21 August 09 (am)

Workout notes Nothing yet; swim over lunch. Resting for tomorrows races (1 mile/5K combination)

Posts
Recursivity: talks about the cultural differences between Canada and the US. Interestingly enough, I visited Ottawa and found the Canadians to be very friendly.

Academia: one university is giving a grade that is lower than an F: it is an “FD” which means that the person failed due to academic dishonesty. I applaud the effort, but I can see the lawsuits brewing…

An Illinois right wing group is going after a public school teacher for writing an atheist blog.

It is interesting how offended people get when you reject their pet superstitions!

Mathematics/Science

This is a long, wordy essay on what amounts to the bell curve. But the photo of the machine that produces the bell curve via experiment is worth observing.

Cosmic Variance: this is a bit of a humorous post comparing Galileo to Newton, both in what they did and how they wrote.

Politics Some see President Obama as struggling. On one hand, President Obama is spending too much time trying to split the difference between extremes. On the other hand, he (and we) may have underestimated how difficult it is to achieve “change”, even with 58 so called Democrats in the Senate:

There are a few of Obama’s liberal critics who could stand to recognize this. The Senate, with its filibuster rule, small-state bias, and committee and seniority structure, is a slow-moving, change-resistant, lower-case “c” conservative institution. It’s not obvious that if you put — I don’t know — Dennis Kucinich in the Oval Office that he’d have been able to accomplish a whole heck of a lot more. And Obama’s achievements are not insignificant: he signed an $800 billion stimulus package, expanded children’s health care, seems to have rescued the economy from a complete meltdown (although not necessarily from an extended recession), and has generally gotten good reviews on his foreign policy. And it’s a little early to write the obituary on health care, which is still more likely to pass than to fail.

The more intelligent liberal critique of Obama, however — and the one that Krugman is echoing — is that he’s left too much up to the whims of Congress, and particularly the Senate. Yes, Obama let his “Northeastern and Pacific Western liberal allies” write the health care, climate and stimulus bills. But he also let Blue Dogs and Committee Chairs mark them up. As a result, the climate bill that passed the House was significantly watered-down, the stimulus package was less than what economists like Krugman was calling for, and the public option is in grave trouble in the Senate.

But still, he isn’t doing that poorly; compare this period of his presidency with the similar period of Reagan’s or Bill Clinton’s.

20 Aug 09 (late pm)

Snarky quote
“Faith may not move mountains, but…..
(go here to see the completion)

Science and Frogs

Yes, Jerry Coyne has a frog named after him. No, there is no photo of it here, but there is an adorable frog photo.

Science: take a 26 question science literacy test here. I only got 24 right, but I didn't read one of them carefully. (hat tip to Sandwalk)

Health Care

Robert Reich makes a strong argument for the public option

Without a public, Medicare-like option, health care reform is a bandaid for a system in critical condition. There's no way to push private insurers to become more efficient and provide better value to Americans without being forced to compete with a public option. And there's no way to get overall health-care costs down without a public option that has the authority and scale to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, and other providers -- thereby opening the way for private insurers to do the same.

It's been clear from the start that the private insurers and other parts of the medical-industrial complex have hated the idea of the public option, for precisely these reasons. A public option would cut deeply into their current profits. That's why they've been willing to spend a fortune on lobbyists, threaten and intimidate legislators and ordinary Americans, and even rattle Obama's cage to the point where the Administration is about to give up on it.

The White House wonders why there hasn't been more support for universal health care coming from progressives, grass-roots Democrats, and Independents. I'll tell you why. It's because the White House has never made an explicit commitment to a public option. [...]

What's Conrad's response? "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," he tells "FOX News Sunday." Conrad is wrong. If Obama tells Senate Democrats he will not sign a healthcare reform bill without a public option, there will be enough votes in the United States Senate for a public option.

Robert Reich also talks about Obama supporters:

As I just wrote in The American Prospect, my friend Fred voted for Obama and trusts him to do the right thing. "He's the brightest and most decent person who's occupied the Oval Office in my lifetime," Fred says. His trust for the man extends to Obama's agenda. "I don't have time to wade into the details of the economy or health care or climate change legislation or anything else, but I know he's got my interests at heart."

My friend Sally also voted for Obama and still likes him, but she's increasingly upset about his policies. "He's giving away the store," she complains, pointing to his penchant for compromise. "He gave Wall Street $600 billion in bailouts and doesn't even want to regulate it, gave big polluters 85 percent of the cap-and-trade permits, and has promised the American Medical Association, Big Pharma, and private insurers whatever they want in return for their support of universal health care." Sally says she voted for Obama because he promised to change American politics, but she thinks corporate interests are more powerful than ever. [...]

Fred and Sally offer a fairly good sampling of Obama voters at this juncture, almost nine months after Election Day. Fred represents the trusters; Sally, the cynics. Some cynicism is to be expected in the post-honeymoon phase of any presidency, once the idealism of a campaign has crashed into the realities of governing. What seems unusual this time is how popular the president remains even as many of his supporters become uneasy about what he's actually doing. The apparent paradox may be the byproduct of the very qualities that put him into office.

I tend to be a bit more like Fred; I know that President Obama is only human and will make mistakes, but I also know that he is smart, ethical and has a better handle of things that I could ever have.

But Reich makes an important point: if we sit back and say "he's got this", we might not be motivated enough to do our part.

Speaking of the health care debate: The Obama administration is accused of being a bit too "wonky" and not presenting things in the proper (read: more emotional) way:

The PolicySpeak Disaster

PolicySpeak is the principle that: If you just tell people the policy facts, they will reason to the right conclusion and support the policy wholeheartedly.

PolicySpeak is the principle behind the President’s new Reality Check Website. To my knowledge, the Reality Check Website, has not had a reality check. That is, the administration has not hired a first-class cognitive psychologist to take subjects who have been convinced by right-wing myths and lies, have them read the Reality Check website, and see if the Reality Check website has changed their minds a couple of days or a week later. I have my doubts, but do the test.

To many liberals, PolicySpeak sounds like the high road: a rational, public discussion in the best tradition of liberal democracy. Convince the populace rationally on the objective policy merits. Give the facts and figures. Assume self-interest as the motivator of rational choice. Convince people by the logic of the policymakers that the policy is in their interest
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But to a cognitive scientist or neuroscientist, this sounds nuts. The view of human reason and language behind PolicySpeak is just false. Certainly reason should be used. It’s just that you should use real reason, the way people really think. Certainly the truth should be told. It’s just that it should be told so it makes sense to people, resonates with them, and inspires them to act. Certainly new media should be used. It’s just that a system of communications should be constructed and used effectively.

I believe that what went wrong is (a) the choice of PolicySpeak and (b) the decision to depend on the campaign apparatus (blogs, Town Hall meetings, presidential appearances, grassroots support) instead of setting up an adequate communications system.

What Now?

It is not too late. The statistic I’ve heard is that over 80% of citizens want a public plan, but the right wing’s framing has been overwhelming public debate, taking advantage of the right’s communication system and framing prowess.
The administration has dug itself (and the country) into a hole. At the very least, the old mistakes can be avoided, a clear and powerful narrative is still available and true, and some powerful, memorable, and accurate language should be substituted for PolicySpeak, or at least added and repeated by spokespeople nationwide.

The narrative is simple:

Surf to the article to see the "framing". Yes, the author of this article is George Lakoff, Author of Don't Think of an Elephant.