So this blog writer app on my phone doesn't have support for drafts or edits! Continuing from my previous thoughts:
Case in point: today I was riding around with a conservative fellow who is the pro-business, former executive for a health insurance giant, has multiple homes and fancy cars type. He is talking about how Obama is in trouble because now the Left is hating on him for the health care situation.
On the road we passed a beat up pickup truck with an NRA bumper sticker that says "when you pry it from my cold dead hands".
Both the Mercedes driving former health insurance exec and the pickup truck arms bearer are supposedly in the same political party, but it's pretty hard to believe. Whereas the disagreers on the Left seem miles closer by comparison.
At least on the left our sub-factions don't have diametrically opposed desires. What do you think a real Libertarian would say about abortion rights or gay marriage? The isolationist preferences of a social conservative don't jive at all with the interventionist tendencies of a neocon.
Compare that to the Left's pragmatist vs. the idealist. They still both want the same things, they just have different ideas about how to achieve them.
Now, at a certain point you do see some fractures on the left. There's much discussion recently of the "third way" - using private enterprise to pursue the public good, largely through subsidies. And that can run counter to the hardcore socialist condemnation of the profit motive as a drain on public goods.
And again I come back to the question of "where am I on this spectrum?" I certainly am highly suspicious of private sector involvement in public goods. I don't trust private enterprise with public parks, national defense, firefighting or public safety, and I don't see why I should trust them with health care.
However I can be convinced that with proper (heavy) regulation and subsidies, health care reform can be achieved. And perhaps that is a more realistic way of getting there. But I don't think, all other things being equal, that the private sector path is preferable. And I would be surprised to hear a Democrat argue that losing the public option is the 'better' choice in any sense other than increasing the chances of passing reform.
If anything, I feel like my political energies are best spent pushing for better regulation to protect citizens from the private sector than worrying about the purity of how health care is reformed. And that I think is something that falls in the old "80% of things we can agree on" category, and it doesn't really cost anything.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
A different kind of civil war
My health care reform reading of late has had a lot of mentions and examples of a so-called split amongst progressives aka liberals aka democrats (the whole big tent for the sake of discussion).
Several different terms have been tossed around as appellations for the two sides, but it's probably better to just describe them.
On one side we have the people disappointed with the compromises made to the likes of Lieberman and Nelson. People like Howard Dean who are really ticked off at how 'real' reform has been sold out to expedience.
On the other had you have people who are willing to accept the cutting of deals and who view the 'bill-killers' and public option die-hards as naive. This group could broadly be said to feel that even a modest amount of progress is still progress, and that shouldn't be jeopardized by idealism.
And to start I think that's the least loaded way to describe them. Some might call them idealists and pragmatists, though I think even those words might be a little loaded (since idealism usually implies an unattainable goal).
But what I found interesting about this split is that since I'm a progressive/liberal/Democrat, I must fall into one of these camps, yes? And yet I struggle to identify firmly with either one, and even to find a firm dividing line between them.
Looking at the republican situation there is a much clearer split between the three subgroups of conservatives: neocons, libertarians and the religious right.
Several different terms have been tossed around as appellations for the two sides, but it's probably better to just describe them.
On one side we have the people disappointed with the compromises made to the likes of Lieberman and Nelson. People like Howard Dean who are really ticked off at how 'real' reform has been sold out to expedience.
On the other had you have people who are willing to accept the cutting of deals and who view the 'bill-killers' and public option die-hards as naive. This group could broadly be said to feel that even a modest amount of progress is still progress, and that shouldn't be jeopardized by idealism.
And to start I think that's the least loaded way to describe them. Some might call them idealists and pragmatists, though I think even those words might be a little loaded (since idealism usually implies an unattainable goal).
But what I found interesting about this split is that since I'm a progressive/liberal/Democrat, I must fall into one of these camps, yes? And yet I struggle to identify firmly with either one, and even to find a firm dividing line between them.
Looking at the republican situation there is a much clearer split between the three subgroups of conservatives: neocons, libertarians and the religious right.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
F U Joe Lieberman
Dear Joe,
You are an unprincipled shill for the insurance industry that pays your wife's salary. How much money will you make from dicking over health care reform? Thanks for putting the interests of your bank account so blatantly ahead of those of the citizens of this country.
You've made it pretty clear on the record that the only criteria for determining what is a good or a bad idea in health care reform is whether it will result in your insurance company friends increasing their profits.
Mandating that 30 million citizens have to buy insurance from private companies? You think that's swell.
Doing anything about the cost of health insurance? Well that just won't do, for an ever-changing set of reasons, none of which make any sense.
You are an unprincipled shill for the insurance industry that pays your wife's salary. How much money will you make from dicking over health care reform? Thanks for putting the interests of your bank account so blatantly ahead of those of the citizens of this country.
You've made it pretty clear on the record that the only criteria for determining what is a good or a bad idea in health care reform is whether it will result in your insurance company friends increasing their profits.
Mandating that 30 million citizens have to buy insurance from private companies? You think that's swell.
Doing anything about the cost of health insurance? Well that just won't do, for an ever-changing set of reasons, none of which make any sense.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/joe_lieberman_lets_not_make_a.html
Your lack of moral fiber makes me want to puke. Just quit the senate and go pick up the insurance industry job that is waiting for you, and take Evan Bayh with you. Actual representatives of American citezens have real work to do.
Your lack of moral fiber makes me want to puke. Just quit the senate and go pick up the insurance industry job that is waiting for you, and take Evan Bayh with you. Actual representatives of American citezens have real work to do.
Friday, December 11, 2009
A conversation on facebook
I will (probably never) get around to reformatting this later, but in the interests of preserving some discussion about the internet:
John Gates The internet is a cesspool. Human discourse is doomed.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Scientifically Illiterate
Dr. Nancy Snyderman just finished up a great appearance on Meet The Press. I've never seen her before but she should be doing more than hosting a show on MSNBC with her impressive grasp of science and health care policy. One thing she said really rang true - it went something like "We are in danger of becoming a scientifically illiterate country."
Nothing demonstrated that more aptly than the woman sitting next to her, another Nancy - Ambassador Nancy Brinker. Brinker admirably founded the breast cancer awareness/advocacy group Susan G. Komin for the Cure, but she is also a great example of how her advocacy and lobbying on behalf of increased breast cancer awareness has given her blinders when it comes to science and data.
Backing up, this is all about last week's minor uproar over the release of new federal guidelines for breast cancer and cervical cancer screening. Dr. Snyderman got right to the point by saying that these were scientifically arrived at guidelines and the negative reaction to them is a case of anecdote winning out over data.
Quick summary: The HHS Preventative Services Task Force found that the number of false positives in women in their 40's were large enough, and the number of real cancers caught early small enough, that mammograms for women in that age bracket did more harm than good overall (due to false positives resulting in stress, unnecessary biopsies, etc).
What an example of the battle between science and anecdote! Just like with the vaccine hubbub, in response to scientists saying "statistically early mammograms do more harm than good," anecdoters say "an early mammogram saved this person's life, therefore they must be good for everyone." (With vaccines it is the reverse - scientists say "statistically there is far far more risk in not getting vaccinated than in getting vaccinated," but anecdoters fixate on the one in a million chance that a vaccine might harm them.)
And then when you bring politics into it, it gets worse. Few politicians have the courage to lead and teach by correcting the public's preference for anecdote, instead choosing to back off the issue. This gives ground to those on the right who use public fear for their own political ends (I'm looking at you Rep. Marsha Blackburn - oh hi Dr. Nancy)
People like that really piss me off.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Fight for it
A few minutes into this clip is a statement that really got me riled (in a good way):
I agree. Let Republicans filibuster a public option. Put together something that is right and good for the American people and let them waste Congress' time reading from cookbooks while the American people live without a basic human right. Democrats need to gather up the cojones to stand up for what is right and let Republicans worry about how they're going to look when they oppose it.
I <3 Shep Smith
Shepard Smith continues to be one of my favorite people on television.
I really appreciate how in just a few sentences he clarifies and challenges the blatant obfuscation by Springer: We'd still have private insurance, private companies and government compete all the time, it's about options.
I don't have cable, so I don't know if these are rare moments for Shep, but every time I hear his name it's because he's telling it like it is in the face of conservative spin.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Astroturfing
via ThinkProgress I read today a memo detailing 'best practices' for harassing Democratic and Moderate Republican Representatives at town halls over health care, the stimulus and the like (but primarily health care.
Then I saw the practices in action in this video of Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter getting booed at a town hall.
Chris Good of The Atlantic Monthly has an examination of the plans to rally against lawmakers who support health care reform in August.
I've never really seen or heard of this type of thing before, or at least never thought that it might be effective. Apparently they call it "Astroturf" - as in an artificial grass roots movement. Essentially the lobbying groups responsible for the "Tea Parties" is continuing the effort by planning rallies and events as well as directly confronting lawmakers with organized heckling, booing, etc at their town halls.
Despite initially scoffing at it, watching the short video clips of the infiltrators at work it certainly LOOKS effective. Sebelius and Specter looked totally rattled by the coordinated questioning and booing.
Other accounts of the same town hall however note that the majority of attendees stood and applauded Sebelius and Specter in support, and that it was merely a vocal minority giving the brief impression of an angry mob.
But really, all we're likely to see are the short clips of booing right? So this is potentially an insanely effective strategy for which I cannot imagine an effective counter. Fox News is aptly highlighting these moments, and it gives the impression that everyone is against health care reform.
So, a few points:
Part of me supposes that even if a lobbying organization is sponsoring and organizing these events, it's not necessarily THAT artificial - they appear to be real people who actually believe the things they believe.
However, the things they believe are, well...wrong. In the Fox News clip linked above the questioner rails against medicare, medicaid and social security as "broke". Those are three of the most popular and successful government programs ever, and so it seems kind of oddball to point to them as reasons for not reforming health care.
So I guess what is artificial about it is that the lobbyist organization gives the impression of a well thought out movement that has rallied people together, when in fact it appears it's more like a cattle call for knee-jerk right-wing reactionaries.
You get the strong impression that once you reach a certain level in the administration of these groups, the people running the show don't actually believe any of the stuff the people taking orders are shouting. They just see the angry people doing the shouting as convenient foot soldiers. It's the same old unholy alliance of the machinations of the wealthy and the misguided anger of the poor. It's that "Southern Strategy" all over again - hold your nose and play up to the angry minority in order to form that necessary majority. Admittedly, that's reading a lot into things, but that's my analysis.
The effectiveness in the end of this strategy is going to hinge on the extent to which lawmakers and voters can step back from the emotional reaction to hearing jeers and boos and actually assess the merit of the argumentation, and realize how the majority of their constituents actually feel. And really, that is going to hinge on the supporters of health care reform making their voices heard.
But right now I perceive it as much easier to rally against health care reform than to rally for it, because there isn't a single solid plan to get behind - instead there are many versions. This is where Obama could really make a difference by coming in with a clear outline of what he wants to see, so the voters can get behind it with gusto.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Digital Media
The news that Amazon remotely deleted content from customers' Kindles gets me thinking about all kinds of ramifications of our digital age.
Striking features highlighted by the article include:
The lack of a second-hand market - you can't resell your digital content once you are done with it the way you can with a record album, book or video game disc.
The power of the licensing company to retract the content. In this case they seem to realize it was a bad decision and are taking all kinds of heat for it, and a refund was given, but for the 17 year old kid quoted in the article who had all his notes and annotations for a school assignment deleted as well, that's pretty horrible and he has no recourse.
International copyright law issues - In the United States the copyright to "1984" has not yet expired, but in other countries it has already entered the public domain.
But what really gets me thinking is the reference to Amazon's Terms of Service. Terms of Service have always bugged me. With a physical product you pretty much know the terms: you pay for it, it's yours. A restaurant's terms are likewise well known: they feed and serve you, you pay. Subscription services begin to get hazier, like your gym membership, cable television or cell phone, but even there the worst that can happen is that you're locked into paying the duration of a contract whether you use the service or not. It's in the online digital realm that TOS really get arcane. The uniqueness and strangeness of these sorts of TOS are compounded by the fact that they are rarely read. Everytime a new patch is added to a popular online game I play, I am asked to re-confirm my acknowledgement of the Terms of Service. I didn't read them the first time, I certainly don't re-read the three pages of fine print every time the game is patched. Only my assumption that there can't be anything ridiculous within the terms consoles me.
And that's where most people are. They don't pay much attention to the TOS because they assume that if they contained any outrageous offenses, either someone who is paying more attention would stir up a fuss or the terms would never hold up to scrutiny.
In the end whenever you have to agree to a Terms of Service it's generally good practice to assume that you have no rights and that your access to the provider's service is at their pleasure. The Kindle is that rare object that occupies a space in which that sort of surrender is hard to swallow, both because it mimics a physical object that has no such restrictions and because it seemingly follows a similar model to online music downloads. I would be shocked and dismayed to find that iTunes had deleted content from my personal computer. The realization that the Kindle may physically belong to the owner, but that all its contents exist at the discretion of Amazon is a shocking one.
Looking to the future I find it hard to believe that such a model could persist indefinitely. The concept of ownership is too important to humans (at least to Americans) to fade completely away as the digital age matures. Instead that distinction between owning and renting will probably become further defined in future products. Amazon's dilemma in this case is that their customers assumed they owned their purchases, and their legal team viewed them instead as indefinite rentals that Amazon still held responsibility for after the purchase had been made. Long term I don't see how Amazon's definition can hold up, and I think some other perspective will have to gain dominance, even if it isn't based on copyright over the data itself but instead on fees for transmission or hosting. After all, devices like the Kindle can still make money as a pay-for-download device if Amazon controls the means for putting information on the device - no matter whether the content is public domain or copyrighted. This is just another example of the old fashioned notions of copyright bumping up against the realities of digital media.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Mobile!
I've set up an iPhone app to allow blog posting from my phone. Unfortunately I think I can only have one blog set up on it, but it is a nice feature anyway.
Perhaps we'll see some remote postings in the future that would otherwise be lost to the abyss. In the meantime I am actually sitting in front of my computer writing this...
Perhaps we'll see some remote postings in the future that would otherwise be lost to the abyss. In the meantime I am actually sitting in front of my computer writing this...
Sunday, May 31, 2009
"FAIL"
I was all set to write a blog post about the expression 'fail' (as in 'epic fail') creeping into the mainstream, when I found out that Christopher Beam already did a much better job of it than I would have on Slate back in October. It's a great read and you should check it out.
It's kind of like your Dad trying to work "rad" into a conversation though when conservative bloggers and summer tv previews co-opt an expression originating amongst forum-trolling gamers.
Like everything supposedly cool that enters into the mainstream, there's a certain element of "it was cool until you started doing it" here. Shit, and in fact I guess I'm pretty uncool for coming late to the party in highlighting this little bit of lexicon. But I swear, I knew about it back in '04.
Now my question is, is there a term for something being no longer cool because it has hit the mainstream? I guess you could interpret that as 'Jumping the Shark' in a more universal sense. But I'd rather there be a german word like shadenfreude that means that exact thing. I'll have to look around for that one.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Hit Pieces and the Scientific Method
On the train today I read this over somebody's shoulder (sorry man) and it pissed me off.
Not just because it is really crazy to argue that climate change isn't happening, or that human activity doesn't have an effect on the global environment, but because I hate to see the word "skeptic" used against science and doubt used to bolster ignorance.
The article and the argument in general is a hit piece against science. It hinges on the conceit that any two arguments should be given equal consideration simply because equality is good, irrespective of the quality of the two positions. It likewise misrepresents the place of skepticism and doubt in scientific inquiry. The same way creationists misconstrue the meaning of the word "theory" in the context of the scientific method, here Mr. Wood drops the loaded words "skeptic" and "believer" into the discussion as the only qualitative arguments on the table. We are left with no actual data with which to make a judgment, only our conceptions of the relative value of arguments generally made by "skeptics" and "believers". This type of argumentation is patently disingenous and were Mr. Wood a real and honest journalist, he would be ashamed.
The misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the scientific method in polemic writing is one of my biggest pet peeves. Doing so intentionally in order to sow doubt and ignorance in the public is a travesty of logic and scientific reasoning. Real science is the pursuit of truth, not the obfuscation of it.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Cyber-Archaeology of the future
I am working on a television show about science, and in preparing the segments we want to film I have to do a fair amount of research to gather information for the hosts so that they can simplify it for the audience. The show is more about cool visuals than real science, but there is a drive to keep everything we do grounded in science of some redeeming value.
In the process of looking up random bits of scientific information (mostly through google searches), a picture forms in my mind of the internet as a whole and the value of a search engine to sift through ever-increasing numbers of pages to find what I'm looking for. I see pages like this one, buried in a government website, that stand alone, relatively unconnected to the rest of the internet (well...I guess not anymore now that I'm linking to it). It's not an old website, it just looks like one. But what about all those old angelfire pages (here's a fabulous example) ? What will become of them in the future as the internet grows and changes? More importantly, what obscure tidbits of information might be contained in them that future netizens will want to find?
I envision areas of study dedicated to delving through old websites and mining them for information. The Indiana Jones of the future will be a master googler rather than a bullwhip-wielding grave robber. All kinds of random information might be hidden in rarely-visited sites that are too small to bother deleting, being copied onto newer, more massive servers in bulk information transfers along with all their early 21st century secrets and collecting cyber-dust until one day someone stumbles across them.
And then there will be that rare gem that someone knows is out there, but doesn't know how to find. In the year 2080, how will someone find the credits for that Cadillac commercial with Kate Walsh that came out in 2008? What was on the cover of USAToday 75 years ago? The 'official' sources of information for these kinds of questions may actually be unavailable - if the companies in question went bankrupt and official websites were taken offline - but what if there is a random blog post about the subject hidden away somewhere, still accessible online because it was never important enough to delete?
Google and Wikipedia are doing a great job of organizing the internet, but there's still a lot of mess out there - and maybe that's good for future cyber-archaeologists.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Feeding The Beast
We have a habit of creating Beasts in America. The friendly creature that at first seems so helpful and productive that we feed it and nourish it and come to rely on it, until it grows bigger, and hungrier, and soon we realize that we can't live without it. We realize that It demands sacrifice.
If you're a conservative that is probably your view of the federal government - hence the conservative concept of "starving the beast" by cutting taxes to necessitate the cutting of programs.
I now understand that perspective better because although I don't view the government as a Beast (at the moment), I do see the Beast that is the financial sector.
We have gotten to the point in this country where we have hitched so many wagons to the stock market and investment culture, most notably the retirement savings of a generation, that our entire national morality has been warped into the Cult of the Stock Market Beast. It was good to us, and now we are obsessed with its every twitch and grimace because our livelihoods depend on its mood. What was good for the Beast was good for everyone.
The problem is that investments have gone from being the fuel for progress to being parasites on productivity. A pretty standard Return On Investment for a hedge fund is 20+%. That means if I have $500,000 to invest I could make $100,000 a year DOING NOTHING. Whereas if I was an Engineer, Farmer, Funiture-maker, someone that actually does something or makes something - I have to work for a living.
Not only that, but the investment culture, because it is naturally populated by the more powerful and more well connected, has lobbied government to tax investment income differently than regular income. So even if I make $100,000 as a Doctor, Lawyer, Farmer, Engineer, Filmmaker, whatever, I'll pay more in taxes on that income than I would if I made $100,000 as an investor.
Isn't that kind of insane? Investment has its purposes, but we've developed a culture surrounding it that is entirely unhealthy - it's a culture in which the stock market's response to world events and policy announcements is given tremendous weight in the public mind. We get hordes of financial commentators worshipping the market and viscerally reacting positively to anything that makes it go up and negatively to anything that makes it go down. We get scenes like these, in which Peter Schiff repeatedly warns throughout 2006 and 2007 that the market isn't behaving rationally and is destined for a fall, while investment-class blowhards literally laugh in his face - because anything that is making them money MUST be right and shouldn't be questioned.
If we learn anything from this economic crisis, it has simply got to be that producing goods and services should be valued more highly than having a good return on investment. We put too high a value on the ability to shuffle money around to create more money, because we only looked at the percent return on paper. The financial sector grew into a Beast because when we fed it money, it gave us back more money - and we didn't question how it did it, we just celebrated that it did. Now it has turned on us and instead of shitting out money it's just shitting all over us.
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