Dear small Texas counties: Blame Abbott for your #VoterID bills

As I blogged yesterday, the state of Texas and its "sue Obama" attorney general, Greg Abbott, are now being sued BY Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice over both Texas new voter ID law and over redistricting.

Well, the local county clerk is complaining about the cost of running a legal notice for the details of the new voter ID law. It would cost, unless she can get the Secretary of State to let it be trimmed, about $250 to run bilingually.

Hey, I don't want to soak the county unnecessarily, but, if that's what the state says is needed, that's what's needed. (And, I don't know if it's a required posting, but I sure got that indication.)

Once again, Texas' money-waster in chief rears his head. And, with DOJ officially involved, the voter ID bill may at least face an injunction before this November's constitutional amendments election. If so, more money wasted.

Oh, and ain't it funny, or "funny," that the law does nothing to address vote fraud, actual as well as alleged, in voting by mail? Why? Because in the past, that's been the provenance of old, white, rural Republicans, in many cases, though that's probably changing.

(I'm waiting for the GOP to try to figure out how to "cage" voters by mail.)

#Coffitivity: Stupider than the #MozartEffect

And snobbier, too!

A Facebook friend sent me a link to Coffitivity, which makes the Mozart Effect sound like actual science!

Quoting from the website:

Coffee shop sounds boost creativity, now those sounds are at your fingertips!

And, the hints of impeccable social science studies backing this up follow.

First, recognizing true junk science combined with true Nice Polite Republican Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, Meyer-lemon-squeezing, Obama-loving sales pitches is the key to this.

As for that research? They link to one study, which looks at ambient noise in general, not one particular type of ambient noise, and that doesn't actually claim to prove anything. Here:

Based on the above research, we predict that the distraction caused by a moderate (vs. low) level of noise will induce processing difficulty, leading to abstract processing and, consequently, to greater creativity.

Predict ain't the same as prove. Fail. And, it's not called The Journal of Consumer Research for nothing. Sorry, but why doesn't the University of Chicago actually get empirical behavioral economics rolling more and more?

Next, the study did say that moderately varying ambient sound isn't the only way to possibly boost creativity. It said colors of moderate intensity with moderate changes could do the same.

Like .... being out in nature!

And, because we're more modern than the Mozart Effect, there's no CDs. There's apps! And even an employee called a "growth hacker"!

Now, to riff on my stereotypical neoliberal rant from above.

Of course, Coffitivity's targeted only to Mac users, because we know you PC types still buy fucking No. 1-selling Folgers from the can at the grocery store.

That rant about Folgers, etc., is sparked by something Kai Rissdahl had on Marketplace on NPR yesterday. I wrote the following brief snark.

Your Kai Rissdahl + Marketplace teh stupid + dog whistle, perhaps, for today: "Coffee snobs, you may want to shut off your radios for the next 2 minutes and 10 seconds." He then says, Did you know the best selling coffee in America at the grocery store is ...... (long ellipsis)

"Folgers."

No shit, Sherlock? Folgers, or Maxwell House as No. 2, were brainless guesses. Why? They're cheap and they've been around for a century longer than Starbucks.

That said, although not as bad as 20 years ago, since they do use all Arabica beans now, they're still semi-dreck compared to real coffees.

That said, the best Robustas are better than the worst Arabicas, but our coffee snob balloon buster didn't tell us that.

So, of course, something like this is geared to iPods and iPads. A little more come-on to Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, Meyer-lemon-squeezing types that only Mac users are really creative? Your iPad or iPhone is fine, but Android coffee drinkers need not apply? See that subtle dogwhistle in there, too? Yes, halfway down the page it has a blurb for non-Mac smartphone users, but right below the banner, it says: 

Available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad in the App Store!

Sorry, even if you talk about generic smartphones later, that's still a dogwhistle in my book.

Anyway, had to email the Coffitivity folks this:

Coffee research shows drinking six or more cups a day shortens your life span. A more serious than anything you've done, in-depth, longitudinal study shows that.

More coffee research shows that the stress from wondering what 'growth hacker' to buy, how much money one can afford for it, and worrying about the high prices of Starbucks plus the health effects of all the sugar and fats from non-coffee 'coffee drinks' further shortens one's lifespan.

And, I'm not joking.

One real, longitudinal study, from the Mayo Clinic, though kind of iffy on its follow-up questions, says six or more cups a day can shorten lifespan due to increasing cardiovascular problems. Another, lesser study says that six or more cups a day may increase metabolic syndrome, a diabetes precursor.

And I Tweeted them this:

Coffitivity sounds like another typical American "magic bullet" fail. Euclid: There is no #MozartEffect route to learning.

Because that's exactly what it sounds like. Of course, Euclid didn't have Starbucks, or coffee in general, so I'm riffing on his famous "there is no royal road to learning" comments to Alexander the Great.

What's next? Sounding like coffee snobs about different coffeehouse ambient noises? But of course, I'm sure.

"Our 'Afternoon Enchantment' is a medium-light roast of noise, perfect for those midday times when your mind, like your body, craves a siesta but you know you must do work."

Also, misspelling the root word in a mash-up, i.e., "coffee" in this case, will get you an extra spanking from me as an editor.

Why Walter Johnson is greater than Cy Young — or other oldsters

Some fan votes on the ELO player ratings Baseball-Reference are stupid. How is Dennis Eckersley the 11th-best pitcher ever? (Answer: He's not.)

The big debate about pitchers, though, has always been, though, where Cy Young should stand, despite those 511 wins.

And, at least second to the Big Train, Walter Johnson, is right. (If even that high.)

Why? It's all about the rules, and the relevant ages and eras of the two greats.

First, the "dead ball" era of 1900-1920 wasn't totally that way.

The modern, or modern-like, cork-center ball was introduced in 1910. But, let's start from the beginning, noting that Young started pitching in 1890 and Johnson in 1907.

Let's look at pitching-related rules changes in general, by year.

*** 1890: Young starts career ***


1893: Mound is moved back to 60-6", its current distance. Pitching rubber is introduced. So, Young's first three seasons weren't under modern rules, dead or live ball.

1897: Pitchers (and other players) are barred from deliberately discoloring or injuring the ball. Yes, after the fatal beaning of Ray Chapman by Carl Mays, rotating out balls more regularly became part of the solution. But, this change, even, helped a bit. Young had pitched seven seasons while being allowed to be "Black and Decker," whether he did it that much or not. (See 1908, too.)

1904: Mound height set at 15 inches. Not sure how much some teams before that tried to make it higher.

*** 1907: Johnson starts career ***

1908: Pitchers are specifically forbidden from scuffing or discoloring a ball.

1910: The cork-center ball is adopted. (Arguably, we should talk about "semi-dead ball era after this. Note that home run totals picked up to a decent degree from here on out, even before the "live-ball era." (1918 is an outlier due to the enforced shortening of the season for WWI and I therefore don't count it.)

*** 1911: Young retires at end of season ***

1920: The "lively ball" is introduced.

1925: The rosin bag is introduced.


*** 1927: Johnson retires after season ***


So, Young basically played in a totally different era than Johnson. Hall of Famer? Sure. But, maybe he shouldn't even be in the top five in pitchers. Who knows?

Add in the anecdotal tales that Johnson (after hitting a few people early in his career) was afraid to throw too far inside, lest he possibly kill somebody himself, and some batters knowing this about him, and I think we could well call him the best of all time.

How would he have done today?

Well, his sidearm-type motion would have kept low stress on his arm today, just like then. And, while not conducive to a good curve, I have no doubt he could have thrown devastating versions of a slider and a cutter out of that same arm slot.

And, before Don Drysdale broke it in the pitching-heavy 1968, Johnson had the record for a scoreless-innings streak at 55 2/3.

My thoughts on other pitchers who were at least in part in the dead-ball era, or the true 1910-1909 dead ball era and the 1910-1919 semi-dead era?

Pete Alexander I think was third-best. Christy Mathewson had a slightly lower ERA+ and benefited from being on better teams. And, he retired at a relatively young 35 and his arm was gone before that.

 The one I have trouble with is a totally live-ball era pitcher. Yeah, Lefty Grove won 300, with a fantastic winning percentage, and a great ERA+, but retiring somewhat younger colors things a bit. Even allowing for him being in the liveliest of live-ball eras (at least before steroids), his WHIP being above 1.25 also is a bit of a ding.

Also, and sorry Dodgers and 1960s fans, Sandy Koufax shouldn't be No. 8. Even at his peak, he never had an ERA+ of above 200, among other things. (His best was a 190; Bob Gibson had a 258 in his incredible 1968, and Johnson, even with the low scoring of his era, broke 200 four times.) Also, arguably, besides finding his control in LA, he found Dodger Stadium, after it was built. Yes, I know B-R's ERA+ ratings are park-adjusted as default, but still, keep that in mind. Even more with Don Drysdale, who probably should not be a HOFer, and who definitely shouldn't be ranked No. 16 among pitchers, just one step behind Gibby. Doubly even more with Don Sutton, who shouldn't be ranked a spot ahead of Gibby at No. 14. Makes me wonder if this is younger, less nuanced fans, or its just Dodger fans crashing the boards.

Is there an "Obama effect" like the "Bradley effect"?

The Bradley effect is named after former long-term Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who lost a bid for governor in California even while polls showed him leading.

As Wikipedia explains, the gist of it is that, even though polls are anonymous, a certain number of white voters will tell pollsters they intend to vote for a black candidate, because that's what they think they should say, even though they have no such actual intention.

In more recent years, it appears to have lessened, which is itself a sign of progress.

However, it may have been replaced by what I will call the "Obama effect."

I finally tumbled on that based on this Gallup poll (graphic at left), which shows whites' and blacks' views on whether or not the criminal justice system is biased against blacks, are widening.

The percentage of blacks believing there's bias hasn't changed for years, while the percentage of whites believing that there is bias has dropped significantly in recent years.

And, when did those "recent years" start?

Well, in 2009.

Hence, the "Obama effect."

Update, Aug. 22: Half of America, fortunately, sees through the Obama effect and sees no new progress on black-white racial equality. 

Here's the nut graf:

Overall, 49 percent of Americans say "a lot more" remains to be done to achieve racial equality. Among blacks, the share climbs to 79 percent, compared with 44 percent for whites and 48 percent for Hispanics.

Lemme see ... Dear Leader got somewhere around 44 percent of white vote in 2012, didn't he? Yep, 43 percent. That means all the GOPers, from the five men in black who overthrew Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act on down conveniently happen to disagree with the idea, and let the Obama effect flood their minds.

Other findings.
—By political party, about 56 percent of Republicans say the U.S. has made a lot of progress toward racial equality, compared with just 38 percent of Democrats. When asked how much more needs to be done, 35 percent of Republicans say "a lot" compared with 63 percent of Democrats.

—About 7 in 10 blacks say they are treated less fairly than whites in dealing with police (70 percent) or in the courts (68 percent). And the Pew report shows that in 2010, black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated. That's up from 1960, when black men were five times more likely to be in a federal or state prison, or local jail.
The first just further underscores the idea of an Obama effect. The second? DWB still happens. And, don't forget Trayvon Martin.

Meanwhile, Hispanics continue to feel, on average, less out of the loop than blacks. Word to the wise there, the hopefully wise including the Texas Democratic Party and Battleground Texas.

That said, why?

Assuming not all Republicans, or conservative independents, are John Roberts, let alone Nino Scalias, why?

As the excellent book "Blind Spot" points out, a lot of people have hidden biases on race (or sex, sexual orientation, or age). Per the book's title, these are unconscious, and are often held by people who proudly present and profess themselves as liberal, including on racial relations.

So, some of the white decline may be blind-spotters who sincerely, and consciously, believe Obama's election "proves something" while unconsciously letting themselves off the hook at the same time.

Others may be more consciously letting themselves off the hook.

And a few may have little unconscious bias, let alone conscious bias, but they just think we are making progress.

That said, this issue applies to far more than widening gaps in viewing our criminal justice system. However, that particular issue is perfectly illustrative of what's at hand.

And, even with allowance for his Trayvon Martin speech, one wonders if Dear Leader himself has been a victim of the Obama effect.

Dear #antivaxxer Kenneth Copeland — can't you pray the measles away?

Now, I'm not generally like Gnu Atheists, poking wanton fun at religion.

But, when there's low-hanging fruit, such as a church run by one of the scions of success gospel guru (and IRS-trimming) Kenneth Copeland getting an outbreak of the measles, it's too rich to pass up.

Copeland, the father of Eagle Mountain International Church Pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons is also a faith healer PLUS an antivaxxer of sorts.

And, per the link, Rev. Pearsons is tap-dancing:

There are a lot of people that think the Bible — we talk about walking by faith — it leaves out things such as, I don't know, people just get strange. But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law. 

Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious. And the interesting thing of it, it wasn't a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood. It was the ministers, it was those who knew how to take the promises of God as well as the commandments of God to take care of things like disinfection and so forth....

Many of the things that we have in medical practice now actually are things you can trace back into scripture. It's when we find out what's in the scripture that we have wisdom.

She's also tap-dancing another way.

Isn't it always "interesting" that literalist or semiliteralist women ministers ALWAYS ignore what pseudo-Paul said about them in 2 Timothy?

How bad is it?

Ten people in Tarrant County have come down with measles, and the vector's been traced to the church.

And, at that link, Pearsons shows more science ignorance:

“What we’re going to be doing tonight, after church, is there will be a massive disinfecting of the entire church, this whole building, the whole campus, everything,” Pearsons said.

Measles isn't something you spray away with a can of Lysol or wash away with a bottle of Clorox. It's a virus, not a bacterium, and a hardy one. When an outbreak happens, the solution is vaccination in social rings around the ground zero.

A "massive disinfecting of the entire church" is as useful as an exorcism, or per daddy's success gospel, praying for a new airplane from him while laying hands on the TV while he's on the air.

Just ugh.

That said, the church is also hosting vaccination clinics.

(That's a friendly thing to remember, especially when people deny the theory of evolution. Vaccines, and how they work, and when they actually don't work, are all related to that, folks!)

This would be an opportunity for a religious leader to argue for the god-given brilliance of humans creating vaccines, if Copeland had more theological common sense. Of course, there would still be that pesky problem of evil about why vaccines exist in the first place.

Hey, Abbott: It's Obama's turn to sue YOU

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has said he perceives his job as attorney general thusly:

During his tenure as Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott has developed a bit of a routine: "I go into the office," he told a GOP audience in San Angelo in Februrary, "I sue Barack Obama, and then I go home." It's a line he uses in virtually every speech he gives and it has the benefit of being basically true.

Is now on the other end of the stick.

President Barack Obama's Department of Justice and AG Eric Holder is suing the state over its voter ID law.

But not just that. DOJ's also intervening in the redistricting lawsuit.

As I've said before, Abbott, now running for governor, is arguably the state's chief elected money-waster. That said, he headlines a pack of conservatives in the Lege who pass bills that lead to lawsuits like this.

And now, Tricky Ricky Perry speaks of "the will of the people." I guess he forgot the words "rich" and "white" in there.