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[Sep. 4th, 2009|04:32 pm] |
I must admit I'm tremendously confused by this story on less wrong. The basic gist of it on one level is a concern of good and evil in situations where the answer seems clear but actually isn't. As it's actually an interesting story with a good twist, I'll discuss it under the cut (and give the story synopsis):
( Spoilers for the lazy, discussion for the rest )
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| Gripes and Grimaces. |
[Aug. 19th, 2009|04:20 pm] |
This, of course, won't be anywhere near page one (nor on the main sci/tech page on google, nor on the main page for ny times, nor wa-po:
Americans Gain 73 Days of Life. Heart disease and cancer deaths down for another year. The death rate also fell for influenza and pneumonia, homicide, accidents, stroke, diabetes and hypertension. Blacks now live past seventy (their gain was about 1/2 year). Some variation with infant mortality (slightly up).
On a different note, a buddy of mine at work complained about how powerless he was, and how democracy doesn;t work because no one listens to him. I was a bit amused by the complaint because, with 299 million or so other equals in the US, this is about right. We only have a voice inasmuch as we get people to listen to us.
While I'm on this kind of not, the next person who I talk to who that complains that drug companies or whatnot are funding all the health care protests are going to get a slap on the back of the head. I'm in favor of taking away basic health care coverage from a person's job (it seems odd to put them together, given how arbitrary a job can be), but to honestly think that a lot of those guys protesting are insincere is silly on the face of it. It's like when right-wingers say some group is funded by communists (back in the old days, anyway). Sure, they might be, but that doesn't mean those folks wouldn't have been doing much the same stuff.
Oh, and I'm probably joining the Whole Foods Girlcott. If a guy has a recommendation about solutions, you give him the right of the way. Tell him why the idea is bad, sure, but boycotting when someone hasn't committed a serious social insult? Please.
Well, the gripes are over for now. Actually, wait. I just read this quote by Jeffererson, in the wiki entry on "The Constitution is not a suicide pact" : "[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means." I knew the guy was more of a realist than history normally lets on, but wow. That's almost a kissinger level statement.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 14th, 2009|08:57 am] |
One of the things that's really striking me about The Road to Serfdom so far is how much Hayek qualifies the things he says. It's almost like listening to myself through B's ears. It's especially ironic because he seems (from his intro) to believe it's a very forceful text, and seems concerned about the way his fellows will receive it (this was born out, but reading it, the only real force is from the construction of his arguments about how giving government the power of production via planning is a bad thing if you want to keep the liberty that even socialists probably would like to keep (he uses the old term of socialist, of which he had many friends, which probably translates better to communist now).
The other thing I'm wondering is whether "moral intuition" is the only game in town for ethics besides "it's all cultural with some miscellaneous cognitive functions which herding animals tend to possess". Now, rather than being simple naval gazing, I think the question has some signifigance since, if one can design a set of laws that takes advantage of people's inclinations, then I think one can end up with better people, much as taking advantage of natural inclinations, e free market with some structure tends to work for people's benefit. |
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| Tired of the Current Economic Arguments on Health Care |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|08:21 am] |
I've decided I'm tired of reading the various whines and gripes of the political parties going on at the moment, and wanted to focus on some meatier stuff. I'm starting with Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom". I'm just finishing up the introduction, but this paragraph the editor (Bruce Caldwell) pulls from Keynes struck me:
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who here voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
It feels true. Watching Obama summon the ghost of Keynes, while the Republicans summon Adam Smith, and one can watch the great conversation taking place, even if the summoners have probably never read the works first hand, and seem to misapply quite a bit of it. In fact, I guess even tossing around the main terms being discussed in the current health care debate "State", "Property", "Liberty", "Duties", etc is bringing up terms which the various political philosophers have defined, or more appropriately- given shape to. One just has to have heard the terms from other people, and made sense of them from the various contexts, and they become entrapped in the various intellectual's worlds.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 10th, 2009|10:27 am] |
I feel kind of bad that I don't write about social justice issues enough. Now, it should be noted that I probably don't think of that phrase the same as other people who talk about it do, since my view of things tends to be of the noblesse oblige variety, with the hope that eventually everyone rises up the ladder of their desires, as opposed to some root belief that people are equally across the spectrum (that's probably an unfair strawman view, but I wanted to establish some contrast. I assume most people are nuanced in their ideas).
However, I definitely dislike attacks on individual dignity, or even worse, where the rules compound on one another. It's just not sporting. This article in the NY Times on how a lot of current laws are returning us to the days of having debtor prisons hit that chord (the orginal study the article is based on is here). An example:
The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.
or, perhaps a closer to home idea:
Or suppose you miss a payment and, before you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you’re stopped for something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have your car impounded or face a steep fine
It just feels like punishing people twice.
FWIW, The meanest cities (from the study)
1. Los Angeles CA
2. St Peteresburg, FL
3. Orlando, FL
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Gainsville, FL
6. Kalamazoo, MI
7. San Francisco, CA
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Bradenton, FL
10. Berkely, CA
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| Godwin |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|11:53 am] |
There are right ways to do things, and wrong ways to do things. part of the patriot act that always bugged me was the "neighbor-tipster" aspect of it. Not that I think it wrong to report particularly suspicious behavior, just that it worries me to actively solicit it. Even more worrying is the idea that someone might report someone else because they're communicating in an otherwise nonthreatening, legal way, talking about some policy issue. Well, the administration looks like it's doing just that over health care:
From the white house website:
"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."
Now, to be fair here, there is a lot of bad info and disingenuity going around (on both sides). I can understand the desire to have a sort of central info dump to keep the PR message on target, but that kind of fight really belongs to whatever guys you have paying attention to this sort of thing, and the blogs that support your side. It doesn't belong as a list in the hands of the government (unless one considers these folks to be a danger to the republic... and even then, an imminent danger). Perhaps another better method would be to say "send us something you're not sure about, and we'll explain our side; I'd be OK with that too. Just not like the way this sounds.
I guess this is the kind of thing that makes me remember that I believe the situation dictates political responses more than the party does.
I should mention this blogs has actually been viewed by the fed once before. back when I made a post about some of Sam Brownback's supporters.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|07:56 pm] |
Well, this article on live science seems to have attracted the child free crowd out of the woodwork. I particulary enjoy this comment (just assume the whole thing is [sic], much like anything I might have copied and pasted:
I agree, Earth is far to over populated. Problem is there are certain groups that fell like they should have 10 or more kids. Catholics forbid using birth control so they breed like roaches, and in places like New Orleans there are people that have babies just to get welfare checks. This planet is doomed.
Pretty funny. I especially enjoy the juxtaposition of a left side argument (overpopulation), with a right side argument (welfare queens). My lulz complete, I did notce a comment later that makes me think. The poster notes the guy is probably OK with abortion on the grounds that it's woman's right to choose what she does with her body. The filpside of this though, may be that a woman has the right to choose how she utilizes her reproductive organs in the more traditional manner.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|01:44 am] |
A site I've really come to love recently, Artist a day. So far, my favorite piece, by Paulette Insall:
 
Although I will admit I enjoy this one by David Mellon, even though I find it a little creepy. Perhaps I like it because it's creepy.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 2nd, 2009|04:41 am] |
I believe I've lost the ability to read something and post a cogent remark. I'd say I was out of practice, but in reality, I've always kind of had the sort of mindset that drifts off into its own interpretations before the other person's argument really sets in. Part of it is probably because I feel I've grasped something, another part because I'm a little too eager to converse, and a final part is just a sort of love of ideas as they bounce around. With some folks, this works. With others, it almost certainly appears that I'm a bit of a loon, which, after going over some of my own entries months later, may not be an entirely incorrect assessment. This is just unsatisfactory, well, assuming my goal is idea sharing as opposed to banter.
It's obviously not the case that I can't construct a logical phrase. I do it all the time in math. It's not that I don't have the ability to talk, I do that quite well too. And it's not that I don't listen, I've been complemented enough on that over the course of the years to know that
I do. It's something more selective, like filtering out a couple of bits, or the sense of what they actually mean, which can change the entire substance of someone else's words. The problem is so random that I really can't pinpoint it, and it doesn't really impact my day to day life, so it's hard to work up the urge to fix it.
I think I remember in the navy that someone recommended that I slow down, but all that ever did was frustrate me, without any concomitent increase in accuracy. Then again, maybe that was because I didn't desire to do it, so it just made me cranky without making me buy into the issue. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 1st, 2009|02:27 pm] |
Woo-Hoo! I beat a credit card company!
Never let it be said that having odd tastes in reading material, ability to surf the net for advice, and a mastery of trivia doesn't pay off. Recently, Chase (the card used to WaMu, but they got bought out) canceled my credit card account due to some high balances on my other cards (which wasn't surprising, as I've just gotten married, and the cards helped fill in the slack, and haven't been the top priority since we've been shopping for new house.. never thought my VA loan will be as helpful as it's going to be). Needless to say, this concerned me since it could affect my credit score via a change in available vs utilized balances (it doesn't really, btw), so I decided to fight back -well, as much as a former Diplomacy player whose nickname was the sniveler could.
Here's how it all went down: I was about to buy some pizza about two weeks ago when the person told me my card didn't go through. I thought that was weird (this card was a couple hundred below the limit), so I called the company, and piece of advice one- the first people you call are gatekeepers. They'll almost never be able to solve a problem on their own, and neither will their bosses. The best they can do is transfer you to the people who can.
Realizing this, I went to the nearest chase branch the next day to see a real person who could possibly give me some advice on how to pursue the issue, maybe even tell me who I should call. While fun to talk to, the best he could offer me was the number they call to talk to the credit department. Great, another gatekeper. So, I chatted this one up and asked to talk to her supervisor in the hope she could help (I hadn't heard the term "account representative" yet), and water to wine, after a litle being nice, and some talk about how there might have been a mistake on the report (there was, but it wasn't the real problem. Still, it got me through the gatekeeper), she transferred me to the Credit Lending department.
Once here, I was actually helped by someone who could make decisions. She looked at the numbers and told me that the reason was about the high utilized to available ratio, and there was nothing she could do there, so I talked about how I understood that they utilized models, and asked if she could tell me how much I needed to plop in to get the card back... oh, well can't get that, it's propietary information (realized that as soon as it came out of my mouth because I read about capital one having a proprietary system for this kind of thing), then talked up about The CEO Jamie Dimon (thank you lolfed.com), and she goes "Well, how much money do you make?" I told her and she goes "why don't you send in your w-2's and we'll look at these things again." Jackpot.
Well, it took a couple days after faxing when I got no response back, but this time, I had researched the topic online, and rather than going through the phonus interuptus again, I discovered the word "backdoor number" It still leads to a gatekeepre of a sort, but this one's goal is more about finding the person you'll need. Here's the link, I recommend that anyone who's dealing with customer service from bestbuy to walmart taking a peek: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2983
Well, I hope this is useful to someone in the future.
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 1st, 2009|12:36 am] |
Every so often, one comes across an answer to one of life's hard questions. In this case, why sex and yawning often go together.
"Yawning, argues Dr. Robert Provine, a neuroscientist, professor of psychology, and yawning expert (yes, yawning expert) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is an evolutionary trait conserved across all vertebrate species. Fish do it, lions do it, we do it. It is so embedded in the primitive parts of our brains that fetuses do it in utero. We do it for a variety of reasons, like boredom or as social instinct — the so-called contagious yawn. You may be yawning right now because you are reading about yawning. (Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally.) But as Provine, who has also authored a book called “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation,” has pointed out, paratroopers ready to jump out of airplanes and into battle are prone to yawning, as are dogs just before they attack and it’s safe to say they are not bored. Yawning, in fact, is also a sign of arousal. Biochemically speaking, it may be caused by the release of dopamine in the brain which may trigger a cascade of other brain chemicals like oxytocin and nitric oxide, the stuff erections are made of, among them. For example, when scientists experimenting with Melanotan, or PT-141, (a drug we’ve covered here before) tried it on people, they found that in addition to creating erections, “nausea and yawning were frequently reported side effects.” As Provine explained to me, a yawn “serves a number of functions but a common feature in all is that it is associated with a change of state, a shift, say, from sleep to wakefulness, wakefulness to sleep.” So when you shift from not aroused to aroused, you yawn. Yawning at the moment of impending sex, he said, “is not at all rare.” Dutch scholar Wolter Seuntjens has an interesting Web site exploring the eroticism of the yawn, and Provine speculates that sexual climax and yawning may “share a neurobehavioral heritage.” You’re not bored, or starved for oxygen. You’re just turned on."
Amazing. I wonder if this also has anything to do with the fact that I get... priapus like... when I get tired during a lecture.
"
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| Librarians |
[Jul. 30th, 2009|05:30 pm] |
I used to love the old days of libraries, when you could really show some mastery in finding the oddest and most esotheric items of information. To this day, the ability to dig stuff up and hunt for something like "who was the inventor of the billard ball?" in a room filled with books is one of my great pleasures. Given that it's a useful skill, I thought it might be nice to share my algorithm, and hopefully see how other people do it. Interestingly, I find that the ability to look up stuff in a library translates pretty directly to using the net. The main difference is that the interenet is simultaneously better (I can search a phrase), and worse (I get 500,000 hits).
Step 1: The Question. This is the most important part of any search, as it's pretty hard to find out something about japanese poetry if you don't know whether you're looking for waka or tanka. Sometimes a little early research helps out. A deeper version of this occurs when you get a "keyhole" effect, asking the perfect question to know where to look. Once upon a time, when I was learning about steam plants I asked the question "what's the difference between a primary and a secondary system?" as all I had seen up till then was a bunch of different systems that had different bits and pieces, and didn't make too much sense. After the question, all the turbines and pipes had a place in the universe.
Step2: Depth. How deep does the question need to be answered? If it's just a statistsic, maybe a quick internet search; if it's a deep question, grabbing a couple books on both the topic and the related portions, and then slogging through indexes.
Step 3: Thinking backwards:. If you can imagine how the answer will be phrased, searching online becomes ten times easier. Searching elephant + dung won't get as good a search as combinging the phrase "man slipped in" with elephant dung. The goal in online searching is to realize that the obvious search will get a whole bunch of hits, and be useless, unless you like reading 10,000 entries. Using the quotation marks, or the "-" sign (like Chaplin -charlie, if you're looking for some other chaplin) can pull off a hundred thousand possibilities if it's a popular item.
Step 4: Who else talks about this? Just because you're looking up something about yersian pestis, you may not need to go to the biology section. It's quite possible a history of the plague book may have a better explanation of what happens in the progression of the disease from an epidemoligical standpoint -and vice versa, learning the history may be aided by knowing about how people actually respond to it. A little bit of scanning in this manner over a long period of time may lead to the ease of the next item:
Step 5: Lateral Thinking. Sometimes you just gotta follow a hunch and do what's interesting. Eventually, you may get that "Poincarre momenet" when everything makes sense, and find the line that satisfies.
Step 6: Drudgery: Well, it's not always interesting. I've clicked though several dozen graphs looking for one that gives an actual global mean temperature, as opposed to giving a temperature anaomoly, and let me not even start to talk about how bad people are at giving out graphs that end when their point is best made (OK. I'm not entirely perfect here either. I could put more time to finding data that disagrees with me too).
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| Human Health Care vs Veterenary Care |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|02:42 pm] |
Well, Damn. I think the left, right, libertarians and populists may have to examine some presumptions (myself included):
From Megan McCardle at the Atlantic:
Now, think about the details here. Animal health care is cost sensitive (people will often weigh an animal's life vs the cost), and generally, it is payed at the vet's directly. No support system to pay for things, minimal government regulation, minimal malpractice.
McArdle's explanation:
"Two reasons, presumably: technological change and rising income. As we get wealthier, we spend more of our income on former luxuries, like keeping our pets healthy--nineteenth century veterinary care for sick cats consisted of a sack and some stones to weight it down with. And improvements in health care technology are giving us more things to spend that money on. With the help of my family, I bought my dog five extra years of life with an MRI that diagnosed his slipped disk; without it, we'd have had to put him to sleep when he was three. Worth it? I think so. But in 1950, I couldn't have afforded it, even if it had been available."
So, Health care as luxury? Interesting. I wonder if, at that point, one can ask about things like diminishing returns, or whether economies of scale exist (if everyone has an MRI, they will be mass produced like some other forms of instrunmentation.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|01:58 am] |
From xkcd:
Often, at work, people will start talking about how bad things are, and how they're getting worse. Seventy percent of the time, I kind of slough it off on the grounds that they're probably just griping, but in some cases, I get the feeling that they seem to look at it from the point of view that life is bad and getting worse, and that now will never be as good as then. Part of me appreciates the sentiment, as I can say with no uncertainty that now will never be exactly like then, but then I'll never be the same person I was yesterday, not necessarily worse, just different, so it's just a statement of the obvious.
Yet I can't imagine how people can think of the whole of history as one continual trek in a downward moral spiral. I mean, we're still here, and assuming morality is something that helps us to exist, then it's gotta be working or else we wouldn't be around to question it. Now, I think one can say the standards now are worse than they used to be, but that's not the best path of thought either, since I can bet that if things went back to the way they were 200 years ago, the person would think it was even worse. In fact, it's one of my favorite lines of rebuttal, to point out what a reasonable person would probably have considered justifiable or good in other centuries and eras.
I would imagine a more fruitful way of thinking in this direction would be sort of socratic; each generation learns something from the old one, and then gets confronted with a different set of problems, so that even while the knowledge base grows, the potential issues increase even faster creating a feeling of having even less wisdom than our parents may have had. While I guess that's useful from a humility standpoint, it's troublesome in that it can mean problems now aren't viewed with sufficient seriousness, being "the fault of all those bad/stupid/low class/rich/etc people", which is more of a blamestorming than problem solving activity.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|01:18 am] |
I thought this was a nice link to share:
"Why smart people often feel they're the dumbest one in the room"
Being somewhat extroverted, I think it's pretty common for people to overestimate how intelligent I may be, especially since I tend to toss out ideas that can come from topics that are potentially obscure, but in reality, just reflect some bit of stuff I happened to be reading that day (and, as an entp, I can go through quite a bit, stashing this and that factoid for later recombination into more original second level thoughts), and gathering other people's opinions, as opposed to something I put together myself.
I , however, tend to be most impressed with folks who have a poker face about things, you tell them stuff, and are pretty sure they're processing it, but don't give quite enough feedback to see where they are. It only get's reinforced if they open their mouth every so often and something intelligent comes out. It can get to the point where I want to get inside the other person's head because I want to see how it ticks.
The interplay seems to make for an good chemistry, one side very curious, the other side relaxed by a person who's pretty easy to read, making for a decent conversation.
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|05:41 am] |
Why do so many people seem to conflate moral relativism with a "live and let live" philosophy?
On the other hand, why do so many live-and-let-livers seem to be so intolerant of people who have different moral beliefs?
The first question springs to mind from a recent discussion where on one hand the person argued that moral rules are essentially arbitrary constructs (gay marriage in this case), then says it should be allowed because it's not hurting anyone, and we should live and let live. It seems the person has a definite idea of what they believe to be a moral guideline (the 'it's not hurting anyone else basis), and what they don't (people who find issue with sexual variety). Now, I don't have an issue with the debate about which position is better, but it seems to undercut one's position to argue that the rules are arbitrary, and then try to enforce another set in the same argument. Perhaps it would have been better to say X principal dominates Y in this case.
The second question springs from a side thought during the first discussion, that people who argue for tolerance are often anything but. I guess the very idea of trying to get someone to agree with us is by it's very nature manipulative, if not actually somewhat coercive vis a vis a sort of bandwagon argument. It's just not a live and let live kind of thing to do.
I guess this is why I split up my personal life philosophy from my thoughts about how others should behave, with the tacit understanding they probably do the same thing on some level. That way, I can fully acknowledge that morals can be highly malleable, while following some form of them. I have instincts that I was probably born with on what's right or wrong that were no doubt guided by my upbringing, and I feel good or bad when I follow them (or don't), but since I can't see behind someone else's brain, I feel more inclined to accept their behavior in as much as it doesn't interfere with mine, but I also accept the fact that lots of other folks want to have more rules for purposes ranging from mere signaling (rules on dress or speech), to actual organization of limited resources (use of various facilities, marriage, etc..). Since there is some benefit from folks following these various rules, I tend to go along most of the time. Still, in order to satisfy my own peevishness, I tend to work for the spirit as opposed to the wording (think of a rolling stop. Sure it violates the law, but if you look adequetly it serves the purpose). |
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| Biden My Time |
[May. 8th, 2009|12:50 am] |
Joe Biden recently got into some trouble recently for saying "I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now" referring to trains and such (it should be noted that he frequently rides a train to DC, and did so none too recently). Now, I won't debate the reasonableness of the comment, or whether or not it would cause some kind panic (note: I like Joe. Much for the same reason I like mccain. They say stuff that's on their mind every so often. It may require a foot to be inserted later, but I think it's good thing because it makes them more like the rest of us), but I will say that I've seen one or two blogs comment on the uproar saying "science will win out" or what not, in a an attempt to say Biden was wrong. This kind of thinking bugs me.
Why? Because all science can say in this case is that I have X probability of catching the flu from a person who happens to be on the train. That's it. It can't say it's the best answer, and while it might be able to answer (through economics) what the optimal answer is from a cost point of view, it certainly can't say which is "good" or "bad", it can just merely state some probabilities.
This whole using the "science club" seems to be as popular as using the "morality club" (An example is someone saying it's for the kids... in a political debate) and it functions as a rhetorical weapon, which is that part that bugs me. It detracts from the real issue, which is one of public policy: Weighing all the known benefits and costs, and running it against our filter of what is just and unjust, is this a good idea?
Some topics (most certainly not complete) that I think misuse science, and instead are arguing something more akin to morality:
The environment- I think the ipcc report represents a reasonable interpetation of the data. It's a starting point for public policy discussion. I'm more than happy to have the debate on costs and benefits, but one has to realize that while the scince says what is probable, the environment in many ways has a value that is based on it's usefulness. Any discussion that wants to preserve it perfectly is approaching morality, not science.
Abortion- One can point to various topics of research that a fetus has or doesn't have this response or that, but in the end, the actual decision being made is a moral one about the rights of one individual vs another in a very specific arrangement. Now, if one wants to argue science in the abortion debate, they have to use a study like one about crime rates dropping when abortion is legal, but good luck with that, cf "The Morality Stick".
Toxins and other Dangers- This is the one that orginally used to bug the crap out of me. OK, X chemical has Y effects, some of which have a certain probablity of being harmful. Now, we can most ceratinly ban the chemical, but then we have to ask why are we banning this instead of Z chemical, which is equally harmful, but is "natural", or whatever reason is used to justify why the same risk results in different outrage. In fact, there's been some study on this topic and a correlation of 0.2 pops out (this means hazard and outrage are almost never in sync with each other, ie they're independent variables). In fact, the weirdest part is that the 0.2 pops up independently in different fields, be it travel, chemical hazard, job hazard, etc... Again, this isn't a matter of science (or else we'd be doing a more comprehensive risk management with some sort of agreed upon threshold of stability, say 1 in 10,000 chance of death, or a couple years of life expectancy), but rather one of public policy.
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| Sympathy for the Devil. |
[May. 8th, 2009|12:33 am] |
I wonder why it is in our culture that we have a hard time justifying empathy for our employers, or even business in general. I find myself in debates frequently about whether certain cost cutting measures are needed at work for example, and well, let's face it, in the current climate it's not hard to find someone complaining about the way things are run on the commerce side of things.
An example: A sizable retailer closes. The news will cover it, but the angle will be about job losses, as opposed to the oppurtunities lost for people who were shopping for whatever item the store sold, or even an angle about how the person built up the place, or the hoops they had to go through to get there (unless there's a local angle to be covered).
Another example: Discussing with a coworker about overtime. Revenues have dropped recently, and management is asking for givebacks. At our level, a policy has been implemented to reduce overtime by not calling out shifts when a daystaff member is available to fill them during the day shift. I can understand where the person sees this as a pain to their own pockets, or perhaps an abrogation of contractual resposibilities, but I can't understand why they think it's a bad thing generally. A water plant is there to produce waterr a rate reasonable to it's consumers. To varying extents,. the rate they can charge is limited by regulations. Therefore, in a bad time, the only way to keep itself above water (so to speak) is to cut costs. I'm not sure where the assumption that a huge pot of money exists during a poor economic period comes from, except from maybe a sense of entitlement (then again, I find money grubbing by most people to be dishonorable, so seeing close up bugs me on principle.)
Now, I could be the weirdo here since my general leanings toward devil's advocacy will cause me to take some weaker arguments, but in this case, I think the people who go through the rigamorole to start a place are doing a service to the rest of us (not directly of course, they're doing it for the money), and it seems like there's some empathy to be had. |
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[May. 4th, 2009|09:38 am] |
WARNING
DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO ALONE.
MAY CAUSE NIGHTMARES.
For those who don't get videos in LJ, here's the link: Top Freakiest Advertisements:
Now, onto the analysis. The one thing to note is all the diabolical laughter, or at least what we consider diabolical laughter nowadays. I think what we may have here is an example of how an emotional response has changed over time. 50 years ago, assuming they were actually trying to sell this doll, as opposed to giving me horrible dreams, the kids are obviously supposed to look excited when they see the doll, as opposed to crepy. The laugh was supposed to be wild, as opposed to something quite so... sinister.
For those who check up the article, I also recommend the michael myers rejuveniquwe mask, playing "You are so Beautiful"in the background... with no spoken bits..
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