First off, on a serious note
- Most of you who know me or read me know my blog is primarily driven
with some current events, some data wonkery, but mostly levity and
humor. Obviously after the horrific tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut at
Sandy Hook Elementary there is no way to even attempt any humor but I
feel before proceeding with my usual gluttony of snark I wanted express
my prayers and condolences to those families who lost loved ones in
the massacre.
Working in public health I tend to view mass shootings through the lense of an Epidemiologist or Sociologist. Which is to say studying the interaction of several factors that combine to create this tragedy and treat it as a public health problem. What these crimes represent is the lethal intersection of two things: people with serious, untreated mental illness who have easy availability to lethal firearms. I could write a thesis but here are just a few quick thoughts:
- We can call the shooter crazy because nobody in their right mind wakes up one day and says casually 'Hmm.. you know what I feel like doing today? Killing a lot small kids.' What separates Adam Lanza and the 27 other previous mass shooters from say a mafia hitman is that that the mafioso kills with a specific intent and purpose. Plus that purpose is rational (bump off competition, kill a informant, etc.). Plus the mob had a code, no killing of women, children, or innocents. Not saying it's morally right, just saying it's rational. These no mass shooters on the other hand had no rational basis for what they did.
- We have a mental health problem in this country because we lack a sufficient mental healthcare system in this country. Our choice is to create an extensive mental health safety net through expanding Medicaid and mandating private insurance coverage for it. Yes that involves higher taxes and premiums, but the alternative is the societal cost of lives lost in mass shootings like the Sandy Hook massacre by lunatics where a mental health safety net could have intervened and prevented them from harming others.
- We need to destigmatize mental illness. Just as someone can't help having the Genetic diseases or Cancer, neither can someone help having Bi-Polar depression or personality disorder. Why view mental healthcare different from regular healthcare?
- People collectively in what I call the American gun culture (sellers, manufacturers, and owners) need to understand we can no longer pretend that the erosion of gun control over the past 20 years which facilitated easy accessibility to powerful firearms without any accountability where they end up did not play any role in this tragedy. The gun industry has pushed for laws which make getting high powered firearms and ammunition easier than getting Advil Cold and Sinus. They also wanted repeal of the Assault Weapon Ban, they got it, but an unintended consequence is the mentally deranged and criminals having access to semi-automatic weapons to commit violence. The gun industry bears some responsibility in how those weapons are used.
- To all the armchair commandos stating if we simply arm all Americans with concealed weapons in public we can stop mass shootings. To a non-gun owner that sounds like a extraordinarily idiotic idea.
- The biggest threat to responsible gun owners may end up being the Nat'l Rifle Association (NRA) itself. For the past 30 years it has turned into a conspiracy factory ginning up fear and paranoia among gun owners for the profit and gain of gun manufacturers. It's also been the most powerful lobbying presence in Congress.
- However post Sandy Hook feels like a paradigm shift or tipping point because the NRA will be going up against a much more powerful group: The Mom lobby. There's going to be a conversation about gun violence after this incident so the gun industry would be wise to choose their words and pick their battles very carefully, because now might be a good time to compromise on a few things. Finally to quote Dennis Miller: 'Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong'
It Is Now Officially Impossible To Have An Affair - Remember when they said technology would make life less complicated and more simpler? Try telling that to Gen. David Petraeus who had to resign as head of the CIA over an affair which was discovered through what else? e-mail. When our head spy, the man in charge of keeping the nation's secrets can't even keep his own affair secret we can now pronounce 'in the 21st Century it is impossible to have an affair so let's not even try'. It also doesn't help when your lover (who is not your wife) threatens another woman (who also not your wife) because she's perceived as getting too friendly. Who would've thought a participant in an affair would lack self-control?
FUN BONUS FACT - All things considered, Petraeus was doing a good job as CIA director and some thought he should not have to resign simply due to a sex scandal. If you want to know how uptight Americans are about sex, there is a legendary story among people in the intelligence community about the time the Soviets tried to blackmail a French Ambassador in Berlin, Germany during the Cold War. Presented with photos of himself in an compromising position during an affair, the French Ambassador was told to either spill sensitive information to the KGB or risk having the photos released to the French media and his wife. Without missing a beat, the Ambassador replies 'Well then I'll take one of these, and two of those. And send this one to the media, it has my good side.'
When Bad 'Reply All' Things Happens To Good People - Microsoft announced for its new e-mail package Outlook it will allow the option to disable the 'Reply All' button. This is welcome news to anyone in an office because nothing pisses off co-workers than getting 20 unwanted responses to an mass e-mail because people hit 'Reply All' instead of just 'Reply' to the original sender. It's also good news for an New York University (NYU) student who replying to an standard administration e-mail (RE:Opting Out of Your 1098T') about tax forms accidentally hit Reply All...as in all 39,979 NYU students.
In what became known around University circles as 'The Replyallcalypse' many of the other recipients decided to do what any college student with ample free time, beer, and keyboard would do..be a dick and hit Reply All to give their two cents. Replies varied from Nicolas Cage film clips, asking to borrow everything from movies, to pencils, to weed and finally ending in death threats to whomever Replied All again. It got so out of hand that NYU had to shut down their e-mail server until it could delete the Reply All responses and disable it from being used mass e-mails.
Now that Fantasy Football is over, it's time for an new fantasy league - I'd like to submit my idea for the Fantasy Celebrity Arrest League. A fun game adults and children can play and unlike football will last all year long! It works like this, you and your friends pick a starter celebrity like you would for various football positions from various categories of entertainment who are most likely to get arrested or do something stupid. When they do you earn points and whoever has the most points at the end of the year wins...absolutely nothing...except the glory of being able to predict human behavior. So here's how my fantasy celebrity roster would look like:
Actress: Amanda Bynes (back-up Lindsay Lohan)
Actor: Gary Busey (back-up Charlie Sheen)
Comedian: Katt Williams (back-up Andy Dick)
Singer: Chris Brown (back-up LeAnn Rimes)
Athlete: Ryan Leaf (back-up Pacman Jones)
Reality Star: Steve O from JackAss, (any cast member from Jersey Shore)
Team category: Real Housewives Of Orange County
Don't Look Now, But Nazism May Be Making a Comeback In Europe - Over in Greece which has been on the verge of economic collapse since financial crisis they recently had an election and a political party called the Golden Dawn won 7% of the popular vote. That normally would not be cause for concern except it would be the American equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi Party winning 7% of Congressional seats. As documented in GQ by Chris Heath, when not running for election The Golden Dawn members in their free time enjoy the ethnic cleansing of various neighborhoods in Greek cities by burning down the homes of non-Greek immigrants and intimidating them to flee. Which is much like infamous Nazi 'brown shirts' or Sturmabteiling in who did the same to Jewish neighborhoods in pre-war Germany.
And here are some other disturbing similarities to Pre-War Germany:
- Golden Dawn attracts many young members where Greeks under 25 where unemployment is over 50%
- Their flag bears an eerie resemblance to the Nazi Schwastica
- Their growth feeds off the economic upheaval in Greece
- They like to scapegoat Greece's immigrant community for all the country's troubles
- Greece is not exactly known for political stability creating opportunity for fringe groups to seize power. If other parts of Europe go downhill economically like Greece this new strain of facism could spread like a virus.
Let's hope those who do not learn from history will not necessarily be able to repeat it
In Case You Did Not Already Hate that brat from 'Two And a Half Men' - August T. Jones thelucky little bastard child star chosen to
play the half part in 'Two and Half Men' recently on Christian web
video called his own show filth and implored people not to watch
because it would corrupt their mind. Of course later after a talk from
Uncle 'Charlie' about what happens when you bite the hand that feeds
you, Jones quickly walked back his comments. Considering he makes
$250,000 an episode to be the straight men to Ashton Kutcher's comedic
genius (written with obvious sarcastic sneer) August Jones just showed
why increasing taxes on Millionaires next year is politically
expedient.
When Economists Have Too Much Time On Their Hands - A senior analyst from PNC Bank from actually sat down and calculated what it would cost to buy the items from 'The 12 Days of Christmas'. His estimated tally was $104,000 most of which could be attributed to the '5 Golden Rings' given the skyrocketing cost of gold. Other academics were quick to point out flaws in his study such as the '9 dancers dancing', is that regular folk dancers, or strippers? For the '8 Maids a Milking', is that regular cow milking or 8 prostitutes dressed a German farm girl to do some 'milking' (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And would the '6 Swans a Swimming' include someone to clean up all the poop? And what in the hell exactly is a 'partridge in a pear tree?'
This really goes to show that in statistical modeling of price estimation, unexplained variance is a real bitch.
How The Roadrunner Explains the Obama's Re-Election - People of a certain age might remember the the Roadrunner cartoons from the Looney Tunes shows. This was where Wile E. Coyote was always trying to nab the swift, elusive Roadrunner for dinner and no matter how complicated or elaborate, the Roadrunner always managed to elude the traps erected for him and leaving it to blow up in the face of Wile and also helps explains the Obama victory over Romney.
Historically speaking it is very hard to unseat a sitting President running for re-election. Only three times in the last century has an once-elected President running for re-election (so not counting Ford) been denied a second term (Hoover '36, Carter '80, Bush Sr. '92). What all three had in common was a dismal Nat'l economy so it made sense to think Romney (Wiley E. Coyote) lying in wait with that giant boulder would roll right over an unsuspecting Obama (The Roadrunner). But instead election night Obama simply let the boulder wrap right around and crash back into Romney and his Billionaire backers. Here's why:
1.Money Can't Buy Elections - Republicans thought Citizens United court case which overturned campaign finance reform would allow them to use unlimited money mainly from Billionaires and corporations to buy themselves Congress and the White House. However, as blogger Gregg Easterbrook noted a candidate with good ideas and organization is far more potent than a blank check.
beep, beep
2.A little too cocky - Much like Coyote thinks his traps are foolproof, Karl Rove thought carpet bombing the airwaves in swing states would destroy Obama. Instead Rove failed to understand that in the era of the DVR, most people will fast-forward right through them because no one really watches TV in real time anymore. And those without DVR's simply drown out the commercials since they've become so bad they're almost self-parodies. Instead Obama put their money into grassroots organization and Get Out The Vote efforts which were the difference maker in Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.
beep, beep
3.Voter suppression blew up in their face - At the state level especially the swing ones like Pennsylvania and Florida, GOP passed voter ID laws thinking it would curtail minorities from voting because of flawed thinking that minorities were less likely to have driver's licenses. Instead this had the opposite effect, as it motivated minorities even more to vote, evidenced by people who waited 8 hours in minority areas of Miami essentially giving the middle finger to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Meanwhile the voting bloc the GOP needed to vote, the elderly often had difficulty voting because many do not drive and no longer have licenses to show as ID.
beep, beep
4.Data Analysts outperformed political consultants - While Romney relied on expensive political consultants to craft negative TV advertising with outlandish themes. Obama had two secret weapons, data mining where you cull through millions and millions of consumer records to find trends and predictive modeling where you use those trends to design advertising to achieve maximum effect. The result is when Obama did do TV advertising it was brutally effective, like the one showing Romney singing 'America the Beautiful' embarrassingly offkey as a backdrop while facts about his record at Bain Capital which shipped tons of jobs overseas and hid money in the Caribbean scroll across the screen. Romney never recovered from that one
beep, beep
Keep your eye on the fiscal cliff negotiations and disregard what the pundits say on who won, who lost meme. Because most likely it will end with Obama telling House Republicans afterward...'beep, beep motherfuckers!'
Working in public health I tend to view mass shootings through the lense of an Epidemiologist or Sociologist. Which is to say studying the interaction of several factors that combine to create this tragedy and treat it as a public health problem. What these crimes represent is the lethal intersection of two things: people with serious, untreated mental illness who have easy availability to lethal firearms. I could write a thesis but here are just a few quick thoughts:
- We can call the shooter crazy because nobody in their right mind wakes up one day and says casually 'Hmm.. you know what I feel like doing today? Killing a lot small kids.' What separates Adam Lanza and the 27 other previous mass shooters from say a mafia hitman is that that the mafioso kills with a specific intent and purpose. Plus that purpose is rational (bump off competition, kill a informant, etc.). Plus the mob had a code, no killing of women, children, or innocents. Not saying it's morally right, just saying it's rational. These no mass shooters on the other hand had no rational basis for what they did.
- We have a mental health problem in this country because we lack a sufficient mental healthcare system in this country. Our choice is to create an extensive mental health safety net through expanding Medicaid and mandating private insurance coverage for it. Yes that involves higher taxes and premiums, but the alternative is the societal cost of lives lost in mass shootings like the Sandy Hook massacre by lunatics where a mental health safety net could have intervened and prevented them from harming others.
- We need to destigmatize mental illness. Just as someone can't help having the Genetic diseases or Cancer, neither can someone help having Bi-Polar depression or personality disorder. Why view mental healthcare different from regular healthcare?
- People collectively in what I call the American gun culture (sellers, manufacturers, and owners) need to understand we can no longer pretend that the erosion of gun control over the past 20 years which facilitated easy accessibility to powerful firearms without any accountability where they end up did not play any role in this tragedy. The gun industry has pushed for laws which make getting high powered firearms and ammunition easier than getting Advil Cold and Sinus. They also wanted repeal of the Assault Weapon Ban, they got it, but an unintended consequence is the mentally deranged and criminals having access to semi-automatic weapons to commit violence. The gun industry bears some responsibility in how those weapons are used.
- To all the armchair commandos stating if we simply arm all Americans with concealed weapons in public we can stop mass shootings. To a non-gun owner that sounds like a extraordinarily idiotic idea.
- The biggest threat to responsible gun owners may end up being the Nat'l Rifle Association (NRA) itself. For the past 30 years it has turned into a conspiracy factory ginning up fear and paranoia among gun owners for the profit and gain of gun manufacturers. It's also been the most powerful lobbying presence in Congress.
- However post Sandy Hook feels like a paradigm shift or tipping point because the NRA will be going up against a much more powerful group: The Mom lobby. There's going to be a conversation about gun violence after this incident so the gun industry would be wise to choose their words and pick their battles very carefully, because now might be a good time to compromise on a few things. Finally to quote Dennis Miller: 'Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong'
It Is Now Officially Impossible To Have An Affair - Remember when they said technology would make life less complicated and more simpler? Try telling that to Gen. David Petraeus who had to resign as head of the CIA over an affair which was discovered through what else? e-mail. When our head spy, the man in charge of keeping the nation's secrets can't even keep his own affair secret we can now pronounce 'in the 21st Century it is impossible to have an affair so let's not even try'. It also doesn't help when your lover (who is not your wife) threatens another woman (who also not your wife) because she's perceived as getting too friendly. Who would've thought a participant in an affair would lack self-control?
(Petraeus Flowchart if you need it)
FUN BONUS FACT - All things considered, Petraeus was doing a good job as CIA director and some thought he should not have to resign simply due to a sex scandal. If you want to know how uptight Americans are about sex, there is a legendary story among people in the intelligence community about the time the Soviets tried to blackmail a French Ambassador in Berlin, Germany during the Cold War. Presented with photos of himself in an compromising position during an affair, the French Ambassador was told to either spill sensitive information to the KGB or risk having the photos released to the French media and his wife. Without missing a beat, the Ambassador replies 'Well then I'll take one of these, and two of those. And send this one to the media, it has my good side.'
When Bad 'Reply All' Things Happens To Good People - Microsoft announced for its new e-mail package Outlook it will allow the option to disable the 'Reply All' button. This is welcome news to anyone in an office because nothing pisses off co-workers than getting 20 unwanted responses to an mass e-mail because people hit 'Reply All' instead of just 'Reply' to the original sender. It's also good news for an New York University (NYU) student who replying to an standard administration e-mail (RE:Opting Out of Your 1098T') about tax forms accidentally hit Reply All...as in all 39,979 NYU students.
In what became known around University circles as 'The Replyallcalypse' many of the other recipients decided to do what any college student with ample free time, beer, and keyboard would do..be a dick and hit Reply All to give their two cents. Replies varied from Nicolas Cage film clips, asking to borrow everything from movies, to pencils, to weed and finally ending in death threats to whomever Replied All again. It got so out of hand that NYU had to shut down their e-mail server until it could delete the Reply All responses and disable it from being used mass e-mails.
Now that Fantasy Football is over, it's time for an new fantasy league - I'd like to submit my idea for the Fantasy Celebrity Arrest League. A fun game adults and children can play and unlike football will last all year long! It works like this, you and your friends pick a starter celebrity like you would for various football positions from various categories of entertainment who are most likely to get arrested or do something stupid. When they do you earn points and whoever has the most points at the end of the year wins...absolutely nothing...except the glory of being able to predict human behavior. So here's how my fantasy celebrity roster would look like:
Actress: Amanda Bynes (back-up Lindsay Lohan)
Actor: Gary Busey (back-up Charlie Sheen)
Comedian: Katt Williams (back-up Andy Dick)
Singer: Chris Brown (back-up LeAnn Rimes)
Athlete: Ryan Leaf (back-up Pacman Jones)
Reality Star: Steve O from JackAss, (any cast member from Jersey Shore)
Team category: Real Housewives Of Orange County
Don't Look Now, But Nazism May Be Making a Comeback In Europe - Over in Greece which has been on the verge of economic collapse since financial crisis they recently had an election and a political party called the Golden Dawn won 7% of the popular vote. That normally would not be cause for concern except it would be the American equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi Party winning 7% of Congressional seats. As documented in GQ by Chris Heath, when not running for election The Golden Dawn members in their free time enjoy the ethnic cleansing of various neighborhoods in Greek cities by burning down the homes of non-Greek immigrants and intimidating them to flee. Which is much like infamous Nazi 'brown shirts' or Sturmabteiling in who did the same to Jewish neighborhoods in pre-war Germany.
And here are some other disturbing similarities to Pre-War Germany:
- Golden Dawn attracts many young members where Greeks under 25 where unemployment is over 50%
- Their flag bears an eerie resemblance to the Nazi Schwastica
- Their growth feeds off the economic upheaval in Greece
- They like to scapegoat Greece's immigrant community for all the country's troubles
- Greece is not exactly known for political stability creating opportunity for fringe groups to seize power. If other parts of Europe go downhill economically like Greece this new strain of facism could spread like a virus.
Let's hope those who do not learn from history will not necessarily be able to repeat it
In Case You Did Not Already Hate that brat from 'Two And a Half Men' - August T. Jones the
When Economists Have Too Much Time On Their Hands - A senior analyst from PNC Bank from actually sat down and calculated what it would cost to buy the items from 'The 12 Days of Christmas'. His estimated tally was $104,000 most of which could be attributed to the '5 Golden Rings' given the skyrocketing cost of gold. Other academics were quick to point out flaws in his study such as the '9 dancers dancing', is that regular folk dancers, or strippers? For the '8 Maids a Milking', is that regular cow milking or 8 prostitutes dressed a German farm girl to do some 'milking' (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And would the '6 Swans a Swimming' include someone to clean up all the poop? And what in the hell exactly is a 'partridge in a pear tree?'
This really goes to show that in statistical modeling of price estimation, unexplained variance is a real bitch.
How The Roadrunner Explains the Obama's Re-Election - People of a certain age might remember the the Roadrunner cartoons from the Looney Tunes shows. This was where Wile E. Coyote was always trying to nab the swift, elusive Roadrunner for dinner and no matter how complicated or elaborate, the Roadrunner always managed to elude the traps erected for him and leaving it to blow up in the face of Wile and also helps explains the Obama victory over Romney.
Historically speaking it is very hard to unseat a sitting President running for re-election. Only three times in the last century has an once-elected President running for re-election (so not counting Ford) been denied a second term (Hoover '36, Carter '80, Bush Sr. '92). What all three had in common was a dismal Nat'l economy so it made sense to think Romney (Wiley E. Coyote) lying in wait with that giant boulder would roll right over an unsuspecting Obama (The Roadrunner). But instead election night Obama simply let the boulder wrap right around and crash back into Romney and his Billionaire backers. Here's why:
1.Money Can't Buy Elections - Republicans thought Citizens United court case which overturned campaign finance reform would allow them to use unlimited money mainly from Billionaires and corporations to buy themselves Congress and the White House. However, as blogger Gregg Easterbrook noted a candidate with good ideas and organization is far more potent than a blank check.
beep, beep
2.A little too cocky - Much like Coyote thinks his traps are foolproof, Karl Rove thought carpet bombing the airwaves in swing states would destroy Obama. Instead Rove failed to understand that in the era of the DVR, most people will fast-forward right through them because no one really watches TV in real time anymore. And those without DVR's simply drown out the commercials since they've become so bad they're almost self-parodies. Instead Obama put their money into grassroots organization and Get Out The Vote efforts which were the difference maker in Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.
beep, beep
3.Voter suppression blew up in their face - At the state level especially the swing ones like Pennsylvania and Florida, GOP passed voter ID laws thinking it would curtail minorities from voting because of flawed thinking that minorities were less likely to have driver's licenses. Instead this had the opposite effect, as it motivated minorities even more to vote, evidenced by people who waited 8 hours in minority areas of Miami essentially giving the middle finger to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Meanwhile the voting bloc the GOP needed to vote, the elderly often had difficulty voting because many do not drive and no longer have licenses to show as ID.
beep, beep
4.Data Analysts outperformed political consultants - While Romney relied on expensive political consultants to craft negative TV advertising with outlandish themes. Obama had two secret weapons, data mining where you cull through millions and millions of consumer records to find trends and predictive modeling where you use those trends to design advertising to achieve maximum effect. The result is when Obama did do TV advertising it was brutally effective, like the one showing Romney singing 'America the Beautiful' embarrassingly offkey as a backdrop while facts about his record at Bain Capital which shipped tons of jobs overseas and hid money in the Caribbean scroll across the screen. Romney never recovered from that one
beep, beep
Keep your eye on the fiscal cliff negotiations and disregard what the pundits say on who won, who lost meme. Because most likely it will end with Obama telling House Republicans afterward...'beep, beep motherfuckers!'
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