Am I worse off because I didn't go to MIT?

There was a time in my youth when I was naive--and silly--enough to think I could go to MIT. I had no idea what I wanted to do when got there, but that's beside the point.

I ended up going to a public state school, flunking out, and then eventually graduating from a different public institution.

So what did I miss? Am I permanently locked out of the best opportunities available because I graduated from a "lower-tier" school?

If economists Alan Krueger and Stacey Dale are correct, it only matters that I graduated, not so much where from. In a Working Paper titled "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables", available here, they suggest that students with a choice of going to an elite or lower-tier school end up just about the same regardless of where they go. You can find more details, including video, at the New York Times' Economix blog.

As for going to MIT, now just about anyone can do it online.

Who knew Randy Quaid and his wife were crazy dope-addled thieves?

Flash Movie Reviews: "Surrogates"

So I went to see "Surrogates" tonight, and came away mixed. The film treads on interesting territory. What would the world be like if we all stayed home and experienced everything through an artificial interface?

One thing that leaped out at me about the film's notion of robots being the only things walking around was, where would people eat? I can't believe everyone would just eat take-out, or make their food at home. Eating is too wrapped up with how we socialize. And you certainly couldn't do that with a robotic avatar.

On top of that, the movie mixes together multiple elements and wraps them up just a little too neatly for my taste. I would have preferred a film which stopped to think about the world it created instead of just rushing through it to tidy conclusion.

It's worth a viewing, but wait for the DVD. Or maybe you can just download it?

A Picture is worth (certain) words

Via Andrew Sullivan, we see a picture that tells us all we need to know about the current yelling on the right about how President Obama is a "Socialist".

What they really mean: "Socialism" is giving everybody a taste of the privileges historically reserved for us white people here in the US.

"Blacks"

Why do some white people refer to all black people as "blacks"? Not "black people", "black folks", African-Americans, etc, but "blacks".

It seems as if they're not talking about individual people, but some homogeneous horde of formless, faceless others. I can't account for it myself because the notion makes no sense. My son is considered black thanks to the one-drop rule. Would they call him "a black" if they saw him with me?

All this reminds me of an offensive episode of "Californication". In it, Hank is anxiously waiting for one of the many women he's slept with to have her baby, so he can make sure it's not his. Eventually he ends up being present when the baby is born, and it comes out black. Not a little dark, but very dark-complected. So dark, in fact, that its utterly unrealistic. Most children are born with light skin which gets darker as they get a little older. While its common to use older babies in TV and movies because truly newborns aren't convenient--or available--this was way too over-the-top.

But the step-father's reaction was even worse. Yes, the woman Hank banged was with someone else. He solemnly held the child and showed it to its mother, proudly saying "I will raise this black child as my own". Why did he have to use the word "black"? Does it require clarification? Had the baby been born white as a polar bear, would he have needed to qualify his feelings by saying something like "I will raise this bastard child as my own"? Technically, that's what the baby is.

I was solidly offended. The unrealistically portrayed baby was used as a comic prop and treated as less than legitimate because it was black.

"Californication" doesn't have a monopoly on tone-deaf portrayal of black people though. "Family Guy" has developed a schizophrenic relationship with black folks. Cleveland, one of the main characters is getting his own show, premiering this Sunday. Once he's gone, Peter, Lois and the rest of the gang will no longer have their "black friend". They'll instead have to maintain an unsteady relationship with the few black or other POC who somehow end up in Quohog.

And let's not even get started on the slavery bit they did in the "Panic Room" episode....

Why do some white people view anyone who doesn't look like them as some threatening "Other"?

We now return to Anti-terrorism, already in progress

I just saw on TPM that the Justice Department has indicted Najibullah Zazi, the airport shuttle driver from Denver, on charges he planned to blow up targets in New York.

Isn't it interesting how different this is from previous plots? No massive news conference, no Orange Terror Alert--do you have enough duct tape? Instead, it was a deliberate process that probably would have been even more subtle if an NYPD informant hadn't tipped off the suspects they were under surveillance.

I notice that Drudge and Fox News manage to mention this, underneath blaring headlines about schoolchildren "forced to sing Obama's praises". As if he's Kim Jong-Il or something...

WTF: White Jim Crow?!

Rush is worried about a "White Jim Crow". Does he think he's going to have to give up his private plane to Jay-Z or something?

Or is he worried about being lynched? I don't think there's a tree branch big enough to hold up his fat ass. Besides, when the rampaging hordes of "blacks" (as he likes to call them) from "Obama's America" (as opposed to Real America), come for him, he can just barricade himself in his Palm Beach mansion with a shitload of Oxycontin and ride it out.

Rush and his ilk must be terrified that payback is a bitch. Of course, that's not how it works. Even as America changes, there's no threat white privilege will go away any time soon. The typical black person also doesn't have it in for white people the way racists like Rush think they do.

Through his comments, it looks like Rush, and those who support what he says, are projecting their own racial anger and resentment onto others.

Flash Movie Review: State of Play

Laid-off Wonkette employee watches All the President's Men one too many times. Actually, the movie is pretty good, even if its got that nostalgic for the good old days of newspapers feel to it. And it has Ben Affleck's best performance since Hollywoodland.

Open Thread

House is to Trance as Jazz is to....

Moore's Law and College Students

While a lot of the coverage of the MIT students getting images of the earth's curvature using only $150 worth of stuff talks about their ingenuity--and they have that--it also says a lot about how powerful technology is available to just anybody.

It would have been a lot more work to accomplish that task just 10 years ago. For example, I doubt they could have obtained the GPS receiver alone for less that $150. And it wouldn't have been feasible to track it with a cell phone. And the camera would have been either larger or produced much lower quality images. And so on... but you get the point.

This is just another small example of Moore's Law making technology ubiquitous.

The real point here is that clever or motivated people have very powerful tools at their disposal, if they just take the time and effort to use them. Which is not a comforting thought, since it means these guys do too.

But you already knew that. The real question is not what bloodthirsty regimes will do with it, but what will YOU and I do? If a balloon, hand warmers, and a Styrofoam cooler can be used to photograph the darkness of space, what can we do with everyday stuff we take for granted?

Here are some places to get started:

Cracked: 7 Items You Won't Believe Are Actually Legal

Make: Technology on your time