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Public school funding, lotteries and Extreme Home Makeover?

Listening to Dennis Prager while running some errands this afternoon took me from his discussion of public education, and specifically the issue of whether enough is spent on public education, to lottery winners and current reality television shows.  Prager made the point that just spending money on schools is not the answer, and cited the federal court takeover of the school districts in Kansas to support his point.  I think he may have actually meant the school districts in Missouri (perhaps around Kansas City or perhaps St. Louis), but in any event, the basic point he was making was that the federal court directed ridiculous amounts of money be spent on the school districts in an attempt to remedy past discrimination.  I believe the court even went so far as to effectively order a tax increase to raise the money at one point.  The end result?  No improvement in academic performance despite the state of the art facilities and exorbitant spending.

Which made me think of the stories (perhaps apocryphal) of lottery winners whose lives have ultimately not really improved despite the sudden infusion of great wealth.  Without a firm foundation and good decision-making abilities, they wind up essentially regressing to the mean of their previous lifestyle.

And then the next car in my train of thought was that it would be fascinating to do follow-up stories on the families who have had their homes either completely replaced or renovated as part of ABC's Extreme Home Makeover program.  My kids are fascinated by this show, for some reason, so we tend to have it on Sunday night after dinner.  My daughter seems to get rather involved emotionally in the idea of doing something to help the family and how great it is for them that they will have such a wonderful home when the work is done.

But I wonder sometimes whether the Paul Harvey-esque "rest of the story" is as bright as what we see on Sunday nights.  I have an inkling that in the aftermath of the week of giving and building that puts a tremendous spectacle on television, many of the families are still ill-equipped to take proper care of their new homes and all that comes with them.  I have never looked into things like the gift tax consequences that may be involved, but I'm really thinking more at this point of just the necessary maintenance in terms of cleaning and taking care of landscaping.  Those can be very time consuming and/or costly in ways that may create a slow decline into decrepitude that would rather sad.

I hope I'm wrong.  Perhaps there is some independent filmmaker or ambitious investigative journalist who will break this story and reveal to the world that in fact things have tended to work out well for these families.  The continued absence of such follow-up work by ABC tends to make me think my fears are well founded.


Tags: Media   culture  
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I have my doubts about academic research like this, but it's an interesting and amusing possibility...

I’m guessing Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, among others, would be none too happy to have the behavioral economics research described in “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” applied to their behavior while in office.  From the book review:

Take Ariely's unusual experiment on sexual arousal. A group of 20-something male college students were asked to predict how they would answer a set of questions about sexual attitudes and behavior when sexually aroused. They were asked the same questions twice -- first in a “cold, rational” state, and again while they were viewing pornography Web sites.

No Difference?

“If we know ourselves, then there should be no difference between those two conditions, but as the results show, we don't really know ourselves. In a cold state, people thought they would always respect women, always use condoms and their sexual preferences were rather conservative,” Ariely said. Once they were aroused, their answers changed dramatically -- a willingness to engage in risky activities replaced normal caution.

So what does this have to do with economics?

“Imagine a stockbroker, who is at a particular moment making a lot of money or losing a lot of money,” Ariely said.  “He's gripped by emotion. Is he going to make the same decision as he would in a cold, rational state?”

Or imagine an elected official, who is at a particular moment faced with making a decision about national security.  He's gripped by ... emotion (wink wink).  Is he going to make the same decision as he would in a cold, rational state?  Interestingly, perhaps Richard Miniter's musings on Pajamas Media approach this issue on the Spitzer drama.  Here’s his post in full:

As usual, the press took the easy way out of the Spitzer-sex scandal. They wore out their shoe leather finding out who the poor girl was servicing the New York governor. The New York Times stooped for the scoop.

The less-sexy, more important angle is: Who was paying for these $1,300-hour services?

The common assumption is that Spitzer himself paid. And maybe he did. But it seems unlikely. He is not personally wealthy (unlike his father) and, indeed, got into some trouble for apparently violating campaign finance rules for borrowing from his father for his campaign.

If Spitzer did not pay, who did? Now things become interesting. What if the tab was paid by a lobbyist? What, ahem, favor was expected in return? Did Spitzer give it to him?

And what if the favor-seeker was not an American citizen or represented a non-American interest? What if we represented say Chinese intelligence? Or the Saudis, who are well-known to pay for services at the “Emperors Club VIP” and other call-girl services? What did they want?

One thing that might interest the Saudis is the work of the New York Police Department’s elite counter-terrorism division. They might be interested in burying intelligence linking a prince’s unfortunate donation to an Islamic charity.

The possibilities are endless and the question is worth answering: Mr. Spitzer who paid your bill at the Emperor’s Club?

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I don't think this is any kind of smoking gun that shows "Wall Street" took down Eliot Spitzer

When I saw the title of the link at Pajamas Media, I was intrigued.  "Did Wall Street Nail Spitzer?"  A fair question which I alluded to the other day in commenting that at that point, it looked like the Hollywood version of evil big business knowing everything about its enemies and taking them down accordingly was dealt a blow with the Spitzer case.

So out of curiosity, I clicked the link.  The name of the author, Alexander Cockburn, rang a bell, though I didn't recall having read anything by him previously.  A quick Dogpile search indicated that he's a radical leftist who has been around for a while and written a lot.

In actually reading the story, it's pretty much a pile of conjecture that perhaps Wall Street's private eyes, and somehow their collaborationists in the administration, Republican party, or maybe conservatives generally (the story is pretty vague) managed to get an investigation underway that nailed Spitzer.

Is it possible?  I suppose.  But this story doesn't advance the ball in any significant way toward proving anything.  It's just a rambling "this is the way it might have happened" piece.  The biggest hurdle I couldn't clear (and there are many) is just the basic point of how inept must these nefarious Wall Street moneymen and their high-priced investigators be if it took them 10 years to get the job done, allowing Spitzer to take down as many people as he did without ever taking a case to trial?

Occam's Razor still most likely applies in this matter.  Mr. Cockburn may not believe that Spitzer's financial shenanigans were flagged without benefit of a massive Wall Street and government conspiracy, but he's going to have to do a lot better than this if he wants that dog to hunt.


Tags: spitzer   Media  
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Caveat emptor

As we Cubs fans begin our second century of failure and misery, we can at least chortle a little bit at the poor rubes in San Diego.  From Thursday's USA Today:

...the Padres do have a former ace up their sleeve in Mark Prior.

The ex-Chicago Cub, recovering from shoulder surgery last April, signed a one-year, $1 million deal with his hometown Padres. He missed most of the last two years and hasn't pitched a full season since 2003, when he won 18 games and led the Cubs to the playoffs. He will probably pitch in minor league rehab assignments in April and plans to be ready to pitch in the majors by late May or early June.

"He's on track with baseball activities and medically. He's making his bullpen sessions without any setbacks," manager Bud Black said.

Meanwhile, he's focused on drills, throwing off the mound and feeling confident as he increases the stress placed on his shoulder with each bullpen session. The fifth starter's job is in his sights.

If only I had a nickel for every story that projected Mark Prior's return to form and gave a timeframe for when he might be back in the pitching rotation.  Enjoy the waiting, San Diego.  I'm sure it will be any week now when Mark Prior graces the diamond with his return to pitching.

Of course, given that Prior is now a former Cub, the most likely scenario will be a mid-season return for him in San Diego, where he will have a Sutcliffean run to take the Padres to the World Series, where he and Maddux will each win a game.

I think I'm going to be sick.


Tags: Cubs   baseball  
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Whatever can be done to address a crippling 1% revenue shortfall?!

The weekly local paper in Lawrence Township, the Lawrence Ledger, ran a front page story on Thursday explaining the Township Council has been "stunned by the loss of $391,000 in state aid..."  Certainly, I can think of plenty of things I could do with a nice chunk of change like that.  But reading the rest of the sentence only serves to make my blood boil once again as I ponder the effectiveness and overall competence of elected officials.  For the remainder of the sentence explains that "Township Council has directed Municipal Manager Richard Krawczun to re-examine the proposed $39.9 million budget for 2008."

Wow.  The Township Council is running things so tightly that they are "stunned" by the loss of a grand total of 1% of the PROPOSED budget?!  Reading the story carefully, it is never explained what the 2007 budget figure was, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that the $39.9 million proposal is an increase of more than 1% over the previous year's budget.

Yep.  A quick noodling around on the Lawrence Township website shows that the 2007 budget figure was $38,266,244.  Taking the $39.9 million figure as accurate, that's a proposed INCREASE of $1,633,756 from last year's budget.  That's a 4% increase being proposed.  And obviously there's simply no way in the world that the Township could get by if they only increased the budget by 3%.

No doubt Mr. Krawczun and Township Council will now spend weeks and hundreds of man-hours trying to figure out how to reconfigure the proposed budget to avoid a complete meltdown of life in Lawrence Township.  Any resident with common sense could probably spend a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoon and figure out a dozen different ways to cut out at least $400,000 from the proposed budget that would work just fine.

Prediction?  No way in the world a bunch of elected officials and bureaucrats find a way to get by with a little less.  Taxes and/or fees will be raised in hopes of generating more revenue from the taxpayers.

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Musings on the other lessons of the Spitzer melodrama

In pondering the bigger picture of an attorney general, and later governor, of a large state that contains the media capital of the world who has been involved in both the prosecution, and patronage, of prostitutes over a 10 year span, I found myself reaching the following conclusions:

1.  Big business must not be populated by the shady, omniscient, conspiracy mad characters that Hollywood and the television industry tell us about.  If they were, then wouldn't someone at one of these mega corporations that Eliot Spitzer did his best to ruin through bogus prosecutions have had his team of investigator/lackeys find out about the AG's time with hookers and used that to both save their business and ruin Spitzer's career?  The fact that this never happened is a serious blow to the worldview of those who think movies like The Insider are somehow practically documentaries about corporate behavior.

2.  Investigative journalism is either dead, or a complete joke.  Again, New York is the media capital of the world.  And yet somehow no one in the media managed to get a scoop that the state's AG and then governor was using prostitutes?  No doubt there are many factors at play here.  For the usual suspects such as the television networks, The New York Times, etc., it's most likely a case of not having any reason to want to investigate Spitzer because he's a liberal Democrat who believes in and works for all the things that those in those media outlets believe in and work for.  In the case of the supposedly conservative Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc., they get a failing grade for either not trying to discover this, or for simply falling in line with all the other mainstream media in not bothering to look into what Spitzer was up to.  And for the more alternative conservative media, including talk radio and the internet-based commentariat, they most likely just don't have the resources and wherewithal to begin to crack this kind of case.

Perhaps when the "true story" is finally told, there will be some revelations, but for now, it seems like this is all the result of the federal investigation fortuitously turning up the financial transactions that undid Spitzer's career.  Where are the journalism school types to tell us we should have had a Woodward and Bernstein uncover this scandal?  I won't hold my breath waiting for that kind of rallying cry from the media.

Tags: Media   culture  
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Giving Northwestern and/or Chicago a bad name

Breaking news from the world of science via ScienceDaily.com.  From the story:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2008) — What makes you suddenly dart into the bakery when you spy chocolate- frosted donuts in the window, though you certainly hadn't planned on indulging? As you lick the frosting off your fingers, don't blame a lack of self-control.

New research from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine reveals how hunger works in the brain and the way neurons pull your strings to lunge for the sweet fried dough.

Krispy Kremes, in perhaps their first starring role in neurological research, helped lead to the discovery. In the study, subjects were tested twice -- once after gorging on up to eight Krispy Kreme donuts until they couldn't eat anymore, and on another day after fasting for eight hours.


Seriously?  "up to eight Krispy Kreme donuts until they couldn't eat anymore..."?  Who are these lightweights who topped out at 8 Krispy Kremes?  There can't be a Bears or Cubs fan among 'em.

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Happy Birthday, Aspirin!

Well, not exactly it's birthday, but I see from the History Channel's website that on this day in history the British patent office issued a patent to Bayer for aspirin:

On this day in 1899, the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registers Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co.

Now the most common drug in household medicine cabinets, acetylsalicylic acid was originally made from a chemical found in the bark of willow trees. In its primitive form, the active ingredient, salicin, was used for centuries in folk medicine, beginning in ancient Greece when Hippocrates used it to relieve pain and fever. Known to doctors since the mid-19th century, it was used sparingly due to its unpleasant taste and tendency to damage the stomach.


I often tease my lovely wife, who is a medicinal research chemist doing work on drug discovery, that I'm glad Bayer figured out aspirin when it did because the way the drug companies operate, they haven't come up with anything nearly as useful since.

I wish I had known this was a big day for aspirin; I would have reached for the other bottle in the cabinet rather than pop a couple of Tylenol to try to help with this splitting headache.  Oh well, if I'm lucky I'll still have it in 4-6 hours and I can give the aspirin a shot.  Maybe those ancient Greeks were onto something.


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If Evander Holyfield can still box, can't Katarina Witt please keep skating?

Sad news from the world of sports on the retirement of a living legend:

BERLIN -- Two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt ended her show career on ice with a final performance as Carmen -- the role that defined her greatest triumph.

Witt drew thunderous applause in Hannover on the last night of her farewell tour Tuesday, capping her six routines with bowls of fire around the rink.

"I have to say, honestly, that you prepare a tour like this and think of everything," Witt said. "Then I totally forgot to think of what I would say at the very end. Maybe just: Thank you."

The 42-year-old former East German, dubbed "the most beautiful face of socialism" by Time magazine, drew worldwide fame by beating American rival Debi Thomas at the end of the Cold War in a politically charged duel for the 1988 Olympic gold.


The story goes on to note that Witt won her first Olympic gold medal in 1984, the same year Evander Holyfield competed in Olympic boxing.  Amazing that both of them would still be out performing / competing after this long a time.
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The Golden Rule still applies in academia, and the Saudis apparently have the gold

If only the United States Marines had access to oil riches, I guess they’d be as welcome in Berkeley as the Saudis.  Heck, they’d probably even get a free pass on that whole “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing the Clinton administration forced on them!  From the Contra Costa Times:

BERKELEY -- UC Berkeley is negotiating a secretive deal with a developing graduate university in Saudi Arabia, where Berkeley faculty will collaborate on research and help the school hire professors.

But the collaboration has raised significant questions among Berkeley instructors about whether the Saudi school will discriminate against women and others, as is the case at most of the country's institutions.

Berkeley administrators have declined to disclose most information about the developing agreement, denying several requests from the Times for public records. University attorneys said disclosing the records could derail the contract with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which the two schools expect to finalize as early as Tuesday.


As the old story / joke goes, “We’ve established what you are, madam.  Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
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The march of progress and its unfortunate, though perhaps necessary, effects

Real estate development, urban sprawl, and the threat of having your home taken by eminent domain is not limited to the U.S.  Yesterday's NY Times had a piece on the potential impact of expansion of London's Heathrow Airport on the village of Sipson.  Actually, “impact” is a little misleading, as it sounds like the expansion would have the effect of wiping out what’s left of the entire village.  Here’s the intro:

The fortunes of this little village have long depended on the fortunes of Heathrow Airport, just a couple of miles away. But just as it has lived for Heathrow, Sipson might have to die for Heathrow.

If the government goes ahead with its plans to build a third runway for the overstuffed airport, the village will be wiped from the map. The 700 or so houses, the elementary school, the church, the pubs, the Indian restaurant, the hair salon — all those would be torn down.


It’s easy to miss what stopped me in my tracks in that part of the story.  After reading that far, I turned to my beautiful wife and asked her to guess how many runways each of the airports serving New York City (Newark, LaGuardia, and Idlewild) have.  She figured they probably have 4-6 a piece.  I then asked about Philly.  She speculated 4.  Then I asked about Heathrow.  She figured 4-6.  I told her it has 2.  But they want to add a third.

Looking up the information online, I found that Idlewild has 4 runways
Newark has 3LaGuardia has 2, and   Philadelphia has 4.  According to each of the Wikipedia entries for these airports, they served 48.9 million, 37.3 million, 25.3 million and 31.5 million passengers, respectively, for the most recent annual figures available.  So that’s 111.5 million passengers served by 8 runways in the NY area alone, with Philly serving 31.5 million on 4 runways.

Which brings us to Heathrow, which had 67 million passengers coming and going over its 2 runways.

Further down in the story, we get the following:


Few would argue that Heathrow, one of the busiest passenger airports in the world, is also among the most reviled. Unfriendly, overcrowded and puzzlingly vulnerable to crippling meltdowns at crucial travel times, Heathrow is regularly cited by travelers as one of the worst things about coming to London.

The answer, according to a coalition encompassing the government, business leaders and BAA, the company that owns the airport, is to make it bigger. A fifth terminal, built over residents’ and environmentalists’ objections at a cost of nearly $9 billion, is to open next month.

At the same time, the government is proposing to increase the number of flights coming in and out of Heathrow, to about 700,000 a year from the current 480,000. This would be accomplished not only by building the new runway but also by making better use of the two existing runways, where flights are currently staggered to give people living in the flight paths a break from the noise.


Again, crunching some numbers we see 480,000 flights a year, which means they have about 1,315 flights per day.  That averages to just about 55 flights per hour.  Sounds about what you might expect for what the story notes is one of the busiest passenger airports in the world.

But is it surprising that it’s “overcrowded and puzzlingly vulnerable to crippling meltdowns at crucial travels times”?  They have 2 runways and 4 terminals (the fifth, as noted, opens soon) and try to move almost a flight a minute, and 184,000 people a day, in and out of the airport.  Of course it has these problems.  I’d be shocked if it didn’t.

And how much of a break from the noise are the people in the flight paths getting from having these 1,315 flights a day, 55 flights per hour, staggered over the 2 runways?

From the picture this paints of life in the area around Heathrow, I’m amazed there’s anyone living in Sipson at all.


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A different perspective on aid to Africa, and aid in general

Interesting column by Amity Shlaes on the effect of foreign aid on recipient nations.  Here's a taste:

You get the sense that politicians these days are racing to match Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and the rest of the private sector in charity spending. Historians talk about the old scramble for Africa. That was a scramble to get -- European monarchs took land for colonies. Now we are witnessing a scramble to give.

The new scramble is as much a shame as the old one. Foreign aid can be the kiss of death for poor regions, as a former World Bank official, William Easterly, demonstrated in his recent book, ``The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.''


Bono, Bob Geldof, President Bush and Bill Gates may disagree, but at some point, the numbers say what they say.  It's been a very difficult task to try to help many of the Third World countries out of poverty, poor governance, disease and famine.  Money alone is not the answer.  I should try to find some kind of information on the positive effects of the British Empire's expansion as it relates to mortality rates, disease, poverty and governance.  My guess would be that the empire's growth had positive effects at least with respect to reducing mortality rates and disease.  The effects on poverty and governance may be trickier to evaluate given the very different nature of the times as the world moved from slavery and aristocratic rule at the same time the empire grew.  Still, there may be lessons from the experience of the growth of the British Empire that could be used to learn how to truly help improve the plight of the Third World.
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Victoria's Secret and Prince's hip replacement - connection revealed!

From today's Washington Post:

Maybe it was the lusty mannequins in its stores, the massage oil on its shelves or the overabundance of cleavage on the glittery runway of its annual TV fashion show. But yesterday, Victoria's Secret chief executive Sharen J. Turney acknowledged that the chain had gotten "too sexy."

Is such a thing even possible?


I guess it's too much to ask of the thousands who staff the Washington Post to pay attention to news that flies over the internet, because on February 24, 5 days before the Post's story ran, we learned the answer to this question:

Pop legend Prince is having a secret HIP REPLACEMENT at the age of just 49—after being crippled by years of sexy dancing.

The pint-sized US star would develop a severe limp and have to use a WALKING STICK without surgery.


A lot of research will probably have to be done to find out exactly how many years of sexy dancing and/or sexy lingerie modeling the human body can take before hip replacement surgery is inevitable.  Hopefully the folks at Victoria's Secret have acted in time so that none of their models are at risk.
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How do you say, "There's gold in them thar hills!" in German?

The Germans better hope that Ben Gates and his team haven't found the cavern first:

Treasure hunters suspended drilling in Germany's Ore Mountains, saying they need a more precise location for the Nazi gold and looted paintings that they believe retreating German forces buried there at the end of World War II.

A week of drilling in a hillside at Deutschkatharinenberg, a hamlet near the Czech border, has yielded no sign of the treasure. Heinz-Peter Haustein, the mayor of nearby Deutschneudorf, said he has asked two geophysicists, Franz Jacobs and Bernd Leissring, to help narrow down its location.


I hope these guys are right and they actually do find some treasure.  It would be fascinating to see if they actually find the Amber Room:

It vanished in the wake of World War II–an 11-foot-square hall walled with amber and other semiprecious stones and worth $142 million in today's dollars. One of the only pieces to be found is a small mosaic of jasper and onyx.

In 1716, the king of Prussia presented the Amber Room, a masterpiece of Baroque art, to Russian Czar Peter the Great. Catherine the Great later commissioned a new generation of craftsmen to embellish the room and moved it from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to her new summer abode in Tsarskoye Selo, just outside the city. "When the work was finished, in 1770, the room was dazzling," wrote art historians Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov. "It was illuminated by 565 candles whose light was reflected in the warm gold surface of the amber and sparkled in the mirrors, gilt, and mosaics."

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Is Tiger Woods the Harry Callahan of the PGA?

Inspector Harry Callahan said it best:

A man’s got to know his limitations.

Perhaps Tiger Woods learned this lesson from Magnum Force.  Woods, who sees the very real possibility of winning all 4 Grand Slam golf tournaments during a calendar year, calls the idea that he may win every golf tournament he enters this year unrealistic.  From the story:

Tiger Woods says it's unrealistic to project his unbeaten start to 2008 into a perfect golf season.

Woods has won six straight events and eight of his past nine dating back to last season. He isn't likely to return to the course until next month at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill tournament in Orlando, Florida.

When he does, he said, he'll be trying to continue his winning streak as far as it can run.

``I have been asked whether I think I can go undefeated this year,'' Woods said in a monthly newsletter on his Web site. ``Is it realistic? No. But why would you go to a tournament if you don't think you can win? That's my expectation of myself.''

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