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Atlas Blogged

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January 29, 2009

But in here it's so delightful - thoughts on Obama and the weather

I caught an interesting audio clip on the radio yesterday morning while driving to work. You may have heard it too; President Obama was scoffing at the fact that his daughters didn't have school because of the winter weather. As a transplant from Buffalo, I do understand the president being less than impressed with the way the mid-Atlantic shuts down with the slightest provocation. DC is not Chicago, that's for sure.

But I was also less than impressed with the way Obama spoke about the situation.

We're going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town... I'm saying that when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things.

First, that's not the way to win over the locals. Nobody likes being told that their whole city is a bunch of pansies (even when it's true). And this is coming from the POTUS who was planning to reach out to the community and be a part of DC? Not smooth.

Second, given the history of Chicago politics, I'm not sure we need any "flinty Chicago toughness" in our nation's capital. Maybe that's just me.

But third, what's that bit about flinty Chicago toughness? Via NRO, NYT reports something odd:

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.

In addition to this being contrary to what Obama said on the stump, (We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times...), it's contrary to what he said about how folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things.

Perhaps I just don't understand how they do things in Chicago.

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January 28, 2009

Protectionism: Everybody stimulate yourself!

At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, economists are discussing the world economic downturn and possible reactions to it. One item that caught my attention was the conversation on protectionism.

[T]he downturn could persuade politicians to introduce trade barriers and steer investments only into their own economies.

This would harm developing countries the most, said South Africa's finance minister Trevor Manuel.

Well, yeah. That's the point of protectionism.

Anybody who advocates protectionist economic policies is looking to (how do I say this) protect some people by increasing the exposure of others. And since political borders define the jobs of most government officials, those are the lines that define who various policies are intended to benefit. Everybody outside those lines is (how do I say this) foreign, and therefore given a whole lot less consideration.

There are several reasons why I think protectionist policies are asinine and unhelpful, but I don't expect to be able to persuade the protectionist advocates with high talk of universal values or the proper role of government, or even by dumping tea in the harbor. The best shot I've got is to quote Justin Yifu Lin, Senior Vice-President of Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank:

The whole world is a closed economy. Fiscal stimuli will not work if they are not coordinated.

While it will strike some of our regular readers as quite collectivist, I think he makes an excellent point. If a government is capable of promoting or causing economic stimulus at all, it certainly can't do so in a vacuum. On the grand scale, it would be foolish and harmful for the developed nations to even try to stimulate their own economies at the expense of everybody else.

In the modern global economy, those lines on the map are in many ways less important than the lines of commerce. This is becoming more so than ever before. Most major corporations are multinationals whose health and profits are dependent on many parts of the globe. Your investments, your bank, your employment, your food staples and clothes and widgets are all a part of a global market.

Simply put, wealth is not made through isolationism.

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January 27, 2009

I like the pictures

playboy.jpg

I'm not previously familiar with Alertbox, the "bi-weekly column by Dr. Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group", but it has an ironcially spartan design considering the fact that it implores us to "read these first: Usability 101 and Top 10 mistakes of Web design."

What really caught my eye was this tidbit:

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

On the one hand, yeah, of course we scan websites. Websites are full of all kinds of crap that does not pertain to us, including sidebars, headers, ads, and other boring crap. And many visitors are just here for the pictures. (This is so completely the case for AtlasBlogged... I check sitemeter!)

On the other hand, this means that most text goes unread, and it might as well not be there. And while I do have that reaction for most of the blogs I read, I don't want you to have that reaction while reading what I've written.

Dammit, the 80% you wouldn't want to read is the stuff I edited out anyway!


Nielsen's graphs are instructive... as he explains, the first one demonstrates that "when you add verbiage to a page, you can assume that customers will read 18% of it."

Customers? Hrm. We might speak of a marketplace of ideas, but a political blog is not designed the same way as a commercial site. Nielsen's second graph shows that "on an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less." While that's interesting, it's probably way too broad to be useful to me or the average political blogger. Still, it's an interesting site and I'll have to find time to read more of it.

Though I'd appreciate a pretty picture in any post that doesn't include useful graphs.

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January 26, 2009

Mandela, King, Gandhi... Blagojevich

In an apparent attempt to entertain us, impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich today said the most asinine thing he could think of about his situation:

As he was taken from his home by federal agents on Dec. 9, Blagojevich told NBC, "I thought about Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi and tried to put some perspective to all this and that is what I am doing now."

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January 18, 2009

Shovels are so 1933

Over at The Next Right, Matt Dabrowski asks:

If Obama's stimulus plan doesn't give jobs to the white-collar, educated people who need them, can the stimulus possibly work?

Let's leave aside for the moment whether or not the nation needs these projects (which I believe we do), or whether we support them (which I do as well). Will these infrastructure projects even work?

The answer is "No, they won't".

The Wall Street Journal says that "many Americans have been out of work for months and are resorting to lower-wage or part-time jobs to make ends meet." But infrastructure construction jobs are skill positions--the era of digging ditches with shovels is long gone. It's not a matter of handing out shovels to millions of laborers who have been locked out of their factories or whose farms have failed. That's not how things are built these days. And after decades of changing the shape of the American workforce, it is finally time to admit that the shape of the workforce has changed.

This is not 1933, and the old New Deal simply can't be enacted in today's America.

Anybody who wants to address ways to lower unemployment needs to consider this point made by the Economist:

The New Deal was introduced into a world of giant organisations—of big businesses and big trade unions that were capable of striking deals with big government. But today’s economy is much more fluid. America’s most successful companies are entrepreneurial outfits like Apple and Google, which thrive on flexibility; even giant companies such as General Electric are breaking themselves up into entrepreneurial divisions. More Americans own their own companies (15%) than belong to trade unions (12%).

Please re-read that last sentence again before advocating any government-works plans to address today's unemployment.

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January 15, 2009

The cutting edge is nipping at its own tail

The New York Times reports on a groundbreaking new approach to science education:

[W]ith physicists across the country pushing for universities to do a better job of teaching science, M.I.T. has made a striking change.

The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning...

M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways... physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.

Pioneering? I think it sounds awfully familiar.

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

This quote is often attributed to Confucius. I think it's safe to say the Times is giving a lot of credit to these educators today who are just revamping well-known concepts. It would be more appropriate to say that the needs of the universities have changed, than to say that we are pioneering brand new methods. As demand for degrees went up over the last century, so did class sizes. Recitations were introduced because students learn better in smaller classes. But projectors and movie clips permit a single lecturer to reach a large audience, while smaller class sizes would require more lecture-hours from the faculty. So large classes it has long been, not because we were unaware of the limitations of this method, but because it was what we had the time and money to do. It is good that this is changing, but again, it's not because we didn't know that more effective methods existed.

Technology will continue to change both the needs of these institutions and the teaching methods they "pioneer" to address them. Social networking is starting to be taken seriously, and the internet has been revolutionizing the way classrooms work. Accessibility to professors and classmates is changing, and input from people outside the classroom is becoming easier and easier to get. Whereas my own high school science teacher once wrote a letter to a university professor to get an answer about a topic that was beyond his ken, I might email or text one of my contacts. Rather than wait a week or more, I can get that information instantly for my students (assuming my contact is not in a meeting or the Bahamas). This will only get easier with time.

Science education (like most subjects) needs a lot of work, from the top down. Students walk into intro physics courses with a very poor understanding of mechanics and electromagnetism, despite having been exposed to these topics in high school and middle school, where class sizes are considerably smaller than the now abandoned 300 seat auditorium mentioned in the Times article. While I applaud universities like MIT for trying to do something about it, I think we need to remember that this is not a panacea. It does not address the issues that keep our high schools and middle schools from approaching their potentials. It will not take the place of motivation, which is especially necessary for the absolute top students in each field. These and other challenges could very easily be forgotten and left by the wayside in our haste to embrace the new MIT model of Confucian pedagogy.

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January 14, 2009

Funny Because It's True (yet again)

The Onion recently ran an article that harkens back to the days when the site was funny on a regular basis:

Cash-strapped American Airlines announced a new series of fees this week that will apply to all customers not currently flying, scheduled to fly, or even thinking about flying aboard the commercial carrier.

And how exactly is this funny? Er, well, it's funny because in the real world a corporation couldn't do that to us. I mean, without the help of the government, who most certainly can and does enable some corporations to do that to us. Please, think about your taxes and what is done with them when you read lines like this one:

...non-passengers of American Airlines should expect to pay a small fee when making Greyhound bus reservations, choosing to drive to their final destination, or simply being a citizen of the United States with a valid Social Security number.

Hrm. Suddenly it's not so funny.

But it can be, if you consider the irony in the way corporations are viewed as evil and oppressive to so many people, when in reality their ability to limit our freedom is largely through the government.

Possibly even more humorous is the way many libertarians think that corporations are Capitalists. It is often said that corporations exist to make money. But this view assumes a level of integrity and morality that many corporate executives simply do not maintain. Corporations exist to gain money. If they can get it by charging non-customers, e.g. via a government intermediary, then some of them will do exactly that.

It's hilarious.

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January 12, 2009

Obligatory Gaza

An interesting point:

Through the Gaza war, Israel has accused Hamas of endangering civilians
by establishing military installations in populated areas. It has been
a central justification by the army for the killing of Palestinian
civilians. The shoppers at the Azrieli mall see no contradiction
between that claim and Israel building its defence headquarters next
door to a shopping centre. "They might have a point if they attacked
it," said Yoni Ahren, a computer engineer sipping coffee. "But they
don't. Instead they send suicide bombers to blow us up in the mall.

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January 3, 2009

Being Reasonable--reaction from the Muslim family recently thrown off a flight by AirTrain

An interesting interview on NPR:

A Muslim-American passenger, one of nine members of a family detained and questioned at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after fellow passengers on their AirTran flight reported hearing a suspicious conversation, says the family is trying not to be angry at what happened.

(interview is audio, 5:13 in duration)

After listening to this interview, I have to say that Atif Irfan sounds like he is much less frustrated and angry about this whole situation than I am. In fact, he sounds really, really understanding and reasonable about the whole thing, especially for a man who was born and raised in the United States to have been treated this way.

But me? I'm pretty angry about it.

I am ashamed of and angry with Mr. Irfan's fellow passengers, who are clearly morons.
I mean first rate xenophobic morons--the type who make all Americans look stupid, and probably still don't understand that they were wrong. As noted yesterday at PoliBlog,

[W]hy in the world would a set of terrorists come onto the plane and call attention to themselves by talking about the safest place to sit on the plane? Beyond that, did the passengers, AirTran officials and the air marshals actually think that these people planned to blow up the plane and ride the wreckage to the ground? Last time I checked, radical jihadists weren’t too concerned about surviving their attacks.

But oh, you know... better safe than sorry! The guy looks like what I think a terrorist probably looks like!

Morons.

Also, Airtrain's initial response to this situation was terrible. As I told my wife last night, if I had been forced to get off the plane and go through the TSA's asinine screening process a second time just because a Muslim family was discussing flight safety, I would refuse to ever do business with that airline again. In fact, I might have refused to get back on the plane. They need to play catchup on public relations, beyond the apology they have offered to Mr. Irfan.

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