Orton's Arm

That "he who is without sin should cast the first stone" quote is all too easy to misapply. Consider the extreme example of a man who spent his time raping ten year old girls. Should society tolerate this behavior? Absolutely not. I'd be happy to cast stones at this man, even though I'm less than perfect. At some point, you have to draw the line. Beyond that line, you have to say, "This behavior is unacceptable, and won't be tolerated." Society absolutely must have certain standards of decency, and there have to be strong punishments for those who violate those standards. To avoid setting such standards out of fear of being judgmental is to create a moral cesspool. Willis is fathering children out of wedlock. He's not making an effort to be any kind of father for those kids. Should this kind of behavior be tolerated and accepted? That depends on how much you care about kids, and how important you think a father is to them.

The phenotype is something observable, and involves not merely genes but genetic expression; as well as environmental influences. The genotype is the underlying genes themselves. Heritability (in the narrow sense) is the extent to which children's traits can be predicted by observing the traits of their parents. If parents 1.0 SDs taller than the mean tend to produce children 0.7 SDs above the mean, the narrow-sense heritability for height is 70%. Heritability in the broad sense is the extent to which children's traits are determined by genetics. The extent to which a trait is heritable in the broad sense can be estimated by studying identical twins. In our earlier discussion, some of those who disagreed with me implied that if a trait was less than 100% heritable (in the narrow sense), evolutionary forces wouldn't apply. This implication, if correct, would undermine the basis for Darwinism.

Wow! Just this once Ramius chose to post a personal insult instead of an intelligent remark! That's so unexpected of you, Ramius, so unpredictable! Oh, oh, what's next? Please tell us you could have posted something intelligent, but whomever you're disagreeing with would have been too stupid to understand it!

I'm discussing the relationship between evolution and regression toward the mean. For example, tall parents tend to have children who are also tall; but not quite as tall (on average) as their parents. Does this mean evolutionary forces don't apply to height? I feel all traits are subject to evolutionary forces; including those traits which experience regression toward the mean. Others feel that if a trait experiences regression toward the mean, evolutionary forces don't apply to that particular trait. According to this way of thinking, if something in the environment made it so that tall people tended to have more children than short people, the population wouldn't get taller. Regression towad the mean would make it so that in the long run, the population's average height would stay more or less the same. Because just about all traits are subject to regression toward the mean, that line of thinking constitutes a rejection of Darwinism.

Leading up to the draft, Bill from NYC really, really wanted Marv to trade down and take Mangold--as did others. Instead, Marv stayed at #8 and took a SS. Based on their respective rookie years, it looks like Mangold will be a better football player than Whitner. Based on what we've seen so far, what Bill from NYC suggested would have helped the Bills considerably more than what Marv actually did. Not once have I heard Bill from NYC say, "see I told you so." Nor have I seen anyone else on this thread express that sentiment. What I have seen is a feeling of disappointment that the Bills had an opportunity to obtain, say, 120 units of benefit to the team, and came away with only 60 or 70. Those expressing this sentiment are accused of 20/20 hindsight or coulda-woulda-shoulda, even though these same people were saying these exact same things before the draft. As for the accusation that those who disagree with the Whitner pick think they should be the Bills' GM--I'd disagree with that one too. Part of the fun of being a football fan is asking what you'd do in a GM's place. If after the fact you see your own plans would have worked out better than the GM's--as is the case here--you should be able to point that out without people treating you like you have leprosy.

What makes the pick frustrating is that the Bills could have traded down and drafted Mangold. Mangold is well on his way to being one of the best centers in the league, and would have been an excellent building block toward creating a dominating offensive line. Plus the Bills would have had an additional second round pick. Instead we used the 8th overall pick on a player who (thus far) has been a good but not special strong safety. If Whitner becomes the next Ronnie Lott--or even the next Ed Reed--the pick will look a lot stronger than it does right now. But Whitner will have to play very, very well to bring the team as much benefit as Mangold alone would have; let alone Mangold plus a second round pick.

Suppose there's a trait out there for, say, height, which is 80% determined by parents' observable traits, and 20% determined by environment, random chance, or recessive genes. Under those circumstances, if two parents were 100 units above the average height, their children would, on average, be 80 units above the population's average. Suppose that being taller conferred a survival advantage or reproduction advantage of some sort. Darwinism tells us to expect the population to become progressively taller. But there are those on these boards who implied otherwise--that this drifting back towards the population's mean would over the long run cancel out whatever genetic incentives for height Darwinism would otherwise have provided. According to this view, only those traits which are 100% heritable are candidates for Darwinistic evolution. Moreover, Darwinistic pressure towards increasing levels of height is presumed to bring about far more harm than good, due to the assumed reduction in the level of genetic diversity. I'd point out that if the views in the above paragraph are adopted, Darwinism's scope of influence becomes very narrow indeed. Few if any traits are 100% heritable. If the basis for Darwinism is rejected, all we're left with is Creationism. Do we need to start taking Creationism seriously? Or should we start believing Darwinism can and does work even if a trait isn't 100% heritable? I'm a Christian, but I believe that the basis for Darwinism is sound. Consider that the chihuahua is descended from wolf ancestors! Given a steady source of genetic pressure, and enough generations, animals can and will experience large changes. These changes aren't limited to traits that are 100% heritable, but seem to include any trait that's largely influenced by genetics. Edit: correction.

It was a good article. The one part I'll take issue with is this sentence: That sentence makes it sound like Butler was the man in charge of building those Super Bowl teams, even though Bill Polian did more than any other single person to put them together. Butler's real success came in the late '90s with the strong Wade Phillips defenses.

That sounds like the Nate Clements situation all over again. If McGahee produces, the Bills may not be in a position to re-sign him. He'll be a free agent, and will go to a team and a city of his own choosing. Under those circumstances, I don't see the Bills offering him more money than any other team, nor do I feel Buffalo would be at the very top of McGahee's list of places he'd like to be. There's a real danger of getting into a one-and-done situation with McGahee. I'd much rather have a 2nd or 3rd round draft pick than have just one more year of McGahee's play. You say that many draft picks don't work out, and that's certainly true. But I'd counter that by saying that unless a certain percentage of your draft picks work out, your team will not be a serious threat to go far in the playoffs. You have to gamble on your front office's ability to get a good chunk of those draft picks right, whether you like the gamble or not. Think about the Bills' needs for next year: Tier 1 (most important) needs - ORG - #2 WR - MLB (assuming Fletcher leaves) Tier 2 (almost as important) needs - DT - C - TE - CB (assuming Clements leaves) - Misc. As you can see, the Bills will find it impossible to fill all these needs with their day 1 picks. Adding a second round pick for McGahee could mean the difference between having a top-ten RG versus putting up with another year of Preston. Or it could mean having a real threat at DT versus having a Tim Anderson-style player manning the position.

Dude, that's rich. In case you've forgotten, I provided a Wikipedia article about regression toward the mean, which you ridiculed because it was Wikipedia. Then I provided a Hyperstats link about it, which you ridiculed because it was Hyperstats. Then I provided links from Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago, the EPA, and other credible sources which said the same things I'd been saying, and that the Wikipedia and Hyperstats articles had said. At that point you declared victory. Really, why on earth you still expect anyone to take you seriously is completely beyond me.

I call Ramius a troll because I often see him express disagreement by attacking the intelligence of others. I've never seen him use logic or facts to support any of his views. His style of debate--if you can call it that--makes it very hard for reasonable discussions to stay reasonable.

I refuse to dignify the stats-related threads which we participated in as a legitimate argument. What transpired was as follows: 1) I described the regression effect (a.k.a. regression toward the mean), 2) you ridiculed said effect, and me for describing it, 3) I found websites from Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago, the EPA, the University of Washington, and Ohio State that described regression toward the mean in the same way I did, 4) you continued to ridicule the phenomenon, as well as me personally. Given the very serious extent to which you've embarrassed yourself, I choose to categorically ignore any and all unsupported statements you might make. As far as yall's logic goes, it may not be completely valid, because yall has probably given a lot more thought to McGahee's words than McGahee himself did. But even with that limitation, it's far more logical than anything I can recollect having seen you post on these boards.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Ramius to use logic or facts to support his position. I've yet to see Ramius use either facts or logic to support any of his positions, in any discussion, ever. Waiting for logic and reason from Ramius is like waiting for fiscal discipline from the federal government.

In other words, you're content to be a troll and blame your troll-like behavior on others. This is why I see you as an ignorant loudmouth.

True, but I'm not sure that invalidates the original poster's point. How desperate would you have to feel before you decided that the best possible representative for yourself, your political party, your nation, and your ideology is someone like this?

I'll grant you that it's an imperfect system. That said, I can see why teams would want to do something. A few weeks ago I watched a good part of a game between the St. Louis Rams and the visiting Chicago Bears. A lot of Bears fans had driven into St. Louis from Chicago; enough that it was hard to tell which team was at home and which team was the visitor. That had to be problematic for the Rams. If the owner of the Chargers doesn't want the same thing happening to his team . . . well more power to him.

Great pictures, Nick. Which one are you, and which one is Greg?

I'm in the mood to hand out compliments, so here goes: you're as big a moron as Willis.

As Darin's been hinting, economic cycles are largely caused by things outside the government's control. There are also a lot of times when government involvement today creates a benefit tomorrow. For example, the 1957 launch of Sputnik inspired the United States government to create the Advanced Research projects Agency (ARPA) with an eye toward improving computers as they related to command and control. During the 1960s and early '70s, ARPA decided to prepare for a nuclear war. Computers were networked together in such a way that even if a nuclear war took out several network nodes, communication would still be possible among the rest. By 1971, the ARPANET was up and running. Later on, people at universities began using the ARPANET to send emails to each other. As more and more people began using this network, it became known as the Internet. The World Wide Web is a layer on top of the Internet. When Clinton was president, the economy received a strong push from Internet-related businesses. Not only did you have the dot-coms, but you had companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, and HP sell increasingly large numbers of servers to anyone who needed to host a website. Cisco benefited by selling routers, switches, hubs, and other networking gear; Intel and Microsoft benefited from Internet-inspired increases in global computer sales. Little if any of this tech sector boom was caused by anything Clinton did. The main thing the government did well during the Clinton era was to keep the federal deficit low; which in turn helps to lower long-term interest rates. Lower interest rates mean that it's easier for companies to borrow money to buy things like servers and routers. But if the government kept the deficit low, it was because of some federal spending discipline. Which, by the way, Newt Gingrich and the Republican House were directly responsible for instituting.

Suppose the Bills end up hosting a playoff game one of these years. I'd have no problem with them excluding the other team's fans, if there are enough willing Buffalo fans to buy all the seats.

I suppose this is your "attempt" at humor. You might notice a couple of things: 1) nobody's laughing, 2) the underlying phenomenon you're attempting to ridicule (the regression effect--a.k.a. regression toward the mean) has been described by people at Duke, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Berkeley, the EPA, the University of Washington, and even Ohio State. In a test/retest situation, where the correlation coefficient between test and retest is less than one, those who obtain extreme scores on the first test will tend to score closer to the population's mean upon being retested. Your basic inability to understand so simple a concept is why your participation in the regression toward the mean thread was an utter failure.

Whether the Bills should trade McGahee largely depends on whether they're planning on offering him an extension. If they've pretty much made up their minds that he's not going to get an extension when his contract expires, Marv should start considering all reasonable offers that teams make for McGahee. What I don't want to see happen is for the Bills to lose out on the 2nd or 3rd round pick we could have had for McGahee just because we wanted to get one last year of play out of him. One year of McGahee's play is not worth that kind of price.

Since you think you're so smart, please enlighten the board with your wisdom. True or false: in any test/retest situation, where the correlation coeffecient between test and retest is less than 1, those who obtain extreme scores on the initial test will, on average, score closer to the population's mean upon being retested.

You could add the fact that he's nothing special at RB.

I can agree with that.