Majorities and minorities

Ice cream by eye color	Yes	No
Blue	16	43
Brown	224	151

Suppose we asked a few more than 400 people whether they preferred strawberry ice cream over chocolate and, as they answered we also noted their eye color. If eye color was related to their preference, we’d see disproportionally more folks with one eye color saying “Yes.” In fact, the data might look something like those in the yellow table. Following the majority-rule concept, we’d conclude that people prefer strawberry to chocolate.

Of course, such a conclusion hides something pretty intriguing. The preference differs depending on the color of the respondents’ eyes. We might still agree that the majority prefers strawberry, but following the majority runs quite clearly counter to the interests of the minority, no? Why, we might wonder, is there this difference? Is there something to be learned from the minority?

Stupak-Pitts by gender	Yes	No
Female	16	43
Male	224	151

As far as tastes in ice cream, there’s probably not much of importance. However, the data in the table are not actually about ice cream preferences. I took those numbers from the vote by members of the US House of Representatives on the Stupak Amendment to HR 3962, the “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” Representative Bart Stupak (with Representative Joe Pitts) proposed an amendment that restricted coverage of abortions under the health care plan; insurance plans that are purchased with government subsidies may not cover abortions. That includes privately purchased health care insurance. The amendment passed with strong support from men, but not from women.

Over 70% of female representives, who may not be the minority in the population but are in the House of Representatives, voted against the Stupak-Pitts amendment (see blue table). Nearly 60% of male representatives voted in favor of it. It appears to me that those women must know something those men don’t know. More importantly, it appears to me that the majority’s decision has run counter to the expressed concern of the minority. ‘Majority rule’ is a good thing, but in our system it has to be accompanied by protection of the minority’s rights.

Now, the analogy to eye color doesn’t really fit well. One chooses neither her eye color nor gender, to be sure. However, requiring blue-eyed people to eat strawberry ice cream isn’t as much of a big deal as requiring women to live with laws restricting their access to health-care procedures.

I am sorry to report that our representative, Tom Perriello, was among the 224 men who voted to restrict insurance coverage for abortions.

Although one can find these data in a lot of places here is a source for them. In case there’s a statistically intrigued reader, the chi square of 21.94 with 1 degree of freedom is significant with a probability of 0.00000282. (I understand that the p value is not an index of the strength of the relationship.)

While I’m at it, here, please take a few minutes to see how some of the erstwhile debate about the health care legislation went.

Rafman’s reflections on Google street view

Thanks to my brother Frank, I got a chance to read “IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View” by Jon Rafman over on Art Fag City. Mr. Rafman, whose new book entitled Sixteen Google Street Views probably contains images similar to those in this essay, has a marvelous essay discussing the images he’s found among the Google images from street view. Highly recommended.

Voting ends soon

Voting in Project 10¹⁰⁰ (i.e., “Project 10 to the 100th”), Google’s effort to promote good-doing works, ends tomorrow. Time to get over there and do the duty.

Lucinda Williams was here

Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams played the C’ville Pavillion 26 September, rocking the appreciative crowd and the rain. It was the third in Pat’s summer concert series, though summer’s officially ended now, and definitely worth the price of admission.

Ms. Williams ordered the set of songs chronologically by album, starting with Rambling and progressing to Little Honey, announcing each before performing it. It included “I Lost It,” “Something About What Happens When we Talk,” “Drunken Angel,” “Tears of Joy,” and “It’s a Long Way to the Top” as well as many more songs than I can remember.

She wore a multi-fabric ballcap with a bill that hid her eyes. She announced her marriage one week earlier, and she brought a couple onto the stage, where the man asked the woman to marry him.

Ms. Williams’ band, Buick 6, performed a brief set of its own before backing her. Initially I thought we were going to get an arty, indulgent rock sound, but after a couple of songs I began to enjoy their work. They were very tight and strong.

Rain fell throughout the performance. It ran off the Pavillion’s fabric roof on both sides and soaked the seating in the grassy area at the back. Probably the weather reduced the size of the crowd. Fortunately, Pat had secured row-2 seats for us.

10^100th Voting

Project 10¹⁰⁰ (i.e., “Project 10 to the 100th”) is an effort by Google to promote good-doing works. I mentioned it in Dec ‘08 when I commented on a a story by Meagan Ellis of Materials World Magazine about a project by Edward Sazonov demonstrating the use of vibrations generated by passing traffic to charge a battery that would power a sensor and wireless transmitter. Project 10¹⁰⁰ received > 150,000 proposals for good-doing works, narrowed the proposals to nn, and is now soliciting public input about which ones to fund.

Last fall we launched Project 10^100, a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Your response was overwhelming. Thousands of people from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 (or around 10^5.2) ideas, from general investment suggestions to specific implementation proposals. As we reviewed these submissions, we started noticing lots of similar ideas related to certain broad topics, and decided that combining the best aspects of these individual proposals would produce the most innovative approaches to solving some very pressing problems.

The finalists are not as specific as I thought they would be, but they are interesting. Go to Project 10 to the 100th to learn about the projects and vote. Here’s a link for my earlier post.

Mr Deity returns

As one or two of the two or three regular readers know, I’m impressed by the Mr. Deity shorts. Well, after a delay following the second season, the third season is available. I recommend it.

Books Behind Bars comes back

Last month after officials with the Virginia corrections department blocked Books Behind Bars, the Charlottesville non-profit organization that sends books to inmates, from conducting its activities in Virginia prisons, things looked pretty grim for the venerable program supported by local bookstore owner Kay Allison. Citing concerns about contraband (a CD and paperclips) slipping into prisons with the books sent to prisoners by Books Behind Bars and demands on corrections staff to manage the prison end of the program, corrections officials refused to permit the organization to accept any more books that BBB sent in response to requests for them by prisoners.

2009 4-Miler

I worked the Charlottesville Women’s 4-Miler yesterday, as I have pretty much every year for a long time. The setting at Foxfield is beautiful and the weather was very nice this year. The crowd was very large (I’d like to obtain a well-documented estimate of the number of spectators) and wonderfully enthusiastic. The decorations, including the banners with the names of loved ones lost to cancer, attached to the fences along the last mile or so of the course, were familiar, but they still get to me.