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text:
Oct 3, 2013
Heads up Boys and Girls!
A large part of the complex just went up for sale: The northern portion that lines Dean. .
<small>View Larger Map</small>
You'll need $18M.
If you take the affordable housing incentive, you'll receive over 100,000 BSF!
If you just build market, you get around 75k BSF.
Here are the addresses it shares with Franklin Avenue:
606, 608, 610, 612, 614 Franklin
Make sure to look at the pdf above to get a sense of which buildings we are talking about.
Press: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2013/10/03/crown-heights-owner-plays-off-rezoning-lists-site-for-18m/
Brownstoner says the owner did NOT list the Brewery itself - the amazing old brick edifice on Bergen - and plans to convert it himself to residential and retail.
If this is true this is excellent news. Presumably the proceeds from the sale of the (architecturally) less-significant parcels on Dean Street can subsidize his costs to stabilize and renovate the brewery.
This pdf shows which of the buildings are for sale:
The big brick buildings that line Bergen are not for sale. The ones that line Dean are for sale
If I can be slightly ignorant for a second here (and I know there's a separate "new Crown Heights zoning" thread...but in a sentence or two, what about the new zoning (which actually puts limits on new building heights, right?) - would likely have motivated the seller to list this property post zoning amendment?
While height restrictions were imposed, this lot was given the ability to build a greater Floor Area Ratio, which impacts buildable sq ft.
The FAR can now be further increased if the developer chooses to participate in an affordable housing program.
The definition of "affordable" that must be abided by isn't very strict by my definition. Hence, the developer might go for it....
Very good question notsayin. The FAR is the story but the big change doesn't depend on the inclusionary housing (affordable). The FAR for this lot went from 2.43 to 3.45 as of right or 4.6 if they add the affordable component.
The trade off is that city planning dictates the building height (80') and the setback (R7A with the A being very important). http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/zone/zh_r7a.shtml
No longer can someone build a similar building to that tower on St. Marks surrounded by a parking lot. The building has to line up with the walls of the others. So the city is basically telling developers to build buildings that are similar in mass, scale, and street experience to the historic buildings. The quid pro quo is that owners can build more on these lots now. Plus if they include affordable units (restricted to families makeing less than 80% of Area Median Income ~ $49k I think) they can build even more. Typically this is incentive enough for them to build the units.
Also forgot to mention that the new zoning doesn't have the same open space (usually a parking lot or grass) requirements as the old. This makes possible building denser buildings that are ultimately more marketable and attractive to retail.
I agree with everything vaportrail wrote.
And will add that although it won't be ready until 2-3 years from now, I expect the first floor to provide some Class A commercial space.
TerraCRG is trying to get bidders to line up...
Hi (real name),
As you may already know, my team is marketing the mixed-use development site located at 608 Franklin Avenue on the corner of Franklin Avenue and Dean Street in Brooklyn. The property is zoned R7A which allows for up to 4.6 FAR with inclusionary housing bonus, giving the project a total of 100,875 buildable SF. The 21,929 SF site has 141 feet of frontage on Franklin Avenue.
The Preliminary Bid deadline for the property is this Friday, November 1st @ 2 PM. If you are planning to bid, please email me for the full Offering Memo and feel free to give me a call to discuss.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Ofer Cohen | Founder & President | TerraCRG | 592 Pacific Street, Suite B | Brooklyn, NY 11217 |
T: 718-768-6888 | F: 917-591-8206 | firstname.lastname@example.com | www.terracrg.com | @ofercohen
TerraCRG is hiring http://www.terracrg.com/careers/
Sadly, I don't think I have enough in my checking account to handle this.
See how they feel about $20.
Readers, this development is one of the Big Developments happening in western Crown Heights in 2014 that we will watching closely. To learn about the others, see this thread:
aerial view:
present description: http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/Looplink/Profile/Profile.aspx?LL=true&LID=18393349&STID=terracrg
An eight-story mixed-use building is coming to the corner of Dean and Franklin in Crown Heights, on the site of a former brewery. NY YIMBY first spotted new building applications for the 119-unit development at 1036-1042 Dean Street.The ODA Architecture-designed build will have 100,629 square feet total, including 81,880 square feet of residential space and 18,749 square feet of commercial.More at http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2014/06/eight-story-building-to-replace-part-of-crown-heights-brewery/
Next two floors: http://newyorkyimby.com/2016/01/construction-update-608-franklin-avenue-crown-heights.html
note: photos not by me.
press: http://newyorkyimby.com/2016/05/eight-story-106-unit-residential-project-topped-out-at-608-franklin-avenue-crown-heights.html
"The structure will measure 125,350 square feet and its residential units should average 693 square feet apiece. Rental apartments are in the works, and configurations will include studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms. Twenty-four of the apartments will rent at below-market rates through the housing lottery. Amenities include a 56-car parking garage on the cellar and ground floors, storage for 63 bikes, a lounge, a fitness center, an common outdoor area on the second floor, and a rooftop terrace. Yoel Goldman's Brooklyn GC is the developer, with ODA New York is behind the design. Occupancy can probably be expected by the end of the year."
photo: Tectonic
Not yet. But I will keep watching this site. This site continues to be one of the sites I believe will make a large impact on western Crown Heights: http://www.brooklynian.com/discussion/47007/the-big-18-developments-the-whynot-31-wont-stop-talking-about?new=1
Update: I walked by here last night. Finishes appear to be getting put in to many of the units. I saw mini-split AC units up in a lot of the apartments as of last night.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Friday, 20 April 2012
12 comments:
- Nin Andrews said...
I always think of them as fairy tale trees. I used to try to draw the trees in the antique books my mom had,
and the first time I went to California, I recognize them.
You can almost see the fairies in them--and the little Tolkien types of characters.
- 20 April 2012 at 04:36
- TC said...
Legend has it the best place to find a fairy is at the foot of a cypress tree. As these trees sometimes live as long as 2000 years, and of course fairies can never be counted on to hold still for long, there could be a bit of a wait. But one supposes even the most fleeting glimpse would be well worth the wait.
Some have been known to abbreviate the vigil by building Cypress Fairy Houses to entice the little visitors. But one imagines them to be a bit picky, so that the architecture and decor would have to be just right.
- 20 April 2012 at 05:38
- ACravan said...
I've just returned from driving Jane to school in Bryn Mawr, where our route takes us past some spreading cow pastures and other pretty sights. All along the way, I was thinking of this -- the writing, the pictures and the beautifully broad visual format of BTP that lets the words and images assume their correct perspective. Funny and true about bending without breaking. I used to joke (the joke based on reality because I'm fairly clumsy and prone to tripping, falling down, etc.) that I was lucky that I bruise, but don't break. Over the past few years, though, I'm conscious of the bending process you've described so well and hoping that it's been a reasonable (and eventually happy) adaptation to life's circumstances. Certainly, I wouldn't mind being as beautiful as those cypresses. Curtis
- 20 April 2012 at 05:55
- TC said...
I am currently proving once again (getting bit redundant this, after several bad falls in recent years) the frailty of the mortal coil, by having mine slowly turn into a poster specimen for contusions in all colours of the rainbow (blunt force trauma impact working its slow bad magic); and have in thus wise learned that human soft tissue is definitely no match for tons of metal moving at speed.
But of course I had already known that, in the general, vague common-sense sort of way. Still there's no teacher quite like Experience. For the past fifteen days I've been going back and forth on the question of whether a bent frame is really better than a broken one. Maybe in a few more weeks I will be able to form a conclusion... if, that is, I have not by that time involuntarily come to one.
- 20 April 2012 at 06:22
- STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...
"Better bent than broken."
Or as Campion once said --
"The tender graft is easely Broke,
But who shall shake the sturdie Oke?"
light coming into sky above still black
plane of ridge, robin calling on branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
being part of it, one there
was as much as it was
sometimes both figures, two
states, person become
tree-lined green of ridge above channel,
white cloud in pale blue sky on horizon
- 20 April 2012 at 06:56
- TC said...
I thought of you when putting this together, both because you have that fortunate family background in native Monterey Cypress country; and because the (locally introduced) specimens of which I speak in this text stood (and doubtless still stand) on Nymph Road, a mere echo's distance from where you are fortunate (not to mention wise) enough to be dwelling, e'en as we speak.
(And for saying the magic words "Thomas" and Campion", were there any justice in the blogosphere, you would be rewarded as were the contestants on the Groucho Marx show, way back when, for saying whatever magic word had been stipulated for the occasion... it was hard not to suspect, at times, that clues had been surreptitiously provided... but in any case, when the word was said, a stuffed duck dropped down from above, and the happy contestant/s got $50.)
- 20 April 2012 at 07:12
- STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...
Thanks for this, your saying of "the magic words" here has prompted this other small offering from Campion, regarding such "native . . . specimens" among other things --
"The Sypres curten of the night is spread,
And over all a silent dewe is cast,
The weaker cares by sleep are conquered;
But I alone, with hidious grief agast,
In spite of Morpheus charmes a watch doe keepe
Over mine eies, to banish careless sleepe."
- 20 April 2012 at 08:19
- vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...
A pleasure seeing this again, this time sandwiched between these wonderful photographs but then again, you already know how I stand on cypresses and Seferis on wind-swept pines!
- 20 April 2012 at 10:30
- aditya said...
bent better than broken ..
Reminds me of the childhood lessons and a haiku made out sometime back while half remembering them (though on a slightly different plane if not the same)--
be humble ..
only twigs with flowers
- 20 April 2012 at 11:10
- Jonathan Chant said...
'...wiser to give way for a while, so as to go on.'
Good to be reminded of this. Great post, thanks Tom.
- 20 April 2012 at 12:16
- TC said...
Thanks to everyone, and to that excellent poet-physician, Dr. Thomas Campion, as well.
Ah Morpheus, where art thy charmes, now that they are needed so?
- 21 April 2012 at 06:23
- Robb said...
As beautiful as the trees.
- 24 April 2012 at 13:55


text:
If top managers have trouble recognizing the difference between alternative assets and alternative strategies, what hope do the rest of us have?
"I was at a conference recently and asked a keynote speaker about the future of alternative strategies," Curian Capital's Gabriel Burstein, Ph. D. (left), told ThinkAdvisor during a discussion with colleagues on Thursday. "He answered by describing assets like commodities and real estate, and not a word about strategies, so even legendary managers get confused, and that confusion is spreading."
It's an ongoing and widely observed problem. Although Dorothy Weaver, CEO of Collins Capital, recently said advisors are on "the cusp of really understanding the difference between alternative strategies and assets," they're not quite there, and it remains a frustration for all involved.
"An advisor in Texas with whom I was recently speaking said whenever he talks to his clients about alternative strategies, they don't want to hear it because they might have lost so much recently on commodities or real estate," added Burstein, head of investment strategy in asset management at the Denver-based firm. "They don't realize that the assets might have a volatility of 20%, say, annualized over a 10-year period, but the strategies might have 5% to 8% volatility."
Disentangling strategies from assets with advisors and clients is the challenge the industry faces, he said.
Jim Gilmore, a VP and portfolio manager at Curian, noted the number of people with institutional experience at the firm that are "getting used to common terms on the retail side," but are seeing abuse in how they're used and implemented.
"Institutional plan sponsors use no more than 10% in their portfolios to combat inflation, and in periods of low inflation those allocations may be dead weight," Gilmore (left) said. "Look at gold; everyone on the retail side has been told it's where they have to be. Well, if they started the year with $1 they ended with $0.75. We're trying to recognize the risk/return characteristics of each strategy and weight them appropriately."
He added that the retail side is looking for one strategy that is a "panacea" for managing volatility, and it's usually something that "isn't a very substantive return driver.
"What is needed is a wide range of strategies that have a wide range of volatilities and return drivers," he argued. "If you add in 10, 12 or 15 of these strategies, individually they might have 8% to 12% volatility, but acting in concert they might have 5% volatility."
One of the biggest challenges to effective portfolio construction on the '40 Act retail side is manager selection, and that's where Brian Hargreaves comes in. The firm's VP of alternative investments and manager research uses a top-down approach that looks at strategy and allocation, combined with a bottom-up approach of manager selection.
"When evaluating a manager, its critical to ensure returns are alpha driven and not deviating from stated objectives," Hargreaves noted. "Particularly, look to ensure managers avoid style drift by employing a repeatable and sustainable process. Managers should also avoid chasing the flavor of the month or the hot, new thing."
As for the sources of alpha, it must be "pure or real alpha," says Hargreaves (left), not a passive strategy that might happen to be doing well during a given period of time.
"We then look at performance and the idiosyncrasies of the manager's firm," Hargreaves added. "The standard due diligence process is also performed to review the investment thesis as well as legal, compliance and operations." He pointed to multi-strategy funds as growing in popularity, as are long/short credit strategies, among others.
Gilmore moved to a description of what Curian means by its conservative, moderate and growth allocations. "'Conservative' has 5% target volatility, plus or minus one. With one-third the volatility of the S&P 500, it can really have an impact on the portfolio. And it can be used as a replacement for fixed-income allocations."
Moderate, he continued, adds in a bit of equity beta through some private equity, real estate and infrastructure and has volatility on the order of a 7% target. "The growth portfolio increases equity beta to maintain a target of 9%."
The key, Gilmore concluded, is to start with the investor's purpose in mind. "Too often, I see the allocation as the last item for consideration, and it doesn't get the attention it deserves. How do advisors get it matched right for the investors' needs? Advisors are thirsty for that kind of knowledge."


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Yesterday's Saturday Sky is courtesy of a very rainy and stormy day:
Today, however, dawned bright and sunny. It was the perfect day for hanging out downtown.
While watching people and dogs stroll by, I finished another scarf:
A Scarf With No Name
What: A Scarf With No Name
Yarn: Bernat Softee Chunky: One full skein of Hot Blue and nearly one full skein of Hot Lime
Needles: sizes 10 Knit Picks Options
Pattern: Garter stitch
Date started: 3/23/07
Date finished: 3/25/07
Dimensions: 5″ x 76″, including fringe
Lesson Learned: I LOVE knitting the stripes in this direction.
Destination: Warm The World
I think my brief scarf obsession is over. I'm itching to get back to socks now.
Samantha spent some time today excavating her hidey-hole:
This made her very thirsty and here she is running for her water dish:
Once back inside, the girls took turns keeping watch on the neighborhood:
The cats have a room of their own (yes, really), but they usually hang out together:
Finally, here is Kishka. I'm quite certain she's thinking "Please stop taking my picture. I'm trying to sleep."


text:
Following the publication of my last blog post on Gizmodo yesterday, I received a lot of comments from women and men who said they had experienced cyberstalking situations similar to mine, some not as bad and some far worse.
So I decided to email the Dean of my alma mater's College of Engineering this FYI:
Dear Dean Munson,
I attended the College of Engineering from 2004-2006 and ended up transferring to LS&A. I thought you may be interested as to why. I recently published this article on Gizmodo about an experience with cyber stalking that I unfortunately had my freshman year, and I thought you may be interested to know this kind of thing is happening on your campus, and how it affects the targets. I strongly feel that incidents like this are one cause of the enormous gender disparity that exists within the engineering school. I hope you find some value to this, and please feel free to contact me if you would like advice on ways the college could do more to stop harassment against women.
Arikia Millikan
I was surprised to receive the following response about four hours later:
Erika,I am sorry to hear about your experience. Actually, this is the first such experience I've heard of in Engineering at U-M. Although I think that cyberstalking is a really bad thing, I have to disagree with your conclusion that incidents like yours "cause the enormous gender disparity that exists within the engineering school." Our problem regarding gender is that not enough women students from high school apply to study engineering in the first place. This is true nationwide. At U-M, our retention rates for women and men students in engineering are nearly the same. So, once a woman enters CoE, she is very likely to stay and complete an engineering degree.Thank you for sharing your story. I meet with undergraduates often in CoE (including lots of women) and I will be on the alert for the type of misbehavior you endured.–David Munson
Today I sent my reply:
Dean Munson, thank you for your prompt response.
With all due respect though, sir, why would you have heard about such an experience before? When I went to DPS, I was told nothing could be done and was dismissed. With such an "oh well, deal with it" response to my — and any woman in a similar position's — first impulse in seeking intervention regarding such a matter, why then would a student take the issue up with the dean? When I was a freshman, I never realized that was an appropriate plan of action or even an option. In fact, I never received any kind of notice of a campus resource for addressing instances of harassment in the College Engineering — information that is readily distributed in LS&A. While you are on the alert for this kind of misconduct in the future, I would urge you to also have conversations with the north campus Department of Public Safety in addition to female students. Perhaps they could provide you with statistics about how much this kind of incident is reported so that, rather than citing a lack of anecdotal evidence as evidence that something isn't occurring, you could cite hard information.
To clarify, I didn't say incidents like my specific stalking incident cause the gender disparity. I said that incidents like mine (which if you read or even skimmed the essay to the point where I explain why I dropped out you would understand was a reference to the persistent sexual objectification from male students and even once a professor I endured) are *one* of the many reasons I *believe* contribute to the gender disparity. For you to tell me that it's not is, frankly, offensive. Furthermore, noting that the retention rates are nearly the same for men and women says nothing about the causes of the dropping out. I would be willing to bet that the breakdown of dropout causes are very different for women than what they are for men.
The problem that you cite as being the reason for gender disparity in the College of Engineering — that female high schoolers do not apply to engineering school — is a problem that is often caused by the same factor I cited in my essay that you dismissed: sexism. Unless you think that women are not inherently as good in science and math as men are, in which case I'd urge you to remember the Larry Summers incident, explore and the volumes of research that indicate the contrary, and revisit this hypothesis.
Thank you again for your response. In addition to my own experience in the University of Michigan College of Engineering, I now understand an additional factor that sustains the gender imbalance on your campus: your denialism. Thank you also for making me the most happy I have ever been that I did not pursue a career in engineering.
(not Erika)
I also sent it to Kelley Adams, my college friend I reference briefly in the story who is now a Project Manager at MIT's Violence Prevention Response Center. She linked me to the CDC's recently-released findings from the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) which contains statistics on many different forms of violence, including stalking.
From the report's Executive Summary:
Stalking Victimization by Any Perpetrator
- One in 6 women (16.2%) and 1 in 19 men (5.2%) in the United States have experienced stalking victimization at some point during their lifetime in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
- Two-thirds (66.2%) of female victims of stalking were stalked by a current or former intimate partner; men were primarily stalked by an intimate partner or an acquaintance, 41.4% and 40.0%, respectively.
- Repeatedly receiving unwanted telephone calls, voice, or text messages was the most commonly experienced stalking tactic for both female and male victims of stalking (78.8% for women and 75.9% for men).
- More than half of female victims and more than one-third of male victims of stalking indicated that they were stalked before the age of 25; about 1 in 5 female victims and 1 in 14 male victims experienced stalking between the ages of 11 and 17.
Thanks for the stats, Kelley. Hopefully when the University's PR team finds this via Google Alert, they'll be nice enough to forward this to Dean Munson so he can consider it while he is on the alert.


text:
Not everyone thinks that it matters whether scientific theories make true statements about the world, as scientific realists do. Laudan (1981) argues against scientific realism based on a pessimistic meta-induction: If theories that were deemed successful in the past turn out to be false, then we can reasonably expect all our current successful theories to be false as well. Van Fraassen (1980) believes it is sufficient for a theory to be 'empirically adequate', and make true predictions about things we can observe, irrespective of whether these predictions are derived from a theory that describes how the unobservable world is in reality. This viewpoint is known as constructive empiricism. As Van Fraassen summarizes the constructive empiricist perspective (1980, p.12): "Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate".
The idea that we should 'believe' scientific hypotheses is not something scientific realists can get behind. Either they think theories make true statements about things in the world, but we will have to remain completely agnostic about when they do (Feyerabend, 1993), or they think that corroborating novel and risky predictions makes it reasonable to believe that a theory has some 'truth-likeness', or verisimilitude. The concept of verisimilitude is based on the intuition that a theory is closer to a true statement when the theory allows us to make more true predictions, and less false predictions. When data is in line with predictions, a theory gains verisimilitude, when data are not in line with predictions, a theory loses verisimilitude (Meehl, 1978). Popper clearly intended verisimilitude to be different from belief (Niiniluoto, 1998). Importantly, verisimilitude refers to how close a theory is to the truth, which makes it an ontological, not epistemological question. That is, verisimilitude is a function of the degree to which a theory is similar to the truth, but it is not a function of the degree of belief in, or the evidence for, a theory (Meehl, 1978, 1990). It is also not necessary for a scientific realist that we ever know what is true – we just need to be of the opinion that we can move closer to the truth (known as comparative scientific realism, Kuipers, 2016).
Attempts to formalize verisimilitude have been a challenge, and from the perspective of an empirical scientist, the abstract nature of this ongoing discussion does not really make me optimistic it will be extremely useful in everyday practice. On a more intuitive level, verisimilitude can be regarded as the extent to which a theory makes the most correct (and least incorrect) statements about specific features in the world. One way to think about this is using the 'possible worlds' approach (Niiniluoto, 1999), where for each basic state of the world one can predict, there is a possible world that contains each unique combination of states.
For example, consider the experiments by Stroop (1935), where color related words (e.g., RED, BLUE) are printed either in congruent colors (i.e., the word RED in red ink) or incongruent colors (i.e., the word RED in blue ink). We might have a very simple theory predicting that people automatically process irrelevant information in a task. When we do two versions of a Stroop experiment, one where people are asked to read the words, and one where people are asked to name the colors, this simple theory would predict slower responses on incongruent trials, compared to congruent trials. A slightly more advanced theory predicts that congruency effects are dependent upon the salience of the word dimension and color dimension (Melara & Algom, 2003). Because in the standard Stroop experiment the word dimension is much more salient in both tasks than the color dimension, this theory predicts slower responses on incongruent trials, but only in the color naming condition. We have four possible worlds, two of which represent predictions from either of the two theories, and two that are not in line with either theory.
Responses Color Naming
Responses Word Naming
World 1
World 2
Not Slower
World 3
Not Slower
World 4
Not Slower
Not Slower
In an unpublished working paper, Meehl (1990b) discusses a 'box score' of the number of successfully predicted features, which he acknowledges is too simplistic. No widely accepted formalized measure of verisimilitude is available to express the similarity between the successfully predicted features by a theory, although several proposals have been put forward (Niiniluoto, 1998; Oddie, 2013, for an example based on Tversky's (1977) contrast model, see Cevolani, Crupi, & Festa, 2011). However, even if formal measures of verisimilitude are not available, it remains a useful concept to describe theories that are assumed to be closer to the truth because they make novel predictions (Psillos, 1999).
As empirical scientists, our main job is to decide which features are present in our world. Therefore, we need to know if predictions made by theories are corroborated or falsified in experiments. To be able to falsify a theory, it needs to forbid certain states of the world (Lakatos, 1978). This is not easy, especially for probabilistic statements, which is the bread and butter of psychological science. Where a single black swan is clearly observable, probabilistic statements only reach their true predicted value in infinity, and every finite sample will have some variation around the predicted value. However, according to Popper, probabilistic statements can be made falsifiable by interpreting probability as the relative frequency of a result in a specified hypothetical series of observations, and decide that reproducible regularities are not attributed to randomness (Popper, 2002). Even though any finite sample will show some variation, we can decide upon a limit of the variation. Researchers can use the limit of variation that is allowed as a methodological rule, and decide whether a set of observations falls in a 'forbidden' state of the world, or in a 'permitted' state of the world, according to some theoretical prediction.
This methodological falsification (Lakatos, 1978) is clearly inspired by a Neyman-Pearson perspective on statistical inferences. Popper (2002, p. 168) acknowledges feedback from the statistician Abraham Wald, who developed statistical decision theory based on the work by Neyman and Pearson (Wald, 1992). Lakatos (1978, p. 25) writes how we can make predictions falsifiable by "specifying certain rejection rules which may render statistically interpreted evidence 'inconsistent' with the probabilistic theory" and notes: "this methodological falsificationism is the philosophical basis of some of the most interesting developments in modern statistics. The Neyman-Pearson approach rests completely on methodological falsificationism". To use methodological falsification, Popper describes how empirical researchers need to decide upon an interval within which the predicted value will fall. We can then calculate for any number of observations the probability that our value will indeed fall within this range, and design a study such that this probability is very high, or that it's complementary probability, which Popper denotes by ε, is small. We can recognize this procedure as a Neyman-Pearson hypothesis test, where ε is the Type 2 error rate. In other words, high statistical power, or when the null is true, a very low alpha level, can corroborate a hypothesis.
Popper distinguishes between subjective probabilities (where the degree of probability is expressed as feelings of certainty, or, belief), and objective probabilities (where probabilities are relative frequencies with which an event occurs in a specified range of observations. Popper strongly believed that the corroboration of tests should be based on Frequentist, not Bayesian, probabilities (Popper, p. 434): "As to degree of corroboration, it is nothing but a measure of the degree to which a hypothesis h has been tested, and of the degree to which it has stood up to tests. It must not be interpreted, therefore, as a degree of the rationality of our belief in the truth of h". For a scientific realist, who believes the main goal of scientists is to identify features of the world that corroborate or falsify theories, what matters is whether theories are truthlike, not whether you believe they are truthlike. As Taper and Lele (2011) express this viewpoint: "It is not that we believe that Bayes' rule or Bayesian mathematics is flawed, but that from the axiomatic foundational definition of probability Bayesianism is doomed to answer questions irrelevant to science. We do not care what you believe, we barely care what we believe, what we are interested in is what you can show." Indeed, if the goal is to identify the presence or absence of features in the world to develop more truth-like theories, we mainly need procedures that allow us to make choices about the presence or absence of these features with high accuracy. Subjective belief plays no role in these procedures.
To identify the presence or absence of features with high accuracy, we need a statistical procedure that allows us to make decisions while controlling the probability we make an error. This idea is translated into practice in hypothesis testing procedures put forward by Neyman and Pearson (1933): "We are inclined to think that as far as a particular hypothesis is concerned, no test based upon the theory of probability can by itself provide any valuable evidence of the truth or falsehood of that hypothesis. But we may look at the purpose of tests from another view-point. Without hoping to know whether each separate hypothesis is true or false, we may search for rules to govern our behaviour with regard to them, in following which we insure that, in the long run of experience, we shall not be too often wrong." Any procedure with good error control can be used (although Popper stresses that these findings should also be replicable). Some authors prefer likelihood ratios where error rates have maximum bounds (Royall, 1997; Taper & Ponciano, 2016), but in general, frequentists hypothesis tests are used where both the Type 1 error rate and the Type 2 error rate are controlled.
Meehl (1978) believes "the almost universal reliance on merely refuting the null hypothesis as the standard method for corroborating substantive theories in the soft areas is a terrible mistake, is basically unsound, poor scientific strategy, and one of the worst things that ever happened in the history of psychology". Meehl is of this opinion, not because hypothesis tests are not useful, but because they are not used to test risky predictions. Meehl remarks that "When I was a rat psychologist, I unabashedly employed significance testing in latent-learning experiments; looking back I see no reason to fault myself for having done so in the light of my present methodological views" (Meehl, 1990a). When one theory predicts rats learn nothing, and another theory predicts rats learn something, even Meehl believed testing the difference between an experimental and control group was a useful test of a theoretical prediction. However, Meehl believes that many hypothesis tests are used in a way such that they actually do not increase the verisimilitude of theories are all. If you predict gender differences, you will find them more often than not in a large enough sample. Because people can not be randomly assigned to gender conditions, the null hypothesis is most likely false, not predicted by any theory, and therefore rejecting the null hypothesis does not increase the verisimilitude of any theory. But as a scientific realist, Meehl believes accepting or rejecting predictions is a sound procedure, as long as you test risky predictions in procedures with low error rates. Using such procedures, we have observed an asymmetry in the Stroop experiments, where the interference effect is much greater in the color naming task than in the word naming task, which leads us to believe the theory that takes into account the salience of the word and color dimensions has higher truth-likeness.
From a scientific realism perspective, Bayes Factors or Bayesian posteriors do not provide an answer to the main question of interest, which is the verisimilitude of scientific theories. Belief can be used to decide which questions to examine, but it can not be used to determine the truth-likeness of a theory. Obviously, if you reject realism, and follow anti-realist philosophical viewpoints such as Fraassen's constructive empiricism, then you also reject verisimilitude, or the idea that theories can be closer to an unobservable and unknowable truth. I understand most psychologists do not choose their statistical approaches to follow logically from their philosophy on science, and instead follow norms or hypes. But I think it is useful to at least reflect upon basic questions. What is the goal of science? Can we approach the truth, or can we only believe in hypotheses? There should be some correspondence between your choice of statistical inferences, and your philosophy of science. Whenever I tell a fellow scientist that I am not particularly interested in evidence, and that I think error control is the most important goal in science, people often look at me like I'm crazy, and talk to me like I'm stupid. I might be both – but I think my statements follow logically from a scientific realist perspective on science, and are perfectly in line with thoughts by Neyman, Popper, Lakatos, and Meehl.
A final benefit of being a scientific realist is that I can believe it is close to 100% certain that this blog post is wrong, but testing my ideas against the literature, it seems to have pretty high verisimilitude. Nevertheless, this is a topic I am not an expert on, so use the comments to identify features of my blog that are incorrect, so that we can improve its truth-likeness.
Cevolani, G., Crupi, V., & Festa, R. (2011). Verisimilitude and belief change for conjunctive theories. Erkenntnis, 75(2), 183.
Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against method (3rd ed). London ; New York: Verso.
Kuipers, T. A. F. (2016). Models, postulates, and generalized nomic truth approximation. Synthese, 193(10), 3057–3077. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0916-9
Lakatos, I. (1978). The methodology of scientific research programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical papers (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.
Laudan, L. (1981). A confutation of convergent realism. Philosophy of Science, 48(1), 19–49.
Meehl, P. E. (1978). Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the Slow Progress of Soft Psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 806–834.
Meehl, P. E. (1990a). Appraising and amending theories: The strategy of Lakatosian defense and two principles that warrant it. Psychological Inquiry, 1(2), 108–141.
Meehl, P. E. (1990b). Corroboration and verisimilitude: Against Lakatos' "sheer leap of faith." Working Paper, MCPS-90-01). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Center for Philosophy of Science. Retrieved from http://meehl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1696/f/146corroborationverisimilitude.pdf
Melara, R. D., & Algom, D. (2003). Driven by information: A tectonic theory of Stroop effects. Psychological Review, 110(3), 422–471. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.3.422
Neyman, J., & Pearson, E. S. (1933). On the Problem of the Most Efficient Tests of Statistical Hypotheses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 231(694–706), 289–337. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.1933.0009
Niiniluoto, I. (1998). Verisimilitude: The Third Period. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49, 1–29.
Niiniluoto, I. (1999). Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford University Press.
Oddie, G. (2013). The content, consequence and likeness approaches to verisimilitude: compatibility, trivialization, and underdetermination. Synthese, 190(9), 1647–1687. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-011-9930-8
Popper, K. R. (2002). The logic of scientific discovery. London; New York: Routledge.
Psillos, S. (1999). Scientific realism: how science tracks truth. London; New York: Routledge.
Royall, R. (1997). Statistical Evidence: A Likelihood Paradigm. London ; New York: Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643.
Taper, M. L., & Lele, S. R. (2011). Philosophy of Statistics. In P. S. Bandyophadhyay & M. R. Forster (Eds.), Evidence, evidence functions, and error probabilities (pp. 513–531). Elsevier, USA.
Taper, M. L., & Ponciano, J. M. (2016). Evidential statistics as a statistical modern synthesis to support 21st century science. Population Ecology, 58(1), 9–29.
Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84(4), 327.
Van Fraassen, B. C. (1980). The scientific image. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press.
Wald, A. (1992). Statistical Decision Functions. In S. Kotz & N. L. Johnson (Eds.), Breakthroughs in Statistics (pp. 342–357). Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0919-5_22


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The mother of a man suspected of killing his grandparents says her parents always "saw the good" in Michael Chadd Boysen and were like "second parents" to him.
Although Boysen, 26, had spent time in prison for burglary and robberies related to a drug addiction, Melanie Taylor said he "never threatened the family and the family never felt threatened by him."
Taylor's comments, made to King County sheriff's Sgt. Cindi West, were released Thursday. The family has requested privacy.
Robert R. Taylor, 82, and Norma J. Taylor, 80, were strangled last Saturday in their Renton home. They had hosted a family welcome home party for Boysen the night before, after his release from prison.
The King County medical examiner's office released the cause of death Thursday.
Melanie Taylor found the bodies.
"When it came to Chadd, they saw the good in him and were forgiving of his choices," she said of her parents. "They were warrior spirits fighting for a cause and that cause was Chadd.
"They still love him and I do too," she said.
Taylor described a loving boy and good student who developed addictive behaviors as he grew up. She said she and her former husband adopted the boy as a baby and she "loved him from the minute he was put in my arm."
Boysen was arrested Tuesday after a daylong standoff at a motel in Lincoln City, Ore. He's in serious condition and conscious at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, West said Thursday.
The elderly couple had picked Boysen up last Friday from the Washington state prison at Monroe. They spent about six hours that day driving him on errands to get things he needed to start a six-month drug treatment and rehabilitation program, Melanie Taylor said.
At a family celebration dinner that night, "Chadd was upbeat and talked about the wonderful day he had with his grandparents," she recalled.
After the bodies were found, King County Sheriff John Urquhart called Boysen extremely dangerous because of threats he had made while in prison against his family and law enforcement. Authorities didn't learn of the threats until after he made the news, suspected of killing in his grandparents.
Detectives have determined that Boysen checked in under his own name and spent Saturday night at a motel in the south Seattle suburb of Tukwila, not far from his grandparents' home, West said.
He surfaced next in Lincoln City, Ore.
The co-manager of a motel there said Boysen seemed normal. He was friendly, chatty, paid with cash and showed his identification as if he had nothing to hide.
Boysen said he was on a road trip when he checked in Monday, said Leah Kallimanis, the co-manager at WestShore OceanFront Suites.
It wasn't until early Tuesday morning, as she and her husband and motel co-manager, Adrian Kallimanis, were watching TV news and going over the previous day's guest log that it hit her.
"All of a sudden my wife said, `Oh my gosh, I checked that guy in yesterday.' She looked at the registration form and the name and she said, `This is the guy who is on the news right now,'" Adrian Kallimanis told The Seattle Times.
They called police, which prompted the standoff that ended with officers storming Boysen's room and finding him lying on the floor with self-inflicted cuts.
The King County prosecutor's office is working on charges, but spokesman Dan Donohoe could not say when they'll be filed.
Boysen is held on a no-bail warrant from the Washington Department of Corrections for violating terms of his release.
He could be returned to Washington in a matter of days. It could take weeks if he fights extradition, Donohoe said.
It could not be determined if Boysen has a lawyer.
Boysen had just finished serving nine months in prison on a burglary conviction, said Washington state Corrections Department spokesman Chad Lewis. He was previously in prison between 2006 and February 2011 for four robbery convictions. Those convictions were related to an addiction to narcotic painkillers, Lewis said.


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(visited by Mike Richter)
13-May-2001 -- Three Confluences in one day - well that was my aim for May 13 2001. It ended up as two new confluences and one distant attempt. As the song goes - "two out of three ain't bad".
The first visit before lunch involved a two and a half hour drive from home to S34 E150, but the road we headed down ran out a few kilometres distant from the Confluence. The last visit to S34 E149 ended up after sunset and maybe just as well, the road was 400 metres from the Confluence.
My second Confluence visit on May 13 to S34 E148 was successful, even though I was worried when I drove along the nearest road shown on the map to find that the nearest point to the Confluence was still 1 km away across farm land ! I didn't really have time to walk two km, so I decided to check an unmapped road which brought me within 700 metres, but still fenced off. On closer inspection I noticed that there was a gate leading on to untended land 100 metres wide, running between two farms. The gate was unlocked so I concluded that it was a stock route or an easement for a future road. It was rough going at the start, but after a few minutes of driving I could see the Confluence, 70 metres into a sheep paddock. As I walked towards the Confluence, it appeared that I was heading straight for a mound of rocks - did someone already know about this Confluence ? I reached the Confluence 5 metres short of the mound of rocks, so I had no reason to question that I was the first visitor to this Confluence. Typical of the western plains of New South Wales, this confluence was in the middle of a very flat plain used for sheep farming.


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You can greatly improve the look and value of your home by enhancing your landscape. Truthfully, knowing the best way to landscape your home takes some time and effort on your part. You must know what you're doing before you begin. This article will give you some great tips that will let you improve the appearance of your property.
Think about making a drawing of your prospective landscaping project before you begin the work. This will give you a visual idea of what you want, how it will look, and what kind and amount of materials your project will require. It will also be a lot simpler to use an eraser to modify your drawing, as opposed to redoing your entire lawn.
Changing the edging on your beds can dramatically alter the look of your landscaping. The look of soft curves is more popular now than the look of straight lines and sharp corners. Cutting the edges of your flower beds is cheap, but it can totally transform your flower bed's appearance.
Make use of native plants and shrubs when planning your landscaping project. Try using local trees, flowers and shrubs when planting your garden. Plants that are local to the area will do their best in the worst soils, require less water and will survive the terrible weather conditions.
Use local plants when landscaping. Native plants are easier to care for because they are already comfortable in your climate and soil. This will make them easier to care for and make your landscaping maintenance easier. Your local gardening store will be able to provide you with all the information you need about native plants.
As you have seen, landscaping plays a pivotal part in how your home looks and feels. While it is not exactly easy to landscape your home correctly, it just takes a bit of effort. After learning the steps that we present here you will have taken major steps to becoming skilled at landscaping.
Suggestions On How You Can Clean Up Around The Yard


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By Teachers, For Teachers
Does your staff need Educational Technology training? The K-12 Teachers Alliance can help you plan your in-service professional development at no additional cost.
"Enjoy your field trip to the state park. Due to the budget, there won't be any field trips at all next year," my principal said to us during our team meeting last week.
Budget cuts, the need for an ever-increasing number of chaperones per student, and about a million other obstacles educators face every day are making class field trips a thing of the past. It's a shame, because allowing our students to discover and explore in an environment outside of the classroom can be an amazing way to inspire a love of learning that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
We can whine and complain about not being able to take field trips, but once we're done with that – what's next? Virtual field trips can give students a bit of the "field trip experience" without the need for funding, permission slips, and chaperones.
Here are some quick pointers on how to make virtual field trips an exciting and useful part of your lesson plans.
Do Your Research
A quick Google search of "virtual field trips" will give you over 2 million hits (no lie – I checked!). Planning one is definitely going to take some forethought. Your first step should be to tailor your virtual field trip to match it to your curriculum.
For instance, if you're studying the Civil War, check out the National Park Service site for the Gettysburg Battlefields satellite broadcast tours that come with associated lesson plans. If you're learning about biomes, you can take your students on a tour of each one. Students can learn about the plants and animals that live there all from a computer.
Keep Them Accountable
Just like real field trips, if you aren't careful, students are going to goof off. Make sure that your students are following along with your virtual field trip by giving them something that they are required to complete and turn into you at the end. Let them know you'll be grading it. That way, you'll know they're paying attention, and if they don't, there will be a consequence for it.
Like the Gettysburg virtual field trip, many come with prepared activities and/or worksheets.
If your virtual field trip doesn't, one simple suggestion is having students write down ten new facts they learned that they didn't know before the field trip on a piece of notebook paper. As a more complex project, have students write multiple pages of follow-along notes that require the them to research information on the virtual field trip website to complete.
The bottom line is: For best results, make sure that your students are required to show you what they have learned.
Plan for Success
When things go wrong, your entire lesson goes down the drain so make sure you are ready to go technology-wise before your students arrive. If you want students to have their own computer, arrange in advance to go to the computer lab. Be sure all the computers are able to visit the site(s) you want the students to look at. If a Smartboard or a projector is needed then make sure it's all in working order.
Students love using technology in the classroom, but their attention begins to wane quickly when you have technological difficulties.
Indulge in Creativity
There are tons of ways to allow your students to experience something totally different while making it relevant to your curriculum – all it takes is a little creativity. If a virtual field trip doesn't exactly fit into your curriculum, don't despair! Try looking for cross-curricular ideas that you can use in your class.
For instance, if your art teacher is studying famous painters, take advantage. Why not have your math classes take a virtual field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art ?
As an assignment, have your students create their own word problems using famous works of art. For instance, the number of people in Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jette" increased by the number of haystacks in Monet's "Haystacks." Have students challenge their classmates to use the website to find their answers.
Helpful Resources
Here are a few resources that will help you jump start your virtual fieldtrips.
This great site breaks down virtual field trip ideas by subject.
The Teacher's Guide to Virtual Field Trips
This site is full of many links links with great virtual tours like an ancient roman villa, a butterfly conservatory, the American Museum of Natural History, and more!
Many school's do units on the Holocaust this time of year. A virtual tour can help your students really grasp the horror of this event – but make sure you preview this tour first to choose what you want your students to see.
Internet 4 Classrooms – Virtual Tours
This website contains a nice group of tours which are organized by topic.
Ideas for using Skype for guest speakers, presenters or interviews.
Virtual Field Trips with Google Maps
See the pyramids and Great Wall of China via satellite, take a video tour of the Eiffel Tower or walk the streets anywhere in the world.
As the year winds down, it is a perfect time to try something new, to get some ideas for next year, and to do something fun with this class of students before they leave your classroom for the last time. I encourage you to give virtual field trips a try – I think you'll find that you AND your students have a great time.
What are your suggestions for virtual field trips? Share with us in the comments section!