Monthly Archives: July 2010

The anger in Cleveland over LeBron

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While the story of a fan dressed in a LeBron James Miami Heat jersey being escorted out of the Cleveland Indians game last night makes the rounds, Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated writes about the anger present in the city of Cleveland. According to Posnanski, what makes this anger different from anger after  sports letdowns of the past (of which Cleveland has seen its share) is that the anger seems to be growing.

Those who don’t watch or follow sports sometimes say that it doesn’t matter who wins or loses or how the local team finishes. Posnanski is suggesting the opposite: this anger about an NBA transaction is present all over a large city.

My questions: how much does this sports move really diminish the quality of life in Cleveland? Are workers less productive or are fewer business deals made? Do less visitors come to Cleveland now that it is not the city of LeBron? Can the image of Cleveland across the United States sink (even with Forbes already earlier this year naming it the most miserable city in the United States)? Would residents move away from Cleveland because LeBron also moved away?

Add ‘The Pond’ to the list of US intelligence agencies

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According to the AP, papers have recently been released that tell about another American intelligence agency that operated in the 1940s and 1950s:

Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer.

It operated under the cover of multinational corporations, including American Express, Chase National Bank and Philips, the Dutch-based electronic giant. One of its top agents was a female American journalist.

The rest of the article contains information on some of the exploits of the organization, how it was founded, and how it ended.

While leaked emails about Journolist or leaked documents through WikiLeaks may be interesting, the information contained in the archives of the United States government and all its agencies would be fascinating.

Quick Review: Gran Torino

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Gran Torino is a film containing a number of common archetypes: the grumpy old man who finds hope, the coming-of-age teenager, the well-kept old car that symbolizes hope, the decent people versus the gangs, and the grieving and broken person who finds redemption in self-sacrifice. I think the movie pulls the pieces together successfully.

Clint Eastwood plays a Korean war vet (Walt Kowalski) who is the last white resident in a run-down Detroit neighborhood that is now home to many Hmong immigrants. The movie opens with the funeral of Kowalski’s wife and Eastwood is seemingly mad at the whole world early in the film. But, Kowalski finds meaning by the end.

Some quick thoughts:

1. Kowalski is an ancient relic in modern Detroit. At one point, his elderly Hmong neighbor asks him why as a white person he is still living in this neighborhood in Detroit. He used to work in an auto factory and believes in hard work and (excessive) insults to interact with other men.

2. The movie is named after a car but it is mainly a plot device. The real center of the movie is the relationships that Walt forms with his neighbors.

3. There is a lot of commentary on today’s world built into this movie.

a. Diversity and immigration are key themes. Even with seemingly important outward differences, Walt, despite his politically incorrect language, is able to find common ground with his new neighbors.

b. The younger generation vs. the older generation. Walt may look old and act in confounding ways but he knows what true virtue is. The two main Hmong teenagers in the film come across as kind and industrious even as the Hmong gang members (and gang members of other backgrounds) are portrayed as losers. Walt’s kids and grandkids are made out to be rather horrible. One female teenage grandchild is particularly singled out as she can only think of what she might get when Walt dies. The young Catholic priest is virtuous but ultimately naive about matters of life and death.

This movie attempts to do a lot in 116 minutes but is ultimately likable.

(The film was generally well-received by critics: on RottenTomatoes, 210 reviews with 168 fresh/80%.)

Debate over food portions in Last Supper paintings

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ARTnews reports on a debate concerning a study that was published earlier this year in the International Journal of Obesity. The study from Brian and Craig Wansink examined depictions of the food at the Last Supper in artwork dating back to the sixth century. Their conclusions: “the food portions became increasingly generous over time, with the main dish expanding by 69 percent, the bread portions by 23 percent, and the plates swelling in size by 66 percent.” The study hit the news wires in March; read reporting from the New York Times here.The implication in some of the news coverage was that food portions have increased over time, contributing to issues like obesity.

According to ARTnews, some art historians have taken issue with the study. Some of the issues listed in the article:

1. Is the Last Supper the best meal to examine?

2. Is the growing importance of still-life art over this time period more responsible for the growing size of plates?

3. Is there a growing amount of food because the cuisine of European cultures expanded over time?

4. Is this an appropriate methodology for measuring something like food portions?

An interesting study and an interesting debate over what it means.

PhD comics tackles sociology and Comic-Con

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PhD Comics spent three days this past weekend exploring Comic-Con. On day three, Jorge Cham followed sociologist Dan Perkel as he conducted ethnographic interviews with comic artists. According to the comic strip, here is Perkel’s explanation of what sociology is:

Sociology is not about defining what’s “normal.” It’s about getting different people’s perspective. You listen to them, and you find patterns. We each live in a different social world. And each of our experiences are different.

A reasonable explanation for three panels of a comic strip, particularly the part about finding patterns.

Also, I wonder about the initial responses to Perkel’s greeting: “Hi, I’m a sociologist. Can I ask you a few questions?”

Ongoing issue of measuring online audiences

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If you were examining Hulu.com’s online audience figures from the last few months, you would find some fluctuation: 43.5 million viewers in May and then 24 million viewers in June. What happened? Did something radically change with the website? Are people abandoning the practice of watching television online?

No, the main change is that ComScore changed its methodology for measuring who used the website. According to the Los Angeles Times:

The three dominant measurement firms — ComScore, Nielsen and Quantcast — have been working since 2007 with an independent media auditing group to make improvements so the Web data they report don’t have a fun-house quality, in which the same site’s traffic can look emaciated or bulging, depending on the viewer’s angle.

These firms have used different measurements over time including panels of users (like Nielsen uses for television and radio) and embedded tags in videos and websites to track viewership. These numbers matter more than ever for advertisers as they will spend around $25 billion in online advertising in the United States in 2010.

As in many cases, knowing the means of measurement matters tremendously for interpreting statistics.

Inequality due to credit card fees

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A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston argues that credit card reward programs contribute to income inequality. According to the Yahoo story:

Merchants usually don’t charge different prices for card users to recover the costs of fees and rewards, but instead, mark up the prices for all consumers.

As a result, people who pay cash — and who are more likely to be lower income — end up subsidizing those who pay by credit card…

After accounting for rewards paid by banks, households who earn more than $150,000 annually receive a subsidy of $756 on average every year, while the households earning $20,000 or less pay $23.

On one hand, this seems fairly obvious: those with more money to spend will use credit cards in order to earn more rewards. On the other hand, the impact on prices of the fees on business owners pay to the credit card companies is generally hidden.

Perhaps more places could offer discounts for people who pay in cash? The only time I have encountered this on a large scale is at gas stations in New Jersey.

The value of kindergarten (and kindergarten teachers)

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Several economists recently presented a paper analyzing the effect of  kindergarten performance on adult outcomes. The New York Times summarizes the findings:

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

The study still has to go through the peer-review process and the researchers aren’t sure what the link is between kindergarten performance and the adult outcomes.

Based on these findings, the economists suggest excellent kindergarten teachers are worth $320,000 a year.

This analysis is based on data from a Tennessee study, Project Star, from the 1980s. By randomly assigning kids to kindergarten classes, they set up an experiment where differences between classes could later be examined.

Page: Policies based on social class, not just race

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Columnist Clarence Page writes today on comments made last week by Virginia Democratic Senator James Webb. While writing in the Wall Street Journal, Webb “called for an end to government diversity programs.” Page’s conclusion on Webb’s (in Page’s opinion: sometimes muddled) thoughts: “Our colleges and workplaces could benefit from diversity by social and economic class, too, and not just by race.”

This reminds me of William Julius Wilson’s suggestion that Americans don’t like social policies that benefit one group over others. Instead, Wilson suggested we need programs that benefit people from many or all groups in order for such programs to draw widespread support. Webb’s and Page’s suggestions about providing help by social class across races would seem to fit this idea.

The “selfish elite” own iPads

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New technology from Apple always seems to stir up a lot of attention. MyType, a consumer research company, studied both the owners of iPads and the new gadget’s critics (20,000 people total):

iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, “selfish elites.”

They are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,” MyType’s Tim Koelkebeck told Wired.com.

96 percent those most likely to criticize the iPad, on the other hand, don’t even own one, although as geeks, they were slightly more likely to do so than the average population — and far more likely to have an opinion about the device one way or the other (updated). This group tends to be “self-directed young people who look down on conformity and are interested in videogames, computers, electronics, science and the internet,” said Koelkebeck.

A strong reminder that technology is not just a tool; it is often a status symbol. I remember having a discussion with some students about what it meant to have and display an Apple laptop in class. Students were quite aware that they were sending some sort of message about themselves in their computer choice.

It is also worth remembering that Apple once held its own non-comformist identity as they took on big, bad Microsoft. Today, Apple’s products such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad are the height of cool but those who have them may be considered comformist.