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Edward Tufte Appointed To Help Track and Explain Stimulus Funds
President Obama recently announced several appointments to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, including data visualization expert Edward Tufte, author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The purpose of the panel is to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose aim is "To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information." Tufte said on his website, "I'm doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary."
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'" -Bill Hicks
Living With a Nerd
Just another feel good appointment of an academic to a position where they can't really do anything. Meanwhile Obama staffs his cabinet with wall street insiders. If Obama really wants transparency and accountability, he should fire Geithner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren. But no, he won't do that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
just take one of the most famous graphs from his book, and reproduce it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Napoleon's_Invasion_of_Russia
relabel the advancing french soldiers "good intentions for accountable government"
relabel the retreating french soldiers "obfuscation by entrenched special interests"
job done
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This should be - v e r y - interesting indeed.
I have enormous respect for Tufte and his integrity. I can;t wait to see what happens.
Remember, this is the guy who put Stalin on the cover of his pamphlet on "The Cognitive Style Of Powerpoint"
I'm reminded of Feynman on the Columbia commission.
-=Maggie Leber=-
It should be called the Recovery Advisory Panel Enhancement
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I own his books and recommend them but it seems Tufte is difficult to deal with in person. He charged credit cards for pre-orders before shipping his not-yet-published book and then called someone who politely objected to that a "whiny sanctimonious asshole."
See Flip Philips' blog entry about the scandal here
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
So, no Power Point presentation?
The stimulus is a dead issue. GOP won the round. Considering Bush essentially ran .5 stimuluses a year in deficits for 6 years and then capped it off with a stimuluses worth of bailouts for banks, its rather remarkable that the GOP could do so, but they did.
Trying to keep refighting the stimulus battle is just bad politics...
Obama ought to be a good enough fighter to know that and move on. His best hope for 2010 is to get the troops out of Iraq and declare an epic victory, then use the mantle of victory to take his case before the people.
This is my sig.
Shouldn't this post have been created first, *before* the gov't let loose billions of our taxpayer dollars, seems once in the wild, tracking that cash is going to be difficult.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Not surprised.
The Republican party lost it's spine a long time ago and have splintered into many factions. Effectively, the party was dead even before the 2000 elections and since then has been without leadership.
The Democratic party however, has been very unified but has been rotting from the core since the days of JFK. Now, it too is crumbling apart with rampant thuggery and corruption.
I think we all know how the November elections will turn out. However, there is no way in hell we can foresee who the next president will be. Our political system as we know it, is fucked. I reckon this is a good thing. Perhaps now we can get people more involved with how politics happen in DC and start voting based on someones voting record, and not based purely on party. At least, I hope so.
Life is not for the lazy.
Because this is really, really complicated and he'll be able to put it into pictures you will be able to understand.
I think we all know how the November elections will turn out. However, there is no way in hell we can foresee who the next president will be. Our political system as we know it, is fucked. I reckon this is a good thing. Perhaps now we can get people more involved with how politics happen in DC and start voting based on someones voting record, and not based purely on party. At least, I hope so.
This isn't an ageism thing, but I honestly feel that anyone in the house or senate over the age of 45 should not be allowed to be reelected, at least not for the next few cycles. Part of the problem is that so many people running this country are stuck in the past without an eye for the future. This worked fine in the 80's and 90's, but nowadays that just doesn't cut it.
Term limits in general would be a great thing...
Living With a Nerd
Quite simply, he will be helpful because when he puts together a report, there will be one or two incredibly informative graphs that explain where the money went and how that money changed things.
By having this information in such a concise, digestible form, it will help bring transparency and accountability to the government.
One of the major issues we're having in the U.S. is that one side is saying one thing and claiming absolutely that they are right while the other side is making contradictory claims just a vocally. Getting some real, solid, hard numbers and easily understand representations of these numbers will make these kinds of useless back and forth arguments less possible.
At least that's the theory. We'll see if he can make any difference in practice.
You have to be 35 to serve, so that leaves a rather narrow window.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's hard to be impartial with shivers running up your leg.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
No, it won't. Tufte's whole point is that the focus should be on the data, and that anything that doesn't contribute to understanding ("chart junk") should be dropped. It may well contain elegant graphs, though. The other thing you can count on is that Tufte won't let them pull dirty tricks, such as using log scales, charts with a y axis other than 0, non-propotional areas, etc.
I'd reccomend both his books and his seminar to anyone, by the way. You'll never look at another graph or powerpoint wihtout critiqeing it.
Tufte is amazing. I expect he'll be able to convey in an easy to understand display what is happening w/ our recovery effort. If your a bit skeptical of him, you've got to read his books
At least that's the theory. We'll see if he can make any difference in practice.
In practice, political operatives will maneuver behind the scenes to ensure that whatever information the commission receives is carefully selected, filtered and sanitized so that the "right" conclusions are reached. The stakes are so high in this case that it is incredibly naïve to think that there won't be skullduggery.
he has never run even so much as a convenience store
I realize this is really only intended as empty rhetoric but, come on. Here are a few things Obama has run, for everyone's information:
The Harvard law Review
Chicago's Developing Communities Project (DCP)
Illinois's Project Vote
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services
U.S. Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs
Now, I realize that it is at least arguable that none of these provide the leadership experience required to be an effective president. You probably would like to have seen a former governor/mayor/head of a large agency. I don't think that sort of experience is strictly necessary, but I see how reasonable people could disagree. (Though, if I may ask, what leadership experience does John McCain have that qualifies him in your eyes? Is it just length of service in the Senate?)
But to say that Obama has not run so much as a convenience store is just totally false and it smacks of an either mean spirited (or, at best, willfully ignorant) parroting of the popular right-wing line that Obama is somehow a lightweight.
caritj.org
Unless by "extremes of the parties" you mean the rightmost extremes of both parties, I think you've gone round the bend. If the extreme left wing of the Democrats had been in control, Dennis Kucinich would have been the nominee. That guy really is far to the left. Obama? There are few Democrats more centrist. Just a quick example: health care. The current plan in play in Congress is almost exactly the same as the one Mitt freakin' Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts. Until recently, this would have been a Republican health care plan - the mainstream opinion among Democrats is that single-payer is the way to go.
Regardless of your personal preferences on issues like health care, it's an absolute fact that the Democratic party is controlled by highly centrist types, and the Republican party is being run by, not to put too fine a point on it, whackjobs.
Not surprised.
The Republican party lost it's spine a long time ago and have splintered into many factions. Effectively, the party was dead even before the 2000 elections and since then has been without leadership.
True, it's splintered into factions (Teabaggers vs business conservatives vs religious wackos) but in the current Congress it has been remarkably unified. It says "No!" to everything. Of course, it's easy to be the minority opposition. You don't have to have any ideas on how to solve problems and move the country forward. (As an example of what happens when Republicans are fully in power, look to Arizona. Here the Republicans remain unified and committed to "No!" Our state is on beyond fucked.)
The Democratic party however, has been very unified but has been rotting from the core since the days of JFK. Now, it too is crumbling apart with rampant thuggery and corruption.
What Democratic party are you talking about? In what bizarro world is it unified? Asshats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln seem to want to be all "mavericky" like that idiot McCain and his boyfriend Joe Lieberman, so any notion of party unity is a pipe dream. As for "rotting at the core," this happens as the Blue Dogs triangulate and try to have it all ways instead of having any principles.