South Clinton: The Death Of A Neighborhood

Big tip of the hat to Jerry Goedkin for pointing this out to me.

Dr. James R. Fishr, Jr. is an organizational psychologist, organic chemist and author of a number of books. He is also a Clinton native and expresses eloquently the tensions in the city. Do go read the whole thing, The Death of A Neighborhood

You look like you're lost, sir," said a stout female security officer, as she left her vehicle with the large letters “ADM” on the vehicle's door.

"No, I'm not lost. I'm seeing how you have destroyed the neighborhood of my birth."

In an officious manner, obviously feeling duty bound to fulfill her appointed role, she replied, "I'm sorry to tell you, sir, but you are now on private property."

"That is sad," I said as I put my car in reverse, hesitating to touch the button to automatically roll up my window. Turning her back to me as she returned to her vehicle, I could hear her say, almost to herself: Yes, it is, isn't it?

...

Two sets of ironies come to mind in the "Death of a Neighborhood." One is that a disproportionate number of my friends who grew up in South Clinton have either died early in life, or have suffered from incurable diseases. It causes me to wonder if the climate of the community was a factor. If so, they would be better off living elsewhere. My friend still living in South Clinton suffers from cancer. She has fought valiantly to deal with it without complaint and would never think of blaming her condition on the location of her home.

Another irony is that were it not for the Clinton Corn Processing, then the name of the company, I would not have had a chance for a college education. I worked for five summers at Clinton Corn while acquiring two degrees. Indeed, Clinton Corn, then changed to Standard Brands, Inc., was my first employer as a chemist in research and development under Dr. Newton. Nor would I have been able to enjoy the professional life I have experienced were it not for this summer place of employment.

Internet Founder: One Quarter of World Comptuers Part of Botnet

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week in which he states that the number of computers participating in a bot network is much larger than estimated. In fact, he asserts that his research shows that of the approximately 600 million computers attached to the internet, 150 million may be infected. Cerf says that almost all of these victims are unwitting, "in most cases the owners of these computers have not the slightest idea what their little beige friend in the study is up to."

Bots, for those of you who don't know, are a species of malware that do not actively do anything to the host machine. The exist, much like a sleeper spy, quietly on the host until they are issued a command by a central control. Then they leap into action, working to distribute spam or coordinate distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS).

What is the purpose of botnets? Profit, of course. Once a person controls thousands or millions of "little beige friends" then they can be coordinated to deliver goods and services to the nefarious. Botnets have been behind the significant increase in spam over the last few months. Flooded with penny stock offers? Thank the botnets.

These botnets can generate astonishing amounts of network traffic, possibly up to 10-20 Gigabytes per second, that can take down any individual domain or even an entire service provider. Many security vendors are now warning that botnets pose a significant security risk to national government and commercial networks.

Solution? Education of users about proper network usage. Investment in proper security software -- there is no such thing as free security. Vigilance and not treating security issues as a ho-hum affair.

Exciting New Pandemic Makes SARS Look Like Flu

From the Guardian: The dilemma of a deadly disease: patients may be forcibly detained.

The country's health department says it has discussed with the World Health Organisation and South Africa's leading medical organisations the possibility of placing carriers of extreme drug resistant TB or XDR-TB under guard in isolation wards until they die, but has yet to reach a decision.

More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa.

But doctors believe there have been hundreds, possibly thousands, more and the numbers are growing among the millions of people with HIV, who are particularly vulnerable to the disease. Their fear is that patients with XDR-TB, told that there is little that can be done for them, will leave the isolation wards and go home to die. But while they are still walking around they risk spreading the infection.

Excuse me? TWO WEEKS?! 98% Lethal?! Charming. Sounds like some kind of 12 Monkeys, sci-fi, apocalyptic plotline. Good thing the entire world is descending upon South Africa in three years for the next World Cup.

Sunday Soccer Bloggin'

I'm skipping church today to watch the Arsenal - Man U. game. What a geek I am. The best thing about watching European soccer in the winter: You can get 2 games under your belt before settling down to watch a single NFL playoff game that will take the same amount of time as the two soccer games. Having your cake and eating it to.

The Bob Bradley Era, as long or short as it will be, got off to a nice start in L.A. yesterday. The US National team in its first game since its humiliating display in Germany last summer overcame a slow start to win impressively 3-1 against a very young Denmark side in friendly. This was not an international fixture date, so US players playing abroad were not available. There is a lot of Chicago flavor in the USA coaching staff and the mostly MLS side that started yesterday. Head Coach, Bob Bradley was the head coach for the Fire from the team's inception in 1998 to 2004. During that time he took the team to one MLS championship, two championship games, and two US Open Cup titles. Bradley's Assistant Coach, Peter Novak, was a legendary midfielder for the Fire before retiring in 2003 and going on to coach DC United to a title in 2005.

The squad yesterday started three current or former Fire players. And Fire midfielder, Justin Mapp made an amazing, mazy run down the sideline, blowing past three defenders before crossing to Johnathan Bornstein for an easy tap-in in the goal mouth to put the US up 2-1.



A great open field run by Kenny Cooper put the US up 3-1. Cooper is a guy to watch and a potential future legend in US soccer. He is 6' 2" 210lb. and has great foot skills and speed.

Lastly, I urge you to read a wonderful story in the Sunday NYT, Refugees Find Hostility and Hope on Soccer Field is an alternately uplifting and frustrating story of a group of refugees from the harshest countries in the world, adjusting to their new lives in suburban Atlanta.

Update: Well worth playing hooky for. Arsenal came back from 1-0 down with two goals in the last 10 min including a 93rd minute game-winner from Therri Henri. Great stuff! Off to shovel snow. Welcome back from Hawaii, McDermotts. HA!

Opening Moves Of Carbon Trading Gambit In Congress?

A couple of things have crept up in the last few days that make me think that a serious play for some form of carbon credit and/or trading scheme will come up in this Congress. First, the inside baseball bench moves from My DD's, Nancy Scola:

Pelosi's push this week to create a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming was a fascinating peek into the inner-workings of the House and the relationships between the Speaker, Democratic leadership, and the rest of her caucus. Yep, the new panel lacks legislative jurisdiction, but is a platform for raising the profile of climate change. As to be expected, John Dingell -- chairman of the committee that loses ground in this new move and the representative from suburban Detroit -- found this whole reorganization business just simply unnecessary.

Motivating Pelosi? The knowledge that Dingell isn't too keen on the idea that there is a scientific consensus on global warming; the Speaker seems to really want movement on climate change this Congress, and this move puts pressure all around to squeeze something out of the House in the near future.

But oh, there's so much more in this mix! For example: Dingell's chief of staff was a lobbyist and strategist at DaimlerChrysler as late as November. Dingell's wife is the executive director of government relations at GM. Dingell favored Hoyer over Pelosi in the Whip's race in 2001. Pelosi backed Dingell's primary challenger Lynne Rivers in 2002. One House chairman, Henry Waxman is of the opinion that "existing committees can deal effectively with global warming," but worth keeping in mind is that Waxman is next in line for the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee should the 81 year-old Dingell ever vacate the House.

Just in terms of structure, it's hard not to see this as an end run by Pelosi around the House's committee system and its chairmen. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of precedent for what she's done. (Of course, one might argue that there's not a whole lot of precedent for global warming.) The last "non-permanent select committee" was created by Republican leadership to blunt criticism after Hurricane Katrina. The one before that, Homeland Security, was created in the wake of September 11 and soon evolved into full standing committee. This new panel isn't as obviously event-driven and isn't yet designated permanent. Is the idea for it to be short-lived and for climate change and energy independence to revert back to Energy and Commerce when, say, Waxman pries the gavel out of Dingell's hands?

So, that's the House, where Pelosi seems to be laying the groundwork for a committee to talk serious shop about climate change. Over on the Senate, the EIA has just posted a response to a request (largish PDF document) by Sens. Bingaman, Landrieu, Murkowski, Specter, Salazar, and Lugar - a bipartisan lot you'll note -- for comment on draft legislation for a carbon trading regime. In the document, complete with the senators' request and draft legislation.

The draft legislation itself is pretty forward-thinking (at least compared to efforts to-date):

The program would establish annual emissions caps based on targeted reductions in greenhouse gas intensity, defined as emissions per dollar of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The targeted reduction in GHG intensity would be 2.6 percent annually between 2012 and 2021, then increase to 3.0 percent per year beginning in 2022. To limit its potential cost, the program includes a “safety-valve” provision that allows regulated entities to pay a pre-established emissions fee in lieu of submitting an allowance. The safety-valve price is initially set at $7 (in nominal dollars) per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2012 and increases each year by 5 percent over the projected rate of inflation, as measured by the projected increase in the implicit GDP price deflator. In 2004 dollars, the safety valve rises from $5.89 in 2012 to $14.18 in 2030.

The proposal calls for initially allocating 90 percent of the allowances for free to various affected groups, but the proportion of allowances to be auctioned grows from 10 percent in 2012 to 38 percent in 2030. The revenue from the auctions and any safety-valve payments are accumulated into a “Climate Change Trust Fund,” capped at $50 billion, to provide incentives and pay for research, development, and deployment of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Treasury would retain any revenue collected in excess of the $50-billion limit.

Predictably, the EIA takes a dim view of the proposal. In essence they say that it would shave output in the early part of the program as industries pick the low-hanging fruit from a greenhouse gas (GHG) amelioration standpoint. But says the EUA, after that as gains get harder to come by, they would just pay more into the "saftey-valve" account and pollute away. However, the EIA predictions for future prices don't seem to take into account the increased expenses from either building non-GHG production, or paying the production penalty that the producers will incur and inevitably pass on to consumers.

All of EIA's prognostication abilities must be taken with a large grain of salt, considering for example their inability to predict (see: Natural Gas & Diminished Expectations) US gas production and imports over the last six years, or their utter failure to come to grips with North Sea peak oil.

Not saying that anything that reaches the floor will even remotely resemble the draft. But this at least shows that there are people on both sides of the aisle who are starting to think and -- more to the point -- plan seriously about making intelligent policy with regards to petroleum scarcity and global warming.

Radical Transparency in Journalism

Over at Wired they are starting to practice what they preach in the radical transparency experiment preached by Chris Anderson. Clive Thompson posts his thoughts and asks for comments prior to beginning work on a story on... "Radical Transparency." He is looking for examples of:

The curiously quotidian, everyday ways that life is being tweaked -- and improved -- by people voluntarily becoming more open. That includes: Clubhoppers hooking up with each other by listing their locations in real-time on Dodgeball; mining company CEOs making billions (billions!) by posting their geologic data online and getting strangers to help them find gold; Dan Rather's audience fact-checking his work and discovering that crucial parts of his reporting evidence are faked; sci-fi author Cory Doctorow selling more of his print books by giving e-copies away for free...

Specifically, he says he is working on the following general guiding principles of radical transparency.

Secrecy Is Dead: The pre-Internet world trafficked in secrets. Information was valuable because it was rare; keeping it secret increased its value. In the modern world, information is as plentiful as dirt, there's more of it than you can possibly grok on your own -- and the profusion of cameraphones, forwarded emails, search engines, anonymous tipsters, and infinitely copyable digital documents means that your attempts to keep secrets will probably, eventually, fail anyway. Don't bother trying. You'll just look like a jackass when your secrets are leaked and your lies are exposed, kind of like Sony and its rootkit. Instead ...

Tap The Hivemind: Throw everything you've got online, and invite the world to look at it. They'll have more and better ideas that you could have on your own, more and better information than you could gather on your own, wiser and sager perspective than you could gather in 1,000 years of living -- and they'll share it with you. You'll blow past the secret-keepers as if you were driving a car that exists in a world with different and superior physics. Like we said, information used to be rare ... but now it's so ridiculously plentiful that you will never make sense of it on your own. You need help, and you need to help others. And, by the way? Keep in mind that ...

Reputation Is Everything: Google isn't a search engine. Google is a reputation-managment system. What do we search for, anyway? Mostly people, products, ideas -- and what we want to know are, what do other people think about this stuff? All this blogging, Flickring, MySpacing, journaling -- and, most of all, linking -- has transformed the Internet into a world where it's incredibly easy to figure out what the world thinks about you, your neighbor, the company you work for, or the stuff you were blabbing about four years ago. It might seem paradoxical, but in a situation like that, it's better to be an active participant in the ongoing conversation than to stand off and refuse to participate. Because, okay, let's say you don't want to blog, or to Flickr, or to participate in online discussion threads. That means the next time someone Googles you they'll find ... everything that everyone else has said about you, rather than the stuff you've said yourself. (Again -- just ask Sony about this one.) The only way to improve and buff your reputation is to dive in and participate. Be open. Be generous. Throw stuff out there -- your thoughts, your ideas, your personality. Trust comes from transparency.

U.S. States' GDP As Other Countries

Fascinating post from Carl Størmer via Big Picture shows the various US states' gross domestic product as their foreign country equivalents. Hooray, Iowa, we're Venezuela. Greetings, Kansas/Malaysia.

High Def DVD Format Wars: As Goes the Porn Industry

Oh, what the heck. Mote technology news.

It is Beta vs. VHS redux in the fight for dominance in high definition DVD formats. In this corner we have Sony, once again, with the higher quality but more expensive Blu-Ray format. In the other, is HD DVD a product of Toshiba labs and supported by the the trade industry, DVD Forum.

This story pretty much writes itself. But it does get better. Just as in the Beta-VHS wars of the 1970's and 80's, the multibillion dollar porn industry will get the first and most influential vote. But this time, Sony may have taken themselves out of the running altogether. Rumor has it that Sony has vowed to pull the license of any replication house that goes... um, blue.

At last week's Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas (which coincidentally -- nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- runs alongside the Consumer Electronics Expo), the opinion was nearly unanimous that HD DVD would be the way the industry is going.

Studios cited Blu-ray's expense, a dearth of replication houses and market share as the key drivers. "Blu-ray has superior quality, yes," said a spokesperson for porn outfit Bangbros, "but HD DVD is easier to produce, cheaper to produce and there are more HD DVD players in homes than there are Blu-ray players, for example in the Xbox 360.”

But there may be something more at work. Adult movie producer Digital Playground says it's going with HD DVD because Sony won't allow XXX movies on Blu-ray and will lift the license of any replicator who goes astray. Interestingly, last spring Digital Playground was vocal in its support of Blu-ray for its greater capacity and its presence in the PlayStation 3 game console, so whatever it ran up against must have been a serious deal-breaker. There's no confirmation that Sony is in fact enforcing a no-smut policy, but if it is, Sony must know it's putting itself at a disadvantage. How much of a disadvantage is open to question. Porn's influence vs. other market factors may be overestimated to begin with, and these days the most convenient access to dirty movies is online rather than in the curtained back room of the DVD rental store. For the time being, this race remains too close to call.

Microsoft Vista: Run, Don't Walk Away

Ahh, insomnia. When I suffer, the readers win.

We've been playing around a little bit with the Vista beta at work. But, best machine we had to run it on, a HP dc220 with a Pentium 4 - 2.8 GHz processor, 1GB PC-2300 SDRAM and built-in Intel video would not run the Aqu... um, Aero Glass interface.

The hardware requirements for the full Vista interface are daunting, especially for corporate customers. The Enterpries Hardware Plan requires a 1GHz or better processor, 1GB of RAM and a minimum 128MB dedicated video card. Most corporate PC's ship with video on the motherboard which shares the system RAM.

But the most disturbing thing about Vista to date are the extreme measures Mister Softee has gone to do make sure that you don't do anything with your computer the record and movie industries don't approve of.

Peter Guttman, a security researcher has dug into the innards of Vista and exactly how it keeps you from doing what you want with your computer. He has written a detailed analysis of the digital rights management features of Vista and has concluded that The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the
longest suicide note in history.. A bit of this article is below. (Sorry for the funky line breaks. I couldn't be bothered to fix them at 1:45 a.m.)

However, one important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista's content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that's unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry
wishes it were possible [Note C]. This conundrum is displayed over and over
again in the Windows content-protection requirements, with manufacturers being
given no hard-and-fast guidelines but instead being instructed that they need
to display as much dedication as possible to the party line. The
documentation is peppered with sentences like:

"It is recommended that a graphics manufacturer go beyond the strict letter
of the specification and provide additional content-protection features,
because this demonstrates their strong intent to protect premium content".

Vista's content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent
over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in.
Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF
(Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example,
feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction,
and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at
least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn't provide
any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing
protected content [Note E]. In other words if you've sunk a pile of money
into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won't be
able to use it with protected content.

Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon", released as a
Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to
play it under Vista. Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is
regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista disables it, and you
end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd.

Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista's content
protection, so the same applies to a high-end video setup fed from component
video. What if you're lucky enough to have bought a video card that supports
HDMI digital video with HDCP content-protection? There's a good chance that
you'll have to go out and buy another video card that really *does* support
HDCP, because until quite recently no video card on the market actually
supported it even if the vendor's advertising claimed that it did. As the
site that first broke the story put it in their article "The Great HDCP
Fiasco" (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdcp_support/) puts
it:

"None of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP
[...] If you've just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards
expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920x1080
resolution in the future, you've just wasted your money [...] If you just
spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play
1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you've just wasted your
money".

(The two devices mentioned above are the premium supposedly-HDCP-enabled cards
made by the two major graphics chipset manufacturers ATI and nVidia). ATI was
later subject to a class-action lawsuit by its customers over this deception.
As late as August of 2006, when Sony announced its Blu-Ray drive for PCs, it
had to face the embarrassing fact that its Blu-Ray drive couldn't actually
play Blu-Ray disks in HD format ("First Blu-ray disc drive won't play Blu-ray
movies",
http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/dvdburners/0,239029405,240091720,00.htm):

"Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that
support HDCP, this isn't yet possible".

limination of Open-source Hardware Support
-------------------------------------------

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output
devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used
to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably)
genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation
in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that
produces a result that's unique to that device type.

In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of
the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the
workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it
(for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS)
will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the
HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device
beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other
products.

This potential "closing" of the PC's historically open platform is an
extremely worrying trend. A quarter of a century ago, IBM made the momentous
decision to make their PC an open platform by publishing complete hardware
details and allowing anyone to compete on the open market. Many small
companies, the traditional garage startup, got their start through this.

Including Microsoft itself.

This
openness is what created the PC industry, and the reason why most homes
(rather than just a few offices, as had been the case until then) have one or
more PCs sitting in a corner somewhere. This seems to be a return to the bad
old days of 25 years ago when only privileged insiders were able to
participate.

And on and on... More follows on the hideous CPU overhead required to maintain the security of the playback stream; such as when idle checking the system every 30 microseconds to make sure nothing is happening.

I believe that MS is going to experience a tremendous amount of blowback at the consumer level. Maybe not so much at the corporate level. Large corporate customers will be happy with the new deployment and imaging tools and will be content to dial-down the user experience. And of course all those "content protection features" will help make sure that no one is playing DVD's or CD's on the company dime.

And it won't happen right away. No, it will be a year or so down the road, after millions of copies are sold pre-loaded on new comuputers and HDCP and Blu-Ray equipment and content begin to enter the market en masse. Then, as people realize (courtesy of people like me after they bring them to the shop to be "fixed" because they won't play DVDs) that Microsoft has crippled their PC and made their investment in expensive equipment and entertainment worthless... Then it will be torches and pitchforks time.

Bosworth Field for Bush In Iraq

The chief problem that has bedeviled the Bush Administration from the beginning in its Iraq project is that it seems to have been working with a construct of the Middle East of its dreams and desires, not of the Middle East as it is; 20,0000 years old, cradle of Western Civilization, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, a modern technological society burdened by cultural ideas from the Middle Ages, a bustling, brawling collection of tribes, clans, cults and idealists of every stripe imaginable in the human condition.

For a long time, the Administration and its supporters succeeded in getting many if not most of the American people to buy into its imaginary construct. It did this in much the same way as Peter Pan revived Tinkerbell. If we all clap hard enough and believe hard enough it will be so.

Well, facts are uncomfortable and uncompromising things. They will not be denied and they keep forcing themselves upon you. Anyone who is not completely psychotic will eventually be faced with accepting that their fantastic world view does not work in the world of facts and will change their outlook.

Not so our Glorious Leader. After a solid renunciation of his policies at the polls in November, it had the change to reevaluate. After the promulgation of the findings of the Iraq Study Group, an unwieldy collection of pretty much every rational idea put forth in the last four years for dealing with the situation in Iraq, the Administration could have made some hard choices.

Instead it has decided to throw yet more bodies into the fray. The plan Bush put forward on Wednesday would raise the troop levels to about what they were in mid-2005. This final "surge" will be combined with a push to get the Iraqi government to make a series of reforms that have been in the works since the government was empaneled in January of last year. That government has known that it needed to do these things and has not yet been able to do them. Expecting them to do so know is yet more wishful thinking.

Many Democrats have been branding this plan an "escalation" of the war in Iraq. Normally, I don't hold with such semantic shenanigans. However, it seems that escalation is indeed the word to be used here. The plan put forth to once-and-for-all occupy and pacify large swaths of Bahgdad by placing US soldiers in the neighborhoods 24/7 will force the militias who currently excersise defacto confrol to stand and fight. This will lead to an escalation in the level and ferocity of fighting.

Secondly, the entire framing of this plan as the last-best-hope for victory puts a huge mental pressure on military commanders and rank-and-file soldiery to pull out all the stops in day-to-day fighting. Former US Special Forces Colonel and Middle Eastern Expert, Pat Lang recently wrote an article Surging To Defeat:

As Robert Gates takes the helm at the Pentagon today, he is probably already aware that Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush are resolute in their decision to stay the course in Iraq (without using those words) for the next two years. What he probably does not realize is that the U.S. military is about to commit hara-kiri.

A “surge” of the size possible under current constraints on U.S. forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war. Reinforcement of Baghdad several thousand U.S. troops last summer simply brought on more violence. Those who believe still more troops will bring “victory” are living in a dangerous dream world and need to wake up.

Moreover, major reinforcement would commit the US Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there are no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to a hope of “victory,” and few measures will be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: the Bulge, Stalingrad, the Battle of Algiers. It will be total war with all the likelihood of excesses and mass casualties that come with total war.

To take up such a strategy and force our armed forces into it would be an immoral course of action, both for our troops and for the thousands more Iraqis bound to die.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., spoke for many of us last Thursday on the Senate floor:

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore.”

Yesterday, when George Stephanopoulos asked Smith what he meant by “criminal,” he replied:

“I said it. You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.”

If adopted, the “surge” strategy will be even worse than that. It will be something we will spend a generation living down.

Lastly, this week comes the news that US forces are going after Iranian operations in Iraq. The operation in Irbil last week took down a facility that was borderline to seizing diplomats. This is not necessarily a strategically or operationally poor decision. The Iranians are working actively with their clients and allies in Iraq and working their interests. The interests of Iran are not the interests of the US forces there and they could be considered legitimate targets.

However, Iran is not (yet) a belligerent in this conflict. More behavior such as that this week could change that. I believe that imprisoning Iranians qualifies as an escalation at least in the diplomatic sense that doesn't do much to advance our interests in stabilizing Iraq.

So, at the end of the day we are left with a President who has rejected all attempts by friends and foes alike at urging less-bad bad options in his Iraq adventure. He maintains is now obviously psychotic imaginary world-view of how things may be in Iraq and urges us towards one final effort to "win" "victory." He stands alone now, his former Congressional followers abandoning him in droves after seeing their colleagues cut down in November. Bush stands now alone, only his most loyal retainers by him like Richard III. A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Yet none have the courage or the will to gainsay the President his powers to send unknown hundreds (thousands?) of American men and women to their doom, to undoubtedly kill thousands more Iraqis -- innocent and not, and to commit yet more crimes of war.

Would that he will suffer the torments of Richard on the eve of battle.

Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu!--Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.

Norton Ghost Sucks

If you are ever looking for a system backup package and find yourself in a retail outlet looking at Norton Ghost, run do not walk away. I am now at the store fixing my system that has been FUBARED by Ghost for the second time in 6 months.

Also avoid the Maxtor One-Touch backups with Retrospect bundled. Retrospect is another venerable old product that now blows.

I've had a couple of good experiences with Acronis TrueImage 10 and think that's where I'll go next.

Equal Cheers Under The Law

Interesting article in today's NYT on recent state court rulings requiring equal attendance by cheerleaders at boys' and girls' games.

Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls’ basketball team as well as the boys’, more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

The eight remaining cheerleaders now awkwardly adjust their routines for whichever team is playing here on the home court — “Hands Up You Guys” becomes “Hands Up You Girls”— to comply with a new ruling from federal education officials interpreting Title IX, the law intended to guarantee gender equality in student sports.

“It feels funny when we do it,” said Amanda Cummings, 15, the cheerleading co-captain, who forgot the name of a female basketball player mid-cheer last month.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

But the ruling has left many people here and across the New York region booing, as dozens of schools have chosen to stop sending cheerleaders to away games, as part of an effort to squeeze all the home girls’ games into the cheerleading schedule.

Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy.

Several cheerleaders there recalled a game two years ago, long before the complaint, when the squad decided at the last minute to cheer for the girls’ team because a boys’ game was canceled.

The cheers drowned out directions from the girls’ coach, frustrated the players, and created so much tension that the cheerleaders left before halftime.

“They asked, ‘Why are you here?’ ” recalled Joquina Spence, 18, a senior cheerleader. “We told them, ‘We’re here to support you,’ and it was a problem because they kept yelling at us.”

But, as the New York State Public High School Athletic Association warned in a letter to its 768 members in November, the education department determined that cheerleaders should be provided “regardless of whether the girls’ basketball teams wanted and/or asked for” them.

This court ruling is sexist on its face. The obvious solution is to require that schools establish a boys-only cheerleading squad which would cheer for the girls' teams.

Billmon Is No More

A few weeks ago, in a post on Jim Webb I cited blogger Billmon as I often do. At that time I mentioned that one of the strengths of this participatory culture is that, once you make the investment of time in finding a blog or blogger whose judgment and opinion you could trust, it was like having another brain. There was someone else out there who had the attention and time to find the stories that interested you and who could put them in a context that spoke directly to you.

Since the early days of the Iraq war, Billmon has been one of those bloggers not only for me but for millions of readers. However, around the first of the year, after dropping a number of hints over the last several months, Billmon shut the doors of the famous Whiskey Bar.

Best of luck to you man, whoever you are.

The Philadelphia Inquirer covered the story.

Work, Work, Work

The new year has started off at a pretty torrid pace at Effective Networking. Plus the boss left for Hawaii and left little old me to run the joint. Back soon.

Online Behavior or Yes, We Have No Bananas

Came across this interesting post via metafilter, regarding psychopathic behavior in on-line forums.

The Blog Commenter's Gaze:

The cover story of the December 9th issue of Science News, The Predator's Gaze, is about psychopathy. The whole article is worth a read, but the brief description of psychopathy at the beginning got me thinking about something that Anil Dash wrote the other day. He highlighted a review of a B&B made by a potential guest that was upset that his many attempts to persuade the owners to accept his expired gift certificate. Anil labeled this person a sociopath:

As a public service, I offer you my analysis. This quote is how you can tell this guy is a sociopath. Not that he merely went online and vented to random strangers about his greediness. No, rather, that he was willing to concede his own willful ignorance (or illiteracy?) while complaining. The web is littered with these chuckleheads who point out their own sociopathic behavior while complaining about others.

At dinner the other night, a group of us were talking about a particularly irksome message board contributor and the subject of sociopathy came up again. This particular person seemed to be oblivious to the rules of the board, didn't pick up on the social cues of other participants or moderators to modify his behavior, and was making public personal attacks against others while complaining that others were doing the same to him, even though they were not. Anyone who runs a community site, has comments on their blog, or participates on a message board knows this guy -- and it usually is a guy. He's the fly in everyone else's ointment, screaming in the middle a quiet conversation, and then says things like "if you hate me, I must be doing something right".

With that in mind, some quotes from the Science News article:

Psychopaths lack a conscience and are incapable of experiencing empathy, guilt, or loyalty.

People with psychopathy don't modify behaviors for which they're punished and don't learn to avoid actions that harm others, Blair proposes in the September Cognition. As a result, they fail to develop a moral sense, in his view. Blair's theory fits with previous observations that psychopaths have difficulty learning to avoid punishments, show weak physiological responses to threats, and don't often recognize sadness or fear in others.


He views psychopathic personalities as the product of an attention deficit. Psychopaths focus well on their explicit goals but ignore incidental information that provides perspective and guides behavior, Newman holds. Most other people, as they take action, unconsciously consult such information, for instance, rules of conduct in social settings and nonverbal signs of discomfort in those around them.

Sounds a lot like the fellow we were discussing at dinner. I don't think most of the people that demonstrate antisocial behavior in comment threads are actually psychopaths or sociopaths (there is a difference) in real life. Rather, interacting via text strips out so much social context and "incidental information" that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense.

Thinking about disruptive commenters in this way presents an interesting challenge. According to the article, psychopathy seems to be genetic in nature and curing people of this extreme antisocial behavior can be difficult. An Australian study cited in the article found that boys with behavioral problems reacted better to rewards for good behavior than to punishments for bad behavior. Maybe looking for ways to reward bad online community members for their good behavior as well as trying to replace some of the stripped away social context is the way forward. (A quick idea for replacing some social context: add a graphic of eyes to the text-posting interface?)