Absurd Project Budgets for New York City's MTA

Two stories caught my attention in the NY Post today:

1) The MTA, with its windfall of $800M, is planning on spending $481M to build a platform over the West Side Hudson Rail Yards (where the Jets were going to build) and then sell the rights to developers for housing, commercial, office, etc. I laud the effort to invest in the city's infrastructure, but $481M? For a concrete platform? The way I see it, they are essentially spending half a billion dollars to build the first floor of a high-rise. I believe the parcel is about 1.2M square feet. That translates to $400/sf, more than double what you would pay per square foot for a nice house. With a kitchen, bathrooms, electricity, flooring and finishes. None of which are included in the concrete platform.

2) The MTA will announce a $300M contract today with Lockheed Martin to install 1,000 security cameras in the NYC subway. First of all, it took four years to get started on this? The money has been available since 2002. Sounds like a Pentagon procurement timetable. Secondly, $300M for 1,000 cameras? $300K/camera? Sure, they come with motion detectors and alarms, but how could you possibly figure out a way to spend $300K on a security camera? Let's see: the finest HD camera available in the world, a professional Sony, costs about $150K. OK, halfway there. Now the secure metal box it goes in: $25K. Software: $50K (per camera!). Ummm, $25K for wiring? Another $25K/camera for about 50 man-hours of installation labor at $400/hour plus $5,000 for materials (bolts, screws, etc.)? That leaves HQ about $25M for a few servers, alarms and monitors, maintenance and insurance (let's say 2,000 top-of-the-line 50" HD monitors at $5,000 each, 100 servers at $25,000 each, 1,000 alarm bells at $2,500 each, and $10M left over to keep the whole thing running and insured).

You can see how ridiculous my estimates are. But nobody seems to question these things…they are just taken for granted as the cost of doing government business. Just like the Big Dig in Boston. Don't even get me started on the federal transportation bill. When is someone going to expose the obvious fraud and waste in these civic projects?

Media: Strong-and-Wrong vs. The Limp Left

Sam Harris is the author of a controversial book from last year, The End of Faith. In the book, he argues that religious faith, which he characterizes as irrational belief, threatens to jeopardize world security, as true believers among many religions seek to smite non-believers with increasingly dangerous weapons. It is essentially a call to action in a WMD world to check our religious beliefs at the door before they kill us. As you may imagine, this point of view is not too popular with the religious right. However, it is interesting to check out from Mr. Harris's website which organs of media power chose to interview him about his book and which didn't. A quick glance provides a dramatic illustration of just how difficult of a case Sam Harris will have to make via the traditional media and what this says about the state of right/left politics today:

- Note the three commercial programs that interviewed him:

1) Scarborough Country on MSNBC, which is a right wing show, substitute hosted by Laura Ingraham who won't let Harris get a word in edge-wise and is almost comically biased as a "moderator". At one point, she claims that stem cell research is a complete hoax and the fact that Harris doesn't know that proves that "he hasn't done his homework." Wow.

2) The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Not much I need to add here, other than the fact that O'Reilly is much more evenhanded with Harris than Ingraham was.

3) Faith Under Fire on PAX. PAX is a "family values" network started by the founder of Paxson Communications. The show title doesn't leave much to discuss.

- Now note who didn't interview him:

1) everybody else.

What does this tell us? That the religious right is only interested in putting this guy on the air as an easy mark who can be shot down without much effort. When he fights back, just cut him off or make an outrageous claim like "stem cell research is an overblown failure." A little meat for the fans to chew on. So where are the secularists and lefties, even the middle-of-the-roaders? Why isn't Harris on Aaron Brown or Chris Matthews? Because they are scared! They are scared pissless to side with this guy! In a nutshell, there you have the state of politics in this country today: the strong-and-wrong religious right vs. the spineless left.

There has got to be another way, a "third way". A silent majority out there is right in the middle with us, but we need a voice, we need to stop being silent. Too many people with good ideas like Harris are being drowned out in the cacophany of left/right noise.

College Hoops Basic Math: 3-pointer vs. 2-pointer

There is an extraordinarily simple principle in economics called "expected value". It is used for making decisions. Multiply the odds of an outcome occuring by the value of the outcome and you have your expected value. Pick the path with the highest expected value.

Choice A: shoot a 3-pointer
Choice B: shoot a 2-pointer

My oh my, what is a poor student-athlete to do?

Average team shoots 3-pointers at a roughly 30% clip and 2-pointers at a 40% clip.
EV for 3-pointer: .3 x 3 = .9 points per shot
EV for 2-pointer: .4 x 2 = .8 points per shot
Decision: fire the three, baby! Nothing but net!

Now you can quibble with the percentages and of course different players and teams have different 2- and 3-point shooting skills, but overall, you can at least see that it is a very close call. This would lead one to believe that the average team is better off shooting roughly half threes and half twos. And that is what we are beginning to see in the college game. And I agree with Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe that it is essentially a perversion of the main goal of basketball offense, which is to move the ball to a player with the highest-percentage shot. But when that player only gets credit for 2 points, it then makes sense to try the higher-percentage shot only about half the time. Not to mention that the repetitive "drive-and-dish-for-three" offense is far less interesting to watch than the pretty interior pass that results in a layup.

BTW, the real winner in hoops is to draw a shooting foul: EV for two free throws: .6 x 2 = 1.2 points per foul. Perhaps the "foul factor" gives the 2-point shot a slight edge vs. the 3-pointer, but it is still too close. The three should play a secondary role in college hoops in order to preserve the integrity of the game. Right now, it is of equal or greater importance.