The Immigrant Song

Chertoff can obliterate opposition to Border Fence Project

How is the the first time I'm hearing about this?  From today's "Sidebar" column by Adam Liptak
 

The secretary of homeland security was granted the power in 2005 to void any federal law that might interfere with fence building on the border. For good measure, Congress forbade the courts to second-guess the secretary’s determinations. So long as Mr. Chertoff is willing to say it is necessary to void a given law, his word is final.

For students of American government, yet another frightening reminder of how far this administration will go to ensure that no institution, even the Constitution, can get in its way.  I am not hopeful that SCOTUS will help out here, but this is plain and simple tyranny.  Sigh.

Link: Challenges Arise to Border Fence Project

Gothamist: Meatpacking District's Hog Pit Out, Ralph Lauren In

This is just sad.   Gothamist: Meatpacking District's Hog Pit Out, Ralph Lauren In.  Hog Pit owner  Felisa Dell adds:

It's very sneaky, but in 5 years the 4AM liquor license will be a thing of the past, without any community input.

I only went to the hog pit once or twice, but the wussification of the city appears to be sneaking in.

Disgrace Alert- Shady 22year old supplies defective ammo to DoD for use by Afghanis

Terrible, horrible news, but great investigative reporting by the New York Times.  Whhat piosses me off most is that the massive expansion of private cpontracting combined with a completely useless DoD munitions policy is behind this mess.  Every defective round )(and there are literally millions of them that have been supplied to Afghanistan by this guy) takes our reputation as a nation down a notch.  Why would we do that?  Why wouldn't we have guidelines specifying the quality of the ammunition to be used by our proxies allies in the fight against terrorists?  Well, at least we have an answer:

“There is no specific testing request, and there is no age limit,” said Michael Hutchison, the command’s deputy director for acquisition. “As the ammunition is not standard to the U.S. inventory, the Army doesn’t possess packaging or quality standards for that ammo.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!????????

This whole thing is fascinating and horrifying and has me kind of worked up.  Check it out for yourselves. Supplier Under Scrutiny on Aging Arms for Afghans.

Lessig May Run

Apparently Larry Lessig May Run. For congress.  That would be cool- is it time to start focusing on the 08 Congressional elections?

A Rare political rumination

My dad sent me Jenna Bush's A Young Teacher’s Year of Mop-Ups and Cinderella from yesterday's New York Times.  After reading it, I decided that that was not the worst thing I have ever read, but it's sad those kids know more countries than the President. ZING! It's really just a shame her father is such a stain on our collective consciousness.

I think  an important lesson my father taught me was that I should seek an identity independent of my parents- I think this is a normal process of growing up.  My dad offered part time and summer employment at various times (which paid well) to students from my high school but never to me, and at one point in my life I was kind of hurt by that.   Notwithstanding the accounting issue (that is, how separate were my finances  from my father's when I was 17) I came to understand that this broadened both my resume and my perspective.  Instead of, say, one company on my resume, by the time I graduated from college I had at least four.  Bonus question: how many of those are still in business? One.  But I digress.

So it is kind of a shame that I can't read this piece of let's all join TFA fluff by Jenna Bush and not think about the fact that her father is the president, and I am not too fond of the president. 

However, my thoughts soon returned to being mean.   I was trying to point out that no one (ok, maybe, no prudent layperson??) will be able to treat Jenna Bush as an independent person because our awareness of her is stained by her father's legacy (for those of you playing at home, the precise nature of the stain is like Piña Colada on a pool table, which you can never really get rid of, except that you can re-felt the table)

Maybe the indelible nature of the parent-child contamination association should be understood both ways.  Does this mean Jenna is able to exact revenge for when she was boozing it up in Texas?  (Wait, is she the one who went to Texas or Yale?  I just looked it up: Texas. ) Her photo in Wikipedia is captioned "Jenna "Borrachia" Bush".  I shit you not. UPDATE that wikip-edia entry was apparently a victim of vandalism, and then corrected(see here).  I didn't think that was her actual middle name but it was entertaining for sure.

Why I love the NY Times

I've said to a couple of people in the last week or so that I am the kind of person who reads the NY Times in the morning.  I would use this as a contrrast from the Journal (which I grab online) or the barely human Post or Daily News.

This habit stems from receiving the paper nearly feree for a couple years, and reading it on the way to work.  I don;t think I want to read a paper that is just business, or just NY gossip-level stories, or the police blotter.  For right now, the times is the right balance, and I thoroughly enjoyed the following from today's paper:

The secret war in Laos has consequernces- considering my passion for expionage stories, this nwas a great mix of human interest, espionage war story, and timely warning about what happens when we leave Afghanistan and Iraq: Old U.S. Allies, Still Hiding Deep in Laos

Considering how much I loved Lord of War and Boiler Room, and The Sopranos (specifically the "Webistics pump-and-dump scheme that  Matthew Bevalaqua was involved in), this story was just awesome.  Apparently there is a book somewhere in this tangled mess. Real Estate Executive With Hand in Trump Projects Rose From Tangled Past.

Bush Says Iran Still a Danger Despite Report on Weapons - New York Times

Link: Bush Says Iran Still a Danger Despite Report on Weapons - New York Times.

Oh, well excuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeeeeee   for reading the English language and thinking, um, THE EXACT OPPOSITE.  Sigh.  Bush might as well be saying that after lengthy and not very timely study of South Park, he has concluded that Imaginationland is sending "warning signals."

I think my co-worker AC has it right:

In other words, despite the fact that they are incapable of being a threat, they are still a threat.  They are about as big a threat as...Cuba.  Or Rhode Island.

Well said.

Stephen Colbert: Great Candidate, or THE GREATEST CANDIDATE???

Stephen Colbert is running for president.  Awesome.  I bet he ends up stealing the show.

Report Depicts Recklessness at Blackwater - New York Times

I think when the full extent is known, the use of private contractors in this war will be embarrassing to the Bush administration.  I think this captures it nicely- something I remember hearing about on 60 minutes.  Private contractors are scarily expensive and tens of thousands of them operate with little to no oversight. 

The report also raised questions about the cost-effectiveness of using Blackwater forces instead of United States troops. Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day per guard, “equivalent to $445,000 per year, or six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier,” the report said.

Link: Report Depicts Recklessness at Blackwater - New York Times.  No draft, but being a contracting company is pretty lucrative, it seems.

Flying around my mind this morning...

Can we call it "Don't tase me bro"-gate at CSU Fort Collins? [NYTimes]

"Um, yeah the thing about our news show is, it's like, not news." Thanks, CW 11! The Best TV News, All About Us

14 year old pop/TV star not pregnant. Phew. Viral marketing taking lessons from F/X's Dirt? It’s Pimples, Not Pregnancy, for the Teenage Star Miley Cyrus 

Last but not least, Tell Me you Love Me is entertaining only if you like to heckle.  Are we heckling because the content is so overtly sexual?  Maybe, but with writing this awful and some very weak and annoying characters, I think I'm in good shape.

CBS 42 News in Texas Investigates One Person, One Vote

While you watch this expose on TX state legislkature members entering votews for each other, you might have an overpowering and debilitating feeling of cynicism. Then again, you might also not live in TX, so you can relax.

I ask: Does journalism hit any harder than CBS 42 news? I think not. Thanks to co-worker AC.

YouTube - Texas Legislation.

12,000 Tons a Day: Incinerating is the new recycling

Apparently, NYC has a choice with what to do with its garbage: ladfill or incinerator.  You might have known that already.  But did you know that some people actually favor incinerator?  I couldn;t believe this either, but apparently incinerating is the new recycling- all via "waste to energy" plants.

Link: 12,000 Tons a Day, and What to Do With It - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog.

Want to Advertise Your new Content? screen it at the library!

A poster promoting a screening of the new HBO documentary "Alive Day Memories" is being viewed by some as advertising for HBO on a public building, and by the library as and advertisement for an event- public information.    A copy is being donated to the library and will be available to library patrons.

Are we so unwilling to believe it could be both information AND smart advertising?

At the Library, Useful Information, or an HBO Ad? - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog.

Pizza Sales to Reptiles Skyrocket in Japan

Apparently an enormous nuclear reactor in Japan was damaged in a recent earthquake, and is now on fire and leaking radioactive water.  This can only mean one thing- we are about to be invaded by Dimension X, and when the evil Shredder attacks, we'll know where to look so as not to cut him any slack!

Bush Iraq Strategy = Charlie Brown kicking the Football

This is not just hilarious use of the Peanuts, but a great analogy for George Bush's Iraq "strategy."

1010wins.com reports Midtown office building on fire

So, apparently the roof of the office building my sister works in is on fire [1010wins.com]...she ok and is even joking about all the firemen and news media hanging around.  I'm watching Chopper 4 from my desk and I can see the flames from my office.  Ah, the connected world

Wal-Mart to offer clinics

CNN is reporting that Wal-Mart will open 400 in-store medical clinics within 3 years and that a survey indicated to Wal-Mart that uninsured Americans would go get routine medical treatments if they had a much better idea of how much the care would cost.   Perhaps Wal-Mart asked some of their 700,000 uninsured employees about that.

Something about IMUS

I was just thinking about the Don Imus firestorm and all of the people who are dirtecting their resposnes right back at the african american music community, which does plenty of references to "hos" and their hairdos, and certainly regulartly profits from doing so. 

Is this what we are about now?  If this ushers in a new wave of censorship of any kind of media, whatever the race of the performer, we all lose.  More to follow as my mind wraps around this.  See also books by George Orwell.

Education and Getting In

I went to an Ivy League School, and there were plenty of people who were just devastated that they did not get into Harvard (a smaller number for Yale and Princeton, I think; see also "We Didn't Go To Harvard").  Cornell has a reputation as the easiest Ivy to get into and the hardest to get out of, and to a certain extent maybe the numbers bear that out.  It's accept rate is higher than many of the Ivies, around 20%.

The stories in the New York times in the last several days (For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too and A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them ) have been interesting, but send conflicting messages about what may really be going on.

The article about how in order to secure admission to the best colleges, especially liberal arts colleges, suggest that these high school girls feel pressured to excel in all subjects, play a sport, do community service, and be perfect perfect perfect (sorry, I just keep thinking of Empire Records).  I wish I could feel sorry for them.  Is there a lot riding on the college you choose, and which options you'll have in April of your senior year of high school/after graduation?  Hell yes.  Is it worth sacrificing your own personality just to look like the perfect applicant?  Hell NO.

One student at my high school was reportedly admitted to a state school just for being able to play a particular instrument- this may or may not be true, but it was disturbing to me then because I had real qualms about gaming the system- I thought it was questionable.  Upon reflection, it would just be a sad compromise of one's integrity. 

But as to the claims that students with perfect SATs and grades might still be rejected by  Harvard:

• High test scores and grades don't make you interesting.  Plus, with the number of favors that are doled out in admissions to super-elite universities, the number of spots open to truly interesting and excellent students gets an automatic cut (see The Price of Admission by Daniel Golden; review)
• High test scores and grades don't mean what they used to.  The SAT has be re-centered twice in the last 10 years, and it is surely just as possible as it was when I was in high school to miss some questions and still receive a perfect score on the SAT.  Grade standards and curricula are not as stringent as they used to be, all across the country.  See the decline of public education everywhere. So doesn't that mean it's easier to end up with "perfect," thereby rendering the statistics less valuable?

Did I miss anything? 

The Motives of a Tyrant

I read on Slashdot last night that everyone's favorite Korea (sarcasm) conducted a nuclear test.  This is bad.  Mulling this over as I read the NYTimes story this morning, and also Paul Kedrosky's post on the subject, I was thinking that Paul is right in that we should all wonder why a nation as poor as NK would do such a thing.

On the one hand I am reminded of my international relations course, where we looked at  foreign policy scholars who wrote that most of the "crazy dictators" are unwilling to deploy nuclear weapons- their "craziness" render them unaware of realist perceptions of the strategic consequences of their actions.  Rogue states are ultimately realists.    So, we're probably not going to see NK start a war tomorrow.

NK's economy is weak.  Very weak.  Additional sanctions will not help to create a job base or jump-start manufacturing for export, and those seem fairly likely.  However, I would guess that NK doesn't care about this because the sanctions don;t affect their standing in high-margin markets like counterfeit currency, nuclear fuel, arms, and technology markets.  That the profits from such deals never reaches the people is relevant, but only to illustrate that Kim Jong Il is concerned with the survival of his regime. 

This is like a press release or a launch party (forgive the terminology) for an expansioon of product lines.  It seems to me that those countries labeled by the Bush Admionsytration as an "Axis of Evil" have more to gain by harnessing the power of that image than they do from attempts to reconcile with the west.  We've seen this in Iran/Lebanon and Iraq.

I'm no expert, but from an economic perspective it seems like the object of the PR is more to increase demand for its illegitimate commercial dealings than anything else.

A comment on Air Travel "Secuirty Theatre"

Dave Farber's IP list  had an interesting post about the list of prohibited items now appearing on the TSA web site.  KY Jelly is explicitly authorized. 

I wondered what was on the list, and surfed to the TSA's page for "Law Enforcement Officials Traveling Armed."

Excerpt:

Our Office of Law Enforcement / Federal Air Marshal Service would like to remind officers and agents not to transport prohibited items through security checkpoints or onboard aircraft while traveling armed.  Regulations surrounding prohibited carry-on items such as lighters, stun gun devices, replicas of firearms and knives are covered in the training material, as well as information regarding security checkpoint procedures. Particular attention should be given to the prohibition against carrying hazardous materials, such as pepper spray or mace, in carry-on bags.  For more information read our prohibited items section.

So, a gun, but no liquids, lighters, or lip gloss?  Does the TSA worry that a <bad guy> will overpower an Air Marshall, steal the aerosol deodorant from his carry-on, and take over the plane?

Priorities...WiFi or Butter?

Last week, Morgan Spurlock's show 30 Days featured the story of an American IT worker whose job was outsourced to Bangalore.   (the show is on the same premise as Spurlock's Documentary, "Super Size Me" - what if you did <uncomfortable thing> for 30 days?)  The IT worker in question moved to Bangalore for 30 days to see what kind of job he could get.  He got a job not as a programmer but as an operator in a call center.

The show is, in general, very well done and also highly original and thought provoking. 

Today, GigaOm has an  interesting note about Bangalore wanting to be the next city with a wifi cloud.  Last week's episode of 30 Days showed that there are still many many extremely poor areas of Bangalore, that the city is prone to riots and violence- not every day, but if the city can be held hostage by violent mobs when a movie star dies, things are not swell and dandy...

It seems to me that Bangalore has two very different sets of issues requiring attention: creating a nexus of competitive advantage to serve the world's economies highly efficiently, and the jagged divide between its own middle class and the ultra-poor citizens living nearby. 

I'm not usually one to proselytize about poverty, but it used to be pollution that we were exporting.  Now it's jobs and the stratification of societies?