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I spent a few minutes this afternoon trying to figure out if there is ever an instance where a false signal is better than no signal at all. I couldn’t think of any.

(I asked Ana, and she couldn’t either. In fact, she’s been waiting all week for a call from a prospective employer and she was quite sure that she’d rather continue waiting than be lied to about her getting the job.)

An hour later I decided that my question was flawed. No signal is a kind of signal and one of three that can be ranked, from most to least desirable:

1) true signal
2) no signal
3) false signal

This sounds pretty abstract but it’s a common preoccupation. For example, New Edition’s song “Mr. Telephone Man”:

Mr. Telephone man
There’s something wrong with my line,
When I dial my baby’s number
I get a click everytime

The narrator is willfully misreading a true signal (click) as a false signal (she can’t really be hanging up on him) and brings in a third party to entertain the possibility that there’s no signal (something is wrong with his line.)

In missing persons dramas on TV, grieving family members are often presented with a similar choice: they can accept a likely false signal — the discovery of unidentifiable remains — or they can stay in a state of indeterminacy with no sign of their missing loved one.

This may be a false choice as both options have the same outcome: keeping the case open.

“I’d rather believe a lie than not know” is a bit of a paradox. If you believe you’re being lied to, you know the truth of the matter is otherwise. Accepting a possible lie is a way to postpone the conclusion. It’s a way to bury the hope that one day the lie will be exposed by the arrival of the truth. What is presented as a way to “get closure,” is in fact quite the opposite. It’s a way to secretly keep the case open.

So why not just accept the lack of a sign? What’s so bad about no signal? Like the Telephone Man in the New Edition song, the families in missing persons dramas turn to a third party, the police, to establish the truth. Perhaps, it’s just too disappointing to accept that these arbiters of truth are unable to solve the case?

The worst possible outcome then is for the police to conclude there’s no signal. For order to be maintained, someone must know. Thus, the family member who accepts the possible lie is helping the police save face.

I should revise my list then: a true signal is better than no signal which is better than a false signal which is better than no signal is possible.

Nothing is worse than the possibility that something is unknowable.

I’m struck by the impact that The Thick of It has made on me. In the last two days, I’ve come across two real life stories of political ineptitude that I was able to relish because of that fictional series:

Meg Whitman Campaign Ejects Reporters For Asking Questions and the following:

Asked whether he has had shower encounters like the one Massa alleged, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) was interrupted by an aide — “Senator, we definitely have a speaking engagement” — and whisked away before he could respond.

I’m almost always behind the times when it comes to television and movies. Last night, I began watching Mad Men. (Go Maggie!)

It’s one of the darkest shows I’ve ever seen. I’m a sucker for suspense and greatly enjoy movies where there is a powerful undercurrent of violence (cf. Jonathan Glazer, Alfred Hitchcock, Days of Heaven, much of The Shining) so I was very much taken in by the first few episodes.

I hope the series continues to mine that vein. It’s a wonderful counterpoint to the hogwash about the past being a nicer, cleaner, happier place.

It’s not a vagary of history that the authors of the Bible corrected the mythical Garden of Eden with the notion of Original Sin.

My friend RC and I expand on yesterday’s post about a world with ubiquitous software translation.

Ten years ago, I used Babelfish language translation once in a blue moon and often for entertainment. For the last six months or so I’ve been using Google’s translation tool on almost daily basis. (I read a French and a Japanese blog as well as an Italian magazine.)

The prospect of cheap portable translation tools that are contextually savvy is thrilling. What it will do to culture, I can’t say. But these comments following a New York Times story on Google’s translation breakthroughs may illuminate the next few years.

Updated

My friend RC replies:

Read the rest of this entry »

I watched most of War Games last night. That movie has barely aged. A wonderful story and awesome achievement.

People are amazing. Hence, the web is amazing. While looking for heavy duty cable ties in Los Angeles, I found this thread on how to use duct ties for corsets. Which you would want to do if you’re a goth mimicking Victorian fashion in 2010.

Cognitive psychologist Allison Gopnik suggests children see the world more clearly than adults, albeit without structure:

This heightened state of absorption is emblematic of what Gopnik calls “the evolutionary division of labor between children and adults.” In this collaboration, the child’s protracted period of immaturity is indulged because it allows him to perform uninhibitedly the sorts of experiments that will eventually enable the more plodding and deliberate adult to alter—or at least to manipulate—the reality of his world.

Behold: a comic book written by a five year-old but illustrated by a 29 year-old; via MetaFilter.

I could be wrong but isn’t this kind of collaboration common in the history of fables and the like?

An epistemological reason for Cheney et al’s contempt?

I seldom watch a movie twice, let alone an episode from a TV series. But that’s just what I did last night with the first episode of The Thick of It.

The kicker is that we’d just finished watching all three seasons in less than four days. It’s like getting off an epic rollercoaster and walking right back to the turnstile for another ride.

Think the original version of The Office meets season four of The Wire.

I’ve been sending this link out for the last week but had neglected to post it here. It’s the most cogent and far-reaching explanation that I’ve seen of the convergence between our networked digital lives and game mechanics.

That’s a mouthful but CMU professor Jesse Schell delivers the facts and their implications with verve and humor.

later

In almost all philosophies, the premise that play is at the heart of meaning is old news. But how we play changes meaning just as surely as language shapes it. The possibilities created by our new games would certainly have delighted the philosophers and theologians of yesteryear.

even later

The strongest parts of Schell’s presentation are about “psychological tricks” that get people to spend more money. And while spending money might seem like a shallow activity, it’s one of the ways we communicate what we value. It’s a vote of confidence. And to get someone to vote for you is not an insignificant pathway to explore.

Whoever makes a video game that indirectly teaches kids how to manage debt will change the world for the better, not just because our economy relies on consumer debt but because debt — and interest, in particular — requires a kind of fortune telling.

Many of the existential threats to our species require us to think about the future in ways our brains find difficult. It’s hard to connect the dots between what I do in the next five minutes and how that might affect me in fifty years. All the more reason to make a game out of it.

News journalists and software developers are two branches of the same tree: information technology.

How much creative thinking is simply misremembering? I was groping for Rudyard Kipling and came up with Rumpelstiltskin. In this case, the substitution wasn’t very poetic. But perhaps this kind of swapping happens all the time and is mistaken for “fresh” thinking.

Is Ando Bien Pedo by Banda Los Recoditos (2009) faster than Beep Street by Squarepusher (1997)?

Randall Grahm on being somewhere. And wine. A wonderful lecture with photos.

That’s how much the Six Million Dollar Man would cost today.

(Thank you Ana for asking, Wikipedia for defining, and the Measuring Worth aggregator for answering.)

The Spanish newspaper El País is taking it pretty seriously:

Un activista anti gobierno se estrella contra un edificio federal en Tejas
Un ingeniero de sistemas informáticos manifestó este martes su furia contra el Estado suicidándose con una avioneta lanzada contra un edificio de la agencia tributaria en Austin (Tejas), donde trabajaban 200 empleados federales.

Translation: “An anti-government activist crashes into a federal building in Texas: an IT engineer demonstrated his rage against the government by killing himself with a small plane launched into the IRS building in Austin (Texas) where 200 federal employees worked.”

The Spanish have a long history of dealing with domestic terrorism. But I’m not sure that history is what prompted this language.

Cindy Lauper’s Time After Time and Miguel Bosé’s Nena.

A colleague asked me if our company was still throwing a conference I will refer to as “The Fun Meeting,” to which employees from around the country are invited.

The answer was: “No, because of the economy.”

But instead I replied: “No, Goldman Sachs took it away.”

And then it hit me: guilt is coalescing around Goldman. First it was the Taibbi piece, then the Morgenson pieces and now the links to Greece.

The power of audio dubbing and the cuteness of “Canadian” beavers.

via MetaFilter.

LD Desk by Jon Goulder

Desk by Hansen Family

Swag Desk by George Nelson

Them Crooked Vultures.

So often, musical groups try to steal and end up copying. Them Crooked Vultures have pulled off at least a half-dozen perfect heists on this debut record. Legendary.

In the face of conventional wisdom that asserts rock has nothing left to give and can only be plundered for remixes here is proof that technical mastery can unlock new rooms of possibility and unknowable feeling.

If you believe that musical culture is a dialectical conversation, Them Crooked Vultures are the rare synthesis of several styles (techniques, tastes) where the sum is greater than its parts. A phase transition.

As a response to computer-aided music, Them Crooked Vultures leap past the last decade’s trend towards sloppiness, rejecting the claim that only naif and primitive players can be sincere. Instead, the trio delights in pulling off magic tricks – by definition, acts you don’t notice but for their impossible by-products; the white rabbit, the lovely lady cut in two. These are the moments that sound too good to be true. The turns of phrase that turn heads and inspire hope by remaining mysterious, fleeting.

Then there are the many moments that sound good because they are so true, so familiar. The genuine expression of a harmonic “faith” once preached by The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Layered into a chorus (with a computer, natch), lead singer Josh Homme becomes a fab four of one, as charismatic and erotic as Robert Plant or Mick Jagger ever were on their best nights.

Amusing and insightful take down of conservative think tank propaganda celebrates the pleasures of writing and of living the life examined.

Wonderful, exciting review of future cars and cities.

America has a horrendous mental health problem and instead of addressing it we imprison the hundreds of thousands if not millions who try to cure themselves without access to professional treatment.

Alcove by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Basket by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Yale by Jean-Marie Massaud

Dehors by Michele De Lucchi & Philippe Nigro

Zorro by Stephanie Knust

Stick by Todd Bracher Studio

Bend by Michele Menescardi

PLOF by Yonoh

mr. light by Tomás Alonso
more than a tube of metal but I like them so here they are.

Brilliant idea: Balance the U.S Budget by Auctioning off 10 Million U.S Passports.

A monologue that could make a great dialogue: you’re angry because you’re getting screwed.

The problem is that we like screwing ourselves over – and over again.

Breathtaking and heartbreaking: Days of Heaven.

Another peek at the future of interactions: an augmented reality game of rock paper scissors with t-shirts as the distribution platform.

For the minority of my friends who will read this, are familiar with “technologies of the self” and fans of The Naked Civil Servant: an excellent essay on Quentin Crisp by Mark Simpson, via MetaFilter.

Stephen Walt lays bare the failures of the Obama administration’s policy towards Palestine and Israel and makes some unsettling predictions about its implications for the region and the U.S.

Evert Cilliers on Cheney and other cowards:

There’s a stunning contrast between Cheney and Bush, who said about Obama:”I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence.” And: “I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

Slime Mold Beats Humans at Perfecting Traffic Networks

Matthew Yglesias:

The Republican strategy of holding out for total surrender is working just fine. They had an interesting theory that if you refuse to cooperate with efforts to make the country better, things won’t get better and the out-of-power party will benefit. The theory appears to be true.

In a review of John Cassidy’s book about the bad thinking that led to the global financial crisis, Satyajit Das offers an interesting take on the role that U.S. consumers played in this horrendous man-made disaster.

It’s not, as many in finance and corporate circles hold, that consumers were greedy, irresponsible and stupid (though many were, those attributes are evenly distributed across society.) Rather, it’s that most consumers were getting poorer while the marketplace and political establishment insisted they were getting wealthier:

Firstly, a lack of growth in real income, especially for middle and lower paid employees, made it difficult for [consumers] to achieve the material success that was daily sold to them by the media and advertising. Secondly, the rise of stated income and low or no documentation mortgage reflected the change in work practice where large parts of the work force were no longer employed full-time. Casual or part-time employment and contracting arrangements made the required proof of income difficult.

It’s not that the poor got into contracts they should have avoided, it’s that these contracts were being designed (created and marketed) for an increasing number of consumers trying to keep from losing their buying power — with the claim that such contracts, from credit cards to mortgages, would make these newly poor wealthier. Like magic.

This market in magic debt was no less pernicious than fake doctors who prey on the ill with miracle cures. (Imagine quacks selling a “clean bill of health” that is said to make the sickly bearer healthy again.)

When the contracts came due, relatively few (mostly in finance) were able to pass the buck, most were not. Our government, under the leadership of the prodigal son GW Bush, not only permitted such scams, it endorsed them with b.s. about creating a “society of wealth.” (More like a nation of debtors, from Wall Street to Main Street.)

Americans rejected this agenda in the election of 2008. Even the Republican candidates campaigned on change and learning to live with limited means. Palin touted a hardscrabble, “Alaskan frontier housekeeping” approach to domestic finance.

The Obama administration has proposed an agency that would prevent such consumer abuse, not unlike the way the FDA keeps companies from selling sugar pills to cure Cancer or meat made of glue and sawdust. That proposal may now be yanked given the lack of discipline among Democrats and the consistent discipline shown by Republicans (what the latter lack in ideas they more than make up for in groupthink.)

Nearly a century ago, the shocking scenes in the popular novel “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair helped create an appetite for the FDA. Today’s equivalent would likely be a feature film or a prime time scripted series about the horrors of consumer finance; the perps, their victims and the toll on us all.

I worry that America will only get poorer and more desperate without such a moment of clarity.

Masse Critique by Kilian Rüthemann & Niklaus Wenger

Out of the White by Michel de Broin

A rare mainstream peek at tensions within the U.S. Hispanic community, from the New Yorker:

During the Administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Latino groups had repeatedly failed to coalesce around a candidate [for the Supreme Court.] This time, they were determined to wield their influence as a block…The Mexican-Americans did not have a superior candidate. The Puerto Ricans did not have the numbers. After hours of debate, Ed Pastor, a Mexican-American congressman from Arizona, made a motion: “The best candidate is Sonia Sotomayor, and we should take a vote right here.” The meeting ended with a unanimous vote for Sotomayor.

A great quote from Charles Taylor in an so-so piece:

The individual pursuit of happiness as defined by consumer culture still absorbs much of our time and energy, or else the threat of being shut out of this pursuit through poverty, unemployment, incapacity galvanises our efforts . . . and yet the sense that there is something more presses in. Great numbers of people feel it: in moments of reflection about their life; in moments of relaxation in nature; in moments of bereavement and loss; and quite wildly and unpredictably.

Robert Reich on bumper stickers and Obama-Biden in 2012:

The most painful political truth for Democrats is the nation won’t possibly be out of this jobs hole by the presidential election of 2012, even if the recovery is vigorous. Do the math. In order to get out of the hole, we’d need an average monthly increase of 400,000 jobs between now and then. But even at the peak of the 1990s jobs boom, the highest we ever got was 280,000 jobs a month. At the peak of the last recovery, in 2005, we got no higher than 212,000 jobs a month. Bottom line: Obama will be going into an election year with a higher total level of unemployment than before the Great Recession. He will have to argue that, were it not for his policies, things would be even worse. Counter-factuals like this do not sit well on bumper stickers.

Teach for America and its lessons for public school reform:

Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.