stay curious

small potatoes

2012-02-13T21:03:00.008-06:00

This post attempts to organize some thoughts regarding where we are headed. It's fun when there is a clear vision, but perhaps the most important times for reflection are when things are muddier. Basically, if we can identify unsustainable trends, we can identify sources of change. While the catch is anticipating what exactly that change will be, having some semblance of the terrain is useful.

One of the analytical approaches that interests me is where the tendency toward optimism/pessimism intersects awareness of reality vs. fiction. There is a lot of emphasis in our culture on the first dimension, almost as if being optimistic is more important than being right. Visually, it puts the emphasis like this, on the vertical columns.

However, an attempt to rationally understand the world around us needs to compensate for that natural cognitive fallibility by emphasizing the horizontal.

Truth requires an ability to interpret events both optimistically and pessimistically, to have a vision of what could be yet also a sense of what might go wrong.

With a couple decades of general wage stagnation providing the context for several years of very specific economic hardship and dislocation, the strategy of the governing coalition of interests in the US appears both clear and consistent. Outside of the national security nexus (GWOT, drug war, deportation, etc.) neither the Bush nor Obama Administrations are particularly hostile toward or directly targeting 'average' Americans. The 'not Hitler' meme was one of the better ones that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert encouraged at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Metal Chris captured this one:

In other words, it is not so much that individual political leaders act maliciously toward the citizenry so much as they don't care about us. Apathy is the key descriptor; we are simply irrelevant. All of the energy in government is devoted to marshaling whatever resources are necessary to save the Big Fish. What we are left with is the crumbs; small potatoes, so to speak. You can almost see the political class psyching themselves up to sell the latest batch of small potatoes for the masses as something of remotely similar importance to the efforts to save the Masters of the Universe. The transparency that Vice President Biden accidentally showed at the health care press conference, for example, revealed so much.

It's not that Bush's Medicare 'Modernization' or Obama's HCR 'most important reform since FDR nevermind that Medicare thingy in the 60s' are Terrible Legislation that will Destroy America. It's not that Bush was an Idiot or Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Fascist. It's not that abortion and gay rights renders America ungovernable and/or on a path of moral decay and damnation.

Rather, that's not where the action is. Two successive presidents, from two different parties, pushed massively complicated bills that purported to make the healthcare system significantly better. Yet they didn't actually solve the problem of expensive healthcare that causes preventable deaths.

I learned to hone in on that tactic of over-selling and under-delivering as a teenager, and it has proven to be one of the most insightful observations in comparing words and deeds. It's the 'let your yes be yes and no be no' philosophy: either government should do something (such as guarantee quality healthcare for all citizens) or it shouldn't. Both are legitimate beliefs. So is I don't know/let me think about it/it's not important to me. But to pick bits and pieces from both is to give away that neither belief is sincerely held; rather, they are merely justifications for acting upon an unrelated set of beliefs (like the belief that government should protect the economic interests of the wealthy).

Clarity has been particularly revealed with the financial crisis because we now have so much data upon which to draw. It's a simple statement of fact to observe that the Obama Administration supports the use of law enforcement resources to arrest hundreds of thousands of people every year, from illegal drug users to illegal residents to illegal assemblers. Yet one specific group of criminals stand in stark contrast to this massive deployment of police and prisons: politically connected financial crooks. There are literally more baseball players in legal trouble for testimony given before Congress related to steroid usage than there are top corporate executives and board members in legal trouble for all financial crimes combined. The current Secretary of the Treasury was literally head of the New York Federal Reserve when the proverbial bile was impacting the proverbial turbine. The ongoing effort to enter into a mortgage settlement is designed to give the Too Big To Fail financial firms immunity from liability in court - that's the point, that's what a settlement is - a settling of claims of unlawful behavior outside of court.

The preceding paragraph is neither pessimistic nor partisan. It's simply recognizing where we are at. The past and current Presidents of the United States think cocaine users, whistleblowers, protesters, and immigrants should be treated like murderers while financial fraudsters should be treated like people who don't pay a parking meter.

This is beyond specific policy debates or even broad ideological contests. We are now in the realm of questioning, of bringing to light, the core foundations of the American experiment, in all of its grandiose, exciting, and dangerous forms.

Is the Constitution the foundational pillar of secular governance, or do we now look to something else? Is there a rule of law, or a rule by men? Do we want to participate in a peaceful world order, or do we want to instill an American world order? Our basic systems of property and finance and law are quite literally crumbling around us. It's not pessimistic to point this out, to consider the implications. It's responsible.

We know housing prices got out of control. We know higher education costs got out of control. We know healthcare costs got out of control. If actual solutions to these kinds of problems are not going to be forthcoming, that is important to know, to understand what it really means. If you're a Big Fish, you play things very differently, but for areas of American life that depend upon the broad 'middle class', there are only two outcomes. Either public policy ultimately changes and we start encouraging wage growth again (either directly through employment policies or indirectly through additional transfer payments like universal unemployment insurance), or the asset classes dependent upon wages will simply wither away.

This has to happen*.

Either $20,000 - $30,000 a year has to become what it is elsewhere in the world - a comfortable living - or millennials in aggregate looking for jobs have to have a way to earn much more than that in entry level positions. Xers have to have broadly accessible means of earning promotions and switching careers. Baby boomers need to be able to easily replace lost jobs and find part-time income in retirement.

We have utilized credit to bring forward as much consumption as possible. The distant future is finite, too. And the near-future was spent in the past.

Household formation has slowed. New home sales are at record low levels. Record numbers of Americans do not participate in the healthcare system. The percentage of Americans employed has dropped precipitously. Millennials are even ditching things like cable and phones. Student loans - financial commitments undertaken by minors deemed incompetent to buy a Bud Light - can't be discharged in bankruptcy, ever.

Any asset that depends upon middle class wages, any industry that sells to those last marginal dollars of disposable income, will simply shrivel up to a much smaller core.

That's what I don't follow about some of the more intense hyperinflation perspectives. Massive increases in broad pricing measures ultimately requires the government to get money into the pockets of 'normal' people somehow. But that's not the bailout mechanism this time around. The most well connected players are seeing such socialism, but the general citizenry confronts a dearth of capital. I wonder if our 'capitalist' system can handle such misallocation of resources on such a grand scale.

But what I don't wonder is that it is a misallocation. Undermining the rule of law causes many more problems than it solves.

*It is becoming increasingly difficult to get simple, accurate information. The Consumer Price Index, for example, is so watered down and altered that it's not even clear why it's a good measure. A KC strip steak from grass fed open range cattle simply is not substitutable with a breast from a tightly caged, anti-biotically stuffed, corn-fed melange of chickens. Our political process helpfully focuses attention on the relatively small amount of trinkets from places like China and India when the bulk of American household expenses go to much more mundane domestic sources like housing, healthcare, higher education, food, transportation, and so forth. I keep anal financial records, so I thought it interesting to look at a few specific items of my own. By my various calculations, I had a stretch of rental increases that amount to an annualized rate of 4.8%, tuition and fees at Wash U increased by 5%, the cost of an entry level car increased 6%, health insurance increased 12.6%, and food increased 14.7%. The drawback of course is that by being specific, it's unique to me and just anecdotal. But comparing that against the average annual increase in household income over the past decade - 1.6% - it's obvious to see something has to give.

small frauds and big ones

2012-02-02T21:35:00.006-06:00

It's always fascinating which little ripple ends up making the big wave. Well, at least to weirdoes like me who are into organizational strategy.

At any rate, Susan G. Komen for the Cure is offering a front row seat to PR disaster this week. You see, they have the perfect niche. They make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and there is very little probing of what exactly they do with all this money. Now some people who had no idea that the head of Komen is associated with the Bush Administration* will know that, will think of the organization in a political light. Now, some people who had no idea that an organization with 'for the Cure' in its very name doesn't actually do that much to find a cure will run across discussions of the budget and finances of the organization. Now, the bland, corporatey, nonpartisan branding niche Komen has so carefully crafted for itself over the years has been shattered. Now, a wide variety of people will be exposed to the difference between the talk of groups like Komen and the action of groups like Planned Parenthood. Now, corporate partners of Komen will hear negative feedback as well as positive regarding their financial involvement.

Personally, I'm on the Barbara Ehrenreich end of the pink spectrum, so, I don't particularly care what happens to the national fundraising ability of Komen. And there is some good commentary out there about the marketing angle in particular. I would highlight Dan York and Kivi Levroux Miller for Internet Posterity on this one. Perhaps the best illustration of how the story is out of Komen's control is when I googled Komen. The organization's website didn't even show up in the first page of the search results!

The particular perspective I would add to this commentary is to place this in the context of our collapsing paradigm of vanishing trust in all types of institutions. Know whether you're a big fish or a small fish. The Really Big Frauds are Too Big To Fail. They steal billions and no one says a peep because the government itself is guaranteeing their business model. But if you're a smaller niche, an organization that depends at some level on legitimacy among the general public, don't push your luck. Komen had it all - liberal women and corporate women (maybe corporate personhood debates can shed new light on gender identity?) Donating in Harmony. Did they really think adding a third party - rightwing prolifers - wouldn't upset the apple cart?

Who planned that strategy? Or perhaps more damaging, who didn't plan a strategy to deal with this?

*P.S. Wow, I didn't know Brinker (Komen's CEO) was actually a Pioneer for Bush. Check it out, she even has a profile page with Texans for Public Justice.

P.P.S. Is Komen really inflicting a double booboo on itself, in strict business jargon? Everybody knows coverups tend to cause worse problems than the underlying issue. If Jeffrey Goldberg is remotely close to any semblance of truth in his Atlantic article, then Komen is directly and plainly lying to people about its decision-making process. That can't end well; that's what makes these things drag on far longer.

shorter sotu 2012

2012-01-24T21:26:00.008-06:00

War is Bipartisan. Yippeee! Look, I used an exclamation point, so it's optimistic!

I was looking at a USA Today questionnaire about the presidential race, and it does a great job of (unwittingly) capturing the impending irrelevance of the presidential election. My first-place match gave my answer in 3 out of 11 categories.

Oh, and my number 2 guy has already quit the race. I know virtually nothing about him. My number 3, well, she also is a quitter, and perhaps personally responsible for the great northern migration south. Obama didn't even rank in the top three.

This is like the opposite of 2000. It's shaping up to be the least important election of our time*. But the match game is fun, go check it out.

*Not that it's worth anything, but I remain unchanged in my opinion that this is still Obama's election to lose. Have you seen the GOP clowns? It's a bizarre world when Ron Paul can have so much fun annoying the establishments of both political parties. How is it that he, not the Democratic candidates, is the one inspiring productions like this?

By the way, check out the screen shot. OFA has money to buy airtime on obscure Ron Paul You Tube videos. That says about everything you need to know about our electoral system.

caught with his pants down

2011-11-12T17:40:00.003-06:00

I've been thinking about the right idiomatic expression to capture the weekend, and this one keeps coming to mind.

The sane advice is to let things lay low, to be patient, to let stuff fizzle out. At least, that's the strategy I'd advise.

But you just can't help going for one more fix, one more rendezvous, even if it requires escalatingly hilarious, in retrospect, actions to hide what's happening. At some moment you're caught, your bluff is called, and the exposure itself is what is damaging; you still retain the technical authority to do what you want, but you find that people don't really want to do what they're told simply because they're told to do it.

The Mayor's Office, by its own gambit of escalation, got owned by a couple dozen nobodies* nobody is paying attention to. What strategist is mapping this out? The city abandoned any notion of urgency or danger to the public by its inability to carry out the threat at 3:00pm, with the cameras rolling. The absence of action at that time is the deafening silence of walking in on somebody with their pants down. All the noise thereafter is just that, noise.

And for what? A one night stand?

*okay, might be exaggerating slightly for effect here. It's called hyperbole. Or is it adynaton? Does anybody care?

Anybody?

nothing happened

2011-11-11T17:19:00.004-06:00

So for the first time I swung by the OccupySTL. Actually hadn't been down to Kiener Plaza in quite some time, perhaps not in over a year.

The city released an ultimatum to the group that has three fascinating legal angles for me, perhaps most fascinating now that nothing happened. First, the notion that the city would start strict enforcement of ordinances is a plain as day admission of how our two tiered justice system works - selective prosecution is so engrained in the system that it is not even hidden. The city document leads to the obvious conclusion that most city laws are enforced lackadaisically. They exist not so much as rule of law as tool of power. Second, saying effective immediately at 3:00pm sets up a binary choice of confrontation; there is no way for cooler heads to prevail without completely blinking. Third, what does the Constitution's protection of the right to assemble actually mean? Every big city government in the country takes money and other support from laws passed by Congress, and Congress quite explicitly is forbidden from passing any laws respecting the right of the people to peaceably assemble.

At this stage there is a lot of hunger for answers (answers that conveniently fit in an existing, authorized, enclosed box). One of the most subversive acts of the occupy movement, I think, is its focus first on trying to create space for the questions. The right questions then reframe the whole debate.

Which is of course what's so dangerous about letting the rabble gather in public. It destroyed the British empire.

historic

2011-10-28T07:18:00.001-05:00

What a week. Oakland police shoot a veteran in the head. Brilliant strategy for mayors and police chiefs everywhere to emulate in showing which side they're on.

European leaders double down on bank bailouts at the expense of reforming the financial system. I'm sure European voters will love that. Plus, the economics of more leverage solving a problem of excess leverage makes obvious sense, and China, one of the poorest countries in the world, clearly should be investing in such a scheme. The classic win-win-win. Maybe the EU's banker-lackeys can hit up Turkmenistan and Algeria next. Or maybe the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Libya's gold has to be sitting around somewhere.

President Obama's approval ratings have fallen below 50% among Millennials, and a top Democratic fundraiser has openly protested a fundraising event. Representative Cantor is going around cancelling speeches that might be attended by actual Americans. The canon chancellor of St. Paul's cathedral in London has resigned because of pressure by the church and the financial district to use force against protestors. The son of the Vice President, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, has now launched a lawsuit directly against MERS.

But then, of course, there's the St. Louis Cardinals, with one of the most epic finishes in all of sports during one of the most epic finishes in all of sports. Makes the 0-2 Chiefs playing for the division lead on Monday Night Football on Halloween seem downright pedestrian. And what's up with the Big 12? Does it want to be a a major conference or not?

Eh, that can wait til next week.

only banksters get tarps

2011-10-21T00:18:00.003-05:00

Wow, I wish I had thought of that. Classic.

The absurdities of our system are absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious. The world is changing, or perhaps more accurately, has already changed. It really is as simple as David Graeber lays out.

“We are watching,” I wrote, “the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans...

Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état?

baseball and wall street

2011-10-11T19:06:00.006-05:00

I think the Occupy Wall Street crowd picked impeccable timing. The Yankees and Red Sox are both out of the playoffs. Detroit's the only team left even in the Eastern time zone.

With flyover country carrying the baseball battalion this year, might as well do something else. I'm sure this was an integral part of the planning.

Maybe a Cardinal will do some PR for Veterans for Peace. We could call it learning geography by protest. The corporate media in places like NY and LA might be shocked to learn we Midwesterners despise fraud and inequality and warmongering, too. Red and blue are for sports teams, not the Constitution.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

the idiocy of copy protection

2011-08-30T07:43:00.010-05:00

When people wonder why there is such hostility to the intellectual property framework in the United States and how companies are allowed to inflict intentional damage into their products in the name of 'copyright protection', Blizzard is a poster child for some of the worst behavior. When you buy a software package from them, you don't actually buy the right to use that software on your computer. You buy the right to maybe sometimes use that software under certain circumstances solely under Blizzard's discretion.

Oh, but I forgot, hampered functionality is what customers are demanding. After all, as senior producer Alex Mayberry helpfully explained to MTV, "with our games as a whole we're tying everything into Battle.net these days...We can provide a much a much more stable, connected, safer experience than we could if we let people play off-line."

Ah, maybe it's just a rogue software developer. Oh, nope, senior executive Robert Bridenbecker shows it's a management decision, stating, "When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that." Let's assume the guy hasn't made it to senior management by being a total idiot himself. Which leaves the only conclusion that DRM crap is, well, crap. Or in Blizzard's words:

How do you like them stable and connected and persistent apples? Apparently Blizzard customer service likes 'em so much they don't even respond to support requests. But the exclamation points make it all okay!

Update: Contrasting the corporate spin with the actual legal agreement is downright hilarious.

13. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS FOR YOUR USE, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND THOSE ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE. BLIZZARD DOES NOT WARRANT THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ACCESS OR USE THE SERVICE AT THE TIMES OR LOCATIONS OF YOUR CHOOSING; THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE; THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED; OR THAT THE GAME CLIENT OR THE SERVICE ARE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.

just a phone

2011-08-24T22:37:00.003-05:00

Steve Jobs is so confident that the mobile computing space has been filled out that he's stepping down as CEO. What a run.

Guess my new old iPhone will be my last Jobs smartphone (just in the nick of time, to boot!).

Apple has so defined mobile computing that the 'post' era can simply leave off the smart. From crackberries to droids, they're just phones. We simply expect that our email, contacts, websites, maps, games, alarm clock, weather, sports scores, calendar, stocks, music, photos, and more are available at the touch of a screen. How long we've come since the time when my Nokia phone was stolen and it took me hours to key in phone numbers in that Motorola Razr.

Wanna bet he goes out with a bang this fall?

It will be fun to see what my first Cook phone will be. If the 3GS lasts nearly as long as my original iPhone, I may have to wait a few years!

government by dow 2011

2011-08-04T19:13:00.006-05:00

So at work we were discussing some investment things, and it was mentioned that the stock market was down over 4 percent today. That's in one day.

I checked Yahoo Finance just now and yep, it's pretty bad.

'Government by Dow' has been a fun turn of phrase over the past few years, capturing government's capture of the common good by a much narrower set of interests on Wall Street. But when even Wall Street hates your policies, maybe it's time to rethink. Or at least ask, what is going on?

The day the 'grand bargain' a/k/a debt deal a/k/a CYA for cutting popular programs passed the House, the Dow fell from 12144 to 12132. Then on Tuesday, when it passed the Senate and Obama signed it into law, the Dow closed at 11867. Today, the Dow closed at 11384.

In chart form, the past five days look like this:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Enjoy the ride.

But, I know, whocouldanode that idiotic public policy is bad? Or maybe the efficient markets theory is wrong, and The Market isn't right that the debt deal is awful.

Wait, what's that about unstoppable force hitting immovable object again?

shorter obama

2011-06-23T08:03:00.005-05:00

9/11...blah blah blah...it's all bush's fault...al qaeda is on the run...we need tens of thousands of troops to chase them...even though Afghanistan has 100,000 security forces...don't ask when all the troops will come home because we're trying to turn the page on decades of war

Got it?

dear facebook

2011-06-23T07:32:00.002-05:00

I'm posting this on June 23 at about 7:00am.

Just curious when you'll post it on my wall.

Maybe this is the opposite of the Google beta-update-surprise approach. This is the don't do anything at all approach.

happy father's day

2011-06-19T12:48:00.004-05:00

Hope your dad lives somewhere safe from our nation's freedom producing bombs and liberty promoting prisons! And if you're a dad, hope your kids aren't locked up or six feet under.

Oh wait, sorry, that's not a Hallmark-approved Father's Day Card. Let's return to our regular programming:

Yay for dads, they're awesome, and we as a society are totally supportive of healthy families! We believe in promoting our values all over the world, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...in the air, on land, and sea.

in defense of delta

2011-06-08T19:15:00.000-05:00

I've been helping prepare some info at work for a press conference tomorrow on our HVRP program, so I've got veterans on the mind. I checked YahooFinance when I got home, and a story about Delta charging soldiers bag fees naturally caught my attention.

On first glance, it appears pretty outrageous that a big company would tack on fees to members of our armed forces for checked luggage on a flight from DC to Atlanta.

But the thing is, as hard a critic as I am of failures in corporate governance, it's important to observe when the policy under scrutiny isn't actually that terrible. Delta (and the other major airlines) actually have quite friendly policies toward off duty members of our armed forces using domestic, civilian transportation networks. Relevant to this story, Delta doesn't charge any bag fees to checked luggage until the fourth bag, even though they do charge bag fees to other customers on the same routes. Southwest Airlines thinks this is such a huge issue that they've invented an entire television advertising campaign highlighting their policy that 'bags fly free'.

What this demonstrates is one specific example of the economic costs of militarism. There are the direct costs shown on the federal budget, which are astronomical. But then there are the indirect costs on the civilian economy which are even larger. It costs money to fly four bags from DC to Atlanta. It costs money to train soldiers on their return to the US from overseas deployments, on what they should expect right down to the logistical details of how to return home (the military reimburses bag fees). Somebody has to pay for all this.

It's right to be angry.

But in this case, don't be angry at Delta. The problem is DC. When you have Presidents and Congresses that are too deceitful and cowardly to fully account for all of the costs of war, those costs don't simply disappear. They're just externalized onto private actors, from the soldiers themselves to their family members and community to the various actors they encounter in the civilian economy.

And of course, if we weren't deploying troops overseas in Afghanistan, there wouldn't be any troops needing to carry four bags back from Kabul in the first place.

welcome to the other america

2011-06-03T20:34:00.004-05:00

(PR) Uh oh, I'm ranting about politics...

I obviously haven't been paying much attention because I didn't realize the Clinton blowjob of the early 21st century was an ongoing matter. But apparently, former Senator, Vice Presidential nominee, and Presidential candidate John Edwards has been under an actual, real-life, full blown Department of Justice criminal investigation because he did something absolutely no politician ever does, try to portray a false public narrative about himself that doesn't match his actual nature.

I mean, thank goodness our political leaders (and heck, our business leaders, too, for that matter) are such paragons of virtue and family values.

But what intrigues me most is that the Obama Administration isn't happy with the Usual Punishment* for Being Caught: expulsion from the club (publicly). They actually want a felony conviction.

Quick, name the 10 most important people the Obama Administration has prosecuted.

Okay, I'll give you multiple choice:

a. George Bush
b. Dick Cheney
c. Condoleeza Rice
d. Donald Rumsfeld
e. Alberto Gonzalez
f. ...uh, this might take awhile...

It's almost comical. I only met John Edwards once (I was a pretty big fan back in 2007 of his candidacy). He struck me in person to actually be a lot like his reputation: he felt like a rich, sleezy used car salesman. I don't invite used car salesmen to my birthday parties. I don't go to movies with them. But you know what, I bought my car from one. They serve a purpose. Where the purpose overlaps with your purpose, they are valuable partners.

I ain't lookin' for a saint; and heck, even saints are sinners.

John Edwards made his cheesy sloganeering about poverty. Even today, you can say the phrase two Americas and largely evoke a pretty coherent narrative that Edwards was telling. Now, he's living the two Americas. The problem with our two-tiered justice system isn't that people down on their luck don't break the law. The problem is when the full weight of the law is selectively administered.

If I knew him well enough to call him John, I'd be in position to talk about how his life has completely fallen apart. I'd wonder what Cate, his eldest daughter the same age as me, is going through. But I don't know the family, and like any other family with moral, and now legal, complications, their challenges are for them to face, to decide how they want to come out the other end. His sin is against his wife, his kids, his family, his faith.

What I do know is that this has a chance to remind us what the rule of law means. It means no one is above it. All are equal under it. Technicalities are all the law is. Create exceptions, and what you've got is two Americas.

* of course, even being caught doesn't necessarily do it. Heck, people as varied as Rush Limbaugh and Tim Geithner have broken the law. And no one in the world avails themselves of more drugs and prostitutes than Manhattan and DC.

not you too macmall

2011-05-31T19:46:00.003-05:00

In the increasingly bizarro world of mail-in rebates, MacMall has set a new bar.

Not only is the rebate itself dependent upon people not sending it in, but the next 'obvious' hurdle in the business model that views customers as idiots and employees as expendable is to simply make a policy of denying payments to people who do send in the rebate forms. The reject letter they mail doesn't even have order info to be able to call to complain; you have to look that up separately from your records.

Then when you do call, their poor customer service reps are obligated to maintain the farce that you aren't eligible for the rebate.

It's not until you ask if this is a standard business practice (or yell, or whatever gets through the script to the next response) that they consent and process the rebate. I had specifically emailed MacMall customer service about this precise rebate issue to ensure that there wasn't going to be a problem surrounding the new iMac release.

This is how one-off scammers and shady businesses do things, not legitimate companies that expect repeat business. This must be relatively new, because the last time I ordered I had to submit several different rebates, but at least they processed the ones I submitted.

Part of me wonders if sometime in the not-too-distant future basically every good we buy will simply be shipped from Amazon. Among other things, what interests me personally the most is that it's just dumb business. Instead of being mad at Apple for the delay in shipping the iMac, my memory of the shopping part of this experience will now be MacMall making it painful to do business with them.

one year later

2011-05-24T22:11:00.002-05:00

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

We're all flawed human beings. We have our individual problems/challenges/hubris/sins/whatever.

Transparency in our institutions is one of the best tools we have to allow us to function collectively in a civilized fashion.

further down the rabbit hole

2011-05-20T21:15:00.003-05:00

I've had a wide range of reactions to a Supreme Court ruling this week. The Court overturned a decision by Kentucky's Supreme Court that had determined that police busting down a door without a warrant violated the 4th amendment.

I mean, obviously, that's unconstitutional. You have to create an entire theory of Constitutional Law out of thin air to justify something as ridiculous as that. The text is clear. The intent is clear. The application to modern times is clear.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated

Because the issue is so straightforward, there's really nothing of substance to add to the background at places like NORML's blog.

But two thoughts I will share for intertube posterity.

First, an issue like this is a good reminder to make sure you know what you believe. Times change, social acceptabilities change, do you know what you believe is right and wrong, or do you float with the wind? If you're an American citizen, is the Constitution your basis of political economy, or do you hold some other idea as being more important?

Second, I think this fits into a broader theme of the shifting sands of power as more and more Americans alive today have grown up without a connection to, or even understanding of, the politics of fear and hate and divisiveness that have characterized so much of our myopic focus on wedge issues at the expense of things that really matter. Like many systems of power that are crumbling, it is doubling down on what worked in the past instead of seeking to maintain leadership in the transition to the future.

It's not just the Fed that has some problems, shall we say, with the concept of exigent circumstances.

drug test corporate criminals

2011-05-10T21:59:00.003-05:00

(P) So Missouri Republicans want to drug test poor people.

Might I suggest they look in the mirror? The corporatist wing of the GOP are the biggest druggies on the planet.

And they snort waaay more federal dollars.

beat the streak

2011-05-09T20:47:00.003-05:00

Barry Ritholtz has made me think of baseball. He highlighted information from Zillow about housing prices, specifically, an interesting tidbit that prices have fallen for 57 consecutive months.

60 years ago, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio embarked on two of the greatest feats in modern sports history. Williams finished an entire season with a batting average above .400, while DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games.

No hitter has been able to approach 56 since then.

oh noze

2011-05-04T19:21:00.004-05:00

So I get this email from MacMall on my order status. Yippee.

But then it has this

Back ordered. Not even an estimated ship date.

It's been a while since I bought a product that exciting.

And I see they went ahead and shipped the freebie 1 year of anti-virus software they throw in. That will be quite useful without the computer.

last call

2011-05-02T07:25:00.004-05:00

(P) It's been 21 years since economic sanctions started killing Iraqis in 1990.

18 years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

13 years since the 1998 African embassy bombings.

11 years since the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

10 years since the 2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings and the invasion of Afghanistan.

8 years since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

5 years since Saddam Hussein was killed in 2006.

And now, the White House is set to report the death of Osama bin Laden.

If we don't bring our troops home now from foreign military occupations, we'll be doing this forever.

Forever.

Well, as long as empires last.

Which tends to be shorter than forever.

comedy news network

2011-05-01T08:36:00.003-05:00

CNN claims that, "Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is credited with trimming military spending and using a firm hand on tough decisions."

Ha!

revisiting the mobile computing paradigm

2011-04-27T07:33:00.005-05:00

I've offered my thoughts long-form before about the development of digital computing from mainframes to personal computers to networking to mobile devices. In short, I advocate the perspective that the Wintel duopoly of the 1990s peak of the personal computing era was extremely rare, rather than the norm for technological development, and that we are currently approaching the peak of the mobile era, rather than just entering its initial stages.

This puts me at odds with analysts like Reggie Middleton and Henry Blodget, both of whom subscribe more to the model that technology tends to standardize around one company, and the New Microsoft is Google.

Well for a couple of days I've been thinking about how to approach Blodget's hilarious line of 'iPhone dead' articles. The gist of it is that Apple is doomed because Android phones make up half the US market and growing while iPhone is stuck in second place with only 25% marketshare. I've decided to assemble a little quiz for Blodget and analysts like him.

Enjoy!

1. Fill in the blank: In what year did the Mac’s marketshare fall below 25%?

A: It’s a trick question! Macintosh computers have never accounted for even one quarter of personal computer sales.

2. True or False: Apple was the biggest loser to the IBM PC Compatible / Wintel.

A: False. Remember Radio Shack’s Tandy? Did you know Commodore’s 64 was the best-selling computer of all time? Atari was an iconic brand. Heck, even IBM (the ‘IBM’ of the IBM PC Compatible) and Compaq (the ‘Compatible’ of the IBM PC Compatible) don’t make personal computers anymore.

3. Word Association: In the 1980s, the GUI (graphical user interface) was

An unserious toy not fit for Real Men / The obvious wave of the future

4. Multiple Choice: The company that best navigated the market changes from personal computing to network computing to mobile computing is

a. Amiga
b. Commodore
c. Radio Shack
d. Gateway
e. Compaq
f. Dell
g. Xerox
h. Netscape
i. America OnLine
j. CompuServe
k. Prodigy
l. Lucent
m. Novell
n. Lotus
o. WordPerfect
p. Broderbund
q. Research in Motion
r. Nokia
s. Motorola
t. Palm
u. Napster
v. Real
w. Pets.com
x. GeoCities.com
y. Flooz.com
z. Apple

5. Essay question: In five paragraphs, explain how licensing ‘the Mac’ to Compaq, IBM, Gateway, Dell, HP, or other OEMs would have prevented Microsoft from using bundling and exclusivity deals to guide the transition of IBM PC Compatibles from MS-DOS to Windows, creating the ‘Wintel’ juggernaut of the 1990s.

* Extra Credit: Explain how Apple would be better off today if it had spent the 1990s copying Microsoft's business model instead of investing in technologies like QuickTime and Newton.

midwesterners for manning

2011-04-22T07:32:00.005-05:00

So I haven't been able to sleep through the storm this morning. Maybe I'm excited to go home for Easter.

For whatever reason, I've decided to put down my two cents on the government's move of Pfc. Bradley Manning from Quantico to Leavenworth. For most folks, that's like the middle of nowhere. But I happen to be from a few miles east of there! So I put together a Facebook page and attached this description. If I've done this right, you can even click the Facebook link right here to like it.

With the government’s surprise announcement in April of 2011 that Private First Class Bradley Manning would be transferred from Marine Corps Base Quantico to the Army’s Fort Leavenworth, you may be wondering, where the heck is Fort Leavenworth? For the 99% of the population that doesn’t live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, here’s a brief primer on the military assets in the nation’s midsection.

Scattered around the region are a couple of army ammunition plants, underground storage facilities courtesy of various limestone mines and caves, the old Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, and Honeywell’s nuclear weapons plant. The major military bases are Whiteman Air Force Base and Fort Leavenworth. Whiteman, a little over an hour east of the KC area, is home to one of the world’s most unique military assets – the fleet of B-2 stealth bombers. On the Kansas side, Leavenworth (also the town’s name), in the northwest corner of the KC area, is the oldest Army post west of the Mississippi River. It serves as one of the Army’s most important training facilities.

But this page isn’t about these installations. This is about a particular human being, raising awareness of his circumstances.

You see, Leavenworth is also home to THE federal prison, the prison of prisons, the Place To Be. Sure, there are infamous prisons like Alcatraz, historic prisons like la Bastille Saint-Antoine, and the superduperultravaluemealmax security facilities that have sprouted all over the country. But if you have been a VIP of the United States Federal Government, you have paid a visit to Leavenworth. (Technical note: there are several separate correctional facilities in the Leavenworth area, so if you are ever writing to or visiting someone, make sure you know exactly where they are, but collectively, it’s easiest to simply refer to them all as ‘Leavenworth’).

Naturally, surprise announcements can cause worry and concern, but two key things about Leavenworth do not need to cause alarm. First, it’s true that this relocation moves Manning away from his attorney and the nation’s capital. But Leavenworth isn’t in the middle of nowhere isolated from the rest of the world. It’s actually closer to a major civilian airport than Quantico. Second, Leavenworth is a major destination for military and civilian prisoners. Places like Quantico and Fort Knox are for lesser sentences of military personnel, and on the civilian side, for much of the 20th century, there were few other United States Penitentiaries of note. (Another technical note: in 2005, the civilian federal prison system expanded and reorganized, building larger maximum security facilities and changing United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth to a medium security installation, ending the prison’s century long role as the largest maximum security prison run by the federal government. The United States Disciplinary Barracks remains the military’s sole maximum security facility.)

In other words, the military has taken now 23 year old Bradley Manning out of the purgatory of indefinite detention amongst run of the mill detainees to move him to the place of the federal government’s worst offenders.

Now, I don’t know whether Manning is ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ – I don’t even understand exactly what laws the government claims have been broken. As of the time of this transfer, the government hasn’t even started prosecuting him yet, even though he has been imprisoned since May of 2010. What I do know is that every American citizen, every human being, deserves a few basic rights:

1. Due process
2. A speedy trial
3. Humane treatment
4. Protection from cruel and unusual punishment
5. Access to visitors, including legal counsel, friends, and international observers
6. Equal protection under the law

I also know that information about the activities of our government belongs to We the People, not to our employees in Washington. After all, we don’t imprison Daniel Ellsberg, we celebrate him. The government acted so heinously in the Ellsberg case back in the 1970s that the federal judge hearing the trial dismissed all the charges against the man who leaked what we call the Pentagon Papers.

These principles form the bedrock of our justice system, of our way of life, and not just in DC. We Midwesterners happen to believe in them, too.

Thanks for sharing this page with your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and elected representatives.

(Note: This summary was compiled by a civilian (me) with no detailed knowledge of either the military or civilian correctional systems. If you have expertise in editing this to be more precise, please feel free to share!)

For more info about the ongoing treatment of Manning, see this website or this one.

movie shocker

2011-04-21T18:52:00.002-05:00

from moviefone.com:

I don't know if that's worth driving all the way to south county to see. None of the theaters around here are screening it. They're all excited for Kiera.

pundit4sale

2011-04-19T07:38:00.005-05:00

(P) Something that has fascinated me for several years now is how easily some Democratic pundits seem to shift their principles based upon how the wind blows from party leaders. In the short term, it does provide them significant cover in that it is difficult to discern whether they're bought off or honestly believe what they're blathering. But over time, the only value added Dems bring to the equation is inhabiting the reality-based world, in being interested in doing what works.

It's utter nonsense like this spewed by Matthew Yglesias last week - on a Think Progress blog, no less - that starts warranting comparisons to folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin. Yglesias is actively proposing that powerful people should be above the law. That's a direct assault on the Constitution, not to mention a market-based economy.

So here's the question. Is Yglesias bought and paid for, knowing that the rule of law is a good thing but being willing to shill for criminals nonetheless? Or does he honestly believe that poor people should go to prison for petty crimes while the rich and powerful should maintain their liberty no matter how heinous the consequences of their actions?

I'm obviously a little partial to the Heartland, but the one-two transpartisan punch of Bill Black at UMKC and Tom Hoenig at the KCFRB over the past couple years has been much more interesting than most of the 'liberal' commentary from Inside the Beltway about how we need to Protect the Financial Fraudsters for the Good of us All.

I eagerly anticipate wittiness from Yglesias in favor of the rule of law. Oh wait, just look to the Bush years.

Like this commentary on Attorney General Mukasey.
Or this one on Bush lawbreaking more generally.

Black's response is worth reading in full. And here is the underlying New York Times article from Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story that set off Yglesias' defense of our rotten system. By the way, how's that for turnabout? The corporate media runs a big story highlighting a major problem, and the 'liberal' blogger Yglesias defends the status quo!

This is also a good place to tie in some commentary from Barry Ritholtz about another NYT article - yes, that's two positive references from me regarding the Times in the same post! Even as the overall US prison population has exploded, the Bush and Obama Justice Departments radically reduced annual referrals of white collar crimes for prosecution. You know, despite the mid-90s having no systemic domestic financial collapse, while a decade plus later, we confront Armageddon that Requires us to Give Rich People Money.

let me see if i have this right

2011-04-08T07:37:00.004-05:00

(P) Over the past couple years, Democratic President Barack Obama has argued that the deficit is a serious problem of an urgent nature. To address the presented problem, the Administration has created a fiscal responsibility commission and advocated various approaches like tax cuts, wage freezes, health insurance exchanges, increased out of pocket costs, and so forth. However, the President's budgets haven't actually proposed that revenue equal expenses. After all, the tax cuts, bank bailouts, and military spending have all increased the deficit.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan has also argued that the deficit is a serious problem of an urgent nature. To address the presented problem, he has proposed a budget that advocates various policy options like tax cuts, wage freezes, health insurance exchanges, increased out of pocket costs, and so forth. However, Representative Ryan's budget doesn't actually show how revenue will equal expenses. After all, an actual budget shows not just how much revenue and expenses are projected, but also, what those sources of revenue and expenses are planned to be.

So, uh, what's this about Moments of Truth and Serious Debate and whatnot?

It sounds like we're not even talking about solutions to the purported problem, let alone exchanging ideas about different kinds of solutions.

closet artsy fartsy

2011-04-05T07:40:00.004-05:00

So I'm on the mailing list for both the St. Louis Symphony and the Opera Theater of St. Louis. It makes sense in that I have bought tickets to both venues and do happen to reside in St. Louis.

However, no one would mistake me for having any insight whatsoever into orchestral pieces, choral arrangements, or opera productions.

Yesterday this officially got out of hand. I received a pretty fancy full color fold out mailer from the Artistic Director of the Des Moines Metro Opera. I don't take Julie to enough shows within close driving distance. I'm pretty sure I'm not driving hundreds of miles to do so. And if we were to travel, there's a slightly half decent chance it would be to a theatrical production of a certain relative of the Schroeder clan...

here is a riddle

2011-03-30T14:14:00.005-05:00

I haven't pondered before. Your friendly state-issued photo driver ID is now demanded for all sorts of nondriving purposes. It can get ya booze and cigarettes. It can prove identity to the Feds, from employment to flying. You can see gory movies and rent porn.

Apparently, though, it's not useful for its most basic purpose: proving identification for driving purposes to the state that issued you the ID.

I say all this because I seem to have temporarily accidentally placed my passport in a clearly defined known unknown nonkinetic position, and I don't wish to cause a squirmish at the DMV 36 hours before I have to have my license renewed.

Hopefully the birth certificate isn't stuck in an open-ended commitment to hiding itself.

P.S. This is why you never wait to the last day to do things. You wait until the next to the last day.

budgeting post script

2011-03-15T23:16:00.004-05:00

Time to whip out the Excel charting function one more time.

Apparently, according to Reuters, top Federal Reserve official Bill Dudley was trying to relate to the common man. I suppose he gets props for effort; at least he mentioned something the average American has heard of in a question and answer session that involved more questioning than stenography.

Answer:

"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said referring to Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) latest handheld tablet computer hitting stories on Friday.

"You have to look at the prices of all things," he said.

Now, there are a number of interesting questions that might elicit such a response. Something about technology, or innovation, or business strategy, or upsetting Reggie Middleton, or when your real question is censored so all you can ask is Mac or PC.

However, here's the actual Question to which Dudley responded:

But in Queens, New York, on Friday, William Dudley was bombarded with questions about food inflation, and his attempt to put rising commodity prices into a broader economic context only made things worse.

"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one audience member asked.

So, a questioner asks about this part of the budget (food):

And he answered with this (computers):

What a perfect illustration of how people ask questions about the important things and our leaders talk about the trivial items. And of course, my personal budget probably puts more emphasis on computing than the average household budget.

Keep that in mind the next time some Important Serious Person says they can balance the budget (or any budget, for that matter). It's really not that complicated. Individual households need decent wages and affordable housing, food, healthcare, education, transportation, and energy. Federal and state governments need some combination of increased taxes on the wealthy and reduced spending on the military, financial industry, fossil fuels, prisons, agribusiness, and healthcare. The final combination of those options is determined by the particular political economy we wish to deliver; there's no one 'right' solution to fiscal responsibility.

But talking about much else, from iPads to public broadcasting, from the NEA to the NEA, is a combination of ignorance and malice, varying in relative proportion from pundit to pundit.

By the way, did you notice the typo in that Reuters quote? I don't know how English teachers can possibly compete for students when the corporate media itself has been busy dismantling all writing standards from ethics to proofreading. Reuters is one of the Good Guys of our traditional media outlets, and it appears they pay about as much attention to an article as I do to a blog post.

Maybe they'd have more advertising dollars and readers if the media had spent more time the past couple decades making our leaders answer serious questions with serious answers.

the world is changing

2011-03-10T21:59:00.004-06:00

Are you excited for the future?

Or fighting it?

the superiority of social insurance

2011-03-02T08:10:00.003-06:00

(P) So I'm testing out the online reporting system for medical information at my work. It's pretty standard and works reasonably well. They brag about how it saves you having to fill out 27 pieces of paper every year.

Whoopdeedoo.

This processs reminds me of one of the basic failures of private health insurance: a fragmented system is extremely inefficient. Take identification. How do insurance companies identify you?

The answer, of course, is that they don't. They panic and run to the obvious solution - socialized medicine [cue scary music].

Here's my challenge of the day for those who believe government should not provide basic social insurance coverages, like health insurance and unemployment insurance. If the government is so inefficient, why do private companies use ID numbers created by the Social Security Administration?

fun on the big screen

2011-02-27T14:47:00.007-06:00

For a little pre-Oscars partying I've hooked up my laptop to Julie's TV. Pretty sweet.

So what's a guy to do with a screen 3x his laptop but play around some with Excel's pie chart creator? I mean, after using Office XP/03/04 for so long, 2010/2011 is practically fun to use.

I had been reading up a little bit about oil and budgeting and how speculation and sudden price changes impact personal finances, and there's nothing quite like seeing pie charts as big as your head. While I used to keep a detailed budget when first developing my own financial habits, after a few years now I'm comfortable in the gray(er) area of approximations and estimates. So in rough terms, I thought I'd try and match approximately what my budget looks like compared to the average household put together by John Lohman.

First, here's a snippet of the chart specifically on household expenditures:

I matched his categories and came up with this:

But that left me dissatisfied for a couple of reasons. First, 'other' is way too big a category. Second, this approach doesn't really help sort out what's variable and what's fixed. In other words, what could be changed easily, and what would require a radical departure from present living arrangements?

So a little more playing around in Excel led me to this:

It still has the Big One - housing - and it still has a few small categories of 2 or 3 percent. The improvement is there are now half a dozen categories of in between size that show how my personal expenditures might be changed were a sudden shock to occur. Changing the thermostat is a different degree of change than changing the address. Not traveling to Florida or Washington is a different degree of change than not having a car to drive to the grocery store and not ever going out to see a movie.

I would also use it as a reminder that things like oil shocks and peak oil aren't as big a problem as they are often hyped to be. We possess a variety of simple adaptations which would rapidly become widespread substitutes were there to be serious limitation on our access to cheap oil. Some of these are so mundane, like carpooling, telecommuting, four day workweeks, and bicycling, that we don't even think about them when contemplating high-tech solutions for the 21st century. Others involve a repricing of resources - like increasing the value of abandoned urban property relative to far flung suburban developments - while still others require more centralized, long-term planning, but they're well established technologies, like rail travel. It wasn't cheap oil that helped the Noth in the Civil War or enabled the original ecotourism of the National Parks. It was cheap transportation, and amidst all the fearmongering about the future, don't forget those are two different concepts.

Cheap oil won't last forever, no. But we have plenty of alternatives. Some of them are even improvements on how development has occurred over the past half century.

But of course, we're nowhere near that stage. Oil isn't getting more expensive for companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. They're simply making larger profits. Funny what happens when you follow the money.

Or for one last chart, here's the war budget (just Overseas Contingency Operations, not the 'regular' security spending, which is 4x larger) next to the Amtrak budget:

sony to stop charging fees

2011-02-15T21:33:00.003-06:00

So I watch the Grammy's Sunday night and have fun with Valentine's Day yesterday, and I find out tonight that the world is up in arms about Sony and friends charging licensing fees to use Blu-Ray technology.

I mean, like, demanding money in exchange for nothing. The greed! The arrogance!

Oh, wait, sorry.

It's Sony and friends complaining that Apple wants to charge Sony and friends money in exchange for providing back office support and access to one of the most lucrative store fronts ever created.

It's flabbergasting how hugely massively enormous Apple's victory has been. If I started Nate's Emporium of Digital Magazines, Time Inc wouldn't go around whining that I was charging them 50% for placement in my store; they wouldn't care, because my store doesn't add any value to them.

Why is it that publishers care about the App Store? Aren't we all supposed to be doing everything 'in the cloud'? Aren't there mega transnational corporations that offer an alternative to Apple's ancient 20th century idea of having actual consumers pay actual money for actual content?

Hello?

google's next step

2011-02-13T14:19:00.003-06:00

I'm increasingly curious to see where the new old management wants to take Google. Google's core business, Search, is now over a decade old. The concept that supposedly was behind Google's efforts to grow beyond search is the notion of doing everything on the web, 'in the cloud', so to speak. Instead of purchasing specific pieces of software to run on specific pieces of hardware, our data would be accessible everywhere for whatever we wanted to do with it. Users of Google products would provide their personal information for currency rather than paying money for products. After all, Google's core innovation is that they're not a tech company per se, but are rather an advertising company.

Facebook, a closed social network with similar monetization challenges as an advertiser, and Apple, a closed hardware vendor left for dead, have both grown faster than Google over the past few years.The classic knock on Microsoft is that they haven't developed growth strategies beyond Windows and Office. But the thing is, that's at least two products, with the Xbox business looking increasingly relevant, too.

Google's second big thing, their Office suite to the core Windows portfolio of Search, is Android and Chromium; at least, that's what Google has invested heavily in advancing. They've talked incessantly about the superiority of the cloud, of not making dedicated software for dedicated hardware. But now that these operating systems are out in the wild, actually being used by actual customers and developers, Google confronts a strategic landscape looking an awful lot more similar to the one Apple has spent the past few years hammering into consumer heads, not to mention other vendors making their own software, like RIM, HP/Web OS, and Microsoft/Nokia.

Far from being open, Google has been making explicit decisions to exclude support for certain standards in Chromium. And far from dismissing apps as being irrelevant to the web-based life, Android is being pushed for phones and tablets precisely via vehicles that emphasize specialized software separate from the browser. Or to say it differently, what's the point of Android Market in a world where computing happens in the browser, not independent applications!?!

'There's an App for that' has worked so effectively for Apple that even people in disputes with Apple over the future development of the business model use Apple's framework for computing. Specifically, Time announced they were releasing a special Android app for their Sports Illustrated subscribers. Now, the marketing folks may love that, because superficially, it's a public spat. Look, we have apps Apple doesn't.

But here's the scary question for Google strategy folks. Is that the message you want people to hear? That apps, not the browser, is the future? That Android is valuable because of the software developers provide outside the web, not because of its integration with the web?

I never dreamed Apple's digital hub strategy would have been this successful at redefining the computing landscape. It continues to surprise me how deeply the iPhone and now iPad are burrowing into our collective awareness; virtually every smartphone and tablet now looks and feels like Apple's products. I'm beginning to wonder if Google really has an alternative strategy in mind at all, or if they do, why they're having such difficulty communicating it to their partners.

Does this video still describe corporate strategy at Google in the post Eric Schmidt era? It will be an interesting year.

ayn rand movie embraces big government

2011-02-13T08:05:00.005-06:00

So I learned about a film adaptation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged this weekend.

I'm sure the Randians out there will have a field day with how the film's producers, The Strike Productions, embrace Big Government.

Don't take my word for it. This is on the front page of the official movie site:

They're copyrighting this? Asserting reservation of all 'rights'?

Wait, explain to me again, what right exactly does the government have to restrict the actions of individual people? I'm so confused! Isn't the whole point that there are superior methods of freedom and liberty and justice and unicorns and nutritious donut holes than collective action through government?

We'll know it's a real movie about an Ayn Rand novel when the producers offer something better than intellectual property claims enforceable in US and other courts. Until then, suckers, you've been pwned! These oppressive big government commies even want you to do their own marketing for them so they can spend all their time killing babies and making our country weak and whatever else the sellouts to the BG do.

[note, for the googlers who stumble across this searching something about the movie or ayn rand, this tone is in jest. IP law in the US is a mess. The problem is, anarchy is worse...what is needed across a whole range of issues isn't knee-jerk reactions to government but serious proposals that actually address the problems they purport to solve.]

covey edition

2011-02-10T19:11:00.003-06:00

In the back of my mind, I keep a list of somewhat humorous variations on 'there are two types of people in the world...'

You know, things like, there are two types of people in the world, those that wear boxers or briefs and those that don't; or, there are two types of people in the world, those who like chocolate and those who love it, etc.

Well, thanks to Olin I have added another one.

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who are familiar with Stephen Covey and those who aren't.

I would wager a small fortune the two worlds hardly even know the other exists

:)

thank you car

2011-02-03T19:17:00.004-06:00

for surviving the winter storms.

I'm like the Ayn Rand of the automobile, that famous libertarian who railed against government programs even though she used them.

I hate cars. My favorite vehicular mode of transportation is a chauffeur. We allocate way too many resources to automobiles and way too little to other forms of transit, especially trains.

However, until other forms of mass transit are actually cheap and easy to use, I'm drivin'.

a little time to think

2011-02-02T11:43:00.008-06:00

I have felt particularly out of touch with what's going on in the world the last couple weeks. With a little bit of time and energy to catch up, I think I find I'm most surprised that people are surprised about what's going on.

The world is changing, or perhaps more accurately, has already changed. It just takes some time for the 'old regime' to get that; things don't crumble overnight. In the US, despite everything you hear about the aging of the population, the actual median age of the population is under 40. Not only do we not remember the '60s, we weren't even born then. It's even more stark in most of the industrializing world, with many nations' median age under 30.

We just don't possess the same cultural training and socialization for the old explanations to make sense, to mean anything. You either support democracy or you support authoritarianism. Claiming to support democratic processes and acting to support autocratic ones sends a clear message: you don't believe in the benefits of democracy.

Maybe there was some time in the past when 'Democrat' and 'Republican' meant something substantive. But today, the challenges we face are almost entirely nonpartisan. The framework isn't left and right, it's We the People vs. The Special Interests. The key leadership and power centers of both parties advocate policies that consolidate wealth and power and disparage ideas that would create broad prosperity and innovation. Sure, in election season, there are always some interesting differences at the margin, and that was enough for quite some time in the US.

But entering the second generation now of Americans growing up with prospects worse than our parents, we just don't fall for the 'ole divide and conquer wedge issues. We actually believe what our elders taught us, that America should be a beacon of freedom, not a harbinger of oppression. We actually believe that representative democracy is better than autocratic strongmen. We actually believe that the leaders of our government work for the citizenry, not the other way around. We actually believe that we are on an unsustainable path and that in the end, unsustainable things end. We actually believe that a man should be measured by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. We actually believe that women can do whatever men can do.

Maybe there was a time when the traditional media or corporate media or mainstream media or whatever you prefer offered value. Maybe there was a time when they investigated stories and reported news. Many Americans alive today simply can't remember such an occurrence; it hasn't happened in our lifetime.

One of the most important observations from science, I believe, is the one about the process of scientific development itself. New ideas don't convert adherents of old ideas; it's not a frontal confrontation. Rather, a new generation grows up comfortable with a new paradigm and the old adherents simply die off. Look at viewership ratings of the CBS Nightly News and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Five years ago, most people over 40 had never heard of Jon Stewart. Today, most people under 40 couldn't name the lead anchors on the nightly news. Sure, a few cable commentators have made names for themselves. But as infotainment celebrities, not the people you go to for answers on why we can't provide healthcare and jobs and housing to our fellow Americans.

Change is happening. Not one interested in petty recriminations, but in a substantive reordering of the world and our place as humanity in it. We can be afraid of it, or we can embrace it. We can dig in to fortify the old ways, or we can help bring about change a little faster and better.

When you encounter somebody trying to stop it, you can be forgiven for taking a moment to laugh.

Remember when we were afraid of the Soviets, or the Japanese (the industrial economic competitor, not the bombing Pearl Harbor competitor)?

I don't.

P.S. Thought I'd add five links with a broad overview on these issues.

First, on US foreign policy, especially the Middle East and supporting dictators.

Second, on the abuses of the surveillance state, especially the USA PATRIOT Act.

Third, on the lawlessness with which we treat prisoners, especially torture.

Fourth, on the lawlessness with which we don't protect property rights when it's rich and powerful people committing the fraud and other illegal acts.

Fifth, on the scale of wealth inequality in the US. Mind you, this is before the people whining about deficits gave trillions of dollars of loan guarantees, backstops, free money, sweetheart deals, and other bailouts, handouts, and payouts to the very failed and fraudulent management teams that wrecked the economy in the first place:

Note that none of these issues can be delineated as 'left' or 'right'.

i'm not afraid

2011-01-06T19:54:00.004-06:00

Julie goes out of town for 24 hours and I'm ready to blow something up*.

*warning, don't joke about blowing things up in England.

Two bits of information came out on the same day that highlight everything that's wrong with our two-tiered justice system - the one for the rich and powerful, the other for the rest of us. And when I say rest of us, I mean all of us. White, black, young, old, christian, atheist, north, south; if you're not rich, the government can steamroll you.

What am I talking about?

On the same day, we learn that:

1. The government kidnapped and tortured (err, 'allowed' to be kidnapped and tortured) an American teenager in Kuwait.
2. The government has arrested a former intelligence officer for saying embarrassing (err, 'state secret') things, a local man from O'Fallon, MO.

That both men happen to be black is perhaps the icing on the cake.

Essentially, we can't prosecute - or even stop - the most vicious assaults on American citizens. We can't prosecute - or even stop - the most blatant looting of our financial system.

But boy, share CIA secrets about CIA incompetence in the run-up to Bush's oh-so-legal invasion of Iraq, watch out! Wammmo, Obama/Bush/whoever you picture as 'the enemy' will be after you!

I have a special place in my heart for people who go nuts, because I think insanity is the only rational reaction to what's going on in this world of ours. I have some stupid unevolved hangeron in my brain that refuses to give up. I believe this country of ours can still be saved.

But it's worth it yet again to ponder the difference between a US President and a third world dictator. If government agents can arrest patriots and kidnap citizens, what can't be done to any one of us?

I'm not afraid of black people. I'm not afraid of Muslims. Secrecy itself is the cancer eating away at our security. I refuse to be afraid, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat telling me scary bedtime stories. I refuse to accept that this is the way things are.

hr manager needed, too

2010-12-29T14:37:00.004-06:00

One of the reasons I have long liked Apple is that their business model makes sense. They sell stuff that customers pay for. So long as both parties are happy with that relationship, things will continue indefinitely; what will ebb and flow are simply users at the margins who move with fads and technological changes and so forth.

One of the interesting business models that's developed more recently in the tech world is one built upon advertising. Google is an advertising company; they compete with newspapers and radio stations much more than Microsoft or Apple. Like Google through its flagship Search product, Facebook delivers a valuable product in its core offering - the social network - but one that, like Google, isn't valuable because of the tech aspect. It's valuable because of the network effect, because 'everybody does it'. And like Google trying to monetize outside of search, Facebook faces the intriguing challenge of trying to monetize an idea that everybody knows. The phone book and the little black book and even contact management software have been around for ages. Heck, even digital directory programs predate Facebook; the program at my school was called Faces.

So when you're built on a model of extracting value discretely from users rather than billing customers directly, there's enormous pressure to cut corners at the expense of quality. When I saw this ad, I thought it beautifully captured the ongoing strategic challenges for an ad-based world.

They need a secretary themselves.

merry christmas

2010-12-24T09:55:00.003-06:00

May your celebrations this season be Joyful and Festive
May your mourning bring Healing and Peace
May you treasure dearly that which is worth remembering from the Old Year
And for that which is not, wholeheartedly embrace Change in the New

up is down, black is white

2010-12-07T13:32:00.004-06:00

donuts are healthy, Pizza Hut isn't greasy...

...the Bush tax cuts are now the Obama tax cuts(?!?)...

and the US government is effectively at war with a website for doing precisely what the US government has theoretically, supposedly, like, claimed to support

"Information has never been so free," declared Clinton. "Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."

Read it and weep, Wikileaks. You took the Executive Branch of the United States at its word.

Ha! Joke's on you.

Now if only a certain college football team with the Spartans as their mascot were also getting royally screwed, there would be a great tie-in...

Oh wait!

2010 pre-bowl rankings

2010-12-07T09:58:00.003-06:00

I continue to find it fascinating when various commentators care more about what they wish had happened during this particular football season than actually analyzing the actual season that was actually played.

To recap:

1. The Pac-10 has had a rough season. Only two teams have fewer than five losses. The third team in the conference is 6-6. Only four teams have winning records. Fully half the conference isn't bowl eligible - counting sanctioned USC among the bowl-eligible. Even in the Big East, three quarters of the conference is bowl-eligible. The WAC and MWC both have half their teams bowl-eligible (9 of the 18 total teams in the two leagues). And obviously, the Pac-10 thinks enough of Utah (and Colorado, for that matter) to beg them to join.

2. The Big Ten, similarly, is Aces and spaces. Only three teams have fewer than five losses. Heck, only three teams have winning records in conference play. Unlike the Pac-10, at least there are three quality programs instead of two and the bulk of the league is headed to a bowl game. But similarly to the Pac-10, those top teams played very few games against quality opponents.

3. Name the best team Stanford has beaten all year. Five loss Notre Dame? Or perhaps you prefer the five loss USC team that lost to Notre Dame? Or five loss Arizona? Similarly,

4. Name the best team Ohio State has beaten all year? The five loss Iowa team that lost to the above-mentioned five loss Arizona team? The five loss Miami team that, in addition to losing to Big East South Florida, lost to fellow ACC teams Florida State and Virginia Tech, teams which were themselves beaten by Oklahoma and Boise State? In contrast,

5. Michigan State, Nevada, and Boise State are one-loss teams that have much better wins than Stanford and Ohio State. Is it even relevant that Michigan State beat Wisconsin, who beat Ohio State?

6. And then there are the two-loss teams. Oklahoma, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, and LSU are all teams with more impressive wins than Stanford and Ohio State. Arkansas gets into the BCS because the Sugar Bowl won't pick a slate without an SEC team, and Oklahoma gets to the Fiesta Bowl as Big 12 champs. LSU can't get in because the BCS only allows two teams per conference. This leaves two other slots. No way should Stanford and Ohio State be ranked above all three of the other one loss teams plus the two available two-loss teams. So,

7. Voila. We'll be subjected to another month of hearing about 'big name programs' and 'talent' and 'matchups' and basically anything to distract from those inconvenient 2010 Ws and Ls.

8. Bowl records don't prove anything. The point is who deserves to get there; most any team has a shot at beating most any other team in one game. However, this could be a particularly clear year about the over-ratedness of Ohio State and Stanford and the supremacy of the Big 12. The Big 12 in its finale as a twelve team league stands a very good chance of only losing one or two bowl games.

9. Nebraska hasn't been helping the Big 12. I'll organize some thoughts at some point about the transition of the Big 12. But the short story is that losing to Nebraska hurts those other Big 12 teams a lot, while Nebraska's wins hasn't helped them get ranked highly or helped those teams that beat Nebraska jump up the standings. It's no coincidence that both the Pac-10 and Big Ten are sending at-large teams, while the Big 12, with four ten win teams, gets none. Oregon is getting into the national championship over TCU.

1. Auburn
2. Oregon
3. TCU
4. Michigan State
5. Oklahoma
6. Missouri
7. Arkansas
8. Wisconsin
9. LSU
10. Oklahoma State
11. Nevada
12. Boise State
13. Ohio State
14. Stanford
15. Virginia Tech
16. Texas A&M
17. Nebraska
18. Alabama
19. Utah
20. Florida State
21. South Carolina
22. West Virginia
23. Mississippi State
24. Hawaii
25. San Diego State

random musings on jury duty

2010-12-07T06:59:00.004-06:00

At some indeterminate point in time I may have an indefinite number of observations to make about a specific civil or criminal matter that may or may not be proceeding somewhere in the city of St. Louis.

Until such time, there are a few random thoughts that can clear the censors.

1. Wow, there is either a lot of lawsuits, a prosector's office that is desperate for some extra convictions, or just the whim fancy of coincidence due to only having two data points for reference. Whatever the case, the Jury assembly room was absolutely packed. The last time I was called, I sat for two days in a room that was never more than half full. Yesterday morning, every seat was taken. They were yelling at folks for trying to sit or stand in the aisles.

2. If metal detectors and shoe-wearing is good enough for our court system, how the heck is the TSA's existence justified?

3. Why do they require you to be there by 8:00am on the first day? Nothing was going on.

4. Square this one for me. How does one exercise one's 'intellect and conscience' while also listening to instructions from judges to act without regard for what one believes the law ought to be?

5. Seriously, think about number 4.

6. Downtown is actually pretty nice on a sunny fall day.

7. Communicate end times for the day. Is it so hard to tell folks when they will leave and get them bus passes ahead of time so that if you have to, say, to pick a completely random example, get your car from the shop by 5:30 pm, you know that 1) you will be able to get there by then, or 2) you won't be able to get there by then and should make alternate plans now, long before 5:20pm.

8. Is Jury duty a 'duty' or a 'privilege'? Listening to how many folks aren't eligible is a hodge-podge of hierarchy, class, oppression, and what not. Active duty? Under 21? Felony conviction? I continue to be surprised I've only been called twice in the entire time I've been living in St. Louis.

no wonder the pac-10 needs utah

2010-11-30T21:16:00.003-06:00

I've decided on a new way of looking at the Pac-10 this year. They're not a weak major conference. They're a good mid-major conference. It looks very much like the Mountain West and WAC, from the disparity between top and bottom right down to recruiting Utah to join the Pac-10. Fully half of the conference will finish the season with a losing record - unless, of course, Arizona picks up its fifth loss and Oregon its first. Stanford and Oregon have only beaten three teams each with a winning record all season. They each face just four bowl-eligible teams - including sanctioned USC.

This perspective helps address what to do with the fact that there are four one loss teams which I just don't think have had as good a season as most of the two loss teams. Specifically: Stanford, Nevada, Boise State, and Ohio State. Of those four, Nevada and Boise State have the best wins, not Stanford and Ohio State.

It's also the problem with the BCS. Not the rankings themselves so much as how the bowls choose their participants. If Stanford is good enough for a bowl, then so is Nevada and Boise. On the other hand, if the Sugar Bowl gets to pick Arkansas because they're in the SEC, that shows the problem with not having a BCS bowl in the Big 12. Over the long term, the easiest solution is adding the Cotton Bowl or creating some bowl with a particular tie-in to the Big 12 that's actually in the Big 12. In the short-term, my solution this year is to have the Sugar Bowl be Arkansas and Missouri.

As for the rest, here's a take a little different than most, but mostly in line now that Auburn is clearly at the top, TCU better than Boise, and Alabama now having the 5th best season in the SEC:

1. Auburn
2. Oregon
3. TCU
4. Michigan State
5. Nebraska
6. Missouri
7. Arkansas
8. Wisconsin
9. Oklahoma
10. LSU
11. Oklahoma State
12. Ohio State
13. Nevada
14. Boise State
15. Stanford
16. Virginia Tech
17. Texas A&M
18. South Carolina
19. Alabama
20. Florida State
21. Utah
22. Mississippi State
23. Arizona
24. West Virginia
25. San Diego State

20th anniversary special edition

2010-11-22T21:29:00.004-06:00

I'm a big believer in being involved in the community. I don't really care what it is. Just do something. Out There. With people you wouldn't normally see.

For me, it's working with high school kids. I like teenagers. They're old enough to take care of themselves and young enough not to know what they're not supposed to be able to do.

Let me clarify. I like other people's teenagers. They're coachable and talented and energetic.

In small doses, and then I go home. Without them.

Maybe I'll see you around next year, when the Clayton Fall Classic speech and debate tournament turns old enough to drink.

You know, the coffee and coke necessary to hang out with teenagers. At 8:00 am. On a Saturday.

Speaking of anniversaries, blogger says this is my 500th post. I don't know if that's a lot or a little? It's at least a big fat round number. Maybe it's the public service announcement tax. Every 500 posts, plug helping the kiddies! Being involved with kids is much better than moaning about kids these days trampling your lawn in their unkempt suits and ties and heels. I mean, what's the world coming to? They have girl debaters. And racial minorities. And children of immigrants.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........be very afraid............of something...........that's just so inferior about kids now..........that totally wasn't the case when you were growing up.........

finale for the ages

2010-11-22T07:58:00.004-06:00

Whatever else there is to say about the season, the Big 12 is going out in style. When you look at the combination of top teams, bowl eligible teams, and race for the champion, no other conference is close. The SEC is having a down year; that happens from time to time. Their conference championship game has already been decided; Auburn and South Carolina can both lose and they'll still face each other. It's really the Pac 10 and Big Ten I would pick on. The Pac 10 is awful. Fully half of the conference has a losing record. Assuming Oregon doesn't embarrass itself at Arizona, the Pac 10 only has two teams with fewer than four losses! Outside of their game against each other, Oregon and Stanford won't have played a single top 20 team all season. That's unbelievable when you think about it.

Meanwhile, in the Big Ten, there are three good teams. Everybody else has at least four losses there, too. And the one that won the head-to-head matchup isn't the one getting the respect. However, because Michigan State and Ohio State didn't play each other this year, that means they also, like Oregon and Stanford, had no other game in the entire season against a top 20 team.

At least the SEC, like the Big 12, has had its top teams playing good competition for more than one game. And the ACC and Big East are having competitive races; their shortfall is a lack of victories by their top teams out of conference.

In contrast, in the Big 12, every top team has played multiple games against other top teams. If Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M had only played one top 20 team, all five of them would have zero or one losses. Think about that. Every top team took care of non-conference games. Even bottom teams, like Colorado and Kansas, have wins against non-conference opponents like Hawaii, Georgia, and Georgia Tech. The championship game won't be determined until the very end of the season. There's a legitimate shot of having either ten bowl eligible teams or four different teams with at least ten wins each.

It seems fitting that part of the story comes down to Big 12 quitters Colorado and Nebraska. Does CU end its Big 12 run with an embarrassing season, or do they send NU packing with a gut-wrenching loss?

i am spartacus

2010-11-15T20:10:00.003-06:00

The title of this post takes as inspiration the hilarious police-state saga of Robin Hood airport in England. A frustrated airline passenger made a joke. On Twitter. And authorities, naturally, took it in stride.

By fining him for threatening to blow up the airport.

In response, thousands of people started using the hashtag iamspartacus.

Perhaps the Michigan State Spartans need a similar flurry of activity. The human voters seem to think they're not, like, in first place in the Big Ten. You know, having beaten Wisconsin. Like, on the field. During the season. The same Wisconsin team that turned around and beat Ohio State. On the field. During the season.

LSU, Missouri, and Oklahoma State are of course still underrated by the humans, as well, and Boise State remains overrated. This is the week I bump Oregon over TCU, too; a little bit sad, but it looks like Oregon really should be there. Utah, San Diego State, and Baylor are good wins, but the Stanford win for Oregon just seems to outweigh that now.

There is some good news, though. Alabama bias is officially over. And it looks very likely that the national championship will have Auburn, Oregon, and/or TCU. So come on humans, you are making progress. We're almost there.

1. Auburn
2. Oregon
3. TCU
4. Boise State
5. LSU
6. Nebraska
7. Michigan State
8. Oklahoma State
9. Stanford
10. Wisconsin
11. Ohio State
12. Alabama
13. Missouri
14. Oklahoma
15. Arkansas
16. Virginia Tech
17. Texas A&M
18. South Carolina
19. Mississippi State
20. Iowa
21. Arizona
22. NC State
23. Florida State
24. Utah
25. Nevada

week 11 rankings

2010-11-08T07:09:00.004-06:00

This is why they play the games. Alabama is still the third best team in the SEC.

And Michigan State still leads the Big Ten.

And horror of horrors, Nebraska is the best team in the Big 12 the year they are leaving. At least Colorado sucks; that helps, slightly.

The humans have acknowledged their SEC errors, and they now have TCU ahead of Boise State, but they still show silliness up north. Therefore, another ranking is necessary to correct these deficiencies.

1. Auburn
2. TCU
3. Oregon
4. Boise State
5. Nebraska
6. LSU
7. Michigan State
8. Oklahoma State
9. Stanford
10. Wisconsin
11. Ohio State
12. Alabama
13. Missouri
14. Oklahoma
15. Arizona
16. Iowa
17. Arkansas
18. Mississippi State
19. Utah
20. Virginia Tech
21. Baylor
22. Kansas State
23. Texas A&M
24. Florida State
25. Florida

Subject to change with the actual games played next week, of course.

good thing dc was awesome

2010-11-07T22:37:00.002-06:00

The Chiefs and Tigers had very similar road meltdowns this weekend. So sad. At least last weekend was fun.

fed rally sports trifecta

2010-11-05T07:45:00.004-05:00

I'm actually home enough now to a put a few thoughts down! The past couple weeks have been fantastically busy.

DC was absolutely gorgeous this past weekend. Warm for Halloween, brilliantly clear skies, perfect backdrop against the Capitol. We overwhelmed the city; literally. There were people waiting so long for the subway in the morning that they didn't make it to the mall by the time the rally was over. It took Doug over half an hour just to buy a ticket at 9 in the morning. Oh, and Jon, there are bees in DC in October. One was buzzing around our section of the crowd for about half the rally.

The Federal Reserve is even more anxious and insecure than I imagined. They're so afraid now that they openly view the public as the enemy, personified beautifully by how they handle their flagship building, the Eccles building. One of the great structures to come out of the Great Depression, it's built in dignified stone and marble on Constitution Ave overlooking the northwest end of the mall. We just don't build like that anymore. Unlike many other government buildings in the area, this structure is built back from the road, allowing a simple public plaza area between the steps and the street. Fountains and stone benches flank the sides, while stone pathways and open grassy areas comprise the middle.

Bernanke has instructed his security guards to chase off American citizens having the audacity to use this public plaza, far away from the actual entrance to the building. On a Sunday afternoon. With the Marine Corps Marathon running along Constitution Ave. I never knew how powerful a scrawny white dude was to confront our failed and fraudulent financial crooks until I was literally chased away from their HQ. I can't think of anything that would better symbolize what is going on in our country right now.

Except maybe college football voters. Just totally bizarre. Nebraska is ranked 6th by the computers, 10.5 by the humans. LSU tied Nebraska for 6th in the computers, but has an 11.5 by the humans. The machines have Michigan State at 10; it's 15.5 for the humans. Missouri is number 4 in the computers, 14.5 in the human polls. Of course, Alabama and Ohio State work the other way: 15 and 16 in the computer rankings, 5 and 8 in the human polls.

This is getting to the point where it's hysterically funny. Michigan State is number 1 in the Big Ten right now, except the humans think they're number 3. Missouri and LSU both lost to much better teams than Alabama, so of course the humans think Alabama is having a much better season. Forget playoffs. We should just select the BCS participants from the preseason prognostications. Playing the games seems to be an irrelevant waste of time. I can't wait to see how this weekend turns out. And I do wonder if Nebraska is going to get the Missouri treatment. What if Missouri wins out, Nebraska loses in the Big 12 Championship, and then the BCS selects Missouri over Nebraska the way Kansas was chosen over Missouri a couple years ago?

(non-election) polls and margins of victory

2010-10-27T22:22:00.005-05:00

Earlier this week was a detailed post. Today a specific example of one problem with lazy poll voters in college football: the margin of victory. Quite simply, margin of victory in itself is a relatively useless bit of information. Every game is unique.

Using margin of victory creates hilariously ridiculous constructs.

For example, margin of victory is one of the few things that people who rank a team like Boise State over a team like Missouri or Auburn can point to as evidence for why Boise State is a 'better' team. Well, here's a little fun comparison. Colorado is either the second to worst or worst team in the Big 12 (that will be decided when CU plays KU). This Colorado team beat Hawaii 31-13, an 18 point spread.

That's the same Hawaii that's tied for first in the WAC, Boise State's conference.

Now, Hawaii and Boise State have both played Louisiana Tech, another WAC team. Hawaii won by 20 points, and Boise State by 29. Using margin of victory, that makes Boise State look a little more impressive than Hawaii. How much more impressive does that make them look than Colorado? Then, if you learn that Missouri beat Colorado by 26 points, how would you compare Boise State and Missouri? This sort of exercise wouldn't suggest that Missouri and Boise State are roughly equal teams. It would suggest that Colorado and Boise State are roughly equal teams, with Missouri being notably better.

Now, I don't think Missouri is significantly superior to Boise State; I think they're pretty evenly matched teams, actually. But if you're going to apply concepts other than wins/losses and strength of schedule, then you have to be prepared to accept that sometimes, the additional factors can make things even more bizarre. If you subtract Colorado's 18 point spread from Boise State's points, that makes their margins of victory look a lot less impressive.

Expecting schools like Michigan State, Missouri, or Auburn to post point spreads remotely close to Boise State (or Oregon, for that matter, whose only game against a team with a winning record so far is Stanford) is comical.

Fortunately, the season is long enough that if the Spartans, Tigers, and Tigers continue winning, they will jump Oregon and Boise State. But particularly with Boise State, the question is, why wouldn't they already have jumped them? They've got the same record. They've beaten better opponents. And margin of victory looks pretty similar when the games in question are actually analyzed. All three of the Big 12/SEC/Big Ten undefeateds have shown they can win by over 20 points. They just can't do that regularly against top opponents.

After all, just look at the score from the Boise State - Virginia Tech game. Boise State won by a whopping three points, less than Michigan State's ten point victory over Wisconsin, less than Missouri's nine point victory over Oklahoma, and less than Auburn's seven point victory over LSU. Both the human pollsters and the computers agree that Virginia Tech is not as good as Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and LSU.

I think it's highly unlikely that all three of these teams remain undefeated. But at least one of them might, and it will be really interesting at that juncture to hear why people place Oregon, Boise State, and/or some one-loss team (say, Alabama) ahead of them.

machines smarter than humans, again

2010-10-26T07:42:00.003-05:00

I was prepared for this to be a slow, sad sports season, really. The Chiefs and Rams are coming off of horrific stretches. The Big 12 is saying farewell to Nebraska, heading east, and Colorado, looking west. And there are More Important Things, from the economy and midterm elections to new phases for family and friends. Not to mention that I'm behind on computer games.

But dang nabbit, something is in the water this fall. After a hot summer, this fall has been fantastic. Missouri's NFL franchises are 7-6. That's a winning record; better seasons for both teams have already been assured and we're less than half way through this season!

The Missouri Tigers have also won 7 games. Without losing any. To top it off, the Spartans are undefeated as well, while the media darlings of Alabama and Ohio State have both lost a game already.

And that's where this all comes to a head. The silly season of incoherent poll voters is in full swing. For all the incessant yacking and yammering about how awful the BCS is, the main problem is that the human polls account for twice as much weighting as the computers. (human) Pollsters that do things like looking at prior years instead of the current year. Or assign present values based upon what they believe will happen in the future instead of what has already happened up to this point. Or apply different criteria to different teams. It's truly bizarre, and this season demonstrates the madness in several ways, particularly looking at the most basic things in sports: the win-loss record and strength of competition.

In years when there is lots of chaos caused by few or no teams with unblemished records, the challenge becomes how do you rank teams that have lost games. But the first half of this season is comprised of something rather straightforward: There's an undefeated team in the Big 12, the SEC, the Big Ten, the Pac 10, the Mountain West (which has two), and the WAC. It's pretty simple. This is the absence of chaos; it's called order. These are the teams you talk about first, before looking at the bigger picture. And when you start actually looking at 2010's undefeated teams, I'd argue it becomes pretty clear that there are four teams that have distanced themselves from the pack. None of them, by the way, have the names of Alabama, Ohio State, Oregon, or Boise State. Nope, the top tier of teams for the first half of the 2010 season are, in alphabetical order, Auburn, Michigan State, Missouri, and TCU.

In order to rank a team above those four, some other consideration has to come into play. And in order for that to be legitimate, that consideration has to be applied to all teams. That's the key point: consistency. The computers bring it in spades. The polls, well, sometimes I'm not sure what they're smokin'.

Here's how the BCS computers rank the top four teams:

1. Auburn
2. Missouri
3. Michigan State
4. TCU

Here's the Harris and USA Today polls:

1. Oregon
2. Boise State
3. Auburn
4. TCU

To demonstrate the overwhelming stranglehold of the humans over the BCS - even though all you'll hear in the media is pundits decrying the horrible choices of the computers - is to look at the combined rankings. Oregon and Boise State remain in the top 4.

And this leads us to the natural question: what consideration is being applied equally to reach this kind of disparity by teh humanz? The computers think the SEC leader should play the Big 12 leader for the national championship, with the Big Ten and Mountain West leaders being the runners up. The human polls don't put either Auburn or Missouri in the top 2, and they don't include Missouri or Michigan State in the top 4 at all!

Poll voters aren't just not biased against Boise State and Oregon. They're rabidly biased in favor of them, to the point of crowding out the real story lines of the first half of the season. In fact, there's such a drop-off after my top four teams, that the computers handle this in an interesting way. They put one-loss Oklahoma at number 5. And one-loss LSU ties Boise State for sixth, then Oregon at number 8.

Then there's the matter of one-loss teams. There's no way around the human stupidity of ranking Alabama so highly. None. When Missouri loses to Nebraska, then you can rank Alabama higher - but that loss hasn't happened yet! It's not just Missouri that's slighted by Alabama bias, though. Every one loss team suffers. You see, not only is Alabama not on some semi-pro uberwonderseason, but they haven't even put together the best first half of the season among one loss teams. Their loss at South Carolina is worse than Oklahoma's loss at Missouri, or Wisconsin's at Michigan State, or Ohio State's at Wisconsin, or Stanford's at Oregon, or Florida State's at Oklahoma, or LSU's at Auburn, or Oklahoma State's loss to Nebraska. In fact, what's remarkable about Alabama's loss compared to other top one-loss teams is how badly they got beat by a lesser team than the victors of all those other one-loss teams.

Oh, but it's the quality wins you say, not the losses? Ah, interesting. What teams have Oregon and Boise State beat again (this year) to warrant placing them ahead of Auburn, Missouri, Michigan State, and TCU? Uh-huh. And then when we look specifically at Alabama, they haven't beaten anybody with fewer than two losses. Wisconsin has beaten Ohio State. Nebraska has beaten Oklahoma State. Oklahoma has beaten Florida State. Heck, even Stanford's win over USC is as high a quality as any victory on Alabama's schedule so far.

The computers recognize this, too, and rank Alabama accordingly: at number 12. Alabama is a great team, one of the best in the country. They just don't belong in the Top Ten until they beat Auburn and LSU - which, as of now, they haven't done - and until Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Utah, Wisconsin, and Ohio State lose more games - which, as of now, hasn't happened, either.

So if it's not being undefeated, and it's not the quality of wins, and it's not the quality of losses, how are pollsters making decisions? Is it the conference?

Well, TCU is in the only conference with two unbeaten teams, and other schools like Air Force and San Diego State are playing competitively, too. That's all the more reason to rank them ahead of Boise State. The Big 12, meanwhile, is putting on a conference finale for the ages. Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma State are all quality programs. In the Embarrassment of the Season Bowl, Colorado beat Georgia. Heck, Baylor is bowl eligible, Texas is simply middle of the pack, and Kansas managed to beat Georgia Tech. In the Big Ten, meanwhile, Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Iowa all look very solid. Oh yeah, Michigan has a guy who can make headlines. It's also interesting that Iowa is ranked so much more highly by humans than machines; why wouldn't the Big Ten love be going to Michigan State, first and foremost? And Illinois beat the same Penn State team Alabama did. In a bizarre twist, the SEC luster isn't rubbing off on the conference's undefeated team, or even the team it beat. Rather, it's the third best SEC performance of the first half, Alabama, hogging all the (human) headlines.

After all, we can't have preseason prognosticators bothered by how the season actually turns out. I mean, imagine if the World Series wasn't the Yanks and Phillies? How could Texas and San Francisco even be worth talking about?

Unfortunately, this post has to be this long, because it's absolutely necessary to point out the inherent contradiction which the humans can't shake: it simply can't be that Boise State and Oregon are having great years while it is also true that Alabama is having a great year. The second half of the season could very well play out differently, particularly with possible losses for Missouri at Nebraska, Michigan State at Iowa, Auburn at Alabama, and TCU/Utah. But as we mark the roughly halfway point through the season, it needs reminding in all the biased pundit hype that so far in the 2010 season, the computers are smarter than the pollsters. The problem with using coaches to rank these things is that coaches have a far more important demand on their time - coaching. There's no evil conspiracy here, just an unfortunate problem with relying so heavily on the human polls. Fortunately, there's a simple solution. Have the computer rankings account for half the score, rather than 1/3.

So, here's where I place things. I will re-arrange accordingly after my higher ranked teams actually lose and the lower ranked teams actually win. And remember, the computers will adjust, too. They have no pre-season prediction egos to feed. That's probably why the media blathers on about how horrible the machines are. Change is scary.

1. Auburn
2. Missouri
3. Michigan State
4. TCU
5. Oregon
6. Boise State
7. Utah
8. Oklahoma
9. Wisconsin
10. Ohio State
11. LSU
12. Alabama
13. Nebraska
14. Florida State
15. Oklahoma State
16. Stanford
17. Arizona
18. Mississippi State
19. Iowa
20. Baylor
21. South Carolina
22. Arkansas
23. Virginia Tech
24. Miami
25. San Diego State

it's here

2010-10-22T18:40:00.004-05:00

And I don't mean ESPN College GameDay.

Nope, just talking about my car.

Wait for it.

And then it's gone.

the chiefs are in the playoffs

2010-10-11T16:42:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I said the Chargers' early road sloppiness meant they had to win the games in this stretch against Arizona, Oakland, and St. Louis, while the Chiefs didn't need to beat Indy or Houston.

Well, two games in, the Chargers have already lost.

There are all sorts of things that can go wrong over the course of the season - from horrific injuries to brutal mental collapses - but it is truly amazing how early in the season it appears that such a bad team as the 2009 Chiefs were are now poised in 2010 to win the division. There are 12 games left to play for the Chiefs, and no team appears more in control of their division race than Kansas City. Now, it's quite possible actually San Diego could win a wildcard spot. They get games against New England, Tennessee, Indianapolis, and Houston, which if they win could all be potential tie breakers for a wildcard spot. Of course, those are all potential losses for the Chargers, too, which is part of their problem looking ahead at their schedule.

But at any rate, from the perspective of the AFC West and the Chiefs, wow. They're ahead in the loss column, the division record, and remaining opponents. Either the defense frustrated the dominant offense in the AFC South, or the Colts are in decline similar to the Chargers and the AFC South teams will all be giving each other losses, making it quite possible that the West picks up a wildcard team at the expense of the South. The offense had one of the most impressive strings of failures you can see, and the team was in the game on the road until the final few minutes. Scary. I have now firmly transitioned from being excited for a winning record to wanting to see a division title this year with this team.

more good news for the chiefs

2010-10-03T17:07:00.003-05:00

And the Rams too, for that matter.

The Chiefs aren't good enough yet to consistently beat dominant teams. So it's great news that this year, there don't appear to be any such teams in the NFL. None. Every team looks beatable at this stage of the game.

In the NFC, we had winless teams at the bottom of the NFC North, NFC South, and NFC West travel to three of the top teams in the conference. All three teams remain winless, but they lost on the road by a collective six points. Not exactly an overwhelming performance by the Packers, Saints, and Falcons. In the AFC, there's not a single (other) undefeated team remaining. Every (other) team has already lost at least one game in the conference and/or at home.

What's going on this year?

stars continue to align

2010-09-30T18:51:00.001-05:00

At a superficial level, one would expect the Chiefs to be a below average but not rock bottom team this year. They've got some untested players and coaches, and they are coming off a three year reign of terror, so to speak, wherein they've won all of about 10 games. Out of 48. (Although, interestingly, they only finished last in the division in two of those three seasons). Looking forward, it appears the Chiefs have troughed, and the question is how far to the upswing they might progress this season. And the big question mark about the Chargers is how fast their dominance will fade over the next couple seasons. In fact, San Diego's four consecutive division titles is the longest AFC West streak since the Raiders of the 1970s won five in a row.

So with that context we entered 2010. From the perspective of the Chiefs, it has the potential to be a particularly noteworthy affair, more than just a small improvement over 2009. After some seasons where it seemed like the schedulers were out to get us (one of those fun fan complaints), 2010 is set up nicely for things to potentially get very interesting. Our home/away matchups mimic the Chargers, which gives us a good guidepost (assuming San Diego is still the team to beat this year). With the renovations to Arrowhead complete, there is some additional excitement on that front.

But I say potential, because the stars do have to align for this to be a magical season. Which, of course, is why seasons like this one could be are described as magical.

Consider the stretch before the bye week. In the early part of the Chiefs' schedule, the pressure was on Kansas City to perform. Right out of the gate, we hosted a division rival on Monday night at home. If you're going to be competitive, you have to win divisional home games. Then, the second game of the season is one of the winnable road games, and the third game back at home. Again, these are the kinds of games that need to be won to be competitive. It doesn't have to be pretty; just be ahead when the clock hits zero.

Well, the Chiefs actually performed. It took two ugly wins and better adaption to weather, but this season is already materially different than the previous three. That means the pressure is now on the Chargers. Next up for us is a bye week and two road games we don't need to win. San Diego, though, has to win three times in the next three weeks. Now, it's possible that San Diego still has another year of dominance left, their early difficulties losing two flukey road games don't mean anything, and they finish the season about 13-3 and win the division handily. In that case, the Chiefs improve from last year, celebrate that, and go into 2011 aiming for division champ.

But it's also possible that the Chargers are losing close games on the road because they're not that much better than the rest of the league. In that case, let's go back to the schedule. Due to losing at Arrowhead, the Chargers absolutely have to beat the Chiefs at home later this year. If KC pulls off a victory at either Indianapolis or Houston over the next two weeks, that means San Diego absolutely must do the same thing. With the Chiefs' victory against their AFC North opponent, and upcoming AFC East opponent being the Buffalo Bills, the Chargers are under the gun to beat both the Patriots and Bengals. In short, by coming out of the first six weeks at least 3-2 (which is already done, after week 3), KC, for the whole rest of the season, puts the pressure on San Diego, a team that won three times as many games as the Chiefs last year.

It only takes one more mistake by San Diego, losing a sloppy road game or getting surprised at home, and the Chiefs might have a hard time not looking phenomenal. Of course, the Chiefs could also finish the season about 3-10 after their 3-0 start, too.

If you'd asked me a month ago, I would have been excited for a winning season. Now, I think there is legitimate talk about the Chiefs vying for the division title, this year, based on what has happened so far and then looking out at the scheduling yet to come. It's your move, San Diego. Are you going 12-1 the rest of the season, or not? Were the Seattle and KC losses more September flukes, or are you also going to lose at Indy, Houston, Cincinnati, Denver, and Oakland? Are New England and Tennessee going to come in and beat you at home? Are you even, perhaps, worried about Sam Bradford and the newly resurgent 1-15 St. Louis Rams? Time will tell. I can't wait to see how the universe aligns.

It's been a few years since MO NFL fans were actually excited about seeing how the season unfolds. This is the combined record of the Chiefs and Rams over the past three seasons: 16-80. Ouch.

have a seat, stay for awhile

2010-09-27T21:48:00.003-05:00

For the non sports fans, the Rams have had some problems recently. They didn't even win a home game last year.

But this year, the Rams have played competitive games against the Raiders and the Cardinals. Sam Bradford, the rookie from Oklahoma, is making by far the most impact in the NFL this season. By comparison, Florida's Tim Tebow isn't even the Broncos starter.

And here we are playing Washington tough. The Rams take the best Washington can throw at them, regain the lead, and...make the lead even bigger! And what do St. Louis fans do?

That's right. They start leaving.

This is a party. The first home win in four years. The Rams are only a game out of first place in the NFC West. They're not even in last place in the division. Savor this. Either this is the start of something incredible, or a rarity to be relished.

Stick around for awhile. At least, be there when the clock hits zero.

thanks tom

2010-09-24T18:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm not exactly on a first name basis with anyone from the Fed, let alone a Regional President.

But there's a great writeup in BusinessWeek about the approach of Thomas Hoenig, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Well worth the read. The observations are really pretty straightforward when you boil them down. And they're getting into the mainstream corporate media.

1. There's a difference between rescuing the banking system and rescuing big banks. Community banks are who have good business plans that add value to the economy.
2. The Fed isn't equipped to handle the present situation; monetary policy simply doesn't do much when the problem is too much credit. In fact, Greenspan and Bernanke are responsible for precisely some of the conditions that have created booms and busts over the past couple decades.
3. We should break up any entity deemed 'too big to fail'.

Or as the article writes

The hard truth, in his view, is that there just isn't much more the Fed can do to help, and we all ought to admit that.

We've had a Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs (GS) under a Democratic President and a Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs under a Republican President. The outcomes were not good,"

"What I took from that," says Hoenig, "was that it followed a period of very easy credit. It followed a period when people felt prices could only go up." Feel-good rates, in other words, led to excessive leverage and crisis. "I find it very interesting today," Hoenig continues, "how many people don't remember the late 1970s-early 1980s."

When community banks stumble, he adds, they are allowed to fail. When Wall Street collapsed, it got a heroic rescue. "I would break them up," Hoenig says of Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Bank of America (BAC). "They're too big. They have too much political influence. When they get in trouble again, the temptation to rescue them because they are 'too big to fail' will be very strong."

what a little bit of law school does to you

2010-09-13T20:03:00.004-05:00

James Kwak has another interesting post up at the Baseline Scenario blog. It is entitled 'What a Little Bit of Economics Does to You'. He manages to touch upon several issues which I think are important. What is unusual for the blog is that the manner in which he does this is by being nearly completely wrong (generally, I tend to agree with most of what is written at Baseline Scenario). This is my somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but overall serious, take on the matter.

Kwak starts by discussing a paper that asked questions about various actions to see if people thought it was fair or unfair, reaching a broad conclusion that “The cardinal rule of fairness is surely that one person should not achieve a gain by simply imposing an equivalent loss on another.” I wholeheartedly agree; that seems like a great, succinct summary of the concept of fairness as it relates to economic transactions. This is why actions like fraud and torture are illegal; they are simply one person's gain at the expense of someone else's loss. This is why at the heart of capitalism lies the concept of consent of the individual.

However, Kwak then relates this broad concept to his current class.

"Today in class, the professor posed the first question from the paper:
A hardware store has been selling snow shovels for $15. The morning after a large snowstorm, the store raises the price to $20.”

In 1986, 82 percent of respondents thought this was unfair. In class, it was about 50-50.

As the professor said, this is probably because there are a lot of business school students in this class. Business school students are classic Econ 101 robots. They know enough to know that if there is a demand shift, not only is it OK to raise prices, but you should raise prices in order to clear the market. In this case, supply is fixed in the short term, so raising the price won’t increase supply; the Econ 101 argument is that raising the price allocates the shovels to people who will derive more utility from them (because they will pay more), thereby increasing social welfare.

This writing is rich in irony and confused reasoning. As business school students may be classic Econ 101 robots, so too are law school students classic law professor stenographers. If the professor said it, it must be true!

More substantively, we're talking about snow shovels here. That cost $20. Simply buying a replacement blade for the Snow Wovel costs $19.85, and that's based upon shipping to an area that is not encumbered by a snow storm. Moreover, the fact that someone would even need a snow shovel implies two very important things. First, they own property that needs care (a house with a sidewalk, a driveway for a car, etc). How many renters are expected to shovel snow? How many poor people have cars? Second, they don't currently have a snow shovel; in other words, they're being negligent in maintaining their property and free-riding off of others to bail them out when they want help. That's like complaining that the gas company shuts off your gas after not paying your bills for six months.

In addition, there's a lot of 'shoulds' in here. Notice, the question doesn't ask what students would do if they were the business owner. Rather, the question is if it's unfair for the business to raise prices. Finally, one point worth mentioning here is that this is all based upon insufficient information. It's speculation; one cannot conclude what people are thinking, or why, from the given information.

Kwak continues

But this rests on a huge assumption: that willingness to pay is the same as utility. Unfortunately, however, this assumption fails in the real world; poor people simply can’t pay as much for snow shovels as rich people, and as a result a price increase will allocate shovels to rich people, not to those who need them the most.* But people who believe Econ 101 only remember the demand and supply curves they saw on the first day of class, so they think firms should raise prices.

Note the bait and switch here, how Kwak almost subconsciously transitions from concerns about people who have to pay the higher price for the shovel to concerns about people who won't get a shovel. The people paying $20 for the shovel after a snowstorm are deriving greater utility from it, otherwise they wouldn't pay the extra $5. Now, for those who can't afford the $20, the question remains, why didn't they buy a shovel at $15? Are they too poor to afford even a $15 shovel? At that rate, we're talking about people too poor to worry about things like driveways and sidewalks. That kind of property is owned by rich people. Kwak would need to demonstrate some data that suggests that the marginal increase in the price of the shovel impacts the distribution of shovel consumption with respect to income. This is not academic, by the way. For example, one substitute good for buying a shovel is hiring somebody else to shovel your driveway. Guess who is more likely to do that? Richer folks! Another substitute good is calling in to work to take a day off. Guess who has more paid leave time? Richer folks! Another substitute good is bringing in shovels from someplace else. Guess what's going to attract other sellers to brave the snow and distance? Higher prices! Another substitute good is borrowing/renting a shovel from a neighbor. Guess who's more likely to live in an area where there are other property owners who would have shovels to share/loan? Richer folks! The point of all this is that higher prices might lead to more shovels being bought by poorer folks, not less; we would need actual data to determine that. The conceptual framework alone offers no guidance. That price increase can just as easily signal to richer folks that they should choose some other method at their disposal of clearing their property of snow as it can signal to poorer folks that they can't get a shovel because they can't afford the extra $5.

Also, this sentiment languishes in the same insufficient information purgatory. Since Kwak does not claim to speak for people who 'believe' Econ 101, he would need to present some actual evidence about what those people believe. He would also need evidence that law students at Yale are representative of the general population in the ways material to the original paper. Perhaps the problem isn't business at all; maybe it's our elite universities that create concepts of fairness alien to average Americans.

While the above academic fun is fun, the real meat lies ahead:

I suspect that belief in Econ 101 is not only stronger among business school students (and the businessmen they become) than among ordinary people, but is also stronger today than it was in 1986. The free market ideology teaches not only that businesses can maximize profits by any legal means, but that they have a moral imperative to maximize profits by any legal means, including generating profits by imposing equivalent losses on their counterparties. (Essentially all proprietary trading fulfills this condition.) And three decades of this ideology have probably changed people’s responses to these types of questions.

More fundamentally, the 1986 paper shows that Econ 101 is diametrically opposed to human beings’ intuitive sense of fairness. Yet public policy largely follows the dictates of Econ 101. Is that a good thing?

Notice the leap from 'Econ 101' to 'free market ideology'? That claim calls for a modicum of warrants, shall we say. And then we're back to this business of generating profits by imposing losses on counterparties. That may be what the laissez-faire 'free market ideology' types think, and perhaps Kwak shows his subtle cultural biases by assuming that's what everybody thinks. And maybe I just had great professors. I mean, I'd take Wash U over Yale any day (which is why you should recognize both of our biases in the odd event we played a basketball game or something). While I have great disdain for certain parts of the business community and great appreciation for certain parts of the legal community, I think overall there are probably too many lawyers and too few people who really understand business in our society. In fact, you could go so far as to argue that Kwak has the cause and effect reversed. Maybe the problem isn't that business education creates market fundamentalism, but rather, that those inclined toward the free market ideology are about the only folks who think business education is valuable? Maybe if we had more architects and painters and philosophers and social service agency staffers and gay rights activists and whoever-whatsie else's studying the basic concepts of business, both the economy and society would benefit?

Regardless of where you align on that particular mode of thought, consider the core inaccuracy of Kwak's assertion. The store selling the shovel for $20 isn't imposing a loss on the buyer. That's a stupid argument; I don't know how to put it more kindly. If the shovel wasn't worth $20, the buyer wouldn't buy it. In fact, refusing patronage to a store is precisely how one demonstrates that the legal actions of the store's proprietors are unfair.

I would also point out the misguided nature of his last statement. Our public policy isn't dominated by Econ 101. It largely ignores it. That's why we're in such the crapper at the moment, so to speak. Remember my comment about things like fraud and torture? Imagine if we actually prosecuted stuff like that which has been undermining both our economy and our democracy.

Kwak's footnote sums it up

* I’m not saying that there is a perfect way to allocate the shovels, just that using price isn’t perfect, and does have inequality effects

In other words, there is no perfect way to allocate scarce resources. Everything has inequality and inefficiency effects. The pricing mechanism in capitalism is just the best system we've got until we come up with something better. I highly encourage everyone to investigate Econ 101 and see what you think for yourself. I enjoyed my own professors, like Jackson Nickerson, who taught my Management 100 class, William Emmons, who taught my Microeconomics class, Dottie Petersen, who taught my global macroeconomics class, Russ Roberts, who taught my class on business and public policy, and Robert Pollak, who taught my course on business and the environment. These are only a handful of professors, of course, but I highlight them because they were teaching the fundamentals, the 'Econ 101' stuff that Kwak apparently thinks is destroying our culture. My beef isn't with the economic textbook written by Gregory Mankiw, George Bush's economic advisor; it was a great textbook. My beef is with the public policies our government enacts that ignore basic economics. I'm not worried about changes in public attitudes toward 'free markets'; my concern is when our public policies ignore the broad will of the people.

I can't wait until Kwak posts a piece about how personal finance education and financial literacy caused the DJIA/NASDAQ and housing bubbles!

the politics of parking

2010-09-12T13:25:00.003-05:00

A funny thing happened on the way to church. Grand Center, Inc didn't let me park on the church's parking lot.

It's very weird. I don't know why it's so difficult for organizations to work together. This is one of the things I'm still trying to learn about urban life in general and St. Louis in particular; why is it that people and groups who are basically all on the same team have such difficulty arriving at mutually beneficial arrangements? GCI has been very good at charging visitors to Midtown St. Louis for the privilege of using parking spaces - including those owned by the church. But for some unexplained reason, GCI seems to think they own all the proceeds. Apparently, they broke off negotiations so suddenly that they didn't even allow the church to build a separate street entrance into that part of the parking lot before literally denying little old church ladies the ability to park next to the entrance. And of course, there's no notice or anything. The thankless task of telling people they can't enter the parking lot was left to the subcontracted parking lot attendants to explain on Sunday morning.

What's the dealio Mr. Schoemehl? We're even doing GCI the favor of housing the Grand Center Arts Academy charter school for a year until their tax-credit financed building rehab is completed. You owe us man. I expect more from my fellow Skinker-Debaliviere peep!

1,000 miles to go

2010-09-05T16:30:00.005-05:00

In becoming more like a local St. Louisan this weekend, I commuted from Warrenton to church this morning! Yay cabin.

On the way out, I passed mile 99,000. Just 1,000 more to that very exciting arbitrary round number.

And in a not-so-random shameless plug for Mark Ireland for Judge, I met a couple people from Minnesota today. Woohoo.

the mobile computing paradigm is already here

2010-09-01T21:59:00.000-05:00

James Kwak contributes to a great econ and finance blog called the Baseline Scenario headlined by former IMF economist Simon Johnson. Johnson is one of the people with whom I would most closely associate my own personal perspectives on the ongoing economic, financial, and social crises confronting us which I like to only-half jestingly refer to as the Republican Recession. Kwak specifically is currently a law student, formerly a consultant for McKensie. I don't know as much about Reggie Middleton, but he runs the intriguing investment website boombustblog.com with the tagline ‘micro views of macro markets’.

But this post isn’t about economics, law, and investing per se. It’s a bit closer to my own formal academic training, strategic decision-making by large organizations and the interplay of technology and business. (Warning: it’s also, like me, long-winded.) Kwak has written two posts on the Future of Personal Computing (Part 1 and Part 2), while Middleton has assembled a whole series of posts examining the market relevance of what he terms the paradigm shift to ultra mobile computing. They’re intriguing reads and certainly worth pondering if you possess any interest in these matters.

What I would like to do however is offer a dissent, or an alternative reading of the tea leaves from the two particular perspectives. First, specifically, I think Apple’s strategic choices are better than they allow, and secondly, I think the broader course of computing is a little different from the conceptual framework presented. In short, I argue Apple’s model delivers significant value for consumers, while I find ‘cloud’ computing to be less beneficial than Kwak describes and less disruptive than Middleton describes. I agree that we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the current phase of the computer revolution, but it seems like their analysis employs the frameworks applicable to older paradigms. I argue that Apple gets the shift better than perhaps any other company on the planet.

Here’s how I would lay out the digital computing revolution, or what I'll shorten to the computer revolution (we've been computing for thousands of years, of course, and there was a time when analog computing seemed to be the wave of the future). While no model is precise, I think this broad overview helps us see the major strands and developments over time. The computer revolution, I posit, is one of the most important and disruptive transitions in human history. There have been periods where a certain paradigm has been dominant, and as computing has evolved, a shift occurs which emphasizes a different aspect of computing. However, I would suggest that within the computer revolution, the old paradigm isn’t displaced. Rather, the new builds upon and complements what has come before. While the newer paradigms feel, well, newer, each successive shift is actually less revolutionary than what came before, analogous to the communication revolution that saw paradigm shifts in the development of language, and then writing, and then the printing press, and then the internet. The internet is awesome, but if someone was trying to theorize something as revolutionary as, say, language itself, that would require something much grander, like figuring out how to communicate in an entirely different way, such as by touch, or movement, or telepathy. The intertubes aren't anywhere close to replacing Real Life.

The first paradigm I would describe as mainframe computing, characterized by the initial developments in the computing revolution. This is where you input your information, go grab lunch, come back, and see what happened (okay, yes, this is way oversimplifying the matter). The second paradigm would be personal computing, characterized by getting computers into homes and offices – and getting people to use them. The third paradigm I would call network computing. Now that we have all these computers big and small, let’s get them all talking to each other. The fourth paradigm shift, I think, is mobile computing. Here the question is how to access these networks of computers anytime, anywhere. I think there are three key components: the device capabilities (hardware and software), the back-end e-commerce support, and 'cloud' computing.

The title of this post comes from the sense that the core absence from the arguments by Kwak and Middleton (among others presenting similar thoughts) is that we’re already well into the age of mobile computing. In other words, we’re not approaching the outset of a new paradigm. We’re already well into its development and implementation. Then Apple CEO John Sculley laid out the term Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) in 1992, about the same time IBM was developing Simon, the first smart phone. By the late 1990s, we had the Newton MessagePad and the Palm Pilot and the Nokia Communicator. Apple’s concept of the ‘digital hub’ is almost a decade old now. Blackberry has became a household name. Online gaming has been incorporated into everything from Microsoft’s Xbox Live to Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net. SharePoint services in Office are so widespread now that even non-profits are using the technology for sharing documents. From Dell to HP to Amazon to Apple to PayPal to Ebay to a host of other companies, e-commerce is here. Netflix streams movies. OnStar brings Big Brother to life, and more generally, computers are in everything from cars to clocks. The iPhone is now three years old – the blending of the MessagePad, Pilot, Blackberry, Simon, and other precursors in a device that is now copied worldwide. Social networking has been around for a decade, and even Facebook is now over six years old. And Google, well, it's been a long time since the early days of the search engine. When someone actually posts a comment on this Google blog, Google Mail sends my phone an email message with the comment. It's even been five years since Google bought Android.

In short, the main components of mobile computing, far from being in the infancy stage, are well on their way to maturation: the front end hardware and software, the back end e-commerce, and the nebulous concept of ‘cloud’ computing. Look at the new Android smartphones: a Blackberry or iPhone user would instantly recognize them as a smartphone. More interestingly, a Newton MessagePad or Palm Pilot user would recognize them. I predict that the phones and tablets on sale this Christmas will be recognizable as mobile computing a decade from now. Sure, like Apple’s Quicktake digital camera, or Microsoft Windows 95, or Google Search from 1999, they’ll look clunky and slow and almost embarrassingly outdated. But you’ll know what they are.

Let’s dig into commentary specific to Apple. This is from Kwak’s Part 2:

“ …But I think the important point is that they are promoting a model of personal computing where most of the developers write for the iPhone OS, and if you want to use their applications you have to buy an Apple hardware product. Yes, Apple makes great hardware, but I think consumers will do better with an open model; if you look at smartphones, it’s already the case that many phones running Android — Google’s open-source operating system — are better than the iPhone at many different things. (The iPhone may still be the best overall, but there are many good reasons why you might pick a particular Android phone over the iPhone.) And Android has already passed the iPhone as the number two smartphone (measured by new sales), behind the BlackBerry... “

Kwak’s position is that Apple wants tight control over the hardware and software, and then significantly, that this desire conflicts with the best interests of Apple’s consumers. The former is absolutely true. It’s the latter part of the assertion where Kwak fails to substantiate his claim. Rather, it’s stated much more as a premise upon which to base further analysis rather than a claim which must be proven in and of itself, before any other conclusions may be drawn from it.

And here I think Kwak applies a more legalistic approach to what is really a business question, or to say it differently, he does what a lot of business analysts do. They forget to make the customer #1. They assume models and logic and processes can replace or circumvent or take precedent over the preferences of consumers. But at the end of the day, from drugs to diapers to digital devices, one ignores the actual wishes of the consumer at one’s own peril.

Apple’s model doesn’t restrict consumer choice. It embraces it. Choosing not to participate in the Apple experience is itself one of the choices Apple presents to consumers. If you prefer a Blackberry or a Droid or a Pre or an Evo, well, go buy one (interesting side note: just in the time period I’ve been drafting this piece, HP has bought Palm and the Pre isn’t even on sale any longer – a great illustration of the pace of change in mobile computing and also how the ‘personal computer’ makers are still quite relevant and profitable even in the age of the internet and smartphones and cloud computing). Same for a Zune MP3 player or a Dell laptop or an HP desktop. That’s competition, choice, consumer freedom, whatever you like to call it. Most citizens of our globe are not Apple customers. More philosophically, if you don’t want a fancy smartphone, or don’t want a cell phone at all, that is also your choice as a consumer (although the latter option in particular is increasingly open only to those who unwittingly or purposefully shun connecting with modern society, which presents its own potential line of philosophizing about what choice really means).

Rather, what Apple’s model does is impose restrictions within the Apple ecosystem. If you think Google’s online calendar application is superior to Apple’s iCal, well, then use it. That’s choice. That’s openness. The ability to choose different ways of interacting with technology. The fact that one of those ‘ways’ – tight restrictions upon and integration of hardware and software – is, in a limited sense, not open, doesn’t in any way restrict the consumer’s ability to choose among the various ways of interacting with technology. The closed system is itself one of the choices, and it’s precisely Apple’s customers who value the simplicity of that system that make Apple profitable. Consumers like me are willing to pay a finite but economically real premium to have ‘applications’ on our ‘computers’ that mostly ‘just work’. At certain times in Apple’s history, there have been fewer of us, and at other times, more of us, and Apple’s effectiveness at delivering on the strategy has varied over time, but that in a nutshell is why Apple is a multi-billion dollar transnational corporation. They offer their customers something for which their customers are willing to pay dollars. And yen, euros, and other currencies, too. For Kwak to perform a more rigorous analysis of Apple’s strategic stance specifically, he’ll need to bring to bear a sharp focus on why Apple customers are Apple customers, not on why non-Apple customers aren’t Apple customers.

Similarly, Middleton seems very interested in why Google’s Android is growing in smartphone marketshare. It’s a little tricky evaluating the nuances of his position, because he doesn’t really publish his full position. His pieces are mainly teasers to get people to subscribe to his investing research and analysis, and you can see that tone in the headlines, like “RIM Smart Phone Market Share, RIP?” and “Empirical Evidence of Android Eating Apple!”. More than a passing resemblance to entry worthy into the Apple Death Knell, in my opinion. However, because Middleton is primarily pushing his subscription model, you have to take the tone with a grain of salt: of course he’s trying to be controversial and exaggerate trends at the margins in order to attract eyeballs. Recognizing various cognitive biases is important for both investing and strategic analysis.

In the first piece in the series, Middleton lays out his overriding thesis:

“While everybody is celebrating the Ipad and the IPhone 4, pushing Apple stock through the plasmoshere (I actually like Apple as a company, a literal marketing market – what Microsoft use to be), Google is quietly creating a technological, business model and strategic advantage wherein there will be no way in hell Apple will be able to keep up if things continue to progress at the current pace. In essence, Apple will be relying more and more on marketing prowess and less on capability and competitive technological innovation to maintain margin and revenue growth. That is a dangerous place to be. Simply observe the speed upon which the Google/Android/HTC ecosystem has developed and the power, flexibility and usability of this early product after just two years on the market.”

The title tells you where he’s going: “There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All”. I would suggest, however, that this is ‘old-paradigm’ thinking. Middleton is claiming there’s a paradigm shift and then applying analysis from the old paradigm. Two key points stand out to me at this juncture. First, there are more companies involved than Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Second, this isn’t going to be winner-take-all.

Let me elaborate on this second point. The Wintel and Office ecosystems at the heart of the personal computing phase are notable precisely for their rarity; there are extremely few instances of natural monopolies (or duopolies) existing in the private sphere where government actually helps the monopoly rather than trying to create competition. This is due to the way patent and copyright law has intersected with the network effects of IT products. Microsoft’s methods for communicating in its Windows OS and Office productivity suite have been recognized by the government as intellectual property owned by Microsoft. This is a once-in-a-billion arrangement. It’s like the power company owning the electrical standard in your outlet, or the phone company owning the concept of dialing numbers, or the water company owning the idea of a copper pipe, or GAP owning the use of cotton in clothing.

The paradigm shift that is mobile computing isn’t like that. The fundamental network effect of a smartphone – can it call other phones – isn’t owned by a private company. AT&T users can call Verizon users. Blackerry users can call iPhone users. An iPad or Kindle can access the data parts of cellular networks without even having to offer voice capability at all. This is critical to understanding the paradigm shift: smartphones and cloud computing and tablets and e-commerce and so forth lends itself more to oligopoly than monopoly (which itself builds upon the network computing phase that rendered the Wintel and Office dynasties less suffocating for established firms like Apple and HP and new entrants like Google and Amazon). Multiple firms will be creating the IT landscape of the future, and multiple firms will be profiting from it. In fact, I would argue, multiple firms have already created much of the landscape, and multiple firms are already profiting from it.

Now as for the cloud computing component of mobile computing specifically, there is great potential in distributed networks, in information flowing freely among different computers, or more generally, in stuff being available anywhere and everywhere. In the US, we have many ‘cloud’ systems. The electrical wiring my laptop uses to access the power grid from a condo complex in St. Louis works just as well to access the power grid from a hotel in Minnesota. That is not a small accomplishment, either of engineering prowess and manufacturing capacity or of effective government involvement in describing and enforcing the rules of the game for markets to follow. But there are still reasons that I want to take ‘my’ computer with me on the trip rather than using machines supplied by the airlines, hotels, restaurants, car rental places, and other vendors I encounter along the way. There’s also a reason that laptops, cell phones, and other mobile devices have batteries to complement the ‘cloud’ system that is the electric grid – sometimes the cloud just isn’t accessible.

Kwak suggests that

“ …The obvious alternative is Google, which has its own operating systems (Android and Chrome), but doesn’t particularly care if you use them or not — as long as you are using the Internet, where they sell their ads. I’d like to see an Android tablet with a real browser that can handle anything on the Web, and then I simply wouldn’t need most of the apps I have on my iPad (Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Maps, AccuWeather, Netflix, NPR, Bloomberg, etc.). Now, Google isn’t pursuing an open strategy because it’s nice; they’re doing it because they want everyone to go to the Internet to see their ads. But ultimately I think that’s a better model for consumers, because you avoid lock-in on the development level (developers don’t have to commit to the iPhone OS) and on the hardware level (anyone can build an Android device, which is already providing more innovation and choice when it comes to smartphones)… “

But this falls apart on several levels. Google also is a multi-billion dollar transnational corporation. They are this size because, like Apple, they deliver products people like. But unlike Apple, their users and their customers are two vastly different groups of people. Google’s customers are people paying for advertising. They sell their advertising by attracting users, from Google Search to Google Mail to Google Blogger to Google YouTube. At a fundamental level, it is far from obvious to me why a model which extracts value from users for the benefit of customers (advertisers) is inherently best from the user’s perspective. At a business level, Google is a corporate entity, overseen by a private, non-governmental Board of Directors. It is not obvious to me why Google is inherently a different model of governance than most other transnational corporations. [Note, generally speaking I ascribe higher value overall to the leadership and governance among technology companies than most other industries, like financial firms, energy, agribusiness, healthcare, telecommunications, and so forth.]

And most relevant for this analysis, I don’t follow Kwak’s reasoning at a technical level. The cloud only works when you can access it. You have to have some sort of standard terminal – just like a plug for an electric outlet – to ‘plug in’ or ‘dial in’ or ‘remote in’ or whichever is your favorite metaphor for what exactly we’re doing. The amount of stuff to download has expanded faster than the speeds at which it can be downloaded (just look at HD video for example). Now, Kwak has a very reasonable defense: offline access. But here’s the thing. The more computing is designed to seamlessly integrate ‘online’ and ‘offline’ information production, the more it resembles…Apple’s model! That quite literally describes the relationship between, say, an iPod, a PC, and iTunes, or for something Mac-specific, a MacBook, Mail, and Gmail.

You have to have ‘apps’ running on a ‘computer’ that is ‘local’ in ‘your’ possession. A lot of us like that model. I for one love using Blogger and Gmail and Google Search. I use FaceBook heavily, too, and Flickr. But I like (most of) my games and my contacts and my pictures and my music and so forth with me, where I am, rather than sitting on another computer somewhere else that I may or may not be able to access, that may or may not be part of a commercial advertising agreement between a third party who cares not the least what happens to my data. Yes, some of my personal data is on FaceBook. But it’s the data I want to be publicly available. Yes, some of my finances are online, from checking to retirement accounts. But I expect that those financial firms will keep that data private from third-party folks. Yes, Blogger lets you type directly through the browser. But a post like this I’m writing primarily in a stand-alone word processing application running on my local computer.

Is that more expensive than ad-supported cloud computing? Yeap.

But it costs a heckuva lot less today than that first Apple IIe I used over a quarter century ago. That’s value creation. Mainframes will of course remain valuable, too. And for the foreseeable future, over the next couple decades, personal computers aren’t going anywhere – except more and more of the places we like to take them. The cloud isn’t displacing servers and PCs; it’s built on top of them, rendering them even more important. The Apple model, where software and hardware is tightly integrated around a core of personal computing with a periphery of devices accessing networks and extending mobility and ease of use around the core, isn’t going anywhere. And Apple has bet the corporate farm not just on personal computing generally, but specifically on the market segments within personal computing that value tightly linked hardware and software devices that appear to the end user to simply work seamlessly together.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not an app-fiend on the iPhone. I bought one for using about half a dozen apps, not hundreds of apps. My total purchases at the iTunes App Store over the almost three years I’ve had my iPhone are less than $100, or less than three months’ worth of DSL/cable data connectivity thanks to the real market failures in our system, the telecommunications companies delivering internet access. But I don’t see the web browser replacing those other categories of applications any time soon. Rather, I’m on the ‘convergence’ bandwagon. Stand-alone applications are simply too valuable to people like me, for issues ranging from ease of use to features to data privacy to frustration with the telcos. What we want to be able to do with our computers is to continue realizing convergence with other aspects of our lives, with the computer as hub.

The losers in the shift to mobile computing aren’t going to be the likes of Microsoft, Google, or Apple. The real losers are the Sony Walkman and the newspaper classified ad and manufacturers of VHS tapes and entertainment companies that would like my iPhone data plan monthly budget and so forth. The computer revolution’s disruptiveness is seen particularly well through this light. The major IT firms are competing with non-IT products and services as much as they’re competing with each other. Individual firms can always go the way of Xerox, from iconic company to marginal bit player. RIM is perhaps most at risk of this fate at the moment. But with regard to Apple, I think they continue as a defining force in the computer revolution for years to come. As Windows 7 is basically the GUI personal computing experience known as a Mac, and as Android 2 is basically the multi-touch combined PDA/cell phone known as an iPhone, I think whatever competes with the iPad will basically, well, be an iPad. And that’s the other part that’s exciting for Apple customers. Apple continues to show a knack for popularizing what works in computing. The profits may not always accrue to Apple for this, but enough do to keep Apple at the cutting edge for the foreseeable future.

This is particularly true of mobile computing, where Apple’s iPhone is quite literally what the competition looks like, the iPad is basically Tiger Woods of the past decade (as in, Tiger vs. the Field), and for Apple shareholders, it has garnered a simply unfathomable amount of total industry profit in a sector where there were already established, major transnational corporate players. If Apple market share falls to around 10% long-term of the global smartphone market, that’s a phenomenal ROI from the Newton MessagePad a decade and a half ago. Combine that with the Office-like grip of the iPod, and the continuing business of core personal computing, and Apple has all the resources it needs to be relevant for whatever comes down the pike too far out in the future to predict today. Apple has figured out how to commoditize the underlying bits of computing, buying lots of stuff in huge quantities. The markup, the value-added, is in assembling a simple package of these components for consumers. Apple's entire core product line basically consists of three desktop computers (Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro), three laptops (MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air), three music players (iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Classic), and three iOS PDAs (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad). This allows Apple to buy the underlying components by the millions while distinguishing their commoditized bits from the same commoditized bits used by other companies. There's a segment of the market that appreciates Apple doing this kind of work and giving them a manageable number of options and choices. Apple plays around at the margins, such as with Apple TV and MobileMe, to see how much it wants to incorporate things like cloud computing into its core products. Video streaming, for example, was part of that original Steve Jobs keynote on the digital lifestyle.

As regards Google, they’re actually in a more precarious state than I think Kwak, Middleton, and others allow. The shift from brilliant behemoth to blundering invader of Russia in winter is pretty subtle. Perhaps Google can compete on multiple fronts with upstarts and established players galore while maintaining a business model that extracts value from the company’s users for use by the company’s customers. But, perhaps Google comes to appreciate that companies like Microsoft and Apple and RIM and Nokia and so forth are more natural business partners than competitors. Does Google want to provide support for Android and Chrome if it starts making firms think twice about how much data Google collects via its prime moneymaker, Google Search? Can Google actually support multiple OSes over time? That I think becomes a very interesting strategic decision, a ‘what if’ scenario of more risk than anything Apple (or Microsoft) currently faces. What if, say, Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Nokia, Dell, and HP got together to make Bing a true competitor to Google Search? What if Motorola and HTC and LG and Samsung didn’t like being dependent upon Google for updates and support? What if Microsoft renders Exchange synchronization and other features less workable on Android devices? What if Google’s efforts to monetize its non-search properties for advertisers simply drives users somewhere else, undermining the one product Google has successfully monetized? What if the negative customer attitudes of the telcos rubs off on Google's brand as they work closer together?

Let me emphasize, my proposition is that all the major computer IT firms (Microsoft, Apple, Google, and many more) stand to benefit from the mobile computing paradigm shift in the ongoing computer revolution. I throw out the Google discussion here to push back against what I see some people suggesting that either the ‘old guard’ just doesn’t get it, or that somehow the new players aren’t susceptible to their own grand business risks, too.

Of course, the best judge is the passage of time. If Android-powered smartphones and Chrome-powerd tablets/netbooks/whatever leapfrog so far beyond the iPhone and iPad and MacBook as to leave them unrecognizable, then hey, maybe I’ll help out my hometown carrier Sprint by picking up the 2015 version of the HTC Evo and whatever iPad-killer actually, you know, ships.

remind me again

2010-08-28T12:12:00.004-05:00

Why are marijuana users more dangerous to society than the financial fraudsters that wrecked our economy?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think drugs are awful. I'm 'old school' on that, a good little Baptist boy. Heck, I watch my consumption of caffeine and acetaminophen, never mind alcohol and THC.

But this joint LA Times op-ed by our current and past drug czars (heads of the Office of National Drug Control Policy) cracks me up. I know those are English words following English grammar, but I don't understand what they're saying.

I think they might have been stoned when they wrote that. That's my most charitable explanation.

go irish

2010-08-12T08:17:00.003-05:00

I mean, with a name like Dempsey, how can I not support Mark Ireland for judge?

P.S. Sarah, or whoever is doing the website, primary day is over...you can put up info about the general :)

progressively stupider driving

2010-08-03T07:45:00.005-05:00

(R) Sometimes I think sick me is more authentic than healthy me, because healthy me spends a not insignificant amount of energy being patient with things that annoy me while sick me just gets annoyed. I don't know if St. Louis just has worse drivers than elsewhere, because I haven't driven regularly in very many cities (although, drivers in San Francisco aren't exactly top-notch, probably because they get out of practice and pedestrians are horrible), or maybe it's because I spend more time in city driving in St. Louis.

Whatever.

If you're changing lanes in front of somebody merging onto the highway, don't slow down. That seems like a pretty simple concept. There's a reason they have exit lanes; that's where you slow down.

If you want to make a right turn from a street with several lanes, get in line with everybody else. Don't get into the left lanes, zoom past people, then try to muscle back in.

If you want to make a left turn against oncoming traffic, turn on your blinker. And wait for oncoming traffic to finish its oncomingness.

If I had still been driving the Cavalier this morning, I might have been involved in an accident. I cannot 100% say that I would have stopped for all three idiotic road maneuvers on the same morning.

Grrr....This would be a great week to take the whole week off if that were a realistic option.

is apple obsoleting the mini?

2010-07-30T08:31:00.006-05:00

Last week I was looking at computer configurations and it just seemed the iMacs were a little stale. It's all Rich's fault really because he got excited about StarCraft II and so I was poking around recommended specs and things like that. My MacBook is great, and I've really been laptop first ever since my iBook, but you do compromise on graphics and RAM especially with a low end laptop. Well, it turned out Apple thought the iMac line dated too, as they revamped the whole desktop Mac product line.

But the Mini revamp leaves me scratching my head. In an era where most of the 'major' leaps in PC computing power are behind us, it latches onto another selling point - its compact size. It also addresses the planned obsolescence problem: if you buy an all-in-one computer in the flat screen era, the monitor stays decent longer than the system, creating a fixed cost that lengthens the amount of time you're attached to the system (and the keyboard and mice issue affects most unattached systems, too). The Mini allows you to replace the whole system during the life of the monitor and peripherals, or even operate without a monitor. Unlike HP and Dell, Apple doesn't offer a low end tower system.

So this iteration of the iMac line seems like a really good value. The base level system with a 21.5 inch monitor is a 3 GHz Core i3 with 4GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, and Radeon 4670 graphics card for $1,200. If you like playing the instant rebate game, HP and Dell have exciting websites to navigate, although at the moment, it seems like Dell is mainly interested in pushing either the lower end Celeron and Pentium chips, or the i7. They don't seem to have much of the i3 variety yet to peruse.

At first glance, the new Mini is significantly cheaper at $700 vs $1200. But I think this vanishes astonishingly quickly when one looks at the difference. There's a lot of stuff the Mini doesn't have - a monitor, stereo speakers, webcam, microphone, wireless mouse and keyboard being the most obvious. We could approximate that at roughly $300, which is over half the gap right there. But worse, the Mini has noticeably inferior technical specs in its core system. It has a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, representing both much lower clock speed and an older generation of chips. It has a 320 GB HDD that is both smaller and slower. It has 2 GB RAM, which is both half as much as the iMac and also slower. It has an integrated video card instead of the discrete graphics in the iMac.

What's really funny is trying to configure the Mini to be more like the iMac. When you upgrade the specs to this:

you have a better system, but one that is still inferior to the iMac. Yet it costs just $12 less. Try buying a monitor from Apple for that.

I really like the concept of the Mini. But if Apple is going to create such extreme price/performance gaps, I wonder if they've decided it's not as cool a business strategy as it is a concept. I was thinking of getting a Mini as my next computer purchase. That has now been put on hold, and I'm not sure where to go next. If I were doing marketing for Apple, I'd suggest strongly that the price and product aspects be revisited - unless the purpose is to phase it out slowly, which I think this might do gracefully.

Here's what I'd like to see instead: three models, instead of two. You do the inexpensive one at $599, perhaps cutting back on the hard drive and the processor if that cuts too deeply into margins (for example, a 2 GHz C2 Duo and 160 GB HDD). Then you add a $799 model with, say, a 3 GHz core i3, 4GB RAM (1066 MHz), and discrete video card. This still lets the low end iMac be better with the faster RAM and a bigger and faster hard drive while rendering a value Mini at this price point. Then you keep the third Mini option at $999 which is the server version.

So the business gamble Apple presents is something like this. I might get a new iMac, which is a little bit more computer than I need in that I have a TV/monitor and keyboard/trackball currently. However, I might also not do anything at all this year. Essentially, Apple is jeopardizing $600 - 800 worth of sales, my future interest in the Mini line, and the likelihood of my next computer purchase being within the next three years (as I'd keep the iMac longer than the Mini), all in exchange to get me to pony up another $400 now. Or maybe it's just really expensive to cram this new stuff into the Mini, and Apple's marketing team is running into the problem that 'small form factor' and 'inexpensive consumer machine' are becoming more conflicting than complimentary.

deficit fearmongers expand deficit

2010-07-27T18:52:00.003-05:00

(P/R) For the sake of all that is rational and sane, I feel the need to make a blanket statement that shows no mercy or compassion for concepts like nuance and shades of gray.

If you voted for the war supplemental - ie, money above and beyond the massively bloated amount of money already allocated to military excursions - you have zero credibility on fiscal responsibility. I don't want to hear you utter one word about deficits or debt. I don't want a peep about how Social Security will go bankrupt in a gazillion years or how the richest country in the history of the world can't afford healthcare for its citizens or how rich people paying the lowest taxes in the developed world pay too much in taxes.

You. Have. Zero. Credibility.*

*Of course, you've probably had slim-to-none credibility as is. But this vote helpfully renders the number a precise zero.

Stop talking about the deficit. Everybody knows it's irrelevant. Even you.

highly recommend green zone

2010-07-23T23:49:00.003-05:00

If you like Matt Damon and action movies, definitely rent Green Zone. I think it's slightly more suspense/less close violence than the Bourne series, but it's very similar. It's creepier to the extent that there's nothing magic or special. Damon isn't a superhero; nobody is.

To the extent that 'facts' are now 'politicized' (ie, that the Bush Administration lied about WMDs in Iraq should be about as controversial as the notion that the Earth orbits the sun), the movie certainly is political, but there's very little actual politicizing in the movie. There's all of about 90 seconds of dialogue sermonizing on the bigger picture. The other 90 minutes it's an action movie with fictional characters pursuing a fictional plot. And some of the fictionalization makes The Powers That Be look better, not worse, than reality might warrant. The reporter is actually investigating deeper into the story, questioning what is going on. The CIA is impressively nimble, and the notion that there aren't WMDs is treated innocently, as if no one would have contemplated it. The civilian administrators talk a lot about democracy and building Iraq, while magically never uttering that little word we hear so much about in real life. I'll let you guess which word that might be.

But the creepiness, it's all around. This thing might just as well have been a documentary. What difference would it make? We have so successfully blended fantasy and reality that maybe there's no meaningful distinction to be made. And really, what's it matter? The movie ends and you go on about life.

You know, if you're not, like, one of the characters stuck in the story.

i can't believe i'm about to type this

2010-07-20T18:24:00.003-05:00

but Ross Douthat just wrote a fairly insightful and stimulating piece. Douthat is the conservative picked up recently by the NY Times as clearly their other authors are just so gosh darn radical tree-hugging hippies.

I've particularly enjoyed Naked Capitalism's warning labels. For example, for the bizarre hit piece called The Agony of the Liberals, Yves Smith added the disclaimer:

The Agony of the Liberals Ross Douthat, New York Times. Read this only if you want to raise your blood pressure.

But this week, in The Roots of White Anxiety, he almost accidentally hits upon something important. You have to get past the obligatory conservative homage to a Pat Buchanan intro, and past some of the unhelpful generalizations, like the implicit barb that 'elite universities' are somehow unfriendly to conservatives or 'Red America', to see it.

But it's there. He lays out in black and white the challenge confronting our body politic. Our system of higher education represents the class divide rocking our society, morphing from institutions of equality and meritocracy to places designed to amplify and harden socioeconomic status across generations. Working class Americans of our rural and urban communities have at some points in our history worked together to achieve progress. Much of the unfolding of the past few decades has been efforts to break these two groups apart, to create as much tension and hostility as possible to prevent them from working together. That's essentially why the culture wars were fought: not just to get Republicans fired up to oppose those Godless commies, but also, to get Democrats to relate less to all the racists who live between NY and LA.

The culture wars themselves are largely irrelevant now (sorry boomers, but most young people really don't care much about petty things like skin color or abortion bans or the evils of homosexuality). But the remnants of the culture wars are all around us, in the increasingly separate worlds inhabited by various socioeconomic classes. Lack of familiarity breeds distrust and undermines cooperation. Not on purpose. But just because we're more comfortable with stuff we're around, from ideas to people. The outcome is class stratification, and looking at the demographics of admissions to top universities gives a great empirical insight into the larger trend.

sad news

2010-07-11T12:21:00.003-05:00

From the Daily Herald (Chicago)

Rev. Billy Joe Shaw...was the beloved husband of Diep Nguyen; loving father of Tim, Dan and Ian; dear son of the late Wendell and Jennie Mae Shaw; brother of the late Bobby Lee Shaw; and uncle of Jessica Lane.

In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Pastor Bill will be appreciated for the Appalachia Service Project, collected by ORUMC. Arrangements by Ahlgrim & Sons Funeral and Cremation Services, Schaumburg. For information, 847-882-5580.

quick, who said this

2010-07-03T17:46:00.004-05:00

"Well if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan," [x] says of the president. "Alright? Because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops."

[x] also described the situation around the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as "very comical."

- And no, it wasn't me! -

It wasn't someone from Code Pink or the Green Party either.

It was this guy, Chairman of the Republican Party.

I'm so confused. Nebraska has moved to the Big Ten and I don't know who to root for.

Oops, I mean, Democrats have replaced Republicans, and now I don't know whether the good guys support a military occupation or think having troops in central Asia ranks on the stupid ladder somewhere between bungie jumping without a cable and putting your hand on a hot stove to recover from frostbite.

What does it mean when the Bush/Cheney folks and the Obama/Biden folks both think that the head of the RNC is an idiot - when he happens to spout something with a hint of sensibility to it?

Help! There's been conference realignment but no one has printed the new media guides yet about what rivalries I'm supposed to care about and who's on which side.

Is Liz Cheney the new Adult in Charge? Has Bill Kristol been right about war all along?

DNC, please bring a little sanity to the episode:

It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.

okie dokie, or do that...

hey, we won a series

2010-06-27T16:05:00.002-05:00

It's amazing what happens when you get decent pitching and score runs at the same time.

Now only 12 games under 500...

congrats jon and grace

2010-06-27T13:38:00.001-05:00

The wedding at the Butterfly House was great! And Bacana was fabulous of course.

takes a parasite to know a parasite

2010-06-26T07:17:00.005-05:00

My hometown paper has an absolutely hilarious story about a farmer in Raytown. You see, apparently some guy painted the side of a tractor trailer with the phrase:

Are you a producer or parasite
Democrats - Party of Parasites

Here's the picture from the story taken by Donald Bradley:

The lefty sphere of the intertubes has had some fun with this, because the Kansas City Star did a little investigative journalism (!). It turns out anti-welfare small-town farmer David Jungerman is actually a posterboy for everything that's wrong with ag subsidies specifically and corporate welfare more generally.

Over the past 15 years, Jungerman has taken over $1 million worth of federal farm subsidies.

Hi-larious.

Now, generally speaking, I think there's a lot more common ground for average Democrats and Republicans to work together on issues - I argue strongly that most Americans see the world pretty similarly and that Democrats in particular would benefit from a little less mockery of Republicans and a little more cooperation.

However, I think it's also important for my more conservative friends to understand that this is the kind of stuff that gets associated with the GOP; this is what people hear about at places like Think Progress and Daily Kos. This is an act of idiocy, showing the worst of entitlement mentality combined with an incendiary lack of taste. Nevermind the policy debate about the real world benefits of social insurance programs like TANF/welfare, SNAP/food stamps, unemployment insurance, health insurance, old age insurance, disability insurance, and so forth, and nevermind the actual political leanings of Jungerman (in response to the publicity the stories have created for him, he has said that

he's not even a die-hard Republican. He voted for Claire McCaskill when she won a U.S. Senate seat in 2006.)

the image of a million-dollar welfare queen lobbing personal insults at people who

Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them

is just farcical.

And it raises the tricky question for Republicans: does Jungerman represent the economic views of your party? There are all too many people in both parties that are more interested in the gamesmanship of hurling insults back and forth than actually crafting policy options to solve problems and make us more peaceful and prosperous. If we ended all government welfare tomorrow, it would devastate poor people with no other cushion. But in absolute terms, the amount of money lost by richer folks would be much, much, much greater, from war profiteers to financial crooks to big farmers. If we can't be intellectually honest about current federal spending, then we can't move forward on deciding how we want to change spending in the future.

strategy and sports

2010-06-16T20:12:00.003-05:00

Athletic games themselves involve lots of strategy. But a different kind of case study in decision-making has unfolded for us over the past week or so as we've moved past speculation to action. I think I'm just not a big enough Colorado or Nebraska fan to get why they would see the grass as greener to the west and east. Whatever their ultimate calculus, what's done is done.

So now the most interesting question is viewed from the perspective of the remaining Big 12. What to do?

The safe answer, the likely answer, the easy answer, is to stand pat. Execute on a strategy of making a ten team league successful. That's what I'd recommend as a consultant. I'm about 95% confidant that's what will happen.

But that other one chance in twenty nags at me. I'm a big believer that the flip side of challenge almost always is opportunity. Over the weekend, the Big 12 was in its weakest position as a conference in the history of its existence. Today, however, it's at its strongest point in years, perhaps ever. The Big 12 faced the most direct threats possible to its future from a variety of sources and for whatever mixture of reasons you care to elaborate, ten schools decided to stick together. Furthermore, as the Pac-10 and Big Ten in particular went after Big 12 schools, that gives the Big 12 a window of opportunity to strike in 'self-defense', as a reaction to having lost two universities to the aggressiveness of other conferences. Finally, as the Big 12 lost two teams, but to different conferences, there is a unique opportunity to offer entrance to a pair of schools.

The following options, again, are neither likely nor something the Big 12 can necessarily implement. Rather, they're options that recognize an important part of strategic decision-making: if you never think about the moon, you'll never get there. And you only have a few windows suitable for launch. This is one such window.

I would be quite interested to be able to have a quiet conversation with these schools just to see what they would think.

Scenario 1:

Take the game to the Pac-10. The more I've been thinking about this one, the more it's been nibbling at me. Do you think Arizona and Arizona State might fit better in the big 12? One thing that's always bugged me is how the Big 12 doesn't have its own BCS bowl. The Big Ten and Pac-10 have their 'granddaddy of 'em all' in LA. The SEC has the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The Orange Bowl is in Florida. But Big 12 conference champs get sent out to Arizona. It's not that the Fiesta Bowl is a terrible one. It's just that it's nowhere near the (current) Big 12. We can fix that, creating regular conference trips to Arizona in the process. Arizona adds a growing population demographic and a chance to make 'southwest' and 'central' divisions, returning OU and OSU to competing with MU/KU/ISU/KSU. Separately from football, it also allows UA to compete in a stronger basketball conference. Imagine an annual KU/UA conference basketball game. It's also worth noting, for UA/ASU, that the Big 12 has received more national attention and more revenue than the Pac-10. BCS bowl games would get to be played in Arizona.

Scenario 2:

Invite Utah and BYU. The Pac-10 can't do this because they have an odd number. I think we could make the case that coming as a pair to the Big 12 is better than being left in different conferences. And with the loss of Colorado, Utah and BYU maintain a Big 12 presence in the Rockies/interior West. These schools could be added to the Big 12 North and leave the South as is. In addition, don't overlook the Morman connection. BYU gives Baylor a fellow private religious school generally, while specifically a lot of Mormons stuck around Missouri instead of migrating farther west to Utah.

Scenario 3:

Return the favor to the Big Ten. I can't help looking at a map and wondering if it's possible to split the Big Ten in two. Of course it's not really that realistic, but you never know until you ask Illinois and Indiana. A week ago I would have said it would have been impossible for Nebraska to leave the Big 12. But this wouldn't just be to vengefully carve out the mid-section of the conference just below Chicago. Indiana is a basketball program in a football conference. Trading IU basketball would almost make up for NU football on the tradition front. Meanwhile, the most natural rival for Illinois is Missouri. Both IU and IL are essentially the same distance from St. Louis as they are from Chicago. This directly deals with one of the challenges - that some MU fans actually want to move to the Big Ten - by making St. Louis a central city in the Big 12 rather than a border city. The schools would also fit in very nicely with the rest of the Big 12 North, even down to the I-70 corridor running from Topeka to Indianapolis. I would point out ever so subtlely that the state of Indiana owes us a big favor, too, and this is a great time to collect. Do this move and we'll move past your theft of the NCAA headquarters from the city that invested so heavily in making collegiate athletics what we know today.

Scenario 4:

Now I'm getting quite unrealistic. There's an intriguing geographical quirk to the south and east of the Big 12. Northwest Arkansas is actually closely associated with the states of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Fayetteville is so remote from the rest of the SEC that Arkansas plays some games in Little Rock. Arkansas has history with the Southwest conference where it was a founding member with schools like OU and UT. Meanwhile, Memphis is down the Mississippi River from St. Louis, on the border with Arkansas, and is not currently in a major conference. Memphis doesn't really have much of a football program at the moment, but by pushing the Big 12 through Arkansas and into Tennessee, I don't think it would be that big of an issue - the point would be to bring recruiting space and geographic range, not replace the tradition lost with Nebraska. It would also allow ISU and Baylor to have a comrade near the bottom of the pecking order. In basketball, Memphis would add a high-win school, which helps as RPI is important in basketball (unlike football). An annual KU/Memphis basketball game would be another great conference schedule addition.

Scenario 5:

Feeling out Kentucky and Louisville is my last 'what if' for the night. They fit nicely in the existing Big 12 North/South division, putting basketball state Kentucky with basketball state Kansas. In fact, you already see these teams together from time to time when St. Louis hosts an NCAA tourney round and fans come in from both directions. This would also get Louisville (Big East) and Kentucky (SEC) into the same conference, and what a basketball conference that would be. Unlike Memphis, Louisville and Kentucky do have competitive football programs they would bring, but not good enough they would threaten OU and UT. Plus, I like the town of Louisville, so I'm sure some arrangements can be made for my sake.

Unlikely, sure.

But somebody had to start the conversation that made Boulder look to the Pacific and Nebraska abandon KC. For a brief moment in time, the Big 12 is both strongly unified and able to make bold moves without being the aggressor. There's certainly a lot to be said for the ten team arrangement for both of the major revenue sports, football and basketball. In football, it allows a round robin format and eliminates a conference championship whose primary consequence recently seems to be giving good teams losses. In basketball, it allows annual home and home series while improving the RPI by shedding the two worst programs in the conference.

Still, the Big 12 as ten teams now has no margin of error. There's a part of me that wants to throw a long pass and see what happens. Otherwise, unless there's some breakdown in another major conference, this is the peak of the Big 12. We get more vulnerable over time to a raid from any direction, and the next one will be fatal.

nebraska mortgages its future

2010-06-14T20:48:00.004-05:00

Before going further, I of course admit that this isn't that big a deal In the Scheme of Things. We're not talking about nuclear proliferation or financial fraud or oil spills. Or Brittany, Brangelina, or Beyonce.

But still...

Two major universities decided to leave what is (was) arguably the best collegiate conference in the country for the uncertain future of two separate conferences on opposite sides of the country. Nebraska and Colorado first played a football game against each other in 1898. Kansans, Missourians, Nebraskans, and other vacationers enjoy making the trek to the Rockies, while all good pro football fans of course root against the Broncos while supporting the Chiefs. Colorado I'm really not sure what they're expecting to get out of this move.

What I want to focus on is Nebraska. I use the language of mortgage because I think it captures the uncertainty: there are a range of potential outcomes, and it could be a good move or a bad move. It depends. And like the financial industry of our day, we've destroyed the history and tradition of what came before. Whatever else happens in the future, we have officially severed ties to the past. That's sad. And frustrating. And disappointing. Nebraska football has a history unparalleled in the heartland. You have to travel over 500 miles from Lincoln to get to South Bend or Norman. It's over 600 miles to Ann Arbor. Over 700 to Tuscaloosa, Columbus, or Austin. Even farther to State College. The plains states can't support a high concentration of professional sports teams, but it is large enough for a vibrant collection of universities.

Nebraska, just up I-29 from Kansas City, was the key voice pushing for Arrowhead stadium to remain one of the premier venues boasting both college and professional sports. As I type this, Oklahoma is playing in the College World Series in Omaha. And the Royals' AAA club is in Omaha. That's what makes a lot of this so bitter particularly from a KC-perspective. Instead of sticking around and fighting for a major conference centered around the center of the country, Nebraska jumped ship.

To the Big Ten.

Save it Tom, Nebraska ain't like Minnesota or Illinois or Ohio or Michigan. Lincoln ain't Columbus or Madison. Omaha ain't Chicago or Detroit. And Nebraska didn't leave a broken conference. It broke the conference.

Sort of.

And see, that's the thing. The Big 12 wasn't broken. Yes, Texas is a pain. As a good American, I hate Texas as much as anybody. Yes, there were some political gaffes, like Missouri Governor Nixon acting like he knows something about running an athletic conference or a university system. But Nebraska belongs with Missouri and Kansas and Kansas State and Iowa State and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Dallas is a valuable counterweight to the regional pull of other places, like Chicago, Atlanta, and LA.

Nebraska has now mortgaged its top-tier tradition to get into a new place. There's a part of me that hopes Nebraska cleans the floor of the Big Ten. But there's also a part of me that's sad enough and upset enough to hope Nebraska gets exactly what it deserves: access to the 'stability' of the Big Ten in exchange for permanent loss of its unique prestige.

Dear Nebraska fans/players/Big Red nation:

When you're done playing not just second fiddle but third or fourth in a league whose population center isn't even in a state bordering Nebraska, come back to the Big 12. Stick around and fight to make this part of the MidWest top rate, rather than abandoning us.

In the meantime, expect us to express our, uh, feelings about this in your direction. Let's be clear. You dumped us. Not the other way around. And in the process, you have contributed greatly to the transfer of college from meaning to money.

go lady jays

2010-06-10T08:28:00.003-05:00

I keep forgetting to post this. Liberty creamed Pattonville in the MSHSAA girls Class 3 soccer championships on Saturday.

Apparently this was our first Final Four for either the boys or girls soccer teams.

Woohoo!

will manning serve more jail time than libby?

2010-06-07T20:07:00.005-05:00

There are some fascinating angles to this story at Wired. What is classified information? What should be classified? Who gets to determine what is classified? Is it ever okay to leak something? What should happen to whistleblowers? How does the public conduct oversight of classification?

And perhaps most interestingly, what is the military smoking to give a 22 year old the keys to the kingdom? Is this what our military has become? We're so far removed from dealing with actual national security matters that an army specialist deemed by our own government as barely competent to drink a beer has access to sensitive diplomatic cables that have nothing to do with his assignment in Iraq?

Or maybe, they do have something to do with Iraq, and they would be quite embarrassing for our political leadership. But of course, how can we know what they are when the government classifies them and prevents We the People from seeing them? This is particularly intriguing as it involves the Wikileaks video Collateral Murder to which my reaction is basically ho hum.

You see, unlike when, say, the Bush Administration destroyed an actual national security asset, and most ironically, one working on WMDs, stuff like this carries no military value. None. Zero. It's political, and there are no reasons to classify politics. In fact, secrecy is pretty much exactly how We the People get screwed.

But remember, no senior Bush official served jail time for revealing undercover agent Valerie Plame (Wilson). None. Zero. Wanna bet 22 year old Manning gets more than that?

why is it acceptable when Israel does it?

2010-06-05T14:30:00.005-05:00

(P)(R)Tuesday, I explored the question of what if the Israeli military attack on a civilian group in international waters had been conducted by another country instead, like Iran or China.

What I'm interested in this afternoon is why Israel gets a free pass. What is so valuable about a militaristic right-wing government that we allow them to assault US citizens with impunity, even kids? Furkan Dogan wasn't just some no-name foreigner. He was a US citizen. And he was a teenager. Those quintessentially evil villains in the Dateline TV show 'to catch a predator' don't even kill their victims.

And you can't say the most recent aid flotilla was some anomaly, either. Another ship taking part in the movement to end the blockade is named the Rachel Corrie. You know why it's called that? Because Rachel Corrie was an American student who was killed by the Israeli government.

And the Israeli government just keeps on attacking Americans. Just this week, the IDF fired a tear gas canister directly in the face of student Emily Henochowicz. The artist whose profile picture is of somebody in an eyeball costume will never have the use of her left eye again. It's gone:

Note: image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of ISM.

It's a sad commentary on America when we can make fake noises about the evils of poor foreigners and protecting our borders and so forth, but when foreign governments are attacking actual Americans, we suddenly lack the capacity to do anything about it.

Why?

what if Iran or China attacked a NATO member?

2010-06-01T08:28:00.004-05:00

(P)(R) One of the stories I took a break from during my lovely trip to Minnesota involved the sanctions Israel has imposed upon the Gaza strip. Economic sanctions are one of the most horrific weapons in the modern day arsenal, brutalizing the citizenry while having negligible impact on the regime. The sanctions Israel has imposed upon Gaza are particularly brutal in some of the details.

But what happened over the weekend isn't really directly about the human consequences for Palestinians. While I was out of town, the state of Israel launched a military attack against civilian vessels which had been searched before departure and which were flying under the Turkish flag. Turkey isn't just some random country. They are a member of NATO.

NATO is a military alliance. In our modern day Americana world of fake threats, like color-coded alerts and the evils of marijuana and impoverished warlords from Fallujah to Kandahar, we are tempted to forget sometimes that earlier in the post-war era, we still felt like there were actual national security interests the US held around the globe. We built the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an explicit alliance for the defense of all.

We are treaty-bound to defend, militarily, our fellow signatories. Article V in particular spells this out:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Now, Israel of course enjoys a special relationship with the US. Greece and Turkey specifically, and all the Europeans more generally, know this well. This kind of event wouldn't lead to World War III. Rather, what this does is it weakens the American century, the American post-war experiment of collective security. What we are telling groups around the world is that they can not rely upon the US to be objective standard-bearers of international law and order. Rather, we've picked sides. You are for us or against us.

If you're a Somali pirate, we'll send the US Navy after you. We'll shoot you on sight. If you're a member of the Israeli Defense Force, you have free reign to assault vessels in international waters - even if they're flying flags of countries we are theoretically sworn to defend.

I don't know what the future of NATO holds in a world where the US screams at countries like Iran while giving free passes to countries like Israel. But I do know this double standard is going to get us into trouble.

Actually, strike that. It's already gotten us into trouble. The only question is what happens next.

an apple world

2010-05-18T06:39:00.005-05:00

I remember 15 years ago when Apple ran some playful ads 'welcoming' Microsoft to concepts like the recycle bin and file names with more than 8 characters related to the release of Windows 95. For the Windows world, 95 was an impressive event, ('Start Me Up') and I think it's one of the core steps along the path to one central mechanism for interfacing with electronics, in the phrasing of today, of convergence.

These are a couple of my favorite Apple ads

Apple executives certainly made the 1990s an interesting time to be a Mac user, but I've never quite related to the 'Mac vs. PC' debate for two main reasons. First, it's a matter of personal preference. If you like Windows, fabulous. Computers should be a source of help and fun, not stress and disappointment. Second, it's a little like 'boxers vs. briefs' or 'Republicans vs. Democrats' - it's an artificial dichotomy that restricts the picture rather than providing insightful answers. 'Computers' are more than a big box that sits under your desk, and Apple gets that as much as any company on the planet.

I've been an Apple user since before Macs and Wintel machines. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Intel have been business competitors of Apple, but they've also been business partners of Apple. And if you want to know about me, don't ask about rock bands from the 80s or TV shows from the 90s or politics in the 00s. The single biggest influence, or connection, you might say, would be with Apple. It means to me what 'muscle cars' meant to prior generations of Americans, and I'm very grateful to have grown up in the 'interesting times' of the PC wars and the browser wars and the smartphone wars and whatnot.

I've spent the past two months of my life basically getting my work ready for rolling out a major upgrade investing in our IT infrastructure. I would love of course to simply buy everyone iMacs and run Mac OS X server, but I don't have any moral qualms about that not being an option. I've sold plenty of Apple gear over the years; enthusiastic customers are far better marketers than the paid staff of an organization. I know Microsoft gives lots of IT peeps job security. Heck, my brother is a well-compensated Microsoftie. Unless I go run Apple one day, he is by far going to pursue the most financially lucrative career of all of us.

But the comment I find myself coming back to today, as we're nearing the end of this upgrade, is the invocation of another song, a classic from the opening of Independence Day, itself a classic product placement before companies were quite so direct about that.

I think with Windows 7, It's the End of the World As We Know It. It took a decade and a half, with fits and starts along the way, but I think the convergence between Mac OS and Windows is complete. There's not much more to do. Everyone today is buying a Mac. Apple produced superior products and has had what I think is a permanent impact on how we interact with technology.

I feel fine. I wonder how Windows folks feel. Deep down, are they a little embarrassed that the eye candy and user interface won out over complexity and features and customization? Sure, Windows still has that stuff underneath the hood. But most Microsoft customers these days aren't even interested in learning how to change the oil.

if you're an insecure nerd

2010-05-01T11:26:00.004-05:00

you may like this. I found it searching a Target wedding registry. It's classic.

Also, this is a good test of Facebook's importing of blog posts. The 'ole book o' faces seems to be taking longer and longer to actually capture these suckers, kind of undermining the handiness of the automatic nature of the process. This is being posted at 11:30am on Saturday, May 1, 2010. I put the over/under on FB's bots at about Monday afternoon.

surprisingly nostalgic

2010-04-23T22:54:00.003-05:00

There was somethin' funny in the water tonight. It's not like I haven't been around campus since graduation; I'm one of the weirdoes that likes their college so much they continue living near it long after graduating.

But tonight there was a bit of a twinge of something or other. My girlfriend's out of town, my roommate's out of town, finished up a couple projects at work, haven't seen a couple of my friends around here in a while...and wandering across campus this evening just felt kinda odd.

And then I get home, and of course the cat's not even excited to see me!

I don't get the Iraq shooting video

2010-04-14T07:30:00.003-05:00

(P) I had been debating whether I wanted to see the video posted at Wikileaks of the shooting of some Iraqis a few years ago from Apache helicopters. There was so much hype around it, I really wasn't sure what might be on it.

But I went and watched it last night, and I don't get it. The soldiers in the video were quite professional. They maintained aerial surveillance of the ground, stayed in contact with each other, sought permission from their commanders before taking action, used short controlled bursts of rounds, and were otherwise quite calm and focused. I was particularly impressed by their restraint after one of them thought he saw an RPG. I'm sorry, but if I'm in a helicopter in a war zone, and my colleague is saying there's an RPG, I just might pull that trigger and ask permission to engage later. After wetting my pants, of course.

This. Is. War.

What the bleeping bleepity bleep bleep did you think was going on over there? We're handing out flowers? Baking cookies? Singing Kum ba yah?

If Iraqis (and Afghans and Iranians and Saudis and Pakistanis and everybody else) are our enemies, then we should celebrate the efficient, professional conduct captured in this engagement. If those people aren't our enemies, well, get the heck out of there. Until the President, Secretary of Defense, and Centcom commanders give the orders to leave, this is precisely what will continue in our name.

The story of this video is that there's no story. That's why the government fought Reuters' FOIA request. The Reuters employees, and the other Iraqis too, are dead because of the choice to occupy the country. These events are expected consequences of sending military troops to patrol foreign places.

woah, the royals put up 10 runs

2010-04-12T20:23:00.002-05:00

Spread the love around guys. We need some runs the rest of the week, too.

oh, book of faces

2010-03-31T21:52:00.000-05:00

aren't you fabulous

liberal mud wrestling cage match extroardinaire

2010-03-30T21:16:00.005-05:00

I have become slightly fascinated by a particular bout of personality-run-amok circulating around the intertubes recently regarding Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Rogers Cadenhead, et al. If you know what I'm talking about, no need to rehash anything; you've already spent too much time reading about this.

If you don't, just picture scantily clad women mud wrestling (apparently, a lot of people do, as a quick Google Search turns up 766,000 links) and then replace scantily clad women with liberal activist blogger nerds.

Much fun.

P.S. Holy cow. I clicked on the Google Search link, and it said 808,000 links. That's 42,000 new web pages in like a day. Either I accidentally started some massive new trend, or there's going to be 15 million pages on mud wrestling come my birthday next year. Or, perhaps, mathematics isn't quite so simple as extrapolating linear trends forever. But then what would Wall Street hotshots do to claim they should make gobs 'o money?

And dude, check it out. All you have to do is come up with long phrases not usually found together, and presto, Google gold. Search mud wrestling liberal activist blogger nerds and guess who's number 1?

Really, you would never guess.

I even out-Malkined Michelle, whose post wasn't even number 2.

Just don't make me update this again when someone else steals the top spot that clearly and rightfully belongs to moi.

ha, just kidding

2010-03-05T23:34:00.002-06:00

(P) I clearly can't read an invitation. The Obama/McCaskill event is obviously next week...

quick reminder - Obama's in town tonight

2010-03-04T10:02:00.003-06:00

(P) I'm helping out with my Clayton kiddies tonight, but if you've got nothing else to do, Obama and McCaskill are scheduled to put on a fundraiser at the Renaissance Grand at 6:30. You can get SRO tickets for just $25. I assume many of the local politicians will be there.

Alderwoman Triplett's link-through page at Act Blue is here.

Proceeds go to the Show Me State Victory Fund, which I believe is basically McCaskill's 2012 re-election fund.

the SF Fed exists in another dimension

2010-02-26T09:21:00.003-06:00

I have decided that aliens abducted the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and replaced it with a drab building that could be anything but an illegal secret conspiracy aimed at controlling the world.

I find this the only possible conclusion after being thoroughly disappointed. The location is perfect; you hop off the BART and you are in the heart of the financial district, literally at the gates of the SF Fed. You just don't know it. There's no gleaming white marble and stone structure. No statue ideal for the casual picture. I have generally thought San Francisco to be a far superior city to Atlanta. But I may have to reorient my whole worldview now. They've got the western kingdom of the rulers of the free world holed up in a bunker.

You almost feel sorry for the suckers.

beach, park, or art museum

2010-02-25T09:21:00.002-06:00

This week has been full of difficult choices!

blunt's website cracks me up

2010-02-19T07:44:00.004-06:00

(P) I've been enjoying checking out Representative Blunt's website over the past year as he's the de facto GOP candidate for Bond's Senate seat. What cracks me up is how there will be one news headline that will just completely contradict the headline before it. Do the Congressman's advisors think we're morans? For example, if you're opposed to making the national debt larger, then fine, support policies that shrink the debt.

As a headline from 2/4 states: Blunt votes no on Greatest Debt Increase in American History. Never mind the reasoning behind that logic; let's take it at face value for a moment.

Contrast that with a headline from two days before and a headline from the day before: Blunt Slams President's Tax Hike on Charitable Donations and Blunt Blast's President's removal of C-17s from Budget. Again, set aside the reasoning for why it might be good or bad to reduce the tax breaks that wealthy Americans get for donating to charity and why it might be good or bad to reduce defense spending. Just take the statements at face value.

Within two days, Blunt's office issued statements saying that

1) We should increase the debt, and
2) We should decrease the debt

Or as another example, if you believe in free trade, great. I went to business school to major in management and international business. That's speakin' my language.

So on Blunt's issues page, he talks about

Promoting the free flow of goods, knowledge and innovation around the world

But on the very same page, he talks about

Enforcing our border, standing up for the rule of law

Again, set aside for a second whether you believe we should have free trade or a closed border; both have legitimate arguments backing them up. Rather, consider that the issues section of Blunt's website declares that

1) We should promote trade around the world, and
2) We should restrict trade at our borders

With leadership like that, he's sure to earn a promotion!

Seriously, Republicans support that guy? Democrats have their problems. I'm the first to call them idiots when they're, well, idiots. But Congressman Blunt takes it to a whole other level.

Whose side is he on? The Republicans blasting government spending? Or the commie-hippie-tree-hugging tax and spenders throwing away money on homeless people?

remembering three great speeches

2010-01-18T22:17:00.004-06:00

It's been a busy year. Hard to believe another year has gone by since we remember the life and work of the Reverend Doctor. You never want to lionize a person, we're all flawed and mortal, but it's good to seek wisdom from the past, from those who have blazed a trail we merely try our best to navigate anew.

Some of my favorite bits of some of my favorite speeches. Over four decades old and as relevant as anything uttered today.

I Have a Dream - 1963

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Nobel Prize Acceptance - 1964

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

A Time to Break Silence - 1967

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

[snip]

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

holy cow, cnbc is doing investigative reporting

2010-01-12T20:43:00.003-06:00

I'm almost flabbergasted. CNBC, the network that didn't seem to even know it's stupid to attack the Daily Show, has an in-depth special on this evening about the new world of Walmart. Now, of course, it ultimately is still largely an advertisement for Walmart. Fairly new Walmart CEO Duke gets very good air-time for his interview.

However, this is borderline real news, a shocker from the business channel seemed destined for irrelevance.

I'm not sure if this is a first time air, or a repeat broadcast, but consider:

There is video footage of everything from Obama (circa 2007) speaking to the United Farm and Commercial Workers about supporting workers as they demand better wages and the right to organize from Walmart to protesters with Jobs for Justice and others outside Walmart stores to a trip to DC organized by UFCW to lobby for EFCA (the bill making unionization easier).

There are interviews not just with the aforementioned CEO and other senior executives, but also a store manager, associates of various persuasions (even those speaking out about wages and healthcare), wake up walmart (an advocacy group dedicated to pressuring Walmart), and Chinese factory workers speaking out against working conditions.

Just, wow. I'm having to re-evaluate my whole opinion of GE.

Well, let's not go that far. But for the whole time I've been eating dinner and then on my laptop, I haven't bothered changing the channel.

i have a new project

2010-01-03T17:20:00.004-06:00

Let's get real, while it would be cool to eat lots of green leafy vegetables and workout every day for one year, that ain't happening. A few years ago, I made my new year's project about ties. Specifically, getting rid of them.

I've got a project for this year.

I want to see how many Fed branches I can get my picture taken in front of. I've actually kind of thought this through accidentally. You see, Doug's condo overlooks the Atlanta Fed. Julie's work is right next door to the St. Louis Fed. My parents happen to live within decent driving distance of the KC Fed. Julie's sister happens to live near the Minneapolis Fed. We happen to be visiting San Francisco this February. That's like half the list right there.

It'll be fun!

duck quesadillas

2010-01-01T22:15:00.001-06:00

Need I say more?