This Monday I turn thirty. I'm not completely sure how that happened. Somehow, the last five years just blurred by. It was not that long ago that I looked forward to turning a year older, but I am starting to hit the age where I want to put on the breaks a bit. Not too much, but a bit.
When people are in their twenties, even in their late twenties, there is not really much expectation for maturity. I am very comfortable with that low bar. While this birthday is not that huge of a deal for me it does mean that I feel I will be held to a higher standard than I have been.
In looking back over the last ten years I do see how I have significantly changed in that time, but it does not feel like I have ten years of experiences to account for that ten years. I think I viewed the decade as a catch up decade to address the challenges I faced at the beginning of it. Different people take different approaches to what they will do in early adulthood and mine was probably a bit less exciting than most. As long as the economy doesn't destroy my plans, I actually want to find a way to make the next decade more of a fun decade than I planned for the last decade. I apparently reversed the order on how that is supposed to work, but that is just the way situations dictated that it had to go.
For someone who plans a lot, I really do not have a clue what direction life will take in the next decade. Given that, I think it is appropriate to end this post without a real conclusion.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
a silent living room
I am currently typing this on my laptop from a silent and dark living room. This is because a few months ago NJ decided that he wanted to sleep in the living room. At first we resisted this, but we decided that it was better to let him sleep on the couch than have him wake up crying in the middle of the night and waking up CD. It was a question of picking our battles.
As a consequence of NJ being on the couch throughout the evening, this is the first time in my life that I have watched more television on my a computer than on the TV. Golden and I had one guilty pleasure show for the summer, Here Come the Newlyweds, which just so happened to be posted online on a weekly basis. Golden has one or two other shows she catches online, and I have been watching episodes of the old series Sliders online since I didn't catch it when it was actually broadcast.
Since television has always had a significant role in my routine, it is a little odd for the TV to be off so much. It doesn't feel instinctive to turn on the television any more. It even feels a bit like a special occasion as of late to turn on the TV and flip the channel to something that is not produced for preschoolers.
Like everything, this is just a phase and before long I expect to be back to watching the television regularly again. I expect that the meantime will continue to feel surreal as I sit in the dark, however.
As a consequence of NJ being on the couch throughout the evening, this is the first time in my life that I have watched more television on my a computer than on the TV. Golden and I had one guilty pleasure show for the summer, Here Come the Newlyweds, which just so happened to be posted online on a weekly basis. Golden has one or two other shows she catches online, and I have been watching episodes of the old series Sliders online since I didn't catch it when it was actually broadcast.
Since television has always had a significant role in my routine, it is a little odd for the TV to be off so much. It doesn't feel instinctive to turn on the television any more. It even feels a bit like a special occasion as of late to turn on the TV and flip the channel to something that is not produced for preschoolers.
Like everything, this is just a phase and before long I expect to be back to watching the television regularly again. I expect that the meantime will continue to feel surreal as I sit in the dark, however.
Friday, July 10, 2009
the pendulum
I keep up with politics, but I honestly do try not to get bogged down in it. For anyone who has an interest in the ebbs and flows throughout society, even for the completely apolitical, observing trends in politics can be incredibly instructive as to how society works. It actually probably helps if a person is apolitical because learning about the mechanics of politics is probably more difficult for a partisan for a variety of reasons which I will not address here.
Many years back I determined that politics at the national level essentially operates like a pendulum whose inevitable swings will make it appear that society moves to the right and to the left at irrational speeds. No one can really change the political swings within a truly representative government because the things that most effectively hinder political change are the things that dilute representation such as gerrymandering. People and political parties can influence the rate of the swing, but most of the major political parties' natural tendencies to try to make things more liberal or more conservative only strengthen the pendulum's swing to the other side of the political spectrum.
The two strongest and most obvious examples of this tendency were the 1994 and the 2008 elections. In both situations I heard pundits talk as if there was a fundamental shift in how people believed. While there are certainly constant shifts in societal positions for every issue, I do not believe that vast philosophical shifts are responsible for most swings in power, and my impression is that they are much rarer and typically much slower than is purported.
The biggest reason for such dramatic political shifts, I believe, is that voters exist at all points along a continuum rather than concentrated on one side or the other. In fact, it is more complicated than even that because a continuum is two-dimensional and varying political positions are not two-dimensional, but I'll stick with describing it as a continuum for now. When a political party comes into power it finds that it is next to impossible to pacify a majority of people because most issues have vast intricacies that guarantee disappointing large numbers of people along the continuum who voted for the people in power.
As a simple example of the problems the party in power faces, if you are a conservative how do you balance the desire for a small government with the desire for a strong military? This is at the root of a lot of conservative's distaste for Bush policies. If you are a liberal how do you balance support for green initiatives with support for union jobs (a very large percentage of which are in carbon-emitting or polluting industries)? This will be a very relevant issue in the next election, and moreso than most people realize. One issue may not cause a huge loss of voters, but at some point a critical mass of voters will become disillusioned and the pendulum will swing the other way. Neither remaining moderate nor trending toward the extremes is safe because voters can be lost from all points in the continuum.
Really, the only thing that I can think of that can slow the pendulum is the ability to blame the other side for the way things are, but to also maintain enough power to take credit for whatever goes well. Reagan was fortunate to come into power immediately after an unpopular president in the middle of an economic morass (he was in a very similar situation to Obama, really), but I think the biggest key to his enduring popularity among those trending to the right and his ability to get overwhelmingly reelected in 1984 was that Congress was dominated by the Democrats while he was in the White House. The same can be said of Clinton. Few would count his years with a Democratic Congress between 1992 and 1994 as his best in the White House, but he maintained popularity after 1994 in spite of some of the other things that happened in his administration, I believe largely because he had a Republican Congress.
Now that the Democrats have a supermajority in the U.S. Senate I know that some version of this pendulum effect is in the minds of strategists in both parties already. It is not a mistake that Democrats more than Republicans have talked up the fact that the supermajority is more symbolic than practical, because it makes them more easy to blame for anything that people do not like coming out of Washington. The paradox is that, like with Clinton, the thing that would most add to Obama's longevity in office and benefit his legacy would be for Republicans to win big in the 2010 elections. The complexity of working around these sorts of conundrums is why good political strategists make the big bucks.
Many years back I determined that politics at the national level essentially operates like a pendulum whose inevitable swings will make it appear that society moves to the right and to the left at irrational speeds. No one can really change the political swings within a truly representative government because the things that most effectively hinder political change are the things that dilute representation such as gerrymandering. People and political parties can influence the rate of the swing, but most of the major political parties' natural tendencies to try to make things more liberal or more conservative only strengthen the pendulum's swing to the other side of the political spectrum.
The two strongest and most obvious examples of this tendency were the 1994 and the 2008 elections. In both situations I heard pundits talk as if there was a fundamental shift in how people believed. While there are certainly constant shifts in societal positions for every issue, I do not believe that vast philosophical shifts are responsible for most swings in power, and my impression is that they are much rarer and typically much slower than is purported.
The biggest reason for such dramatic political shifts, I believe, is that voters exist at all points along a continuum rather than concentrated on one side or the other. In fact, it is more complicated than even that because a continuum is two-dimensional and varying political positions are not two-dimensional, but I'll stick with describing it as a continuum for now. When a political party comes into power it finds that it is next to impossible to pacify a majority of people because most issues have vast intricacies that guarantee disappointing large numbers of people along the continuum who voted for the people in power.
As a simple example of the problems the party in power faces, if you are a conservative how do you balance the desire for a small government with the desire for a strong military? This is at the root of a lot of conservative's distaste for Bush policies. If you are a liberal how do you balance support for green initiatives with support for union jobs (a very large percentage of which are in carbon-emitting or polluting industries)? This will be a very relevant issue in the next election, and moreso than most people realize. One issue may not cause a huge loss of voters, but at some point a critical mass of voters will become disillusioned and the pendulum will swing the other way. Neither remaining moderate nor trending toward the extremes is safe because voters can be lost from all points in the continuum.
Really, the only thing that I can think of that can slow the pendulum is the ability to blame the other side for the way things are, but to also maintain enough power to take credit for whatever goes well. Reagan was fortunate to come into power immediately after an unpopular president in the middle of an economic morass (he was in a very similar situation to Obama, really), but I think the biggest key to his enduring popularity among those trending to the right and his ability to get overwhelmingly reelected in 1984 was that Congress was dominated by the Democrats while he was in the White House. The same can be said of Clinton. Few would count his years with a Democratic Congress between 1992 and 1994 as his best in the White House, but he maintained popularity after 1994 in spite of some of the other things that happened in his administration, I believe largely because he had a Republican Congress.
Now that the Democrats have a supermajority in the U.S. Senate I know that some version of this pendulum effect is in the minds of strategists in both parties already. It is not a mistake that Democrats more than Republicans have talked up the fact that the supermajority is more symbolic than practical, because it makes them more easy to blame for anything that people do not like coming out of Washington. The paradox is that, like with Clinton, the thing that would most add to Obama's longevity in office and benefit his legacy would be for Republicans to win big in the 2010 elections. The complexity of working around these sorts of conundrums is why good political strategists make the big bucks.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
pop-ups
Something that has perplexed me is what the point of pop-up advertisements are. I know that I am at least more put off by them than anything else, so I cannot imagine that many legitimate companies would be successful in using pop-ups. Also, most browsers block a large percentage of pop-ups, so even if they would have been successful many of those advertisements are not seen by most users. My assessments about this must somehow be wrong because pop-ups still exist in large quantities.
I can understand that some websites that do not have to maintain a highly professional reputation might be able to use pop-ups because they do not have an image to tarnish with the type of advertising that they accept. Websites that bank on professionalism of some sort or on reputation have too much to lose, in my opinion, to play that game.
One website that confounds me in its use of pop-up advertising is Snopes. Psychologically, if I get a pop-up when I go to a website, my trust of what I find on that website takes a hit. Since Snopes is founded on its audience's trust and since it probably has a more technically experienced audience that is less likely to click on a pop-up, I don't know for the life of me why the website has so many pop-ups. Do they really get more advertising dollars by popping up a couple of windows every time someone visits the site than they would by avoiding the practice? If it were not for the fact that the website has very compelling content that I cannot reliably get elsewhere I probably would have decided to stop going to the site long ago. I know at least one person who has sworn off the site for the same reason.
So, if you happen to be reading this and you are considering building a website and making money on advertising, please consider forgoing the pop-ups and pop-under ads.
I can understand that some websites that do not have to maintain a highly professional reputation might be able to use pop-ups because they do not have an image to tarnish with the type of advertising that they accept. Websites that bank on professionalism of some sort or on reputation have too much to lose, in my opinion, to play that game.
One website that confounds me in its use of pop-up advertising is Snopes. Psychologically, if I get a pop-up when I go to a website, my trust of what I find on that website takes a hit. Since Snopes is founded on its audience's trust and since it probably has a more technically experienced audience that is less likely to click on a pop-up, I don't know for the life of me why the website has so many pop-ups. Do they really get more advertising dollars by popping up a couple of windows every time someone visits the site than they would by avoiding the practice? If it were not for the fact that the website has very compelling content that I cannot reliably get elsewhere I probably would have decided to stop going to the site long ago. I know at least one person who has sworn off the site for the same reason.
So, if you happen to be reading this and you are considering building a website and making money on advertising, please consider forgoing the pop-ups and pop-under ads.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
