Your Money or Your Life Ideas

January 4, 2018
Posted by Jay Livingston

“A bet is a tax on bullshit,” says Alex Tabarrok. Most of the time though, even when the losers are paying up, they still reject the notion that their position was bullshit.

Heather MacDonald (see the previous post) didn’t put actual money on her prediction that the court-ordered curtailing of the NYPD stop-and-frisk policy would increase crime, but if she had, even while she was handing over the cash-filled envelope, she would be insisting that her views about policing are correct. It’s easier to give up your money than to give up your ideas.*

That’s true even when the money in question is a million dollars.

In 2007, Ted Seides, a hedge fund manager at Protégé Partners, and Warren Buffet made a million-dollar bet.** Buffet was a hedge-fund skeptic despite all the tales of hedge funds elevating their investors from merely wealthy to filthy rich. Basically the  bet was whether the hedge funders would outperform the market over the next decade. Seides selected a pool of five hedge funds; Buffet took the market – the S&P 500.

It’s 2018, and time’s almost up. Let’s turn up the cards over and see who won. The hedge funds showed an average yearly gain of 2.1%; the S&P, 7.1%.

In Bloomberg piece yesterday (here), Seides conceded: “With eight months remaining, for all intents and purposes, the bet is over. I lost.”

The title of the article is “Why I Lost My Bet With Warren Buffet.” The more accurate title would have been “I Lost But That Doesn’t Mean I Was Wrong.” Seides argument is basically that this was an unusual event. “S&P 500 defied the odds” with its “anomalously strong relative performance.” He makes the analogy to a single showdown hand of hold ’em. You expect that the pocket aces to stand up against the 7♣ 4♦. But every so often, the next five cards will include a couple of sevens.

But when you use five hedge funds, not one, and 500 stocks; when you use a ten-year period rather than a day or month or even year; then you greatly reduce the chances that the outcome is a freakish event.

The trouble, Seides says, is that over the past decade the market has gone up, not down. Alas. Hedge funds do much better when the market tanks. Thus he persuades himself that his ideas are still right. In fact, he’s ready to go double or nothing. 

My guess is that doubling down on a bet with Warren Buffett for the next 10 years would hold greater-than-even odds of victory. The S&P 500 looks overpriced and has a reasonable chance of disappointing passive investors. Hedge funds mitigate risk in bear markets, while seeking to participate in some of a bull market. Investing in hedge funds is a bet against continuing bull markets; investing in the S&P 500 is a bet on a continuing bull market. [emphasis added]

Buffet’s principle reason for avoiding hedge funds is the high fees they charge their investors. Those high fees pay the salaries and bonuses of people like Ted Seides. No wonder he defends hedge funds despite his having just lost a million-dollar bet. As Mark Twain said, “It is very difficult to get a man to understand something, especially if his income depends on not understanding it”


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* The subject line of this post is a reference to an old Jack Benny joke.  (Benny, for you youngsters out there in the under-70 crowd, was a comedian whose persona included being a tightwad.) A robber points a gun at him and utters the cliche robber line, “Your money or your life.” Benny hesitates. The robber repeats, “Come on buddy, your money or your life?” “I know,” says Benny, “I’m just trying to decide.”

** The actual amount they put on the tables was $320,000, a sum that after ten years would probably be worth $1M. It turned out to be a bit more. See this Business Insider article for details.

Stop-and-Frisk and the Crime Wave That Wasn’t

January 2, 2018
Posted by Jay Livingston

It’s hard to admit you were wrong even when you make a flat-out prediction of something that doesn’t happen. In 2010, twenty-three economists signed a letter predicting disastrous inflation because of Fed monetary policy. Four years and no inflation later, all but one stuck to their guns and refused to acknowledge that they were wrong. (For more details, see my post “Failed Prophecy and Sunk Costs.”)

And now Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. In 2013, when the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy was being challenged in court and in the City Council, she clearly saw the future. In City Journal, the house organ of the Manhattan Institute, she wrote an article called “Stop the Killing, Keep ‘Stop-and-Frisk.’” Stop-and frisk was stopping murder, she said, and ending the policy would reverse that positive trend.

Unless the politicians and editorialists pressing so hard for a radical reduction of stops can offer a crime-fighting strategy to rival the NYPD’s record, they are implicitly calling for a rise in violence.

Her interview on the National Review podcast “Need to Know” was summed up as follows by Jack Dunphy at Ricochet, a right-leaning website.

I’ve just now finished listening to the latest “Need to Know” podcast, in which Jay and Mona interviewed my friend Heather Mac Donald. . . . End stop-and-frisk, she says, and prepare to see the murder rate in New York climb once again.

MacDonald didn’t put it quite that simply, but the implication was clear. On that podcast, she also predicted that the end of “proactive policing” (mostly stop-and-frisk) would “destroy the city’s economic vitality.”

It didn’t happen – none of it. The court challenge to stop-and-frisk was upheld in 2013. Stops decreased dramatically. Crime did not increase. At all. Not that year and not in the years that followed. As this graph from Mother Jones shows, the rapid increase and then decrease in stops had virtually no effect on crime rates, which began to decrease in the early 1990s and continued their downward trend.

The graph goes up through 2015. In the next two years, the lines continued their slight downward trend. In the year just ended, New York had its lowest number of murders since the 1950s. Rates of other crimes have also remained low.

Three years of low crime following the decrease in stop-and-frisk was finally enough for some conservatives to admit that they were wrong. At National Review, Kyle Smith wrote a column with the headline “We Were Wrong About Stop-and-Frisk.”

Not Heather MacDonald. The title of her piece, also in National Review, warns us. “Don’t Take the Wrong Lessons from NYC’s Murder Drop.” Those wrong lessons are caricatures of those who disagree with her (“proactive policing like pedestrian stops is unnecessary, these cop critics say”). As for the continued low level of violence and murder, she attributes these crime trends to gentrification. She has a point. Demographic changes play a part, and the gentrification MacDonald describes is linked no doubt to that economic vitality that she said would die along with the reduction in stop-and-frisk. But demographic change happens gradually. The changes in stop-and-frisk were sudden. Their effects should have had immediate and noticeable effects. They didn’t.

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UPDATE, Jan. 3: On Twitter, Mark Kleiman says that just although the big increase in stop-and-frisk had no effect during a period of relatively low crime rates, the policy might be effective when crime rates are high. I do not know of any relevant research on this, and Kleiman doesn't refer to any. But the targets of the policy, even during low-crime years, were high-crime neighborhoods and people who the police suspected of being high-crime people.

Punishing the Guilty – For Whose Benefit?

December 31, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

“The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” was written and filmed well before Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, Roy Moore, and all the others were in the news.  Yet the film has a remarkably timely incident, and it illustrates how men, even when they are sort of on the right side, the side of the victim, can be disappointingly obtuse. What the men want is retribution. That’s what will make them feel good. But in their focus on punishing the guilty, they ignore what the victim is asking for – understanding and  support

Half-brothers Andy and Matthew and their older sister Jean have come to visit their father in the hospital. As they stand in the parking lot, they see another visitor, Paul, a friend of their father’s. Paul is old and infirm; he has to be carried to the hospital by a burly male nurse. This episode in the movie is called “Jean’s Story.” That story is an incident from her teen years that she now tells to her two brothers for the first time.

She was visiting her parents on Martha’s Vineyard one summer.

JEAN: The next day, Dad played tennis and worked in his studio. I went down to the beach with the kids. I got to swim in the ocean which was really special for me. I loved that. Later, I showered in the outdoor shower with my suit on. And I realized someone was watching me. It was Paul. He smiled at me, almost politely and then he lowered his tight bathing suit, took out his penis and started stroking it. MATT: Oh God. DANNY: Paul did?! JEAN: I watched him until he finished. Then he walked away. DANNY: Did you tell anyone? JEAN: I told Dad that night and he asked if Paul had touched me and I said, No. He thought we should probably just leave it then, they were going back to the City soon anyway. But that if Paul did it again, he’d punch him in the nose. The next day when I was leaving, I looked around for Dad to say goodbye, but he was playing tennis. I thought about telling your Mom, Matthew, but I was afraid she’d get angry at me. I remember crying on my way to the ferry.

Jean leaves, and the brothers try to think of what to do. “Do we kick the shit out of him?” Danny suggests, but they realize this might kill the old man, and besides, what if the burly nurse stepped in? So they decide to trash Paul’s car. They are inept at first but soon get the hang of it, kicking the mirrors, twisting off the wipers, smashing the windshield with a rock.

They are exhilirated and quite proud of themselves.

MATT:  That felt great. DANNY:  I don’t know why we don’t do that more often.

A few minutes later, they excitedly show Jean their handiwork, but her reaction is not what they expected. It’s more like the reaction she would have to a couple of little boys who had done something stupid. “We thought you’d be happy,” says Danny.

The brothers were In fact acting like a couple of little boys, and they did do something stupid. And even though they are grown men, Jean still has to explain it to them.

MATT: He has dementia? ELIZA [Matt’s 18-year old daughter]: (nods) Yeah. MATT:  He has dementia. DANNY: Well, he didn’t have dementia when he molested Jean. JEAN: He didn’t molest me. DANNY: (losing steam) But let’s not minimize it, Jean. What he did was shitty and damaging and I don’t know...that same asshole is in there somewhere... Right? Beneath the dementia. JEAN: I’m glad you guys feel better. Unfortunately I’m still fucked up. DANNY: Do you want to take a swing? JEAN: I could smash every car in this parking lot and burn the hospital down and it wouldn’t un-fuck me up. [silence] You guys will never understand what it’s like to be me in this family.

The mens’ aggression – towards Paul and in a later scene towards one another – does something for the men. It brings them closer together. But it does nothing for Jean. And when she tells them so, and they try to think of doing something for their sister, all they can come up with is to offer her a chance to participate in punishing the guilty (or at least his car). They are clueless.

Flashback – Eco v. Macho

December 28, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

It’s not manly being green. That’s the finding of two researchers (Aaron Brough and James Wilkie) writing at Scientific American two days ago (here).

men may shun eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their masculinity. It’s not that men don’t care about the environment. But they also tend to want to feel macho, and they worry that eco-friendly behaviors might brand them as feminine.

The authors ask the practical question, “What can pro-environmental marketers do to buffer against the threat posed to men by the green-feminine stereotype?” They make a general prescription – brand green behavior as manly – but aside from some small suggestions (bold fonts, wild wilderness imagery), no specific examples.

I have news for them. Texas figured it out long ago. I blogged it back in 2009. Here is that post.

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September 6, 2009

Claude the brand consultant was consulting with me – i.e., he was picking up the cappuccino tab at Starbucks. He was about to start teaching a course called something like “Communications and Public Affairs,” and not being an academic (though he’s a really good teacher), he wanted some advice on the syllabus.

We finally got around to the idea that Messages about Issues had to be tailored for specific Audiences or Publics, particularly their Interests and Values. (Those capitalized words were possible major headings in the syllabus.)

I immediately thought of the example of Texas and litter. How could you convince Texans to be more respectful of public places and not toss all that crap out onto the roads they drove on? The Ladybird Johnson approach – “Highway Beautification”? Wrong audience. The people who were littering obviously didn’t care about highway beauty.

The guy you were trying to reach was Bubba, the classic red stater – fiercely individualistic, anti-government, macho. Bubba was also a slob, and probably proud of it. You couldn’t appeal to self-interest since it’s in Bubba’s self-interest to chuck his garbage out the window. Even hefty fines (and they are hefty) would work only if you could catch litterers often enough – unlikely on the Texas highways.

The best way in was Values. But how? “Don’t be a Litterbug, Keep Your Community Clean” would be too nice, too feminine or babyish, and, like “Pitch In” too collectivist. Instead, Roy Spence and Tim McClure at the Austin ad agency GSD&M had the Texas DOT go with chauvinism – Texas chauvinism. Spence and McClure were the ones who had distilled the target audience down to the Bubba stereotype, and the idea they played on to reach Bubba was not that littering was ugly or wrong or costly, but that it hurt Texas. And thus in 1985 was born one of the most famous and effective campaigns in the history of advertising.


With its double meaning of “mess,” it captured Bubba’s patriotism and pugnacity. The bumper stickers were soon everywhere. The TV ads featured famous proud Texans. One of the early ones  featured Too-Tall Jones and Randy White, two of the toughest dudes on the Cowboys defense, picking up roadside trash.

Edited ranscript:

JONES: You see the guy who threw this out the window, you tell him I got a message for him.

WHITE: (picks up a beer can): I got a message for him too.

OFF-CAMERA VOICE: What’s that?

WHITE: (Crushes the beer can with one fist). Well, I kinda need to see him to deliver it.

JONES: Don’t mess with Texas.

Litter in Texas has been reduced by 72%, the campaign is still going strong a quarter-century later, and McLure and Spence have a book about it. My source was Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers (no, jazzers, not those Heath brothers), Chip and Dan.

Science v. Community Wishes

December 27, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston


The CDC didn’t ban those seven words (fetus, vulnerable, diversity, evidence-based, science-based, entitlement, transgender). It suggested that their writers not use them. This was not a diktat from the White House. It was not blatant censorship. More likely the suggestion came from a CDC career staffer trying to protect the Center from Congress. He or she was saying in effect, “We face cutbacks. If you want Congress to fund a project, don’t put these words in your proposal.”
Here’s the telling sentence from the memo

Instead of “science-based” or -“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”

It could be worse. And it is worse in other regions of the Trump administration. At the EPA and the Department of Energy, the term “climate change” is disappearing (and the administration demanded a list of names of scientists there doing research on this non-existent thing, whatever it’s called.)

But the CDC memo is still pretty bad. Never in the past had it been necessary to caution staffers not to use science-based or evidence-based when writing something Congress members and their staffs might read. That was then. Now, the Republicans are in control, and for them, apparently, politics and ideology trump science and evidence. Do the runoffs from strip mining contaminate the water so that more people become sick and die from cancer and other diseases? Well, not if “the community” wishes it not to be so. (There’s also the question of just who “the community” is.) What about childhood immunization? If you live in an area with lots of anti-vaxxers, the CDC, in making its recommendation, will weigh those community wishes against science and the evidence on rates of autism (vaccination does not increase risk) and measles (non-vaccination increases risk).

The other ominous suggestion in the memo is that research has to be compatible with Republican ideology. If there’s a chance that the results, the evidence, will reveal negative consequences of Republican policies, the study won’t be funded. If you are going to study the effects on vulnerable, diverse populations (e.,g., transgender people or people dependent on entitlement programs), better find another way to describe them.

But Is That True?

December 26, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

A New York Times op-ed this weekend by Margaret Renki (here) reminded me of an assignment I regularly give. Here’s the relevant excerpt from the Times.

Eighty percent of white born-again Christians voting in Alabama backed Roy Moore, and there is no skirting the damage they’ve done to their own moral standing. The day of the election, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, identified the biggest loser in Alabama: Christian faith itself. From now on, Mr. Galli wrote, “When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation.”

Is this true? 

For the assignment, I ask students to convert a claim like this into a testable hypothesis. Students are welcome to find such statements on their own, but to make life easier, I offer several that I have collected over the years.* I may add this one to the folder. The point of the assignment is that evidence, good evidence, is always necessary, but figuring out what that evidence should be is often difficult.

Renki’s statement sounds reasonable. But what if someone disagrees? That’s why we need evidence. What if someone says, “No, the Roy Moore thing didn’t damage anyone’s moral standing except perhaps Roy Moore’s. The credibility of born-again Christians won’t change.”

For the assignment, students have to be very clear about what the variables are, and how to measure them. They have to specify the categories or values for each variable and the information they would use to decide the category or score for each unit. Don’t be be constrained by technical or realistic limits, I tell them.  You have unlimited capacity to get the information you need. You can even have a time machine if you want to get comparative data from the past or future. 

In this case, they can travel forward several years to see what has happened to the moral standing of evangelicals. The trick is to turn “moral standing” into something that can actually be measured. That’s the other point of the assignment: operationalizing a vague concept like “moral standing” is difficult. No matter how you do it, someone will be able to point out the flaws. And they’ll be right. At some point, a researcher just has to say, “Yes, I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best I could come up with.”
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* This is also an exercise in reading. Rarely do op-ed writers make a direct cause-effect statement.  Instead, that idea is often implied, mixed in among statements about what should or should not be done. A student has to be able to extract the hypothesis. Here are some examples of ideas distilled from these articles.

• NFL officiating is bad because the refs are older and because they do this only as a part-time job. Refs should also have to face the media post-game.
• Allowing women to serve in combat units in the Army will lead to sexual tension and lower unit cohesion.
• Replacing tipping with a living wage and European-style service charge will be better for waiters and not reduce the quality of service.
• Cinderella movies give girls a distorted idea of love and relationships and endangers their emotional health and self-image.
• Banning on-field use of smokeless tobacco will improve public health because kids imitate their sports heroes.
• “Bathroom laws” like the one in North Carolina are bad for the mental health of transgender kids.

How Big Is Your Tax Cut? Compared to What?

December 23, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Questions:

1. How much did you pay in federal income tax last year?
2. What percent of your gross or net income was that?
3. When you file your taxes in a couple of months, will you compare the figures with those of a year earlier?

My own answer to the first two is “I don’t know.” That’s probably the most accurate answer to #3 as well. 

Americans opposed the recently passed tax bill 46-32%. Most people also think that the tax bill favors the wealthy rather than the middle class. Only self-identified Republicans think otherwise, and even among them, only 60% see the tax as more for the middle class than for the wealthy.

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

Republican politicians are hoping that these views will change when people see their take-home pay increase. Here’s conservative columnist Bret Stephens writing in today’s New York Times:

In 2018, according to the Tax Policy Center, 91 percent of middle-income filers will get a tax cut, averaging close to $1,100. That’s real money, or at least enough to give Donald Trump and congressional Republicans a good opening for a “we told you so” moment.

In politics, perception and ideology are more important than the facts. But what about personal experience?  How much does it influence perception and ideology?

When Obama reduced taxes, almost nobody noticed the increase in their paycheck. Public perception was equally divided between those who thought taxes and not changed and those who thought taxes had increased.

I get paid every two weeks. That $1100 of “real money” Stephens talks about will work out to about $50 a check. Will I notice? Maybe the first time. I think that’s what happened when Obama’s payroll tax cut went through. When I do my income tax next April, will I say, “Hey, I’m paying $1100 less than last year!”? Not unless I dig out my old returns.

Republican hopes might also run into the problem of “comparison groups” – the others that we compare ourselves against. So far, that’s worked out pretty well for Republicans. Liberals have been in despair puzzling about those White working-class people who oppose Obamacare and other programs they would have benefited from. Why would they reject a healthcare law that picked up a large chunk of their insurance premiums?

Probably because they were comparing themselves with the undeserving poor – the moochers, the folks who are getting Medicaid absolutely free. As Sen. Orrin Hatch put it recently, ““I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”

But when it comes to tax cuts, those White working-class taxpayers can’t very well compare themselves with the poor, whose tax cuts, if any, are small. Instead, when it comes to paying taxes, working-class people, and middle-class too, are looking not at the poor but at the wealthy. And what they see is people  getting tax cuts that dwarf their own. Perhaps on this one issue, they will share the left-wing focus on the undeserving rich.

In April, the Gallup poll regularly asks people if they see their income taxes as “fair.”  Last year, with no real change in the income tax, the percentage jumped from 50% to 61%.

 If Republican politicians and journalists are right, that number will increase next time around. I’m not so sure.

Women’s Magazines — By the Numbers

December 22, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Women’s magazines love numbers: “328 Fun Hair Ideas,” “25 Best Bags of Spring,” “21 Mind Blowing Sex Moves” – that sort of thing.  They’ve been doing this since long before the Internet age of Buzzfeed and listicles. (I’ve posted about this from time to time, here for example).

I abbreviated that third cover come-on. The full title on the cover, in varying font sizes is: 21 Mind Blowing Sex Moves You’ve Never Tried Before (Introducing the Brazilian “Sweet Treat”). It’s from Cosmopolitan, of course.

(Click on an image for a larger view. But do you really need it?)

Lately Cosmo has gotten more political. At their website yesterday you could find this reaction to the tax bill.

The Cosmo content changes. It’s no longer just hair styles and sex moves. And the photo accompanying the piece is of a smiling Paul Ryan. But in the headlines, they still lead with a number. (Story #3 is “8 Ways Your Relationship Changes After Kids.”)

I guess women just have a natural attraction to math.

“Mindhunter” Needs a Sociology Checker

December 12, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Mindhunter” makes it to Huffington Post’s list of the best shows you can stream in Netflix. I’m not sure what Hufflepuff’s criteria were, but obviously precision in sociological theory was not among them.

The show is set in the 1970s, and the mindhunter-in-chief’s girlfriend, Debbie Mitford, is a sociology grad student at U Va. In Episode 1, she pretty much mangles Durkheim’s ideas about deviance.  (See “Debbie Does Durkheim”) Now in Episode 8, it’s Goffman.

In a scene in her apartment, Holden the mindhunter interrupts her studying – even though she has told him not to – to ask what she’s reading. Without turning from her desk she holds the book over her shoulder to show him. It’s a classic – The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman.

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

Props to the props department for finding a copy with its original cover, though to be picky, Debbie probably would have bought it in paperback. After all, judging from the lighting, her budget doesn’t even allow her to use much electricity. Holden asks her to explain Goffman.

So far so good. Goffman argues that we can understand much about human interaction if we see it as drama. The question is why – why do we play these parts and play them in particular ways?

Oy. I dread any forthcoming episode when Debbie takes her qualifying exams. In Goffman’s dramaturgy we are motivated not by altruism or conformism. We are not primarily interested in making others feel good. Instead, we are trying to have others think well of us – or at least to have them form the impression of us that we want them to have. It’s not altruism so much as it is manipulation. It’s not conscious manipulation. It’s just that we just don’t want others to get the wrong impression, which is another way of saying that we do want them to get the right impression. So we put on the costumes and speak the lines that will ensure that others think that we are the person we want them to think we are.

Confidence men and fraudsters provide the clearest example since their performance is deliberate, conscious, and cynical. But even the person who is sincere faces the same task of impression-management.

Let us now turn from the others to the point of view of the individual who presents himself before them. He may wish them to think highly of him, or to think that he thinks highly of them, or to perceive how in fact he feels toward them, or to obtain no clear-cut impression; be may wish to ensure sufficient harmony so that the interaction can be sustained, or to defraud, get rid of, confuse, mislead, antagonize, or insult them. Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive treatment of him.[emphasis added]

We “control the conduct of others” by playing our part.

This control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate, and he can influence this definition by expressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan. Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey.[emphasis added]

For the presentation of self to work, it must be congruent with the setting. You’re going to have a hard time getting people to think you’re Willy Loman if the stage you walk onto is the set for “Wicked.” It’s Holden the Mindhunter, with zero sociology courses on his transcript, who is alert to this possibility.

The problem is not that Roger is a psychopath or pervert (though he may be). It’s that he’s giving the performance in the wrong setting.  Giving the wrong performance in the wrong setting leaves people confused. In fact, Goffman said something similar in Asylums, though I'm not really holding my breath waiting for Debbie’s summary.

Joan — An Old Name For a Young Pelvis

November 30, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

What to name a mechanical vagina? It’s not a question most of us have to deal with on a daily basis. Or ever. But then, most of us are not trying to learn how to insert an IUD.

For her Vox podast “The Impact” Sarah Kliff recently visited a Delaware clinic for doctors and nurses who would be mastering the art of LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives). Inserting an IUD properly is an acquired skill – even gynecologists may be clumsy at first –  so the learners practice on artificial vaginas.  Ms Kliff, in the spirit of participatory journalism, was taking a stab at it. Here’s a brief excerpt from her attempt.  The “robotic pelvis” she was trying her hand on was named Joan.



LARCs are effective. After Colorado offered them free of charge in 2009, the rate of births and abortions among teens decreased by more than 40%. Among women 20-24, the decrease was 20%. (Source: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/cfpi-report)

The dramatic changes occurred mostly among Colorado’s youth. Very few of them were named Joan. Joan is not the name of a teenage girl. Teenage girls are named Emily, Hannah, Elizabeth, Taylor, Hannah. Among the young named Joan, boys outnumber girls by at least five to one. Joan used to be popular for girls. In the 1930s, it was consistently among the top ten. In her heyday, Joan accounted for 1-2% of all births, more than the most popular girls names today. Take that, Emma.

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

That was the. For the past quarter-century, Joan hasn’t been in the top 1,000. The most common age for women named Joan is 78. Joans who might need an IUD or other LARC (green in the graph below) are far outnumbered by the Joans whose childbearing days are behind them. (I drew the fertility line at the generous age of 55.)

So why did the clinic in Delaware name their robotic pelvis Joan rather than Ashley or Madison (both in the top six among today’s 15-year olds)? I have no idea.

Special People

November 28, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

I never thought that Trump’s “Pocohantas” joke was offensive. In fact, the first time I heard it, I thought it was pretty good. It made fun of Elizabeth Warren’s claim to some slim strand of Cherokee lineage.

It’s as though, after one of Trump’s many statements about being highly intelligent (“I’m, like, a really smart person”), Sen. Warren had referred to him as “Einstein.” The slur is not against physicists. It’s against Trump for claiming to be something he is so obviously not.

At the ceremony to honor the Navaho code talkers yesterday, Trump hauled out the Pocohantas dig again though it is long past its use-by date. The truly appalling part was that he used the ceremony as an occasion to make a personal derogatory remark about a political enemy. Is that what the Navahos came for? Appalling, as I say, but not unexpected. And no doubt, Trump supporters will see it as more evidence that Trump is their kind of guy.

The more offensive line from Trump is what followed.

You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her “Pocahontas.” But you know what, I like you because you are special. You are special people. You are really incredible people. And from the heart, from the absolute heart, we appreciate what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, the bravery that you displayed, and the love that you have for your country.

Trump is being complimentary. But underlying the praise is the assumption that the Navaho are not like regular Americans. Imagine a politician addressing a gathering of Jewish leaders and saying, “You know, you Jews are special people. You’re incredible people.” My guess is that the Jews being honored might suddenly get kind of interested in their shoelaces.

“Special-needs” kids, “special ed” – we recognize these as euphemisms. But even when “special” is supposed to designate something positive, it still draws the line between “you” and “us.” And it’s “you,” you special people, who are different.

When In Urfa . . . (Culture and Meaning)

November 25, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

A culture is a “meaning system.” A language gives meaning to sounds. A culture gives meaning to actions. What something means is a matter of interpretation. The same sound means different things in diferent languages. Ditto behavior.

When Elif Batuman walked around in Urfa, Turkey without a headscarf, she thought she was expressing her preferences in dress and perhaps her opinion about individualism, feminism, and the Turkish president. (See my post from earlier this week, “How Culture Works.” For Batuman to have worn the scarf would have meant that she was abandoning her ideas. That’s what it would have meant to her. To the people of Urfa, it would have meant only that she was exercising normal politeness.

Batuman herself eventually came to share this view, but only after she had been clued in by someone else – a woman of Turkish origin who was similarly secular, Westernized, and professional. Her mother.

Here is Batuman on “Fresh Air” describing the conversation.


Here’s the transcript.

The thought that I had in Urfa was what am I trying to show by going without a headscarf given that the people who see me without the headscarf have a completely different interpretation? Like, they don't know my ideas. They just know, oh, this is a person who is here and doesn't respect the way that we do things enough to, like, put this thing on her head. Like it - and then it was funny because actually after I wrote that piece in The New Yorker, my mother read it. And I think of my mother as such a, like, a proud secularist person. And she's a scientist. And her mother studied literature. And I'm just so proud of her and of her mother. And she was like, I can't believe I didn't tell you to just wear a headscarf in Urfa. And I was like, really? And she was like, of course. It's just - it's a common politeness. It's - they're people from the countryside. When you go there, of course you wear a head[scarf]. It's just a nice thing to do. And for her it was this thing about, like, niceness. And it wasn't this, like, anguished political thing that I'd been making it into

What does wearing a headscarf mean? Does it mean that the woman has abandoned her feminist beliefs, supporting the patriarchy, and endorsing a repressive, dictatorial president? Or does it mean that she’s just being nice?

Jon Hedricks 1921-2017

November 23, 2017
Posted by Jay Livingston

Others before him had done “vocalese” – instrumental jazz solos transcribed, set with lyrics, and sung. The best known was Eddie Jefferson’s “Moody’s Mood for Love” – James Moody’s solo on the Dorothy Fields - Jimmy McHugh song. But these were rare, almost novelty items. Hendricks took it to a new level.  His vocal trio – Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross – recreated entire arrangements with lyrics to the entire recording

Here is Hendricks’s adaptation of Duke Ellington’s  “Cottontail,” the 1940 recording featuring Ben Webster on tenor. The title – I have no idea why Ellington chose it – pretty much forced Hendricks into Beatrix Potter territory. But Hendricks put a hip musician frame to the tale, transforming Peter Rabbit into sort of a druggie.

Way back in my childhood
I heard a story so true
’bout a funny bunny
Stealing some boo from a garden he knew.

“Boo” is 1940s slang for marijuana.

Out in the garden where carrots are dense
I found a hole in the fence.
Every mornin’ when things are still,
I crawl through the hole and eat my fill.
The other rabbits say I’m taking dares,
and maybe I’m wrong but who cares?
I’m a hooked rabbit! Yeah I got a carrot habit.

My favorite part in the Ellington recording is the chorus by the sax section (at 2:04 in the original recording). In the LHR version above, it starts at 1:54, and the voices are in unison rather than the close harmony of the Ellington’s sax section. 

Thirty years later, Hendricks was still on his game, putting lyrics to one of the most famous jazz recordings, “Freddie Freeloader” from Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue.” Writing lyrics to a John Coltrane “sheets of sound” solo is no easy task. Neither is singing it. But Hendricks does it, leaving the easier solos to singers who are technically better – Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, and George Benson. It runs to nine minutes but it’s well worth listening to (here), especially if you’ve heard the original so many times over the years that you know every note