Patriotic Toyotas

Posted on March 11th, 2010

Continuing his campaign to be Writer of the Decade (2001 to 2011), Robert Wright takes on the Toyota madness.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations (explained in a footnote below) suggest that if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don’t bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million — 2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244.

Prius KnobIncidentally, I did an experiment in my Prius the other day to make sure it would go into neutral just in case I am one of the 2.8.

Ever seen the knob of a Prius?

See that circle thingie at the intersection of the lines. The knob just kind of sits at the circle thingie. To shift into neutral, you push the knob to the left and  when you let it go, it springs back to the circle position. Down for engine braking etc.

So, here’s the thing. You can’t you just tap it over to the N. You have to hold it there for like half a second.

I wonder if the out-of-control people did a little tap and panicked when the car kept accelerating?

TAP!  ZOMG! TAP! It won’t go in neutral!! Tap! Tap! Tap! Aaaaaaargh!!!!!

Wright is right though.

But it worries me that this Toyota thing worries us so much. We live in a world where responding irrationally to risk (say, the risk of a terrorist attack) can lead us to make mistakes (say, invading Iraq). So the Toyota story is a kind of test of our terrorism-fighting capacity — our ability to keep our wits about us when things seem spooky.

Passing the test depends on lots of things. It depends on politicians resisting the temptation to score cheap points via the exploitation of irrational fear. It depends on journalists doing the same. And it depends on Americans in general keeping cool, notwithstanding the likely failure of many politicians and journalists to do their part.

So go out today and buy a Toyota. It’s the patriotic thing to do.

He’s wrong about the last bit though. Don’t buy a Prius. Not because they might crash. But because they’re crap.

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Still Angry After All These Years

Posted on March 7th, 2010

I experience stabbing pains of guilt when I read about the Iraq Inquiry in Britain. That  horrible story no longer moves me to anger; I just shake my head and keep walking.

I am sincerely grateful, therefore, to Daniel Larison in The American Conservative for still being very angry. I am glad he won’t let it rest.

Of course the new administration will try to make the best of it, claim progress and take credit for anything it can. That is in the political self-interest of this administration. Having inherited a mess that the political class has convinced itself was improving, it would not be advantageous to be the one overseeing the unraveling. The rest of us are not burdened by such considerations.

I don’t think it is particular noble to destroy another people’s country on the basis of unfounded, paranoid fears that its small, economically weak, militarily inferior government posed grave threats to the global superpower. There are many words that come to mind to describe this, but noble is not one of them. It is not especially noble to do this with no meaningful plan for restoring order and governance in the wake of the invasion. There is no nobility to be found in the afterthought of poorly constructing a democratic regime whose elections served as the trigger for massive bloodshed. Likewise, there was not much nobility when our government belatedly recognized its incompetence and failure long after it could do the civilian casualties any good and proposed a plan that would temporarily reduce violence long enough for the previous administration to get out the door.

My anger is still there but is deep below the surface but I am glad that Larison is still able to rouse it back up and remind me. I don’t want to forget.

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How to Watch the News

Posted on March 6th, 2010


How To Report The News - Watch more Funny Videos

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Lost Decade

Posted on March 2nd, 2010

Next time someone tells you that the republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility and/or growth, show them this (from the economist) and have them annotate the decades with a red or blue marker.

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The End of Atheism

Posted on February 28th, 2010

They say that without religion, we would not have the Sistine Chapel or Handel’s Messiah or the cathedral at Rouens. Well, without atheism Julia Sweeney would not have made Letting Go of God. After an hour of listening to Julia’s heartbreaking journey from devout catholic to accidental atheist, there is no need to read or write anything else about atheism or religion. Case closed.

This is the first video of thirteen. Everyone one of them is a masterpiece. Listen to it with your children.

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¡Olé!

Posted on February 27th, 2010

Skip this one unless you are really into Ted talks and/or Elizabeth Gilbert. Or maybe just skip to the last minute for her inspirational idea.

Elizabeth recounts the Greek idea that genius is not something we are, it’s something we have; it’s something that acts through us. She suggests that genius is something like Doby the house elf who lives in the wall and leaps out every now and then to infuse our work with brilliance…or not.

Watch the video or scroll down for the spoiler. Your choice.

Spoiler alert:

If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case, decides to let some kind of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts…then…¡Olé!

And if not… do your dance anyhow…then ¡Olé! to you nonetheless.

Ah heck. Go watch the video. It was good. she earned her ¡Olé!

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Health Care Spending

Posted on February 27th, 2010

You probably know that the US spends more of its GDP on health care than any other OECD nation (for better outcomes).

Yet every major country spends very significantly less of its national output on health than we do. As Table 1 shows, we spend five percent of GDP more than the country with the second-highest level of health spending as a share of GDP. Five percent of GDP is about $700 billion that Americans could be spending on new homes, cars and clothing, nice restaurants, paying off bills or anything else they can imagine. Instead, that money went to doctors, hospitals, pharmacists and insurance companies. If we only spent as much as Japan—a country known for having an excellent health system and a healthy population—we would have eight percent of GDP, about $1 trillion, to spend on anything we like.

Country Percent
U.S. 16.0
France 11.0
Germany 10.4
Belgium 10.2
Canada 10.1
Portugal 9.9
OECD Average 8.9
U.K. 8.4

But did you know that government spending on health care is also higher most other countries too?

Country Percent
France 8.7
Germany 8.0
U.S. 7.3
U.K. 6.9
OECD Average 6.4

what I am trying to show is that for no more than we are already spending on health through the government we could have a single-payer system no worse that those that exist in almost every other major country. My point is that this is an option that the administration should have at least floated and on which we should have had a national debate. I don’t think Americans would have embraced such an option, but as I said at the beginning it would have clarified the debate by focusing on the overall cost of our health care system—which I believe is far too great for what we get in return—and made reforms such as those that the Democrats have put forward seem modest by comparison.

Data from the OECD. Commentary from Bruce Bartlett’s excellent blog.

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Where Your Friends Are

Posted on February 13th, 2010

facebook

Marvellous visualization of where friends tend to cluster in Facebook. Apparently everyone in Dixie knows someone in Atlanta and all the Mormons are friends with each other.

My latest visualization shows the information by location, with connections drawn between places that share friends. For example, a lot of people in LA have friends in San Francisco, so there’s a line between them.

Looking at the network of US cities, it’s been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster. For example Columbus, OH and Charleston WV are nearby as the crow flies, but share few connections, with Columbus clearly part of the North, and Charleston tied to the South:

Take a look at his country-level visualization too.

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Greatest Greatest Hits

Posted on February 11th, 2010

Rolling StoneWell, I made it through the first 100 and the most striking thing about the list is that they sure like those greatest hits albums at Rolling Stone… and the Beatles. Although, oddly, they didn’t include any Beatles Greatest Hits albums.

By including a greatest hits album, they are basically saying - well, this guy didn’t really have any good albums but we like him…so…here are his greatest hits anyway.

Get rid of all the greatest hits, about half of The Beatles’ albums and all the oddball ones (I am looking at you Captain Beefheart) that they threw in to see if we were paying attention and you’d have a good list of about 40 albums that you really should go back and listen to someday. Maybe tomorrow.

Only four hundred to go.

UPDATE

I pruned the list down for you. I nuked all the greatest hits and oddballs and got rid of some Beatles. 40 fantastic albums remain and here they are. I left them in the original order that Rolling Stone had them.

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
4. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan
6. What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye
9. Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
10. The Beatles (”The White Album”), The Beatles
11. The Sun Sessions, Elvis Presley
12. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
15. Are You Experienced?, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
17. Nevermind, Nirvana
18. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
22. Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon
23. Innervisions, Stevie Wonder
25. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
26. The Joshua Tree, U2
28. Who’s Next, The Who
29. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin
32. Let It Bleed, The Rolling Stones
37. Hotel California, The Eagles
41. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, The Sex Pistols
42. The Doors, The Doors
43. The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
51. Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel
57. Beggars Banquet, The Rolling Stones
65. Moondance, Van Morrison
66. Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin
68. Off the Wall, Michael Jackson
71. After the Gold Rush, Neil Young
72. Purple Rain, Prince
73. Back in Black, AC/DC
74. Otis Blue, Otis Redding
79. Star Time, James Brown
83. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Aretha Franklin
87. The Wall, Pink Floyd
88. At Folsom Prison, Johnny Cash
91. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John
93. Sign ‘o’ the Times, Prince
97. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan
98. This Year’s Model, Elvis Costello
99. There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Sly and the Family Stone
100. In the Wee Small Hours, Frank Sinatra

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Bird of Ill Omen

Posted on February 6th, 2010

Albatross

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It still needs some work but it’s a pretty good first try even if I say so myself.

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