Comments for Aaron Shaw's weblog

Comment on University of California Hits the Panic Button by moravecglobal

moravecglobal — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:51:26 +0000

UC President Yudof Approves $3,000,000 to Outsource UCB Chancellor’s Birgeneau’s Job
The UC President has a UCB Chancellor that should do the high paid job he is paid for instead of hiring an East Coast consulting firm to fulfill his responsibilities. ‘World class’ smart executives like Chancellor Birgeneau need to do the analysis, hard work and make the difficult decisions of their executive job!
Where do consulting firms like Bain ($3,000,000 consultants) get their recommendations?
From interviewing the senior management that hired them and will be approving their monthly consultant fees and expense reports. Remember the nationally known auditing firm who said the right things and submitted recommendations that senior management wanted to hear and fooled government oversight agencies and the public?
Mr. Birgeneau’s executive officer performance management responsibilities include “inspiring innovation and leading change.” This involves “defining outcomes, energizing others at all levels and ensuring continuing commitment.” Instead of demonstrating his capacity to fulfill his executive accountabilities, Mr. Birgeneau outsourced them. Doesn’t he engage University of California and University of California Berkeley (UCB) people at all levels to help examine the budget and recommend the necessary trims? Hasn’t he talked to Cornell and the University of North Carolina – which also hired Bain — about best practices and recommendations that might apply to UCB cuts?
No wonder the faculty and staff are angry and suspicious. Three million dollars is a high price for Californians to pay when a knowledgeable ‘world-class’ Chancellor is not doing his job.
Please help save $3,000,000 for teaching our students and request that the UC President require the UCB Chancellor to fulfill his executive job accountabilities

Comment on Why are people so happy in Denmark? by babsindk

babsindk — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:14:09 +0000

It’s not the ‘happiest’ place, but it is a place where people are very proud of what the feel they have.

Danes do not smile more, but they are certainly more smug.

They laugh and black and white minstrel acts and drink heavily.

Foreigners in Denmark have a hard time because the Danish are quite threatened by new blood.

The reports about the Danish being the happiest are over rated, they seem like quite a miserable bunch, generally, albeit a well nourished miserable bunch.

Comment on University of California Hits the Panic Button by We Want No Taxation, No Representation « Ben Turner’s Blog

We Want No Taxation, No Representation « Ben Turner’s Blog — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:16:04 +0000

[...] today I read a blog post from a guy I follow at UC Berkeley: “A public relations bomb just landed in my inbox: an email fromUC Berkeley Chancellor Robert [...]

Comment on New Pew Survey: The Internet in Campaign 2008 by links for 2009-04-27 « 6 to cut, 4 to sharpen

links for 2009-04-27 « 6 to cut, 4 to sharpen — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:09:31 +0000

[...] New Pew Survey: The Internet in Campaign 2008 | Aaron Shaw Detailed stats on the influence of the internet on election politics (tags: internet politics usa election) [...]

Comment on Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote by Pablo

Pablo — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:13:54 +0000

Also, Facebook seems to own up to the process’ shortcomings. Ullyot doesn’t outright say it was a failure, but he doesn’t go so far as to say it was a success either. Instead, it reads to me like he admits that it was an experiment that the company can build upon. Perhaps this was the foundational experiment of your “culture of democracy”?

Comment on Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote by Pablo

Pablo — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:50:03 +0000

I think it was a good try, considering that the ‘outcry’ to the changes in FB’s policy was pretty much limited to a few geeks & a whole lotta law geeks. Whether they admit the experiment failed or not will likely only matter to to the same people who cared in the first place.

It seemed to me that since a lot more people were upset over the changes to user homepages, Facebook would have been better off building the platform’s ‘democracy’ by putting those changes to vote first & spreading the word about the vote through the groups millions of people joined in protest.

Regardless, I’d love to see data on how the vote broke down, esp. geographic concentrations of voters.

Comment on Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote by aaron

aaron — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:33:37 +0000

Definitely – and thanks for reminding me about the nastiness of amendment 4.3 – I forgot to include it in this post!

Comment on Calling Bullsh*t on the Facebook Governance Vote by jilliancyork

jilliancyork — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:51:20 +0000

Yikes! Between this and their seeming lack of desire to clarify amendment 4.3 (effectively banning users in 5 countries – despite private explanations of the rule only applying to commercial use of Facebook) I think we’ve hit #facebookfail.

Comment on New Pew Survey: The Internet in Campaign 2008 by aaron

aaron — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:32:14 +0000

Hey Pablo! Thanks for another great comment

Your observation of informal and transient cell-phone use practices in Gary illustrates a classic data collection and analysis paradox that I would call “the Hidden Population Catch 22.” I think the paradox goes something like this:

(1) Survey researchers are unlikely to change their sampling techniques or population estimates unless someone can demonstrate conclusively that their data is biased in a systematic way.

(2) Hidden populations are hard/impossible to get reliable data about using research techniques that meet the standards of survey researchers.

As you might guess, it follows that it’s difficult to find evidence about “hidden populations” that meet survey researchers’ standards of rigor. Consequently, it’s tough to figure out whether the data about hidden populations is biased or not.

The trick would be to figure out whether or not your gut suspicion about informal and transient cell-phone use is widespread enough to result in a systematic bias that Pew hadn’t already caught somehow in their weighing of the data. I’m sure they did a ton of internal analysis to make sure they thought their sample population was reasonable and that landline surveys of political opinion yield unbiased results. The trouble, as I mentioned above, is that the only basis for comparison are other studies and population estimates generated through methods that wouldn’t necessarily capture accurate information about the sub-populations we’re talking about. You could go in circles for hours…

Comment on New Pew Survey: The Internet in Campaign 2008 by Pablo

Pablo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:22:52 +0000

I always wondered how they measured the “cell phone only” voting crowd…by cell phone plan or by cell phone possession. In East Chicago, Gary (IN) where I worked for Obama, a lot of people used the pay-per phone cards on their cell phone and a lot of cell phones were allegedly purchased stolen. When the Pew Research came out, even amended, I couldn’t help but think that a vast underclass that was overwhelmingly for Obama was still going uncounted.