Olympia in springtime

Robert "Berd" Whitlock is one of Olympia's indispensables, a photographer who blends politics, philosophy and imagery from his unique, and uniquely Olympian, perspective. Regardless of your partisan proclivities, you can enjoy his work--and, if you're like me, it'll inspire you to go outside / get a better camera / learn how to actually use the better camera.

Here's his latest set, in which he somehow manages to make the Ugly Building look beautiful.  And here's his Flickr stream.  Enjoy.

brother wrote a book

Congrats to my brother, who will soon have his first book published. (First solo project, anyhow, which counts more than sharing a volume with a bunch of other essayists, right, Bro?)

It's been a labor of much love for him--hopefully more love than labor--and will quite possibly cement his reputation as one of the premier young evangelical thinkers in the U.S. Expect to find it on bookshelves this June, or you can go ahead and preorder it at Amazon. (What better way to spend your Christmas giftcard?)

If we judge the book by its handsome cover, the potential audience for Earthen Vessels is composed of evangelical Christians, theologians, philosophers, various other assorted intellectual types, and, quite possibly, highly confused semi-literate adolescents.

debating a fool

The best part of the entire book of Proverbs, in this debate coach's opinion, comes in the 26th chapter.

4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.

5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.

This, in essence, is the perfect answer to the question, "Should you debate an intellectually dishonest opponent?"

Yes and no.

Yes, because you have the chance to demolish the fallacies and point reasonable listeners toward the truth. And if you don't, someone less qualified (or capable) will try--and if they fail, they'll only make things worse.

No, because you'll fail anyway, not only because your opponent will use every trick in the book to "win" the debate (and your audience may not be able to tell the difference between a "win" and a win), but their mere presence on the stage will feed their PR efforts.

Of course, if you refuse to debate them, they'll accuse you of intellectual cowardice. Or you may come across as a bully. (Although that's subjective; I think Barney Frank is entirely appropriate dressing down a disingenuous opponent, but perhaps it's because I admire curmudgeons.)

So we're back to the paradoxical advice. Or, to paraphrase Yoda: Do, or do not. There is no win.

ten titles in search of an author

(Apologies to Pirandello, and thanks to my brother.)

The Compleat Blogger
Idiot Boxers: The Ever-Dumbening Discourse of Cable News
Don't Bet on Sports
A Theological History of the Coen Brothers
Ethics You Can Actually Live By
Finding Bromance
A Guide to Cheating at Solitaire
Twitter Told Me So
There Ought to be Crying in Baseball
The Social Contract in the Age of the End User License Agreement

into the sunset

As the decade closes, blog-neighbor TRP hangs up his spurs. At least we'll always have the archive.

what rhymes with humbug?

Of course a poem protesting the War on Christmas would provoke a counterpoem.

It's rhetorical escalation, and we're all collateral damage.

step away from the candy bowl

Jason Kuznicki on the semiotics and politics of office candy:

There were the little rituals. You’d come in, take a piece of candy, start a conversation, do business. But some people would wait until your office was empty, then sneak in without so much as turning on the light. Some of those people got caught. I was once told by a Hershey’s-Miniatures woman that the visitors dropped off when the Special Darks ran out. Once she realized it, she stopped offering an assortment. The visitors came back.

When you wanted candy without a conversation, you’d have to feign a certain socially appropriate amount of guilt. And the owner of the office would feign a certain socially appropriate amount of judgment. A slight wince; a raised eyebrow. And then: chocolate! So worth it.

Your smile may be wide, your handshake firm. But if your candy dish is suspect, so are you.

Oh, and keeping candy in sight, as Kuznicki's later anecdotal observation confirms, is scientifically proven to increase consumption.

Mmm. Candy.

the modest films of a modest woman

Maybe Meryl Streep's too modest.

Now, I know I'm a good actress. I'm Meryl Streep. I've won two Academy Awards, and I have been nominated for 15. That's a record. But what my friends and I figured out is that the name Meryl Streep isn't really synonymous with one truly unforgettable film. It's weird to think about, but it's undeniably true.

Go ahead, try and name a classic movie I've starred in. Not a classic character I've portrayed, mind you, but an overall amazing piece of cinema. You can't. You just can't.

A little help, Lena?

Update: Lena answers the call--and explains why Streep's Casablanca is not The Hours.

today's determined links

1. Are people doomed to think of lawyers as sophists? Probably, since it's a matter of indeterminate definitions.

2. Determination, one power chord at a time.

3. Determining guilt and innocence: the "shaky science" of criminal forensics.

4. Isn't the outcome essentially predetermined?

5. How ETA's recent attack blunts hopes of Basque self-determination.

good words about a full life

If you read only one thing on the Internet today, make it Tim Sandefur's eulogy for his grandmother Elsie.

an open letter to Trader Joe's

Dear Trader Joe's,

It pains to write this, but I feel spurned and neglected by your corporation. Not because it's taken you so long to come to Olympia--I, too, will celebrate your store's opening next month--but because I had to learn the good news fourthhand.

Seriously: I heard about it on Twitter from someone who posted on Facebook a conversation they'd had with an employee at another store in the region. Heard that the Olympia location will open its doors to an adoring public on August 22nd, 2009.

But I can't vouch for the accuracy of the date. Believe me, I'd love to, but heard-it-from-a-friend is trouble enough, journalistically speaking, never mind heard-it-from-a-multilayered-social-network-of-acquaintances-and-strangers.

What's my beef, specifically? Well, take a look at this sirloin. A week ago I posted on this very blog an update to the news from February that a store would be opening this year. Seeking more specific information, I dutifully filled out the email form on your website, and got the automatic repsonse saying hey, we're busy, but we check all our emails, and yours is in the queue.

A week later, nothing.

I could have mailed a letter and gotten a faster response. I could have resurrected the Pony Express and gotten a faster response. Heck, I could have built a time machine, gone back in time to snatch a Pony Express driver from the Old West, sent him galloping to your headquarters, and still gotten a faster response.

And it's not just me: my wife reports that when she tried to email a concern about a faulty product, she never heard back.

Your email system is broken, Trader Joe's.

And now, so is my heart.

Love,

Me

deconstructing merit pay

Ryan at I Thought a Think explains why merit pay is never a simple matter.

So, who is your Most Valuable Teacher?

Is it Teacher A, who added the most value to her class over the course of the year?
Is it Teacher B, who had more of her kids meet the year-end goal?
Is it Teacher C, whose class scored the highest in the spring?
Is it Teacher D, who turned around more failing kids than any of the others?

"Value" is a homophone; there's the value signified by the numbers, but there's also the values of the school, the district, and the state which have to be superimposed atop any effort to link the data to the teacher. If the incentive pay/merit pay/whatever pay in this case goes to only one of the four teachers, you're making a statement about the value of the work the other three did, and it's a pretty lousy thing to say to the other three who also made progress that their success didn't matter as much.

And, of course, there are even more fundamental assumptions at work:
1. That the differences across teachers are statistically significant. (In small sample sizes, chance is magnified.)
2. That there are no mitigating factors that better explain students' growth within and across classes. (How much is due to good ol' maturation? Are all relevant factors controlled for?)
3. That the test measures something important.

We run into more trouble when we deal with mobile populations, or when we consider high school teachers who see their students for only fifty-five minutes a day in a single subject.

This is not to say only nay to the prospect of performance pay for teachers. I'm sure with today's data collecting and crunching powers, some magic formula can be worked out--something akin to the Netflix prize for education--but as Ryan shows, first we have to agree on what we actually value.

move over, oral critique

The digital era has finally arrived--for debate judges. Jeffrey Miller of Georgia Forensics throws down the gauntlet:

When Brandon & I started this website two years ago we had one main goal, we were set on building community and supporting free, open knowledge. I’m taking this one step farther by challenging the judging community across the nation, not just in Georgia, to become better teachers and more responsible judges.

I challenge judges to use some type of website (wikispace, wordpress, blogspot, etc) and post a DETAILED ballot of every round you judge.

The idea was inspired by Michael Antonucci, Lexington & Georgetown Univ. debate coach, last year. He began a blogspot to record all of his ballots & decisions.

So far, three other judges have signed on.

I have a full plate, and can only pack on so many more appetizers, intellectually speaking, but since I'm not only a coach of one team, but an instructor to hundreds of students all over the country, well, why not give it a go?

Though I can't formally promise that I'll type up every single round in detail, I'll take my laptop to every round and post as many as I can. (I'll ask permission of students before doing so, in case they're afraid of being "scouted" by the competition.)

It strikes me as a worthwhile venture, and I hope others will try it as well.

tweet like you mean it

Long-time blog-neighbor T/R/P is contemplating Twitter. Sort of. More accurately, he's contemplating blogger burnout, and leaving Twitter for the far-off future as a fallback plan.

How can a blogger avoid burnout? I see at least two routes to successful long-term blogging. First, continuous posting to build up a fanbase. This either takes financial independence or a team effort. Second, for the individual hobbyist, a slightly more random version of the same, with enough posts per week to people coming, but with enough unpredictability to keep things interesting. (Think "variable schedule reinforcement," the true joy of gambling.)

I used to write short posts on this blog, since it was the only place for 'em. Now I save my inner Hemingway for Twitter--which shows up on the blog sidebar, for your enjoyment--and save a little space between blog posts.

Blogging and Twitter don't have to be an either/or. Like man and fish, they can coexist peaceably.



Related: the two Slate pieces that got me thinking about how to Twitter better: the one about orphans and the one about blowhards.

Wikipedia is smarter than you

1. At least if you're one of an embarrassed batch of J-school grads:

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's made-up quote - which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 - flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.

They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

Read it all to find out what happened.

2. That Wikipedia has transformed from a hobbyhorse to an Encarta-toppling information powerhouse is a testament to its utility, as well as the power of wiki-addiction over its selfless editors. One of them is Ira Matetsky, who goes under Wikipedia's hood in what promises to be a fascinating series of blog posts.

3. I had three junior classes each create a wiki study guide for The Death of Artemio Cruz, a fantastically complex book. Overall, the experiment was a success, but I think I failed to adequately explain the nature and purpose of the wiki, by the number of students who, in their self-evaluations, noted that they wouldn't dare edit someone else's entry because "that would be rude."

license to vegetate

James Hanley on teaching at the college level:

I keep trying to figure out why teaching is so exhausting, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.

1. The brain uses a tremendous amount of energy, approximately twenty percent of the body’s total. As a teacher/scholar you’re thinking nearly all the time, which explains why sometimes when I come home I can’t muster the energy to do anything but sit on the couch and watch Scrubs....

2. In teaching you are always “on.” This point was made by a local elementary teacher. And I think it’s true. In class (12 hours a week), I am always on stage, performing....

3. In teaching you have constant deadlines. 6 classes per week = 6 deadlines per week. Add on deadlines for a variety of other things, and it’s a bit wearing. Having one big project with an important deadline is, on the whole, not as draining as having non-stop small overlapping deadlines....

I’m not looking for sympathy, just trying to understand why this nice mostly desk job with flexible hours and summers “off” is, nevertheless, so utterly exhausting that all my colleagues look like zombies right now.

Agreed on all counts. As a high school teacher with five classes, in a normal week I spend about 23 hours on stage, and the rest of my free time, even when watching the Mariners on a Saturday night, thinking about teaching, like my mind is Windows and all my processing power is being sapped by programs running in the background.

I'm just waiting 'til the day I can upgrade my brain.

mix it up

Last night the M's beat a pretty good Tampa Bay team behind spectacular pitching by Jarrod Washburn. How did that happen? USS Mariner's Dave Cameron explains:

He threw a 91 MPH fastball with hardly any movement at all (upper right corner), he threw an 89 MPH fastball that rivaled Brandon Webb’s sinker for movement, and he threw everything in between. There’s so much variation in velocity and movement that the pitch description algorithm kind of threw it’s hands up in the air and went on strike.

Just on his fastball, we’ve got a lot of four seamers, a few sinkers, a couple of cutters, a pair of splitters, and a few that are just generically labeled fastball because they don’t fit into any of the aforementioned categories. That doesn’t even include the change-up, some of which are probably actually sinkers, and move like his fastball just with less velocity.

Oh, and he also threw two distinctly different breaking balls, just for good measure

In other words, there was a party on Jarrod Washburn's mound, and every pitch type was invited.

Click through to see the pitch F/X chart that proves Cameron's point.

the peril of sticking it to the census man

In perhaps my favorite exchange from O Brother Where Art Thou, the Hogwallop child, after ensuring that our vagrant heroes aren't "from the bank," or "servin' papers," notes, "I nicked the census man." Delmar O'Donnell responds, "Now there's a good boy."

It's that time of the decade again. Blogger and principled libertarian D.A. Ridgely recently told a census taker that he'd rather not answer any questions.

He was, I believe, genuinely puzzled. Who could object to anything so innocuous as a census?

I could. Sadly, he entered something or other in his hand held gizmo, for all I know scheduling a visit to my house from federal SWAT team soon, probably in the middle of the night.

“The law is the law,” he said. We exchanged somewhat strained pleasantries and he went on his way.

He seemed like a nice man. I’m sorry I made him feel uncomfortable.

The applicable provision of the U.S. Code, for my fellow prospective scofflaws, is as follows:

Title 13 U.S. Code § 221. Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100....

So there it is. A fine of not more than a hundred dollars for refusing and not more than $500 for lying. The law is the law.

Actually, I really don’t have any strong objections to the census. I do, however, object to being required to comply, even more so when it is being supervised by an ideological hack like Rahm Emanuel. But, hey, if Rahm knocks on the door personally, maybe I’ll reconsider.

As I noted a while ago, the penalty for refusing to answer the American Community Survey--a sort of pre-census--is pretty stiff. It maxes out at $5,000, actually--and, although I'm no lawyer, I have reason to believe the same is true of the regular-ol' census. According to the ACS website,

The American Community Survey is conducted under the authority of Title 13, United States Code, Sections 141 and 193, and response is mandatory. According to Section 221, persons who do not respond shall be fined not more than $100. Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3571 and Section 3559, in effect amends Title 13 U.S.C. Section 221 by changing the fine for anyone over 18 years old who refuses or willfully neglects to complete the questionnaire or answer questions posed by census takers from a fine of not more than $100 to not more than $5,000.

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 3571 reads, in part:

(a) In General.— A defendant who has been found guilty of an offense may be sentenced to pay a fine.
(b) Fines for Individuals.— Except as provided in subsection (e) of this section, an individual who has been found guilty of an offense may be fined not more than the greatest of—
(1) the amount specified in the law setting forth the offense;
(2) the applicable amount under subsection (d) of this section;
...
(7) for an infraction, not more than $5,000.

[emphasis added]

The only exception in subsection (e) is for any law that "by specific reference, exempts the offense from the applicability of the fine otherwise applicable under this section." Sadly, Title 13 Section 221 doesn't make any specific reference and concomitant exemption.

At least it's not 1975, before the act was amended to remove the jail time penalty, up to 60 days for spurning the census man. Not sure how much you'd get for shooting him.

why torture doesn't work

From time to time, this blog has discussed the morality of torture, which, for its proponents, hinges on one thing: whether it works. But even the severest utilitarian would have hard time justifying a practice that, as far as we can tell, is worse than useless. Consider the newly-released details of the CIA's investigation on Abu Zubaida. Ed Brayton points to the story, found in the Washington Post:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Zubaida's "confessions" produced garbage, yet his captors, even when faced with evidence that further waterboarding was pointless, continued to torture him. Brayton comments,

This is one of the main problems with such interrogations and it has nothing to do with those famous "ticking timebomb" scenarios we hear so much about. They're convinced they have a high value target in detention but in fact he's just a low level flunkie who has little to tell [them]. So when he doesn't give them useful information, they're convinced they have to torture him to get the information they're sure he has.

And even after they torture him and he tells them everything he thinks they want to hear to make them stop, and even after they waste time and resources chasing all the false leads he gives them, they never think to question their own assumptions either for that person or for others. Even after the failure of their first instance of torture, they continued to approve others.

I see at least two reasons for this. First, in the heightened emotional state brought on by the combination of crisis-thinking and moral abnegation, the ordinary distortions of confirmation bias are amplified until the noise drowns out the signal. Second, torture is a sort of moral Rubicon--once crossed, there's no going back, no possible admission of failure, for it would reveal a truth too ugly to comprehend--not only to the outside world, but to the torturer.

I read it, but I don't get it

The title of this post is stolen from one of the best books any English teacher (or any secondary teacher, for that matter) can buy. I thought of Tovani's classic while attempting to read this paper [pdf], offered as "homework" by blog-neighbor Mark Olson. Here's a sample:

If either one of these functions, say θF/a , is influenced by some information that is free in the above sense (i.e., not a function of A’s choice of directions and events F-earlier than that choice),then there must be an an earliest (“infimum”) F-time t0 after which all such information is available to a. Since the non-free information is also available at t0, all these information bits, free and non-free, must have a value 0 or 1 to enter as arguments in the function θF/a . So we regard a’s response as having started at t0.

You can be the world's most competent reader--me--and still have no idea what you're reading, if you lack the requisite background knowledge.