More on multitasking

David Glenn of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the state of multitasking research:

"One of the deepest questions in this field," [Stanford professor Clifford I.] Nass says, "is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring—that is, they're really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay—or is it just an aversion to the task at hand?"

When Nass was a high-school student, decades ago, his parents were fond of an old quotation from Sir Joshua Reynolds: "There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." That is the conundrum that has animated much of his career.

"I don't think that law students in classrooms are sitting there thinking, Boy, I'd rather play Freecell than learn the law," Nass says. "I don't think that's the case. What happens is that there's a moment that comes when you say, Boy, I can do something really easy, or I can do something really hard."

I need to get started on a collection of didactic quotations for my children. And I need to do more hard things.

Eggs in booze

I crack a raw egg into a dark beer now and then. This makes me want to branch out into frothy-meringuey cocktails. And the salmonella risk is nil since our eggs are homegrown!

Quick thoughts on cars

Imagine that tomorrow a clean and cheap automobile fuel is discovered. Any car can be inexpensively modified to burn this new fuel. It has no emissions save water vapor. Perhaps also a mild lavender scent. It is a dream fuel and it will probably never exist, but this is a hypothetical scenario so that's okay. Imagine how liberated a ecologically conscientous car user would feel as their anxiety over global warming and oil wars vanish. The locus of so much angst would return to its pre-Fall (circa Carter administration) state of blissful freedom. We could all finally drive as much as we damn well pleased and not have to give a damn (god damnit!).

I admit it sounds pretty nice. But even with a miracle fuel under the hood, it's still the case that the car must go. The personal automobile is about much more than emissions; it is not even primarily about emissions. It is primarily about space. Nothing can change the fact that the personal automobile is a terrible use of space, and space is the scarcest urban resource.

Problem the first: traffic. André Gorz writes that the automobile is essentially a luxury good, "like a villa by the sea, it is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one." This is abundantly clear to anyone who has experienced the agony of a daily commute through gridlock traffic. The inescapable fact is that, per passenger mile, cars take up vastly too much space for everyone to have one.

Problem the second: parking. Any place worth going to is going to attract lots of folks. If they all bring their cars, they have to park them somewhere. But building giant parking lots detracts from the pleasure of the place. So we kill it to make it "accessible."

Furthermore, the space taken up by cars (driving and parked) necessarily eats into the opportunities for pedestrians and bicycles. Traffic increases, streets are widened, soon neighborhood are traversed by freeway-sized thoroughfares that no one in their right mind would let a child cross on their way to school. Super-sized parking lots separate storefronts from the street, discouraging pedestrians from approaching on foot. Etc.

I think we want to believe the miracle fuel story because the (extremely real) threat of global warming has put attention on emissions. As it should. However, we can't lose sight of the fact that even the cleanest car is incompatible with a city friendly to pedestrians and cyclists. And the benefits to be reaped from encouraging walking and cycling are more* than just clean air.

* In fact, here's a study.

UC cuts; New Almodóvar movie

My alma mater (go Aggies) is being bled to death. The Texans smell the blood.

Almodóvar has a new movie! Does anyone know when it will get to us here in the hinterlands?

Bicycling, when it's not a subculture

From a New York Times piece on bikes at Stanford:

[F]ew people wear helmets, and everyone is wearing ordinary clothes — none of the sleek and gaudy costumes you see on cyclists pumping through the peninsular hills and whistling down Sand Hill Road to the Caltrain station. They are themselves on wheels.

Exactly. When riding a bicycle stops being countercultural and gains broad appeal (though: which causes which?), people ride as they are. We have to give up the exclusivity and the uniform to get there.

Also, it's funny how entrenched the Lyrca-warrior image of cyclists is in the Bay Area. Hence the almost surprised tone of the article.

Morning findings

The Senate has released their health care bill. Part of how it pays for itself is by taxing insurance policies that cost more than $8,500/yr per person. The AFL-CIO thinks this qualifies as "middle-class." Ezra Klein makes a two-birds-one-stone-argument that the tax not only funds health care, but puts pressure on costs.

It was partly the Army's fault that Katrina was so devastating. I did not know what the MRGO was before hearing this story.

I really want to go here, here, and here.

I can't get this stupid shit out of my head.

Term-limited legislators vs. interest groups in CA: a fair fight?

Michael B. Farrell of the Christian Science Monitor on the weakening effect of term limits in CA. Interesting take on a little-explored aspect of the budget crisis.

While lobbyists play a significant role in any state’s budget process, experts say California lawmakers have become uniquely prone to outside influence because of strict term limits approved by voters in 1990. Assembly members are limited to six years in office and senators are limited to eight years.

“Interest groups, which of course have no term limits, can wield influence disproportionately in this kind of environment,” says Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San José State University.

Limited terms mean that lawmakers don’t have time to build up the political clout needed to take on powerful lobbyists, experts say. The state’s budget crises have been brokered in the past by longer-serving legislators, but few of today’s politicians wield that sort of power.

“In a term-limited environment, with a lot of politicians who tend to operate out of fear more than foresight,” says Consumer Watchdog’s Mr. Heller, “the institutional memory resides in the lobbyist community.”

Source article.