Astra Taylor on the Internet and “cultural democracy”

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The lead-in to Rose Dwyer’s interview with Astra Taylor on the Harper’s magazine website:

In her new book, The People’s Platform, Astra Taylor, a cultural critic and the director of the documentaries Zizek! and Examined Life, challenges the notion that the Internet has brought us into an age of cultural democracy. While some have hailed the medium as a platform for diverse voices and the free exchange of information and ideas, Taylor shows that these assumptions are suspect at best. Instead, she argues, the new cultural order looks much like the old: big voices overshadow small ones, content is sensationalist and powered by advertisements, quality work is underfunded, and corporate giants like Google and Facebook rule. The Internet does offer promising tools, Taylor writes, but a cultural democracy will be born only if we work collaboratively to develop the potential of this powerful resource. I asked her six questions about her book…

Read the full interview here.

MATLAB!

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I’m now the proud owner of a MATLAB Home license:

MATLAB® is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming. Using MATLAB, you can analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models and applications. The language, tools, and built-in math functions enable you to explore multiple approaches and reach a solution faster than with spreadsheets or traditional programming languages, such as C/C++ or Java™.

Why did I do it?  1)  I want to be able to tinker at home,  2) the license for home use is only $150, 3) IDL, my primary programming language for nearly 20 years now, doesn’t offer home use licenses (Commercial licenses for MATLAB and IDL each run about $2k.), and 4)  MATLAB has become the lingua franca of technical computing.

IDL is great for algorithm development and I like it better than MATLAB for image display – not to mention that in the head-to-head comparisons I’ve done custom algorithms run 2-3x faster in IDL than in MATLAB – but outside of a few niche areas hardly anyone knows it.   I’m finding that’s increasingly an issue at work.  At a minimum I need to be fluent in both.

When I first started using MATLAB at work the analogy I made was switching from French to Spanish as your primary language.  (I don’t speak either but the analogy sounded appropriate.)  The structure of my code would be fine but there’d be tons of grammatical errors.   (Row major vs column major still gives me fits, as do matrix indices running 1 to n as opposed to 0 to n-1.  Oh, and the difference between what you get back from their respective 2D FFT functions?  It took me two weeks to discover that the difference in convention mattered for what I was doing and then to get the MATLAB-IDL mapping right.)

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Food Stamps

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From Paul Krugman, “Inequality Is a Drag” (emphasis mine):

Consider, for example, what we know about food stamps, perennially targeted by conservatives who claim that they reduce the incentive to work. The historical evidence does indeed suggest that making food stamps available somewhat reduces work effort, especially by single mothers. But it also suggests that Americans who had access to food stamps when they were children grew up to be healthier and more productive than those who didn’t, which means that they made a bigger economic contribution. The purpose of the food stamp program was to reduce misery, but it’s a good guess that the program was also good for American economic growth.

Thought for the Day – 5 August 2014

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[By] running a high unemployment policy the government is transferring money from low and moderate income people to … higher income people. We could bring the unemployment rate down to 5.0 percent or possibly 4.0 percent with larger government deficits or a lower valued dollar, which would reduce the size of the trade deficit. The lower rate of unemployment would not only give millions more people jobs, it would also give workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution the bargaining power necessary to raise their wages. These workers would then have more money, while high income households would have to pay more for help.

– Dean Baker

Weekly Digest – August 3, 2014

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Must Read

Should Read

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Truth in Advertising: Weather Forecasting Edition

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I check the NWS forecast every morning.   I also check the “Forecast Discussion” section – where the forecasters give the details behind the forecast on the main page – because sometimes there’s something like this:

.NEAR TERM /UNTIL 6 PM THIS EVENING/...
***TODAY/S FORECAST IS OF VERY LOW CONFIDENCE GIVEN CONSIDERABLE
  MODEL DISAGREEMENT***

…

PRETTY REMARKABLE MODEL DISAGREEMENT FOR A 12 HOUR FORECAST.  THE
MODELS ARE STRUGGLING WITH A PLUME OF TROPICAL MOISTURE STREAMING
NORTHWARD FROM THE MID ATLANTIC STATES. WHENEVER YOU ARE DEALING
WITH TROPICAL MOISTURE AND VIRTUALLY NO THERMAL GRADIENT...ITS
GOING TO PLAY HAVOC WITH COMPUTER MODEL FORECASTS AND PLACEMENT OF
QPF.

AT THIS POINT...THE BEST THING WE CAN DO IS KEEP THE THEME OF THE
FORECAST GOING FROM THE LAST FEW DAYS...NOT JUMPING ON WILD MODEL
SWINGS...

Three cheers for truth in advertising.  Admission of uncertainty is a good thing.

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In praise of “free play”

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“Free play” is a relatively new term to me.  When I was a kid we just called it “play.”

Dr. Ron Turker, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, had an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, All Played Out:

Recently, I told a teenage boy, whom I’ll call Lucas, and his parents that he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament (A.C.L.) in his knee. The matching soccer jerseys worn by the entire family were a hint as to how the conversation would go.

“You don’t understand, this is his life!” Mom said.

“We need this fixed — he’s in the Olympic Development Program! He’s elite,” said Dad.

Lucas is 13. The next 40 minutes of what had been a 20-minute appointment were spent trying to reset expectations. Lucas would need a minimum of six months to heal the reconstructed graft. On top of that, his bones were still growing, so the surgical technique would have to be altered to a trickier and less tested procedure. And the harsh reality: Any knee that has had a major injury will never be 100 percent “normal.” His parents were furious and left for the inevitable second opinion.

These visits are exhausting and more common every year. The question is why.

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