weekly quote #31: Megan McArdle June 23, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 1 comment so farShe notes at the end of a post about the ridiculous prevalence of outrage on the net:
“It’s hard to generate intellectual respect for someone who believes that life is an exam composed entirely of multiple choice questions.”
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seeing numbers June 19, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentArt, at its best, helps us see ourselves in ways which we would not otherwise be able to. Great art is self-awareness and fresh perspective combined and made concrete.
Via The World’s Fair, I am reminded of the work of Chris Jordan (no close relation*), whose work “Running the numbers” makes it much more simple — and much more dramatic — to visualize the magnitude of the statistics that we encounter all the time.
You can see Chris talking about his work at TED and also on a Pop!Cast.
(* the phrase “no relation” being pretty much pointless — we’re all related, after all…)
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laying arms bare June 18, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentLanguage Log has a nice post up (and check out the linked OICTIQ post) about the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms.
I found it interesting, even though I don’t really care about the founders’ intents.
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moo May 30, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 3commentsVia FP Passport (whose Blake Hounshell says he’s skeptical about the main points), an article about voteri americanus and this most predictable of presidential campaigns by David Runciman at the London Review of Books.
Money quote:
“Followed day by day, the race for the Democratic nomination has been the most exciting election in living memory. But viewed in retrospect, it is clear that it has been quite predictable. All the twists and turns have been a function of the somewhat random sequencing of different state primaries, which taken individually have invariably conformed to type, with Obama winning where he was always likely to win… …and Clinton winning where she was likely to win.”
And, nearer the end, bringing some Joseph Schumpeter to bear:
“In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, written in 1942, Schumpeter pointed out that most people do not think much about politics at all: they simply respond to triggers in ways that require the minimum of mental effort. ‘The typical citizen,’ Schumpeter wrote, ‘drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way which he would readily recognise as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective.’ The demographic determinism of this election campaign is evidence of the ease with which the main candidates have been able to exploit the instinctive reflexes of various segments of the population, and the difficulty that their opponents have had in overcoming these reflexes with competing arguments.”
I’m not as skeptical as FP - while I do think it’s stretching to say an election can be predicted solely on census data, I am willing to go along with Mr Runciman and blame the voters.
Tags for this article: politics , society , voters
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discounting climate change May 27, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentJames Hrynyshyn over at The Island of Doubt has a post up about the dismal science of economically evaluating the impact of global climate change. Good stuff, elaborating why exactly it’s so difficult to make good predictions about how climate change will affect us and therefore make good policy about what specifically we should do.
I don’t like the reference to discounting as a ’sleight-of-hand accounting technique’, though. I don’t entirely agree with the wait-and-see position put forth by Lomborg, and the line of thought that amounts to hoping that it gets cheaper to counter climate change in the future is, at best, a very risky policy. Moreover, anyone who claims that discounting (in the economic sense) says that it’s better to wait because it’ll be cheaper in the future is either ignorant of the economics or being disingenuous. Discounting is a well-established principal of the dismal science, but it basically says that a sum money today is “worth more” than that same sum of money in the future — which does not mean that we should wait because the technology and effort (along with, by implication, everything else) required to counter climate change will be cheaper. So while I agree with the assertion that using discounting to justify inaction in the sphere of climate change policy is completely bogus, it is bogus because it is a misuse of discounting, and not because discounting itself is bogus.
Tags for this article: climate change , economics , politics , society
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Com Blog is back! May 22, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentAfter a long hiatus, Complexity Blog returns with a great post about one of my biggest pet peeves and (until my recent move) banes of my driving existence: traffic lights.
Tags for this article: blog , complexity , engineering , society , traffic
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frightening May 21, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentOver at Science Blogs, both Dispatches from the Culture Wars and The Island of Doubt have posts up about a recent survey which indicates that the number of high school teachers covering creationism as a valid subject is frighteningly high: 1 in 8.
Tags for this article: creationism , creationism , education , science
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movienomics May 17, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 1 comment so farTwenty-Cent Paradigms has a very interesting post citing Alphaville about how the film Taxi Driver changed the US economy in the early 80s. No kidding.
Tags for this article: economics , film , society
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war as human condition May 17, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentStrange Maps is featuring an Amnesty International map of the world composed of images of human warriors; in the body of the post are a series of quotes about war, both ‘for’ and ‘against’.
SM’s take on the map is: “What is it about war that makes it both undesirable and unavoidable?”
My take on SM’s take is: What is it about us that makes war both undesirable and unavoidable?
Tags for this article: human condition , maps , quotaton , society , war
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