Steve Kass

Facts
  The reflecting pool on the National Mall covers an area of about 8 acres. [reference]
  An American football field including the endzones covers about 1.3 acres. [reference]
  The seating area of Michigan Stadium covers about 6 or 7 acres. [reference]
  The capacity of Michigan Stadium is about 100,000 people. [reference]

Observations
  At the most crowded locations, the density of people on the Capitol lawn today was no more than in a packed stadium. [references: lawn, stadium]
  Most of the people on the mall today were within an area of two or three reflecting pools in size (and white). [reference]

Estimate
  (2.5 reflecting pools) × (8 acres per reflecting pool) ÷ (6.5 acres per stadium) × (100,000 people per stadium) × (average 0.5 density) = 150,000 people. More than 87,000, perhaps. Hundreds of thousands, as in more than 200,000? Not too likely. A million? No.

In his most recent essay, A Case of Mental Courage, David Brooks writes that America’s underlying problem is that “there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate.”

That is to say, Brooks laments Americans’ lack¹ of esteem for “mental character.” Hear, hear!

While stereotypes are imperfect, and often dangerous, it seems to me that Brooks has dug down to an important difference between “liberal” and “conservative,” at least as those terms are recognized and represented in the sphere of public media. Dug down to, but not recognized or explored.

Brooks identifies as “mental flabbiness” the unwillingness to confront personal bias. He appropriately deplores herd thinking, confirmation bias, and the rigidity of political debate. All of which are indeed deplorable. Unfortunately, however — and unsurprisingly, given his political bent — Brooks stops short of what he might find a painful insight: the biggest obstacle to the status of mental character is the “conservatives,” not the “liberals².”

Conservatives in politics and the press deride mental character. A striking example of this conservative disdain is the one-liner that badly hurt John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign: “He was for the war before he was against it,” with its implication that to change one’s mind is a character flaw. It’s not. Sadly, too few Democrats thought it would be useful to stand up for mental character; instead many shot back their own “for it before he was against it” quips.³

I’d go on, but it’s late and I’m out of footnote characters⁴. Regarding other aspects of Brooks’s latest, see the Times’s comments section and, for what I hope are interesting tangents, my footnotes below if you didn’t hop down to them yet.

¹ Brooks might say “loss,” not “lack.” In Brooks’s narrative, mental character is a characteristic men once upon a time valued, if not possessed. (“This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated.”) He frames mental character as Christian myth frames Virtue or Grace, and like a conservative cleric might argue about the decline of religion, Brooks argues that modern Man has fallen or turned away from mental character, which, like Christian Virtue, is a state Man can only aspire to achieve through constant struggle (and painful struggle at that, though I suspect the arguably vivid allusions in Brooks’s essay to self-flagellation were unintentional).

The mystical fog in which Brooks envelops (or envisions) this “ethos” notwithstanding, he and I agree that society would benefit by placing more value on mental character as he describes and defines.

² The political spectrum isn’t one-dimensional, and I’m generalizing and categorizing,  but not too dangerously, I hope. My characterization, while generally valid, still admits outliers — but they’re exceptions that don’t diminish the value of the characterization. Among media outlets, for example, one “liberal” voice that is unfortunately antithetic to mental character on many issues is the Huffington Post (in contrast to the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Kos, MediaMatters, and scores of others). A “conservative” voice that thankfully shows considerable respect to mental character is the Atlantic (in contrast to [expletive deleted], National Review, the Washington Times, the New York Post, and scores of others). Such exceptions are relatively few.

³ Here I’ll risk exposing my own confirmation bias with some speculation: at least at first, I believe the Democrats hit back with the same “before he was against it” as one might return a schoolyard punch from a bully. This was quicker and easier than addressing Republicans’ base values. It might also have been less risky, because it’s not clear whether the public cared about candidates’ character more than their success at bullying. In a bullying contest, unfortunately, the conservatives are likely to win. (They’re better bullies by far. To wit: Beck, Limbaugh, Palin.)

⁴ Ok, I lied. I’m only out of the ones I can type without using the <sup>tag. But it’s still late.

It’s bad enough that Google News considers the Washington Times a news organization, but attributing the Times’s rubbish to George Washington?

I have my doubts about some of the other George Washington quotes Google News offers, too.

If the South Korean government can find a way to satisfy the letter of the law while channeling their economic activities away from Iranian institutions — non-Iranian banks, maybe in Dubai — that’s the first step.

CNN doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should, given that they’re easily as irresponsible as their buddies at [expletive deleted]. Today they’re fanning the fires about “illegal immigration,” the current euphemism for people we don’t like because they’re brownish and speak another language especially Spanish. Writer Arthur Brice devotes a big chunk of a 900-word article on CNN.com today to a discussion of “anchor babies,” the current not-so-euphemism for babies of people we don’t like because they’re brownish and speak another language especially Spanish. Here’s my brief rant on the article, “Report: 8 percent of U.S. newborns have undocumented parents.”

Before ranting, though, let me be one of the first to greet all these new and beautiful U.S. citizens: “¡Welcome, and bienvenidos!”

This rant has two parts. First, let’s see what “have undocumented parents” means, so we know more about this 8% on whom the goons will be spreading their invective. The phrase shouldn’t mean anything other than “have undocumented parents,” but somehow it does, and not just because of headlinic license. It means “has at least one undocumented parent.” Here’s the relevant wording (emphasis mine) from the Pew report Brice describes:

A child has unauthorized immigrant parents if either parent is unauthorized. A child has U.S.-born parents if all identified parents are U.S.-born.

Well, that’s stupid. The asymmetry reminds me of the definition of Colored, as in for the purpose of what school you can go to, what train car you can sit in, and what drinking fountain you can use, and, before the 14th amendment was ratified, as in whether you were a U.S. citizen, more or less.

Next thing you know, today’s goons who want to abridge the Fourteenth Amendment will find a way to damn not only these youngsters but sus hijos y nietos también, no matter what, probably because fuck the Constitution and Bill of Rights, God tells them to.

Not to mention that “[s]ome pregnant women from other countries are traveling to the United States to give birth and then taking their babies back home to raise them as terrorists that would return to attack America,” a concern raised by Texas state representative Debbie Riddle, “a Republican,” that Brice thought fit to pass on.

Tattooing the letter U on them to start, maybe? (You can bet they’d have no problem paying for that medical procedure with government dollars.)

Part 2: The word “anchor babies” doesn’t appear in the Pew report, but instead of leaving it out of the article entirely, Brice fills us in. He knows that more people will read an article if it’s about anchor babies.

“Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency,” says an organization called The American Resistance, which has described itself as “a coalition of immigration crime fighters opposing illegal and undocumented immigration.”

Minor partial credit to Brice for using the past tense when mentioning The American Resistance, but he forgot to mention that they are “no longer an active – or updated – Website or effort,” and haven’t been since 2006, according to — well, themselves, in a message they left on the web four years ago. The fact that Brice names them at all is goofy, to put it kindly. There are dozens of non-moribund organizations he could have called up. A Youtube link to a [expletive deleted] broadcast from within the last week, maybe.

That’s all. Have a nice week.

Internet news aggregator robots never leave me alone. Internet news aggregator robots, never leave me alone.

Every day or more, one of the news aggregator robots gets both my attention and my goat. Here’s one of today’s missiles: “CDC: Most Teens Choose to Abstain,” at cbn.com. The first paragraph:

A recent study shows that most teenagers are virgins, contradicting claims from family planning groups that most young people do not abstain from sex and more sex ed should be taught in schools.

Image by Kelley Boone, some rights reserved (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

This kind of blabbery drives me nuts. They might has well have said, “A recent study shows that the earth is flat, contradicting claims from Unitarians that the planets revolve around the sun and astronomy should be taught in schools instead of the Bible,” when in fact a recent study showed no such thing, and even if it had, it wouldn’t contradict what the Unitarians supposedly said. Maybe if I’d been on the debate team I’d know how to respond more effectively.

If I were a fundamentalist Christian who wanted to justify abstinence education, I wouldn’t quote or misquote studies, nor would I attempt to use logic. I’d be honest: “According to my church, the world is flat, most young people abstain from sex, and abstinence should be taught in schools right after study hall and before creationism. That’s what I believe, because faith in the church is my guiding light.”

Studies be damned, science be damned, the church is the ultimate authority. I might have more respect if they put it that way more often. (I would still object if it got to the point of the Constitution be damned and laws be damned.) Why should fundamentalists care a whit about the fact that science is consistent, well-founded, and predictive? Why should they care about evidence from studies and measurements, if faith, not intelligence, is their life’s compass? I can disagree, disapprove, and be dismayed, but I have no appeal. We live on different planets; we grew up in different universes.

Anyway, for readers who might appreciate facts and figures, let me explain the CBN’s vulpigeration.

What is “sex,” anyway? For its study, the CDC defined “sex” to be heterosexual vaginal sexual intercourse¹ only (though the boy need not stay on top). Many English speakers would call a bunch of other things people do naked with others sex, but the CDC’s restrictive definition should suit the Christian Broadcasting Network in two ways. First, this definition doesn’t infringe on the way CBN might define another word, “sodomy.” They might prefer it for that bunch of other things people do naked with each other. Second, it yields higher virgin percentages. As far as the CDC and CBN.com are concerned, you’re a virgin if you haven’t been part of any penis-in-vagina hanky-panky, even if you’ve gotten plenty naked and nasty with one or more hims or hers.

Fact: Most young people do not abstain from sex. (Or “sex.”) Not during their entire youth, which is what CBN.com suggested. According to the CDC study, most (65% of) boys aged 18-19 and most (60% of) girls in the same age group have had heterosexual vaginal sexual intercourse. The CDC numbers suggest that most young people do abstain from sex “sex” until about age 17 or 18, but abstaining until you stop abstaining is not the same thing as abstaining. Using the CBN.com logic, you could say that all people abstain from sex, ’cuz they all do — until they stop, and most stop, as we know from all the babies being born and abortions being performed. Few babies (or aborted fetuses) are incarnate nowadays.

¹ Additional information available on the internet.

Lately, there’s been some buzz (no pun intended) in some circles about the recent redesign of Google News, my hometown paper. An initial flurry of articles appeared on June 30 or July 1, when Google launched its first major redesign in years. Another flurry appeared today when Google tweaked the new look, ostensibly in response to a wave (no pun intended) of complaints from users.

Many of the reports have illustrations intending to show the initial changes or recent tweaks (for example Technorati, GoogleWatch, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab). However, none that I’ve seen paints a useful picture of what many users (including me) dislike about the new design, with the new tweaks or not.

Here’s the change from my vantage point. For each capture, I’ve scrolled to just below the “Top News” — to the top of the individual news sections like U.S., Sci/Tech, and so on. These are scaled-down screen captures of nearly the full 1920-pixel width of my screen and most of its 1200-pixel height, omitting some browser falderal.

Old Google News format (still in place at news.google.ca).

New Google News format (single column view).

Google News format (two-column view).

In unveiling today’s two-column view, Google tells me I can “now once again view two columns of news headlines.” Instead of deconstructing Google’s announcement, I direct you to the screenshots. At the top is the two-column view Google provided before July 1. At the bottom is the two column view Google is “once again” providing. Can you spot the differences?

On one screen, I used to see about 14 stories from news sections I selected. Then Google decided to give me only six. Now I see eight or ten, which brings me to today’s arithmetic fact:

14 = 8 + TWO HUGE WHITE RECTANGLES OF EMPTINESS.

That’s the first-order approximation. On closer inspection (I apologize for not having linked the full-size images, but you can still see some of this), this is a better approximation: 14 + important details + little junk = 8 + TWO HUGE WHITE RECTANGLES OF EMPTINESS + fewer important details + some junk

Less obvious than the TWO HUGE WHITE RECTANGLES OF EMPTINESS, but not worth ignoring, is the new design’s omission (in both new formats) of the lead story’s author(s). I can’t keep track of reporters now the way I could back when I was learning to read news, but I’d still like to see who the author is (without an extra click) especially given that the alternative seems to be some more WHITE EMPTINESS.

If you’ve gotten this far, you might be formulating a question about the EVEN LARGER #F3F6ED RECTANGLES OF EMPTINESS that surround the content here on my very own soapbox. Good question. If I had Google’s resources, not only would this blog be far more popular and interesting, you’d get it in a stunning, device-appropriate format. (At least for a few years, you might, until I went to the other side.) You’re getting what you get, #F3F6ED EMPTINESS included, because it’s easy for me to do and it seems like a reasonable compromise that accommodates a variety of screens and devices, none too badly. If I had Google’s resources, I might also be able to employ someone who could write better answers to hard questions, but I’m not entirely sure, given the AQ (answer quotient) from Apple and Google lately.

If you have something to tell me about my blog’s design, by all means do, and I’ll listen. I can’t promise changes, but I can and do promise that if I change things, I won’t tell you I’m giving my reader(s) what they wanted unless that’s truly the case.

Finally, if I seem more consistently cranky than usual lately, or if I mention Canada a lot more often than before, well, now you know why.

In a segment of Pro Se, today’s installment of This American Life, radio host Ira Glass spoke with Francisco Calderon, a New York district attorney, about a case he lost¹ to a defendant who represented himself in court. I’m not a regular listener, and based on today’s episode, I won’t become one. The show’s web site describes the segment, Disorder in the Court, this way:

Earlier this year, admitted drug user Jorge Cruz decided to act as his own lawyer in an Albany, New York criminal court. Impossibly, he won. Ira talks to Francisco Calderon, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, about what it feels like to lose to an amateur.

Perhaps I have too much faith in the American legal system. I believe that judges and juries base their decisions on the evidence and on the law. Absent information to the contrary, I assume the jury didn’t find the prosecution’s evidence sufficient to convict Cruz. Glass didn’t mention this possibility, but the facts and rhetoric in Glass’s interview with Calderon suggest it.

The rhetoric (which offended me) matched the website’s subjective description of the segment. “… admitted drug user … Impossibly, he won.” Because Cruz was an admitted drug user, Glass seems to imply, he must have been guilty.

Glass never touched on the question of whether Cruz was guilty, nor on the legal standard of reasonable doubt. Calderon said he never “connected” with the jury, who he thought sympathized with the picture of Cruz as a poor drug addict who couldn’t have afforded the $5,000 worth of drugs he was accused of possessing. The felony-weight cocaine was seized from under a mattress in a hotel room registered to Cruz’s brother. Cruz admitted to using drugs in the room, but he claimed not to know there was a stash in the bed. Cruz’s brother and a third person in the room pleaded guilty to felony drug charges and were sentenced without a trial.

Calderon worried that the more he objected to Cruz in the courtroom (and no doubt he had valid objections to Cruz, who had no legal training to know what sort of questioning was allowed), the more he’d come across as a bully. Glass analogized that juries expected something like a boxing match between well-matched fighters.

A trial isn’t a fistfight between lawyers where the jury decides who landed the best uppercut. Sure, a lawyer who can’t “land a punch” might prevent the jury from understanding the facts, but (television notwithstanding) the defendant is the one on trial, not the lawyers.

If life were as simple as “he’s a drug user, he must be guilty,” we wouldn’t need much of a legal system, nor would we have the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Jorge Cruz availed himself of his constitutional right, and he chose to represent himself. He was acquitted by the jury on the most serious charge, but I’m not convinced his choice to serve as his own attorney was an important factor in the outcome.

Disorder in the Court fits the American narrative that champions the underdog and devalues experience, education, process, and authority. (The irony² isn’t lost on me that this same narrative helps boost the blogger ego.) Yet at the same time, it whispers a contrasting message that authority is always right, and that when it fails, something else is to blame. Taken only a bit further, these are the narratives that give rise to and sustain Joe the Plumber, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin – narratives that are as resolutely American “as apple pie,” but that verge on the truly distasteful and dangerous.

Other segments of Pro Se were also disappointing. In Swak Down, a former student teacher tells how he addressed a violent incident by deciding to “forgo all the rules, and administer frontier justice on the fly,” believing (still) that no other approach would have worked. In Underling Gets an Underling, a former production assistant tells the story of how she handled her frustration about how she was being treated: she placed a phony Craigslist ad for her own production assistant, hired an unwitting fellow, and then treated him as unfairly and dishonestly as she felt her boss was treating her.

This American Life may or may not be representative of American life, but it left a bad taste in my mouth today. It needs a big dash of opprobrium at least.

¹ A contemporary account of the case in the Albany Times Union notes that while Cruz was acquitted of felony cocaine possession, the jury did find him guilty of misdemeanor heroin possession, and he was sentenced to time already served in the Albany County jail.

² I know, I know.

Millions of Americans were up in arms over the holiday weekend after McDonald’s¹, the fast-food giant, began to use “oyster” packaging, the vacuum-formed, heat-sealed, hard plastic clear containers more commonly associated with batteries and computer peripherals than with restaurant food, for drive-up and take-out orders at all its restaurants in the United States and its territories on Friday.

  Some rights reserved by bunchofpants

Hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints have appeared on Twitter and from loyal customers who prefer the old paper wrappers.

• WTF IM SUPPOSE TO CARRY A CHAINSAW IN MY GLOVE COMPARMENT MACDONALDS YOU FAIL
• what are u thinking with this crap mcdonald #burgerfail #wendys

On Facebook, dozens of groups have been created in opposition to the change, such as “Admit you’re wrong, McDonalds” and “A Million People in Support of Burgers in Paper,” where users can lodge longer complaints, like this one:

• “I’ve eaten two Big Macs and a large fries every day since you switched from styrofoam 20 years ago, but McD doesn’t care about its customers any more. I went to Burger King today, and you know what? It tastes better, too. Good riddance, McDonalds.”

Scores of complaints were also lodged on the official McDonald’s website.

According to its June 30 press release, the change addresses two of McDonald’s’s customers’ most pressing concerns. “For years, customers have wanted to be able to check their order without unwrapping everything. The new packages are transparent. Also, customers want their food to be safe from insects and germs, and according to our research, welded packaging provides that impression better than any other option.”

When asked about the public outrage, a spokesman for McDonald’s had this to say: “While it can take time to adjust to change, we’ve tested our latest packaging design thoroughly. We’ll keep monitoring customer feedback so we can continue improving our product.”

McDonald’s aficionados in Detroit, Buffalo, and a few other locations quickly found out they had another option. Canadian locations won’t adopt the new packaging for a few months.

What do you think?

¹ This article is not really about McDonald’s, and McDonald’s did not switch to clamshell packaging. This article is about Google News, and they did switch to something that makes about as much sense as clamshell packaging for takeout food.

Kudos to Brian Klug and Anand Lal Shimpi for measuring and graphing the (very nonlinear) relationship [article;graph] between iPhone 4 bars and signal strength, which helps explain what’s going on with the iPhone death grip.

Also, here’s a suggestion to AT&T, who might want to replace the slogan “More Bars in More Places.”

  iPhone image © Patrick Hoesly (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Early Wednesday, a new monument slowly rose over St. Petersburg in northern Russia, and tourists and residents alike have flocked to see it. The Moscow Times provided this poetic description of the new attraction:

Measuring 65 meters long and 27 meters across, the light-colored phallus rises and glistens against the imperial-era capital’s elegant skyline when the bridge is drawn up to let ships pass in the twilit northern summer nights.

More at english.pravda.ru: Giant Penis Erects Literally in St. Petersburg Center. Additional photos at Xaxor.com.

Note: This is not the first time a giant penis has aroused attention in one or another St. Petersburg. In 2008, police in St. Petersburg, Florida, responded to a “complaint about a giant penis statue.” The incident ended in the arrest of an art gallery owner for violating a city ordinance that prohibits places that serve alcohol from allowing the public display of genitals. (The genitals of a person found by investigating officers, not the aforementioned statue, prompted the arrest.) According to its owner, the Florida giant penis statue stood “eight” feet tall.

Thanks to Lucinda for passing this on from Sue Katz.