Some people in political office are mind-bogglingly stupid

...and this post isn't about the States! Actually, one thing that really irritates me is all the American-politics-bashing that goes on outside of America. American politics has its share of stupid personalities, but it's not like others don't. It's just that the stage is so much bigger in the States, the whole world gets to learn about it and gets to feel smug.

But I have to think that there are not many American politicians who are stupider than Lilian Helder, member of the Dutch parliament for the xenophobes of the PVV. I mainly like this video because I felt really good knowing that I still remember enough Dutch to get the general gist of what was happening, but take a look:

Mevr. Helder (speaking throughout) is discussing what to do with some kinds of criminals. Two approaches (one prison, one something else) are being compared, and it has been found that this something else approach has led to lower rates of recidivism (repeat offense) than the prison approach. She counters that this is like comparing cows and strawberries, because person A is not person B (she also helpfully adds that neither is person B person A). But, someone counters, the other approach has demonstrated lower rates of reoffense! To which mevr. Helder glibly states that you can't say that someone who went to prison wouldn't reoffend if they instead went to (this other thing) or that someone who went to (this other thing) would reoffend if they went to prison, because these things didn't actually happen! My eternal sympathies go to Sharon Gesthuizen (she also has a really beautiful "r" and a fantastic accent overall!) who asks whether the PVV then disbelieves statistical research in general? And asks in further disbelief whether, if, say, one hospital had heart operations fail 50% of the time, and another 3%, mevr. Helder would claim there is no difference in the quality of the hospitals.  Mevr. Gesthuizen, you are the best. I salute you!

By the way, expect this blog to further quieten its already quiet existence, as I've started a co-blog with a friend of mine. (ratedzed.wordpress.com). We swear a lot more there than I do here, I hope that's okay.

Sympathy for the Darrell

Ever been predisposed to dislike someone, and then read an article basically all about how the person is a crook, and yet end up somehow finding the person more likeable because of the article? No? I guess it's just me and

This profile of Darrell Issa

...

Okay, so the only point of this post is that I think the title is funny. So what?

Politicians are Surprisingly Good People

I realised don't really understand how political parties work given their reputations and incentives when it comes to getting power. So one thing that is a problem that is often discussed is that it's in the interest of parties out of power to sabotage the country so that the parties in power look bad. This is a problem, but in general it's not so bad because in most forms of government the parties in power are more numerous, and they certainly have greater power to enact their agenda (otherwise being "in power" is pretty meaningless). So, you would think that, even if the out-of-power parties were trying sabotage while the in-power parties were trying to improve the situation, overall it would be improved. And so it's reasonable to judge the in-power parties by their performance.

The additional problem that I don't understand how to resolve is the problem of reputation. Say, in America, the Democrats are associated with taking care of the poor, and the Republicans are associated with tough anti-terrorism measures. So, when people are really scared of terrorism, they are more likely to vote Republican. And when they are really scared of being poor and not taken care of, they are more likely to vote Democrat. Given that, it would be really good for the Republicans if there were more terrorist attacks, and good for the Democrats if more people were poor. Now, obviously, with some lag, there is a resolution. Given a long enough period of time, if it becomes clear that every time the Democrats are in power, there's a depression, and every time the Republicans are in power, there is a terrorist attack, then the reputations of the parties would change. However, that would take a very long time. Economic cycles are slow and terrorist attacks don't come so often that correlations are easy to discern. This isn't limited to the US - it is the case anywhere there are parties that are not based on leaders' personalities, but instead on policies.

Thus it seems to me if a party wanted to be cynically manipulative to stay in power, it should actually try to develop a reputation of caring about something the members don't actually care about and then make sure that's a strong concern for everyone (say, by completely neglecting doing anything about the issue when in power). Happily, this becomes somewhat problematic in a system where the party structure itself is somewhat democratic since party leaders would have to have the opposite desires from other party members, and that is unsustainable. One thing is I've not seen examples of this (except maybe Republicans on the Deficit?), so maybe politicians are not as cynical as everyone makes them out to be - they're not even acting in rational self-interest! They're, all things considered, being pretty altruistic.

The other upshot of thinking about this is that it is actually a good idea to have a grassroots-style primary process. Which is some consolation for the fact that as a result half of all time in American politics is spent campaigning. At least I see the point.

Propeller Hats

Imagine this: every time you wanted to drive or ride in a car, you had to wear a propeller hat. It would of course look silly and what's more, wouldn't be particularly comfortable. Due to a bizarre property of this hat, you couldn't in fact leave it in the car for when you needed it, because it can be stolen by telepathy by anyone walking by. Additionally, it has this feature that if it is raining outside, your head under the hat gets wet, and if it's cold your ears freeze. However, not to worry, you can keep your head dry by wearing a shower cap in addition to the propeller hat. And the ears freezing can be solved by wearing a toque underneath the propeller hat, but, of course, apart from looking incredibly ridiculous, this might make your propeller hat not fit on your head anymore, so you might have to get another one. These propeller hats would cost about a tenth of the price of your car, and if somehow you ended up bumping it, you would need to buy a new one. Not wearing one would seem to be a good solution, except that that will result in being stopped by police, usually followed by a fine.

Outlandish, you say, why would such things exist. But, as you may have guessed, my point is that they already do - except they are called "helmets" and they go with bicycles. I just saw this video (thanks A.A.!) of a talk by Mikael Colville-Andersen on how wearing helmets discourages biking:



Colville-Andersen is very engaging and charismatic. It's true that the talk is a little overwrought and conspiratorial - I think the speaker recognises this as well. But the upshot is, helmet laws make biking sound dangerous, which makes people not bike. To me, it seems rather commonsensical that bike helmets would increase bike safety, so, since I don't have data to the contrary, I'm not going to argue that it's not so (Colville-Andersen, however, does, and does). But just like the Times' "DANGER ZONES" story, it seems to me the increased safety of wearing bike helmets is more than offset by the increased safety hazard of less people biking. Helmets, both in their hazardmongering aspect and just in their inconvenience, means less people biking, means more people driving who are going to hit bicycles with their cars, means less motorists aware of cyclists, means less cycle-friendly infrastructure, which in turns means it's more annoying to bike and even less people do it.  I wouldn't say don't wear a bike helmet - wear one if you want. All I would say is that I seriously doubt mandatory helmet laws improve a city's overall bike safety.

Most people aren't gay: a quasi-defense of George Rekers

Sorry for the political interludes, I promise to revert to Russian accents soon!

As you may/may not know, George Rekers was a founder of the Family Research Council, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, and general purveyor of anti-gay views. providing court testimony that gays should be excluded from the Boy Scouts, not allowed to adopt children, and that homosexuality is destructive and, also, curable. If you knew all that, chances are you also knew that the Miami New Times (their local version of the Seattle Weekly) discovered that he was caught having hired a "rentboy" - a gay escort, basically.

The desire to engage in schadenfreude is very high and very understandable. And, as my least favourite New York Times opinion writer points out, it's richly deserved. Rekers' actions caused misery for many people. Before I learnt that he was gay, I would unhesitatingly be in favour of all sorts of Rekers-bashing (of course, at that point, I had no idea who he was, so this is kinda theoretical). But now that it turns out he is gay, I am a lot more sympathetic. Think about a person who believes that homosexuality is wrong, and yet has this intense homosexual desire. He would universalise his plight. He could come to believe that this is a trial of the will that everyone must face. He will come to believe that heterosexuals around him have conquered these trials, and are simply stronger-willed than the homosexuals he sees. I think, given the high number of gay scandals like Larry Craig's or Ted Haggard's, there is something to this interpretation. Though to the other gays what he said seemed like a denial of the reality of their lives, from his perspective, maybe Rekers was saying "be stronger! We all know what it's like". Doesn't that seem forgiveable?

Of course, that whole part where he is now claiming to not be gay totally destroys my sympathies for Rekers. He is so wedded to his reputation he wants to pretend to not be gay and go on hurting other gays. What a jackass. But I believe that there are other people in his situation. So here's my point to the putative future Rekerses: I'm willing to bet a great majority of people don't want to engage in gay sex. It's not that outwardly heterosexual people mostly have homosexual desires but have the will to fight through them. It's just that some people are gay, but most aren't.

Bike to Work Day

This Friday was Bike to Work Day here in Seattle. And as someone who wishes for more bike-friendliness in Seattle, I seriously hope it was abysmally ineffective at getting people who normally don't bike to work to do so this Friday. Because if you had decided to bike to work on this day of all days, you'd likely think twice about doing it again: sun in the morning changing to wind, pouring rain and a thunderstorm in the afternoon will do that. I bike to work relatively often, and it certainly made me reconsider doing so on days when I have to bring my laptop with me!

However, luckily in this one specific case but unfortunately in general, I do think Bike to Work Day isn't a very good tool for getting people into biking to work. For most people, biking to work isn't something they can do semi-regularly without some investment of time and money and expertise. Unless that changes, offering a one-time set of goodies for people to bike to work will at most entice them to do it once. Ultimately, Bike to Work Day ends up being about as effective at increasing bicycle commute levels as Take your Kids to Work Day is at increasing child labour.

Bike to Work Day did get me thinking, however, about the difference between a place like the Netherlands, where a lot of people bike commute, and the US, where they don't. What do I mean "a lot of people"? Take a look at this video (you don't need to watch all of it - nothing any more or less exciting happens towards the end than at the beginning):

The point is, that is unimaginable here in Seattle. Part of that is that Seattle is annoyingly hilly. All in all, I'd rather live in a hilly city next to a place like Mt. Rainier than in a pleasantly flat city if that means that there aren't any mountains in your entire country. But there's more to it.

Another big difference that isn't up to us is perception. To undercut my point from earlier in the post, which I confess was mostly made cause I liked the joke it led up to, if you try commuting by bicycle, you may realise that it's actually a way better idea than you anticipated. This has certainly been true for me: I started bike commuting in the Netherlands, because that's what everyone did. And having seen its benefits, I continue to do so in Seattle, whereas in Vancouver, I think I biked to UBC a total of about three times (even though Vancouver is way less hilly than Seattle). So the way to get more people to bike commute is to make it the norm. huh? That's not that realistic, but it would be the reason for having things like Bike to Work Day.

Which brings us back to this Friday, when the Seattle Times ran a front page headline in alarming red font "DANGER ZONES!" What happened? Well, as you may have guessed, it was Bike to Work Day, and the Seattle Times was doing its part by listing which places in the city are not safe for biking. The article is much better than a cursory look at the front page suggested, but here's the thing: a normal, rational person should look at the title and think: "maybe this biking to work thing isn't such a great idea! It's just not safe!" In addition to promoting bike safety, the Seattle Times are actually promoting not biking.

The big problem here is that the best way to improve bike safety is to promote biking. The more people bike, the more drivers are aware of bikers. The more people bike, the more bikers are aware of each other. The more people bike, the easier it is to find bike-friendly routes to places. The more people bike, the more cities have to devote infrastructure to concerns of biker safety (..., the more people bike... it's a positive feedback loop!).

I'm not saying lie and pretend biking is safer than it is. But devoting probably the only front page on bicycles in the year to how unsafe biking in certain places is, and then writing as if you're doing it to somehow benefit the biking community is either misguided or dishonest. The thing is, even in the Netherlands, biking is not totally safe. Every time I biked down van Woustraat in Amsterdam, I had the distinct impression I was about to get killed. The only time I was anywhere near as frightened biking in North America, I had been awake for 24 hours straight and biking on Highway 17 in Nanaimo and there were trucks going past me at 90 km/h (I WAS AN IDIOT! DON'T EVER DO THAT!!!). You're never going to make everywhere safe for bicycles (or otherwise, for that matter). But the best way to make more places more safe for biking is to increase the amount of bikers out there. Part of that is not being a bike safety alarmist.

God v. Aliens

There are many things I don't understand. One is why some gays think the right to gay marriage is important. Another is why some non-gays wish to deny them this right. A third is pretty much fucking everything about quantum field theory.

But this post isn't about any of those things. It's about why Intelligent Design advocates don't (at least I never heard of it happening) present Fermi's paradox as an argument for their side. Actually, maybe I do know why: it doesn't in anyway say anything about evolution, the thing that IDers most fervently want to take down. And yet, I would enjoy it if I heard the question

"If there's no God, where are all the aliens?"

I mean, it's not like ID-supporters in the scientific community don't largely have a reputation as lunatics already, so they got nothing to lose. But seriously, I can't think of an answer to that question.