“The Choice” to stay: Sam Lim and I discuss the season finale of Homeland

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carriesaulSam Lim: Where do we even start with the finale? Boy. Let me first say that it met — and exceeded — my expectations (not by a lot but enough). The beginning dragged out the way I expected a Carrie-Brody escapade into the woods would, even with Quinn right behind them (since they didn’t know). The fact that Quinn did not take out Brody and his subsequent reasoning (as explained to Estes…more on that in a minute) did not surprise me in the least; I expected that as much.

Before I make fun of Estes (again), I do think the conversations Carrie and Brody had in the cabin were really rather poignant. Here you have two very battered (physically and emotionally) individuals, and it’s like they can only be themselves and (almost) completely honest with each other. I say “almost” because Carrie — for all her ridiculousness — still has a shred of doubt about Brody (you see that look on her face after Brody found the gun? It was like a “Hehe. Let’s not play with guns now, dear” type of look), though he seemed to win her over fairly easily as always.

Now, as for Estes, gosh, what a tool. Everything always has to be about him. The sad part is there are real people just like him in real life. I suppose it’s part of what makes Quinn’s line to him somewhat schadenfreude-inducing: “I’m a guy who kills bad guys.”

The episode doesn’t really take off (action-wise), though, until Walden’s funeral, I thought. I particularly enjoyed the great ironies of Brody’s encounters at the funeral. First, he is greeted by Walden’s grieving widow, who is completely oblivious to the fact that the guy who basically murdered her husband is escorting her to her seat. Then there’s his handshake with Estes, completely unaware that the man had a hit out on him until less than a day before. I have to say…I chuckled.

Let’s talk plot flaws real fast, since they’re my favorite. Isn’t it sort of conspicuous when both Carrie and Brody leave the funeral early? And am I being too cynical to think it strange that the CIA building is absolutely deserted except for where the funeral is taking place (sure, Walden has deep ties to the CIA and the funeral might be on a weekend, but still, it’s the CIA!)? Carrie and Brody (both, again, with bright yellow visitor badges) just waltzed right into Saul’s empty office and probably would’ve engaged in a bit of inappropriate behavior in another man’s office had Brody not spotted his car. Speaking of which… Continue reading “The Choice” to stay: Sam Lim and I discuss the season finale of Homeland →

The Senate filibuster: cure by nuclear option?

Politics, , , , , , ,

My piece on the Senate’s opportunity to take up filibuster reform is now up on The Morningside Post:

Not everyone is onboard with an overhaul of Senate rules, however. Unsurprisingly, Senate Republicans are concerned that restricting the filibuster will eliminate their party’s most potent weapon against the Democratic majority. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s spokesman warned, “We hope Democrats will work toward allowing members of both sides to be involved in the legislative process — rather than poisoning the well on the very first day of the next Congress.”

Filibuster reform comes with its own set of caveats for Democrats as well. “Forcing the minority to [be present in the Senate] in order to actually mount the filibuster also requires that the Senate stay in session endlessly,” Lieberman notes, creating a burden borne equally by both parties. “In order to go down that road,” he says, “Democratic senators would have to be willing to spend more time in Washington, spend more time hanging around the Senate floor and actually participating in this nonsense than they’re probably willing to do.”

Twitter truth-telling

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Slate reports on new research that raises the potential of machine-aided Twitter reading — that is, initial vetting of tweets for veracity, based on certain elements:

A 2010 paper from Yahoo Research analyzed tweets from that year’s 8.8 Chile earthquake and found that legitimate news—such as word that the Santiago airport had closed, that a supermarket in Concepcion was being looted, and that a tsunami had hit the coastal town of Iloca—propagated on Twitter differently than falsehoods, like the rumor that singer Ricardo Arjona had died or that a tsunami warning had been issued for Valparaiso. One key difference might sound obvious but is still quite useful: The false rumors were far more likely to be tweeted along with a question mark or some other indication of doubt or denial.

Building on that work, the authors of the 2010 study developed a machine-learning classifier that uses 16 features to assess the credibility of newsworthy tweets. Among the features that make information more credible:

– Tweets about it tend to be longer and include URLs.

– People tweeting it have higher follower counts.

– Tweets about it are negative rather than positive in tone.

– Tweets about it do not include question marks, exclamation marks, or first- or third-person pronouns.

Several of those findings were echoed in another recent study from researchers at India’s Institute of Information Technology who also found that credible tweets are less likely to contain swear words and significantly more likely to contain frowny emoticons than smiley faces.

But won’t many chronic Twitter liars simply absorb these lessons and tailor their tweets to trick the new algorithm? (Say that last part five times fast.)

The American attention span for a gun control debate? Quite low, in fact

Media, Politics, , , , ,

Danny Hayes offers a sober assessment of the probability that gun control will stay in the news for long after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre:

This phenomenon – the media’s intense interest in, and subsequent boredom with, a public policy problem – is known as the “issue-attention cycle.” A dramatic event, such as a shooting, brings an issue to the media’s attention, prompts an avalanche of news, and then an inevitable decline in coverage. Coverage of natural disasters is a particularly good example. Unless new events continue to draw journalists’ attention, they move on to other, fresher stories. The public then turns its concerns elsewhere, too.

But might this time be different? Perhaps. After all, the slaughter of innocent schoolchildren has no doubt gripped the media and public in a way that even the attempted murder of a member of Congress didn’t.

In time, however, the images of Sandy Hook will fade. And if gun control remains in the headlines a month from now, it will likely be only because Obama and the Democrats have taken up the political fight.