Exceptional American Magazine Covers

February 18, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

American “exceptionalism” often takes the form of American insularity – the assumption that we don’t really need to know anything about the rest of the world.  The European economic crisis, how and whether it is resolved, surely will have an impact on the US economy.  But to judge from Time Magazine covers (the Feb. 20 edition) , it’s not worth our attention, at least not when you compare it with something really important – like animal friendships.

Kos has several other examples.  Or go to the source and click back through the weeks.

I’ve noted before (here) how news magazine covers show the American preference for life-style stories rather than hard news.  Again, I’m reminded of the line spoken by Ben Kingsley as Behrani, the Iranian immigrant in the movie “The House of Sand and Fog”:

Americans . . . They have the eyes of small children who are forever looking for the next source of distraction, entertainment, sweet taste in the mouth.

Avoiding Indeterminacy (Predicting the Past)

February 15, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

One of the most difficult ideas to grasp or accept is indeterminacy, randomness.  We devote a considerable effort to making up stories to show that nothing is random, that everything is, or was, predictable. 

“We should have seen Lin coming” was the headline in Carl Bialik’s Wall Street Journal blog post (here) on Monday. 

Jeremy Lin – is there anybody who has not heard about “Linsanity”? – a guard for the Knicks, is the NBA’s new great white hope, though he’s Asian (his parents are from Taiwan).  Single-handedly he is bringing the NBA a new demo.  Even when the Knicks are on the road, the fans – in Washington, in Toronto, wherever – cheer for Lin.

Like one of those huge best-sellers by an unknown author that 39 publishers turned down before one took a chance, Lin’s talents might never have seen the light of NBA.  He played well at Harvard but in the NBA draft received not a nibble.   Eventually, he was picked up by the Knicks, but they too had no idea that Lin was star material.  Coach D’Antoni didn’t give him much court time until a game earlier two weeks ago when Lin went in to give Bibby a breather.  He scored 25 points, and since then, he has been headline news.

How did everyone miss him?  Carl Bialik is the WSJl’s “Numbers Guy,” and he puts together some numbers to show that Lin’s abilities were clear from the start.  Numbers like this:

Per 40 minutes this season, he’s taken 7.8 shots at the rim and made five of them. That’s the second-most made field goals from the rim for guards who’ve played at least 10 games and at least 10 minutes per game, and a percentage in line with the impressive Nos. 1 and 3 on the list . . .

If you thought a rim shot was something that followed a lame joke in a burlesque house, you might not find this convincing.  But Bialik has more such numbers, and he makes the case. 

Still, it reminded me of days at the horse track.  The Racing Form provides a wealth of information, mostly quantitative, on each horse in the race – the horse’s past performances.*   Horseplayers process all this data and make a bet.  Then, after the race, as they tear up their losing tickets, they go back to the past performances, and no matter which horse won, they can always find the bits of data that made it clear why that horse was bound to win. 

Prediction is very hard, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra or someone said.  Prediction about the past and present is much easier, as Bialik’s blogpost illustrates.  Or as Duncan Watts puts it in the title of his excellent book, Everything is Obvious . . . Once You Know the Answer.** 

There’s another reason the Knicks didn’t know how good Lin was.  Here’s Knick announcer Clemson Smith-Muñiz (la voz en Español de los Knicks):

I’ve asked the coaching staff the question this way: didn't you see this in practice? And the answer has been, invariably, “What practice?” Due to this condensed season, which included barely 4 weeks of pre-season, all teams are limiting their practices, especially the full-court scrimmages, on off days.

Their point, again, is that the Lin phenomenon was not indeterminate.  Given a chance to see Lin in practice, any good coach would have seen his abilities.

Of course, Lin might turn out to be a flash in the pan.  Maybe by his second time around the league, the other teams will have learned how to play him.  It hasn’t happened yet (last night, his three-pointer with less than a second on the clock won the game), but if it does, sports writers, maybe even Carl Bialik, will write columns and blog posts saying that his short-lived success was utterly predictable.

Linsanity is fine, Lindeterminacy is intolerable.

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* When non-horseplayers appropriated the term “track record,” they distorted its meaning, just as Bialik does in his blogpost (I did not bother to quote it).  What they are referring to is what horseplayers know as “past performances.” 

Not only does the popular meaning of “track record” have nothing to do with its meaning at the race track, but in most cases, the speaker or writer could drop the “track” without changing the meaning, except perhaps to make it clearer. 


** Another blogpost on Watt’s ideas and horse races is here.

Class and Virtue

February 13, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

How to inculcate virtue in the lower classes?  Since Victorian times, if not before, this question has troubled the upper classes.

I’m sure that it’s pure coincidence that Charles Murray’s new book* hit the stores just a few days before the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens.  To us, looking back to the England of Dickens, it seems obvious that the virtue of the upper class was a luxury afforded by their wealth (largely inherited).  And the absence of virtue, the vice, of the lower class was a reasonable response to the cruel conditions of their position in society. 

I can’t really do a Tale of Two Charleses here since I haven’t read Murray’s book (I confess I never read that other Charlesbook, the two cities one, either), but the reviews make it clear that Murray’s central theme is virtue, especially the decline of virtue among the white lower classes.  Here is economist Bryan Caplan paraphrasing:

College graduates in high-IQ occupations aren’t just doing well economically; they continue to practice the Founding Virtues of marriage, industry, honesty, and religion.  The working class, in contrast, has fallen apart.  Never mind their stagnant wages; they’ve almost completely lost touch with the Founding Virtues that allow college graduates to live successful, meaningful lives. 

Pay no attention to those stagnant wages behind the curtain. Focus on virtue.

But maybe even virtue can be confusing.  Take family for example.  Murray provides the statistic that among white women who never went past high school, the proportion who have had out-of-wedlock children has risen to 40%.  This should have disastrous consequences –  for the children themselves, for the women, for the working class, and maybe for whole sectors of society. 

But apparently it is not inherently damaging.  If bastardy (to use Dickensian diction)  indicates lack of virtue, and if a healthy economy rests on virtue, countries with high rates of out-of-wedlock births must be in for a rough time. By contrast, a country with a very low rate of out-of-wedlock children, a virtuous society, would be rich in other ways too.

Just to confirm this, I looked up some data on OECD countries. 

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

The US is at just about the OECD average, but look who’s above us. The Scandinavian countries, France, Belgium, the Netherlands – they all have national rates that are above that of our “fallen apart” white working class.  And yet, their economies are relatively solid, even in these uncertain times.  And who’s way below us?  Greece, for one, along with some other countries – notably Italy and Spain –  which are said to be near the brink of economic disaster.

The point is that the consequences of having an out-of-wedlock child are not automatically disastrous. Governments can do things to make having children – in or out of wedlock – more economically difficult or less so. 

The marital status of a mother may be less important than her age.  Having a child at an early age makes everything more complicated.  And the US has many more teenage mothers than do other advanced countries.

Our adolescent fertility rate has decreased considerably since 1980, but it’s still three times that of most European countries.  Should we chalk this up to lack of virtue?  Murray seems to blame the kinds of people who drive to Whole Foods in their Priuses, or better yet, go on their bicycles, and then of course recycle.  You know them, the liberal elite – the ones that conservatives accuse of wanting the US to be more like Europe.  Maybe on this teen motherhood thing, these elitists have a point; being more like Europe might not be so bad.

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* Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

What Were They Thinking . . .

February 10, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
(Cross-posted at Sociological Images - with some interesting comments)


 . . .  or not thinking?  

Being in the dominant majority allows you that comfort of not thinking.  People in that majority can assume that everyone shares their views, ideas, and even characteristics, and much of the time, they’ll be right.  “Flesh colored” in the US, sometimes even today, means the color of white people’s flesh.

White is the default race, the American race.  It’s easy to ignore that African Americans might not see those Band-Aids as flesh colored.  Similarly, Christianity is the default religion, and those who are in the majority can make those same flesh-colored assumptions.  Justice Scalia, for example, seemed unable to understand that the Jewish families of Jews killed in war might not feel “honored” by a cross placed on the grave of their son or daughter. (My post on this is here.)

The latest example:  this Hannukah card sent in South Carolina, presumably to Jews, by Rick Santorum’s local team.  First tweeted by political reporter Hunter Walker, it’s rapidly making the rounds of the Internet. 

Whoever created and sent this card, it just did not occur to them that Jews might not feel the holiday warmth of that New Testament message from Jesus.