Bordering on Factual

Yesterday, a cool-looking map showed up on my Facebook feed, shared by a friend; it depicts the North American continent with the historical political boundaries of the native Americans. It listed clear boundaries for separate states of the First Nations: Anasazi, Apache Empire, Arawak, Aztec Empire, Beothuk Empire, Cherokee Soverignty, Cheyenne, Chickasaw, Chilcotin, Chinook, Chumash, Comanche, Cree Federation, Creek, Crow, Dogrib, Flathead, Great Sioux Nation, Haida Gwai, Hopi, Huron Supremacy, Inuit, Iroquois Confederacy, Mayan Empire, Mi’kmaq, Mohican, Navajo, Ojibwa, Olmec Kingdom, Pawnee, Pequot, Pomo, Powhatan, Salish, Shuswap, Slavey, Tlingit, and Ute.

Facebook post of Native American map

I’d never before seen such a clear depiction of the geopolitical boundaries of pre-Columbian America, and it was a stark reminder of how we, as a people, systematically invaded and destroyed a continent of cultured peoples. We wiped away their cultures, their languages, their history, and even the memory of them, leaving only scraps behind, and we protect our current borders of land they used to live on. The American Indian Wars ended in 1924, less than a hundred years ago, but it’s not even part of the American political dialog. And we’ve whitewashed our pogroms against Native Americans, in the same way we’re presently sugar-coating slavery in history courses.

The original person who posted the picture on Facebook also included this commentary,

America before colonization…. I’ve never seen this map in my entire 25 years of formal education. Not in one history book or one lesson. This is not a mistake… Representation matters!!! #NativeHistory #BeforeAmerica

Well said. And others agreed… the post has over 150,000 shares as I write this!

But something smelled wrong to me about the map itself.

Continue reading “Bordering on Factual”

You’re drunk FCC, go home

I just chimed in to the FCC to request that they stop the merger of Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. I don’t know if my voice will make a difference, but I do know that saying nothing will definitely not make a difference.

Here was my statement to the FCC (flawed, I’m sure, but I hope the intent and sentiment is conveyed):

Allowing the merger of Comcast and Time-Warner Cable will dramatically decrease consumer benefits and choice.

Some mergers can be good, allowing struggling companies to reduce losses; in this case, neither Comcast nor Time-Warner Cable is in a situation that needs this merger for financial stability; both companies are currently thriving in the marketplace.

Innovation and an open market for goods and services is in the best interest of the American people. This was clearly shown when the Bell System was broken up January 8, leading to the emergence of advanced competitive services, including cellular phone service, and lower prices. The FCC should take that as a model, and decrease the monopolistic merger of competitors, which decreases this innovation, price competition, and customer choice. Customer service is already notoriously poor at both companies, and decreasing customer choice is likely to make it harder for customers to receive adequate service.

Without competition, Internet providers have little incentive to provide either improved service or lower prices. The US is already widely regarded as having relatively expensive and slow Internet service compared to other industrial nations, and this merger threatens to make that worse.

In addition to the loss of benefits to the consumer, this merger threatens American jobs. When a merger occurs, service departments also merge, and workers lose their jobs. This is especially true when the mergers are in similar industries; some studies have shown an average of 19% job loss, far above the norm of 7.9% when the industries are unrelated. Comcast currently employs 136,000 people; Time-Warner Cable currently employs 51,600 people; if the average job loss takes place, that could mean approximately 35,644 jobs lost, or more conservatively 14,820 jobs, in a still-struggling employment market; many of these will be unskilled labor, which is even harder to resolve. While no laws in the US take into account the effect of job loss on mergers, this is still a factor that can be taken into account by the FCC; laws are only necessary when systemic problems arise in the behavior of key industry players and regulators, and allowing this merger could necessitate the creation of a law that would otherwise be avoided.

Please take the necessary steps to block this merger.

If you are a US citizen, you have until August 25th, 2014 to file a comment. The FCC seems to have gone out of its way to make this difficult, so here are some step-by-step instructions:

  1. Fill out the Free Press petition first just in case. Then, if you want to register your opposition independently…
  2. Go to the FCC  Electronic Comment Filing System page
  3. Enter “14-57” in the Proceeding Number field; you’ll get no immediate confirmation, but this is the code for the “Applications of Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable Inc. for Consent to Assign or Transfer Control of Licenses and Applications”. (Note: this is not arcane at all. That’s just an illusion.)
  4. Fill in all required personal information
  5. Ensure that the Type of Filing field is set to “Comment” (the default)
  6. Write a text document explaining why this is such a bad idea; crib mine if you like, or find a much better rationale, but be sure to be clear in your opposition (or support, if you’re a masochist).
  7. Upload your document using the Choose File button. (That’s right, you can’t just leave a comment in a text area, you have to write a separate document. The FCC seems to accept at least .txt and .doc files.) Add your optional description of the file in the Custom Description, so they know your sentiment even if they don’t open your file (which is pretty likely); I labeled mine “Block Comcast-TWC merger”.

Yay! You live in an arguably democratic country!

A Life in a Day, in 2024









“Hey, Doug, what’s up?”












Invisible Visualization

Last year, I put together a talk called “Invisible Visualization” on making accessible data visualizations. Several people have asked me about it, so I thought I’d write a post about it.

By “accessible”, I mean able to be consumed and understood by people with a variety of sensory needs, including people with visual limitations, cognitive impairments, mobility challenges, and other considerations. I provided a few simple ways to expose the data in SVG images, but mostly I described different constraints and suggested ways of thinking about the problems.

I didn’t want to lecture people about the need for making their content accessible; I wanted to excite them about the possibilities of doing so. It’s great that there are legal regulations addressing the needs of people with disabilities (like the “Section 508” laws here in the US), but that’s not going to empower and motivate developers and designers to want to meet these kinds of design constraints and solve these kinds of technical challenges. I sought to avoid the “threat and guilt” trap that I’ve seen too many accessibility talks fall into.

Continue reading “Invisible Visualization”