Things that were not immediately obvious to me

I don’t much like the Internet’s efforts to serve up relevant advertising to me. It’s creepy enough when, after I visit a company’s website to look at their products, I’m deluged with their ads from every website I visit for weeks thereafter, but it’s the monotony of the thing that really gets me down. If I visit a UK website, I don’t want to see another bloody ad from Meg Whitman’s insufferable gubernatorial campaign — I want to see ads for tea, or umbrellas, or PSAs condemning soccer hooliganism. Something different.

(more…)

Apparently, I will be on vacation this week. (Well, vacation from the blog, anyway. I’ve been coming up to speed on Django and WSGI configuration.) Posting will resume on 30 August.

In the meantime, perhaps you might enjoy these re-runs:

• Organization
• Six Word Stories: 11-99
• DC: Recap
• 99.999999999%
• Probability
• Six Word Stories: Virus
• The Facts

From the 18 August 2010 edition of Roger Ebert’s “Answer Man” letters column:

Q. I have watched and read your reviews for years with great honor. I disagree so strongly with your review of “Eat Pray Love” that it makes me sick. You just don’t get it, and many others like you don’t get it. You do not know at all what it is like being a woman in this day and age (or previously) who did not want to be defined by a man or married off to one. If you think Stephen in the movie was an OK husband, you are out to lunch. He was horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (except on paper to people who do not need emotional sustenance). David was the narcissist from hell that many of us have fallen for… do you not get that??????????? Many of the males of the species are frankly overrated and the women’s movement has proven this (or frankly not sufficiently). I hope your wife will bring you up to speed. (Jeanine Carlson, Ph.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist)

Ph.D.

Licensed Clinical Psychologist.

Oh dear.

Now, it’s the Internet, so who knows. FWIW, there is a Jeanine Carlson with these credentials in Falls Church, VA. If she didn’t write this, I pity her. If she did … hoo boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a “dull boy”. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

(more…)

Let’s indulge in a little geek time. In “Star Wars” the planet Alderaan is (spoiler alert!) blown up by the Death Star. It’s a commonplace to notice that this represents a remarkable technological feat, given the size and mass of planets and the nature of gravity. Today, I want to address the following question:

Everyone knows that it would take a lot of energy to blow up a planet. If Alderaan were entirely composed of explosives, would the detonation of those explosives be sufficient to destroy the planet?

Yes, it’s a silly question, and we’re not going to address it rigorously. I just want to see how far we can get.

(more…)

On the one hand, there was soot on the back of the car, a strong whiff of gasoline, and what looked to be a big intercooler stuffed into the front grill, all indicative of a wild (or badly done) aftermarket turbo job. On the other, 600 to the wheels is an awful lot of power.

There’s a line I read somewhere or other; it went something like this:

You can’t see anything if you see through everything.

I was reminded of it when I ran across this piece, which argues that an excessive emphasis on the avoidance of error can inhibit understanding:

We can worry about getting on the wrong train in the foreign train station whose signs we can’t read. But we should also worry about dithering in the station too long and thus failing to get on the right train. We could starve to death in that station if we never leave. This, it seems to me, is the essence of Newman and Pascal’s insight. Sometimes, the dangers of failing to affirm the truth are far greater than the dangers of wrongly affirming falsehood.

If we see this danger — the danger of truths lost, insights missed, convictions never formed — then the complexion of intellectual inquiry changes, and the burdens of proof shift. We begin to cherish books and teachers and friends who push us and romance us with the possibilities of truth.

As someone who holds that “it’s not what you don’t know that gets you, it’s what you do know that just ain’t so” I think this idea could easily be — and often is — taken too far. It still seems a noteworthy point of view.

It’s about 3 months to the midterms, which means one thing: free entertainment for political junkies. The economy is going to be a big issue in these elections, and the wisdom and efficacy of the $787 billion stimulus passed in 2009 is going to be a big economic policy question. To quote a prescient observer from early last year:

If the 2010 economy is strong, for whatever reason, Democrats are likely to do well, and Republicans poorly, irrespective of the outcome of the “stimulus” debate. On the other hand, a weak economy will profit the Republicans, but only to the extent they can offer a coherent critique of the Democrat handling of the economy.

…

If the “stimulus” passes over Republican objections, Republicans in 2010 can blame the … weak economy on Democrat policies; this message will be consistent with their earlier opposition to the “stimulus” plan. This is the “we told you so” scenario.

…

If the “stimulus” is defeated because of Republican opposition (i.e. a filibuster) then Democrats will be able to blame Republican obstructionism for the weak state of the economy.

I see that Democrats are now bravely attempting to spin the first scenario into the second; VP Biden is claiming that “the Recovery Act was undersized because the White House shrunk the economic stimulus package to win Republican votes in Congress to pass it.” (That’s a quote from the Politico story, not Biden himself.) That’s … well, I guess you have to do the best you can with a bad situation. I don’t think the “$787 billion just wasn’t enough dammit!” line is going to fly, though.

There’s a very, very bad idea out there that needs addressing. Here’s Seth Godin:

If a candidate wants to gain attention and possibly votes, then, it makes short-term sense to stir up fear of strangers and turn it into anger. It might even work (once). But it makes it virtually impossible to govern. It’s a short-term strategy that eats itself, because sooner or later, everyone is a stranger, and fear is no foundation for work that matters.

and here’s Peggy Noonan:

Only love makes great political movements. Movements based on resentment, anger and public rage always fade, they rise and fall, they never stay. If you came to play, get serious.

This is ahistorical, short-sighted, starry-eyed, foolish, dangerous claptrap. It might contain a grain of truth — maybe truly enduring movements can’t be built around negativity. But such movements can grow, and endure, and rule for quite a long time in political terms — more than long enough to ruin your day, or ruin your nation, or take your life, or take the lives of tens of millions.

If you were a Jew in 1930’s Germany, you would be unwise to take solace in the notion that the Nazi movement would eventually collapse. If you were a farmer in 1920’s Ukraine, you would soon regret thinking that the Bolshevik philosophy seemed a little too angry to last. In the long run, Godin and Noonan might be right, but “in the long run, we’re all dead”.

Actually, I prefer this formulation: “Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent.” As with markets, so with the world. The longevity of political movements means nothing to you, so long as they last long enough to hurt you.

By now, we’re all accustomed to talk about government action “stimulating” the economy. I wonder, though, if we give enough thought to how this can possibly work: How can government increase economic activity above its natural level — and why, if it can do so, doesn’t it do this all the time?

(more…)