QE4.

From The Economist, on today's Federal Reserve actions (QE4?):

"While we wait to observe the impact of the policy, we can nonetheless appreciate the pragmatism and intellectual flexibility of the FOMC. Though behind the curve for much of the recovery, it has evolved relatively quickly over the past year in response to changing data and a changing academic debate. Perhaps it will evolve a bit more if conditions demand it."

... and from Brad DeLong, making the matter slightly clearer:

"THE FEDERAL RESERVE: THREE YEARS LATE--BUT THEY DID IT!!"

Regarding Word Shortcuts on the Mac ...

I'm a fairly heavy user of Office for Mac, and "Outline View" in particular.  For structuring a Table of Contents, it's essential.  One nice tool is the ability to promote or demote particular levels of the outline without taking your hands off the keyboard.  Because I can never remember the shortcuts to do so myself, I'm putting them here for my (and everyone else's) benefit.

Demote:     Tab.
Promote:    Shift+Tab.
Body Text:  Shift+Cmd+N.

Standing, Blogging, and Prop 8.

From time to time I post on other people's blogs.  I used to believe blog comments were a one-way conversation with the blogger.  That's not really why I do so any more -- the reason now is that, while there's something interesting on the blogger's site, I generally want to read what their other readers think of a particular point -- the comment threads can become Condorcet juries.  Some blogs are especially useful for that purpose.  One is the Volokh Conspiracy.

From "Supreme Court Grants Prop 8, DOMA Cases"
Orin Kerr, The Volokh Conspiracy
available at http://tinyurl.com/c9nt497

I posted a message over there on Friday to Orin Kerr, who is an expert on 4th Amendment case law regarding the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  The specific post concerns standing to defend California's Proposition 8.  The nice part was that twenty-two other comments on the message helped me take my own thinking on the subject a couple of more steps down the road, so to speak.

The issue being discussed, standing in the context of the Prop. 8 case, is a big deal for lawyers, but its importance to the public at large is questionable.  For instance,  Margaret Warner of the PBS Newshour referred to it as the "so-called" standing question on Friday's broadcast.  I tend to think the standing question is important, but that the issue will probably prove to be merely interesting rather than determinative.

Inscription on the wall of the Supreme Court Building
from Marbury v. Madison.

I think we as Americans believe courts have the inherent power to hear constitutional challenges of this type, which I think is the pillar of truth at the core of Marbury v. Madison (1803), 5 U.S. 137.  That inherent power cannot be fairly exercised without advocates for either side in the courtroom.  Indeed, if the Prop. 8 advocates are barred from the room, the constitutional question would, ultimately, be a de facto decision by the executive branch, not the judiciary.

We as Americans have more or less accepted that the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions will be the courts.  Executive and legislative interference with the court's ability to do so tends to be considered game-playing by the courts, and the Supreme Court appoints counsel to make such "orphan" arguments about once per term. The Prop. 8 case may thus become something of a natural experiment concerning the inherent power of the courts to hear disputes despite efforts by the executive and legislative branches to deprive them of the ability to do so, which should prove interesting to civil procedure scholars, if not ultimately proving important in deciding the case.

Where Newspapers Are Headed ...

The Economist took at look at the newspaper industry this week.  They touched on their article from 2006, which noted the dire future of the industry (a prediction that has come true). However, their evaluation is that the future looks less grim six years on, mostly due to the advent of paywalls.

"News Adventures"
The Economist, December 8, 2012
available at http://tinyurl.com/az8vcfv

The unusual feature of newspapers, like most media, is that they have been counter-majoritarian in the past. An editor would undertake a campaign that was unpopular, and change the minds of his readers -- often if not always to the betterment of the community.  Businesspeople took note -- a successful but unpopular corporation could use the same vehicle to burnish its reputation through a media campaign -- or, better yet, avoid that problem entirely through careful advertising over time.  This created an economic link between local business and the paper, which had significant consequences.

The close connection between local businesses and a newspaper built on advertising meant many small towns had an essentially conservative institution that nonetheless valued ideas and the importance of the 1st Amendment.  The small town newspaper could therefore be an important bulwark against insularity and parochialism across the United States.

The new economic model, though, is different; it is based on subscriptions, not advertising.  The newspaper must now cater to its readers to a greater degree, and potentially their prejudices.  The Economist points to the future of newspapers as being similar to the future of radio, in a somewhat unconcerned fashion.

It is understating the matter to suggest that there are merely "critics" of the changes to radio.

Of course the counter-majoritarian feature of media in general has not gone away; the reasons businesses need to reach customers have not changed, merely the vehicle has (Google or Facebook, instead of the New York Times). However, there is a greatly diminished local element to such technologies -- one of the cast of characters in a small town, the  newspaper editor, has no analogue for a web site.

This has happened in other industries -- the local banker has been replaced with a Director of Business Development dispatched from the city, and a nurse-practicioner working at a distant HMO's facility substitutes for the local GP. The services (banking, health care, advertising) are perhaps provided more economically, but the open question is whether the community is diminished when its most powerful, insightful, and respected members, the banker, the editor and the doctor, are subjected to new economic pressures from unexpected directions. The radio model, thus, should be cause for concern for newspapers -- it may be more a poisoned chalice rather than a magical elixir.

Sonoma County vs. Odessa, Texas.

I was thinking this morning about a Press Democrat article from February of this year, which discussed high school athletes who received scholarships from Sonoma County.  The striking element of the story was the number of female student-athletes receiving scholarships to play college soccer.  Fifteen (15) seniors signed letters of intent to play women's soccer at the college level.  By way of contrast, there was only one Division I football scholarship offered, and that was to attend an FCS school, UC Davis.

"High School Girls Soccer Reigns on National Signing Day"
 Howard Senzell, Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, February 1, 2012
Available at http://tinyurl.com/bx3vxwg 

In Sonoma County, the importance of women's soccer is almost a given for the County's 488,116 residents, so this outcome isn't considered too unusual.  However, if football and soccer scholarships were evenly distributed across the country, you'd expect Sonoma County to generate seven (7) D1 football scholarship players every year, but only 3-4 women's soccer scholarship players.

Sonoma County's lack of D1 football players isn't necessarily that surprising -- the county is relatively remote, and Northern California's football culture is more concentrated in Sacramento and the East Bay.  While there are good athletes here, this isn't a place like San Diego, with great athletes across the board.  Scouts thus come to the area infrequently, so a D1 player on the bubble is less likely to be noticed here, even when that caliber of athlete exists.

The reason the football data is interesting, though, is because it disproves the "San Diego" model.  Sonoma County isn't like Contra Costa County, where the success of Danville and San Ramon in soccer is complemented by the football prowess of De La Salle. If that rule were true, you'd expect almost no women's soccer scholarship athletes to come out of Sonoma County.

Expected County Population1 D1 Football Scholarship.

Instead, of course, the truth is the opposite.  There is something quite unusual about Sonoma County and women's soccer, statistically speaking.  I suspect this is the most uneven distribution in this direction between the two sports in the United States.  To put the distribution in perspective: 

• A normal county that produces only a single D1 football player is about 117,124 people, or somewhere between the size of Humboldt County (134,623) and Mendocino County (87,553), the 35th and 38th largest counties in California.

Expected County Population

15 Women's Soccer Scholarships.

• However, a normal city that produces 15 women's soccer scholarships is about 2,017,830 people, or somewhere between the size of Houston (2,145,146) and Philadelphia (1,536,471), the fourth and fifth largest cities in the U.S.

Of course, you'd kind of expect there to be a women's soccer magnet somewhere.  You know, the equivalent of, say, Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Or, perhaps, Odessa, Texas.

If there is, it looks like it might very well be Sonoma County, California.

Romeo Crennel is Good at His Job.

Romeo Crennel is good at his job.  This statement flies in the face of conventional wisdom -- Crennel is considered something of a failure by that standard.  He's only had one winning season in ~5 seasons as a head coach, and his team this year is just 2-10.

I say this after watching Merril Hoge on ESPN comment on the Chiefs win this past weekend, and the murder-suicide that took place the day before. Merril argued that

• There is no skill set that prepares an individual to deal with that kind of a situation;
• That the Chiefs were inspiring in their performance; and 
• That Romeo Crennel displayed amazing leadership qualities.  

I like Merril, and I am impressed with Romeo Crennel's handling of the situation, but I don't think the analysis is right.

First, I can think of ten different skill sets that are all designed to deal with the horrible situation that occurred at the Chiefs' facility -- cop, firefighter, EMT, doc, shrink, nurse, lawyer, judge, priest, and rabbi, just to start. These kinds of things are routine for those jobs. Each one of those individuals has a skill set designed to deal with a specific part of that situation. So Merril's wrong on that one.

The second is whether the win is inspiring.  NFL players are professional athletes, but they are really professional entertainers, like stage actors.  The byword of those fields has always been "the show must go on."  They did their jobs as entertainers -- commendable, but something more than that?

Finally, on whether this is a display of leadership by Crennel -- Crennel did his job, and did it well. It is common to overlook that a coach like Crennel is the operational manager of an organization worth approximately a billion dollars.  That organization's value is based on holding eight events (games) at their stadium each year.  Romeo made sure the game took place, and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

Part of being a coach is being a leader, but Hoge heralding Crennel as a great leader misses the schwerpunkt.  The important question, the tough point, is why was Crennel able to lead? Why is Romeo Crennel good at his job?

I can't tell much, from thousands of miles away, about Romeo Crennel's personality, or the way he interacts with people.  But I'm probably right about the following point -- Romeo Crennel has the capacity to form intimate relationships -- that he is able and capable of being affectionate towards people. Such a capacity is the single best predictor of success in every aspect of life. I think it's the reason Jovan Belcher sought him out, the reason his players gravitated to him in a crisis, and the reason the Chiefs were able to go to work on Sunday.  Romeo Crennel has a "skill set," for lack of a better word, to deal with such situations -- and that skill set, not winning, is the sine qua non of coaching.

Conversations with History: Elizabeth Warren.

For anyone interested in what happens next in American politics, watching this video makes an awful lot of sense. Elizabeth Warren's path through life has been anything but conventional, and was pretty much the last thing I'd ever expect for a law professor from Harvard. The interview is long (an hour) but the first ten minutes are probably the most important.

Elizabeth Warren is already a prominent figure at this point in her career, but isn't as overtly political as she perhaps is today.  The talk is very candid, and she goes into her experiences growing up, her somewhat roundabout education, her early days as a solo law practitioner, and how she began her research into bankruptcy law. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this interview is that it was conducted before the start of the Lesser Depression, and how prescient her views are given what's taken place since.

Regarding the interviewer, the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley has been conducting this series for more than 25 years, and Harry Kreisler does a great job of moderating the interviews.  I've watched a set, and they're quite something.  All are available on YouTube, from Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im to Howard Zinn.