Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Cenk Uygur: Blood On Our Hands
Cenk Uygur writes Blood On Our Hands in The Huffington Post. After showing pictures of dead children he writes:
"The whole world called for a cease fire so there wouldn't be more civilian deaths. Except the United States -- we said keep on bombing. There were already over 400 dead civilians. No one was under the illusion that Israel wasn't killing civilians, predominantly civilians. But still we gave the green light. Keep killing."
I wanted to quote more but I realized it would be the last 7 paragraphs. Just go there and read it.
"The whole world called for a cease fire so there wouldn't be more civilian deaths. Except the United States -- we said keep on bombing. There were already over 400 dead civilians. No one was under the illusion that Israel wasn't killing civilians, predominantly civilians. But still we gave the green light. Keep killing."
I wanted to quote more but I realized it would be the last 7 paragraphs. Just go there and read it.
Castro Not Dead Yet
Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his younger brother Raul, 75, to undergo surgery.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Proof Medicare Drug Coverage was too Complicated
The new Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage plan was supposed to help seniors or or the Republicans pander to drug companies depending on who you listen to. It was widely criticized as having too many plans and being too complicated. Now we have proof that's true. See some of the plans had a gap in coverage called a donut.
Your first x amount spent on prescription drugs was (partly) covered by the plan. Your next y amount was not covered, you had to pay all of it. And then your next z amount was (partly) covered again. So if you had small drug bills you were fine and if you had medium drug bills you had to pay more and if you had huge drug bills you had most of it covered but payed a portion of it yourself.
Now of course this might be difficult to explain to your grandmother. It was all spelled out in the plans but it seems people are starting to hit the donut and are complaining. "They have just learned that their Medicare drug plans are maxing out on early coverage and that they must now spend $2,850 from their own pockets before coverage will resume."
So here's the part that's the proof the plan was too complicated. "According to a report by the Campaign for America's Future, a Washington-based advocacy organization, seniors enrolled in the program at the start of the year will, on average, reach the doughnut hole Sept. 22." There's no way a politician would would structure a new entitlement to piss off millions of seniors a month before elections. This must mean the politicians voting for these plans didn't understand them.
Your first x amount spent on prescription drugs was (partly) covered by the plan. Your next y amount was not covered, you had to pay all of it. And then your next z amount was (partly) covered again. So if you had small drug bills you were fine and if you had medium drug bills you had to pay more and if you had huge drug bills you had most of it covered but payed a portion of it yourself.
Now of course this might be difficult to explain to your grandmother. It was all spelled out in the plans but it seems people are starting to hit the donut and are complaining. "They have just learned that their Medicare drug plans are maxing out on early coverage and that they must now spend $2,850 from their own pockets before coverage will resume."
So here's the part that's the proof the plan was too complicated. "According to a report by the Campaign for America's Future, a Washington-based advocacy organization, seniors enrolled in the program at the start of the year will, on average, reach the doughnut hole Sept. 22." There's no way a politician would would structure a new entitlement to piss off millions of seniors a month before elections. This must mean the politicians voting for these plans didn't understand them.
FSM Hate Mail
I happen to like the Flying Spaghetti Monster though I didn't realize there's now a book on it. I am amazed at this collection of hate mail it apparently generated. How can people be so stupid?
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Kennedy on Roberts and Alito
Ted Kennedy (R-MA) wrote what I think is an op-ed in the Washington Post today called Roberts and Alito Misled Us. And he wrote about it again in the Huffington Post. His point is that these two really are strong conservative ideologues, now with lifetime appointments, and more so that we need to reform the confirmation process.
Kennedy points out that Roberts and Alito voted together 91% of the time but leaves out that Roberts voted only 82% of the time with Thomas and 86% of the time with Scalia while Stevens and Souter voted together 83% and Ginsberg and Souter have voted together 86% of the time over the last 10 years.
The point that nominees should have to answer judicial philosophy questions is a good one. I just think it would be better made by someone who wasn't a political ideologue who's been in the Senate for a lifetime. There are ideologues on both sides. Political issues are decided by which side has 51% of elected officials and not by compromise. Roberts does seems to be trying to have narrower decisions that bring more consensus. Kennedy left out that 38% of the cases were decided unanimously which while just a little above the average of last 10 years (36%) it's considerably more than the 30% from last year or the 28% from the year before.
Kennedy points out that Roberts and Alito voted together 91% of the time but leaves out that Roberts voted only 82% of the time with Thomas and 86% of the time with Scalia while Stevens and Souter voted together 83% and Ginsberg and Souter have voted together 86% of the time over the last 10 years.
The point that nominees should have to answer judicial philosophy questions is a good one. I just think it would be better made by someone who wasn't a political ideologue who's been in the Senate for a lifetime. There are ideologues on both sides. Political issues are decided by which side has 51% of elected officials and not by compromise. Roberts does seems to be trying to have narrower decisions that bring more consensus. Kennedy left out that 38% of the cases were decided unanimously which while just a little above the average of last 10 years (36%) it's considerably more than the 30% from last year or the 28% from the year before.
Steely Dan Wilson
Steely Dan has written an Open letter to Luke Wilson wherein they accuse Owen Wilson's latest movie You, Me and Dupree of being a ripoff of their 2000 song Cousin Dupree, which I would have thought no one had heard of but apparently it won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Book Review: Beautiful Evidence
I was greatly looking forward to Edward Tufte's fourth book Beautiful Evidence but after reading it I was a bit disappointed. I found it very repetitive of his previous books including the examples.
The first chapter was 30 pages long and covered Mapped Images, "representational images with scales, diagrams, overlays, numbers, words, images." It was lots of examples, so much so I was worried that it was just examples and would leave us to parse out the lessons, but he pulled through in the end and even summarize four lessons at the end of the chapter.
The second chapter was on Sparklines. These are small, graphs that fit into sentences as if they are words. They are good at showing showing trends in a small space and highlighting a few points. Examples are sports records, stock performance, and medical info. He ended the chapter with info on how to scale, color and format them in much more detail than he usually does which was nice. It's a cool concept and it's easy to see it's evolution from Galileo's description of seeing Saturn the first time and Tufte's previous medical charts. These have been discussed on Tufte's website for several years and there are some fonts to help you create these in current software apps. As a result it felt a little stale to me and they probably aren't something I'll use in the near future. If they're new for you, you should enjoy this chapter.
Chapter three was on diagrams with arrows. There were two diagrams showing the relationships between various artists and art movements. They were very good as was their description. However, other examples weren't so good. I didn't get the point of the horse drawing at all. Galileo's drawing while quite involved had no information about what it was and no translation, even the title. For someone who's usually so involved in explaining the actual data presented in the example, I had none of that here, all I could do was appreciate the pretty picture. While Feynman diagrams are incredibly useful to physicists, there's no way reading this book you could understand them. Then again there's no way to include enough description to explain them, so maybe they weren't a good example.
Tufte worships Galileo, in Chapter four he reproduces the same two pages from a Galileo book, not once or twice, but three times. In just four continuous pages! Fine, but on page 100 he goes too far when he starts commenting on how Galileo's printed stars show through to the opposite side of page. He says "The raking light and consequent shadows are similar to, say, the paly of sunlight on lunar mountains." Oh please. But I was happy to see his idolatry didn't stop him from offering improvements on Galileo's designs. He then went on to Issac Newton. I didn't think this added much and the 1.5 pages detailing "the dreary history of text/image segregation for the 23 editions in 5 languages of Newton's Opticks published since 1704" was exhaustive and unnecessary to make the point that images and descriptions should be closely located. He quickly moved to recent times and a 1 page graphic on "Spotting a hidden handgun" was gorgeous almost made me forget the rest.
Chapter five covers the six Fundamental principals of analytic design. The information presented is very good. As an example he uses the classic chart of Napolean's march on russia by Charles Joseph Minard. Anyone who knows Tufte knows this chart which in his first book he described as "It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn." It's reprinted five times in this chapter in it's entirety and various parts of it are also reprinted several more times over 13 pages. I agree with part of this, it means the reader doesn't have to turn back to previous pages to follow the narrative, but I've seen this so many times before I knew it by heart. It would have been better with a different example. I also thought that if the fold out version had another page and was printed on the back, I could refer to it while reading the following pages.
In spite of the name Beautiful Evidence, Tufte spends 45 pages showing ugly evidence. That's almost a quarter of the book's 200 pages. Chapter six is 16 pages of good examples of the ways people lie in presenting evidence. He coins a new word for this: economisting. Chapter seven is a 30 page compelling rant against PowerPoint. It's an expanded form of a pamphlet he previous released (which I own). The mock PowerPoint presentation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is hysterical. All of the examples were far worse than presentations I've seen and I believe I've seen many presentations that were helped by PowerPoint. Tufte says these are maybe 10% of all presentations, which struck me as an example of economisting. Trying to convincing the world to stop using PowerPoint is bold, perhaps impossibly so, but I've previously read this in his pamphlet and heard it at a lecture of his 10 years ago.
Chapter Eight I found rather inexplicable. It's 24 pages of sculptures and how they are displayed, particularly how large abstract landscape sculptures are mounted. Ok, most of them are sculptures by Tufte, but I found it rather self-indulgent.
The book certainly has some very good parts, but as it's his fourth book and drew on materials published on his site, I was disappointed by it.
The first chapter was 30 pages long and covered Mapped Images, "representational images with scales, diagrams, overlays, numbers, words, images." It was lots of examples, so much so I was worried that it was just examples and would leave us to parse out the lessons, but he pulled through in the end and even summarize four lessons at the end of the chapter.
The second chapter was on Sparklines. These are small, graphs that fit into sentences as if they are words. They are good at showing showing trends in a small space and highlighting a few points. Examples are sports records, stock performance, and medical info. He ended the chapter with info on how to scale, color and format them in much more detail than he usually does which was nice. It's a cool concept and it's easy to see it's evolution from Galileo's description of seeing Saturn the first time and Tufte's previous medical charts. These have been discussed on Tufte's website for several years and there are some fonts to help you create these in current software apps. As a result it felt a little stale to me and they probably aren't something I'll use in the near future. If they're new for you, you should enjoy this chapter.
Chapter three was on diagrams with arrows. There were two diagrams showing the relationships between various artists and art movements. They were very good as was their description. However, other examples weren't so good. I didn't get the point of the horse drawing at all. Galileo's drawing while quite involved had no information about what it was and no translation, even the title. For someone who's usually so involved in explaining the actual data presented in the example, I had none of that here, all I could do was appreciate the pretty picture. While Feynman diagrams are incredibly useful to physicists, there's no way reading this book you could understand them. Then again there's no way to include enough description to explain them, so maybe they weren't a good example.
Tufte worships Galileo, in Chapter four he reproduces the same two pages from a Galileo book, not once or twice, but three times. In just four continuous pages! Fine, but on page 100 he goes too far when he starts commenting on how Galileo's printed stars show through to the opposite side of page. He says "The raking light and consequent shadows are similar to, say, the paly of sunlight on lunar mountains." Oh please. But I was happy to see his idolatry didn't stop him from offering improvements on Galileo's designs. He then went on to Issac Newton. I didn't think this added much and the 1.5 pages detailing "the dreary history of text/image segregation for the 23 editions in 5 languages of Newton's Opticks published since 1704" was exhaustive and unnecessary to make the point that images and descriptions should be closely located. He quickly moved to recent times and a 1 page graphic on "Spotting a hidden handgun" was gorgeous almost made me forget the rest.
Chapter five covers the six Fundamental principals of analytic design. The information presented is very good. As an example he uses the classic chart of Napolean's march on russia by Charles Joseph Minard. Anyone who knows Tufte knows this chart which in his first book he described as "It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn." It's reprinted five times in this chapter in it's entirety and various parts of it are also reprinted several more times over 13 pages. I agree with part of this, it means the reader doesn't have to turn back to previous pages to follow the narrative, but I've seen this so many times before I knew it by heart. It would have been better with a different example. I also thought that if the fold out version had another page and was printed on the back, I could refer to it while reading the following pages.
In spite of the name Beautiful Evidence, Tufte spends 45 pages showing ugly evidence. That's almost a quarter of the book's 200 pages. Chapter six is 16 pages of good examples of the ways people lie in presenting evidence. He coins a new word for this: economisting. Chapter seven is a 30 page compelling rant against PowerPoint. It's an expanded form of a pamphlet he previous released (which I own). The mock PowerPoint presentation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is hysterical. All of the examples were far worse than presentations I've seen and I believe I've seen many presentations that were helped by PowerPoint. Tufte says these are maybe 10% of all presentations, which struck me as an example of economisting. Trying to convincing the world to stop using PowerPoint is bold, perhaps impossibly so, but I've previously read this in his pamphlet and heard it at a lecture of his 10 years ago.
Chapter Eight I found rather inexplicable. It's 24 pages of sculptures and how they are displayed, particularly how large abstract landscape sculptures are mounted. Ok, most of them are sculptures by Tufte, but I found it rather self-indulgent.
The book certainly has some very good parts, but as it's his fourth book and drew on materials published on his site, I was disappointed by it.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Rational Voices
Cenk Uygur has a really good article at The Huffington Post called We Were Right. In spite of the sound of the title it's actually not an I told you so. "We shouldn't be proud because things went poorly, as we feared and suspected. We should be proud that we tried to get people to change direction even when it was most unpopular."
He includes an apology from conservative talk radio host Doug McIntyre which is very much worth a read.
Uygur ends by saying that our policy of pre-emptive strike is now being seen in Israel and possibly by Turkey. Our go it alone attitude is translated as "When in doubt, invade" which isn't really much of a translation from Cheney's 1% solution. He points out that Israel shouldn't invade because "It will only push Lebanon further towards the extremists." and instead of attacking Iran we should "Fight against the culture of fundamentalism through persuasion, free markets and education." Oh, and we should still be going after bin Laden.
He includes an apology from conservative talk radio host Doug McIntyre which is very much worth a read.
Uygur ends by saying that our policy of pre-emptive strike is now being seen in Israel and possibly by Turkey. Our go it alone attitude is translated as "When in doubt, invade" which isn't really much of a translation from Cheney's 1% solution. He points out that Israel shouldn't invade because "It will only push Lebanon further towards the extremists." and instead of attacking Iran we should "Fight against the culture of fundamentalism through persuasion, free markets and education." Oh, and we should still be going after bin Laden.
Arms Sales
The New York Times reports U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis. No surprise, we supply arms to the Israelis and Iran supplies Hezbollah. Maybe this is the just the preview of what's to come. Oh and we also sold $6 billion of arms to Saudi Arabia so that the Arabs don't think we're just on Israel's side.
I know this is naive, but would the region be less crazy if we didn't supply both sides with the means the kill each other? Go see Why We Fight. What if built them schools and gave them good history textbooks. I know, where would we get those from?
I know this is naive, but would the region be less crazy if we didn't supply both sides with the means the kill each other? Go see Why We Fight. What if built them schools and gave them good history textbooks. I know, where would we get those from?
Friday, July 21, 2006
Bush and Budgeting, Violates Law
Thing Progress reports on how rep Chris Shays (R-CT) is unhappy that Bush Refuses To Estimate Future Costs of Iraq War It's a little more important than having one (Republican) House member upset. It seems there's a 2005 law requiring the President to provide Congress a report detailing estimated costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The director of the OMB says the pentagon can't provide an estimate because there are too many variables. It would be difficult to do so if you don't have a plan.
I've long been annoyed that Bush's submitted federal budgets don't include the cost of the war. But this is getting ridiculous.
I've long been annoyed that Bush's submitted federal budgets don't include the cost of the war. But this is getting ridiculous.
You're Doing a Heckuva Job, Maggie
So apparently the Secretary of Education is also useless. This Daily Kos article seems to get it pretty right and has good pointers. In short the Secretary of Education went to Congress asking for $100 million for a school voucher program. The problem is, 4 days prior her Department published a study showing there wasn't an appreciable difference in test scores of public v private school students.
Comic blog from Beruit
Mazen Kerbaj is a musician and comic author in Beruit. He started blogging his daily experiences and thoughts in comic form. Many of the images come from his flickr photostream but it's not exactly the same as whats in the blog. Interesting stuff.
Rest in Peace
A friend of mine lost a 3.5 year battle to colon cancer last night. Bjarne was an amazing person. Everyone who knew him called him an inspiration. This is proof the world isn't fair.
Bush Blocks Investigation into NSA
On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Bush himself decided not to grant clearance to the Justice Department officials investigating the NSA Domestic Spying program. The Office of Professional Responsibility was conducting the investigation and in 31 years has never been denied clearance.
The Washington Post has good coverage including video. Dan Froomkin has very complete coverage in Cover-Up Exposed?.
At least the related AT&T lawsuit is going forward.
The Washington Post has good coverage including video. Dan Froomkin has very complete coverage in Cover-Up Exposed?.
At least the related AT&T lawsuit is going forward.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Human Space Invaders
In all the time I've spent at a movie theater (and playing Space Invaders) I've never thought to do this. 67 people are the pixes in this 3 min film which took 4 hours to make.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Bush's Open Mic
So there's this whole Bush open mic thing that happened. At the G8 summit while talking with Tony Blair, they didn't realize their mics were on. It wasn't really as big a deal as it might have been. Here is a transcript of what they said. To me the bigger thing was why our press coverage sucked so much. Here's what The Independent had to say about it. At least we have blogs, here's a good one on it.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
The Missing Architects of War
Arianna Huffington asks Where Have All the Architects of War Gone? She follows up on Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith.
Taking Stevens Seriously
Here's Ed Felten's attempt at Taking Stevens Seriously in his blog Freedom to Tinker. Even if you substitute the right words in there, the argument he tried to make is still pretty weak (but not as horrible as most make it out to be). I still think it would be nice if the people making the laws really understood what they were legislating about.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The Shipping News
The June 17th issue of the Economist had a special report on Logistics. Special Reports are most always interesting but make it even harder to finish an issue in a week. I'm about a month behind which is about par.
Logistics is the modern word for shipping and supply chain management fits in there too. This paragraph really surprised me:
Here's another crazy fact. The world's biggest distributor of fresh lobsters is in Lousiville, KY. And it's not just a headquarters, it's actually a hub that the lobsters are shipped to and then shipped out.
Logistics is the modern word for shipping and supply chain management fits in there too. This paragraph really surprised me:
The range of logistics businesses the express operators are moving into is huge. One service offered by UPS's local branches is a drop-off facility for broken Toshiba laptops. Most owners think that when they have told Toshiba about their problem and put their laptop into a UPS box, it is sent to the Japanese company to be repaired and then returned by UPS. But what really happens is that when the laptop arrives at UPS's Louisville hub, it is taken to a vast estate of warehouses near the airport and mended in a repair shop owned and run not by Toshiba but by UPS. The UPS technicians are trained by Toshiba and the warehouse holds Toshiba spare parts. Even the people in the Toshiba call-centre that deal with inquires work for UPS. The delivery company has been contracted to provide a complete repair and customer-service-operation. And having done this for one company, UPS could capitalise on its investment by proding a similar service for others.
Here's another crazy fact. The world's biggest distributor of fresh lobsters is in Lousiville, KY. And it's not just a headquarters, it's actually a hub that the lobsters are shipped to and then shipped out.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Bush Kinda Inflating Deficit Progress
Brad DeLong is an Economist at U.C. Berkeley and I like his blog and videocasts. called Morning Coffee. In today's episode he points out that "For the fourth year in a row, the administration's January deficit forecasts are at the highest end of the range of forecasts--and sure enough, the actual deficit comes in lower. Which allows for press conferences by Bushies touting 'progress' on reducing the deficit." Yes it was lower than expected but only by $60 billion not the $120 billion Bush is saying. And he cites the press corps as falling for it. "Why does the White House mislead us all the time about everything it can? Well it does so because the press corps lets them get away with it."
FYI, while I appreciate trying to advance the media, I think videocasts have a way to go. First off it's distracting to see his eyes go back and forth between the camera and the text he's reading. Also I'm tired of waiting for large download when this would have been trivial if it was a text (or even HTML) article.
FYI, while I appreciate trying to advance the media, I think videocasts have a way to go. First off it's distracting to see his eyes go back and forth between the camera and the text he's reading. Also I'm tired of waiting for large download when this would have been trivial if it was a text (or even HTML) article.
9/11 Profiteering
Here's a blog post pointing to a WSJ article that says that when the markets reopened after 9/11 some companies gave their executives option grants. Now in and of itself that's not a problem, but this is. See after 9/11 the market fell a lot, 14% over 5 days. The value of options for a public company is based on the current price. If the current price is low, the option costs less. Since the option can last for years, if the price climbs big profits result.
The WSJ found that many companies that don't normally issue options in September did so in 2001 and that the "grants were concentrated around Sept. 21, when the market reached its post-attack low". 511 top executives at 186 companies (including Home Depot, Merrill Lynch, and T. Rowe Price) got option grants in the second half of September 2001. The disgusting part is that these folks could have bought stock on the open market at depressed prices which would have helped bolster the market and the economy. "In 1929, when the stock market crashed, JP Morgan (and others) stepped in. They bought stock with their own dollars, they saved Wall Street." Instead these guys were just greedy.
The WSJ found that many companies that don't normally issue options in September did so in 2001 and that the "grants were concentrated around Sept. 21, when the market reached its post-attack low". 511 top executives at 186 companies (including Home Depot, Merrill Lynch, and T. Rowe Price) got option grants in the second half of September 2001. The disgusting part is that these folks could have bought stock on the open market at depressed prices which would have helped bolster the market and the economy. "In 1929, when the stock market crashed, JP Morgan (and others) stepped in. They bought stock with their own dollars, they saved Wall Street." Instead these guys were just greedy.
Understanding Israel/Lebanon
Here's an interesting interview with Mark Perry, co-director of the Conflicts Forum which I've never heard of but seems to be an NGO trying actual diplomacy in the middle east.
"There are five major political movements in the Middle East: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And we [the U.S. government] don’t talk to any of them. How can we possibly have any leverage diplomatically to end the current conflict when the only party we talk to is Israel?"
"There are five major political movements in the Middle East: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And we [the U.S. government] don’t talk to any of them. How can we possibly have any leverage diplomatically to end the current conflict when the only party we talk to is Israel?"
Friday, July 14, 2006
Men Obsolete
According to research published in the journal Developmental Cell women can make sperm. "Scientists in England have turned stem cells from am embryo into sperm which are capable of producing offspring." Maybe this is why the right is afraid of stem cell research.
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