From The Journal Of Dubious Studies

Jordan Pearson discusses one novel way to spot faked research:

Previous research has shown that patterns of language can be good indicators of deceit in fields outside of science. A 2003 study that asked participants to write untruthful statements in several experiments on topics like abortion legislation found that liars tended to use less adjectives while also playing up the affective dimension of their argument by using positive superlatives. Other studies have found that liars have trouble approximating the proper amount of genre-specific terms to use in their writing, as was the case in a study analyzing fake hotel reviews, whose authors’ underuse of spatial dimensions flagged their reviews as fraudulent.

[Cornell PhD candidate David] Markowitz and [colleague Jeffrey] Hancock discovered that [disgraced Dutch professor of social psychology Diederik] Stapel’s fraudulent papers conformed to these findings in non-scientific contexts. “Stapel also wrote with more certainty when describing his fake data, using nearly one-third more certainty terms than he did in the genuine articles,” the authors wrote. “Words such as ‘profoundly,’ ‘extremely,’ and ‘considerably’ frame the findings as having a substantial and dramatic impact.”

Additionally, they discovered that Stapel overused scientific jargon (what the researchers deemed to be genre-specific), indicating that he had trouble estimating the right amount to use in order to make his accounts seem truthful. He also used far fewer adjectives in his fraudulent papers than in his truthful ones.

The SJWs Now Get To Police Speech On Twitter, Ctd

Last night, a reader wrote:

It looks like the fears mentioned in your post have already come to pass; @nero, the Twitter account of Milo Yiannopoulos, a writer for Breitbart, is currently suspended. I am no fan of the guy – he is trans-phobic, but not violently or inappropriately so. I am sure his account will be re-enabled shortly, but that this group was able to get his account shut off not for harassment, but for wrong-think, is disturbing. I’m really liberal/left leaning, but nothing gets me foaming at the mouth more than crap like this. This does a ton of harm to the Women’s Rights movement, turning off people like me who would normally support it wholeheartedly.

Gawker’s Tom Scocca accuses that reader and me of the following:

What really matters is not the stalking and abuse that has taken place, but the hypothetical danger that feminists will seize power as authoritarian censors, burning Beethoven and establishing anti-masculinity brainwashing camps.

No. Try again, Tom. As I’ve now written many times – and did in the post Scocca links to – I actively support suspending abusive, stalking tweeters or those threatening violence. I just worry that some are using this to advance a left-feminist ideology through censorship of journalists. I would imagine a Gawker writer might be sensitive to journalists’ being censored on Twitter because of saying politically incorrect things. Apparently not. Easier to throw a few tired, ancient cheap shots at yours truly than see if I’m actually onto something here. Another reader notes some non-harassing tweeters have also been suspended recently:

Gone are the accounts of Mykeru, a critic of feminism within the Atheist-Skeptic movement, as well as Janet Bloomfield, Social Media Director of A Voice for Men. Their accounts also disappeared in the past three days. Thunderf00t, another prominent critic of feminism within the Skeptic movement, had his account suspended for close to a month. None of these accounts were abusive or harassing. The only thing they had in common was that they were all critical of feminism.

Or critical of a particular strand of contemporary left-feminism. It looks as if Thunderf00t has had his Twitter account suspended because he linked to YouTube videos critical of Anita Sarkeesian. @nero’s account just went back online, but did WAM get it suspended in the first place? Here’s evidence they did:

We’ve asked WAM if they did or did not report @nero for suspension. No word back as of yet. And what threats or stalking or harassment did @nero engage in to merit the brief suspension? Drum roll:

Yiannopoulos apologized for that sexist swipe against @redlianak:

So it looks like he had already been held accountable for his shitty words in the best way – public embarrassment, not Twitter censorship. And the tweeter who bragged of getting Yiannopoulos banned was quite clear why of another reason: @nero opposed marriage equality, and is therefore allegedly homophobic (especially because he’s gay). So the standard for banning people from Twitter is now homophobia. And why not? If homophobic speech oppresses someone, it must be forbidden, right?

Let me know if you’ve been suspended for ideological reasons – and not for harassment or stalking or threats of violence. And if you know of a Twitter account that has been rightly suspended for actual threats to individual women, ditto.

Europe’s Other Secessionists

In the face of staunch opposition from the Spanish government, which declared the act unconstitutional, some 2.3 million residents of Catalonia turned out on Sunday to vote in a non-binding referendum on independence from Spain. Over 80 percent voted “yes”:

Because the straw poll did not contain the electoral guarantees of a true referendum, and was organized and promoted entirely by pro-sovereignty groups, it was largely expected that those opposed to independence would not turn up to vote (and indeed, the percentage of returns against both statehood and independence was a mere 4.5%; an additional 10% voted in favor of statehood—meaning greater autonomy within a federal-style system—but rejected independence). If yesterday’s poll is indeed an accurate reflection of what Catalonia could expect in a binding referendum with greater electoral guarantees and a high level of participation, then somewhere between 40 and 50% of the total eligible population would vote in favor of independence.

Bershidsky interprets the vote as a message to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who “has consistently refused to deal with the political, rather than the legal, side of the issue”:

Rajoy has signaled his willingness to negotiate with the Catalan government, but only from a position of strength. That’s no way to approach a region where close to 2 million people are unhappy with the way they are being governed from Madrid. Spain is the only European country where people feel a stronger regional than national identity, according to the World Values Survey. That makes centralization a bad idea. The best option for the Spanish government is to go back to the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, which was passed by the parliament and approved by 2.5 million Catalan voters — but then emasculated in 2010 by the Constitutional Court. By granting Catalans exactly as much independence as they have always asked for, that would effectively put an end to the secession movement.

Diego Muro also urges Madrid to listen:

Madrid’s approach has been needlessly adversarial. Rather than resist Catalan’s aspirations, the Spanish government should welcome its commitment to a democratic process. After all, Spain has a long history of nationalist groups―most notably the Basque nationalist group ETA―turning to terrorism, rather than the ballot box, to pursue their goals. Madrid has chosen to portray its disagreement with Catalonia in legalistic terms. But the crux of the matter is a political problem: how to accommodate the region’s aspiration for independence within Spain’s existing national framework. The sooner the Spanish government recognizes the true nature of the problem, the sooner it can restore calm throughout the country.

The Bloomberg View editors believe Catalans would opt for union in the end, provided Rajoy abandons his disdainful approach to their concerns:

The first step to persuading Catalans to stay in Spain would be to map out a legal, constitutional route to giving them their say. Catalonia’s proposed secession would be even more fraught with risk than was Scotland’s. It would carve away about 20 percent of Spain’s economy, compared with 8 percent for the U.K. Investors in Catalonia’s bonds certainly believe independence would be at least as bad for the region as for the rest of Spain. So in a real campaign, in which voters are confronted with the realities of assuming up to 200 billion euros ($250 billion) of Spanish debt, the case for unity should be winnable.

Love’s Labor Win?

Tyler Cowen highlights a paper that suggests union membership is a boon to marriage. From the paper’s abstract:

Over the past five decades, marriage has changed dramatically, as young people began marrying later or never getting married at all. Scholars have shown how this decline is less a result of changing cultural definitions of marriage, and more a result of men’s changing access to social and economic prerequisites for marriage. Specifically, men’s current economic standing and men’s future economic security have been shown to affect their marriageability. Traditionally, labor unions provided economic standing and security to male workers. Yet during the same period that marriage has declined among young people, membership in labor unions has declined precipitously, particularly for men.

In this article … union membership is positively and significantly associated with marriage. We show then that this relationship is largely explained by the increased income, regularity and stability of employment, and fringe benefits that come with union membership.

One In Twenty Arrests Are For Pot

Marijuana Arrests

Ingraham reviews new FBI data:

The total number of arrests for all offenses continues to drop sharply, from a high of 15.3 million in 1997 to 11.3 million in 2013. But marijuana possession arrests have not declined at the same rate – these arrests accounted for 1.6 percent of all arrests in 1990, but make up 5.4 percent of all arrests today. Moreover, arrests for all drug offenses made up a record share – 13.3 percent – of total arrests this year. Drug violations represent the single largest category of arrests tracked by the FBI. As NORML notes, if we assume ACLU’s conservative estimate of a cost of $750 for each marijuana possession arrest, it means that states spent more than $450 million on these arrests in 2013 alone.

Sullum examines the big picture:

The peak year for marijuana arrests was 2007, when there were about 873,000, three times as many as in 1991. The number fell to 848,000 in 2008, rebounded to 858,000 in 2009, and has been declining since then. Contributing to that trend, Colorado and Washington last year stopped arresting people for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, as required by legalization measures that voters approved in 2012. Prior to that change, Colorado police were arresting about 10,000 people for marijuana possession each year. The annual number in Washington was about 6,000. Marijuana possession arrests in New York City, which peaked at more than 50,000 in 2011, also fell last year, from 39,218 to 28,644.

The downward national trend should continue. Washington, D.C., decriminalizedmarijuana possession last spring, and [yesterday] the NYPD announced that it will further reduce arrests of cannabis consumers, beginning later this month.

Matt Taylor explains the forthcoming NYC policy:

Starting next Wednesday, November 19, possession of 25 grams or less of pot—even in public view—will no longer get you cuffed and brought downtown by the cops. Instead, police will begin issuing criminal court summons, or desk appearance tickets, requiring guilty parties show up in front of a judge at a future date. The bad news for pot lovers is that smoking the stuff in public will still be sufficient to earn you a night or two in jail. And since many New Yorkers—especially young men of color—fail to show up when issued desk appearance tickets, this isn’t exactly a game-changer when it comes to the war on drugs in America’s largest city.

Matt Schiavenza hears from skeptical drug policy experts:

“It’s not decriminalization,” said Joanne Naughton, a former NYPD officer and member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP. “People will be summoned into a criminal court to answer to criminal charges.” If those summoned fail to appear in court, judges could issue arrest warrants.

Kenneth P. Thompson, the Brooklyn District Attorney, is another skeptic. Thompson, who stopped prosecuting marijuana possession charges earlier this year, argued that a ticket and court summons would cause additional complications. Because summons without an arrest warrant don’t receive prosecutorial review, violators may not have access to full legal oversight and won’t automatically be appointed a lawyer. “These cases will move forward even when due process violations might have occurred,” Thompson said.

The GOP’s Firewall In The House

Nate Cohn measures it. Democrats now need 32 seats to retake the House:

The Republicans hold only 28 seats in districts that were carried by Mr. Obama. Many of these seats would fall to the Democrats in an anti-Republican year. The 12 newly elected Republicans who won seats in districts carried by Mr. Obama in 2012 are particularly vulnerable; many of these freshman Republicans could lose re-election in 2016.

Yet Democrats will have a struggle to win all of the seats held by Republicans that voted for Mr. Obama in 2012. The benefits of incumbency will allow many of these Republicans to defy even the most inhospitable conditions. And some of these Republicans, like Dave Reichert of Washington or Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, are survivors of the 2006 and 2008 waves.

He concludes that “a Republican president is probably a prerequisite to a Democratic House.” Edward Morrissey is skeptical of such claims:

Cohn, whose polling and demographic analyses are usually top notch, might be right this time, assuming that Republicans make no mistakes and Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot. The last round of redistricting certainly gave Republicans a boost, and their expanded control of state legislatures may give them a head start on the redistricting that will take place after the 2020 census by boosting their likelihood of retaining control of those chambers. The expanded control at the state level also means that Republicans will produce more experienced candidates for the House and Senate over the next few years, which is one reason why some Democrats pointed to that outcome as the worst news from Election Night.

Still, history cautions against Republican optimism and Democratic despair. As we have seen over the last 20 years, it’s usually folly to assume that parties can avoid overreach and scandal for very long. Turnout in this wave election was historically low, which argues against learning any significant lessons on demography and sustainability. Unlike 1994, Republicans did not run on a unifying national platform; they relied instead on deep dissatisfaction with President Obama and Democratic leadership in the Senate that refused to check his perceived abuses. That parallels 2006 most closely, which means that the one mandate Republicans can claim would be to force Obama to work with the GOP on their terms, as voters either turned out to oppose Obama or didn’t bother to turn out in his support. That mandate could mean an even higher risk of overreach, although the lack of electoral consequences for last fall’s government shutdown suggests voters are very fed up with the White House.

A Pro-Life Election? Ctd

Olga Khazan discusses what the failure of “personhood” ballot initiatives in last week’s election – in contrast to Tennessee’s successful constitutional amendment paving the way for more restrictions on abortion – reveals about the split between the “incrementalist” and “absolutist” wings of the pro-life movement. While voters can’t stomach the radical changes the absolutists are demanding, that’s cold comfort to Kat Stoeffel, who argues that the incrementalists are in some ways a greater threat to abortion rights:

Rather than offering sweeping amendments for a hypothetical post-Roe future, [Target Regulation of Abortion Providers laws] revoke abortion access piecemeal, starting now. … Part of the insidiousness of TRAP laws is that they are so tedious they fly under the radar of all but the most dedicated pro-choice advocates. But another part of the problem is that TRAP laws don’t frighten the voter who is indifferent to abortion but also has the resources to navigate restrictions. She’s free to think, But I’d still be able to get one if I needed to and skip voting this year, as young people (who are traditionally pro-choice Democrats) disproportionately opted to do this year.

Also, these laws don’t just affect women who are looking to terminate pregnancies. In a NYT op-ed, Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin describe how laws designed to restrict abortion have been used to prosecute women who suffer miscarriages:

How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived. In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.” In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide. In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Jessica Grose, meanwhile, pleads with her fellow left-feminists to stop describing the midterms as “bad for women”, as it’s a bit condescending to the millions of women who voted for Republicans like “combat veteran and hog castrator Joni Ernst in Iowa, black Mormon Mia Love in Utah, and youngest woman to ever be elected to Congress Elise Stefanik in New York”:

It’s not just candidates that women disagree on. It’s the issues themselves. Let’s take access to abortion, which is seen as a pivotal “women’s issue.” According to the Washington Post, polling over the years has shown that there’s actually not that much difference between men and women’s views on abortion. And women may be more supportive of restrictions on late-term abortions than men are. Particularly in this election, issues like the economy and security have outweighed social issues among all voters. Which is to say, though the right to choose is incredibly important to people like me and Ann Friedman, it’s not as important to a good portion of the female electorate.

The Gerrymandering In Michigan

Rigging the geography of districts does not fully explain the GOP’s grip on the House, but in Michigan, at least, it definitely had an impact:

State House: 1,536,711 (51.2%) total votes cast for state House Democratic candidates that resulted in 47 Democratic House seats (43%)

1,464,983 (48.8%) total votes for state House Republican candidates result in 63 Republican House seats (57%)

State Senate: 1,483,938 (49.3%) total votes for state Senate Democratic candidates result in 11 Democratic Senate seats (29%)

1,528,393 (50.7%) total votes for state Senate Republican candidates result in 27 Republican Senate seats (71%)

U.S. Congress: 1,506,455 (49.1%) total votes for Democratic congressional candidates result in 5 Democratic congressional seats (36%)

1,458,264 (47.6%) total votes for Republican congressional candidates result in 9 Republican congressional seats (64%)

That last one is a little jaw-dropping, innit?

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #230

VFYWC-230

A reader writes:

A quick glance at the photo immediately brought Haifa to mind, particularly the curved bay stretching north to Akko and the hint of date palms in the foreground. On closer inspection I found nothing major to persuade me otherwise, although I seem to remember the coastline to be slightly more built up than it appears in the photo. In any case, finding the actual building has proved beyond me, so I’ll guess this was taken from a house somewhere along Henrietta Szold Street.

Another hedges his bets:

This is obviously Richmond, California; Cape Town, South Africa; Perth, Australia; Almeria, Spain; or Valparaiso, Chile. (I think that covers all of the Mediterranean-climate bases.)

Another looks very closely:

Surgery this week meant a short window of time to search, but during that time I searched every port identified by worldportsource.com as a port of call for Mediterranean Shipping Company, the MSC seen on the container ship. However, it seems to be about 60 short of the number of ports actually serviced by MSC. So, I’m left waiting to hear where it is. Judging from the picture, I see what could be Japanese architecture, arid mountains, and modern homes and street lights. I think Hawaii and Japan are too lush and, and so I’m guessing a shot in the dark that it’s in California. I thought maybe Palo Alto, but it doesn’t match.

The next reader might be wrong, but at least we learn something:

Holy crap! I think I’m starting to get into this, as I have been at least getting the right city. I think you’re showing some British Imperial nostalgia, as this is almost certainly the city of Valapraiso, Chile! What has this got to do with Britain? Well it was port city that held commemorative events for the Battle of Coronel, where a naval force under the German von Spee destroyed an antiquated British force under Rear Admiral Cradock, the first naval loss by the Royal Navy in World War I (and a humiliating one at that, as all casualties were British). However, this victory sowed the seeds for the defeat of von Spee and his men, since he had expended over half his ammunition in the battle and had no means of re-supply. The British were eager for revenge, which they got shortly thereafter at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

The 100th anniversary was just this month. And the skyline looks just like the many pictures that the BBC posted on the anniversary of the battle.  I’ll leave the specific window to someone else …

Another emailer gets us on the right continent with this tantalizing offer:

Hi Dear, compliments of the season. I know that you do not know me, i do not know you in person but i got your contact from a business consultant in Dakar – Senegal. I have a proposal for you,please get back to me if you are interested in a business related issues..

A real reader takes us to the right city in Africa:

I thought it might be Marseille from looking around during other contests, but nope. (That’s the story for most of these contests for me, “Know nope.”) So please let it be Cape Town, South Africa. I’m guessing somewhere in the Oranjezicht neighborhood.

A former resident confirms:

I’m an American who spent 4 years (’92-’95) teaching high school at Zonnebloem on the edge of the old District Six in Cape Town (near this exquisite perch); now principal of a school in Gaborone, Botswana (landlocked), and miss the mountains and sea in the world’s most beautiful city. Yup, even better than San Francisco. Actually, the best view from this spot in the “city bowl” is of Table Mountain which you’d see if you turned 180 degrees.

Table Mountain has been made a few appearances on the Dish, including Contest #69, which led to one of our favorite coincidences of the contest series. Meanwhile, a former winner nails this week’s hotel and window with yet another greatly informed entry:

This week, we are all jealous of the submitter who enjoyed a meal in the dining room of the MannaBay Boutique Hotel admiring the views across Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa out towards Table Bay.  The address is 8 Bridle Road, Oranjezicht, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa and it sits below Table Mountain.  At first, the foliage, mountains across the water, and my mistaken believe that there was a mixture of forks and chopsticks on the table caused me to start my search in Australia and New Zealand. I searched for container ports where the opening of the bay faces north in the southern hemisphere, but few ports fit.  Finally giving up on Oceania, I randomly searched ports in Chile and South Africa and quickly landed in Cape Town.

The window is the large glass wall of the MannaBay’s dining room facing north.  There are many wonderful pictures of the room and the window online, including this one.  The angle and stone wall along the left edge of the contest photo means the photographer was standing above the table against the left (western) wall of the room:

Window

Although a wonderful painting, the hotel’s decorator placed the portrait of Lord Byron wearing Albanian dress in the Persian room.  It was painted in 1813 after Byron returned from his Grand Tour of the Mediterranean but prior to his more famous foreign travels that culminated in his death during the Greek War of Independence.  Byron, and this famous painting, would influence generations of future travel writers.  As seen in this portion of a BBC documentary, Patrick Leigh Fermor looked to Byron for literary inspiration as well as how to pose when wearing traditional Cretan pants.  The horse statutes in the Persian room also seem out of place.  They appear to resemble Chinese terracotta horse statutes (here or here) rather than Persian ones.  Nonetheless, the room – like the others – looks amazing.

This week is really going to haunt this player:

I woke up this morning from a bad dream where I had put the wrong address on my entry. And I had!  The house I indicated in my earlier email is 4 Bridle Rd, not 6 Bridle Rd as I had stated previously. So 4 Bridle Rd.  Final answer. And now you know the contest gives some of us bad dreams.

As noted above, it’s 8 Bridle Road. Here’s this week’s collage of your guesses:

VFYWC-230-Guess_Collage_sm

A long-time reader, first-time player:

We had a dinner party tonight and I showed a South African friend who knew immediately that it was Cape Town. His dad, now a US citizen, grew up in a neighborhood in the picture. After five pounds of steak and a lot of wine, we started our investigation in earnest. I relied on Google Earth and clicked on B&B’s, restaurants and hotels in the vicinity. For a while I got sidetracked and looked for establishments with Eames chairs – since they’re trendy – but came back to Google and methodically checked until I found MannaBay. It’s 1 AM!

Also, I’m a huge fan. The Dish kept me sane my ten years as a stay-at-home mom. Between breastfeeding, spit-up, laundry, cooking, baths, play dates, errands, etc. I religiously visited The Dish. I’m back to work so I don’t get it as often, but when I do, it’s one of my favorite parts of the day.

Another correct guesser gets rightfully sentimental:

Since the birth of my second daughter in mid-October, I haven’t participated in the contest, finding the views too difficult to solve from only a mobile phone and in the limited time available.  This week, with the baby sleeping more soundly, and a view that instantly evoked a reaction in me, I had to solve it.

While sitting with my new daughter sleeping next to me, I was brought back to a thrilling time a few months into my relationship with her mother (and my wife).  My wife and I met in the summer of 2001 during a summer job, and instantly hit it off.  While we almost instantly knew we were soulmates, she was taking the fall of 2001 to study abroad in South Africa, first in Venda, and then Cape Town.  Before smart phones and ubiquitous internet accessibility or Skype, this was a real challenge to our relationship.  Feeling like I needed a personal connection, I decided to visit her once she got to Cape Town.  I flew half way around the world in October, 2001, shortly after 9/11.  After a nervous transfer through Johannesburg and having my luggage lost, I was unsure if I had made a wise choice.  But the moment I saw my wife, it was clear why I had to come.  Her classmates quickly accepted me, (perhaps mockingly) calling me “The One,” and I proceeded to have an amazing experience with the woman I was madly in love with, who I’m now lucky enough to call my wife and mother of our children.

Another reader shares a less happy memory:

It took me a very long time to identify this as Cape Town even though I’d spent a few nights with some friends in this general area several years ago. It was 1994 and my first time to Cape Town. I’d been staying in Botswana for a few years and was doing some hitchhiking to see a few places before I headed back home to the States. I left Cape Town on 10 May.  Nelson Mandela took the oath of office in Cape Town that same day.  I could tell you all the reasons why I left when I did, but they all seem rather lame now. I was standing by the paved road on the edge of Cape Town looking for a ride to Namibia when I saw the flyover.  I took out my camera, took a picture, and instantly knew that I was going to regret that moment for the rest of my life:

mandela flyover

Also, our contest poet from last week returns:

This one took longer than I had predicted
My wife suspects that I am addicted.

Again with the seaside ports you go,
MSC has 2-7-0.

Search shots of “succulents”, where’s this one found?
Eureka, the MSC port of Cape Town!

Next, a feat of long distance alignment,
Oh, I spy three! What alignment refinement:
That hill in Cape Farms, the Civ-Centre Tower,
And solar arrays … now I feel the power!

(As everyone knows, solar panels face north,
As long as you live way down south, of corth.)

Plotting scotch tape across PC screen,
I head for the view, with points in between,
To T-Mountain Park, I wiggle and squirm,
Manna Bay Cafe: Reflections confirm!

Left window panel, floor two, final tally,
Now for an optional tasteless finale:

Who, me? Addicted? What kind of a man,
Reads maps on his iPad while warming the can?
Please do not laugh, I may be a stinker,
But you can’t go wrong emulating The Thinker!

But emulators be warned, our Grand Champion has become a household name:

“I bet Doug Chini is happy,” said my 10-year-old daughter when she saw this one …

We’re not so sure:

The “Pom Pom” room. Yep, that’s actually the name of one of the rooms at the hotel where this week’s view was shot. The pic itself was only middling in terms of difficulty, but the hotel may very well be the most disgustingly posh lodgings ever featured in the contest. Which is my way of saying that I’d give my right arm to be there instead of being stuck up here staring into the teeth of the oncoming New York winter.

VFYW Cape Town Aerial Marked - Copy

This week’s view comes from a hotel on the lower slopes of Table Mountain and looks out over Cape Town, South Africa along a heading of 25.58 degrees. The picture was taken at approximately 7:02 AM local time on the morning of November 6th from the front left side of the Cafe at the MannaBay Hotel.

On to this week’s winner. This contest was the 18th time this veteran player has nailed at least the right building. His prize-winning entry this week:

This VFYW was taken from the Manna Bay hotel in Cape Town, bordering Table Mountain at 8 Bridle Rd.

The photographer sees a bay, with substantial development on both opposing shores.  The architecture is Western European or American; there are no hints of East Asian, South Asian, or classic Mediterranean building details.  The flora suggests a climate that is temperate, but somewhat arid.  I’m familiar enough with California to rule its cities out.  My inclination was that we are looking at western or southern Australia, Chile or Argentina, South Africa, or possibly Mexico.  The two long piers in the harbor provided a useful litmus test when looking at maps of harbors. Having first ruled out the harbors of Perth and Adelaide, I hit paydirt with the long piers at Cape Town:

 image001

Using Google Maps, I knew I was close when I found the street lamp by a house with the appropriate shingle roof.

image002

Then I found the solar panels, and considered the alignment of the corner of their platform and the peak of the shingle roof:

image003That pointed me to the Manna Bay, and the solution. X marks the spot:

image004

… which we can see from the inside, too, along with the table and chairs reflected in the glass of the VFYW:

image006

By the way, our winner was also the reader the submitted the photo for Contest #197. Speaking of submitters, this week’s photo was the first this reader had ever sent in:

I was in Cape Town as part of a trip to South Africa to attend the wedding of the daughter of very close friends of mine from Washington DC (glad Andrew finally came to his senses and moved back!).  She is an American and yesterday married a South African man from Hermanus, a spectacularly beautiful resort town on the Atlantic about 90 minutes drive from Cape Town.  Hermanus is famous for having the best land-based whale watching in the world.  A large population of Southern Right whales spends July to December in Walker Bay.

Cape Town, and the Western Cape part of South Africa, is stunningly beautiful. The core part of the city as you no doubt know is nestled between Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean (Table Bay). The climate is Mediterranean, and it is late spring now. Spectacular sunny warm days with very low humidity, and chilly nights. A little like the weather in Santa Barbara California. The city is an amazing melting pot of people of indigenous tribal, Afrikaans, British and a little bit of everything else.  For example there is a section of the city that originally housed a large Malaysian population. Little known fact at least to me – when the Dutch first colonized South Africa they brought Malaysians as slaves.  The people are extremely friendly, the food and wine are delicious, and the cost is relatively low, at least that is the sense of American tourists like me.

I will follow the results of the photo contest with great interest. My guess is that a lot of people will quickly figure out it is Cape Town but they may have more trouble identifying the MannaBay hotel. We shall see.

Thanks and keep up the great work. I read The Dish every day, including here in South Africa.

Lastly, reader alerts us to some new competition from The Paris Review:

For the past few years, readers of the Daily have enjoyed an occasional series called “Windows on the World,” featuring Matteo Pericoli’s intricate pen-and-ink drawings of the views from writers’ windows around the world. Now those drawings are available in a book—Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views—and we’re celebrating with a contest. You can have your view illustrated by Pericoli, too. Starting today, submit a photograph of the view through your window—including the window frame—along with three hundred words about what you see…

The reader adds, “But I guess plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, right?”

You can browse a gallery of all our previous contests here.

Obama Revives The Net Neutrality Fight

Yesterday, the president threw his full support behind the principle of net neutrality, urging the FCC to reclassify broadband Internet services as a public utility:

Obama’s argument explicitly rejects proposed rules that FCC considered earlier this year to allow paid prioritization, a plan by which content providers can make deals with ISPs to get faster service to their websites. (Those rules are still under consideration and have not been finalized.) The White House proposal calls for no paid prioritization, no blocking of any content that is not illegal, and no throttling of Internet services, where some customers have their Internet speeds artificially slowed down. The proposal also asks that any new rules include mobile broadband, which is already the primary access point for many users.

As the president himself reminds us, the FCC does not answer to him, and does not have to listen to (or even consider) his suggestions. So there are no guarantees that any of these rules will even come to pass. However, an endorsement by the White House would be the strongest push yet toward an FCC that treats all Internet traffic as equal.

Phillip Bump calls this politically smart:

[S]iding with people against Comcast (which actually is subject to a higher standard on neutrality than other companies for now) and other cable providers is hardly a political misstep. (Do you love your cable company? Right. Thought so.)

It also helps repair relationships with the tech community that were splintered in the wake of the National Security Agency’s spying revelations.

When leaks from Edward Snowden revealed the extent to which the agency was infiltrating social networks, it put firms like Facebook and Google in an awkward commercial position. The administration reached out to the companies as it planned revisions. But an embrace of net neutrality —backed by big companies that don’t want to have to pay more to push out their content — is a big win for for tech. It could use one; its marquee midterm race went poorly.

Jason Koebler weighs the reaction from net neutrality proponents:

At first blush, it looks like  many of the most net neutrality supporters are happy with Obama’s announcement. Tim Karr, senior director of strategy at Free Press, who has organized many of the net neutrality protests called it “huge.” Tim Wu, who invented the idea of net neutrality, called it “100 percent on target.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation also backed Obama’s statement.

Of course, in the end, this is the FCC’s decision, and chairman Tom Wheeler has already proposed a  mostly maligned “hybrid” proposal that is apparently already being thrown out because of the backlash it received when its existence leaked more than a week ago. In that proposal, paid prioritization could occur between content providers and ISPs: Netflix, for instance, could pay to have its content delivered faster to consumers. In his statement, Obama said that’s no good.

David Dayen detects a message here about what kind of lame-duck president Obama plans to be:

As for the president, this maneuver signals that he’s not looking to be a caretaker in his final two years, at least on discrete issues. Net neutrality activists correctly reasoned that getting Obama involved would provide the surge of support they needed for reclassification, and they targeted him as much as the FCC over the past several months. Obama showed that he listened, and it should give some solace to other groups wanting him to use his executive authority. In other words, Obama’s action on net neutrality is very good news for those who want him to move on immigration.

Nick Gillespie remains staunchly opposed to what he calls a dumb policy:

The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change. That’s never a good idea, especially in an area where new ways of bundling and delivering content are constantly being tried. It’s a historical accident that cable companies, who back in the day benefited from monopoly contracts with local governments, have morphed into ISPs. That will not always be the case, as the rise of Verizon (originally a phone company) and Google’s rollout of its own fiber system, attest. Just a few years ago, the FCC frowned on the cell-phone company MetroPCS’s discount plan that allowed access to the World Wide Web but denied users multimedia streaming. The FCC and Net Neutrality proponents thought that was a bad thing. Customers on a budget had a different opinion.

James Pethokoukis also opposes Obama’s proposal:

Keep in mind that the Obama plan would give the FCC, according to R Street’s Steven Titich, “the widest range of alternatives for economic and technological regulation of broadband.” And, of course, make the agency an even more attractive target for the lobbying class. …

All this, then, just to lock in “net neutrality” – a situation that does not exist and never existed — despite the risk of limiting new investment and innovation, Obama wants the FCC to treat the internet like a public utility. But the Obama proposal is based on flawed model of how the internet operates. Half of the internet’s traffic comes from just 30 content providers such as Google and Facebook.  And they’ve already made special arrangements by plugging directly into the ISPs. “Fast lanes” already exist. Again, R Street’s Titch: “There’s nothing about network neutrality to “preserve.” A regulation that pretends there is would serve to remove an economic incentive needed to ensure that broadband infrastructure is sufficiently robust to support the demands contemporary applications have placed on it.”

But Adam Clark Estes argues that opponents are overstating the level and nature of regulation Obama is proposing here:

If the idea of using an 80-year-old law to regulate a super futuristic communications technology worries you, you’ll be very glad to know that the president’s got your back. In his statement, there is this brief but very important line: “I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act—while at the same time forbearing from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services.” (Emphasis mine.)

So the first part of it is the big reveal. Obama wants the FCC to treat broadband companies as common carriers. Telephone companies are also a common carriers regulated under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. However, this does not mean that Obama wants the FCC to apply all of the same regulations for telephones to broadband internet.

Meanwhile, here’s Ted Cruz’s response:

Yglesias tries to translate:

What, if anything, that phrase means is difficult to say. But its political significance is easy to grasp. All true conservatives hate Obamacare, so if net neutrality is Obamacare for the internet, all true conservatives should rally against it.

The asinine analogy prompted Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman to create this explainer cartoon.