A Perfectly-sensible Story About MySpace from Reuters.

I spend quite a bit of time complaining about the biases of the Reuters News Service so it is incumbent on me to mention when they get something right. This has not proven to be an excessive burden since it doesn't happen very often -- but it has happened again. This morning's story by Jill Serjeant, dateline Thu May 11, 8:23 AM ET, gets the MySpace social-networking phenomenon exactly right.

I have quoted the story -- As freedom shrinks, teens seek MySpace to hang out -- in its entirety since links to news stories go stale sometimes, especially stories they are, shall we say, out of line with the editorial direction of the wire service. Here it is:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - They paper their virtual walls with kittens and cartoon characters, give their address as Candyland, their age as 103 and announce they are yearning for true love.

Welcome to the secret, yet very public, world of young teens who are flocking to social-networking Internet sites both to chill with friends and to figure out the timeless adolescent question "Who am I?"

Although originally aimed at 20-somethings interested in independent music, Web sites like MySpace.com, which is owned by News Corp, have attracted an enormous following among middle school students, and cultural theorists say it's not hard to see why.

As the real world is perceived as more dangerous with child abductors lurking on every corner, kids flock online to hang out with friends, express their hopes and dreams and bare their souls with often painful honesty -- mostly unbeknownst to their tech-clumsy parents.

"We have a complete culture of fear," said Danah Boyd, 28, a Ph.D student and social media researcher at the University of California Berkeley. "Kids really have no place where they are not under constant surveillance."

Driven to and from school, chaperoned at parties and often lacking public transport, today's middle-class American kids are no longer free to hang out unsupervised at the park, the bowling alley or to bike around the neighborhood they way they did 20 years ago.

"A lot of that coming-of-age stuff in public is gone. So kids are creating social spaces within all this controlled space," said Boyd.

LIFE SUPPORT

The ranks of Santa Monica, California-based MySpace.com has swollen to more than 73 million members in two years, making it the second-biggest Web domain after Yahoo in terms of page views. Other popular teen sites are Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga.com and Orkut.com.

Most MySpace members live in the United States but a British version was launched this year and Australia will be next.

More than half of 15- to 20-year-olds who are online are using MySpace, according to the company's research. They use the site's design technology to create personal "spaces" that resemble a cross between a high school locker and a secret diary.

Researchers say older teens and 20-somethings use the site more for friendship, sharing music and arranging meetings and parties.

The younger set use it to chill with known friends and work out their own identity. Some construct fantasy lives of vast wages, luxury cars and say they are searching for "live-in pimps." Others confess touchingly to being geeks, loving uncool movies like "The Sound of Music" or list their puppy as their lover.

"Building identity is a lot of what a teen-ager is. The majority feel they don't fit in," said networking consultant Ross Dawson, chairman of Future Exploration Network.

"This is the first generation for which it is entirely natural to socialize in a digital environment. Mobile phones, instant messaging, texting and being online really are their life support," Dawson said.

ADULT ALARM

Under-14s are not supposed to use MySpace but tens of thousands ignore that stipulation, inventing ages and high school careers still beyond their reach, and sometimes posting sexually precocious pictures.

To meet concern over possible sexual exploitation of children, MySpace hired a safety czar in April and requires under-18s to review safety tips before registering. It also restricts the profiles of under-16s to users they know.

It says it has deleted more than 250,000 profiles of under-14-year-olds since 2004 on the basis of tips by parents and algorithms that search the site looking for keywords and phrases that identify very young users.

"We are now deleting something like 5,000 under-age profiles a day," said Shawn Gold, head of marketing for MySpace.

Gold said the dangers should be kept in perspective. "If MySpace were a state it would be twice the size of California, but the crime associated with it would be a five-block area of New York City."

For all the adult alarm over the coarse language and provocative poses often seen on such sites, Boyd said teens are doing just what they have always done.

"Adults are not normally privy to these teen-age expressions. But when teens hang out in public they do these stupid things and they always have.

"Teens are trying to figure out their sexuality for better or worse. It's a problem for parents to pretend like it doesn't exist. If parents have an open mind and can hear their teens expressing themselves in all their ridiculousness, they can make sense of it and it stops being so scary," she said.

Implosion Photoblog

building
Originally uploaded by bigleehimself.

I got up before the sun came up today to go see the demolition company bring down a twelve-story building across the street from Crabtree Mall in Raleigh. I took along the trusty Kodak to do a bit of photo blogging.

It was a cool, rainy Sunday and the implosion was scheduled for 7:30 am. The early hour on a Sunday was chosen because they had to close several major streets for a few minutes to blow the building. Add in the light rain and you get an event where only the most dedicated rubber-neckers were in attendance.


Clicking on the photos will take you to bigger versions in my Flickr.com account.


My plan had been to watch the implosion from the parking deck of the mall but was turned back by a policeman who said the a press pass was needed to get in there. Several people I spoke to had actually come the night before the pick out the best spot in the mall parking lot to watch but when they came back in the morning they couldn't get in.




The spot where I and my fellow rubber-neckers wound up was on a road that runs behind the mall and a bit up the hill. There were a couple of trees in the way but we had a pretty good view of the building (which you can see in the background here.)




I heard some people say that the parking lot of the old Steak and Ale further up the hill had a better view. The people on the hill in this photo are up there. I thought about walking up there but decided that the other location might have worse tree problems that where I was standing -- and I didn't want to lose my spot.




Quite a few people brought their kids. The wet weather held down the crowd and everyone could find a spot where they could see.




This gentleman was sitting in the brush up on the hill taking photos. His camera was a smallish digital of some sort -- too small to show in this photo. His photographer's pose with no camera visible made him look a bit like a mime doing an interpritation of a photographer.
I'd watched quite a few implosions on TV but this was my first opportunity to watch on in person. The "implosion" is handled by blowing out the supports for the middle part of the building first then knocking out the support for the outside once the middle is already falling. That makes all the outside walls fall in towards the center and the whole building falls inside its old footprint.




Those first explosions -- the ones that take out the support for the building's center can't really be seen. You hear them... BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. ... and you think Dang! It's going. I'd better take a picture! but there is nothing to take a picture of...





Then, while you are waiting for your slow-cycling Kodak camera to get ready for the next shot they blow the supports for the outer wall and you miss your chance to get a shot showing the visible explosions. You do have time for exactly one shot as the building collapses in on itself...





...and all the shots you want of the big cloud of dust.





After the implosion the pile of debris is smaller than you expect it to be.



After the explosion I took this shot from the bridge that is in the foreground of my photos of the implosion. These guys arrived on the site amazingly fast. They probably weren't that far away when it came down.

Note to self: The next time you photograph a building being blown up be sure you get a decent "before" picture and don't wind up grabbing a crappy-crop version from the middle of a wide angle frame.

El Stinko de Mayo

I'd like to correct a misconception people have about today's Mexican holiday. Most people think that the idea is to go down to the local cantina on May 5th and get stinking drunk -- and then to add the resulting May 6th hangover to the list of grievances that make us rather cross with Mexico. This is not what el Cinco de Mayo is all about.

according to Wikipedia,

El Cinco de Mayo ("The Fifth of May" in Spanish) is a national celebration in Mexico. It commemorates the victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragoza over the French expeditionary forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.

Historical background

In 1862, in response to Mexico's refusal to pay off its debt, Britain, Spain and France sent troops to Mexico; they arrived in January of 1862. The new democratically-elected government of President Benito Juárez made agreements with the British and the Spanish, who promptly recalled their armies, but the French stayed, thus beginning the period of the French intervention in Mexico. Emperor Napoleon III wanted to secure French dominance in the former Spanish colony, including installing one of his relatives, Archduke Maximillian of Austria, as ruler of Mexico.

Confident of a quick victory, 6,500 French soldiers marched on to Mexico City to seize the capital before the Mexicans could muster a viable defense. Along their march, the French already encountered stiff resistance before Zaragoza struck out to intercept the invaders.

The battle between the French and Mexican armies occurred on May 5 when Zaragoza's ill-equipped militia of 4,500 men encountered the better-armed French force. However, Zaragoza's small and nimble cavalry units were able to prevent French dragoons from taking the field and overwhelming the Mexican infantry. With the dragoons removed from the main attack, the Mexicans routed the remaining French soldiers with a combination of their tenacity, inhospitable terrain, and a stampede of cattle set off by local peasants. The invasion was stopped and crushed.

Zaragoza won the battle but lost the war. The French Emperor, upon learning of the failed invasion, immediately dispatched another force, this time numbering 30,000 soldiers. By 1864, they succeeded in defeating the Mexican army and occupying Mexico City. Archduke Maximillian became Emperor of Mexico.

Maximilian's rule was short-lived. Mexican rebels opposed to his rule resisted, seeking the aid of the United States. Once the American Civil War was over, the U.S. military began supplying Mexicans with weapons and ammunition, and by 1867, the rebels finally defeated the French and deposed their puppet Emperor. The Mexican people then reelected Juárez as president.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with going down to the local cantina for pocas cervezas on el Cinco de Mayo [Note: be sure to squeeze the lime wedge into the beer and poke it down into the bottle. Most Mexican beer doesn't taste right without the lime and Corona has no taste at all.] Just don't blame your hangover on the poor Mexicans who are celebrating their hundred-and-forty-some year-old, temporary victory over the evil and insideous French.

¿ Quien es Juan Galt ?

Today thousands of hispanic immigrants, many of them illegals, took a day off from work to demonstrate for "immigrant "rights". The idea is to have a one-day "strike" to show the US how dependent we are on the work done by hispanic immigrants. It is a somewhat-less-drastic version of Ayn Rand's character John Galt who decided to "stop the engine of the world" by inspiring scientists, engineers and industrialists to drop out of society.

Anyone who has read my blog in recent months knows that I am generally sympathetic to the idea of immigration reforms that would provide our current illegals with an opportunity to continue to work here. (I also support building a wall/fence/whatever to keep more from arriving until we have dealt with the ones we have now.) But, like I said, I am sympathetic to the situation of the illegals, most of whom I see as working very hard, living modestly, and making very little trouble.

Todays demonstrations are a big mistake for the immigrant community. They are doing themselves no good by letting a few ethnicity pimps make them seem Anti-American -- something which they overwhelmingly are not. The average illegal immigrant has come to the US to work hard and try to make a buck -- money which they send back to their families in Mexico by the billions. They have not come here as reconquistadores who want to take back the South West US because it was "stolen" from Mexico. They have come here to mow grass and pick fruit. The whole "re-conquest" thing comes from a few pointy-headed college professors and from a handfull of leftist "activists" who use the issue to grab for the microphone and to claim to represent the marchers.

The fact of the matter is that the hispanic workers aren't important enough to the economy to make much difference by taking a day off -- or by disappearing altogether. Having them around is good for the economy -- but not so good that we couldn't do without them. I support a guest-worker plan of some sort for humanitarian reasons -- not because I think the economy can't get by without one. So the message sent by the demonstrations will not be that the immigrants are necessary -- but that the are ungrateful and demanding. They are less likely, rather than more, to get fair, sensible treatment from the federal government now that they have further alienated the voting public.

Of course this all suits the ethnicity pimps just fine. The more polarized and poisonous the atmosphere of the immigration debate in this country the more power and media attention they will get. Your average low-wage hispanic worker is not particularly savvy, politically speaking. While you watch the news coverage of today's events please bear in mind that most of the people out there marching behind their Mexican flags have no notion what message they are sending.

Did Anyone Get the License Plate?

I was out running some errands today and as I pulled up at the light at US 1 and Tryon in Cary there was this guy in a convertable. He was driving with the top down and was drinking something out of a paper cup as he drove. When he stopped at the light he put down the paper cup and grabbed a half-empty clear one-liter bottle from the passenger seat beside him, took off the cap and started not so much to drink from the bottle as to pour its colorless contents down the front of his shirt. It was hard to tell what sort of bottle it was but it looked quite a bit like the plastic bottles that cheap vodka comes in -- the brand with the shiny blue label.

When the light changed it seemed to take the guy a while to get his car in the right gear to drive away. The man behind him, who apparently knew a drunk driver when he saw one -- started blowing his horn and gesturing. The gesturing and honking continued for a block or two until the guy in the convertible turned off into McGreggor Downs shopping center. The guy behind him drove on by shaking his finger out the window as the covertible turned off the road.

There were quite a few people there in trafic with us. I don't know if anyone else got the license number of the convertible, but I did. Here it is:



I took the above photo in my driveway because, you see, the guy in the convertible was me and the guy behind me -- the one with the honking and gesturing -- had jumped to an understandable, but mistaken conclusion. If you were planning to report the incident to MADD or the police, I'd just as soon you didn't. Which brings us to what really happened.

Dear Diary,

I mowed the grass this morning. It was a fine day -- sunny but cool -- and it was good to have something to do outside. I noticed that the bare spots where the dogs run up and down by the fence were not filling in and resolved to get some more grass seed after lunch. The furiture shop had called saying that the pillow for one of our chairs was ready so I decided to buy the grass seed at the Lowes across from Ethan Allan at the Crossroads Shopping Center in Cary. To add a third errand to my trip I also took along my gym clothes so I could hit the gym on the way home.

I was doing my mowing in an undershirt and blue jeans which seemed a bit underdressed for Ethan Allen so, not wanting to dirty another shirt for a few minutes wearing I put back on the shirt I wore to the office yesterday. This is technically against the rules; my wife gets mad when I wear my relatively-more-expensive and delicate 'work' clothes for weekend chores. But I was just going to two stores and the gym so what could go wrong? Since the weather was fine I put the top down on my car and headed out.

I picked up the pillow first. The wife has been calling the store freguently to see if it was in -- not so much because she was eager to have it as because she wanted to pick it up so I wouldn't have to know what it cost. It was actually less than I had thought but it was still a lot for a firkin' pillow. I have bought computers for less and she complained about the expense and I figured this expensive pillow would be handy the next time something needs an upgrade.

Next I picked up the grass seed across the street -- I also picked up a few annual flower plants to consign to the window-box-of-death. On my way to the gym I stopped at Whole Foods to get a cup of coffee. I find that my workout goes oh-so-much better if I am appropriately caffeinated. When I got the the light at Tryon and 64 I went over a bump and the coffee sloshed and geysered out of sipper on my paper cup and a splotch landed right on the front of my non-weekend-approved, $40 dollar-plus, dress shirt. This was a potential disaster! If the spot set it would more-than-offset any advantage I might have gotten from my wifes ridiculously-expensive pillow.

Thinking fast I grabbed a napkin from the side pocket of my car and blotted. I could see that there would be a visible spot if I let it dry so I grabbed a half-empty bottle of water I had left on the passenger seat after my last trip to the gym, took off the cap and sloshed some on the spot to keep it wet. The light turned green and when I went to pull away I found that I had left the car in third gear while I dealt with the spill. I shifted the bottle of water to my left hand to shift gears and headed for the gym a few blocks away to continue rinsing and blotting in the parking lot.

About this time I noticed the car behind me blowing his horn -- honk honk honk honk -- and giving me indeciptherable hand gestures -- not rude gestures, just odd ones I couldn't figure out. As I got in the left turn lane the guy passed me, staring at me and shaking his finger at me -- tisk tisk -- out the window.

I did manage to get the spot out, I think, and it was only later, as I was running a few laps at the gym that I realized what all the honking and gesturing was about. I had been mistaken for a drunk driver. Pretty funny, I think.

[Note to self: be sure to use the expensive-pillow thing quickly since the wife sometimes reads my blog and once she knows about the coffee spot she will suddenly be able to see it and will give me the "this shirt is ruined" thing.]

Whatsit

My lovely wife found this object at the side of the road while walking the dog. Neither of us have a clue what it is. Whatever it is it is quite sturdy and rather heavy.

It appears to be made out of some sort of composite material -- sort of a cross between fiberglass and masonite. It has the same feel in the hand, and the same heft as an extremely dense wood such as Ironwood or Ebony. Clicking on the images will bring up larger versions of the photos which show more details. The lower photo, in particular, gives a good look at the "grain" of the material which is more fiberglass than wood. That photo also shows the small hole that appears to have been drilled after it was formed.

The object gives every appearance of having a definite function. The carefully smoothed edges of the big hole and the three cutouts suggest ropes or cables. The small, drilled hole is not smoothed, suggesting that the small hole is not part of the object's function but may be used to hang it up until it is needed. As I said, the object speaks clearly of carefully designed functionality -- it merely gives very little information about what that function might be.

I am posting my photos of the object in hopes that some reader may have used, or at least seen, such a thing and can tell me what it is. My current best theory is that it is a Klingon sex toy. The fact that this is my best theory should tell you how far from a clue I am. Klingons are fictitious, for one thing, and besides, at only eleven inches it would be rather small.

If you know what this thing is please leave a comment. If you have no clue, guess. If you have lost one of these recently on the Cary Parkway just tell me what it is and you can have it back.

Juan Enrique was a Tomato Pickin Man

John Henry he said to his captain:
  "Your money is getting mighty slim,
When I hammer through this old mountain,
  Oh Captain will you walk in?"

John Henry's captain came to him
  With fifty dollars in his hand,
He laid his hand on his shoulder and said:
  "This belongs to a steel driving man."

John Henry was hammering on the right side,
  The big steam drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
  He hammered his fool self to death.

No one knows for sure who John Henry was, or even whether he really lived. He is such a popular figure in American folklore that generations of local storytellers and balladeers have claimed him across a wide swath of the southeastern United States -- continuing his memory, and at the same time obscuring his identity. According to John Garst at the University of Georgia, he might have been John Henry Dabney, born a slave in 1844 on Burleigh Plantation (near Crystal Springs Mississippi) and the much sung and storied contest between John Henry with his hammer and the steam drill may have taken place during the construction of the Oak and Coosa Mountain tunnels east of Birmingham for the C & W Railroad in 1887. That would make John Henry's 'captain' Captain Frederick Yeamans Dabney, a railroad engineer, Confederate veteran and nephew of John Henry's former owner.


Steam Drill

John Henry was a manual laborer who's job was being replaced by a machine. He was the last and best of his breed -- fighting a delaying action against inevitable changes that would make him obsolete. There are countless versions of the songs and stories about John Henry and they all have a common theme that if John Henry had been more sensible he wouldn't have "hammered his fool self to death," clinging to a way of life that was ending. If John Henry had been smarter he would have learned to work with that steam drill, but he loved the swing and the sing of his hammer too much. His one-time victory over the machine didn't change anything. If he had been smarter he would have done something else. But he didn't and we still sing about him almost a century later.

---

When the Bracero program ended in 1964 many argued that the tomato industry in California would be damaged, or at least that the prices of tomato products such as ketchup would soar. What happened instead was that the industry developed a new variety of tomatoes with an oblong fruit that was sturdier and capable of machine harvesting. Picking tomatoes was the "job Americans won't do" of its day in the early 1960s. Then as now the idea of "jobs Americans won't do" stinks if you consider it as an attitude of the American work force. But as a statement of economic reality, or as a prediction, it was spot on. The guest worker program ended and Americans never did that job. The Braceros were replaced by machines.


Tomato Harvester -- The Steam Drill of 1964

Like John Henry who drilled blasting holes with a steel drill and a big hammer, the Braceros who picked tomatoes in California were working in a labor-intensive job where nascent advances in technology put a ceiling on how much it made sense to pay for the work they did. By the time the Bracero program ended their labor was still cost-effective for their employers -- due in large part to the fact that the Braceros worked insanely hard for very little pay -- but the handwriting was on the wall. It wouldn't have been long before the improvements in mechanized agriculture would have made the hand-picking of tomatoes uneconomic, at least for making ketchup, even with Bracero labor. The industry adapted to the loss of the migrant laborers with scarcely a pause.

The story of the Braceros in California does not lend itself to songs like John Henry, the Steel Drivin' Man, but it is a story often told by anti-immigration pundits who see it as a refutation of the idea that the economy needs immigrant labor to perform labor-intensive tasks that are uneconomic if done at the local prevailing labor rate. And since the end of the guest worker program was, for the most part a wash for the California tomato industry and labor market, it does tend to contradict those who predict huge dire consequences if the supply of cheap labor is cut off.

On the other hand there was very little good that came from ending the program either. The companies growing tomatoes in California were forced to invest in mechanization a bit earlier than they would have otherwise. Non-immigrant agricultural workers in California saw a small increase in the level of pay they could demand but not enough to really change their situation. The jobs vacated by the Mexican workers did not go to higher-paid American workers -- the jobs just went away when the guest workers did. So the end of the Bracero program in 1964 was slightly favorable for farm workers in California unless they owned their own farm. It was slightly unfavorable for farm owners -- being least painful to the large farm owners who could afford to mechanize and most painful for the smaller farmers who could could not. On the whole, as I said, it was a wash... as long as you forget about the Braceros themselves. For them it was a disaster.

It cannot be denied that the Braceros were not treated very well. They worked hard, often in very bad conditions, and were paid very little. It says a lot about their conditions back home that they would queue up by the thousands to be treated so badly. The fact of the matter is that however lousy their pay was by American standards it allowed them to support their families far better than they could by working in Mexico.

Today's Informal Guest Worker Program:

The Mexican economy tanked in December 1994 when the Mexican government could no longer support the increasingly unrealistic valuation of the Peso. The banking system collapsed and the country was thrown into a depression. In the more developed parts of the country eventual recovery was made possible by an emergency loan from the United States and by the NAFTA free trade agreement that stimulated Mexican industry and boosted exports. In the poorer parts of the country the poverty rate exceeded 50 percent for years and finally dropped mostly due to money that men who were working illegally in the US sent home to their families. The number of illegal immigrants currently working in the US is estimated at approximately twelve million and the money they send home is the second-largest source of revenue for the Mexican economy.

Like the Braceros, today's illegal immigrants are largely agricultural workers. Unlike their predecessors who were seasonal workers, today's illegal immigrants tend to remain in the country all year. Those who see immigration as a threat often point out that when the season is over the seasonal workers no longer go home. While this could indicate that they have lost their desire to return home during the off season, it could also reflect the fact that increased patrolling of the border forces them to choose between spending the off season with their families and being sure they will be able to work during the next year's growing season.

They continue to work in areas where the American workforce has moved on. It's not so much the jobs that Americans won't do as jobs Americans used to do but don't any more. Much of the citrus that is grown in this country is picked by immigrant labor. American's don't mind picking fruit. We used to pick fruit but, with international competition being what it is, and with emerging technology for picking the fruit mechanically holding down the value of the labor, it doesn't pay very well. And if the immigrants were to disappear it wouldn't pay at all. The job of picking oranges would quickly be done by machines.


Citrus Harvesting Machines -- the Steam Drill of the new millennium.

You shouldn't think that I am suggesting that the citrus-picking machines will put low-cost immigrant workers out of work. There is always something useful that hard-working, low-cost labor can do. I remember talking to a forester about growing pine trees in the Florida panhandle. After you harvest a plantation of trees there are three things you can do to get ready for the next cycle. Two of the three operations cost money but they improve your yield per acre. For option one you do nothing but leave a few seed trees per acre. With option one you can expect a yield of about thirty-five dollars per acre per year on average. Option two adds a controlled burn and sending in a team after the first year to kill any sprouting hardwoods so they don't crowd out the young pine trees. With option two you get another fifteen to twenty dollars an acre. Option three is doing the whole thing with machines to grind stumps and prepare the soil and a v-groove planter. Option three is quite expensive but you can get over one hundred dollars a year per acre. If you are a paper company and can spread the cost of the machines over thousands of acres there is no question that the last option is the most profitable. If you have an acre or two it is probably most sensible just to rely on the seed trees since the benefit of site preparation is so small with so few acres. But if you fall at just the right spot in the middle of the range the forester I was talking with can hook you up with a team of Guatemalans who can make their living on that fifteen dollar per acre spread between options one and two.

In the admittedly unlikely event that you are terribly interested in site preparation options for southern pine plantations, you might want to read this

Twenty-five years ago today.

Then president Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley. Hinckley missed the President with all six shots but one of the bullets did ricochet off of the bullet-proof glass of the presidential limo and strike the President in the chest. Press Secretary James Brady, police officer Thomas Delehanty, and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy were also injured, Brady most seriously. The President was taken to George Washington University Hospital where my sister was the resident in charge of the emergency room. Although she never actually treated him -- other people saw to him while she did the paperwork -- she was officially his doctor for the very few minutes it took for his personal physicians to arrive and her signature appears on his admission papers.

Left Behind Again

I have been left behind again and it is starting to piss me off. I showed up at the docks where the luxurious Right-Wing Conspiracy was boarding for its cruise through the Straights and Narrows of Immigration and I couldn't get on. I got as far as the sign by the gangplank -- "You Must be THIS Angry to Ride" -- and although I stretched and scowled, drawing on my full (and usually more than sufficient) reserves of peevishness, I just couldn't quite measure up. I tried remembering the Alamo but all I got was Peter Ustinov. I thought about the Mexican with the leaf blower who blows the grass clippings off of the sidewalk and onto the street, and the other Mexican who comes along behind him blowing it off of the street and back onto the sidewalk. Event then I couldn't quite reach the arrow on the sign.

So here I am on the dock watching all the people I usually agree with on almost everything waving farewell and drawing away. I wasn't really surprised to see Neal Boortz there on the rail. I agree with what he says 95 percent of the time but he does go on a tangent sometimes. But Thomas Sowell was a disappointment.

I am not altogether alone of course. There are a few others who didn't measure up. Dafydd ab Hugh is one, and Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan also seem to have missed the boat, so to speak. And, come to think of it the boat sailed with the Presidential suite unoccupied as well.

This is the second time in about a month this has happened. I just couldn't muster the requisite level of indignation to get on board with the Dubai Ports 'outrage' either. At the time I wrote about how unsettling it was to find myself on the same side of a divisive issue as Jimmy Carter. Now I find myself closer to Ted Kennedy than to Neal Boortz on another issue. It's almost enough to make one doubt one's sanity -- almost but not quite.

Like Oliver Wendall Douglas in Green Acres, Dafydd, the President and I find ourselves the only sane men in a world gone batty.

Update: I just bumped into Mat Towery here on the dock. He couldn't get on the boat either. Towery seems to be trying to get Boortz back on shore by pointing out that Boortz's Fair Tax plan would be an excellent way to finesse the issue of getting "guest workers" to pay their share of taxes.

Update: I noticed NRO's Mark Kirkorian on the ship, hurling abuse at someone standing on the dock. Looking to find his target I found that it was none other than George Will. It's starting to seem a bit less lonely here on the shore.

BigThickDude

	John "Living one passionate moment to the next!" Male, 22 years old CATONSVILLE, MARYLAND United States Last Login: 3/12/2006
2/11/2006 9:06 PM john..........where have you been and why am i seeing you on the news? why am i hearing that you murdered someone? we got into plenty of arguments, why didnt you kill ME?

John Christopher Gaumer's page on MySpace.com has been taken down as I write this but you can still find it in Google's cache. The information above is the photo and information that Gaumer chose for his profile as "BIGTHICKDUDE" in the MySpace social networking site. Also above is the last posting on his page by one of his online "friends".

"Perils of online dating prompt safety efforts" is a Reuters Story that discusses the murder. It opens like this

Josie Phyllis Brown never had a chance against her 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter) killer, although his stature was one of the few things she should have known from his Internet profile.

John Christopher Gaumer, who confessed to the murder and led Baltimore County police to Brown's body on February 7, listed his height and other attributes in his quest for dates on MySpace.com, a free Internet social site owned by News Corp. where mostly young people connect for friendship and romance.

As you might gather from the title and the lede the Reuters piece is not so much about the murder investigation as it is about the dangers of online social networking sites. It is fairly typical of the national coverage of the story -- a few paragraphs about the Gaumer and his victim to establish a linkage with MySpace.com and the rest of the story is about how dangerous these social networking sites can be for young people.

Those two paragraphs manage, with a marvelous economy of prose, to state a few well-chosen facts, give a few generally false impressions, and get on to other topics. Let's start with the first sentence: "... although his stature [6'6"] was one of the few things she should have known from his Internet Profile". This gives the impression that the information Gaumer provided was sparse, misleading or false. Actually, he had provided quite a bit of information -- all of which appears to either be accurate or at least to fall within the allowable range of self-deception for a 22 year-old college male. Warning signs abound on his page including an online survey he posted which reads, in part--

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name: John
Birthday: November 23, 1983
Birthplace: K.I. Soyer AFB, Michigan
Eye Color: Green with a touch of gold, but change with clothing
Hair Color: Brown but highlights in the sun
Height: 6'6 I'm an ogre.. almost a legal Giant
Right Handed or Left Handed: Left mostly but both!
Your Heritage: Gookianarian lol ask me about my story/ German, Irish, and english
Your Weakness: Pens, Beautiful tall slender woman, oh you were asking for one lol!!!
Your Fears: Dying alone, my parents dying, my sister never being truly happy
Your Perfect Pizza: EVERYTHING...except hmmmm no no EVERYTHING
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: SKYDIVING, but I'm doing that 9/18 but anoth would be eating blow fish!
Your Best Physical Feature: eyes
Single or Group Dates: Single dates that way you can break the ice without too much
Cappuccino or Coffee: Coffee
Do you Shower Daily: multiple times usually im a dirty orge
Do you want to get Married: Yes
Do you belive in yourself: i have my moments
Do you think you are Attractive: I do but I have to work hard to achieve that
Are you a Health Freak: I use to be but I'll eat a fatty Mc fatty burger
Do you get along with your Parents: YES!! my parents are my best friends
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol: YUP!!!!!!!
In the past month have you Smoked: nope!
In the past month have you been on Drugs: nope except supplements to be the SUPER BEAST!!!
In the past month have you gone on a Date: YES and had some great ones
In the past month have you gone to a Mall: omg every week
In the past month have you been on Stage: no but its my secret passion
In the past month have you been Dumped: not really
Ever been Drunk: YUP YUP drinking it up
Ever been called a Tease: shit I tease myself too much to do that
Ever been Beaten up: HA!!! I'm an ogre
Ever Shoplifted: yes
How do you want to Die: sleeping or in glory
In a Boy/Girl..
Favourite Eye Color: any
Favourite Hair Color: any I'm not too pickie
Short or Long Hair: i perfer short but depends on the person
Height: 5'0 -6'6 but i like 5'11 tehehe
Weight: slender but not pickie..but the girl can't weigh more than me
Best Clothing Style: indie/goth/ preppy the works
Number of Drugs I have taken: dont matter
Number of CDs I own: A LOT
Number of Piercings: the merrier
Number of Tattoos: 1 so far
Number of things in my Past I Regret: too man to count

So, yes his profile does give his stature -- 6'6", an ogre, almost a legal giant -- but it also suggests him to be a narsissist who is taking supplements to become "the SUPER BEAST." He describes himself as an "ogre" three times (actually as an "ogre" twice and as a "filthy orge" once which I take to mean an ogre who is not a careful typist.)

He also gave his age -- 22, which makes him five years younger than his victim who, despite his having met her on "MySpace.com, a free Internet social site owned by News Corp. where mostly young people connect for friendship and romance" was 27, divorced, a single mother and old enough, and experienced enough to have known that she should be more careful. Please understand that I am not implying that the victim was in any way responsible for her fate, but only that the Reuters story omits her age (and his, for that matter) because it would distract from their use of the MySpace murder as an introduction to the discussion of the perils of online social networks populated by underage children pretending to be older and lurking pedophiles, pretending to be children.

There is, to be sure, a certain fascination to crimes with an Internet tie-in. Gaumer left quite a trail in the Internet -- not just on MySpace but on other sites as well. He had pages on RateMyBody.com, OkCupid.com, FaceTheJury.com (an edgy "dating" site with an ironic name under the circumstances), AIM, etc. and viewing the information on his pages feels a bit like wandering into a crime scene and going through the accused's sock drawer to see what he was all about. With Gaumer it doesn't take long to figure that out. He was about as subtle as a leg-humping dog. A bit more online snooping will turn up stories such as this one[warning: sexual situations, mild language, a bit creepy] that offer further confirmation.

I must admit that the social networking tie-in to the reporting on this story irks me a bit. Meeting new people online is risky -- not because it is something you do on the Internet, but because you are meeting new people. People you just met are people you don't know much about almost by definition, and whether you met them on the Internet or at a bar or a club makes very little difference. The internet does provide more opportunity to lie about their personal appearance, age and gender but meeting someone in a noisy club provides them an excellent opportunity to lie about everything else. Imette St. Guillen, a 24-year-old student at John Jay College , apparently met her alleged attacker in a bar where he was employed as a bouncer but the news stories about the event (such as this AP story from MSNBC) do not feel the need to explain to us what dangerous places bars can be.

I attribute the fixation on the MySpace tie-in to two things: First, the media love to run stories about things that people are worried about and people, especially parents, are worried about what goes on in these somewhat-mysterious online meeting places. Usually, when these fears are overblown as they are in this case, the stories will have alarming titles but the actual text will be more measured and reassuring -- usually, but not always. Which brings us to the second point. MySpace, the site you usually see singled out, was recently aquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owners of Fox News. Reuters in particular, but most of the other non-Fox news outlets in varying degrees, takes delight in casting MySpace, now owned by their competitor and political adversary, in the most unflattering light possible.

Background: For a bit more intformation on the stories I have mentioned here you might check out Steve Huffs CrimeBlog for information about the Gaumer investigation and Johnsville for analysis of the Littlejohn investigation in New York.

V for Vendetta

I saw the film V for Vendetta last night at the late show. It's a rather long movie and the late show was really late. The ten o'clock show didn't get out until 12:35 am and, by the time the trailers were over the late show didn't start until nearly one in the morning. I hope the Friday late show was better attended than my Saturday night one. I enjoy midnight showings and I hate to see theaters lose money running them. I bought a small popcorn which will have helped the theater recoup about half of the pay of the girl who sold it to me. The theater's take on my ticket may have paid the projectionist when combined with the tickets of the other three people attending the show. By the time projectionist followed me out at 3:15 and locked the door I'm aftaid the theater was out a bundle on their decision to run a late show of the Wachowski brothers' latest offering.

Since the Park Place theater in Morrisville, NC appears to have run their Saturday late show as a public service, instead of for profit, it behooves me to say that I appreciate it. I want to assure them that the local movie-going community appreciates their efforts on our behalf and that the low attendance should be blamed on the film, which is deeply flawed.

What's wrong with the film? Alan Moore, who wrote the original graphic novel but asked to have his name taken off the film, sums it up nicely in his interview at MTV.com:

When I wrote "V," politics were taking a serious turn for the worse over here. We'd had [Conservative Party Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher in for two or three years, we'd had anti-Thatcher riots, we'd got the National Front and the right wing making serious advances. "V for Vendetta" was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy.

Those words, "fascism" and "anarchy," occur nowhere in the film. It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. In my original story there had been a limited nuclear war, which had isolated Britain, caused a lot of chaos and a collapse of government, and a fascist totalitarian dictatorship had sprung up. Now, in the film, you've got a sinister group of right-wing figures — not fascists, but you know that they're bad guys — and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It's a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England]. The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it. And if the Wachowski brothers had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn't it have been more direct to do what I'd done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?

George Clooney's being attacked for making ["Good Night, and Good Luck"], but he still had the nerve to make it. Presumably it's not illegal — not yet anyway — to express dissenting opinions in the land of free? So perhaps it would have been better for everybody if the Wachowski brothers had done something set in America, and instead of a hero who dresses up as Guy Fawkes, they could have had him dressed as Paul Revere. It could have worked.

It should be pointed out, in fairness, that Moore is a bit hard on the film. This is not to say that the parts he dislikes are not there, or that they are less annoying than he lets on, but that the film is not without its pleasures. The acting is good throughout with Natalie Portman and Stephen Rea being the standouts. The special effects, the pacing and the direction are all fine. The writing is maddeningly uneven -- there are long sequences that capture the feel of Moore's original and are actually quite involving, and there are also long sequences that have been added to update the story and are jarring and annoying.

Watching V for Vendetta is a bit like attending a live performance of MacBeth with a troupe of fine actors doing excellent preformances on one side of the stage and a troupe of monkeys hurling feces at the audience from the other. I can't really recommend it, but if you are determined to go you should try to ignore the monkeys... and wear a raincoat.

Update: 22 March

A few other reviews of V for Vendetta that share my point of view (more or less) are Jason Apuzzo's at Libertas and my friend Bill's at SciFiDimensions. Jason's piece draws parallels to a relatively obscure film that you can read about here.

Spelling Checker Humor

Some years ago I worked for Unisys and the spelling checker in Microsoft Word could not recognize the name of the company. Every time I spell checked a document with the word "Unisys" in it my computer would helpfully suggest "Anuses" as a replacement -- which struck me as so funny that I never added the word to my personal dictionary.

Blogger's spell checker also can't spell Unisys but it's suggestion of "Unisex" is not as funny. On the other hand, the other day I misspelled the word "pedophile" (in teleoscope: Blinded by my anti-Reuters Bias) and Blogger's spelling checker suggested "bedfellow".

UN Discovers Weather

We all know the swell job the UN does at soothing the tensions in international disputes, but did you know that they predict the weather, too?

GENEVA (Reuters) - Cool sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific point to a La Nina phenomenon, but it is too early to predict the impact on global weather, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday.

So there you have it: "La Nina conditions unusually early in the year, too soon to predict that impact on the global weather" says the UN meteorologist. The Reuters reporter scribbles for a minute, nodding, and responds "Yes, I see. What impact will this have on global weather?"

The phenomenon was also not expected to last long, the U.N. agency said in a statement.

Combined with other oceanic and atmospheric conditions, the temperatures were "consistent with the early stages of a basin-wide La Nina event," the WMO said.

But the agency said it very early in the year for the appearance of a basin-wide La Nina, which can upset normal weather and bring heavy rains and droughts, and this made it hard to predict its impact.

"There is some additional uncertainty over the extent to which typical La Nina rainfall and temperature patterns will occur," it said.

Furthermore, the phenomenon was expected to be relatively short-lived, with a return to what the agency called "neutral" conditions by the middle of the year or shortly thereafter.

In the Philippines, where a community of 1,800 people was entombed by a landslide last month on Leyte island, the national weather bureau has said that typhoons, flood and rains since November might be linked to development of La Nina.

The WMO said careful monitoring would be needed for indications that La Nina could last longer or even turn into an El Nino event, which can also have devastating climatic effects and occurs when sea surface temperatures rise substantially.

"Neither of these two scenarios is considered likely, but cannot be ruled out at the current time," the WMO said.

Now we know. The La Nina will be brief unless it last longer. It may also turn into its opposite, El Nino. As a possible result of any of these eventualities it may rain less, more or about the same. It may be warmer unless it is colder. But no matter what happens it will be "devastating."

Nasty stuff, weather.

Blinded by my anti-Reuters Bias

If you have read my blog you will have noticed that the Reuters news service and I do not see eye-to-eye on most issues. I have removed most of the Reuters feeds for hard news from my MyYahoo home page since their outrageous slanting of the news tends to distract me. I do let Yahoo display a few Reuters headlines from the Reuters "Science" and "Internet Report" feeds, and even there Reuters manages to annoy me. A recent story in their "Internet Report," for instance, reported Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the "MySpace" web site -- an online community that is very popular with teens and young adults. Reuters, being quite liberal in its outlook, is not particularly fond of conservative Murdoch (founder of Fox news) and their report on the acquisition focused primarily on the problem of pedophile sexual predators in online communities. (MySpace: Murdoch's big hope, parents' nightmare).

But every now and then my anti-Reuters bias can make me pass over a good story. Case in point is the story in Reuters Science entitled Suit may prevent maternal deaths during childbirth. I passed on that story several times thinking Oh great. Another medical class-action lawsuit. Just what we need. But when I did get around to reading the story I find that the "suit" is a garment -- a compression garment worn on the extremities that appears to greatly reduce the risk of shock associated with blood loss during childbirth. Its rather an interesting story actually, and worth reading.

Goodmail

There is a new company called Goodmail Systems that has a new angle on fighting spam and other email-related problems. They are partnering with AOL and Yahoo to launch a new "Certified" email system in which legitimate companies will pay Goodmail to certify that messages they send are actually from the claimed source. Goodmail will attach a cryptographic certificate to the message that AOL, Yahoo and other ISPs will recognize. Messages certified by Goodmail will be delivered directly to the users' inboxes and will never go to the spam or junk mailboxes. You will be hearing a lot about Goodmail in the coming months -- it will be quite controversial -- and I will be discussing it in this posting... in a minute. But first, a trip down memory lane.

Do you remember those birthday cards you used to get when you were a kid -- the ones that were just a sleeve with an oval opening on one side where a dead president could look out? As an adult you might now suspect that Uncle Irving or Aunt Sue were too lazy to shop for cards and found it convenient just to slip a few bucks in a sleeve and mail it out. But that is because, as an adult, you have forgotten the crucial thing that all kids know: a birthday card with money in it is high-quality mail -- much better, for instance, than the birthday postcard you get from your dentist with the slightly-creepy happy, smiling toothbrush.

Your mom may have thought the money-card was tacky but Aunt Sue wasn't sending it to your mom; she was sending it to you and Aunt Sue knew that her six dollar investment -- one dollar for the sleeve, the envelope and postsage, and five dollars as payload -- would result in at least six dollars worth of seven-year-old birthday glee. The card from Dr Molar, your dentist, on the other hand, was mostly intended for your mother; it said to her that Dr. Molar was still in business and his practice was sufficiently well-managed to send out birthday postcards to the children on his patient list. The postcard cost less to send and was of less value when it arrived but, on balance, it too was worthwhile.

Ahhh, nostalgia... But, back to Goodmail. Goodmail is targetted at buisness-related email. It is intended to allow companies who need to get email to their customers -- for things like monthly account statements or airline e-tickets -- to be sure their messages will be delivered. The company can enter into an arrangement with Goodmail, pay a small per-message charge and have their mail marked as legitimate in a way that AOL, Yahoo, etc. can recognize using a cryptographically secure mark that spammers (phishers, etc.) cannot replicate. When the message arrives, not only will it bypass the spam filters, but it will also be marked with an indication that AOL/Yahoo/Goodmail certify that it was sent by the claimed sender and has not been modified in transit.

Let me be clear about one thing. This is a very good idea. If properly implemented it will take a big bite out of the problem of "phishing" (fraulent emails claiming to come from a trusted business or organization that ask for personal information which will be used for indentity theft.) It will also help somewhat with spam -- but not as much as it could. It is, as I said, a good idea, but I wish it would go farther.

What will be controversial about the use of Goodmail is that it will divide email into two classes: trustworthy certified mail and unvetted ordinary email. The certified email will be generally safe to open and, since the source is known, will be less prone to fraud. Also, since sending each message will cost the sender money there will be an incentive to limit the messages to high-value communications. The non-certified mail, on the other hand, will be the same mess it is now. One will never know for sure from whom a message has come and whether or not a message is safe to open. Since the incremental cost of sending an email message is neglegable, low-value bulk email will continue to flood user's inboxes. The technological battle between spammers and spam filterers will continue with both sides claiming advances but neither side winning. One will never be able to send an email and know that it will be received and read -- a false-positive match in a spam filter may cause it to be blocked, of if delivered it may still get lost among the hundreds of bulk messages the user doesn't have time to read. Private email will continue to be mired in this morass while commercial messages flow freely and reliably.

The main opposition to the use of this new channel will come from non-profit organizations who don't want their bulk messages to arrive uncertified but are unwilling to pony up for the per-message price to have them certified. (See this from InfoWorld.) They know that once users realize that messages marked as certified email are safer to open and less prone to fraud they will become more reluctant to open uncertified bulk mail. Goodmail states that they plan to offer certification services at cost to non-profit organizations -- setting the price at a cost-recovery level so they neither profit from, nor subsidize, the NPOs -- but it will still represent a cost to the NPOs. Many of them are currently spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the certified email program in an effort to prevent the service from being launched.

Goodmail is targetting business emaail (with a slight concession to the larger NPOs) but are doing nothing about private email. Their FAQ states, in part:

CertifiedEmail is NOT "email postage" for personal, individual, consumer emails. Individuals will not pay. Neither Goodmail nor its ISP partners have ever, or would ever, suggest that any consumer should pay to send emails.
CertifiedEmail is NOT "a tax. Neither AOL nor Yahoo! nor any other ISP with whom Goodmail partners will require senders to use the service in order to get their volume email delivered. Those who do decide not to use the service will see no change in their current delivery metric as a result of the Goodmail/AOL partnership.

CertifiedEmail is NOT for prospecting. CertifiedEmail is only for organizations' permissioned-based or transaction-based email. Those who receive their messages are people who have agreed to be contacted--typically they have transacted business with the sending organization and expect the communication, for example, a travel confirmation.

CertifiedEmail is NOT for spammers. Only reputable ogranizations can use the service. Goodmail carefully vets its senders, accrediting each one to verify its good sending practices, and rigorously monitor its complaint levels to be sure the sender is complying with Goodmail's acceptable use policy. The service is NOT a way for an organization to buy its way past AOL and Yahoo! spam filters.
CertifedEmail is NOT a barrier for those who don't use it. CertifiedEmail does not limit consumer access to the Internet or harm notions of free speech--rather, it protects consumers from online fraud, identity theft, and overzealous marketing practices.

CertifiedEmail is NOT a spam filter or spam blocker. Goodmail's goal is to raise the bar so high on sender behavior that messages are not second-guessed by filters and get a direct path to the inbox and a visual identification that the message is good. Goodmail has never suggested CertifiedEmail is the silver bullet for all of email's ills.

While this is an altogether sensible position for Goodmail to take it does not attempt to solve all the problems with email. Goodmail's FAQ admits this in the last section I quoted. It is quite likely that Goodmail has chosen the right target for their business. Business email is where the (honest) money is to be made in the email biz and their approach should be a big help with phishing. But it would be nice to see something a bit more effective against spam. In particular, I would like to see a way for private individuals to be able to send "certified" emails without opening the door for spammers.

The key to understanding how this might work is to remember Aunt Sue's birthday card. It was demonstrably a valuable piece of mail because it contained money. And Dr. Molar's postcard, while it did not contain currency, still cost something to send and Dr Molar was not likely to send one to everyone in the phone book. He, at least, needed to think it had some value to send it out at all.

That, I think, is the most significant indicator of spam -- each message is of very low value to either the sender or the receiver. The sender tries to compensate for the low value by sending his message to millions of addresses. The receiver compensates for the low value by actually reading less and less of the email he is sent, trying by various error-prone processes to pick out the increasingly small percentage of email that has any value and ignoring the rest.

A Modest Proposal.

Form a company to allow individuals to send "certified" emails using Goodmail as the channel (obviously Goodmail would have to approve the deal.) Users would create accounts and would choose user ids and passwords to control access to the account. Users would need to log in to send certified email. Users would be charged an initial amount to fund the account and would be able to provide additional funds as needed to maintain their balance. When a user wished to send a certified email the user would specify an amount to be drawn from their account balance and attached to the message. A minimum amount (perhaps initially ten cents) would apply. The user sending the message would designate a charity to receive the funds (less a small processing fee) when the message was opened unless the recipient preferred to have the funds sent to a different charity or applied to the receiver's account balance. The user would also have a receiver's profile which would allow them to specify a minimum amount that would need to be attached for messages addressed to them to be delivered. They could also specify whether this amount should go into their account or be donated to a charity of their choice. If a message was delivered but remained unopened for thirty days the funds attached to it (less the handling fee) would revert to the senders balance and the recipient would be able to read the message without triggering any transfer of funds.

The idea here is to associate a nominal fee with sending a message. The fee would reflect the value of the receiver's time and attention in reading it. If we assume that the recipient actually reads his email then deliberately sending a low-value message is a theft of the recipient's time. The recipient can set whatever value he wants on his time but not less than the minimum amount needed to make sending spam uneconomic. The disposition of the funds (to the recipient's account or to a charity of his choice) is up to the recipient if he has an account. If the recipient has no account, and declines to set one up, the funds will go to the charity suggested by the sender. The funds in a user's account can only be used to send messages and can never be converted to cash paid to the user but can be converted to cash paid to a non-profit charity either at the user's direction or as part of the process of sending messages as described above. All funds paid to the company to maintain the users' balances will eventually either be consumed by transaction fees in sending messages or will be paid to non-profit organizations as directed by the users' profiles.

Obvoiusly the concept still needs work. But I think the ideas are sound and the central idea is that "free" email is a bad idea. Email-related fraud and other crime doubles year over year and the root cause is the silly idea that email ought to be "free". As it turns out email is neither free as in speech or free as in beer. Instead, it is free as in free-for-all and free as in free-fall. I think it should be fixed and I think Goodmail is a step in the right direction.

Jimmy and Me

Past President Jimmy Carter is a nice man. He is a thoughtful man and tries very hard to be a good man. Sadly, the thoughtful part doesn't seem to work out very well for him and most of the things he thinks are wrong. Realizing this, it always makes me nervous to find that I agree with him on a contentious issue, and it has happened again. Jimmy supports President Bush on the issue of allowing a United Arab Emirate owned company to buy the company that handles the commercial operation of six east-coast US ports -- and so do I.

Finding myself on the other side of the issue from pretty much everybody with whom I generally agree, it was something of a relief to read this editorial opinion from the Wall Street Journal that nicely outlines my position.

Some of us are scratching our heads all right, but we're wondering why Mr. Graham and others believe Dubai Ports World has been insufficiently vetted for the task at hand. So far, none of the critics have provided any evidence that the Administration hasn't done its due diligence. The deal has been blessed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multiagency panel that includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security.

Yes, some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens. But then the London subway bombings last year were perpetrated by citizens of Britain, home to the company (P&O) that currently manages the ports that Dubai Ports World would take over. Which tells us three things: First, this work is already being outsourced to "a foreign-based company"; second, discriminating against a Mideast company offers no security guarantees because attacks are sometimes homegrown; and third, Mr. Graham likes to talk first and ask questions later.

Besides, the notion that the Bush Administration is farming out port "security" to hostile Arab nations is alarmist nonsense. Dubai Ports World would be managing the commercial activities of these U.S. ports, not securing them. There's a difference. Port security falls to Coast Guard and U.S. Customs officials. "Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday. "The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Kristie Clemens of U.S. Customs and Border Protection elaborated that "Customs and Border Protection has the sole responsibility for the cargo processing and cargo security, incoming and outgoing. The port authority sets the guidelines for the entire port, and port operators have to follow those guidelines." Again, nothing in the pending deal would affect that arrangement.

This issue offers the politicians in Congress an irresistable opportunity to appear hawkish on the War on Terror by demanding that nothing whatsoever be done about it. By giving the impression that port security is the responsibility of the private company running the Port Authority, and not of the Customs Agency and the Coast Guard, they can make political capital without the painful outlay of financial capital that would be involved in properly financing the agencies actually charged to do the job. If anything, having the UAE company running the port may make us safer by making it clear to the voting public that port security is the job of the US government and not of the contractor running the port.

And what is more disappointing is that opinion leaders who like to talk endlessly about finding ways to build relationships with the moderates in the Arab world, when faced with an actual opportunity to do so in a way that represents real cooperation and an element of trust, are leading the xenophobic charge. Confronted with organization of Arab businessmen, many of the usual UN-apologist, internationalist-leaning pols have constructed efigies of Jihadist madmen and are carrying them flaming up and down the halls of Congress.

There has been quite a bit of discussion -- rather too much, actually, some of it here -- about the damage that the Danish Cartoons have done to relations between the West and the Islamic world. But the people who are rioting over the cartoons are already beyond the reach of any appeal we might make. People marching with signs that read "God Bless Hitler" are not likely to be among the "moderates" to whom we seek to reach out. I have heard it said that President Bush has made a political blunder with his support for the ports deal. Perhaps he has made a domestic political blunder but, I would argue, he has done so to avoid the major geopolitical blunder of telling one of our best allies in the Arab world that, despite what we say when we are asking them for things, we don't trust them enough to do business with them.

At least that's how I see it. Me and Jimmy, God help me.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an Islamic dissadent. She is a Somali expatriate living in the Netherlands where she is an MP. She recently gave a speech in Berlin that, I think resonates with the photo above which I found in the Brussels Journal. Here's the end:

I think it is right to make critical drawings and films of Muhammad. It is necessary to write books on him in order to educate ordinary citizens on Muhammad.

I do not seek to offend religious sentiment, but I will not submit to tyranny. Demanding that people who do not accept Muhammad’s teachings should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission.

I am not the only dissident in Islam. There are more like me here in the West. If they have no bodyguards they work under false identities to protect themselves from harm. But there are also others who refuse to conform: in Teheran, in Doha and Riyadh, in Amman and Cairo, in Khartoum and in Mogadishu, in Lahore and in Kabul.

The dissidents of Islamism, like the dissidents of communism, don’t have nuclear bombs or any other weapons. We have no money from oil like the Saudis. We will not burn embassies and flags. We refuse to get carried away in a frenzy of collective violence. In number we are too small and too scattered to become a collective of anything. In electoral terms here in the west we are practically useless.

All we have are our thoughts; and all we ask is a fair chance to express them. Our opponents will use force to silence us. They will use manipulation; they will claim they are mortally offended. They will claim we are mentally unstable and should not be taken seriously. The defenders of Communism, too, used these methods.

Berlin is a city of optimism. Communism failed. The wall was broken down. Things may seem difficult and confusing today. But I am optimistic that the virtual wall, between lovers of liberty and those who succumb to the seduction and safety of totalitarian ideas will also, one day, come down.

It is an excellent speech. It has the same sense of the moment and the same ringing tone as Churchill at his best. Read the whole thing here.

The Brussels Journal piece is also worth reading. In it Paul Belien quotes an unidentified Danish letter-writer as saying

I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a rule of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice towards our fellow men.

And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Government of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Muslim regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian aid, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the drawings of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.

Read the whole thing here.

Imposing Sharia in Jante

Consider the following ten axioms which might describe a Danish multiculturalist's position on relations with the Islamic community in Denmark. As you read please bear in mind that I a describing a set of ideas that I do not myself believe.

1. Native, non-Muslim Danes should not think that they are special. Danes are by nature a deeply egalitarian people but Danish culture is not without its elements of racist and cultural exceptionalism.
2. Danes should not assume that they are of the same standing as the Muslim minority.Without consideration of differences of opportunity and the history of past oppression a simple comparison of social standing and achievement would be grossly unfair.
3. Danes should not think that they are smarter than Muslims. The idea that differences in achievement between Muslim and non-Muslim Danes can be explained, even in part, by differences in intellectual capacity is unacceptable.
4. Danish culture is no better than that of the Islamic community. If there were to be a core principle of multiculturalism this would be it.
5. Danes should not assume themselves better educated than the Muslims. Comparison of levels of education between groups with different ethnicity and different culturally-based standards is frustrated, and ultimately rendered pointless, by the impossibility of evaluating the importance of the skills and information imparted.
6. Danes should not think that they are more important than Muslims. Denmark is a small country and the Islamic world community is vast. The Danes have much to gain and much to lose depending on their relationship with Islam.
7. Danes should not feel that they, as a people, are uniquely good at anything. Danes tend to be quietly proud of their abilities. While their reticence about putting themselves forward speaks well of them they should still remember that they see their own accomplishments through the filter of their culture and others may view them differently.
8. Danes should not laugh at Islam. Islam is a serious religion and the Danes a serious people. It mars the dignity of both for the Danes to ridicule Islam.
9. Danes should not think that the world cares especially about them. National alliances are weak and the EU and other Western nations are too pressed with other concerns to worry about the Dane's internal problems with their Islamic community, and what is more, the other Western powers are in many cases pursuing approaches that give them some real or imagined advantage, but are not necessarily good for Denmark.
10. Danes should not assume that they can teach the Islamic community anything. The Danes have a long history and a rich culture but so does the Islamic community. It would be presumptuous of the Danes to insist that immigrants become somehow Danish just to live in Denmark -- presumptuous and a waste of the advantages that diversity could give to a small country in an increasingly Islamic world.

By this point any Danes, Norwegians or students of Scandinavian culture will have recognized my ten axioms as a trivial rewording of Janteloven (Jante Law) which is described in Wikipedia thusly:

The Jante Law (Danish and Norwegian: Janteloven Swedish: Jantelagen Finnish: Jante-laki) is a concept created by the Danish/Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in his novel A refugee crosses his tracks (En flygtning krysser sitt spor, 1933), where he portrays the small Danish town Jante, modeled upon his native town Nykøbing Mors as it was in the beginning of the 20th century.

There are 10 different rules in the law, but they are all variations on a single theme and are usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: Don't think you're anyone special or that you're better than us. The 10 rules are:

1. You shall not think that you are special.
2. You shall not think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. You shall not think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. You shall not think that you know more than us.
6. You shall not think that you are more important than us.
7. You shall not think that you are good at anything.
8. You shall not laugh at us.
9. You shall not think that anyone cares about you.
10. You shall not think that you can teach us anything.

In the book, those Janters who transgress this unwritten 'law' are regarded with suspicion and some hostility, as it goes against communal desire in the town, which is to preserve social stability and uniformity.

Most Danes will deny, with varying degrees of indignation, that Jante Law has anything to do with them, or with the Danish psyche, but the fact that these "laws" from a novel written over seventy years ago are still being discussed [mild profanity] suggests that Sandemose may have been on to something.

While few Danes will agree with the ten points of Jante Law as written, if you state them the other way around -- "I should not think the I am special; I should not think that I am smarter than they are; etc." -- you will find them nodding along, at least for the first few until they catch on to what you are doing. While they can generally see that Jantelowen is repressive and stifling when applied to other people they still see many of the precepts as guide to how they themselves should act.

I mention all this to offer a possible answer to a question that a number of people are asking: Why did the "cartoon" crisis erupt in Denmark, of all places? The Danes are natural multiculturalists, not so much because they value diversity more than other peoples or are less xenophobic (neither of which is particlarly true) but because they tend to be reserverd and private and they have an aversion to putting themselves forward. This means that when groups from other culturs emmigrate to Denmark the Danes make very few demands that they integrate into Danish society as a whole. Given that they have a large degree of autonomy, why is the Danish Islamic community making so much trouble?

My theory about this question is that the Danes, and other Scandanavian peoples, who like to be left alone and expect others to be the same, failed to give fair warning to the Islamic community that there were aspects of the local culture that they feel strongly about. One often hears this idea expressed in terms of the perception of weakness and a determination on the part of the Muslims to exploit it. My notion is slightly different; As I see it the Muslims have come to the conclusion that they can simply demand that Sharia be imposed incrementally on Denmark since they (the Muslims) feel strongly about it and the Danes don't seem to have any strong opinions about it one way or the other.

There are some signs that the Muslims may have overplayed their hand with the cartoons. The cartoons, once you get to see them, are surprisingly mild and tasteful, despite the furor that has sprung up around them. They fall well within the boundaries of alowable commentary in any modern Western culture. They do violate some aspects of Islamic law but Denamrk is not an Islamic theocracy and even from an Islamic point of view there is some reason to question the ban. Representations of God and the Prophet are forbidden because of concerns about idolatry and so, unless one imagines that the Danes are going to bow down to a picture of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, it is hard to see the problem they pose. Of course, they do violate the Islamic law that states that "Islam cannot take a joke" which, come to think of it is not that different from rule number 8 in the Janteloven

See teleoscope: Cartoon Fun. for an animation with small versions of the cartoons and a link to a source for larger ones.

Huge, Lily-Scented Worm Found as Reuters Burys Lede

Discovery News has reported the finding of a rare earthworm.

Feb. 10, 2006 — A gigantic white worm that smells like lilies was recently unearthed in the state of Washington.

The invertebrate, called the giant Palouse earthworm because it can grow to around three feet long, had not been seen in nearly two decades and is believed to be extremely rare, according to a University of Idaho press release.

Slightly later the Reuters News Service reported the release of the election reports in Iraq in a story entitled Car bomb kills nine as poll results released.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb outside a mosque in Baghdad killed nine people on Friday as poll results confirmed the new political dominance of
Iraq's long-oppressed Shi'ites.

Interior Ministry sources and police said initially that the mosque in the violent Doura district of Baghdad was Shi'ite. They later said the bomb exploded outside a Sunni mosque nearby.

There have been numerous killings [... ]

As electoral commission official Adel al-Lami read out the results at a media briefing in the heavily fortified Green Zone, 10 km (six miles) to the south the car bomb exploded, hurling worshippers to the ground.

The scientist who found the giant earthworm has not yet commented on the Reuters story but she was quoted as saying that she noticed the worm immediately because "it's very white and the anterior part is pink near the mouth. She reported that she did not notice the pleasant, lily-like odor said to be associated with her rare earthworm, an odor also coincidentally missing from the Reuters story.

Cartoon Fun.

The images embedded in the animation above have been much discussed in the news but very few people have actually seen them. The endless discussion of how 'offensive' these cartoons are, combined with the refusal on the part of much of the press to run them so people can form their own opinions, has given the impression -- I would argue the false impression -- that they are animated by a hate-filled, far right xenophobia that would offend the sensibilities of anyone with good taste. I have put up this animation featuring small images of the cartoons to give people a sense of what the cartoons are like. My images are too small to see details and are mostly too small to read the captions (most of which are not in English anyway) but they suffice, I think, to give the general sense of what they are about. I found the images at this site that displays them in more detail.

Update: Michelle Malkin has a better formatted page to see the original cartoons.

Oscars

Do you recognize the fish? They are Oscars -- Golden Oscars, as it happens. They seem a suitable illustration for a piece about the nominations for the 78th Academy Awards. These Golden Oscars have nothing do do with movies and, for a large part of the moviegoing public neither do the other ones.

In Oscars and the New Hollywood Triviality on the conservative film blog Libertas Jason Apuzzo continues his argument that Oscar nominees are increasingly chosen for their politics and tend to be independent films that fewer and fewer people have actually seen.

I must confess that I am beginning to respond to speculation about Oscar-worthiness in a film review in much the same way I respond to claims that a breakfast cereal is healthy. A few claims that a cereal is "good for you" or a "nutritious part of a good breakfast" are to be expected -- but when the ad copy is mostly about how healthy a cereal is I begin to expect texturized pine fiber nuggets flavored with flax seed oil. Similarly, when all I hear about a film is how likely it is to win Oscars I expect it to provide more heavy-handed left-leaning political pummelling than lively entertainment. This is unfair in many cases -- many of the films nominated are fine films -- but it is fair in enough cases that I have trouble freeing myself of the predisposition.

To examine Mr. Apuzzo's theory that nobody ever sees the films that get nominated for Oscars these days I offer the following scientific survey of one person randomly chosen among those sitting in my chair right now. The nominees are here if you want to follow along.

Teleoscope: Can I ask you a few questions about this year's Oscan nominees?
BigLee: I'm kind of busy right now...
Teleoscope: No you're not. You are blogging.
BigLee: Wellll... OK.
Teleoscope: Of the films with Best Actor nominations how many have you seen?
BigLee: I've been meaning to see "Walk the Line".
Teleoscope: That's none, then.
BigLee: Yes, none.
Teleoscope: Best Actor supporting?
BigLee: Nope.
Teleoscope: Best Actress?
BigLee: I saw "Pride and Prejudice".
Teleoscope: One of the five, then. Best actress supporting?
BigLee: Um, no. Not actually.
Teleoscope: Best Animated Feature?
BigLee: Two of the three.
Teleoscope: Ahh. Art Direction?
BigLee: Three of five. King Kong deserves it but it won't win.
Teleoscope: Why not? I don't think of Art Direction as being that political.
BigLee: The thing is, members of the Academy vote in their own specialty. This award gives the Art Directors their big chance to show that they hate Republicans, too. I think "Good Night, and Good Luck" has a good shot at the Oscar.
Teleoscope: Cinematography?
BigLee: One of five.
Teleoscope: That would be the Batman film...?
BigLee: Yes, how'd you guess?
Teleoscope: I got lucky. Costume Design?
BigLee: Two of five.
Teleoscope: Best Director?
BigLee: Go fish.
Teleoscope: Documentary?
BigLee: Surprisingly, I've seen one of them. March of the Penguins deserves the Oscar -- in spades. It's tragic really that they won't win. If the script had just mentioned the threat that "Global Warming" poses to the penguin's breeding grounds they'd have been a shoe-in, especially what their with being French and all...
Teleoscope: Ummm. Let's pick up the pace. Documentary Short? Editing? Foreign Language Film?
BigLee: Nope. Nope and nope.
Teleoscope: Best Picture?
BigLee: Zero.
Teleoscope: Animated Short? Live Action Short?
BigLee: None of them. Bit surprised I haven't seen the Pixar short.
Teleoscope: Sound Editing?
BigLee: Two out of three.
Teleoscope: Sound Mixing?
BigLee: Three of four.
Teleoscope: Visual Effects?
BigLee: All three of them. This is the only category where I have seen them all.
Teleoscope: I notice that you score higher in the more technical categories. How do you respond to the idea that you may just be a "special effects" geek?
BigLee: That could be, I suppose, but I don't think so, or at least not completely. Special effects are enablers. They allow the filmmaker to tell a story that would not have been possible to tell as well without them. C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter that he didn't think that live action films should be made from his Narnia books since the talking lion would appear silly and spoil the story. The new Narnia film is wonderful -- not because we get to see a talking lion but because "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a fabulous story and it can finally be filmed. I don't think I am any more attracted to the films because of their special effects than the films are ignored by the Academy for being too busy telling stories to address "social issues".
Teleoscope: That was your longest answer yet. Pushed your buttons, did I?
BigLee: Ummm.
Teleoscope: So let's finish up. Original Screenplay? Adapted Screenplay?
BigLee: Nada and zilch.
Teleoscope: So, by my rough count there are something like sixty different films represented. And of those you have seen...
BigLee: Eleven.
Teleoscope: And in the big four awards -- Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture?
BigLee: I have seen only "Pride and Prejudice". One in eleven. There are several of them I have been planning to see... once they get to the second-run theaters. They tend to be films that I think I ought to see but am not that excited about... and now that they are nominated for Academy Awards it will be that much harder to work up any enthusiasm.