You're worried about the wrong thing

I have to admit I'm getting extremely tired of hearing that we need to worry about disincentives to seeking work due to unemployment benefits. In a normal situation, when most unemployment is frictional, perhaps we do; but not now. Repeat after me: Right now there are on average more than five people seeking work per one job opening. It cannot be any clearer that the unemployment we have now is not caused by people not being willing to take jobs that are available. Rather, it is caused by, you know, there being less jobs than people who want them.

A parasite calling kettle black?

Through Ed Brayton, I've learned about David Jungerman, a Missouri farmer who had recently painted his tractor trailer with the message: "Are you a producer or a parasite? Democrats - party of parasites." This is murderous irony since most farming in the U.S. is inefficient and sustainable only because of government subsidies (a.k.a. handouts); Brayton quotes the Kansas City Star which determined that Jungerman himself has received over a million dollars in farm subsidies since 1995. The paper goes on to say

"That's just my money coming back to me," Jungerman (...) said Monday. "I pay a lot in taxes. I'm not a parasite." (...) Jungerman said he put up the sign to protest people who pay no taxes, but, "Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them" in social programs.

To this Brayton replies

Sorry, still doesn't fly. I bet he hasn't paid a million dollars in taxes in the last 15 years.

Both Jungerman and Brayton are missing the point here. You can be a net income tax payer and still be a "parasite." For example, there are plenty of indirect farm subsidies which work as price distortions; basically, the government pays to inflate prices of goods sold by farmers and to deflate prices of goods bought by them. So it is very well possible that not just Jungerman's farm subsidies money, but his very income, is in fact a handout. Of course there's no way for me to know if this is actually the case. My point is that just because someone is a net income tax payer does not mean he's a "producer."

An then of course there's a broader point, which everybody is missing, not just Brayton. That point is that just because someone is a hypocrite does not necessarily mean that what he's saying is false.

Shallow thinking

Today in the World Cup we've had another terrible and game-changing referee call. In a knock-out game between Germany and England, with the scoreline reading 2-1 to Germany, the referee called back a perfectly legitimate goal for England which, if allowed, would tie the game at twos. The Germans then went on to win the game 4-1.

I'm not going to write about FIFA and its ridiculous policies when it comes to botched referee calls; first, everyone can see the obvious themselves and second, it just makes me too mad. Instead I'll write about something a lot of fans and sports journalists have said after this game. Look, Germany won 4-1, they say, so you can't really claim that that one goal for England would have made any difference.

To put it mildly, it is a very unintelligent thing to say. What on Earth makes you think that, with the game tied 2-2, the rest of it would've gone the same way as it did with the score being 2-1? This is not a controlled experiment, this is life. You can't just change one variable and expect all the rest of them to stay fixed.

The structure of soccer is such that it provides a strong disincentive to playing an offensive game. If the other team commits most of its players to defense, scoring against them is very hard. Furthermore, the very act of trying to score against them is extremely risky: you have to commit seven or eight players to play on the other team's half. This means you're exposed at the back, which creates a constant danger that when the defending team manages to steal the ball from you they will get to have a quick breakaway with lots of space to play because your defenders are trying to attack. Such counter-attacking "sucker punch" goals happen all the time in soccer, and that is why teams always try to avoid committing too many players up front. They only do that when they absolutely have to--that is, when they fall behind in a must-win game. So if the English were given that goal they clearly deserved, the game would have been tied, and England could play a careful, defensive game. But because of the referee call, they had to chase, commit players to offense, which allowed Germany to score two easy counter-attacking goals. I'm not saying Germany would have lost if that goal was allowed. I don't know that. But I do know that it would have been a very different game.

Added: And the referees aren't quite done yet. Another unfair, game-changing call occurred in the very next match, Argentina-Mexico. Argentina scored their first goal from an obvious offside position. An early lead allowed Argentina to adopt the comfortable "defend and counter-attack" strategy.

Score for a vuvuzela concerto in B-flat

(HT: Football Polemics.)

Keep whining

Congratulations to the U.S. men's national soccer team for beating Algeria 1-0 and advancing to the round of sixteen as Group C winners. Congratulations especially to the U.S. No 10 Landon Donovan for keeping his cool under enormous pressure and converting what almost certainly was the very last scoring chance of the game.

The game with Algeria was an incredible thriller. A scoreless draw would have seen the U.S. eliminated while any kind of win would ensure their qualification, but despite the U.S.'s huge advantage in shots, possession etc. the goal did not come until three minutes before the final whistle, so the fans were kept on their toes for a long time.

Actually, it was much worse than that. The Americans did score a goal much earlier, in the 25th minute, but the goal was disallowed on an offsides call. Video replay showed the call was obviously wrong and the goal should have stood; but in soccer the referee calls are final and they cannot be reversed by any type of review, video or otherwise. So until Donovan scored his goal, the U.S. fans were facing a possibility that their team will be cheated out of the next round rather than eliminated from it. Actually, it was even worse than that. The U.S. was going into the Algeria game having already been cheated out of a win by a bad referee call (they scored a goal against Slovenia which was mistakenly disallowed; had it been allowed, the U.S. would have won their game instead of tying it and the game with Algeria would not have been a must-win for them).

In a post-game interview, Donovan was asked what his feelings were when the U.S. goal against Algeria was called back. He said he felt that there was no point in "moaning about it," as he put it. In one sense, he's right: since referee calls are irreversible, the only thing a team can do in that situation is to try to forget about it as quickly as possible and keep pushing for another goal. But now that the game is over, I think it's time to start moaning. The curious thing, however, is that if the team started complaining, many (if not most) fans would react to it without much sympathy. They'd say something like "Quit whining, you've won the game, what more do you want!" But the outcome shouldn't matter. Unfair treatment doesn't stop being unfair just because the victim manages to prevail in spite of it. If a black person had to go through a racially biased job recruitment process, got the job, and then decided to sue his employer for discrimination, we would sympathize with him--and rightfully so. Most of us wouldn't say "You got the job, didn't you, so stop complaining!"

Music to my ears

The Institute for Creation Research has been seeking accreditation in Texas in order to be able to award a Master's degree in science education. Having been denied by the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board, ICR has filed a federal law suit. As part of it, ICR has also filed a request to be able to temporarily award the degree while their case is pending. The request has been turned down by the court; here's an excerpt from the ruling:

It appears that although the court has twice required the Plaintiff to re-plead and set forth a short and plain statement of the relief requested, Plaintiff is entirely unable to file a request which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information.

Ouch. Reading this has filled my heart with joy reminiscent of that which I felt when first seeing the court ruling on Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District.

(HT: National Center for Science Education.)

Learn your game theory

When you do, you won't be surprised by things that, after a moment's thought, aren't all that surprising.

Here's the situation: today in the last round of the World Cup Group A, Mexico played Uruguay while South Africa competed with France. These were last games of round one, and they were deciding which teams advance to the knock-off stage of the tournament (round of 16). Best two teams in the group advance, the other two are knocked out of the tournament. It pays to be the best team in the group, as it means that you will likely be paired up with a weaker team in the knock-off round (no. 1 team from group A plays with no. 2 team from group B and vice versa). The situation after previous two games was such that, in case of a tie between Uruguay and Mexico, both teams ensure that they qualify, regardless of the outcome of the South Africa-France game. Because of this, essentially all sports media have decreed that both teams will play for a scorless draw: they will both come out on the pitch with an unspoken understanding that, since a tie is good for both of them, and since not scoring is the safest and least suspicious-looking way of ensuring a tie, they will both avoid serious attempts at attacking the rival's goal.

The sports media couldn't be more wrong. If they they had any brains, they wouldn't be worried about this game being rigged. In fact, the only rational thing for both teams to do is to try to score and score early, because the situation that the teams are in is that of a classic Prisoner's Dilemma, and the only rational thing to do in a Prisoner's Dilemma is to not cooperate. Sure, it is good for either team to tie, but it's even better to win. If they win, they ensure a top spot in the group and thus raise their chances of avoiding Argentina in the next round; if they tie, they may be second (depending on what happens in the other game). Suppose you're Mexico's coach. It's the 88th minute of the game and the result is nil-nil because Uruguay has in fact "cooperated" by not trying to score on you. What do you do? Tell your team to score, of course; if you do, Uruguay will likely not have enough time to tie the game back, and so you will ensure yourself a win and the additional prize of avoiding Argentina. But the Uruguay coach knows that you face that incentive, so he will not cooperate in the first place. You know that the Uruguay coach will not cooperate, so you will not cooperate either. The only rational tactics ("equilibrium" in game theory lingo) is for both teams to try to score early to avoid being a "sucker" when it's too late in the game to retaliate. A tie is of course still a likely outcome of the game, but both teams will play for the win, not for the tie.

This is in fact what happened. Both teams were seriously trying to score. In the end, only one of them turned out to be successful (Uruguay won 1-0), but both tried to; neither team was faking their attacks. (Mexico still qualified because they lucked out in terms of the score in the other game.) Sports media call this result "surprising" and salute Uruguay for being "spontaneous" and "non-calculating." The truth is exactly the other way around. The result is not surprising, and Uruguay's tactics were calculated and rational.

Elections bring out the worst in people

I hate elections, especially the time right before and right after the actual voting. People get very passionate about politics, and when people get passionate, they tend to abandon clear thinking. The sleep of reason breeds monsters, said Goya, and in case of the height of electoral campaigns those monsters are fallacies. Here is (an incomplete) list of fallacies that "pop up" in the media every time a democracy holds elections.

1) Tribalism. As such it's not a fallacy per se, but it leads to fallacies. People stricken with the tribal mode of thinking tend to believe that their favored candidate is right about everything he says while the other one is wrong about everything. If the candidate they oppose says that two plus three is five, or that it's wrong to eat babies, tribal leaders on the other side automatically disagree or at least try to argue that the other side doesn't really believe what it says.

2) Hypocrisy about tribalism. Tribal disputes always come very crudely disguised as policy debates; but usually anyone with a clear mind can see that those who talk about policies have no interest in finding out what actually works.

2) Ad hominems. Those are ingrained in tribalism, and their most ubiquitous form is assuming that everyone who disagrees with you on policy issues has bad intentions.

3) Belief that "each vote counts." No elections have ever been decided by a single vote, or anything remotely close to a single vote. The probability that your vote will decide which candidate wins national elections is smaller than the probability that you will win the lottery.

4) Religious attitude towards the belief that each vote counts. Those who point out that a single vote does not, in fact, matter, are faced with much sanctimonious indignation. Also, whenever you are arguing that the probability of anyone being a swing voter is essentially zero, some defender of the "each vote counts" doctrine will inevitably counter by saying "What if everyone thought that way?"--as though that reply had any logical relevance.

5) Projection. Part of a whole package of fallacies stemming from people trying to read information from data that simply does not contain it. Polling numbers tell you who people voted for; it tells you nothing about why they voted for this guy and not that guy. It's extremely annoying to hear pundits trying to explain, right after the polls closed, that people voted for Obama mainly because of the economy or because they were tired of the war in Iraq. Before having reliable survey data, it's impossible to tell. Or, another example: how many times have you heard that Obama beat McCain because he ran a much better campaign? A lot, probably. But that's something we can't know, because we have no control: we don't know what Obama's numbers would have been if his campaign was weaker. It could have been the campaign, sure; but it could have been the economic meltdown just as well. We know that, all else equal, the incumbent party does well when the economy is good, and does poorly when the economy is weak. I could have been the case that, in the fall of 2008, the economy was in such terrible shape that McCain would have lost to a fire hydrant. We just don't know.

6) Ecological fallacy. This one is rampant right after the results are turned in as well. Suppose that this time around, Democrats had more young people as well as more Hispanic people voting for them than they did four years ago. You will then inevitably hear someone concluding from this that more young Hispanics voted Democratic. But this conclusion does not follow: without seeing individual data, we don't know if its Hispanics or Whites or Blacks who were younger than usual.

And so on; there's more, much more. It's possible that I will update the list if something else comes to my mind. To wrap the post up, a disclaimer: I only hate elections in an absolute sense, not in a relative sense. That is to say I hate elections, but I hate viable alternatives even more.

The Pope and the refs

FIFA and the Vatican are very similar in how they deal with being caught doing something wrong. (Of course I'm not trying to suggest that the moral gravity of their respective wrongdoings is comparable, only that they deal with being exposed in a very similar fashion). First order of business in both organizations is to pretend nothing has happened. If that is no longer possible, they may admit to being wrong and sometimes even apologize, but never in a way that is of any use to the victims (FIFA never reverses bad referee calls; the church never pays damages unless forced to by the courts, and even then it tries to collect money for this purpose from churchgoers). They both blatantly refuse to consider any kind of institutional change that could prevent the wrongs from happening again (FIFA essentially says it will never introduce any type of during-the-game review of referee calls; the church essentially says it will never cooperate with law enforcement when it comes to sexual abuse investigations against priests). When the church internally punishes a priest for molesting children, and when FIFA punishes a ref for distorting the outcome of an important game, the punishment is usually more about removing the individual from positions of publicity rather than imposing any significant inconveniences on them; and neither FIFA nor the church admits out loud exactly what the individual is being punished for.

These similarities should not come as a surprise. Both FIFA and the church are effectively monopolies in their respective market niches, so it's no wonder that their customers have very little bargaining power. People may get angry with them, but somehow soccers fans boycotting the World Cup or Catholics boycotting Sunday mass has never been a real possibility.

This only makes sense if you also dig out Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin

Ozzy Osbourne is to become one of the few people in the world to have their full genome sequenced. Apparently, scientists are curious why he is still alive at 61 after decades of record-breaking alcohol and drug abuse.

People, can you say "control group?" Ozzy's genome won't tell us much unless it's compared with the genomes of people whose substance abuse was on par with Ozzy's but who did not survive it.

Good complexity, bad complexity

In the context of complex financial products and algorithmic trading, we often hear that it's a problem when things that are being sold are so complex that buyers cannot possibly understand how they work. But somehow we never hear that objection about, say, computers or airline flights. What's the percentage of consumers who understand, in full detail, how a computer works or what makes an airplane fly?

Contradiction? Who cares! Part 2437

Here's a surprise for everyone: self-contradictory speech from a politician! It's from a TV interview in Polish (I don't have a link so you'll have to take my word for it), and the culprit is one Professor Jan Winiecki, member of a Polish constitutional body called Monetary Policy Council (which is roughly the equivalent of the Federal Reserve Board). The interview was about Poland joining the Eurozone. At one point Winiecki was addressing a specific argument against common currency, namely that implementing it would deprive Poland of the possibility to increase the competitiveness of its exports by devaluing its national currency. His answer was: First, devaluing your currency does not increase the competitiveness of your exports (he quoted data to the effect that the dynamics of growth of Polish exports was actually slower during times when Polish currency was losing value against the Euro); Second, if Poland implements the Euro, then businesses in the exports sector that want to be more competitive will only be able to do this through improving their productivity, because improving competitiveness through devaluing currency will no longer be an option.

I'm not kidding. He said both those things in one breath.

Why did JFK want to send cloned dinosaurs into space?

A brilliant quote from Randall Munroe:

(...) if you read [JFK's] speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars.

The quote is a mouse-over in Munroe's equally brilliant cartoon. It's probably the best (and definitely funniest) example of a fallacy that is ubiquitous in all debates, public or private: refusal to take responsibility for logical consequences of one's own beliefs. If you claim that A, and if it can be shown that A implies B, then you are also claiming that B, whether you like it or not. It doesn't matter that you didn't intend to claim that B, that you disagree with B, or whatever. If you don't like the consequences of your beliefs that have been shown to you, your only logically valid line of defense is trying to show that the consequences you don't like do not really follow; you are not allowed to just say "But I've never said that." For example, I think that if you're saying it's wrong to discriminate based on race, you're also saying that it's wrong to protect American jobs from foreign competition; and if you're saying that manufacturers should have legal power to set asking prices of the goods they manufacture, you're also saying that Amazon.com does not provide any useful services. If you don't like these conclusions, you have to either attempt to show they do not follow from your premises, or else rethink those premises.

If xkcd is right and JFK's arguments for sending people to the moon are equally good as arguments for sending cloned dinosaurs into space, then JFK was indeed in favor of sending cloned dinosaurs into space, whether he realized it or not.

Where does their soccer money come from?

To bore my readers completely, another post about soccer. In a recent paper about the sport, economist Jim O'Neill wrote that "Poland's economy has decoupled from the performance of the national football team in the past decade."

Boy, did it ever. It decoupled in the sense that both national and club team soccer perform abysmally. What's interesting is that in at least four post-communist countries that are poorer than Poland (Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and Ukraine), soccer is doing great. In all those countries, fans care about the sport about the same. Of those five countries, Poland is the richest on per capita basis (PPP GDP's per capita are as follows: Poland $17,900; Russia $15,100; Bulgaria $12,600; Romania $11,500; Ukraine $6,400). And yet, there is huge disparity in how much money is being invested in the sport in Poland versus four other countries. The richest team in Polish soccer top-tier league has an annual budget of about $15 million. The richest teams of Romania, Russia, or Ukraine operate on budgets that are eight to ten times larger. The same magnitude of disparities can be seen when comparing entire leagues. In case of Russia this can be sort of explained: First, they're not that much poorer, and second, in aggregate terms they're actually richer (their GDP is more than three times larger). But Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine are poorer both in aggregate and per capita terms. Their fans do not care about the sport any more than Polish fans do. And yet they spend more than ten times as much on soccer as Poland does (and it's mostly private spending, too; there's very little government money in it). I don't understand why this happens.

Overheard on NPR

I've only heard bits and pieces of the NPR interview I'm writing about; I don't know who the interviewee was. The broad context of what he was talking about was anti-trust laws, WalMart, and the like. At any rate the interviewee (for convenience, let's call him Dan) decried the current state of affairs in which manufacturers are no longer in power to set prices of their own products. Dan said that manufacturers should have that power but they don't anymore, because lots of times prices are set by a long chain of intermediaries.

What Dan said is definitely wrong, but it could be wrong in one of two ways, depending on what he means by "price." If he means the final price at which the transaction of a certain good is finalized, then he's wrong because manufacturers never had the power to set that price to begin with. Market price of something isn't set by a single entity, but by a bargaining process between all participants of the transaction: manufacturers, sellers, and buyers. Sure, the manufacturer gets to set the asking price; but if she happens to set it below or above the market-clearing rate, she'll have to change it or go out of business. In other words, she doesn't really set it.

But maybe "asking price" is what Dan meant all along. In that case what he's saying is that the asking price of a product should always be set by its manufacturer, and not by trade intermediaries. For example, if I manufacture a tea-pot, then I should get to have all say in determining what price buyers should be asked to pay for it, and not WalMart, if WalMart happens to sell my teapots to the larger public. That's really just another way of saying that intermediaries shouldn't be allowed to profit from what they do (because if they're not free to charge prices different than what they pay the manufacturers, they can't). Which is really just another way of saying that intermediaries do not provide any useful service. For example, Amazon.com is completely useless; after all, it doesn't make anything, it only sells stuff it buys from other people.

How about some Econ 101, Dan?

Studying games without game theory

Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology has an experimental paper on soccer penalty-taking. The design is supposed to measure differences in perception and performance in penalty-takers under under stress and no-stress conditions. A bunch of players were asked to take a bunch of penalty kicks each; the control group were told that nothing depends on how often they score, whereas the treatment group were rewarded for performance in various ways, monetary or otherwise. Three things were then measured for penalty-takers in both groups: what they were looking at before taking the shot, how long they were looking at it, and how well they did (i.e. frequency with which they scored). The experiment finds that members of the treatment group were more likely to concentrate their eyesight on the keeper before the shooting more, and performed worse than members of the control group.

This is a flawed research design.

The flaw is to take into account only the psychological aspect of the penalty shooting game while completely ignoring the game-theoretic aspect. A penalty kick is a simultaneous-move game between the taker and the goalkeeper: the taker decides where to place the ball, and the keeper decides which way to dive, both at the same time. Moreover, it is a game in which neither the taker nor the keeper can afford to stick to one choice all the time: if the taker only shoots near the left post, for example, the keeper will figure it out and start diving left all the time; similarly, if the keeper dives only to the right, the taker will start shooting left. (In game theory lingo, the game has no pure strategy equilibrium.) However, it does have an equilibrium in randomized strategies (mixed strategies). What this means is that each player picks a certain frequency with which he plays each strategy; for example, assuming for simplicity that you can only shoot left or right, the taker chooses to shoot left with some probability p and right with some probability 1-p, whereas the keeper chooses to dive left with some probability q and right with some probability 1-q, where p and q are both strictly between 0 and 1. In other words, both players realize there is no single strategy that works all the time, but that there can be a certain mix of strategies that can work some percentage of the time, just like poker players realize that there is no strategy to play any given hand that's always correct, just a strategy that's correct on average. What's more, once you choose to play equilibrium frequencies, you score with a certain fixed rate no matter where the keeper dives (if you're the taker), or save with a certain rate no matter where the taker shoots (if you're the keeper).

The sports psychology paper is missing all this. As a result, we have no idea whether players that perform better do so because they have been placed under "no-stress conditions" or because they are closer to equilibrium frequencies than their counterparts. The correct design would be as follows. First, you calculate equilibrium shooting frequencies (here's one attempt at this). Then you proceed with the treatment/control design and let your players shoot enough times to be able to tell if they're converging on the equilibrium frequency or not. Those who do not will unfortunately have to have their datapoints thrown out: you won't be able to tell if they're doing well/badly due to control/treatment or due to deviating from the equilibrium. However, if you see the difference in performance between treatment and control groups among players that do follow the equilibrium strategy, you can be sure that that difference is really due to treatment.

I have a suspicion that if the equilibrium variable were accounted for, the significance of results from this paper would disappear.

On soccer, comic books, bread, and uninteresting questions

Dan Drezner wonders out loud in Foreign Policy why great world powers aren't dominating soccer. Right now, the seven largest GDP's in the world are (in descending order): the United States, China, Germany, Japan, Russia, India and Brazil. According to FIFA, the seven best men's national soccer teams in the world are Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Argentina. Drezner's question is: why are only two countries from the first list represented on the second? Why aren't the U.S., China, and India dominating the soccer pitch? After all, they have way more money available to invest in soccer than, say, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Argentina or Spain.

This is a really uninteresting question if I ever saw one. It's uninteresting because the answer is so obvious: cultural preferences. The U.S., India and China simply don't care as much about soccer. (Why? I don't know; that question is actually somewhat interesting.) Thinking that richer economies should, all else equal, be better at soccer than poorer ones stems from a very basic mistake: forgetting that what people (and whole economies) spend money on is a function of not just their resources, but preferences as well. Asking why China isn't one of the top three soccer powers in the world is a bit like asking why Bill Gates is not one of the largest comic book buyers in the world--after all, he has more money to spend on comic books than almost anyone else.

Back in the dark days of communism in Poland, the supply of bread and its prices were regulated by the government. When the system fell, those regulations were lifted. I remember the opponents of this arguing that regulating the supply of bread cannot be left to the market because if it is, the rich will buy up all the bread and there will not be enough left for the poor. The same mistake is at work in this objection.

Veto power is power

To have power over someone is to be able to influence them to do something they would otherwise not do, and/or not to do something they would otherwise do. This much I think is non-controversial. Suppose you're an exec sitting on the board of some large corporation. The board is deciding on a merger, and everything depends on you. You don't think that the merger is a good idea, and are planning to strike it down at the board meeting. But, before the meeting, you get a threat from a widely known hired gun who tells you that if you block the merger, he will kill you, your wife, children, and pretty much everyone dear to you. You know the guy's reputation and consider his threat credible; thus, at the board meeting you vote for the merger. The hitman leaves you and your family alone. Did the hitman have power over you? Of course he did. He didn't shoot you or any of your family members, but nonetheless he did make you do something you did not want to do. That's power.

In about three weeks, Poland will have presidential elections. There is a recurring theme you can hear from politicians, journalists, and voters alike: in Poland, the President has no power. All those who say this are wrong. The power of a Polish President is perfectly analogous to the power of the hitman in my example; therefore saying that the President has no power is just like saying that the hitman from my little example has no power.

Here's where the analogy is. Polish President has veto power, which works as follows. When a draft of a bill was accepted by the Sejm (that's our lower house of parliament) and Senat (that's the upper house) in majority voting, it gets sent to the Presidents. If the President signs it, that's it, the bill becomes law. But the President can veto the bill, in which case it gets sent back to Sejm. Now Sejm can override the veto, but in order to do this, a 3/5 majority of votes is needed. If the number of "nay" votes is less that 3/5, the bill is dead.

Now it is true that if the government coalition has 3/5 or more votes in Sejm, the President really does have no power. But if they don't have as many votes, he does. And just like the hitman has this power without even having to use his gun, so does the President have it without even having to veto anything. Suppose we have a conservative President and a very liberal government. The government is supported by a majority coalition in Sejm, but that coalition does not have a 3/5 of the votes; the Sejm is split 55/45 between liberal government supporters and conservative President supporters. Suppose also that the government coalition is drafting a bill regulating abortion. The coalitions' preference range from the view that abortions should be available on demand, no questions asked, no strings attached, to the view that it should be available but with some minor restrictions. The conservatives' views range from "no abortions for any reason" to "some abortions but with very severe restrictions." It's also known that the President wants to outlaw abortions altogether. What does the coalition want to do? Well, in a perfect world they'd write a bill that would allow unrestricted abortions, as that would be closest to their preferences. But they know the President will veto that bill, so instead to prevent the bill from being killed altogether, they write one that they think will get 3/5 of the votes; i.e., they include some postulates of the conservatives in it. In other words, even without there being an actual veto, there is a non-trivial difference between the bill that the coalition wants to write and the one they actually do write. That difference is exactly the power of the President.

Lie to me

By and large, interviews with athletes are incredibly, mind-numbingly boring. Great majority of the interviewees never offer anything remotely close to insight or even substance; they are usually reduced to offensively stupid platitudes ("We have to be careful not to make mistakes while trying to capitalize on the mistakes of our opponents," "He's a great player because he's fantastic offensively while at the same time paying attention to defense," etc.) and an occasional silly joke. Why is that?

The first, and least interesting reason is good old-fashioned hypocrisy. For whatever reason we (i.e. the viewing public and, by extension, the media) are not satisfied if great athletes are just that. No, we also want them to be role models, all-around great people who we'd like our children to emulate. Role models have to avoid saying (and doing) anything controversial--and that's one reason that, when interviewed, they so often choose to simply not say anything at all (sure, words are coming out of their mouths, but those words have no meaning). Why is this hypocritical? Because there's very little overlap between the sets "great athletes" and "great role models." Successful athletes are overly competitive. Overly competitive people are much more likely than the general public to be raging a******s. You can't have your cake and eat it too; if you want your sports to be played by the best athletes available, you simply have to accept the fact that most of your sports heroes will be people who do things like this. Or much worse.

It isn't the case that athletes say uninteresting and unintelligent things because they are less intelligent and interesting than average (sure, some of them are, but I think it's a small minority). They say them because, for reasons I don't quite understand, that is exactly what we want to hear. I know this because whenever a sports star says things that are honest and/or insightful, they are invariably punished for saying them by the media. Here's an example. In the 2007 U.S. Open, Serena Williams was visibly out of form. Playing rather poorly, she was trounced in the quarterfinal by Justine Henin. Famous players hold press conferences after big games, be they wins or losses, and there are certain well-defined things that the media expect them to say. If you lost, you're supposed to compliment your opponent, saying that "she just outplayed you today" or some such, as well as give some half-baked reasons as to why you think you lost ("I made too many unforced errors" or "My drop shot was off today" or "I'm still not quite back from my injury" or whatever). Now in the press conference she held after her loss to Henin, Serena Williams said nothing of the sort. Instead, she appeared to give answers that were honest. (Watching it, it seemed that the reason for it was that she was too embittered by her loss to care about playing the usual media games.) She said she didn't really know why she lost. She refused to credit Henin for her win; she said it was her losing the game rather than Henin winning it. When some journalist, frustrated by everyone's inability to coax Serena into saying the usual things, asked her why she was even there, she answered that she was there because absence would earn her a fine, and as long as she kept losing games she couldn't afford to pay fines. I remember the amusingly sanctimonious indignation of the media after that press conference. Sports journalists were outraged at Serena for being "ungraceful," "disrespectful" and a "sore loser." But anyone who watched that press conference had to know that she was truthful. So it looks as though we want athletes to say very specific things, and punish them for saying anything else, even though we all know perfectly well that the things we want them to say are lies. Why is that? Maybe it's just me, but I think this is a very interesting question.