Tag Archives: motherjones-com

Open Plan Workspaces Are the Work of Satan

by TWWTawnyalsjmn Posted on December 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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After nine years in an office, Lindsey Kaufman’s bosses decided to convert her ad agency into an open plan workspace:

Our new, modern Tribeca office was beautifully airy, and yet remarkably oppressive. Nothing was private. On the first day, I took my seat at the table assigned to our creative department, next to a nice woman who I suspect was an air horn in a former life. All day, there was constant shuffling, yelling, and laughing, along with loud music piped through a PA system.

….These new floor plans are ideal for maximizing a company’s space while minimizing costs. Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cellphone use isn’t occupying billing hours. But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting.

Do not dare to ever criticize cubicles in my presence. This is what they replaced, not spacious corner offices with lots of natural light and walnut desks. Compared to open plan, cubicles are a paradise on Earth. Open plan is the work of Satan.

That is all.

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Open Plan Workspaces Are the Work of Satan

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Today’s Birthday Advice: Celebrate Responsibly

by RandalHardwick Posted on December 29, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s a fascinating new factlet. University of Chicago economics researcher Pablo Pena, who is apparently dedicated to putting the dismal back in the dismal science, tells us that we’re more likely to die on our birthdays. If you’re in your 20s, you’re 25 percent more likely to die on your birthday than on any other day. On weekends this rises to 48 percent.

Now, your chance of dying on any day is pretty small if you’re in your 20s, so a 25 percent increase isn’t actually much. Still! Watch out for those drunken birthday bashes! If you’re under ten, watch out for the sugar highs from too much cake and punch. If you’re in your 50s, watch out for….something. I’m not sure what. Above 60, apparently we all give up on birthday Saturnalias and our risk of dying isn’t much higher than average.

This comes via Wonkblog’s Jason Millman, who provides this sage advice: “celebrate responsibly.” I always do.

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Today’s Birthday Advice: Celebrate Responsibly

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The NSA Is Surprisingly Open-Minded About Analysts Spying on Their Spouses

by BarneyNiland Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Via Bloomberg, we learn that the NSA chose Christmas Eve to release its latest set of reports on violations of surveillance rules by its analysts. Nice work, NSA! For the most part, the reports don’t appear to contain anything especially new, but I was struck by this particular violation:

The OIG’s Office of Investigation initiated an investigation of an allegation than an NSA analyst had conducted an unauthorized intelligence activity. In an interview conducted by the NSA/CSS Office of Security and Counterintelligence, the analyst reported that, during the past two or three years, she had searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting….Although the investigation is ongoing, the analyst has been advised to cease her activities.

Wait a second. She was caught using NSA surveillance facilities to spy on her husband and was merely told to cease her activities? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to, say, fire her instantly and bar her from possessing any kind of security clearance ever again in her life? What am I missing here?

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The NSA Is Surprisingly Open-Minded About Analysts Spying on Their Spouses

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Chart of the Day: War on Christmas Continues to Take a Drubbing

by JoeannR90dydqr Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

With the Christmas season now officially closed, I figured everyone would appreciate a final update on how our troops performed this year in the War on Christmas™. And since my Wikipedia entry insists that this blog is known for “original statistical and graphical analysis,” that’s what you’re going to get.

So then: the chart below is a Google Ngram showing the popularity of Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays. I’m sorry to report that contrary to suggestions from certain quarters, Happy Holidays has been taking a terrific and sustained beating ever since the mid-70s. I took the liberty of extending the trendline based on an extensive personal sampling of popular music and TV shows, and I’m afraid the results were devastating: 2014 was yet another year of Happy Holidays getting its ass kicked. In 1975 we were behind by 2 x 10-5 percentage points. Today we’re behind by 5 x 10-5 percentage points, and falling farther behind every year.

I know this might be discouraging news to some of you, but buck up, urban liberals! Happy Holidays is still doing better than the Lakers, the Bears, and the Knicks. Just wait ’til next year.

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Chart of the Day: War on Christmas Continues to Take a Drubbing

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The Hotel Industry Is Apparently Hellbent on Screwing Its Guests

by dkqmqscwx Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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The sheer venality and barefaced contempt for its customers that’s so often displayed by corporate America never ceases to amaze me. I had no idea this was going on:

Microsoft and Google don’t agree on much, but they’ve presented a united front against the hotel industry, which is trying to convince government regulators to give them the option of blocking guests from using personal Wi-Fi hotspots….In October, Marriott settled an FCC complaint about the practice for $600,000 but argued that it hadn’t broken the law and was using technology to protect guests from “rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber attacks and identity theft.”

….Opponents of the proposal basically argued in filings late Monday that the hotel industry is just trying to keep guests and exhibitors dependent on pricy hotel wireless networks. They suggested hotels have other options for protecting Wi-Fi networks than jamming personal hotspots.

Years ago hotels lost the ability to charge outrageous prices for phone calls, so now they’re engaged in a desperate rear-guard attempt to keep charging outrageous prices for Wi-Fi. Here’s a suggestion instead: provide decent rooms at reasonable prices, and offer your guests additional services at reasonable prices too. Ho ho ho.

POSTSCRIPT: I wonder what the range of these jamming devices is? If Marriott or Hilton ends up jamming a Wi-Fi hotspot that someone is using on a public sidewalk outside one of their hotels, are they liable for damages?

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The Hotel Industry Is Apparently Hellbent on Screwing Its Guests

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Smile! You’re on Cop Cam!

by AshliStead Posted on December 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Seattle police have made the decision to adopt body cameras, but this means they need to find an automated way to blur out things like faces and license plate numbers before the footage becomes public. Dara Lind comments:

But as police departments move cop cams into the field, the an important question becomes whether there are things that shouldn’t be recorded to protect civilians’ privacy. And if so, who controls the footage?….As reported in Slate, the programmers that participated in the hackathon focused on ways to automatically redact police footage so that, for example, civilians’ faces and license plate numbers were blurred.

The fundamental appeal of automatic redaction for a city government is pretty clear. If you can write an automated program that takes care of any privacy concerns, you can release body-camera footage to the public en masse. Without an automated solution, the city would have to rely on the police department to edit the footage — which opens the door to manipulation.

En masse? I wonder where this leads? If I get pulled over for speeding in Seattle, the encounter will be saved on video. Does that get released to anyone who wants to see it? Does every encounter with a police officer become public? How long will police departments be required to save video records? What kind of indexing requirements will be imposed? Will they all be accessible as public records via Freedom of Information requests?

These are good questions to ponder. Body cameras for police forces are a good idea, but there are downsides as well as upsides.

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Smile! You’re on Cop Cam!

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Everyone Wants the Cuba Embargo to End

by BiancaJJXK Posted on December 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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According to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 64 percent of the American public supports establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. And even greater numbers want to get rid of the trade embargo:

Those are remarkable numbers. Everyone supports an end to the embargo by wide margins, even Republicans. I checked all the other crosstabs, and it turns out that ending the embargo is supported by all parties, all ideologies, all sexes, all ages, all races, all education levels, all incomes, and all regions.

The only subgroup that opposes it—barely—is conservative Republicans, who make up about 17 percent of the population. So naturally that means the embargo will stay in place. It no longer really matters what the other 83 percent of us think.

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Everyone Wants the Cuba Embargo to End

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Mystery Chart of the Day: What’s Up With All the Skinny Economists?

by MatthewBrower Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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The chart on the right is excerpted from the Wall Street Journal. It shows which occupations have the lowest obesity rates, and most of it makes sense. There are folks who do a lot of physical labor (janitors, maids, cooks, etc.). There are health professionals who are probably hyper-aware of the risks of obesity. There are athletes and actors who have to stay in shape as part of their jobs.

And then, at the very bottom, there are economists, scientists, and psychologists. What’s up with that? Why would these folks be unusually slender? I can’t even come up with a plausible hypothesis, aside from the possibility that these professions attract rabid obsessives who are so devoted to their jobs that they don’t care about food. Aside from that, I got nothing. Put your best guess in comments.

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Mystery Chart of the Day: What’s Up With All the Skinny Economists?

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

by ChristiGuest Posted on December 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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From James Pethokoukis:

The energy sector gives, and the energy sector takes. The stunning drop in oil prices looks like bad news for the “Texas Miracle.” (Texas is responsible for 40% of all US oil production — vs. 25% five years ago — and all of the net US job growth since 2007.) This from JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli: “As we weigh the evidence, we think Texas will, at the least, have a rough 2015 ahead, and is at risk of slipping into a regional recession.”

Man, Rick Perry is one lucky guy, isn’t he? It’s true that the “Texas Miracle” may not be quite the miracle Perry would like us to believe. As the chart below shows in a nutshell, the Texas unemployment rate has fared only slightly better than the average of all its surrounding states.

Still, Texas has certainly had strong absolute job growth. However, this is mostly due to (a) population growth; (b) the shale oil boom; and (c) surprisingly strict mortgage loan regulations combined with loose land use rules, which allowed Texas to escape the worst of the housing bubble. Perry had nothing to do with any of this. And now that oil is collapsing and might bring the miracle to a sudden end, Perry is leaving office and can avoid all blame for what happens next.

One lucky guy indeed.

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Rick Perry Is One Lucky Dude

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Ferguson Is Even More Polarizing Than Polls Suggest

by MandyWMFom Posted on December 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Georgia expat Ed Kilgore reports on a recent visit to his home state:

I’ve just spent nearly a week back home in exurban Atlanta, and I regret to report that the events in and in reaction to Ferguson have brought back (at least in some of the older white folks I talked with) nasty and openly racist attitudes I haven’t heard expressed in so unguarded a manner since the 1970s. The polling we’ve all seen about divergent perceptions of Ferguson doesn’t even begin to reflect the intensity of the hostility I heard towards “the blacks” (an inhibition against free use of the n-word, at least in semi-public, seems to be the only post-civil-rights taboo left), who have the outrageous temerity to protest an obvious act of self-defense by a police officer.

I’m not sure there’s really anything useful I can say about this. I just thought it was worth passing along.

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Ferguson Is Even More Polarizing Than Polls Suggest

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