Month: November 2005

Election 2005: Winning Feels Good

Tristero has a nice roundup of the election results here.

Shorter version: We didn’t win it all but we won quite a lot. I’m particuarly pleased by the Pennsylvania voters who threw out all 8 of the foolish school board members that had tried to get ID into the school curriculum.

It’s a good day to be a Democrat. But let’s not get cocky. The 2006 and 2008 elections will be much more important.

The Grey Lady Gets Some Spine

I don’t necessarily agree with the characterization of Venezuela’s leader but other than that this NY Times editorial is spot-on.

After President Bush’s disastrous visit to Latin America, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can’t afford an American government this bad for that long.

In Argentina, Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to relate to world leaders face to face, could barely summon the energy to chat with the 33 other leaders there, almost all of whom would be considered friendly to the United States under normal circumstances. He and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like the president of Venezuela to steal the show.

It’s amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

More “Scare Science” Affects Cats

One of the first things you learn in statistics class is this: CORRLEATION IS NOT CAUSATION. Yet time and again you see the scare of the week meme going around because some scientist has found a correlation between X and Y.

Here’s this week’s and it’s a doozy:

Dr. Fuller Torrey is studying whether a parasite in Fluffy’s droppings causes schizophrenia, a mental illness that strikes 2.2 million Americans and is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and trouble regulating emotions.

The Washington-area psychiatrist has found that people with schizophrenia were more likely to have had pet cats as young children, or their mothers kept the animals during their pregnancies. Torrey is now testing antibiotics against the feline parasite Toxoplasma gondii to treat schizophrenia.

In other words, he’s forund a correlation and now he’s testing for causation. There’s no real proof of his theory. Except the article goes on to say this:

Torrey advises parents not to buy pet cats for young children.

Now I have an issue. If this meme catches on, a lot of animal shelters are going to get a wave of abandoned cats and have problems adopting out cats to people with kids. And at this point, all you have is a correlation, NOT proof of causation.