Truer Words - A Journal

StratFor On the Significance of Those Cartoons

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:39:45 GMT

Strategic Forecasting sent out their latest, free intelligence report today. This one provides a pretty thorough analysis of the background and results of Those Cartoons.

I've attached the whole article (with permission), but here's my favorite quote:

European states cannot control what private publications publish. That means that, like it or not, they are hostage to Islamic perceptions. The threat, therefore, is not under their control. And thus, even if the actions or policies of the United States did precipitate 9/11, the Europeans are no more immune to the threat than the Americans are.

If you're at all interested in the apparent "collision of civilizations," read this article.

Those Cartoons

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 14:42:22 GMT

I'm not particularly surprised that the European press ran those cartoons that have the Muslim world in an uproar.

I am surprised that Dave Winer hasn't even mentioned them, as far as I can tell, nevermind actually run one or two of them himself. (I wonder if he's even considered showing one of them?)

It also surprises me that so few American papers have run it. Not that I'm claiming they should: not running them seems to have shown some wise self-restraint. Or maybe they're just scared.

Are the cartoons being avoided out of respect for Muslim beliefs, or is it just fear of reprisals?

France, the Netherlands, and Europe's Constitution

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:31:23 GMT

By now, I'm sure everybody knows that French voters rejected the European constitution in Sunday's referendum. Voters in the Netherlands did the same thing, today.

This really, really surprised me. I fully expected Europe to come together this year and "stand up" as something like a single nation.

Now I don't know what to think. Is there some change that could be made to the constitution which would make it more appealing to these vothers, or is the whole idea of One Europe anathema to the majority? Is the main issue "globalization," as they've been reporting here in the US media, or is it significantly more complicated? Something else entirely?

What's the prevailing line of thought among the voters who rejected it? (Is there a prevailing line of thought, some common opinion or idea held by the majority?)

He Must Have Had a Pretzel In His Mouth...

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 23:10:50 GMT

Bush today said that Iran's "moo-lah" need to be convinced to renounce their "nucular ambitions."

If you heard the quote on NPR, did you notice how he dragged out "moo-lah," as though he was relishing the pain he was inflicting? (I applaud the reporters for being able to sit through these speeches with their sanity intact. Perhaps that's the difference between webloggers and paid journalists?)

Is this phoneticide? Is he some sort of languassassin?

Speaking of Missing the Point...

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 04:52:29 GMT

Seems Mr. Negrino not only saw my last post, but responded to it very quickly. He might have been better off reading it again and thinking about it before replying so quickly.

"Mean man say I wrong. Me not like that. Must hit with club or say ugly things." (Which is fine, I can take it, but please be careful to not actually read everything I wrote.)

He starts out by saying that my post was unsigned. All the posts on my journal (the home page) are by me. It even says so, down in the lower right corner. "Truer Words is Seth Dillingham's personal web site." He probably didn't scroll down that far, but the comments link for that post does have my name, right there at the top.

I've read his post, twice. Much of it is strangely reminiscent of the old question, "Are you still beating your wife?" I never said or implied most of what he's talking about, nor did I comment on most of his post. (I quoted the paragraph on which I was commenting. Maybe he missed that.)

Actually, I intentionally avoided my first reaction to the original post. "Oh, here's another liberal who's hurt and angry because Bush got another four years. Now that Iraq has taken a real step towards democracy and self-rule, it's not as easy to pick on Bush and the utter failure that is the Iraq war, becuase something real has finally been accomplished. So, instead, let's just pick them apart because a bunch of religious clerics -- before the government has even been formed -- reportedly want a Shariah-friendly government."

The only issue I had with his post was the intellectual elitism. It's not about whether he was right or wrong, because in fact I agree with much of what he said. In fact, even that is an exaggeration. My real problem was the lack of humility. I was being literal: it bugged me that he was claimed the whole twenty-first century for America and/or "the West."

Who cares what century it is? Why is Shariah any less (or more) appropriate now than it was a couple-few hundred years ago? A huge number of people are under Shariah law now, far more than there were in the 15th century. That's tragic and sick, though my pointing that out has nothing at all to do with Mr. Negrino's pitiful attempts at character assassination.

You've confused a mildly-annoyed, half-hearted response to part of one of your paragraphs with nonsensical blather, as you put it. You wouldn't know nonsensical blather, Mr. Negrino, if it fell in your lap. Believe me, I know this to be true, as i've read a couple of your books. Also, you may not have liked the tone of my post, but it wasn't intended to be hostile. Can't say the same for this one, especially this paragraph. In case you were wondering.

(Mr. Negrino probably didn't see Brian Carnell's comment on Jim's site, either, although I linked to Jim's message for exactly that reason.)

Iraq's Elections Took Them Back to What Century?

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 21:24:49 GMT

Jim pointed to an article on Backup Brain about the Iraqi elections. Apparently the Shiites, who will have the majority in the new government (based on last month's elections), don't want the new constitution or any laws passed by the new state to violate Shariah (Islamic code of conduct).

The author of the piece, Tom Negrino, goes on to say:

So the US deposed a brutal (but rabidly secular and agressively modern) regime that was at best a theoretical threat to the US, and has created a new Islamic republic in the Middle East. Yes, the Iraqi people have now voted, and I guess that's a good thing. But it appears they have voted themselves back into the 15th Century. And it only took $400 billion and 1,500 American lives to achieve this triumphant result.

They voted themselves back into the 15th century, because The clerics generally agree that the constitution must ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a basic understanding of Shariah? Does Mr. Negrino have any idea just how much of the world is living under Shariah today, in the 21st century? Or, is our Western civilization really the best definition of our century? Does that mean they voted themselves back into our 15th century?

Oh, wait... the United States didn't have a 15th century.

Have I mentioned, before, that intellectual elitism tends to grate on my nerves?

"We're liberal, democratic and secular, so we're also smarter and better than you. How stupid of you, therefore, at the dawn of your new civilization, to choose a government for yourselves that expresses beliefs which are so different from our own! (Nevermind the dawn of our own civilization[s], if you please.)"

More About Morality in the Election

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 11:26:43 GMT

I'm seeing a lot of comments around the web about the morality issue in the election. Most of the comments are from Democrats... which is not really a surprise, since I'm seeing the comments on the web. ;-)

What's bothering me about some of these comments is the idea that the Republicans used fear and proclamations of good and evil to convince the electorate that they were the more moral choice.

Consider Brent's comments:

Now, I voted for Kerry for moral reasons as well as practical. Freedom and civil rights are moral issues. The differences between Kerrys and Bushs foreign and economic policies are, in many cases, moral differences.

(And I think that winning an election by scaring people with gays is immoral. Its cynical, manipulative, panderingand its highly effective.)

Brent considers freedom, civil rights, and Federal fiscal policy to be moral issues. Generally, though, I think people consider those to be, well, civil issues.

Lots of people still believe in the "old fashioned" sense of right and wrong. Bad fiscal policy is stupid, but it's not "sinful." The Patriot Act is disturbing and restrictive and overarching, but it's not shameful or scandalous.

This knee-jerk reaction that the Republicans only got the "morality vote" because they scared people is just plain wrong, and is preventing people from seeing what may have actually happened here. That is, the "left" and the "right" seem to have developed entirely different senses of right and wrong.

Years ago we had a long discussion about right and wrong, morality, and atheism. The current issue goes right back to what I was trying to understand (and the point I was trying to make) back then: what is your source of morality? What is your moral compass?

On one side of this election, the compass was apparently one's own sense of what does or does not harm another (humanism, generally, and I only use that term because that's what others have used). On the other side of the election, the compass seems to be based more on a learned morality, mostly from the Bible but probably also from a shared sense of what it says (especially as there is no way that all those voters are actually "religious").

Perhaps it would be better to try to understand why Bush would win the moral vote, why people might see him as the more moral of the two, without chalking it up to stupidyt, fear, or intimidation, and without attempting to psycho-analyze millions of people.

(Please note that I didn't vote, and I was bound to be disappointed no matter who won. I personally don't think either choice was a particularly moral character. This post is about understanding what happened, not promoting either viewpoint.)

End of the Survivor: Arafat is Dead

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 11:53:29 GMT

Apparently Arafat just died, only hours after it was reported that he was in a coma.

It was mentioned in the press interview with Bush (which is happening now), he was just told by a reporter. Can't even find any links on it yet.

Choose Your High Ground

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:23:49 GMT

A complaint I often see about "the right," especially the "religious right," is that they always try to take the moral high ground.

But doesn't the left tend to claim the "intellectual high ground" as their territory? Today Brent made numerous references to the Democrats being the result of America's roots in Enlightenment, and basing everything on Reason. Since this was in contrast to the "other side," doesn't that imply that they are both unreasonable and unenlightened?

Brian Carnell made the point quite well in a reply to the message that started this topic. He said:

... the problem is that the media portrays opponents of gay marraige as a bunch of redneck bigots and the current strategy for instituting gay marriage is to bypass legislatures and go to the courts. Nobody should be surprised that when you tell a sizable part of the population that they're a bunch of bigoted morons whose opinion won't matter...

The "left" seems to believe that the "right" just needs more education, as though the reason they disagree is simply that one side doesn't understand the issues clearly enough, and those "educated few" on the right who still disagree are either bigoted (obviously that doesn't apply to all the issues), naturally unintelligent, or have some personal stake in or history with the issue which prevents them from seeing clearly.

The "right," however, tends to act like the "left" are a bunch of evil, baby-killing, gay heathen who have lost their way. With no built-in moral guidance of their own, laws are needed to protect them from theselves and to prevent them from corrupting America.

What a mess. Were this a negotiation of some sort, both sides would need a cooling off period.

Personally, I think the US is at its best when it's swimming the channel between the two banks, recognizing that individual rights and freedoms are wonderful and essential things, and tempering that recognition with an understanding that some things really do Matter, that some things can be Right or Wrong based on nothing more than principle.

Moral Values in the Election

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:46:45 GMT

Exit polls -- for whatever they're worth -- showed that the biggest concern among voters this year was not Iraq, the economy, or terror. It was moral values.

Iraq was second among voter issues, and Kerry drew 75 percent of those voters. But more Florida voters listed moral values as their main concern than Kerry's campaign issues of the economy or health care. Seventy-nine percent of the "moral values" voters went for Bush. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

The 2004 election produced more than a few surprises. Exit polls revealed that moral values trumped Iraq and the economy as a top voter concern. [NPR Morning Edition]

The economy and moral values were the top issues for young voters, with about one-fifth of those surveyed choosing each. Young people concerned about moral values strongly supported Bush, while those interested in the economy and jobs chose Kerry. [azcentral.com Arizona's Home Page]

One voter in five said moral values were the most important issue driving the vote, and almost eight out of 10 backed Bush. Terrorism was almost as high in importance, and 85 percent of voters citing it also supported the president. Kerry found his strongest support -- more than 80 percent -- among those who named the economy, jobs and the war in Iraq as their most important concerns. [Washington Post]

Might this have anything to do with the overwhelming support for constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman, on the ballots in eleven different states? Isn't anybody else going to make this connection?

I understand why so many webloggers came out so strongly against Bush. (Personally, as I told Corinne, I was going to be deeply disappointed no matter who won.) Still, it's interesting to see much of the country make a connection here that none of the pundits really expected.

The media may or may not be mostly-liberal, and the weblogging community most definitely does track strongly to the left, but that doesn't mean the country follows. Agree or disagree with what they've chosen, I find it quite refreshing that the people made a choice contrary to the expectations and wishes of the bias all around them.

Bush, Iraq, al Qaeda, WMD, Terrorism, etc., etc., etc.

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 09:21:41 GMT

Stratfor sent one of their frequent updates last night. This issue covered the mess Bush finds himself in as a direct result of not telling the public the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq. (He's bounced around from the imminent threat of WMD's to elimination of an evil despot to planting the seeds of democracy.)

They've previously laid out what they firmly believe to be the main line of reasoning behind the invasion. It's not a conspiracy theory, and is in fact a much more plausible and "acceptable" reason (relatively speaking) than spreading democracy... but Bush and his team can't bring themselves to spell it out.

It bugs me that nobody seems to be discussing this view (not the media, not the other sites I read, nobody).

Anyway, their mailing said it was ok to share it, so I'm attaching a copy of the article to this post.

Yes, it's lengthy, but it's worth the time to read it.

Funny Political Cartoon

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:08:36 GMT

The Command Post has a funny political cartoon showing all the candidates staggering down a race track towards NH.

What's funniest about it, to me, is John Kerry in the front looking so haggard and exhausted. He looks just like he did at the end of the first day in the PMC... and I'm speaking from experience, as he actually gave me an elbow in the food tent (so I got a good look at him). :-)

(The cartoon is originally from Cox & Forkum.)

Political Royalty Payments

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 27 Dec 2003 11:54:04 GMT

Last night HBO showed Collateral Damage at 8:00 on HBO-E, their most-watched channel. Then at 10:00 they showed True Lies. Both are Schwarzenegger movies.

A couple months ago, before the California re-elections, the Sci-Fi channel and USA both showed lots and lots of Arnie's movies.

Having a Hollywood big boy like Arnold sitting in Cupertino's big chair has to be good for the movie makers. Right? He's certainly going to have their best interests at heart, because he's one of them.

Update: I'm obviously a mac user. Jim Roepcke pointed out that "Cupertino" should have been "Sacramento." Duh. Thanks Jim!

While it's true that Schwarzenegger bankrolled his own campaign, so that he's supposedly not beholden to any special interests, does this mean he's no longer interested in money? Since he was already rich, did he make his last few movies for free? Is it a coincidence that T3 came out just before his campaign for governor?

Answers: No, no, and not very likely.

So with him already in office, what can Hollywood do to keep him happy? Ooh ooh, I know! They can pay him back for his self-financed campaign! But they can't do that directly, it would probably land them in jail. They can, however, show his recent movies a LOT more often, and at prime time, so that his royalty payments are much larger than they would be otherwise.

Huh. I'm apparently turning into a conspiracy theorist. Must be mind manipulation from the G-men.

Arar's Story Makes Me Ask: "Where Am I?"

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 16:18:09 GMT

If this story of Maher Arar is for real, if he really was treated this way, then I don't know where I am. I thought I was living in the U.S.A., but... I can't be. Or maybe I'm in the US but fell through a crack into an alternate dimension.

Or maybe the US has really, really lost its way. Or its mind.

I don't even care if he is a terrorist. The people in the US who treated him that way, especially choosing to send him to Syria, are no better. They've become what they are so afraid of.

Thanks, Jim, for posting those links.

The American Idea!

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 10:14:10 GMT

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard an interview with two guys who wrote a book about inventions. Unfortunately, I missed the beginning of the interview, so I'm not sure who they were (and I can't find anything about it on the NPR (Weekend Edition) site.

Their invention ideas were very interesting, but their final comments were the best. They said that their book isn't full of new ideas, and their not all their own ideas, but they all come from the very old American idea of "trying to find better ways to run the world."

I almost spit my coffee into the windshield! What a perfect quote! If somebody like Wait Wait -- Don't Tell Me! doesn't pick up on that quote for use in their show, I'll be very surprised and disappointed.

Update: Alwin provided the missing info. The name of the book (and web site) is Why Not?, written by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff. Thanks Alwin!

Why Iraq?

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:46:24 GMT

A thread over on Joggle's forums (of all places) seems to have set me off, a little.

They were talking about the fact that the US is still searching for WMD's in Iraq, so far without any luck. Someone suggested that this is like trying to find cigarettes in your kid's room, after warning him for six months that you were going to search his room for them.

I'll probably regret posting this here, as someone is bound to sTroll in and take a shot at me, but here's my response. (This is not meant to be pro or anti US, it's just an explanation of how I see the situation.)

Quoting usausa:

Should you refrain from disciplining your child because of what he might do if you do discipline him?

Since when is the USA the parent?

There's no evidence that he had weapons of mass destruction during the last few years before the war. None. Remember, the inspectors were there off and on for years before the war, and never found anything.

People keep saying that it takes a long time to find these weapons in such a big country, but it'll take a lot longer to prove they're not there: how do you prove something isn't there, without literally searching every square foot/meter/yard of the entire country?

Hussein was a bad guy, there's no doubt about that. Probably the worst in the region. The US had very good reasons for going into Iraq and deposing Hussein, but there's no evidence the WMDs were one of those reasons.

One good reason to go into Iraq is that the entire middle east is a hot-bed for state-sponsored terrorism. Again, there's no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, nor even that they had any significant connections with Al Qaeda, but Iraq is right in the middle of everything.

Strategically, there's no better country the US could have invaded. Now that they're in place, the military can start putting real pressure on the other nations to stop supporting terrorism or risk paying a price they know they can't afford.

The US needed a base of operations in the Middle East to "project power" into the region. Where else could they have gone? Kuwait's the only country that would have allowed them to increase their presence without an invasion, but it's not strategic enough for the rest of the region, and is way too small.

Consider everything the US government does, especially militarily, through the lense of counter-terrorism. The current "war" in Iraq isn't a war at all, it's just one front in the global war (at least, as the US seems to see it).

Anyway, I'm not making all this stuff up myself. There are lots of intelligence-analysis services (NOT news services) that publish freely-available reports on a regular basis. My favorite is Stratfor.

VeriSign 2.0

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 10:03:22 GMT

Network Solutions used to be the company we all loved to hate. They were in control of the whole .com name registration system.

They were bought by VeriSign a few years ago, who seemed quite happy with their role as the company we all loved to hate.

Reading Michael Tsai's site this morning, I found that VeriSign added a wildcard A record to the top level .com domain. In English, that means that if you don't type in a domain name exactly right, your browser will end up pointing to Verisign's own server, where they can display ads. In other words, they now effectively own every unregistered domain.

They're evil, and they've just been upgraded from "the company we all love to hate," to simply, "the company we all hate."

The folks at /. are leading (or at least, participating in) an effort to get ICANN to put a stop to this.

The Big Dogs Are In Town

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 09 Sep 2003 08:13:06 GMT

All six of the New England governors are here in Mystic, today. That's kind of weird. Maybe they're fishing, or having pizza.

Not sure where they're staying. If I can find out, maybe I'll stop by and say hi, maybe get some pictures. Or... not.

Actually, it might be a better idea to get out of town. With so much corruption and self-interest gathered in one place, our little town is likely to implode.

A National Operating System!?

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 13:11:46 GMT

Jim Roepcke thinks that it's a good idea for governments to try to standardize their nations on a non-Microsoft operating system (which some Asian nations are considering), and that the same thing is likely to happen in the West, sooner or later.

The specific bit I'm responding to is in a later message in the discussion prompted by that post (a message where he apparently compares the "American revolution, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights" to "the people" rising up, throwing off the tyranny of Microsoft and guranteeing their Freedom to compute. [That's an extreme, tongue-in-cheek paraphrase.] ;-)

So I suppose the American revolution, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were a bad idea? Or are you saying they were actually sponsored by corporations?

and:

If governments exist, we might as well use their influence and our influence over them to bring about change. Obviously, we don't always know what the right change is, but that's human nature. Corporations are no better at knowing the right path.

Once again, if Microsoft offered a decent product I don't think anyone would be bothering trying to make a people's OS.

Governments have far more influence over the people, via the media, than the people do over the governments.

1. People are generally uninformed about any topic they're asked about.

2. The majority doesn't vote.

The minority that still votes make their decisions based on what they've learned in the media. The problem is that mass media *always* does a lousy job of really explaining any issue.

For example, my specialties are software, religion, and cycling, three things on which I can be considered "very well informed" if not "expert." Whenever the mass media -- television, newspaper/online news, or radio -- covers any of these things, I shudder. They always leave out important facts, or get basic facts completely wrong.

Uninformed or misinformed populations can't make the right decisions except by chance. Far more likely is that "the people" are going to make whatever decision is presented as "best" through the media, without ever really understanding the question.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, but doesn't this seem like the world we live in today?

Besides, how are "the people" going to choose a National Operating System? A national referendum? Yeah right, not likely. It would be decided by the bureaucrats, elected or not.

I don't really care that Microsoft's OS is full of holes. If the market isn't smart enough or strong enough to punish them by choosing another OS, then the market has decided (by default, if nothing else) that the OS is "good enough." How are "the people" -- that can't punish Microsoft in the marketplace by choosing something else -- suddenly going to become smart and inspired enough to choose another operating system at the national level?

PMC Saturday Afternoon: Ship!, Senator John Kerry and the Draft, Nap Time!

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 02 Aug 2003 12:28:55 GMT

After arriving at the MMA, I took my bike to lockup.

The PMC is not a race, that's been made very clear to all of us, but those of us that ride all the time can't help but compare our performance with the rest of the crowd. So, I'm not ashamed to admit that I was very pleased to see a huge, almost-completely-empty bike lockup. By the end of the day, it would be filled with nearly four thousand bikes, but right now it held less than one hundred. Yes!

My plan for the next hour or two was to take a shower...

PMC Saturday Afternoon, Continued...

National "Do Not Call" Registry, and Spam

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 27 Jun 2003 18:42:07 GMT

The FTC has finally opened the National Do Not Call Registry. Register your phone number(s) on this list, and by October most telemarketers will be unable to legally call you.

NPR reported that Dubya said the list was growing by more than 100 numbers per second, at its peak today.

This doesn't just send a message to the telemarketers about invading our lives... it will effectively put most of them out of business, if enough people register. Good riddance.

There's little doubt that the (eventual) success of the the DNC Registry will be used to support similar legislation regarding email SPAM. Unfortunately, while I'd support any reasonable measure to reduce or eliminate the amount of spam (specifically UCE, or Unsolicited Commercial Email) I receive, I don't think a "Do Not Email" registry is the right approach. Two reasons: too much spam arrives from overseas and so enforcement would be virtually impossible, and I prefer the chaotic, unregulated internet to one with Big Brother watching over everything.

The solution to the spam problem, I believe, has not yet been found. There may not even be a good, general solution. MTA-level and MUA-level filters are not good enough: they reduce the spam I actually have to deal with personally, but they do nothing about the incredible amount of bandwidth (and money) it wastes on the inter-networks.

Society's Morals

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 15:28:08 GMT

An article on EquityFeminism.com about the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl by her fifty year old husband, both aboriginal Australians, leads right back to the ongoing discussions on this site about morality in atheism and society.

In this case, a man paid the parents of a girl a portion of his salary for years in order to have their daughter as his wife when she came of age. When she turned fifteen, they were married, but she refused to consummate... so he raped her.

The story doesn't end there. Though he was initially sentenced to thirteen months in jail, the judge in a higher court reduced the sentence to just one day. Sound crazy? Here's the reasoning:

Expert testimony submitted by an anthropologist in the case called the man's arrangement with the girl "traditional" and therefore "morally correct."

That was part of the defense the man used in his initial trial where he received 13 months. The appellate court's judge agreed with this defense, and so reduced his sentence.

This is an incredible example of the problem with society-based morals. If right and wrong is defined only by the opinions of society, then this judge acted correctly because the man was permitted to beat his wife into submission in his society.

That's disgusting, of course, but it's not surprising. It's the result of a worthless pseudo-morality that is based on society, on not understanding or believing or accepting that anyone is higher than man, or that anyone other than man can say what is right and wrong.

What Happened to "You're Welcome?"

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 10 Apr 2003 09:07:57 GMT

When did the polite response to "thank you" become another "thank you?"

Listen to any interview or discussion on NPR. At the end, the host always thanks the other person, and the other person always says "thank you" in return.

Whenever I pick up some fast food or a coffee, the end of the exchange is always "thank you" and "thank you."

This is very odd. What ever happened to "you're welcome?" I might hear "thank you" or "thanks" twenty or thirty times every day, but almost never hear anybody say "you're welcome."

Like Some Fries with that Hootie Roast?

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 09 Apr 2003 08:24:57 GMT

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition, sports commentator Frank Deford ate "Hootie Johnson" (of the Augusta National's Masters golf tournament) for breakfast. I haven't heard a blatant trashing like that on NPR in years!

... and of course, from another point of view, this is just a larger example of why volunteers shoudl not be allowed to run big-time sports. At root, The Masters and the United States Olympic program, and various other botched up sports federations, all suffer the same... that the people at the top are not qualified.

Playing five dollar Nassaus at the club does not equip a person to run a major golf spectacle. Be it golf, the Olympics, or whatever, we have to keep learning the hard way that professional sports can not be entrusted to blazer-wearing amateurs who are out of their league.

Though I don't have a problem with men wanting a boys-only club, I couldn't help but cheer Mr. Deford's fire and passion. He believes Hootie is doing serious damage to one of the most respected sports institutions, and he's not mincing words. That's the only way to make people think!

Souder and Cuomo: Spaking of Faith in Amerian Politics

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 28 Mar 2003 19:59:26 GMT

WNPR, the local NPR affiiliate, is currently playing a fantastic "Pew Forum" on faith and politics in America. The two speakers are former Governor Mario Cuomo (D-NY) and Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN).

Souder just made a point I raised ages ago, but came at it from a different direction. He said that the reason Russia has such a terrible problem with corruption is that they imported America's capitalism, but built it on a foundation of (decades of) near-atheism. The result was greed and corruption.

"In Russia, I would argue, and in other countries where weve exported capitalism without the moral foundation, what we wound up with was greed. When we export liberty without a moral foundation, you wind up with license.

Im on the board of the Russian-American Christian University. The goal is not to teach theology; its to teach economics with a moral foundation. When I had dinner with the head of their stock market, the struggle was that 75 percent of the assets initially in any bank statement werent real, and they just assumed thats what you do. If you dont have some sort of a premise, it is very hard to make our type of system work."

There's little doubt that the U.S. is much less "faithful" than it used to be (or much more secular), that Christianity (of some sort) plays a much smaller role in the life of the "average individual" than it used to. Does this have anything to do with the ongoing corporate scandals of the last couple years? (I think it might, but of course I can't prove that, and no I'm not saying there were never corporate scandals before.)

Mario Cuomo fascinates me, he's an excellent -- and extremely intelligent -- speaker. He's had his share of problems, and committed a number of blunders while in office, but during his years in office he did a fairly good job of applying his beliefs to his politics. His part of the forum, as the first speaker, are a bit more interesting than Congressman Souder's.

Jordan's Ambassador to the US: Punny Guy

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 21 Mar 2003 18:43:49 GMT

Jordan's ambassador to the U.S. was being interviewed on NPR this evening. The interviewer asked him what effect the war might have on the "Palestinian situation in the West Bank" (Israel).

He started his reply with, "King Abdullah is caught between Iraq and a hard place, the hard place being the Palestinians..."

Oh brother. I think he was trying to be funny.

*I'd* never be caught using puns. You know, being the lowest form of humor and all...

(Oddly, just as I wrote that, there was a major thunder boom... first in weeks. Must be a coincidence.)

Al Gore and the Internet

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 20 Mar 2003 11:28:36 GMT

I can't believe people -- especially those who should know better -- are still bashing Gore for the misquote about inventing the internet. Not only is that not what he said, but he actually did play a big part in creating what we now think of as the 'Net.

Here's the best piece on this subject I've seen. It's also the longest.

If you don't have time to read that, then read the one written by Kahn and Cerf instead. These are two men who can definitely take a bit of credit for "inventing the internet" (though they never would, since it's not one technology).

A Rambling on "The Data Fog" and Majority Opinion

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 13 Mar 2003 18:01:14 GMT

The latest Stratfor Weekly newsletter, speaking on the build-up to the war in Iraq, contained a sentence I found extremely interesting:

It is as if global communications have created a layer of fog over geopolitical reality.

The newsletter's topic this week is aobut the mis-perception that Europe stands in solidarity against the U.S. war in Iraq, and that in fact the vote in the U.N. Security Council is something like 16-6-6 in favor of the war.

That quoted sentence struck a chord, though. My thoughts are that we're very close -- or have already reached -- the point of saturation. Our ability to communicate information and stories is at an all time high because of all the forms of global communication (phones, email, web sites, global news coverage) at our fingertips. Unfortunately, when all information is available -- or worse, actually pushed at us -- at once, we're really no better off than having none of it.

Living on the receiving end of that firehose of communication, we all find a small set of signals to tune in and try to ignore the rest. I know it's easiest to hear the loudest signal, but I also know the loudest signal is not always the truest.

If the news organizations on the radio, tv, and the web are all saying basically the same thing, they're probably wrong. The majority is very rarely in the right.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
- Samuel Clemens

Standards

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 03 Mar 2003 14:51:12 GMT

There's a bit of fussing on Apple's Java-Dev list right now because someone referred to Java as a "standard." Some folks get all up-in-arms about misuse of the word "standard," believing that it's not a standard until some not-for-profit (IETF, W3C, ISO, etc) publishes something saying it's a standard.

Yeah. Like XHTML is a standard now just because the W3C published it. Ahem. Looks like XHTML 2 is really going to be a big hit with the web developers, huh?

I think we sometimes forget what the word "standard" means. How about just, "this is the way we do things," or, "for future reference and compatibility, this is the specification to which we're generally adhering."

Java *is* a standard. Not an open standard like HTML which is driven by an altruistic, no-commercial-interest organization like the W3C (my computer's "Bupkus Detector" keeps flagging that sentence, must be a bug), but it's a standard in the more important sense that its adoption has been very wide-spread and deep.