| Jul 30 | Information Flows and Large Organizations |
| Jul 29 | Friday Shuffle! |
| Jul 27 | Business as Usual for Tom DeLay |
| Jul 26 | Low-Income High School Wonkery |
| Jul 26 | "Comprehensive Energy Legislation" |
| Jul 25 | Blogging: Harder Than It Looks |
| Jul 23 | Guest gig |
| Jul 22 | Friday Chinchilla Blogging & Shuffle! |
| Jul 20 | The Great Feebate Debate, Part Eight |
| Jul 20 | Public Opinion on Reproductive Rights |
| Jul 15 | The Connector Conspiracy |
| Jul 15 | Harry Potter and the Operational Nightmare |
| Jul 13 | Five Minutes With the Average Legislator |
| Jul 12 | Drinking Liberally |
| Jul 8 | Friday non-Shuffle! (Special God Save the Queen Edition) |
| Jul 5 | Independence Day Traditions |
| Jul 4 | The Young and the Restless |
| Jul 1 | Saturday SCOTUS Blogging |
| Jul 1 | Friday Chinchilla Blogging & Shuffle! |
This past week I got to sit in on Edward Tufte's one-day seminar on ... the presentation of technical information, or something to that effect. I can tell you that Tufte likes Galileo, dislikes Power Point, is not a huge fan of marketing, and cares deeply about user interface design. For some of his more groundbreaking work, take a look at his chapter on sparklines (huge page with lots of big images; broadband recommended), which, if you can produce enough of them quickly, promise to drastically increase the amount of content on a page.
Most fascinating was Tufte's work on the commissions responsible for investigating the root causes of the Columbia and Challenger accidents. In both cases, there had been some discussion before the accident that a catastrophic failure might occur. In the case of the Challenger, engineers responsible for desigining the rocket boosters correctly identified that the cold temperatures at launch would cause a failure, but could not present this evidence to NASA executives in an effective manner. In the case of the Columbia, power point slides presented by Boeing obscured the lack of data on the effect of large chunks of foam landing on the shuttle; tests had examined the effect of 3 cubic inches of foam hitting the shuttle, while the estimated size of the foam chunk was around 1920 cubic inches.
These two accidents illustrate the tremendous challenges of delivering quality information to executives in large organizations, as well as the difficulties of avoiding the influence of political pressure in high risk technical decisions (engineers were told to "reexamine" their calculations in the Challenger accident after recommending "no go"). Sadly, there aren't many silver bullets to be had in this department either.
Chinchilla Blogging has to wait until later ... I woke up late and they were already asleep.
Meanwhile, this week's shuffle is an eclectic mainstream mix
Clearly I've become a victim of outrage fatigue. Between Tom DeLay inserting $1.5 billion in federal largesse to Sugar Land-based businesses (hat tip to Atrios), and the Dracula Congress set for another late-night session of arm twisting and letting those textile state Republicans fly home to avoid voting for or against DR-CAFTA, I really don't see anything out of the ordinary. After Congress tried to abolish all laws in Southern California, then Justice officials reduced their tobacco settlement by $120 billion dollars, it's not really worth it to get your undies in a wad over ten figures for some DeLay cronies.
The abuse of the conference process, plus the late-night votes, make for great 2006 bulletin board material. I mean, really, someone should be running focus groups to figure out which piece of Republican foul play most frustrates the American public so the ads hit as hard as possible. All this recklessness makes me wonder: do DeLay, Blunt, and the rest of this gang just sit around in their Congressional offices at night, cackling "I am invEEEncible!" to themselves, while not noticing that right behind them sits a huge vat of electoral liquid nitrogen that's set to burst in fifteen months?
Peter Levine -- my Favorite Blogger Who Deserves To Be Read More -- links to a flash video produced by high school students in Prince George's County, Maryland. The kids were concerned about the increase in teen obesity, and tried to do some research connecting eating and exercise habits to land use. Do neighborhoods with more "unhealthy" restaurants have higher obesity? If so, how much higher? Does a good sidewalk with good lighting encourage habitual exercise? How much difference does street layout (a subdivision with cul-de-sacs versus a more urban grid) make in exercise rates? The movie focuses on the relationship between immigration and obesity, since it turns out that collecting good data on land use and obesity is really hard, while discovering the length of time before American eating habits reach the lives of first-generation Americans is a more straightforward task.
This sort of research is critically important. We have a great abstract policy goal to "reduce obesity by promoting healthy eating and exercise", but there are many nuts-and-bolts steps along the way to make that goal into a reality. And the idea is applicable to any problem -- crime, pollution, -- it takes a national commitment to solving the problem, plus hundreds if not thousands of people interested in making local changes that help turn the national vision into reality. And not all of those ideas have to come from think tanks in Washington DC.
To my mind, what makes this all more amazing is that, according to Peter, the students of Northwestern High took the initiative to address obesity as a community problem. Sure, it helped that Professor Levine was there to help, but improving the political knowledge of low- and middle-income seniors is certainly something progressives can be happy about.
I hate euphemisms.
Anyhow, CBS has another update on the Smokey Joe Barton's energy bill (Ezra Klein has a good takedown). Conferees have split the difference between the $8 billion House package and the $14 billion Senate version, settling on a figure of $11.5 billion worth of subsidies for an industry where one company has $25 billion in the bank. They appear to have avoided most potential Senate landmines; however, a provision to open up Florida to exploratory drilling may force a rather strange alliance between Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez in a filibuster.
It will probably come down to how many Corn State Democrats and idelogical moderates feel they have to vote for the bill. Senator Bayh, I believe it's time to see what you're really made of.
In more local news, I'm not allowed to comment to heavily on various buy blue-related issues with my employer for obvious reasons, but we're not a bunch of corporate raiders. Check out our non-profit contest and donate to your favorite (again, I have mine, but I shouldn't provide any influence here).
Also, Drinking Liberally is on tonight. This time, with buttons. Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th ave E, 8pm.
Stuff I've written in the last two days:
Enjoy.
While we're at it, it's time for some morning hay:
We're back for another round of debating the efficacy of hybrid car subsidies with Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias. Some key points:
First, the Times' comparison of the V6 Accord Hybrid (29 city, 37 highway) with the four-cylinder Accord (24 city, 34 highway) is a complete red herring. The proper comparison is with the six-cylinder Accord (20 city, 30 highway), to which it compares much more favorably. And even then, the V6 Hybrid actually has another 15 horsepower over the traditional gas engine. Honda is using the Hybrid as an upsell; dad wants the Hybrid because he can go from 0-60 faster, while mom wants it so she isn't spending as much on gasoline. It's fun for the whole family!
Second, improving the fuel economy of cars with more "muscle" from 20/30mpg to 29/37mpg is nothing to sneeze at. For comparison, other cars in roughly the same horsepower class include Volvo S60 (19/26), the Toyota Avalon (22/31), the Saab 9-3 (21/28), the award-winning Chrysler 300 (17/24 -- you gotta love that American ingenuity), and the Nissan Maxima (20/28). A 50% increase in fuel economy is worth a lot in my book.
Third, Ezra's right. Gas taxes are politically infeasible, terribly regressive, and an increase wouldn't force a move to hybrid cars until gas prices reached at European levels. Last I checked, Michigan had two Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor; I'm not very interested in making them unhappy.
Fourth, Ezra's also right that moving to a general fuel economy feebate system, where taxes and or subsidies are based on the fuel economy rather than the technology used, is a good way to accelerate the move towards more efficient cars. It would also motivate consumers to invest their "efficiency dividend" in consuming less energy, rather than having more/faster/bigger stuff that consumed the same amount. However, it's unclear what such a system would do to US auto manufacturers. Would they have to replace equipment used to manufacture their current fleet? Would they have to spend huge amounts of money on R&D? Would we have to bail them out of their health care spending at the same time?
Fifth, Corn. I don't know what to think about it. Maybe there is some low-hanging fruit in terms of efficiency improvements there, and suddenly producing a gallon of ethanol will require consuming fewer BTUs than it gives off. Maybe not. I don't really know. Up until now, we haven't been using the ethanol subsidy as a sop to Big Corn and various universities that study agriculture somewhat seriously. One could imagine that with a little more effort and scrutiny, all the money we spent on ethanol might actually get put to use, rather than ending up in the pockets of Archer-Daniels-Midland company.
Sixth, Hydrogen. Totally fanciful. Or rather, there's no real way to build a large-scale infrastructure for hydrogen cars in the next 20 years. Perhaps my grandchildren can look forward to the day when they plug their car back into the wall to push its excess brake energy into their apartment complex's reactor, but it's not going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years.
Summary: as I outlined before, without any subsidies, hybrid cars don't yet make sense from the buyer's perspective. Using the tax code or other subsidies to push consumers towards hybrid cars is still worth doing, especially if it motivates continued research and development in the area. That said, the Bush proposal to double the hybrid tax credit or deduction won't make hybrids that much more economical, and will primary benefit upper middle class voters who itemize, while furthering the GOP's starve the beast strategy.
Recommended, non-alarmist reading on energy:
Update: Stirling Newberry falls prey to the same article.
It appears a Consumer Reports study shows that the non-hybrid V6 gets 23 mpg in actual driving conditions, and the hybrid gets 25 mpg. Car and Driver has a similar test that pegs the hybrid's fuel economy at 26 mpg and the non-hybrid near 22mpg.
As the debate around John G. Roberts coagulates, I was stunned by this bit of polling information (Full Study here (PDF)). Sixty percent of the public can't figure out which party is the pro-life party and which one is the pro-choice party? Have both parties gotten really good at hiding this bit of information?
Regardless, polling data points out that Democrats are on the right side of this issue, and if Roe is in fact threatened, you go to the mattresses for Roe -- like I said before. The spectre of criminalizing ordinary women1 will make a whole lot of voters pro-choice, and in a hurry. Take a look at this series from this Harris poll:
In general, do you favor permitting a woman who wants one to have an abortion in all circumstances, some circumstances, or no circumstances?
All
CircumstancesSome
CircumstancesNo
Circumstances1985 26 53 20 1992 29 54 14 1992 34 52 11 1993 30 55 14 1996 25 53 19
There are many other series that support this thesis. Here's another other big one, from the University of Michigan:
Which one of the opinions on this page best agrees with your view? (1) By law, abortion should never be permitted; (2) The law should permit abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger; (3) The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established; or (4) By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.
Never Permitted Only in Cases of
Rape, Incest,
or DangerClear Need Always as Personal
Choice1980 11 32 18 35 1982 13 30 19 35 1984 13 29 19 35 1986 13 28 18 38 1988 12 33 18 35 1990 12 33 14 40 1992 10 28 14 46 1994 12 30 14 42 1996 12 29 16 42
Now, both of these series stop about ten years in the past, so public opinion may have shifted a bit, especially given the paucity of prominent politicians advocating for the sound practice of making abortion safe, legal, and rare. The Time/CNN figures (back when CNN and Time did polling together), show the "illegal in all circumstances" number creeping back from the its low around 10-12% to 17%, and the "always a personal choice" figure dropping from it's 1992 election year high of 49% to as low as 35%. But given that opinion has changed before, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't change again with sufficient prodding. And turning ambivalent voters into pro-choice voters will make many, many, more Democrats.
Update: Welcome TPMCafe readers! And any time the site owners want to add functionality to edit existing posts, it would be really nice for those of us who don't proofread enough.
Angelica Oung discovers the connector conspiracy's vicious plot to make it nigh impossible to get herself to England, along with her little dog, too.
The connector conspiracy was popularized by the hardware accessory companies during the 1980s, but has its roots in a much, much older conspiracy: the railroads. At one point in time, each town had its own quirky local railroad, which was able to handle a different weight of car from the next town over, had different width rails, had different space between each "slat" (or whatever those things were called), could tolerate a different top speed, and so on. Of course, the company that maintained the local railroad was locally owned, so whenever Vanderbilt and his band of merry capitalists came a'calling for standardized rail gauges, the local company would lobby furiously against the outside agitators. This reduced competition and put upward prices on railroads, in addition to making it a pain in the butt to get to the next town over. On the other hand, it kept a few mom-and-pop businesses alive. Analogies between Vanderbilt and the Waltons are likely quite appropriate; though, the railroads would often jack up the price of shipping soon after acquiring a local monopoly.
In the case of the railroads, standardization was an inevitable consequence of the push for trans continental railroads, though it was probably hastened by the tight relationships between Congress and the large trusts of the Gilded Age. In the computer software business, the need for Windows to compete with linux in the Enterprise Server space has force Microsoft to embrace open standards rather than push more proprietary ones. As for animal tracking microchips, Angelica's best bet is to hope that a major chip maker -- such as IBM. Texas Instruments, or Analog Devices -- decides to break into the animal tracking market directly. The big players will inevitably adopt as many existing standards as they can, because their goal is to capture as much of the market as possible, not to preserve their existing share. In theory, this will force the bit players to get on board, or more likely, start buying their chips from the big chipmakers and making their money on services (support for tracking devices, tracking software, etc.).
But I Am Not a Libertarian, so there are no guarantees that the market will do what you want in this case.
If you were scheduling a big party to celebrate Amazon's 10th birthday, wouldn't it be a good idea not to put it on the same day as the release of Harry Potter and the Corporate Synergy Half-Prince (Book 6), a product with such large sales volume that your company has to tell Wall Street "a year-over-year comparison of Q3 performance between 1986 and 1987 isn't informative, because the release Harry Potter and the Global Marketing Campaign1 overstates our performance in 1986"? The image of two hundred pagers going off during Bob Dylan's set strikes me as ... suboptimal.
Hopefully everyone who wants the book already has it on pre-order.
Winston Churchill once said the best argument against democracy was spending five minutes with the average voter. It's often a source of gallows humor that half of Bush voters think he supports the Kyoto protocol (which he explicitly doesn't), that he supports things like the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (which he sort of doesn't), that more than ten percent of the public doesn't know who their mayor is, or who their congressman, and so on. Yet remarkably, by and large our elected officials are earnest people who want to use their elected position to accomplish something positive, who are willing to listen when you talk to them, and who by and large make politics an honorable profession. Members of the current national Republican Party's leadership excepted, of course.
So I think the best argument in favor of democracy is spending five minutes with the average legislator. It's a heartening experience worth trying some time.
State Representative Ed Murray (D-Capitol Hill/Fremont/Wallingford/Montlake/U-District) will be at Drinking Liberally tonight. He'll talk about HB 1515
Come and stay for the fireworks.
Amy: "I don't know what to say about the pipe bombing"
Josh: "There's nothing to say."
And yes, I'm compelled to put in Oasis and a Spice Girl's solo effort. To deny Britpop is to deny Britain.
It would be easy to look at what's happened yesterday and give in to the knee-jerk emotion that rushes to the front of one's head. But of course, that's how we got into the situation where we are today. Britain has been the victim of bombs that target civilians for thirty-five years; they've learned to prevent this sort of tragedy as best they can, then deal with the aftermath as best as one can expect. I wish the best for the victims and their families' future.
Now is one of those times you may feel inspired to hit the International Committee of the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity International, the Army War College Foundation, or whatever other charitable group strikes your fancy.
Mind The Gap, indeed.
Perhaps it's the result of growing up in a state where all fireworks -- including sparklers -- were illegal and there were no border towns or Indian reservations where I could buy them, but I don't understand the appeal of retail-grade fireworks at all, beyond the notion that blowing stuff up is "cool". Running the risk of seriously burning your hand, or worse, launching a roman candle into your friend, all for a few bright flashes in the night, just doesn't strike me as a good trade-off. If I'm going to roll the dice, I'll try something along the lines of autocross racing or skydiving.
The social libertarian streak in me knows that outright bans on this sort of thing aren't very popular, unless there is some motivating event such as a series of high-profile injuries or deaths caused by retail fireworks. I don't wish for an outcome of that sort.
Also, Drinking Liberally is tonight. Come enjoy a pint.
Thoughts on youth voter mobilization posted on TPMCafe.
Here is the link to Mark Schmitt's comments, which I neglected to include.
Well, since the battle is now joined, or at least may be joined, let's look at some possible outcomes of the pending Supreme Court nomination.
First, let's throw out things that are highly unlikely
Let's move slowly into the land of the more probable:
A couple of other notes:
Personally, I'm just hoping for a nominee who's older than sixty. With the improvements in high quality old-age health care, plus the increased reliance on clerks, it's possible to continue one's career as a Supreme Court Justice for much longer than it was in even the mid-twentieth century.
Be careful out there folks. The volume on this one goes to eleven.
It's a special Supreme Court + 4th of July weekend 15 track edition.
Ouch. And it was going so well up until then. Meanwhile Troy and Erica are holding down the home front:
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 05:21 01 July 2005
