Friday, January 26, 2018
I got the data from . . .
A great example of cognitive pollution.
Ha ha, oh man. A ton of news orgs and the National Park Service cite a stat that the U.S. uses 500 million plastic straws a day. @christianbrits tracked down the source: a-9-year old https://t.co/MwIiOFG26w pic.twitter.com/geyuiFrw4h
— CJ Ciaramella (@cjciaramella) January 25, 2018
Measurement of journalistic performance
Hmm. That's interesting. I came across the Society of Professional Journalists which has been around since 1909. The fact of its existence is not what is so interesting, it is their code of ethics.
I am a management consultant and therefore the capacity to measure and monitor is a central function of any process. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
There is nothing especially controversial about their code of ethics which is organized around four key principles: 1) Seek truth and report it, 2) Minimize harm, 3) Act independently, and 4) Be accountable.
Great principles. Under each, they have an elaboration of what each means. It is these elements which I find interesting because they create the opportunity for assessing performance. How well does a newspaper or journalist perform on each of these desirable attributes? It raises interesting questions. In a well run enterprise, your performance measures drive performance, behavior, incentives, etc. Do media companies use this Code of Ethics as part of their performance reviews for journalists or are these simply statements of virtue with no real world impact?
What I did was to turn the code of ethics into a checklist. I kept the performance assessment simple (Low, Medium, High). I then did an eyeball check of half a dozen New York Times news articles against these stated standards. The results were revealing. The biggest issue (on too small a sample) was sources. The more striking the news report, the fewer the named sources. In three of the articles there were no named sources. Balance was another major issue - reporting from one side or viewpoint only was the norm. Failing to distinguish reporting from advocacy was also common. On and on. The Low to High continuum was flawed. I needed a bottom category when the ethic was not adhered to at all.
Very revealing exercise. It would be interesting to run this exercise on a few hundred randomly selected articles across multiple news enterprises and with a more granular and defined performance scale. It would manifest Michael Crichton's observation about the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
Here are the four sheets. Click to enlarge.
I am a management consultant and therefore the capacity to measure and monitor is a central function of any process. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
There is nothing especially controversial about their code of ethics which is organized around four key principles: 1) Seek truth and report it, 2) Minimize harm, 3) Act independently, and 4) Be accountable.
Great principles. Under each, they have an elaboration of what each means. It is these elements which I find interesting because they create the opportunity for assessing performance. How well does a newspaper or journalist perform on each of these desirable attributes? It raises interesting questions. In a well run enterprise, your performance measures drive performance, behavior, incentives, etc. Do media companies use this Code of Ethics as part of their performance reviews for journalists or are these simply statements of virtue with no real world impact?
What I did was to turn the code of ethics into a checklist. I kept the performance assessment simple (Low, Medium, High). I then did an eyeball check of half a dozen New York Times news articles against these stated standards. The results were revealing. The biggest issue (on too small a sample) was sources. The more striking the news report, the fewer the named sources. In three of the articles there were no named sources. Balance was another major issue - reporting from one side or viewpoint only was the norm. Failing to distinguish reporting from advocacy was also common. On and on. The Low to High continuum was flawed. I needed a bottom category when the ethic was not adhered to at all.
Very revealing exercise. It would be interesting to run this exercise on a few hundred randomly selected articles across multiple news enterprises and with a more granular and defined performance scale. It would manifest Michael Crichton's observation about the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Here are the four sheets. Click to enlarge.
Centralized collaborative teams are more susceptible to believing claims which are false than are decentralized more competitive teams
From Centralized “big science” communities more likely generate non-replicable results by Valentin Danchev, Andrey Rzhetsky, and James A. Evans. From the abstract.
Most of what we know is wrong, and the more out of the mainstream our claims, the more likely it is to be wrong.
Their second finding is the one I am interested in. While the above is true, there is a second way of looking at the issue. Which groups are more susceptible to false knowledge, large, centralized, collaborative teams or smaller, decentralized, competitive teams? What they find is that centralized collaborative teams are more susceptible to believing claims which are false than are decentralized more competitive teams.
That is interesting and entirely consistent with classical liberal worldview (Locke, Smith, Mills, Hume, Hayek, etc.). The fact that centralized, collaborative research groups are more susceptible to group think and false knowledge is also entirely consistent with modern economic and political experience.
These findings also suggest an interesting insight to the challenge of fake news (false knowledge) in complex, modern, dynamic societies.
It is a common, and not unfounded, claim that news media are biased. This claim is usually made in political terms (Democrats versus Republicans or left versus right) and that is an interesting to a degree. But I have made the point frequently in earlier posts that I think there is something different going on which drives the perceived partisan split. I have focused on the homogenization of the media industry. The great bulk of reporters are now concentrated in a small number of cities - New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles.
Sub offices and stringers in other locations, sure, but not where any decisions are made. These are all high cost, high density, high inequality, Democratic majority cities. Combine that with all reporters and editors now being highly compensated (upper middle class) and all with college and or advanced degrees, and it is easy to see that they live in a world that is distinctly different from that of most Americans. It is easy to see why there is a large divide between the world as seen by an average American and the world as seen by journalists in dense, expensive, unequal, mass transit enabled, highly unequal, democrat dominated cities. They simply live in two different worlds.
There is another factor which I have mentioned in the past but which this research would seem to weight more heavily. In addition to all the above observations being true, it is also the case that the news collection and distribution industry is now far more concentrated than in the past. Five major media organizations account for 80% or more of the media.
Danchev, Rzhetsky, and Evans find that centralized, collaborative, interdependent communities perpetuate incorrect beliefs to a greater extent than do independent, decentralized, competitive organizations. Perhaps the fact that news media is now concentrated in three cities, among five companies, with experientially homogenous employees who work collaboratively with one another, and with shared worldviews might be the greater explanation for why they are so prone to seize on and exaggerate information which is inaccurate and/or untrue. Perhaps it is not so much an issue of partisan bias (an incidental outcome) but at core simply a product of an underlying system dynamic.
Hugely speculative but an interesting implication.
Growing concern that most published results, including those widely agreed upon, may be false are rarely examined against rapidly expanding research production. Replications have only occurred on small scales due to prohibitive expense and limited professional incentive. We introduce a novel, high-throughput replication strategy aligning 51,292 published claims about drug-gene interactions with high-throughput experiments performed through the NIH LINCS L1000 program. We show (1) that unique claims replicate 19% more frequently than at random, while those widely agreed upon replicate 45% more frequently, manifesting collective correction mechanisms in science; but (2) centralized scientific communities perpetuate claims that are less likely to replicate even if widely agreed upon, demonstrating how centralized, overlapping collaborations weaken collective understanding. Decentralized research communities involve more independent teams and use more diverse methodologies, generating the most robust, replicable results. Our findings highlight the importance of science policies that foster decentralized collaboration to promote robust scientific advance.That is kind of opaque. The closing discussion is marginally more enlightening.
Extensive (22) and often overlapping scientific collaboration (16), along with cumulative advantage processes that create central, star scientists (19), produce centralized “big science” communities with dense methodological and intellectual dependencies. Such communities tend to publish fragile findings. Our research points to the importance of science policies that foster competition and decentralized collaboration to promote robust and replicable scientific advance. Our analysis demonstrates the utility of large-scale experiments coupled with enriched article content and metadata to diagnose the replicability of published research. Our findings suggest a calculus for evaluating the system-level trade-off between investments in robust, replicable knowledge, which comes at the price of larger, but weaker, preliminary insight.If I am reading the study correctly, what they are saying is that if you divide findings between unique claims (different from the mainstream) and received wisdom (claims consistent with the consensus of the community), the unique claims are replicated at half the rate of the received wisdom claims. But in either category (unique claims versus received wisdom) the majority (at least 55%) of claims fail to replicate.
Most of what we know is wrong, and the more out of the mainstream our claims, the more likely it is to be wrong.
Their second finding is the one I am interested in. While the above is true, there is a second way of looking at the issue. Which groups are more susceptible to false knowledge, large, centralized, collaborative teams or smaller, decentralized, competitive teams? What they find is that centralized collaborative teams are more susceptible to believing claims which are false than are decentralized more competitive teams.
That is interesting and entirely consistent with classical liberal worldview (Locke, Smith, Mills, Hume, Hayek, etc.). The fact that centralized, collaborative research groups are more susceptible to group think and false knowledge is also entirely consistent with modern economic and political experience.
These findings also suggest an interesting insight to the challenge of fake news (false knowledge) in complex, modern, dynamic societies.
It is a common, and not unfounded, claim that news media are biased. This claim is usually made in political terms (Democrats versus Republicans or left versus right) and that is an interesting to a degree. But I have made the point frequently in earlier posts that I think there is something different going on which drives the perceived partisan split. I have focused on the homogenization of the media industry. The great bulk of reporters are now concentrated in a small number of cities - New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles.
Sub offices and stringers in other locations, sure, but not where any decisions are made. These are all high cost, high density, high inequality, Democratic majority cities. Combine that with all reporters and editors now being highly compensated (upper middle class) and all with college and or advanced degrees, and it is easy to see that they live in a world that is distinctly different from that of most Americans. It is easy to see why there is a large divide between the world as seen by an average American and the world as seen by journalists in dense, expensive, unequal, mass transit enabled, highly unequal, democrat dominated cities. They simply live in two different worlds.
There is another factor which I have mentioned in the past but which this research would seem to weight more heavily. In addition to all the above observations being true, it is also the case that the news collection and distribution industry is now far more concentrated than in the past. Five major media organizations account for 80% or more of the media.
Danchev, Rzhetsky, and Evans find that centralized, collaborative, interdependent communities perpetuate incorrect beliefs to a greater extent than do independent, decentralized, competitive organizations. Perhaps the fact that news media is now concentrated in three cities, among five companies, with experientially homogenous employees who work collaboratively with one another, and with shared worldviews might be the greater explanation for why they are so prone to seize on and exaggerate information which is inaccurate and/or untrue. Perhaps it is not so much an issue of partisan bias (an incidental outcome) but at core simply a product of an underlying system dynamic.
Hugely speculative but an interesting implication.
The Lost Forest by Aline Kilmer
The Lost Forest
by Aline Kilmer
I WALKED with my mother
Where the tall trees grow,
And she showed me tiny tables
Where the elves sit in a row,
And the bells that ring to call them
When the night winds blow.
There were small frosted toadstools,
And little cups of wine,
And velvet banks to rest on
Where moss grew thick and fine,
And a smooth brown ring for dancing
Underneath a pine.
But now when I go walking
All the way is clear;
The little bells are silent
And the moss grown sere,
And I know that in the moonlight
Not an elf comes near.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
The Star-Splitter by Robert Frost
The Star-Splitter
by Robert Frost
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion's having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?"
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities...
"What do you want with one of those blame things?"
I asked him well beforehand. "Don't you get one!"
"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight," he said.
"I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it."
There where he moved the rocks to plow the ground
And plowed between the rocks he couldn't move,
Few farms changed hands; so rather than spend years
Trying to sell his farm and then not selling,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And bought the telescope with what it came to.
He had been heard to say by several:
"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it may as well be me."
After such loose talk it was no surprise
When he did what he did and burned his house down.
Mean laughter went about the town that day
To let him know we weren't the least imposed on,
And he could wait--we'd see to him to-morrow.
But the first thing next morning we reflected
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.
Our thief, the one who does our stealing from us,
We don't cut off from coming to church suppers,
But what we miss we go to him and ask for.
He promptly gives it back, that is if still
Uneaten, unworn out, or undisposed of.
It wouldn't do to be too hard on Brad
About his telescope. Beyond the age
Of being given one's gift for Christmas,
He had to take the best way he knew how
To find himself in one. Well, all we said was
He took a strange thing to be roguish over.
Some sympathy was wasted on the house,
A good old-timer dating back along;
But a house isn't sentient; the house
Didn't feel anything. And if it did,
Why not regard it as a sacrifice,
And an old-fashioned sacrifice by fire,
Instead of a new-fashioned one at auction?
Out of a house and so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for star-gazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood.
We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night to-night
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Fascinating as an example of a profound lack of self-awareness. From Is President Trump a Stealth Postmodernist or Just a Liar? by Thomas B. Edsall. Edsall is one of the more knowledgeable, sophisticated journalists of the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic party.
Whether one agrees with the argument he might be making in a column, it almost always has a useful insight and is usually rich with relevant and revealing information.
But like so many in the "intellectual" establishment, his worldview has been powerfully shaken by the inconceivable election of Trump. The quality of his columns has declined and he more and more frequently is shouting "Get off my lawn" rather than making an informed argument. The trappings of the old form are still there but gone is the rigor and insight.
You can see the rot in this most recent column. When you lead with a classic example of an informal fallacy (the false dilemma in the headline), it is a good tell that the argument might not be rigorous.
The trouble deepens in the lede paragraph.
It is also a reminder of Salena Zito's insight during the campaign:
Pundits and the establishment want Trump to adhere to their class norms and their customs of communication. The fact that he speaks rhetorically and to great effect undermines there class sense of what is right. It is not hard to see the class bigotry and disdain behind so many critical articles and opinions.
Which is ironic. Most establishment bromides are wrong. Their favored policies frequently fail disastrously. They suffer confirmation bias, interpreting everything according to their prior beliefs and not factually and dispassionately. From a logic and empirical evidence perspective, they get things as wrong as does Trump. Edsall's column is an example of this. Yes, it looks learned. Yes, there is a bandying around of sophisticated notions. But really, there is no evidence to support his thesis, simply a massive appeal to authority. It fails from both a logical/evidence based point of view as well as in terms of rhetoric.
The opening paragraph is a tautology (an argument in which the conclusion is also it's premise; an example of circular reasoning). The opening paragraph is also an example of unstated assumptions, limited scope, and confirmation bias.
Six logical fallacies in only two sentences totaling 34 words. That red flag gets bigger and redder.
Edsall then serves up a 68 paragraph long word-salad of quotations from 25 academics who are ideologically and politically opposed to Donald Trump. It is an extensive but shallow discursion into the fields of postmodernist philosophy, deconstructionism, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, comparative literature, religion, English, and political punditry. These are very smart people but it is worth noting that these are also fields in which the overwhelming majority (greater than 70%) of published research fails to replicate and/or is retracted.
Edsall's evidence is essentially a compilation from ideological opponents speaking from positions of authority in fields where most the accepted knowledge is actually untrue. That seems a pretty shaky argument. No balance, no data, no facts, no empirical evidence, just opinions from smart people in academic fields of discredited research.
This is a massive intellectual smoke screen. More artfully:
All this noise leads up to Edsall's overwrought conclusion.
That isn't an argument. That is simply an existential scream of an establishment which sees its influence and sinecures under threat from this new agent of the citizens. I am imagining a Trump tweet on Edsall's column. I suspect it would be a one word summary of the 2,655 word essay.
Whether one agrees with the argument he might be making in a column, it almost always has a useful insight and is usually rich with relevant and revealing information.
But like so many in the "intellectual" establishment, his worldview has been powerfully shaken by the inconceivable election of Trump. The quality of his columns has declined and he more and more frequently is shouting "Get off my lawn" rather than making an informed argument. The trappings of the old form are still there but gone is the rigor and insight.
You can see the rot in this most recent column. When you lead with a classic example of an informal fallacy (the false dilemma in the headline), it is a good tell that the argument might not be rigorous.
The trouble deepens in the lede paragraph.
How should we explain the fact that President Trump got away with making 2,140 false or misleading claims during his initial year in office?That is a disturbingly fragile foundation for an argument. There is a whole philosophical debate to be had about that assumed "fact" of 2,140 false or misleading claims. Even if you accept the oddly precise 2,140 at face value, compared to what? What is the average number of false or misleading statements for the first year of earlier presidents? And of what consequence? Do all, or any, of the these false or misleading claims, in sum or in part, equate to "weapons of mass destruction" or "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"? This 2,140 claim is stripped of definition or context. It is without meaning unless you accept it a priori as meaningful and true.
It is also a reminder of Salena Zito's insight during the campaign:
When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.Pundits and press want to find fault with Trump's enthusiastic oratory and rhetoric. And they are right, there is conflation, and approximation, and inaccurate estimation galore. His is not airtight public policy forum-speak with tight logic and rigorous evidence. You want white paper speak, get a white paper. He speaks rhetorically. You learn more about the direction he is signaling rather than his command of the facts and figures. He might indeed have those at his finger tips but that is irrelevant when speaking rhetorically. His supporters are not wrong to take him seriously (direction) but not literally (facts and figures.)
Pundits and the establishment want Trump to adhere to their class norms and their customs of communication. The fact that he speaks rhetorically and to great effect undermines there class sense of what is right. It is not hard to see the class bigotry and disdain behind so many critical articles and opinions.
Which is ironic. Most establishment bromides are wrong. Their favored policies frequently fail disastrously. They suffer confirmation bias, interpreting everything according to their prior beliefs and not factually and dispassionately. From a logic and empirical evidence perspective, they get things as wrong as does Trump. Edsall's column is an example of this. Yes, it looks learned. Yes, there is a bandying around of sophisticated notions. But really, there is no evidence to support his thesis, simply a massive appeal to authority. It fails from both a logical/evidence based point of view as well as in terms of rhetoric.
The opening paragraph is a tautology (an argument in which the conclusion is also it's premise; an example of circular reasoning). The opening paragraph is also an example of unstated assumptions, limited scope, and confirmation bias.
Six logical fallacies in only two sentences totaling 34 words. That red flag gets bigger and redder.
Edsall then serves up a 68 paragraph long word-salad of quotations from 25 academics who are ideologically and politically opposed to Donald Trump. It is an extensive but shallow discursion into the fields of postmodernist philosophy, deconstructionism, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, comparative literature, religion, English, and political punditry. These are very smart people but it is worth noting that these are also fields in which the overwhelming majority (greater than 70%) of published research fails to replicate and/or is retracted.
Edsall's evidence is essentially a compilation from ideological opponents speaking from positions of authority in fields where most the accepted knowledge is actually untrue. That seems a pretty shaky argument. No balance, no data, no facts, no empirical evidence, just opinions from smart people in academic fields of discredited research.
This is a massive intellectual smoke screen. More artfully:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,"And then is heard no more" - were that we were so lucky.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
All this noise leads up to Edsall's overwrought conclusion.
If tribalism has begun to supplant traditional partisanship, their argument suggests, lying in politics will metastasize as traditional constraints continue to fall by the wayside.There are three conclusions to this long, long argument -
Trump’s success, such as it is, has been to accelerate the ongoing transformation of traditional political competition into an atavistic struggle in which each side claims moral superiority and defines the opposition as evil.
These developments have been unfolding for decades, but the 2016 election was a turning point that appears to have the potential to corrupt the system beyond repair. Trump is determined to leave the destruction of democratic procedure as his legacy. Instead of granting him the title of postmodernist, let’s say instead that Trump is a nihilist who seeks to trample, to trash, to blight, to break and to burn.
The 2016 election was a turning point that appears to have the potential to corrupt the system beyond repair.Edsall has just invested 2,655 words talking about a variety of things that have nothing to do with these conclusions. He starts with the assumption that Trump is a liar and concludes that 2016 marked the decline of our system and that Trump is intentionally destroying our system of government.
Trump is determined to leave the destruction of democratic procedure as his legacy.
Trump is a nihilist who seeks to trample, to trash, to blight, to break and to burn.
That isn't an argument. That is simply an existential scream of an establishment which sees its influence and sinecures under threat from this new agent of the citizens. I am imagining a Trump tweet on Edsall's column. I suspect it would be a one word summary of the 2,655 word essay.
Sad!A summary which I would also imagine being endorsed by 50-70% of citizens. And a summary trashed by the 0.000001% of the population who are establishment pundits and establishment insiders as lacking artfulness, sophistication, and nuance. Missing the point that he won the argument through artful rhetoric versus their earnest, but inadequate, effort to appear logical and empirical.
Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers
Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers
Double click to enlarge.
Double click to enlarge.
Barrett's Privateers
by Stan Rogers
Oh, the year was 1778
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
A letter of marque came from the king
To the scummiest vessel I've ever seen
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
Oh, Elcid Barrett cried the town
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
For twenty brave men all fishermen who
Would make for him the Antelope's crew
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
She'd a list to the port and her sails in rags
And the cook in the scuppers with the staggers and jags
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
On the King's birthday we put to sea
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
We were 91 days to Montego Bay
Pumping like madmen all the way
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
On the 96th day we sailed again
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
When a bloody great Yankee hove in sight
With our cracked four pounders we made to fight
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
Now the Yankee lay low down with gold
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
She was broad and fat and loose in the stays
But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
Then at length we stood two cables away
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
Our cracked four pounders made an awful din
But with one fat ball, the Yank stove us in
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
The Antelope shook and pitched on her side
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs
And the Main truck carried off both me legs
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
So here I lay in my 23rd year
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
It's been 6 years since we sailed away
And I just made Halifax yesterday
God damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers
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