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Skip to comments.The Signal and the Silence: When is prediction usefuland when is it dangerous?
Posted on 04/16/2013 11:01:46 PM PDT by neverdem
Ever since leading the Boston Red Sox to victory in the 2007 World Series, Josh Beckett had been a mainstay of the teams pitching rotation. But when he hobbled off the mound with an ankle injury on September 5, 2011, the Red Sox faithful took the news in stride. After all, their team was the hottest in baseball. The previous winter, the Sox had acquired two of the sports most sought-after players, outfielder Carl Crawford and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez. The acquisitions led the Boston Herald to declare the team the TOP SOX SQUAD OF ALL TIME before it had played an inning. And until the afternoon of September 5, the Sox had largely lived up to the hype, winning 84 games and losing just 55. Even with nearly a month of baseball left, they seemed like a lock for the postseason.
True, Red Sox fans were no strangers to tragic endings: the slow ground ball through Bill Buckners legs in the 1986 World Series; manager Grady Littles leaving Pedro Martinez on the pitchers mound for one inning too many in the 2003 playoffs; Yankee Bucky Dents season-ending home run at Fenway Park in 1978. But this time, any Sox fans disconcerted by news of Becketts ankle sprain could rest assured that they had science on their side—that is, the various statistical models that gave their team almost a 100 percent chance of making the playoffs.
Coolstandings.com is a website that forecasts every baseball teams odds of reaching the postseason by running a Monte Carlo simulation—millions of computerized iterations of the teams upcoming games—and converting the results into the percentage chance that the team will win its division. If a team wins the division 100,000 times out of a million, the editors of Coolstandings explain, then that team is given a 10 percent chance of winning the division. When Beckett exited the game on September 5, Boston fans could visit Coolstandings and take solace in the fact that their team still had a 99.2 percent chance of making the playoffs. Coolstandings wasnt alone: Baseball Prospectus, one the nations best-respected baseball websites and another stat-based predictor of playoff odds, reported on Becketts injury but added: Not that the Sox are in danger of missing the playoffs without him; their chance of bonus baseball stood at 99.7 percent even after losing [the game in] extra innings.
Having read all that, dont ask a Red Sox fan how the 2011 season played out. What ensued was the worst collapse in Major League Baseball history: losing 17 games and winning just six, the Sox watched their lead over Tampa Bay for the last American League playoff spot evaporate. But even as the team collapsed, the statistical models kept telling Boston fans to keep calm. Before we all freak out about an epic Boston choke, lets head over to coolstandings.com for a dose of reality, wrote USA Todays Gabe Lacques on September 16. They have done us the favor of simulating the rest of the season 1 million times to determine every teams chances of postseason play. And they still put the Red Soxs chances at . . . 88.7 percent to make the playoffs.
Twelve days later, Boston really did get a dose of reality. On the morning of September 28, the final day of the season, the team found itself tied with Tampa for the last playoff spot. That night, the Red Sox led Baltimore 32 in the seventh inning; then a torrential downpour delayed the game for nearly 90 minutes. After play resumed, Baltimore scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. Just moments later, Tampa capped a miraculous comeback from a 70 deficit against the Yankees—winning the game in the tenth inning, clinching the final playoff spot, and sending the Red Sox home for a dismal winter. As the magnitude of the collapse sank in, nobody put it better than the Boston Globes Pete Abraham on Twitter: I think my days of looking at Cool Standings or the Baseball Prospectus playoff odds are over with.
Baseball is far from the only area in which predictions can disappoint, and in recent years, a handful of writers have drawn attention to the biases and habits that influence our ability to make good forecasts. The two most recent entrants in this category, Nate Silvers The Signal and the Noise and Nassim Talebs Antifragile, appeared to wide acclaim in late 2012, with each author winning scores of favorable reviews and profiles; both received invitations to Silicon Valley to speak at Googles prestigious Authors@Google series within weeks of each other. The two books, then, seem to have captured the zeitgeist—despite having largely contradictory messages and methodologies. Silver comes to praise those who have mastered the art of forecasting and to encourage us to learn from their lessons; Taleb comes to bury those who hubristically overestimated their own predictive capabilities and to caution us against repeating their mistakes. When read together, the two books illustrate not just how we can become better predictors but also how we can recognize better when we predict at our own peril.
In The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Dont, Nate Silver offers a book-length extension of the statistical approach that has brought such prominence to his New York Times poll-tracking blog, FiveThirtyEight (a reference to the number of votes in the electoral college). Political statistical analysis had already enjoyed a renaissance in the first decade of the 2000s, thanks in part to RealClearPolitics.coms creation of RCP Averages, which combined many polls into a single poll-of-polls. But Silver took aggregation to an entirely new level.
First, instead of treating all the relevant polls equally, as the RCP Averages did by simply averaging the polls results, Silver weighted them according to their perceived reliability, taking into account such factors as their freshness, their sample size, and the pollsters track records. Second, instead of averaging the polls bottom-line numbers and then reporting a single, nationwide average, Silver entered the polls into a Monte Carlo simulation. Much as Coolstandings runs millions of computerized simulations of upcoming baseball games, Silver ran millions of computerized simulations of elections. The outcomes of all these simulations varied: sometimes Candidate A beat Candidate B by a wide margin; sometimes A beat B by a narrow margin; sometimes B beat A. But when the millions of results were amassed, they could be translated into the most likely final vote tally. Perhaps more important was that the range of simulated outcomes illustrated the variance, the likely range of actual outcomes. So even if the likeliest outcome was a substantial win by Candidate A, Candidate B might still win upset victories in 10 percent of the simulated elections; thus, As odds of winning the election would be stated as 90 percent.
So far, Silvers predictions have been impressively accurate. For the 2008 presidential race, he accurately called 49 of the 50 states, getting only Indiana wrong. In 2012, he was 50-for-50—much to the chagrin of critics who had dismissed what they thought were unduly pro-Obama forecasts.
The 34-year-old forecaster has blogged about statistics and politics only for those two presidential election cycles, first on his own independent site and now at the Times, in a three-year agreement that expires this year. He has legions of readers, and his blog attracted almost 5 million page views on Election Day 2012. But his interest in statistics and forecasting manifested itself first in the context of baseball. He pioneered PECOTA, a forecasting model that revolutionized baseball statistical analysis, and sold it to Baseball Prospectus for an ownership stake and an editors position. Silver has also been a very successful poker player, and he credits the game for giving him better training than anything else I can think of about how to weigh new information, what might be important information and what might be less so, as he told the Guardian.
Accordingly, The Signal and the Noise isnt Silvers attempt to apply his work in political prognostication to foreign, nonpolitical territory. Rather, its a demonstration of the instincts, skill, and breadth of knowledge that made him such a good political forecaster in the first place.
The title of Silvers book refers to a contrast that engineers draw between a transmitted signal and the background noise that interferes with the audiences reception of that signal. The signal is the truth, Silver writes in his opening pages. The noise is what distracts us from the truth. Built as a series of case studies—some hopeful examples—rather than as a ground-up theoretical work, The Signal and the Noise seeks to show how we can improve at forecasting future events.
Silver sees himself as a pragmatist, not an absolutist or a utopian. In the very first pages, he excoriates one tech utopian, former Wired editor Chris Anderson, who evangelized in 2008 that the age of Big Data meant that we can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot. Such views, Silver responds, are badly mistaken. For while Big Data may offer forecasters an unprecedented opportunity to model how the world works, the numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. Worse still, Andersons data deluge threatens to overwhelm us not just with more signal but also with more noise, forcing analysts to work harder than ever to separate truly useful information from spurious correlations and other false results. Bigger data may allow for more accurate forecasts, but only if we have analysts capable of discerning when the models have gone in the wrong direction.
This argument finds its best illustration in Silvers chapter on weather forecasting, which shows how meteorologists use their own experience and intellectual craftsmanship to adjust computer-model results manually. Humans can make the computer forecasts better or they can make them worse, Silver writes. He praises analysts eyesight—their capacity to see fuzzy patterns that computer models miss. So while The Signal and the Noise is an emphatically pro-science and pro-technology book, Silver intends it to be first and foremost a practical book. One thinks of Michael Lewiss Moneyball, which commenced a decade of bitter fighting between traditional baseball scouts and modern statistics geeks before a consensus emerged on the need for both technology and craftsmanship. Silvers aim is to skip the dialectical thesis and antithesis and move right to synthesis, pointing a way forward.
The books case studies are examples of how forecasters can use this general approach—technology aided by human understanding—to overcome major forecasting failures. The most recent of these failures that Silver discusses is the recent financial crisis, which far too few on Wall Street foresaw or guarded against. Moodys and Wall Street overestimated their ability to recognize the risk in portfolios; the broader American public was overconfident that housing prices would rise forever; later, the Obama administration was overconfident that its $800 billion stimulus package would jump-start the economy and return it to health.
Silver contrasts this cautionary tale with some success stories in which failures led to substantial improvements in the quality of forecasts. One of these examples involves Silvers home turf: elections. Like financiers, political pundits suffer from overconfidence. Theyre too confident that their own preferred parties or candidates will prevail at the polls, too confident to admit mistakes and learn from them, and too confident about their predictive capabilities to take seriously the range of other outcomes that might result on Election Day. According to Silver, these forecasters would do well to adopt a probabilistic approach, acknowledging the real-world uncertainty in their forecasts and the imperfections in their theories about how the world [is] supposed to behave—the last thing that an ideologue wants to do. In other words, they should follow the lead not just of FiveThirtyEight but also of the Cook Political Report, which takes much more seriously the value of qualitative information gleaned from interviews with candidates. The key is not to give these nonquantitative factors too much weight, which might actually make . . . forecasts worse, but rather to take them just seriously enough to help (in the Cook Reports case) call a few extra races right.
And then there are those meteorologists—who, Silver explains, are sometimes corrupted by market competition that prizes TV ratings over technical accuracy. Viewers value the appearance of accuracy, so weathermen facing a 50 percent chance of rain will at times flip a coin to settle on a forecast stating either a 60 percent or a 40 percent chance, rather than deliver a wishy-washy 50-50 forecast. And because viewers would rather be pleasantly surprised by clear skies than be unpleasantly surprised by rain, weathermen tend to skew their forecasts toward showers. Even though Silvers two scenarios seem at odds—are weathermen flipping coins, or are they reliably biased in one direction?—the general point rings true: meteorologists are in the TV business as much as the weather business, and their forecasts can be the worse for it. If the forecast was objective, if it has zero bias in precipitation, one Weather Channel meteorologist admitted to Silver, wed probably be in trouble. Thus Silver applauds the admirably well calibrated forecasts of the National Weather Service, which shuns the biases that undermine so many TV forecasts. And he further praises meteorologists recognition that, in forecasting hurricanes, one should predict not just a narrow, most-likely path for the storm but rather a cone of outcomes that shows the public a broader range of possible paths.
All in all, Silvers diagnosis of what ails modern forecasting appears sound, in no small part because of his willingness to stand on the shoulders of social-science giants. His chapter on political predictions draws heavily on Philip Tetlocks 2005 classic Expert Political Judgment—which, after taking the confidential predictions of nearly 300 experts in various fields over 20 years and comparing them with the arbitrary predictions of a dart-throwing chimpanzee found that humanity barely bests the chimp. Silvers discussion of overconfidence in the financial crisis echoes Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoffs wildly successful This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Other predecessors go unacknowledged, perhaps because the author didnt notice them. In describing the stock market as a two-track process—a signal track reflecting market fundamentals and long-term value and a noise track dominated by short-term momentum trading and herding behaviors—he neglects to mention that Benjamin Graham, one of the most influential market analysts of all time, wrote the same thing in 1949. In the short run, the stock market is a voting machine, Graham explained in The Intelligent Investor; in the long run it is a weighing machine.
Silvers most important intellectual debt might be found near the end of the book. He uses an interview with Donald Rumsfeld as a jumping-off point for a discussion of what the defense secretary famously called unknown unknowns—that is, information that we dont even know that we lack and questions that we dont realize we need to ask. And that, in turn, leads Silver to Roberta Wohlstetters seminal study of the intelligence failures that preceded the Pearl Harbor attack, a study that itself employed the metaphor of signals and noise. (Silver graciously notes that Wohlstetter pioneered the use of the metaphor 50 years ago.)
This chapter reveals a central, if unstated, premise of Silvers analysis, along with some limits of his prescriptions—limits that he refuses to concede meaningfully. By employing the metaphor of signal and noise, both Wohlstetter and Silver assume that there is a signal to be found. In Wohlstetters case, that assumption made sense: her signal consisted of the Japanese transmissions that America collected but didnt digest in time to prevent the attack. For Silver, a signal is something quite different. True, his loose terminology sometimes obscures precisely what he means by the term: early in the book, his signal is the truth that we are too often distracted from; by the end, it is an indication of the underlying truth behind a statistical or predictive problem. But whether his signal is a future event or todays approximation of that event based on past data points, he fails to deal with a troubling difficulty: signals dont always exist.
For example, how would Silver calculate the odds of a truly rare event—say, Russias sudden, unexpected default on its own bonds in 1998, which set off a cascade of failures that killed the vaunted hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management and nearly precipitated a Wall Street disaster? As journalist Roger Lowenstein later recounted, before August 1998, Russia had never defaulted on its debt—or not since 1917, at any rate. When it did, credit markets behaved in ways that Long-Term didnt predict and wasnt prepared for. Even if Russias default had been forecastable, the cascade of subsequent events that led to LTCMs demise wouldnt have been. For all the brilliance of [LTCMs] theory, it was based on an assumption that the future performance of bonds would mirror their past movements, the New York Timess Gretchen Morgenson wrote at the time of the crisis. There was no signal—only silence.
How should we try to forecast such events? Or is the mere act of trying to forecast them dangerous? Silver comes closest to conceding the problem when he writes, frankly, that his methods for forecasting in politics and sports probably arent all that useful for national-security analysis because politics and sports are data-rich fields that yield satisfying answers, while national security involves very rare events. At this point, one might expect Silver to warn readers not to take his theories too far. In an earlier chapter, after all, he has cautioned against overfitting data to preconceived models. But in the end, he fails to heed that advice.
Nassim Taleb has spent the last several years railing against precisely this variety of predictive hubris. In Fooled by Randomness (2001), he warned that we often see cause-and-effect narratives in random courses of events. Six years later, in The Black Swan, he expanded his thesis into an all-out assault on modern societys failure to take seriously the threat of black-swan events. These were low-probability, high-impact events that couldnt plausibly be forecast using past data and experience—just the problem that Silver fails to acknowledge properly.
Talebs personal story, like Silvers, has been repeated countless times in newspaper and magazine profiles. And just as with Silver, Talebs methodology grows out of his background. Silvers roots are in baseball and poker; Talebs life has been marked by black swans. He was born in Lebanon in 1960, when that nation was still a stable equilibrium, a mosaic of cultures and religions seen by many as an example of coexistence, as he recounts in The Black Swan. But a civil war shattered that coexistence—and with it, Talebs philosophy: The very idea of assumed equilibrium bothered me. I looked at the constellations in the sky and did not know what to believe.
Taleb didnt flee volatility, however; he pursued it. After receiving his MBA from the Wharton School, he worked as a derivatives trader at the investment bank First Boston, where he built up what he later described as a massive position in long-shot options. Ordinarily, those options were useless. But when the markets collapsed on October 19, 1987—Black Monday, as Wall Street would call it—Talebs position paid off. In a single day, he netted tens of millions of dollars—97 percent of all the money he would ever earn. Talebs work taught him that a deep gulf yawned between market theory and market reality, and he began to press the point in public, first as an evening professor at NYU and then in writing.
Taleb drew the term black swan from the tale of British explorers amazed to discover black swans in Australia. Before their journey, the explorers had assumed that all swans were white—an assumption derived from thousands of years of European history. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans, wrote Taleb. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird. The point is that in some cases, past events do not reliably illustrate the possible scope of future events. And some of these unpredictable future events—financial collapses, terrorist attacks, unanticipated wars—can cause sudden, catastrophic harm. In The Black Swan and in media appearances, Taleb urged his audience not to leave itself exposed to the destructive force of black swans.
At first, Taleb saw the solution as making ourselves and our society more robust—that is, better able to survive black swans. In a long discussion appended to the books second edition, he described how we could replace our modern fragility with a Black-Swan-Robust Society. But as Taleb continued to research and write about the subject, he came to realize that he had seized on the wrong dichotomy. The opposite of your odds of being harmed by unforeseen events are your odds of benefiting from them. The opposite of fragility, therefore, is not robustness but anti-fragility. We are anti-fragile when we are convex to risk—when we have more to gain from unpredictable risks than we have to lose from them. Hence Talebs latest book, Antifragile, a prescription for how to thrive in an uncertain world.
Taleb emphasizes that his latest book is not a stand-alone project but rather an outgrowth of the same ideas that animated his earlier writings. The whole, he writes, constitutes a main corpus focused on uncertainty, randomness, probability, disorder, and what to do in a world we dont understand; . . . that is, decision making under opacity. So readers familiar with Talebs work will find Antifragile a comfortable read whose prescriptions flow naturally from his previous books. For example, instead of constructing your life as a series of wagers on the future, build a nonpredictive life that eliminates downside risk whenever possible while leaving yourself open to upside risk—perhaps by putting your precious retirement savings into low-risk fixed-income investments while committing smaller parts of your investment portfolio to small stakes in start-up companies, which might yield a small loss but might produce an immense gain.
More advice: antifragility requires keeping your options open as long as possible and thus maintaining your freedom to change a course of action if a black swan suddenly arrives. Furthermore, you can reduce fragility with a less-is-more mind-set that searches not for complex solutions to complex problems but for simple solutions that solve as much of the problem as possible. Finally, Taleb endorses conservative respect for the tried and true over the new and novel: whats worked for generations ought to enjoy at least presumptive credit because it has withstood the test of time.
Taleb discusses few specific policy changes. But one of his primary assertions is readily applicable to policy debates: Skin in the game is the only true mitigator of fragility. The surest way to reduce the threat that unforeseeable risk poses is to make sure that those who create the risk also bear its potential costs. Among Talebs targets are the banks that the government considers too big to fail. Bank executives have no skin in the game, he argues, because they keep the upside and transfer the downside to others. When they hit it big, they collect bonuses; when they lose big, they get rescued by the bankruptcy code, government bailouts, and other parachutes. Similarly, journalists who analyze and predict may win book deals and TV appearances when they make the right call, but seldom do they suffer a penalty for wrong predictions. Speculative traders, by contrast, take both the upside and the downside.
Rules ensuring that people have skin in the game create incentives for them to identify and mitigate risks ahead of time. Taleb traces such rules back nearly 4,000 years, to Hammurabis code: If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house—the builder shall be put to death. Today, Taleb argues, an analogous rule should apply to Robert Rubin and the other fragilistas who built a brittle financial system and paid no cost for its collapse.
Antifragile helps dispel a common misconception about Talebs thought. He is not opposed to risk or even to black swans. Risk-taking and the mistakes that often result from it can be a source of strength in our society. Just as stress can make bones stronger, errors provide indispensable information—at least in a properly anti-fragile system, which learns from that information. The airline industry is a good example of such a system. Every plane crash brings us closer to safety, improves the system, and makes the next flight safer, writes Taleb. Those who perish contribute to the overall safety of others. Swiss flight 111, TWA flight 800, and Air France flight 447 allowed the improvement of the system. Thanks to legal and regulatory liability, the airlines fully bear the costs of their mistakes and ignorance; no airline is considered too big to fail, and thus the incentives are aligned for them to act prudently and improve over time. In the long run, the airline system as a whole benefits from this experience. (In 2010, its worth noting, two MIT Sloan School of Management professors and a National Transportation Safety Board official published a working paper calling on Wall Street regulators to mimic the NTSBs postaccident procedures, saying that it could improve our understanding of systemic risk.) Taleb offers a similar take on the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011: One can safely say that it made us aware of the problem with nuclear reactors . . . and prevented larger catastrophes. We cant learn from mistakes unless we make them.
Taleb thus stands in marked opposition to the modern-day activists who seize on the presence of uncertainty as grounds for shutting down certain projects altogether. Environmentalist critics of energy-infrastructure initiatives frequently resort to this tactic. If Taleb had the power to decide whether to allow shale gas fracking, say, his first question wouldnt be: Have we figured out all the possible risks? Rather, he would ask: Where are the projects fragilities, and who will bear the costs when the project produces actual failures and losses—even if those losses are the result not just of events that we anticipate today but of those that we dont see coming? Only if companies remain responsible can we feel reasonably confident that they will mitigate the risks already on their radars and try, at least, to guard against the black swans that are not.
But Talebs specific prescriptions are less significant than the more general theme that he strives to convey in Antifragile and his other books: the need for epistemic modesty, a recognition of our own limits when we try to ascertain what the future holds. Talebs objective is not to make us better predictors but rather to reject the impossible ambition of foreseeing the unforeseeable. He wants to live happily in a world I dont understand, as he puts it. That we can forecast some things doesnt justify our overconfidence in forecasting generally.
That overconfidence is precisely the risk that Nate Silver runs at certain points of The Signal and the Noise. Silver might counter that his prescriptions deal with scenarios, such as baseball playoffs and presidential elections, in which black swans arent really a threat, since past data and experience offer a reasonable approximation of what the future will look like. And even if Silver himself wouldnt offer that rejoinder, Taleb would, as he did in a rare joint appearance with Silver on Bloomberg TV this past December. Asked whether Silvers book contradicted Talebs views on uncertainty and prediction, Taleb replied:
No, no, what he does is rigorous. Why? Because in economics, you cant predict. In what he does, you can predict, because hes dealing with binary variables. And let me explain. Hes predicting . . . the probability of getting this president. Okay, youre going to get one president, so its a binary event. A war is not defined; an election is defined. A war can kill one person, or a million people, or 25 million people.
For the most part, Taleb continued, Silvers work avoided contexts with fat tails—situations in which extreme events were extraordinarily likely and powerful—and was thus immune to black swan errors.
That might be an accurate characterization of Silvers work on politics, baseball, and poker, but it doesnt describe his books discussion of economics, let alone of terrorism and war. The problem in The Signal and the Noise is Silvers faith in our ability to know when were on steady predictive ground. Throughout the book, he concedes that if you cant make a good prediction, it is very often harmful to pretend that you can; that purely statistical approaches toward forecasting are ineffective at best when there is not a sufficient sample of data to work with; and that forecasting is difficult for areas that are not data-rich. But those warnings do little good when he offers little or no indication of how we can be certain that were in a position to make a good prediction, that we have sufficient data, and that our area is data-rich.
Compounding that problem, probabilistic frameworks inherently lend themselves to a bias that Taleb highlighted in The Black Swan: our ability to explain away mistakes without reassessing our presumptions. A good example of this kind of thinking occurred in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, when Silvers advocates, responding to conservative critics, argued that even if Silver blew his call, that wouldnt disprove his model. After first blaming a possible Silver misfire on the polls that Silver used—as the old saying goes, garbage in, garbage out—the Washington Posts Ezra Klein stressed that if Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesnt mean Silvers model was wrong. After all, Klein explained, Silvers model gave Romney a 25 to 40 percent chance of winning. So a Romney win would mean simply that the underdog won, not that the underdog wasnt, in fact, the underdog.
Yet for all the energy that Klein and others devoted to criticizing Silvers critics, they made little effort to grapple with a deeper question: How could one ever know whether Silvers model was actually wrong? Weve certainly seen other models implode. Wall Street bankers long depended on value-at-risk (VaR) models to determine how much they stood to lose from a market downturn. But those instruments failed to model the housing bubble realistically before it burst, sending shock waves through the financial markets. As Taleb has often argued since the financial crash, the problem with VaR models wasnt just that they were sometimes wrong. It was that their appearance of precision inspired too much confidence among those who used them.
In a much less ruinous way, thats what happened to Red Sox fans in 2011. The problem with the Coolstandings and Baseball Prospectus forecasts wasnt merely that they overestimated Bostons playoff odds when Josh Beckett hobbled to the dugout on September 5. Nor was it just that they failed to adjust their models appropriately in the days that immediately followed. It was that they persisted in their underlying assumptions, even as the Red Sox experienced a cascade of failures that simply had no precedent in the historical data. No one watching the Red Sox on September 16 should have taken at face value the Coolstandings statement that the team had an 88.7 percent chance of making the playoffs. Fans who took refuge in those statistics were mainly trying to fool themselves about what they were seeing with their own eyes.
When the Sox finally did collapse in the last game of the season, no shortage of analysts reviewed the statistical wreckage. Silver was among them. Tracing the series of putative probabilities, he did the math and concluded that there had been a combined probability of about one chance in 278 million of all these events coming together in quite this way, at least if you trusted the models. Silver admitted that when confronted with numbers like these, you have to start to ask a few questions, statistical and existential. But to Silver, the main lesson was that some of the models assumptions needed to be tweaked. To the rest of us, the lesson was that the models were almost certainly wrong.
Fortunately, it was only baseball. Fortunately for Silver and his defenders, the election results saved them from having to answer the nagging question of how, if ever, they would be able to tell in real time whether Silvers model was wrong. And fortunately for all of us, a miscalled election would, in the great scheme of things, rank closer to a blown baseball prediction than to an unforeseen financial crisis in terms of societal harm.
But what about those future financial crises and terrorist attacks? For that matter, what about the risk of deepwater oil wells rupturing or of tsunamis hitting nuclear facilities? And those are just the known unknowns. What about the truly unknown unknowns? If we are to draw a useful lesson from Silvers and Talebs excellent books, it is that we need both of them. As Silver contends, we should improve our forecasts whenever possible. But as Taleb cautions, we must have the modesty to admit that some matters do not lend themselves to sound forecasts—and plan accordingly.
wishing you were here...
null and void,
What happened to The Comedian?
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From Roe to Gosnell (Best of the Web Today - It's long, but it's absolutely jaw dropping.)
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Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
He announced he was going away, then vanished.
He went to True Blue Liberty. He was an anti-FReeper and opused out on February 11, 2011.
Thanks for the info.
Good post.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a very interesting writer. He condemns journalists, which puts him on the side of the angels there if I am the judge, but he also condemns economists. And that could be painting with too broad a brush, as far as Im concerned.
However, Taleb calls Adam Smith a philosopher rather than an economist, and he provides mathematics which seems to justify his low opinion of some of economics. And for that matter, there is in fact an entire branch of economics called Macroeconomics which I consider pure BS.
I would love to see Thomas Sowell and Nassim Taleb critique each others work.
...even as the team collapsed, the statistical models kept telling Boston fans to keep calm. "Before we all freak out about an epic Boston choke, lets head over to coolstandings.com for a dose of reality, wrote USA Todays Gabe Lacques on September 16. They have done us the favor of simulating the rest of the season 1 million times to determine every teams chances of postseason play. And they still put the Red Soxs chances at . . . 88.7 percent to make the playoffs." Twelve days later, Boston really did get a dose of reality. On the morning of September 28, the final day of the season, the team found itself tied with Tampa for the last playoff spot. That night, the Red Sox led Baltimore 32 in the seventh inning; then a torrential downpour delayed the game for nearly 90 minutes. After play resumed, Baltimore scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. Just moments later, Tampa capped a miraculous comeback from a 70 deficit against the Yankees -- winning the game in the tenth inning, clinching the final playoff spot, and sending the Red Sox home for a dismal winter. As the magnitude of the collapse sank in, nobody put it better than the Boston Globes Pete Abraham on Twitter: "I think my days of looking at Cool Standings or the Baseball Prospectus playoff odds are over with.
Thanks for the heads up.
I'd like to see them face off also because Thomas Sowell is both a philosopher and economist, and a first rate one.
Thanks for the ping!
I am constantly having to deal with elitists who think that their centralized control plans, for which they often claim to have "data," are superior to common sense plans which rely more on "free market" principles.
"How cool -- let's suddenly 'transform medicine' into our 'vision' of 'the patient centered medical home.'"
In essence they ignore fragility in their elitist "best laid plans" and also ignore the anti-fragility built into and enhanced by free market approaches, which automatically take much of the approach Talib advocates, including pre-defining who takes the brunt of the "risks," choosing simplicity when possible, ceding weight to tried and true methods, etc. etc.
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The Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT GPU is a new mid-range graphics card in the D9x graphics family, which is manufactured in 65nm technology.
SLI-Ready,the GeForce 9600 GT chipset offers 64 stream processors, a 256-bit frame buffer, standard-setting GeForce 9 Series features and support for DirectX 10 games.
Nvidia claims that the new 9600GT offers up to a 90% performance increase over the comparable 8 Series GPU GeForce 8600 GTS.
Key features:
Below you can see all the currently available Nvidia 9xxx series models:
The 9600GT comes to cover the lower end market with good price/performance ratio. Looking at it specs, the onboard 512MB ram and the high core/memory clocks should cover the needs of the majority of users.
Today we have in our hands two implementations of the Nvidia 9600GT GPU, the Asus 9600GT Silent, the Gainward Gainward 9600GT Top and the Inno3D 9600GT IChill.
- Asus 9600GT Silent Edition
Asus released its own solution for quiet operation based at Nvidia's 9600GT reference card. The "Silent Edition" features a new cooler design that allows the GPU to operate at lower temperatures , called V-Cool heatsink.
The retail box is rather big, indicating that the board of the card could be slightly larger that the usual Nvidia designs.
The Asus EN9600GT Silent bulks a
D-Sub15-to-DVI converter, an S-Video cable, two CD-ROM discs with drivers and utilities and of course a DVI-to-HDMI converter.
The Asus EN960GT Silent features a massive external heatsink to keep the overall core/memory banks cool. There are two DVI-D and a component output. Of course SLI configurations are possible with this card, when paired with another Nvidia based 9600GT. In order to work properly, the card needs a 6-pin molex power supply.
The card runs at the default Nvidia specifications. Later we will examine the overclocking capabilities of the card, provided that its passive cooling system could possibly make overclocking more difficult.

subset: commoncrawl


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Advanced Technique: Seeing Around Corners
Here's a technique for matching complementary exclusion sets in boxes that are on different rows and in different columns. I've detailed how this works in four images.
Complementary exclusion sets are when you have two sets of data that exclude, or complement, each other's values. Thus, there can be no link between the two. The pairing of these two values must therefore be false.
As you will see in this example:
Julia's exclusion set excludes everything except lime and indigo.
The $1500 exclusion set excludes lime and indigo ONLY.
Thus, Julia cannot have the $1500 hospital bill.
Complementary exclusion sets are typically easy to see. However, for this puzzle, the sub-grids for "Name/Color" and "$Money/Color" are on different rows. Further, one exclusion set is horizontal, and the other is vertical!
Matching up these sets involves a technique I call "Seeing Around Corners."
I have not encountered a puzzle, here, where this technique is the only one available to continue solving the puzzle, but it would be a real evil puzzle if it was.
Bear in mind, this is a really easy puzzle, and the exclusion sets are spelled out for you in successive clues. It's very easy to see this way. But what if it took several clues and techniques to reach this point? I had been wondering if this was a solving technique, but until I saw this easy puzzle, I didn't know if it would work.
Here's the puzzle. I filled it in up through clue 3 when I noticed the link between clues 2 and 3:
To prove that the two exclusion sets were complementary, I redrew the grid after swapping color and money. It's easy to see that the exclusion sets complement each other:
Now back to the original puzzle layout. Note how the two exclusion sets are on different rows and columns and that one is horizontal and the other vertical. Even so, you can link the two and eliminate one more value from the grid. All you have to learn, is how to see around the corners:
Instead of redrawing a grid to see complementary exclusion sets, just imagine rotating the upper-right box onto the second row. That's why I call it "seeing around corners". In the same way, the lower-left box can be rotated onto the second column. Note that the rotated boxes have two headings. Also note that the orientation of the headings matches the rotation. If you miss this, your conclusion will be incorrect:
I hope I explained this well enough for someone to learn from it.
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NEW YORK (AP) — A jury ended its first full day of deliberations on Friday without a verdict in the case of a New York City police officer accused of plotting to abduct and cannibalize women.
The jurors received the case late Thursday after hearing a defense lawyer tell them in closing arguments that elaborate plans of Officer Gilberto Valle were fantasy role-play, while a prosecutor said they were "no joke."
Valle, 28, has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping conspiracy and with misusing a national database to learn personal information about potential targets. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
In notes to the judge on Friday, the jury asked for transcripts of the testimony of some of the women Valle allegedly targeted, and of an FBI agent who arrested him. Jurors also sought guidance on the elements of the kidnapping conspiracy charge.
The jury is due to resume deliberations on Monday morning.
In the closing arguments earlier this week, defense attorney Julia Gatto said Valle's chats on fetish websites about abducting, torturing and eating at least six women, including his wife, "are no more real than an alien invasion."
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Hadassa Waxman said evidence showed Valle "left the world of fantasy and entered the world of reality." The officer's actions were "no joke," she added. "It was not just sick entertainment."
In a rebuttal argument given before the jury was to get the case, prosecutor Randall Jackson called Valle "a sexually sadistic individual."
The arguments capped a two-week trial in federal court. During the presentation of evidence, jurors sometimes appeared squeamish when shown sadistic images from Internet sites visited by Valle. The officer openly wept over his wife's testimony describing how she uncovered his late-night computer activity, fled their home with their infant child and contacted the FBI.
A Trenton, N.J. man charged in the conspiracy, Michael Vanhise, has pleaded not guilty and is to stand trial separately.


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MDCC Alumnus Rep. Taylor (R-Boyle) to Chair Corrections Committee
Speaker of the House Philip Gunn announced his appointment of Rep. Tommy Taylor (R-Boyle) to the position of chairman of the House Corrections Committee. Taylor replaces former Chairman Rep. George Flaggs (D-Vicksburg) who was sworn in as Mayor of Vicksburg on June 30.
"I am pleased to appoint Rep. Taylor to fill this position as Chairman on the House Corrections Committee," said Speaker Philip Gunn. "Rep. Taylor served as warden to a prison for many years. From an insider's perspective, he knows how a corrections facility operates, and I trust that. I know he will guide the House to make efficient decisions related to Mississippi's prison system.
"We have a lot of work to do," he continued. "As the number of incarcerations rise, so do the costs. We have to figure out how to better deal with this growing burden, now, and in the future."
Rep. Taylor served as warden of Bolivar County Regional Correctional Facility for approximately 12 years. Prior to that, he worked in law enforcement and corrections beginning in 1969. He has been in the Legislature for two years.
"I feel honored with Speaker Gunn's confidence in me to serve as the Chairman of the House Corrections Committee," said Taylor. "I also share Speaker Gunn's feelings that we have a lot of work to do to avoid compromising the public safety, as well as staff and inmate safety, while being accountable to the taxpayers of the State of Mississippi. With the continuous increase in the inmate population, the budget also increases.
"With those in state, county, municipal and judicial government working with the Department of Corrections, hopefully there will be a workable solution to accommodate all," continued Taylor. "Again, I am looking forward to this challenge and am very honored and appreciative of this appointment from Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn."


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Lodge cast iron sale - 20% OFF all pieces! Friday, September 21st - Sunday, September 23rd.
Thank you for your interest in collaborating with Whisk for your fund-raising event.
Whisk Kitchen | A Community of Cooks
"I think cooking and food is something that unites everybody. Being able to share that with our friends and our neighbors people that we meet here in the store is something that really, really makes us feel like we are sharing our passion. Diane and I started this business with the idea of building a community of cooks but the true test of that is does the community build on itself and take a new life of its own? And that's really what's happened We've got the community of chefs and that's profession based and they cook in a restaurant Then we've got assistants who help out in the kitchen passionate cooks, people who just love to be around the kitchen. Our customers are a big community. We try to bring people into the store we try to educate them, entertain them, and inspire them. It's the sharing of the food and the technique and the skills that makes it so delightful. Whether it is sharing through a class, a party. Sharing tools that can make cooking more fun, easier. There is no other cooking store that has the inventory that they have. I get the expert advice as well as the product I'm looking for. This store is built with over 15,000 different, unique items. and all of those tools have a purpose. We've got the tool that will provide value, and also help them accomplish whatever they want to accomplish. When students come in for our classes they can expect great training, technique, fun, and a party! But they can pick and choose what they want We have some students that come in so they can up their game We've got other students who might come in for a Friday or Saturday night They're getting a show, they are getting technical training but they sit back, relax, sip on a glass of wine and it's their choice how much they participate. I love that look on a persons face when they go "oh my gosh, I can't wait to go home and try this out" Literally, cooking changes the chemical compounds in food Figuratively, cooking changes the way you eat, it changes the way people interact together, and it changes your experience. It's in that process, where you're sitting together, you're cooking you're learning about what's being cooked, but really what's happening is you're starting to talk about life stories. It's through those life stories that you end up getting enriched yourself because it just broadens your experience Everyone has to sustain themselves and if we can do it together in the kitchen it's something that we really want to nurture in our community. We are really, truly a community of cooks and people love it."


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Published on April 30th, 2009 | By: Andrea Ross0
Savannah River Researchers Unveil Permeable, Pourable Glass 'Microballoons'
May 8, 2008
Microspheres to Carry Hydrogen, Deliver Drugs, Filter Gases and Detect Nuclear Development
WESTERVILLE, OH – What looks like a fertilized egg, flows like water, gets stuffed with catalysts and exotic nanostructures and may have the potential of making the current retail gasoline infrastructure compatible with hydrogen-based vehicles of the future – not to mention also contributing to arenas such asnuclear proliferation and global warming?
The answer is contained in the June issue of The Bulletin, the monthly magazine of The American Ceramic Society, which carries the first news of a never-before-seen class of materials and technology developed by scientists at the Savannah River National Laboratory.
This unique material, dubbed Porous Wall-Hollow Glass Microspheres (PW-HGM), consists of porous glass 'microballoons' that are smaller than thediameter of a human hair. The key characteristic of these 2-100 micron spheres is an interconnected porosity in their thin outer walls that can be produced and varied on a scale of 100 to 3,000 Angstroms.
SRNL Researchers G.G. Wicks, L.K. Heung, and R.F. Schumacher have been able to use these open channels to fill the microballons with gas absorbents and other materials. Hydrogen or other reactive gases can then enter the microspheres through the pores, creating a relatively safe, contained, solid-state storage system. Photographs of these glass-absorbent composites also reveal that the wall porosity generates entirely new nano-structures.
Wicks, Heung and Schumacher have shown that the PW-HGM's permeable walls can be used for non-composite purposes, too. For example, the porosity can be altered and controlled in various ways that allow the spheres to filter mixed gas streams within a system.
Another feature of the microballoons is that their mechanical properties can be altered so they can be made to flow like a liquid. This suggests that an existing infrastructure that currently transports, stores and distributes liquids such as the existing gasoline distribution and retail network can be used. This property and their relative strength also make the PW-HGMs suitable for reuse and recycling.
The SRNL team is involved in more than a half dozen programs and collaborations involving the PW-HGMs in areas such as hydrogen storage in vehicles (Toyota), gas purification and separations, and even very diverse applications including abatement of global warming effects, improving lead-acid battery performance and nuclear non-proliferation. Applications such as the development of new drug delivery systems and MRI contrast agents are also blossoming in the medical field (Medical College of Georgia).
Founded in 1898, The American Ceramics Society is the professional membership organization for international ceramics and materials scientists, engineers, researchers, manufacturers, plant personnel, educators, and students. Drawing members from 60 countries, ACerS serves the informational, educational, and professional needs of its 6,000 members and provides them with access to periodicals and books, meetings and expositions, and online technical information. Besides the Bulletin, ACerS publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Ceramic Society and the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology, two of the most cited ceramic publications in the world.
Image 1: Microsphere and its contents: The top of a glass microsphere has been removed to show how palladium has passed through the sphere's pores and assembled itself into a new nanostructure. (Credit: Savannah River National Lab and The American Ceramic Society)
Image 2: Unique nanostructures have been grown on both the interior and exterior of the PW-HGMs. (Credit: Savannah River National Lab and The American Ceramic Society)
Image 3: Schematic representation of microsphere wall porosity. (Credit: Savannah River National Lab and The American Ceramic Society)
Release Summary: Porous glass microspheres developed at the Savannah River National Lab can be filled with absorbents to store gas and other materials. On a macro scale, these strong, reusable microspheres can be made to behave like a liquid. Applications for hydrogen storage, gas transport, gas purification and separation, sensor technologies, global-warming applications, and drug delivery systems are underway. Coatings, plates, and fibers with similar properties can also be fabricated.
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Calm down, it's just a willy...
I think that it's not the first time Big Dave has caused a controversy - often required to don a loincloth of fig leaves - or copper.
The good burghers of the Japanese town of Okuizumo have suggested a giant replica of Michelangelo's David might do well to slip on some underpants, lest kiddies are left traumatised by an eyeful of the "big and unexpected" statue. Okuizumo, in Shimane Prefecture, has enjoyed the 5-metre tall nude since last summer. It was …
I think that it's not the first time Big Dave has caused a controversy - often required to don a loincloth of fig leaves - or copper.
Soon to take a sauna. We stoke ours to 90 degrees centigrade - comfortable, until Girlie throws water on the Kiuas (heater) which is full of stones for heat retension. It has pine benches, no problen. Wood doesn't retain heat. We have to remove metal jewellery before we enter, else it'll burn us.
Heard about a Russian oligarch who had a sauna fitted to his boat. He demanded copper benches.
Er, NO!!! Must've hurt!
Don't they have penis festivals/parades in Japan?
Indeed they do, where you can buy all manner of penile goods, including lolipops for the kids...
Just a willy?
That man has a cock as hard as a rock....
Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.
If it does come true, let me know how it works out for you...
Wood does retain heat, it just doesn't conduct very well.
All I can say is that Japan is weird. Hey, I love 'em, but have you seen gay Japenese porn? 'Extreme' just doesn't do parts of it justice. Yet. there's that odd pixilation. Perhaps they are Southern Baptists at heart. I dunno....
Half the population has one.
The human body is a beautiful thing. Why not celebrate the masculine form?
Most human bodies are not that beautiful.
Michelangelo's David is generally considered to be a good looking chap.
The legend is that he was originally carved with a larger dong, but the wealthy traders who commissioned him grew jealous of the appreciative comments their wives made about him, so they insisted Michelangelo chipped David's manhood down to its current size. Alas, the story is probably not true.
Still, why do the Japanese pixel out genitals, but are fine with demon tentacle rape porn?
Quentin, is that you?
"[...] so they insisted Michelangelo chipped David's manhood down to its current size."
It is however true of the figure in Jacob Epstein's "Day" high above the pavement at 55 Broadway - St James Park station - which was built as the headquarters of the Underground.
The possibly apochryphal part of the story is that people on the pavement below objected to the way rain water was channelled off the tip of it.
A similar story exists for Eric Gill's "Ariel" at BBC Broadcasting House - although there are conflicting accounts.
> Why not celebrate the masculine form?
Kryten: But it's hideous! That's the best design they could come up with!? Are you seriously telling me there were choices and someone said "Ah. There. That's it. That's the shape we're looking for; the 'last-chicken-in-the-shop' look." Shakepseare had one. Einstein. Perry Como sang 'Memories Are Made of This' with one of those stashed in his slacks!?'
Lister: Well yeah.
Kryten: No wonder humans don't have a zoom mode!
"why do the Japanese pixel out genitals, but are fine with demon tentacle rape porn?
tentacle porn was thought up because of genitals censorship; the law wanted the genitals to be censored but the adult artists wanted to make adult manga; so they invented the tentacles style!
There is a nice article on Kotaku.com regarding the matter: http://kotaku.com/5938424/its-possible-to-talk-intelligently-about-tentacles-right
Mathematically speaking I have more than twice the average number of penises found on humans (which is less than 50% as there are more women)
I even have more than the average for men (which is very slightly under 100% - due to disease, accidents, carving knife-related events and very sharp vacuum cleaner attachments, or misplaced curiosity)
"That's the best design they could come up with!?"
There's a nice spoof on project management about God creating the world. He was running short of time. So he just stuck the genitalia on - and would get round to fixing it properly later.
If anybody needs me, I'll be in my bunk appreciating controversial works of art!
"which is less than 50% as there are more women"
Wrote :- "The human body is a beautiful thing. Why not celebrate the masculine form?"
As someone else said, most are not so beautiful. And for many of those people, the sight of a beautiful one paraded for the sake of its being beautiful just pisses them off. Like having a statue of a fat cat guy in a top hat lighting a cigar with a £50 note and placing it in the poor part of town.
"Most human bodies are not that beautiful."
Most human bodies ARE beautiful, we are just conditioned to think they are not.
Unless you're saying beauty is objective than you're talking rubbish!
"Still, why do the Japanese pixel out genitals,"
The best example of this is in the anime Eden of the East, where at one point the main characters are running around a half-destroyed shopping mall which is also populated (for reasons that aren't entirely clear, even after you've watched the whole thing) by twenty thousand naked NEETs. And the obfuscation was a sort of scratchy blob over the relevant parts, adding a surreal note to the whole experience.
>Kryten: But it's hideous! That's the best design they could come up with!?
Q: What is the knob on the end for?
German scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the man!
French Scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the woman!
British Scientist: It is to stop your hand falling off the end!
Modern fluid modelling suggests the knob on the end has evolved to act as a plunger, removing what might have been left there by a previous gentleman- all the better to promote your genetic material. More civilised than easting his offspring after the fact, as lions have been known to.
Anyway, here's a Monty Python song, NSFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPFUYUUdQ
"The legend is that he was originally carved with a larger dong"
Technically, David's much-derided willy isn't that small- probably at least average length for an adult male. It just looks that way because it's easy to forget the statue it's plastered on is 5.2 metres high :-)
Mathematically speaking, the average human being has one ovary, one testicle, and one wit.
Certainly not the ones in IT.
(Hey, I worked in the IT angle!)
I thought it was pretty obvious why the NEETs where there, that's where the container ship dropped them off.
...yet society at large welcomes this kind of shenanigan so long as it's a female that's being held up as a spectacle.
No. The average human body that's at best pudgy and out of shape is not beautiful. There is good reason that you don't typically see your average schmuck as the subject of high art. It doesn't matter what the age or civilization. Most people simply don't measure up.
The Germans had a great PSA regarding exercise that featured an "average" David demonstrating what lack of exercise would do to you. Nobody wants to see the that version of David.
> No. The average human body that's at best pudgy and out of shape is not beautiful.
That's a very subjective viewpoint actually, and not shared by others. :D
It's diffficult for a man to "appreciate" other men's bodies so how would you define beauty in the context of the human form other than what you personally find appealing?
In Africa, men find attractive the "fuller" woman and prefer it visually as apposed to the more western view that thinner is better (to a point).
<cliche alert>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder</cliche alert>
It says it all really.
Under natural conditions there are more women born but now that half the worlds population in China and India have ultrasound, abortions, and in China a one child policy along with both somewhat turning a blind eye toward little girls mysteriously dying things are a bit skewed sadly. Not to mention it occurs in other countries besides these two as well.
Totally off topic but having almost half the world's population in two neighboring countries where there are not going to be enough women may be a real geopolitical problem here in the not too distant future. Young men not being able to get laid tends to breed violence.
I love my Finnish girlfriend.
In winter.
When it's dark.
And, the lights are off.
Aah, she's beautiful!
Wrote :- "Most human bodies ARE beautiful, we are just conditioned to think they are not."
Bollocks (if that is the right term to use here). So you are saying that if only in the school playground we had passed round illustrated books of naked warty old geezers, we would have grown up thinking that wart old geezers were beautiful?
I don't recall my parents or teachers "conditioning" me to think that nubile young women were beautiful. In fact it seems to me now that they did everything possible to discourage it, like confiscating pin-up mags depicting them.
Schoolteacher :- "I shall keep these disgusting publications."
Wrote :- "society at large welcomes this kind of shenanigan so long as it's a female that's being held up as a spectacle."
You are getting out of touch. These days naked females are rare on mainstream media. It just isn't PC. Instead it seems fashionable to show naked men, especially in gay scenarios. Watching TV, my wife and I have a contest in which she counts appearances of naked or part-naked men, and I count the ditto women. She wins.
We had to reset the score after seeing "Wilde" last week.
" The sex ratio for the entire world population is 101 males to 100 females."
I knew it! I am the 1 left over!!
Indeed, it is important to remember that censorship created tentacle porn. Next time someone is espousing the benefits of censorship remember what they'll likely achieve.
After all, us men call the "Morning Glory" "Piss-Proud".
After a pee, gone (have to stand on my head, natch)
But the Japs have the same....
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis) - scroll to the last piccie. Can't understand why kiddies are offended. Simply shows where they cane from. "Etch'd in stone!"
The member on the original statue is rather understated.
I've seen bigger pricks down at the local bank.
The ancient Greeks had an aesthetic style that favoured small penises with a long prepuce. So the Renaissancee and neo-classical sculpture traditions copied that style.
Not unusual, really. The average man has 5.5-7 inches, whereas the average bank manager is closer to six foot.
oh my...I'm not even sure I want to know how you know this.
Or 'a grower, not a shower', as we used to call it..
>oh my...I'm not even sure I want to know how you know this [The ancient Greeks had an aesthetic style that favoured small penises with a long prepuce.]
History of Art and the Classics used to be considered part of a rounded (some would say elitist) education:
"Sex was invented by the ancient Greeks, but it took the Romans to introduce it to women".
My hobby is figurative clay modelling. Apparently my style is "neo-realist" - which means the penis is modelled at the same scale as the rest of the body. It's surprising how many people say that it's been made too long. Seems as if all the neo-classical statue "little" ones have affected women's expectations. Men usually have a distorted expectation based on the foreshortening effect of looking down at their own.
> "Sex was invented by the ancient Greeks, but it took the Romans to introduce it to women".
Anything the Romans did was a Greek copy. So whatever they did, the Greeks would have to have done it first.
This includes bankruptcy and irrelevancy for 1500 years as well.


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There's something about Mike McGee performing in Worcester that's a bit like coming home for the holidays. That he actually did perform during the holiday season — Sunday for the Poets' Asylum at the WCUW Frontroom, Monday for the Dirty Gerund Poetry Series at Ralph's Chadwick Square Diner — is mostly beside the point.
McGee, a poet from San Jose, Calif., made a big impression on Worcester when he briefly lived here a few years ago. He's the sort of artist every arts scene wants to have in its midst: creative, ambitious, easily likable and extremely energizing. He was heavily involved with the city's poetry readings, and launched a still-talked-about underground poetry series in his Vernon Hill apartment called The Kitchen Sessions, which attracted notable poets from around the country. He also published his first full-length book — "In Search of Midnight: The Mike McGee Handbook of Awesome," from Write Bloody publishing — while he lived here. But really, it wasn't just the quality of his work that made an impression, it was the man himself.
So when McGee returned for a handful of readings, the outpour of affection from the poetry community was both enormous and predictable. Both of his local readings had full houses. Moreover, each reading seemed to be filled with people you don't regularly see at poetry readings — including some who remain active in the art form but don't regularly attend readings, along with some whose interests have largely veered away from poetry all together. Both readings were preceded by effusive greetings and reminiscing, to the point where things took on the character of a family reunion.
A lot of artists like to avoid the phrase "family" when talking about their communities. It's kind of a loaded word. The word "scene" is far more noncommittal, with its implication of transience and detachment. "Family" is too involved. It conjures images of an idyllic '50s-TV comedy. Artists, after all, are at least as catty, competitive and egotistical as anybody else. Moreover, it implies ties that can't be easily cut. And to that latter point, perhaps, it is the correct word. After all, the shared experience of creating art and sharing the work of maintaining a community is the sort of experience that can bond people in indelible ways for the rest of their lives. Even if those connections aren't always warm and fuzzy.
Of course, family is often complicated. In real life, some lose touch with relatives, or stop speaking to some or all of them altogether. There are short-lived spats and interminable feuds. For all the sense of love, acceptance and safety that comes with family, there is also a bald vulnerability, the sort that can cause emotional wounds to run deep. A life in the arts, for all its positives and negatives, can be remarkably similar — the difference being a matter of calling, rather than blood.
Clearly, in his brief tenure in Worcester, McGee had become a bit of a touchstone. Not the only one, certainly, but one made notable by his absence, one whose brief return visit drew poets and poetry lovers like a holiday dinner (without the sense of begrudging attendance that sometimes implies.)
To say his performances were excellent is, again, predictable (although I should note I had to leave before his second set Monday night, although I've heard nothing but good things). Between the two evenings, McGee performed poems that ranged from a trilogy of hilarious anecdotes about — ahem — passing gas in front of celebrities Viggo Mortensen, Edie Brickell and Marilyn Manson, to a spiraling love poem to his girlfriend that traced the cells of their bodies back to the creation of the universe. He dragged out an old favorite — "Soul Food," an Ingmar Bergman-gone-wrong tale of an eating contest against the incarnation of Death — which he announced he was putting on hiatus for a while. He was funny and engaging, and did chuckle-raising celebrity impersonations, including a rip-roaring Sean Connery. He poked good-natured fun at a number of poets — including many in the room (myself included) — in poems, and the audience loved him even more. The applause in both rooms was effusive, the energy in both venues electrifying.
In short, he was himself, and he was home in Worcester. And the admittedly academic question of whether a community of artists is a "scene" or a "family" or something else entirely receded completely, and the holidays were warm, bright and full of cheer. (Victor D. Infante)


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NBC Wants a George Washington Drama
Ride Lincoln's coattails much?
Some news no one was adequately prepared for: NBC is developing a George Washington drama with a murderer's row of talent including Rain Man director Barry Levinson, The King's Speech screenwriter David Seidler, Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame, and Oz creator Tom Fontana. The series would work from Ron Chernow's Pulitzer-winner Washington: A Life, "hailed as the first biography to unlock the president's complex and enigmatic personality." Don't forget Darren Aronofsky has a Washington biopic in the works, too, because presidents are the new vampires, except when they're hunting vampires.
"What's so interesting is here was a man who was more instrumental to what our country is today and more famous than any other figure in our history, and yet no one knows anything about him," Levinson says. "We know the myth of the man, but the reality was he was a flawed and troubled character who overcame his flaws to become one of the foremost leaders of this nation." Presumably omitted: "And Lincoln looks dope, too, so ..."


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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Federal prosecutors investigating the West Virginia mine explosion that killed 29 men widened their net Wednesday, filing criminal charges against a longtime Massey Energy executive who worked closely with former CEO Don Blankenship — a move signaling where their sights may be ultimately set.
The cooperation of David Craig Hughart is a sign that authorities may be gathering evidence to target officials further up the Massey hierarchy. Some victims' families hold Blankenship personally responsible for the worst U.S. mining disaster in four decades, though prosecutors have declined to say who else could face charges in the wide-ranging and continuing probe.
Several former federal prosecutors say it wouldn't be easy to prosecute Blankenship, and it would require more than just damning testimony from witnesses who may have their own agendas.
Corporations like Massey, since bought out by Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources, are typically structured to shield their leaders from liability, the experts say. To reach the top, investigators would most likely need hard evidence to match witnesses' words.
Either that, says former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey of Miami, or they'll need multiple witnesses.
"If the star witness has a supporting cast," he said, "it can be a compelling basis for conviction."
Hughart, former president of a Massey subsidiary that controlled White Buck Coal Co., worked alongside Blankenship for at least 15 years and was named in a federal information filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Beckley. He is cooperating with prosecutors, and U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said Hughart is prepared to plead guilty to two conspiracy charges that carry the possibility of six years in prison.
Hughart's phone has been disconnected, and his attorney didn't immediately comment.
Although Upper Big Branch is never directly mentioned in the case against Hughart, Goodwin said the charges come from the investigation of the April 2010 explosion. And the nature of the allegations parallels charges brought against those who were directly involved with UBB.
Prosecutors say Hughart worked with unnamed co-conspirators to ensure miners at White Buck and other, unidentified Massey-owned operations received advance warning about surprise federal inspections many times between 2000 and March 2010.
Those illegal warnings gave workers time to conceal life-threatening violations that could have led to citations, fines and costly shutdowns, authorities say.
Hughart faces two charges: felony conspiracy to defraud the government by impeding the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and misdemeanor conspiracy to violate mandatory health and safety standards.
Goodwin wouldn't say who else might be charged or when, but that his investigators are "trying to push forward as quickly as we can."
Hughart has been president of at least 10 Massey subsidiaries throughout his career, positions that would have required the consent of a CEO whose micromanagement is well-documented.
At Upper Big Branch, for example, Blankenship demanded production reports every 30 minutes.
And last year, Blankenship acknowledged during a deposition for an unrelated lawsuit that his employees had sometimes found cans of Dad's root beer on their desks: Dad's, he told the attorney questioning him, stood for "Do as Don says."
Neither Blankenship, who retired about eight months after the disaster, nor one of his attorneys responded to an email seeking comment.
Four investigations have concluded that Massey concealed problems at the mine through an elaborate scheme that included sanitized safety-inspection books and an advance-warning system.
Clay Mullins, who lost brother Rex in the explosion, doesn't believe it will be that hard to prove that Blankenship personally maintained a corporate culture that put no value on workers or safety.
"I think all Massey operations ran just the way UBB did," Mullins said. "They all had advance warning. They all tried to hide and cover up as much as they could. They tried to conceal and deceive and deny. That was Massey's mentality. That was how they handled things."
The United Mine Workers of America, which accused Massey of "industrial homicide," has demanded that Blankenship and 17 other managers who refused to talk to investigators be compelled to testify publicly or cited for contempt. It says those responsible for the disaster must be brought to justice.
But David Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Miami who now heads the white-collar litigation practice of a private law firm, said corroboration would be critical to prosecuting Blankenship.
"They are going to need documents," he said. "The real linchpin of their prosecution is being able to prove the CEO or some other officer or director actively participated in what was going on."
Absent direct proof, Weinstein said, prosecutors would have to demonstrate "willful blindness" to matters of safety.
After a 2006 fire that killed two men at a different Massey operation, a memo surfaced that could help prosecutors make that part of the case. In it, Blankenship told workers at the mine that if their bosses asked them to build roof supports or perform similar safety-related tasks, "ignore them and run coal."
"This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills," he wrote.
Massey settled that lawsuit for undisclosed terms, and its Aracoma Coal subsidiary paid $4.2 million in civil and criminal penalties.
Bruce Stanley, the Pittsburgh attorney who handled that lawsuit and others against Massey, said no managers could act without Blankenship's direction.
"I cannot imagine that anybody at Hughart's pay rank could engage in any of the activities that he's accused of without Don Blankenship's permission and blessing," Stanley said.
During the Aracoma investigation, memos made clear that Blankenship paid particular attention to mines that were falling short of budget projections, Stanley said. The day of the fire, he called Aracoma's then-president, wondering why a section crew wasn't working.
"Indeed he was super micromanaging all of these mines," Stanley said. "At the section level and on a daily basis."
Hughart is the third person to face serious criminal charges in connection with Upper Big Branch.
Former UBB superintendent Gary May is also cooperating with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for his actions at the mine and is set to be sentenced in January.
Former Massey security chief Hughie Elbert Stover, meanwhile, is appealing his conviction last fall on charges he lied to investigators and ordered a subordinate to destroy documents.
He was sentenced to three years behind bars — one of the stiffest punishments ever handed down in a mine safety case — but has been free pending appeal. Witnesses testified that Stover instructed mine guards to send radio alerts whenever inspectors entered the property. He's denied any wrongdoing.
The explosion at Upper Big Branch was sparked by worn teeth on a cutting machine, and fueled by methane and coal dust. It was allowed to propagate by clogged and broken water sprayers. The force of the blast traveled miles of underground corridors, killing men instantly.
Goodwin's office negotiated a $210 million agreement with Alpha to settle past violations at UBB and other Massey mines, protecting the company from criminal prosecution.
But individuals remain on the hook.
Jeffrey Sloman, a former U.S. attorney in Miami, said criminal prosecutions of big-company CEOs are "relatively rare, but it happens from time to time."
"You see it on Wall Street," he said, "with New York going after financial crimes cases pretty aggressively."
Gary Quarles, who lost his son Gary Wayne at Upper Big Branch, just wants Blankenship to face criminal charges and be held accountable.
"Everybody thinks he's above the law," he said. "I want at least something filed against him, to show him you can be had. It doesn't matter what he's charged with, just something. ... Even Martha Stewart went to jail. "
Associated Press writer Larry O'Dell contributed from Richmond, Va.


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Documents and Forms
Business and Finance Division
The Business and Finance Documents and Forms page has been updated to better serve our users. Please click here to access the new, secure Google Site which contains all of the forms previously found on this page. (Note: You must be logged into your SLU account in order to access this page).


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Cooperation Among Cooperatives
A visit to Mexico brings together three parts of one complete cooperative supply chain—farmer co-op (CIRSA) to worker-owned co-op (Equal Exchange) to consumer co-op (Co-op Food Stores).
Learn More here.
Contact: +1 (774) 776-7366
Cooperation Among Cooperatives
A visit to Mexico brings together three parts of one complete cooperative supply chain—farmer co-op (CIRSA) to worker-owned co-op (Equal Exchange) to consumer co-op (Co-op Food Stores).
Learn More here.
Take a look at the ways we've streamlined our Fair Trade fundraising program to help your group earn more money in less time.
We #SustainUSFWC because our Federation is helping build a #neweconomy. Here's some of the things the USFWC has done this year for co-ops. Help them grow by becoming a Sustaining Member today!
October is Fair Trade Month, and there's a lot to celebrate!
You already know that Fair Trade is important to farmers, communities and the planet, and that Equal Exchange's partnerships help improve lives and land around the world. How will you showcase your support of better trade this month?
We have a few ideas to get you inspired and spreading the word about why Fair Trade matters.
Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it's time for candy, trick-or-treating, costumes and more candy. Every year, Americans spend over a billion dollars on millions of pounds of Halloween chocolate — enough for every sweet tooth in the country and then some!
The coffee world is always changing and evolving – that's part of what makes it so exciting. Lately, there's been a lot of buzz about Keurig* coffee makers and K-cup* single serve coffee, and everyone at Equal Exchange has been in on the conversation. We've been listening, too, to the concerns and preferences of our customers and doing everything we can to learn about this new corner of the coffee market. After many months of discussion and development, we have an exciting announcement: Equal Exchange is now offering three of our most popular blends in single serve cups for your Keurig. We're proud to be able to offer you a single serve cup that's truly different: environmentally friendly, good for farmers and absolutely delicious.
Peasant Assembly of the Coordination of Latin American Rural Organizations and La Vía Campesina in Central America (CLOC-LVC-CA)
The Peasant Movement Defines its Position on the Climate and Food Crisis in Central America
Read Part I here.
There would be no cashews from El Salvador that year.


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CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt officially requested on Thursday a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss what it described as Israeli aggression on Gaza, the Foreign Ministry said.
Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, recalled its ambassador from Israel on Wednesday after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed Hamas's top military commander.
The peace with Israel has never been warm, even under U.S.-ally Hosni Mubarak, but ties have turned even cooler since the longtime autocrat was ousted last year and Islamists took power.
Egypt's representative to the United Nations called for the meeting in formal letters to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the current head of the council, India's representative, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Egyptian ambassador expressed Egypt's "serious alarm at the Israeli aggression on Gaza" and described the attack as a violation of international law.
He called for urgent international action, particularly from the council, "to confront this serious situation which threatens international peace and security."
(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Jon Boyle)


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Animation of atmosphere to electrons – wind turbine technology
Detail 3D render of wake steering
Manhattan Bridge
Simulation of cars interacting.
Simulation of 3D Vehicle Sensors
Solar Everywhere
Published in Green Chemistry front cover – November 2014
Published in Advanced Electronic Materials – January 2017
1933 Ford – Yellowstone Under Canvas
Better Buildings Smart Labs Accelerator Multimedia Presentation
Multi-Family Housing in Denver Tech Center.
San Diego – 5th Avenue Pier
Steamboat Springs – Twilight
November 2016 New York City Super Moon
Multimedia presentation of Milehouse Apartments in the Denver Tech Center.
Aerial of Union Station
Exploded view of a wind turbine
3D illustration of a conceptual idea of using an expandable blade for easy transportation.
Illustration of a conceptual idea of providing a mobile charging station using a semi truck.
3D illustration of 3 vehicle comparison
3D conceptual drawing of a modified A/C unit
Union Station – Denver
Botanical Gardens – D.C.
Royal Gorge
Rome street musicians
Colored rendition of Union Station
Rome at night
8th Generation Vineyard – Summerland, Canada
Union Station – Interior
Aerial of the corner of Puget Sound, Washington
Street musicians in Rome
Phoenix on fire
Bernkastel-kues, Germany
Tucannon River Wind Site – Dayton, WA
Aerial view of Bainbridge Island
Interior of a house in Castle Rock, CO
Washington D.C. – Botanical Gardens
Historic Ice House building in Denver, CO
Historic Union Station interior
Vancouver at dusk
National monument – Washington, D.C.
Royal Gorge – burnt trees
Aerial – Tucannon River Wind Farm
Aerial o fMcPhee Reservoir Damn
Oxford Hotel and Union Station – Denver, CO
Gastown Steam Clock in Vancouver, Canada
Shot this down one of Venice' many water alleys
View of my Ducati overlooking Flatirons in Boulder, CO
Aerial of Spokane, Washington
Aerial of Downtown Denver
Video tour of a home in Castle Rock, CO
Multimedia video of il Lugano Hotel – Miami
Aerial of Beavercreek
Interior of a home in Castle Rock, CO
Aerial of Lakeside Amusement Park
Tucannan River Wind Farm in Dayton, Washington
Illustration of offshore wind turbines


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Kate C. Feibusch is the author of 'Prescription for the Boards, USMLE Step 2', published 1998 under ISBN 9780781714273 and ISBN 0781714273.[read more]
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Colorful knots to undo, bright blocks to chew, straws to hide treats, clattering coconuts . . . with so many colorful textures to investigate, your bird will never get bored! Sisal rope, knots, and frays provide endless entertainment for birds who love to preen and play. Best of all, he can climb or hang while he explores, exercising mind, feet, and beak. 11" x 23" hanging bird toy is ideal for Amazons to macaws. Includes hanging hardware.
Please click "More Information" for playtime recommendations.