Monthly Archives: September 2010

Making art out of sprawl

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The Infrastructurist comments on a story about an artist who uses sprawl and suburbia as his subject. The Infrastructurist and the story commentator suggest these images are alienating and ultimately, tragic:

The suburbs are totally self-contained, labyrinthine, and generally terrifying. The Times describes them as “static, crystalline and inorganic. Indeed, some of these streets frame retirement communities: places to move to once you’ve already been what you’ve set out to be.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

I don’t think one has to see these images as tragic. A couple of possible defenses of such images (and the one The Infrastructurist has on the story is a good one):

1. These can be seen as very ordered places. Not ordered in the sense of traditional city grid ordered but they still have a logic. The streets may be more winding but these communities seem to be centered around retail centers or parks. They may even have their own kind of beauty.

2. If one already thinks sprawl is bad, then viewing these overhead shots may just be throwing fuel on the fire. However, these images can be read as the American manifestation of particular social and cultural values: individualism and privacy as built in single-family homes and suburban streets for our cars. In America, the particular expression of these values may be best exhibited in suburbs. There are other ways suburbs/sprawl could be structured to still support those values – or perhaps these commentators would suggest these values themselves should just be done away with. But that is not a problem with these images; it is an underlying issue with sprawl and suburbs.

Losing Internet connection like going back to prehistoric days?

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This was my thought last night when the Internet was unavailable at home: this is like going back to a prehistoric era. While this is hyperbolic, it’s a reminder of how common the Internet is in our everyday lives. Choosing to not have it for a while for another worthy cause (like a vacation) is one thing; not having it when you want to us it is another thing.

My second thought: it might be nice to have a smart phone so that I would never (or rarely) have to deal with an outage.

“Is the American Dream dead?”

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President Obama was at a town hall meeting earlier this week where he fielded questions about some difficult topics. One question came from a law school graduate who is struggling at age 30: “Is the American dream dead?”

This is an interesting question. One response to this guy, which I don’t think would really placate him or be charitable, would be to say that one personal case of difficulties does not mean the American Dream has disappeared. On the other hand, this question could lead to the question of whether the American Dream will be redefined in the future because of present economic and social realities.

One part of the American Dream that could complicate the future definition is that Americans tend to want better things for their children. It is fascinating to go back to community studies like Middletown and see in the 1920s how parents wanted their wanted their children to get ahead, primarily through education. What if this is no longer feasible for many? Perhaps the American Dream will simply level off for a while rather than continue to expand. But this would mean parents (and children) would need to change their expectations about what the future might hold.

Vested interests in the telling of history

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In a recent class, we were discussing an article that talked about a number of issues of doing research after an event has happened. One of the main concerns was the vested interests of the respondents. Particularly, if the respondent were socially near to the event or phenomenon, their retelling is filtered through their own personal interests.

A classic example of this came across the news wires today: some new information that sheds light on why the Titantic hit an iceberg and then sank so quickly. A brief part of the story:

The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 because of a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing, an author said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Louise Patten, a writer and granddaughter of Titanic second officer Charles Lightoller, said the truth about what happened nearly 100 years ago had been hidden for fear of tarnishing the reputation of her grandfather, who later became a war hero.

Lightoller, the most senior officer to have survived the disaster, covered up the error in two inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic because he was worried it would bankrupt the ill-fated liner’s owners and put his colleagues out of a job.

I’ll be curious to see how quickly this new information can (or cannot) be corroborated.

The online “mega-reviewers”

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One of the innovations of online stores is the ability for users to rate what they like and then for other users to base decisions or comment on those previous ratings. A site like Amazon.com is amazing in this regard; within a few minutes, a reader can get a much better idea about a product.

But statistics from Netflix, another site that allows user reviews, indicate that many users don’t rate anything while there is a small percentage of people who might be called “mega-reviewers”:

About a tenth of one percent (0.07%) of Netflix users — more than 10,000 people —  have rated more than 20,000 items. And a full one percent, or nearly 150,000 Netflixers, have rated more than 5,000 movies. By contrast, only 60 percent of Netflix users rate any movies at all, and the typical person only gives out 200 starred grades.

This rating pattern might fit a Poisson or a negative binomial regression where many people rate none or very few movies while there is a smaller percentage who rate a lot. (A useful statistic in helping to figure out the shape of the curve: while there is 40% that doesn’t rate anything, of the 60 percent who rate any movies at all, what is that median?)

The Atlantic talks to two of mega-reviewers who seem to motivated by seeing what the system would recommend to them after having all of their input. Interestingly, they suggest Netflix still recommends movies to them that they don’t like after watching them.

Examining the backlash against LeBron James through the prism of race

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After making “The Decision” to join the Miami Heat, LeBron James has suffered a backlash from many fans and pundits. This backlash has led to a lower “Q score,” a rating that compares the public’s favorable versus unfavorable image of a public figure.

However, how much his Q score dropped is dependent on race: overall, whites were moved more to think negatively about LeBron after what happened this summer. Henry Abbott at Truehoop argues that something deeper, fear, might explain why whites reacted as they did. Also at ESPN, Vincent Thomas argues that James’  relatively unchanged Q scores among blacks is the result of “black protectionism.”

Searching for good colleges in the suburbs

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Newsweek recently put together a list of desirable colleges. One of the lists is the “25 most desirable suburban schools.” A couple of questions:

1. Are there people who specifically search for a college because it is located in a suburb? I can see the appeal to many of applying to a college in a big city – but I doubt being located in a suburb tops many lists of what people are looking for in a college.

2. I would take issue with whether several of these schools are suburban schools. The University of Notre Dame? It may have its own address and zip code but it is basically surrounded by South Bend. The real suburbs of the area, a place like Granger, are miles away. The University of Virginia is located in Charlottesville, roughly 70 miles from Richmond. For these two cases, this is a very loose definition of a suburb.

“The Dieter’s Paradox”: Not seeing calories, even when they are right in front of us

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A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology finds that healthy food, like fruits and vegetables, has a “halo effect” so powerful that consumers don’t even think they have calories:

[A]nother weight-loss conundrum: if you show people a plate of unhealthy food – say, a burger and fries – and then add some steamed broccoli to the very same plate, most people will say the second plate has fewer calories, even though it demonstrably has more calories on it. The author of the new paper, Alexander Chernev of Northwestern University, calls this “The Dieter’s Paradox.”

This study adds to a body of research that suggests we have difficulty estimating how much food and calories are really in front of us. These findings also remind me of Michael Pollan’s argument that focusing on nutrition, so in this case, seeing the vegetables or healthier food and thinking of how “nutritious” it is, is the wrong way to go about eating.

Slate series on inequality in America

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Timothy Noah at Slate has put together a ten-part series about “the great convergence,” a Paul Krugman term for the recent thirty year stretch in the United States where the income gap has grown between the top 1% and the rest of the population.

Depression in cyber-bullying vs. in-person bullying

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Cyber-bullying has drawn a lot of recent attention from commentators, schools, and parents. A new research study in the Journal of Adolescent Health argues that in contrast to in-person bullying where both the bully and bullied are more likely to be depressed, in cyber-bullying, it is the victim who is more likely to be depressed. The research examined “7,500 students from 43 countries.”

The researchers argue this finding may be due to the unique traits of cyber-bullying:

A big reason for the depression could be that word spreads faster and more easily online: Blog posts, comments and e-mails can be written anonymously and readily copied and pasted, said researcher Ronald Iannotti, a staff scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Once made, such posts may survive indefinitely.

“Cyber-bullying goes on, it persists,” Iannotti told MyHealthNewsDaily. “So not only does it happen the first time you’ve seen it, but you know it’s still out there circulating.”

Unlike traditional face-to-face bullying, where there is a limited number of witnesses, cyber-bullying can have an audience of hundreds or thousands of online bystanders. The anonymity of the poster can add to the victim’s stress because there’s no easy way to get the person to stop, Iannotti said.

While this may explain why those who are bullied suffer more from depression, it doesn’t explain why the bullies feel less depressed when their bullying takes place online. Perhaps because they are able to remain anonymous and can’t feel any backlash or public pressure if no one knows who they are?