What will be unacceptable in 50 years?

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been trying to imagine how, about 150 years ago, an American culture could celebrate the ownership of humans. That is unacceptable in America today. Times change.

Assuming we continued the historic trends of the past hundred years [1], what will be unacceptable fifty years from now?

I listed three ideas in a comment ...

Grappling With Genosha - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Personal - The Atlantic

.... What things do we love that will be despised in fifty years?

I eat pigs. I think that will be unacceptable in fifty years.

Coates loves football, a sport where brain damage is a normal outcome. I think that will be unacceptable sooner than fifty years from now.

We imprison and kill people with disabled brains. I think that will be unacceptable fifty years from now...

Any others?

[1] Of course this is simply a thought experiment. If the trends of the past century continue, humans will not be defining acceptability.

What China's rulers fear today

Blood and Treasure, one of my favorite blogs, suggests a leaked document as a guide to the current fears of China's leadership --  A General Notice from the Central Propaganda Bureau Regarding News and Propaganda in 2011. In bullet form, they are (emphases mine):

• income distribution, the stock and real-estate markets, employment and social security, education and health, and safety in manufacturing.
• reports on disasters and extreme incidents.  They "cannot include interviews or supervision from non-local areas".
• reports on the requisition of land and forcible demolition, especially report on incidents of violent demolition or “suicides, self-mutilation, or collective action”
• public selection of news, people, or events [jg: I think this refers to social reporting, public selection of topics]
• incidents of collective action ... prevent reports on collective action from pointing towards and focusing on the party and the government.
• anti-corruption cases ... Do not use the term “civil society” (gongmin shehui).
• Do not conduct questionnaires or on-line surveys on housing prices.
• instances of using a residential construction foundation to change a residential permit
• problems related to Spring Festival travel, such as “difficulties in obtaining even one ticket.”

For China in 2011 it's all about real estate and land seizures. Yes, they have a housing bubble too, and it's going to blow soon. I am really tired of "interesting times".

Extreme parenting

There's a book in play about "extreme parenting", which is apparently a Chinese thing (Koreans would disagree). It's gotten a lot of attention.

It's silly. Extreme parenting requires special needs children. Parenting bright kids without disability is recreational parenting.

The rise and fall of recreational clubs

From the Jan 2011 MN North Star Ski Club newsletter (emphases mine) ...

“Ted Wirth’s hiking club is on its last legs” This was a Star & Trib article on October 26, 2010 describing the decline and demise of a 90-year old Minneapolis Municipal Hiking Club. It peaked at about 500 members and apparently had a full program of 88 hikes in 1928, for example. One member described her first hike in 1934 as starting at West 54th Street and Penn Avenue South (where Settergrin’s Hardware has been for 100 years), going into the “countryside” and ending at Lake Calhoun.

Currently, the average age of its Board is 84. The article summarizes that the club is victim of aging membership and changing exercise habits. Is this pertinent to our North Star’s with our aging membership and gradually declining numbers? Along with the two previous NS Presidents, I wonder what we can do about this?

The "Ted Wirth" referenced in the Strib article lent his name to one of the best of many excellent MSP parks. Ninety years is an impressive record; most of the recreational clubs I've known had lifespans in the 10-30 year range.

I wonder what they the MMHC did right. Google didn't turn up any tips on what makes for a long-lived club. A lot of people would like to know the answer, not least the evidently shrinking North Star (nordic) Ski Club.

Maybe The Atlantic or The New Yorker will assign someone to survey long lived clubs and ask them how they both recruit new members and retain the faithful core (excluding university associated organizations of course. It's easy for them!). I'd buy that issue ...

Unloading the post queue

There are many things I'd like to write about, but only a bit of time to do it. So here's a quick list. I'll probably get back to most of these topics sooner or later ...

• 21st century America is 19th century South Carolina. Instead of plantations we have the titans of Finance. They don't have employees making cars, or slaves picking cotton, they have software moving money. The rest of us are the freemen of the Old South. It's quite stable until the software gets a bit smarter.
• William Pfaff (like Andy Grove) says America is committing economic suicide by (unlike Germany) abandoning manufacturing. Actually the problem isn't money. We are doing well by skimming the wealth of India and China. The problem is that we're now living in Goldman Sachs plantation.
• The first golden age of personal computing was multipolar. We had Lotus, Microsoft, WordPerfect, AshtonTate, Apple, Amiga, IBM, Intel, Atari and so on. Then we were bipolar - Microsoft and Apple. Then, for a time, we were monopolar. Now we're multipolar again; we have Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Facebook, Intel, ARM and so on. In the 1980s we had dueling document formats. In the 10s we have dueling video formats. Multipolar is better for people like me.
• It took 15 years to defeat email spam. Now we have Demand Media and GoogleFail. Demand Media isn't a parasite like email spammers, it's a Google symbiote. We knew funding the web through marketing was a Faustian bargain, but we didn't know what the price would be. Unintended consequences again.
• Google's Demand Media problem feels somewhat like the problems of democracy. America's founders tried, with limited success, to tackle these problems by mixing in some aristocracy and autocracy, and avoiding direct voting (government by referendum - ex: 2010 California).
• xkcd made wikipedia's list of common misconceptions famous. There is a small universe of these lists, including lists of categories of lists (meta-lists and list taxonomies). Geek heaven, and very Aspie.
• All the interesting business models for healthcare delivery are disruptive. That's true for most businesses, but especially true for American healthcare in 2010.
• There is a high cost to being #1, but it's a deferred price. There's some level in a hierarchy that has the best tradeoff between personal power and happiness. It's neither the top nor bottom ...
• Human evolution drove symbol manipulation, but not arithmetic skills. We are much better at math than mosquitofish, but only somewhat better at arithmetic. This explains much of the modern world.
• The Verizon iPhone will slow US iPad sales. Many iPad users bought them because they didn't have an iPhone, and they didn't have an iPhone because they were Verizon customers.

Neither Loughner, Palin, Beck nor Limbaugh are responsible. Who is?

Jared Loughner is a paranoid schizophrenic.

Loughner a "textbook" case paranoid schizophrenic - Jared Loughner - Salon.com

... He's a textbook case. Most psychiatrists will tell you they need to examine a patient before diagnosing him, but this guy has all of the symptoms. He has the right age of onset. He has a deteriorating social course, as they say in the [DSM], social and occupational dysfunction...

This is not a hard diagnosis. This is like diagnosing rain by looking at the splashing drops. In any sane society, Loughner would not be considered responsible for his actions. He is not the "face of evil" dammit, he is a victim of one of the most terrible diseases in the vast array of terrible diseases.

Nor are Palin, Beck or Limbaugh responsible. Yes, paranoid schizophrenics do listen to talk radio, and, yes, it does influence them. Palin and Limbaugh, at least, are sane enough to bear some responsibility for their rhetoric. The voices in Loughner's own head, however, would be stronger than their rants.

If I were a theist I would blame this one on God, but I'm not. There are, however, some close human substitutes. They would be NRA supporters and GOP voters.

If the 2004 assault weapons ban were still in place Loughner would still have shot Giffords, but his kill count would be much lower. If Arizona had a robust mental health care system nobody might have died.

People who support the GOP and the NRA are responsible both for the failure to renew the assault weapons ban and for the miserable state of Arizona (and America's) mental health care.

If you are looking for an intelligent and thoughtful response to this tragedy, forget Loughner. Forget (please) Palin, Beck and Limbaugh. Forget gun control, that won't happen in America. Instead, focus on the identification and management of major psychiatric disorders.

Google is clothes free - what's next

When a man's paycheck depends on his not understanding something, you can depend upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair's Law

After Jeff Atwood pointed out that Google search isn't working any more the rest of my geek tribe piled on. We all agree - the emperor isn't wearing anything at all. My recent personal anecdote concerns searches for Apple support documents. Instead of finding the ad-free originals Google found inferior answers.com rewrites [1].

The root cause of this problem isn't hard to understand. One easy fix would be for Google to boost the ratings of ad free pages like (cough) Gordon's Notes. In a stroke that would eliminate most of the splogs (spam blogs) and junk pages. It would also eliminate Google's revenue.

Google will dial back a bit and improve their results, but they have a fundamental business problem. So, for that matter, do all of its competitors. The only real fix is to charge end users for search.

We won't pay for search alone. We should, but we won't. We aren't smart enough. Apple has shown, however, that millions will pay for their ad-free, and remarkably crummy, MobileMe services.

What if Apple were to partner with Google (or Bing) and offer search results tweaked and reordered to favor ad-free content as a part of an enhanced pay-for-use MobileMe offering? For that matter, they could do their own search using their mysterious Carolina facility.

Search is expensive. Hideously expensive. The best search requires that we pay directly. Someone will have to figure out how to make this work. In the meantime we can read answers.com.

[1] Which, frankly, weren't bad. I wouldn't mind them if they actually referenced the source documents. Which they don't.

Update 2/24/11: Google dropped the hammer. The new algorithm gives similar results to the Chrome-only search personalization tool. In my own limited testing my blog posts are much more often on the front page -- even with personalized search turned off.

Most cultures punish the atypically generous

All cultures punish "cheaters". That's unsurprising.

What's surprising is that most cultures punish the atypically generous ...

Balkinization

... the U.S, Australia and the U.K. subjects were much less likely to punish players who HAD cooperated by contributing to the group project. In other societies, ‘[m]any subjects engaged in anti-social punishment; that is, they paid to reduce the earnings of ‘overly’ cooperative individuals (those who contributed more than the punisher did).’ ...

Looking at the graph some cultures punish atypical generosity even more than "free riders". On visual inspection I see three grades of anti-social punishment (emphases mine) ...

• Low levels: US, Australia, UK, Switzerland, China, Germany
• Mid level: Denmark, Ukraine, Korea, Turkey, Russia (I suspect Japan would resemble Korea)
• High level: Saudi Arabia, Greece, Oman

I suspect Canada would fall between Germany and Denmark, at the high end of low punishment. I grew up in Canada, where we understood it was rude to be exceptionally good in any way. I wonder if what's measured here is really a general response to being exceptional (talented, witty, generous, etc) rather than to a specific response to "excessive" generosity. It may also be that in some cultures there is a strong duty to reciprocate generosity (Japan?), so the generous act can be a bit of an unwanted gift.

I think these responses are important to understand -- particularly for those whose programming favors generosity. Even in the US the naturally generous will work with people from cultures that may resent or feel burdened by an unsolicited gift. It is often wise to balance gifts with requests, providing an opportunity for the recipient to balance the scales. Most of all it may be wise to do deed invisibly, so nobody will feel burdened and the Samaritan will go unpunished.

 

Is the GOP truly a pawn of corporations and the wealthy? We'll find out soon.

Charlie Stross says emergent corporate entities control America. Krugman says wealth alone is sufficient explanation, emergent entities are an unnecessary complication.

John Gordon says control (the bouncing yellow ball) of America is a dynamic balance between the emergent corporate entity (ECE) powerful (wealthy) individuals, and the voting masses [1]:

Of course I'm right, but it would be nice to have evidence.

Fortunately, there's a natural experiment coming up. The GOP is threatening to destroy the American, and world, economy. This is in the interests of neither powerful individuals nor ECEs. So if it happens, then Stross, Krugman and I are all wrong. The Voters have power after all, and it's just too bad so many Americans are detached from reality.

I bet, however, that the Tea Party GOP caves, and the GOP that serves the powerful and the corporate wins.

That doesn't tell us whether Stross, Krugman, or me has the best story though. We need a different falsifiable prediction.

It's tough to come up with that test because this is a triangle of frenemies, not enemies. Often the interests of (hypothetical) ECEs align with those of powerful people and/or Voters (who are both consumers and employees).  We need test where the voters are neutral, but the interests of corporate entities and powerful individuals are opposed.

The only test I've come up with so far would be to examine the pattern of legislation over the past 30 years. My hypothesis is that we'd find that legislation and accounting regulations have furthered the development of ECEs even as they've reduced the rate of return to Powerful individuals -- perhaps shrinking that pool [2] and even reducing overall economic growth.

Can anyone think of another falsifiable test?

[1] Similar picture here, but there the third point was "the weak". Also true, but different point.
[2] So we end up with fewer "players", even though they may be individually wealthier.

See also:

• Speculation: The corporate ecosystem and American stasis
• Understanding the elections - what's really changed
• America 2011: exploring the boundaries of democracy and capitalism

Smartphone choice made easy: iPhone vs. Android

Asymco estimates half of Americans will use a smartphone by the end of 2011. That means either an Android OS device or an Apple iPhone, since there are no viable competitors.[2]
Which one should you choose?
It turns out the decision is quite easy.

• If you want to stay with T-Mobile or Sprint -> Android
• if you are with Verizon or AT&T then ...
  • the phone is for a younger teen or child -> iPhone, Android has no parental controls
  • you want software without advertising -> iPhone, Android apps are almost entirely ad supported
  • you are an iTunes user and buy iTunes video/movies -> iPhone, Android phones can't play iTunes DRMd video or music
  • you want to avoid malware -> iPhone, the Android marketplace is not curated
  • you want the device to have value in two years -> iPhone, it can be used as an iPod touch equivalent after its phone lifetime has passed
  • you want software and OS support over the lifetime of the device -> iPhone, Android device manufacturers rarely provide more than a few months of updates
  • Google voice is very important to you -> Android, on the iPhone it's not fully integrated
  • You don't have, or don't want to use, a classic (legacy) computer -> Android [3]
  • You want Google Apps support -> Android [4]
  • If none of the above is true, you can save 20% of the phone cost by buying an Android phone [1]

Most Verizon and AT&T customers will be happiest with an iPhone.
[1] Assuming $500 in mandatory data fees over the 2 year contract span, prices are about $550 for an Android device and about $700 for a comparable iPhone.
[2] BlackBerry is walking dead. Talk to me about Microsoft's phone in a year or so. Nokia? What's that?
[3] I assume Android doesn't require a legacy (Windows/Mac) computer. The iPhone expects one, I don't know if you can really use an iPhone without iTunes
[4] iPhone is a mediocre fit for Google Apps. I assume Android is better, but nobody talks about this.

The not-so-vast readership of Gordon's notes - and why I keep posting

I get emails when a reader (infrequently) comments. The author deleted this comment, so I'll keep it anonymous ...

Say, is it not odd that you don't have a bunch of readers reading your blog? You have been writing this since 2003 and nobody comments or reads it? Is this even real?

Oh and I figured out how I reached your blog. I was looking for "nobody reads your blog" on google and a comment from your blog showed up on the 47th page.

Its sad and funny at the same time...

I wasn't able to replicate his search results, but unless we're post AI this was a bio post, not a bot post.

It's a good question [4], but there are a lot of blogs that go unread. So mine is not that unusual. What's unusual is that it's been persistently unread for 7 years. So the real question is - "why would anyone write 5,494 posts that nobody reads?" (@9,000 if you add Gordon's Tech) [1]

The short answer is that I read both of Gordon's Blogs. As I wrote back in 2007 ...

... my own very low readership blogs are written for these audiences in this order:

1. Myself. It’s how I learn and think.

2. The GoogleMind: building inferential links for search and reflection.

3. Tech blog: Future readers who find my posts useful to solve a problem they have that I've solved for myself.

4. Gordon's Notes: My grandchildren, so I can say I didn't remain silent -- and my tiny audience of regular readers, not least my wife (hey, we don't get that much time to talk!) ...

Later, when I integrated Google Custom Search, my history of posts began to inform my Google searches. My blogs extend my memory into the wider net.

So that explains why there are 9,000 "John Gordon" posts.

As to why their aren't many comments/readers, I can imagine several reasons ...

• There's no theme. Gordon's Notes follows my interests, and they wander. At any given time there will posts that most people find boring, repetitive, or weird.
• I'm writing for someone like me, Brad DeLong, Charlie Stross, Emily L and others of that esoteric sort. That's an uber-niche audience.
• I have no public persona (I write using a pseudonym)
• I like writing, but I don't work at writing. I'd have to work a lot harder to write well enough to be truly readable.
• I don't market the blog.
• I update my blog at odd hours, and I'm slow to respond to comments.
• I have an irregular posting schedule.
• I don't right about areas where I'm really a world-class expert because I keep my blogging and my employment separate.
• I often write about the grim side of reality (that is, most of it).

That covers the bases I think. Except ...

Except, it's not quite so simple. It turns out I do have a few readers -- I'm guessing about 100 or so [3], not counting a larger number who come via Google [2], but certainly counting Google itself. Some of my readers are bloggers with substantial readership, and sometimes they respond to what I write.

So I do have an audience after all, it's just very quiet.

See also:

• Strange loops: Google custom and customized search - and a memory blog
• Google's IQ boost is only beginning

-- fn --

[1] Why do I share thousands of items via Google Reader? Because that's a searchable repository of things I find interesting. Another memory extender.
[2] I don't have a stellar Google ranking, but it's not bad 
[3] About 80 via Google Reader alone, where I share these posts.  There's also Emily, who comments over breakfast. A lot of my posts come out of our discussions.
[4] It wasn't clear when I first posted this that I like the question. I think it's a good question and I think it was meant well. Sorry for not making that clear. I've added this footnote.

Update 1/6/11: Based on comment response I probably have more regular readers than I imagined.

End times for the credit card?

Despite all of their security issues, I've never thought credit cards would go away. I figured one day banks would become liable for identity theft, and credit card companies would fix their broken-by-design security models.

I never thought credit cards would just go away -- until today. Today I went to pay my American Express Blue cash back statement. I do this monthly, it's usually a minor nuisance. Today, however, I found a newish web site. It feels Flash based. It features obnoxious, flickering ads. It made me do a security reset. The "feedback" button didn't render correctly in Safari, it wasn't the only rendering problem (just the most ironic one). To add injury to injury, the new site told me AMEX was making some incomprehensible change to its cash back program next March. I don't think that change is meant to please me.

I've seen this kind of service regression before. It doesn't end well.

It's a sign that the smart people at AMEX have abandoned ship. That fits with news coverage of the woes of the credit card business. Credit card margins are being squeezed, their prime victims, people who paid interest, have gone bankrupt.

We've all heard stories for years about a replacement for the credit card. It hasn't happened, but maybe this year will be different.

America 2011: exploring the boundaries of democracy and capitalism

Reading about the fall of Detroit, the ranting of the GOP's Tea Party House, ubiquitous fraud and corruption, and the emergence of the corporate person, it's easy to imagine that we're going where no nation has gone before -- testing the limits of both democracy and capitalism.

But has any nation been here before? How long did Athenian democracy last? Not all that long actually ....

Athenian democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. ..

... The greatest and longest lasting democratic leader was Pericles; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian War ... It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts are of this fourth-century modification rather than the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Macedonians in 322 BC ...

The Peloponnesian war lasted from 431 BC to 404 BC. So Athenian democracy might have lasted as little as 100 years. If you count periods of restoration you might get to 160 years. American "Democracy" [1] is about 235 years old.

Going where no nation has gone before ...

See also

• Invaders from Mars - Charlie's Diary (Charles Stross on the corporate entity) vs. Hive-minds and Kleptocrats - Krugman (Krugman disses Stross). I think I've got the right balance, but then I would, woudn't I?
• Gordon's Notes: Understanding the elections - what's really changed
• Gordon's Notes: Speculation: The corporate ecosystem and American stasis
• Gordon's Notes: Why do companies exist?
• Gordon's Notes: Troubled capitalism: The corporate entity

[1] Assuming one starts with white male landowner voters.

Product suggestion: Integrated attic stair and stair frame seal

When I'm looking for a product, I first imagine how it would work. Then I search for it.

Often I find exactly what I imagined. Sometimes, however, it doesn't exist.

Today, in the third coming [1] of the Minnesota ice dam, I went looking for a replacement for our old attic stairs.

I imagine an integrated stair/insulation system. This would be a metal frame that would sit into our attic floor. It would hold traditional folding/sliding stairs. In addition it would have a "lid" atop the frame with a latch and a door lifter.

To enter the attic one would go up the stairs and then open the latch. The lid, sealed by high quality rubber seals, would open up with a slight push. The door lifters would keep it open. A string would be used to shut it.

A simple idea, but this crude system is the best I could find - Attic Stair Insulation Insulsure Attic Tent AT-2 Model. So we'll have to have something custom made for us.

If you're a bored manufacturer, you should be able to put this together in a few months and sell it next year. Please send me a link and I'll update this post.

[1] Third in my residence here. Prior bad years were 1997 and 2004, but 2010-2011 may be the worst of all.

Detroit in ruins - we need salvage law for this wrecked vessel

The Observer is highlighting Detroit in ruins, a series of photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Think of it as a slow motion but more devastating version of Hurricaine Katrina.

The most stunning image, for me, was the picture of the east side public library:

They abandoned a building full of books.

Others pictures show unsalvaged Art Deco chandeliers, classrooms with anatomic models, and piles of documents in an abandoned police station. Some of them are doubtless staged (this is art, not documentary), but did they really stage the library?

Can we organize a team of crack commandos to liberate the old books?

At this point, maybe we should treat Detroit like a wrecked ship open for salvage. Ten percent of revenue on recovered goods goes to the city, the rest to the winner.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: Detroit, dialysis and special needs - 11/2010