The Daily Parker

I've heard of résumé padding, but, wow:

[Adam] Wheeler had never attended the exclusive Phillips Academy prep school in Andover or MIT. And his academic record at Harvard was far less dazzling than he claimed. Instead of straight A's, Wheeler had received some A's, a few B's and a D. His SAT scores were also much less impressive: 1160 and 1220, not the perfect 1600 he had claimed, according to court documents.

Wheeler, 23, of Milton, Del., was ordered held on $5,000 bail Tuesday after pleading not guilty to 20 counts of larceny, identity fraud and other charges. ... Wheeler was tossed from Harvard last fall after he tried to get the school's endorsement for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships, and a professor reviewing his applications found evidence he had plagiarized from another professor, prosecutors say. Wheeler's parents gave him up to a Yale official who called to ask about their son's transfer application.

Prosecutor John Verner said in court Tuesday that Wheeler essentially stole $45,000 in financial aid, scholarship money and academic awards from Harvard.

Just thinking back to my application to Fuqua, I can't figure out how he faked his academic record. All the supporting documents, like transcripts, usually have to come directly from the institutions, for starters. Doesn't Harvard have control systems?

Mondays are Economist days over here. I've got myself into a rhythm of travel, school, work, and keeping sane that requires me to put things in small boxes of time; on Mondays I read the latest Economist. This week had two unusually interesting (and short) articles in the "Finance and Economics" section[1].

First, a report that numeracy predicts mortgage defaults better than any other variable:

Even accounting for a host of differences between people—including attitudes to risk, income levels and credit scores—those who fell behind on their mortgages were noticeably less numerate than those who kept up with their payments in the same overall circumstances. The least numerate fell behind about 25% of the time. For those who did best on the test, the number of payments they missed was almost 12%. A fifth of the least numerate group had been in foreclosure, but only 7% of those who were more numerically adept had.

Surprisingly, the least numerate were not making loan choices that differed much from their peers. They were about as likely to have a fixed-rate mortgage as the more numerically able. They did not borrow a larger share of their income. And loans were about the same fraction of the house’s value.

They've even got a handy quiz of the type the researchers used. Two pages on, in the "Economics Focus" column, the newspaper reported on the FCC's decision two weeks ago to treat ISPs as common carriers for their last-mile service. This is a big deal:

A medieval innkeeper, for example, often offered the only lodging in town; a boatman could cross only with the king’s writ. Second, the state sometimes offers favours of its own to transporters—public lands and roads, say, or the seizure of private property to make way for new infrastructure—and expects a certain level of public service in return. Third, transport is essential to commerce. It represents an input cost to almost all businesses, and to restrict access or overcharge is to burden the entire economy.

All these arguments applied in spades to 19th-century rail. Like a medieval town’s sole inn, a railway line is a perfect example of a natural monopoly: it is tremendously expensive to build and it is difficult to justify more than one set of tracks on any route just to guarantee competition. ...

Telecoms operators argue that America does not need common carriage for internet access, because the country’s unique network of local cable monopolies competes against its last-mile copper-wire monopolies. ... The FCC’s current plan—to ask last-mile providers to subsidise rural service, and to ensure equal treatment of packets of information—is a mild intervention by global standards.

Time now to review, once again, the team's finance assignment due tonight, and then collapse in a heap. The Daily Parker will probably continue to have slightly less velocity than usual for a week or so as I twist myself into a small knot of anxiety over my finance midterm. If only it could be as engaging as a class as it is in a newspaper.

[1] Yes, the topic interests me in the abstract, but at the same time I can't wait until the end of doing concrete finance—e.g., working out CAPM calculations—once my finance class ends next month.

I needed to catch my breath this weekend, so The Daily Parker fell to the bottom of the stack. Here are some of the things that passed before my eyes in the last few days:

• Math teacher Dan Meyer gave a TED Talk in March suggesting improvements to how we teach math. He says we should teach kids how to reason, not just plug in formulae. As I'm going through the effects of bad mathematics education myself this term, his talk resonated.
• The Texas Taliban have made another tinfoil hat recommendation to the Texas School Board, this time to have textbooks explain to children "Threats of global government to individual freedom and liberty includ[ing] the votes of the U. N. General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, the U. N. Gun Ban proposal, forced redistribution of American wealth to third world countries, and global environmental initiatives."
• Melvin Conner, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Eduction, sums up new research in childhood cognitive development, including the worrying trend of earlier puberty and later emotional maturity.
• Scott Adams ruminates on brain management in ways I've noticed myself: "I also find it impossible to do any sort of creative writing while listening to music, perhaps for the same reason: Creativity springs from a deep examination of self, which you then generalize, and music seems to share that bandwidth."

There were a few others in there, too, which I'll post as soon as I remember them.

NPR reports that a new analysis of the BP oil spill puts the gusher at 2.3 to 11.7 megaliters per day, rather than BP's original estimate of 590 kL. They've also got video.

Also, there's a good reason why dead fish aren't washing up on shore yet. We've already killed them all, thanks to oxygen deprivation caused by Mississippi River runoff. The oil spill just gilds the lily, really.

Waaaaay back in ancient history, I actually reported a Nigerian scammer to the FBI. This was, oh, 1997 or so, maybe 1998. The FBI already had a cybercrimes unit in San Francisco, and I had a half-hour conversation with one of the agents there about a bizarre email I'd received from a Nigerian IP address. We actually did some IP tracing and header analysis on the email to determine its origin. Yes, the scam was that new.

Who was it that said, the more things change, the more they stay the same? Right:

OFFICER IN-CHARGE:
NAME: Mr. Robert Stephen Sien @
FBI UK Internet Fraud Watch/Alert
Phone: +44 792 457 7408

We are writing in response to our track light monitoring device which we received today in our office about your transactions.

The Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) Washington DC, in conjunction with the Scotland Yard, Has screened through our various Monitoring Networks also our German counterpart the anti fraud unit reported that your identity/information was used to dupe a German Business man to the tune of $5 Million USD by some Africa/Nigerian Fraudsters.

After all the series of investigations conducted here in our office we tracked your record and we found out that you have never had any fraudulent case that may jeopardize your image and personality.

We have concluded our investigation and you have been approved to be compensated from the total amount recovered for scam victims compensation. So all you need to do right now in other to receive your compensation and clear your name from the list of these Con Men which has already been forwarded to our office is to secure the CLEAN BILL CERTIFICATE immediately.

This Certificate will clear your name from the scam list which will enable you receive the sum of $500,000.00 Usd compensation fund.

You are required to contact Robert S. Sien by email: rssien@aol.com with your full name and contact details for easy communication also to guild you on how to secure the CLEAN BILL CERTIFICATE and claim your money.

THANKS FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION.

Robert Stephen Sien.
FBI SPECIAL AGENT

You know what tipped me off? What made me certain this was a 419 scammer? Because, you can see, it's quite well crafted, no loose ends, nothing to arouse suspicion.

What tipped me off was this:

When real FBI agents refer to their employer, they never capitalize "of".

It's obvious when you look at it.

So, with a project running somewhere around 105%, an old and patient client that predates my current employment waiting for some updates, Global Financial Management requiring that I figure out the combined beta of two companies about to merge, Foundations of Strategy expecting a transaction cost analysis Saturday morning, and an overwhelming anticipation of seeing Diane and Parker tomorrow after almost two weeks, I find myself completely out of creativity. Heaven bless my winter office (probably, now that the pizzeria around the corner has left, simply "my remote office").

Fortunately, other people on the Intertubes have plenty of it. Creativity, I mean. Here is a quorum, mostly pinched from Sullivan:

• The Washington Post has a list of twelve things to toss out this spring, as written by Elizabeth Warren, Karl Rove, and Onion editor Joe Randazzo. (The last is an indictment of Internet memes.) There's also a bit on virginity.
• Writer Andrea Donderi posits a dichotomy between Asker and Guesser cultures. In Cultures, Civilization, and Leadership (one of the CCMBA's core classes) we'd look at this in terms of ICE profiles, which I would explain if I could find the link. (See above re: being overloaded.) This comes via The Guardian, who have the distinction this week of having endorsed for prime minister the guy who became deputy PM. By the way, this kind of embarassment (two guys running against each other only to have to work together as #1 and #2) hasn't happened in the US since 1800. But that's not important right now.
• While on the subject, it's a little daunting that we haven't had our midterms yet and I've made no progress on the video, but there are only 50 days until our next residency starts. (See above re: being really overloaded.)
• Finally, Sam Harris has a new demolition of the Catholic Church Good line near the top: "This scandal was one of the most spectacular 'own goals' in the history of religion, and there seems to be no need to deride faith at its most vulnerable and self-abased." (I would explain that my views are probably more moderate than Harris's, and yet I enjoy his writing, but see above re: being really monster raving loony overloaded.)

Shannon has brought my last drink and my check, my teammate KW is busy compiling all of our notes for Strategy, and Parker, I expect, is getting a relaxing belly-scratch from Diane 1,000 km away. I think we're all OK with this, but Parker has the best deal.

Also, for those of you watching in real time, yes: I posted this blasted entry five times in quick succession, because I kept finding typos. This should come as great news to the people currently engaged in Scrabble games with me on Facebook.

I came across this at lunchtime: a Canadian analysis of how the Conservative-Liberal coalition in the UK will simultaneously introduce fixed, five-year parliamentary terms and at the same time prevent the government from calling an early election. (Why Canadian? Because Canada has a fixed-term parliament, but, as Stephen Harper demonstrated in 2006, it isn't a fixed term if the ruling party doesn't want it to be.) The whole column is a bit wonkish, but it describes something approaching an intersection of game theory and UK constitutional law:

[I]f you look at the text of the Conservative-Lib Dem accord, it...says 55% would be required for “dissolution,” that is for dissolving the House and calling an election. This is a crucial difference [with a vote of no confidence]. Significantly, too, the provision comes at the tag end of the paragraph establishing a fixed five-year term of government. Because it’s the guarantee of it.

What it means is that if the government were defeated in the House — by the usual 50% margin — Prime Minister Cameron could not simply go the Queen and ask for dissolution. He would have to get a vote of 55% of the House to permit him to do so. So he could not wriggle out of the coalition, or the commitment to a five-year term, by engineering his own defeat (still less do what Stephen Harper did, and call a snap election, without even the fig-leaf of defeat to justify the breach).

A note about velocity: I'm posting less lately because I'm on a pretty intense project at work, and because this term's Duke workload is actually larger than first term. I'll explain what that means when I have a spare moment.

Gordon Brown has tendered his resignation to the Queen. At this writing, David Cameron has an audience with Her Majesty, who is expected to ask him to form a government.

It'll be a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition. Very, very interesting. Sullivan has good commentary on why.

Update: Prime Minister David Cameron takes power:

Going over some photos from Shanghai, I found a few examples of the well-known Chinese allergy to validating English translations with people who actually speak English. Some examples:

Mmm! Almost as appetizing as the "hot pig intestines food" offered at the same establishment:

And this one, I couldn't figure out:

Update: An academic explanation (NSFW) of why this might be happening. Oh, the poor cabbage.

Via NPR, fifty years ago today the FDA announced it would formally approve Enovid for contraceptive use:

As long as people have been making little people, they've wanted to know how not to. The ancient Egyptians mixed a paste out of crocodile dung and formed it into a pessary, or vaginal insert. Aristotle proposed cedar oil and frankincense oil as spermicides; Casanova wrote of using half a lemon as a cervical cap. The condom is often credited to one Dr. Condom in the mid-1700s, who was said to have invented a sheath made out of sheep intestines for England's King Charles II to help limit the number of bastards he sired, though such devices had actually been around for centuries.

"The Pill was not at all what separated reproduction and sex among married people," argues Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who calls that "among the biggest misconceptions" about sexual behavior and the Pill. Long before its introduction, women already knew how to avoid pregnancy, however imperfectly. The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900 the average was down to 3.5.

... The genius came in the form of a brash researcher named Gregory Pincus, whom [Margaret] Sanger met at a dinner party in 1951.... Pincus had been a promising assistant professor of physiology at Harvard in the 1930s, when, at the age of 31, he succeeded in creating a rabbit embryo in a petri dish — the precursor to in vitro fertilization. It was lauded as a brilliant scientific breakthrough — until a 1937 profile in Collier's magazine suggested he was creating a world of Amazons in which men would be unnecessary. Harvard denied him tenure, and Pincus went off to form his own research lab.

Just remember, though: every sperm is sacred.