Mil Millington, the comic genius behind "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About", has written a novel, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. He's promoting it right now in the UK. I'm on his mailing list, and I've got to quote this:

If you're interviewed by a journalist - pretty much *any* journalist - this is what happens:

Journalist: 'How much of the stuff in the book is true.'

Mil: 'None of it. It's all made up. Fiction. That's why they're not called Mil and Margret: because I invented *everything*. Wish I hadn't needed to - it was quite hard work, actually.'

This will appear in the paper as: "Everything is completely true," said Mil Millington, 57, wearing a bikini. "All those things? Margret and I said and did absolutely every single one of them - the fact that the names were changed is down to a printing error."

Love that guy.

Dwight Merideth at the marvelous PLA has created the charmingly titled Koufax awards. Vote early, vote often.

Josh Marshall hits the nail on the head:

Consider the fact that right now we're debating whether the Republican Senate Majority Leader is a racist who yearns for the days of segregation or just a good ole boy who says a lot of things that make it seem like he's a racist who yearns for the days of segregation. I think you can say that that's a debate the Democrats are pretty comfortable having. And it'll keep being that way. Republicans are starting to realize that.

Via Calpundit, a reminder that racism is very real in 2002. Researchers sent out identical resumes for a variety of help-wanted ads; the only difference were the first names. Half were "black-sounding" names like Aisha, Tamika and Tyrone, while half were not. The non-black-sounding names were twice as likely to be called for interviews as the black-sounding names. We do not live in a color-blind society, and it takes a certain degree of deliberate obtuseness to pretend that we do.

You know, I understand the arguments against affirmative action. Affirmative action is absolutely not fair, and the stigma of being a quota is very real. I don't know how to heal race relations. But you know, it wouldn't hurt if affirmative action opponents recognized that minorities have good reason to doubt that they're being treated fairly in hiring. It's not all in Jesse Jackson's head. And it doesn't hurt when they actively reject ads like this: "You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority." In the absence of any recognition that minorities actually do have a harder time succeeding than whites, that kind of message is just a thumb in the eye.

Now. What if I said that opponents of affirmative action were "objectively anti-minority?" Open racists, who are rare, depend on mainstream conservative opposition to affirmative action in order to promote their agenda. So shouldn't conservative opponents of affirmative action hang their head in shame? To paraphrase Glenn, "But when your movement is the key tool of racists, well, it should give you pause, shouldn't it?"

We all know that both of these statements would be absurd, just as Glenn Reynolds' statements about the anti-war movement are. Not only because they're innacurate and wildly unfair (although they are), but also because they show contempt for those who disagree with you. They signify that you wish to end rational discussion. My Clinton-loathing, occasional-Limbaugh-listening dad isn't convinced that we need to go to war with Iraq. (Partially, it's because he's not convinced it would actually improve our national security; partially, it's because he's "objectively pro-military," having a son in the Army.) If he keeps getting the message from war supporters that he's a craven supporter of Saddam Hussein, will that convince him? I rather doubt it.

I like Glenn Reynolds, both as a person and as a pundit. I read every word he writes. But I can't remember the last time that he's apologized for something, and it drives me to distraction sometimes. A little while ago, there was recently a flap when a few people, including Glenn Reynolds and Charles Murtaugh, were taken by Kathryn Lopez's inaccurate portrayal of Martha Burk's article. I wanted to cry with delight when I read this on Charles Murtaugh's site.

I got totally ganked by National Review Online's Kathryn Lopez -- the Martha Burk article that she describes in the piece linked to below is satirical, not serious, and somehow she omitted to inform her readership of that important fact. As Calpundit writes, "I thought it was liberals who don't have a sense of humor." I suck.

It was a portrait in utter class. He didn’t change the subject (like Glenn Reynolds did), and he didn’t try to blame liberals (like Kathryn Lopez did). He just apologized. When was the last time you saw a blogger do that?

I doubt that you can finish today's Daily Howler and not come out pissed off at Sean Hannity. What a disgrace that guy is.

One thing that I learned working in health care (more to come)

Next in a series

One of the most interesting unreported stories that I see working in the medical field is the flight of qualified MDs away from medical practice into industry. (If I get anything wrong here, I hope that Ross Bloviator corrects me; I'm no expert.)

Rising malpractice insurance, sharply declining compensation, and increasing oversight from HMOs have made practicing medicine less and less attractive. Medicine has always been a demanding and draining profession, but it's gotten a lot less lucrative in the past decade or so. Physicians used to be able to perform the services they wanted and bill on a cost-plus basis, much like defense contractors. The system made it easy for doctors to make a nice living, but it also fed rapid inflation of health costs. In the 90s, managed care put the brakes on cost-plus billing, and started setting rules about what doctors could and could not do. Some specialties, especially surgery, saw their compensation fall by 30-40% or more. Primary care physicians need to see more patients, spending less time with each one, just to keep up. It's gotten harder to be a doctor, and pays a lot less. So it's no wonder that they're dissatisifed.

Nearly half of physicians age 50 or older plan to leave medicine within the next three years, according to a survey conducted by the Dallas firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates. While 38 percent plan to retire, 12 percent will seek jobs in non-medical settings. And only 50 percent of physicians surveyed would choose medicine as a career if they were starting out today....

Dr. Hirsch has found through her research and work that physicians are increasingly unhappy with their careers, as evidenced by both rising physician turnover and disability claims. The Merritt, Hawkins & Associates survey found 56 percent of physicians cited managed care as their biggest professional frustration; nearly 50 percent of doctors indicated that managed care was a "significant factor" or "the single most significant factor" in their decision to change their style of practice.

While many physicians blame managed care for their woes, Dr. Hirsch says it's just the element that tips the scales. A real dollar decrease in physician compensation, heightened fears of malpractice litigation, the growth of managed care, and the rise of dot-com and other lucrative job opportunities have all been blamed for growing job dissatisfaction and a significant decline in medical school applications. "Many doctors are dissatisfied, burnt out, or just plain bored," she says.

In this unscientific poll, 32% of the doctors said that they would like to quit, and 62% said that they are less satisfied than when they started.

At the same time, the increasing sophistication of HMOs and insurers (among others) mean that there are more and more opportunities in industry for physicians. Early in the 90s, when insurers started cracking down on costs, it was often a matter of simple financial triage. "We just noticed that MRIs cost a lot more than X-rays- do more X-rays and fewer MRIs!"

Well, they really couldn't get away with that. Squeezing doctors is like herding cats; most doctors won't go along with an order from a payor that they see as boneheaded and harmful to patients. (How they resist is the subject for another post.) At the same time, letting doctors bill at will is not a sustainable strategy. So insurers have to build mechanisms to reduce costs that don't insult the doctors and don't hurt the patients. "We noticed that you're doing head MRIs whenever someone has a cold- don't do that! Do this instead!"

If you want to construct these kinds of rules, you need medical experts to help write and implement them. There's a name for these kind of people- doctors. And there's a lot of dissatisifed doctors who wouldn't mind a nice 9-to-5, after years of 5-to-9. As a result, although I can't find any numbers, I'm seeing a lot of medical management positions filled by MDs. They tend to be mature, hardworking and smart as whips. (I have great respect for doctors.) I suspect that within my lifetime, medical schools will begin to offer specialty administrative MD degrees for doctors who will spend their entire careers without practicing.

What does this mean for health care? I'm not sure, but I've got a bad feeling about it. Every once in a while, I'll read an article asking, "Are there too many physicians?" I don't really understand the argument; you can intelligently argue that there are too many specialists and not enough primary care physicians, or OB/GYNs, or rural docs, or whatever. But I don't see any positive effects from a net removal of physicians from the practice of medicine, and I think thatI'm seeing that.

I’m writing my business school applications. Inspired by that, I’m going to share with you some of the things that I’ve learned in the various work environments in which I’ve been privileged to work.

First of a series, maybe

A few things that I learned working in market research

- Huge decisions are made on differences that are smaller than the margin of error. Even among important decision makers, it’s rare to find someone who can think clearly about the concept of “margin of error.” If I tell someone that people prefer product A (51%) over product B (49%), with a margin of error of 3%, it’s a rare person indeed who can walk away without thinking that people slightly preferred product A. This is only one example of widespread innumeracy, but you saw it all the time.

- Demographic differences for consumer product ratings are negligible, more often than not. The most boring part of a market research report is the section called “Demographic differences”. (Mind you, the other sections are better than a Led Zeppelin concert with bubble wrap on the floor.)

- The correlation between income and education is one of the strongest I’ve ever seen in social science. It forced me to believe that parents who force their whiny children to stay in high school and go to college are doing their kids a great favor.

- I live in a bubble, as do most professionals. Virtually everyone that I deal with, at work and at home, went to college. It’s easy to forget the ¾ of the adult population doesn’t have a college degree. I’ve had a blessed life, and I find it very hard to imagine supporting a household on $42,218 a year, but half of the country lives on that or less. It's easy for a single person, but it seems that bringing up a child or two on that income would be awfully hard.

- It’s getting harder and harder to conduct telephone polls. I don’t know if people who are willing to talk to market researchers are a minority of the population yet, but they’re getting there. If you don't control for it, you get a sample that skews much older than the general population. At some point, the industry will have to ask itself, “What does it mean when the people who talk to us are, by definition, statistical outliers?”

- In a focus group of 10, at least 2 are semi-professional focus group attendees. (Attendees are typically paid $40-60 dollars for two hours, more if they’re a specialized group such as nurses.) The facilities know and don’t care. Not by coinicidence, a lot of these people are struggling actors.

- Having said all that, market research is still a good idea for a lot of companies. It’s very, very easy for a big project to work up a lot of internal momentum, only to learn too late that they’ve released Crystal Pepsi. My favorite story comes from a start-up who wanted to know if stockbrokers would be interested in a certain online service. The start-up had lined up quite a bit of funding and had a few people employed already. On our first day in the field, we found out that the service they were offering was against the law. Whoops!

Yesterday, I had some confusion about bias in the media. I have to apologize- Michael Kelly’s set me straight! Thanks, Michael!

I realize that this isn’t terribly substantive criticism, but doesn’t this remind you of a 9th grade book report prepared at 11:00 on a Sunday night? He’s done everything to pad the word count, short of adding a bibliography and starting with “Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘bias’ as…”

People are especially stubborn about media bias, but could you even imagine this editorial convincing anyone that they’re wrong? I can’t. If Kelly doesn't have the time to write his column, that's no shame. So why not kill it?

Why does Pat Buchanan get to be on television?

I heard the story of Buchanan's attempt at Holocaust denial a few years ago, but it seems to have slipped down the memory hole, along with George Will’s use of Carter’s stolen debate handbook to coach Reagan in 1980. (Of course, that's no different from when the liberal media... um... never mind.) It's worth revisiting.

The story in brief- in 1990, Pat Buchanan wrote this in his New York Post column, defending accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk:

This so-called "Holocaust Survivor Syndrome" involves "group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics." Reportedly, half the 20,000 survivor testimonies in Jerusalem are considered "unreliable," not to be used in trials.

Finally, the death engine. During the war, the underground government of the Warsaw Ghetto reported to London that the Jews of Treblinka were being electrocuted and steamed to death.

The Israeli court, however, concluded the murder weapon for 850,000 was the diesel engine from a Soviet tank which drove its exhaust into the death chamber. All died in 20 minutes, Finkelstein swore in 1945.

The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, D.C., tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes.

That's not correct. In the death camps, diesel engines were intentionally run at high RPMs and starved of oxygen, producing exhaust with very low levels of oxygen. A functioning locomotive engine would be tuned differently, producing exhaust with a higher oxygen content. It doesn't prove anything.

So where did Buchanan get this story?

Buchanan's source was almost certainly the July 1988 issue of a small (six-page) pamphlet: the G.I.E.A. Newsletter of the German American Information and Education Association (P.O. Box 23169, Washington D.C., 20026). The agenda of this newsletter becomes clear on page two:

The May Newsletter which discusses the Holocaust Museum continues to generate the greatest response. Approximately 95% of the response has been favorable; 5% negative. Evidently, that museum has a lot of people stirred up. It is obvious that the issue that sticks in the craw of so many is the hypocrisy blatantly displayed and practiced by the American Jewish community.

It is very clear that if enough people would write their senators and congressman [sic], and demand that rooms be set aside for other holocausts, something could be accomplished. Write them and point out that the German people were "holocausted" after WW II, especially by the Bolshevics, originally a Jewish/Zionist movement…

I am not aware of this May 13, 1988 article being cited in any Holocaust-denial material other than this newsletter. It looks, therefore, suspiciously like it was this newsletter that Buchanan received in the mail and, accepting its claims as true, reprinted them in his nationally-syndicated column.

I can't look at Buchanan without seeing this. What the hell do you have to do to get chased out of the celebrity press corps, anyway?

A few new permalinks that I've been reading while I'm away:

TalkLeft
Soundbitten
Talk A Blue Streak
Making Light
The Daily Rant and Pandagon, who cancel each other out.

And two funny links:

Damn Hell Ass Kings is a sort of metablog that informs you whenever one of a series of amusing web pages are updated. My favorites are Fametracker, Pop Culture Junk Mail, and Miscellaneous, Etc. Miscellaneous, Etc. is really something special, so I gave him his own link.

By the way, I'm very touched by the warm "welcome back" from so many bloggers. Thanks so much for your kindness; I'll try to be worth it.

The blog world is in the middle of a full-on shitstorm about Trent Lott's wistful remembrances of segregation at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. Pretty much every blogger is furious and disgusted. Lott has been vigorously denounced by every side of the spectrum, with the exception of the toad-like Robert Novak and the cowardly Tom Daschle. (In addition to Atrios, Instapundit and Josh Marshall, I especially liked Alex Whitlock's heartfelt response, and Virginia Postrel said exactly what I was thinking.)

But the mainstream media has been curiously slow to report on this story. Yesterday afternoon, out of curiousity, I asked two intelligent, well-informed co-workers if they had heard anything about Trent Lott recently. One is conservative and the other is fairly liberal. Neither had heard a thing. With the exception of the loathsome Robert Novak, we all agree that the near-total silence of the “liberal media” for four days is awfully curious.

So yeah. What’s up with that?

(I’m sitting in the back of the class doing my best Horshack imitation. "OOH! OOH OOH! OOH OOH!"*)

Here’s my take- Al Gore, media critic, is right. I take two lessons out of this:

The American mainstream media ain't liberal. With its intiable appetite for content, the mainstream media is reactive. (I have a good friend who works in PR. I once shared with him the statistic that I had heard that 40% of the average newspaper comes directly from PR companies. He immediately said, "Oh, at least!")

And to people like me, the media often looks pretty damn conservative, because it often gets fed by the unabashed conservative media. The Mighty Wurlitzer of Fox News, talk radio, the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are tremendously good at placing their stories into the mainstream press. Republicans have a much, much louder megaphone with which to inject their stories into the mass media. The media will print it in a typically "balanced" fashion- "Republicans say the Bush tax plan will help the middle class, Democrats disagree, and our head's all a'twitter trying to figure out who's correct". But in the end, Republicans have gotten their story out there.

The Daily Howler has been on this theme for a while- the RNC has had tremendous success in injecting its memes into the mass media. For example, Governor Bush performed poorly on Andy Hiller's pop quiz about world leaders. In response, Karen Hughes said, "The person who is running for president is seeking to be the leader of the free world, not a Jeopardy! contestant. I would venture to guess that 99.9 percent of most Americans and probably most candidates could not answer who is the president of Chechnya.” Within a few days, the press corps had widely dismissed the "pop quiz." It was called "gotcha journalism" by Fred Barnes, Juan Williams, Deborah Orin, Al Hunt, Andrea Mitchell and Martin Schram, Jim Lehrer, Antony Sabato, Jeff Birnbaum, Robert "Waste of Skin" Novak and Tucker Carlson. In the next few days, the following journalists and political analysts scolded Andy Hiller and dismissed the importance of the quiz specifically using the word "Jeopardy":

Larry Sabato: "We're electing a president, not a Jeopardy! champ.”
Morton Kondracke: "He would fail at Jeopardy!, right? He might be in third place on a game show."
Jim Lehrer: "Jeopardy! questions"
Robert "Virus on Legs" Novak: "The real problem is that winning Jeopardy! games and leading the nation require different skills.”
Clarence Page
Howard Kurtz
Michael Barone
Andrea Mitchell

We can argue about whether they were right or wrong, but it sure does look like they got their talking points from a common source. Same thing for the "invented the internet" story, and so on. When the RNC needs a little help creating spin, who they gonna call?

I know that the DNC blasts out press releases to the media, too. But if the DNC wants to hear a "yes, sir!" from the mainstream media, where the hell do they go? Yeah, there's these two guys on "Crossfire", and Paul Krugman may say something. The New Republic may or may not say something, depending on if they hate Democrats this week. But there is no channel and no newspaper that will keep up the drumbeat. (The DNC doesn't give a shit about Augusta, by the way.) Compare the attention paid to Gore's claims about his dog's drugs and Bush's failure to show up for National Guard duty for a year. I've asked any number of intelligent people about Bush's desertion; people who are aware of it are exceedingly rare.

Lesson the Second. As of Tuesday, Trent Lott's statement became a big story, and it looks like it's getting bigger. We'll never really know why it turned around. Maybe it's blogs. Maybe the media was holding out for next week's cycle.

I think that it was Al Gore. I think that it took a prominent member of the opposition to offer a vigorous soundbite to inject it into the media. (Sorry, Jesse Jackson doesn't count.) If the Democrats don't care about this, Howard Kurtz might figure, why should I risk offending my sources?

The Democrats need to make a damn fuss if they want their points in the media. Democrats can get their talking points into the media, but it isn't as easy as blast-faxing them out. (Not the the DNC even tried on this issue.) It’s no coincidence that Tom Daschle got a lot of coverage for saying that it was outrageous for Bush to say the Senate wasn’t interested in national security. It’s no coincidence that this coverage actually managed to make the administration issue something resembling an apology. What is amazing is that Daschle didn’t learn anything from this experience.

As a minority party, we need more fewer Tom Daschles and more Al Gores.

* Incidentally, out of all the horrible TV shows to get a movie, why not “Welcome Back, Kotter”? I’m not saying I want to see it, I'm just saying.

Just out of curiousity, does anyone have any links before last Thursday in which a Republican expresses his disgust for Trent Lott? They're coming out of the woodwork now, and I have no doubt that they're sincere, but was there a river of Republican anti-Lott sentiment that I've been missing for years?

Oh, yeah, while I was gone, I got called an "extremist" by den Beste. (More accurately, I was called a non-non-extremist.) Well, I don't aim to offend here. Out of respect for my Republican friends who read this page, I offer this tribute.

I want to give props to Charles "Off the Kuff"ner for at least two reasons. First, he gave me the kick to try this again. Second, this little gem is one of the most absolutely correct things I've read in a while.

Two quotes I'd like to share to keep perspective on this whole crazy "writing on the internet" numba-one-laffy-hit-show:

"Internet forums bring out the worst of humanity: stupid irrational egomaniacs telling each other how much they hate everything. Getting bothered by it is like reading 'FUCK YOU' on a bathroom wall and saying, 'Fuck ME!? H-how DARE they!!'" -Seanbaby*

"An old friend who still believes what we believed in college took me to task the last time we met, and wondered where Mr. Middle Ground had gone, why I no longer seemed interested in finding commonality. The simple answer is that there is no common ground with people who think you’re a political leper, a winged monkey in the service of a green-skinned Nancy Reagan in a witch’s hat. Respect works both ways, and if it’s not returned, then something changes. There’s a difference between thinking someone’s strategies are wrong, and thinking them a knave who acts from ignorance at best, and more likely acts from malice. If that’s what you think, I am not interested in changing your mind. I am not interested in working together. I am not interested in suffering your insults or your condescension or any other form your preconceptions take. I am interested in defeating you, and getting down to work with the people who come in your place, and grant me the respect I’ll give them."- James Lileks

Replace "Nancy Reagan" with "Hillary Clinton," and Lileks is reading my heart.


*This page has a golden selection of Seanbaby quotes. I'm just going to pick three:

Seanbaby: I love Flash Gordon so much that I made a page entirely about it and Bloodsport. But that was back when I could barely form a sentence without sounding like an idiot.
Erik: That doesn't help narrow down the date, Sean.
Seanbaby: Don't Tango-and-Cash me, dickhead.

"And while I'm on the subject of taking personal offense at public announcements, why do U2 songs keep telling me not to kill people because of their color? I don't even do that, you stupid dicks. Sometimes when they come on I scream back at the radio, "Hey Bono, why don't you stop lighting hitchhikers on fire?" and then change the station to someone who gives less insulting advice like, 'You've got to Move it! Move it!'"

"Robin, if you carry around a Special Mummy Ray Gun in your panties, it better fucking work on mummies."

Has it been a week already? My, how time flies...

I've got a few cobwebs to kick out as I work on a longer post about Guess Who. I thought I'd post a little something before I forget:

During the little Rush Limbaugh hoo-hah a few weeks ago, I kept seeing the figure that 20 million people listen to Rush Limbaugh every week.

Really? For the purpose of comparison:

Number of people who watch Friends every week- 22 million

Number of U.S. households- 52.7 million (Sorry, more like 100 million)

Number of Playstation 2 units sold worldwide- 30 million

Copies of "What Color is Your Parachute Sold" over the course of 22 editions- 5 million

Copies of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" sold as of Nov. 2001- 26 million

Copies of Pink Floyd’s "The Wall" sold as of Nov. 2001- 23 million

Number of people who speak Dutch- 20 million (Isn't that weird?)

I can't vouch for all of these numbers, but come on. If Rush Limbaugh gets 20 million listeners a week, I'm the King of Spain.