Facts, Ideology, History

January 9, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

The Republican version of history seems to be that George W. Bush took office at about 10 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001.

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” I’m not sure if Einstein really said this, and if he did, I’m not sure how he meant it to apply to physics. But I do know that in everyday life, the facts come in for a good deal of rough treatment. We select the ones that fit with our ideas; as for those that don’t, we often twist and contort them until they do, or else we just deny that they exist.

Even prominent people speaking in public about very well-known facts let their ideology override the facts. For example, the conservative ideology is that conservatives are “tough” on terror, while liberals are “soft.” Toughness scares off would-be terrorists; softness invites them. Therefore, when conservatives are in power, people in America are safe from terrorism.

One of the great public relations successes of recent times is the Bush administration’s ability, using this theory, to convince conservatives and many others that the attacks of 9/11 didn’t happen on their watch. For some reason, even people who are in the business of thinking and reporting about important events find it hard to remember who it was that had been in the White House for nine months on that day.

Here we have Dana Perino, former press secretary for George W. Bush, telling Sean Hannity two months ago, “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term.”


That little thing on Sept. 11, 2001, nine months into Bush’s term – Perino apparently forgot about it. And neither Hannity nor his other guest could remember it either. It did not fit with their view of history.

Not until it was pointed out to her did Perino issue a correction via Twitter:

I obviously meant no terror attack on U.S. post 9/11 during Bush 2nd term.

You’d think that after Perino’s gaffe, prominent Republicans would remember not to make this claim so explicitly. But oops, they did it again.

Rudy Giuliani on Good Morning America tells George Stephanopoulos, “We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.” (The line comes at about the 3:20 mark.)


And Stephanopoulos, just like the guys on Fox, lets the remark pass. It’s not that he forgot about the attacks. But, I suspect, Stephanopoulos too has unwittingly absorbed the picture painted by the conservative ideologists. It takes just a bit more mental effort to remember something that clashes with prior ideas. So with his mind on closing this segment of GMA on time, he doesn’t realize that Giuliani has just made a huge misstatement of fact.

Did Giuliani not know who was president on Sept. 11, 2001? Maybe Rudy didn’t remember his own speech at the Republican convention

I grabbed the arm of then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and I said to him, “Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president.”

Well, as I said above, it seems that someone else must have been president until just after the planes hit the towers.

Even if you allow the Perino dodge (“no terror attack post 9/11"), as Giuliani did in a subsequent “clarification” of his remarks, you still have to block out the fact of the shoe bomber, who was remarkably similar to the current terrorist, the main difference being which parts of his body he was willing to use as a weapon. Later, Giuliani went on the Larry King show. Even then, even knowing that his remarks would be carefully examined, Giuliani continued let his ideology shape his facts. When reminded that Bush took six days before he issued any kind of response to the shoe bomber attack, Giuliani said, “And I believe that six days was before the September 11th attack.”

It wasn’t. It was three months after.

Change the facts.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

January 7, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

It seems almost like a Monty Python sketch: the interviewer leaning over to ask the little school boy what he wants to be when he grows up, and the boy stammers, “A- a- a- an actuary.”

Kieran Healy linked to this site, which rates and ranks the best jobs for 2010. Kieran’s post singled out #11 (Philosopher). Here’s a longer list. Click on the image for a somewhat larger view. For a view that you can actually see, and a fuller disclosure of the methodology, go to the original site.

(Click on the image.)

Comfort Zones

January 7 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

De Tocquville said it first. Every time I read some observation about America and Americans, especially by writers from the other side of the Atlantic, I’m almost certain I could find something similar in Democracy in America.

This time it was Geoff Dyer’s “Letter from London” in the New York Times Book Review. Dyer contrasts the pleasantness of life in America with the willingness of his fellow Brits to endure small deprivations. “We didn’t drive big gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s, and if we were chilly of an evening we put on a sweater rather than turning up the heating (or, more accurately, turning off the A.C.)”

Americans, he implies, would never resign themselves to a car that was too small or a room that was not a perfect temperature. He traces this British “ostrich stoicism” to the War.

Our finest hour (the blitz, the Battle of Britain), manifests itself in a peculiar compromise: a highly stylized willingness to muddle on, to put up with poor quality and high prices (restaurants, trains), to proffer (and accept) apologies not as a prelude to but as a substitute for improvement. We may not enjoy the way things are, but we endure them in a way that seems either quaint or quasi-Soviet to American visitors.

Here’s de Tocqueville on the issue of creature comforts, over a century before World War II, nearly two centuries before Geoff Dyer, and with a slightly different spin:

In America the passion for physical well-being is . . . general; it is felt by all. The effort to satisfy even the least wants of the body and to provide the little conveniences of life is uppermost in every mind.

I never perceived among the wealthier inhabitants of the United States that proud contempt of physical gratifications which is sometimes to be met with even in the most opulent and dissolute aristocracies.

For de Tocqueville, stoicism came not from experience (the Blitz) but from structure, specifically aristocracy. For those in the upper levels,

the comforts of life are not the end of life, but simply a way of living. . . . enjoyed but scarcely thought of. . . . The members of an aristocracy often display a haughty contempt of these very enjoyments and exhibit singular powers of endurance under the privation of them.

For the poor in aristocracies, the lack of mobility creates its own kind of stoicism.

They do not think of things which they despair of obtaining and which they hardly know enough of to desire.

Just as the structure of aristocracy made for its stoicism, it is the structure of democratic society that breeds the obsession with the comforts of life.

When . . . the distinctions of ranks are obliterated and privileges are destroyed, when hereditary property is subdivided and education and freedom are widely diffused, the desire of acquiring the comforts of the world haunts the imagination of the poor, and the dread of losing them that of the rich.

De Tocqueville knew nothing about l'empreinte charbon, but our love of comfort is a huge part of the reason that Americans produce, per capita, three times as much CO2 as do Europeans. What do we Americans do when we get to Europe and find that we have to dry our clothes on a line, not a dryer, and that the car we rent has no automatic shift, no air conditioning, and no cup holders?

(All de Toqueville passages are from Democracy in America, Book II, Chapter X.)

Compare and Contrast

January 6, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Male or female?



Look at the two faces for more than a second and you’ll realize that they are the same.

This bit of androgyny won third place in the Best Visual Illusion of 2009 contest.*

The illusion is that although it’s the same face, the one on the left looks more female, the one on the right more male. The reason is something familiar to all of us who read the make-up tips in Allure, Glamour, etc. We use blush to contour and highlight, to add shape and definition (i.e., the illusion of shape and definition). We use eyeliners in rich colors. And our lipstick, whatever color might suit us best, accents the difference between our mouth and the surrounding area. In a word, we add contrast.

Contrast is the crucial factor in this illusion: more contrast = female; less contrast = male. (Try downloading this .gif into your photo editor and then fool around with the contrast control.)


*Prizes were awarded last May. I discovered it only recently thanks to Brad DeLong’s blog. The original research is by Richard Russell of Harvard: “Russell, R. (2009) A sex difference in facial pigmentation and its exaggeration by cosmetics” Perception, (38)1211-1219.