Progress and ChartBloat

Think people are getting more informed as the arrow of time moves forward? Turns out the answer is that they are getting less informed. Here's the wired study.

Watch out for that graphic though - it sensationalizes the statistics. The metrics are mapped to the diameter of the circles and not the area. Makes the effect appear much more amplified than it really is. Someone needs to buy the reporter the Tufte book.

Mellow Terrorists

Funny beyond belief.

Smaller is Better

Gladwell strikes again and makes another strong case that he is one of the best analyst/writers in the country. In "Big and Bad" Malcolm takes on the SUV myth that bigger is safer. The article is peppered with quotes ("An elegant woman said that she needed her full sized-Lexus 470 to drive up over the curb and onto the lawns to park at parties in Beverly Hills"), anecdotes ("SUV buyers tend to be insecure, vain, self-centered, and frequently nervous about their marriage"), statistics ("the driver fatality rate humble camry is more than three times that in the mighty 4Runner), psychology research ("learned helpnessness") - and is a meaty and filling read. The basic gist is that SUVs are very bad at active safety, ie being nimble enough to avoid running into objets - and they tend to make drivers think that they are safe just by the virtue of being huge, and hence SUVers are less inclined to avoid collisions. The latter is a fallacy because safety standards for cars are much higher than those for trucks.

And incidentally, it praises the VW Jetta - "clearly audible engine, light and precise steering, short wheelbase - and so dwarfed by other cars on the road that it reminds an intelligent driver the necessity of driving safely and defensively". Quite a coincidence that last Sunday these exact features saved me from getting into a fender bender. I did a rolling stop manuever on a stop sign, and it turned out that it was not a four way stop and there was a minivan coming in from the right side. I slammed on the brake and swerved to the left and avoided a certain collision and patted myself on the back for my quick reaction time. Now I know that were I in a SUV - that would have been a certain crash. Suddenly I like my Jetta a lot more :D Danke, Wolfsburg!

Trade Policy: Goods vs Information

Good article by Cory Doctorow. The argument is that the US allowed cheap imports to flood the US market in exchange for developing countries promise to opt into the american IP laws. It is not clear (and I doubt it could be proven) whether that premise can be proven, or whether there was a conscious decision to go that route - but that is what happened in essence. Now the only option for US is to go whack-a-mole over companies in China and Russia that abuse the unenforceable IP laws. Good luck with that sisyphean task, old man Sam!

Farm Policy and Waistline

Sounds interesting - will read later.

Michael Lewis on the Subprime Mess

This article argues that the reckless borrower is as much to blame as the creditor. Lewis also points out that the real loser is the scrupulous subprime borrower who now cannot get a loan for his mortgage. Who is the winner in all this? In my opinion, it is the real estate agent who gets a guaranteed transaction cut, and the loan broker who pretty much gets paid regardless of how the loan turns out. It is a case of perverse incentives, where it is in the best interest of both of these parties to see the deal close - and no consequences if it goes sour later on. I for one, really hope that redfin succeeds in creating a new model for house purchases.

No signs of progress ...

Research from the Pew institute indicates that the internet and the 24 hour news channels arent really making us more informed.

Awwwww

IP Laws Found Harmful

Hal Varian (yeah, the guy who wrote your college econ textbook) writes a piece for NYT explaining how having no IP laws has actually been beneficial for the fashion industry. Particularly relevant now as the US hammers China on its "weak" IP protection. Lost in the debate is whether the firms that are clamoring for legislation are actually providing products that are valuable (by that I mean have a good cost to value ratio) to the consumers in China. Most people in Asia are not likely to drop $25 for a DVD when they make a hundred dollars a month - no matter how many laws you pass and how many illegal DVD sniffing dogs you train.

Einstein and Religion

"God does not play dice with the universe."

"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."

These oft repeated quotes have led people to generally believe that Einstein was a religious man. The truth of the matter is a little more nuanced than that. This article on Time sheds a little more light on his spiritual profile. Couple of very interesting quotes:

"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

US Stats on Religion

Newsweek poll results.

Viacom, Google, and Intellectual Property

Viacom's WP editorial on the YouTube lawsuit. Michael Fricklas puts out the standard argument that copyright holders cannot be burdened with policing sites for violations of their property. What piqued my interest in the piece was a section at the end which says "Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws." This is a dubious claim at best because Google's success is a successful confluence of ideation(the pagerank algorithm), scaling (the massive decentralized infrastructure), and a disruptive business model (free advertiser funded software). Note that Google did not file a patent for their technology and sit back and sue competitors, but rather built an infrastructure and business model that has such tremendous scale that it becomes virtually impossible for others to replicate it. The way that copyright holders and patent trolls are wielding IP and patent laws recently, it is holding back innovation and growth - not fostering them. And I have already blogged about the NYT article on how IP laws unfairly tax the developing nations. And here's Google's response to the article.

Painting Obama

Profile of David Axelrod, a strategist for Obama on NYTMag. Some useful insights into the presidential politics (esp the bit about Hillary towards the end) and a couple of great quotes (What is a good reporter anyways but a writer who is able to distill a story into a few thematic quotes?).

“One of the reasons Bush has succeeded in two elections, is that in his own rough-hewn way he has conveyed a sense of this is who I am, warts and all.”

“So many consultants are fighting the last war, but David is fighting the next one, and that makes him very, very dangerous”

“What David is basically doing — and this is somewhat new for Democrats — isn’t trying to figure out how to sell policies. It’s a matter of personality. How do we sell leadership?”

“I know that there are people who wouldn’t vote for a black candidate, but I don’t know if they would vote for a Democratic candidate anyway. But I think that in a sense Barack is the personification of his own message for this country, that we get past the things that divide us and focus on the things that unite us. He is his own vision.”

Karl Rove helped George Bush win two terms as president by “understanding that every election is a reaction to the last president” and then in 2004 by “figuring out how to make Bush’s stubbornness into a political virtue.”

World Press Photo Award - Outstanding Images

Great shots (esp the resisting settler ). Reminds me of a similar great image from Nepal.

Reverse Foreign Aid

Cheap credit, Intellectual Property and Copyright tithes, and tax holidays for large corporations - the unwitting gifts of third world to the first. (From NYTMag).

The Host

A huge hit in Korea, the Host is getting a limited release in the US, and we watched it last night. While it seemed to be a straightforward horror movie on the surface, somehow I thought there was a lot of messages floating around in the background. Such as

• The unhealthy US influence on Korea


• How family ties transcend individual imperfections


• The gullibility of the Korean government


• The helplessness of individuals in a fascist environment


• Some more servings of evil US influence and propaganda

At some points, the movie is comedic - and some parts in the middle drag on, and the scares are minimal. It was a big success in Korea, so I get the feeling there is a lot of cultural context I missed out on. A good break from the standard American thrillers nevertheless.

Incentive to Piracy (image from flickr)

Funny

The Immigrant Experience

Just watched Mira Nair's The Namesake. This piece is quite different from her previous work - Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. The Namesake follows an indian immigrant family as they adapt to America. The story is simple (as most lives are), but still touching nonetheless. A little slow in the beginning, the movie becomes coherent towards the end - and so does Kal Penn's performance. Not a seismic event by any means, but still worth watching.

Mixtapes, Creative Commons, and Derivative Arts

In an age where we expect congressmen to parrot industry lines about how draconian copyright laws are necessary and good for society, we now hear a sane voice in washington - amazing. Another article that touches on the mixtape mess and how it is indicative of the problem with IP laws.

Oxley Repentant

Senator Oxley admits that the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation was passed in a hurry, and looking back he would do things differently. And given that laws are easier to pass than repeal, this one's going to continue to hurt US businesses for a while. I know of at least one company that is spending a lot, and jumping through a lot of needless hoops because of Sox: mine.