Ugly website update

This was going to be a quick post that Salon.com's new look could be used as a classroom example of how to make a site uglier, less useful, harder to navigate, and more self-important.

Then I logged in to Blogger to make the post, and saw what Google has wrought upon the control panels. They win. FAR uglier and less useful.

Whatever their target demographic is, I'm apparently not in it.

Mismatched Caption Dept.

I don't know if it's an issue with the website or with my browser, but I've noticed something about Andrew Sullivan's site. The right side of the page has links to various articles at the Daily Beast. Sometimes the linked story changes, but the image attached to the link doesn't. This can  result in things like this:

No, you don't care to know where my mind went with that combination.... 

McArdle on Poverty

A few weeks back I mentioned in passing that the Atlantic's Megan McArdle has an occasional habit of falling back into glibertarian hand-waving. Fairness demands I point out that when she avoids it--as this post on the intractability of poverty certainly does--she's first rate.

She points out that there are environmental constraints, but also bad choices, and (what too many writers on this subject don't get, but if you've ever lived in poverty you learn real quick):

It isn't that people can't get out of this: they do it quite frequently. But in order to do so, you need the will and the skill--and the luck--to execute perfectly. There is no margin for error in the lives of the working poor.

And that many decisions made out of fatigue, hopelessless, lack of information, or simply different priorities, lead to perpetuation of the problem.

It's a hard problem. Really hard. I don't have an easy answer any more than she does. But it's nice to see someone on the internet recognizing both sides of the problem, at least.

As adults they are the products of everything that has happened to them, and everything that they have done, but they are also now exercising free will. If you assume you know the choice they should make, and that there is some reliable way to entice them to make it, you're imagining away their humanity, and replacing it with an automaton.

Public policy can modestly improve the incentives and choice sets that poor people face--and it should do those things. But it cannot remake people into something more to the liking of bourgeois taxpayers. And it would actually be pretty creepy if it could.

Penn State, and lacking explanations

The news coming out of Penn State is, of course, shocking, outrageous, and all the rest. Plenty of pundits are trying to come up with reasons why it happened, or how it could have gone on so long, or how varied the reactions are now (the students are rioting because the coach was fired for covering up child rape? and they're seeing the coach as the victim?).

Megan McArdle over at the Atlantic is trying to come to grips with it. I've had my criticisms of Ms. McArdle in the past; I don't remember if I've shared any of them here or not. Her tendency toward glib, dismissive, off the cuff solutions to other people's problems, privileged outrage when things affect her personally (see debit card fees, and limits thereon), blahblahblah. Some of her comments are, I think, pretty much on target; others are almost dangerously out to lunch. Overall, her on-target percentage is higher than average, probably higher than mine, so I keep some opinions to myself. After all, she's putting her thoughts out there with her name on them for public view daily, I'm firing off potshots relatively anonymously when the mood hits me. There's a difference.

She's grappling with why this happened, how it could have happened, what possible reason people could have for letting it go on. And she's coming up short.

Because, as an economist, she's viewing things as a classical economist. To the classical economist, people are rational, utility-maximizing beings, with at least a modicum of empathy toward others, basic fairness, and an enlightened-self-interest recognition of the societal need to protect the innocent and the vulnerable.

Which may be very useful for certain types of analysis, but fails completely (because it is completely at variance with reality) when we enter the dark twilight world where power, privilege, and sex intersect.

On a campus with a winning football team, the coaches (and to a lesser degree the athletes) have power. And they certainly have privilege. The problem with privilege, of course, is that it becomes invisible, taken for granted, and tends to grow. Those with privilege quickly learn that there's no one to say no. Or to give any negative feedback at all. I read a blog yesterday quoting Walter Mondale to the effect that he didn't realize he wasn't funny until he was no longer VP and people stopped laughing at his jokes. So, one tends to assume that if in doubt, one can get away with it. Because one always has in the past.

Meanwhile, for those in the vicinity... Taking on someone with power is risky. It's dangerous. It's unpleasant. Part of privilege is that others will take one's side no matter how egregious the offense (see Students, Penn State, Rioting). If anyone loses their job, it's usually not the privileged one.

So it's easier (lower immediate cost) to look the other way and maybe try not to think about it too much. In fact, after a while, that becomes rather easy. All too easy.

It's not a satisfying explanation. It's not rational. It's not about rational behavior. It's about social pressure and not wanting to rock the boat and not taking on someone who has Very Important Friends, In High Places. No, they didn't market their development office as a pedophile procurement business. But if Big Donor X called up and asked so-and-so to call him back, well, you take the message and pass it along. Do you suspect? Maybe. But you don't know, and why make trouble for a winning program on the basis of rumor? Particularly when whatever hits the fan will not be distributed evenly?

As much as I've ragged on him (and I have shared those views here), Andrew Sullivan understands it. His parallels with the Church abuse scandals are a little overdrawn--I don't believe the comparison is as direct as he's making it here--but it's the same basic dynamic at play.

The people who did know, who saw, and did nothing, are the most contemptible here. But that's another rant. For another evening.

It's not rational. It's not amenable to economic analysis. But it's still reality.

On hold

Let's make it official...

We're working on an initiative for one of the classes I teach to try to reduce the rate of D/F/Withdrawal grades in the course. I might write some things about it here sometime--we're certainly seeing some interesting things, and it's been fun watching our associate dean learn all about the joys of teaching freshmen--but I'm too busy working the 10 and 12 hour days to have time to blog about them.

Random Musings from a Random Geek is on hiatus. Posts will be occasional at best. To my regular readers, both of you, I'll try to be back but am not sure when that will be.

Move along, nothing to see here.....

Housekeeping...

I've added the annoying word-test requirement to comment. I'm spending more and more time cleaning up spambots in the comments. My regular readers (both of you) will just have to deal with the inconvenience. Sorry.

I'm not sure what it is about 2 posts in particular that make them such spam magnets, but oh well, many and mysterious are the ways of script kiddies and spammers...

Lest Anyone Doubt...

...that for some, religion is used as a tool to serve neo-con/GOP-style political ends, we present:

The Conservatising the Bible Project.

Here's the whole thing. Read it if you dare.

Wow. Just... wow. But it's nice to see the reversal of priorities being presented in such an up-front manner.

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan.)

This just in

People in Iran have really long names.

Where would we be without Faux Noise, er, um, Fox News, to tell us these things?

I've spent much of the last several days glued to my monitor watching the extraordinary events in Iran unfold. I don't have any information or much insight to add to what's already being said, and Andrew Sullivan is doing extraordinary work on this.

The only thing that's striking about this is how it seems to have caught everyone in the West so thoroughly by surprise. Like the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this appears to Western eyes to have come out of nowhere, though in retrospect we'll tell ourselves there were signs there to be seen. And there probably were...but we weren't paying attention. We didn't notice them. We didn't take them seriously.

Of course, it would have been hard to predict that the election would be rigged that clumsily. A rigged election was more or less expected, but one that "no one in their right mind can believe" wasn't, and has proven to be the proverbial straw.

And so far, Obama has done exactly the right thing, by staying out of it, so neither side can accuse the other of being pawns or dupes of the Great Satan. This isn't about us; it's about them.

Elevating the Debate

Wonkette sums up my feelings about Chuck Grassley's indignant twitters to/about Obama, which have the depth & tone you'd expect from a teenager:

We are all stupider for having read this.

Seriously, go read the twits in question. They read like something an overprivileged teenager would write. This clown is a U.S. Senator? Yes, the 140-character limit of Twitter doesn't lend itself to pensive asides or elaborately-built-up arguments, but this is absurd.

Proof once more of the dictum from the founding fathers (I don't remember if it was Jefferson or Madison, and could be wrong about both of them). Democracy doesn't ensure the people get the leadership they want, but it does ensure they get the leadership they deserve.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

On "irrational numbers" and innumerate bloggers

Warning: Extreme nerd-dom ahead.

So there's a post at the Atlantic about the government's ownership of 60% of GM, taking on the ludicrous claim that the government now owns a large swath of corporate America. As the post correctly points out, the actual ownership of private companies by the federal government is substantially under 1/10 of 1%, which is hardly a socialist paradise. However, the reporter completely blows it with this discussion of the (admittedly rather fun) pie chart produced by Excel:

What I do see is that Microsoft Excel feels the need to portray the percentage of American companies owned by the government as an irrational number. That's 5.07e^-02, or %0.0507 of American companies that are owned by the United States. (When I ask Excel to display this breakdown in real numbers it just becomes "100%" and "0%.")

Um, no. Wrong. That's not an irrational number. It's scientific notation. An irrational number is a number that can't be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. It has nothing to do with whether it's written in a mantissa-exponent form (as in 5.07 * 10^-2). Scientific notation is handy for dealing with very large or very small numbers, and yes, Excel would round it to 0%, unless you asked Excel to display things out to some fixed number of decimal places.

Which is simple to do, as is suppressing scientific notation in the first place. Either one takes about 4 clicks of the mouse.

Really, people who do business reporting should be familiar with the basic functions of spreadsheet software, and if you're going to complain about something being a particular type of number, you should have some idea what you're talking about.

Update: After numerous comments in the comments section, it's been fixed so that instead of "irrational number" it says "exponential notation." All is well.

Wish-I'd-Said-That Dept.

Mark Kleiman nails it once again.

A Useful Rule of Thumb

From John A. over at AmericaBlog:

If you're emailing it to one person, what you're sending is probably good. If you're emailing it to 5 or more people, it's probably crap.

That about matches up with my experience.

Assisting Mark Kleiman

In a post about a topic I'm not informed enough to have an opinion on (yes, there are a few of them), Mark Kleiman wonders if there's a form of the term "bimbo" that applies to men.

The term I've heard used is "himbo."

Glad to be of service.

Kleiman update

Re: The previous post, which was originally about this post.

Mr Kleiman posted a comment pointing out a factual error in my post (my bad, I gotta stop posting late at night) and laying out his position in more detail. I was, in fact, misreading him in places, and his proposed solution has quite a bit to recommend it. I don't think it's likely to happen politically (govt recognizes partnerships, under some different name, for everyone, gay & straight alike, and religious organizations decide for themselves what 'marriage' means), but it would be a cleaner solution, and Mr Kleiman doesn't seem to think it's likely to happen immediately either. Anyway, go read the comment, it's worth it.

Thanks for the quick & courteous reply. I'm still sometimes amazed to realize I'm not just talking to myself on this internet thingy....

Quote of the day

From a commenter on one of the blogs at WaPo:

Being in the majority means responding to the weakening cry of "Liberal!" with the loud and overbearing oath, "Dimwit!"

Election Day: Report from the trenches

Polls opened in Missouri at 6:00 AM. When I arrived a few minutes before 6:00, there were over 200 people in line, snaking down the steps, along the sidewalk, through the parking lot, almost to the street in the back of the little Knights of Columbus hall where we vote. The parking lot was full, the parking lot in the church across the street was full, and people were parking 2 or 3 blocks away. I've NEVER seen more than 10 people in line at this polling station since I've lived here.

A slightly bleary-eyed 20-something got in line behind me and said this was his first time voting, were the lines always this long? Several of us in line had a good laugh and assured him that no, none of us ever seen anything quite like this, certainly not at 6 AM.

The line moved relatively quickly, as such things go. People were in a good mood, and no one seemed frustrated by the long wait (though one person had to leave the line because they had to be at work at 7:00, but I heard them say they'd be back after they got off shift at 3:30). I got my optical-scan ballot at 6:45 and was out the door at 6:50. By that time, the line was shorter--there were "only" a hundred people or so, and the line only went halfway down the parking lot.

Something big is happening. And with turnout like this, whoever wins will certainly be able to claim a mandate.

One other thing. I'm not one for flag-waving sentimentality. But walking up to the polls, seeing 200 people lined up before sunrise, patiently waiting for the opportunity to cast a vote--Is this a great country, or what? Maybe American democracy has a chance after all. The people are waking up, and they are about to speak. Loudly, I think.

Update: This is the body of an email I sent to Andrew Sullivan. He posted part of it. I'm famous, woohoo! Well, in an anonymous, who-cares kind of way.

Happy Birthday, 3 days late

I just realized... last Tuesday marked one year since this blog's first post (helpfully entitled, "First post"). Though the first substantive post was this one. Where has the time gone? I find myself agreeing with Calvin: Here I am in the future, and it looks a lot like that past. Where are the flying cars? The jetpacks? The personal robot servants?

More sectarian whining

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people.

--Andrew Sullivan, today

So it's okay to be disrespectful, as long as you don't hurt their feelings. Because the sentiments of the religious, no matter how silly the superstition, are paramount.

To be fair, when reports came out about some jackass in Guantanamo flushing a Koran down the commode, Andrew called them out about that, too. But it was a purely pragmatic argument--this is going to enrage them against us and serves no good purpose--rather than being out of lines because of some general rule that ridiculous ideas can be ridiculed unless they're ridiculous ideas about magic sky-fairies.

Or at least, about his magic sky-fairy.

Update 11:20 PM: I just noticed that apparently some other people called Andrew on this. And, to his credit, he posted the replies.

Update 7/12: He's taken most of it back. Oh, and he now claims he defended Myers' right to say whatever he wishes. Funny, I can't seem to find that in the original post. Here's the full text of what he said:

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a "goddamned cracker" isn't about free speech; it's really about some baseline civility. Myers' rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.

I don't see any defense of Myers' right to anything in there. Really, the posturing on this is incredible. Of course, what set off Myers in the first place was the fact that for stealing a cracker, terms like "hate crime" and "kidnapping" were being tossed around, there's a movement afoot to get the student expelled, death threats were made, and there is now an armed guard at Mass at the campus chapel, to make sure no more cracker-napping occurs. I wonder if Andrew read the entire story in the first place?

Short version of Andrew Sullivan

I wasn't wrong, but maybe I wasn't as right as I could have been, and in any event, we've kinda-sorta got something that maybe looks like the rule of law so I'm okay with it. Besides, it's the president's fault, not the companies, that they broke the law--it's not like AT&T or Verizon could afford a lawyer or anything. And it's natural to panic and toss the rule of law overboard when we're in a national panic, which we all were, especially me, so let's just move on.

When the man is right, he's right, but he periodically has episodes of recto-cranial inversion that are mind-boggling in their intensity.

Missing the point

Newsweek tries to be cutting-edge by suggesting the Internet is the new sweatshop.

They may be teenagers posting videos of themselves dancing like Soulja Boy, programmers messing around with Twitter's tools to create cool new applications or aspiring game developers who want to create the next big thing. But what they all have in common is a somewhat surprising willingness to work for little more than peer recognition and a long shot at 15 seconds of fame.

Because, of course, money is the only possible motivation to do anything. If you're not doing it for money, you're being a rube. The enjoyment of doing it? Of making a contribution? Oh pish tush.

Whether these 21st-century worker bees can be said to be having fun (is it really entertaining to update a Wikipedia entry?), there's no question that their moonlighting has value even if they're not being compensated.

I don't know if "entertaining" is the right word. "Sorry, gang, I won't be tagging along to the party, I'm going to stay home and update Wikipedia" sounds a little unlikely. But it can be rewarding. Making a contribution, even if "just" for peer recognition (and why is that a bad thing?), has its rewards.

It's also possible N'Gai Croal, the author of the piece, is, like most journalists, innumerate. (I don't know, one way or the other.) Consider that the entire Internet-connected population is currently about one billion. What happens if everyone connected to the internet contributes a half-hour per month of their time doing something (making vids, music mixes, game programming, artwork, Wikipedia edits, whatever) of something that ends up on the internet?

That's five hundred million hours--roughly five Wikipedias--every month.

Someone please send Newsweek a copy of Clay Shirky's article on social surplus, and why we're on the verge of another boom.

But as long as so many of you are willing to work for free, the proprietors of these virtual sweatshops will happily accept.

But again, this isn't the point. A half-hour a month, volunteered, is hardly a "sweatshop," no matter how (melo)dramatic an article headline that makes. Yes, there are some who obsessively devote every hour to contribute, just as in the pre-internet age some people obsessed over their bottle-cap collections.

Peer recognition, satisfaction from making a positive contribution, and the pleasures of creating are sufficient motivation. Scaled up, across the internet, enough small contributions add up. And again, Croal fundamentally misunderstands.

Yes, the vast majority of uploaded videos are well below professional quality. Most blogs are barely worth reading. (No comment on whether this one falls within that category.) Sturgeon's Law applies on the internet as well as it does everywhere else. But again, the simple scale of the phenomenon means that the top few percent will be very good.

Newsweek answered its own question as true. In fact, the way they phrased the question shows they don't understand the subject in the first place.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]