Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

A New York Times reporter contacted me over the weekend, wanting a quote for a story on paying people to do illustrations for Wikipedia. He asked me whether I thought that this was a radical departure for Wikipedia, which had never paid authors before. I said “it isn’t radical because illustrators aren’t authors.” The illustrators with whom I’ve worked are not domain experts. They’ve taken a pencil sketch from me and cleaned it up so that it doesn’t look like it was drawn by a developmentally disabled third grader. To me, paying an illustrator is like paying a typesetter or someone else who assist in preparing a manuscript. Of course there are medical illustrators and others who have substantial knowledge of anatomy and who probably be regarded as authors, but I wasn’t think of that when I suggested the following idea to Jimmy Wales: (1) author sketches in pencil, scans, and uploads to a queue, (2) illustrator somewhere in the world downloads the pencil sketch, reworks competently, and uploads to an approval queue (email notification to the author), (3) author reviews to make sure that the professionally drawn illustration is consistent with the pencil sketch, (4) illustrator gets paid and drawing goes live on Wikipedia, with hyperlink credit to a page where all of the illustrator’s contributions are shown and that has contact information for that illustration (I figured that prominent credit would cut down on the compensation demanded by illustrators).

So… please fill the comment section with your opinions. Is this a radical departure? Is the illustrator the author or the domain expert who did the pencil sketch?

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In chatting with friends here in Cambridge, all of whom are, needless to say, angry Democrats who blame all of the world’s ills on George W. Bush, the conversation has turned to some cheerful holiday subjects…

• is the average working American better or worse off than in decades past?
• is it easier or more difficult for an American to achieve a reasonable standard of living?
• is all of the increased wealth of our society going to a handful of folks at the top enjoying a new gilded age?

For these diehard Democrats, the answer is clear: the average person is worse off; the rich are a lot richer. One statistic that seems to support this way of looking at the U.S. is a chart of real wages showing that the average weekly earnings, in 1982 dollars, grew to a peak of $332 in 1972 and has fallen to $278 today.

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2006/08/15/average-income-in-the-united-states/ and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

show that real household income is still growing, albeit at a slower pace than between WWII and the early 1970s. How to explain this difference? The fall in average wage might indicate an influx into the workforce of people who work only part time, e.g., mothers of young children. The rise in family income might indicate an influx into the workforce of people who hadn’t been working before, e.g., wives of guys with jobs (though the Wikipedia entry indicates that the number of married households with two working partners is decreasing as a percentage of the total, maybe an indication that divorce has become more common).

One thing that nobody seemed to consider was the effect of immigration. If a bunch of folks show up here with limited education and poor English skills we wouldn’t expect them to earn high wages. It might not be an indication of unfairness if real wages have stagnated. It might simply mean that immigrants are arriving in huge numbers. The natives are experiencing income growth but they are disappearing in the statistics under the tide of immigration.

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461544532/Immigration_to_the_United_States.html

shows that the modern stagnation in real wages coincides with a huge increase in the number of immigrants. Should we feel sorry for a guy from Guatemala who earns only $277/week? As long as his standard of living is higher than it was in Guatemala, we shouldn’t pity him on economic grounds. If his children are not as prosperous as the children of a Rockefeller, should we pity them or give the family a few more generations to build wealth?

Complaints about the plight of the average worker seem to be contradicted by everyday experience. Habitually drunken carpenters who seldom show up to work are driving around in $35,000 SUVs, living in brand-new sprawl housing, and buying $2,500 flat-screen TVs that nobody in the 1970s could have imagined a need for. Brazilian house cleaners with questionable immigration status are driving the 4-year-old SUV that was traded in on that new one. Whole Foods is packed with people willing to line up to pay $150 for a slice of cheese, plate of sushi, bowl of soup, and bunch of free-range carrots. It is tough to hire anyone competent. We see the oppressed masses in Michael Moore movies, but we don’t see them on the streets or in the stores agonizing over whether to buy bread or medicine.

My explanation for the apparent contradiction between what one sees at the car dealers and BestBuy and how folks in the Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge feel is immigration and population growth. I mentioned this to one interlocutor, 70 years old now, and pointed out that if the U.S. had remained a country of 150 million as it had been in her youth, the average wage might well be quite high because labor would be scarce. She was shocked and refused to believe that there had been such significant growth, but the Census Bureau backed me up. We asked her what she thought the best years to have been an American were and she said the 1950s, despite the fact that conservatism strangled her beatnik spirit. The population of the U.S. reached 160 million in 1953, compared to 303.5 million today.

What about the countries that we regard as workers’ paradises with 35-hour work weeks, national health care, and lavish pensions? Visit

http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/300million_popchart/flash.htm

and click on “International”. Then click “USA”, “France”, and “Germany.” Notice that the last two have flat population graphs since 1950. Click on France and Germany again to remove them. Then click Mexico. A session with Edward Tufte’s books would probably result in the graph being rescaled, but it is clear that we have more in common with Mexico than with France.

So… should we give thanks this holiday season that we have managed to introduce 150 million additional people to the joys of traffic jams, strip malls, materialism, borrowing money, printing money, and invading helpless Third World countries (i.e., all of the things that make America great)? Or should we be sad that we can’t have a country of 303 million where a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant earns as much as someone whose family walked off the Mayflower?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/technology/01online.html says that income distribution hasn’t changed since Jesus Christ was in the Temple…

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http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/the_way_vs_a_way_japan_v_china.php

is a fun page showing how the Japanese fill up the gas tank on a small airplane, contrasted with the Chinese.

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Folks: Some friends and I have developed an education program/prize for young people interested in aviation: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/prize

Comments and ideas for how to promote this would be welcome.

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Given that a lot of airplane construction methods are unchanged since World War II, I had always wondered why planes weren’t manufactured in China. Considerable hand labor is required to rivet together a metal airplane and even composite (plastic) plane factories seem to be humming with people.

http://www.cessna.com/news/article.chtml?ID=Xdg9EKUhsb1cI57ikmmGK7x13mhGGCol9paNMmg7MllCu8ZuHg

breaks the news that Cessna’s new Light Sport Aircraft (visual flight only; two seats; similar numbers to an ancient Cessna 150 or 152 except that you lose the capability of instrument flying) will be made in China, thus saving $71,000 per plane (according to Avweb). The plane will retail for about $110,000.

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Motorola’s CEO steps down due to disappointing financial performance (I still haven’t replaced my Motorola KRZR, which, combined with the optional desktop software, is one of the worst-engineered products that I’ve ever bought).

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Edward-J-Zander_HSW9.html shows that the guy has gotten paid more than $10 million per year to deliver financial performance equivalent to the S&P 500 (the “relative to market” score of 99). I’m wondering if Motorola shareholders are in as much pain as I am when I have to use their company’s product.

So… what to buy? I still want something like my old Treo 270: flip-phone design and real keyboard. Are there any new exciting phones out there? I looked at the Helio but rejected it because its address book can’t sync street addresses, only phone numbers. It would be nice to have a phone with a really good camera. I don’t mind a bit of bulk and weight.

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… seems to be the chicken: http://philip.greenspun.com/images/200708-honfleur/military-memorial-chicken-3

[A belated upload from a trip to Honfleur, Normandy in August 2007.]

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The November 19, 2007 New Yorker magazine carries an article by Tom Reiss entitled “Laugh Riots” (abstract). It is about a guy whose father is black and who leads a public life based on a black identity. Said black father is from Africa and split up with his mother when the public figure was an infant. The guy was raised by his white mother. The guy gives public talks to thousands of people and attracts an audience where people of nearly all creeds and colors get together and feel inspired. He has been a recent candidate for presidential office.

Who is this French Barack Obama? He goes by the single name of Dieudonné. What is his message that unifies the bourgeoisie and Muslims from the exurban slums surrounding French cities? That all of their problems can be blamed on (1) the 500,000 remaining French Jews who control French media, finance, and politics, and (2) Jews in Israel and the U.S. who control the rest of the world’s media, finance, and politics.

More: Wikipedia as usual.

[Speaking of the Jews in France, I recently finished Suite Francaise, an interesting book by a Russian-French Jew. The novel, which has no Jewish characters, starts with the defeat of the French in June 1940, which terrifies folks into fleeing Paris, and then the first year of the German occupation and Vichy government, to which her characters gradually adapt. The book is worth reading despite its being part of an unfinished multi-novel set. The author, Irene Némirovsky, was killed by the Germans in 1942.]

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I went to the National Gallery (U.S.) yesterday and revisited the Hopper show that had started at the Museum of Fine Arts. Looks even better when you don’t have to pay $20 to see it! The more interesting show is Turner, with more of his paintings assembled in the U.S. than ever before. It is worth seeing the 30-minute film down in the basement before you visit the show.

The movie made it clear just how much more patience an artist needed to have in the old days. Turner dreamed of visiting Italy, for example, but the Napoleonic Wars prevented him from reaching that country until he was age 44. Turner often said that his only secret was “damned hard work”.

What modern artist is most comparable to Turner? You might think it should be Thomas Kinkade. Both work in landscape and have tried to elevate it to a higher status than formerly accorded. Kinkade sometimes visits galleries and adds “sparkle” to his paintings while buyers wait. Turner, I learned from the film, would go to the “varnishing period” just before a show at the Royal Academy. While other artists were merely applying some clear varnish, Turner would add the final touches of white and yellow to bring out the light in his paintings. So Kinkade is America’s Turner.

Who is Britain’s Turner? Damien Hirst! It is true that Turner never tried to exhibit a dead animal. On the other hand, both were the leading and highest priced British artists of their respective days. Speaking of prices, a recent New Yorker magazine talked about some simple spot paintings that Hirst (or his assistants) had done recently. Each sold for $1.5 million and nearly 1000 have been made. So Hirst’s sales from just this one series have totaled nearly $1.5 billion. Turner died, at the age of 76, after six decades of painstaking work and laborious travel, in 1851. According to the film, his estate was worth $8 million in current money.

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New Yorker magazine arrived today, but I demonstrated my appreciation for fine literature by opening the Robinson Helicopter Company’s newsletter first. For folks with Robinsons on order, the exciting news is that HID landing lights are available as an $850 option (only took them about four years to catch up to Cirrus!). The newsletter relates the interesting statistic that the people of traffic- and crime-plagued Sao Paolo, Brazil keep more than 1000 helicopters busy shuttling among approximately 250 helipads and heliports.

The most bizarre note concerns a couple of guys who decided to fly a Robinson R44 from California to Scotland. They made it over the North Atlantic, completing the 7,000 mile trip in 16 days. Most shocking to me is that they chose to do the trip in a helicopter without pop-out floats (a helicopter ditching is followed within seconds by the helicopter sinking like a stone; an airplane by contrast will float for a few minutes).

Details: http://www.maverickmccann.com

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