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.
* 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.
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'?”
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.
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 OxfordNo American, whether in anger or in a comedy sketch, would call a man (including himself) a cunt. But here’s Laurie Penny:
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.**
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.
Oobleck and the Gulf Disaster
February 7, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston
Oobleck is not high-tech chemistry. The name comes from Dr. Seuss, and making the stuff is child’s play – mix cornflour and water – which is why grade-school kids are familiar with it. Also why YouTube has lots of videos of people running on water. (Mythbusters got in the act too.)
Now it turns out that Oobleck might have stopped the BP underwater gusher in the Gulf. Mud, the usual “top kill” substance, was useless because the flow of oil was so rapid. But oobleck’s “non-Newtonian” (Seussian?) properties might have done the trick. (Wired has the story here.)
Jonathan Katz, a physicist, apparently suggested oobleck to the Department of Energy team that was assembled three weeks into the disaster.
In 1986, the mystery of the Challenger disaster stopped being mysterious and became instantly understandable when Richard Feynman dropped a rubber O-ring into a glass of ice water. This wasn’t rocket science. Or rather, it was rocket science, but it was the part that a third-grader could understand.
These weren’t failures of science (let’s assume that the oobleck theory is correct). Maybe they weren’t even failures of scientists. More likely they were failures of organization. We need to know more about how the structure and culture of organizations keeps some ideas from getting very far, or from getting in the door at all . . . until it’s too late.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Oobleck is not high-tech chemistry. The name comes from Dr. Seuss, and making the stuff is child’s play – mix cornflour and water – which is why grade-school kids are familiar with it. Also why YouTube has lots of videos of people running on water. (Mythbusters got in the act too.)
Now it turns out that Oobleck might have stopped the BP underwater gusher in the Gulf. Mud, the usual “top kill” substance, was useless because the flow of oil was so rapid. But oobleck’s “non-Newtonian” (Seussian?) properties might have done the trick. (Wired has the story here.)
Jonathan Katz, a physicist, apparently suggested oobleck to the Department of Energy team that was assembled three weeks into the disaster.
Katz did some quick math and saw that a half-cornstarch drilling mud would suppress the turbulence and sink in one coherent slug. Unfortunately, no one listened.
“I have no idea why they didn’t pay attention,” said Richard Garwin, a retired IBM physicist who was also part of the DOE-convened team.
In 1986, the mystery of the Challenger disaster stopped being mysterious and became instantly understandable when Richard Feynman dropped a rubber O-ring into a glass of ice water. This wasn’t rocket science. Or rather, it was rocket science, but it was the part that a third-grader could understand.These weren’t failures of science (let’s assume that the oobleck theory is correct). Maybe they weren’t even failures of scientists. More likely they were failures of organization. We need to know more about how the structure and culture of organizations keeps some ideas from getting very far, or from getting in the door at all . . . until it’s too late.
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