So, you think you were admitted to MIT?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not so fast, kids, not so fast:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent an e-mail to prospective students, erroneously telling them in a line at the bottom that they had been admitted…

The mix-up happened when MIT combined two separate lists for an electronic mailing about financial aid. At the bottom was a footer that said “You are on this list because you are admitted to MIT,” according to Peterson. By merging the lists in a program called MailChimp, admissions officers mistakenly imported the footer from a list of students accepted under early admissions.

Hey, it’s not as though MIT should have any special knowledge about how to work computers or computer programs, is it?

My favorite sentence in the article is this one:

Such mistakes are occurring more often across the country as university and college admissions offices rely more on electronic communication with prospective students.

Computers can do wonderful things. But their very ease can sometimes make it easy to slip up. I am reminded of the fact that in all my recent encounters with doctors and the health care system, everyone has groaned and made a face when discussing the new requirement to keep electronic records. Not to mince words about it, everyone basically thinks it’s not only a royal pain in the butt but also a total crock of BS. Garbage in, garbage out, and very time-consuming garbage at that.

[Hat tip: College Insurrection.]

The mammogram study and the NY Times

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article in the NY Times about a new mammogram study that’s gotten a lot of attention.

And here’s the study itself.

Compare and contrast.

The first sentence of the Times article:

One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.

From the study’s abstract:

Objective: To compare breast cancer incidence and mortality up to 25 years in women aged 40-59 who did or did not undergo mammography screening…

Conclusion: Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care when adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is freely available.

There were many more details, of course. Both articles are long, especially the study. But the Times article never even mentions the age limitations of the study, and that first sentence in the Times implies that women of all ages were part of the study, which they were not. The study explicitly dealt only with woman between the ages of 40 and 59.

I wonder what the Times’ agenda might be here, although never underestimate the possibility of mere shoddy and slipshod reporting.

The study itself offers some evidence that annual mammograms in those age groups don’t reduce mortality significantly as compared to regular breast examination (not as compared to nothing). There are the usual problems with methodology in large epidemiological studies of this type, and there are other studies of the subject that agree and disagree. But this one should certainly add to the amount of information that we have, as well as the amount of confusion.

Why does age matter so much? Breast cancer is not a unitary disease. There are many types, and the disease in younger women often works somewhat differently than in older women. Let’s not forget, by the way, that 1 in 100 cases of breast cancer occur in men.

Jonathan Turley, principled liberal

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley is a liberal star, a constitutional law professor with impeccable credentials:

Turley holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School where he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. He is the youngest person to receive an academic chair in the school’s history. He runs the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS), the Environmental Law Clinic, and the Environmental Legislation Project.

Prior to joining the George Washington University, he was one of the youngest professors to be offered tenure at the Tulane University Law School.

But Turley has an interesting quirk that makes him unusual in another way: he thinks for himself. Sometimes he agrees with the liberal line and sometimes not. Turley has been relentless lately on the topic of Obama’s power overreach (see this, for example). He’s one of the very few liberals these days who is not so focused on content (the end justifies the means because of the goals) that he ignores process (wait a minute – tyranny is dangerous even if I happen to agree with the goals).

As such, I salute him. It’s sad that perspective and courage like his has become so rare, but it has.

Here is Turley on Wednesday, telling it like it is:

I have grown used to…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the fact that I’m now living in the Arctic.

It’s been that kind of winter. It’s snowing now—snowing along most of the eastern part of the country, I think. We here in the north actually have gotten less snow than some more southerly places, but we’ve still gotten plenty.

Plus, it’s been cold, bitter cold. I now think of 15 degrees during the day, and zero or below zero at night, as the new normal. It’s not so bad, really, if you bundle up. Long underwear if I’m going to be out for some time, but even if I dispense with that there’s the obligatory down coat, earmuffs, down mittens, several scarves, boots, and a face mask if the wind has decided to blow.

The funny thing is that it’s not bad. Granted, I don’t have a lot of auto commuting to do; I do hate driving in the snow. But we haven’t (knock wood) had too many ice storms this winter, and ice storms are the thing I fear the most, in part because of the driving and in part because of the power outages. There’s something about a real winter, an authentic, old-fashioned, snow-cover-and-freezing-all-the-time winter, that’s invigorating and even beautiful in New England.

Not that I won’t welcome spring.

The truth, the whole truth: the Obamacare Plan

The New Neo Posted on by

Reading the administration’s announcements about how many people have signed up for Obamacare so far*, I realize that not only do I not trust the figures to tell the whole story, but I don’t trust them to have any relation to reality at all. Whether they are based on something (how many people have placed a plan in their carts without paying?) or on nothing except the wishful thinking and imagination of those issuing them, these statistics have become so much blah blah blah. Pure propaganda.

And that is true of just about everything this administration says, as Victor Davis Hanson points out. It’s not that previous administrations have always told the truth—they most certainly have not—but the frequency, scope, and nature of this administration’s lies have caused not only the opposition to distrust what he and his spokespeople say but have even caused Obama’s followers and supporters to distrust what he and his spokespeople say. The difference between the first and the second group of distrusters is that, to a far greater extent, his supporters accept, defend, cover up, and even in some cases admire his lies for their strategic value.

Obama has discovered something about the American people, which is that most are not following things that closely or thoughtfully. And so if you are audacious enough (and your name is Barack Obama) you can fool most of the people most of the time. And your supporters will defend you for it, as long as you’re not lying to them about some pet issue of theirs.

This is not a discovery that bodes well for the country. It’s one of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. With the press behind you and the wind at your back, you can do just about anything.

[*NOTE: Something about the whole process reminds me of the Soviets’ Five Year Plans and especially the propaganda surrounding the announcements of their success.

Fiddling around on YouTube I found the following Soviet propaganda animation. It’s from 1939 and the graphics are really wonderfully done. I think it demonstrates very well the sentiments that were played on, both the hatred and the hope:

The Kulaks were “eliminated.” Quite a verb, that.]

Conservative proposals

The New Neo Posted on by

I just noticed a trend today: my two most recent posts are about conservative proposals for change. “Conservative” and “change” is not an oxymoron, either, because (unlike the idea some people have of conservatism) conservatism does not just represent stagnancy, or going back to something that once was. It does represent certain principles, many of which are rooted in the past, but there’s nothing against new solutions based on those principles.

All too often, though, the Republican Party (and conservation, which is not the same thing) has allowed itself to be defined as staying in the past, a sort of ossified fuddy-duddyism that doesn’t meet people’s needs. If conservatism is ever going to appeal to enough people to matter, it must change that perception and somehow override the liberal press to get out a message that will resonate with people.

There is no question in my mind that conservatism has such a message, and that it is a better message (although a more complex one) than that provided by today’s liberalism or the left. Conservatives had better learn how to formulate it, operationalize it with specifics, and deliver it in a way that people can hear and understand, or they will be marginalized. I’m convinced it’s possible to get the word out, but to do it conservatives can’t focus on side issues. Right now it’s the economic issues (including Obamacare) that are in people’s faces and for which people want solutions. The hype is that Republicans and/or conservatives don’t offer them. We need to stop complaining that the press is obscuring the real conservative message (although it is) and concentrate on making that message louder and clearer.

Of course, that’s hardly the only thing that needs doing. But it’s a very urgent thing.

The 2017 project

The New Neo Posted on by

This looks like a very interesting website. I haven’t had time to peruse it, but just a glance indicates it’s worth studying.

One of the features is a proposal for a conservative alternative to Obamacare. Again, I haven’t read it so I can’t say what I think of it, but I plan to. Here’s a summary:

It would solve the three core problems that called out for real reform even before the Democrats passed Obamacare: getting more people insured; dealing with the problem of preexisting conditions; and lowering costs. In providing politically attractive and substantively sound solutions to these three core concerns, it would justify bringing an end to Obamacare, and thus would pave the way for full repeal.

Just as important as what our proposal would do is what it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t force anyone to buy insurance. It wouldn’t auto-enroll anyone in any plan. It wouldn’t reduce the tax break for employer-based insurance (aside from closing the tax loophole at the high end). It wouldn’t cost anywhere near the $2 trillion over a decade that Obamacare would cost. It wouldn’t undermine religious liberty. It would allow Americans to keep their current plan if they like it.

I think that last horse (the final sentence of the quote) has already left the barn, though.

A kinder, gentler-sounding conservatism?

The New Neo Posted on by

Conservative “social justice,” from Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute.

What do you think?

And extra credit if, before you read the article (and without Googling it), you can identify the source of this quote:

The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity. We have here a human as well as an economic problem…The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon [welfare] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out [welfare] in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.

This White House photo…

The New Neo Posted on by

…posted by Michelle Obama of the First Family’s two dogs comes under the heading of “what if the Bushes had put this up on their website?” You know the answer, of course:

michelledogs

A person’s reaction to the photo depends not only on the obvious question of whether the person supports the Obamas or not. You might ask “whatever was Michelle thinking of?” But perhaps she was merely thinking that most people love dogs and might consider the prospect of their sitting at the dinner table wearing jewelry to be just plain cute. I yield to no one in my disapproval of Obama’s politics as well as much of his character, but somehow I just can’t get into a “Michelle is Marie Antoinette” uproar about these here doggies.

Now, when I had a dog, I not only never let him sit at the dinner table (he was kind of small for that, anyway), but I never even fed him scraps from the table—until after his dinner and ours were finished, and the scraps were placed in his regular bowl—for fear of encouraging begging. I remember back in the late 70s when I went to France it was not unusual to see dogs seated at dinner tables there even in restaurants. When I returned to France more recently, that quaint custom seems to have gone out of style. But perhaps Michelle is intent on reviving it.

Here is the less refined version:

dogspoker

Robert Frost on idealists

The New Neo Posted on by

The following is from a speech Robert Frost gave at Bread Loaf on July 4, 1960 (from the book Robert Frost: A Living Voice, edited by Reginald L. Cook), where he’s describing an encounter with a Boston cab driver:

Now in Boston I said to a fellow who was driving me: “You in college?” He looked about like that—looked as if he was crowding in for an education. He said, “Yes.” I said, “What are you going to do?” He said, “There’s a question whether there’s anything to do in a time like this.” I said, “Oh-oh” sounds like Boston, you know. He said, “But Emerson says that no man should leave the world unless it’s the better for his having been in it.” He said, “But on the other hand, Voltaire says: Mind your own garden. Mind your own business.” I said, “That leaves you hung up somewhere.” And he said, “Yes.” And then I said, “Of course. Never give a child a choice.”

Later in the same lecture:

Now, I have a poem I’ll read you about a typical idealist: he’s unscrupulous. Some people don’t get that. I don’t want to carry that too far. Let me tell you [a story] of it…I had a clipping sent to me from a magazine that we won’t name in which my name was used as having sent a box of apples—sprayed apples, sprayed with chemicals—and that they were rotten when they got to my friend, and so my friend threw them in the compost heap and it ruined the compost heap that year—the chemicals in it. See, it was an organic [farming] magazine. There were three lies in that. I never sprayed an apple in my life. I never boxed an apple in my life. And I never gave any apples to anybody. Three lies in one. That was all just in the interests of organic farming. Three lies. That’s what I call unscrupulous. It’s idealistic, though, wanting to do that.