>> ^blankfist:

And I like how his chart stops at 1 million. Why doesn't he show what they'd do to people who make more than 1 million? What about people who make ten million? Or 100 million? Because this is just theater.


Presumably that's because that demographic is a tiny fraction of the US population and not exactly the target group here.

That said,

>> ^handmethekeysyou:


The fact that the White House is not read up on Tufte, someone who has written numerous books on statistics in politics and who remains the foremost thinker on information design, is disheartening at best.
Sorry to geek out on this, but I expect better. You're trying to take steps forward by speaking in plain English to the general public, & I salute you for it. But you need to come correct.


I find it difficult to believe any player who makes it to the White House is inept enough to do this by accident. I suspect the diameter (if I was feeling really cynical, I'd say the radius) of the circles is what the ruler was used to measure out, quite intentionally.

I love this idea, and I really hope they continue with it as a series. However, I take one very strong issue with this video; specifically their absolute failure in communication design. The use of circles is borderline offensive to anyone even loosely schooled in the subject.

"We got a ruler and measured out the size of the tax cut, is how big the circle is [sic]". Cool. Corresponding to what? How big the tax cut is by percentage? Dollar amount? What?

The ruler was used for what? Diameter? Area? How are you representing the % or $ amount?

People trained in advertising & marketing seem to believe that bar charts are boring to the populace. Well, if you're representing a linear data set, your representation should be linear. That's not boring, that's good, accurate representation.

To quote Tufte [from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information]: "Another way to confuse data variation with design variation is to use area to show one-dimensional data."
And later: "The number of information-carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number of dimensions in the data."

The fact that the White House is not read up on Tufte, someone who has written numerous books on statistics in politics and who remains the foremost thinker on information design, is disheartening at best.

Sorry to geek out on this, but I expect better. You're trying to take steps forward by speaking in plain English to the general public, & I salute you for it. But you need to come correct.

@NetRunner. I don't think writing law in plain English is in anyway comparable to programming anything in English. That makes no comparable sense. *Superdouble analogy fail!

You're a programmer, too. So, that's just... wow... that's embarrassing for you. Pigfucker.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:
You can't write the law in plain English because it's too imprecise, just like you can't write computer programs in English.

Analogy fail.


Disagree with the assertion if you like, but that analogy is just fine.

Or do you need me to put it in plain language for you so you can understand it?

>> ^NetRunner:

You can't write the law in plain English because it's too imprecise, just like you can't write computer programs in English.


Analogy fail.

Staffers with legal expertise are the ones reading and writing the bills. You can't write the law in plain English because it's too imprecise, just like you can't write computer programs in English.

Now what they could do to address this concern is release the plain-English parent documents that the Congressmen use when they're negotiating, which later gets translated into legalese by staffers.

That way you'd at least have documentation of what the intended structure of the law was when it was written.

>> ^MaxWilder:

This is hokum. Nobody reads those big bills. As the first speaker said (poorly, I might add) it just isn't possible. What a conscientious Senator would do is divide the bill up by sections and have specialists summarize the key points, and look for inconsistencies and errors.
I doubt most politicians do that, either, but not even the best will read the whole thing unless it's for a stupid political talking point. "I read the bill, and I know what's in it!"
I'd much rather see videos about how nobody reads the bills, and how horrible it is to make them so huge, complicated, and unreadable for the American public. That would be a valid point.


I Agree with the you. Stop with the damned legaleese and just write the bill in plain English. I forget which teacher said it, but she said "Your essays, emails, or notes should only be as long as they need to be; to get the point across."

@KnivesOut:
I thought he made it quite clear he was on the side of the business owner. Just because he refused to state it in so many words doesn't make it unclear. It -does- however, demonstrate a certain lack of integrity, this refusal to put his stance in plain English.

I quite agree with you on everything but that one single point. The Civil Rights Act is one of the few truly awesome pieces of legislation our government has produced. All of it, not just the 10 sections he likes. It's one of the rare examples of what our country -could- be, if we ever have a sudden outbreak of sanity again.

Wow, an honest, reasonable Republican. I thought we lost the last one of those when Chuck Hagel retired.

I don't see a problem with saying that nobody reads the legislative language. I only wish that the "plain English" versions were released alongside the legislative language version of every bill. That way, those rare individuals (OCD sufferers?) who actually -can- pull clarity out of the complexity could comb it over and holler about issues that don't match.

thanks for the jokes!

In reply to this comment by dotdude:
Thank you for the promote.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
*promote for those of you that have been living under a rock for the past decade

Thank you for the promote.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
*promote for those of you that have been living under a rock for the past decade

Blogs in Plain English:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Blogs-in-Plain-English

"Scared the shit out of"

There was never an indication about this to me while I was there. She said, after the others had left and we were heading to bed, "You need to watch it with that" that being the grabbing, I replied "Yeah, yeah" in a shrugging-it-off kind of way. I should have seen that sign and acted accordingly, but I didn't. I was ignorant, but never malicious.

If she had said it in plain english, while we were just the two of us in the room "Please, I really think you made us uncomfortable with that groping and things you said like [x][y][z]" I would have apologized then too.

If I were far more relentless than I remember, then obviously I don't remember it. I continued talking like we had talked on messenger and on videosift too, like with ac it was probably spiraling out of control, but I didn't see it at the time, and I was not alone in that.

"I think from VS alone we know that he doesn't care for being censored, and he does and says what he wants when he wants. Mix this in with alcohol and heat..."

I do indeed not care for being censored, especially on videosift. In real life I am quite a bit more amicable though, and while we did discuss what should and shouldn't be said to a child, I never said anything to any of her kids that were inappropriate and anywhere near what people have been telling me I said.

I say what I want a lot of the times, but to suggest that I "do what I want" has some nasty innuendo as well, which I certainly do not care for. My wrongdoings in Texas are what I did to Ivy, and to me at the time it did not seem as such a huge deal. I've apologized for that quite a few times already, and I'm still sorry for that.

"He's obviously never going to admit that he used sexual innuendo around her children, so that's her word against his, and he's clever enough to know that if he lays it bare he can get away with bullshitting the rest of it, i'm sure."

I am not a liar. I may have very different boundaries, which means I've stepped on a lot of toes. My swearing is just how I talk, it's not that I deliberately swear to be a jerk to people. I just don't think swearing is or should be a big deal at all. It obviously is much more of a deal to some people than others, and I'm sorry I was being insensitive to that.

I'm not trying to bullshit my way out of this, if I did say anything that her kids overheard then I was not aware. I can imagine the scenario where me and bea has talked about something like it, and one of them could have run into the room. At that point we've stopped talking like that. If anyone knows me here, and a lot of people do, it's that I'm not a liar, I don't want to distort the truth. Hell, that's what my whole crusade against religion has been about.

I feel sorry for bea too. She was nothing but nice to me while I was in Texas and I did my best to only be nice to the people there as well. She doesn't deserve this, but neither do I. To come out with a diatribe like the one above is not in any way nice, proper or appropriate and that's the only reason I've laid things out as I remember them. You talk to me about appropriateness and come out with such dire accusations and conclusions? Appalling.

I'm not leaving anything deliberately out, I am not distorting the truth. My comments to AC were well into the realm of crazy innuendo, because that's what we had already done for a long time. I saw it as something completely beside her relationship, that's why I continued. This was obviously my mistake, not hers. The same thing with bea - we talked a lot of trash in the lounge and it just poured over into real life conversations as well. We are both to blame for that.

I'm not a bad person. I can be very oblivious, god yes, but I am certainly not malicious and I hope none of you judge me as such.

And with that, I'm moving away from this subject. I don't think I will be as active on VS as I've been, but I'll still be around, because I still have a lot of friends here and if I ever do leave videosift, I would have it be a a much less bitter note than this.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
Did you hear that, Obama? Stop pussyfooting about the public option. Just push it through via reconciliation. The Republicans don't want to help; they want just want to kill it outright. You campaigned with the slogan "Change." Well now is your chance.

Yeah good plan. Push through a bill that's a steaming pile of shit and isn't the best for the American people. And before someone says "but what's your idea for a bill..." I've posted it several times. Take CHA, modify to fit US, dance a few songs. Be happy. But no you think you need to have a 1200sec. bill that oozes BS all over it instead of something that can do all the work and be under 25 sections in plain English.

Let me repeat myself for the sake of repeating, you can want something that's in the best interests of all your citizens. But you'd better do it properly the first time. Luckily the US has other nations, and other countries(hint hint) who are built on a similar architecture(hint Canada hint) of power sharing, with federal power. If it's so unwieldly that the average citizen can't understand it, than the bill is absolutely useless.

That's what you have now, that's what's wrong. That's why it shouldn't pass. That's why it should be simple, easy to understand, and be left to each individual state.

Meh, i think after the initial "Are you an idiot, I'm speaking plain english" confrontation we all knew that he just wanted a simple question answered. Anyone who watches the show knows this is how it goes. Also, he was pissed because they had to shut down the kitchen and give everyone a free shrimp cocktail.