Back to Boot Camp

The Times states,

Now Apple has announced Boot Camp, which will allow some versions of Windows to run more or less natively on an Apple machine. ...

So the prospect of Boot Camp raises two very different scenarios. Windows users will buy Apple machines to run Windows. Or they may try out Apple's operating system just for the fun of it and get hooked.

Or maybe Mac users who want to be able to run some PC programs will find Boot Camp convenient, and far superior "Virtual PC" emulator software. Or maybe it will help convince people who want to transition away from Windows, which is substantially inferior to Mac OS X, but want relative certainty that they will be able to access their old files in the new system.

Telemarketers Are So Special....

I don't think I've gone a day this week without being hit by a telemarketer offering online promotion of my legal practice. The latest one said that they have a special technique which gets their clients' sites listed above all the other listings in Google. (Because AdWords is such a big secret.)

If these companies are so good at online promotion, why are they using telemarketers? And if these companies are so good at law firm promotion, why do they have so many practice areas available in my "territory"? "You want personal injury? No? How about family law? Criminal defense? Employment discrimination?" Well, no, I really don't.

Insults Between Academics

Prof. David Bernstein writes of an insult once uttered by one of his law professors:

When I was a student at Yale, one of my professors, the author of eminently forgettable and inconsequential works on law and economics, referred to Prof. Siegan as "that nut from San Diego, what's his name?"

Calling another academic a "nut from San Diego"? How inappropriate.

Declining NetFlix Service

(I'm not talking about their intentionally slow service for people whom they deem to be returning movies too quickly. I'm also not speaking of their seemingly chronic problem with ordering too few copies of newly released films to reasonably satisfy customer demand.)

Over the past two months my experience with NetFlix has involved repeated problems with movies being lost (and ultimately found) in the mail. They made an unexplained mistake in shipping one of the movies on my queue which, as a result, shows a "Shipped" date of "3/06/06" and a "Est. Arrival" date of "3/28/06" - twenty-two days! I have had two other movies "lost" in shipment to me, one due to an envelope coming apart in the mail (I received the portion of the envelope with my address on it - the part you tear off and discard before returning the movie) and another that simply didn't arrive (but was later found by NetFlix).

The processing time for returns is often much longer than it used to be, and now often seems to be three or four business days, and I don't believe that the USPS is responsible. It also seems to be more common for them to mail the new movie one or two business days after their receipt of a return.

I will grant that this could just be bad luck - a statistical anomaly which is unfortunately affecting my account. Are other Netflix subscribers having a better experience?

Moments from April Fool's Day History

Google's April Fool's Day joke reminds me of a similar joke from many years back, in the dark ages where the Internet was largely text-based. A clever prankster wrote a personality quiz which he promised would allow him to make highly promising romantic matches between those who took the quiz. In fact all matches that he made were random - yet some nonetheless developed into long-term relationships.

(Had he patented that joke as a business model, might he be able to extract licensing fees from eHarmony? Just a question....)

The "Method Acting" Defense?

What is it with prima donna celebrities throwing telephones at people? Do you think it would work if she argues, "But your honor - I am trying out for the role of Russell Crowe in an upcoming biopic. I know I was out-of-line, but I was just that deeply into character."

I like this,

[Defense attorney David] Breitbart called the [prosecutor's] request for $3,500 bail "an insult," saying his client's Park Avenue apartment is worth more than $3 million and she earns "more than six figures on a regular basis."

Would an appropriate response be, "Would your client find a $1 million bail less insulting?"

(It appears that Ms. Campbell has been previously accused of similar acts.)

Whiny Crybabies

I know that James Lindgren disagrees with the study which suggests that conservatives were whiny crybabies as children, even if perhaps asserting statistical arguments which are no less dubious, but his blogging colleagues are doing him no favor with their endless whiny posts about how hard it is to be a conservative.

Oh, crikey.... Just when I was thinking Ilya Somin's posts were somewhat reasonable....

Some of those who claim that campus intolerance of conservatives and libertarians is not a significant problem argue that right of center students are themselves obnoxious, intolerant, and so forth. If there really is an overrepresentation of such people among outspoken campus right-wingers, this fact may itself be the result of PC intolerance. If speaking out in favor of un-PC viewpoints can lead to social ostracism, an obnoxious jerk is less likely to be deterred by this danger than a conservative who is generally nice and popular. After all, the jerk is probably already widely disliked, while his more popular counterpart has much more to lose from any PC backlash to his remarks.

A recent post on what to me seems like a childish grudge match leads to this:

Just wanted to drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy your blog and also commend you for standing up to Brian Leiter. Without articulate spokesmen like yourself, upcoming conservatives wouldn't have a chance of survival in today's leftist-dominated universities. Good work.

You know, I just can't bring myself to feel sorry for tenured professors, most of whom were privileged enough to go to schools like Harvard and Yale, when they whine for decades afterward about how horribly oppressed they were in their college years. If they have a valid complaint, judging from the typical post on the subject, it seemingly should be that they managed to spend that much money on their bachelor's and graduate degrees at top colleges yet didn't develop better critical thinking skills.

Subsequent Remedial Measures

I realize they're playing it up for the media, but would this type of claim make you want to hire this firm?

Apple Computer’s release Wednesday of a software update to limit the volume level of its iPod music player confirms the product is flawed, U.S. attorneys involved in a class-action suit against the company said.

Also, what's so special about an iPod that common sense shouldn't apply? Hearing loss from excessive volume was an issue with the "Walkman" back in the 1980's.

Blaming Google

In an article that tries to blame Google for the decline of literacy in society, Edward Tenner writes:

Many students seem to lack the skills to structure their searches so they can find useful information quickly. In 2002, graduate students at Tel Aviv University were asked to find on the Web, with no time limit, a picture of the Mona Lisa; the complete text of either "Robinson Crusoe" or "David Copperfield"; and a recipe for apple pie accompanied by a photograph. Only 15 percent succeeded at all three assignments.

Today, Google may have expedited such tasks, but the malaise remains.

Actually, Google makes it easy.

The Mona Lisa.
Robinson Crusoe and David Copperfield.
Apple Pie.

More owners of free high-quality content should learn the tradecraft of tweaking their sites to improve search engine rankings.

Spoken like somebody who knows nothing about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or how hard it can be to "rank" for a commercially competitive keyword.

It's all about the links....

There is a conventional wisdom in legal circles that blogs ("blawgs") are great because they can generate traffic and interest which won't be generated by a traditional website, while helping to establish you as an expert. There is truth to this, but the reality is "it's all about the links".

If you have a decent weblog you have a good chance of being linked within the "blogrolls" of other weblogs. You also will periodically have your posts, typically your freshest posts, linked to other weblogs. "Look at 'this really cool thing' Mike wrote over at Crime and Federalism." "Paul Craddick's been a bit slow with the posts lately - is he waiting for something?"

Search engines love links, and more to the point they love natural links. (By "natural links" I mean those inspired by a genuine interest in the linked material, as opposed to links added for the primary or sole purpose of trying to inflate a site's search engine ranking.) Weblogs are a natural source of both.

Search engines also love fresh content, and sometimes give it a boost in their results for a few days after they find it. If you update a blog with any regularity, you are producing fresh content for the search engines.

Also, weblogs typically feature RSS feeds which can create an easy avenue for people to follow your work without actually visiting your site. That is a lot more efficient than trying to create and distribute an online client newsletter.

At the same time, the older material on a traditional site tends to do better in search engine results than do older blog entries. There are a couple of obvious reasons for this. First, although new blog content tends to generate links, linking tends to drop to nothing or near-nothing within a day or two. The absence of fresh links, and the fact that existing links are relegated to archive pages on other blogs, and the passage of the material from the front page of the weblog where it was published, diminishes the value of the linked content to search engine algorithms. In contrast, a traditional collection of quality articles will tend to continue to generate interest and links over time.

In my humble opinion, a law firm will typically benefit from a weblog, but the weblog should be integrated into the firm's site. The firm should build a collection of articles on the firm website, and use the weblog to feature its new article content. By featuring an article on the weblog (e.g., by announcing its publication with a short excerpt and a link), the odds go up that external links (those on other sites) will be directed at the article as opposed to the weblog entry, which in turn should help that article in future search engine results.

Only the Spare Change

A clarification of a blog post from a few days ago. Katherine Harris has clarified that she won't be spending her $10 million inheritance on her Senate campaign, and will instead only be spending her "existing assets" which also amount to about $10 million.

I wish I had that kind of change kicking around under my sofa pillows....

A Seat At The Table

Is a seat at the big table enough? David Bernstein seems to think so:

Oh, and there's an EXCELLENT reason for a black conservative, especially a political activist, to be a Republican: if you want the GOP to pay attention to the interests of African Americans, it's very helpful if there are some blacks in the party who are in the room when important decisions are made.

Eugene Robinson suggests otherwise:

You could rationalize working for someone like Helms by telling yourself that you could do more good for the African American community from the inside, next to the seat of power, than from the outside. You could tell yourself you were advancing the interests of black people, even if most black people disagreed. You could ignore racism or pretend it was something else. You could tell yourself that you were making compromises and sacrifices for the greater good.

Finally, you could arrive at the White House, with a big job and regular access to the president. But it might be a White House where all the big decisions were made by just a few people, and you weren't one of them.

Then what?

But really, how often does this actually happen in any context. Somebody who wants to be political active and be a force for change in the world, who (strategically) never joins the political parties or organizations with which he agrees, who goes under deep cover in the opposing party where he rises to a position where he has access to its leaders, and who then tries to influence the party's decision-makers to take the positions he has hidden throughout his life (and to at least some degree must continue to hide in order to protect his position)?

Even if such covert work were effective, how often would your time and energy have been better spent working for the causes in which you believe?

Both the Bernstein and Robinson positions seem to assume a compromise of ideals.

Political Ideology and Racism

Over at the Volokh conspiracy, contributor James Lindgren (who is quite adept with statistical analysis software and the data at issue) contends that white Democrats are significantly more racist than are white Republicans:

Eugene,

To your list I would add that, over the last 30 years, typical white Republicans in the general public have been significantly less traditionally racist than typical white Democrats.

For example, in the 1996-2004 General Social Surveys, 11.9% of white Democrats think that differences in black/white success are due to black inborn disability, compared to only 9.1% of white Republicans. Similarly, 14.5% of white Democrats favor laws against racial intermarriage, compared to 12.2% of white Republicans.

In the two decades before 1996, these differences tend to be much stronger. Republicans have traditionally been less traditionally racist.

So, although there is a shift in traditional racism toward members of the Republican Party, members of the Democratic Party have been still more racist over the last decade--though the Republican Party may overtake it soon. Only if one uses "modern racism" measures that conflate opposition to big government with racism do Republicans usually score as significantly more racist than Democrats.

Given the tiny percentages at issue, it is astonishing that Lindgren would try to assert significant racism or lack thereof on the basis of his recited figures. But beyond that, if the data truly supports his claims, why is he the only one making these claims? Would Karl Rove truly sit on such explosive data, as the Republicans attempt to make headway among this nation's minority populations?

Although I don't have access to the same tools as Lindgren, it is possible to perform a basic reality check on his assertion through Berkeley's SDA Archive site. Using the "Frequencies or crosstabulation" tool, looking at the General Social Surveys, 1972-2004 Cumulative File, focusing on Lindgren's hallmark of racism, the question of inborn ability [RACDIF4], limiting results to white respondants [RACE(1)], and weighing results with a non-response adjustment [WT2004NR], I see the following results:



When I look at expression of admiration for blacks [ADMIRBLK], I see the following results:



By Lindgren's measure (and let me again emphasize that I disgree with his measure), if Democrats can be said to be significantly more racist than Republicans, conservatives (and moderates) would appear to be vastly more racist than liberals.

When I look at Lindgren's argument that Democrats are more likely to favor laws against interracial marriage [RACMAR], he's right - the survey indicates that strong and moderate Democrats and strong Republicans are more likely to support such laws:



But when liberal and conservative ideology is examined, it seems that strong support for such laws comes from people who describe themselves as moderate, polically conservative and strongly conservative, while political liberals are significantly less likely to support such laws:



Perhaps the difference between the two results is explained by the fact that political moderates are more likely to self-identify as Democrats than they are as Republicans:



I don't agree with Lindgren's extrapolations from the data - I don't think his data supports his claims, and I think he knows it. I know that at least one statistics guru passes by this blog on occasion - I would love to hear an expert opinion on this, as a final word on my clumsy analysis as presented above.

If Only Nixon Had Thought Of This....

According to USNews.com,

But in a little-noticed white paper submitted by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Congress on January 19 justifying the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers made a tacit case that President Bush also has the inherent authority to order [warrantless] physical searches. ... The memo cites congressional testimony of Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 1994 stating that the Justice Department "believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

(Note to Gonzales: Ditch the weasel words, stop trying to pass the buck or hide behind the opinions of others, show some backbone and state what you believe the law to be.)

In any event, I'm still trying to find the "except if you're the President" clause in the Fourth Amendment. (And isn't it terrifically activist to read a "foreign policy exception" into such plain language?)

Should I Be Impressed or Appalled

Katherine Harris really wants to be a Senator:

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris plans to spend $10 million she inherited from her father in her race to unseat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, she announced Wednesday night.

Does she view the expenditure of $10 million of her own money as an expression of her devotion to public virtue {cough}, or does she look upon it as a capitalist - an investment, which is expected to pay off even greater returns?

Don't Insert That Screwdriver... Where?

In a joke that might redefine the concept of "painfully funny", there's an image circulating on the web depicting a screwdriver set with a most unusual warning label: "Not To Be Inserted Into Penis".

Ouch?

For the record, here's what the unedited packaging would have looked like:

The Wonders of Modern Pseudo-Medicine

Thanks to the wonders of modern pseudo-medicine, you can now magically remove all of your simulated cellulite simply by applying a lotion to affected areas of your body. Best of all, it's free. (To try....) At that price, it's worth every penny. {cough}

(Ad spotted on Slate.)

What Do Web Surfers Look At

One of the important considerations in creating a site is trying to figure out where to place important information, and what design elements help readers find content or make it more likely that they will remain on a site and read its content. Although not new, Poynter Extra's eyetrack studies provide a lot of information about how people actually read online content. Through Google Adsense you can find helpful information about where people are most likely to click ads on content pages, forum pages, and weblogs - information which you can use on any site, if you wish to draw reader attention to particular information, links, or features. And this little graphic from WebmasterWorld tells you why coming in within the first four results on a search engine is key to generating traffic. (It can at times be better to come in 11th - being the first listing on a second page of search engine results - than to be in spots six through ten on the first page.)

Would You Take The Case?

You're offered the opportunity to take a very high-profile double murder trial... triple if you count the fact that one of the victims was pregnant... if you agree to work for free. Court TV will likely cover the trial, which will all-but-certainly end with your client's conviction and sentence to mandatory life without parole. If you wish to present any sort of mitigation of your client's guilt, you will probably have to expend a considerable amount of your own money for expert witnesses. But in the interim you'll get tons of publicity.

By my calculation, it isn't worth it. Would any of the lawyers reading this beg to differ?

It Helps To Actually Have A Twin....

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall describes a former Bush advisor's attempt to beat retail fraud charges with an 'evil twin' defense. (i.e., "My twin brother did it.")

It sounds like the defense may fail, but the defendant still has an advantage over a client I once represented who tried the same claim.... That is, in this case the defendant actually has> a twin brother.

Who "Owns" Your Name

Over at The Legal Underground, Evan Schaeffer points to a couple of blog posts about legal websites. I think that the posts are most helpful to corporate firms, as opposed to solos and small firms, but if you have a law firm website (or are considering getting one) they're worth reading.

But there's something a lot of lawyers aren't considering - at least that I can see - in the Internet era. Specifically, what comes up in a search engine when somebody types in their name. If you have a generic name, it can be difficult to "own" your name - that is, to have your site come up as the number one search engine result for "John Smith", "John Smith Lawyer", or "John Smith Attorney". (But you still may be able to achieve that result for "John Smith Kalamazoo" or "John Smith Michigan Lawyer".) If you have an unusual name it will often be easier to lay claim to the number one search engine spot - but not just for you.

I had a lawyer call me recently to complain that one of the top Google results for his name was a client rant posted on ripoffreport.com. I have seen lawyers whose name draws as the first result a news article or official online announcement of disciplinary proceedings. It is easy to post a site, or publish an online review, criticizing a lawyer - and if you haven't taken some time to optimize for your name, when new or potential clients search for you on the Internet they may well see such a review before they find your actual firm website.

If you're hiring a web designer, one of the topics of discussion should be search engine optimization, and which keywords you wish to emphasize on your site. I would suggest that, among the keywords you designate as being important, you include your name.

Is This The Model For The U.S. To Follow?

An interminable trial ends with the death of the incarcerated defendant. Does this mean that, assuming we apply the rules of a trial by ordeal, Milosevic was innocent?

Oh, sure, it wasn't intended to be a trial by ordeal, but the Milosevic trial hardly stands as a model of international justice done right.

Editorial Cowardice

Despite the state legislature's decision to make South Dakota an epicenter of a renewed war over abortion rights, CJR Daily describes how the state's largest newspaper, the Argus Leader, has announced that it will not publish editorials on the subject.

Darn The Censorious Government

Perhaps somebody can explain this to me. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Bernstein rails against censorious public employers, concluding,

Yes, I'm troubled by the fact that the government, acting as employer, has such censorious powers. In the case of the prosecutor, it's pretty much unavoidable. In Mr. Gray's case, it provides another reason to support privatization of peripheral government functions.

Leaving Emerson aside for the moment, isn't that a non sequitur? Does Professor Bernstein really think that private employers are more tolerant of employee speech than public employers?

Returning to Emerson, is running a law school a peripheral government function, or is Prof. Bernstein's concern limited to peripheral functions that don't pay his salary?

Looking For Courage In All The Wrong Places....

The Chicago Tribune blares, "Bush's Pakistan visit not 'risk-free'". Well, duh. What is risk-free? Not even sitting in front of a television and eating pretzels is risk-free, and let's not even talk about hunting with the Vice President. Confronting the danger,

Bush planned to spend the night at the well-fortified U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

As one would expect.

Is this unfair? It's just that I see the White House announcements about risk being an attempt to make Bush seem brave for making this trip, during which he presumably will never set foot outside an awesome and extraordinarily expensive "security bubble", and to overshadow the more significant stories (and problems) that are dogging his administration.

Shattering All The Stereotypes....

The context. (They're broadcast television stuff, but these links aren't appropriate for every workplace.)

In response to this, and apparently more directly to this:

an apparently real Playboy Bunny asks,

Why is a shark/whale/ocean your mascot? It's not called the shark pit.

In furtherance of her effort to shatter stereotypes, I understand that she also likes butterflies and flowers, and prays every night for world peace.

Sleep Apnea - A Quick Self-Check

Do you:

• Snore?
• Wake up several times during the night?
• Feel tired during the day?

If so, you should consider the possibility that you have sleep apnea, and discuss your situation with your doctor.

And The Difference Would Be... What?

Howard Stern is being sued by CBS Radio, allegedly for promoting Sirius Satellite Radio during his last months with CBS. The allegation appears to be that Stern didn't disclose that he had a stock deal with Sirius "valued at approximately $220 million, if Sirius reached certain subscriber levels at a date as early as this year".

What difference does that make? Were the comments Stern made about Sirius somehow transformed by the deal? Because "We knew he was promoting Sirius, and we knew how much the airtime was worth, but didn't realize how much he would be making" doesn't strike me as a particularly compelling reason to sue. If he was, in fact, misappropriating air time, CBS should have taken action the moment they detected his misconduct.

It's So Much Easier When Other People Do The Work

It is interesting to read that the U.S. government feels the need to get vast amounts of data from Google and other search engines, in order to somehow demonstrate that people find child pornography on the Internet, given that it appears that 40% of child pornography (at least, in terms of that downloaded in Britain) originates in the United States.

Less than 1 per cent of the sites were located in the UK, highlighting the success of the police and the IWF in countering domestically generated child pornography. ... Around 40 per cent of child pornography accessed in the UK comes from the US. A further 28 per cent comes from Russia where, although the production of child pornography is increasing rapidly, the authorities seem reluctant to act. 'There is no liaison with Russia to tackle these sites, so they stay up almost ad infinitum,' Robbins said.

A difference in approach between the US and UK authorities has also led to problems. 'If a site is found in the UK, it's usually taken down within 48 hours,' Robbins said. 'In America they tend to leave the sites up once they are identified while the police gather evidence for a sting operation. That's a problem for us in the UK, because people continue to access the sites and commit offences.'

You would think that the U.S. would install better statistics software on the sites it is monitoring, and log the search engine referral data....

Caution - Both of the following links will automatically play music:
The Internet is for porn - and always has been. (Well, not really, but....)

Lessons In (Im)politics

Have you heard about what's happening with the Detroit Zoo?

If You're Happy And You Know It....

George Will's column today invites all sorts of snarky retorts. Conservatives, he claims on the basis of a self-reporting survey, are happier than liberals. Or at least happer than "conservative Republicans"... not quite the same thing, particularly these days.

But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .

[eyeroll] Maybe some Oxycontin would cheer the liberals up? (Oops... that was snarky. But what comes closer to a "happy pill"?)

The survey also concludes, "Married people are happier than unmarrieds. People who worship frequently are happier than those who don't. ... Rich people are happier than poor people. Whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks. Sunbelt residents are happier than those who live in the rest of the country." Of those, Will mentions religion, the sunbelt and marriage.

No Computers Needed

Last week on "Real Time with Bill Maher", Iraq advisor Dan Senor defended the disappearance of billions of dollars in the early months of the U.S. occupation, protesting that if they had waited until it was possible to set up a "first world" accounting system, they would have been unable to distribute funds for many months despite the pressing need to, for example, help fund activities which might create jobs for unemployed Iraqis. He estimated that it would have taken "ten months, a year" to implement a "first world" accounting system. He argued that the "wheelbarrows of cash and no receipts" method of accounting was "inherited from Saddam's government"... which may well be true, but to me does not seem to be a good defense of maintaining that system.

I'm just wondering, what's so complicated about issuing receipts, storing them, and letting somebody count the beans at a later date? They literally had wheelbarrows full of cash which they were distributing, so it's hard to believe the concern was about space. (Mr. Senor did respond to this suggestion, to the effect of "What do you mean write it down? the government was governing over 27 million people. You don't just write it down." Um... why not?)

A first world accounting system, rather than one "inherited" from the locals? The Sumerians did better with clay tokens.

There's A Name I Haven't Heard For A While....

... And one you have probably never heard at all. Google is excited to announce the appointment of Larry Brilliant as executive director of Google.org. (I'm reminded of other curious names like "Faith Popcorn" - Can that really be the name he was born with?)

Brilliant's contribution to Ann Arbor history included founding NETI Technologies, and that company's creation of an online conferencing software package called Picospan. You can see the legacy of that software if you telnet in to Grex or Arbornet, both of which use newer software which is still very reminiscent of the original. The rise and fall of NETI's stock might also have been taken as a cautionary tale for those who invested in Internet companies "before the bubble burst", had any of them been interested in cautionary tales. For more than you ever wanted to know about early computer conferencing in Ann Arbor, and a little bit more on top of that, here's a summary.

Google Enters the World of Webhosting

I mean, beyond blogs. Google Page Creator. (Via SitePoint blogs).

More Power To Them

I never bought into the Segway hype, but the inventor's more recent innovations seem to have a lot of potential.

Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity. Those figures add up to a big problem for the world—and an equally big opportunity for entrepreneurs.

To solve the problem, he's invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.

"Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water," says Kamen. "The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns."

Diplomacy - Where "Old Europe" Shines....

Well, perhaps not always....

Libya's parliamentary secretariat today suspended the interior minister and referred him for investigation over yesterday's riots that resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people.

Meanwhile, the Italian cabinet minister blamed for sparking the riots has resigned.

* * *

At least 10 people died in a six-hour riot on outside the Italian consulate yesterday, where more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered in an angry protest, apparently in reaction to an Italian cabinet minister wearing a T-shirt printed with the cartoons satirising Prophet Muhammad that have provoked protests across the Muslim world.

Granted, Italian politics are weird. (I wonder what they would have made of it, had the T-shirt been worn by a porn star.) Not that I want to damn Congress with faint praise (although some of its members work hard to leave us with little choice), but at least nobody rioted over the "freedom fries" thing....

The Importance of Coming Clean

Two news stories which, but for the choices of the Bush Administration, wouldn't be in the news....

• Dick Cheney shoots his friend. Why is it still a story? Because Mr. Cheney didn't immediately issue a statement about what happened, ideally with some of the remorse he expressed several days later during his interview on Fox News.

• New Abu Ghraib Pictures. Whether you think they're "more of the same" or even more shocking than the first batch, the Bush Administration's effort to squelch these pictures has led to them coming out in dribs and drabs (with a possible torrent soon to come from Salon).

In the former case, it's hard to tell what Mr. Cheney was thinking - this was obviously going to be a headline story which, if managed improperly, could drag on for days or weeks. Yet it is almost as if the Vice President's office set out to handle the media aspects improperly.

In the latter case, while it would have been a bitter pill to swallow, had all of the pictures been released when the initial set of photographs came to public attention, this would be an old story. Sure, it might have been more difficult for the Administration to spin its "just a few bad apples" line, or to convince as many people that the mistreatment of prisoners was minor. But we wouldn't have a new headline story, and new pictures being distributed in the Middle East when tensions are already very high. (And right on the heels of a similar British scandal.)

I know that the government, and the Bush Administration in particular, loves its secrets. But for once, perhaps they should weigh the cost of secrecy against the benefit of honesty.

The Cartoons

Majikthise says it better than most. (H.T., Explananda)

Modern Customer Service

One of the biggest problems of the manner in which many businesses offer what presently passes for "customer service" is that there is no consistency in who is working to resolve a problem, and thus there is nobody who is responsible to resolve the problem. Some companies, such as (at last check) MCI, claim not to have individual extensions for their employees. (A phone company wihtout extensions? C'mon.) Even if you have the employee's name, you have to try to work your way through an invisible labyrinth of switchboards to be reconnected.

Some more recent examples of this phenomenon:

* My webhosting company, eager to make me wonder why I stayed with them after last year's experience, tried to pair customer service highs with customer service lows. The highs? Their employees are for the most part very good at dealing with increasingly frustrated customers. The lows? Pretty much everything else.

I was having some problems with a server, so I requested that they reboot the server. The site didn't come back online, which isn't a particularly good sign - but also one they should catch. When they did get the server restarted, it wouldn't run Apache, which is to say it wouldn't run any websites. They ran a diagnostic and, surprise, the hard drive was failing

I asked the technician who called with that news how long I could reasonably expect one of their hard drives to last. "We use Seagate drives." Yes, but how long should they last? "I've seen them last a month, and I've seen them last five years." Yes, but how long should I reasonably be able to expect them to last? "If you need to be absolutely certain that your data is always online there are systems which can do that. For $100,000.00 you can set up a...." I'm aware that if I spend an unlimited amount of money I can get a much more reliable system; I'm asking about this hard drive on this system. I know I'm not one of your heavier users, so what can I reasonably expect? "I've seen them last for years, or sometimes just a month or two." Egad....

Rather than sticking a new hard drive into the old system, I contacted customer service to upgrade to newer, more capable hardware. "You're aware that we won't be able to transfer your IP's over to the new machine?" Well, not ideal, but I still wanted to upgrade. I made clear that I wanted to cancel the old machine, as it wasn't running anyway and I wasn't going to bring it back online even if they put a new hard drive in it. I added on their backup solution which, although in my opinion a bit overpriced for what you get will perhaps save me some grief the next time my hard drive fails after a period of time they cannot approximate.

So I go to the new server's administrative interface and start setting up the websites. At which time I notice that the only IP Addresses I can assign to websites are those from the old server. I contact customer service. "The new block of IP's should have been assigned to your server." Well, yeah. "Hey - you say you're cancelling the old server. We can transfer that block of IP's to your new server if you want." I thought you couldn't do that. "It's pretty easy. I'll take care of it for you." It should be done in about sixty to ninety minutes.

Later that evening I still can't work with the IP's, so I call back. "It says here in the notes that everything is fine." What does it say if you attempt to verify the notes, rather than just reading them. "Oh. It looks like it wasn't completed. And the guy who does that went home for the night." So? "He comes in about 8:30 in the morning. I'll put a sticky on his screen and he'll probably take care of it first thing."

At 9:00 the next morning.... "That was done last night." Did you see the sticky on your screen? "Yes, I did, but the notes say it was done." Did you attempt to verify the notes, rather than just reading them? "Oh. Let me look into this." [Insert 40 minutes on hold here.] "It was done yesterday." If it was done yesterday, why isn't it working now? "Our system has to reset itself for the changes to take place, and it reboots every six hours. So everything should be working by noon." Didn't the system reboot, then, at 6 AM? And for that matter at midnight last night? And at 6 PM yesterday? "Um, the system will reboot at noon and it should work after that."

That was accurate - shortly after noon, everything seemed to be working... except for the fact that I couldn't access the server by FTP or POP or SMTP. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out if there was a problem at my end... nope. Back to technical support. "The ports are closed." Yes, when I called you I told you that the ports were closed. I need them open, so I can set up my websites." "I don't know why they are closed." I don't care. I need them open. "It may be a security reason, because they should be open." Well, find out if there is a security problem then, fix it, and open them. "I can't see from the account history if you closed them or if we did. If you closed them there will be a charge to reopen them." I'm telling you right now that you closed them. "Let me check something. Can you hold for a couple of minutes?" [Insert a couple of minutes on hold here.] "We can't figure out who closed the ports, so we'll open them without charging you." You closed them. Thank you for agreeing to reopen them. "I said we couldn't figure out...." Well, as I said, I didn't close them, which leaves you.

"Which ports do you want open?" How about the ones which are supposed to be open by default? "I can't advise you as to which ports to have open." I'm not asking for advice, just the default settings. [Insert tedious discussion of ports here.] "We can have those open for you in one to two hours, and I've made the note extremely clear so that they will do it right." Is this something I can fix from my end? "No, this has to be changed here... wait, yes. On your machine you can open these ports yourself." Can you tell me how? "Sorry, I can't do that."

Two hours later, a return call to indicate that the SMPT and POP ports (those for email) remained closed (although I had been happily transferring files to the server to bring the sites back on line). "Let me tell you how to fix that yourself" (Less than thirty seconds later....)

Although the summary doesn't necessarily convey it, that last technician was highly professional, courteous, and knowledgeable. He was unable to be more helpful because company policy is to charge by the task for as much support as possible unless a customer is paying a monthly fee to have support included with their server. So even though every single problem I had was the fault of the webhost, their own policies prevented their technicians from providing actual customer support... because I hadn't paid them for the privilege of helping them troubleshoot their own screwups. It says something that at the end of the day (well, actually, the end of the second day) their own technical support representative was sufficiently exhausted with their system to break the rules by giving me instruction, rather than issuing yet another ticket to have things fixed in-house "in an hour or two."

* I sent an inquiry to Comcast over some email problems, noting that AOL was rejecting emails I was sending. In the first email I described the correction that AOL requested they implement in order to resolve the problem. In the second email I summarized the problem and pointed out a minor incorrection in the first email.

The response to the first email explained that they could not make individualized changes to Comcast accounts, then presented a lengthy (and entirely irrelevant) description of how to configure email for an Outlook Express account. (Even if I used Outlook Express, that wouldn't be the problem....)

The second email, which by any sensible measure should have been sent to the same person, went instead to a different person. That second person, looking at exactly the same problem, indicated "We are aware of this issue and we apologize for any inconvenience that it may cause you. Our engineers are in contact with the email administrators at AOL, and they are working together to resolve this issue."

In my opinion, they're working a bit too slowly at one end or the other, but at least the second communication was relevant and helpful. However only the first communication was given a customer service ticket number, so I can't follow up to the second without being routed to yet another random customer support person.

"We'll Just Import Them From China"

Sebastian Mallaby has a "What, Me Worry?"-type editorial in today's Post, complaining that our nation doesn't really have a problem with science education - and if it does, that we still don't have anything to worry about.

The story of Gavriel Salvendy [who has advanced post-graduate science education in China], which some might see as an omen of America's declining status, is in fact more subtle. Salvendy has long recruited star Chinese graduate students to Purdue, where he still does most of his research. Of the 18 Chinese who have completed PhDs under his supervision at the Indiana campus, 15 have stayed on in the United States.

Over five years, that's three Ph.D.'s per year who we have successfully imported from China. Yay, us?

As I see it, the problems of science education in the United States include:

• As a society, we have a general disdain for "book learning" and even moreso for the type of person ("geek" / "nerd" / "egghead") who pursues a career in math or physical science.
• We rely very heavily upon foreign students to round out our university rosters in the physical sciences, particularly at the graduate level.
• We are pursuing immigration policies which make it less attractive for foreign students to pursue graduate degrees within the United States.
• Foreign nations are increasingly able to offer their own math and science graduate students an education equivalent to or superior to that which they might receive at a U.S. college.
• We rely upon a sizeable population of well-educated immigrants to perform scentific and engineering work for our nation's companies.
• Foreign workers with science degrees are increasingly able to find quality work without leaving their nations of origin, or battling with the USCIS.
• U.S. companies are finding it less important to bring foreign workers to the United States, as opposed to taking the work overseas.

Fundamentally, our nation doesn't care about science, is increasingly ignorant of basic science and math, and doesn't see the importance of improving. Given his own history of mediocrity, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Mr. Mallaby has chosen to be the spokesperson for the status quo.

Mallaby writes,

The science lobby should also stop pretending that countries compete the same way companies do. Firms such as Toyota and Ford really do go head-to-head against each other; if Toyota has superior technology, it will steal Ford's customers -- and Ford may even disappear. But if China produces Nobel-quality science, it won't put the United States out of business; rather, Chinese discoveries will help American scientists discover more, too.

Here's a neat new word for Mr. Mallaby to learn: Patent. Mallaby continues,

Equally, Toyota doesn't sell cars to Ford workers, so there's no benefit to Ford's people if Toyota's quality advances. But China does sell to Americans, so whatever makes it more productive has some upside for the United States as well.

Mallaby is mixing his metaphors. Taking a lead in science and technology provides a significant benefit not only to corporations, but also to countries. Even if Mallaby cannot grasp how the producer of the world's best software or electronic goods can provide an economic boon to the nation in which it is headquartered, perhaps he should also consider the desire of the U.S. to maintain a lead in military technology, which is an area where we can't expect nations like China to sell us their secrets. You can't count on being able to perpetually import other nation's brain power in order to remain competitive.

Pushing The Sports Analogy Too Far

Behind the New York Times firewall, in "Remaking the Epic of America", David "Babbling" Brooks shares the insight he expects us to derive from a handful of sports movies he has seen. Movies in which:

A tough, no-nonsense coach, usually with a shadow-filled past, takes over a shambolic, underfunded team. He forces his players to work harder than they ever thought they could. He inspires them to sacrifice for the greater good. Finally, he leads them to glory over richer and more respected rivals.

When a story is repeated this often, and when it continues to attract audiences time after time, it is because it affirms certain values precious to the culture. The values these movies affirm amount to a brick-by-brick destruction of the values that were prevalent 30 years ago.

Thirty years ago, young people were told to question authority. But the heroes of these movies are coaches who are unabashed authority figures. Preferring success to affection, they instill fear and sometimes hatred in their players. They insist on being called "sir" and impose dominating discipline. "This is no democracy," Denzel Washington's character says in "Remember the Titans." "It is a dictatorship. I am the law."

This, of course, tells us far more about Mr. Brooks than it does about society. Having a reasonable impression of Mr. Brooks' stature, I somehow doubt that he has any first-hand knowledge of playing football under a tough coach, but as with William F. Buckley, Jr. and tales of life at sea, the movie image seduces him. And the seduction is not so much the idea of following an unabashed authority figure - it's a reflection of the authoritarian mind at work.

What do I mean by that? I am referencing the mindset that certain people are meant to lead, and others meant to follow. When you are in the position of a follower, it is your duty to be both loyal and unquestioning. This mindset also defines how the authoritarian personality relates to his superiors. Think of Ambassador John Bolton, who seems to have simultaneously been a horrible boss to those "beneath" him and comfortable in the role of a sycophant to those above him. Brooks and Buckley are a bit peculiar as authoritarians, as they have sidestepped the traditional power structure of our society. But perhaps that shouldn't be surprising of an authoritarian with a huge ego but who has nobody to command.

This of course doesn't stop the fantasy - Buckley admires a pubescent lord naturally taking his position as a leader of men, without so much as a thought for the men and boys of common blood who were fated to serve, and Brooks adores the totalitarian coach who cannot be questioned by even his best player. Meanwhile in real life, they spend their careers sitting alone behind their computers or dictaphones.

While Brooks is enamored with the "Horatio Alger" aspects of the stories, his larger point appears to be that independent thought - and affirmative action - are bad.

In short, these movies embrace the civil rights part of the 1960's and 1970's. Women and minorities should be given full access to the competitive world of the meritocracy. But they take the therapeutic, progressive, New Age part of the 1960's and 1970's and they crush it dead. They create a culture of all-inclusive traditionalism.

I must have missed the mixed-gender sports teams in the films he listed.

I understand why somebody who thinks like Brooks would think that the decline of independent thought, cowed deference to authority, and everybody meekly maintaining their place in the societal pecking order is attractive. Many an elitist snob yearns for the return of an "upstairs-downstairs" society. Personally, though, I think it was the breakdown of rigid class structure and the questioning of authority which led to the remarkable progress we made in the 20th Century.

Meanwhile, I'll await Brooks' column where he explains that, as slasher films have seen significant success over the past thirty years, movies like Se7en, Nightmare on Elm Street and Silence of the Lambs affirm values precious to society.