bmagnus

Sincerely, Insulted Female Voter

The following is the draft of a letter I will be sending to the editorial staff of Alternet.

To Whom It May Concern:

As a regular reader of Alternet, I find myself insulted by the blatant sexist subtext of Lakshmi Chaudhry’s essay, “What John Kerry Needs: The Estrogen Factor.” I am not sure what I find more outrageous: the insinuation that the woman who pasted her head over Mrs. Edward’s picture is in any way “typical” of female voters; the description of women as “those creatures with breasts”; or pointing out that “the fact that Edwards ‘looks seriously hot’ while he’s making his pitch doesn’t hurt either.” Even John Edwards should be insulted by this message of “He’s more than just a pretty face.”

If your point is that Senator Edwards is able to effectively deliver a message of importance to female voters, please make that point and move on. Frankly, this article smacks of “Oh yes! Kerry should run with Edwards because he’s so dreeeeeamy!”

Don’t get me wrong, being charismatic is a huge asset to someone running for office. Dennis Kucinich can attest to this. He has great ideas but, well, looks so unpresidential. Senator Kerry would be wise to get some of Kucinich’s ideas on board, and perhaps even get the man himself on board helping make policy. However, if the Presidential race comes down to looks and charisma, perhaps we should completely sell out and consider Brad Pitt. Or maybe Harrison Ford — he has at least played the President in a movie. Don’t you think that would spice up the Vice-Presidential debates this fall?

If Senator Kerry wants women’s votes this fall, the key is not his Vice-Presidential candidate, but the issues. Talk to us about things that matter to us. Strangely enough, most of the things the female half of our population cares about effect the rest of the country too.

For example, everybody needs healthcare. And at this point, I think we can all agree it is expensive. Furthermore, I think anybody who has honestly looked at the issues understands that nothing President Bush has done has improved things.

How about food safety? We all eat food, don’t we? And choosy moms would like to know they aren’t feeding their kids mad-cow burgers, or otherwise dangerous food.

Don’t forget education. Education is a critical issue not only to moms, but to anybody who has employees, and anybody who wants to make sure America has a stable, productive economy in the future.

Oh, and don’t forget the price of oil and gas. Frankly, it is vitally important to everyone. It’s important to everyone who uses a vehicle to get to work or school. It’s important to small businesses. It’s important to big businesses. It’s important to the economy. It’s important to global security.

This is to say nothing of civil liberties (which we all have), the environment (which we all live in), inflation (it’s back!), and even the 40 hour work week (which still might be in danger).

John Edwards may well be the right man to be John Kerry’s running mate. However, it that is the case it is because of his stance on the issues, not “The Estrogen Factor.”

Happy Mother’s Day! Look what I made you!

The teenager who apparently wrote the Sasser and Netsky worms may have been trying to help drum up business for his mom’s computer repair shop. Sven J. has been arrested, but not before he unleashed what was supposed to have been some kind of damage limiting version of the worm. Indeed, according to the young hacker, Netsky was originally intended as an anti-viral virus to combat MyDoom and Bagle. Oh yeah, except for that whole attacking the local educational server thing. He may, however, avoid jail-time because he just turned 18.

Another worm was apparently written and released by an acquaintance of Sven J. The second young man was also arrested last week. Phatbot is the latest in a line of viruses begun in 2002. It is a spambot, and if you think you have gotten more than your fair share of spam in the last week or so, Phatbot might have something to do with it.

No idea what I’m talking about? How Stuff Works has a good explanation. Go ahead, there’s no harm in admitting you don’t know stuff.

Victims of Sasser, which has only been in circulation since April 30, include Westpac Bank, the Northern Territory Government, British Airways, Delta Airlines and the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency. These are not home users with neither firewall nor clue; they are large organizations with large Information Technology departments. These are people who have the expertise to make networks secure, even when the official solution is the problem. It costs businesses a lot of money to keep up with this stuff, and even more to combat actual outbreaks. And guess what? Those businesses turn around and pass the costs on to their customers. You.

And that is to say nothing of the time and money you may spend should you be the victim of such a virus.

Microsoft is going to need to do more than give out bounties to stop the virus problem. The idea that a high school student — who his computer teacher described as “not show[ing] early signs of genius in the technological world” — and his college aged buddy could write viruses that can infiltrate a variety of allegedly secure networks is absurd. The fact that one young man has been writing related malicious code that exploits one, single Windows vulnerability for 2 years is absolutely outrageous.

You deserve a virus free computer. Really.

If you only have time to read two important things today, they should be these. First, check out what Security Guru Bruce Schneier has to say about surveillance and search warrants. Then try this piece about hiring trends, inflation, and balancing the economy.

Respect

We interrupt this post to point out the obvious. Torturing, humiliating, and murdering prisoners is a bad thing. Even the President of the United States says so. It isn’t even acceptable when it happens in American prisons. Don’t dare excuse it by saying these were all “bad” people. The bottom line is they are all people. Maybe they don’t deserve deluxe accommodations and gourmet meals, but they surely don’t deserve what has happened either. Enough said.

We now return you to your previously scheduled commentary.

When I took English 1302 in college, they took great pains to remind us that when writing an essay, we must consider our audience: who will be reading it; what will they be expecting to see; what do we want to say to them. There was the tacit understanding that through most of our collegiate career, our primary audience would be our professors, who would among other things expect to see good grammar and spelling, and an adequate understanding of the things you were supposed to have learned in class. Depending on the professor — and this was something you might hear in passing or something you might experience first hand — you might be expected to adhere to a certain party line, and at least pretend to espouse liberalism, conservatism, feminism, chauvanism, capitalism, socialism, Protestantism, Darwinism, or the theory of the day. Failure to adhere to this unwritten rule is failure to consider and cater to your audience.

This principle can be applied to business too. In fact, I like to summarize it as follows: Do not annoy your customers. This includes both people who use your product/service, and those who might do so someday. This may come as a shock, but people don’t like to do business with companies that annoy them. There are some exceptions to this rule of thumb, for example if you are fortunate enough to have a monopoly (telephone, cable, computer operating system). Or perhaps if you are in a situation where the people who pay the bills are different from the people who actually use your services (any business that depends on insurance companies for reimbursement).

The bottom line is that I will avoid giving you money if you annoy me. That being the case, don’t stuff flyers under my windshield wiper. Don’t stick them in my front door. Don’t send me spam, don’t call me, don’t send me junk faxes (who the heck are these people buying OTC penny stocks on the basis of a fax tip anyway? And when I want a new mortgage, I’ll call a mortgage broker rather than check my fax machine). Think about it for a minute: do you do business with companies that advertise this way? No? Then why on earth would you waste time and money doing it? I don’t really mind junk mail, because most of it recycles. Besides which, every once in a while I actually find a company to do business with from junk mail. Just the same, how many AOL CDs do I really need?

Make it easy to get ahold of you. I shouldn’t have to play tag just to find a valid phone number for you. When I do call, I do not want to navigate an arcane voice-mail system, I want to talk to you and arrange service or solve a problem. And if you have a web site, it should be simple, fast loading, and easy to navigate. Oh, and it should definitely include a way to reach you someplace.

I’m already your customer? Then return my phone calls promptly. Show up when you say you will, and have all the equipment you need to do the job. Do what I need done, and do it right the first time. I will not be happy if you have to come back to my property to fix things you messed up, missed, or just plain didn’t do correctly. Be responsible. Don’t tell me how reliable and professional you are, show me. Gee, another business rule you could have learned in English class.

Don’t talk down to me, don’t try to sell me goods and services I don’t need, and for goodness sake don’t you dare call me “dear” or “honey.” You can darn well call your customers by their title and last name: Mr. Jones, Miss Smith, Dr. Stewart; your customer is not your buddy. If you have a customer who feels this is too formal, he or she will correct you. Smile and comply with his or her wishes. The “topic sentence” of this paragraph — and this essay — is treat people with respect.

Wanted: Truth in Headlines

According to the Chicago Tribune, Poor Kids Thrive in Charter School. (Here’s a no registration required version, and a related story). This brings to mind a thesis that all we need to do to improve schools in poor neighborhoods is turn them over to private management and let them be charter schools. Free them of government oversight and teachers unions; let the miracle of free markets do the rest. Unfortunately their anecdote does not prove the headline.

The school in question is the Preuss School, run by the University of California at San Diego. Here, 750 specially chosen students from around the area attend a $14 Million facility one more month a year, one more hour a day, and have double-length classes that meet every other day. Parental participation and volunteerism is expected. Evidence of their success is high attendance, high college admissions rates, and high rates of actually taking the SAT. A better title for this essay might be “Select Group of Poor Kids Thrive in One Particular Charter School.”

What they have proven is that the sort of student who will enroll in such a school, and whose parents will support such a decision, are achievers.

Companies that run private and charter schools — companies like Edison and Nobel — do not have $14 Million facilities. Nor can any school district afford to turn every campus into such a facility. Few organizations have the ability to make teachers work more hours. Neither private companies nor average school districts have the backing of major universities and the bottomless pool of Education Majors those universities are training. This model is replicable, but absolutely cannot be made universal.

Speaking of what is best for the children, what was the American Academy of Pediatrics thinking when they published a report suggesting a wait and see attitude for kids’ ear infections? Waiting a week might be reasonable, but “For children who are not at risk for speech, language or learning problems, ‘watchful waiting’ for at least three months is recommended instead of treatment.”

Just what every parent wants to do, spend 3 months watching and waiting with a kid whose ears hurt. Besides which, almost by definition a kid who has an earache for 3 months is at risk for speech, language, or learning problems. The strange thing is that the members of the AAP will wonder why parents find this advice unacceptable.

Going Up?

It isn’t your imagination. Prices are going up. Food is costing more. Gas is costing more. Anything imported from China is costing more. It doesn’t take Warren Buffett to tell you that inflation is here and “that the companies that will be best suited for this environment will be ones that either have unique products and services or aren’t as dependent on purchasing inflation sensitive goods.”

The bottom line is that the FOMC will be raising interest rates — probably not at their Tuesday meeting, but at their June 29 meeting. So say the experts, and frankly the FOMC does not like to move unless the experts know it’s coming. But since Reuters and the Associated Press both see it coming, a hike in interest rates shouldn’t surprise anybody who keeps track of these things. Lock in those Adjustable Rate Mortgages now, alright? And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One of the more important things about the currently beginning round of inflation is that the items in question are not things we can do without. Everybody eats food. Of course, shoppers are doing everything they can think of to pay less for food. Who can blame them? Maybe that’s why grocery chain Winn-Dixie is planning on selling or closing 156 stores. Insert obligatory comment of what you think of Winn-Dixie, but the fact is they can’t compete on price, and they’ve never been known for competing on quality.

As for gasoline, even if you don’t own a car you probably depend on the stuff. Indeed, if you are reading this site on a computer, that computer had to be transported to where it sits from the factory. Chances are it rode in a truck for at least part of that journey. At least be cheered by the fact that truckers aren’t happy about rising fuel prices either. The bottom line is that gas prices are continuing to go up, that Trilby Lundberg will continue to announce record high gas prices as needed through the summer, and that Big Oil will make a lot of money.

Oh yes. And then there’s China. Part of our inflation problem is that China is experiencing inflation, and their currency is linked to ours. This of course means anything they export to the United States has to cost more to cover the increased costs of manufacture. This is a big problem. Just look at some random country of manufacture tags around your home and in stores. A lot of goods come from China. And why does China have an inflation problem? Because of the Weak Dollar. Frequent readers know that the Weak Dollar policy is allowed by the current administration for several reasons, including a misguided belief that it will improve the trade deficit. But this policy had another consequence: oil is pretty much bought and sold in American dollars around the world; the Weak Dollar means OPEC feels they can’t afford to keep oil prices low.

The high price of gas and the rising price of Chinese goods are inextricably linked by the Weak Dollar. This leads to higher prices for everything, including food. The cycle feeds itself.

The good news is that Wall Street has another word for inflation: “Pricing Power.”

Teacher! My Math Book Bluescreened Again!

Maybe you read about this here, here, or even here. It is less likely that you have read this press release. The short version of the story is as follows: The Forney Independent School District, just enough East of Dallas to be not quite a suburb, has decided that rather than buy traditional textbooks for the 5th and 6th graders, they will buy notebook computers with the textbooks and 2000 works of literature on them.

The official reasons for this decision include the fact that the District expects to be short about 600 textbooks, and it takes 3 months to order and receive books. Furthermore, the director of this program points out that “A child’s set of textbooks costs $350. If they can get these notebooks down to $500, it gets cost-effective in a hurry.” Of course the students can tell you that $350 is less than $500, and a lot less than the $1350 that each computer will actually cost. Based on a quick check of prices, it seems unlikely that this price includes the content. I sincerely doubt the computerized versions of the textbooks cost less than their paper-based brethren.

IBM for it’s part points out that works of literature — such as the complete works of Shakespeare — that are already on the computer represent physical books the district does not need to purchase. How many of those 2000 works of pre-loaded literature will actually be read anyway? Does anybody really want to read them on their computer? How many of them are remotely age-appropriate? Most American students are not officially exposed to Shakespeare until 8th or 9th grade, but that seems to be beside the point. The party line from IBM and their content partner, Vital Source Technologies, is that computerized is better. After all, it’s indexed, it’s searchable, it’s all in one relatively lightweight box that fits nicely into a knapsack or locker. It’s even ergonomically friendly compared to a student carrying every textbook they use.

Math pop quiz! Which is less money: 600 textbooks times $350 (that’s the price for a complete set of books, despite the fact that they “only” expect to be short 600 individual textbooks), or 459 students times $1350? I bet you could buy a lot of books with the difference between those figures. Congratulations, Texans. This is your tax money at work.

Now that we’ve utterly debunked the idea that somehow this saves money, we can deal with the unintended consequences of this decision. Let’s start with computer literacy. Are the teachers really prepared to use these computers, let alone teach from them? Are they ready to spend the first 10 minutes of each and every class debugging somebody’s computer textbook problem? And is it fair to the other kids in class to waste this time in every class period? I’m sure they’ve got better things to do.

Which brings us to the next problem. How are you going to make sure the kids are reading their textbooks instead of playing games? Don’t tell me these computers have no games on them. One trip home fixes that problem. If these computers are equipped with wireless modems, it doesn’t even take that. In fact, games may be the least of the unauthorized software that ends up on these computers.

Speaking of one trip home, we should consider parental support at home. Are the parents capable of helping the kids use and perhaps troubleshoot the computer? There’s nothing to troubleshoot in a book. Don’t dismiss this problem: computerized textbooks may exacerbate the achievement gap between rich and poor students. How? By making parents less able to help their children.

There is also an obsolescence issue to consider. The school officials in this case claim that paper textbooks can be several years out of date. However, does this really change anything? Experts are not going to decide that the Declaration of Independence wasn’t really signed in 1776, or that a water molecule isn’t really two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. How much of what a 6th grader really needs to know about any given topic is really the topic of heated academic debate? There is still valuable information in a 5 year old textbook. On the other hand, see what you can accomplish with a 5 year old computer. Good luck.

Speaking of 5 year old computers, let’s talk about the environmental impact of this project. Those computers will have to be disposed of someday, and computers aren’t exactly landfill friendly. In addition to added disposal costs, there will be ongoing costs to operate these computers. One light bulb can make a dozen students able to read a standard textbook. However, each of these computers will require its own power.

I haven’t even gotten around to talking about theft and damage. Officials at schools where such programs have been tried say this is rare, but frankly I find that hard to believe. I am more willing to believe that a certain number of parents are just willing to suck up repair and replacement costs.

Finally, what if when fall comes, it turns out the school is short computers? After all, the reason for this purchase was an anticipated textbook shortage. At least you can photocopy pages of a textbook until a book order arrives.

The only person who really stands to benefit from this deal is one IBM salesman.

Hiatus

I will not be posting for a few days in the interests of server upgrades and maintenance. Please excuse this interruption. I promise to be posting by the end of the week. There should be no actual downtime for the site.

Thank you for tuning in, and much thanks for your patience.

How does that work?

Now let me make sure I understand this. We will hand over “sovereignty” to Iraq on June 30, but they won’t be able to command their own armed forces, and they won’t be able to make their own laws. If George III had offered this “opportunity” for self-government to our Patriot forbears during the Revolutionary War, much laughter and gunfire would have ensued. Please remember that these words were written by people who overthrew a legal government.

In the meantime Fallujah is officially a quagmire. Oh yeah, and we have more reports of American snipers shooting schoolchildren. What a clever way to defuse the situation.

Speaking of schoolchildren, back in the United States, a licensed, state certified and probably “highly qualified” teacher ordered a student thrown out a window. I have spoken about “No Child Left Behind” before, and cannot understand why we can’t get people like this permanently out of the classroom. Want to promote excellent schools? How about we promote enough independent thought that this girl’s classmates realize that’s a bad idea?

Wasn’t that the point?

An Associated Press poll finds that Americans are still worried about terrorist attacks. President Bush says he isn’t surprised, and adds that it’s hard to defend our country from terrorists, and we should be patient.

Mr. Bush isn’t surprised. Nor should he be. Didn’t his advisor Condi Rice say just days ago that we should expect terrorists to attempt to disrupt our November elections? Didn’t Mr. Bush himself warn us that just because the PATRIOT Act was set to expire didn’t mean the risk of terrorism would expire too? Doesn’t the Department of Homeland Security tell us there is at this moment an Elevated Risk of Terrorist Attacks? That’s Threat Advisory Code Yellow to you and me. Frankly, we should be concerned if Mr. Bush were surprised. After all, his entire team has been telling us to Look Out!

In the meantime, the Washington Post reports that we may need to send more money to Iraq. Here’s the no registration required version. My inner cynic wants to know why. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to send our tax dollars directly to Halliburton and the other gauging contractors?

If you didn’t see this very moving picture of flag-draped coffins coming home from the Middle East yesterday, take a good look at it now. The people responsible for bringing it to you have been fired.

Back at home, over half of American workers are concerned about job security. Add to that record high gas prices, and Greenspan pointing out the elephant in the living room — the fact that interest rates will eventually have to go up — and things aren’t looking good for Joe and Jane Average. And that’s before they think ahead to whether their son may someday be drafted into the military.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

When Dilbert is making jokes about real estate, I take that as a sign that the housing market is way out of control. With housing starts up to an annualized rate of 2 million units per year you’ve got to wonder. That’s one new house per 146 Americans. Who is buying them? Who will live in them? What are we tearing down to build them?

Another comic with a serious note today is Get Fuzzy, with the aim of reminding us that real people — normal people like you and me — get hurt in wars. Ever thought about letting the military pay for college? Ever thought about serving your country, maybe even picking up some extra cash in the reserves? Then Rob Wilco’s injured cousin could be you. This is to say nothing about the brave men and women who have died in Iraq.

And from corporate America, Coca Cola has announced their intention to launch a “Low Carb” soda. Foolishly, most people who want such a product are already drinking Diet Coke. Indeed, people who are on true low-carb diets do not consume refined sugars at all, particularly during the early stages of the diet. Atkins even says no caffeine, especially during the first two weeks. The only people buying this product will be people who are under the delusion that they can substitute a few “diet” products and lose weight. Yeah, good luck there. In their defense, it is only fair to point out that Coke is merely following Pepsi’s lead.

Two comics being serious. One industry being clueless.