Author Archives: Tom

More DeVany on Bonds

Posted on by
7

bbonds081007.jpgAs noted here earlier this week, Art DeVany has written extensively on the specious basis of the conventional wisdom that Barry Bonds’ steroid use allowed him to break the Major League Baseball home run records. DeVany responds again here:

[The conventional wisdom that Bonds’ steroid use allowed him to break the MLB home run records] does not fit into any standard model or argument that has been offered as an explanation for his “departure” from the norm. There is no norm, which [the conventional wisdom] and most others advances.
Genius does not follow a process that can be normed. My argument is simple and is in the paper. Basically, most people are using an implicit normal distribution model of HRs and they claim that his performance cannot come from the model. Hence, he must have taken something. This is wrong. His performance is within the natural variation of HR hitting, but the model is not a normal distribution. Why should it be? A normal distribution applies when most people are close to the average. This has nothing to do with HRs. If you role snake eyes three times in a row, do you think there has to be an explanation? No, it is in the variation. Just chance. The dice are not on steroids.
What is worse is that people who claim “he did it and it worked” don’t know much about the physiology of steroids. They weaken connective tissue and interfere with concentration when they are taken in large doses. They primarily increase protein synthesis is ST muscle fibers, which are no good for hitting HRs. Lastly, most people who formulate the argument do not have a falsifiable hypothesis, and this is not science. They take his performance, which no one else has ever done, and claim that you cannot prove that it was not due to steroids. “He took steroids and therefore hit 73 HRs” cannot be falsified. Because the conclusion is true, the statement is vacuous. It is true no matter what the premise.

Read the entire post.
Update: Professor DeVany compares Bonds and Hank Aaron’s home run-hitting prowess to that of an average MLB player here, and provides additional comments regarding Bonds here. Professor DeVany’s paper on home-run hitting is here (pdf).

Kling’s Iron Trilemma

Posted on by
1

Kling%27s%20book.gifFollowing on this post from ealier this week in regard to American’s currently failed system of health care finance, Arnold Kling follows with another one:

. . . Kling’s Iron Trilemma. We want:
–what I call insulation, where consumers enjoy the peace of mind of having their medical services paid for by a third party;
–unrestricted access, where consumers and doctors can choose medical procedures without bureaucratic interference or government budget limits;
–less stress over rising health care costs.
The trilemma is that we can have at most two out of three. Much of the “reality-based community” (an Orwellian label if there ever was one) denies that the trilemma exists. [Jonathon] Gruber [the M.I.T. economist who helped design the universal health insurance plan in Massachusetts] does not deny its existence, but he prefers restricting access to reducing insulation. I prefer the latter.

Spitzer channels Dr. Phil

Posted on by
Reply

Spitzer081007.jpgHas the mainstream media sentenced the Lord of Regulation to sensitivity training?

Solzhenitsyn speaks

Posted on by
Reply

solzh-1.jpgWhen you have a few minutes, don’t miss this Speigel Online interview with prominent Russian writer and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Check out Solzhenitsyn’s overview of Russia’s political leaders since the fall of Communism:

Gorbachev’s administration was amazingly politically naÔve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Gorbachev, and not Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of our country.
Yeltsin’s period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to people’s lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This, of course, deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community. All this met with even more hearty Western applause.
Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

Read the entire interview.

An easy prediction

Posted on by
Reply

Metrorail%20car-Houston080807.jpgBuried in the Chronicle’s article on the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s latest propaganda release regarding the proposed University light rail line is the following snippet:

The study estimates say the Cummins-Wheeler-Elgin combination is the least expensive of the routes considered, at $715 million, compared with $836 million for the Southwest Freeway-Alabama combination.

Prediction: Both routes will cost substantially more than the estimates and the revenue generated from the ridership will not come close to meeting the operating expenses of the line.

Gretchen Morgenson’s recurring nightmare

Posted on by
Reply

morgensongretchen%20080807.jpgLarry Ribstein used to be NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson’s worst nightmare, but the nightmares receded a bit when Professor Ribstein tired of exposing the vacuous nature of her weekly columns after a year or so. Nevertheless, Morgenson’s nightmare has not gone away completely:

[Kevin J.] Murphy and [Jan] Zaojnik attribute the rise in the relative value of managerial ability to a variety of factors. Most interestingly, these include the need for public relations skills in dealing with external constituencies and increased media coverage. Other factors include the need to be conversant with other disciplines — economics, management science, accounting, finance. The authors argue that firm-specific skills are becoming less important because data are no longer “buried in the bowels of the organization,” but are easily accessible by computers.
The authors conclude that the importance of general rather than firm-specific human capital means that:

CEOs can capture the whole marginal product created by their transferable ability, but the lack of alternative use for their firm-specific skills means that they can only extract a fraction of the rents created by this part of their human capital. Therefore, a shift in the relative importance of general managerial ability will lead to higher wages even if overall managerial marginal productivity declines.

. . .Most importantly, I love the irony here. Murphy and Zaojnik are saying that part of what is driving executive pay up is the skill in dealing with Gretchen Morgenson and her ilk ñ the very people who are complaining about that pay.

Read the entire post.

Bonds does it

Posted on by
3

barry-bonds%20080807.jpgBarry Bonds finally broke Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record last night, dooming all of us to several days of inane and simplistic arguments on talk radio shows as to whether Bonds’ record should include an asterisk because of his use of steroids during the latter stages of his career.
For a more balanced view regarding Bonds and his steroid use, take a look at previous posts here, here, here, here, here and here over the past several years. In the end, Bonds is a product of his environment.
Update: Kuff agrees with me, and sabermetrician JC Bradbury provides a reasoned view on Bonds. Lee Sinins provides this statistical analysis (pdf) of Bonds’ career. And here is the video on no. 756:

The Universal Distraction

Posted on by
7

HealthInsurance%20080809.gifAs noted in these earlier posts, Arnold Kling continues to provide an enormous amount of lucid analysis on what ails America’s health care finance system. In this TCS Daily op-ed, Kling makes two excellent points, the first regarding tax treatment of health insurance premiums:

I would like to see the abolition of the tax break for company-provided health benefits as well as the tax break for Medical Savings Accounts. Company-provided health benefits ought to be included with personal income and taxed at the personal income rate. There should be no special benefits for savings accounts labeled “medical.” (I think that all saving ought to be tax-free, but that’s another topic.)
. . . Although I prefer real health insurance to insulation, I do not want to impose my preferences on others. All I ask is that we reform our tax code so that it is neutral.

Second, Kling makes an important point regarding the freedom to buy health insurance and the health care limits that society needs to accept if a person chooses not to do so:

[M]ost of the people who are uninsured today are reasonably healthy. They just do not want to pay for their own health insurance. In my view, they ought to be allowed to make that choice, but they should face the consequences. If they require health care, the cost should not be shifted onto other people who have insurance.

The cultural legacy of politicizing religion

Posted on by
4

God%20Bless%20America%20cross.gifThe pastor of the local church that my family and I attend has used the pulpit from time to time to advocate political positions and certain politicians, which I have always viewed as a dubious practice. I was reminded of my pastor’s sermons as I read this Cathy Young/ReasonOnline article on the questionable cultural legacy of the late Jerry Falwell:

Though the movement Falwell helped launch was unable to enact much of its agenda into law, there is no question that it transformed the American political landscape. Even the battles it hasnít won, such as the effort to teach ìintelligent designî in schools on a par with evolution, are still battles it was able to force on its opponents.
More broadly, it helped create a climate in which the language of politics is saturated with references to God, a political culture in which a major political magazine (Newsweek) can ask a presidential candidate (Howard Dean) whether he believes in Jesus Christ as the son of God and the path to eternal life.
Despite these political inroads, Falwellís brand of religious conservatism has suffered losses in the culture wars. Feminism, its radical excesses mostly discarded, has become firmly integrated into Americaís cultural mainstream. (Even, apparently, in Falwellís own family: His daughter is a surgeon.) Acceptance of gays is now at a level that would have been unthinkable in 1980. Sexual content in mainstream entertainment has steadily increased, and adults-only material is more available than ever thanks to new technologies. While divorce rates have dropped somewhat, so have marriage rates; in much of America, sex between single adults is widely accepted as a social norm.

Along those same lines, this CNN article reports on a Kentucky church’s “Court Watch” program in which volunteers attend court hearings to monitor how judges are handling drug-related cases. It’s clear that the members of the church group are not interested in facilitating leniency in sentencing in such cases.
Several years ago, while sweating a jury in a civil case at the courthouse, I attended the daily initial appearance docket call in the juvenile criminal court next door. It was a heartbreaking experience and prompted me to begin doing pro bono work in the local juvenile criminal justice system. Since then, I’ve attended numerous such initial appearance dockets in the juvenile criminal justice system. I have never seen a member of any Christian organization attending one of those dockets.

In Cold Blood

Posted on by
Reply

In%20Cold%20Blood.jpgAs noted earlier here, I oppose the death penalty because of the way in which our criminal justice system administers it, but I have no philosophical opposition to it. Here is why.