| Friday, March
4, 2005
From another conference:
During a moment of comparative boredom, with Larry
Summers' recantation fresh upon my memory, I thought about extensions to his
offending remarks that might have brought a cooler resolution to his
depressing situation. In particular, I thought a reasoned estimate of
feminine expectations vis-`-vis tenure at elite departments of mathematics
would calm things down. Google provided these data:
The National Research Council periodically ranks math
(and other) departments on the quality of their scholarly output. The last
such ranking, in 1995, identified 48 mathematics departments with NRC scores
between 3.0 and 5.0. (The two highest ranking departments, UC Berkeley and
Princeton each had scores of 4.94.)
As of 2002, the 23 private university departments in
the list had 536 tenured faculty of whom 26 were women. In the public
universities tenured faculty numbered 1163 and included 87 tenured women.
Even benign feminists might be upset by these numbers, but analysis shows
them to be about as expected. Larry could have made the following argument.
In most disciplines the most talented scholars
eventually find their way into the best departments. Assuming little else,
the expected number of tenured female faculty in elite departments can be
easily estimated. Recent (2004) SAT data show for the 1.4 million test
takers a male-female math gap of 0.310 SD (in male SD units), with a F/M SD
ratio of 0.9483.
Assuming these parameters apply to the resident US
population, one can fill the 536 tenured slots in the private universities
with mathematicians in rank order of ability. Using a pool of all US
residents between the ages of 25 and 64, the procedure yields an estimate of
34 tenured women, which may be compared to the 26 women observed. The same
calculation for the public universities estimates that of the 1163 tenured
faculty 85 will be women, which may be compared to the 87 observed.
These calculations show that mathematical ability
manifests at a tender age and persists throughout life.
==============
On Terry Schiavo
Hi Jerry,
Stumbled onto your blog/web site. I too am scared of
the slippery slope.
I would like to add that at least in the minds of the
physicians I encountered here, ten years ago while I had
pneumonia, this slope is already fully traveled.
I had viral pneumonia that didn't respond to the
treatments they tried on me and over the course of a month got ill enough to
be hospitalized. I had a very small child (Eric was less than two) and
Robert was less than five.
The doctor in the emergency room put me on IV
antibiotics. The specialists removed it, insisting I couldn't possibly have
pneumonia because x rays didn't show it (long story.)
They proceeded to do a ... the word evades me... tube
down throat for looking at bronchial passages. I was tachycardic when they
did it. When they told me they would use atropine to put the tube down, I
went ballistic. As any reader of Agatha Christie I know what atropine does.
They told me not to worry my pretty head about it and induced a heart
attack.
Let's just say -- because you don't have all day --
that this was the first of many "mistakes". It came down to my husband
having to be in the hospital with me round the clock to prevent stupid
things being done. So -- just medical errors, right?
Maybe.
Because as soon as Dan left the hospital for any
reason -- usually to take care of the kids for two hours when our patchwork
of friends and babysitters failed -- this... round... would start. Doctor
after doctor and nurse after nurse would come in to convince me to have a
particularly risky procedure (that my sister in law, who is a pathologist,
was fairly sure would kill me) done. They used arguments like "Your husband
is spending so much time with you, he'll probably lose his job." "You're
just a housewife, what do you contribute to your family?" and "What good are
you to your children in this state?"
Now, all this for a temporary illness -- by and large
I've been relatively healthy since -- which disappeared in three days once
Dan started screaming at all and sundry (He'd heard about the "round") and
got the IV antibiotics re-instated. Miraculously, shortly thereafter, they
"found out" my pneumonia was "intracellular" and that's why it didn't show
on x rays.
Now, I wonder how many other "housewives" these
loonies have convinced to have suicidal procedures on the principle that
their life is worth nothing. (I was published by that time, but only in
short stories, but never mind. If my pursuit in life were crochet and a
better cookie, I fail to see where that would/should make me less valuable
to society. In many ways the best thing I do is raise the kids and I could
still do most of that from my bed were I unlucky enough to be that
incapacitated.) Considering I had a medical "team" of six doctors "working"
on me, I wonder how widespread this sentiment is among health professionals.
And EXACTLY who made them God to judge someone's worth or ability to enjoy
life.
(Should I collapse of a pulmonary complaint in the
future, Dan has instructions to drive as fast as he can to Jewish National
in Denver which is reputed one of the best lung hospitals in the country.
Maybe they'll be just as zany, but at least I can hope they aren't.)
All this to say I can't help sympathizing with Terri
and that the last thing I want is for someone either personally hostile or
indifferently hostile (the force for elimination of housewives, apparently)
to me to have power over my life. I've grown resigned to the fact that I'm
surrounded by idiots. I just don't want them to have power over my life.
Sorry for the rant. -- Just wanted to point out how
bad it is. I hope few people have encountered this type of medical prejudice
while relatively young, relatively compos-mentis, and just temporarily
impaired, but I would bet others have. And even one is too many.
Sarah
I have been told that going to a teaching hospital
is not always wise... but that's quite a story. It may be the worst bedside
manners I have ever heard of in a US domestic hospital...
(I am aware that parts of this have to be
incomplete because viral pneumonia doesn't respond to antibiotics, and my
guess is that my friend was cured by old fashioned time and rest; it would
be interesting to piece together what actually happened here, since we see
this from the pov of an intelligent layperson. But the "I know best, how
dare you question me" attitude on the part of interns and residents is not
anything like as unusual as we might hope. Sometimes you just can't
tell them anything. One thing my wife and I insist on is choosing doctors
who understand that we are intelligent people with access to a lot of
information and while we aren't experts in health care or anything like it,
we aren't clods either. And believe me, I have had people who resented my
being called "Doctor" try to tell me things that made no sense medically,
and later found out they didn't make sense; there must have been an acoustic
anomaly in the lecture room...
Physicians used to be told that the first rule was
do no harm, and for thousands of years that was probably the best rule of
all, given that there was little they could do until the discovery of the
germ theory of disease; even after that the "do no harm" was more important
than actual treatments until sulfa and then antibiotics. Today we have
medical technologies that would have been thought pure magic in the Age of
Discovery. Physicians in the Napoleonic and Civil War eras would have
marveled at the routinely achieved results today.
But physicians today aren't smarter than those who
bled Byron to death. Better informed, but not smarter...
======
Subject: News Story
I thought you would appreciate this one:
And no parachuting by widows, either: Far be it from
me to celebrate the breaking of laws with impunity, but you have to admire
the resolve of two students from Britain, who have made it their goal this
summer to break at least 45 U.S. laws - the stupidest ones they can find <http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1425731,00.html>
. "There are thousands of stupid laws in the United States, but we are
limiting ourselves to breaking about 45 of them," said Richard Smith, from
Cornwall. He and his friend Luke Bateman plan to spend eight weeks breaking
dumb laws such as the one that prevents whale-hunting in Utah (a landlocked
state). He says he got the idea while playing a board game called
Balderdash, which asks players to complete the phrase: "It is illegal in
Florida for a widow to ... " The answer is to parachute on a Sunday.
Regards, Doug Thomas
======
Subject: Netscape Mail Filers Problem
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I'm having a problem with Netscape 7.2 email filters
for which I cannot find an answer. Maybe you or a reader have a solution.
I have a variety of mail filters to put mail from
friends and various mailing lists into appropriate folders. Unfortunately,
some of the filters periodically deactivate themselves. I'll find mail that
should be in folders, instead still in the inbox and when I check the
filters dialog, those filters are unchecked. I recheck those filters and all
is fixed until it happens again.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Chris Morton Rocky River, OH
Not being a Netscape user I can't help.
============
Subject: Will it soon be illegal to build your own
TVs? (The Broadcast Flag)
I'll bet this is not a periodical you usually read,
but it has a very important cover article:
http://www.sfbg.com/39/22/cover_fcc.html
quote from article:
What has galvanized this group – made up of TV fans,
civil liberties activists, and politically minded hackers – is outrage at
what the Broadcast Flag will do to the future of innovative, crazy-dream
devices like MythTV. After the mandate goes into effect July 1, it will be
illegal for anyone in the United States to manufacture a device that records
high-definition television unless it's built to obey a special signal – the
flag – emitted by stations broadcasting HD shows. The flag will tell PVRs
and other equipment whether they're allowed to copy a show onto some other
medium, like a DVD. In short, broadcasters and content owners will actually
be able to control your recording habits....
Even more disturbing, the Broadcast Flag mandates that
recording devices be "robust against user modification." In plain language,
that means consumers can't repair, tinker with, or optimize their own
machines. What's more, it will also become impossible for small, upstart
technology companies to break into the consumer electronics market for TV
recorders. If they can't take apart the devices that output the HD signal,
they can't build cool new devices to play with that signal....
Already, small-business owners like Jack Kelliher –
who runs a tiny computer hobbyist company called pcHDTV – are being forced
to change their business strategies to survive the flag. A longtime hardware
hacker and entrepreneur, Kelliher sells a computer component called a PC
card that lets computers tune in HD signals like a television (people at the
Build-In used his cards to turn their computers into TVs). "We wanted to do
something for hobbyists who wanted to build their own HD systems," he tells
me by phone from his office in Utah. "But then the FCC did their embargo,
and the rule means we can't offer the product next year."
He and his partners are scrambling to come up with
other (legal) products to sell next year, in order to make ends meet. Among
other things, they're creating a computer card that will receive TV signals
and output them to analog devices that aren't affected by the Broadcast
Flag. "This whole thing bothers me because I come from an era when we built
radios in high school and stuff like that," Kelliher says. "Being able to
build your own TV seems really American to me. It's sad that the government
wants to halt innovation – it's just un-American."
John Dahlman
Sad, perhaps. Unusual, no.
========
From: Stephen M. St. Onge
Subject: Goodbye, Freedom of Speech
Dear Jerry:
So start looking for a lawyer, to
figure out what your endorsement is worth, and whether your mail page
links constitute a political contribution.
"Freedom of speech? What's that?"
I'll be hiring my own lawyer, just as soon as I finish stocking up on
ammo,
Yours in outrage,
Stephen
DELENDAM ESSE SAUDI ARABIA!
===============
Subject: W in 2009: At the United Nations!
With the other prognosticators among us just now
trying to line up the 2008 Presidential election competition – Condi vs.
Hillary, for example, as I’ve been hoping for and jabbering about for four
years or more now – it is time once more for me to stay way ahead. This time
I am concerned with the future activities of our President, George W. Bush.
In 2009, as President W steps down and hands over
power to President Condi, what is he to do? Few pundits have given this much
consideration. I mean, is he supposed to chop logs and carry brush for the
next thirty years of his life down at the ranch? Run around the world
spouting liberal nonsense like Bill Clinton? Pretend to build the occasional
low-income housing like Jimmy Carter? Dive out of airplanes like his father?
We hope not. Surely the man who freed Southwest Asia
and the Middle East from Islamofascism deserves to be honored more than
that; surely the man who outmaneuvered all of Europe and half of Asia can
put his great skills to use on the few remaining global hotspots. But when
he is no longer President, how can he continue to carry out such
revolutionary goals?
I am proposing to solve Mr. Bush’s future dilemma with
two letters: U. N.
Yes – let us make George W. Bush the next Secretary
General of the United Nations!
Let this great uniter take over the bully pulpit in
New York, and speak for the whole world, to the whole world. (I mean, W had
just one week in Europe, and already the French, Germans and Russians are
falling all over themselves to help us get Syria out of Lebanon. This shows
tremendous understanding of international relations.)
Mr. Bush will then begin to use the United Nations to
bring democracy and freedom everywhere; free minds and free markets will
become the mantra of the One World – there will be no more Third World.
The new job would be very significant historically.
Where Bill Clinton failed to achieve Middle East peace through
dilly-dallying with dictators, W has done it with strength and determination
and the hopes of free people. So where Bill Clinton is not being considered
for the top post because of his lack of success in anything, W should be
ready to step over to the United Nations leadership position in late January
2009 to continue his world-changing mission.
And the liberals should love the appointment because
for the very first time, American conservatives would finally be backing the
U.N.
Cheers,
-Arlan Andrews, Sr.
Padre Island, Texas
Good Heavens!
The Confederate Constitution gave at-large
seats for life to former Presidents of the Confederacy. Not all that bad an
idea, actually. But perhaps we can improve on it.
Is UN Sec Gen --> US President as
Augustus --> Caesar?
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