The case for hate speech

Jonathan Rauch, a prominent gay rights advocate, on why he hopes the boycott of Ender's Card fails: 

Fortunately, Card’s claim is false. Better still, it is preposterous. Most fair-minded people who read his screeds will see that they are not proper arguments at all, but merely ill-tempered reflexes. When Card puts his stuff out there, he makes us look good by comparison. The more he talks, and the more we talk, the better we sound.

I can think of quite a few reasons why boycotting Ender’s Game is a bad idea. It looks like intimidation, which plays into the right’s “gay bullies” narrative, in which intolerant homosexuals are purportedly driving conservatives from the public square. It would have little or no effect on Card while punishing the many other people who worked on the movie, most of whom, Hollywood being Hollywood, probably are not anti-gay (and many of whom almost certainly are gay). It would undercut the real raison d’être of the gay-rights movement: not to win equality just for gay Americans but to advance the freedom of all Americans to live as who they really are and say what they really think. Even if they are Orson Scott Card.

Above all, the boycott should fizzle, and I expect it will fizzle, because gay people know we owe our progress to freedom of speech and freedom of thought. The best society for minorities is not the society that protects minorities from speech but the one that protects speech from minorities (and from majorities, too). Gay Americans can do the cause of equality more good by rejecting this boycott than by supporting it. I’ll see the movie—if the reviews are good.

I loved the book Ender's Game . It's a sci-fi classic. Orson Scott Card's comments about gay marriage are ignorant and hateful. All of the above?

Who do you want taking the last shot?

TrueHoop looked at the last 5 minutes of 2012 NBA playoff games to try to answer the question: who should take the last shot, your superstar or a random wide open teammate?

And you know what we found? The Archangel, Hero Ball offense isn't the best. Though it may not be as fun, if your star has a passing lane to a wide open shooter, that's almost certainly better.

Through last night's play, “go-to players” are shooting 41.8 percent (71-170), including 25.6 percent (11-43) from 3.

Other players who happen to be open are shooting 54.2 percent (58-107) on field goal attempts, including 36 percent (18-50) from 3.

That is a massive difference. Teams shooting 41.8 percent from the floor almost never beat teams shooting 54.2 percent. It is a strong reflection on the power of competing against no defense. 

You get a sense for why this might be watching NBA players warm up for a game. When they're shooting without anyone on them, NBA players make a shockingly high percentage of their shots.

Another entertaining data point to support this case: this video of Gilbert Arenas's 3-point shooting contest with teammate DeShawn Stevenson in practice in 2007. Both shot 100 3-pointers, Arenas using one hand from college 3-point range, DeShawn using two hands from NBA range. The outcome is entertaining, but just as impressive is the sheer number they make.

Make-up secrets of Marilyn Monroe

I never would have thought I'd watch a nearly 12 minute video on a woman's make-up techniques, but this video of Marilyn Monroe's unbelievably involved regimen was hypnotic.

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The statistical curve of nostalgia

Vinyl sales are on an upward swing! 

A remarkable 2.9 million vinyl LPs have been sold in the U.S. so far this year, up 33.5 percent from 2012, according to Nielsen SoundScan (NLSN). In fact, vinyl has been steadily on the rise since bottoming out in 2006, when only 858,000 records were sold. In just seven years, the 65-year-old format has bounced back 338 percent.

But in the scheme of things, it's not really that popular. 

But here’s the thing: Even in today’s diminished music business, 2.9 million albums isn’t very much. Vinyl sales make up only 1.4 percent of all albums sold so far this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which makes touting the “comeback” of vinyl a little bit like telling a double amputee that at least he won’t have to spend money on winter gloves.

It strikes me that this type of sales curve, a long period of decline followed by a slight upward rebound that doesn't get you anywhere close to the earlier peaks, is the shape of many things that go out of style before making a minor comeback as a novelty, a nostalgic fashion statement.

Nate Silver and Sam Wang on impact of shutdown

Sam Wang penned an article on the impact of the government shutdown on Republicans and their House seats. It's titled "Republicans could lose their House majority because of the shutdown":

Since the election is over a year away, it is hard to predict how this will translate to future seat gain/loss. If the election were held today, Democrats would pick up around 30 seats, giving them control of the chamber. I do not expect this to happen. Many things will happen in the coming 12 months, and the current crisis might be a distant memory. But at this point I do expect Democrats to pick up seats next year, an exception to the midterm rule.

Nate Silver was the more famous of the election prediction pundits from the last Presidential election, but among people who followed that space closely Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium was just as much a must-follow. Silver's relaunch of FiveThirtyEight.com hasn't arrived yet, but in the meantime he penned a quick piece over at Grantland, his temporary home.

1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown's political impact.

Remember Syria? The fiscal cliff? Benghazi? The IRS scandal? The collapse of immigration reform? All of these were hyped as game-changing political moments by the news media, just as so many stories were during the election last year. In each case, the public's interest quickly waned once the news cycle turned over to another story. Most political stories have a fairly short half-life and won't turn out to be as consequential as they seem at the time.

Some took these two pieces as an opportunity to pit the two pundits against each other, but as Wang notes, the two are not as far apart as provocative headlines might make it seem. Wang does think this time could be different, though.

Multiple polls, including detailed onerom NBC/WSJ, show that public sentiment has turned against the GOP. Under the radar, gerrymandered districts are swinging much harder than I was expecting. If the election were today, Democrats would control the House by about 50 seats. That will fade, but by how much?

Silver lists other events that didn’t move opinion: Benghazi, and the IRS business, and Syria. But the shutdown has, bigtime. I agree with him that most pundits emit bulls**t, which is why I am working on a prediction model. Right now, the model is saying: as long as the GOP stays on its current path, where the House goes next fall is an even-money bet.

How this impacts the next election will be a fascinating test of whether this gambit by the extremists in the Republican Party really boomerangs on them. Any system that divorces costs from actions really kills the feedback loop that's needed for continuous improvement.