An interesting view on the Arab Spring

What Caused the Arab Spring?
[Via Big Think]

What’s the Latest Development? French social scientist Emmanuel Todd calls himself a “cosine academic”. In favoring statistical models over political or ideological explanations, it is not surprising that he links the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa to very measurable metrics: literacy, birth and marriage rates. In each case he sees a process of modernization that augments individuals’ liberties. “When more than 90 percent of young people can read and write and have a modicum of education, no traditional authoritarian regime will last for long.”

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He says it is not strictly due to a policy of regression and that the rise of fundamentalists is due to the rapidly changing milieu people find themselves in. Some react by embracing the new; others by becoming more repressive.

A modicum of literacy, particularly amongst women, seems to be a major spur for the toppling of authoritative regimes. As well as young who no longer want to be as restricted in their thinking. There may be some intermittent rulers who abrogate these ideals, just as the French Revolution led to Napoleon.

In the end, Enlightenment always seems to win.

How 3D movies screw things up for the rest of us

by Jesse Varner

Cinema chains dimming movies “up to 85%” on digital projectors
[Via Boing Boing]

The Boston Globe reports that AMC, National Amusements, and Regal cinema chains are leaving 3D projector lenses on for 2D movies. This means that the projected image is polarized and far dimmer than it should be. The chains won’t acknowledge that they’re doing it, but one quoted insider says its an “unspoken” corporate policy.

Given that your HD TV set shows it just fine, and your living room doesn’t smell of weaponized butter, aren’t they driving customers to piracy? Try this for irony: one reason operators hate changing lenses is reportedly because of crippling DRM on Sony’s digital projectors, which “will shut down on you” if a mistake is made when resetting the system. So, they just don’t change them, because serving a ruined product is better than serving no product at all.

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In order to change the lenses, they need passwords and security clearance. If they do it wrong – which is likely – the projector shuts down.

So, they leave on the 3D lenses and make the overall picture much darker.  Take your monitor and turn the brightness down to the 15% level. Is that a great ‘picture’? Now watch a video fullscreen. DO things seem a little muddy?

Thus even with 2D movies, 3D ruins the experience.

Psychology Today’s own blogs dismantle the ‘black women are not attractive’ pseudoscience

by tibchris

Not everyone at Psychology Today is incompetent
[Via Pharyngula]

That study claiming that black women are “objectively” unattractive seems to be finally getting its author, Satoshi Kanazawa, in big trouble. That would be entirely wrong if it were based on disliking his conclusions, but if it were based on a demonstration of Kanazawa’s incompetence, then it would be earned. And that seems to be what is happening. Interestingly, many really good criticisms of Kanazawa are coming from Psychology Today’s blogs.

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I had read some initial critiques of this ‘work’ but these are pretty devastating. In particular, this one where the author went back and looked at the data itself:

Kanazawa mentions several times that his data on attractiveness are scored “objectively”. The ratings of attractiveness made by the interviewers show extremely large differences in terms of how attractive they found the interviewee. For instance the ratings collected from Waves 1 and 2 are correlated at only r = .300 (a correlation ranges from -1.0 to +1.00), suggesting that a meager 9% of the differences in second wave ratings of the same individual can be predicted on the basis of ratings made a year before. The ratings taken at Waves 3 and 4 correlated between raters even lower, at only .136– even though the interviewees had reached adulthood by then and so are not expected to change in physical development as strongly as the teenagers. Although these ratings were not taken at the same time, if ratings of attractiveness have less than 2% common variance, one is hard pressed to side with Kanazawa’s assertion that attractiveness can be rated objectively.

This means that the data do not really support Kanazawa’ conclusion as well as simple chance does. In fact the data support the conclusion that there is no difference between ethnicities regarding physical beauty.

It is pretty interesting how crappy pop psychology from a non-peeer review magazine can get spread all over the world. People’s biases to believe certain things are on sharp display then.

They just do not understand Apple

Andy Zaky on Apple’s P/E Ratio
[Via Daring Fireball]

Andy Zaky makes the case that Apple’s stock is anything but a Wall Street darling:

Yet, when we see Google (GOOG) report 17% earnings growth and trade a 20 P/E ratio and then watch Apple report 92% earnings growth and trade at a 16 P/E ratio, how in the hell can anyone say that Apple is treated as a darling? Amazon (AMZN) missed earnings expectation for the third time in five quarters, and grew at a far lower growth rate than Apple on both the top and bottom line and trades at a 90 P/E ratio. Netflix (NFLX) also missed expectations, grew at a far lower growth rate than Apple on both the top and bottom line and trades at a 70.58 P/E ratio.

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So much for Wall Street being rational. The P/E ratio is supposed to be a measure of future growth.

Growth does not match what it should. I wonder why.

I suspect this is why some police do not want videos made

Jury awards $82,000 after woman is arrested when asking police for a business card | OregonLive.com
[Via Oregonlive]

A Multnomah County jury awarded a 33-year-old woman $82,000 Thursday, saying they wanted to send Portland police a message: Hand over a business card the next time a citizen asks for one.

Several jurors who spoke to The Oregonian after the verdict in Multnomah County Circuit Court said police weren’t dealing with an urgent or dangerous situation on the evening of Feb. 13, 2009 — when Shei’Meka Newmann questioned what she thought was an unnecessarily rough arrest of a fellow MAX rider. It would have taken only a few seconds for an officer to hand Newmann a card, jurors said.

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Sounds like the video from the MAX train demonstrated to the jury that the police were lying when they described the behavior of the passenger. Asking for a policeman’s card resulted in her arrest and charging with interfering with an investigation.

The jury did not believe the video demonstrated that at all. It is telling that the charges against her were dropped because the arresting officer did not show up in court. KNowing yt was bogus but makingsure she had to pay for the court costs. What a nice way to show her who is the boss!

This case was egregious enough that even another officer testified that she had done nothing wrong.

So much easier to intimidate and bully citizens when there are no cameras around. Perhaps now the bad ones try to use some of that training they received to better use.

Today I Learned – Just how big africa is.

The True Size of Africa

based on an image by Kai Krause, one o the most influential graphic software developers in history.

Amazingly, the surface area of Africa is just a little smaller than the surface area of the moon.

That damned Mercator projection really does distort things.

Another reason I like Charles Barkley

Badass Quote of the Day
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

From Charles Barkley:

“First of all, every player has played with gay guys. It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say, ‘Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.’ First of all, quit telling me what I think. I’d rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can’t play.

Any professional athlete who gets on TV or radio and says he never played with a gay guy is a stone-freakin’ idiot. I would even say the same thing in college. Every college player, every pro player in any sport has probably played with a gay person. … They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I’ve been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can’t be in for any form of discrimination at all.”

If only that viewpoint was more widespread.

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Charles actually has some of the better basketball pundits because he seems to have kept his eye on the prize and puts a reasonable perspective on what is, at its heart, a game.

Another mirror of The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.
[Via Dave Winer's linkblog feed]

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

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I’ve written about these Basic Laws several times over the last few years. It is always nice to have multiple places to find important information, just in case the links decay.

The House appears to want to stop the dismantlement of our nuclear weapons

by BlatantNews.com

Be Careful What You Ask For: HASC Republicans Vote to Stop Surveillance of US Nuclear Arsenal
[Via All Things Nuclear]

In the early morning hours of May 12, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) approved its version of the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). During the markup of the Strategic Forces Section, Republicans offered and passed five amendments that sought to limit what actions the Obama administration can take in regard to U.S. nuclear forces. All five were based on a bill called the “New START Treaty Implementation Act,” which was introduced in the House two weeks ago by Representative Michael Turner (R-OH) and apparently could soon be introduced in the Senate by Senator John Kyl (R-AZ), though it has not happened yet for reasons that are unclear.

Unfortunately, if either this bill or the HASC amendments become law they will impede progress on reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

Before going any further, it’s important to point out that this bill and the amendments are not clearly written. As a result, Senator Kyl and Representative Turner’s intent is not completely clear. My colleague Kingston Reif has already written a very good overview of the bill, but we would like to further highlight some of its potential consequences and problems.

For example, under the header “Prohibition on Reduction of Stockpile Hedge,” Section 4(c) of the bill would stop all dismantlement activities until at least 2024, if not much longer, for all nondeployed warheads. The language prohibits funding for dismantlement or retirement of “any nondeployed strategic or non-strategic nuclear weapon” until 90 days after the bill’s stringent conditions are met.

Except for the header, the Kyl-Turner bill makes no distinction among nondeployed forces. If the bill is passed, it could lead to some unfortunate unintended consequences. In part, this is because U.S. nuclear weapons fall into three basic categories: 1) deployed and 2) nondeployed forces that are a) in reserve, known as the “hedge,” or b) waiting to be dismantled. Because the bill does not distinguish between the latter two, it could stop all dismantlement, leaving some 4,000 warheads – and unknown numbers of jobs at Pantex – in the lurch. Fortunately, the HASC amendment to the NDAA makes an exception for weapons awaiting dismantlement.

However, the HASC amendment to the NDAA creates a potentially far more serious problem, one that could compromise the United States’ ability to assess the reliability, safety, and security of the nuclear arsenal. Every year, scientists retire, dismantle, and run tests on eleven of every type of nuclear weapon in the stockpile to determine whether they are still reliable, safe, and secure. To cite NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, “weapons are retired from the stockpile as a result of changes in strategic requirements or because items are removed from the stockpile to be evaluated for surveillance purposes.” If the Kyl-Turner bill or the House NDAA are ever signed into law, the surveillance process—which entails the dismantlement of retired warheads—would stop. The NNSA would be unable to certify the reliability, safety, and security of the stockpile until specific, long-term conditions are satisfied.

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The President could not lower nuclear weapons numbers even to follow a treaty because the certification required by the bill  will not be ready until 2024. See how that works. The House adds conditions that have to be met but can not be met for 13 years. Thus we have to keep our huge nuclear arsenal even if everyone in the world dismantles theirs.

But why would Russia lower theirs, since this law would prevent the US from doing the same.

It seems that the same bill that wants war to last forever, or as long as the Executive has sole power to, also now wants to halt the President’s ability to reduce the number of military weapons.

I guess they will need those weapons to fight all the wars they need to fight.

Let’s see – strong Executive  fighting a never ending war, a large standing army and nuclear weapons that can only be disposed of by using. That seems likely to produce some real problems.

The Forever War

by Cristiano Betta

A Conflict Without End – NYTimes.com
[Via NYT]

Osama bin Laden had been dead only a few days when House Republicans began their efforts to expand, rather than contract, the war on terror. Not content with the president’s wide-ranging powers to pursue the archcriminals of Sept. 11, 2001, Republicans want to authorize the military to pursue virtually anyone suspected of terrorism, anywhere on earth, from now to the end of time. Readers’ Comments “George Orwell is smirking in his grave right now.” Rick, South Florida Read Full Comment » This wildly expansive authorization would, in essence, make the war on terror a permanent and limitless aspect of life on earth, along with its huge potential for abuse.

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Yes, Congress is trying to pass legislation that will allow the Executive to use the military anywhere they want – including inside the US – for virtually any reason, apparently forever.

The Constitution says that only Congress can declare war. Here we see them giving up that right so that any Executive can pretty much use the military for any purpose involving any type of hostilities.

This will likely pass since it is hidden inside a Defense Authorization Act. And no one wants to appear to be weak on ‘defense’.

Our political leaders are cowardly handing the Executive more and more power. Power that has historically resulted in the loss of democracy.

And I thought Haldeman’s book was satirical.

My first ‘Holy Crap’ app from the Mac app store

by Memotions

Hype 1.0
[Via Daring Fireball]

Brand-new keyframe-based animation and interactive content creation tool for Mac OS X — with pure HTML5 output. Fire up their gallery of examples on your iPad or iPhone and get a glimpse of the future.

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I went to the web site and watched the tutorials. I actually mouthed holy crap.

I’ve been personally buying software since the late 70s– I first had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4 then a Radio Shack CoCo before settling on a 128K Mac.

This is the sort of application that can change everything. For less than $30, I can create animations for web pages that are independent of Adobe and Flash.

For now.

Like Pagemaker or Pagemill it allows naive users to create almost professional works. And, like both of those paradigm shifting applications, it will change how we disseminate information and data.

I bought Pagemaker when it was put out by Aldus. Before Adobe bought Aldus. I used the beta of Pagemill from Seneca before Adobe bought it. (I also used Cyberstudio – which became GoLive – and Dreamweaver before Adobe bought each of them.)

See a pattern here?

I’m headed to the Mac App Store right now – Hype is at a reduced price – to buy this before Adobe gets its hands on it and ruins it. I’d suggest you do too.

It may be more fun to play with this weekend than Infinity Blade.

 

The title does not look good for Blackberry Playbooks

by edans

BlackBerry PlayBook sales miss targets by over 90% at major retailer, ‘much higher’ return rate than XOOM (Jonathan S. Geller/BGR)
[Via Techmeme]

Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
BlackBerry PlayBook sales miss targets by over 90% at major retailer, ‘much higher’ return rate than XOOM —  According to a trusted source from a major big box retailer, sales of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook have fallen far short of expectations.  In addition, we’re told that the PlayBook …

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Granted this is just one retailer. But RIM may be doing the same thing Samsung did – claim lots of sales because they moved them in the sales channel – but they mostly sit on the retailer’s shelves.

And with all the recent problems with batches of the Playbook – they had to recall some units and an update appears to kill battery life – this sort of news is not good at all.

How the Internet can correct things, even insane things

Access Copyright Claims Trademark On The Copyright Symbol
[Via Techdirt]

Okay. This is just insane. Via Howard Knopf, we learn that Canadian copyright licensing agency Access Copyright is claiming to hold the trademark on the classic copyright symbol: ©. You can see it in their new website:

While there are three TMs in the image, at least two of them (top logo and in the righthand column) appear to be on the copyright symbol itself. You can see one directly here:

Are they serious? I mean, I recognize that maximalists believe strongly in copyright, patents and trademarks together… but it still seems insane that a group like Access Copyright would make a totally ridiculous trademark claim on the © symbol.

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So when I first read this, I was wondering if they were insane? But thanks to the comments,I learned that they were not insane, just not a competent as one would hope.

Putting the TM next to the copyright mark was a mistake and they fixed in on the website.

Ken Layne’s aphorism continues to hold. “We can fact-check your ass!”

And the 4th amendment travesties are not only at the Federal level

What 4th Amendment? Indiana Sheriff Says Random, Warrantless House To House Searches Are Okay
[Via Techdirt]

We’ve been covering a large number of situations and legal rulings lately that appear to suggest that the 4th Amendment is pretty much null and void for much of the US. With the news of a bad Supreme Court ruling concerning the ability of police to invade a home without a warrant, so long as they create circumstances that make it seem urgent, we’re pointed to an even more ridiculous ruling in the Indiana Supreme Court that effectively legalizes the ability of law enforcement to enter any home without a warrant. Why? The court basically says that it’s “against public policy” to require a warrant:

“We believe however that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.”

In other words, the gradual (and, at times, not so gradual) destruction of the 4th Amendment is used to destroy it even more.

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The 4th amendment is one of the most important ones and one that was put in due to the history of the English to abuse their own citizens. Now we a Supreme Court ruling from Indiana  – a pretty conservative state – that resisting an unlawful entry of a house is against public policy.

As usual, dissents in these atrocious cases are quite straightforward and easy to understand. A morsel:

But the common law rule supporting a citizen’s right to resist unlawful entry into her home rests on a very different ground, namely, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Indeed, “the physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585 (1980). In my view it is breathtaking that the majority deems it appropriate or even necessary to erode this constitutional protection based on a rationale addressing much different policy considerations. There is simply no reason to abrogate the common law right of a citizen to resist the unlawful police entry into his or her home.

In fact, the same Supreme Court in Indiana said that the police could enter a house unannounced without knocking to serve any warrant, simply on their ‘belief.’ So when they enter a home without announcing themselves and the home owner defends the home, they can legally be shot dead for resisting. What a wonderful Orwellian moment.

The US Supreme Court has recently ruled that police can enter any house without a warrant simply if they believe evidence might be destroyed. Well, when are they ever NOT going to believe that is happening.

The courts will no even protect us from the encroachment of executive power. Even state governments are handing over more and more power to the Executive branch. This is not a party thing. It is a power thing and has been going on for at least 40 years.

Some people are calling this the Rapist’ Doctrine – Don’t resist. It’ll only make things worse. Of course, since we cannot tell the difference between a criminal home invasion by thieves and a criminal home invasion by police, we are screwed either way. And most likely dead.

So then you get things like this, where the police cover-up is already starting. The only non-police witnesses still alive say the police did not identify themselves. The Marine was trying to protect his wife and kids. They had to shoot him 60 times and he was still not dead. The paramedics were held back for almost an hour before getting to the body. By then he was dead.

We are living through some serious erosions of our 4th amendment rights and there is not any real fight from either political party.

Our government was set up to prevent accretion of power to the Executive – where historically tyrants lurked. But both the Legislative branch and, more recently the Judicial, seem perfectly willing to hand more and more power to the Executive. At the loss to citizens.

In fact, if it is a choice between what is best for the Executive branch and what is best for citizens, the Executive mostly wins. Civil rights lose. Torture citizens. Sure. Wiretap them. Sure. Bug their phones. Sure. Put tracking devices in their car. Fine. Assassinate them without due process. Great. Hold them in solitary for months without charging them. No problem. Read their emails. No difficulty. Kill them in their homes. They had it coming. Make felonies out of misdemeanors. Sounds great.

These are all powers that Executives of both parties have been handed. They will not give them up easily.

while everyone focusses on what the President does, Congress continues its efforts to subvert the 4th amendment

Congress Just Sold You Out: Leadership Plans To Extend Patriot Act For Four Years With NO Concessions
[Via Techdirt]

As we’ve discussed, there were some very questionable provisions in the Patriot Act which were set to expire last year, but got extended, officially to allow time for debate. There was none, and when the extension was set to expire, Congress extended the clauses again for 90 days, supposedly to debate them. There were some superficial discussions, but the end result is what many people knew would happen anyway: the provisions are going to be extended for four years, with no concessions or greater oversight. Not only that, but the leadership from both major parties, who have agreed to this “deal,” want to pass it with little or no debate:

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire, according to officials in both parties who spoke on condition of anonymity. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government.

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Both parties want the power to spy on citizens with little oversight. What started as a response to outside terrorists will become an entrenched tool to go after any sort of criminal – which they get to define – in the US. In violation of the 4th Amendment. I am sure it will never be abused, right?

This is a cancer on both parties and is simply the same long term grab for power that any government makes unless checked by its citizens.

I hope we start doing this sometime before I die.