Things that defines Ted K

…
Mr. Kennedy was the last surviving brother of a generation of Kennedys that dominated American politics in the 1960s and that came to embody glamour, political idealism and untimely death. The Kennedy mystique — some call it the Kennedy myth — has held the imagination of the world for decades, and it came to rest on the sometimes too-narrow shoulders of the brother known as Teddy.
….
Born to one of the wealthiest American families, Mr. Kennedy spoke for the downtrodden in his public life while living the heedless private life of a playboy and a rake for many of his years. Dismissed early in his career as a lightweight and an unworthy successor to his revered brothers, he grew in stature over time by sheer longevity and by hewing to liberal principles while often crossing the partisan aisle to enact legislation. A man of unbridled appetites at times, he nevertheless brought a discipline to his public work that resulted in an impressive catalog of legislative achievement across a broad landscape of social policy.
…..

Although he was a leading spokesman for liberal issues and a favorite target of conservative fund-raising appeals, the hallmark of his legislative success was his ability to find Republican allies to get bills passed. Perhaps the last notable example was his work with President George W. Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, the education law pushed by Mr. Bush in 2001. He also co-sponsored immigration legislation with Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. One of his greatest friends and collaborators in the Senate was Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican.
……
Mr. Kennedy had less impact on foreign policy than on domestic concerns, but when he spoke, his voice was influential. He led the Congressional effort to impose sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, pushed for peace in Northern Ireland, won a ban on arms sales to the dictatorship in Chile and denounced the Vietnam War. In 2002, he voted against authorizing the Iraq war; later, he called that opposition “the best vote I’ve made in my 44 years in the United States Senate.”
….
Mr. Kennedy struggled for much of his life with his weight, with alcohol and with persistent tales of womanizing. In an Easter break episode in 1991 in Palm Beach, Fla., he went out drinking with his son Patrick and a nephew, William Kennedy Smith, on the night that Mr. Smith was accused of raping a woman. Mr. Smith was prosecuted in a lurid trial that fall but was acquitted.
….
After graduating from Milton in 1950, where he showed a penchant for debating and sports but was otherwise an undistinguished student, Mr. Kennedy enrolled in Harvard, as had his father and brothers. It was at Harvard, in his freshman year, that he ran into the first of several personal troubles that were to dog him for the rest of his life: He persuaded another student to take his Spanish examination, got caught and was forced to leave the university.
…..
As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the University of Virginia, said the catchphrase of that era was: “Most people grow up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”
…..
fate, and the Kennedy recklessness, intervened on July 18, 1969. Mr. Kennedy was at a party with several women who had been aides to Robert. The party, a liquor-soaked barbecue, was held at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard. He left around midnight with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, took a turn away from the ferry landing and drove the car off a narrow bridge on an isolated beach road. The car sank in eight feet of water, but he managed to escape. Miss Kopechne, a former campaign worker for Robert, drowned.
Mr. Kennedy did not report the accident to the authorities for almost 10 hours, explaining later that he had been so banged about by the crash that he had suffered a concussion, and that he had become so exhausted while trying to rescue Miss Kopechne that he had gone immediately to bed. A week later, he pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence.
But that was far from the end of the episode. Questions lingered in the minds of the Massachusetts authorities and of the general public. Why was the car on an isolated road? Had he been drinking? (Mr. Kennedy testified at an inquest that he had had two drinks.) What sort of relationship did Mr. Kennedy and Miss Kopechne have? Could she have been saved if he had sought help immediately? Why did the senator tell his political advisers about the accident before reporting it to the police?
…..

Freed at last of the expectation that he should and would seek the White House, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself fully to his day job in the Senate, where he had already led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.
….
His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.
In one of those bipartisan alliances that were hallmarks of his legislative successes, Mr. Kennedy worked with Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, to secure passage of the voting rights measure, and Mr. Dole got most of the credit.
Perhaps his greatest success on civil rights came in 1990 with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required employers and public facilities to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled. When the bill was finally passed, Mr. Kennedy and others told how their views on the bill had been shaped by having relatives with disabilities. Mr. Kennedy cited his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, and his son who had lost a leg to cancer.
Mr. Kennedy was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s strongest allies in their failed 1994 effort to enact national health insurance, a measure the senator had been pushing, in one form or another, since 1969.
But he kept pushing incremental reforms, and in 1997, teaming with Senator Hatch, Mr. Kennedy helped enact a landmark health care program for children in low-income families, a program now known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-Chip.

…
He was a forceful and successful opponent of the confirmation of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. In a speech delivered within minutes of President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Mr. Bork in 1987, Mr. Kennedy made an attack that even friendly commentators called demagogic. Mr. Bork’s “extremist view of the Constitution,” he said, meant that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.”

Daughter deficit--development and discrimination against women

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23FOB-idealab-t.html?ref=world

Major points:
Mechanisms through which economic development (better education, wealthier households, more power of women in families) could make things worse:
* Lower birth rates--births of daughters got even more serious;
* Technologies could help to discriminate the girls: abortions after ultra-sonic tests;
* Higher education and income levels generate more resources, development offers new opportunities to discriminate against living girls.

--> Overall, development equalizes gender, among other things, but it is important to push for changes in values too.

I am sure many women economists have contributed to this article. I am never interested in these. Nevertheless, it is interesting stuff.

2009 Cincy final and semifinals (men's)

1- Murray vs Fed--"back to tactics". As Brad, Chris and Darren pointed out repeatedly, Roger Federer did two brilliant things he never did before against Murray: return to the center of the court and really stepped up on the second serve. This seems to be VERY effective. As Agassi says, "one great thing about tennis is that you dont need to play great to win, you only need to play better than your opponent", not to let your opponent play his game is sometimes easier than to show your best. Roger seemed to find the Achilles' heels of Murray, let's see how Murray gonna respond in their next match-up. One bad thing about Murray was his adaption/ability to "CHANGE" on court.

2- Rafa vs Nole--"Nole just too good". Just watched the second set. Maybe in the first Rafa couldnt catch up w/ Nole, in the second, Rafa definitely played comfortably, producing very good tennis. But Nole just too sharp, too pentrating. Again, his best show in months. I was expecting a thrilling final after that, but as it turned out, it was an anti-climax. The 4h-consecutive loss in a MASTERS final for the cute and once-defiant Serb.

3- Roger vs Nole, ---"First serve, man!" The first serve is crucial for Nole as he faces the big guns. It drove me mad when he just couldn't find it throughout the match. And he lacked the faith of hanging there from the start. Really disappointed about Nole's performance today. Roger was sharp, versatile and brutal, he could not wait to fire the first shot these days, which makes his game nicer (in my opinion), but he just couldn't keep up his level for very long on hard court these days. So if Nole has the mentality, he could tough it out, like he himself and Murray did in the spring.

Looking forward to US Open, We have at least 6 players who well deserve the trophy (Murray, Novak, del Potro, A-Rod, Rafa and the one and the only, Roger Federer). THE DRAW GONNA BE CRUCIAL!!

Murray the new world #2

1- THINGS do change very quickly. It is very cruel. But missing a Wimbledon, losing the No.1 or No.2 ranking won't change who you are, and all those are trivial comparing to a healthy body. It is not really great pressure for Rafa. I really hope he sees all these this way. But he does have to rethink his schedule and have a new attitude to points, matches and tournaments.

2- Yet another great achievement for Andy Murray. Maybe many will see this breakthrough /progress coming too late. But I feel this might be better for him in the long run. Premature sex makes a relationship easily rotted, fame too easily gotten can lead to similar consequences for a career. Now he has got to #2, is #1 far? But on the other hand, every chance matters if you want to chase the history. Obviously, Murray is the strongest on the hard court after last year's US Open. Who conquers hard court conquers the tennis world. But why Rafa and Roger are still monopolize the headlines/ is he still not the focus? Because his mediocre performances in the majors. He lost one good chance in Melbourne, he was under too much pressure in Wimbledon, just as Tim Henman did. It still remains to be seen whether and how he gonna demonstrate his superiority in US Open. From now to next US Open (2010) can tell me who Murray really is.

3- A small "recession" for Djoker, he needs to regroup. He should work more in the gym. (A deep depression for Ana. Hard to tell when she will come back. )

4- Roddick, I think I understand what he thinks now: running a race against the clock, the age. His eagerness and earnestness translates into great improvement on techniques and more patience and composure on court, but those seem to wipe out the freshness he once has. He is so heavy, mentally. Today he lost another very close match to del Potro. H2H is now 0-3. His backhand is still fragile comparing to del Potro.

5- Federer. Hard to see the possibility that he wins another shield. He has passed his golden era on hard court too. But you can always recall his beautiful days on Grand Slams.

Chinese GDP

The sum of the GDPs published by provincial governments are 1,400 billion RMB, or 9.9% more than the GDP published by the National Statistical Bureau.

Unemployment rate

Firstly a good (and plain!) interpretation of the recently-published US unemployment rate:

http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/not-as-bad-but-not-good/?hp

Key points:
*that is statistically unimportant given the sampling error in the household survey.

*In any case, it fell not because more people said they had jobs — employment was down in that survey — but because fewer people were still looking for work .

*the auto manufacturing business had added 28,200 workers. Added? That sure is not the impression you’d get from the reports coming from Detroit. ....It turns out those are seasonally adjusted numbers. .....

*The number of unemployed people who have been unemployed for 14 weeks or less was .... the lowest figure for that group since December. But the number unemployed for 15 weeks or more was 7.88 million, up 74 percent since December and the highest figure ever. ....more than a third of the unemployed have been out of work for at least 27 weeks. The average unemployed person had been jobless for less than 20 weeks at the end of last year. Now the figure is over 25 weeks.

*Is it good news that fewer people are losing their jobs? Yes. Is it bad news that the number of long-term unemployed is rising? Yes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To have a better understanding, one should remind how unemployment is defined and how unemployment rate is calculated, theoretically.

A very simple symbol ("u" if i m not mistaken) turns out to be pretty complicated empirically. The unemployment rate is collected through CPS, one of the 3 leading labor economics databases (US) for the reasons briefly explained on BLS website.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#where

How is this work/project done?

http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/bdacodes.htm

The evolution:

http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/bhistory.htm

The questionairres can be found @

http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/bqestair.htm---not readable!

http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/intmanc4.htm

The sampling and weighting---**still pretty conceptual in some senses, but that's enough for most usages.

http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/bsampwgt.htm

The imputation--**N/A

The seasonal-adjusted algorithm---**N/A

Some people sniffed at this release. To this, my response is:Any data has room for politics but one should have faith in the quality of US data.

Data has room for "politics" because the ground/field work has so many to tackle, much more than what is in the theorists' minds. Like many other data, the (US) government never disclose how they finally get that final percentage (to the tenth). But overall, people tend to believe the US and UK data are credible, at least after the adjustments. (what in the news are normally "early release", which means tentative, the "finalized figures" come month(s) later) It probably relates to the tradition, the custom. It is interesting to see how vast the difference is between US, UK, Germany data and Italy and Spain's. Whether it is a well-functioned democracy matters too. Who believes the Chinese data on employment and growth rate?

Comeback

I couldn't get access to this blog shortly after going back to China, because of the damned Internet censorship thing.

They blocked all foreign blogs (including those in Tennis.com!), Facebook, Google Picasa, Windows Live Space (temporarily, for one month roughly), GMail, Hotmail, (temporarily, during June 4 period), many media sites including BBC China etc.

What a hell it is!