DC Transit Fail

Public transit is pretty nice in DC. You have trains and busses all over town, and they run pretty frequently. By all accounts, it's a world-class city with a word-class transit system. Except that the people in charge of it are really, really stupid when it comes to technology.

That's a bold claim, but I'm prepared to back it up:

1. Google Maps knows nothing about Metro trains, and is generally confused about bus routes too. WMATA publishes the data that Google needs--in the format Google needs it in--to make Google Maps Metro-aware (you can find it here under "GTFS Download"). But they've published it under a draconian license that reserves the right to charge for it or remove it in the future. So, as you might imagine, that's not cool w/ Google. Way to do all the work and then drown at the shore, guys. More background on this here.

2. For a long time, WMATA didn't even provide this bullet-pre-installed-in-foot non-solution. Originally they refused to play along at all, saying:

Metro staff did explore some possibilities with Google, but ultimately we decided that forming a partnership with Google was not in our best interest from a business perspective. We do believe that Metro's newly redesigned Web site, at www.wmata.com, improves customers' access to information about the Metro system. In addition, customers may get real-time information and bus and rail schedules directly on their cell phones or PDAs.


Oh right, you mean the website whose trip planner determined that a co-worker of mine should use the following Metro rail route between Union Station and Shady Grove (two stops on the red line--the same freaking line):

Notice that round trip in the middle where they have you take the blue line from Metro Center to McPherson Square, then take the orange line back to Metro Center once you get there? Not all red line trains go to Shady Grove, but they should know that and their tool should be able to handle that extremely common situation. And apparently this sort of thing happens pretty often with the WMATA Trip Roulette Machine.


3. Notice how it also doesn't show you a map of your trip (like this other tool called GOOGLE MAPS does). They just want you to trust them that it's all correct. Inspiring a lot of confidence there, guys.


4. Google will always be better at this than you are, Metro tech team. I'm sorry, but it's true. You can't and shouldn't try to compete with their resources, experience, and technology. Feel free to continue banging out your trip planner tool, but please, for the love of Jeebus, let Google use your freaking transit data so those of us who prefer useful tools can get on with our lives. Please?

Thomas Merton is Wrong

Ran across this quote today:

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself."

Apparently it comes from Thomas Merton in "Letter to a Young Activist."

Sigh... Fail.


I understand that things have not been easy for those of us on the
left lately. And this quote offers a tempting salve for those feelings
of frustration. But...

Not focusing on results is a bit of a pet peeve of mine in the
progressive world. It is, in my humble opinion, how we can have
multiple, well-funded non-profits for every single issue we care
about, and yet not make much progress on them. It is how we can
control two branches of national government, and yet be unable to pass
healthcare legislation, close Guantanamo, and reign in the abuses of
large corporate-persons.

Focusing on results is exactly what activists, young and old, should
constantly be doing. The real trick is understanding how to "fail
forward" (to borrow Clay Shirky's term).

Yes, you will fail. A lot. Over and over. But if you build your power
/ movement / organization during each campaign, then you will begin
again in a better position to win than you were in the last time. And
begin again you must. This is politics, and it can be used for good
or evil. We need more progressives focused on using it to achieve good
results. Otherwise, the "work itself" has no "rightness" or "truth." It's
self-delusion.

Cause and effect

Cause.

Effect.

There you have it. So if Palin visits your town, just put your mail on your mailbox. You just may live to get the reply.

Here's a handy graph to further illuminate the danger we all now face:

It's Debatable?

The Chicago Tribune has an article today about last night's Biden v. Palin smackdown. It's title is "The winner? It's debatable." But look how the article starts out:

They were in the same room Thursday night, but Joe Biden and Sarah Palin often seemed to be participating in separate debates. One debate dealt with issues. The other served as a platform for Palin's unique brand of Alaskan-bred populism and twangy asides.

Uh... Is it just me or is it a sad day in America when "issues" vs. "twangy asides" constitutes a toss-up in the Vice Presidential Debate? FAIL.

Fail.

Political Journalism an oxymoron?

Here is a very interesting article on political journalism and why it sucks so badly. "Yawn," you may be thinking, "I've read that one before. Several times." You're potentially right, but give this one a go.

The point, once it gets there, is that political journalism shouldn't focus on who is going to win, but on who should win. An excerpt from the end of the article:

"[T]he job of the campaign press is not to preempt the voters' decision by asking endlessly, and predicting constantly, who's going to win. The job is to make certain that what needs to be discussed will be discussed in time to make a difference - and then report on that."

Damn skippy. The article starts out by claiming that the media is a mindless beast that does horse race political coverage because that's what everyone else does. It then starts to make the case that "expertise" in this field (namely, predicting political outcomes determined by voters) is dubious at best. This dovetails interestingly with a book I read recently called Super Crunchers that pretty much debunks all form of human "expertise" where it concerns analyzing data and making predictions based on that (and instead claims that machines can make much more accurate predictions, so we should let them do the predicting while we spend our brain cells on more creative, humany things like imagining what else we could have machines predict for us).

Combining these two perspectives, one could make the case that not only is horse race political journalism bad for democracy (in the sense that it pretends to predict outcomes but actually ends up unduly influencing them), but it's also a job much better left to number crunchers than so-called political "experts" who are terrible at it anyway. How many points was Obama supposed to win NH by, again? That would then free up real journalists to cover real issues and where candidates stand on them. Imagine that.

Morey Middle School is a Drug-Free Zone

1,000 words, indeed.

uncov = douche

I recently put uncov into my feed reader at the suggestion of some friends. I found it mildly humorous at times. But seriously, homeboy is a douchebag that mostly pisses me off. So I'm calling it: uncov = fail.

Apparently at uncov it's a rant-worthy occurrence when a woman blogs about programming but not über-geekily enough for Ted's liking. Lame post here.

Keep churning out those oh-so-clever "LOLZ!!!1! FALE!!!!one!!" Photoshop abortions, gang!