The New York Times is a convenient source of this story Birth Control Rule Altered to Allay Religious Objections.

The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue.

Some of us have been wondering for a long time why Obama even tries to compromise.  He sets a very bad precedent.

At what point should you be allowed to shirk your responsibility that 90% of the society believes you should fulfill?  When the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”, is it OK to write laws specifically relieving some members of religious institutions from their responsibilities?

If you have a religious objection to something, shouldn’t you reimburse the government to compensate them for exempting you from your responsibilities to society.

War conscientious objectors either served in non-combat roles or alternative service or were sent to jail or fled to Canada.

Yes, I know.  These are all weak arguments.  There is no settling this disagreement by logic.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the story Senate Republicans will oppose Cordray again for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and 42 other GOP senators sent a letter Friday to Obama saying the consumer office has little accountability to Congress and wields too much regulatory authority. They said they will oppose any nominee, regardless of his or her party affiliation.

Well, it didn’t take long for the Republicans to prove that Harry Reid was a fool for going bipartisan with the Republicans over filibuster reform.  We may have to suffer through another two years of this foolishness before we get another chance to fix the filibuster.  Anybody want to place any bets as to whether Lucy  (The Republicans) will pull the football away again as Charlie Brown (Harry Reid) approaches to kick it?

Has Harry Reid never heard the fable You knew I was a rattlesnake when you picked me up.

    A young girl was trudging along a mountain path, trying to reach her grandmother’s house. It was bitter cold, and the wind cut like a knife. When she was within sight of her destination, she heard a rustle at her feet.

Looking down, she saw a snake. Before she could move, the snake spoke to her. He said, “I am about to die. It is too cold for me up here, and I am freezing. There is no food in these mountains, and I am starving. Please put me under your coat and take me with you.”

“No,” replied the girl. “I know your kind. You are a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you will bite me, and your bite is poisonous.”

“No, no,” said the snake. “If you help me, you will be my best friend. I will treat you differently.”

The little girl sat down on a rock for a moment to rest and think things over. She looked at the beautiful markings on the snake and had to admit that it was the most beautiful snake she had ever seen.

Suddenly, she said, “I believe you. I will save you. All living things deserve to be treated with kindness.”

The little girl reached over, put the snake gently under her coat and proceeded toward her grandmother’s house.

Within a moment, she felt a sharp pain in her side. The snake had bitten her.

“How could you do this to me?” she cried. “You promised that you would not bite me, and I trusted you!”

“You knew what I was when you picked me up,” hissed the snake as he slithered away.

Leaonard Pitts Jr. has written the piece Commentary: Beyonce, lip-synching and a sign of the times which almost comes close to my own opinion on this matter.

As in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, the pop chanteuse who, it was revealed last week, lip-synced her show-stopping performance of the national anthem at the inauguration, thereby causing earthquakes in diverse places, cats to mate with dogs, blood to rain from the sky and the earth to begin a slow spiral into the sun.

My own reaction is more along the line of my comment on the above post.

It is called entertainment.  So the real question is, “Were you entertained?”  If so, then you got what you came for.

I know this may be shocking to some, but magicians don’t really saw women in half.  Do you want your money back because you wanted to see a woman sawed in half and then put back together?

Would the singing performance be more real if Beyonce’ had just depended on real electronic amplification and transmission across the world by real television?

I suppose we ought to ask if her beauty is real or if she were wearing make-up.  Of course there is no surgical enhancement to any star’s beauty.  Dolly Parton is really built that way.

I do understand the issue, though.  I was a little disappointed to find out that a camera obscura was used to create the realistic paintings of the old and revered masters.  I think I have gotten over those initial feelings of disappointment.   At least they traced things with their own hands.  Or did they?  Could have been done by an apprentice.  Now I am really ruining your day.

Let me know if you like or are thoroughly disappointed in the video, Huge Bear Surprises Crew on EcoBubble Photo Shoot in BC . Thanks to RogerG for posting this link on his facebook page.

The New Yorker has an interesting book review, What Nate Silver Gets Wrong.

Can Nate Silver do no wrong? Between elections and baseball statistics, Silver has become America’s secular god of predictions. And now he has a best-seller, “The Signal and the Noise,” in which he discusses the challenges and science of prediction in a wide range of domains, covering politics, sports, earthquakes, epidemics, economics, and climate change. How does a predictor go about making accurate predictions? Why are certain types of predictions, like when earthquakes will hit, so difficult? For any lay reader wanting to know more about the statistics and the art of prediction, the book should be essential reading. Just about the only thing seriously wrong with the book lies in its core technical claim.

The review authors start to explain Bayesian statistics as follows:

A Bayesian approach is particularly useful when predicting outcome probabilities in cases where one has strong prior knowledge of a situation.

The review is interesting reading.  I could probably stand to read it again and pay careful attention to the examples.  Probability was never my strong suit.

The comments on the article also prove to be very interesting.  I chose to add my 2 cents worth in response to one comment.

“Unfortunately, the same guys got it all wrong in 2007 (The Financial Collapse)”

There is a much simpler explanation of why they got it wrong in 2007. The predictions about mortgage backed securities were based on historical data of traditional mortgages based on sound banking principles. When the demand for MBSs became too strong, the idea of mortgages based on sound banking principals was abandoned. The probability of failure for sound mortgages was used to predict the failure of unsound mortgages.

On top of that, the leverage was so high, that a small decline in real estate prices could wipe out the whole industry. In the historical data collected, leverage was never this high.

So the failure was to build a model based on a history that did not apply to the current situation and then think that model could cover the current situation.

I spent my career making software to simulate numerical models of integrated circuits.  Mine were not intended to be sophisticated in the statistical (probability) domain.  The sophistication, such as it was, was in the physics.  This experience has made me sensitive to trying to extend models into domains in which the model may no longer be appropriate.  As the technology in the semiconductor industry advanced over the 40 year lifetime of my career, effects that used to be negligible started to become dominant.  As a result, the physical effects include in the  models was constantly under revision.

January 30, 2013

I finally went back to look more deeply into the calculation that the woman getting a positive result on her breast cancer test had a 90% chance of the result being a false positive.

I put words into the equations for the factors that were being calculated to get a better understanding of the meaning of the factors in the equations.

( fraction of women who have breast cancer *
fraction of women who have cancer and get a positive result )
= number of women who get a positive result and actually have breast cancer
if all women who have breast cancer were tested.

( fraction of women who do not have breast cancer *
fraction of women who get a false positive )
= fraction of women who would get a false positive if all women who did
not have cancer were tested.

The flaw in the argument is that almost all women who have breast cancer get tested, and not all women who do not have breast cancer are tested. I bet a larger fraction of women who do have breast cancer get tested than those who don’t have breast cancer get tested. You don’t get tested unless there is some other indication that you might have breast cancer. The results of the calculation cannot be taken as correct until you get actual numbers to correct the flaw. The numbers may turn out to be right, but this explanation is no proof that they are.

Which goes back to my old maxim, if the results of a calculation are in wide variance from what your intuition tells you, then you had better double check to see which one is right. This is one reason why all good scientific programmers try to have an intuitive idea of what the result ought to be before they write a program to make the calculation. Either they do it by intuition (manual calculations) or some alternative mechanical way to make the calculation. How else can you test to see if you have made any mistakes in your program?

Email I received from Friends of Bernie Sanders

January 24, 2013
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

This country faces major crises in terms of the economy and unemployment, the deficit, global warming, health care, campaign finance reform, education and a crumbling infrastructure – to name a few. In my view, none of these problems will be effectively addressed so long as one senator can demand 60 votes to pass legislation. The rule changes adopted today are a step forward in making the operations of the Senate more efficient and expeditious. They are not enough.

Most Americans grew up believing that in America the majority rules. That is not the case in the Senate. For many years now, especially since President Obama has been in office, it has taken 60 votes to pass any significant piece of legislation. When Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the 1950s, he filed cloture to end a filibuster only once. Majority Leader Reid has filed cloture 390 times.

The Senate is not the House and the minority party must be treated with respect and given the opportunity to offer amendments and make their case in opposition. A minority must not, however, be allowed to permanently obstruct the wishes of the majority. That is not democracy. That is a perversion of democracy.

In my view, if a senator or a group of senators are strenuously opposed to legislation they have the right and duty to come to the floor and, for as long as they want, engage in a talking filibuster by explaining to the American people the reasons for their objection. They should not, however, continue to have the right to abuse arcane Senate rules to block a majority of senators from acting on behalf of the American people.

I created a petition to John Fischer, Mass Dept of Environmental Protection and Governor Deval Patrick which says:

“Do not lift the moratorium on incinerators in Massachusetts as long as there are far better alternatives to incineration.”

The people who run the SignOn petition web site have said, If you get 20 signatures on your petition, we’ll email it to at least 1,000 people in your area to help it grow (assuming of course that it’s consistent with MoveOn’s progressive values).

Will you sign this petition? Click here:

http://signon.org/sign/keep-the-incinerator – Pardon the misleading shortening of the URL.  SignOn truncated it just before the keyword.  It should have been  keep-the-incinerator-moratorium

After reading the story Barracuda Security Equipment Contains Hardcoded Backdoors, I immediately put these products on my s-t list.  My worry is how to remember that these products are on my list for as long as the problem exists.  I am afraid I might make a purchase after I have forgotten this story.

This is one reason to post this story on my blog and other pages that I have on the internet.  I hope this sticks in my mind.  Maybe yours, too.

Reader WayneP sent me a link to the item Nicholas Eberstadt: Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers.

A growing body of empirical evidence points to increasing dependency on state largess. The evidence documents as well a number of perverse and disturbing changes that this entitlement state is imposing on society.

I decided to do a little research on this item.  So far I have found The Big Lie About the “Entitlement State” .

Is the view that “entitlements”—government programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—“will bankrupt the country” a “sensible conclusion”? No. It’s scare-mongering of the “OH MYGOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” variety, completely unjustified by a sober look at data on government transfer payments between 1960 and 2010.

This second article is not a direct refutation of everything in the first article, far from it.  However it does delve a little deeper into the interpretation of raw numbers that might seem very scary if you leave out certain relevant context.

Obviously more research needs to be done to figure out which story is closer to reality, if in fact either story is anywhere near reality.

Do you ever wonder with the share of wealth and income migrating to the upper few percent in this country over the last 30 or more years, who are the real takers?  Well, at least who are the more successful takers?

How about the above for some undefined data taken out of context? Make of this what you will.

Here is an email I received from Elizabeth Warren on her view of the recent filibuster reform. I am glad to see that she realizes that this is but a first step in the process.

Steven, I’m disappointed by the filibuster reform deal we passed in the Senate last night. Since Election Day, hundreds of thousands of people all across the country have spoken out for big, bold rules changes to stop Senate gridlock. That’s not the bill we voted for in the Senate yesterday, and that’s why I’m really disappointed. But some change is better than no change at all. If my new colleagues can compromise to reduce the use of the filibuster, even just a little, then it’s a step forward. I’m new to the Senate, but I’m not naive. What happens if the new filibuster deal doesn’t work? What if the Republicans go straight back to the same playbook? Then we keep on fighting for more changes until we get it right. This vote shows that we need to remain vigilant, we need to work hard, and we need to stand strong for what we believe in. We got some change, and we’re not giving up. I want you to know that your participation made a difference. Without you — and thousands of other people — we’d have nothing and no hope for ending the gridlock. Now we have something, and we’re staying on high alert for what comes next. Thanks for being a part of this, Elizabeth

Daily Kos has the article Takeaways from the filibuster fight.  The author starts with the following:

Okay, before we decide once and for all whether this is a win or a loss, there are a few things I want out on the table. And the first point, appropriately enough, is that whenever you’re talking about the Senate, since the answer to any question about it is either “well, yes and no,” or, “it depends,” the answer to whether this is a win or a loss will be the same. Yes and no. And, it depends.

So, you know you are in for a long read before you find out.  To cut to the chase, I think the answer is that it was a fair start, but we have more work to do.