Obsidian Wings

James Booker Open Thread

by hilzoy

One of the things I did while I was feeling flattened was to listen to some of the music on Jeanne d'Arc's New Orleans music list. Some I knew, but I hadn't heard of James Booker before. (No doubt the rest of you have, being cool and hip and all.) He had what sounds like a horrible life -- piano prodigy, heroin, prison, mental institution, paranoia, early death -- in the course of which he made some really, really wonderful music. I put some up here; I'll take it off in a few days, as usual. But you should really listen to it. What's up there is really good, if you like blues/ragtime-y music, but it's not his best, just some songs from the one album I did not buy from the iTunes Music Store, and thus the one I don't have to tell you my password to let you listen to. This album is made from tapes of him playing a piano bar in New Orleans, near the end of his life, when (I gather) he was as likely to pass out at the piano as to play.

I also put up two songs by one of my relatives, who's a folksinger. In my dreams I play guitar like he does.

For Shame

Brian Boitano would probably clean up after his dog. 

I have recently come across an interesting case of what some bloggers are calling cybershaming (see also here).  The gist of the story is:

It began in a subway train with a girl whose dog made a mess on the train floor. When nearby elders told her to clean up the mess, she basically told them to f[***] off. A nearby enraged netizen then took pictures of her and posted it, without any masking, on a popular website which started a nationwide witchhunt.

Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture. All mentions of privacy invasion were shouted down with accusations of being related to the girl. The common excuse for their behavior was that the girl doesn't deserve privacy.

I think this is an interesting case.  I think the privacy advocates overstate the harm--the girl's life  isn't permanently ruined, eventually it will become like a guy who threw up on his date at the prom, the story will be told endlessly but it won't sting as badly later in life.  Furthermore this particular girl is unfortunate to be one of the first to be hit by cybershaming.  If it becomes more prevalent, individual incidents will get lost in the the torrent of information.  That said, the case is still a bit troubling.  If privacy is a value to be cherished, this kind of social-norm enforcement is going to eat it away to practically nothing.  If the only things we can keep private are our financial records (and only sometimes) the notion of privacy has gotten a lot smaller.  I'm prone to want to curb the practice if it becomes popular, but I'm at a loss to non-draconian ways of doing so.  The easiest method which doesn't amount to total control of the internet would be to allow a small claims court-style suit (worth maybe $100 or $500) for invasion of privacy.  The two problems with that is that it wouldn't deter large players if the phenomenon became popular, and that it could be easily evaded by publishing outside the jursidiction. 

Any thoughts?  Is this kind of thing bad?  If it ought to be curbed, how would you do so? 

Is This Really Necessary?

by hilzoy

From the Chicago Tribune, via Freiheit und Wissen, comes news of a new line of greeting cards designed especially for adulterers.

"One morning at breakfast, Cathy Gallagher told her husband she wanted to start a line of greeting cards for adulterers. There was a pregnant pause. And then he said, "I think it's a great idea." Lucky for him, Gallagher doesn't plan on patronizing her own business. "You don't have to be a murderer to write a murder mystery," she says. Nor, apparently, does one need to be unfaithful to write a Christmas card that says, "As we each celebrate with our families, I will be thinking of you." (...)

The cards feature acrylic paintings on the cover, done by an artist in Virginia and predictably heavy on deep shades of red, with long verses by Gallagher inside. Some of them read as if they were written by a dropout of the Hallmark school of greeting-card writing:

"My soul has been searching for you since I came into this world.

"All my life I have had this emptiness inside, like a part of me was missing and I was incomplete ...

"And now I can't imagine my life without you ... Even if I have to share you."

There's a card for office romances that begins, "The weekend apart is finally over," and an apology card that describes how hard it is not to be able to call and smooth over "our misunderstanding." There's even a breakup card that says, "I can't go on like this anymore ... I guess our timing just wasn't right."

But there's also a card urging the receiver to leave his or her spouse. "Let's live our lives together and finally be one," it says. "I can't imagine not having you in my life. Let's start living our lives for 'us.'""

Ewww.

For the love of God, Brian Boitano, and all that is good and Holy ...

by von

.... Please tell me that this is a joke:

I'd like to touch on an issue so obvious and yet so unreported and unstudied by those of us seeking to understand the psychological makeup that drives the republican anger machine.  It is my contention that republicans, at their core, find their root motivations in that most primal of driving forces in the human body: sexuality. 

In their case, the repression of their sexuality.

Wow.  I can't believe that no one else stumbled on such a stunning insight into the true nature of things.  You, sir, are truly a latter-day Siddhartha; a virtual boddhisatvah of the modern era.  You, sir, are an inspiration!  Come, let me medidate beneath the wide branches of your Bodhi tree, and drink from the calm waters of your deep intellect. ....

Hwæt!

I am enlightened!* Finally, I understand the Left's giant puppets, "Little Eichmanns," free-range anarchists, and "Bushhitler" youth! Finally, I can speak truth to power!  Indeed:

I'd like to touch on an issue so obvious and yet so unreported and unstudied by those of us seeking to understand the psychological makeup that drives the left-wing anger machine.  It is my contention that left-wingers, at their core, find their root motivations in that most primal of driving forces in the human body: stupidity. 

In their case, the expression of their stupidity.

*Albeit in a mixed-metaphor kinda way. 

I, Too, Know All About These Kittens

(Apologies to The Editors, who we hope will be back online soon. They do it better, and they did the original.)

This kitten thinks listening to Christina Aguilera is torture.

This kitten would be a lot less comfortable in a real gulag.

This kitten has embraced dhimmitude.

These kittens are eating away at the moral fiber of our nation.

This kitten wants to tie down America’s superior strength with a million Liliputian ropes.

This kitten is a party of no.

Yo!

by hilzoy

Gary is having a fund drive. Here's the general background.

Go to any of those links and click the Paypal button in the upper left hand corner if you want to do the right thing.

Thanks.

CAFTA Blog: Addition to Von's Blogroll

Doverspa of RedState points to a comprehensive blog supporting the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).  To get it out on the table, free trade is one of the few policies that almost always has my unqualified support.  Since I haven't seen any legitimate reason to withold such support from CAFTA, support it I do. 

I hope to blog a bit more about CAFTA and free trade down the road; today I'm a bit tied up on other matters. 

So:  CAFTABlog goes on the blogroll.  And RedState gets added as well:  not only is it a daily read for me, but it nicely balances Daily Kos -- and frequently features the writings of our own Charles Bird, to boot.

And that, my friends, is what Brian Boitano would do.  (Erm, maybe not so much about adding CAFTABlog and RedState to the blogroll -- or supporting free trade deals almost sight unseen -- but definitely the rest.)

My Job Is Safe For Now

by hilzoy

Department of Louise brings scary, scary news: people are not just developing, but actually marketing and using, software that supposedly enables computers to grade (or, more accurately, "grade") essays. According to one of the people who is selling this stuff, their biggest problem is that no one believes that computers can possibly do a good job grading essays:

"That's the biggest obstacle for this technology," said Frank Catalano, a senior vice president for Pearson Assessments and Testing, whose Intelligent Essay Assessor is used in middle schools and the military alike. "It's not its accuracy. It's not its suitability. It's the believability that it can do the things it already can do."

I can see how this would be a problem. Take me, for instance: I am not an ignorant Luddite, but when I ask myself: self, honestly, do you think a computer could do a good job of grading a student's essay? the answer is: no. Not a chance. Maybe at some distant point in the future, when all of us except for those fortunate few who can afford beachfront property in Antarctica are living in climate-controlled biodomes, they might be able to, but not just now. Oddly enough, I'm right:

"The software is not flawless, even its most ardent supporters admit.

When the University of California at Davis tried out such technology a couple years back, lecturer Andy Jones decided to try to trick e-Rater.

Prompted to write on workplace injuries, Jones instead input a letter of recommendation, substituting "risk of personal injury" for the student's name.

"My thinking was, 'This is ridiculous, I'm sure it will get a zero,'" he said.

He got a five out of six.

A second time around, Jones scattered "chimpanzee" throughout the essay, guessing unusual words would yield him a higher score.

He got a six.

In Brent's class, sophomore Brady Didion submitted drafts of his papers numerous times to ensure his final version included everything the computer wanted.

"What you're learning, really, is how to cheat the program," he said."

Just the lesson we want to give those impressionable young minds entrusted to our care. But that hasn't stopped people from using it:

"Watertown, S.D., students are among those who now have their writing-assessment tests scored by computer.

Lesli Hanson, an assistant superintendent in Watertown, said students like taking the test by computer and teachers are relieved to end an annual ritual that kept two dozen people holed up for three days to score 1,500 tests.

"It almost got to be torture," she said.

Some 80 percent of Indiana's 60,000 11th-graders have their English assessment scored by computer, and another 10,000 ninth-graders are taking part in a trial in which computers assess some routine written assignments.

Stan Jones, Indiana's commissioner of higher education, said the technology isn't as good as a teacher but cuts turnaround time, trims costs and allows overworked teachers to give written assignments without fearing the workload."

The question is, if those assignments are going to be graded by programs that give a perfect score to a letter of recommendation with the word 'chimpanzee' scattered throughout, why would you bother giving written assignments at all? And if you really don't care about the grading, why go to the trouble of buying software when it's so much easier to paint the letters A through F on dice and roll them? Sheesh.

For some no doubt quaint and technologically unsophisticated reason, I think that teaching my students to write well is the most important thing I can do for them, bar none. Long after they have forgotten exactly what the Categorical Imperative is, or what the main objections to utilitarianism are, the kind of intellectual confidence and precision that really learning to write gives you will linger on. So I think: if I can teach them that, I have done my job. And if, in addition, I teach them that it's possible to make arguments for moral claims, I can die happy. The idea of handing either task over to software that can't distinguish a letter of recommendation for someone called "risk of personal injury" from an essay on workplace safety is -- well, I can't even figure out how to say how awful it is. And I should say that I hate, hate, hate grading.

Of course, lucky me has a good job at a wealthy research university. So if I were to say that I just didn't have time to grade essays, I would be lying. Possibly the teachers in Indiana (paging von!) have the time too, and they're just lazy. Possibly, though, they really don't have the time. Grading essays is hard work, especially if you try to do right by your students. There are rough drafts and rewrites, lengthy attempts to explain what went wrong with a student's argument and how it might have been improved, and so on. I have been doing this for a while, and it still takes me about 45 minutes per 5-7 page paper, if I'm working efficiently. (Note to future professors: this is not only the right thing to do; it also does a lot for student morale. When they get over a page of comments that are plainly written about their paper, not mass-produced, they are much less likely to think you're biassed.)

The point is: it does take a lot of time. And eleventh grade teachers have a lot more students than I do. Maybe they really, honestly can't grade their students' papers. If that's the case, it's time to think about hiring some more teachers. And if there isn't enough money, it's time to think about finding some, through higher taxes if need be. Because if essays are being graded by this software, kids are being badly shortchanged.

Joy Happens!

One of the happiest/silliest tidbits getting linked around the blogosphere has been taken down from its original site (apparently too much traffic), but via In Search of the Miraculous there's a link (and a request on that site [Fluxblog] to download, not stream it or link directly to it from elsewhere) to a site with a link to a video that would make the grouchiest curmudgeon with a persistent case of hemorrhoids smile. Here's just a snippet from Kidz Bop's cover of Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone.":

Open Thread

Folks on the Soviet Union vs. Germany thread are teetering on being banned. Seriously. Bring it up a notch, please. To help ease the tensions, I'll offer this for a caption contest (that's Bush driving and Putin riding shotgun):