Not a Potted Plant

1. What’s up with your objectively incorrect voting for The Voice, America? Did you somehow forget to vote for Amanda Brown? She’s got major pipes, she rocks and she croons and she shows soul and emotion, and unlike any of the contestants left, she fills the void left by Whitney Houston’s demise, she smiles like she’s having fun when she’s performing. And she’s every bit as hot as Cassadee Pope. Sure, I like Nicholas and his baby-making music but Amanda Brown should have won it all. As I understand it, though, she’s already getting a recording contract going.

2. Poaching Huntress from Batman and making her a foil to Oliver Queen in Arrow was a really good idea: not evil, but too dangerous to be an ally. I get the slow burn of Green Arrow having to root out corruption within his own family (and the backstory the writers retconned for Huntress is a nice counterpoint to that). All the rich people are pretty, but they’re boring. The show needs a good villain and the writers burned through Deadshot early on. China White is not turning out to be interesting: she’s just a gang leader with some ninja skillz, but no personality yet. No, the villain does not have to be Oliver’s best friend Merlyn, whose transformation into a super-villain is moving way too slowly for my taste — when is Merlyn going to quit being Oliver’s mopey girlfriend-remora, and ninja up so we can get some good duels going?

3. At first, I wondered why it is that every damn night I get a blast of mockery aimed at Fox News on The Daily Show. But I guess the writers there figured, “Fish it, if they’re dishing up this much raw material, we may as well use it.” The interviews have also been quite good recently, especially Chris Christie and Cory Booker, even if John Stewart is much feistier with Republicans than he is with Democrats — the Republicans do still get a reasonable chance to express themselves. If anything, I want more interview time, and fewer bits after the opening monologue.

Half Sigma argues that iPhones are the worst MP3 players ever. The comments about how MP3 playing isn’t what iPhones are for begs the question: why not? There really isn’t any good reason. And especially no good reason that this design mentality should be expanding to other devices:

Grafting the iPhone’s clever, customizable interface onto other products sounds like a universal win. Then again, try using that touchscreen Nano. With the proper dance of carefully aimed taps and flicks, it can do more than any Nano before it. But when it comes to what iPods were built to do—play audio files—the Nano has devolved. The physical playback buttons have vanished. As one Macword reviewer complained when the player was released in 2010, it’s harder than ever to pause or play a track: “You must pull out the Nano so you can see its screen, then wake up the iPod, then navigate to the appropriate screen.” What might have been a one-step operation on the pre-2010 Nano now requires a sequence of three or four actions. And aside from adjusting the volume, the Nano can’t really be operated blind, with one hand in your bag or pocket. A software update this past winter allows for customizing the wake button to perform one function when double-clicked, such as skipping or pausing. It’s an improvement, but not a true fix. Like the iPhone, it still demands your full attention: Both eyes and, in most cases, both hands.

Admittedly, this is a minor detail. But that’s where interface design lives and dies, in the tiny time-savings associated with the simplest operations. An outstanding interface separates the products you love from the ones you simply use. In the Nano’s case, the touchscreen works. There’s nothing broken about it. But it’s clumsy and ill-conceived, given the uses for which it’s supposedly designed. To put a touchscreen on a Nano presumes that a touchscreen can be a universal interface, and that all devices aspire to do all things. But people don’t buy a Nano because they want a mini-iPhone or a micro-iPad. They want something they can shove in their pocket or clip to their shorts when they take a walk or go for a run, a device for playing music on the move. In those scenarios, a touchscreen doesn’t help at all.

As far as smartphones go, there really isn’t any good reason I am aware of that they can’t have a sort of music-playing mode. Why you shouldn’t be able to use your volume keys for stop-start-nextrack-etc in addition to volume control (indeed, my desire to switch tracks or pause-play exceeds my ability to change volume. I mean, I want to be able to change the volume, but generally speaking once I get that right I can simply remove the device from my holster and deal with it manually.

This isn’t just an iPhone or an Apple thing. Everybody has been following their lead and Android still isn’t as good as Windows Mobile 2003 when it comes to this sort of thing (and Windows Mobile isn’t as good as the old fashioned Walkman, for that matter). The push towards fewer and fewer physical buttons is driving this (my old TyTn has almost 20 buttons, it’s successor has 8 or 12 depending on whether you count the directionals, its successor has 7 with no directionals though a zoom scale, and my current Android phone has 7 but all are hard-directed to particular tasks). Other than base aesthetics and a desire to control, I can think of no reason why you can’t have a protruding button (that you can feel through your pocket or holster) that is configurable.

Now, for MP3 playing specifically you can buy a cheaper device that is more specifically geared towards the basic tasks of listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. But it still leaves the question as to why this basic functionality should be outsourced from a powerful device to a much less powerful one. I have my Android phone acceptably doing these things, but only due to my willingness to limit my Bluetooth headsets to a very narrow selection (AVRCP-capable, but single-ear) and it’s unreliable and buggy.

Erik Sofge’s comments about automakers is particularly disconcerting. That’s where easy access to doing things can literally be a matter of life and death. My phone has a superior navigation application than my old Garmin GPS, but I end up using the latter simply because the complexity of using the phone would make me more accident-prone. And neither the GPS nor the phone has the embossed buttons that are easier for effortless control. My car radio does, but it’s not clear how much longer that’s going to be the case. I end up listening to audio from my phone in the car most of the time anyway, which I only have embossed physical buttons on my earpiece because of the great care I’ve taken in that regard. I’m not even listening through the earpiece most of the time (I hook it into the aux jack and listen through the car’s speakers), but still use the earpiece for the buttons that don’t exist on the phone itself.

I still refer to the ability to navigate music as The Walkman Test, even through the last iteration of Sony Walkman’s (Android devices) themselves couldn’t pass The Walkman Test.

Chuck Thompson has a book out called Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession. While researching for the book, he traveled along the south and was, for some reason, not graciously received. He writes:

If it did nothing else, my time in the South did teach me to empathize with Southerners of all political persuasions who are sick and tired of having the honor of their region traduced by moralizing Northern jackasses such as myself (however impressively informed and well-intentioned we might be). For enduring the constant shaming and petty ridicule of the North, Southerners deserve some sort of national medal.

Still, there seems to be something dysfunctionally (and uniquely) Dixie at play in a bellicosity so intense that it leads otherwise intelligent people to the trough of abuse rather than to the table of intelligent counterpoint when confronted with an opinion that’s critical of their way of thinking.

Not for nothin’, but these two things are not unrelated. Beleaguered populations circle their wagons. When someone suggests about how much more awesome the nation would be if it weren’t for those redneck hicks, someone else from the same region making “impressively informed and well-intentioned” criticisms is likely to be met with more hostility and less reason than they otherwise might. That’s not fair to the second person, but it’s also not happening in a vacuum.

As a product of the South, who left and is unlikely to ever return on a permanent basis, I always read these sorts of things on two levels. Substantively, I agree with a number of the criticisms and levy them myself. I disagree with other criticisms. Beneath it all, though, I primarily want the South to be a better place. I don’t doubt that many outside critics feel the same way. Sometimes it’s a desire for the South to simply be like them or agree with them, which is similar but not the same thing. Other times, though, one gets the distinct impression that the South’s role is merely to be that backwards place that thank heavens we are all better than.

The Confederate Flag is one of my ever-present examples. I want the flag to come down. I want it removed from Mississippi’s flag, I don’t want it flying over any statehouses or even any Confederate memorial graves (the Stars & Bars should be sufficient, as a historical relic). Now, I run into problems on two fronts. The first group is those that want to fly the flag and fly it proudly. The second group are outsiders who are demanding that the flag be taken down, but will ultimately heap a similar amount of scorn on the region if they do. Taking down the flag would not, after all, change the fundamental disagreements causing much of the conflict. Even absent the most fundamental thing (or the thing perceived as being most fundamental) – race – the divisions exist.

And, to be honest, as long as the State of Texas is depicted by some lunatic judge in Texas, and people choose to identify the south with the least desirable among them, well… it’s hard for the truly well-meaning to get a fair hearing. I don’t think that this is a phenomenon particularly unique to the South. Along these lines…

One wonders why this Southerner—and others who beat the same drum of outrage—are not instead asking, “Why is a KKK Grand Dragon able to operate a long-running business selling Klan robes, booklets outlining Klan rituals and related disease across from the courthouse in a town square in 2012?”

What, precisely, are southerners or Americans supposed to do to make them no longer “able” to operating such a business? Yet, until they are somehow driven out of business, they besmirch the region? A failure to close down a store on the basis of its politics is “looking the other way”? Objecting residents can boycott, but they are unlikely to be shopping there in the first place. As long as this is the metric by which the South is to be judged, it’s a losing proposition.

There are some similarities living in the non-urban Mountain West, and I would bet the Great Plains as well. What’s The Matter With Kansas and all that. There was a reason that Sarah Palin resonated so. The South, though, is in a league all its own in terms of reciprocal disdain.

I’m not trying to argue “poor little Dixie” here. I am among those that see some serious problems. I may see some things that are not problems or greatly exaggerated mixed in with the critical soup, but that doesn’t constitute much of a defense. I left the region and have little desire to go back. Further, I myself am guilty of the antagonism that I describe. Not towards the corner of the region where I grew up, but towards other areas lower on the pecking order of acceptable-thinking Americans.

A little while ago, I cocked an eyebrow when Mississippi State University announced itself as the location of the Ulysses Grant Presidential Library. My initial reaction to reading this was… not charitable. The more I read, though, the more interesting the story was. I was tempted to be dismissive because, well, we all know how a whole lot of Mississippians feel towards the Civil War. However, if that sort of thing is ever to change, southerners and southern organizations like MSU need to take these steps and need to be applauded for doing so. Skepticism, or holding over the belated timing of these things, undermines the forces for necessary change and emboldens intransigence. It pushes people in the middle away from compromise and encourages the circling of wagons.

I was raised in an extended family that was… not forward thinking, in many ways. With a view of history that does not stand up much to scrutiny. And growing up, I bought into a lot of it. That’s what happens when you’re taught something. Like a lot of people, I moved beyond that. But it’s an attractive myth. Wanting to be proud of where you come from. Making convenient the fact that a lot of the relics that have been passed on from generation to generation involve having been on the wrong side of one of the nation’s great moral struggles. It’s very seductive. It requires little in the way of mental gymnastics to not see any contradiction between having these views and having friends (or at least acquaintances) of color. And those people who talk trash about you and yours? It only helps the myth, really. People telling you that the country would be better off without the likes of you only hardens it. It’s a line in the sand that I was born on the wrong side of. One where it is a challenge to look at the line and agree with the actual dynamics of the righteous and wrong side.

The existence of sides, of course, is not the invention of the South’s critics. It is an invention of history and, to the extent that it lingers, primarily of the South itself. But to erase that line, and for the South to move beyond it, discussions about which Americans are the ideal Americans and which collective groups of people holding the rest of us back are counterproductive. Actions that are wrong should be criticized. People that commit actions that are wrong should be criticized. Looking at collective groups of people and identifying them by the loudest and most intransigent among them breeds intransigence. It empowers it.

When I write a multiple choice question, I like to come up with at least one of four answers that is clearly wrong. Ideally, there are two obviously wrong answers, one “maybe-it-might-be-right” answer and one correct answer. But at least one answer should be totally wrong. For instance:

Barney works at a fast-food restaurant called the Frying Dutchman. He observes what he believes to be a significant safety issue when a leak springs in the deep fat fryer and management does not fix it. Barney then reports the leak to OSHA. Barney is called a:
a) Scurvy rat.
b) Mandatory reporter.
c) Fiduciary.
d) Whistleblower.

For a graduate class in employment law, I consider the “Frying Dutchman” question both a fair question, and an easy one. (The answer, of course, is “d.”) So too did I consider this a question, the first that I posed in the 100-question test, that was fair and easy:

In the context of employment law, “discrimination” means:
a) Evidence that suggests the accusations against a defendant are correct.
b) Preferential treatment given to a member of a favored group.
c) The belief that members of a particular religion are morally inferior.
d) Taste, refinement, and discernment.

Four out of five students got this one wrong and all four gave the same answer. But not in the way I thought they would have: they chose one of the answers that I thought was obviously wrong, one of the two that I thought would be excludable immediately.

When I first started teaching a mentor told me that I could not design a test so easy that a student would not somehow screw it up. If the entire test consisted of one question and the question was: “Sign your name here: _________________” I would either get someone who wrote the words “your name here” on the blank line or someone who managed to sign their name elsewhere on the paper. So don’t worry about it if your students miss a seemingly obvious question, or even a whole bunch of them. That’s just going to happen. An assurance that I need right about now because when four out of five students give the same wrong answer that suggests to me that something I said or did stuck in their minds bizarrely, and now they’re walking around having completed a graduate-level class in employment law thinking that discrimination is a good thing.

It begins with a momentary disorientation. “What is that?” I say. Then I realize that the “that” which I have been unable to identify the thing that I am looking directly at. A blind spot has manifested at the exact focus of my vision. This is the vanguard of the demon’s attack.

I blink. Several times. The blind spot does not go away. I can peripherally see what I’m looking at, or at least rapidly rotating my vision around it to change the focus enough to allow the visual data to move in. And my recognition of what may be underway comes instantly with a feeling of dread, annoyance, and a small bit of fear.

Over the next two or three minutes, the blind spot grows until it takes up about five degrees of my focus. By now, it is usually C-shaped. It appears like the “digital fuzz” that a television program places over a person’s face or other body parts to obscure them from vision. Closing my eyes does not make this obscuring fuzz go away. It brings the sharp, glowing edges of the blind spot into focus.

Continue Reading →

As part of my continuing intermittent series of posts publicly worrying about California lighting its money on fire with a high speed rail construction project, I offer another post publicly worrying about California lighting its money on fire with a high speed rail construction project. And again I want to impress the viewer with the nuance that I want to have high speed rail here — I’m just convinced that the state is botching the job.

Today, I note that the California High Speed Rail Authority has had a change in leadership. Its new chief executive is the former head of the California Department of Transportation, ubiquitously known in the state as “Caltrans.” Now, I actually have a pretty high opinion of Caltrans, since I’ve taken the time to consider the massive, massive job that it has been charged with. They aren’t perfect and construction on the roads is a massive headache when you encounter it, but all things considered they’re as on top of the job as seems reasonably possible.

So the change in day-to-day leadership is a good thing. But the appointed directors overseeing the project seem content to continue the previous iteration of the plans to phase in the high speed rail project in the San Joaquin Valley rather than in either the San Francisco peninsula or the Los Angeles basin. The reason? Continue Reading →

Around election time, on Hit Coffee I pondered whether Romney’s loss would have any effect on the LDS Church:

[A] change of trajectory somewhere along the line does seem possible. The Romney loss could play a roll in it, but I think being on what will be the losing side of the gay marriage issue will be a bigger one. To be clear, I don’t think the LDS Church will ever formally or informally endorse same-sex marriage. Civil unions and such yes, but marriage never. But I think their experiences with Proposition 8 and the backlash they faced may have jarred them a little (it sure as heck would have jarred me). Not just that they were publicly reviled, but it was the conspicuousness with which they were targeted. It’s not that they don’t like attention – they clearly do – but they have always seemed at least a little wary of being seen as backwards. It’s actually a bit difficult to describe, but many southern evangelicals seem to revel in being the big, bad guy to their opponents. Mormons maintain their distinctness, to be sure, but perhaps because of a history of having been on the wrong side of public backlashes, they are reluctant to be too different.

The LDS Chuch does seem to be shifting its views on homosexuality just a bit:

Among the videos on the site is one featuring the Mormon apostle Dallin H. Oaks, titled “What Needs to Change.” Oaks says that “what needs to change is to help our own members and families understand how to deal with same-gender attraction.” While that sentence doesn’t quite parse grammatically, the message seems to be: Don’t throw your children out of the house because they’re gay. Do teach them, though, not to have gay sex. The “doctrine of the church, that sexual activity should only occur between a man and a woman who are married,” Oaks says, “has not changed and is not changing.”

Those who pay attention to verb tenses may notice that Oaks does not say that Mormon doctrine will not change. On one level, this is simply good Mormonism: The LDS Church believes in continual revelation through a living prophet, so no apostle can declare with certainty that something will never change. And the new website, which is hardly a celebration of gay pride, is also a savvy bit of public relations: Brad Kramer, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan who studies contemporary Mormonism (and who is Mormon himself), called the site “an example of the curious space where PR and doctrinal shift intersect and subtly cooperate.”

To be sure, this is a very subtle shift. But it’s not in isolation. In 2010, two years after having getting a lot of negative attention due to their role in Proposition 8, they came out in favor of a ban on anti-gay discrimination in Salt Lake County and came out strongly against anti-gay persecution in schools.

Like I said, I don’t think the church will ever support gay marriage. Nor will they ever be okay with homosexuality. But I think they are at least somewhat subject to peer pressure. And we’re seeing that now.