Monthly Archives: July 2010

Life

Bicycle Race

July 29, 2010 – 8:00 am

This weekend I am participating in a charity bicycle ride. This is hilarious on several levels: primarily the “charity,” “bicycle,” and “ride” levels. (The “participating” level is pretty funny too.)

I’ve got my trusty old REI bicycle, an aftermarket memory-foam seat designed to stave off groin-numbness, an iPhone full of motivational music (mostly A Night at the Hip-Hopera on repeat), some ugly pink battery-powered speakers from Best Buy, some ugly “for kids” handlebar pouch to hold the speakers and my keys and wallet, the cool Schwinn helmet I bought back when I was briefly the custodian of Mateo’s Target bike, a weird eyeglass-mounted rearview mirror that’s probably more distracting than it is helpful1, a tight-fitting (and consequently gut-enhancing) bike jersey with rear elastic pockets that feel too unfamiliar to trust, the completely-inappropriate-for-serious-cycling Keen sandals I trekked all over India in, and a huge variety of performance-enhancing drugs like Singulair and Benadryl and Claritin. My goal is to ride 50 miles on the first day and 300 miles on the second, although I also have secondary goals of not getting hit by any trucks and not getting car-doored.

If I don’t come back, avenge my death.


1. The first time I tried it, all the people I was riding with asked me how I liked it. “Well,” I offered, “you know how sometimes you get an extra sense and it takes a while for your brain to figure out how to integrate its inputs with your pre-existing sensory data?” Not a transhumanist in the bunch, it turned out, and so they all looked at me like I was crazy.

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Politics

Republican Tea Party Contract on America

July 28, 2010 – 5:07 pm

The Democrats seem to have decided that their strategy for this fall will be to conflate the Tea Party with the Republican Party. Toward this end, they’ve crafted a ten-point “Republican Tea Party [sic] Contract on America.”

This “Contract on America” is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that most of the bullet points sound pretty damn appealing, and the worst of the bunch — “cap liabilities for the oil spill” — is something that I’ve never heard “Tea Party” types advocate (and even the “evidence” the Democrats cite for that bullet point seem to have nothing to do with “capping liabilities,” but rather consist of skepticism over the President’s authority to dictate the terms of the liability). Taken as a whole, it’s much better than what either the real Republican party or the Democrats themselves are offering to do, and a candidate who actually offered the “Contract on America” would — even with its flaws — be my preferred candidate.

The second reason it’s interesting is that it departs from the usual narrative about how the Tea Party is just a bunch of racists whose primary motivation is hatred of Black people and Brown people. (Sometimes Red people too.) Curiously, none of the ten “Contract on America” items have the slightest to do with Black people or Brown people or Red people. Reading the list, you’d be tempted to conclude that Tea Partiers were motivated by beliefs about things like “the proper role of government” and “economics” and “political economy” and “tax policy.” If you didn’t already “know” that Tea-Partyism was an offshoot of racism, you might never figure it out from their list!

And, of course, the third reason it’s interesting is that it somehow manages not once to use the juvenile slur “teabaggers.” I bet someone gets fired for that.

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Law Politics

Equal Protection, Sex with Teachers, and Student-Athletes

July 23, 2010 – 8:48 am

Call me an old softie, but it always bugs me when different laws apply to different people. For instance, during the most recent student-teacher-sex-scandal I learned the following:

While the age of consent for a sexual relationship in Washington state is 16, it is criminal for a teacher or anyone else in a position of power to have sexual relations with anyone under the age of 18.

Now, despite some titillating … um … videos I might have seen, I can understand the arguments why you don’t want teachers having sex with students. For instance, it’s a big distraction from the school’s goals, like not teaching math, not teaching reading, and planning periods. It’s also a big distraction from the students’ goals, like trying to have sex.

Nonetheless, if the students are otherwise old enough to consent, this is an argument for firing said teachers, or possibly even for not hiring them in the first place. It’s not a particularly compelling argument for making them subject to a different age of consent than everyone else, which (if you think about it) means that a teacher could conceivably go to prison for the same actions that her non-teaching neighbor could perform quite legally.

Admittedly, as injustices go, this is a pretty small one, and anyway I’m sure if I thought about it I could find some way to blame it on the teachers’ unions, who I imagine would be reluctant to endorse my “fire teachers who break the rules” program.

I was thinking about all this when I read an article about the “problem” of sports agents trying to influence college athletes:

In January, Illinois will become the 39th state to adopt the Uniform Athlete Agents Act, which calls for stiff penalties for anyone who passes himself off as a representative without a state license or for anyone who pays a college athlete with eligibility remaining. Since California, Michigan and Ohio already have their own non-UAAA laws, that leaves only eight states (Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont and Virginia) that don’t regulate agents

The penalties for “sports-agenting without a license” I at least understand, being familiar with analogues in the taxi industry, the hairbraiding industry, the eyebrow-threading industry, the florist industry, the interior-design industry, the moving industry, and the healthcare industry.

The other is pretty impressive, though, for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s a very selective law. I can legally give money to college students who aren’t athletes. I can legally give money to college athletes whose eligibility to play sports has expired. I can legally give money to college-aged athletes who aren’t college students. But the instant I give money to someone who’s a college athlete with eligibility remaining, I’m a criminal.

More disturbingly, college eligibility is determined solely by the rules of the NCAA, which is (last time I checked) a private organization. Private organizations are, of course, welcome to punish their members, although usually not with prison time. Obviously, the NCAA has no jurisdiction to punish me, seeing as how I’m not a college student. So basically they’ve convinced 39 (and counting) state legislatures to pass laws ensuring that — even though I have no association with their organization other than through the video game “NCAA Football 11″ — I can go to prison if I violate their privately-chosen rules.

Several sports-columnists seem to be applauding this state of affairs, although I’m sort of dreading the moment when all the other private organizations start realizing they can get their private rules written into law. The day when the American Mathematical Society’s proscription on Proof by Contradiction becomes a felony will be an especially bad one for me.

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Politics Technology

Why Software Testers Should Run for Congress

July 22, 2010 – 8:51 am

In my previous post “Why Software Developers Shouldn’t Run for Congress” I poked fun at the idea, proposed by a pie-in-the-sky, government-would-work-well-if-only-it-were-run-by-my-kind-of-people type, that an influx of software developers would noticeably improve the quality of our laws.

During a subsequent Facebook discussion, I came up with an additional “reason” why developers might enjoy Congress: developers hate testing their code, and Congress never tests before shipping. Of course I was being flip, but the idea has since gotten stuck in my head.

In software, when you want to make changes to code, you test them. You change small pieces and use unit tests to make sure they don’t break existing functionality. You develop a spec outlining what the code is supposed to do, and then you check that it does those things before you ship it. You have code reviews so that other coders can inspect your code looking for possible unintended consequences. You let normal users try to break the code before it ships. You try using the code yourself for a while before you inflict it on your customers. When you know that people will try to “game” your final product, you model their behavior and try to account for it in your design.

In particular, if you want to stay in business you don’t show up the night before release with thousands of pages of unreviewed, untested, hodge-podge code written by the very people hoping to hack your systems, full of hidden side effects, functionality that wasn’t in the spec, backdoors, and billion-dollar bugs. Unless you’re Congress, of course, in which case you stay in business no matter how sloppy your “coding” habits are.

So while I still don’t think Congress would be particularly improved by the addition of software developers, it sure as hell could benefit from some testers.

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Economics Politics

The Gold Standard of Health Care Reform

July 21, 2010 – 9:42 am

Back during the debate over the Obamacare bill I vehemently insisted that it wouldn’t be “real” health care reform unless it addressed the shameful practice of not requiring people who buy and sell gold coins to file IRS form 1099 for most of their transactions. Thankfully, it looks like Congress didn’t let me down:

With spot market prices for gold at nearly $1,200 an ounce, Heller estimates that he’ll be filling out between 10,000 and 20,000 tax forms per year after the new law takes effect.

“I’ll have to hire two full-time people just to track all this stuff, which cuts into my profitability,” he said.

Plus there’s two new jobs we can add to the “created or saved” list!

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Politics Technology

Why Software Developers Shouldn’t Run for Congress

July 19, 2010 – 11:33 am

Over on his blog, Clay Johnson gives five reasons why software developers ought to run for Congress:

1. They’re underrepresented. (Similarly, so are people without college degrees, so perhaps they ought to run too.)

2. Congress could use their expertise. For example, think about the more-than-1000-page Stimulus Bill. Not only does it monkey in an unintended-consequences kind of way with multi-billion-dollar swaths of the economy, it also contains a poorly written website spec for recovery.gov! If we had more developers in Congress, perhaps the bill would only do the former.

3. Software developers like solving problems, and will make the Congress more efficient at doing what it does. Like, maybe instead of just posting self-serving press releases on their websites, they can add them their Twitter feeds as well. Rather than ignoring their constituents’ letters and phone calls, they can ignore their emails and tweets. Rather than arbitrarily deciding where to allocate waste-of-taxpayer-money pork funds, they’ll write software programs that use “algorithms” to decide where to waste our money. The possibilities are endless.

4. They’d probably staff their offices with other software developers, who would not only Rails-ify House Subcommittee websites that no one cares about, they’d also be much less likely to sue the taxpayers for sexual harassment. Everyone wins.

5. Software developers are great communicators! Sure, they use too many acronyms, and they tend to stare at their shoes instead of making eye contact, and they’re afraid of girls, and they prefer instant messaging to actual conversation. But they’re also much better at foursquare (“Congressman Jones is now Mayor of D.C. Madam“) and they’d probably update their blogs a lot more frequently.

–

The blog post doesn’t mention it, but there are also some good reasons why software developers shouldn’t run for Congress.

1. Congressmen spend most of their time raising money, which will bring back all those bad memories of your last failed startup.

2. Not only does Congress not provide free sodas, they’re always trying to tax them!

3. (# of foosball tables in Capitol) + (# of XBOX 360s in Capitol) + (# of ball pits in Capitol) = 0

4. Terrible iPhone reception in Congressional office buildings.

5. Software developers hate bullshit; Congress non-stop bullshit.

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Music

Uncle Joel’s YouTube Concert Series: Songs from before I was born

July 18, 2010 – 9:48 am

The YouTube is possibly the greatest boon for music lovers in the history of the world. Some might point out that Napster or BitTorrent or iTunes made it easier to acquire and collect music, but acquisition and collection are not the same things as love.

Here, then, is a lovingly-curated concert series of a few of my favorite performances. Today’s series is called “Songs from before I was born.”

1. Led Zeppelin – Dazed and Confused – Denmark 1969

When I was 17, I would have told you that Led Zeppelin was the greatest rock band of all time. Now that I’m twice that age (and more), I can’t say that I disagree. The YouTube is full of great live Zeppelin performances, but this early set (which contains 4 other videos), performed in a pitch-black auditorium in front of a few dozen Danes sitting passively on the floor, is stripped down and near-perfect.

2. Chicago Transit Authority – I’m a Man – Beat Club 1968 (?)

If you’re my age, you probably think of Chicago as purveyors of cheesy 80s soft rock and love themes from Karate Kid sequels. Thanks to the YouTube, you can see that there was a point in the distant past where they absolutely killed it.

3. Edgar Winter Group – Frankenstein

Yes, Edgar Winter is a creepy Scientologist albino with a keytar, and, yes, Rick Derringer is approximately 3 feet tall, but Edgar keeps switching instruments mid-song like some sort of albino Scientologist maniac, and this is a fantastic jam.

4. Beatles – Ticket to Ride – Shea Stadium 1965

This seems to be the sweet spot, where they were absolutely huge but hadn’t gotten super-weird yet. That crowd is insane, and the music is perfectly done.

[The only good version I can find has embedding disabled. Jerks.]

5. Seals & Crofts – Summer Breeze – Live 1973 Midnight Special

As far as I’m concerned, hippies have only ever done two good things. One is putting cookie dough in ice cream. The other is this song.

Next time in the concert series: “Hair Metal / Crunk.”

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Economics

The Validity of Keynesian Economics

July 15, 2010 – 11:43 am

This morning I saw a bus ad for City University reading “This traffic jam proves the validity of Keynesian economic theory.”

This is actually one of the better defenses I’ve seen of Keynesian economics; nonetheless, there was no traffic jam at the time.

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Writing

Fiction, Non-fiction, Humor, and Religion

July 13, 2010 – 8:30 am

Occasionally someone will express to me a desire like “I want to climb Mount Rainier” or “I want to be a guest on ‘The Price Is Right’” or “I want to record a swing-band cover version of REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’,” and then when I ask them why they say, “just so I can say I did it.”

To which I always point out that you don’t have to do something in order to say you did it. Then it’s usually clarified that the desire isn’t just to “say I did it,” it’s to “truthfully say I did it,” at which point I suggest that I can give better advice when people are more forthcoming about their motivations.

–

For the past several weeks I’ve been introducing myself to people as “a writer,” which is really a lot of fun. If not for the preceding “truthfulness” hang-up, I’d suggest you’d try it. People seem to react much more positively to “writer” than they ever did to “data analyst” or “quantitative analyst” or “corporate stooge” or “fareologist.”

Most of the time they’ll get this really interested look on their faces and ask, “fiction or non-fiction?” as if a writer somehow has to choose between the two. Right now, for instance, I’m working on one fiction book (Untitled Joel Grus Fiction Project) and one non-fiction book (Untitled Joel Grus Non-Fiction Project), so I usually smile and answer, “yes,” and then when they change their really interested look to a really confused look, I continue, “both,” and then they change back to an interested look.

It was a little bit tougher when I only had the religion book. A good half of it is true (mostly the parts involving Scott Baio and the parts involving Thomas Kinkade), and the rest of it is made-up (especially all the parts about “god”). Does that make it “fiction”? “Non-fiction”? I prefer to describe it as a “humor” book, but no one ever asks “fiction, non-fiction, or humor?” or even “fiction, non-fiction, or religion?”

Along similar lines, people often ask me if I’m writing any more books about religion. I currently don’t have any plans to, for the simple reason that I feel like I’ve said everything I need to say on the topic.

(I sometimes toy with the idea of writing a kids’ version, although my friends with kids seem pretty convinced that the “Santa Claus is false” chapter would earn me some sort of fatwa and that the smart move would be to focus on other topics.)

I have a variety of interests, and why would I want to rehash the same book *cough* Dawkins *cough* over and over when I could branch out and write about Reptilians, about how public-sector unions caused the fall of Rome, or about a boy who likes to play baseball but is no good at it.

The most compelling argument they make is that readers tend to have topical interests, and that fans of a book called Your Religion Is False would be much more likely to buy Your Religion Is Still False than The Boy Who Likes To Play Baseball But Is No Good At It. If I ever get fans, I suppose I’ll have to take this into consideration.

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Economics Technology

Smash the Synthesizers

July 11, 2010 – 3:07 pm

There’s a scourge stalking Broadway. It’s called the “synthesizer,” and it uses “technology” to generate sounds that heretofore could only be generated by human “musicians.” And like other human-supplanting devices such as mechanized looms, grain threshers, and sex robots, the “synthesizer” must be stopped.

So warns violinist Paul Woodiel, who is quite sure that Leonard Bernstein would have been at the head of the smashing line:

Now, after 500 performances, our producers have told us and our union that in order to cut costs they will chop our string section in half, releasing five musicians and “replacing” them with a synthesizer piped in from another room. I don’t think Lenny would have approved.

[...]

Soon, though, if all goes according to plan, these songs will be produced by a skeletal string section accompanied by an inert, artificial, electronic device, which an engineer will try to manipulate, hoping to deceive audiences into thinking it’s the real thing.

Indeed, it would be pretty unfair to deceive audiences that way. If we grant the producers this one deceit, they’re sure to follow it with others. Next they’ll replace the story’s gang members with “actors” only pretending to be gang members. Instead of expensive real guns, they’ll probably start using prop guns that only pretend to fire bullets. Heck, they might even start faking some of the deaths in the play!

Better just to pull the plug:

So here’s my proposition: if the show is no longer profitable, the producers should simply close it with its dignity intact. Doing so might put me out of work, but it would honor (rather than demean) the legacy of Bernstein’s crown jewel.

That’s a pretty forceful statement, that he and all his co-musicians and all the actors and all the stagehands and the directors and costumers are all offering to quit their jobs in order to fight off big King Synthesizer. All of the co-musicians and actors and stagehands and directors and costumers are on-board with his crusade, right?

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