Tag Archives: mother

Everyone Loves Charts! Except For Those Who Don’t.

by DonnyLangston Posted on November 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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This post is going to end up being insufferably nerdly, so bear with me. It comes via Justin Wolfers, who tells us about a new study showing that if you present information, it’s more persuasive if it includes a chart. Since my Wikipedia entry says I’m known for “offering original statistical and graphical analysis,” this is thrilling news—especially since I’ve never really believed that my charts have influenced anyone who didn’t already believe what I was saying in the first place.

So let’s go to the source. First off, I love the title of the paper:

Blinded with science: Trivial graphs and formulas increase ad persuasiveness and belief in product efficacy

Trivial graphs! Roger that. And sure enough, the researchers’ first experiment suggests that if you tell people a drug reduces illness by 40 percent, they’re more likely to believe it if you include a bar chart that shows one bar 40 percent lower than the other. Unfortunately, this conclusion comes via a tiny, non-random sample, and the responses are weirdly contradictory. On a scale of 1-9, the chart group rates the drug only slightly more effective than the non-chart group. But on a question that directly asks if the drug works, the chart group is far more positive. What’s up with that?

But this isn’t yet the truly nerdly part. I’m just picking the usual statistical nits. Next up, the researchers tried to find out if the chart group is more persuaded simply because the chart helps them remember the information better. Long story short, that’s not the case. Everyone remembers the information about equally well. But wait: this group is even worse: it’s a tiny, non-random sample of university freshman lab rats, who are very much not typical of the population, especially when it comes to assessing quantitative information. What’s more, assuming I’m interpreting the typo-laden concluding sentence correctly, the chart group displays 79 percent retention vs. 70 percent for the non-chart group. That sure sounds like a possibly significant difference. It’s only the tiny sample size that makes it worthless. But frankly, the tiny sample size probably makes this whole study worthless.

But this still isn’t the truly nerdly part. Here it is, and I’m going to excerpt directly from the study:

Say what? This molecule allegedly has 29 (!) helium atoms? Come on, man. I took one look at that and just laughed. Then I looked at the fake chemical formula, and they got it wrong. It’s got 29 hydrogen atoms. Or does it? Who knows. Now, it’s true that the group for this study was recruited at a shopping mall, and I’ll grant that your average mall rat isn’t too likely to notice this. Still. WTF? That’s at least two typos; a ridiculously small and non-random sample; and contradictory results depending on how the participants were queried.

I’m going to keep using charts because they convey a lot of information efficiently to people who like charts. Plus, I like charts. But are these charts actually persuading anyone of anything? I’m unpersuaded.

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Everyone Loves Charts! Except For Those Who Don’t.

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I’m Pretty Thankful This Year. Here’s Why.

by FelishaSoriano Posted on November 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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You might not expect someone who was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago to be feeling especially thankful right now. And it’s true that I’m not excited about either the cancer itself or the fairly miserable effects of the weekly chemotherapy that’s treating it. Nevertheless, this episode of my life has gotten me thinking about thankfulness, and it’s been on my mind for a while now. I know this is a little out of character, but allow me to share this with you in my usual bloggish way today.

The whole thing started on the evening of October 17th, when I sneezed hard and injured my back. On the morning of Saturday the 18th I couldn’t move enough to get out of bed. Here’s what happened next.

Marian called 911. Within ten minutes a troop of firefighters and paramedics were at our door. They hauled me downstairs on a stretcher, and ten minutes later I was in the emergency room. Over the next couple of hours I was tended to by an attentive staff of nurses and doctors. Blood was drawn, X-rays were taken, painkillers were administered. By a little after noon, a preliminary diagnosis of possible multiple myeloma had been made and I was admitted to the hospital.

The hospital was clean and efficient. My room was comfortable and private and had plenty of room for visitors. Over the course of the next few days, a rotating squadron of nurses took care of me. Biopsies were done. Medication was prescribed. A kyphoplasty was performed to stabilize my back. The myeloma diagnosis was confirmed on Thursday, and I was started on chemotherapy a few hours later. It was superb, unstinting care.

The day after I was released from the hospital, Marian and I went shopping and spent several thousand dollars on new furniture that my back could tolerate. A few days after that we got an enormous bill for the hospital stay, but it was nearly entirely paid for by insurance. The balance was something we could easily afford.

In short, everything that happened after that fateful sneeze has demonstrated just how lucky I am. I got immediate, skilled treatment. I have great health insurance. I have a good job and no money problems. I work at home and can set my own hours—and I even have a job I like so much it actually helps me weather the treatment. I work for editors who are completely understanding about what I’m going through and want only for me to recover. I have family and friends who care about me and are endlessly willing to help. And most of all, I have a wife who loves me and is always, always, always there for me.

There is nothing more I could want. I’m even thankful for the sneeze. It hurt like hell, but it’s the thing that got me to the hospital in the first place. Without it, I wouldn’t be recovering as I write this.

So sure: cancer sucks. But how many people who go through it have all this? Not many. Some have money problems. Some have work problems. Some are on their own. Some have lousy or nonexistent health insurance. Some get inadequate treatment. I have none of those problems. I am lucky almost beyond belief.

And one more thing: health care is suddenly a lot more real to me than ever before. Sure, I’ve always favored universal health care as a policy position. But now? It’s all I can do to wonder why anyone, no matter how principled their beliefs, would want to deny the kind of care I’ve gotten to even a single person. Not grudging, bare-bones care that’s an endless nightmare of stress and bill collectors. Decent, generous care that the richest country in the richest era in human history can easily afford.

Why wouldn’t you want that for everyone? It beggars the imagination.

In any case, that’s what I got—that and a lot more. And I am thankful for it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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I’m Pretty Thankful This Year. Here’s Why.

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Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

by SalinaR35rp Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Europe’s infamous right to be forgotten is on track to become truly Orwellian:

Europe’s privacy regulators want the right to be forgotten to go global. In a new set of guidelines agreed Wednesday in Brussels, the body representing the EU’s 28 national privacy regulators said that search engines should apply the bloc’s new right to be forgotten to all of their websites.

….Google may consider a way to apply the ruling on Google.com without applying it globally … by returning different results depending on whether the person is searching from an Internet Protocol address located within the EU. But it is unclear if such a move would satisfy regulators, as it would only make it harder to sidestep the ruling inside the EU, not globally.

“These are fundamental rights. My rights don’t go away at the border,” one data-protection official said of the idea of using IP addresses to apply the rule.

I understand that the EU has a more expansive view of personal privacy than the US and other countries. What’s more, I’m generally on their side in this battle when it comes to truly personal information. Both corporate and government collection of personal buying habits, internet browsing patterns, and so forth deserve to be reined in.

But here we’re talking about largely public information. It’s bad enough that the EU is insisting that people not only have a right to control genuinely personal data, but also have a right to shape attitudes and perceptions that are based on public record. It’s even worse that they’re now trying to impose this absurdity on the entire planet. If they insist on having a continent-wide memory hole, I guess that’s their business. But they sure don’t have the right to foist their insistence on artificially altering reality on the rest of us. Enough’s enough.

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Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

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GOP Takes Revenge Over Immigration Order in Tax Bill. Obama Tells Them to Pound Sand.

by EPEElvapbisqwzl Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Danny Vinik describes the tax extender package currently wending its way through Congress:

Imagine somebody asked you to imagine the worst possible deal on taxes. It’d probably have the following qualities:

It would be bad for the environment.

It would be bad for the deficit.

It would give short shrift to the working poor.

And it would be a bonanza for corporations.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to conjure up such a package. Congressional Republicans already have. And for some unfathomable reason, Senate Democrats including Harry Reid seem inclined to go along—although the White House has vowed to veto such a deal if Congress goes ahead and passes it.

Actually, there’s nothing all that unfathomable about what’s going on. The tax extender bill may be a dog’s breakfast of legitimate tax provisions running interference for a long laundry list of indefensible giveaways and corporate welfare, but it’s always been supported by both parties and it would have passed long ago if not for an outbreak of routine sniping over amendments and 60-vote thresholds last spring. That aside, the whole thing is a perfect bipartisan lovefest. Republicans and Democrats alike want to make sure that corporations continue to get all their favorite tax breaks.

In fact, the only thing that’s really new here is the nature of Obama’s veto threat. He’s made the threat before, but primarily because the extenders weren’t being paid for and would add to the deficit. The fact that middle-class tax breaks might not also be extended was sort of an afterthought. Now, however, that’s front and center:

The emerging tax legislation would make permanent 10 provisions, including an expanded research and development tax credit….a measure allowing small businesses to deduct virtually any investment; the deduction for state and local sales taxes….tax breaks for car-racing tracks….benefits for racehorse owners.

….Left off were the two tax breaks valued most by liberal Democrats: a permanently expanded earned-income credit and a child tax credit for the working poor. Friday night, Republican negotiators announced they would exclude those measures as payback for the president’s executive order on immigration, saying a surge of newly legalized workers would claim the credit, tax aides from both parties said.

So there you have it. This bill is the first victim of Republican frothing over Obama’s immigration order. As revenge, they left out Democratic tax priorities, and Obama is having none of it.

This is all part of the new Obama we’ve seen since the midterm election, which seems to have had an oddly liberating effect on him. Over the course of just a few weeks he’s been throwing sand in Republican faces will gleeful abandon: cutting climate change deals with the Chinese; demanding full net neutrality regulations from the FCC; issuing an executive order on immigration; and now threatening to veto a Republican-crafted bill unless they include expanded EITC and child tax credits. It’s as though he’s tired of their endless threats to go nuclear over every little thing and just doesn’t care anymore. Go ahead, he’s telling them. Make my day.

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GOP Takes Revenge Over Immigration Order in Tax Bill. Obama Tells Them to Pound Sand.

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A Nuclear Deal With Iran Probably Won’t Happen

by Leila7054fzwlze Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Over at Foreign Affairs, Aaron David Miller and Jason Brodsky run through four reasons that we failed to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by this weekend’s deadline. This is the key one:

An internal IAEA document that was prepared in 2009 detailed an April 1984 high-level meeting at the presidential palace in Tehran in which Khamenei — then president of Iran — championed a decision by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to launch a nuclear weapons program. According to the account, Khamenei said that “this was the only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel.”

….The fact is that Iran knows what it wants: to preserve as much of its nuclear weapons capacity as possible and free itself from as much of the sanctions regime as it can. The mullahs see Iran’s status as a nuclear weapons state as a hedge against regime change and as consistent with its regional status as a great power. That is what it still wants. And that’s why it isn’t prepared — yet — to settle just for what it needs to do a deal. Ditto for America. And it’s hard to believe that another six months is going to somehow fix that problem.

This is why I’m skeptical that a deal can be reached. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons capability. The United States wants Iran to verifiably abandon its nuclear ambitions. Everything else is just fluff, and it’s hard to see a middle ground here.

This doesn’t mean an agreement is impossible. Maybe there really is some halfway point that both sides can live with. It sure isn’t easy to see it, though. The disagreement here is just too fundamental and too definitive. One side wants to be able to build a bomb, and the other side wants exactly the opposite. How do you split that baby?

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A Nuclear Deal With Iran Probably Won’t Happen

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Is Obama Trolling Republicans Over Immigration?

by MabelISSrj Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Jonah Goldberg is unhappy with President Obama’s immigration order, but he’s not steaming mad about it. And I think this allows him to see some things a little more clearly than his fellow conservatives:

Maybe President Obama is just trolling?

….As Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution notes, Obama “could’ve done all this quietly, without making any announcement whatsoever.” After all, Obama has unilaterally reinterpreted and rewritten the law without nationally televised addresses before. But doing that wouldn’t let him pander to Latinos and, more important, that wouldn’t achieve his real goal: enraging Republicans.

As policy, King Obama’s edict is a mess, which may explain why Latinos are underwhelmed by it, according to the polls. But that’s not the yardstick Obama cares about most. The real goal is twofold: Cement Latinos into the Democratic coalition and force Republicans to overreact. He can’t achieve the first if he doesn’t succeed with the second. It remains to be seen if the Republicans will let themselves be trolled into helping him.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty certain that Obama did what he did because he really believes it’s the right thing to do. Goldberg just isn’t able to acknowledge that and retain his conservative cred. Still, somewhere in the Oval Office there was someone writing down pros and cons on a napkin, and I’ll bet that enraging the GOP caucus and wrecking their legislative agenda made it onto the list of pros. So far, it looks like it’s probably working. But if Republicans are smart, they’ll figure out some way to follow Goldberg’s advice and rein in their worst impulses. If they go nuts, they’re just playing into Obama’s hands.

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Is Obama Trolling Republicans Over Immigration?

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BREAKING: Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Will Not Be Charged for Killing Michael Brown, Grand Jury Decides

by GustavoE07 Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Grand jury decides not to indict: The grand jury reviewing Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson’s case in St. Louis County announced on Monday night that Wilson will not be charged in the shooting death of Michael Brown. The decision came more than three months after Wilson shot and killed Brown, the unarmed black teenager whose death on August 9 triggered weeks of protests that included sporadic violence and looting.

Twelve jurors—nine whites and three African Americans—reviewed Wilson’s case. Their decision continues a long-running pattern of police officers involved in fatal shootings going unprosecuted.

Brown family issues statement: Mike Brown’s parents released a statement following the grand jury decision asking protesters keep their actions peaceful:

Wilson’s lawyers issue statement: Wilson’s attorneys also released a statement, saying that “Law enforcement personnel must frequently make split-second and difficult decisions”:

Restricted air space: The Federal Aviation Administration confirms to Mother Jones that it restricted air space over Ferguson at 10:15 p.m. local time “due to gunfire.” The resrtiction was in effect from the surface to 3,000 feet above sea level (about 2,500 feet off the ground), so that’s why some news feeds were still working above the area.

President Obama reacts: Shortly after 10pm Eastern time, the president spoke, urging a peaceful response to the news. “Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone. We should be honoring their wishes.”

Attorney General issues statement: Attorney General Eric Holder has released the following statement, saying the federal investigation into the shooting is still ongoing. (Read more about the Department of Justice’s investigation here):

Photos of Wilson released: Meanwhile, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch said Wilson suffered “some swelling and redness to his face”:

More reactions: Some reactions from around the Ferguson area:

Several fires pop up: Multiple reports of fires started to roll in. Here are just a couple.

Real-time footage: Watch a livestream from the streets of Ferguson captured by Bassem Masri here:

Source – 

BREAKING: Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Will Not Be Charged for Killing Michael Brown, Grand Jury Decides

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Are Term Limits a Good Idea?

by Remona20Ax Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

Jim Newton, a longtime local politics reporter in Los Angeles, wrote his final column for the LA Times today. In it, he offered up “a handful of changes that might make a big difference,” and the one that resonates with me is his suggestion that both LA and California do away with term limits:

Elected officials who were popular with their constituents once held their seats for decades, building up experience and knowledge; now, with term limits in place, they’re barely seated before they start searching for the next office. That’s brought new faces but at great cost. Power has shifted from those we elect to those we don’t, to the permanent bureaucracy and to lobbyists. Problems get kicked down the road in favor of attention-grabbing short-term initiatives that may have long-term consequences.

Case in point: Why do so many public employees enjoy budget-breaking pensions? Because term-limited officials realize it is easier to promise a future benefit than to give raises now. The reckoning comes later; by then they’re gone.

Term limits locally were the work of Richard Riordan, who bankrolled the initiative and later became mayor. I asked him recently about them, and he startled me with his response: It was, he said, “the worst mistake of my life.”

Term limits always sound good. The problem with the idea is that being a council member or a legislator is like any other job: you get better with experience. If your legislature is populated solely by people with, at most, a term or two of experience, it’s inevitable that (a) they’ll have an almost pathologically short-term focus, and (b) more and more power will flow to lobbyists and bureaucrats who stay around forever and understand the levers of power better.

For what it’s worth, I’d recommend a middle ground. I understand the problem people have with politicians who win office and essentially occupy sinecures for the rest of their lives. It’s often a recipe for becoming insulated and out of touch with the real-world needs of constituents. But short term limits don’t solve the problem of unaccountable power, they simply shift the power to other places. The answer, I think, is moderate term limits. Something between, say, ten and twenty years. That’s long enough to build up genuine expertise and a genuine power base, while still preventing an office from becoming a lifetime of guaranteed employment.

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Are Term Limits a Good Idea?

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Benghazi Is Over, But the Mainstream Media Just Yawns

by MandyToddmqo Posted on November 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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After two years of seemingly endless Benghazi coverage, how did the nation’s major media cover the report of a Republican-led House committee that debunked every single Benghazi conspiracy theory and absolved the White House of wrongdoing? Long story short, don’t bother looking on the front page anywhere. Here’s a rundown:

The Washington Post briefly moved its story into the top spot on its homepage this afternoon. In the print edition, it ran somewhere inside, though I don’t know where.
The New York Times ran only a brief AP dispatch yesterday. Late today they finally put up a staff-written story, scheduled to run in the print edition tomorrow on page A23.
The Wall Street Journal ran a decent piece, but it got no play on the website and ran in the print edition on page A5.
USA Today ran an AP dispatch, but only if you can manage to find it. I don’t know if it also ran anywhere in the print edition.
As near as I can tell, the LA Times ignored the story completely.
Ditto for the US edition of the Guardian.
Fox News ran a hilarious story that ignored nearly every finding of the report and managed to all but say that it was actually a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration. You really have to read it to believe it.

I get that the report of a House committee isn’t the most exciting news in the world. It’s dry, it has no visuals, it rehashes old ground, and it doesn’t feature Kim Kardashian’s butt.

Still, this is a report endorsed by top Republicans that basically rebuts practically every Republican bit of hysteria over Benghazi spanning the past two years. Is it really good news judgment to treat this the same way they would a dull study on the aging of America from the Brookings Institution?

UPDATE: Late tonight, the LA Times finally roused itself to run a non-bylined piece somewhere in the Africa section.

I should add that the stories which did run were mostly fairly decent (Fox News excepted, of course). In particular, Ken Dilanian’s AP report was detailed and accurate, and ran early in the morning. The problem is less with the details of the coverage, than with the fact that the coverage was either buried or nonexistent practically everywhere.

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Benghazi Is Over, But the Mainstream Media Just Yawns

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If You’re White and Feel Discriminated Against, Jose Antonio Vargas Wants to Talk to You

by RogerCurry Posted on November 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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“Do you think some people treat you unfairly because you’re white?”

“Do you feel you’re missing out on an important job, school, or other opportunity because you’re white?”

These questions were included in a recent casting call for an MTV documentary in Washington DC. It swiftly raised eyebrows across the internet: Do white people really need yet another medium to showcase, well, white people problems?

But when it came out that the man behind the documentary was actually journalist and prominent immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas and his organization Define American, the initial scorn quickly disappeared; the questions suddenly became legitimate.

“Race is uncomfortable for everybody,” Vargas told Mother Jones. “But when you bring in race and whiteness, I think you’re really laying it on thick for people. And that’s why I think we’re getting the reaction we’re getting.”

Vargas says he expected the Craigslist post to elicit some controversy—indeed, it’s exactly this tendency to immediately call out others for racial bias, without attempting to seek understanding, he hopes to explore. “I’m not interested in that ‘gotcha’ moment, where in the age of Twitter we over-communicate without ever actually connecting.” he said. “I am going to let the work speak for itself.”

In recent years, those “gotcha” moments have dominated countless headlines. And the news cycle is a familiar one: It starts with the internet discovering a person doing something, at best, racially insensitive, and at worst, blatantly racist. Outrage moves to social media where users are quick to ridicule the offender in question. The mounting anger is only quelled by a forced apology, firing, etc. But what happens after the hashtags stop trending? The conversations that follow don’t exactly have the same viral potential and are rarely discussed.

“Critical analysis is of utmost importance whenever we talk about race in America,” he said. And for Vargas, the way Americans currently discuss race is “superficial and oversimplified.” But in a time when race is such a loaded topic, this is increasingly problematic. That’s exactly where the “Untitled Whiteness Project” comes in.

The film is currently in its beginning stages and aligns with MTV’s larger “Look Different” campaign, which explores hidden prejudices among millennials. The campaign recently partnered with David Binder Research for a study to examine how young people view their own identities and biases. Among the white 18 to 24 year-olds who participated in the study, 48 percent said discrimination against white people has emerged as just a serious problem as discrimination against people of color. Only 39 percent believed white people had more advantages than people of color.

Vargas wants to discuss these perspectives, shed light on hidden biases, and perhaps even more importantly, create an open discourse for young people to talk comfortably talk about race and their own identities without judgment.

“This isn’t about making anyone feel bad, “Vargas said. “I want to create a safe place where people can actually explore this conversation.”

“It’s so easy to hate something you don’t know. What’s harder is to actually scratch the surface.”

So expect to see similarly uneasy Craigslist posts to emerge all over the country—Vargas is here to shake things up and get young people to start talking.

Excerpt from: 

If You’re White and Feel Discriminated Against, Jose Antonio Vargas Wants to Talk to You

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