove themselves incapable of being reliable partners in any kind of ruling coalition.

Today we have an example of what can be accomplished through active engagement rather than disengagement. In Pennsylvania, primary voters have unseated the two Republican leaders in the state Senate that gave the body an unpopular pay raise, joining thirteen of their incumbent House colleagues in getting the boot

About the same time we moved out here, the state legislature voted themselves a pay raise, and contrary to the state constitution, voted to take it the same year. Voters were already furious because Fast Eddie Rendell had diverted 90% of the gasoline tax away from road construction throughout the state to prop up the failing Philly public transportation system. The pay raise pushed them over the edge.

Imparters of conventional wisdom said over and over again that the anger would fade, and it would have no effect on elections. Yet, the anger never did fade, and thirty state legislators decided not to run, and not to face the anger of their constituents. And voters demonstrated their disgust yesterday in the primary.

This is a prime example of what I’ve taken some heat over lately on certain blogs (which shall remain nameless): If you want to effect change, then vote. Sitting on your ass and doing some passive-aggressive Korean “I’ll let them know how pissed off I am by not voting” act won’t do a damn thing, other than hand the Democrats the election.

It’s irrelevant what your politics are, or what issues are most important to you. If you want change, vote. Period. End of discussion.

From PennLive:

Voter backlash continues in Pa. over legislative pay raise
5/17/2006, 3:09 a.m. ET
By MARTHA RAFFAELE
The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In a demonstration of lasting public anger over a legislative pay raise, Pennsylvania voters ended the political careers of two veteran state Senate Republican leaders and at least 12 House members in a major shake-up of the General Assembly.

 [ . . . ]

The results marked the first time in more than 40 years that any Pennsylvania legislative leader was voted out of office. They also represented a dramatic reversal of recent election trends; only a handful of sitting lawmakers typically lose in any given election year.

 [ . . . ]

The most stunning defeat