I finally got around to reading Clay Shirky's excellent article, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. He compares the current change in newspapers due to the web with the advent of the printing press and describes things about that process you probably didn't know.
"The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several. One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open internet. Another plan was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, they could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: sue copyright infringers directly, making an example of them."
"Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke. With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem."
"That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify."
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Dan Kalikows Favorite Graph
Dan Kalikow describes his Favorite Graph in five parts, Part 1/5, My Favorite Graph: at the Equator.
"About 30 or 40 years back, I saw this graph in 'Sky & Telescope' magazine (see link at [1] below). I don't recall its author. I loved it and hung it on my office wall. It turned up again behind a bookcase a couple months ago, and I was so glad to renew acquaintances with it. For me, it has remained simply the most beautiful, the most chock-full of information graph ever, and that includes Minard's stunning multidimensional map/graph of Napoleon's March to Russia)"
"About 30 or 40 years back, I saw this graph in 'Sky & Telescope' magazine (see link at [1] below). I don't recall its author. I loved it and hung it on my office wall. It turned up again behind a bookcase a couple months ago, and I was so glad to renew acquaintances with it. For me, it has remained simply the most beautiful, the most chock-full of information graph ever, and that includes Minard's stunning multidimensional map/graph of Napoleon's March to Russia)"
Starbucks to Offer New Strategy Blend
The Wall Street Journal reports Starbucks to Offer New Strategy Blend "A broad series of changes at Starbucks Corp., from instant coffee to new menu boards that leave off drink prices, show how Starbucks is adjusting its upscale formula to the economic downturn."
"In the past month, Starbucks has entered the instant-coffee market with a version called Via that the company bills as offering a cup of Starbucks coffee for less than $1. It also has introduced pairings of breakfast sandwiches and drinks priced at $3.95, or about $1 less than when bought individually."
Offering bonus combos makes sense, leaving prices off your menu is just wrong.
"In the past month, Starbucks has entered the instant-coffee market with a version called Via that the company bills as offering a cup of Starbucks coffee for less than $1. It also has introduced pairings of breakfast sandwiches and drinks priced at $3.95, or about $1 less than when bought individually."
Offering bonus combos makes sense, leaving prices off your menu is just wrong.
Best Sandwiches in America?
Slashfood Readers Pick the Best Sandwiches in America. I've had numbers 1, 39, and 46.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Reinventing the Presidency
January's Atlantic had an article The Founders’ Great Mistake that comments on some problems with how the executive branch works (or doesn't work) and suggests some solutions. Interesting read.
"Who is responsible for the past eight years of dismal American governance? ‘George W. Bush’ is a decent answer. But we should reserve some blame for the Founding Fathers, who created a presidential office that is ill-considered, vaguely defined, and ripe for abuse. Here’s how to fix what the Founders got wrong—before the next G. W. Bush enters the Oval Office."
"Who is responsible for the past eight years of dismal American governance? ‘George W. Bush’ is a decent answer. But we should reserve some blame for the Founding Fathers, who created a presidential office that is ill-considered, vaguely defined, and ripe for abuse. Here’s how to fix what the Founders got wrong—before the next G. W. Bush enters the Oval Office."
No It's Not Fixed Yet
I like this post by Kevin Drum last week: Fixing the Economy "So, yeah, in public he appears to be dithering. And the rock jawed titans of Wall Street are doing the same thing they always do when things aren't quite going their way: they weep and moan and panic. It's quite a spectacle. But honestly, this is something that's going to take months to address at a minimum. That's just the way it is. Going into a panic because we're well into his seventh week and Obama hasn't cured the economy is silly."
Saturday, March 14, 2009
More Proof Quantum Mechanics is Spooky
I hope someone can explain this to me. The Economist wrote Quantum physics and reality, I'm not looking, honest! and Science News wrote 'Spooky Action At A Distance' Of Quantum Mechanics Directly Observed.
if a particle and anti-particle collide, they annihilate each other. Hardy's paradox is that they might not if the interaction isn't observed. Basically if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, did it really fall?
"This week Kazuhiro Yokota of Osaka University in Japan and his colleagues demonstrated that Hardy’s paradox is, in fact, correct. They report their work in the New Journal of Physics. The experiment represents independent confirmation of a similar demonstration by Jeff Lundeen and Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto, which was published seven weeks ago in Physical Review Letters."
Both groups used quantum entangled photons, "In this version, two photons were used instead of a positron and an electron and relied not upon non-annihilation but on polarization degrees of freedom values measured."
They uses a technique known as weak measurement which gives some information but not all and doesn't disturb the particles. "Dr Yokota (and also Drs Lundeen and Steinberg) managed to observe them without looking, as it were, by not gathering enough information from any one interaction to draw a conclusion, and then pooling these partial results so that the total became meaningful."
At first read, this reminded me of AAA rated financial derivatives based on bad mortgages, but that's probably just because of what I've been reading lately. :)
The Economist wrote: "Not disturbing it is the quantum-mechanical equivalent of not really looking. So they were able to show that the universe does indeed exist when it is not being observed."
"What the several researchers found was that there were more photons in some places than there should have been and fewer in others. The stunning result, though, was that in some places the number of photons was actually less than zero. Fewer than zero particles being present usually means that you have antiparticles instead. But there is no such thing as an antiphoton (photons are their own antiparticles, and are pure energy in any case), so that cannot apply here. The only mathematically consistent explanation known for this result is therefore Hardy’s."
Here's the researcher's own description from their abstract, "Unlike Hardy's original argument in which the contradiction is inferred by retrodiction, our experiment reveals its paradoxical nature as preposterous values actually read out from the meter. Such a direct observation of a paradox gives us new insights into the spooky action of quantum mechanics."
if a particle and anti-particle collide, they annihilate each other. Hardy's paradox is that they might not if the interaction isn't observed. Basically if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, did it really fall?
"This week Kazuhiro Yokota of Osaka University in Japan and his colleagues demonstrated that Hardy’s paradox is, in fact, correct. They report their work in the New Journal of Physics. The experiment represents independent confirmation of a similar demonstration by Jeff Lundeen and Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto, which was published seven weeks ago in Physical Review Letters."
Both groups used quantum entangled photons, "In this version, two photons were used instead of a positron and an electron and relied not upon non-annihilation but on polarization degrees of freedom values measured."
They uses a technique known as weak measurement which gives some information but not all and doesn't disturb the particles. "Dr Yokota (and also Drs Lundeen and Steinberg) managed to observe them without looking, as it were, by not gathering enough information from any one interaction to draw a conclusion, and then pooling these partial results so that the total became meaningful."
At first read, this reminded me of AAA rated financial derivatives based on bad mortgages, but that's probably just because of what I've been reading lately. :)
The Economist wrote: "Not disturbing it is the quantum-mechanical equivalent of not really looking. So they were able to show that the universe does indeed exist when it is not being observed."
"What the several researchers found was that there were more photons in some places than there should have been and fewer in others. The stunning result, though, was that in some places the number of photons was actually less than zero. Fewer than zero particles being present usually means that you have antiparticles instead. But there is no such thing as an antiphoton (photons are their own antiparticles, and are pure energy in any case), so that cannot apply here. The only mathematically consistent explanation known for this result is therefore Hardy’s."
Here's the researcher's own description from their abstract, "Unlike Hardy's original argument in which the contradiction is inferred by retrodiction, our experiment reveals its paradoxical nature as preposterous values actually read out from the meter. Such a direct observation of a paradox gives us new insights into the spooky action of quantum mechanics."
The Bees are Back in Town
Remember the bees disappearing? Well maybe not so much. The Economist reported The bees are back in town "The economic crisis has contributed to a glut of bees in California. That raises questions about whether a supposed global pollination crisis is real"
Pattie Maes demos the Sixth Sense at TED
This TEDTalk by Pattie Maes of the Media Lab demos a new Sixth Sense technology that puts the Minority Report interface to shame. It seems to be the work of her student, Pranav Mistry. It's a wearable computer that projects an interface and controls wherever you are on whatever surface you want. Hold up your fingers in a rectangle to take a picture, draw a circle on your write to project a clock there, scan items in stores and project info about them, right on the item. Very cool ideas...
Stewart-Cramer Interview Analysis
Balkinization has a must read post on The Stewart-Cramer interview and the predicament of journalism.
"The reason we don't see interviews like this on television is first, that interviewees don't sit there and take accusations of this type-- they fight back, spin, obfuscate, or change the subject; and second, that if a contemporary reporter started laying into a subject the way Stewart laid into Cramer, no one would ever agree to an interview with that reporter again. It was a rare combination of circumstances that led Cramer to agree to sit still and listen to Stewart engage in his j'accuse."
There was also a segment on Friday's News Hour, Controversy Continues to Brew Over Media's Role in Financial Meltdown. They spent a bit too much time on the misdirection that yes, Jim Cramer makes mistakes. It of course wasn't about the hazards of stock picking. They did list a number of good articles covering the mistakes of the market that occurred over several years, but another commentator brought up that they were lost in the noise of how to get into this new market. Another said that they started reporting some of the problems, like the housing bubble, too early. So people stopped paying attention and how many times could they continue to write the same story. That's certainly the case with The Economist. But of course, where was the analysis saying that the bubble was being kept artificially alive by bad fed policy?
It ended with: "The thing that people need to realize about journalism is that it's largely telling you what has happened, not what is going to happen. And so the only part of journalism that tells you what is going to happen is investigative journalism. And that's getting savaged right now in a lot of media companies where they're laying people off."
Update: Of course, Glenn Greenwald has stuff to say on this that is worth reading, There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer.
"The reason we don't see interviews like this on television is first, that interviewees don't sit there and take accusations of this type-- they fight back, spin, obfuscate, or change the subject; and second, that if a contemporary reporter started laying into a subject the way Stewart laid into Cramer, no one would ever agree to an interview with that reporter again. It was a rare combination of circumstances that led Cramer to agree to sit still and listen to Stewart engage in his j'accuse."
There was also a segment on Friday's News Hour, Controversy Continues to Brew Over Media's Role in Financial Meltdown. They spent a bit too much time on the misdirection that yes, Jim Cramer makes mistakes. It of course wasn't about the hazards of stock picking. They did list a number of good articles covering the mistakes of the market that occurred over several years, but another commentator brought up that they were lost in the noise of how to get into this new market. Another said that they started reporting some of the problems, like the housing bubble, too early. So people stopped paying attention and how many times could they continue to write the same story. That's certainly the case with The Economist. But of course, where was the analysis saying that the bubble was being kept artificially alive by bad fed policy?
It ended with: "The thing that people need to realize about journalism is that it's largely telling you what has happened, not what is going to happen. And so the only part of journalism that tells you what is going to happen is investigative journalism. And that's getting savaged right now in a lot of media companies where they're laying people off."
Update: Of course, Glenn Greenwald has stuff to say on this that is worth reading, There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Watch Thursdays Daily Show
Seriously, you have to watch this. Jon Stewart had Jim Cramer on and it wasn't funny at all. He did the best interview on the financial crises I've seen. He must have lost a ton of money because he is pissed. And the same way he handed it to Crossfire on CNN in 2004, he just did the same thing to CNBC with Cramer sitting next to him.
A CEO lied to you, shocker. Maybe reporting involves doing some fact checking. Uncovering 35:1 leverage shouldn't be difficult.
He apologized that Cramer became the face of this while deploring the programming of CNBC.
The video isn't up yet, but it will be here. It will also be rerun on Comedy Central friday at 10am, 2pm, and 8pm ET.
A CEO lied to you, shocker. Maybe reporting involves doing some fact checking. Uncovering 35:1 leverage shouldn't be difficult.
He apologized that Cramer became the face of this while deploring the programming of CNBC.
The video isn't up yet, but it will be here. It will also be rerun on Comedy Central friday at 10am, 2pm, and 8pm ET.
FlowingData - Data Visualization and Statistics
Rachel Maddow had this great tweet today, "As a radio shlub who is new to presenting info visually, I'm falling in <3 with people who worry over how to do it well" and then she pointed to FlowingData Data Visualization and Statistics.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
So I went to the first day of the Gender and the Law conference at Radcliffe today. I got there early and managed to get a seat in the second row:
The first panel was led by Linda Greenhouse who used to report on the Supreme Court for the New York Times. It included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Nancy Gertner and Judge Sandra Lynch. We all stood and applauded as she walked in and I and at least a few of those around me were all surprised at how well she seemed. She is tiny but had no problems walking and negotiating the stairs unaided. She had surgery 5 weeks ago and will be 76 on Sunday.
Greenhouse commented that she was surprised that Ginsburg attended the State of the Union message and commented that in another interview she said that she did it "because I wanted the country to see that there's a woman on the Supreme Court." That seems to be a paraphrasing of this.
It was an interesting overview of the field which I hadn't known much about. Greenhouse's introduction set the stage very nicely by pointing out that three of them were all within months of each other in age and basically had Ginsburg to thank for paving the way for them. I knew she had done some gender discrimination cases, but I hadn't realized that she basically created the field in the seventies, much as Brown v. Board of Education had done for civil rights cases.
She went to Harvard Law School in the fifties where she was one of nine women in a class of over 500. She left after two years and finished at Columbia because her husband got a good job in New York. Harvard wouldn't let her do her third year at Columbia and then get a Harvard degree and if I understood it correctly, they would have had she been a man.
She mentioned a case but I don't know the name, I think it was from 1961. It was set in Florida where the law did not require women to serve on juries. They could volunteer, but of course few did. A Florida woman was on trial for murder of her abusive philandering husband and was convicted by an all male jury. She argued she wanted a juror of her peers that might understand her frame of mind. Ginsburg found the FL law objectionable because it said women weren't important enough to have to perform this duty of citizenship.
In the seventies she founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU and worked on several seminal cases. One of the panelists said "We would not have Title VII or Title IX without Ruth Bader Ginsburg."
I have a few cases I want to read about:
Reed v. Reed (1971) - unanimously overturned the Idaho Probate Court specification that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates.
Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) - changed military benefits so that could not be different based on gender. This was the first case Ginsburg argued before the Supreme Court and apparently her performance was brilliant.
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975) - Overturned a clause in Social Security law. Women could only get benefits for themselves not their family. This case was a widower who couldn't get benefits for his child, no one was going to vote against it.
She mentioned a case they never managed to bring to court as it became moot. During Vietnam, an Air Force Captain (Susan Strut?) became pregnant and told her commanding officer. He gave her two choices, leave the air force or get an abortion (which would have been provided by the base as was apparently common practice). She didn't want to leave the Air Force as it was her career, was Roman Catholic and didn't want an abortion, and had arranged for adoption at birth. I've forgotten why it became moot, but imagine a government forced abortion coming to trial today?
It turns out that most of the sex discrimination cases rely on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the state can not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was a post civil war amendment and the framers clearly were applying it to issues of race. It was not for gender reasons as there were many discriminatory gender laws on the books at the time. But they used the word person, and can we now interpret it more broadly/ This is the liberal vs originalist argument. She explicitly said she thought the framers intended it to grow beyond race and while it didn't sound like just her viewpoint, she didn't cite any evidence for this view.
It was a very interesting discussion. The ACLU has this article on some of these topics, Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff.
Afterwards was a panel on gender and education. The main case cited was the 1996 VMI case, United States v. Virginia. Apparently there's a movement in the country to allow public schools to offer single sex classes (or even schools). There are supposedly some benefits of this an a few examples of schools having great success in helping troubled students by moving them to single gender classes. However, Emily Martin of the Women's Rights Project of the ACLU listed many examples of discrimination and listed two primary instigators of such programs as Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian. She said they say some reasonable things but listed many crazy sounding differences between the genders that supported quite different teaching methods. One was that girls hearing is 10 times better than boys, so a male teacher speaking in a normal voice sounds as if they are shouting at them, and since boys hearing is bad, teachers should speak louder to them to be heard. There were more differences about math ability, etc. She made them come off as the Intelligent Designers of single sex education.
I had a difficult time understanding the issue as it seemed clear cut to me. Brown v. Board of Ed had found separate is inherently unequal. For public schools it seems they should be co-ed. Private schools can of course do what they want. I wouldn't be allow to start a company and hire only a single gender because it would make management techniques easier. I didn't get to ask any questions but a law professor sitting next to me explained that while this might be true in the broad sense, when you get to the legal details and connecting the dots it wasn't as clear cut. Also employment law is different from education law which is clearly true. Like software, it seems lots of laws have bugs too.
Questions were submitted on index cards and the moderator collected them and asked the panel. Apparently 8 people asked about transgendered K-12 students. This was in Cambridge after all. The answer was that most single sex school advocates pretend they don't exist.
The first panel was led by Linda Greenhouse who used to report on the Supreme Court for the New York Times. It included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Nancy Gertner and Judge Sandra Lynch. We all stood and applauded as she walked in and I and at least a few of those around me were all surprised at how well she seemed. She is tiny but had no problems walking and negotiating the stairs unaided. She had surgery 5 weeks ago and will be 76 on Sunday.
Greenhouse commented that she was surprised that Ginsburg attended the State of the Union message and commented that in another interview she said that she did it "because I wanted the country to see that there's a woman on the Supreme Court." That seems to be a paraphrasing of this.
It was an interesting overview of the field which I hadn't known much about. Greenhouse's introduction set the stage very nicely by pointing out that three of them were all within months of each other in age and basically had Ginsburg to thank for paving the way for them. I knew she had done some gender discrimination cases, but I hadn't realized that she basically created the field in the seventies, much as Brown v. Board of Education had done for civil rights cases.
She went to Harvard Law School in the fifties where she was one of nine women in a class of over 500. She left after two years and finished at Columbia because her husband got a good job in New York. Harvard wouldn't let her do her third year at Columbia and then get a Harvard degree and if I understood it correctly, they would have had she been a man.
She mentioned a case but I don't know the name, I think it was from 1961. It was set in Florida where the law did not require women to serve on juries. They could volunteer, but of course few did. A Florida woman was on trial for murder of her abusive philandering husband and was convicted by an all male jury. She argued she wanted a juror of her peers that might understand her frame of mind. Ginsburg found the FL law objectionable because it said women weren't important enough to have to perform this duty of citizenship.
In the seventies she founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU and worked on several seminal cases. One of the panelists said "We would not have Title VII or Title IX without Ruth Bader Ginsburg."
I have a few cases I want to read about:
Reed v. Reed (1971) - unanimously overturned the Idaho Probate Court specification that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates.
Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) - changed military benefits so that could not be different based on gender. This was the first case Ginsburg argued before the Supreme Court and apparently her performance was brilliant.
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975) - Overturned a clause in Social Security law. Women could only get benefits for themselves not their family. This case was a widower who couldn't get benefits for his child, no one was going to vote against it.
She mentioned a case they never managed to bring to court as it became moot. During Vietnam, an Air Force Captain (Susan Strut?) became pregnant and told her commanding officer. He gave her two choices, leave the air force or get an abortion (which would have been provided by the base as was apparently common practice). She didn't want to leave the Air Force as it was her career, was Roman Catholic and didn't want an abortion, and had arranged for adoption at birth. I've forgotten why it became moot, but imagine a government forced abortion coming to trial today?
It turns out that most of the sex discrimination cases rely on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the state can not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This was a post civil war amendment and the framers clearly were applying it to issues of race. It was not for gender reasons as there were many discriminatory gender laws on the books at the time. But they used the word person, and can we now interpret it more broadly/ This is the liberal vs originalist argument. She explicitly said she thought the framers intended it to grow beyond race and while it didn't sound like just her viewpoint, she didn't cite any evidence for this view.
It was a very interesting discussion. The ACLU has this article on some of these topics, Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff.
Afterwards was a panel on gender and education. The main case cited was the 1996 VMI case, United States v. Virginia. Apparently there's a movement in the country to allow public schools to offer single sex classes (or even schools). There are supposedly some benefits of this an a few examples of schools having great success in helping troubled students by moving them to single gender classes. However, Emily Martin of the Women's Rights Project of the ACLU listed many examples of discrimination and listed two primary instigators of such programs as Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian. She said they say some reasonable things but listed many crazy sounding differences between the genders that supported quite different teaching methods. One was that girls hearing is 10 times better than boys, so a male teacher speaking in a normal voice sounds as if they are shouting at them, and since boys hearing is bad, teachers should speak louder to them to be heard. There were more differences about math ability, etc. She made them come off as the Intelligent Designers of single sex education.
I had a difficult time understanding the issue as it seemed clear cut to me. Brown v. Board of Ed had found separate is inherently unequal. For public schools it seems they should be co-ed. Private schools can of course do what they want. I wouldn't be allow to start a company and hire only a single gender because it would make management techniques easier. I didn't get to ask any questions but a law professor sitting next to me explained that while this might be true in the broad sense, when you get to the legal details and connecting the dots it wasn't as clear cut. Also employment law is different from education law which is clearly true. Like software, it seems lots of laws have bugs too.
Questions were submitted on index cards and the moderator collected them and asked the panel. Apparently 8 people asked about transgendered K-12 students. This was in Cambridge after all. The answer was that most single sex school advocates pretend they don't exist.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Cheney's Executive Assassination Ring
The Raw Story | Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney
"Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an 'executive assassination ring' throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney."
"Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. "It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," he explained. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.""
Almost makes me sorry I like The Unit. Can we torture Cheney yet?
"Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an 'executive assassination ring' throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney."
"Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. "It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," he explained. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.""
Almost makes me sorry I like The Unit. Can we torture Cheney yet?
RBG at Harvard
I probably won't be blogging much Thu and Fri this week as I'm going to conference at Radcliffe on Gender and the Law. A panel Thu afternoon will include Pulitzer Prize winning former Supreme Court report for the New York Times, Linda Greenhouse and more interestingly, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Should be fun.
Lithium Battery Breakthrough
Ars Technica Lithium breakthrough could charge batteries in 10 seconds "A new version of lithium battery technology can either provide a higher storage density than current batteries, or can charge and discharge as fast as a supercapacitor, emptying its entire charge in under 10 seconds."
The article gets into some details and this could be huge. Then again, it ends with this:
"A more significant problem is that these batteries may wind up facing an electric grid that was never meant to deal with them. A 1Wh cell phone battery could charge in 10 seconds, but would pull a hefty 360W in the process. A battery that's sufficient to run an electric vehicle could be fully charged in five minutes—which would make electric vehicles incredibly practical—but doing so would pull 180kW, which is most certainly not practical."
But didn't Obama want to upgrade the electric grid to deal with alternative energy? Hmmmm....
The article gets into some details and this could be huge. Then again, it ends with this:
"A more significant problem is that these batteries may wind up facing an electric grid that was never meant to deal with them. A 1Wh cell phone battery could charge in 10 seconds, but would pull a hefty 360W in the process. A battery that's sufficient to run an electric vehicle could be fully charged in five minutes—which would make electric vehicles incredibly practical—but doing so would pull 180kW, which is most certainly not practical."
But didn't Obama want to upgrade the electric grid to deal with alternative energy? Hmmmm....
Greenwald on Chuck Schumer
I don't know anything about Charles Freeman. Glenn Greenwald writes about The agenda of Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about his history of confirmation votes.
"You can break the law when spying on Americans. You can store massive amounts of data about the activities of American citizens without the Congress authorizing or even knowing about it. You can give cover to torture, endorse the idea that Americans can be imprisoned without charges, and assert that the President can attack Iran without Congressional authority. You can advocate aggressive wars against Iraq and Iran and even take positions too extremist and belligerent even for the Bush administration. That's all perfectly fine for Chuck Schumer. All of that is perfectly consistent with occupying the highest and most powerful positions in Government.
But you can't make 'statements against Israel.' Even for far less important and influential positions, even for positions that require far-ranging debates of ideas, that will cause Chuck Schumer to call Rahm Emanuel and -- echoing the views of the further-right members of the Senate -- demand that you be disqualified from serving in the American government, and then run around boasting that making 'over-the-top' statements 'against Israel' is the supreme sin in American politics. Chuck Schumer represents nothing other than the rotted ways of Washington. "
I like Schumer's politics, but I'm liking him less and less when he speaks. I saw him with Lindsay Graham on a sunday morning show I think last weekend, and I was impressed with how useless both of their statements were.
"You can break the law when spying on Americans. You can store massive amounts of data about the activities of American citizens without the Congress authorizing or even knowing about it. You can give cover to torture, endorse the idea that Americans can be imprisoned without charges, and assert that the President can attack Iran without Congressional authority. You can advocate aggressive wars against Iraq and Iran and even take positions too extremist and belligerent even for the Bush administration. That's all perfectly fine for Chuck Schumer. All of that is perfectly consistent with occupying the highest and most powerful positions in Government.
But you can't make 'statements against Israel.' Even for far less important and influential positions, even for positions that require far-ranging debates of ideas, that will cause Chuck Schumer to call Rahm Emanuel and -- echoing the views of the further-right members of the Senate -- demand that you be disqualified from serving in the American government, and then run around boasting that making 'over-the-top' statements 'against Israel' is the supreme sin in American politics. Chuck Schumer represents nothing other than the rotted ways of Washington. "
I like Schumer's politics, but I'm liking him less and less when he speaks. I saw him with Lindsay Graham on a sunday morning show I think last weekend, and I was impressed with how useless both of their statements were.
Remember Private Social Security Accounts?
The Cunning Realist writes: "Anyone seen any recent calls for Social Security private accounts?" At least one thing that Bush wasn't allowed to screw up.
Damning Jim Cramer Video
I wonder how much of this Huffington Post piece Jon Stewart is going to use. Jim Cramer Shorting Stocks, Manipulating Markets, Saying The SEC Doesn't Understand.
"In light of the current economic crisis, and with the hullabaloo ignited recently by Jon Stewart over the accuracy of CNBC's reporting, we thought it might be useful to revisit this shocking 2006 interview Jim Cramer gave to TheStreet.com's Aaron Task. In it, the host of Mad Money says he regularly manipulated the market when he ran his hedge fund. He calls it "a fun game, and it's a lucrative game." He suggests all hedge fund managers do the same. "No one else in the world would ever admit that, but I could care. I am not going to say it on TV," he quips in the video."
Hello? SEC?
"In light of the current economic crisis, and with the hullabaloo ignited recently by Jon Stewart over the accuracy of CNBC's reporting, we thought it might be useful to revisit this shocking 2006 interview Jim Cramer gave to TheStreet.com's Aaron Task. In it, the host of Mad Money says he regularly manipulated the market when he ran his hedge fund. He calls it "a fun game, and it's a lucrative game." He suggests all hedge fund managers do the same. "No one else in the world would ever admit that, but I could care. I am not going to say it on TV," he quips in the video."
Hello? SEC?
Twitchhiker
Twitchhiker documents the travels of Paul Smith. "On 1st March, [he’ll] attempt to travel as far around the world as possible in 30 days, relying only on the goodwill of people using Twitter." He left from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and the goal is New Zealand. The first rule is "I can only accept offers of travel and accommodation on Twitter, from users who are following @twitchhiker." He can only spend money on food and drink, can't make plans more than 3 days in advance and must move every 2 days.
How strange.
How strange.
All Clear, Well Mostly
I went to my ENT for my 4 week followup today. My septum is completely healed and straight. My turbinates are 95% healed. The remaining 5% explains the post-nasal drip and sore throat I've been experiencing (he saw no evidence of infection). He saw a few dry patches still and I should continue "moisturizing" with the bacitracin for a few more weeks.
The dry winter air doesn't help; everything heals more slowly in winter. He said the humid air that comes with 60º April days should help a lot.
I still have some numbness in my two front teeth but that's normal and should continue to get better day by day. Same with the soreness in my nose. I am allowed to blow my nose like a normal person.
I finally figured out where the turbinates are. All the diagrams I've seen show a profile of the nose and I thought of them on the outer part of the nose. But they are above the roof the mouth and go back almost as far as the ears. They are huge.
My sleep is improved and I feel rested, which I didn't before. But I am waking up in the middle of the night I think due to some heartburn I can't quite explain. I'll work on that. Getting one thing taken care of doesn't fix anything else that might be wrong. Software is so much easier to debug.
Thanks for all the well-wishes.
The dry winter air doesn't help; everything heals more slowly in winter. He said the humid air that comes with 60º April days should help a lot.
I still have some numbness in my two front teeth but that's normal and should continue to get better day by day. Same with the soreness in my nose. I am allowed to blow my nose like a normal person.
I finally figured out where the turbinates are. All the diagrams I've seen show a profile of the nose and I thought of them on the outer part of the nose. But they are above the roof the mouth and go back almost as far as the ears. They are huge.
My sleep is improved and I feel rested, which I didn't before. But I am waking up in the middle of the night I think due to some heartburn I can't quite explain. I'll work on that. Getting one thing taken care of doesn't fix anything else that might be wrong. Software is so much easier to debug.
Thanks for all the well-wishes.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Missing $1,000,000 Tax Bracket
I really like the point of this post by Nate Silver, The Missing $1,000,000 Tax Bracket.
Movie Review: Watchmen
My expectation for Watchmen was that it would be a fairly faithful retelling of the plot of the graphic novel but not much more. I think the film exactly met that expectation. Unfortunately, the plot is the least interesting thing about the graphic novel.
I saw the film with a group of 12 people, only about half had read the graphic novel before and only a couple of us had read it multiple times. I can't say anyone loved it and most of the uninitiated found it quite long and a couple found it boring and the others were certainly not fascinated but thought it ok.
As a superhero movie for a general audience it's a tough sell. The characters are all original; no one has ever heard of them before unless they've read the book. It's probably a bit worse that they're based on old Charlton comics characters from the sixties that even fewer people have ever heard of. Perhaps the hook is that it tries to postulate what a world would be like if costumed heroes really existed, the problem is that some of the changes from the book really weaken that element of the film and that other films have already tried to do that with more familiar heroes (Batman Begins, Spider-Man, X-Men).
A lot of people have said that Watchmen is unfilmable, but few say why. The real special quality of the Watchmen graphic novel was that it pushed the medium of comics further than anything had. In that respect it's like Citizen Kane, doing everything at the highest level. Every page has a layout with a 3x3 grid which gives a metronomic quality to the pacing. Very few times are the panels combined or split, giving added emotional weight to the scene. Cinematic techniques like zooming, cross cutting and match cutting are used.
Every scene change has some transitional element. It might be a phrase repeated by two characters or an image or a theme. Rorschach throwing hot oil on a fellow convict is followed by a drop of coffee in a pot. Jon's former girlfriend complaining about their breakup is cross cut with his current girlfriend running out on him. One character saying "there is so little time" cuts to another saying "it's getting pretty late". An image of trick-or-treaters followed by someone saying "it's like all our old nightmares come back to haunt us". Sometimes it's too forced, but you have to be impressed with the dedication.
The relationship between words and pictures are explored. Sometimes the words in a panel relate directly to the image, sometimes ironically, sometimes thematically. Sometimes there are multiple dialogs happening at once and unlike in a film, you can make sense of them at your own pace. Sometimes the story is conveyed in words, sometimes just in the images, sometimes additional information is buried in the details of the images. You're encouraged to flip back to previous parts of the story to relate images and phrases. Often the same scene is shown from a different perspective or the similar phrases are used repeatedly.
The most obvious example of how it explores comics versus any other medium is issue 5. It's titled Fearful Symmetries and explores the idea of symmetry every way it can. There are reflections in mirrors and puddles. Symmetrical ink blots are shown. Words and letters and numbers that are symmetrical like V and 810018 are used repeatedly. There are thematic symmetries between different characters. A parallel story with a pirate comic within a comic is told. Even more so, the layout of the whole issue is symmetrical. The center two pages are a symmetrical spread and the next two outer pages have symmetrical layouts and story elements and so on. I don't know as it adds much to the storytelling, but no other medium could do this.
There are hundreds of repeated motifs, including lots of repeated imagery. The smiley face, clocks, radiation symbols, graffiti, silhouettes of two people in an embrace, newspapers, a face surrounded by hands, etc.
Some are very subtle. My favorite is this image from issue 4 page 6 that make a subtle nuclear reference. Notice the "fat man and little boy" as background figures in adjacent panels. Yes, I'm sure this was deliberate. In another fun visual pun, a short villain has only his voice balloons in his first panels because he was too short to be in the panel.
Watchmen really requires multiple readings to appreciate. Like the movie The Sixth Sense, you can watch it once and enjoy the ending, but it's only when you watch the whole thing again that you appreciate that every scene works two different ways. On repeated reads of Watchmen you always pick up more things. It unfilmable not because the story was too complex or dense, but because it did things that just don't work in film (or prose for that matter). For the same reason you can't translate a poem or an instrumental song into a film (aside from a performance) you can't translate a comic pushing the medium this far. My one hope was that they would instead push the film medium as far as they could, but of course they didn't do that.
So how did the movie do? It's a pretty faithful adaption of a rather complex story that's filled with lots of flashbacks to flesh out a fictional world. I think the story was easy enough to follow. The opening credit sequence explains lots of the backstory and was one of the highlights of the film (and some easter eggs in it are explained here). It's hard for me to tell if they made it so that someone unfamiliar with the story would care about the characters. Even given the 2:40 runtime, there's so much story, I'm not sure you have time to relate or really understand the characters.
They added a little more action and removed minor characters and a few plot points and changed the ending a bit. They also removed the comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter. There are certainly compromises that need to be made in a film adaptation, but I found all of these hurt the point of the story (well except for the Black Freighter, I was ok with that going). Yes the book was violent but the film has more graphic depictions of violence onscreen which seemed unnecessary.
In a story in part about how we need to look to ourselves and not superheroes for our own future, removing the common man seems like a big loss. Dr. Manhattan's alienation from human kind was played down and so his realization that even a single human life is special is less significant. In the comic Laurie and Dan were pathetic and mostly useless figures, the bad guy doesn't even bother with them, twice. In the film they were beefed up and given seemingly superhuman fighting abilities which undercuts the idea that even the most ordinary can make a significant difference. And I don't know why people are ok with the change to the ending, I don't think it makes sense at all.
On the other hand, I thought Jackie Earle Haley made a great Rorschach, and seeing his mask actually changing was a nice improvement (though you can't compare when the images are the same). Jeffrey Dean Morgan made a great Comedian, which is especially impressive considering he was Grey's Anatomy's all too likable Denny. Dr. Manhattan was also done well. I did miss that the film did not attempt to explain to us how he perceives things and by shrinking the role of Rorschach's psychologist they played down how bleak his world view actually is; which for an uncompromising objectivist that seems significant. Nixon's makeup was awful; he had Pinocchio's nose.
One big difference between comics and film is that film can have a soundtrack. Watchmen certainly does. There are lots of very recognizable, loud and unsubtle musical choices. A couple work pretty well, but less obvious choices might have been better in keeping with the techniques of the comic.
Overall, I'm not sure seeing the movie will make people want to see it again or make them want to read the graphic novel. If you're debating seeing it, I'd say read the graphic novel instead. Twice.
*Spoilers*
Here are my problems with the ending. In the comic, Ozymandias manufactures an alien invasion to scare the world into working together against a common enemy. All the people who help him work on this plot are fed a fake story about making a very secret Hollywood film and then eliminated by people who eliminate each other before the squid is launched. There are no loose ends for anyone to trace back to him.
In the film, the alien is replaced with technology based on Dr. Manhattan and the public thinks Dr. Manhattan attacks them. They unite to defend themselves from him. But he's left earth 2 days prior. Why do they think he's attacking them? And in the film upon hearing of this plot Jon says he must leave to keep the story going. Shouldn't he stay to continue to frighten people? And at least several major energy industrial figures know that Veidt has been working with Dr. Manhattan on a new energy source (if not the general public). Wouldn't someone connect that he might be responsible for the explosions? Isn't that a big thread for the world's smartest man to leave dangling? And why would Janey Slater hire someone to hire someone to kill Moloch? In the book, she just thinks she'd dying of cancer from Jon. In the film she's involved with the plot and is still alive at the end of the film.
In the comic, the alien was created from genetic technology and Bubastis, Veidt's mutant lynx, is created via that research. In the film she just appears out of nowhere with no explanation. In the comic Veidt made his fortune by creating new energy sources, the film it's unclear how he made his money.
Finally, in the book there are two short and critical conversations between Jon and Veidt that are not in the film. In the 70s Veidt says to Jon "With your help, our scientists are limited only by their imaginations" and Jon replies "And by their consciences surely?" to which Veidt says "Let's hope so". That's a lot of foreshadowing for Veidt's character. At the very end Viedt asks Jon "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end" and Jon says "In the end? Nothing ends Adrian. Nothing ever ends" and Veidt replies "Jon? Wait! What do you mean by..." and Jon leaves. The film doesn't have that conversation and has Laurie say the "nothing ever ends line" to Dan. That really undercuts the moral issues with what Veidt did.
I didn't care about Lukas changing Star Wars so that Han fired first. I'm surprised I care so much about the above changes; but they do feel more significant to me. Sure, they allow the scene in Antarctica to work mostly the same, but they don't work as well as a scheme thought up by Ozymandias. And the comic went to great trouble to be internally consistent.
Ok, have at me. I'm really curious to hear other people's thoughts on the film.
I saw the film with a group of 12 people, only about half had read the graphic novel before and only a couple of us had read it multiple times. I can't say anyone loved it and most of the uninitiated found it quite long and a couple found it boring and the others were certainly not fascinated but thought it ok.
As a superhero movie for a general audience it's a tough sell. The characters are all original; no one has ever heard of them before unless they've read the book. It's probably a bit worse that they're based on old Charlton comics characters from the sixties that even fewer people have ever heard of. Perhaps the hook is that it tries to postulate what a world would be like if costumed heroes really existed, the problem is that some of the changes from the book really weaken that element of the film and that other films have already tried to do that with more familiar heroes (Batman Begins, Spider-Man, X-Men).
A lot of people have said that Watchmen is unfilmable, but few say why. The real special quality of the Watchmen graphic novel was that it pushed the medium of comics further than anything had. In that respect it's like Citizen Kane, doing everything at the highest level. Every page has a layout with a 3x3 grid which gives a metronomic quality to the pacing. Very few times are the panels combined or split, giving added emotional weight to the scene. Cinematic techniques like zooming, cross cutting and match cutting are used.
Every scene change has some transitional element. It might be a phrase repeated by two characters or an image or a theme. Rorschach throwing hot oil on a fellow convict is followed by a drop of coffee in a pot. Jon's former girlfriend complaining about their breakup is cross cut with his current girlfriend running out on him. One character saying "there is so little time" cuts to another saying "it's getting pretty late". An image of trick-or-treaters followed by someone saying "it's like all our old nightmares come back to haunt us". Sometimes it's too forced, but you have to be impressed with the dedication.
The relationship between words and pictures are explored. Sometimes the words in a panel relate directly to the image, sometimes ironically, sometimes thematically. Sometimes there are multiple dialogs happening at once and unlike in a film, you can make sense of them at your own pace. Sometimes the story is conveyed in words, sometimes just in the images, sometimes additional information is buried in the details of the images. You're encouraged to flip back to previous parts of the story to relate images and phrases. Often the same scene is shown from a different perspective or the similar phrases are used repeatedly.
The most obvious example of how it explores comics versus any other medium is issue 5. It's titled Fearful Symmetries and explores the idea of symmetry every way it can. There are reflections in mirrors and puddles. Symmetrical ink blots are shown. Words and letters and numbers that are symmetrical like V and 810018 are used repeatedly. There are thematic symmetries between different characters. A parallel story with a pirate comic within a comic is told. Even more so, the layout of the whole issue is symmetrical. The center two pages are a symmetrical spread and the next two outer pages have symmetrical layouts and story elements and so on. I don't know as it adds much to the storytelling, but no other medium could do this.
There are hundreds of repeated motifs, including lots of repeated imagery. The smiley face, clocks, radiation symbols, graffiti, silhouettes of two people in an embrace, newspapers, a face surrounded by hands, etc.
Some are very subtle. My favorite is this image from issue 4 page 6 that make a subtle nuclear reference. Notice the "fat man and little boy" as background figures in adjacent panels. Yes, I'm sure this was deliberate. In another fun visual pun, a short villain has only his voice balloons in his first panels because he was too short to be in the panel.Watchmen really requires multiple readings to appreciate. Like the movie The Sixth Sense, you can watch it once and enjoy the ending, but it's only when you watch the whole thing again that you appreciate that every scene works two different ways. On repeated reads of Watchmen you always pick up more things. It unfilmable not because the story was too complex or dense, but because it did things that just don't work in film (or prose for that matter). For the same reason you can't translate a poem or an instrumental song into a film (aside from a performance) you can't translate a comic pushing the medium this far. My one hope was that they would instead push the film medium as far as they could, but of course they didn't do that.
So how did the movie do? It's a pretty faithful adaption of a rather complex story that's filled with lots of flashbacks to flesh out a fictional world. I think the story was easy enough to follow. The opening credit sequence explains lots of the backstory and was one of the highlights of the film (and some easter eggs in it are explained here). It's hard for me to tell if they made it so that someone unfamiliar with the story would care about the characters. Even given the 2:40 runtime, there's so much story, I'm not sure you have time to relate or really understand the characters.
They added a little more action and removed minor characters and a few plot points and changed the ending a bit. They also removed the comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter. There are certainly compromises that need to be made in a film adaptation, but I found all of these hurt the point of the story (well except for the Black Freighter, I was ok with that going). Yes the book was violent but the film has more graphic depictions of violence onscreen which seemed unnecessary.
In a story in part about how we need to look to ourselves and not superheroes for our own future, removing the common man seems like a big loss. Dr. Manhattan's alienation from human kind was played down and so his realization that even a single human life is special is less significant. In the comic Laurie and Dan were pathetic and mostly useless figures, the bad guy doesn't even bother with them, twice. In the film they were beefed up and given seemingly superhuman fighting abilities which undercuts the idea that even the most ordinary can make a significant difference. And I don't know why people are ok with the change to the ending, I don't think it makes sense at all.
On the other hand, I thought Jackie Earle Haley made a great Rorschach, and seeing his mask actually changing was a nice improvement (though you can't compare when the images are the same). Jeffrey Dean Morgan made a great Comedian, which is especially impressive considering he was Grey's Anatomy's all too likable Denny. Dr. Manhattan was also done well. I did miss that the film did not attempt to explain to us how he perceives things and by shrinking the role of Rorschach's psychologist they played down how bleak his world view actually is; which for an uncompromising objectivist that seems significant. Nixon's makeup was awful; he had Pinocchio's nose.
One big difference between comics and film is that film can have a soundtrack. Watchmen certainly does. There are lots of very recognizable, loud and unsubtle musical choices. A couple work pretty well, but less obvious choices might have been better in keeping with the techniques of the comic.
Overall, I'm not sure seeing the movie will make people want to see it again or make them want to read the graphic novel. If you're debating seeing it, I'd say read the graphic novel instead. Twice.
*Spoilers*
Here are my problems with the ending. In the comic, Ozymandias manufactures an alien invasion to scare the world into working together against a common enemy. All the people who help him work on this plot are fed a fake story about making a very secret Hollywood film and then eliminated by people who eliminate each other before the squid is launched. There are no loose ends for anyone to trace back to him.
In the film, the alien is replaced with technology based on Dr. Manhattan and the public thinks Dr. Manhattan attacks them. They unite to defend themselves from him. But he's left earth 2 days prior. Why do they think he's attacking them? And in the film upon hearing of this plot Jon says he must leave to keep the story going. Shouldn't he stay to continue to frighten people? And at least several major energy industrial figures know that Veidt has been working with Dr. Manhattan on a new energy source (if not the general public). Wouldn't someone connect that he might be responsible for the explosions? Isn't that a big thread for the world's smartest man to leave dangling? And why would Janey Slater hire someone to hire someone to kill Moloch? In the book, she just thinks she'd dying of cancer from Jon. In the film she's involved with the plot and is still alive at the end of the film.
In the comic, the alien was created from genetic technology and Bubastis, Veidt's mutant lynx, is created via that research. In the film she just appears out of nowhere with no explanation. In the comic Veidt made his fortune by creating new energy sources, the film it's unclear how he made his money.
Finally, in the book there are two short and critical conversations between Jon and Veidt that are not in the film. In the 70s Veidt says to Jon "With your help, our scientists are limited only by their imaginations" and Jon replies "And by their consciences surely?" to which Veidt says "Let's hope so". That's a lot of foreshadowing for Veidt's character. At the very end Viedt asks Jon "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end" and Jon says "In the end? Nothing ends Adrian. Nothing ever ends" and Veidt replies "Jon? Wait! What do you mean by..." and Jon leaves. The film doesn't have that conversation and has Laurie say the "nothing ever ends line" to Dan. That really undercuts the moral issues with what Veidt did.
I didn't care about Lukas changing Star Wars so that Han fired first. I'm surprised I care so much about the above changes; but they do feel more significant to me. Sure, they allow the scene in Antarctica to work mostly the same, but they don't work as well as a scheme thought up by Ozymandias. And the comic went to great trouble to be internally consistent.
Ok, have at me. I'm really curious to hear other people's thoughts on the film.
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