Much is Hereby Explained

From 1980 to 2014, student headcount in public schools increased 22.6% while expenditures increased by a mere 115.2%  (in constant dollars)

The increased expenditures went to purchase more
130.0% more Instructional Aides (whoever they are)
 88.1% more School District Administrative Staff
 63.1% more Principles/Assistant Principles
 63.0 % more Guidance Counselors
 43.4% more Teachers
 40.0% more Support Staff
  7.1% fewer Librarians


The United States Department of Education began operating on May 4, 1980.

The March of the Tabs

March comes in like a lion, the proverb says, and this is surely true of the march of the tabs, which have accumulated unpruned on TOF's tab-bar over the unruly winter months, frozen on the branches like cherry blossoms in global warming. Hereunder, with appropriately short shrift:

1. "Everything Old is New Again" Remember the torrential rains in California this past winter? The following article appeared in Scientific American back in 2013:

THE INTENSE RAINSTORMS SWEEPING IN FROM the Pacific Ocean began to pound central California on Christmas Eve in 1861 and continued virtually unabated for 43 days. The deluges quickly transformed rivers running down from the Sierra Nevada mountains along the state’s eastern border into raging torrents that swept away entire communities and mining settlements. The rivers and rains poured into the state’s vast Central Valley, turning it into an inland sea 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Thousands of people died, and one quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned. Downtown Sacramento was submerged under 10 feet of brown water filled with debris from countless mudslides on the region’s steep slopes. California’s legislature, unable to function, moved to San Francisco until Sacramento dried out—six months later. By then, the state was bankrupt. 

It gives the usual nod to "but this time the rains will be worse because global warming blah-blah-blah," but it's hard to overlook the pre-emptive catatastrophes that look so much like those of today.  

However, when the "rivers in the sky" were reported during the California deluge this winter, none of this background was reported. This was not likely because they wished to conceal the context, but because the needed more air-time for commercials. These days, you may notice they sometimes don't have enough time to complete a sentence. 

2. La Grande Scazzottata Copernica is up. If you read Italian, enjoy it.

Russia Explained

If every person is the hero of his own story, then every country is the center of the world. Geography is not fate, but it will often do until Fate comes a-knocking on the door, so what does Russia look like when the world is centered on it?

Fun With Statistics

The Wall Street Journal tells us

The fleet of battery-powered cars is rising, and their owners are more than twice as wealthy as most Americans. An Experian Automotive study found that more than 20% of them are middle-aged professionals who make more than $175,000 a year. 

TOF can already envision the headlines. Buying an electric car will make you rich!! After all, it's statisticalistic. You can't argue with stats!
(If you think that's risible, you haven't been paying attention to the way such statistics are interpreted by the axe-grinders. Married people are happier; so we should force people into marriage to make them happy! Perhaps more infamously, home-owners are more prosperous, so we should loosen the rules for mortgage qualification so the poor people can also prosper!)

Actually, the item tells us that the cost of building charging stations for the wealthy electrocar owners will be added to the rates for the utility, so that poor people will have the pleasure of subsidizing the luxuries of the rich.

+++

Another example of Statistics in Action, due to the gimlet eye of Wm. M. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars:

When I first ascend to Emperor, after throwing into the dungeon any within earshot who cannot speak a full sentence without using ‘like’, my first act will be to create a year-long moratorium on all science publishing.
I’ll do this out of kindness. The system is rigged to tempt people beyond endurance to write papers that are either (A) nonsense or (B) what everybody already knows re-packaged as “research.” This must be stopped because it is having a terrible effect on the sanity of the nation.
As proof, I offer the peer-reviewed “Parental Well-being Surrounding First Birth as a Determinant of Further Parity Progression” by Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä in the journal Demography, a paper which was announced by the Washington Post with the headline, “Parenthood is worse than divorce, unemployment — even the death of a partner“.
The Post’s headline is possibly the result of insanity; it is certainly nonsense.

Read the rest at the link.

Surely You Remember the Wave of Outrage...

...that swept the country. A major investigative report by the Associated Press about ten years ago has been found webward. It is linked here for Faithful Reader's edification. TOF remembers brief mention at the time, but it was picked up by only a few major newspapers and (ITRRC) by no networks.

Which may be why you don't remember the wave of outrage.

Sterling Silver

There has been much hoo-hah in the media recently, where discussion of NSA "wire"-tapping, the performance of the government-run VA medical care, or of an economy for the past seven years endemically sluggish has been eclipsed by a two-minute hate declared regarding Emmanuel Goldstein Donald Sterling. Sterling, for those of you thankfully beyond range of the twitterverse, is the current stand-in for those perennial goldsteins, the Koch Brothers.

The exquisite sin of this two-time NAACP Lifetime Achievment Awardee has been that, having espied his mistress publicly accompanied by men other than himself, suffered the umbrage of all married men apparently being dissed by their mistresses and vented infelicitously regarding her behavior. In the course of this, he naturally mentioned those in whose company she had been seen and marked their most salient characteristic. Now, this venting was in a private conversation, but someone (presumably not the NSA) recorded it and distributed it to various publicity organs, in consequence of which the mistress' Q-score was increased from zero to a wee but positive number.

Summum ius, summa iniuria

Roman Tully

So wrote Cicero in De officiis I.10.33.  It translates as 'maximum justice is maximum injustice.' 

Oakland Oakley

Prof. Barbara Oakley, of Oakland University, Rochester, MI, whom TOF cannot resist calling Oakland Oakley, has published a paper yclept: "Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The eight pages of the paper manage to accumulate 110 footnotes, so it is an impressive feat.  Or an impressive foot. 

Pathological altruism is "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm" with the proviso that while the altruist does not foresee harm that "an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable."  This can be summed up in the great Battle Cry of the Besserwissers: "What could possibly go wrong?"  (Followed sooner or later by the plaintive "How were we supposed to know?")

Sometimes They Don't Read What They Done Wrote

It has since been deleted by someone with an ear for irony, but....

A New Definition of Chutzpah

A young woman who works in the welfare office in a certain county received a call from someone requesting food stamps.
What is your annual income? she said.
$175,000
(silence, followed by:)
I'm sorry, but you aren't eligible for food stamps.  
I don't see why not!
(looking up SSI data...)
It says here you own two rental properties in New York City and make $6000/mo.
Why does that matter?
+ + +

An Algebraical Conundrum

Alcibiades: I approve of A.
Socrates: But then surely you have a reason for your approval?
Alc.: Certes.  I approve of A because it lacks property X!
Soc.: But then you must also approve of B, because B also lacks property X.
Alc.: What?  No!  That is awful.  A is worthy because of... because of condition Y.

In De Nile

"If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately," Gibbs said, while declining to speculate whether the Egyptian government was in fact behind the violence.

Presumably, if the violence is instigated by the protesters or by free-lance Mubarak supporters, it may then proceed unabated.