Man, fleas, and gods

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the dozens.

- Michel de Montaigne

Why this isn't the time

Another mass shooting, again at a school, and the reactions are predictable as ever. "We need to talk about gun control." "Don't politicize the tragedy." "To not talk about it would be to politicize it." "I love you guys, but Americans are fucking idiots" (from a Canadian friend of mine).

Anyway, I don't think there's anything wrong with politicizing the attack -- it's an inherently political topic -- but this is still the wrong time to be talking about changing policy. Why? We're in the wake of an attention-getting but unrepresentative event. Emotional reactions don't lead to good policy.

While this attack is clearly a terrible event for those directly involved, it's a detail from a public policy standpoint. There are roughly 9,000-10,000 per year in the US. That's 25-30 per day, every day. Newtown is, in a very real sense, just another day.

It also seems that most commonly proposed gun control measures wouldn't do much to prevent attacks like this. Waiting periods, background checks, registration, all sensible but not relevant to the situation at hand. These mass shootings tend to be perpetrated by people with no prior criminal record, a long planning horizon, and no concerns about getting caught.

What might help? The most effective policy would probably be to suppress media coverage. These people are copycats, looking for attention. We give it to them. I recently read about some countries that suppressed reports of suicide-by-train, with a resulting drop in rates (large drop by train, smaller one overall). It seems like a similar dynamic But would I advocate that? I'm not so sure. The only other thing I'd see maybe working would be eliminating all guns, but I'm not even sure that would be possible, setting aside for the moment the costs and Constitutional issues.

Best headline ever?

Fuck You, Pelicans Are Awesome

Actually, the whole article is pretty good. Have a read.

Dave Brubeck R.I.P.

Dave Brubeck died today. It's almost twelve years ago I had a chance to see him play live, an 80th birthday concert with four of his sons and the London Symphony Orchestra, but missed it because I'd already bought my flight back to the States for Christmas. It's high on my list of things I regret not doing in life.

To be honest, I didn't even realize he was still alive until I heard the news. I didn't even realize he was still alive and playing twelve years ago until I saw the show advertised. I'm certainly not a great follower of his. But as jazz goes, I think he's one of the best, and I'm not sure he's as well known as he should be.

If you're not familiar with him, check out Take Five. You'll recognize it. Then go a bit deeper with Unsquare Dance, probably my favorite of his. You might recognize it too. It's been in commercials and apparently made #74 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100. Then try The Real Ambassadors, with its great backstory. And his verison of Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho. And what he did with Volga Boatmen while touring Russia. And on and on and on.....

Photos that give a truly different vew of reality

This is some of the coolest photography I've ever seen. It's interesting, and the writer spends a lot of time explaining what's behind it, but focusing on that is like focusing on the chemical processes behind a film photo or the signal processing in a digital camera. It's interesting, but that's secondary.

Instead, these are cool just because they draw me in. I've spend a lot of time with them, mostly with the waves. I haven't spent much of it thinking about what the scenes would look like 'normally'. They just look familiar, yet not, like a glimpse into a different reality

My first reaction was to want one of these cameras. Setting aside the $85,000 price tag, I probably couldn't produce anything like this anyway. I have plenty of photographic power now, but my skills, my vision... still a work in progress. And this is some serious vision, not just a piece of equipment.

A unified theory of politics

I think I might have figured it out.

1. Most Democratic voters are seriously uninformed, haven't thought very deeply about the issues, and are voting mainly on tribal loyalty.
2. But a lot of them are well informed, have thought deeply about the issues, and are voting based on values and some good thought about how the world works.
3. Points 1 and 2 apply equally to Republican voters.

I could probably extend point 3 to Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, PRI, SDP, and any other large party anywhere. (You're probably less likely to support a minor party, be it Libertarians or Greens, without having thought about it a lot.)

What are the implications? Well, first, it should show that it's not that impressive to point out stupid things said by supporters of the opposition; supporters of your side are saying lots of stupid things too. You want to get somewhere, try to engage with the better arguments from the opposition.

And that leads nicely into my second point, which is that the opposition generally has some good arguments for their position. Not all people who disagree with you are uninformed. Often it comes down to a difference in values. Sometimes it's differing predictions about the effect of a policy. It's almost always subjective differences, not objective ones.

This is why I rarely try to changes peoples opinions about policy. Instead, I just try to change their opinions of my opinions. If I can convince someone that you don't have to be an idiot to support, say, market-based health care reforms, I'll call that a success, even if I can't convince them that those reforms are the best policy.

Mars landing

We've all seen a lot from Curiosity, still photos and video. This video is being offered up by Slate as the "[b]est Mars landing video ever." They might be right.