Monthly Archives: September 2010

Designing kitchens for the people who work in them

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An exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City explores the changing design of kitchens in the 20th century. While this room may indeed be a functional space, designs were often based on clear ideas about what kind of women were to be in such a space:

These days, there are magazines and television programs devoted to kitchen design, but in 1926 it was a new idea. In fact, curator Juliet Kinchin tells NPR’s Robert Smith, designing a kitchen was actually a political act.

“There’s always been that political dimension to kitchens,” Kinchin explains.

“For centuries, really, the kitchen had been ignored by design professionals, not least because it tended to be lower-class women or servants who occupied the kitchen space,” she says…

It was women who led the reform of the kitchen into an efficient space — one to be proud of. Kinchin says, “they were trying to adopt a scientific approach to housework and raise the status of housework.”

This is a reminder that homes and spaces inside and outside are linked to broader ideas about gender, social class, and what is considered the “good life.” Based on images from shows like those on HGTV and looking at real estate ads, the kitchen in today’s home is often the centerpiece with gleaming new appliances, rich cabinets, and plenty of storage space. This is commonly tied to ideas about the kitchen being the center of the home where someone cooks and the family gathers to work or play nearby. (This is somewhat ironic considering how much home cooking is actually done these days compared to eating out or eating prepared food.) Is placing more emphasis on modern kitchens empowering for women or a constant reminder about traditional values that would seek to keep women there?

I wonder if there are homes that feature “men’s kitchens” – though there may be plenty of big homes that have this in an outdoor kitchen/grilling area. This inside space might include a large television, large stove/grill, and comfortable seating.

Collecting online sales taxes

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With so many governments struggling to make ends meet, more states are looking at how to collect more sales tax revenue from online purchases. While Internet users may not like this, it seems like this is primarily being held up by complications about how to collect the money:

Under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, businesses are responsible for collecting sales taxes on every sale they make in a state where they have a “physical nexus.” In other words, if the business has a store, an office or even a single sales rep in your state, it’s supposed to tack the state’s sales tax onto your bill.

Online retailers like Amazon.com typically don’t add the tax, except in the states where they’re based or where they have physical facilities like warehouses or distribution centers. Amazon, for example, collects sales taxes only in Washington (its home state), Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota and New York.

The tax is still supposed to be paid, however. And if the seller’s not responsible, then you, the buyer, are. In general, you’re supposed to voluntarily file your own report and pay the standard tax on your out-of-state online purchases. (The appropriate forms are available on state tax agency websites, revenue officials are happy to remind you.)

But it turns out that the vast majority of Americans are completely unaware of those rules, so the forms don’t get filed and the taxes don’t get paid — to the tune of $8.6 billion in 2010 alone, the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates.

Two quick thoughts:

1. Why have states waited so long to get on this? Perhaps they didn’t want to look like the bad guys while things were relatively good.

2. If more of these taxes are paid, what effects would this have on Internet commerce? There would still be benefits to Internet purchases: no need to go out to a store, often a lot more options, delivery to your doorstep. At the same time, would this help traditional retailers?

Fighting innumeracy and “proofiness”

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A new book by journalist Charles Seife examines how figures and statistics are poorly used in public debates. I like his idea of “proofiness” which seems similar to the concept of “truthiness.” Here are some of the types of bad statistics he points out:

Falsifying numbers is the crudest form of proofiness. Seife lays out a rogues’ gallery of more subtle deceptions. “Potemkin numbers” are phony statistics based on erroneous or nonexistent calculations. Justice Antonin Scalia’s assertion that only 0.027 percent of convicted felons are wrongly imprisoned was a Potemkin number derived from a prosecutor’s back-of-the-envelope estimate; more careful studies suggest the rate might be between 3 and 5 percent.

“Disestimation” involves ascribing too much meaning to a measurement, relative to the uncertainties and errors inherent in it. In the most provocative and detailed part of the book, Seife analyzes the recounting process in the astonishingly close 2008 Minnesota Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The winner, he claims, should have been decided by a coin flip; anything else is disestimation, considering that the observed errors in counting the votes were always much larger than the number of votes (roughly 200 to 300) separating the two candidates.

“Comparing apples and oranges” is another perennial favorite. The conservative Blue Dog Democrats indulged in it when they accused the Bush administration of borrowing more money from foreign governments in four years than had all the previous administrations in our nation’s history, combined. True enough, but only if one conveniently forgets to correct for inflation.

Books like these are needed in our society as politicians often debate through numbers. Without a proper understanding of who is using these numbers, where they come from, and what they mean, the public will have difficulty understanding what is going on. (And this may be the aim of politicians.)

(Based on this review, his arguments and concepts seem similar to those of sociologist Joel Best.)

Polluting power plants and municipal boundaries

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Many people do not want to live near facilities like power plants, sewage treatment plants, and landfills. However, if the facility is outside municipal boundaries, there may be little citizens can do. The Chicago Tribune presents a classic example – a power plant emitting heavy pollution that draws less attention because it is just outside Chicago city limits:

From a plane, it would be easy to think one of the nation’s dirtiest power plants is within the Chicago city limits.

But the aging State Line Power Station, a major contributor to the city’s chronically dirty air, sits just a few hundred feet over the state border in Indiana, leaving it largely unnoticed and untouched during a decades-long effort to transform the Chicago area’s smog-choked history.

Protesters regularly march in front of two other coal-fired power plants in Pilsen and Little Village, demanding an end to noxious pollution that wafts into the Chicago neighborhoods. Federal and state prosecutors are suing the owner of the plants to force significant cuts in smog- and soot-forming emissions.

Yet a Tribune analysis reveals that the State Line plant, built along Lake Michigan by ComEd in 1929 and bought by Virginia-based Dominion Resources in 2002, is far dirtier than either of the Chicago plants. It emits more lung-damaging nitrogen oxide than the Pilsen and Little Village plants combined, and churns more sulfur dioxide and toxic mercury into the air than either plant.

The article goes on to say that there are efforts to force this plant to clean up. Considering the attention these kinds of plants tend to draw when located in more populated areas, its interesting that this one has received less notice than other facilities.

A note: this plant can be seen easily from the Chicago Skyway.

Median income falls in the 2000s, poverty rate up

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Recently released figures from the Census Bureau show troubling news with two oft-cited measures of income:

The bureau’s annual snapshot of American living standards also found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008—the highest since 1994. Some 43.6 million Americans were living below the official poverty threshold, but the measure doesn’t fully capture the panoply of government antipoverty measures.

The inflation-adjusted income of the median household—smack in the middle of the populace—fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.

While the poverty figures have drawn a lot of media attention, they are now at 1994 levels (also around the time of a recession). It is not good news that the poverty rate is up but this isn’t catastrophic compared to recent historical figures.

Perhaps more troubling is the decrease in the median income over the course of an entire decade. This suggests that the economic problems aren’t just limited to those at the bottom of the economic ladder; it is affecting many more Americans who saw no real income growth over a ten year stretch. Figures like these are also used by some as evidence of the growing income gap in America.

The campaign slogan: “You may hate us, but GOP is worse”

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As election season starts to kick into higher gear, the AP sums up the campaign strategy of Democrats:

Democratic candidates want to convince these voters that no matter how much they hate the status quo, they would be worse off under a Republican Party that hasn’t learned from its mistakes and is lurching ever harder to the right.

“This needs to be a choice, not a referendum” on the Democratic-led Congress and Obama administration, said Erik Smith, a Democratic campaign adviser.

President Barack Obama, campaigning for a Senate contender in Connecticut on Thursday, said of Republicans: “All they are going to be feeding us is anger and resentment and not a lot of new ideas. But that’s a potent force when people are scared and they’re hurting.”

With slogans like these, it is any wonder that many people don’t want to vote at all?

Decrease in office romances

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Businessweek suggests that office romances are on the decline because of a confluence of lawsuits and third party discrimination claims, which may be linked to pressures from the current recession. But there are those who argue that such romances are actually good for productivity and for businesses:

A once-amorous workforce already seems to be feeling the effects. This February, 75 percent of U.S. workers surveyed by job search website Monster.com (MWW) believed a workplace relationship could bring a conflict. Sixty-two percent said they felt office romances were a distraction from job performance. Careerbuilder.com’s annual Valentine’s Day romance poll has shown an alarming decline in reported office trysts. In 2006, 50 percent of respondents claimed to have partaken in a workplace relationship during their career. Earlier this year, the number dropped to 37 percent.

This is disturbing news not only for employees but also for their bosses. Some management experts believe that a workplace fling can “greatly increase something called ‘engagement,’ ” says Stephanie Losee, co-author of Office Mate, a guide to finding love in the workplace. “That’s when you’re excited to come in and work and you care about your company.” For these reasons, National Public Radio, Princeton Review (REVU), Pixar (DIS), and Southwest Airlines (LUV) encourage in-house matchmaking. Frederick S. Lane III, author of The Naked Employee, argues that co-worker couples spend more time at work, take fewer sick days, and are less likely to quit.

So if office romance is down due to economic pressures, are people now building romantic relationships elsewhere? Or are people just less likely to pursue romantic relationships when economic instability is present?

Additionally, I don’t envy managers who have to look out for and monitor such relationships. Such situations seem ripe for Michael Scott-type awkwardness.

Leading the story with appearances of politicians

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One frustrating aspect of political coverage is the common emphasis on the appearance of politicians. This is particularly common in stories about female politicians: the story often has to start with a quick summary of how (appropriate or fashionable) they look. Perhaps this is to be expected in a culture that prizes attractiveness and youth. But this emphasis can cross gender lines. Just consider this summary of Mitch Daniels found in the third paragraph of a story in a recent edition of Newsweek:

If you’ve heard anything about Indiana’s very slight, very balding, very unimposing governor—and that’s a big if—it’s probably just the opposite: that he couldn’t possibly win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and that even if he did, his chances of defeating Obama in the general election would be close to nil. The reasons, they say, are many. At 5 feet 7 (in boots), Daniels is shorter than Obama’s 12-year-old daughter, Malia. His rather uninspiring demeanor—reticent, stiff, and slightly skittish, with darting eyes and long blanks between words—better suits a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which he happens to be, than a leader of the free world. And his comb-over is borderline delusional. As conservative journalist Andrew Ferguson recently put it, “I see [Daniels] as he strides toward the middle of the stage to shake hands with Obama before the first debate and comes up to the president’s navel. Election over.”

There are lots of reasons you could disagree with Mitch Daniels – the story goes on to discuss some of these points. But what do his height, “uninspiring demeanor,” and hair have to do with his ability to govern?

The trolley problem, race, and making decisions

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The trolley problem  is a classic vignette used in research studies and it asks under what conditions is it permissible to sacrifice one life for the lives of others (see an explanation here). Psychologist David Pizarro tweaked the trolley problem to include racial dimensions by using characters named Chip and Tyrone. Pizarro found that people’s opinions about race influenced which character they were more willing to sacrifice:

What did this say about people’s morals? Not that they don’t have any. It suggests that they had more than one set of morals, one more consequentialist than another, and choose to fit the situation…

Or as Pizarro told me on the phone, “The idea is not that people are or are not utilitarian; it’s that they will cite being utilitarian when it behooves them. People are aren’t using these principles and then applying them. They arrive at a judgment and seek a principle.”

So we’ll tell a child on one day, as Pizarro’s parents told him, that ends should never justify means, then explain the next day that while it was horrible to bomb Hiroshima, it was morally acceptable because it shortened the war. We act — and then cite whichever moral system fits best, the relative or the absolute.

Some interesting findings from a different take on a classic research tool. This is always an interesting question to ask regarding many social issues: when does the end justify the means and when does it not?

Reinterpreting the actions of emerging adults: searching for discipleship?

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At her.meneutics, Kristen Scharold argues that some Christian emerging adults aren’t just wasting time. Instead, they may be figuring out what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus:

Admittedly, some of us are resistant to settling into the “traditional cycle” of adulthood, but is this because we are sloughing off responsibilities, or because we are waking up to a new set of responsibilities? For 20-somethings who are committed to Jesus, it could be the latter.

We are becoming increasingly ill-fitted categorical adults, but only within the narrow definition that adulthood means settling down — that is, tethering ourselves to romantic partners or to permanent homes. But if adulthood means accepting responsibility — regardless of whether we stay in one place, with the same career, or with the same people — then some of my peers aren’t emerging but have already arrived. They are taking Jesus’ call to discipleship seriously. They are embracing an expansive vision of adulthood, one that doesn’t necessarily involve getting a spouse and a mortgage, but more importantly means following Jesus, a call that sometimes requires reckless abandon (“and immediately they left their nets and followed him”), singleness (“there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”), and financial insecurities (“sell all you have . . . and come follow me”).

Some Christian 20-somethings might look like their fellow emerging adults, but by remaining single, serving overseas, working for justice, creating cultural goods, and pursuing other unprecedented opportunities for gospel advancement and renewal, they may be responding most responsibly to the call of discipleship.

Scharold may be right: they likely are some Christians who are pursuing this. It would be frustrating to be someone who is trying to live a Godly life and instead is simply lumped in with supposedly lazy, shiftless emerging adults.

However, we don’t know how right she is – she cites no data. If this is based on anecdotal evidence (this is also the basis of many arguments against the behaviors of emerging adults), we have no idea how many Christian emerging adults are actually engaging in this behavior.

Of course, there is data to appeal to when exploring these questions. In the area of emerging adults and faith, check out Soul Searching and Souls in Transition. These books suggest while there are some emerging adults who can be classified as devoted to their faith, there are many others who are somewhere between no faith and devoted faith as they try to figure out how to make their lives their own.