random rants about ugly pants

Sports Crazed. Disturbing. Dumbing Down.

2012-01-31T15:40:00.000-08:00

From the NYT, a look at the influence of sports and sports money on higher education:

"In a study published last month as part of the National Bureau of Education Research working paper series, Oregon researchers compared student grades with the performance of the Fighting Ducks, winner of this year’s Rose Bowl and a crowd pleaser in their Nike uniforms in crazy color combinations and mirrored helmets.
“Here is evidence that suggests that when your football team does well, grades suffer,” said Dr. Waddell, who compared transcripts of over 29,700 students from 1999 to 2007 against Oregon’s win-loss record. For every three games won, grade-point average for men dropped 0.02, widening the G.P.A. gender gap by 9 percent. Women’s grades didn’t suffer. In a separate survey of 183 students, the success of the Ducks also seemed to cause slacking off: students reported studying less (24 percent of men, 9 percent of women), consuming more alcohol (28 percent, 20 percent) and partying more (47 percent, 28 percent)."

Every time a touchdown is scored, a boy in the bleachers gets a little dumber. What a depressing finding.

Two Links

2012-01-16T13:09:00.000-08:00

Offering up two insightful, if somewhat depressing, thoughts from Nicholas Carr:

Books That Are Never Done Being Written -- about the malleability of digital books and and the essential end to the era of immutable text we have lived in since Gutenberg, and a blog entry on our current inability to experience anything without sticking some digital filter between ourselves and it.

Happy MLK Jr. Day.

Remember the Dream.

Questions For The Day

2012-01-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

So, after my cursory reading of the morning headlines, I'm left with two simple questions:

Will our obstructionist congress allow Obama to move ahead with his plan to act on consolidating federal bureaucracies, or will they bloviate about the unreasonable extension of executive power, or something of the like?
Now that the state has had to come out and say what we've all known for years --- that PG&E is criminally negligent in its actions, and has been since at least 1956 --- and is looking to ding them for hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, will PG&E cry poverty, and go to the state regulatory commission to request that these costs be passed on to the customers (including those survivors of the deadly 2010 blast which instigated the whole process, of course), or will the State have the balls to demand that the shareholders actually take the downside of their risk for once, and eat the cost the way they should (if capitalism worked the way it is supposed to)?

I'm afraid I'm not too hopeful about the outcome in either case.

Happy Friday, and Happy MLK Jr. Weekend.

Quote For The Day

2012-01-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

"Mitt has the character of a private equity investor: a constant, reptilian assessment of self interest and opportunity."
-Andrew Sullivan, posting to give props to Ron Paul as the "candidate of character and integrity."

Now, I'm not sure about Mitt. But I think Sullivan nails the capitalist ideal dead on.

Call, Speak, Vocalize, Listen.

2012-01-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

This study suggests that there really is a problem with our heavy reliance on texting and other non-voice methods of communication. While it isn't a surprise that there is a cognitive difference between our reactions to a known voice and to a written text from that same person via a digital device, being able to break it down to the level of neuroendocrine response is pretty notable.

In any case, if you're feeling stressed, call your mother --- don't text her.

Gimme Some Money

2012-01-09T16:13:00.000-08:00

A really egregious business model is offered up in this new rapaciously anti-community, anti-consumer, truly Randian even-more-than-the-market-will-bear car service model using "dynamic pricing". The service is called "Uber" -- perhaps a Nietzschean reference -- and it isn't pretty:

Although New Year’s Eve was very profitable for Uber, customers were not happy. Many felt the pricing was exorbitant and they took to Twitter and the Web to complain. Some people said that at certain times in the evening, rides had spiked to as high as seven times the usual price, and they called it highway robbery. Uber’s goal is to make the experience as simple as possible, so customers are not shown their fare until the end of the ride, when it is automatically charged to their credit card.

The NYT blog post on this hints at the evil in the model. I hope this gives pause to such current trands as dynamic parking pricing, and other civic experiments of that ilk. There is a limit to the viability of unabashed greed costumed as market principles.

A Bad, Even Destructive Idea

2012-01-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

....and really great news---for Mitt Romney.

I imagine that Bill Keller's op-ed in the NYT today had Romney's team more gleeful than anything since that picture of the Bain partners steeping their greed hardons in hundred dollar bills.

The idea of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton swapping places as VP and Secretary of State is just about the most destructively bad idea I can think of for the Democrats who live more than 25 miles from Washington DC, and frankly, for the administration in general and for the liberal side of politics in general. Perhaps Keller has too many glittering stars exploding in his eyes to see it, but this would leave us with a VP who is hugely despised by a large swath of the nation, and a Secretary of State who has about as much diplomacy in his actions (think Biden-isms, here, folks) as a late night comic with tourette's.

Oh well. I guess it's just politics.

Brief Thought

2012-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

I have little to say about the irrelevant circus entertainment we were all given by the GOP last night in Iowa, other than this: the Republican voters of that state came down to making a choice between a wealthy, privileged chameleon, and a aggressively activist religious imperialist. They left the libertarian, the hatemonger, and the raft of crazy to fade away for the evening.

But even between the choice of two penny dreadfuls, they could not choose. With a margin of eight votes, I don't think Romney is feeling as big as he likes. And Santorum may be feeling grand, but like the other rapid surges we've seen I expect his will go down in the flames of harsh negative ads, the bright light of the press, and the realization of the non-christianist evangelical crowd that he is a really ugly proposition.

I hope it will be different when it comes to the election, but for now, this horse-race among the GOP hopefuls is painful -- it's a bit like watching your crazy old aunt run her panties up the flagpole.

Quotes For The Day

2011-12-08T10:33:00.001-08:00

First;

"The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows.... We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

And then;

"Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune....Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President, Asst. Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Nobel prize winner, educational reformer, conservationist, and...Republican icon.

Quote For The Day

2011-11-22T09:50:00.001-08:00

See, Ma? Economists really do have a sense of humor!

"...a policy prescription such as taxing height (Mankiw and Weinzierl, 2010) isobviously not socially acceptable because it violates certain horizontal equity concerns that do not appear in basic models."

It's actually a very good paper on optimal taxation models. None of which violate concerns for horizontal equity. The three policy recommendations the authors make won't have the 1% jumping for joy:

Very high earners should be subject to high and rising marginal tax rates on earnings.
The earnings of low-income families should be subsidized, and those subsidies should then be phased out with high implicit marginal tax rates.
Capital income should be taxed.

Econometrics for the people. I like it.

Another Vexatious ADA Lawsuit that Never Should Have Happened

2011-11-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

Our neighborhood can't seem to get a break from this. You'd think there would be more action than "raising business owner awareness" which is the current City strategy, when we continue to have stories like this one:

It began when Roberto received a letter from a customer who claimed that certain features in Roberto’s store violated the ADA. All were minor violations such as a recycling bin placed too close to a door and a pastry case located too close to a counter. Roberto did not realize his store was in violation of the ADA but quickly made the requested changes and notified the customer.
The customer acknowledged that Roberto made the requested changes yet sued anyway and sought nearly $90,000 in damages.
(emphasis added)

They eventually settled -- after more than a year -- for just under $20,000. But here's the thing: the law is written to enable exactly this sort of action. The identification of an issue, notification of the business, and resolution or "reasonable accommodation." So here you have a small business owner following exactly the trajectory the law has demanded, in spirit and letter, and still getting completely screwed.

The only reason to go forward with such action is the pursuit of financial gain, rather than a correction of the problem. And this is like poison to the judicial system, as well as to the small business world. Despite my support for the ADA laws and their intent, and my desire to see as much accommodation made as is possible I have no sympathy, and no respect, for those who file and pursue suits like this one.

Don't Tell Me Libraries Are Obsolete

2011-11-12T11:37:00.001-08:00

Because, you see, it's the last place left where we have a chance to teach some semblance of critical thinking skills, now that we have elided them from the more general educational curriculum:

Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.
But, crucially, she also trains students to assess the credibility of what they find online. For example, she teaches them to analyze the tone of a web page to judge whether it was created by an academic, an advocacy group, or a hobbyist. Students quickly gain the ability to detect if a top-ranked page about Martin Luther King Jr. was actually posted by white supremacists.

Read Thompson's whole piece here. I won't go so far as to say that the rise of information technology is making us stupid; but I will say that it is most certainly allowing us to become less discriminating, less mentally acute, and overall a society of the intellectually lazy and gullible.

2011-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

From a groundbreaking 2009 report on multi-tasking:

Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set.

And now, the author's 2011 ruminations on the same topic:

Historically, when someone tapped on our shoulder, they were necessarily physically next to us. So they knew if we were already holding a conversation with someone else, and could adjust their behavior, or withhold their request. We, in turn, felt compelled to respond to the tap on the shoulder when it came. But now, the incoming chat message, the phone call, and the television announcer, all tap on our shoulder in a sense, trying to get our attention. They are entirely oblivious to each other, and solicit our attention as if they were the only ones. We, on the other hand, feel the same obligation to respond. It may be that our social norms and instincts are not scaling at the rate of communication channels. In this way, media may have brought about a new tragedy of the commons - by aggressively trying to grab our undivided attention, they have threatened the very notion of undivided attention.

I think the moral is that we desperately need to begin exercising more control over our focus and our interactions. Shut off the iPhone. Turn off the twitter feed. Read a book. Have an uninterrupted conversation with the person or people right next to you.

This is not Ludditry: this is retraining ourselves to think with focus in an age dedicated to the disruption of that thought.

(h/t Sullivan)

Living in the End Times

2011-11-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Great. First we have Citizens United, and the reification of the concept of corporate personhood, where a fictional entity made up of the interests of multiple individuals is granted the same positive rights as each of those constituent persons, but none of the responsibilities, moral hazard or downside risk that comes with those rights for any single person. Now we have, at the opposite end of the spectrum, this brilliant bill being egged along by Haley Barbour in the great state of Mississippi, which will "define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights".

I'm waiting for the first pregnant woman to speak on behalf of her fertilized egg for its inalienable right to purchase a gun.

Just How Low Have We Sunk?

2011-11-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

After the Second World War, we introduced the GI Bill (the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944"). While it grew over the years, in its origin it was a response to the return of our military forces to civilian life after a devastating conflict. For the returning vets, it offered up a college education, a year of unemployment compensation and loans to buy homes and start businesses. It altered the course of millions of lives, and spurred an unprecedented era of economic expansion for this country.

Now, after 9 years of unending war overseas, and thousands of lives lost, and irreparable change in our social fabric from the "war on terror", we have another generation of military coming home. This time to an economy more depressed and less inviting than any since the mid 1930s.

Now, as then, we have the opportunity to use this challenge to our advantage, and create a new "GI Bill" or at the least massively invigorate the existing measures, to both create a means of welcoming home those troops on whom we have placed such a wretched burden over the last decade, as well as to recharge an ailing economy with an influx of highly trained and capable workers.

Unfortunately, it seems the best we can do is the “Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011”:

It would offer a tax credit to companies that hire out of work veterans and increase an existing credit that already goes to companies that hire veterans with service-related disabilities.

A tax credit for hiring companies? I'm sorry, but that's pathetic.

A Dire Metaphor for Our Times

2011-11-01T13:12:00.000-07:00

Since I was a teenager piddling away my spare hours in my public high school's art studio classes, I have looked at Cooper Union as a beacon of light in a sea of ever-darkening waves. For more than a century, the school has stood as an example of the ideal of free education for any who are qualified, regardless of class, race, status, birth or belief. But now, through a mixture of poor management, bad luck, ill-timing and the general malaise of our times, Cooper Union is considering reinstating a tuition fee. Not for everyone, and not in certainty. But for an institution which weathered the Great Depression and two world wars without fees, to come to this point is a sad reminder of how far we have strayed from the dreams of the past: of an enlightened, educated population without the barriers of class or commerce holding back those who showed promise and desire. Of a literate and dynamic civic population, steeped in the wells of critical thinking, creativity, and applied intellect.

In a way, Cooper Union has stood as an educational antithesis of the fallacies of libertarian theories; of proof of the value of a social contract which demands balance against the open markets and self-interest.

We need more places like this, not fewer.

Why Herman Cain Might Be The GOP Nominee

2011-10-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

In the words of Andrew Sullivan:

Perry is simply too dumb and lazy to be president. Romney too transparently opportunist for a purist party. Paul is disqualified because of foreign policy. Bachmann is a programmed bonkers-bot. Santorum is a frothy substance whose views of the world are frozen in place sometime around 1986. Gingrich is an asshole who could never win the presidency, and even those who like his permanent smirk/snarl understand that. Huntsman might as well be Al Sharpton, because of his views on climate change, gays and because of his working for Satan. No wonder Cain has a shot.

Thankfully, I suspect that winning the GOP nomination this election is a bit like winning 4th place in an Olympic medal competition: you might have done really well, but no one is going to give a damn the next day, and someone else is walking away with the gold.I have no qualms at all with Herman Cain walking away with 4th place. After the Sarah Palin as VP debacle, even a blowhard shallow-minded pizza CEO whose knowledge of global affairs and statecraft runs the gamut from A to B could be a step up.

Pace, Ambrose Bierce

2011-10-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

Provided, without comment, other than a small, stifled chuckle....

A Republican-English Dictionary

Your Daily Dose of Crazy

2011-09-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of TPM and dear, dear Michele Bachmann: It's a brand new Cuban missile crisis, courtesy of.....Hezbollah.You can't make this stuff up. I'm going to purchase my tin foil hat now.

Seriously?

2011-09-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

I mean, really?

Wasn't the grinding down of eBay and the failed run for ~~overlord~~ governor of California enough?

And HP: wasn't one high profile female CEO disaster plenty for now?

HP Names Meg Whitman CEO

On Palestine

2011-09-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Today, as the Palestinians present their formal request for statehood at the UN, I am struck by the disconnect in the language being used: If you listen to the US and the Israelis, they speak about "peace" --- that peace is only achievable thru negotiation. If you listen to the Palestinians and the Egyptians, they speak of independence and freedom:

“There are small countries in the world that have gained their freedom and independence but we still haven’t got ours,” Mr. Abbas told his guests. “So we are going to demand this right.”

It seems to me that this is a major disconnect, and that the US has failed to broker the gap between. Peace has little to do with freedom, just as electoral democracy has little to do with stability (cf. the election of Hamas in Gaza). If the US and Israel are trying to shift the frame of the discussion, then they are losing that battle. Most of the world sees independence as the keystone here, not an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict.I think it a cruel historical irony that in this situation the US is in the role of imperial Britain, and Palestine somewhat in that of the North American colonies -- and Israel in the role of Mandatory Britain, and the Palestinians in the role of the fledgling Jewish State. And while it is in our diplomatic interest to maintain an effective brokering position to promote peace, we frankly have failed to do so lately, and it comes as no surprise that the Palestinians are fed up with the failure of talking, and wish for exactly what Israel desired in 1947: recognition, self-determination, and the freedom to govern their own destiny.No, it's not peace. But perhaps at this point we are overrating both the value and possibility of such a thing in such a place. Independence can be granted. Peace will have to be learned.

brainstorm

2011-09-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Idea for a great new tech gadget:the iRoll.

Update, en passant

2011-09-20T18:21:00.000-07:00

Well, between travels in Europe, multiple job craziness, and a pretty overwhelming schedule of late, I haven't had a chance to comment on Congress, the President's economic proposal, the insanity of the local hubbub over our upcoming mayoral election, or anything else for that matter. But in the meanwhile, if you want some random mutterings from me, please look over to the left of this page and click on a couple of my Kindle stories, and have a read. And maybe by the time you're done, I'll have a fresh rant for you right here!

In A World Awash With Evil Lawyering....

2011-09-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

...We get this small crumb of genius. Texas Federal Judge Sam Sparks invites his annoying litigators to a kindergarten party to learn the law.Like I said: genius.

..and if you thought it was getting better

2011-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

...you were wrong. Here's a depressing report from IPS on the intersection between grossly overpaid executives and corporate tax evasion:

Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging - IPS

Don't read it if you want to feel good about corporate America. This is all about the negatives of our model of captitalism: the perverse incentive to focus on internal profit rather than external production.

Yes, it makes me angry.

Efficiency?

2011-08-31T12:10:00.000-07:00

Apparently, we can cut the boarding time for airplanes in half. Easily. And now it's been tested and proven.

I'll fly on the first airline which takes up the Steffen method described in this BBC article. But I suspect it's far more likely we continue to have queues that file, block by block, inefficiently, into our flying metal cigar tubes.

Great News

2011-08-31T11:00:00.001-07:00

The DOJ, in a fit of clear thinking, has filed to block the AT&T / T-Mobile takeover.

And yes, as proposed it is a takeover, not a merger, at least from the consumer perspective. Nothing of T-Mobile would be left: not their price structures, not their services, not their network bands.

This is a positive move during a very bleak moment for consumer rights, and I applaud the decision makers who have come down on the side of the American people.

Coolest. Music Video. Ever.

2011-07-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

OK Go has a new interactive video out that is built entirely on the new HTML5 web standard, and it is genius. It only works in the Chrome Browser, so fire up chrome and go here to watch and hear one of my favorite pop bands do something amazing. Seriously. In comparison, just watching it normally (below) is like eating soup with a fork.

A Question For All Republicans

2011-07-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

A serious question: with most everyone in congress acting like spoiled bullies and petulant 6 year olds, do any conservatives really believe that the current tactics and actions of their elected officials are in the best interests of the nation, short term or long term? Because from my own vantage point, which while informed by my socialist-tinged past, is primarily a centrist one, I have a hard time seeing that any actions currently happening in Washington are anything but trouble for us.

In the short term, we are fraying the social fabric of the majority of the country; on the long term, does anyone really believe that any legislative action taken by this (or any) congress can actually be expected to continue to be held to force in the way it was originally intended 20-30 years down the road? Because that is effectively what the GOP is demanding.

Like trickle-down economics, like tax reduction causing massive increases in economic growth: it has never happened before, and there is no reason to expect it to happen now.

Independence Day's a-comin'

2011-07-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

And while Jim DeMint's new book on the 2-year history of the Tea Party is due to hit bookstores tomorrow, and while I appreciate the unsubtle direct relation he makes between the current radical movement and the radical religious upheavals of past American history --- more people should think about this, and realize that we're not seeing a simple political movement but a really radical, reactionary, religious uprising with a political mask --- may I suggest some lighter holiday reading fare:

Click Here For Shameless Self-Promotional Plug!

Seriously though, whatever you decide to read, enjoy the holiday weekend.

The Words Will Make You Out N Out

2011-07-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

I always have been intrigued by the challenges of bringing roundabouts to US roadways, and am happy to see some headway. But I never thought that the reason we were, as a nation, so oppositional to their use was that they were too jesuitical:

"Behind the wheel, we're less likely to abide by an orderly pattern of merging that, though faster for the group, may require an individual to slow down or, God forbid, yield."

Americans tend to be orthogonal in their thinking and behaviour, he says.

"We like right angles, yes and no answers, Manichean explanations. Roundabouts require more subtlety than we're used to."

When Balls Meets Borderline Ineptitude

2011-06-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

So a Nigerian man boards a Virgin America flight in NYC bound for California with an expired boarding pass with someone else's name and an expired ID that doesn't match, and no one notices. But when he is caught trying the same thing a few days later, I gotta hand it to him:

Noibi spent several days in Southern California before returning to the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday, when he tried to board a Delta flight bound for Atlanta. The FBI said he again presented an expired boarding pass and had no valid identification.

A search of his bag found 10 expired boarding passes, none of them with his name.

Noibi was then arrested.

10 expired boarding passes? Damn. Balls of brass to try that. And as for TSA's theater of faux-protection: just what were all y'all up to there?

In Passing

2011-06-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order, and while I continue to disagree with much of his philosophy, and grind my teeth when he contradicts himself with sweeping grandiose (and unfootnoted) ideological statements just pages after presenting strong evidence for its opposite....despite this, he is still brilliant, and every single person with libertarian leanings, or an overly fond love of Hayek, should take a moment and read chapter 17: The Origins of the Rule of Law.

And if, perchance, you have a more liberal take on political economy than libertarian, this book will challenge your preconceptions, and force you to think about the things you think you already know. Which is, of course, the definition of a good read.

#FreeMarketFail

2011-06-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

We've given corporations the same rights as individuals, but we've allotted them none of the governance we demand for individuals. This creates the perverse incentives we see being abused int he so called free market today, even in mainstream areas where perverse incentives are not necessarily built into the nature of the market, as they are in health care.

If we find a rapist, we punish him. If we see someone working a a pimp or a trafficker, we throw them into jail.

In a lovely write up in the NY Times, we now have a view into a recent report on executive pay levels. It looks not at the absolute figures of absurd compensation, but at that compensation as a measure of a company's overall output. And frankly, if I were a shareholder reading this report, my first thought would be that these executives are raping the company, and acting as pimps who demand their "perks" and cut of profits, working their prostitutes into the grave.

The report, for instance, compared earnings per share with cash pay — just salary and bonus, if there is one. It identified 24 companies where cash compensation last year amounted to 2 percent or more of the company’s net income from continuing operations.

Topping this list is Allergan Inc., the health care concern whose top executives received, after taxes, an estimated $2.6 million in salaries last year. That amounted to 50 percent of what the company earned from continuing operations, the report said.

That's just one example of many.

I don't see a mad rush to change things coming from this report, however much I would wish it. I just think that the longer we allow dysfunction to rule our world, and rule the organizations to which we cede so much of our liberty and polity, we are going to see nothing but a faster and faster rush toward towering inequity, rampant greed, and a predilection to socially destructive forces becoming entrenched in our system of governance.

Uh-Mazing

2011-06-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Wow. I hadn't much followed the Citi security breach, but the NYT has an article detailing it, and Oh. My God. They were hacked with an exploit that I was protecting against back in 1999, a security hole so deep and wide and obvious that it is truly terrifying to think that in 2011 a major banking institution could be caught with its pants down on this.

In the Citi breach, the data thieves were able to penetrate the bank’s defenses by first logging on to the site reserved for its credit card customers.

Once inside, they leapfrogged between the accounts of different Citi customers by inserting various account numbers into a string of text located in the browser’s address bar. The hackers’ code systems automatically repeated this exercise tens of thousands of times — allowing them to capture the confidential private data.

The method is seemingly simple, but the fact that the thieves knew to focus on this particular vulnerability marks the Citigroup attack as especially ingenious, security experts said.

One security expert familiar with the investigation wondered how the hackers could have known to breach security by focusing on the vulnerability in the browser. “It would have been hard to prepare for this type of vulnerability,” he said.

First, these "security experts" should be sacked , tarred and feathered, and laughed out of the industry if the quotes are accurate and in context. This exploit was the antithesis of "ingenious" or "hard to prepare for"; a basic rule for any web developer --- let alone a banking ecommerce security expert --- is that you never expose unencrypted security information in the query string (those letters & numbers tacked on the website URL), and if you do, you do not use them as the primary security key. Use cookies and other unexposed keys to secure a unique session for a user.

There is no way for an institution to protect completely against dedicated hackers: any wall that can be built can also be cracked. But Citi here is guilty of the worst sort of sloppiness and disregard for its customers. It is at a level where one suspects either willfulness or utter stupidity, or both.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2011-06-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just this morning, we were discussing the weird and offensive PR campaign for San Francisco's weird and offensive attempt to outlaw male circumcision. And now in this morning's paper in a related blurb, I find the world's most hilarious job title:

Jena Troutman, a lactation consultant and the mother of two boys, had been leading the charge to gather signatures to qualify a circumcision ban for Santa Monica's 2012 ballot. But she said she was scrapping her efforts because of intense media focus on the religious component of circumcision.

Lactation Consultant? Seriously? Does any woman on the face of the earth really need a consultant to help her along with what humans have been doing since...well, since before we were even human? What's next? Morning Post-Coffee Bowel Movement Advisor? Yawning Coach? Blinking Assistant?

Sheesh. I was going to write something about the whole circumsion thing, but now I'm not sure I can get back to that sane and rational happy place where I can avoid choking on my coffee in bemused and almost fearful dismay at the displays of 9 kinds of crazy that I'm seeing.

My Professional Life, In A Nutshell

2011-06-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

xkcd nails it yet again:

Birthday

2011-05-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I have made it to the doorstep of another year of life; As I find myself unexpectedly rushing toward the end of my first half-century, I think back on my adolescent suspicion that I'd never make it past 23 years, and I'm a little bemused. And impressed. And having this day ushered in with well wishing friends and family and loved ones is a benison indeed.

And yet, walking across this threshold (as I must, we all must, there is no stopping time) is somehow so daunting, I suppose it's just "excelsior!", and time to tale the garbage out, and do the dishes.

(Before enlightenment: chop wood, fetch water. After enlightenment: chop wood, fetch water.)

Do me a favor: read poetry.

Teaching That Matters

2011-05-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

In the NYT today, there is a little article which, couched in the context of teaching current events in an AP class in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, actually provides a subtle and scathing critique of the current state of High School education in the US, and re-emphasizes for anyone who might have forgotten just what value there is in a good teacher with the guts to actually teach beyond (and even against) the standard rote requisite. A key swipe at the status quo:

When Mr. Doyle began his career 25 years ago, schools taught current events. But standardized testing and canned curriculums have squeezed most of that out of public education. The A.P. history course is a yearlong race to master several centuries’ worth of facts that may or may not turn up on the exam in May.

“A lot of A.P. is memorizing timelines,” explained Anna Hagadorn, who memorized enough last year to earn a top score of 5.

Even the College Board, which makes so much money selling SAT and A.P. tests that it can pay its president, Gaston Caperton, $872,061 a year, has acknowledged that its A.P. American history exam needs to be revamped. Mr. Caperton has promised by 2013 to deliver a new test that will do a better job of fostering analytic skills.

Doyle's response to the testing bloat is to teach his students 5 weeks of current affairs curriculum on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The author of the article notes that this learning does not indoctrinate, nor persuade politically: it merely does what good teaching is supposed to do: inform, engage, and draw students into the process of grappling with the nature of what they know on one hand, what they do not know on the other, and being equipped intellectually to tell the difference --- and to move information and experience from the latter hand to the former.

This is important, despite being a buried lede in the local area pages of the paper, because it speaks to a larger theme: if we care about the world we live in, and the country we live in, and the culture we take part in, then we cannot, and must not allow one another to act as bystanders while the forces of inertia or fear or reactionary politics or religious zealotry slowly dismember the underpinnings of what allows us our place in this weave of life. There's a lot of stupid out there, and a lot of crazy, and we are more and more driven to perceive our passive actions (online, at home, wherever) as the replacement for action. And this is a recipe for disaster.

Just knowing about a war is not the same as understanding what that war means to you, and your world.

Sending a Facebook note to someone is not the same as sharing a conversation with them over coffee.

Memorizing dates and timelines is not the same as learning to think.

Post-Rapture Insanity

2011-05-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

With this delightful morsel of insanity picked up by FP's Joshua Keating, I'm left....well, I'm just left.

"The real bin Laden died years ago after receiving treatment in American hospitals for his various illnesses," ...."His [bin Laden] body was frozen and kept in storage for a date when it would be of advantage to the United States to use it for maximum advantage"...

I am so glad that the world has ended; I don't think I could put up with much more silliness like that.

A Little Self Indulgence, Please

2011-05-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

My birthday is coming up in a matter of days. I will be all of 45 years of age come next saturday. What does that mean? I've no idea. I've also no idea how one should celebrate a midlife milestone in the midst of a mental landscape that sees a great deal of challenge --- a landscape of vast deserts and rocky plains --- but very little in the way of celebratory oases. So: what to do? A quiet dinner? A cocktail party? A living wake? A bottle of '61 Lafite and a straw? I really have no idea.

Suggestions welcome. Let me know what this marker on the lifeline continuum deserves.

And another Thing....

2011-05-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Queen is in Dublin, the first reigning British monarch in 100 years to visit the Republic. And yes, there's all sorts of crazy to be found in the papers today. But after much deep thought, I truly feel that exploding watermelons has to win some sort of prize.

Don't Like

2011-05-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

And with one word, a new low is reached in social networking (and wrongheaded baby naming) history:

Facebook inspires Israeli couple to name baby 'Like'

Luddite Literature

2011-05-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

There is something that to me is strangely soothing, calming and sane about writing (and reading) poetry which is not meant to be slammed, staged, performed and woot-wooted once finished. Poetry which is in its totality not only words spoken but words put on a page, and seen on paper just as much as heard --- whether in the mind's ear or out loud. The rhythms and cadences of the written poem, and of the written poem recited, are something which I can neither pinpoint in their nature nor really want to. I can contrast them with most of what is considered poetry today: what you'll hear at slams and most performances, which is all great stuff, but a different (I believe) category and genre of writing.

The poetry of measured internal cadence, of line and meter, of lyric and epic, of image and imagination. Words on a page that leap out at you with more force than they appear to carry; emotional impact which is more than the summ of its parts, and not because of the brilliant delivery, but because of the resonance of the words, the words, the words...

Yes, I've got more poems out for those who indulge. And yes, they are small, and lyric, and I can only hope that at time they strive to reach a level of meaning and impact like that which I describe above. But only you can decide that.

Happy Birthday, Old Grey Donkey

2011-05-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's Eeyore's birthday today. He is 140 years old, and continues to look not a day over 85.

If I have a literary icon, talismanic hero, or shameful mirror image, it is this guy.

Three cheers for the Old Grey Donkey!

The Value Of Torture

2011-05-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

I am aghast that once again the nation is engaged in the wrong discussion about the wrong problem. Suddenly we have the debate again of Team Cheney/Rice ("Torture works! It gave us the information we needed to get Osama!") and Team Moore/MoveOn/HuffPo ("Torture doesn't work! All it gets is lies and disinformation!"). And it makes me sick, because both those arguments effectively accept the legitimacy of the act itself: the conscientious applied torture of another human being.

It doesn't matter whether torture might provide valuable information: robbing a bank provides valuable funds, but we don't accept it as morally or legally legitimate. It makes no difference what someone might say after being waterboarded 183 times. Or once. The point is that we, as a people and as a nation, have a choice to either uphold our ideals, or debase them utterly. There is no middle ground here: you can't "sorta kinda" torture someone. It's all or nothing, just as murder is all or nothing.

So we have that choice: uphold our ideals, or debase them utterly. By choosing to accept the current basis of discussion --- "does torture work" rather than "is torture right" --- we have started down the uglier of those two paths.

I've said this all before. I'll keep saying it. We are the sum of our actions, and if we choose to accept and practice actions which are degrading, inhuman, and immoral, then we too become as degraded, inhuman, and immoral as the acts themselves.

It's not a slippery slope, folks: it's a sheer precipitous cliff.

The abrupt stillbirth of martyrdom?

2011-05-02T09:41:00.001-07:00

Shot in the head.

Buried at sea.

Is this how the war will end?

Bin Laden Is Dead

2011-05-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

BBC reports. Obama is supposed to be making a statement in moments.

This is very strange feeling news. Both enormous, and weirdly inconsequential.

further... Listening to Obama speak now. This is an astonishing moment. Hearing the president take personal responsibility for this action, was just...remarkable.

further... Has it really been ten years? It feels as though we've been at war forever...."Justice has been done". So says the president. And he is right.

further... "we can do whatever we set our minds to"; it's both a confirmation of American exceptionalism, and a subtle repudiation of the failures of the last decade. Bravo, Mr. President.

Random Thoughts

2011-04-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Timothy Dalton wasn't a bad Bond; but he wasn't that good, either.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison? Pure genius.

There are good martinis and bad martinis, but there is no such thing as a 'meh' martini.

Occasionally I've dreamt in black & white, but my nightmares are always technicolor.

As you get older, there is less and less room for 'maybe'.

There is no such thing as Equality

2011-04-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

If you have any personal sense of social justice, then you too will likely find this document (pdf) to which Krugman links today to be the most depressing thing you read about the current state of economic inequality in America today. It's the IRS publication summarizing just what the top 400 wealthiest taxpayers actually receive in income, and what they contribute in taxes.

If you thought you understood just how much wealth is concentrated at the very top of the pyramid these days, think again: it's worse than that, whatever you thought "that" was. And when you look at the trend --- the publication traces it since 1992 --- it's even more disheartening. In most cases, there has been a ten-fold increase in the concentration of wealth, and a reduction by 50% or more in the amount of tax paid on that wealth.

And Michelle Bachmann thinks it appropriate to compare the current tax burden to the Holocaust.

The disconnect we have between reality, morality, and politics continues to astonish me.

Call Me Foolish

2011-04-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

But this news makes me sad: we have just seen the end of the twilight for typewriters, and have begun their long, long night.

I plan on stocking up black and red ribbon for my still-marvelous and entirely functional L.C. Smith & Corona machine, with its lustrous burgundy lacquer job permanent aroma of newsrooms past, and keeping at least that one dinosaur alive, for those days when the power is out and the cell towers are down.

Ideology, Again

2011-04-22T11:12:00.001-07:00

It even affects those who actively struggle against it. In this post by Andrew Sullivan, on health care cost containment, and the reality that a "free" market solution simply doesn't exist for it, states emphatically --- in the face of empirical proof otherwise ---

"I don't want to believe this"

...and there you have the problem.

Despite proof contrary to cherished beliefs -- in this case that there are market solutions to all problems, and that conservative thinking and rational individualism are always the best of all possible outcomes -- we struggle to ignore facts and hold onto faith. Not because we disbelieve what we are shown, but because we don't like it. And we don't like to be wrong when being so subtly (or not so subtly) alters the very basis for how we percieve ourselves within the universe.

To see what is in front of your nose in indeed a constant struggle. And one that requires humility, and flexibility.

A Tool is only as smart as its user

2011-04-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

An interesting case in point: apparently this business owner is a bit wiser than the speed camera company, and the local police:

For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos - taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp - creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.

Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.

So far the judges have agreed.

"Smart" Phones?

2011-04-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, they are cool. Yes, they do lots of stuff. But....Smart? It's a misnomer that falls squarely in the middle of a problematic issue in our current discourse on technology, and intelligence, and knowledge.

Let me back up a minute, and mention a few things that bring me to this topic. First, there's been some chatter online about blowback from our incessant checking of our mobile accessories, to the point where rudeness in person has become acceptable behavior. On this topic I'm with the commentator from SXSW: if I'm taking the time and making the effort to engage with you face à face, then please: stop checking your facebook feed for the time it takes to have a conversation. Just because we are amidst a tidal wave of ADD-enhanced distraction, that doesn't mean that the basic tenets of politeness vs. rudeness have changed.

Along with this, the recent discovery that your iphone is tracking your whereabouts. All the time. Without your knowledge, and with the potential for disclosure of that information to pretty much anybody.

Finally, after seeing the very interesting and entertaining (but in my opinion flawed) theater piece Wirehead, and listening to the President of the Singularity Institute discuss his prognostications for tech and AI over the next 30 years, I am amazed at the conflations we are so apt to make right now between the quality of human intelligence, and the quantity of tools for summarizing and processing data.

Look, technology creates tools. It doesn't enhance intelligence. We certainly make more and more powerful tools, in less and less space, that operate more and more quickly, BUT...the qualitative difference between a calculator and an intellect still remains. Turing tests get harder and harder, but still are unable to cross the barrier of moral sense and idiosyncratic, multi-contextual emotive responses.

When I hear from a very smart person that in 30 years computers will be "smarter" than people, I wince. Because they are measuring a qualitative value by quantitative measures. By those measures computers are already "smarter" than humans. They can calculate more, faster, and more accurately. BUT...they can't determine if a result is morally of value, or if 8 year old boys will find humor in the results, or even if there will be greater value by not providing a full answer swiftly --- and yet these are exactly the sort of concepts that in truth define intelligence and awareness.

So, your smartphone: is it smart because it is 300 times smaller than the machine required to do the same activities 30 years ago? Or is it actually just enabling a shorter attention span, and a fraying of existing non-virtual social fabrics?

A tool is only as useful as its user is wise in using it.

The Tail Wagging The Ideology

2011-04-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the problem with fervent belief: it tends to blind us to what's actually going on around us. When a person is utterly convinced of their own ideological bias --- Objectivism, free market, socialism, conservative Christianism, Orthodox Judaism, white supremacy, black supremacy, free love, authoritarianism, whatever --- if you have a preconceived set of notions about what is important, and what the outcomes of your actions will be, then you will, guaranteed, miss what is actually going on around around you. Because if anything in this life is certain, other than death and taxes, it is that the Law of Unintended Consequences is king.

Paul Krugman has a blog post today implicitly illustrating this bracing concept. His example, the cost of prescription drugs in the market model of Medicare-D vs. costs in the nationalized model of the VA, is exemplary in illustrating why so many folks on the far right side of the fence are still touting a solution that has already proven to be the poorer of two options.

Obama called for using Medicare’s purchasing power to reduce drug costs; Paul Ryan, in his ~~hissy fit~~ response, held Medicare Part D — which specifically denies Medicare the ability to bargain — as an example of the cost savings that can be achieved through privatization

But you see, Medicare-D doesn't work as well as the VA model. It just doesn't. It costs a lot more, and does less to control those costs. But Ryan is already convinced that market forces will always provide the better solution. So when faced with the reality that the VA in its non-market, socialized approach, has costs which are 40% lower, he does the only thing he can do: ignore reality, and press harder for what he knows must be right. And when I say convinced, I mean conviction in the most religious sense.

There is no difference between political ideology and religious faith when approached this way; if I suddenly had incontrovertible proof that there was no afterlife, I doubt that many religious people would simply shrug and stop believing.

Ideological beliefs must be approached less as universal dictates and more as moral guides. When your beliefs are countered with a reality that sings a different song, you need to reconsider your approach, or face the wrath of heaven.

Moment For Today

2011-03-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

Nothing like Harry the Hipster, Betty Boop, and a little Ovaltine to make the day just a wee bit brighter:

Breaking News

2011-03-30T11:56:00.001-07:00

California GOP adamantly against the right to vote!

Seriously though: this feels like the most absurdly self-destructive move a political body has made here in a while. And they've made quite a few over the last few years. But refusing to allow the people the opportunity to vote on a vital issue, even if to only voice our solid displeasure....it reeks of paternalism, irrationality, fear and poor politicking. Refusing to allow the vote, demanding a new laundry list of silliness including funding for county fairs (?!?!), and then blaming the unions?

Somehow this smacks of awfulness of a level that says the state really is screwed, and even the best efforts of governor Brown are going to fall short.

Thinking

2011-03-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

First: I think that the intervention in Libya is wrong. Not because we shouldn't be involved, but because I believe there was too little effort made to twist the arms of the Arab League in terms of real commitment; and while there are reasons for Libya being of concern, so is Yemen. So is Bahrain. This might be the only path, but I don't think we are walking the right line along it.

Second: I can't even begin to speak on the tragedy in Japan; the nuclear issues are a distraction from the real horror of more than 18,000 now listed as dead from the earthquake and tsunami. Somehow that is far more of an immediate horror than the need for people to drink shelf-stable milk for a few months until the cleanup of the reactors is complete.

Finally: The AT&T/T-Mobile merger announced yesterday is going to be a consumer catastrophe, and bodes ill not just for the telecom industry, but for tech innovation, market competition and the hope that after 2008 something mattered more than the short term profit for shareholders of megafirms.

Breaking the Silence

2011-03-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

So I haven't said much here lately; it's not due to the stunning tidal wave of events overtaking North Africa and the Middle East which, quite honestly, I didn't expect could happen. It's not that I don't have anything to say about the craptastic union busting going on under the mask of "budgetary conservatism" in Wisconsin (and Ohio, and Indiana). But here's the deal: I've been distracted.

By pie.

My first public venture into baking (at least since I taught some basic cooking courses in Santa Cruz back in the early 90s) is happening this week, with the presence of 3141 Pies at the New Taste Marketplace in San Francisco. So despite the world turning upside down, what little of my brain that my day job has not consumed has been subdivided between my work with the SF Playhouse, and preparing pie recipes. Also, trying to relax and allow myself to succumb to the twitterdom that is requisite these days for getting the word out.

So, as of today, I'll be trying to be more conscientious about not only ranting my thoughts, but keeping you up to date on the pie situation.

I Give Up

2011-01-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

When Tim Pawlenty, a state Governor and viable candidate for US President says apologetically to Jon Stewart, comedian and TV personality, at the end of their subtly contentious interview, "your brain is too complex" ---- I know that we're doomed.

Watch the interview. At first I thought Pawlenty was being evasive and obtuse, but after that last comment, I think perhaps he really just doesn't understand what the hell is going on. And that --- for him, for us, for the people of Minnesota --- is a tragedy. The inability to dissociate content from context, to extrapolate from the specific to the general, the overarching lack of all the intellectual skills one would expect from a leader --- or a salesman, even --- is astonishing for someone at his level.

And again, I wonder: why must we now look almost solely to our satirists for rational responses to our condition?

Incredibly Cool

2011-01-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

Literally: an orchestra made of glacier ice.

And in an effort to not have my head explode with the inability of so many right now to understand the ramifications of their words, I will say little on the tragedy in Tucson; only that one of the choices we face when given liberty, and freedom, and the right to free speech, is to choose our words wisely, or else discover what evil hides in the corners of our world in which we care not to look.

When "Politically Correct" means "Just Plain Wrong"

2011-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Samuel Clemens must be writhing in his grave:

Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in "Huck Finn" and four times in "Tom Sawyer." He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those "which people praise and don't read."

"It's such a shame that one word should be a barrier between a marvelous reading experience and a lot of readers," Gribben said.

Sadly, it isn't the word that is the barrier, it's the profound lack of context that too much of our nation rejoices in when it comes to understanding our own history and literature. As the other Twain scholar in the article notes, "If we can't do that in the classroom, we can't do that anywhere." Frankly, I'm not sure that we teach Twain solely for people to get a "marvelous reading experience" --- although that is certainly one of the benefits, and I am happy that when I was reading Twain in school, my teachers were able to address quite directly and baldly the issues of race and class and prejudice as they are seen in the text, as well as the text in its historical context, and what it means to read it now.

I somehow have a hard time seeing that happen when "nigger" is transformed to "slave", and "Injun" to "Indian". The word is the point. Replacing it is the same as taking a 3,000 calorie patty of ground fatty beef along with overly sugary bread, chemically stabilized cholesterol-laden sauces, deep-fried potatoes, and a triple-sized sugary soda drink, adding a plastic breakable toy, and declaring it a "Happy Meal".

Happy New Year, Mr. ATT Repair Guy!

2010-12-27T10:13:00.000-08:00

So today, after years of on again off again landline and DSL issues --- mainly horrific static on the line whenever it rains, and disruption of DSL whenever the voice line engages --- the AT&T repair guy showed up today (four days early), and was able to do what no other AT&T guy has done for me before.

I mean, yes, he cleared up the trouble, and my line now is crystal clear (for now); more importantly, he diagnosed the cause--- which has eluded everyone who AT&T has sent out over the last 12 years.

It's not my equipment. It's not my splitter. It's not the wiring in my walls.

The lead pipe that carries all the twisted pairs from the splice box in our building's basement and out to the telephone pole on our street corner, that pipe is apparently as old as our building (90 years or more). And that lead pipe has a crack or seam or leak in it, somewhere on it's length as it climbs the telephone pole outside. And my twisted pair carrying my voice and data lines is apparently the one that has been catching all the incoming moisture.

So, now I am attached to a new pair, and the line is clear, but since my repair guy is internal wiring, and the pole is only dealt with by the external wire work group, it is likely only a matter of time (and weather) until another trouble ticket will need to be filed.

But in the meantime, thank you, Mr. AT&T Repair Guy. Hearing a dial tone rather than static is a lovely little gift ---- however ephemeral.

In Case You Were Wondering....

2010-11-25T22:39:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting here in the sunshine, the morning after Thanksgiving, in a pleasant house on a hillside in the Egkomi neighborhood of Nicosia, on the island of Cyprus. It is a strange but pleasant place, with the constant reminder of a war-torn past. Orange trees dot the urban landscape and within the old city walls a bustle of pedestrian currents run through the streets from the walls to the checkpoint at the UN buffer zone, up through the Turkish side of the city, and back again.

I'll be back in the US in a few days, and perhaps I will say more then about this place. But perhaps not. I will, however, put up the year's reading list and Best Of book list.

Ta-Dah!

2010-11-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I was going to write about the incredibly disturbing implications of this article --- which, unsurprisingly, seem to be missed entirely by not only the instructors and students engaged with the devices, but by the journalist as well --- but I've been shifted in focus to the upcoming Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

I just can't get the image out of my head of the imagined proposal: "So, honey, how would you like to be the future Queen of England?"

Talk about a great come-on. I'm not sure that can be topped.

As to the handheld remotes in higher education, just read the last few paragraphs, and consider: isn't the capacity to do exactly what these tools are enabling students to avoid --- speaking their minds publicly, supporting a point of view despite opposition, and having the courage to stand up for what you believe even when the majority is of a different (and potentially antagonistic) mind --- isn't this a critical part of what higher education is supposed to provide?

OK. I'm off to sit by the mailbox now and wait for my Royal invitation.

Quote for the Day

2010-11-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

“The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not data.”

- Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science.

The Meaning Of Democracy

2010-11-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, 171,000 people took to the polls, in order to exercise their right to vote, and to have a voice in the future of our communities, the state and the nation.

On Wednesday, more than 200,000 people took to the streets, in order to get drunk and shout loudly under a rain of confetti in celebration of our local baseball team winning the world series.

Yes, both matter. But somehow, I think that one matters more than the other.

And I'm afraid that The People™ don't entirely agree with me.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

no amount of money or having the latest new media tools means anything if you don't have a message.

- Mindy Finn, Republican media consultant, on the demise of Meg Whitman. From the SF Chron.

Why Voting Matters (again)

2010-11-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

Here in this hotbed of activist action, San Francisco:

Total population: 758,000

Total number registered voters: 465,181

Total votes cast on Tuesday: 171,271

That's less than a 37% turnout. In a profoundly political city. Now, imagine spreading that across the country, and imagine just how many people didn't bother.

In part, I blame the absurd "independent" / "conservative" / libertarian meme that your vote doesn't matter that has helped to propel the self-selective disenfranchisement we keep seeing. But then again, perhaps it is just part of the nihilistic self-absorbed zeitgeist of the Privileged People.

Why Voting Matters

2010-11-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

By a 2-1 margin, voters yesterday were over the age of 55. Consider that, on two levels. First, that the sweeping youth vote which brought Obama to office two years ago was absent completely: those folks did not switch sides, they simply bailed out. Next, the overwhelming majority of those people who voted the new crop of so-called conservatives in to office are the very people who have been whipped into fear over the cuts in medicare built in to the new health care plan---which also is the first significant cost-cutting measure to be seen since before Bush was in office.

Think about that: the people who want government to spend less (except on their medical coverage) voted out the people who actually passed a law to allow the government to reduce spending, in order to increase spending on their own needs at the expense of their children, and their children's children.

Had the voters from 2008 come out in any proportion at all, we would be looking at a remarkable save from the brink of disaster for Democrats, rather than an historic wave of transformation for the GOP in the House. Had the White House crafted a method of communicating even half of what they have actually been able to accomplish from the 2008 agenda with any sense of heart and belly, we wouldn't spend the next two months listening to John Boehner mis-categorize yesterday's sweep as a mandate to repudiate the policies of the president, rather than a general lack of enthusiasm for the Democrats --- which, let's face it, is pretty much the other shoe dropping from the very similar lack of confidence in the GOP four years ago which brought in the historic Democratic majority.

Post Electoral Question

2010-11-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

So, an opposition political party (in this case, the GOP), say that the proposed policies from the party on the far side of the aisle are bad bad bad, and so they will obstruct any attempt to get them passed. But...

We know that the undercurrent of these actions is to garner support for a future election (like yesterday's) in order to gain power. So labeling the opponents' ideas as "bad for the country" makes them heroes, because they kept evil from coming to pass.

But wouldn't it make more sense, if those policies really were bad, to let them pass?

See, if they are such bad policy, then the people will see how horrid the current guys in charge are, and will overwhelmingly vote for the "I told ya so" party. It would be self evident, and a helluva lot cheaper.

But they don't: not the GOP now, not either them nor dems ever. Which implies that they don't really think the policy is so bad. It implies that they don't really give a damn. At least not about anything but the politics, and short term gain.

*/End cynical rant/*

I Love California

2010-11-02T09:33:00.001-07:00

Even on election day, we can gin up a headline like this one:

Schwarzenegger bans welfare cards at psychics

I can see that this move will be controversial already. According to the article, the list of unacceptable businesses for state-issued welfare debit cards includes:

medical marijuana shops

Psychics

bail bond establishments

bingo halls

cruise ships

tattoo parlors

Still, I might argue against the last item. body art can have significant spiritual value.

2010-10-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

While the photo was not captured near the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo river, all set about with fever trees, it might as well have been:

Now we indeed know for certain what the crocodile has for dinner.

Like a CEO driving a company to ruin

2010-10-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Under the Republican plan, the budget resolution would set spending at 2008 levels, lawmakers said. While cutting the $100 billion needed to meet that pledge would force deep cuts, they have steered away from a specific plan for it.

“I’m a budgeteer,” Ryan said. “I just bring down the cap.”

And there you have the grand fallacy and danger of the current darling of the GOP. Ryan here is doing what a bad executive does---perhaps they've learned this from television shows like Law & Order, 24, and everything by Andrew Sorkin---and are replacing leadership with 'by any means necessary' arrogance.

They are not equivalent.

By ignoring the details of how something is accomplished -- in this case getting our government spending under control -- you leave open the opportunity for every unintended consequence, backfire, and internal failure imaginable. As the reporter points out in the Bloomberg piece I link to above, that's pretty much what might be expected with the current Republican plan.

I have issues with the idea that we need to run government more like a business: I think that the two management methods and aims are, while not completely antithetical, are indeed dialectically oppositional. But even worse is the idea that we ought to run government like a bad business, that spurs negative competition, short-term unsustainable profit at the cost of long term viability, and disregards the innate connection between the desired ends, and the mean by which those ends are achieved.

If Ryan is the best the GOP has to offer, and his best is to explicitly ignore detail -- hey, I'm not a details guy, I'm a budgeteer! -- then they, and we, are in for a long, cold winter.

“I want to be tolerant of intolerance. That’s my goal.”

2010-10-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

Frank Bruni gives us a fascinating glimpse into a restaurant's experiment in social inclusion at the heart of the exclusionary world of Hasidic Judaism's Lubavitcher community.

From my own experiences (granted, many years ago now) with the community, it rings very true, on both the positives and the negatives: the inquisitive and almost compulsively friendly interactions individually, the disturbingly oppressive actions from those in power and engaged in maintaining it; the curiously bipolar nature of the community as it intersects with he secular world and the need for compromise with those beyond the boundary of the community. My favorite bit from Bruni's observances:

Among the waiters and waitresses who have worked at Basil over its first seven months, there hasn’t been one observant Jew. There have been several black servers — Perez made sure of that. And there have been several gay servers, including her 32-year-old nephew, Michael Viola, who moved to Crown Heights from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On a few occasions, he says, he has mentioned his sexual orientation to religious Jewish customers — for instance, when one couple inquired if he had a girlfriend.

“Actually, boyfriend,” he corrected them.

They went on to ask what dating was like for a gay man and whether he was open with his parents. He answered and went on to ask if they had room for dessert.

The open simplicity and lack of condescension or judgment in that interaction---I just love it. Of course, I'd love it more if it were more the nature of the whole body of the community, and not just the atomic individuals within it.

Genius

2010-10-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Via Ezra Klein and The Dish, this pdf showing how to provide an itemized receipt for your federal taxes is brilliant.

Now: the pie charts showing government spending are easily accessible; aren't there some crack web developers out there willing to throw a page up on the web with a simple interactive calculator based on those numbers? Just plug in your total tax bill, and get your itemized receipt?

This needn't be a government sponsored issue: some enterprising geek with some basic javascript skills and a little entrepreneurial verve should be able to whip up something like this in a couple of days.

Deep Thought II

2010-09-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

After watching the first of the debates in the California race for governor, my mind wanders:

Meg Whitman has spent $120 million to date on the CA gubernatorial campaign; Jerry Brown has spent about $4 million.

Brown is polling at the mid to high 40s; Whitman between 39% - 41%.

Who do you want in charge of the fiscal train wreck that is California: the candidate who spends a literal fortune in order to have a truly mediocre showing, or the candidate who spends almost nothing, and still winds up coming out on top?

Deep Thought

2010-09-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Why is it that three and one half of the top five solutions to creating more jobs and increasing the economic health of the nation are exactly the options against which conservatives are willing to fight tooth and nail? And the bottom five least effective seem to be the bedrock of their agenda?

Increasing Aid to the Unemployed

Reducing Employers' Payroll Taxes for Firms That Increase Their Payroll*

Reducing Employers' Payroll Taxes

Investing in Infrastructure

Providing Aid to States for Purposes Other Than Infrastructure

If you can posit (and I firmly believe that you can) that the positive economic health of the nation benefits the generation of wealth for those who already control large amounts of the existing wealth, then why on earth do conservatives insist on working against their own long-term interests?

(* I only count this as half, since the idea of raising payrolls would to most Boehner/Beck conservatives smack of both governmental coercion as well as cancelling out the benefit of a lower payroll tax.)

The Underwear Gnomes Attack!

2010-09-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

SF Chronicle reports that the startup company Xmarks will be shuttering in 90 days. Apparently the profoundly shallow thinking fostered by the 90's interwebs boom really has no place in a functioning market:

For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses

So writes the company co-founder.

The problem here is not a lack of good intentions, nor of a competent product. It is the stunning idea that you can create a company without any business plan for revenue generation beyond "I hope we think of something". This was a major reason for the severity of the dot-bomb, and continues to be a barrier to innovation. Just because an idea is cool does not make it a value proposition. If you want to create something, serving it up as a for-profit venture is not necessarily the best, or only way to do so.

Perhaps what we need is more innovation on the business modeling side, rather than just in the technology and products we deliver: If there is a product that is useful, and cool, and provides value, but lacks a profitable revenue stream, how can it still be presented to the public in a viable manner for both the creators and the users?

I think a key lesson to delve into for us is: The providing of value is not always obvious, nor always understood in a short time frame. Innovation may be of enormous value, yet still not provide a reasonable or rapid financial return to the implementers of that innovation. How can we foster creativity of that nature, without disincentivizing the marketplace?

Hmmm

2010-09-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

The SF Chronicle is reporting that Barbara Boxer has taken a noticeable lead in the race between her and Carly Fiorina, 47%-41%; polls suggest that this is far less a race between contending points of view than it is a race between high negatives:

Nearly two-thirds of Fiorina's supporters say their preference is more of a vote against Boxer than a choice for the former HP executive.

Just 29 percent of Boxer voters say their preference is based on their negative feelings for Fiorina.

And yet boxer has a 47% disapproval rating. With 12% of the electorate undecided, it is still anyone's race. but two-thirds of support being a vote against someone else rather than a vote for you doesn't leave a lot of real supporters.

I still think that Boxer will take this election, not because she is loved, but because in the end, that majority of voters supporting the not-Boxer candidate will either stay home and not vote, or start to realize just how unappealing a candidate they are looking to elect: replacing donkey poop with elephant poop still leaves the room stinking.

Moonshine, Sunbeams, Lollipops and Puppy Dogs

2010-09-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

That's apparently what the new CA budget is made of -- or possibly what our legislators have been smoking in order to achieve concensus on what appears to be yet another unsustainable and dubious budget offering for our state:

Sources close to the talks said leaders had agreed to make $7.5 billion in spending cuts and that they are assuming the state will receive a significant amount of federal money, which has not been promised. The $7.5 billion in cuts is much less than the governor and Republicans have been backing - about $12 billion - and even less than the $8 billion in reductions Democrats had proposed.

Additionally, the framework relies on a $1.4 billion revenue estimate by the Legislative Analyst's Office, which is rosier than a Department of Finance estimate, along with $1.2 billion from the sale of state buildings that would then be leased back.

So, the health of our State relies on cutting less of our deficit spending than what was proposed by those who don't want to cut anything at all, and then relying on funds that don't exist except in the feverish daydreams of Sacramentans hoping to suck at the already dry teat of an irritated Federal sow.

Yeah, I am feeling really positive about this election year.

Democratic Epic Fail

2010-09-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Dems in Congress decide that having a tax issue horse in the race prior to elections is a bad idea. So now instead of having two solid stances prior to November (1: We saved the country from default by forcing the ultra-rich to once again pay their fair share, or 2: the GOP want the country to default because they support the greed of the ultra rich), they now go in with "we fought hard to expire the Bush tax rates because they were killing the nation at the expense of the middle class and the poor, but now since we aren't sure how it might turn out we're going to punt because we didn't really care that much anyway."

My god, as a party they are pathetic. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry though, since our choice in leadership is pathetic, or sanctimoniously evil.

The Pledging of America

2010-09-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

right.

I've just finished reading the populist screed that is the Pledge to America; the amount of hypocrisy, dangerously shallow policy directives and revanching of cold war era fearmongering is pretty daunting. Here are a few of my most favorite disturbing quotes:

By permanently stopping job-killing tax hikes, families will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money and small businesses will have the stability they need to invest in our economy and help grow our workforce.

Hmm. Seems to me that a permanent freeze on all tax hikes might be a terrifically bad idea. Also, I'm not sure there is more than a tenuous connection between higher (not "high") taxes and "job-killing". In any case, should the unforeseen disaster arise, which requires higher spending, how, exactly would we deal with it---since we've permanently cancelled our ability to levy more tax money?

We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care with common-sense solutions focused on lowering costs and protecting American jobs.

I would think that the blanket protection of existing jobs, and the sweeping lowering of costs might be in direct contradiction with one another, without the intervention of some larger force of regulation---such as a government. It's back to basics here, Econ 101 etc. You can't have everything, and have it on the cheap, and expect to receive value and live well. Protectionism in a global economy for a nation the size of the US is eminently self-destructive.

Hold Weekly Votes on Spending Cuts.

Good lord. This might as well be labeled "how to keep congress from ever accomplishing anything by clogging the arteries of legislation with meaningless blather and bureaucratic procedural time-eaters." We can barely get these guys to vote on anything of value now; imagine the logjam if they were mandated to vote on spending cuts every week---regardless if there is anything to cut. It's like begging for an ideological impasse every Friday, forever.

Impose a Net Federal Hiring Freeze of Non-Security Employees: Small businesses and entrepreneurs are the engine of our economy and should not be crowded out by unchecked government growth. We will impose a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees and ensure that the public sector no longer grows at the expense of the private sector.

Leaving aside the basic issue that the public and private sectors are rarely in competition for jobs at a federal level, and that there is no data to suggest that small businesses are being "crowded out" by government workers, a net hiring freeze would be a massive disaster. If the goal is to throw government into chaos, then maybe OK. But as real policy for governance, this is one of the stupidest ideas imaginable.

We will repeal President Obama’s government takeover of health care and replace it with common-sense reforms focused on strengthening the doctor-patient relationship.

You can't legislate the doctor-patient relationship. Any more than you can legislate the love of children for their parents. This red herring is better stated as "we will return to the status quo ante, and rely on the selflessness and goodwill of those in the medical profession and the insurance world to govern our needs."

Permanently Prohibit Taxpayer Funding of Abortion: We will establish a government-wide prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion and subsidies for insurance coverage that includes abortion, this includes enacting into law what is known as the Hyde Amendment. We will also enact into law conscience protections for health care providers, including doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

Overturn Roe v Wade. This has nothing to do with government, nor economics, but just about legislating morality. It also is as heavy handed an action by government as anything the authors' claim to oppose. The difference? They oppose actions which act as legislative policy in the financial and communal secular world (the normal realm of our government), and are all for even more authoritarian action when it governs the moral, or the private, or the personal actions of individuals.

Fully Fund Missile Defense.

Lacking a Soviet enemy, this document formalizes their replacement with Iran, and threatens a rain of ICBMs on Topeka unless we return to Reagan era levels of spending on systems which are now obsolete as strategic objects. How this fits with reduced spending I've no clue. How we might be able to forget that enemies are fungible, and just a few years ago this same language was leveled against Iraq, leading us to our longest war, and providing high cost with great suffering and little gain...I dunno.

Maybe we really are that stupid. I, for one, have no desire to share in the nation that this document truly portends. I'm not thrilled with what we've got, but at least I know that we have hope for working and altering it for the better. This "Pledge" strips us of that.

Autumn

2010-09-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the full (harvest) moon, the beginning of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the first day after the autumnal equinox, and the day that the first revisions of the health care relief act go into law.

Of all these, I think the last is both the most important and the least lauded right now.

At the same time, I suspect that the pre-electoral s--tstorm that is being whipped up right now by the Tea Party and the congressional GOPs ~~re-upped Contract With America~~ Pledge to America is going to continue to both eclipse any real activity to better our lives, as well as feed the sense of the nation that up is down, white is black, bad is good, and that the absorption in self without sense of responsibility to any others, the affirmation of entitlement without cause or reason, and the glorification of leaders and politicians who have more in common with the cast of Big Brother than with any non-fictional character of merit.

sigh.

"We don’t know"

2010-09-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

An invaluable and critically important commentary on a critically important topic: the current nature of knowledge, learning, and cognition. I urge you to read it in full, and think about the implications of the author's statements on your own behavior.

Some of the top digital designs of the moment, both in school and in the rest of life, embed the underlying message that we understand the brain and its workings. That is false. We don’t know how information is represented in the brain. We don’t know how reason is accomplished by neurons. There are some vaguely cool ideas floating around, and we might know a lot more about these things any moment now, but at this moment, we don’t.

...If students don’t learn to think, then no amount of access to information will do them any good.

I wish I were less inclined to agree with the author's assessments, but I think he is dead on. There is at the moment a blurring of perception between the tools for information dissemination, and the ability to use those tools to engage in critical inquiry or true innovative discovery.

While technology is a fantastic tool, it teaches neither judgement nor critical inquiry. Those things are what propel us into innovative thinking, and new discovery, and the willingness to look down an undiscovered path and (potentially) declare it of greater value, even when the main road has five stars from 800 yelp reviews and 15,000 "likes".

Indian Summer?

2010-09-17T12:37:00.001-07:00

It is grey, wet, and altogether dank on the west side of San Francisco right now. A healthy dose of typical September weather --- hot sun, bright skies, warm afternoons --- would do a lot of good for those of us who are fogbound and wondering where the light has gone.

On top of this, the news that yet another hypocritical and lying candidate is coming out swinging with the tune that sings "My opponent is the liar and the hypocrite! Don't bother to check the record, just listen to my spin!" This time, it is ($119 million dollars and counting) Meg Whitman's meaner CEO sister, Carly Fiorina, who has in one fell swoop accused Barbara Boxer of "class warfare", obfuscated her own history, told a few blatant falsehoods, and completely conflated and confused the issues of class, business practice, poor planning, and self-aggrandizement, and wealth accumulation at the explicit cost of those on whom that wealth is built.

Consider: Boxer has accused Fiorina of laying off tens of thousands of workers while accruing to herself increased pay, benefits, and a yacht (basically true). Fiorina spins this by saying that Boxer herself is a millionaire, and therefore is engaging in hypocritical "class warfare." This makes no sense. The fact that Boxer is filthy rich has little to do with the accusation that Fiorina was a terrible business leader, who destroyed morale, played employees against one another, engaged in internal spying and drove a company into the hole---all the while protecting her own assets and accruing wealth.

This is a bit like two rich kids who get driven to school each day in matching Maybachs; one is a bully, the other just a snotty rich kid. One day they get into an argument over who deserves to be head of the class, and the snotty rich kid says "You don't deserve it, you're a big fat mean bully!" And the bully responds "You little creep! You're just as evil, since your car is the same as mine! And that's mean to all the other kids here!"

Like I said, pretty lame.

And while this is going on, in the background we have the quiet hallmark of a record 80 days without a budget in the State of California (sigh), and the first slight murmurs of an actual campaign from Jerry Brown. I wait to see what he can do against the $7 per vote that Whitman has already spent of her own money. (We have 17 million likely voters in the state).

Personally, it would take more than the price of a beer to buy my vote, especially for someone as ill-prepared and ill-equipped for public office as Whitman.

On a lighter note, here's a video of a potential candidate who can prove that they have exactly the skills they claim: a robot that can do the hokey-pokey!

Unfit For Office

2010-09-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

I have yet to hear anyone specifically mention this rather sordid tidbit of info regarding Meg Whitman's past with eBay; I doubt it would sit well with the majority of California voters.

eBay acquired LOQUO in the Spring of 2005, as part of Meg Whitman’s classifieds acquisition strategy, at a time when its “eroticos profesionales” section was present, but with few ads or pictures. Changes would soon be afoot however, and Meg crowed about the growth and profitability of LOQUO on eBay’s Q2 2007 earnings call.

...Meg Whitman didn’t mention eBay’s paid hard-core pornographic ads offering unprotected sex acts for sale to eBay investors when talking up the growth and profitability of LOQUO during eBay earnings calls, and I’m not aware that subsequent management has done so either.

Similarly, there is no reference to eBay classifieds depicting unprotected sex for sale with potentially underage and/or trafficked persons on the Stop Human Trafficking by Using eBay Classifieds Facebook page.

That is from the craigslist blog, in discussing the background of their attempts to filter their adult classified ads. and publish only "legitimate" posts unrelated to prostitution, underage sex, and/or human trafficking. They have recently given up on this effort, and in place of the former "adult" link, there is only the word "CENSORED."

If more than a dozen AGs were willing and eager to chase down the CL folks over this for the last four years, then I struggle to understand how anyone could condone the leader of a similar company providing similar public ads running for high office in one of the largest states in the union.

This isn't really about pornography; this is about prostitution, and human trafficking. And turning a blind eye to that activity in search of a profit.

If Whitman does not or cannot publicly and explicitly explain how and why her company managed to allow such activity, then I don't see how she can be allowed the opportunity to govern. And as our AG, I hope that Jerry Brown has the wherewithal to ask her this question in debate.

Observations

2010-09-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

I walk by the reform movement synagogue (large, prominent, wealthy) and notice the armed guard at the entrance: he stands quietly in a bullet-proof glass sentry box, the full body metal detector on his right. I flash suddenly on Naples, 1986, the height of the mafia activity of the eighties, going to a bank to get cash, and seeing the same scene.

I walk by the orthodox synagogue six blocks away (small, nondescript, lower middle class, immigrant-laden); the door is open to the street, children run in and out, not a gun nor a metal detector nor a sentry box in sight.

_____________________________

A foundation has given 1.3 million dollars to schools and teachers, to fulfill the teachers' wish lists for their classrooms. I don't know whether to rejoice that California classrooms received this windfall, or to scream in frustration that with a single massive act of generosity, a private group has reinforced the unspoken sentiment that the government need not find a way to better serve our children and their educators.

_____________________________

The essentials of liberty require intellectual rigor, and uncommon decency. We seem to be dead set on replacing these ideals with more banal gods: desire for uncommon wealth, rather than desire for a magnificent commonwealth; instaed of liberty and justice for all, a market-driven free-for-all.

Intent on not learning from our mistakes, I wonder what we plan on refusing to learn over the next decade.

Milestone

2010-08-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Amid all the other crazy, from the unbelievably horrific floods in Pakistan to the mosque mayhem in NYC to the California budget yet again being at impasse and the state looking to issue IOUs, this bit of news should be getting bigger headlines, and is more important in the long run than I believe we are giving it credit for at the moment:

Last US combat brigade leaves Iraq

A quiet, almost unnoticed end to a 7-year long war that in the best case, toppled a nasty dictator, and in the worst case, destabilized an entire region of the world while at the same time destroying the economic and diplomatic health of the US.

A Sad Loss

2010-08-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Tony Judt, historian, dead at age 62.

Prop 8 Ruled Unconstitutional

2010-08-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

A bright light of reason in a time of darkness. As far as I can tell at this moment, TPM has the only quotes from the actual ruling. Here they are:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional....

In the absence of a rational basis, what remains of proponents' case is an inference, amply supported by evidence in the record, that Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples. FF 78-80. Whether that belief is based on moral disapproval of homosexuality, animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate.....

The arguments surrounding Proposition 8 raise a question similar to that addressed in Lawrence, when the Court asked whether a majority of citizens could use the power of the state to enforce "profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles" through the criminal code. ... The question here is whether California voters can enforce those same principles through regulation of marriage licenses. They cannot. California's obligation is to treat its citizens equally, not to "mandate [its] own moral code."

It's almost as though you could imagine sanity reigning again, at least in this state.

Let's hope.

UPDATE: here's the complete ruling.

Local Muni Crankiness: Rewarding Failure

2010-08-03T11:11:00.001-07:00

Muni operators in SF are now approved to receive their annual City Charter-mandated raise, this year of 5.75%. The host of issues surrounding this hot button topic aren't what I want to bitch about though: not the quality of Muni, nor the upcoming ballot measure to wipe the Charter clean of their exceptionalism. It's just my personal frustration at seeing failure being rewarded, and indeed lauded.

The two comparable systems to which SF Muni is compared are Boston and Santa Clara Valley. The first is, I believe, the better comparison (small dense city, complex road grid, challenging population and routing, mix of over- and underground usage, trolley/coach rolling stock and light rail, etc.). So let's just glance at them. If you google it, it takes about 15 seconds or less to find the MBTA's public performance scorecard for 2009 online. Try finding SFMTA's. You won't. There isn't one.

I want to be proud of where I live, and to be able to proclaim it as a world-class destination; but our current situation precludes that from happening.

For MBTA, the most noticeable issues are that their overall on-time performance (using nearly identical metrics to those apparently used by Muni) hovers a few points above 90%. Muni announced with much fanfare earlier this year that they'd tipped the scales of success by achieving a record on time performance of 77% --- of course, that was only on the routes which had been drastically reduced or modified last year. The remainder of the system was hovering between 71% and 73%. (you can find all this here, and here).

Even more interesting to me are the missed run statistics. MBTA includes these, and there too notes a 90% or higher achievement rate overall. SFMTA has rates of...we just don't know. Since operators. as part of their work rules, have no need (at least initially) to alert anyone of missed runs/absenteeism, there doesn't seem to be either an accurate accounting, nor a willingness to publicize any estimates. But anecdotally, we are running a higher loss rate than Boston, at about 13-15%.

That said, now that we are paying Muni to get their asses whupped by MBTA --- not by a little, but by a 30 point spread --- I wonder what's next. And I wonder how on earth we are ever going to be able to negotiate our way out of the managerial and structural mess that Muni has become.

Why We Are Doomed

2010-08-01T14:49:00.001-07:00

Last night I had the pleasure of spending the evening with friends at a BBQ party. As we sat under the clear night stars, talk turned to the economy. One of the guests, a very smart and very engaged man who works in the financial sector, said he thought we were in for a long slow recovery, with higher taxes and fewer services.

I turned to him, and asked what he foresaw as the route to that model, considering that a large number of the folks in government right now (and their constituents) are fairly well dedicated to the idea of reducing taxes, and limiting any cuts in real governmental costs (like, say, defense). He repeated what he had said. I asked again - how do we get there if the congress can't enact legislation to either raise taxes or reduce costs because of political posturing and agendas of the opposition (and some of the Democrats as well). His response was telling:

"Well, they just have to. There's no other way to get out of this mess."

Which brings me to my title statement. The disbelief of rational people in the ability of those in power to engage in the most irrational of acts is what paves the clear wide road to self-destruction. Indeed, the current Congress could very easily block any tax raises, or any real cost cutting, until the fiscal health of the country is so unsound as to be unrecoverable for decades. Just because it's obvious that taking such a route would be catastrophic is in no way a protection against taking that route.

Genocides continue to occur in this world because (in some small part) rational people refuse to accept that their peers could engage in such obscene behavior. And so it occurs, in the face of denial, until nothing can be done but bury our dead.

Economic idiocy in the form of lowering taxes and raising spending simultaneously, while desperately struggling out of the worst recession in generations, and fighting two foreign wars, is absolutely within our reach. The fact that to do so is unbelievably stupid doesn't make it unbelievable. And I wish that more people who are close to these issues would understand that. Because if they don't, we really are doomed.

Evidence Based Living

2010-07-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about current political discourse, and the increasingly polarized nature of the dialogue we hear. The last quarter century has seen an increasing erosion of the (vocalized) center, and an extension of the fringe edges of ideology at both ends of the spectrum. OK. We know this. But what has been bugging me is the increasing prevalence of outspoken individuals on those ideological frayed ends, and even more so in what has become the mainstream of conservative, right wing thought, of a remarkable lack of interest in the evidence left by history and reality, in favor of adherence to principle.

I see this everywhere: in major publications (eg Economist, WSJ), in blogs, commentaries and op-eds (eg NYT, Atlantic), and I hear it on a daily basis from otherwise clear-thinking people. And I fear that it has spread like a metastasizing cancer from political commentary to most other fields of discourse as well.

Paul Krugman points out a recurring cycle in economics that indicates a pattern of deflation, and is bewildered why people who know this continue to ignore it, in his words

What I’ve never quite understood is why so many investors still loooove the likes of the WSJ editorial page, while they hate, hate, hate people like, well, me — when believing anything the former says has historically been a very good way to lose a lot of money.

It's a fair question. And not just an economic one. An anecdotal aside: I was watching a documentary on WWII last night, and perused some of the online comments other viewers had left at Netflix. The comment that stood out was from a viewer who thought it was an excellent documentary, except he couldn't believe that some of what was shown to have occurred really occurred. Therefore he urged people to disbelieve it.

The desire to believe the accuracy of an ideology or belief in the face of evidence to the contrary used to be considered a sign of madness. Now it is starting to be counted (apparently) as a sign of strength.

In a similar vein, on the always frustrating and valuable blog of Andrew Sullivan, he points out some discussion between Gary Shteyngart and Ross Douthat on the value of the information soup that is the interwebs. Apparently, they are arguing that crap information is a gateway to valuable information; that

MySpace and lolcats make you more likely not less to go on, through serendipitous link-wanderings, to read, say, The American Scene, which in turn makes you more likely to read, say, Dos Passos.

The profoundly misguided and dangerous mistake in this thought is the error of assuming that most people consume all information equally in a high-speed rapid consumption environment.

Sorry, no.

What it may do is make people more likely to look at a comment about Dos Passos. But not actually read Dos Passos. The world of wikipedia has made it far easier to digest information at a slightly sub-Cliff Notes level, and provides no reward to the average internet user for actually engaging with content at a higher level.

People create more, but there is no incentive to create better.

What we are creating is is a universe of information similar ot a fast food emporium, where you can get a cheap, ugly hamburger that tweaks all the immediate gratification centers of your brain, only you have a choice between the burger called "The Filet Mignon Supreme", or the "Super-Health McPatty Deluxe", or even (if you're a masochist) the "B-Grade ground meat from animals treated like hell and processed in a sweat shop in Asia". But they're all effectively the same product, with the same content despite the packaging and labeling. And they all leave you in the same state of poor health.

This is just another process which is training us to disbelieve what we discover through experience and assessment, and rely on the structures of our own dysjunctive beliefs. It's as though, along with universal literacy, the scientific method is busily been tossed on the trash heap of human past, along with the rest of the achievements of the Enlightenment.

Feeding The Beast?

2010-07-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

I love this story: A Canadian Anglican priest fed a communion wafer to a parishioner's dog, which accompanied him to the altar during communion.

A female priest, no less.

I guess this is what the Catholics are worried about when they talk about the pitfalls of opening the priesthood to women?

Bow. Wow.

WikiLeaks

2010-07-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid that despite the huffle-fuffle in the press, this isn't Pentagon Papers II. Unlike the PP, there doesn't appear to be any smoking gun; nor is this vetted material. It's raw intelligence that still requires review (90,000 pages of review). Remember, it was unvetted intelligence of this nature that got us into Iraq. Remember Chalabi's connections? The mobile weapons labs? the WMD? Mmm hmm.

None of the info is pretty, but none of it is really news. Just confirmation of details. I agree in most part with George Friedman on this:

Much will be made about the shocking truth that has been shown, which, as mentioned above, shocks only those who wish to be shocked...We are left with the mystery of who compiled all of these documents and who had access to them with enough time and facilities to transmit them to the outside world in a blatant and sustained breach of protocol. The image we have is of an unidentified individual or small group working to get a “shocking truth” out to the public, only the truth is not shocking — it is what was known all along in excruciating detail. Who would want to detail a truth that is already known, with access to all this documentation and the ability to transmit it unimpeded?

That's the question we face. It has more to do with political agendas, election timing, and a willingness to use the active military as a wedge tool against the war effort, the military, and the current administration, than with the Afghan war and the potential there for success or failure.

Not a Bad Idea

2010-07-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

I think that Haiti could do far worse than this. Just please, please, please don't tell Bono. He might get ideas.

RIP Daniel Schorr

2010-07-23T11:03:00.001-07:00

Not only an amazing journalist and a respected figure, but a voice in my own life that, as part of the background of my knowledge and daily access to the news, will be sorely missed. His passing, however, provided the opportunity for Donald Ritchie, the congressional historian, to provide this summative quote on the current state of journalism:

"What passes for commentary today is almost all opinion," Ritchie said, "but Schorr was part of that breed of commentators who dug up information before they pontificated about it."

They grow fewer and fewer with the passing days, and we are inundated with Becks and Breitbarts and Hannitys.

The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.

Why Am I not Concerned?

2010-07-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

I received the following in an email this morning, from one of my NPO service organization lists:

"On May 17, 2010, the IRS began revoking tax-exempt status from nonprofits that failed to file three consecutive annual returns (Form 990-N, 990-EZ, 990, or 990-PF). As a result, as many as 300,000 nonprofits may lose their tax-exempt status, effectively shrinking the nonprofit sector by 25%."

I knew about this stronger enforcement already, but I found it interesting that this service organization was using a tone of "be afraid, be very afraid" --- not about the need to pay attention to your paperwork as a registered 501(c)(3) NPO, but that the sector was shrinking massively. Oh no!

To my mind this is probably a very good thing.

From my own experience in the NPO world, I think that the sector is unfortunately rife with mismanagement, self-perpetuating inefficiency, inappropriate qualification; and despite the many, many devoted and well-meaning individuals who dedicate themselves to the causes that many non-profits work toward, as well as the minority of incredibly impactful groups, it is a sector which to a significant degree is wildly ineffective at reaching its goals.

With the mindset of providing a space for everyone, and a vested interest in maintaining the status quo (if we were to solve world hunger, then what happens to the thousands of organizations based on the model of trying to feed the starving?), I think that a simple weeding out of those groups who are too disorganized or sloppy to file their correct papaerwork three years running isn't such a bad thing. In fact, it will likely have the positive impact on the NPO world of consolidating effort among those groups with the organizational skills necessary to not only provide for others, but to look after their own houses as well.

So in the end, 25% off a bloated industry sounds pretty good to me.

In Poor Taste

2010-07-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

But...before loading a new pump into his heart, did Cheney's doctors consider the BP oil approach? A top kill"? Bottom kill? A junk shot, perhaps?

On the other hand, maybe BP could have done better hiring the former VPs doctors to do their damned work in the gulf to begin with....

NYT Headline: A New Pumping Device Brings Hope for Cheney