Can we have a playoff, please?

According to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted two weeks ago, 63 percent of self-described college football fans favor replacing the current Bowl Championship Series with a playoff, while 26 percent want to keep the BCS. The other 11 percent lied about being fans, because if you are a fan, you have an opinion about this. If anything, this is a conservative figure; other polls have found that as many as 90 percent of college football fans disapprove of the BCS.

 

In response to this, Bill Hancock, the executive director of the Bowl Championship Series, said, "It's easy to support a hypothetical playoff on paper, but no one has come up with a viable way to actually create one without diminishing the value of the regular season and ending the bowl games as we know them."

 

Really, Bill?

 

I've seen a lot of playoff proposals, any of which would be better than the current system. My favorite comes from Dan Wetzel, who would have a 16 team playoff, with the champions of all 11 conferences and 5 at-large teams. All games except the championship would be home games for the higher seed. Wetzel has laid out a lengthy argument on why that would be the best system, so I won't go through the whole thing here, but I do think it's the best proposal I've seen.

 

That said, I'll reiterate that almost any playoff proposal would be better than the current system, in that it would allow more than just two teams to contend for a championship.

"Anything Tebow can do, Wall can do better"

Improved Tebowisms:

 

Highlights: "- Tim Tebow was late for practice one day.The rest of the team had to run laps for being early. Tim Tebow has to practice."

- Whoever coined the phrase "defense wins championship" obviously never heard of Tim Tebow. Whoever coined the phrase "defense wins championship" was probably a caveman or a Florida fan. John Wall would later add the 's' to the end of the phrase, making it grammatically correct.

- Tim Tebow doesn't bowl strikes, he just knocks down one pin and the other nine faint. John Wall just bowls strikes, because he's awesome at bowling and not a cheater.

- Tim Tebow's house has no doors, only walls that he walks through. John Wall's house has doors, because he knows that a house with no doors is a stupid idea.

- When Tebow scores a touchdown it's worth 7 points without the extra point kick, but he always gives one back in the spirit of being a missionary. John Wall thinks he should've used some of those points against Alabama....
- Tim Tebow can get Chick-Fil-A on Sundays, John Wall said it was okay.

- Tim Tebow can dribble a football, John Wall showed him how. Wall is now trying to teach him how to throw one. It's an uphill battle.

My favorite: "Tebow has counted out pi to its final decimal place; John Wall has better things to do."

 

Read the whole list.

Worthy of The Onion

When the Ann Arbor Chronicle pointed out an article in the Tampa Bay Business Journal critical of a subsidiary of Detroit-base Issue Media Group, I found my way to 83 Degrees Tampa Bay, which offers Tampa Bay-area humor about economic development issues, some of which matches the best of The Onion:

- Local Woman Aspires to Under-Employment
- Best Places to Be Laid Off From (funny enough to let the grammar slide!)
- Economics Professor Just Doesn't Get It

Applying "That's not what we do" to your personal life

Today ,via I Will Teach You To Be Rich, I came across another great example of how saying "That's not what we do" is the backbone of strategy.

Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great (my review) and Built to Last, says that the best New Year's resolution you can make is a "Stop Doing" list. This is a similar concept to the second section, "Elimination", of Tim Ferris's The 4-Hour Workweek.

I often feel this way

BLS fails Macroeconomics 101

From the New York Times, via DeaneBarker.net

 

One of the first things we learned in macroeconomics (it was literally in the first chapter of my textbook, by this guy) was that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year.

 

GDP calculation is (relatively) easy when all production occurs within a single country within a single year. International trade and work across years complicate matters, and one common solution is to use a "value-added" calculation.

 

Consider a simple case: Elbonia has only one product, cogs. In 2007, they produced 100 cogs, which sold for $2 each. Elbonia's 2007 GDP was $200.

 

Slightly more complex: Kneebonia has only one product, widgets. Each widget is made of 10 cogs. In 2006, they entirely produced 100 widgets, which sold for $50 each, and had widgets in process consisting of 10 cogs at the end of the year. In Kneebonia, cogs are generally valued at $3 each. Kneebonia's 2006 GDP was $5,030 (100x$50 + 10x$30). In 2007, Kneebonia produced 100 widgets, and had no widgets in process at year-end. Kneebonia's 2007 GDP was $4,970 (99x$50 + 1x$20 for the value added in 2007).

 

International trade: In 2008, the Kneebonian executives realize that, rather than manufacture their own cogs for $3, they can import them from Elbonia for $2 and pocket the difference. Elbonia makes 2,000 cogs at $2 each, for an Elbonian GDP of $2000. Kneebonia makes 100 widgets, but because they didn't make the cogs, they only get to take credit for the value added of $30 per widget, so even though they maintained their widget production, Kneebonia's GDP decreases to $3,000.

 

So what did the BLS do wrong?

 

Well, the US has had an awful lot of outsourcing and offshoring lately. In some cases, the cogs were outsourced, and the BLS didn't adjust for the value added. In some cases, it appears that the entire widget assembly was outsourced, and the BLS just kept counting it.

 

What does it mean?

 

If the BLS has been consistently overestimating US GDP, it means that actual GDP growth has been less than reported, and recessionary declines greater. By itself, this doesn't necessary make a huge difference, although it may partly account for recent "jobless recoveries", but when factored together with the systematic undercounting of inflation and unemployment, which I've previously mentioned, it adds up to a much worse economic picture than the government has been reporting.

Saying "that's not what we do."

Seth Godin reminds us that saying "That's not what we do" (with an understanding of why -- more than just because you never did) is the backbone of strategy, one day after a nice New York Times article about a new media outlet doing exactly that.

 

On The Texas Tribune's second day of operation, big news broke in their back yard, when a shooting left thirteen people dead at Fort Hood. Tribune staffer Elise Hu described the scene in their offices:

 

We were all sitting around talking excitedly about what we were going to do with it. And then you could see Matt [Stiles] was about to blow his stack.

 

You see, the Tribune is not, and was not intended to be, a general news outlet. Their mission is specific: to report on the politics and policy of Texas state government. So kudos to the Tribune for being willing to say, "that's not what we do." I wish more organizations had their discipline!

Carly Fiorina is a hack

On the heels of her announcement that she will seek the Republican nomination for the Senate seat from California currently held by Barbara Boxer, I thought I'd review the "high" points of Carly Fiorina's career.

- She led the spin-off of Lucent from AT&T. Lucent's IPO price was $7.56 per share, and it quickly rose to $84, meaning that the IPO left 90% of the potential money on the table. Within four years Lucent was struggling, and after 6 years, Lucent's stock had crashed to $0.55 per share. Obviously she wasn't 100% responsible for all this, but she certainly played a key role.

- As CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she was an unmitigated disaster. Over the 5 1/2 years she led the company, HP's stock price went from $55 to $21, a 62% decline, while competitor Dell gained 8% over the same time. She merged HP with one of the crappiest PC makers ever, Compaq. She got in a public dispute with HP board member Walter Hewlett, the son of co-founder William Hewlett. On the day Fiorina was forced out of HP, the stock price jumped 6.9% while the broader markets were down. She has subsequently been called the "anti-Steve Jobs" and one of the 20 worst American CEOs of all time.

- She was a key advisor to John McCain in his 2008 presidential campaign, during which she described Sarah Palin as "a person of great accomplishment", before sticking her foot in her mouth by saying that Palin lacked the experience to run a major company like Hewlett Packard, later adding that none of the candidates on the Democratic or Republican tickets had the experience to run a major business.

Sounds like a great nominee for the Republican Party!

Dave Ramsey's latest lie

Dave Ramsey's latest newsletter had an outright lie, and he should be called out on this:

Washington recently announced that, for the first time since 1975, there will be no cost-of-living adjustment for more than 50 million Social Security recipients in 2010. This is just another sign that the system is mathematically doomed and shouldn't be counted on to fund you at retirement. [My emphasis]

The second sentence is just plain not true, and I'm sure Dave knows this. When there is no (or very low) inflation, there should be no inflation adjustment!

As the Social Security Administration's website states quite clearly:

Because there is no increase in the CPI-W from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009, there is no COLA.

In other words, this has absolutely nothing to do with the solvency, or lack thereof, of Social Security.

Justifiable != necessary

On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, discussed his most recent book, War of Necessity, War of Choice. While Mr. Haass is certainly well-qualified and makes a good argument, in the end I don't think any war can truly be said to be a war of necessity; there is always a choice, however unpalatable in may be.

For example, on the show, Mr. Haass described several wars as "wars of necessity" (from the American perspective), including the American Revolutionary War, World War II, and the Korean War (in the beginning, though he mentioned that it developed into a war of choice with the 1950 UN offensive), while describing the Vietnam War and the current Iraq War as wars of choice. This is an overly-simplistic view which I'm disappointed to find in such a distinguished diplomat.

Each of the wars presented by Mr. Haass as a war of necessity may be a justifiable war (jus ad bellum, though not necessarily jus in bello), but there is a difference between justified and necessary. There were alternatives to each war mentioned: in the American Revolution, 15% to 20% of the white population were loyalists; on December 8, 1941, Jeannette Rankin saw an alternative to war with Japan; in 1951, British Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross acknowledged opposition to the Korean War, saying, "I know there are some who think that the horror and devastation of a world war now would be so frightful, whoever won, and the damage to civilization so lasting, that it would be better to submit to Communist domination. I understand that view–but I reject it."

Shawcross's view, as expressed in that quote, probably comes close to Mr. Haass's intended meaning of "war of necessity" -- not that no other options are available, but that any options are perceived as relatively unacceptable. If, for example, you had the choice between losing a toe and losing an arm, most people would choose to keep their arm. That doesn't make losing the toe necessary, but it does make it justifiable.

Kudos to Senator Coburn (R-OK)

I don't agree with certain of his positions, but I must say, kudos to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) for holding up $10 billion in unneeded spending.

 

"If we pass a new program, we either ought to get rid of the old program or we ought to make it to where it blends with this other one so it's effective," Coburn said in an interview last week. "Almost everything that they've offered has a duplicate program out there that they're not either eliminating or changing." He said the Senate was shirking its duty by failing to give closer review to the hundreds of bills that slide through by unanimous consent. And he said Congress should not be clearing the way for billions of dollars in potential new spending — even on meritorious projects — without making reductions elsewhere. Fearful of the public debt piling up, he said he wanted the opportunity to at least propose those cuts.

"We ought not be borrowing and expanding the federal government unless we get rid of stuff that is not working," he said.

More on inflation

As a followup on my previous comments about inflation, consider Dow Chemical's announcement today that it will raise prices by up to 25% next month, following on a 20% price increase last month. For those whose math skills are shaky, that's 50% in three months (don't forget to compound!), which comes to 400% annually! Consumers won't see these price increases immediately, but rest assured that this will eventually work its way through the supply chain; manufacturers are not going to just absorb this price increase.

"Misery Index" - the real numbers

The unemployment rate and the annual inflation rate are sometimes added together to create what is called the "misery index". A number of news outlets have recently speculated as to why things seems so bad for most people, but the misery index, based on the "official" government numbers, is a relatively low 9.6.

 

The problem is that, for decades, the federal government has been gimicking both indices. For example, since the mid-1990s, the unemployment rate excludes "discouraged workers" who are no longer even looking for work. As another example of a change made in the 1990s (from ShadowStats.com):

 

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that.

 

If we use more traditional measures, unemployment is nearing 14%, inflation is nearly 12%, the misery index is 26% (far worse than the previous post-World War II record of 20.76 in 1980), and we're almost 4 years into a recession!

 

Making matters even worse (pointed out here), whereas in the 1970s, raises generally kept up with inflation, raises today (usually in the 2% to 4% range) clearly have not and will not.

How often does a 100-year flood occur?

From the New York Times:

 

"We have had two almost 100-year floods and two almost 500-year floods in a 35-year period," said Nicholas Pinter, a professor who specializes in flood hydrology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. "Flood levels all along this stretch of the Mississippi have climbed upward, not just by inches but by 8, 10, 12 feet — up to 18 feet over historical 100-year flood conditions. So the simple answer is that floods are higher and more frequent.

"But the underlying theme to everything that's going on," Dr. Pinter added, "is that the current estimates for flood frequency and intensity appear to be grossly underestimated."

Unmodified screenshot

The marketing of consumerism

Here's a fascinating article on how the culture of consumerism beat back the prospect of a shorter work week and more free time.

 

...If as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day—or 2.7 hours if we were willing to return to the 1948 level.

 

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962

"Clinton, you invoked a political nightmare" by Keith Olberman

Clinton, you invoked a political nightmare

By Keith Olbermann

Asked if her continuing fight for the nomination against Senator Obama hurts the Democratic party, Sen. Hillary Clinton replied, "I don't. Because again, I've been around long enough. You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just don't understand it. You know, there's lots of speculation about why it is. "

The comments were recorded and we showed them to you earlier and they are online as we speak.

She actually said those words.

Those words, Senator?

You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination.

You actually invoked the specter of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph, for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever.

You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred  -  and  gender  hatred  - and political hatred.

You actually used the word "assassination" in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president.

Or a white man.

Or a white woman!

You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running against an African-American against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign?

You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running to break your "greatest glass ceiling" and claiming there are people who would do anything to stop you?

You!

Senator -  never mind the implications of using the word "assassination" in any connection to Senator Obama...

What about you?

You cannot say this!

The references, said her spokesperson, were not, in any way, weighted.

The allusions, said Mo Uh-leathee, are, "...historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer and any reading into it beyond that would be inaccurate and outrageous."

I'm sorry.

There is no inaccuracy.

Not for a moment does any rational person believe Senator Clinton is actually hoping for the worst of all political calamities.

Yet the outrage belongs, not to Senator Clinton or her supporters, but to every other American.

Firstly, she has previously bordered on the remarks she made today...

Then swerved back from them and the awful skid they represented.

She said, in an off-camera interview with Time on March 6, "Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months."

In retrospect, we failed her when we did not call her out, for that remark, dry and only disturbing, in a magazine's pages. But somebody obviously warned her of the danger of that rhetoric:

After the Indiana primary, on May 7, she told supporters at a Washington hotel:

"Sometimes you gotta calm people down a little bit. But if you look at successful presidential campaigns, my husband did not get the nomination until June of 1992. I remember tragically when Senator Kennedy won California near the end of that process."

And at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the same day, she referenced it again:

"You know, I remember very well what happened in the California primary in 1968 as, you know, Senator Kennedy won that primary."

On March 6th she had said "assassinated."

By May 7 she had avoided it. Today... she went back to an awful well. There is no good time to recall the awful events of June 5th, 1968, of Senator Bobby Kennedy, happy and alive - perhaps, for the first time since his own brother's death in Dallas in 1963... Galvanized to try to lead this nation back from one of its darkest eras... Only to fall victim to the same surge that took that brother, and Martin Luther King... There is no good time to recall this. But certainly to invoke it, two weeks before the exact 40th anniversary of the assassination, is an insensitive and heartless thing.

And certainly to invoke it, three days after the awful diagnosis, and heart-breaking prognosis, for Senator Ted Kennedy, is just as insensitive, and just as heartless. And both actions, open a door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks the highest office in this country, and through that door shows something not merely troubling, but frightening. And politically inexplicable.

What, Senator, do you suppose would happen if you withdrew from the campaign, and Senator Obama formally became the presumptive nominee, and then suddenly left the scene? It doesn't even have to be the "dark curse upon the land" you mentioned today, Senator. Nor even an issue of health. He could simply change his mind... Or there could unfold that perfect-storm scandal your people have often referenced, even predicted. Maybe he could get a better offer from some other, wiser, country. What happens then, Senator? You are not allowed back into the race? Your delegates and your support vanish? The Democrats don't run anybody for President?

What happens, of course, is what happened when the Democrats' vice presidential choice, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, had to withdraw from the ticket, in 1972 after it proved he had not been forthcoming about previous mental health treatments. George McGovern simply got another vice president.

Senator, as late as the late summer of 1864 the Republicans were talking about having a second convention, to withdraw Abraham Lincoln's re-nomination and choose somebody else because until Sherman took Atlanta in September it looked like Lincoln was going to lose to George McClellan.

You could theoretically suspend your campaign, Senator.

There's plenty of time and plenty of historical precedent, Senator, in case you want to come back in, if something bad should happen to Senator Obama. Nothing serious, mind you.

It's just like you said, "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

Since those awful words in Sioux Falls, and after the condescending, buck-passing statement from her spokesperson, Senator Clinton has made something akin to an apology, without any evident recognition of the true trauma she has inflicted.

"I was discussing the Democratic primary history, and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged California in June in 1992 and 1968," she said in Brandon, South Dakota. "I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June. That's a historic fact.

"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy.  I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive, I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever."

"My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to and I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate in the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.  Thanks. Not a word about the inappropriateness of referencing assassination.

Not a word about the inappropriateness of implying - whether it was intended or not - that she was hanging around waiting for somebody to try something terrible.

Not a word about Senator Obama.

Not a word about Senator McCain.

Not: I'm sorry...

Not: I apologize...

Not: I blew it...

Not: please forgive me.

God knows, Senator, in this campaign, this nation has had to forgive you, early and often...

And despite your now traditional position of the offended victim, the nation has forgiven you.

We have forgiven you your insistence that there have been widespread calls for you to end your campaign, when such calls had been few. We have forgiven you your misspeaking about Martin Luther King's relative importance to the Civil Rights movement.

We have forgiven you your misspeaking about your under-fire landing in Bosnia.

We have forgiven you insisting Michigan's vote wouldn't count and then claiming those who would not count it were Un-Democratic.

We have forgiven you pledging to not campaign in Florida and thus disenfranchise voters there, and then claim those who stuck to those rules were as wrong as those who defended slavery or denied women the vote.

We have forgiven you the photos of Osama Bin Laden in an anti-Obama ad...

We have forgiven you fawning over the fairness of Fox News while they were still calling you a murderer.

We have forgiven you accepting Richard Mellon Scaife's endorsement and then laughing as you described his "deathbed conversion."

We have forgiven you quoting the electoral predictions of Boss Karl Rove.

We have forgiven you the 3 a.m. Phone Call commercial.

We have forgiven you President Clinton's disparaging comparison of the Obama candidacy to Jesse Jackson's.

We have forgiven you Geraldine Ferraro's national radio interview suggesting Obama would not still be in the race had he been a white man.

We have forgiven you the dozen changing metrics and the endless self-contradictions of your insistence that your nomination is mathematically probable rather than a statistical impossibility.

We have forgiven you your declaration of some primary states as counting and some as not.

We have forgiven you exploiting Jeremiah Wright in front of the editorial board of the lunatic-fringe Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

We have forgiven you exploiting William Ayers in front of the debate on ABC.

We have forgiven you for boasting of your "support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans"...

We have even forgiven you repeatedly praising Senator McCain at Senator Obama's expense, and your own expense, and the Democratic ticket's expense.

But Senator, we cannot forgive you this.

"You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

We cannot forgive you this -- not because it is crass and low and unfeeling and brutal.

This is unforgivable, because this nation's deepest shame, its most enduring horror, its most terrifying legacy, is political assassination.

Lincoln.

Garfield.

McKinley.

Kennedy.

Martin Luther King.

Robert Kennedy.

And, but for the grace of the universe or the luck of the draw, Reagan, Ford, Truman, Nixon, Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, even George Wallace.

The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!

And to not appreciate, immediately - to still not appreciate tonight - just what you have done... is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead.

This, Senator, is too much.

Because a senator - a politician - a person -  who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot - has no business being, and no capacity to be, the President of the United States.

Good night and good luck.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24797758/page/3/

Earthquake

Did you feel the earthquake this morning? I actually did; I woke up just about 5:40, and when I heard the dishes rattling a little, I though the cats were playing. Then I saw the blinds shaking and decided it was probably an earthquake. It didn't do much here, just enough to barely rattle dishes that were stacked on the drying rack. If things hadn't been completely quiet -- if it had come 30 minutes later -- I propably wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Comcast v. the FCC

A couple weeks ago I commented on the Comcast - BitTorrent kerfuffle.

 

The two companies now appear to have settled their differences. In a joint press conference last Thursday, they announced that they are now working together to insure that Comcast's efforts to manage its network did not unfairly single out any applications. Comcast promised that by the end of 2008 they will only restrict bandwidth for individual users, and then only during peak usage periods when not to do so would cause service disruptions for others. BitTorrent said it was revamping its software to improve efficiency, and that it would work with Comcast to make the software and network function better together.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who had threatened Comcast with penalties over the BitTorrent restrictions, was much less charitable. While he said that he was "pleased that Comcast has reversed course" he also said it is not reasonable to "arbitrarily block certain applications," and went on to complain about the pace of Comcast's announced changes.

Hillary versus the US Constitution

Following the announcement of Admiral Fallon's early "retirement" after he repeatedly and publicly disagreed with the Bush Administration over Middle-East policy, Sen. Hillary Clinton urged her colleagues to back a bill requiring Bush to get congressional approval before taking any military action against Iran.

 

This is one of the most absurd political maneuvers in a long line of such moves. While I think that any military action against Iran would be a terrible mistake, for many reasons, this bill is patently unconstitutional, and, should Sen. Clinton be elected, I'm sure she would ignore it, citing the president's role as Commander in Chief.

 

This is a strong hint that Sen. Clinton may have just as little regard for the Constitution as the current president. The real loser in this showdown will be the American people.