Category Archives: Espresso
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”
Source: Quote by Michael Crichton: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is…”
Or any people, for that matter. The good stuff doesn’t start until an hour in. It actually sort of gives you an idea of how long it actually took. Well, if you’re watching it on video. I suspect things like that go more quickly when you’re in the middle of the terror.
Source: Watch the Titanic Sink in Real Time in a New 2-Hour, 40 Minute Animation | Open Culture
I mentioned Over There how bad of a candidate Hillary Clinton is and got a fair amount of pushback. If she’s so bad how come she keeps winning? The answer involves quite a bit of good fortune that doesn’t actually reflect on her capabilities as a candidate. She has, with only one exception (2006 re-election), underperformed in every race that she’s run. She’s just been in a position that she’s been able to afford to. In 2000, she was elected to the senate as a carpetbagger… and underperformed Al Gore by five points. But you can do that when you’re running as a Democrat in New York. In 2008, she lost to underdog Barack Obama. In 2016, she had the hardest time fending off Bernie Sanders, who should have been a token challenger. Any one of these performances can be explained away (Obama is really good! She was a carpetbagger against a native! Someone else getting 45% was inevitable!), but taken all together the common thread is her. We can add this election to her list, where if you tilt your head and squint your eyes you can say something about the popular vote or Comey or whatever. But she lost to a man with a 37% approval rating. It’s pretty remarkable. In the end, she was a Martha Coakley who chose less bad races.
The secret history of the graphic novel.
The sincerity and suffocation of life in the midwest.
The walking dead (in their own mind).
The US government is looking in to how to confront space weather.
“There are some basic questions to consider before you make the decision to take on a wedding loan.”… like whether or not you are fiscally responsible?
What it’s like to date a sugar mama.
Phil Zuckerman looks at our hatred of atheists.
A fight breaks out when a husband comes home and finds his wife with another penguin. pic.twitter.com/9ejYGcJ5TJ
— Nat Geo Channel (@NatGeoChannel) November 4, 2016
It’s always comforting to hear that there is no slippery slope, but while campaigners demand graphic warnings on alcohol and researchers look into plain packaging for food, the world’s top nanny states are getting on with the job of transferring anti-smoking policies to other products. San Francisco recently introduced cigarette-style health warnings on cans of pop and Ireland has dipped into the tobacco control playbook for its new idea of ‘booze curtains’.
The Public Health (Alcohol) Bill is a piece of good old-fashioned temperance legislation with the modern twist that the Irish government set up its own sockpuppet lobby group specifically to campaign for it. It includes a sky-high minimum price of €1 and extensive advertising restrictions. As the Department of Health explains, the aim is to ‘reduce visibility, accessibility and availability of alcohol’. To that end, it wants to protect shoppers from the untold trauma of seeing beer and wine in convenience stores.
Source: Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: The alcohol display ban – another slip down the slope
About a month ago, Megan McArdle goes over the many problems with Obamacare and as usual, while I support the policy, I fear that too many of her critiques are spot on. While discussing possible solutions to those problems, she mentions two options:
“repeal and replace” (or at least gut renovate the system so that it functions as originally promised), or tweak regulations and hope that’s enough. From a policy perspective, “repeal and replace” obviously seems to be the way to go; no one really likes the kludged-together system created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and either Republicans or Democrats could design something that worked more rationally. However desirable this might be from a policy perspective, though, it’s even less plausible than legislative tweaks politically. Undoing what was done in 2010 would involve either repealing things that people like — like the ban on lifetime caps, and exclusions for pre-existing conditions — or moving toward something people don’t like, such as heftier mandates or government providing health care directly.
That leaves us regulatory tweaking. The good news about this is that it’s largely invisible to voters, which lowers the political barriers to change. The bad news is that there’s only so much tweaking regulators can do within the law (or even by skating outside it). This is the easiest option, but it’s also the weakest, and the least likely to work. Nonetheless, that’s what we’re going to end up doing, no matter who gets elected president.
To riff a little off that first quoted paragraph, one thing that’s bothered me about the “repeal and replace” mantra is that while it’s at least plausible that a Republican Congress and a Republican president might “repeal” the law, I don’t see them following through with the “replacement.” Why not just “replace” it, a move that would effect the repeal they’re claiming to seek?
That’s not a jab against McArdle. Her article is mostly just an excuse for me to sound off on “repeal and replace.” But she does raise problems that those, like me, who support Obamacare need to find some kind of answer for.
TRUMWILL: At the moment, I don’t plan to vote for any Republican this cycle who doesn’t repudiate Trump.
JERRY CALLAHAN: If I’m elected to the State Senate, Unlike my opponent, I will protect our clean water and air by supporting a complete ban on fracking.
TRUMWILL: Hmmm. Well, Larson has my attention now. But still, Trump.
JERRY CALLAHAN: I will fight any and all charter schools to protect our public schools!
TRUMWILL: Trump. Trump. Trump.
JERRY CALLAHAN: While I want to get money out of politics, Erica Larson has an unacceptable fixation on letting non-media people share their political views in the 60-90 days before an election. Vote clean elections, vote Callahan.
TRUMWILL: Well, how much sense does it really make to bundle local and national candidates together? I mean, it’s two different levels of government and state and national Republicans can differ…
JERRY CALLAHAN: My opponent is in the pocket of Big Tobacco, which has recently been targeting our teenagers with e-cigarettes.
TRUMWILL: Are you kidding me?
JERRY CALLAHAN: Larson has a wild plan to relocate the US capital to Nebraska and expand the US House to 6,000 seats. What a nut. Vote sanity, vote Callahan.
TRUMWILL: ARE YOU FU-{Explodes}
