PIPA/SOPA Explained

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As you might have guessed I love staying on top of current events, especially as it relates to politics, the economy and just about anything not related to Justin Bieber or Dancing with the Stars. So you can imagine my frustration when I just don't have the time to get up to speed on an issue that I'm pretty sure is important.  That's what has happened with the current PIPA/SOPA issue in Congress which is why I was so pleased to come across this explanation of the issue by Clay Shirky:

Confessions of an English Major

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Over at his blog John Robinson shares a great quote about English majors:

“That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren’t left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosphy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented and math too mathematical — because they weren’t musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they’d done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn’t know what to major in majored in.”

Sadly the quote and some of the comments on John's post hit close to home.  I must admit that I majored in English Lit mainly because:

  • I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I'd heard that English was preferable to "undecided" and that it was a good major to prepare you for various forms of grad school, including law school.  If I'd bothered to physically meet with my advisor before the day I needed him to sign my paperwork to get my degree he might have told me differently.
  • Every other major just seemed too hard.  They would have required studying and who wants to do that?
  • I kind of enjoyed proving that someone could get a BA in English Literature without even a rudimentary grasp of grammar.  Ask me to identify a prepositional phrase and I'll just drool on a piece of paper.
  • Last, but not least, it wasn't lost on me that I would be one of maybe five guys in the entire English Department at GMU. I thought the approximately 500-1 female/male ratio was great until I was called a misogynist by a member of a study group.  After looking it up in a dictionary I didn't join any more study groups and refrained from any classroom discussion involving the role of gender in literature which means I never once spoke.

And thus were planted the seeds of greatness mediocrity.

Red Wine Research

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First the bad news:

Remember all that research about resveratrol, the compound in red wine said to help your heart? "Following a three-year investigation, a university review board has concluded that Dipak K. Das, Ph.D., the director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the university's school of medicine, in Farmington, manipulated research data in at least 145 instances."

Then the good news from one of the commenters on the post:

While scientific misconduct is a serious matter, it is worth understanding that this isn't about "all that research about resveratol" as the summary puts it, but rather just the research on it by a particular researcher in Connecticut, who was neither the first nor most significant researcher in the field.

I'm choosing to believe that red wine is still all it was cooked up to be.

Do You Know How Hard It Is to Dust a Christmas Tree?

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Good friend Ruth Burcaw, creator of the Burcaw Approach to Christmas decorating, has a nice post explaining why she shunned the Burcaw approach this year:

Still, I was surprised by the family reaction to my announcement that we would be taking down the tree at the end of the 2011-12 holiday season. What was I thinking? “We are the family who leaves their Christmas tree up! What will we tell our friends?” It just seemed like time; I mean, do you have any idea how much dust can accumulate on a Christmas tree over the course of two years?  Dusting a tree is not an easy task.  So, the weekend after epiphany (January 6), the tree came down. As I worked on the dismantling, I reflected about why it had to come down now:

  • Simple Boredom: Over time, I stopped noticing the tree. My trips into the living room to sit and read/knit by the glowing light of the tree became fewer and fewer. I began to take its beauty for granted.
  • The Process is Important : As I removed each ornament one-by-one from its carefully-chosen location nestled among the branches, I realized I receive great satisfaction in touching, admiring, and most of all, remembering the story of each ornament.  A thoughtful employee who moved on long ago gave me the gorgeous Santa and Mrs. Claus kissing fish ornaments.  We picked up the little Mickey Mouse in a Christmas light bulb ornament during our family trip to Disney World in 2006. Another rare wooden Santa I bought in a mall in Phoenix while traveling for work.  Santa riding a fish I gave to my husband, an aspirational fisherman. An old-fashioned Santa cross-stitched by my father-in-law was an early marriage gift. The elegant Radke, the whimsical Silvestri, the Santa on a golf ball from my childhood tree. Each ornament stirs up emotions and memories, most all of them good, associated with people and places throughout my life. Why would I deny myself the small pleasure of the trip down Santa Memory Lane?
  • A Tree Does Not Equal Happiness: Where does authentic happiness come from? Certainly, I am aware that nothing external creates happiness on any core level, but the tree has always represented meaningful aspects of  my life – the joy and anticipation of Christmas, special family memories and trips, light that shines in darkness, and moments of peaceful, quiet contemplation. But do I really need the tree to conjure up those thoughts and images? Can I create happiness without the physical reminder? I suppose it is time to consider the possibility.

I'm trying to convince my lovely wife that we need to pick up the Burcaw torch and run with it this year.  So far, so good.

That Vintage Sears Catalog Is Gonna Get Vintagier

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After reading Fec's Sears Death Watch I'm wishing I'd saved an old Sears catalog.  It might be a valuable relic in the near future.

The last time I set foot in a Sears was five years ago when Celeste and I bought a stove and a dishwasher.  Let's just say our experience directly led to me being highly motivated to never return.

Ken Snowden, UNCG Econ Professor, On the Mortgage Mess

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UNCG Econ Professor Ken Snowden is a co-author of an upcoming book about lessons to be learned from the Great Depression that might be applied to our current mortgage mess.  An excerpt can be found at the Freakonomics blog:

For the past four years, the U.S. has faced a housing crisis that shows no signs of ending.  The situation was similar in June 1933 when the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was created to address the nation’s last severe mortgage crisis.  Some have suggested that a new HOLC could help resolve the current crisis, but their characterizations of the HOLC have been incomplete.  Our goal here is to summarize recent research that provides a fuller picture of the HOLC and its impact on housing markets in the 1930s.        

Between 1933 and 1936 the HOLC bought and then refinanced one million severely delinquent mortgages, representing roughly one-tenth of the nation’s nonfarm owner-occupied homes.  The total amount refinanced was $3 billion, or about 20 percent of the outstanding mortgage debt on one- to four-family homes in 1933.  A program of similar proportions in 2011 would refinance 7.6 million loans worth $2 trillion. 

Trader Joe’s Big Brother

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I remember reading an article (I think in Wired magazine) years ago about the parent company for Trader Joe's, but I'd forgotten about it until I saw this Freakonomics post:

The company is called Aldi and, though I’d seen one or two of its stores in the past, I didn’t even know it was a grocery store. Then I read this very interesting Wall Street Journal piece about the company’s ambitious new plan for the U.S., which calls for 75 new stores this year. The article claims that Aldi is so good at selling cheap goods that WalMart couldn’t compete with it in Germany.

So, for those of you waiting with bated breath for Trader Joe's to announce a store opening in Winston-Salem or Greensboro, you can already shop at its big brother's stores.  Here's a handy-dandy list of locations for you.

I Don’t Know

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Want to surprise someone?  Admit you don't know the answer to a question, especially if it's a question about a topic on which you're supposed to be an expert.  Personally I respect anyone who has the guts to admit they don't know everything, and I took to heart a lesson I was taught early in my career; if you don't know the answer to a question the right response is "I don't know, but I'll be happy to find out for you."

The guys at Freakonomics recently posted two interesting items related to "I Don't Know."  The first was a response to the question “Why do people feel compelled to answer questions that they do not know the answer to?”.  The answer:

What I’ve found in business is that almost no one will ever admit to not knowing the answer to a question. So even if they absolutely have no idea what the answer is, if it’s within their realm of expertise, faking is just an important part. I really have come to believe teaching MBAs that one of the most  important things you learn as an MBA is how to pretend you know the answer to any question even though you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. And I’ve found it’s really one of the most destructive factors in business — is that everyone masquerades like they know the answer and no one will ever admit they don’t know the answer, and it makes it almost impossible to learn.

The second was a comment left by one of their readers:

In my classroom, students lose 1/4 point for wrong answers on quizzes. But for writing “I don’t know,” they get 1/4 point. (A correct answer is 1 point). The rationale is that if someone is in a medical emergency, and someone asks me what should be done, the answer “I don’t know” is much preferable to a guess. “I don’t know” leads the questioner to ask someone who hopefully is knowledgeable.

Part of why “I don’t know is so hard to say” stems from an education system based on attempting every single question, whether you know the answer or not.

P.S.: End-of-year student survey showed students strongly supported the +1/4 point IDK and -1/4 point wrong-answer system. 

If you think about it we do a lot of things that teach our kids to fear admitting ignorance, or making a mistake, and that inevitably leads to sending people into society who value being perceived as right more than they do actually being right.  I don't even want to think about the mischief we've brought on ourselves as a result.