Curious, Joyful, Happy Kids Grow Up: Unfortunately

I must admit I find the wonder kids have amazingly refreshing. When I was a kid I just took it for granted. Now, unfortunately surrounded by way too many incurious, blasé, dreary adults I realize the kids really have a much better idea how to live than we adults do.

Have some fun. Have some fun with a cardboard box and a stick. Or a plastic dinosaur and a small firetruck. Or just reading a book, for the 56th time this year, about how some cat goes to the store.



Meanwhile I think an alien could appear on the subway and most of my fellow passengers would only be concerned if it was taking up too much space or blocked their exit, and if not, maybe not even notice it.

Hey, maybe this is why my parents always asked me "what did you do today?"
Me: [Jeez stop hounding me, Dad] "Nothing"
Actually what I did: played in a puddle; landed on the moon with Rachel and Dan and brought some moon rocks back to play with; learned that we named the people in North America, Indians, when Christopher Columbus came because we were completely wrong about who they actually were and somehow never got around to fixing that error (another strike against you crazy adults); and decided that really chocolate ice cream is better than spinach and adults don't have any idea what they are talking about.]

Me: [Why the heck do I want to talk about that stuff, you are an adult you must have done much cooler stuff. You get to do whatever you want, you are not trapped all day being ordered around by big adults who can make you do whatever they want :-(]. "Yuck, spinach" :-( [I can't wait until I get to just eat chocolate ice cream and no spinach]

Well maybe I now finally figured out why adults want to know what kids did every day - they might get some vicarious joy (having nearly forgotten how to find a falling leaf, or cool green shoe joyful). Now why people want to know what their spouse did, I still don't understand that :-)

Just watching the faces of adults and kids is amazing. Adults, by and large show no joy. A kid's face will show more joy when they see their Mom for the 8th time today than an adult will in the entire month. I just have to believe that is not a good sign.

As a kid I didn't think adults had much of a clue or very good reasons for why things had to be certain ways. Of course, as a kid, I was "unreasonable" and had to "wait to grow up" and then I would understand. I have to say I think my kid self had most of it right.

I didn't get how trapped we become as adults into day to day lives that we don't mean to chose - I did get that wrong. But I am not sure I was wrong that we shouldn't do that. But it is harder than I thought to avoid it (especially since I didn't think it was even a risk that an adult would be stuck doing stuff about as fun as being stuck in a chair and being lectured to with a bunch of other people all day long about stuff you often couldn't care about at all).

What is exciting to me now? Refinancing my mortgage at 3.75%. Now that is great. But, I think most 7 year olds have much better things they are excited about.

Photo of my nephews by my brother.

Related: The freedom to act before you have been trained to follow convention, at all costs - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Letting Children Learn – Hole in the Wall Computers - Amy's Halloween Costume



Photo of my nephew at the Staten Island Children's Museum. We need to get back to that time when we spend through life in a blur of wonder and excitement.

Oregon, TCU, Boise State, Auburn...

Oregon, TCU and Boise State are all great college football teams. If Auburn wins their next 2 games they will be up there with those 3.

I hope we get TCU or Boise State in the championship game and the other versus Auburn, Oregon, LSU, Stanford or Alabama. Boise State v Oregon and TCU v. Auburn would be great. I think Boise State and TCU would beat most other teams badly - and probably would beat some of those teams above badly. On a good day one of the Big Ten schools might be able to be competitive but I think they would most likely be destroyed. I think even with a loss either TCU or Boise State are no worse than 5th. I am a long time Badger fan, we good this year but good about 15th, not good 7th...

Even though I think TCU and Boise State could be the best 2 teams I hope we don't get that as the title game. I really would rather see those 2 teams play and beat the best of the rest of the teams. Or fail to do so. Oregon might have a chance to beat them. Though I would favor TCU and Boise State against whatever team they play.

My ranking
1 - Oregon, TCU, Boise State
4 - Auburn
5 - LSU
6 - Stanford
7 - Wisconsin
8 - Michigan State
9 - Nebraska
10 - Iowa
11 - Arkansas
12 - Alabama
13 - Ohio State

I feel the teams from about 7 - 18 are very closely matched. The SEC is packed with very good teams. Unlike past years where schools that weren't that good were threatening to sneak by without deserving it. I think Boise State and TCU are clearly among the best few teams in the country.

Bad Government, Closed Access

Charging money for laws that people must follow. Great talk. We really do need to stop allowing special interests to so completely take from the public for very bad reasons. We need to replace dinosaurs that don't understand that closed, proprietary systems are dangerous and should be avoided when possible (and tolerated while continuing to look for better solutions).

Pulic.Resource.Org. Public.Resource.Org is a receipient of the Project 10100 Award from Google.

Related: Publishers Fight Progress Again - Against Amazon Kindle - What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests - The Differences Between Culture and Code

Economic Freedom

The "Economic Freedom Index" Isn't

For example, by any valid measure of economic freedom, the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act would have been considered an upward surge in statism and protectionism unequaled since (at least) the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. But Heritage, a co-creator of the Index, is one of the most strident advocates, inside the pseudo-libertarian beltway establishment, of global “intellectual property” enforcement expansion.

The Economic Freedom Index fails to distinguish between the primary, structural forms of state intervention that prop up corporate power, and the secondary, ameliorative forms of intervention that attempt to moderate its side effects. The state enforces a whole host of artificial property rights and artificial scarcities which serve as sources of economic rent to privileged firms, and maintains all sorts of regulatory cartels.
...
If I didn't know better, if I didn't know that real free markets were the enemies of corporate power, I’d hate them myself.

Very well said. I completely agree with your statement that "real free markets were the enemies of corporate power." I find myself frustrated at those that argue capitalism is bad because... and then they talk about corporate welfare policies, policies aimed at paying off those that pay politicians etc.. That are not capitalism. And the others that claim they like capitalism and basically they just want the government to support big business interests and their policies. Real capitalism does a great job of providing economic wealth to the population. And it must be regulated sensible (that is part of capitalism not some add on). You need to regulate negative externalities (pollution etc.). You need to enforce the rule of law. It makes sense to have patents and copyright (but they need to balance the interests of the parties involved to promote societal benefit and individual reward, to encourage people to invest their time and resources).

Related: Copywrong - Have We Lost Our Capitalist Heritage? - China and the Sugar Industry Tax Consumers

Suicides: Foxconn, Cornell and the Golden Gate Bridge

Wrong on So Many Levels

Foxconn Installs Antijumping Nets at Hebei Plants. Anti-jumping nets?

Having built safety nets along its employee dormitories after a series of jumping suicides at its Shenzhen production plant, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which uses the trade name Foxconn, is now installing the same sort of nets at some of its inland factories

...
If things are so bad that people would rather hurl themselves off of tall buildings than work in a Foxconn factory (or even just go find a factory job down the street) it seems like Foxconn should put the nets on the doors of their factories to catch people from going in.
...
The 42,000 employees in the Shenzhen plant assemble nearly 70% of the iPhones and iPads for Apple. There have been 10 factory workers who jumped to their deaths in the first 5 months of 2010 at the Shenzhen plant

It is wrong on many levels. I do think Apple has some responsibility. I do think human psychology around suicide is complex and confusing and cause and affect can be confused by correlation not cause.

Putting the nets there sure looks lame, and like non-root cause problems solving. But if they actually save lives then what? There are nets below the Golden Gate bridge (also to reduce suicide deaths) after quite a bit of debate. It sure takes a long time for them to act. 2 years later and still barely moving forward.

Cornell University has a long term problem with suicide jumpers, 6 this year - and they have installed suicide prevention fences:

Several suicides clustered in a close proximity of time and location, such as what Cornell experienced in late winter, are known to cause an "imitation" effect on vulnerable members of the community, elevating their risk of suicide. No one knows for sure how long the elevated risk can last, but the mental health professionals Cornell consulted said that it is very likely to continue for the foreseeable future and strongly recommended that temporary barriers remain in place while permanent means restriction measures are explored and designed.

I am not at all sure the suicide prevention nets at Foxconn are a bad idea. They certainly "look" (visually, and the image they convey is not being very root cause problem solving like) bad.

If we examine Cornell and Foxconn together what answers might we find? I think there are things to fix at Foxconn, but it is very easy for those of us the USA to just paint management as villainous. I don't think we will paint Cornell professors as villainous. Foxconn absolutely needs to do much more than put up nets. But whether putting up nets is good short term fix (like Cornell's) I think is at least debatable.

Problem solving can be quite complex. Especially with something like suicide where the causes are very likely to be varied and systemic. I doubt you will find one root cause. You may find at Foxcon: low wages (and the pressures that brings on as one factor - Foxconn doubled wages recently), lack of joy in work (to an extreme level - truly feeling like a cog in a machine with no hope), "imitation effect", homesickness (moving to the factor hundreds or miles from home and living in a dorm), youngness (hormones, lack of life experience, exaggerated importance... - similar at Cornell and Foxconn), perhaps abusive practices in the factory, perhaps other psychology in the factory (low light, long hours, painful work...), perhaps bullying of peers...

I think a good systemic solution will look at what I think all management should look at: practicing respect for people and creating joy in work. But that isn't an overnight solution, even if they wanted to pursue that strategy (which I don't see any evidence that they do). It will take time to change the system. It is something that I think can address the systemic root causes.

Related: Auto Manufacturing in 2009: USA 5.7 million, Japan 7.9 million, China 13.8 million - Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation - USA, China and Japan Lead Manufacturing Output in 2008 - China’s Manufacturing Economy

They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love

Peter Scholtes was a friend. He wrote a great song: They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love (we are One in the Spirit). Here are several versions of the song:



Lyrics to They Will Know We are Christians by our Love:

We are one in the spirit we are one in the Lord
We are one in the spirit we are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity will one day be restored

And they'll Know we are Christians by our love, by our love
Yes they'll know we are Christians by our love.

We will walk with each other we will walk hand in hand
We will walk with each other we will walk hand in hand
And together we'll spread the news that God is in our land.

We will work with each other we will work side by side
We will work with each other we will work side by side
And we'll guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride

All praise to the father from whom all things come
And all praise to Christ Jesus his only son
And all praise to the spirit who makes us one.













Related: Books and articles by Peter Scholtes - Company Culture - Amazing Grace - John Dower

War is Horrible

War is horrible. It may well be necessary at times, unfortunately. But it is horrible and pretending otherwise is a mistake.

Unfortunately governments have taken advantage of several factors to hide the costs of war. We are by and large sheep that take whatever news the government gives (on military and security matters). The government decided to eliminate (or drastically reduce) images that would make us question war and paint anyone that finds this bad as potentially in league with the enemies. That we have taken such treatment is sad. We do have some journalist that write actual news but that seems to be something most news media types object to.

The Hidden Cost of War by Ron Paul

War is dirty and horrible and even in a good war (if such a thing exists, but lets just say it does) there will be tons of stuff that is very disturbing to see. I don't think the solution to that is to stop seeing the disturbing images, data... I believe we should do things that are sensible which can be seen as very bad and openly accept the criticism and explain why it is necessary.


But the government knows this is a bad strategy if your goal is to make people like you. Explaining why horrible things are necessary doesn't get people to like you, by and large. It is much easier to just smile and speak about abstract ideas and hope no-one looks behind the curtain. Most won't. It works well.
I suppose part of the explanation for why we don't demand more is that those that like the unexamined wars are good at selling their views. All the ridicules stuff they do where they try to claim any examination is an insult to the soldiers... Equating support of whatever they believe with patriotism and anyone criticizing those views as unpatriotic... They have learned that manipulating the media to manipulate the populace is much easier than honestly delving into the options, costs, risk and trade-offs that must be considered. But I would say mostly it is because we are sheep. And we don't like to hear bad news and about suffering. So we are perfectly willing to be ignorant of the cost of war.



And above I am focusing on the human costs of war. The killing, injuries, loss of freedom, loss of fathers, mental health problems of returning soldiers... The financial costs are also huge and as a conscious strategy of those who don't want to examine the costs of war largely left out of the debate.

The War on Terror is now more expensive than Vietnam or World War I—but the dishonest way Washington is paying for it may prove costliest of all. - The $3 Trillion War

A Warning from History: Don’t expect democracy in Iraq by John W. Dower, February, 2003.

Related: Iraq: the Human Cost - Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots - National Book Award (1999): Embracing Defeat - Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - The First Amendment - Walter Reed Patients Told to Keep Quiet

Google Voice for Everyone in the USA

I have been using Google Voice for a couple years now (from when it was Grand Central). It is great. Now it is openly available



The messages "transcribed" and sent to your email is nice (though it is still fairly lame). The ability to force unknown numbers to announce themselves before being put through to your phone is awesome. No more spam calls at all. You can also send calls to any of your phones based on show is calling. Basically it is great and it is free. There are lots of features I don't even use but the best features for me are call screening and emails with the voice messages. I don't have to worry about giving my phone number to business that will then abuse the information they were provided -
Google Voice gives me control over who can ring my phone and who must first leave a message.

Related: Droid Incredible - Kiss Your Phone Bill Good-bye - Save Money on Cell Phone Service, Price Reductions - Google Operating System (Chrome)

Adam Smith Supported Using Markets to Serve Society Not Robber Barrons

The Beast Unchained: Privatizing Up, Down, and Inside

If we cede our minds "in here" to the beasts of private enterprise, they will hold the keys to our global mind, and it will be to them that we will have to turn when the challenges before us demand that we apply our minds "in here" most keenly.

The fanciful idea behind unfettered free markets and private enterprise — Adam Smith's "invisible hand" — is the law of the jungle, in which we imagine that we can ride on the back of perfect predators, unchained from public regulation and common purpose.

Adam Smith did have great ideas on economics. However, those quoting him now often do him grave injustice. Including those that think he argued for an unregulated market. He was first a moral philosopher who looked at emerging capitalism to document how it markets work and detail that direct intervention was often not the ideal solution. Basically taking a systemic view that markets can react better at meeting some societal needs than individuals making decision.

Adam Smith completely understood businesses would seek unfair advantage in the market. For capitalism to work the market must be regulated. In addition, the externalities (pollution, risks…) are failing in the market – and must somehow be addressed for markets to work.

Adam Smith did not believe free markets were the end (the aim). He believed the greatest good to society would come when the market was allowed to operate efficiently but that those players in the market would attempt to subvert societal good for their own good and that needed to be managed.

We should not allow those seeking to take from society what they don't deserve to claim such immoral behavior (that Adam Smith saw as wrong) to claim support from Adam Smith for their desires.

Related: Monopolies and Oligopolies do not a Free Market Make - What Capitalism Is, And Is Not - There is No Invisible Hand

Erica's Adventures In Saudi Arabia

Erica has some great adventures in Saudi Arabia, catching Spike the uromastyx (giant lizard), catching a Bufo dhufarensis (toad), and finding Cistanche flowers. Great stuff.








Related: kid in a claw game - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Backyard Wildlife: Great Spreadwing Damselfly

Earthlink/Covad - Failure after Failure and No Desire to Improve

Earthlink supplies my internet connection (via Covad). the connection is remarkably bad. Normally it will fail several times a month but for relatively short periods of time when I actually want to use it (under an hour). As I say very bad but given teh monopolistic behavaior of the alternatives I haven't switched. Who actually choses to subject themselves the Verizon or Comcast if they have any way of avoiding it?

For several days the connections has become 3rd world like. Down over 1/3 of the time for 3 days.

Here are some example ping results from teh last few days
8562 packets transmitted, 5621 received, 34% packet loss, time 8570442ms
135 packets transmitted, 3 received, 97% packet loss, time 134157ms
140 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 139189ms
346 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 345519ms
281 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 280259ms

Calling up for support I have learned over the years is useless. they force you through all sorts of obvious steps to waste time that I have already told them I tried and failed. Every time they go through the same steps of forcing you to remove your router, test out this and that and every time it does nothing. The connection is somehow broken, having nothing to do with my local setup but they never will explore that problem. All they will do is go through the steps and find out wow the connection doesn't work. No kidding. They now add an amazingly horrible push button hell that fails to provide sensible options - press 1 if you service works, press 2 if you want to check on your email.... repeated over and over - no actual option.

Yesterday - since the service is obviously broken I gave up and spent 2 hours trying to deal with them. the sum total of that was 2 hours wasted and the "support" person just hung up after getting tired of seeing that the options they were trying failed as I told them they would. Not surprisingly Earthlink just dropped the matter. No follow up by them on the "service" they were providing. I called back twice and asked for them to tell me what had been done, what steps they took after hanging up (or if the call really was just disconnected... in which case we all know no-one interested in service would then just abandon the service because the call was disconnected...). Nothing is the answer. And again, I asked. Again more nothing.

They have devolved to be so bad that I have to consider using 2 companies that have "service" records only rivaled by soviet era collectives. What a sad state of affairs we have created that we force people to rely on such horrible service if they want to have a connection to the internet.

What fixes the problem of the broken connection Earthlink and Covad provide me. Wait. That is it. The only thing that helps is waiting. Normally that means every month or two I just don't get to use the internet when I want. The last 3 days it has meant I don't get to use it for many hours on end (over 6 yesterday) or it is repeatedly interrupted for 2-25 minutes and then comes back then breaks then comes back. All the fiddling with settings and rebooting and... accomplishes nothing. Just behave like a soviet citizen in 1979 and be happy you have electricity occasionally is Earthlink/covads answer. Unfortunately my options are to use some other soviet style customer service company. How sad for me.

Related: Customer Service is Important - AT&T's Attempt to Take Away Consumer's Rights Denied - Is Poor Service the Industry Standard?

Hulu Desktop for Ubuntu

I have been having all sorts of trouble with Hulu on my new Ubuntu desktop. When it does work it has a great fullscreen display. But the fullscreen mode would not work quite often. And when it did work it would always choose the smaller of my two monitors no matter what I did. The Popout option was nice and I could move it to the monitor I wanted but the control (pause, restart etc.) wouldn't work.

In trying to find solutions to these bugs I stumbled across Hulu desktop for Linux (including an Ubuntu 64 bit option). It works very well. The interface for Hulu desktop is flashy and nice in some ways but in some ways it is not easy to navigate. For example, it is much easier to see a list of the episodes you have subscribed to and their expiration dates.

And I get to watch programs like Caprica that I couldn't otherwise, since I don't have cable TV.

Related: Embedded YouTube Videos Won't Play - Using Multiple Firefox Profiles at the Same Time in Ubuntu

Problem: Hulu full-screen mode fails on Ubuntu in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Hulu popout screen controls fail - Ubuntu 9.04, 64-bit. How to move a Hulu fullscreen to another monitor (using Hulu Desktop you can choose which monitor to use).

Our fiscal practices have been irresponsible for years

Thoughts At Tax Time: Big Bill Coming Due by Emily Anstaett

We all agree on the facts: the national debt is closing in on $13 trillion and our fiscal practices have been irresponsible for years. With that starting point, we can all come to both an understanding of the gravity of the situation and the realization that difficult decisions and sacrifices will have to be made to get our economy back on track and restore the overall satisfaction of Americans to comfortable levels.

Unfortunately we don't all agree we have been "irresponsible for years." We have lots of politicians acting like the huge debt problem is some new issue. Every time times are good they want to give favors to their friends. And when times are bad they want to give favors to their friends. And we keep electing politicians that don't care about ruining the country so long as they can give their friends big amounts of cash favors. Until we grow up and realize we are selling out the future of our country by electing those they seek to put favors to the friends today above the interests of the country we will fall further and further into debt.

I am pretty cynical about the ability of us to vote for ethical, competent, intelligent leaders. Or for the type of people we elect to take sensible steps. I can be surprised though. The ability of the Clinton administration to pass a balance budget (even if you say that it wasn't really balanced given the funny accounting Washington uses it was still pretty amazingly good).

I would love to be wrong and see our politicians put the well being of the country 1st or even 3rd or 4th but I don't think that is very likely. I believe we will have to show them we expect them to put the country first and I don't think we, as voters, will. And even if we did we have to elect people that have the skills to know what is right and the leadership to put the right policies in place.

 

John Hunter

Related: Taxes – Slightly or Steeply Progressive? - Taxes per Person by Country - Failed Leaders Protect Trust Fund Babies Instead of the Country

The Boom in Adult Interns

The great recession and huge loss of jobs has created a growth in internships. Working for Free: The Boom in Adult Interns

When you hear the word intern, you probably don't think of people like Kristina Shands. For starters, she's 38. And she had notched 10 years of experience as a fundraiser at a nonprofit in Tennessee before she was laid off last year. But now that Shands is considering moving into sports management, she's interning with the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team, writing game summaries and handing out stats on game day. She devotes about 10 hours a week to the Bears, and she does it for free. "I'm getting to see the inner workings of a professional hockey team, learning about the business side of sports, and I get to watch hockey," Shands says. "I'm having fun."

The increase in internships, however can go to far: The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York's labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department's top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Related: find internships by state - Federal requirements for internships - USA Unemployment Rate Remains at 9.7%

Embedded YouTube Videos Won't Play

On my Ubuntu machine embedded YouTube videos won't play (in any browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera) but videos from the YouTube site play fine.

Lazyweb: What is causing this? How can I fix it?

Health Care System Needs Much More Reform

Why is every other rich country able to provide universal health care for far less than the USA can provide partial health care? Are we just less capable than every other country? The only other area I know of we are so universally worse than every other country is in the percentage of the population that is free (not locked up in jail). All the health care system performance studies I have seen show the USA on the low end of performance and at a cost 50-100% higher than other countries. If the system we have used in the last 30 years is so great why are we do we have bad to mediocre results at a huge cost?

I don't think the current health care reform bill does anywhere close to enough to address the huge problems with our current health system. It seems that yet again (they have been doing so for decades now) those trying to restrict changes have successfully stopped much in the way of reform.

I am not sure how anyone can believe the new law changes to a new cycle of increasing health care costs. Health care costs have taken an increasing percentage of the GDP every year for decades. The worst that can possible happen is the continuous cycle of costs increases are increased.

This heath reform failed to do enough to stop the increases. But we can see how good a job of those against reform did to stop reform. Until more people refuse to accept the continued extremely poor USA health care system results those against reform are going to continue to stop attempts to fix the system that hugely damages our economy year after year, decade after decade. There is no question reform will happen it is only a matter of how long we wait.

Special interests can maintain systems that harm the society to maintain their special interests to an extent. But the health care system failures have grown so large the economy cannot sustain the special interest favors without drastically reducing economic performance for everyone else. Currently we waste easily $500 billion a year (compared to what other countries can do). It is sad we have to through so much money away year after year. Unless we are just not capable of matching even the 2nd most inefficient health care system in the world, in which case we are going to suffer a great deal. But I don't believe we are incapable of being say 30% worse than the next poorest run health system. So now we tax the rest of society some hundreds of billions each year (and increasing). So far the rest of us are willing to accept this. But at some point the increased demands of those against having the US even perform much much worse than the 2nd worse country in the world will be too much and reform will happen. And it already happens in lots of small way. Companies move jobs offshore due to the poor health care system in the USA...

My blog post on health care system economics - health care system improvement

Preaching False Ideas to Men Known to be Idiots

Re: Yes, Debt Matters

Over the last several weeks I've been contemplating how things have changed in my still relatively short lifetime... how the word "freedom" has somehow morphed to mean "I work so others get free stuff" or perhaps even better "I better stop working so I can get free stuff." Personal accountability has gone out the window, an increasing number of people pay no taxes - coming dangerously close to the 51% tipping point where tax policy will be set by those who don't pay anything, and somehow all kinds of new "rights" have magically appeared in the Constitution."

A huge amount of debt is bad, like the amount we have taken on. Those that have continued to elect politicians that pour on the debt the last 30 years should be ashamed of ourselves, but we do not seem to be. We shouldn't elect people that year after year pay out money they don't have with the (unspoken) promise of future taxes.

Saying people don't pay taxes when they often pay much higher proportional taxes than the rich is very misleading. Pretending that income taxes are the only taxes is just not true. When people try to say a small percentage of people pay taxes, usually they mean there is a significant portion that don't pay federal income taxes. Which is, of course, not the same thing as not paying taxes.

I'm not sure where your claim of 51% pay no taxes comes from but it sounds like the extremely misleading "data" presented by those that think the poor are somehow responsible or to blame and we should be doing more to support the lifestyles of the rich.

Buffett Slams Tax System Disparities

Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

Interview with Warren Buffett:

Most of my income is taxed at 15 percent, and-- and doesn't pay a payroll. Mainly it's dividends and capital gains. And if you look at the For-- Forbes 400, a bunch of my fellow rich guys-- they will-- their tax rate overall to the federal government will be less than that of their receptionist.
...
I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges-- me that the average for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists. So, I'll give 'em an 800 number. They can call me. And the million will go to whichever charity the winner-- designates.

Criticize the politicians that have for decades passed budgets that hike the taxes in the future to give their current voters a false sense of well being (because they know the voters won't think about the future costs the largess [big tax cuts now without spending cuts, for example, are not in fact tax cuts in any real sense, they are just shifting taxes to the future. But that is not what the marketers peddling those giveaways say, of course] today costs). Criticize the voters for mortgaging a significant amount of future economic wealth of their country to such charlatans. I concur with such criticisms.

But I get frustrated with attempts to distort people's perceptions with misleading data. The debt problems are not because the poor are paying too little in taxes.

We spent like crazy in the last 10 years. That is a huge part of the problem - almost no-one disagrees with this. We reduced taxes on the rich. That is another huge part of the problem - some disagree with this. I can understand people feeling differently, that is their choice. But I see any attempt to market giveaways to voters today, that sticks a huge bill to those in the future as poor policy. Cutting taxes is fine as long as you cut spending a the same time (and you don't rely on fake financial projections to justify your current largess, of course).

We blow hundreds of billions a year in a very poorly run health system (again a problem that has existed and grown for decades). One can argue the current attempts makes it worse. One can't argue we elected people that have done nothing significant about it for decades.

No one must buy our debt. I have, for more than a decade, thought the main reason Japan and China buy so much of our debt is not because it is wise investment but for other economic reasons (and some political reasons). They wish to keep the dollar value high and allow the USA to buy their goods. I think they would be wise to massively reduce those purchases. And I suspect they shall. But we shall see.

It isn't tricky. Those of us that have elected politicians that created huge debt loads (by increasing spending or reducing current taxes) created the need for huge taxes for the future to pay off that debt. We continue to elect them so it is just playing out the way we chose.

Unfortunately we suffer a great deal from

1) the inability to think beyond the current year with any degree of sense. We act like 8 year olds. That isn't a good thing for adults to do on matters such as long term saving and debt. We not only do it with those we elect but also in our own retirement accounts.

2) the intellectual discourse on the most important and complex decisions our country makes is about at the level of a Coke commercial. Again this is something we chose. If we didn't acknowledge/accept ill informed campaigns on matters of pubic policy then talking heads would actually be replaced with thoughtful people that detailed the cost and benefits of options and provided alternatives they support. Instead we want simple minded marketing minds to set the policy landscape so we get decisions based on fear, rhetoric, oversimplifications, marketing gimmicks, manipulation, demagoguery...

H. L. Mencken said it well, a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." I can't tell how many of our politicians are demagogues and how many are the idiots that demagogues play for fools. But an awful lot of them are in one or the other camp. I imagine many think they are demagogues, but I bet quite a few are really fools.

Ubuntu and Linux Resources

• Ubuntu Kung-Fu





• order book from Amazon


• Ubuntu Pocket Guide - paper book from Amazon





• Linux-Unix cheat sheets - The ultimate collection

Related: Tips for Your First 24 Hours with Ubuntu - Ubuntu: Closing a Program That Won't Respond

Real Journalism Exposes Bail Bond Corruption

It is far to infrequently that I actually find real journalism. Here is a great example of a journalist doing their job and informing the public of how corrupt the bail bond system is in practice. It isn't surprising NPR is behind this journalism as they actually run their organization in a way that allows true journalism unlike so many other "news" organizations. Sponsor NPR.

Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates

"Follow the money," Henderson says. "Usually whenever you've got questions of money, you follow the money and they'll tell you the reasons why some things operate."

He says the bail bondsmen don't want to see his program receive anything more than limited funding. The bondsmen "make money and they contribute their influence," Henderson says. "I would do more if we had the funding to do more." It's not that Lubbock's bondsmen want Henderson's clients. They don't. Henderson's clients can't afford a bondsman's fees.

But Henderson says the bondsmen lobby to keep his program as small and unproductive as possible, so that no paying customers slip though — even if that means thousands of inmates like Raymond Howard and Leslie Chew wait in jail at taxpayer expense, because they never find the money to become paying customers.

"The bonding companies make a living," Henderson says. "That's just the nature of Texas and Lubbock."

But it's not just Texas and Lubbock. Industry experts and a review of national lobbying efforts by NPR show that pretrial release programs across the country are increasingly locked in a losing battle with bonding companies trying to either limit their programs or shut them down entirely.

As Henderson walks back downstairs, he stops and reads the sign above the door in the lobby. It says: Protecting our community by changing lives. "Jail doesn't do anybody any good," he says. "The only thing that jail is good for is to keep the dangerous people in the community away from the people who don't pose a risk."

But that is not who is in the nation's jails. According to the Justice Department, two-thirds of the people in the nation's jails are petty, nonviolent offenders who are there for only one reason: They can't afford their bail.
...
Bondsmen's main responsibility is to bring defendants back to court if they fail to show up. But it turns out that many bondsmen aren't doing this job.

Statistically, most bail jumpers are not caught by bondsmen or their bounty hunters. They're caught by sheriff's deputies, according to Beni Hemmeline from Lubbock's district attorney's office.

"More often than not, the defendants are rearrested on a warrant that's issued after they fail to appear," Hemmeline said.

Asked if the bondsmen are fulfilling their end of the deal, Hemmeline says, "Well, it may be that [the bondsmen] can't find them. They can't camp at the door 24 hours a day. They do the best that they can, I think."

If a defendant does run, the bondsman is also supposed to pay the county the full cost of the bond as a sort of punishment for not keeping an eye on the client.

But that doesn't happen, either, Hemmeline says.

Hemmeline says Lubbock usually settles for a far lower amount than the full bond. In fact, according to the county treasurer in Lubbock, bondsmen usually only pay 5 percent of the bond when a client runs.

Consider that math for a minute. The bondsmen charge clients at least 10 percent. But if the client runs, they only have to pay the county 5 percent. Meaning if they make no effort whatsoever, they still profit. Hemmeline says asking for more might put the bondsmen out of business.

"Bond companies serve an important purpose," she says.

NPR found bondsmen getting similar breaks in other states. In California, bondsmen owe counties $150 million that they should have had to pay when their clients failed to show up for court. In New Jersey, bondsmen owe $250,000 over the past four years. In Erie, Pa., officials stopped collecting money for a time because it was too much of a hassle to get the bonding companies to pay up.

It is possible to skip the commercial bail bonding business entirely by just paying cash. Show up for court and you get your cash back. But it turns out that this is not as easy as it sounds. It takes hours longer to post a cash bail. And many people, like Sandy Ramirez, don't even know that it's an option.

Ramirez came to Lubbock Bail Bond for her 18-year-old son, who was arrested after getting into a scuffle with his friends. They were charged with public mischief. Her son was given $750 bail.

She says neither the district attorney's office, the judge nor the court clerk told her she could leave cash with the court as a deposit and get it back when the case was over.

"I never knew that," Ramirez says. "That's awful not to know that."

Lubbock Bail Bond tacked on some additional fees for, among other things, paying on a payment plan. In the end, she owes the company $260 — more than half the cost of the bond. Two weeks after the scuffle, prosecutors dropped all the charges against the teens. But two months later, she's still paying the bail bondsman.

Related: Death of Newsprint - Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer - Watching the Watchmen - Photographers are not a Threat - Buying Favors from Politicians - Lobbyists Pay Congressmen to Keep Taxes Off Billion Dollar Private Equities Deals and on For Our Grandchildren

Lines of Confusion Illusion

Cool illusion. I like to remind myself that such examples show that what you think it true is not always true.

Related: Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid Image - Fooled by Randomness - Seeing Patterns Where None Exists

Site to Share Pasted Code

Nice tool to quickly share code: Pastie

Related: Create Instant Screencasts - Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Life is Short. What Do You Have to Show for Yourself?

I think there are 2 good points here. One is doing work that you believe makes a difference. To me that is the more important factor. Will 5-10 years from now you be happy with what you accomplished in that time? Are you glad you spent your time that way?

The second issue of owning what you have produced is nice. But it is not easy to create very valuable content that can be converted into cash. Some can and then it is great.

I think really, more often, it can be the freedom that your own work gives you that is rewarding. Not so much the monetary value it brings. I do have quite a few web sites (Curious Cat Management Improvement Site, The Life and Legacy of William G. Hunter, Management and Leadership Quotes, Curious Cat Economics and Investing Blog...) that I really enjoy working on and I think are worthwhile. And they get lots of visitors (when I compare it to people I meet or train in seminars or the like). But they are far from properties I can sell for any significant amount of money.

Comment on: Life is Short. What Do You Have to Show for Yourself?

Think about it: a decade goes by, and I don’t have anything to show for it.

Man, that sucks.

How much of your last 10 years do you own?


2009 is different.

I own – outright – 99% of what I’ve done in 2009.

Photo Essay: Longwood Gardens, Delaware

See photos from my visit to Longwood Gardens in Delaware.

Google's Wonder Wheel

I found out about this cool search tool via Powerful Seo tool all bloggers should know about. Google's Wonder Wheel lets you view related search terms. It is interesting to follow the path for a few steps to see where it leads.



Related: Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - PageRank Distribution

Photo Management and Web Gallery Creation Software

What suggestions to people have for photo management and web gallery creation software. I don't need anything fancy. I have been using Picasa and it is ok. It does take me a long time to do some things though. And the latest version (Picasa 3.0 for Linux) seems to eliminate the main function I liked (replaced with only letting you upload photos to their web site).

Essentially what I have been doing is

• putting the photos I want in this gallery in one folder (these are the high resolution unedited photos)


• cropping the some of the photos


• using Picasa's make a web page feature (which automatically created thumbnails and let me set the maximum size of photos [say 800 pixels] and it reduced the image size - for web display)


• it also created pages for each of the photos (the idea is you could just upload the resulting files (html and jpg) to your site and you had a live web page

I like this model. I want to keep the photos on my Curious Cat Travels site - not some third party site (like Picasa Web, Flickr...). The most annoying thing about old process was I had to manually edit each page and the html Picasa generated wasn't really what I needed - so I just cut out a portion of the html from each page and pasted it into the template I had for my photo galleries.

Does anyone have suggestions for the best tools to do this using Linux?

I am installing digikam, now and will try it out.

Related: Curious Cat Travel Photo Blog - Using Your Digital Camera

Interactions and Data Analysis

Re: Context Matters

Multivariate testing is great. And it a great way to determine interactive factors - which are essentially not possible to determine with one variable at a time testing (though a smart person can see indications within this type to view them).

Your example though seems to largely be about properly stratifying the data for optimization. While it is always difficult to tell with short examples it seems like it may well be that you have 2 different audiences and a solution that, for example, intercepts the search engine traffic and gives them some context might help a lot (you see this on many blogs where they say - "I see you find us search on X - you may also be interested in Y...

But the biggest point I think your story illustrates is the importance of the experimenter. They need to think. Their role is not just to calculate some numbers and whatever number is higher wins. George Box: "it’s not about proving a theorem, it's about being curious about things. There aren't enough people who will apply [DOE] as a way of finding things out."

Related: YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15% - Using Design of Experiments - Statistics for Experimenters

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card

Stonefather by Orson Scott Card is a novella and prelude to a forthcoming fantasy saga: Mithermages. I found it enjoyable and reminiscent of his previous fantasy work especially the Alvin Maker series. I don't read hardly any fantasy, other than that by Orson Scott Card.

Another recent publication (2008), Keeper of Dreams, collects 22 short stories and novellas by Orson Scott Card, not found in Maps in a Mirror:

The Elephants of Poznan
Atlantis
Geriatric Ward
Heal Thyself
Space Boy
Angles
Vessel
Dust
Homeless in Hell
In the Dragon's House
Inventing Lovers on the Phone
Waterbaby
Keeper of Lost Dreams
Missed
50 WPM
Feed the Baby of Love
Grinning Man
The Yazoo Queen
Christmas at Helaman's House
Neighbors
God Plays Fair Once Too Often
Worthy to Be One of Us

Both are well work reading in my opinion.

Related: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - Reading in 2006 - Create Your Own Book

Disregard for People by FedEX and UPS

My comments prompted by UPS: Disrespect for People? by Dan Markovitz

I consistently see UPS and FedEx park in traffic lanes, in front of a fire hydrant, in no parking zones meant to provide pedestrians view of the traffic to cross the street safely... when there are available parking spaces less than 20 feet away (and actual loading zones not much further away).

It would seem they must do this hours every day (based on the level of abuse I see). I often see the illegally parked vehicle from UPS or FedEx, park legally, get done what I need to do, and drive away and the illegally parked vehicle is still there.

It is obvious that UPS and FedEx systemically violate traffic laws and make the roads more dangerous. The extent of the abuse make it obvious to me they design their work process with full knowledge that they endanger and inconvenience others for their convenience. I am not sure why such consistent intentional systemic dis-rearguard for laws is allowed to continue, but obviously it is.

Maybe in Manhattan parking in traffic lanes is the way things work, but that is not the case in most places. Only UPS and FedEx chose to systemically endanger inconvenience others for their convenience (well, and others such as chemical companies dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, here I mean only UPS and FedEx do so with an obvious policy on how they use the roads). Society doesn't work when you allow those that just don't care about anyone else to do whatever they feel like and force others to suffer the consequences (for the actions they take based on their disdain for the rest of us). Ethics obviously have lost the ability to influence a significant number of people - whether they chose to park illegally hours every day or loot "their" companies. The government is suppose to enforce laws to punish those that have disdain for others rights. When that is not done everyone suffers so a few rude and disrespectful can do whatever they feel like.

Arguments like we have to break the law to deliver packages make no sense to me. If package delivery is important then buildings need to provide parking or delivery companies drivers drive around drop of packages to employees with carts to deliver a few blocks worth of packages then meet up with another truck... Or whatever else will work, I would sure hope a multi-billion dollar company can figure out better solutions than I can in 5 minutes. If you can't figure out how to meet a customer need without violating the law that means you don't have a viable business - not that you have to violate the law. You can't say, oh we dump the toxic chemicals in the river. Yes, it is against the law but, we have no other option but to violate the law so don't blame us for our disdain for those of you who must cope with our actions.

Related: Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Manners - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Violations tagged as ups were caught parked in a bike lanes around the world 50 times

Double Parked Delivery Trucks

I'd go with a carrot and stick system. I like the "FedEx" loading zone idea. Let delivery companies purchase a special parking permit (Ex:a "D" permit) that lets them park in any of these loading zone spaces and then put them in all the logical places with consultation from the delivery companies themselves. Charge a price that will keep those who don't really need one from buying one but keep it cheapish.

Then enforce double parking and escalate tickets for it. After the 5th ticket, they double, ad infinitum. If UPS starts getting some $12000 parking tickets, they'll rethink their strategy.

I Love xkcd Animated Clip

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Awesome. The xkcd comic is great.

Related: What Makes Scientists Different :-) - Comic About Programming - Friday Fun: Correlation - Home Engineering: Reading in Bed

Create Instant Screencasts

Screenr - create instant screencasts. Looks pretty cool.

Wordpress Plugins: Super Cache and Bad Behavior

Wordpress is a great blog platform. I started with blogger but switched to using Wordpress for my blogs (other than this one) several years ago. One great advantage to Wordpress are the great Plugins that are available. I have continually had problems with Super Cache and Bad Behavior, however. Getting errors including:

Cannot modify header information

[function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/wp-cache.php on line 49

They are great plugins but seem to have not played together too well. They have tried to work out the problems and searches find explanations that this problem has been fixed. However I continued to have the problems when I upgraded a blog today. I tried various things that didn't help. I deactivated both and if I reactive super cache after bad behavior the errors seem to persist. However if I activated Super Cache and then Bad Behavior things seem to work fine.

Related: Gallery of Free WordPress Themes - 50 Wordpress Tutorials - Wordpress Admin Page Not Found - The First Blogger

Death at the Hands of Others Today is Actually Historically Low Now

Why is There Peace?

When the archeologist Lawrence Keeley examined casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers—which is the best picture we have of how people might have lived 10,000 years ago—he discovered that the likelihood that a man would die at the hands of another man ranged from a high of 60 percent in one tribe to 15 percent at the most peaceable end. In contrast, the chance that a European or American man would be killed by another man was less than one percent during the 20th century, a period of time that includes both world wars. If the death rate of tribal warfare had prevailed in the 20th century, there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million, horrible as that is.
...
The sociologist Norbert Elias suggested that European modernity accelerated a "civilizing process" marked by increases in self-control, long-term planning, and sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others.
...
Whatever its causes, the decline of violence has profound implications. It is not a license for complacency: We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time. Nor is it necessarily grounds for optimism about the immediate future, since the world has never before had national leaders who combine pre-modern sensibilities with modern weapons.

It is good to remember that statistically things are often much much better today than 100 years ago or 200 years ago. We still have much to be ashamed of. We need to do much better for the future of humanity but in many many ways we have made great progress.

Related: Leading Causes of Death - Global Cancer Deaths to Double by 2030 - Too Much Stuff - Water Wars Break Out in India

Still Young Contrary to Appearances

Great comic from the great xkcd comic. "I'm pretty sure I stopped growing up in my teens and have been faking it ever since"

Mountain Dew

I actually like Mountain Dew. That alone isn't worth mentioning but I like it enough to be tempted by new flavors. Now I know that likely these flavors will be lame. But I am tempted enough to try. Most sounded bad but I decided to try the orange Mountain Dew. It is as bad as you would expect. I was hoping maybe it would be good, but instead the odds (that any brand knock off add-on product is going to be horrible) turned out to be accurate again.

You would think companies could do better than this type of product addition. Granted sugar water is not exactly the hotbed of innovation. But this attempt to just slap a brand name on some slight alternative in the hopes it will sell seems pretty lame to me. And the items I have tried have disappointed far more than they have succeeded. I don't try them often but do occasionally.

I guess these ad-ons work though since we see them so often. I would think they will be bad in the long run as you create tons of bad products that you try to sell by claiming a tie to a liked product. Then people associate those lame products with your good product. But I can believe in the short run you get more of a chance to get people to buy your add-on product.

Water Wars Break Out in India

India prays for rain as water wars break out

In Bhopal, which bills itself as the City of Lakes, patience is already at breaking point. The largest lake, the 1,000-year-old, man-made Upper Lake, had reduced in size from 38 sq km to 5 sq km by the start of last week.

The population of 1.8 million has been rationed to 30 minutes of water supply every other day since October. That became one day in three as the monsoon failed to materialise. In nearby Indore the ration is half an hour's supply every seven days.

The UN has warned for many years that water shortages will become one of the most pressing problems on the planet over the coming decades, with one report estimating that four billion people will be affected by 2050. What is happening in India, which has too many people in places where there is not enough water, is a foretaste of what is to come.
...
He and a group of friends slapped Gyarasi, 35; Raju tried to stop him. Someone produced a sword and, a few minutes later, the Malviyas lay dying. "We were too afraid to do anything," said a woman who gave her name as Shanno. "Dinu didn't want them to take any water. He wanted it for himself."

Everyone stood around, looking down at the hole in the ground. The pipe is dry. "It is a terrible thing, that people should be fighting over water," said Shanno.

Related: Water Pump Merry-go-Round - Agricultural Irrigation with Salt Water - Water From Air

Bad Security on Government Required RFID e-passports

Those that understood security and RFID said from the beginning embedding RFID chips in passports was a very bad idea. Now the Feds are saying you need to make sure you completely encase your e-passport inside something that blocks RFID transmission or take security risks. That sure is a recipe for disaster - how many millions of people are going to fail to do that. We sure do need the government to start making better technology decisions now that such decisions are so critical to the functioning of society.

Insecurity of Homeland Security RFID passports shown by researcher

The current EPC Gen 2 RFID tags used in the wallet-sized Homeland Security passports use no encryption, and are unable to selectively transmit any data. Instead, the RFID tags broadcast sensitive information, enabling anyone with the proper equipment -- such as Chris Pagent -- to collect information that could potentially be used for identity theft, or other nefarious purposes. "The passport card is a real radio broadcast, so there's no real limit to the read range. It's conceivable that these things can be tracked from 100 meters -- a couple of miles," he was quoted as saying.

Chris had no trouble collecting -- and copying -- information from the RFID passports of six people, in a half-hour of driving around.

Google Operating System

Google Chrome Operating System

the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.
...
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
...
The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Interesting.

Related: Ubuntu 7.1 - Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - Google's Search Results: Should Factors Other Than User Value be Used - Last Google Toolbar PageRank Update of 2008

Police Failing to Enforce Law If Lawbreaker is a Police Officer

APD officers caught running red lights

Dozens of Austin police officers have been caught on camera running red lights since the city first installed red light safety cameras in May 2008. The city has installed nine red light cameras since last year and issued more than 6,000 citations to red light runners.

In that same time, more than 36 local police officers have also been caught on camera. The officers are not running on calls and do not have their flashing lights on, as is required by department policy. The videos below clearly show the violations, which include running through red lights or failing to stop before turning right on a red light.
...
"If they're going to enforce the law, they should also abide by the law, I mean no on should be above the law no matter if you wear a badge," said Austin driver James Thompson.

Unfortunately we seem to have many people that believe the more authority you have the less you have to be held accountable for. That is the reverse of what is needed for a civil society. You need those with authority to be held to a higher standard not a lower one. Such continued evidence that even on the obvious minor items (that are easily visible) provides good reason to question the underlying corruption of those responsible for regulating society.

These failures extend from police abusing power to try and prevent liberty (taking photos etc.), not enforcing laws against those in power and regulators failing to regulate financial markets. Those responsible for watching society need to do a much better job. As long as the watchmen seem to support those in their ranks that break the law and see questioning of their refusal to practice fair justice when those with authority violate laws the entire profession is tarnished. The solution is not to get mad at those that expect those in authority to behave and be held accountable but to reform the system and stop tolerating corruption.

Just like the media needs to do more reporting like this (where they act as the watcher of the watchmen, performing a valuable service to society) and less of non-news they seem to be partial to in the last few decades.

Related: Watching the Watchmen - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment - SWAT Raids - Systemic Failures?

Eliminating Regulation Led to Our Financial Crisis

Response to: Note to Regulators: Beware the Montana Paradox

Understood. My point is that the regulators were not empowered. Congress eliminated the regulations that held things in check at the behest of those given them large cash contributions. In addition, regulators can be greatly hampered by the leadership of the organizations they reside in. Regulators are prevented from regulating by the political appointees at the top of their organizations (or by politicians not funding the organization - think FDA food safety failures...).

There certainly is a difference of opinion over what is appropriate regulation. And then once the appropriate regulation is agreed to, what are appropriate response to real world situations is still an open question. I find that many today still don't understand how much a failure of proper regulation is response for our current situation. That failure took at least 4 forms: failed policy of removing appropriate regulation, failed political appointments of regulatory bodies with those that believed regulation was by its nature bad and fought to not enforce even the regulations still in the law, restricting funds to regulatory agencies (this is a common strategy when eliminating the laws that required regulation, still did not satisfy those that wished to eliminate the governments proper regulatory role in a capitalist system) and fourth, the failure of regulators to act properly after those 3 failures were in place.

To me the system problem was above the people problem of regulators failing to act well. It seems to me blaming the regulators is equivalent to blaming the workers. After policy had managed to strip huge amounts of sensible regulation to then blame the workers is not the best way to look at the cause of the failures in my opinion. After crippling regulatory organizations (by changes to the law due by politicians), starved for resources (again by politicians) and led by those fighting the regulatory role of their organization and instituting policies prohibiting sensible regulation (aging by politicians) to then blame those workers (regulators) who failed to properly regulate just seems the wrong analysis in my opinion.

The system was changed to eliminate regulation at the behest of those proposing that regulation was bad for the economy. The results of removing regulation do not seem to support their contention.

I agree politicians made poor policy decisions to encourage more home ownership. That was a part of the problem. To me the main thrust of the problem was not that but the continued erosion of the restrictions on excessive risk taking by financial firms and the removal of regulation that had been in place since the great depression, after a collapse of the financial system.

Anyway, those that appose regulation of financial markets control DC, even now. So there is very little danger (for those that see it as a danger) of putting regulation of financial markets back into the shape it was before the recent few decades created the unregulated current environment. The amount of cash those benefiting from the current system have to give to politicians to continue to the current system is in no significant danger.

I must say Phil Graham is not someone that has much credibility on financial matters with me. He was as responsible as anyone else for eliminating the regulation that was in place previously and received huge amounts of donations from those in the financial community to pursue strategies that benefited them.

So, I guess we disagree on the main causes of the failure of many financial firms until they were bailed out by the government. Thankfully, we are allowed to have our own opinions.

Related: Failure to Regulate Financial Markets Leads to Predictable Consequences - Monopolies and Oligopolies do not a Free Market Make - Too Big to Fail - Sound Canadian Banking System - posts on economics

Librarians Standing Up to the Madness

"You are ordered to comply and you can tell no-one of this investigation." FBI to librarian. The librarian said I think this is unconstitutional and I will not comply. Listen to the story of what can happen if some brave souls stand in the way of government trying to suppress liberty.

Related: Freedom Increasingly at Risk - Watching the Watchmen - Tired of Incompetent Government Harassment

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean, is a great, fun, read. It was awarded the Newberry medal (awarded annually by the American Library Association, to the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children).

Related: Publishers Fight Progress Again - Against Amazon Kindle - The World at the End of Time - Hugo and Nebula Award Books