Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Ecoloblue Life - Atmospheric Water Generators
http://www.ecoloblue.com/en/ecoloblue
The website also has links to solar iphone/ipod chargers and biodegradable plastics.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
“Boast of Quietness” by Jorge Luis Borges
Sure of my life and of my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Obama's unprecedented message to the Iranian People
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Viva
their Viva La Vida album, and halfway through the gig they ran off the
stage and played an acoustic set about ten metres from our seats.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
How the US hit the reset button
If ever the world would have forgiven a man for not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, it would have been now. No one would blame Barack Obama if he focused exclusively on the economic crisis, pushing the foreign policy in-tray to the back of his desk. After all, there's only so much even a Messiah can handle.
For all that, the new US President has crammed a slew of foreign policy moves into his first six weeks, any one of which would have made big news in normal times. Instead, in the age of global economic meltdown, they have had to fight for more than fleeting media attention.
Most visible have been the big declarations, whether announcing the beginning of the end of the Iraq war, avowing that "the United States of America does not torture" or ordering that Guantanamo be closed. In just the last week, we've had the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, dispatching officials to Syria as well as inviting Iran to talks on the future of Afghanistan - extending a hand to two states previously consigned to outer darkness.
The start of the month brought the revelation that Obama had written a secret letter to his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, hinting at a deal in which Moscow would lean on Iran, urging it to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, in return for the US scrapping its planned installation of a missile defence system in Russia's eastern European backyard. A gesture to cap it all: the Obama Administration has moved to ease trade and travel restrictions with Cuba.
The question - 50 days into the administration - is: is there a common thread of logic running through these moves, one that we might describe, however prematurely, as the Obama doctrine?
The first unifying theme, sounded minutes after he took the presidential oath, is a repudiation of the legacy of his predecessor. Obama is determined to signal to the world that he is the unBush. Some on the left and right alike have suggested that this is more symbolic than real, that in fact the basic lineaments of US policy remain in place.
Obama will keep rather a lot of troops in Iraq until the end of 2011, just as the Bush administration planned; he has intensified US involvement in Afghanistan, sending 17,000 more troops; and Robert Gates, George Bush's defence secretary, remains in this post under Obama.
Put that to the Obama team and they don't wholly deny it. The US did not become a different country on January 20, they say; its interests have not changed overnight.
The difference, says the new team in Washington, is that while the Bush folk were "forced" into realism after seeing their ideological dreams in ruins, "this is our starting point".
What no one denies is that there is a clear advantage for the US in the rest of the world believing that a profound change has come about. Which is why the declaration by the Vice President, Joe Biden, that the US is pressing the "reset button" has become the current catchphrase of US diplomacy.
A benign assessment of the Obama record so far would see two other early traits. The first is a readiness to speak the truth. Asked by The New York Times last week whether the US was winning the war in Afghanistan, he replied tersely: "No." After the Bush years, when those who followed the evidence were dismissed as dullards imprisoned in the narrow-minded confines of the "reality-based community", such candour is a relief. Second, there are some signs of imaginative thinking. Deploying the veteran of the Northern Ireland peace process, George Mitchell, to the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of those ideas that seems obvious - but only because it makes so much sense. The same goes for allocating the Afghan-Pakistan, or "Afpak", file to the hardball maestro Richard Holbrooke.
But plaudits surely go to Obama's direct appeal to Medvedev, with its echoes of the former US president John Kennedy's resolution of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Just as JFK agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey if the Soviet Union took theirs away from Cuba, so Obama implicitly made a similar offer to Russia: you get Iran to back down and I'll remove my interceptor missiles and radar stations from Poland and the Czech Republic. If such an initiative were to work, the knock-on effects would be multiple.
Take one: Israel has long hinted that if its friends were to make the Iranian threat go away, it would respond by moving forward on the peace track. For a long while that was assumed to mean military action against Iran. But if Obama's Russia gambit were to succeed - and the critics claim Gates started work on these lines a year ago - the goal of an Iranian nuclear freeze, with all its ancillary benefits, would be achieved without a shot being fired.
To be clear, this is not guitar-strumming hippie dovishness, as the escalation in Afghanistan confirms - though one administration official warns against overinterpreting that move. It is a "time-buying exercise", he says, ensuring things don't get worse on the ground while the White House undertakes a strategic review of the entire Afpak region, from where, it argues, every major al-Qaeda attack since September 11, 2001, has emanated.
I'm told this was the thrust of Biden's message to NATO's North Atlantic Council in Brussels this week: not some kind of "wussy multilateralism", with lots of cosy meetings and platitudes, but a "results-oriented" desire to get things done - and the belief that that only happens when the world acts in concert.
To be sure, these are only the early signals in the early days. But from a President with his hands full, they are encouraging.
The Guardian - 13/3/2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Stuck Between Stations - The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together.
Sucking off each other at the demonstrations
Making sure their makeup’s straight
Crushing one another with colossal expectations.
Dependent, undisciplined, and sleeping late.
She was a really cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian.
She was a damn good dancer but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.
She likes the warm feeling but she’s tired of all the dehydration.
Most nights are crystal clear
But tonight it’s like it’s stuck between stations
On the radio.
The devil and John Berryman
Took a walk together.
They ended up on Washington
Talking to the river.
He said “I’ve surrounded myself with doctors
And deep thinkers.
But big heads with soft bodies
Make for lousy lovers.”
There was that night that we thought John Berryman could fly.
But he didn’t
So he died.
She said “You’re pretty good with words
But words won’t save your life.”
And they didn’t.
So he died.
He was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected.
He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn out winters.
He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration
Most nights were kind of fuzzy
But that last night he had total retention.
These Twin Cities kisses
Sound like clicks and hisses.
We all tumbled down and
Drowned in the Mississippi River.
We drink
We dry up
Then we crumble to dust.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Green Gloves
friends are somewhere getting wasted,
hope they're staying glued together,
I have arms for them.
Take another sip of them,
it floats around and takes me over
like a little drop of ink in a glass of water.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Swheat! Split personality juice...
frivolity... but never did I think I'd bump into this baby - a shot of
wheatgrass and green drink on one side with a shot of orange, mango
and a few other fruits from the yellow to red spectrum on the other.
Two's company on this tip, fe sho.
'But chickens are buddhists too!'
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Mail2Blogger
running... and from my iPhone!
Sent from my iPhone
Eli stars in Lawrence Leung's Choose Your Own Adventure
Monday, February 23, 2009
"What human beings can be, they must be".
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Is the End Nigh?
Turnbull brooks no breaks in ranks
Phillip Coorey
February 20, 2009
MALCOLM TURNBULL sacked one frontbencher and disciplined another as the Liberal Party meltdown continued apace yesterday.
The right-wing Liberal senator Cory Bernardi was thrown off the front bench for attacking a fellow South Australian frontbencher, the moderate Christopher Pyne, as a political opportunist.
Last night Mr Turnbull refused to name a replacement for Senator Bernardi, raising anxiety among the right, which had accepted the sacking but requested that Senator Bernardi be replaced by Senator Mitch Fifield.
In another breach, the NSW frontbencher Tony Abbott departed from longstanding Coalition policy by saying the nation could no longer afford to increase the pension.
The Coalition had spent all of last year demanding that the Government increase the pension by at least $30 a week.
Mr Abbott, whose portfolio covers pensioners, outraged his colleagues by saying the increases would cost about $6 billion a year and were no longer affordable.
"The economic circumstances of Australia are much different now than what they were 12 months ago," he told 2GB. "I think something like this would need to be considered very carefully and very cautiously."
The Nationals leader, Warren Truss, immediately rang in to repudiate Mr Abbott, and Mr Turnbull's spokesman issued a statement claiming Mr Abbott's lapse was Labor's fault because it had spent down the budget to try to stimulate the economy.
"Mr Rudd must keep his promise to older Australians and increase the base rate of the aged pension," the spokesman said.
Senator Bernardi and Mr Pyne are from opposite sides of the factional fence.
Senator Bernardi despises Mr Pyne and was one of many right-wingers angry at his appointment to the post of manager of Opposition business in the shake-up that followed Julia Bishop's ouster as shadow treasurer.
On Wednesday night Senator Bernardi published a weekly newsletter that contained an anecdote in which an unnamed colleague once told him he would have happily become a Labor MP but chose the Liberal Party because of where he lived.
That colleague was later identified as Mr Pyne, who flatly rejected the claim, saying he had campaigned for the Liberals when he was in year 3.
When Senator Bernardi refused to issue a retraction, Mr Turnbull sacked him as a shadow parliamentary secretary.
"I will not tolerate members of the shadow executive disparaging their colleagues in such a personal and gratuitous fashion," Mr Turnbull said.
Senator Bernardi remained defiant, saying he had not identified Mr Pyne and that Mr Turnbull had set a precedent.
In a speech last night, the former prime minister John Howard threw his "strong support" behind Mr Turnbull, who is also at loggerheads with the former treasurer Peter Costello.
As senior Liberals confirmed that Mr Costello would seek preselection again, the Victorian MP steered clear of Mr Howard's lecture in Melbourne.
Instead he turned up in Sydney to launch the Australian edition of The Spectator.
The magazine features an article by Tom Switzer, a former staffer to Brendan Nelson, which argues that Mr Costello "is the only Liberal with the talent, experience and parliamentary skills to beat Labor".Phillip Coorey is the Herald's Chief Political Correspondent
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
A Discussion and Evaluation of Essential Quality Standards in Approaches to the Psychometric Assessment of Personality
A Discussion and Evaluation of Essential Quality Standards in Approaches to the Psychometric Assessment of Personality
Luke Fullagar
Monash University
Abstract
Diagnostic and predictive value of personality assessment is primarily contingent on the psychometric quality standards of standardisation, reliability and validity. Standardisation enforces uniformity in scoring and administration, and normalises test performance against identifiable samples. Reliability studies measure consistency between testing contexts such as time intervals, between test items, on alternate test forms and between different examiners. Three predominant validity studies evaluate a test’s accuracy in assessing an intended construct: construct (whether a test accurately captures the construct), content (whether the test adequately, accurately and proportionately covers critical aspects of the construct), and criterion-related validity (a comparison of test scores to relevant criterion measures, measured either contemporaneously or at interval. Syncretic integration of theoretical and empirical approaches is preferred for future development of scientific personalty assessment.
A Discussion and Evaluation of Essential Quality Standards in Approaches to the Psychometric Assessment of Personality.
While subjectively-focussed approaches to personality such as psychoanalytic observation, humanistic psychotherapeutic models and projective techniques have sought to apply and further generate personalty theories through idiographic means, strong criticism has been levelled at these approaches for deficiency in the provision of empirically substantiated conclusions (Meier, 1994). Over the last century, nomothetic methods have developed to subject personality theory to scientific scrutiny, generate original theoretical frameworks (e.g. Cattell’s 16PF (Cattell, 1946), five factor personality model (McRae & Costa, 1987)) and develop exacting objective tests for the measurement of personality constructs in both general settings (e.g. the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) or NEO Personality Inventory which relies on the five-factor model (Costa & McRae, 1985)) and clinical diagnostic settings (e.g. the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, now closely aligned with personality disorder constructs in the DSM-IV (Millon & Meagher, 2004)) (Coolidge & Segal, 2004).
While myriad methods of personalty testing are in operation across clinical and public settings, including objective questionaries, checklists, sentence completion tests, interviews, self-report and peer-reported ratings, thematic apperception tests, figure drawing and Rorschach or Holtzman inkbot tests (Eysenck, 2004), the diagnostic and predictive value of these methods hinge on the extent to which they meet the psychometric quality standards of standardisation, reliability and validity.
Standardisation
Uniformity in procedure appropriately limits a test’s diagnostic and predictive relevance to standardisation sample profiles and situational contexts assessed in test development. Standardising procedural controls advances the likelihood that a respondent's relationship to the test construct will be the central independent variable of measurement (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). In practice, test manuals manage subtle factors influencing performance through formulised administration directions (Coolidge & Segal, 2004) covering variables as disparate as time limits, required and prohibited materials, oral instructions, preliminary demonstrations, handling methods for test taker queries, speaking pace, voice tone and inflection, pauses, and facial expressions (Anastasi & Urbina).
Since no true zero on measurement scales arises in psychological testing, norms are necessary to evaluate a test taker’s performance relative to both the average performance of standardisation samples (large, representative samples with profiles (e.g. race, age, gender) consistent with the test’s intended design) and any standard deviations from this norm (frequency of varying degrees of deviation above and below the average) (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997).
Size and representativeness are the key variables in assessing adequacy of standardisation samples. Samples must reliably reflect the intended population and be sufficiently large to render standard errors of descriptive statistics (i.e. mean, standard deviation and distribution) to appropriately low levels (Kline, 1993). Because differing degrees of homogeny arise within samples, systematic statistical methods of random and stratified sampling are employed to generate representativeness (Shum, O‘Gorman & Myors, 2006). Samples are considered random if an equal chance exists that any individual in a given population can be selected, and drawing one member does not influence the likelihood of any other member being drawn (Shum, O‘Gorman & Myors, 2006). Although random number tables and sampling by interval are adopted to stimulate random samples, each is contingent on the quality and relevance of source inventory (e.g. census data). Kline (1993) argues that due practical limitations (cost, substantial sample size requirements) random sampling be limited to circumstances where critical target population categories evade developers (and therefore preclude preliminary stratified sampling). Stratified sampling expands from the practical limitations of random sampling by dividing heterogenous populations into smaller, more homogenous populations (e.g. age, sex) relevant to test scores, and proportionately combining these results to form representative samples of the wider population (Kline, 1993). Cattell, Eber and Tatsuoka (1970) argue that due to qualitative reductions in generalisation biases, size for size, stratified sampling is more effective than random sampling at generating representative samples.
Test-Retest Reliability
Test-retest reliability measures stability in scores across time. Assuming constructs to be stable over test occasions (Coolidge & Segal, 2004), a correlation coefficient is commonly adopted to statistically express degrees of similarity between score sets on a scale from +1 (highest correlation) to -1 (0 being no agreement), and performance differences across tests are interpreted (according to classical test theory) as a reflection of administration and measurement error (Friedenberg, 1995). Coefficient scores above 0.8 are acceptable, and exceptional above 0.9 (Coolidge & Segal, 2004). These scores are squared to produce percentage-based expressions of score set agreement, and by negative inference, measurement error (e.g. 0.7 squared illustrates 49% difference in individual characteristics and 51% measurement error) (Kline, 1993). Intervals are determined by inferences drawn regarding construct stability, and the literature on accepted intervals is inconsistent (e.g. Kline (1993) suggests a three month minimum, cf. Segal and Coolidge (1994) and Friedenberg (1995) who report intervals of one week (for less-stable constructs) to one month).
Statistical analysis does not illumine the qualitative nature of error proportions which include: chance variables (e.g. subject’s mood, health), measurement error (e.g. poorly standardised scoring and test instructions) and factors which boost or otherwise distort measurement (e.g. effects of memory and practice during short intervals, insufficient sample size and representativeness to manage standard error) (Friedenberg, 1995; Kline, 1993).
Carry-over memory and practice effects are sometimes mitigated by alternate form administration, which tests different items from the same domain of construct characteristics. To account for effects of varying test items, correlation coefficients assess ‘alternate-form reliability’, that is, score consistency between form administrations. Differences are interpreted as measurement error in selecting test items (however, again, coefficient results do not illumine qualitative causes of variance, and additional studies (e.g. counterbalancing techniques) further exploring causation) (Friedenberg, 1995). High alternate-form reliability also assists in drawing inferences about domain scope by substantiating additional test item sets capable of illustrating the given domain.
Internal Consistency/Scale Reliability
To mitigate the potential for both estimation and relevance errors in choosing representative samples, internal consistency measures the stability between test items in assessing the relevant domain of characteristics that infer test constructs. The domain-sampling model (Nunnally, 1967) statistically scores the standard error of measurement (SEM) (broadly, a standard deviation analysis) (Shum, O’Gorman & Myors, 2006). Mathematical derivation of SEM is beyond this paper, but important is its reliance on a ‘reliability coefficient’, reflecting proportions of observed score variance due to true score variance, where high true score variance renders error score variance, and therefore propensity for measurement error, low (Shum, O’Gorman & Myors).
Reliability coefficients are measured in three main ways. Classical psychometric theory employs ‘split-half reliability’ testing that divides completed tests into two half tests (usually via odd/even splitting item number splitting) (Friedenberg, 1995; Kline, 1993) which are correlated similar to the test-retest coefficient (cf. where split-halves have largely different variances, an alternative correlation equation proposed by Guttmann (1945) may be preferred (Friedenberg)). Logic underlying split-half reliability infers that items equally representative of a domain should produce similar split-test performance. To account for statistical effects that non-linearly decrease scores of shortened test lengths, the Spearman-Brown prophecy or prediction formula is commonly applied to upwardly adjust correlation results (Aiken & Groth-Marnat, 2006).
The other two main methods, the eminent Cronbach’s (1951) alpha (Alpha) and the KR20 (& lesser used KR21) formulas (Kuder & Richardson, 1937) are separately derived, yet cover largely the same domain. The KR20 and KR21 only apply where scores are dichotomous (e.g. 0 or 1) (Thompson, 2003), whereas Alpha also applies to multiple scale items. Alpha extends the two-scale limitation of split-half testing by calculating average score correlations between an item and all other items. Scores above 0.8 are generally considered appropriately reliable (Segal and Coolidge, 1994). Alpha values are, however, limited by two variables: they are misleadingly lowered on short test and inflated on long tests, and are dependent on a high first factor concentration which affects interpretive correlation against multi-concept scales (Segal and Coolidge, 1994).
In addition to quantifying reliability, opinion largely favours high internal consistency as reflective of high validity (Guilford, 1956; Nunnally, 1978). However, Cattell and Kline (1977) dissent, arguing that since tests measure breadth in variables, and test items must be more specific than these variables, high correlations in consistency between items will render the test variables narrow (what Cattell refers to as ‘bloated specifics’), and thus not valid. Notwithstanding the merits of this theoretical argument, little evidence exists of tests in which items correlate well with the criterion score but not with each other (including Cattell’s own 16PF personality test (Barret & Kline,1982)) and on this basis, high internal consistency is perhaps best considered a necessary, but not sufficient, indicator of reliability (Kline, 1993).
With significant success (Thompson, 2003b), Generalisablity Theory (Cronbach, et al., 1972) and Item-Response Theory (Lord, 1980) have each sought to expand classical test theory to account for multiple and simultaneous sources of error and explicitly connect reliability measurement to the contextual purpose of measurement.
Classically, three validation strategies are considered the primary ‘trinitarian’ model for validity: construct (the extent to which a test accurately captures a specific theoretical construct it was designed to measure), content (whether the test adequately, accurately and proportionately covers the aspects of this construct as evidenced in the literature), and criterion-related (comparison of test scores to relevant criterion measures, measured contemporaneously (concurrent validity) or at interval (predictive validity)). This evaluative delineation is adopted here notwithstanding endorsement of Messick’s (1995, as cited in Cohen, & Swerdlik, 2005) criticism that trinitarian demarcation is an ultimately artificial, arbitrary separation of a multi-method, yet, unitary concept, that may properly include concepts like face validity (the subjective estimate of what a test purports to measure ‘on its face’), socio-cultural implications of test scores, and consequences of use (Cohen & Swerdlik).
Construct Validity
Construct validity is increasingly accepted as an ‘umbrella’ validity test (Anastasi, 1992; Kagan, 1988; Cohen & Swerdlik, 2005) which utilises evidence from a network of rational and statistical sources, including content and criterion-related investigations, to assess a test’s ability to predict or diagnose the test construct in the context it is operating (Meier, 1994). For example, Cronbach (1955, 1989) alone considered construct validity discernable from such wide ranging phenomena as group differences, correlation matricies, factor analysis, item inter-correlations, change over occasions, studies of individual test performance, examination of items, score stability, and varying test procedures experimentally (Meier, 1994). Murphy and Davidshofer (1998, p.103) wryly concluded that “almost any information gathered in the process of developing or using a test is relevant to its validity”. Armed with diverse data, weighting methods, especially between contradictory or incorrect items, are key.
Campbell and Fiske (1959) elucidate a theoretical methodology emphasising assessment of both convergent and discriminant validity (ie. that valid tests should correlate with other tests measuring the similar constructs and simultaneously diverge from those measuring different constructs). Seeking to mitigate the effects of method variance (that data collection methods influences data collected), they proposed a view of test constructs as interconnected ‘trait-method units’ capable of evaluation through a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) correlation matrix including at least one test of both a hypothetically convergent and divergent construct, and evidence of diverse testing methods.
In building an MTMM matrix, the mathematical procedures collectively referred to as factor analysis, are often employed to obtain evidence of both discriminant and convergent validity (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2005). Factor analysis reductively extracts strongly correlated variables (‘factors’), from psychometric data which are interpreted (once empirically confirmed) as qualities of fundamental difference. By correlating against other established similar (convergent) or distinguishable (discriminant) factors the extent to which the factor determines the test score (or ‘loading’) is assessed. Of course, for factor analysis to produce meaningful statistics, it is essential that any influences on the method of measurement (for example, halo effects (Thorndike, 1920) (a form of positive rater bias) or racial and sex-based rater bias (Landy & Farr, 1980)) are also investigated and accounted for (Cohen & Swerdlik).
Content Validity
Central to content validity assessment is the adequacy domain-specific content sampling from the universe of items inferring the construct. This investigation is critical to ensuring that generalisable inferences drawn about the applicability of the construct to the relevant test scores are accurate. Content validity is less relevant for personality testing than other measures (e.g. intelligence) (Aiken & Groth-Marnat, 2006; Kline, 1993) and discussion here is consequently limited. Nonetheless, important strategies for establishing personalty test content validity include: seeking expert opinion on item range and evidence of relevant literature reviews during all development phases (Aiken & Groth-Marnat). Moreover, salient socio-cultural biases should be considered in establishing the context of content domain boundaries (Meier, 1994).
Criterion-Related Validity
Concurrent validity is more pertinent than predictive validity for personality testing (Aiken & Groth-Marnat, 2006), and is often utilised in test administrations intended to distinguish between average scores of different classes (e.g. socio-economic or clinical diagnostic groups). Each are assessed on two types of statistical evidence: a validity coefficient (usually the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient), which assesses score correlations between criterion and predictor measures, and expectancy data, which illustrate the likelihood of where scores will arise on a criterion measure (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2005).
Validity coefficients assess the standard error of estimate (SOE) being the standard deviation between predicted and actual criterion scores (Freidenberg, 1985), and regression techniques use results to generate banks of highly correlated predictors (Meier, 1994). When more than one predictor is introduced, developers minimise overlap by testing ‘incremental validity’, which questions the extent to which additional predictors illumine aspects of criterion measures deficient in the prior predictor arrangement. Expectancy tables compare score percentiles against essential criterion criteria (e.g. pass/fail, valid/not valid) (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2005) such that illustrative correlations between scales and volume intervals can be interpreted.
Criterion measures must also be relevant, valid and uncontaminated (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2005), meaning criterion measures must be germane to the test’s intended measure, criterion measure validity indicators must match predictor context and purpose, and the criterion measure itself must not be based, in whole or in part, on the predictor measures (which erroneously results in self prediction) (Cohen & Swerdlik).
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Thompson, B., & Vacha-Haase, T. (2003). Psychometrics is datametrics: The test is not reliable. In Thompson, B (Ed.), Score Reliability: Contemporary Thinking on Reliablity Issues (pp.123-148). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Thorndike, E. L. (1920). A constant error in psychological ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4, 25-29.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Of droughts and flooding rains...
“The Opposition must be wondering how it missed the bus,” he told the Senate to jeers from coalition senators.
(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25048788-5013404,00.html)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Into the Wild
“Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgruntled with man and his works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul. The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation”.
Roderick Nash
Wilderness and the American Mind.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Time to Pretend - MGMT
I'm feeling raw
I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music
make some money
find some models for wives.
I'll move to Paris,
shoot some heroin
and fuck with the stars.
You man the island
and the cocaine
and the elegant cars.
This is our decision
to live fast and die young.
We've got the vision,
now
let's
have
some
fun.
Yeah it's overwhelming,
but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices
and wake up for the morning commute?
Forget about our mothers
and our friends.
We were fated to pretend.
I'll miss the playgrounds
and the animals
and digging up worms.
I'll miss the comfort
of my mother
and the weight
of the world.
I'll miss my sister,
miss my father,
miss my dog
and my home.
Yeah I'll miss the boredom
and the freedom
and the time spent alone.
But there is really nothing,
nothing we can do.
Love must be forgotten.
Life can always start up anew.
The models will have children,
we'll get a divorce,
we'll find some more models,
Everything must
run
its
course.
We'll choke on our vomit
and that will be the end.
We were fated to pretend.
Since Feeling Is First
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e.e. cummings.
Developmental Action Inquiry
From Developmental Action Inquiry: A Distinct Integral Theory That Actually Integrates
Developmental Theory, Practice and Research, by Torbet et. al. Paper presented to the Integral Theory in Academia Conference 2008.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Peter Costello, The Costello Memoirs
“September's breakdown in banking markets has left global growth slowing at a scary speed, shattering confidence and commodity prices as it does, giving 2009's global recession unstoppable momentum. Global growth in 2009 will be worse than at any time since the early 1990s, and may well be the worst in several decades”.
Media Release – 19 January 2008 – Access Economics Business Outlook: ‘September's breakdown in banking markets has left global growth slowing at scary speed’.
Libs Need Not Move to the Left
Libs Need Not Move to the Left
Tom Switzer - smh.com.au
Since the federal Coalition's defeat in 2007, several commentators have called on the Liberal Party to embrace a progressive agenda. The argument goes like this: From climate change to border protection, Liberals should ditch the conservative shibboleths that defined the Howard era, inch back towards the political centre and demonstrate they are not as out of touch as the critics allege.
The party of Menzies, urges frontbencher Christopher Pyne, "must again be a force for change".
The problem, though, is that, notwithstanding the loss of conservative government, the centre of political gravity in Australia remains conservative. No longer, for instance, is welfare seen as an unconditional right. No longer are activist judges rewriting our constitution. No longer are Australians ashamed of our past, pessimistic about our future and unsure about our place in the world.
In this environment, why should Liberals lurch left when Labor could only win power by moving right? Why should a right-of-centre party run to the left of a church-going, family-values Labor leader almost as conservative as the prime minister he replaced? Indeed, Kevin Rudd - first as opposition leader and then as Prime Minister over the past 13 months - has had a lot more in common with John Howard than he has with Phillip Adams.
As opposition leader, Rudd not only styled himself as an "economic conservative" but also mimicked Howard on virtually everything from opposition to gay marriage and teacher unions to support for anti-terrorism laws during the Haneef debacle and the federal intervention in remote indigenous communities. Such tactics worked a treat. He convinced key segments of the socially conservative working and lower middle classes in marginal suburban and regional electorates to vote Labor again after their 12-year affair with the Coalition.
What about Rudd's record since he's been PM? True, he has jettisoned some of the former government's positions. He ratified the Kyoto protocol, expressed a formal apology to the stolen generations, and he is in the process of tilting the workplace balance in favour of unions. His decision to withdraw combat troops from Iraq, moreover, marked a clean break with what the Australian people regarded as the biggest mistake of the Howard era.
But take a closer look at Rudd's other positions. This is a malleable pragmatist who was far more critical of Bill Henson's so-called art of photographing naked young girls than Malcolm Turnbull; who defied his left-purist base by keeping Howard's citizenship tests; who prefers the teaching of narrative history over the black armband view; and who is contemplating another round of income and company tax cuts. Just this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission's annual report on detention revealed that Rudd is maintaining the very policy of indefinitely detaining asylum seekers, including children, that Howard's foes regarded as cruel and evil. So much for being a change agent.
In this environment, do Liberals win electoral kudos by becoming more progressive? In fact, the most politically important voters remain not the so-called doctors' wives from metropolitan Australia, but the so-called Howard battlers from middle Australia, particularly in outer suburbs of Sydney and Brisbane and sunbelt seats of Queensland. It was these people who formed Howard's core support. It is these people to whom Rudd has appealed in the past two years. It is these people to whom today's Liberals need to appeal in coming years.
They may not read Edmund Burke but they are a temperamentally conservative lot, wary of change, believing that efforts to transform anything quickly will have, as Burke wrote, "pleasing commencements" but "lamentable conclusions".
They were attracted to Howard because he championed Australian values, based on a robust patriotism and the repudiation of Paul Keating's political correctness. They turned off Howard because they believed his Work Choices and the rising costs of living threatened their personal security and prosperity. And they felt reassured by Rudd's conservatism, including his pledge to turn back people-smuggling operations.
Would a progressive agenda that includes zealous efforts to combat global warming really play well with this group? Take the debate over emissions trading schemes. After proclaiming that "climate change is the great economic, environmental and moral challenge of our time", Rudd has significantly downgraded his Government's carbon targets.
This was wise. After all, it would have been crazy for Australia, heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to slash its greenhouse gas levels at a high cost in jobs and cash when no nation that matters would follow our lead.
But in their rush to outflank Labor on the environment, there is a risk that Malcolm Turnbull and his spokesman Greg Hunt could further alienate the party from the very constituency they need to win back (not to mention the energy-intensive industries that will be slugged by the trading schemes).
It is one thing for Liberals to place themselves at the forefront of this debate. It is another for Liberals to insist that a single-income family should pay more to run their air-conditioner, fridge and stove, computer and large flat-screen television. Middle Australia may not understand emissions trading but they understand hits to the hip pocket.
For these reasons, it would be a mistake for Liberals to embrace a progressive agenda in a political landscape that remains conservative. As Peter Costello argued on these pages recently: "The Liberal Party should remember it is the guardian of the centre-right tradition in Australia." If Liberals cede the nation's heartland to Rudd, they might as well kiss the next election goodbye.
Tom Switzer, a former senior Liberal adviser, is a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/14/1231608791764.html
Thursday, January 15, 2009
One Is Called
Study and contemplation are not unbalanced,
All teachings arise as personal advice,
And one can communicate one's understanding.
One is called noble
When one's delusions have been subdued,
One is able to calm the minds of self and others,
And one has vision and meditation free from confusion.
One is called a sublime being
When one's knowledge does not harm one's humility,
One's humility does not obstruct expression of one's knowledge,
And one works for the benefit of Truth.
(Written by the the Forth Karmapa, Rol-pai Dor-je, Chief disciple of the Seventh Dalai Lama)
Apithology
My friend Will Varey has been in writing retreat for a couple of months preparing doctoral research on psychology of human systems. Part of his work over the recent period has included the creation of a community of practice + scholarly journal serving his conception of Apithology, or the study of the causes, conditions, processes, structures of generative health in human systems (and even that line doesn't really do his work justice). I've really been drawn into Will's vision and writing ability - which is like transrational poerty to my eyes. In particular, I've been trying to find a way to articulate and conceive of a gentle experiential shift in the way I've noticed myself making meaning - that is, from focussing more of my attention on the process of abandoning the scaffolds of the past in search of some transcendent (read:'higher') form of processing, to what he beautifully phrases as "working with, rather than against, this dynamic of human sense-making, familiar conceptions may guide our consideration and understanding of the entirely new". Always nice when someone's so clearly looking in a similar direction and able to translate the experience into language.Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Tim Ferris' 'Deferrers' v 'New Rich'
D:To work for yourself.
NR:To have others work for you.
D:To work when you want to.
NR:To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect ("minimum effective load").
D:To retire early or young.
NR:To distribute recovery periods and adventures (mini-retirements) throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.
D:To buy all the things you want to have.
NR:To do all the things you want to do, and be all the things you want to be. If this includes some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are either means to an end or bonuses, not the focus.
D:To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge.
NR:To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.
D:To make a ton of money.
NR:To make a ton of money with specific reasons and defined dreams to chase, timelines and steps included. What are you working for?
D:To have more.
NR:To have more quality and less clutter. To have huge financial reserves but recognize that most material wants are justifications for spending time on the things that don’t really matter, including buying things and preparing to buy things. You spent two weeks negotiating your new Infiniti with the dealership and got $10,000 off? That’s great. Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything useful to this world, or just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard, and coming home to a drunken existence on the weekends?
D:To reach the big pay-off, whether IPO, acquisition, retirement, or other pot of gold.
NR:To think big but ensure payday comes every day: cash flow first, big payday second.
D:To have freedom from doing that which you dislike.
NR:To have freedom from doing that which you dislike, but also the freedom and resolve to pursue your dreams without reverting to work for work’s sake (W4W). After years of repetitive work, you will often need to dig hard to find your passions, redefine your dreams, and revive hobbies that you let atrophy to near extinction. The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
I also really liked this little pep talk he offers in the first portion of the book:
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
Twenty feet and closing.
"Run! Ruuuuuuuuuun!" Hans didn't speak Portuguese, but the meaning was clear enough--haul ass. His sneakers gripped firmly on the jagged rock, and he drove his chest forward towards 3,000 feet of nothing.
He held his breath on the final step, and the panic drove him to near unconsciousness. His vision blurred at the edges, closing to a single pin point of light, and then... he floated. The all-consuming celestial blue of the horizon hit his visual field an instant after he realized that the thermal updraft had caught him and the wings of the paraglider. Fear was behind him on the mountain top, and thousands of feet above the resplendent green rain forest and pristine white beaches of Copacabana, Hans Keeling had seen the light.
That was Sunday.
On Monday, Hans returned to his law office in Century City, Los Angeles' posh corporate haven, and promptly handed in his three-week notice...
For nearly five years, he had faced his alarm clock with the same dread: I have to do this for another 40-45 years? He had once slept under his desk at the office after a punishing half-done project, only to wake up and continue on it the next morning. That same morning, he had made himself a promise: two more times and I'm out of here. Strike number three came the day before he left for his Brazilian vacation.
We all make these promises to ourselves, and Hans had done it before as well, but things were now somehow different. He was different. He had realized something while arcing in slow circles towards the earth--risks weren't that scary once you took them. His colleagues told him what he expected to hear: he was throwing it all away. He was an attorney on his way to the top--what the hell did he want?
Hans didn't know exactly what he wanted, but he had tasted it. On the other hand, he did know what bored him to tears, and he was done with it. No more passing days as the living dead, no more dinners where his colleagues compared cars, riding on the sugar high of a new BMW purchase until someone bought a more expensive Mercedes. It was over.
Immediately, a strange shift began--Hans felt, for the first time in a long time, at peace with himself and what he was doing. He had always been terrified of plane turbulence, as if he might die with the best inside of him, but now he could fly through a violent storm sleeping like a baby.
Strange indeed.
More than a year later, he was still getting unsolicited job offers from law firms but by then had started Nexus Surf, a premier surf-adventure company based in the tropical paradise of Florianopolis, Brazil. He had met his dream girl, a Carioca with caramel-colored skin named Tatiana, and spent most of his time relaxing under palm trees or treating clients to the best times of their lives.
Is this what he had been so afraid of?
These days, he often sees his former self in the under-joyed and overworked professionals he takes out on the waves. Waiting for the swell, the true emotions come out: "God, I wish I could do what you do." His reply is always the same: "You can."
The setting sun reflects off the surface of the water, providing a zen-like setting for a message he knows is true: it's not giving up to put your current path on indefinite pause. He could pick up his law career exactly where he left off if he wanted to, but that is the furthest thing from his mind.
As they paddle back to shore after an awesome session, his clients get a hold of themselves and regain their composure. They set foot on shore, and reality sinks its fangs in: "I would, but I can't really throw it all away."
He has to laugh.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Darlin' Won't You Come?
I’ve rubbed off my palms and I’ve worn out my knees
And I don’t feel this place holds a lot for me
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
Darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
It’s hard finding hope when you’re lost at sea
And I want to belong but I’d rather be free
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
I was dumb I was foolin’ around
Always searching for something I’d found
Now I know I could die and I’d be happy
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
Darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
I’ve burnt every bridge and I’ve walked every street
And I’ve started to question what happiness means
So darlin won’t you come run away with me
I was dumb I was foolin’ around
Always searching for something I’d found
Now I know I could die and I’d be happy
So darlin’ won’t you come run away with me
Darlin’ won’t you come and retire with me
I’m done with this crowd and I’m done with this scene
And you’re the only one who believes in me
So darlin’ won’t you come and retire with me
- Bob Evans
Monday, December 15, 2008
Run Away
“There’s a part of you that always always wants to still be the Arctic Monkeys or keep thinking that pop music is cool, but there comes a point when you have to throw away your jeans and your trainers and start admitting to yourself that you’re too old for Lily Allen. But there’s a whole kind of other music out there … you know I’m 40 this year and I’m suddenly discovering Beethoven, Brahms and Bizet... You know pop music is about ‘I love you forever let’s run away together’. I’ve done that bit, I’ve run away forever and I’m on the next thing now which is ‘look, we’ve run away together, here we are surrounded by nappies - where’s the violins?...
... But you know it’s hard to let go".
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Fretful stories
- Byron Katie
Simulacres et Simulation
Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:
- First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
- Second order, associated with the industrial revolution, where distinctions between image and reality breaks down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The items' ability to imitate reality threaten to replace the original version.
- Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation break down. There is only the simulacrum
- Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
- Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
- Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the process used to create them.
- Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
- Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Cold Desert
but me.
Friday, December 12, 2008
School of Seven Bells
But the demon and me were the best of friends from the start...
Born to run, baby run like a stream down a mountainside
with the wind in my back I don't barely even bat an eye.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Derrida on The Return of Religion
- Jaques Derrida, Religion.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Bad Signs as the CBD Empties
This is a stellar article from the SMH today. Although it points too heavily at the big-end-of-town bonus bankers, without giving a strong enough tint to the army of $80-130K finance slaves also suffering the downturn, if you read the latter into the argument, a very accurate picture of the cascading private and government interventionist errors is woven into the thread.
I've been bemoaning KRudd's mismanagement of the retail spending stimulus measures, not only because of the redundant logic in giving savers billions to merely bank, but that once again, in times of spending turmoil, the sacrificial (no kids, lacking youth), equally as vulnerable (mortgages and share capital exposure), aspirational (study hard, long-term view) class who've been instrumental in using their sweat and their smarts to build this lengthy period of prosperity, receive no support. Moreover, for fear of losing votes at the ignorant hand of the 'working family' Daily Telegraph politcal narrative, this 20 & 30-something workforce are being forced to fund fellow citizens living closer to their humanity (having children, an adolescence not spent in the books, early adulthood not stuck in high-stress offices) who, when all efforts are balanced out, exist on not radically dissimilar salaries - first, via cash grants, second via the tax redistributed from the single middle-class, and thirdly, via the effective disparity in taxing singles vs families.
It's completely insane - if, after all this fiscal crisis, we're still waving the flag of a capitalist system, and in doing so, our economic management requires us to keep blindly consuming, then surely government intervention should also carry that flavour and target the spending class? But once again, the neo-social democratic faux third-way horseshit that staples unsustainable capitalist partiality to an interventionist government desperate to maintain its voting base (unionised working classes) is raping those who, through the Keating and Howard years, have leaked from the old divides of master and worker into a skilled, 21st century, techno-industrial, postmodern culture that doesn't have the time and space to generate 'working families'. These bastards in Canberra, and in capitalist powerbases worldwide, have spent a couple of decades creating my community - schooling our humanity away from us, stressing us with competecy examinations at all stages in our lives, building workers before building people, beaming endless public images into our private spheres, skilling us to become a 'smart country', using our impossible efforts to generate unprecedented (yet globally unbalanced) prospertiy, supressing our bio-psycho-socio-cultural health for economic favour - and it's now time, after all this service, to be served in turn. There is another brand of working class which isn't toiling with body on a factory floor, but rather, exhausing their minds on an office floor - and, in this age of high-priced hyper-consumerism, the power of latter's salary is no longer apparent enough to preclude public generosity in times of trouble...
... you know, I could really use a grand this Christmas too. It'd go a long way to paying for my computer posture to be realligned, or to get glasses for my box eyes, or a gym membership to get muscles like a beach bumb, or a coastal holiday to get a tan (or at least a few sessions in a solarium during my lunchbreak), or a book on workplace psychopathy, maybe even some time with a therapist... hell I could even afford to put a few bucks in a collection plate and pray for someone to save us ;-)
Bad signs as the CBD empties
There's a joke doing the rounds of finance workers in the CBD, given added poignancy by this week's decision by upmarket shirt maker Herringbone to go into voluntary administration. What's the definition of optimism in the finance sector? Answer: ironing five shirts on a Sunday night.
Global financial turmoil is cutting a swathe through Australia's army of finance workers, most of whom call Sydney home. The list of job casualties is beginning to look a veritable who's who of Sydney's city skyline.
In the heart of the city, in the building formerly known as the millionaires' factory, Macquarie Bank is tipped to have axed upwards of 1000 jobs. A few streets over on Phillip Street, there are 150 fewer investment bankers sipping double-shot espressos in the garishly orange foyer of the ABN Amro building.
A block away at Deutsche Bank Place, topped by the famous Lord Norman Foster-designed "goal posts", there are 30 fewer Deutsche bankers to make the daily trip up in its vertiginous glass elevators. Down at Circular Quay, the historic AMP building is 210 AMP employees lighter, while the Axa Australia building has said goodbye to 90 Axa staff.
Job losses so far this year among Australia's big four retail banks now stand at 1000 for ANZ, 179 at NAB and 450 at Westpac, according to the Finance Sector Union. Other big name casualties include Babcock and Brown (850 people), Insurance Australia Group (600), UBS (50), Merrill Lynch (20) and Goldman Sachs (10).
All up, the FSU estimates there have been almost 5000 jobs lost in the finance industry since the start of the year, most of them in Sydney. Surprisingly, it appears even this may be an understatement. The chief economist at JPMorgan, Stephen Walters, puts the losses at closer to 19,000, based on company briefings to analysts and media reports.
As the CBD vacates, there is a lingering sense of unreality about it all. Job losses are like the elephant in the room that everyone is gossiping about but no one wants to talk about publicly. Those still ironing shirts are keen to avoid the spotlight, while the newly unemployed, instead of protesting on the street, are quietly going about the business of putting the Mosman home on the market, auctioning the Audi and offloading the holiday house at Palm Beach. Tail between legs, they're retreating homewards to start living the simple life, or start writing that novel they always knew they had in them.
It's the silent recession, which, unlike other recent recessions, is coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up. But it in the end it will catch up with everyone.
Just as the sharemarket tends to lead the real economy, with stock prices plunging well before real activity does, job losses in the finance sector are likely to be a precursor to wider job losses in the rest of the economy. It is already happening, with Gerry Harvey announcing the closure of up to 10 loss-making stores next year and Qantas announcing it will axe more than 1000 positions.
The cyclical downturn in the broader economy is about to catch up with the financial downturn and one will probably amplify the other. Interest rates are falling at their fastest pace since the last recession but they spent six months of this year at 12-year highs as the Reserve Bank, after 17 years of continuous growth, attempted to keep the economy from exceeding its speed limits.
Heavily indebted households have been burnt and consumers in general have a new appreciation of the dangers of debt. It will take at least six months for interest rate cuts to begin to work their way through to help boost the economy.
Meanwhile, Australia has lost some of its biggest spenders. Fewer corporate luncheons mean fewer waiters and chefs. Fewer people catching taxis in the CBD means fewer taxi drivers.
Fewer luxury purchases means fewer retail assistants and so on.
These former high-flyers also played an important role in inflating and maintaining property prices in well-located inner-city areas. It is not clear how much longer house prices in these areas can hold up against the tide of new properties coming on to the market. There are 312 properties currently listed for sale in Mosman, complete with their own "French Provincial-inspired terrace" and "breathtaking Middle Harbour views". One three-bedroom villa is advertised ominously as "for definite sale".
Enter the Government's hastily constructed "economic security strategy", consisting mostly of pre-Christmas cash bonuses for families and pensioners. It is a multibillion-dollar attempt to prime the economy's pump. Problem is, it works best if the money is spent.
Pensioners, with their relatively low levels of debt and higher proportionate spending on food, are likely to spend most of it but a large amount of the goodies for families are likely to go straight into paying off credit card or mortgage debt.
A long-standing political tradition for targeting cash handouts at so called "battler" families with large mortgages, and ignoring young singles, may well have backfired. If the Rudd Government was really serious about encouraging spending, it should have given $1000 bonuses to young singles, or couples with no kids, to spend on the latest iPhone, coffee machine or a degustation dinner at Tetsuya's.
The truth is that no one really knows for sure how much will be spent. Official figures on retail sales won't be available until February. It will be March before we know the impact on economic growth.
Meanwhile, January and February are shaping up as crunch months for the Australian economy. This is customarily a quiet time for business so, if the Government's spending package fails to lift consumer spirits, it's likely to be a prime time for retailers and other consumer-dependent employers to announce further job cuts.
So enjoy your Christmas and New Year parties. When the fireworks cease after midnight on December 31, we're in for one hell of a hangover.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
McCandless on Jesse Jackson and The Great Black Hope
April 1, 1988
“No one can say ‘Jackson can’t win’”
“It seems that everywhere I turn I find people congratulating Jesse Jackson on the incredible feats he has accomplished in his drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. Most people are truly amazed, as I am, at the unprecedented success of his campaign, and appear to hold Jackson in high esteem.
However, when the question arises as to his actual chances for being the nominee most everyone gives him none. (...)
Some people might argue that Jackson ‘doesn’t want’ to be President. They maintain that Jackson is merely in the race to try to benefit the cause of black citizens. (...) Is it to become precedent that a black man can never be on the ticket because that ticket could then ‘never win’? Or is there supposed to be some ‘better time’ in the future for a black man to be on the ticket? When would this be, year 2000, year 3000?
The Democratic voters are the backbone of the party, and through their votes they have shown a strong interest in Jackson as the nominee. Let’s leave these ‘can’t’ win’ people to rot in their mire.”
