Archive
Songs about mothers
I have a soft spot for sensitive singer songwriting men talking about their mothers, even when it’s a fraught relationship. After all, I’ve got three sons, and it’s nice to imagine they won’t forget about me once they leave. And hey, I’d rather have hate than nothing!
This morning I’m all about that. I started out with Sufjan Stevens (who has a new album coming out, by all accounts his best) singing For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti:
Next I moved on to another incredibly emo heartfelt band called Iron and Wine, one of my favorites when I’m in this pineful mood. Here they are singing Upward Over the Mountain, a song I credit with the internal efforts I’ve made (so far) to let my sons someday leave me:
Next, now that I’m thoroughly in the mood, I’ll just go ahead and – brace myself and – listen to John Lennon’s Mother:
And to top that off, I’ll finish with something hopeful, Conor Obersts You Are Your Mother’s Child:
Talking tomorrow evening at American University
Tomorrow I’m running down to D.C. after recording my Slate podcast. I’ll be giving an evening talk to the math and statistics folks (and the general public) at American University on Weapons of Math Destruction. So basically the nerdy low-down on what I’m writing about in my book. Here’s the poster (for live links, go here):
Maybe I’ll see you there!
I felt warm and relaxed
When I was a kid, being the child of nerd atheists, I spent more time watching Star Trek, Animal House, and Monty Python than in church.
Scratch that, I spent no time at all in church, and quite a bit of time at sci-fi conventions, where my father was a sci-fi book dealer. In fact it was a yearly ritual to carry a bunch of boxes of books to the car to tote them to Boskone, where we’d have a table in the big book room.
Sometimes I’d be in charge of selling, at least once I was old enough to make change. When I wasn’t on duty I’d wander around the room and wish I had enough money to buy sparkly purple crystals from weird women wearing scarves.
Sometimes I’d even read the books, out of boredom. They weren’t my thing, and I didn’t know why back then, but now I think I do.
Most of the time, the set-up seemed along these lines: some extremely macho guy, misunderstood and brilliant, gets into some kind of jam and uses his brilliant mind to find his way out of it. On the way he meets stupid men and even stupider – but gorgeous – women, who trick and finagle him, distracting him from his high-minded goals. Every now and then he’d get back at the women by fucking them. And yes, I’m thinking about Heinlein here, which my dad absolutely worships. Probably Larry Niven isn’t quite as bad.
In other words, it was mostly an adolescent male fantasy, with a side order of scientifically flavored situational crisis. Too much getting laid and proving yourself to other men, too little science. Waaay too little science.
Fast forward about 30 years, and I’m married to a man who reads sci-fi for fun (don’t tell him I said this, he denies being a fan). But progress has been made, because he can laugh at the ridiculous posturing.
About 10 years ago, in fact, he laughed out loud at a particularly ridiculous line from Heinlein’s “Puppet Masters.” I will show it to you so you can appreciate how much this explains to me about my childhood:
I felt warm and relaxed, as if I had just killed a man or had a woman.
I mean, for fuck’s sake. Oh, and if you want more context, please go ahead and read this excerpt, which taken as a whole is even worse than I remember. Oh, and here’s the cover:
Also, here’s another thing that I now (finally!) understand. Namely, when a boy reads this stuff, he actually might identify with it. I know this because my husband admitted this to me, and although I was momentarily stunned, it makes sense when you think about it.
Whereas, when I read it, I naturally concluded that it wasn’t about me at all, that it was in fact alien to me. If I wanted to force myself into that universe, where the women were so vile and dumb, then I’d have to decide between:
- not admitting I’m female, or
- admitting it, but trying to prove that, unlike those bimbos who couldn’t even fix a broken warp drive, I would be different. I’d have deep thoughts too, just like men.
Either of these attitudes, both of which I tried on at different times, were and are fucked up. I shouldn’t be surprised then that sci-fi never held sustained interest for me.
Anyway, it’s all good, because in our house nowadays, when we want to be funny, one of us mentions that they feel “warm and relaxed,” and then the other says, “holy crap, did you just kill a man??”
A/B testing in politics
As research for my book I’m studying the way people use big data techniques, mostly from the marketing world, in politics. So naturally I was intrigued by Kyle Rush’s blogpost about A/B testing on the Obama campaign. Kyle was the Deputy Director of Frontend Web Development at Obama for America.
In case you don’t know the lingo, A/B testing is a test done by marketers to decide which of two ad designs is more effective – the ad with the dark blue background or the ad with the dark red background, for example. But in this case it was more like, the ad with Obama’s family or the ad with Obama’s family and the American flag in the background.
The idea is, as a marketer, you offer your target audience both ads – actually, any individual in the target audience either sees ad A or ad B, randomly – and then, after enough people have seen the ads, you see which population responds more, and you go with that version. Then you move on to the next test, where you keep the characteristic that just won and you test some other aspect of the ad, like the font.
As a mathematical testing framework, A/B testing is interesting and has structural complications – how do you know you’re getting a global maximum instead of a local maximum? In other words, if you’d first tested the font, and then the background color, would you have ended up with a “better ad”? What if there are 50 things you’d like to test, how do you decide which order to test them in?
But that’s not what interests me about Kyle’s Obama A/B testing blogpost. Rather, I’m fascinated by the definition of success that was chosen.
After all, an A/B test is all about which ad “works better,” so there has to be some way to measure success, and it has to be measured in real time if you want to go through many iterations of your ad.
In the case of the Obama campaign, there were two definitions of success, or maybe three: how often people signed up to be on Obama’s newsletter, how often they gave money, and how much money they gave. I infer this from Kyle’s braggy second sentence, “Overall we executed about 500 a/b tests on our web pages in a 20 month period which increased donation conversions by 49% and sign up conversions by 161%.” Those were the measures Kyle and his team was optimizing on.
Most of the blog post focused on getting people to donate more, and specifically on getting them to fill out the credit card donation page form. Here’s what they A/B tested:
Our plan was to separate the field groups into four smaller steps so that users did not feel overwhelmed by the length of the form. Essentially the idea was to get users to the top of the mountain by showing them a small incline rather than a steep slope.
What I find super interesting about this stuff (and of course this not the only “data science” that was used in Obama’s campaign, there was a separate team focused on getting Facebook users to share their friends’ lists and such) is that nowhere is there even a slight nod to the question of whether this stuff will improve or even maintain democracy. They don’t even discuss how maintainable this is.
I mean, we gave the Obama analytics team lots of credit for stuff, but in the end what they did was optimize a bunch of people’s donation money. Is that something we should cheer? It seems more like an arms race with the Republican party, in which the Democrats pulled ahead temporarily. And all it means is that the fight for donations will be even more manipulative, by both sides, by the next presidential election cycle.
As Felix Salmon pointed out to me over beer and sausages last week, the problem with big data in politics is that the easiest thing you can measure in politics is money, which means everything is optimized to that metric of success, leaving all other considerations ignored and probably stifled. And yes, “sign ups” are also measurable, but they more or less correspond to people who will receive weekly or daily requests for money from the candidate.
Readers, please tell me I’m wrong. Or suggest a way we can measure something and optimize to something that is less cynical than the size of a war chest.
Guest Post: A Discussion Of PARCC Testing
This is a guest post by Eugene Stern, who writes a blog at Sense Made Here, and Kristin Wald, who writes a blog at This Unique* Weblog. Crossposted on their blogs as well.
Today’s post is a discussion of education reform, standardized testing, and PARCC with my friend Kristin Wald, who has been extremely kind to this blog. Kristin taught high school English in the NYC public schools for many years. Today her kids and mine go to school together in Montclair. She has her own blog that gets orders of magnitude more readers than I do.
ES: PARCC testing is beginning in New Jersey this month. There’s been lots of anxiety and confusion in Montclair and elsewhere as parents debate whether to have their kids take the test or opt out. How do you think about it, both as a teacher and as a parent?
KW: My simple answer is that my kids will sit for PARCC. However, and this is where is gets grainy, that doesn’t mean I consider myself a cheerleader for the exam or for the Common Core curriculum in general.
In fact, my initial reaction, a few years ago, was to distance my children from both the Common Core and PARCC. So much so that I wrote to my child’s principal and teacher requesting that no practice tests be administered to him. At that point I had only peripherally heard about the issues and was extending my distaste for No Child Left Behind and, later, Race to the Top. However, despite reading about and discussing the myriad issues, I still believe in change from within and trying the system out to see kinks and wrinkles up-close rather than condemning it full force.
Standards
ES: Why did you dislike NCLB and Race to the Top? What was your experience with them as a teacher?
KW: Back when I taught in NYC, there was wiggle room if students and schools didn’t meet standards. Part of my survival as a teacher was to shut my door and do what I wanted. By the time I left the classroom in 2007 we were being asked to post the standards codes for the New York State Regents Exams around our rooms, similar to posting Common Core standards all around. That made no sense to me. Who was this supposed to be for? Not the students – if they’re gazing around the room they’re not looking at CC RL.9-10 next to an essay hanging on a bulletin board. I also found NCLB naïve in its “every child can learn it all” attitude. I mean, yes, sure, any child can learn. But kids aren’t starting out at the same place or with the same support. And anyone who has experience with children who have not had the proper support up through 11th grade knows they’re not going to do well, or even half-way to well, just because they have a kickass teacher that year.
Regarding my initial aversion to Common Core, especially as a high school English Language Arts teacher, the minimal appearance of fiction and poetry was disheartening. We’d already seen the slant in the NYS Regents Exam since the late 90’s.
However, a couple of years ago, a friend asked me to explain the reason The Bluest Eye, with its abuse and rape scenes, was included in Common Core selections, so I took a closer look. Basically, a right-wing blogger had excerpted lines and scenes from the novel to paint it as “smut” and child pornography, thus condemning the entire Common Core curriculum. My response to my friend ended up as “In Defense of The Bluest Eye.”
That’s when I started looking more closely at the Common Core curriculum. Learning about some of the challenges facing public schools around the country, I had to admit that having a required curriculum didn’t seem like a terrible idea. In fact, in a few cases, the Common Core felt less confining than what they’d had before. And you know, even in NYC, there were English departments that rarely taught women or minority writers. Without a strong leader in a department, there’s such a thing as too much autonomy. Just like a unit in a class, a school and a department should have a focus, a balance.
But your expertise is Mathematics, Eugene. What are your thoughts on the Common Core from that perspective?
ES: They’re a mix. There are aspects of the reforms that I agree with, aspects that I strongly disagree with, and then a bunch of stuff in between.
The main thing I agree with is that learning math should be centered on learning concepts rather than procedures. You should still learn procedures, but with a conceptual underpinning, so you understand what you’re doing. That’s not a new idea: it’s been in the air, and frustrating some parents, for 50 years or more. In the 1960’s, they called it New Math.
Back then, the reforms didn’t go so well because the concepts they were trying to teach were too abstract – too much set theory, in a nutshell, at least in the younger grades. So then there was a retrenchment, back to learning procedures. But these things seem to go in cycles, and now we’re trying to teach concepts better again. This time more flexibly, less abstractly, with more examples. At least that’s the hope, and I share that hope.
I also agree with your point about needing some common standards defining what gets taught at each grade level. You don’t want to be super-prescriptive, but you need to ensure some kind of consistency between schools. Otherwise, what happens when a kid switches schools? Math, especially, is such a cumulative subject that you really need to have some big picture consistency in how you teach it.
Assessment
ES: What I disagree with is the increased emphasis on standardized testing, especially the raised stakes of those tests. I want to see better, more consistent standards and curriculum, but I think that can and should happen without putting this very heavy and punitive assessment mechanism on top of it.
KW: Yes, claiming to want to assess ability (which is a good thing), but then connecting the results to a teacher’s effectiveness in that moment is insincere evaluation. And using a standardized test not created by the teacher with material not covered in class as a hard percentage of a teacher’s evaluation makes little sense. I understand that much of the exam is testing critical thinking, ability to reason and use logic, and so on. It’s not about specific content, and that’s fine. (I really do think that’s fine!) Linking teacher evaluations to it is not.
Students cannot be taught to think critically in six months. As you mentioned about the spiraling back to concepts, those skills need to be revisited again and again in different contexts. And I agree, tests needn’t be the main driver for raising standards and developing curriculum. But they can give a good read on overall strengths and weaknesses. And if PARCC is supposed to be about assessing student strengths and weaknesses, it should be informing adjustments in curriculum.
On a smaller scale, strong teachers and staffs are supposed to work as a team to influence the entire school and district with adjusted curriculum as well. With a wide reach like the Common Core, a worrying issue is that different parts of the USA will have varying needs to meet. Making adjustments for all based on such a wide collection of assessments is counterintuitive. Local districts (and the principals and teachers in them) need to have leeway with applying them to best suit their own students.
Even so, I do like some things about data driven curricula. Teachers and school administrators are some of the most empathetic and caring people there are, but they are still human, and biases exist. Teachers, guidance counselors, administrators can’t help but be affected by personal sympathies and peeves. Having a consistent assessment of skills can be very helpful for those students who sometimes fall through the cracks. Basically, standards: yes. Linking scores to teacher evaluation: no.
ES: Yes, I just don’t get the conventional wisdom that we can only tell that the reforms are working, at both the individual and group level, through standardized test results. It gives us some information, but it’s still just a proxy. A highly imperfect proxy at that, and we need to have lots of others.
I also really like your point that, as you’re rolling out national standards, you need some local assessment to help you see how those national standards are meeting local needs. It’s a safeguard against getting too cookie-cutter.
I think it’s incredibly important that, as you and I talk, we can separate changes we like from changes we don’t. One reason there’s so much noise and confusion now is that everything – standards, curriculum, testing – gets lumped together under “Common Core.” It becomes this giant kitchen sink that’s very hard to talk about in a rational way. Testing especially should be separated out because it’s fundamentally an issue of process, whereas standards and curriculum are really about content.
You take a guy like Cuomo in New York. He’s trying to increase the reliance on standardized tests in teacher evaluations, so that value added models based on test scores count for half of a teacher’s total evaluation. And he says stuff like this: “Everyone will tell you, nationwide, the key to education reform is a teacher evaluation system.” That’s from his State of the State address in January. He doesn’t care about making the content better at all. “Everyone” will tell you! I know for a fact that the people spending all their time figuring out at what grade level kids should start to learn about fractions aren’t going tell you that!
I couldn’t disagree with that guy more, but I’m not going to argue with him based on whether or not I like the problems my kids are getting in math class. I’m going to point out examples, which he should be well aware of by now, of how badly the models work. That’s a totally different discussion, about what we can model accurately and fairly and what we can’t.
So let’s have that discussion. Starting point: if you want to use test scores to evaluate teachers, you need a model because – I think everyone agrees on this – how kids do on a test depends on much more than how good their teacher was. There’s the talent of the kid, what preparation they got outside their teacher’s classroom, whether they got a good night’s sleep the night before, and a good breakfast, and lots of other things. As well as natural randomness: maybe the reading comprehension section was about DNA, and the kid just read a book about DNA last month. So you need a model to break out the impact of the teacher. And the models we have today, even the most state-of-the-art ones, can give you useful aggregate information, but they just don’t work at that level of detail. I’m saying this as a math person, and the American Statistical Association agrees. I’ve written about this here and here and here and here.
Having student test results impact teacher evaluations is my biggest objection to PARCC, by far.
KW: Yep. Can I just cut and paste what you’ve said? However, for me, another distasteful aspect is how technology is tangled up in the PARCC exam.
Technology
ES: Let me tell you the saddest thing I’ve heard all week. There’s a guy named Dan Meyer, who writes very interesting things about math education, both in his blog and on Twitter. He put out a tweet about a bunch of kids coming into a classroom and collectively groaning when they saw laptops on every desk. And the reason was that they just instinctively assumed they were either about to take a test or do test prep.
That feels like such a collective failure to me. Look, I work in technology, and I’m still optimistic that it’s going to have a positive impact on math education. You can use computers to do experiments, visualize relationships, reinforce concepts by having kids code them up, you name it. The new standards emphasize data analysis and statistics much more than any earlier standards did, and I think that’s a great thing. But using computers primarily as a testing tool is an enormous missed opportunity. It’s like, here’s the most amazing tool human beings have ever invented, and we’re going to use it primarily as a paperweight. And we’re going to waste class time teaching kids exactly how to use it as a paperweight. That’s just so dispiriting.
KW: That’s something that hardly occurred to me. My main objection to hosting the PARCC exam on computers – and giving preparation homework and assignments that MUST be done on a computer – is the unfairness inherent in accessibility. It’s one more way to widen the achievement gap that we are supposed to be minimizing. I wrote about it from one perspective here.
I’m sure there are some students who test better on a computer, but the playing field has to be evenly designed and aggressively offered. Otherwise, a major part of what the PARCC is testing is how accurately and quickly children use a keyboard. And in the aggregate, the group that will have scores negatively impacted will be children with less access to the technology used on the PARCC. That’s not an assessment we need to test to know. When I took the practice tests, I found some questions quite clear, but others were difficult not for content but in maneuvering to create a fraction or other concept. Part of that can be solved through practice and comfort with the technology, but then we return to what we’re actually testing.
ES: Those are both great points. The last thing you want to do is force kids to write math on a computer, because it’s really hard! Math has lots of specialized notation that’s much easier to write with pencil and paper, and learning how to write math and use that notation is a big part of learning the subject. It’s not easy, and you don’t want to put artificial obstacles in kids’ way. I want kids thinking about fractions and exponents and what they mean, and how to write them in a mathematical expression, but not worrying about how to put a numerator above a denominator or do a superscript or make a font smaller on a computer. Plus, why in the world would you limit what kids can express on a test to what they can input on a keyboard? A test is a proxy already, and this limits what it can capture even more.
I believe in using technology in education, but we’ve got the order totally backwards. Don’t introduce the computer as a device to administer tests, introduce it as a tool to help in the classroom. Use it for demos and experiments and illustrating concepts.
As far as access and fairness go, I think that’s another argument for using the computer as a teaching tool rather than a testing tool. If a school is using computers in class, then at least everyone has access in the classroom setting, which is a start. Now you might branch out from there to assignments that require a computer. But if that’s done right, and those assignments grow in an organic way out of what’s happening in the classroom, and they have clear learning value, then the school and the community are also morally obligated to make sure that everyone has access. If you don’t have a computer at home, and you need to do computer-based homework, then we have to get you computer access, after school hours, or at the library, or what have you. And that might actually level the playing field a bit. Whereas now, many computer exercises feel like they’re primarily there to get kids used to the testing medium. There isn’t the same moral imperative to give everybody access to that.
I really want to hear more about your experience with the PARCC practice tests, though. I’ve seen many social media threads about unclear questions, both in a testing context and more generally with the Common Core. It sounds like you didn’t think it was so bad?
KW: Well, “not so bad” in that I am a 45 year old who was really trying to take the practice exam honestly, but didn’t feel stressed about the results. However, I found the questions with fractions confusing in execution on the computer (I almost gave up), and some of the questions really had to be read more than once. Now, granted, I haven’t been exposed to the language and technique of the exam. That matters a lot. In the SAT, for example, if you don’t know the testing language and format it will adversely affect your performance. This is similar to any format of an exam or task, even putting together an IKEA nightstand.
There are mainly two approaches to preparation, and out of fear of failing, some school districts are doing hardcore test preparation – much like SAT preparation classes – to the detriment of content and skill-based learning. Others are not altering their classroom approaches radically; in fact, some teachers and parents have told me they hardly notice a difference. My unscientific observations point to a separation between the two that is lined in Socio-Economic Status. If districts feel like they are on the edge or have a lot to lose (autonomy, funding, jobs), if makes sense that they would be reactionary in dealing with the PARCC exam. Ironically, schools that treat the PARCC like a high-stakes test are the ones losing the most.
Opting Out
KW: Despite my misgivings, I’m not in favor of “opting out” of the test. I understand the frustration that has prompted the push some districts are experiencing, but there have been some compromises in New Jersey. I was glad to see that the NJ Assembly voted to put off using the PARCC results for student placement and teacher evaluations for three years. And I was relieved, though not thrilled, that the percentage of PARCC results to be used in teacher evaluations was lowered to 10% (and now put off). I still think it should not be a part of teacher evaluations, but 10% is an improvement.
Rather than refusing the exam, I’d prefer to see the PARCC in action and compare honest data to school and teacher-generated assessments in order to improve the assessment overall. I believe an objective state or national model is worth having; relying only on teacher-based assessment has consistency and subjective problems in many areas. And that goes double for areas with deeply disadvantaged students.
ES: Yes, NJ seems to be stepping back from the brink as far as model-driven teacher evaluation goes. I think I feel the same way you do, but if I lived in NY, where Cuomo is trying to bump up the weight of value added models in evaluations to 50%, I might very well be opting out.
Let me illustrate the contrast – NY vs. NJ, more test prep vs. less — with an example. My family is good friends with a family that lived in NYC for many years, and just moved to Montclair a couple months ago. Their older kid is in third grade, which is the grade level where all this testing starts. In their NYC gifted and talented public school, the test was this big, stressful thing, and it was giving the kid all kinds of test anxiety. So the mom was planning to opt out. But when they got to Montclair, the kid’s teacher was much more low key, and telling the kids not to worry. And once it became lower stakes, the kid wanted to take the test! The mom was still ambivalent, but she decided that here was an opportunity for her kid to get used to tests without anxiety, and that was the most important factor for her.
I’m trying to make two points here. One: whether or not you opt out depends on lots of factors, and people’s situations and priorities can be very different. We need to respect that, regardless of which way people end up going. Two: shame on us, as grown ups, for polluting our kids’ education with our anxieties! We need to stop that, and that extends both to the education policies we put in place and how we collectively debate those policies. I guess what I’m saying is: less noise, folks, please.
KW: Does this very long blog post count as noise, Eugene? I wonder how this will be assessed? There are so many other issues – private profits from public education, teacher autonomy in high performing schools, a lack of educational supplies and family support, and so on. But we have to start somewhere with civil and productive discourse, right? So, thank you for having the conversation.
ES: Kristin, I won’t try to predict anyone else’s assessment, but I will keep mine low stakes and say this has been a pleasure!
A critique of a review of a book by Bruce Schneier
I haven’t yet read Bruce Schneier’s new book, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles To Collect Your Data and Control Your World. I plan to in the coming days, while I’m traveling with my kids for spring break.
Even so, I already feel capable of critiquing this review of his book (hat tip Jordan Ellenberg), written by Columbia Business School Professor and Investment Banker Jonathan Knee. You see, I’m writing a book myself on big data, so I feel like I understand many of the issues intimately.
The review starts out flattering, but then it hits this turn:
When it comes to his specific policy recommendations, however, Mr. Schneier becomes significantly less compelling. And the underlying philosophy that emerges — once he has dispensed with all pretense of an evenhanded presentation of the issues — seems actually subversive of the very democratic principles that he claims animates his mission.
That’s a pretty hefty charge. Let’s take a look into Knee’s evidence that Schneier wants to subvert democratic principles.
NSA
First, he complains that Schneier wants the government to stop collecting and mining massive amounts of data in its search for terrorists. Knee thinks this is dumb because it would be great to have lots of data on the “bad guys” once we catch them.
Any time someone uses the phrase “bad guys,” it makes me wince.
But putting that aside, Knee is either ignorant of or is completely ignoring what mass surveillance and data dredging actually creates: the false positives, the time and money and attention, not to mention the potential for misuse and hacking. Knee’s opinion on that is simply that we normal citizens just don’t know enough to have an opinion on whether it works, including Schneier, and in spite of Schneier knowing Snowden pretty well.
It’s just like waterboarding – Knee says – we can’t be sure it isn’t a great fucking idea.
Wait, before we move on, who is more pro-democracy, the guy who wants to stop totalitarian social control methods, or the guy who wants to leave it to the opaque authorities?
Corporate Data Collection
Here’s where Knee really gets lost in Schneier’s logic, because – get this – Schneier wants corporate collection and sale of consumer data to stop. The nerve. As Knee says:
Mr. Schneier promotes no less than a fundamental reshaping of the media and technology landscape. Companies with access to large amounts of personal data would be “automatically classified as fiduciaries” and subject to “special legal restrictions and protections.”
That these limits would render illegal most current business models — under which consumers exchange enhanced access by advertisers for free services – does not seem to bother Mr. Schneier”
I can’t help but think that Knee cannot understand any argument that would threaten the business world as he knows it. After all, he is a business professor and an investment banker. Things seem pretty well worked out when you live in such an environment.
By Knee’s logic, even if the current business model is subverting democracy – which I also argue in my book – we shouldn’t tamper with it because it’s a business model.
The way Knee paints Schneier as anti-democratic is by using the classic fallacy in big data which I wrote about here:
Although professing to be primarily preoccupied with respect of individual autonomy, the fact that Americans as a group apparently don’t feel the same way as he does about privacy appears to have little impact on the author’s radical regulatory agenda. He actually blames “the media” for the failure of his positions to attract more popular support.
Quick summary: Americans as a group do not feel this way because they do not understand what they are trading when they trade their privacy. Commercial and governmental interests, meanwhile, are all united in convincing Americans not to think too hard about it. There are very few people devoting themselves to alerting people to the dark side of big data, and Schneier is one of them. It is a patriotic act.
Also, yes Professor Knee, “the media” generally speaking writes down whatever a marketer in the big data world says is true. There are wonderful exceptions, of course.
So, here’s a question for Knee. What if you found out about a threat on the citizenry, and wanted to put a stop to it? You might write a book and explain the threat; the fact that not everyone already agrees with you wouldn’t make your book anti-democratic, would it?
MLK
The rest of the review basically boils down to, “you don’t understand the teachings of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior like I do.”
Do you know about Godwin’s law, which says that as soon as someone invokes the Nazis in an argument about anything, they’ve lost the argument?
I feel like we need another, similar rule, which says, if you’re invoking MLK and claiming the other person is misinterpreting him while you have him nailed, then you’ve lost the argument.
Data Justice Launches!
I’m super excited to announce that I’m teaming up with Nathan Newman and Frank Pasquale on a newly launched project called Data Justice and subtitled Challenging Rising Exploitation and Economic Inequality from Big Data.
Nathan Newman is the director of Data Justice and is a lawyer and policy advocate. You might remember his work with racial and economic profiling of Google ads. Frank Pasquale is a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of a book I recently reviewed called The Black Box Society.
The mission for Data Justice can be read here and explains how we hope to build a movement on the data justice front by working across various disciplines like law, computer science, and technology. We also have a blog and a press release which I hope you have time to read.
Aunt Pythia’s advice
Dearest readers, do you know how much Aunt Pythia loves you and misses you during the week? So much that she’s baked everyone a pie for pi day:
Confession: I stole this pic off the web. I could never make a pie that perfect.
According to my calculations, it’s about to be a once-in-a-century moment to celebrate the number pi, so please grab a fork.
Also, you know what they say about April showers bringing May flowers, right? Well now it’s March showers too. It’s raining impressively outside. It’s all good though, because Aunt Pythia is counting on the rain to wash away all those nasty cigarette butts that have emerged from the dirty melted snow. Yuck!
A final word before we get started: this column doesn’t just happen, it’s all about you guys asking your very serious and important questions (no fewer than two sex-related questions this week!) and Aunt Pythia’s terrible and poorly thought out advice, and then of course the commenters who correct me. In other words, it’s just like public radio except more titillating.
All this to say that, after you read today’s column, don’t forget to:
ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!
By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I met my boyfriend last spring. We’re both STEM majors and had a DiffEq class together. We quickly learned to integrate. We also found ways to locate the local maximum quickly when needed or to calculate the slow, asymptotic convergence to the major axis. My problem is not with Jim.
We each live in apartments off campus even though our families are in the local metro area. We have visited each other’s homes many times. In late spring when it got warm we began going to Jim’s mother’s house on the weekend to swim in the pool and get some sun.
Mrs. W is divorced and she dates frequently. Jim has told me she has no serious relationships, but he thinks she has several FWBs. She is a partner in a prestigious law firm. She works long hours so Jim and I frequently have the uninterrupted use of the house.
One Saturday in June, we went out to the house to go swimming. When I walked out to the pool, I saw Mrs. W sunning herself. Dressed in a tankini with boy shorts, her mid-forties, well-toned body looked fabulous. She got up to greet me as always. She usually gives me a collarbone-to-collarbone hug and a kiss on the cheek. This time the hug was a full-body hug and a wet kiss landed on the side of my neck. Additionally, one of her hands ended up low on my back; so low that her pinky rested on my bikini bottom right at the top of my butt. The full-body hug, kiss on the neck and hand low on my back became her standard greeting whenever we met.
On Labor Day Jim and I decided to have an end-of-summer pool closing party. I drove out to the house early to help set up. When I got there, Mrs. W greeted me at the door with her hug and told me that Jim had run to the store to get drinks and snacks. She followed me to Jim’s room where I stripped off the shorts and tank top I had worn over my bikini. She hugged me again, telling me how glad she was that Jim and I were dating. It was her standard hug, except this time her hand slipped inside my bikini bottom until her fingers rested over the top of my crack. After about 5 seconds, she jumped back apologizing profusely for being clumsy.
In December she announced that she was giving me clothes for Christmas. We went shopping at a very upscale department store. We selected several outfits for me to try on. She also selected four halter tops that she said she would need when she and an FWB went to Aruba for New Year’s. We entered the dressing room and I eagerly began mixing and matching tops and bottoms. Mrs. W took off her blouse and bra to try on the halter tops. Soon we had chosen the outfits for me. Mrs. W had selected the tops she wanted also. The last top did not look good against her skin and she suggested that I try it on.
She took it off and handed it to me. When I had it on, she said it looked great and we would get it so I could wear it for Jim in the spring. I slipped back out of it. Mrs. W told me how much she enjoyed taking me shopping and gave me a hug. We were both topless and she held me for half a minute or more. I was surprised at how nice it felt.
Since that shopping trip, Mrs. W has featured in some of my solo fantasies.
My birthday is coming up in early March. As my birthday gift, Mrs. W has invited me to go on a ‘girl’s only’ weekend to a resort spa. I’m excited about the possibilities yet a little scared to go.
Now my two questions: (1) Am I reading her signals right? (2) She’s my boyfriend’s mom!?!?
Befuddled In MAssachusetts Yet Bewitched and Excited
Dear BIMAYBE,
Holy. I can’t, even. I mean, for fuck’s sake.
How long did it take you to concoct that story?! That is absolutely amazing. You should totally start writing singles for Amazon Kindle. You are really miles ahead of your competition. I’m sweaty over here on a chilly rainy late winter morning.
Plus, the math at the beginning, and the sign-off at the end. Just phenomenal. Maybe my favorite all-time Aunt Pythia submission (har har).
Hey, you know what? Instead of answering your ridiculous and fabricated questions at the end, can I instead ask you a question?
Thanks, here it is: can you come over and hang out with me and tell me how you come up with that stuff? I’m all ears. My email is on my “about” page. Please let me know it’s really you by sending me the next chapter.
And, just in case you are for real, I’ll just say, my advice is to write down what happens next and send it to me via email (which is on my “about” page). Because there’s really nothing at stake here, no morals to worry about, at least that I can see from my vantage point of heavy breathing voyeur.
So yes, my question and my answer amount to the same thing: SEND ME MORE!
Love,
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Do you think that we will ever see legal, on-line gambling or will the gambling interests be able to continue to block it? There is a Costa Rican website that we are allowed to use, but I don’t understand why poker players can’t gamble legally? I have thought, at least, that is still true.
Sonambulist
Dear Sonambulist,
Huh? What? Gambling? Not sure, completely distracted. Please do look that up.
Oh wait, it looks complicated. As in, you’d probably not get in trouble as a user, but if you wanted to set something up you might want to be prepared to flee quickly if and when your site is discovered. Also, it might depend whether you can convincingly argue that poker is a game of skill, not of luck. Personally I have been very very consistently unlucky with poker, so I’d say luck.
Auntie P
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
My Office Cat likes to sit on my keyboard and set in front of the display. What can I do? He needs to be in the office, because his litter box is in the office closet. Also, he likes to be with me.
Missing Link
Dear ML,
I think you’ve confused me for a cat person. I am not. I am a dog person. Dog people don’t understand cat people in various aspects, and this would be one of those aspects. From my perspective, you have a few choices:
- find a new job (with dog people),
- bring your dog to work,
- figure out a way of making your keyboard less comfortable, or
- figure out a way of making something else more comfortable for the cat than your keyboard. For example, build the cat a place to play. Be this guy, who is super awesome and makes me love cat people. Then, after you build the cat palace for 15 years or so, you can get your work done.
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Total egghead here. I want to write an op-ed, but I’d like to find some data to support my arguments. (“For example, at Big State U, precalculus courses make up 80% of the courses taught, and they’re taught largely by mathematics graduate students.”) But the problem I’m facing as an out-of-date mathematician is this: how the hell do you actually get your paws on data?! Surely public universities should make such data available…somewhere. Right? Or am I nutters?
Upstate Upstart
Dear UU,
Good question, and the answer is I’m not sure. Readers?
Auntie P
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Sorry in advance for any TMI. I’m a 20-year-old female nerd suffering from a common sexual dysfunction: it’s a chronic muscle spasm in my nether regions which makes any form of penetration incredibly painful. I’ve never been able to insert so much as a tampon without discomfort.
I can certainly experience pleasure in other ways, but as a horny and regrettably heterosexual college student, this has really thrown a wrench in my romantic/sex life. I exude the personality of someone who’d have a lot of casual sex, but I frequently pass on hookups I’d otherwise pursue for fear of embarrassing myself or disappointing the person in question. I’ve had some very understanding partners in the past, but I’m single right now and about to move to a new place without any old flames.
Obviously you’re not a physical therapist and can’t fix my actual problem, but I guess my question is, is it impolite to pick up dudes at a bar or party with no intention of letting anything more than a finger in my cooch? How transparent should I be about my issue? How weird will I come off as if I dodge the act without going into detail about why? Do you have any ideas for a smooth exit strategy?
Again… sorry for TMI…
Venture Among Girls Instead Now? Invoke Spinsterhood? More Uncomfortable Sex?
Dear VAGINISMUS,
ARE YOU KIDDING?!!? Aunt Pythia does not understand the meaning of the phrase “TMI.” Plus, she loves learning about new things, although this specific thing is bad news, and she’s very sorry you have to deal with it.
As for your question. It is very very clear in my head that you have not made any vaginal promises to a man just by picking him up in a bar. There are all sorts of ways to enjoy time together, clothed or naked, without doing something that would cause you pain. You have no apologies to make, and neither do you have explanations.
I do think you might want to be prepared to offer pleasure in other ways, but goodness knows you already have a long list of such methods. There’s not a drunk male alive that wouldn’t be satisfied with that list. If you get to know someone well, and it’s actually a sober 5th date, then of course you might feel like explaining what’s up. But absolutely do it on your own time, and don’t stand for anything except gratitude.
Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
——
Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have made progress on that project instead.
But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.
Click here for a form or just do it now:
Earth’s aphelion and perihelion
Sometimes the stuff I think about gets me down. I mean, jeez, I think about cynical stuff all the time, and I need to rest my brain sometimes.
When that happens, I sometimes fantasize about really long-term things that happen in the solar system or even the universe. It gives me perspective.
One of my favorite videos to watch at these moments is this one, which always blows my mind. The take-away: nothing is permanent unless there is actually a physical law forcing it to be. Here it is:
p.s. I vote for “tropical year” because I love analemmas.
p.p.s. Looking forward to Vega being the pole star once again.
p.p.p.s. This came up because my husband and I got into a conversation about earth’s aphelion and perihelion and we were wondering if it’s just by chance that perihelion happens near the beginning of winter. The answer is yes, because [take-away above].
p.p.p.p.s. How cool is the name “invariable plane”? And how amazing that the period of the orbiting plane of the earth and the period of the axial tilt are different? There’s really nothing that we can rely on, is there?
Tomtown Ramblers killing it
Last night my bluegrass band, the Tomtown Ramblers, was killing it at band practice. Here’s a picture of us learning a song:
When we sing in 3 part harmony we get all squeezed together.
As for what song it was, probably this one:
What we lacked in talent we made up for in numbers.
If you’re a musician and want to jam with us, come to Clearwater at the end of June, we’ll (mostly all) be there!
Illegitimate international debt
How do you declare international debt illegitimate?
When is debt so odious that the taxpayers of a government have no obligation to pay it back?
This is a huge, important question. It’s a question currently plaguing Argentina and Greece, for example. Individuals in both countries have explained to me that the debt was taken on by previous regimes that stuffed their own pockets, and then amplified by terrible deals with predatory investment banks. The average individual citizen feels very little personal responsibility to pay that debt back, consisting as it does of interest payments to the banking system.
The movie we showed at Alt Banking last week, Who’s Saving Whom, also made the case that Spain could declare its taxpayer debt illegitimate, considering that the banking system got bailed out on the taxpayer dime.
Well, now the Center for Global Development has come up with an idea in this direction, called Preemptive Contract Sanctions (hat tip Philip Sterne). They’re aiming it at Syrian debt for Russian arms, and claiming that this debt is odious and illegitimate from the outset. The idea is, if the international community can get together and agree that such debt is odious, and that they will not lift a finger in the future to help the borrower get their money back, then it would be harder to borrow the money, and maybe even impossible, and it wouldn’t saddle future citizens of Syria with that burden.
It’s an interesting idea – see the video here:
It wouldn’t necessarily help solve the current debt crises of Argentina and Greece, which built up over many years, but I like the idea of all debt living on a spectrum of morality. Too often when contracts enter the financial system, they are utterly sanitized and legitimized in the eyes of the international community.
Aunt Pythia’s advice
Readers! Lots of love to spread today, and I’ve got a love shovel. So be prepared to get covered from head to toe in love.
And no, it’s nothing like snow, so don’t worry about wearing boots or anything. In fact it’s best experienced naked, as most good things are. Think of it as powerful self-love which has been donated to you by a good friend, along with a strong cup of tea and a delicious piece of chocolate babka from Breads Bakery. Holy fuck that’s good stuff.
If you don’t know what I mean by self-love then go ahead and read this piece (hat tip Becky Jaffe).
Also, and relatedly, if you find self-love interesting, you might also find Bitch Planet interesting. I haven’t read it yet but I read this review, and I found it fascinating, especially this line:
Penny not only feels more herself at her size … she also doesn’t care if she offends your eye; in fact, she prefers it.
Fascinating food for thought.
Hey, now, don’t let me get distracted. It’s time for some advice! It’s that time again when I take your perfectly reasonable questions and utterly fuck them up with terrible suggestions. Are you ready? Let’s do this!!
And afterwards, don’t forget to:
ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!
By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I’m a math student in my last year (yay!) who has found an incredible study/friend group to work/socialize with since starting college and, overall, I would say life is pretty awesome (infinity yay!). Recently one of these friends (let’s call him X) has come out and, being a gay guy myself, I feel super proud of him and I want him to feel supported by everyone and to help make this transition as smooth as possible (I remember only too well how unpleasant it was for myself).
There is, however, one quirk of his that I don’t approve of and try to discourage: continually hitting on/sexually objectifying a straight male friend of ours (let’s call him Y). Y has confided in me that he is extremely uncomfortable with him doing this. I’ve seen it in action before and really any person (gay or straight) would share the same visceral reaction of extreme discomfort seeing X behave as he does around Y. I’ve tried a few times to take X aside and explain that I, too, have had feelings for straight male friends and wanted to act out the way he does, but it’s actually very rude and inconsiderate to do those things; in fact it’s no different from a straight male making unwanted sexual advances on a female colleague. But it doesn’t seem to stick. I thought it would get better once he started seeing guys, since he would have an outlet for his sexual energy, but it’s only gotten worse.
More recently, his unwanted sexual hovering has spread to basically any straight male he finds attractive. Obviously, I’m concerned for X’s sake that if he continues acting this way, he’ll end up alienating himself both professionally and socially from a lot of people (man and woman, gay and straight). My opinion (barring exceptional cases) is that people who come out before the age of 25 should get a 6-month pass to clean up whatever shit they brought with them from their straight days. But it’s been almost 4 months and it’s not getting any better.
What can I say (if anything at all) to my sexually-objectifying gay male nerd friend X? Am I doomed to watch this turn into a train wreck or should I just accept that I can’t fix this problem for him and move on? I still care a lot about his well-being and obviously want the best for him. HELP US, PLEASE?
Got A Lotta (\bar{Q}uirky/Questions)
Dear GAL(\bar{Q}/Q),
If I saw such behavior I’d just speak up, for X’s sake, Y’s sake, and a whole bunch of other (Y’)’s sakes. And I think you should too.
In fact, you’ve got a wonderful set of points to make to him, along these lines:
- I’m really glad you came out, good for you.
- In general I think people get a 6-month pass on weird stuff after they come out.
- For you it’s been 4 already, and I’m getting worried.
- Because I see some of your behavior as offensive, even if you don’t, and I’m worried about you.
- Namely, you focus too much sexual energy on straight guys who are not inviting it.
- I’ll talk about this more if you want, but I want you to know I’m here for you.
Obviously, when you make such a speech to a friend, they are likely to feel ashamed and angry. So expect that, and give it time. You will be doing the right thing, and I expect your friendship will survive. And if it doesn’t, you might not want to hang out with him after all.
Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Auntie P,
I am new to the site and I’ve already read all of your articles for this year. Every time I revisit your website, I have to scroll down for a while until I can find the next article I haven’t read. I appreciate the ‘Categories’ button but I’ve still encountered the same issue here.
I was wondering if you could organize the site better to make it easier to navigate around. Here are a few sorting suggestions:
1. Sort for most popular to least popular.
2. Sort based on blog entry year.
3. Sort based on oldest to newest.
Thanks!
Seeking Order Restore Trust
Dear SORT,
Nice sign off.
OK so let me get this straight, you want the greatest Aunt Pythia hits, and my current system of search by category is getting you down. I appreciate the love and want to help, obv.
The thing is, I’m not sure how to correct this. WordPress.com only gives me so many tools to work with. Moreover, they’ve lately been arbitrarily presenting me with a “new” and an “old” system for blogging, and in the old system I had categories laid out for me, hard to ignore or forget, and I’d pretty consistently categorize my posts with “Aunt Pythia” when applicable, but in the new system the categories are impossible to find, so some recent Aunt Pythia columns don’t even get categorized in the Aunt Pythia category!
In other words, major sorting calamity.
I’d love to do better. If anyone knows more than I do about how to work with an archive of wordpress posts, please pipe up, thanks.
Love always,
Auntie P
——
Hey Aunt Pythia!
Thanks for your column. I want to get your thoughts on a situation been going around and around in my head for ages (help!). I know there won’t be just one answer to this – but I wanna get yours!
You write about being someone who falls in love all the time, but you also write about being in a relationship. How can other couples get past the hurt/betrayal that so often seems to accompany extra-relationship flirting / crushes / affairs?
I’m in a long-term relationship I value and I see it continuing indefinitely – unless I get caught flirting and cheating again. My partner feels betrayed by this behavior, but I’m not sure I can (or want to) resist the thrill I get from it. We both want to make our relationship work but aren’t sure how.
Flirt Alert
Dear Flirt Alert,
Lots of different approaches to this, naturally.
Important question: you say your partner feels betrayed by this behavior, but you don’t say what you’ve said to your partner when you’ve been previously caught cheating. Did you promise never to do it again? Or did you explain that you still love your partner and still want to stay with them?
I know to many that may sound like splitting hairs to some, but I think it’s key.
For the cheaters I know, at least the successful ones, they don’t lie to their partners and pretend they’ll never again stray. They acknowledge the feeling of betrayal, they try to prevent pain in their loved ones, but they don’t promise they’ll change, because they know they won’t.
Here’s my advice. In a moment when there’s no temptation in sight, when you are not crushed out on anyone and so there’s no imminent threat, talk to your partner about your love for them, about your desire to stay with them, and about the irresistible thrill you get out of flirting and – yes – sometimes more. Explain that you don’t think this is something that will go away, and that if you “promise” it will never again happen, you’re afraid that will be an empty promise. See what happens.
For fuck’s sake, don’t wait until you are dying to fuck some cutie at work to bring up this topic, because that will come out and then jealousy will ensue. Talk about it abstractly to see if an arrangement can be made.
Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
p.s. Some readers might wonder what I mean by “successful cheaters.” I’m gonna leave it there for now but feel free to ask.
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Perhaps you would please give me some study advice. In disregard, but no doubt substantiating, Hardy’s admonition: do not attempt over sixty (as in the essay you mention on the blog), I am a 70 year-old self studier having started three years ago.
Needless to say I am nowhere near as proficient as I would like to be, but so what. I really dig it.
I have picked a lot of the low hanging fruit in a standard undergrad curriculum. As an alternative to academic texts (I have been quite picky in choosing them), I would really like focus and cultivate a bit of expertise in some niche area.
I would appreciate any study recommendations: I would be most interested in a cool topic, especially if it has a masterpiece text or set of notes. I am deliberately avoiding expressing any preferences for particular areas as I am more interested in the process.
Thanks for giving this your consideration.
Best regards,
Antipodal
Antipodal,
Are you kidding me? I learned everything I know from wikipedia and other people. I basically never read technical books.
But good luck!
Aunt Pythia
p.s. Have you seen this?
——
Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have made progress on that project instead.
But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.
Click here for a form or just do it now:
Patent trolls
This morning I’m preparing for my weekly Slate Money podcast by trying to learn all about patents and patent trolls. To tell you the truth, so far I don’t know why patent trolls are all that bad, besides the fact that they obviously have a terrible sounding name. It seems like the patent system works in many ways for good, at least when there’s no weird extensions of the time limitations and the original patent was valid. Feel free to disagree, though, and tell me why.
Also on the slate (harhar): Amanda Palmer, Wu-Tang Clan, and Lumber Liquidators. Another typical week in the world of podcasting, in other words.
My number of the week is going to be 2063, by the way, but I’m not saying why.
Affordable Housing Needs a Reset #OWS
I’m super proud of the latest Huffington Post piece that Alt Banking put out entitled Affordable Housing Needs a Reset. Here’s an excerpt:
We’ve been hearing a lot lately from New York Mayor de Blasio on his affordable housing plan. He says he will “build or preserve” 200,000 housing units, but the plan would only build 8,000 units a year. Unless it is radically changed, the mayor’s plan will squander public assets, enrich real estate developers, but do very little for the record number of people living in the shelter system or at risk of landing there.
Let’s first talk about how the term “affordable housing” is defined and whether it jives with our concept of the kinds of places New Yorkers can actually afford to live in. The mayor’s plan defines an apartment renting for $41,500 a year as affordable because a family of four with $138,435 in income can afford it ― even though that is more than twice the actual New York City median 4-person household income of $63,000. That is, most New Yorkers cannot afford an “affordable apartment” by the mayor’s standards.
The mayor’s plan tracks the pattern New York City has religiously followed for quite some time of trying to “incentivize” private development. The city effectively pays a fortune to private developers to build this kind of stuff. Here is a frightening statistic from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development: in 2013, New York City gave private developers a pass on $1.2 billion in taxes in order to stimulate the building of 153,000 units of housing ― just 12,000 of which met the messed-up definition of affordability. Hard to believe we couldn’t have done a lot better by simply collecting those taxes.
Read the rest of the essay here.
Two articles on understanding statistical error
Today I want to share two articles today which call on the public to try to understand scientific error at a deeper level than we do now.
First, an academic journal called Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has decided to ban articles using p-values. This was written up in Nature news (hat tip Nikki Leger) with an excellent discussion of the good and bad things that might result. On the one hand, p-values are thoroughly gamed and too easy to achieve with repetitive testing, resulting in a corpus that is skewed towards such testing situations. On the other hand, if you get rid of p-values you have to replace them with something to give you an idea of whether a statistical result is interesting. Of course there are plenty others out there, but they too may quickly become gamed.
Second, The Big Story has an in-depth article on evidence-based sentencing and paroling models and what can go wrong there (hat tip Auros Harman). They focus on the fact that the people filling out the questionnaires can and do lie in order to game their scores and leave jail earlier. They also mention the fact that the scores are quite unrobust to small changes in input, specifically age. Finally, they punish people for being poor or for “hanging out with the wrong crowd” or even for having parents that went to jail.
Aunt Pythia’s advice
People!
Do you really hate my advice? Do you disagree with everything I ever say, and wish you had an outlet for your frustration?
If so, good news for you today. I have officially found the place in the world where you can get advice which is the exact opposite of mine, namely by watching the new TV show Sex Box and then listening to the awful and rigid suggestions from the three judges. From the entertaining review of Sex Box:
Married couples briefly describe their unfulfilling sex lives, then are sent to the box, on the theory that the release of endorphins following sex will put them in the mood for a frank postcoital discussion of their problems. In the premiere, none of the men fall asleep after leaving the box, though this is a distinct possibility for viewers of any gender.
Worst part: the sex box is actually not made from clear material. We just have to take it on faith that sex is going on in there. But if that’s already enough for you guys, then be gone! Go ahead, leave!!
For those of you who are still here, I’ma let you into my sex-related reading list as a reward of loyalty. This very week I purchased two books which I think will be excellent reads, and might be titillating as well. Namely, Sex at Dawn and Sperm Wars.
I haven’t read this yet but the TED talk was pretty good.
Some of this stuff might be pseudo-science, but I don’t care, because it’s about sex.
I’m hoping to read these both over the next few days and weeks (after I finish the first three amazing Elena Ferrante Neopolitan Novels) and then write up a comparative review. I’d love to hear from you guys if you have more book recommendations in this genre. In the meantime,
ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!
By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Zac Weiner claims marriage is a lot like the Dollar Auction in game theory. I get the sinking feeling that his comic is an accurate portrayal of my life.
Do you agree with him? And if so, what is the best strategy to get out of a bad marriage?
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”
-Joshua
Dear Joshua,
Here’s the comic for anyone who doesn’t know what we’re talking about:
Here’s the thing. I think that people who wait for their spouse to end a marriage are cowardly. Let’s focus on that last frame, where the couple are both thinking that if the other one leaves them, it will be “easier.” Kind of the definition of cowardly to do something because it’s easier.
Also, easier in what sense? What are you trying avoid, guilt or unhappiness? I can only imagine that someone in that mindset has already accepted permanent unhappiness, barring some kind of miracle, and is focused on the last remaining issue, that of guilt.
Fuck that. Get more selfish (if you call it that) and focus on your own unhappiness, and screw the guilt. Tell your spouse you’re unhappy, because it’s more courageous, because it might be fixable, and because it will be much more likely to get fixed if you talk about it.
This is not a game, it’s your life.
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I was on vacation in Utrecht the other day, and was very surprised to find a vagina, apparently abandoned. Can I keep it, or should I hand it in to the police?
Someone Not Accustomed To Commenting Here
Dear SNATCH,
Keep it, take good care of it, and I mean really good care of it, and then please return it to its rightful owner, who will be ever ever so grateful, I’m absolutely sure of it.
Aunt Pythia
p.s. I love your sign-off. And everything else about you.
——
Hello Miss Pythia,
You are quoted here about your reflections on open algorithms.
Is it possible for a firm like Google to model billions of human brains when they collectively interact with computers? And if yes, why only do marketing when you can manipulate brains?
Michaël (Toulouse)
Dear Michael,
Marketing is manipulating brains. That’s exactly what marketing is, turning brains into things that pay you for stuff.
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
My sister and her girlfriend came to stay with me and my family (husband, kids) at Christmas. The girlfriend was lovely and a good time was had by all.
The girlfriend has started emailing me, not including my sister on the emails, saying what a great time she had, how much she liked me, how she couldn’t wait to come back and visit again, asking me (only — no family) to come out and visit her, trying to make some inside jokes about my family, etc. Each time I wrote back, looping in my sister, and was nice but distant. The first email or two were fine but I feel like she is either seriously boundary-challenged or is hitting on me.
Should I keep responding to her emails? Say something to her? Say something to my sister?
Sincerely,
Don’t Play On Your Team, Wouldn’t Sleep With You If I Did
Dear DPOYTWSWYIID,
This one is easy. Yes, she’s hitting on you. That’s fine because you’re super gorgeous and attractive and who wouldn’t want a piece of that? Everyone should be allowed to fall in love. I’d leave it at that, and strain to feel empathy for her situation rather than judgement.
As for what you should do: don’t write back, or wait like 6 weeks and then apologize for being super busy, and even then talk about incredibly boring things like getting your washing machine fixed and buying clothes for your ever-growing kids. Oh, and of course don’t tell your sister, nothing really happened.
Auntie P.
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I had a book published recently (December 8). My publisher’s schedule needs caused me to have to abruptly stop working on the book and hand it over. It is a reference book with a lot of data, so that meant that there is some missing data. I had an opportunity to add some more content late in the game. That caused the publication date to slip from October 15 to December 8. The editor and publisher decided that it was more important to get the additional content than to make the original date, which was a good thing. The bad thing is that there is still missing content. I was told that I might have an opportunity, if there are additional printings, to add content and fix errors. I am back to working a 40 hour-a-week job, so that reduces the time that I have to do anything. That was the factor which slowed down the research and writing process originally. I was laid off in May, so I had time to build the index and add content. I also corrected some errors. Should I be pushing finding and adding the missing content? I had made a small start, but then the holidays hit and stopped me again.
Lost in Space
Dear Lost In Space,
Given that this is a technical book, it’s more about your integrity and reputation than it is about money. If I were you I would work on it, and I’d also maintain a webpage with the most updated links to data. When and if the time comes, add it to the book. You won’t regret doing that for your readers, and neither will they.
Aunt Pythia
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Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have made progress on that project instead.
But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.
Click here for a form or just do it now:
For Profit Colleges Are The Real Villain
Scott Walker has recently made waves in Wisconsin by surreptitiously attempting to change the mission of the University of Wisconsin, and by threatening to remove $300 million of federal aid to the University of Wisconsin, citing the “laziness of professors” as a problem in need of a solution. On the one hand, he’s right to say there’s a crisis in higher education. But on the other hand, he has the wrong villain.
Instead of focusing on state schools like U of W, we should be investigating the toxic for-profit college industry. For-profit colleges have mushroomed in the last decade and tend to represent themselves as a solution to a very real problem; namely, that it’s become increasingly difficult to get a good job out of high school.
People who have been told to get a degree to pull themselves out of poverty are often faced with two options: enrolling at a nearby community college, or at a for-profit. But, partly because public funds are being diverted to for-profits, more affordable community colleges are not able to fill demand, leaving potential students with the more expensive alternative.
The results have proven to be terrible for the students. They leave with devastating debt, low graduation rates, and often no real education, often worse off than when they started.
This hasn’t gone completely unnoticed. The for-profit industry has been getting into repeated messy problems lately for fraudulent practices, including lying about graduation rates and post-graduation jobs. In the past year alone we’ve seen Corinthian, ITT, and GIBills.com get busted for fraudulent marketing practices.
This won’t be a surprise to those who know how these for-profits operate. They represent a revenue-maximizing industry which game the federal student aid programs for the poor and for veterans. Corinthian obtained $1.4 billion in federal grant and loan dollars in 2010 alone, more than the 10 University of California campuses combined for that same year. We could and should be getting more for our money.
Moreover, the industry specifically targets vulnerable, poor, minority single mothers online with misleading ads promising an easy degree and a new life. Once they have a phone number, they have trained recruiters repeatedly call and “poke the pain” of their targets.
Even when the fraudulent practices are discovered, as is the case with Corinthian, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has accused of running a “predatory lending scheme,” the students haven’t gotten their money back, and neither have the taxpayers.
Obama has been making noises about a new college ranking system. Instead he should create a flat-out fraud detection system, built explicitly to be harder to game than the current watered-down regulatory framework, and particularly considering these companies are professional gamers.
Even better, the government should cut for-profits off of public assistance, and divert subsidies to struggling community colleges and institutions like the University of Wisconsin, which are better positioned to serve the common good. When education becomes a profit center, things go awry: admissions counselors become salespeople, students become consumers to be wrung for every last dime, and administrators become executives who cash out while students and taxpayers are left with the tab.
Corinthian and the other for-profits are only the worst along the spectrum of bad, and almost no college is immune to these kinds of tricks. We need to do a better job of quality control and educational goals. Beyond real punishment for the worst offenders, and refunding bilked student’s money, we should immediately increase funding for state schools, and try to once again create a country of opportunity.
Big Data Is The New Phrenology
Have you ever heard of phrenology? It was, once upon a time, the “science” of measuring someone’s skull to understand their intellectual capabilities.
This sounds totally idiotic but was a huge fucking deal in the mid-1800’s, and really didn’t stop getting some credit until much later. I know that because I happen to own the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was written by the top scholars of the time but is now horribly and fascinatingly outdated.
For example, the entry for “Negro” is famously racist. Wikipedia has an excerpt: “Mentally the negro is inferior to the white… the arrest or even deterioration of mental development [after adolescence] is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro’s life and thoughts.”
But really that one line doesn’t tell the whole story. Here’s the whole thing, it’s long:
Pages 1 and 2
Pages 3 and 4
Pages 5 and 6
As you can see, they really go into it, with all sorts of data and speculative theories. But near the beginning there’s straight up racist phrenology:
From page 1
To be clear: this was produced by a culture that was using pseudo-scientific nonsense to validate an underlying toxic and racist mindset. There was nothing more to it, but because people become awed and confused around scientific facts and figures, it seemed to work as a validating argument in 1911.
Anyhoo, I thought this was an interesting back drop to the NPR story I wanted to share with you (hat tip Yves Smith) entitled Recruiting Better Talent With Brain Games And Big Data. You can read the transcript as well, you don’t have to listen. Basically the idea is you play video games and the machine takes note of how you play and the choices you make and comes back to you with a personality profile. That profile will help you get a job or will exclude you from a job if the company believes in the results. There’s been no scientific tests to see if or how this stuff works, we’re supposed to just believe in it because, you know, data is objective and everything.
Here’s the thing. What we’ve got is a new kind of awful pseudo-science, which replaces measurements of skulls with big data. There’s no reason to think this stuff is any less biased or discriminatory either: given that there’s no actual science behind it, we might simply be replicating a selection method to get people who we like and who remind us of ourselves. To be sure, it might not be as deliberate as what we saw above, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
The NPR reporter who introduced this story did so by saying, “let’s start this hour with a look at an innovation in something that’s gone unchanged, it seems, forever.” That one sentence already gets it wrong, though. This is, unfortunately, not innovative. This is just the big data version of phrenology.
Student Debt Strikers Take On Corinthian College
Fifteen students have refused to pay back their student debt to Everest College, owned by the now disgraced for-profit company Corinthian College. They call themselves “the Corinthian 15”.
Good for them. Corinthian College is a predatory and fraudulent company which was in the business of gaming the federal loan system while making false promises to its students. Those students are victims of fraud and should not be the ones paying back the government money for an education they never got. Instead, Corinthian should pay back the money.
There are articles about this in the New Yorker, Newsweek, and the Guardian, and there’s a letter of support signed by Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich, among others, which contains the following:
By declaring a strike, the Corinthian 15 are taking debt relief for themselves and challenging the Department of Education to look out for students instead of protecting rich and powerful creditors. By declaring a strike, they are taking a stand for all student debtors, by reminding us that for-profits schools are just an extreme version of our increasingly untenable system of debt-financed higher education. By declaring a strike, the Corinthian 15 are asking why the U.S. lags so far behind other industrialized societies in denying its citizenry the right to free college enrollment.
At the same time, there’s a new Rolling Jubilee initiative that just freed $13 million dollars worth of student debt, which was covered by Democracy Now. Right on.
How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy
I’m really looking forward to tonight’s panel on mega-foundations and democracy, organized by the Big Apple Coffee Party. I will be the moderator of the event, which takes place at 6:30 tonight at All Soul’s Church at 1157 Lexington Avenue and is open to the public.
In preparation, I’m reading the article that inspired tonight’s discussion, written by one of tonight’s three panelists, Joanne Barkan. The essay is entitled Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy and it’s published by Dissent Magazine.
Also on the panel will be Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies and a Senior Fellow at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, who can be seen putting philanthropy on trial here, and Stanley Katz, Director of the Center for Arts and Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University, who wrote this piece called Beware Of Big Donors.
I hope I see you all there tonight!
Also, this Friday I’ll be giving a talk at Cornell Tech called Making The Case For Data Journalism. Send me an email if you want to come to that, I’ll need to get you on the list. It’s at 12:30 in the Google building.
Finally, I had a lot of fun over the weekend at the Rebellious Lawyer’s Conference at Yale, which is a yearly conference organized by law students. I was on a panel concerned with Occupy and the law profession, organized by Zorka Milin, an amazing tax lawyer and activist, and the other panelists were the amazing and inspirational Akshat Tewary of Occupy the SEC and Rebecca Wilkins, also an activist tax lawyer who is writing a book about tax law for the rest of us that I can’t wait to read.
mathbabe 
