Tag Archives: festival

Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

by Gina72Ebzwtxbe Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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We have names! They have not, ahem, been met with universal acclaim, but we’re sticking with them. Our little gray-and-white girl is:

Hopper aka Gracie aka The Admiral

And our little black-and-white boy is:

Hilbert aka Davie aka The Professor aka The 24th Problem

For those of you too lazy to google things, Hopper is named after Admiral Grace Hopper, “the mother of COBOL.” Hilbert is named after David Hilbert, a famous German mathematician who has some personal resonance for me and also happens to have a name that begins with H, which makes him a nicely alliterative companion for Hopper. Among other things, Hilbert is famous for a speech in 1900 in which he laid out 23 fundamental mathematical problems, some of which remain unsolved to this day.

It turns out, by the way, that the fastest way to get Hilbert’s attention is to pay attention to Hopper. All we have to do is scratch Hopper’s chin and Hilbert, somehow, becomes aware of it and comes bounding into the room demanding that we scratch his chin. It’s really quite remarkable. He not only has a jealous streak, he apparently has ESP too.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

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Yet More Crackpotism From the Tea Party Darling in Iowa

by KandiNPVzfidna Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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TPM’s Daniel Strauss provides us with the latest intel on tea party darling Joni Ernst, currently favored to win a Senate seat in Iowa. Here are her answers to a survey from the Campaign for Liberty in 2012, when she was running for the state legislature:

Strauss naturally focuses on Question 5, in which Ernst happily agrees that Iowa should allow state troopers and local sheriffs to toss federal officials in the slammer if they try to implement Obamacare in their state. This is complete lunacy, but of course no one will take any notice. For some reason, conservative Republicans are allowed to get away with this kind of stuff. There’s a sort of tacit understanding in the press that they don’t really mean it when they say things like this. It’s just a harmless way of showing their tribal affiliation.

However, I’m also intrigued by Question 1. I assume this was prompted by police use of drones, which was starting to make the news back in 2012, but does it also include things like red light cameras and automated radar installations on highways? Does Ernst really oppose this stuff? She might! And maybe it’s a big deal in Iowa. I’m just curious.

UPDATE: And as long as we’re on the subject of Iowa, Senate seats, and the press, maybe you should check out Eric Boehlert’s fully justified bafflement over the national media’s infatuation with a crude Republican smear campaign based on transparent lies about Democratic candidate Bruce Braley and his neighbor’s chickens. Click here for more.

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Yet More Crackpotism From the Tea Party Darling in Iowa

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Would You Pay $20 For a Non-Reclining Seat in Front of You?

by jcxftrrly Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Slate has a great example today of the endowment effect, aka status quo bias:

In an online survey, we asked people to imagine that they were about to take a six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles. We told them that the airline had created a new policy that would allow people to pay those seated in front of them to not recline their seats. We asked one group of subjects to tell us the least amount of money that they would be willing to accept to not recline during the flight. And we asked another group of subjects to tell us the most amount of money that they would pay to prevent the person in front of them from not reclining.

….Recliners wanted on average $41 to refrain from reclining, while reclinees were willing to pay only $18 on average….When we flipped the default—that is, when we made the rule that people did not have an automatic right to recline, but would have to negotiate to get it—then people’s values suddenly reversed. Now, recliners were only willing to pay about $12 to recline while reclinees were unwilling to sell their knee room for less than $39.

When the status quo is a reclining seat, people demand a lot of money before they’ll give it up. But when the status quo is a lot of knee room, people demand a lot of money before they’ll give that up.

So what would happen if this experiment were done in real life on a large scale—and without any messy face-to-face negotiation? Suppose an online booking service offered non-reclining seats for a $20 discount and the seats behind them for a $20 extra charge? Would the market clear? No? Then try $15. Or $25. I’ll bet it wouldn’t take too long to find the market-clearing price, and I’ll bet it would be somewhere around $25 on most flights. (Though possibly much more on red-eyes.)

The authors of the Slate piece note that in the online experiment, the status quo would have changed only about a quarter of the time. But that’s to be expected. I’d be likely to pay for the legroom because I’m fairly tall and I sometimes want to use a laptop on my tray table. But for anyone of average height or less, it’s probably not that big a deal. Likewise, some people care about reclining and others don’t. I mostly don’t, for example. Put it all together, and I’d guess that if you offered this deal on a long-term basis, less than 20 percent of all seats would be affected.

Now, would any airline find it worthwhile to do this? Probably not. There’s no money in it for them, and enforcement would be a huge pain in the ass. But it would certainly be an interesting real-world experiment if anyone were willing to give it a go.

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Would You Pay $20 For a Non-Reclining Seat in Front of You?

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Here’s How Fact Checking Exits the Real World and Enters Wonderland

by DeenaWitherspoo Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

So here’s the big controversy of the day out in our nation’s heartland. Joni Ernst, running for a Senate seat in Iowa, is one of 21 Republicans who voted in favor of a “personhood” amendment to the state constitution. It says that “the inalienable right to life of every person at any stage of development shall be recognized and protected.”

That seems clear enough. It means life begins at conception, and that embryos will have the same legal protections as you and me. Ernst’s opponent, Bruce Braley, concludes, logically enough, that this would ban certain forms of contraception, prevent people from getting in vitro fertilization, and lead to the prosecution of doctors who perform those procedures.

Ernst says this is nonsense. “That amendment is simply a statement that I support life,” she says. Why, it’s just a nothingburger! Sort of like a resolution endorsing apple pie or Mother’s Day.

Today, Glenn Kessler wades into this dispute. He dings Ernst for “straining credulity” about the intent of the amendment, but he also has harsh words for Braley:

Braley goes too far with his scary scenarios, especially because he repeatedly said the amendment “would” have the impact he described. Ernst is on record of not opposing contraception—though she also favors punishing doctors who perform abortions. We concede that the legal terrain in murky, and the impact uncertain. But that’s all the more reason not to speak with such certainty. Braley thus earns Two Pinocchios.

Ed Kilgore is dumbfounded by this kind of treatment, and so am I. I just don’t get it. Kessler is not some babe in the woulds. He knows perfectly well exactly what the goal of this amendment is. It’s possible, of course, that Democrats in Iowa will prevent Republicans from enacting enabling legislation. Or that the US Supreme Court will stand in the way. But why does that matter when the intent is so clear? Likewise, Ernst may say that “I will always stand with our women on affordable access to contraception,” but that’s plain and simple weaseling. And it doesn’t even matter. Republicans in the legislature can keep their hands completely clean and simply let activists take things to court. With an amendment like that in place, no judge could turn away a suit that asked for a ban on abortions or in-vitro fertilization or certain forms of contraception.

As Kilgore says, “Encouraging this lack of accountability, and engaging in the worst form of false equivalency, is just a sin.” All Braley is doing is calling out Ernst for the obvious implications of an amendment she supports. It’s not merely a “statement” and she knows it. But in our topsy-turvy world of fact checking, Braley’s plain description of the obvious real-world impact of Ernst’s amendment is somehow deemed more of a lie than Ernst’s slippery prevarications in the first place.

I don’t understand this. This isn’t a debating society. It’s not la-la land. It’s the real world, and it’s not partisan sniping to say that we all know what this stuff means in the real world. Shouldn’t that be the domain of a fact checker?

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Here’s How Fact Checking Exits the Real World and Enters Wonderland

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

by Ebony8143ve Posted on September 26, 2014

Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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26 Sep 2014 6:21 PM

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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Yes, America’s green movement is often seen as white. And there are plenty of reasons for that, including the fact that environmental organization staffers are predomnantly white and that a small fraction of environmental grant funding goes toward environmental justice. But when you ask Americans what they care about, nonwhites are the ones who give a damn.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, organized and prettified by FiveThirtyEight’s DataLab, nonwhite Americans are significantly more likely than whites to think global warming should be a top priority for the U.S. government. The gap is now over 20 percent.

FiveThirtyEight

What FiveThirtyEight notes, however, is that even when you control for political party (sure, Democrats are going to be more likely to favor government action, and more minorities are Democrats), the numbers still skew in favor of nonwhites.

FiveThirtyEight

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In other words, despite any sort of messaging to the contrary, people of color care about the environment. A lot.

As many media outlets have noted, if the People’s Climate March was any indication, this movement is getting visibly more diverse. But events like the Americas Latino Eco Festival and this kind of polling data are bringing more attention to the idea that, if we’re talking beliefs, it already was diverse. Ninety percent of Latinos, for example, believe that the government should take action on climate change. According to a 2010 poll from Yale University, people of color “were often the strongest supporters of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” And a recent Green For All survey shows similar results.

People talk about “inclusivity” in the environmental movement. Maybe what they should be pointing to is “reality.”

Source:
The Racial Gap on Global Warming

, FiveThirtyEight.

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Americans of color put whites to shame on climate

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The Faces of Outside Lands 2014

by NickolaHennessy Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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For the seventh straight year, the Outside Lands Music and Art Festival took over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this past weekend for an extravaganza of wine, beer, shopping, all manner of hip food, panel talks with chefs, and comedy shows. Oh, and there was also the music, increasingly just one draw in the overall festival experience. Thousands of party-seekers and music fans showed up for what was considered one of the most expansive—both in sheer size and range of offerings—OSL fests ever. It may not be a national event like Coachella, Bonnaroo, or Lollapalooza, but it didn’t lack big-name entertainers (Kanye West), rock legends (Tom Petty), or indie darlings playing afternoon sets. The attendees—200,000 in all—were locals and out-of-towners alike, old and young, costumed and non-costumed. We talked with some of them to get a sense of the pulse.

Kenny, server, San Francisco: “I just saw Big Freedia, and I’m originally from the South. It’s good to see Southern artists out here.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Dre, animal nurse, Oakland: “Outside Lands is definitely one of those things you love and you hate, because it’s so crowded, but the lineup is so good.” On her Pikachu suit: “My friends and I all have our own onesies. We roll phat.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Taylor, Adam, and TJ, from San Francisco: “I think we came more for the experience. Excited for Tycho, Boys Noize, Duck Sauce. And Macklemore. Everyone. I’m excited for everyone!” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Robert, healthcare co-op owner, San Francisco: “It’s really different from my first concert, which was Woodstock in 1969, where there were no services whatsoever… I like the enthusiasm of the young folks who are here, it’s infectious!” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Britney, student, Los Angeles: “I love wine. I’m like a wine connoisseur, and being able to be at a festival as a 21-year-old, on top of all the great music and art stuff, to be able to enjoy some wine as well is like the best thing.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Pearl, San Francisco, on this year’s crowd: “Way more biddies. Way more biddies. I think they oversold. I know they were trying to increase capacity—I think they succeeded.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Jenae and Summer, students, Burlingame, California: “It’s so much different from last year—there’s so many more people. It’s packed. The lineup was better last year, but it’s still equally fun. It’s like an experience, the whole vibe and everything.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Tom, business intelligence professional, San Francisco: “I live like three blocks away. I usually try to at least make one day a year since I’m so close. I just walk down the hill and I’m here. The lineup I wasn’t as impressed with, but it’s always a good time.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Ranjiv, an Outside Lands first-timer: “This festival is so nice. It’s so much better than all the other festivals. The people are so much better. The music is quality. I’m lovin’ it.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Michael, elementary school worker, Los Angeles: “I’m sticking around for Tom Petty. My mom is with me; she loves it. Gonna stick around for Flume—he’s my favorite artist—and catch a flight home in the morning.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Mika and Natalie, from Cupertino and New York City: “We’re here for the summer and thought it’d be cool to check this out.” Best thing they saw: “Two super happy bunny-costumed people plowing through the crowd.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Tessa, voter registration canvasser, on the hundreds signing up to vote at OSL: “It’s the really happy people, the people we want to have voting.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Jason, deliveryman, Atherton, California: “It’s definitely not as great as a lineup I’ve seen in the past. It’s definitely just as crowded. I just saw the improvised Shakespeare troupe. They were amazing.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Monty and his daughters, Portland: “It’s their first music festival. I’m corrupting them. So, you know what, their mom will complain forever because now they’re gonna love music festivals.” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

Kerry and Erin, from Reno and San Francisco, on their favorite sets: “Capital Cities was really good. Arctic Monkeys were really good, too. ” Prashanth Kamalakanthan

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The Faces of Outside Lands 2014

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Musician Jenny Lewis on "Sipping the Kool-Aid" of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

by Dorcas82Euh Posted on July 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jenny Lewis, the musician best-known for fronting Rilo Kiley and singing in the Postal Service, has a packed schedule at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City, but she never gives off the impression that she’s in a rush. She homes in on every person she’s introduced to with genuine enthusiasm. Lewis is tiny, with long red hair, a mega-watt smile, and a tie-dyed blazer inspired by, “Cosmos, man!”—the television show beloved by geeks that helped inspire her new solo album, The Voyager, out on July 29 (stream it here.)

The Voyager is a frank examination of womanhood, buried under a layer of sugary alt-pop. Lewis is largely known for her songwriting, often about relationships, and this record is no different: She covers topics like late bloomers, “When I turned 16, I was furious and restless,” troubled romances, “I told you I cheated and you punched through the drywall,” and marriage, “I could love you forever. I could love you until all the Polaroids fade.”

Lewis’s music video for the album’s first single, “Just One of the Guys,” is a star-studded affair, featuring her friends Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart all dolled up—but as men. The song is a partly a meditation on ticking clocks (“When I look at myself, all I can see/I’m just another lady without a baby.”) Lewis tells me her lyrics speak for themselves and there is, “that lady pressure, as you called it, that is just biological in some ways.” She adds that, “Despite hanging out with dudes for my entire life and trying to fit in, ultimately, I’m a woman, and I’m becoming more comfortable with that the older I get.” She adds, “I’ve fought to be where I am today, and I’m absolutely a feminist.”

Lewis wrote the album, her first solo record since 2008, while struggling with a two-year bout of insomnia that she says almost took her out of the game. “I became an asshole,” she jokes. While sleepless nights didn’t really help her creativity, they did prompt her to watch a lot of late-night boxing and Cosmos, the television series by Carl Sagan, which became inspiration for her album. “I would watch that over and over and some that imagery really made it into the songs,” she says. Which isn’t to say that the title track is “a science fiction song.” Instead, it’s more about personal voyages. As she sings, “Nothing lasts forever when you travel time/ I’ve been sipping that Kool-Aid of the cosmos.”

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Musician Jenny Lewis on "Sipping the Kool-Aid" of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

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Baby Catapulting and Other Batshit Hypotheses That Teach You How Science Works

by VioletFarthing Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a really good joke. Someone has made a clever new connection between two mundane things that we’ve all encountered—and suddenly we have a lovely “aha” moment. We find it funny.

That sense of revelation accompanying a good joke or comic is very similar to what many scientists experience when they finally figure out a great explanation for some kind of previously unknown phenomenon. But don’t take it from us. Take it from the scientifically-trained author and illustrator Zach Weinersmith (née Weiner), creator of the popular web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), known for its science-themed humor.

“I suspect what’s actually going on with people who are thought of as very creative is they’re good at two skills, one of which is generating connections rapidly, and two, editing out the garbage quickly,” explains Weinersmith on this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast.

Zach Weinersmith in 2011. Christina Xu/Wikimedia Commons

In Weinersmith’s case, some of funniest jokes are actually about just plain bad scientific thinking—and they teach a lesson about what science is, and what it isn’t. The comic artist is now one of the main forces behind an event series, entitled the “Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses,” that specializes in “celebrations of well-argued and thoroughly-researched but completely incorrect evolutionary theory.” The winner takes home a sculpture of Charles Darwin, “shrugging skeptically.” The first festival took place at MIT in late 2013.

The idea for the festival originated in a popular cartoon that Weinersmith drew, depicting a scientist presenting the argument that babies are shaped like footballs so that they can be punted over mountains and thereby share hereditary material with more genetically-distinct populations living in nearby villages. (see below; click to enlarge/go to original). On a whim, he polled his Facebook fans to see if anyone might be interested in attending an event in which he turned this comic into a pseudo-serious academic talk.

“To my amazement, a thousand people came to this really dorky show,” says Weinersmith.

The cartoon that started it all. Zach Weinersmith/Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

And so BAHFest was born; the first winner gave a talk attempting to explain baby crying (“infant distress vocalization”) as advantageous because it gave supremely frustrated adults a “natural adrenaline boost” that, in turn, made them more effective in battle with rival tribes. Especially when they brought the infants into battle with them. (You might be noticing a theme here.)

Why did Weinersmith and the other organizers choose to highlight fake science talks about topics related to adaptation and human evolution in particular? “Biology is something everybody gets on some level,” says Weinersmith, who confesses he has a much harder time imagining a fake chemistry talk that would actually be funny. But he stresses that he is not “actively trying to make fun of” evolutionary psychology, or the idea that we can explain how humans behave and think today based on the evolutionary quandaries and stresses present during the species’ development. It’s just that the just-so stories characteristic of this field are quite seductive when couched in evolutionary terms.

As for Weinersmith’s own wacko-funny idea that babies are meant to be aerodynamic: He notes, babies are “largely hairless,” an attribute that would reduce friction, or drag, when flying through the air. Plus, when you blow air on babies’ faces, meanwhile, he notes they close their mouths, preventing air from entering their bodies and creating an eddy current. (Weinersmith’s science background is in physics.) “It doesn’t make sense that the baby should have this reflex unless it is designed to fly through the air, via a catapult,” says Weinersmith.

Nazca “Astronaut,” Peru. Raymond Ostertag/Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, babies enjoy being lifted and spun in the air. And there’s even some historical evidence, Weinersmith says:

If you consider the Nazca lines, these are enormous macrostructures of these simplistic iconic drawings. So why would you ever make a drawing that people on the ground can’t even see, which is also at the same time iconic and cute-looking. There’s only one reasonable explanation which is that it’s designed for a baby to be flying over it and remain calm in flight.

Below is the full video of Weinersmith giving his “Infantapulting Hypothesis” talk at the first BAHFest. You’ll notice one slight alteration in the “theory” from cartoon to lecture: The babies are not being punted any more, but rather, catapulted. “In the original version, the baby was being drop kicked,” says Weinersmith. “And I thought for an audience of semi-normal people, that might be a little upsetting. Or at least, it would be hard to make slides.”

So how do we distinguish fact from fiction when it comes to science? When Weinersmith asked one of the previous BAHFest participants about a certain graph, one that showed a direct correlation between obesity and the length of a country’s roads, he got the following answer: “Nothing that I left in is not true.” And herein lies a major pitfall in science: cherry picking or data mining. Because we humans are highly susceptible to the confirmation bias—that is, we tend to look for evidence that supports what we already think is going on, rather than data that might call our own hypotheses into question—we need to be very careful not to focus on only a small subset of information available to us.

Otherwise, what we think is a good idea might actually be, well, just a joke.

Another serious lesson from the supremely unserious BAHFest is that there is a huge amount of interpretation of data involved in science. “I feel like there’s this unfortunate notion among most people that what a scientist does is get data, and then the data tells them what the conclusion is and that’s how science gets done,” says Weinersmith. “And of course the actual process is quite a bit messier, which probably makes it more fun. But I think the public often get misled by the idea that getting science is kind of like digging up gold nuggets or something.”

When Weinersmith isn’t creating comics and curating events to roast bad science, he’s tending to his 3-month old baby girl. Infantpulting is out, of course, but he says he was thinking about a safe way that he could, er, involve his daughter in a real wind tunnel demonstration to elaborate on the theory.

“I suppose I could 3D print a model of exactly my kid for the experiment,” he says.

To listen to the full Inquiring Minds interview with Zach Weinersmith, you can stream below:

This episode of Inquiring Minds, a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and best-selling author Chris Mooney, also features a short discussion with Cynthia Graber, author of the new PBS/NOVANext article “The Next Green Revolution May Rely on Microbes,” and a discussion of the science of why human biting is so dangerous, and of how our hormones influence political choices.

To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds viaiTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher and on Swell. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also recently singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.

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Baby Catapulting and Other Batshit Hypotheses That Teach You How Science Works

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How to Raise Black Children (on Camera)

by JackJanesgql Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Like many parents, Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson decided to capture their first-born’s major milestones on video—first day of school, basketball games, middle-school graduation, preparations for the prom. They filmed the mundane moments, too: Walking the family dog, meltdowns over homework, a trip to the doctor that resulted in an ADHD diagnosis. All told, the family compiled more than 800 hours of footage starting the day that their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, entered kindergarten at Manhattan’s Dalton School—two middle-class black boys on scholarships at one of the nation’s most exclusive, and predominantly white, educational institutions.

In the resulting documentary, American Promise, which won a Sundance Jury Award and airs nationally on PBS on February 3, parents will see much that they recognize from their everyday struggles to raise confident, well-rounded kids—from the last-minute cramming on the drive to school to arguments around the kitchen table over a mediocre report card. But at a time when study after study shows black boys on the wrong side of a staggering achievement gap, the film offers an intimate look at the additional burdens of cultural bias and the social typecasting of young black men. Here’s a trailer:

This week, the Brewster and Stephenson release a new parenting book, Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and Life. Based on their 13-year-experiment, the book includes expert advice on dealing with bias and stereotyping. I reached the couple at home in Brooklyn as they prepared for a final screening at the New York Film Festival to discuss overbooked kids, Trayvon Martin, and what it’s like raising a child under the camera’s watchful eye.

Mother Jones: How has American Promise been received on the festival circuit?

Joe Brewster: We were told we were the first in history to get a two-time standing ovation at the New York Film Festival. That’s kind of amazing, although another film got one the same night so I think they’re in the standing ovation mode over there. But the kids were there and they got one for themselves. And a number of parents came up to us, talking about how it spoke to them.

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How to Raise Black Children (on Camera)

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