May 31, 2008
Aleks Jakulin has a really interesting page on political data mining. Not so much on the subject itself, but just some really intersting graphics on Senate votes in the US from what I assume is the 2003 roll.
One interesting point is that Senator Kerry screws up a lot of the data for having been absent for over 60% of the votes that session. As a result, he skews to the center - because, as Jakulin analyzes it, not voting is like letting the majority vote for you.
The most useful graphic by far from my point of view is this one, which shows which issues Republicans and Democrats differed most on. If you scroll to the bottom, you can also see which issues they voted the same on. 100% agreement from all sides came on a bill to provide additional pay and benefits for military personel. More interesting to some will be the differences between the various Republican voting blocks, of which he identifies three (though only two seem to be really antagonistic). Block B seem to be the fiscal conservatives, Block A the Bush loyalists, and Block C the McCain crowd (though McCain himself straddles groups B and C).
Another interesting ranking had to do with how influential each state or individual Senator was. One should use the work “influential” with caution here, of course. What Jakulin means is that these are the states and Senators that voted with the majority on the most occasions, and so account for the lion’s share of the variation in the data. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re causing the pattern, just that they’re more likely than not to reflect the overall sense of the Congress. By this measure, the top ten most influential states in 2003 in order of influence were: Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Montana (???), Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama. All of these states were represented by two Republicans except Montana and Georgia, which had Senators from both parties. If you’ll recall, of course, this was the year of Zell Miller from Georgia, so for all practical purposes Georgia had two Republican Senators. The top twenty most influential Senators were all Republicans - unsurprising for a year in which there was a Republican majority.
A breakdown of the observed “voting blocks” is here.
On the whole, very interesting stuff. Unless I am mistaken, Jakulin is marginally involved in the writing of this book, which will be out in September and which I have criticized a bit before. I look forward to going through it with a fine-toothed comb in the fall.
I’ve never seen Sex and the City, and I have no plans to see the movie. But it’s a cultural phenomenon, and so I have been reading articles about it here and there. In one by Kathryn Lopez, I stumbled across what may be one of the best, most concise statements of my complaints with the current dating culture.
The movie, like the series, is an important cultural contribution. It’s a mirror. And you don’t have to be promiscuous or crass like Carrie and Samantha and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) tend to be to see a reflection. There is a real focus on men, and on what women do to men: Women don’t forgive men. Women don’t think about men and their feelings. For as sensitive as the modern man is supposed to be to a women’s feelings and as sensitive as a man is supposed to look, he’s not really supposed to register an opinion. Or slip up. Or be honest.
Indeed. That’s a nice summary of frustrations I’ve had in a large number of my relationships. In particular, I think, the bit about forgiveness. People screw up - and that means the woman as well as the man. When I forgive a girlfriend, even for “major” violations like cheating, she gets a clean slate. There may be some teasing here and there afterward, granted, but “I forgive you” means “we’re starting over.” It means she doesn’t have any hoops to jump through; it means there are no grudges; it means that I don’t emotionally blackmail her by constant petty reminders of things she’s done. I agree to share some of the burden and do some of the work, even though it’s not technically my fault or responsibility. That’s what forgiveness is.
Another supposed “girls’ show” (though I’m starting to have my doubts just how feminist it really is) - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - comes to mind here. In particular, the episode I Only Have Eyes for You - a second season bit which deals with forgiveness. If you haven’t seen it I won’t ruin it, only to say that the plot is a contrivance by which the character having difficulty understanding forgiveness ends up in the shoes of someone who needs it. Notable dialogue is Giles, explaining the concept to Buffy:
To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It’s not done because people deserve it, it’s done because they need it.
Right. Forgiveness is not fair or just, and it’s most emphatically not about evening the score. There’s forgiveness for the same reason there’s charity. Yes, ideally everyone carries their own weight and is never a burden on anyone else. But here in the real world, people frequently make mistakes, get things wrong, and end up relying on others for things they have no right to ask for. We keep the whole messy thing going by occasionally “writing off debts,” if I may speak that way about relationships. If you go into a relationship honestly, with open eyes, then you know that your partner is going to screw up eventually - because everyone always does. If you really care about the person, you accept that, and you accept the mistake, and you move on.
Naturally, there are limits. You can’t forgive someone who has no serious desire to reform, for example. People screw up once, twice, maybe even three times if they’re weak (and we’re all weak in our ways). If you find yourself forgiving too often in short time span, however, it may be that the other person isn’t really devoted to you, or is starting to take you for granted - and in that case it’s time to seriously consider leaving, naturally. Relationships can’t be carried by only one partner.
And that’s exactly my complaint with a lot of the women I’ve dated. By this definition of forgiveness, I really wonder whether any woman has ever actually forgiven me for the times I’ve screwed up. When I think back to my dating history, I can think of one genunine example. That’s not a very good track record for the fairer sex.
I’ve frequently been in situations where I’ve been told I’m forgiven, of course. But it never seems to be actually true. First, to even get to the point where you’re (nominally) “forgiven,” you have to go through the whole weepy confessional conversation, which doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose except to have you repeat endlessly that you’re the one in the wrong. What generally comes next is rarely a simple “I forgive you.” Instead, we have to plan out how we’re going to build our relationship back up, which invariably includes enumerating all the things that are going to be different now that trust has been injured, or whatever. And then, forever after, whenever there’s an opportunity to bring it up in a not-so-veiled hint, that opportunity is virtually never wasted. Calling this kind of behavior “forgiveness” is Orwellian, really, as it’s nothing of the kind.
I’ve never understood the point of all this. It’s damaging, it’s NOT “commitment,” and it’s certainly not a path to happiness - for either partner. More than that, it’s simply unrealistic. People are not perfect, and I think the danger of shows like Sex in the City is that they teach people to make a sport out of finding fault. Things have improved from times past, to be sure. Girls these days know that Prince Charming isn’t coming to make everything better for them, and that’s a step. But they still act as though they deserve Prince Charming, and that’s a problem.
Giving up on finding the perfect mate isn’t selling yourself short - because there’s still plenty of room to be choosy from among the pool that’s available. And let’s be clear about this - people SHOULD be choosy. No self-respecting person wants less for themselves than the best they can get. It’s demeaning both for you and your partner if you settle. But the “best you can get” - that goal that you strive for - should still be something that actually exists.
Fantasy can be useful if channeled properly. Indeed, the human ability to imagine - to see things not as they are but as they should be - is probably one of our greater adaptive assets. But like anything, too much of a good thing can really come back to bite you in the ass. Forgiveness is a constructive channeling of fantasy, I think. Once the dastardly deed, whatever it may be, is done, it’s done; there’s no way to undo it or to completely forget it. So we do the next best thing: we summon an act of will and pretend it never happened. I don’t mean “pretend” in the sense of rewriting the facts in our memories, of course, but in the sense that we choose to act as if it never happened, to hold expectations as though it never happened, to carry on as though it never happened, etc. A destructive channelling of fantasy is when you endlessly blame people for not being exactly what you wish they were, or what you’d hoped they would be, or what you were imagining they’d be. If someone isn’t what you want, then leave them and go find someone else. If someone is what you want but made a mistake, forgive them. And if you only want things you know you’ll never find, then I’m sorry for you.
May 30, 2008
Well, well. You know all those arguments that legalizing prostitution would lead to some kind of explosion in the rates? Not true in New Zealand, where “a comparison between the number of sex workers in Christchurch in 1999, before decriminalisation, and 2006 - after the act was passed - showed the total had stayed about the same.”
More goodies:
Before the act, the illicit status of the industry meant workers were open to coercion and exploitation by managers, pimps and clients. Research indicated there had been “some improvement” in employment conditions “but this is by no means universal”.
In other words, laws banning prostitution actually work against prostitutes by making them complicit in the “crime.” They are reluctant to go to the police with abuses for fear of arrest. Who knew?
Not to mention - sex work isn’t all (or even mostly, or even at all in many cases) about exploitation.
Around 93 per cent of sex workers cited money as the reason for getting into and staying in the sex industry.
“The most significant barriers to exiting are loss of income, reluctance to lose the flexible working hours available in the sex industry and the camaraderie and sense of belonging that some sex workers describe.”
So sex work is a good part-time job, actually. That’s backed up by this UChicago working paper, which reports that prostitutes in Chicago work an average of 13 hours a week for $26-31/hour. Better money than most of these women can earn anywhere, with flexible hours. One of the women in the study, in fact (the one with a pimp) was earning more like $50/hour for about 12 hours a week.
Is there any reason at all why this should be illegal? Oh, right, the danger of violence. Certainly that comes with the territory, but making anything against the law guarantees it will be more dangerous. Again from the New Zealand article:
More than 60 per cent felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law.
Other findings included that the majority of sex workers felt the act could do little about violence that occurred, although a significant majority felt there had been an improvement since the passing of the act.
So violence remains a problem, but sex workers now feel more in control of the situation. A step in the right direction rather than a panacea, in other words - exactly what one might expect.
I realize that New Zealand is a demographic outlier in the world and that its experiences with policy implementation can’t be taken as definitive for that reason. But these results are just intuitive; there is no reason to believe the situation after decriminalization or (better still) legalization in the US would be any different. Let’s legalize it already.
For all the demographics geeks out there, a map of only the roads in the US. Which is to say: in most parts of the east, the roads are so dense that that part of the country is generally dark, whereas in the west it’s all open. Interesting points are that some geographical features emerge - like the Appalachian Mountain ridges, where roads go around them, or various rivers, etc. Other interesting points: in the plains you can see county outlines, where some counties apparently randomly choose to spend hardly any money on roads at all, and so are lakes of light in a region of dark. Also interesting to me was that upper Maine is apparently less inhabited than the Michigan Upper Penninsula. Counterintuitive because my friends from Michigan talk about it as though it’s this vast untapped wilderness. Clearly not the case.
He also has an interesting widget-thing showing how baseball teams get returns on their salary investments (or don’t) over time.
And this one is a cool-looking graphic about text in the Enron email database, but I can’t really grok the information it’s trying to show.
The Wright controversy expands beyond Rev. Wright. Now even guest preachers at Obama’s not-at-all-former church are being caught on film spouting hatred. No doubt the geniuses at Language Log will cite this as further evidence that there’s nothing to see here because, you know, it’s all in the past and stuff.
Today’s example of government bullying gun owners comes from Toronto, where the mayor is on a mission from God to ban guns everywhere. In this case, he’s managed to seize a law-abiding citizen’s gun stash on the premise that the guns were “improperly stored.”
Now how, one wonders, do the police know that guns being kept in a private home were “improperly stored?” The article doesn’t say, but let me hazzard a guess. The article notes that the man in question is a licensed gun collector, and the police seized 125 legal guns in the raid. Probably they used the country’s national gun registry - which is routinely available to local police through an online interface, identified all the people in Toronto who own more guns than the mayor thinks they should have, and have started systematically harassing them. This is, of course, a testable hypothesis that will be confirmed if and when we see an upsurge in news reports from Toronto of similar types of raids.
Now check out some of the quotes from the article:
“This area is a very good neighbourhood. We don’t normally come across guns or drugs or violence in this area. It’s just overwhelming to hear about this,” a local resident named Stephan said.
Why is it “overwhelming” to learn that someone in an affluent neighborhood with no history of crime or violence is a (organ blast) gun collector? I would have thought that was a perfectly ordinary rich-guy hobby, even in Canada. Note the automatic assumption that any gun ownership will invariably be tied to drugs or gang violence. It just ain’t the case, kiddo, so you can leave your prejudice at the door. Quite the contrary, most owners of legal guns are responsible citizens, likely to be your best friends in any emergency where the police don’t arrive in time.
“I can’t believe this is going on in our area,” another neighbour, Lianne Ottaway said. “This is such an incredible area and it’s where we choose to live, and I don’t like to hear this kind of thing.”
What, exactly, is “going on” in your area that you “can’t believe?” Gun collection? Gee, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say someone in your neighborhood has a knife collection too. Wanna panic for me a second time, then?
Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the neighbors have ever had a problem with this “shocking” man down the street. No one is quoted as having been in an altercation with him, been threatened by him, or in any way having been made uncomfortable by him. This is a classic example of the magic word “gun” turning otherwise rational humans into community standards vigilantes.
If there’s anything that’s “overwhelming” here, it’s the irrationality of the prejudice against guns and gun owners. We’re talking about what is almost certainly an abuse of police power by a mayor who is overstepping his authority in conducting a public crusade to enforce his personal preferences (as opposed to the actual law). Rather than worry about that clear threat to their safety, civil liberties and well-being by this kind of abuse, residents choose to vilify a man they have no reason to believe is involved in any criminal activity at all, let alone gang and drug violence.
The lesson for us in these United States is clear: JUST SAY NO to any proposed gun registry this side of the border (and if Obama is president, you can bet there will be such a proposal). If the Canadian experience is any guide, the police WILL abuse such a thing, and your neighbors will turn a blind eye when they come for you.
May 29, 2008
Cool i09 internet poll for the week is When did Battlestar Jump the Shark?. My favorite part is that that’s a “when” with no “if ever” hedge. “Never jumped” isn’t even on the choices list.
At the time of writing, the pole position commenter begs to differ. But come now, that show jumped! Anyone who can look you in the eye and say that Battlestar hasn’t spun out of control is selling something - and if they go so far as to claim that it’s as good as it ever was they’re on crack.
My own opinions on the matter are public record, and fortunately also an option on the poll. I voted for “when the half-cylon fetus blood cured the president’s cancer,” which, I’m sorry to report, puts me in 3rd place. All the events that score higher happened after this in series chronology, so it seems most Battlestar fans had a higher crap threshold than I did. Which is, I suppose, why the damn thing’s still on the air at all.
Oh - bonus for clicking: hot pic of Katee Sackhoff on a bike!
Attaboy, George! George Will has another excellent column out today echoing things I have said (main difference: people read Will) about McCain’s superficially appealing but ultimately goofy idea of appearing before Congress in a Westminster-style Prime Minister’s Questions with the legislature. Will covers all the points I did, but then tells me something I didn’t know. Apparently the “State of the Union” speech was only ever meant to be ceremonial, and in fact from Jefferson (who was uncomfortable with it) all the way to Wilson, it was delivered in writing, and Congress gave written replies. Maybe, rather than going full-ahead with a scheme common in constitutional monarchies, we could get back to this format instead? Hell, send it by email, for all I care.
If This is to be believed, the Tesla Motor Company will be introducing a $98,000 all-electric sportscar soon - possibly next year. Some circles claim that it will run at an average cost of $0.01/mile, do 0-60 in 4 seconds, and require only 3.5 hours to charge (though not from a standard wall socket - it will need special “fueling stations” of its own).
It’s the 1cent/mile fuel cost that strikes me, of course. That’s really spiffy!
So where’s the catch?
Well, the price tag, obviously. By comparison, I drive a 1999 Maxima that I bought used for around $15k. Taking the current mileage and comparing it to what it was when I bought it and dividing by the number of years, it seems I drive about 6,000 miles a year. OK - ‘99 Maximas get about 21mpg (that feels about right to me). So that implies I use 286 gallons of gas a year. Since I have to fill up with premium, I’m currently paying $4.20/gallon. All other things being equal, I would drop that to an even $4 to factor in this year’s cheaper months - but since I expect gas prices to continue rising a bit, let’s just do the math at $4.20. Assuming a solid rate of $4.20/gallon, I could expect to pay just over $1200 in gas a year. Since my total expenditures on gas for the Tesla Roadster would be only $60, I would save $1040 or so a year in gas by buying one.
Yeah, but it costs so much more than my current auto. Even if we buy these numbers (and let’s face it, we don’t: I find it hugely implausible that there are cars in existence that run on $0.01/mile, not to mention that new technology like this that expects to sell only 10,000 units or so exclusively in California in its initial offering is bound to require frequent and expensive repairs), it would take me over 80 years of driving to break even (a $15k car vs. a $98k car).
The irony of all this, of course, is that people who are in a position to shell out $90+k for a car probably aren’t sweatin’ the $1000/yr gas bill much. So I don’t really see the point in talking about fuel efficiency for an electric-powered luxury car.
Fortunately, Tesla gets this. From a post by the CEO on the company’s blog:
Almost any new technology initially has high unit cost before it can be optimized and this is no less true for electric cars. The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model.
Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable. In keeping with a fast growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into R&D to drive down the costs and bring the follow on products to market as fast as possible. When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping pay for development of the low cost family car.
Needless to say, this is encouraging, a really smart strategy.
Ah, but do the cars work? Popular Mechanics seems satisfied!
I will be needing a new car in exactly two years. If they have family cars on the market by then in the $50k range, I’m in.
