Of course we always get the results afterwards, how do you prepare for that.

Professional Investors will say “Fundamentals,” but that would apply reason to this market, and I don’t have any sign that this is reasonable. Reasons would be predictable laws, rules that everybody is playing by. But if people are playing with a different set of rules from your, your fundamentals won’t get you anywhere. Maybe the stockmarket is really more about sociology rather than economics, emotions rather than understanding, luck rather than prediction.
The attached article may serve as an illustration. I’m not quoting the whole thing, just a couple of statements. I like the:

“The fundamentals don’t matter. What ultimately does matter is what the Fed is likely to do,” he said.

“It’s an emotional, sentiment-driven market. Anxiety is driving the market. It’s hard to come to any conclusion that the fundamental value of the market is changed from three to four weeks ago.”

I read somewhere a long time ago that Steve Wozniak, the Apple Founder, long ago got out of the stockmarket and just invested in guaranteed rates of return. Don’t know if I believe that, but with the money he made, he should make plenty even at 2% a year. For the rest of us knowing that our retirement is swept along on a giant wave of mass hysteria, it’s a bumpy ride.
(Original found here.)

Stocks Slump as Hopes for Rate Cut Fall
By TIM PARADIS
AP Business Writer
Published March 16, 2007, 11:16 PM CDT

NEW YORK — Wall Street slumped Friday after another reading on inflation deflated hopes the Federal Reserve will start moving toward an interest rate cut when it meets next week. The major indexes suffered moderate losses for the week.

The inflation reading was the second in as many days that upended expectations that the Fed might consider lowering rates as the economy gives off signs of slowing. The sentiment overshadowed a stronger-than-expected increase in industrial production.

“The market is dealing with the softer economic data that we’re seeing and trying to reconcile that with the somewhat stiff inflation data,” said Marie Schofield, fixed income strategist and portfolio manager at Columbia Management Group.

…

Inflation concerns remained entrenched on Wall Street Friday. The Labor Department’s report that its Consumer Price Index rose by 0.4 percent in February renewed some of the concerns that dogged stocks on Thursday. Wall Street had expected an increase of 0.3 percent. The rise was double that of January and the largest rise since a similar increase in December. Rising costs for gasoline, food and citrus crops helped boost prices.

However, the important core figure, which excludes often volatile food and energy prices, didn’t surprise Wall Street. It rose 0.2 percent as expected.

The Federal Reserve reported industrial production increased 1 percent in February, well above the 0.3 percent increase analysts expected.

The consumer inflation figures came one day after a key measure of inflation at the wholesale level took Wall Street by surprise with a higher-than-expected reading. Wall Street overcame the unwelcome Producer Price Index reading Thursday to move moderately higher as it focused on further corporate takeover news.

The inflation readings draw Wall Street’s attention because investors are concerned that higher prices will make it harder for the Fed to justify a reduction in short-term interest rates, even if such a move could help stave off a further slowdown in the economy. The latest inflation readings carry particular significance as the Fed begins a two-day meeting on Tuesday. The central bank has left interest rates unchanged at its last five meetings, interrupting a string of 17 straight increases that began in 2004.

Joe Balestrino, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors Inc., contends investors are viewing economic data through the eyes of the Fed and not as much for what it says about the economy.

“The fundamentals don’t matter. What ultimately does matter is what the Fed is likely to do,” he said.

“It’s an emotional, sentiment-driven market. Anxiety is driving the market. It’s hard to come to any conclusion that the fundamental value of the market is changed from three to four weeks ago.”

Sentiment took a jarring nosedive on Feb. 27 when a worldwide selloff raced through the markets and sent the Dow industrials down 416 points that day. Since then Wall Street has been trying to regain its footing and ascertain whether stocks had found a new bottom.

…

But you see what happens. Bush has appointed a lot of long time friends to high political positions. Loyalty matters. Competency may be less so.

By the way, there seems to be a lot of talk about accountability in the government. Saying “I am accountable” is not taking accountability, not by a long shot.

(Originals found here and here.)

The Reno Precedent
President Clinton’s attorney general fired all U.S. attorneys. So why is this different?
Thursday, March 15, 2007

THE LATEST they-do-it-too excuse for the undeniably botched and increasingly suspicious firings of U.S. attorneys involves the 1993 episode in which President Clinton’s new attorney general, Janet Reno, unceremoniously dismissed the first Bush administration’s holdover U.S. attorneys. By comparison with the Reno massacre, we are told, the Bush administration’s canning of eight U.S. attorneys was positively restrained; if you suspect political motives in the current controversy, so the argument goes, consider that when he was ousted by Reno, the U.S. attorney in the District, Jay Stephens, was just weeks away from deciding whether to indict House Ways and Means Chairman Daniel Rostenkowski (D-Ill.). Inconveniently for these conspiracy theorists, Mr. Rostenkowski was in fact indicted and convicted — and, yes, he ultimately was pardoned by President Clinton.

The Reno precedent is a red herring, not a useful comparison. The summary way she announced the move was, indeed, unusual if not unprecedented. But a turnover in the top prosecutorial jobs with a new administration taking power — especially one of a different party — was not. As we wrote at the time, “These are political appointees who owed their jobs to the last administration and have expected to be replaced ever since last November’s election. It would likely have happened earlier had the Clinton administration not made such an adventure out of the appointment of an attorney general.” And so President George W. Bush, properly and unsurprisingly, replaced all but a few U.S. attorneys during his first year in office. Indeed, while it would undoubtedly have been disruptive and unwise, it would not have been illegal or unethical for the president to follow the suggestion of his then-White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, to replace all the prosecutors again in his second term.

The question, then, is what to make of the president’s move to fire several of the prosecutors. This recent group firing, in the midst of a presidential term, is unprecedented; Mr. Bush was simply incorrect yesterday when he described it as “a customary practice by presidents.” But unprecedented doesn’t equal wrong: U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and he is entitled to have in place prosecutors committed to his law enforcement priorities. (The potential for misusing the newly bestowed interim appointment authority to evade Senate confirmation is a separate, and troubling, concern.)

Internal administration e-mails released Tuesday offer some indications of those sorts of policy-related issues, from references to “woodshedding” the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol C. Lam, over immigration cases to complaints about whether Paul K. Charlton in Arizona and Daniel G. Bogden in Nevada were balking at obscenity prosecutions. But there are also ample grounds for suspicion about improper motives, including the involvement of White House political aides and telephone calls from lawmakers to prosecutors about politically sensitive cases. The dishonest conduct of the Justice Department has only served to deepen suspicions, to underscore the importance of figuring out exactly what transpired here and to distinguish this situation from the Reno precedent.

and here is another article with more background

Time to Go, Mr. Gonzales
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, March 14, 2007

“I believe in accountability,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proclaimed yesterday at a news conference that was a self-serving masterpiece of passive voice and unpersuasive platitudes. “Like every CEO of a major organization, I am responsible for what happens at the Department of Justice. I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility. And my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to access accountability and to make improvements so that the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur again in the future.”

Is there anyone left — seriously, is there a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — who has confidence in Gonzales’s capacity to fix this mess? Is there anyone who accepts Gonzales’s CEO analogy — and thinks that a sentient board of directors wouldn’t have fired him long ago?

Let’s assume Gonzales’s good faith: that he truly is upset about what happened on his watch, just as he was upset last week about the FBI’s cavalier mishandling of its authority to issue “national security letters,” and wants to make things right.

There is no reason to believe that he is capable of making a change. The portrait of the Gonzales Justice Department that emerges from the e-mails released yesterday, and from the attorney general’s own comments, is of an agency overseen by an absentee landlord, chronically clueless about what’s happening around him.

This is a man whose memory is so foggy that George W. Bush — not exactly Mr. Detail — has a sharper recollection of their conversations than the attorney general does. The president, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, told Gonzales that Republicans were complaining about prosecutors failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud. Gonzales doesn’t recall the conversation.

I’m sorry, is there somebody he’s paying more attention to than the president of the United States?

At his I’m-accountable-but-I-didn’t-know-anything news conference yesterday, Gonzales said he knew the White House had suggested canning all 93 U.S. attorneys, rejected that idea and then left things to his chief of staff. “I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on,” he said. “That’s basically what I knew as the attorney general.”

How reassuring. But, a reporter asked, how could it be that his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, was figuring out “which U.S. attorneys to . . . let go and you not know?”

Answer: “Well, again as — I accept responsibility for whatever happens here in this department. But I have 110,000 working in the department. Obviously, there are going to be decisions made that I’m not aware of all the time.”

Translation: “I’m going to tell you I’m responsible, because that’s what they tell me I have to say. But of course I’m not. It’s all Kyle Sampson’s fault. I’m hoping that if I say I’m accountable often enough, no one will actually hold me accountable.”

Ousting a group of top federal prosecutors isn’t some minor, inconsequential act. It’s the sort of thing that a responsible attorney general would be deeply immersed in. Gonzales’s depiction of his own marginality is the most damning evidence of his unfitness for the job.

The precise non-mistake mistake that Gonzales copped to yesterday was sharing “incomplete” — this is Gonzales-speak for wrong — information with Congress. Think about this: Gonzales first testified about the U.S. attorney firings on Jan. 19. His No. 2, Paul McNulty, testified on Feb. 6. Assistant Attorney General William Moschella testified March 6.

And it wasn’t until this week that Justice finally figured out it hadn’t figured out the whole story? If that’s true — and I’m not sure which would be worse — why should anyone believe this crowd is capable of getting its congressional story straight in the future?

Meantime, the pages of e-mails released yesterday show how — while Gonzales hummed happily above the fray — his lieutenants carefully choreographed the firings, down to making sure that the relevant senators were called at precisely the same time the ousted prosecutors were to be informed of their fates, and delaying the moment of truth until they left a meeting of federal prosecutors “to reduce chatter.”

When Arkansas senators balked at installing Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin in the U.S. attorney’s job there, Sampson recommended that the department “gum this to death.” If the senators ultimately balk, he said, “then we can tell them we’ll look for other candidates . . . and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in ‘good faith’ of course.” Of course.

In his now famous “overblown personnel matter” column in USA Today last week, Gonzales wrote, “While I am grateful for the public service of these seven U.S. attorneys, they simply lost my confidence.” (Or did he mean Kyle Sampson’s confidence?)

It’s time — past time — for the president to say the same, perhaps more quietly and more politely, about his friend, his counselor and his failed attorney general.

Good to see that the Chief of Police is not contemplating lowering the standard.

(Original found here.)

Young police recruits struggle to pass exam
by Erin Miller
West Hawaii Today
Saturday, March 17, 2007 9:48 AM HST

Response to the Police Department’s youth cadet program has been good, but academic difficulties may keep some candidates out of the program.

Police Chief Lawrence Mahuna said Friday the department received more than 100 applications for the program, which is set to begin this summer.

The scoring of applications isn’t finished, but among applicants who failed the entrance exam, reading comprehension was a “major issue,” Mahuna told Police Commissioners at their monthly meeting.

Cadet applicants who were unable to finish the test in the allotted amount of time struggled with understanding what they read, he added. Other components of the test include following logical progression, analytical thinking and math skills.

“Do you ever have meetings with teachers, to let them know we pass the students who can’t read?” Commissioner Karolyn Lundkvist asked Mahuna. “To correct that, it seems we could start with some kind of forum for the teachers.”

Mahuna said doesn’t think blaming teachers or the state’s Department of Education is the right approach.

“It’s not so much that they don’t recognize the problem,” he said. “The problems arise with behavior management, the inordinate amount of time spent doing that and it disrupts the rest of the class.”

Mahuna said he did not anticipate lessening the test’s difficulty level, because to become police officers, applicants must have at least a high school diploma or its equivalent. One goal of the cadet program is to help the cadets become full-fledged police officers when they are old enough to apply.

Mahuna said after the meeting that some of the applicants taking the test were still in high school and haven’t completed their education.

Commissioner Anita Politano Steckel said members of the public might push for education reform — if they knew students were unable to pass tests like the Police Department’s entrance exam.

“We can’t get people to pass a rather ordinary [exam],” Politano Steckel said. “I hope this gets out and you get the public excited.”

Commission Chairwoman Pudding Lassiter told Lundkvist to pursue a forum with police, school and community representatives to discuss the problem.

The youth cadet program is part of the department’s ongoing recruiting drive to fill vacancies. The department has openings for 43 sworn officers and 17 civilian employees.

Recently there was this about people’s earlier discretions coming back to them after having been posted on the web. The scary part here is no that people were denied jobs because of something stupid they did, but because of something somebody else said about them.

I recently got an email from a college admission officer asking me to not google prospective freshmen for background. Apparently lots of interviewers have been using the Internet for informal background checks and because the younger generations are sharing so much more of their lives (and lifestyles) all this information can make it part of the discussion. The officer’s recommendation was to not make it so, and to just leave it off.

It’s one thing to put things like this into the public commons will the full knowledge that your words can come back and bite you, but it’s a different thing when people write things about you, perhaps without you knowing. Gruntled co-workers, a server who didn’t get a tip, a homeless person you ignored on the street - any action could be documented and reflect upon you. One you may be able to control, but the other one is basically out of your hands.

It’s a brave new world. Be careful. Or perhaps, be truthful, be kind.

(Original found here.)

Peeka-Boo!
Published March 11, 2007
by Kathleen Parker, Orlando Sentinel

WASHINGTON — It seemed like a good idea at the time.

How often have we all pasted that cartoon balloon over the mental image of a youthful indiscretion? Thank goodness no one had a camera, we might add.

Now everybody has a camera, and youthful indiscretions are captured for all time. And suddenly, we’re not so young anymore.

The MySpace-Facebook-dot-com generation has come of age, and some are finding that their silly stunts have come back to haunt them as they enter the grown-up marketplace. Others are finding that their private moments are not so private after all.

Three young women featured anonymously in a recent Washington Post article told horror stories of their attempts to find jobs, only to discover that they may have been disqualified by online postings by virtual strangers. Gossip and graphics included.

One, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and Yale law student who had gotten articles published in law journals, interviewed at 16 firms for a summer job and received no offers. How could that be?

It turned out that she and others had been discussed in not-so-flattering terms on an online message board, AutoAdmit, which is run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent, according to the Post. The board boasts up to 1 million visitors a month, and postings can be anonymous.

And vicious.

Another woman featured in the Post story is a Yale law student and Fulbright scholar who graduated summa cum laude. Not only was she the subject of a derogatory AutoAdmit chat, but photographs of her were posted on a “hottest” law-school student contest site with graphic discussions of her attributes.

Not everyone hates to be considered “hot,” but this woman was afraid to go to the gym because visitors to the site were encouraged to take cell-phone pictures of her. Beware the chatterbox in the shower stall next door. Another young woman felt afraid when online chatter about her led to an anonymous sexual threat.

The tension between free speech and privacy is nothing new, but the debate has become more complicated by the explosion in video portability and networking Web sites. In today’s uncivil society, the stakes are high and the rules are low.

Invite anonymity to the mix and hostility finds release in the vacuum created when shame went missing.

Unfortunately for some, employers are now using the Internet to vet job candidates. They, too, can be privy to those just-for-fun college forays, as well as to commentary from those with an ax to grind.

The Post reported research showing that about half of U.S. hiring officials use the Internet to evaluate job applicants and that about one-third had denied employment based on material produced by an Internet search engine. Could it happen to you? Apparently, it could happen to anyone.

Today’s college students frequently post their bios with photos on Facebook.com. Innocent and inexperienced in the realm of repercussions, they don’t hesitate to display their silliest selves, clothed and often not.

The generation that was serenaded by Madonna and marinated in sexual imagery now dwells in a high-tech, freewheeling, sexually explicit environment where porn is the new risque and everybody’s gone wild.

Ivy League and other large universities frequently are home to sex magazines featuring students who say posing nude is “fun” and a “badge of honor,” according to last Sunday’s New York Times magazine. What’s the big deal? “A body is a body is a body, and I’m proud of my body, and why not show my body?” asks Alecia Oleyourryk, co-founder of Boink, a “user-friendly porn” magazine produced by students at Boston University.

“It’s not going to keep me from having a job.”

Famous last words, perhaps.

It is true that a body is just a body, and everybody has one. But those who’ve lived awhile know that what we “knew” with certainty in our 20s isn’t necessarily what we come to know in our 30s, 40s and 50s. When you sexualize and objectify yourself, it’s asking a lot that others — including future bosses — refrain from doing the same.

Advice to the young: If you can’t imagine your mother or father doing something, you probably shouldn’t do it either. Your kids may remind you of that someday.

What about the parents? Isn’t that what parents should do, ensure that their kids are fed, rested, and clothed. No, the response is

It’s about aloha, loving the kid. Why deny them lunch? … People are obviously not thinking about the welfare of the child.

Yikes. I’d understand it for kids in kindergarten or the early elementary grades (but then you might not want to ask them to handle “meal tickets” in the first place), but once you get older …
(Originals found here and here.)

School lunch policies questioned
by Lisa Huynh
West Hawaii Today
Monday, March 12, 2007

Prompted by an incident in which a Kohala High School student was denied lunch because he lost his lunch ticket, Hawaii Island administrators are revisiting a long-standing debate about school lunch policies.

The question of whether students should be given lunch when they lose their lunch tickets or forget to bring their lunch money — and whether grade level should guide policy — is a complicated one involving education and finances.

The Department of Education does not have an umbrella policy for how schools should handle lunch distribution. The issues are dealt with on a school-by-school basis, said Randy Moore of the Office of Business Services.

Often schools will provide lunches to students regardless of the situation but in doing so at least several Big Island schools have accrued school-lunch-loan debts. Further, educators have expressed the need to hold students accountable for their actions.

Lani Eugenio, the mother of a Kohala High student, recently appealed to the state DOE and the Board of Education to address problems related to school lunch policy after her son was denied lunch when he lost his lunch ticket and wasn’t able to pay for its replacement.

In a memo to the DOE and BOE titled “Feed Our Children,” Eugenio wrote that her “child lost his lunch ticket and asked that the $5 replacement fee be taken out of his account, which had nearly $100. It was denied and he was denied lunch.”

She said the department and board responded to her letter but have made no changes to the system.

Kohala High School Principal Catherine Bratt said the school has attempted to address the issue of lost school lunch tickets by offering to keep the tickets in the cafeteria, where students can retrieve and return them at meal times.

“If they haven’t had a ticket, we’ve basically given them wiggle room,” Bratt said. However, unpaid loans have led to the school accruing outstanding loans close to $50. Bratt said she’s heard of other schools that have had significantly higher debts from lending students money for lunch.

Hawaii’s public schools have automated systems in which parents are notified immediately when school lunch accounts are running low, said Bratt.

Schools are reimbursed by the federal and state governments for free and reduced lunches. The data from the lunch programs aids federal government tracking of low-income students.

In the 2005-2006 school year, roughly 6.6 million free meals and 2.3 million reduced-price meals were served in Hawaii, according to Glenna Owens, DOE school food services program manager. The state received about $18 million in federal reimbursements for free meals, and about $5.5 million for reduced-price meals.

West Hawaii Complex Area Superintendent Art Souza said the general understanding is all students are going to be fed. Before becoming superintendent, Souza said he inherited a school-lunch-loan debt when he was principal at Waikoloa Elementary.

“The difficulty is, how do we collect the school lunch loans?” Souza said. “It’s an ongoing problem and there’s no right or wrong answer.”

He added there are many levels of understanding on the issue. For some schools, making students responsible for their money and tickets is a form of teaching civic responsibility.

Standard practice from the state office is for elementary schools never to deny children food, said Owens. However, the same practice does not hold for high schools, likely because the students are expected to be more responsible.

Eugenio believes students should never be held accountable for their tickets, and that the school administration is responsible for feeding the students so they are not malnourished.

“It’s about aloha, loving the kid. Why deny them lunch?” she said. “… People are obviously not thinking about the welfare of the child.”

A different approach to solve the same problem.

Konawaena program ensures kids are fed
by Lisa Huynh
West Hawaii Today
Friday, March 16, 2007

If each person in the community gave just one dollar, no student would go hungry. This idea led to a plan and a realization for Konawaena High School teacher Alex Cadang.

The lifelong educator’s idea came from an encounter with a student who, hungry and embarrassed, silently left the school cafeteria after being denied lunch because her meal account was empty.

“I was angry and approached the cafeteria manager about the situation. I asked, ‘Why not just give her the food?’ and he explained that he needed to follow the policies,” said Cadang, an in-school suspension specialist.

Instead of fixating on reasons why students should not or could not be fed, he sought a way in which they would.

Shortly after his encounter with the student, Cadang approached friend Ed Finnegan with the idea of starting a fund. It would help feed students who qualify for free or reduced lunch in emergency situations.

“What we tried to do was keep it very simple … children who have meal cards that are depleted may use our funds,” Finnegan said. “… Regardless of the amount of money you’re donating, you know that you are funding meals for kids.”

With the help of caring people in and outside of the school, and with the support of the Principal Shawn Suzuki, Cadang created the “No Child Left Hungry” Program. Despite Cadang’s not having advertised the program, word spread quickly around campus and many stepped forward to make donations.

“What’s wonderful about this is that people in the community have such a passion for the students. They just want to help our kids and families,” said Suzuki. “… This goes beyond giving money. They are not only giving their money, they are giving their time.”

Finnegan and Cadang call the plan a simple solution from simple folks, but they also acknowledge the larger implications of their collective efforts.

“I’d rather have 1,000 people give $1 than one person getting a tax write-off, because then people will understand the plight of our children,” said Cadang.

Konawaena is not alone in struggling to deal with state and federal school lunch policies prohibiting meal loans. West Hawaii Today highlighted the issue in a recent article involving Kohala High School.

Schools are reimbursed by the federal and state governments for free and reduced lunches. The data from the lunch programs aids federal government tracking of low-income students. In the 2005-2006 school year, roughly 6.6 million free meals and 2.3 million reduced-price meals were served in Hawaii, according to Glenna Owens, Department of Education school food services program manager. The state received about $18 million in federal reimbursements for free meals, and about $5.5 million for reduced-price meals.

Cadang said he wanted to share his school’s story in the hopes that it would help others determine their own solutions.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to look beyond the problem,” Cadang said. “We think we have a model that might help other schools.”

Even though Cadang said he knows the system will be abused by some, he still believes it is worthwhile.

The DOE does not have a policy for how schools should handle lunch distribution. The issues are dealt with on a school-by-school basis, said Randy Moore of the Office of Business Services.

Suzuki said implementation of the program does not negate the fact that students must be responsible for their meal cards.

“The expectation is students will still be responsible for their cards and showing us their identification,” he said. “This is just really a different vehicle for addressing the problems and I sure hope it will do some good.”

School cafeteria manager Kip Yamamoto said keeping meal cards in the cafeteria is difficult because, at the high school level, the students come in at different times and there are too many cards to look after.

“I told (Cadang) that (the program) is a good idea because there are kids that come in without cards or money. It’s a good thing when we can pull up the funds from a general account,” said Yamamoto.

Although he does not deal directly with the students most of the time, Yamamoto said it is hard for the cafeteria staff to turn away students.

For more information, contact Alex Cadang at 323-4500.

There are a few threads to follow: Sarah Lawrence decides to stop using SAT scores, without affects on the students applying. However US News will calculate an arbitrary average SAT score for that school without regards to reality. So the school decides to consider dropping out, i.e. supplying even fewer statistics to US News which will then fill in again for them. So if they decide not to participate, they will be participated by a news organization highly dependent on the success of those rankings.

So lies are being uses as statistics. A national ranking system turns out to be anything but. A national news magazine ends up losing all integrity. And a college is being under the gun to stand up to principle, or to be broadly misrepresented by those with the power. Who ends up good coming out of this?
Thank you for writing this article. I hope that we get some sort of retraction from US News & World Report, but if there isn’t - shame on you.

Too bad we’re all so dependent on lists - that we need rankings to make informed choices.

(Original article posted here.)

The Cost of Bucking College Rankings
By Michele Tolela Myers
Sunday, March 11, 2007

Like most college presidents, I have seen many prospective students and their parents show up on campus in recent months, clutching their well-worn copies of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings issue. U.S. News has smartly tapped into students’ need to sort out colleges and universities in a rational way. Parents, who face increasing college costs, understandably want to know where best to make that expensive investment.

U.S. News benefits from our appetite for shortcuts, sound bites and top-10 lists. The magazine has parlayed the appearance of unbiased measurements into a profitable bottom line.

The problem is that the U.S. News college rankings are far from reliable.

Turns out that some of their numbers are made up. I know that firsthand. Two years ago, we at Sarah Lawrence College decided to stop using SAT scores in our admission process. We didn’t make them optional, as some schools do. We simply told our prospective students not to bother sending them. We determined that the best predictors of success at Sarah Lawrence are high school grades in rigorous college-prep courses, teachers’ recommendations and extensive writing samples. We are a writing-intensive school, and the information produced by SAT scores added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions.

Since we dropped the SAT altogether, we no longer provide SAT information to U.S. News & World Report. Our two years’ experience with this practice has been very good. Faculty members report that our students continue to be terrific. Their average high school grades, high school ranks and grades in Advanced Placement courses have not changed.

But this principled decision has put us in jeopardy. I was recently informed by the director of data research at U.S. News, the person at the magazine who has a lot to say about how the rankings are computed, that absent students’ SAT scores, the magazine will calculate the college’s ranking by assuming an arbitrary average SAT score of one standard deviation (roughly 200 points) below the average score of our peer group.

In other words, in the absence of real data, they will make up a number. He made clear to me that he believes that schools that do not use SAT scores in their admission process are admitting less capable students and therefore should lose points on their selectivity index. Our experience, of course, tells us otherwise.

But the story does not stop here. When I reported this conversation at Sarah Lawrence, several faculty members and deans suggested that perhaps it was time to stop playing ranking roulette and opt out of the survey. A few colleges explore this option each year, but most don’t follow through (Reed College is one of the few exceptions I know of), because, like unilateral disarmament, unilateral withdrawal from the U.S. News ranking system is dangerous.

We discovered how dangerous it can be through a presentation U.S. News made at the 2006 meeting of the North East Association for Institutional Research. There, the magazine indicated that if a school stops sending data, the default assumption will be that it performs one standard deviation below the mean on numerous factors for which U.S. News can’t find published data. Again, making up the numbers it can’t get.

The message is clear. Unless we are willing to be badly misrepresented, we had better send the information the magazine wants. We haven’t yet decided what we will do. But if we don’t go along, we understand we will be harmed because many students will assume that Sarah Lawrence is much less selective than it actually is.

The reality is that the magazine’s rankings issue has a large circulation and that parents and students rely on these rankings to make a college choice that has enormous educational and financial implications. This gives the magazine the power to keep colleges playing the game it sets and controls.

Why should we care if we lose our place in their rankings? Because ultimately, so many people take these rankings seriously. I would at least like to let them know how misleading the whole affair is.

The writer is president of Sarah Lawrence College.

EVER SINCE Ernst Chain and Howard Florey isolated penicillin in 1939, inaugurating the era of antibiotics, harmful microbes have steadily developed resistance to even the most robust bacteria killers. The more often a particular antibiotic is administered, the more likely that bacteria will adapt. So, along with the continual development of new antibiotics, the best way to preserve the efficacy of medications that treat dangerous infections is to use them as sparingly as possible. That’s why your doctor might not prescribe a course of amoxycillin for your sniffles.

But The Post’s Rick Weiss reported last week that the Food and Drug Administration might do the exact opposite. The FDA is considering approval of cefquinome, a powerful antibiotic, to treat a common bovine infection. Never mind that there are already 12 medications on the market to treat the illness, bovine respiratory disease, or that it would be more effective to simply house cows in more sanitary conditions. FDA officials are not supposed to discriminate against drugs because their purposes might overlap with others. Nor can they tell farmers how to raise their livestock.

What the FDA can do, however, is alter its self-imposed rules that prevent the agency from fully considering the public health risks of approving this antibiotic for use in animals. The FDA’s current rules say that the agency can deny approval if giving the medication to livestock would threaten the efficacy of a major antibiotic in the treatment of food-borne illnesses in humans.

But overusing cefquinome might undermine a similar antibiotic for humans, cefepime, that is an essential medication for treating many infections that are not classified as food-borne but are nevertheless very dangerous. James E. Leggett Jr., an infectious-disease specialist whom the FDA brought in to advise on the cefquinome issue, points out that risk analyses compiled according to FDA guidelines do not consider whether giving cefquinome to cows would encourage resistance to it and other valuable antibiotics in some of the bacteria that live in — and are excreted from — the bovine gut, such as E. coli.

Instead of ignoring these risks, the FDA should adopt the more sensible standard that the World Health Organization recommends, which would allow the FDA to reject drugs that might undermine an antibiotic important in fighting “serious human disease,” food-borne or not. With a fuller picture of how dangerous widespread use of cefquinome in cows might be, the FDA can make a better decision.

I wonder if all of this undermines medical science somehow, because you’re never quite sure.

But way, I found a second article showing how the FDA, that approved drugs, operates. Coming up.

(Original found here.)

Beta Carotene Pills May Not Save Vision
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) - Carrots, rich in beta carotene, long have been thought to sharpen eyesight, but a new study suggests that beta carotene pills are powerless against a common type of vision loss among older people. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people 65 and older. The condition blurs the center of the field of vision, making it difficult to read, drive, thread a needle and even recognize faces. It affects more than 10 million Americans and there is no cure.

An earlier large study had shown that beta carotene _ when taken with certain vitamins and zinc _ could slow or prevent vision loss in people with age-related macular degeneration. Commercial formulations of the eye-protecting combination vitamins are sold over the counter.

But the new study found no benefit for beta carotene supplements alone against the disease.

That may be a comfort for smokers with signs of macular degeneration. Smoking is a risk factor for the condition, but beta carotene has been shown in other research to raise the risk of lung cancer in smokers. So eye doctors have advised smokers concerned about macular degeneration to find a vitamin regimen without beta carotene.

“This study at least suggests that beta carotene might not be an important component of that (vitamin) formulation,” said Dr. Stuart Fine of the University of Pennsylvania’s Scheie Eye Institute, who was not involved in the new study.

The finding is based on data from more than 21,000 male doctors who were followed for an average of 12 years. The doctors were randomly assigned to take either 50 milligrams of beta carotene every other day or a dummy pill. The doctors didn’t know whether the pills they took contained beta carotene.

Roughly the same number of doctors in both groups developed the eye condition, suggesting beta carotene didn’t help or hurt. After 12 years, there were 162 cases of macular disease in the beta carotene group and 170 cases in the group taking the dummy pills. The difference in the numbers was not statistically significant, meaning it could have occurred by chance.

Study co-author Dr. William Christen at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said it’s possible that beta carotene might be helpful only in combination with the other vitamins and zinc, but he said that’s unlikely.

Christen said it’s unclear whether the latest findings would apply to women since the experiment only involved men; he said he’d like to see a similar study among women. The research, appearing in the March issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, also says nothing about carrots and eyesight.

“Currently the best advice might be something you’ve heard before: Eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day because it’s the combination of nutrients that seems to be the important factor,” Christen said.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. Some of the researchers reported receiving past funding from pharmaceutical and nutritional supplement makers.

On the Net:
Archives of Ophthalmology:
http://archopht.ama-assn.org

I’ve read about the PSAs for the oil production in the former Soviet Republics, but they’re right, this sounds rather aggressive and tragic.

Since the beginning all foreign media and foreign countries that suggested that this war could be about oil, were ridiculed. Ah well. Guess who has pie in their face now?

(Original found here.)

Iraq legislation
The war was all about oil

For those who may have wondered whether oil was the reason we invaded Iraq, a new oil law just passed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Council of Ministers, and probably soon to be passed by the Iraqi Parliament, should answer that question.

This law, which was planned in the U.S. before the invasion and has since been promoted by J. Paul Bremer and his successors, will legalize Production Service Agreements (PSAs) with oil companies from outside of Iraq, such as Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell.

These contracts will provide these companies with lengthy contracts (up to 30 years) to extract Iraqi oil and reap up to 75 percent of the profits. It also allows for oil company representatives to sit on the Iraqi Oil Council which determines Iraqi oil policy.

No other Middle Eastern country currently uses PSAs and where they have been used in the past (e.g. for technological expertise); they have been written for much shorter periods, like five years.

This privatization of its oil industry will deprive Iraq of much-needed revenue to rebuild and sustain its country which has been severely damaged as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation and will transfer that money to the pockets of outside interests.

So, at last, we know what George Bush means when he speaks of “victory” in Iraq and why Dick Cheney can say, “Things are going well in Iraq.”

Among the beneficiaries of the invasion will be the big oil companies who will now be able to continue supplying us with gasoline at exorbitant prices.

One might only mention also the contracting firms (like Halliburton) and arms merchants for whom the Iraq invasion is a bonanza.

On the other side of the ledger are the American military and their families, countless Iraqi children, women, and men, dead, wounded and fled, and the American taxpayers of today and years to come.

In addition, a plundered U.S. treasury that cannot provide for education, health care, Katrina recovery, development of alternative energy sources and the basic infrastructure here at home. These are the casualties of this disastrous war for oil, all for an agenda of the few.

Tragic.

See more details at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

T.B., Waimea

I don’t know what the legislature was about, but given that the bill is now held because of a medical professional means it can’t be completely unreasonable. The writer implies that the state shouldn’t require doctors to act against their Hippocratic Oath (see wikipedia here), but then has no problem for an Ohana and their personal physician to take end of life decisions without legal sanction. So it’s better for a family to end the life of a loved one, than the state saying that they can do so without repercussions?
The word “dignity” seems to be a particular sore spot, as if there can be no dignity in any legal “killing.”

Yet

the state should never put itself in the position of sanctioning killing other than for the purpose of protecting society

This is icky. It’s ok to kill the bad guys, it’s not ok to assist the good guys. I thought the Hippocratic Oath said something about doing no harm (and that it also is against doctors assisting in executions). Sometimes when people get to the end of their life, you may be doing harm by not letting them go and helping them to go. People with terminal cancers are usually not “kept alive at all costs.” The decision is how to help them and increase their “quality of life.”

“Quality of life” is not the same as “alive.”
(Original found here.)

UPDATE: a day later another person wrote in regarding this article. He comes from a different perspective and sounds rather angry at the original views expressed. Of course more valid points. Sometimes you feel that it is time for new language to view all this. The Republican Administration is great at coming up with slogan, or new terms for things we already call something (like “Insurgents,” or “War on Terror,” or “Unlawful Combatants”). Let’s apply that same and rename something known. We have Conservatives and Liberals. But they’re conserving and liberating what - the Status Quo? OK - so how about “old fashioned” and “modern?” (or “stubborn” and “impatient” if that sounds better).

Anyways, the followup letter was pissed, though heartfelt.

Death with Dignity
Protect Marriage and the Terminally Ill
Saturday, March 10, 2007 9:49 AM HST

The person who recently wrote a letter castigating Hawaii’s Legislature for not passing a “death with dignity” bill was evidently not present in the Health Committee hearing where public testimony regarding this subject occurred.

I was, and I can tell you the testimony against this very deceptive legislation was overwhelmingly against it. There were no arguments given that were more powerful than those from the community of the disabled, all of whom understood (as well as the U.S. Supreme Court) that this type of law can push us further down the “slippery slope” of reduced protections for the most vulnerable in society.

There is nothing “humanitarian” or “dignifying” about giving legal sanction to health care providers to begin functioning contrary to their Hippocratic oaths. When the state tries to define which people have more or less dignity based upon their physical condition in a given near death experience, it perverts its role in society to treat everyone as equal under the law, and it will ultimately fail. This is the “fruit” of such actions in Belgium and Holland and at a minimum, we can learn from their story. Indeed, these same countries are now slowly embracing the concept of infant euthanasia and it started with embracing the conceptual paradigm of “death with dignity”.

This bill never came before the Legislature as a result of any groundswell of public opinion, nor the breakdown of traditions that safeguard individuals prerogatives of deciding among their ohana and with their personal physician what end of life decisions to take without the force of legal sanction. The state should never put itself in the position of sanctioning killing other than for the purpose of protecting society.

Bob Dylan sang a song with a line “when we practice to deceive, oh, what a tangled web we weave.” This legislation, while perhaps well intended, would have created a tangled web of deception. Let us never participate in this deception under the guise of helping our neighbors and family members to die more peacefully, or with “greater dignity”.

Our local state representative, Josh Green, and his committee by a vote of 5 to 2, chose the wisest course of action and held the bill.

A far more serious issue at present (and one which hundreds of thousands of people did speak their mind on) is the Legislature seeking to overturn the results of the state wide referendum in 1998 that protected the institution of marriage by a majority vote of 69 percent.

House bill 908, entitled “Civil Unions” and described as “extending the same rights and responsibilities of spouses to partners in a civil union” would make a mockery of the 1998 vote.

It simply results in marriage being called by another name. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

Husbands and wives take care for your children and let your legislators know your thoughts.

MS, Kailua-Kona

here is the follow up, found here.

Same sex unions
Conservative doublespeak
Saturday, March 17, 2007 9:47 AM HST

In his letter to the editor published on March 10, Mark Spengler, in his argument for protection of the terminally ill wrote, in arguing for the defeat of the bill, the state “perverts its role in society to treat everyone as equal under the law.”

Yet in the second part of his letter, he goes on to argue against “extending the same rights and responsibilities of spouses to partners in a civil union.” As so many in the conservative fight against any kind of legal recognition of civil unions, Mr. Spengler argues for the state to treat conservative issues “as equal under the law,” all while talking out of the other side of his mouth and demanding that civil unions not be recognized.

For someone who is so concerned about protecting marriage, perhaps their attention would be better focused on Las Vegas wedding chapels and the two-day marriages of the Britney Spears of the world. Furthermore, I would think that the conservatives of this country, if so concerned with holding marriage up as the proper adult relationship between two committed, loving people, they would be clamoring for co-habiting gays and lesbians to marry instead of “shacking up.”

Instead, conservatives seemingly have to have someone to feel superior to. Think about it: Gays and lesbians remain the last group of people that it is still socially acceptable, and legal, to discriminate against in most of the nation.

Yes, even toothless residents of trailer park ghettos can sit in their smoke-filled homes waiting for their next government handout, but they can still feel superior to even the most successful homosexual in their town, because they have the legal recognition of their relationship, whatever that may be.

Are conservative marriages on such shaky ground that if the gay couple in your neighborhood had equal recognition under the law, your marriage would lose its sanctity? Would you end up in divorce court? Would the thought of gays having the same rights as you regarding hospital visitation, inheritance, taxes, and all the rest cause you to question your own sexuality? Is your grasp on heterosexuality so weak that you are concerned that you would join my “team” if, God forbid, we had the same tax deduction, or my partner could be covered by my medical insurance?

Conservatives of America, you should know that gays are not clamoring to burst into their local Baptist, Pentecostal, or Catholic church during Sunday services and demand to be married. This may come as a shock to you, but in many cities, we have our own churches. But even in small towns like Kona, where there is not a gay church, being humans, we are not generally inclined to barge in on a body of Jesus’ followers — where we likely would be viewed with disdain, be unwelcome, and in some locales we would be at risk for physical harm –in a church or just outside of it.

“What would Jesus do?” The Jesus I know is about love, and I don’t believe He would look favorably on people who treat others as inferior humans.

Happily there are denominations where generally, all are welcome, so if your church is not among them you can relax: don’t look for me in your house of bigotry and homophobia, I won’t be there.

I will admit that HB 908, as written, had a flaw. I do not think any 16-year-old should be allowed to “marry” — anybody. But I am not the least bit interested in a 16-year-old, but I remain interested in my 41-year-old partner.

And he thanks you Mr. Spengler, and all the taxpayers of this country, as Medicare has paid for two expensive hip replacement surgeries in the last two years.

I’m sure that Blue Cross thanks America’s conservatives too, since they do not have to recognize a legal relationship with my partner, they didn’t have to insure him or pay for his expensive surgeries.

I hope you think of that when you write your next big check to the IRS.

B.L., Kailua-Kona