Simplicity Patterns

February 17, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Moral clarity” always seemed to me like a self-flattering way of saying “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.” Moral clarity turns the complicated into the simple. It reduces a complex issue into a choice between good and evil. William Bennett popularized the phrase in his arguments supporting the Iraq invasion. Terrorism is evil, therefore invading Iraq is good. Unfortunately, reality turned out to be a lot more complicated.

The call for “Moral Clarity” comes mostly from the right, and not just on fighting terrorism. Go to the “Center for Moral Clarity,” click on “Key National Issues,” and you’ll find support for “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” (be warned however that this page does not spell out the moral clarity of leaving 40 million Americans without health insurance).

Does this preference for the simple over the complex generally distinguish the political right wing from the left? (See an earlier post on this and tolerance for ambiguity here.) And does it carry over into other areas? Is the political also the personal?

OK Cupid is a dating site. It isn’t about terrorism or health care. But the people who run it (Harvard math grads who turn dating into data) have looked at the correlations and discovered some non-obvious connections. Looking to get lucky? Ask your prospective date if they like the taste of beer. Those who do, both men and women, are 60% more likely to say they would consider sleeping with someone on the first date.

The same sorts of questions fit with the idea that conservatives prefer simplicity both in politics and people.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

Here were the political questions that these were based on.
On the surface, liking your peeps to be simple or complex shouldn’t have much to do with your position on gay marriage or creationism. But it does.

Blogging for Dollars?

February 15, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

I got religion. Or more accurately, religion’s got me. The Bulletin for the Study of Religion, is cross-posting my “When Prophecy’s Faked” entry of a couple of weeks ago, a liaison I never expected. The lord works in mysterious ways.

I’m flattered. But unfortunately, this is no way to get rich. It wouldn’t be even if Arianna Huffington had been the one spreading my prose across the cybersphere. HuffPo pays its bloggers, even sociologist worthies like the redoubtable Philip Cohen, exactly the same sum as does ReligBull – $0.

That sum, it turns out, is not much less than a blog post’s true worth, even at the Huffington Post with its 15 million page views a day. Nate Silver does the math (here):

Of those 15 million views at the HuffPo main page, only a small fraction come to the blogs housed at HuffPo. Silver estimates that the median blog post got about 550 page views. How much is that in American money? Silver calculates it as $3.44.

Ms. Huffington just sold her Post to AOL for $315 million. But if you were thinking about retiring to the Bahamas by monetizing your blog, maybe you should reconsider. (My friend Michael says he thought that to “monetize” something meant to turn it into water lilies. Maybe that’s the better idea.)

Skill Transfer - Quote of the Day

February 11, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

People who made a ton of money in the business world sometimes run for public office. Their entry level aims are usually somewhere near the top – governor, senator, even president. And they often tout their business success as evidence that they’ll be excellent public servants or that they “know how to create jobs.”

It reminds me of high school – the student government elections and Assembly Day when the jock’s speech always centered on the idea that his experience on the football team qualified him to be president of the student body.

I was thinking about this again when I read Sudhir Vankatesh’s piece in Wired about prostitution. He notes that the Internet has not been kind to the pimp role. Hookers have become much more independent.

I met 11 pimps working out of midtown Manhattan in 1999, and all were out of work within four years. One enlisted in the military; two have been homeless. Only one now has a full-time job, working as a janitor in a charter school.*

I imagined a pimp speechifying about his administrative role, his vast experience dealing with people, bringing buyers and sellers together – making a market really. All these qualified him for a leadership position in business or government. It’s the same kind of bullshit peddled by the quarterback in high school or the former CEO running for governor. The difference is that the pimps know it and take a more realistic view of their job history.

I asked one of them how pimping experience helps him in the legit economy: “You learn one thing,” he said. “For a good blow job, a man will do just about anything. What can I do with that knowledge? I have no idea.”

* Charter-school advocates often argue that these schools, freed from the union stranglehold over hiring and firing, can be much more effective in their personnel selection. I guess they have a point.

Seaward with the C-word

February 9, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

(Warning: this post is about language, and it contains some very bad words. When we talk about language, if we can’t use the actual words that we’re talking about, then the terrorists have won.)

It’s fun to notice the differences between American and British English, especially profanity – probably because in most respects the languages are so similar. Sure, it’s “ass” here and “arse” there, but the meaning is the same. Some words, like “wanker,” have crossed the Atlantic (maybe because we didn’t really have a good word for it).

Then there’s the C-word.

A BBC presenter,* Jeremy Paxman, slipped in referring to the budget “cuts,” and it came out as “the C-word” (story and video here). A month earlier, another presenter made a similar mistake when referring to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. (The presenter’s name: James Naughtie. Enough said.)

We’re a bit more prudish about language. In the US, inadvertent or spontaneous profanity on TV has brought heavy fines. In the UK, it’s been merely a giggle. In the US, “The King’s Speech” is rated R for language. In the UK, it’s 12A (under 12 years must be accompanied by an adult).

And in the New Statesman last week, Laurie Penny spoke up for the C-word. She finds it “empowering,” especially when uttered by a woman.

On this side of the Atlantic as well, it’s the word that carries the strongest taboo. Probably more so than in Britain. I think we use also it differently. We do not use it to refer to men. My first inkling of this came thanks to the Monty Python travel agent sketch. The Tourist cannot pronounce the letter C. The travel agent, Bounder, asks, “Can you say the letter 'K'?”

Tourist: Oh yes, Khaki, king, kettle, Kuwait, Keble Bollege Oxford
Bounder: Why don't you say the letter 'K' instead of the letter 'C'?
Tourist: what you mean.....spell bolour with a K
Bounder: Yes
Tourist: Kolour. Oh that's very good, I never thought of that. What a silly bunt.**

No American, whether in anger or in a comedy sketch, would call a man (including himself) a cunt. But here’s Laurie Penny:

The first time I ever used it, I was 12 years old, and being hounded by a group of sixth-form boys who just loved to corner me on the stairs and make hilarious sexy comments. One day, one of them decided it would be funny to pick me up by the waist and shake me. I spat out the words “put me down, you utter cunt,” and the boy was so shocked that he dropped me instantly.

Manliness isn’t the issue. It’s not like when we call a guy a “pussy.” When the Brits call a man a cunt, it apparently means merely that he is completely inept, perhaps contemptible In the US, she would have called him “asshole.” Cunt just carries too much gender denotation, at least to my American ears.

It reminds me of something I heard long ago in college. A bunch of guys were talking, and one said that some girl was “a schmuck.”

“You should never call a girl a schmuck,” said another guy, pausing before finishing the thought, “unless she’s a real schmuck.”

---------------------
* A non-profane difference. American TV doesn’t have “presenters” or “newsreaders.”

** In the only YouTube versions I could find, this punchline has been edited out.