As my grandma always told me: Don’t be a douche.

Sample:

We know you went to Michigan with Tom Brady. We know you were his tutor for freshman English. We know that without your help, he probably wouldn’t have passed. This does NOT give you the right to say “I taught him everything he knows” every time the guy throws a touchdown pass. Especially when the rest of us are rooting for the other team.

The Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University has released a “policy brief” that casts doubts on the ability of railroads to increase population density and change land use:

In general, all these comparisons showed that investments in commuter rail had small, but generally positive, impacts on nearby areas.

The problem is that the “small, but generally positive” effects were brought about by billions of dollars in investments.

I made a similar though entirely unresearched argument about railway awhile ago about the limits of trains as a general social policy tool. One point I made, however, about railway driving up household incomes, is only partially sustained by the brief.

Household incomes in some areas always served by commuter rail are higher than average household incomes in the region, but incomes are lower than the regional average in some areas that gained service as well.

My retort is that the incomes will increase over time in areas that have railway stations. Well, it’s more of a hypothesis than a retort, really.

I certainly wouldn’t regard the Rappaport brief as the definitive document on whether we should expand rail service, but it is certainly worth spending a few minutes on.

Sports, basketball, and Boston Celtics legend Red Auerbach has died. Adam has a roundup of reactions from Boston bloggers.

The Boston Globe’s Michael Levenson and Yvonne Abraham have a follow up article today on yesterday’s report that Boston’s population actually increased by some 7,000 people between 2000 and 2005, rather than decreased by 30,000, as originally estimated by the United States Census Bureau

Here’s how the article explains how the revision came about:

After the bureau’s estimate for Boston was released, Menino ordered the Boston Redevelopment Authority to tabulate the number of housing units built and demolished since 2000. He said the city could more accurately measure housing that the census might have missed, such as new college dormitories and commercial buildings that were converted to housing.

BRA officials found that the Census Bureau had underestimated new housing production by more than 3,000 units, and overestimated demolitions by 1,800, said Alvaro Lima, the agency’s director of research.

Those numbers really raise about as many questions as they answer.

I assume more thnan 3,000 means less than 3,100, so let’s round it up to 3,100 for a total of 4,900 housing units that the Bureau’s originial estimate of Boston’s population had not taken into consideration. The Bureau extracted the 4,900 new and non-demolished old units into 37,000 people to add to the the population estimate.

That’s odd.

The 2000 Census counted 251,935 housing units in Boston. The 4,900 that the Census missed estimating in 2005 represent 1.9% of that total (though I don’t know what the current total is), but the population estimate was off by 5%, according to the revised numbers. On the other hand, the new population estimate is just a tad over 1% higher than the 2000 population count. But then again, the new population estimate squeezed 37,000 people out of about 4,900 housing units, which is about 7.6 people per unit, vastly higher than the 2.3 average in 2000.

I guess there could be a few different explanations:

1) There are factors that explain the estimate gap that aren’t mentioned in the Globe article.

2) Most of the previously unestimated population lives in group quarters (dorms, basically) and are students more often than immigrants.

3) The new estimate has little backing by evidence and is really just the product of a machine-politics big-city mayor twisting arms.

The Census Bureau should explain which new housing units it misses. It’d be a bit much to ask for a list of all 3,000 units, but surely it could reveal the two or three buildings with the biggest number of housing units that it overlooked.

It should also explain why it increased the estimate by 37,000 when the difference in housing units suggests an upward revision of less than 12,000 rather than 37,000. A revision of 12,000 would still have meant a population loss for Boston.

The United State Census Bureau: “Helping you make informed decisions.”

Looks like the Globe has some explaining to do itself. Yesterday it claimed that the Mayor hailed the news as a “psychic boost,” a rather preposterous idea, but today it writes the Mayor hailed it as a “psychological boost.” Is the Globe covering for the Mayor or did Levenson and Abraham screw up royally yesterday (I say royally because you’re really smearing a person if you falsely claim he hails something as a psychic boost)?

One of Boston’s storylines over the past few years has been the city’s shrinking population. According to United States Census Bureau estimates, the population shrank from 589,000 in 2000 to 559,000 in 2005. Today, Boston Globe reporters Michael Levenson and Yvonne Abraham reports that the Census has revised its estimate for Boston to 596,638 after the city provided the government agency with “new data demonstrating that thousands of new housing units had been built in the city in recent years.”

(Also according to the Globe reporters, “Mayor Thomas M. Menino hailed the new tally as a psychic boost for” Boston. A psychic boost? Is the Mayor one of my brother’s clients?)

That’s quite a revision, and it’ll be interesting to see if the American Community Survey for Boston will also be revised. Not to mention Suffolk County’s population estimate. The Census estimate and Community Surveys have shown some odd results as I pointed out last August. Among some of the oddities I mentioned was the fact that Boston’s group quarter population was larger than the county’s. Another strange thing was that the Communiy Survey showed surprisingly slow growth of the number of immigrants in the city. The Globe report suggests that many of the previously uncounted (or rather, unestimated) Bostonians in fact are immigrants.

As I wrote in yet another comment on population estimates last August: “Remember, it’s all estimates based on assumptions and measurements` that may or may not be correct.”

I’ll leave you with one more thing from last August: “[O]ne has to ask oneself why one is paying taxes to get such strange data?”

As I’m writing this the Census Bureau has yet to update Boston’s population data on its website.

(News of revised estimate via Universal Hub)

Here’s an interesting aside: Are the 37,000 newly estimated Bostonians enough to put Boston back in the top 5 of Nielsen markets? The Boston market is only a little over 11,000 household behind the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market. Assuming that 94% of the 37,000 live in households (as opposed to group quarters), and assuming 2.31 people per household (the Boston average in the 2000 Census), the 37,000 should translate to 15,000 households.

Back for more: So the Census estimate was off by about 5% on Boston’s population. If the the agency is equally off on America’s population in general, it’s understimating it by 15 million people. Immigration restrictionists have long complained that the Census indeed consistently underestimates the number of people in America, especially the number of illegal aliens. The Census Bureau estimates there are 9 million illegal aliens in America, while other observers believe there are as many as 20 million. The Boston debacle sure as heck doesn’t help the Bureau’s case.

Is it mean-spirited to point out that the Bureau’s slogan is “Helping you make informed decisions”?

Actually, the more I’m thinking about this debacle, the more annoyed I get. Boston isn’t some backwater town that’s barely on the Bureau’s radar. Boston is home of one of the Bureau’s 12 regional offices. How can it possibly be that the underestimate of Boston’s population is because of faulty data rather than faulty methodology? And if the problem is the data, why are we to believe that the data for Boston was exceptionally bad? It’s time for Congress to grill the Bureau heads.

I watched a show on the Military Channel that featured gun camera clips from World War 2 on. Quite interesting. It had dogfights, strafing of both stationary and moving targets, and missile-guidance film. Here’s a World War 2 gun camera clip. Enjoy.

Below is a picture of my army knife. The inscription is the Swedish acronym for Staff and Communication School, which is where I did my military service for 11 months in 1990-1991. As you can see (and if you can’t, click here for a larger version) the acronym reads StabSbS, and who hasn’t felt the need to stab bs at a meeting or two?

It wasn’t the most exciting of games when New England Patriots improved to 5-1 by defeating Buffalo Bill 28-6 on the road. Unlike the first time the two met this season, the Patriots had little difficulty in taking care of the Bills. The Patriots racked up a number of big plays, while the Bills managed only one, a 56 yard catch and run to set up Buffalo’s first field goal.

New England’s biggest play was probably Laurence Maroney’s 74 yard kick-off return after Buffalo’s field goal. It seemed as if the Bills would get out of that jam with just a New England field goal attempt, but defensive lineman Kelsey managed to rough quarterback Tom Brady, giving runningback Corey Dillon a chance to truck in from the 12 yard line with just under a minute remaining of the first quarter.It was Dillon who provided the bulk of New England’s running game with 14 carries for 47 yards and two touchdowns.

And that was pretty much all she wrote. The second and most the third quarters turned into a defensive slugfest where the Patriots’ defense consistently frustrated Buffalo’s offense by bending but not breaking.

Much pre-game attention was paid to Troy Brown closing in on Stanley Morgan’s club record for career receptions, but Brown had a fairly quiet day with 2 catches for 21 yards, leaving him four short of the record. Brady’s main targets were tight end Ben Watson with five catches for 60 yards and Reche Caldwell with five catches for 22 yards, including two that converted third downs. Caldwell also dropped a pass in Buffalo’s end zone. Doug Gabriel chipped in 45 yards on three catches, including a touchdown. Rookie Chad Jackson had one 35 yard touchdown catch and 14 yard carry on a reverse.

The offensive line was its usual self, well above League average but not necessarily much more. Left tackle Matt Light struggled some in the pass protection, as he often does against speed rushers.

The defense was outstanding and Asante Samuel was the star of the game with one interception and overall dominating pass defense.

The AFC East is ridiculously bad. The New England Patriots are now 5-1. They are 4-0 against AFC East, but only 1-1 against NFL opponents. Unfortunately, of New England’s remaining 10 games eight are against NFL teams. The Patriots are clearly the best team in the AFC Eats, but how well do they stack up against the NFL? New York Jets defeated the woeful Detroit Lions today, but Miami Dolphins lost to the woeful Green Bay Packers.

Mark at BfloBlog isn’t happy about Buffalo’s quarterback JP Losman:

I just don’t think that the kid has it. He continues to hold the ball too long, make bad reads, lock onto receivers without looking off the DB�s, and worst of all, he keeps turning the ball over. Losman fumbled the ball three times today (the Pats recovered two of those) and he threw an interception after staring at the intended receiver for the entire play. That’s three turnovers by Losman in one game and that�s three too many. In a game that was statistically very even, the difference was turnovers and field position.

Losman’s ballhandling skills are subpar and the way he stared down and locked in on his receiver on Samuel’s reception had “not good enough” written all over it. On the other hand, Brady got away with one on his touchdown pass to Doug Gabriel. That was a daredevil pass across the body, to the middle of the field, aiming at a spot surrounded by three Bills defenders.

Ready for some pumpkin pictures? Me too!

New England t-shirt maker Life Is Good arranged a pumpkin festival on Boston Common today. People were asked to bring carved pumpkins (Jack o’Lanterns as they’re known) for the Life Is Good crew to light when darkness set in. We didn’t stay around for the pumpkin lighting, but we did snap some pictures of pumpkins.

Here’s one of the seas of carved pumpkins:

There were people and pumpkins everywhere on the fifth or so of the Boston Common where the pumpkin fun took place. Here are some racked pumpkins:

Real artists sign their work:

The flagship attraction of the festival was this pyramid of pumpkins. Quite a sight, I must say.

Another shot of the pyramid, this time from a cool angle with racked pumpkins in the foreground. As you’ll see, I’m as imaginative as a photographer as I am as pumpkin carver.

The best pumpkin we saw was this Boston Red Sox carving. Very nice:

Here’s our contribution to the festival. I call it an understated, classic look:

Last year’s Life Is Good pumpkin fun was wiped out by really nasty weather, but this time around the weather was amazing, a perfect late-fall afternoon, a bit chilly but sunny. The whole thing made me feel really good about living in Boston.

Adam has lots more of pumpkin pictures over at Universal Hub. Also check out Jen’s pictures from the pumpkin fest.