Christopher DeMille

Dude! I mean, Your Holiness!

2008-04-21T07:49:00.006-04:00

"Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." —President George W. Bush to the Pope at the White House, April 16, 2008.

Technorati tags: groktesta

My call is important!

2008-04-17T07:55:00.009-04:00

A message to all customer service telephone operations everywhere: Your recorded assurance, played every two minutes while I'm on hold for two hours waiting to speak with a support person, that "Your call is very important to us" impresses me not at all. If it was that important to you, you wouldn't have me waiting two hours to speak with someone. Besides that, I'm less concerned about the importance of my call to you than I am about its importance to me, and the latter is what it would be really nice for you to acknowledge, and it would be even nicer if you acted accordingly.

Technorati tags: customer service

Russian flag at North Pole—so?

2007-08-07T07:14:00.003-04:00

Using a robotic arm, a Russian submarine planted a flag in the seabed at the North Pole last week. Under ordinary international law, because the North Pole is under the open sea, Russia would have no more claim over that area than the US would have on the Pacific Ocean between the Aleutian Islands and Hawaii. And in 1969, the US planted a flag on the moon. Did people flip out then? It didn't mean the US has a territorial claim to the moon or any part of it.

But this is different. There is a UN convention on the exploitation of buried resources in the Arctic by the nations from which the continental shelf extends into the Arctic Ocean. Canada's upset because Russia's way ahead of them. It's there own fault, though, if they haven't gotten the technology together that they need to press their own claims.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Russian MTV is sporting a new signature photo.

Technorati tags: arctic flag oil resources robotics

House snubs marriage amendment

2006-07-18T14:53:00.004-04:00

Another attempt to amend the US Constitution to ban same-sex marriage has failed, in the House, this afternoon. Thank goodness. Didn't anyone read it? It says,

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither the Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

Can you find the inanity? This pronouncement has the humorous consequence that even if a state's legislature and people voted to add a provision their state constitution reading "Marriage shall be legal between two persons of the same sex and shall be subject to all the terms, rights, privileges, and obligations associated by law with marriage between two persons of the opposite sex," courts would not be allow to construe this provision to say what it says. Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado wrote this, and she isn't very bright so it's understandable, but it speaks to the rabidness of the the amendment's supporters that they ignored anyone who pointed out the problematic nature of the language (not to mention the fact that it goes further than even the President wanted it to go, though of course the President has no role in the process of amending the Constitution), concerned that any alteration, even in the name of commonsense, would be read among their core voters as a capitulation to the enemy.

Technorati tags: same-sex marriage gay rights

Measuring our love for our national parks

2006-07-05T15:32:00.003-04:00

From time to time some periodical or other reports that we are overrunning our national parks. As resorts and cities become more expensive as tourist destinations, and as it becomes easier, thanks to electronics and miniaturization, to carry along the comforts of home, more people are throwing the kids in the SUV and trekking to our wilderness areas to be with nature. This level of traffic is stressing animal and plant life, crumbling roads and eroding trails, straining maintenance resources, and detracting from the pristine beauty that draws visitors in the first place.

So Juliet Eilperin's piece, "'Videophilia' Keeps America Indoors" in today's Washington Post, came as a surprise. According to Eilperin, attendance at America's national parks has been shrinking since 1987! And she relates the findings of two researchers that the popular obsession with at-home movies, the Internet, and video games is responsible for perhaps 97.5% of the drop in park tourism.

Oh, come on. Staying in to see The Day After Tomorrow for the 80th time is what one does instead of weeding the yard, not instead of taking a Yellowstone vacation. That the researchers' conclusion is implausible becomes clear when they observe that "[i]n 2003, the average American devoted 327 more hours than in 1987 watching movies, playing video games and using the Internet" as though it were not only an explanation but a revelation. In 1987 the average American devoted no hours to Internet use! If the average American now spends at least an hour each day on-line, that more than accounts for 327 hours spent on the Internet alone. Of course we now spend at least that much time on the Internet, movies, and video games together. And since most Internet use is for work, shopping, correspondence, and entertainment after school or work—in other words, activities in which people have always engaged in—it certainly is not displacing trips to national parks.

Returning to the question of whether park use is declining, I wonder whether all the previous articles I've read on the subject were wrong. I also wonder how alarmed I should be about the fears, noted in the article, that dwindling public exposure to national parks will lead to reduced public concern for the environment and conservation. So on the one hand the parks are being trampled to death by unrelenting swarms of tourists, and on the other hand they are at dire risk of neglect owing to plummeting attendance. Whichever way visitor statistics are actually headed, it's bad!

Technorati tags: conservation parks recreation society

Conservatives react to HPV vaccine recommendation

2006-06-30T09:12:00.001-04:00

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended that a new human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine be given to all girls and women from age 11 to age 26 (New York Times). The US Department of Health and Human Services is likely to accept the recommendation. One outcome will be the obligation to launch a program to make these immunizations available to poor girls ages 11–18 at no cost to them.

One reaction:

"You can't catch the virus, you have to go out and get it with sexual behavior," said Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group based in Colorado Springs. "We can prevent it by having the best public health method, and that's not having sex before marriage."
Ms. Klepacki's group opposes mandating Gardasil vaccinations.

This response is representative of the position that such right-wing groups usually have about any health or safety issue connected with what they see as a moral issue. Compare their opposition to making condoms available to teenagers and needle exchanges for intravenous drug users. Their observation that abstinence from sex or illegal drug use is the only sure way to avoid STDs, HIV, and so on. Nevertheless, they obstinately refuse to validate any other approach. They don't believe in Plan B (no pun with the emergency birth control pill by that name intended): it's their way or the highway. In their view, the government should only help the "moral", and the rest of us can fend for ourselves. It's the philosophy of government for the few.

I'm pleased to see that this shortsightedness isn't universal among these groups. The Washington Post shares this note about another conservative group:

"The Family Research Council continues to endorse both the distribution and the widespread availability of the vaccine," said Moira Gaul, the coordinator of the organization's Abstinence Project.

She said the council would oppose making the vaccine compulsory. That is because, unlike measles and many childhood infections, HPV is not transmitted casually or through indirect contact in public places such as schools.

Technorati tags: medicine morality

The right not to be offended?

2006-06-27T18:10:00.003-04:00

The fervor with which some Americans bellow for a law to criminalize the burning of the U.S. flag embodies a principle that should chill to the core any genuine believer in personal liberties: that there should be a right not to be offended. Essential to understanding our Constitutional rights is the comprehension that a right not to be offended would annihilate them. A person who sees nothing disturbing in an Animal Farm-style interpretation of the Bill of Rights,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion unless I am offended, or prohibit the free exercise thereof unless I am offended; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press unless I am offended; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble unless I am offended ....

is a person who lacks the most fundamental grasp of the significance of the rights that have been bestowed on us and of the meaning of their inalienability.

Technorati tags: freedom of speech human rights right not to be offended flag burning

Bush on signing statements: pseudo-legislative mumbo-jumbo

2006-06-27T15:56:00.001-04:00

From the Washington Post's June 27 article on presidential signing statements:

The bill-signing statements say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

You can't reserve a right you don't have. The courts will interpret law based on Congressional intent, not Presidential intent, because laws, after all, aren't written by the President. The President can signal how he will interpret the law, but if his interpretation differs from the words or intent of the legislation, then he won't be changing the law, he'll be putting us on notice about how he intends to violate it. As for the matter of constitutionality, that's what the Supreme Court is for. When the Administration disputes the constitutionality of a law, it requests an opinion from the Supreme Court. That's the way it's always worked, and that's they way it should work.

Maybe Bush will tell us next that if he crosses his fingers while signing a bill, it doesn't count.

Bush push for line item veto

2006-06-27T15:15:00.001-04:00

Today's Washington Post article about the pending line-item veto bill:

Bush complained that many earmarks do not comport with budgetary priorities and result in "unnecessary spending." Often, he said, "earmarks are inserted into bills at the last minute, which leaves no time or little time for debate."

If Congress wanted a solution to this problem, they could change the houses' respective rules to prohibit introduction of unvetted last-minute amendments, right? This is addressed:

[Bush] said this procedure would "shine the light of day on spending items that get passed in the dark of the night," sending "a healthy signal to the people that we're going to be wise about how we spend their money."

It would also create a situation where fiscally abusive congressmen continue to get credit among their targeted constituents for having inserted the earmarks (just as they get credit now for introducing apple-pie bills year after year that are guaranteed to fail) while the President gets to take the fall when he infuriates the same constituents by vetoing the pork provisions. Why would the President expose himself like that? Conversely, if the President does exercise the line-item veto because the admiration they generate for him outweighs the resulting disgruntlement among the would-be beneficiaries of the special spending, then why wouldn't members of Congress rather have that credit directed toward themselves instead of the lower level of credit evoked by the earmarks?

Why can't Congress just learn to control itself? It has the means. It just lacks the will.

Deadlines are important!

2006-05-10T08:23:00.000-04:00

President Bush had this to say to elderly Medicare recipients regarding the May 15 deadline for enrolling in the Medicare prescription drug plan: "Deadlines are important. Deadlines help people understand there's finality, and people need to get after it, you know?"

That isn't the same tune he was whistling when pressured to set a target date for withdrawal from Iraq, was it?

It's SU-DO-KU, for heaven's sake!

2006-05-06T18:35:00.000-04:00

An old brainteaser asks, "What word is always pronounced wrong?" The trick answer is: the word "wrong." Haha, fine, but a real stumper is the inability of the most ardent fans of the latest rage in puzzledom to pronounce the name of their new favorite pastime.

Sudoku, from Japan, is a grid consisting of a three-by-three arrangement of smaller grids, each of which is a three-by-three arrangement of squares. The grid is initially seeded with digits from 1 through 9 in some small number of its squares. The goal is to fill in the remaining squares with digits 1 through 9 such that no digit is repeated in any one row, any one column, or any one subgrid. There may be more rules but I forget.

Perhaps eight people so far have professed to me their passion for Sudoku. Considering that the word is spelled phonetically, is only six letters long, and poses no phonetic challenge for native English speakers, I would think that someone who dawdles over these puzzles every day in the Washington Post or some other publication would pronounce its name correctly with no mental exertion. But over and over I hear either "su-du-ku" or "su-du-ko." Only once have I heard "su-do-ku."

Is a puzzlement.

Human chip implants: embedding pitfalls

2006-03-15T08:35:00.001-05:00

Two questions about the wisdom of implanting data chips into human beings for medical tracking purposes (The Washington Post), beyond the usual concerns about privacy:

Could unscrupulous types use data writing apparatus to record false information on people's chips, endangering their safety?
Aren't these chips the type of metallic implant that could hinder the use of MRI to diagnose medical conditions?

Technorati tags: medicine privacy security technology

Amazon's patent and trademark madness

2006-03-10T19:27:00.000-05:00

More silliness at Amazon.com has come to my attention since I wrote about their undeserved patent for their "1-Click" feature a couple of weeks ago. Now I see that they have created an icon (they call it a "badge") reading Real Name™. They place this doohickey next to the name of a reviewer when they've ascertained from his credit card information that he's writing under his real, genuine, actual, honest to God name. After all, if he's writing under his real name, they reason, by posting the review he's putting his reputation at stake, and so the fact that he's using his real name deserves the spotlight.

I think the significance that Amazon is attaching to a reviewer's use of his real name is a bit exaggerated. But never mind that: what in the world is the TM doing there? The reviewer is using his real name. That's what I would call it. That's what you would call it. Where do they get off trademarking the use of the phrase "real name" to refer to someone's real name? Why would they do that?

I was about to say that I hoped they didn't have the audacity to register the trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office, before it occurred to me to look for myself. Well, here it is, folks. There doesn't seem to be a way to create a direct permanent link to the details, but you can find the following information for trademark number 78627630 at the USPTO website.

What are they going to trademark next, the word "book"?

Word Mark REAL NAME

Goods and Services IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Business information services in the field of identifying and verifying credentials of users associated with submitted, posted or syndicated content. FIRST USE: 20050410. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050410

Standard Characters Claimed

Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK

Design Search Code

Serial Number 78627630

Filing Date May 11, 2005

Current Filing Basis 1A

Original Filing Basis 1A

Owner (APPLICANT) Amazon Technologies, Inc. CORPORATION NEVADA Attn: Trademarks PO Box 8102 Reno NEVADA 89507

Type of Mark SERVICE MARK

Register PRINCIPAL

Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Technorati tags: patents

Help me understand this bridge hand!

2006-03-06T07:43:00.000-05:00

Let's see if I get any bites. I'm starting to read up on bridge after a 30-year hiatus, so I took a look at Frank Stewart's Bridge in the Washington Post today, and I can't figure out the play. Can anyone explain it to me?

The contract is 3NT. I count nine obvious tricks for the declarer with a possible tenth in spades. After South takes West's 4H and East's 10H with the K, he goes to spades, which West lets go by on the first round and then stops in the second with the A. Then he clinches the contract for his opponents by playing a diamond.

Stewart says that if West had led the 9C instead of the diamond, South would have been down by two. How? As far as I can figure, Stewart's idea is that East will have two extra club tricks after everyone else's clubs have been exhausted. But if East responds to the 9 with the A and immediately leads to West's K, then a third club would be taken by South's Q and East won't ever get another chance to lead. If East ducks on the 9, then South wins a club directly.

OK, maybe I have figured this out, but confirmation would be appreciated! Since West led a low heart, East expects that West would like one sent back his way at this point. The result will be a successful finesse on South's Q, whether or not East anticipated a finesse, and West will wind up with four tricks in hearts to add to the AS and AH tricks, for down two.

Well, this was a useful exercise, but I've always wished that the bridge columns would explain it that far instead of making me figure it out! The mental exertion is beneficial, but even after I've worked the deal out I'm not sure that I've got it quite right.

Technorati tags: bridge

Putting stock in on-line newspapers

2006-03-02T04:15:00.000-05:00

Some newspaper publishers are ripping space-intensive financial market data out of their print editions and exiling it to their websites ("Newspapers Weigh Cutting Stock Pages," The Washington Post, 2 March 2006, page D03). John Temple of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver notes that:

Investors ... are mostly higher-income people who probably have Internet connections at home and want up-to-the-minute stock prices rather than the day-old figures a newspaper provides.

He also says, "'Frankly, it's had almost no measurable impact on our circulation.'" Maybe that's because the same people who check the markets every day and have the means to do so on-line ditched newspapers as their source for this information long ago. You can get stock prices from the Rocky Mountain News or Washington Post e-versions instead of their hard-copy counterparts, but you can also set up a profile at Bloomberg.com or many sites offering similar services and get an up-to-the-minute read on your personal portfolio whenever you want. I haven't checked a stock price in the paper, of either the physical or virtual variety, in years.

Technorati tags: technology techoisie

Acts of conscience by health professionals: the profession is not the point

2006-02-26T16:16:00.000-05:00

Dahlia Lithwick compares the situation of the California physicians who walked out on an execution to which they declined to be an accessory with the current debate over Wal-Mart pharmacists in Massachusetts who refused to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills ("Wal-Mart and the Death Penalty," Washington Post, 26 February 2006, page B3). Lithwick makes a case for distinguishing the rights and obligations inuring to physicians from those applicable to pharmacists. This analysis is beside the point. The primary difference, to expand on a perspective given in a letter to the editor in the Post, is like the difference between a movie multiplex that doesn't show R or NC-17 rated films, and a theatre that does show them, and has several currently playing, but has a ticket agent who for her own reasons of conscience refused to sell tickets to those films.

State officials seeking to have the California execution carried out didn't go to some doctor store that openly offers lethal injection services and then find that the doctors supplied to them, for their own personal reasons, wouldn't do what they'd been contracted out to do. The physicians are free agents, and they can choose to take an assignment or not. The pharmacists aren't in the same position. Wal-Mart doesn't have a policy against filling prescriptions for birth control, so customers visiting a Wal-Mart store in search of birth control have a reasonable expectation of being able to obtain it. Individual employees have no business derailing this transaction. That would be an awful lot of power to place in their hands. If the requirements of the job are at odds with their personal beliefs, then they ought to find a job that doesn't require them to subordinate their conscience. An Orthodox Jew won't take a job that requires working on the Sabbath. A vegetarian who believes "meat is murder" shouldn't apply for employment as a server at a steak restaurant, nor should the restaurant have to hire her if, perversely, she does.

Another difference worth noting is that a woman seeking a morning-after pill is operating within narrow time constraints and under duress. The state of California can hardly argue that it desperately needs to put a convict to death, or that it needs to do so now.

Technorati tags: civil rights Christianity

The Governor of Virginia can't set his own employment policies?

2006-02-25T15:03:00.000-05:00

The Attorney General of Virginia, Robert O'Donnell, at the instigation of obsessed homophobe Delegate Bob Marshall, issued an opinion that the Governor has no right to issue an order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in state employment (Washington Blade Online, 24 February 2006) because the state constitution doesn't explicitly grant him the power to do so. Never mind that the Governor is the boss, and you'd think that, absent an explicit prohibition, the boss gets to make the rules. Anyway, Governor Mark Warner issued just such an order shortly before he left office (I'm of the opinion that he's a weasel*, and the fact that he waited till the eleventh hour to do this is one sign of that), and Governor Tim Kaine has affirmed it.

Article V, Section 10 of the Virginia Constitution states,

Except as may be otherwise provided in this Constitution, the Governor shall appoint each officer serving as the head of an administrative department or division of the executive branch of the government, subject to such confirmation as the General Assembly may prescribe. Each officer appointed by the Governor pursuant to this section shall have such professional qualifications as may be prescribed by law and shall serve at the pleasure of the Governor.

In other words, the Governor can fire any of his appointees for any reason. Can O'Donnell explain why such a reason might not be because an appointee isn't enforcing the Governor's directive not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation? The executive order can be read as amounting to, "Look, people, here's one of the rules I want you to follow with respect to your own staff if you don't want to find your butt out on the sidewalk." How does O'Donnell find this not to be within the scope of the Governor's power?

It doesn't really matter, because an opinion by the Attorney General doesn't amount to a hill of beans unless he chooses to go to court to have it enforced. To take it to court, he'd have to wait for a discrimination case to arise, and for the Governor to respond by quashing it, upon threat of the overseeing agency or department officer's job if necessary. At that point, a judge would probably find that the Governor's power to fire an officer, being prescribed as it is by the state constitution, superseded some bureaucrat's right to be unfair to a civil servant for unfair and arbitrary reasons. But in case you weren't aware of it, much of the legislative scurrying around in Richmond these days, particularly in regard to matters of sexual orientation, is vastly more characterized by ardent exhibitions of raw bigotry than by expressions of substance and thought.

* My first clue that Warner is a weasel came when Warner arrived at a barbecue I attended that was held by a GLBT political organization. This was a week after he'd announced his opposition to gay marriage, so some of us attending were already unimpressed with him. We ambushed him almost as soon as he arrived and challenged him on his statement. He went totally Quayle on us, completely astonished and stammering attempts at responses about practicalities, about the realities of political life in Virginia. When this appeared not to satisfy us, he whined through closed teeth, "Jeez guys, my sister's a lesbian!" We were so stunned by this. What was his point? At first it wasn't clear why he would be telling us that at all. Then it occurred to us that what he meant to say was, "Hey, don't you understand that I'm really on your side?" But what I got out of it was that he was such a weasel, even his own sibling's homosexuality wasn't enough impetus to stand up for what's fair and right. Yet that didn't stop him from invoking her as a shield. Unfortunately, by the time I'd thought this through and was going to call him on it, he'd slipped away, presumably to glad-hand with some of the less confrontational attendees.

Technorati tags: Virginia Virginia government gay rights

Why is the BlackBerry so damn important?

2006-02-25T13:27:00.000-05:00

Having just used the looming demise of the BlackBerry as my lead-in for an article on patent practices, I remembered that I've been wondering why the BlackBerry is the focus of so much concern anyway. Aren't there plenty of software services that will connect mobile device users to their Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes accounts, without needing to create a relay account as BlackBerry users have to do? I'm not making a judgment here—I honestly don't know whether BlackBerry is necessarily superior to all of the other available e-mail apronstring applications. What can you all tell me about this?

Technorati tags: technology techoisie

Patenting the obvious and tormenting the techoisie

2006-02-25T08:47:00.000-05:00

Commenting on the imminent injunction against RIM's BlackBerry communication service, which is terrifying remote handheld wireless messaging addicts everywhere, Rob Pegoraro suggests one way to stanch the patent enforcement mania that these days is stifling rather than furthering technological innovation:

The patent office would apply a higher standard of "non-obviousness" -- the idea that a patent shouldn't reward "inventions" any competent individual could have thought up. ("BlackBerry Lawsuit is Patently Absurd", The Washington Post, 25 February 2006, page D1.)

Pegoraro says "higher" standard because US patent law already holds non-obviousness to be a criterion for deeming someone's effort an "invention." I've thought all along, though, that it should be more obvious what "obvious" is. For example, years ago Amazon.com managed to patent it's "1-Click" shopping feature, whereby a shopper can skip the usual lengthy shopping-cart-and-checkout procedure by registering once and provide all his purchasing credentials (name, address, credit card information) in advance. Later, when viewing an item for sale on the site, the shopper can use a "1-Click" button to have the item purchased and shipped with no further typing or mousing. Then Amazon tried to enforce this patent via a lawsuit. By what reason did the patent office issue this protection? The 1-Click feature was no invention. As with any on-line feature, it consists of two components: the model and its implementation.

The model is: a customer goes to a store in his small hometown. He's been there hundreds of times. The storekeeper knows him and keeps his address, phone number, and outstanding account in a ledger. The customer picks a few items off the shelf and brings them to the cash register. The storekeeper computes the total. The customer says, "Put it on my account." The storekeeper says, "OK." The customer leaves, and eventually receives a bill or trues up on a later visit to the store.

In other words, the model is old hat. It's numbingly obvious that it would be great to get a shopper out of the store with a minimum of hassle to the shopper.

As for the implementation, imagine asking a programmer to write a program to print out the prime numbers from 1 to 1000. Any programmer who knows what a prime number is can do that. Let's go up a few levels of complexity and ask a programmer to write a routine for a shopping web site that will store a customer's pertinent data so that later when he clicks a single button next to a view of a particular product, the purchase will be processed and the item will be shipped automatically. I'll tell you: any programmer who knows one or more of the technologies used for that kind of processing in this day and age (.NET, BizTalk, and SQL Server; enterprise JavaBeans and Oracle; etc.) can write a program that will do that, without any kind of true innovation being involved. I mean, there might be a couple of stumpers along the way, and the programmer who solves them might feel mighty proud of himself—but thousands of other programmers would encounter exactly the same obstacles and would just as deftly surmount them.

Solving problems is the nature of programming. Creativity and insight might be required. But in the end, it's a largely mechanical process, and most of it really just can't be classified as "invention." Amazon's argument in defense of its patent (I know, I wrote to them questioning them about it years ago) is the amount of time, effort, and expense that they put it into it. That's irrelevant. It takes a lot of time, effort, and expense to put up an office building, but that doesn't make every office building a patentable invention. The folks at the USPTO need to be less impressed by the obvious than they are now.

Technorati tags: patents technology techoisie

Outsourcing our national security: Kennedy is shocked by old news

2006-02-24T08:14:00.000-05:00

Posturing yesterday over the administration's approval of a deal transferring management of six major US ports to a Dubai-based company, Senator Edward Kennedy condemned the White House for "outsourcing our national security." ("Ports and a Storm," Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, 24 February 2006.)

I'm not sure I disagree with Kennedy, though I was somewhat persuaded by a Post editorial, "Port Security Humbug," on the subject on 22 February. But this is a case of outrage over old news. For example, while this may not be the case at the State Department or the Pentagon, security at every Federal agency office I've visited in recent years has been exercised by officers bearing shoulder patches from private contracting operations.

A few weeks ago I was asked to be interviewed by a Federal security investigator in connection with a clearance being sought for an associate of mine. I assumed the investigator was a Federal employee, and was a bit startled to learn that he was a contractor. I wondered, without reaching any conclusion, whether it was a good idea for the government to rely on the private sector to determine who's safe and who isn't. I also question the wisdom of allowing a private concern to have access to the kind of information about potential Federal employees and contractors alike that comes into their possession in the course of these investigations.

Technorati tags: security homeland security

Are studies on kids and TV as sloppy as Austan Goolsbee thinks?

2006-02-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

Something's missing from the analysis in the Slate article The Benefits of Bozo - Proof that TV doesn't harm kids by Austan Goolsbee. Citing the evidence over the decades that TV is no good for children, Goolsbee says,

Most studies of the impact of television, however, are seriously flawed. They compare kids who watch TV and kids who don't, when kids in those two groups live in very different environments. Kids who watch no TV, or only a small amount of educational programming, as a group are from much wealthier families than those who watch hours and hours.

Scientific researchers are typically savvy about things like controlling for extrinsic variables. What that would mean in the case of monitoring children's TV viewing habits is that the tykes would be divided into groups according to, say, household income. Non-TV watchers within each group would be compared with mild and heavy TV watchers in the same group. At least, that should be obvious to any scientist.

This makes me wonder whether it has occurred to Goolsbee that the authors of all these studies might have accounted for family economic factors in releasing their findings. Another possibility is that the studies really were sloppy. But if that's so, and Goolsbee knows it, that would be noteworthy, eyebrow-raising news, and he should have mentioned it, rather than leading the reader to believe that he was casting unfounded aspersions.

Google China allows a little subversiveness

2006-02-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

My curiosity stirred by the controversy over the willingness of search engine provider Google to filter results on its Chinese site to satisfy Beijing's repressive interests, I ran a search for "tiananmen massacre" on Google's main, French, Japanese, and Russian sites as well as its Chinese one. The results:

Site	Hits
Google.com	90,600
Google France	90,800
Google Japan	90,800
Google Russia	90,700
Google China	272

I was expecting 0 in the last row. I was wrong, so I guess freedom rings in China after all!

Virginia Senate votes for tobacco ban; what of right to choose?

2006-02-14T07:03:00.000-05:00

That was unexpected: the Virginia Senate voted yesterday to ban smoking in restaurants and most other public places (The Washington Post). The Post indicated that passage in the House of Delegates was much less likely.

The three basic arguments against imposing smoking bans are:

Smokers will stay away or leave sooner, reducing revenue.
Smoking is a legal activity, so banning people from engaging in it is unreasonable.
It's an infringement on the rights of business owners, employees, and customers to make their own choices.

I have some sympathy for the first argument. The impact of legislation on business profits is a legitimate consideration to be weighed against the other ramifications. In this case, it's my understanding, and the Post concurs, that studies are finding no substantive detriment to profits after all. After all, many non-smokers avoid bars and other establishments, or spend less time in them than they otherwise might, precisely because of the noxious fumes. Many of these people find themselves more inclined to patronize these businesses and to stay longer once the smoke has disappeared. I don't know how thorough or reliable the studies to date have been, but business owners who contest proposed bans out of fear of financial harm don't seem to appreciate the possibility that they are belaboring a moot point, against their own interests.

The other two arguments were voiced by Senator Charles R. Hawkins (R-Pittsylvania), who represents tobacco growers in the state:

We're talking about a legal product that's licensed and sold in Virginia—that's taxed and taxed and taxed. Now we're saying we know better than people who operate their own businesses what they can do.

Cars, of course, are legal products, taxed and taxed and taxed, but you aren't allowed to use one to tear through your neighbor's front yard or crash through his plate glass door. The legality of a product doesn't confer unimpeded freedom to use it as one may wish.

As for the right of choice—the right of owners to choose the environment they want to provide, the right of employees to decide whether they want to work in a particular establishment, and the right of customers to patronize a business or not—I have some sympathy, but not enough, because the new driving force behind smoking bans is the realization that it is a public health issue, not just a nuisance. We could trash the health code and let the customers decide whether to eat in a restaurant with a dead water heater that holds egg salad and raw shrimp unrefrigerated for hours in porous containers and allows vermin to proliferate in the kitchen. We could let banquet halls pack three times as many people into an enclosed space with a single exit than could possibly escape safely in case of a fire. How many of those who oppose a smoking ban on the grounds of choice would like to see these other forms of regulation go away?

Technorati tags: smoking smokers' rights civil rights

Bumper stickers we'd like to see

2006-02-11T11:49:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration: making America secure by alienating our friends and galvanizing our enemies.

If our government tramples on civil rights, the terrorists will have won.

Evangelical Christianity and the captive audience

2006-02-09T19:46:00.000-05:00

Last summer Americans United for Separation of Church and State investigated reports of intimidation and unwelcome proselytizing of non-Christian cadets at the US Air Force Academy by evangelical students, faculty, and chaplains. Responding to protests, the Air Force issued guidelines placing restrictions on these acts. Now AU reports that a replacement set of guidelines cuts back on the earlier protections, and moreover speaks in terms of protecting the religious rights of the chaplains. Essentially the chaplains are claiming the right to proselytize the students at their institution as a matter of religious freedom—as though their right to harass others supersedes the religious rights of the students to be left alone.

Unfortunately, this is typical of what's going on in many sectors of our society. Evangelical Christian organizations are fighting to have prayer led in public schools. The federal government is funding faith-based organizations in the name of social service, and leaving those organizations free not only to witness to those they help but to make aid contingent on their receptiveness to the message. Prisoners in some correctional facilities are being required to attend openly Bible-based rehabilitation programs.

Do you see the strategy? The common elements are twofold: a captive audience (students, those in need, prisoners) and authority figures intent on making them or keeping them Christian whether they (or their parents) like it or not. The faithmongers act as if the people in their care or charge are there to serve their purposes rather than the reverse. It's nefarious, and we need to put a lid on it.

Technorati tags: church and state christianity civil rights freedom of religion

Word Mark	REAL NAME
Goods and Services	IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Business information services in the field of identifying and verifying credentials of users associated with submitted, posted or syndicated content. FIRST USE: 20050410. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050410
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code	(4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Design Search Code
Serial Number	78627630
Filing Date	May 11, 2005
Current Filing Basis	1A
Original Filing Basis	1A
Owner (APPLICANT)	Amazon Technologies, Inc. CORPORATION NEVADA Attn: Trademarks PO Box 8102 Reno NEVADA 89507
Type of Mark	SERVICE MARK
Register	PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator	LIVE