Extending the Manhattan street grid across the world!

via extendny.com

Ever wonder what you address would be if you extended the Manhattan Grid all over the world? Now you can know!

Turns out my high school was on the corner of 1,513th Avenue and South 11,574th Street.

A Columnist Recants, but the WSJ Edit Page Won't Hear it : CJR

A year and a half ago, George Mason University economics professor Daniel B. Klein wrote a column about his finding that liberals scored much worse on a test about basic economics than libertarians and conservatives. The Wall Street Journal trumpeted it with this sneering headline:

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics.

The problems with the column were obvious, as left-leaning publications were quick to point out. It was based on responses to eight questions that were almost all tilted toward conservative ideas. In some instances, it counted the correct answer as the wrong answer or counted answers as false that are in fact unfalsifiable (meaning, can’t be proven false one way or another; e.g. “blue is the best color”). For instance:

5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

If there’s more than one Third World worker being exploited overseas by an American company, then “agree” is the correct answer to No. 5. Surely there are two people somewhere being exploited by American firms. Less narrowly: Whether somebody is being exploited is opinion that’s not falsifiable until everyone agrees on what exploitation is. While Wall Street Journal editorial page and Mercatus types might not agree that exploited is a fair word for, say, the twenty-nine Bangladeshis who died last year sewing clothes for the GAP and Target for 28 cents an hour (after management locked them inside to prevent theft), I would, and so would most everyone else.

And there are lots of “unenlightened” economists who disagree with the premise that the minimum wage raises unemployment and that so-called free trade doesn’t

But regardless of the merits of his first effort, Klein ought to get some kind of award for the remarkable intellectual honesty for his second one, which recounts how he got it wrong the first time. Klein revisited his earlier findings, going back to confirm them only to find out that what he’d been confirming was confirmation bias:

But one year later, in May 2011, Buturovic and I published a new scholarly article reporting on a new survey. It turned out that I needed to retract the conclusions I’d trumpeted in The Wall Street Journal. The new results invalidated our original result: under the right circumstances, conservatives and libertarians were as likely as anyone on the left to give wrong answers to economic questions. The proper inference from our work is not that one group is more enlightened, or less. It’s that “myside bias”—the tendency to judge a statement according to how conveniently it fits with one’s settled position—is pervasive among all of America’s political groups. The bias is seen in the data, and in my actions.

But you won’t find that retraction in The Wall Street Journal. It’s in The Atlantic this month. I thought that was odd, so I asked Klein if the Journal had declined to run it. He emailed back:

Back in May I approached the WSJ person I had worked with. They declined the idea of a follow-up.

Klein, for his part, says that he isn’t “inclined to fault them for that decision.”

The WSJ, dealing with the first survey study, had great difficulty dealing with 8 policy questions (plus the ideology question) and the results.

The idea of a new op-ed, dealing with 17 policy questions, and two sets of results, is very hard to imagine.

It’s not hard for me to imagine. Actually, it’s hard to imagine a publication not finding a way to run a piece by someone effectively retracting a column it has published. All seventeen questions don’t need to be in the piece, and 800 words is plenty of room to tell the story.

I asked the Journal for comment and will update if I hear back.

I can’t say I’m surprised that the Journal’s edit page would decline to do so—disappointed, yes. We’ve seen many times how ideology trumps the truth there. As Jonathan Chait wrote back in May, when Klein’s paper came out (and the WSJ declined to run an op-ed on it):

I think they genuinely deserve credit for taking into account the objections and making the effort to correct them. The interesting question is whether the Wall Street Journal could be shamed into publishing another op-ed correcting the first one. Probably not, but you never know.

Now we do know, and that, and the contrast with how honestly Klein grappled with his findings, says a lot about what you need to know about The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

via cjr.org

Ugh. Just ugh.

Tim Tebow, "Tebowing" and Media BS

via youtube.com

This video shows every touchdown pass by Dan Marino in 1994. This is Marino's comeback season from a near career-ending injury. You can see how hobbled he was at the beginning of the year.

What you will also see. An absolute clinic on how to throw the football. Marino could make every kind of throw, at any point in the field. Its this sort of ability that drives football fans crazy when they see someone like Tim Tebow play quarterback. Whatever else the kid may be, he is simply not in the league of the Dan Marinos of the NFL. Of course, he doesn't *have to be*. I mean, Marino is in everybody's Top 5 QBs of all time list. But still, look at the mechanics of a prototype passer and then Tebow.

Now, for perhaps the most important reason to watch. I coun't 6 "tebows" by receivers in this video out of 30 touchdowns. That's 20%! Two of the most blatant "tebows" were done by All-Pro TE Keith Jackson. I don't remember anyone ever saying a word about this sort of thing. Of course, none were done by Marino, who is white and a QB.

Perhaps the issue is no one cared when non-QBs "tebowed", Maybe the media believes you will care more when a charismatic young QB, (and a white player from a southern college), 'tebows"?

Maybe they are playing you, pushing your buttons, covering a non-issue?

A Serving of Gratitude Brings Healthy Dividends

Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.

But what if you’re not the grateful sort? I sought guidance from the psychologists who have made gratitude a hot research topic. Here’s their advice for getting into the holiday spirit — or at least getting through dinner Thursday:

Start with “gratitude lite.” That’s the term used by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis, for the technique used in his pioneering experiments he conducted along with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami. They instructed people to keep a journal listing five things for which they felt grateful, like a friend’s generosity, something they’d learned, a sunset they’d enjoyed.

The gratitude journal was brief — just one sentence for each of the five things — and done only once a week, but after two months there were significant effects. Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out.

Further benefits were observed in a study of polio survivors and other people with neuromuscular problems. The ones who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling happier and more optimistic than those in a control group, and these reports were corroborated by observations from their spouses. These grateful people also fell asleep more quickly at night, slept longer and woke up feeling more refreshed.

“If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep,” Dr. Emmons advises in “Thanks!” his book on gratitude research.

Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness. Sure, you may feel obliged to return a favor, but that’s not gratitude, at least not the way psychologists define it. Indebtedness is more of a negative feeling and doesn’t yield the same benefits as gratitude, which inclines you to be nice to anyone, not just a benefactor.

In an experiment at Northeastern University, Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno sabotaged each participant’s computer and arranged for another student to fix it. Afterward, the students who had been helped were likelier to volunteer to help someone else — a complete stranger — with an unrelated task. Gratitude promoted good karma. And if it works with strangers ....

Try it on your family. No matter how dysfunctional your family, gratitude can still work, says Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside.

“Do one small and unobtrusive thoughtful or generous thing for each member of your family on Thanksgiving,” she advises. “Say thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture. Express your admiration for someone’s skills or talents — wielding that kitchen knife so masterfully, for example. And truly listen, even when your grandfather is boring you again with the same World War II story.”

Don’t counterattack. If you’re bracing for insults on Thursday, consider a recent experiment at the University of Kentucky. After turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!”

Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation. The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser. Not surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics by subjecting them to especially loud blasts — much louder than the noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations.

But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students: the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful. After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism — or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics.

“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky. “It helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy. “It’s an equal-opportunity emotion. Anyone can experience it and benefit from it, even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

Share the feeling. Why does gratitude do so much good? “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”

Try a gratitude visit. This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”

Contemplate a higher power. Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.

Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger.

“As a culture, we have lost a deep sense of gratefulness about the freedoms we enjoy, a lack of gratitude toward those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom, a lack of gratitude for all the material advantages we have,” he says. “The focus of Thanksgiving should be a reflection of how our lives have been made so much more comfortable by the sacrifices of those who have come before us.”

And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself —

Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.

Is that too much of a stretch? When all else fails, remember the Monty Python mantra of the Black Plague victim: “I’m not dead.” It’s all a matter of perspective.

via nytimes.com

Evidently Gratitude is healthy. I gotta re-read this one every couple of months.