A Tufte Alert goes out, of course, whenever misleading graphics rear their ugly head (named for Yale's own rock star of graphs). In today's Times, there's a misleading graphic depicting an "epidemic scorecard" which attempts to put SARS in context of all the other epidemics in the world. A quick glance at the graph gives one the impression that the size of each epidemic's rectangle is relative to the number of deaths (or cases) associated with that disease. However, a closer look reveals that there's apparently no such relation: Denge Fever, with 24,000 deaths a year, is about twice the size as Influenza, with 250,000 deaths a year. Tuberculosis and Diarrheal Diseases have about the same number of deaths, but TB is about 1/3 larger. All of which undercuts the point they're trying to make: SARS, with 353 deaths, is given about 1/2 the space as Yellow Fever which has 100 times as many deaths. (Or 50 times, if you annualize SARS.) Shame on their graphics department for fumbling this one.
[Update: I posted this up on Tufte's website (the "Ask E.T." section) and actually got a response from the man himself!]
| New York Times |
Those of you who take polls to be the word of God should check out this article on this modern world.
Only 40% of Americans can name the three branches of government, while 37% can't even name one.40% of Americans think there's strong evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11, while only 36% know there is little to none. Support for the Iraq war continues to be strongly associated with the belief that Saddam was involved in 9-11. (An earlier Retropoll had found that among people who know there is little or no evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda, opposition to the war was over 75%.)
Americans of all stripes overwhelmingly reject individual Patriot Act provisions -- secret searches, electronic surveillance, arrests without detention, etc. -- but seem blissfully unaware that they are part of the War on Terrorism.
On some level, American do seem to understand the depth of their manipulation, with "media hype" named as a leading cause of fear.
Disturbingly, however, belief that the US must prove charges against other countries before attacking them is declining significantly.
| Terrorism | Politics |
Since we’re all about the french connection today, I’ll toss in something found at Tristan Nitot’s Standblog, to wit, a bookmarklet that allows you to change all instances of the word freedom in a page to French.
UPDATE: Daniel Glazman’s blog, the location of the bookmarklet, seems to have evaporated since I found this info. Perhaps it will return.
| Politics |
The top French restaurant "Tour d'Argent" has proudly announced the official strangling of their one millionth duck. The chef claims that strangulation keeps the flesh more succulent then if you simply slit their throats. Once the act is done, carcasses of freshly strangled ducks are pressed to extract the blood which is mixed with cognac and port to make a rich, sizzling sauce. Yum! The chef reflected on his accomplishment: "One million ducks. It's marvelous, really moving."
No ducks were available for comment.
| Ducks | Birds | France |
From this report in the Guardian (also reported elsewhere), the Sugar industry is putting pressure on Congress to cut funding for the WHO after it recommended that sugar be no more than 10 percent of a healthy diet. Here's an excerpt from the Sugar Association's letter:
"Taxpayers' dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of Americans, much less the rest of the world," says the letter. "If necessary we will promote and encourage new laws which require future WHO funding to be provided only if the organisation accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of science."
| Sugar | Lies |
I have no idea of whether Mike Hawash is innocent or not, but statements like the following give me the creeps:
"Around that time, neighbors in the placid suburb of Hillsboro called the police to report that Mr. Hawash had become increasingly religious, growing a long beard and favoring clothing common in the Middle East."
Google has a long list of stories related to this case, and there is also a website organized by his supporters.
I find the images used as short hand fascinating. His own website uses this photo, from his wedding:
to emphasize his Americanness. (See, he's cheek to cheek with his blond wife !). The other photo that is circulating emphasizes his otherness (I wonder where it comes from ?):
Remind me not to grow a beard and start observing my first amendment rights any time soon, unless I become a nudist at the same time.
[And no, I'm not trying to bias you by showing the 2 photos at different sizes. I'm just linking to the versions I've seen out there, and am too damn lazy to save them and resize them to equivalent sizes, or so that his face is the same size in both]
| War on Terror | Religion |
The most fun a moderate can have is when he gets to take a simultaneous swipe at the right and the left - and one of the best arenas to do this in is education. This morning's New York Times features a great review of a book I want to buy (or, well, borrow from a friend willing to shell out $24) - The Language Police.
Now, before you left-wingers get upset about yet another book bashing political correctness, and before you right-wingers get upset about yet another book assaulting and eroding key family values - you'll all hate it! The author's position is that both sides follow the same nutsy reasoning: Both sides "believe that reality follows language usage," [and] that if they "can stop people from ever seeing offensive words and ideas, they can prevent them from having the thought or committing the act that the words imply."
Of course, the real fun is that each side has a very different sense of what offensive words and ideas are. As the author puts it, censors on the right aim "to restore an idealized vision of the past, an Arcadia of happy family life" in which Father knows best, Mother takes care of the house and kids, and everyone goes to church on Sundays, censors on the left believe in "an idealized vision of the future, a utopia in which egalitarianism prevails in all social relations," a world in which "all nations and all cultures are of equal accomplishment and value."
So, thanks to the radical right, textbooks can't show dinosaurs (evolution!), quarreling parents or disobedient children (not uplifiting!), etc. But the radical left brings us such brilliant censorship as no mothers cooking (sexist!), no african-american families living in the city (racist!), and a host of "disfavored words" such as "brotherhood, fraternity, heroine, snowman, swarthy, crazy, senile and polo." I'm not sure why polo isn't allowed. Add to that hilarious suggestions that aren't clearly left/right like replacing mentions of unhealthy foods (like candy) with healthy ones (like yogurt), and not mentioning birthday parties (because some kids don't get to have them), and you end up with textbooks that read like pabulum.
The solution? Let ME write all textbooks. Other than a little too much emphasis on "Star Wars" and "Buffy" themes, it would be much more exciting and enriching to your average 13 year-old.
| Language |
Burlesque, thankfully, does not mean "like Burl Ives." Now we want to go every week!
-- an amazing work of theater, as much for its performance as for its history and politics.
| Apartheid |
I had a great weekend of celebration for my 33rd birthday, which was yesterday. Saturday night Debbie and I went to the Va Va Voom Room, the burlesque show at Fez hosted by the hilariously deadpan Miss Astrid. "We have to come every week!" said Debbie afterward, and I tend to agree. I wonder if they allow kids?
Continue reading "Happy Birthday to Meeeee...." » |
How is it that they can suck all the life out of the book? Is it some sort of spell?
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Murder. Madness. German Expressionist sets.
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| The Simpsons | Reference |
| Tolkien |
Did you know that the Close Encounters UFO is the same height as the Empire State Building? Well, now you do.
| Science Fiction |
Hey, guys? In the van parked on 7th Avenue? The one with the big sign duct-taped to the side of it, advertising your floor-sanding and painting services, with pink flyers attached, the same ones you blanket the neighborhood with? You might want to remove the copy of High Times from your dashboard. Just a suggestion.
| Park Slope | Drugs |
As someone who is currently getting my identity passed around from scam ring to scam ring, I have a vested interest in just how easy or hard it is to tell who you are during a traffic stop (especially in Portland). Somehow, even with my ridiculous story (which I will tell sometime), this new in--the-field fingerprinting idea doesn't make me more comfortable. Having had my identity snatched, am I more or less at risk of turning up with the wrong thumbprint and getting dragged downtown? Hard to say, but I think the answer is "both."
[Also, note the logic emanating from the current Federal Law Enforcement geniuses, "You have to drastically cut back on your budget, so here's $900,000 to spend on 300 high-tech field-fingerprint remote identity database access devices."]
"The Minnesota-based Identix manufactures the technology, which captures fingerprints at the scene and remotely transmits them to a database. The Portland police will run the prints against the FBI's automated fingerprint database, and a database of seven Western states, known as the Western Identification Network.
If there is a match, the system returns the person's name, date of birth and mug shot directly to the officer's handheld terminal, the size of a Palm Pilot. Then the officer can check the person's criminal history and search for any outstanding warrants.
Manufacturers and police tout the time it could save officers, keeping them from needlessly transporting suspects to a police precinct or jail to fingerprint them.
'With shrinking budgets and shrinking staff, we need to capitalize on emerging technology,' said Capt. Greg Hendricks, of the bureau's identification division.
Within a year, the bureau intends to expand the pilot purchase of 15 to more than 300 terminals for all patrol officers, under $650,000 set aside for the Portland police by the U.S. Department of Justice and recently approved by Congress."
| Surveillance Society |
That "you're either with us or against us" line just keeps resonating and resonating. Not that Molly Ivins is exactly The Economist when it comes to financial analysis, but here's yet another gift from The Dubyas to their mistress Big Bidness:
"The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act."
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Chewbacca returns. This alone may make the third Star Wars prequel the best of the trilogy. Not that the bar was set high - we recently rewatched the barely-watchable "Send in the Clones" (or whatever it was called). Let's just hope that the forgettable actor who plays Anakin Skywaker gets burned beyond recognition fairly early in the movie.
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We were just showing off
Previously unimaginable heights of impunity? Check. The White House has ceased bothering to pretend. Lies are the new Truth. And nary a consequence in sight.
"To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war -- a global show of American power and democracy.
Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.
'We were not lying, said one official. 'But it was just a matter of emphasis.' ...
What if Sept. 11 had never happened? Would the United States have gone to war with Iraq? Administration officials and others say no...."
| War | WMD |
One day later, U.S. restarts production of plutonium parts for bombs
"The United States has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has restarted production of plutonium parts for bombs, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The announcement marks an important symbolic and operational milestone in rebuilding the nation's nuclear weapons complex, which began a long retrenchment in the late 1980s as the Cold War ended and the toll of environmental damage from bomb production became known.
'Since 1989 until today, we were the only nuclear power in the world that could not make a pit,' said Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Energy Department agency that runs the weapons production complex.
A pit is a hollow sphere made of plutonium, surrounded by conventional explosives that detonate and start fission as the sphere implodes.
Under a Bush administration plan, the Energy Department will begin limited production of plutonium parts for the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons and begin laying plans for a new factory that could produce parts for hundreds of weapons each year.
The last time the United States made a plutonium pit was at the Energy Department's Rocky Flats site in Colorado, which was shut down after serious environmental laws were broken and the FBI raided the plant.
Weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory said Tuesday that they had built a plutonium pit for a W-88 warhead for a Trident nuclear missile. The production took eight years and ultimately will cost $1.5 billion when the pit is fully certified by the Energy Department in 2007, Los Alamos officials said.
'It is a sign that after a long period of decline, the weapons complex is back and growing,' said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert. 'To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons.'"
| WMD | Military |
Following up on my and Mike’s brilliant suggestions for conservative ice cream flavors, and since I haven’t seen it anywhere else (read: Google got me nothing), I hereby offer to the offended parties the slogan Sanction Sanctorum. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, and good night.
Note: this is not a site that provides catchy slogans. Sorry. | Kulturkampf |
A quick follow-up to the Rick Santorum story: We all know by know that gay rights groups have come out in force, rife with indignation about having gay sex compared to (among other things) polygamy.
But did you know that the polygamists aren't that happy about it either?
No word yet from the "man-on-dog" activists that Senator Santorum seems concerned about.
| Rick Santorum | Gay Marriage | Polygamy |
"The Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.
The weapon, known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, would be a full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in an urban area. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional 'bunker busters' dropped on Baghdad in an attempt to kill former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Federal officials signed documents in Washington this week to launch a preliminary design contest between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
'This administration is very serious about rethinking the entire thing,' said a physicist at a U.S. nuclear weapons lab. 'I think everyone around here is really encouraged to look at what the actual role is for nuclear weapons.'"
| War | Military |
Creed fans sue band for sucking. Found on can't-stop.org.
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Not that I check Blogdex religiously, but it would seem to me that a program in Kansas to exact taxes from the sales of illegal drugs would get some notice in the blogosphere. Slippery-slopers, get yer megaphones ready.
| Law |
Overheard last night, before Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, two gentlemen seated behind me:
"I didn't know this was animated. I tell you, I have grave reservations about this."
"You don't like animation?"
"Not this kind."
"I've seen this before, in Italy. These characters are Italian. It's cartoons for big kids. I don't really like it either."
"Then why don't we see another one -- what's next door? A Mighty Wind?"
"Sure. We'll tell them we didn't know this was animated."
Exeunt.
Excuse me? How exactly did you fail to notice this salient fact about this movie? Did you perhaps neglect to read anything about it before you bought the tickets? Or not notice the poster? What kind of decision-making process went into this selection? Maybe one of you is a Charlie Parker fan, and the other likes Westerns?
Sigh.
Oh the movie? Lots of fun. Looks great. As in all the Bebop series, a triumph of style over substance. But, with more time, the plot actually makes more sense than some of the 0.5 hr shows. Fortunately, more time for great fights. Unfortunately, more time for melodrama. Major disappointment: didn't use "Tank!" for the opening credits, but the music was actually pretty good. It probably stands on its own without knowing the series, but I think you'd do better renting a DVD or two of the shows to see if you like it first.
| Anime |
My favorite headline of the morning: "Dixie Chicks Pose Nude to Answer Critics." Entertainers have the best way of demonstrating their politics.
I remember that, back when they were announcing their embarassment about being from Texas (because it is the home state of President Bush), thinking "well, I'm not buying any more of their albums until I see a little T&A!"
Obviously, I wasn't alone.
| George W. Bush | Texas |
Rush sings about being a Nazi. I love sound editors...
| Music | Lies |
Last night we were watching the special features on The Princess Bride DVD. (Did you know that André the Giant used to be driven to school by his neighbor, Samuel Beckett?) Deb asked if Chris and Susan Sarandon were related and so off to imdb. (Turns out they used to be married. Bonus trivia question: Chris S. was in another movie with a PB co-star. Name it for a Ishpoint!) Then we were curious as to what else Rob Reiner had directed. His latest project, as it turns out, is a romantic comedy based on a story by Dostoyevsky. "Out of all the Russians, Dostoyevsky is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel for romantic comedy sources" said Deb. But as it turns out, 90 movies have been made from Dostoyevsky's works. Tolstoy? 91. Gogol? 45. Pushkin? 54. Chekhov? A whopping 128.
Suddenly a new game is born! Find the authors with the most screen credits! We all know that the cultural relevance of an author is really measured by how many movies have been made from your books. All the arguments about the canon could be easily resolved by referring to the new Ishbadiddle / IMDB Author Relevance Index.
Can you beat these? More Ishpoints for any authors we've missed.
Continue reading "The Ishbadiddle / IMDB Author Relevance Index [Updated]" » | Shakespeare | Samuel Beckett | Dickens | Tolstoy | Dostoyevsky | Brothers Grimm | Orwell | James Joyce | Oscar Wilde | Jules Verne | Lewis Carroll | Isaac Asimov | Kurt Vonnegut | Tolkien | Borges | Stephen King | Noel Coward | Ibsen | H.P. Lovecraft | H. Rider Haggard | Charlotte Brontė | Philip K. Dick |
One of von Trier's first features, a dreamlike / nightmarish combination of Kafka, Brazil, Hiroshima mon amour, and Beckett. Filmed in brown!
| Samuel Beckett | Kafka |
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of itAlabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamAlabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamCan't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayerAlabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamThis is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yetHound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my lastLord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayerDon't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't knowJust try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamI made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and meYes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister SadieOh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't knowYou don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi GoddamThat's it!
[Sorry Mike. It's just such an incredible song, and Nina Simone just died ... I couldn't figure out how to edit it down. I put this up after hearing it on the radio, it sent chills up my spine.]
| Trent Lott | Mississippi |
What more should I say, other than how can you not like an event which includes questions like this in it's FAQ:
Can I rent the Colossal Colon for an event? How much does it cost?
Click here and here to find out more.
| Land of the Lost |
So I want to take a break from writing about politics and write a little something about all the tech stuff I've gotten into recently. This is a long post, the culmination of a few weeks of surfin', so bear with me and let me know in the comments if you want me to stop posting such long posts. I'm moving towards fewer, more in-depth posts, but that might not suit everyone and I certainly don't want to inconvenience any of you. Anyway, on with the info.
First, I've really gotten into Mozilla, the open-source browser built on the bones of Netscape Navigator. I downloaded it because there was a program I wanted to try (which I'll get into below) and I have to say I love it. The main thing it has to recommend it (stolen from Opera) is tabbed browsing (ie, your browser window looks like an excel page with many different sections). Click on a link and the new page loads in the background, allowing you to continue reading or switch over and switch back without getting as lost. It makes checking out nooks and crannies that much easier--something you'll be wishing you had in this article, for example.
The real killer app part of tabbed browsing, though, is the ability to bookmark a group of tabs as a single bookmark. I have a politics tab with all my favorite sites in it (e.g. atrios, DailyKos, Hullabaloo, Salon) and, with a single click, they've all loaded. When I'm done reading, I close the tab and move on. It's really changed the way I use the internet.
There are some drawbacks to Mozilla, and it's not my only browser (not that you can uninstall the IE browser, as the Microsoft trial proved--well, sorta kinda and this entry is long enough already). The mail client isn't as good as Outlook Express, but it's all right. The main bummer is that it's not as well-integrated with Blogger as IE. There's a plugin called Mozblog that doesn't work as well for me as the right-click BlogThis feature. I bookmarked the javascript BlogThis app, and it only works occasionally. Even Blogger's web interface looks a little funny when you load it (the margins in the posting frame are half-width), and you can't do CTRL-SHIFT-A to make links, which is a real drag. Other than that, though, the browsing experience is much, much better with tabs.
I downloaded Mozilla because NewsMonster required it. I found Newsmonster on Six Log, the blog of Six Apart, the company that makes Moveable Type. MT really has some interesting features Blogger doesn't have yet, and I've toyed with getting it up and running, but in the VHS/Beta department, Blogger gives free, painless hosting, and that could be the equivalent of "it records longer than 30 minutes." I'd love it if Blogger implemented some of MT's cooler featurees, including TrackBack and categorized archives.
Anyway, Newsmonster is one of the many networking tools trying to generate emergent content. It subscribes to RSS feeds of various weblogs and/or websites and, in its not-yet-implemented feature, will allow you to search on nodes to find more interesting news. Let's say you like my site. You can then see which sites I've subscribed to and go to them directly, and so on, until you're getting the content you want--see the site for details (and his idea about blognet--it's sort of like Weblog Neighborhood in Radio). The issue is how to overcome Clay Shirky's observation about the fact that information gets centralized on the internet. I was interested in this because I had the exact same idea a few weeks ago (no, really) and it turns out the guy designing it lives ten blocks from me.
Basically, it seems to me that we're really on the verge of some cool emergent content. For some background on what emergence is, here are some good places to look. Start with this really good overview, then read Joi Ito's article on emergent democracy, then check out his archives on emergent democracy. Blogroots has a trackback-based site that aggregates posts about weblogs here, and you might want to check out the blog from the author of Smart Mobs.
The problem with emergence comes down to a couple of things. First, you want to make sure there's a low signal-to-noise ratio, so that the democracy of the internet, where anyone can say anything, doesn't turn into cacophony. One way you can do this is via reputation, where someone is invested in his/her reputation and therefore doesn't say anything stupid. The problem is that sometimes, anonymity really frees people up to say something useful that they might not ordinarily say for fear of reprisal. These two articles (here and here), while technical, are pretty interesting--they describe an anonymous persistent reputation system. That way anonymity isn't just an excuse to talk smack. (More information on reputation systems can be found at the Reputations Research Network.) The other way to preserve high signal-to-noise ratios is by moderating (or "modding") comments, so that cream rises to the top. Clay Shirky has written an interesting article on the social contracts implied in collaborative/emergent/content management systems.
When emergence works, you end up with true collective wisdom. Farah and I won our local video store's pool based on share prices in the Hollywood Stock Exchange, deciding to go for it based on James Surowiecki's excellent article on decision markets. We won without having seen a single picture (we're new parents in the video-only phase, with this being a notable exception)--which made Best Picture go down a lot easier, actually. Ideally you'd end up with good ideas floating to the top. Clay Shirky imagines this changing the music industry; some people use NetFlix because it's so good at recommending new movies. Howard Dean's campaign has made a lot of hay out of this, using Meetup and actually raising tons of money from an idea that emerged from the grassroots.
If you want to move out of the realm of the theoretical, here are some implementations of it. There's Friendster, a way of finding new friends of friends (pitched initially as a dating service). On the information front, you can find out new information by tracking word bursts, or random links from similar sites through Tangent, or More Like This From Others (which is an ingenious idea for solving the problem of different people categorizing information in different ways). Mediagora is a really cool idea by Kevin Marks for a content distribution system where copying would generate benefits to all people (another idea I had--damn it). MoJo is an idea for distributed journalism--basically a way of coordinating a bunch of eyewitness reports. On the technical front, there's the Open Content Network and the more-established BitTorrent, which use p2p networks to cache materials from servers that are getting overwhelmed. If these ideas don't appeal to you and you have a better one (but no coding skills), submit it to the LazyWeb.
I've also found some tools that enable this kind of collaboration. The biggest and baddest is slashcode, but there are a few more like Sco