Hopping to Baltimore In baseball -- or, more aptly, in the minds of today's baseball analysts -- can you ever "add by subtraction?"
In the past few years there's been a not-so-silent revolution in baseball analysis, which I find compelling and, considering how long we've relied on batting average and RBIs as a measure of how good a ballplayer is, long overdue. If these aren't its only two foundations, you can probably agree they're at least central: Evidence must be examined and proof offered that one or another measure of offensive, defensive or pitching performance contributes to an understanding of how "well" a player played or is likely to play; and to completely understand and appreciate this evidence, any recourse to "instinct," "gut," or other unquantifiable, romantic notion of a player must be prohibited.
Under this regimen you would show that nearly every important measure of Sammy Sosa's production has been in decline for four years:
(BB/AB is a quick and dirty way to measure walk rate when plate appearances aren't in front of you.)
Seems simple enough. Sosa's "baggage," though, is a trial to any New World Man-analyst. After all, .253/.332/.517, 35 HR is .253/.332/.517, 35 HR whether the player is the nicest, most reserved guy in the world or a simmering pot of selfishness and resentment. If personality or attitude affect a player's play, it will be built into ("priced" into, to use a more apt term from investment) his statistics. What statistics can't measure, of course, is whether a player's personality or attitude affect his teammates' play.
So with a little confidence you may look at the above trend and determine that Sosa would be good for .245/.320/.500, 30 HR if he remained a Cub, and no one would look at you crossways. Following the central tenets of this kind of analysis, you wouldn't concern yourself with whether he'd feud with his manager, piss off his teammates, or, certainly, get booed by the fans.
But while statistics record what happens when batter and pitcher are isolated (or, in the case of defense, when a ball is in play), players are only isolated for a very tiny amount of ballgame time, and never exist in a vacuum when the game is not going on. We've all worked with people we genuinely didn't like, and our aversion can be minimal, or make us dread going to work. When we dread going to work we're in a sour mood when we get there, and our experience tells us our "performance" on the job can be affected.
While this isn't some false, romantic notion like "clutch ability" or "competitiveness," it also isn't quantifiable. The objection to romantic analyses isn't that nothing unobservable matters, but that nothing unobservable can be measured and quantified. (It is a failing on the bell -- not the long tail -- of these new analysts as a group that they sometimes don't understand this.)
Unfortunately, general managers can't ignore workplace issues because they're not quantifiable. Nor should they if they could. No less an analytical giant than Bill James, employed by the Red Sox as a consultant, was asked (scroll to the very end of the page) what was the most important factor behind the Sox's World Series championship. He said:
But I do believe, in all sincerity, that the 2004 Red Sox championship was, more than anything else, a tribute to fantastic veteran leadership. We have a player on our roster who embodies courage and determination. We have a veteran player, and a good one, who is as relentlessly positive as anyone you would meet. We have a veteran leader who is studious and intense and focused. We have a veteran pitcher who is very quiet, but very calm and extremely self-confident. We have a slugger in the middle of our lineup who combines most or all of these traits. I don't believe that any team in baseball history has ever had a better corps of veteran leaders, and I don't think there is a chance in hell that we would have rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win if that wasn't true.
"Fantastic veteran leadership" (FVL?) is not a statistic you will see anytime soon, but it is obvious that if a championship team can have it -- and use it to win -- a team can also have the opposite, whether that's no veteran leadership or terrible veteran leadership.
As I was digesting the news of Sammy being traded to the Orioles, I thought of James' frankly astonishing quote -- not that it isn't intuitively true, but that of all people Bill James would be the one to say it -- and wondered: What if Sammy Sosa, he of the corked bat, of the sneeze that forced him on the disabled list, of the early shower in the season finale, which he lied about and which prompted his teammates to demand an explanation, had been a central figure on that Red Sox team? I don't think the Sox had any brooding, self-centered half wits whose influence these other fantastic veteran leaders had to drown out; I'm certain they had none who had been a team icon for many years.
If you're a younger player, or newer to the team, do you take your cues from the people who have been around longer? If the veteran leaders on your club are relentlessly positive, inspirational, figthing till the last drop of blood is spilled (literally), is that more likely to win you a game or series in the playoffs? We've seen it. Get you to the playoffs in the first place? It follows. So what if Sammy, or someone with Sammy's disposition and inclination to hang 'em up and leave early, had been on the club?
You can "add by subtraction." Analysts aren'tsayingso, and frankly are handcuffing themselves in the process. You can't responsibly and thoroughly evaluate this trade without considering some dreaded "intangibles." Jim Hendry didn't. Dusty Baker and the Cubs players won't. Fear of having to use the cliche "clubhouse cancer" shouldn't prevent analysts from being thorough and honest in their writings.
1/26/2005 Palmer was a Democrat President Palmer, played on 24 by Cerrano from Major League for the first three seasons, was a Demcorat, it has been revealed.
(I feel like Matt Drudge.)
In this week's episode, Audrey Raines, Jack Bauer's love interest and daughter of the Secretary of Defense under President Keeler, Palmer's opponent in his re-election bid until Palmer dropped out, remembers that she's seen one of the terrorists at a Heritage Foundation dinner.
The daughter of/top aide to the Secretary of Defense is unlikely to have attended many Heritage Foundation functions if she and he are not Republicans. But, you say, Democratic presidents can have Secretaries of Defense from the other party? Yes, they can, but earlier this season President Keeler mentions that Secretary Heller has been a close friend and adviser for many years; it is reasonable to conclude he is not just a bolt-on to the cabinet in the interest of ecumenism.
Further, the question whether President Palmer was a Republican or Democrat in the first place arises from his bond with and admiration for Jack. The admiration is mutual; though, as head of field operations for CTU Jack served the President, whoever he was. Fast forward to this season, and Jack has landed a top job with the Republican Secretary of Defense. It is unlikely that Jack would seek or be offered a job with a Democratic administration not headed by Palmer. That, of course, is speculation, but it squares with Audrey's Heritage Foundation fêtê attendance.
1/25/2005 He looks an laughs at a' that It's Rabbie Burns' 246th birthday, something of a national holiday in Scotland, from whence came the strain of my family that had my last name attached to it. Robust, ribald, intemperate, Burns wrote standards still sung today the world over, like My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose and Auld Lang Syne, but was unbelievably prolific, so that it's likely even his admirers have never read everything he composed.
1/2 lb. beef liver 2 lamb kidneys 3/4 lb. lamb shoulder 1/4 lb beef suet 2 onions, minced 1 c. oatmeal 1 c. stock salt and pepper
Boil the meats for an hour. Cool. Grate the liver. Chop the others fine. Chop the suet. Toast the oatmeal in a shallow pan in the oven, shaking occasionally. Mix the meats, suet, onions and oatmeal together with a cup of the stock in which liver and meats were cooked. Add salt and plenty of pepper to taste.
Turn into greased Pyrex bowl. Cover with 2 or 3 layers of foil. Steam on a rack in a pan of boiling water for 2 hours, adding more boiling water as it boils away.
Serves 6.
Before dining, say the Selkirk Grace:
Some hae meat and cannot eat. Some cannot eat that want it: But we hae meat and we can eat, Sae let the Lord be thankit.
Eat, read, recite, sing, toast the lassies -- and let the lassies reply. Imbibe. Sing. Rinse, repeat.
1/18/2005 As Paul Harvey might say Ever since I got a gig where I can work from a home office, I've missed anything broadcast by Paul Harvey. AM radio elsewhere but in a car? Ha ha! Anyway, the venerable broadcaster was brought to mind as I read on SCOTUSblog about the Sacramento man who is pressing an emergency petition, which he insists the Chief Justice recuse himself from, to enjoin prayer at the President's inauguration. This isn't the man's first trip to federal court, but the first on his own behalf -- no, wait, they figured out he wasn't really acting on his daughter's behalf in the earlier case. Never mind.
Anyway, as the venerable Mr. Harvey might say, "he would probably like for us to give his name."
Belated happy MLK Day There's so much fun stuff to comment on in this Sun-Times story that I'm not sure where to begin. How about at the beginning:
Mayor Daley's purchasing chief threatened Monday to fire the city official who told Billy Goat tavern owner Sam Sianis to scratch out his own name and leave his wife's name on an O'Hare Airport liquor license to cash in on the city's minority set-aside program.
"I'm outraged. That's something that should not occur. This is a legitimate program and people should not be taking advantage of it," said chief procurement officer Eric Griggs.
"If I find out that someone in my department assisted someone in taking advantage of the program, they'll be terminated immediately. . . . If Sam thinks that someone told him to mislead the city, he should let the city know who it is. Sam needs to come forward. He needs to let the city [know] who told him to do it."
Last week, Sianis told the Chicago Sun-Times that City Hall instructed him to cross his name off the O'Hare liquor license and remove it from other lease documents because, "It have to be minority [and] I'm not minority."
What better way to belatedly celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day than with a minority set-asides scandal in Chicago? But that's not all:
The reason Mr. Sianis' wife is in a position to benefit from the city's minority set-aside program in question is because she's... drum roll... a woman.
While I suppose, for the sake of argument (because I honestly don't know), that female business owners are still in fact a minority of all business owners, I do know that women are not a minority. (Heck, we males are outnumbered in the Barr household 3-2.)
Second, here's a delicious, Chicago-style quote from 27th Ward Ald. Walter Burnett: "It appears that the minority set-asides are being abused by everybody else -- except the true minorities."
Just in case I have to bring it home (I hope not), that's right! This is a program that's supposed to be abused by minorities! Hands off, majority person!
Third, the undercurrent in all this is "political storm clouds hanging over a Chicago set-aside program that, critics contend, has been manipulated by the politically connected."
I take that back. That's not interesting or novel at all. Ok, third: Just Saturday Mr. Sianis came up in conversation here in the Barr household. Well, not really. My wife and stepdaughter are Steelers fans, and we were watching the game, Kristin (stepdaughter) regaled in her Antwaan Randle El jersey and a Pitt ballcap. "Have you worn that getup for every game recently?" I asked.
"No, not since Ben [Roethlisberger] started playing."
I proceeded to try and teach her the invaluable life's lesson that if your football team is on a 14-game winning streak, you don't screw with it by wearing some kind of getup in the playoffs. She scoffed, as teenagers are wont to do, adding as the final cut: "And a goat cursed the Cubs, I know." (She also doesn't believe the Cubs are cursed, though she offers no viable alternative explanation.)
So, Mr. Sianis, we were just talking about your ancestor's billy goat. How's that for coincidence? For the record, Kristin removed the jersey and cap (and hid in the bathroom) after the Jets took a 17-10 lead, after which, as you know, the Steelers, bolstered by two missed Jets figgies, won in overtime. Not to gloat, I'm just saying.
1/16/2005 Cruel and unusual Prof. Althouse and other lawbloggers have commented or provided contemporaneous (or TiVo!) accounts on the recent Scalia-Breyer debate on the use of foreign law in the Supreme Court. Power Line titled a post on the subject "Does Zimbabwean Law Overrule the Constitution?" Nice grabber, but of course it doesn't, and no one thinks it does.
I've written on this before, and no one, even Ms. Justice Ginsberg, has suggested that any other country's laws trump ours. What goes on is a desire to justify a desired result, and a dearth of domestic options. This is particularly (though not exclusively) true, and we may see it again this week, in the case of the Cruel and Unusual Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Long ago, the Supreme Court bequeathed upon itself the power to divine "evolving standards of decency" to determine whether a punishment is appropriate under the Eighth Amendment.
There are a number of problems with this that are self-evident to anyone who isn't predisposed enough to agree with the Court's determinations not to complain about its tyranny. In a representative republic, the lawmaking body is far more able, and accountable, to determine what "evolving standards of decency" are than insulated, life-tenured judges. It's far easier to change a law that ends up not working than a Supreme Court opinion.
On top of that, though, the "evolving standards of decency" standard ignores the word "and" between "cruel" and "unusual." Bluntly, under the Constitution, a punishment may be cruel, but if it's not unusual, it doesn't run afoul of the Eighth Amendment. (The word "or" was available to drafters of the Bill of Rights, if that's what they meant, after all.) Gauging "evolving standards of decency" may determine whether a judge thinks something is "cruel," but in the case of, say, execution for crimes committed by minors (the case whose determination we may have this week), if every similarly situated convict is subject to the same punishment, and has been for a long time, there is no reading of the word "unusual" that will support a finding that a practice is unconstitutional.
As Mr. Justice Scalia has observed, if the Court is really interested in doing what the rest of the world does, it will ban abortion and homosexuality, which are unlawful in the majority of the world. Even if you want to cop out and only look to democracies, you'd need to rein in the Court's pro-abortion jurisprudence significantly to square it with laws in Europe. But the Court isn't interested in other countries' laws governing us; they're interested in them governing us. If they can find support in a human rights treaty to which the United States is not a party, or a recent court case in France, then it will cite it favorably. It only seems like most of the country is perfectly willing to live under the tyranny of a 5-4 Court. In reality, it needs some pretense of precedential support to run our lives to mute criticism. If it can't find it here, it goes abroad.
1/14/2005 Stickers evolve Apropos this, Scrappleface reports today that the textbook stickers have "evolved" to now read:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a fact, not a theory, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with childlike trust, accepted obediently and defended vigorously against the attacks of ignorant monotheists.
1/13/2005 So wrong, in so many ways Sometimes, you wonder what country you woke up in. For Andrew Sullivan, that wonder is usually aroused by torture, or evagelicals being President, or criticism of a Lincoln-was-gay theory. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that what I see wrong with the country generally makes people tilt their heads, say "hm," and change the subject. But this is the most abstruse reading of the First Amendment I have ever seen, and the fact it eminated from a life-tenured federal district judge who is not even in California makes me, honestly, despair for the Republic.
A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
"By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories," U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said.
The stickers were put inside the books' front covers by public school officials in Cobb County in 2002. They read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
First, in what way does calling evolution a "theory" "denigrate" it? That's what it is. You can't see it happening, you can't replicate its effects in a lab. Its sheer bigness and the deepness of time it takes to work means it will always be a non-provable "theory." The fossil record is too spotty to help and fossilization does not preserve reproductive organs, brains, pulmonary or circulatory systems, or really anything you'd want it to if you could pick ("just keep the skeleton; that's all we'll need!" No.). Does that mean evolution didn't happen? Of course not.
In what way does encouraging students that anything should be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered" "denigrate" it? What unbelievable nonsense.
Second, granting, which you might if you're an idiot, "denigration," you proceed to strike something down in the name of the First Amendment because there "appears" to be some "endorsement" of something not "specifically reference[d]" going on?
Third -- you stay right there, Cobb County school board, I'm not finished with you -- evolution is not a theory in any way "regarding the origin of living things." See my previous bloviation upon this subject here. Darwin wrote about the "origin" of "species," of course -- classifications, subsets containing certain characteristics -- how one thing might become another, but not how the first thing got there in the first place.
But for crying out loud, if a school board wants to teach its students that "evolution is a theory ... regarding the origin of living things," even if you think that school board is a bunch of slack-jawed yokels, can you responsibly tell me they've violated the Constitution of the United States?
"While evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community," Judge Cooper said, relying on U.S.Const. Am. I, "Congress shall make no law ... misleading students regarding the significance and value of things in the scientific community."
Like I said, I know I get spun up by stuff no one else cares about. But I'm getting sick and tired of people waving the First Amendment around when they worry that someone's feelings are going to get hurt about something. Our rights to govern ourselves are supposed to be guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, they're not supposed to be ammonia judges can use to peel off school boards' stickers they find possibly might appear to be endorsing something and maybe misleading about the significance of something else even though nothing is actually mentioned by name.
Greatest guitar solo A Small Victory via Sanity's Edge are wondering aloud: What is the greatest rock and roll guitar solo of all time? The greatest rock and roll guitar solo of all time, let me be perfectly clear, is solo #1 from "Telegraph Road," by Mark Knopfler from Love Over Gold by Dire Straits. The only guitar solo which even approaches this is the solo to end "Tunnel of Love," by Mark Knopfler from Making Movies by Dire Straits. That there is debate on this topic betrays... I don't know, a fat lot of nonsense.
The five songs on Love Over Gold, including the 14:15 opus "Telegraph Road," were carefully hand-crafted to perfection -- that is, played over and over and over and over until absolutely perfect to Knopfler's taste. This is the reason he's cited for the band releasing its Twisting By the Pool EP immediately afterward, a four-song get-your-yah-yahs bit of sloppy rock that must have been cathartic after spending so much time on the likes of "Private Investigations."
Every note in "Telegraph Road" is testament to this attention to detail. Attention to detail, of course, can't make a crap song good, but they're all good songs, not great, and I daresay more time was spent perfecting them than your run of the mill rock album fare. The first solo, running from about 4:06 to about 4:59, is perfect. Perfect in every way. Perfect beyond adequate description (if you hadn't noticed). Go listen if you don't believe me.
A piano solo hands off to it, and it flexes a little and starts off with a chug followed by trademark Knopfler bends and lilts expertly woven into the background rhythm. It complements what's going on around it in the song so perfectly you're left with the impression the solo must have played itself, organically springing from the background after the piano player petered out and said "you have a go." Part of Knopfler's trademark sound is accomplished by his not using a pick, and there's no stray "clang" or chirp in this solo; it is sublimely beautiful and perfect. I think I've said that already, but it is.
Ok, we've cleared that up, then. I've also added two songs to my top 25, neither involving Mark Knopfler nor, indeed, guitar solos.
1/12/2005 Sentencing guidelines no longer mandatory, and a homework assignment for Sen. Reid The Supreme Court today held (124-page PDF), 5-4, that the strictures of the Sixth Amendment apply to the federal sentencing guidelines in the same way they do to mandatory state sentencing guidelines. This is unsurprising, and anticipated, both by the Blakely majority and minority (the 5-4 distribution of that part of the opinion is the same). A different 5-4 majority, though, inexplicably decided to blot out the parts of the guidelines that make them mandatory, leaving them otherwise intact.
At issue in the present case was a federal convict, Mr. Booker, whom a jury found guilty of possessing 92.5 grams of crack. The sentencing judge held a post-trial sentencing proceeding and found by a preponderance of the evidence that Booker had actually possessed an additional 566 grams. The federal sentencing ranges for the two quantities differ.
If you buy that the Sixth Amendment's trial by jury requirements are implicated by sentencing rules (which the Court does, 5-4), Booker cannot be sentenced on the basis of having possessed more than 650 grams of crack, only on the basis of having possessed 92.5. The guidelines are unconstitutional, then, as applied to Booker.
Messrs. Justice Breyer and Kennedy, Ms. Justice O'Connor, Ms. Justice Ginsberg and the Chief Justice went "wonderfully" (Mr. Justice Scalia's word, and he meant it literally, not colloquially) further, and stripped the mandatory sentencing guidelines of their mandatory-ness by eliminating two subsections. I don't think there ought to be mandatory sentencing guidelines for policy reasons, so I think Congress should change the law. And no doubt it will, now. But this inexplicable transformation of mandatory guidelines into something that "should be consulted" is beyond logic, and beyond, I believe, the power of the Court.
Mr. Justice Stevens, who delivered the opinion of the Court as to the Sixth Amendment's applicability, dissents from the remedial opinion, joined in part by Mr. Justice Scalia -- don't believe everything you read! Mr. Justice Scalia dissents separately, in wonderfully (I'm using it colloquially) typical style:
The remedial majority takes as the North Star of its analysis the fact that Congress enacted a “judge-based sentencing system.” Ante, at 22 (opinion of BREYER, J.). That seems to me quite misguided. Congress did indeed expect judges to make the factual determinations to which the Guidelines apply, just as it expected the Guidelines to be mandatory. But which of those expectations was central to the congressional purpose is not hard to determine. No headline describing the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (Act) would have read “Congress reaffirms judge-based sentencing” rather than “Congress prescribes standardized sentences.” JUSTICE BREYER’s opinion for the Court repeatedly acknowledges that the primary objective of the Act was to reduce sentencing disparity. Inexplicably, however, the opinion concludes that the manner of achieving uniform sentences was more important to Congress than actually achieving uniformity -— that Congress was so attached to having judges determine “real conduct” on the basis of bureaucratically prepared, hearsay-riddled presentence reports that it would rather lose the binding nature of the Guidelines than adhere to the old-fashioned process of having juries find the facts that expose a defendant to increased prison time....
The Court claims that “a statute that does not explicitly set forth a standard of review may nonetheless do so implicitly.” Ante, at 17 (opinion of BREYER, J.). Perhaps so. But we have before us a statute that does explicitly set forth a standard of review. The question is, when the Court has severed that standard of review (contained in §3742(e)), does it make any sense to look for some Congressional “implication” of a different standard of review in the remnants of the statute that the Court has left standing? Only in Wonderland. (This may explain in part why, as JUSTICE STEVENS’s dissent correctly observes, ante, at 12, none of the numerous persons and organizations filing briefs as parties or amici in these cases —- all of whom filed this side of the looking-glass —- proposed, or I think even imagined, the remedial majority’s wonderful disposition.) Unsurprisingly, none of the three cases cited by the Court used the power of implication to fill a gap created by the Court’s own removal of an explicit standard. The Court’s need to create a new, “implied” standard of review -- however “linguistically” “fair,” ante, at 19—amounts to a confession that it has exceeded its powers.
Emphases in original, and footnotes omitted. He's not just bitching; he has an important point about possible unintended consequences here: "Today’s remedial opinion does not even pretend to honor [the] principle that sentencing discretion is unreviewable except pursuant to specific statutory direction." He would seem to be right. The remedial majority seems to be saying that appellate courts may now review sentences for their "reasonableness" -- a dramatic departure, if so, and one which might survive Congress' "fixing" the guidelines to make them mandatory yet Constitutional. (For neither majority says that mandatory sentencing guidelines are per se unconstitutional; as I note above, they were unconstitutional as applied to Booker, or, if you prefer, insofar as they allow facts not found beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury to increase a sentence.)
Mr. Justice Thomas also dissents, not with Scalia's flamboyancy, naturally. His opinion is better structured, I daresay better reasoned, and frankly more convincing. Sen. Reid's assignment: Read the two dissents. Both are fine pieces of work, but I dare him to say Thomas' reads as though written at an eighth grade level. Scalia's opinion begins on page 90, Thomas' on page 101 of the slip opinion.
Obligatory CBS News post Of the millions (probably) of words posted in the blogosphere and written elsewhere, the most incisive point about the Thornburgh report in my opinion was made by, as one might expect, John Hinderacker:
[T]he fundamental problem that led to the downfall of 60 Minutes and, perhaps, CBS News, was the fact that no one involved in the reportorial or editorial process was a Republican or a conservative. If there had been anyone in the organization who did not share Mary Mapes's politics, who was not desperate to counteract the Swift Boat Vets and deliver the election to the Democrats, then certain obvious questions would have been asked: Where, exactly, did these documents come from? What reason is there to think that they really originated in the "personal files" of a long-dead National Guard officer, if his family has no knowledge of them? How did such modern-looking memos come to be produced in the early 1970s? How can these critical memos, allegedly by Jerry Killian, be reconciled with the glowing evaluations of Lt. Bush that Killian signed? Why haven't you interviewed General "Buck" Staudt, who is casually slandered in one of the alleged memos? Why didn't you show the memos to General Bobby Hodges, rather than reading phrases from them to him over the telephone? Isn't it a funny coincidence that these "newly discovered" memos are attributed to the one person in this story who is conveniently dead?
And so on, ad nearly infinitum. But, because virtually everyone in the CBS News organization shared Mary Mapes's politics and objective (i.e., the election of John Kerry), skeptical questions were not asked. If there is a single overriding explanation for how a fake story, intended to influence a Presidential election through the use of forged documents, could have been promulgated by 60 Minutes, it is the lack of diversity at CBS News.
It's almost unfortunate that this is seems like a throwaway in the linked Hindrocket post. It's the crux of the issue, it seems to me, and it was staring Thornburgh in the face as well.
Within an hour (0:59:43) of the 60 Minutes II episode in question going off the air, and within 42 minutes of the link to the "documents" being posted by a Freeper, another Freeper famously noted:
[E]very single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
It took less than 45 minutes for someone who "did not share Mary Mapes' politics" to identify the documents as likely forgeries. (The poster, "Buckhead," probably noticed instantly upon seeing them, of course, but you get my drift.) The point being, everyone working on the story at 60 Minutes with access to the documents was willing to believe without critical inquiry that the documents were authentic. If even one person were otherwise, the story may never have seen air.
Leave aside even the fact that the desire to air the story, when it was aired, overwhelmed even the self preservation instincts of the participants. Basing a story on documents of dubious authenticity can, as we now know as if we needed a demonstration, cost someone their job as a news producer. Mary Mapes, Dan Rather et al. knew that, even if their agenda made them more credulous than "Buckhead." When Thornburgh seems to conclude, and analysts seem to agree, that "haste" was the culprit here, I think that's what they're getting at, whether they realize it or not: "Haste" to air the story overwhelmed even the most basic self interest of the participants. "Haste" or no "haste," though, made absolutely no difference vis a vis the "lack of diversity at CBS News," as Hinderacker aptly puts it.
I think Thornburgh, CBS News and the mainstream media in general have been asking if not the wrong, then at least the less productive question. How did the people that put this story together and aired it do so without considering the risk to their careers? It's a valid question, but if the inquiry is limited to that, you get the Thornburgh report and its "no basis to accuse" people of having a political agenda in airing the story. The better, more productive question would have been: How did the people that put this story together and aired it do so without even one of them being reflexively skeptical about the documents and the story itself? Pursue that line of inquiry and you'll arrive, I think, at Hinderacker's conclusion.
If "haste" -- that is, the pressure to break stories in the information age, when bloggers, e-mailers, message board posters, etc. can "scoop" you -- is going to overwhelm even the self preservation instincts of reporters and producers, there are only two options: you're toast, or you hire a more politically and intellectually diverse news division. I wonder, if only briefly, which will happen.
1/11/2005 24 and torture Guilty pleasure 24 has never shied from weaving torture into its storylines -- torture meant to extract critical information -- whether by "the good guys" or with the good guys on the receiving end. Hero Jack Bauer was once himself tortured to the point where he died, briefly (and then carried on the rest of the season's "day" as though nothing had happened -- 24 fans know they have to suspend disbelief in exchange for usually gripping drama). Last season, Bauer ordered the innocent daughter of that year's criminal mastermind to be dragged unprotected into a hotel into which the mastermind's lackeys had unleashed a deadly virus, to get the mastermind to talk. (It works, in the nick of time for the daughter.) In year two of the series, the President orders the torture of a member of his senior staff to discover the whereabouts of a nuclear device set to be detonated on American soil.
During the first hour of this year's installment, Bauer assaults a guard at his former employer, the Counterterrorism Unit (CTU) in Los Angeles, steals his gun, intrudes on an interrogation he believes isn't being conducted with the appropriate level of urgency, shoots the suspect in the leg and forces him to reveal the real terrorist target of the day. The information comes too late (else it would be a short year), but comes. Lest you be left with the impression Bauer is the only one to stoop to such lows, CTU's new boss orders the torture of the son of the Secretary of Defense of the United States a couple hours later, because he is the only witness to the SecDef's abduction by Arab (!!) terrorists and his (forced) polygraph results were "inconclusive" on whether he told anyone else where his father would be at the moment of his abduction. A new (to us) agent is squeamish about the particular type of torture ordered, so confers with his boss and they agree to use sensory deprivation instead. As of the end of hour four, Junior hasn't talked.
What to make of this? 24 is a well regarded show by the critics and awards nominators, and always a ratings hit. I have no idea where the plot's conception and the series' filming overlaps the timeline of the Abu Ghraib and "torture memo" eruptions, but certainly its being shown in January, 2005 with no more than the usual disclaimer for a 24 episode -- "Due to scenes of graphic violence..." -- is a fart in the general direction of Bush administration critics.
As noted by Colby Cosh, many newspapers, including the local Beacon Journal, had to run a prominent apology for a Hi & Lois cartoon appearing in last Sunday's edition because it depicted flooding up to the rooftops in "the tropics," but was produced before the recent tsunami disaster in southeast Asia and since nobody really ever reads Hi & Lois, no one noticed in time to pull it or get a substitute cartoon. One can only imagine, say, if 24 were on CBS the network running the disclaimer that "scenes of Arab prisoner abuse and torture in this episode were written and filmed before we-- er, Senate Democrats began questioning Attorney General designate Alberto Gonzales' role in the possible formulation of torture policy for the administration in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, and it was too late to substitute neo-Nazis, like the movie version of The Sum of All Fears did. We regret this and apologize to our audience. Viewer animadversion is advised."
I will even go out on a limb and speculate that the SecDef's son's portrayal as a used, misguided, rumpled, messy, incoherent, unsophisticated lefty for no other reason than to defy his father -- he "needs to grow up someday," his sister, a main character and Bauer love interest, says, while his father tells him "spare me the eighth grade Michael Moore logic" during an argument -- and his subsequent torture on not very well developed grounds (agent: "We don't even know if he's guilty of anything." Boss: "This is how we'll find out") is a purposeful plot device.
Ok, maybe nothing sinister is going on. As I've said, it's certainly not the first appearance of torture in the plot of a 24 season. I guess what I'm most surprised at is that this isn't getting more attention (maybe it is, just not where I'm looking) from hand-wringers who think that, for instance, The Incredibles reinforces outdated pre-feminist stereotypes, or that television has played an important, positive part in how the country perceives gays -- doesn't a top-rated, critically acclaimed show routinely showing torture and portraying it as an effective terrorism-thwarting mechanism have the kind of nefarious subconscious influence on viewers as the latest Pixar cartoon movie? Are those most actively crying "torture!" in re: Alberto Gonzales and Don Rumsfeld just not the type to watch 24? I can't believe it's that; those most actively crying "torture!" are generally the types to be concerned over what the great unwashed is being exposed to, they themselves being uniquely able to separate fact and fiction.
Maybe I just haven't given it enough time. We'll see. Ms. Dowd?
Restoration of photos from the WTC "Thousands of photos recovered from the World Trade Center ruins after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have been restored and will be posted on a Web site for people to identify and claim, officials said on Friday," according to Reuters.
Some 8,000 photos will appear on the restricted-access Web site beginning on Jan. 18, with deceased victims' relatives provided with a password to enter the site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
Employees of former World Trade Center tenants will get access later this year, added the Port Authority, which owns the 16-acre Trade Center site.
This is a touching and very worthy effort, to collect and restore these, it seems to me. It isn't clear though who to thank. The Reuters account says "The photos, pulled from some 1.6 million tons of debris sifted through by workers at the Fresh Kills landfill in the borough of Staten Island, were restored at no charge by the Eastman Kodak Co. Port Authority spokesman Lou Martinez said."
Kudos to Eastman Kodak, but what did it cost the company? This AP account explicitly identifies the scientists who worked to restore the photos as "volunteers," and this local account from Rochester, NY indicates that about six scientists worked on the project, and, according to an Eastman Kodak spokesman, "They devoted their personal time to do as good a job as anyone could do." The New York Times account doesn't help: "They were recovered from the ruins, scanned and digitally restored in 2002 by the Eastman Kodak Company."
This ambiguity certainly doesn't mean Eastman Kodak is taking credit for something it didn't do. (The company evidently did not release a press release on this, at least this month, even though it seems to release them about everything else they do.) Even if employees worked on their own time, the equipment, power, space and other overhead belonged to the company. In fact, this 2002 RIT story indicated the company hired an intern from the school to work the summer helping to restore the photos (4,000, at the time, if you notice; today, there are more than 8,000).
What's strange is that this AP story from earlier in September, 2002 indicates much of the work was done by NFL Films in Philadelphia -- in fact, that's where the project started: "Phil Tuckett, an NFL Films documentarian, was asked to help on the project by a police department archivist he got to know when making a documentary about the department." The story also makes clear that "employees at Kodak and NFL Films, working on their own time, have been scanning the photos onto computers." Strange that no account from last week mentions NFL Films, and that the Times and Reuters credit only "the Eastman Kodak Company," no volunteers or interns at all.
To the Times' credit, it is only there that we find what I consider to be valuable information: "[The site] will not be made public and, for privacy's sake, the pictures on the Web site cannot be downloaded or copied." Good.
Anyway, credit and thanks belong to Eastman Kodak, NFL Films, the Port Authority and all the volunteers involved.
1/8/2005 Rough draft Here's a first crack at what I'll be mostly mailing the Representatives below. Post updated with links to contact information; as you see, the majority of them require you to enter your ZIP plus four number to e-mail them. I know, I'm sure there's a way around this, but if they don't want my e-mail -- just want to, you know, vote to disenfranchise me -- I'll play ball.
Dear Representative :
I am an Ohioan with a family of five in Rootstown, Ohio, about 20 miles from Akron. My township went Bush by about 200 votes out of 4,000 or so cast; my county went Kerry 53-47, and my state went Bush by about 118,000 votes, slightly less than the margin by which Sen. Kerry won Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania registered 219,000 new voters from the 2000 election, a period during which the Census Bureau estimates it lost about three percent of its population. This explosion in new registrants warranted an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and resulted in about 97 percent of the voting-age population of Philadelphia County being registered to vote. In nearby Lehigh County, 80 percent of the voting-age population was registered to vote; in Cumberland County, which includes the state capital, about 83 percent of the voting-age population was registered to vote. Sen. Kerry took 81 percent of the vote in Philadelphia County, 524,752, to President Bush's 19 percent, 125,727, directly resulting in Sen. Kerry's carrying Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes. Without Philadelphia County, President Bush would have carried Pennsylvania by more than 270,000 votes.
I am unaware of any Congressional investigations into voting or registration irregularities in Pennsylvania, Michigan or any other "blue" state. Certainly none that turned out 100+-page reports on "What Went Wrong." From my perspective, there seemed to be a concerted effort in the last few months -- starting before the election was even held -- to smear my state and its Secretary of State and create a "Florida of 2004" where there was none.
You made a historic vote on January 6. You voted not to count my vote for President. As the media is fond of reporting, that has happened only one other time since 1877. You belong to a party (for whose nominees I voted in the most recent state elections for Governor, Attorney General and Auditor) that has prided itself since November 2000 on insisting that every vote count, and every vote be counted. Yet you voted on the floor of the House of Representatives not to count my state's votes.
How dare you?
You're willing to ignore any fraud that might have occurred in a state that went Kerry, and vote not to count my vote for President because the candidate you favored lost? This is a bald abuse of power. Thank goodness no more than 30 of your colleagues believed voting to disenfranchise an entire state to make a political point wasn't an embarrassment to democracy and an insult to Ohioans. Whatever you accomplish in the 109th Congress, I will regard your vote in Roll Call 7 as the most important you made. Frankly, that's not something to be proud of.
Every vote (for a Democrat) counts, and every vote (for a Democrat) must be counted? If that's you're philosophy, it's no wonder your party is receding from national relevance.
They will all be receiving correspondence from me. I am especially ashamed of Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, D-Shaker Heights, and Dennis Kucinich, D-Mars, the only Ohio Congresspersons to vote to deny my -- and their own -- voice in the electoral process for President.
And then there's torture The Gonzales confirmation hearings are bringing the debate over "torture" to the fore, and much has been written since I last had a chance to blog. I'll make three observations.
One, as Eugene Volokh has ably said, "This is a hard question that reasonable people can and should debate. But it seems to me that abstract arguments about moral high grounds or stooping to the enemy's level do more to weaken the argument against torture than to strengthen it." (Link via Instapundit.) While all true, I mean to highlight the first sentence (but didn't want to remove the remark from its context). If you're discussing this issue with someone who makes a frustrated sound, throws up their hands and walks away, it wasn't worth it anyway.
Two, Iraq is a signatory, along with the United States, to the Geneva Conventions; prisoners in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib, were regarded by this country as Prisoners of War; and no Iraqi captured during the invasion of Iraq should be treated any way but humanely and decently (Geneva Conventions or no).
Three, al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions; al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are not covered by its strictures. The point has been made over and over that that does not mean they should be tortured, and of course that's true, but what it does mean is that they're not Prisoners of War covered under the Geneva Conventions. QED. So, people need to stop saying they are. (In fact, two "legal experts" called by Sen. Leahy to testify against Gonzales conceded this point.)
A cold, practical point stemming from the above: Iraqi army detainees can tell us nothing about al Qaeda or other terrorist camps, operations, plans, cells, infrastructure, etc. In fact, POWs as envisioned by the Geneva Conventions almost to a man will be people with no reliable operational knowledge of his side's future activities. And besides, we've conquered Iraq. On the other hand, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who may have trained at al Qaeda camps, who may very well have operational knowledge of future al Qaeda activity, can potentially tell us a great deal that will save innocent lives. If this is an uncomfortable distinction, I'm sorry, but it's there.
While I was away Took the two smallest children, Junior and Muffin, to Cape Coral, Florida to visit my folks for a few days from December 31 to January 5. A great time was had by all, other than the trip back, which ran 14:15 in elapsed time due to weather delays, a re-routing, and such.
James Taranto of OpinionJournal's Best of the Web caught Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in a ridiculous error (to be kind) regarding his criticism of Mr. Justice Thomas as "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court." Reid, when "pressed" (he wasn't, much, at the time, by Tim Russert), said he thought Thomas was mostly a dullard compared to, say, Mr. Justice Scalia, and that Thomas' opinions were poorly written.
Given a week or more to come up with an answer to the question never asked by Russert, i.e., "like, which opinions do you mean?", Reid said on CNN's Inside Politics:
Henry: When you were asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether or not you could support Justice Thomas to be chief justice you said quote, "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written." Could you name one of those opinions that you think is poorly written?
Reid: Oh sure, that's easy to do. You take the Hillside Dairy case. In that case you had a dissent written by Scalia and a dissent written by Thomas. There--it's like looking at an eighth-grade dissertation compared to somebody who just graduated from Harvard.
Scalia's is well reasoned. He doesn't want to turn stare decisis precedent on its head. That's what Thomas wants to do. So yes, I think he has written a very poor opinion there and he's written other opinions that are not very good.
Read Taranto's excellent treatment of this; suffice it to say that Scalia did not dissent in Hillside Dairy v. Lyons, and Thomas dissented perfunctorily as to Part II of the opinion, in one paragraph referencing a longer, earlier dissent, and neither opinion is written at an "eighth-grade" level.
Thomas' journey has been well-documented, and I can shed no more light on it than anyone, but operate on the basis of two observations. One, he suffers, and will continue to suffer, from having been nominated by President George H.W. Bush for being black. Ideally, we'd like the best Congress (well, maybe I wouldn't), best President and executive branch, and best Supreme Court you could put together from all eligible persons in and out of the country, but that will never happen, of course. Thomas wasn't the "best" nominee then and isn't the "best" possible Justice now but his work has revealed that he is a capable, even fine, Associate Justice. My operating point being that to continue to be tainted by his being nominated for reasons other than his being the "best" candidate the first Bush administration could find is unfair and irrelevant; he's there now, and doing a good job.
My other observation is that Thomas suffers from the again unfair assumption that he is a Scalia puppet. He and Mr. Justice Scalia are frequently on the same side of issues, and join one another's opinions. This reflects an in kind sense of both jurisprudence (procedure) and view of the law (substance), not any kind of manipulation by Scalia. But Thomas can't escape this appearance for three reasons, the first of which is in the paragraph above. Second, Mr. Justice Scalia is simply more effusive and more prolific a writer than Thomas, or any other Associate Justice, is; there are simply more opinions, and more memorable ones, of Scalia's for Thomas to join than the other way around. Finally, the facts that Mr. Justice Thomas rarely questions lawyers during oral argument and admittted long ago to avoiding the news media (wouldn't you, after what he went through?) paint a picture for those predisposed of someone who is disengaged, an empty vessel. I'm quite sure that is an incorrect picture.
In sum, Thomas is, unfortunately, a terribly interesting person, current events-wise and historically. Much of the received wisdom about him is false, as demonstrated aptly by Sen. Reid. He may never have a chance to reshape the nation's opinions of him, short of being elevated to Chief and presiding over an historical Court revolution. Whether that's desirable I leave for future posts.
Animus
"My one purpose in writing I have explained over and over again: it is simply to provide a katharsis for my own thoughts.
They worry me until they are set forth in words." --H.L. Mencken
