Category: Uncategorized

“Michigan State settles Larry Nassar lawsuits for $500 million” (Lansing State Journal):

Michigan State University has agreed to a $500 million settlement with the hundreds of women and girls who say Larry Nassar sexually assaulted them, bringing to a close another aspect of the scandal now in its 20th month.

The settlement and the details were announced in a statement from attorneys representing victims and the university. A portion of the settlement — $75 million — will be held back in the event of future lawsuits filed against MSU over Nassar.

MSU has paid nine law firms more than $11.3 million to represent it and its current and former employees in the civil litigation and state and federal investigations related to Nassar’s crimes.

MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant said the university has not determined how it will pay for the settlement or how much will be covered by its insurance providers.

To date, MSU has paid law firms at least $2.5 million to handle insurance aspects related to Nassar’s crimes and the lawsuits.

It’s likely MSU has multiple liability insurance policies and it’s possible for an organization its size to have $500 million in coverage ,although the university’s out-of-pocket costs could still be in the tens of millions, Lars Powell, an insurance expert at the University of Alabama who is not involved with MSU, said Wednesday. It’s likely the insurers were part of the settlement discussions, he said.

“I would guess that whatever settlement they reached would be the amount of insurance they carry,” said Powell, who is director of the Alabama Center for Insurance Information & Research. “They wouldn’t just agree to the settlement, nor would the plaintiffs agree to that settlement, if the insurers weren’t on board.”

The reader comments on the corresponding New York Times article are mostly along the lines of “It should be way more”:

This settlement is about a billion dollars short if they really wanted to send message.

This is a travesty of justice. $1.5mm per gymnast for years of abuse?

So, let me get this straight: $1.5+ million each to 332 victims is supposed to wash away the foul memories of a monster who manhandled and abused them?

There are a few folks who respond to this emotional situation with logical arguments (the sure sign of being a total asshole?):

Lifelong Democrat: Let the funds for this settlement be paid by the athletic department, which has proximate responsibility, rather than from academics. So MSU has to drop some sports, or cut back on athletic “scholarships,” that’s a price they ought to have to pay. (Response from Kara Nemsi: There is no way to separate academic and athletic departments. It will be the students who will pay for this through their tuition and debt.)

(from a man, obviously): I certainly sympathize with the women who were abused, but $500 million could fund a lot of scholarships, new classrooms and laboratories. [He hasn’t visited our Boston suburb. He would learn that building a new K-8 school for 440 town children plus 84 Metco-program children (sorted by race identity) and 20 teachers’ kids will cost roughly $100 million in a best-case scenario.]

This weblog is a safe space for thoughts that would get us all defriended on Facebook. Let’s think about all of the above from the perspective of a Bermuda-based insurer…

If we take the NYT commenters as representative of a likely jury pool, and also look at the total amount (more than $100 for every Michigan resident who has a job), shouldn’t liability insurance rates for employers, universities, etc. rise? Without higher rates, who will rush to line up to pay out the next $500 million? If rates do rise, that has to be passed on to consumers as higher prices, right? Since money invested in the U.S. has to earn a comparable return to what it would yield in a less exposed-to-litigation society, prices must go up to maintain the same profit percentage given a rise in the cost of liability insurance.

Will economic historians look back at the 2010s as the beginning of the Era of #MeToo Inflation?

Related:

• How can young Americans adapt to a post-Weinstein world? (Consider Erin Andrews, for example. A jury found that that she had suffered $55 million in damages from being filmed naked by a guest in an adjacent hotel room. As that is typically more than a hotel would have to pay for negligently killing a guest, it would have been impossible to predict an award of this size and, again, likely impossible to insure against.)
• “Fixing Flint’s contaminated water system could cost $216m, report says” (Guardian)
• Some figures on venture capital investment in Michigan companies ($500 million would be roughly two years of all VC funding)

Full post, including comments

“What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity” (nytimes) gives some color to the statistic “Only 48% of married women want regular sex after four years.” (Good Housekeeping).

A few years ago, while living in London, I dated married men for companionship … After being married for 23 years, I wanted sex but not a relationship. …

What surprised me was that these husbands weren’t looking to have more sex. They were looking to have any sex.

Maybe the reason some wives aren’t having sex with their husbands is because, as women age, we long for a different kind of sex. I know I did, which is what led me down this path of illicit encounters. After all, nearly as many women are initiating affairs as men.

One thing that is interesting is the author’s (and editors’?) faith in the power of words and conversation:

I am not saying the answer is non-monogamy, which can be rife with risks and unintended entanglements. I believe the answer is honesty and dialogue, no matter how frightening. Lack of sex in marriage is common, and it shouldn’t lead to shame and silence.

In the end, I had to wonder if what these men couldn’t face was something else altogether: hearing why their wives no longer wanted to have sex with them. It’s much easier, after all, to set up an account on Tinder.

One of our neighbors divorced her 50-year-old husband in order to spend more time having sex with her 30-year-old boyfriend (she kept most of the cashflow off the husband’s paycheck, fortunately, as she did not work at all and her new lover was only minimally employed). Would this fit woman in her late 40s have regained her interest in the 50-year-old given some “dialogue”?

Full post, including comments

“Is ‘Ladies Lingerie’ a Harmless Joke or Harassment?” (Atlantic):

Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, asked a crowded hotel elevator what floor everyone needed. Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, replied, “Ladies’ lingerie” (or, as Sharoni remembers it, “Women’s lingerie.”) Several people laughed. Was that sexual harassment?

Academics have been debating the question among themselves since last month, when Sharoni filed a formal complaint about the incident, triggering an investigation by the International Studies Association. The ISA would later conclude that Lebow must apologize in writing by May 15.

Professor/Victim Sharoni is a 57-year-old at an obscure college here in suburban Massachusetts (the Wikipedia page is almost empty). Her abuser is a 76-year-old professor at King’s College London, ranked among the world’s top 25 universities. Thanks to the miracle of tenure, ordinarily a younger scholar who wanted this guy’s job would have to wait for him to die. But perhaps she can get rid of him and free up his position for herself via this dispute? (or maybe she will take over a position at a 2nd-tier school when that person moves to the 1st-tier King’s College?)

Separately, this is a good illustration of how much free time tenured faculty have on their hands! (Consistent with the book Higher Education?, which calculates that a typical Yale professor earns $820 per hour of work that is actually required.)

Related:

• Harvard can get rid of an old guy with tenure
• Academic tenure leads to reduction in quantity and quality of work
• Tim Hunt, Ellen Pao, and how to get rid of old tenured faculty

Full post, including comments

Here’s a fun gift for an elementary or middle schooler: The Girl Aviators and the Phantom Airship, a beautifully produced hardcover of a 1911 book.

The book has some nice illustrations and the re-publisher has added some interesting photos of early aviation.

This is a good reminder that at one time nearly ever American was excited about aviation and not because they wanted to go to LAX for $199.

Report from an 8-year-old reader:

There is a competition to build an airplane, except for the engine. Roy and his sister Peggy build an airplane and name it “The Golden Butterfly.” The plane is built to hold 3, but flies fine with 4 kids. They participate in a race and end up winning [surprise!].

Favorite parts: A kidnapping that includes falling into a well. The race victory.

My suggestion: Send the book to your favorite young person who is about to escape for the summer!

Readers: What are some other good books for, say, 10-year-olds, on aviation?

Related:

• other books, many on an aviation theme, by the same author (Margaret Burnham)

Full post, including comments

I was recently arranging a meeting with an email friend (not as virtuous as a Facebook friend). She wrote “my phone is 347…” It seemed like an obvious situation for Gmail to include a link offering “add this to the contact information for her”. Yet this did not happen. Nor does Gmail offer any similar shortcuts in any of the emails where the sender wrote “my phone number is …”

Why do we believe in the Dawn of AI when an application such as Gmail, backed by literally infinite money and programming talent, can’t do what the lowest quality human assistant would be able to do?

Full post, including comments

A friend sent me “With Steve Wynn Gone, ‘Queen of Las Vegas’ Does Boardroom Battle” (nytimes):

Elaine Wynn, known as the Queen of Las Vegas for her long involvement with Mirage and Wynn Resorts, the casino and resort companies she founded with her ex-husband Steve Wynn, might seem an unlikely champion of shareholder rights and good corporate governance.

The outcome is of far more than academic interest, given that Ms. Wynn is now the company’s largest shareholder, with a 9 percent stake valued this week at nearly $2 billion.

For years, the terms of a shareholder agreement related to her 2010 divorce settlement prevented her from voting her shares independently of Mr. Wynn. But that changed earlier this year after The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Wynn had engaged in a long pattern of sexual harassment of Wynn employees, and had paid a manicurist $7.5 million after she told others in 2005 that Mr. Wynn had forced her to have sex.

The cash-for-sex transactions in which Mr. Wynn allegedly engaged were brought to the attention of journalists in a post-divorce lawsuit by the former beauty queen (Vanity Fair), who is generally credited with supervising the interior design of the casinos that Steve Wynn managed. Mr. Wynn no longer is a shareholder or a manager while the former Mrs. Wynn will likely soon be in charge.

My friend’s email: “For decades he prevailed over competition from Caesars, MGM, and the rest, but was taken down by the divorce plaintiff. I bet he wishes he had hired an interior designer instead of marrying one.”

He remarried Ms. Wynn in 1991, after an initial divorce in 1986 (Wikipedia). By that time Wynn had already launched the $630 million Mirage casino. It is kind of interesting that, despite the array of attorneys, risk management executives, etc. that would necessarily surround a casino project of this size, he couldn’t foresee the risk of being married (I don’t think that there have been huge relevant changes in Nevada law between 1991 and now (one big change is that the state defaults to a 50/50 parenting schedule, but the happy-to-unhappy couple did not have any children during this second marriage (Ms. Wynn was 49 years old when the second marriage began)). If we are to believe all of the allegations about Mr. Wynn’s frisky and cash-fueled sexual activities, it seems reasonable to assume that things were proceeding in a similar manner back in 1991. Wouldn’t that have been an additional obvious reason not to take the risk of marriage plus bringing the wife into the business partnership?

Separately, here’s another one where the thinking is tough to understand. “Geena Davis’ 4th husband files for divorce after nearly 17 years of marriage” (Newsday):

Jarrahy requested dissolution of their marriage under the title “Rob Doe vs. Veronica Doe.” TMZ, People magazine and E! News each said they confirmed this was for Iranian-American doctor Jarrahy, born in 1971 [i.e., he is 47], and Davis, 62.

Jarrahy’s filing, which states the couple separated late last year, cites irreconcilable differences and asks for spousal support and joint legal and physical custody of their children, daughter Alizeh, 16, and twin sons Kian and Kaiis, 14.

She had already been divorced three times so presumably she was familiar with California family law, a strongly pro-alimony system. How could she have imagined that the marriage would last when, as soon as she became an elderly woman, he would be able to get her to pay him to enjoy the Los Angeles singles scene as a wealthy middle-aged guy? (See “What I learned at my 35th MIT reunion“: The women who had been sued were the higher-earning spouse. For example, female physicians who survived 30 years of practice without a malpractice lawsuit had proved vulnerable to attack in family court. No-fault divorce for their plaintiffs was rephrased as “Would you like to discard your 55-year-old wife, take half of the money she saved from working as a medical specialist, take half of the money she’s going to earn going forward, and see if having sex with younger women is more exciting?”)

[The guy asking a judge to order Geena Davis to support him, incidentally, is a practicing plastic surgeon. That’s the beauty of California family court! Middle-class taxpayers fund a judge to listen to a prime-age-for-working guy who earns $750,000 per year explain why he can’t live on that and why a former sex partner who will soon be eligible for Medicare should be helping out.]

“Related:

• Nevada family law (unlike in many other states, it is difficult to earn court-ordered profits from a sexual relationship unless the sex partner can be persuaded to marry; child support from an unmarried encounter will yield less than $250,000 in revenue (tax-free) over an 18-year period)

Full post, including comments

It is all a question of perspective…

“The Refugee Detectives: Inside Germany’s high-stakes operation to sort people fleeing death from opportunists and pretenders” (Atlantic):

Two years after the peak of the influx, more than 80 percent of refugees were jobless, in a general population whose unemployment rate is 5.5 percent. Successful integration is not assured.

“Germany’s Secret Labor Experiment” (nytimes):

In fact, Germany is moving at full speed with a plan to channel those refugees into its work force. Germany’s political class is doing the country an egregious disfavor by soft-pedaling its muscular, state-of-the-art efforts in labor market integration.

Germany does indeed face a demographic crisis, but it’s not from the influx of refugees. Its population is aging rapidly, and jobs are going unfilled. Over the next decade, Germany is going to need even more — not fewer — immigrants to keep its economy on track and cover growing pension outlays.

So Germany’s going with what it’s got: an abundance of young, overwhelmingly male foreign nationals, a relatively small segment of whom have advanced education or professional training.

Despite the bumps, there’s already evidence of success.

Economists say that a plausible best-case scenario is 50 percent or 60 percent of the current refugee population being employed five years from now — a prediction contingent on successful integration. If this happens, economists say that Germany can accommodate a net migration of about 700,000 people a year.

To get true public support, the country’s leaders have to change the public conversation from one that fears migrants to one that sees how integration can help everyone.

Full post, including comments

At dinner the other night I sat between a United Airlines B737 pilot and an American Airlines A320 pilot.

The purported airline pilot shortage has not hit the mainline carriers. The United pilot explained that for a white or Asian male it would be necessary to have substantial turbine-multi pilot-in-command time (i.e., have worked at a regional airline for 5-10 years so as to upgrade to captain). In other words, United and American are not poaching first officers (“co-pilots”) from regional airlines, nor are they hiring white/Asian men anywhere near the FAA minimums (1500 hours, possibly all but about 50 in a little four-seat single-engine plane).

[It is a different story for pilots who identify as “female” or who can claim membership in one of the sought-after racial groups. They will be hired if they meet the bare regulatory minimums (i.e., they skip out on the 5-10 years of time- and experience-building and can therefore be much more advanced in their careers at any age because, once hired by a United or American, it is all about seniority).]

What’s the easiest job at these airlines? Senior first officer on the B777, especially if one’s role is to be an en-route relief pilot (just sit in the right seat and maybe work the radios for four hours mid-flight). You literally get paid to sleep in a crew rest bunk for nearly all of your “working” hours. Due to your high seniority you get the best schedules and are probably home at least 20 days per month. This position can be gamed such that the relief pilot does not do three takeoffs and landings within 90 days. Then he or she is no longer legal to serve as a crew member and is grounded for a month while the airline figures out how to schedule simulator training to regain currency.

Down in the world of humble four-seat piston airplanes, the shortage does seem to be real. At our local airport, for example, a 54-year-old flight school shut down recently, saying that they couldn’t recruit and retain instructors. I can’t figure out whether that leaves our school in better or worse shape. On the one hand we no longer have any real competition other than people driving 30+ minutes to some other airport. On the other hand, this “competitor” was great at marketing (our school is great at maintenance) and brought a lot of people to the airport who learned to fly with them and then rented from us or got additional ratings with us.

[Can a flight school holler “shortage” when the retail price for an instructor is less than what the local gym charges for a personal trainer? No school would be short of instructors if it paid $150,000 per year ($200,000 including benefits and taxes?). But if the instructor teaches 500 flight hours per year, that’s $400/hour to the customer, currently paying $150/hour for the plane and $50-60/hour for the teacher. Customers would presumably wander off to find other hobbies if flight schools pushed dual rates from $200/hour to $550.]

Full post, including comments

Most of the May/June 2018 issue of Technology Review, the MIT alumni magazine, is devoted to blockchain. Futurists will appreciate “Inside the Jordan refugee camp that runs on blockchain”, about Syrians living in a potential future of retinal authentication for spending crypto currency:

Haddad’s idea for Building Blocks was to start by creating an account on a blockchain for every family of Syrian refugees in a Jordanian camp. Families wouldn’t then have to wait days for local banks to transfer their money, or have to share identifying information with the banks, where some unscrupulous employee might steal or misuse it. Meanwhile, the WFP, instead of forwarding money before it’s spent, could itself tally all refugee purchases and pay participating stores afterward in local currency. That’s a big deal, since upwards of 30 percent of UN assistance is lost to corruption.

It is great to do good for others, but what about folks who want to do good for themselves? There is an interesting article on hackers who have made off with crypto currency, not only the familiar Mt. Gox heist, but a January 2018 raid on Coincheck (the thieves netted about $250 million on $500 million stolen).

[The magazine also devoted space to its multi-year theme of female victimhood as evidenced by the paucity of cisgender female nerds (could also be celebrated as evidence of a society with so much opportunity for women that they can do interesting jobs instead; see “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic), which says “In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.”). In the introduction to an interview with Amber Baldet, a JP Morgan Chase manager, the “cryptocommunity” is described as “an entitled boys’ club”. The magazine shows its commitment to gender bravery by interviewing this executive, not about technology or finance or what she and her team of coders might be accomplishing, but about “the state of diversity in the cryptocurrency world.” There are two full-page images of the subject, in both of which she shows enough skin to reveal multiple tatoos. (The editors chose to feature full-page images of multiple women in the issue, but men are generally shown at 1/4 or 1/16th this size. An alien reader would assume that women are literally bigger than men.) In the MIT-only section, an engineering professor who earned her PhD in 1964 is quoted as saying “If engineering doesn’t make welcome space for women then engineering will become marginalized.” The journalists doesn’t comment on the seeming cisgender-normative prejudice or denial of gender fluidity (how do the professor, journalist, and editors know that humans currently working as engineers will continue to identify as “male”?)]

Readers: Will journalists end up being some of the main beneficiaries of blockchain? (other than the obvious beneficiaries, such as vendors of illegal products and services) Every magazine or newspaper can recycle every old headline and most old stories by adding “with blockchain” for the next few years?

Related:

• “Bitcoin v. Medical School”
• Why doesn’t everyone with unmetered electricity mine Bitcoin?
• Secret bitcoin billionaires will renounce their U.S. citizenship before cashing in?
• Bitcoin as Ponzi scheme

Full post, including comments

It is tough to convict people given all of the procedural safeguards that we have in place because we value fairness. In the old days, the remedy for this was to torture people until they confessed. Today we make the punishment after conviction 10X worse than it was previously, but offer the option to confess via a plea bargain and receive instead the former maximum sentence. This theme is explored in the classic University of Chicago Law Review article “Torture and Plea Bargaining” (Langbein).

I’m wondering if the sexual assault courts that the Obama Administration forced universities to create have discovered the same idea. “Lawyer: Yovino will claim at trial she was raped by SHU football players” (CT Post):

State prosecutors Tatiana Messina and Emily Trudeau contend Nikki Yovino, now 20, falsely claimed in 2016 that she was raped after having consensual sex in a bathroom with the two men, because she didn’t want to lose another young man as a prospective boyfriend.

Bridgeport lawyer Frank Riccio II, who represents the two men, said that as a result of Yovino’s rape allegations, his clients were scheduled for a school disciplinary hearing but on the advice of legal council agreed instead to withdraw from the university rather than face being expelled and having that on their records.

If three college kids are in the bathroom with the door closed it will be tough for anyone who wasn’t there to establish exactly what happened (and perhaps all three were drunk so even they don’t remember?). Thus, it makes sense to threaten sufficiently severe punishment that the accused will simply take the desired action in exchange for not suffering the maximum punishment.

Related:

• Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (a.k.a. majoring in partying and football)

Full post, including comments