Month: July 2010

Clay Johnson wants web developers to run for Congress:

Great developers are systems fixers and systems hackers. There is no system more ripe for elegant process hacks than the United States House of Representatives. Put a developer in Congress, and they’ll start exposing data on their own. They’ll build systems to make it so they can hear from their constituents better. Just as Ted Kennedy had his staff make the first Congressional website, a developer in Congress will seek to use new technology to make their job easier. That’s what hackers do.

(Hat tip: Alexis)

Information Is Beautiful illustrates the cognitive surplus:

I was listening to writer Clay Shirky talk about cognitive surplus – the idea of spare brainpower in the world’s collective mind just sitting there waiting, wanting, to be harnessed. He had a stand-out statistic that snagged my mind. I thought I would visualise it.

This is a jarring thought:

A paper by Diego Comin, Erick Gong, and myself was just published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. We collected crude but informative data on the state of technology in various parts of the world in 1000 BC, 0 AD, and 1500 AD.

1500 AD technology is a particularly powerful predictor of per capita income today. 78 percent of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is explained by technology differences that already existed in 1500 AD – even BEFORE the slave trade and colonialism.

Glenn Reynolds defends the right to photograph the police:

In Britain, the country's police chiefs' association is attempting to educate officers about the rights of photographers. So far, nothing like that has happened in the U.S., but it should. Trying to block photography in public places is not only heavy-handed and wrong but, thanks to technology, basically useless. With the proliferation of cameras in just about every device we carry, digital photography has become too ubiquitous to stop. Let's have a truce in the war on photography and set our sights on the real bad guys.

Dish coverage and commentary of the Breitbart-Sherrod controversy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and a reader dissent here. (Meanwhile, POTUS signed a major bill.)  On the Journo-scandal, Andrew challenged Chait, doubled down, and Ezra defended his defunct forum. Andrew also kept on the Hollywood scandal (multiple dissents here), defended himself from Tablet's charges, and meep-meep'd over the GOP. Scott Horton dug into the WaPo series and Ray Sanchez reported more on the police state.

In Palin watch, Goldblog sounded an alarm over her stance on Israel, her group blog peddled a revolting ad against the NYC mosque, readers rushed to defend religious freedom, another underscored the absolutism of her base on Trig, and Larison betted on Romney. Her latest mama grizzly surged in the Georgia governor's race.

In assorted coverage, Hitch grappled with the US-Israel problem, Christopher Papagianis and Reihan wonked out on homeownership, and Jonathan Rauch sees marriage equality as a foregone conclusion. Vice magazine shot a short doc down in the Gulf while Dan Ariely reminded us about the rainforests.  A look at a uniquely Green skyscraper here. A love letter to the Old Spice Guy here.

MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here.

— C.B.

Jonathan Chait defends himself and journo-list. It was just a water-cooler list-serv that just happened to be open only to liberals whom Ezra Klein liked. (Why writers and reporters cannot kibbitz one on one or share their private thoughts by email outside such an exclusive list is beyond me.) Spencer Ackerman's post – and the obvious assumptions behind it – are just Spencer, and have nothing to do with Chait or anyone else at Journolist. And there's no double standard between Chait's condemnation of Townhouse because the Townhouse members were open activists, while the hacks on Journolist are pure as the driven snow and seeking truth among one another, untainted by any smidgen of groupthink, collusion or a partisan echo-chamber.

Yes, seriously.

For the record, I never stated that Journolist was started as a means to foster groupthink. My point is that such a smug, self-satisfied elitist clique cannot but evoke such an atmosphere over time. And it did. That Klein had to stop collective petitions suggests there was an atmosphere in which such petitions were likely, no? If it were just a water-cooler, how could that possibly have happened? What bizarre idea did some of the members get into their heads?

As I've said all along, I'm sure much of the list's chats were entirely proper, helpful, productive, etc. I defended the privacy of the list and found the scummy attacks on Weigel to be awful. I do not publish private emails and never have. But I don't believe liberals are somehow immune to the groupthink that has destroyed conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy.

Hat tip: Buzzfeed.

Thomas Morton travels down to Louisiana to talk with environmental experts and "our nation's most well-spoken rednecks" and comes back with this unvarnished look. Here's Part 2 and Part 3.

David Gelernter imagines the next leap forward in artificial intelligence:

Emotion summarizes experience.  If the subtle emotion you happen to feel on the first warm, bright day of spring (an emotion that has no name) is similar to the emotion you felt the first time you took a girl to the movies, this particular emotion might connect the two events; and next year's first warm spring day might cause you to remember the girl and the movie. 

No computer will be creative unless it can simulate all the nuances of human emotion.

We tend to think of emotions in a few primary colors: happy, sad, angry….  But our real emotional states are almost always far more subtle and complex.  How do you feel when you've hit a tennis ball hard and well, or driven a nail into a plank with two perfect hammer blows?  When you first re-enter, as an adult, the school you attended as a child?  When you spot the spires of Chartres on the horizon, or your son's girlfriend reminds you of a girl you once knew?  Or the day turns suddenly dark and a storm threatens, or your best friend is about to make a big mistake but you can't tell him? 

Ambinder has some suggestions for journalists:

Study cognitive science. Figure out how minds work. Be suspicious about patterns and be knowledgeable about probability.

Don't be self-righteous. Journalists working for big newspapers, magazines, television networks, or websites are privileged to have the platform and should be humble about using its power.

Be humble about conclusions. This is not to say that you can't make them. It is to say that if your conclusions aren't provisional, then they probably are not correct.