In a data driven world . . .

we are always trying to understand more about how people make decisions.  One of the unintended consequences is that you end up with a lot of answers that don't make a lot of sense.  Asking people about why they made a choice can easily lead you astray.  The fact is they often don't know why they did this or that.  But because you are asking, they feel compelled to give you an answer.  An answer that is often false, leaving the questioner less informed then when they began their questioning.  In fact, the very fact that people will have to explain themselves, effects the choices that they make. 

I write this because we seem to be in a quest for more of everything, even knowledge.  And too often we forget to ask ourselves what we are really learning from all this data collection.

Radio Lab (a great show, by the way) covers this well in an episode called Choice.

Here is an interesting blog post about the subject as well.

Rooting for the Republican Party

Those who know me may be surprised to read the title of this post, but I truly am. I can root for them, because the only way that they are going to be able to come back is to have better ideas. I want to have a choice as to who to vote for, and they have not given me one in quite awhile.

The link below talks about the start of a 3rd party -- an idea that at least seems intellectually plausible. But is it really necessary? When we look back at history we see that the party's have been very loose structures, with coalitions often crossing party lines. Regional differences often separated those within a single party. In essence, what our congress, and by proxy, what governed us were coalitions. They were not that different from the coalitions that permeate the governments of Europe. Hubert Humphrey (D) had a hell of a lot more in common with Everett Dirksen of Illinois (R) then he did with Richard Russell (D) from Georgia. See the breakdown of the regional votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 below as an example.

The original House version:

* Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
* Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)

* Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
* Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)

The Senate version:

* Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) (only Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
* Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (this was Senator John Tower of Texas)
* Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (only Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the measure)
* Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire opposed the measure)


The Gaucho Politico: At What Point is a Third Part Viable

friendfeed please . . .

bring back your drop-down options  -- the following is quoted from: The Inquistr

Did someone send out a memo about hating dropdown lists and I missed it?

Everywhere it seems in Friendfeed, including its bookmarklet, dropdown lists have been banished to some netherworld. Instead we have some fancy combination of a text entry box and a auto complete dropdown. What this means is that if you don’t want the item that is displayed in the text area you click on the little ‘X’ to make it go away. Then you start typing the name, group or whatever in the text area and magically a dropdown list will appear with a list of items Friendfeed thinks you mean based on the letters you have typed in.

Gee, thanks. Good luck figuring that out all you new users as it was it took me a minute or two to figure about what the hell was going on. so tell me – other than being a way to show off some ninja javascript skill WTF is the point? Are proper dropdown lists so un-cool, even though they are simple to figure out and use, that they need to be replaced with a ridiculous option. C’mon give me a break.

In the end

Friendfeed has lost some of the best things that made it attractive and as a result it has become more work. I have always said that Friendfeed was one of the best tools out there for people need to keep their fingertips on the pulse of what is happening.

Couldn't agree more

Pelosi, Bush, . . . whoever was involved, no matter what party.  I don't necessarily want criminal prosecution, but we need to investigate. I wouldn't rule it out. 

Buckley

I enjoyed this article by Christopher Buckley -- I may pick up the book.

In a way I miss the arguments from the right from someone like Buckley.  While I did not often agree with him, at least the arguments were interesting.  And he certainly was a character.  I can't say that anybody has filled that void.

I enjoy Brooks and Andrew Sullivan, but the problem is that they both (at least I know Sullivan did) voted for Obama in the last election. 

I am posting this using Scribefire, seeing how it works.  So far so good.