Hello, New York Times: What's the problem?

We've all become accustomed to weak, poorly argued and half-ass opinions on the Internet. You see them on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and any site where people are allowed to vent.

I'm not talking about factually wrong statements, though there are plenty of those as well. I'm talking about writing that tries to make a point, but fails for lack of coherence, facts or organization. These are cases where the writer has simply failed to take the reader from Point A through Point B to the conclusion at Point C. 

It's unfortunate, because these writers may actually have a good idea, but they just don't express it well. 

It is one thing to see such muddled thinking around the amateurish corners of the Internet, but it is particularly troubling when it appears in the news pages of the authoritative New York Times.

Case in point is a recent NYT story on "fast furniture" that rambled on about solving a "problem," but never established what the problem was. Let's take a look how the story went awry:

The headline

The headline in the published paper was "'Fast Furniture' is Cheap, Stylish and Clogging American Landfills." Online, the headline was "‘Fast Furniture’ Is Cheap. And Americans Are Throwing It in the Trash / The mass-produced furniture that sold furiously during the pandemic could soon be clogging landfills."

Reading that, you might think the issue is obvious: Discarded furniture is either clogging landfills now or will "soon" be doing so. But the story actually doesn't say any thing like that.

A note for non-journalists: The headline of a story is not written by the writer of the story, but by an editor. While the editor tries to capture the essence of the story in the headline, every once in a while the editor gets it wrong. That's certainly what happened in this case.

The story

This story, by Debra Kamin, begins with a mostly factual report.

Americans bought piles of furniture during the pandemic, with sales on desks, chairs and patio equipment jumping by more than $4 billion from 2019 to 2021, according to a market data company. And a lot of it won’t survive the decade.

Fast furniture, which is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon.

Kamen can't hide her disdain for this category of furniture. In the second paragraph, she says "fast furniture is for those looking to hook up but not settle down. It’s the one-season fling of furnishings." Then, the first source she quote piles on with more disdain:

Many of the Ikea beds and Wayfair desks bought during the Covid-19 lockdown were designed to last about five years, said Deana McDonagh, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “I relate to fast furniture like I do to fast food,” Ms. McDonagh said. “It’s empty of culture, and it’s not carrying any history with it.”

After Kamen quotes Ikea and Wayfair defending their products, she throws in some facts that lack context.

Each year, Americans throw out more than 12 million tons of furniture, creating mountains of solid waste that have grown 450 percent since 1960, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Bits of tossed furniture can be recycled, but the vast majority ends up in landfills.

"Mountains of solid waste" sounds like a lot. But is it? In fact, 12 million tons is just 4% of all annual waste, but you won't find that in the story.

It is in the next paragraph that the really story starts to go off the rails:

“It’s quite a big problem, both spatially and also because of the way a lot of fast furniture is made now, it’s not just wood and metal. The materials don’t biodegrade or break down,” said Ashlee Piper, a sustainability expert and the author of “Give a Sh*t: Do Good. Live Better. Save the Planet.” “We’re creating this Leviathan problem at landfills with the furniture that we get rid of.”

Stop there. What is a "big problem" or a "Leviathan problem"? Discarded furniture is going to a landfill — so? Landfills are designed to handle all kinds of waste, and the U.S. has plenty of landfill space. The materials don't biodegrade -- well, ok, but again, so?

At this point in the story you would expect to find a quote from a landfill industry official saying they are overwhelmed with furniture waste. You also might expect a comment from a scientist explaining why it is significant that the furniture doesn't biodegrade. But there is none of either, anywhere in the story.

You remember how the headline used the word "clogging"? Kamen never uses that word in the story, nor does she ever indicate that this waste is too much for landfills to handle.  

Kamin goes on to give some background on the furniture industry and the appeal of inexpensive furniture (hint: It's inexpensive). She quotes people who buy this product and also a man who makes his own furniture. 

She says that some companies have "entered the market in the hopes of presenting a solution." Again, we're left wondering: A solution to what?

As I indicated at the top, maybe there really is a problem. But this story never says what it is. It never connects the dots. The New York Times should do better.

Documentary review: "Into the Deep"

(Note: This review has spoilers)

"Into the Deep," a documentary about the 2017 sex-torture murder of a journalist aboard a private submarine in Denmark, is both revealing and disturbing — as well as seriously flawed.

If the combination of "sex-torture" and "private submarine" in one sentence isn't enough to convince you that this is a bizarre story, let me assure you that "Into the Deep" goes, um, even deeper into one man's depraved mind.

That man is Danish inventor-entrepreneur Peter Madsen, who was eventually convicted of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall while the two were sealed alone on his self-built submarine.

Madsen was working to build a rocket that he hoped would take him into space, and had drawn in a cadre of young volunteers to help him. As the movie shows, he was at turns charismatic, manipulative and an outright liar. Documentary maker Emma Sullivan was there to film much of his work, and this movie is the result. 

Peter Madsen

When you consider that this is a movie that includes discussions of torture, beheading and limbs being sawed off, it's notable that the most chilling moment may actually be a monologue by Madsen that Sullivan smartly saves for the end.

Eleven months before the murder, in an interview with Sullivan, Madsen launches into an impromptu lecture, saying "psychopaths exist among us." 

There are, he says, "human predators that walk around and grab people and use them and throw them out, used." He adds, "There is the possibility that you have simply come upon a human predator."

The movie certainly illuminates the story behind the murder —  especially if, like me, you knew little about it before — but it also has some stunning holes.

While Sullivan digs deep into Madsen's mind and also shows the emotional turmoil of those who worked with him, the movie bizarrely tells us almost nothing about Kim Wall. For much of the film, she is referred to only generically as "the journalist."  It is as if Wall is merely a prop as the narcissistic murderer soaks up all the attention.

We get multiple scenes of volunteers who worked with Madsen expressing their shock that he killed someone, but we hear nothing about who Wall was or how her death affected her family and friends. It is a stunning and offensive omission. . 

The second hole is less serious, but not trivial. The movie gives Madsen a forum to complain about how his former employers, Copenhagen Suborbitals, supposedly mistreated him. His bitterness runs through the film. So what is the response from Copenhagen Suborbitals?  There is none. There is no indication that Sullivan ever asked them. This omission is even more stunning when you know that Copenhagen Suborbitals was located immediately adjacent to Madsen's company. All Sullivan had to do was walk next door.

Rushed Judgments: Vote no on Long Beach's Measure Q

 There are 52 races and ballot propositions for Los Angeles County voters at the 2022 general election. No person can possibly make informed judgments on so many items. So I'm spending 5 to 10 minutes looking at each issue and sharing my decision. 

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Measure Q would raise taxes on people who own property in Long Beach to pay for a long list of public school upgrades, repairs and construction. For someone owning a million-dollar home (and in 2022, in Long Beach, a million-dollar home is shockingly average), this will cost $600 a year.

This is a tough one for me because I believe in a strong public school system, but I am also disturbed at how frequently the Long Beach Unified School District comes to taxpayers begging for money. Just six years ago, the district asked for (and got) $1.5 billion in bonds. Now it's asking for another $1.7 billion.

I don't claim to fully understand what's going on, but this does raise questions about how well the district manages its money. We already pay for schools as part of our annual taxes, so why these extra demands? LBUSD gives a generous benefits package to employees (it pays 100% of healthcare premiums for most of its workers), but it can't set aside money for school construction and repairs? .

Even with those concerns, I probably would have voted for Measure Q except for one thing. Several years ago, LBUSD abruptly locked up all its school playgrounds, preventing children from using them during evenings, weekends and summer.

No one questions the need to keep schools secure during the instructional day, but for generations, children and families in Long Beach have been able to use the playgrounds during non-school hours. Many children, including my own, learned to ride their bikes on school playgrounds, a much safer venue than on the street. This was a great option for park-poor neighborhoods, since every part of the city at least has a school.

But now those playgrounds sit empty behind locked gates during evenings, weekends and summer. Yes, the school district has since decided to occasionally open some playgrounds for limited hours on some Saturdays, but it's a far cry from what's needed.

Not only does this locked-gate policy deny kids a place to play, it disrespects the taxpayers who paid for those playgrounds. It sends the message that LBUSD isn't a true partner with the community. 

Rushed Judgments: Vote no on California's Proposition 1

There are 52 races and ballot propositions for Los Angeles County at the 2022 general election. No person can possibly make informed judgments on so many items. So I'm spending 5 to 10 minutes looking at each issue and giving you my decision. 

No matter how you vote on Prop. 1, one thing is for sure: It won't matter. Prop. 1 is going to pass easily no matter what anyone says or does.

That's because Prop. 1 is aimed at enshrining the right to abortion in the California Constitution, and a strong majority of Californians support abortion. And since the Supreme Court invalidated Roe v Wade, the passion to support abortion rights in California is stronger than ever. 

So if I had half a clue about the phrase "pick your battles," I would just ignore this proposal and move on. 

No one has ever accused me of having a clue, or even half of one, so let me outline the reasons that Prop. 1 is a bad idea. 

First, you're being played. Abortion is already legal in California, so why this proposition? There's a lot of evidence that the Prop. 1 is a political ploy by the Democratic Party to increase turnout at the election. Bring a hot-button issue to the ballot, the logic goes, and liberal voters will show up.

You may not mind being a political pawn, but you should be concerned about the vague wording of Prop. 1. The short measure says, "The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

Read that a couple times (if you can get past the bad grammar) and you'll notice a few things. For one, while proponents state that this measure is about abortion, it could have a lot wider impact.  Abortion and contraceptive access are only listed as examples of "an individual's reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions."

The bill's opponents say this measure will override state law and allow late-term abortions. Proponents deny that. Here's the deal: No one really knows because the measure is so vague. 

What else is included? Could this have an impact on in-vitro fertilization, pregnancy leave, or sex-change operations? Again, no one really knows.

If we're enshrining a right in the state constitution, shouldn't we be clear on what it does? If we don't we will leave it up to judges to decide what it means.

Yes, I know a lot of us are outraged over abortion law changes in other states. But that doesn't mean we need to rush a vague and poorly written constitutional amendment into the California constitution

How about if we just take a breath, step back and write a clearly written measure that clearly states what we want. 

Rushed Judgments: Baron, Barreto, Chang, Lyons, Hammond, Hare for judge

There are 52 races and ballot propositions for Los Angeles County voters to decide on in the 2022 general election. No voter can possibly make informed judgments on so many items. I'm spending 5 to 10 minutes looking at each issue and giving you my half-baked decision. 

There are six Los Angeles Superior Court judgeships on the the ballot. For five of the six races, the Los Angeles Times and Metropolitan News endorsements agree. Conveniently, the five people endorsed were also my choices in the primary. Done. 

The one race of "contention" is for office No. 70, where the Times endorses Holly Hancock and the Met News says Renee Yolande Chang. The Los Angeles Daily News endorsed Chang in the primary but hasn't said anything about the general election. I chose Hancock in the primary. Is there any reason to change? 

It's a close call. As a public defender, Hancock probably leans more toward defendant's rights. As a prosecutor, Chang probably leans toward victim's rights. 

 Frankly, there's a not a lot to go on in this race, but the Met News endorsement from the primary seems the only substantive look at the race, and they chose Chang. So I'll go with Chang.

So my suggestions:

Office 60: Abby Baron

Office 67: Fernanda Maria Barreto

Office 70: Renee Yolande Chang

Office 90: Melissa Lyons

Office 118: Melissa Hammond

Office 151: Patrick Hare

Book review: "The Hunt for History" by Nathan Raab

Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay to a book is to regret that it had to end.

This was the case with "The Hunt for History," by Nathan Raab, a 2020 book filled with fascinating historical stories and an inside look at the world of rare document collectors. When I turned the last page and realized there were no more stories, I was bummed. 

"The Hunt for History" isn't a perfect book, but it's very readable. Raab, a collector and reseller of historical documents and objects, illuminates lesser-known moments involving such figures as George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.. Each story is tied to a document or item that Raab is considering acquiring. First he must answer some basic questions: Is this item genuine? And if it is, what is it worth?

It's a bit like "Antiques Roadshow," but this book goes deeper.

I liked Raab's description, early in "The Hunt for History," of learning the rare document business at the feet of his father. His father impressed on Raab the importance of examining the details of a document — "Don't just assume, look closer." For example, the elder Raab spotted the significance of an obscure William McKinley document listed among many items for sale at an auction. They bought if for $20,000 and resold it for $60,000. 

"This is the process by which my dad had built his business in the early years: he'd looked at page after page and found something hidden in plain sight," Nathan Raab writes. 

A key takeaway: The most valuable documents connect the authors to their historical significance. His father, for instance, instantly saw the value in a letter by Orville Wright where he describes "Learning the secret of flight from a bird." If the letter had been about a more mundane topic, it would be far less valuable. 

Eventually, Nathan Raab took over the family business, with help from his father. 

In one chapter, Raab describes acquiring a letter signed by Thomas Jefferson that was largely a list of books the third president was ordering. It didn't seem that significant at first, especially when he realized the bulk of the handwriting in the letter was not Jefferson's.  

"Damn," said his father.

But research changed things. First, they discovered it had been written by Meriwether Lewis, who was Jefferson's secretary before leading the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They then learned that this book order was actually the first major acquisition of the Library of Congress. So in one document, they connected two major historical figures and a major American institution.  They eventually sold the letter to the Library of Congress (Raab hints that the price was "in the six figures").

There are more stories relating to Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Ronald Reagan, and other notables. Many of the stories involve fortuitous discoveries of valuable items in someone's closet or attic. Too often, Raab says, important historical items have been forgotten and ignored, and come close to being tossed in the trash (of course, some probably are). 

It takes time and experience to recognize the value of a piece, Raab says — even auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's often miss or underplay the historical significance of items they're selling, 

I liked Raab's description of how they work to authenticate documents and spot fakes. They look for clues in the handwriting, the type of paper, the "bleeding" of  the ink, watermarks, creases, and any known history of the item (the "provenance"). Even the size of the paper itself can be a clue.

Raab is a good writer, but there some small lapses.

First, he is inconsistent in providing the prices of items. Part of the fun of these stories is knowing what things are worth. In some chapters, he is clear about prices, but at other times is oddly vague.

In one chapter about selling two long-lost audiotapes from the Air Force One flight that carried John F. Kennedy's body after his assassination, Raab at first describes how he and his father agonized over what price to ask. They eventually settled on $500,000. But when he was forced to give one of the tapes to the National Archives, he was able to sell only one. So what did it sell for? He never says.

In one case, he seems to hint that a batch of documents he was reviewing had been acquired earlier by theft, saying "it was pretty clear what happened." Don't be coy! Say what you mean.

Last, I wish Raab would admit to at least one mistaken purchase. Surely, there's been a time where he inadvertently bought a fake or at least paid too much for something. But none of that is in the book.  A little less-than-perfect moment would help make him more human.

Still, these are minor complaints. It is a quite enjoyable book. Raab seems a young man, so I hope he will return someday with more great stories.

Movie review: "Margin Call"

The 2011 movie "Margin Call" attempts to capture the start of the 2008 financial collapse by looking at the inside workings of a single financial company. If you're thinking this sounds like Lehman Brothers, the company whose failure triggered the meltdown of banks and brokerages, you've got the right idea.

There was a lot of real-life drama at the time of the collapse and you could imagine it making a good movie. But "Margin Call" is not it. Despite an all-star cast — Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci — the movie is undermined by a subpar script.

The entire story takes place in less than 24 hours, beginning with mass layoffs at the company. This is perhaps the best part of the movie, as it captures the heartlessness of the layoff process. Tucci's character. Eric Dale, is one of those to get the ax, but before he is escorted from the building, he asks former underling Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) to take a look at some research he has been working on.

Zachary Quinto in "Margin Call"

Sullivan looks at the data, crunches some numbers and goes — "Whoa!"  He shows others the numbers, and they all go "Uh oh," "Oh shit," and similar things. We never get to see what they're looking at and there is barely any effort to explain it, but the upshot is that they've realized their financial house of cards is about to fall.

There's a ton of angst, hand-wringing, and finger-pointing as a tight group of financial wizards and executives stay up all night.  But the movie's unwillingness or inability to explain the actual problem is terribly frustrating for the viewer. We don't understand why the company is in trouble, why it's melting down at this particular moment nor whether it has any real options.

It's as if the scriptwriters said "Financial stuff is too hard to explain, so we're not even going to try." That's weak. Smart movies figure out ways to explain complicated topics to the masses. 

By midway through the movie it's clear that the financial disaster is coming when the markets open in the morning. There's zero suspense, just more hand-wringing. It's a slow, melancholy slide to the inevitable.

It's somewhat disconcerting that while the angst continues into the wee hours of the night and even into the early morning, all the characters remain primly dressed with not a hair out of place, nor even a yawn.

One of the movie's biggest weaknesses is that it's just plain hard to feel any sympathy for characters that — as the movie clearly states — are making ungodly gobs of money. You know that even if they lose this job, they will find another similar lucrative one soon after. (You do feel a little sorry for Kevin Spacey's character after his dog dies, but that's a small moment.) 

A smart movie would have found a way to show how the actions of wealthy Wall Street fat cats affect everyday people. 

Where are you most likely to die in a public mass shooting?

 Since Jan. 1, 1992, there have been 134 shootings in a public space in the United States where at least four people have died. That's according to the Mass Shooter Database created and maintained by The Violence Project.  In all, 801 people have died in the incidents. 

These shootings have not been uniformly distributed around the country. In fact, 14 states have had zero of these events in this 30-year period. By comparison, Texas has had eight fatal mass shootings; California seven.

So where are you most likely to die in a public mass shooting? The numbers say: Nevada.

By dividing the number of people who have died in these shootings by the state's population, we get a rate. And Nevada's rate — 19.7 deaths per million people — is the highest among all the states, 

Nevada's rate is due almost entirely to the 2017 murder of 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest musical festival in Las Vegas. There was only one other fatal public mass shooting in Nevada since 1991 — the murder of four people in Carson City in 2011. 

Nevada is followed on this list by the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Colorado and Virginia.  Full list is at the bottom. 

That's the top of the rankings, but in many ways I'm more interested in the bottom.  I feel like some lessons could be learned by looking at the 14 states that had zeros deaths: North Carolina, Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

What are those states doing right? I don't know, but we should try to find out.

It is too simplistic to dismiss the zero-death toll in these states as being due to the fact that most of them are small. 

While it's true that some of the least-populated states, such as Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska, are in this zero-death group, so is North Carolina, which is the ninth-most populated state. While it has no deaths in this category over the last 30 years, Connecticut, with one-third as many people, has had 39.

Another way to put it would be to note that Colorado has about the same population as Iowa, Maine and Montana combined, but the former has had 39 deaths in public mass shootings since 1991 while the latter three have had zero.  Again, why? 

It should be noted that public fatal mass shooting are relatively rate. A total of 801 deaths over 30 years is 26.7 deaths per year. While each of those deaths is a tragedy, it is important to remember that 11,000 people in the U.S. are murdered by gun every year. Most of these happen in everyday places like in the home and at work. If you're going to be shot to death, it's far more likely that the killer will be someone you know rather than a random stranger. 

	State/District	Total deaths	Population (2021)	Deaths per million people
1	.Nevada	62	3,143,991	19.72
2	.District of Columbia	12	670,050	17.91
3	.Connecticut	39	3,605,597	10.82
4	.Colorado	39	5,812,069	6.71
5	.Virginia	44	8,642,274	5.09
6	.Mississippi	15	2,949,965	5.08
7	.Hawaii	7	1,441,553	4.86
8	.Nebraska	8	1,963,692	4.07
9	.Texas	114	29,527,941	3.86
10	.Florida	81	21,781,128	3.72
11	.Oregon	13	4,246,155	3.06
12	.Wisconsin	17	5,895,908	2.88
13	.New Hampshire	4	1,388,992	2.88
14	.Minnesota	15	5,707,390	2.63
15	.South Carolina	13	5,190,705	2.50
16	.Georgia	24	10,799,566	2.22
17	.Idaho	4	1,900,923	2.10
18	.Louisiana	9	4,624,047	1.95
19	.Washington	15	7,738,692	1.94
20	.New York	38	19,835,913	1.92
21	.Indiana	12	6,805,985	1.76
22	.Kansas	5	2,934,582	1.70
23	.Ohio	20	11,780,017	1.70
24	.California	65	39,237,836	1.66
25	.Arkansas	5	3,025,891	1.65
26	.Missouri	10	6,168,187	1.62
27	.Pennsylvania	20	12,964,056	1.54
28	.Utah	5	3,337,975	1.50
29	.Arizona	10	7,276,316	1.37
30	.Tennessee	9	6,975,218	1.29
31	.Illinois	15	12,671,469	1.18
32	.Kentucky	5	4,509,394	1.11
33	.Massachusetts	7	6,984,723	1.00
34	.Michigan	10	10,050,811	0.99
35	.Maryland	5	6,165,129	0.81
36	.Alabama	4	5,039,877	0.79
37	.New Jersey	4	9,267,130	0.43
38	Alaska	0	732,673	0.00
39	.Delaware	0	1,003,384	0.00
40	.Iowa	0	3,193,079	0.00
41	.Maine	0	1,372,247	0.00
42	.Montana	0	1,104,271	0.00
43	.New Mexico	0	2,115,877	0.00
44	.North Carolina	0	10,551,162	0.00
45	.North Dakota	0	774,948	0.00
46	.Oklahoma	0	3,986,639	0.00
47	.Rhode Island	0	1,095,610	0.00
48	.South Dakota	0	895,376	0.00
49	.Vermont	0	645,570	0.00
50	.West Virginia	0	1,782,959	0.00
51	.Wyoming	0	578,803	0.00