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July 7th, 2009

10:36 am - The Year of the Brand 2009 has been a lot of things to a lot of people -- most of them bad. But one thing that it is clearly becoming is the Year of the Brand. Every company fighting for an edge is trying to re-brand their image. Find that magical insight that will make people spend money in a down economy. Frankly, it's getting a little bit funny. We're barely halfway through the year, and already there are enough disasters out there that you really have to wonder what people are thinking. Clearly all of that expensive Marketing school learnin' doesn't prepare you to operate in a crisis situation. Today, the long-venerated Sci Fi Channel is re-branding. As of this morning, they are now called SyFy. Their catchline is "Imagine Greater". What? Completely aside from the fact that I'm never going to be able to call it anything aside from "Siffy" again, and forgetting that its most pop-famous products are absolutely god-awful cult movies, such as this weekend's upcoming sure-to-be-classic "Sand Serpents", I have to wonder who thought this was a good idea. Only some marketing tool could possibly believe that this somehow increases the value of their brand. The best that can be said is that at least they're not alone. Joining Siffy on the 2009 Wall of Shame are many old and respectable companies that ought to know better. Like Tropicana, who briefly, earlier this year, decided to re-brand their classic Orange Juice product to make it look like a carton of bottom-shelf Food Club squeeze. What's wrong with Generic juice?? Nothing! If you're a communist... Apparently not many of them, because sales plummeted precipitously. Or how about Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7, which failed to learn an important lesson from the Vista debacle, and is proceeding to launch with even MORE crippled sub-versions than it's ill-fated predecessor. Nothing like selling the consumer a car and then telling them that it'll be another $99 to make the "optional" airbags work properly. Proving once again that just because a tech company calls something a branded version, doesn't mean it's anything other than a feature scam. US consumers might not have noticed, but overseas, the Quicker-Picker-Upper, Bounty, is no longer Bounty. It underwent a brand change this year to become "Plenty". Why? Who the hell knows, since the official party line is that the new name will focus consumers on the "incredible soaking power" of the towels. This was accompanied by a media blitz featuring two cross-dressing men and the slogan "only the name's changed." Somewhere, Rosie is twisting in her grave... (If she's dead. I'm not sure.) Branding is important to the marketplace. It gives consumers an artificial community to rally around. A sense that you've found something you can relate to, and build loyalty towards in exchange for a valued product or service. When done properly, a strong brand can be a company's largest asset. Or it can be it's largest liability. I rather think that someone might have "imagined greater" than Siffy. Current Mood: amused

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July 1st, 2009

02:23 pm - Mental Whiplash I pride myself on being one of those people who can have temporally-distant friends. Meaning: I tend to hang out with the sort of people whom I can go YEARS without seeing, and then the next time we're together, pick up right where we left off. Being as generally spastic as I am in the rest of my life, this skill is pretty much the one thing that ensures I have any kind of social life whatsoever. But there are times when this phenomenon derails. Times when an external factor is introduced that short-circuits my ability to behave as though no time at all has passed. Kids. For you locals, it's no big deal. I see you and your kids often enough that my mental image updates pretty regularly. They do grow up fast, but it's easy to take, even in discrete little jumps. I got an e-mail today from someone who moved out of Cleveland in 1999, and who I've seen in person maybe 3 times since, and only once with his family. When they left, his daughter was going on 3 years old, and he didn't even HAVE a son yet. Now she's going on 13 and he's ~8. The family pictures he sent are of him, his wife, some teenager who looks like his wife, and some grade school boy that looks like him. I know who they are, but my brain is busily trying to convince me that they're some alien replicants deposited into his family within the last 6 months. Because surely the toddling little girl I remember, who gave her Elmo to me one night while I was visiting, is not 13 years old!!! Mental whiplash is a weird thing. I'm going to have to re-evaluate how I approach long-distance friendships with parents. Today, I think I've realized that the rules of this game are not quite what I thought they were. Current Mood: shocked

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June 30th, 2009

11:17 am - The science of envy Ars Technica has an interesting article, entitled: Irrational Markets: People reject free money out of anger. It is a quick and cursory overview of a very interesting topic, and well worth the 5 minutes it takes to read. Essentially, it gives an overview of some new papers released this week on Game Theory. While that sounds like something that might be more applicable to your Wii than the US Economy as a whole, it really isn't. In fact, Game Theory is perhaps one of the best fields of research to pursue if you want to understand why human societies behave the way they do. In short, the article gives an overview of the classic Ultimatum Game. You give one person a stack of cash and tell them to divide it however they wish between themselves and one other person. If the other person accepts the offer, they both get to keep the money. If the other person rejects the offer, neither of them do. Not surprisingly, "unfair" offers are almost always rejected, even though accepting ANY offer would result in both parties walking away with FREE MONEY. Sounds simple, right? We have an intrinsic want for fairness, even if punishing perceived greed is self-defeating. But how do we evaluate that difference? Let's take, for instance, a fast food worker in San Francisco. If you work in an Arby's in San Fran, you're making a city minimum wage of $9.79 per hour. Let's say (for sake of argument) that the President of that company is making $350,000 per year. Is it fair that a clerk makes $19,580 per year, while the president of the same company makes $350,000? Depending on your idealogical leanings, you may answer that question differently. But let's break the question down further... Is it fair that a clerk makes $9.79 per hour, while the head cook makes $12.73? That's a 30% wage increase going from the newbie to a major player in that restaurant. Most people would probably say that's fair. Or how about if the manager of that restaurant makes $33,000 per year? Ok... maybe that's fair too? That is, after all, a 30% pay raise from the cook. Then you have 30% more going to the owner of that restaurant ($43,000). Then you have 30% more going to the franchisee who owns lots of restaurants in that area ($55,922). Then 30% to the District Manager who's responsible for all of the restaurants in San Fran ($72,699). Then 30% to the Regional Manager who oversees all of California ($94k). Then 30% to the National Manager, and 30% to the VP of Operations, and 30% to the COO and 30% to the CFO, and then 30% to the CEO... which is $350,905. If you were at any step in that chain, getting a major promotion to the next level, 30% would seem pretty fair. You're taking on a lot more work, you're traveling, you're dealing with problems at all levels below you in the company, etc... From inside the system, each and every step you claw up seems pretty reasonable and fair. Yet, if you say that a CEO makes $351k in salary annually, while his poor starving front-line employees are below the poverty level at $19,500... well, that's sounds terribly unfair. This is of course a massive over-simplification of both the scenario and the problem. But it does illustrate that there are frequently perfectly rational reasons behind circumstances that we perceive as being irreparably skewed. Most of the time, we never bother to find out... because even when we understand the micro-detail, we still make snap judgments based on our perceptions of "the big picture" when confronted with a decision point. Game Theory is one way to help sort through all of that. To figure out how we perceive the world, and to craft explanations and scenarios that help people make rational decisions based on framing of the available information. Unfortunately, such powers can also be used for evil. And it seems, lately, that is being done more often than the reverse. When you look at everything going on in our government today -- the discussions on global warming "cap and trade", the discussion of health care, the bail-out packages. All are textbook cases of information saturation and game theory. Dump 1,300 pages of dense text on the desk of a Congressman, extract bits of "big picture" information from the summary and fill the rest with placeholders to be determined later. They're forcing an Ultimatum Game by removing the opportunity for rational examination. You have 30 seconds to make a decision that seems "fair". If you guess right, we all win. If you guess wrong, we all lose. Go! Last week the House voted in a climate bill that contains more placeholders than details, and it's pretty safe to say that not a single seated member of that esteemed body would have even had enough hours in the day to read all 1300 pages. Yet they voted anyway because they "had" to. Under such a scenario, the actual detail and rational logic become meaningless. Health Care? How much focus is paid to the 259,798,799 Americans who currently have health insurance, as opposed to the 47 million who do not? When we bailed out the auto makers, who was looking out for the approximately 138,000,000 people who paid that bill, and was it fair in the face of the estimated 377,000 people who would have been directly affected by their collapse? (A 500:1 ratio.) As our understanding of human perception and tribal instinct improves, it's being leveraged by everyone from magicians to high-level politicians. In the same way that Penn and Teller can make 1.2 million people annually believe that they've caught a bullet in their teeth, a politician can make 120 million people believe that they're being treated unfairly. Everyone's too busy watching the people in white shirts toss a basketball around to notice the gorilla walking through the room. Sadly, understanding human perception and decision making doesn't change it. No matter how clearly we understand that you can't win at a game of Ball and Cups, we'll still try to follow the ball as the streetcorner huckster slides them around the table. No matter how much better off we'd be to just take the free $50 with no strings attached, we'll rail against the unfairness of it all when we know that someone else is getting $100. There's a few million years of cognitive evolution backing up that decision process. So the best we can do is learn to recognize the swindle. Recognize when we're focusing on the wrong thing, and try to view situations from a different perspective. Standing on the corner trying to follow the ball is a useless exercise no matter how much you want to do it. It's time to train ourselves to start looking under the table. Current Mood: thoughtful

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June 23rd, 2009

12:54 pm - Ohio In 13,000 BC nomads walked the lands where Cleveland stands. Exhibiting the most forethought of any human-like peoples before or since, they kept moving. About 12,000 years later a group of indigenous people who had learned to survive on sunflowers and bitter local squash decided that they were too depressed to fight it anymore and put down roots for about two and a half millennium, building circular mounded earthworks with no obvious entrance or exit, thereby signifying how trapped they felt by their surroundings. They disappeared without a trace, and none of the other indigenous peoples in more cosmopolitan places like New York or Alabama seemed to notice or care. During the 18th century the French set up trade routes through the area to trap fur, but since one can only make so many coats out of ratty squirrels and mange-infested groundhogs, they staged a war in 1754 with the Brits. After a decade or so of watching the redcoats catch footrot in the swamp forests, they rolled over like a bunch of whipped female lapdogs, and told the Queen she could take this place and shove it up her exquisitely polished arse. When the United States was founded in 1776, they named this area the "Western Reserve", because it was in the west and they were just going to reserve judgment on what to do with the place. Slavery was deemed to be illegal here, because there are some places that even slaves shouldn't be forced to live. Several towns were founded around 1800, all of which hugged the borders with Pennsylvania or even West Virginia, because those were the areas deemed most suitable for supporting life. As their populations grew, penniless settlers grudgingly slogged their way north settling towns like Greenville and Chippewa, both of which sank into the swamps at least once. In 1786, Moses Cleaveland led a team of surveyors to the area, and founded the town that would forever bear his name. Almost -- because a printer's error on the declaration document dropped the 'a' from the town's name, and good 'ole Moses was too illiterate to notice. Most of the survey team returned to Connecticut with wild tales of festering mudholes and rabid howler monkeys in the area, along with whirlpools and snake-haired sirens who led the first mariners of Lake Erie to their doom. Those men were committed to a friary near Boston for their own protection, but many escaped and returned to the area with the fevered intention of converting the evil monkeys to Christianity. While that effort failed, their ramshackle churches remain on nearly every block, and the vast majority of the area's residents continue to visit them weekly to this day, in futile efforts to keep the harpies away. As life sciences and man's knowledge of meteorology grew, it became evident that Cleveland had two seasons: Mosquito Season and a primary season the forecasters of the time called "Ye Fucking Batshit Cold Tyme". As few people ventured out in the Cold Tyme, and few people ventured out in the Mosquito Season, in 1854 some rich dugongs from Pittsburgh started shipping iron and coal into the area to smelt into steel, on the theory that nobody would probably notice. When nobody did, the oil and automotive magnates from Marathon, Peerless, People's, Jordon Wintow, Standard and others, started building even more volatile processing plants in the region, dumping their foul effluent into the river. Still, it would be almost 100 years before anybody noticed this, and then only by accident when the sparks from a flintlock revolver (with which an area man was taking his own life) fell onto the surface of the "water". Throughout the 1950's and 1960's Cleveland's fame grew, serving as the actual inspiration for the naming of such hip, modern American trends as "white flight" and "urban sprawl". Not to be outdone in the national media by "The Big Apple" and "The Windy City", Cleveland adopted the moniker of "The Mistake on the Lake". So dubbed, in 1978, the city became the first town in America to ever fall into default, under the watchful eye of Mayor Dennis Kucinich; a feat so unparalleled in American history, that the awed residents elevated Sir Dennis to the post of US Representative, and occasionally back major runs at the White House. Cleveland enjoys top billing on the US's ranking of most impoverished cities, and while it is only the 7th most dangerous US city in the national crime rankings, it is observed to be straining with all its might to someday be Number One. Thanks to a unique urban renewal experiment by the CIA, crack cocaine is inexpensive and widely available in Cleveland, which leads to remarkable numbers for the city in areas such as education statistics and the number of lavish and mandatory all-expense-paid "staycations" enjoyed by minority residents in the city's exceptional live-in facilities. Starting in 1991, the NAACP determined that teachers weren't trying hard enough, nor were racist administrators providing enough busing, to educate the growing number of poor students in the area. So in 1994 they sued the state to eliminate mandatory standardized testing, on the well-reasoned theory advanced by Schrödinger on Quantum States, which posits that if we do not measure the stupidity of a child, it will not exist. Thanks to their timely intervention and focus on the key problem, graduation rates from Cleveland Public Schools advanced to 26.6% by 1996. In the ensuing decade, a Great and Powerful Board of County Administrators set forth an ambitious plan to build a new Convention Center that nobody will use, to replace the old Convention Center that nobody uses. The center would be located ideally somewhere that would provide the highest cost of developing superfund-tainted and reclaimed land, while strategically avoiding anywhere that non-Clevelanders might like to visit. To further increase its value, a "Medical Mart" would be attached, displaying many fine creations of the medical equipment industry -- because time has proven that if there's one thing Clevelanders truly excel at, it's getting sick and dying. To make true this halcyon dream, Cleveland now enjoys the second highest municipal sales tax rate in America, but again, can be seen striving with all its heart to someday be Number One. Awash in this tide of new money for urban development, the State wisely determined in 2009 that funding for libraries and other public education services would be cut by as much as 50%. A rational decision in light of their near-contemporary decisions to increase funding for research of Lake Erie island snakes by 15%, and grant new funding to allow convicted felons to get DNA tests. Experts assume that this may well have a noticeable effect on the aforementioned ~30% high school graduation rate. Meanwhile, industry has ground to a halt; some theorize as a result of the inability to move goods into or out of the area due to increased Siren activity snatching mariners just outside of Cleveland's only port. Clearly it is time for a change. We need money to fight the sirens, build a Convention Center, and investigate why poor black children can't get bussed to the right school. And that's why we need gambling. Right Ted Strickland? Current Mood: annoyed

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June 16th, 2009

09:40 am - A collapse of confidence I've been diligently avoiding making posts lately about politics, economics or business. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is that, lately, I feel like I know almost zero about any of them. Anything predictable by my particular brand of common sense has gone straight out the window, and for the first time in at least the last decade, I feel like I'm walking around blindfolded to the future. This would not normally be a big deal, except that in talking to other young businesspeople locally, it seems I'm far from alone. We're all watching business dry up and fellow companies fold. We see non-profits struggling to make payroll much less engage in philanthropy, and we wonder what's going to give. I have made posts in the past about Zimbabwe, and the mismanagement and hyperinflation that brought the southern African nation to its knees, from its once-lofty perch as the "Breadbasket of Africa." While the USA is hardly playing catch-up with Zimbabwe, it's distressing that a number of news articles have started popping up, comparing the US situation with the former economy of that nation -- even if their thesis is that No, we're not anywhere near that yet. The fact that we can even draw those comparisons for the purpose of disputing them is shocking, and should serve as a warning of where one fork of the road we're on can lead. Sadly, the one thing I am still 100% sure of is that perception is reality. And amongst the US business community, it's not what's actually going on, it's what they believe is going on that matters. Because that's what decisions are based on. In past down-turns, we reach a point where every business owner starts jockeying for position for the recovery. Balance sheets are examined, decisions are made on how many employees can be hired and how much infrastructure can be improved. How long can the company carry a loss to position itself to be ahead of the competition when the recovery finally hits and consumers or fellow businesses start spending money again? It's a cyclical tightrope, and some win and some lose in the transaction. This time, it's different. The US dollar is falling again. Healthcare costs are rapidly inflating -- linked not un-coincidentally to the ongoing rise in malpractice insurance rates and other lawsuit-related costs. The government is spending like a drunken sailor in port, and the historical outcome of that is skyrocketing interest rates necessary to soak up the excess money supply -- don't forget that Jimmy Carter's 21% interest has happened in our lifetime. New and exotic taxes are being discussed openly in the halls of Congress and in the media. It's thrown the formula out of whack. One colleague of mine desperately wants to expand his hosting service and hire a couple of new sysadmins to steal work from foundering companies. But all of the trade press he's reading say that Internet and tech services companies -- one of the last great un-taxed frontiers -- are on the chopping block for major new taxation, possibly within the next year. His employee health care, like my own, went up by 18% this year. Talk of additional fees on businesses to cover Universal Health Care, in addition to our employees' care costs, loom large over all small business. The adjustable rate mortgage on his condo-style telco hosting center rose this year for the first time, and he has to either refinance (at significant cost) or pray that interest rates don't spike, or the mortgage payment alone could put him out of business. Other than the mortgage bit (since my company leases space), I understand all of those concerns. It's not an issue right now of "can I expand to be ready for the recovery." It's "can I survive this wave of expensive new bullshit rushing straight at my head?" Now expand that by about 10,000 times and apply it upwards to, say, senior executives at a major national food company. They're not in finance, and they're not in automobile manufacturing. And yet they look at what's going on under the new Administration, and saying to themselves: "So we make food, and people need to eat. We're one of the top-10 manufacturers in the nation. If the economic situation continues to stagnate, are we looking at price controls or restrictions on how we source product or do business?" Nobody knows that answer, so they're taking the prudent route and stockpiling resources. They're cutting un-profitable products and the employees that run them, and not staffing up to ANY excess capacity in any department. This is not a hypothetical -- it's a conversation I had about a month ago on a conference call with a VP-level executive. In the end, this all boils down to fear. Fear of the unknown, no small amount of fear of the known, and uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring. It bears repeating that businesses aren't some magical money pots that vomit forth jobs and cash into the economy -- they're just collections of consumers working towards a common goal, and when consumers are scared, businesses are scared. Right now, small businesses are petrified, and large businesses are hoarding cash like dragons because they have no idea whether even their size will protect them from a sustained downturn in an inflationary economy. As a consumer, I understand the desire to look at the examples of greed, excess and malfeasance in the business community, and clamor for greater oversight. I do it too -- the "evil empire" of Microsoft, the military industrial complex of Cargill and ADM. The problem with interventionist economies, however, is that you can't just stop there with the big "evil" companies. Venezuela is a fine example of the phenomenon... they nationalized their petroleum industry, but then all of the companies that serviced or bought from the petroleum industry reacted to protect their interests, so Chavez had to nationalize them too. When the currency started tanking, he had to implement price controls on consumer goods. Then there were shortages, so he had to nationalize the dairies and other food companies to keep enough food on the shelves to feed the population. It's a never-ending chain of damage control once you go down that route. Whether that happens in the USA or not is irrelevant. The drivers of our nation's economy see the potential for it to happen, and are taking steps to protect themselves. So we end up with many of the end-effects of that scenario well before it has even started to occur. And with GM, Chrysler, the banks, and all the talk on Health Care, it very much has started to occur. 21% interest is not a madman's fever-dream at this point, given that soaking up this year's sale of $3.25 trillion in Treasury debt would all by itself require rates higher than during the Carter years. Sadly, this is something I (and others) did see coming to some degree. It's where we go from here where things are a bit murky. We spent the stimulus money, and unemployment has continued to skyrocket to near all-time highs. We increased unemployment benefits, and now the slightly increased benefits have the unintended consequence of families becoming ineligible for food stamps and other assistance. We bail out companies, and they go bankrupt anyhow. It has to end. We cannot start the climb until we bottom out as a nation. These incessant and futile attempts to protect people from the consequences of their own actions merely delay those consequences until they are larger and worse. We need to restore confidence. We need to make people believe that the economy works, and that they control even some small part of their destiny again. Rather than layoffs, I know of at least two jobs that would be available if the business owners weren't too scared out of their own heads to hire for them, over what changes our leadership might bring to their doorstep. Not to mention the spots I myself would probably be trying to staff-up if my clients weren't still desperately cutting to try and protect themselves. That alone should be all we need to know about the state of the economy. Sad, but unavoidably true. Current Mood: depressed

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June 8th, 2009

12:47 pm - It's not easy red-penning the universe. It's no big secret that I am a compulsive proofreader. A Grammar Nazi. He Who Worships The Webster. Call it what you will. In 2009, it's not easy being this particular shade of green, because it seems that any word or construct can be made correct simply by declaring it so. Get 10 people on the Internet to agree with you, and voila! Ain't nunna them mades up words aren't good now. Today's study: Shorty. For time immemorial, "shorty" was a mildly derogatory word for someone who was short. When I was in college, the expanding lexicon of engineering meant that a shorty was a 1-2' long piece of network cable used to jumper across devices in a server room. Sometime in the mid 1990's, Shorty acquired a new urban meaning. It referred to a youngster, getting his start out in the 'hood, dealing drugs and pimping for the first time. Trend-setting rapper NaS defined the word in context in his single "One Love": "Shorty's laugh was cold blooded as he spoke so foul. Only twelve, trying to tell me that he liked my style." A wash of other references followed, representin' how we got to protect the Shorties so they grow up respectin'. No problem. Street slang evolves like any other language, so I just went with this. In my brain, the first popular definition of Shorty went from being a small bit of wire to being a hard-core pre-teen with a gun. Once again, the l33t-speaking world was at peace. Two weeks ago, we were listening to the radio in our rental car, and a dance song came on the XM radio station we were listening to. The lyrics would haunt me to this day: "Somebody call 911. Shorty fire burning on the dance floor, Whoa. I gotta cool it down... That little shorty fire's burning on the dance floor." ~Sean Kingston (slightly inaccurate excerpt) Thinking that I was at least moderately up-to-date on dance party slang, the first thing that came into my head was "Jesus!! They wrote a song about torching some little punk-assed kid in a club?!" I have to point out that this was a crappy sound system, the windows were down, and most of the lyrics other than the start of the refrain were pretty much unintelligible. I was really confused as to what the hell this song could possibly have meant. What had we come to, as a society, when our pop music involves lighting drug dealers on fire while the rest of the club dances on?? Turns out that in the span of a few short years, the word "Shorty" has been utterly and completely redefined again. NOW, Shorty means: 1) Your girlfriend, or a girl that you date or go out with. 2) One of your closest female friends, someone that you hang out with a lot. 3) An attractive girl that you want to meet. Usage: "Hey, look at the ass on that Shorty over there. That Shorty's on fire." How have we gone from "punk assed little kid smacking up the ho" to "smokin hot female" in just a couple of years?? I call shenanigans. Even street slang shouldn't evolve that quickly, and particularly not to mean something almost diametrically opposite to the original meaning. Attention all hot chicks: You are not shorties unless you're selling drugs and talking smack to the gangbangers who are chronologically older than you. You are a "hottie". Or, if you spend more than 50% of your leisure time in a club, a "Club Rat". Grammar Nazi has spoken. Current Mood: confused

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May 18th, 2009

12:51 pm - The Naked Truth Making the news today, we have a bunch of prudes at the "Electronic Privacy Information Center" trying to whip up support for their crusade against millimeter-wave scanning at US airports. In general, this is not a particularly thrilling news item. But I feel the need to post it here in the hopes that my retort will also "go viral", and that enough clear-thinking reasonable people will tell Lillie Coney and her crew precisely where to shove their objections. If you've not yet had the opportunity to go through one of these machines, let me just say that it's a frequent traveler's dream come true. You walk into a clear plexiglas chamber, put your arms out in front of you, stand still for about 3 seconds, and you're off and on your way. No beeping because of pennies in your pocket. No going back-and-forth through the metal detector. No taking your freaking shoes off! If you're flagged as a threat for having something show up on your person, you're shunted off into a secondary inspection area. I have never personally seen that occur (yet). Now, to Ms. Coney's objections, as it turns out I actually know someone who works on these machines at one of our National Laboratories, writing the software that does the image analysis. He shared with me an anecdote on why these fears are unfounded. Because the scans penetrate _everything_ down to human skin, the images are featureless. No hair, no eyebrows, no external characteristics whatsoever. They did a test where they took images of 8 people of comparable height, printed them out, and showed the images to another group of people, while the original 8 stood against the wall in a lineup. Nobody in the room could figure out who's scan was who's. This makes sense because research on human facial recognition has proven time and time again that you only need to modify a few small details about a face for it to be completely unrecognizable. [One such study by MIT - PDF Document]. Show a picture of Winona Rider without her eyebrows, and better than 90% of test subjects will be unable to identify her. So the argument that TSA screeners in a remote room at LAX will be taking pictures of scans of celebrities and posting them on the Internet is the height of fearmongering. Even if they did post the body scans, it would be cognitively impossible to actually identify them as such. You'd have just as much luck posting MY body scan online and calling it Hugh Jackman... Do you see genitalia? *gasp!* Yes, you do. As a featureless outline in 2D. You'll see more lascivious depictions of genitalia by going to Miami Beach any day of the week. In fact, if I have to look at the cocks of strangers I'd rather it be pixellated and featureless, than live, in-person, and straining through a banana hammock at my neighborhood pool! The millimeter-wave technology is quite possibly the best thing to hit the market, in this crazy, paranoid, security-delusional post-9/11 world we live in. Finally a technology that satisfies the government's craving for material security, coupled with a traveler's craving for just getting onto the freaking plane in the smallest possible amount of time! ACLU and EPIC, sit down, shut up, and don't screw this up for the rest of us! Just because you're embarrassed enough to hide in your closet if anyone even mentions the outline of a nipple, doesn't mean that the 2 billion people who travel annually are that prudish. Particularly when the most lascivious thing that might be seen is more akin to a teenagers' view through the old cable scrambling on the Spice channel. And doubly so when the only person who sees it is a bored TSA agent who isn't even in the same building as you! How some people stretch to find any excuse to go on a crusade. Current Mood: annoyed

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May 15th, 2009

11:09 pm - Honey, what's that on the corner... KABOOM In this era of air conditioning and cable TV, I have often lamented how most people don't know their neighbors these days. Generally, it takes one of two things for people to meet those who live near them: 1) The fall of civilization -- I met most of my neighbors in my old apartment complex during the Great Power Outage of 2003. 2) Fear. It is the latter that introduced me to a few of my neighbors tonight. Now, since one of my pet peeves is people who don't know their neighbors, I met most of my neighbors years ago. But that has its limits... I don't know the people who live two blocks away. Two blocks away, the Westlake police responded to a domestic dispute, which turned into a bomb squad deployment. As we came home from the Case Reunion banquet this evening, the street was barricaded by police and fire engines. Most of the residents of that street were milling aimlessly around on the corner. A few younger kids were standing near the stop sign, so I rolled down my window to ask what was going on. Combined with stories from other passersby, a story of terror emerged: Chapter 1) Chick fight!! A domestic dispute involving two females transpired on the front lawn of the house. Chapter 2) Call in the fuzz. Police are summoned to the home. (According to reports, police have been summoned to said home 37 times since 2004... who knew?!?) Chapter 3) Absurd Officiousness. Without explanation, police blockade the street and evacuate residents on the block. "We can't tell you what's going on", said the coppers. "Well," say the residents, "if you won't tell us, we will..." Chapter 4) Alert the media! One neighbor figures out that if the police won't talk, it's time to call in the professional naggers. All 4 major news networks are alerted. All 4 arrive on the scene. Chapter 5) The scoop at 11. Making deadlines for the evening news, the reporters allow neighborhood residents to listen in as they phone the story back to the studios. "8 explosive devices the size of a softball, 1 pipe bomb, and drug paraphernalia were removed from the home. 1 adult female arrested on drug charges." Chapter 6) Order is Officially Restored - Meet thy neighbors. Basking in the official comfort brought about by the Westshore special unit fulfilling their duties as operatives, relieved neighbors mill around aimlessly talking to each other. "Wow," said we all... "who'd have thought something like this would happen in our neighborhood." Then we go back to our air conditioning and cable TVs, secure in the fact that the neighborhood is a nice place to live once again. Right? Mad props go to exilejedi and aquamindy for opening up their house to the neighbors, and putting Winnie the Pooh on the big screen for the neighborhood toddlers, who would otherwise be stuck outside on the corner. The tasty liquid refreshments weren't bad either... I met a few people whom, honestly, I'm unlikely to see much of ever again. But it's always good to know your neighbors. Because it's always those weird ones you don't know who turn out to be the bomb-building, wife-beating drug addicts. It just goes to show that no matter how nice you think your neighborhood is, there's always something that will surprise you. Time to watch a little less TV, and wander a bit further afield during our summertime walks. And I guess I'd better stop cooking meth in my basement and beating gieves. Don't want to be that guy, ya know?? Current Mood: amused

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April 23rd, 2009

04:43 pm - The Value of Your Word They say in business that if you don't have your integrity, you don't have anything. I've watched this play out, in practice, time after time. People who screw over their vendors or customers with lies and deception find that they have none of either, sooner or later. Word tends to get around, and when you've purposely deceived someone for your own gain, your future in any given industry becomes a lot harder. So it is from a business perspective, not a political perspective, that I'm starting to get a little nervous about the policies and practices of our new government. There's a big bucketload of stuff I'm not happy with -- tax policies, foreign policies, social program policies, etc... -- but those are political, and they're topics for another day. From a purely business perspective, we're swimming in dangerous waters. For the first time ever (and I'm including the New Deal here), we have a government who is reaching back through time to re-write contract law on a massive, consumer-based scale: - Don't like the terms on your mortgage? We'll make the lender change them. - Don't like the bonuses contracted by a bank? We'll make the bank rescind them. - Don't like the way an industry is running? We'll replace a CEO and dictate operating terms for their future product lines. - Don't like the way a previous administration conducted a war? We'll waffle on our intentions and threaten to launch investigations of individuals who were following orders from their superiors. - Don't like the interest rate terms on your credit card? We'll haul in the company presidents and freeze their ability to execute on those terms. It's easy to look at all of these things and throw around the term "unfair" or "unethical". And perhaps they are! But it shows exactly how far we've fallen as a society of laws that such considerations even impinge on our interpretation of them. Throughout history, one of the cornerstones of contract law was that if you signed it, you were liable for it, unless that clause was found to be illegal at the time. You could sign away your right to, virtually, anything... and you could sign the most outlandish, expensive, extortionary promisory note to get what you want, and you were then-and-forever on the hook for it, because you got what you wanted. The solution seems delightfully Robin Hood. We punish the big businesses to help the little guy. Yet, even in the tale of Robin Hood, the populace of England suffered miserably under the draconian policies put in place to crush him and his followers. And while the evil Prince John eventually got his comeuppance, you'll note that the story says nothing about the living conditions of the commoners who had been ground into dirt over the preceding decade... In our real-world, not understanding your contract has never been a defense. No moreso than ignorance of any other laws are defense against breaking them. If you're a forest-dwelling cult member who didn't know that robbing a convenience store in the big city was against the law, that isn't going to keep you out of jail for doing so. And if you didn't realize that failure to pay outstanding debts would result in your credit card rates skyrocketing, you really did have several choices long before then, including: 1) Read the paperwork before you sign it, and find a different card if you don't like the terms. 2) Don't buy all of that crap that you couldn't afford. Particularly in the credit card industry, it's not like there isn't competition. Credit card issuers compete on a thousand different fronts, interest rates and payment terms prominently among them! So if you got the card with the $20,000 limit and the free gas perk (with 30% APR) instead of the card with the $5,000 limit and 8.99% APR because you wanted to spend your little eyeballs out and believed that you were getting free stuff to-boot, well... You got what you wanted. Now we have a government who wants to give you what you wanted, and eliminate your responsibilities under that contract. That's very generous. Apparently there is such a thing as a free lunch. But when you don't have your integrity, you don't have anything. And we see this in action right now, on the housing front. Everyone is screaming about the credit crisis, even after we've stopped to think about what set those dominoes falling. Subprime borrowers (i.e. people who frequently couldn't afford what they wanted to buy) got caught in the wringer, and the laws of unintended consequences turned many well-intentioned efforts to "save" them into massive taxpayer losses and a general inability for anyone with imperfect credit to get new loans. The taps were shut off for an entire class of people all the way back at the sources of capital because, effectively, it was shown that both the lenders and the borrowers in those markets had ZERO integrity. Even now when cash is actually plentiful, the dollar is high and profits are rising, those in a good position still have no interest nor motivation to re-open that line of operation. So then we throw around words like "abusive" and "deceptive". Because it's in the fine print, or because (and I love this line of thinking) it wasn't easy to find the information online -- really, the Obama administration actually said, out loud, that the credit card lender practices were abusive because consumers couldn't compare them online. We have officially crossed the line where human ignorance, stupidity, laziness and greed qualify as victimization standards for abuse and deceit. But what's going to happen when we crack down? Well, I'll bet my bottom dollar that the first thing that happens is that anybody without perfect credit becomes unable to get a new credit card. There is evidence that the groundwork for this has already been laid. AmEx was merely the most generous lender, offering certain higher-risk customers $300 to voluntarily close their card accounts. But the news has a constant trickle of stories about banks unilaterally canceling Home Equity credit lines and credit cards for at-risk borrowers. The companies see the writing on the wall. When you have no integrity, you have no business. In this particular case, it's sad because it's the government's lack of integrity -- or perhaps, more accurately, its unwillingness to let its constituents sink-or-swim on their own integrity -- that is tarring an entire class of citizens with the bad-business brush. If credit card companies believe that the government will make a habit of re-writing contract law to suit the current foibles of its highest-risk constituencies, then they will simply stop issuing cards to those people. The revenue lost by not doing business in that sector will eventually be less than the revenue lost by doing business there and taking huge write-offs against projections after the gub'mint sticks their hand into the stew pot later. Force write-downs on subprime lenders, and there will be no subprime lending. Tie the hands of companies to make products that match market demand, and those companies will have less sales. Scapegoat CEOs for political gain, and the most qualified people will not take positions in companies under such scrutiny. And yes: prosecute people for following orders and people will stop following orders. Maybe you think that's a good thing, but I suspect you'll agree that it's not, upon deeper reflection. Again, we're proving to be poor students of History. Artificial limits on revenue and compensation are nothing more than an analog to price controls. Whenever you implement price controls, the inevitable result is shortages. Even dictatorial, fascist, genocidal governments cannot squeeze more water out of the stone of industry, once all profit motivation has been removed from it. Control the price of goods, and supply will move in lockstep with price rather than demand. Control the profit motivation on a good or service, and availability of such will be restricted to those increasingly-limited areas above the profit threshold. We may no longer be a nation of strict laws, save one: The Law of Unintended Consequences. It takes no act of Congress for that to be in full force and effect. When you start messing about with contracts, agreements, and the personal integrity of those who enter into deals for whatever the reason, you can expect a visit from the Law someday. Before that happens, it's sometimes better for everyone if you just exercise your right to remain silent instead. Current Mood: worried

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April 16th, 2009

12:09 pm - The day I became "Old" That's it. I have HAD it!! Today is the day that I officially become old and irrelevant. I don't care. I'm unashamed. I'm just going to come right out with it: I despise Twitter. Not just dislike. DESPISE. Most of you know that I'm a compulsive proofreader. That's not to say that I have perfect writing, has grammar, and spellz rite. Just that it takes all of my willpower not to go at my computer monitor with a red Sharpie whenever I catch obvious typos. The fact that people cannot proof their Tweets after-the-fact drives me insane. If I had a single lentil for every Twittered typo I've caught in just the last week, I'd have solved world hunger by now. (Oh, and did I mention that it makes my skin crawl to refer to inane little mini-thoughts as "Tweets"?) Seriously though, I'm really having a problem figuring out why this has caught on as a trend. Proofreading aside, this is the epitome of information without context. Without living in the breast pocket of whomever is posting, most microblog entries make only the most cursory sense to an observer. Even an observer who knows the blogger pretty well. It's like trying to view a Renoir through a pinhole camera. Get enough snapshots and you'll eventually get the whole picture... but probably not before you'll drive an icepick through your eye in frustration. I'll concede that there are certain helpful applications of this technology. Letting a group of friends know where you've gone and where to find you at any point in time. Blasting out a notice about a change of time on a meeting. Anything you can do with text messaging, but for more than one person and on an information-pull basis. It's multicast text messaging. There are definitely uses. But that's not how people are using it. The vast majority of Twitter users (in my experience) are attempting to fulfill the mission of a real Blog -- expressing opinions, telling stories, sharing experiences -- in 140 characters or less. And with all due apologies to those of you on my Friends list who are doing this: it makes everything sound shallow and trite. Worse, it's a self-defeating practice even at its finest. I've heard people say that they love it because it forces them to structure their thoughts, and be clear and concise. Ok, there may be some value there. But that's what you get when a professor forces you to write a term paper that's under 5 pages, or a scholarship application gives you 2000 words. 140 characters seems to stretch the minimum threshold of the concept a bit thinly... For every wise and sagely Confucianism that flows from the structured mind of a text virtuoso, there are 500 pieces of badly-typed natter chewing up the world's dwindling bandwidth. Twitter is the very embodiment of where we're going as an electronic, connected society. Sharing thin, uncensored, often wildly-inappropriate information with anyone who cares to pay attention to us; yelling miniature half-baked thoughts at each other as we pass like ships in the night, desperately trying to avoid any sort of real human contact. Huh. Sort of like this blog, come to think of it. Weird. But at least I spent more than 140 seconds thinking about it before I decided to share. You can rest assured that anything herein was more or less intentional. Please ensure that all comments are greater than 140 characters. 12:34: Sitting at my desk hating Twitter. 12:35: Pressing "Post to darlox" -- Edited - 12:40 PM: 12:37: Why does this soup taste like corn? 12:39: Dammit... stubbed my toe. God I hate that. Current Mood: annoyed

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April 14th, 2009

01:35 pm - Conspicuous Consumption Yes, I was driving a 2002 GMC Envoy bucket-o-bolts with 131,000 miles on it. Yes, it was in need of some new tires, repairs, etc. Yes, it got abhorrent gas mileage. It pretty much made the Baby Jesus cry in most conceivable ways. And yet, actually, I loved it. I loved it to the point where life without an SUV was really an anathema concept to me. I liked being able to hare off-road in the Laurel Highlands in the middle of winter. I liked being able to haul 30 bags of mulch and fertilizer home for my garden. I like being able to haul around a dozen PCs to a client, without paying UPS $13 per box. Did I "use my SUV to its full potential?" Heck no. Few do. But I definitely used it for a heck of a lot more than grocery runs and weekend drives to big cities. Which is precisely why I bought another one. I am the proud owner of a new Toyota Highlander Hybrid. It was a factory demo unit, so this puppy is tricked out, and yet we actually paid about $1500 less for it than we'd planned to pay on a mid-grade new one. Only has about 4800 miles on it, and comes with the full warranty. It's in pristine condition. Yes, it's a Hybrid. No, I'm not suddenly trying to save the planet. But the geek in me is fascinated by how this thing works. And because it has two electric traction motors along with the gas engine, it actually develops 25 more horsepower than the gas-only model. It's zippy! It's a smooth ride. I'm truly shocked at how bad the car sales market must be right now. gieves and I made an offer that we thought was a negotiation starting-point, and they accepted it. Smelling blood in the water, we then hemmed and hawed and got right up to the point of threatening to walk out of the dealership, and they said the magic car-dealer words: "What will it take for us to get you in this vehicle, tonight?" So we told them. And they took that too. (And now I feel bad that we didn't ask for even more, and yet I'm so shocked at the price we DID get that I quite frankly can't even guess at how much more we might have gotten.) Even after accounting for depreciation on that 4800 miles at double the consensus rate, we still got the vehicle for more than $3500 less than what Consumer Reports' New Car Pricing Service said was the actual dealer cost, after hold-backs and incentives and all of that other junk. By the numbers, they lost a significant amount of money on this sale. ... and while I'm absolutely certain that they did not, it really blows my mind what the manufacturers must be giving the dealers right now to try and get cars out the door. So now I'm driving around in the stealth car. It turns on with a button, makes no noise as I shift it into Drive, and creeps silently through the neighborhood until I exceed 25mph or so. I sort of want to sneak up on someone and blow the horn. If you're in the market for an SUV -- hybrid or otherwise -- now would seem to be the time to buy. I was really left with the impression that our dealer would have lopped his right hand off and followed us home to cook dinner and scrub our toilets as a deal-sweetener, had we refused their offer. It may actually have been the only semi-pleasant car purchasing exercise I've ever had in my life. And now, I'm also saving the environment with my giant, suburbanite, yuppified earth-smashing dink-car. Maybe I can find a way to make it run on pureed kittens just to get my hateful conservative street-cred back... Current Mood: amused

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April 8th, 2009

01:42 pm - A return to running commentary Greetings to thee, my fine LJ peeps! Did you miss me? Yes, I missed you too. C'mere and give your darlox a hug... *ahem* Anyhow. I have lots of updates I've been dying to make. From an update on some notable happenings in Japan, to a book review or two, to plenty of ranting and raving. Alas, I've lacked the time, being up to my eyeballs in work and other obligations. So I'm going to ease back into this with a bit of current-events commentary. Specifically: current relations with Cuba. I literally did a double-take in the car this morning on the way to work, when the news was reporting what has recently occurred. A delegation from the US's Congressional Black Caucus met with Fidel Castro this week. Now before I lose you here, I'm not going to rally for the whole "we hate Communism" thing... Communism as a movement is pretty much no better nor worse than any other political movement on the wildly-polarized US scene today. Face it, we have Republicans and Democrats doing things that card-carrying Communists would never have dared even 20 years ago. What's getting to me about this recent push to embrace Cuba is the bald-faced and dangerous ignorance of history here. Congressman Bobby Rush (D - IL) was quoted during his visit as saying that "In my household, I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor." And that "it was almost like listening to an old friend" to talk to him. Congressman, precisely how many "old friends" do you have who assassinated at least 3 political rivals in front of their children in broad daylight? Who executed violent land-grabs with the force of a private militia? Who created neighborhood spy groups that drag men from their families in the middle of the night under suspicion of hoarding food? Who were the supreme dictator of a nation that international human rights groups repeatedly call "one of the world's most corrupt states"? One would hope not many, but these days, I suppose one never knows. Proponents of normalized relations with Cuba paint pictures of a veritable Caribbean paradise, with no poor and universal health care. What they fail to mention is that the US is the only major nation that has a Cuba embargo. More than 2 million Canadians alone visit Cuba annually. ... and yet the place is a virtual pit, with poverty and repression reigning the day. It gets more foreign visitors annually than the Cayman Islands. Yet the Caymans have the 12th largest GDP per capita in the world! And last I checked, none of the other Caribbean nations -- not even worst-in-the-hemisphere Haiti -- have more than 40,000 refugees annually piling onto anything that floats and claiming refuge in the USA. The major industrial and tourist facilities on Cuba are either owned by government officials, or owned by foreign entities under an agreement with the Cuban government that has come to be known as "tourism aparthied" -- because regular Cuban citizens are forbidden from participating in them, and the visitors are prohibited from seeing the "real" Cuba. They have destroyed their own agricultural sector through a combination of mismanagement and outdated Soviet-era policies, to the point where Raul Castro himself ridiculed the country's efforts. Meat is such a rare commodity at present, that the unregistered slaughter of a cow actually carries a longer prison sentence than the killing of another human being. The US's embargo is not the source of Cuba's problems. Lifting it will not be much of a solution. We have no embargo against Venezuela, and yet the Castro-idolizing Hugo Chavez has managed to beggar his country's economy and bring about 30% annual inflation simply by copying the policies of his "mentor". The naked stupidity exhibited by some of this nation's elected officials has become staggering. To uphold an ideology to the point where you will truly behave as though your ends justify any and all means, puts the entire nation in a very dangerous position. Even considering a friendly dialog with a man whose own files once referred to "The War of Extermination of Every Form of Deviation or Resistance to the Cuban Revolutionary Ideology" is something that Americans should hold against their elected leaders to their very tombs. Let us never forget that Benito Mussolini was once too adored by much of the world's "progressive thinking" population. He made the trains run on time. He vehemently opposed class warfare. He established thousands of new farms and agricultural towns. The newspapers of Europe declared "The very strong man, that Mussolini undoubtedly is, is exactly what the misruled Italian people need." [Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), 1922] ... and in the end he was shot in the chest, hung from the roof of a gas station with piano wire, and his body was stoned by the children of Milan. Most of us would not argue that he deserved much less. As we proceed into this bright new era where we want everyone in the world to love America again, let's not forget that there are some whose love we can most definitely do without. Kowtowing to brutal dictators because their political ideology happens to be in vogue once more shows the utter lack of regard these people actually hold for the common good. When the next insane dictator rises to draw us into another conflict for our most basic way of life, we truly will have nobody to blame but ourselves. Current Mood: disappointed

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March 18th, 2009

03:23 pm - Ping! FAQ: 1) Yes, I am still alive. 2) No, I am not around. Craziness abounds and I'm currently in Portland OR awaiting a connection to Tokyo, where I'll be for the next week. 3) Yes, I still have opinions on what's happening in the world. I may even write about them someday. LJ, for me, has been worse than a foreign country lately... in that I actually spend time in foreign countries. Really, I still care about you all, and the things you write here. Just not lately. Or for a little while yet. Like unto MacArthur, I shall return! Current Mood: stressed

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February 28th, 2009

03:30 am - An Unscheduled Destination The sign currently to our left... Airplanes rocket off into the sky each day. Most of them get where they're going. Some do not. Tonight, myself, gieves and butterandjelly were on such a flight. It is 4:30 AM local time in Gander, Newfoundland Canada, where I sit as I type this. Gander International Airport is the western Transatlantic safe-harbor airport. When a plane has a problem, and it's less than half of the way to Europe, it comes here. Our plane caught on fire. Now, let's not over-react. There were no flames shooting from the engines or smoke billowing into the cabin. Unfortunately, there was apparently enough smoke in the cockpit that visibility was diminished, and the resolution procedures did not work. So our flight deck crew did a fine job of addressing what was a fairly serious emergency in the air. For us, there was a strong and unmistakable vug of electrical smoke in the cabin, which persisted despite the captain's de-pressurizing of the cabin to try and clear the "vapor smell", as it was described by one flight attendant during an announcement. I commend the efforts of Delta Flight 122's crew for dealing with the situation quickly and effectively. Though I'm amused by the flight attendant who, with a slight edge of worry in her voice, made the announcement: "We need everybody to remain calm. Just remain calm. REMAIN CALM!" A little too much like she was trying to convince herself -- but otherwise, they did excellently in what must have been a very stressful situation for them. For me? Well, this actually completes some kind of non-fatal superfecta in airline travel for me. I've been on a flight that slid off the runway during icy conditions. I've been on (two) flights that had to abort landings during final approach due to obstructions on the runway. I've been on a flight with a mechanical problem that had to circle for an hour while they determined whether it was ok to land. And now I've been part of an in-air emergency requiring an international safe-harbor diversion. Fun! Ok, not really. But certainly interesting. Not nearly as worrying as one would expect, either. They're the sort of the airline equivalent of blowing a tire on the highway... You're a little scared, mostly annoyed, and well, it occasionally just comes with the territory. An infinitesimally small number ever get to experience the high drama of landing on the Hudson, for instance. This is cake. I sit here in a circa-1940's airport, surrounded by cranky Canadians who were pulled out of their beds to come and open an airport and deploy emergency services for a bunch of Americans. We have yet to get any updates from Delta, though their website implies that another plane has been deployed and that we will continue our journey sometime around 10 AM. Conversation in the lobby is largely people waking up loved ones back home to tell them where they are. I see no need, so you're all getting this electronically. (If I were floating in the ocean off Newfoundland, rather than sitting on an Apollo-era contemporary institutional couch, I'd call...) Others are debating aloud whether they want to get back on another airplane -- like they have any choice, given where we are! A few will undoubtedly have flown their final commercial flight, once they get home, and live out the rest of their days going no further than land transportation will take them. It's all a little silly. You still have a better chance of being plastered on the highway than of dying in an air emergency. Travel is adventure. And where's the adventure if everything always goes to plan?? I've definitely visited somewhere new today. It is infinitely better to be somewhere unexpected on the ground, than to be in serious danger in the sky. Signing off from the north-easternmost tip of North America, in frozen Canada, I'm a sleep-deprived traveler waiting for his next lift outta town. Current Mood: tired

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February 24th, 2009

01:40 am - Little fuzzy dots in the sky I know it's unlikely that any of you will be awake, reading this at 1:40 AM. I made a liar out of gieves, who drank her potion and planned to pass out some two hours ago... Photo swiped from SpaceWeather.com Nonetheless, if you happen to be conscious, go outside and look about 45-degrees up in the south-east. Just below Saturn, you'll see one of the more unusual cosmic wanderers ever to enter our neighborhood making its closest approach to Earth. Comet Lulin is making its first, and likely last, visit to our solar system. This twin tailed green smudge in the sky is visible with binoculars for the next couple of nights. Or, if you're like us and decide to lug a heavy telescope out in the freezing cold, you'll see a larger green smudge. Not long from now, its unusual retrograde orbit will whip it well beyond all but the most powerful of telescopes -- the next couple of nights are the last chance for the average stargazer to see even a haze of its double-tail. Honestly, the crystal-clear view of Saturn in the frigid night was more impressive. So we enjoyed looking at our ringed neighbor as much, if not more. But smudge or no smudge, our unusual green visitor is worth peeking at just so you can say you have. It's unlikely that human eyes will ever see it again -- at least not for the next 10,000 years or so. If you go blind in the morning, and the Triffids come immediately after, don't blame me. Current Mood: accomplished

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February 23rd, 2009

10:11 am - Little Brother is Watching You Those of you who know me generally know that I'm not a tinfoil hat-wearing paranoid. I may believe that humans are fundamentally ignorant, but not that they're fundamentally out to get me. Even the government. Which is why I am somewhat discomfited by my atypical concern over the recent trend towards location-based everything. GPS on your phone, on your camera, wi-fi location tracking, cell tower location tracking, Twittering, Dopplr'ing and "Where You At"'ing. Take the iPhone for instance. Every photo you take with your iPhone is automatically geotagged, and can be automatically uploaded to Flickr. So let us visit that site and pull the very first photostream we come across, such as this one. (NOTE: I do not know this person. I have literally randomly pulled them off the web... their fault for exposing all of this publicly.) From their geotags, I know that this person lives in a neighborhood just southwest of Houston Texas, with a big yellow dog named Pedro -- his parents have one named Sasha and live nearby. Since he has several pictures of the inside of his apartment geotagged, I know precisely where he lives, that he buys Venti-sized drinks at the local Starbucks, travels the world like a maniac (I can appreciate that), works in an office in Lamar Terrace, Houston, and that his commute takes him on Route 59. I also happen to know that today, this very morning, he is in Charlottesville Virginia, driving a yellow Hertz rental car, with Virginia license plates XVV-5238. I know all of this because he, himself, told me -- and he doesn't even know who I am. If I were the sort to be sleeping with his girlfriend, or stealing his really nice bike (he has one), now would be a good time. I know he's on the east coast. If Alex happened to be the sort who Dopplr'd, then I would also know exactly how long he was going to be gone, and where he was going next. Because he has a picture of himself on a Continental jet, and I know where he picked up his rental car, I can even use Continental's online flight system, his departure airport, and his first and last name (which is on his other blog, that he conveniently linked to) to find out when he's flying home. I'm not even the government. If I was some crazy college stalker, I would be salivating over all of the college girls who go out and get trashed, and then Twitter their evening away talking about how completely blitzed they are. It's like a digital buffet -- you don't even need roofies anymore... just watch the twitter and flickr streams until they've screwed themselves up enough that you can catch them when they stumble out onto the sidewalk. "Here baby, let me help you to your car..." This is the amount of info that people are currently sharing with strangers. When you get to the point of sharing with people you know, it all gets kicked up yet another notch. I can pull out my cell phone and see where you are at any point in time. With some carriers, I can even pull up a website and find out precisely where you are. I know what you had for dinner. I know what you watched on TV last night. I even know what you've purchased from Amazon. How good of a friend am I, really, and are you completely sure? ;) What's worse is that you take all of this with people who ought to know better -- adults -- and apply it down one generation. The 16-year-old twits going to the online image-chans and posting naked pics of themselves from their phones are sending the scum of the Internet precise geographic coordinates as to the location of the house where they're currently naked and "safe" as they titillate the public. That's fine, as long as there aren't any perverts within an hour's drive of your home... I consider myself a technically-savvy person. I'm typically "with it" when it comes to plugged-in trends, and I can appreciate them even if I don't partake myself. This current one, however, just really distresses me. I like a certain amount of anonymity in my life. One of the reasons that I enjoy hiking and camping is that I can unplug, forceably, for just a little while. Dragging the Internet with me into the woods is just about the last thing I want to do -- and letting anonymous robbers know that my house is empty at the same time is pretty low on that list as well. We've entered a new phase of development where most consumers have yet to re-climb the mountain of realizing that "Can" ≠ "Should". It's not so much that the world is a dangerous place, as that it can be. Plugging yourself into your friends is fun, and a great way to build camaraderie in relationships that sometimes span wide distances. Unfortunately, it's not just our friends that are watching. Systems are imperfect, data is exposed. If my friends want to know where I am, they can (and do) call. Besides, if they're not good enough friends to pick up the phone and spend 15 seconds checking on someone, what are they chances that they're good enough friends to need to know where you are at every second of the day?? There is still something to be said for human interaction, on occasion... Big brother is watching you. But big brother doesn't care. Little brother is much more annoying, and he knows you're in South Kensington right now Ms. Blog editor... Current Mood: concerned

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February 12th, 2009

09:44 am - When people have nowhere else to turn This is a bad time in America. Times are hard and people are becoming dispirited. Different personality types respond to adversity differently; some pull themselves up by the bootstraps, while others descend into despair -- and everything in between. Throughout history, it's been the job of prominent public figures to keep the nation's morale up. To create inspiring institutions that give people hope. It is the role of President to be the figurehead for that effort, and to inspire people to things greater than themselves. FDR once said: "It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want." JFK's famous quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Calvin Coolidge: "Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." Theodore Roosevelt: "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort." During the campaign, it is certain that President Obama did just that. Whether you bought into it or not, there is absolutely no denying that he did run a campaign of hope. His various demographics projected hopes for a thousand different dreams onto the canvas of his campaign, and many carry that hope today. But over the last week, the harsh realities of modern life have begun to set in. Hope alone does not fulfill dreams, not without rolling up one's sleeves and working to make it so. The anti-war crowd had their hope dashed on the rocks when Obama reiterated and supported the Bush Administration position on "Extraordinary rendition". The progressive economic crowd are as scared and disappointed in the shape of the new stimulus package as the conservative crowd is -- and pretty much everyone is disappointed in the first initiative by Treasury Secretary Geithner. Life is full of disappointments. Buy a helmet. What concerns me is that for a campaign built on Hope and Change, we've seen precious little of either in the last month. Rather, we've seen a string of quotes and policies scientifically and exceptionally designed to sow fear and dependence in the population. Critics decried the Bush policies of using fear-mongering as a tool to pass national security initiatives. Yet that same thing is happening now -- "If we don't move swiftly to put this plan in motion, our economic crisis will become a national catastrophe." If that's not sowing fear for political gain, I'm hard-pressed to determine what would be. The same argument was used to pass TARP, and now we know how that all turned out... (I won't even hold against the Administration, Nancy Pelosi's repeated comments that if the package isn't passed, we'll shed 500 million jobs each month. Even after she was corrected, she repeated it in a separate venue. Another famous FDR quote comes to mind: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.") When people have nowhere else to turn, they look for inspiration. They look for hope. Earlier this week, President Obama held a town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Florida. The transcript can be found here. On some bits, he was right-on. He was a realist and told people that welfare programs weren't going to replace the pre-unemployment salaries of people who are laid off. He acknowledged that people bought houses they could never afford, and that saving everyone's home wasn't possible. That's good. That's also fairly obvious, and would be terrifying if he believed otherwise. But the real eye-opener was the people chosen to ask questions to the President. Examples: "Is there any provisions in your stimulus package that actually will give back to the taxpayers individually" "I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in. We need urgent. And the housing authority has two years’ waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help." "If we ran out of oil today, we would not be able to move anything around in this state, honest to God. And I hope you’re going to help getting that thing in the Gulf, to turn that around. We don’t want to drill oil in the Gulf, thank you. Right on. ... So I want to ask you, how will we get our state going again in transportation? I’m very worried about our dependence on foreign oil, and I don’t want to drill in the Gulf." "I’m currently a student at Edison State College in my second semester. And, OK, I’ve been at the same job, which is McDonald’s, for four-and-a-half years because of the fact that I can’t find another job. Now, with the fact that I’ve been there for as long as I’ve been there, do you have any plan or any idea of making one that has been there for a long time receive any better benefits than what they’ve already received?" I'm actually, legitimately horrified that such questions are being asked of the President of the United States. In the midst of an economic crisis, are you going to give us money individually? We're not going to be able to move anything if we run out of oil, but we don't want foreign oil, and I don't want to drill in the Gulf. I work at McDonalds and am a freshman in college, what kind of benefits are you going to get me? For the love of pete, man... You're a freshman in college! Show some marketable skills, and be glad you're even employed while many, many are not. All saddening situations to be sure, but dear lord! The level of selfishness that implies is absolutely shocking. People pillory Conservatives for being cold-hearted and not wanting to help the less fortunate. But in each case, Obama's response was to assure the questioner that he had plans to fix their problems. In the case of the homeless woman -- heartbreaking to be sure -- he had her go talk to "his people" who would help her. Is the President taking pointers from Oprah Winfrey now? (**) This is not helpful to a population of people looking for hope. To expect that any elected official could individually help each and every one of the 350 million citizens in this nation is an instant setup for heartbreak. Where's the motivation? Where's the hope for better times? What he delivered was straight from the government-dependence handbook. We're going to increase your unemployment payments. My people are going to help you. We're going to build rail transportation in swamp-ridden Florida and "somehow" do it without oil. We're going to implement reforms, that would make McDonald's pay for your healthcare. (Heh - goodbye value menu.) The economic, social and legal likelihood of ANY of those things coming to pass is pretty much zero. To wit: Canada's unemployment and healthcare system is strained to the limit, and that's with an average 60% tax bracket spread over less than 1/10th of the US population -- there aren't enough dollars in circulation to even that playing field here. Obama's "people" do not have the resources to give every homeless person a house -- and previous attempts to make homeowners out of those who cannot afford them have brought us to where we are today. European-style public transportation took almost 100 years to build, and covers a gross land mass of less than 1/3rd of America, with almost none of the geographic barriers common to the US' south and west. Not to mention that if they can't clear the barriers to build decent rail travel in Metro Philadelphia, what are the chances of doing it in Tampa? McDonalds will sooner fire its fleet of under-paid workers and hire a trained manager and a fleet of "Made for You" robots than have to double its menu prices to provide benefits to zero-skill workers. Change may one day come. Obama's administration will not live to see it -- at least not like that. Nor should it, if such short-signed and pandering policies are what pass for Real Change in 2009. My point in all of this is that now is a time to be inspiring. Now is a time to build hope. Government is excellent at ironing out the wrinkles in private industry -- it's the common trust fund that protects us when our collective mistakes threaten to destroy us. Yet in the long-run, it has never succeeded as the primary source of the people's sustenance, anywhere, ever. It's time has now come, but its managers must realize that for prosperity to return, its time must be as short as possible. When it came to generating hope for prosperity, Obama was excellent at doing that during his campaign, but is thus far failing miserably at it during his Administration. Obama, you've won the election. You're President now. It's time to start directly pandering less, and doing (and saying) the things that will actually get this country back onto the right track. You're no longer primarily lobbying for votes, you're running a 232-year-old country with a system that has worked pretty damned well more often than it has failed. Bluntly, giving Mr. Smith an extra $200/week for his 13 weeks of unemployment, or Nadya Suleman an extra $200/month in food stamps, may make dedicated voters out of Mr. Smith and Ms. "Breeding-like-a-virus-is-a-blessing" Suleman. But that does nothing to get him a job, it does nothing to free up resources to create him a job, and it does even less for Mr. Smith's motivation and ability to find an inventive and productive solution to the situation in which he finds himself. Giving Student X healthcare with his McDonald's job is a very humane thing to go, until you realize that there are a LOT more Student X's waiting to consume that resource, than Worker Y's to support them. Social Security is learning that lesson... How humane is it for the people whose standard of care you are lowering in that process? Short of that, do as little as you possibly can bear. Everything in history proves that cycles like this one work themselves out without -- and occasionally in spite of -- government action. Sit on your hands, and then you can still take credit for the recovery 36 months from now. Even the Great Depression ended in 3 years, and most of the largest government programs which assisted in that recovery expired, or were canceled, within a decade. "I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose!" ~ Woodrow Wilson Getting what you think you want is not always the same as getting what you really need. We are a nation of people, but we are a universe of numbers and a planet of scarcity. When people stop believing that, is when the really bad things start happening. Universal quality and prosperity may very well be mutually exclusive when you're talking about 350 million people and a comparatively fixed number of hard resources. Inspire people to prosperity and you might make more resources. Package people for equality, and you've got a race to the bottom wherever it's tried. The people need hope, not blank checks that the Earth cannot cash. But life is full of little disappointments. I'm shopping for a helmet. (**) - Let us not forget that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Most of the people who got free cars from Oprah had to give them back or sell them. Because they couldn't afford the sales and income tax that the government levied on the individual recipients. Funny how even good deeds can be punished by the government. Current Mood: disappointed

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February 11th, 2009

05:53 pm - Let's not, and just say we did Random House, I have a significant problem with this book. At least the artwork on the cover. No, wait. Pretty much the whole thing. *laugh* Current Mood: amused

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January 29th, 2009

11:26 am - Saddlebacking for the win Warning: Links slightly NSFW Dan Savage is an amusing writer. I've been reading Savage Love, well, pretty much since there's been a Savage Love column in The Stranger and The Onion. Often the letters are just shock-value fodder. Other times they're insightful and good advice. As a writer, one thing he's pretty good at is controlling language. With the help of hordes of devoted readers, he's used the language effectively before -- to pillory anti-gay Senator Rick Santorum by re-defining Santorum. Google his last name... it's result #1, and it's fairly vivid. It's also telling that probably more people in the nation at this point could identify the re-defined meaning of that term than could identify the eponymous Senator. But this week he pulled that trick in a less-disgusting, but oh-so-much-better way. As a swipe at anti-gay pastor Rick Warren, of California's Saddleback Church (and a swipe at our new President Obama for choosing Warren as his inaugural invocation chaplain) the term "Saddlebacking" has been redefined. I find it to be highly appropriate to the gripe at hand. I can think of no definition more likely to get right up Rev. Warren's left nostril. You can check out Saddlebacking if you wish to read it for yourself. Because there's no more effective way to point out the ridiculousness of certain beliefs than to spotlight a documented phenomenon that arises as a result of them. I'm sure all of the well-meaning but misguided teens in Warren's ministry are proud that their "purity" has been immortalized in an Internet meme. Current Mood: amused

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January 22nd, 2009

04:25 pm - Don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan? At this very moment, I would like every person who has ever lamented the plight of starving children to stop what you're doing, buy a plane ticket to Brussels, and kick an EU minister in the balls. Square in the balls. I would also like anyone who believes that we actually have Free Markets to stop what you're doing and kick yourself in the balls. Because you're living in a fantasy land, and should not be permitted to procreate. To prevent market prices on dairy products from decreasing in the EU, the European Union has purchased 30,000 tons of unwanted butter at the taxpayers' expense. A move roundly applauded by Copa-Cogeca, the European farmworkers union. This move will prevent consumer prices for dairy from decreasing during the economic slowdown across the 27 member states. That's 60 million pounds of butter. About 187,000 cubic feet of churned cow-juice. Cut into sticks, it's 22,727 linear miles of standard quarter-pound butter sticks, or enough to stretch more than half way around the Earth at the equator. ... except that it would melt there. I want to ski on it. They need to mash down an edge and sell tickets. If they're going to manipulate the markets dammit, at least make it something with a little public benefit to it! But wait. There's more. They've also purchased 109,000 TONS of unwanted skim milk powder. So it can "snow" on my butter mountain while I ski down it. The butter and milk powder join 717,810 TONS of cereal and 41,422 TONS of sugar, purchased by the EU to prevent a decrease in market prices. That's more than twice the weight in cereal as the official weight of the Empire State Building. Which means that after we're done skiing on the flaky butter mountain, we can all have a big 'ole Frosted Flakes party. Oh, but it still gets better! The EU has in its market-protection horde more than 2.3 million hectoliters of wine. That's 230,000,000 liters, or about 60,760,000 gallons of old-world vino. That's enough pressed grapes to fill more than 300 Geauga Lake waterparks. Stated another way, that's more than 10 times the fluid capacity of the world's largest aquarium, the Atlanta Aquarium. Which means that if Beluga Whales could live in Chardonnay, the EU's stash would be enough to support a spacious living environment for more than 50 whales. They'd never be able to sell it then, though... 'cause of all the fish poop. Probably. I mean, it's French wine, so you never really know in the first place, right? Does anyone else find this to be staggering? They're shepherding over-producing industries at the expense of their own citizenry during an economic downturn, and storing literal mountains of commodity foodstuffs, all while while telling the USA that we're not doing enough about food shortages in Africa and on the subcontinent? I'm glad I've got that straight. I'll stop stressing now, because I'm going to go skiing on a freakin' hill of butter before my dip in the wine lake. Current Mood: confused

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