This USA Today snippet on the number of blacks killed by white police officers isolates a single data point, without context. The viewer/reader is left without any sense of cause or even useful correlations. This treatment is representative of the mass media approach to every complex issue – sensationalism vs informing the public.

While issues of race are top-of-mind in this incident, they are not the only issue. We don’t even know if they have the greatest influence. Militarization of police forces; varying crime rates among geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic groups;  even the media influence on various cultures all likely play important roles. But we don’t get a sense of any of this from USA Today.

The media’s obligation to inform the public is arguable, but the media’s effort to do so is non-existant. If the “investigative reporter” in the video is even moderately professional, and is not an idiot, I can’t imagine the stress of having your investigative work narrowed down to the single most sensational sound byte and then having to pretend that you’ve done something serious.

Is it any wonder that, among the most thoughtful people I know, very few of them pay attention to mainstream mass media anymore.

Spurious correlations. They’re everywhere. Cable news, “venerable” news sites, blogs and, of course, the twitterverse. Every time something sensational happens we’re inundated with out-of-context, misrepresented, isolated factoids trotted out as meaningful insight. Now, thanks to Tyler Vigen, we have a whole website dedicated to useless, pointless statistical correlations. Polemics everywhere should rejoice.

Spurious Correlations

World's Best Business Plan

I WANT TO START a business. My plan is for a management team that is a revolving committee of 535 people who gain membership through bribery, lying, campaigning and trying to out-promise each other. Advancement in the committee is through more bribery, subterfuge and generally any of the baser human activities. (If you do not understand this method of advancement you should watch the original Star Trek series episode “Mirror, Mirror” from 1967.) Continue reading

An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the November issue of Reason magazine. My favorite quote is her closing statement:

But I don’t even think that the trouble is Islam. The trouble is the West, because in the West there’s this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway, and that what we are seeing now in Muslim countries is a craving for respect. Or it’s poverty, or it’s caused by colonization.

The Western mind-set — that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away — is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.

For anyone who’s managed to miss the news for the past 6 months, the southeast US is in a 100-year drought. As we are wont to do in such cases, we have ignored this for the past several years until now all our lakes and reservoirs are nearly empty. Suddenly, we have a crisis.

Imagine that.

So what do our vaunted civil servants do in this precarious situation? They implement outdoor watering bans. They argue with other states. They complain to the Army Corps of Engineers. They shutdown car washes and landscape companies. They go on TV and tell us how dreadful it is, and how sorry they are that people must lose jobs, and that they just can’t help this awful, awful situation.

All the while they completely ignore the blindingly obvious, brain-dead simple, straightforward, and guaranteed 100% foolproof solution to the problem. Any 3rd-grader could suggest this.

Raise the price of water!!!

Oh, I know we can’t raise the price. After all, it’s completely unfair to the poor.

Bullshit.

The average person can live comfortably on 1,000 gallons/month. They don’t even need to be particularly conservative to do that. We could probably survive well on 750, but let’s say 1,000 to be compassionate. So for a family of four you need 4,000 gallons.

Let’s be really, really compassionate for the poor. Set the price for the first 5,000 gallons at $10. Set the price for the next 1,000 at $10. That’s $20 for up to 6,000 gallons – enough to serve a family of 7.

Set the price for the next 1,000 at $20. The next 1,000 at $30 and so on. At 10,000 gallons you’re paying $150. By the time you get to 15,000 gallons (a typical amount of water used in one month watering a yard) the cost is now $550. Nobody gets a pass. Everybody pays.

You think people won’t stop using excess water once they get a $550 bill? I sure will. If they won’t (or don’t), raise the incremental price to $20 per thousand. I don’t know anyone who would spend $1,100/mo on water. If you have that kind of money more power to you – there aren’t going to be enough of you to significantly raise total usage and we can all get on with our lives without these self-serving, jackass politicians grandstanding on TV with all their new emergency regulations.

Car wash owners would have to run out and change their coin-ops from $2 to $10. Or $20. That will hurt business, but people who want to spend $10 or $20 can still wash their car now and then. And maybe the owners will figure out they need to recycle. Ditto for industrial users and the power company. Office building managers will have to figure out how to actually operate their sprinkler systems, or turn them off. And landscapers will have to stop guaranteeing their plants. But we’ll get over it.

It’s absurd to try and reduce the use of limited resources in every way imaginable except the one way that is best designed for managing limited resources – economics.

But this is the government. I wish I could be surprised.

In his Business column in today’s Wall Street Journal [subscription required] Alan Murray reports:

American taxpayers should keep a close eye on the health-care hot potato being tossed aside by DaimlerChrysler AG. Some day, it could end up in their laps.

Daimler’s plan to give control of its Chrysler subsidiary to Cerberus Capital Management is motivated in no small part by its desire to offload the $18 billion in health benefits Chrysler eventually will owe to United Auto Worker retirees.

That’s a big reason why the German company was willing to agree to spend $650 million to make the deal happen.

Yes, it’s you and me that will get to pay for Daimler’s incompetence and ineptitude. Oh, Murray also says Barack Obama is promising to pickup a portion of healthcare costs for all automakers. Another great Democratic strategy – don’t actually fix the problem, just get the government to pay for it. I’m shocked! Shocked, I say.

In the last couple of weeks I had someone come on this site and post, via anonymous comments, a series of diatribes that were a serious attack on another individual and company. The information was detailed but utterly unsubstantiated. The tone was extremely angry. The allegations ranged from deception to outright fraud. I also did a little IP address tracing and determined that the person had gone to some lengths to hide their address.

Within a matter of hours I contacted people who knew something about the companies and person involved, cogitated on what to do, and decided to remove all posts from that individual. I did so without compunction and didn’t think anything else about it. I don’t normally remove comments, in fact that was only the second time in the four five years I’ve had this site. But I guess this kind of thing is going to become more common and we’re being forced to deal with it.

Recently a blog author I follow has been forced to withdraw from blogging and even cancel personal appearances due to death threats received via comments on her blog. The story has received major news coverage, making CNN, the New York Times, and BBC News among others.

Kathy Sierra, author of Creating Passionate Users wrote a nice, user-centered blog about keeping users engaged and had a wonderful sense of graphics and graphic usage. It was good stuff. But somewhere someone got ticked off and began a campaign of vile and serious threats against her.  I find this almost incomprehensible. I didn’t have much to say that hadn’t already been said, and I didn’t feel like adding to the long list of people linking to the murky, disturbing post that describes it all from Kathy’s perspective. But there, I’ve linked to it, as I can’t really talk about this without doing so.

In response to the Sierra fiasco Tim O’Reilly (of O’Reilly Publishing) came out with a Blogger’s Code of Conduct that has created it’s own little tempest in a teapot, as bloggers debate what is censorship, what isn’t, what are we liable for, what is protected speech, etc. I was reminded of all this today when I came across a post by Michelle Lintz at the writetechnology blog:

The Blogosphere Grows Up a Little

Everyone has growing pains as they progress from toddler through to adulthood. The blogosphere is a living, dynamic thing and it’s no different. It was inevitable, of course. That’s not to say it’s not painful for some, and emotional for many.

I debated on even mentioning it, but when it was picked up by the New York Times and the BBC (here and here), I had to investigate further.

To understand it, you have to acknowledge that as in any industry or field, there are certain high-profile folks. In the blogosphere, we have our own “stars” or “celebrities.” People like Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Kathy Sierra, just to name a few. These folks are incredibly high profile, speak at many events, are public figures that express their views on widely read and well respected blogs. The rest of us are just regular bloggers and the rest of us make up the majority of the blogosphere. In fact, for many of us, these blog stars exist on the periphery of our blogging existence, if at all. So, why are their problems important?

[…]
As the blogosphere, or at least the high-profile part, reeled from all this, Tim O’Reilly (yep, the guy who puts animals on his tech books) decided to step in. I concur with many bloggers out there that his actions as “hall monitor” are slightly misguided, no matter how well intentioned. O’Reilly has issued a draft Blogger Code of Conduct and suggests blogs have badges – those who subscribe to the Code of Conduct and those who have an “Anything Goes” badge. Basically, Anything Goes means that any sort of comment can be posted on the blog.

It raises valid questions. Are bloggers responsible for the comments posted to their blogs? Can we censor the comments, and is it censorship? What information do we actually own, when it comes to our blogs, and how accurate are we expected to be? Should we allow anonymous commenting? Are we responsible for the people who choose to remain anonymous? […]

I had some discussions with a lawyer friend when the untoward comments appeared on my blog. He advised that I might expect a cease and desist letter, which he admitted would be a monumentally stupid thing to do on the part of the company’s attorney (he knew what I would do with it.) But we agreed that corporate attorneys don’t get paid for being smart, they get paid for being lawyers. We also agreed that such a letter would have little legal standing other than possibly causing me a little inconvenience. Ultimately, fear of lawyers had nothing to do with my decision.

What did affect my decision was the fact that some yahoo had come on my site, using my weblog and its (admittedly minor) traffic to propagate their personal vendetta. I don’t need O’Reilly’s Code of Conduct to help me understand that people don’t get to do that here.

I am not the government. I am a private individual and therefore cannot, by definition, engage in censorship. I have no obligation to protect anyone’s speech. I have a vested interest in allowing people to post comments challenging my views, questioning my conclusions, forcing me to justify and defend my positions. But I don’t have to let just anyone write just anything they want. Not now, not ever.

I really don’t understand this whole censorship argument. Freedom of Speech and censorship are principles that apply to coercive forces, like governments. If the government didn’t have the power to imprison and execute there would be no need for laws mandating protected speech. I don’t have the power to do either of those things and therefore am not subject to such constraints. I’m just a guy who doesn’t have to play with people who don’t follow the rules of common decency and good sense.

So comment here all you want. I allow anonymous comments as long as no one abuses it. I don’t mind if you disagree with me as long as you do so in a way that makes some sort of sense, and I won’t delete comments unless there is something truly objectionable and unwarranted. But please, refrain from personal attacks, name-calling, making unsubstantiated allegations of illegal behavior, or engaging in other libelous diatribes. I just don’t have the time or patience for it.

Not that you would, but don’t make travel plans for Nigeria any time soon. Via Jeff Vail at Energy Intelligence

Nigeria Escalation

Energy Intelligence Note: 9 May, 2007

The situation in Nigeria is escalating–as expected, geologically-driven declines in oil production are spawning geopolitically-driven increases in disruptions from “above-ground factors.” The recent attacks on major oil pipelines in Nigeria cut all oil flow to AGIP’s Brass Export Terminal, taking a further 200,000 barrels per day off the market. On top of that, take a look at the latest unclassified figures on kidnappings in Nigeria, courtesy of the CIA:

2006:
Total Hostages (Unresolved): 66 (0)
American Hostages (Unresolved): 0 (0)

2007:
Total Hostages (Unresolved): 106 (17)
Amercan Hostages (Unresolved): 17 (5)

And 2007 is only half over! That represents a rougly 200% year-on-year increase in total hostages, and a huge leap in the “value” of these hostages, as reflected by the sudden shift toward higher-skill and western workers, as shown by the sudden prevalence of American hostages.

AT&T now charges eight minutes for one of these one-minute calls in Missouri

Jo Ann Weitkamp knew something was wrong. The minutes on her prepaid telephone calling card were disappearing faster than she was talking.

Weitkamp, 72, lives in an apartment for seniors in Warrenton. Every few months, she visits a Sam’s Club store and pays about $28 to add 1,000 minutes to her calling card. She’s found that an inexpensive way to keep in touch with family members.

Until now.

Since February, AT&T has been charging Missouri customers eight minutes on their prepaid calling cards for each minute they talk to someone in Missouri.

The charge formerly was one minute for each minute called.

[…]

“We’re following the law, and this is something we’re required to do by the FCC,” said Amanda Ray, a spokeswoman in Dallas for AT&T.

She says the change is not a rate increase.

“It’s a reclassification,” Ray said. […]

According to the article, no one regulates phone card rates. Not the state of MO, not the FCC, nobody.

The problem here isn’t the rate, it’s the deception. AT&T wants to be allowed to change rates without state permission. Fine. Do that. But don’t lie about it. Don’t throw in some bogus multiplication factor when you agreed to provide per-minute charges.

There are two industries that deserve to be uttelry destroyed – the music industry and the telcos. They are both saturated with an entitlement mentality that defies description, and are populated by lying rat-bastards of the highest order. Good riddance to them both.