On why I hate television news, and why being ignorant about math is stoopid

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I was having a discussion with an e-buddy of mine on the great depression the other day, and I challenged him to find a measure in which the current economic climate was worst than back then. He almost immediately provided me with this link from CBS news: Chronic unemployment worst then Great Depression. There are several things in the article of note, but the key finding is right here:

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months – a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

(note: CBS has actually chaged their page. Look here to see what the older version said)

Well somewhere back in my dim past, I actually received a degree in History, and while I am no expert on the history of the Great Depression, I can do me a bit of research. So first off, lets see what the unemployment numbers are like for then and now:

Great Depression Unemployment

Today’s Unemployment

As you can see, they are not even close. Unemployment topped out at 24.75% in 1933, while it was 10.6% in January of 2010 (the actual yearly average for 2010 is lower, in the 9.5% range). But rather than going with peak unemployment numbers, lets even them out a bit. To make the argument fair for CBS I’ll use 9% as the current unemployment, while using 17.5% for the depression era unemployment (the average of all of the 1930s).

So lets see here, the current chronic unemployment rate is 45% of those unemployed. That is 45% of 9%, or 4.05% of the total population. That roughly means 4% of the Americans are chronically unemployed, and 5% or Americans are now unemployed, but will likely find work in the by next year.

Now, lets compare that to the Great Depression. The article says the chronic unemployment rate is worst now, than back then. For this to be true, the older chronic rate must be lower then 45% of those unemployed. (Note: the revised article now says the chronic rate was about 31%, so I’ll use that figure). So 31% of 17% were chronically unemployed, which works out to be 5.425% of the population were chronically unemployed. This also means a little over 12% of the population were unemployed but likely to find work in the next year.

So stacking them up we have:

The current situation:
9% unemployed, 4% chronically unemployed.

Great Depression:
17.5% unemployed, 5.4% chronically unemployed.

In what universe is 4% worse than 5.4%? In what universe is 17.5% preferable to 9%? Do you see the problem I have with this? Yes it is true that a chronic unemployment rate of 45% of those unemployed is worse then one of 31%, but as soon as those number are put in the proper context, any claim of being “worse” is flat out ludicrous.

What is “worse” than the initial report, was the fallout from it. The initial report came out on 6/6/11. The very next day websites from all over the political spectrum had linked to the CBS page, and were citing this statistic as fact. (do a google search for “unemployment worse than great depression” and see what I mean) I could find no page saying, “Hey! Wait a minute here,” even though it should be obvious at a glance.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Now there are all kinds of issues with my analysis.  Unemployment data from the 1930s is sketchy, as the government did not start keeping good records for a lot of things until the 1950s. I have no idea how CBS determined that the chronic unemployment rate was at 31% when the government did not collect such data back then. And obviously I’m greatly simplifying a complex problem just to make it easier to show. The fact that I’m even close is pretty obvious as CBS has subsequently changed their article, but there are lots of websites out there repeating the same wrong data, as if it were fact.

Shoes

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Today, a little tool that looks like this saved my life.

Well, not really my life, but it did save my shoes.

You see, I have me a bit of shoes. About 10 pair or so. The problem is they all reside in a vary narrow closet space, stored in sort of an amorphous pile. This was starting to annoy me as some of them would fall out every time I opened my closet door, so I thought I would build some shelves to corral those suckers (maybe it was from reading This Old House Magazine on my lunch break). Anyway, I went out to the garage to look though the spare lumber pile, picked a likely piece, and prepared to start cutting. Seeing this, Teri came over and casually mentioned, “what about your old shoe rack? You know, the one collecting dust in the garage?”

“Oh yea,” I said intelligently as I went to go look for it. “The shoe rack.”

Now this shoe rack was a hold-over from our old house. It was sitting in the garage because it could not fit in the narrow (23.5″ wide) closets of the new place. I intended to sell it off at the next garage sale. That was 10 years ago when we moved here. So I pulled the rack out, and looked it over. Besides it’s width, it was perfect. The problem was that the darn thing is made of metal tubes with plastic interlocking end pieces. Somehow, the metal tubes had to be cut.

I don’t know if you know anything about cutting metal tubes, but they can be a right pain in the ass. Put too much pressure on them, and they deform (meaning compress). After that, they are a ring-tailed bitch to get the ends round again. The problem is, the ends needs to be round so they can be pressure fitted (read jammed) into the plastic end pieces.

Enter the tool: The Superior Tool model # 35030 Mini Tubing Cutter. I bought my Superior Tool tubing cutter to cut the small brass tubes used for converting the motors on CD-ROM drives into model airplane motors. That was about 8 years ago, and the darn thing has been spending all its free time hanging out with the other model airplane tools. So I dusted it off, attached it to one of the metal tubes for my shoe rack, and gave it a go. Sure enough the darn thing worked flawlessly. Not only did it cut the tube without deforming it, but it also rolled the ends of the tube inwards so they would be easier to fit in the plastic end pieces.  Within an hour I had cut all 8 tubes, filed and sanded their edges, and reconfigured the new thinner shoe rack in my closet.

Boy my shoes are happy right now. And I feel like a manly man. The best part is there is one less thing in our garage I have to deal with. Until we move again, that is.

I’ve been reading David Mamet…

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…from his book, Three Uses of the Knife, and I have to say the man does have a way with words. Some memorable quotes:

The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.

Las Vegas doesn’t offer fortune (though it purports to) or thrills (unless one finds degradation thrilling). It offers the opportunity to exercise one’s compulsion.

The book is good stuff for leaning about story structure and writing drama. The quotes simply help to make it easier to grasp.

A Cool Conceit…

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…but not yet a story. The idea is that someone gets arrested for causing a power outage (an act thought to be impossible). The crime is Criminal Interruption of Internet Service, because as everyone knows, in the future it will be a crime to stop anyone from having access to the internet.

on music

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Today I listened to some music while working out in the garage. That happens to be where I keep my stereo (not enough room in the house). I recently picked up the album Crime of the Century by Supertramp. That I referred to it as an album tells you right off how old I am. I remember when that album came out on a Criterion Collection special high quality vinyl. This was back before there were CDs.

The music is deep, and highly polished. It is prog rock, meaning that it reaches back into the classic music closet for ideas as opposed to the blues, jazz, or country closets. So odd meters, odd chords, actual counter melodies in the bass line, deep meaningful lyrics, etc. But there is more to it than that. I have Rush albums from that time, and they are good, but not this lush. Yes albums from the same era are wonderfully complex, but not as commercial. Not as slick. These are albums in which a lot of time was painstakingly put into the craft of recording and producing high quality music. In today’s digital world, where recording is so much easier, I wonder if something is being lost. I can’t think of a modern CD which was written/produced like this album. I don’t think anyone builds songs like this anymore.

Listening to it today brought me back to summers in Clovis. Driving around in Carl Christenson’s car, music blaring. I discovered this album, and this type of music in high school, back when I was VERY ERNEST about the world. It was impossible for me to listen to the music and NOT talk about it. I had to point out every cool part, every interesting note. It seems very compulsive to me now, but I suppose at the time that it was just our way of working out our intellects. Finding something we could be adult about, and hammering away at it until we appeared practiced and urbane.

I’m older now, and really don’t have much time to just sit and listen to music. I tend to use music as a tool, either to set a mood for writing, or to help be focus on retouching. Rarely do I take the time to just listen, letting the lush orchestration flow over my ears. So today I cleaned out pool equipment that has been sitting on my workbench since last fall when we put away the pool, and enjoyed Supertramp, followed by Ambrosia’s self titled first album. The only one in my collection that is missing  from that time period is Dark Side of the Moon, which is sitting in my Amazon shopping cart, waiting for me to make the purchase.

Oh frabjous day!

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It’s 8:30 and already I’ve had the most wonderful morning. You see I was walking Trevor to our local public school, like I do every school day. To get there we have to cross the treacherous and swift moving Burbank Blvd. where more than once I’ve almost been hit by passing cars. So today, when we round the corner and spied the villainous street ahead, we saw there was a roving gang of jack-booted thugs on motorcycles, enforcing the local traffic standards. They even had an undercover “troll” who crossed the street – at the cross-walk, and always with the huge lights flashing – just to reel in more suckers.

Let me tell you, it was beautiful.

12 to 15 motorcycle cops were out, and they just were throwing down ticket after ticket. Half way across the street I looked west down Burbank Blvd., and off in the distance I saw three different sets of flashing lights behind pulled over cars. It was like Christmas in May. On the way home, while I was thanking the fine officers for being there, our corner crossing guard went back and forth across the street twice. Each time two or more cars would zoom past him, and each time another motorcycle cop hit the gas, and that little bit of siren song sounded.

I didn’t feel the least bit bad for the poor unsuspecting cars. That corner has been a nightmare for us for 5 years. I’ve been almost hit countless times while crossing the street with my son. You try crossing a street with a small child, and have the cars miss you only because you jump out of their way, and tell me how you feel about it. Cars will not only fail to stop, but they will zoom right pass you and flip you off.

But not today mother fuckers. Let me tell you. Not today.

So how has your morning been?

Housecleaning

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I just did some work to the site, moving Angel of Death to a different page, and updating the old AoD page to be my new Fiction page. The main reason for the change was to make room for more of my fictional work. Yea! More fiction, more fiction. I put up a page about an evil little fantasy piece called Wisdom, and plan to follow it soon with a longer pure sci-fi short called In The Root. I’ll provide links to the stories if I can sell them.

All of this mean that you, my dear reader, get cool stuff to read. And I ask you, what is wrong with that?

Interesting people

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I met a very interesting lady tonight named Judith, on the ride home. She was an excellent contrast in character. She spoke like a New Yorker (not with the accent, but with that same feverish delivery, and the tendency to use proclamations), yet she thought like an old-school liberal. She is a piano teacher, in town from Canada to see her daughter perform in a local show. I got the feeling she is also at loose ends, a creative person playing the odds to see what will fall out of their lives. As she talked, you could almost see her fierce intellect behind her eyes. She wasn’t mean, or unkind, at least at heart. Yet there was a part of her I could sense that was neither dangerous, nor scary, but powerful all the same. I think perhaps, fearless.

The Metro’s bus and rail system was definitely not suited to Judith. That girl needs a train. She also had mental illness in her family, and in her personal life; a point we both could share. A brave and faithful traveler. Perhaps we’ll meet again.

Then later, on my last bus, I met a young lady who had a large backpack on her back. She had just been to Mississippi to some meeting for those who like to ride the rails, and we’re not talking about the ticket purchasing kind of traveler either. I told her of my own grandfather’s experiences during the great depression when “hopping freight” was common. She must have been under 30, and yet had already been married three times. Her third husband died of cancer (I believe). What she didn’t say, but what was clear to me, was that she was definitely touched by mental illness. When I meet people like this, I often wonder what will happen to them. She was very smart (she mentioned she had a degree in Chemistry), but she was also very fragile, so much so that I was almost afraid to talk to her. As if my words might harm her. She was quite the opposite of Judith, who was almost painfully centered. The two, separated by a middle train run, made for a very bizarre commute.

New Brain Food

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I got a link today to a site called Coilhouse, which is an arthouse print magazine, a very nice one. I bought their first issue (they’ve only done 5) for a paltry $6. The pdf downloaded, and I made it to the spread of pages 34-35. On that page is a photo by a Spanish photographer named Eugenio Recuenco, who is just awesome. The photo in question was this, from his fairy tales collection. I got one look at this lovely lady stretched out in her room, and I knew I had a story. The story is about going on a hike with some friends, and suddenly running across this woman, exactly as in the photo.

Its not every day one gets such a bang to the creative brain from a new source. Looks like I’ll be buying more of Coilhouse’s work. After I get through their first issue.

AoD almost ready for show

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I’ve been working on a round of edits for Angel of Death. I say “I”, but the lion’s share of the work was done by my mother-in-law, Sharon Davis. As if I wasn’t indebted to her enough. Anyway, I intend to have the novel up shortly as a full file.

Since I was under the hood anyway, I’ve gone through and switched it from 21 chapters to 70. These chapters breaks were mostly obvious. I noticed their need when I went back and read the whole novel as I would any other book. When I wrote AoD, I structured the novel around 20 different chunks of text, each about 5k words long. But when I went back and read the book, these divisions were neither clear, nor necessary. Now the chapters are much shorter, and cleaner; most are under 2k words, with two just a few paragraphs long. All the breaks, save two, come at natural points in the story. The two additional chapters break up some fairly long scenes (3500 words of more), and happen at points where some sort of a gap should work. Mind you, I’m guessing here; I have a strong sense of what works as a voracious reader, but I’m not anything like a professional editor, and will not take on that mantel to suit my own selfish needs.

The best part of working with Sharon was sitting down with her, and trying to figure out the proper spelling for “pinche pendejo”, and “culo”. Its not every day one gets to use such words around their mother-in-law, and get away with it.