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Since the Enlightenment, champions of progress have urged us to break free of the chains of tradition.

Just because "we've always done it this way," is no reason to keep doing it this way. It is irrational, it is dumb, indeed, it is frequently dishonest, to cling to traditions, they say. If we aim to understand the world and control it the abiding ambition of all empirically minded thinkers then surely we can dispense with the baggage of inherited convention.

Keith Law has just published a book that explores this question. The book is opinionated and it is sparked by fury. Indeed, Law writes as one who speaks truth to power. It is written by someone who thinks of himself as at the vanguard, the revolutionary forefront.

It is now possible, he insists, indeed, it is now mandatory, that we use mathematical analysis and statistics not only to evaluate human achievement, but also to learn how to predict it in the future.

I exaggerate maybe just a little bit.

Law's book is about the use of statistics in baseball. And while his assault on the Old Ways is driven by a real sense of outrage at the way irrational tradition shackles progressive thinking, he confines himself, by and large, to bad thinking in the domain of baseball. It is baseball he wants us to learn to think right about.

Law is a writer at ESPN and his his book, published in April, is called Smart Baseball: The Story Behind The Old Stats That Are Ruining The Game, The New Ones That Are Running It, And The Right Way To Think About Baseball.

For Law, the "old stats" are ruining the game. Batting Average, for example, is a terrible measure of a batter's offensive "value," since it considers hits-per-at-bat. This is doubly wrong-headed, he contends: It ignores the fact that not all hits are created equally (a home run is worth more than a single), and it disregards the batter's offensive achievements (e.g. walks), which don't happen during at bats (since not all plate appearances count as at bats). Likewise, Runs Batted In is not only uninformative about how good a player is offensively, it is dishonest, for it confuses his accomplishments with those of his teammates, Law says. You can only drive batters in, after all, if there are runners on base to be driven in.

Or consider the evaluation of pitching performance by wins; this is even more outrageous, he says. You can only win if your team scores, and the pitcher has no control over that. The idea that it is the pitcher who wins is premised on the idea that good pitchers have a kind of magic that leads their teams to victory. And that, Law is certain, is so much nonsense. Praising an individual player for results over which he has nothing resembling control isn't very bright. It isn't going to help you figure out what's really going on on the field, and might very well lead you to make bad baseball decisions.

We use statistics, Law holds, to evaluate performance. We want to understand what a player actually does on the field, and we want to predict likely performance going forward. We need objectivity to do this. We need data. We need metrics that cut through the noise to the reality. The last thing we need are old fashioned prejudices about pitchers winning games and RBI being a measure of a player's offensive value to his team, he says.

Can we do what Law and his fellow "quants" demand? Can we use numbers to assign value, to sort through praise and blame, and to ground baseball decisions in matters of value-neutral fact? I get it that this is something baseball executives want. Michael Lewis explained in Moneyball that the new statistics make it possible to discover sources of baseball value that traditional thinking has tended to ignore. And I get it that if you're a player, or a manager, or a fan, the problem of evaluating and predicting is of the greatest importance.

But is it actually possible, in baseball, or in life, so to regiment, comprehend and control human behavior?

I think there are reasons to doubt this.

One of the things that particularly bugs Law about the RBI stat is that there are cases, as he notes, where the official scorer has discretion over whether to award the RBI. He continues:

"[A]ny stat that involves such human objectivity [I think he meant to write "subjectivity"] is immediately reduced in value as a result. People are prone to so many cognitive biases and are so inconsistent in their judgments..."

But in fact, I would argue, all baseball stats rest, finally, on just this sort of subjectivity. Consider, at the lowest level, baseball is about hits and outs. For example, Law argues that the basic job of a batter is to not make an out -- that is, to get on base.

But are outs determined in a value-free, objective way? Not really. Very frequently, at least, the question of whether an out was made is a judgment call. Instant replay hasn't changed this. It's just removed the required judgment call to a remote location.

And the same is true of hits themselves. When is a hit a hit, and when is it the result of a fielder's error? Nothing determines this other than the decision of the official scorer.

And let's not even get into balls and strikes!

However you look at it, the low-level facts on the ground, the smallest units of meaningful baseball hits, outs, balls, strikes, foul or fair are themselves intrinsically soft, squishy, value-laden matters of interpretation.

Bring the biggest quantificational canon you can find. It won't shoot straight if you set in down on shifting sands.

But maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe this is what we love about baseball. We are called on to evaluate, to make choices, to make predictions, to lay odds, precisely when there are no algorithms or mathematical rules to do this for us.

I don't advocate a return to tradition. I think Law and his colleagues are right that there is a value in new analytical tools for thinking about baseball. But that's a far cry from accepting his idea that it is possible to use numbers, by themselves, to identify and control value, in baseball, or anywhere else.

Want to know what happened on the field? You'd better take a look.

Alva No is a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he writes and teaches about perception, consciousness and art. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). You can keep up with more of what Alva is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe

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Using Numbers To Comprehend And Control Human Behavior - Delaware First Media

Middle East Eye

EXCLUSIVE: Saudi investor ploughs millions into liberal icon of UK media Middle East Eye According to registers updated on Companies House on Friday, Abuljadayel controls up to 50 percent of voting rights within Independent Digital News and Media, the company that controls the Independent brand. An informed Saudi source described ... and more »

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EXCLUSIVE: Saudi investor ploughs millions into liberal icon of UK media - Middle East Eye

KERRY HARVEY

Last updated12:00, July 28 2017

PETER MEECHAM/stuff.co.nz

Filthy Rich was much-maligned during its first season last year. Is it any better this time around?

It is fair to say, Teuila Blakely is no walkover. When a sex tape featuring the former Shortland Street actress and Warriors player Konrad Hurrell surfaced on line in 2014, she met the backlash head on.

Three years later, Blakely is still a favourite with on-line trolls but that has done nothing to dampen her enthusiasm for being in the public eye either on screen as an actor or fronting campaigns for the many causes she supports.

Her latest role, as Filthy Rich's vixenish Malia the woman who gave up Joe (Alex Tarrant), the son she had with the late John Truebridge in return for a Hawaiian resort is unlikely to engender any sympathy from the haters.

Teuila Blakely with her Filthy Rich co-star Miriama Smith.

"Sometimes you go for a role and you just know intrinsically that it's yours and that's how I felt about Malia right from the beginning," Blakely says. "I just knew as soon as I read her that it was me."

READ MORE: *Teuila Blakely to lay formal complaint against Flava host Athena Angelou *Teuila Blakely: I'm New Zealand most trolled woman *Teuila Blakely doesn't regret hitting back at the haters

She acknowledges that while not everyone will love Malia as much as she does, she will not go unnoticed and that will help with the work she does outside of acting.

Teuila Blakely has starred in Shortland Street, Westside and now plays Malia in Filthy Rich.

"You can't control how people react and I certainly learnt that. I've had some very trying times in public life but, then again, it's kind of cool playing characters that do get a really strong reaction," she says.

"I'm sure there'll be some backlash. I can't really do much in the public eye without some kind of negative reaction ever since that whole (sex tape) thing. People have the right to react the way they're going to. I don't tend to worry about how other people are."

However, she does admit to being stunned by how critical some people can be of someone they don't know or even of someone they do.

"Most of us couldn't even imagine what motivates people to be like that. It's just bizarre sometimes," she says.

"I do think though that it is unfortunate in this day and age with social media and things like that, it does tend to generate a lot more negative reaction which for me, having been at the receiving end of it, is unfortunate."

That said, Blakely, 42, admits the publicity has its advantages when it comes to raising awareness about the issues that are closest to her heart.

Most recently, she has been one of the faces of the Human Rights Commission's Give Nothing To Racism campaign as well as supporting MyBodyMyTerms, a campaign that challenges people's perceptions about sex, sexual assault, and victim blaming.

"Those two campaigns are particularly meaningful to me," she says.

"Being a Polynesian girl growing up in New Zealand, racism was rife, especially where I was from (Tauranga and then West Auckland). Being able to have contributed to the Give Nothing To Racism campaign, especially for the Human Rights Commission, I felt incredibly honoured and in terms of MyBodyMyTerms, equally so.

"I'm an advocate for sexual empowerment for young women in fact, for everyone. That was an issue that was very, very close to my heart and actually which went with a lot of other work I do.

"When I'm not on screen and I'm not acting, I'm always just sort of being me and (highlighting) those issues and anything to do with encouraging other people to have the best life that they could possibly live."

For Blakely, who had her son Jared, now 25, when she was 16, Filthy Rich's Malia is helping her do just that.

"One of the most fascinating aspects of playing Malia was that she was a very different kind of mother to me. She got pregnant very young in life like I did but I kept my child and she gave hers up," Blakely says.

"I think it's fascinating to be able to explore human behaviour and understand the motivation of women who choose that. It's been a real gift to play as an actress because there is never a dull moment. Mind you, that's the nature of a show like Filthy Rich which is why it is so great to be involved in the second season.

"It is such a different type of production to Shortland Street and I really love the extremity, not only of the characters but also of the details of the houses, the cars, the clothes, the shoes, the behaviour and the fact that there are really people like that in real life, that really do live those kind of lives."

Filthy Rich, TVNZ 2, Tuesday.

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-TV Guide

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Teuila Blakely on social media and trolls: 'You can't control how people react' - Stuff.co.nz

Heavy fighting broke out Thursday as U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured almost half of the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa. But the push into the city in northern Syria slowed due to stiff resistance and large amounts of explosives planted by the extremists, a spokeswoman for the fighters and monitors said.

The assault on Raqqa by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led fighting coalition, began June 6, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and U.S. troops advising the local forces.

Since then, the SDF has made steady advances from the eastern and western sides of the city, reaching the walled old quarter.

The fall of Raqqa, the extremist group's self-proclaimed capital, would be a huge loss for IS, which earlier this month lost the Iraqi city of Mosul. But much tougher fighting still lies ahead.

Army Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said 45 percent of Raqqa was under the control of the SDF.

In a series of tweets, he said the SDF cleared about 9 square miles of terrain this past week fighting against "stiff, sporadic resistance" from IS militants entrenched in Raqqa.

Commanders on the western Raqqa front line said there were about 800 meters left before SDF forces moving from east and west would connect tightening the noose on IS.

The battlefield Thursday was busy with hundreds of SDF fighters taking cover inside destroyed buildings less than 500 meters from IS combatants. SDF troops lobbed dozens of mortar shells at the militants, who sent out armed drones above the SDF forces

Meanwhile, senior U.N. humanitarian official Ursula Mueller told the U.N. Security Council by video from Jordan on Thursday that an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 people remained in Raqqa.

She said the city was encircled and "there is no way for them to get out."

Since April 1, over 200,000 people have fled their homes in the area around Raqqa, she said. The figure includes more than 30,000 displaced just this month as U.S.-backed Syrian fighters try to oust the extremists.

Nisreen Abdullah, the Kurdish spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that the pace of the advance into Raqqa had slowed because of huge amounts of explosives laid by IS fighters.

As the extremists become more surrounded, they have increased their suicide attacks on fighters of the SDF, she added.

"Raqqa has become a booby-trapped city and this shows their (IS') weakness," said Abdullah, of the Women's Protection Units or YPJ, speaking from northern Syria. "They are also using civilians as human shields and this is slowing the push as well."

She said the Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the Kurdish YPJ women fighters, now controls 45 percent of Raqqa. She added that since the offensive began, SDF fighters have fully captured eight neighborhoods.

Plumes of smoke could be seen behind buildings in Raqqa a day earlier as the coalition pounded IS targets in the city. Syrian children looked on as U.S. armored vehicles drove by. One American soldier on a vehicle made the victory sign.

Mustafa Bali, who heads the SDF media center, confirmed on Thursday that the group now has half of Raqqa and said the most important areas liberated in the past four days were the Nazlet Shehadeh and Panorama Square neighborhoods both on the southwestern part of the city.

But he said there are IS counterattacks, militant sleeper cells and tunnels in the area.

"It was not easy, we have casualties and martyrs," he said, adding that the fighting was ongoing.

In the eastern front, where SDF forces breached IS defenses on the edge of the old city about a month ago, fighters have now reached the old citadel, an SDF commander in charge of one sector in the front told the AP.

"As we move forward we find a tunnel every 100 meters," Jihad Khabat said. He said the enemy, "besieged and in distress," hides in deep and long tunnels under the city, from where they can hit Syrian fighters in daily counterattacks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said SDF fighters control half of Raqqa. The attacks on the city have claimed many casualties among the tens of thousands of civilians who are still trapped in areas controlled by IS.

The Observatory said 29 people, including eight children, were killed in airstrikes on the city on Wednesday. The activist-operated Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently group said 36 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in airstrikes and shelling.

The reports could not be independently confirmed.

In central Syria, fighting edged closer to the IS stronghold of Sukhna, the last major town held by IS in the Homs province, according to the Observatory and the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media.

SCMM said Syrian troops killed and wounded a number of IS fighters in battles near a mountain that overlooks the area. The Observatory said troops are now about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Sukhna, which has been held by IS since the summer of 2015.

Near the border with Lebanon, a cease-fire went into effect between the militant Hezbollah group and al-Qaida-linked fighters on Thursday morning as negotiations were underway to reach a deal that would eventually lead to the evacuation of Syrian fighters to the northwestern rebel-held province of Idlib.

The truce followed a six-day offensive by Hezbollah and Syrian troops who besieged al-Qaida-linked fighters in a small border area.

Senior Lebanese security official, Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who is leading the negotiations, told reporters in Beirut that the details of the deal will remain secret, adding that fighters and their families who decide to leave for Idlib will do it under the supervision of Lebanese authorities.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said the deal will include the release of five members of the Shiite group who are held by insurgents in Syria.

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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US-backed Syrian fighters now control almost half of IS city - ABC News

Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Michael C. Wetzel: State law gives power to the Oregon City's elected commission, not to voters, to shut down the city's urban-renewal program

In voting for Measure 3-514, Oregon City voters thought that they were making the city give up its urban-renewal program, but a judge has ruled that state law overpowers the directive now in the Oregon City Charter to shut down the program.

The judge's ruling essentially reduced Measure 3-514 to an advisory measure. Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Michael C. Wetzel said that state law gives power to the Oregon City Commission, not to voters, to shut down the city's urban-renewal program.

Calling the measure constitutional (a ruling that went against the objections of the city's attorneys), Wetzel still affirmed the right of citizens to vote on a measure that is now part of the Oregon City Charter as Section 59E.

"I recognize that a majority of the voters of Oregon City adopted Section 59E, and I do not overturn their will lightly," Wetzel wrote. "If the citizens of Oregon City now wish to depart urban renewal, they will need to exit through the same door they entered, by utilizing the provisions of ORS chapter 457."

City Commission used this chapter of state law to adopt the downtown urban-renewal plan in 1990. A majority of city commissioners still supports using tax-increment financing for development projects in the downtown area, so they won't be willingly giving up on urban renewal. City Commission has authorized the spending of more than $180,000 in taxpayer money so far on legal fees to keep their right to use urban-renewal financing.

Wetzel declined to take a political position as to whether city commissioners should now follow the will of voters in shutting down the urban-renewal program.

"Of course, I express no opinion as to the wisdom of urban renewal or tax-increment financing, as those are policy decisions beyond the purview of this court," Wetzel wrote.

There were no big celebrations at City Hall due to the judge's decision, said Mayor Dan Holladay. The subdued attitude of city officials is in part due to an impending appeal from Measure 3-514 proponents, and in part due to the city's limited ability to spend urban-renewal dollars until the legal fight is over.

"The court merely affirmed that the law is what the law is," Holladay said. "Urban renewal is a tool in our toolbox, and you could say that urban renewal, especially the storefront grants, was a major part of the revitalization of downtown."

Co-chief petitioner John Williams said that the decision was actually a partial win for the proponents of Measure 3-514. Williams pointed out that the measure was ruled constitutional, so it will enshrined in the City Charter as a reminder to future city commissioners to encourage them to follow the state-authorized procedure for abandoning tax-increment financing schemes.

"It's important that we got the first part of that trial settled in our favor, and that was a big positive step," Williams said.

Limited victory

After the July 18 decision by Wetzel in circuit court, city attorney Bill Kabeiseman said, "Urban renewal is no longer constrained by the provisions that were added to the charter, so it can continue to operate as it was."

In practice, though, it's still in the charter, and the city will have to keep in mind that it could go either way on appeal.

A small change will be implemented through the city's budgeting process. Normally, half of the budget for Oregon City's Economic Development Manager Eric Underwood and his assistant is paid for out of the urban-renewal budget. After the success of the urban-renewal measure with voters, Oregon City started paying their salaries entirely out of the general fund.

"After this [July 18] decision, that will revert back to being the case," Holladay said.

Although the mayor said that potential developers of the Rossman Landfill were encouraged to hear that state law is pre-empting the Oregon City Charter, Holladay doubted that the city would be able to start any major projects funded using urban-renewal dollars in this timeframe.

"I think we could, but it's unlikely that we would move forward on a major project while this is out on appeal," Holladay said.

City commissioners could be personally on the hook for a financial decision that goes against the appeals court. In Umrein v. Nelson (1984), the Oregon Court of Appeals said that substantial changes to urban-renewal plan without proper authorization could make the public officials who authorize such expenses personally liable.

"Those dollars [now going to the city's Economic Development Department] aren't big enough that they couldn't be paid back out of the general fund if we somehow lose on appeal," Holladay said.

Measure 3-514 proponents are looking forward to the Oregon Court of Appeals potentially giving teeth to the will of voters, both for urban renewal and for annexation of land into city boundaries. While Oregon City declined to join the fight to defend its citizens' rights to vote on proposed annexations, the concept of local control or home rule is hotly contested statewide.

Oregon City used to be one of many cities in state that required voter approval of proposed annexations, but Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed legislation in March 2016 to limit voter-approved annexations. Joined by the League of Oregon Cities in a lawsuit to keep its voters' rights, the city of Corvallis lost in circuit court earlier this year. Corvallis appealed the state's pre-emption of annexation laws to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

"Somebody needs to make a definitive judgement as to what home rule really means," Williams said. "The general principal here is that home rule and the state's urban renewal chapter 451 are not compatible."

Oregon City's mayor said he was confident that higher courts would also affirm the right of city commissioners to make the decisions regarding urban renewal.

"The only way for John to change urban renewal is to go to Legislature," Holladay said. "I think he's going to lose on appeal as well."

Attorney fees

In January 2016, Oregon City had tried to revoke the right to circulate a legal petition for Measure 3-514. The city had itself approved the petition for circulation in May 2015.

Saying that the city had illegally attempted to infringe on the petitioners' constitutional rights, Wetzel cited a similar case in awarding attorney fees to the chief petitioners of the anti-urban-renewal measure.

"Similar to the plaintiff's in Umrein v. Heimbigner (1984), [the Oregon City] plaintiffs' statutory argument was pursued to vindicate plaintiffs' substantive initiative rights under the Oregon Constitution," Wetzel wrote.

Asked to quantify the judge's decision to award attorney fees, Williams said Oregon City was successfully sued for $15,000 to $18,000, depending how much the judge allows the measure proponents to be charged per hour for an attorney.

Holladay said that asking the court to rule on the constitutionality of the measure was the only financially responsible thing for the city to do. He defended City Commission's decision to spend $166,029.14 in taxpayer money on legal bills since the measure was filed. He pointed out that the $15,000 to $18,000 in additional attorney's bills that the city will now have to pay its opponents' attorney is minimal compared to the overall legal bills.

Oregon City spent more than $50,000 between the time that the petition was originally filed in April 2015 and March 2016, just prior to a hearing determining that the city should not have reversed its decision to allow the petition ("Urban-renewal petitioners successfully sue Oregon City for attempting to block ballot measure," May 2, 2016). Public records show that the city has spent $115,373.64 since March 2016 (through April 2017, when the last hearings were held on the measure's constitutionality). To review the ballot measure for legality, write a ballot title/caption and draft an official summary of what the measure would do, less than $3,000 would be total legal bill that would have had to have been spent for a normal petition filed in a city in Oregon.

Williams questioned whether it's a financially smart decision for the City Commission to continue fighting the will of voters on legal grounds. He encouraged elected officials to close the urban-renewal district as voters intended when they voted for the measure.

"The real financial responsibility is obey the City Charter as amended and stop spending taxpayer money on more coffee shops, wine bars and downtown storefronts," Williams said. "Leave taxpayer money where it is intended to go: to schools, police, parks and public services."

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Judge: Oregon City Commission keeps control of urban renewal - Portland Tribune