Cautious drug approval

None of this is news to me, but I think Steven Den Beste's Cautious drug approval piece gives a decent summary of why prescription drugs seem so expensive:

After the Thalidomide catastrophe, the FDA became notoriously cautious about approving new drugs. Thalidomide wasn't approved in the US (it was still in process at the time) and Thalidomide caused no deformed babies in the US. This reinforced the bureaucratic culture of caution at the FDA.

But the FDA is also inherently cautious, simply because of the situation they're in. If they approve a drug which ends up being dangerous, they will get roasted for it. But if they refuse to approve a safe drug, or if the approval process is extremely slow, they don't get roasted for all the people who suffer and die who could have been helped if the drug had been approved sooner. It's inherent in their situation that they will err on the side of caution because it's much riskier for the FDA bureaucrats to be too eager to approve a drug than to be too cautious about doing so. Whether that's good or bad for the rest of us is less clear.

The approval process is so long and so involved and requires such a mountain of data to be collected, that it is massively expensive. The total cost for development and approval can exceed $100 million per drug. And a lot of money can be consumed during the testing and approval for drugs which are ultimately rejected.

Pharmaceutical companies have to recoup that cost, and the money can only come from sales of drugs after approval. That's why drugs which are still under patent are so expensive compared to generics after patent expiration. Generics are priced based on a markup over manufacturing and distribution costs, whereas drugs under patent are priced to amortize the cost of development and regulatory approval, as well as to amortize the money spent on other drugs which were rejected.

The amortization premium paid by Americans is all the greater because most other nations in the world "free ride" on American drug development.

Love in the Time of No Time

In The Economics of On-Line Dating, Tyler Cowen cites a New York Times Magazine article, Love in the Time of No Time, that "is not full of economic reasoning though the interesting and salacious content may keep you reading." It does mention one bit of economic data though:

In the first half of 2003, Americans spent $214.3 million on personals and dating sites — almost triple what they spent in all of 2001. Online dating is the most lucrative form of legal paid online content.

I knew I should've started an on-line dating site...

After working through eight or nine pages of salacious details I reached this bit that amused me:

Online dates that lead to love — and they are legion — are a little like Tolstoy's happy families: for all their quirky particularity, they end up sounding strangely alike. There's Kellie Smith, 33, from outside Boston, an occupational therapist who whimsically clicked ''Love on AOL'' during her lunch break and found herself on Match.com, where she dashed off e-mail messages to several men who interested her. Michael DuGally, 35, a partner in a Massachusetts furniture manufacturing company, was her first online date; they met for lunch and never really parted. Last summer, the couple asked Match.com for a logo banner so they could be photographed with it on their wedding day.

I enjoyed Cowen's analysis:

The bottom line, however, is simple. On-line dating seems to serve (at least) two major constituencies. First, many people use it to marry or otherwise find a monogamous relationship. Match.com claims to have lost 140,000 members, by enabling those people to find partners. Second, many people use internet dating to find casual sex or serial partners. The article quotes a "Greg," who enjoys a first date with quickie sex at the end, and then offers the following remark: "I liked her, but not enough to merit fireworks. Given the seemingly endless selectoin, I get to be a little less forgiving."

Since I suspect that on-line dating is more effective than not, people will increasingly choose one category or the other. Those people who are willing and able to marry, will find their partners and marry. After some period of time, the stock of marriageable people will be smaller. (Note: I believe that some decent chunk of the unmarried are simply emotionally incapable of marrying, for whatever reason.) The remaining unmarried will then find relatively higher returns from the serial dating and casual sex routes. So the distribution of the number of sexual partners will become more bimodal over time.

Furthermore, the last two years have been an especially good time to marry through on-line dating. The new technology is being applied to a large stock of unmarried people who could marry and be happy, but who otherwise could not find the right partner. Yes, an ongoing flow will replenish the stock but arguably the stock has been at a peak in recent times, given that on-line dating has just taken off. So if you want to marry, hurry up and get on-line. If you are just looking for casual sex, well, you have a greater luxury of waiting and in fact your options will likely improve with time.

Get Your Flu Shot!

Even after reading Get Your Flu Shot!, I doubt I will — proving its point:

We do not respond to risks rationally. We are scared of Ebola, pesticides, nuclear radiation and terrorists but the flu? Who cares about the flu? You should. In an average year, the flu kills almost as many people as die in auto accidents (36,000 for the flu, 42, 815 for highway accidents in 2002) and this year experts expect some 50-70 thousand flu deaths. True, those over 65 years of age and older are most at risk but thousands of younger people die from the flu every year. A flu shot reduces your chances of death by 50 percent. (Here is more flu info from the CDC.)

The Burden of Carrying a Lethal Weapon

I stumbled across this story, by a guy named Jess Lebow, about his trip to Thailand when he was 13, and what he bought with the money burning a hole in his pocket there (since the exchange rate was so favorable):

That's when I saw it: the samurai sword that I had always wanted. Actually, there were thousands of them. This merchant had two different sizes — long and short. The longer ones (which I now know were katana) were black and the shorter ones (wakizashi) were red. The blades were made of polished, sharpened metal, but the sheathes were made of wood. Colored straw had been wrapped around the handle and glued to various parts of the sheath to add a little ornamentation.

Not exactly quality construction.

Still, it didn't matter. I had to have one. So I began my haggling routine, purchased a black-sheathed katana with the last of my money, and returned to find my mother.

And she was livid.

How were we going to get a full-sized samurai sword (she used this term, too) through the airport and back home? They were going to stop us, she said, and maybe even put us in jail. Airport security wasn't exactly what it is today, but hijackings and bombings were prominent in the public eye.

Taking a martial weapon on a plane was frowned upon.

Still, I somehow convinced her that everything would be fine, but as a compromise I had to agree to surrender the sword if we were hassled. She was skeptical, but we were running behind, and she didn't want to argue. She shoved the tape recorder she'd bought as a gift for my brother into my open suitcase as I repacked.

To make matters worse, the sword in its sheath was too long to fit. I had to pull it out of its sheath to get it packed, but I did get it in. Pushing the underwear and sweatpants down as I closed the zipper, I heard a tremendous rip.

The tip had punched through the side of the suitcase.

Now my mother was even more pissed, and we were late for our flight. Nothing will push my mother over the edge faster than being late for an airplane. In a fit of what I can only call simple brilliant ingenuity, my mother came up with an engineering feat that rivals the likes of MacGyver or even the A-Team. Diving into a restaurant across the street, she came out with a wine bottle cork. Jamming it on the tip of my sword, she shoved the blade deep within the same suitcase and smashed it closed. No rip, no pop, no protruding weapon tip, and we were off.

So, of course, we got stopped at the airport. The gate agent X-rayed our bags and stopped us before we finished checking in. Back then they had to ask your permission to open your bags (ah, the good old days), and we told them they could.

They went right for the bag with the sword in it. A pair of armed guards appeared from out of nowhere, standing behind the gate agent who was searching the bag. They carried machine guns on straps over their shoulders. One actually held the handle of his gun -- ready to lift and shoot at hijackers or thirteen-year-old samurai wannabes -- with one hand as he casually ate an apple with the other.

My mother glared down at me, and I withered. Her words of warning rang through head. ". . . maybe even go to jail." Then a more sickening thought pushed that one aside.

These guys might take my sword.

Not that. Anything but that.

The gate agent began piling my stuff on the stand next to him. Out came my swimming suit, my running shoes, the miniature pirate ship, a pair of stop watches, and the samurai sword with its exposed blade and wine cork on the tip.

Time seemed to slow down for me then. The gate agent lifted the sword into the air -- a warrior about to strike me down. He was going to take it. I knew it. We were going to go to jail. And when we got out, I was going to be grounded for a least a month.

Probably more.

The gate agent plunged his hand deeper into the suitcase and pulled out the tape recorder. Plopping the naked blade down on top of my clothing he held out his other hand.

What's this?"

"A-a gift," my mother stammered. "A tape recorder."

"Make it play."

She took it and pressed the button, but nothing happened. It had worked when she bought it. I'd heard it myself. But now either the batteries were dead or the cheap-o cassette player was simply broken. Whatever the case, they confiscated the tape recorder, thinking it could be a bomb.

Then they let us go — after they neatly packed my sword back inside the suitcase.

I got on the plane with a smug look on my face. My mother was quite embarrassed that it had been her purchase and not mine that had gotten us stopped, and she was probably at least a little unnerved that the gate agent seemed to sense no danger from a 3-foot-long samurai sword.

I guess the cork put him at ease.

Deadly Ebola Virus Kills 18 in Northwest Congo

The black magic is working. Deadly Ebola Virus Kills 18 in Northwest Congo:

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has killed 18 people in northwestern Congo Republic, where the disease killed 120 earlier this year, state television said.
[...]
Officials believe the latest outbreak, first reported earlier this month, started after a group of hunters ate a dead boar they found in the forest.

Scientists think the previous Ebola outbreak in the region, known as Cuvette-Ouest, was caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat. Bushmeat is a staple among forest communities and a delicacy in many cities.

Many locals, however, believe occult forces are behind the spread of the disease. They have recently blamed Red Cross workers for conjuring up the virus through black magic.

During the previous outbreak, villagers stoned and beat to death four teachers accused of casting a spell to cause the disease.

Root from Peru Holds Hope for Dieters, Diabetics

Peru is home to quite a few interesting crops. Root from Peru Holds Hope for Dieters, Diabetics:

Peru, the land that gave the world potatoes, is home to yacon, a tasty root that scientists say is good for the gut, potentially safeguards against cancer, helps absorption of calcium and vitamins and can lessen the blood sugar peaks from eating sweet food that are a problem for diabetics.
[...]
Yacon, which is native to an Andean region stretching from Venezuela to northern Argentina, has a crunchy texture like a water chestnut and is refreshingly sweet and juicy. Left in the sun, its sweetness intensifies, and it can be eaten as a fruit, consumed in drinks, syrups, cakes or pickles or in stir-fries.

Though packed with sugar, its principal appeal to the health conscious lies in the fact that the sugar in question is mainly oligofructose, which cannot be absorbed by the body.
[...]
In addition, oligofructose promotes beneficial bacteria in the colon.
[...]
Yacon — the root of a tall, leafy plant with tiny yellow sunflowers that Inca "chasquis," or messengers, pulled from the pathside to slake their thirst — is thought to have originated in a region stretching from central Peru to northern Bolivia.
[...]
It was in Japan, Hermann said, that yacon's oligofructose qualities were discovered. "The Japanese also found out that if the leaves are used in tea, it has the effect of avoiding the peaks that you have when eating sugary or starchy food, when your blood sugar level goes up violently," he said.

Perhaps I could sweeten my yerba mate tea with a bit of yacon.

Brazil Seeks to Show Coffee's Health Benefits

Brazil Seeks to Show Coffee's Health Benefits:

Brazil, the world's No. 1 coffee producer, hopes to convince people to drink up — and ease a global crisis caused by oversupply — by proving that coffee is good for you.

The country that offers school children "coffee breaks," plans to try to show that coffee can help reduce heart disease, countering the conventional wisdom that coffee causes health problems including anxiety and hypertension.

In other news, Columbia is studying the health benefits of cocaine. (OK, I made that one up.)

World's Only Known Albino Gorilla Dies

Albinism is such a simple change, but people go crazy over it. From World's Only Known Albino Gorilla Dies:

The world's only known albino gorilla, Copito de Nieve (Snowflake), died early Monday at the Barcelona zoo, leaving this city without a beloved mascot and the scientific world without one of its most unique creatures.

Now we just need a talking albino ape.

Stressful and Insecure Jobs Take a Toll on Health

This should surprise no one. Stressful and Insecure Jobs Take a Toll on Health:

Australian researchers found that managers and other professionals who were under a strong threat of being laid off were more than three times as likely to report depression, anxiety or being in poor health than people in more secure positions.

And people who said they worked in highly stressful jobs with little control over how and when they work were also more likely than others to have depression or anxiety.

Scan Painlessly Pinpoints Muscle Stiffness

I didn't know that we needed a way to scan for muscle stiffness — I can usually tell where I'm sore — but Scan Painlessly Pinpoints Muscle Stiffness reports on the new use for MRI machines:

An experimental technique that uses widely available imaging technology is a painless way to measure muscle stiffness, researchers report.
[...]
The technique, known as magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), involves the same scanner used to perform magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a technique that provides a good view of the internal structures of the body, particularly soft tissue, the brain, spinal cord and joints.
[...]
Within an MRI scanner, the skin is vibrated, which causes waves to penetrate tissue and to multiply in muscle. Doctors take an image of these waves and then measure them to evaluate muscle stiffness.

I foresee the following exchange with an orthopedist in the future:

"You see these black dots?"
"Yeah."
"That's where you're not stiff and sore."
"Hmm...looks about right."

Man Dies After Winning Vodka-Drinking Contest

The "winner" died after downing 1.5 liters of vodka — more than half a liter of pure alcohol (assuming the vodka was 80 proof). Man Dies After Winning Vodka-Drinking Contest:

A vodka-drinking competition in a southern Russian town ended in tragedy with the winner dead and several runners-up in intensive care.

'The competition lasted 30, perhaps 40 minutes and the winner downed three half-liter bottles. He was taken home by taxi but died within 20 minutes,' said Roman Popov, a prosecutor pursuing the case in the town of Volgodonsk.

'Five contestants ended up in intensive care. Those not in hospital turned up the next day, ostensibly for another drink.'

Popov said the director of the shop organizing this month's contest had been charged with manslaughter. He had offered 10 liters of vodka to the competitor drinking the most in the shortest time.

Russians drink the equivalent of 15 liters of pure alcohol per head annually, one of the highest rates in the world. Some experts estimate one in seven Russians is an alcoholic.

Face Transplants Possible But More Research Needed

You could replace "face transplants" with just about anything and this headline would be valid — Face Transplants Possible But More Research Needed:

Face transplants are technically possible and could arguably be less difficult than reattaching a severed finger, surgeons said on Wednesday, but they called for more research into the risks involved before they are attempted.

Truly a creepy image — face-transplant rejection:

The microsurgical skills needed for a face transplant are already well established, according to a report by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

But too little is known about the psychological impact it would have on the recipient or the donor family, the ethical issues or the long-term risks of immunosuppressive drugs that would have to be taken for life to prevent the immune system from rejecting the new face.

This might surprise some people — and ruin a number of movie plots:

"We need to get across the complexities of this medical advance and dismiss the myths that have been reported — for example the first face transplant recipients will not necessarily look like the donor," he said.

Transplanting the skin and underlying soft tissue from one individual to the facial structure of another would give an appearance that would be different from the donor and the recipient, he added in a statement.

So much for Face Off...

Man Armed With Knife Kills Hungry Bear

Whoa. Man Armed With Knife Kills Hungry Bear:

Hirsch had only a 3 1/2-inch knife blade when he came across the bear in his backyard in Williams Lake, about 190 miles northeast of Vancouver.
[...]
As the bear began to circle him, Hirsch faced it like a wrestler in a ring.

"It was like a knife fight that you'd see in an old-time Western," he said. The bear swatted out at him, but each time it lunged, he managed to stab it.

"I couldn't tell you if the fight lasted three seconds or three minutes," Hirsch said.

Three stabs to the bear's chest and one to its neck finally did the bruin in.

It stood about 5 foot 7 inches to Hirsch's 5 feet 9 inches and weighed 200 pounds, according to conservation officers who inspected it.

"I can say it sure looked smaller the next morning than it did during the fight," said Hirsch.

The bear was in poor shape, suffering from a severed tongue and broken jaw, the conservation officer said. Its stomach was empty and the bear had little fat on it.

Hirsch, a retired electrical foreman at B.C. Hydro, suffered a scratch to the top of his head and scratches to his back — and a shredded T-shirt.

Fat Cells May Be the Obesity-Hypertension Link

Fat Cells May Be the Obesity-Hypertension Link reports on a recent PNAS paper:

Fat cells produce factors that directly stimulate the adrenal gland to release the hormone aldosterone, new findings show. Because aldosterone regulates blood pressure, these factors may at least partly explain the link between obesity and high blood pressure.
[...]
Other hormones produced by the cells also increased: cortisol was nearly tripled, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) levels increased 1.5-fold.

Milestones

Milestones quotes an interesting passage from Inventing Japan. Compare post-war Japan to present-day Iraq:

Tokyo endured [the] winter [of 1945-1946] on the workings of an illegal economy. The black market encompassed thousands of sellers and millions of buyers dealing in every commodity of daily life. It was also a vast jungle of lawlessness that began with thefts and led to gang killings, turf wars, and casual murders, becoming at last a criminal demimonde of immense proportions. It embraced all classes and kinds of people. When the war ended, sake, bread, clothing, shoes, sugar and blankets had disappeared from military depots all over the country, pilfered wholesale by officers and enlisted men alike. Small thefts were the routine of daily existence. A bicycle snatched at Ueno's railway station turned up repainted and for sale two hours later at the station in Shimbashi. Koreans and Chinese, forced-labor immigrants during the war, prospered with goods smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and by the Occupation's ruling, they could not be arrested by Japanese police.

It was the beginning for many mobster organizations, some of whose descendants still operate today. In Tokyo there were eight major syndicates, each with its own piece of turf around the major train stations...They fought amongst themselves and against other gangs, the Japanese mobs battling constantly for territory against the Koreans and Chinese. Guns were plentiful, another result of looted army depots. Unable or unwilling to intervene, police let gangs have at one another, and the shootouts continued for several years into the Occupation. One day in April 1948, two gangs — one Japanese, one Korean — fought it out with pistols in the Hamamatsu district. The next day, about one hundred Japanese returned to the attack on the Koreans' black market there and killed or wounded more than 15 men.

Ancients Manipulated Corn Genes

According to Ancients Manipulated Corn Genes, the grass-like teosinte plant become the domesticated maize plant when early farmers bred for useful traits — useful to humans, at any rate:

The ancestral plant of corn, teosinte, was first domesticated some 6,000 to 9,000 years ago in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico, the researchers said in this week's issue of Science magazine. At first, teosinte was a grassy-like plant with many stems bearing small cobs with kernels sheathed in hard shells.

By cultivating plants with desirable characteristics, farmers caused teosinte to morph into an increasingly useful crop. The researchers said by 5,500 years ago the size of the kernels was larger. By 4,400 years ago, all of the gene variants found in modern corn were present in crops grown in Mexico.

The plant and its grain were so changed by the directed cultivation that it evolved into a form that could not grow in the wild and was dependent on farmers to survive from generation to generation, the study found.

The genes:

One gene changed the architecture of corn from a plant with many branches to one with a single stalk with a male tassel at the top and female cobs growing along the side.

Another genetic change softened the outer hull on the kernel. Before the change, the plant depended on animals to spread its seeds. After animals ate the corn, the tough outer shells would allow the kernels to pass unharmed through the gut.

With a softer hull, the kernels would not survive passage through the gut of an animal. As a result, the plant became dependent on farmers to spread its seeds.

Another genetic change caused the kernels to stick more tightly to the cob. And still another change modified the starch of the grain.

This final change, the authors wrote, made the corn more suitable for making tortillas, and, thus, may have been an early variant encouraged by the farmers.

Fiji Villagers Apologize for Cannibalism

Fiji Villagers Apologize for Cannibalism:

Villagers in a remote Fijian community staged an elaborate ceremony of apology Thursday for the relatives of a British missionary killed and eaten here 136 years ago.

The Rev. Thomas Baker and eight Fijian followers were killed and devoured by cannibals in 1867 in the village of Nabutautau, high in the hills of the South Pacific island of Viti Levu. Residents say their community has been cursed ever since.

In a mixture of ancient pagan and modern Christian rites, the villagers have staged a series of ceremonies hoping to erase the misfortunes they believe have kept them poor.

If you're staging ceremonies to lift the curse that has left you poor, I'm betting you'll stay poor for a long, long time.

It's the little details that make the story — like trying to eat his boots:

The rituals — which started about a month ago — culminated Thursday with the offering of cows, specially woven mats and 30 carved sperm-whale teeth known as tabua to 10 Australian descendants of Baker.

"This is our third apology but, unlike the first two, this one is being offered physically to the family of Mr. Baker," Ratu Filimoni Nawawabalavu, the village's chief, told The Associated Press.

Nawawabalavu is the great-grandson of the chief responsible for cooking the missionary in an earthen oven.

Past apologies have not helped. In 1993, villagers presented the Methodist Church of Fiji with Baker's boots — which cannibals tried unsuccessfully to cook and eat.

Why did they kill and eat the missionary?

There are differing accounts of Baker's demise. A villager said last month the incident started when the chief borrowed Baker's hat. Baker tried to take it back without knowing that touching a chief's head was taboo and punishable by death.

Others say the missionary lent the chief a comb, then touched his head as he tried to retrieve it from the chief's tight, curly hair.

Back to my original point:

Villagers believe that since 1867, either Baker's spirit or disapproving gods have made sure that modern developments like electricity, a school, piped water supply and other essentials enjoyed by most Fijian villagers have been kept from them.

California Bison Sent to New Dakota Home

About 100 bison are being moved from Catalina Island to South Dakota. From California Bison Sent to New Dakota Home:

About a third of the Southern California island's 300 bison were shipped off this week to South Dakota, where they will live on two Indian reservations.
[...]
A study released last year showed that bison severely damaged native plants by grazing, wallowing in dirt and rubbing themselves against trees to scratch or shed their thick coats. The animals also spread nonnative plants by carrying seeds in their hair.

The animals, however, are extremely popular with tourists, the lifeblood of the island economy.

How did they get on the island. Good question.

Bison have lived on Catalina Island since the 1920s, when 14 animals were brought in for a movie shoot.

The finished film, "The Vanishing American," had no footage of bison. Still, the wooly beasts became a mainstay on Santa Catalina a few years later, after chewing gum mogul William Wrigley Jr. acquired a majority interest in the company that owned the island.

Every Man a Demiurge

Every Man a Demiurge presents an amusing take on the Matrix trilogy:

If you want to understand the Matrix trilogy, think of it as a capsule history of baby-boom rock. The original Matrix is a three-chord riff of a movie: a simple, familiar idea — "What if reality is a great big fake?" — amplified and transformed into an irresistible hook. The Matrix Reloaded is a 1970s prog-rock concept album: sprawling, pretentious, and ultimately incoherent, but brimming with ideas and virtuoso displays. And The Matrix: Revolutions is an over-the-hill pop star recycling someone else's material — the sort of music you'd hear on a Michelob commercial, circa 1987.

Even if Revolutions weren't already slated to be the final installment, its chilly critical and commercial reception should guarantee we won't find ourselves awash in ads next year hyping The Matrix 4: This Time, It's Personal.

Airpower's Century

Airpower's Century presents an excellent interview with Walter Boyne about the history of airpower. Boyne points out that reconnaissance aircraft quickly proved their worth, and soon aircraft found a related role:

Well, the Germans had overextended themselves on two fronts, and they had to depend upon superior artillery on the Western Front to hold their line. Long-range artillery has to be precise to be effective; you have to hit what you're aiming at, and to do this, you have to know where your shots fall. It didn't take long for both sides to figure out that with an airplane you could bring your guns on target very quickly. So observation planes became critical, and that meant you needed fighter planes to shoot them down. Then you needed fighters to fight those fighters, so an entirely new generation of aircraft, the fighter airplane, grew out of it. They got all the glory, but they were an afterthought. They were necessary only because airborne observation had changed the nature of war.

Naturally, when we think of WWI, we think of WWI flying aces — but strategic bombing got its start in WWI:

The odd thing is that while the First World War saw almost every sort of airpower that would be used in the Second — even the cruise missile — the only things we remember are the dogfights and the aces. We think of strategic bombing — striking targets designed to destroy a whole nation's will to fight, as opposed to simply winning a battle — as a development of World War II. But it wasn't. The German bomber and Zeppelin raids on London during World War I were an immense campaign. It's been almost entirely forgotten, but it made a lasting impression on both belligerents. The Zeppelins dropped more than 200 tons of bombs and killed over 500 people, while the bombers killed another 800 and wounded over 2,000. The Germans thought that this was a very small return for a large investment, so German planners stayed away from strategic bombing when they prepared for the next war. But the British, who, after all, had had the bombs fall on them, thought the campaign was a success. They believed strategic bombing would be vastly more destructive in the next war, and as a result, the British — and we Americans — eventually developed devastating strategic bombing forces. Germany never did. Moreover, Britain had a pretty good air defense system in place in time for the 1940 Blitz.

German Zeppelins dropped more than 200 tons of bombs on London. Wow.

Americans and the British both had the wrong idea about fighter planes. They thought: We'll send fighters over to Germany, and the Germans will come up, and we'll shoot them down. But the Germans would just sit on the ground, because the Allied fighter planes weren't doing any harm. The only way you could get the Germans in the air was to attack a target sufficiently valuable that they had to come up and defend it. [...] Even those massive portions of the strategic bombing campaign against targets that didn't matter, or couldn't be destroyed — the cities, or the will of the Germans to fight — nonetheless forced the relocation of the Luftwaffe's fighters to Germany, away from the fronts, which allowed them to be destroyed, and hugely contributed to the Allied victories on the ground.

Allied strategic bombing pulled a lot of German resources away from both (ground) fronts.

Hitler would probably have been better advised to say, "We'll accept the damage. We won't make the choice for anti-aircraft guns instead of anti-tank guns, because the air campaign isn't gaining any territory and the tanks are."The thousands of gunners, the tens of thousands of shells they required, and the 88-millimeter guns taken away from the front: All these had an immense effect, and in the west, possibly a decisive one.

Read the whole article.

Vietnam Unveils Ancient Artifacts from Excavation

Vietnam Unveils Ancient Artifacts from Excavation:

Ancient terracotta dragons, phoenix statues and ceramic urns unearthed from a royal compound accidentally discovered where Vietnam's new parliament was being built were put on display for the first time on Tuesday.

I have to wonder what kind of mystical powers these ancient artifacts possess...

So how many artifacts are we talking about?

In its first international briefing at the site, the Ministry of Information and Culture displayed some of the estimated two million items that have been uncovered since excavation began in December 2002 in the capital Hanoi.

Two million artifacts? Well, they're not all cool artifacts:

Deep wells, ornate pavilions and bases for mighty pillars were found along with the more mundane rubbish dumps and tiled drains. Some gold jewelry, decorated swords and a cannon were also retrieved along with skeletal remains from a later period.

So why haven't we heard anything about this until now?

Access to the site has been strictly controlled, with foreign media not permitted to visit.

K-1 USA News - Sumo Star Akebono to Fight Bob Sapp

My sumo-savvy buddy, John, clued me in to this piece of K-1 USA News:

In a press conference at the Imperial Palace Hotel, K-1 announced today that Sumo star Akebono will fight Bob Sapp on New Year's Eve.

K-1 is Japan's premier kickboxing promotion, and Bob Sapp is their latest star. He's 6'7" and 374 lbs (with defined abs) — and Akebono dwarfs him.

Akebono was born Chad Rowan in Oahu, Hawaii. In 1993 he was given the fighting name Akebono when he became the first non-Japanese to achieve the ranking of Yokozuna (Grand Champion), Sumo's highest honor. In his nine years as a Yokozuna, Akebono amassed a sparkling record of 432 wins in 554 bouts.

Said Akebono at the press conference: "I would like to announce that I, Taro Akebono, applied for leave from the Japan Sumo Association on November 5th, and today this request has been granted. From now on, I will take up a new direction as a professional fighter in K-1. I would like to thank the Japan Sumo Association and Azuma-Seki Oyakata [Akebono's stable master] for supporting me, and also everyone in the K-1 organization."

Akebono's announcement garnered a phenomenal amount of interest. The press conference attracted a total of 300 media people, including Japanese national broadcasters NHK. In all a total of 23 TV cameras were focused on the 34 year-old Yokozuna, making this by far the biggest-ever K-1 press conference -- two TV stations went so far as to interrupt their regular programming to carry the announcement live!

Akebono said he learned about K-1 from fighters such as Francisco Filho and Ray Sefo, and wanted to compete in K-1 to show his three children (too young to have followed his Sumo career) that their father still has his fighting spirit.

Clone Wars

I hated both of the recent Star Wars movies — or, at least, I was sorely disappointed by them — but I'm enthralled by the new Clone Wars five-minute, animated shorts on Cartoon Network. (You can watch them on-line too.) I had a similar reaction to the toys; they were much, much cooler than the movies. (I didn't buy any of the toys, but seeing them at Target did get me excited to see the movies.)

The Marxist and the Methodist

In The Marxist and the Methodist, Murray Sayle reviews Jonathan Fenby's Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost — and shares some amusing tidbits in the process:

Even in his glory days Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, durable president of the Republic of China, had his critics. American liberals derided him as "Cash-my-cheque" in acknowledgment of the monstrous corruption of his in-laws, although not of the abstemious Gimo, as his grandiose rank was usually abbreviated, himself. General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the American chief of staff forced on him by President Roosevelt, referred to him as "The Peanut" because of his short stature and shiny bald head, and described him to a journalist as "an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son-of-a-bitch". No respecter of persons, Vinegar Joe in the privacy of his diary called Chiang's great rival Mouse Tongue (Patrick Hurley, boozy US ambassador to China, made it Moose Dung) and here lies the reason for the Gimo's relative eclipse. History worships winners, and the Gimo had the bad luck to come up against Mao Tse-tung (in the old spelling), military/political commander of genius and the cruellest ruler China has ever had, at least since Emperor Chin Shi-Huang-Ti built the Great Wall ("a human life for every stone"), ordered the burning of the books and gave the country its western name.

Here's an interesting cast of characters — and an interesting way of introducing them:

When China's Doctor Zhivago is filmed they will provide a rich cast of tragi-comedians. The Christian General, Feng Yuxiang, who kidnapped recruits from the countryside and baptised them with a fire hose. The Dog Meat General, Zhang Zongchang, named after his preferred summer dish, who was described as having "the physique of an elephant, the brain of a pig and the temperament of a tiger", a type not uncommon in military history. Zhang was reputed to have a penis as long as a pile of 86 silver dollars and to have given his concubines numbers as he could not remember their names. In Manchuria an illiterate bandit, Zhang Zuolin, promoted himself Marshal and ruled an area as large as France and Germany. When his son Zhang Xueliang took the family rank Zhang became the Old Marshal and his boy the Young Marshal. Others included the Philosopher General and the Model Governor. Flavourful character parts included Dr Sun's portly, cigar-smoking bodyguard, the London arms dealer Morris "Two-Gun" Cohen, Big-Eared Du, boss of the Shanghai underworld, the communist International agents Hendricus Sneevliet and Borodin, otherwise General Vasilii Konstantinovich Blyukher, symbols of Moscow's catastrophic meddling in Chiang's China.

More good "dirt":

But Fenby has dug up new dirt on the Gimo. He already had a wife, and knew Shanghai rather better than he let on. Earlier in the 1920s he had married Cheih-ju ("pure and unblemished") Chen, known as Jennie, a statuesque middle-class girl 19 years his junior he had courted strenuously since she was 13. A few weeks after the wedding Jennie was diagnosed as having gonorrhoea that her husband admitted having picked up in his days as a fashionable young man-about-Shanghai when he may, says Fenby, have joined Big-Eared Du's gang. The disease, Jennie recounted in a long-lost autobiography, left them both sterile. Certainly neither she nor Meiling had children; Chiang's only son, Chiang Ching-kuo, future president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, was born of an even earlier marriage arranged by the Chiang family. The Gimo dumped faithful Jennie and, despite his connections there gave Shanghai a wide berth and fixed his capital at Nanking, 200 miles up the Yangtze River from the raffish City by the Sea.

An amusing language bit:

Had Japan been able to add China's resources to the Axis I might well be writing this in another language, mit some difficulty.

(That reminds me of the Hollywood screenwriting abbreviation for silence: M.O.S. — mitout sound, a term used by a powerful German-speaking producer in the early days.)

And here's a factoid I already knew:

Gung Ho, "work together", was the slogan of a Chinese farmers' co-op picked up by US Marines.

Gung ho, in English, isn't so much about teamwork as about a can-do attitude. Merriam-Webster defines it as:

Main Entry: gung ho
Pronunciation: 'g&[ng]-'hO
Function: adjective
Etymology: Gung ho!, motto (interpreted as meaning "work together") adopted by certain U.S. marines, from Chinese (Beijing) gōnghé, short for Zhōngguó Gōngyè Hézuò Shè Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society
Date: 1942
: extremely or overly zealous or enthusiastic

Bigger Products Made for Bigger People

Bigger Products Made for Bigger People reports on some disturbing products customized for larger customers:

Goliath Casket of Lynn, Ind., every month ships four or five triplewide models, 44 inches wide compared to the standard 24. In July, Goliath started offering a 52-inch-wide model and has already sold three, company vice president Julane Davis said.

Bill Fabrey and Nancy Summer founded Amplestuff, of Bearsville, N.Y., when Summer, who weighs 450 pounds, told Fabrey that she couldn't find a sponge to reach certain parts of her body. Fabrey, an engineer, came up with Sponge on a Stick. The company has built an entire line of products with heavier people in mind, including seat belt extenders, higher-limit scales and extra-large towels.

Children Wait Patiently For Heavily Fortified Tree House To Be Attacked

It's funny because it's true. Children Wait Patiently For Heavily Fortified Tree House To Be Attacked:

For the third uneventful day in a row, members of the Poison Ninjas Club awaited the invasion of their tree house, sources in the backyard of 1740 Sumac Road reported Monday.

"We spent all day Saturday making dirt bombs and dragging buckets of pine cones up into the tree house," said 10-year-old club president Carrie Williams, her eyes trained on the southern border of the lawn. "When the enemy attacks, we'll be ready. Actually, we've been ready for, like, three whole days."

After standing guard throughout the weekend, Williams and her fellow Poison Ninjas left the tree unsupervised while they attended school on Monday. The Ninjas reconvened at the tree house after school and found their supplies undisturbed and no evidence of nefarious activity near the tree. Disappointed, they took up arms once again and began to stare out at the lawn in search of some sign of a threat.

Americans Demand Increased Governmental Protection From Selves

I love The Onion. Americans Demand Increased Governmental Protection From Selves:

Alarmed by the unhealthy choices they make every day, more and more Americans are calling on the government to enact legislation that will protect them from their own behavior.

"The government is finally starting to take some responsibility for the effect my behavior has on others," said New York City resident Alec Haverchuk, 44, who is prohibited by law from smoking in restaurants and bars. "But we have a long way to go. I can still light up on city streets and in the privacy of my own home. I mean, legislators acknowledge that my cigarette smoke could give others cancer, but don't they care about me, too?"

"It's not just about Americans eating too many fries or cracking their skulls open when they fall off their bicycles," said Los Angeles resident Rebecca Burnie, 26. "It's a financial issue, too. I spend all my money on trendy clothes and a nightlife that I can't afford. I'm $23,000 in debt, but the credit-card companies keep letting me spend. It's obscene that the government allows those companies to allow me to do this to myself. Why do I pay my taxes?"
[...]
"The fact is, personal responsibility doesn't work," Nathansen said. "Take a good look at the way others around you are living, and I'm sure you'll agree. It's time for the American people to demand that someone force them to do something about it."

The World of Tomorrow

Harry Knowles, on his Ain't It Cool News site, describes The World of Tomorrow as a must-see deco sci-fi masterpiece with giant robots. That caught my attention. One of his readers caught a few unfinished minutes of it in New York, and "apparently it was shot entirely against blue screen on digital video by a first time director." Interesting. Here are some more in-depth comments:

And, even in rough form, it looks fantastic.

Like "Down With Love" was a 60s-style movie shot like a 60s movie, World looks almost exactly like a 1930s sci-fi flick. The fact that the backgrounds and other elements look hand-drawn actually adds rather than detracts from the appeal. This could be the first example of a movie in which the stiff and artificial look that the blue screen creates actually improves the overall effect. It reminded me of an Alan Moore comic come to life (Giant robots walking down the streets of Art Deco Manhattan? Awesome)

Since I'd seen and heard nothing about it, I looked it up on Yahoo! Movies and found out some technical details:

The Los Angeles Times has revealed that Kerry Cornan is a CalArts graduate, and his software is a CGI program that allows him to shoot his entire movie against blue screens, and fill in the backgrounds later with images he's been working on for years, which are mostly already done. What this allows Conran to do, which is what is so revolutionary, is to have an already existing 3-D storyboard of every scene, with stick figures in place where the actors are supposed to be. Now, all he has to do is stick in his cast, and he's basically done, it sounds like.

Martial arts expert kills two raiders

This is real life, not a movie. From Martial arts expert kills two raiders:

A Chinese martial arts expert was in custody yesterday after turning the tables on four burglars armed with knives, killing two of them and seriously wounding a third.

The 28-year-old man, known as "the doctor" for his practice of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, managed to seize one of the two knives carried by his assailants and saw off the entire group with the ferocity of his reaction.

Magistrates in the central Italian town of Empoli are now seeking to establish whether his self-defence constituted an excessive use of force.

The butchery, worthy of a Quentin Tarantino film, began shortly before midnight on Friday when the four men knocked at the apartment of a Chinese hairdresser in the centre of Empoli.

The hairdresser, her assistant and "the doctor", who operated from the same premises, were reportedly overpowered and tied up before the group, all thought to be in their 20s and 30s, ransacked the apartment.

Disappointed by their meagre booty, the attackers allegedly threatened to rape the two women unless they told them where the rest of their money was hidden.

At this point the doctor managed to free himself, seize a knife from one of the aggressors and deliver a series of lethal stab wounds.

Investigators found the body of one man, who had been stabbed in the heart, sprawled on the staircase and another man bleeding to death in the street from a wound to his leg. A third man is recovering in hospital from a punctured lung.

The doctor was found crouching in the entrance to the building with cuts to his shoulder, face and hands.

Investigators are trying to determine whether he inflicted the injuries while defending himself inside the apartment, or hunted down the burglars after they had fled.

Govermentium

Silly, but I saw it on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, and it's amusing in its own way:

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named 'Governmentium'. Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second. Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as 'Critical Morass'. You will know it when you see it.

More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well

The Hoover Institute, a conservative thinktank, publishes a number of books, including More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well — which they adverstise with these controversial excerpts:

Women in the Military. "At Parris Island, it was discovered that 45 percent of female Marines were unable to throw a hand grenade far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. If I were in a foxhole with a woman about to toss a hand grenade, I'd consider her the enemy."

Racial and Gender Quotas. "The only reason the elite haven't mandated quotas for women, Japanese, and other underrepresented groups in the NBA and the NFL is because the folly and costs of their cosmic justice vision would be exposed."

Affirmative Action. "Too many blacks receive twelve years of fraudulent primary and secondary education that cannot be overcome by four years of college. Unfortunately, liberals and civil rights organizations add to that disaster by giving unquestioned support to a corrupt education establishment that produces the fraud."

The Americans with Disabilities Act. "In some quarters, the ADA is taken to stand for 'Attorney's Dream Answered.' And who pays? You and I, through higher prices or less convenience."

The Minimum Wage. "Low wages are more a result of people being underproductive than being underpaid. They simply do not have the skills to produce and do things their fellow man highly values. The minimum wage law is evil legislation and deserving of repeal altogether."

Medical Student Epithet Makes Patients Wary

The power of euphemism, from Medical Student Epithet Makes Patients Wary:

Patients reluctant to have a medical student sit in on their consultation are less worried if the student is introduced as a 'trainee' instead, a doctor wrote on Friday in Britain's leading medical journal.

Patients are much more willing to accept the presence of a 'trainee doctor' or even a 'student doctor' than a 'medical student,' Hany George El-Sayeh wrote in the British Medical Journal.

He said patients feared they would be seen by a scruffy, disinterested youth who might later report their intimacies in the bar.

Describing a student as a trainee doctor would also heighten the youngster's esteem, he added. But trainees themselves ought to counter stereotypes by making a greater effort to appear interested, smart and punctual, he said.

Foreign Belly Dancers Fight Ban in Egypt

I'm a bit confused about how Muslim nation can have a strong, proud tradition of belly dancing. Anyway, the Egyptians don't seem to like foreign competition. Foreign Belly Dancers Fight Ban in Egypt:

Foreign belly dancers are appealing to the Egyptian courts to overturn a decree that stops them working in the country they consider the home of the dance, a performer and her lawyer said Thursday.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a lawyer representing two dancers, Australian Caroline Evanoff and a Russian known as Nour, said Manpower and Employment Minister Ahmed el-Amawi issued the decree preventing foreign belly dancers from working in Egypt.
[...]
Tickets fetch 200 Egyptian pounds ($35.52) for performances by top dancers in Cairo's luxury hotels, where the mixed-sex audiences often throw generous tips onto the dance floor.

Some dancers perform in cheaper, smoke-filled bars, frequented almost entirely by men, venues which some say give a bad reputation to an art form that requires years of training to perfect.

Singapore Policeman Gets Two Years for Oral Sex

Singapore never ceases to amaze me. Singapore Policeman Gets Two Years for Oral Sex:

A Singaporean police sergeant has been jailed for two years for having oral sex in a country where prostitution is legal but oral sex is not, a newspaper reported Friday.

The Straits Times reported that the 27-year-old police coast guard sergeant landed in court after a 16-year-old reported to the police that she had performed oral sex on the man.

She was above the age of consent and agreed to perform the act, but oral sex is against the law in the city-state, the paper said.

'The act by itself is an offence. It is not a question of consent or no consent. Even between consenting people, it is an offence,' criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan told the paper.

The maximum punishment for the offence is life imprisonment.

'Hitler's Mountain Home' from Homes and Gardens November 1938 - p 193

Wow. The Guardian Unlimited has reprinted Hitler's Mountain Home from Homes and Gardens November 1938 - p 193.

It turns out that one of the Guardian's editors had stumbled across the magazine article, as he describes in At home with the Führer:

My discovery was an article headlined 'Hitler's Mountain Home' - a breathless, three-page Hello!-style tour around Haus Wachenfeld, Hitler's chalet in the Bavarian Alps. In it, the author, the improbably named Ignatius Phayre, tells us that 'it is over 12 years since Herr Hitler fixed on the site of his one and only home. It had to be close to the Austrian border'. It was originally little more than a shed, but he was able to develop it 'as his famous book Mein Kampf became a bestseller of astonishing power'.

The great dictator, it seems, was quite the interiors wizard: "The colour scheme throughout this bright, airy chalet is light jade green. The Führer is his own decorator, designer and furnisher, as well as architect... [Hitler] has a passion about cut flowers in his home."

And he is seldom alone in his mountain hideaway, as he "delights in the society of brilliant foreigners, especially painters, musicians and singers. As host, he is a droll raconteur... "

Knowledge Problem: Moral Hazard and Protective Gear

It turns out that people take greater risks when they're protected against the consequencies. Knowledge Problem: Moral Hazard and Protective Gear brings up an example I've heard before:

My interest is in pointing out that the seatbelt phenomenon for which Sam Peltzman is known here — that mandatory seatbelt laws can and do, at the margin, induce less careful driving than in the absence of such laws — is not just restricted to seatbelt laws. (Heck, have ya seen the way Volvo drivers drive?)

Take my favorite example, from my favorite sport: hockey. When I was a wee lassie and we had season tix to the Penguins, the players soared around the ice with their locks flowing (this was the mid-70s, after all), and there were fights, and people got injured.

Then the NHL implemented a mandatory helmet rule for all entering players; existing players were grandfathered out of having to comply. Both my casual empiricism and statistics on penalty minutes and the increase in incidence of particular penalties (especially high sticking) suggest that the Peltzman effect was in full force: mandatory helmets seem, at the margin, to have contributed to an increase in violence in hockey, particularly the nasty, cheap crap that gives hockey such a bad name.

What this moral hazard problem has provoked in the NHL is not a reconsideration of the wisdom of mandatory helmet rules, far from it. It has led to two decades of inveighing against fighting, roughing, high sticking, checking from behind, all of the behaviors that increased after the helmet rule.

Similarly, American football players tackle their opponents much more violently than rugby players can afford to, and gloved boxers hit harder than bareknuckle fighters.

Coolie?

After reading Upwardly mobile phone jockey... or 'cyber-coolie'?, I decided to look up "coolie"; it was one of those words I more-or-less knew, but didn't know the origin of. Merriam-Webster OnLine defines it as follows:

Main Entry: coo·lie
Pronunciation: \ˈkü-lē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Hindi & Urdu qulī
Date: 1638
: an unskilled laborer or porter usually in or from the Far East hired for low or subsistence wages

Beyond face values

Beyond face values reviews Portraits: A History — and shares some amusing art history:

For example, until the 19th century the only permissible way an artist could paint a naked female portrait was for the sitter to pretend to be a goddess. Even Rubens's blatant celebration of the sexiness of his young second wife was rendered respectable by deriving her pose from an ancient statue of Venus. Diane de Poitiers, posing starkers as the virgin goddess Diana, must be the cheekiest. She was both widowed and the mistress of Henry II at the time.

It was Goya who broke the convention with his Naked Maja, "the first purely profane, life-sized female nude in Western art". The picture was commissioned by a Spanish politician for his secret erotic collection, only gossip identifying the subject as the Duchess of Alba — a slur which so rankled with her family that 150 years later, in 1945, the duke had his ancestor's remains exhumed, unfortunately to no conclusive proof.

Upwardly mobile phone jockey... or 'cyber-coolie'?

Upwardly mobile phone jockey... or 'cyber-coolie'? describes India's success in taking over the call-center business:

In India, which has been most successful in stealing call-centre business from the rich countries, companies teach their operators to understand American accents and imitate them. They watch American movies together, and those who can easily comprehend Sylvester Stallone's dialogue are said to be approaching perfection. Some companies try to create an American ambience by putting little American flags on the desks and providing pizza.

India now has more than 160,000 call-centre workers and expects to have a million by 2008. Raman Roy, who runs a company called Wipro Spectramind, imagines India becoming 'the back office of the world.' He had 200 employees three years ago and now has 5,100. They take catalogue orders, book hotel and airline reservations, do some telemarketing, and then move up to computer help desks, insurance claims processing, various forms of accounting, and payroll management.

This is where it gets interesting though:

Not everyone finds this system admirable. Last year, a reporter for the Times of India mentioned to Roy that there are those who think these workers operate at the lowest end of the value chain. Roy replied that you can do a low-end job and then maybe move to a better job. "Without the low end, you cannot proceed to the high end."

This controversy recently broke out in an unlikely place, the letters column of the Times Literary Supplement. After Susan Sontag praised Indians for putting their English-language skills to work through call centres, a furious professor in New Delhi denounced her for failing to see that "These poor young men and women are indeed the cyber-coolies of our global age." In the next issue, another Delhi resident wrote that what the professor considers exploitation looks to workers like a way to acquire skills as well as income. He acknowledged that while "it isn't much fun to persuade someone in Detroit to pay his credit card bill" (yet another function of call centres), it builds negotiating skills.

It is an iron law of international economics that the Exploitation Police will swoop down and denounce anyone who creates new jobs, particularly in relatively poor areas. The common complaint is that call-centre companies set up shop in places (New Brunswick is a good example) where they can find well-educated workers at relatively low wages. The Exploitation Police make this sound almost criminal. In fact, it's the way capitalism has always expanded and the way that poor regions have traditionally turned themselves into less poor regions. To consider this sort of change deplorable is to miss the fact that business lives by ingenuity and perishes when it ceases to find new and cheaper ways to get its work done.

It is an iron law of international economics that the Exploitation Police will swoop down and denounce anyone who creates new jobs, particularly in relatively poor areas. I love that line.

Rorschach Inkblot Test, Fortune Tellers, and Cold Reading

Rorschach Inkblot Test, Fortune Tellers, and Cold Reading draws an intriguing connection between the famous psychological intrument and astrology:

Introduced in 1921 by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, the test bears a charming resemblance to a party game. A person is shown ten inkblots and asked to tell what each resembles. Like swirling images in a crystal ball, the ambiguous blots tell a different story to every person who gazes upon them. There are butterflies and bats, diaphanous dresses and bow ties, monkeys, monsters, and mountain-climbing bears. When scored and interpreted by an expert, people's responses to the blots are said to provide a full and penetrating portrait of their personalities.

The scientific evidence for the Rorschach has always been feeble.

How did the Rorschach test become so popular then? Because Rorschach "wizards" were able to make uncannily accurate "blind readings" of patients from just their test responses. Only these amazing Rorschach readings were no more accurate than a good palm reading:

In the late 1940s, psychologist Bertram Forer published an eye-opening study that he called a "demonstration of gullibility" (Forer 1949). After administering a questionnaire to his introductory psychology class, he prepared personality sketches. For example: "Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations."

Forer asked the students to rate their own sketches for accuracy. The students gave an average rating of "very good." More than 40 percent said that their sketch provided a perfect fit to their personality.

The results seemed to show that Forer's personality questionnaire possessed a high degree of validity. However, there was a diabolical catch: Forer had given all the students the same personality sketch, which he manufactured using horoscopes from an astrology book. The students had gullibly accepted this boiler-plate personality description as if it applied to them uniquely as individuals.

Although the statements borrowed from the astrology book were seemingly precise, they applied to almost all people. Following the eminent researcher Paul Meehl, psychologists now call such personality statements "Barnum statements," after the great showman P.T. Barnum who said, "A circus should have a little something for everybody" (he's also credited with, "There's a sucker born every minute").

As Forer had discovered, people tend to seriously overestimate the degree to which Barnum statements fit them uniquely. For example, students in one study who were given Barnum statements disguised as test results responded with glowing praise: "On the nose! Very good"; "Applies to me individually, as there are too many facets which fit me too well to be a generalization."

Interestingly, many "psychics" believe in their own powers — and most Rorschach "wizards" probably believed in theirs.

Falling on Deaf Ears

Falling on Deaf Ears asks, how reliable are ear-witnesses? Not very:

Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed in Trenton, N.J., in April 1936, for kidnapping and murdering the young son of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. The most dramatic moment in Hauptmann's closely watched trial came when Lindbergh identified Hauptmann's voice as that of his son's kidnapper. "The minute Lindbergh pointed his finger at Hauptmann, the trial was over," said Hauptmann's lawyer after the conviction. "Jesus Christ himself said he was convinced this was the man who killed his son. Who was anybody to doubt him or deny him justice?"

Lindbergh had heard the voice of his son's kidnapper three years earlier. Still hoping to get the child back alive, Lindbergh had accompanied Dr. John Condon to St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx to deliver ransom money. Condon handed off $50,000 in marked gold certificates, while Lindbergh waited nearly 100 yards away in a car. Out of the darkness came the words, "Hey, doctor! Over here, over here."

Twenty-nine months after the encounter in the cemetery, in September 1934, Lindbergh told a Bronx grand jury that "it would be very difficult to sit here and say that I could pick a man by that voice." Undeterred, the district attorney asked Lindbergh later that day: "Would you like to see the man who kidnapped your son?" The next morning, while Lindbergh sat in the back of the D.A.'s office among a group of detectives, Hauptmann was brought in and asked to repeat the words, "Hey, doctor. Here, doctor, over here." Lindbergh told the prosecutor that he recognized the voice as that of the kidnapper, and he testified under oath at the trial that Hauptmann was the man he had heard in the cemetery.
[...]
One year after Hauptmann's execution, Frances McGehee, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois, had students listen to a person read a 56-word passage from behind a screen. The students were then tested at various times to see whether they could pick the reader out from a group of five voices. They did so with 83 percent accuracy the next day. Three weeks later, however, their success rate had declined dramatically to 51 percent. Fi