Neutrality Isn't

Net Neutrality is in the news again. (You can read my explanation on the issue here, along with my explanation of why I'm bitter and cynical about it.) It got a boost in publicity recently because President Obama came out in favour of it. Predictably, other politicians then quickly decided they were against it. Conservative icon Ted Cruz tweeted that it was just like Obamacare:

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

That lead to a lot of criticism from techies and/or liberals, well summarised in this comic from The Oatmeal. It ridicules Cruz's tweet, and encourages politicians to see this as a bipartisan issue that is in everyone's interest. And it notes that Cruz received a lot of campaign funds from communication companies that would benefit from the end of Net Neutrality.

Well I have a different perspective and it's something quite unexpected, so I'll put it in its own paragraph for emphasis:

Ted Cruz has a point.

To clarify, I should point out that I do fully believe the following:

• Net Neutrality is a good thing.
• Ted Cruz doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
• Cruz is saying this primarily to stay in the good graces of his donors.
• Cruz compares everything he doesn't like to Obamacare ("I asked for medium-rare! This steakhouse is just like Obamacare! ")

So this is one of those cases of a clock that doesn't work being right twice a day. And can we please come up with a more modern version of that saying? 

The fact is that Net Neutrality is a lot like Obamacare. In both cases we're talking about regulating something such that there is a minimum amount of service that everyone can depend on, with the cost being that no one can get better service even if they can pay extra. In both cases, the alternative is a less-regulated system in which your level of service depends on your ability to pay, allowing people to buy better service with more money, but allowing the possibility that some will be priced out of a reasonable level of service.

Of course, Cruz is being disingenuous when he characterises Net Neutrality as though it were the government running the Internet. But that too is a similarity to Obamacare: the proposed solution is a system of regulation rather than total government control (in contrast to say, Canada's health care system.) But, in both cases, opponents are falsely portraying it as the government running everything.

As for The Oatmeal, it's wrong: this is a partisan issue. Some people may agree with its opinion that regulating internet speeds is a good idea (I do) but many others will not, thinking it's better if people/companies can pay for better service. That's what a partisan issue is: one in which the parties disagree. Just because you're really sure that you're right doesn't make your cause bipartisan.

Things My Grandfather Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future.

I have a pair of speakers that are better than the one in your Victrola, but they're so small they fit in a person's ears.  They are still in working order, but I may have to replace them because the foam cover is ripped, and they don't sell them separately from new speakers.

All Of These Things Are Just Like The Others

You may have seen a recent article about the "Hipster Effect."  That is, a scientist has mathematically explained why hipsters look the same, even though they are trying to be individual.

The explanation is this: assume that everyone in a community wants to avoid any trend.  You also assume that, like most people, it takes a while for an individual to realize that a trend exists (that is, you don't assume there is a trend to wear red suspenders just because you saw one person wearing red suspenders; it takes a while to notice a pattern.)  When you simulate such a community, they eventually fall into a rhythm where everyone realizes there's a trend, switches to the opposite of the trend, notices that trend, switches, and so on.

It's an interesting concept: it's a lesson in how patterns can have very non-obvious causes, and a lesson in how difficult it is for an individual in a large population to avoid being part of large movements.  But I don't think it alone explains the phenomena of individualistic people looking the same.

In a world where you can easily distinguish yourself in a myriad of different ways, it's not likely you'd create a trend that way.  That is, if you're tired of everyone wearing white, wearing black isn't the only way to distinguish yourself; you could start wearing 1970's style rollerskates. Or wear an ironic neckerchief.  Or carry a clarinet around.

Okay, there is the possibility that avoiding trends itself becomes a trend. That is, you might try to avoid clothing trends by choosing your clothing based only on practicality and comfort.  If enough people do that, then comfortable, practical clothing might be seen as a trend, and adopted by people who choose their clothing based on fashion.  That's sort of what happened with Grunge era fashion.

I remember a Sociology prof observing that loners often look like other loners, though he explained it in terms of psychology: everyone has a need for both individuality and belonging, but different people have different amounts of each need.  So individualistic people don't completely reject membership in any group, they just have less of a need than most people.  So for them, the ideal solution is to join a smaller group. If you're in a subculture, you can feel individual while still maintaining a sense that you belong to something.

That seems to be a better explanation than some sort of comedy of errors in which people end up the same in an attempt to be different. That sounds like something that would be the premise of an SNL sketch or a Twilight Zone episode. 

Hall Of Name

Today was the last day of the Canadian Football League season.  People are talking about end-of-season awards, but there's one category everyone is missing: names.  This season, the CFL has had the best player names, exceeding even the NFL in that area.  So here are my nominees:

Hamilton Tiger-Cats	Bakari Grant
Montreal Alouettes	Winston Venable
Toronto Argonauts	Swayze Waters
Ottawa Redblacks	Dobson Collins
Calgary Stampeders	Bo Levi Mitchell
Edmonton Eskimos	Adarius Bowman
Saskatchewan Roughriders	Weston Dressler
B.C. Lions	Solomon Elimimian
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	Paris Cotton

Would You Buy A Used Racing Team From These People?

Two of Formula 1's eleven teams have run out of money.  Marussia appears to be finished.  And Caterham is trying to raise money through crowdfunding. 

This story has been reported in the media as a reckoning for the sport, in which they will realize that the finances are unsustainable, and it will have to be remade.  Racing suffers from the same success-begets-success problem that a lot of sports face, in which good teams have greater income, which allow them to outbid other teams for top talent.  Auto racing has it worse for a couple of big reasons: one is that money doesn't just buy talent, it buys technology.  And there's the fact that no one has any reason to love the lesser teams:  In team sports, a bad team can at least count on at least some fans from their home town to support them even when they are uncompetitive. That's why I doubt the Caterham funding plea will work; sadly, there probably aren't many people around the world that will care.

Sports is a bizarro world where Americans are socialist and Europeans are unapologetic capitalists.  So NASCAR and IndyCar have low-cost, balanced series, while Formula 1 does little to keep lesser teams alive, never mind competitive.  So not only to winning teams win the big prize money and get the biggest sponsorship dollars, they also get the bigger share of the TV money.  So it's inevitable that lesser teams will get caught in a vicious circle.  Some people have suggested that the solution is to let the unsuccessful teams go under, and just have the rich and successful teams field more cars each.  But that won't work either, since the problem will just reappear: Even if there are fewer teams with more cars, someone has to finish last, and no one will want to sponsor them.

So eventually the sport will have to completely overhaul how it works.  But that will mean a radical shift in philosophy, as they drop the pretence that the sport is some ultimate technological competition at the bleeding-edge of engineering.  Instead, they'll have to tighten the rules to make the cars virtually the same, and sell it as a competitive sport.

But they won't be doing that any time soon.  In a world with many emerging markets, there is a constant supply of rich people and corporations looking for instant credibility and status.  Essentially, that's the case with Russian-owned Marussia, (formerly) Malaysian-owned Caterham, and the next candidate for bankruptcy, Force India. So expect all these teams to be back next year, under new names and ownership.

Undecided Voters Need Their Head Examined

You may have seen a recent article about researchers predicting if a person is liberal or conservative based on their reaction to "disturbing" (i.e. gross) images.  Despite what you're likely thinking, it's not that one side was more disturbed by the images than the other; actually, people's reaction to the images (and even their description of their reaction to them) didn't predict a person's ideology.  Instead, it was a scan of brain activity while the person looked at the pictures.  The different areas of the brain that were activated could be used to predict a person's political views with 95% accuracy.

There are a lot of interesting and controversial aspects to the story, but what I find interesting is the high accuracy of the scan.  It would seem to surpass other tests to predict a person's ideology, such as: annual income or church attendance.  More interestingly, it would likely be better than the test of simply asking the person what their ideology is. 

I, like most politically aware people, are constantly amazed at how many undecided people there are.  I can understand people being torn between two similar options they've narrowed it down to.  But there are always people who go into the election seriously claiming that they have no idea which of the diverse candidates they favour.  So those people have no idea what their political ideology is, but according to this paper, a brain scan could tell them.

Like An Annoying Neighbour

Often, companies will use a common character or concept in their ads. Like Wendy's with that red-haired woman who seems to have a different circle of friends every week. I'm sure that people in the ad business have a name for it.

Anyway, usually a brand will only have one of those ad motifs at a time. Wendy's, for instance, used to have Dave Thomas, and before that they had the Where's The Beef lady. But you wouldn't try to have two ad styles going at once, unless you are trying to cover up the fact that you have an insane number of ads.

Which brings me to insurance. All the big American insurance companies run two campaigns.

• GEICO: the English gecko, "Everyone knows that."
• Progressive: Flo, that anthropomorphic box
• Allstate: the President from 24, Mayhem

So why would insurance require so many ways to advertise? I know insurance is one of those businesses that is "sold, not bought" but still, that's a suspicious amount of effort put into selling something.  Usually if people use so many cutesy gimmicks in advertising, it's either breakfast cereal, or they're trying to distract you from something.

At this point, I was going to rant about how bad the Esurance ads are.  But they are so misguided that I thought first I should google, "esurance 'half that time' 'is that a joke'".  I think the ads are serious - taking on GEICO's "15 minutes could save you 15%" ads, by promising to take half the time, but not saying how much money they save you.  But I came across another blog that has already disembowelled the ad campaign, so I won't bother.