Blog Archives

Linkluster Central Indiana


bunnyaxThis fog harvesting contraption made me think of Dune. Which, for whatever it’s worth, I did not really enjoy.

Some folks are surprised that Bernie Sanders did so well in Alaska. They shouldn’t be! Without sarcasm, I will say this: Mineral wealth socialism is the best socialism.

The NCAA may have a “women problem” but women’s basketball is not a good example of that. The NCAA and networks put forth a heroic effort into making women’s basketball a major sport, and it just didn’t take.

Though I haven’t seen the new one, I agree with Jack Butler about how great the animated Superman/Batman movie was. Which may be something of a pattern. Also, Jonathan Last’s run-down on the Batman/Superman history is worth reading.

Cavity-free candy? That’s neat.

Stephen Silver looks at Trump in the context of hate speech and anti-PC.

Frederick Hess writes of the isolation of the conservative academic, and Josh McCabe relays what was said in a symposium on the subject.

How gamergate appropriated anime on Twitter and toxified anime avatars.

Ebb. Flow. Suburbs in, suburbs out, suburbs back in. The domestic migration map is pretty cool, though.

Well, yeah. That’s a part of it, certainly.

Dara Lind is outraged by Ted Cruz’s unAmerican plan to secure Muslim neighborhoods, but Eli Lake says he’s basically describing France. Hopefully, these folks will be able to help.

John Burnett and NPR look at Irish illegal immigrants.

Jesse Singal explores the idea that prosecutions should be literally race-blind.

Wait, the Ego Depletion theory isn’t true? I’ve supported nanny-ish regulation on the basis that people have finite will power. Hmmm.

Is disagreement becoming personal prejudice? I don’t know. What I do know is that if you are ever – ever tempted to tag something as the “last acceptable prejudice”… just don’t.


Category: Newsroom

Tweetstorm: Cities, Cars, & Roads


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Category: Statehouse

Linkluster Severus and Leo


snowwhitegunGwen Ifill lamented on Twitter that politicians used to respond to tragedies with thoughts and prayers. Of course, we know what happened to that.

Vox says that shutting down Muslim immigration won’t solve Europe’s security problems. I’m inclined to agree, but let’s be honest: Would Vox ever run a piece that came to the opposite conclusion?

New Zealand won’t be changing its flag after all. Previously discussed here.

Cool! Obama’s new education secretary has a charter school background.

How Mitt Romney came to the rescue in Utah! It wasn’t really just Mitt, though he certainly helped.

I really, really, really hope this doesn’t factor heavily into Hillary Clinton’s game plan. I mean, sure, go ahead and make the argument, but I just hope they’re not depending on it. I’m still reeling over her arguing that one of her main attacks against Trump is going to be “America’s standing in the world.” {shudder}

I’ve been predicting, for a little while now, that the GOP’s stranglehold on the House may be in jeopardy. It turns out maybe not in the most optimistic (for them) scenarios, because Democrats are idiots.

I have mixed feelings about limiting the ability of homeowners to rent their house out for short periods, AirBnB style, but I am otherwise pretty sympathetic to the army contractor dude and being able to rent out to students, and pretty hostile to hard caps.

Are our wind energy tax credits coming to an end?

Toronto to Vancouver in three hours sounds kind of cool.

Culture clash in Pocatello, Idaho. How a university’s need for foreign students (and their money) generated community conflict.

The Challenger engineer who tried to sound the alarm has died.

A ruling in New Mexico may mean that they can’t get doctors in Texas.

How The Sims promotes conservative family values.

We think of flying as having been normalized in the west, but it’s still the province of the elite. I remember back before airline deregulation and before Dad got a few raises and we drove halfway across the country to visit family. It’s weird to consider that people still do that.

At Cracked, Michael Hossey gives seven weird and dispiriting ways that companies screw their workers.


Category: Newsroom

The Mysterious Ways of John Kasich


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Category: Newsroom

Estimated Intelligence


I’ve been listening to music lately while driving (instead of audiobooks). Somehow my player ended up without a CD and so I grabbed the first one out of my case. It’s an independent artist from Deltona who you’ve never heard of and, as far as I know, stopped making music years ago. His band at the time followed a pattern I’d seen many times: A little rocky at first, getting progressively better, then right when they’ve gotten really good and people see me singing along with the lyrics are asking me questions about the band… they break up and go their separate ways. He rebounded a couple times with other bands, but never really recaptured the magic.

Part of what made me think that Todd might “make it” is that he is a really good looking guy. I mean really, really good looking guy. He started off singing country and my then-girlfriend’s friends would come to shows with us even if they didn’t like country music because they liked to watch him sing. His looks would stand out in a Hollywood film. He was a good singer, a better-than-decent songwriter, and an improving performer, but all he really had to do for the female contingent of his fan-base was stand there and smile winsomely.

One of the themes of his music has to do with his struggles with the ladies. More specifically, the lack of leverage he often feels he has in his relationships, former relationships, and near relationships. It’s not an uncommon theme, but it’s a weird theme coming from him. How can a guy like that have difficulty with the ladies? Which is not entirely fair, because the better looking a man or woman is, the higher the standards they have for a potential partner, and the less leverage their looks buy them. It’s also the case, if his music is any indication, that he may not be the best boyfriend. One of his woe-is-me songs involved infidelity.

The other thought I had was that he could have difficulty with the ladies despite his looks and charisma because he’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

Then I realized that wasn’t true at all. At least, I had no particular reason to believe it’s true. He had a college degree and his day job at the time was as a mortgage accountant. I don’t know that such a job requires genius, but it almost certainly requires more than being a dull tool in any objective sense. He may be dimmer than the average mortgage accountant, or dimmer than the average college graduate (though I have no particular reason to believe that either is true), but his general level of intelligence is likely to be no less than average and probably higher.

Why did I think otherwise? The comparative lack of depth of his music? Maybe. His friendly manner making him seem dim? Or do I have a bias against good looking men? The latter is a female stereotype, but that’s only because it’s under-observed in men and not because it’s absent. I’ve found myself on at least a couple of occasions coming to a quick, and wrong, conclusion about attractive guys.

It’s also likely the case that my estimate of average is revised upwards by virtue of the fact that most of the people that I communicate with non-superficially most of the time are of higher intelligence. On Ordinary Times, at Hit Coffee, and in meatworld. Throw in Facebook and Twitter, while we’re at it. This says nothing special about myself and more about how we tend to organize along these lines. It correllates genetically with our families, our jobs, and society more generally.

This leads to some skewed perceptions generally. You see this especially in the political world, where obviously intelligent people are dismissed as unintelligent when that’s almost certainly not the case. The dismissal can come from partisan instincts: This person takes political stands I believe are stupid so they must be stupid. You see this applied in some of the oddest places to obviously intelligent individuals from Barack Obama to Ted Cruz.

Beyond that, though, it tends to attract to people who display a seeming lack of intellectual curiosity, such as George W Bush and Sarah Palin. There is no real reason to believe that GWB is not intelligent. It was taken for granted by some that between Bush and Kerry it was obvious the latter had an intellect the former lacked, but there was never much basis for believing that and there was a little bit of basis for believing it was not the case. Kerry got points for his affectations, while Bush lost them for the same reason as well as the “lack of intellectual curiosity” thing. The latter of which can be associated with intelligence, but it’s rather tricky to do so.

Then there’s Sarah Palin. Good ole’ Sarah Palin. Not only was she tagged dumb, but this view has largely been considered vindicated by almost all of the left, most of the center, and a good chunk of the right. Except that it probably isn’t so. The assessment of Palin’s intelligence is probably informed most of all by her surroundings. Specifically, that she is surrounded by people who are more intelligent than she is. Her IQ is probably about average. It just looks low by comparison. Her failures are the product of being in an environment where average simply won’t cut it. And so she is considered dumb. It’s no mistake that she managed Wasilla and Alaska with a degree of adeptness, but then flopped so badly at the national level. The jobs got harder, and she didn’t have the reserves. Most people would probably handle it worse than she did, as hard as that may be to imagine.

The same could be said for Bush, if we consider him a failure: The presidency requires unusually high intelligence merely to function competently. If it’s a matter of brainpower, though, it seems likely that Kerry would have been just as unsuccessful. Or alternately Bush may have had the intelligence for the job but not the temperament. Or beyond that, the biggest problem was just that he got some bad ideas and ran with them, which is not as good an indicator of a useful definition of intelligence as we might think. A lot of smart people devote themselves to bad ideas – seemingly dumb ones – and to believe otherwise is to be pretty ideologically blinkered (as evidenced by attempts to portray Ben Carson as anything other than exceptionally intelligent).

In all likelihood, most of us have run into this in the office place. Early in the days of Hit Coffee I wrote about a guy named Charlie Belcher. The key primer on him was lost to the sands of WordPress, but the long and short of it is that he was worse than deadweight. Not only did he not actively contribute to the XML programming team, but his presence cost resources even if he’d been there for free because the rest of us had to devote extraordinary amounts of time trying to explain over and over again how to do the job and correcting his innumerable failures. He -along with another coworker named Edgar who was also worse than deadweight – personally did a lot to convince me of the limited potential being able to bring the masses into the knowledge economy. While Edgar’s intelligence very likely was below average, Charlie’s was probably about average. He was just working in a job where that wasn’t enough. Both were very motivated to do well, both had every opportunity to succeed, and both washed out because neither of them could.

PS This post is about intelligence. Not about the comparative failings and virtues of the Republican and Democratic Party. Please comment accordingly.


Category: Coffeehouse

Linkluster Domino’s in Australia


wantedWell this is a perfectly Australian story: Venomous spider traps a snake in the garage.

My wife has complained about EMR inbox notifications, and now her complaints have been backed by science.

Related: Living with yourself (or not) after a professional mistake kills someone. Even when there are no lawsuits, hospitals are a liability factory.

Sigh. Also, why are all of Mario Cuomo’s kids so bad.

I suppose “bad lapse in judgment” is one way of putting it.

I have myself seen some connections between the Ascension of Trump and the French Revolution. In mentality, if not trails of blood.

Australia is running so low on koala food that they might have to start euthanizing. Good think they can’t eat flesh anymore.

When practice doesn’t make perfect! Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades investigate why extensive relationship history (experience!) doesn’t lead to marital success.

Americans are increasingly accepting of social change in most respects, but not divorce. I attribute it to the triumph of experience over hope. {Related}

The retirement of Shamu: SeaWorld announces that its ending its orca program.

I hadn’t thought about it explicitly in this manner, but the Australia-Siberia connection kind of makes sense. And here is Stanislav Zakharkin talking about the Siberian movement.

Volvo is working on a kangaroo avoidance system for Australia.

Well this makes sense. Given the sprawling storyline of Game of Thrones, I can see why it might appeal to prisoners that their prison terms should seem short by comparison.

Australia has something of a Wyoming problem with the Northern Territory, which is insufficiently populated for statehood but too big to be ignored. What about merging it with South Australia?

Matt Novak looks at Australia’s secret history as a White Utopia.


Category: Newsroom

Trump in North Carolina


Something to file away. Bitzer is a professor in North Carolina and was a useful Twitter resource during both the South Carolina and North Carolina primaries.

Here is the full exit poll, which makes for useful comparison. It has varied from state to state, but it is definitely the case in North Carolina that the more educated a voter is, the less likely they are to vote for Trump. Even with that, though, it should be noted that he won 35% of college graduates and 30% of postgrads. In terms of income, he won mostly on the basis of those making $30-50k a year, though again did impressively across the board (and won among those who make more than $100k a year).


Category: Newsroom

OSC: Southern Tech vs Saxon State


socresheet-osc-bbKELLY: Welcome to the Ordinary Sports Channel’s half-time show. We’re here in the first round of the Eastern Metro Conference tournament and it’s been a surprisingly good game!

BLUE: That’s right, Tod. Southern Tech came into this game with a decided advantage considering all of the injuries that Saxon State has had all year, but they’re really hanging in there! Down by five in a very high scoring game.

KELLY: Yes. The Packers obviously have the advantage here, but the Spartans showing real grit.

TRUMAN: Are we done with this yet?

KELLY: I’m sorry? Done with what?

TRUMAN: Done pretending this is a {air quotes} “competitive” game between two {air quotes} “good teams”? (more…)


Category: Coffeehouse

Trump Tinder (Men Are Dogs)


Kyla Brandon poses as a Trump supporter on Tinder to see what kind of responses she would get. With the assistance of an attractive profile photo, she got many responses.

It reminded me of this episode of Rom-Com, which is worth watching in its ten minute entirety. NSFW:

(I will grant that the comparison between a Trump supporter and the woman in the profile in Rom-Com is pretty tenuous. Some of the guys that responded to her also seemed okay. An interesting social experiment either way.)


Category: Theater

Linkluster Full Circle Plus One Hundred


fallout

So, is the EU building illegal settlements in Israel?

Matthew Yglesias has made the important discovery that things matter in presidential contests other than what boxes a candidate checks. Let us congratulate him on his personal growth. Also, Jonathan Chait. Steven Berman responds, as does Noah Berlatsky. At the end of the day… I’ll take it, I guess.

Brendan Nyhan tweetstorms the rise of Donald Trump, and the multifactorial institutional failures that made it happen, and Der Spiegel explains how the US media made it happen.

As Trump serves as a warning sign about democracy for the rest of the world, an insider explains how the nomination could be stolen from him.

Sarah Fallon and Wired explain that cancer rates spiking in Fukushima were not due to radiation.

Mark Judge argues that cities are the new suburbs and suburbs are the new cities.

The arctic island of Svalbard is trying to figure out how to get people to come visit during its very dark, very cold winters.

Should we fix our broken hearts and inappropriate desires with pharmaceuticals?

There are various aspects of my wife’s job that can get her very worked up. This is one of them. She proverbially (and sometimes literally) weeps for patients that are kept past their time.

Six (non-conservative) psychologists and sociologists in three studies suggest there is a substantial ideological bias in social science research. {More}

Hey, there’s something about Canada we don’t want to talk about.

A Taiwanese model posed for a picture in an ad for a cosmetic clinic. It ruined her life and she sued.

Exxon finds itself in the unenviable position of people asking them “Hey, isn’t that what the tobacco companies did?”

It came around too late for me, but it does seem like Facebook would be fertile ground for flirting and all that. It seems weird to me they never really did the matchmaking thing. They’d have some great analytics.

Peter Tatchell has changed his mind on the gay cake issue. It’s a bit different from the wedding cake issue over here, though, as it required a specific message being put onto the cake.

It’s not just me: Anime really was great twenty years ago.


Category: Newsroom