Category: opinion

Coming to terms with current politics

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I had my fill of politics during the four years in which I obtained my degree in Political Science. (A degree, I might add, which I promptly put to good use by becoming a software developer.) The problem with political science is that it is far more political than it is scientific. In fact, there is little about politics which is scientific and that makes it a difficult beast to understand. I used to be interested in politics and what was going on around me, however, over the last few years I have grown increasingly frustrated and disheartened by it, and the recent election and the events since have led me to the (unscientific) conclusion that not much good will come from politicians anytime soon, unless some drastic changes are made to the way politicians and the voters operate.  I can think of two steps that will help set things in the right direction:

  1. Term limits.  The argument against term limits is that is prevents good men and women from continuing their service beyond their initial term. The argument for term limits is that is eliminates the “career” politician and in our current state, I think the career politician is one of the most destructive influences we have in government. Politics should not be a career. It is public a public service. We have made it into a career, but with a certain level of willpower, we can unmake it. Term limits across the board are in order, I think. Those people lucky (or unfortunate) enough to be elected should spend their time governing, not running for reelection. The decisions they make in office should be what’s best for all of the country, not just the people who will likely vote for them next term. Setting hard term limits seems to me to be the only way to achieve this. Some might argue that in doing so, we rule out an entire class of potential leaders, but at this point, I am wary of any politician, Democrat or Republican, who wants to make a career out of politics. We need people who are willing to solve problems without much thought (or fear) of reelection. Realistically, of course, this is like the fox guarding the hen house. What politician in their right mind would vote for legislation that would effectively limit their career? The answer to this question highlights the state of our affairs, I think. But for the country to move out of the political stagnation we’ve wandered into, a term limit on politicians at all levels is the only way I see out of the quagmire.
  2. Education. We have become a nation of issue voters, where typically one issue that has little to do with governing decides an election. This is our own fault of course. If voters were better educated, I think they would make better decisions. But we simply don’t value education the way we should. If we did, we wouldn’t be falling behind in rankings against other nations. Party politics uses hot-button issues to scare voters into thinking that a vote for Candidate A means that you will lose the right to X. A smart voter knows that this isn’t true and they recognize that any politician who depends on votes based on a single issue isn’t one worthy of governing, I don’t care what party they belong to. We all need to be looking out for the big picture. We all need to learn to compromise where compromise is appropriate. Understanding the issues helps. An understanding of history helps. (Nothing we do is unique, it has all happened before in some form or another.) The smarter the voters, the better the politicians we will get.

I’m not optimistic about the next decade or so in U.S. politics. But the pendulum eventually swings back the other way. This are bad and then things are good. It is learning how to control the pendulum that is the trick we have yet to learn, be it the economy or other issues that face us. Either way, a message needs to be sent that we simply will no longer tolerate career politicians making decisions for us. It’s a message that I doubt very much will gain the momentum or visibility it needs, but I see it as one way out of this mess we’re in.

The Quiet Man

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Occasionally, I’ll browse the movies playing on Turner Classic Movies and record some of them. Last night, Kelly and I watched The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. The truth is, I tend to like these older movies more and more compared to what we have today. I think we both thought it was a “cute” movie. What was most amusing about it was what you could learn about the era in which it was made (1952-ish). Many of the backgrounds seemed artificial and it made me wonder if it seemed so because we are so used to CGI and on-location films today–or if the backgrounds seemed equally artificial to audiences of 1952, but I don’t think this is a question that can be answered. Even people who saw the movie in the theaters in 1952 would be hard-pressed to recall if the scenery felt authentic or not.

John Wayne (I haven’t seen many of his films) came across as a little too Joe Western, which might have been okay had the film actually been a Western as opposed to a romantic comedy that takes place in Ireland.  Maureen O’Hara was pretty good, I thought. We both laughed at how “un-PC” the movie was.

I like watching these movies, and I’m serious when I say that I tend to enjoy them more than the stuff that comes out in theaters today. That is not a hard rule, but there have been few movies that I have seen in the last few years that I really come away from saying, wow, that was great. It’s nice to know there is an entire virtually undiscovered universe of film out there to take advantage of. And it reminds me that I need to scroll through what’s playing this week on TCM and see if there’s anything that looks interesting.

Harry Potter and the Unoriginal Previews

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Kelly and I had a chance to see the latest Harry Potter installment recently. It is the first time I’d been to the movies in many months. I enjoyed the movie despite its cliffhanger ending and having to wait a while to find out what happens. (I only read the first book and I’ve managed to avoid most spoilers somehow.) It was nice getting out to the movies, just the two of us, and I think we both enjoyed the film.

But something disturbed me before the movie even started: the previews.

I can’t remember how many previews we saw, but as for the ones I do remember: Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Yogi Bear, Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Little Red Ridinghood. I’m fairly certain there was one other and it had the same thing in common as the first five previews.  Have you figured out what it is yet?

They were all previews for movies that are based on something originally in print form: comic books, novels, stories.  It made me wonder: is there any original storytelling ability left in Hollywood? Or are they now completely and utterly dependent on us writers for material? I suppose as a writer one might see that as a good thing, but I the movies made from previous material are rarely as good as the original material and just about everyone knows it. But I imagine that they are generally cheaper than coming up with an original idea, and cost-effective since there is already an audience base for the original work.

Seems pretty lazy to me, and I’m not sure what disappoints me more: the sheer laziness of Hollywood, or the sheer laziness of audiences who would rather see the original twisted out of form on the big screen than read it in its original from the library.  (I count myself in the latter group; as I said at the outset, I only read the first Harry Potter book, but I’ve seen all of the movies.)

“Don’t touch my junk” will save the day

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This is why I am not overly concerned about the recent invasive screening techniques used by the TSA. The balance between freedom and security is a zero-sum game. Increase security and freedoms decrease. Increase freedoms and security decreases. Americans will tolerate only so much before they will do what they are best at–revolt. Congress is listening because they have to–the very people being felt-up by airport security staff are the same people who put Congress in office. With the Congress involved it is only a matter of time.  Pistole, the head of the TSA has said that he’s not going to change the policies. Fast forward to the not-too-distant future where he’ll likely issue a quiet memorandum, backing out of the policies which many people say border on sexual harassment.

There is a call to boycott the screenings on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.  It will be interesting to see how that works out. For me it comes down to a risk assessment: how much you value your freedom over how likely it seems to you that someone can sneak explosives on board an aircraft through existing security mechanism. I think the TSA has gone too far, but I’m not concerned because John Tyner’s, “Don’t touch my junk” will resonate with the public and with Congress in the same way that Roosevelt’s “little dog Fala” did. And the pendulum will begin to swing back the other way.

Scientifc American gets a face-lift

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Scientific American October 2010

Beginning with the October 2010 issue, Scientific American has gotten yet another face lift. I’ve been a subscriber to SCIAM for 15 years and I read each issue cover-to-cover, and in doing so, I’ve become very comfortable with the look and feel, and where things fall in the magazine. So I was ready to complain about any change just for the sake of the change.

But overall, I’m pleased with the result.

In part that’s because the changes they have made seem to mirror the aesthetics of New Scientist, which is my favorite science magazine.  Looking at a page in the first half of SCIAM, it looks remarkably similar in formatting and over all feel to a page in New Scientist.  This may not be the most original move on the part of the designers of the magazine, but it works from a usability standpoint.  For one thing, the non-feature articles almost never span more than a page now.  I think some of the headline news is more condensed than it was before and I like the fact that I can read these pieces in their entirety without flipping a page.  (There are one or two exceptions.)

The magazine has also reorganized the way it presents articles, columns and features.  In this, I generally don’t like the change.  I was used to a very specific rhythm whereby you started with the editorial and letters, followed by the famous 50-100-150 years ago page, and then by the news. That was followed by all of the opinion columns, and then the features, and finally, reviews.  Beginning in October that all changes.  You get the editorial and letters, and then 2 short opinion pieces.  This is followed by the “Advances” section which replaces the science news.  Then an opinion piece on health, followed by a new column, “TechnoFiles” which is an opinion piece by David Pogue.  Then you are into the features which is followed by reviews.  Michael Shermer‘s excellent “Skeptic” column has been moved way to the back (page 98 in the October issue), and Steve Mirky‘s “Antigravity” column follows that, no longer being the last item in the magazine.  That’s too bad because it was always nice finishing off an intense reading of science with a laugh.  Inexplicably, the 50, 100, 150 Years Ago page is now the second to last item (page 102 in the October issue), and the final page of the magazine is a new item called “Graphic Science” which illustrates something of interest using fancy charts and graphs.

There are other minor changes, the most notable to me being the use of Wall Street Journal style illustrations for feature and column authors instead of the photographs they used to use. I’m not sure why one is better than the other, and therefore question the purpose of this change.

I liked when all of the opinion pieces were collected together before the features, but I suppose the magazine designers can’t please everyone.  I cannot for the life of my understand why the moved the 50, 100, 150 years ago column from the front to the back.  I do, however, like the new format of the features themselves.  They are all 2-column and make much better and more efficient use of page space, in my opinion.

My last grip is about the binding.  Beginning with this issue, the magazine goes from a rounded binding to a flat one, presumably because the flat one allows information to be printed on the edge.  It is a mistake.  It may not seem like a big deal, but as a regular reader, I like to fold the magazine in such a way the I am only looking at one page at a time.  The round binding made that easy, the flat binding makes it virtually impossible.  From a usability standpoint, it is frustratingly annoying.

I finished the October issue yesterday and I’m halfway through November.  I imagine by the time I’m through November I’ll be more-or-less used to the new format, and then, just when I’ve finally become completely comfortable with it, it will change again.

The onion and the flu: a myth in one act

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I received an email message today with the subject “FW: Very interesting – Onion Theory” and I realize that alone should have given me pause, but I recognized the sender’s address and took a look at it anyway.  The gist of the message is that onions scattered about the rooms of your house can stave off the flu virus, and that everyone should give this a try since flu season is upon us.  Here was my response to the message:

Sorry to disappoint, but the onion vs. flu has long since been proven to be an urban myth:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/swineflu/onion.asp

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/medical/a/swine_flu_facts_onions_and_flu.htm

It’s a little disappointing that this stuff still gets spread around (no pun intended) and casts a sad light on the state of our understand of scientific method and principles of science in general.

The narrative of the farmer’s tale has some rather gaping logical flaws, to say nothing of completely misunderstanding the biology of viruses.

The best way to prevent the flu, of course, is to get a flu vaccine, which countless double-blind studies have shown, prevents the flu with a higher degree of success than anything else, including onions.

Despite advice to the contrary, trying the onion method can hurt, especially if you are someone prone to getting the flu like a young child or elderly person.  Since onions provide no protection, trying this method as opposed to, say, a vaccination leaves you vulnerable to a virus that you’ve deceived yourself into thinking you’re protected against. This can have obvious dangerous consequences.

Sorry to spoil the show, but it’s nothing more than snakeoil shammery.

What bothers me most about messages like this is that they uncover just how poor our collective grasp of science and scientific principles really is, and just how easily we’ll accept without question something we receive in email, and then pass it along to everyone we know.  We’ve got to do better people!  It took my 5 seconds to do a Google search for “onions and flu” and the top two hits were the two links that I included in my message.

What’s more is the assertion that cut up onions left around somehow dangerous, an assertion that goes equally unchallenged, and one that is equally false.  There is no scientific evidence of this.

There is the question of why even bother replying to these messages.  After all, I know that the information is wrong, so who is it hurting?  Well, I suppose I could leave it alone, but this is a particular pet peeve of mine and sometimes, I just can’t keep quiet about these things.

And just to be clear and so no one missed the point onions won’t protect you from the flu.

The trouble with David Pogue’s “Trouble with E-Readers”

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In the November 2010 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, David Pogue writes a column pointing out “The Trouble with E-Readers“.  The trouble with Pogue’s column is that he is focusing on arguments that are old-hat and many of them are being addressed.  What he, and the rest of the world seem to miss is that perhaps the most significant problem with E-Readers is their aesthetics.  Robert J. Sawyer wrote about this scandalous state of e-books back in February.

Pogue argues that the death of the printed book is premature and that comes as news to just about no one following E-Reader developments.  In the long run, E-Reader editions of books may very well replace the paperback market, but hardcovers and trade editions are going nowhere anytime soon.  He makes a kind of amusing post hoc argument as to why E-Readers won’t replace books (because television didn’t replace radio and e-mail didn’t replace paper).

And then he goes on to talk about the crudeness of the technology, addressing the points that we are all aware of, but not even mentioning the crudeness of the aesthetics for most of these devices.  I’ve talked about this before, but for those new to the discussion, what I mean by aesthetics is how pleasing the e-book looks to our trained eyes.  And our eyes are trained.  When we look at a book, we are used to certain types of justification, certain types of hyphenation, and a certain lack of typos in the text.  However, many e-books are scanned in from manuscript without a copy editor, introducing numerous OCR errors that never appear in their print version.  (Think of the word “turn”.  An OCR scan may see that “rn” as an “m” and so you get “tum” instead.  I’ve seen this countless times in e-books.  Hyphenation in print books helps maintain the satisfying level of word spacing that we are used to.  All of this combines to be the aesthetics of the book and it is here that publishers are presently failing.  Fix this aspect of  e-books and E-Readers and all of the other pieces will fall into place.

It is not an easy fix.  It requires changes to the way e-book software does hyphenation.  It requires paying copy editors to read the e-book version of each format of the book produced to check for typos introduced through OCR automation.  Publishers will argue that this drives up the price of the book.  But until the aesthetics of the e-book match that of the hardcover or paperback, people will continue to resist them for vague reasons that they can’t quite explain.

Ultimately, no device will ever be as perfect as a book.  Isaac Asimov gave a reasoned argument for this in his essay “The Ancient and the Ultimate” and if you’ve never read that essay, I urge you to check it out.  But I have been generally pleased with my Kindle and I consider myself a convert.

Tardy bells, redux

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With all of the meetings I have been in lately, I once again find it frustratingly necessary to implement some kind of tardy bell within my company.  This is nothing new.  I wrote on this very subject over four years ago, and nothing has changed.  People are still routinely late to meetings, often without notice or apology.  When my frustration works up to a requisite pitch, I try to calm myself by imagining a tardy-bell system like the kind I had in junior high school and high school, with middle managers, directors and senior directors dashing down the hallway at the first sounding of the bell, their coat tails trailing behind them, their ties flapping in the artificial breeze.  At least that is enough to make me smile.

A fair-weather fan?

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Yankees

I was accused, yesterday, of being a fair-weather fan because I complained that I was giving up on last night’s game and heading off to bed.  I surprised by the accusation.  No one with whom I work would ever consider me a fair-weather fan, but since I couldn’t sleep last night, I gave the matter some thought.

I gave up on the game in frustration.  I think this is a natural emotion, the more so when you care about something that is completely out of your control.  You can only shout at your TV so many times (the results are the same, regardless).  Frustration, to me, is an emotion that shows you care.  If the poor showing by Yankees pitching didn’t frustrate me, I’d see it as a sign that it was something I just didn’t care much about.  But I love baseball and I have been a lifelong Yankees fan, despite nearly everyone around me hating the team.  There is nothing wrong with frustration.

I also complained that I didn’t have the energy for tonight’s game and my accuser took exception to that.  What kind of fan am I if I don’t support my team, whole hog into the wee hours of the night?  I suppose, under those circumstances, I am a fair-weather fan.  I’ve found as I have gotten older that it is more difficult for me to stay up late, and these games often go past midnight on the East Coast.  This difficulty, however, has nothing to do with being a fan of the team.  I have difficulty staying up to midnight on any night.  Even so, I claimed I didn’t have the energy to watch tonight’s game, and in part, I think I meant I didn’t have the heart to watch it.  This goes hand-in-hand with frustration, I think.

But there are other, more practical reasons why I won’t be watching tonight’s game.  Wednesday night’s are my writer’s group nights and at the moment, writing takes a priority over baseball.  If that makes me a fair-weather fan, then so be it.  I can live with that.  The bottom line is that fan though I am, baseball doesn’t always come first.

Arizona, immigration and the 14th amendment

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Am I the only one who thinks that the United States is once again embarrassing itself with its sudden posturing on illegal immigration?  In my mind, Arizona has become the laughing stock of the nation, to say nothing of the world.  And now, Republicans seem to want to amend the Constitution to undo the citizenship clause (which says that if you are born here, you are a citizen).  The clause is a simple and clear one:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.

There are those who feel that this encourages illegal immigrants.  Maybe it does, but so what?  What ever happened to “give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…”?  I suppose Republicans look upon the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty as naive; these are the same people who view the second amendment as unalterable.  It seems to me that the nation was founded on the principle of acceptance, of a better life.  It’s why we are all here in the first place.  Excepting Native Americans, no one here can claim they were not a beneficiary of the open immigration policies of the United States.

And now we are trying to make it even harder to give other people the same opportunities.  This is one of those things that makes me sad, and ashamed to call myself an American.  What a hypocritical nation we have become!  Arizona leads the pack with its “papers, please” approach to illegal immigration.  I wonder what it is that people are so afraid of?

  1. Illegal immigrants take away jobs from honest Americans?  Show me a truly honest American (that is, an able-bodied citizen not attempting to be a career welfare recipient, or a professional litigant) and I’ll show you someone who has no fear of losing a job to an illegal immigrant.
  2. Illegal immigrants cost the state an enormous amount of money?  We call ourselves a “Christian” nation, but I don’t see it.  Where is the notion of charity?  Amnesty?  There are certain core decencies that you simply can’t cast aside because they cost too much.  We are obligated to pay it forward.
  3. Illegal immigrants encourage crime and poverty?  This is true of anything illegal or taboo.  Drugs would not be as exotic if they were legalized.  Children wouldn’t be as fascinated at the notion of sex if it wasn’t a mystery.  If we made it easier to be a legal citizen, much of the crime and poverty associated with it would go away over time.

I think we need to look this ugly side of ourselves in the face and at least lost the hypocrisy.  We are the “haves” of the world, and we don’t want to give up any of what we “have” to the “have-nots”.  That is what people are really afraid of.  If only these same people had the courage to admit this–at least then they couldn’t be called hypocrites.  Then they’d only be honest bigots.

Emotionally investing in other worlds

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Regarding his new film, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio was quoted by the London Daily Star as saying:

This is my first science fiction film.  I have a hard time with science fiction.  I have a little aversion to it, because it’s hard to emotionally invest in worlds that are too detached from what we know.

I can only assume that DiCaprio was referring to science fiction films, and not written science fiction.  I, too, find difficulty emotionally investing in much of the science fiction films that are out there, but I simply can’t see how this is possible for written science fiction.  It begs the question:  what, if any, science fiction has DiCaprio read that he has found it difficult to invest in?

Well-written science fiction is all about getting the reading to emotionally invest in what is happening in the story; suspension of disbelief requires this.  This can be a difficult challenge for writers (and why so many writers say that the most difficult kind of writing they do is science fiction).  The fact that they can do it successfully again and again is a testament to the skills of the writer.  It doesn’t matter that the worlds we sometimes visit are detached from what we know–we still fall in love with those world, come to feel a familiar bond with them (think Dune or Foundation, for instance).  And yet the implication that all science fiction is about worlds too detached from what we know belies an ignorance of the genre.

Think of Robert Silverberg’s brilliant novel Dying Inside, which takes place in New York City in the 1970s.   Think of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, the setting of which might be unfamiliar, but the theme of which–the purpose of war–is something that touches us every day.  Ray Bradbury writes stories about familiar and unfamiliar worlds, but in each of them we recognize ourselves, our gifts and our follies carried with us.  These stories shine a different kind of light on the human condition, allow us to examine ourselves in ways hidden from a classical narrative.  Every world we visit in science fiction, not matter how unfamiliar, is a world we know.

Sometimes, clarity gets lost in the storytelling.  In the same interview, DiCaprio says of the script:

It’s a very well-written, comprehensive script.  It’s completely original.  But you really had to have [directory] Chris [Nolan] in person to articulate some of the things swirling around in his head.

If the director of the film had to explain the concepts that underlie the story to its lead actor, what does that say for the rest of us?  Sometimes, lack of clarity in writing can make it difficult to emotionally attach to something, be it familiar or unknown.

Let’s see if we can find 1,000,000 people in support of flying by clicking their heels together

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You’ve seen these Facebook groups:   “1 million strong for [fill-in-the-blank].”  These are almost always political, in support of the President, against the immigration bill, whatever it might be.  I views these updates with a growing sense of ennui.  My basic question is: what’s the point?  Certainly 1 million people who “want the old Facebook interface back” might demonstrate to the Facebook powers-that-be that there is some considerable disapproval to the changes they are making.  But what’s the point of 1,000,000 strong against the Arizona immigration bill, or health care reform?  Presumably politicians aren’t spending the bulk of their time reading Facebook updates, and parsing out those names who are constituents for their districts.  (Though I could be wrong here.)  As an expression of opinion, it is harmless, but opinion for important matters shouldn’t be harmless.  It should force issues, educate the public, convince people that change is required.

I see several problems that arise out of these statements:

  1. Argument by numbers.  The implication with each of these statements is that the more people you can get to agree with the statement, the more powerful and true the statement is.  Anyone who has received the most basic instruction in logic will see the fallacy here.  It disturbs me, therefore, that so many people seem to miss it.
  2. Magic numbers.  What is so magic about 1,000,000 people, anyway?  In the United States, it represents less than 1/3rd of a percent of the overall population, and perhaps only 1/50th of a voting majority.  Setting argument #1 aside for a moment, why do the creators of these groups set their sights so low?  Why not go for 5 million, or 10 million people?  Not that it would make a difference in the outcome, but it does illustrate a seeming lack grasp on the scope of a problem.
  3. Opinion-in-a-box.  These statements offer pre-packaged, opinions for the taking.  They are the fast-food equivalent of opinion.  They require no personal investigation.  Clicking a button, it seems, has become the de rigueur method of expressing one’s opinion without having to actually form one.  The danger here, clearly, is that by putting opinion in a neat little box, you neglect everything outside that box.

There are other more powerful and persuasive ways to express opinions.  Write a letter to your representative.  Writer a letter to the editor.  Volunteer for a cause.  Or how about (dare I say) take the time to better educate yourself about the issues of the day.  The problem, of course, is that each of these alternatives takes considerably more effort than clicking the LIKE button on Facebook.  When you get right down to it, it seems to me that it is not so much the opinion that matters as it is the time and effort it takes to express it.