I always wondered if there were a poll of Americans that asks what their favorite movie is, like this one for England. It turns out there is one, from 2008, and contrary to my claim in an an earlier post, Gone with the Wind was #1.
Star Wars, the favorite in England, is #2. I think a response of any of the Star Wars movies counted for Star Wars, or many people who consider the trilogy their favorite and just said "Star Wars" because it seems odd that Star Wars was #2 and Empire didn't make the cut.
What is very surprising is that The Godfather comes it at #9. That may be a product of The Godfather - Part 2 siphoning off votes. Many people consider these two movies their favorites, but they are strongly divided about which is better (The Godfather is il migliore.)
Also revealing is that The Shawshank Redemption didn't make the list, but Forrest Gump did. I've long thought that IMDb and other sources were biased in favor of Shawshank because young people like it but old people don't. Given that Shawshank is #3 in the English poll, I suspect that there is a big divide between Americans and foreigners too. It's probably not that shocking, though, that Gump, which crushed Shawshank at the box office, is more popular. (I think it Gump is a vastly superior feel-good story.)
The box office, which I've long championed as an underrated measure of people's tastes, is also a good predictor for other films such as The Sound of Music. Gender, touch on in another post, biases most polls--with that bias removed The Notebook leaps into the top 10.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is another notable absence. My guess is that is because while everyone (all age groups, both genders) like Raiders, I don't know many people who consider it their favorite.
Would The Dark Knight make the list if another poll was done today? If it did which movie would lose the most ground? My guess is The Lord of the Rings, which was #4, might drop a few spots but would stay on the list.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Quote of the Day: Hair Edition
Blondes have around 140,000 hairs, brunettes 110,000, and redheads only 90,000I don't know if that's true. I also don't know why black hair is ignored.
Update: I think this is the 200th (undeleted) post on this blog.
More on why journalists need to study math
Usually when I write about why journalists need to make more math it's to correct a misleading statement about a statistic. This time, in a new twist, it's to correct Jeff Jacoby's subtle error in reasoning.
If you didn't read the Op-Ed, he's criticizing the National Popular Vote Compact, which will ensure the winner of the popular vote wins the presidential election when enough states ratify it. It's hard to understand Jacoby's argument because his point is (to translate) "you Democrats are so dumb, like I once was, then I became a conservative" with an imitation of Buckly-Hitchens flair.
But what I think he's saying is this: "Suppose the Democrat wins the popular vote, then MA will give it's electoral votes to them. But they almost certainly would have won the state. Now suppose the Republican wins the popular vote. There's a good chance that the Democrat won MA, so the outcome is to flip MA's 12 electoral votes in the Republican column." This is how the compact "nullifi[es] of [voter's] vote[s]."
That almost sounds like it makes sense. The compact, most likely, will make MA voters have less say in the election because it increases the chances that Republicans will win. Except that it doesn't.
What Jacoby forgot is that, while it's true that under the compact MA's electoral votes will never swing to a Democrat, it's possible votes in MA could swing Texas into the "D" column. In 2000, for instance, Gore's 787k margin of victory in MA also gave him a 545k margin of victory in the popular vote. If the compact were operative in Texas that would have flipped Texas' 34 electoral votes from Bush to Gore and Gore would have been president--thanks, of course, to MA Democrats. But under the compact, Jacoby assures us, MA Democrats would have nothing to gain.
(That only applies to a state's vote as a whole. The issue for a single voter is the probability that without their vote, under the compact, the popular vote is a tie or, under current law, neither candidate has 270 electoral votes without their state and the election in their state is a tie. For MA it's obvious the tiny, tiny probability of the former is many, many orders of magnitude larger.)
James Franco
If I have a guilty pleasure it's reading human interest pieces. I stumbled on this one about James Franco, who is a surprisingly interesting character.
A comment on the writing: I like the style of most magazine writers, but they always throw in a few howlers that irk me. Take, for instance:
. . .like [his life is] some kind of gonzo performance piece: a high-concept parody of cultural ambition.
That's only about a third of the sentence, but the use of "high-concept" makes it mush. I also think the article could be improved by cutting out some of the more bizarre claims (see quote above). They aren't very interesting, a cardinal sin in a human interest piece.
About Franco: I've been saying the past few weeks that one of the two things that could have improved Inception is if Franco played Arthur. (He was Nolan's first choice.) Franco has an aura that could have helped reconcile the fact that Inception is dominated by DiCaprio but built on an ensemble cast. Franco's Arthur could have been Cobb-lite; Gordon-Levitt's Arthur is just part of the team. That said, Gordon-Levitt delivers some of the lines a lot better than Franco could have managed.
To find out that he's been wasting he life writing about dumb shit instead of immortalizing his career with Inception, it's a pity. But an interesting one.
Picture of the Day
"Would you consider role-playing a rape fantasy with a partner who asked you too?"
(Green = yes, Red = No)
More here.
Wyoming might be driven by a small-sample size effect. Nevada makes a lot of sense. Florida, though, is far and away the big state most interested in rape fantasies. I wasn't that surprised. Also note the legacy of puritanism is alive and well in New England.
Authentic
I wonder why people care if something is an original, or "authentic."
Someone says "this is authentic Sicilian music" and people are primed to think it's better. But if you wouldn't know the difference between--someone had to tell you, after all--an old Sicilian song and one written by an American last year, why would you care?
In some cases, it makes sense to say "authentic" as a signal. A pizza palor in Boston is called "New York Pizza" and I think they advertise as "authentic New York style." Why? New York Pizza is the best kind of pizza, so it's a signal the product is good. It's also a costlessly cheap signal to send, so you shouldn't trust it. But a lot of people, who wouldn't know the difference between some shit baked in New Haven and a real New York slice, would care if it was "real" New York pizza. Why?
Authenticity makes people particualrly irrational in the art world. Few people can tell the difference between an authentic Picasso and a good replica by looking at the paintings. Maybe no one can. So why doesn't any care if they're buying a forgery? If you're an investor you should. If someone finds out, that investment is going to plummet in value. But suppose you're just a collector. All you can do with a painting is look at it.
You find the same kind of irrationality with new paintings. Someone says they discovered a lost Monet. Everyone looks at it and they form their opinions about how it looks and whether it's "real." Shouldn't the painting be valued based on how it looks? What kind of nut case cares who painted it? (If you get the utility from your paintings by using them as a signal that you're rich, as a way of saying, without saying it, that "look, I'm better than you because I can buy this expensive paintings" then I understand why you care. But you've got a lot of more serious problems. And why can't you just tape diamonds on the wall next to a replica?)
Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for just enjoying food, songs, and paintings I like instead of using (and changing) my tastes to project an image of who I want people to think I am. It's most people's revealed preference (at least among the rich) to do the later, so there's got to be something good about it? Then again, when you mention it this behavior to people, they deny it. I guess maybe they aren't so proud of it.
Someone says "this is authentic Sicilian music" and people are primed to think it's better. But if you wouldn't know the difference between--someone had to tell you, after all--an old Sicilian song and one written by an American last year, why would you care?
In some cases, it makes sense to say "authentic" as a signal. A pizza palor in Boston is called "New York Pizza" and I think they advertise as "authentic New York style." Why? New York Pizza is the best kind of pizza, so it's a signal the product is good. It's also a costlessly cheap signal to send, so you shouldn't trust it. But a lot of people, who wouldn't know the difference between some shit baked in New Haven and a real New York slice, would care if it was "real" New York pizza. Why?
Authenticity makes people particualrly irrational in the art world. Few people can tell the difference between an authentic Picasso and a good replica by looking at the paintings. Maybe no one can. So why doesn't any care if they're buying a forgery? If you're an investor you should. If someone finds out, that investment is going to plummet in value. But suppose you're just a collector. All you can do with a painting is look at it.
You find the same kind of irrationality with new paintings. Someone says they discovered a lost Monet. Everyone looks at it and they form their opinions about how it looks and whether it's "real." Shouldn't the painting be valued based on how it looks? What kind of nut case cares who painted it? (If you get the utility from your paintings by using them as a signal that you're rich, as a way of saying, without saying it, that "look, I'm better than you because I can buy this expensive paintings" then I understand why you care. But you've got a lot of more serious problems. And why can't you just tape diamonds on the wall next to a replica?)
Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for just enjoying food, songs, and paintings I like instead of using (and changing) my tastes to project an image of who I want people to think I am. It's most people's revealed preference (at least among the rich) to do the later, so there's got to be something good about it? Then again, when you mention it this behavior to people, they deny it. I guess maybe they aren't so proud of it.
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