The Dish

The Congressional Leadership Backs Obama

Boehner supports the president’s decision to attack Syria:

Cantor, Pelosi, and Reid have also voiced their support for intervention. Only McConnell isn’t onboard yet. Dreher sighs:

Unless there is a rebellion in the Congressional ranks, in both parties, we are going to do this thing. We are going to bomb Syria to make Syria safer for al-Qaeda and other Islamists. This country never, ever learns.

Benen, on the other hand, argues that passage still isn’t a sure thing:

[W]ith Boehner and Cantor endorsing the president’s position, GOP lawmakers will obviously have to consider whether to embarrass their own leaders while also embarrassing the president. They might very well do this anyway, but at a minimum, it should give rank-and-file Republicans pause. Indeed, if there’s a contingent within the caucus that’s inclined to follow the leadership’s call, and there’s a similarly sized element of House Democrats who’ll follow House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) lead, then the odds of the chamber approving a resolution are probably slightly better now than they were a few hours ago.

The Fix is counting votes. Meanwhile, Galupo bets that any acts of bipartisanship won’t last:

If, as I suspect, a majority of Republicans vote aye on a strike against the Assad regime, they might feel emboldened to confront Obama on the domestic front. If politics stops at the water’s edge of foreign policy, as the cliché goes, Republicans will have earned a measure of good will from the media, and even, to a lesser extent, from the Obama administration itself. With Syria behind them, Republicans could thus reenter the budget and debt ceiling debates with renewed resolve: Okay, Barack; we’re on this side of the water’s edge again.

Horny In Houston

Miles Klee highlights a study:

[E]xperimenters set up duplicate “decoy ads” in the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist and the adult/escorts section of Backpage.com for 15 different cities, collecting the phone numbers and texts of everyone who replied. When all was said and done, they had amassed 677 points of contact and 451 numbers. On average, they estimated, under 5 percent of men in a metropolitan city area – supposedly just those “over 18,” as if a curious youngster wouldn’t lie on a terms of use agreement – are soliciting online sex ads. [They found that] some regions are a little hornier than others: “On average, within the 15 markets explored, one out over every 20 males over the age of 18 in a metropolitan city area was soliciting online sex ads. The findings ranged from approximately one out of every 5 males (Houston, 21.4 percent) to less than one of 166 males (San Francisco, .6 percent).

Update from a reader:

Let me assure you, more than 0.6% of men in San Francisco are looking for sex online. But not on Craigslist (what is this, 1998?) We have apps for that now.

Another:

I call bullshit on this study. The results were pretty sensational and the sample size seemed small – 451 numbers in 15 cities. That’s 30 people per city. So I looked up the actual paper to see if it was credible, and was not exactly impressed.

I’ve laid out an example of how they appear to be doing the math below, but short answer is that they appear to both make math errors and also make unrealistic assumptions to make their numbers look bigger. They even appear to have screwed up population data (which seems pretty hard to do).

Their methodology was to post two fake ads, assume the small number of responses was representative and random, do some math and assume every single other ad posted got the same response rate from a totally different set of customers. Their entire methodology is based on using repeat callers to estimate population sizes, but then they assume other ads get completely different “customers” calling in.

It’s ridiculous and they make much too sweeping claims from their research. Now, I was surprised at the levels of activity they cited other (presumably less grandiose) research as showing, but their research doesn’t appear to add much real evidence. I’m not even sure it’s useful as a measure of relative behavior between cities. They may just be capturing relative popularity of the particular sex sites.

I’m going to use NYC as my example because it’s the most obviously ridiculous. Their headline: 3.4% of men over 18 years old solicit sex online in NYC.

Ridiculous underlying data: They received responses from 7, yes SEVEN, people. Three of whom called twice. They extrapolated from this ludicrous sample an entire population estimate. And they made what appear to be two math errors in doing so.

Math error #1: They say there are about 21 thousand sex ad users, which implies NYC adult male population of ~500 thousand. It’s more like 3 million. Maybe they only considered Manhattan under the logic that Johns, like witches, cannot cross moving water.

Math error #2: My best estimate is that their own math would show an estimate of about 4,400 [((8+7)/4-1)*341.5] as the population using the formula from Chapman they provide and maximizing the possible values. Maybe they used one of their other (apparently arbitrary) methodologies, but they don’t actually say.

Combined these errors change their estimate by an order of magnitude so it’s more like 0.25%. Whoops.

Other cities are slightly less absurd, but it pisses me off when sloppy research gets elevated in the media because it tells a good story. I’m all for confirming my bias that Houston sucks, but this one isn’t fair.

The Other Southern Comfort, Ctd

A reader can relate to this post:

I have some seriously rednecked cousins-in-law down here in Florida, and if there are two things they are proud of, it’s their Southern heritage and their liberty. They still bristle over the Northern War of Aggression and consider anyone north of Orlando a Yankee. They all smoke pot, are still convinced Obama’s a Muslim, work hard, and will fight each other over anything. They would welcome legalization in a heartbeat. One less intrusion on their lives by the goddamned government.

Another illustrates that theme by pointing to the lyrics from “Team Party darling Charlie Daniels’ 1974 song, ‘Long Haired Country Boy'” (seen above):

“People say I’m no good, and crazy as a loon
‘Cause I get stoned in the mornin’, I get drunk in the afternoon…

“‘Cause I ain’t askin’ nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
You just leave this long haired country boy alone…

“A poor girl wants to marry, a rich girl wants to flirt
A rich man goes to college, a poor man goes to work
A drunkard wants another drink of wine, and a politician wants your vote
I don’t want much of nothing at all, but I will take another toke

“‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
You just leave this long haired country boy alone”

Another reader:

Your post mentioned Willie Nelson, which reminded me of a wonderful Texas Monthly article on the Outlaw Country movement, which brought the rednecks and hippies together in the early ’70s. My favorite quotes:

BILL BENTLEY “The thing that turned Austin inside out was cocaine. The city got flooded with it.”

STEVE EARLE “It created a caste system. The democracy goes out when people are hiding in bathrooms because some can afford cocaine and some can’t.”

WILLIE NELSON “I never liked it. Eventually I told everybody, ‘You’re wired, you’re fired.’ If you’re going to play music, you better all be on the same drug. You can’t have a guy up here wailing away on cocaine while you’re laid back on a little pot. It just don’t work.”

Questions About Syria

Frum lists four. Among them, “What will it cost?”

A Syria campaign is being advertised as comparatively cheap in money and American lives. We’re promised “no boots on the ground.” But there’s another cost in danger of being overlooked: the opportunity cost.

The president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and other top officials have only so much time and energy. If they commit to resolving the Syrian civil war, inevitably they give second shrift, or third shrift, or worse to many other concerns of arguably greater importance to the region and the world.

Egypt, for example, seems to be heading toward the same civil strife as Syria. Who is developing the plan for helping to prevent that outcome? How much high-level support and attention are they getting?

Dave Schuler rattles off other questions:

Assume an attack on Syria is unsuccessful in the sense that Assad continues to use chemical weapons after the attack. What then?

Assume an attack on Syria is successful, Assad stops using chemical weapons (he might have done so anyway), but he is able to defeat the rebels without them. What then?

Assume an attack on Syria is successful, Assad stops using chemical weapons (he might have done so anyway), he is unable to defeat the rebels outright, and the civil war just continues. What then?

Assume an attack on Syria is successful and Assad, hamstringed in his attempts to preserve his regime, is ousted by the rebels. The rebels are radical Islamists. What then?

We attack Syria. Syria, Iran, or both retaliate by attacking Americans or American interests in the Middle East using asymmetric warfare techniques. What then?

We attack Syria. An American aircraft carrier is sunk by asymmetric warfare techniques (that’s actually occurred in war games of conflict in the Middle East). What then?

Adam Ozinek ponders the economic perks and social drawbacks of an entertainment market driven by Big Data. He notes that the “more information we have, the more profitable first degree price discrimination will be”:

If knowing where people go on the web can increase profits by over 1% compared to simple demographics based price discrimination, then how much will it help to know where people go in the real world? How about who they encounter and speak with? What products they look at and how much time they spend looking at them?

Is this kind of world sort of creepy and unfair? I think this is somewhat true and my guess is most people think this is very true. But consider the benefits. For example, I’ve written before that TVs that watch us are the best hope for breaking up the technologically stagnant and poor service that cable companies provide. Many wish for an a la carte system but the economics mean that whatever system replaces cable is going to need to find a way cover the large fixed costs of creating TV shows. This is why I am skeptical of any systems that only manage cheaper prices. What is needed is alternative revenues to provide a subsidy or lower real costs, and few have found a way to deliver this. TVs that watch you, in contrast, can deliver on the former.

Previous Dish on Netflix’s Big Data strategy here. Recent thoughts from Kevin Spacey on the Netflix model here.

Words And Stories Will Never Die

Casey N. Cep’s visit to The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, mingled with childhood memories of bookshelves her father built, sparked these reflections on the future of reading:

Few people believe that the end of bookstores would be the end of reading, or even the end of browsing or serendipitous encounters with literature. No matter how far into the digital realm literature moves, there are those who will always revere the book. Rare book libraries and manuscript archives will always, and for good reason, keep vaults full of parchment and paper. Artists like Michael Piscitello, David Lovejoy, Jena Priebe, Brady Westwater, Nick Lord, and the many others who have contributed to the Last Bookstore will continue to make art from physical books, while artists and archivists will always devote themselves to the book as concept.

The rest of us, though, will realize it is not books that we have loved, but words and stories.

Take those bookcases in my childhood room. It was not the stained pine shelves that I cherished, but the father who made them. Take the sawhorses that my father used to build the shelves. It was not the battered pine sawhorses we prized, but the grandfather who built them and used them for his trade. The charity and hope and utility of the sawhorses and the shelves are what we loved, not the things themselves.

The same, I think, is true of books. Had we come of age in the scroll era, we would be just as resistant to the codex. But here we are, creatures of the book looking for new homes on Web sites and Kindles. The charity and hope of the stories we love are still there in their digital equivalents. Telling a story, communicating an idea, capturing an emotion: these are all possible with words whatever their format.

Recent Dish on bookshops here and here.

(Photo of The Last Bookstore, described by Cep as “equal parts mausoleum, shrine, and warehouse,” by Scott Garner)

The Other Southern Comfort

Patrik Jonsson wonders if legalization will catch on below the Mason-Dixon line:

[L]ook a little closer at Dixie’s denizens and one sees small but potent signs of a legalization groundswell, in part fueled by the South’s unique contributions to marijuana culture and prohibition. In Texas and all over the South, there are a lot Willie Nelson-style social and cultural “outlaw” attitudes, all of which overlap with Ron Paul libertarianism. … More critically, the South is one of the country’s premier pot growing grounds, with Kentucky and Tennessee surpassing northern California in marijuana tonnage each harvest. Evidence also suggests that it’s used recreationally as much in the South as in other corners of the country.

Executive Dress

Simon Doonan contemplates fashion and politics:

I think when people write about politicians’ clothes they’re really scraping the barrel, especially when they write about men’s clothes. They do this analysis of like, a red tie. They all wear red ties, for God’s sake. Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places. The politicians in history who have worn remarkable clothes are few and far between. You have to go back to Benjamin Disraeli, who was an outrageous dandy who wore velvet, yellow velvet waistcoats and knickers and he wore a lot of perfume and jewelry. He was extremely camp and over the top. Any politician who’s smart in this day and age is going to dress so as to be unremarkable, but somehow other writers feel it incumbent on themselves to remark on the unremarkable. I don’t know how they do it. “Oh look, he’s wearing an anorak.” And you can get columns out of it, and I think, really? An anorak?

Doonan particularly dislikes fashion talk about Michelle Obama:

The reality is, Mrs. Obama is quite chic, but not sort of in a vain, self-involved way. I guess I was getting sick of people talking about her appearance all the time, and I thought it was very unfair to her and borderline insulting. To me, it’s quite clear that what makes her a great First Lady is her intelligence and her strength and her warmth. Think about Nancy Reagan, think about Laura Bush, think about Hillary Clinton. You don’t get all those three in any of those women, warmth, strength, and intelligence. I thought it was unfair to her and unfair to her legacy to keep focusing on her clothing.

Update from a reader:

Just curious. Which quality do you think Simon Doonan was referring to regarding Laura Bush?

Think about Nancy Reagan, think about Laura Bush, think about Hillary Clinton. You don’t get all those three in any of those women, warmth, strength, and intelligence.

I can’t imagine it’s warmth, because she’s always come across that way to me, and I can’t imagine he’s calling her dumb. So I’m assuming he’s thinking “strength,” because she doesn’t have an in-your-face personality. But that’s not my definition of strength. I don’t know how anyone could survive being First Lady for 8 years without being strong. She’s also publicly disagreed with her husband’s stance on gay marriage and reproductive choice – that doesn’t require strength?

I’m a die-hard Democrat, but I think Laura Bush exhibits all those qualities in droves (her only intelligence blip being whom she chose to marry – but, you know, love yada yada yada).

(Image of Disraeli via Wikimedia Commons)

What, Exactly, Will Congress Authorize?

Jack Goldsmith analyzes the administration’s proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF):

The proposed AUMF focuses on Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad. It authorizes the President to use any element of the U.S. Armed Forces and any method of force. It does not contain specific limits on targets – either in terms of the identity of the targets (e.g. the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Hezbollah, Iran) or the geography of the targets. Its main limit comes on the purposes for which force can be used. Four points are worth making about these purposes.

First, the proposed AUMF authorizes the President to use force “in connection with” the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war. (It does not limit the President’s use force to the territory of Syria, but rather says that the use of force must have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian conflict. Activities outside Syria can and certainly do have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war.). Second, the use of force must be designed to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of WMDs “within, to or from Syria” or (broader yet) to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.” Third, the proposed AUMF gives the President final interpretive authority to determine when these criteria are satisfied (“as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”). Fourth, the proposed AUMF contemplates no procedural restrictions on the President’s powers (such as a time limit).

Jeez. No wonder Larison thinks the authorization is too broad:

As it is currently written, the resolution likely wouldn’t pass because it requests authorization for what could potentially be much more than a few “limited” strikes. If this resolution passed, Congress would be effectively signing off on U.S. strikes against targets both in and outside of Syria for as long as the war in Syria lasts. That isn’t what the administration claims that it wants to do, but why would anyone take their word for it?

Daniel Nexon argues that broad authorizations are necessary:

In fact, successful compellence against Syria almost certainly requires a credible threat of escalation. The biggest threat posed by potential US intervention? That it directly or indirectly leads to the overthrow of the current regime. Crafting an AUMF that undercuts that threat will almost certainly be counterproductive when it comes to the Administration’s preferred outcome in Syria: forcing the regime to accept a negotiated settlement with the rebels.

The Senate is already revising the administration’s AUMF to make it more limited. Goldsmith believes that this will prove difficult. With any luck, this could be the sticking point – or the way toward a deal.