The Thinker's Advantage

James Thompson:

Men are often startled when, without any warning, their dearly beloved suddenly asks “What are you thinking about right now?”

Naturally, the last thing a man should give is a truthful answer. Endless trouble will ensue if the man innocently replies: “Having sex with your best friend”. Therefore, in the unaccustomed role of agony uncle, I would suggest that men prepare a response in advance, and trot it out when required.

Good advice. Although, in honesty, I can remember only one time when I was the recipient of that clichéd question. To which I answered, thruthfully, "I was thinking, 'Should I ever get rich, it would be nice to have a separate room to put a pool table in'". That taught her, I guess.

What happens to me more often is that people think I'm looking at something specific, when actually I'm just staring into undefined space, usually reflecting on what was just said. (I'm not particularly quick.) With some delight I've noticed that a colleague of mine has memorized this as a characteristic of mine after I'd repeatedly explained to her that, no I wasn't looking at her shoes, I was just thinking, and my eyeballs have to point somewhere. I know she's memorized this as she recently started saying something about how I was probably hungry, the way I was looking at her meal, oh, no, wait, I was probably just thinking, right? That'll come in handy the next time she starts thinking I'm staring at her tits, when I'm actually, you know, staring at her tits. They're lovely, and I can't help it.

The Operation Called Verstehen

So Robin "Hurricane" Carter died. While he was an accomplished boxer, he is best known for Bob Dylan writing a song about him. When I read the news, I immediately reacted by listening to the song.*

It is a well-known phenomenon that, when musicians die, people start listening to their stuff, sometimes putting old records on top of the charts. This is usually interpreted as people sort of paying homage to the artists. But I wonder how much is simply a reminder effect: "Oh, yeah, back in school, my best friend Michael had the Thriller album, and I really liked it. But I lost the tape he made for me. I should go to Amazon and order the CD."

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*I found that Spotify also has two versions by an artist who calls himself "Dylan", but is not Bob - a "Dance Mix" and a "House Mix". Whether you ought to listen to them depends on how much of a taste for trash you got.

Publication Bias: Things Are Looking Up!

I am happy to relay that my first peer-reviewed article was publshed today*, especially because coefficients of interest in the preferred models are all insignificant.

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*In the past, I have published an article in an online journal that says it's peer-reviewed on the home page, but, judging from my experience, isn't.

5/12/13

Tuned into the news channel yesterday night to watch a documentary on the Aryan Brotherhood. For a minute there I thought, "Wait a minute! Nelson Mandela was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood? That can't be right, can it?"

Nope.

Seems It's Never Really, Really Hot in Peking (First Post from Berlin)

So, first post from Berlin. I can't really say much about the city yet, as I've been preoccupied with work and looking for a flat. So far, my predominant impression of Berlin is that it's hot, though that doesn't really distinguish the city from the rest of the country. Hence, a (heat-related) anectoid about Peking instead.

 

I've recently had breakfast with a couple - Chinese husband, German wife - who live there most of the year. They said that Peking is both extremely smoggy and extremely hot. But official temperatures rarely reach 40 degrees centigrade. The reason is easy enogh to see: There is a rule that if it's 40 degrees or more, factories need to close for the day. 

Lest you think this kind of thing only happens in extremely authoritarian societies: I once heard from people who were consultants with Copenhagen (?) city services. The city was obliged to provide snow clearing services when the ground was "covered by snow". Can you guess who were the last people in Copenhagen to notice when the ground was covered by snow? That's right: City officials.

If you teach stats, you may want to try and get your hand on a dataset of official Peking temperatures and see if you can quasi-replicate Quetelet: Presumably, actual temperatures follow a near-normal distribution, so in official Peking temperatures, you should see a bump at 40 degrees. This might also be useful when introducing regression discontinuity approaches.

P.S.: Another thingy the Chinese husband told: A taxi driver asked him: "What? You have a European wife and you live in China? Why?"

Can You Fight Cancer?

I've been surprised to find that I've followed the US primaries much more closely than I thought I would, given my boredom with day-to-day politics and the fact that I don't live in, nor am a citizen of, the United States. I guess I like the whole politics-as-a-contact-sport setup, coupled with the fact that we now have a cast of four easily distinguished characters, as though this were a boyband: Slick Type You'd Cast As President in a Hollywood Movie, Kranky Old Man with Krazy Ideas, Flyover Beta Who Tries to Play Tough and Used Carpet Salesman. I've even watched one of the TV showdowns, or whatever they call them. When the host asked the four contenders to make the argument that their wives would make good first ladies, I naturally rolled my eyes, but it turned out that the answers were less uninteresting than I'd anticipated [the following quotes are from memory]. Gingrich's answer has kinda faded in my memory, though I seem to remember he loves his wife. Paul said his wife had written a cookbook, "The Ron Paul Cookbook". Santorum pointed out that he and his wife had brought up seven kids, "so we know children aren't good by nature". Romney said something strange. His wife, he said, is a fighter, as evidenced by the fact that she survived cancer.

Although I find it strange, you hear this kind of thing a lot. I've seen two cases of cancer in my immediate family. Both survived, but there wasn't a lot of fighting involved. They both got diagnosed, had an operation, and it turned out that the cancer hadn't spread. Competent surgery? Yes. Luck? Yes. Fighting? No.

I am aware, of course, that many people go through chemotherapy, and that this isn't exactly a fun experience. But still, suffering does not equal fighting. The closest thing to fighting in this context I can think is visualization. As you probably know, there is an idea that you're supposed to imagine little Pac-Man-type creatures moving through your body, eating up cancer cells. If that works, I'd like to see a solid study on it - I'm envisioning a large randomized controlled trial analyzed using IV techniques. Even if it does work, visualization doesn't strike me as particularly fight-like.

You might say that even if it's nonsense, it is nice to think of people who have been through hard times, often due to no fault of their own, and came through, as strong, and admire them for it. O.k. But there's a flipside to that. It suggests that those who didn't pull through sorta had themselves to blame - they just weren't tough enough. That seems kinda wrong.

Auteurs in Film and Academia

Last night I watched Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the documentary about New Hollywood based on Peter Biskind's book of the same name. A main point I take away from the film (and which I don't remember taking away from the movie) is that maybe giving directors more or less complete control may not be such a good idea after all. The narrative is that it worked for a few years, giving us The Conversation and Taxi Driver; but then, the treatment directors received, coupled with excessive cocaine consumption, got to their heads, which gave us films like Scorsese's New York, New York (I haven't seen that one, but there seems to be a general agreement that it's, um, not a masterpiece.). The general argument need not be restricted to U.S. cinema. I certainly wouldn't have minded if some money men would have told Godard, "Er, Jean-Luc, can't you give us something that's a little more À bout de souffle?"

So perhaps artistic freedom isn't that hot after all. From a theoretical standpoint, that shouldn't be too surprising. Artists are good at creating original ideas and are almost bound to exhibit a certain amount of self-absorbtion; moreover, going against the grain is pretty much part of the job description. No wonder they'll pursue crap ideas from time to time, scoffing at the proles' ignorance.

I am writing this as I am in the middle of revising an article for resubmission. (In fact, I'm procrastinating). The main insult challenge is to cut its length by about 30%. No fun. But then, would I rather read a shorter or a longer article? Well, we all know the answer to that one. If you think that peer-review is the work of the devil whenever you're on the receiving end, but think, "Thank god there's peer-review" whenever you're asked to act as a gatekeeper, be aware that there's an inconsistency.

Question of the Day

Nassim Taleb describes [Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann] as “in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud”. What does this tell us about Taleb?

That's a comment at Marginal Revolution by Ian Leslie; here's his blog. I'm halfway through The Black Swan, and it's got interesting ideas, but, man, it's wordy. Extrapolating from the first half, it seems that a hundred pages instead of the 400 he managed to fill would have done fine.

In the Long Run, Reading Economists Will Make You Lonely

So, here's from a telephone conversation I had today.

A friend of mine told me it was her turn to clean the loo today. She wasn't looking forward to it. Her live-in boyfriend was always so quick and thorough when cleaning; she was slow and sloppy. Hire a cleaning person, I said. No money, she said - deep in the red, in fact. How come, I said, you have a well-paying job. Well, she said, she'd been supporting boyfriend until he'd recently found a job, but that job didn't pay so well that he could swiftly pay off the money he owed her.

It was then that I made a suggestion that I thought was obvious. The suggestion was rejected.

I should be reading economists less and social psychologists more.

Satan's Librarian

Maybe it's some secret rite of passage? Maybe Scientology's behind it? I really do wonder why it is not uncostomary in this country for people to approach bookstore employees or librarians with The Unanswerable Question about the Generic Book. You know, the one that goes,

Excuse me, I have a question. There's this book I read about two decades ago, and I really enjoyed it, and I thought maybe it's something for my niece. It's about this girl that moves to a town and then she meets a boy and they do lots of things together. Could you tell me the title, please?

This is pretty much what the person in front of me said the other day to one of the local librarians, when I was in much of a hurry, naturally. But instead of reciting her usual routine about 80,000 books published each year . . . can't know everything, she instead said, and I swear this is true,

I don't know, but why don't you go to that desk over there. There's our head librarian. He knows much more about these things than I do.

It's kind of frightening when you get a glimpse at the hatred simmering in the heads of seemingly peaceful people.

You Can See Where Freud Was Coming from

Hey, I've got a very learned post coming up about gender differences, causality and scientific methods. Once I get round to it. In the meantime, more weird videos.

So, here's what a friend of mine got for her birthday yesterday. It's called the Kackel-Dackel:



Before anyone gets funny ideas, no, I don't have underage "friends", it's just that people I know are very immature.

Anyway, Andrew Hammel, an American in Germany, might see this as another piece of evidence for his view that there is a "harrowing frankness about bodily functions displayed in Germany." However, the Dutch have the same thing; there it's called Takkie Kakkie:



Plus, there's Snotty Snotter:



I don't think I'll be rushing over the German-Dutch border to get my Snotty any time soon, but it certainly seems preferrable to the American alternative.

Why Hidden Market Research Should Be Banned

Received a call from Infratest, a well-known German polling company, yesterday. The interviewer said they were doing a poll on politics which would take about ten minutes and the results of which would be published by ARD, a publicly funded TV station. I agreed to be interviewed.

The interview started out with demographics, then came questions on politics, but at some point I thought, "Wait a minute, what does my telephone connection have to do with politics? Market research?" Being too agreeable a person, I still went ahead, but when she announced the next questions would be on my "travel behaviour", I asked whether this was still the interview for ARD. She answered no, this would be a little market research and she was sorry; she couldn't know beforehand which questions the computer would throw at her (which is credible). I declined to continue the interview.

The probability that I'm going to agree to be interviewed by Infratest in the future has markedly declined as a consequence. Perhaps Infratest's decision to couple the announced interview with market research is profitable in the short term but not the long term? Well, that's for them to worry about.

But not everyone will differentiate between this company and others. As a consequence of Infratest's questionable tactics, the willingness to participate in any social science research, including on topics more important than which party people would vote for in a hypothetical upcoming election, will decline. In other words, this kind of thing creates a negative externality for other researchers.

And of course, it is immoral to mislead interviewees about what they're going to be interviewed about. Not in the same league as rape and torture, but immoral still.

Two reasons why this kind of thing should be illegal.

The Obligatory Volcano Post

1. Could you make it up? A Volcano explodes on Iceland, and it's called Eyjafjallajökull. Good heavens! How regrettable that in Germany you can't just give your child any name you like. Fortunately, in other countries you can. News stories to be expected between now and the end of the year. Also, on this very day, more than 100 unmarried and childless males between 12 and 30 years of age have thought the thought: "Cool! I'm going to call my [band/webpage/whatever] 'Eyjafjallajökull'! How wildly original!"

2. Seth Roberts is looking at the postive side. Don't miss the possible connection to the names thing above!

3. Today I left a mildly pedantic volcano-related comment at libertarian hangout Marginal Revolution. About five minutes later I thought: "Ah, someone's going to mistake my purely factual statement for a normative one and come back with Milton Friedman's Answer to Everything." It's a bit creepy when it actually happens.

Die deutsche Kultur

I Musik

Wer wegen der ärmlichen Medienlandschaft nie Gelegenheit hatte, gute Soul-Sänger zu hören, der wird nichts Anstößiges daran finden, wenn im Fernsehen bemitleidenswerten deutschen Vorstadtjugendlichen, die auf eine Weise, die man nur als hartnäckig, verbissen oder eisern bezeichnen kann, auswendig gelernte Blues- und Gospelprhrasierungen herunterexerzieren wie eine unverstandene Schiller-Ballade, attestiert wird, sie hätten "wahnsinnige Soul-Stimmen".

- Max Goldt*

II Film

Germany produces plenty of mass-market comedies and dramas for just plain folks. The problem is that movies that are supposed to tackle 'ambitious' themes often turn out so dreary.

People in the German film industry tell me there's a norming process that controls access to German film subsidies. Directors have to convince committees of tastemakers to fund their projects. The filmmakers themselves, and the tastemakers, have strong preferences and prejudices. They consider themselves proudly allergic to "Hollywood" -- which they associate with Ken and Barbie actors, canned happy endings, staged dramatic confrontations, stereotyped confrontations between good and evil, unnecessary explosions, action-movie cliches, etc. They're looking for interpersonal drama, for social commentary, for moral ambiguity -- "anti-Hollywood" qualities. In fact, I've personally seen film scripts that have come back to aspiring directors with passages marked "too Hollywood."

The problem, according to my sources, is that a lot of these tastemakers and directors eventually come to stamp the dreaded "Hollywood" label on any enhanced storytelling technique -- such as suspense, or a happy ending, or a voice-over. Endings in which everything turns out basically OK will be choppped and replaced with ambiguous fade-outs. Pleasant, likable characters who we're supposed to identify with will be criticized as too "one-sided" or "subjective." Humor that's considered too broad (by stuffy Bildungsbuerger) will be squelched. The end result of this process is films that end up bland and wishy-washy even when they're supposed to be provocative.

- Andrew Hammel

III Sprache

Eine Pastorin, der im öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk Sendezeit gegeben worden war, hörte ich heute morgen folgenden Ausdruck benutzen:

den Seelenanker werfen

Ich habe nicht genau hingehört, aber ich glaube, es sollte eine Metapher für das Beten sein. In einem Liedtext der Gruppe Pur kommt es zu der Wortkombination "Seelen aneinander reiben".

IV Zusammenfassung

Gleich drei gute Gründe, Sui- und/oder Homizid zu begehen. Das kann ja ein lustiges Wochenende werden!

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*"Die Stabilität der Tomatenschelte", S. 135-43 in: ders.: QQ, Reinbeck: Rowohlt, hier S. 140

Something I Learned Today (Sort of)

Apparently, when Danish people want to express the idea that like hires like, they say "Rip, Rap og Rug", those being the Danish names for Huey, Dewey, and Louie. (Why does Denmark need employement quotas for women? Rip, Rap og Rug!) I failed to ask whether you can speak of of a Huey, Dewey and Louie effect, but promise to do so first thing on Monday. (Watch out for updates.)

Sociologists would call this "homophilic selection in hiring". Obviously a much better term.

P.S.: In German, they're called "Tick, Trick und Track."

P.P.S.: More Danish I learned: I already knew that Danes say "hej" for "hello", but not that it's pronounced like the English "hi", nor that you say "hej hej" for "goodbye".

Typecast

As very regular readers of this blog already know, I watched Magnolia last night. In case you haven't seen it, it should be said it's a masterpiece, and if you care about mid-to-high brow films or, for that matter, people and emotions at all, you should make it a priority to watch it soon.

The most impressive actor in a strong cast is Tom Cruise as Frank Mackey, "author of Seduce and Destroy, a self-help system for men to 'tame' women" (Wikipedia), who preaches the mantra "Respect the Cock" to his following. You wouldn't normally read a good word about Cruise on this blog because I can't stand the man. But that is the point. When Mackey dodges an interviewer's question about his not-so-cool childhood by digressing into his usual PR phrases, it seems like a satire of a typical Cruise interview. The role fits Cruise like a glove and he delivers a truly memorable performance.

This reminds me of Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver in the first Bridget Jones movie (which is actually pretty good). Can't stand Grant's guts, and that's why he's ideal as the superficial, dishonest braggard Cleaver.

It's not just actors I dislike playing characters that are disagreeable; Mackey and Cleaver are dislikable in ways that are taylor-made for Cruise and Grant. And it seems I enjoy that more than actors I like in either likable or dislikable roles. Which, in turn, may not express something all that likable about my own character.

Now all I have to do is to think of a proper role for Julia Roberts.

Quick Prediction

As you may know, European elections are held in Germany today (as well as in many other nations). But if you don't, you could be forgiven - even if you spent the last four weeks in Germany. Based on this and the fact that at my local polling station, 15 (fifteen) people had voted between ten and eleven o'clock (despite the decent weather), I'm willing to make a prediction - or rather, two versions of the same prediction:

Weak claim: Today's elections will set a new record low in participation.

Strong claim: Participation will be below 40%.

Just to clarify: I actually think the strong claim is true. Results tonight.

Update 19:54: According to the most recent estimates I've seen, the weak claim seems to be correct, the strong claim wrong.

Update 09-06-09: Wrong on both counts. See second comment, though.

Otter, Schmetterlinge

[B]eim Anblick, wie sich Marcus unter der Dusche den Baustaub abwusch und ihm die dunkle Behaarung im Wasser wie ein Otterpelz am Körper klebte, hatte sie immer noch Schmetterlinge im Bauch.

Simon Becketts Die Chemie des Todes sollte besser sehr bald sehr spannend werden, sonst müssen wir getrennte Wege gehen.

Funny Mail

Contains adult language and stupidity

Yes, I had been wondering why my comment at a certain blog had not been published. The answer's in the mailbox. I reproduce the anonymized mail in full (emphases mine):

Hi, LemmusLemmus.

Your [blog name] comment, quoted below, has been rejected for publication on [blog name].

It would be stylistically a little more elegant if she used the blog name once in that sentence, but never mind.

The youtube video you have tried to embed uses inappropriate language, including the word "fucking."

I didn't try to embed it, I tried to link to it. I've checked the video. It does use that word. Repeatedly. If that kind of thing is against your policy, you should be a little more explicit about it in your comments policy. Just saying that comments should be "brief, polite, and to the point" may be a little too unspecific.

Your comment also uses the word "faggot" in reference to gays or homosexuals.

That's because I couldn't make my mind up. Does it refer to gays or homosexuals?

It is not sufficient for you to suggest that your being allowed to use this word is okay when other people's uses of this word are not.

I think what she means by that last sentences is the following: In my comment I criticized people for thinking of gay people as "faggots" (although that wasn't the main point). And I think she's saying that it's not o.k. for me to use that word even if I use it to criticize its use by others. Or maybe especially because I criticize others for using it. What do native speakers think? I'd really like to hear from you about this one.

Your comment has nothing to do with the [blog name] thread, "[post name]." That thread is about taxation and efficiency.

Here things are starting to get weird. That post does talk about taxation and efficiency, but mainly to make a more general point about moral reasoning - namely, whether you should start from specific cases and develop general principles on that basis or should judge specific cases based on general principles (in which case you are sometimes going to arrive at results which go against common moral intuitions). With which my comment has a lot to do.

And now she goes into full headmaster mode:

LemmusLemmus, I don't know what you were thinking to submit this comment. You have been a valued and longstanding commenter on [blog name]. Your submitting this crude and irrelevant comment makes us distrust your comments generally. Your future comments will now be set to Moderate mode.

Regards,

[name, etc.]

Not just "moderate mode". No, it's "Moderate mode" with a capital "M"!

I think it's o.k. for blogs to have implicit comments policies which do not allow linking to videos that contain the word "fucking", but this is truly bizarre.

And now, because you've all been waiting for it, and to preserve it for future generations, The Scandalous Unpublished Lemmus Comment (which she kindly provided with her mail):

I have no problem with starting from specific cases and genaralizing from there. In fact, I guess that's how most grand theories on morals were constructed. But you'll have to come up with first principles at some point. Otherwise you're down there with Tom, Dick and Harry who oppose gay marriage because . . . well . . . they're faggots!

What was I thinking?

World's Wisest Blogpost?

Not this one. This one:

Every now and then people do things that indicate they are not fully attending to their current situation. For example, they will put their shirt on backwards. Or they will forget whether or not they've put on face wash while taking a shower. Most of the time, people are looked down upon when they make such a mistake, and if it happens a lot they will begin to be called names such as "space cadet."

[...]

In anecdotal accounts, I've witnessed a high correlation between space cadetishness with high intelligence and/or output, especially in academia. At some point, one must consider the possibility that there might be an element of causation there.

I couldn't agree more. Especially today.