What went wrong with Mars One and Hyperloop coverage -- never let a resolved issue stand in the way of a nice think piece

 One of the many contributing factors to the disastrous coverage of Mars One was the human interest appeal. Almost no publication could resist the temptation to tell the inspiring story of bold colonists about to take a one-way trip to another planet. Some of the articles briefly mentioned the possibility that the mission might not happen, but none owned up to the virtual certainty that it wouldn't. To do so would have ruined the story, or at least made it into something more complex and downbeat.

We see something similar here. The Hyperloop would be a useful example for any number of wide-eyed essays on visionary CEOs and Silicon Valley culture, but much of that usefulness depends on the proposal being a serious effort and not just a sad cry for attention. The desire to make Musk's white paper into what the writer needs combined with a weak grasp of engineering gives us stories like this New York Magazine piece by Kevin Roose.

It's been a day since Elon Musk revealed his grand plans for a so-called Hyperloop, a flashy high-speed transportation system that feels pulled from a Robert Heinlein novel, and nobody quite knows what to make of it. PandoDaily's Hamish McKenzie says Hyperloop is proof that Musk has supplanted Steve Jobs as the tech world's biggest visionary. Sam Biddle at Valleywag says it's an expression of a "very rich man's wild imagination." Pundits and professors are weighing in on whether the proposed technology — essentially, it's a scheme to shoot aluminum passenger pods through giant vacuum tubes at 800 mph — would actually work.

Lost in the debate about the Hyperloop's feasibility, or lack thereof, is the fact that Musk's plan — which he's admitted may never materialize — is not primarily a technical proposal directed at consumers, but a political statement aimed squarely at the Establishment. By proposing a new way to provide mass transportation that is both cheaper and faster than anything approved by state authorities, Musk is taking aim at the government's monopoly on large public works projects. He's saying to policymakers in Washington and Sacramento alike: I can do your job better than you.

Biddle is mildly skeptical; McKenzie goes beyond the credulous into the shamelessly sycophantic. At no point in the piece or in any of the linked articles, do you catch any sense of the real discussion. Even the framing of  "whether the proposed technology ... would actually work" shows a weak grasp of the issue. Given enough time and money, there's no question something along these general lines would work. What pretty much all of the professors (at least those who don't have a vested interest) are objecting to is the proposed timeline and, even more to the point, budget. Particularly regarding money, Musk is proposing numbers that are easily one and possibly two orders of magnitude below reasonable.

Of course, Roose can't come out and say this. Acknowledging it would greatly undercut a narrative built around disruptive entrepreneurs trying "to pressure lawmakers to get out of the way of technological progress." That mean he has to go along with at least the possibility that the Hyperloop is viable.

And that's part of the problem.

Essential Kael

I have a couple of posts in the draft stage and a few more in the back of my head that center on either quotes from Pauline Kael or discussion of the New Journalism movement that involve her. I thought it might not be a bad idea to do a quick introductory post because Kael is one of those writers who does need an introduction.

Part of the problem is that, when you say "critic," most people think "reviewer."  Probably the easiest way to explain the distinction is in terms of audience. Criticism is written for people who know a work; reviews are written for people who are thinking about trying it. Kael was, at best, a deeply problematic reviewer. She could wildly oversell films she felt were particularly deserving. Other times, she would simply use the film as a jumping off point for an essay on films or culture or politics. She almost always had something interesting to say, but little that was useful when you were trying to decide which movie to see.

My advice for those new to Kael is to start with the essays, then check out the full (not the capsule) reviews of films you've seen, then stop.

Here are four to get the ball rolling.

Raising Kane
 The New Yorker, February 20, 1971 and February 27, 1971

Kael's best known essay and my favorite. Also her most controversial, though not always for the reasons normally given (see below). The piece is difficult to describe, part critical essay, part historical narrative, part reflection on American culture, but the unifying thread is the story of the East Coast writers and artists who came to Hollywood. By turns affectionate, insightful and sad. At least part of the vitriol it inspired can be attributed to the people she had pissed off a few years earlier with...



Circles and Squares
Film Quarterly (01/Apr/1963)

A relentless dismantling of the American take on auteur theory, particularly that of Andrew Sarris. In addition to pointing out the various contradictions and logical flaws in the standard arguments of the time, it digs into the dangers of praising works and congratulating ourselves just because we catch various allusions and influences (decades before anyone had heard of Tarantino). It may not be a coincidence that many those who came off worst in this piece (particularly Peter Bogdanovich) were among the most vocal of Welles "defenders" after the release of "Raising Kane."



Trash, Art, and the Movies
Harper's, February 1969

Addresses the fundamental paradoxes of taking pop culture seriously. It argues that we should acknowledge the pleasures and the vitality of a good trashy movie without trying to project upon it artistic qualities and deeper meanings to justify our approval. At the same time, we shouldn't equate the lack of trashiness with great art, particularly when it means praising the boring and the high-minded.




Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers
The New Yorker, June 23, 1980

A prescient take on the end of the Young Turk era of American film. Kael didn't care for auteurism as a critical theory but she tended to like auteurs, particularly the big visionary directors like Welles and Kurosawa and Huston. She looked upon the late 60s and early 70s as a golden age with films like Bonnie and Clyde and directors like Altman.

Kael openly viewed herself as an advocate for what she considered important films and visionary filmmakers, and she was willing to cross ethical lines to promote her favorites (such as when she wrote an ecstatic review of Nashville based on a private screening of a rough cut).

The end of the Young Turks era (combined with a brief stint working in Hollywood) left her bitter and pessimistic about the future of American cinema, which led to this 1980 essay. By far, my least favorite  of the four. The topic is too depressing for her to have any fun with and too narrow for her to make the interesting connections that mark the other three pieces. Worse still, the few films of the period she did like are overpraised to the point of exhaustion. That said, the observations on corporate culture are sharp and the predictions about pre-novelization perfectly describe franchises like I am Number Four.

Keep an eye on the follow-up

Check out Just what were Donald Trump’s ties to the mob?

It's an excellent piece of investigative journalism by the reliable David Cay Johnston, building on the solid foundation laid by Wayne Barrett. It's the kind of story where you run across players like the Genovese and Gambino families.

It's also filled with the kind of revelations that should dominate any discussion of the race not focused on policy proposals, but will it? That brings me to the point of this post. Is the 21st Century press able to handle the hard stuff? After all these years of innuendo and pseudo-scandal, do they still have what it takes to deal with the real thing? I'd like to think so but, based on the response to Johnson's piece so far, I'm not optimistic.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, the Hyperloop

Before we get further into the story, there is an important aspect that has bizarrely gone unmentioned in most of the coverage of this.

The Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system originally put forward by Elon Musk, incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors.

The outline of the original Hyperloop concept was made public by the release of a preliminary design document in August 2013, which included a notional route running from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, paralleling the Interstate 5 corridor for most of its length. Preliminary analysis indicated that such a route might obtain an expected journey time of 35 minutes, meaning that passengers would traverse the 350-mile (560 km) route at an average speed of around 600 mph (970 km/h), with a top speed of 760 mph (1,200 km/h). Preliminary cost estimates for the LA–SF notional route were included in the white paper—US$6 billion for a passenger-only version, and US$7.5 billion for a somewhat larger-diameter version transporting passengers and vehicles —although transportation analysts doubted that the system could be constructed on that budget.

To the extent that there is an idea in the proposal, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a new one. Pretty much everyone in relevant fields of engineering has at least tossed these concepts around in the back of their heads. Many, if not most, have even sketched out something similar on the back of a notebook during a boring class.

We haven't seen a real life version of one of these trains, not because there's necessarily anything wrong with the basic concepts, but because actually making something like this would require either a tremendous financial commitment or a major advance that dramatically reduces the cost of construction. None of the recent proposals have seriously addressed these problems, let alone solved them; they have simply waved them away.

Joseph Brownstein had an excellent summary of some of the issues:

“There’s no way the economics on that would ever work out,” said Dan Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

At projected capacity levels, the so-called Hyperloop would transport 840 people each hour, each paying $20. With capital, labor and maintenance costs factored in, Sperling said, “Those numbers, even in the most outlandish visionary way, do not make any sense at all. The whole technology is unproven. I know he’s a brilliant guy, but it just doesn’t pencil out.”

...

Bonnie Lowenthal, chair of the California State Assembly's Transportation Committee told the Wall Street Journal, "Big infrastructure projects in California are very difficult. We have very complicated funding, we have environmental protections, seismic faults and land acquisition – but that's just the shortlist.”

Beyond land-purchase issues, any realistic estimate of the costs would say Musk and his team are underestimating them "by at least a factor of 10 to 20," said Michael L. Anderson, an associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He said the more realistic price for a one-way ticket would reach about $1,000, based on his own projections of construction costs and Musk's proposed capacity of 840 riders per hour.

"You're talking $100 billion to build what they’re proposing,” Anderson said.

Anderson said that while some of the infrastructure is novel, the elevated guideway was not unlike existing structures such as the Bay Area Rapid Transit's aerial tracks. For the Hyperloop's tracks, that alone would cost in the tens of billions. As for the pipeline for the cars, he said, oil pipelines are $5 million to $6 million per mile, and they are seven times narrower than the Hyperloop's would need to be. In addition, the Hyperloop track could not change direction abruptly the way an oil pipeline could.

"It really has to be built to much higher standards than anybody has ever built a pipeline to," Anderson said.

Ultimately, it comes down to the Hyperloop not being able to transport enough people, Anderson said.

"If it’s going to cost $100 billion, you need to make it very high capacity to make it a worthwhile investment and it’s not," he said, explaining that in order to get a 6 percent return, tickets for the Hyperloop built at his projected costs and Musk's proposed capacity would have to be $1,000 each -- a price not enough people would be willing to pay to sustain it.

Like the woman said, that's the shortlist.

I'm going to see how far I can go into this thread without using either the expressions "train wreck" or "perfect storm."

The hyperloop seems almost designed to prey upon the press's weakness when it comes to engineering and technology. It's a story that demands a grasp of infrastructure, implementation, and the distinction between mature and immature technology. On top of that, it combines an alarming number of the elements of the stories that have suckered the press corps in recent years. Silicon Valley hype, CEOs who are inevitably described as "visionary," ludicrously optimistic cost estimates, and geewhiz heavy technology.

Already, we are seeing many aspects of the Mars One fiasco playing out again:

Reporters are asking all the wrong questions;

They are seeking out "experts" with highly unrepresentative opinions;

They are credulously accepting numbers that are easily an order of magnitude off;

As far as I can tell, few have even bothered to look at a map of the route. Otherwise, we'd surely be hearing more about the bizarre decision to start a super sonic rail line to San Francisco just south of the Tejon Pass;

When the occasional journalist does actual... you know... reporting, it has little to no impact on the discussion.

This is going to get ugly.

Another puzzle video -- going meta on Dudeney's Beer Barrel Puzzle

First off, you'll notice that things look a bit different. A friend of mine who works in postproduction (welcome to LA) made up an opening title sequence for the series. The video still looks like something done quickly on the cheap, but hopefully we've gotten to the point where the amateurism is not distracting.

My main focus here and what I want to direct your attention to is the meta. The central idea which is basically taken from George Pólya is that mathematics instruction should be less concerned with individual problems and more concerned with teaching the process of problem solving.

Puzzles are a natural fit for this concept. Their value for explicitly introducing heuristics has been demonstrated by any number of smart people such as Pólya, Martin Gardner (particularly in the Aha! books) and Raymond Smullyan, but the approach has never gotten the traction it deserves, perhaps because it requires both mathematical sophistication and a sense of humor, two qualities sadly lacking in both in traditional education programs and in the reform movement.

With that objective in mind, take a look, let me know what you think, and, if you're so inclined, feel free to share this with anyone who might be interested.






I used this problem as a jumping off point to discuss trial and error methods. For the more mathematically inclined, Dudeney's original solution might be of more interest.

From sandwich-makers to sitcoms -- more tales of monopsony

Continuing our abuse of economic power thread from yesterday, Ken Levine (the writer/director/producer associated with about half the classic television shows you can think of) has an excellent post on the annual upfronts. For those of you not from LA, here's a primer from Wikipedia:

In the North American television industry, an upfront is a group of gatherings hosted at the start of important advertising sales periods by television network executives, attended by the press and major advertisers. It is so named because of its main purpose, to allow marketers to buy television commercial airtime "up front", or several months before the television season begins.

The first upfront presentation was made by ABC in 1962, in an attempt to find out how advertisers felt about the network's new shows.

In the United States, the major broadcast networks' upfronts occur in New York City during the third week of May, the last full week of that month's sweeps period. The networks announce their fall primetime schedules, including tentative launch dates (i.e., fall or midseason) for new television programming, which may be "picked up" the week before. The programming announcements themselves are usually augmented with clips from the new television series, extravagant musical numbers, comedic scenes, and appearances by network stars, and take place at grand venues such as Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, or Carnegie Hall. It is also the time when it is announced (by virtue of not being on the fall schedule) which shows are canceled for the next season. In recent years, the networks have mostly revealed this information to the public a few days before the actual presentation. Most cable networks present earlier in the spring since they usually program for the summer months; press attention to these announcements is usually much lighter.

Levine's whole post is worth reading but given some of our recent discussions, this part seemed particularly relevant.

Originally, before networks could own shows, the fights were with studios over number of episodes ordered and license fees. The license fee is what the network gives the studio to produce the show. The network was allowed two airings. If the cost of the show was more than the license fee then the studio paid the difference. The networks made their money by selling commercial time.

So if a series was cancelled after thirteen weeks and the studio shelled out a lot of additional costs it took a bath. But if the show was a hit, like say FRIENDS, then the studio owned it outright. At the time, syndication was the brass ring. Warner Brothers has made billions on FRIENDS. 20th continues to rake in money from MASH. It’s like a slot machine that just keeps paying out for over forty years.

Studios made so much money that the networks eventually cried poverty and lobbied the government to participate.  They won and were allowed to own studios and shows.  There was concern that the networks would then just pick up their own shows and squeeze out outside studios.  "Oh no," they promised, "Our goal is to get the highest ratings so we'll buy the best shows regardless of who produces it."   You know the result.  For the most part networks only picked up shows they owned. If they bought a show from an outside studio they usually required partnership.

If you had an ownership stake in a series (let's say you were the writer/creator/showrunner) you now had another partner. Sort of reminds you of the Sopranos,’ doesn’t it? And even the big syndication dollars were in jeopardy. Why? Because networks began buying cable networks and selling their shows essentially to themselves at reduced rates. The ownership partners were undercut again. The networks profited in that they had quality programming for their upstart networks and they alone profited on the advertising. This prompted several lawsuits by folks with ownership stakes, like Alan Alda.

As a bit of context, the television networks have spent more than half their lives under predictions of eminent demise. Go back to the late 70s and early 80s and you'll find columnists speculating that cable and the VCR would kill off at least one of the big three before 1990. These columns were recycled over the years  with the advent of digital cable, DVDs, video games, the internet, the boom in original programming, streaming services and probably a few other developments I can't think of at the moment.

All of these new sources of competition continued to erode (losing a monopoly will do that), but they remained one of the dominant forces in the media landscape and thanks to deregulation and industry consolidation, companies like NBC/Universal/Comcast have unprecedented freedom to abuse market power.

We're thirty-plus years into an experiment in  laissez-faire economics and certain conclusions are difficult to avoid.

1. Left unchecked, economic power tends to consolidate.

2. Once gained, that power is remarkably difficult to lose, even in the case of spectacularly incompetent management.

3. Inevitably, that power will be abused.

As a statistician, I know I'm always supposed to be calling for more data, but in this case, I think we have enough.

What does Mark Thoma think about Jimmy John's?

Sometimes articles just demand to be paired up.


From Professor Thoma:

The second view of inequality, one that is gaining traction, emphasizes market imperfections and the exploitation of power relationships. Adherents to this school of thought believe that market systems have an inherent tendency toward large monopolies, and this tendency has been furthered by technological change, globalization, and economic strategies by incumbent firms that make it hard for new competitors to enter the market.

As monopoly power becomes established, those with economic and political power can capture the political process and prevent the enforcement of antitrust law and regulatory change that could threaten their market dominance. The political power large firms have can also be used to undermine unions destroying any chance workers have to bargain on equal footing for wages. This leads to even higher profits and more inequality.

...

These courses do spend time looking at the economic consequences of monopolistic completion, oligopolies, and monopolies, though not enough in most cases. But students are left with the impression that these market structures are aberrations from the norm rather than the normal state of affairs. That needs to change. And what is missing altogether in most cases is a discussion of power relationships. Quoting Professor Stiglitz once again, “historically, the oppression of large groups – slaves, women, and minorities of various types – are obvious instances where inequalities are the result of power relationships, not marginal returns.”

I'm not an economist so obviously anything I say on the subject should be viewed skeptically, but I would assume that when people in power routinely demand concessions from those without power and those concessions are of slight value to those making the demands while being onerous to those complying, we have strong evidence of an unhealthy power dynamic.


From Kerry Close:

Of the workers who have signed non-competes, fewer than half say they had access to trade secrets that a potential rival company could take advantage of. What’s more, 37% of workers say they have signed non-compete agreements at some point in their careers.

While engineering and computer/mathematical occupations have the highest prevalence of non-competes, the agreements aren’t exclusive to highly-skilled professions. For instance, 15% of workers without four-year college degrees are subject to non-competes, while 14% of employees earning less than $40,000 a year have signed a non-compete. That’s despite the fact that employees in both sectors are about half as likely to possess trade secrets than more highly educated and higher-earning counterparts in the work force.

...

In one of the most puzzling and criticized example of non-competes, fast food sandwich chain Jimmy John’s requires workers to promise they won’t work for a competitor, defined as a nearby business that derives at least 10% of its revenue from sandwiches, within two years of leaving their job. Specifically citing Jimmy John’s, two senators introduced a bill last summer that would prohibit the use of non-compete agreements for employees earning less than $15 an hour, $31,200 a year or the minimum wage in the employee municipality. It would also require employers to tell prospective hires that they may be asked to enter into such an agreement.

The shift from “is not” to “is” framing or when the irresistible appeal of not-Trump meets the immovable obstacle of is-Cruz

[I wrote this (or at least dictated it to my phone) a month ago back when Cruz was still in the race, albeit fading fast. The tenses are, as a result, occasionally a bit weird but I'm still comfortable with the basic thesis.]

These two posts from TPM got me thinking:

From Trumpmentum. Yes, Trumpmentum. Really.

I don't deny this could still happen. It's quite possible. But it is worth noting that in the nationwide GOP primary polls, after a brief Cruz Boomlet (Dead Ted Bounce) Trump's numbers have rebounded and actually appear to be rising again. Yes, rising. (The rise could just be wobbliness in the polls; but he's at least stabilized his support nationwide.) Conventional wisdom was - perhaps still is - that Trump had hit his ceiling and the sheer weight of bad news was pulling him down. That probably wouldn't stop Trump from winning more primaries. But it would likely make it impossible for him to secure 1237 delegates. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz would accrue enough to make him a plausible alternative nominee.

Again, that's not what's happening. Cruz's numbers nationwide are going down, seemingly shedding at least a margin of support to both Trump and Kasich. There's also little doubt that a big win in New York, which seems highly likely, will give him a wave of good press and allow him to reclaim the look of a winner.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Trump will get 1237 delegates or that he'll be the nominee. I find it hard to figure out or at least game out the chances of any of this - mainly because all the possibilities seem deeply implausible and yet one must happen. What does seem clear to me is this: Conventional wisdom seems to be or has been that Trump had peaked and started to fall with mix of the Lewandowski 'assault', the terrible week with four different positions on abortion, various protester beatings and unified elite GOP denunciation. He likely couldn't be caught by any other candidate. But he might be a 'zombie' plurality winner - still in the lead but so clearly damaged and losing steam that he could with some ease be denied the nomination. But the polls show Cruz is falling and Trump has not just stabilized but actually seems to be gaining steam.

What's not totally clear to me is how much this is being driven by Trump and how much people seeing Ted Cruz is turning people against him. Remember, always start from the axiom of EHTD (Everybody Hates Ted Cruz). And you can't go far wrong. Clearly the anti-Cruz wall Cruz built in the Senate is holding strong. But whether it's more strength from Trump or the failure of the anti-Trump stalking horse doesn't really matter. The upshot is the same. Trump is getting stronger, not weaker. And that portends bad things for any effort to deny him in Cleveland.

And from New York City GOP Gala Crowd Ignores Ted Cruz During His Speech

Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) speech at the New York City Republican gala on Thursday night was met with a cool reception from the crowd, who spoke amongst themselves and milled about as Cruz delivered his campaign stump speech.

"I will admit to you, I haven’t built any buildings in New York City," Cruz said at the beginning of his address, drawing some applause, according to Buzzfeed News.

But it went downhill from there.

As Cruz continued with his speech, his applause lines drew little attention from the New York Republicans at the dinner, according to NBC News. The sound of chatter and cutlery on plates grew louder as Cruz's speech went on, according to Buzzfeed News. People also began wandering the room to chat with acquaintances at other tables.

Though  for very different reasons, both Romney and Trump were front runners who were highly unacceptable to a substantial faction of the party. The result has been two consecutive Republican primaries with a distinctive piston-like action. On a fairly regular basis, some alternative candidate suddenly moves up in terms of polls, coverage, buzz, and expectations, peaks briefly then goes back down.

As mentioned before, game theory gives us a pretty good model of how voters unhappy with the front runner can converge on a second choice, but I think another theory is needed to explain why these candidates almost always fade.

I would argue that we see a shift in voter thinking when the alternative candidate peaks. On the upstroke the question of whom to vote for is framed as who is a viable alternative? While on the downstroke the question is framed as is this a viable candidate? Put another way, the theory is that when people looking for a focal point, they are on the lookout for points that might attract other people; after they've converged, they start examining the choice more critically.

Another somewhat complementary theory is that some people will tentatively move toward a possible focal point only so long as others appear to be converging around that point. I want to be careful with this one. Momentum is perhaps the most overused term in political reporting, and I generally tune out when I hear it. However, in a case where voters unhappy with a front runner are trying to coordinate their efforts and present a united opposition, I think the concept makes sense.

(If all this is true, then both Nate and Nate got it completely backwards when they repeatedly declared Donald Trump to be another Herman Cain. Under these theories Trump was Romney; Rubio and the other candidates who had their brief moment in the sun were Cain.)

Being down to a two-man race changes the dynamic quite a bit, but we are still seeing a similar pattern. A week of bad news for Trump gets voters (and perhaps more importantly analysts and pundits) thinking about the possibility of Ted Cruz as a viable alternative and we see something of a bump. Then the thinking shifts to Ted Cruz as an actual candidate...

"Remember, always start from the axiom of EHTD"

TFA's enrollment woes – the importance of putting numbers into context

This Washington Post piece by Emma Brown on the problems at Teach For America is interesting on a number of levels, definitely something you should take a look at if you've been following the story. [emphasis added]

Applications to Teach for America fell by 16 percent in 2016, marking the third consecutive year in which the organization — which places college graduates in some of the nation’s toughest classrooms — has seen its applicant pool shrink.

...

TFA received 37,000 applications in 2016, down from 57,000 in 2013 — a 35 percent dive in three years. It’s a sharp reversal for an organization that grew quickly during much of its 25-year history ["grew quickly" is certainly true in terms of budget, not so much in terms of members. See below -- MP], becoming a stalwart in education reform circles and a favorite among philanthropists.

Teach for America now boasts 50,000 corps members and alumni; some have stayed in the classroom and others have gone on to work in education in other ways, joining nonprofits, running for office and leading charter schools. Its alumni include some of most recognized names in public education, including D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and her predecessor, Michelle Rhee.

...

The declining interest means that TFA is providing fewer corps members to school districts each year: The organization generally accepts about 10 percent of its applicant pool, and it refuses to lower its bar for admission, [Elisa Villanueva Beard, TFA’s chief executive] wrote. This year’s corps is likely to be several hundred smaller than last year’s.

“These shortfalls matter. Corps members are good at their work,” she wrote. “Our school and district partners want to hire far more of them than our current recruitment effort is producing.”

This certainly sounds like a big deal, but a few seconds on Google and some very quick, back of the envelope calculations reveal just how small these numbers are in relative terms.To put things in perspective, there are over 3 million full-time teachers. A drop of several hundred applicants won't be all that noticeable, even if all of them were going to high-need areas (and quite a few aren't).


As previously discussed, TFA is a minor player viewed as a supplier of teachers, but in terms of fundraising, it's a big deal.

From Wikipedia:

Year	# of Applicants	# of Incoming Corps Members	# of Regions	Operating Budget
2003	15,708	1,646	20	$29.8M
2004	13,378	1,626	22	$34.0M
2005	17,348	2,181	22	$38.4M
2006	18,968	2,464	25	$55.6M
2007	18,172	2,895	26	$77.9M
2008	24,718	3,614	29	$122.3M
2009	35,178	4,065	35	$153.4M
2010	46,359	4,493	40	$176.0M
2011	47,911	5,066	43	$229M
2012	48,442	5,800[21]	46	$244M
2013	57,000	6,000[22]	48

If all TFA did was recruit six thousand new teachers a year, there would be no way to justify these budgets, but of course, that was never the main focus. TFA is an advocacy group with a stated mission to "enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation's most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence." [again, emphasis added]

Though the organization is sometimes coy on the point, the focus has never been on leading from the classroom. The positions of real value are administrators, think-tank fellows, politicians, and education journalists, and the program is set up to help them rise to those spots, often at exceptional speed. We can go back and forth on whether a decline in the influence of TFA would be a good thing or a bad, but we probably don't need to worry about what the loss of "several hundred" prospective TFA mombers will do to the teaching pool.

One of these I'm actually going to write that ddulite mega-thread...

And when I do, I'm definitely going to use extensive quotes from this beautifully brutal piece by Evgeny Morozov.

What the Khannas’ project illustrates so well is that the defining feature of today’s techno-aggrandizing is its utter ignorance of all the techno-aggrandizing that has come before it. The fantasy of technology as an autonomous force is a century-old delusion that no serious contemporary theorist of technology would defend. The Khannas have no interest in intellectual history, or in the state of contemporary thought about technology. They prefer to quote, almost at random, the likes of Oswald Spengler and Karl Jaspers instead. This strategy of invoking random Teutonic names and concepts might work on the unsophisticated crowds at Davos and TED, but to imagine that either Spengler or Jaspers have something interesting or original to tell us about cloning, e-books, or asteroid mining is foolish. “A new era requires a new vocabulary,” the Khannas proclaim—only to embrace the terminology that was already in place by the end of the nineteenth century. They may be well-funded, but they are not well-educated.

Their promiscuous use of the word Technik exposes the shaky foundation of their enterprise—as well as of many popular discussions about technology, which inevitably gravitate toward the bullshit zone. To return to Harry Frankfurt, the key distinction between the liar and the bullshitter is that the former conceals “that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality,” whereas the latter conceals that he is not interested in reality at all. The bullshitter “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” To suggest that Parag and Ayesha Khanna—and numerous pundits before them—might be pursuing purposes other than describing—or improving—reality is almost self-evident. (A look at the website of the Hybrid Reality Institute would suffice.) The more interesting question here is why bullshit about technology, unlike other types of bullshit, is so hard to see for what it is.

It is here that the Khannas stand out. Technik, as they use this term, is something so expansive and nebulous that it can denote absolutely anything. Technik is the magic concept that allows the Khannas to make their most meaningless sentences look as if they actually carry some content. They use Technik as a synonym for innovation, design, engineering, science, mastery, capital, the economy, and a dozen other things. It is what fixes cities, reinvigorates social networking, and grants us immortality. Technik is every pundit’s wet dream: a foreign word that confers an air of cosmopolitanism upon its utterer. It can be applied to solve virtually any problem, and it is so abstract that its purveyor can hardly be held accountable for its inaccuracies and inanities.

Of course, any discussion of embarrassing ddulite hype will include an inevitable section on TED Talks,,,

I can surmise why the Khannas would have wanted to write this book, but it is not immediately obvious why TED Books would have wanted to publish it. I must disclose that I spoke at a TED Global Conference in Oxford in 2009, and I admit that my appearance there certainly helped to expose my argument to a much wider audience, for which I remain grateful. So I take no pleasure in declaring what has been obvious for some time: that TED is no longer a responsible curator of ideas “worth spreading.” Instead it has become something ludicrous, and a little sinister.

Today TED is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering—a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity, to live in the form of videos, tweets, and now e-books. In the world of TED—or, to use their argot, in the TED “ecosystem”—books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books—and so it goes ad infinitum in the sizzling Stakhanovite cycle of memetics, until any shade of depth or nuance disappears into the virtual void. Richard Dawkins, the father of memetics, should be very proud. Perhaps he can explain how “ideas worth spreading” become “ideas no footnotes can support.”

So much BS, so little time.

The wages of bad journalism are Trump

A  number of commentaries have sprung up trying to argue that the rise of Trump shows that democracy is fatally flawed and that we should think about transferring more power to "the right sort of people" (the elites, thought leaders, the political and journalistic establishment, etc.). One of the many flaws of this argument is that a careful survey of how we got here shows that the vast majority of the blame goes to the elites, thought leaders, the political and journalistic establishment, etc.

One of the few establishment figures who has been getting the story right, Paul Krugman, has a post up today that beautifully illustrates the point.

Still boggled by reports that Trump, having realized that the numbers on his tax plan aren’t remotely credible, has decided to fix things by bringing in as experts … Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore. I mean, at some level this was predictable. But it still tells you a lot about both Donald the Doofus and his chosen party.

...

I mean, Kudlow is to economics what William Kristol is to political strategy: if he says something, you know it’s wrong. When he ridiculed “bubbleheads” who thought overvalued real estate could bring down the economy, you should have rushed for the bomb shelters; when he proclaimed Bush a huge success, because a rising stock market is the ultimate verdict on a presidency (unless the president is a Democrat), you should have known that the Bush era would end with epochal collapse. And then there’s Moore, who has a similarly awesome forecasting record, and adds to it an impressive lack of even minimal technical competence. Seriously: read the CJR report on his mess-up over job numbers:

The recurring “oops,” intended as a dig at Krugman, took on an unintended irony after Abouhalkah discovered that Moore’s numbers did not match those of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In fact, Moore later acknowledged, he was using BLS numbers not from “the last five years” but from an earlier five-year period: December 2007 to December 2012. Focusing on that period is arguably dubious, because the span captures the depths of the Great Recession and the housing crash, which hit some states harder than others—and whose impact likely would have swamped any tax-rate effect. There are other issues with the quality of Moore’s argument, too, like its glancing-at-best treatment of how factors like housing costs shape population and job growth.

In any case, Abouhalkah found, Moore’s numbers were wrong even for 2007-12, in ways that complicated the “low taxes = more jobs” message.

Texas did not gain 1 million jobs in the 2007-2012 period Moore measured. The correct figure was a gain of 497,400 jobs.

Florida did not add hundreds of thousands of jobs in that span. It actually lost 461,500 jobs.

New York, with [its] very high income tax rates, did not lose jobs during that time. It gained 75,900 jobs.

Oops, indeed.

Of course, Moore remains the chief economist at Heritage. And maybe Trump believes that this is a certificate of quality, that anyone in that position must be a real expert.

At some point in the past twenty or thirty years journalists (or probably more preciselyeditors and publishers) decided that once someone had been recognized as an authority, that person was in for life. You could be a complete babbling idiot, a raging bigot, and about as accurate as a knave in a knight /knave puzzle. It wouldn't matter. Once on the list, you will be treated as a sober and credible source until the day you die or until concerned family members have you institutionalized for your own good.

In any system with even minimal standards of accountability, neither Kudlow nor Moore would still have careers in media or economics or politics. Instead, not only are they still employed, they are treated with sufficient respect that Donald Trump is able to improve his respectability by hiring them.

So speaks a person who has never lived with room-mates

This is Joseph.

Kevin Drum wonders about apartments with common living and dining areas, but private bedrooms and baths.  The reason I would be skeptical about this arrangement is that you end up with whomever should happen to rent one of the units.  If a group of people pool resources to purchase an apartment then they get to pick who they live with.  Even so, these arrangements often end in a messy or unfortunate way.  It's the same in college (I lived in a dorm like this once, except with a shared bathroom) in that you have the pressure release of this living arrangement being time limited (and, even then, it can be pretty tough). 

So what happens when your apartment mate is loud at night?  Or does something illegal?  Or is very messy?  Who picks what goes on the TV (I remember this as a non-trivial issue in student residences)? 

This strikes me as an endless series of room-mate fights.  At some point, the shared kitchen is likely to end up in a bad state as that is where bad behavior (dirty dishes, food "borrowing", unsanitary counters) is likely to first peak.  The dorm I lived in mitigated this somewhat using maid service, but it was not a perfect fix. 

Aleatoricism and Social Media

Often when I'm writing a post, I realize that what I had intended as a supporting passage would work better freestanding. In this case, I was revisiting an old thread about how the vast majority of even the smartest journalists and politicians on Twitter don't understand Twitter.  Part of the problem is the tendency to think that you can simply cut up something linear and structured into 140 character increments and call them “tweets.”

This is one of those cases where the medium most definitely is the message, and the medium is fast and random with people dropping in and out unpredictably and each reader having a different context based on who he or she is following and what's on his or her screens. In order to effectively use Twitter, you have to channel your inner McLuhan..

All of which got me to thinking about the way previous writers have tried to incorporate the random into their work.

Bryan Stanley Johnson (1933–1973) wrote an experimental novel The Unfortunates (1969), which was published in separate sections, consisting of a "first" and a "last" section, with the sections in between allowed to be shuffled randomly by a reader. This was an attempt to reproduce the randomness of personal memory. The overall narrative is about a sports journalist traveling to a city, to cover a football game, and recalling events and people from years earlier when he had lived in the city.

I wonder if there's an online version of The Unfortunates. It would seem to be a natural fit.

Product placements and hidden costs

Intrusive product placement was one of the reasons I stopped watching White Collar. The annoyance wasn't up there with the plot holes and character inconsistencies, but it was a factor. The spots were so clumsy and blatant that I wondered if they were meant as a protest by the writers, directors, and actors. Either way, it was a major distraction in a show that couldn't afford it.

In the television market of 2016, the field is so crowded that every viewing choice comes with opportunity costs. By choosing to watch Veep or Kimmy Schmidt or Silicon Valley or any of the dozen or so of the shows you really do mean to get around to. That level of competition for viewers heightens what has always been a perverse incentive in most corporations and the delayed, the hidden, the intangible.

When an executive suggests a change that saves money or brings in revenue at the cost of quality or customer loyalty, the positives are immediately evident; the negatives (assuming they are recognized at all) are usually delayed until the executive has moved up and out of the blast radius. In a market where all shows have to fight to hold on to viewers, that can deadly.