You can now find me blogging, sans pseudonym, at Strike the Rootmy new constellation of blogs!

There once was a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmerâ€s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmerâ€s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the Taoist farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

About a week later, the horse returned, bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the Taoist farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the corralling of the horses, came to see for themselves. As they stood there looking at the corral filled with horses, the neighbors said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

A couple of weeks later, the Taoist farmer’s son’s leg was badly broken when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to break. A few days later the broken leg became infected and the son became delirious with fever. The neighbors, all hearing of the incident, came to see the son. As they stood there, the neighbors said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

At that same time in China, there was a war going on between two rival warlords. The warlord of the Taoist farmer’s village was involved in this war. In need of more soldiers, he sent one of his captains to the village to conscript young men to fight in the war. When the captain came to take the Taoist farmer’s son he found a young man with a broken leg who was delirious with fever. Knowing there was no way the son could fight, the captain left him there. A few days later, the son’s fever broke. The neighbors, hearing of the son’s not being taken to fight in the war and of his return to good health, all came to see him. As they stood there, each one said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”

According to Taoism, the true significance of events can never be understood as they are occurring, for in every event there are elements of both good and bad. Furthermore, each event has no specific beginning or end and may influence events for years to come.

But let’s see here: if Uncle Sam helps out AMEX, it allows AMEX to float more credit card debt. Is this what our economy needs? Maybe credit card debt should dry up a little bit, especially since Americans abuse cards so badly. Sure, an illiquid credit securities market may make it harder for some Americans to refinance or consolidate some credit cards, but that is still no substitute for paying the bloody cards off and not incurring more debt, and ready access to new credits cards will probably just make it easier to avoid making the hard decisions.

In short, having the federal government go with more deficit spending so that Americans can get into more credit card debt sounds like a perfect recipe for destabilizing our currency and economy even more. No doubt it will be wildly popular on Capitol Hill for that reason.

map of route

photo set

“The issues that have provided conservatives with victories in the past — particularly welfare and crime — have been rendered irrelevant by success,” Michael Gerson, the Bush speechwriter turned columnist, wrote last week. “The issues of the moment — income stagnation, climate disruption, massive demographic shifts and health care access — seem strange, unexplored land for many in the movement.”

In fact these “issues of the moment” have been with us for years now, decades in some instances, but until recently they were either ignored by conservatives or dismissed as the hobby-horses of alarmist liberals or entrenched “special interests.”

He continues with a brief recap of the last thirty years in Washington, with observations that, to my perception, demonstrate that while the Republicans have been making a lot of noise with their ideological agenda, the Democrats have, slowly but surely, been developing a pragmatic approach. The election of Barack Obama, together with Democratic gains in Congress, appears to be the fruit of that labor.

Throughout the campaign there were plenty of people who criticized Obama for choosing to vague a theme with “Change.” At the same time, there were lots of Obama supporters who worried, up until just a month or two ago, that he was not mean enough, not aggressive enough in partisan combat. But I think both groups missed the real message of Obama’s campaign, which was wisely concealed right out in the open. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the message.” Barack Obama conducted himself and his campaign in a way that distinguished him from recent politics; he brought a reasoned and measured tone to everything he did. Melding smarts with rhetorical finesse, he managed to appear both pragmatic and inspirational.

The idea of “change” as a campaign theme was a brilliant move because the word evokes something different for everyone. People feel involved. They begin to cause changes. And now, after the campaign has ended, it leaves Americans the way an artful and thoughtful movie leaves them: with something to talk about. What was the “change” Obama kept talking about?

 

I’m just saying.

 

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**Statistics from the CDC and Alan Guttmacher Institute available at:   http://www.nrlc.org/ABORTION/facts/abortionstats.html.  Total abortions in the US since 1973 are 48.5 million.  Abortion rates began declining in the mid-1990s, and it seems that more than half of those abortions occurred in 1990 or earlier — i.e., at least 18 years before today’s date.

As seems to be standard practice for companies these days, you do not provide an obvious or easy method to give direct feedback on your products and services. So, after rummaging around the AT&T Wireless website for a while and finding no ways to “contact” you except when I need “support,” I decided instead to write a blog post, hoping that you, like Comcast, have minions that track these kinds of things.

I have an iPhone. That means a couple days ago I received the text message you sent to iPhone users informing us that we can now access free Wi-Fi at locations like Starbucks, where AT&T provides wireless internet access.

When I received the message, it seemed like a pretty sweet deal. But this morning, while I was at Starbucks, I tried to use your system. Here’s the short version of what I think: Your “service” sucks.

Whoever designed your “free Wi-Fi” for iPhone users clearly has no idea how iPhones are actually used. Let me explain by walking you through an example of how I tried to use your service.

While enjoying my coffee and reading a book, I turned to a footnote in my book, which cited another book that I may be interested in purchasing. So I pulled out my iPhone, opened Safari, and tapped my bookmark to Amazon.com. The usual prompt to choose a wireless network popped up and I chose the AT&T “free Wi-Fi” network. Then, instead of taking me to Amazon.com, your network hijacked my browser and required me to enter my ten-digit telephone number and tap a box to indicate that I agree with your terms of service. (By the way, do you think anybody really, honestly “agrees” with your terms of service when you make that indication mandatory to even use your service? But, you know, you’re a telecommunications company, so you get to just push us all around.)

But entering my telephone number and tapping that acceptance box did not connect me to the internet and send me on my way to Amazon.com. No, instead, you told me I would shortly receive a text message with a link to internet access. So I waited a bit, maybe ten seconds, and the text message arrived. It said:

Thank you for choosing AT&T. Click the link below to connect or reconnect to this AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot today. Free access is renewable every 24 hours.

Then there was a link. Which I tapped. AT&T interface design people: nobody “clicks” anything on an iPhone. But you are clearly not thoughtful enough to realize that.

Anyway, I tapped the link, which took me back to Safari, where another browser page popped up. That means when I tapped the icon to zoom out and scroll back and forth between the various browser pages in Safari, I now had two worthless pages open from AT&T: one telling me to wait for a text message and a second one telling me that I was now connected to the internet. Did you then automatically drop me off at my original destination, Amazon.com? No! I had to pull up my bookmarks and tap that link again. Ridiculous! Way too cumbersome.

But that’s only the first part of why your system sucks.

After looking at the listing for the book I wanted to see, I decided not to initiate a purchase just then, so I put my iPhone back in my pocket and kept reading. But a few minutes later, there was something else I wanted to look up, so I pulled out my iPhone again, thinking I was still connected to the “AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot” that your irritating text message had linked. Nope. I had to go through the whole routine again! Why? Apparently because “due to inactivity,” my session was shut down, or some such nonsense.

Listen, iPhones are not like internet terminals back in 1995. People do not sit down, log on, do a bunch of different things, log off, and walk away. With an iPhone, users connect, disconnect, reconnect, go online, go offline, and carry out small tasks here and there. This idea that “due to inactivity”—for just a few minutes!—the ability to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot should be terminated without going through your ridiculous little procedure again is preposterous from a user interface standpoint.

And if I want to use another internet-connected application on the iPhone, like the Mail application, the added steps are even more ridiculous. To check my email with a Wi-Fi connection, I have to go into Safari, then into the SMS application, then back to Safari, then to Mail. That’s just stupid.

So what did I do? I went to the Settings on my iPhone and told the phone to “forget” that network. I went back to the “Edge” data network. Even though the connection speed was not as fast as the Wi-Fi, I didn’t have to waste my time entering my number, waiting for a text message, clicking a link, closing two worthless pages, re-navigating to where I wanted to go, etc.

In other words, your “service” sucks. I put the word “service” in quotation marks because it didn’t feel like a service. It felt like a waste of my time. Your free Wi-Fi for iPhone users needs some major improvements before I’ll use it again.

Maybe you could talk to Apple and get them to add something into the firmware so that when AT&T routers detect an iPhone trying to connect, they perform some kind of “handshake” transaction with the phone to determine whether the user is an AT&T customer. Then provide seamless connectivity for people who are your customers, without making us go through all your silly procedures.

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative group, called it a “top order of business” to determine Ms. Palinâ€s future role. “Conservatives have been looking for leadership, and she has proven that she can electrify the grass roots like few people have in the last 20 years,” Mr. Bozell said. “No matter what she decides to do, there will be a small mother lode of financial support behind her.”

The Democrats are running a candidate with an impressive intellect, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, who is so articulate that the humorists at Saturday Night Live still haven’t figured an effective way to make fun of him. Even conservatives are impressed by how well he’s run his campaign.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are running a couple of intellectual lightweights who are so easy to parody that even I can totter around like a mental patient saying “my friends” or pull out a snippet of halfway decent Palin-speak sometimes. You betcha. Then you have Republicans saying things like the remark quoted above, conflating “leadership” with the ability to “electrify the grass roots” and raise “a small mother lode of financial support.” Who are these people? Could they be more transparent about their desire to have power even at the cost of putting idiotic figureheads in the Oval Office, destroying our national respect at home and abroad, and systematically dumbing down our social discourse?

When was the last time Republicans ran a candidate who had some intellectual heft or at least respectability? Twenty years ago? Thirty years ago? Maybe. But then Alan Greenspan wrote in his recent book that Richard Nixon was hands-down the smartest president he ever worked with, so maybe a wicked-smart Republican is not what the world needs.

If the Republicans could run somebody with the intellectual credentials, articulation, and rhetorical strength of Barack Obama, on a solid conservative platform without all the “moral” issues that have plagued the Republican party for the last thirty-five years, since Roe v. Wade, then I would probably vote for him or her. But who are they looking at? Sarah Palin. Ridiculous.

Thursday,
November 20, 7:00pm
Clarion University, Clarion, PA
Carlson Library, Level A

Wednesday,
November 19, 8:00pm
Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh,
PA
McConomy Auditorium, University
Center

For those who cannot make these talks, Fems for Life is beginning to put some brief talks on Youtube. There is only one so far, but keep your eyes peeled as they will be building it up.