aphar

In 1998 I was attending a Princeton macroeconomics class taught by Prof. Alan Blinder.
He was gracious enough to let me in and answer my many questions after lectures.

One question I asked him was about the Marxist claim that recessions are inevitable under capitalism: after all, observationally, no capitalist economy has lasted much more that 10 years without one. He responded that this is a not a conclusive proof: each and every recession can be explained by a specific action (or inaction!) by the central bank, and, given a Sufficiently Smart central bank, capitalism may exist without recessions.

There is also an observation that every time socialism has been tried, it has been a failure, from utopian communities to USSR, Cuba and Venezuela (note that Scandinavia is not socialist!). Nevertheless, die hard enthusiasts keep preaching it (including a UChicago freshman over a Thanksgiving dinner!)

How do these two positions differ?

Фразу "Гнилой Запад" придумал славянофил Шевырёв в 1841 году.
Прошло почти 200 лет.
Российская Империя, сгнив, превратилась в Советский Союз.
СССР, тоже сгнив, мутировал в Российскую Федерацию.
А Запад всё никак.
Шевырёв, кстати, умер в Париже.

It is claimed that Voters In Wyoming Have 3.6 Times The Voting Power That [California voters] Have.
Had the author said that a WY voter elects 3.6 times more electors than a CA voter, he would have been correct - and irrelevant.

However, he said Voting Power and thus he is wrong.

Voting power is quantified by Shapley Value, which measures how often a given voter casts the decisive vote. E.g., if there are 3 voters, each of them is equally likely to cast the second (decisive) vote, so each has power 1/3. However, if two of them form a coalition, i.e., always vote the same, then the 3rd voter becomes irrelevant and thus his power is now 0, while the power of the two allied voters is now 1/2 each.

The US presidential election analogue is: suppose, for simplicity, we have just two states: CA with 10M people, which elects 10 representatives (one per 1M) and 2 senators, and WY with 10k people, which elects 1 representative (as a state, it is entitled to at least one) and 2 senators.
CA has 12 electors per 10M people - 1.2e-6 electors per person (1.2 electors per 1M).
WY has 3 electors per 10k people - 3e-4 electors per person (300 electors per 1M).
Looks like WY has 250 more power than CA!
Nope, not so fast.
When the electoral college convenes, CA elects the president without consulting WY - its 12 electors form a majority of the 15-member college.
This means that CA has electoral power 1 and WY 0.
Thus, WY is completely disenfranchised.

This is a simplistic example which shows that "electors per capita" is a worthless metric.

The question is - how does it translate into the real life?

Fortunately, almost 60 years ago this question has already been answered: table 4 shows that "large states" with 40+ electors have about 7% more "per capita power" than "small states" (5 and fewer electors).

PS. The quote in the subject comes from John McCarthy.

PPS. See also Why hasn't the US changed the Electoral College to allocate electors by proportion for each state?

About 6 weeks ago I served on a jury in a civil case (6 days!)
There were 8 of us (6 primary and 2 alternates, I was number 4).
The case was about medical damages for two persons (the driver and the front seat passenger) being rear-ended by a cab while standing at a red light.
Half way through the driver settled, and the passenger settled right before the closing arguments, so we did not have an opportunity to discuss the case.
Two episodes from the trial are of general interest (IMO).

Diagnostic Gold Standard

All 4(!) expert witnesses (2 for the defense, 2 for the plaintiffs) were asked what was the "Diagnostic Gold Standard" for orthopedics, and 3 of them (surgeons) said laparoscopic surgery. The 3rd, a diagnostic radiologist, said that 20-30 years ago, when those 3 surgeons went to school, this was true, but not now. Now the gold standard is MRI and proceeded to show scans of the patient's shoulder and knee in 3 directions, moving planes &c &c.
The picture is worth a 1k words, so, if the surgeons have shown us the videos from their surgeries, I might have been more skeptical, but, for now, I believe in MRI more.

What about the other arm?!

Part of the argument centered on the loss of movement in the passenger's right shoulder - inability to raise the arm much above the shoulder. The plaintiffs claimed it was a result of the accident, and defense, naturally, claimed that it was age-related arthritis.
What stunned me was that the defense attorney did not ask about the other (left) arm and the treating physician did not volunteer that information either!
Only the defense expert witness (who, according to the plaintiffs, spent a meager 5 minutes examining the patient) mentioned the left arm as an important issue (and the loss of movement in the left arm was comparable to that of the right one).
I have little expectation of the attorneys' understanding of the scientific method, but the treating physician withholding information about the other arm - that was a clear case of scientific misconduct.

For those unfamiliar with the US Justice system

The US justice system is adversarial (as opposed to the inquisitorial in some other places), i.e., only the parties (plaitif and defense) can question witnesses, not the judge (who merely ensures that the rules are followed) and not the jury (who will have to decide who won).
The only way for me to question a witness was to submit the question in writing to the judge during the recess (the jury is barred from direct contact with the judge and the counsels) and, if the judge is so inclined, he will pass the question on to the witness.

The Effects of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector:
collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27% increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff's office
teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $199.6 billion in the US annually

See also Why can public employees unionize?

Art is a pointer.
Classical art points to the reality is represents.
Impressionist art points to the Classical art.
Modern art points only to itself.
This means that any decent garbage collector (e.g., mark-and-sweep) should be able to move it to trash, reclaiming the space.
Indeed, this is what happened in 2015.
However, this achievement is not very common because many popular GCs used now rely on reference counting (e.g., Python & R).
After all, modern art points to itself, so its reference counter is 1, thus the sucky GCs cannot collect it.

A real life replay of the old jokes ("Yankee Barbarian Kills Family Pet"/"US Marine Assaults African Immigrant and Steals His Lunch"):

"Couple heartbroken after golden retriever shot to death by neighbor"

What actually happened:

• a couple "let their dogs outside... for a run"


• the dogs went after the neighbor's chickens


• the dog was growling and teeth showing


• the neighbor felt he and his wife were in danger


• the neighbor defended himself and family

This seems like a cut and dry case.
Why do the journalists prefer to distort the truth?
Is it because of the gun being used?
What if the neighbor clubbed the offending beast?