Can we use data to improve education? Most assuredly, and this is one of the things that makes the Khan Academy give me so much hope. However, it only works if we accept the validity of metrics. A lot 0f people are bothered by the concept.

Nine famous movie villains who were right all along. Some of these I had actually already come to the defense of (Senator Bill Kelly). Others had never occurred to me (The Wicked Witch).

As most of you know, I have long been bearish on China. I don’t believe that they are going to maintain the edges that they have as they continue to industrialize and I am skeptical that they have been doing enough right to create a new edge. So you knew I would have to flag this article.

From NPR, a modern look at manners.

Shortly after we first met, my wife told me that my drinking habits made me a borderline alcoholic (it was an observation, not a condemnation). That, to me, suggests that the definition for alcoholic is absurdly broad. I thought of that when I read Confessions of a Binge Drinker.

A really odd look at Sweden’s confederate subculture. As in… Confederate Flag and KKK shirts. It would be insanely weird to be in Sweden and run across that.

The communion wafer industry. My church back home switched to actual bread for a while. I thought it was kind of cool. Anyway, the quote of the piece: “Advertising our altar bread is a positive thing for Cavanagh Company. We take a lot of pride in putting our family name on a product that will eventually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

A story of a disgraced weatherman, a con job, and the Russian mafia.

100 Incredible Views Out Of Airplane Windows. My favorites are London, Rio, Qatar, and the one from Hong Kong that looks like a screaming face (#75), though really almost all pictures of Hong Kong are cool.

Why do we have so many firemen?

A long while back, Abel wrote about and linked to a piece on stray dogs in Eastern Europe.

Old-school readers of Hit Coffee and associated blogs will remember Sheila Tone’s “Prole Test.” Originally posted on Bob’s old blog, it went down when his old site did. However, as Charles Murray causes a wave with his Bubble Thickness Test, I thought that it was high-time to reproduce it.

—-

A few weeks back, Bob wrote a sweet little post about how people should be more sympathetic to my woes. (sniff) But he gives me too much credit, saying I was poor. I wasn’t. Not by any government definition anyway.

But I wasn’t middle-class, either. So what am I talking about? I hope the little quiz below helps clarify things.

The best term I’ve been able to come up with is working-class, which leaves some loopholes. How about semi-prolehood? Whatever it is, it describes an important difference. It means you’re not poor, but there’s still a big difference in what you get to do for a living, where you get to go to school, and how you live.

Remember, this isn’t about being in the underclass. That’s why many serious hardships aren’t scored. It’s about how you might eventually graduate from college, but you’ll never get to work for the New York Times. You could maybe be a lawyer, but you’ll never work for one of those big firms. Definitely a schoolteacher, but probably not a professor. And for God’s sake, don’t try to get into screenwriting or directing. Yes, I know about Quentin Tarantino, but name three others who are under 60. Finance or politics will also be rough (but good luck, Dizzy).

The following are a few telltale characteristics of the non-middle-class:

1. Military service.

This obviously only applies at times your family was in the United States, so apologies to recent immigrants. Did anyone in your family serve? As an enlisted person? No points for officers. One prole point for each grandparent, uncle or cousin. Two for each parent. Three for each sibling or yourself.

2. Professions.

Is anyone in your family a medical doctor? Minus three points for the first, one point for each additional. Minus two for the first lawyer or university professor (must be an accredited university), one for each additional. Either parent work for the government in a non-management, non-elected position? One prole point — unless it’s your mom and she was a teacher. Then no points, because women from higher classes often become teachers.

3. Education.

How many people from your graduating high school class went to an Ivy League university? Any? Minus one point for each, up to a maximum 3 points. Edit: Add one point if you had to travel more than 30 minutes to get to that high school.*

How many people in your immediate family (counting grandparents, parents, siblings and spouses) have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited, non-online institution? Minus one point for each — but only if they got the degree prior to age 24. Minus two points for each USNWR first-tier. Don’t count anyone you already counted as a professional in Number 2.

Two prole points if no for both parents and all grandparents. Three prole points if your answer is zero for all immediate family besides yourself, and you have at least one sibling.

Minus one if you graduated from any accredited college before the age of 24. Minus one more if it was a USNWR first-tier.

Notice there are no points assigned based upon who paid for your education. This is not an oversight. Many non-middle-class parents and grandparents — cops, aerospace workers — proudly pay for their descendants’ attendance at USC, Loyola Marymount, University of LaVerne, and Cal State whatever.

4. Health Insurance.

Growing up, was your health insurance HMO or private? One prole point for HMO or none.

I remember in a political science class, we were going on a class trip and needed to provide our medical insurance carrier. A list was passed around. I was last to sign. I saw that every other student had either Blue Cross or Blue Shield. And that was even at my crappy state school. (The polisci kids tended to be future lawyers, and seemed younger and wealthier than the general student population.)

5. Travel.

Prior to age 24, how many times did you travel outside the continental United States by airplane or boat? Minus one point for each time — but no points if it was to visit relatives. One prole point if your answer is never.

6. Discipline.

Did your parents physically discipline you after the age of 7? One prole point. Three points for after the age of 12. Minus one if your answer is never — unless you’re Jewish, then no deduction. My understanding is that Jewish people in the United States never physically discipline regardless of their economic status.

7. Inheritance.

Prior to age 30, did you inherit money? If so, minus one.

Yes, choosing 30 is a bit arbitrary. It’s an age when you’re still in the youth demographic and at least one parent is usually still alive. How much you got doesn’t matter. You’re either from the type of family that does that, or you’re not. A semi-prole could easily have a parent die prior to 30, but the parent either would have died with no money or left all assets to the other parent, probably passing by intestacy. If both your parents died I’ll let you decide if the point is fair.

More likely scenario is that your grandparents left you money. That kind of estate planning is for the upper classes.

8. Traditional family.

Were your parents divorced or estranged prior to your entry into high school? If so, one prole point. Same if they weren’t married at the time of your birth. This does not apply if at the time of your birth, your parents lived in either California or New York and were working in entertainment or the arts. Those people live by different rules.

One point if a parent died prior to your entry into high school and the surviving parent failed to remarry within five years (speaks to economic problems and lack of social ties).

Do you know the full names and maiden names of your grandparents? If not, plus one. Great-grandparents? Minus one. Got any pictures of the greats? Minus one. Edit: Unless they’re still alive, then plus one. OK, no points either way if they’re over 100.

*******************************

If you ended up with any points, you’re on Sheila’s side of the wall. Sorry. Have a Happy Meal, it always makes me feel better.
_______________________________

* Like in Half Sigma’s high school, probably half the class went to Ivies, but he had to take a boat every morning to get there. That should count for something.
________________________________

Clarification: If you are married, include your spouse and his family in your the answers to 1, 2, 3, and 7. Those are about current status. Don’t count your spouse in 4, 5, 6, and 8. Those refer to your individual background.
______________________________

Addendum: Earn up to six additional points for Native American heritage!

A while back, there was a Guardian article on corporations claiming ownership over videos in the public domain:

But one titanic problem with ContentID has received little attention: the use of ContentID by those who falsely or incorrectly assert ownership over public domain works – works that have no copyright at all – and then either block access to the videos, or collect the advertising revenue from these videos.

FedFlix is a charitable project launched by Carl Malamud, a “rogue archivist” who raises funds to digitise and upload videos created at US government expense. Under US law, government creations are in the public domain and can be freely used by anyone, but the US government is remarkably lax about actually making its treasures available to the public that owns them.

Malamud’s group pays the fees associated with retrieving copies from the US government – sometimes buying high-priced DVDs that the government issues, other times paying to have unreleased videos retrieved from government archives – and posts them to YouTube, the Internet Archive and other video sites, so that anyone and everyone can see, download, and use them.

Malamud’s 146-page report from FedFlix to the Archivist of the United States documents claims that companies such as NBC Universal, al-Jazeera, and Discovery Communications have used ContentID to claim title to FedFlix videos on YouTube. Some music royalty collecting societies have claimed infringements in “silent movies”.

Here is more on FedFlix.

One of the ostensible reasons for SOPA and Protect IP is that it provides an undue burden on content IP owners to find and locate every single instance of copyright infringement. One of the main pushbacks against SOPA and PIPA is that it would apply an undue burden on the part of user-generated sites to approve each and every piece of content that someone uploads. And what we have hear can validate each argument. The content producers’ recklessness can at least potentially be attributed to having to scan over so much material that they get some things wrong (if we are to take the most benign explanation). And the burden that the sites face make it so that they simply don’t have time to straighten things out (this benign explanation is, I believe, more reasonably applied here).

But what jumps out at me here is the difference between a right you have and a right that is respected. I’ve mentioned this before with regard to the TSA. It doesn’t matter what kind of rights you have if they are arbitrarily ignored. In fact, it makes it worse because at least rights you are denied have to be justified somewhere along the chain. To use the TSA example, if they are going to force all milk-bottles to go through an X-Ray machine, the TSA has to make the case that this is safe and necessary. If you have the right to have your milk bottle not go through the machine, but they penalize you for ever asserting this right, then they have effectively made a rule without justifying it.

So here we have a case where videos that CBS and Discovery do not own are being flagged. Their ability to claim ownership over these videos has never been justified. The ability to post these videos is, at least in theory, granted because they are in the public domain. In practice, however, there is simply no way to actually assert this right without being severely penalized. This applies to more than YouTube videos. You are theoretically in the right if you choose to make and release a Little Mermaid video. However, if you choose to do so, Disney can turn around and claim that you infringed not on the Little Mermaid that exists in the public domain, but their variation of it. They may have absolutely no case, but if ABC/Disney sends you a letter saying that they are going to use all of their legal might to run you out of business, are you going to risk it? Are you going to pay thousands and thousands in legal fees to emerge victorious… and broke?

I am considering a superhero project. In it, I would love to use some of the (few) superheroes that have fallen into the public domain. But these have been used by the Big Boys. The Big Boys can make all sorts of arguments (similar to Little Mermaid), and once they get to court, I’ve already lost. And so while I have the right to use these heroes, I am not free, in any meaningful sense, to actually assert that right. And so I won’t.

Copyright carries with it loads of ambiguity and logistical problems. Either they have rights that are extremely difficult to enforce, such as a proliferation of videos on YouTube that they have to have taken down one by one or thousands of BitTorrent downloaders that they have to single out (and get a lot of bad publicity in the process)… or we have rights that are difficult to assert. The theoretical, but constantly challenged, right to back up content that we own. The ability to actually own, rather than merely rent, works that we buy. The right to upload material that nobody owns the right to. This creates a real zero-sum environment wherein either content producers have insufficient ability to enforce their copyrights, or an ability so broad as to create real headaches for people tagged with false positives.

And where you sit is where you stand. It becomes worthwhile to ask questions about how much we - the consumers - can actually trust the content owners to behave ethically. Their apparent entitlement to endless copyrights, and their willingness to engage in shoot-first-ask-questions-later tactics, and their propensity use the money they make to lobby for laws that reduces access to the public domain, makes me inclined to restrict their power as much as possible. Even if, as they claim, it has a detrimental effect on the arts in the long run.

The SOPA protests represented a rivalry between northern and southern California, movies and technology. Good for them, because heaven help us if they start really working together. There was a movie some time back called Anti-Trust, with Tim Robbins as a Bill Gates figure. The moral of the story was that software-for-profit was wrong and that “information wants to be free.” Well… what about movies? Do they want to be free? If not, why not? It was best, in the context of this movie, not to ask that question.

Also, a look at modern media piracy and its actual effects. I have always found the claim that piracy enables crime syndicates to be odd. If anything, the opposite is true, because, as this points out, they can’t compete with free any more than the studios can. Less so, since a lot of people will feel better buying legit copies. If you’re going to go illegit, why pay for it?

Kodak has filed for bankrupcy. Its future is in doubt, but it does have some patent revenue streams. They also are looking at doubling down on printing. Which is a brilliant place to go as we move to a paperless society. Should we ever meet, valued commenters, buy me a drink and I will tell you about my professional dealings with Kodak. In addition to the whole film thing, they are one of the most toxic corporations I have ever seen (and I have seen some doozies).

Apple is looking at getting into the textbook business. But who is going to pay for it? This is beyond the scope of what we usually ask teachers to supply. Personally, I think this is something that Amazon should be doing. They’d be more price-conscious. Either way, though, I do wonder how they’re going to get around the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has fought Kindle readers for being insufficiently friendly to the blind. Tablets are only going to be moreso.

Speaking of Apple and iBooks, their EULA is really quite disturbing. I mean, more than most EULA’s.

Again… the problem with news organizations “fact-checking.” Facts, in order to become (useful) information, require context. Context is open to interpretation. Therefore, “ObamaCare is Socialism” and “Republicans voted to end Medicare” ended up as Lies of the Year. Neither were lies. Both were subjective subjective judgments that we either agree with or disagree with.

Norway authorities took away an Indian couple’s kids for “feeding them wrong.” What happens when the Nanny State meets Multiculturalism.

The St. Louis Rams are going to be playing some games in London. Costa Tsiokas thinks that this may be a prelude to relocating the team back to Los Angeles (hurting their ticket sales). I don’t know about that, but the article goes on to mention that there is a fan club for the New England Patriots out there (the Patriots have also played in the UK). Does anyone else get a kick out of the irony of Brits rooting for a team called the New England Patriots with a colonial captain on their helmet?

A French diet guru wants to grade people on their weight. Using BMI. Sigh.

A look at the 1% and what they majored in. I actually do find it quite surprising that nearly 1 in 20 history majors become 1%ers. Almost 1 in 10 economics majors is less surprising. One imagines that it’s still not a good idea to go to North By Northeast State U and major in history, though. One imagines that a history major that becomes a 1% was bound for there regardless of what they majored in. Still: surprising.

A look at the DEA and the Adderall Shortage.

South America deserves an aware for finding a use for mimes.

A little while ago I wrote about how, if you have cell phone conversations in public, you have a very diminished expectation of privacy:

I was at a tire place this morning. In the waiting room was a woman talking on the phone. She talked about all of the gossip going on around her (maybe the local) LDS church. She was actually quite witty and I cracked a smile at some of the things she said. This got a Look Of Death from her for listening in to her conversation.

Turns out that this made the news:

While on a train Thursday, Bob Salladay, a senior editor at California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting, realized he was sitting near Santa Ana City Council member Michele Martinez. He listened to her talk on the phone and then started tweeting what she said about her campaign. He also tweeted that he was “99 percent sure it was Michele Martinez.”

It turns out, it was. In an email statement, Martinez responded: “I don’t know what’s worse; someone secretly listening to a private conversation without consent or misrepresenting that conversation publicly. It’s disrespectful, dishonest and downright creepy.” Salladay tweeted in response: “There is nothing secret about an elected official talking loudly on a public train.”

Quite so. There are some questions about whether Salladay should have taken some extra steps to verify who was talking. But other than that, I think he’s in the clear. Doug Mataconis comments:

Of course, all of this raises the question of why Martinez (who has not denied that it was her on the train or that Salladay reported what she said accurately) would have a conversation like this is in public to begin with. We’ve all been in some public area where people talk on their cell phone far louder than they need to, forcing at least one side of their conversation upon us whether we want to hear it or not, and I’ve personally been surprised at the number of times you can hear people talking about things out loud that one would think they wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. Martinez’s outrage here would sound a little more sincere if it weren’t for the fact that she was dumb enough to talk about this on a train where anyone around her could here what she’s saying. The fact that one of those people happened to be a reporter is really just her bad luck.

Quite so. As I said in my post, there is no expectation of privacy if you are talking in a public area to where other people can hear you. It was Salladay’s good luck that it was a conversation that he wanted to hear, but more often than not it’s more along the lines of LDS gossip that I listened to.

Doug goes on:

What if the conversation that Salladay had overheard hadn’t had anything to do with the campaign, though? What if it was some kind of personal conversation that revealed, or appeared to reveal, something embarrassing of a personal nature? Would it have been appropriate, from a journalistic standpoint, for him to “live tweet” the conversation in that case? Admittedly, it becomes a more difficult question at that point, and it’s hard to make the case that the private life of a state representative is really all that newsworthy unless it involves something illegal. The fact that Martinez might have been having a fight with her husband, for example, doesn’t strike me as something the public needs to know. At the same time, thought, it’s a tough line to draw and it’s hardly an invasion of privacy if someone is speaking so loudly in public that everyone around them can hear clearly.

This, to me, is a broader question of journalistic ethics that is unrelated to how the information was obtained. If it’s not right to report it because a staffer says so, it’s not right to report it because you overheard it on a train. The same standard applies in both cases. I have no idea why overhearing something would be less valid than talking to a staffer who overheard something.

How elite Asian students are cheating on US college applications. There is, apparently, a booming industry around this.

Ever since a childhood fixation with Atlantis, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of lost cities.

Would Americans be healthier if they spent more on food? I think Doug makes a really good point here that in some ways it’s the availability of food rather than cost. Even if natural food is better, and even if it weren’t more expensive, it would still be less convenient. In my more severe moments, I consider the war on salt to primarily be a war on convenient foods. Not as a byproduct, but as the point of the proposed ban. Meanwhile, the problem with blaming food deserts.

The court case that almost made it illegal to tape TV shows.

Bill Gates has saved six million lives since 2007. He’s spent $28 billion from his fortune. That makes a lot of money per life saved if all of it were going to live-saving. But I don’t think that’s the case. I would be interested in a breakdown of how much his life-saving efforts have cost per life saved.

Los Angeles is apparently the favorite destination for Europeans looking to move to the US.

The top 1% of mobile users account for 50% of the world’s wireless bandwidth. Meanwhile, 5% of Americans make up 50% of health care spending.

This puts a cramp on my designs of putting an NFL team in Riverside.

The inbreeding coefficient of superheroes. Meanwhile, superheroes in Salt Lake City! And lastly, the favorite superheroes of Republican politicians. Any of them who names Ted Kord has my vote. Okay, not really.

Felix Salmon complains about a pricing innovation I had not yet heard of: ATM’s working off a percentage fee rather than a flat fee. Or, as these things generally go, whichever fee is greater. In the case he cites, it’s $3 or 3%.

Look, I’m not going to get all market-worshipper on this, but as far as price gouging goes, this is far less of a big deal than what we put up with at sports arenas, amusement parks, and so on. If I don’t like Holiday Inn’s charge, I really, genuinely can go elsewhere. Maybe this will take up like wildfire and all of them will be doing this and so at some point in the future I won’t have a choice.

Even then, though, the pricing model itself doesn’t seem particularly outrageous. In order to trip up to the percentage-based fee, that means that you have to be extracting more than $100. If you’re extracting more than $100, maybe you need to find the nearest branch of your bank. If anything, I think this fee is to guide people to do just that. Extracting large sums from an ATM machine actually does cost them more money. It means more regular restocking. So I can very easily see why they would be cool with people taking out $40, but wanting those who intend to take more out to think twice, go elsewhere, or pay extra.

Of course it does not cost them $3 per small transaction or an extra $3 for a transaction of $200. But the ATM, the security involved, and restocking all do cost money. Is Holiday Inn making money off the ATM? I would imagine so. Maybe it would be better if they provided it as a cost-neutral convenience. Maybe we should go to hotels that do just that.

But really, there has never been a better time for a consumer as far as this stuff goes. More and more places offer cash-back on purchases to the point that I almost never use an ATM anymore (not even my own bank’s). But more to the point, we need cash a lot less than we used to. $100 in cash goes a lot further than it used to with credit card swipers everywhere. And if there is one benefit to the increasing consolidation of banks, it’s that it’s more likely your bank has an ATM nearby just in case you happen to need one. The last couple of times I did use an ATM it was while traveling. A quick google and a quick drive and no ATM fees at all.

Now, maybe it’s not worth it to get in your car and drive for ten minutes in order to save $3 or $6. If so, that only suggests that the Holiday Inn’s convenience charge is reasonable.

Apparently, someone reached my original Trumanverse map by googling images for “map of the usa with state names”.

Relatedly, I wrote this on LoOG yesterday:

With Wikipedia down, Timothy Lee points out that this could be Wikipedia-alternative Citizendium’s chance to shine. I tried to use it, but it’s pretty… thin. Personally, I thought that this was Uncyclopedia’s turn at the wheel. They joined the blackout, though. Shame. That would have made for some awesome term papers.

Another month, another article on the imminent demise of the laptop. Look, the desktop isn’t even dead yet. Beyond that, the notion that because laptop design has been perfected means it’s dead is a pretty dumb argument.

The case for saving ugly buildings. Go brutalism! More seriously, I ultimately take an “out with the old…” perspective, provided that it makes economic sense to replace a particular building. I just don’t trust what the tastemakers call cool or ugly.

When you define half of Americans as poor or low-income, it says more about the metrics used than the state of our nation.

Should Hollywood go back to using miniatures? I’m for anything that would hold costs down.

One of the interesting things that jumped out at me when I originally moved north was the number of people who left their cars running while they went inside. I even did it myself sometimes. In Milwaukee, it’s causing the predictable problems. Not of theft, but “unlawful usage.” Kids stealing a ride to school. Apparently it’s illegal to leave your car running. It reminds me of the town I was raised in where it was illegal to leave your bikes out because you were in effect giving escapees from the local juvenile hall a free ride.

In Illinois, you now need ID to buy drain cleaner.

Atlantic Cities makes the case for strong urban cores. I actually agree! The problem is when people think that the way to do this is to kneecap suburbs. Atlanta has apparently accomplished a downtown renewal despite its outward expansion. The fact that the urban cores were lost in the rust belt, and that the rust belt is struggling, and that the former is the cause of the latter, has a causation-correlation problem.

From the files of near self-parody, Conservapedia wants a bible without all that liberal stuff. I’ve heard some conservatives say that Conservapedia is parody, but I’ve seen little reason to believe that’s actually the case.

This is the stuff of jetpacks and flying cars, but more fun to think about.

My name has found itself on a new mailing list. Of that I am sure.

What’s curious is that my name on this mailing list is W.S. Truman. I never fill out forms by that name. None of my credit cards are in that name. My Frequent Flier Miles are not under that name. I mention my FFMs because I was recently told it was time to cash them in and I picked up a subscription to Forbes, The Atlantic, and ESPN Magazine. I suspect that one of those three passed my name along. I suspect it was Forbes because two of the three things I received in the mail today came from conservative organizations. One of them, on the envelope, asking a loaded question that my answer to was actually not the one they were assuming I would have.

My mom made a habit out of using different names whenever she would sign for things that could put her on a mailing list. She has four names, so it wasn’t hard for her to do (she used the dog’s name once, and Roscoe received a credit card in the mail*). For a while, she kept track of who put the lists out where. She wrote an great article about it that she published in her local newsletter. It was good enough that it should have been in a more formal newspaper or magazine (I got only some of her writing talent).

* - Yes, this is a true story. It said “Just call to activate” though I assume that calling would have meant a more lengthy process than that. Among other things, to be sure that they didn’t actually give a credit card to a dog.

As I have mentioned in the past, it’s a bit ironic that so many of the white cross arguments involve Utah. By “white cross” arguments, I mean the desire on the part of secularists to do away with the tradition of white crosses to mark the death of someone. The ironic thing about Utah is that it is the one state in the continental United States where the cross is not a symbol of the dominant religion (Mormons don’t really do crosses). In fact, it’s Utah first and foremost that I look at and actually believe that no, the cross does not have to be an establishing symbol of a specific religion (or series of religions). If that is what Utah were going for, they’d have little tooting Moronis on the site of the road. Or something.

As far as such crosses go, I can understand the objections even though I don’t actually share them. If anything, Christians themselves should be kind of anxious about their holy symbol being used for something that isn’t religious in nature. Sort of like the secularization of Christmas.

Arapaho makes extensive use of roadside crosses. And there is more of an establishment concern here than elsewhere, because they are put up by the state. There is one stretch of dangerous highway where my wife and I counted 30-something over just a few miles. They were put up by the state to underline, once twice and thirty-something times to drive carefully.

And part of the problem is that there is no other symbol that you see on the side of the road and know immediately what it means.

Which brings me to the point of this post: If crosses are really a problem, those that want to take the crosses down need to come up with a replacement. That would sell me on the issue. Instead of saying “Take down that cross” they should say “How about we use this instead.” I don’t know, and don’t really care what is used. It could be just a white stake in the ground. Something immediately recognizable and identifiable. Arapaho can put up a sign as you enter the Danger Zone saying (more concisely so that people don’t get into accidents as they try to read the sign) “Hey, you’re about to see a bunch of white stakes in the ground. This is where people died. So drive carefully!”

Here are ten reasons that Windows Phone 7 is better than Android. Of course, the real question is whether or not it matters. WinPhone is trying to occupy that sweet spot between an extremely inflexible iPhone and the WinMo-like chaos of Android. When I have to make the move away from WinMo, I still don’t know if it will be to WinPhone or Android. Probably the latter, but if Microsoft can provide what I want, I will (somewhat begrudgingly) accept the closed environment.

Farhad Manjoo says that this year may be The Year of Microsoft. I’m skeptical of Windows Phone 7, but wish them all the best. I don’t have a strong opinion on Windows 8. It’s hard to see how it will be revolutionary, though. Maybe I’m just sour because they killed the idea of a real computer-tablet.

One thing that Microsoft never got right with Windows Mobile was getting users off the stylus. Oddly, Samsung wants to bring the stylus back. It feels a little like full circle. It actually makes sense, though. There are times to use your fingers and times a stylus is better. It just strikes me as “odd” from a marketing perspective. Styluses are just considered old hat, no matter how practical.

James Joyner provides a level-headed perspective to the urinating soldiers.

Vladimir Putin is a very bad egg, but he’s got “cool” down pat. Whale hunting with crossbows? It’s almost enough to make up for the plastic surgery.

Is Japan’s failure, the “lost decade” a myth? Matthew Yglesias says it is not. If Nanani is still reading, I’d love to hear her perspective.

Hasbro is suing Asus for the latter naming their tablet the Transformer. This article says that they probably don’t have a case because nobody is going to confuse a toy with a tablet. But with Verizon paying George Lucas for the Droid name, it strikes me that there is precedent. The Transformer is actually supposed to be one of the best tablets on the market.

I could have sworn that I wrote on this before - and my apologies if I have - but I can’t find it.

This post is at least partially about the new TV series, Boss. It will contain little in the way of spoilers and will also not require you to have actually seen the show.

In the beginning of the first episode, Chicago Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) is hit with what may be the worst medical diagnosis there is, something called Lewy Body. It’s a cross between Parkinson’s and Alzheimers. His body, and his mind, are betraying him. His time left as an independent, cognoscente person is perilously short. The show is about Grammer’s attempts to conceal his illness and reaffirm his political power in the face of various external and internal threats.

It’s not The Wire, but I thought it was a really good show. If I were Tom Kane, though, it would have likely been a very boring show. It would have been a show about using my last day’s to assure a stable and ordertly transition into quiet retirement. Kane, though, fights on. The only transition he tries to manage is to replace Governor Cullen (Francis Guinan) with young upstart State Treasurer Zajac (Jeff Hephner), and rather than backing down from politics, he throws himself further and further into it. The notion of backing down, or losing, never occurs to him even to the point where he does something that left me literally uttering “Oh, my god.” It becomes apparent, as the show progresses, that Kane has little or nothing to retire to. He is in a loveless marriage and he and his wife both disowned their only child in the name of political expediency. There are some attempts to reconcile with his daughter, but that’s about as personal as he gets.

The whole mentality is rather alien to me. That’s one reason why I would never have a successful career in politics.

Of course, I look back at some political figures in astonishment at the degree to which they went the opposite track. There was a young politician in Colosse, Alex Leventis, who had an astonishing career ahead of him. Some were saying that he could go on to become president. A moderate Democrat, he was thought highly of across party lines. Then, in an announcement that everyone assumed was going to be for a gubernatorial bid, Leventis announced his retirement from politics. Nobody had any idea why. Less than a decade later, Leventis was in prison.

The bizarre thing about the Leventis story is what it came to be apparent did happen to him. He fell in love with a stripper. Apparently, an avaricious one. And in an attempt to make her happy, he did things in his political office that he shouldn’t have done. He retired to go to the private sector (and so that he could marry a former stripper without cocking as many eyebrows) and made more money there until his past caught up with him. The guy that everybody loved suddenly had no friends. He’d burned his bridges with Democrats by being something of a maverick. He’d burned his bridges with Republicans by being a Democrat. The stripper left him while he was in prison.

Leventis and Kane represent opposite sides of the political spectrum. One who threw it all away for the woman that he loved and the other held on tight in part because he loved nothing but what he had.

As folks around here know, I oppose a playoff for college football. The notion that it produces the “fairest” result is far from clear when. More to the point, though, there is no perfect way to determine a champion. March Madness isn’t perfect. Major League Baseball isn’t perfect. The pursuit of perfection, often in the form of allowing more and more teams into the playoff because the 9th team is arguably just as good as the 8th, merely pushes the can down the road.

This post isn’t about playoffs. This post is about what is often behind the push for playoffs. That pursuit of perfection. A fool’s errand, as often as not. The notion that any system is going to produce the perfect result, unsullied by a freak loss here or a bad call there.

Until relatively recently, I was opposed to instant replay of any form in football. The idea being, even the instant replay people aren’t going to get it right sometimes. The typical “incontrovertible evidence” standard means that the replay booth is left to decide between whether it really looked like the ref’s call was wrong, or whether it really, really looked like the ref’s call was wrong. And sometimes they get it wrong entirely. Sometimes a pivotal call is one that can’t be reviewed. Sometimes the call on the ground is so effed up that there is no right way to do it (a fumble is confused for a forward pass, a whistle blows the play dead and the live ball is picked up with an open field for a touchdown… how do you sort that one out?). There is, of course, more fair and less fair, but the delays and such didn’t seem worth it.

My mind changed as (at least at the college level) the reviews got a lot better and, most importantly, faster. Particularly in the first half of the season. There seemed to be some backsliding towards the end of the season. But the first half of the season, as well as last season (which is when my mind was changed), demonstrated that it’s possible to correct the obvious bad ones (of which there are many) without delaying the game. My main point, though, about sometimes just accepting the bad calls as a part of the game rather than a betrayal of the game, stands… in the abstract, at least.

While I was down in Colosse, I watched a Southern Tech basketball game against (who else?) Utica. I don’t watch basketball on all that regular a basis, but it was the worst officiating I believe I have ever seen. Of course, that’s one of the fundamental differences between basketball and football. In football, there are some bad calls (even with instant replay) and they can sometimes have a powerful impact on the game. You can debate it, discuss it, pick it apart. But basketball? It comes down to 100,000 ref calls throughout the game. And there can’t be anything like instant replay. And a whole lot of them are in gray areas and all of them are in realtime. In a lopsided game, there isn’t much the refs can do to affect the outcome, but if it is at all close, the best you can hope for is that the refs screw up equally.

And that’s okay. It, like at least some crummy officiating in football, is built into the game.

To get back to playoffs, when I think of March Madness, whatever problems I have with it from a fairness standpoint, I don’t think anything it does even remotely compares to the arbitrariness of the referees. A reason for me to prefer football, perhaps, though in the end it’s as much about the excitement of the games as it is about a true contest of superiority.

And that’s yet another reason why the LSU-Alabama rematch sucked.

Is lego evil or just highly problematic? I can’t speak to the sexism, but I find the product tie-in model to be agitating. This is kind of cool, though.

People remain in prison for a crime we are still trying to figure out if it’s possible.

Nine stubborn truths about the brain that just won’t die.

One gallon of gasoline can power an iPhone for 20 years.

A critical look at anti-Jitney laws.

Is dynamic parking pricing not working?

Are biased refs good business? It’s common in wrestling entertainment for some local hero to win the title belt for the hometown crowd only to lose it again in short order.

I think this MIT program is awesome. Not only online courses, but certificates!

I got my auto registration for my Forester, Nader, and was in for a shock: It’s $325! Now, that won’t impress you Californians out there, but considering we just recently paid less than a third of that on my wife’s car, Ninjette, it was an unpleasant surprise. It was hefty last time for Nader, but I figured that was due to the fact it was a new car registration. It turns out that the state is engaging in affluence-discrimination. A form of progressive taxation under the idea that if you can afford a newish car (less than five years old) you must be fishin’ loaded. My inner conservative is outraged as this is yet another way our increased income is being chipped away at. My inner liberal points out that my paying $225 to the state ($100 is local) allows someone barely getting by on a clunker* to pay $30 (and less on the county, though I can’t find the exact number). Intellectually, the liberal wins. The conservative hasn’t calmed down yet.

Anyway, I hadn’t heard of this before. I thought three-digit registration was something that only blue coastal states did.

* – Ironically, this puts us in both categories, since my car is relatively new and my wife’s is almost old enough to get its own drivers license.

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When I got back to the airport in Deseret, I was happy to see that Nader was dirty as all getout. (I was not so happy that Nader’s battery was dead.) I feel like a bad Subaru owner when Nader is clean. Go to a Subaru dealership, and the pictures they have all over the walls are not of a clean car, but a picture of the dirtiest one they can find. In-keeping with the image and all that. I don’t exactly go offroading. I wouldn’t let it get dirty just to assuage my insecurities, but the below-freezing weather has made a carwash a bad idea. So, for now anyway, I feel like a proper Subaru owner.

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At Ataturk’s, a guy roled up in a Subaru Forester of the same color as mine. My first thought was “Hey, cool.”

My second thought was “You don’t see many of those down here.”

My third thought was “Why the hell would anybody down here by a Subaru?”

We bought ours strictly for climate reasons. Otherwise, no reason to care about the AWD. And without caring about the AWD, some of the competing cars are competitively priced. We probably would have gone with one of those.

Larry Downes got a lot of publicity with a screed against Best Buy, declaring its imminent demise:

To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.

I admit. I can’t do it. A few days ago, I visited a Best Buy store in Pinole, CA with a friend. He’s a devoted consumer electronics and media shopper, and wanted to buy the 3D blu ray of “How to Train Your Dragon,” which Best Buy sells exclusively. According to the company’s website, it’s backordered but available for pickup at the store we visited. The item wasn’t there, however, and the sales staff had no information.

But my friend decided to buy some other blu-ray discs. Or at least he tried to, until we were “assisted” by a young, poorly groomed sales clerk from the TV department, who wandered over to interrogate us. What kind of TV do you have? Do you have a cable service, or a satellite service? Do you have a triple play service plan?

He was clearly—and clumsily–trying to sell some alternative. (My guess is CinemaNow, Best Buy’s private label on-demand content service.) My friend politely but firmly told him he was not interested in switching his service from Comcast. I tried to change the subject by asking if there was a separate bin for 3D blu rays; he didn’t know.

The used car style questions continued. “I have just one last question for you,” he finally said to my friend. “How much do you pay Comcast every month?”

My friend is too polite. “How is that any of your business?” I asked him. “All right then,” he said, the fake smile unaffected, “You folks have a nice day.” He slinked back to his pit.

Best Buy is on my blacklist of companies. They’re one of the Evil Corporations. I’m not a fan. I shop there sometimes, but only because I need to and there is no Fry’s around. What’s funny about this, though, is that the one thing Best Buy always did so much better than Circuit City is that they didn’t have the overly aggressive salespeople. I could shop in piece. And honestly, I can’t remember a problem even on more recent trips. So I don’t know if they changed their business practices from when I went there all the time (and the few times I’ve been recently I lucked out) or whether I just come with a “Don’t tread on me” demeanor.

His follow-up suggests that his experiences are not unique.

I also heard from plenty of current Best Buy employees, both via Forbes and through private emails. Best Buy has a strong sales culture at the stores, and some employees took the article personally. I called out some of their (non-obscene) comments on the original post, in part because I think they inadvertently highlight what’s wrong with the company’s current strategy.

Employees, I learned, are strongly conditioned to see every customer who walks in the store as a potential target, one who needs to be coerced into buying something other than what they came looking for.

But you can’t treat the customer as an adversary in a battle of wills. You can’t provide superior service when you’ve been drilled to view each person who walks into your store as prey. You can’t be a trusted source of expertise on consumer electronics when, as many former employees told me, failure to follow the company script means getting your hours cut or simply being fired.

A shame, if true. Since I consider Best Buy to be an Evil Corporation, I won’t mind if they go. I hope it provides an opportunity for Fry’s to expand. Fry’s has a bit of a different business model, with more of a bookstorish emphasis on “kick back, relax, have some coffee!” Of course, bookstores themselves are alleged to be in trouble. So Fry’s might choose to play it safe (one of Borders alleged mishaps was overexpansion, if I recall).

Is the Toyota Camry getting knocked off its perch?

A case against the case against payday loans. More.

A self-publishing success story, marked for future inspiration.

What our taste in music says about us. Or “why I tended not to mention my appreciation of country music in my old online matchsite profiles.”

I was torn between whether I should buy this immediately or wait until I needed a nite-lite. But it sold out. They Might Be Giants needs to get on top of this and offer a genuine TMBG one.

Why conservatives and libertarians hate urbanists. Here is a potential area of common ground.

As far as the “distracted driver” phenomenon is a problem, portable electronics are only a small part of the problem. Also, the NTSB may be misleading the public.

How the characters from Lost make a peanut butter sandwich.

A look at dishonesty and intellectual dishonesty.

The shocking truth about office Christmas parties and infidelity.

So the iPod is apparently destroying ears. Ha! I don’t have an iPod! Wait… “and other audio devices”? Crap. Well, I only listen to the audio in my right ear. So I guess my left is good!

The dynamics of predicted attractedness:

The researchers asked each of their subjects to rate their own attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 7. The students then had three-minute one-on-one conversations with five members of the opposite sex, a setup the scientists describe as “speed meeting.” (The goal wasn’t to get a date, because some of the participants already were involved with people outside the study.) After each conversation, they rated the other person’s attractiveness and sexual interest.
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The more attractive the woman was to the guy, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him, researchers found. And it turns out, the less attractive men (who believed they were better looking than the women rated them) were more likely to think beautiful women were hot for them. But the more attractive guys tended to have a more realistic assessment.

And the women? Perilloux and her coauthors found that women underestimated men’s sexual interest.

This doesn’t actually surprise me much in any event. It punctures part of the ideology that women have a higher estimation of their romantic prospects because they conflate sleeping with a man with the same sort of romantic possibility as entering a monogamous relationship with them.

But beyond that, the fact that less attractive men have “higher standards” is unsurprising not only by reading Roissy’s peanut gallery, but also from my own experience. Less attractive men tend to have less romantic experience. It’s through romantic experiences that we figure out where exactly we stand in the pecking order. I know that before I actually started dating, I had an inflated idea of what the possibilities were if I could just get from Point A to Point B. As I started getting more and more exposure to women, I started learning where I fit into things. This was a positive development and not just because I “lowered my standards.” It meant, among other things, that I started actually noticing my female counterparts.

For guys, that’s a big part of things. Hit Coffee friend Bob commented that unattractive women are, to men, background furniture. We see attractive women on TV; we notice the attractive women around us. We get a misguided sense of what “normal” is. And, along with the male tendency to view ourselves as normal, associate ourselves with women that are out of our league if we are not careful. I had every incentive not to do this, did not at all do this consciously, but it ended up happening anyway. Of course, I finally determined “my place” shortly before I lost weight, and then when I lost weight (and became more socially acclimated), my self-perception didn’t change with it. So it can absolutely work in reverse and we can become more female-like in our self-assessments.

Missing from all of this, of course, are the non-physical attributes of dateability. We tend to take for granted that men are physically-obsessed. Some men assume too much that women don’t care about looks (it’s all about “status” or alphahood or something else). Other men, though, tend to view all relationships the same way that we view women. Or, perhaps more accurately, the way we think we view women. The way that guys without romantic opportunities often do (because they don’t understand the difference between a plain or chubby girl we actually get along with and an attractive woman that we don’t). So, for instance, when we get rejected, we often think that it’s because the woman is acting on the basis that they are better than us rather than that they don’t see compatibility. This is especially the case among guys with scant dating experience. I remember when I asked out and was rejected by a chubby girl that I only asked out because I thought we were in the same ballpark (we were close). But we weren’t in the same place at all. That she was socially “better” than me was true, actually, but even if you overlook that, you still had an overall lack of compatibility. Along these lines, if nothing else:

I remember Eva saying that she and a previous boyfriend were having a hard time relating to one another because he was super-popular in school and she wasn’t. It sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Yet I am not sure it is.

There is also the issue of aspirational dating, wherein we try to define who we are by who we are with. The notion that being with an attractive woman means that we are inherently more attractive. The same goes to a lesser extent with popularity. Even with cliches. I had an attraction to flighty, gregarious sorts. In part it was a response to my discomfort with my more quiet, introspective manner. But when I was left to actually spend time with one, I discovered that even in the best of circumstances it was kind of hard to actually get along. Of course, I am not an “opposites attract” sort of person, on the whole. And sometimes it clearly does work. But whether it works or not, I think there is the tendency, among guys and girls, to sort of see ourselves in the person we are with. For less attractive or popular guys (in particular) and less attractive or popular girls (to a degree), I think it often results a repulsion for our “equals” if it means conceding where we are in the pecking order. This, combined with the overall lack of experience and increased likelihood of social isolation, contributes significantly to the inflated sense of attractiveness by guys.

But not so much for girls. I wonder why that is? I think that, to some extent, it is related to overall relationship dynamics. The guy is expected to ask the girl out. Therefore, if a guy does not regularly ask girls out, he is more free to dream of where he might be if he did. On the other side of the table, a girl who is not asked out is more likely to be confronted with where she happens to be. She might be able to get one night stands, but I don’t think she is likely to conflate that into something more the same way that a lot of guys do. The burden of doing the asking falls to the guys, but it also gives guys a greater sense of self-control. And the ability to tell themselves that they could do better than they can, if they would only press it (or figure out how).

One of the shows on the new Fall TV season I am enjoying is Person of Interest. The premise is the show is that Michael Emerson (Ben Linas from LOST) developed a comprehensive surveillance/intelligence for the government. For fear of it being found out, the government shows remarkable restraint and doesn’t act on the information the system puts together unless it’s very large-scale. It can, among other things, figure out when murders are about to happen. Emerson hires a former secret agent man (James Cavaziel, aka Jesus) to stop these crimes. In order for the government not to know he hacked the system, all they have to go on is a social security number. The SSN may belong to a victim or a perpetrator. They don’t really know.

It sounds absurd and, of course, is. But it tickles my imagination. The notion that you could capture and decipher so much information. You can’t, of course, but… again, it tickles my imagination. You see some things from the cameras’ point of view, where it’s essentially watching and identifying and listening in on people all day. Then the computers go to work figuring out what’s important. Reading the tea leaves.

Such a system would, of course, be terrifying. Because, of course, the government wouldn’t show that kind of restraint. Or discipline. The temptation would be too great. In addition to the War on Terror, we have a War on Drugs, right? So we should use it there, too. And child porn! And porn! And sex crimes! But from the point of view of an administrator…

Anyhow, I was totally reminded of all of this when I read about google goggles. Can you imagine wearing these things while driving? Or trying to drive?

http://gizmodo.com/5869614/will-real+life-google-goggles-replace-your-dorky-eyeglasses