Information snacks from the outside world

[xthread]

There've been a lot of interesting articles in the last month that I've been meaning to share.

Science Snack: Men and Women have very different levels of emotional perceptiveness.. until you pay them for it

Social Science Snack: There's been a bit of recent research that suggests that financial opportunity in the US is becoming more stratified. However, folks at UMass have been looking into how (and how reliably) economic success (and failure!) is transmitted from generation to generation, and conclude that where you come from matters more than we would like for it to, observe that earlier studies over-stated how much opportunity there was, and also note that a goodly chunk of how your parents' level of wealth is transmitted to you is the result of them successfully transmitting the skills required to become wealthy. Also, being smart helps, but much less than people tend to expect. Lots of stat in this paper, it's a challenge to read if your math is weak. However, they have rafts of good citations to existing literature in the field (for example, it's apparently well-documented that believing that your employer will drop you like a hot rock given half a chance is corrosive to your success in the job market, evet it happens to be true that they will. Yow!)

Economics Snack: India has been running experiments with using teacher incentive payments to improve student performance. It appears to work, and furthermore appears to work in ways that suggest that it should work in the first world as well. That's very cool. Here's a detailed article over at Marginal Revolution, with links to the relevant paper.

Another Economics Snack from Marginal Revolution: Expecting to be poor in the future leads you to do things that keep you poor. Who knew?

(Aside: I'm trying not to include US Healthcare-related articles, because I've been saving up for a Big Post About Healthcare. So that's why you're not seeing me talk about it)

Art and Design Snack: A lovely interview with the industrial artist who designed the original Apple ][ logo, giving us the first six-color computing empire in Silicon Valley.

Engineering Snack: A long Ars Technica article discussing what Moore's Law means, and, more importantly, doesn't.

Computing Snack: A long and extremely thorough discussion of the changes in the newest version of Mac OS, Snow Leopard, also from Ars Technica. Probably completely disinteresting if you're not an application developer or systems programmer. Hat tip to netik for originally tweeting about this one. Although, of course, when I'd forgotten where the article was and was trying to come up with the right search terms to use to find it again, a random in a coffee shop told me where to look (he'd noticed I'd already upgraded to 10.6, and was commending my bravery).

Software Development Management Snack: Paul Graham on how managers use their time versus how programmers use their time. Nothing new here, per se, but useful vocabulary for talking about our daily lives in the world of software development.

Old Media Snack: Nice Newspaper Industry you've got there. Pity its business model is toast. Quick reminder: from the perspective of a newspaper, Readers are Product Inventory - they're what the newspaper sells, to advertisers, and virtually all large newspapers today depend on that advertising revenue as their primary stream of income, swamping anything they might make from subscriptions. Journalism isn't dead in the first world, but Newspapers (in particular) are having to learn right quick the lessons they've declined to learn over the last three decades, while people were telling them repeatedly that New Media was coming, and it would eat their lunch if they didn't do something about their business model.

Web-Comic Snack: Now, now, picking on formula genre writers is cheap pickings. But it's still fun! Or, at least, it's funny because it's so close to being true. And, hey, if that's not enough for you, they shoot a well-deserved shot over Lipton's bow as well.

Medical Snack: HPV appears to be a serious cause of lung cancer, likely second only to smoking. No, really, HPV vaccination is a very, very, very good thing.

Politics Snack: This one's a two-parter. First, Barney Frank shows how not to smack down a looney constituent, losing his cool with a Larouche supporter at a 'Town Meeting' in Massachusetts. Second, Al Franken shows how to do it right, in fact, favorably interacting with a mob of teabaggers standing around him at a state fair. Right here is a word which means advances the discussion, rather than makes partisans feel good about it. Yes, I know, some of you absolutely love the first one. It's still really bad sound-bite.

Drama Snack: Back in 1982, the British director John Barton did a 27-part series for the BBC on performing Shakespeare. The Beeb has recently released the series on video, here's a discussion of how and why it's lovely. Or, you could just take my word for it and order it.

Healthcare Snack: Ok, here's just one. One of the suggestions being bandied around toward reducing the egregious amounts of money the US spends on health care is to make changes to medical malpractice and tort laws, so that doctors don't have to spend as much money insuring themselves against malpractice suits, and don't have to perform defensive procedures that they believe are medically irrelevant, but which will help defend them against a malpractice suit should one occur. This sounds really appealing, given how much doctors pay on malpractice insurance, and how frequently they are spuriously sued - if you're an OB/GYN who performs births, you're going to be sued by someone about every year and a half, and you will win almost all of those lawsuits. There's only one problem - changing malpractice and tort laws wouldn't save enough around to make a difference - Harvard Economists went looking in 2005, and determined that the US only spends about $12 per person per year on medical malpractice payouts, which isn't even noise in the system. Much more data and conversation here.

Strange Bedfellows Snack: Ted Olson, the attorney who argued Bush v. Gore in 2000, ultimately leading to the US Supreme Court seating President George W Bush, is suing the state of California over Proposition 8, which made gay marriage explicitly illegal in California. He's holds that defending gay marriage is a fundamentally conservative position, and that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional at its core. Here's an excellent article from the New York Times explaining why.

Crime / Science Snack: I've been waiting for people to start faking DNA evidence. It appears that a team of researchers have demonstrated that it's possible to do so. Whee! Oh, in unrelated news, eyewitness testimony is awful and juries are pretty dubious to being with, faked video will lead people to misremember events they observed, and we now have the strongest case since 1976 of a US state putting an innocent man to death for a crime that didn't happen. I'll say that last again - not a crime that the man did not commit, but a crime that didn't actually occur. Ah, the foibles of the criminal justice system. It's enough to make someone believe strongly in limitations on government powers in the arena of criminal justice.

Zombie Snack: Is this really your plan? Spend your whole life locked inside a mall? These brains rock... Let's Eat 'Em! [Note: NSFW audio. Also, comic undead violence, and abby normal behavior]

Start-up Snack: Apparently it normally takes 8-10 years for even the most successful new technology companies to really become moon-shots. Gosh, who new?

Another Start-up Snack: Raising Capital is just like Dating. And not in a good way.

Technology History Snack: The Secret History of Silicon Valley. When two funding agents like the same baby company very much...

That's all for now. With luck, some of these will enlighten and entertain you.
What do you want? Information.
  You won't get it!
    By hook or by crook, we will

Comments

[iridium.livejournal.com]

sleepy med student says: tossing out snacks at 3am is no fair! tasty, though.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

These are pretty awesome! Thanks for my news bite of the day. :)

[tronpublic.livejournal.com]

Wow, dude! That's hardly a snack! I'm only halfway through reading the menu and I'm already full. Great stuff!

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

It's more like tapas, I guess.

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

'Second, Al Franken shows how to do it right, in fact, favorably interacting with a mob of teabaggers standing around him at a state fair. Right here is a word which means advances the discussion, rather than makes partisans feel good about it.'

So, for example, I assume Franken doesn't use the word "teabaggers"?

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Well... you're right, that's not the most respectful choice of words. It was the first thing that came to mind, because three of the people surrounding him were wearing Taxed Enough Already shirts. But you're right, it's not the most respectful choice of words, and my entire point is that if you're going to interact with people who strongly disagree with you, you need to be actually interacting with them, especially if they're doing everything possible to get you to lose your cool.

[mangosteen]

That's a very interesting point.... did the LaRouche supporter actually strongly disagree with Barney Frank, or were they being completely orthogonal?

I'd say the response would be different between the two.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

I think that we can safely assume, absent any data whatsoever, that a Larouche supporter and Barney Frank start out in strong disagreement about the world. Anything that they actually say to each other is just confirmation of the point.

[mangosteen]

Hm. Allow me to restate.

Another way to look at Frank's shutdown of the LaRouche supporter is "You're a Markov chainer. Go away. At least I can answer questions from actual political opposition... you're just a waste of time."

There is no gain to be had in interacting with a Markov chainer.

[draggonlaady.livejournal.com]

On Barney Frank: the part where he points out that her comparison between Obama and Hitler is vile and only allowed because of the first amendment was clever. The part where he compares her to a table? not so much...

Good points from Al Franken.

Thanks for pointing up the lung cancer thing, I hadn't known that. And absolutely loved the stuff on teacher incentives and emotional perception.

[kimmalat.livejournal.com]

Wow, lots to read. First link: here's a thought and I'm tired so if it is poorly worded, I apologize: women receive a larger financial boost in general in our culture from empathy than men and this may be way women in general are more empathetic - the pay off is already there. When men are told there is a payoff, they engage. This is interesting. Must think more now. TTFN!

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

OoooOOOooooh! That's a really good point!

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Randomly, since I think you may appreciate this: a horrible, sociopathic, television-mentioning, cynical analysis of promotions in large corporations. It's surprisingly well thought-out, and is a bit like the Peter Principle but assumes self-interest on the parts of executives and other higher-ups.

It also references the show "The Office" extensively, but I don't watch the show yet still appreciated the explanation of business practices. So I won't worry about whether you watch it.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Finally worked my way through (nearly) all these articles. Well worth it. Thank you. I had already linked to your post after my initial glance-through.