Ted Landau on Apple, politics, evolution, movies & whatever
General
Terrorism and risk tolerance
Dec 30th
By all accounts, we screwed up in not stopping Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from ever boarding the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. But before we become too absorbed in self-blame, it’s worth noting a few points:
• Almost all of the red flags (he paid cash for ticket; he had no luggage; his father had warned U.S. about his extremist links) were things that should have led to his detection and apprehension before he ever made it to the security screening device. Certainly, no changes to in-flight rules and regulations would have helped in these matters. So let’s not get carried away with ridiculous in-flight procedures (such as turning off the televised map that shows the plane’s location or forcing you to stow your laptop for the last hour of flight) that will almost certainly not have any effect on any future terrorist attempts.
• While there are definitely things that need to change to prevent another similar terrorist attempt, this doesn’t mean that our current system was a complete failure. Yes, some luck was involved in the attempt not succeeding. And the actions of other passengers certainly played a role. But I believe it is also true that the attempt failed at least partly because our current security measures forced the terrorist to use a low-probability-of-success method. Otherwise, he would have had many more “desirable” options to choose from.
• We can never be 100% certain that an attack will not succeed. As we try to get the risk closer and closer to zero, there is a trade-off: we give up more and more of our privacy rights and we make flying less and less enjoyable (some would argue it is already completely unenjoyable; count me in this group). At some point, we have to ask: Is the extra security worth the trade-off? For example: Would it be okay to require that every passenger be strip searched if that meant that the odds of a terrorist attacked dropped only from 2 in a million to 1 in a million? I would say no. Bear in mind that no lives have been lost as a result of a terrorist attack on a U.S. plane since 2001.
So let’s fix what needs fixing. But let’s not get carried away and ruin what is already working well enough.
Let Oscar be Oscar
Feb 26th
Every year, it’s the same lament: The Oscar telecast ratings are down. What should we do to prop them up?
Enough already. Let’s be clear: The purpose of the Academy Awards (Oscar) is not primarily to garner ratings (although television executives may dispute this). It is to give out awards.
Ideally, it is to give out awards to the most deserving films. Admittedly, it is not an ideal process. For one thing, many in Hollywood view everything about films, including the Oscars, only as a way to generate money. Artistic value be damned. Movies that don’t make a lot of money are, by definition in this view, not good and should not get Oscars. Another problem is that some of the people that vote don’t take the process all that seriously and may not even have seen many of the films in contention. Or they vote based on which film ran the best “campaign” or which actor has the most sentimental appeal. And don’t even get me started on the screwy way that the nominations work for Best Foreign Film (so that a superb picture such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and and 2 Days doesn’t even get a nomination). Or the fact that the last time the Best Song category had more than one memorable song (if that many) was several decades ago.
Even so, the Academy Awards is still, even in a bad year, one of the most watched shows on television. So enough complaining.
Instead, revel in the fact that this year’s nominees somehow managed to include a bunch of great films, even though they were not blockbusters. Major nominations, for example, went to No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Atonement, The Savages, La Vie en Rose, Away From Her, and The Valley of Elah.
Yet I keep reading how the solution to the Oscar ratings “problem” is to ensure that awards should go to more popular films. The theory is that if nominations mainly go to pictures that most people actually saw, more people would watch the telecast. A Time magazine column by Richard Corliss expressed this view in its most extreme and despicable form.
I spit on this solution.
The five most popular films this past year were: Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Now some of these films were enjoyable. No doubt about it. But I’d like to believe that even people who went to these films and enjoyed them can recognize the difference between an enjoyable and popular film vs. a great and award-worthy film. These are not mutually-exclusive categories. But it is far from a sure thing that they will overlap. Does anyone truly want to argue that the 5 pictures at the start of this paragraph should have been the Best Picture nominees? I hope not.
There’s only so much you can do to improve the ratings the Academy Awards. Giving awards to popular but otherwise crappy films should not be one of them. Doing so, in my view, is equivalent to saying that we could improve the ratings of the Super Bowl if we gave the underdog team a 10 point lead before the start of the game, so that the score would likely remain close throughout the 4 quarters. Sound crazy? Sure. But it’s no more crazy than the phony solutions to the Oscar ratings non-problem.
My one suggestion to increase Oscar ratings is to focus more on the films themselves. Creative segments that include clips from great films of previous years, for example, are always one of the highlights for me. Beyond that, leave it alone. Let Oscar be Oscar. Don’t sell him out to the highest bidder.
Can voters be more stupid than this?
Feb 6th
Here in California, we had State Proposition 91 on yesterday’s ballot. It’s designed to make sure that gasoline tax revenue is used for transportation funding, as intended, and not something else.
In an unusual turn of events, no one supported this proposition, not even the people responsible for getting it on the ballot.
How can this be?
It’s a timing thing. It turns out that the approval to be on the ballot was given in 2006. However, a separate proposal that accomplished the same goal wound up on the November 2006 ballot and was passed. This made this year’s Proposition 91 irrelevant. So the original supporters said not to vote for it.
Don’t believe me? Check out the Voter Information Guide and see for yourself. The section for arguments in favor of Proposition 91 states: “Proposition 91 is no longer needed. We respectfully urge you to vote NO ON PROPOSITION 91.”
Okay. Here’s the punchline:
It’s still early as I write this (only 14% of precincts are reporting) but the percentage of YES votes for Proposition 91 is 44% (that’s over one million votes and counting). That’s right. A greater percentage (and greater number) of people have so far voted in favor of Proposition 91 than have voted in favor of Proposition 92, 94, 95, 96 or 97. Of all the propositions on the ballot, only Proposition 93 has received more YES votes—with an only slightly larger percentage: 48%.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain (the projected winners in their respective primaries) each have less votes (by several hundred thousand) than the votes in favor of Proposition 91.
The kindest spin that can be put on this is that “yes on 91″ voters read the proposal for the first time when in the voting booth and made their decision knowing nothing else about it. Maybe that’s not exactly a stupid way to vote. But it’s sure close.
Intelligence: Environment vs. Genetics
Dec 17th
For the record, I have little tolerance for these endless environment vs. genetics debates. Too often, they make it sound like an either-or debate: Either trait X is “determined” by the environment or by genetics. It has to be one or the other. People who actually study this issue have long ago realized that traits are instead “determined” by some combination of the two factors. True, there is a continuum, where some traits may be more influenced by one of these two factors than the other. But it never reaches 100%. It is similarly silly to say that a given trait is “90% genetic” or whatever. This would be like saying that your mother’s apple pie is determined 90% by recipe and 10% by cooking skill. An apple pie is a result of the interplay of these two determinants. You can never completely isolate one factor from the other—or assign a percentage to each one.
That said, it is also my belief that most human characteristics, both physical and behavioral, are significantly influenced by our genes. Just because an apple pie is not 100% determined by its recipe does not mean that its recipe is irrelevant to how the apple pie tastes. The same is true for genes and human behavior.
When it comes to human behaviors and skills, our genes place upper limits on what we can achieve. I doubt that anyone believes they could match Michael Jordan’s basketball abilities simply by practicing harder or getting the “right” training or growing up in a different environment or whatever else might be mentioned here. Most of us will never and could never be as good as Michael Jordan, no matter what. He started off with a genetic advantage that the rest of us don’t have. In a different environment, he might not have realized his potential. But most of us don’t even have the potential to realize.
This reminds me of a more personal example. I took piano lessons for 10 years, from about the age of 8 to 18. For most of that time, I studied under an excellent teacher and studied quite hard. Still, I struggled to move up the ranks and join the teacher’s “advanced students” group. I eventually made it but it was not easy.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine (we weren’t close friends but we were friendly to each other) was taking lessons from the same teacher. We grew up in the same town, were of the same religion and traveled in similar social circles. My friend had a much much easier time advancing. Indeed, he was so good that the teacher wound up giving him his own solo concert when we were seniors in high school. Quite simply, my friend was incredibly talented.
I was not surprised when, several years later, I discovered that my friend had made a career in music. His name is Randy Edelman and he went on to become a noted film composer. I am confident that there is no way that I could have achieved what Randy achieved, no matter how similar our backgrounds and how hard I tried. There was a genetic component to his talent that I did not have.
I was reminded of all of this when I read the recent article in the New York Times by Richard Nisbett, titled “All Brains Are the Same Color.” The main contention of the article is that any racial difference in intelligence “has environmental, not genetic, causes.”
Leaving aside my prior concern about whether such statements are ever meaningful, and leaving aside concerns about the potential bias of I.Q. testing, I would mainly agree with Nisbett’s contention. It is possible that there is a “genetic cause” for some of the difference, just as there may be for any physical trait, such as the color of skin. But, if there is, it is too entangled in other causes for us to clearly define it. At least for the moment, it is more reasonable to assume no difference at all.
But we have to be careful not to overgeneralize here. It is one thing to say that the intelligence differences between two groups have no genetic basis. It is quite another thing to say that there is no genetic basis for intelligence at all. To me this would be the equivalent of saying that we can all be Einsteins, given the right environment. Or that we can all be Michael Jordan. Or that I could have easily been Randy Edelman. It just isn’t so. Pretending it is so or wishing it were so, does not change that fact.
At some level, we all know that some of us are smarter than most of us, and that such differences are not simply a question of environment. Denying this truth, as with the case of any denial of truth, ultimately causes more harm than good.
Sorry for the long gap between this posting and the previous one. I have been busy finishing up my iPhone book. I hope to return to a more frequent posting schedule now.