April 26, 2014

World War A: Another adventuress plays the identity politics card

No Pole Left Behind: The demure V Stiviano showing off her skills
Earlier this week I pointed out that an increasing number of the identity politics brouhahas in Silicon Valley don't seem to involve traditional victims, but instead revolve around attractive young women who hand the press a prefab narrative about the horrors of "alpha-male culture." Large concentrations of money have traditionally attracted that type of woman formerly known as the adventuress. Some Internet searching suggests that the term "adventuress" is no longer used in polite society, although it remains a popular title for pulp novels for women. It's considered sexist to say that Bonaparte was an adventurer while Lola Montez was an adventuress. So, the word and, increasingly, the concept are forgotten.

The shrinking of vocabulary makes us dumber, just as Orwell explained in the Appendix to 1984, so it's hardly surprising that:

- Adventuresses have figured out how to play the political correctness game for fun and money

- Nobody else notices they are adventuresses

At the moment, the most important news story in the history of forever is some an comment about Magic Johnson apparently made by the octogenarian billionaire slumlord and owner of the L.A. Clippers NBA team, Donald Sterling, to his mistress V Stiviano, which she recorded. (It's illegal in California to record private conversations without the consent of both parties, but racism!).

From the Los Angeles Times:
Sterling's wife describes mistress as gold digger in lawsuit

By Bettina Boxall 
April 26, 2014, 6:25 p.m. 
Donald Sterling’s wife of more than 50 years describes his alleged mistress as a gold digger who seduces older, wealthy men and persuades them to shower her with gifts, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on March 7. 
The Clippers team owner and a woman identified as V. Stiviano allegedly began an affair after meeting at the 2010 Super Bowl game and were still in the relationship as of the filing date, according to the lawsuit filed by Rochelle H. Sterling, who is described in the suit as "a married woman seeking to protect and recover community property in her individual capacity."   
Rochelle Sterling alleges that her husband used community property to buy Stiviano a 2012 Ferrari, two Bentleys and a 2013 Range Rover, worth a total of more than $500,0000. 
Sterling also allegedly gave Stiviano $1.8 million to buy a duplex on West 4th Street near the Beverly Center last December, according to the suit, which claims that Sterling additionally provided her with $240,000 for upkeep and living expenses. 
The property was supposed to be held in the Sterlings’ name, Rochelle Sterling contends, but Stiviano has title and has refused to relinquish it. Arguing that the gifts were all allegedly made without Rochelle Sterling’s knowledge or consent, the complaint seeks their return along with compensatory damages. 
The suit, which includes as defendants unnamed agents and employees of Stiviano, alleges that before the complaint was filed, Donald Sterling asked her to return the property. The complaint also says that Stiviano goes by several other names, including Vanessa Maria Perez, Monica Gallegos and Maria Valdez. ...
Late Friday, TMZ posted an audio recording it said captures Sterling making racist statements in the course of an argument to a woman identified as V. Stiviano. The Times has not confirmed the authenticity of the tape. ...
The Clippers released a statement Saturday in which President Andy Roeser says the team does not know if the man recorded is Sterling, but that the comments do not reflect Sterling's "views, beliefs or feelings." 
Furthermore, Roeser claims the woman on the tape is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Sterling family that claims she embezzled more than $1.8 million. Sterling told Roeser that the woman said she would "get even" with Sterling for bringing the lawsuit against her.
   

The Biggest News Story in the History of the World

All from the front page of LATimes.com right now:

In Malaysia, Obama decries alleged Sterling remarks
42 minutes ago
'We've made enormous strides, but you're going to continue to see this percolate up every so often,' the president says.


http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz304VGvXzX


IN THE NEWS: DONALD STERLING 

3:15 p.m.
An audio recording allegedly captures Clippers owner Donald Sterling, right, making racist comments in an argument with a friend. 

It's time to retire Donald Sterling
18 minutes ago


http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz3032Nkbbf

Barkley: If true, suspend Sterling 3:37 p.m. 

Social media explodes, crying 'racist' 3:27 p.m. 

Clippers respond to alleged remarks 3:11 p.m. 

Clippers' DeAndre Jordan reacts 2:55 p.m.
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302ZcpGpf 

NAACP planned to honor Donald Sterling, who's now beset by racism flap38 minutes ago
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302Zt4U4x 

Doc Rivers: Donald Sterling's alleged comments can't be a distraction21 minutes ago
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302ZxcvXp 

Clippers owner Donald Sterling is no stranger to race-related lawsuits35 minutes ago
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302a1nQFH 

Reaction around NBA swift to Donald Sterling's alleged racial comments36 minutes ago
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302a5nHEm 

L.A. NOW & CALIFORNIARacist remarks attributed to Donald Sterling 'despicable,' L.A. mayor says Racist remarks attributed to Donald Sterling 'despicable,' L.A. mayor says
This post has been updated, as indicated in the notes below. 
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302aClaiU


SPORTSNBA investigates alleged racist remarks by Clippers' Donald SterlingNBA investigates alleged racist remarks by Clippers' Donald Sterling
http://www.latimes.com/#ixzz302aLAYwV

"The Media Has a Woman Problem"

From the NYT:
The Media Has a Woman Problem 
By LIZA MUNDY 
APRIL 26, 2014 
... All but one of the individual winners of Pulitzer Prizes in journalism this year were male.

So, that suggests that women employees on average just aren't performing up to snuff, right?

Oops, forget that inference ever occurred to me! Don't let anybody notice you are inferring.
       

Did lead pollution cause crime?

People are once again talking about the hypothesis that the rise and fall in crime rates can be attributed to the rise and fall of lead pollution. For example, earlier this week, Steven Pinker tweeted:

  1. An earlier & more skeptical view of the lead-crime hypothesis: "Lead Poisoning and the Great 1960s Freakout":

I did a lot of work on the history of crime rates in 1999 and 2005 in regard to the similar Freakonomics did-abortion-cut-crime controversy that is relevant to the lead-and-crime debate. So I'm going to post below the 1999 four-part debate in Slate between Freakonomist Steven D. Levitt and myself in Slate. For apparently technical reasons, that 15-year-old discussion has become hard to find using search engines.

I outlined here my suggestions for new research that could resolve the lead and crime question by studying crime rates around EPA lead pollution Superfund Sites.
          

"Does Abortion Prevent Crime?" Steven D. Levitt's opening statement to Steve Sailer in 1999 "Slate" debate

Below is the first of four parts of a 1999 debate in Slate between U. of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, and myself, Steve Sailer. We discussed Levitt's most celebrated theory: Did the legalization of abortion in 1969-1973 cause the crime rate to fall? 

I've decided to host this debate on my website because it is of some modest degree of historical importance as the first airing of one of the longer-running social science controversies of the 21st Century, and because Slate deleted our names from their posting of it during a website reorganization. Several years ago, Slate promised to restore our names, but hasn't done so yet. The absence of our names on Slate has made it hard for interested readers to find this using search engines.

E-MAIL DEBATES OF NEWSWORTHY TOPICS.
AUG. 23 1999 5:32 PM

Does Abortion Prevent Crime?

Part 1 of 4 of a debate between Steven D. Levitt and Steve Sailer




To read more on this topic, see Steve Sailer's 2005 posting after The Economist and the Wall Street Journal revealed that an attempted replication of Levitt's state-level analysis by Boston Fed economists Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz discovered that Levitt had made a fatal error in his computer code, which explains why Levitt's state-level findings didn't match my national-level analysis in 1999.
   
Complete debate: Part 1 (Levitt);   Part 2 (Sailer);   Part 3 (Levitt);   Part 4 (Sailer)
   

"Does Abortion Prevent Crime?" Steve Sailer's first response to Steven D. Levitt in 1999 "Slate" debate

Below is the second of four parts of a 1999 debate in Slate between U. of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, and myself, Steve Sailer. We discussed Levitt's most celebrated theory: Did the legalization of abortion in 1969-1973 cause the crime rate to fall? 

I've decided to host this debate on my website because it is of some modest degree of historical importance as the first airing of one of the longer-running social science controversies of the 21st Century, and because Slate deleted our names from their posting of it during a website reorganization. Several years ago, Slate promised to restore our names, but hasn't done so yet. The absence of our names on Slate has made it hard for interested readers to find this using search engines.

E-MAIL DEBATES OF NEWSWORTHY TOPICS.
AUG. 24 1999 3:30 AM

Does Abortion Prevent Crime?

"Does Abortion Prevent Crime?" Steven D. Levitt's response to Steve Sailer in 1999 "Slate" debate

Below is the third of four parts of a 1999 debate in Slate between U. of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, and myself, Steve Sailer. We discussed Levitt's most celebrated theory: Did the legalization of abortion in 1969-1973 cause the crime rate to fall? 

I've decided to host this debate on my website because it is of some modest degree of historical importance as the first airing of one of the longer-running social science controversies of the 21st Century, and because Slate deleted our names from their posting of it during a website reorganization. Several years ago, Slate promised to restore our names, but hasn't done so yet. The absence of our names on Slate has made it hard for interested readers to find this using search engines.


E-MAIL DEBATES OF NEWSWORTHY TOPICS.
AUG. 24 1999 9:30 PM

Does Abortion Prevent Crime?


  1. The arrival of crack led to large increases in crime rates between 1985 and the early '90s, particularly for inner-city African-American youths.
  2. The fall of the crack epidemic left many of the bad apples of this cohort dead, imprisoned, or scared straight. Consequently, not only did crime fall back to its original pre-crack level, but actually dropped even further in a "overshoot" effect.
  3. States that had high abortion rates in the '70s were hit harder by the crack epidemic, thus any link between falling crime in the '90s and abortion rates in the '70s is spurious.
If either assumption 1 or 2 is true, then the crack epidemic can explain some of the rise and fall in crime in the '80s and '90s. In order for your crack hypothesis to undermine the "abortion reduces crime" theory, however, all three assumptions must hold true.

So, let's look at the assumptions one by one and see how they fare.
  1. Did the arrival of crack lead to rising youth crime? Yes. No argument from me here.
  2. Did the decline in crack lead to a "boomerang" effect in which crime actually fell by more than it had risen with the arrival of crack? Unfortunately for your story, the empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects this claim. Using specifications similar to those in our paper, we find that the states with the biggest increases in murder over the rising crack years (1985-91) did see murder rates fall faster between 1991 and 1997. But for every 10 percent that murder rose between 1985 and 1991, it fell by only 2.6 percent between 1991 and 1997. For your story to explain the decline in crime that we attribute to legalized abortion, this estimate would have to be about five times bigger. Moreover, for violent crime and property crime, increases in these crimes over the period 1985-91 are actually associated with increases in the period 1991-97 as well. In other words, for crimes other than murder, the impact of crack is not even in the right direction for your story.
  3. Were high-abortion-rate states in the '70s hit harder by the crack epidemic in the '90s? Given the preceding paragraph, this is a moot point, because all three assumptions must be true to undermine the abortion story, but let's look anyway. A reasonable proxy for how hard the crack epidemic hit a state is the rise in crime in that state over the period 1985-91. Your theory requires a large positive correlation between abortion rates in a state in the '70s and the rise in crime in that state between 1985 and 1991. In fact the actual correlations, depending on the crime category, range between -.32 and +.09 Thus, the claim that high-abortion states are the same states that were hit hardest by crack is not true empirically. While some states with high abortion rates did have a lot of crack (e.g., New York and D.C.), Vermont, Kansas, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Washington were among the 10 states with the highest abortion rates in the '70s. These were not exactly the epicenters of the crack epidemic.
So, what is the final tally? Two of the key assumptions underlying your alternative hypothesis appear to be false: The retreat of crack has not led to an "overshoot" in crime, causing it to be lower than 1985, and even if it had, the states with high abortion rates in the '70s do not appear to be affected particularly strongly by the crack epidemic. Moreover, when we re-run our analysis controlling for both changes in crime rates from 1985 to 1991 and the level of crime in 1991, the abortion variable comes in just as strongly as in our original analysis.

Crack clearly has affected crime over the last decade, but it cannot explain away our results with respect to legalized abortion.

The best test of any theory is its predictive value. The abortion theory predicts that crime will continue to fall slowly for the next 10 to 15 years. Also, the declines in crime should continue to be greater in high-abortion states than in low-abortion states. What do you predict based on your crack theory? If you are willing to wait 10 years, perhaps we can resolve this debate.
To read more on this topic, see Steve Sailer's 2005 posting after The Economist and the Wall Street Journal revealed that an attempted replication of Levitt's state-level analysis by Boston Fed economists Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz discovered that Levitt had made a fatal error in his computer code, which explains why Levitt's state-level findings didn't match my national-level analysis in 1999.

Complete debate: Part 1 (Levitt);   Part 2 (Sailer);   Part 3 (Levitt);   Part 4 (Sailer)
   

"Does Abortion Prevent Crime?" Steve Sailer's 2nd response to Steven D. Levitt in 1999 Slate debate

Below is the fourth and final part of a 1999 debate in Slate between U. of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, and myself, Steve Sailer. We discussed Levitt's most celebrated theory: Did the legalization of abortion in 1969-1973 cause the crime rate to fall? 

I've decided to host this debate on my website because it is of some modest degree of historical importance as the first airing of one of the longer-running social science controversies of the 21st Century, and because Slate deleted our names from their posting of it during a website reorganization. Several years ago, Slate promised to restore our names, but hasn't done so yet. The absence of our names on Slate has made it hard for interested readers to find this using search engines.

E-MAIL DEBATES OF NEWSWORTHY TOPICS.
AUG. 25 1999 3:30 AM

Does Abortion Prevent Crime?


To read more on this topic, see Steve Sailer's 2005 posting after The Economist and the Wall Street Journal revealed that an attempted replication of Levitt's state-level analysis by Boston Fed economists Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz discovered that Levitt had made a fatal error in his computer code, which explains why Levitt's state-level findings didn't match my national-level analysis in 1999.
   
Complete debate: Part 1 (Levitt);   Part 2 (Sailer);   Part 3 (Levitt);   Part 4 (Sailer)