The ‘Gray Lady’ nickname of the NYT implies the kind of conservatism and caution that’s appropriate to a journal of record. But in what is, as far as I know, a newspaper first, today’s NYT brings the astrology column onto the Op-Ed page, providing horoscopes for the Democratic Presidential hopefuls.

I’m bemused by this. If the implied view is that astrology is so patently silly that no-one would take it seriously, isn’t this rather a juvenile trick to play on Erin Sullivan, noted as the author of Saturn in Transit and the forthcoming Astrology and Psychology of Midlife and Aging., who appears to have contributed her column in all seriousness? If the implied view is anything other than that astrology is too silly to be taken seriously, isn’t this rather insulting to every reader of the NYT who has even a high school level of scientific literacy? No doubt there is some ironic postmodern stance that is appropriate here, but I can’t quite locate it.

In today’s SMH, Gerard Henderson repeats all the standard claims about swinging voters, for example

Elections in Australia are invariably decided by people who in most other democracies would not vote, or who, if they choose to back a minor party or independent, would not express a preference for either of the major parties. This is due to the unique federal electoral system, which comprises compulsory and preferential voting – introduced in 1924 and 1918 respectively.

In other words, it is the essentially uncommitted and/or uninterested – living in marginal seats – who decide election outcomes in Australia … Since the end of the Pacific War, the Government has changed hands only five times – 1949 (Menzies), 1972 (Gough Whitlam), 1975 (Fraser), 1983 (Hawke) and 1996 (Howard). The outcome in each case was determined by the change in allegiance of essentially non-political voters, along with a proportion of newly enrolled electors.

There’s a trivial sense in which all of this true, just as the outcome of a cricket match [at least if it isn’t drawn] is always decided by the last ball. And in a constituency-based system with only two parties capable of winning seats, it’s broadly speaking correct that only marginal seats count – however, swings are more variable these days so more seats are marginal.

Apart from that, however, Henderson’s analysis is (to the extent that it was ever valid), totally out of date. The implied picture is one in which most voters, and all who take a serious interest in politics, are committed supporters of one major party or the other, in roughly equal numbers. Hence, the remainder, the ‘swingers’ determine the outcome.

This was always a problematic viewpoint. As Henderson’s own family experience during the Split (he has an interesting piece on this in the latest Sydney Institute newsletter) people can and do make permanent changes in their political allegiance. A conversion of this kind is far more valuable to the gaining party than winning a swinging voter for a single election.

More importantly, the number of “rusted-on” major party voters has declined drastically. Both sides have recorded votes of 35 per cent or below in their worst recent outings, which puts an absolute upper bound of 70 per cent voters committed to one party or the other. But even within this group, there are almost certainly some who changed over time, or voted on a specific issues. For example, Keating lost lots of hardcore Labor voters in the 1996 election, but he undoubtedly gained some “cafe latte” votes with his cultural agenda – many of these will not be so attracted to Latham, while the former hardcore may return.

Henderson is particularly unsatisfactory when it comes to the minor parties. He notes that most Green preferences go to Labor, but there’s a big difference between getting a primary vote and getting 70 per cent of second preferences. To be precise, on these numbers the average Green vote is worth 0.4 first preferences votes to Labor.

More importantly, since minor party preferences are now crucial, what basis does Henderson have for equating minor party voters with “the uncommitted or uninterested”? The decision to vote for a minor party means that the voter has rejected both of the obvious choices, which normally implies some degree of interest in the process. It’s hard to argue that Democrat and Green voters as a group are less interested in politics than major party voters, whatever you might think of the results of their interest. Even One Nation voters, who are on average closer to Henderson’s idea of the apolitical swinger, were expressing a (negative) interest in political ‘business as usual’ when they abandoned their traditional allegiances to vote for Pauline.

Thanks to reader Jim Norton, who points to this letter to the Oz on DDT from parasitologist Dr Alan Lymbery, demolishing the nonsense peddled by Christopher Pearson (it’s on Keneth Miles site). My take on Pearson’s nonsense was here, with links to earlier pieces. I’m pleased to see it matches Lymbery almost point for point.

One fact Lymbery adds, of which I was not aware, is that Rachel Carson, who has been much maligned in the debate on this topic, explicitly noted, in relation to the growth of resistance arising from indiscriminate use of DDT

No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored . . . The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse

Lymbery concludes

Malaria is responsible for enormous suffering and death. The facts are readily available in the scientific literature. To blame a reduction in DDT usage for the death of 10-30 million people from malaria is not just simple-minded, it is demonstrably wrong. To blame a mythical, monolithic entity called the environmental lobby for the total reduction in DDT usage is not just paranoid, it is also demonstrably wrong. Your article is not only poor journalism, it is an insult to the people who work for the control of parasitic diseases that afflict developing nations.

The same could be said of the dozens of junk science sites in the blogosphere that have reproduced the same nonsense, usually with no attempt to check original sources.

This piece by William Safire alleges that the CIA was engaged in terrorist activity in Russia in the early 1980s, sabotaging a gas pipeline funded by Britain and Germany, and allegedly leading to its explosion.

Of course, Safire doesn’t use the word terrorism and regards the whole thing as a major victory in the Cold War, but we don’t need to use our imagination to see how the US would regard the same thing done in reverse – blowing up pipelines is one of the main terrorist activities of the Iraqi insurgents.

The sabotage was allegedly done by supplying defective computer chips of a type that were under embargo because of their supposed military use. I get the impression Safire thinks that this makes the deal OK and that it’s different from blowing up the pipeline with dynamite (but I can’t be sure of this).

Finally, I should add that the story sounds phony to me.

For the first time in many weeks, the Monday Message Board is on time and under budget. Please post your thoughts on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please).

The slow-motion renationalisation of British Rail takes one more step.

Among the famous quotes attributed to JM Keynes, one that stands out is

When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir

I am reminded of this whenever I read discussions of what was in the minds of those who pushed us into the Iraq war. It’s regularly stated that the behavior of Saddam Hussein in obstructing weapons inspections led analysts to assume he had something to hide. I shared this view until late 2002, and was reinforced in this by the behavior of Bush and Blair, including the various dossiers they published and the push for UN Resolution 1441 – they acted like police who had their suspect dead to rights, and only needed a search warrant.

In November and December 2002, however, the facts changed. First Saddam announced that he would readmit UN inspectors, without restrictions on the sites to be inspected and that he would declare all his weapons. Then he proceeded to do just that, claiming to have no weapons at all. Meanwhile Bush and Blair suddenly started hedging about the nature of the knowledge they had declared. The same pattern proceeded right up to the outbreak of war. Time after time, some condition would be declared crucial by Bush and Blair (overflights, interviews with Iraqi scientists, out-of-country interviews with Iraqi scientists), the Iraqi government would agree after a brief delay and then new condition would be raised. As quite a few observers noted, the behavior was the same as that of the Austro-Hungarian government with respect to Serbia in 1914.

Given the change in facts, any unbiased observer would have concluded, correctly that the balance of probabilities favored the hypotheses Bush and Blair were bluffing and that there were no weapons of mass destruction in usable form. I drew precisely this conclusion at the time, though with the mistaken corollary that Blair would stick to his word and refuse to go to war once Saddam called their bluff.

If those facts weren’t enough, it was obvious that, if Saddam did have weapons he would use them in the early days of war, preferably before Coalition troops had entered the country. Thus, it was apparent by the first days of the war that (with probability close to 1), there were no usable weapons. The fact that the contrary belief prevailed for so long is testament to the power of faith in the face of experience.

I’m still working through the O’Brien/O’Brian (Patrick and Flann) section of the bookshelf. I missed the movie of Master and Commander, as I was out of town too long, and will have to watch it on DVD, which will definitely be a second-best option for this kind of film. I did see Japanese Story, a film with a rather slight plot, but an excellent performance from Toni Collette.

Via David Appell, I came across this marvellous quote from Freeman Dyson

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?” I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.” He said, “I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

It came to mind when I read this story in the NYT with the introductory claim What really stimulates economic growth is whether you believe in an afterlife — especially hell.The report is of some estimations done by Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro (the story notes that the two are married) published in American Sociological Review.

Barro is probably the biggest name in the field of cross-country growth regressions (a field in which I’ve also dabbled), and I’m sure he’s aware that thousands of these regressions have been run and that, with very limited exceptions, results that particular factors are conducive to growth have proved highly fragile. I haven’t read the paper, so for all I know, the results have been checked for robustness in every possible way. But my eyebrows went up when I saw this para

Oddly enough, the research also showed that at a certain point, increases in church, mosque and synagogue attendance tended to depress economic growth. Mr. Barro, a renowned economist, and Ms. McCleary, a lecturer in Harvard’s government department, theorized that larger attendance figures could mean that religious institutions were using up a disproportionate share of resources.

What this means is that at least two parameters have been used in fitting growth to religiosity and that the two have opposite signs – most likely it’s some sort of quadratic. In my experience, there’s always at least one arbitrary choice made in the pretesting of these models (for example once you have a quadratic, the scaling of variables becomes critical). That gives three free parameters, if not more.

I’m not John von Neumann, but with two parameters I can fit a dromedary and with three I can do a Bactrian camel.

I just got the latest issue of Scientific American, and noted with interest the Table of Contents, in which the Skeptic column promised an evolutionary explanation of the mutiny on the Bounty. I vaguely expected the usual stuff about alpha and beta males or somesuch, but I found that the ev psych boffins have come up with a startling new discovery. Young men like having sex. At this point the mathematics and biochemistry get a bit complicated for me (oxytocin is in there somewhere), but apparently this has something to do with the survival of the species.

Even more startling, though, is the fact that

Although Bligh preceded Charles Darwin by nearly a century,

he managed to anticipate this discovery. Who would have thought that a former governor of New South Wales (and not a successful one) would share with EO Wilson and Stephen Pinker the honour of founding evolutionary psychology? In Bligh’s words

I can only conjecture that they have Idealy assured themselves of a more happy life among the Otaheitians than they could possibly have in England, which joined to some Female connections has most likely been the leading cause of the whole business.

Delivery times are somewhat strange here in the Antipodes, and I thought perhaps I had an advance copy of the April edition, but the cover says February.