This is an update to my post previously about income in the United States.  Based on 111,617,402 households in the US as of 2006.

It’s not much different than before.  82% of people make less than 100k in the household.  Of course, in some locales, 100k is plenty to thrive.  However, 200k+ is not all that much.  To have only 3% make that much, even including two parents working, is surprising.  I thought there would be more.

Look at the African America households by comparison. Much bleaker:

Rachel Luxemburg was kind enough to forward me this report from Jakob Nielsen on how people read on the web.

I have always known that people do not read a web page the way they do a book or email. On the web, people will skim. They will pass whole blocks of text. Their eyes will jump around like mad. There have been slews of authors who point this out, like Steve Krug with “Happy Talk Must Die“. This article brings much needed statistics to the discussion. Some takeaways I get from it.

1. The report itself is too long. I skimmed it.
2. On an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. See the chart below

There are some techniques you can use to take advantage of this knowledge.

1. Use color and bold and highlight and CAPS to emphasize the key phrases that you want the user to see. This also works on your resume. Red is the most “alert” of the colors, however anything with high contrast will do the trick.
2. Use fewer words. Use declarative statements. Eliminate the fluff. CUT CUT CUT. It is critical to say what you want to say without getting verbose. A picture is worth a thousand words.
3. Being repetitive is ok sometimes. Even though it’s more words, if you put your key message in multiple places, then the liklihood of someone reading it goes up. Luck of the skimmer.
4. Use bullets and numbers. Easier to read.

I remember the 2000 primaries.  Al Gore was battling Bill Bradley.  I don’t remember all of the details, but specifically, I remember feeling guilty after the election.  I thought, Bill Bradley would have been a better candidate.

Right now, I am having deja vu.  Is Barack Obama the new Bill Bradley?  Will I feel remorse after the fall and think, “Ahh, Obama would have been a better candidate?”  Of course, he is no Biden, but that this point it is a three way race.    I still will vote for Biden if his name is on the ballot, but if it isn’t then I was thinking, “Who is best?”

On the one hand, I think about the big picture, long term view.  Will Barack Obama be better for African Americans than Hillary Clinton would be for women?  Both are oppressed groups.   On the other hand, I think about the short term election.  Winning is not a sure thing at all.  Iraq is looking a little better.  Who knows where we will bee in a year?  Which candidate has a better chance of winning?  Based on my first law of presidential elections (”Charisma wins”) then I would have to say that Obama has more charisma than Clinton or Edwards.

Well, on the bright side, at least California will not have a winner predetermined. Our vote counts for something.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a plunge this morning.  It got me thinking.  I wonder what the Dow looks like for the last 16 years.  8 years of Bill Clinton and 8 years (almost) of Bush.  I used data/sceenshot from Investor.com

Notice how the Bush years aren’t quite as good as the Clinton years.  Bush was touted as a business man when he was elected.  An energy guy too.  It was thought, incorrectly, that he would be able to implement a sensible energy policy and the Dow would do well.

I think Bush is not incompetent.  I think he did exactly what he wanted to do. He lowered taxes on the wealthy.  He made sure the energy companies had record profits at the expense of everyday people.  He toppled Saddam Hussein, who had insulted the family honor apparently.  He moved the judiciary WAY to the right, especially the supreme court.  We will be paying THAT bill for a long time.

I think Bush did exactly what he wanted to do.  I am disappointed that the Democrats can not find a way to combat his methods.  If it were up to me, which it isn’t, I would send bill after bill to Bush so that he can veto them. I would force the Republicans to do actual filibusters on TV, 24/7.  We should force them to show that they don’t care about anyone except themselves. Dems need to get serious and start fighting for what they believe in.

Oh well, maybe next time.  I just want to live to the day I can be scanned into my nanobot body.

Hillary Clinton is a genius. I never thought of this, but she just pulled out the unbeatable strategy. Crying. Think about it. When a man cries, he is not strong and usually ridiculed. When a woman cries, men immediately give up and woman bond together. I think it’s from some evolutionary gene or something. Crying is the nuclear bomb of arguments for women. I swear, I could be 100% right, but when Katie starts crying, I have to give up.

Hillary was losing New Hampshire. She got on TV and flashed a few tears. BAM! The next thing you know she is a winner. I don’t know how many times she can go to this well, but my guess is that it’s infinite. As long as it’s perceived as genuine and not faking.

Can you imagine her with foreign leaders? She would meet with Putin and say, “Please dismantle your nuclear arsenal”. After refusing, she would start crying and a few minutes later, the Russian leader would say, “OK, OK! Please stop crying, we will do whatever you want!”

I’m telling you, it is the ultimate weapon. Check it out.

She is brilliant in that she didn’t bawl. Just a tear, here or there. Just a hint. She will save the bawling for the general election.

Ok, so now we have a second data point after Iowa.  New Hampshire, which was a dead-even race for Clinton and Obama now has Obama ahead by 13 percentage points.

It is riddiculous to say that New Hampshire was taking into account the “retail campaigning” that happens in Iowa because New Hampshire gets it just the same.  You can’t say that New Hampshire care what “white Iowa voters” thought about Obama because New Hampshire is mostly white as well.  The only explanation for a 13% overnight swing is simple: People like to vote for the winner.

This is the reason they don’t allow the east coast voting to be shown on the west coast is because it has a very real effect on voter preference.  This is simple human psychology.  People can’t be objective if they know what other people are doing.  A person can be objective, but a mass of people can not.

A great book on this subject is “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki.  Crowds can be awesome at deciding things if given the right circumstances.  One of those key pre-requisites is that the people do not know what the other people have said.  The primaries is completely destroying the basis of asking the crowd to make a good decision.  Only by voting on the same day, without knowing the results when you vote can you hope for the voter to understand.

Don’t think this is all about politics.  This is about your web application and any web voting too.  When the user knows the outcome for other users, he/she will mimic that behavior with statistical relevance.  This includes asking the user about which feature is better and what their satisfaction or engagement is.  Even online polls about politics suffer from this.

UX Theory #32: A mass of people voting on anything will be influenced by knowing the outcome of previous voters.  They will mimic the winning behavior by a large statistical margin.

My prediction on the rest of the primaries.  Huckabee will win.  Obama will win.

One hope:  I hope Hillary Clinton stays in the senate for the rest of her career.  I would love to see her as Majority leader.  I would love to see her move to the LEFT.  I thought she should have countered Obama’s “change” message with the following.  “Is change good for change’s sake?  I am interested in PROGRESS.  Change just means different.  Do we want something different or something better?  I want to leave the world better than I found it.  Not just swap one dysfunction for another”.

I think that would have played well.

Primaries suck.  I want to vote for Joe Biden.  A bunch of local yokels in Iowa voted for Barack Obama and now he is “unstoppable”.  Are you kidding me?  Who cares what Iowa thinks?  I don’t!  I want to vote for Biden and he has no right to withdrawn his name so quickly. 

Primaries suck.  The talking heads on TV just blabber on and on about how they are positioned and what kind of money they have or spend or what kind of ads they run.  Who cares if Mike Huckabee has a Christmas commercial?  I understand that its hard to cover news 24/7 on msnbc, but I feel like they NEVER cover news.  It’s just conjecture and punditry.

The talking heads made all these statements about what it means and what the mood of the populace is.  Give me a break.  It’s IOWA!  It’s like 1,000 people TOPS!  Who cares!  Who cares about New Hampshire either?! 

The whole primary thing disenfranchises me as a voter and a progressive.  I hate it.  I want a single day for primaries.  ONE day!  Not 12 weeks.  I want my vote to count!  I don’t give a shit about “retail politics” and how people eat barbaque pork rinds with a deep fried twinkie.  I just want my vote to count.

Will Biden be on the ballot?  If not, I won’t vote for anyone.  If he is, then I don’t care if he withdrew, I am voting for him anyway.

This is terrible design.  Seriously, I consider this a design flaw, like the butterfly ballot in Florida.  It is because of poor UX design that politics suck.

California is a pain in the ass.  They have these propositions and initiatives and special elections ALL THE TIME.  Every single time we have to vote, they ask us questions that we can not answer.  It is terribly designed user experience.  Never ask a question that has significant implications that the user has no way of knowing.  It makes it so that they can not effectively answer the question.  Example:

Prop 92
This proposition is to lower the cost of community college.  I went to community college and really appreciated what it did for me.  I support higher education for low income students and want to do my part to support community colleges in the state.  HOWEVER, it does not say how it will pay for this.  So there are a couple of possibilities.  Raise taxes or cut spending.  If republicans are in charge, I imagine they will cut spending to programs that I love dearly. They will cut public transportation, healthcare, k-12 education and even cut community college support funds.  They will gut the system.  If the democrats are in charge, they will probably raise taxes somewhere else, but I have no idea where.

How can I possibly answer the question?  Why are they asking me in the first place?  We elect legislators to make the laws and decide the spending.  The people are not informed and can not possibly make a wise, complex decision based on 3 paragraphs of information.  My message to California:  STOP ASKING ME!  Go figure it out yourselves!  We elected you to make these decisions, not to pass the buck!

In your application, there is a very real corollary,  Dont ask questions that have implications that the user can not disinguish. Example:

Permanently delete.  Does this mean that all the data can never be recovered?  Does it just hide it?  Are there implications for other items that use this first item as a dependency?

Be sure to give options to the user, but try to figure out a system where the user can undo anything and can make decisions with minimal consequences.  It’s hard, but you can do it.  The user elected you to design the system, not to ask them endless questions.

If Al Gore wins the Nobel prize, he should run for president.  I am convinced that he would win.  The country feels guilty about the 2000 election.  We know Gore won, but we let it slide and let Bush take the prize.  In hindsight, that was a really shitty decision.  The Supreme Court is now packed with right-wing nutjobs.  The country is spewing CO2 like crazy.  The disparity between rich and poor is greater than ever.  We are mired in an unwinable war and are rolling back social programs and civil rights.  I think the country feels guilty and would want to try again with a different decision.  An A/B test of sorts.

The only thing stopping Gore is Gore.  He might not want to try.  People are trying to draft him though like

• http://www.algore.org/
• http://www.draftgore.com/
• http://www.algore04.com/
• http://www.algoresupportcenter.com/

Al’s official site is http://www.algore.com/ and has no mention of running.  I am reminded of when Al D’Amato refused the Supreme Court appointment.  It ended his career.  Sometimes, the timing is right and you have to go for the gold.

I filled out this MSNBC Candidates/Issues Matrix. Looking carefully at the positions of all the candidates, I rated them all.  As I expected, Hillary Clinton is not as progressive as I would like her to be.  Mike Gravel has some good positions, but he seems “a few kb short of a meg” to me.  The guy I was most inline with is Joe Biden.  Joe is the man.  He reminds me alot of Paul Kaplan.

On the other side of the spectrum is Tom Tancredo.  Tom is a bonafide wack-a-doodle.  Nutjob.  Crackhead.   He’s insane.  No seriously.  Really.  Look at his positions.  Are you kidding me?