Read. Think. Then Post.

An easy three steps that would (still!) keep a lot of people out of trouble.

Instapundit links this, apparently approvingly. "Drunk driving" kills, so why do cops mainly give out speeding tickets? Slogans and fallacious logic driving spending priorities, the linked editorial suggests (while Instapundit thinks it's all about revenue).

Many, many methodological fallacies permeate its five short paragraphs. Again, let us count the ways.

1) "Drunken drivers". Since these are NHTSA stats, numbers of "drunken drivers" are actually going to be "those whose blood-alcohol content levels are at or above .08%". Sorry, but for most people, the level of impairment after one or two beers is nowhere near "drunken". Bzzzt for unsubstantiated hyperbole.

2) "Distracted drivers". This category comes to us also from the NHTSA with some unknown contribution from VA Tech. While in the main I sympathize with attributing influence to this conceptual factor, as an empirical, measurable phenomenon it leaves quite a bit to be desired. Presumably data must be self-reported in many cases, and mixing self-reported with other data sources (passengers; post-accident circumstantial evidence) increases unreliability across the data pool.

All normal people multitask when driving, in part because driving requires multitasking in the first place: You must be able to check your speed and scan other dials and indicators, flick the turn signal, start/stop the wipers, hit the lights/brights, etc., without coming to a screeching halt every two minutes to adjust one of the functional driving controls. Thus, if you are driving along and fooling with the radio, are you a "distracted driver"? Maybe, maybe not. If you are driving along obsessing over the fight you just had with a random store clerk or loved one, are you distracted from driving? Maybe, maybe not.

Taking it one step further: There are bad drivers and good drivers. I'll posit that good drivers are ones who have a substantial foundation of automatic multitasking and learned reactions to smaller or more peripheral signals. Good drivers can take on significantly more distraction -- or apparent distraction -- than a less-experienced or a less naturally alert person, and/or can selectively tune in and out with respect to safety signals versus other 'noise' in the environment.

So, who are the "distracted drivers"? Those who report afterwards that they were talking to others in the car or changing the radio station, or those who report afterwards that they were distracted by talking to others in the car or changing the radio station? Or those whose passengers report the baby in the back seat was screaming (when we all know that parents can be astoundingly oblivious to the horrific noises their offspring make any time, any place)? Or the cop who finds a cell phone on the seat of a car after an accident? Is it methodologically defensible to use any of these criteria? Which? How has the validity of whatever measure was used been tested?

Philosophically, what traffic accident isn't caused at some level by a distracted driver? Is the theory that there is a significant class of accidents caused by people who are paying attention? Sure, occasionally a tire may blow out or cars can slide on snow. However, since those types of incidents don't invariably result in accidents, and in fact the skill, experience/knowledge, and attention level of the driver (and sometimes sheer luck) often avert damage to that car or others, wouldn't all drivers who have accidents also be drivers who were distracted, if only by their own thoughts or perhaps simple disinterest in the task at hand?

3) Unfortunately, the editorial links nowhere, so there's no way to assess whether or how the numbers presented in conjunction with these conceptually and empirically murky were constructed.

3a) In the days of Usenet, I researched official (USG) figures on drunk driving and drunk driving related statistics. It turned out at that time that accidents "caused" by drunk driving are, for the purposes of USG slogans and MADD proselytizing, any accident that includes a driver whose BAC is over the legal limit is deemed to have been caused by the "drunk" behind the wheel. Now, this is nutbar territory on the face of it. This means I could be in my lane, traveling at the safe and posted speed limit, with a BAC of .080%, and some idiot could run a stop sign or red light and ram into the side of my car, and the statistics would show that that accident was my fault. As I say, nutbar territory.

NB: It's a little jangly, but more dissection along these lines here, including one precious bit I'd forgotten from that long-ago Usenet debate: If a sober driver hits a pedestrian who has been drinking, that counts as an accident caused by "drunk driving". Another item I don't recall from back when: An accident involving a designated driver counts as one caused by drunk driving -- passenger BACs count as much as anyone behind the wheel. Well, that's one way to hit 40% "caused" by "drunks".

3b) Awareness of this feature of the statistical landscape raises my suspicions about the claim that "fully 80%" of accidents are (Warning!) "caused" by distracted drivers.

4) ObHyperbole Alert: "The latest data demonstrates that such drivers kill and maim far more people than speeders." Not in this editorial the latest data do not. "Fully 80%" of crashes does not exceed the unknown number of persons killed, which presumably is over twice the "nearly half" of all fatalities from crashes. If there are other data, the editorialist should have produced them, since otherwise this looks like a specious conflating of unrelated statistics (which are, see above, highly dubious and unreliable in themselves).

*****
And that's the first two paragraphs...
*****

5) I'll just note in passing the emotive language throughout the 'policy' grafs. A classic tool of demagoguery that editorials typically use, it's a dangerous and foolish way to make public policy. Its mixture with the bad numbers used badly does add to the bad odor of this piece.

6) Whether or not speeding is "more" important than drinking and distracting might be an interesting question, but not as this editorialist frames it. Public policy requires juggling interests and priorities along a number of dimensions, and in this editorial we are in the flat land of If It Saves One Life mob-raising talk instead. Not a single number is presented that distracted driving "causes" traffic deaths, even in the distinctly loose and ambiguous way "drunks" do. And surely no one can claim that people aren't upset enough about drunk driving, when the Constitution has already been impaired by legalization of checkpoints and current talk is of pushing legal limits down to .05%?

It appears that the editorialist has jammed together the largely unrelated issues of distraction with drinking in order to drive (heh) up the Deadly! Numbers! factor lacking on the distraction side and the Let's Get Serious About This Serious Problem which is clearly not lacking on the drunk-driving side. A little semantic sleight of hand and, boy, it really looks like the cops have everything all backwards!

But until we don't have speed limits, it just makes sense for traffic cops to give tickets for speeding. That seems at least more useful than parking tickets.

And what's the justification for not giving out speeding tickets? The editorial presents two: Speeding tickets are expensive, and giving speeding tickets at this time of year is scrooge-like. As to the first: Yes, dear, that is the point. The expense is part of the deterring structure of laws against speeding. The second: Totally unserious.

7) Furthermore, there's an eentsy problem with the idea that cops should stop writing so many speeding tickets and start "focusing" on drunks and distracted drivers. How?

Sure, we could set up more checkpoints. I'm against them in principle, but chasing speeders isn't preventing checkpoints. And there's all the extra manpower freed up by red-light cameras, too. Personally, I would consider Scrooge a pretty jolly, well-intentioned fellow by comparison with cops and cop administrators who feel increased intrusion into my private life and lawful business is justified on the theory that Something (More) Must Be Done about the non-zero probability that someone, somewhere, might be in hypothetical danger in the vicinity of a vehicle and BAC>.0-whatever.

Beyond that point, how the heck are cops supposed to focus in on distracted drivers? There are already laws against driving-and-talking in many (most?) places [NB: I don't have a cell phone, so I don't pay attention to those laws], and all sorts of things distract (bad) drivers. Food, non-alcoholic beverages, conversation, life, love, the universe, and all that. Distracted-while-driving status can't be determined by a test, so even checkpoints won't help. Rip out radios and CD players, criminalize Ipods and crying babies -- or all passengers, require No-Doz before trips over 15 minutes? But most accidents occur close to home! And society wants folks to carpool! Wow, this social engineering stuff is Hard.

8) Wrt revenue: A red herring to the editorial's central point, that we should care more about nabbing, prosecuting, and penalizing drinkers and distractables (whence could cometh, presumably, a whole lot more revenue) than we do about poor ol' speeders. Revenue is an outcome of nabbing whomever. Which miscreants public policy targets for the revenue extraction (as penalty or deterrent) is the question. Sure, other questions can be raised, but ultimately that's not "why" we do it.

In sum: Drunks, cell-phone users, people with kids, people who get sleepy (or tired or enraged [and whatever happened to activism drumming up Concern about road rage?]), and just plain bad drivers -- heck yeah, get 'em all off the road. And I admit, speeders don't bother me at all unless they're tailgating me, which is a different problem. I'll even admit that I recently got a speeding ticket, which was pretty much a big PITA. So, I suppose I should be on the editorialist's side.

But I'm not. I'm never on the side of the sloppy pseudo-factoid argument. I don't want cops' priorities determined by the loudest whiner -- not MADD, true; but not this writer either. I don't want public policy determined by the Nanny-est of the Nanny State attitudes. People die. People get killed unfairly. Speed kills, drunk driving kills, cell phones kill (for all I know). Even if I disagree with the mania against doing anything but sitting still in a chair until every .000001% of alcohol content has left your blood, I see no advantage in that attitude being displaced by some other irrational phobic mania.

Policy should be informed by facts, and still will involve hard choices and trade-offs on principles and/or resources. Even if that's not how it works, it's how we should try to make it work. The fanatic fighting the shrill demonizing the hysterical only means we'll all end up disrespecting everything.

How far are we from that now?

Let me count the ways

1. Patronizing
2. Braindead
3. Out-0f-touch
4. Disinterested
5. Unimaginative
6. Passive
7. Ludditean
8. Narrow-minded
9. Apathetic
10. Lazy

And those are just my reactions to the attitude conveyed by the 'news' cited here (first item), not even touching on the atrocious paucity of seriousness, profound lack of engagement, and risk aversion revealed by the choice itself.

Gaaawlee, it's the internerd, har har. Them geeks are funny weirdos, not wanting to plop down on the couch and make like a potato. Why, those goofy folks are thinking, and it seems like they're working hard, and they're doing it for free??? Great balls o' fire, what's the world coming to?

Over the past week, I've probably spent 11 or more hours fooling around with various programs in order to convert a video file and a text file into a series of files suitable for burning into a DVD that will play on a standalone player with selectable subtitles. This will not make me any money. This will not make me any friends. This will not advance my career. This will not impress anyone I know or love. No one will understand how challenging it was or how many dead ends I explored before I got the steps of the process (I hope, I hope!) in order and operating.

At the same time, it wasn't 11 hours wasted watching TeeVee (although the tube was probably running in the background for at least half of the time). It didn't keep me out of the 70-degree sunshine blessing us in the middle of December. It didn't keep me from doing laundry, vacuuming, scrubbing the stove, paying bills, or cooking a few meals. It didn't cost me a dime.

As a matter of fact, I had fun. I tested a half dozen things and figured out where problems lie. I'm further along the production curve than I was a week ago -- more creative self-production, even, if I feel like it sometime. I communicated with a number of people I'll never meet. If what I figured out last night works (it's running at home while I'm at the office now), I'll share it with people I'll never meet -- potentially contributing to strangers' happiness and ability to accomplish tasks around the globe, or maybe ultimately read by no one, anywhere.

Maybe in three weeks someone else will come up with some tool to do what I've done with much effort and using all the ingenuity I can muster after, as noted, a long day at work. Many long days at work. I myself, if this works, will be able to explain how to do it in five minutes. But I've figured out how to do it myself. If not all by myself, all on my own. People who don't get why that's a buzz don't understand much about life, what makes it fun, what builds its meaning.

I feel sorry for people who see no value in engaging the world and mastering even a tiny piece of it this way.

Let's rev this baby back up

Give 'em an inch, and...

A British-listed mining company, the first to invest in bankrupt Zimbabwe since the political crisis began, was ordered off its valuable diamond claim yesterday.

... a.k.a., the usual.

Most hilarious comment: "I don't believe Zimbabwe would allow illegal seizure of claims without due process." I hope Andrew Cranswick's a comedian, because he sure has no business being the CEO of African Consolidated Resources plc. Must be a misprint.

ObPileOn

Me, not the link, which goes to (one of) the original speculator(s) as to the peanuttiness of last year's Dim Dem candidate for the Presidency.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

"My point wasn’t that Kerry’s performance at Yale proved that he was intellectually inferior to Bush. My point was that there was absolutely no reason to believe that Kerry was an intellectual giant. Intellectual giants leave footprints indicating as much. Bill Clinton, for instance, didn’t receive four D’s during his freshman year at Georgetown and this was in spite of coming from Nowhere, Arkansas, where[as] Kerry had attended a series of the country’s (and Switzerland’s) finest prep schools."

(my emphasis)

You know, there is something about this that is just so despicable that I can hardly stand it. It's not the grades, obviously, although to be perfectly frank, as someone who never had any trouble in any school or any class on any subject if I may be so immodest -- despite, like Prez #42, growing up in the benighted South -- I will admit to feeling some contempt for four frickin' Ds in a year (semester?). But the constant deception and dismissal of skeptics while skating and embellishing a reputation he knows he doesn't deserve ... and if he didn't personally & publicly pontificate on his own mental prowess compared to M. George, he certainly did with interviewers in private and never discounted the "nuanced" assertions of others ... it's almost pathological.

As much as I never liked anything about TeRAYza, she never seemed to lack brains -- lack of sense, yes, but not fundamental brainpower. I wonder if she's content with the bargain she's ended up with, now. I'd hate to be a servant in that house.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a rich and powerful person who wants a boytoy around, but a pretentious, inept, and mildly cursed Lurch of a boytoy? Not exactly the deal of the day.

Surrounding yourself with leaders

Found the linked post above via Carnival of the Capitalists, and it got me thinking. Not only is this more-or-less how things seem to work on this new team here at my new job -- with a soupcon more of classic leadership provided by our fearless semi-leader -- but I'm also slightly surprised to find that I think I might like it much better than being, myself, In Charge.

However, I think Strange Brand does miss the boat on a few key elements. Maybe it's just because I don't like it when I don't know who's in charge, having been burned far too many times in my last two jobs on things I thought I was doing only to find out I just wasted two weeks (or months) of my life working on something that someone else takes away, or has handed to them. Not because I was doing a poor job, or at least I've never been given that explanation. Just because lines of authority and/or communication have never been clarified and some arbitrary decision gets made at some level where they may not even have known I'd already done the legwork, or some "manager" decides an effort needs a "team" but the personalities and politics of that team mean someone else is going to make all of the decisions ... unless I wanted to choose that battle, which of course I never (well, hardly ever) did.

So that's a long digression to say that I may still be reacting to those experiences as opposed to the reality of the situation here, which I'm still sussing out after just two months, anyway. But, to the extent that it seems vestigially true here, I'll sum up my difference of opinion with the author of the linked piece by saying that the distinction between leader and led is a false dichotomy, in at least two ways off the top of my head:

(1) Any successful organization has a division of labor. If the putative leader of the overall thing does not defer to the, for example, technical leadership of the legal guy, or the financial guy, or the supply guy, when the questions at hand are in their areas of expertise, the putative leader will be very sorry when he's in court, out of business, or doesn't have any paper for the copy machine. So, the mixed-bag-o-leaders the author holds out as a unique solution isn't, very.

(2) I also don't buy this description, at all:

There are a lot of talented people who need to be supervised, and there are a lot of people who get a thrill out of micromanaging.

Supervision isn't the same thing as management, and management isn't the same thing as micromanaging. At. All.

At the first project, we had three 'bosses'. The first one was a nuclear-strike manager. Very hands-off until she felt like making command, and I do mean command, decisions. That was the first time I ever had stuff yanked out from under me to the total disregard of whatever I may (or, toward the end, may not) have put into the work already. We actually formed a little support group to go out for coffee and whatever to boost ourselves back up after some of her blitzkrieg 'management' incidents.

The second was laissez-faire to the point of a truly invisible hand. We splintered away from supporting each other until we moved offices and had a nice little suite to compare notes more easily, and although it was much kinder and gentler I will say the work surely suffered through the total absence of management.

The third (after a 3 or 4 month interregnum vacillating between micromanagement and no management) was the classic micromanager nightmare: Totally did not trust anyone to be able to do any aspect of their jobs, despite the fact that we had been doing ours for 5-7 years and she had been doing hers for 20 minutes. I don't want to dwell on her because she was such a terrible, terrible boss.

Nor will I get into the bosses at the second project, since there was actual malice and deliberate damage inflicted there, which is a problem of an entirely different order.

But I think these few examples trivially demonstrate that his dichotomy is not a useful one. Yes, there are a few people who like to dictate, command, and control. They don't make good bosses and they make terrible managers. There are also people who like to be strictly organized by others and only accountable within the scope of whether or not they followed orders. They can only be classified as high-maintenance drones, who make pretty lousy employees in my experience.

Normal Earth People like flexibility in how we do our jobs. Whatever our own level of work, we like peers to consult when we have functional or tactical questions, higher-level folks to consult when we have operational or strategic questions, lower-level folks to help us get things done. Sometimes we like to make decisions, sometimes we like to build consensus, and sometimes we like someone else to put their neck(s) out. We like to know when it's our call and when it's not, even if we don't always like the division of decision-making. Personally, I like to know who's accountable for task X, so that if it's me I'll sweat the details but if it's not I'll save my sweat for something else. I love sharing credit with folks who've shared the work, or even subordinates who haven't done much but could benefit from the confidence or status boost. Just don't ask me to do the work for someone who won't acknowledge my contribution.

Jah rule

An intriguing profile on the WSJ's free site:

He was outraged when a liberal white radio personality called Condi Rice an "Aunt Jemima" for embracing Republicanism, and even angrier when top black Democrats stood silent. He founded ABE--American Black Elephants--a group that so far has 10 members. At a recent L.A. County Republican Party meeting, Mr. Hayes erupted into "God Bless America" after watching slides from a soldier who'd just returned from Iraq. Less emotive Republicans, though startled, joined right in.

A Rastafarian Republican who tells urban layabouts to stop blaming racism for blacks killing blacks with guns and drugs? That's a California miracle.

Priming the pump

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I just don't get this question. What's the significance of being in the fire? Should you pick a book you love, or hate? Or just one that would be likely to have been pitched onto the burning pile? Seriously, I get no handle here at all. So, I pick Lad, A Dog, for no reason at all.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yeah, this one is kind of creepy, too. A crush. I don't think so.

The last book you bought is:

Well, the most recent books coming into the house include Life with Jeeves, a collection of PG Wodehouse; The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe; The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart; and Vamps and Tramps, Camille Paglia's next-to-latest. All of those, however, I picked up at the surplus shed, i.e. dump.

The last book you read:

The last book I completed was a book-on-tape, Year of Wonders. I don't remember the author, but it was really gripping. Death, plague, and so forth. It was all pretty awful but so well written and read that I couldn't stop listening to it. In retrospect, I do wish I had -- I don't need that junk in my head.

What are you currently reading?

Two books, plus the four aforementioned, but really nothing. A stack of Wall Street Journals. WSJ crossword puzzles.

I really need to get more sleep on a more regular basis.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

Oh, I don't know. Some big fat ones, I suppose -- history. The Bible. Maybe that one on How the Scots invented the modern world (could be some good tips in there). Some kind of mechanical/agricultural how-to guide. A hollowed-out book with a firearm and some ammo inside instead, heh heh. And something very, very cheerful -- deep thoughts but cheerful - PG Wodehouse springs to mind.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

No one.

Bottom of the barrel

Liberals officially out of ideas.

Chris Matthews just had a panel segment comparing Hilary "Empowered" Clinton to Laura "Housewife" Bush. The consensus was that Laura would not run for President. Quelle shocque. That's some uber-insight right there.

Along the way, Matthews made sure to disparage Laura not only for her lack of ambition to be President, but her lack of forethought and preparation in not having acquired the credentials to run for President.


ObSpeechless: ...

Strong but true

I'm supposed to be working, but since I got word on Thursday that I wasn't getting any adjustment to my position here -- which means not only that the people I knew were ticked off that I escaped their previous plot (a restructuring bait-and-switch that would have made my life a living hell, and not for any piddly 40-hour-work-week, either) but that the internal subdivision in which I'd found temporary respite doesn't mind sticking it to me, also.

Good thing I'm already looking for my next job.

Anyway, after Thursday's Gud Nooze, I found out on Friday (a day I'd previously hoped to take off, so I could, er, take off), that a significant deadline that had been shifted out to the second week of December had at some point been reshifted back to the Monday after Thanksgiving. No, no one thought to mention that to me. Meaning, if I'm to have any hope of getting out of this godforsaken town over the horriday, at all, then I'm working this Sunday. Today. Terrific.

I should write a book on this organization's suicide. "How to Gut Morale and Inspire Loathing".

I'm not exactly motivated to work, obviously, but all the less so since that whole sideshow (I care so little it's not exactly front and center in my life) is running alongside my personal life going to utter ruin over the last month -- long time coming, but not the kind of thing for which a person can really be braced. It profoundly sucks regardless.

Anyway, to put all that in perspective, here's a little commentary from the Iraq front of the warn terra:

"Here's an alternative headline the [NY] Times' staff might have considered: 'Showing Their Resolve, Rebels Terrorize Families, Target Children, Disembowel Women, Behead the Elderly.'"

Don't bother with the NYT article, but do follow the Times of London reality check link.

Jobs, real jobs, and peons

Via Lileks, I discover a startling picture of abysmal obliviousness:

"But I don't know that she's ever had a real job -- I mean, since she's been grown up."

So someone who's disingenuously introduced in this same piece as a 'philanthropist' (read: a person who considers it the highest of public works to bestow fat chunks o' money-with-arbitrary-strings as ostentatiously as possible) gratuitously insults someone else who the entire universe must know worked as a librarian (and as many also know, a teacher), for not having had the "validation" of her "bigger" "life experience". Small beans, you may say. Laura was just marking time, perhaps. But she worked on her own for ten years, which is more than a lot of wimmen of that generation can say. I expect it's more than the Heinz widow, not counting being hired by relatives. And since she doesn't consider motherhood a real job, why should we count her nepotism experiences, either?

My mom got her master's and worked as a teacher before she got married. My grandmom worked practically all her life as the county librarian. Lots of ladies of many generations have done the same, with or without the advanced degree. That was a real job. Raising six (or three, or any) kids is a real job. And jeezo louise-o, putting up with Kerry's Madame, who btw turns in her taxes using only the name of her dead husband, must be more than a job-and-a-half.

Here are a few more choice statements:

"I mention my age because I find people in this country — women, not men, of course — women are so troubled by their age."

Of course. We are but little girls who await the sophisticated guidance of someone (a true cosmopolitan, apparently, neither in nor of this country) who married a rich guy who kicked the bucket. (Men, otoh [and I note that the byline appears to be a man], aren't foolish like that -- I wonder if she batted her eyes or gave a sidelong glance or patented hair-flip as she inserted the caveat?) Yeah, seeing her cavort around the country demonstrating her unconcern and inconsideration for Heinz's replacement (who so clearly enjoys spending her money but hardly seems to be able to remember her name, either) is a real buzz, quite the ideal toward which we backwoods bumpkins can only aspire.

Well, Americans who pause [at a potential First Lady who was born abroad, to two foreign parents] probably don't know history very well, because we are all from somewhere. [...] And to fear that or disparage that I don't think is American. And I never hear that out there.

Yeeeeeessss. Now I see. Any feeling that she might be condescending, might fail to serve our country and its interests, might in fact be someone we would all grow increasingly to detest for her supreme arrogance in being Not From Around Here but criticizing those who are for not being American in their attitudes ... why, we're simply wrong. Perhaps we've never had real jobs, or are not yet grown up.

I mean, wow. The layers of buffering that must surround this woman on a constant, daily, omnipresent basis have to be a mile thick. Does no one ever tell her she's a horse's ass? Because she is the purest example of offensive moronosity I've run across in, well, forever.

"...[M]y experience is a little bit bigger — because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.

Bottom line: What TuhRAYzuh's life has been is what life is about. What anyone else has been/done/seen/shared is self-evidently lesser. Why, how could anyone take that as a criticism? That's just a "silly" idea some peasants might have -- none, of course, that she's ever heard (of course, the peasants with whom She interacts probably number no more than the single digits) -- and could only come from our failure to understand how "big" her heart and mind are, and anyone who persists can "shove it", because they're not being truly American.


Thanks for clearing things up, there, honey. Now run along, I'm sure you have servants to command and minions to make scatter.

ObSheesh: Sheesh.