This morning while cleaning up breakfast dishes, I had the Sunday Morning show on in the background.  I generally enjoy the show, but I'm always disappointed—and baffled—when they cede the "opinion" section to Ben Stein.

The Sunday Morning host, Charles Osgood, is thoughtful, and (and this is key) rational.  Ben Stein is such a contrast.  To me, putting Stein on Sunday Morning is like putting Jerry Springer on Frontline, or having Ronald McDonald on The French Chef.

Today's Steinian wisdom dropping is that Obama should vow do do nothing until at least 2010.  The solution to all economic problems, according to Stein, is that we should simply "let things be" and order and prosperity will naturally evolve.  (Well, he didn't actually say "evolve", but that's what he meant.)

His rationale?  The Beatles.  Seriously, according to Stein, "If it was good enough for the Beatles, it should be good enough for all of us."

Nice cherry picking, Ben.  Somehow, I can't imagine you're willing to follow your own "logic" very far.

I was quite pleased to read this morning that Tim Minchin’s Storm (my hand’s down favorite poem of 2009), is being turned into an animated movie.  Here’s a taste of the coming storm:

Tim Minchin's Storm Movie Trailer

Storm is a 9-minute beat poem which has already attracted roughly a quarter of a million views on YouTube and has become the anthem for critical thinking worldwide. The new, animated version of Storm will be released in 2010.

For the latest project news, information about the production team, or to help support this non-profit effort, visit (or subscribe to) the Storm Production Blog.

In a recent article in The New Republic, Lawrence Lessig cautions against openness in government.  He suggests that while some good may come from transparency, the “collateral consequence of that good need not itself be good.”

While I agree with his main conclusion, that campaign finance reform is essential to squelching the cynicism inherent in our current political system, I found many of his other conclusions along the way to be far less compelling.

For example, he points to the difficulties in mapping a causal connection between a particular campaign contribution and a particular vote cast. Of course, finding such a specific connection may not be possible. But he then builds on this idea by asking, “If the data does not tell us anything, what is the harm in producing it?”

But this starts with a non sequitur. While access to data may not tell us one specific thing (e.g., the connection between a particular contribution and a particular vote), that does not mean that it does not tell us anything. The data can tell us many things. Sure, there are people that will misinterpret the data, but this is nothing new. People routinely, systematically, and sometimes, willfully, misinterpret data every minute of every day (e.g., antivaxxers, young-earth creationists, holocaust deniers, homeopaths, and on and on). Suggesting that transparency-enabling data should be suppressed because people might draw erroneous conclusions (whether due to short attention spans, lack of foundational understanding, or whatever) is like suggesting that we should not explore the human genome, the stars, or the fossil record because people might draw erroneous conclusions. (Which, of course, some people do suggest, but we mostly think of that as crank fundamentalism.)

Transparency in government is a good thing and I am encouraged by the steps being taken to provide open access to government data, even if that means we still have to figure out the best ways to use that data.